Текст книги "Serpents Among the Ruins "

Автор книги: David George

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“Sir,” Linavil said. She hesitated only a second before adding, “Yes, sir.” She operated her console, but Vokar understood her almost imperceptible delay for what it was: disagreement, bordering on insubordination. The ship’s cloak required an enormous amount of power to operate, and standard procedure—even during incursions into enemy space, such as this one—mandated minimizing the utilization of other systems, including defensive shields. Linavil knew that, of course, and her hesitation revealed that she believed there to be insufficient cause to alter that strategy. “Shields now functioning at one hundred percent,” she said.

“Yes,” Vokar said, giving a moment’s thought to whether or not it would pay to reprimand the subcommander. She had long been a loyal follower—sometimes almost tooloyal, her militant support of both his command and his other objectives threatening to draw unwanted attention. Still, she possessed other tangible assets, including an uncle in the Senate, and the ear of a centurion in the praetor’s cabinet. At the same time, she had lately taken issue with Vokar, mostly in subtle ways, and he had begun to wonder whether her own personal objectives had come to supersede her support of his.

Vokar stood, descended to the deck, and paced into the center of the bridge, returning his attention to the tactical display on the viewscreen. “Analysis, Sublieutenant Akeev.” Vokar already had his suspicions—more than that, his judgments—about what he was witnessing, but he wanted to hear an unbiased scientific view as well.

“The detonation is massive, Admiral,” Akeev replied from his station near the main viewer. He detailed the output of the explosion, a staggering figure. “Its profile reads almost like the blast caused by the catastrophic failure of a Starfleet warp core, but it is far more powerful.”

Vokar looked over at the science officer. Wearing the gray ensign of military technical disciplines down the right third of his uniform top, Akeev had long since lost the youthful appearance he’d had when Vokar had handpicked him from the Beryk Institute a decade ago. The scientist had graduated at the top of his class, and combined with the military proficiencies he’d shown as a boy in the Youth Guard, he’d been a commodity too potentially valuable for Vokar to overlook.

“ Couldthe explosion have been a warp-core failure?” Vokar asked. They had detected three Starfleet vessels in the area, and a fourth object that had resembled a ship, though he believed that it had likely been something else.

“I don’t think so,” Akeev said. “Besides being too powerful, the explosion was also too focused to have been a random blast.”

“Then what do you think it is?” Vokar asked. The answer seemed perfectly clear to him. Starfleet had spent a great deal of time recently conducting battle simulations at their outposts along the Neutral Zone, as well as upgrading the weapon systems in those installations, both activities obvious preparations for combat. When Imperial Fleet Command had received word of those operations, Vokar had taken his ship into Federation space to observe. Now similar information had brought Vokar and his ship here, and there seemed little doubt that the Federation was continuing its provisioning for a war it professed not to want. The hypocrisy sickened him, but the Federation would be made to pay for its dishonesty.

“I think it’s a weapon, Admiral,” Akeev said. “I think the fourth object out there was a weapons platform Starfleet was testing.”

“Not just a weapon,” Vokar said, looking back up at the viewscreen. The arc of destructive force had lost much of its power, he saw, but not before passing through a considerable volume of space.

“No, not justa weapon,” Akeev agreed. “A metaweapon.”

Vokar looked over again at the scientist. “A piece of information the praetor would surely like to have, wouldn’t you say, Akeev?” He smiled thinly, disgusted by the duplicitous Federation even as he foresaw its downfall. “Something even the Klingons would enjoy knowing.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Vokar rounded on his heel and strode back to his command chair. “Tactical, return shields to one-quarter,” he said. “Navigation, plot a course for the Arandra Entry. Helm, maximum warp. I want to get a message to Romulus as soon as possible.” Vokar’s officers acknowledged his orders as they set about executing them. “Clear the screen,” he added. “Viewer ahead.”

On the main viewscreen, the tactical display winked off, a starscape appearing in its place. Vokar felt the thrum of the ship’s engines as they engaged, and a moment later, the stars on the viewscreen started to fall away to port. The Romulan flagship Tomedchanged course and headed for home.

