Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire - By Michael A. Martin Page 0,17
working version of one of the devices responsible for altering the climates of so many of the planets we’ve found throughout this sector of space—”
“Then Krassrr will expect to use it to create a new crècheworld for his caste should we fail to find one ready-made,” S’syrixx said, interrupting. “This was not the way I had hoped to spend my career.” Like most members of his particular subcaste, he had anticipated a long, quiet life creating and maintaining the Gorn Hegemony’s intellectual demimonde—the eons-old pre-technological oral tradition of preserving and ritually reciting the most cherished documents of Gorn science, religion, literature, theater, and music.
“Don’t worry,” said his friend, who laid his claws companionably across the scales of S’syrixx’s bare shoulder. With his other manus, he pointed toward the ancient platform/obelisk that drifted far above the alien world on the screen. “Should the captain find the results of your inquiries into that ancient object unsatisfactory, he will probably take pains to make your new paleo-terraforming career a brief one.”
S’syrixx nodded mutely as a feeling of intense foreboding tightened his cloaca.
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
Z’shezhira feared that Gog’resssh might finally be about to pick a fight he couldn’t win—a fight that would almost certainly result in the destruction of the S’alath, the deaths of Gog’resssh and his troopers, and the demise of the relative handful of surviving tech-caste hostages the radiation-addled war-casters had enslaved since they’d wrested control of the ship from its rightful crew—most of whom had long since been summarily ejected into hard vacuum.
Z’shezhira was surprised at the sanguineness with which she regarded the inevitability of her own death in such a scenario. Perhaps, she thought as she worked wearily at the multiple-application console to which Gog’resssh always exiled her during her interminable work shifts on the S’alath’s command deck, I should welcome oblivion.
Using the small viewer built into her console, Z’shezhira watched in silence as the image of oblivion approached almost closely enough for her to make out its shape.
She glanced toward Gog’resssh, whose gold-and-silver multifaceted eyes appeared to be riveted to the command deck’s central viewer, which displayed a larger though equally indistinct version of the same distant, vague image that Z’shezhira had been studying on her console.
“Helm, has the approaching vessel detected us yet?” growled the S’alath’s renegade commander.
“Not so far as I can determine, First Myrmidon,” replied the young trooper who was operating the flight control console. Z’shezhira recalled that his name was Sk’salissk.
“Good,” Gog’resssh said in a voice that sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together.
Second Myrmidon Zegrroz’rh, Gog’resssh’s second-in-command, lumbered from the clawholds that encircled the command deck toward the helm station near the center. Though his radiation burns had mostly receded—Z’shezhira had been forced to see to that personally—one of his multiple-lensed eyes was permanently clouded, damaged beyond repair. Z’shezhira had no doubt that both his ruined eye and his remaining good one concealed far deeper and more profound injuries, if only barely.
“Helm,” Zegrroz’rh rumbled, “can you continue to keep us concealed from the approaching vessel?”
“I believe so, Second Myrmidon. Presently we are concealed from their sensors, but not necessarily from visual detection—that is, if the unknown ship approaches us closely.”
Z’shezhira understood, of course, that the planet the S’alath now orbited—one of the outermost ice worlds of the system Gog’resssh had just sent some of his crew to explore in the furtherance of his quest for a new warrior nursery world—did much to obscure the S’alath’s presence; not only would the planet’s frequent cryo-volcanic eruptions tend to scatter active sensor scans, but the very distance between the remote ice world and the more temperate bodies that orbited deeper in the local primary star’s gravity would ensure the S’alath’s concealment.
Until, of course, Gog’resssh decided to make his presence known.
“The vessel crossed this world’s orbit,” the helmsman said, “on a heading for the inner worlds we just finished surveying.”
“We should attack,” Zegrroz’rh said, his unnerving white eye seeming to burrow into Z’shezhira even though she knew he was looking in Gog’resssh’s direction.
“Not yet,” Gog’resssh said.
Relief at the realization that her demise might not be imminent after all warred with disappointment as it occurred to Z’shezhira that her servitude to this aggressive creature and his henchman was to continue. At least if I remain alive, she thought, consoling herself, then at least the possibility of someday seeing S’syrixx again remains.
Zegrroz’rh released a deeply hostile growl as his brows crumpled in a manner that emphasized the unnervingly insectlike quality of his one good eye. “No doubt they are