Текст книги "The Sundered"
Автор книги: Andy Mangels
Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Научная фантастика
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Chapter 34
Sulu retrieved the glass of Merlot from the food slot and returned to the couch. Chekov sat on a chair across from him, nursing a small glass of vodka. Chekov hadn’t changed to off-duty gear yet, but Sulu was in his white turtleneck undershirt, and he had kicked off his boots.
“I still feel as if it’s my responsibility,” Sulu said. “I was in command of the ship when Burgess took the shuttlecraft into the rift. I could have tried to stop her.”
Chekov snorted. “Well, of courseyou feel responsible, Hikaru. You’re a Starfleet captain. Everythingthat happens on this ship is your responsibility, whether you know it’s going on or not. But that doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for her actions. Shestole the shuttle all on her own—with a little unauthorized help.”
Sulu knew that Chekov was referring to Lieutenant Commander Lojur. He was still uncertain as to exactly what punishment the navigator should receive. Perhaps it had been a mistake to allow Lojur to come back to duty so soon after the death of his fiancé. That thought brought with it, unbidden, a sad reminder that there were several dead crew members for whom he and Pavel had to plan memorial services.
Chekov interrupted Sulu’s clouded thoughts. “Burgess was a real styervo,but I think that in the end, I can [370] understand why she did what she did.” He took a swallow of his vodka, then continued. “I don’t think it was ego that drove her. At least not completely.”
“Well, shedidn’t seem to think so,” Sulu said. “So, what do you think it was?”
“Humanity has been unified for centuries,” Chekov said. “But the Neyel have been left out of all of that, and they’ll need a lot of guidance if they’re ever to join the human mainstream. How many human diplomats ever get an opportunity to help unite mankind all over again?”
Sulu nodded. Put that way, Burgess’s passion made a great deal of sense.
A chime rang out then, followed by Janice Rand’s voice coming over the comm. “Captain, I have Admiral Nogura on subspace for you.”
Sulu put his glass down on the table and walked over toward his desk. “Put it through to my quarters, Commander.”
Back to the beginning,Sulu thought as he sat behind the desk and activated the terminal there. This is where it all started.
“Captain Sulu, I’m looking forward to reading your report regarding the situation with the Tholians.”
Sulu swallowed. “Yes, sir. I’ve just finished it, but I haven’t filed it yet. If you’d like to hear it now, I’m ready.”
Nogura smiled as if he were indulging a request instead of making one. “Please do, Captain.”
Sulu launched into a narrative of the past days’ events, laying out the highs, lows, and middles, as well as the surprises along the way. He ended with his admission that only the most foolhardy of risks and the sheerest luck had prevented a war. And that because of his dereliction of duty, Burgess had stolen the shuttlecraft Genjiand kidnapped key figures in the local Tholian-Neyel dispute in an effort to force a truce whose final resolution was still admittedly uncertain.
Nogura leaned back in his chair as he listened. When [371] Sulu finished, he sat back upright. “Captain, let’s deal with Burgess first. She revealed sensitive information to the Tholians without authorization. It sounds to me that her actions were beyond the pale long before she stole the shuttle. No matterwhat she ultimately accomplished, I can guarantee that neither the Federation Council nor Starfleet Command will look kindly upon her should she ever return.”With a slight smile, he added, “Not that I expectthat to happen any time soon. Her career is finished.”
Chekov moved around to the area behind the monitor, and Sulu saw that his expression was full of misgivings. He’s not happy about my taking responsibility for Burgess’s actions,Sulu thought. But I have no real choice.
“Regarding your own actions,”Nogura said, “I’m not certain that I’d use a phrase like ‘dereliction of duty’ to describe them. True, the assignment I gave youdid call for a ‘discreet investigation,’ and you do seem to have failed miserably at that.”He smiled broadly then, as if to soften his last statement. “But in the end, everything seems to have turned out very well indeed for all concerned, thanks in no small part to your own quick thinking.”
Sulu wasn’t aware he was holding his breath until that point, and he let it out in a rush.
“From where I sit,”Nogura continued, steepling his fingers in front of him, “Ambassador Burgess seems far more deserving of blame for anything that went wrong on this mission than you are. So let me ask you this: when you file your official report, are you certain you want to include absolutelyeverything you’ve just told me?”
Chekov cleared his throat, and held up a hand to get Sulu’s attention. Sulu looked back down at the monitor. “Admiral, will you excuse me for a moment? Something urgent has just come up.”
“Certainly, Captain.”
Sulu muted the audio feed on the subspace channel and [372] stood, moving around the desk and out of the visual pickups field of view.
“What is it, Pavel?” he asked.
