Heresy 61

Tylha

Samantha Beresford has injected me with about a bucketful of drugs. Not just hyronaline for the radiation, but anti-toxins for the fumes when Storm Command burned, and half a dozen agents for adjusting my neuro-chemistry after the pounding my nerves took in Bresar's mindscape. And she made me sleep on the flight back from Vulcan, and she wants me to sleep now.

For that matter, I want to sleep now. I feel woozy and nauseous and very, very tired. But there is so much to do -

So I sit at the desk in Experimental Engineering, and I try to sort out the most important things.

The Tellarite, Slett, at least kept things moving while I was off the station. But there is still a mammoth job to do on the repairs... and our communications still need disentangling. I have about six dozen conflicting high-priority requests in front of me, and I have to work through them all, and still find time for essentials of my own. Like the series of debriefings on the whole wretched business, or the board of inquiry where I'll have to defend the hapless Captain Willis over the loss of the USS Marengo....

Of course, my problems are the same as everyone's. The sudden appearance and equally sudden crash of the Hegemony of Bresar has left a monumental mess, everywhere....

The disruption of Starfleet's communications left us exposed against the Klingons, and the KDF took full advantage. The hard-fought salient at Aznetkur has, finally, collapsed. T'Nae and Paul Hengest and many others managed to salvage something from the ruins, though - the Klingons didn't claw back all their territorial losses after the Bercera business. And what they did re-take, they paid for. In blood, for every cubic centimetre of space.

The repercussions of the Hegemony will still be felt across the Federation. There were many, many deaths on both sides in the battle of Andoria, and those losses are keenly felt. Chancellor th'Oziph, though, has agreed to a deal with the provisional Vulcan government - now that the Hegemony's leadership is dead or imprisoned, a blanket amnesty will be granted to everyone else involved. It's the right thing to do - it galls my Andorian instinct for clan-honour and blood-vengeance, but it is the right thing to do.

There will be a coolness, though, in Vulcan-Andorian relations until the rift heals... and we need that healing. We still have the matter of the hundreds of thousands of Romulan refugees accepted into Vulcan space under the Hegemony's aegis. And we owe Obisek and the Romulan Republic for their help... and that is an edge of worry for me, too, because they are our allies, but not necessarily our friends.

And events in Romulan space are... turbulent. The loss of the Hegemony fleet has left the Tal Shiar resurgent, taking back their losses with brutal efficiency. Valikra's home system of Porruma is the last holdout, and it is under daily bombardment by Tal Shiar forces - they will send in an occupation force soon, though there may be very little left to occupy. But to mount this military operation, the Tal Shiar must have sold itself further into bondage to the Elachi and their shadowy Iconian masters....

And there are other fronts, the Borg and the Dyson Spheres, the terrorist resurgences in Cardassian space....

It is all a big mess, and we need to clean it up. We need to pull ourselves together, to heal from this. We are wounded, and we can't go on being wounded.

And dealing with all these urgent engineering requests is - a very small step in the right direction. I sigh heavily and start putting the PADDs into some sort of order.

It takes a moment for me to register that the office door has hissed open. I look up.

"Vice Admiral Shohl." Admiral Semok is standing in the doorway. He is blinking, and looking - for a Vulcan - distinctly embarrassed. "Ah," he says, and stops.

We need to heal. Let it start here, in a small way. I stand up, and give him my best military salute.

"Welcome back, sir."

Heresy 60

The Warden's body flickered for an instant as his holographic matrix went through a scheduled self-test. He looked down from the guard post, at the light bridge that led to the deepest, most secure levels of Facility 4028.

The holographic guards were marching over the bridge now, faceless in their reflective helmets, their armour gleaming with personal shielding, their weapons at the ready. Eight of them. The slight figure of the Vulcan woman in their midst was almost hidden from the Warden's view.

An indicator flashed on the control board. The cell door was opening. A moment later, the cell started to register occupancy. The door closed again. The Warden fancied for a moment that he heard the dull boom of the door swinging shut, echoing through all the lightless rock that held the Federation's most secure detention facility. He reproved himself. He was not programmed for fancies - and, anyway, those doors did not swing, they slid.

"T'Nir of Vulcan," he read aloud from the display. "Guilty of treason, murder and conspiracy to commit genocide."

Confirmed, came the electronic message from the ISIS computer.

"She is of previous good character, was acting under mental influence, and pled guilty to all charges. These facts should mitigate in her favour."

Noted.

"Against this, we must consider the unquantifiable factors of the mental influence. We have no guarantees that it has lapsed, and lack a full understanding of its potentialities. The matter is under investigation by experts on Vulcan, but no conclusions have been reached."

Also noted.

"In view of this, all precautions must be taken to ensure the continued security of the facility." The Warden was not programmed for professional pique, either - but, when he considered some events earlier in his career, he felt it anyway.

I concur, said ISIS.

"Condition: security ultimate, then."

Confirmed. Security ultimate.

The light bridge winked out. On the other side, the guards, their work done, discorporated, their holo-matrices returning to the ISIS network.

The Warden continued to look down. His vigilance was mechanically perfect, mechanically patient... eternal.

---

The cell was spacious, and not uncomfortable. But it was still a cell.

