Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Marcus laughed. Then she caught herself and covered her mouth until she regained her composure. “Lieutenant,” she said, as if she were appalled at his reaction, “this is much bigger than fixing a few broken bodies. You said yourself that the entire Jinoteur system was infused with this waveform.”

A feeling of intense dread welled up inside him. “So…?”

“So?” Marcus replied. She called up the sensor readings that Theriault had made of the Jinoteur system before the ship had approached the fourth planet. “That star system registered as less than half a million years old. With a main-sequence star? And every body in the system the exact same age? How is that even possible?” The Jinoteur Pattern appeared on the screen, and a slightly fanatical gleam lit up Marcus’s eyes. “What if this matrix doesn’t just regenerate what already exists? What if it can be used to shape matter and energy into any configuration desired?” She stared at it in awe. “You could build planets from nothing. You could make stars.” She grinned, giddy with excitement, and mimed a supernova explosion with her hands. “Let there be light.”

Xiong finally understood why his pleas for scientific glasnost with the Klingons and the Tholians had been refused so adamantly by Starfleet Command. If Marcus was right about the tremendous possibilities contained in the meta-genome and the waveform, it was a discovery with galactic implications.

In the right hands, it could be the greatest gift ever bestowed upon sentient beings, a boon to life itself.

In the wrong hands, it would be the most barbaric weapon of mass destruction and genocide ever known.

Watching his new colleague gaze in wonder at the mysterious energy waveform on his monitor, Xiong silently wished that he could go back six days in time to that placid, moonlit beach on Jinoteur—and shatter his tricorder against a boulder.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Xiong said softly, “I think I’d like to go and get settled back into my office.” He started to leave.

Marcus’s apologetic tone almost sounded sincere as she broke the news. “That’s not your office anymore.”

Pennington sat cross-legged on the floor in the center of his empty living room. At his side was a half-eaten turkey sandwich and a bottle of lukewarm fruit juice that he had purchased to go from a vendor in Stars Landing’s restaurant district. It was a far cry from the fancy cuisine that he had enjoyed during his brief years as a star reporter for the Federation News Service, but, as his former editor Arlys often liked to say, “the best reporters are the hungry ones.”

A single, tubular lighting element, which he had purchased from the station’s quartermaster with a bit of his meager savings, glowed from the fixture on the ceiling above him. His shadow fell over the screen of the small portable data manager in his hands; he used the device for everything from personal communications to composing his freelance news stories and editing audiovisual data from his recorder.

Though he had watched his video footage from Jinoteur more than a hundred times in the past week, he remained unsure how much of it was good enough to use in his report. Most of the shots he had made—while running from and dodging falling debris—were staticky and blurred, more suggestive than conclusive. The wildly shaking images had barely captured a few clear frames of the creatures he had encountered on the planet. He had made extensive notes about his firsthand observations, but the only person who could corroborate his account of events was Ensign Theriault—who, he had been unsurprised to learn, was under orders not to discuss the mission with anyone.

Not that it would make much difference, he figured. It’s not as if Commodore Reyes would let me file this story anyway.

Voices outside his window—pedestrians passing by—pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked up from his work and realized that he had lost track of time; he had been working for several hours. Outside his window, the darkness of a simulated night had fallen over Stars Landing. Dusky orange lamplight slanted through his vertical window blinds.

Yawning, he stretched his arms over his head. Maybe I’ll go out for a while. See if Quinn’s down the pub.

A knock on his apartment door echoed off his bare walls. Hope triumphed over experience, and he afforded himself a moment of optimism. He had hoped that Theriault would come calling, perhaps to buy him the drink she had promised him. Though he had never actually told her where he lived, it wasn’t as if he were hard to find: like every other permanent denizen of Starbase 47, his residence was listed in the public directory.

He set aside his data manager and stiffly pushed himself back to his feet. A few creaking-kneed steps later, he opened his front door—and felt the enthusiasm bleed from his face as he saw Diego Reyes looking back at him. “Commodore,” Pennington said, masking his hostility with humor. “Time for my inquisition already? I was sure I’d merit at least one night’s reprieve.”

“May I come in, Mr. Pennington?”

