Star Trek

by John Jackson Miller

  He’d gone in and out of consciousness enough that he’d lost track of time. The Dromax had mostly been busy through all of it, appearing infrequently to toss him food. Sometimes it was for humans. He wanted medication—but most of all, he wanted to know what had happened to Georgiou and Dax.

  The whole adventure had gone wrong somehow. He assumed it was his fault; most everything usually was. But the current turn was a complete surprise. Hadn’t they just found their goal?

  A Dromax entered. Bleary eyed, Finnegan looked up. “Who’s there?”

  “Can’t you tell us apart yet?” the Dromax declared. “Georgiou was right about you. You are an oaf.”

  “General Agamalon. Grand.” He stopped to cough. “I’d shake your hand, but I’ve got a bad dose of it. That—and, well, I’m in a cage.”

  “It happened that way. I haven’t been a kilometer from the Cascade since everything happened—and I promised not to let you out of my sight.”

  “Who’d you promise?”

  “Your commanding officer, before she left in the ship. I don’t know what you did to irritate her, but count yourself lucky. Were you my subordinate, I’d have had you killed by now.”

  Finnegan rubbed his head. Part of it was coming back, but the message from Burnham aboard the ship was the last thing he remembered. Georgiou had tried to ditch him before; she’d finally succeeded. “Did Dax go with her?”

  “We’re still searching. We think she may have gone out the northern entrance, into unclaimed territory. There’s a lot of jungle there.”

  Good for her, then. Finnegan could see her, gymnastically swinging from branch to branch over the heads of the shorter Dromax. “I’ve seen all of you running about. I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Everything’s changed,” Agamalon said, squat body jittering with excitement. “Now that the Double Crescent rules the Dromax, the Casmarran economy is collapsing. Some of them fear we won’t need to buy their weapons anymore. Some of them fear we’ll be turning our sights on them next.”

  “Reason to be worried, have they?”

  “We’ll see. There may be other forces in play. And speaking of…”

  Agamalon turned to see Garph approach. The two Dromax retired to a space farther away to confer. The discussion, Finnegan saw, was animated.

  After a long wait, he watched as both of them approached. “Sergeant Garph tells me we’ve just gotten word of a new situation,” Agamalon said. “Apparently there is no end to the wonders of the past few days.”

  “Can’t wait to see them.”

  “Afraid you won’t,” the general responded. Garph drew a disruptor and pointed it at Finnegan.

  He could only summon an exhausted sigh. “Ah, Sergeant. I thought we were friends. We saved you, remember?”

  “Your captain saved me.”

  “Did ‘my captain’ order this?”

  Neither Dromax responded.

  Finnegan straightened himself as best he could in the cage. “Well, crack on. Don’t leave me here waiting.”

  He steeled himself. A burst of energy washed over his body—

  —and he found himself in a bright, antiseptic room.

  The afterlife is duller looking than I expected, he thought. The cage was gone, he noticed; only after his eyes adjusted did he realize he was sitting on a transporter pad.

  The side doors whooshed open, admitting Leland. “We have him,” Sydia said from the control station.

  “Leland!” Finnegan raised his hand for the spymaster to help him up—only to draw it back and sneeze into it. Then he offered it again. “Where am I?”

  “NCIA-93,” Leland said, taking care to grab Finnegan by the sleeve rather than his dripping hand. “Sydia, medical team at once. Bridge, get us out of orbit before the Dromax see us.”

  “I thought you couldn’t come here,” Finnegan said. “The treaty.”

  “We’re Section 31, Sean. We don’t ask permission, and we rarely ask forgiveness.”

  “Is that your motto?”

  “That’s classified.” He helped Finnegan stand. “We knew they were about to shoot you. We acted. You’re complaining?”

  “No. I mean—yes, that’s not good enough.” Finnegan frowned. “Georgiou said you were outside the edge of Troika space—that you might not even know where we were. How’d you know where I was? Or what was happening?”

  “That’s classified.”

