The Operative (A Star Trek novel)

Chapter Thirty-One

Giuseppe Ocht does not come from a long and aristocratic lineage, but when he wrested power from his predecessors who did, it pleased his vanity to keep their acoutrements of office. One of these was the Palace.

It really isn't a palace at all. Or rather, only part of it was a palace. It is extremely old, was old even in pre-Federation days. Tens of centuries ago, it started life as a rude stone fortress to keep one group of the pseudo-hominid indigenous beings from being killed by other groups. Eventually came peace, and in that peace it was expanded, becoming perhaps a temple of some sort, or a meeting hall.

By the time the first human colonists landed, the indigenous intelligent life was gone. No one knows what happened to them. The most likely explanation is that the Romulans or the Klingons either killed them all or took them as slaves. Life is often rough on a world near their borders.

The Palace, though, is still here.

The banquet hall is in an older, though not the oldest, part of the building, a section dating back centuries. Windows completely cover one end of large rectangular room, with deep burgundy drapes now pulled aside to give a view of the twinkling lights of University City in the valley overlooked by the Palace's eyrie. Dark wood paneling lines the walls.

Apparently Ocht has a taste for the ancient, for neither the chandeliers nor the wall sconces are electric. Instead, hundreds of real candles have been lit, their liquid glow reflecting richly from the walls' polished wood. In the center of the room is a long plain table, covered with fine white linen, silver, china, and crystal and lit by silver candelabras. Steam rises from heaping platters of meat and other food sitting there.

Reluctant guests line the table. The chair at the table's head is empty. To its left sits the Romulan captain Senak, then the Klingon K'Planak, Sulu, Smythe, and finally, McCoy. Down the other side sit Kirk, Flynn, Spock, Scott, and O'Connor.

Seven augmented guards stand at intervals around the table, three behind Flynn.

Ocht had first taken Flynn to his augment laboratories, stunning him several times along the way whenever he woke up. Ocht's augments had been designed to be deactivated by a hormonal trigger, a safeguard in case one went amok. Unfortunately for Ocht, neither the chemical that could pull the fangs from his own augments nor related hormones had any effect on Flynn. Unfortunately for Flynn, Ocht's technicians were good enough to realize it.

The Klingon and the Romulan are sullen. The planet-based Javelin phasers shot across their bows as well—thought not actually through their ships—warning them to take no action against their temporarily immobilized foes. Then they, too, were asked to dinner. The invitation, backed as it was by the tacit threat of a phaser their shields could not stop, was accepted, but not with the best of grace.

They protested the unprovoked (as they said) attacks on their ships as soon as the Federation prisoners and captains were brought in, and threatened retaliation by their governments. The other Federation officers deferred to Kirk, who dismissed the claims first with a brusque suggestion to take it up with the Federation, then, when they did not desist, with an equally brusque suggestion of where they could put said claims.

"So tell me, Dr. McCoy," Kirk says, deciding to break the tense silence that has fallen, "how did you and O'Connor manage to get caught?"

They were not allowed to talk en route to the banquet room, but the augments seem not to have any orders to stop them now. They stand silently now around the room, seemingly ignoring the "guests." They look like bored, hyperactive cats.

"We blew up one of the shield generators, and I think we damaged the other one—in that building where they got you—then a bunch of Ocht's goons stormed in. I gather that another team had taken a portable shield generator to where the scientists were being beamed out. Must've been strong enough to block transporters. Anyway, there was a fight where we were. We lost. Pretty simple."