A contest of principles, p.35
A Contest of Principles, page 35
“Hear me, Avomora. We must risk this… if you ever wish to be the ruler of your own fate. You, I, us… we can take back your life, together.”
Empty promises! I alone can ease your torment. Do not heed the stranger’s lies, child…
A sudden surge of fury amplified Avomora’s resolve. Spock felt her willpower swell and he focused it like a phaser beam on the tendrils rooting Vumri’s mind to Avomora’s, which began to dissolve and melt away before the sheer force of his and the princess’s combined thoughts.
“We are not a child! Our mind is our own!”
* * *
“We are not a child! Our mind is our own!”
Spock and Avomora shouted in unison, startling McCoy. Spock fell away from the chair, collapsing onto the floor. Avo went limp in her chair, her spasms ceasing abruptly. Her heartbeat dropped dramatically. Her breaths grew shallow.
“Spock!” Chapel hurried to check on the fallen Vulcan. Her scanner whirred energetically as she shouted out its readings. “Major cardiac arrhythmia, sinking blood pressure, respiratory distress… he’s crashing, Doctor!”
“What’s wrong?” Jemo could not stay back any longer. She rushed to Avomora’s side. “Is it over? Is she going to be all right?”
“Not if we don’t move quickly,” McCoy said. “For both of them.”
He wasn’t entirely sure what had just transpired inside Avomora’s head, but both she and Spock were showing every sign of major, possibly life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. If McCoy had to make a guess, he’d venture that the mind-meld had “worked” to the extent of undoing whatever Vumri had done to Avo, but that the princess was now going through the telepathic equivalent of quitting “cold turkey”—with Spock along for the ride, thanks to the meld.
“Chapel, ten cc’s of cordrazine for Spock, followed by a good slap, if necessary, to keep him from slipping into a coma.” McCoy barked out orders, careful to keep his patients straight and tailor his emergency measures to their respective species. “Jemo, grab me a spare hypospray from that medkit over there!”
“On it!”
Jemo sprang across the study to fetch the device even as Chapel treated Spock. McCoy could have used a few extra arms, not to mention a fully staffed sickbay, but the private study was now an intensive-care unit. Returning in record time, Jemo slapped a hypospray into McCoy’s waiting palm. With no time to load anything specific into the device, the doctor had to resort to one of the preloaded palliatives readily available to him. He quickly double-checked the dosage before administering the drug. Avo’s skin felt cold and clammy to the touch as he propped her head up.
“Is that going to do it?” Jemo took Avo’s limp hand in hers. “Tell me you can save her!”
Chapel slapped Spock across the face to rouse him, a drastic measure that was known to be effective with Vulcans sometimes. “Wake up, Spock!” she pleaded. “Come back to us!”
McCoy found himself torn between his patients, uncertain which was in the most danger. Standard triage criteria were of little use.
Please, he thought, don’t let me lose them both!
* * *
“Does Ozalor have a death penalty?” Levine asked.
“Don’t know,” Godwin called back to him from an archway at the other side of the antechamber. “Probably should’ve asked before.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” he said.
Their defenses were buckling. The reflective surface of the mirror portal glowed furiously red before evaporating into a silvery mist, revealing a mounted cannon on the other side of the archway, along with what looked like a small army of palace guards. Peering past the guards, through the crackling force field that remained, Levine glimpsed Salokonos, the Yovode himself, commanding the assault on his daughter’s chambers.
“Surrender,” he bellowed, “or no mercy will be shown you!”
Levine glanced over at the hall leading to the study. He wished he had some clue what was going on with Spock, McCoy, Chapel, and the princess, but in the meantime, he intended to hold his position for as long as possible, while counting on Godwin to do the same. That was the thing about working security; sometimes all you could do was follow orders and put yourself on the line, without knowing what command was up to.
Ours is but to do or die, he thought. Preferably the former.
The cannon battered the crumbling force field. Blinding flashes of bright blue Cherenkov radiation left fuzzy spots dancing in Levine’s vision. The field gave every evidence of being a strong one, probably the best the royal treasury could afford, but he didn’t need a tactical display to know that it couldn’t stand up to such punishment much longer. Determined guards fired on the field with their rifles and disruptors as well, adding to the barrage. The force field flickered and sputtered, clearly on its last legs.
“Get ready!” Levine called to Godwin. “Here they come!”
“Hard to miss,” she shot back. “Battle stations, it is.”
With a flurry of sparks, the field gave up the ghost. A first wave of guards poured through the breach, roaring like blood-crazed Klingons, only to be stunned by the Starfleet officers’ purloined disruptors. Using the archways as cover, Levine and Godwin set up a crossfire to slow the assault. The stunned guards dropped to the floor, but more guards stormed the antechamber, leaping over their fallen comrades. They fired back at the defenders. A crimson disruptor beam sizzled past Levine’s head as he ducked back inside the doorway just in time. He wanted to think that the Ozalorians’ disruptors were set on stun, but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. He’d seen what they had done to the force field.
“Keep going!” Salokonos urged his guards. “For my daughter’s sake!”
Funny thing, Levine thought. As I understand it, we’re trying to save your daughter too.
