Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation by Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens Page A

mercenaries. One of the impassive brutes, bulky in radiation armor, swung up a fistgun. But its threat did nothing to halt the civilian’s outraged tirade.
    Cochrane saw a stuttering blue pulse of plasma fire erupt from the fistgun and looked away as the civilian’s body crumpled to the ground, all protests at an end. Cochrane, miserable, wondered again why he had ever decided to return to Earth. The Multidimensional Physics Conference he had attended on the moon last week, the first he had ever attended off Centauri B II, was as close as he should have come.
    But he, too, was only human. And just as the leaders of Earth had been unable to believe that the followers of the Optimum could be as dangerous and as destructive as the past two decades had proven, he, like most others of his species, had found it hard to believe that something bad could happen personally to him.
    Whether that was a result of self-delusional blindness or transcendent optimism, Cochrane didn’t know. But it was a weakness of all humans, and Cochrane felt sickeningly certain he was about to pay for his naivete.
    The compartment speaker clicked on and Cochrane heard the chauffeur’s clear young voice, calm and composed. “Checkpoint ahead, gentlemen. You’ll need your cards.” Sir John grumbled as he reached inside his jacket and removed his identification card. Cochrane had never put his away since it had been given to him back at Sir John’s town house and its forged contents described to him. The slender strip of flexible glass, sparkling with quantum-interference inscriptions, falsely identified him as an American businessman from one of the Optimum-controlled states. Sir John’s network had further established an elaborate scenario to preserve Cochrane’s real identity.
    In the trunk were two suitcases with American-made clothes in Cochrane’s size, as well as suitable business records and doctored family photos.
    The need for such subterfuge had been prompted by the leader of this region’s Optimum Movement, Colonel Adrik Thorsen himself. Acting as the provisional governor of the British Republic, Thorsen had appeared on data-agency uploads, proclaiming Cochrane to be an enemy of the Greater Good. At first, Cochrane had hoped ThorseWs motivation had only been the result of the long-ago insult to his pride when he had arrived at Titan to meet Cochrane and found only Brack. At Brack’s urging, Cochrane had led Thorsen then and wished he could do so again, right now.p>
    Especially since Sir John’s network of contacts in the lower echelons of’ the movement’s headquarters, in what used to be the Parliament Buildings, had revealed that Thorsen’s continued obsession with Cochrane appeared to go far beyond any simple redress for personal insult. The Optimum had apparently concluded that Cochrane’s superimpellor did have military uses, and that Cochrane alone held the key to unleashing that potentially unconquerable power.
    It was a mad hypothesis, Cochrane knew, derived from an incomplete understanding of his work. But despite all that Brack and he had done to spread his work to the broadest possible audience, the Optimum still clung to the belief that Cochrane had held back certain aspects of his research—aspects they obviously now thought they could extract from Cochrane’s mind by the most optimal methods.
    Fortunately, when Sir John had learned of Thorsen’s true intent, he had immediately arranged the cancellation of the informal private sessions scheduled between Cochrane and Europe’s independent scientific community. Three days after arriving on Earth, two days after visiting his parents’ graves and walking past the home where he had grown up, Cochrane was bundled off to a safe house as preparations were made to return him to the stars.
    There was a harsh tapping on the window next to Sir John. The elderly astronomer touched the control that cleared the window.
    A mercenary leaned down, her features swollen by the