Текст книги "Precipice"

Автор книги: David Mack

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“If that is your wish, I have no objection.”

“Thank you.” He finished his task and reclined to watch the stars melt past. “So … what’s next?”

Staring into the darkness ahead of them, T’Prynn saw only possibilities. “Now we go hunting,” she said.

15

March 23, 2267

“Things have certainly gotten a bit more interesting,” Reyes said from the back of the Zin’za’s bridge.

A pack of angry Klingons turned aft and glared at him. They seemed decidedly unamused at having their long-awaited siege of Starbase 47 preempted by a nigh-omnipotent race of interstellar meddlers known as the Organians.

Addressing the Federation and the Klingon Empire, an elder of the Organians known as Ayelborne had appeared simultaneously before the leaders of both nations, and on the bridge of every starship and combat-ready installation of both sides in the imminent conflict. He had rendered the weapons and surfaces of all major systems’ controls too hot to touch. In essence, he had warned both sides to behave themselves or else lose their toys.

Reyes found it kind of funny.

Naturally, the Klingons didn’t.

The executive officer of the Zin’za,a hulking thug named BelHoQ, stormed across the cramped space of crimson light and murky shadows to tower over Reyes. “This must be some kind of Earther trick,” he said with a voice that sounded as if it were made of gravel. “Your kind knows they are going to lose this war, so they asked these yIntagHpu’to interfere.”

“I’m guessing you weren’t the captain of your debate team in school, were you?” Reyes pointed at the image of the equally crippled U.S.S. Endeavourand Starbase 47 on the main viewer. “You and your friends were about to get your asses handed to you. If anybody was looking for the ref to stop this fight, it should’ve been you guys.”

BelHoQ bared his teeth in a growling snarl.

Captain Kutal barked, “Enough! BelHoQ, man your station!”

The XO backed away from Reyes, breaking eye contact only once they were several strides apart.

From his post near where Reyes stood, tactical officer Lieutenant Tonar grumbled, “It seems we’ll have to wait until another day to take our revenge for Mirdonyae V.”

Reyes had no idea what had happened at Mirdonyae V to piss off the Klingons, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “So, is that it? Is this why you woke me up and dragged me in here?”

Eyes wide with rage, Kutal snapped, “I brought you here to see your precious station reduced to fire and fragments! So you could bear witness to our moment of victory!”

Mocking the Klingons’ fury with an insolent smile, Reyes replied, “How’s that working out for you?”

Kutal looked as if he were about to erupt in a profane stream-of-consciousness rant when the communications officer interjected, “Captain?”

“What is it, Kreq?”

“Priority message from High Command, sir.”

Quaking with bottled-up rage, Kutal said in a deathly quiet voice, “Put it on-screen, Lieutenant.”

Kreq worked at his console for a moment. Then the image on the main viewer changed to an older, gray-maned Klingon standing in front of a black banner decorated with the Empire’s trefoil emblem.

“All fleet commanders,”said the Klingon.

“This is General Garthog. Stand down. Withdraw from Federation space and return to regular patrols. High Command, out.”

The transmission ended, and the screen reverted to the view of Starbase 47 and the Constitution-class ship holding position between the station and the Zin’za.

Reyes watched Kutal clench his fists and slowly open them. A black cloud of anger followed the captain as he returned to his chair on the bridge’s elevated center dais. He sat down. “Lieutenant Kreq, hail the rest of our squadron.”

Seconds later Kreq said, “Channel open, Captain.”

“All vessels, this is Captain Kutal. We have new orders from the High Command. Stand down. Disengage from attack formation and set course back to the Somraw Anchorage. Kutal, out.” He nodded at Kreq, who cut the channel. “Helm, lay in the course and prepare to lead the fleet home.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the helmsman.

Vanguard and the Endeavourvanished from the main viewer as the Zin’zaand its fleet broke formation and maneuvered away. In less than a minute the Klingon ships had regrouped in a traveling formation and jumped to warp speed, on a heading back to their own space. Reyes was relieved the battle had been averted, but he also felt a renewed sense of despair that he was being carried away from it still in the custody of his enemies.

