Kobayashi Maru ste-12 Read online

  But the impassive demeanor of the assembled delegates immediately told him that only definitive firsthand evidenceinformation that would almost certainly compromise Trips ability to contribute to the continued survival of the Coalition, and maybe even that of Earth itselfwould suffice to persuade the assembled wise heads of four worlds to set aside their many differences.

  And to act on something other than the ever-shifting internal politics of their fractious, fragile new alliance.

  Archer wondered, not for the first time, whether he had embarked on a fools errand by coming here.

  Archers main recollection an hour after hed presented his case before the Coalition Council was that his audience had listened attentively for the most part, but had nevertheless seemed either unwilling or unable to deal head-on with the coming Romulan threat. Sitting in the copilots seat of Shuttlepod One beside Travis Mayweather, Archer silently dissected his own performance before the Coalitions massed powers-that-be as he watched the fog-shrouded San Francisco skyline drop over the horizon. He felt almost robotic as he went through the motions of assisting his helmsman in taking the small auxiliary craft back up into the parking orbit where Enterpriseawaited.

  Travis checked in with Lieutenant Donna “D.O. ONeill, Enterprises third watch commander, who confirmed the shuttlepods approach vector. Then Archer secured his console and rose from his seat to face the rest of his senior officers, all of whom were seated aft of the cockpit area. TPol regarded him with an all but unreadable expression, while both Phlox and Hoshi watched him as well, their gazes radiating quiet concern. Malcolm stared distractedly out of one of the small portside windows, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

  Archer took the empty seat beside his tactical officer. “Looks like my speech must have come off as badly as I think it did.

  Reed turned toward him, displaying a bemused expression. “Sir?

  “You seem to be brooding, Malcolm. Just like the rest of my audience.

  “I wouldnt say Im exactly brooding,Captain, he said in his clipped British accent. “I was just thinking about these Breen that Minister Soval mentioned.

  “Ah. Archer nodded. “What about them?

  “I just wonder why the hell weve never heard of them before, sir.

  Archer had considered that as well, but had already decided that he had to place some limits on his capacity to worry about the future, the unknown, and what might be the unknowable.

  “Perhaps the Breen are obscure to humans because so little is known about them, TPol said. “Even the Vulcan Security Directorate possesses very little hard information about that species.

  Archer nodded, accepting TPols explanation at face value. “Theres no point in jumping at shadows, Malcolm, he said. “For all we know, the Breen are really just Sovals favorite breed of saber-toothed Vulcan puppies, and he was just jerking our collective chains. Besides, weve got the annual inspection of the Altair VI outpost ahead of us, and then its back to the commercial freight corridors to prowl for pirates, Romulans, or whatever else turns up. Weve already got enough on our plate without borrowing any moretrouble.

  Reed smiled ironically. “Worrying just might be the biggest part of a tactical officers job description, sir.

  Sir,he thought, nodding a silent acknowledgment of Malcolms commendable vigilance. Captain.When had his crew begun sounding so excessively formal in his presence?

  It started after Trip left,he realized in a rush. Despite the fact that his working relationship with TPol had grown more close, open, and cordial than he had ever imagined possible, there was nobody aboard Enterprisewho could fill the cold void created by Trips open-ended absence. Though he knew Trips death was merely a ruseas did TPol, Phlox, and Reedit felt real enough to inspire genuine mourning.

  Captain. Sir. Captain. Nobody here feels comfortable just calling me Jonathan.Not even TPol, who had to have been grieving over Trips absence even more intensely than Archer was, her Vulcan emotional makeup notwithstanding.

  He suddenly felt more disconcertingly alone than he had since hed first accepted command of Enterprise.

  THREE

  Vulcan Year 8737 (2135 A.C.E.) Trilan (Vulcan outpost settlement)

  TP OL FLATTENED HERSELFagainst the moist wall, struggling to keep her ragged inhalations under control. She wasnt certain what had happened to the others. It had been at least a quarter of an hour since she had heard any screams, or anything other than the sound of her own heartbeat and rushing bloodlife-giving fluid that she felt certain might be betraying her even now.

