The Higher Frontier

by Christopher L. Bennett

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  To Shotaro Ishinomori, for showing us the way to transform

  Historian’s Note

  The main events of this story take place several years after the Enterprise stops V’Ger from destroying Earth (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and several years before Khan Noonien Singh escapes from Ceti Alpha V (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan).

  2278

  Prologue

  Aenar Compound

  Northern Wastes, Andoria

  Sisyra could smell the city burning.

  Few things were more frightening here than a fire raging out of control, a heat great enough to soften the crags of ancient, stonelike ice to which the Aenar’s homes and structures were attached. The buildings were anchored deep enough that no normal fire could loosen them before it could be put out, but there was nothing normal about what Sisyra sensed all around her.

  In a typical crisis, the mental cries of the Aenar closest to the scene would be immediately heard and responded to by the whole community. There were so few Aenar left in the universe anymore—fewer than a thousand of pure blood now—that every life was jealously guarded. Sisyra zh’Sakab was herself one of the community’s main protectors, the chief physician these past few years since her mentor Shikis had passed away. She was unusually young for such a crucial role in society, but with so few left, many Aenar were obligated to rise to whatever responsibilities fell upon them. Whenever one of her neighbors had cried out in need, she had felt it and sped to the scene, along with the other emergency responders.

  Yet this time, there had not been just a single cry for help. Dozens had called out at once, sending mental impressions of the invaders that had suddenly materialized in their midst and begun attacking indiscriminately. All over the compound, Aenar were dying, the precious few being diminished even more. Loving family members were being cut down before their bondmates. A young thaan screamed as he was hurled through a window in one of the highest modules and plummeted toward the icy crags below. A much younger brother and sister were burning to death in their home. Their mental cries of terror and anguish filled Sisyra’s mind, paralyzing her with indecision. Which of them could she help? Which way should she turn? How could she come to anyone’s aid without being struck down herself?

  Sisyra felt the same paralyzing helplessness in the familiar minds of the compound’s other protectors. They were trained to deal with emergencies and accidents, but no Aenar had raised a hand in violence for more than a century, no matter the provocation. As a rule, it had never been necessary to employ means as crude as violence. The remoteness of the Northern Wastes and the maze of tunnels between the compound and the surface provided protection against routine visits from outsiders. The magnetic anomalies near Andor’s pole created a natural damping field around the settlement, blocking most known forms of transporter, and a network of field amplifiers had been erected around the compound to block the rest. On those few occasions when intruders did come—Andorian radicals resentful of the Aenar’s struggle for their rights, or offworld slavers seeking to exploit their telepathic gifts as the Romulans had done generations before—the strongest telepathic adepts had been able to confuse their senses and hide the compound and its occupants from their view, or to frighten them off with hallucinations of the caverns collapsing around them. Species that relied on vision were easily fooled.

  Yet these attackers had appeared out of nowhere like the phantoms of ancient myth, with no trace of a transporter signal to trip the compound’s warning sensors. And something shielded their minds from telepathic influence. Sisyra could feel every emotion, every anguished sensation, from the invaders’ victims, yet the slayers’ own minds were voids to her. Oh, they were not silent; they laughed as they beat defenseless Aenar to death, as they shot them in the back, as they set their homes afire. “Fan the flames,” she heard them roar through others’ ears. “Crush everything!” But neither Sisyra nor any of the others whose minds she connected with could gain any sense of why the invaders were so filled with hatred toward her people.

  And she did not sense the phantom warrior coming for her until it was almost too late.

  Just in time, as she ran down the rampway from the burning hospital module into the tunnel network carved within the ice crag that supported it, her antennae sensed the electromagnetic signature of an armor-clad figure approaching through an adjoining tunnel. She spun and dodged down another branch of the intersection just before the phantom lunged at her. She heard the whoosh of a heavy blade of some kind passing just a few handbreadths behind her head.

  A sword. It must have been a sword, like those in the tales of the Aenar’s ancient battles with the other, more populous subspecies of Andorians, before her people had embraced pacifism. These attackers had amazing technology; surely they had weapons that could have wiped out the compound in seconds. And yet they chose to hunt the Aenar down individually, to kill them with ancient blades or beat them to death with armored fists. Sisyra could not read their thoughts, but she could read their actions: sadistic, vindictive, personal. They were not here simply to exterminate, but to terrorize.

  And at that, they were succeeding effortlessly. Sisyra’s terror as the sword-wielding hunter pursued her was overpowering. Between that terror and the sensory overload of the suffering and deaths she felt from all around her, Sisyra lost her bearings and made a wrong turn. She found herself in a cul-de-sac, a path blocked by an icefall months ago and never cleared out because the population had shrunk so much that the part of the settlement it connected to was no longer needed.

  And now it would be the cause of the population’s reduction by one more individual.