BelHoQ checked the bridge’s duty stations, then made his sotto voce report to the captain, who responded with a curt nod then waved him away.

Reyes was considering asking his guards to take him to the head so he could do something productive when Kutal walked aft to confront him.

“Starfleet and the Federation will blame this travesty on Ayel-borne and the Organians,” Kutal said. “The Klingon High Command will no doubt do the same.” He stepped forward and pressed his nose against Reyes’s. “But if I find out your little summit with Gorkon had anything to do with today’s debacle, I’ll make sure you both suffer and die in disgrace.”

“Don’t look at me,” Reyes said. “I was just happy to have a front-row seat so I could watch Vanguard kick your ass.”

Kutal’s mouth stretched into a broad, evil grin. Then he said to the guards lurking nearby, “This petaQis stinking up my bridge. Take him back to his quarters.”

Brawny soldiers hauled Reyes away. He cooperated, but it made little difference to the Klingon guards, who seemed to like dragging him rather than letting him walk. He wondered how they planned to carry him down the ladder to the next deck.

Then they reached the ladderway and hurled him down through it.

He landed hard on the deck below, enduring most of the impact with his hands, elbows, and chest. Before he had a chance to assess whether he’d suffered any broken bones, his guards had descended the ladder, grabbed him, and resumed portering him to his quarters.

The door to his room hissed open, and the guards hurled him like a meaty bowling ball into the gray-green broom closet with a bunk and toilet that laughingly passed for quarters on this ship. He was grateful to come to a halt against his bunk frame without losing consciousness. The door slid shut, and he heard the gentle thump of magnetic bolts locking him inside.

Home, sweet home,he mused grimly, climbing onto his bunk.

There was something on the unpadded slab other than a threadbare blanket and a thin pillow: a book.

He picked it up. It was thick and heavy, leather-bound and embossed with gold-foil trim. Printed on its cover: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Beneath the title was a reproduction of the Bard’s signature.

Tucked inside the front cover was a note, handwritten on a scrap of parchment. Reyes plucked it out and held it to the light so he could see it better.

“I hope you approve,” it read, “though I think these plays were all better in the original Klingon.” Then he saw the signature on the note and laughed.

“Best regards, Gorkon.”

Interlude

16

May 26, 2267

Jetanien stood alone on a barren mesa in the midst of a yawning plain. Behind him sat his warp-capable diplomatic shuttle, parked and camouflaged.

Soon the sun would set. Another wasted day would draw to a close, and Jetanien would retire for the evening inside his tiny vessel, eat a reheated meal from the cache of provisions he’d brought from Vanguard, and go to sleep wondering where he had gone wrong.

Already days had passed in silence and solitude since his arrival on Nimbus III. The remote planet had seemed like an ideal setting for a clandestine political summit. Unclaimed and all but unpopulated, it was politically neutral and had little in the way of arable soil or exploitable resources. This was a rock for which no one would be willing to fight a war.

Whether that made it a good place in which to broker a lasting peace, or a good place to die in peace, remained to be seen.

Resting one clawed manus over the other in front of him, he watched a hundred shades of crimson bleed up from the horizon. He tapped his chitinous beak in amusement at one of his fleeting thoughts. Did I really call this “a remote planet”? Aren’t all planets remote, when one thinks about it?

The sky had a thousand hues and was utterly empty. The Chelon diplomat searched it for any sign of the two peers he had invited here to meet him. The limited window of time during which they had agreed to meet had begun two days earlier.

Jetanien had been there at the first appointed hour. The others had not, but that was to be expected. In moments when his pessimism got the better of him, he feared they would never come at all.

Regardless, he was not dismayed or deterred. He would wait as long as was necessary. He was committed.

Listening to the wind and the dry susurrus of sand over stone, he reflected on the countless mistakes he had made in the past two years, the deadly blunders and the sobering gaffes.

I thought I could forge a new interstellar order,he berated himself. What arrogance! What audacity!

He pictured the face of Anna Sandesjo, a Klingon spy disguised as a human woman who had finagled herself a position as his senior attaché. His staff had detected her subterfuge fairly soon after her arrival on Vanguard, but Jetanien had overruled the regulations that demanded they report her to Starfleet Intelligence and the base commander.