  She had been one of six agents of the VSharthe Vulcan Security Directoratethat had undertaken this mission, but she knew that their prey had already dispatched at least two of the others. Their squads leader, Denak, had disappeared down a hole in the ground; the fact that the hole had sealed itself almost immediately lent credence to the idea that Denak had been takenand had not fallen victim to a simple misstep.

  The two other VShar agents had similarly disappeared as theyd made their way through the dank caverns that housed the Frislen, but TPol had nimbly managed to avoid capture. She tried to tamp down the voice inside her that fairly screamed, You havent been takenyet. In this context, the feeling of fear was less an emotion than a primal survival instinct. She allowed it to settle upon her like a warm but ill-fitting cloak.

  To catch something as primal as these creatures, I must think like them,TPol reasoned. It was, in fact, one of the most basic lessons of intelligence and espionage work; to infiltrate, one had to learn to think like ones opponent, even to the point of becoming one of them if necessary.

  She knew that she could never becomeone of the Frislen, unless she contracted the contagion that had ravaged them. From what the Security Directorates files had indicated, that would require both intimate sexual contact and a significant blood-to-blood transfer; the majority of the Frislens victims were not transformed, however, but served instead as food for their cannibalistic appetites.

  Despite their savagery, the Frislen were apparently not without technological defenses, as the VShar team had learned shortly after disembarking here. A targeted electromagnetic pulse had rendered not only all of their scanning and communication equipment useless, but their weaponry as well. The pulse should have been their cue to leave, as TPol and Eskren had reasoned, but Denak had ordered them to move into the caves that apparently housed the Frislen. They were armed now only with smaller weapons barely suitable for hand-to-hand combat, although TPol knew that she could throw the hand-length tricheqon her belt with deadly accuracy. Once, at least.

  TPol felt her boots come into contact with something on the floor, and she crouched defensively, peering into the darkness around her. One hand moved forward, and her fingers connected with something crust-covered and tubular. Further exploration told her that what she had stumbled upon was the skeletal remains ofsomething. She couldnt be certain what it was. It wasnt humanoid, but it was too large to be one of the smaller creatures that were indigenous to this world.

  A sehlat,she finally reasoned, exploring further and finding not only clumps of fur and gristle, but also the sharp tusks that were indicative of adolescent-to-fully-grown members of the urso-feline species that this forbidding worlds Vulcan settlers had brought with them.

  Her mind racing, TPol quickly began removing certain parts of the sehlats skeletal structure. She winced as she broke several of the bonesthe sound of the cracks was like cannon fire in the tunnelsbut her fingers told her that she had guessed correctly about the brittle condition of the remains.

  A short while later, TPol heard sounds nearby. She couldnt tell from which direction they had emanated, but she assumed she was now being stalked anew. Crouching lower, curled almost into a ball, she quickly finished making her preparations, then stood. Shaking, she used a bone fragment to scratch the top side of her shoulder, where the fabric of her sedmahhad already been torn. She felt the blood well up immediately; she had been cut deeply enough to bleed, but not enough to cause nerve damagenor, she
hoped, to affect her defensive abilities.

  Knowing that the Frislen could detect her scent even more strongly than before, TPol sprinted forward into the darkness, barely able to see the tunnels around her. She sensed movement behind her, but dared not whirl around to face her pursuers. The only thing she knew for certain was that the farther into the caves she got, the closer she would come to their nest.

  The floor abruptly gave way in front of her, and she pitched forward, falling into a shallow fissure or ravineor a trapand she felt the creatures leap on her the next moment, their hands pummeling her over and over again, their nails slashing at her. She struggled against their powerful limbs, but after an indefinable length of time allowed herself to go limp. She focused her conscious mind inward, ready to wake up fully with the speed of a charging le-matyafrom behind her meditative shield against both mortal terror and physical pain.