  Her resignation dissolved her fear, and she turned to face her attacker stoically, antennae coming to bear so that she could get a sense of the phantom’s shape and body language. The tall, powerful, evidently male figure was entirely encased in faceless armor, rigid and metallic yet with an organic texture, and charged with energy as if somehow alive. But she could get no sense of the being within the armor … until he chuckled.

  “Who are you?” Sisyra cried in outrage. “What are you, that you would do this to a race already dying?”

  The phantom replied in a distorted voice. “Those who are about to die do not need to know the reason why.”

  Something welled up inside Sisyra in response to those cold words. Anger, defiance—but something more. It was like a long-sleeping part of her was starting to wake. Fight, it seemed to say within her. If you do not fight, you cannot survive!

  She had been raised to believe otherwise—that it was better to die to preserve the Aenar’s principles. But if the Aenar as a race were now dying, what was left
to preserve? She had no chance of killing such an enemy in any case—but at least she could make a point.

  Sisyra listened to the call of her heart, embracing the warming energy that grew within her. She stretched out her hands to direct it toward the phantom. She felt something emerge from her and push him back like a strong wind, making him stagger.

  Her antennae reared back in surprise. Telekinesis? She’d heard tales of such abilities existing among rare, special Aenar in the past, but it was not a side of their psionic abilities that they had chosen to explore, preferring to use them for gentler things, for sharing thoughts and connecting souls. It was certainly nothing Sisyra had ever imagined herself capable of.

  Again, he chuckled. “There you are. At last, this fight is getting interesting!”

  She sensed and heard it as he raised his sword and charged her. She raised her hands again, blocking the swing with another telekinetic pulse. She felt the tunnel ceiling rattle in response, perceiving its instability and weak points more clearly than she had mere moments before. Her desperation, or her resolve, must have heightened her powers. Trusting implicitly in these new sensations, she directed a surge of energy upward, shaking loose the already unstable ice.

  The debris fell between her and the phantom, for even now, she could not bring herself to attack him directly. Still, there were now tonnes of ice between them, blocking the tunnel almost completely. Sisyra was trapped within the cul-de-sac, but at least she was safe from his sword.

  “Now I’m getting vexed,” the phantom told her, his voice carrying through the narrow gap that remained. “I’m going to carve you up and see what lets you do that.”

  He raised a hand, and she felt a surge of energy around it, heard a crackle in the air. Suddenly he held a weapon that had not been there before, summoned as if by magic. Bolts of plasma flew from it and blasted through the pile of debris. Sisyra backed away, raising her hands to shield her face from the ice shrapnel. When she lowered them, he was stepping over the last of the debris.

  “I know what lets me do it,” Sisyra cried defiantly as she sent forth more surges from her mind to repel him. “I feel it inside me. My life burns brightly!”

  The phantom held his ground, slowly pushing forward against the psionic gale. “It’s not your life,” he declared. “And I intend to prove it.”

  At last, Sisyra could sustain the effort no longer. She sank to her knees in exhaustion and despair as the phantom strode casually up to her. Armored fingers closed around her throat.

  “So,” the phantom said, “shall we begin the experiment?”

  One

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  “Was the Aenar massacre as bad as the news services are claiming?”

  On the desk screen in James Kirk’s quarters, Admiral Harry Morrow stared back grimly as he answered the captain’s question. “If anything, it was worse, Jim. Every last Aenar in the settlement was systematically, brutally murdered. And not from a distance, not cleanly with energy weapons—they did it with their own hands, and they took their time.

  “But they were thorough,” the Starfleet chief of staff went on. “The Aenar were already a dying minority on Andoria—less than a thousand left. Even so, they’ve resisted contact with outsiders, mistrusted Andorian and Federation offers to help them rebuild. There were only a few dozen who ever left their compound, mostly a group of political activists lobbying against the Andorian terraforming program.”

  Over Kirk’s left shoulder, Leonard McCoy crossed his arms. “Unbelievable that the fight over terraforming is still going on. After fifty years of arguing, you’d think they’d have found a way to balance the need to warm the rest of the planet with the need to preserve the Aenar’s way of life. The Andorians’ reckless disregard for the Aenar came close to being genocidal in itself.”

  “That may be, Doctor,” said Morrow, “but in an ironic way, it’s the reason that any Aenar are still alive. There are fewer than seventy survivors on Andoria now, and they’ve all been placed in protective custody. Starfleet is tracking down some others who have gone offworld to appeal for aid from the Federation or NGO charities, and one group that was searching for a suitable ice world where they might relocate. We estimate there are now no more than ninety-five Aenar left in existence.”

  At Kirk’s right, Commander Spock shook his head. “Strange … to go to such extremes in the attempt to exterminate a subspecies already on the verge of extinction. It would seem more logical merely to wait and let nature take its course.”

