Crisis of Consciousness (9 page)

THE CAPTAIN AND TAINLER
returned to the central control room after only two minutes. They found Pippenge nervously pacing, shedding hair into his hand and onto his robes: loose strands of both dark and white had fallen and were laying oddly across his breast.

A bit out of breath, Kirk huffed to Spock, “What about the jamming? Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

“From here.”

They all looked toward the elevator, its doors now open. Zhatan stood inside, flanked by two heavily armed soldiers. A third hulking soldier held a squirming Palamas. He pointed a weapon to the A&A officer’s head. It looked like a cross between a Romulan disruptor and an ancient Vulcan laser pistol, which suggested some cultural designs were deep-seeded.

“My men.” Kirk instantly thought of Kaalburg and Ottenbrite.

“You might say they, too, are ‘jammed.’ ” Zhatan didn’t smile. She didn’t seem to be enjoying this as much as her words might suggest.

Kirk hoped his men weren’t dead. Perhaps there was a Kenisian neck pinch. They had a weapon to Palamas’s head but hadn’t shot her. So there was a chance.

“I knew you weren’t gone.” Kirk wouldn’t play games by asking Zhatan what she wanted. They all knew. He only hoped to delay her long enough that Scott would return, get no answer to his hails, and beam down a security team.

“You’re an insightful commander,” Zhatan said. She motioned in a way that encompassed them all. “Remove your weapons and communications devices, please.”

With Kirk’s nod, the landing party removed their equipment and placed everything on the lip of the console. As the captain lay down his phaser, he pulled Palamas away from the Kenisians and moved her behind him.

“As proficient as you are,” Zhatan continued, “we are better. Collectively we have hundreds of years more experience than you.”

“Experience, but not wisdom,” Kirk said, hoping to engage her in debate now that Palamas was out of direct danger. “Why do this to the Maabas? You could have a home here. With them. In peace.”

“Peace,” Zhatan said bitterly, “no longer interests us.”

SIX

Ordering them to lead the way, the Kenisian commander directed the
Enterprise
officers and the Maabas to move through the hatchway that led to the ancient facility. For reasons she didn’t care to divulge, Zhatan needed the original computer banks.

In an attempt to stall until the
Enterprise
returned, Kirk was happy enough to go along.

“How did you manage to return to the system without my ship detecting you?” he asked her.

“We’re more clever than you may credit us, Captain.”

“Oh, I credit you quite a lot.”

“We sense some disdain in your tone.”

“Do you?” Kirk tried to slacken his pace so he could hang back and get closer to Zhatan, but the guard who’d threatened Palamas—a large cross between a Vulcan and a Neanderthal—pushed him forward. Of the three guards, he was the biggest and seemed focused on Kirk. The other two held their weapons on Spock and the lieutenant, and McCoy, Pippenge, and Tainler respectively.

“If we were as vile as you think us,” Zhatan said, “would we not kill you where you stand? We do not
need
you.”

Kirk thought that sounded like she was trying to convince herself she was acting justly. Or at least not foolishly.

“You’re looking for a weapon of uncontrollable destruction.”

“It can be controlled. It will be,” she said. “We are sure it can be done.”

Can be
, Kirk thought. “So you’ve never used it.”

“It has been beyond us,” Zhatan admitted sadly. “We have held the plans within us for so long.”

“But you needed the prototype. You don’t remember it all.” Like some ancient game of telephone, Kirk surmised, their memory of the plans had become too divergent from the original.

“As I said, Captain, you’re quite astute.” Was that respect in her tone? How many of the consciousnesses within Zhatan admired Kirk, and how many wanted him dead?

That was something he might have to test.

“We have a modern version of the devices you found,” she continued. “But we do not have all the details on the original. Some things,” she said quietly, “are lost to time.”

“And,” Kirk pressed on, “you don’t have the
nu’hubis
.”

“
Na’hubis
,” she corrected him. “But you are right. Re-creation and refinement has always eluded us.”

Spock spoke quietly from his position near the front. “We accessed Maabas copies of your data. If your antiquated computers no longer function, would it not be best to use more modern equipment?” Kirk knew he, too, was looking for a way to slow down the Kenisians until the
Enterprise
returned. If they decided to go back, rather than forge ahead, it would waste significant time.

“Did you find details on how to create
na’hubis
, Mister Spock?” Zhatan asked. “Or meticulous plans on the prototype?”

“No.”

“Because such information would be hidden, nontransferable. And incorruptible.”

“You didn’t have time to take the plans or the compound when you fled,” Kirk realized.

Zhatan softened, as if remembering far back—part of her likely was—and her voice was heavy with emotion. “We tried. There was great debate about what the weapon might do to our planet, and some were very much against its use without further testing.” As if pivoting on a mental heel, Zhatan became bitter. “Others were sure it would work, and we were denied the chance to save ourselves from exile.”