Minus Seven: Aftermath

The medical scanner whirred as Morell passed it over her patient, the gentle sound just one of many in this section of Space Station KR-3’s infirmary. The soft, too-slow pulse that echoed the beating of her patient’s heart emanated from the diagnostic panel above the biobed, and a respirator hissed its sad but vital operation. The funeral dirge of modern medical equipment,Morell thought, not without bitterness. She usually appreciated such sounds, thinking of them not as a dirge, but as the accompaniment of the journey back to health of those she treated. But in a case such as this, when her best efforts—when anyphysician’s best efforts—would likely be insufficient, nothing could adequately fill the silence left by a missing voice.

Morell reviewed the scanner readings on a medical tricorder. She saw nothing unexpected on the display, and worse, she saw nothing encouraging. Setting the instruments down on a nearby cart, she took one more look at the diagnostic panel, as though it might show her something different than the scanner just had. Though she’d been a doctor for forty years, this aspect of her work had never gotten any easier. But then, as the first CMO under whom she’d served had told her, it shouldn’tget easier; being unable to save the sick or injured should always be hard.

As Morell reached up and dimmed the display above the biobed, she heard the door to the intensive-care section sigh open. She turned and headed in that direction, suspecting that she knew who had just come in, and thinking that it would be best if she could move him out of here as quickly as possible. If she had to, she would quote the technicality that, at this late hour, visitors were not even supposed to be here.

Morell exited her patient’s room—sectioned off, but lacking a fourth wall, the “room” was really more of a bay—and approached the visitor. A nurse at the other end of the intensive-care section had also started in this direction, striding past the other, thankfully empty, bays, but Morell waved him away. “Captain,” she said when she reached the wide door, which had closed behind him. She saw immediately that he had not been getting much rest; his eyes appeared glassy, with dark patches hanging in the flesh beneath them. He also still wore his uniform, though his shift had ended hours ago. “Let me prescribe something for you to help you sleep,” she said. She placed her hand on his upper arm and urged him back toward the door.

“Thanks, Uta,” Captain Harriman said, but he didn’t allow her to lead him away. He slipped his arm from her grasp and glanced toward the bay from which she had just emerged. “How is he?” he asked.

Morell briefly considered suggesting that they talk elsewhere, even thought about ordering the captain out of the infirmary, or at least out of intensive care. But she did none of those things, understanding that nothing would ease this burden for either one of them. “He’s not good,” she said. “The surgery went as well as it could, but there was so much damage to his brain…” She let the sentence trail off, something she did not typically do, and she realized just how tired she also felt. Because of the extent of the head trauma Admiral Harriman had sustained, coupled with the number of injured crew from Ad Astrathat she and her staff had needed to treat, Morell had chosen to place the admiral in stasis for most of the time it had taken Enterpriseto return to KR-3. They’d arrived back at the space station earlier today, and the CMO here had agreed to allow Morell to continue to treat the elder Harriman. She had spent several hours in the operating theater here, opening up three sections of the admiral’s skull in order for her to remove the subdural hematomata that had been caused by the blunt force to his head. The surgery had been successful, but…“It’ll take some time before we know the permanent effects of the cerebral swelling.”

“Has he regained consciousness?” the captain asked.

“No,” Morell said. “And I’m afraid I can’t tell you when he will, or even ifhe will.”

The captain nodded slowly, as though trying to decide what to do with this information. Finally, he said, “But there’s a chance he might wake up.”

Morell offered a tight, closed-mouth smile, hoping it masked how badly she felt for the captain. “There’s always a chance,” she said. She reached up and put her hand on his upper arm again, this time in a comforting gesture. “But it’s not a good chance, Captain,” she told him, because she saw little benefit in hiding the truth. “You should make peace with that.”

Again, he nodded slowly, then patted her hand where it rested on his arm; his fingers, she noticed, were cold. “All right,” he said, then looked past her again, in the direction of the admiral’s biobed. “Can I see him?” he asked.

Morell paused, never knowing how to answer that question. For some people, having a last opportunity to see a badly injured loved one helped provide closure; for others, it stripped away the ability to remember the loved one in the fullness of health. “You can go see him, Captain,” Morell said at last. “But you might not want to. He doesn’t…” The words came hard. Ad Astrahad been battered by the shock wave from the explosion, and so had its crew, although the admiral had been the only one whose injuries might prove fatal. “He doesn’t look very much like himself.”