T'Nir sat on the bed for a long, long time, her head hanging. Finally, in a quiet voice, she began to speak.

"I am imprisoned under conditions of maximum security, among artificial minds I cannot influence. The artifact, the source of my power, has been taken from me and is being held at a cosmic distance from here. What remains of the will of this fleshly vessel is now implacably opposed to my own. My existence is known, my political and military power has been destroyed. My enemies are on their guard against me."

She raised her head. Her eyes were burning.

"These things are setbacks. And setbacks yield to the disciplined mind."

Heresy 59

T'Laihhae

"You are dismissed," I tell the centurion on guard duty at the brig.

She looks at me doubtfully. "Standard procedure is that prisoners should not be left unattended -"

"I am attending. You are dismissed."

She looks even more doubtful, but the habit of obedience is strong, even in the Republic fleet. She stands, salutes, and leaves. I square my shoulders and enter the brig. Then I turn, to lock down the doorway with my command code.

The brig is not large, but there is space enough to separate prisoners if need be. The crewmen from the shuttle are being held in cells near the doorway. I walk down the narrow passage between them, turn a corner, and stand before the only other occupied cell.

He is there. He is sitting on the bed, and he looks up as I approach. I see the light of recognition in his eyes.

"Centurion T'Laihhae," says Vorkov.

I stop before the force-field entrance to the cell. Now that the moment has come, I find it hard to think what to say to him. The knife in the wrist sheath feels immensely heavy.

"Should I address you as General, or Minister?" I temporize.

"Whichever you feel appropriate," he replies. There is no emotion, not even a trace of apprehension, on his long, saturnine face.

I have imagined a moment like this many times. In that imagination, I have cursed him, or lectured him, or simply killed him, each one a hundred times over. "Minister Vorkov, then. It is your current effective rank, after all."

"Quite so, Centurion," says Vorkov.

He is trying to needle me, I must not let him.... Then, a realization. He is trying to needle me because he needs to. He needs to feel he is asserting some sort of power over me... because the reality is - quite otherwise.

"I am disappointed in you, Minister," I say. "You have not sufficiently assimilated and understood the maxims and principles of Bresar. Procedures adapt to the realities of the situation, do they not? And the reality of this situation is... that my old Imperial rank is no longer relevant."

He raises one eyebrow. "You require me to address you as a purported Vice Admiral of the so-called Republic."

"I do not require it - Minister. For all your purported and so-called, you are a prisoner aboard a Republic warship that answers to my commands. Facts, Minister. You are surrounded by force fields and armoured metal and armed guards, and there is nothing purported about any of it."

He nods. "I accept that. So. It seems you have come a long way since our last meeting, Vice Admiral. Perhaps you should thank me for that."

"Oh," I say, "I have considered very deeply, Minister, what I owe you."

He grows agitated, at last. He stands up. "Am I, at least, to be permitted the Right of Statement before -"

"You may talk." I remind myself: that is all he can do.

"You hate me because I killed your friend -"

"Incorrect," I say, "or at least incomplete. You made me complicit in my friend's death, and that is why I hate you. And myself."

Vorkov's shoulders slump, a little, at that. "Then you... recognize your own role in what happened."

"Of course. And I have condemned myself for it - many times. But I do not let that cripple me... one's self is the one enemy with whom it is always necessary to come to terms."

"Necessary." He snarls. Somehow, I have cracked the façade. "What I did was necessary - disaffection was growing under my command, an example had to be made! The consequences of disloyalty had to be demonstrated -"

"Ah, yes," I say. "Another reason to be disappointed in you. You spoke to me so memorably of loyalty, and yet, here you are, a defector from the Tal Shiar to the Hegemony."

"Loyalty," Vorkov spits, "is a virtue only in subordinates."

"And you have never seen yourself as a subordinate?"

"Never. Valikra offered opportunities for advancement - and T'Nir offered opportunities to dispose of Valikra. T'Nir's death cult around the katra would have self-destructed in due course. And then - there could have been a ruler of a unified Vulcan and Romulan state. Not a fanatic, not an academic idealist, not a ghost from the dead past. I could have ruled."

"I fear you underestimate your opposition - or overestimate yourself. And you are wrong, in any case, about loyalty. If we are not trustworthy for those we command - then we have no right to command them."

"Moralistic nonsense."

"Not at all. Simple pragmatism. Sooner or later, they will realise that." I frown. There is a sound in the air, a dim rhythmic banging. "I think I hear my subordinates now, in fact. Working at the door to the brig. I should commend them, but they leave me with very little time -"

I twist my wrist, and the knife pops into my hand. I hold it up. "I killed your lackey Plectan with this," I say. "An assassin's weapon, with a poison reservoir in the hilt. I have not had time to replace the Dimorus rodent toxin I used on Plectan... but I did have the opportunity, during the journey from Andoria to Vulcan, to prepare a liquid suspension of Pasicide-7. It would be interesting, academically, to see what it does...."

My gaze meets his and holds it for what seems like a year.

Then I slip the knife back into its sheath. "I can live with an unsatisfied academic curiosity," I say.

Vorkov finds his voice. "I am... gratified," he says.