  Finnegan felt another burst of energy: this one, righteous rage. He grabbed Leland by the collar. “I’ve been through hell, you stupid eejit! Tell me or I’ll sneeze in your face!”

  Leland looked at him—then to Sydia—and chuckled. “Pipe the sound down here,” he said.

  Sydia touched a control. Then, over the room’s public address system, Finnegan heard his own voice: “Reason to be worried, have they?”

  And then another: “We’ll see. There may be other forces in play. And speaking of…”

  “That’s me and Agamalon, a minute ago.” He released Leland. “How in the hell?”

  Leland pointed to Finnegan’s mouth. “The tooth you lost on Pacifica. We replaced it, remember?”

  Finnegan froze. “Yeah?”

  “It’s a transmitter. Works in combination with a very classified substance called viridium. It decays in the subspace spectrum—a starship can home in on it from systems away.”

  Finnegan’s finger went immediately to his mouth. “You mean,” he said after removing it, “you’ve been listening to my every word all this time?”

  “No, not all. The transmitter’s range is limited. But when we didn’t hear from your team, we homed in on the viridium—and once we got close enough, heard your conversation. Sounds like we got you out just in time.”

  Finnegan stepped to the wall and sagged against it, exhausted. “It’s just as well. I don’t have the energy to explain everything.”

  He had slid down to sit on the deck again when the medic entered. She was immediately startled by Finnegan’s ragged condition. “You look rough,” she said, opening her bag. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “I could murder a drink.”

  “Georgiou and Dax,” Leland said. “Where are they?”

  Finnegan looked up at him, pained. “Dax is on the ground.”

  Sydia responded. “That is not what our life-sign readings say. Every being on the moon is Dromax.”

  “Then she’s with Georgiou,” Finnegan said. “She took Jadama Rohn.”

  “She found it!” Leland said, brightening. “We heard a bit of that, but didn’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. She found out where the killer clouds came from.”

  The medic finished running a scan of the wound to his face. “This injury of yours—did you run into something?” She shook her head as she examined the readings. “It’s like you were kicked in the face with a high-heeled boot.”

  Finnegan winced. “Well, that’s it. Your emperor. She’s cutting you people out.”

  Leland’s smile faded. “She’s gone bad?”

  He tried to laugh, but could only cough. And coughing made him rock about on the deck, and that made his backside hurt even more. He tried to stand. “I’ve got this rash,” he said, pawing at his pants. “I’ve been sitting in water for I don’t know how long.”

  “We’ll get to that in sickbay,” the medic said.

  “It’s burning like hell!” He pulled at the trousers, even as the medic backed away.

  Leland blanched. “Sean, buddy, we’d really rather you didn’t—”

  Then, everyone went silent—expressions going from horror to astonishment to puzzlement.

  “What is it?” Finnegan asked. “A Dromax leech gnawing on me?”

  “Somebody’s written something on your ass,” Leland said.

  Startled, Finnegan looked back and down. “Huh.”

  “Swollen,” the medic said, running her tricorder past. “Some kind of indelible ink. You’re allergic to it. It’s—er, exten
sive.”

  “Must have been while I was knocked out,” Finnegan said.

  “I sure hope so,” Leland said, staring.

  “Come on, what’s it say?” Finnegan started to pull his pants farther down.

  “Stop! Read it in sickbay,” Leland said. “That’s a hell of a way for someone to send a message.”

  “Definitely where the Dromax wouldn’t look,” Finnegan said, buttoning up.

  Regarding him as he headed for the doorway, Leland chuckled. “You don’t seem very surprised. You were expecting someone to do something like this?”

  “Yeah—but years ago.” He scratched his head. “Cadet Kirk always said he’d get his revenge. I just didn’t expect it now.”

  43

  OAST

  In her continuum, Emperor Georgiou had taken one look at the absorption nebula surrounding Oast and had decided not to subject Hephaestus to its hazards. A flagship was as much a showpiece as it was a platform for waging war. There was no sense in having its exterior marred by whatever the hell was blackening that stretch of sky. She’d sent in her battle cruisers instead in an operation coordinated by Maddox; within half a day of firing into the nebula, they had turned the surface of the mystery world to glass.

