Strange New Worlds 2016
Page 24
Chakotay smiled grimly. “Scuttlebutt outstrips the fastest ship?”
“It always has.”
“I assume you’ll want me to confirm your story as well.” He had forgotten that the Doctor was there.
“That would be useful, yes.”
“Well, a cover-up isn’t exactly in my programming, but this is hardly the first time I’ve had to stretch the boundaries of my subroutines.” The Doctor cracked his knuckles. “Well, if it will contribute to the mental health of the crew, I’ll aid you in your intrigue. I suppose this will give me a chance to test my acting skills.”
“No need to get fancy, Doctor. And,” she warned, “don’t pretend to know any details we haven’t already given you.”
“I shall be the epitome of discretion.”
“Very good.” The captain turned back to the assemblage. “Everyone else, no need to go out of your way to volunteer information. Just let word spread on its own. Don’t make a big thing of it, especially if the truth is likely to come out in short order. Dismissed.” As the other crew members left, Chakotay looked toward the captain, and she nodded to indicate he was welcome to stay. The captain turned back to Tuvok. “I hope you’re right about this. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Nor do I. Unfortunately, I do not have a better plan at this time.”
“I’ll be careful until we find the culprit. Thankfully, the truth has a way of coming out on its own.”
“When I heard the story about the anomaly, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I didn’t know if it was a genuine mistake or if you were trying to lure me into a sense of confidence. I was happy with the results in any case: Despite this trial, the crew seemed to come together. I don’t know about you, but it gave me the confidence that I needed to trust we’d make it through further challenges.
“But I was still concerned about lingering doubts. I overheard several of the engineers express surprise that the explosion had been written off so easily. I felt like I should tie up my loose ends, but I was never quite sure how. Then . . . well, Seska.”
Tuvok understood immediately. Mere days after the investigation had been officially halted, the traitorous engineer had been revealed as a Cardassian spy posing as a Bajoran in order to infiltrate the Maquis. Shortly after her true heritage was revealed she defected to the Kazon-Nistrim. She later lured Voyager into the trap that had marooned them and led to Suder’s tragic, but heroic, death as well as her own end.
“I had never imagined Seska was a traitor, but her defection gave you the opportunity you needed to close the case. Assuming I could convince you of a connection.”
Chakotay and Tuvok looked around Seska’s abandoned quarters.
“This is absolutely insane,” Chakotay said, defeated. “Seska was one of our strongest allies.”
“It is true that she was very loyal to you in your days in the Maquis,” Tuvok acknowledged, “but you must admit that she was not conducive in our efforts to unify the crew.”
“I don’t feel much like admitting anything right now, if you don’t mind,” Chakotay said with strain in his voice. He walked over to her bed where a thin glass vase held a fading Bajoran lilac. He cautiously lifted the flower.
“Hello, Tuvok.”
He whipped around to see Seska’s image on the display. “Prerecorded,” Tuvok noted. Chakotay surmised it was programmed to respond to the flower being disturbed while Tuvok was present.
“I was hoping you’d be the one to clean out my quarters if I had to bail out. I thought I’d leave a little good-bye present to thank you for infiltrating the Maquis. Although I suppose I’m one to talk,” the image said, smiling.
A coffee cup overflowing with creamer whirled into existence in the replicator, this time with a replicated firework sticking right out of the cup.
Chakotay thought quickly. “Computer, recycle the meal in the replicator!”
Just as the sparkler began to ignite, the computer obediently dissolved the cup and sparkler back into nonexistence.
“Well, I hope I put my last replicator ration to good use.” Seska grinned from the panel. “Last time I’ll get to use that trick for a while. Just goes to show: If you aren’t willing to share your technology,” she said, referring to the replicators she attempted to provide to the Kazon, “then there’s all the more reason to use it against you.” The smile faded from her face. “Well, good-bye. Can’t say it’s been fun.” The image disappeared.
“It would seem Seska did not learn from the ineffectiveness of her previous attempt to use this method.”
Chakotay stared stunned where Seska’s image had been a moment ago. His voice was flat as he spoke. “She’s never been very good at improvising explosives. Always preferred her for other types of engineering.” He sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”
“So there you have it . . . the last record of my sins. I’m sorry, Tuvok. I know I’ve been a disappointment, but I needed to clear my conscience. Have you ever heard of a human book called Les Misérables? Very popular among the Maquis. I was reading it in my confinement, and a turn of phrase struck me: ‘I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all. . . . It was sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience.’ Please give my apologies to the captain. To Commander Chakotay as well. And most of all to you, Tuvok.” Suder’s expression was unchanged, but his voice cracked as he spoke. “I can’t truly justify what I’ve done. I only hope that I was able to use my violent tendencies as a tool. I hope I had some small part in bringing the crew together. I hope . . . I hope I helped in some way. That would make everything worth it.” He looked off to the side as he thought a moment. “Well, that’s it. Good-bye, Tuvok. I hope I get a chance to tell you this myself before you find it. And I hope you make it back here to find it in the first place. End recording.”
As the recording ended, Tuvok and Janeway could not help but glance at the replicator, but nothing was appearing.
