Worlds in Collision (62 page)

Chekov nodded vigorously, shaking both of them in their suits. But he kept his same bright grin in place. “And…now…I've…got…another!”

 

Shipmaster Krulmadden used a sonic pick to clean the remnants of his dinner from his jeweled teeth, and every time he held the madly vibrating needle to his teeth, the high-pitched grating sound of it made Chekov cringe. Unfortunately, Krulmadden had seen his reaction and apparently enjoyed it. His teeth were long since sparkling—in more ways than one—but he kept tapping the sonic pick to them in order to see Chekov jump. Except for that annoying noise, the
Queen Mary'
s crew lounge was silent as everyone waited for Krulmadden's reply.

But he wasn't ready to give one. “You were not
f'deraxt'l
admiral in
stator-
fleet,” Krulmadden said skeptically.

Lasslanlin and Artinton laughed at the new pun on Starfleet their cousin had made.

“So you could not have big secrets like the one you tell me.” Krulmadden placed the sonic pick against his teeth until his lips blurred with vibration. “Should I kill you for liars being?”

Chekov shook his head and prepared himself to tell the story again. He couldn't understand how a being whose brain worked as slowly as Krulmadden's had ever managed to stay in control of his own vessel for so long.

“I did not make myself clear,” Chekov said wearily. The combination of four hours of EVA to repair the
Queen Mary'
s hull breech, the return to double gravity, and now the added discomfort of having a medic-booth intravenous cuff strapped to his arm was rapidly becoming more than he could bear. Beside him at the brilliantly gleaming steel mess table, he saw Sulu slumped in his chair, dark circles under his eyes, struggling against anti-radiation drugs and exhaustion to stay awake. A long glistening tube trailed from his arm as well, snaking across the floor to the humming and vibrating medic booth.

“We have time, time, time,” Krulmadden said expansively. “Make yourself clear, little mammal.”

“First of all, what I have told you is not a secret,” Chekov said.

Krulmadden spit on the floor. “A million tons of fissionables which lie around for the taking—and they have not been taken? If they have not been taken, then they must be a secret.”

“No,” Chekov protested. “It's just that fissionables are not considered that important. Starfleet has complete jurisdiction over the planet and it is forbidden to take anything from it.”

“Besides,” Sulu said weakly, “almost all Starfleet vessels are powered by matter and antimatter. Starfleet doesn't need fissionables.”

Krulmadden looked over at Lasslanlin and Artinton.

“They lie,” Lasslanlin said.

“So kill them,” Artinton concluded happily.

Chekov tried to wave his hands in frustration but he couldn't lift them from the tabletop. “How can you say that I'm lying if you won't even go to the planet to see for yourself?”

Lasslanlin had another suggestion. “If they not lying, then can we go ourselves to the planet?”

Artinton smiled with another idea of his own. “So we can kill them now still!”

Sulu shook his head back and forth. “No, Artinton. If you kill us before you go, then you won't be able to get past the Starfleet blockade. We're the ones who know the codes and the patrol patterns, remember? You need us to get in and to get out.”

“Kill them afterward?” Artinton asked hopefully. “Just one?”

Krulmadden placed his hands on the table and the metal of his rings scraped like fingernails on slate. Chekov didn't know how much more of this his ears could take.

“This is Krulmadden's problem,” he said. “You wish to steal from
stator
fleet. All right, Krulmadden understands this. You wish to shame them, hurt them, all fine and good, good, good as far as Krulmadden knows. But Talin IV is Kirk's World, yes, no?”

“Talin IV is Talin IV,” Sulu said grimly.

“Whatever. The planet of many names was destroyed by nuclear warheads. Updates say
all
weapons. All weapons launched when the
Enterprise
goes there and scares everyone. All weapons explode. Kill that world. Foof. No more nothing.”

“That's right,” Chekov said. “So what is your problem?”

“Exploding all weapons means consuming all fissionables. Krulmadden knows uniphysics. There are no fissionables on Talin IV. You lie to bring me dishonor. So I must kill you, nothing personal. Artinton, give me a dancerknife with a very slow blade.”

Krulmadden held out his hand like a surgeon waiting for a protoplaser. Artinton pulled open his vest and began looking inside. Chekov heard the clink of fine metal.

“Wait! Listen to me for once!” Chekov tried to stand but only managed to get halfway up.

Krulmadden shrugged and brought his hand back. “Okay,” he agreed.

Chekov stared at the pirate's new change of mood in disbelief. How could he keep reversing himself this way? The navigator couldn't stand it any longer. He didn't care what Sulu said about trying to stay calm. He had had enough. “Listen to me, you owerstuffed, jiggling mound of flame jelly. I have told you cossacks this a thousand times and I will only tell you once more before I rip those ridiculous rocks out of your mouth with your own belt buckles!” Chekov ignored Sulu's plaintive groan. “Not all the Talin warheads exploded. They have a failure rate of forty percent. Forty percent of the entire world's arsenal is still there—refined, weapons-grade fissionables. And no one on the planet can do a thing to stop you.”

