Serpents in the Garden

by Jeff Mariotte

  Close around him were the sounds of tools working earth and stone. A smell like wet clay filled his nose, but with undercurrents of blood that he thought was his own. Testing with his tongue, he found no missing teeth, but sore spots where his cheeks had been cut. When he opened his eyes, rain quickly filled them, so he risked the spikes of agony and turned his head again.

  Moonlight filtering through clouds showed him Rowland and Tyree, hacking at the hillside, carving away an opening. It was not yet deep enough to shield anyone from the rain, but it soon would be. He looked as far up the path as he could and saw the others doing the same, working in teams.

  He groaned, involuntarily, and instantly regretted it because it sent bolts of pain shooting through him. At the sound, Rowland turned toward him. “Admiral!” he said. “You’re awake! Sorry we aren’t done with this yet—we’ve been workin’ as fast as we can, but it’s like tryin’ to carve through granite with a dull spoon.” He looked at Kirk as if expecting an answer, then apparently came to his senses. “Sorry. How bad are you hurt?” Another pause. He knelt beside Kirk. He, too, was soaked, dripping water onto Kirk’s chest. “Can you talk?”

  “C . . . an,” Kirk managed. “Don’t . . . want to. Hurts.”

  “We’ll get you under shelter in just a little while, Admiral. If it’s okay to move you.”

  “Don’t . . . suppose there’s a . . . doctor . . . in the house?”

  “Tyree thinks there’s a Kahn-ut-tu somewhere, but he doesn’t know how to find her. Once we get shelter dug, he’ll try and track her down, okay?”

  She wouldn’t have the medicinal herbs and roots she’d need to treat him, Kirk suspected. But some of them had other abilities, according to the stories he’d been told. Abilities that were so unknown to him, to the science he understood, that they might as well be magic. If Tyree could find her, she might be able to help.

  At any rate, nothing she could do would make him hurt any more than he already did. This was a level of pain, core-deep, that he had never experienced. He hoped he never would again.

  Rowland turned back to his work with renewed vigor. A bolt of lightning created a strobe effect, showing the lanky aide’s arms moving in herky-jerky fashion as he attacked the shallow opening with a pickax.

  Nausea gripped Kirk again, pulsing inside him like electricity through a closed circuit. It passed quickly, for which he was grateful. He knew better than to think it meant he was already healing, though. A beating like that would have consequences that would linger for days if he were lucky, and forever if he were not.

  * * *

  He woke again when Tyree and Rowland hoisted him off the wet ground and carried him into the shelter they had hewn from the wall of the pit. Being carried felt like he was being stabbed with hundred of knives. Being set down on the hard floor felt like those knives were on fire.

  His eyelids fluttered. He tried to speak, but no sound emerged. Then, mercifully, he was unconscious again.

  * * *

  When Kirk next woke, sunlight streamed into the recess in the side of the pit. He heard the sounds of labor from below, of hundreds of steel tools clanking against rock. He heard voices raised in shouts, in song. He heard the steady, monotonous pulsing of the smelter.

  He was dry, and although the pain was still omnipresent, it had lessened slightly, dialed back a notch or two on the scale of unbearable agony.

  The smell, he would learn, would never change to any significant degree. It was the dull, chalky smell of hard-packed dirt and rock being turned to the air, mixed with the smell of hundreds of laborers sweating and the bitter sparks of their tools striking stone, overlaid with the sharp tang of ash from their cook-fires and lanterns.

  Kirk sat up. His head swam and his vision blurred. He almost sank down again, unwilling to risk yet more misery. But he forced himself not to. Once the first waves of nausea passed, he felt a little stronger, and he edged himself out of the alcove and onto the path. He moved a little farther, to the path’s edge, and looked over.

  The path he was on spiraled down and down and down, or others just like it did, terracing the walls of the pit in ever-declining layers. At the top, the hole in the earth was hundreds of yards wide—maybe a mile across, he judged. The pit was essentially conical in shape, though, so it got smaller as it descended, until at the bottom, it was probably less than a hundred yards across.