Differing factions
, Kirk thought.
How many are still alive within her that remember the exodus?
The captain stopped and waited for Zhatan to catch up with him. It was all so natural that the guards stopped, eating away more time.

“Zhatan, you can have your planet back. You can share it with the Maabas. We can even find a new world for you.” Kirk held out his arms, half pleading with her, half welcoming her in peace. “There doesn’t need to be violence.”

She sighed. “Captain, we are well aware that your ship is due to arrive soon. You Starfleeters seem to be ones of habit and schedules. We applaud it.” She motioned him forward with her weapon. “But we shan’t be fooled by your tactics.”

“Keep walking,” the guard next to him said, pressing the point of the weapon into Kirk’s back. Reluctantly, the prisoners started down the corridor again.

When they entered a stairway that led down—to where, Kirk couldn’t see—he thought this should be where he made his move.

Mock-tripping, Kirk stumbled down three stairs and into Pippenge as well as McCoy’s and Tainler’s guard, which caused Spock and Palamas’s guards to falter.

Spock quickly recovered and attempted to subdue his sentry with a neck pinch, but the move was anticipated and blocked.

By the time Kirk had gotten two blows into the jaw of his immovable guard, Zhatan fired a warning shot of bright green energy that smashed into the stairwell ceiling above them and sent sparks showering down. “Enough!”

Knuckles stinging, Kirk straightened from the awkward crouch he’d been in. He’d planned to spring from his legs to strengthen the next punch—a difficult move to perform while on stairs—but he never got the chance.

Foolish
. The space was too confined for that to have worked. As he panted stale air in and out of his lungs, Kirk remembered that the atmosphere was thinner and the tri-ox was wearing off. And his strength waned with it.

They continued down the stairway. “We know you had to try,” Zhatan said. “But you needn’t worry about yourselves or what happens t—”

At the bottom of the stairway, they moved into a large room. There was a computer kiosk to the left, and opposite that were the containers Spock had shown them.

The
na’hubis.

Once they were all inside, Kirk turned to watch Zhatan.
What had she been about to say?
If Kirk needn’t worry, was it because they’d be dead?

No
, he thought. Using the weapon on the planet would defeat the purpose of their return. Kirk couldn’t believe they’d be so irrational that they would destroy their adopted homeworld just because someone else had colonized in their absence.

The tone of Zhatan’s voice, the feeling he got when she was in his mind—

“You want revenge,” Kirk said. “Not against the Maabas, but whoever pushed you from this world.”

Zhatan stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment.
What was she thinking?
And how many minds inside her were debating what she should tell him?

“Not revenge,” she said finally. “Justice. For the lives upended by a war of aggression.”

“Justice?” Kirk asked. “Or punishment?”

“Do you not have a system which penalizes wrongdoing, Captain?”

Kirk nodded. “We do. Only when someone is found guilty is a punishment carried out.”

“Conquerors, by their actions, are guilty of many crimes.”

Kirk could feel the anger radiating from her, like waves of emotional heat. Again he wondered if it was something left over—some tenuous link—from the forced mind-meld. If so, he felt no influence, just a thread of understanding.

Instinctively, the captain knew not to ask her who she was to try, convict, and carry out a sentence for past crimes. The consciousnesses within Zhatan probably remembered the atrocities they suffered. To her—to all of them—this was not something from a school lesson. It was their personal history.

Pulling a device from her pocket, Zhatan placed the small semicircle-shaped object on the computer kiosk. The unit hummed to life, and a series of holographic images rapidly sliced through the air above the kiosk.

The blur was too quick for Kirk to read, but he noticed Spock registered what—for a Vulcan—passed as surprise, perhaps even shock.

The captain was poised to finally ask why, but Spock was already stepping forward.

“This weapon must not be used.”

The Vulcan’s Kenisian guard tried to pull him back but they were of relatively equal strength and the thin air did not hamper Spock.

“Be silent,” Zhatan snapped. She moved to fire her weapon at him, but then she pulled her arm back a bit.

“I cannot,” Spock said.

“Mister Spock, don’t,” Palamas whispered.

“The Maabas archive did not have complete data. The true purpose of this weapon”—he nodded toward the kiosk’s holographic display that continued to flash by—“is to vibrate subatomic particles in such a way that energy and matter break down irrevocably.”

“Hardly,” Zhatan said. “The process can be limited. We now know exactly how to regulate the effect.” She sounded like a scientist giving a lecture.

“Captain,” Spock said, turning to Kirk, “the Kenisians mustn’t be allowed to detonate one of these mines. Humans feared there might be a chain reaction from splitting the atom, that it would destroy the atmosphere. The database showed Kenisian scientists debated the same quandary. They did not finish the experiment.” He looked at Zhatan. “They’d decided the risk was too high.”

