Текст книги "The Sundered"

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

PART 3

SECRETS

Chapter 9

Damn it!Sulu thought, instantly on his feet and moving toward the wounded Tholian ambassador. The pungent odor of sulfur permeated the conference room, as did a gabble of shouting human voices.

None of the Tholians uttered a sound.

Smoke and other superheated gases quickly roiled through the room, making the air uncomfortably hot. The sounds of coughing filled the air as an alarm shrilled. His eyes already stinging, Sulu drew and held a deep breath of what he hoped was clear air; it was already redolent with the acrid stench of rotten eggs. He heard the roar of the emergency fans as the environmental system struggled to get the room’s atmosphere back into class-M equilibrium. The smoke and vapor swiftly began to recede.

Kasrene’s aide, Mosrene, had already backed away from the evidence of his dirty work—he had apparently applied some sort of crude patch to the rent in Kasrene’s enviro-suit, no doubt for the benefit of the humans present—and made no further threatening moves toward his superior. The remaining three members of the Tholian diplomatic party took up similar poses at Mosrene’s side, all of them behaving as though they had just witnessed a genteel debate rather than an act of possibly mortal violence.

[94] Why aren’t any of them trying to help Kasrene?

Looking through the faceplate of Ambassador Kasrene’s suit, Sulu tried to interpret the emotions on the Tholian diplomat’s rigid, unreadable crystalline features. Was she surprised? The burnished red-and-gold planes of her countenance revealed nothing he understood.

Though the moment seemed frozen in time, Sulu and Chekov both arrived at Kasrene’s side almost immediately. They simultaneously caught her heavy body as it began collapsing deckward, the haft of Mosrene’s whisker-thin blade still protruding from the front of her suit. Taking care not to let the blade touch him—the weapon had just cut through the heavy, durable fabric as though it were whipped butter—Sulu strained against Kasrene’s great weight, which felt like a tumbling neutronium wall.

“Clear the room!” Sulu roared as he struggled. “Security!”

“I need a trauma team in conference room four!” Chapel was shouting into a communicator. “And get me some help from that Tholian ship.”

Chekov was already frantically patching into Excelsior’scommunications system to alert Yilskene’s nearby flagship that a Tholian doctor was needed urgently.

Where’s Akaar?Sulu thought. The giant Capellan could probably have lifted Kasrene with a single steel-muscled arm. But a glance over his shoulder confirmed that the security chief was busy fulfilling his primary duty—maintaining order among both the Tholian and Federation delegations. He was directing two small teams of lightly armed security guards as they escorted both groups out of the conference room and into the corridor. Sulu presumed they were being ushered back to their respective quarters until things settled down, but at the moment he didn’t much care.

Aidan Burgess, however, wasn’t going quietly. Clearly determined to reach the fallen Tholian’s side, she all but dared an owl-eyed young security guard to either stand aside or [95] shoot her. She instantly ran afoul of Akaar, who draped a heavy arm across her shoulder. Sulu might have enjoyed the sight of the Federation special envoy being lifted and carried away like a sack of quadrotriticale were he not still in danger of becoming pinned beneath an enormous heap of living—or perhaps dying—crystal.

Two more pairs of hands grabbed at the wounded alien’s suit, making Kasrene’s mass suddenly far more manageable. With the help of Tuvok and Chapel, Sulu and Chekov carefully lowered Kasrene into what appeared to be a sitting position, balancing her on her long, wide tail. The rotten-egg aromas evidently still issuing from Kasrene’s suit were becoming almost overpowering.

Dr. Chapel was already running her medical tricorder over the Tholian’s wounds, her face pinched in concentration.

Sulu eyed the weapon that remained lodged in Kasrene’s thorax. Monomolecular blade,he thought with an inward shudder, glad he’d never faced anything like it in the fencing lanes. Very nasty piece of work, that.

“How bad?” he asked.