  An army of workers was positioned all along the walkway, all of the workers the same brown color, covered in the dust and muck of the dirt they worked. At the top, they looked more or less human, while in the depths they were tiny, ant-sized.

  Kirk shifted his gaze, looking up toward the top of the pit. Across from him was a tangle of stone buildings, some with what appeared to be observation decks reaching out over the pit’s edge, as if daring anyone to trust the constructions of man over the ineluctable pull of gravity.

  Someone stood there, hands on the rail, looking in.

  Kirk rubbed his eyes. His vision was still a little bleary, his eyes gummy.

  But he knew what he saw.

  Klingons.

  * * *

  “They’re gonna make you work, Admiral,” Rowland said. Night had fallen and the laborers had climbed out of the pit. Rowland and the other Freeholders captured together were cooking their meager rations in a dented pot, over open flame. Rowland crouched beside Kirk, offering him water out of a canteen made from the internal organs of some local creature. Kirk drank from it, greedily, until he felt his stomach flip. Then he pulled it away from his mouth, spilling some down his chest.

  “I’m not sure how much good I’ll be.”

  “Don’t matter. I heard Carella sayin’ that tomorrow you’d use a shovel or he’d have Belo finish the job he started.”

  “He did a number on me, all right,” Kirk said. He had looked at his torso, which was black and yellow and red and blue and, in some places, magenta and green. Colorful tissue damage, he decided, was no better for being visually dramatic.

  “He did at that, Admiral Kirk. Woulda killed a lot of folks. I had to turn away—I couldn’t stand to watch anymore, and not be able to do anything. I’m really sorry—I tried to break loose, we all did, but they had us too tight and wouldn’t let go. We had to just stand there while that bastard worked you over. I looked away, but I could still hear the sound, like . . . like someone hitting a side of beef with a baseball bat, over and over. Made me sick. Still does—I heard it last night when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. If I coulda done anything—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Rowland,” Kirk said.

  “It was just killin’ me to listen to. You sure you’re okay now?”

  Kirk looked into the fire that Renaya tended. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll live. I don’t think he did any permanent damage. In fact, I think he’s very good at his job. He knew just how much he could punish me without doing real harm. If he’d been less skilled, I’d be in considerably worse shape right now.”

  Rowland broke into a broad smile. “Well, I guess we can thank our lucky stars that he’s a professional goon, then.” He started to walk toward the fire, and then stopped, turned around. “Oh, hey, I almost forgot, I found out what we’re minin’ here.”

  “Oh?” Between seeing a Klingon for himself and this news, Kirk was starting to think they’d done the right thing by letting themselves be captured—beating to the contrary.

  “Leutrinium,” Rowland said. “Whatever that is.”

  “Klingons use it for power generation in big plants on Qo’noS and in the smaller power plants on their starships. If they’re going to all this trouble here, their supply at home must be dwindling fast.”

  “That’d be my guess, too.”

  “That’s good to know, Rowland. Thanks.”

  “Figured I might as well keep my ears open while I was at it.”

  “You figured right,” Kirk said. “Good job.”

  Twenty

  The next morning, Kirk was handed a shovel and told
to descend into the pit with the rest of the workers. Every step was agony, but he didn’t show that to the Victors overseeing the work detail.

  The Victors stood around or squatted in the shade or sprawled with their backs against the pit walls, rifles always at the ready. Their manner was casual, as if they had done the same thing for so long that they expected each day to be like the one before. They swapped jokes and stories, chatted about the weather, made fun of the laborers working in the hot sun, scratched themselves and spat, and sometimes relieved themselves, unconcerned with who else was around.