  They carried her with them instead of dragging her, and she was grateful for that, even as she continued to focus herself on what was to come. Eventually, she heard screams she could identify as coming from Vekkr, but as they came closer, the wailing subsided into guttural cries and moans. She hoped silently that if she should survive the mission, she would be able to find the strength to deliver a painless death to any of her comrades who had become infected.

  She remained limp as a rag doll as her captors unceremoniously dumped her against something hard, allowing her to land in a semiseated position. Vekkr was mostly silent now, though in her meditative state, TPol could hear several of the other sounds that were reverberating through the dark, rocky chamber. Within her mind, she withdrew, as if she were a hungry, ravening Underlier waiting to strike from below the baking sands of Vulcans Forge.

  A rough hand grabbed her face, its jagged fingernails digging into her chin. TPol allowed herself to come back to full consciousness, but willed herself not to tense up into a defensive posture that the creatures might notice. She opened her eyes, however, and found herself staring into the ravaged face of what appeared to be a female humanoid.

  Her features were vaguely similar to those of Vulcans, but her eyes were more prominent and seemed to have multiple lids, nictitating from the sides as well as from top to bottom. The womans ears tapered to graceful points at their tips, but everything else about her external pinnae struck TPol as less than aesthetically pleasing; they were flattened backward, were roughly the same size as the womans entire face, and were covered in bulging greenish veins.

  In a movement that might have been a smile had she had lips, the Frislen woman allowed her mouth to tilt upward on the sides as she noticed TPol studying her. Four rows of rotted teethwhich included sharpened, predatory incisorsfilled her oral cavity.

  “You will be mine, I think, the woman said, speaking in a perfect Vulcan Standard dialect.

  TPol was less interested in what the statement meant than she was in keeping the woman talking. As naturally and fearfully as she couldshe didnt really have to feign the trembling that had overtaken hershe peered around the woman into the dimness of the cavern beyond. She saw three more of the Frislen, as well as the remains of Yekda, and the body of Vekkr, on top of which lay a fifth Frislen, who was moving languidly, almost as if in a drunken state.

  “What are you planning to do with us? TPol asked, hearing the quaver in her own voice.

  “You will be mine,the woman said again. “That one belongs now to Gromstl, she said, gesturing toward the creature atop Vekkr. “The others, she added, sweeping a clawed hand toward a grate in the floor that apparently covered a prisonlike pit, “will be food. Or fun. Or they will belong,too.

  TPol understood that the womans emphasis on the word “belong meant that she intended to infect TPol.

  “Why are you preying on the people here? TPol asked.

  The woman tilted her head, a scabrous tongue sliding against one of her forward rows of sharpened teeth. “To survive. To feed. To procreate. To be a reminder, always.

  TPol didnt know what the woman meant, but needed to keep her talking until the time was right to move. “A reminder of what? That savagery exists in the worlds we inhabit? That sentient beings can debase themselves to the level of carnivores or parasites?

  The woman pushed TPols head back roughly and rose to a crouch as she released a noise that might possibly be interpreted as laughter if it hadnt sounded so much like howling. She looked around at the others, then returned her gaze to TPol, who had gathered her arms close in around her torso, clutching herself the way a frightened child might.

  “Perhaps one of these days we should allow someone to returnto tell the others what we really are, the woman said. “The origins of what you call the Frislen. Before the experiments, the mutations, the banishment.

  The woman leaned in close, fixing TPol with her dark, predatory eyes. “They would tell how wewere once you.

  In that moment, TPol allowed her entire being to suffuse itself with every bit of energy she had kept in reserve. Flashing her arms out, she pulled the broken sehlatribs out from where she had concealed them inside her sleeves, tight against her forearms. With a quick slashing motion, she used the jagged tips of the bones to cut the throat of the woman, rolling herself aside even as the ichorous green blood began to spray.

  As the dying Frislen woman clutched at her throat, TPol drew the short tricheqfrom the boot where she had hidden it and threw it at one of the other creatures in the cavern. It pierced his forehead, dropping him instantly.

