Star Trek Discovery- Fear Itself

by James Swallow

  The shadowed, dim space had its own microclimate, as warm as blood and with a spicy tang to the air that made the Kelpien’s nostril pits twitch. There was something else he could sense, too . . . an ambient ebb and flow, like distant waves breaking upon a far-off shoreline. The feel of it came through the striations in his skull as Saru’s innate electrosensitivity picked up the impression from all around him. In a peculiar way that he couldn’t articulate, it reminded him of home.

  Setting his tricorder to continuous scan mode, Saru pressed on, spreading his weight so he could move without drawing attention to himself. He saw no sign of the being that had met his gaze back on the maintenance catwalk, but there were many others of the same species, some exhibiting differing genders, some clearly at the younger or older ranges of age. By their activities, these did not appear to be members of the transport ship’s crew. Saru guessed they were passengers of a sort, but if that were so, the crude and basic living conditions they were in did not speak well of Peliar generosity.

  He looked up again, considering the size of the module. Shenzhou’s scans had shown eight containers of this dimension mounted on the spinal frame of the big ship. Were there other gatherings of these beings in each one, similarly clustering side by side in the belly of an alien vessel?

  Saru pulled his communicator from his belt, but the dull chirp it emitted when he flicked up the antenna grid told him it would be impossible to signal Johar, Weeton, or the Shenzhou. The local particle density was still extremely high, smothering all the frequencies he could access.

  He paused, considering his next move. His desire to know more conflicted with his instinct for self-preservation. It would be possible for him to retreat, perhaps, climb the support cables and eventually retrace his path back to the engine chamber. But that would leave too many unanswered questions, and Saru could imagine Captain Georgiou’s steady gaze on him, pressing him for an explanation he didn’t have. He pictured ch’Theloh and Burnham and the rest of the crew. They would expect me to retreat, he told himself. They would expect me to flee.

  Saru rejected that option. He was a Starfleet officer. This was a first contact situation. He was obliged to reveal himself and attempt a meaningful interaction with these beings . . . and besides, he had already “met” one of them.

  He continued on, looking for a clearing, for a place where he could show himself without engendering a negative reaction from the humanoids. Ahead, the wash of the invisible electrostatic field grew more intense and Saru was drawn to it, picking up the sounds of multiple, overlapping voices.

  He came across a space like a courtyard, a set of interlinked metal decks beneath a web of cables where dozens of the aliens were gathering. Their language was quick, full of sibilants and harsh glottal noises that went back and forth in rapid chugs. Saru’s universal translator was having difficulty interpreting the speech, continually stopping and restarting its program as it failed to find a key into the alien tongue. It was rare to find a linguistic framework that the UT’s expert system couldn’t quickly configure into Federation Standard, but so far the device could only render the most basic of concepts from the conversation happening below. Anxiety. Waiting. Conflict. The translator gave no more detail than that.

  The key component was fear, and Saru gave a rueful nod. That was something he could appreciate. He took a deep breath and gathered himself. There was an open spot at the back of the courtyard. He would lower himself down, raise his hands in a gesture of friendship, and—

  A change passed over the crowd in the blink of an eye, every single one of the aliens falling silent. Saru spotted movement on the far side of the open area. A trio of the four-armed beings in close order moved through the group, and he noticed they each wore a dusty band of red cloth around their four wrists. By the way the others stepped back to let them pass, it was clear they had a kind of authority among the aliens. Looking more carefully, Saru noted that others in the gathered crowd wore bands of their own in different colors, some with two or three on their wrists but none with four.

  Then the red-bands stepped apart and Saru realized that they had been shielding a fourth figure from sight. Not an adult, he guessed, a younger female of the species. She wore white robes that were grubby with age and use, and her stance was off-kilter. As she walked forward, Saru saw why. One of her legs was severely deformed, and each step she took was an effort. But as she passed by the others in the crowd, they reached out to touch her and in turn she ran her hands over them. Where the white-robe moved, the humanoids seemed to grow calmer and more assured.

  A spiritual leader? The thought crossed Saru’s mind. Although she seemed too young to be considered any kind of elder, the effect the robed female had on her fellow beings was immediate and undeniable.

  She was just a short distance away when the hobbled young female stopped suddenly and looked straight up, directly at Saru. He blinked in shock, tensing for a shout of alarm, but instead her gaze was full of interest, of curiosity.

  Not so that of her escorts, however. Two of the red-bands followed the female’s gaze and saw the Kelpien hiding in the shadows overhead, and they showed the reaction he had expected. Angry shouts boiled up from the courtyard and the assembled crowd below closed ranks to shield the white-robed figure from whatever threat Saru represented, others squaring off in a manner that clearly promised violence.

  “No, no . . .” Saru raised his hands and tilted back his head in an attempt to look harmless. Empty hands proved he carried no weapons and showing his throat was a signifier among many species of a passive intent, but it did little to calm the mood.

  Anger. Panic. Distress. The UT tonelessly reported the temper of the aliens to Saru, but without specifics it was of little use.