Not that he expected Salokonos to see it that way at the moment.
Firing with practiced accuracy, Levine thinned out another wave of guards, while Godwin stunned her fair share of invaders, too, but they were fighting a losing battle against a seemingly inexhaustible flood of opponents dead set on recapturing them—or worse. A red-hot disruptor beam melted away a strip of fiber-optic molding around the doorway, only a few centimeters away from his fragile flesh. He glanced over at Godwin and saw her similarly besieged.
Nice knowing you, he thought.
Gaining ground, the guards advanced like a category-ten ion storm. Levine saw the end of the battle coming in minutes, if not seconds, but kept on firing. He hoped Captain Kirk would someday get word of the rescue party’s valiant last stand. It would be nice to be remembered at least.
“Halt, everyone!” a voice rang out. “Lay down your arms!”
Avomora emerged from the hall leading to the study. She looked a bit pale and shaky, but clearly up and about. She approached the guards, who immediately ceased fire lest they strike their crown princess by mistake. Levine and Godwin lowered their weapons as well, not wanting to catch her in the crossfire. Glancing toward the hall, Levine glimpsed Spock trailing after Avomora, propped up by both McCoy and Chapel. Jemo had her glowing knife out, just in case.
“Avomora?” Her distraught father pushed through his guards to reach her. “Are you well?”
“More than you can imagine,” she said, smiling. “More than I ever dreamed I could be.”
Forty-One
Vok
“It’s working, Captain,” Uhura reported. “The votes are streaming in, billions of them.”
The Enterprise had been drafted into service as Vok Populi’s emergency replacement. The ship’s computer was, by a considerable margin, the most sophisticated and powerful computer in the sector. It was generations beyond anything found on Vok, whose technology was more akin to that of twenty-second-century Earth. Uhura, Scotty, and his engineers had scrambled to adapt the Enterprise’s existing systems to the task of intercepting the votes that would have been transmitted to VP-One. The trick was harnessing all that processing power, as well as the ship’s communications array, to receive and tabulate the votes of more than six billion Vokites spread out across the surface of the planet.
“Mister Scott?” Kirk asked from his chair on the bridge.
“So far, so good, sir.” Scott manned the main engineering station. “But I can’t promise we’re out of the woods yet.”
“Understood, Mister Scott.”
Despite the Enterprise’s prodigious computer, the job was putting a strain on its systems, which were not designed for this. To compensate, all nonessential computer functions and communications had been suspended for the duration of the tabulations. Kirk wished that Spock was on hand to assist with the technical challenges, but the crew that remained was among the best in Starfleet.
“It’s vital that this election take place today,” Dare said, defying any suggestion that she return to sickbay.
The commissioner had used all her powers of persuasion to convince the planet’s executive committee to accept the last-minute change in plans. She had not consulted with the candidates; she would have to get their approval after the fact. Kirk agreed with her; as he knew from experience, sometimes it was smarter to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
The curve of the planet could be glimpsed at the bottom of the viewscreen. “Status, Yeoman Zahra?”
“Steady on course, Captain,” she replied from the helm. The Enterprise was slowly orbiting Vok, following the same path VP-One would have taken had it not self-destructed. “Feels like we’re crawling, though.”
“Take it slow, Yeoman,” he said. “We have to give the entire world a chance to vote… in every time zone.”
“Aye, sir.”
It occurred to Kirk that he was going to have to relieve Zahra and the rest of the bridge crew eventually, given that the global election was going to take all day. Kirk found himself grateful that a Vokite day was only twenty-two hours long.
“Captain!” Scott said, frowning at his display screens. “We may have a wee problem.”
Kirk pivoted toward him. “What is it?”
“The computer, sir, it’s slowing down quickly, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron. Too much data coming in too fast through too many channels; it’s causing a logjam of sorts.”
Kirk had been afraid of something like this. The Enterprise wasn’t built to be a planetary voting tabulator and they’d barely had time to jury-rig it to that purpose, let alone run any trials or tests. Technical difficulties were to be expected but could not be allowed to undo the election. Too much was at stake.
“Uhura, any way you can regulate the transmissions?”
“I’m trying, Captain, but Mister Scott is right. We’re not prepared to process so many signals at once. I’m trying to govern the flow by temporarily storing the excess data in buffers, but they’re filling up faster than I can release them back into the pipeline.”
Dare looked worried. “Just be certain no votes get erased or rejected. The integrity of the election depends on every vote being counted.”
“We all appreciate your concerns, Commissioner,” Kirk said, “and the importance of making sure every eligible voice is heard.” He flicked a switch on his starboard armrest. “Computer, report status of vote tabulation.”
“Tabulation encountering difficulties,” the ship’s artificial voice replied. “Efficiency impaired. Processing power insufficient. Tabulation procedure in jeopardy.”
“Computer, access additional circuits as needed, excepting essential functions.”
The overhead lights flickered briefly as the computer diverted more of its duotronic circuits to the task at hand. Kirk hoped that would be enough, but he was swiftly disappointed.
“Nonessential circuits insufficient.”
“Captain?” Tanaka said, speaking up. He remained under guard, his trip to the brig postponed on the chance that his singular understanding of VP-One could still prove necessary. “I may be able to help.”