“Looks about as bad as it can get,” Chapel said, kneeling beside Kasrene and coughing because of the effluvium escaping from the Tholian’s compromised and imperfectly patched suit. Improvising with a protoplaser, she sealed the breach, thereby preventing the fumes from overcoming every oxygen-breather in the room.

Chapel looked up and gazed significantly at Sulu. “I’m really going to need a Tholian doctor.”

Sulu turned to Chekov, who shook his head. “When I explained to Yilskene’s watch officer that this was Mosrene’s doing, he said ‘the castes must look after their own.’ Then he cut off the channel.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Chapel said. “Then I’m going to need to get her to sickbay, so I can cut off this suit and work on her through an environment forcefield.”

[96] “Where’s that trauma team?” Chekov wanted to know.

At that moment, a trio of med techs rushed into the conference room, a large antigrav stretcher floating between them. Tuvok assisted the medics in hoisting the Tholian’s still form onto the hovering platform, which bobbed and oscillated momentarily as it adjusted to the ambassador’s considerable mass. Kasrene was placed awkwardly on her side, to prevent the still dangerous blade from causing any further injury, either to the ambassador or to the medical personnel.

Akaar and a pair of security guards returned to the conference room then, and the security chief ordered his people to clear a “fast crash-cart route” to sickbay. Holding a phaser, the Capellan looked ready to vaporize anything that got in the trauma team’s way. Sulu guessed that it must have been difficult for Akaar to restrain himself from shooting Mosrene down in his tracks. Aware that the father Akaar had never met had been murdered during a political coup, Sulu knew that the young officer had little love for would-be assassins.

Just as the med techs began moving Kasrene toward the door, one of the ambassador’s gauntlet-clad hands shot out. Before anyone could react, she seized Tuvok’s right wrist in an iron grip.

“Vulcan,” Kasrene said, the chorus of layered voices that formed her translated words now sounding jangled and discordant. “Vulcan. Mind-toucher. Think to you. Touch. Touch.”

Tuvok froze, his expression even more blank and unreadable than usual.

“Save your strength, Ambassador,” Chapel said.

The Tholian’s grip appeared to tighten. Tuvok suddenly looked pained.

“Let him go, Ambassador,” Sulu said. “We can’t help you if you fight us.”

“Dying,” she said. “Vulcan. Is. Only. Help.”

The Tholian’s grip suddenly relaxed.

[97] His face blank once again, Tuvok collapsed, prompting Sulu to dive to catch him before his head hit the deck.

“Bring him along, too,” Chapel said, indicating Tuvok.

Sulu nodded, hoisting the young Vulcan to his feet. Tuvok remained limp as Sulu and Chekov each took one of his arms and bore him quickly through the corridor behind Kasrene’s swiftly-moving stretcher.

“What’s happened to him?” Chekov asked as the group rushed into a wide turbolift.

“Sickbay,” Chapel told the computer before turning to face Chekov. “I don’t know. Maybe he inhaled too much of the leakage from Kasrene’s suit.”

Sulu knew that Chapel was making a purely off-the-cuff guess, since she was preoccupied with her struggle—apparently a losing one—to keep the Tholian ambassador alive.

Still helping Chekov hold Tuvok’s slack form, Sulu listened to the Vulcan’s breathing. It didn’t sound labored, though it was slightly shallow. It seemed unlikely that the hot gases from Kasrene’s suit had seared his lungs.

And yet Tuvok’s open eyes were vacant and glassy, staring off into infinity as though they’d been exposed to something no humanoid had ever seen before.

“Circulatory pressure is crashing, Doctor,” one of the med techs laboring over Kasrene said. “She’s flat-lining.”

“I can read the tricorder, Ensign,” Chapel snapped as the turbolift deposited them across the corridor from sickbay. Everyone dashed through the main doors and into a corner in which the medics quickly improvised a Tholian-compatible isolation chamber. Reaching through the forcefield boundary with a pair of medical waldoes, Chapel wasted no time using a laser scalpel to slice open Kasrene’s suit.

