Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 7

"I need to speak to T'Pol," Sarek said. "Alone, without other amba.s.sadors or diplomats listening. I ask your help in this, Commander. All I desire is to have the opportunity to make my case to her."

"I don't know..." Kirk said. He had far less love for the Coalition than Sarek apparently did, but what he was asking of him was to help undermine Earth's purpose in asking for this summit-essentially, an act of treason.

"What if I were to tell you, Mister Kirk, that by preventing this unification, you would in fact be saving Earth?"

"I'd be skeptical."

"Naturally," Sarek said with a nod. He turned and began to pace slowly. "The Klingon Empire is growing restive. Since their defeat at Donatu V, they have contented themselves with picking away at minor worlds beyond either of our territories, such as Khitomer, Mestiko, and Organia. But a new generation is coming of age on Qo'noS, young warriors longing to earn honor in combat. Their High Council has been pouring more and more resources into the Defense Force." He turned then to look at Kirk directly. "It is all but inevitable that they will launch a new offensive within the next five-point-four-three-seven years, either against the Interstellar Coalition, the Commonwealth worlds of United Earth, or, most likely, both."

Kirk shook his head in confusion. "Then, you're saying it makes no difference if Earth joins the Coalition or not, we're still as likely to be attacked."

"But as a member of the Coalition," Sarek reminded him, "your Starfleet would be under the direction of Coalition s.p.a.ce Command. Say the Klingons launched a two-p.r.o.nged attack, one at Aldebaran Colony, a world of approximately twelve million, the other against Betelgeuse, one with over eight billion inhabitants. Which do you think will receive the bulk of the defensive effort?"

Kirk blanched at that thought. Of course, they would put their strongest defense around a highly populated member world. But, with a foothold on Aldebaran, it would be an easy matter for the Klingons to then move on to Deneva, Ivor Prime, and then Earth itself. "But...like you said, the Interstellar Coalition is supposed to serve the mutual needs of all its members. They couldn't just leave a world like Aldebaran defenseless."

"No. But they would not be able to defend it well. Except for the occasional Orion raid or other isolated incidents, the Coalition has been at peace for the past generation. Any war would be devastating. The only questions are whether your people can make the choice how to fight, and my people can be allowed to choose peace instead."

Before Kirk could offer any more counterarguments, Sarek pulled a bright green data card from the cuff of his jacket sleeve. "Here," he said, handing it to Kirk. "This has the time and the coordinates where I will meet you and T'Pol tomorrow, as well as the codes which will allow you to beam down without triggering any security alerts."

"Well, now, hold on," Kirk said, still holding the small plastic square out at arm's length. "I haven't said I'll help you yet."

"Tell her whatever you must to have her accompany you," Sarek said, ignoring Kirk's objection, "but speak to no one else of any of this."

Kirk started to repeat his protest, but was cut off by the oddly pitched hum of a non-Starfleet transporter beam. The Vulcan seemed to s.h.i.+ft out of focus, then disappeared in a column of swirling energy. As soon as he was gone, the doors behind him opened with a swoosh, letting light from the corridor spill in.

Kirk hesitated for just a moment, trying to absorb everything he'd just heard and to sort through all the questions now swirling through his head, chief among them, what to do with this information the Vulcan representative had given him. He turned and headed back for the reception hall, determined to find some answers before making any decisions.

7.

"Lieutenant Penda?"

Nyota Uhura muted her earpiece, but made certain she was still recording all the comm traffic to and from the Coalition vessels Shallash and Kuvak before turning in her seat. "Yes, Commander," she asked, looking up at the Enterprise first officer with wide, innocent eyes.

"Pulling double s.h.i.+fts so soon after your transfer?" Kirk asked, offering a small sympathetic grin.

Uhura-or rather, "Penda"-nodded and explained, "Lieutenant Palmer had some personal business she wanted to take care of." An easy half-truth, since everyone on a stars.h.i.+p crew always had personal business that needed attending to, and never enough off-duty time to take care of it. However, it had been Uhura who offered to let the beta-s.h.i.+ft communications officer have the evening off-ostensibly so that "Penda" might have the chance to "get better acquainted" with the handsome young relief helm officer. Palmer was happy enough to comply, and fortunately discreet in her brief knowing glances between "Penda" and Kevin Riley. Of course, Uhura had zero interest, romantic or otherwise, in the lieutenant; life in Starfleet Intelligence didn't allow for such indulgences, particularly not in her section.

"So," Kirk said, leaning his right hip against her console, "how are you enjoying your new a.s.signment so far?"

