2279

28

A Desolation Called Peace

Marlena lurked a few paces behind Spock’s chair, half concealed in the penumbra of the war room’s perimeter, listening as he presided over a meeting of his senior cabinet members, Starfleet flag officers, and advisers.

Most of the discussions she audited were relatively mundane, but what mattered was that she had been invited by Spock to join these classified sessions of the imperial cabinet, reinforcing her status within the government: she was not just a concubine or an empress in title alone. In matters of state, her presence was expected and her opinions were heard.

The foreign minister, a Denobulan named Rhox, introduced the next item on the meeting’s agenda. “The Breen ambassador has been complaining publicly that we’re selling weapons and ships to the Cardassian Union. I’ve prepared a statement of denial we can transmit to our embassies in—”

“Unnecessary,” Spock said. “Ambassador Tren is correct: we have provided ships and small arms to the Cardassians, to aid them in their border conflict against the Tholian Assembly.” Howls of angry protest swelled and crashed like a wave against Spock’s unyielding wall of cool reserve.

Searching the faces gathered around the table, Marlena saw only one that mirrored Spock’s serene visage: Grand Admiral Zhao Sheng’s.

Rhox’s voice cut through the din of shouting. “Your Majesty, I don’t understand. My ministry has no knowledge of any such arrangement with the Cardassian Union. Who negotiated this deal?”

“I did,” Spock said. “On behalf of Legate Zaris, Ambassador Dakar accepted my offer several weeks ago. The first shipments of small arms are en route to Cardassia Prime now.”

More raised voices bled together into cacophony. Again Spock remained aloof from the choir of pitched emotions. Order was restored when Zhao slammed his palm on the tabletop. The crack of impact echoed in the silence that followed it.

Turning toward Spock, Zhao asked in a politely restrained baritone, “Your Majesty, may I inquire what precautions you would like Starfleet to take to prevent the Cardassians from turning our largesse against us?”

“None at this time, Admiral.”

Nodding, Zhao pressed on. “As you wish, my liege. But may I remind Your Majesty, the Cardassians have long coveted our colony on Bajor. Newly armed and encouraged, they might see our noble generosity as an invitation to take that which has not been offered.”

“Perhaps,” Spock said. “But this pact was struck in good faith, Admiral. I do not wish to provoke the Cardassian Union by impugning its honor after the fact, either in the form of preemptive action or broken promises.”

Zhao nodded. “Understood, Majesty. For my own edification, can I expect to receive an accounting of what vessels and arms have been transferred?”

“Yes, Admiral. Let me assure you, and all the other esteemed members of this cabinet, I did not act in haste or exuberance. I placed strict limits on the types and quantities of ships and matériel made available to the Cardassians. They likely will need every last piece of what they have acquired to contain the threat to their space posed by the Tholian Assembly.”

Foreign Minister Rhox interjected, “The Tholians will see this as a provocation, Majesty. Your predecessor’s incursions into the Taurus Reach have already stoked the Tholians’ fury; this will fan its flames.”

“Irrelevant,” Spock said. “The Tholians are mired in a full-scale war with the Klingon Empire for control of the Taurus Reach. By forcing them to divert resources to maintain their status quo with the Cardassian Union, we can undermine the Tholians’ control over key shipping lanes, ensuring we retain access to several of our more remote possessions.”

Smiling as if to conceal his frustration, Rhox replied, “Yes, Majesty, but arming the Cardassians is hardly—”

“The Emperor has spoken,” Zhao said, cutting Rhox’s reply short.

A deathly pall descended on the room. Spock nodded his thanks to Zhao, who responded in kind. Sounding as calm and untroubled as ever, Spock asked the room, “What is the next item on the agenda?”

Grand Admiral Zhao replied, “News of civil unrest within the Romulan Star Empire, Majesty. We can use this opportunity to expand our holdings in the Glintara Sector. If I may direct your attention to the star map on screen one …”

The rest of the meeting continued in a brisk, professional manner, but the mood of fear remained, tugging like an undertow, pulling all opinions closer to those favored by the Emperor.

Watching her lord and husband preside over his cabinet, Marlena frowned. So, my love, she brooded. You’re not such a stranger to tyranny, after all.

Riding in the secure turbolift to the imperial residence, Spock felt Marlena’s stare on the back of his neck. Knowing she would interpret even a casual moment of eye contact as an invitation to speak, he glanced over his shoulder at her.

“You know Zhao and the others were right about Cardassia,” she said.

Facing forward, Spock replied, “In what regard?”

“Arming them is dangerous,” Marlena said, “no matter what precautions you take or how many limits you impose. What if the Cardassians reverse-engineer our technology and start mass-producing it?”

“I fully expect them to do so,” Spock said.

His answer stunned Marlena into a momentary silence, during which the only sound was the mellisonant hum of the ascending turbolift.

“So you don’t care that the Cardassians might make a play for the Bajor and Kalandra sectors?”

Stealing another look at his wife, Spock said, “My long-term plans depend on it.” The turbolift slowed and stopped. The doors opened, and Spock stepped into their home’s foyer as he continued. “I have armed them more than sufficiently to repel the Tholians’ incursions. It will be only a matter of time before they move against our possessions in that region.”

A pair of Vulcan guards defending the inner door lifted their fists to their armored breasts in salute as Spock and Marlena passed them and entered the residence. As the doors clacked shut behind Marlena, she said, “If you know the Cardassians will act against us, why give them that kind of advantage?”

Spock led her to the dining room, where a buffet-style lunch had been set out for them. He chose a plate and filled it with a variety of fruits and vegetables as he answered his wife. “I have created the monster I need,” he said. “In order to bring about my intended endgame, I need to foster an alliance between the Cardassian Union and the Klingon Empire.”

Filling her own plate, Marlena asked, “Why those two powers?”

“Separately, neither is strong enough to challenge us,” Spock said. “United, however, they might be able to defeat a weakened version of the Terran Empire.”

Spearing some choice cuts of rare red meat, Marlena asked, “Why, exactly, would we want that?”

“Because an alliance between those two powers would bring out the worst qualities in both,” Spock explained. “More than any other political pairing I can imagine in this part of space, the Cardassians and Klingons will exacerbate each other’s worst tendencies. Though they will both see such an alliance as a means to an end, neither will realize until too late how incompatible their worldviews are.”

Shaking her head, Marlena asked, “So what? If they fall to bickering after we’ve been swept off the map, what difference will it make?”

“In the short term, none,” Spock admitted. “But in the long run it will be the most important element of my plan.” He regarded Marlena with an air of quiet confidence. “Their alliance will be doomed from its inception. By aligning against us, they will sow the seeds of their own destruction—and ensure our victory.”

2280

29

A Promise Denied

Marlena’s heart broke as her gaze swept over a sea of dirty faces, dark with blood and grime and fear, gaunt with hunger and sickness. The stench of unwashed bodies and untreated wounds was thick in the summer swelter of Iadara’s equatorial latitudes, and everywhere Marlena looked she saw another living portrait of suffering and deprivation.

Most of the refugees huddled under makeshift shelters. They were hiding from a steady deluge of tepid rain that did little to wash away the pervasive stink engulfing the city. The planet’s nominal capital, Akabar, had been little more than a sleepy coastal town before it was swamped with survivors displaced from the Terran Empire’s colony on Galen, a world caught in the brutal crossfire of the Cardassian-Tholian border conflict.

Bedraggled individuals pushed to the front of the crowds lining the heavily guarded main street, on which Spock and Marlena walked surrounded by a phalanx of armored Vulcan elite troops.

Isolated voices pierced the sorrowful cries of the throng.

“Help us, Emperor Spock!”

“Save us, Majesty!”

“Please, Majesty, take pity on us …”

None of the entreaties seemed to move Spock, but each desperate plea for succor brought tears of rage and grief to Marlena’s eyes. She grasped Spock’s arm as they walked together. “Can’t we do something, Spock?”

“We are doing what we can,” he said. “This world is far from the core systems. It will take time for aid to arrive.”

News of the unfolding tragedy on Iadara had motivated Marlena to press for a state visit to the planet. She had expected Spock to reject her suggestion; instead, he had embraced it, citing an urgent need to bolster citizens’ confidence that the Terran Empire remained serious about defending its border colonies and keeping its promise to provide aid to its people.

To that end, several members of Spock’s cabinet had accompanied them on this impromptu foray to the edge of a war zone, and they were trailed by a battalion of attachés and press liaisons who would ensure that news of the Emperor’s visit to Iadara was disseminated in the most flattering possible light.

As they passed a pavilion whose flaps were folded shut, Marlena caught the high-pitched cries of children from inside the ramshackle structure. Ignoring the requests of her bodyguards and Spock’s advisers, she detoured off the street and strode purposefully inside the pavilion.

A stench of disease and decay overwhelmed her. Her eyes adjusted to the deep shadows spawned by the enclosure’s few weak light sources. A handful of badly fatigued doctors and nurses drifted half-conscious through their rounds. Rows of beds placed head-to-head filled almost every square meter of floor space, leaving barely enough room for narrow aisles between them.

Lying in the beds were scores of children. Emaciated and pale, bloodied and burned; some were all but naked, and all of them shivered despite the heat.

Spock entered the pavilion and stood behind Marlena. His expression didn’t change, but she was certain she felt him tense at the gruesome spectacle.

Marlena pointed at a passing nurse, whose uniform was stained with dirt and bodily emissions. “You,” she said to the Bolian woman. “Come here. Now.” As soon as the nurse was in front of her, Marlena gestured at the ranks of children in their beds. “Why are these children left in such squalor?”

The nurse replied with more anger than Marlena was accustomed to hearing. “Squalor? These children are receiving the best care we have. If you want to see squalor, Majesty, I suggest you visit the men’s ward on the next block.”

Placing a hand on Marlena’s shoulder, Spock interjected, “She is correct. Iadara is facing acute shortages of food, potable water, medicine, and basic supplies.” To the captain of his elite guard, a middle-aged Vulcan named Torov, Spock said, “Contact Captain Riley. Enterprise and all ships in its battle group are to begin manufacturing blankets, modular shelter components, and basic medicines immediately. I also want nine million liters of water beamed down by tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours, and a team of engineers to upgrade the city’s sewage- and water-treatment systems.”

Torov lifted his arm in a salute. “Yes, Majesty!” Then he turned away, opened his communicator, and began relaying Spock’s orders to the small armada of Starfleet vessels in orbit.

Kneeling beside the closest bed, Marlena asked the nurse, “Where are these children’s parents?”

“Most are orphans, Majesty.”

Marlena tenderly stroked a sweaty lock of dark hair from the brow of an unconscious little girl. In the tabula rasa of the child’s face, Marlena saw the promise of something beautiful. Looking up at Spock, she said, “We should adopt one of these children.” Gazing back down at the girl lost in her twilight slumber, Marlena added, “Maybe this little angel.”

Lifting one eyebrow, Spock asked, “Why?”

“We lead by action,” Marlena said. “If we take in one of the orphans of the war you helped start, we can set an example for others to follow.”