Even to Sulu’s untrained eye, Kasrene’s seeping chest wound appeared mortal. The blood—if indeed that word could be used to describe the escaping viscous fluid—appeared to be a brilliant, shimmering turquoise in color, at [98] least as seen through the dimness and distortion of the isolation forcefield and the class-N atmosphere that lay behind it.

Mosrene obviously didn’t want Kasrene to tell us whatever it was she was about to tell us. What is he trying to hide?Sulu recalled some of Kasrene’s last words before she had fallen unconscious. Vulcan,she had said. Mind-toucher.

Had Kasrene known that Vulcans were touch-telepaths? It seemed as likely as not; it wasn’t as though the Federation kept that information classified.

As he and Chekov carefully laid Tuvok on an unoccupied biobed away from the corner where trauma team worked, Sulu looked once again straight into Tuvok’s glassy, staring eyes.

Perhaps those eyes had glimpsed whatever it was that had moved Mosrene to attempt murder.

After slicing away most of Kasrene’s suit, Chapel and the trauma team employed an artificial respirator, a pair of cardiostimulators, and even a forcefield-mediated open-thoracic surgical procedure. Using waldoes to cross the isolation field, they continued working on the ambassador’s still form for another forty-two minutes before Chapel finally pronounced her patient dead.

Chapel turned away from the waldoes and the gore-spattered trauma table, cursing. She had lost patients before, many times. She had learned to live with that long ago, though it was still extraordinarily painful whenever it happened. She knew that some percentage of those who required her help would arrive too injured, too ill—or just plain too late—to be saved.

But she found it hard to accept such a loss when she understood so little about the dying patient’s physiology. For all she knew, a first-year Tholian medical student might have been able to keep Kasrene alive. Now that she could never know the truth of it, all she had was self-recrimination.

“You did everything you could, Doctor,” said Chekov, [99] who seemed to have no trouble guessing the drift of her thoughts. He had dropped by the sickbay every fifteen minutes or so since the trauma team had begun its futile effort to save Kasrene.

Chapel shook her head. “What I did was precious little. Maybe the Tholians ought to consider training some of their junior diplomats in emergency surgery. Or do they have a separate goddamned medical caste, too?”

“Chris, I’m sorry,” Chekov said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She gently brushed the hand away. “I’m all right, Pavel. I just wish these people had at least shared a little of their medical data with us. I was flying blind.”

“Admiral Yilskene’s people didn’t seem overly concerned about what happened to Kasrene,” Chekov said. “Yilskene doesn’t even seem in much of a hurry to debrief Mosrene about what happened. I just don’t get it.”

“I think you explained it pretty well earlier. ‘The castes must look after their own.’ Well, they did a pretty miserable job. And so did I.”

“Doctor, Kasrene was run through with a monomolecular blade. You dounderstand that this patient was beyond saving, don’t you?”

“Certainly beyond myabilities.”

“When you consider the internal injuries a weapon like that can inflict, I don’t think a Tholian medic could have done any better.”

That’s why monoblades are illegal on most Federation worlds,Chapel thought. But then, we’re a long way from the heart of the Federation, aren’t we?

“I’m not sure I understand your point, Pavel,” she said aloud, doffing her surgical smock and tossing it into a nearby clothing ’cycler.

He sat on the end of an empty biobed and ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair, apparently gathering his [100] thoughts. Oh, please. Not another story about growing up in Novy Riga, Russia.Chapel controlled a wince.

Chekov looked around as though making sure none of the sickbay staff were close enough to overhear him, then studied her with a serious expression. “Did I ever tell you what it was like to be forced to watch while Khan cut the throats of everybody on the Regula I research station?”

Chapel nodded, though she was surprised that he would mention this. From her medical database, she knew that Chekov had suffered intense posttraumatic stress as a result of that experience, which had later sidelined him from serving as Captain Sulu’s exec for several years. She was also aware that he. generally took great pains not to discuss that particular chapter of his career, even with Excelsior’schief medical officer.

