Forged in Fire Page 34

  “Don’t worry,” the albino said, almost soothingly. “I needn’t kill any of you. At least . . . not today.”

  Sulu felt a slight nick against his cheek, but no real pain. It wasn’t until the albino suddenly backed away, stepping behind the protective line of his armed subordinates, that Sulu saw the delicate tracery of his own blood on the tip of the other man’s blade. In response to the pirate chieftain’s sharp commands, his people covered his escape, their firearms at the ready as they exited en masse through a rear door.

  Now he has a sample of my DNA, Sulu realized, suddenly chilled to the marrow. He can take his time killing me now. The same way he killed the woman in the bar on Galdonterre.

  “They’re retreating,” Kor said, still clutching his bat’leth before him.

  Koloth shook his head. “No. He’s merely toying with us.”

  “That was foolish of him,” Kor said. “He left us armed.”

  “But not nearly as well armed as he is,” Sulu said, wishing that Klingon outrage didn’t make it so necessary to state the obvious.

  The solid rock beneath Sulu’s boots shuddered, like the deck of a starship that had just taken a heavy phaser barrage.

  “Autodestruct device?” Koloth wondered aloud. Sulu was impressed by the cool detachment with which the Klingon seemed to contemplate the prospect of his own imminent death.

  “Or perhaps he merely wants us to believe he has an autodestruct device,” said Kor. “So that we will retreat as well.”

  The ground spasmed again, harder this time. Sulu didn’t like it one little bit. While he had to question the logic of demolishing such an inaccessible and obviously expensive hideout when the albino possessed far simpler means of disposing of his enemies, Sulu wasn’t willing to wager his life on the motivations of such an obviously unstable personality.

  “What is that proverb you Klingons have about not fighting in burning houses?” he said.

  Without saying another word, Sulu recovered his helmet and led the way back toward the same doorway through which the team had entered in the first place. He was gratified to see that both Kor and Koloth had quietly decided to exercise the better part of valor by doing likewise.

  There’ll be other chances to get this guy, Sulu told himself, reaching into the pocket on his left thigh for his ruptured suit’s emergency patch kit as he walked. And maybe sooner rather than later.

  PART IV:

  SIFTING THE ASHES

  The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

  — Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Stardate 9028.5 (Early 2290)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  The door before him slid obediently open, and Sulu stepped inside. “Hello, Gertrude,” he murmured to the carnivorous Delvin cat trap plant that sat in a planter atop the dresser on the wall opposite his bed. The plant seemed to wave its thorny gold and crimson fronds at him in response to his voice, like a small, sessile dog eagerly greeting its returning master.

  Exhaustion finally moved in for the kill as the door closed behind him; sprawling across the bed without bothering to remove his uniform jacket, he felt blissful sleep beginning to enfold him almost before his body had finished settling on the mattress.

  The door chime buzzed with skull-piercing sharpness at that precise moment. There had better be a damned good reason for this, Sulu thought, sitting up slowly, as though struggling to escape the fierce gravitational pull of a neutron star. Like all-out galactic war.

  “Come,” he said with as much pleasantness as he could muster.

  The door to his quarters slid open again, to reveal Lieutenant Commander Cutler standing in the corridor beyond.

  “Commander,” she said, speaking with an uncharacteristic tentativeness.

  As much curious as concerned, Sulu stood. “Come in,” he said.

  Cutler dutifully stepped inside, only to stand at parade rest, awkwardly silent.

  Sulu tipped his head in puzzlement. “Is anything wrong, Cutler?”

  She looked almost scandalized, or at least vulnerable in a way he’d never seen before. “No. Sir. The opposite, in fact. Doctor Klass and Ambassador Kamarag are both finally conscious, and Doctor Chapel says that the prognosis looks good for both of them.”

  “That’s great news,” Sulu said, truly delighted for the first time since circumstances had thrust command of Excelsior upon him. He gestured toward the couch beside the wall near Gertrude. “Why don’t you have a seat, Commander?”