  With care, he climbed down into the courtyard, and the aliens drew back to give him space. The tallest of them only came to the level of Saru’s sternum, and he could feel the ripple of raw terror his appearance generated in the assembly. It was a strange experience for the Kelpien to be the feared rather than the fearful.

  There was no means of escape for him. The humanoids surrounded him on all sides, and some of them had produced heavy cudgels or stubby blades. Saru knew without doubt that if he made one wrong move, they would interpret it as an attack and react accordingly.

  If it came to that, could he fight his way out? There was a type-2 phaser on his belt set for stun, and he knew how to use it, but the last thing Saru wanted to do was to start shooting at a race of beings who were perfectly within their rights to consider him an invader.

  The situation was slipping out of control, and he knew he had to navigate a way through it. They are afraid. You know how that feels. Use that. Saru took a breath and silenced his own anxieties; he felt the ephemeral pressure on his senses once more, the phantom crackle of electromagnetic energy in the air.

  The subtle play of sensory fields was a part of how Saru’s kind communicated intimately with one another, and with each passing second he became more certain that these beings shared a similar trait, but on a different level.

  Moderating his breathing, drawing his own electrostatic pattern into quiescence, Saru opened his arms once again and showed the humanoids that he was defenseless. “I come in peace,” he intoned. “I ask you to forgive my intrusion. I mean no disrespect.”

  Anger ebbed, turning to suspicion and doubt. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but it was a step in the right direction. The weapons he had seen were lowered, but still the humanoids kept their distance.

  Then from the far edge of the group came the female in the white robe, pressing awkwardly through the ranks of her red-banded companions despite their obvious displeasure. She cocked her head to study Saru, her wide, dark eyes taking him in. He mimicked the motion, then tapped a finger on his chest. “I am Saru.” It was the most basic, most elementary communication in the universe. “Sah-roo,” he repeated, sounding it out. The Kelpien hoped that his name didn’t translate to some terrible insult in their language. />
  “Sah. Roo.” The female in white echoed his words. Her voice had a soft, musical quality to it.

  “Yes.” He pointed at her. “You? Who are you?”

  She was reaching up to touch her chest, in the same place Saru had touched his, when the crowd around them erupted in a new wave of fear. Before he could react, the three males with the red bands had shot forward and enveloped the female in white, dragging her away. She vanished into the depths of the crowd with a gasp, and in a blink it was as if she had never been there.

  Saru thought that the humanoids were reacting to something he had done, some cultural taboo he had inadvertently transgressed. But then he realized they were drawing back from an area to the rear of the courtyard, forming into a ragged defensive line. He turned on his hooves to see four Peliars in steel-gray shipsuits advancing into the light from the biolumes. Each of them carried a particle-beam carbine and they threw wary, uneasy glares at the crowd surrounding them.

  One of them—a stern-faced male with tattoo markings across his cheek—pointed at Saru. “At last! There’s the off-worlder.”

  Another of them, wearing a sensor monocle, made an exasperated noise. “What in the name of the suns are you doing down here? They could have killed you!”

  “Who are these beings?” Saru demanded, drawing himself up to his full height. “Why are they on board this ship?”

  “Come with us, now!” said the tattooed male. “You can’t be here. They don’t like outsiders!”

  “Who?” demanded Saru once more. “They aren’t from Peliar Zel.”

  “They’re Gorlans,” said one of the other Peliars, as if that answered all possible questions. “Come on! We don’t want to provoke them any more than you already have!”

  Saru turned back, searching the faces of the crowd for any sign of the female in the white robes, but he saw no trace of her. “I was communicating with them . . .”

  “No you weren’t,” said the Peliar with the monocle. “Their language is impossible to translate.”

  “Like talking to the rocks,” said another, with a derisive snort.

  The crewman with the tattoos put a firm hand on Saru’s shoulder and pulled him away. “Come with us,” he insisted. “Don’t worry. They won’t follow.” Reluctantly, the Kelpien allowed himself to be led off.

  “They’re here because they want to be,” said the other Peliar. “Everything is fine as long as nobody does anything stupid . . .” He glared at Saru. “Such as disturbing one of their gatherings!”

  They walked through a connecting tunnel and out of the cargo module, into a corridor that went back toward the bow of the ship. A hatch rolled shut behind them, sealing off the passage.

  The Peliar with the tattoos eyed Saru coldly. “Is this all you Starfleet officers do, go where you aren’t wanted?” He didn’t wait for Saru to reply. “It’s a wonder your Federation still exists!”

  • • •

  “I will freely admit, this is not the sort of complication I was expecting to encounter out here,” said Captain Georgiou as she rested against the side of the desk in her ready room. “Now it appears we have stumbled across not one group of beings in need of assistance, but two?”

  “That is . . . unclear,” said Lieutenant Commander Johar.

  Burnham’s gaze shifted to the holographic images sharing the room with them, the grainy virtual versions of the chief engineer and Lieutenant Saru being transmitted from the cockpit area of the shuttle Yang. The images were laced with static and of low definition, but she could clearly read their expressions. The engineer had that tight-lipped look he got whenever something wasn’t working exactly as it was supposed to, and for his part, Saru’s face was the very definition of hangdog.