I thought we could tap her comms, use her to find out what the Klingons really knew.Shame as deep as an ocean welled up inside him. I gambled with her life—and she died for it.

One failure after another haunted him. Political missteps, such as letting the trilateral talks with the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly degenerate into a litany of threats, made him question his wisdom. Military miscalculations, such as not doing enough to forge an agreement between Starfleet and the settlers on Gamma Tauri IV, had costs thousands of lives.

My life is a leitmotif of hubris,he brooded.

The rattling of sabers at Mirdonyae V, to rescue the captured Starfleet officer Ming Xiong from Klingon custody, had only pushed the Federation and the Klingon Empire one step closer to war. Liberating Xiong had been absolutely necessary; Jetanien had never doubted it. But an accidental triggering of the mysterious Shedai machinery on that world had led to the planet’s premature destruction, and the Klingons were making as much political hay from the tragedy as they could.

War seems inevitable,Jetanien lamented. Will history say that I was to blame? That my misjudgments paved the way?

He bowed his head until his chin almost touched the top of his chest carapace. You narcissistic fool,he chastised himself. Millions of lives are on the brink of destruction, and you’re fretting over your reputation? You’re worrying about your legacy when others are fearing for their lives? How petty you are.

Looking up, he drank in the majestic, bleak beauty of the planet around him. Barren, utterly desolate, worthless but for its atmosphere, this blighted orb represented his best hope of making his career stand for more than a farce. It was his last chance to create something of enduring, tangible value to the galaxy.

Part of him was unable to believe his plan could work. It seemed too far-fetched. Too optimistic. Too invested in ideals such as peace, trust, and hope.

The sun’s edge sank below the horizon. In the sky, fiery streaks of red turned violet and purple. Stars peppered the darkling heavens.

Despondent, Jetanien walked toward his shuttle, prepared to consign another day to the abyss of time.

As he neared the open hatchway of his shuttle-turned-shelter, he heard something behind the cries of the wind, a rising shriek of thrusters underscored by the low thunder of displaced air. He stepped back from his shuttle, arched his back, and looked up into a growing point of light.

A ship was descending toward the mesa.

Jetanien adjusted his pristine white-and-gold raiment and straightened his black fez, making sure its white drape was centered behind his head. Then he held his hat in place as he watched the first of his invited peers arrive.

The small personal transport slowed as it completed its vertical descent and touched down on the mesa, only a few meters from Jetanien’s vessel. Its roaring thrusters shook the ground as it settled into its landing, then they went silent as the ship powered down.

Its design was distinctively Klingon in origin.

Jetanien stepped toward it as its side hatch slid open.

Lugok, the Klingon former ambassador to Vanguard, emerged from the vessel and strode forward to meet him. Taking the Chelon’s manus in his powerful grip, Lugok said, “Jetanien, you crafty old petaQ. I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

“I might have said the same of you,” Jetanien replied, shaking the Klingon’s hand. “But I’m encouraged to see you have not entirely given up on diplomacy.”

Releasing his grip and withdrawing his hand, Lugok said with a jagged smile, “Don’t go all soft on me, Chelon. I just came to see if D’tran of Romulus actually shows up. After all, the man’s ancient, practically a piece of history himself. Who wouldn’twant to meet him?”

Folding his arms, Jetanien replied, “Regardless of your motive for making the journey, thank you for coming.” Gesturing to his shuttle, he added, “I was about to have dinner. If you—”

“I prefer to eat alone,” Lugok said.

“Very well.” Jetanien turned and went back inside his ship. Until D’tran of Romulus arrived, he would still be only waiting. But now at least he had company.

PART TWO

Night’s Black Agents

17

May 29, 2267

Most mornings, Captain Rana Desai’s walk from her quarters on Starbase 47 to the main entrance of the Starfleet JAG Corps’ complex in the station’s core was short and free of distractions. Today it was a gauntlet.

Desai had barely taken one step through the front door when she was set upon by packs of junior officers, all of them pushing data slates at her while calling out hurried requests.

