Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (32 page)

The Orion drew a chair close and leaned forward to
say, “You think you’ve won, don’t you, Korsal?”

“I was not aware there was a contest, Borth.”

The yellow eyes held a feral gleam. “The game goes
on, whether you are player or merely pawn. This plague will set the Federation and the Klingon and
Romulan empires at one another’s throats—and the
winners will be the Orions.”

“You are wrong, Borth,” said Korsal. “You under
estimate our intelligence.”

“Whose? The Klingons?” the man hissed. “Surely
you cannot mean the Federation! Have you applied
for citizenship in that pitiful mix of slave-born races,
Korsal?”

“I am a Klingon,” Korsal replied, refusing to admit
that the thought had crossed his mind often since he had realized he could never go home. Where was
home? Nisus was the only place he had ever felt truly
welcome.

“You’re no Klingon,” Borth told him. “You’re weak
as any Federate—you belong with them. When I sell
this plague to the Klingons and the Roms, though,
how will your fine friends treat you?”

Sell it to the Romulans? Then it
was
a Romulan on
Nisus whose blood carried the immunity factor. He
had thought he dreamed that part of what he had overheard. There weren’t supposed to be any
Romulans in the Federation.

Borth continued with his threats. “Oh, the Federa
tion will keep you alive, you and your half-breed sons.

They may even breed you, for your precious blood.
You’ll be a laboratory animal to them—along with other Klingons they’ll capture for their blood.”

Anger gave Korsal the strength to grasp Borth’s
shoulder in a bruising grip; had they been alone, he
might have strangled him. “Do you think I will allow
you to tell them, Borth? I will kill you first.”

“Then you’d better do it now,” Borth replied coldly. “I will be leaving Nisus soon—along with
everyone else.”

“What?”

“Fool! This intermingling of races weakens both the
Federation and the Klingon Empire. We Orions sell our excess women to both, diluting your bloodlines.
When the Federation Council gets the report on the
Nisus plague, they’ll recognize its source and disband
the colony here. Then where will you go, Korsal?
Whatever happens, you have lost. Unless—”

“Unless?”

Borth glanced over to where Seela now stood by Karl’s bed, stroking her sleeping stepson’s forehead. “When I let you marry Seela—”

But that was not how it had happened. Korsal had purchased his wife from Borth to prevent the man from sending Seela back to the Orion system when
she had reached an age to be valuable. Her beauty and
her dancing skills would probably have meant her purchase as an expensive pleasure slave. Korsal had
set her free before marrying her.

“Leave Seela out of this!” Korsal told him. “You
sold
her, just another transaction. You don’t care
about her.”

“Ah, but you do,” said Borth. “She is amazingly
loyal to you, Korsal. Since you married her, I haven’t
gotten a single piece of useful information out of her.”

Hearing her name, Seela returned to Korsal, sitting
on the edge of his bed. Her presence could have
clouded his senses, but it did not. Instead, he felt her
support, as if she lent him strength. All his friends had
warned him against marrying an Orion, then become
silent on the subject after he had done so. But he had
been right: Seela did not manipulate him … except
when he wanted her to.

“I know why you wanted me to marry Seela, Borth,” he said, taking his wife’s hand. “You badly underestimated her. She knows exactly what you
are.”

“She is merely a woman. A commodity. You are a
fool to treat her otherwise. However,” the Orion continued, “you can salvage her, make a place for
your sons, escape before you become prisoners of the
Federation. Come with me to Klinzhai. Report the
plague to your people, Korsal. Be a hero, giving them
a new weapon against their enemies. Your enemies.”

“
No,” said Korsal. To his astonishment, Seela
spoke the word in unison with him.

Then, “No, Uncle,” Seela said. “Whatever happens, we will not be party to starting interplanetary
war.”

“You had your chance,” said Borth, extricating
himself from Korsal’s grip and rising. “Now I will do
what must be done for the good of Orion.”

When Borth had gone, Korsal said, “He does not
know the codes for contacting the Klingon Empire.
He will have to go there—and I must prevent him.”

“You are right, my husband,” said Seela.

Korsal stared at her and remembered several times
recently when she had asked favors of him—always
by communicator, so that her pheromones could not
affect him. The third or fourth time it had happened,
he had realized how much she wanted his trust. How
she struggled to overcome her upbringing, her depen
dence on men to tell her what to do, her instinctive
and practiced use of sensuality to obtain favor.

“You were supposed to persuade me to agree to
what Borth wanted,” said Korsal.