The captain continued to stare past her for a few moments, and then said, “Okay.” He pulled his gaze away from the direction of where his father lay dying and looked back at Morell. “Thank you, Uta,” he said. He patted her hand once more, then turned and stepped away. The wide door between intensive care and the main section of the infirmary slid quietly open, and the captain walked through it and toward the infirmary exit.

“Captain,” Morell said, stepping forward to prevent the door from closing. When he stopped and peered back at her, she found that she had nothing to say, despite wanting very much to find some way to help the captain. “Good night,” she finally said.

“Good night, Doctor.” Morell watched him leave, and only after the door had closed behind him did she remember that she had wanted to give him something to help him sleep. She took a step, intending to go after him, but then she stopped. The captain was a secure enough man, she knew, that he if needed help, he would ask for it.

Morell thought about returning to her quarters aboard Enterpriseand trying to sleep herself, but she felt too unsettled for that right now. She considered the café down on the Plaza, but quickly discounted that possibility as well, not wanting either to socialize or to sit alone in a public place. Finally, without even really making a conscious decision, she headed back into intensive care, back over to where the admiral lay comatose. She retrieved a chair from the corner of the bay and pulled it up beside the biobed. She didn’t talk to the admiral, or take his hand, but just sat quietly beside him. She stayed with him for a long time, unable to help him any more than she already had, but unwilling to let her patient go.

The sound penetrated into Sulu’s dream, but only after it had come again did it rouse her from sleep. In an instant, she bounded out of bed, unsure if a red alert had woken her, but taking no chances and responding as though it had. As she stood tensed in the middle of her bedroom, waiting to hear information from the bridge or the next blare of the alert klaxon, the memory of what had happened to Universeand its crew rose hauntingly in her mind. The last two days had been filled with moments like this, the horror of the tragedy inescapable. She also knew that there would be many more such moments in the weeks and months ahead, and that she would always bear emotional scars from the terrible disaster.

The door signal buzzed, apparently for the third time, and Sulu tried to concentrate on the present. “Computer, what time is it?” she asked in the pitch-dark room. Before she had retired for the night, she had shuttered the viewing ports above her bed, just as she did every night, because she had difficulty falling asleep in even the faint illumination provided by the stars.

“The time is zero-one-thirty-five hours,”the computer replied.

“One-thirty-five?” Sulu repeated, surprised that somebody would be calling on her now. No wonder she felt so tired. She shook her head, trying to clear away her grogginess.

“Just a minute,” she called out into the main room of her quarters. “Computer, lights up half.”

As the lighting panels came on, Sulu moved to a circular armchair in the corner, where she had draped her robe before going to bed. She pulled the red, floor-length garment on over her body, tied its sash about her waist, and headed out of her bedroom.

At the entry to her quarters, she touched a control pad set into the bulkhead, and the doors glided open. Captain Harriman stood in the corridor. “Captain,” she said, but in the next second, she saw the torment in his face, the fatigue in his carriage. “John,” she said, concerned not just about her commanding officer, but about her friend. “Come inside.” She reached a hand to his elbow and guided him into her quarters.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Harriman said as the doors closed behind him. “I just needed to talk.”

“Of course,” Sulu said, walking with him over to the sofa that sat against the outer bulkhead. Here too, she had shuttered the viewing ports for Enterprise’s simulated night. Harriman sat down, and Sulu took a seat in an easy chair across a low table from him. It occurred to her to ask him if something had happened to upset him, but of course something had: Universehad exploded in a soundless flash in the middle of deep space, ending the lives of fifty-one members of Starfleet, and threatening the life of Harriman’s father.

He leaned forward, his forearms resting atop his knees, and looked over at her. “I don’t know where to begin, Demora,” he said. He looked not just tired, but exhausted. She suspected that he’d barely slept since the accident.

“You don’t have to know where to begin,” she told him. “The last couple of days have been painful for all of us. I know you feel that, and that you also carry the crew’s wounds in addition to your own. That’s an awful lot to bear.”

Harriman sat up and leaned against the back of the sofa. “I do feel terrible about the crew, about the loss they must feel,” he said. “But it’s also more than that.”