“Captain, I need you to sign this …”

“Can you approve this change-of-venue order, sir?”

“Have you ruled on my discovery motion yet, Captain?”

She scribbled her signature, fired off curt answers, and delegated several bits of tedium. Just when she thought she had weathered all the obstacles keeping her from her desk, she was intercepted by one of her senior personnel, Lieutenant Holly Moyer. The willowy redhead, who kept her long straight hair tucked in a regulation bun while on duty, appeared beside Desai. “Good morning, Captain.”

“It is so far,” Desai said. “Here to ruin it for me?”

Moyer smiled. “If we had time for a game of racquetball, I would be.” She handed Desai a data slate. “I finished the background checks on the incoming security personnel.”

Skimming the report, Desai asked, “Any red flags?”

“Just one: Petty Officer Third Class Armstrong. Forensic specialist asking for a transfer from the U.S.S. Orem. Multiple reprimands for insubordination, and a history of creating public disturbances. I rejected his application.”

Desai looked over the top sheet of Moyer’s report and nodded. “Fine. Need anything from me?”

“Just sign next to the Xand I’ll bounce his butt to a graveyard shift on some rock where he won’t bother anybody.”

“Done,” said Desai. She etched her autograph onto the transfer orders with the slate’s stylus, then handed both items back to Moyer. “Bounce at will, Lieutenant.”

Veering away toward her own office, Moyer replied with a smile and a playful salute, “Aye, sir.”

The door of Desai’s private office was open, and she could see her desk and chair. She nodded at her assistant and was almost inside her pseudo-sanctuary when a man called out to her. “Captain?”

She turned to see another of her senior lawyers, Commander Peter Liverakos, walking toward her. Like everyone else in the JAG complex that morning, the lean man with a salt-and-pepper goatee had a data slate tucked under his arm. Desai resisted the urge to heave a rueful sigh and said, “Yes, Commander?”

“Sorry to bother you, Captain, but the Orion ambassador’s been giving an earful to Admiral Weiland about some of our prosecutions of Orion nationals here on the station. The admiral would like to know where we stand on those cases.”

Desai rolled her eyes. “They broke the law on Federation soil. If they’d stayed on their own ships, this wouldn’t be an issue.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a moment. “Where did we leave those cases?”

“I’ve offered their counsels plea bargains. They haven’t replied yet. My guess is they’re hoping we’ll drop the charges.”

“And what does Admiral Weiland want us to do?”

“I think his exact words were, Crucify them,but I’d have to check the transcript to be sure.”

“Revoke the plea deals,” Desai said. “If they want mercy, let them give us something we can use. If they don’t, Mars can always use a few more ditchdiggers.”

“Aye, sir,” Liverakos said with a nod and a grin, clearly eager to get to that day’s work.

Finally free of distractions and emergent crises, Desai stepped into her office and settled into her chair. Her computer terminal powered up at the touch of a button, and she began looking over that day’s official communiqués from the Starfleet JAG office on Earth, as well as daily situation reports from the station’s security division. It had been a fairly busy overnight shift.

Her door signal buzzed. “Come,” she said.

The door slid open, and her assistant, Ensign Roberta Lenger, entered carrying Desai’s breakfast on a tray. She set a mug of steaming-hot coffee on Desai’s desk. “Morning, Captain.”

Desai picked up her coffee and smiled at the younger woman. “It is now.”

Placing a small plate on the desk, Lenger said, “The commissary was out of raspberry pastries. I hope blueberry is okay.”

“It’s fine,” Desai said. “What’s my schedule this morning?”

“You have a meeting in twenty minutes with Admiral Nogura, to review an interdiction order for the Omicron Ceti colony.”

Desai shook her head. “As if we need the threat of arrest to prevent people from visiting a planet whose star bathes it in Berthold rays.”

Lenger shrugged. “You know how looters get.”

“I certainly do. Is the docket set for the afternoon?”

“Yes, Captain. The disciplinary hearing for Crewman Sohl starts at fourteen hundred. You’ll be presiding over opening statements and the first part of the prosecution’s argument.”