  Kirk was positioned well into the pit, far from anybody he knew. He worked with four others, three men and a woman. The woman was from Tyree’s Hill People group, but she was someone Kirk had never met before. He made a point not to mention that Tyree had been captured, because he didn’t want the news to spread. They were assigned a particular section of the pit wall and were told to start digging.

  “What are we looking for?” Kirk asked, wanting to delay work as long as he could.

  “You need not worry about that,” one of the Victors said. “If you find anything, we’re right here.”

  “I just thought I could keep an eye out.”

  “You are not here for your eyes, Freeholder, but for your back. Dig!”

  Kirk shrugged, which hurt, and then he set to digging, which hurt more. Every motion—shoving the blade into the earth, pushing it deeper with his foot, drawing it out mounded with dirt, turning and tossing that to the area the overseers told them to use, then repeating the whole process—sent lances of pain slicing through him. He tried to disguise it from his fellow laborers and the Victors, but every now and then he winced, and before long he was sweating even more profusely than the heat and the effort would account for.

  “Are you ill?” the Hill woman asked.

  “I’m . . . fine,” Kirk said.

  “No. You are far from fine.”

  Kirk lowered his voice. “I took a beating, when we were caught,” he said. “I don’t want to give those guys the satisfaction of knowing they hurt me.”

  “You are a foolish man. Brave, but foolish.”

  “I’ve been called that. And worse.”

  “I would expect nothing else. What is your name, brave fool?”

  “James. James Kirk.”

  “James Kirk, I am called Alta.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alta. Although the circumstances could be better.”

  “Indeed.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  She looked at the sky, as if the answer were floating in the sunlight or written on the scatter of clouds. “A year,” she said. “A little more.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kirk said. “Maybe we can get you out of here soon.”

  Alta laughed. “Out? How? Are you a magician? We are here now, and here is where we’ll die.”

  Kirk realized, too late, that he shouldn’t have broached that subject. He didn’t intend to die in this pit, but he didn’t have an actual escape plan yet. If and when he came up with one, he couldn’t guarantee that everybody else would be released at the same time. His goal was to free the planet from Klingon interference, but that wouldn’t necessarily translate into a lessening of the Victors’ power.

  “Let’s just say I’m an eternal optimist,” he said after a time. “And—”

  “You two!” one of their guards shouted. “Less talking, more digging!”

  Kirk glanced over his shoulder. The Victor had his rifle leveled at their backs. Talking to Alta had distracted him from the pain, but now it was back. He tried to ignore it, and he set to digging again.

  * * *

  During the day, he was too deep in the pit to see the buildings he believed housed the mine offices, supply depot, and other administrative functions. Making the arduous climb at day’s end, shovel across his shoulders, feeling more drained than he’d ever been, he caught a glimpse of them and saw three Klingons standing by the railing, conferring about something. One of them looked into the pit, as if alerted by the intensity of Kirk’s gaze. The admiral felt like they locked eyes, but he knew that from this distance that was an illusion—he could barely make out the Klingon’s face, and the Klingon could not have seen him any better.

  Still, three Klingons indicated that their presence in Victory was ongoing and that the one he had spotted the day before wasn’t a fluke. Over the next several days, he saw more. Other Klingons showed up on the deck overlooking the pit. Once he spotted a Klingon freighter, green-skinned and stocky, not sleek like the Klingon ships he’d encountered before, landing near the smelter. The ship took off again before sundown, but it was confirmation that the mineral was being processed for the benefit of the Klingon Empire.

  Now, Kirk knew what before he had only suspected. The question that remained: how to get that proof to the Federation Council, who could make a case that the Organian Treaty had been violated?

  Trapped in a pit mine, sleeping in a shallow depression hewn from the mine wall, Kirk had no way to contact the outside world, much less anyone beyond Neural itself. If he could get to his communicator . . . but at the moment, that was no more feasible than standing on the pathway into the pit, cupping his hands around his mouth, screaming to the heavens and expecting to be heard on Earth.

  * * *

  Joslen wandered Freehold like a ghost.