The manner of Reyes’s asking surprised Pennington; the commodore had sounded sincere and nonconfrontational. Stepping back from the doorway, Pennington replied, “Of course, sir.”

Reyes took cautious steps into the apartment, as if he were wary of an ambush. He looked around at the barren space and down at the half-consumed meal and beverage. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

Pennington stood behind Reyes and leaned against the wall beside the front door. “I’d invite you to sit down, but I’m boycotting furniture.”

The commodore stepped into the middle of the room and picked up Pennington’s data device. He held it in one hand and looked back at Pennington. “May I?”

“May you what? Read it? Or take it?”

He didn’t expect Reyes’s low-key reaction, a contrite lowering of his eyes. “May I look at it?”

Folding his arms, Pennington replied, “Be my guest.” He watched for about a minute as Reyes reviewed his first-draft text article and the related video clips and images. Every few seconds, Reyes’s eyebrows lifted slightly, or he nodded slowly.

“Impressive,” Reyes said as he turned off the device. “I’d have thought the star system vanishing would leave you behind the eight ball, but you even made that work for you.” He kneeled, set the device back on the floor, and stood again. “I’m sorry I can’t let the Sagittarius officers go on the record.”

“No doubt,” Pennington said, already tired of Reyes’s slow dance around the obvious. “I know why you’re here, Commodore. Do us both a favor, and get it over with.”

At first, Reyes didn’t respond. He walked over to the window and peeked between the blinds, through the amber light, into the artificial evening of the station’s terrestrial enclosure. “Why do you think I’m here, Mr. Pennington?”

A trick question? Pennington hesitated before he answered, “To seize my footage from Jinoteur—and to tell me not to bother filing the story, since it won’t get past your censors.”

“Send it to me,” Reyes said. “I’ll make sure it goes out as written.”

Instantly suspicious of the commodore’s motives, Pennington considered a few possible scenarios at work: an attempt at entrapment, a cruel hoax, or another scheme to publicly attack his credibility. “Why?” he asked. “What’s in it for you?”

“The truth,” Reyes said. “Nothing more, nothing less.” The longer he stared out the window, the more distant his expression became. “Very soon, Tim—perhaps in a couple of days—word’s going to get out that I invoked General Order 24 against Gamma Tauri IV.” He looked at Pennington. “Do you know what that is?” Pennington shook his head no, and Reyes continued, “It’s an order to annihilate the surface of a planet—to exterminate every living thing, blast away its atmosphere, cook its oceans, and leave nothing but a red-hot ball of glass.”

It was a startling image. “My God,” Pennington whispered.

“I gave that order to contain a threat,” Reyes said. “To stop a massive attack by an enemy you’ve now seen with your own eyes.” He turned once more to the view outside the window. “More than thirteen thousand people died on Gamma Tauri IV,” he said. As he continued, his sorrow slowly transmuted to quiet anger. “But that’s nothing compared to how many would die if that enemy ever reaches a fully populated planet. We woke this nightmare, and now it’s loose, God knows where, running amok. And nobody knows about it, Tim. Nobody knows because we keep hiding the truth, hoping we can steal another handful of ancient secrets from these creatures before all hell breaks loose.” His anger abated, leaving only his somber tone of grief. “The crew of the Bombay died for this secret, along with a dozen men and women from the Endeavour and the Lovell. Now it’s claimed thirteen thousand souls on Gamma Tauri IV, including a woman who used to be my wife.” He sighed heavily. “How many have to die? How many lives are we supposed to sacrifice on the altar of security? When does this madness stop?”

Pennington’s throat tightened with anxiety. Outside of Starfleet, he was likely the only person who knew that Reyes had ordered the destruction of Gamma Tauri IV. It was as big a piece of breaking news as his experiences on Jinoteur. “Sir,” he said, concealing his apprehension with a neutral monotone, “what do you want me to do with this information?”

“Publish it.” Reyes turned away from the window and walked to the front door. “Write the truth, exactly as you saw it.”

“The truth about Gamma Tauri IV might make you look bad,” Pennington said, halting Reyes in the open doorway. “Very bad.”

Looking back, Reyes replied, “All the more reason.”

“But if you let my story go out uncensored,” Pennington said, “won’t you be court-martialed?”

