Seekers: Second Nature

by David Mack

  The first officer thought for a moment. She directed her next question at Dastin. “How long would it take to get us close enough to that crater to see what’s going on down there?”

  “No offense, sir, but why would we want to?”

  “Just playing a hunch. I’m thinking they might be up to something that could cause the energy readings that drew us here.”

  Her suggestion left Hesh wide-eyed and befuddled. “Forgive me for doubting your hypothesis, Commander, but I am unable to conceive of any process by which a natural methane burn could produce an energy signature powerful enough to be detected by one of our reconnaissance probes.”

  “I never said it made sense on its face. I just said I have a hunch.” She turned her green eyes toward Dastin. “So? How long to get us sideline seats at the crater?”

  Dastin struggled to discern a safe path to the pit of fire from their current position. “Looks like we can follow the edge of this ridge back down into the jungle, then shadow that trail over there to the crater. Barring disasters, we can be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  The order was given, and Dastin wasted no time or breath debating it. He guided the landing party along the ridge line, which sloped gradually downward until it was swallowed by the jungle. Beneath the lush canopy of the forest, darkness reigned. As the last traces of daylight vanished, the black expanse of the jungle came alive with a mad cacophony of noise—the sawing music of insects, the throaty growls of animal hungers, and shrill cries that sliced through the primitive gloom. Dastin did his best to remain silent amid the clamor, to emulate the quiet surety of a predator in the night, only to feel betrayed by the labored breaths of his comrades, who struggled to keep up with him as he blazed a trail toward the crater.

  As they neared the tree line, the heavy pulse of low drums resounded through the night like a titan’s heartbeat, and the light of the crater’s blue fire became bright enough to silhouette the great throng of people who encircled it. Dastin stopped and held up a closed fist to tell the others to halt. Despite his signal, they ran into each other like bumbling cadets.

  “Smooth,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  Theriault reproved him with a poisonous glare. “What do you see?”

  “The creepiest town meeting in history.” He beckoned Hesh forward and pointed at the crowd encircling the crater. “Check this out. Looks like some kind of ceremony.”

  The Arkenite made a silent scan of the natives with his tricorder. “The female in the feathered robes appears to be leading whatever ritual is being carried out.”

  Dastin squinted to pick out details. “What about the ones wearing the big headpieces?”

  Hesh sounded baffled. “What of them?”

  “What are those weapons they’re carrying?”

  The entire landing party eyed the armored natives who ringed the throng. Tan Bao shrugged. “They look like spears.”

  “No.” Dastin shook his head. “Those aren’t blades on the end. They’re too bulky, and they have no piercing tips or cutting edges.” Something about the natives’ pole-arms troubled him. “I can’t say why, but I don’t like the look of those things.”

  Hesh checked his tricorder again. “I detect nothing unusual about them.”

  “Well, do me a favor and keep an—” He saw the armored guards prod certain individuals toward the pit of fire. “What are they doing?”

  Theriault’s jaw slackened with horror. As the landing party watched, the armored guards with the pole-arms and ornate headdresses ushered toward the pit a young man whose body was painted with peculiar symbols—and they nudged him over the crater’s edge. He screamed for only a few seconds as he fell—and then a gust of golden fire roared into the black sky, and the only sound was the snap and crack of the cyan flames, and the steady tempo of the drums.

  “I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea,” Theriault muttered.

  Dastin respected the XO’s gift for understatement. “That makes two of us.”

  Hesh sidled up to them and thrust his tricorder toward Theriault. “Commander, I’ve made an interesting discovery.”

  “More interesting than people being sacrificed to a pit of burning gas?”

  The science officer pointed at the tricorder’s display. “Sir, all the natives I’ve scanned are no older than their late teens. This appears to be an entire civilization of ­children.”

