"May I ask what you're reading on the planer's surface?" Amba.s.sador Spock asked. "Anything unfamiliar? Any sign of destruction by the Constrictor?"

"I'm picking up airstrips;' Jeremy reported, a couple of things that might be missile deployment facilities... heliports... some satellites... pretty typical. Maybe mid-or late-twenty-first-century equivalent or so. I could be all wrong, though."

At tactical, Zack Bolt commented, "You get to a certain level of atmospheric aeronautics and yours is as good as any body's:'

Stiles waved an icy hand toward Spock. "Why don't you have a look for yourself, sir? You were here too, and I'm sure you knew the layout a lot better than I ever did. After all..."

If Spock's dark eyes saw through the layers of reasons and excuses, he made no hint of that, except perhaps for the hesitation before accepting.

"Very well," he said, and took the place at the science station as Jeremy moved out of his way. He bent over the readout hood, tapped some of the controls, causing monitors to flicker and change, focus or choose new subjects.

Stiles knew what Speck expected a devastated planet, a civilization crushed nearly out of existence, the people who'd managed to survive suffering in the few remaining caves and wreckage that hadn't been smashed, hardly any old people, hardly any kids .... But that's not what came up.

Maps of the planet's cities, boundaries in some places marked off by electronic border markers readable from s.p.a.ce. Stiles recognized some of what he saw from that first approach all those years ago, and he was stirred by new apprehensions. He recognized the mountains showing up on geographical longrange, and flinched. The idea of returning in triumph, healthy, alive, in command of a ship, dissolved and crumbled away. Suddenly he was twenty-one and out of control.

The hum of the ship around him as thrusters moved them toward orbit pounded like blood in his head. He was grateful when Travis quietly took over the approach orders, doing so smoothly enough that n.o.body seemed to notice. Or at least they pretended they didn't.

Stiles wasn't much for puffing on airs, but he'd have liked to give them a little command puff-up right about now, just for Christmas. Couldn't find it, though. Just couldn't find it.

"Cities seem intact. No signs of catastrophic damage;' Speck commented as he clicked his way through the scanner's offerings. "I recognize several of the buildings at the main city complexes on the primary continent...." Now he leaned closer and seemed almost to frown. "Although... the architectural style has changed significantly. Many of the old constructions are missing, replaced by complexes with only one or two stories" He turned his head, without straightening up, to look at Stiles. "During your incarceration, did you hear any word of so broad a cultural change?"

"Me? Zevon and I used to talk about what could be done to help buildings survive the Constrictor... elastic brackets and joints, different construction materials-either much heavier so they could withstand the pressure, or much lighter so they wouldn't be crushed... but n.o.body ever paid attention to us. That was just us, just talking."

"They seem to have implemented many changes" Spock commented, looked at what he saw on the screens. "Even the colors of the cities are different now. I believe they may have changed materials significantly. They seem to be primarily using quarried granite rather than timber and brick. And I'm reading quintot.i.tantium and dutronium reenforcement members rather than conventional steel and iron. When I evacuated, they were incapable of such a development at their industrial level."

"Granite.. ,' Stiles sifted his memory. "Dutronium... Zevon and I used to design-we used to think up all kinds of things. Maybe the Pojjana just figured out some of them on their own. It doesn't take that much to figure out how to build a spandex house, y'know... most of our ideas just made basic sense. It's not like we had much to work with or anything .... "

McCoy watched the continent slowly turn on the large forward screen. "Do you think he's still alive and influencing their development?"

"I hope so, I sure hope so" Stiles said with his heart squeezing fearfully. "Zevon doesn't have a prime directive. But I don't know how he could get anybody to listen to him. We could never get past the a.s.sistant warden. And I don't know if... they turned on him after I got pulled out or... maybe they just..."

No one said anything to comfort or refute his tortured sup positions or stem the racing of his imagination.

'There's only so much he could do" Stiles grumbled, his thoughts taking on a life of their own. "After all, the sector's been red for years. n.o.body's been in or out, right?" "We watch the sector constantly," Spock undergirded. "There has been extremely little breaching, give or take the odd delinquent shaman."

Dr. McCoy's white brows danced. "Or the occasional sublime wise-a.s.s. Other than that, a skinny bird couldn't slip in and out of Red Sector without somebody's noticing. Mr. Stiles, you think your friend could be somewhere other than the capital city? Running some process that engineers those new buildings?"

"Even Zevon couldn't make industries all by himself, even if he were in charge of the whole planet, never mind a prisoner. Besides, he wasn't an architect. Is eleven years long enough to make sweeping changes on a whole planet? Nah... probably not. He'd have to get all the way up to somebody trusting him first, and, believe me, on a planet of people who really don't like aliens, that could take... well, more doing than either of us could manage from a prison cell or our lab. Travis, adjust the trim, will you?" "Trim, aye. Give it another three degrees level, Stinson?' "Aye aye, sir, three degrees starboard."

