Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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“This creature is an Earth human?” Donatra asked quietly, leaning toward the doctor.

“Genetically, though obviously not in phenotype,” Venora said in a near-whisper. “This individual appears to possess a number of adaptations to long periods of microgravity, with traits that resemble those of arboreal primates.”

“I’ve never seen any other humans with such traits.”

“Nor have I, Commander. But there’s no reason these creatures could not have evolved from baseline human stock, just as we split off from our Vulcan forebears, millennia ago.”

Donatra stared in growing wonderment at the slumbering alien. “An Earth human.”

Venora leaned over her patient, studying him with evident concern. “As counterintuitive as that may be, that is the essential truth of it,” she said quietly. “This creature’s genes, or at least most of them, originated on Earth.”

The alien’s stiff, shutter-like eyelids slowly opened then, revealing dark, extremely alert eyes. Those deep brown orbs showed fear at first, until they lit upon Venora, whose presence appeared to calm him, at least somewhat. The doctor had evidently built up at least some degree of trust with the alien already.

“Not…not of Aerth,” the creature said, sitting up in a tentative, cautious manner. The guards stood by attentively only a few paces away, obviously ready to vaporize the alien at the first sign of trouble. The alien’s eyes fell upon Donatra and narrowed with obvious distaste.

“Who are you?”

“I am Commander Donatra, of the Romulan Imperial Warbird Valdore,which you are aboard,” Donatra said, trying to sound both authoritative and nonthreatening.

He nodded. “You want something of me.”

“Only the answers to a few questions.”

“I cannot prevent you from asking them, Commander.”

“You’ve already told us that you’re not an Earth human,” Donatra said. That made sense, considering how very far away Earth was from this extremely remote region of space. “So what exactly areyou, Mr. Frane?”

The creature, this Frane, tilted its head in evident puzzlement.

“What do your people call themselves?” Venora said, by way of clarification.

“We are called Neyel.” Looking at Venora, Frane added, “Where are the others who accompanied me in the evacuation capsule?”

“We found a total of four of your escape pods…evacuation capsules,” Donatra said.

“Four?” Frane appeared surprised, but Donatra couldn’t tell if that was because he had expected more or fewer of the pods to have survived whatever disaster had precipitated their launch.

“Three of the pods contained members of your species, all of whom are apparently uniformed members of your people’s military. You were found in the last one, along with a female…Neyel. And three aliens of species we have never encountered before.”

The creature sat more fully upright, moving quickly enough to provoke the guards, who raised their weapons in a gesture of unambiguous warning.

“Easy,” Venora said, clearly speaking to the guards as much as to Frane.

Frane remained sitting up in the bed, utterly still and rigid as a statue. The only movement Donatra could see in him was contained in the sound of his voice. And in the play of emotions behind his eyes.

“Where are they? Nozomi and g’Ishea and Fasaryl and Lofi. What have you done with—”

Donatra spread her hands and interrupted him. “Those who shared the pod with you are safe. They are elsewhere aboard this vessel.”

Frane met Donatra’s gaze directly. “I wish to see them.”

“You shall. But I need to get a few more answers from you first.”

The Neyel only glared at her in stony silence.

Donatra didn’t need Venora’s training in psychology to see that Frane was becoming oppositional. She knew that if he was to be spared the very real risk of permanent brain damage from truly invasive mind scans, then she had better do more than simply intimidate him. She had to win his confidence.

She reached into a pouch on the lower front of her uniform jacket and withdrew a short loop of fabric, into which countless stones, shells, bones, and gems had been sewn. She held it up so that the Neyel could see it clearly.

“You were wearing this when you were brought aboard. It seemed to be very important to you.” Indeed, he had fought like a wild rainjungle zdonekto keep it.

She handed him the object in silence. It lay in his open palm and he regarded it in what might have been silent reverence.

“Your remote ancestors were obviously Earth humans,” she said, disturbing the deep quiet that had descended upon the infirmary. “How did they get out into this region of space?”

Frane shrugged, still staring at the small loop of fabric in his left hand. “No one knows for certain. Many records were lost during and after the Great Sundering, centuries ago.”

The term “Sundering” took Donatra somewhat aback. Romulans often used this very same term to refer to their own people’s millennia-past separation from their Vulcan ancestors. It made sense. After all, if Vulcans could beget Romulans, then why couldn’t humans have begat the Neyel?

