Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself

by James Swallow

  “Have we detected any activity on the Tholian side of the border?” said Georgiou.

  “Negative,” noted the first officer. “In fact, it’s been unusually quiet over there. Odd, considering recent events. If I had to hazard a guess, I would reason their ships are elsewhere. Either that or deliberately lying dormant.”

  “I know what Starfleet Command would say,” said the captain. “Do you think we need their guidance, Number One?”

  A wry smile pulled at the corner of ch’Theloh’s mouth. “We haven’t up until now.”

  Georgiou nodded to herself. “Roll the dice, Commander. With any luck, the irregular warp field emissions we’re putting out with that replacement axis unit will confuse the hell out of them.”

  “Captain!” Burnham reached out to Georgiou before she could move away. “There’s something I have to ask you.”

  Georgiou exchanged a look with the first officer. “Go on.”

  “I believe we should transmit an encrypted subspace message to the Yang. Our people need to know that Admiral Tauh is on his way.” Her tone rose, becoming insistent. “You heard what he said. He doesn’t want to end this situation peacefully. If we can warn Saru and the others, it might give them an advantage. If we don’t, they’ll be looking the other way when Tauh’s ship arrives with a squadron of attack drones.”

  “You were paying attention?” ch’Theloh said firmly. “To the parts of the conversation we just had about Tholians, and nests of deadly stinging insects, yes?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  He spoke over her, in a low hiss that didn’t travel. “To get through this, we need to keep our emissions as low as possible, Lieutenant. Avoid detection. Sending out a subspace signal would be the very opposite of that!” Ch’Theloh’s antennae stiffened. “We don’t even know if any of our people are still alive to hear it.”

  “Then why are we going after them?” Burnham matched his tone. “Just to pick up the bodies of our dead? Tauh already promised to do that for us.”

  “Commander, Lieutenant.” Georgiou raised a hand to end the discussion. “We’re doing this thing, and I say we go all in.” She gave Burnham a nod. “Send the message, Michael. Work with Ensign Fan to mask the signal as much as possible.”

  “I don’t like it,” said ch’Theloh.

  “You don’t like anything, Sonny,” the captain told him, patting the Andorian on the shoulder. “That’s your job.”

  • • •

  Saru sat alone in the familiar silence of the shuttle’s cockpit and stared mournfully through the canopy.

  Out past the Yang’s nose and the acres of curved hull metal it rested upon, he had a view that extended away toward the distant aft impulse-drive cluster, which formed the end of the star-freighter’s “spine.” Large, dark shapes cluttered the space around the flanks of the vessel, each one the asymmetrical, wedge-like form of a massive cargo module. As the Kelpien watched, he saw flashes of ion fire flare at the corners of some units, nudging them closer to the transport ship. In turn, fans of glittering blue-green light spread from heavy-duty tractor beam emitters along the length of the vessel, capturing the modules and maneuvering them into position. The containers were stacking atop ones already in place, locking together to form one single structure. Over the past few hours, the mass of the Peliar ship had almost doubled with all the new additions.

  He watched the silent motion and wondered about the beings inside the containers. The Yang’s sensors were reading a massive density of Gorlan life readings within them as the entire surviving population of their colony packed themselves into the last few functioning modules and evacuated their temporary home.

  Saru had listened in on the messages Vetch had sent to the Gorlans on the surface. Even across the distance, he had sensed the powerful mix of raw anger, desperation, and elation at the possibility of a second chance. The refugees down on the sanctuary planet had been lost without their hub to guide them, and to know she was still alive gave them renewed hope.

  But that would soon fade, he realized, and the Gorlans would turn to resentment for what they had been put through. They are a proud and passionate people, he thought. I don’t know if Ejah’s guidance will be enough to temper their fury.

  Saru wanted to speak with her again, to implore her to turn Madoh away from his plan to mount another attack on the Shenzhou, but the red-bands had made it very clear to the Kelpien that would not be permitted. He had no way to know if Ejah was even aware of what her guardians were considering. He imagined not; Madoh and Vetch had both spoken of deeds they had done without her knowledge, of acts that were “necessary” to keep her safe. In their own way, they were protecting her, shielding the hub from the darker truths of their survival.