"You should not be. I intend to do the right thing, Minister, by the law and by treaty. You are wanted in the Federation for a heinous crime, and the evidence against you is more than sufficient. Do you know what they will do to you, in the Federation? They take rehabilitation very seriously." I find I am almost crooning the words. "They will work with you, Vorkov, over years and decades. Counsellors and therapists, psychologists and telepaths... they will bring you to an understanding of your crimes, and a genuine desire for atonement. You will resist, but it is for your good, so they will never give up. They will cure you, Vorkov. They will cure you of the disease of being you."

He does not reply. His face is stricken.

"There is hope, yet, though," I say sweetly. "I might leave you to the Federation, but the Tal Shiar are not inclined to be lenient with defectors. They may well send operatives to... cure that disease by a more radical excision. Should that happen, rest assured that I will shed no tears."

I hear the door of the brig burst open, hear the clattering of running feet on the deck. I turn as they come around the corner.

It is not the ones who know me best - my old comrades from Virinat and Crateris. Aitra is there, his face freshly lined with new worries, and his partner Retar... Dellis, her big homely face apprehensive... Zdanruvruk, determination in his eyes... and Commander Yousest, out of place as always in Starfleet uniform, his vestigial gills fluttering. It is not the ones who know me best... it is, perhaps, the ones who care about me the most....

"Sir -" Aitra begins, and stops. Zdanruvruk has a medical scanner in his hands: he points it at Vorkov. "He's... uninjured," he says, in a tone of blank amazement.

"Of course he is." I remember something, and add, with a brief smile, "Our equipment should not be tainted with the blood of a traitor."

And I turn and walk away. Behind me, I hear a single thump and crackle - Vorkov's fist, striking uselessly at the force field. I pay him no more mind. For the first time in a long while, I feel I can pay him no more mind.

"Sir." Dellis is at my elbow. "We were - we worried that -"

"That my history with Vorkov might lead me to take private vengeance. I can understand that."

Dellis shakes her head and looks sullen. "None of us knows what that - history - is," she says.

"Perhaps you should take the opportunity to ask Vorkov. In any case - it is over now." My heart is, curiously, light. "I have taken all the vengeance that I needed to take. Whatever was between Vorkov and me... is ended, now, and I have won." I smile, and the smile remains on my face. "And I am relieved to discover - I can live with that."

Heresy 58

Ronnie

Two of Twelve is wittering at me about brain activity and heart rates and what is wrong with mine. I ignore her as I bend over Tylha. For a moment, I think she's not breathing. Then she shivers, and her antennae twitch; her eyelids flutter open, and she even manages to say something in Andorian which my combadge is too prissy to translate. I'll take that as a good sign.

When the katric ark went dim, and the psi field faded out, everyone rushed in. Tylha's CMO and a couple of Vulcan medics are crouched over Stiak, scanning him. I could have told them there was no point. Living people don't have faces like that.

The androids, Amiga and Ada, are getting smoothly to their feet. "Self test commencing," they say in eerie unison. They stand quite still for a couple of seconds, then chorus, "Self test completed and satisfactory." I stare. Ada turns her metal eyes to me, and explains, "We are both the same model, sir, after all."

She seems totally calm and unfazed by it all. Oh, to be a machine, never to know fear or panic or confusion... wait, no. Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt. Not for me, thanks, not ever again.

Ahepkur is trying to scan the androids with her tricorder, while also keeping a phaser pointed at the katric ark. A couple of the Vulcan security guys are edging into the doorway -

And everyone's eyes turn to T'Nir as she unfolds from her meditation pose and stands up.

"For the moment, I am myself," she says in a small voice.

Ahepkur levels her phaser a fraction of a second before the security guards do the same. T'Nir pays no attention to them. She takes a single step forward, and touches the katric ark with her fingertips.

"Bresar is... in abeyance. I cannot say for certain that he is destroyed. But for the present... I am myself again."

A gasping voice comes from the floor behind me. "How can we possibly be sure?" Tylha asks.

"A logical question. You cannot," says T'Nir. "I will do what I can to prevent Bresar's resurgence... I have done all that was possible, in the past." The recordings. Of course. "But it is unlikely to be sufficient, once Bresar has recovered from the psychic shock of Stiak's... action. Bresar's mind is powerful and strongly driven to survive. Moreover, this artifact was crafted specifically for him."

Her voice is calm, toneless, and logical. One thing I'm sure of, it's a Vulcan speaking.

"At present, the katra of Bresar is to some extent divided between two vessels - the katric ark and myself. To render him harmless, it will be necessary to sequester both vessels in widely separate locations."

"Or destroy one," I say, "or both."

"Conceivably. I am not sure that the katric ark can be safely destroyed with any technology currently available to us, though. Bresar is a survivor, and he anticipated many methods of destruction."

I can imagine. Or maybe I can't. Even if we dropped the damned thing into the sun... I wonder, about a star haunted by the ghost of Bresar.

"As for myself -" T'Nir makes a dismissive gesture. "The katric ark should be kept for study - under the strictest possible safety constraints." She hesitates. "I, too, should be kept under strict controls. This is appropriate, for many reasons." She turns and takes a step towards Stiak's body. "The Hegemony of Bresar must be repudiated and its organization dismantled. In support of this... it is necessary that criminal charges should be brought against me. I will... I can... offer no defence. In the public interest, I will accept the maximum penalties for my actions." She takes another step forwards.

