Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain (19 page)

The Horta was silent for a moment, and then in Spock’s mind the thought of total understanding coalesced.

We would like to present a new clan to you, Speaker from the Stars.

Fascinating,
thought Spock.
Please do so.

Here is the Star Clan,
Slider Dan intoned in thought.
We are your children, Speaker from the Stars

“What’s going on, Spock?” asked Kirk. “What are you two thinking?”

“We are coming to an understanding,” said Spock. “Our similarities are greater than our differences, and I believe both myself and the Horta truly understand this now. They are a remarkable species. And it would be an honor to become the new All Mother, should that ever come to be.”

“You’re seriously considering this?” asked Kirk

“Not really, Captain,” said Spock. “But, as I believe the saying goes: It
is
an honor to be nominated.”

•   •   •

Rescuing the Horta proved to be challenging, but now every last one of the castaways was collected. Kirk and Spock accompanied Slider Dan back to the shuttle bay, and there they met McCoy, who had been standing by to check out all incoming Horta and to treat any ailments from vacuum or extreme cold.

“I told you before,” said McCoy. “I’m a doctor, not a veterinarian or construction worker. What I don’t know about these creatures’ physiology could fill volumes.”

“And I told you before,” said Kirk, “you’re a healer, so heal.”

“Well, the truth is, as far as I can tell, I’m not needed here,” McCoy grumbled.

In the shuttle bay, the several hundred Horta who had not been spaced were gathered in a large circle around those who had. Spock quickly touched a Horta and joined in the common mind meld of the creatures. He reported back that what was going on was a storytelling session.

“They seem to possess the resiliency of teenagers,” said Spock. “They’re not fazed by change and uncertainty the way an older creature might be. I don’t know whether to attribute this to the species itself or to their relative youth.”

“Or to both,” Kirk said.

“Quite,” replied Spock. “In any case, I do not believe the doctor’s services will be required on this occasion.”

“Thank the powers that be for little favors.”

“I don’t know what I was going to do if they
had
needed my help,” muttered McCoy. “I filled up that phaser wound on the All Mother with thermoconcrete. This time I thought I may have to coat them in hot tar or something equally bizarre.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Kirk said to McCoy’s retreating back. “Spock, the Horta are not even the slightest bit upset by this mishap?”

Spock shook his head. “They are concerned about their safety. And when they experienced the loss of the castaways, it was as if a wound had opened up in their collective mentality. It is hard to express in terms a human would understand, but
it is as if you experienced a sudden amputation of an extremity. The loss was felt in an almost physical sense. Now that the missing Horta are returned and reconnected to the group mind, there is a sense of rejoicing and happiness, and, most of all, of completion. While I cannot share in their joy, I sense its presence. It is a feeling of profound relief on their part.”

“Better than profound anger,” said Kirk. “All right, we’ve heard from our returned Horta, but what did they
do
while they were waiting to get picked up?”

“As I understand it from Slider Dan, the Horta are capable of producing reactionary ejecta from carapaces. They were able to experiment with various maneuvers. As we discovered, groups fell out very near together, and, while they were frightened that they would not be rescued, as sensible creatures they decided to make the most of the situation. They began flying about together, conjoining in formations. Furthermore, they looked around and took in all they could of the sky—something they almost never see on Janus VI. For some of these Horta, the experience was extremely moving, verging on sacred. And they want more of it.”

“When the job is done,” Kirk said.

“Yes, I believe they understand this,” Mister Spock answered.

Kirk smiled. It was as he suspected. Once a
sentient species experienced the wonder of space flight, they seldom wanted to give it up. And some among them would always yearn for it thereafter. The Horta were no different than humans in this respect. It wasn’t inconceivable that a Horta might become a Starfleet officer, as a matter of fact. Maybe even a captain.

That was the future. For now, Vesbius was one day away at warp eight. The asteroid was drawing closer and closer. There was no guarantee that Spock’s and Scotty’s plan would work. The captain was sure that it could be modified along the way. But time was pressing and there was little room for error. This one would be close—and a world and its people hung in the balance.