“Computer, deactivate the replicator in Lieutenant Suder’s quarters,” Tuvok requested, not wishing to live dangerously. A low hum and the dimming of lights indicated compliance.
Tuvok deactivated his force field; Janeway and Andrews followed suit a moment later.
“Well,” said Janeway. “I guess we have a lot to discuss.”
Captain Janeway sat in her ready room chair as Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Tuvok stood nearby.
“Well, I suppose it explains a lot,” said Chakotay, who had just been filled in. “It never sat quite right that Seska had arranged the explosions, even with everything else she’d done.”
Tuvok spoke with concern. “I am a bit disturbed that this information never arose in my work with Mister Suder, either in our mind-meld, or in my work with him after.”
Janeway nodded. “He was a troubled man. And remember that you weren’t in any condition to absorb anything after that mind-meld,” she reassured. “I don’t think there’s any need to concern yourself.”
“It was a difficult confession for him to make,” added Chakotay, “but he made it in the end.”
All were silent for a moment.
“I must say,” added Tuvok, “Mister Suder’s plan may have been somewhat effective.” Chakotay raised an eyebrow. Tuvok continued, “It did seem as though the crew was pulling together in the wake of the attack. In combination with Seska’s betrayal, it gave the crew common enemies.”
“Do you think Suder was right, then?” asked Chakotay. “Is an act of violence what we actually needed to test if the crew could stand together?”
“No.” Janeway’s voice was unwavering. “We didn’t need Suder’s methods. This crew was coming together long before his ill-conceived attempts to ‘help.’ It seems appropriate that he quoted Les Misérables. Chakotay, have you read it?”
“Personally, I think Suder missed the point of the novel. Frankly, I think many of the Maquis missed the point.”
“How so?”
“You named your ship after Jean Valjean, didn’t you?” Chakotay nodded. “But in Les Misérables, violence wasn’t the answer. It was absolutely futile. What happened to the insurgents?”
“They were slaughtered.”
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. “To be fair, that may be more a matter of history than an intended message.”
“The only way we were able to build something was by building trust. Suder was right about that much. But that trust is built on respect, not on violence.” Janeway smiled. “I like to think that was the message of the novel.”
Chakotay was happy to feel the mood lighten. “Be careful. You’re inviting some literary debate. Just give me some time to brush up.”
“Are you a fast reader?”
“No, but we’ve got seventy years.”
Tuvok took the opportunity to interject. “I have always understood the theme as this: ‘Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other.’ ”
Chakotay smirked in amusement. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Tuvok. Did you teach literary criticism at the Academy?”
“I taught many things.”
Janeway chuckled. “Well, you’ve made my point. You can’t have that kind of love without real trust.”
Chakotay was uncertain if he agreed with the literary interpretation, but he didn’t care much at the moment. He agreed with the sentiment in any case.
“I supoose if Mister Suder were with us,” Tuvok added, “he would point out that his intent was to use violence as a shortcut to building that trust.”
“Well, Tuvok, it’s a good thing both of our crews started this voyage with the same belief: Doing the right thing is more important than taking shortcuts.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, gentlemen. However we got here, we’re where we need to be. Let’s keep building on that. Dismissed.”
Tuvok sat in his quarters, where he had been meditating on the newly revealed history of the troubled crewman who had become his unintended protégé. He inspected Suder’s orchid. Tuvok had chosen to care for it personally, at least for now.
He took a moment to apply a gentle mist to the leaves. It was astonishing how with such little care the orchid was already showing signs of recovery. Tuvok had considered clipping the stem or removing the wilting petals, but now he began to suspect this may not be necessary. It didn’t need drastic measures in order to heal itself. It would just need consistent, gentle care.
Sometimes in building strength, a little gentleness was all that was needed.
LIFE AMONG THE POST-INDUSTRIAL BARBARIANS
John Coffren
I WASN’T ALWAYS PARANOID. Thirty years of pacing up and down this three-kilometer stretch has left me terribly alone. Even among the daily throng that flooded Hermosa Avenue to purchase trinkets from vendors or expose themselves to near-lethal doses of ultraviolet radiation, I was unnoticed and unwanted.
All my worldly possessions traveled with me inside this cart that I pushed along palm tree–laden paths. The two-by-four and hockey stick near the front were my only defense against the predatory humans. They slunk about with sullen looks and sharp eyes and considered the merciless beating of an old man a momentary distraction from the boring tedium that was their life.
Quasi-Cardassian totalitarians patrolled this beach too and looked for any excuse to unsheathe their wooden batons and strike me in places that left no mark or abrasion on my skin, but had me reeling in pain for days.
I tried to avoid them.
The rest of the population paraded about half-naked and totally consumed with their own unimportant lives. They resisted any social interaction by ignoring me. If eye contact was made, they quickly dismissed it by looking away or through me. Besides, they were in love with their first-generation communicators. Wait until the true potential of their mobile phones was unlocked. All these zombies will never put them down.
Why did I even try to save these ingrates? Most of them will die in the big quake fifty years from now. Sadly enough, I went on trying because I failed these miserable simians and took their future away from them. My mission became my life’s work. I posted signs, warnings of the coming apocalypse. They showed their gratitude by incarcerating me in jails and mental institutions. And when they called me captain, it was only to mock me.