"Even though it was Bresar acting, not you?" Tylha asks, hoarsely.

"That is not relevant. It is impossible to deal with Bresar, without dealing with me. Besides, I can never be sure of my own level of complicity, in accepting Bresar's mind into mine. It is logical that I should accept this." She takes one more step, and stands over Stiak's body. She looks down. "In any case... my life is over."

I look at her face. I didn't even know that Vulcans could weep.

Heresy 57

Tylha

Roaring blackness gradually fades, and I come back to an awareness of my surroundings. I'm face down on hot stone, under a faceted yellow sky. Around me, the grinding noise of the walls moving into new positions; off to one side, the towering bulk of Bresar. Is that a smile on his immense face? I pull myself upright. My head is spinning.

There is no sign of Stiak anywhere.

My combadge chirps at me. I slap it. "Shohl."

"Tylha." Ronnie's voice. "You OK?"

"Stiak did a mind-meld." My head hurts, as well as everything else. "I think I'm over it, but...."

"OK, kiddo. Hang in there. Don't go towards the light just yet."

"Oh." I've heard about this. "Stupid thing to do. Andorian, remember? Light means ice, the surface, danger... where humans 'go towards the light', Andorian brains are conditioned to go towards darkness and safety, instead."

"Well, you learn something new every day," says Ronnie, acerbically. "How fascinating. You must tell me more about Andorian near-death experiences, only preferably, y'know, some time when you're not actually having one."

"Right." The walls are changing again. I look around, hoping for a glimpse of Stiak, but he's nowhere to be seen. "Stiak's gone," I tell Ronnie.

"His life signs are stable," Ronnie says. "Better than yours, last time we looked."

"He had some sort of idea," I say. "I wish I knew what it was. Wish I had one myself."

"Look around, can you form some kind of rudimentary lathe?... oh, God, sorry."

I briefly fantasize about going after the inappropriate-humour switch in Ronnie's brain. With a hammer and chisel.

"I can't see anything except stone walls and a giant Vulcan." I frown. "I lost my gun. All right, it didn't work... but I should still have it, shouldn't I?"

"You think there are inconsistencies in this... mindscape... thing?"

"Possibly. It's got flaws, we know that. Maybe Stiak's figured out how to use them." I shake my head. "Or maybe my gun just fell behind a wall when I landed here. I don't know."

Then I hear something - not just the grinding of the moving stones, or the vague rumblings as Bresar's vast body shifts - something else. A familiar noise: the sound of impulse engines, the whistling of a body passing through the atmosphere -

The sleek black shape passes over me, and I look up and gape.

"Walt Whitman!"

"Tylha." Ronnie sounds genuinely worried. "Um, random literary references are kinda my thing - if you've started them too, that's gotta be a bad sign -"

"No, no, no." I watch entranced as the shuttle's arrowhead shape curves across the air. "It's the name of my shuttlecraft. The one we used to get down to Chara V. USS Walt Whitman."

"OK, I'm confused now," says Ronnie.

"Stiak must have - hacked - Bresar's artifact, enough to create something of his own, inside the mindscape. He picked the shuttle."

"So what does that get you?"

"A weapon. Maybe. In here, Bresar is just a big chunk of meat. The antiproton array on the shuttle should be able to cook and carve him pretty neatly."

And as I speak, a line of red light lances from the shuttle, standing out starkly against the yellow sky, stabbing into Bresar's enormous chest. The giant roars in pain.

"Mind-meld." I clutch my head. "Stiak must be drawing on me for the Whitman's capabilities. Shields up!" I shout into the air. "Arm torpedoes!"

The dazzling pinpricks of Whitman's chroniton torps dart out. Bresar howls with fury as they slam into him, ripping the dark robe he's wearing and punching into the flesh beneath. Green blood begins to flow from the rents in the giant's clothing.

"If Bresar controls this mindscape of yours, though," says Ronnie, "won't he come up with something to counter all that?"

"He doesn't know how," I say. "The Whitman is one of those temporal-anomaly ships from the 29th century, even I don't know all the things it can do. Bresar's got no clue how to deal with it, and T'Nir's memories won't help him. I think she was impressed by it."

Bresar raises one enormous hand, and lightning flickers over his fingers, emerging in great crashing streams of light that rush towards the Whitman. "Basic charged-particle emissions? A standard shuttle could block that with its navigational deflectors!" I shout. And, indeed, the Whitman shrugs off the attack. The antiproton beams stab out once again.

Bresar howls. The sound is deafening. Then he closes his eyes and seems to concentrate. The trickles of blood flowing from his wounds... dry up; the wounds themselves close without leaving scars. "OK. Self-healing, within this mindscape. But he needs to concentrate in order to do it. You can break that concentration."

I don't know if I'm talking to Stiak, through the mental link he established, or just to myself. I don't know what, exactly, he's trying to do - or what will happen to us if Bresar dies in here. I don't know a lot of things. What I do know... is that this is the only chance.

Red light slashes across Bresar again, opening fresh wounds. "Tylha, what's happening?" Ronnie's voice demands.