“Your father,” Sulu said, her tone sympathetic. Even though she knew that Harriman had not had much of a relationship with Blackjack for many years, she also understood that the threat of losing a parent changed things.

“My father, yeah,” Harriman allowed. “But I’m not even sure that’s it. I’ve been feeling like this, feeling…disconnected…for a while.”

Sulu had actually noticed a difference in Harriman during the past few months: he hadn’t been as quick to laugh or to socialize, and he’d been sterner and more formal with the crew than she’d previously known him to be. The alteration in his behavior had not been drastic, though, and nothing she hadn’t ascribed to some of the same pressures and concerns she’d been feeling herself. For too long, the crew of Enterprisehad been involved less with the exploration of space and more with interstellar politics. Word had spread from Qo’noS that many Klingons had begun to clamor for Chancellor Azetbur to jettison the “embarrassment” of accepting Federation aid, while the Romulans continued to make noises and take actions that promised a coming conflict. All of which had taken a toll on her, and she’d assumed, on the captain as well. And ever since the Romulans had forcibly occupied the world of the Koltaari, Harriman had been involved in numerous high-level Starfleet meetings about how to address the mounting threat, a process that she guessed had worn him down further.

“I think it must be easier now than ever to feel disconnected,” Sulu said. “The galaxy doesn’t seem to be a very friendly place these days, does it?”

Harriman raised his eyebrows, the left side of his mouth curling into a humorless half-smile. “No,” he agreed, “it sure doesn’t.”

“Well, why don’t we do something about that?” she said, slapping her hands down on the tops of her knees. She knew that Harriman wanted to talk, but she thought that a change of tone might help him. “How about something to drink?” she asked, not waiting for an answer before getting up and crossing the room toward the food synthesizer.

“Sure,” Harriman said behind her. “Why not?”

Rather than selecting something from the ship’s menu, Sulu touched a control away from the food synthesizer. A different door slid open in the bulkhead, revealing a large compartment, about a meter square and half as deep. Inside stood a frame containing several dozen bottles of wine lying on their sides, their corks facing outward. An oenophile, Sulu had requested the special modification to her quarters a decade ago, when she had been promoted to be the ship’s executive officer. Wine appreciation had been among her father’s many leisure pursuits, one she had taken to during the course of her travels in Starfleet. “How about some port?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder.

Harriman shrugged. “Fine,” he said, but this time he smiled with some apparent good humor. He knew of her passion for wines, and he had always professed an appreciation for people with passions; a “philophile,” he liked to call himself.

Sulu peered into the compartment and found a Late Bottled Vintage port, 2289, from Argelius II. She reached into the climate-controlled environment—twelve degrees, with high humidity—and pulled out the bottle. She closed the compartment, then retrieved a stylish metal rack from a nearby shelf. After placing the port in the center of the rack, where it sat between a pair of hanging, stemmed glasses, she carried it over and set it down on the low table in front of the sofa.

“I think you’ll like this,” Sulu said, recalling which wines Harriman had enjoyed in the past. She used her thumbnail to break the seal at the top of the bottle. “It’s dense, with a rich, full-fruit nose. Full-bodied, but it’s got finesse and a great style.” She circled her hand around the cap of the cork stopper and pulled, twisting it back and forth until it came free.

“At this point,” Harriman said, “I’d settle for anything short of a phaser blast to the chest.” He paused, then added, “Then again…” Sulu was pleased to hear him joke.

“Trust me,” she said, pouring the fortified wine. “This will knock you off your feet better than a phaser blast.” The port came out of the bottle opaque, so deeply purple that it almost appeared black. When she finished pouring, she set the bottle down and handed a glass across the table to him. “What shall we drink to?” she asked, sitting back down and lifting her own glass.

“To peace,” Harriman suggested, leaning forward, a telling remark as to his state of mind, Sulu thought.

“To peace,” she said, but then another toast came to mind. She quickly tried to assess whether or not she should offer it. After a moment, she did: “To Admiral Blackjack Harriman.”

The captain looked at her for a few seconds without saying anything, his expression frozen, and she worried that she had upset him or hurt him by saying the wrong thing. But then he reached forward and touched his glass to hers. “To Blackjack,” he said. He raised his glass toward his mouth, but then hesitated, apparently waiting for Sulu to drink first. She did, sipping the grape nectar. It tasted as good as she’d expected, and even better than when she’d first sampled it on Argelius a few years back. She only wished the occasion could have been celebratory, rather than mournful.