“Khan stuck these ... alien slugs into my ear, and into Captain Terrell’s,” Chekov continued, staring off into his memories. “Once those creatures had entwined themselves into our brains, we had no other choice but to follow Khan’s orders. No matter how hard we tried to resist, we couldn’t stop ourselves. At least, when Khan ordered him to kill Jim Kirk, Clark Terrell found the courage to point the phaser at himself instead.”

Watching his hands slowly turn white as they gripped the sides of the biobed, Chapel felt she had to stop him from going any further. She simply didn’t want to see her old friend trot out his pain, particularly for her benefit.

“Me, I just stood there until I couldn’t stand the pain from that damned eel anymore,” Chekov continued. “I discovered that I just wasn’t strong enough to—”

“Why are you telling me this, Pavel?” she interrupted.

“Because even though you did everything you could, Christine, sometimes that simply isn’t good enough.”

Chapel favored him with a wan smile. “Thanks, Pavel. Maybe you should consider hanging out a shingle for psych-counseling services.”

[101] “That would be too much like evaluating crew morale reports, Doctor,” he said, returning her smile before nodding toward a nearby biobed. “How’s Tuvok?”

Chapel led the way to the bed where Tuvok lay, far from the mess and clamor of the trauma team, whose members were still packing up their instruments and discreetly covering up the Tholian ambassador’s sliced-open corpse with a light blue tarp.

Chapel looked up at the readings on the biobed monitor above Tuvok’s head. “Not good. He’s suffering from some sort of neural shock. I haven’t seen a Vulcan brain exhibit trauma of this type since Spock tried to mind-meld with V’Ger.”

“Spock got better,” Chekov pointed out.

“He was also extremely lucky.” Chapel recalled, not without a little melancholy, the unrequited infatuation she had felt toward Spock when they had served together on the original Enterprise.With the benefit of many years of hindsight, she realized now that her nonrelationship with Spock probably stemmed from her feelings of loss after her separation from Dr. Roger Korby, her late fiancé; Korby had proved to be even more remote from love—to say nothing of simple humanity—than even the most stoic of Vulcans.

Still, she occasionally wondered whether Spock ever thought about her after all these years.

“So what’s Tuvok’s prognosis?” Chekov wanted to know, concern striating his forehead.

“It’s too soon to lay odds, but I do have an initial treatment idea,” Chapel said as she crossed to the companel on the wall and punched a button. “Chapel to Dr. T’Lavik.”

“T’Lavik here, Doctor,”came the Vulcan physician’s response, her voice a calm, even contralto. Though her shift had ended several hours earlier, she didn’t sound like someone who’d been roused from slumber. “What can I do for you? Vulcans, heal thyselves,Chapel thought. “Please report to [102] sickbay immediately, Doctor. I need a consultation for treating psionic trauma. The patient is Lieutenant Tuvok.”

There was a slight but noticeable delay in T’Lavik’s response. Chapel imagined that, like most Vulcans, T’Lavik would be somewhat sensitive about discussing Vulcan touch-telepathy with a non-Vulcan. “I will be there presently. T’Lavik out.”

Chapel turned from the companel and faced Chekov. “Don’t worry, Pavel. I’ve already lost one patient today. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let another one slip through my fingers.”

A huge weight had settled upon Sulu’s shoulders after Christine called to inform him of Kasrene’s death. So Mosrene’s plan succeeded, whatever the reasons behind it.

Sulu stood between Aidan Burgess and Janice Rand in the dimly lit VIP quarters that had been assigned to Tholian Ambassador Mosrene. Mosrene, now out of his cumbersome enviro-suit, sat on the floor behind the orange-tinted forcefield barrier that contained the hot, high-pressure sulfurous atmosphere he required. Outside the barrier, the air was uncomfortably warm, though breathable for class-M life.

Sulu found himself wishing that the forcefield separating him from Mosrene were attached to the entrance to the ship’s brig. The only problem with that, as Burgess had already pointed out, was that Mosrene may not have done anything wrong in the eyes of Tholian law.

