Dreadnought! Page 11

  “No—Oh!”

  I clapped my eyes shut, one hand streaking to my cracking lower back. Stupid … sat up too quickly. “Oh … ooohhh …”

  “Move as little as possible.”

  What was Sarda doing in the loud place?

  The only thing worse than sitting up too fast would have been lying down again, so I leaned forward and pressed my pounding head between my fists. “Oh … brother. I always wondered what phaser stun felt like …”

  Sarda gently maneuvered me into a position that let me lean back, supported by a blank grey wall. There were other walls here just like this one, I noticed as I blinked sight back into my eyes.

  “Rittenhouse?” I guessed.

  “He evidently assumed we would attempt to break away from Boma. Are you hurt badly?”

  “My back feels like splintered wood. He must have hit me square in the spine.” I blinked more and squinted into his amber eyes, sure I saw anxiety deep behind the Vulcan shields, and I wondered about the reason for it. “Was I out longer than normal for a phaser hit?”

  “Only seventeen minutes.”

  “Then why … never mind. Nice little brig they’ve got here. I won’t be able to computer-fool my way out of this.” The cubicle surrounded us in a lead corrunite shell, except for the wall to my left, the opening, through which we saw an empty corridor. We would’ve been tempted to walk right through were it not for the bright blue glowing rim all around the portal, showing the disruption field in full operation. A very nice, complete little brig. I ignored the force field’s threatening hum and pulled at my ankles. “My legs aren’t with me yet.”

  Sarda relaxed slightly, exuding what must have been the Vulcan equivalent of a sigh of relief. “The human neural network begins to reactivate from phaser stun virtually as soon as the blast ceases. Sensation should return to your extremities in a few minutes, at which point we will attempt escape.”

  I shot him a look. “You think we can actually bust out of here?”

  He tipped his head, meeting my gaze fearlessly. “No,” he said flatly, “but you do. Doubting I can stop you from so futile an attempt, I shall help you.”

  Though I tried not to smile my thanks for his faith in me, my mouth curled into a grin as I said, “Always knew there was more to you than logic.”

  He straightened, barely perceptibly, retreating, but not as much as before. Luckily he didn’t bother to argue that logic was his sole motivation, since we both knew better. “May I vent a curiosity?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “To what were you referring when you told Rittenhouse that ‘it’ would not work? You mentioned a coup at Star Fleet …”

  “That would be only part of it. A big part, but—well, Earth history has good examples.”

  “I am disturbingly ignorant of Earth history.”

  “You don’t know the events that led up to the Third World War?”

  “As I indicated, I do not.”

  “Well … freedom isn’t something people just give up one day. It trickles away, bit by bit, without anyone really noticing soon enough.” Seeing his quandary, I offered, “Let me give you an example. In the prosperity of the late twentieth century people kept handing over deciding powers to their governments, sometimes even demanding government intervention. Can you imagine actually asking bureaucracies to take over?” Disbelief crossed Sarda’s face. As a Vulcan, he couldn’t even conceive of such a thing, so I kept on explaining since interest lay behind his disbelief. “It started with the most basic of rights—property. The right of the individual to the fruits of his own labor went under in the face of the needs of his society.”

  “Were there not objections?”

  “Sure, strong ones, but too late. Those who benefited from sacrificing the individual to society were too powerful. Some groups became so powerful that nobody could compete anymore. So more government help. The pile got bigger and bigger, but it was just a fat horse. The more it got fed, the less work it could do. You heard Rittenhouse talk about a common-good sort of ideal? This is the same thing. After a while the only way to survive in the “new” system was through joining a powerful group—a labor union, like I said, a religious organization, a political unit or business conglomerate that had gotten itself special insulation from competitors. Eventually individuals fired by self-interest just began to disappear, replaced by those groups, each fighting for a different way to promote the common good, which of course translated into whatever was best for themselves. The economic system fell like a house of cards. If society had problems, they blamed it on parts of society who were disruptive, the same people who just happened to have different viewpoints from theirs. So they pushed for control of those others.”