“Don’t you understand what the admiral is telling you?” Chekov asked, scowling. “The Federation Council is going to pressure Starfleet Command to pillory somebodyover the various breaches of diplomatic protocol that occurred during this mission. It’ll be a lot harder for them to do that to Burgess in absentiathan it would be for them to go after somebody else.”
Sulu nodded. “I know that.”
“Well, that somebodythey’re after doesn’t have to be you.”
Chekov stepped forward and put his hand onto Sulu’s shoulder. “You and I have been friends for a long time, Hikaru. I know you want to take full responsibility, the way you’ve always done. But sometimes the responsibility for a bad choice needs to stay with the one who made it. Don’t put yourcareer in jeopardy because of the things that shedid.”
Grinning, Chekov added, “Besides, I don’t want to be the captain thatbadly.”
Sulu recalled something that Pavel had said to him earlier: Just remember that taking responsibility for a family member sometimes means having to decide against them when they go astray.
Burgess’s safety had been his responsibility. Perhaps he was punishing himself for having allowed her to persuade him to let her enter the rift and strike out for Neyel Hegemony space. There was no way even to know for sure that she hadn’t developed interspace-madness during transit, or had simply gotten lost and joined the graveyard of ships that tumbled eternally through the interdimensional depths.
But making that journey washer decision, not mine. Just as kidnapping Yilskene and Joh’jym was.
Sulu returned Chekov’s smile, then arrived at a decision of his own. Crossing back to his desk, he was relieved to see that Nogura was waiting patiently, apparently studying [373] something on a padd. Sulu reactivated the audio feed and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
“No problem at all, Captain,”Nogura said. “I was just reviewing some other reports here. And speaking of reports, have you made a decision about what’s to be in yours?”
Sulu looked back at him quizzically. “Report, sir? I’m afraid I haven’t had time yet to complete it.”
Nogura smiled, and pointed directly into the monitor. “Very good, Captain. I’ll expect to see it sometime tomorrow. Nogura out.”
Sulu stood and stretched. He turned to see Chekov staring out the cabin window, holding a newly filled glass of vodka on the rocks. Sulu picked up his glass of wine and joined his friend.
As the stars moved by at warp speed, streaks of light that appeared and were gone in a blink, Chekov hoisted his drink. “Here’s to our next mission. May it be unsullied by both monoblades and diplomacy.”
Sulu grinned, clinked his glass against Chekov’s, then turned to watch the stars fly past.
Chapter 35
2298. Auld Greg Aerth Calendar, the Neyel Coreworld of Oghen
The long war to annihilate the Devils, which seemed to have been raging all her life, was suddenly done.
And Oghen endured, though it was more than a little worse for wear.
Still, Vil’ja could scarcely believe it, nor could most of her classmates. Even Father seemed to have given up hope of victory during the darkest hours before the Treaty.
It’s over,Vil’ja repeated to herself over and over after Father had given her the news. She knew that war was a bad thing. Yet she was both frightened and exhilarated by the sudden wrenching change.
So what happensnow?
Standing beside her father in the early morning chill, Vil’ja grew quiet, as did the rest of the crowd that had gathered today in the capital city’s broad boulevards and courtyards. Virtually everyone was looking skyward, and Vil’ja and her father were no exception.
The compact white ship was landing, descending very slowly on its antigravs toward a wide, brick-paved plaza,which the crowd had sensibly decided to leave clear. Vil’ja’s small, bright eyes were drawn irresistibly to the [375] unreadable—yet somehow vaguely familiar—writing that adorned the sides of the small craft’s spotless hull.
Nudging her father, Vil’ja pointed at the alien vessel. “Do the Devils ever fly ships that look like that?” she asked, feeling a sudden jolt of anxiety at the idea. When she’d first heard about the landing that was to take place this morning, she’d imagined a triumphant Neyel commander would emerge from the ship, holding aloft the head of the leader of the Devil forces. Then she’d had a disconcerting image of the reverse—a Devil brandishing a severed Neyel head.
Looking up at Father, Vil’ja squeezed his hand, drawing comfort from its rocklike solidity.
“No, that’s definitely notwhat a Devil ship looks like,” Father said, smiling down at her. “Remember what the news-net said this morning? This ship is carrying a peace envoy who came all the way from Aerth.”
Vil’ja nodded, even though the notion of a living person from Aerth was hard to accept. The idea of Aerth being tangible, something more than a setting for bedtime tales, would take some getting used to.
Even as the white vessel came to rest beside an ornate fountain carved from black volcanic glass, a pair of small Neyel patrol vessels came to ground nearby. Vil’ja found their presence reassuring, since each of the Neyel craft was much bigger than the compact white ship, and probably also better armed as well, judging from the way Father had always described them.
