Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 12

He nodded, and started his way down the corridor, holding his phaser out steadily as he made closer inspections of the dim niches and closed doorjambs he led the team past. Behind him, the first officer asked Vinci, "Any indications of a self-destruct sequence in progress?"

"Negative," he said. "No indication of an active integrated self-destruct system."

"Which isn't to say they couldn't destroy themselves-and us with them-at the drop of a hat."

Thank you for that cheery thought, Chekov thought at Lester. He took another deep breath and forced himself to stay focused.

"It does look like all intras.h.i.+p communications is offline," Vinci continued. "And all the emergency bulkheads on the s.h.i.+p have been sealed shut."

"Hull breaches?" March asked.

"No, none," Kirk answered, which was somewhat of a relief to Chekov, as they had just reached one of those sealed bulkheads. Though, given the choice of finding a room full of angry Romulans or the vacuum of s.p.a.ce beyond the sealed doors, it was a toss-up.

Chekov slowly and carefully pried the cover off the hatch control panel, while Vinci, using a series of silent hand gestures, laid out the plan for their a.s.sault. Kirk and the security contingent all nodded and took up their positions. Meanwhile, Chekov identified the locking circuit, took one more deep breath, and pulled it loose. He looked to the first officer, who gave him a sharp nod, and then yanked the manual release lever down hard.

There was a loud clack, and the doors slid apart. He ducked and leapt through the widening gap, firing his phaser at the pair of figures at the far end of the wide-open room, scrambling for cover before they could respond in kind.

Chekov found a computer bank to hide behind. On the opposite side of the doorway, he saw March crouch behind a desk of some sort, his face twisted in determination. Between them, bolts of tightly focused colored energy blazed from the pa.s.sageway as Kirk, Vinci, and Lester lay down covering fire.

Chekov watched where the return shots were coming from, then peered around the edge of his concealed position and aimed for their source. He fired and hit something round and s.h.i.+ny gold, realizing as it snapped backward that it was the helmeted head of a Romulan guard. The man went down, but before Chekov could feel too good about himself, a return shot struck the device he was using as his s.h.i.+eld. Though the beam itself did not penetrate, the explosion of its inner workings was powerful enough to blast a hole through the back side and blow thousands of bits of microscopic shrapnel into Chekov's face. He screamed as white hot needles pierced his eyes and ripped his skin. He doubled over, hands to his face, and fell into a tight ball, keeping just enough presence of mind to maintain his cover.

"Chekov!" He lifted his head toward the sound of Commander Kirk's voice, but all he could make out was a dark shadow hovering over him against the already weak light of the room. "You okay, kid?"

"Just a flesh wound," Chekov said, or at least tried to. He spat out a glob of warm blood and phlegm, then said, slightly more clearly, "At least I took out one of the d.a.m.ned Cossacks before they got me."

Kirk gave Chekov's shoulder a squeeze and said, "Don't worry about it, kid," suggesting Chekov had not been as coherent as he had thought. "You did good. We'll take care of the rest; you just take it easy."

That sounds like a good idea, Chekov thought as Kirk's shadow grew and filled his entire failing field of vision with darkness.

Chekov was torn up pretty good, worse than anything Kirk's field first-aid training could deal with, even if they weren't still in the middle of a firefight. He pulled his communicator from his pocket and called for an emergency medical beam-out for the Russian kid. He thought to reach out and s.n.a.t.c.h Chekov's phaser from his open hand-just in case-just before the crewman was caught in the transporter and dissolved away. He stuck Chekov's phaser in the back of his pants and leaned out into the open with his own weapon held forward.

As he squeezed the firing stud and ducked back, he noted with satisfaction that the second of the three helmeted soldiers he'd counted was now kissing the deck. It occurred to him that the headwear had to be traditional or ceremonial, because it sure didn't seem to have any practical defensive worth. Kirk's own shot had just missed the one unhelmeted soldier in this security section-an officer, most likely, and a woman at that, with long dark hair and a shockingly short skirt. She also looked shockingly human; in another reality, Kirk would be offering to buy her a drink rather than trying to blast her through the bulkhead. She fired back at him while shouting some Romulan obscenity-which, he considered, might not have been an unexpected response to his offer of a drink, either.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Vinci jump up and fire, then heard what sounded like a third Romulan body collapsing on the deck. That left only one more-a.s.suming, with communications down, the rest of the s.h.i.+p was unaware of what was going on down here, or else reinforcements were being slowed down by the emergency bulkheads. Neither of these was a particularly good a.s.sumption to make.

