“It’s advanced,” she said. “But it’s in his wheelhouse.”
“Yes, but you’ll be working in it. I’d rather have you on the bridge. I may want your guidance.”
“I won’t be far. You can call down whenever you want.”
29
* * *
Combat Module Carrier 539-Aloga
Pergamum Nebula
“I am here, Wavemaster.”
“Enter, Gold-Five.”
Spock had spent the previous hour mentally preparing for departure on another mission. He had not lost count of them yet, but their frequency had been enough to introduce a fatigued indifference to the specifics. He had been ready to board Aloga-One for the drop when the summons from Kormagan arrived.
He had never before been allowed anywhere near Carrier Aloga’s command bell, much less in the room he now entered. The room was a perfect sphere, clearly the center of the forward section of the ship. But the place was pitch black.
“Step over, Spock.” Kormagan stood atop a pedestal at the room’s center. Spock complied. When he reached the platform at its base, she—or someone else—took control of his armor systems, activating his jetpack and lifting him to her level. “Button up.”
Spock deployed his headgear—and saw before him what Kormagan was looking at. In place of the walls he saw swaths of color, punctuated here and there by points of light—and populated everywhere by blinking icons. Enterprise had been hoping to finish mapping the Pergamum. The Boundless, he saw, had already done it.
In the nearest foreground to his right, he saw the indicator for Carrier Aloga’s five transport modules, all heading to the nearby globe of Ghaffah. “You are not going on the mission?” he asked.
“It’s just a reconnaissance operation.” Kormagan stepped in front of him—and he found that he could see her in front of the stars. “I’ll come to the point. I want to know everything there is to know about Enterprise.”
Spock had expected such a talk—only much earlier. “You saw her in action when you apprehended us. That must be enough.”
“We were too busy trying to keep from being annihilated,” Kormagan said. “Those photon torpedoes of yours are more powerful than anything we’ve been able to construct.”
“May that serve to prevent you from harassing Enterprise again—presuming you find it.” Spock studied her for a moment. “Unless you have found it,” he added, looking around the room.
“They didn’t stay at that planet—the one the Lurians called Susquatane—long,” Kormagan replied. “By the time one of the other waves went back to check, it was gone. We thought Enterprise had left the nebula entirely.”
It made sense to Spock that Pike would give the order to depart. If he hadn’t, that order must surely come soon, as the vessel’s one-year mission was nearing its end.
“Last week, things changed.” Kormagan paced around the circumference of the platform. “Some of our early-warning-system satellites in the middle-density regions noticed something passing through, pounding with shield projection in a way that none of our ships—or the Rengru—would ever do.”
Spock’s eyes narrowed. “You are certain of this?”
“I think Enterprise has stumbled across the path of one of our other waves. They have no idea the force that captured you is one of many. I think they’re headed toward Little Hope.”
“Excuse me?”
“A rift between cloud complexes. It’s named for a battle that—well, you can guess how it went.” Kormagan waved her hand—and a region came into view before Spock. It appeared to be a void populated by stellar remnants. “Nothing there of value, just the wreckage of colliding solar systems,” she said. “A few failed stars and dead planets.”
Spock studied the place. “Significant dense formations surround it.”
“It sets up perfectly for an ambush. I know because the Rengru did it to me, when I was part of the Five-One-One. That’s how the place got its name—and how I wound up in another wave.”
Spock had nearly taken a step back at the word “ambush”—but did nothing. Kormagan had definitely noticed. “You control your emotions well.”
“Yes.”
“They tell me your kind tries to do that. It’s one reason I’ve kept you out on the line.”
“As opposed to what?”
“You know there are safer places to be.” She faced him. “What you may not know is this: right now, all your people are still alive. All thirty.”
That startled him. He hadn’t known the exact number—or the fact. “They are unharmed?”
She shrugged. “They’re armored, they should be. It wasn’t easy to find out. Some of them are with different waves now.”
“Traded like chattel,” Spock said, his voice chilly.
“I can get them back.”
Spock froze. What is she getting at?
“Not right away,” Kormagan said, pacing again. “It would take time. But at a minimum, I can negotiate with my opposite numbers to get them taken off the most dangerous details. Most of them are already in support roles, like your friend in Jayko’s workshop.”
“What is it you want?”
“You will lead an assault on Enterprise.”
“I will not.”
“This won’t be like Susquatane. We weren’t trying to take her then—just you. This time, I’m bringing in a couple of other waves that want a piece of the spoils. And your former comrades are going to have a hard time fleeing from Little Hope.” Kormagan gestured. An image of Enterprise appeared in the location, followed by more than a dozen Boundless carriers and their constituent transport modules, surrounding it.
The plot had not surprised Spock at all. “Return me to the deck, Kormagan. I will not betray my people.”
“You betray them by not helping.”
Spock couldn’t see how.
“You don’t realize what I’m offering,” Kormagan said, stopping. “No peoples in the Boundless are afforded special status. But I am willing to see that the thirty we have now—and however many I capture from Enterprise—wind up in manufacturing divisions. No fighting.”
“I see. And if I refuse, you will act in a sadistic and punitive manner toward them.”
