Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire Read online

  —there!

  “Interrogative,” White-Blue said. “Question. Enquiry. Did you perceive that?”

  The cybernetic organism with whom White-Blue shared the lab’s catwalk waved his two primary cybernetic limbs as well as his metal tail, spreading the hands on the ends of each artificial extremity in a gesture of affect that presumably came from careful observation of the mannerisms of some of Torvig’s humanoid shipmates.

  “Perceive what?” said Torvig, his voice conveying a note of something that White-Blue could only interpret as an emotion. Could it be exasperation because this would be the third time he had diverted his friend’s attention from the measurements he was taking?

  “The signal I picked up a short time ago,” White-Blue said. “I believe I have detected it again. Can you verify my observation?” Using his hard interface with the lab’s main control console, White-Blue adjusted the section of the cosmos currently being displayed in the chamber’s vast, full-surround holographic display. The effect looked uncannily like actual instantaneous travel across light-years of space. Perhaps that was the reason for Torvig’s insistence on a strong artificial gravitational field: to help him remain cognizant that he was still aboard a starship rather than flying bodily through the cosmos.

  “There seems to be something there, in the lower subspace bands,” Torvig said, his voice registering a quality that White-Blue had learned to associate with surprise. “No, it’s gone again. Whatever it was, it appeared to be badly attenuated.”

  “And therefore extremely difficult to distinguish from the cosmic background radiation,” White-Blue said.

  “Exactly,” Torvig said.

  “Interrogative. Should we report it to the bridge?”

  The Choblik spread his cybernetic hands again as he waved his tail at the lab’s representation of the vastness of this sector of the Beta Quadrant—a sector that now betrayed no trace of the intermittent subspace signal. “Report what?”

  Deanna Troi awoke to find that Will’s side of the bed was undisturbed; he’d more than likely pulled an all-night shift on the bridge. She didn’t need her Betazoid gift of empathic awareness to understand the reason: the potential discovery of an ancient power equally capable of wholesale creation and destruction was weighing heavily on him, both because of the vast promise it held for a still-wounded Federation, and because of the existential threat it posed.

  After scooping up little Natasha and giving the year-old child her morning feeding, Troi replicated a light breakfast of uttaberries and swix for herself and ate about half of it before sending the meal’s remains back into the quantum limbo from which it had emerged. She then took a quick sonic shower, changed into a regular duty uniform, and dropped Natasha off with T’Pel at the day-care quarters that adjoined sickbay. After she kissed her daughter goodbye, and exchanged a dignified farewell with T’Pel as well as smiles with two-year-old Totyarguil Bolaji and eleven-year-old Noah Powell, she stepped out into the corridor.

  It was only then that she began to observe that something wasn’t completely right. Something was happening up on the bridge. She sensed Will’s ebullience at the prospect of a new discovery, which sounded a psychic note that nearly (but not quite) masked his misgivings about whatever Titan might find in the next system. And suddenly she noticed something else: emotions that denoted high intelligence, but also primal, almost atavistic feelings. She sensed territoriality, anger, and aggression, but also a familiarity with music, literature, and art. Fear, but also passion. It was difficult to tell which, if either, was ascendant.

  As she walked toward the nearest turbolift, Troi touched her combadge. “Commander Troi to the bridge. Have we reached the next system?”

  An answer came immediately, courtesy of Titan’s first officer. “We have, Commander.”

  “I was just about to call you to the bridge,” said Will. He sounded distracted by the developing crisis, whatever it was.

  “Not necessary, Captain. I’m already on my way.” Thank you so much, she thought into their telepathic link, for almost letting me sleep through whatever’s going on up there, Imzadi.

  I wanted you to be rested, he thought back to her. Although her extraordinarily difficult pregnancy had ended happily some twelve months earlier with the birth of little Natasha, Will still hadn’t entirely shaken the annoying habit he’d developed of treating her like a fragile pane of Betazoid stained glass.