Twelve

Sulu sat back from the computer screen in his quarters and shook his head in dismay. The history of the Deneb II brush wars was an extremely unsavory and disheartening subject for research, and he’d spent a couple of hours immersed in it. Both sides in the conflict had behaved abysmally, and this was compounded by the fact that the ideologues on both sides had defined the other as inhuman.

The planet surface became a mosaic of nanotech-driven insanity, terrible transformation, and total destruction. Whole swaths became uninhabitable, filled with dueling nanotech-animated zombie armies in perpetual, preprogrammed struggle with one another. Humans who ventured into such areas entered a killing zone out of a surrealist nightmare.

That
had been Merling’s training ground, thought Sulu. No wonder he had turned out to be such a troubled soul.

But what did any of this have to do with the current mission?

Sulu was not sure, but something did not smell
right, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

To do so, he had enlisted the aid of Chekov and the ship’s interior sensors. He was expecting the ensign at any minute.

Sulu ordered up hot water and was preparing to make himself a cup of tea when Chekov arrived. “Come in.” The door to his quarters slid open and the Russian ensign entered. He saw Sulu’s teapot and his eyes lit up.

“Is that the special blend your grandmother sent you?”

“It is,” said Sulu. “Would you like a cup?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Chekov replied. Without waiting to be invited, Chekov pulled up a chair and sat down across from Sulu at the cabin’s small worktable. Sulu didn’t mind. After three and a half years of working together, he and Pavel had become close friends and had saved each other’s lives more than once. Neither stood on ceremony.

Sulu carefully placed the tea in the cup and poured hot water over it. This tea was
matcha,
the thick tea his grandmother used in her ceremonies, and it was wonderfully rich. Sulu liked to carry his own supply of tea. After Sulu carefully mixed the tea he nodded. Chekov took a sip and sighed in contentment.

“My compliments to your grandmother,” he said. “So, how did your research go?”

“Deneb II,” said Sulu, shaking his head. “What a sad story.”

“A civil war?”

“Yes, a terrible one,” Sulu answered. “The worst part about the conflict was that the humanoid government and rebels were not merely from the same background, but were blood relations in many cases. None of that seemed to matter once the fighting started.”

“And what were they fighting over?”

“Water,” said Sulu. “Plain water.”

Sulu explained further that at issue had been rights to the planet’s limited fresh water supply. For a century, wells were owned and controlled by certain families. But after the Federation discovered the planet, and despite the Prime Directive, the outside world trickled in as the locals sought to adopt modern ways of doing things. The trouble was, what was modern on Deneb II turned out to be centuries out of date within the larger Federation.

Eventually, the planetary government, never strong to begin with, divided into two factions. The Water Holders were those who still believed in family rights to wells. But they took it a step further and proclaimed that individual well water must
only
be drunk by the family that owned it.

The Water Sharers, on the other hand, believed in communal ownership of all wells. Upkeep of wells, which was a continual nuisance on Deneb II
with its frequent choking sandstorms, was to be a task all must help with. In Sharer territories, instead of everyone keeping the wells clear, no one did. The Sharers blamed the Holders for their bad wells, and the Holders believed the Sharers sacrilegious polluters who drank unpurified water and had turned into demons as a result.

When war broke out, it was ugly, for by this time, both sides had used the planet’s considerable wealth from dilithium mining to purchase advanced weaponry. Those weapons had all come with contingents of “advisors.”

Chekov sipped his tea. “This is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with our Major Merling?”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Sulu said. He finished his own tea and continued the tale.

“Johan Merling had been one of those outside advisors. After serving an extremely undistinguished stint in his homeworld’s militia, Merling had put himself on the market as a mercenary and had ended up on Deneb II as advisor to the Sharer government. His expertise was in unconventional warfare, and, according to official records, Merling had trained a special forces unit whose mission was to poison Holder wells and knock them out of commission as water sources.