For a moment he thought he saw Reyes almost grin. “Probably,” the commodore said. “It’s your call, Tim. Do what you think’s right.” Reyes walked away, and the door shut with a loud clack, leaving Pennington alone with its echo.

He stood staring at the closed door, recovering from the shock of the unexpected…and then, all thoughts of Quinn, a drink at Tom Walker’s place, and a grateful cute redhead left his mind as he scooped up his data device and resumed writing.

I can finish this story in a few hours, he told himself. Let’s just hope Reyes doesn’t change his mind before it’s filed.

The gauges above T’Prynn’s biobed had all but flatlined. Fisher frowned as he watched and waited during the prolonged lacunae between minuscule pulses of the Vulcan’s autonomic systems.

M’Benga stood on the other side of the bed, leaning into the pool of bright bluish light focused on T’Prynn. He made notes on her chart, which was cradled in his bent left arm. Noticing Fisher’s dismay, he said, “Don’t be alarmed by her vital signs. It’s perfectly natural.”

“Nothing natural about it,” Fisher said, the edges in his voice rougher than usual. “She’s one late breath from dead.”

They were alone with T’Prynn in one of Vanguard Hospital’s isolation wards. Soft synthetic tones beeped and whirred in the background. Ten times per minute, a deep thump emanated from the cardiopulmonary monitor, signaling another feeble beat of T’Prynn’s heart. Her breaths were long but shallow.

Not content to let a machine guide his entire diagnosis, Fisher reached down to grasp T’Prynn’s wrist and feel for himself the strength of her pulse. He pushed aside the edge of the thermal blanket that covered her from the neck down. As he grasped her radiantly warm wrist, he nodded at the blanket and asked M’Benga, “Is this thing really necessary?”

“It helps promote the healing process,” M’Benga said. “In a Vulcan healing trance, a patient concentrates his or her strength, blood, and antibodies on the injury. Simulating the heat and aridity of Vulcan facilitates this effort.”

A weak tremor of life passed through T’Prynn’s wrist, under Fisher’s fingertip. “Whatever did this to her,” he said, “I don’t think blood or antibodies are gonna fix it.” He looked at her face, which was neither placid nor troubled—merely blank. “And you can call this a healing trance if it makes you feel better, but when I was in medical school we called this a coma.”

M’Benga finished marking the chart and set it back into a slot at the foot of T’Prynn’s bed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “If this is a healing trance, it’s the deepest one I’ve ever seen. But even if I’m wrong, and it is a coma, I see no harm in making her comfortable.”

Fisher withdrew his hand from T’Prynn’s wrist. “Agreed,” he said. He gently tucked the thermal blanket back into place at the bed’s edge. Drawing a breath as a prelude to a sigh, he inhaled the bracing odors of surgical sanitizer and the harsh disinfectant used to mop the hospital’s floors. Exhaling, he felt fatigue spread through him. It had been a manic day tending the wounded and dying from the attack on the Malacca, and this was the final stop on his evening rounds. He plucked T’Prynn’s chart from the slot at the foot of the bed and skimmed it quickly. “I see we finally got her real medical history,” he said.

“Yes,” M’Benga said. “It makes for fascinating reading. Those deep-tissue injuries and skeletal fractures I detected during her physical were sustained during a premarital ritual combat called Koon-ut-kal-

if-fee. Usually, the challenge is made by someone who wants to marry a person betrothed to another, so they can fight their rival for the mate. When T’Prynn asked her fiancé Sten to terminate their marriage compact, he refused and challenged her to the duel. Apparently, his aim was either to force her to change her mind or to deny her the right to claim another mate in the future…. So she killed him.”

“Charming,” Fisher said, almost dreading to see what other dark secrets of Vulcan culture were hidden in its details. “Is that why she’s been hiding these records?”

M’Benga conveyed his doubt with a tilt of his head. “I don’t think so. The Koon-ut-kal-if-fee is a legally protected Vulcan ritual. Unless she assaulted or killed a fellow member of Starfleet, or an unwilling participant, her actions would be entirely lawful under Vulcan jurisprudence.”