Kirk was in no position to reject Tanaka’s input out of hand. “Talk to me.”
“We anticipated a glitch like this, in the event there was a surge of voting at any particular moment. If you’ll allow me access to a control panel, I can possibly fix this. I just need to tweak some crucial subroutines so that your computer can do a better job of breaking the flow of votes into smaller, more discrete packets, perhaps by region or district, tabulating each packet individually before adding each subtotal to the cumulative sum.” He shrugged. “That’s the simple version.”
What he was saying made sense to Kirk. He often did the same thing when reviewing the ship’s stores and consumption rates; it was easier and more efficient to add up several smaller totals instead of trying to calculate it all at once. But could he truly trust Tanaka after what he had done? Tanaka was the one who was responsible for destroying Vok Populi in the first place.
“Please, Captain,” he said. “Let me try to make up for what I did, at least to some degree?”
Kirk attempted to gauge his sincerity. “How do I know I can trust you? What’s to stop you from putting Myp’s safety above our mission again?”
He doubted that Tanaka could trick the Enterprise into self-destructing—a Constitution-class starship was more secure than that—but it was possible he could deliberately make their current problem even worse by throwing more bugs into the computer’s electoral programming.
“I’ve already done what I can to save Myp,” Tanaka said. “I did what her captors asked. I destroyed Vok Populi, which they have surely confirmed by now. They have no way of knowing what’s transpiring on the Enterprise or whether I’m cooperating with you or not.” He smiled wanly. “If you pull this off, they’ll blame your legendary ingenuity, not me.”
Kirk was willing to take the blame. Sizing Tanaka up, he took the penitent diplomat at his word.
“Go for it.”
He nodded at Chekov and Bradley, who stepped back and let Tanaka scurry over to Spock’s science station, where Haines surrendered her seat to him. She watched warily over his shoulder as he accessed the main computer. Kirk observed him carefully as well.
Tense moments passed. Tanaka deftly worked the computer control panels while studying the various visual displays. He inserted a microtape into the reader, modified it via the manual input controls, then ejected it with a sigh of relief. He slumped back against his seat, breathing heavily as though he had just run a four-minute mile.
“There,” he said. “That should do it.”
Kirk couldn’t—wouldn’t—take his word for it. “Computer, report status of vote tabulation.”
“Tabulation proceeding,” the computer reported calmly. “Efficiency restored.”
Kirk was glad to hear it. Was he just projecting, or did the computer’s tone sound subtly more relaxed as well? In any event, it appeared the tabulation was back on track.
“Thank you, Mister Tanaka,” he said stiffly, not quite ready to forgive the other man for his earlier betrayal.
“It was the least I could do, Captain.” Tanaka returned the station to Haines. “And not nearly enough.”
Kirk couldn’t disagree. Tanaka’s timely assistance didn’t make up for putting them in this bind, but it was a start. Perhaps he had taken his first step on the road to redemption.
In the meantime, they still had a long day ahead. Even with Tanaka’s fixes, would the Enterprise’s computer be able to keep up? Would General Gogg and his loyal supporters accept the result of the vote? Would Prup and her fellow reformers?
That probably depends, he thought, on what those results are.
* * *
Twenty-plus hours later, Kirk was running on coffee and a short power nap he’d managed to squeeze in during a lull in the voting. The food slots had been shut down to free up processing power for the election, but he’d remembered Janice Rand’s old trick of using a hand phaser to heat up a stale pot of coffee from the galley. In retrospect, she had deserved a commendation for that inspired bit of creativity.
“Well, Kirk?” General Gogg demanded from the bridge’s main viewscreen. “Let’s have it. Who claims the victory in this contest?”
Both candidates appeared on the screen, which was split between their transmissions from the planet. Kirk understood that both Gogg and Prup were holed up in their respective campaign headquarters, awaiting the election results. Vok’s executive committee was listening in as well. Dare had chosen to notify all parties of the final tally before releasing it to the public, if only to stay out ahead of any possible challenges. She shared the command circle with Kirk, discreetly relying on a guard rail for support. Typically, Gogg had directed his query at Kirk, who refused to play along, letting Dare deliver the news regardless.
“The results are in,” she said, “and the majority of the votes went to Prup.”
“Holy jamborees!” The young activist clutched her chest as though to keep her heart from bursting through her ribs. She looked more stunned than elated. Jubilant aides rushed in from off-screen to hug and congratulate her. Prup shook her head, visibly struggling to process the news. She sounded as though she couldn’t quite believe it. “For real?”
“The Enterprise’s computer has double-checked and triple-checked the figures,” Dare stated. “In the end, you received sixty-two percent of the vote and General Gogg received the remaining thirty-eight percent. Voter turnout represented eighty-three percent, which is quite impressive. Your people can be justifiably proud of their determination to stand and be counted.”
And that was despite the turmoil and intimidation, Kirk reflected. He had to wonder how high the turnout might have been had it not been for incidents like the one in the capital plaza frightening some voters away from the polls. Still, Dare was right; Vok was to be commended for that outstanding degree of civic participation.