“So how did youget out here?” Frane asked, tilting his head slightly.

“The Great Bloom evidently brought us here,” she said. In response to the blank stare that greeted this revelation, she added, “The large energy cloud from which we retrieved you and your people.”

Frane’s eyes widened slightly, though he maintained his composure well. “The Sleeper brought you here then.”

Donatra sighed; whatever this “sleeper” was, she had no desire to receive a lecture on interstellar mythology. At least not now.

“Why were you and your people in evacuation capsules?” she asked, trying her best to keep the military steel out of her voice. Her fleet, after all, remained missing, its fate unknown.

Frane replied after a lengthy pause. “We were forced to abandon our ship. Surely you were able to divine that for yourselves. Or learn that from one of the ship’s officers.”

Donatra shook her head. “You’re the first Neyel we’ve succeeded in communicating with so far.”

“Ah,” Frane said, a look of understanding crossing his strangely immobile, gray features. “You must have assumed I would be easier to coerce than the military officers would be. My father always underestimated me in much the same way.”

I had better tread very carefully here,Donatra thought, wondering why the Neyel military had been transporting civilians. Were they mission specialists? Or perhaps prisoners?

Aloud, she said, “Civilians often have a…less rigid perspective in situations such as these.”

Frane’s hard lips curved upward ironically. “And they may also be less likely to die from a brainbleed if you were to apply those mental scanners of yours to some purpose other than basic language acquisition.”

He’s no simpleton, this one,Donatra thought. I mustn’t make the mistake of underestimating him.

“I have no desire to test that proposition, Mr. Frane,” she said aloud, smiling as compassionate a smile as she could muster. In truth, she had no wish to inflict harm on this creature, or on the other civilian Neyel—the female—that they had rescued. Indeed, Donatra had decided to make communicating with Frane a priority because the female had seemed far too frail and terrified to withstand interrogation. And the three unknown sentients that had also shared Frane’s escape pod were simply tooalien for even shallow mind-probing to yield any predictable outcome.

Frane slumped back onto the bed in apparent resignation. Donatra wondered if he had decided to cooperate in order to safeguard his female.

“What do you want to know?” he said, sighing.

“Why, exactly, you abandoned your ship, Mr. Frane.”

“We were attacked.”

“By whom?” Donatra asked. Once again, she was growing impatient, though she continued doing her utmost to conceal that fact.

“By other ships that emerged from the Sleeper and have since disappeared into the space of the Neyel Hegemony.”

Donatra’s throat suddenly went dry. “Other ships. What did these other ships look like?”

“They were large warships. Long, tapering vessels that greatly resemble this one, unless I’m very much mistaken. I saw dozens of them. Their attack was brief, but devastating.”

Donatra’s heart thudded in her side, feeling like a singularity drive going rapidly into overload. My fleet. My fleetis here, somewhere in this gods-forsaken corner of space.

But why would her people have used her ships to mount such a senseless attack, and then flee ever deeper into the unknown?

Then, even as Donatra began to frame that question, the infirmary was plunged into stygian darkness.

Chapter Six

The baleful green dullness of the Valdore’s emergency lighting kicked in a moment later. Making her way carefully through the dim illumination, Donatra crossed to the comm panel mounted on the nearest wall.

“Bridge! Report!”

Centurion Liravek’s crisp, businesslike voice replied. “Attempting to take the Klingon vessel in tow has evidently overtaxed our primary power circuits, Commander. Even at the very low-power impulse speeds available to us. We owe it to the effects of the Great Bloom.”

“Are we clear of it?”

“Negative, Commander. The rift’s random subspace effects will probably stop and reverse our drift sometime over the next severalveraku . Even at our current distance from the event horizon, we are still well within the Bloom’s strongest zone of subspace interference.”

So sending a distress signal would be an exercise in futility,Donatra thought glumly. Even if we had a functioning comm system.She had begun hoping that the appearance of her fleet in Neyel space meant that there was at least somechance that Riker and his Starfleet vessel had made it here intact as well. But without a fully operational communications system or sensors, there was no way to tell.

“How soon can we effect repairs and resume a course away from the Bloom and its interference zone?”