Kasrene’s erstwhile assistant betrayed no emotion that Sulu could construe as either guilt or remorse; to the contrary, the Tholian’s demeanor seemed as unfathomable as ever, his face and body an enigmatic congeries of fractured-looking gold-and-ruby crystal formations. Mosrene’s limbs were folded beneath him, his tail outstretched to the rear, sphinxlike.

Sulu decided that the direct approach would be best. [103] “Mosrene, I need to know why you killed the ambassador. Can you explain yourself?”

Mosrene’s voice, mediated by the universal translator, rose in a chorus that sounded somewhat nettled. “I am Ambassador Kasrene’s lawful successor, Captain Sulu. Please address me as AmbassadorMosrene.”

Sulu closed his eyes to tamp down his frustration. He took a long, deep breath before opening them and speaking again. “There must be far more discreet methods of rising in the Tholian hierarchy, AmbassadorMosrene, than killing your superior in the middle of a diplomatic meeting. So I have to conclude that you had reasons to act that go beyond simple career enhancement.” He glanced significantly at Burgess, hoping she would pick up on his wordless message: Let me handle the interrogation. You’ve already said more than enough to these people.

Mosrene turned his head so that his white, emerald-rimmed eyespots seemed to widen very slightly. “That is so. Ambassador Kasrene was about to divulge ... sensitive information, which I deemed best contained. I owe no further explanation to anyone, save my superiors in the diplomatic caste. They will understand the necessity of my actions, just as the other members of our delegation did.”

“I’m sure he’s right about that,” Burgess said.

Rand nodded. “I have to agree, too, Captain. Either all three of Kasrene’s other aides were Mosrene’s confederates in an assassination conspiracy, or else they’re all absolutely confident that Mosrene will be vindicated.”

Reluctantly, Sulu was forced to concur. Since none of the surviving Tholians aboard Excelsiorhad so far implied that anyone besides Mosrene was responsible for Kasrene’s death, he tended to trust Rand’s latter hypothesis.

Still, the fact that a cold-blooded killing had occurred aboard his ship—one apparently sanctioned by Tholian law, no less—bothered him intensely. On top of that, he was [104] irked by Mosrene’s dismissive tone, which he was convinced wasn’t a product of his imagination or a maladjusted translator. Though Federation law and Starfleet protocol prevented him from taking any action against Mosrene, Sulu found himself tempted to give this newly promoted Tholian ambassador over to the tender mercies of Security Chief Akaar, at least for an hour or two.

“What sort of information might have been worth Kasrene’s life?” Sulu asked.

Mosrene made a sound like a choir hiccuping in six-part harmony. Sulu interpreted the noise as an involuntary chuckle. “It is the sort of information that requires containment—at anycost,” the Tholian said. “Therefore it is the sort of information which I will discuss with you no further.”

Mosrene’s eyespots narrowed and vanished, as though he had suddenly fallen asleep or entered a deep meditational trance. He seemed almost literally to turn to stone, and did not respond when Sulu called his name.

The companel on the-wall sounded. “Chapel to Captain Sulu.”

Sulu stepped to the wall and punched a button, his eyes still fixed on the immobile Tholian. “Sulu here.”

“It’s about Lieutenant Tuvok, Captain.”

“Please don’t tell me you have more bad news, Doctor.”

“Why don’t you come back to sickbay, and let Tuvok give you the news himself?”

For the first time, it seemed, since the attack on Kasrene, Sulu allowed himself a sigh of relief. “I’m on my way.”

“What do you remember, Lieutenant?” Sulu asked, anxious to learn everything that had passed between Tuvok and Ambassador Kasrene. Besides himself and Tuvok, Dr. Chapel and Dr. T’Lavik were also present in the sickbay, along with Chekov.

Sitting up on the biobed, Tuvok appeared alert and [105] energetic, if somewhat pale. “I remember one of the ambassador’s hands reaching toward me. Next, I experienced a lancing pain through my skull. And then I felt ...” The young Vulcan trailed off, an uncharacteristic look of confusion crossing his face.