Spock grimaced. “We can endorse and support an adoption program without directly participating in it.”

A note of desperation crept into Marlena’s voice. “Don’t underestimate the value of a symbolic gesture, Spock. Think of what it would mean for the Empire to see you embrace one of your most vulnerable subjects as your own.”

With the back of his hand, Spock gently stroked the face of the girl lying in front of Marlena. “Such a gesture might appear noble, but it would beg questions of favoritism. It would be more just to improve the conditions of all the refugees equally, rather than elevate one above the others to live as a political prop.”

“That’s not what I—”

Spock cut her off with a hard look. “We should go.”

He led her out of the pavilion to the street. As they rejoined their retinue of armed protectors and career sycophants, Marlena stole a melancholy look back at the shelter of lost children. It felt as if part of her had been left behind there, at the little girl’s bedside. Even though she loved Spock, she cursed him silently as she fell into step beside him, continuing their empty parade for the media.

He knew what I was asking for, she brooded. But as always, he answers only what I say instead of what he knows I mean.

For now the discussion was closed, but Marlena knew—as she was certain Spock did—that it was far from over.

2281

30

Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

Amanda Grayson lay awake in bed beside her husband, feeling minutes bleed away while she waited for the Vulcan dawn to break like red thunder.

Lingering half awake in the nether hours, she felt anxious and alone. Sarek had grown distant in the years since his rapprochement with Spock en route to the Babel Conference. He no longer trusted her with access to his waking thoughts.

During the decades before he and his son reconciled, Sarek had trusted Amanda to keep the secrets revealed within the telepathic bond created by their marriage. They both knew if the Empress or other ambitious parties acquired confirmation of Vulcans’ psionic gifts, it could lead to the extermination of Sarek’s people. While Sarek used Amanda’s connections to advance his political career, she kept his people’s great secret to maintain a modicum of control over him—to make certain he placed the Empire’s best interests ahead of Vulcan’s.

Then he had met in secret with Spock, and afterward Amanda began to feel her hold on both of them slipping from her grasp.

The first crack in Sarek’s psionic armor had appeared three years earlier, during his last phase of Pon farr. Linked in the heat of passion, Amanda had a fleeting glimpse of Sarek’s inner mind, a hint of the secrets he harbored. Since that night, his control faltered sometimes when he slept. Amanda had learned that if she could hold herself in a twilight sleep while Sarek dreamed, she could steal fleeting peeks at the memories he had locked away from her.

Each new insight deepened Amanda’s fear for the future. Something sinister was afoot. Almost immediately after Spock had usurped the throne from Empress Sato III, he had installed Sarek as the governor of Vulcan. At the time Amanda had welcomed Spock’s action; blatant nepotism had long been a common practice within the Empire, and because Sato III had obstructed Sarek’s career path out of spite, the appointment had seemed like a dutiful son’s gracious gift to his father.

Now, however, lying awake in the deep watches of the night, Amanda wondered if Spock had installed his father not out of gratitude but as a prelude to a political realignment of the Empire.

She strained to see more, to seize hold of something concrete, but the details were hazy, lost in the fog of Sarek’s subconscious. All she had was a feeling—an unshakable suspicion something terrible and seditious was imminent.

What could it be? Were father and son, governor and emperor, conspiring to visit Vulcan’s long-simmering revenge upon Earth and humanity?

A single idea leaped from the darkest abyss of Sarek’s mind into Amanda’s thoughts. The notion itself was enough to terrify her, but the perfect certainty of Sarek’s belief in it shook Amanda to her bones: We will end the Empire.

Madness! Amanda recoiled from Sarek and stumbled as she got out of bed.

It was so horrific as to be incomprehensible. Spock and Sarek were planning to destroy the Empire itself. She asked herself over and over, Why? No answers came. Only more confusion, more fear … and then came the fury of betrayal.

She backed away from her sleeping husband.

I’m a loyal citizen of the Empire, she reminded herself. I won’t let traitors tear down all that my people have built. She resolved to act.

I need an ally strong enough to stop them, she reasoned, slipping out of the bedroom. Someone who’ll gain from seeing them fall.

At once the answer came to her … and she smiled.

After listening to Amanda’s tense account of a brewing conspiracy between Spock and Sarek, it was difficult for Marlena to feign disbelief; she had long known Spock and his father were in league to initiate sweeping political reforms. One look at her mother-in-law’s face on the comm screen, however, told Marlena the less she shared with Amanda the better.

“How did you come by this information?” Marlena asked.

“That’s not important,” Amanda said.

Marlena sharpened her stare and her voice. “I think it is.”

“You’re married to a Vulcan, as I am,” Amanda said. “You know better than to ask a question whose answer cannot be spoken.”

Her implication was clear to Marlena: the telepathic connection of the marriage bond had made Amanda privy to Sarek’s hidden agenda. Nodding in comprehension, Marlena said, “I understand.”

“We need to move quickly,” Amanda said, the cold fire of her anger palpable to Marlena even through the filter of a subspace channel. “We can’t sit back and let those green-blooded traitors deliver the Empire into bondage.”

Playing the part of the naïf, Marlena asked, “What would you have me do, Amanda? Most of Starfleet is loyal to Spock, and none of the planetary governors are willing to challenge him politically.”

“That’s because they’re not in a position to stop him,” Amanda said with a malevolent gleam in her eye. “But you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“Listen to me,” Amanda said, adopting a conspiratorial air. “I have powerful friends on Earth and Andor. Loyal friends.” Flashing a thin smile, she added, “They could be your friends, as well.”

“Meaning?”

“If you eliminate Spock, you could rule in his place—an Empress Regnant instead of a mere Empress Consort—and the Empire would once again kneel before a human monarch, as it should.”

Marlena loved Spock and believed in his vision of the future, but the siren song of absolute power called to her. Empress Marlena—a mistress with no master, she thought, blushing with pride.

“We should talk in person,” Marlena said. “When can you visit Earth?”

“In a week’s time.”

“Can I meet with one of your Andorian friends?”

Amanda made a small nod and smiled. “That can be arranged.”

“I look forward to your visit.”

“As do I … Majesty.”

“Most troubling,” Spock said.

The recording of Marlena’s conversation with Amanda left little room for Spock to doubt the gravity of the situation. It called for swift action.

He had hoped Sarek would be able to maintain enough control over his link with Amanda to avoid revealing too much of the plan to her. Unfortunately, his father’s physician had found early warning signs of Bendii Syndrome in Sarek’s brain chemistry shortly after his last Pon farr. Though the damage to Sarek’s cerebral tissue was still too slight to pose any risk of him projecting his hidden emotions onto others, it apparently had made it much more difficult for Sarek to conceal anything from Amanda within their marriage bond.

Spock had been sworn to secrecy by his father; he had not discussed Sarek’s infirmity with anyone—not even Marlena—and saw no reason to break his pledge now. The cause of this lapse in secrecy was no longer an issue; only its effect was.

Sequestered with Spock in the privacy of their bedroom, Marlena sat on the bed and watched him stare out the window at the gardens behind the imperial palace. She had been somber ever since bringing him a data card containing the recorded conversation. In a small voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”

“That is a difficult question to answer,” Spock said. “The threat my mother poses cannot be ignored. Her family is wealthy and connected to many of the Empire’s most powerful individuals, families, and corporations.”

Marlena got up from the bed and padded in cautious steps toward Spock. “Can’t she be persuaded to use those connections to help you?”

Shaking his head, Spock replied, “Doubtful. She is and always has been a loyal citizen of the Empire. I do not think she will act against it—not even for her husband or her son.”

“If that’s true, she could ruin everything,” Marlena said.

“Agreed.” Spock kept his voice level and his chin up even as he struggled to contain a crushing flood of despair.

Emotion is a cue, but it does not serve me, he admonished himself. I must control it as I must control my destiny. Logic alone must dictate my response.

He repeated his mantra, but his emotions refused to be yoked.

Marlena wrapped her hands around his left arm and nestled her head against his shoulder. Her presence was quiet but strong, concerned but not afraid. Spock found the balance in her countenance reassuring.

“My logic is clouded,” he confessed. “I ask your advice. What action should I take?”

She looked up at him with clear and determined eyes. “If Amanda can’t be swayed to our way of thinking, then you must do what is in the best interest of the people of the Empire. The good of the many—”

“Outweighs the needs of the few.”

“Or the one,” Marlena said.

Spock nodded with grim acceptance. “I will do what must be done.”

Sarek turned off the comm unit on his living room wall and stood in silence.

The voice of his aide, Lokor, echoed in his thoughts, but the words still did not feel real; the message they conveyed was too terrible for him to accept.

“The shuttle exploded en route to Earth,” Lokor had said. “Preliminary sensor sweeps indicate it was an accidental warp-core breach. The crew likely had no warning and no time to attempt a correction or evacuation.” Almost as an afterthought, the young man had added, “There were no survivors, Governor.”

Long rays of fading crimson slashed through the blinds shielding the windows. Outside, another day was dying, the sun a lonely ember sinking into a spreading sea of black.

Inside the home of Sarek, silence reigned.

He wandered, mute and alone, through empty rooms. Though he plodded in graceless steps, he felt weightless and insubstantial. No thoughts formed in his mind. Introspection revealed nothing but a gray void.

The chambers of his dwelling felt unfamiliar. It was as if he had never lived there, never owned any of those possessions, never known the place at all.

Drifting back into the main room, he was drawn to the wide, westward-facing window. He opened its blinds and stared out, past the towers and stalagmite-inspired cliff dwellings of ShiKahr, toward the ragged line of mountaintops on the horizon. Vulcan’s primary star, Nevasa, vanished behind them. A ruby-hued flare pulsed low in the sky … and then it faded away, vanished into darkness.

Sarek spun away from the window and flew into a rage, hurling antique vases against the walls, smashing priceless statues on the hard stone floor, battering the comm panel’s screen with his bare fists. With strength fueled by grief and madness, he lifted a stone coffee table and launched it at the picture window. The table shattered but barely blemished the window, which was made of transparent aluminum. Chunks of rock scattered around Sarek’s feet.

He fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breath and fighting to hold back hot tears of bitter sorrow.

My wife … my love … my Amanda … you’re gone.

2282

31

Caveat Vendor

“Sit down,” Kor said to Lorp, a fat Ferengi black marketeer. “You’re late.”

The corpulent businessman cast nervous looks at the heavily armed Klingon warriors flanking Kor, then he pulled back a chair and grunted with exertion as he awkwardly settled his bulk onto it. “Thank you, General,” he said.

Two more Ferengi stayed close behind Lorp, their hands resting on holstered plasma pistols while their eyes darted furtively back and forth at Kor’s men.

Kor scowled at his guests. The Ferengi were a repulsive race, in his opinion. Their noses looked ready-made for rooting in filth, and their oversized ears and propensity for flinching made him think of easily spooked rodents.

“You promised me information,” Kor said.

Lorp flashed a grin of fearsome, jagged teeth—his species’ only handsome feature, in Kor’s opinion. “Well, yes, I did, but I didn’t come all the way to Cestus III to give it to you as a gift. First I believe you have something for me, hm?”