"We must not a.s.sume;' Spock mentioned, "that anything is the same after eleven years"

Stiles strode around to the other side of the bridge, where Spock was still scanning the readouts of the planet below. "Are you saying you think he's dead?"

Spock glanced at him. "You spare yourself by accepting the likelihood. You nearly died yourself." "I was sick." "And ill-treated, poorly fed, ignored, imprisoned-" "Zevon's Romulan. He's stronger than-"

"Not stronger enough" the amba.s.sador cautioned, now standing straight and looking right at him. "The odds... are troubling." McCoy was watching him. Stiles could sense it.

He could sense-and see the fretful averted attention of everybody around him. They all knew his past. He was too close to this. Maybe it was a mistake not sending somebody completely impa.s.sive. There was more at stake than just Zevon. Was he thinking clearly enough? "What do we do?" Stiles wondered. "Just... approach?"

"Almost to the atmosphere, Eric" Travis reported. "What do you want to do?" "I don't know yet."

"We've got to have an order either to enter or veer off. At this point we can't hover."

"No doubt the planetary monitoring system has already noticed us;' Spock told him. "Although they had no s.p.a.ceborne fleet, they were perfectly able to effect short-range scans of the immediate area, for defensive purpose~ I'm sure they have identified your ship as a Starfleet unit. If you don't mind my suggesting we broadcast a "

A shriek cut him off as the CST bellowed around them and the whole ship was jaw-kicked. The deck canted to an instant 30-degree list, as if they'd struck something out in the middle of s.p.a.ce. Were they too low? Had they hit a mountain?

Pinned to the side of the helm for a terrible few seconds, Stiles gritted his teeth and fought against the thrust. He heard the cries of his crew as they were thrown violently against the side of the tender, crammed into bulkheads and equipment and each other in a tangle of pressure and shock. "What is it!" he called. "Did we hit a satellite?"

Jeremy clung to the console one chair down from where Spock was pressed to the science ledge. "Energy funnel! It's pulling us down?'

Dr. McCoy clasped his chaff and grimaced. "I hate this kind of thing-"

"Is it coming from the planet?" Twisting, Stiles jabbed at the helm over the shoulder of the flabbergasted trainee pilot. "Oh, no, I know they shouldn't have this! They didn't have anything like this! Not that could pull in a CST! We can tow a starship!"

Travis scrambled for the engineering mainframe to see if there was an answer there, but when he turned again his face was a mask of bafflement. "It's as if the planet itself has grabbed us!"

The Imperial Palace Cool aft, finally, moved through the ancient hails of the crown family's traditional home. The soft harp music played eternally over the sound system, just sweet enough to drive anybody crazy after the first twenty hours. The tape had looped a few times, and by now Ansue Hasty had taken to humming harmony to the tunes he recognized.

This, in bitter contrast to the suffering empress, who was roused now and then by Crusher's ministrations and wakened to relentless agony because from time to time medical tests required her cooperation. Even when the young woman was allowed to sink back into unconsciousness, her struggle just to breathe provided a pathetic percussion to the d.a.m.ned harp music. It had been a difficult two days.

"Mr. Hashley, please take these two instruments and clean them thoroughly, the way I showed you yesterday, and then bring them back;' Crusher instructed. She'd only caught a few catnaps and was feeling the stress of fatigue. This was like being a resident again.

"I just love helping you," Hashley said. "Maybe when we get out of this, I can join Starfleet and come to the Enterprise and be your a.s.sistant."

"You could certainly do something like that;' she said. "No reason you couldn't take a few paramedical courses and start a new career. I'm thinking of switching to professional wrestler, myself. Whew... could you bring me that pillow and put it behind my back? I can't let go of this IV pump right now. I've almost got a result... stand by, Data"

In her periphery, Crusher saw Data look up from his communications center, formerly the empress's dressing-room vanity. "Standing by, Doctor."

The imperial communications relays were tied in to over six hundred stations throughout the empire. Data had taken nearly three hours to confirm, through codes, geological information, and star-mapping devices, that the relays were actually working and in contact with a spiderweb of stations on several planets. After all, what good would it be if they were just talking to a con artist next door?

Her head swam as she took a moment to relax her brain, while her hands worked under the blue light of the portable sterile field she'd set up. She even indulged in closing her eyes for a few moments, until the fled readings bleeped. Sounded like a cannon going off.

Crusher forced her eyes open and blinked a couple of times, focusing on the readings rushing across the miniature monitor screen. "Good, very good... I was right. Data, confirm that the physicians should stop fighting the fever. Let it run its course-it stresses the attacking prions."

"Relaying that, doctor. Your progress is remarkable for only two days."

