Michael A. Martin - Star Trek: Typhon Pact #2: Seize the Fire

Youre aboard the Federation Starship Titan, Dr. Ree said.

The captain just told me hes coming down from the bridge to speak with you. Our senior diplomatic officer will accompany him.

Tie-tan, Ssyrixx said, doing his best to pronounce the strange syllables as he heard them.

Ssyrixx carefully pushed himself the rest of the way up into a sitting position and allowed his bare, scale-covered feet to swing over the side of the surprisingly sturdy little infirmary bed. He was determined to make a good first impression with this vessels captain, as well as to demonstrate his gratitude to the person who was ultimately responsible for his rescue.

My name, he said, is Ssyrixx.

Ree displayed an impressive assemblage of long, sharp teeth. Welcome aboard, Ssyrixx.

Ssyrixx heard a brief pneumatic hiss, which drew his attention to an open doorway that hadnt been in his line of sight before.

A pair of uniformed humanoids entered the chamber and slowly approached the bed. Ssyrixx suddenly felt unsteady. Had something gone wrong with the ships environmental systems, or its artificial gravity generators? His claws tore into the beds edges as he hung on, suddenly desperate to steady himself.

The room spun, and he felt long, scale-covered fingers and forelimbs pushing him gently back onto the bed.

Mammals, he muttered as darkness made another bid for him. Why did it have to be mammals?

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Cover art and design by Alan Dingman

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-6782-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-6796-0 (ebook)

For Marco Palmieri, who first handed me the keys to Titan, and for Margaret Clark, who invited me back aboard for the current mission.

This story begins in early 2381, during the time of the mass Borg assault recounted in the Destiny trilogy, and concludes in late August 2382, more than a year later (roughly coinciding with the principal time frame of Star Trek: Typhon PactZero Sum Game).

Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

C LARENCE D ARROW

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

W ILLIAM B LAKE , T HE T IGER , Songs of Experience

First Myrmidon Gogresssh stood upon the observation footbridge that overlooked the enclosed vastness of the incubation chamber. His claws encircling the railings, Gogresssh recalled the first time hed looked upon the room from this high, deceptively solid perch; hed found the sight almost overwhelming. Apart from the immensity of the starlit nights that blanketed the three Gorn worlds where hed dwelled throughout his span of twenty-eight Gornar suncircuits, he had never before experienced such sheer hugeness. The great translucent roof that soared overhead had created an irresistible urge to crane his head in every direction, leaving his thick neck pained afterward by several strained muscles.

Far beneath the dome, which admitted only the most benign frequencies of light from Sazssgrerrns yellow-white star, stood legions of eggsthe leathery husks that held the developing offspring of the Gorn Hegemonys warrior caste. Row upon row of ovoid shapes, each roughly the size of a mature warriors head, rested in their individual warming chambers, their numbers multiplied out to infinity by the reflective properties of the enclosures rounded walls. Gogresssh took quiet comfort from the humid, sultry air that wafted up around the footbridge out of the chamber below, where it nurtured the orderly, greenish-white ranks of the eggs. Those rows of enshelled younglings represented the futurea future that Gogresssh was committed to safeguarding from any threat that might arise between now and the day those younglings acquired the ability to fend for themselves.

Gogresssh reveled in the anticipatory stillness of the eggs, which he likened to sentries standing an unrelieved, almost one-suncircuit-long duty shift; he regarded their apparently endless vigil as a positive augurya portent of the disciplined Gorn shock troops they would one day become. Their first tour of duty would begin a mere handful of diurnal cycles after the growing fetuses finished clawing through their protective membranes; they would embark upon the rigorous, lifelong regimen of training and combat that was their elite military-caste birthright almost immediately after their emergence into the world.

Today, however, nearly two local suncircuits into his current tour of crche-guardian duty, Gogresssh looked upon the vista arrayed across the sprawling incubation floor beneath him with a far more jaundiced eye than had been his wont on that memorable first diurnal cycle at Sazssgrerrn. What he had once found awe-inspiring now seemed almost quotidian, a font of impatience and ennui rather than a source of wonder and fulfillment.

Of course, Gogresssh was careful not to articulate any such thought aloud, particularly so close to the workspaces of so many technological- and artisan-caste types, some of whom were no doubt inclined to send unfavorable reports about him to his military-caste superiors. Fortunately, the many adjacent environmental-regulation stations, offices, and laboratories were silent today, as though the staff had decided to take the morning off.

It was odd, if also incidentally something of a relief, to find the crches nerve center all but deserted on what should have been a typical workday. Although he was duty-bound to protect the tech-casters, Gogresssh nevertheless found that their relatively large numbers, close proximity, and overall omnipresence grated on him.

Gogresssh tensed as he suddenly became aware of a familiar, reedy voice just behind him. I see that you remain troubled, First Myrmidon Gogresssh. Were your higher-rankers unable to give you any reassurance?

The warrior silently cursed himself for allowing the voices owner to approach him so closely without being noticed. He turned quickly toward the speaker, an elderly member of the technological caste, and carefully avoided staring directly into his eyes for any longer than a moment or two. Although the scientists two golden orbs stared out in typical Gorn fashion from beneath heavy crests on either side of his skull, they lacked the hundreds of facets that comprised a warriors motion-oriented compound eye; instead each visual organ displayed a single, eerily mammalian-looking vertical pupil.