“I did not forget.” Kor nodded at the warrior on his right side, who picked up a metallic case from the floor and laid it flat on the table between Kor and Lorp. Leaning forward, Kor opened the case and pushed it across the table to Lorp.

The Ferengi’s beady eyes opened wide with avarice as he looked upon his payment: a complete set of holographic schematics for a cloaking device. “Yes,” Lorp said, the word broadening his enormous snaggle-toothed grin. “This will fetch a very handsome price in certain sectors. Very handsome, indeed.”

Reaching out, Kor pushed the case’s lid shut. “Information. Now.”

Lorp’s grin became a grimace. He snapped his fingers and held up one hand. One of his men reached inside his jacket.

Both of Kor’s men had their disruptors drawn and aimed before the Ferengi retainer could remove his hand from inside his coat. He froze in place.

“Gejh, K’mdek—stand down,” Kor said. His men holstered their weapons. He nodded at the Ferengi retainer. “Proceed.”

Moving with slowness born of caution, the Ferengi aide removed a pale blue data rod from his jacket pocket and handed it to Lorp, who passed it to Kor.

“As promised, General,” Lorp said.

Kor reached inside his tunic and retrieved a device for reading optolythic data rods—a Cardassian technology that was prized because data could be written to such rods only once and thereafter could not be altered. The Cardassian government produced the rods only as it needed them, and they were very difficult to counterfeit. Consequently, they had become a favored means of encoding data that needed to be couriered by unreliable third parties—such as the Ferengi.

Even as Kor skimmed through the rod’s contents, Lorp seemed intent on narrating it for him from memory.

“Lots of contraband and strange materials moving around,” Lorp said. “High-tech computer parts, construction materials, exotic elements. Starfleet’s making deals, buying stuff from smugglers it could get for nothing at home.”

“I see that,” Kor said. He had suspected something odd was transpiring in the space beyond the Taurus Reach, but he had not expected to uncover a conspiracy as far-reaching as this seemed to be. Starfleet was supporting some kind of secret operation, using Orions and Ferengi as cutouts to hide its activities from its own chain of command. “Where is Starfleet taking these things?”

“An abandoned space station,” Lorp said, “orbiting a planetoid on the edge of the Mutara Nebula.”

Kor nodded. “Yes, the old Regula I station. I know it.”

“Lots of money involved in this deal,” Lorp said. “Big profits. Whoever’s behind this is well capitalized.”

“Indeed,” Kor said. He removed the data rod from its reader and tucked both into pockets inside his tunic. He flashed a disingenuous smile at Lorp. “Thank you for being so thorough in your research.”

Grinning, Lorp replied, “You’re quite wel—” He froze in mid-sentence as Kor’s men drew their disruptors and fired.

The barrage was deafening, but only for a moment.

Lorp’s henchmen were slain first. They fell in smoking heaps with their plasma pistols only half drawn from their holsters.

Then both of Kor’s warriors shot at Lorp. His charred bulk was knocked backward. He and his chair struck the ground with a loud slap.

The screeching of disruptors ceased, and once again the backwater dive bar fell silent. That was the Gorn’s one trait Kor appreciated: as long as the shooting didn’t cause any property damage or hurt any of their people, they didn’t give a damn what aliens did to each other.

He pushed back his chair, stood, and picked up the case from the table. Stepping over the smoldering corpses of the Ferengi, he said to his men, “Now there are three fewer people in the galaxy who know what we know; there is no chance of the Ferengi reselling it to anyone else; and the secrets of the Empire remain safe.” Leading his men out of the bar, he added with a fierce grin, “This, my friends, is what is known as a win-win situation.”

2283

32

A Serviceable Villain

Six months after the surgery, Lurqal still found herself surprised by her reflection.

Catching sight of her image in the mirror of her quarters’ bedroom, the cruel irony of her circumstances almost made her laugh.

It had been nearly six years since her narrow escape from the Starfleet starbase known as Vanguard. She and Turag, a representative from Imperial Intelligence, had been sent there to strike a deal with Commodore Reyes, who had captured a member of a precursor race known as the Shedai and transformed its immense power into a weapon that could shatter worlds.

The terms of an agreement between Reyes and the Klingon Empire were still being negotiated when Vanguard was attacked by one of the starships under its authority, its secret weapon was sabotaged from within, and the Shedai trapped in its core was unleashed to gut the station like a bonefish. Finally, a Tholian warfleet launched a surprise attack that reduced Vanguard and its yoked Shedai to ionized gas and radiation.

Turag, Reyes, and just about every other living thing on Vanguard perished that day, but Lurqal—burned, broken, and bloody—refused to die.

As the station imploded, she stole a warp-capable shuttlecraft and escaped moments before Starbase 47 was consumed in the Tholians’ brutal assault.

Lurqal returned to Qo’noS, but the limitations of Klingon medical science left her body deformed and her face disfigured. Unable to die with honor, she resigned herself to living in exile as a freak and outcast, an object of derision for the young, healthy, and beautiful.

Years passed.

Then, nine months ago, an agent of Imperial Intelligence sought out Lurqal and offered her an assignment—as a spy to be sent in human guise to infiltrate a secret Terran Empire research laboratory led by Dr. Carol Marcus, the scientist who had created the fearsome technology on Vanguard.

Eager for a chance to return to duty, Lurqal accepted the mission.

The same military surgeons whose lack of regard for the Empire’s wounded warriors had left her shattered and ruined as a Klingon transformed her in three months into the very image of human feminine beauty. Symmetrical and elegantly curved, tall and delicately featured, Lurqal gazed in shock at her new form.

Under the skin she remained Klingon, but a slew of subtle implants would fool the majority of sensors and medical scanners she was likely to encounter while living in Terran space. Hidden in her personal effects were several containers of tuQloS pills, which would enable her to draw nourishment from cooked food.

She stroked a lock of her long, auburn hair from her face and tucked it behind one ear. Staring at her reflection, she mused, I don’t know who you are.

Her door signal buzzed. Straightening her posture, she said, “Come.”

The door slid open, revealing the smiling face of Carol Marcus. “Doctor Sandesjo,” she said, stepping into the doorway. “Welcome aboard.”

“Please,” Lurqal said, mustering a disarming smile, “call me Anna.”

“Fine,” Marcus said. “And you can call me Carol.” Tilting her head toward the corridor, she added, “Would you like a brief tour of the facility?”

Lurqal nodded. “I’d love one.”

Marcus led her through the passageways of space station Regula I, which were crowded with white-garbed civilian scientists. “It’s a good thing you got here when you did,” Marcus said. “We’ve been without a good computer engineer for a few months, and everything’s running behind as a result.”

“What happened to your last computer engineer?”

The question darkened Marcus’s mood. “A tragic accident,” she said. “He was installing some new cables on a lower deck when an old plasma conduit ruptured inside his crawl space.”

Good, Lurqal thought. They don’t know he was assassinated to set the stage for my insertion. Wrinkling her face to convey shock and dismay, she replied, “My God, that’s terrible.”

They arrived at what Lurqal had expected would be the upper deck of the station’s operations level. Marcus and her team had transformed the open space into their primary laboratory.

“This is where the magic happens,” Marcus said. “Tonight at dinner I’ll introduce you to everyone, but I can point out a few of our more notable team members from here.” She pointed around the room. “Those are Doctors Tarcoh, Gek, and Koothrappali.” Gesturing at a much younger human man with curly blond hair, she added, “And that’s my son, David. He’s one of our project leaders.”

Her son? Interesting. “What project is he leading?”

“That’s classified.” With a gentle touch on Lurqal’s elbow, Marcus added, “We should move along and finish getting you settled.”

“Of course.”

The blond scientist led Lurqal to a turbolift that took them down to one of the station’s lower levels. Along the way to their next destination, Marcus pointed out the various specialized labs her team had set up, and she waxed eloquent about many of their experimental new technologies. Lurqal noted it all for the report she would be expected to submit to Imperial Intelligence via secure subspace comm.

She interrupted one of Marcus’s prideful spiels to observe, “There don’t appear to be any military personnel anywhere on this station.”

Marcus smiled. “That’s right.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, we’re out here in the middle of nowhere, working on all this top-secret stuff. What if the Klingons or the Tholians try to take over the station?”

“I’d pity them,” Marcus said. She grasped Lurqal’s shoulder in a manner the Klingon spy could only imagine was meant to be reassuring rather than a gross violation of her personal space. “I know it looks like we’re alone, but trust me—we’re not. Now, let’s focus on more important matters.” She handed Lurqal a small stack of colored data cards. “The blue one is your meal card for the station’s commissary. The red one is for picking up clean clothes, bedsheets, and bath linens from the supply office. Use the green one for refills on personal supplies, and the yellow one’s for accessing the entertainment library: books, music, vids—pretty much everything from the recorded history of the Terran Empire.”

“Great,” Lurqal said, holding up the cards. “My cup runneth over.”

“I have a dozen other places I need to be right now. Can you find your own way back to your quarters?”

Nodding, Lurqal said, “Sure, no problem.”

“Thanks,” Marcus said, already hurrying away. “And welcome to the team!”

Lurqal waved good-bye to Marcus and then navigated the simple path back to her assigned quarters. Her official duties were not scheduled to begin until the next day after she had “settled in,” as the humans were fond of saying, so she decided it would be a good time to check in with her handler, who was nearby awaiting her comm signal on the cloaked cruiser I.K.S. Zin’za.

She locked her door. From her travel bag she took a surveillance-detection tool disguised as part of her makeup kit. Two careful scans revealed no sign of monitoring devices in her quarters. Satisfied her abode was secure, she assembled several other items from her travel kit into a secure comm unit. The pieces fit together in a matter of seconds, and she activated the device.

It hummed for a moment—then it crackled with static interference. She adjusted its settings in search of a clear frequency but found only more noise.

Running a diagnostic, Lurqal suspected the comm was about to deliver her some bad news. She was right.

Jammed, she fumed as she saw the results of the unit’s feedback analysis. The entire station’s surrounded by a scattering field. She switched off the device.

There would be no unauthorized transmissions in or out of the station as long as the scattering field remained active. That explains why this place is such a well-kept secret, Lurqal realized. Then she reconsidered Marcus’s warning: I know it looks like we’re alone, but trust me—we’re not. Looking out her window, Lurqal wondered where a Starfleet ship could be hiding—and then the slow turning of the station brought the Mutara Nebula into view.

This op just got a lot harder, Lurqal brooded. And a whole lot riskier.

2284

33

Hearts and Minds

The echoes of Spock’s voice faded away into the vastness of the Common Forum, and for a moment stretched by anticipation all was silent. He had delivered his proclamation of citizens’ rights, uninterrupted, to a sea of stunned faces. It was done now, and it could not be undone, and there was naught to do but wait in the heavy swell of anxious quietude for the reaction.