I carried a keepsake on my person, because if I left it back in the alley these greedy people would steal it just as surely as they’ve stolen nearly everything else I brought with me to this wretched century. Underneath my dirty gray overcoat and pinned to my threadbare brown vest was a relic from a lost era: my combadge.
The burgundy and blue, my command uniform, lay neatly folded inside a plastic bag near the bottom of the cart. I cut quite a handsome figure in it back in the day. It would look ridiculous hanging off my bony frame now.
My clothes and combadge were my only possessions when I initiated an emergency beam out over the High Sierras thirty years ago. I had no choice. The impact would have killed me. And Henry Starling would have gladly stepped over my lifeless body to unlock the technological secrets of my timeship.
The Aeon had been badly damaged in the Delta Quadrant. When full phasers failed, Voyager emitted a high-energy polaron pulse to overload my subatomic disruptor. If those fools had only turned off the deflector pulse, I could have saved the future. Janeway couldn’t see past the prow of her ship. One hundred and fifty lives for untold billions seemed a fair exchange to her.
She never saw the debris: remains of her own ship, a section of the secondary hull, floating amidst the smashed rubble of the Sol star system. She was already dead. Better for my century that she, her crew, and ship perish in the cold, lonely reaches of the Delta Quadrant than in our crowded solar system.
Tough decisions come with rank. Once near the Horsehead Nebula, I vaporized a subwarp transport ship that carried five hundred colonists en route to a new homeworld on Cestus III. Among them, a temporal agent of the Na’Kuhl, who would start a genocidal war that would cost billions of lives and create political instability in that sector for centuries. Our records were sketchy. I accessed a fragment of a passenger list, and armed with that knowledge I carried out my orders.
The timestream is littered with scheming aliens: Romulans, Vorgons, and Krenim to name a few, who must be dealt with swiftly and severely. They must be separated from dangerous artifacts like the Guardian of Forever, the Tox Uthat, and chroniton torpedoes.
There was no room for half measures or a crisis of conscience.
This mission was booby-trapped with so many improbabilities: a twenty-fourth-century starship crippling a twenty-ninth-century timeship, a Neanderthal repairing and flying a Model 86, and the one man sent to save a world ends up destroying it.
I should have powered up weapons inside the temporal rift where Voyager’s sensors couldn’t penetrate and come out firing. I should have realized a warp core implosion can’t obliterate a star system, but an uncalibrated temporal matrix can and did. A leads to B leads to C leads to A.
An unexpected outcome left me stranded in the past with no hope of rescue. In Janeway’s time, Federation crews lost in the past harbored no dreams of returning to their timeline and were instructed to stay out of history’s way. In my time, the Temporal Integrity Commission scanned the timestream for anomalies including marooned captains.
But there was no one left in my future to come looking for me or to find me rooting around in waste receptacles for my next meal. Maybe it was better this way. Still, I carried the foreknowledge that my stolen timeship will cause the future’s
end. Being stranded in this post-industrial hell seemed a light sentence for such a terrible crime.
Castaways from any age must eventually abandon the shoreline and seek shelter inland. An abandoned cargo container that still housed the husk of one of their internal-combustion vehicles became my makeshift home. My crooked spine came from one night too many spent on that yellow sofa with missing cushions. A shredded orange-and-white parachute did a poor job of keeping me dry during rainstorms. Heaps of refuse—tires, hubcaps, trash cans, and crates—piled up next to towering brick walls that soared dozens of meters overhead. I’ve scrawled on these walls painted warnings, predictions:
THE END IS COMING
THE END OF THE FUTURE
APOCALYPSE
THERE WILL BE NO TOMORROWS.
My warnings went unheeded by these hedonists. I might as well have screamed in Klingon for all the good it did me and them. Sometimes I found myself screaming over missing pencils or that thief Starling’s latest philanthropic gesture. They usually ignored me. Occasionally, they reported me to the local authorities.
When night fell and the stars came out, I forgot about my current plight and dreamed of my past, the future. Most of my dreams were of the confident young man I was who captained a ship that could open vistas in the pulse-flows of time.
I’ve traveled backward to zero, to marvel at the birth of the universe in all its fiery, wonderful glory, and forward five hundred years beyond my own time to record sights at the limits of human comprehension. I’ve witnessed the nightmare of the Alpha Quadrant overrun by Dominion forces and reviewed holorecords of an invasion plan into Earth’s past made by hostile interdimensional beings from fluidic space. I’ve defused temporal disruptors and navigated the Briar Patch at hyper-impulse speeds.
Such talk was considered lunacy by these fools and earned me a syringe full of primitive pharmaceuticals and a padded cell. Gentle remonstrations from damn social workers was the only solace to be found. They advised me to see their doctors. Doctors, what a laugh. Their counselors lacked empathic powers or even formal training. The medics of these dark ages couldn’t even cure a cold, repair neural pathways, or regenerate damaged tissue. I might as well have danced around some ceremonial fire on one of the stone-age planets in the Taurus system.