"Just fine, sir," "Penda" answered with a smile, while behind that facade, Uhura silently snarled in annoyance. Who knew what kind of vital, time-sensitive information she could be missing while engaging in patient small talk with her supposed superior officer.

"I'm glad to hear that," Kirk said, flas.h.i.+ng a boyishly winsome smile. The h.e.l.l of being an attractive young female in the service, Uhura considered, was having to endure being chatted up by every self-styled charmer in uniform. At least Kirk wasn't as obnoxious as some others in their flirtation.

"Lieutenant..." Kirk said, hesitated, then continued, "I was...wondering if you...if I might ask...off the record, unofficially..."

"Sir?" she prompted. She wondered that someone with Kirk's looks would be so bad at this, before recalling that he was a recent widower, and likely just out of practice.

Kirk lowered his voice, leaned in almost imperceptibly, and said, "Wondered if you had picked up any recent chatter about the Klingons."

Uhura blinked. "Excuse me?" That was the absolute last question she had expected.

"I know a lot comes through your board," Kirk explained. "Things that don't necessarily make their way into Command reports and dispatches. I'm just curious if there's been any uptick in talk about the Empire?"

For the briefest of moments, Uhura felt a flash of disappointment that Kirk had not, in fact, been flirting with her. That disappeared as she wondered whether he was being candid about his reasons for asking her, or if he in fact knew who she really was and what her real mission was aboard Enterprise.

It only took a moment to decide that it didn't matter either way. "Well, I did just happen to notice the Guadalca.n.a.l, which has been on border patrol the last six months, has been sending a large number of transmissions back to Earth." Uhura knew that Kirk's security rating was high enough that he could access all except Captain Padway's cla.s.sified logs. It wasn't generally a good idea to give personnel outside of Intelligence access to raw una.n.a.lyzed data like this, but if it let her get back to her work, Uhura had no misgivings as she pulled a freshly encoded data card from her console and handed it over to the commander.

"I appreciate your help, Miss Penda," Kirk said, grinning once again before turning and ducking into the turbolift directly behind him.

The moment he was gone, Uhura turned back to her monitoring boards and keyed a new set of variables into her search parameters. Now, on top of everything else her superiors had expected from her here at Babel, she needed to find out how the Klingons figured into whatever had been discussed at the opening reception. She was looking at a lot more deep research work now.

Well, I guess I know what I'll be doing during gamma s.h.i.+ft, she thought to herself.

T'Pol watched as the candle flame guttered and drowned in its surrounding lake of melted wax. She sighed and pushed herself up off the deck, giving in to the realization that meditation was not possible in her current mental state.

She could not understand why the reception had left her so unsettled. Other than Sarek's snub, and some sort of altercation involving Commander Kirk, the evening had gone relatively well. Her impression from those she had spoken with was that a closer and more friendly relations.h.i.+p with United Earth would, generally speaking, be a welcome development.

"But would that be a good thing?"

T'Pol took pause. Of course it would, she told the contrarian voice. It is the goal toward which we worked for so many years.

"Is it? From what I've gathered, Winston and Hedford and Ta.r.s.es aren't much interested in the captain's goals so much as their own."

They ultimately have the same goal: to partner with the other powers of the galaxy...

"Yeah, but not in the same spirit," Trip's voice said. "Granted, you need people like them: the practical, political minds to deal with the nitty-gritty details. But the captain brought more than that to the table. Could he have convinced the Andorians and Vulcans to start talking in the first place if all he cared about was how it affected Earth? Where is Jonathan Archer's spirit, his dream, in any of this?"

Before she could formulate an answer to that self-posed question, her thoughts were disrupted by the sound of the door chime. T'Pol opened her eyes and glanced at a nearby chronometer, which read 0446 hours. The conference proper was not scheduled to begin for another four hours and fourteen minutes, and thus anyone directly involved should currently be asleep, and would have no reason to deprive her of the same. As this suggested an urgency on the part of whoever was on the other side of the door, T'Pol called out, "Come in," as she slowly and carefully pulled herself to her feet.

She was not surprised when she saw Commander Kirk enter the cabin. The first officer would be a logical choice to alert her to any type of s.h.i.+pboard emergency or similarly vital information. However, there was no suggestion of stress in the man's expression; or rather, the stress he did convey appeared to be antic.i.p.atory, rather than the result of something that had already happened. The two stared at each other for what seemed to be a very long and uncomfortable time.

Finally, Kirk said, "Miss T'Pol, I need to ask you to come with me."

T'Pol fought back the sudden surge of irrational fear she felt trying to overwhelm her. "Where?" she asked the young human.

"Down to the planet."

"Indeed?" she replied. "I a.s.sume, given your placid demeanor and the lack of any alerts, this is not a life-threatening emergency. And the absence of Amba.s.sadors Hedford and Ta.r.s.es leads me to question your intentions."