"Stiak's got the hang of the shuttle." Or he's using my knowledge to guide him - whatever works. "If he can defeat Bresar in here...." A surge of hope runs through me. "Maybe if he can do that, he can take control of the artifact and get us out of here."

Bresar turns, his hands reaching out. "Steady," I mutter, "steady. The Whitman's controls are fast enough, responsive enough... you can evade anything he throws at you...."

More lightning flashes from the giant's hands. "Futile!" I yell. The antiproton array blazes back, a sustained, savage burst -

- and Bresar's hand flashes forward and closes around the Walt Whitman.

"Oh, no," I moan.

"What?" asks Ronnie.

"Keep calm. Not the end. The shield and hull crush limits are very high, you can shoot your way out, you can burn through his hand before the core -"

And then he proves me wrong.

The concussion and flash of the core breach is apocalyptic. I close my eyes, and the light dazzles even through shut eyelids. The sound, when it reaches me, is every thunderstorm I've ever heard, all rolled into one.

In sick despair, I open my eyes.

There is no sign of the shuttle - but Bresar is staggering. His right arm ends in a smoking, steaming stump, just below the elbow, green blood pouring out in immense gushes. His face is slashed and scarred with shrapnel from the blast. The giant screams and stumbles, and falls -

Bresar falls, and the shock of his fall runs through the ground, and through the sky. The stone walls all tumble down, and the stone slabs lift up like leaves on a gale. The sky is riven through with cracks, and darkness starts to leak in. The stone beneath me rises up and throws me into the air, and the world is full of dust and blackness, and I am falling again, falling -

Heresy 56

Ronnie

I stand up, shaking all over, my whole body slimy with sweat. There's a nasty rasping, whirring sound coming from somewhere. After a moment, I realise it's the sound of my own breathing.

I stagger down the corridor, away from the room. "Stiak's trying something," I manage to gasp.

Tylha's medical officer, a bosomy brunette with one of those cyber-monocle things apparently stapled permanently to her head, comes bustling up to me with a hypo in one hand and a tricorder in the other. I push her away. "Get back! Too close. You haven't got Borg insulation on your neurons - do you want to end up like them?"

I gesture at the library, where T'Nos and Silit and Vorruk are still sitting cross-legged on the floor. Sitting there, faintly smiling, and stone cold dead.

"Tylha's cortical activity is dropping hard," the medic says. "And what there is - I've never seen anything like it." She points the tricorder in my direction. "The readings I'm getting from you, too -"

"They're weird," I say. "They're always weird, don't sweat it. Too much Borg plumbing in my system, still."

"At least let me give you a shot of Tri-Ox -"

"No." I push her off again. Two of Twelve, inside my head, is chuntering through an interminable list of self-checks and consistency tests... I don't want anything messing her up. Right now, all that Borg plumbing is the only asset I've got.

"Let me know when Tylha's brain activity improves," I say. "Or, God forbid, gets worse.... If she dies, we're pulling the androids out of there with tractor beams, then tossing an antimatter charge in and letting God sort it out."

"Are you sure that's wise?" God, why do people keep asking me that? How the hell would I know? I lean against a wall, trying to catch my breath, sweating all over T'Nir's tasteful interior designs.

"Sir." Ahepkur has a tricorder in her hand, too, but she's keeping back, behind what we reckon is the safe limit for normal humanoids. "Sir, I'm worried about the machines."

"The machines?" It takes me a moment or two to cotton on to what she's talking about. "Ada and Amiga?"

Ahepkur nods. "The psi field is affecting them too, and in unpredictable ways. It may degrade the positronic matrices of their brains, perhaps to the point where their current personality and memory structures cannot be recovered." The Klingon's expression is uncharacteristically troubled. "In a way, the machines are risking their lives."

"Yes." I stand up straight. "We'd better make sure it's worth it, then."

Ahepkur glances at the open doorway. "A single shot from a phaser rifle might vaporize that thing -"

"Might kill Tylha, too," I say. "Or maybe an enormous influx of energy is just what Bresar needs." I shake my head, which turns out not to be a good move. "Antimatter charge is probably a bad idea too, in that case. Let's face it, we just don't know. And I'm not sure the Vulcan experts will know any better than us." I look towards the doorway, too. "Probably the closest thing we've got to experts on Bresar's artifact... are Stiak and T'Nir."

"That does not bode well, sir," says Ahepkur.

"Too right. At least Stiak might finally have woken up and smelled the coffee. I hope." I could really go for a cup of coffee round about now.

Tylha's medic comes back, looking cross. I suspect Tylha is one of those commanders who grumbles about taking physicals and so on, but lets the MO have her way in the end. Me? I'm fairly sure I have a medical officer. Somewhere. "Tylha's brain activity is returning to it previous levels," she says. "I can't say returning to normal, but -"

"Got the picture," I say. "Right. Time to Heath Robinson my nervous system again, then."

"Sir?" says Ahepkur. The medic looks blank, too. They just don't give these kids a classical education any more.

I turn towards the doorway - a little reluctantly, I admit. Inside, Tylha is lying sprawled on the floor in front of T'Nir and the katric ark. Her android science officer, Amiga, is lying down a little way inside the room, just close enough to wrap one outstretched hand round Tylha's foot. My plucky astromech droid Ada is holding onto Amiga's foot, and she's close enough that her legs stick out of the doorway. It looks ridiculous, like some sort of party game gone horribly wrong.