Hatches on both Neyel vessels quickly opened and several armed troopers stepped out. They marched briskly toward the white vessel, their limbs and tails coming to rigid attention as they took up positions beside what appeared to be a sealed hatch near the small ship’s bow. Their brilliant silver sashes identified them as an official honor guard, as though the being inside the white ship were a high-ranking official from the Gran Drech’tor’s court. But Vil’ja knew that [376] if the creature from Aerth turned out in reality to be some sort of monster, perhaps a Devil in disguise, the troopers—all of them hard-eyed veterans like her father—would be ready for it.
Like many Neyel children, she was well acquainted with the muted yet omnipresent sense of dread and worry that always descended like a low fog whenever a parent was called up to defend Blue Oghen from the Devil scourge. Like so many other parents, Father had done his duty, and had come back to the family afterward with many stories, some of which Vil’ja knew he was withholding from her “for her own good.” Mother, too, had taken her turn fighting the Devils during the later phases of the Rift War.
But Mother had not returned. She had not been so fortunate as Father. Or maybe, as Vil’ja sometimes wondered when Father was lost deep in his cups, it was the other way around.
Still holding tightly to her father’s hand, Vil’ja looked up, half expecting to see a Devil ship come swooping down on the unassuming-looking Aerth vessel, intent on mindless destruction.
Instead, she saw only an azure, almost cloudless sky, now completely free of the intense auroras and magnetic storms that had lately disrupted the broadcast of so many of her favorite tridee programs. Father had blamed these troubles on the effects of Riftspace, from which the Devils had sprung. The Rift, he’d explained, had stirred up violence on the surface of the sun, which created some pretty frightening fireworks in the skies of Oghen. It had gotten so bad that Vil’ja had begun to resign herself to the prevailing belief that only the utter extermination of the Devils could save her people. And perhaps not even that.
Today, everything was different. Now Vil’ja took the sudden complete absence of atmospheric disturbances as a reassuring sign. It showed, as Father had explained, that [377] the Riftmouth was sealing up. It meant that the very fractures in space that had created the Riftmouth were now closing, scabbing over and healing like a sewn and sutured wound.
But Vil’ja knew that this healing also meant that Auld Aerth was now once again out of the Neyel Hegemony’s reach. Perhaps forever. The Aerth of the Neyel’s ancestors would once again fade away into legend.
Except for the white ship. The alien vessel, the ship from the ancestral world of Aerth, was real. Almost disconcertingly so.
Continuing to scan the heavens, Vil’ja noticed something else: the sky contained only the merest hint of its usual yellow-orange discoloration today. Father sometimes called these ubiquitous sunset hues “the fruits of Neyel impatience,” usually after he’d had too much to drink, or had spent too much time alone in his study staring forlornly at old pictures of Mother, or both. Vil’ja wasn’t entirely certain what he meant when he described the sky in this way. But she had an inkling that it had something to do with the numberless resource extractors and foundries and smokestacks that had built this city and all the others that now sprawled across the globe, as well as the massed fleets of Neyel warships that protected the skies and expanded the Hegemony’s reach in every direction.
Warships like the one Mother had died on.
A low murmur rippled through the crowd. Father pointed toward the Aerth ship, snapping Vil’ja abruptly out of her reverie.
The hatch on the Aerth ship began to slide open, and a narrow gangplank slowly extended downward past the ship’s graceful engine nacelles to the plaza floor. Moments later, a figure appeared in the open hatchway. The Aerth envoy,Vil’ja thought.
The Aerthean was a female, Vil’ja surmised, judging [378] from its overall shape and proportions. But aside from its possessing a head, torso, and limbs, the creature was like no Neyel she had ever seen. The being was short in stature compared to her Neyel escorts, and had no tail. Though clothing covered most of the alien’s form, Vil’ja could see that the Aerth woman’s skin looked incredibly fragile, her face and hands apparently as smooth and vulnerable as those of a newborn Neyel.
But the Aerthean’s crowning feature, literally, was the great shock of fine, red-hued fiber that grew from her head. The long, ruddy strands reminded Vil’ja of the fur that covered the heads and torsos of the indigies she sometimes saw on tridee, or the ones she’d seen mounted and stuffed in the Knowledge Museum. She had even once observed a few of the indigies alive, making their traditional ceramic house-wares at a tourist attraction she had visited with Mother nearly three oghencycles ago. The indigies who lived in that place had not seemed very happy.