“Have I acted that way to you?”
“Would you call abduction the act of friends?”
“You don’t know what you’re facing,” Kormagan said, turning her armored back to him. “And I mean you—because if we don’t stop the Rengru, they will next become a problem for your Starfleet or the Klingons or whoever lives outside. We’re the heroes.”
“You are acting in your own self-interest, in the name of someone—or perhaps some thing—called K’davu.”
Kormagan didn’t seem surprised he had heard the word. “That too.”
“What does it mean? What is your conflict about?”
Kormagan spun. “It wouldn’t help you to know. You’d simply try to communicate with the Rengru again—yes, I know you’ve never stopped trying. And they will pierce your armor and knife the back of your skull, and you will die having been of no use to us.”
Spock was unmoved. “To my captain, we thirty are already dead. I will not trade the freedom of Enterprise’s occupants to improve our lot—or to lessen the putative fate of the entire company.” He crossed his arms. “You may speak until these stars burn out.”
Kormagan stared at him. “Are all Vulcans so unreasonable?”
“Reason is our greatest treasure.”
“Reason this: I don’t want to kill your people. But they entered my war of their own volition, with weapons and technology never before seen in this nebula. I have to have what they have. Or I have to keep it from the Rengru.”
“If you fear the latter, we will leave.”
“It’s too late!” Kormagan shoved at Spock, nearly knocking him off the platform. She pointed at the star field. “Your people sealed their fate by not leaving when they had the chance. Now they’re out there, banging about—it’s a mirac
le the Rengru haven’t found them yet. If they claim Enterprise, we will never get our chance to—”
She paused. Spock watched her take a step back. In a more composed voice, she said, “If you will not help, you lose any say in what happens.”
Spock considered her words. Enterprise, he now knew, was the key. He began to pace. “I have a counteroffer, Kormagan. Am I correct in assuming the starship is more important to you than the personnel?”
“I always need personnel.”
“But there are many things you can learn from Enterprise—and which its personnel will never teach you, under any form of duress. I certainly will not. Surely adding to the efficiency of your future troops is better than a marginal number of new recruits who were never bred for war?”
Kormagan regarded him cautiously. “Logical.”
“Yes,” Spock said, “it is.” He stopped and turned toward her. “So if I help you take the ship in such a manner that results in no casualties—”
“I can’t guarantee that. Your people may act against us. And I don’t control the other waves.”
He began again: “If I help you take the ship so the Rengru do not have it, the cost would be the thirty—plus the people of Enterprise All of them—provided with a vessel or vessels capable of making it home. With the promise that they may traverse your space unmolested.”
“You don’t ask for much!”
“You ask for more than you know.” Spock went silent.
Kormagan studied him for several long moments before looking back at the image of Enterprise, surrounded. Then she studied the blinking icons across the sky—all, Spock suspected, representing Rengru forces. They seemed particularly clustered around one cloud-laden region which had a small white light at its center. Kormagan looked at it the longest before speaking again. “I have a counteroffer to your counteroffer.”
“I will not haggle over my crewmates’ lives.”
“This is a little thing.”
“Proceed.”
“You can have every crewmember—but one.”
Spock shook his head. “My captain is not for sale.”
“I don’t mean your captain. I need one of you to remain, to help me make sense of the technology aboard Enterprise.”
“I already said no one would help you.”
“Except, perhaps, the one making the bargain.”
“You want me to stay.”
“It makes sense. You know our needs—and you know your technology. If you help me seize their ship, I don’t know how welcome you’d be with them anyway.” Kormagan opened her gloved palm. “I would give you a place of importance in the wave.”
“I would take no reward for separating my crew from its ship. Not even if it saved them.”
“But you would save them.”
Spock looked at Enterprise’s image—and then looked down. “I will give the matter thought.”
She gestured—and Spock’s jetpack ignited. He lifted from the platform and drifted down to the deck and its entryway. “I can’t give you much time,” she called down. “We’re going to cross paths with your starship one way or another. Once that happens, either you’re in or you’re out. In which case, all your people are in.”
Spock nodded. “You were wrong about something, Kormagan.”
“What?”
“You said the Boundless had no use for economics. But you are more accomplished at trade than you know.”
30
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Departing Shivane
Nearly a year into his mission to the Pergamum, and a number of things no longer seemed funny to Pike. One of them: Amin’s joke about being able to tell where the Essfive attackers had been. Not after Enterprise visited Shivane, a planet named in the records of Courier 4, the most recent probe his team had captured. A significant portion of the world’s surface had been purged by antimatter blasts.
“Essfive sure didn’t spare the gigatons,” Nhan said, studying her recordings of the blast zone from her bridge station. “We can’t find an atom of what was there before.”
“It was a colony,” Raden said. “These characters steal people. That’s all.”
Pike couldn’t imagine it had been anything but a settlement either. “But why,” he asked, “does Essfive cover its tracks on planets but not spaceships?”
“Possibly two different kinds of raiders,” Nhan said. “Maybe even two unrelated groups?”