A roar of applause surged up from the members of the Forum, a wave of sound like floodwater breaking against a dam. Exultant and energized, the thousands of gathered representatives from worlds throughout the Empire stood and applauded and chanted his name with almost idolatrous fervor. Stomping feet rumbled the hall. Its lower level was packed on three sides with tiers of seats for the Forum members, and its spacious balconies served as a gallery for citizen observers, or for the Senate during joint sessions of the legislature such as this one.

Faces grim and forbidding communicated the Senate’s reaction. Like mannequins of stone, its members looked down with ashen-faced horror at the populist turn their government had just taken. A few shook their heads in disbelief. Spock presumed they were unable to comprehend why he would have chosen to give more power to the citizenry than to himself. In all likelihood, he knew, they would never understand. Regardless, the one power Spock still reserved for himself was that his word carried the absolute force of law.

He let the applause wash over him for a moment, not because he enjoyed it but because it would help cement this moment in the minds of those hundreds of billions of citizens throughout the Empire who were watching it on the subspace feed. This was a threshold moment for their society, and he knew it would be important for them to have the requisite time to absorb its full importance. Nearly a minute elapsed as the cheering and applause continued unabated. Sensing the moment had run its course, Spock bowed his head to the legislature. As thousands of arms were extended in salutary reply, he withdrew from the podium in the center of the Forum and departed, surrounded by his elite Vulcan guard, through the rear exit.

Marlena was waiting for him in the turbolift, which carried them to their private residence on the uppermost level. She clutched his arm tenderly. “You were magnificent,” she said softly. He glanced in her direction and saw her smile.

“Most kind,” he said, his old habit of understated humility intact despite more than seven years of imperial privilege.

The turbolift doors opened, and they exited to their airy, sunlit residence. Sarek stood in the doorway to their parlor, flanked by two more of the elite Vulcan guards. “Your address went well,” Sarek said as Spock and Marlena passed him.

“As well as could be expected,” Spock replied over his shoulder to Sarek, who followed him into the parlor.

The guards closed the double doors behind Sarek, giving Spock at least a modicum of privacy with his wife and father. Marlena and Spock sat next to one another in matching, heavy wooden chairs. Sarek sat to Spock’s right, at the corner of a long sofa. All three of them were aware of the servants hovering just out of sight at all times, and they kept their voices low. “You’ve won the hearts of the people,” Sarek said. “But the elites are already conspiring against you.”

“Enemies are a consequence of politics,” Spock said.

Folding his hands in his lap, Sarek replied, “Your reign will not last forever, Spock. The most probable consequence of your latest action is that you will be assassinated by someone acting on behalf of your political opponents.”

“I am aware of my rivals’ ambitions,” Spock said. He beckoned a servant as he continued. “However, I do not consider them to be a risk.” A female servant unobtrusively took her place in front of the trio. To her, Spock said, “Plasska tea, service for three.” With a genteel murmur of “Yes, Majesty,” the servant slipped away.

Sarek waited until the woman was well out of earshot before he spoke. “Spock, the threat posed by your rivals is not a trivial one. If you are killed or deposed, your progressive regime will almost certainly be replaced by one of a decidedly reactionary temperament.”

The cool demeanors of the two Vulcan men made Marlena’s undercurrent of anger all the more palpable by comparison. “His assassins will not succeed,” she said to Sarek. “I will see to that.”

Expressing his incredulity with a raised eyebrow, Sarek asked, “And how will you do that, my dear? With what resources?”

“I am not without means, Sarek,” she retorted. “This would not be the first—” Spock silenced her outburst with a gentle press of his palm on the back of her hand. Marlena took his admonition to heart and pursed her lips while suppressing the rest of what she had intended to say.

It was Spock’s opinion that Sarek need never be told of the Tantalus field device, or of the role it had played in Spock’s assumption of power. It had been a terrible risk revealing its existence to Saavik, but Spock’s long-term plans for her had made it crucial to test her loyalty as early as possible.

Silence reigned over the parlor until the tea was delivered and poured. All three of them sipped from their cups and nodded their approval. Then Sarek set down his cup and, once again with a conspirator’s hushed voice, continued the conversation. “Let us assume your wife is correct, and assassins pose no threat to you. Even if you succeed in your goal of abolishing the Empire, once you place its fate into the hands of a representative government, it will almost certainly be corrupted from within. The Senate will be first among those looking to consolidate their power; they will learn how to manipulate popular sentiment and fill the Common Forum with their own partisans. Gradually at first, then more boldly, they will steer the republic back toward totalitarianism. Ultimately, they will elect one of their own as dictator-for-life … and the Empire you are laboring to end will be reborn. The rights you granted to the people will be revoked; they will resist, and rebel, and be brutally suppressed. Civil war will rend the Empire, and its enemies will exploit that division to conquer us outright. All that you have done will have been for naught, my son.”

Spock finished his own tea and set down the empty cup. “All that you predict, I have anticipated,” he said. Leaning back in his chair, he continued. “That is why the republic must be destroyed by its enemies before it lapses back into empire.”

The statement seemed to perplex Sarek. “What beneficial end would that accomplish?”

“Liberty crushed by one’s own government carries the poison of betrayal,” Spock said. “If so extinguished, it will be almost impossible to rekindle, and our cause shall be lost. But freedom lost to conquest focuses the people’s anger outward, and unites them in common cause against a foreign oppressor.”

“You intend to let the republic fall?” Sarek asked. Upon Spock’s nod of confirmation, he continued. “A dangerous gamble. What if such a rebellion fails to materialize? Or simply fails? Staking the future of our civilization on the success of a future insurgency seems a most foolish proposition.”

As Spock rose from his chair, Sarek did likewise. Spock turned toward Marlena. “Will you excuse us a moment?” Marlena cast wary looks at both Spock and Sarek, and then she got up and walked with prideful calm from the parlor.

Once she was in the next room, and the door closed behind her, Spock said loudly, for the servants lurking in the wings, “Leave us.” Like spooked mice, the domestics scurried away. A clatter of closing doors marked their exits.

Able to speak in full privacy at last, Spock still whispered. “Steps will be taken to ensure the success of the rebellion,” he said. “The groundwork for an insurgency is being laid now, while we have time to prepare in safety. If my plan is successful, the Klingon-led occupation of the former Terran Empire will last less than one hundred fifteen Earth years.”

With unconcealed suspicion, Sarek said, “And if it fails?”

“Then several millennia of Vulcan and human scientific achievement will be lost forever.”

“And what are these steps you’re going to take?”

“Not I,” Spock said. “You.”

34

Omega’s Genesis

After spending most of seven years as a virtual prisoner in the imperial residence, Emperor Spock appreciated returning to a starship. Recent refits had made them faster, more comfortable, and more powerful than ever before.

At his behest, the Enterprise, now in its seventh year under the command of Captain Kevin Riley, had been standing by to beam up Spock from the palace after his meeting with Sarek. With the Empire devolving into chaos following his declaration of rights and freedoms for the people, it had seemed an opportune time to slip away. During his absence, Marlena would reign as Empress, freeing him to make this journey incognito.

Liberating as his departure was, it carried an element of risk he hadn’t faced in close to seventeen years. For the first time since he had slain Captain Kirk, he was without the protection of the Tantalus field device, which remained safely concealed in his and Marlena’s private quarters on Earth. Fortunately, the judicious use of the device over the years had cultivated such a profound culture of fear with respect to Spock’s purported psionic powers that it was unlikely he would be challenged during this brief sojourn from the throne.

The boatswain’s whistle sounded over the ship’s intercom.

“Attention, all hands. Stand by for secure transport. Captain Riley, please report to the bridge.”

As the channel closed, the door signal buzzed. Turning to face the door, Spock said, “Enter.”

The door slid open, and the ship’s first officer, Commander Saavik, stepped inside. “Your Majesty,” she said with a reverent bow of her head, then she looked up and delivered the formal salute. He noted she avoided making eye contact with him, and her demeanor seemed stiff.

“At ease,” he said. “Is it time?”

“Yes, Majesty. The facility has been prepared, and a secure transport conduit is standing by.”

“Then let us proceed.”

Saavik nodded and led the way out the door into the corridor. Spock followed her. A pair of his elite Vulcan bodyguards fell into step a few paces behind him. Moving until he was almost parallel with Saavik, he said in a confidential tone, “You seem preoccupied.”

“Not at all, Majesty,” she said as she stepped into an open and waiting turbolift car. He and his guards followed her in.

The ride was brief. As soon as they stepped off into another empty, sealed-off corridor, Spock subtly signaled his guards to fall back a few paces to give him privacy. “You are uncomfortable with the proclamation I made on Earth.”

“I have said no such—”

“Prevarication does not suit you. Speak plainly. I would know your thoughts.”

Her apprehension was palpable. She eyed him with guarded suspicion. “Do I address the Emperor?”

“You address your mentor, and your Academy sponsor.”

That seemed to reassure her. Glancing over her shoulder to make certain the bodyguards would not overhear her, she whispered to Spock, “Undermining your own power was an error.”

Her assertion intrigued him. “How so?”

They turned a corner toward the transporter room. “The Empire and its ruler are one,” she said. “By diminishing yourself, you diminish the Empire. You invite conquest.”

“Which is stronger, Saavik? One man, or ten men?” He let the analogy sink in for a few seconds. Before she could answer, he continued. “An empire that derives its strength and authority from one person alone is weak, because its foundation is too narrow. One whose power derives from the mutual consent of the many rests upon a broad and unshakable base.”

“Which is stronger, Your Majesty? A sheet of metal foil twenty meters square, or the blade of the knife that slices through it?” She paused a few meters shy of the transporter room door, and Spock and his guards halted with her. “Diffusing the power of the Empire throughout its people robs it of focus,” she added. “A quality our enemies possess in abundance.”

Spock considered her point. “When our enemies choose to conquer us,” he said, “they will succeed. And it will be their undoing.” He stepped ahead of her and led the way into the transporter room. An engineer manned the transporter console, and another pair of Spock’s elite guards stood at attention, awaiting his arrival. He stepped onto the platform, accompanied by the two guards who had followed him through the corridors.

Saavik stood between Spock and the transporter operator. Arching one eyebrow, she asked, “Majesty, do you really believe conquering us would cause the fall of the Klingon Empire?”

With perfect surety, he replied, “It is inevitable.”

Then, with a nod, the order was given, and Spock and his guards vanished into the white haze of the transporter beam.

Carol Marcus paced nervously inside the storage bay, awaiting the arrival of the most powerful VIP guest in the Empire. Don’t panic, she kept telling herself. It’s a good proposal, he’s a Vulcan, he’ll see that what you’re asking for is logical. … Don’t panic.

The transporter effect shimmered into existence just a few meters away from her. She froze in place and watched three Vulcanoid shapes materialize, one in front and two behind. As the sparkling glow faded away, she found herself face-to-face with Emperor Spock, the supreme ruler of the Terran Empire.

Though she had been taught as a child how to curtsey, she had never had any need to do so until this moment—and suddenly she found herself awkwardly wobbling over her own crossed feet. “Your Majesty,” she said while looking at the floor. “Welcome to Regula.”