But it might be the only chance we have to find out what's happening with the katric ark. And I have a feeling we really, really need to know what Bresar is up to.

I kneel down, then lie down, on T'Nir's floor, and reach out for Ada's leg. I can feel the neural nanites stirring - a weird itching sensation.

*/*inadvisable---neural circuitry operating outside established parameters---withdraw---summon specialised units for reassessment---download data from main archives---reconnect---reconnect*/*

Stop whining, Two of Twelve. And cover me. I'm going in.

Heresy 55

Tylha

The blackout lasts only a fraction of a second... yet things seem to have changed in its wake. Something is wrong - I can't see where, but something is wrong -

That's it. My senses. I can see just fine, but my antennae... nothing is registering, no feeling, no taste to the air. As if I've gone numb from the forehead up. And somehow the light is - wrong....

It's disorienting, but it's not going to stop me. I raise the pulsewave and point it towards T'Nir. Her eyes are open now, and she studies me, smiling faintly. Then other things start to click -

Stiak's eyes are wide open, too, and he is standing... and his attitude is one of abject fear. And the table, that held the katric ark... the table is empty, now.

"It's over, T'Nir," I say, and my voice sounds hollow and weak.

"A gun," T'Nir says. "You think you can stop me with a gun."

I press the trigger. The pulsewave makes a faint whining sound, but nothing else happens. T'Nir's smile widens.

"Vice Admiral Shohl." Stiak speaks now. "You - you should not be here."

"No," says T'Nir dryly. "Indeed not."

I work the gun's action, loading the secondary function - the grenade launcher. There's no way to set a photon grenade to stun, and at this range it will turn T'Nir's unprotected body into hamburger. I know I'm supposed to take her alive, but I have a dreadful fear of this situation - I pull the trigger.

The grenade drops out of the end of the barrel, hits the stone floor with a dull ringing sound, and rolls away.

"A monster," says T'Nir in a voice dripping scorn. "A monster with blue skin, and odd-shaped ears, and antennae... and of course a death ray. So feeble. An image to frighten schoolchildren."

The voice is... wrong, as if it carries overtones of someone speaking in a different register. And besides, T'Nir knows me, knows what an Andorian is.... My skin crawls. "You're not T'Nir," I say.

"How perceptive of you. Actually, some of me still is. Enough to use... enough to fool people."

"You're Bresar."

"Silly little monster. Of course I am."

"There was enough left," Stiak says softly, "to deceive me."

"You," says the thing with T'Nir's face, "wanted to be deceived."

"It's still over," I say. "I don't know what sort of damping field you're using on my weapons, but it won't stop a strike from further away. I have a ship in orbit - for that matter, this building is surrounded right now -"

T'Nir throws back her head and laughs at that. The sound is chilling. "Oh, dear," she says. "This building is surrounded? However did they manage that?"

"Look out of the window, Vice Admiral Shohl," says Stiak in dead, hopeless tones.

I step across the stone floor, carefully skirting T'Nir and her three silent acolytes sitting behind her. Between two tall bookshelves, a window opens onto the garden beyond. I look out.

The garden is still there, the plants still green and verdant. Above them, the sky - the sky is glowing yellow, and cut with gleaming facets. I swallow, hard, and turn to Stiak.

"We're inside the katric ark?"

"The important part of you is," says T'Nir. "The mind. The meat is left in the outside world, of course. One may last a long time without meat. I survived unimpeded for more than two millennia." She sniffs. "And you should not refer to this device as a mere katric ark. It took six psi-artificers of the house of T'Sirn a year to create this artifact - it would not have been possible, even so, had I not used some arts I know to enhance their intellectual capacities -"

"We know of these arts," Stiak says. "The cerebral amplification, sooner or later, burns out the brain."

"In a good cause. My cause. I have never shrunk from using the technique. Silly little monster, are you planning to hit me?"

I let my arm fall to my side. I thought it would probably be futile.

"You have destroyed my material power," says T'Nir, "but you cannot touch me. I assure you, the artificers of T'Sirn made quite sure this vessel was indestructible. No one before or since has had such skill in working kironide. I made sure of that. Preserved, in here, I am safe forever. And, sooner or later, I will find other minds, who will let me re-emerge into the material world - if and when I wish it."

"You were defeated before," I say. "You fled from Vulcan, all the way to Chara V - and you died there, Bresar. Talk all you like, you're still dead. Dead and gone."

"How little you understand. I did not flee. The people of Vulcan showed ingratitude, so I left. And how have they fared without me? Squabbling and brutalizing each other, then finding a sterile unity under the philosophy of a bloodless pacifist... then going out into space and mingling with the likes of you." She laughs. "I wish I could have seen their faces, when my descendants first discovered your kind. Intelligent life among the stars! How disappointed they must have been, to find nothing but a cheap caricature of life, an image from a child's picture book walking around and pretending to think...."

"At least we're better than you," I say hotly. "You think you're the only psychic vampire the Federation's ever encountered? You're not even the first one I've run into. You can be beaten, Bresar, and you will be. By us. The cheap caricatures."