Kirk reacted with a p.r.i.c.kly scowl and said, "Well, your logic is half correct, at least: we're not in a life-threatening emergency, no."

"Then I am curious as to what possible reason you would have to be here in the middle of s.h.i.+p's night, with the intent of removing me clandestinely from the s.h.i.+p."

"Councillor Sarek wants to speak with you, privately. He asked me to arrange for you to meet with him."

T'Pol c.o.c.ked a single eyebrow at him. "I find that highly improbable."

"I honestly don't care if you find it probable or not. Now please, either come with me or-"

T'Pol did not care to find out what followed "or." Neither did she care to learn what the first officer had in mind for her down on the planetoid surface.

And so, she let out a moan and pitched forward.

Kirk instinctively put his arms out to catch her, no doubt believing the frail old Vulcan woman had succ.u.mbed to some debility or stress-induced shock. T'Pol steadied herself against his chest, took a couple of short breaths, and in an apparent effort to right herself, brought up her right hand and laid it on Kirk's shoulder, just where it began to curve up to his neck...

"Ouch," Kirk said quietly, taking hold of T'Pol's arms and in doing so, pulling her hand away. Were she human, she would have cursed her aged muscles and their inability to exert enough pressure on the junction of nerve cells to knock the younger, stronger man into unconsciousness.

"Are you okay?" Kirk asked, his hands still on her arms, holding on to her as if she might swoon again.

"Let go of me!" T'Pol rasped, straining to pull away. Kirk acquiesced, and T'Pol backed away across the stateroom until her back was to the bulkhead, eyeing him warily. Anger, fear, and frustration all welled up within her as it became clear she was at this man's mercy.

Kirk remained where he was, standing staring at the old woman. "I understand you don't trust me," he said quietly. "And given the way Sarek snubbed you, I doubt you trust him much, either. Since I don't much trust any of you, I guess we're all on even ground together."

"If this is supposed to be leading someplace, Commander," T'Pol said, "may I suggest a less circuitous path?"

"All of that aside...I am a Starfleet officer," Kirk said, pointedly. "I know you know what that means. And I give you my word, as an officer and a gentleman, that I have no hidden motives or sinister intentions here. I'm simply pa.s.sing on a request that you come and listen."

T'Pol considered Kirk anew. She of course knew what it meant to be a Starfleet officer-or rather, what it meant to be one a lifetime ago. She also knew the significance of Kirk's vow, which harkened back to those days, and indeed to long naval tradition predating Starfleet by centuries. Finally, she pushed herself away from the wall, dipped her head slightly, and said, "Very well, Commander." Kirk returned the nod and gestured for her to precede him out of the cabin.

The gamma-s.h.i.+ft transporter chief was caught off guard by their arrival. As beaming down to Babel was generally prohibited, he had been spending his quiet watch playing a colorfully animated game on a data slate. He was so abashed at having been caught at this by the first officer that he didn't even raise the slightest protest when Kirk handed him a data card and ordered the two of them beamed down to the encoded coordinates.

Moments later, T'Pol found herself in a dusty, warm, and dimly lit s.p.a.ce, filled with a constant rhythmic thrumming and the scent of industrial lubricant. As her eyes adjusted, she realized she and Kirk had beamed into the Babel facility's physical plant, buried beneath the surface of the planetoid and housing its energy generators, air and water circulators and purifiers, and waste recyclers. Large pipes and conduits wound like jungle vines throughout the cavernous s.p.a.ce, giving it the impression of a labyrinth, with her at the center.

"I appreciate your promptness, Commander." The voice came from a short distance ahead of them, though the echoing surfaces around them confused Kirk's less sensitive ears, causing him to whip his head wildly in all directions. Then the speaker emerged from behind a squat piece of machinery, faced T'Pol, and raised his left hand, fingers spread. "Live long and prosper, T'Pol of Vulcan." T'Pol returned the salute, but upon being addressed in such a way, found herself momentarily unable to speak.

Sarek lowered his hand and turned to the human. "You have proven yourself a friend of my people and our cause, Kirk. You have my grat.i.tude." Kirk, too, seemed to have no response to his words. Sarek then said, "You may return to your s.h.i.+p now. I would speak with T'Pol alone."

Kirk seemed a little put off by this brusque dismissal, but he said nothing as he pulled a communicator from his hip pocket, spoke to the transporter operator, who had been instructed to stand by, and moments later disappeared in a swirl of sparkling energy.