“They were wrong,” she said. “
We
were right.”

Kirk had his answer about the Kenisian factions. The cooler heads that prevailed and lost a war to save their planet were gone. Those who would risk everything were perhaps all that remained.

“The fabric of space itself is in peril,” Spock said, and hearing that from someone not given to hyperbole sent a shudder down Kirk’s spine. “You will destroy far more than your foe.”

“Listen to him!” McCoy pulled forward but was held back by his guard.

Zhatan pulled the object from the kiosk and returned it to her pocket, then regripped her weapon and changed its setting.

“There is no telling the extent of such an event,” Spock said. “This arm of the galaxy could simply cease to exist. Energy and matter would collapse, creating a void of nonexistence.”

“You’re wrong,” she told him, “and I shall prove it to you.”

Zhatan pulled the trigger, as did all her guards. A green flash was followed quickly by darkness.

WHEN SPOCK REGAINED
consciousness, he was neither on the planet, nor back aboard the
Enterprise
. He
was
on a space vessel. He could feel the vibration of engines through the deck plates and the oddly undefinable quality of artificial gravity that differed slightly from the natural pull of a planetary body.

The Vulcan opened his eyes, and they quickly adjusted to the light. He had been placed on a bunk attached to a bulkhead. Having been unconscious, the position was uncomfortable and he stirred. This awakened Pippenge, who was lying next to him. The rest of the landing party were not present.

The walls were an unremarkable gray. The bunk was sturdy and seemed to be part of the wall rather than attached, as he previously assumed. The room was otherwise bare. There was illumination wherever the overhead met the bulkheads, but there didn’t appear to be a door or other path of egress. Clearly they were in some sort of holding cell.

“Are you well?” Spock stood and helped the ambassador to his feet, steadying him by lending support at his elbow and the small of his back.

“I—I think so. I ache all over. And itch. I itch for some reason.” He began scratching his arms and then his legs, thumbs pinching at the skin through his robes. He finally scratched the length of his body in an attempt to stimulate the feeling away.

Spock also noticed a mild sensation on his skin. Pulling his tunic sleeve up, he looked down at his arm. His skin held a darker green tinge than usual, as if he’d been slapped—everywhere.

The wall across from them parted, as if the bulkhead was slit by an invisible knife. Zhatan and two guards stepped through, then the aperture closed again, resuming its smooth appearance.

“Forgive me.” The Kenisian woman’s own skin was also greener than its usual pallor. “The flush you feel is the result of our matter-energy teleportation system. We don’t generally use it for living matter, and it is far harsher than your system.”

Spock had experienced harsh transporters before. The Klingons, for example, did not ameliorate their process for comfort.

Zhatan didn’t hold a weapon, but her two guards carried sidearms and daggers. Spock had seen the same type of knives at certain rites and ceremonies that harkened back to the pre-Surak era. The guards were also helmeted, which was another echo of ancient times.

“Why are we aboard your ship?” Spock asked.

“A direct question,” she said. “We shall offer as direct an answer.” Moving to the wall where she’d entered, Zhatan touched it with her palm. A table and three chairs transported in front of them. In moments they were fully formed, and Zhatan moved to one of the chairs. “Please sit.”

Intraship transporting, but only of inanimate objects.
“Fascinating,” Spock said as he lowered himself onto one of the chairs. It was comfortable and instantly conformed to his shape.

Only recently familiar with advanced transporter technology, Pippenge reacted more slowly. Continuing to pick at his itching skin, he cautiously examined the chair before sitting down.

“Creating furniture and even temporary bulkheads is quite easy,” Zhatan explained. She knocked a knuckle on the slab that spread out between them. “We can even put cushions on the seats, though we’ve never found them comfortable texturally.”

“An interesting and useful technology.” Spock admired the innovation, but discussing it didn’t answer his question. “Why are we your prisoners?”

Zhatan, to her credit, acknowledged her crime without obfuscation. “We have need of your skills.”

Pippenge looked to Spock, then back to Zhatan, probably wondering what skills a politician might have that could be useful to her.

Spock merely waited for her to explain.

“You impressed us,” she said, looking directly at the
Enterprise
’s first officer. “You comprehended much of the science you saw in only brief flashes. You were able to predict—albeit incorrectly—some outcomes our own scientists projected. With further study we believe you can be useful to our goal.” Zhatan paused, and Spock sensed that some internal debate was transpiring. Her eyes flicked a bit from one side to the other, as if figuratively watching an argument between two opposing cliques. “Despite our disagreement,” she finally said, “your help will be instrumental in preventing the outcome you fear.”