“You felt what?” Sulu said, leaning forward.

Frowning, Tuvok turned toward Dr. T’Lavik, who was watching him attentively. “What is wrong with me, Doctor?”

T’Lavik, a centenarian Vulcan female with large ears and iron-gray hair, raised a placating hand. “Your memories of this experience may remain disorganized for some time, Lieutenant. You must be patient while your ability to recall them returns.”

Tuvok appeared to mull that over for a moment before nodding in apparent resignation. But to Sulu’s experienced eye, the young science officer was positively refulgent with impatience.

Sulu had to admit that he was beginning to feel that way himself. “What else do you remember, Mr. Tuvok?” he asked, trying his best to sound soothing rather than badgering.

After a moment’s apparent consideration, Tuvok said, “I believe that the ambassador initiated telepathic contact with me. I cannot recall the specifics as yet, but I do remember her consciousness reaching out toward mine. I remember our minds ... touching.”

“Is that even possible?” Chekov asked no one in particular. He sounded skeptical. “I know that Vulcans are touch-telepaths, but I thought there always had to be skin-to-skin physical contact.”

T’Lavik looked as doubtful as Chekov did. Speaking to Tuvok, she said, “It is unlikely that you experienced a genuine mind-touch with the Tholian ambassador, Lieutenant.”

“I knowwhat I experienced,” Tuvok replied. Sulu was impressed by the bedrock certainty he heard in the lieutenant’s [106] voice. That certainty was something he had learned to trust implicitly over the past five years. Perhaps ...

“Ambassador Burgess briefed us about Tholian telepathy,” Sulu said, his words staying just ahead of the hypothesis that was forming in his mind. “She said that Tholians possess a sort of ... networked intelligence, in addition to their sentience as individuals. Almost a hive intellect.”

Dr. T’Lavik nodded. “You are referring to the Tholian Lattice, Captain.”

“You’re familiar with it, Doctor?” Sulu asked.

“I studied the Tholian culture extensively during my Starfleet Academy training. Although there are significant gaps in the Federation’s knowledge, we do know that Tholians of the political, diplomatic, warrior, and worker castes spend a significant percentage of their short lives immersed in the Lattice. However, the brainwave frequencies of the Lattice are entirely incompatible with those required to initiate a Vulcan mind-meld.”

So that’s that,Sulu thought, dejected. Kasrene probablydid try to send Tuvok whatever information provoked Mosrene into killing her. But she never had a serious chance of success.

“And yet I distinctly recall Ambassador Kasrene’s mind touching mine,” Tuvok said, still insistent. “The contact did not last long, but I am convinced that it was genuine.”

“Yet you say you cannot recall any details from this encounter,” T’Lavik said.

Tuvok glared at her, his uncharacteristic emotions making his features look even more alien than usual. “You yourself counseled patience, Doctor. Perhaps the details will return to me with time.”

“Maybe Tuvok is right,” Chapel said.

T’Lavik looked askance at the chief medical officer. “Again, the Vulcan-Tholian brainwave incompatibility cannot be ignored,” she said, shaking her head slightly.

“But brainwave frequencies tend to change during the [107] dying process,” Chapel said. “When Kasrene’s brain began shutting down, her neural patterns might have become momentarily compatible with Tuvok’s. Long enough to establish a very brief mental link.”

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. “That is a very logical explanation, Doctor Chapel.”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Chapel said with a wry smile.

“Lieutenant Tuvok’s experience may merely be a delusion induced by simple neurological trauma,” T’Lavik said, ignoring the banter and still speaking directly to Chapel. “That scenario is the most basic application of T’plana-Hath’s Razor—the idea that the simplest explanation is also likely to be the most logical one.”

The science officer’s eyes suddenly became unfocused, as though he were looking inward.

“What is it?” Sulu asked.

“I believe I’m beginning to recall more of the experience, Captain. Kasrene wanted me to know something.” A sweat broke out on Tuvok’s brow as he concentrated in protracted silence. At length, he said, “I cannot yet reconstruct Kasrene’s message in its entirety. But I do recall certain ... emotional subtexts.” This came out sounding almost like an admission of unseemly behavior.