  Rested, she thought as she recalled whose side of the bed had been left in close to mint condition last night. I suppose that makes one of us.

  At first Troi resisted the urge to run the rest of the way to the turbolift. She gave in to the impulse a few seconds later, however, after the Red Alert klaxons began to sound. Perhaps half a minute later, she stepped breathlessly off the turbolift and onto Titan’s bridge, where she found Will and Christine already hard at work. The image of a spectacularly ringed, brilliantly sunlit sapphire planet turned slowly on the main viewer.

  In the foreground lurked several sleek, multi-nacelled alien ships whose aspect she could describe only as predatory. The ships were in motion, and at the moment she could see four of them gathering around a collision-pitted orbital platform which hung over the alien world just inside the boundary of the planet’s innermost golden ring. The platform’s flat base and long, needle-like projection dwarfed the largest vessel that Troi could see. At first, she thought the alien ships were massing to attack the platform, until she began to sense proprietary, protective thoughts coming from the aliens. In the parlance of the old western novels her father had shared with her during her childhood, these vessels were “circling the wagons.”

  A growling, sepulchral voice suddenly began to issue from the bridge comm system. “This is Captain Krassrr of the Ssevarrh. Earthers, you have no claim to this system. It has been annexed by the Gorn Hegemony. Withdraw now, or suffer the consequences.”

  “The Gorn vessels’ weapons remain charged,” Lieutenant Rager reported from ops. “They are raising shields.”

  “Raise ours,” said Vale. “Gorn. I really hate the way they sugarcoat everything.”

  Troi took her seat at the left side of the command chair just as her husband rose from it. He looked tired, which was to be expected, but she also could feel how energized he was with determination and purpose. He noted her arrival with a nod and a small smile, then resumed giving the matter at hand his full attention.

  “This is Captain William Riker of the Federation Star-ship Titan,” he said. “This system is at least a full parsec outside any of the previously recorded formal boundaries of the Gorn Hegemony. In fact, Vela OB2–404 lies outside both of our jurisdictions.”

  “Your star charts are evidently badly out of date, Captain. Withdraw. Now.”

  Will made a slashing gesture in the direction of the ops console, and Ensign Dakal immediately interrupted the comm system’s audio pickup. Turning toward Commander Tuvok’s tactical station, he said, “How many Gorn vessels are you picking up, Commander?”

  “Six so far,” the Vulcan said in his customary even tones. “Although they match the known configuration of Gorn scout vessels, they are all well armed and well armored. The odds in a direct confrontation would be very much against us. And they are certainly prepared to use deadly force to defend the orbital platform.”

  “Orbital platform?” Troi asked, turning toward Will. “Could that be the terraforming artifact you think might have remade some of the other planets in this sector?”

  “We don’t know yet, Deanna,” he said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave here before I find out.”

  “Why don’t we have visual communications?” asked Vale, apparently speaking to no one in particular.

  “Because the Gorn seem to prefer it that way,” Troi said. “At least when it comes to communicating with nonreptiloid species.” Among the many intense, primitive emotions she’d been sensing was a strong feeling of cross-phylum revulsion, not dissimilar to the ingrained fear of reptiles or inse
cts that many humanoids routinely experienced.

  After ordering Rager to reactivate the comm pickup, Will began to respond to the Gorn commander’s demand. “Under every agreement between the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony that I’m aware of, we have as much right to conduct research here as you do.”

  “Is that truly what you are doing here, Captain, in orbit of a world I have already explained to you belongs to the Hegemony? You claim to be conducting research?”

  “Research. That’s pretty much all we do, in fact. Titan is a ship of exploration.”

  “Titan would also appear to be one of the Federrazsh’n war vessels responsible for stopping a mass-attack by the machine-mammals more than a suncircuit ago.”

  Machine-mammals, Troi thought. “The Borg,” she whispered.

  “We did take part in that battle,” Will said. “It was necessary to ensure the Federation’s survival.”

  “You won decisively. But only after the machine-mammals devastated an entire Gorn fleet. How very convenient for you.”

