Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (48 page)

Sulu caught Chekov’s glance.

“In fleet of ore-carriers of Antares Prison Mine,” Chekov said, only loud enough for Sulu to hear.

Kirk stood and laid his hand on Sulu’s shoulder.

“Best speed to Genesis, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said.

Uhura had never visited the Vulcan embassy. The stately building stood in a genteel neighborhood in the city, on a hilltop overlooking the sea. The ocean was black and silver in the dark; the moon was one night past full. Uhura materialized on the sidewalk in front of the ambassador’s residence, for it was protected against penetration by unauthorized transporter beams. She walked into the pool of light around the gate and pressed the buzzer.

“Yes?”
The video screen tucked discreetly into a recess in the stone pillar remained featureless. The tiny camera next to it, pointing directly at her, was surely in use.

“I would like to speak with Ambassador Sarek,” she said.

“The ambassador cannot see visitors this evening. You may make an appointment and return during reception hours.”

“But it’s urgent,” Uhura said.

“What is your request?”

“It’s private,” she said, remembering how reticent Spock had always been about his background and his family.

“Sarek is occupied,”
the faceless voice said.
“I cannot disturb him unless I know your name and your business.”

“I am Commander Uhura, from the starship
Enterprise,
” she said. “You may tell Ambassador Sarek that my business…concerns Genesis.”

“Wait,”
said the emotionless voice.

She waited.

She could feel the minutes ticking away, minutes during which her trail would be traced. She knew the process well enough to be able to estimate just how quickly the trace could be done, and when that amount of time had passed she began to listen for the shining satin sound of a transporter beam. Fog rolled in from the sea. She shivered.

She touched the signal button again.

“We respectfully request that you wait.”
The voice had so little inflection that she wondered if it came from a machine, and a machine poorly programmed for Standard at that.

“I’ll be forced to go, soon,” she said. “If I can’t see Sarek I must leave him a message—but I’d prefer to speak to him in private. It will only take a moment!”

“Please contain your emotions.”

She wanted to kick the gatepost, that was how contained her emotions were. But she knew it would do her no good, and probably break her foot as well.

She heard a transporter beam, very near. She pressed herself against the stone gatepost, trying to conceal herself in the shadows. She could not hide from the materializing security team for long. She had considered transporting to some other location and proceeding here on foot, but they would have deduced where she was heading. They probably would have arrived before she did.

She pressed the call-button again.

“We respectfully request that you wait,”
the flat voice said again.

“I’m about to be taken,” she said. “Please tell Sarek—”

The gates swung slowly open. The distance to the residence was about a hundred meters, and the hundred meters was her distance. She plunged inside just as the security team reached her. They chased her across the dark grounds of the Vulcan embassy. She outraced them to the residence, to no avail. The door remained closed. She turned.

One of the security officers strode up the stairs and took her arm.

“Please come with us, Commander. It’ll be a lot easier if you don’t make any fuss.”

“I’ll come with you if you’ll just give me ten minutes to speak with Ambassador Sarek. It’s desperately important!”

The security officer shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s impossible. It’s directly against orders.”

She led Uhura down the stairs and halfway back to the gate.

“Do your orders include invading the sovereign territory of an allied power?”

Sarek had crossed the distance between them and the wide steps of the embassy with such long and silent strides that no one had seen him approach. His commanding presence was accentuated by his long black cape, his drawn, intense features, his dark and deepset eyes. To Uhura he looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept since word of Spock’s death reached him.

The head of the security team blushed scarlet, knowing she had overstepped her authority. She put the best face on it that she could.

“That was not our intention, sir,” she said. “Several people from the last mission of the
Enterprise
have shown…evidence of severe mental difficulties. We’re trying to get them to treatment. If you’ll give me leave to take Commander Uhura to the hospital—”

“I will do no such thing. Commander Uhura has requested political asylum, and I have granted it. I give you leave to remove yourselves from the embassy grounds.”

The security officer stood her ground and spoke to Uhura. “Commander, is this what you want? It could mean exile. But we might all be able to get out of this pretty clean. If I give you your ten minutes—off the record—will you come with us?”

Uhura considered it, but she had burned too many bridges today.

“No,” she said. “I’m staying here.”

The security commander took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Very well.” She turned to Sarek. “My government will contact you immediately with a formal request for extradition.”

“That is up to your government. Good evening.”

The security commander led the team from the grounds of the embassy, and the gate closed behind them.

“Thank you, sir,” Uhura said. She was shivering violently. “I came to tell you—”

“Come inside, Commander,” he said. “There is no need to stand in the cold and the damp…and in public…for our conversation.”

Kruge materialized on the surface of the Genesis world, near enough to the high-order life signs to track them, but far enough away that they would remain ignorant of his arrival, and he could come upon them unawares. At his side, Warrigul appeared, shivering with excitement and whining, but whining almost soundlessly. The beast had been trained to recognize potential combat and to behave in a suitable manner. If Kruge ordered Warrigul to attack, the attack would be silent.

The commander inspected the glade as his sergeant and crew member materialized behind him. The place pleased him, with its dark earth smelling of mould, the tall-stalked plants that bore drooping, leathery leaves, the heat and actinic brightness of the brilliant new sun.