“ ‘Emotional subtexts,’ ” T’Lavik repeated, an ever-so-slight tinge of scorn coloring her words. Sulu wondered, and not for the first time, whether he would ever encounter an intelligent species that was moreemotional than Vulcans. At times they seemed uncannily proficient in the fine art of sarcasm.

“Yes,” Tuvok continued, a vaguely confessional shame still shading his words. “I experienced her ... belief that the knowledge she wished to impart was essential to the welfare of both the Federation and the Tholian Assembly. She was convinced that whatever it was she knew—whatever it was that Mosrene wanted suppressed—had to be brought to light quickly. It seemed to concern some calamity that both [108] Kasrene and Mosrene believed to be imminent. I regret that I cannot visualize the coming disaster itself. Perhaps if our telepathic contact had lasted longer ...” He trailed off, scowling.

“Did Kasrene give you any idea why Mosrene might have wanted to stop her?” Chekov asked.

“Perhaps, Commander,” Tuvok said. “But I am not certain. I do, however, know that Kasrene wanted us—that is, representatives of the Federation—to be the only recipients of the information she carried. And strangely, she also seemed to share Mosrene’s reticence about allowing the information to circulate generally with the Tholian Assembly. To do so would have precipitated the very disaster she envisioned.”

“If the information really is that sensitive, then keeping it out of the Tholian Lattice will be a neat trick,” Chapel said.

Chekov shrugged. “Not if only a few Tholians know about it, and then keep themselves sequestered from the Lattice. Maybe that’s the reason Mosrene doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to return to Yilskene’s ship.”

But Sulu noticed a huge problem with Mosrene’s apparent need for concealment. “There’s a very wise old proverb about secrets, Pavel. “Three can keep a conspiracy a secret—but only if two of them are dead.’ ”

“What are you saying?” Chapel wanted to know. “That I can expect more Tholians to take up space in my morgue?”

“Not necessarily. I’m saying that we might not have the luxury of waiting around until Lieutenant Tuvok’s memories return more fully before we’re forced to act.”

Aware that everyone’s eyes were upon him, Sulu came to a decision. He had served in Starfleet for far too long to believe in coincidences. Whatever it was that Kasrene had wanted the Federation to know—but had also wanted hidden from her own countrymen—had to be related to the Tholian military buildup that so concerned Starfleet Command. And to whatever alien adversary menaced the Tholians on their far frontier.

[109] So perhaps the solution to one mystery would help to solve the others.

Sulu crossed to the companel on the wall and pressed a button. “Captain Sulu to bridge.”

“Lojur here, sir.”

“Commander, how far are we from the nearest volume of interspatially unstable space?”

“Captain, are you referring to the region where theDefiant disappeared thirty years ago?”

“The very same.”

“There’s a filament of unstable space running through much of the territory claimed by the Tholians. The near end of it lies less than a parsec from our present position.”

Sulu smiled a fencer’s calculating smile. “Good. After Yilskene’s ship picks up the Tholian diplomatic party and sets out for Tholia, Mr. Lojur, I want you to lay in a course parallel to that interspatial filament. And I want you to follow it all the way to the far end of Tholian space.”

“Won’t we show up on Yilskene’s sensors if we take that heading?”Lojur asked.

“Not if we cover our tracks.”

“Sir?”

“We can create a sensor ghost by bouncing a deflector beam off the edge of the filament. That will make it appear that we’re headed back the way we came. Keep us a few dozen klicks from the filament’s edge, but don’t let us actually slip over into interspace. We’re not looking to join the Defiant,after all.”

“Aye, sir.” Lojur sounded apprehensive. Some three decades after her disappearance, the Defiant—whose personnel had slain one another while in the grip of a berserker rage caused by this region’s interspatial distortions—had quickly become the stuff of some fairly hair-raising ghost stories among Starfleet Academy’s midshipmen.

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