  He considered trying to find a way back down into the cargo compartments, but the red-bands were watching him closely at all times. Even now, one of them was nearby, in the corridor below the hatch connecting to the shuttlecraft. Saru had told the Gorlan he needed to prepare a data card, using the Yang’s small mainframe, that would complete the work of deleting the control software from the freighter’s subsystems, but that was a partial truth. He could have finished the work up on the transport’s command deck or by using his tricorder.

  The real reason he had come back to the shuttle was to find some brief isolation. Saru was worn down by the certainty that everyone around him was judging his behavior. Ensign Weeton made no secret of his aversion to Saru’s orders, and the junior officer had practically called him a coward to his face. Despite their own shock at learning the truth about the sanctuary planet, he suspected Nathal and Hekan saw Saru as a Gorlan collaborator, and the Gorlans themselves thought him to be weak.

  “How did this go so wrong?” he wondered aloud, peering morosely at the control console as the data card completed its upload. “My intentions were good. How have I ended up here?”

  Down below, the red-band who had been shadowing him banged a cudgel on the bottom of the hatch. “Outworlder! How much longer is this going to take?”

  “It will be a while,” he lied. On a bleak impulse, Saru let his hands drop onto the shuttle’s flight control yoke. He briefly considered closing the hatch and firing up the thrusters, tearing the Yang away and escaping.

  Run, Saru. A voice in the back of his mind, a memory from his deep past, clawed its way up to the surface of his thoughts. Run, Saru, it said, run and don’t look back.

  “No.” He bit out the word. The frightened, untested youth he had once been was long gone. It was one thing to embrace caution, but he was not a coward.

  He wanted to get up out of the chair and march back down there, demand Madoh’s attention and another audience with the hub, the consequences be damned. But his self-doubt was corrosive, and with every moment he hesitated, the fear and anxiety second-guessed each thought that passed through his mind. It was like a horrible kind of paralysis, and if only he could see a way past it, he might overcome it.

  A beeping tone sounded from the Yang’s subspace communicator grid, and it came as such a surprise that it shocked Saru rigid. In the next second, he shook off the reaction and snatched up a wireless receiver, pressing it to his ear. The communicator’s system asked him for a personal security code to decrypt the incoming message. His eyes widened as he saw the origin of the narrow-band signal. U.S.S. Shenzhou NCC-1227.

  “Authorization Kappa-Saru-Seven,” he whispered, throwing a worried look back at the open hatch in the compartment behind him. If the Gorlan came up to see what was taking so long, if Saru was caught, it would not go well for the Kelpien.

  A loud, buzzing crackle sounded in Saru’s aural canal, and he winced at the noise. The communication had all the characteristics of a burst-transmission message, sent at high gain in the hopes that it would be picked out of the void by the Yang’s monitoring systems. As the shuttle’s decryption subroutines rearranged the coded signal back into something discernable, Saru listened with increasing concern as the garbled sounds merged together int
o a familiar voice.

  “This is Lieutenant Burnham aboard the Shenzhou, to anyone aboard the shuttle Yang. This is a priority-one message. We’ve repaired the damage inflicted on our ship and are currently tracking the fugitive transport. Be advised, a drone-carrier warship from the Peliar Zel system is ahead of us and will arrive at your location before we can reach you. This vessel’s intentions are aggressive, repeat aggressive.” Burnham paused, and Saru could hear the dread in her voice. “Do whatever you can to protect yourselves. We’re on our way, but it may be a while. . . . We’re taking a shortcut. Until then, hold fast. Shenzhou out.”

  A torrent of reactions swept through Saru, and he had to steel himself to rein them all in. Relief that Burnham—and hopefully everyone else—aboard the Shenzhou was unhurt, hope that they would arrive in time to stop things from getting any worse, trepidation over this new reveal of the approaching warship, and finally dismay at the reckoning that would come from the choices he had been forced to make.