  TPol had barely managed to regain her footing before one of the remaining Frislen roared toward her, on the attack. She swiped her foot out in a wide kick, hoping that her second makeshift weapon would work as well as the first. The sehlattusk she had strapped to the side of her boot sliced through her attackers torso, and before his forward momentum had entirely spent itself, the Frislens innards were spilling out upon the rough cavern floor.

  A keening sound swiftly filled the chamber, and TPol whirled again, expecting to be attacked by the other two creatures. But the one making the sound was exiting the room through a tunnel, his body slipping effortlessly into the darkness. The other one, the creature atop Vekkr, seemed neither alarmed nor particularly conscious of what had just transpired nearby.

  TPol noticed only now that she could hear the voices of Denak and Ycha calling out to her. Pushing aside the still bleeding body of the Frislen woman whose throat she had cut, TPol looked down into the pit below the grate. Despite the darkness that enfolded the pit, she could see her comrades, at least in silhouette. She quickly cut through the improvised twine that held the grate in place, moved it aside, then reached down to grasp the hand of Ycha.

  The green blood that still rained down on them from the dying Frislen woman made getting a grip difficult, but within a minute, TPol had finished extracting both her fellow agent and her mission leader.

  Denak quickly counted the corpses, and listened as TPol told him about the Frislen that had escaped into the adjoining chambers. “There are many more of them than weve seen so far, Denak said gravely, pointing toward numerous cavelike openings that could have served as berths for sleeping or hibernation. “We probably dont have much time before were beset again. And theyll be angrythis time, instead of merely hungry.

  He pointed to some fabric remains that still clothed skeletons in a shady corner. “Get some torches going with those scraps.

  As Ycha scrambled to comply, TPol retrieved her tricheqfrom the Frislens forehead. A quick scouting of the cavern revealed several of their partys other fallen weapons: both the useless depowered component devices and a few other tricheqs and bladed weapons.

  As she returned Denaks weapon to him, she saw him holding one of the sharpened sehlatbones over the back of the Frislen who lay atop Vekkr. The creature hadnt even noticed that anyone else was nearby, much less the danger that loomed above. Under its form, a bloodied Vekkr lay unconscious, or worse.

  Denak stabbed the weapon down through both figures, piercing through their hearts almost simultaneous
ly. The creature atop Vekkr thrashed for a moment, then twitched in its death throes; TPols ravaged comrade hadnt moved at all.

  “Even had Vekkr lived, he would have been infected, Denak said simply to TPol. “He would have become one of them.

  Ycha came over with torches, and the dry fabrics ignited quickly.

  Weapons in hand and torches held aloft, the trio swiftly plunged into the caves and, TPol hoped, toward their freedom. Should they make it, TPol knew that Denak would probably call in a military air strike on the region, to bombard the caves with some kind of contained plasma fire. Nothing that lived down here would survive such an attack, nor would any trace of the Frislenor their crimesremain.

  Sparing one final glance backward as they departed, TPol pondered exactly what the cryptic words of the Frislen woman had meant.

  “They would tell howwe were onceyou.

  How different was the statement from Denak?

  “He would have become one ofthem.

  Even from her brief time in the Vulcan Security Directorate, TPol knew that the Vulcan people had buried many dark secrets in their past. As they moved through the blackness, she understood with perfect clarity that the Frislen woman had believed herself to number among those secrets.

  What other secrets have we hidden? And when will another one come out of the darkness to consume us?

  TPol shivered, telling herself that she might never discover the answer to that question if she didnt concentrate on getting out of this place, now.

  Sunday, July 13, 2155 EnterpriseNX-01

  Though she knew it was illogical, TPol shivered slightly. She finally moved over to her bed and pulled the neatly folded gray blanket from the end of it, wrapping it around her shoulders. She returned to stand near the viewport, outside of which the blackness of space and the bright streaks of stars had become almost monotonous in their constancy.