“I’m very sorry about your father, John,” she said.

Harriman nodded his head. “I’m sorry too,” he said, “even though I’m not entirely sure why. I mean, I don’t want him to die, of course, but it’s also not as though he and I were close. Except for admiral-to-captain discussions, we haven’t even talked in years.” He seemed to consider his statement for a moment, and then said, “Maybe we’ve never even reallytalked.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sulu said. “He’s your father. He’s a part of you– literallya part of you—and a part of your life. Whether you’re close or not, you’re connected to each other.”

“By genetics?” Harriman asked. “By blood?” He set his glass of port down on the table. “Is that enough?”

“It’s certainly enough for some things,” Sulu said, hoping that she could offer her friend some words to bring him to an acceptance of his feelings. He had just toasted to galactic peace, but she thought that what he might benefit most from right now would be peace of mind. “It’s enough to make you feel sad that his life’s been put in jeopardy.”

“I feel like a hypocrite,” Harriman said. He stood up, moved out from behind the table, and paced across the room. “I’ve had no personal relationship with the man for years, and I think he’s arrogant and self-involved. He’s strict and unyielding, and he sees the universe in black and white and nothing in between.” Harriman stopped and turned to face Sulu from near the food synthesizer. “The universe just isn’t like that,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” Sulu concurred. “It’s a lot more interesting than that.” Sulu had met and worked with the admiral on several occasions throughout her career, including being debriefed by him after the mission to Devron II, so she knew firsthand his shortcomings. More important, from her long friendship with Harriman, she understood the impact that Blackjack’s behavior as a father had landed on his son.

“I’ve never figured out why he feels the need to be so strident,” Harriman said.

“It’s his way or the spaceway,” Sulu said, invoking the old boomer saying. “That’s for sure.”

“He’d simply call it confidence,” Harriman said, walking back over to the sitting area. “Something he never thought I had much of.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sulu said. “From what Commander Dane told me, you showed the admiral quite a bit of confidence at Askalon Five.” She easily recalled the story she had been told almost twenty years ago by Enterprise’s executive officer at the time, about how the captain had transported the admiral from the bridge and into the brig.

“I doubt Blackjack thought of it as confidence,” Harriman countered. “Something more like insubordination.”

“Either way,” Sulu said, “you impressed him.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Harriman admitted. He was quiet for a moment, and his gaze drifted from Sulu. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he finally said.

For a second, Sulu didn’t know to what he was referring, but then concluded that he must mean the accidental destruction of Universe.“No,” she said, unable to keep a note of sadness from entering her voice.

“I think one thing that’s bothering me is that I don’t like my father,” Harriman said, looking back down at Sulu. “But I want to.”

Sulu sipped at her port, remembering similar feelings she’d had about her own father. “When my mother died and I had to go live with my father,” she said, “a man I’d never even met before that, I hated him. Right from the beginning, without even getting to know him. But when I got to know him, you know what? I still didn’t like him. But I also didn’t wantto like or love him, because he represented things to me: his own absence from the first six years of my life, the loss of my mother, change. But even though I didn’t want to, when I let go of those things, I eventually did come to like him and love him.” She paused, wanting to emphasize what she would say next. “Maybe you can do the same with your father.”

“Maybe,” Harriman said slowly. He turned and walked back across the room again. For as long as she’d known him, Harriman had been peripatetic; even in staff meetings, he had a tendency to wander from his chair and walk about the conference room while speaking. “But there’s really nothing to let go of. I haven’t liked my father for a long time, but I have forgiven him.”

“For what, exactly?” Sulu asked. She sipped again at her port.

Harriman reached the end of the room and headed back toward the sitting area. “For whatever he did that made him fail to be a father to me. For most of my life, he’s simply behaved like my commanding officer. But I don’t harbor that anymore. I used to, and I suppose I still could, but why would I? What good would it do me, or him, or anybody else? Mom’s gone, Lynn’s gone, my grandparents are gone; the only ones left are him and me.”

“And Amina,” Sulu said.

Instantly, Harriman’s bearing changed. He seemed to draw himself up, the troubles affecting him falling away.