  Tan Bao telegraphed his dissent with a furrowed brow. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Hesh. There are lots of species that look young to us even after they’ve attained full maturity. The Fesarians of the First Federation, for example, or the Nimmilites of—”

  “I am not saying these people appear young.” Hesh was adamant. “Look at these scans of their cellular structure, their DNA, their telomeres, their mitochondria. The subjects gathered here range in age from newborns to their late teens. The eldest subjects, by my estimate, are no more than eighteen years of age, and are in the physical primes of their lives.” He nodded toward the pit. “And I suspect it is no coincidence that they are the ones being sent to their deaths.”

  6

  The night stank of burning flesh. Chanting voices snaked between the steady tempo of the drums, a hymn to the sacrifice. Nimur had seen more than a hundred Cleansings, but only now, poised at the precipice of her demise, did she feel the full weight of it. Each beat of the drums, each haunting incantation—they were invitations to step into the flames.

  Everyone she knew stood gathered in the outer circle, bearing witness to the ceremony. Between the observers and the sacrifices stood the Wardens with their lances, and the priestess with her feathered raiment. On the far side of the Well of Flames, two Wardens ushered forward Derym, the next person to be Cleansed. The reed-thin young man’s face was blank, his eyes aflame but empty. It was as if he had been drained of his will to live. Without any sign of resistance or hesitation, he walked in slow, even strides toward the fire. Then, with the single-­mindedness of a moth drawn to a torch, he stepped over the edge and fell facedown, arms outstretched, into the blue inferno. A jet of flames shot upward as the abyss consumed him.

  Nimur wrinkled her nose at the sickly, charnel odor that belched from the Shepherds’ merciless crucible. The reek passed quickly, carried away on scorching gusts of brutal heat.

  And the drums beat on. Their rhythm coursed through Nimur until their cadence held sway over her heartbeat and left her head swimming. She swayed like a reed in the breeze. The chanted words were as much a mystery to her now as they had been all her life; they were not composed of Tomol words; they were the prayer of the Shepherds, passed down verbally from priestess to disciple, one sun-turn after another, since the time of the Arrival. No one knew what they meant, only that they were meant to be recited during the Cleansing.

  So it had always been, and so it would remain.

  On Nimur’s right was Teolo, a young woman she knew but with whom she had never been friendly, partly because she had envied Teolo’s beauty and effortless grace. Next to her, Nimur had always felt plain and clumsy. When they both had reached the age for choosing a mate, Teolo had enjoyed a surfeit of handsome suitors, while Nimur had counted herself fortunate to capture the attention and affection of the simple but kindhearted Kerlo.

  Now they stood together on the verge of annihilation. Despite the abundance of natural gifts with which Teolo had been born and lived, tonight she was doomed to meet the same end as Nimur. In the fire, the two of them would be equals at last.

  The young beauty hesitated at the crater’s edge and cast her final glance at Nimur, of all people. Behind the blaze of power in her eyes was a fathomless sorrow, and Nimur understood it all too well. Teolo grieved, just as she did, for the lives they might have led.

  A Warden nudged his lance into the small of Teolo’s back. She crossed her arms over her chest as s
he fell, comforted only by her own lonely embrace, and vanished into the blue death.

  The night’s other candidates all had been Cleansed. Ysan and two Wardens moved toward Nimur in a solemn slow march. All that remained now was for the priestess to bless Nimur with the Benediction of the Cleansing, offer her the forgiveness of the Shepherds, and send her to walk the last path of all flesh. She heard Ysan and the Wardens halt behind her.

  “Sister? Are you ready to be Cleansed?”

  Nimur turned and faced Ysan—and felt her fear become fury. “No.”

  Ysan stood her ground. “There is no other way, sister.”

  “Not for you.” She made no effort to mask her threatening tone.

  The Wardens spoke the ancient words that sparked the fires in their lances.

  Savoring the heat of confrontation, Nimur realized she had a new sense of the world around her, a new awareness. Other beings gave off tangible but invisible auras, and if she turned her mind to the task, she could alter the shape of those energies. With a single violent impulse, she turned the two Wardens’ life-forces inward and away from herself.