“I followed the trail easily enough to this point, but then things get murky,” Sulu said. “Merling
disappears from the official records as Deneb II descended from rebellion to chaos to complete collapse.”

“Perhaps those records were altered?” Chekov offered.

“It’s more likely all the record keepers were killed,” said Sulu.

“And Merling had a hand in killing them?”

“Possible,” Sulu answered. “In any case, the Holder faction seemed to have the upper hand for a time, but the Sharers resurged. They consolidated their power, and a mass execution of Holders was begun. What started as a war became genocide. Then, as the Holders fought back in desperation, out came the forbidden military nanotech.”

“And you think it was Merling? Cossack!”

Sulu nodded in agreement. “No one knew if it was the Sharers or the Holders who struck first, but someone dropped nano into the wells. The restricted military nano spread and destroyed all in its path, as if the very world had caught the plague. An infected well was literally turned to a poisonous jelly. Those who drank from it died writhing in pain, and then their bodies became infected, zombie-like ‘walkers’ that traveled about spreading the contagion.” Sulu sat back and shook his head. “That’s all I have, however. All circumstantial evidence, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps I can bring us up to date.” Chekov
finished his tea and then raised his data slate. “I have some interesting findings to report.”

That was Chekov—a man made for easy enjoyment but able to turn on a dime to full engagement if the situation called for it. Sulu appreciated these qualities in his friend. Sulu was not so much a master of relaxation as he was a man with hobbies, many hobbies. He had caught the collecting bug at a young age and used it to alleviate the tension of his duties, ensuring the safety of the ship. He had an interest in weaponry long before he’d become a weapons officer himself, and he had an interesting assortment.

“What have you discovered?” Sulu asked his friend.

“First, I examined corridor playback during the shuttle bay incident,” Chekov said. “Our Major Merling was nowhere near the shuttle bay or the Horta while on the ship except for one brief visit, where he’d been accompanied by Captain Kirk, Hannah Faber, and her aides. What’s more, Bellamy Hox definitely
did
slip away for a moment during that tour. Hox probably planted the nano in the control room then.”

“We know Hox is guilty of attempted murder. When he wakes up from that phaser stun, we’ll find out more, I’m sure. But we’ve got nothing on Merling?” Sulu asked. His instincts told him Merling was somehow involved.

“I didn’t say that,” Chekov replied with a smile. Sulu filled his cup again, and Chekov took another sip of tea.

“Well, go on,” said Sulu, keeping the impatience from his voice. You didn’t get anywhere from ordering Chekov about when he was off duty. According to Pavel, nobody could ever be more harsh and dictatorial than his own father, and he considered those who tried to lord it over him only pale imitations of his old man.

The ensign set his teacup back down. He held up a plastic computer card. “The log record for personal locker 57A.”

“Enlighten me,” Sulu said.

“Since Merling didn’t want to be anywhere near Spock or the Horta, we had to put him on deck eight in the technician and ensign berths. As you know from your days down there,
Lieutenant,
these are not the roomiest of spaces. Major Merling beamed up with personal luggage that had to be stored elsewhere.”

“In personal locker 57A,” Sulu said.

“Exactly,” replied Chekov. He slid the card into his computer and the two watched a speeded-up recording of the locker’s access record. Merling came several times to the locker and each time was careful to open it only when no one else was in the corridor. Sometimes this required waiting a good ten minutes. Privacy was more important than quick access, it seemed.

“The interesting point is coming up,” Chekov said. His hand hovered over the control button on the monitor. “Here,” he said, and he pressed the button, freezing the display.

Merling’s hand was just coming out of the locker, holding something. “Can we zoom in on what he’s got there?” Sulu asked.

“Certainly,” said Chekov. He framed and zoomed the image to the item in the major’s hand.

The enlargement showed an instrument with silver trimming on a coal-black body. He’d seen something like this before. Sulu studied it closer. It had a splayed muzzle-like area on the front that was colored bright red, as if to mark the dangerous end.