Spock stepped toward her. “Thank you, Doctor Marcus.” He looked around at their immediate surroundings. “Based on your preliminary report, I presume that this is not the second phase of your project.”

“Certainly not,” Marcus said, before adding, “Your Majesty.” The Emperor’s classically aloof Vulcan nature made it hard for her to tell if he was annoyed with her. She gestured toward the exit from this terminal chamber, which was located at the end of a long service corridor. “May I guide you through the rest of the facility?”

“By all means,” he said.

They left the storage bay, their footsteps echoing crisply in the empty space. Indicating the drab, gray surfaces of the corridor, she noted, “It took the Imperial Corps of Engineers nine months to excavate the preliminary facility. Though it was a costly and time-consuming project, it was essential to—”

“I read your proposal for Project Genesis, Doctor,” he said as they neared a T-shaped intersection. “It is not necessary for you to reiterate its contents.”

Concealing her embarrassment, she replied, “Of course not, Your Majesty. My apologies. Obviously, you just want to know whether phase two was a success.” At the intersection she turned right, stopped, and pivoted back to face Spock. “Well … you tell me.”

The Emperor turned the corner and looked out upon Marcus’s handiwork. True to his Vulcan heritage and his personal reputation, he showed no sign of surprise at the verdant splendor of the Genesis Cave. Kilometers across, the roughly ovoid excavation was teeming with vegetation. Ferns and fronds carpeted the lower half of the space, which was thick with stands of jungle trees whose branches were heavy with fruit. Flowers of variegated colors dotted the periphery of the enclosure at seemingly random intervals. Mist hung in gauzy layers, refracting light from the artificial solar generators in an adjacent cave, on the far side from where Marcus and Spock now stood. Off to the right, in the distance, an enormous waterfall cascaded in snowy plumes over jagged rocks, its wholly natural appearance a testament to its meticulous engineering.

“It’s self-contained and self-sustaining,” she said. “All except the solar generators, which need to be refueled every sixty years.” She waited for a reaction from Spock, but none came. “In transforming this limited volume of inanimate matter, the Genesis Wave was completely successful,” she continued. “But to assess its full potential, we need to move on to phase three: a lifeless, geologically inactive planetoid. For that, we’ll need an increase in our funding, and the services of an imperial starship, to help us seek out an appro—”

“No,” Spock said.

His answer caught her off guard. “Excuse me?”

“Your request for funding and operational support is denied.”

She folded her arms and reminded herself not to raise her voice. Though Spock seemed to be a benign and compassionate sovereign, she remained keenly aware he was still the Emperor—and that he could make her disappear with a single word. “May I ask why, Your Majesty?”

“For the same reason I terminated Operation Vanguard—what you propose is too dangerous. If I allow you to carry out your third-phase test, it will provoke an arms race and prematurely ignite our inevitable conflict with the Klingon Empire.”

She knew he was right; the only reason she had dared to continue her work to this stage was because, unlike the opportunistic and belligerent Empress Sato III, Emperor Spock gave every indication of being a leader who would wield a power such as the Genesis Device wisely.

“But think of the potential, Your Majesty,” she said, unable to give up on a project that had consumed the past eighteen years of her life. “We could transform dead worlds into new Class-M planets. We wouldn’t have to compete with the Klingons for habitable worlds anymore.”

“I am aware of its potential, Doctor, but the risks it carries are too great.” He turned his head and looked again at the cave. “How many people will this facility support?”

Still reeling from the rejection, it took Marcus a moment to answer. “Indefinitely? Perhaps a few hundred. Why?”

“Because I want you to duplicate phase two of your project in a number of other sites throughout the Empire—sites whose locations will be known only to the two of us and to a handful of people who will be permanently attached to them.”

She was confused now. “I thought you said you were terminating Project Genesis.”

“I am,” Spock said. “But your work will not go to waste. I need it—and you—for an infinitely more important project.”

Alarmed but curious, she asked, “What kind of project?”

Spock met her questioning stare with his dark, hypnotic gaze. He replied somberly, “The future of our civilization.”

2285

35

A World in Transition

Fingers brush across Lotok’s graying temple. Thoughts half formed whisper from mind to mind, conveyed with equal parts urgency and discretion. Contact is fleeting and subtle, all but imperceptible, its gift unremarked, its purpose unquestioned. The mind-meld ends, and he looks at his grandson, Kerok; now they are co-conspirators, and there is much work to do.

Another dusky sunrise in ShiKahr, the cinnamon daybreak of dawn on Vulcan. Volkar rouses T’Len, his seven-year-old daughter, for school; their hands touch. He brushes a hair from her cheek. In a moment he shares the secret of a lifetime. Looking upon her sire with new eyes, T’Len understands.

Spock is summoning the future, and we must be ready for it.

A sullen storm front churns on the horizon, a dark stain on the crimson sky. Salok, a tenth-year Kolinahr adept, stands on a ledge near the peak of Mount Seleya. The crash of a far-off gong calls him to meditation. His walk across the bridge is long; his only companion is the wind, howling in minor chords, warm and rich with the clean smells of the deep desert.

In the Halls of Ancient Thought, he is handed his ceremonial sash. As the high priest lowers it into Salok’s hands, they make contact. In between two more crashes of the gong, Salok sees the truth, shared by Emperor Spock with Govenor Sarek and passed on to a thousand more minds since: a vision of another reality, an incontrovertible mental image of a universe both like and unlike his own.

The knowledge comes with a price: a call to arms.

Salok is ready.

Rebellion. It’s an idea, a concept, a meme.

Viruslike, it travels and seeks receptive hosts, vessels who will carry it, nurture it, spread it.

Freedom. It is contagious in its simplicity, incendiary in its potential, complicated and inherently contradictory. Logic demands it; without the freedom to explore new thoughts and new ideas, knowledge cannot advance; without intellectual freedom, civilization stagnates. Progress halts. Hope dies.

It is only the germ of an idea. But it is spreading.

L’Haan is a defender of the peace, a law enforcement officer, and until three days ago she had held no other loyalty than to the Empire. Then the Emperor’s vision of the future touched her mind. Today she realizes the Empire is doomed, and Emperor Spock’s dangerous vision is the way of tomorrow.

Her first duty now is to the people of Vulcan—and to the future. Time is short, and there are many minds to reach. Already she has encountered several who are already part of the movement. It is reassuring to know who her allies are, but theirs is an evangelical cause. Success will be measured not in the depth of their personal commitment but in their ability to recruit others. And so she continues to search, to seek out those individuals who seem most likely to sympathize with Spock’s plan for the future.

She sees the man she has been looking for. His name is V’Nem. He is a professor at the Vulcan Science Academy, known for being slightly unorthodox. Statistically speaking, he is likely to be a receptive candidate for The Touch.

L’Haan concocts an excuse to detain him for just a moment. She demands to see what he has hidden in the folds of his loose desert robe. Predictably, he resists, citing the new imperial guarantees against warrantless search and seizure. It’s a flimsy pretext for her to accuse him of resisting arrest, but it will do. She grabs his wrist for only a moment, long enough to reach out and try to make contact with his thoughts, to tell him to remain calm, that he is in no danger—

He is a Romulan. An infiltrator. A spy.

V’Nem reaches for a concealed weapon.

L’Haan attacks, a knifing blow of her stiffened hand against V’Nem’s neck, which snaps instantly. His head lolls toward the ground, a limp and heavy mass with dull eyes. She releases his wrist and lets his body fall into the street.

A crowd gathers. There will be an inquiry, but even after Spock’s legal reforms she still has the power of authority, the protection of being an officer of the law. In short order she will be vindicated, even applauded for exposing and disposing of a Romulan agent. The attention this will bring her will prevent her from spreading Spock’s message for a few weeks, or longer.

This was a mistake of youthful inexperience, she knew. In the future, I must be more circumspect in my actions.

T’Meri slips out of her dormitory at the Vulcan Science Academy and steals away in the dark predawn hours. Halfway across the city, the young Vulcan woman finds her way to an unmarked door below street level. She does not knock; instead she scrapes her boot against the base of the door for a few seconds, then stands where she knows the security camera can see her clearly. The rust-mottled portal opens with fluid ease and surprisingly little noise. She slips inside, and the door is shut quickly after her.

T’Prynn is waiting for her. The older Vulcan woman is ex-Starfleet and, from what few fleeting personal glimpses T’Meri has had of T’Prynn’s mind, privy to many terrible secrets. But the one she has shared most vividly with T’Meri is the one she received from Spock himself, of his mind-meld with the man from the alternate universe. She has imparted the vision to T’Meri so the youth can seek out others sympathetic to Spock’s aims and pass it along to them, with the same directive. T’Meri has done exactly that.

She reaches up toward T’Prynn’s face and gently rests her fingertips against the woman’s smooth, pale skin. In turn, T’Prynn’s fingers press delicately upon the side of T’Meri’s bronze-hued face. Their minds touch, and T’Meri shows T’Prynn all the minds to whom she has conveyed Spock’s message. T’Prynn is pleased—then she breaks the psychic link.

T’Meri opens her eyes and finds her face and T’Prynn’s only a few centimeters apart. Their lips are parted and trembling with anticipation. The sensations are a mystery to T’Meri, whose next Pon farr is still four years away—until she realizes T’Prynn is hiding the fires of her own desire, and that some of that ardor has been transferred in the mind-meld.

The urge to kiss the older woman is overpowering. T’Meri searches her thoughts. She realizes T’Prynn desires her. Burns for her.

She feels the heat of T’Prynn’s breath inside her mouth, mingling with her own, but all she can think about is the fact that, despite Governor Sarek’s attempts at liberal social reforms, Vulcan’s laws—preserved for thousands of years by the Council of Elders at Mount Seleya—forbid her and T’Prynn from succumbing to their true natures.

T’Prynn’s lips graze T’Meri’s.

Surrendering to the swell of passion lingering from their mind-meld, T’Meri returns T’Prynn’s kiss and gives herself over to a woman more than three times her age. T’Prynn is voracious in her desire, primal in her way of touching, almost savage in the way she removes T’Meri’s garments.

We are already conspiring to help destroy the Empire, T’Meri rationalizes between desperate, fumbling gropes as T’Prynn pulls her toward a bed. We are already criminals.

2286

36

Wheels Within Wheels

Emperor Spock entered his throne room. The gilded space resounded with a trumpeted fanfare, drowning out the hubbub of courtiers. Most of the eyes in the room turned to watch him as he swept across the dais, his purple cloak fluttering behind him. He draped it with a flourish around his right arm and seated himself on his throne, careful at every moment to comport himself with quiet dignity.

He nodded at the court’s herald, indicating he was ready to receive that day’s invited visitor. The herald responded with a sheepish glance toward the room’s perimeter. Following the herald’s silent cue, Spock understood: In violation of protocol, the guest was already inside the throne room.

Of course he is, Spock mused.

Curzon Dax, a noted diplomat and negotiator from the planet Trill, appeared to be presiding over a miniature court of his own by a fruit-laden buffet table. The handsome young man was flirting shamelessly with a bevy of beautiful women, several of whom Spock recognized as the wives or favored concubines of imperial dignitaries. Dax cracked jokes and playfully touched the women’s cheeks and chins as they laughed.