Liravek paused briefly before responding, which was unusual for him. “Commander, we’ve vented so much coolant due to the power-circuit failures, that I’m not even certain engine repair is even possible without access to spacedock facilities.”

Donatra looked back toward her Neyel “guest.” Frane hadn’t moved from where he lay on the infirmary bed, apparently in a well-advised effort not to alarm his two armed guards—both of whom had maintained their poise as well as a tight grip on their weapons.

The sight of the still-prone Neyel—whose presence here had resulted entirely from a chance encounter with something that lay beyond the Valdore’s battered hull—suddenly gave Donatra an idea.

Perhaps I should continue looking beyond my vessel for solutions to its problems.

“Thank you, Centurion,” she said aloud. “I’ll be on the bridge shortly to go over our options. Donatra out.” She thumbed the comm circuit closed.

Dr. Venora approached, the diminished lighting accentuating the deep lines and hollows of her wise, patrician face. “Well, Commander. What now?”

Donatra offered a lopsided smile. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve entirely figured it out.” Turning toward the guards, she instructed them to return Venora’s patient to his quarters—albeit under close watch—as soon as the doctor declared it safe to do so. Then she turned on her heel and exited into the dimly lit corridor.

“So you need my help, Commander,” Tchev said. He sat across the table from Donatra, where the faint lighting did little to obscure his snaggly brown teeth. “And rather desperately, too, I gather. Delightful.” His voice dripped with a liberal mixture of sarcasm and smugness.

Donatra wanted to get out of her chair and kick those vile teeth straight down his throat. Instead, she contented herself with silently grinding her own molars. Why did I permit Venora to persuade me to grant these Klingon animals the dignity of guest quarters? They deserve nothing more than to be penned like the beasts they are.

Of course, each of those guest quarters was being guarded very carefully by the Valdore’s vigilant security officers. And Donatra had made no effort to conceal that fact from the Klingons, who would doubtless have tried to move against the Valdore’s crew had their confinement depended upon the ship’s currently de-powered security forcefields. Further, granting them the status of untrustworthy guests, rather than prisoners, at least kept them from attempting ritual suicide, as their sense of honor demanded.

Leaning forward across the table, she said. “You would appear to have little choice other than to cooperate with us, Captain Tchev. Otherwise, both the Dughand the Valdorewill slowly spiral into the center of the spatial rift. My staff is all but certain this would destroy both our vessels.” Or what’s left of them,she amended in silence.

He grinned as he leaned back in his chair, hooking his thumbs in his ornate metal baldric. “And that frightens you.” It was not a question.

Ofcourse it frightens me,she thought, wondering yet again how such pathological people had been able to build and maintain their civilization, such as it was, for so many centuries. Akhh, who but an imbecilicdha’rudh wouldnot fear and seek to avoid an entirely unnecessary and completely avoidable death?

“The strain of rescuing your vessel in our current damaged state has cost us most of our power couplings and virtually all of an already-depleted coolant supply, Captain.”

He made a single “tsk” sound and glowered from beneath his heavy brow. “A shame.”

Donatra mustered every iota of determination she possessed to keep her tone calm and even. “We cannot hope to safely maintain our singularity drive without additional coolant supplies. And our scans show that your ship still has large quantities of the materials we need in order to get under way.”

Tchev leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table. His unfriendly grin broadened further. “So why tell me? Why not simply board the Dughand take what you need?”

Donatra felt her anger nearing its boiling point. “Because I wouldn’t know in advance where all the booby traps are, Captain.”

He looked impressed, though his insufferable grin remained. “You surprise me, Commander. Not that I didn’t expect you to beg for my assistance. However, I had assumed you would insist on discovering our antipersonnel countermeasures the hard way.”

She stood. “That’s still an option, Captain. If both gentle persuasion and our mind-scanning equipment prove ineffective, that is. But in that event, I think I would have to insist that you and your people walk the rest of the way home from here.”

Tchev’s grin collapsed into a more appropriately businesslike expression. After all, there had to be somerational limits to the innate Klingon propensity for empty bluster.

“Very well, Commander Donatra,” said Tchev, a gratifying growl thrumming beneath his words. “Only a fool fights in a burning house. And only an idiotic Duy’would meekly allow that house to burn down around his head.”