  The two hulking defenders flew backward, helpless leaves riding a harsh wind.

  Nimur backhanded Ysan and laughed as the priestess crumpled into a defensive curl.

  A collective gasp sounded from the witnesses, and the other Wardens leveled their weapons at Nimur. She pushed back with a thought driven by rage. A shimmering ring of distortion appeared around her and rushed outward, knocking the Wardens and witnesses off-balance. As the assembled Tomol stumbled and fell, Nimur charged forward and confronted Chimi and Tayno, who huddled over the swaddled, bawling infant Tahna.

  “Give her to me.”

  The two youths could not have failed to understand the implicit threat behind Nimur’s demand, but instead of obeying, they shuddered and closed their eyes.

  Nimur ripped the wailing infant from Chimi’s arms and dashed toward the jungle.

  The tree line was still many strides ahead of her as she heard the angry whine of lances preparing to fire. A Warden shouted, “Stop running and put down the baby!”

  She was only seconds away from cover, from the shelter of foliage and darkness, but she knew she would never get there in time. No matter how fast she ran, she could never outrun a blast from a fire lance.

  Then flashes of red light cut through the night, searing past her on both sides while filling the air with a piercing shriek. The crimson beams left a strange odor in the air, like the smell after a lightning storm, and when their screeching ceased, all she heard behind her were screams.

  Golden blasts tore past her as she barreled into the forest. Pulses of fire from the Wardens’ lances lit trees on fire and kicked up great fountains of short-lived sparks.

  More red pulses flew out of the jungle in the opposite direction, forcing the Wardens to abandon their pursuit and harassment.

  Nimur didn’t know what had attacked the Wardens, or if it had acted on her behalf. All she knew was she had to keep running—because all that Suba had left for her now was death.

  • • •

  “Commander? She’s coming right at us.”

  Theriault barely registered Dastin’s warning. She was still processing the sight of two armored guards being hurled backward as if by the hand of God. “What was that? Telekinesis?”

  Despite the drama unfolding in front of them, Hesh focused on his tricorder’s display. “Unknown. But I’m picking up high-power energy signatures from all the guards’ weapons.”

  The desperate, fleeing young woman plucked a crying infant from the arms of two younger natives, leaped over them, and continued her mad dash toward the landing party’s concealed position in the jungle. Her fear shone through her eyes, which Theriault realized for the first time were ablaze with an inner fire unlike any she had ever seen.

  Tan Bao reached for his phaser but stopped himself from drawing it. “What do we do?”

  Theriault wanted to give the order to lay down suppressing fire and cover the woman’s escape, but she knew that was forbidden by the Prime Directive.

  Behind the escaping young woman, several armored guards scrambled to their feet and aimed their lances at her back. It took all of Theriault’s willpower not to shout out a warning.

  Red beams blazed from concealed positions nearby in the jungle and slashed through the night to slam into the armored natives. A few quick volleys streaked past the woman, felling half a dozen of her pursuers with each volley, and sowing chaos and terror in the unarmed crowd that had surrounded the pit of burning natural gas.

  Frightened natives ran every which way, obstructing the warriors from returning fire with any accuracy. Wild shots tore into the jungle, igniting blazes and peppering the jungle floor with ephemeral sparks. The landing party hit the deck, pressing themselves facedown into the dirt to stay below the barrage, which was as fierce as it was random.

  Tan Bao asked Theriault through gritted teeth, “Who’s shooting?”

  “How the hell should I know?” A near-miss ricocheted off the stump of a fallen tree next to her. Sparks rained down on her as she covered her head with her arms.

  Prone against the fallen tree trunk, Dastin winced as another volley of golden fire screamed past overhead and was answered by ruby-hued blasts from the jungle. “Those are Klingon disruptors. I’d bet my beard on it.”