Clear echoes of their laughter filled the otherwise silent throne room, and Dax and his harem-in-the-making realized they had become the focus of attention. The charismatic youth smiled his apologies to his female admirers as he stepped out of their midst. He placed himself before Spock’s dais and bowed.

“Majesty.”

“Mister Dax,” Spock said. “You are exactly as I imagined you would be.”

Standing tall, Dax asked, “Shall I take that as a compliment, Majesty?”

“I doubt you could be persuaded to do otherwise.”

Even in the face of a mild but public rebuke, Dax’s smile never wavered. He radiated confidence and charm. “Thank you, Majesty, for honoring me with an invitation to your court. How may I serve you, my prince?”

Spock stood and walked to the edge of his dais. His courtiers gasped as he descended its stairs and said to the captain of his guards, “Lower the force field.” The protective barrier flickered into view for a moment as it deactivated. As Spock neared the bottom of the stairs, a platoon of his elite Vulcan guards advanced and surrounded Dax on three sides.

Standing face-to-face with the Trill diplomat, Spock said, “Walk with me.” He led the way toward an adjacent banquet room that had been prepared for the day’s noon meal. Dax remained at Spock’s side, matching his stride rather than lingering the customary half step behind royalty.

“I have followed your career with interest,” Spock said.

Dax cocked an eyebrow. “Really? It’s been less than three years since I joined the Diplomatic Corps. Why notice me?”

“For one so young, you have accomplished much,” Spock said. “You have demonstrated a keen understanding of the Klingon mind-set. In the past year you brokered three cease-fires along our border with their empire, and you resolved numerous treaty disputes, making possible a new trade agreement with Qo’noS.”

The Trill shrugged. “All true.” He smiled. “It’s all about learning how the Klingons think, knowing what they respect, what they respond to.”

Looking askance at Dax, Spock said, “Curious. Most of my courtiers put on shows of humility. They try to deflect praise, but you do not. Indeed, you seem to bask in it.” The banquet room staff stepped aside as Dax and Spock entered. “Is this trait part of what enables you to ‘speak the Klingons’ language’?”

“That’s precisely it, Majesty,” Dax said, plucking a ripe pear from a pyramid of fruit on the corner of the closest table. “I don’t let them intimidate me. Instead of appeasing them, I challenge them.” Dax took a healthy bite out of the green fruit and continued as he chewed. “From their point of view, I’m presenting myself as their equal, so they treat me like one.”

“Fascinating,” Spock said. “A keen insight into their psychology.”

“I know,” Dax said, grinning. “It’s also a fun way to live.”

Spock turned and faced the Trill. “Curzon Dax, I hereby appoint you as my Imperial Ambassador to the Klingon Empire.” He extended his hand.

Beaming with surprise, pride, and elation, Dax took Spock’s hand. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m honored to serve you.”

Their handshake lasted only a few seconds, but that fleeting contact was all Spock required to assess his new ambassador by means of touch-telepathy. He sensed no treachery or duplicity from Dax, but he detected something else, an unexpected psychic presence—a second mind, an independent intelligence existing in harmonic fusion with Curzon’s. It did not seem to be a parasite, so far as Spock could tell, but rather an equal constituent of the Trill’s personality. The humanoid mind and its partner were symbiotically linked. United.

Releasing Dax’s hand, Spock said, “Congratulations, Your Excellency. I must now take my leave of you.”

“Of course, Majesty,” Dax said, making a small bow as Spock departed.

Spock paused at the banquet room’s door and looked back. Dax, his manner even bolder than before, once again was flanked by solicitous female companions. Caught up in his revels, the Trill seemed oblivious of Spock’s telepathic insight into his secret. Watching the audacious young ambassador work the room, Spock decided to investigate Dax and the politically ambiguous Trill people much more thoroughly.

2287

37

Bloody Instructions

A crowd’s distant roar pierced a musical curtain of noise. Shapes formed in a storm of swirling whiteness. Captain Saavik, the new commanding officer of the I.S.S. Enterprise, drew a breath as the transporter beam loosened its paralyzing hold.

Taking in her surroundings, she noted they were every bit as lavish as she had been led to expect. The governor’s palace on Trill was a magnificent work of architecture in its own right, and its sprawling rooftop garden—which had been secured by Enterprise’s security division in advance of Saavik’s arrival—had been decorated with freestanding red banners emblazoned with the Empire’s sword-and-planet emblem. Adding to the palace’s beauty were roving beams of light in a range of intense hues; their movements and intersections painted the soaring towers and elegant curves of the palace’s façade with shifting splashes of color.

Saavik glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the landing party. Her first officer, Commander Xon, and chief medical officer, Dr. M’Benga, flanked her. Both wore dress uniforms, as she did. At the rear of the group were four of Spock’s elite Vulcan guards, attired in full lorica segmentata with battle regalia.

In the middle of their formation stood Empress Marlena, garbed in a scandalously sheer dress of teal-tinted Tholian silk. Her royal countenance was framed by a headpiece: a semicircular frame over which more Tholian silk had been stretched taut and adorned with diamonds in a pattern that evoked the rays of a rising sun.

Far below, in the streets and plazas surrounding the palace, a massive throng of Trill civilians had gathered to witness the occasion of an official state visit, the planet’s first in more than a century. Thunderous cheers filled the air as a fanfare sounded and fireworks lit the night sky in brilliant flashes of emerald and crimson.

Crossing the rooftop garden to meet the Empress’s party was Trill’s governor, a woman in her forties named Neema Cyl. She was trailed by her entourage and flanked by two columns of armed guards.

As the governor’s group neared the landing party, Saavik nodded at Xon and M’Benga, who moved aside to permit the Empress to step forward.

“Your Majesty,” Cyl said, bowing her head as she came to a halt. “Welcome to Trill. It’s a great honor to open my home to you.”

Marlena answered the governor’s courtesy with a subtle nod. “Thank you, Governor. On behalf of Emperor Spock, I bring you greetings and good wishes.” Turning at the waist, she gestured to Saavik. “Please permit me to introduce the commanding officer of the Starship Enterprise, Captain Saavik.”

Saavik stepped forward and offered her hand to the governor.

Cyl smiled as she shook it and said, “Captain, it’s an honor.”

“The honor is mine, Governor.”

Their handshake lasted a half second longer than was customary, but no one other than the Empress seemed to suspect why.

Saavik’s moment of contact with the governor had been the reason for this state visit by the Empress, for Captain Riley’s promotion to the Admiralty, and for Saavik’s early advancement to the center seat of the Enterprise. Spock had needed her to be of sufficient rank to merit a formal introduction to Governor Cyl.

Marshaling her hidden telepathic gifts, Saavik opened her psionic senses to Cyl’s mind—and what she encountered was exactly as Spock had described it in a classified briefing. The governor seemed to possess a curious dual sentience, two unique minds functioning as one identity.

Cyl let go of Saavik’s hand and motioned for the landing party to follow her inside the palace. “Your Majesty,” she said, “your banquet awaits.”

“Thank you, Governor,” Marlena said. “Lead on.”

The landing party stayed close behind the Empress as she accompanied the governor and her entourage inside the palace, but Saavik let them pass by her. Once the two groups had moved out of earshot, Saavik took out her communicator and flipped it open. “Saavik to Enterprise.”

“Scott here,” said her veteran chief engineer. “Go ahead, Captain.”

“Mister Scott, you may begin beaming down shore leave parties.”

“Aye, sir,” Scott said, confirming the coded order. “Are we allowed to bring back souvenirs?”

“Indeed,” Saavik said. “In fact, I encourage it.”

“Understood, sir. Scott out.”

Saavik closed her communicator, tucked it back onto her belt, and hurried to catch up with the rest of her team.

While she and the landing party dined with the governor, investigative teams disguised as shore leave parties from Enterprise would visit the planet’s surface. Posing as tourists, her officers would conduct clandestine scans of the Trill population, while Commander Scott and the crew of the Enterprise made detailed sensor sweeps of the planet’s surface.

Emperor Spock wanted to know whether all Trill possessed the curious trait of a dual mind, or if it was a mark of privilege for their society’s elite. Most important, he needed to know if the Trill would be his allies or his adversaries.

Her mind set to the task, Saavik was determined to find the answers to Spock’s queries before the next day dawned on Trill’s capital city.

The hour was late, and Marlena’s stomach ached from the surfeit of her feast with Trill’s governor. Every plate of the nine-course meal had been sumptuous and prepared to perfection, and despite all her attempts at moderation, Marlena had barely been able to keep from gorging herself. For decorum’s sake, however, she hid her discomfort as she sat in her quarters aboard Enterprise with Saavik, conferring with Spock over a secure subspace channel.

“Give me your summary evaluation of the Trill,” he said to Marlena.

“I find them interesting,” Marlena said. “They possess advanced technology, and they’ve integrated it well into their lives. Their political system seems malleable; I think it would be compatible with your democratically ordered vision of the future.”

“What of their culture?”

“My conversations with the governor and her senior staff suggest the Trill consider the continuity of memory and the accurate accounting of history to be of paramount importance. Also, considering who their closest galactic neighbors are, they strike me as a remarkably open society.”

Saavik interjected, “I disagree, Majesty.”

She ignored Marlena’s glare as Spock replied, “Explain.”

“Trill society is many things, but it is not ‘open.’ They are keeping a great many secrets from us, most of them related to their peculiar joined intelligences.” She transferred an encrypted file over the channel to Spock. “Scans of the Trill population made by our landing parties and Enterprise’s sensors confirm a small minority of the Trill population—perhaps three hundred thousand persons—are bonded with symbiotic parasites, just as we saw in secret scans of Ambassador Dax. These parasites are known to the Trill people as ‘symbionts,’ and they are the source of the composite personalities we have encountered.”

Marlena asked sharply, “How did you learn that, Captain?”

Continuing to direct her reply to Spock, Saavik said, “In addition, Majesty, we have learned the symbionts are very long-lived and are passed from one humanoid host to another. They bond for the lifetime of each host, which implies they can survive as bonded entities for several hundred years—possibly longer.”

“A species capable of preserving knowledge and experience from one lifetime to the next could be instrumental to my long-term plans,” Spock said.

Saavik wore a dubious frown. “Perhaps. But if these symbionts have an agenda of their own, ‘joined’ Trill could be very dangerous.”

Growing more agitated, Marlena rephrased her previous question. “Where did this information come from, Saavik?”

Before Saavik could answer, Spock said, “If we knew more about these Trill-symbiont joinings, it might suggest our next logical step with regard to the Trill. How and where do the joinings occur?”

“They are performed by unjoined Trill known as Guardians, in a sacred underground location called the Caves of Mak’ala. There is a natural hot spring that serves as both the nursery and final repository of the symbionts.”

Marlena snapped, “Both of you, stop!” She pointed a finger at Saavik’s face. “You do not ignore me, Captain. I’m the Empress, and when I ask you a direct question, I expect a prompt and truthful answer.” Gesturing at the detailed report on the computer screen, she asked, “How did you and your crew learn all these facts about the Trill in such a short time, Captain Saavik?”