  “Like the Klingons,” Sarda murmured.

  “And everybody else who doesn’t go along with his plan,” I agreed, glad he could grasp so senseless an idea. “The harder the struggle, the tighter the control.”

  “The deeper the loss of freedoms,” he finished for me. He dropped his gaze. “The Vulcans would be among the first to struggle. And we would never cease struggling against such foolish unity.”

  I answered only with a silent nod.

  “Strange,” he said, “that no one questioned the basic philosophy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His brow knitted. “There is no such thing as ‘common good.’ The only good is in what the individual finds best for himself. If he does no harm in his practice, why would others seek to control him?”

  “On Earth, it was because the others wanted what the individual had earned. Somehow they made themselves believe he didn’t deserve what he worked for, if it went too far over what someone else had, even if that second person hadn’t put much effort out on his own behalf. It became easier to get the government to steal for you than to work your way up.”

  “Inconceivable.”

  “It is to me too.” The bench creaked as I leaned back in thought. “To everybody on Earth. That’s why we guard our personal freedoms so dearly. We came too close to handing them over, and losing them forever.”

  “Did this … change of structure occur swiftly? All over the planet at once?”

  “Well, Earth’s a big planet, but it did hustle right along once it started. It started on the Asian continent and spread to Europe, the Africas, over to South America, and eventually the North Americas. Wherever it went it squeezed the life out of the economy by enslaving successful people to placate those who didn’t produce.”

  “A viral effect?”

  “More like a plague. Or a drug, might be the better way to say it. The addict keeps asking for more. The worse things got, the more the government interfered. After a while, nobody bothered to be an entrepreneur anymore. Oh, they got their utopian one-class society, all right, but the one class was poverty. The black market went wild. Politics became more powerful than personal initiative. People lost the idea of individual action and started looking for great leaders.”

  “The eugenics experiments of the 1990s?”

  I nodded heavily. “I’m glad I don’t have to explain to you about those.”

  “A most … shameful time.”

  “Oh, the worst was yet to come.”

  “Dictatorships?”

  “Like bees’ nests. Democracies turned into little dictatorships. Some of them weren’t so little, really … The worse the economies got, the more those dictators concentrated on taking care of themselves, never mind the people. They started looking for scapegoats, blaming each other, blaming various racial groups or ideological units—”

  “Disgusting …” He actually shuddered.

  “Have you heard of Li Quan?”

  “Not in any detail. Only in references to excess.”

  “He popped out of the western United States and used the border skirmishes between the dictatorships to carry out a global coup. He wanted to be a benevolent dictator, he said. Unify all people under one flag, he said. The good of all, he said. Total sharing, f
ood for all, planetary consolidation …”

  “What occurred?”

  “Sarda, that system doesn’t work! It sounds generous and perfect, but no matter how often it’s been tried, it never operates. Li Quan kept talking benevolence, but the only way government control works is to turn everything into a law or a regulation, which means you have to bring in a military order to keep people in line, which means anybody who disagrees is automatically a criminal. His benevolent dictatorship started as a police state and escalated into a global bloodbath. And all the while he talked about his perfect order, how great it would be for all the people. Of course, in the meantime the people were starving because the economy was shot.” I leaned forward intently as Sarda’s brow knitted in lack of perception. “Don’t you see? Rittenhouse is gradually taking control, gradually putting his own people into key positions. Admiral Armstrong as Star Fleet Representative to the Federation Congress, one step below the Chief Magistrate, three of his people commanding starships, himself chairing the Military Staff Advisory Committee at Fleet Command … and Star Empire to light the fuse. The dreadnought isn’t the beginning of a science—it’s the end of a long fuse!”

  “A galactic military incident with the Klingons …,” Sarda murmured as he added it all up. “Li Quan’s global skirmishes. The perfect excuse to launch a military upheaval at Star Fleet—”

  “Establish martial law,” I added, “and disband the civilian government.”