  But Cutler remained standing stiffly as she continued. “The shuttlecraft are stowed, and Henry’s crew is checking them both for damage from the Qul Tuq magnetar. And all three of the Klingon captains have consented to Doctor Chapel’s request that they come aboard for a medical debriefing — in the interests of the mutual security of both their Empire and our Federation.”

  “Doctor Chapel has always been a very persuasive woman,” he said, genuinely admiring the doctor’s creativity in marketing physical examinations — from which most Klingon warriors would vehemently demur — as debriefings that were critical to galactic security. “Let me know when the Klingons are finished in sickbay. I want to talk with them before they ship out.”

  She nodded. “Of course, Commander.”

  She’s still just not comfortable addressing me as “Captain” yet, is she? he thought, wondering if she was going to hold out until she actually saw the captain’s bars on his shoulders before forcing herself to utter the title in his presence.

  Of course, there was a good chance that that simply wasn’t going to happen, given all the toes he had stepped on over the past two days.

  But Sulu could see from Cutler’s posture that something else was on her mind. Something that seemed to trouble her greatly.

  “Is that all, Cutler?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “Yes. Sir. I wanted to . . . I wanted to compliment you.”

  Sulu’s eyes widened involuntarily in surprise, but he made no move to interrupt her.

  “I’ve seen how much you’ve risked since you . . . took over for Captain Styles,” she said. “I know that it would have been a lot easier and safer for you to have stayed on our side of the border.”

  “Safer, maybe,” he said, shrugging. “But sitting still is never easy. At least it wouldn’t have put me sideways with my orders from Starfleet Command, though.”

  “Exactly,” she said, nodding. “But you saw what had to be done, and you did it. You were committed enough to the idea of building a practical détente with the Klingons to get off the safe road and take a more dangerous one instead.”

  “Don’t congratulate me yet, Commander. It’s a road that still might lead straight to a penal colony, at least for me. Depending, of course, on how cranky the top brass are feeling after reading our reports.”

  He had always imagined her relishing the prospect of Starfleet Command shooting him down in flames. Instead, a somber expression descended across her features.

  “What I’m trying to say,” she said, “is that I owe you an apology. I practically accused you of abetting the murder of Captain Styles. Then you put everything on the line to try to bring his killer to justice.”

  Though this hopeful moment of rapprochement with Cutler had begun to buoy his flagging spirits, thoughts of the albino created a powerful emotional downdraft.

  “The operative word is ‘try,’ ” he said, his jaw muscles stiffening into immobility as though they’d been set in thermoconcrete. “Succeeding is something else entirely.”

  “The albino has been surviving out on the frontier for decades, Commander,” Cutler said, her tone going from sympathetic to gently chiding. “You’ve been on his trail for less than two weeks, and you’ve helped capture a couple dozen of his people, as well as what has to be a huge proportion of the biogenic contraband he controls. It may take some time to bring him down entirely. Even the civilization in Star System 892 wasn’t built in a day.”

>   Sulu allowed himself a wan smile at that last observation. Still, it bothered him intensely that neither he nor the Klingons had managed to capture or kill the albino himself during the confrontation on the moon of Qul Tuq II.

  “Besides,” Cutler continued, “it’s entirely possible that he died when his compound blew apart.”

  Sulu folded his arms and shook his head, all thoughts of sleep now banished. “What was it you just said about him being a survivor?”

  The intensity of Cutler’s momentary answering glower told him that she, too, was continuing to take this manhunt very personally — and also told him that she didn’t want anyone to see that, perhaps him especially. Her briefly unguarded expression bespoke a wound than ran even deeper than the untimely death of her captain.

  Before he could find a delicate way to probe the matter, she said, “I just wish the sensor scans we tried to take of the blast area were more conclusive one way or another. As it is, he could have been vaporized — or he might have used the explosion to cover his escape in the second auxiliary ship. With all the magnetic interference in that system, he wouldn’t have had a very hard time keeping himself hidden from both Excelsior and the Klothos, and then escaping.”