Saavik glanced at Spock’s image on the viewscreen. The Emperor lifted one eyebrow but said nothing to excuse Saavik from her duty to obey royalty. The Vulcan woman clenched her jaw. “We abducted a small number of joined Trill civilians from the planet’s surface using the transporters,” she said. “Aboard the Enterprise, they were … interrogated under controlled conditions.”

Jaw agape, Marlena blinked in horror at Saavik’s revelation. “And what happened to those people after their interrogations?” She waited several seconds, but Saavik said nothing in reply. Filling in the blanks for herself, Marlena said accusatorily, “You had them killed.”

“Operational security had to be maintained,” Saavik said, as if that excused kidnapping, torture, and mass murder.

The Empress was appalled. She aimed her furious gaze at her husband. “I thought your rise to power was supposed to put an end to this kind of barbarism! How can you speak of reform with one breath and sanction vile abuses of power with another? Why should anyone believe promises of change from a tyrant?”

“How would you have had me proceed?”

Lifting her hands in frustration, Marlena said, “With honesty? Why not meet their governor and open a frank dialogue? We could court them as an ally instead of treating them like an enemy at the gates.”

Spock looked at Saavik. “What is your advice, Captain?”

“The joined Trill might be benign, or they might have a hostile agenda,” Saavik said. “At present, we do not know for certain which is the case. It would be best not to involve their government or any joined Trill in your long-term plans for the Empire before investigating them to ensure they are, in fact, an ally.”

Nodding slowly, Spock said, “Agreed.” Looking at Marlena, he added, “I am sorry, but Captain Saavik is correct. This matter calls for caution.”

Marlena fumed in silence. Overruled again in favor of a Vulcan half my age. How utterly predictable.

Saavik asked him, “What are your orders, Majesty?”

“We must know the truth,” Spock said. “Explore the Caves of Mak’ala and make contact with the symbionts. If they wish to be allies, our plans for the future can become more ambitious.”

“And if they prove to be enemies?”

“That will be your first command decision as captain of the Enterprise.”

38

A Covenant with Death

The spinning shimmer of the transporter beam dissolved, leaving black-garbed Saavik alone and swallowed by darkness. She remained still and orientated herself.

Faint echoes of dripping water and moaning wind swirled around her. The atmosphere inside the Caves of Mak’ala was sultry and tinged with sulfur. Shifting her weight, Saavik felt her feet slip on the lichen-covered cave floor.

In the distance, through gaps in the walls of the cavern, she caught dim glimmers of lamplight and distorted shadows. None of them seemed close to her, so she lifted her tricorder from her hip and switched it on. She had dimmed its display as much as possible and had muted its feedback tones. Except for an almost inaudible hum, the device made no sound.

Saavik skulked forward. Using the tricorder, she maintained a safe distance between herself and the Guardians, who tended to move in pairs. It was only a short distance from her isolated beam-in point near the surface to the first level of symbiont pools. Peeking over a rock formation into an open chamber below, she saw it was better illuminated than most other areas of the caves, though the lights there still were kept to a minimum.

Fascinating, she thought, beholding the symbiont pools for the first time. Natural-looking craters dotted the expansive chamber beneath her. Each brimmed with slowly circulating, chalky water. Blue flashes resembling static electricity shot through the pools at varying depths and irregular intervals.

She scanned the pools with her tricorder. In seconds she amassed a significant volume of data about the caves’ geology, water chemistry, and submerged topography—but the electrical discharges remained a mystery.

Most curious.

Detecting a gap in the Guardians’ patrol coverage, Saavik turned off her tricorder and slung it behind her back. As soon as a path down to the pool chamber was clear, she stole forward, sticking as close as possible to the shadows. She shimmied down a narrow column formed by the merger of a stalactite and a stalagmite. Risking detection, she scampered across a patch of open ground and lay flat on the wet stone beside one of the pools.

Up close, she saw what was stirring the waters. Symbionts—tiny vermiform creatures—swam in the milky fluid, propelling themselves with flagellations of their tapered bodies. Saavik surmised the symbionts must have some means of altering their buoyancy—perhaps something as simple as air bladders or rudimentary lungs. The grayish worms were the source of the cerulean jolts of energy traveling through the water. Flashes traveled from one worm to another.

Saavik wondered, Could the discharges be a form of communication? As she leaned closer to the water’s surface, several worms swam toward her, as if conscious of her presence. One bobbed to the surface only centimeters from her face. Treading water in front of Saavik, the symbiont extended a few tentative arcs of blue lightning in the Vulcan’s direction.

My task will be easier if the creatures desire contact, she reasoned.

She reached toward the closest symbiont. The creature emitted a quick series of electrical discharges that arced over Saavik’s hand. As tendrils of energy danced around her wrist, she felt the touch of the symbiont’s mind. It was undeniably sentient, and it evinced great curiosity about her.

Projecting a telepathic question, Saavik asked, Do you have a name?

The symbiont responded with pulses of color, sensations of warmth and cold, and waves of emotion ranging from fear to contentment.

Soon more of its kind drew near and added their energies to the communion with Saavik. None of them seemed to understand her simple inquiries. Their responses felt nebulous and unformed. She opened her thoughts to meld with the symbionts, and then she understood why their perceptions seemed so basic: they were mere younglings, only recently spawned.

To obtain the answers she needed, Saavik needed to find older symbionts.

Projecting her question to the younglings in the simplest telepathic concepts she could imagine, she asked them where she would find the old symbionts, the ones who created the younglings. It took several attempts to get the infant symbionts to understand what she was asking.

Finally, she received a clear answer. It came from all the younglings, and it was expressed as a simple concept that nonetheless seemed gravid with dread.

<<Deeper.>>

One hour later, Saavik was back on the Enterprise, standing on a transporter pad while Montgomery Scott—who had served on the Enterprise for more years and under more captains than any other member of the crew—made the final adjustments to a heavy-duty environmental suit.

“I’ve done all I can with this thing, Captain,” he said. “Gravity and a weight belt will get you to the bottom of those pools, but whether a jury-rigged miniature integrity field will keep you from being crushed by the pressure at those depths … well, that remains to be seen.”

Eyeing the chief engineer’s handiwork, Saavik said, “I am more concerned about how this suit’s thermal exchangers will cope with the pools’ extreme heat. I need to dive very close to the springs’ geothermal source.”

“Aye, you’ll work up a sweat, I can tell you that.” He patted the back of the suit. “Avoid rupturing your coolant tank and you should be okay. But don’t stay down there too long, Captain. I had to strip out the basics to make this suit strong enough to get you down and back again—which means less than two hours of air.”

“I will endeavor to be swift and punctual, Mister Scott.”

The white-haired engineer sighed and nodded. “Aye, sir.” He lifted her suit’s helmet. “Ready?” Saavik nodded, and Scott fixed her helmet into place, muffling the low pulses of the ship’s life-support systems and the hum of the transporter’s energizer coils. Its wraparound faceplate offered her a decent field of vision, but she still felt as if she had been encased in a modern sarcophagus.

Scott moved to the transporter controls and opened a comm channel to the transceiver inside Saavik’s suit. “Can you hear me, Captain?”

“Yes, Mister Scott.”

“Right. I have the coordinates of the underground pool you scanned with your tricorder. Beaming you in won’t be a problem. But once you go deeper—”

“I am aware of the complications posed by the caverns’ geology.”

“Yes, sir.”

Earlier, while using her tricorder to select a covert insertion point for her dive to the symbionts’ source pools, Saavik had noted that only a short distance below the water’s surface the bedrock was rich with a mineral called fistrium. It would impede communications at depths below a hundred meters, and it would make it impossible for the Enterprise crew to beam her up until she was almost at the pools’ surface. Once she submerged into the chasms beneath the Caves of Mak’ala, Saavik would be on her own.

Over the transceiver, Scott said, “Coordinates locked in, Captain.”

“Energize.”

The transporter beam enfolded Saavik, and the familiar confines of the transporter room dissolved in a bright whorl of energized particles. …

Darkness descended. Sensation returned.

Saavik felt weightless for a moment before she became aware of her downward motion. She was sinking. Lifting her arm, she checked the status display mounted above her wrist. Seventy-five meters and dropping quickly. The sensors in her suit detected a solid surface a few meters below. Seconds later she touched down with a mild bump and bent her knees to absorb the impact.

She turned on her helmet beacon. Organic matter littered the rocky shelf on which she stood. Less than twenty meters ahead of her, the underwater plateau ended at a wide fissure along the base of a stone wall that seemed to reach upward to the pools’ surface. Saavik walked to the edge and looked over it, into the fathomless darkness below. To her dismay, her suit’s sensors were unable to give her a reading of the fissure’s depth.

There is no choice, she reminded herself. I must go forward.

Tucking her arms to her sides, Saavik pushed off from the edge and jumped forward. Then the blackness seemed to swallow her whole as it pulled her into the abyss. Her descent was slower than she expected, and soon she realized it was because the ion-rich, magma-heated water became more viscous as she sank deeper. To her alarm, the water was also thick with fistrium leached from the cave’s walls. That would explain why my proximity sensors no longer function.

Her free-fall descent lasted more than ten minutes, and it carried her past impressive swaths of brightly bio-luminescent orange moss clinging to the walls.

The fissure narrowed to the point where Saavik could extend her arms and touch both walls with her fingertips. By the time she finally reached the bottom, the shoulders of her bulky pressure suit scraped the sides. The ground under her feet was mostly level and covered with small, smooth stones.

She focused her suit’s external lights, but they were of little utility. The water at this depth was thick and cloudy. Her helmet beacon revealed little but the meter of ground directly ahead of her; beyond that she saw nothing but a wall of bright fog. She walked against the current, reasoning if young symbionts were spawned in the depths, flowing water must help carry them to the surface. Her hunch proved correct: a short distance away she entered a tunnel-like passage that sloped gradually downward, deeper into darkness.

It appears to be a lava tube, she thought, noting its smooth contours.

After five minutes of trudging progress, Saavik slowed as the passage narrowed. She took great care not to damage her suit’s externally mounted systems while pushing ahead into the claustrophobic tunnel.

Feeling her way forward, she was mindful not to let herself become stuck. No rescue team would be dispatched if she was overdue to check in at the end of this mission’s allotted time. She would simply be written off as “missing,” and Xon would become captain of the Enterprise.

Saavik kept walking for another thirty minutes before the passage’s sides and ceiling pressed in so closely that she was forced to drop to her hands and knees and crawl. The intense water pressure made every movement a labor for Saavik, despite her Vulcan strength and stamina. She checked the chrono on the suit’s forearm. She was more than forty-five minutes into her dive.

Impelled by a renewed sense of dwindling time, Saavik tried to quicken her pace. She lost her balance and fell hard against the side of the lava tube.

Upon impact, her helmet beacon flickered and dimmed.

That is quite inconvenient, she noted.