Krulmadden nodded wisely. “When you say it that way, you make it sound like an appealing business dealing.”

Chekov wanted to put his head on the table and go to sleep for a year. “Say it what way? I didn't say anything that I haven't said before!”

“Ah,” Krulmadden said approvingly, “but this time you said it with such passion.” He made a fist and tapped his knuckles on the table. “Very well, the illustrious jewel of the stars shall go to Talin IV to show our
flars
to the
stator
fleet onions!”

“I think you mean ‘minions,' ” Sulu said weakly.

“Whatever. We shall show them, and then we shall retrieve a cargo of fissionables that shall make Krulmadden the richest trader in all the veils of heaven's harem.” He beamed at Chekov with a jeweled smile. “And if you and your
tislin
survive the medic booth's treatment, you share two percent.” He held up a thick finger before Chekov could say anything. “Nonnegotiable—unless you have your own medic booth you would like to use?”

“Two percent,” Chekov said, hoping that he looked convincingly beaten.

“What a good little mammal.” Krulmadden reached across the table and squeezed Chekov's cheek teasingly between thumb and forefinger.

Chekov pulled away and his head thudded against the back of his chair.
But Talin has almost Earth normal gravity,
he thought.
Sulu and I can recover there.
He tried to straighten his head as he spoke. “Shall I begin to plot in the approaches necessary to awoid Starfleet's patrols around Talin?” he asked.

“No hurry,” Krulmadden said.

“But we're only about five days out from Talin,” Sulu said.

Krulmadden's eyes glinted. “Ah, so you do know where we are. Even without charts. Krulmadden is impressed. But Krulmadden also has other concerns for the moment. And Talin IV is going nowhere but around its lonely little sun. We will go there soon enough. A month, a year, or once upon a time.”

It worked before,
Chekov thought.
Might as well try it again.
“How stupid does a shipmaster have to be to decide not to pick up a fortune in refined fissionables while he has the chance?”

Krulmadden looked at Artinton. The Orion mate pulled back his vest again and began searching for a dancerknife.

“How stupid does a mammal have to be to know that there is no sense picking up one cargo until the shipmaster has unloaded his first? Or do you and your
tislin
hate the slavegirls so much you would have me offload them in empty space without profit?”

Chekov pointed weakly to the intravenous cuff on his arm. “It's the medication,” he said apologetically, trying to shrug despite the cruel gravity.

“Hope that it continues to flow,” Krulmadden said in what was quite clearly a threat. “And in the meantime, I am shipmaster and say where the ship goes. And right now, this ship goes to trade with Black Ire.”

“What is Black Ire?” Chekov asked, trying to keep Krulmadden distracted, but dismayed that it appeared it might still be several months before they could reach Talin.

“Black Ire a who, little mammal. A trader in greenskins and, unlike your dear, sweet, understanding Shipmaster Krulmadden, Black Ire a most fearsome and dangerous
pirate.”

“I thought that's what you were supposed to be,” Sulu sighed.

“Me?” Krulmadden crowed. “Fearsome and dangerous?” He leaned forward, crinkling his pudgy nose and eyebrows at Chekov and Sulu. “How much you have still to learn, little mammals. And how much I shall enjoy teaching you.”

“What happened to the astronauts?”

“The what?” Kirk said. He watched as Nogura stepped carefully across the environmental control board, tail lashing. Kirk had quickly learned why the most critical controls of the
Ian Shelton
were protected with clear covers.

Anne Gauvreau caught up with the cat and scooped it under her arm. “Isn't that what they used to call space explorers? Astronauts or cosmonauts or something? You know, the two Talin in the lunar orbiter. Were they still in orbit when it happened?”

When
it
happened,
Kirk noted. Not “the disaster,” not “the mistake,” Gauvreau just referred to what he had told her had happened at Talin IV as “it.”

“I don't think anyone knows for certain,” Kirk said. He stretched out in the crew chair, watching the stars slip past on the viewscreen at a steady warp four. The ship was two days out from Hanover and there wasn't a lot that Gauvreau didn't know about him or Talin. Two weeks on an automated freighter
was
a long time. “I wasn't kept informed about most of what happened over the next few days. I know that the rescue shuttles from Starbase 29 went looking for the Talin ship but I don't think anything was ever found.”

Gauvreau chucked Nogura under the chin as she watched a consumables breakdown scroll past on a computer display. Kirk respected her ability to be able to keep up with several different sources of information at once. Good officers had to be able to do that in a bridge environment. The human resource specialists in Starfleet called it “human multitasking.”

