Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire - By Michael A. Martin Page 0,1
Those rows of enshelled younglings represented the future—a future that Gog’resssh was committed to safeguarding from any threat that might arise between now and the day those younglings acquired the ability to fend for themselves.
Gog’resssh reveled in the anticipatory stillness of the eggs, which he likened to sentries standing an unrelieved, almost one-suncircuit-long duty shift; he regarded their apparently endless vigil as a positive augury—a portent of the disciplined Gorn shock troops they would one day become. Their first tour of duty would begin a mere handful of diurnal cycles after the growing fetuses finished clawing through their protective membranes; they would embark upon the rigorous, lifelong regimen of training and combat that was their elite military-caste birthright almost immediately after their emergence into the world.
Today, however, nearly two local suncircuits into his current tour of crèche-guardian duty, Gog’resssh looked upon the vista arrayed across the sprawling incubation floor beneath him with a far more jaundiced eye than had been his wont on that memorable first diurnal cycle at Sazssgrerrn. What he had once found awe-inspiring now seemed almost quotidian, a font of impatience and ennui rather than a source of wonder and fulfillment.
Of course, Gog’resssh was careful not to articulate any such thought aloud, particularly so close to the workspaces of so many technological- and artisan-caste types, some of whom were no doubt inclined to send unfavorable reports about him to his military-caste superiors. Fortunately, the many adjacent environmental-regulation stations, offices, and laboratories were silent today, as though the staff had decided to take the morning off.
It was odd, if also incidentally something of a relief, to find the crèche’s nerve center all but deserted on what should have been a typical workday. Although he was duty-bound to protect the tech-casters, Gog’resssh nevertheless found that their relatively large numbers, close proximity, and overall omnipresence grated on him.
Gog’resssh tensed as he suddenly became aware of a familiar, reedy voice just behind him. “I see that you remain troubled, First Myrmidon Gog’resssh. Were your higher-rankers unable to give you any reassurance?”
The warrior silently cursed himself for allowing the voice’s owner to approach him so closely without being noticed. He turned quickly toward the speaker, an elderly member of the technological caste, and carefully avoided staring directly into his eyes for any longer than a moment or two. Although the scientist’s two golden orbs stared out in typical Gorn fashion from beneath heavy crests on either side of his skull, they lacked the hundreds of facets that comprised a warrior’s motion-oriented compound eye; instead each visual organ displayed a single, eerily mammalian-looking vertical pupil.
Keeping his voice as guttural and inflectionless as possible, Gog’resssh said, “Why do you believe me to be troubled, Doctor Rreszsesrr?”
“Because your back is bowed as though it bears the weight of worlds,” the oldster said, speaking as though he were describing some matter of indisputable fact, such as the behavior of objects falling inside a gravitational field.
Straightening his spine, Gog’resssh treated Rreszsesrr to a contemptuous glower before he focused his gaze back upon the apparent infinitude of warrior eggs that spread out in all directions beneath the polysteel footbridge. “Nonsense, Doctor. My back is no more bowed now than it has ever been.”
“Then the time you have spent living among us technologists has affected you more profoundly than you realize,” Rreszsesrr said. “For instance, you appear to have acquired our alleged inability to tell convincing lies.”
Gog’resssh felt the scales on his crest tighten slightly; he had to struggle consciously to prevent them from bristling forward into an obviously aggressive posture. His annoyance at the oldster for being right only increased the difficulty of the effort.
“I have lied to no one, Doctor,” the warrior said. “I have broken no oath. And I will do my duty to the Hegemony, exactly as my superiors have ordered.”
“But I sense you are doing so only under protest.”
“What have I to protest, Doctor? Protecting the next generation is one of the worthiest of tasks. And it is a task that can be done properly only by members of the strongest of Gorn castes.” Gog’resssh gestured with one five-clawed manus toward the multitude of gestating eggs below. “Or so the Hegemonic High Command tells me.”
Rreszsesrr spread both of his complexly articulated forelimbs before him, the short claws on each of his three-fingered hands contrasting sharply with Gog’resssh’s larger, blunter, and far deadlier-looking talons. “Your misgivings are understandable, First Myrmidon. Even by a member of the technological caste.”