The female Romulan officer started shouting at them again in her own language. If the Romulan s.h.i.+p had a universal translator, it must have been offline with the rest of communications. Whatever the woman said, though, she sounded d.a.m.ned confident. Kirk imagined she was a.s.suring them more guards were on their way, they didn't stand a chance, et cetera. He checked the power level on his phaser, and then checked Chekov's. He had the idea of setting his largely drained weapon for a force chamber overload and using it as a grenade against the platoon of alien gunmen they were about to face...

Then the woman stopped talking, and even though he still couldn't understand the language, Kirk got the impression she had not reached the end of her thought. He looked across the way to where Lester and Vinci were, and they looked back, equally confused. Then they heard another voice from where the Romulan guards stood, this one male, and perfectly understandable: "I am unarmed. Please, do come forward."

Lester slowly rose from her crouching position, her own weapon ready in case this was a ruse. When she fully straightened and hadn't fired or been fired on, Vinci followed suit, as did Kirk. March, Kirk noted, did not rise, and never would again. He cursed silently as he drew a bead on the man who stood over the insensate body of the female Romulan-the same man who had deceived him by posing as the Vulcan councillor-his hands up, palms forward. T'Pring then entered the small chamber, and out of the corner of his eye, Kirk thought he saw a look of shock on her face as she got her first look at Councillor Sarek's impersonator.

Once the entire boarding party had revealed themselves, the Romulan looked back over his shoulder, and from the now-opened door of a small cell behind him, the captive Vulcan woman stepped forward. "Lady T'Pol." T'Pring stepped farther into the room. "Are you harmed?"

The older woman shook her head. "No. My treatment has been quite civil."

"Give us your hostage," Kirk ordered, his weapon trained directly at the Romulan.

"On one condition."

Kirk very nearly pulled the trigger then, just to show the lying son of a b.i.t.c.h what he thought about his "condition." But instead, he asked, "And what is that?"

The Romulan hesitated, then turned to look at T'Pol, almost as if for encouragement or willpower. Some kind of silent communication pa.s.sed between them, and then the Romulan turned back and looked directly at T'Pring.

"I request political asylum."

10.

The Romulan was quickly removed from the transporter room to the brig by the security team, with T'Pring following directly behind. T'Pol watched them go, wondering how the Romulan would be received once his request was formally presented to the Coalition, or what Vulcan would make of him.

"Are you sure you're all right, madam?"

T'Pol turned, and realized that Commander Kirk was the only other person besides her still in the transporter room. "Yes, Mister Kirk, I am certain," she said. "I should thank you for helping Subcommander T'Pring honor the commander's request."

"You're...welcome," Kirk said, even as he shook his head. T'Pol knew full well that the fear of the s.h.i.+p self-destructing around them while they debated the wisdom of bringing the Romulan aboard was a greater factor than any kindness on the humans' part. But they went through the ritual pretense all the same.

"And, Lady T'Pol, I want to apologize to you," Kirk added, unexpectedly. "I...there was no excuse for my earlier actions. I can rationalize them, tell myself that I was thinking of Earth's best interests, but in reality, I let that man play on my preexisting prejudices. What's more, even after confirming his claims, I didn't entirely trust him. Part of me suspected he didn't have the best of intentions in wanting to get you alone, and...that was all right with me. I put your life at risk for no good reason. You did nothing to deserve...I don't expect you to forgive me for that, but I am sorry."

T'Pol considered the rush of words and genuine emotion the human offered, and she was repelled. While she believed his remorse was real, and his apology earnest, they were meaningless. They did not undo a single thing that had been done to her, and would do nothing to make his actions less damaging. And since the man specifically said he did not expect forgiveness, she saw no reason to a.s.suage his feelings of guilt by giving in to this ridiculous emotional, human need for...

"Oh, now, come on. I screwed up more than my fair share of times, and you always accepted my apologies once it got through my thick skull how wrong I was."