“Do you think they crashed?” she asked. “I mean, on purpose, seeing their world destroyed like that.”

Kirk watched as Komack stuck his head up above the impulse board, ears flattened. Kirk had learned how to read the creatures' minds in the past two weeks: The cat was looking for a lap.

“I don't think anyone had the resources to scan the entire moon for such a small crashed vehicle. Maybe they even landed. But there was no sign that they tried to get back to Talin.” Komack stepped precisely between the impulse controls and stood across from Kirk, staring intently at him. “I suppose we can't blame them for not wanting to.”

Gauvreau came over to the impulse station and pushed Komack off the board so she could lean against it. She kept her hand busy on Nogura's ears. The stars swam behind her.

“It's not your fault, you know.”

“Thank you,” Kirk said. Now that she had heard the whole story, he didn't question her decision to accept his innocence.

“Too bad I wasn't on the board of inquiry, hmm?” She smiled at him, trying to get him to respond in kind. Kirk knew he hadn't been doing a lot of that on board the
Shelton.
But he decided that he couldn't be blamed for not wanting to, either.

“You still haven't told me everything that went on then,” Gauvreau said.

“Not much to tell. The board members had full bridge log tapes up to the point we went into warp in the atmosphere—” Kirk saw that Gauvreau still shuddered at the concept. “—so they could see exactly what had happened. They reviewed the tapes. Asked a few questions for the record to determine what the state of our minds were at various times, then made their ruling.”

“One ruling or two?” she asked.

“Five actually,” Kirk said. “One for each of us who had willfully—”

“No, I don't mean how many crew members they ruled against. I remember the
Enterprise
Five. I mean, did they only make a ruling to cover the second time you tried to stop the exchange of weapons, or did they rule on the first time, too? After the accidental detonation in the missile silo.”

“As far as the board was concerned, they weren't separate events. The core of their decision was that if I had not interfered the first time, then the second exchange would not have occurred.”

Gauvreau stopped scratching her cat's ears and let him slip out of her hands to the deck. Nogura made a soft squeaking sound as he hit, then stalked off to the ladderway. Gauvreau sat in the navigation chair across from Kirk and leaned forward, putting her elbow on her knee and resting her chin on her hand.

“Now, how did they come to that conclusion?” she asked.

For once Kirk smiled of his own accord. “For what it's worth, my science officer said their reasoning was quite logical.”

“Enlighten me,” Gauvreau said.

Kirk kept his eyes on the screen and the stars. He could not deny that these were painful memories Gauvreau had been coaxing from him. Yet he knew he had to face them sooner or later, so he did not resist.

“They brought in three cultural specialists from the Richter Institute. And they maintained that, from the data assembled by Starfleet's own FCO, the Talin were clearly dedicated to global peace in their world.”

“Despite the fact that they were armed to the teeth?”

“Many worlds have been in similar situations and survived. The specialists said that Talin IV had had an excellent chance of being one of them.”

Gauvreau sat up, plainly upset. “The accidental detonation had nothing at all to do with whatever the Talin hoped for in the long run. And it could have led them to a full exchange even earlier.”

“I'm not the board of inquiry,” Kirk said defensively. “I'm only telling you what they ruled. And they ruled that had the Talin experienced a small example of the effects of a full-scale war because of the accidental detonation, it would have propelled them into serious arms and peace negotiations.”

“Ah,” Gauvreau said, “so the board decided that you spared them that particular lesson.”

“Exactly,” Kirk agreed. “If I had allowed a minor exchange of weapons to take place, then the major exchange would not have followed.”

Gauvreau frowned in disbelief. “Were there any Vulcans on this board?”

“Two actually. The civilian members. And no dissenting opinions.”

“I don't understand how they could come to that conclusion.”

Kirk closed his eyes for a moment and saw himself standing before the board. He remembered each word they had said, because each word had taken away another small part of his dream.

“The board concluded that I had denied the Talin the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes. Because they did not have to deal with the consequences of an accidental nuclear detonation, some of them were recklessly encouraged to proceed with a more dangerous action. By interfering with their normal development, I made it possible for them to engage in an activity which led to the destruction of their world. A textbook example of what happens when the Prime Directive is not upheld.” Kirk opened his eyes. Gauvreau looked away from him.

“Was there no defense you could give?” she asked.

“If I had refused to resign, they would have held a court-martial for each of us who took action on the bridge. We could have presented a defense then, but if the defense weren't accepted, then each of my bridge team might have faced twenty years' imprisonment. I couldn't do that to them.”

“What about what you did to yourself, Kirk?”

“That's not important.”

“What is?”

“The Talin.”

“But if you don't believe you contravened the Prime Directive, then why be concerned with them?”