  It had taken substantially longer than that for Jadama Rohn to make its way across the cosmic structure to the pocket that held Oast’s sun. The Orion ship was of an older vintage, and while the course Georgiou had found in its systems was an easier way in, much had changed in the active nebula in twenty-five years. In-flight maintenance was also required, and that took time.

  Fortunately, Finnegan had brought aboard his and Dax’s shoulder bags containing their food, water, and instruments; Georgiou had found them soon after knocking him out. The emperor had surrendered some of the comestibles to her companion on seeing how lowly the Trill looked.

  “Let them eat field rations,” Georgiou had quipped upon her act of largesse.

  “Do what?”

  “General Antoinette didn’t say that in this universe?”

  “I don’t know Earth’s history.” Dax was not in the mood for banter.

  The delay had permitted something else: active scans of the nebula itself. If Vercer had used Jadama Rohn to collect a blood devil—or if S’satah had, in her universe—it was quite possible the Cloud had come from the cloud, so to speak. Certainly many nebulae were rich with organic elements. But she could find no trace of dikironium, or any of the other compounds the protean mass had been said to transform into.

  Dax had refused to help in those scans, but she had been happy to agree that nothing was out there. If her goal was to make Georgiou give up and turn around—and the emperor was certain it was—the Trill had failed. Georgiou simply finished her repairs and got back underway.

  The nebular envelope finally pierced, the two had beheld a baby star with a single world orbiting round. The planet Oast was a golden pearl, a bauble nested deep within the darkness. Massive, grain-covered steppes stretched out across its lightly clouded surface. But for the lack of large oceans or forests, it would have been the closest thing to Earth that either had seen in Troika space. It looked peaceful.

  The approach was their smoothest since arriving in the region, as well. Did the Oastlings have any forces to stop an incursion, beyond the superstitions of their neighbors? It hadn’t seemed so. Georgiou had brought the Jadama Rohn to a soft landing on what its maps—and her sensor readings—said was the commercial landing zone. She had found the field half-covered with Veneti freighters, all more modern than Jadama Rohn. The vehicles sat, sealed, around a large cluster of silos and attendant supply huts. One storage tower was capped with a transmitter, two others with directional receiving dishes. Floodlights, inactive, pointed down from the heights.

  And that was it. Nothing met them at the foot of the landing ramp but a light, warm, breathable air. No Oastlings, no traders. The freighters were locked up, but tricorder scans suggested nobody was home.

  “This is strange,” Dax said. “These are Quintilian’s ships. Why does he keep them here? I thought the harvest was over.”

  “Quintilian is sharp,” Georgiou said, completing a scan of the silos and finding them full. “If any of his rivals start ramping up food sales to the Dromax and Casmarrans, he can flood the market in a heartbeat and depress the prices.”

  “He told you this?”

  “I have a brain.” Georgiou stepped around a freighter and ran her hand along its surface. “And look at how pristine the hulls of these ships are. He’s rarely had to send them through that nebula, if at all. I’ll bet he put these here as just a threat, and has never had to use them once.”

  She could see Quintilian doing that, perhaps even inviting the other traders to tour his landing field here. She grinned inwardly at his shrewdness. No wonder the Vercers of the region had been forced to look for other opportunities. Quintilian was no warrior, but he knew how to run an empire.

  Dax stepped off the landing area onto the grass. Tan in color, it matched what was in the surrounding grain fields. “We read massive life signs from orbit. Where are they?”

  Georgiou struck out in a different direction, tricorder in hand—and stopped. She knelt. “No buildings. No anything. Who’s he been trading with?”

  Dax snapped her fingers. “Dinner.”

  The emperor looked back. “We just ate breakfast!”

  “No,” Dax said, stepping toward her. “Back at Quintilian’s. We only saw the two Oastlings, what’s their names—”

  “Pyramis and Thisbe.”