It was different with you, T'Pol protested. The manner in which we typically resolved our disagreements...

"Well, I'm not suggesting you make up with Kirk that way, for Pete's sake. But that part aside, don't tell me you didn't feel better once you decided to accept an apology. No matter how illogical that might be."

T'Pol stared at Kirk, silent and impa.s.sive. He naturally took this as a dismissal of his heartfelt expression of contrition, and started to turn away from her.

"Mister Kirk."

He turned back, but now his countenance had hardened, his emotions reburied and hidden behind the facade of the serious Starfleet officer. As a faithful follower of the teachings of Surak, she should have left those obscured emotions just as they were. Instead, she probed the recess where they'd been hidden. "What made you so hateful of Vulcans?"

Kirk glared back at her, almost as reluctant to liberate those emotions as one of her own people. Then the restraining walls crumbled. "My wife and my son were killed when a Vulcan patrol fired on their transport, after she had been invited to a scientific symposium on Vulcan."

"The Galileo," T'Pol whispered. The tragedy had been the main story on all of Earth's information services for weeks after it happened.

Kirk nodded. "Yes. Of course, I know you had nothing to do with that, that it was just a tragic mistake. But since then, every Vulcan..." He hesitated, clenching his jaw and looking away from her. T'Pol did not interrupt the silence that followed, but waited for Kirk to finish. "I look at you, and I can't help but see the murderer of my family."

"I am sorry for your loss, Mister Kirk," T'Pol told him. "And I understand. When I look at you, I-"

T'Pol quickly stopped herself, and Kirk turned his face slowly back to look directly at her again. "You what?"

It is irrelevant, she should have said. Because it was. And because she had never told another being the full story. But here, with this human who had just admitted his own anger and hatred toward her and all her people, the words began spilling out of her for the first time...

It was freezing cold in New York City.

T'Pol had known, of course, it would be. After all, it was winter in Earth's northern hemisphere, and it had been hours since night had fallen in this part of the globe. And both she and Trip had bundled up in layers upon layers of clothing-including a heavy woolen cap that completely covered her ears-over a set of strategically placed sarium battery-powered heatpacks. This ensemble had always sufficed in the past, in those years when they would celebrate the traditional winter holidays at Jonathan's home a few hundred kilometers farther north. But the winds that blew through the crowded, man-made canyons of Seventh Avenue and Broadway seemed to cut right through to the skin, and deeper, causing her entire body to tense. As another such gust roared past, carrying tiny shards of crystallized water with it, again T'Pol wondered how she had allowed Trip to talk her into this.

The original plan had been for them to join Jonathan and his family for this event, but he had called earlier in the day, explaining that Erika had taken ill, and that he and his wife had opted to quietly celebrate the holiday at home. T'Pol had wanted to do the same, but Trip wouldn't hear of it. "Come on, we've been planning this for over a year! The celebration in Times Square is one of the great New Year's Eve traditions."

"Perhaps next year."

"Next year, h.e.l.l. This is the turn of the century! We have to go!"

"As I understand the Gregorian calendar, 2200 is in fact the last year of the twenty-second century, and the twenty-third does not begin until the year 2201."

"Eh, don't give me that nitpicky stuff," Trip grunted, waving his hand dismissively at her. "New Year's 2200 is the big one; ask any human."

T'Pol ignored the jibe. After thirty-eight years of marriage, she had given up trying to either understand or debate what Trip deemed important. If her husband wanted to a.s.sign special significance to the date of 1 January 2200, it was best to simply accept that.

"We should go," Trip continued to wheedle. "We never go anywhere."

T'Pol furrowed her brow, and turned on Trip. "Go then," she had told him, her tone almost as frigid as the New York air. "Nothing is stopping you."

Trip's face fell as he realized his faux pas. "Wait, now, T'Pol..." he said, but she had turned her back on him at that point, moving into the small house's kitchen. She ignored Trip as he followed and called her name again, busying herself by flipping through meal cards, though she was not hungry.