Let’s hope not, Pike thought. He was all theorized out—and the tsakat protocol, as Galadjian’s nebula-navigating procedure had come to be known, was rattling enough to make the transits between clues as off-putting as the stops.
Nhan spoke again. “Huh.”
“Something else, Lieutenant?”
“Sensors thought they saw something in the rear-view tactical display—just for an instant.” She shook her head. “It’s gone now.”
“Should we investigate?”
“No, not for this,” Nhan responded. “This nebula is a floating trash heap.”
“If you’re sure,” Pike said. “What’s next?”
“Back onto Courier 4 ’s mail route,” Amin said. It had led them to Shivane. “Three stops yet where we might find more probes waiting.”
“Or something else,” Pike said. Like our people—or maybe another Shivane. Touring ghost towns and ships of the Pergamum had turned all their lives ghoulish.
“Course is laid in,” Amin said, looking at the massive swirl of gas on the viewscreen. “I feel like we’re about to fly into yesterday’s tapioca.”
That, Pike laughed at. He touched his armrest control. “About to be tsakat time again, Number One.”
From the stardrive section, Una responded, “It’s a little crowded down here, but we’re ready to go.”
“I just realized I am the only engineer currently in the saucer section,” Galadjian mused aloud from his station. Pike knew there had been a time when the engineers would have preferred that state of affairs—but hopefully success ahead would get his chief engineer past all that.
“We’re here to keep you company,” Pike said. “Engage tsakat. Mister Raden, hit the trail.”
Combat Module Carrier 539-Aloga
Approaching Little Hope
“Thank you for what you are doing, daughter. The Rengru are destroying our lives. Your duty honors all of us.”
Seated again—as she often was these days—in the carrier’s spherical strategic-planning chamber, Kormagan thought back to the message she had first seen as a child. It had not been written by her mother, but rather was an exchange between two of her ancient forbears. The message of gratitude had inspired Kormagan as she was growing up in a Boundless mobile educational facility—and later, she had made sure to hand it down to her own daughters and granddaughters.
They were long since dead. The Rengru knew no mercy. Not on her ancestors—nor her children.
Still, Kormagan wondered. Who were you, Greatmother Eudah? How did you meet your end? And what would you say if you knew what we still do for you?
“Troops are prepared, Wavemaster.”
Kormagan opened her eyes. When she looked down and to the left, Opmaster Sperrin appeared superimposed over the nebular imagery. “Thanks, Oppy,” she said, snapped back to the job at hand. “You’re blocking my view of Wave Five-Four-Four.”
Sperrin chuckled. “I’m doing you a favor. Couldn’t we get anyone better for the right flank?”
“Not a lot of choice—not with eleven waves tied up at Varadah.” She didn’t add “at the moment,” because her updates were limited to what their network of messenger probes had delivered—but it was a safe bet. The Varadah Gap was a massive engagement that was into its seventh year. “Besides,” she added, “Hemmick said I owed him for the Lurian trade.”
“They’re better his problem than ours,” Sperrin said. “So you’re going to stay here for the operation? Not like I mind getting back into action.”
“Three waves, fi
fteen carriers. Somebody’s got to play commodore—and it was my idea, after all.”
“The master of the Fifty-Twos is all mouth,” Sperrin said. “If this doesn’t work, Quadeo will ensure the other waves never let us lead anything again.”
“Like they have any better ideas. This war has gone on for centuries—Enterprise is the first chance we’ve had to break it wide open. I’m not letting it go.” Kormagan repositioned her map point of view and opened the channel for Sperrin to see what she was seeing. “Just about figured out all the positions. What do you think of the plan?”
Sperrin looked up. “I think it’s overkill.”
“It’s fine. Is the trap baited?”
“Affirm. We’ve launched several probes to places where Enterprise ought to be able to find them, all directing them straight to Little Hope.”
The moderate clearing in the nebula was right before Kormagan’s eyes. “You took that name out of the probes’ navigational databases, I assume.”
“We changed the entry, as ordered.”
“Good. Spock cooperated on that too. Did you get him what he needs to break into Enterprise?”
“Requisitioned. You’re sure you trust him?”
Inside Kormagan’s headgear, reptilian eyes narrowed. “I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “But I didn’t see any way he could have been fooling us. From what I hear from Baladon, I don’t think Vulcans lie.”
“Great! He can become Hemmick’s new opmaster for the Damn Fool Brigade. And speaking of dumb ideas,” Sperrin asked, “are you really going to set Spock’s people free after we capture them?”
“If he does as instructed—yes. Enterprise’s tech is such a force multiplier we won’t need as many warriors.”
“K’davu by the equinox,” Sperrin said. “That would be a capper to your career.”
“To everyone’s.” Kormagan breathed easily, her whole being full of the certainty that this was the best hope for her people. “Get our ships into position. I’m expecting guests at any time.”
As Sperrin faded from view, Kormagan looked at the icons indicating assembling forces and thought again of the message from the woman she had never met. Greatmother Eudah’s daughter—and so many more—had fallen. It had convinced her: inspirational words were not enough to give future generations of Boundless. She would give them Enterprise—or she would reduce it to atoms.
The Enterprise War Page 15