The rest of her suit’s functions also became erratic. Her forearm display stuttered on and off, and when it was on it sometimes showed gibberish. Lying on her back, she reached down and opened a pocket on her suit’s torso. From it she took a chemical flare that had been treated to withstand intense heat. She cracked it to life and held it ahead of her, its chartreuse glow her only beacon in the blistering, all-consuming dark.

Then there was no more ground beneath her hands.

Her fingers gripped the edge of the lava tube. Saavik checked her proximity sensor. In front of her was a vast space of open water. Because the water in the great chamber was mostly free of fistrium, she was able to coax a clear reading from her suit’s bio-scanner: there were life-forms ahead.

Glow-stick in hand, she pushed off from the edge of the lava tube. She sank slowly to the cavern’s floor. Though there was level ground to walk on, it was limited to narrow paths between massive rocky mounds. Wandering between them, Saavik felt as if she were trapped in a maze.

Fifty-five minutes, she noted, looking at her chrono. Time to make contact.

As if summoned by her desire, a trio of two-meter-long symbionts floated down from the lightless space overhead. The swimming worms were fat and crusted with a ragged carapace. One of the three descended to confront Saavik. It probed her with short bursts of violet energy that made Saavik’s skin tingle.

<<You are an intruder in the realm of the Annuated,>> said the ancient symbiont, its telepathic voice authoritative and powerful. <<Withdraw at once.>>

Saavik held out her hand and opened her mind as an invitation to a meld. I am an emissary of Emperor Spock of the Terran Empire. He has sent me to make contact with the true rulers of Trill so that—

<<Be silent,>> commanded the great worm. <<You are not welcome here.>> The other two bloated worms drifted down to hover above and slightly behind the one who spoke to Saavik. Above them, more vermiform shapes emerged from the darkness, all crackling with violet energy. <<Leave or die.>>

The worms moved toward her, herding her back the way she had come. Backpedaling, Saavik was at a loss for how to persuade the elder symbionts it was in their best interest to speak with her. Turning a tight corner, she tripped and lost her balance. She put out her hands to break her fall and collided with the side of one of the looming rocky mounds—

In a flash of telepathic connection, Saavik understood.

The symbionts chasing her away were not the ancient ones; they were only caretakers, mere adolescents compared to the ones they called the Annuated. The great stationary masses grouped on the cavern’s floor were not rock—they were symbionts that had achieved terrifying size over tens of thousands of years. These beasts of antiquity were the ones that birthed new symbionts and commanded their offspring with unquestioned authority.

At Saavik’s touch, the Annuated Elder’s mind stirred. <<I recognize your species. Your kind are called … Vulcans.>>

It’s flock of caretakers backed away, apparently leery of taking action while Saavik was in communion with one of their rulers.

Saavik asked, How do you know of my kind?

<<Our children roamed the stars thousands of years ago,>> the Annuated Elder replied. <<They brought their knowledge home to us. We know of all the psionically gifted species—Vulcans and Betazoids, Ullians and Aenar, Remans and Medusans. All exterminated now … except for your kind.>> Its mind blazed with grim amusement. <<Most wise. Your people hide their gifts well.>>

Behind the Elder’s condescension, Saavik detected something else. Just as she had sensed a second mind in Trill’s humanoid governor, now she felt the presence of a second mind in the consciousness of this ancient being. At the risk of postponing her return to the surface too long, she initiated a full mind-meld with the Annuated Elder.

Its consciousness was perplexing, its storehouse of memories too vast for Saavik to comprehend. Her talents would be no match for the sheer mental power of the Elder—but its mind was not the one she sought to reveal. Her quarry lay hidden in the darkest recesses of the most primitive quarters of the Elder’s brain. It was a much younger intelligence—relatively speaking—and far more malevolent.

It was a parasite. An invader. A mutant spawn of Trill’s symbionts.

Saavik stole flashes of memory from the hateful creature’s mind.

The Trill had tried once, ages ago, to eradicate the parasites and their hosts. The Trill thought they had succeeded, but a few hardy parasites clung to life. Eventually they escaped their exile on the distant world that their forebears had laid waste.

Concealed inside an artificial comet of ice, they returned to Trill a century ago, falling in a blaze of fire to the sea. Riding one host after another, they found their way home to the Caves of Mak’ala. Safe now in its sweltering depths, they have infested the Annuated, yoking the ancient ones to their cause of vengeance. Bonded now to the egg-layers, the parasites will ensure the Annuated birth only aggressive, dangerous, mutant parasites bent on secretly usurping control first of Trill and eventually the entire galaxy—one mind and one world at a time.

Saavik severed the mind-meld, shed her weight belt, and fled.

The caretakers pursued her, and they were much more in their element than she was. One rammed into her back, knocking her onto her hands and knees.

They swim faster than I can, and they are more maneuverable than I am in this environment. I will need to change tactics.

Fortunately for Saavik, her chief engineer had insisted she come prepared to make a quick exit. Mounted on her right wrist was a compact phaser. She armed it as she rolled onto her back, and then she fired at the caretakers diving at her.

The phaser’s brilliant blue beam of energy shimmered through the water, which boiled and filled with bubbles. Then the huge symbionts’ heavy corpses dropped to the cavern’s floor, half disintegrated.

More caretakers converged on Saavik. Working quickly, she primed a special flare Mister Scott had jury-rigged to propel itself through hyperpressurized water and ignite on contact with a solid surface. Saavik aimed it straight up, triggered it, and released it into the great emptiness overhead.

The flare rocketed up, a pinpoint of light that seemed to vanish in the darkness—then it erupted into a blazing orb of light on a domed ceiling of rock more than two kilometers away. The entire cavern was lit as if by daylight, and Saavik saw the openings of many large lava tubes on the ceiling.

Exit strategy revised.

A few more shots of her wrist phaser kept the caretakers at bay while she energized her suit’s emergency thruster and extended its control handgrips.

Above her, the light of the flare started to dim.

The suit’s thruster was not fully charged, but Saavik could no longer afford to be patient. She set it for maximum burn and keyed the starter.

The roar of the engine was deafening.

Sudden acceleration left her paralyzed for a few seconds until the suit’s guidance circuit smoothed out its delta-v. Struggling to control its direction, Saavik aimed herself at the widest lava tube she could reach. Satisfied she was on target, she detached from her left leg the last of her dive weights, which had been designed to serve a secondary function: they were also high-yield plasma charges.

Watching the charges fall away behind her, sinking back into the cavern of the Annuated, Saavik touched their arming switch on her suit’s belt.

A holographic display on her helmet’s faceplate confirmed the plasma charges had been armed and were on a three-minute countdown to detonation.

Rocketing into the lava tube, Saavik hoped it would lead her back to the surface and not to a dead end or some inescapable underwater labyrinth. She followed the wide passage’s twists and turns, each of which seemed to bring the walls a bit closer. Three and a half minutes into her ascent, a thunderous boom shook the bedrock, and a wall of displaced water surged up behind her.

So much for the Annuated.

After five minutes, her suit’s thruster ran out of fuel. She detached the engine pack and let it sink into the darkness behind her. Kicking with her legs and making wide strokes with her arms, Saavik continued swimming in the direction her helmet’s holographic display told her was “up.”

Her air gauge was five minutes shy of zero when her wrist display confirmed she was close enough to the surface to be free of the fistrium’s interference. She activated her suit’s transceiver. “Saavik to Enterprise.”

The reply was staticky but audible. “Xon here. Go ahead, Captain.”

“Mister Xon, beam down strike teams to the Caves of Mak’ala. Kill the Guardians, and exterminate all symbionts in the pools.”

“Acknowledged,” Xon said.

Minutes later, Saavik surfaced in a remote pool inside the Caves of Mak’ala. Pulling herself out of the water, she collapsed onto all fours, utterly exhausted. The dive to the cavern of the Annuated and the subsequent swim back to the surface had been the most arduous physical experience of her life.

Sitting back, she took off her helmet, dropped it, and let it roll away. The caves echoed with the shrieks of phasers and the screams of the dying.

From nearby, she heard Xon’s voice call out, “Captain Saavik!”

Turning, she saw her first officer leading a team of security personnel from the Enterprise. She said to him, “I am unhurt.”

Xon helped Saavik stand, and then he nodded at one of his men. The security officer took out his communicator and spoke into it. “All teams, this is Lieutenant Treude. The captain is safe. Sterilize the pools.”

One of the other security officers stepped past Treude and opened a satchel slung on his hip. From the bag, the man took a handful of white tablets—a mix of radioactive toxins—and tossed them into the pool from which Saavik had emerged.

The water frothed with pale blue foam. Seconds later the pool’s surface was crowded with dead, floating symbionts. The worms’ cradle of life had become a pit of death. Nothing would ever live in these waters again.

“Well done,” Saavik said to Xon. “Let us return to the ship.”

Xon opened his communicator. “Xon to Enterprise. Two to beam up.”

Spock sat at the desk in his study, reviewing the latest dispatches from Carol Marcus. Pleased with the progress she and her team had made, he considered expanding the scope of the Memory Omega project.

His ruminations were interrupted as the door of his study flew open and slammed against the wall. Marlena stormed through the open doorway, her elegant features distorted by rage as she strode toward him.

“How could you?” she shouted.

“To what, specifically, do you refer?”

“You know damned well what I’m talking about!” She picked up a crystal sphere from its stand on his desk and hurled it at the wall. It shattered into dust and jagged chunks. “Genocide, Spock! You wiped out an entire species!”

“I personally did no such thing.”

“No, you let your protégée do your dirty work.”

He leaned back and pressed his fingertips together over his chest. “Captain Saavik did what she thought was necessary to safeguard the Empire and its people from an aggressive, dangerous, and previously unknown enemy.”

Marlena asked in pitched disbelief, “Did you even read her report?”

“I did.”

“Really? The one I read said she encountered new life-forms unlike anything anyone’s ever seen before, and then she vaporized them.”

“Since you have read the report, then you must also be aware the Annuated symbionts knew of my people’s secret—and that they themselves had been compromised by a hostile parasitic intelligence. If we had allowed them to live, they would have posed a threat not just to my plans for reform, but to all sentient life in the galaxy. The decision to exterminate them was logical.”

“I understand why the infested ones had to be destroyed, but why all of them, Spock? Saavik may have taken the first step in the Caves of Mak’ala, but you were the one who signed an executive order to hunt down and execute all joined Trill.”

“There was no way to know which symbionts had been compromised and which could be trusted,” Spock said. “To permit even one of those parasites to survive would constitute a grave threat to galactic security.” After a brief pause, he added, “Furthermore, I did not order the deaths of all joined Trill.”

His wife rolled her eyes in disgust. “Oh, yes, I forgot—your token gesture of compassion: you spared Curzon Dax. How magnanimous of you. You’ve ordered the covert murder of hundreds of thousands of joined Trill, but all is forgiven because you struck Dax’s name from your death warrant.” She let her fury simmer a moment. Then she asked, “Why spare his life? Why does he get to live?”

Spock exhaled a breath heavy with regret.

“To remind me of what I have become.”

PART III

Sic Transit Imperium

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