She had not exactly been hiding here in Panama City since coming to Earth. She and Trip had visited Jonathan's home several times, they'd attended Travis Mayweather's wedding, and Hos.h.i.+ Sato's funeral. But at the same time, she tried not to draw attention to herself, being the only alien on a planet that did not want her there. On occasion, she would wistfully remember the freedom they'd had aboard Enterprise, traveling wherever they liked, the Vulcan High Command or the United Earth Foreign Office be d.a.m.ned. But she'd given that up-and much more-in order to stay with Trip, and had done so willingly. For him to then behave as if he were the one to have made some great sacrifice...

Then Trip was right behind her, one hand on her shoulder. "Wife," he said low into her ear, as he reached around her with his other hand, holding out the first two fingers.

T'Pol sighed and turned as she touched her fingers to his. He occasionally called her by such human endearments as "honey" and "darling," which were largely meaningless to her. But that word, which carried in it all the weight and significance of the Vulcan marital union that had survived since the Time of the Beginning, never failed to strike a chord deep within her Vulcan heart and soul. "Wife, I am sorry," Trip told her. "You know that being with you is the only important thing to me."

"I know, husband," she said, caressing his two fingers. Then she reached up with her other hand, slipped it around the back of his neck, and pulled his face to hers for a kiss. "We will go."

"You sure?"

T'Pol raised an eyebrow, then nodded. "As you said, we rarely go anywhere."

And so, there they were in the middle of Manhattan Island on a late December night, celebrating the approach of an arbitrarily selected second in time, surrounded by tens of thousands of other boisterous, inebriated celebrants. A band on an elevated stage performed something called "splitter," a contemporary musical style which to T'Pol's covered ears sounded like the cries of aylakim being eaten alive by a le-matya. The younger revelers in the crowd, however, clearly enjoyed it, throwing their bodies about in an unrestrained manner that T'Pol could only guess was supposed to resemble dance. She and Trip watched their enthusiastic contortions, he with a huge smile on his rosy-red face that, illogically, seemed to warm her. T'Pol allowed herself a rare smile of her own. Trip turned to face her, and the noise and crowd became irrelevant as husband and wife shared this moment of happiness together.

Then, for some unknown reason, Trip's smile faltered. He reached out and grabbed at the knit scarf T'Pol had knotted around her neck with a gloved hand, trying to pull it loose. T'Pol's smile disappeared as the remnants of a s...o...b..ll still stuck to Trip's fingertips melted on the underside of her chin and slid down her skin. "What are you doing?" she asked as she pulled away, a move that only served to tighten the scarf knot against the side of her neck.

In backing away, she b.u.mped against a large man who, judging by the smell of his breath, had been celebrating the coming of midnight since noon. And for reasons known only to him, rather than accepting the contact as an inevitable consequence of having a large number of people in a relatively small area, he opted instead to thrust his elbow out, driving it into the small of her back, and growl, "Watch it, d.a.m.n you."

"Hey, pal!" Trip shouted as he caught T'Pol and staggered backward slightly himself. "Take it easy, huh?"

The other man's expression darkened even further. "You got a problem, gramps?" he asked, reaching past T'Pol and poking Trip in the shoulder.

Before matters could escalate any further, T'Pol turned to face the man and said, "I apologize for b.u.mping into you. It was not deliberate."

The irritation on the man's face twisted into a look of confusion. "What's wrong with your face?"

T'Pol lifted a gloved hand to her cheek. She should have realized, seeing all the ruddy-faced humans around her, that she would have a similar physiological response to the cold-except, in her case, it would manifest in her complexion taking on an emerald hue. That, she understood too late, was why Trip had been fussing with her scarf.

Trip now grabbed her elbow, whispered in a voice only she could hear, "The natives are getting restless," and started to guide her away from the drunk. T'Pol didn't argue, nor did she intend to let Trip set their pace in putting distance between themselves and the drunken stranger.

She couldn't move fast enough, though. The drunk lashed out with his hand as the two tried to escape into the crowd, and his fingers just happened to catch the cap T'Pol had been wearing.

There were gasps, and shouts of "Vulcan!" and "Alien!" The drunk was so stunned that he could only stare at her, the cap fallen from his slackened grasp to his feet. But others stepped up in his place, eyeing T'Pol with suspicion and anger. It had been nearly half a century since the last extraterrestrial had been expelled from Earth, and now, here was one among them, posing as one of them, infiltrating one of their ritual celebrations.