  “I certainly hope that’s not the case,” Sulu said. For your sake as well as mine, Cutler. But he knew the smart money wouldn’t wager on that possibility.

  And neither would the Klingons.

  • • •

  Feeling helpless was probably the one thing in all the universe that Kang hated the most. And confinement in the oppressive sterility of Excelsior’s sickbay, however temporary it might prove to be, only exacerbated his increasingly intolerable restiveness.

  “Hurghom, I have been idle here long enough,” he growled. “Since Doctor Chapel finally seems to be quite finished poking and prodding us all, my convalescence would be better spent aboard the QaD!”

  The elderly Klingon doctor moved swiftly to the side of the biobed on which Kang sat, bereft of his weapons, his armor, and much of his uniform. “The fleet is already towing the QaD to one of our repair facilities, Captain. Captain Kor will take us aboard the Klothos as soon as we are all ready to depart.”

  Kang scowled, feeling his smooth brow crumpling until it felt as rough as weathered granite. “I know all that, surgeon. But I should be on board my own vessel all the same, overseeing her repairs.”

  Kang knew that the sooner the QaD was once again spaceworthy, the sooner he would be able to make certain that the raider of Korvat faced an eternity in Gre’thor’s foul belly, where he belonged. Or, failing that, he could at least thwart the albino’s future efforts to assemble and deploy biogenic weapons anywhere within the boundaries of Klingon space.

  “Hey, keep it down over there,” growled the iron-haired human woman who lay on one of the nearby beds. “There are sick people here trying to rest.”

  Another Klingon, a man of advanced years with an impressively textured HemQuch forehead, stood unsteadily beside a third biobed, his tall, broad body partly draped in an undignified hospital gown.

  “Speak for yourself, Doctor Klass,” Ambassador Kamarag said, accenting his words with a convivial display of his sharpened teeth. “Apart from yourself, I see no sick people here.”

  Klass returned Kamarag’s grin. “I used to think that doctors made the worst patients, Mister Ambassador. But that was before I shared a sickbay with a couple of restless Klingons.”

  The doors that lay between Kang and freedom suddenly hissed open, and Dr. Chapel stepped into the room, followed by Commander Sulu, Captains Koloth and Kor, and Ambassador Curzon Dax.

  Chapel stopped at the side of Dr. Klass’s bed. “I hope our guests didn’t give you too much trouble, Doctor.”

  “These guys?” Klass said wryly, hiking a thumb in Kang’s direction. “They’re pussycats.”

  Kang could only hope that “pussycats” were predators at least as fierce as the sabre bears of Qo’noS.

  “Sounds like you’ll be strong enough to take charge again down here any minute now,” Chapel said to Klass.

  Klass nodded, smiling crookedly. “At least until I finally come to my senses and take my retirement, Christine. And when that day comes I don’t think I’ll have to do much arm-twisting to persuade our new CO to draft you for this job.”

  Chapel blushed in the glare of Sulu’s answering grin. “Thanks for letting me pitch in,” she said. “But since I’m still temporarily in charge down here, I’m putting you on a diet free of life-changing decisions — at least until after you’re released. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Fair enough,” Klass grumbled.

  “We haven’t had time yet for a formal medical briefing on everyone’s condition since the Qul Tuq mission,” Sulu said, facing Chapel.

  Chapel’s face abruptly grew very taut and grim. “I wanted to talk you about that once Doctor Hurghom and I finished double-checking the results of our preliminary biomolecular analyses.”

  “You scanned us all right after we came back aboard,” Dax said, one eyebrow raised in evident curiosity. “I thought everyone checked out as healthy then.”

  “So did we,” Hurghom said. “But that was before I began to notice certain . . . discrepancies in the initial readings. Discrepancies that Doctor Chapel has confirmed, at least tentatively.”

  Kang did not like the sound of any of this. “What kind of discrepancies?”