A sip of black coffee proved a few degrees too hot for Desai’s tongue. She swallowed quickly, winced, and said, “Very good. Anything else?”

“The station’s chief of security is outside and waiting to see you. And before you ask—no, he doesn’t have an appointment.”

Desai cast a longing glance at her breakfast, then grimaced. “I need to let my coffee cool anyway. Send him in.”

“Yes, sir.” Lenger stepped out and motioned the chief of security inside Desai’s office.

Haniff Jackson was a man of average height and impressive physique. His red uniform tunic was stretched taut by his biceps and pectorals. He kept his black hair cropped close to his brown head, and he had recently shaved off his goatee, without which he looked younger than his thirty-six years. He strode to Desai’s desk and stood at attention before it. “Captain.”

“At ease, Lieutenant. Have a seat.”

“Thank you, sir.” Jackson pulled back one of the guest chairs and settled into it. Only then did Desai notice the red data card tucked into one of his massive palms.

She folded her hands on the desk. “What can I do for you?”

“For the past year, I’ve been investigating the bombing of the U.S.S. Malacca,” he said. “I’ve been combing the witness statements, the forensic reports, the internal sensor logs, flight-recorder data from the ship, everything.” He handed her the data card. “I think I’ve found a new lead in the case.”

“A new lead?” She looked at the card in her hand. “It’s been almost a year. I’d think the trail would be cold by now.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Jackson said. “But with everything else that’s happened here since then, we never really gave this case the attention it deserved. So I did some checking. All the logs and physical evidence we collected are still here, and any personnel we thought might be material witnesses have been kept on—no one’s transferred off this station without my permission since the bombing.”

Sliding the data card into a slot beside her computer, Desai asked, “And what is this new lead?”

“I have witnesses who link certain suspects to an ongoing smuggling operation involving the Orions on the outside and some of our own people here on the station.”

Curious, she accessed the information on the card. Just as Jackson had said, he had several confidential but on-the-record statements from witnesses who alleged pockets of corruption were active within Starbase 47. “Has any of this been corroborated?”

“Only on a circumstantial basis,” Jackson said. “That’s why I need warrants for arrest, search and seizure, and analysis.”

She admired his zeal for the job. “Consider them granted. You’ll have them all in hard copy by oh-seven hundred tomorrow.”

He stood and extended his hand. “Thank you, Captain.”

She shook it. “You’re welcome, Lieutenant. Good hunting.”

Jackson nodded and left the office.

As the door closed, Desai reveled for a moment in the silence and solitude. She took a bite of her pastry and wiped a fleck of frosting from her upper lip.

Then she looked at the framed photo perched on the corner of her desk of a craggy-faced middle-aged man in a moment of serene repose, and she remembered why she felt so alone all the time, no matter how many people accosted her before breakfast.

Diego Reyes, the man she loved, was dead.

Desai put down her pastry and pushed the plate aside.

She wasn’t hungry anymore.

Lieutenant Ming Xiong knew his monthly report to the brass was off to a bad start when the station’s commanding officer, Rear Admiral Heihachiro Nogura, kicked it off by saying, “Stick to small words, Xiong. I’m in no mood for technobabble today.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Xiong said, wondering how he was supposed to convey the critical details of his presentation without using any of the terminology he had developed to define them.

Seated next to the admiral, and just as eager to hear Xiong’s report on the latest research findings from the Vault—Vanguard’s top-secret research lab devoted to the Shedai—was Xiong’s civilian supervisor, Dr. Carol Marcus.

Marcus and Nogura were like night and day. She was blond and curvaceous, fair-complexioned with smooth skin. The Asian flag officer was thin and lean. His tanned face was lined with age and the burdens of office, and his brush-cut hair, once black, now was surrendering to waves of gray. Both had blue eyes, though of different shades—hers were sky blue, and his were closer to the deep bluish gray of tempered steel.

Seated side by side in Marcus’s office—which had been Xiong’s office before Marcus was placed above him in the chain of command more than a year earlier (a slight that still had Xiong seething with resentment)—the scientist and the admiral each held a fresh cup of hot coffee. The rich aroma of French roast filled the tiny room, reminding Xiong he still hadn’t been able to make time to get his first cup of the day.