  “We would have taken down the Borg sooner, Captain, if we’d had the means.”

  “I do not believe you, Earther. My original demand stands. Leave this system. Immediately.”

  “I’m prepared to accommodate you, Captain, as a gesture of goodwill. But we’d like the answers to a few questions first.”

  Using the telepathic-empathic link she shared with Will, Troi spoke wordlessly to him. Imzadi, shouldn’t I be the one asking him questions? I am Titan’s senior diplomatic officer, after all.

  Not until you’re up to speed on everything we’ve just learned about what’s going on here, he thought back to her. Now, if you don’t mind . . .

  His request was certainly a reasonable one. Since she knew she was not yet in possession of all the relevant facts, she nodded her assent and allowed him to continue without distracting him any further. Still, she couldn’t quite shake the impression that he was somehow . . . babying her again.

  “Questions?” demanded the Gorn captain.

  “About the device that’s orbiting this planet. Your ships seem to be conducting an operation of some sort with it. In fact, our sensor readings indicate that your vessels towed it here from another star system nearby—”

  “You are inquiring into matters that are none of your concern. If you do not leave now, my vessels will open fire. And they will soon be joined by reinforcements. This will be your final warning.”

  And with that, the comm channel abruptly closed.

  Will stared forward, apparently rapt with the image of the meteoroid-scarred artifact that orbited the brilliant blue world.

  “Mister Tuvok, Ensign Fell: Can either of you confirm that Gorn reinforcements are on their way?”

  “Negative,” Tuvok said after a brief pause to check his console.

  “My scans are also negative, Captain,” said Fell, who was running the science console. “Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Gorn captain is bluffing.”

  Tuvok nodded. “I concur. We might not yet be able to pick up the incoming hostiles, either because of stealth technology or because they’re still too distant for our sensors to resolve them.”

  In answer to Will’s questioning glance, Troi said, “Captain Krassrr isn’t lying. He honestly believes that reinforcements are coming. So I’d assume he also wasn’t bluffing when he said he’d attack us if we don’t lea—”

  Something on Fell’s console suddenly drew the relief science officer’s full attention. “Captain, the Gorn vessels are engaging their weapons locks!”

  Imzadi, now would be a prudent time to withdraw, Troi thought, projecting in Will’s direction. She considered the six Gorn ships out there, the escalating anger she sensed from them, and the vulnerable children belowdecks whom T’Pel was doubtless working very hard to keep calm right about now. Don’t you think?

  Troi felt the tension growing thicker all around the bridge. Just as it increased to a nearly unbearable level, Will said, “Lieutenant Lavena, get us out of here, maximum warp. Once we’ve passed the likely range of their long-range sensors, put us on a heading back for this system’s Kuiper belt. We’ll conceal the ship behind one of the belt’s bigger cometary bodies and keep an eye on the Gorn from there.”

  Will announced that he would be in his ready room if anyone needed him. Without asking his permission, Troi followed him inside the small but tidy office.

  “I don’t understand the risk you’re taking, Will,” she said after the door hissed closed behind her. “Why give an already bad-tempered Gorn captain a good reason to destroy us?”

  His back was to her as he looked out the ready-room window, which displayed a weird panorama of the stars that Titan’s velocity had smeared into multicolored streaks. “I’ve just received some new intelligence from Starfleet. It seems that the Gorn lost a critical breeding planet to a natural disaster last year. Ever since then, they’ve been desperate to find a replacement—or, failing that, to make one.”

  He turned away from the speed-distorted starscape. “I have to find out whether that orbital platform the Gorn are defending really is that theoretical terraforming artifact we’ve been talking about ever since we started finding these Doornail planets out here.”

  She approached him.

  “And what if it is, Will?”

  “Then the Gorn may just have gained a huge technological advantage over the Federation. Not to mention a new metaweapon that will almost certainly end up in the hands of the Romulans, the Tzenkethi, the Breen, the Kinshaya, the Tholians—every one of the Gorn Hegemony’s allies in the Typhon Pact.”