Kruge pulled out his tricorder and scanned with it. He located the metallic mass around which so much activity had lately centered. It lay deeper in the glade, perhaps fifty paces. Some minor life signs surrounded it, but the signs lacked the high order that would betray the presence of the prisoners he hoped to take. Still, they had been there, so there he would go too, and pick up their trail.

He set off between the gnarled stalks of the leather plants. Warrigul padded along at his side; the sergeant and the crew member brought up the rear.

The ground began to quiver. Kruge stopped. The quake intensified, till the leather plants all swayed and thumped together with a low and hollow sound. A frond broke away from its stalk, making a heavy liquid crunching noise, and the long thick leaf thudded to the ground like some dying thing at the dead-end of its evolution.

As the earthquake reached its peak, Kruge heard a long and high-pitched hissing shriek, like nothing he had ever heard before. He started toward the noise, striding steadily across the rocking surface. He made note, for future use, of the fact that his two subordinates did not follow him till the quake ceased and he was a good twenty paces ahead of them. Only Warrigul stayed with him.

He nearly stumbled over his pet when it stopped short, took a step backward, and growled.

The thick gray-green vegetation thinned slightly, letting a sharp white column of sunlight pierce the canopy to illuminate the Federation torpedo casing that had engendered so much interest.

All around its base, like the monsters in the story of Ngarakkani, a myth of Kruge’s people, writhed a great mass of sleek scaled creatures. The creatures saw him, or smelled him, or felt the vibration of his footsteps, and rose up in a many-headed tangle to hiss and scream.

Kruge heard the sergeant whisper a protective curse. Kruge smiled to himself, gestured to Warrigul to sit and stay, and strode toward the casket. He ignored all but the largest of the creatures, which had squirmed to the top of the torpedo tube and coiled there. It raised its head, weaved toward him and away, hissed, and squealed a challenge. It reached as high as his shoulder.

He stepped into its sudden strike and grasped its throat, then drew it from the slithering group and raised it up to inspect it. It twisted in his hands. Several others coiled around his boots. He ignored them, as he ignored his two companions, though he was aware of everything, most particularly including the impression the scene must be making. Like the hero Ngarakkani, he would wrestle with the demons and defeat them.

The creature whipped its long lashing tail around his neck and began to squeeze. Kruge thought to unwind it from him, but its strength exceeded his. The harsh scales of its belly cut into his throat, squeezing the breath out of him. Darkness slipped slowly down around him.

The creature had tricked him into going on the defensive. He let its body tighten around him; he turned to the attack. He grabbed its throat with both his hands and squeezed. He began to twist.

He heard its bones begin to crunch. As he began to lose consciousness, its strength suddenly dissipated and it sagged away from him.

He cast the limply writhing body to the ground.

His subordinates gazed upon him with awe. He intensified their reaction by ignoring it. He
tsked
to Warrigul, who leapt up and sprang to his side, snarling at the twitching body of the creature.

Kruge pulled out his communicator.

“Torg,” he said easily, “I have found nothing of consequence. I am continuing the search.”

David sat forlornly on a stone outcropping. His world spread out around his vantage point. It was beautiful. It was strange, and growing stranger. It was destroying itself. The vines back on Regulus I had been a warning that he should have heeded, as he should have heeded the rogue equation in the primary Genesis description. Evolution was running wild. Each species was growing and changing and aiming for its own extinction, without creating any diversity, any new forms, to take over when the old died out. Not that it much mattered. If his estimates were right, the evolutionary process would be only about half done when the more violent geological processes tore the whole planet apart. Soon after that, the subatomic attractions would break down, and the entire mass of what had been the Mutara Nebula, what had been Genesis and its new star system, would degenerate into a homogeneous, gaseous blob, a fiery, structureless plasma: protomatter.

His shadow stretched far down the hillside as the sun set behind him. Night approached, a dark border overwhelming day. It reached the edge of Spock’s glade. The group of delicate fern-trees had grown and coarsened, turning from a patch of feathery emerald green to a smudge of bulbous gray, just in the few hours since he had left it.

He and Saavik had found a vantage point, but so far David had detected no sign of other intelligent life. His tricorder showed nothing, but it was of limited range. He had heard nothing over his communicator; if anyone else had fled
Grissom
before it was shot down, they were as reluctant to broadcast their presence to their attackers as was David. Perhaps they were listening to each other’s static.

More likely, no one else had survived. But until he was sure, he was keeping his communicator set to the Federation emergency channel.

Night fell quickly on Genesis. The land below the promontory had grown too dark for David to see anyone, friendly or malevolent. Darkness obscured everything, even the field of silver ice now covering the desert, nearly surrounding the glade, and grinding away at the base of the mountain itself. David rose and trudged back up the hill. Gnarled black trees with twisting exposed roots loomed over him, and great broken slabs of stone projected from the ground. Soon he reached the narrow, hidden cave they had stumbled upon.

He stepped inside, expecting the pale steady illumination of the camp light from Saavik’s kit. Instead he encountered darkness.

“Saavik—?” he whispered, but before her name had passed his lips she had uncovered the light again. She held her phaser aimed straight at him. She let her hand fall.

“Your footsteps…sounded different,” she said, in explanation and apology. She put the phaser away again. “This place is most discomforting.”

The Vulcan child whimpered. He lay huddled on a bed of tree branches, his face to the stone wall. Saavik had laid her coat over him. She turned to him, touched his shoulder, and said a word or two of comfort. David did not speak the language she was using, but he recognized it when he heard it.