“Over the past several weeks, my team and I here in the Vault have suspended all other projects to focus on the Mirdonyae Artifact,” Xiong said. He used a small remote control to activate a wall monitor, which displayed the visual portion of his briefing. “I’m happy to say we’ve made a number of interesting discoveries about this amazing object.”

An image of the artifact appeared on-screen. It was a twelve-sided polyhedron; each face of it was shaped like a symmetrical pentagon. “At first, we speculated it might be a key for unlocking Shedai technology, because it certainly provides an unprecedented level of access to their systems, but that wasn’t enough to explain some of its more bizarre properties.”

Xiong called up some comparative diagrams of energy readings from the object. “For instance, it seems to telepathically trigger a fear response in most humanoids who come within a few meters of it. We ruled out infrasonic frequencies as the cause, and then we found it was pumping out beta waves at a level we’ve never seen before. That’s what was provoking the constant sensation of anxiety and sometimes even terror that people reported while working with it. We’ve contained the phenomenon by bombarding its isolation pod with inverted waves, which cancel out its effects.”

He called up his next data screen: a complex chain of particles. “When we got down to the sub-nucleonic level of its surface material, we found the same multiphasic properties we’ve come to associate with the Shedai avatar, except it’s been uniquely polarized to inhibit the passage of high-energy particles from its interior. This might have been accomplished by reorganizing atoms of a superdense transuranic element in a modified dilithium nanomatrix, but so far we haven’t been able to look deeply enough to map its structure. Doctor Hofstadter has proposed a new kind of analysis that might help. It’s called an icospectro-gram, and I’d like to encourage you both to have a look at his proposal and consider prioritizing—”

Nogura said, “Xiong, I don’t mean to minimize the fine work you and your team have done, but I’m afraid I need to cut this meeting short. Doctor Marcus led me to believe you had major developments to share. If you would be so kind as to sum up, I promise to read your unabridged report this evening.”

“Yes, sir,” Xiong said, secretly relieved to skip the more tedious sections of his report. He switched the image on-screen to one that resembled a ball of fire with burning tentacles flailing in all directions. “This is what lies at the center of the Mirdonyae Artifact. It’s the source of the beta wave, and the reason the object can access any piece of Shedai technology it contacts. What you’re looking at, sir, is a living but currently disembodied Shedai.”

Nogura’s eyebrows arched upward. “Really?” He got out of his chair and walked to the screen. Staring at it up close, he seemed quietly impressed. “That’s veryinteresting.” He looked expectantly at Xiong. “Dare I ask what your second major discovery was?”

“My analysis of the artifact’s constituent elements and the nature of its fabrication have led me to conclude that, while it was made to interface with Shedai technology, it was notmade by the Shedai but by some other power.”

“Prompting the question of who made it,” said Marcus.

Furrowing his salt-and-pepper eyebrows as he stared at the image on-screen, Nogura asked, “Could the Tholians have built something like this?”

Xiong shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. The materials are far more sophisticated than anything we’ve ever seen them create. For that matter, they’re more advanced than anything we currently know how to produce.”

“So we have no idea who made it,” Nogura said.

“Not at the moment, sir,” Xiong said.

The admiral frowned. Using a control panel next to the screen, he switched it to a star map of the Taurus Reach. “Your first report about the artifact said the Klingons had brought it to Mirdonyae from someplace else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do we know where this object of yours comes from?” Xiong replied somewhat abashed, “Not yet, sir, but we’re working on it.”

“All right.” Nogura faced Xiong and clasped his hands behind his back. “It looks like we’ve got a pretty good handle on the whatpart of this equation, and not so good a grasp on the who, how,or where. Which brings me to my last question. Do we know whythis device was made? Was it to trap a Shedai? To control their machines? Or are those merely incidental details?”

Xiong bowed his head, partly out of humility. “Honestly, sir, we can’t say yet why or where it was made, or who made it. But I can tell you this: we are all very, very eager to find out.”