“Yes, there’s Amina,” he said softly. He navigated around the table and sat back down on the sofa. “And there’s you and Xintal and Rafe and the others. I didn’t mean that there aren’t people who I love, or that there aren’t people who love me. I meant family.”

“You have two families, John,” Sulu told him. “The one you were born into, and the one you choose every day of your life.”

“Yes,” he said. “And my chosen family is very important to me. But I feel…adrift, I guess…that I don’t have the other. I know I haven’t had it for a long time, but I’ve still always had the potential for it. But if my father dies…”

“I think it’s natural to feel those things,” Sulu said. “I also think it’s all right to dislike your father. What would be worse would be to pretend to like him, or even to actually like him despite his bad behavior. Then you’d truly be a hypocrite.”

“I feel sorry for my father,” Harriman said, looking down. “He was estranged from his own father when hedied, and for his own life to end with him estranged from his son…it’s just sad.”

“It is,” Sulu said. “But you can’t change your father; only he can do that.”

“I guess I need to accept that,” Harriman said. “Accept all of it.” He sat quietly for a few minutes, and Sulu let the silence stretch out, wanting to allow him to deal with whatever he was thinking and feeling. At last, he looked up and said, “I’m also worried about my chosen family, Demora, and about the extended family of the Enterprisecrew.”

“We’ve been through a lot recently,” Sulu said.

“I want you to make sure they’re all right,” Harriman told her. “Work with the medical staff to get them through this difficult time. Morell and Benzon and some of the nurses have some psychiatric training.”

“I will,” Sulu said. “I was going to ask you if we should make counselors available to the crew.”

“Let’s encourage activities too,” Harriman said. “It’s been hard for a while. I know we’ve had little downtime, and we’re not likely to get much more right now. I’ve noticed a decline in social activities throughout the ship, so I’d like to do what we can to change that. I want the crew to have some enjoyment in their days, and to lean on each other when they need to.” He raised his arms and wiped his hands down his face, sighing heavily. “I hate that they’re going through this.”

“It’s not just them, John,” Sulu said, realizing that Harriman had not bothered to include himself as being affected by recent events.

He looked at her in shock, as though it had never occurred to him that the Universetragedy had impacted him the same as it had the crew. But then he seemed to recover from his surprise. “I know,” he said. “I’ll speak to Uta too. So should you.”

“Yes, sir,” Sulu said, recognizing the command as something more than friendly advice.

Harriman stood up from the sofa. “I should let you get back to sleep,” he said. “Thanks for listening. Sorry for stopping by so late.”

Demora got up from her chair. “At least I got to try some of this port,” she said. She lifted her glass, drank the small amount left in it, then set it down.

Harriman walked out around the table and headed for the door. Just before he got there, though, he stopped and turned back. He didn’t say anything right away, and he looked to Sulu as though he was trying to make a decision about something. Finally, he said, “I keep thinking about Iron Mike Paris.”

“He saved my life,” Sulu said, her reaction almost automatic. The memory of the events on Devron II remained as fresh for her as though they had happened yesterday.

Harriman nodded, and Sulu expected him to say more about Iron Mike, but instead, all he said was “Good night, Demora.”

“Good night,” she replied. As he left, she looked after him, sensing that he had just attempted to tell her something. She thought about it, but then, unable to conclude anything, shook off the feeling. She watched the doors slide closed, then sat heavily back down in the chair. On the table, she saw, Harriman’s glass of port sat untouched. She thought about drinking it herself, but instead, she got up and went back to bed.

It was a long time before Demora fell back to sleep, though, and when she did, she dreamed of Captain Harriman, Iron Mike Paris, and those horrible days on Devron II.

Azetbur, leader of the High Council, chancellor of the Klingon Empire, seethed. Even after she had calmed the uproar in her office, it required all of her willpower not to dive across the length of the table and wrap her hands around the throat of the Romulan envoy. Instead, she calmly rose, conscious not to allow her hands to roll into fists, though tempted by the release the feel of her sharp fingernails against her palm would have given her. “Thank you, Consul Vinok,” she said. “Please express my appreciation to the praetor for providing the Klingon Empire with this information.” She imagined the green blood of the envoy spurting through her fingers as she squeezed his ignoble life from him.