"Vice Admiral Shohl," says Stiak, "be careful."

"Oh, quite," says T'Nir. "You cannot harm me, or even anger me, but you could very easily bore me, and that would be worse, for you."

"Why?" I ask. "Are you planning to bore right back at us? On the current showing, I admit, you'll be good at it."

"This world is as I wish it," says T'Nir. "At least, once I have my full complement of powers." She makes a quiet tutting noise. "I suppose that cannot be put off much longer now. And it is unfortunate... I do not have all that I would wish. Seven wills, you see, seven minds - the artifact is optimally configured with seven coordinated mentalities. You understand now, I take it, the symbolism of the seven-pointed star? Seven rays of power, united to serve my will."

I stop breathing for a moment. Me, Stiak, the three ministers... and T'Nir herself, whatever there is of her... and the mind of Bresar. Is that what awaits me? To be fused into a composite mind, under Bresar's domination, forever?

"Oh, no," says T'Nir. Is she reading my mind, or just my face? "No, you are not suitable at all for inclusion, monster. No more are you," she adds, turning to Stiak. "Your guard technique against mental invasion matters much less than you think... but you are a scientist. Dry, sceptical, passionless little minds. Politicians, now, they are much easier to handle." She gestures at the three silent figures sitting behind her. "Venal politicians have their uses, in the material world; they can be bought. But honest ones - ones who believe in a cause - those are suitable for my purpose. If they believe in something, they can be made to believe in me."

"But -" Stiak's voice has a catch in it. "T'Nir - she was never concerned with - with politics -"

"She believed in something." The voice is gloating, malevolent. "She believed in you."

Stiak makes no reply. His face is ashen. T'Nir rises to her feet, still graceful. "I would have preferred to have the whole of my little... coterie," she says. "But the Romulans failed me. They died, or they fled." She sniffs. "They fled from Surak and they fled from me. Dying and fleeing seems to be all that these Romulans are fit for." She turns to address the three ministers. "Since they are not here, I will require everything from you."

"Of course," says T'Nos in a trance-like voice.

"That is only logical," says Silit in the same tones.

T'Nir stands and looks down on them, and they change. Before my eyes, a faint haze, like steam, starts to rise from their bodies... and it thickens, becomes opaque, hiding the shapes of the three Vulcans from view. I'm reminded, hideously, of the roiling clouds in Storm Command. T'Nir steps forward into the cloud, and inhales, long and loudly, breathing it in, breathing all of it in...

The cloud clears. Silit, T'Nos and Vorruk are gone.

"You two are not suitable." The bass registers of a powerful masculine voice are louder and clearer now, behind T'Nir's words. "And your conversation has already grown tedious... now, you may amuse me in other ways."

I can't help myself; I lunge for her, my hands clawed, reaching for her throat. But she seems to recede, suddenly, into the distance - and the walls, the floor, the whole structure of the library suddenly comes apart, the pieces all flying into a faceted yellow sky, and I fall, and fall....

---

And I land. Hard, on a gritty stone surface, the breath knocked out of me. I roll, and struggle gasping to my feet. The strange light, the blindness in my antennae, are still confusing me.

Nearby, I hear a weak groan. Stiak.

I help him to his feet, then look around, trying to take stock of our new surroundings. We're on a level surface of stone slabs, some narrow, some broad - it stretches out as far as I can see, in all directions, vanishing into a heat haze, beyond which I can see, in the distance, the red rolling desert hills of Vulcan. Stiak is gasping for breath, evidently winded worse than I was. There is no sign of T'Nir.

A grating noise behind me: I turn around. The narrow slabs of stone are rising out of the ground, becoming walls around us, walls that enclose us in a maze of narrow passages. Stiak says, "No..." in a hopeless moaning tone.

"Stiak." I take him by the shoulder and shake him. "What's going on?"

"It is -" Stiak coughs and swallows, hard. "This is the Shifting Maze of Kham-Sen. It was - a place of execution, in the times of the historical Bresar. Or was reported as such - I am not convinced it was ever built, in reality -"

"How does it work?"

"You have seen how it works. Just now. Each section of wall is hydraulically operated; they extend or retract in a random pattern. It is designed... so that the victims believe that there is a way out. So they hurry, endlessly, through the maze, in search of the configuration that they believe will permit them to reach an exit."

"While Bresar looks down from above, and has a good laugh," I say. "Well, where is he, then?"

Even as I speak, the shadow falls over me. I turn around, and look up.

He is a powerfully built Vulcan male, middle-aged, his dark hair lightly touched with grey, his hawkish features seamed and lined. He looks down on us with black eyes, and his mouth twists into an amused sneer.

He is somewhere around fifteen hundred metres tall.

I think we have a problem.

---

"So, he's just going to watch while we... run around," I say.

"There is little point in running," says Stiak. "We know there is no escape."

"We'd better move, anyway," I say. "If we stay here, he'll start thinking we're boring again. And then he'll come up with something worse." I point at random. "That way."

"We should stick close," says Stiak. "The walls may rise suddenly and separate us.... though I do not know what we can accomplish, together or separately."

"There must be something we can do. Besides - we're not really here, are we? This is all some sort of mindscape, a programmed hallucination. Can we die here?"