"That's me-Remarkable Bey. Look at that! I knew it was there... add that they shouldn't inject supplements of kela.s.siurn, no matter how low the levels get."

Data stopped working the console and looked at her. "Doctor, is it not true that Vulcanoids can suffer irreparable intestinal scarring from lack of kela.s.sium?"

"Absolutely, but this test is hinting to me that the kela.s.sium's not leaving the body at all. Look... see these protovilium levels? Those only show up when there's a repository of kela.s.sium. They shouldn't be reading this way ff she is really K-deficient."

Hashley looked up from organizing the medical instruments. "I've heard of that kind of thing! When I was delivering industrial incendiaries to Carolus, one of the company medics told me about how the body defends itself with some really weird stuff"

Crusher only half-registered what he said. She had learned over the past hours to pick on a word or two without really committing herself to listening. "Mmm, this is weird, all fight... if these chemical bonds are leading me down the right track, the kela.s.sium's being stored in the second liver. That tells me the attacking prions feed on kela.s.sium. At least partially-Data, are you getting this?" "Yes, Doctor."

"Storing kela.s.sium deprives the infection of an energy source. I think low kela.s.sium's part of the body's natural fortification. Let's take a chance."

"Is that wise?" the android asked. "Some of these patients are dangerously ill already."

Crusher leaned closer to her patient and checked the moaning young woman's temperature in a particularly unscientific yet somehow instinctive way-with the back of her hand.

"Mmm... brink of death's a p.r.i.c.kly place, Data. Sometimes you gotta dance to keep standing there."

Even though she wasn't looking at him, she could still somehow see, perhaps only in her mind, the android's perplexed expression. He didn't counter her comment, though, or question the risk she was taking. Instead he turned back to the portable comm console and relayed the latest thread of hope.

She wished she could speak more freely, venture some opinions about the cra.s.sness of hereditary rulership, mutter a few truths about how it always compromised freedom somewhere down the line-and not usually that far down either-but the four guards were always there, and one of the two women. The guards took turns standing watch every six hours, never leaving the immediate chambers or sitting rooms. And Sentinel Iavo floated in and out... at the moment he was floating back in. "Any success, Doctor?"

Crusher looked up and took the moment to stretch her back and shoulders. "A little. Nominal. Enough to give us an idea that we might eventually beat some of this."

Iavo went to the fireplace, which until now had been stone cold, and turned the head of an unrecognizable carved creature on the mantel; a hissing sound was heard, as flames jumped up in the fake logs, rose to a certain height, adjusted themselves, and settled as if they'd been burning all night. The royal chamber was instantly haunted, medieval.

"The empress may live because of your ministrations," Iavo gauged. All across the empire, the royal family members are beginning to slowly outlive their symptoms."

"So," Crusher said, "you've been listening in on our relays, Sentinel?" He paused. After a moment, he admitted, "Yes, of course." Still he did not turn from the fire. Turning in her chair, Crusher surveyed his tall form, narrow and dark against the flickering golden glow from beyond it, and marveled not for the first time-that no matter where she traveled in the stars, no matter what strange forces she witnessed or what bizarre life forms she encountered, what twisted trees grew or weeds crawled, all over the galaxy fire was always the same color.

And also the same was the smell from the cauldron of ambition.

Sentinel Iavo held his hands toward the fire. Crusher saw them spread before him and slightly to the side, framed in paint-by-number fireglow.

Stretching one arm out, Crusher snapped her fingers once, quietly, toward Data. Flinching as if awakened, the android swiveled away from his console and sat watching. With her other hand, she waved Ansue Hashley into the comer behind her, then put a finger to her lips and gave him the evil eye. The man paled, his eyes widened, and with some wisdom garnered from years running an illegal route, he measured the sense of not arguing or even speaking.

Crusher leaned over the empress and touched the pallid cheek whose changes of color and heat had been the cusp of the doctor's life for many hours. The empress moaned softly. A tear appeared in the comer of the quiet girl's eye. Perhaps she knew.

The two standing guards moved away from the end of the bed. The two who had been resting now stood up.

"I suppose," Crusher began quietly, "you've never had a problem like this come your way, Sentinel." Iavo gazed into the fire. "Nothing like this."

"How does temptation taste to someone who has been loyal all his life?"

For a moment he was silent. He sighed. "It has a certain bitter spice."

"Are you enjoying the chance?" she asked him. "Or are you cornered by other pressures?"

This time Iavo did not answer. The guards stood now in a line, three on one side of him, one on the other, all four facing Crusher, Data, Ansue Hashley, and the dying empress in her bed.