But unlike those indigies, who’d seemed to Vil’ja like walking ghosts, the Aerth woman was smiling. At the signal of the head of the honor guard—a one-armed trooper, who’d no doubt been maimed during the conflict with the Devils—the Aerthean spread her hands, evidently preparing to address the hushed, expectant crowd. After quickly touching a device on the collar of her garment—a microphone or voicecaster,Vil’ja realized—the Aerth woman began to speak, her warm, pleasant voice audible everywhere in the plaza.
“People of the Neyel Hegemony, my name is Aidan Burgess. And I bring you greetings and good wishes from your cousins, the people of Earth, and from the United Federation of Planets of which Earth is a part.”
Earth? Vil’ja wondered as a gentle murmur passed through the crowd, then subsided. Urth? Aerth? What a strange accent she has.
[379] Burgess continued: “You may ask why I have come here, especially since the peace treaty my people have negotiated on behalf of the Hegemony and its former adversaries prohibits all future traffic across the Rift. It is certainly fair to ask why I would strand myself so far from my own people.
“But the answer is a simple one: It is because my people are really not so different from yours. I have come to tell you that Earth, the fabled world of your ancestors, is no myth. It is a real place with a real history, filled with people as real as any of you. It is the planet of my birth, just as it was for your pre-Neyel ancestors of centuries past.”
Vil’ja felt her father tense beside her as a renewed murmur moved through the crowd, like an insistent wind bending a stand of tall grass. She had always been taught that such talk of Auld Aerth was irreverent, disrespectful. Aerth was sacred, and thus best not discussed in overly concrete terms.
But today, with the Rift War finished and proof of Aerth’s tangible reality now on display for all to see—escorted by one of Gran Drech’tor Zafir’s own military honor guards, no less—the mood of the crowd seemed more tolerant. At least, that was Vil’ja’s hope. She did not want to see the people grow angry, especially now that the Rift’s closure gave them cause by precluding any chance of actually reaching Distant Aerth. She didn’t want to endure any more fighting and strife, especially not among her countrymen.
The Aerth envoy went on, as though she’d read Vil’ja’s mind: “I understand that the Neyel people are weary of war. It may encourage you to know that my people have learned, after many centuries of errors and misunderstandings, to live in harmony with many different species who now make up our peace-loving Federation. We have even dissuaded some of the less friendly peoples—such as the Tholians, a species known in your tongue as “Devils”—from further aggression. This tradition of peace is the birthright of all Neyel, a people [380] as closely linked as mine to the Earth of your forebears. Your esteemed leader, Gran Drech’tor Zafir, has expressed a desire to learn all she can of this birthright, and I have pledged the remainder of my life to giving her, and all of the Neyel, every assistance in reaching that end.
“My reason for wishing this is as simple as my reason for coming among you. And it is this: However many centuries have passed since our common ancestors diverged, and no matter how many changes may separate us, my people and yours are indissolubly linked. We are all creatures of Earth, regardless of whether or not any of us—myself included—can ever return there. As branches of the same tree, our two peoples and cultures are stronger together than apart. Thank you, my friends, for allowing me to speak to you today.”
And with that, Burgess bowed and walked down the gangplank, the one-armed honor guard leader at her side. Moving with purposeful strides, with the guards marching behind and beside them, they headed toward the Great Hall of Oghen, where Gran Drech’tor Zafir held court. The crowd, now once again silent, parted to make way for the procession.
Moments later, Vil’ja realized that she and her father were standing directly in the path of Burgess and her party. Father tugged gently on Vil’ja’s arm, trying to coax her out of the way.
But Vil’ja could only stare at the approaching Aerth woman, transfixed. She pulled away from Father, but overbalanced and found herself tumbling arms over tail into a heap on the dew-damp bricks of the plaza floor.
She looked up. The Aerth woman was standing directly over her, staring down with a worried expression while Father and the Neyel military escorts looked on, each of them scowling the same military-issue scowl.
The one-armed trooper began to shoo Vil’ja out of the Aerth envoy’s way, but Burgess held up a restraining hand. [381] The vigilant troopers withdrew slightly, moving two steps backward as the Aerthean woman crouched beside the girl.
“Looks like I’ve just made first contact,” Burgess said. “I’m sorry to have been so clumsy. Are you hurt?”
The Aerth woman reached down to help Vil’ja reach her feet. As she grasped Burgess’s soft arm with a tough-skinned hand, the Neyel girl noticed the strands of the multicolored bracelet the woman wore on her slender wrist. Small stones, shells, and charms of every description were strung like beads all around it, reminding her of an art project she’d done recently at school.