  “Remarkable….”

  “Sarda, he means to dissolve the Federation itself.”

  We stared at the wall, imagining the distant form of Star Empire, and I found that although I understood the processes I was so verbosely explaining to him, I was just as shocked as Sarda was by the idea of their actually happening to us. Rittenhouse drifted back into my mind, a gentle, grandfatherly kind of man who could make anyone trust him. I shook my head slowly. “He really thinks we’ll be better off if the galaxy is directed by some central character. Himself.”

  Sarda turned when I said this. “He does not perceive the error?”

  My right shoulder lifted in a tired half-shrug. “His belief that we should all invest ourselves in the common good will force him to violently subjugate the Klingons and Romulans; he knows that. What he doesn’t realize is that vast parts of the Federation planetary systems won’t hold to his view of the ideal society, and they’ll fight too. We’ll fight. He doesn’t imagine himself at war with the Vulcans or other humans. He’ll be forced to war beyond imagining, and finally to enslave everyone. He doesn’t see it, but it will happen. It always has.”

  The impact sat on us like a grey numbness. I had to force my spine to relax again as we sat side by side and absorbed the terrible realization of my outlandish guesses actually turning out to be true. They must be true—Rittenhouse hadn’t argued with me, and he certainly knew what I was implying.

  Beside me Sarda battled to accept the full-scale foolishness my intense, emotional, too human race made itself vulnerable to, his face hardening, his eyes growing shallow and cold with empathy he would have denied. I saw anger grow as I watched him, his lips pressing tight, his stare filled with the hard floor beneath us, though he wouldn’t have given in to it. There no longer existed any target for his anger from those awful times. Li Quan and his followers were generations dead. World War Three had shown mankind once and for all to let their society grow as a tree grows, free of pruning, free of artificial aids. Since then, since nearly making the biggest cultural blunder in the history of any known race, humans guarded their personal freedoms fiercely and had pushed out into space to guarantee those freedoms to others. Noble in the end, they had made gross mistakes which embarrassed me now in front of my Vulcan companion.

  He shook his head the tiniest bit. “Such waste,” he breathed.

  I nodded. “That’s what happens when society makes decisions instead of individuals.”

  “Society, of course, meaning whoever is in control at the time.”

  “Yes … the loudest lobbyists, political armtwisters, ideological cults, pro-protectionist powers … the father-protector syndrome. It’s a human failing.”

  “I have never understood religions.”

  “Me neither.”

  “You seem to know a substantial amount about that period.”

  “Yeah … captaincy candidates have to concentrate on one section of history from a major Federation power and do a dissertation on it. Mine was ‘Political Collectivism As Causal to Earth’s Third World War.’ So this is my subject. Sorry if I’m ranting. I don’t mean to.”

  “I did request an explanation. Your apology is misplaced.”

  “In that case, I’m not sorry.” Just embarrassed.

  Sensing some intent of mine that I wasn’t even aware of yet, he clasped my arm and hauled me to my feet, then held me as I wobbled through a dizzy wave and moaned at the numb ache in my back. I avoided eye contact; he didn’t need any extra humiliation from his concern for me, so I did him the favor of pretending not to see it. A thanks would only have reminded him of his less-than-complete status as an adult Vulcan. “He must’ve had that phaser set on full stun,” I groaned. “Any more energy and I’d be deader than I feel.”

  “Or less alive than you look.”

  My squeezed-shut eyes flashed open and this time I couldn’t keep down an ear-licking smile. I grabbed his wrist. “A joke? You—joking?”

  He managed to remain deadpan. “Negative. Vulcans never joke.”

  “I’ll remember that, old bean.”

  “I am not a bean.”

  “Not yet.” I shoved myself off the wall, fighting my legs all the way to the brig portal, and stopped just short of the force field. Except for the blue-lighted rim, the field was invisible, but I could feel its energy jumping around my body as I stood near it and its message was clear: forget about getting through.

  “Suggestions?”