  McCoy threw a glare at Spock and opened his mouth to argue—then paused, for even he could hear the muted anguish and disgust beneath Spock’s words. It had been nearly four and a half years now since Spock’s mind-meld with the vast cybernetic entity V’Ger and his epiphany that a life without emotion was sterile and pointless. Since then, he had come to accept both his Vulcan and human sides and found a comfortable synthesis between logic and emotion, giving him a greater serenity than he had ever possessed during his first five-year tour of duty under Kirk. Though times like this, it seemed, could challenge his equilibrium.

  Instead, McCoy’s anger when he spoke was directed at targets more distant than Spock. “Some people get a thrill out of destroying what’s rare and precious,” he said. “Like hunters going after endangered species, just to show that they can. It gives them a sense of power.”

  “While that is one possible motivation for such an act, Doctor, it is premature to presume it to be the underlying cause of this crime. Am I correct, Admiral, that the Andorians have not yet determined the identity of the attackers?”

  “That’s right, Commander,” Morrow replied. “The Andorian government has thrown its full resources into the investigation—as a response to allegations that they didn’t care about the Aenar—and Starfleet Sector Headquarters in the Andoria system is providing full cooperation.”

  Kirk furrowed his brow. “But you contacted us for more than just a news update, Harry. What help can we provide from out here on the frontier? There are many ships closer to Andorian space.”

  “But you’re not that far from Medusan space.”

  “The Medusans?” Kirk leaned back in surprise. He’d heard little about that mysterious, incorporeal species in almost a decade, since the time the Enterprise had ferried their ambassador, Kollos, back home to Medusan space as part of an experimental project to adapt their extraordinary navigational skills for Federation use.

  He would certainly never forget Miranda Jones, the proud, beautiful human telepath who had been chosen to attempt to form a corporate intelligence with Kollos—a permanent mental link that would allow Medusan navigational senses to be employed by humanoid pilots. Given all the trouble that the Enterprise crew, Spock most of all, had endured in order to complete that mission, it sometimes troubled Kirk that nothing appeared to have come of it in the ensuing years. The Medusans had maintained cordial relations with the Federation, and Doctor Jones still lived among them as far as Kirk knew. But there had been little to no increase in their involvement with Federation society in the decade that the project had been underway, and they seemed to show little interest in changing that. Why, then, would they be involved in an incident involving a Federation founder world?

  Naturally, Spock provided the answer. “Of course, it stands to reason. The Aenar were among the candidates considered for the Medusan navigational project. As powerful telepaths who are naturally blind, they would theoretically have been as ideal as Miranda Jones—able to join minds with a Medusan and immune to the severe psychological disruption that the Medusans’ optical signature induces in most humanoids. Ultimately, Ambassador Kollos was unable to persuade the Aenar to overcome their isolationism and pacifism in order to cooperate with Starfleet. Yet he did become acquainted with a number of Aenar individuals during his time on Andoria. I recall from our mind-meld that he found them quite agreeable. It is no wonder that he and his people would take an interest in this tragedy.”

  “You’re right, Spock,�
�� the admiral replied. “Ambassador Kollos personally contacted us—through Miranda Jones—to request a Starfleet escort to Andoria to assist in the investigation. According to Doctor Jones, Kollos insisted on the Enterprise when he learned it was one of the ships in range.”

  “Understood, Admiral,” Kirk said. “I presume the Medusans will send a vessel to rendezvous with us en route?” Given most humanoids’ inability to withstand the Medusans’ appearance, interactions between the Medusans and other civilizations tended to be conducted at a distance from their homeworld.

  “Yes, Jim. Set your course directly for Andoria, and the Medusan authorities will contact you with the specifics. We want to get the Enterprise and Kollos there as soon as possible. We could use all the help we can get to find the ones responsible for this atrocity—and fast.” Morrow leaned forward urgently. “Because we don’t know if or when these monsters will strike again.”

  * * *

  “You know what really gets me about all this?”

  Pavel Chekov’s question prompted Hikaru Sulu to turn to his right to meet the younger man’s eyes. The two of them and Nyota Uhura were standing on the balcony at the rear of the Enterprise’s expansive recreation complex, gazing out one of the aft viewports (just large enough for three to stand abreast) at the prismatic streaks of warp-distorted starlight cycling back past the streamlined nacelles that drove the ship toward Federation space at warp nine.

  Sulu suspected he knew what Chekov was going to say—assuming it was the same thing he was feeling—but he respected the security chief’s visible need to say it. “What’s that?”

  Chekov turned back to the port, unable to meet his friends’ eyes. “I barely even knew the Aenar existed. A whole civilization that was already dying—right on one of the Federation’s founding worlds—and I never really gave them much thought. They were … a footnote of history, nothing more.”