Kirk swung around to face her. It didn't seem like her to be so cold or so callous. “Let's get this straight, Captain. At the time I made my decision to act, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I believed I was following my orders and doing my duty. In hindsight, perhaps I did not uphold the Prime Directive, despite my best intentions. But no matter what actually happened on Talin IV—whether I'm technically or legally right or wrong—I do not intend to deny that I share some responsibility for what happened.” He studied her, wondering if she understood what he was saying, if she understood the concept of duty as he did. “If I caused harm to the Talin, then somehow, some way, I will attempt to right it, no matter how little I can do, and no matter how long it might take.”

Gauvreau stood up and slid her hands into the pockets of her multipatched flight jacket. “You can say that despite what Starfleet did to you?”

“All Starfleet personnel involved with the Talin inquiry did their duty as they saw fit. I have no quarrel with them. The answer lies elsewhere.”

Gauvreau thrust her head forward, squinting in exasperation. “Then who do you have a quarrel with? You've been tighter than a cadet's bedsheet. I keep thinking you're going to haul off and kick one of my cats. If you're not angry at Starfleet and you're not angry at yourself and you're not angry at the damned board of inquiry, then who the hell are you mad at?”

“Captain Gauvreau,” Kirk said seriously, “I'll let you know when I get back to Talin. Because whoever I'm mad at, that's where I'm going to find them.”

 

Two days later, Kirk stood in the empty cargo hold of the
Ian Shelton
and tucked his kit bag under his arm. When Gauvreau came back and paid him for his tour as supercargo, he'd be able to beam over to Hanover's spacedock, then catch a shuttle down to the colony world's freighter yards. There he could try his luck again at getting a cargo handler's job, or even pay for freighter passage to another system closer still to Talin. Eventually, he'd get back there, he knew. And even if he didn't, he knew he would never stop trying.

He heard his name echo in the vast hold of the ship and turned to see Gauvreau standing on an observation platform near the control booth. She waved to him.

About time,
thought Kirk,
now we can get this over with.
Two weeks in deep space with her and he still had no idea how to read her. He couldn't make up his mind whether or not he thought Starfleet had made a mistake in letting go an officer of her wide-ranging abilities, or had been wise in refusing to promote such an eccentric, self-contained perfectionist. At least her cats liked her.

Kirk arrived at the ladder leading up to the observation platform. He was pleased when he saw that among the packages and cases Gauvreau carried was the
Shelton
's paymaster terminal. Liquid credits were slowly being phased out throughout much of the Federation as virtually unlimited power and manufacturing technologies became automated to the point where they were self-reproducing and maintaining. When the necessities of life had no value and interplanetary resources were prodigious enough to ensure that people could have almost anything they could imagine, a simple, cashless system of barter naturally arose. But out on the frontier, Kirk knew, there would always have to be some system of portable wealth so that credits could be taken from place to place in search of scarce commodities. Then again, who knew what the future would bring?

Gauvreau stepped back and Kirk climbed the ladder to join her. He saw her three cats in the cargo control room, staring through the window at her. She would not let them out into the hold, no matter how much they cried and rubbed at the airlock.

“Sorry to take so long,” Gauvreau said. “You'll be pleased to know that the whole transfer of cargo was accomplished without damage. I get a bonus for that and you're going to share in it.”

“Thank you,” Kirk said. Whatever else Anne Gauvreau might be, she was fair. “Did you get a chance to find out about their public transporter facilities?”

“That's what I came back on,” she said. “I even got you a rate card. But…why not come back inside for a few minutes?” She pointed toward the airlock leading to the control room.

Kirk was in a hurry and it showed.

But Gauvreau was determined. She held up a small brown package and Kirk smelled what was in it instantly. “Real coffee,” she said triumphantly. “Stasis beans from Earth. Roasted locally. You can't say no.”

Kirk couldn't. He followed her back into the crew areas of her ship.

As the scent of fresh coffee filled the tiny lounge, Gauvreau unpacked another small case on the games table. “One of the reasons I was held up was because I tried to get online with the Starfleet update channels.” She glanced at him. “It's completely legal. They're a public channel.”

They were, technically, Kirk knew. But to intercept them, civilians usually needed a Starfleet-licensed receiver, which the
Shelton
didn't have.

“So, I still have friends in Starfleet,” Gauvreau said. “And a few of them at the Starfleet office over on the spacedock let me download update files.”

Kirk watched the coffee bubble up from the osmosis inverter. He was surprised at how the prospect of reading Starfleet updates didn't seem to affect him either way—he was neither interested nor disinterested, as if he no longer cared. Instead he wondered why Gauvreau was going to such lengths to let him know she had some.

“Is there something special going on out in the galaxy you think I should know about?” he asked.