Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire - By Michael A. Martin Page 0,7
suncircuits. Especially if we experience setbacks during the simulations.”
“The Hegemony cannot continue to defend itself if the supply of new Gorn warriors remains interrupted for suncircuit after fallow suncircuit.” Not that you expect me or my warriors to be around long enough to observe that sad outcome.
“I understand the drawbacks of caution as well as those of haste. But it really doesn’t matter what I think. Such decisions are the province of the political caste.”
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
Z’shezhira put the scanner on a tray with a number of other obscure-looking medical instruments. Apparently satisfied that he was mending satisfactorily, she bid him farewell.
He called out to her as she reached the threshold, stopping her. “May I speak to Second Myrmidon Zegrroz’rh?” he asked.
After pausing to look into the adjacent healing bay, she turned toward Gog’resssh and dipped her head in a gesture of assent. “He is conscious, though he still requires somewhat more healing than you do. Please do not tire him.”
“I understand,” he said.
After Z’shezhira departed, Gog’resssh rose from the steeply inclined resting board and walked across the infirmary toward the other healing bay. Since the other injured officers and enlisted troopers were recovering elsewhere, he and his lieutenant were all alone but for one another’s company.
“First Myrmidon,” Zegrroz’rh said as he tried to stand, his pain evident. Gog’resssh needed no special medical expertise to see that his Second had suffered more extensive burns than he had.
Gog’resssh gestured for Zegrroz’rh to stay down, and the injured Gorn sagged gratefully back onto the inclined resting board where he’d been recuperating. “The tech-casters aboard this ship have made plans to kill us all,” Gog’resssh said without preamble.
Zegrroz’rh’s brow folded forward in a puzzled frown. “Why did they not do so when we were all more helpless than we are now? Why do they delay?”
Gog’resssh issued a low growl that signaled his displeasure at being questioned. “Why do they do anything, Second? They probably wish to make further observations of the radiation damage we have suffered before deciding they are finished with us.”
“If you are right, we must stop them,” Zegrroz’rh said, demonstrating his usual keen grasp on the obvious.
“Of course I am right. And we shall stop them. What’s more, we are going to repair the damage that the politicals did to us at Sazssgrerrn. And we will find and safeguard a new crècheworld for our caste, without relying on any further ‘help’ from the politicals.”
Zegrroz’rh appeared mystified. Or perhaps he was even more radiation-damaged than Gog’resssh had initially believed. “First Myrmidon?”
Gog’resssh leaned in close to the other warrior and hissed into the earhole just above his radiation-seared zygomatic bone. “Listen very carefully, Zegrroz’rh. We will begin by taking this ship. . . .”
1
U.S.S. TITAN, DEEP IN THE VELA OB2 ASSOCIATION, BETA QUADRANT
The aquamarine world that turned serenely on the main viewer had seemed hospitable enough when Captain William Riker had first looked upon it from orbit. It had seemed so when he had first set foot upon one of the small rocky continents that punctuated a planet-girdling, highly saline ocean. Other than the prevalence of strong winds, and the clouds of grit and dust they kicked up, the place had been very accommodating to Titan’s survey teams—it offered breathable air, middling-warm temperatures, and fair-to-tolerable humidity levels.
But the sometimes all-but-invisible fabric that nearly always accompanied such humanoid-compatible environments—an oft-taken-for-granted little thing more commonly known as life—was conspicuously absent from this place, from pole to pole and meridian to meridian.
William Riker leaned forward in his command chair, resting his chin on his fist as he regarded the dead world that even now Titan’s planetary-science specialists were still busy trying to understand.
“Deanna, what do you think about naming this place ‘Doornail’?” he said, turning to his left just far enough to see an amused smile split his wife’s face.
“ ‘Doornail,’” repeated Commander Deanna Troi, Titan’s senior diplomatic officer, chief counselor, social-sciences department head—and beloved Imzadi of the captain. She pitched her voice low, as if to be audible only in Riker’s immediate vicinity. “That’s a curious choice, Will.”
He repaid Deanna’s grin with interest. After spending the past six hours down on that sterile, rocky world, he was grateful to be back aboard Titan and in the warmth of her presence. “‘Doornail,’” he said, matching her sotto voce delivery. “As in ‘dead as a.’ “
She shrugged. “I understand the idiom, Will. My father came from Earth, after all.”
“But you don’t seem to be falling in love with it.”