STAR TREK - TOS (9 page)

CHARING CROSS ROAD

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

NOVEMBER 5, 1992

IT SOUNDED LIKE A RIOT OUTSIDE. Noisy shouting, along with the smell of burning torches and bonfires, penetrated the cramped, cozy atmosphere of the bookshop, one of several occupying this most bibliophilic of London neighborhoods. Ordinarily, Roberta would be alarmed, but not on the evening of November 5th; she recognized the raucous sound of a typical Guy Fawkes Day celebration.

Through the shop’s first-floor window, she saw hordes of costumed revelers marching down Charing Cross Road toward Trafalgar Square. As well as sparklers and torches, the festivants bore aloft life-size papier-mâché effigies of the infamous Guy himself, not to mention various contemporary politicians and celebrities, all destined for the bonfire before the[69]night was out. Roberta spotted three-dimensional caricatures of Fergie and John Major on their way to incineration, bouncing upon the shoulders of their jubilant bearers. A string of firecrackers went off less than a block away, adding to the general tumult.

Sounds like fun,she thought, from her cluttered desk at the rear of the bookshop. A checkered flannel shirt and torn jeans were her concessions to the “grunge” craze emanating from her native Seattle, while a red AIDS ribbon testified to a more tragic sign of the times. Roberta hoped to join the festivities soon, but first she had to take care of some work. In the last week or so, she’d caught wind of a nefarious plot to burn down Windsor Castle sometime later this month. She suspected Khan was behind the scheme, possibly just to keep her and Seven busy while he plotted bigger mischief elsewhere.
Still, I’d better look
into it,
she resolved, opening a new (and tightly encrypted) file on her computer screen, then firing off some inquiring e-mails to a number of her most trusted European contacts.

Roberta sighed, contemplating the size of her workload. In recent years, she had taken over handling most of the day-to-day operations and field missions, freeing Seven to concentrate more on the big picture; i.e. the growing threat of Khan and his over-ambitious supersiblings. She glanced up at the ceiling, figuring that Seven was no doubt hard at work in his “war room” on the second floor. She was glad that she could take some of the load off his aging shoulders, even if it did get a bit overwhelming sometimes.
Don’t forget,
she reminded herself,
you’ve still got to follow up on those new reports from
Chandigarh.

[70]Plus, of course, she also had a new shipment of books to shelve. She wistfully eyed the small cache of fireworks—mostly sparklers and a few Roman candles—waiting atop her desk, and wondered if she would have time to take part in tonight’s celebrations. A scented candle, sitting atop her computer monitor, safely away from the fireworks, combated the musty aroma of the bookstore.

The tinkle of the copper bell alerted her to the arrival of two prospective customers at the shop’s front entrance. She quickly replaced her notes on the future castle torching with a more innocuous spreadsheet, then glanced up at her visitors—who turned out to be Prince Charles and Ross Perot.

Or, to be more precise, Guy Fawkes Day merrymakers wearing store-bought plastic masks of the prince and the Texas millionaire.
Not bad likenesses,
Roberta thought, although the second man was considerably taller than the real Perot.
But then, who isn’t?
Heavy winter coats protected the impostors from the chill night air outside.

Roberta had spent too much of her life in New York City to be entirely comfortable with the notion of masked strangers entering her store, no matter what night it was. Just to play it safe, she lightly tapped a paperweight upon her desk: a green, translucent pyramid, about the size of three computer diskettes stacked against each other.

The pyramid—in actuality, a remote interface for the artificially intelligent Beta 6 computer upstairs—beeped once and emitted a faint glow as it scanned the newcomers for concealed weapons.

She suppressed a sigh of relief as the pyramid beeped a[71]second time, signifying that visitors were unarmed. “Good evening,” she said pleasantly, standing up behind her desk. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, please,” Prince Charles said from behind his mask. He stepped toward Roberta, leaving his friend to browse the shelves at the front of the store. “I am looking for a book, but I cannot recall the name of the author.” His voice held a hint of an Australian accent. “Do you know who wrote
Far Beyond the
Stars?”

Roberta recognized the title as a classic 1950s science-fiction novella. “That would be Benjamin Russell,” she volunteered, “but I’m afraid we don’t have it in stock.” She shrugged her shoulders and gestured toward the overstuffed bookshelves surrounding her. “We mostly carry history, current events, and other nonfiction works.”