“Murdering people over sex and marriage,” Fisher mumbled. “Logical, my ass.” He glanced peremptorily at M’Benga. “And don’t go lecturing me about why I shouldn’t be appalled by this Koon-ut-whatever business.” Flipping through the rest of T’Prynn’s medical file, he noted the pattern of her anxiety attacks, which had become more severe and more frequent over the course of several decades. “If it wasn’t the legal fallout that worried her,” he speculated, “I’ll bet it was these seizures. A history of mental illness would shred her security rating. She’s probably been afraid of being relieved of duty.”

Nodding, M’Benga said, “With good reason. Now that her records have been declassified and Starfleet Intelligence has our report, they’ve revoked her security clearance. If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky to avoid a court-martial.”

Fisher dropped the data slate with T’Prynn’s chart back into the slot on the bed and heaved a dejected sigh. “If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky, period.”

31

Three minutes past 0800, Reyes settled into the chair behind his desk and checked the data feeds from the Federation. Sipping from his day’s first mug of coffee, he scanned the headlines. He didn’t have to look far to find what he sought.

It was the top item on every news feed, and it carried the byline of Tim Pennington: “Starfleet Officer Orders Destruction of Gamma Tauri IV.” Running beside it on more than half of the major news services was Pennington’s story about his excursion to Jinoteur IV, the mysterious life-forms of that now-vanished star system, their attack on the Sagittarius, and their link to the Gamma Tauri IV disaster.

Reyes took another sip of his coffee, decided it was too hot, and reclined slightly while he puffed gently across the top of his morning beverage. The mug was almost painfully warm in his hands. He considered paging Yeoman Greenfield and asking her to bring him more sugar.

His desktop intercom beeped. The indicator for Jetanien’s private comm channel lit up. Reyes blew another breath over his coffee and set the mug gently on his desk while the intercom beeped again. He leaned forward and pushed the switch to open the channel. “Reyes here.”

“Diego,” Jetanien said, sounding like someone who was pretending to be calm but failing miserably, “I thought you might like to know that she is already on her way up.”

Even though his friend couldn’t see him, Reyes nodded. “I figured as much.”

“We don’t have much time,” Jetanien said. “Once she gets there, you and I will not be permitted to speak further. I need to ask you some very direct questions, and I would appreciate the courtesy of succinct, truthful replies.”

Choosing not to waste time by mocking Jetanien for asking someone else to be succinct, Reyes replied simply, “Fire away.”

“Was this your doing?”

“Yes, it was.”

Agitated clicking noises tapped over the intercom channel. “Were you aware of the story’s contents before you released it for publication?”

Reyes swallowed another half-mouthful of coffee. “Yup.”

This time a low groan underscored the telltale scrape of Jetanien anxiously grinding his beak back and forth. “Was your action in any way coerced?”

“Nope.”

“Diego, this next query is vital,” said Jetanien. “Does the reporter know about the meta-genome, the Jinoteur carrier-wave signal, or the Shedai energy waveform?”

“No,” Reyes said. “All he knows is what he saw with his own eyes—and that’s all he wrote about.”

Another round of groaning and clicks issued from the intercom. “A most regrettable turn of events, Diego.” After a few seconds of heavy silence, the Chelon asked, “Is there anything that I can do for you before she arrives?”

“Yeah,” Reyes said. “Have someone bring me more sugar.”

Pennington relaxed in a comfortable chair at the outdoor café, on the plaza near the edge of Stars Landing. The crescent-shaped neighborhood of elegant civilian buildings gleamed under the pale morning glow of an ersatz sky inside Starbase 47’s terrestrial enclosure.

He was glad to be back at one of his favorite haunts on the station. Only a few other places on Vanguard made eggs Benedict, and none prepared it as well as it was made at Café Romano. Pennington gave the credit to Matt, the café’s chef-proprietor, for his ability to make consistently perfect Hollandaise sauce.

It was five minutes past 0800. Pennington was half finished with his breakfast and triple espresso; his latest story was less than ninety minutes old, and already it had provoked a storm of controversy throughout the interstellar newswire services. In one feature article, he had linked the obliteration of Gamma Tauri IV to inconsistencies in Starfleet’s account of the deaths of its personnel on Erilon, the destruction of the U.S.S. Bombay, and a previously unknown species that had controlled the suddenly missing Jinoteur star system.