Frane was relieved to discover that the almost lightless cabin to which the guards had escorted him contained all four of his fellow Seekers After Penance. Though each of them appeared justifiably apprehensive, none appeared to have suffered any serious injuries. Even the multipartite Lofi seemed to have all but completely recovered from the shock of having been teleported piecemeal from the evacuation capsule.

He was surprised, however, when the guards returned within a few hours to escort him away yet again. At least they had let him recover and don his pilgrim’s robe. And they had made no attempt to take the story bracelet from him again. Still apprehensive that the guards might change their minds about that, he kept the bracelet out of sight, tucked into the front pocket of his robe where he could feel its stones and shells and beads whenever he felt the need. For some reason, it reassured him, as though its very presence could somehow keep him safe. Of course, that notion hadn’t worked very well for his father.

Soon Frane was even more nonplussed to discover himself being escorted into what could only be the main control room of this vast ship of war. Commander Donatra was seated in the raised, thronelike chair at the brightly lit room’s center, while at least half a dozen dark-haired, pale-skinned elves– Romulans,he corrected himself—busied themselves at various duty stations. The wide viewer that dominated the front of the chamber displayed a broad, brilliant image of the energy tendrils that made up the mysterious substance of the Sleeper.

Donatra turned her seat toward him, perhaps alerted to his entrance by her sensitive-looking pointed ears. “Ah, Mr. Frane. Welcome to my bridge.”

He nodded to her, hoping she would regard the gesture as a courteous one. “Thank you. It’s very impressive.” His tail switched behind him involuntarily, until he forced it to remain still.

“Yes, it is that. And thanks to the cooperation of our Klingon…friends, our propulsion system and tractor beam are once again operational.”

“Klingon?” Frane asked, as unfamiliar with the word as he had been with the term ‘Romulan’ until very recently.

“Our… otherguests, Mr. Frane. You must have seen their ship from your escape pod. You’ll likely meet them soon enough. By working in tandem with the Klingons we should have both of our ships under way and clear of the disturbances created by the spatial rift.”

“Again, impressive. But why have you brought me up here?”

Donatra smiled, though the expression looked more predatory than amicable on her saturnine features. “You’re very direct, Mr. Frane.”

“There’s little time to waste,” he said, nodding toward the image on the viewer.

Frane noticed that the Romulan woman’s mien had darkened. “Why? Do you know something we don’t about the Great B1—about the phenomenon out there?”

“We call it the Sleeper.”

“Why?”

Frane squeezed the bracelet between his fingers, imagining that he could draw strength from it. “Because its dreams mold reality itself, at least here in Neyel space. And its infrequent awakenings endthose dreams, causing whole worlds to vanish as though they were nothing but errant thoughts to begin with. Or so say the ancient stories of the Indigenous Races.”

“Ah. I see.” She appeared to relax then, obviously having dismissed the wisdom of the ancients as mere myth and folklore.

And perhaps that is all it ever really was.After all, very few modern Neyel—and certainly noNeyel ancestor of which Frane was aware—had ever taken such tales seriously. The Oh-Neyel People whose earliest struggles and conquests had built the Neyel Hegemony had had time for aught but survival.

But the native peoples the Neyel had conquered over the centuries had known the truth, perhaps from the time that intelligent life had first emerged here, billions of Oghenturns before the Neyel or the human species that sired them had come into being. The long-vanished His’lant, among other races, had understood the true nature of the Sleeper, and may even have been tied to it somehow, perhaps more intimately than any species dreamed by it.

If the His’lant legends are merely stories, then why did Newaerth and its entire system vanish when the Sleeper first began to stir?Frane thought. Why did a billion Neyel and their subjects disappear into oblivion like a dream?

“Why do you need me here?” Frane asked.

“It’s quite simple, Mr. Frane. Until we find a way to return home, we’re going to need a knowledgeable guide to help us find our way around in this region of space.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Frane. You’ve just been hired into the service of the Romulan Star Empire.”

Though he was grateful still to be alive—a fact he knew he owed to Commander Donatra—something in her smile made him recall the cold-bloodedness he had often seen in the eyes of his late father. This was all that kept him from questioning her directly about what might have motivated a fleet of warships—craft that so resembled Donatra’s own vessel—to make an unprovoked attack on a Neyel military flotilla.

Clutching again at the beads and stones of the story bracelet in his pocket, Frane suddenly found himself wishing that the Sleeper would come fully awake sooner rather than later.