  Chapel nodded as several pairs of apprehensive eyes settled squarely upon her. “Doctor Hurghom and I used the past baseline readings stored in the medical files of both our respective crews in order to make certain that no one serving aboard either Excelsior or the Klothos was exposed to any of the albino’s biochemical agents during the Qul Tuq battle.”

  “You said that all of my personnel were cleared of any biomedical danger,” Kor said, his smooth brow now nearly as striated as Kamarag’s.

  “And so they are,” Hurghom said. He turned toward Sulu, who was clearly just as concerned about the welfare of Excelsior’s crew. “No Starfleet personnel show any signs of having been affected either.”

  “But a handful of others showed subtle but definite signs of very recent infection by bioengineered pathogens,” Chapel said. “These pathogens are engineered retroviruses, and they appear to have been individually tailored to affect only their specific hosts.”

  Kang liked what he was hearing less and less.

  “Fortunately, the list of infected parties is quite short,” Hurghom said. “There are only four names on it, in fact.”

  “Enough mystery,” Sulu said, scowling at both physicians. “Who has been infected?”

  “Curzon Dax,” Chapel said. “Along with three Klingons.”

  “Let me guess,” Koloth said. “I am one of the three.”

  “As am I,” Kor said.

  “And me as well, no doubt,” Kang said, feeling as humorless and angry as his two fellow Klingon captains looked.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Chapel, her sapphire eyes taking on the aspect of a regretful yet dutiful executioner.

  “Can you cure it?” Sulu asked.

  Hurghom shrugged. “Given enough years of study, anything is possible. But this particular retrovirus is an extraordinarily complex one. The odds against us neutralizing it any time soon are extremely slim.”

  “What will it do to us?” Kor wanted to know.

  “Over the long haul there’s no way to know for sure,” Chapel said. “It could be a very nasty, pernicious little bug, or it might end up proving harmless. All I can say for certain at this point is that is has already begun rewriting portions of your DNA at a very subtle, and maybe even fundamental, level.”

  “That isn’t a very satisfying explanation, Doctor,” Koloth said, almost snarling.

  To her credit, Chapel didn’t quail in the face of Koloth’s fury. Taking a confident step toward him, she said, “I’m afraid that’s the best you’re going to get at the moment, Captain. In order to cure this thing any time soon, or even take t
he initial step of predicting which specific genes it will rewrite, we would first have to thoroughly understand the albino’s biodesign and manufacturing processes, as well as this virus’s specific purpose.”

  Hurghom affirmed Chapel’s analysis with a vigorous nod. “Without that knowledge, attempting to neutralize this retrovirus would be like trying to decode an encrypted message without the necessary cryptography key.”

  Kang was becoming more determined than ever to get the QaD back into service quickly, the better to resume the hunt as soon as possible. “I will find the albino and force him to reveal his bioengineering secrets.”

  “The four of you faced the albino at close quarters,” Sulu said, his gaze sweeping across Kang, Kor, Koloth, and Dax. “Just as I did.”

  “And you’re wondering why you haven’t been affected as well,” Kang said.

  “Exactly,” Sulu said, his eyes again focused on Chapel. “How about it, Doctor?”

  “Hard to say for sure until I do some more investigation,” she said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “But we can venture a few guesses. For one, you might not have been one of Qagh’s specific targets.”

  “Or perhaps the albino was not able to acquire a DNA sample from you at an earlier time, as he must have done with the others in order to individually tailor disease organisms against them,” Hurghom said.

  “He might have quietly collected DNA samples from us at Korvat, just before the attack,” Kang said.

  “That’s what Doctor Hurghom and I are assuming,” Chapel said.

  Kang wondered exactly how it had been done. Had the albino or one of his confederates collected hair fibers from the conference tables? Or perhaps he had drawn his victims’ DNA from the trace amounts of saliva that had adhered to their drinking vessels.

  He decided that the details didn’t matter. Only the results.

  “So you’re saying that Qagh just happened not to get hold of my DNA,” Sulu said, addressing both Chapel and Hurghom. “At least not in time to create a tailored bioweapon with my name on it.”