“I see,” the man said amiably, not sounding too disappointed. “Let me write down that name.” He removed a small spiral notepad from his coat pocket, then patted himself down, apparently looking for something to write with. “Excuse me,” he said after a few seconds of fruitless self-examination, “may I borrow your pen?”

“Certainly,” Roberta replied automatically. She reached for her servo, which, among its many other uses, also served as a perfectly functional writing implement, and almost handed it over to the stranger. At the last minute, however, she hesitated, brought up short by a niggle of suspicion at the back of her mind.

Holding on tightly to the silver instrument, she peered into the anonymous blue orbs observing her through the cut-out eyeholes of his plastic mask. Was she just being paranoid, or did “Prince Charles” look just a little too eager to get his hands on her pen?

[72]Uncertain, Roberta glanced over at the man’s associate, the too-tall Perot. She couldn’t help noticing the way he appeared to be lingering by the front door, as if maintaining a furtive lookout.
Maybe
he wants to make sure we’re not interrupted,
she speculated, feeling a chill run down her spine.
Ihave
a bad feeling about this.

She drew back her hand, intending to offer Prince Charles a convenient pencil instead, but he must have read her suspicions in her face. “With lightning-fast reflexes, he grabbed hold of her wrist and squeezed it with preternatural strength.

Roberta gasped in pain, releasing the servo involuntarily; The bogus Prince caught hold of it with his free hand before it even came close to hitting the floor. Roberta kicked herself for letting her guard down, however briefly.
I should have remembered,
she thought,
that Khan’s genetically engineered goons
don’t need weapons to be dangerous.

Without releasing Roberta, Prince Charles deposited the captured servo into his coat pocket.
Yet
another one for Khan’s collection,
Roberta reflected bitterly. She drew meager comfort from the knowledge that Khan wanted her and Seven’s technology, especially with regards to teleportation, even more than he wanted them dead. Which probably explains why he didn’t just obliterate the store with a bomb or missile or something.

Prince Charles nodded at Ross Perot, who locked the front entrance and turned theCLOSEDsign toward the outside. Satisfied, Charles let go of Roberta and shoved her down into her seat behind the desk. “Silence,” he warned her, closing his fist around an[73]imaginary throat to illustrate what would happen to her if she raised a fuss. “Upstairs,” he instructed his masked accomplice. “You take the old man.”

Realizing Seven was in immediate danger, Roberta desperately surveyed the disorderly desktop, looking for a weapon to use against the intruders. Her gaze—and hand—fell upon the small pile of fireworks she’d put aside for later that evening. A ten-inch Roman candle, with an exposed wick, bore the useful warning:DO NOT POINT AT OTHER PEOPLE. Hoping there was a good reason for that cautionary note, she snatched up the firework with one hand, her scented candle with the other, aimed the tip of the former directly at her assailant’s face, and lit the fuse.

A geyser of white-hot sparks erupted from the end of the Roman candle, only inches away from Prince Charles’s face. The enemy agent cried out in pain, the cheap plastic mask bubbling and blackening as he tore the burning disguise from his features. He reeled backward, clutching at his blistered face. Smoke rose from the scorched shoulders of his tweedy overcoat.

“That’s for Princess Di!” Roberta quipped, before taking advantage of the imposter’s distress to alert Seven via the glowing green pyramid. “Three-six-eight to 194!” she shouted at the pyramid, using her and Seven’s respective code numbers. “Condition red, Rubicon scenario. Repeat: Rubicon scenario.”

A compliant beep indicated that her warning had been transmitted upstairs. Roberta darted out from behind the desk, only to see the second invader, the one posing as Ross Perot, charge at her from his post by the door. The exaggerated ears and ratlike contours of his disguise reminded Roberta of those

[74]trespassing Ferengi she and Seven had chased out of Wall Street a few months before. Somehow, she didn’t think this guy was going to be discouraged quite so easily—especially since her Roman candle was already sputtering out.