Now alone, Sarek considered T'Pol silently, with an air of what, in a human, she would have termed exhilaration. "I must admit, I have often imagined meeting and speaking with the infamous T'Pol, whose actions sparked so much upheaval and debate on Vulcan. It is quite fascinating now to find those imaginings made a reality."

T'Pol fought to keep any hint of emotion from her voice as she said, "And yet, you forfeited all opportunity to do so yesterday evening."

He shook his head. "I had no interest in being one of the throng of curious admirers. It must have been quite agreeable to have been so enthusiastically received."

"Though not by any of my own people."

The man raised a surprised eyebrow at T'Pol's unveiled animosity. "You may have forgotten, in your long absence, how politics is waged on Vulcan. As one who helped bring down V'Las and the High Command, you know how much is kept hidden in such matters."

"Indeed, I am familiar with V'Las's methods," T'Pol said. "Just as I am familiar with the reforms T'Pau put in place once the extent of his mendacity and lies was discovered."

"Yet secrets do remain secret, usually for good cause."

"And lies?" T'Pol asked. "What good cause do you have for those?"

There was only the slightest tightening of muscles at the corners of the man's eyes. "What lies do you believe I have told?"

"Presenting yourself as Councillor Sarek, for one."

His reaction was restrained, but enough to tell T'Pol that her suspicion was correct. Vulcans were very low level telepaths, and T'Pol's own talents were never more than average. But she had received a specific mental impression of Sarek during their initial meeting. The sense she got of the man before her now, despite the physical resemblance, was different. At first she conjectured the difference was in the new openness he was now willing to show her, but she then realized that this mind was in fact more closed off than the councillor's had been.

The faux Vulcan shrugged as a smile slowly pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Ah, well. I should have preferred the fiction of a cordial encounter between fellow countrymen had persisted a bit longer, but no matter. Come," he said, reaching for T'Pol's elbow, "let's find someplace more comfortable to continue our conversation."

T'Pol tried to pull away and avoid the imposter's grasp, but the effort was futile. The heaviness of his grip sent a bolt of pain up her arm, and she was forced to accompany him through the maze of machinery. Through the pain and near irrepressible anger roiling up inside her, she asked, "Who are you?"

"My name is hardly of any importance" was the response. "Just know that, for the time being, you are an honored guest of the Romulan Star Empire."

Captain Pike's morning coffee went cold in the cup before him as he became more and more engrossed in his reading. He didn't do much recreational reading, but given the prime minister's personal recommendation, Pike decided to pick up John Gill's biography of Nathan Samuels. He was up to the section on Samuels's college years, following the death of his father, when he first joined Terra Prime, and then, only after being fully drawn into the group, began to realize the full extent of what they represented. It was a fascinating look at the mindset of the early twenty-second century, as Earth finally emerged from the Post-Atomic Horror with the help of the Vulcans, and then started to lash back at their benefactors.

Those who fail to remember history...

The captain was interrupted by an electronic whistle over the comm, followed by the voice of Lieutenant Ed Leslie: "Bridge to Captain Pike."

He put his slate down and tapped his comm panel. "Pike here."

"Captain, it seems T'Pol has gone missing."

"What?!"

"She wasn't in her cabin when Amba.s.sador Hedford went to wake her this morning. I had security run a phase-one search of the s.h.i.+p, and they came up empty."

"What about internal sensors?" the captain asked. "She's the only Vulcan aboard; you should-"

"Already done so, sir," Leslie interrupted. "Results were still negative."

Pike's mind raced. How could a one-hundred-plus-year-old Vulcan woman simply disappear? "Could she have gone down to the planet already?"

"All shuttles are accounted for, and there's no record of any transporter activity."

Pike quickly drained his coffee and set it with the rest of his breakfast dishes for Yeoman Rhoodie to retrieve later. "Where are Hedford and Ta.r.s.es?"

"Here on the bridge, sir."

"Good. I'm on my way," he said. "Get Number One and Scotty up there as well. Pike out."

The captain rushed out of his cabin and to the nearby turbolift. As his knuckles turned white from his death grip on the control wand, one question caromed around in his mind.

"Captain, how could something like this be allowed to happen?" Nancy Hedford's shrill voice cut across the bridge the moment the turbolift doors opened. Ta.r.s.es, the more seasoned of the two diplomats, managed to keep the expression of his anger toward Pike nonverbal.

"I d.a.m.ned well intend to find out," Pike answered them both through his clenched jaw. He headed not for the command chair but for the aft port engineering station. He called up the most recent s.h.i.+p status report, and then the results of the Vulcan lifesigns scan. "When was the last time anyone saw her?" he asked as he studied the readouts.

"Last night, after the reception," Hedford said. "We went straight from the shuttle bay to our own cabins."