  Silence fell upon the jungle. In the aftermath of the firefight, the animals all had fled or gone quiet, leaving the nocturnal wilderness eerily bereft of its natural ambience. Without the sonic camouflage of combat or fauna, the fleeing woman’s footfalls were crisp and distinct—and without a doubt closing in on the landing party’s position. From the clearing around the pit came shouted orders and the bustle of warriors readying a search team to breach the tree line.

  Remembering her own directive to avoid contact with the natives, Theriault whispered to her team, “Fall back to the ridge line, single file.”

  The landing party started to get up. Dastin said, “Belay that! Down!” They all dropped back to the muddy ground and took whatever cover they could find.

  The patter of the woman’s footsteps was matched by several more from nearby. All the footfalls slowed, as if those responsible for them had just noted their mutual proximity.

  Common sense—not to mention Starfleet basic tactical training—dictated that until the risk of detection had passed, the wisest course of action in this situation was to stay quiet and out of sight. Unfortunately, Theriault was eager to know if Dastin was right about the weapons being Klingon disruptors, and, if so, what they were doing here. Just keep your head down, she told herself, over and over again. Then her curiosity trumped her caution. She crawled forward and lifted a wide leafy frond to steal a peek at the encounter transpiring only a few meters away.

  The green-skinned, silver-haired native woman in a crudely woven dress had halted in the middle of a narrow trail. She turned in a slow circle, one way and then the other, her eyes and ears searching the darkness around her even as she hugged the whimpering infant to her chest.

  Burly figures emerged from the shadows around her. One stepped onto the trail less than two meters from Theriault, which had meant she had nearly collided with him by accident. In all, she counted six figures. The one in charge approached the woman with empty hands held at chest height, palms out. His deep, rasping voice had the telltale reverb of one processed through a universal translator. Thanks to the flickering light of a nearby burning tree, Theriault noticed the man’s dramatic cranial ridges and well-groomed facial hair.

  Nimur recovered her wits and challenged her saviors’ leader. “You are not Tomol.”

  “No, we’re not. We are Klingons.” He extended one gloved hand to the woman. “I am Commander Tobar.”

  The woman eyed Tobar and his men with naked suspicion. “I am Nimur.”

  “Nim
ur, we have come to help you.”

  Three armored warriors from the pit sprinted into view, several dozen meters behind the impromptu meeting on the trail. Tobar lifted his chin toward the interlopers, and one of his men turned, fired his disruptor pistol, and stunned the approaching trio. Then Tobar smiled at Nimur. “We can take you far from here, to a place where you will be safe. Come with us.”

  The commander had taken care to phrase his statement as an invitation. Why was he being so solicitous? Since when did Klingons ask for anything instead of taking it by force?

  Nimur was slow to grant her trust. “Where can you take me that I’ll be safe?”

  “Somewhere your kinsmen can never follow. A place called Qo’noS.”

  “I’ve never heard of that island.”

  Tobar put on a humble aspect. “As I said, it’s very far from here.”

  None of what Theriault was hearing made any sense to her. Qo’noS? Why would they take her to the Klingon homeworld? What do they want with her?

  Aggressive shouting from the village filtered through the jungle, followed by the rapid beat of war drums. It sounded to Theriault as if the natives were rallying, and that the panicked crowd would soon regroup as an angry mob.

  On the trail, Nimur looked away toward the growing clangor, then cast an appraising eye on the Klingons. “Very well. Take me to Qo’noS.”

  “As soon as our ship comes back, we will,” Tobar said. He motioned to one of his men to take point and lead them away, into the jungle, on a northeasterly heading. Then he draped an arm over Nimur’s shoulder and guided her away. “Until then, we’ll keep you safe.”

  Theriault watched the Klingons slip away into the night, and then she scuttled backward through the underbrush. Her landing party awaited her with anxious stares.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  Tan Bao asked with reluctance, “What’s the bad news?”

  “Dastin gets to keep his beard. Those were Klingon disruptors that shot the natives, and it was Klingons who fired them. They intercepted the woman who fled the ceremony, and they plan on taking her back to Qo’noS as soon as their ride comes back for them.”