“American witch!” he snarled, lunging at Roberta. The cramped layout of the store worked to her advantage, though; Perot had to maneuver around the former Prince Charles, who was still flailing about in agony, before he could get within reach of Roberta, giving her time to look around for another weapon. The “New Arrivals” shelf beckoned, and she grabbed for the biggest, heaviest hardcover she could find—a first edition of
Chicago Mobs of the Twenties,
published by Simon & Schuster just that month—and swung it like a club at Perot’s head. The massive tome slammed into her attacker’s face, cracking the grotesque plastic mask.
Hah!
she thought triumphantly
Who says hardcovers aren’t worth
the money?

The hefty volume would have knocked an ordinary man out cold, but merely staggered Khan’s latest supergoon. Not waiting to see how quickly he recovered, she raced up the stairs to the second floor, then ran down a short, carpeted corridor and threw open the door to Seven’s office. “Fire up the transporter!” she gasped, only slightly winded by her sprint up the stairway Defending humanity all around the world definitely provided plenty of exercise. “They’re right behind me!”

Gary Seven, a.k.a. Supervisor 194, had already begun the evacuation procedure. He was a tall, lean man whose austere countenance had only grown craggier with age. His once-brown hair was now[75]

completely silver, but his icy gray eyes remained as intense and alert as ever. Fears of selective breeding on an unnamed planet light-years from Earth had blessed him with impressive longevity; although in his sixties, he looked fifty at most.

“Khan’s found us again?” he asked her, swiftly but efficiently stuffing crucial documents into a black attaché case. An immense map of the world was mounted to the wall behind him, with small red pins marking the most recent known locations of all the surviving Children of Chrysalis. The pins were grouped in clusters all over the map; Roberta’s gaze briefly gravitated to the mass of pins centered around northern India, Khan’s current base of operations.

“Looks like it,” she said, slamming the office door and bolting it shut.
That’s not going to stop them for
long.
She already heard angry footsteps pounding up the stairs. “We’ve got to vamoose, pronto!”

Seven’s office resembled his former headquarters back in New York City, albeit with newer furniture. A silver pen and pencil set on his antique walnut desk activated the futuristic equipment hidden behind a mundane-looking bookcase, which now swung outward to reveal the sealed entrance of their transporter vault. A dauntingly solid steel door, which looked like the entrance to a bank vault or airlock, prevented access to the vault, until Seven manipulated the pen-and-pencil set again, causing the metal door to open automatically, exposing the apparently empty chamber within. Electronic switches and buttons, installed on the inner side of the door, clicked and whirred as Seven activated a preprogrammed escape sequence. A gleaming chrome control wheel rotated 180 degrees.

[76]Roberta held her breath, hoping that there was still time for Seven to get away.
If only this were
just a drill,
she thought plaintively, recalling all the times she and Seven had rehearsed this and other scenarios.
And just when I was starting to feel at home in London
...

Footsteps racing down the corridor gave way to the sound of fists hammering against the sturdy, reinforced oak door. Irate curses came from right outside, as Elian’s superpowered minions tried to force their way into the office. Roberta threw her own weight against the door, lending the deadbolts whatever help she could. “I can’t hold them back much longer,” she warned Seven. “These guys were literally built for breaking and entering.”

“Almost set,” Seven assured her. A standing silver frame, holding a color portrait of a sleek black cat, occupied a position of honor on Seven’s desk. He carefully added the photo to the vital papers collected in the attaché case, then snapped the case shut. Throwing on a gray tweed jacket over a navy-blue turtleneck sweater, he took the case by its handle and hurried toward the open vault, where, even now, a strangely luminous blue mist was forming, seemingly out of nowhere.

He paused at the threshold of the vault, looking back at his longtime friend and colleague with concern.

“Roberta?” he asked, visibly reluctant to leave her in jeopardy.

“Go!” she urged him. The office door trembled against her straining back with each savage blow upon its opposite side. The sound of cracking wood detonated in her ears. “I know what to do.” Someone had to stay behind to make sure their extraterrestrial[77]technology didn’t fall into Khan’s hands. “Your servo,”

she requested succinctly.

Seven tossed her his own pen, even as, case in hand, he stepped into the swirling azure mist that now appeared to fill the entire vault. She sighed in relief as his rigidly upright figure literally dissolved into the eerily phosphorescent fog. At least one of them was making a clean getaway ...