“That is what he instructed me to do. And also get
the codes from you. I do not take instructions from Borth,” she replied. “Korsal, I had never known a
man could be so strong and honorable until I came to
live with you. Whatever happens, I will stay with
you.”

“Father,” Kevin said from the next bed, “what
is
going to happen?”

Korsal sighed. “The last thing Borth expects, or we would not be alive right now. I must tell Captain Kirk
about Borth’s plans. There is no other way. Borth must be stopped, and short of killing him, I have no other way to do so.”

But after Seela had gone, when he tried to contact Kirk, the communications officer informed him that
the captain was busy and would return his call. “Then
the second in command, please,” Korsal said.

“Mr. Spock is not on the bridge. I will page him for you.”

While he was waiting, another visitor appeared, this one unannounced: the Human male who had operated the transporter the day he and Kevin had
been beamed aboard.

“I’m Montgomery Scott, chief engineer,” said the
Human. “We’ve met, though ye may not recall, bein’
you were near froze t’ death.” Korsal saw wariness in
the man’s eyes, though he was trying to cover it. Whatever Korsal might do, Mr. Scott saw only
“Klingon.

“My son and I have you to thank for saving our
lives,” Korsal replied.

“An’ ye’ve returned the favor manyfold,” Mr. Scott
replied, if somewhat stiffly. “Captain Kirk tells me he
has promised your son Kevin a tour of engineering.”

“Oh—yes!” Kevin said. “But, Father—”

“I’ll take care of it, Kevin. You go along with Mr.
Scott.”

Kevin swung his terminal aside and got off the bed,
searching for his slippers. Scott studied him. “The captain tells me you’ve been accepted to Starfleet
Academy,” he said with faint skepticism.

“Yes, I want to study engineering too. Like my
father,” Kevin said. “Maybe I can adapt the antimat
ter generators you have aboard ship for planets like
Nisus.”

“It requires the absolute zero of deep space as a cooling system,” said Korsal. “Only starships can
safely make use of it.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Scott. “Come on along, lad, and I’ll
show you why.”

“Emergency communication for Korsal,” a female
voice suddenly said from both the wall unit and the
terminal that Korsal had left turned on.

“Korsal here.”

His screen came to life with the image of Emily
Torrence. “Korsal, are you in any condition to work? Ask your doctor—”

“I’m fine,” he said impatiently. “What’s wrong?”

“Spring thaw,” she replied significantly.

“Ice?”

“A new problem. The river has slowed to a trickle, and investigators report an ice dam in the pass above
the safety sluice where you crashed. The spring runoff
is building behind it—”

“And if it lets go, the dam and sluices can’t handle
it!” exclaimed Korsal.

“We’re sending every engineer we have up there
—and it’s not enough. This plague has killed seven of
our best people.”

“Dinna fret, lass,” Mr. Scott said from behind Korsal’s shoulder. “I’ll gather my crew an’ be down there as fast as the transporter can operate. Have ye made sonar scans of the ice dam? We’ll hae t’ phaser runoff tunnels, let the pressure ease slowly. It’ll be delicate work t’ keep it from all breakin’ loose at once.” He glanced at Kevin. “Sorry, boy—that tour will have to wait.”

“Of course!” said Kevin. “We’re corning along to help—aren’t we, Father?”

But as Korsal and his son followed Mr. Scott out of sickbay, they ran straight into Dr. Gardens. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“Planetside,” Korsal explained. “We’ve got to pre
vent a flood!”

Dr. Gardens spared a glance at Mr. Scott’s retreating back. “Scotty’s going down to fix it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re not needed. Back to bed, both of you. Kevin, you look flushed—too much excitement already today.”

“Doctor,” said Korsal, “we are not prisoners on board this ship!”

“No, but you are our only source of iron-based
serum against the Nisus plague. Not only dare you not
endanger your lives, you can’t afford as much as a cold. If you stay here, in another twenty hours we can administer the blood-stimulant drugs again and save more plague victims. If you beam down, you risk illness or injury. You will certainly exhaust your
selves, and delay the time we can start drawing blood.
More people
will die
than would have had to.”

Korsal knew she read in his face that she had won.
He made no further protest. The doctor softened. “Korsal, Montgomery Scott is one of the best engi
neers in the Federation. Under emergency conditions
and with a tight deadline, he is probably
the
best. If
anyone can prevent that dam from bursting, it’s our
Mr. Scott.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Spock was still in sickbay when Sendet was brought
in, fighting and raving. From his rantings, he recog
nized that the man thought he was in
pon farr,
the
time when a Vulcan male must mate or die, but the
diagnostic indicators quickly showed that what he
had was the Nisus plague.