"It must be frustrating" Crusher said, "always to be on the periphery of glory, nearly able to touch it, always condemned to taste but never swallow... and now to see yourself within a step of supreme power... and your followers to see themselves jumping all the obstacles in one leap-advisors, attendants... Sentinels... they all see an opportunity that otherwise would never have occurred. The murder of the empress would be hard for the people to accept, I'm sure, but no one here will care if a Federation doctor and her party suddenly turn up missing. Enterprise officers aren't exactly on the empire's favorite-people list, are we? Therefore, the empress and her family will die without continued treatment."

Despite the fact that there was no real wood, the fire was engineered to crackle and snap-even to put forth the scent of burning autumn leaves. Still with his back to her, Sentinel Iavo lowered his head as if watching her words spin inside some kind of crystal bail in his mind.

Barely above a whisper, he told her, "You came here with no guards, madam."

Crusher turned fully in her seat and robbed her hands on her knees. "Now that you know I might save her, you have to go through with it, don't you?"

The guard at Iavo's right drew his ceremonial dagger. A second guard did the same while the others watched and gripped the handles of their own weapons. Crusher stood up.

Sensing the change, Iavo now turned around to face her. Now the line of Romulans and the threat they posed clicked gracefully into place. For a brief moment Beverly Crusher stood in awe of this elegant race, so Vulcan in their stature, so human in their pa.s.sion.

The last two guards pulled their knives. Firelight played upon the blades. And Iavo himself touched the still-sheathed ceremonial dirk that was the symbol of the highest nonroyal office in the Romulan Star Empire. Data came to her side. Ansue Hashley stood behind them. Crusher pressed back her shoulderlength hair, steadied herself, lowered her weaponless hands to her sides, and looked directly at Iavo. "How are we going to do this?"

Chapter Eighteen.

"WHAT'VE WE GOT?"

Jeremy White responded with typically terse calm. "We've got thirteen minutes before we crash." "Yellow alert, everybody;' Stiles ordered. "Yellow, aye!"

The CST shifted its manner substantially, as certain lights and meters went dark and others popped on, systems deciding which were important and which could wait. The din was maddening-the ship screamed and strained, engines howling right through the bulkheads, setting up harmonic vibrations in every member.

On the main screen and all the other exterior visual monitors, black s.p.a.ce and a planet gave way to the filtering gauze of clouds. They were entering the atmosphere!

While he tried to keep control over his voice, to keep from shouting or sounding excited, it was necessary to speak up over the tin bray of the engines fighting to keep them in s.p.a.ce. "Veer out!" he ordered. "Get us some kilometers."

Both hating and loving the fact that Amba.s.sador Spock and the irascible Leonard McCoy were watching him through a dangerous moment, he forced himself to concentrate on any thing but the two of them. For a second he thought Spock might stay at the science-readout station, where he so obviously and eternally belonged, where he fit so well on a starship or any ship, but the famous officer subtly stepped aside for Jeremy White to take that position.

Stiles hesitated an instant, soon accepting the appropriateness and grandeur of the sacrifice. Spock was letting them handle their own destiny without interference. How did he know to do that? How could he hold himself in check like this?

His stomach turning, Stiles stepped to the starboard side. "Come on, Jeremy, a.n.a.lyze it."

Jeremy's usually sedate expression was screwed into annoyance, possibly because of Spock's presence. "It's some kind of hybrid of a tractor beam and a graviton ray. I've never seen energy combined this way. If a CST can tow a starship, how can they be holding us?"

Travis asked, "Did they have this tech when you were here, Eric?" "No, h.e.l.l, no! Matt, can we-"

Realizing he couldn't be heard five sections back over the scream, of the engines, he struck the nearest comm. "Matt, can we effect any kind of a fair-lead landing?"

From section five, Girvan called over the mechanical scream, "Not at seven thousand feet per second at this angle we can't! "

"Okay, let's come up with something else. How long before the beam pulls us into the mountain?"

"Calculating;' Jeremy said. "Draw is increasing incrementally with our thrust ratios. They're pouring the coals to it."

"Let's pour our own;' Stiles said. "Let's try impulse point zero five, helm." "Point zero five?' "Don't shout."

Stiles shrugged at the kid, a simple gesture that had a visible effect on the young terrified teenagers, who were all watching him to measure how many points they should go on the panic meter. Going into a battle situation, with rules to follow and procedures to rely on, had been something they could handle after Starfleet training. Having the ship tilt and scream under them as a planet sucked at it that was something n.o.body'd ever trained for. Of course, having it smash into a planet's surface would be hard to come back from, too.

Stiles found orders popping from his lips and responses coming from the crew in a step-by-step manner that had saved thousands of s.p.a.cefarers in the past, a protocol upon which he now relied.

"Let's have all the rookies to support positions. Primary crew take your emergency stations. Alan, watch the gyro display and tell me personally if it starts jumping. Let's have red alert." "Red alert!" Travis echoed.

A dozen changes erupted with that order. The lighting all over the CST shifted to muted cherry. The hatches between sections slammed shut and pressure locked-sssschunk.