  “Right. We only saw them at dinner, or right before it. Maybe they’re nocturnal.”

  “We were inside then,” Georgiou said, ready to dismiss the notion—until she took it more seriously. “But they never left the villa, and he always kept the lighting low.” She was willing to give the idea a chance. There wasn’t any other viable explanation. And they’d landed so close to the planetary terminator that they wouldn’t have long to wait.

  Oast lost only a little of its warmth when the sun went down. Georgiou had, by that point, run out of scans to perform. The natives weren’t aboveground, and they weren’t under it either.

  “It’s a dead end,” Dax said—almost too readily, the emperor thought. “Let’s go, while we can still see our way to the ship.”

  “No,” Georgiou said, lifting a finger to the air. “Wait.”

  It was the faintest of zephyrs, at first. A chill that ended as quickly as it began, barely tousling her hair. But as the landscape vanished, the wind picked up—and all around, the tall yellow stalks of grain went into motion. Soon, it was at a low roar, an ocean of foliage on the move.

  “There!” Dax called out, grabbing her arm.

  It appeared first as just a flash—something within the tall stalks. But more light appeared, and soon Georgiou realized what she was looking at: an Oastling, stepping out of the field toward them.

  The oval, gas-filled bubble perched sideways on the creature’s shoulders looked just like what they’d seen before, with the heads of Pyramis and Thisbe. But in the night, with the creature’s brain emitting what little light there was to be seen, the electrostatic activity within the Oastling’s transparent brain—if that was what it even was—gave off a macabre glow.

  The creature stepped forward into the open, a ghoul from the fields—only to pause before Georgiou and Dax. The emperor had never been able to tell whether the Oastlings in Quintilian’s house had visual receptors—but it became apparent that she had been sensed somehow when a visual of her face coalesced inside the being’s gas-filled head.

  “Yes, it’s me,” the emperor said. She’d been beaten to the last two locations by her counterpart; she fully expected the captain to have visited here as well. “I am Philippa Georgiou. I take it you know me.”

  The Oastling did not move—but the face within its head grew cloudy and dark as bioelectric storms corrupted the picture. “You are her,” declared a voice in Georgiou’s head. It sounded n
ot much different from the whistling wind. “You are her, and you are not her.”

  Dax blurted, “Did you hear that?”

  “I did. Our friend is a telepath,” Georgiou said. That explained why there were no voice boxes for them like the other Troika species had.

  “I am Umyda, keeper of the garden.” The Oastling gestured to the fields. Four more Oastlings appeared from between the grain stalks, pushing the plants back to make a path lit by their luminescent heads. “You may follow,” Umyda projected to the visitors. “But you must disarm.”

  Georgiou expected that might happen. She reached into her boot and dropped the knife she’d concealed onto the soil. When the Oastling did not move, she put her hands on her hips. “There’s nothing else. I swear.”

  “Not your weapon. Hers,” the Oastling replied, indicating Dax.

  Georgiou looked to Dax, who took a couple of steps back. “Why, Little Emony—”

  “Stop calling me that,” Dax said, partially unzipping her jacket. “And don’t come near me.” Half fumbling, she drew forth the disruptor and pointed it.

  “You would really shoot me?” Georgiou asked, amused.

  “Emony has been considering shooting you to prevent you from taking what is here,” Umyda said. “But Dax hasn’t been so sure.”

  Georgiou was confused by that. “What do you mean? She’s Emony Dax.”

  “She is Emony—and she is also Dax.”

  Dax froze, eyes wide in the flickering light. “It’s just nonsense.”

  Georgiou stared at her. “Is it?” Several of Dax’s recent accidental statements combined with the things she’d always wondered about Trills. “Umyda, is she two beings?”

  “Emony the Trill contains a long-lived symbiont. It has an independent intelligence, but they also act in unison.”

  Dax shrunk back. “That’s crazy.”

  “It is the greatest secret of her people. It is a threat to her that you know.” Umyda gestured to the younger woman. “And now Dax is reconsidering whether to shoot you.”