Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire - By Michael A. Martin Page 0,16
the surface of a star. So out of all the tens of thousands of worlds accessible to us, how many do you think are likely to provide an environment capable of nurturing our race’s strongest caste?”
R’rerrgran’s facial scales ruffled in response to S’syrixx’s sarcasm. “I presume you speak ironically about strength to accentuate the warrior caste’s present unseemly state of vulnerability.”
“Do not worry about my words being overheard,” S’syrixx said with a derisive snort. “War-casters’ understanding of irony is on a rough par with their comprehension of even elementary mathematics.” He knew he could have cited his present mission as an illustrative example of the Gorn soldiery’s latter failing. Why do these five-fingered, bug-eyed idiots believe the odds in favor of their quest to be any better than the chance that my beloved Z’shezhira might yet turn up alive and well, a castaway on some remote planet? They’ll spare no expense pursuing the one goal while completely ignoring the other.
“Whether they are irony-impaired or not, the warriors can smell disrespect. You don’t want Captain Krassrr to overhear your comments, even if you don’t believe him capable of understanding them. He may be tempted to gut you anyway.”
“And diminish his own caste’s already slim chances of survival by eliminating one of the relatively few Gorn capable of finding him a new nursery planet? The war-casters may be stupid, but they’re not crazy. Or is that the other way around?”
R’rerrgran bared about half of his razor-sharp teeth and displayed a highly textured frown. “You may not be so indispensable as you seem to think, old friend.”
S’syrixx didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you talking about?”
“Can you access the command deck display system from here?” R’rerrgran said, pointing an index claw toward the terminal that glowed in the semigloom of S’syrixx’s narrow workspace.
“Maybe,” S’syrixx said. He began tapping at the controls of his terminal with all six claws. A security block appeared on the screen, and S’syrixx spoke a series of numbers and letters in Captain Krassrr’s guttural voice. The pictographs for AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED flashed on the screen.
“You should also take care never to let Captain Krassrr hear you do that,” said R’rerrgran. “Though I must admit that it was nicely done, even for a member of the arts sub-caste.”
S’syrixx accepted the accolade with a simple head nod. Still, he was proud that his arts subcaste status mirrored his proficiency in the mainstream disciplines of the larger technological caste, such as computer science and the various maths. He also knew that he wasn’t the first member of his family to demonstrate a theatrical-quality arts-caster’s gift for mimicry; according to family lore, his great-granduncle Zsraszk—an arts-caster renowned for his talents using the Voice—had drawn upon intercepted Sst’rfleet communications to mimic the speech patterns of the commander of a mammalian outpost on Inner Eliar more than a century ago. Old Zsraszk’s gift for copying speech—even notoriously difficult-to-manage non-Gorn speech—had enabled Captain S’alath’s warriors to score the first blood in the wars against the expansionist Federrazsh’n. It was a pity that the subsequent untimely intervention of a meddling elder race, as well as that of the hated Federrazsh’n mammal K’irrk, had sullied S’alath’s initial victory, along with Zsraszk’s part in it.
The text on the terminal screen suddenly vanished, displaced by a spacescape whose deep blackness was relieved by the steady cold glow of countless distant stars. Near the bottom of the image was the limb of a partially daylit planet, a green world that looked like so many of the colonies the Gorn Hegemony had established on environmentally compatible worlds throughout nine adjacent and nonadjacent sectors of space.
A few heartbeats after the image appeared, S’syrixx noticed something else—the presence of an artificially constructed object orbiting high over the planet. In the top left corner of the screen one of the other recon vessels in the Ssevarrh’s six-vessel flotilla hove into view, apparently to make close observations of the object, which S’syrixx could now see consisted of a broad, micrometeoroid-scored metal platform out of which projected a tall, equally beat-up-looking towerlike projection. Although there was no way S’syrixx could accurately estimate its size, it gave him the impression of hugeness.
As well as almost unimaginable antiquity. From the look of it, the construct could well be older than the approximately half-million suncircuits that the Gorn civilization had endured.
“Could that be what I think it is?” S’syrixx said.
“Captain Krassrr will no doubt expect an answer to that question,” said the physician. “However, if this is indeed a