Pundits at some news services had called his account of events on Jinoteur IV fiction, but so far none had been able to discredit his video evidence of the beings known as the Shedai, and no one could explain the system’s disappearance. Independent sources had already verified the complete annihilation of Gamma Tauri IV by photon-torpedo bombardment, and Starfleet had reluctantly confirmed its role in that tragedy.

His data device registered a steady flow of incoming text messages from former colleagues at FNS, as well as several from editors and peers at other news services. The missives were all but unanimous in their congratulations; several contained offers of long-term column-writing assignments or invitations to pitch feature stories. Checking the bottom of the alphabetical list, he even found a terse message of congratulation from Arlys Warfield, his former FNS editor, who had fired him after the debacle of the Bombay story.

He savored the taste of victory along with his espresso.

Get over yourself, he thought, popping the suddenly inflated bubble of his ego. You’re just a word monkey who likes to snoop. Don’t go believing your own press.

As he lifted a forkful of eggs Benedict, his data device beeped twice to signal an incoming transmission. He set his fork on the plate, picked up the device, and keyed the transceiver. “This is Tim Pennington.”

“Mr. Pennington,” replied the coarse, familiar voice of Commodore Reyes. “Think you can handle another scoop?”

A quick look around assured Pennington that no one was eavesdropping. “I’m willing to try.”

“Get to my office in the next five minutes. Reyes out.”

Pennington pulled his portable recorder from his pocket and ran for the turbolifts.

Flanked by a pair of serious-faced young male security guards, Captain Rana Desai waited outside Reyes’s office. Business as usual continued around her until his door slid open, with a hiss barely audible over the hubbub of Vanguard’s operations center.

Reyes stepped through the doorway and stood in front of her. All activity on the deck stopped, and the mood grew heavy with grim anticipation. Several meters away, a turbolift opened. Tim Pennington dashed out and stumbled to an awkward halt.

From the first day she had started assembling the chart in the JAG office, Desai had known this moment might come. But she had not expected it to arrive so soon, or for Reyes himself to have forced her hand. In a voice just for him, she asked, “Diego…you know I have no choice?”

His bearing was proud but forgiving. He answered her in a discreet tone. “You have to do your job, Rana.”

Around them, the onlookers slowly had pressed closer. Junior officers, Reyes’s yeoman, and particularly reporter Tim Pennington all were within easy eavesdropping distance.

Her heart swelled with regret. She blinked, cleared her eyes, and steadied her breathing as she forced all vestiges of emotion from her face. “Commodore Diego Reyes,” she declared in her clipped London accent, “by order of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General, you are hereby charged with willfully disobeying the direct order of a superior officer; deliberately releasing classified Starfleet intelligence to the public; and conspiring to disclose classified information.

“You have the right to legal counsel. You have the right to refuse to answer questions. Do you understand these rights?”

Reyes nodded once. “Yes, I do.”

“You are hereby relieved of your command, relieved of duty, and placed under arrest.” Desai looked to the guard on her left. “Take the commodore into custody, and escort him to the brig.”

“Aye, Captain,” said the guard, who stepped forward, looked at Reyes, and gestured with his arm toward a nearby turbolift. “Sir, if you please.” Reyes did as he was asked and walked calmly toward the turbolift, with the two guards following close behind him.

Anger and desperation clashed inside Desai’s thoughts as she watched the man she had come to love being taken away as a prisoner on what had been, until moments ago, his own station. Unable to continue watching his exit from the operations center, she turned and faced Commander Jon Cooper, who stood looking down from the supervisor’s deck. “Commander Cooper,” Desai said. “You’re in charge…. Good luck.”

Guessing she would likely be persona non grata in ops for a while, Desai left the stunned first officer to ponder his sudden promotion and stepped toward a different turbolift from the one into which Reyes was being led. Her only aim was to get back to her office and start preparing her case. Focusing on work felt heartless, but for her own good—and for Diego’s as well—she knew it was the right thing to do. She had a lot of gaps left to fill in, but there was no more time to pin photos on walls and collect anecdotes; it was time to get serious.

She had a court-martial to win.