The angry villagers surged toward their monster...

T'Pol paused, and Kirk remained silent, almost afraid to breathe. She had remained expressionless as she told her story, relating it in a detached, Vulcan-like manner. But Kirk could recognize that, far from being emotionless, she was in fact making a concerted effort to hold back the very real pain she was reliving. It was a look he had done his best to perfect himself over the last six months.

"Trip, of course, leapt to my defense," she continued a moment later. "He put himself between me and the others, even though he was hardly a match for a mob of men a third of his age. By the time the police were able to push through the crowd, break up the fight, and have him beamed to the hospital..."

T'Pol fell silent again. "I'm sorry," Kirk whispered after a moment, and then, remembering what the Romulan had said in his Vulcan guise, added, "I grieve with thee."

T'Pol looked somewhat surprised at that, but simply nodded in acceptance of the sentiment. "But that is who I see when I look at you, Mister Kirk."

"Thank you," Kirk answered, and then clarified, "for sharing that story with me. I get the feeling that it was not that easy for you." T'Pol said nothing, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him.

Kirk turned and started to leave, but paused short of the door. "I think, madam, that the next Vulcan I meet, I will be more likely to see you in them than anyone else."

T'Pol studied him for a long moment, then dipped her head in what he took as a gesture of grat.i.tude. Kirk smiled back-a genuinely heartfelt, friendly smile.

Christopher Pike stood in the well of the main council chamber, looking up at the grand ivory-white dome overhead, and then letting his eyes fall to the rows and rows of tiered wooden benches that circled the speaker's dais. The room was rich in history, and its walls seemed almost to echo with the famed speeches that had been delivered here over the centuries, from the Ramatis Choral Debates of five centuries ago, to the founding of the Interplanetary Coalition in 2161. And now, fates willing, history was to be made once again.

"Captain."

Pike turned to face Amba.s.sadors Hedford and Ta.r.s.es, joining him at the foot of the high marble podium. They exchanged h.e.l.los, and then Hedford turned, as Pike had, to take in their surroundings. "Kind of gives you an idea how the early Christians in Rome felt, just before the lions were released," she observed as more and more delegates filled the seats.

Pike studied her face, looking for some hint of irony, and finding none. "You think it's that bad?" Pike asked, looking up again and studying the attendees a bit more critically.

The conference had almost been canceled outright in the wake of the Kuvak's destruction, and it was only after the Enterprise had returned to Babel with proof of outside interference that it was agreed the summit should go on as planned. However, one didn't need a high esper rating to tell that the mood of many of the partic.i.p.ants had s.h.i.+fted.

"The delegates are concerned," Ta.r.s.es said, diplomatic as always. "We're being blamed, rightly or wrongly, for drawing the Romulans back onto the galactic stage. We lost a lot of the goodwill we started out with forty-eight hours ago. Whether or not we can earn that back..."

As Ta.r.s.es trailed off, leaving that question to dangle just above their heads, Jim Kirk joined the group. The two amba.s.sadors both greeted the commander's presence with rather undiplomatic expressions. Pike couldn't really fault them, all things considered. But Babel Security had decided-in the interests of diplomacy, of course-to drop any charges stemming from the Romulans' theft of security codes, and the worst official offense Pike could think of to pin on him was unauthorized absence. However, the fact that Kirk actually wanted to be witness to this event was reason enough, in Pike's mind, to temporarily forgo any punitive measures against him. "How did it go, Number One?" Pike asked him.

"Pretty well, I think, considering," he answered.

"How did what go?" Ta.r.s.es asked.

Kirk hesitated slightly before telling the amba.s.sadors, "I spoke with Councillor Sarek, to express my personal apologies to him."

"You did what?" Hedford's eyes grew huge, outraged that the Starfleet officer had once again interjected himself into her diplomatic realm. She looked over Kirk's shoulder to one of the foremost tables, where the Councillor and Subcommander T'Pring were now seated in close conversation.

"I felt I owed it to him to explain myself, face-to-face," Kirk said.

Ta.r.s.es scoffed. "I'm sure he found the sentiment utterly illogical."

"Yes, he did," the commander confirmed. "But..."