  Her father was getting better, and there was little she could do for him except run for water when he wanted it or find whatever scraps of food he felt able to eat. Nyran was missing, along with Elanna and Tyree and Keran, plus the stranger named James and his friend, and the others.

  The roads were full of familiar faces, people who were no longer strangers but not yet friends. Although people spoke to her as she passed—and there were those from Rocky Bluff, as well, who had known her since birth—Joslen felt removed from them all. Her heart was somewhere beyond the walls, with Nyran, and she didn’t know where, and without it she was lost.

  “Joslen!” someone called to her. The anxiety in it made her turn to look. Meena ran toward her. The severity of her gaze and the tightness of her jaw made Joslen wonder if she was angry.

  “Meena?”

  When the woman reached her, her arms flew open and she wrapped them around Joslen in a hug so tight the girl began to fear for her ribs. “Joslen, thank goodness I found you. Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Scouts have reported that they saw Nyran taken by slavers. Nyran, Tyree, Elanna, and the rest. The scouts were at a distance, too far to interfere, and then there was so much Victor activity they had to stay hidden for days. Now they’re finally back in Freehold and spreading the news.”

  Joslen felt as if the very earth beneath her feet had given way and she was tumbling into an unending abyss. “No!” she cried, tears welling in her eyes. “They must be mistaken.”

  “Girl, they haven’t returned. Don’t you think they would have, if they were able? We knew something had happened to them. At least we know they’re alive, not dead in some canyon.”

  “Dead might be better,” Joslen said. “Nyran cannot be a slave. He’s too sensitive. It would be torture.”

  “That boy is stronger than you think. Didn’t he go to Rocky Bluff for you, alone? Escape from two mugatos? Then go off alone again, worried about James and Rowland? He has shown his courage and his strength.”

  “You know why he did all that?”

  “Why?”

  “To impress me. Some of the boys from Rocky Bluff beat him, in front of me. He could not bear that, so he was determined to show me that he had courage. It’s my fault he left.”

  Meena was shaking her head, her long brown hair, escaped from its tie, flipping across her face. “No,” she said. “He did what he did. His decision. The fact that he did it to impress you—at least, in part—does not make it your fault.”

  “But if I hadn’t—”

  “Did you beg him to go?”

  “Of course n
ot. I begged him to stay.”

  “But he decided not to.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “His decision. Only Nyran is responsible for what he chooses to do.”

  Joslen had been blaming herself, but Meena’s words rang true. Perhaps it was not her fault. Nyran was his own person, after all. Her control over him was limited, and she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. If he loved her, it was because he chose to. If he wanted to do things for her, or to impress her, that was certainly not because she needed impressing. She already loved him, and she would no matter what.

  “We have to save him,” Joslen said.

  “Do what, now?”

  “Save him. If he went after James and the other man to impress me, I cannot stay in Freehold while he rots in captivity. I am not responsible for his leaving. But if I do nothing, then I am responsible for his continued absence.”

  Meena studied her with a steady gaze. Joslen felt she was being measured, although for a dress or a shroud wasn’t clear. “Joslen, you are a just a girl. What can you—”

  “Nyran and I are the same age!” she said. “If he can do brave things, whatever the risk, then so can I.”

  “I suppose that is true,” Meena said. “One thing I’ve learned about you, Joslen: You ought not be underestimated. You or Nyran, either one.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Help you? If I can. Help you do what?”

  Joslen didn’t have to consider the question for long. “If they’re captives of the Victors, working in the pit, then there’s only one thing to do,” she said. “We need to raise an army.”

  Twenty-One

  When Kirk reached for his shovel in the morning, a pair of Victor overseers stepped between him and it. One put a hand protectively on the shovel. “You don’t need that,” he said.

  The other one, a woman with a stocky build and a low center of gravity, gave him an unpleasant grimace. “The way I hear it, you might just be the most useless digger we’ve had here.”