  “The Peliars have told us that the Gorlans are on board the ship of their own volition, and we’ve yet to see anything that—” Johar’s words suddenly became a jumble of grating hisses, and the image disintegrated into random pixels.

  At Burnham’s side, Commander ch’Theloh scowled and tapped an intercom panel. “Boost the gain on the signal.”

  There was a pause and then Johar’s image returned. “Shenzhou, do you hear us? You dropped out for a second.” With the wake of nadion particles still interfering with subspace communications, it had been Ensign Fan who came up with the idea of using a low-powered, line-of-sight laser as a means of keeping in touch with the rescue party. The only problem was, the beam worked point to point, meaning it had to be constantly aimed at a receptor panel on the shuttlecraft’s hull to work.

  “Please repeat your last,” said Georgiou.

  “I said, we’ve yet to see anything that contradicts the Peliars’ assertions.”

  “Lieutenant Saru doesn’t agree,” said ch’Theloh, studying the science officer’s expression.

  “I am . . . still forming a hypothesis,” ventured the Kelpien, returning to a phrase Burnham had heard him utter more than once during their analysis of the damaged monitor buoy.

  “Burnham.” Abruptly, the Andorian first officer turned his piercing gaze on her. “The Peliars and the Gorlans. What do we know about them?”

  “As we’re aware, the cargo craft is a Peliar vessel,” she began, drawing up recall from her years of studies on Vulcan. “They are a small but highly technological civilization, rated at type two on the Kardashev scale. If you prefer, I can provide the Richter classification—”

  “Generalities will do for now,” said Georgiou.

  “I would characterize the Peliars as thinkers rather than doers,” she went on, shifting to a more colloquial vernacular. “They are carbon-based bipedal humanoids comparable to standard norms from a Class-M planet. They use robotic drones to perform most of their manual labor or hazardous tasks.”

  “There was that autonomous ship we saw on arrival,” noted ch’Theloh.

  Burnham nodded. “Peliar culture is broadly divided into two discrete but cooperative factions, the Alphans and the Betans, who live on the respective moons of their homeworld. They have recently approached the Federation Council to discuss the possibility of membership.”

  “And the Gorlans?” Georgiou picked up a data pad from her desk and studied the ethnological charts of the humanoids displayed there. “I have to admit, I’m not at all familiar with that species.”

  “It would be true to say they are the polar opposite of the Peliars, Captain.” Burnham gestured at the pad. “They originate from a high-gravity environment, so they exhibit greater muscle mass and bone density. They have a reputation for being . . .” She searched for the right adjectives. “Roughhewn. Hardscrabble types. In the past, they are what some would have called ‘frontiersmen.’ ”

  “I’ve heard of them,” offered Johar. “Well, secondhand. My CO on the Stonewall once told me about encountering one of their ships. They have a wanderlust, Captain. They range far and wide from their home system, looking for planets where they can set up subsistence colonies.”

  “Correct,” agreed Burnham. “Gorlan culture is based around tenets of self-reliance and a strong theological belief system. But they are an introspective race, largely private. . . . We really know comparatively little about them.”

  “Lieutenant Saru, in your report you mentioned issues with the universal translator,” said Georgiou. “More detail, please.”

  Saru sighed. “The Gorlan speech patterns are very malleable and nuanced in ways that are hard for the UT software to parse. Extracting anything other than the simplest concepts was not possible.”

  “It could be that the UT needs a larger sample to work from,” said ch’Theloh. “With time and exposure to their language, we might be able to program a better solution.”

  “With respect, sir,” Burnham broke in, “there may be nonverbal elements of communication that our systems can’t pick up on.” The prospect of learning more about a little-known race of sentients was compelling, and she wished once again that the captain had sent her instead of the Kelpien.

  The Andorian’s cranial an
tennae arched slightly. “Do tell,” he said firmly.

  “Lieutenant Burnham is right,” said Saru. “I sensed an extant electromagnetic field effect while I was in close proximity to the Gorlans. I believe it was directly linked to their group emotional state.”

  Georgiou raised an eyebrow. “Can you . . . read that?”

  “At present? Only in a crude fashion. As the commander suggested, I would need time to observe and interact with the Gorlans over a longer period to gain a greater understanding.”

  “And the Peliars don’t want to let us do that.” Ch’Theloh folded his arms across his chest. “Commander, what’s the status of the transport ship at this time?”

  “There’s no immediate danger to the vessel or the Shenzhou,” said the engineer. “I’ve got Ensign Weeton working with Yashae and the rest of the team on the final elements of the warp-core repairs. Sir, I have to tell you, tensions are running pretty high over here.” He paused and gave an uncomfortable frown. “It’s not just Saru’s walkabout that they didn’t like. I have to take the blame for some of it. . . . I didn’t exactly get off on the right foot with Commander Nathal. I wasn’t as delicate with my opinions as I should have been.”

  “That is putting it mildly, sir,” noted Saru.

  The captain gave a low chuckle. “Saladin, if this situation was about playing nice with people, I would have sent a diplomat and left you in engineering.” Then the levity was gone and Georgiou focused on Saru. “Mister Saru, when you were down in the hold with the Gorlans . . . tell me what you felt. I want your emotional take on this.”