  It took a physical effort on his part to take all of those conflicting emotions and push them down, seal them away. I should have paid more attention to Burnham when she talked about those Vulcan meditation rituals of hers. He sighed, drawing a deep breath, and then played back the message once again to make certain he had missed nothing.

  Saru heard the clanking of heavy footfalls on the ladder frame beneath the hatch, and then the red-band’s head and shoulders appeared through the open panel. He looked around suspiciously, finally finding Saru up at the shuttle’s bow. “You have been in here for too long. What are you doing?” The Gorlan hauled himself the rest of the way inside and immediately swatted the open door of an armory locker on the wall, where the Yang’s small store of phasers was kept. All of the firearms had already been looted by Madoh and his comrades, but the red-band was clearly wondering if they might have missed some.

  Saru deftly pocketed the wireless receiver before the Gorlan saw it and deactivated the communications grid. “I am finished.”

  “Then get moving,” snapped the Gorlan.

  “Of course . . .” Saru climbed out of the pilot’s chair and stepped around the red-band. He considered his options. If he brought what he now knew to Madoh, if he forewarned him about the approaching Peliar warship, it might be enough to convince the militant leader to let him talk with Ejah.

  That would mean surrendering the only advantage I have, Saru considered. And to what gain? The hope that Madoh will show me trust? He frowned. No. I must approach this in a different way. But before I can do that, I must take ownership of the mistakes that I have made.

  “You,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height. “You will take me back to the rest of the captives.”

  “No, Madoh said you need to complete your tasks for us, and then—”

  “I need the rest of my team to complete the tasks,” he shot back. “Do you want to be the one to tell Madoh that you stopped me from finishing what I started?”

  The red-band scowled and kneaded the grip of the cudgel in one of his hands, enough that Saru thought he might strike him for daring to show defiance. But then the Gorlan gave a rough shrug and waved him away. “Go on, then. And do not waste any more time.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Saru replied, dropping back through the open airlock hatch.

  • • •

  “He’s still the senior officer,” said Yashae, blinking her large eyes. She looked up and met Weeton’s gaze as he sat across from her, on the other side of the table bolted to the mess hall floor. “We can’t just ignore his orders.”

  “Who said anything about ignore?” Weeton replied. “I’m talking about someone countermanding him.” The ensign nodded toward the next table along, where Saladin Johar lay unconscious beneath a silvery survival blanket. “Saru is making one bad choice after another and it can’t go on.”

  “We’re not waking Johar,” said Zoxom, and the words were stone hard. “I mean it. I don’t care whose rank says what, you can write me up or whatever. The chief engineer is not well enough. I can’t be sure what the shock to his system would do.”

  “No one is saying we need to do that,” Weeton backtracked. “I’m just saying that Lieutenant Saru isn’t who we need in charge right now.” His argument picked up momentum as he went on. “I like the guy, kinda. I do, but he bends like the willow and we need an oak right now, you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t, sir.” Subin ran a hand over her brow. “What are ‘willow’ and ‘oak’?”

  “They’re both kinds of Terran animals,” said Yashae.

  “They’re trees,” Weeton corrected, with an exasperated snort. “Okay, listen, forget the analogies. I’ll stick to facts. Saru is all about playing it safe, right? And so every time something has happened here, he’s chosen not to put up a fight. So where does that leave us? As hostages, like them?” He jerked a thumb at the group of captive Peliars, keeping to themselves on the far side of the compartment. “No, worse than that. We’re collaborating with terrorists. We’ve helped Madoh take full control of this ship from its rightful owners. And now he’s demanding we help him take our ship next! How the hell does that square up to the chain of command?”

  Yashae stared at the deck. “So what are you driving at, Ensign? Because this sounds a lot like mutiny talking.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Chief,” Weeton replied. “We’re not using the m-word! But there’s precedent for overruling an officer if he continually makes questionable decisions.” He looked at Zoxom. “Fitness for command and that kind of thing, right?”

  “I don’t know if I could go along with that,” said the nurse.