"I suspect," says Stiak, "that we cannot... but we will feel the normal needs of our corporeal bodies. Starvation, dehydration, lack of sleep... they will reduce us, ultimately, to a mere mass of pain, a mindless survival. In such a state, we will finally be assimilable by Bresar. A sort of... basic foodstuff... for his psyche."

"I think I'd prefer to avoid that." A grating sound; the walls are shifting again. I hang on to Stiak as the maze changes around us. I should have seen that coming -

"Wait a minute," I say. "Antennae."

"I do not understand," says Stiak.

"Ever since coming in - here - I've not been able to perceive anything with my antennae," I say.

"That is unsurprising. Bresar has no knowledge of Andorian antennae and no subjective understanding of the perceptions you receive through them. So he cannot create those sensations, within this reality."

"Which tells us something. This isn't real, and Bresar is fallible. This mindscape isn't perfect, so it can't be a perfect trap."

The walls change again. Stiak stumbles and falls, leaning against one. "Forgive me," he says, "but I do not see how the fact that you are partially blind... helps us in any way." He moans. "It does not have to be perfect. It only has to be good enough."

"We're inside a psionic artifact," I carry on, doggedly. "All right, Bresar had it made, he knows how it works - but our minds are inside it, too. Surely we can influence its workings, somehow? You're trained in these things, aren't you? In a small way, maybe, but that might be all we need."

Stiak shakes his head. "I do not know how far I can trust my own mind. I do not know how much of - what I have done - was through my own volition, or through the influence of Bresar. That mind is both subtle and powerful, Vice Admiral Shohl."

"Call me Tylha," I mutter.

Stiak turns haunted eyes on me. "Tylha. The Hegemony has done - terrible things. I know that now. And I honestly do not know whether I did them through compulsion, or because I was persuaded by my wife's or Valikra's rhetoric, or because I genuinely thought they were the right thing to do. I do not know how guilty I am."

"Worry about it later. For now, we have to think of some way out."

"But there is none," says Stiak despondently. Then there is a grating noise, as the walls move again -

And, unbelievably, there is another sound.

I look down in astonishment at my chest. My combadge chirps again, insistently. I stare at Stiak, whose eyes are round with amazement too. Hesitantly, I reach up and touch the badge. "Shohl here."

"Holy moly, it freakin' works. Amazing," says a familiar voice.

"Ronnie?"

"Hang in there, kiddo. You are not losing your marbles, this is really me, in the flesh and kicking. Um, except for the flesh part, I guess. And the kicking."

"Who is that?" Stiak asks.

"Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does. Listen, you would not believe what we're doing to get you out of this. My crew and your crew and the Vulcans, it's all go this end, really."

"How are you speaking to me?" I ask.

"Any organic brain getting into the psi field is going to get zonked, pronto. But the androids - your Amiga and my Ada - aren't quite as badly affected. So, we've got a sort of daisy chain set up - Amiga has grabbed hold of you, and Ada's grabbed Amiga, and I get to grab Ada and then use my remaining nanites to make a neural bridge to your cortex. We're using the androids and Two of Twelve as a telephone exchange. And I hope Two of Twelve is really annoyed about it."

I shake my head in disbelief. "OK," I say. "I'm not going to pretend it's not a relief to hear your voice...."

"But you don't need moral support, you need help, fair enough. What's your actual situation?"

"We're trapped - Stiak and I - inside a generated mindscape -" Quickly, I fill her in on what's happening. At the end of it, a low whistle comes from the combadge.

"OK," says Ronnie, "OK. So I get the picture. I suppose the trick now is going to be getting you out of the frame.... Look. Dorok is bringing in some psionic tech-heads from the Vulcan Academy of Sciences, I'll give them what you've told me, maybe they can crack it. Hang tough, kiddo. We will get you out of there. Dunno how, yet, but hey, I'm an optimist. Maybe you can, I dunno, fight Bresar for control of the local reality?"

"Fight him how?" I ask.

"Well, y'know, physically. Direct combat being a metaphor thingy for psychic influence. Kind of thing."

I look up at the towering giant figure. "He's got a bit of a weight advantage," I say. "And reach."

"So find an equalizer. Or use your mobility advantage. Sting like the butterfly, float like the bee. Whatever, you know what I mean."

Stiak has been sitting by me, muttering inaudibly to himself, moving only to keep near me when the walls shift. Now he raises his voice and says, "It may be possible."

"What may?" Ronnie and I ask it together.

"This - link. It is something which Bresar would not permit, were he aware of it. And that means that he is not aware of it. Tylha is right, his control of the perceived local reality is not total." Stiak seems to be gazing into space, theorizing aloud. "If we can find something - some element - to use, which Bresar does not understand or anticipate... ideally, something he cannot use T'Nir's knowledge to compensate for.... Yes."

"Yes, what?" I demand.

"I think I can influence local reality... just enough, for an equalizer. A new factor, whose potentialities Bresar does not know, and which I happen to know... impressed T'Nir." He takes a deep breath. "Tylha, I will need your fullest cooperation."

"All right," I say guardedly. "But what -"

I never finish the sentence, because his hands are suddenly on my head, and there is a roaring in my ears.

"My mind to your mind," is the last thing I hear him say, "your mind to my mind...."