  “I have none. Star Fleet does not often use its brig facilities but the technology behind them is state-of-the-art at all times. I regret my ineffectual presence.”

  “Your presence isn’t ineffectual, Sarda. Not to me anyway.”

  In fact the only thing between me and severe depression was Sarda’s Vulcan steadiness. What was I doing here? A day ago I was just a cadet, safe and buffeted by the years of gradual experience ahead of me before I had to face any real crisis. How in a matter of hours had I ended up at the hub of a military convulsion? All my life there had been a Star Fleet, a Federation, casting their protective cloak over our growing settlements on Proxima, providing a stable root for all their quivering branches, like me. What would I have to go home to after this? Proxima lay on the edge of Federation space, quite secure, until now. If Rittenhouse and his cronies took control, it might be years before the government fabric settled down. The galaxy would be a grab bag. Forces from all over would clutch at ground. My ground. My dripping moss-forests, my lepidodendrons, my fern ponds. My parents. Gone?

  The small bulk of Sarda’s communicator pressed against my thigh, still hiding in the side pouch of my parka. Such a small instrument. Yet with it I could key into the self-destruct mode on Wooden Shoe and with a touch destroy Pompeii, stop Rittenhouse in his tracks. That was worth dying for.

  I pulled out the communicator and stared at it, my eyes blurring the mesh cover into a fuzzy gold square. It was warm in my clammy palm, as though carrying life of its own. I would do it. I would blow Pompeii to Orion. My only doubt was how strongly Rittenhouse led his people. If he died, would the coup die with him or would his cronies carry on? If I could only tell Captain Kirk … he’d make sure things were deflected at Star Fleet, get it all cleaned up, make it safe again.

  I would never know if Sarda knew what I was thinking, the weights and balances shifting in my mind. He should’ve hated me for such thoughts, since his life lay here in my hands too. But his reaction held no resentment, and certainly no lack of courage.

  His fingers closed over the instrument before I coul
d open it, making no effort to avoid contact with my hand. Regretfully he said, “Useless. The brig is insulated against outgoing beams of any kind. Phasers also, if I recall the technology correctly.” He eyed me intently, quite knowingly and with unexpected agreement, even sympathy. “There is a high-energy interior forcefield.”

  “Even a phaser wouldn’t cut us out of here?” I sighed, recovering from near-suicide. “Damn. You’d think Star Fleet could arrange to be inefficient in one little area, wouldn’t you?”

  “Such an aim would be—”

  “I know, I know.” The wall drew me over to itself when my legs started to give out.

  Sarda guided me down to sit on the floor again. “You should rest. Conserve your strength.”

  “I might as well. There doesn’t seem to be much else to do in here. We do have to get out. I don’t think Kirk has picked up on Rittenhouse yet, if he ever will, and we’ve got to tell him.”

  “Are you planning to escape back to Enterprise?”

  “No, I still want to get to Star Empire and get to the root of all this. We have to find out how much is true of what Rittenhouse said about Paul Burch. Burch could be just as bad. A competitor.”

  “Unlikely. His call to Enterprise for support indicates quite different motivations, Piper. I would not be concerned for Engineer Silayna.”

  Vulcan throughout, are you? That’s not Vulcan generosity peeking through your shell. But thanks—I need it.

  “There’s one other thing I can’t figure out.”

  “Which is?”

  “Boma. Have you ever heard of him? Neither have I. And what’s a civilian liaison? Have you ever heard of that classification? I haven’t. But I guess it isn’t odd for a member of the Admiralty to handpick his adjutants, is it? I didn’t think so. Rank has its privileges, right? Sure it does. And did he handpick those three starship captains? Were their captaincies rewards for fealty to him? Because if they were Star Fleet is in deep—”

  “Piper.”

  “What? I’m trying to think.”

  “And I am trying to save you from it. Please remain calm.” He inhaled deeply and recovered from my thought processes, saying, “Humans can certainly be dithyrambic at times.”