  “Why not?” Subin glanced across at the broad-shouldered Xanno. “The ensign’s not wrong.”

  “Because we don’t know what Lieutenant Saru is thinking, and we don’t get to second-guess our officers,” Zoxom said firmly.

  “Then maybe we need to know what he’s thinking,” said Yashae, looking up as the mess hall’s doorway clanked open. “So let’s ask him.”

  Weeton turned with the rest of them as Saru entered, and the Kelpien stiffened as he realized that he had been the subject of their now-silenced conversation.

  “Lieutenant,” said Yashae as he approached. “Sir. We’ve been talking . . .”

  “I do not doubt it,” Saru replied, and he glanced in Weeton’s direction, then away again. “What is Mister Johar’s condition?”

  “Stable,” said Zoxom. “But I honestly don’t know how long he’ll stay that way. He needs proper medical attention, and a full surgical suite. The sickbay on this tub isn’t good enough. It’s just a bunch of auto-doc robots, and they’re only programmed with Peliar anatomy.”

  “I know you’re doing your best, Nurse.” Saru’s head bobbed in a nodding motion, and he halted in front of the group, scanning their weary expressions. At length, he sat down on the bench so he could address them all. “Where are the Gorlan guards?”

  Subin glanced over his shoulder. “Moving back to the hatch, sir. Out of earshot, I’d say.”

  “Good.” He let out a sigh. “None of this is going the way we expected it to. I came back to this ship because I hoped I could help these people, but instead I dragged all of us into . . . this.”

  “No one . . .” Weeton started to speak, then paused, trying to frame his words correctly. “It’s not your fault, Lieutenant. You’re just not the . . .” He faltered again. “I mean, uh . . .”

  “I’m not up to it?” Saru met his gaze. “The Kelpien, who runs and hides every time someone drops a hyperspanner? I know what is said about me, Ensign, I am not deaf.”

  “Are you up to it?” Subin said softly. “Because I will follow your orders, sir. But I need to know. We all need to know.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “You do.”

  • • •

  “In my officer training classes at Starfleet Academy, they told me that in order for a commander to lead, they must have the trust of their subordinates.” Speaking in hushed ton
es that would not carry beyond the group, Saru leaned close, offering Subin, Weeton, and the others the only thing he could: his honesty. “I don’t have yours, and the fault is mine alone.”

  None of them disagreed, and the silence was damning.

  Saru went on. “I have acted rashly and without full consideration of my actions. I wasn’t supposed to come back to this ship, I was expected to remain on board the Shenzhou. But I did so anyway, because I thought I knew better.”

  Weeton and Zoxom exchanged glances. “The XO said as much,” noted the ensign. “He told Johar to go haul you back.”

  Saru nodded. “That man is badly wounded because of the choices I made. He took a disruptor blast meant for me. And if I dwell on that guilt for more than an instant, I fear it will become crippling.” He shook off the thought. “The only way I know how to engender your trust is to be truthful. This is my truth.” He looked to Subin. “I came back to this ship because I thought I could do something against my nature. Take a blind risk in the name of achieving something greater.” Saru recalled that conversation in the Shenzhou’s shuttlebay, when he spoke to Burnham of rules and regulations. “I tried to emulate someone else, to be a person I am not, and it was a mistake.” His gaze shifted to Zoxom. “Then we were here, and things started to fall apart. I told myself I could hold things together, if only I could find a way to prevent any more loss of life. So I made another choice. A compromise. I aided an aggressor in an attack against our own ship.”

  “You told Madoh where to hit the Shenzhou,” said the nurse. “The engines, not the crew decks.”

  Saru nodded again. “It was . . . logical.”

  “I can’t believe you did that . . .” Weeton’s face hardened. “You should have refused point-blank!”

  “And then what?” Zoxom looked to the ensign. “Madoh would have put a salvo into our ship anyway, killed who knows how many—”

  “The captain would have fired back—”

  “If she was still alive,” the nurse countered. “And how many dead would there have been?” He shook his head. “It was an impossible decision to make. It was . . . triage.”