Vil’ja returned her gaze to the Aerth woman’s impossibly soft, vulnerable face. Could such supple creatures as this truly be the fruit of the same tree as the battle-hardened Neyel?
Unless she could reach Aerth herself, Vil’ja realized, she might never know. And without the Rift, that simply wouldn’t be possible.
It took an awkward few moments for Vil’ja to find her voice. “I am not hurt,” she said simply.
Suddenly Vil’ja felt emboldened, perhaps by all the suffering and terror she had absorbed during the Rift War. So she added, very quickly, “But I do have a question.”
From the corner of one hard-lidded eye, Vil’ja saw her father blanch. He obviously wanted them both to melt back into the anonymity of the crowd.
But she also saw the Aerth woman’s smile return, and it encouraged her to stand her ground. “Please. Ask,” the Aerthean said.
Vil’ja drew a deep breath. “Your people have driven the Devils away. For that I thank you.”
She shuddered inwardly when she thought of the Devils. Even though her father, her teachers, and every other adult she knew all claimed that the Rift War was now a thing of the past, Vil’ja had no closure. She still feared and hated the [382] Devils and everything they had done. The war the crystal beasts had started had taken Mother from her. In a way, it had taken Father as well.
“You’re very welcome,” Burgess said. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Vil’ja,” said the girl, flushing with embarrassment at her own atrocious manners. She thought the members of the honor guard were beginning to look impatient. Father appeared ready to slink away and hide, with or without her.
“And what was your question, Vil’ja?”
With an effort, Vil’ja gathered her jumbled thoughts before speaking. “Ending the Rift War meant sealing the Rift, which meant placing Aerth beyond our reach. How can your people and ours really know each other across such a great distance?”
“That’s a very good question, Vil’ja,” Burgess said as she slowly removed the bracelet from her wrist. “And I don’t know if I have an answer. All I can say is that the question is the reason I had to come among you.”
“Even though you can never get back?”
The Aerthean’s eyes glistened with moisture. She nodded. “Even so. Now hold out your hand.”
Vil’ja quietly did as Burgess asked. The Aerth woman placed the stone-and-shell-beaded bracelet into the palm of her hand and gently closed the girl’s rough, gray fingers around it.
“This is a piece of Earth,” the envoy said. “Actually, it’s a whole lot of small pieces of Earth. Every one of these pieces tells a story of its own.”
“Are they yourstories?”
“Some of them are,” the Aerth woman said. Vil’ja started trying to return the bracelet, but Burgess pushed her hands back, gently’ but firmly. “I doubt I’ll ever be going back there, Vil’ja.”
“Will you tell me some of those stories?” Vil’ja asked.
[383] “I would be happy to do that a little later on, Vil’ja. If you will make me a promise first.”
Vil’ja held the bracelet and nodded.
“Someday I want you to return the bracelet to where it came from,” Burgess said.
The girl blinked in confusion. “To Aerth?”
“To Aerth,” the woman replied, this time coloring the revered place name with a fairly good mid-southern latitude Oghen-Neyel accent.
“But without the Rift, a voyage like that would probably take a megajillion oghencycles,” Vil’ja said.
The Aerth woman’s smile turned almost playful. “Maybe even a gigajillion. But you Neyel are clever, patient people. It seems to run in the family. So if your generation doesn’t find a shortcut to Aerth, then your children or your grandchildren almost certainly will. Or theirs will. The Neyel and my people won’t remain isolated from each other forever. The universe simply isn’t big enough to allow that.”
“You’re here,” Vil’ja said, conceding the point. “I guess that proves you’re right.”
The Aerthean woman placed her hands on Vil’ja’s shoulders. “Believe it. Your people will find Aerth, Vil’ja. It’s only a matter of time. And my life’s work is to prepare everyone for the day when that happens. We all have a lot to learn. Myself included.”
Then Burgess nodded to her one-armed escort, and within moments she and the squad of troopers around her departed, the entire group quickly vanishing into the crowd as it resumed its course for the Great Hall of Oghen.
“Let’s go,” Father said to Vil’ja long moments later. His tail twitched spasmodically behind him as though he didn’t know what to do with it.
Vil’ja ignored him. Standing stock-still, she held the bracelet in the flat of her hand and let the morning sun dance across its homemade beadwork of colorful, unfamiliar [384] stones and weird, alien shells. Every one of these pieces tells a story of its own.
Vil’ja looked heavenward again. The largest of Oghen’s moons was visible, and Holy Vangar lay beneath the horizon, out of sight. She concentrated instead on the section of the sky where the teachers had said that Milkyway—and Auld Far Aerth—could be found.
Clutching the bracelet tightly, she decided that one day she would contribute a story or two of her own.