  “But we don’t know yet whether that . . . platform really has any such capabilities. Right?”

  He shook his head. “No. But the Gorn obviously plan to deploy it on the second planet of Vela OB2–404. And they did go to all the trouble of dragging the thing all the way from system OB2–396. They must be reasonably confident in their chances of success.”

  “So the Gorn see Vela OB2–404 II as the best choice to replace their lost breeding world?”

  “It will be,” he said, nodding. “Once they finish adjusting the planet’s climate, that is. Apparently they believe they have the means now. If it turns out they do, then we have a very big problem on our hands.”

  “I understand. The Gorn—the whole Typhon Pact—will have a metaweapon to deploy against us, unless we put a stop to it.”

  “That’s a huge dilemma, Deanna. But I’m afraid it’s not the most immediate one.”

  She took his hands, which she noticed were clammy with the terror he had been struggling so hard to conceal from his crew. “What is, then?”

  “The planet the Gorn want to terraform,” he said. “It’s no Doornail, Deanna.”

  A bottomless pit of realization opened up deep in her belly. At last, she began to comprehend his terror. No. Oh, no.

  He extricated his hands from her grasp and crossed back to the star-streaked window. “The long-range scans show there’s already a civilization there with a hundred or so large cities. They have advanced telecommunications and a thriving culture.

  “I can’t sit by and let the Gorn destroy it.”

  5

  GORN HEGEMONY RECONNAISSANCE VESSEL SSEVARRH

  They’re going to do it here, today, S’syrixx thought, the small monitor before him displaying the eerie yellowish glow of the ecosculptor as the great generation systems deep within its core gradually powered it up. And there’s no way I can persuade them to find another place or time to do this deed. As much as the presence of fur-shedding, homeothermic mammals unnerved him, he almost wished the Sst’rfleeters that Captain Krassrr had chased away had chosen to challenge Krassrr’s highly questionable plans. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

  Soon, very soon, the surface of Hranrar would suffer devastation comparable to what a supernova might deliver. And then, assuming all the theoretical work and partial tests that had been carried out thus far proved reliable, that surface would be re
placed by a new hatchery world specifically tailored for the Gorn warrior caste. The Hranrarii would instantly be reduced to a thing of memory, of interest only to academics and preservers of the past like S’syrixx.

  But despite his mounting despair, S’syrixx knew that he was far from helpless to prevent the slaughter that Krassrr was about to unleash upon Hranrar. Alone in his quarters, he accessed his data terminal and began surreptitiously working his way into a “back door” he had quietly built into the software that the science team was using to feed instructions to the improvised interface between the Gorn flotilla’s computers and the ancient hardware and software that drove the enormous energies contained in the eco-sculptor artifact. The claws on his left manus trembled slightly as he began entering the string of commands he had already decided would prove most effective in feeding the escalating power emanations of the ecosculptor back into itself. In theory, the computer core that governed the artifact—a vastly powerful system that S’syrixx had to admit remained nearly as mysterious as the object itself—would suffer a flash overload that should leave it inoperable, at least for a time.

  After he entered the penultimate command, S’syrixx hesitated. What if I damage the ecosculptor beyond all possibility of repair? he thought. He knew that he was taking a tremendous risk—that of relegating the Gorn warrior caste to the extinction that would inevitably await them in the event they never found a naturally generated hatchery world to take the place of dead Sazssgrerrn. He had little regard for the war-casters, whom he regarded individually as bullies and imbeciles for the most part. But he also bore them no special antipathy, since as a member of a technological caste he was well schooled in the necessity that every caste flourish for the Gorn Hegemony—and for the very Gorn race as a whole—to survive and prosper into the next generation and beyond. Although the relationship between his own caste and that of the warriors was distant and somewhat indirect, no one but the dimmest war-caster groundpounder or meanest labor-caste scat-shoveler could deny the interdependence of all Gorn castes and subcastes.