Seekers: Second Nature

by David Mack

  “Exactly!”

  “Sure. If I knew anything about Klingon neurochemistry. Or their sleep patterns. Or what even a baseline ­Klingon brainwave looks like. Or their susceptibility to subaural frequencies.”

  “In other words . . . no.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “You’re no longer my favorite member of the landing party.”

  “Imagine my disappointment.”

  Dastin cut in, “Wait, does that make me your favorite by default, or are we treating this like an open position? ’Cause no offense to Hesh, but I really think seniority should count here.”

  “Guys, you know that part of the mission where I get fed up and shoot all three of you? We’re coming up on that pretty damned fast.”

  Hesh tapped Theriault’s shoulder. “Commander?”

  “I mean it, Hesh. We need to figure out a plan to get inside the caves before we—”

  “Commander.” The Arkenite’s tone was urgent. “We are not alone.”

  Theriault turned and looked back, then up and around. Dastin and Tan Bao did the same, and soon they all were looking at the same thing: a crescent formation of the armored warriors they had seen at the pit of fire. Their massive headdresses caught the cerulean moonlight with every feather, every scale, and every tuft of fur, and their jeweled faux eyes shimmered in the darkness. Most daunting of all, however, were their lances. The pole-arms, which earlier had looked so primitive from a distance, now crackled with pale blue electricity. Even from a few meters away, they presented a palpable threat.

  In a low voice, Theriault said to the landing party, “Phasers down. Now.” She led by example, slowly placing her own weapon on the ground while keeping her empty hand up, where the natives could see it. She waited until Hesh, Dastin, and Tan Bao had laid down their own phasers, and then she slowly stood.

  The warriors’ lances followed her every movement.

  She kept both hands up in front of her and took a step forward. “Um, hi. My name is Vanessa Theriault. My friends and I are from the United—”

  A flash of light and heat blasted Theriault onto her back. Stunned, all she could do was listen as the natives opened fire on the rest of the landing party.

  Not cool, she decided as her consciousness faded, and she sank into the dark’s waiting embrace.

  9

  Clark Terrell found a lot of things to like about serving on a small ship such as the Sagittarius, but its onboard menu was not one of them. The crew had no end of nicknames for the scout ship’s galley. The engineers’ current favorite was “The Unholy Mess,” while the officers tended to refer to the communal dining area as “Pre-sickbay.” One thing everyone agreed upon was that the Starfleet-approved bill of fare programmed into the food synthesizer left much to be desired.

  So it was that Terrell, while making a hit-and-run foray to the galley for a quick lunch, found himself surprised by the sight of Master Chief Ilucci carefully setting plates full of food on the open compartment’s four tables. At a glance, Terrell saw that each table was arranged with the same six prefabricated meals—but only one set of utensils per table.

  Terrell crossed his arms and leaned in the doorway. “Planning a feast, Master Chief?”

  “A science experiment.”

  If there was one thing a Starfleet career had taught Terrell, it was to be alarmed whenever an engineer was doing something odd and chose to refer to it as an experiment. “Dare I ask?”

  “Threx and I have a little bet with Razka.”

  “Let me skip ahead, Master Chief. Is the end of this story an eating contest?”

  “Not exactly.” Perhaps sensing Terrell’s silent disapproval, he added, “Not directly.”

  “Chief, don’t make me use a court-martial to get a straight answer.”

  The engineer scratched his whiskered chin. “It’s a . . . well . . . a not-puking contest.”

  “Duty compels me to ask you to elaborate, even though I really don’t want you to.”

  A shamed nod. “Yeah. You see, Razka said that Saurians never vomit. But I know he’s just talking out his gills, because I’ve seen Saurians hurl before, more than once. So has Threx. So, we made a bet with Razka that we could make him puke. And he made a counter-bet that he could make me, Threx, and Torvin boot before he did.”

  “Hence the display of pending gluttony I see before me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Sit-ups.”

  Doing his best not to imagine the aftermath of the engineers’ ill-considered wager with the ship’s lead field scout, Terrell moved toward the food synthesizer. “Mind if I grab a chicken sandwich and a coffee before you boys paint the decks?”

  “Be my guest, sir.”

  “Too kind.” Terrell reached into his pocket and fished out a yellow data card that was programmed to deliver his least-un-favorite lunch. Half a second before he could insert it into the food synthesizer’s input slot, the ship’s alarm whooped, and the bulkhead panels flashed yellow.

  “Captain Terrell, please report to the bridge,” Sorak said over the intraship comm.

  Terrell stepped over to a nearby bulkhead comm panel and opened a response channel. “On my way.” He closed the channel and pocketed his meal card. “So much for lunch.” He stole a parting look at one table’s row of condiments on his way out of the galley. “Mind the hot sauce, Chief. It’s twice as mean the second time through.”

  Leaving the chief engineer to his preparations, Terrell hurried through the main deck’s ring-shaped corridor along its starboard side, passing the hatch to the ship’s sole lifeboat, two compartments of crew quarters, and his own cabin on the way back to the bridge.

  The door slid open at Terrell’s approach, and as he strode onto the bridge, Sorak stood from the center seat and began delivering his report. “We detected an encrypted subspace comm signal on a Klingon military frequency, sir. It originated on the planet’s surface.”

  Terrell pivoted into his command chair. “Can we decrypt the message?”

  The white-haired Vulcan stood to the right of the captain’s chair. “Not yet, sir. It’s a newer cipher, one we’ve not seen before.” He glanced at the image of Nereus II on the main viewscreen. “Captain, if Klingon military personnel are on the planet’s surface, it stands to reason they would have one or more support vessels nearby.”

  “If so, why aren’t they in orbit? Why leave a team on the surface without backup?”

  Sorak pondered that. “Difficult to say. A desire to maintain a low profile, perhaps? It might also be that the personnel on the ground are a long-range reconnaissance team. The Klingons have been known to let their scouts explore new worlds autonomously and summon starship support only when it’s required, for combat or exfiltration.”

  Terrell swiveled his chair toward the science console, which was crewed at that moment by Ensign Taryl, a female Orion who served as one of the ship’s field scouts. “Ensign? Is it possible the energy readings our probe detected were Klingon comm signals?”

  The green-skinned woman, whose black hair had been shorn to an efficient but still becoming pixie cut, looked up from the sensor display and shook her head. “No, sir. The power readings our probe detected were not consistent with any known Klingon technology.”

  “At least we can rule out mistaken identity, then.”

  Sorak lowered his voice. “Orders, Captain?”

  The sudden change in the situation left Terrell feeling anxious. “Not many good options.”

  “Assuming the Klingons on the surface have requested starship support,” Sorak said, “we can either stand our ground and meet their ship in orbit, or we can take evasive measures and assume a stealth profile in advance of their arrival. How do you wish to proceed?”

  Terrell stifled a grim chortle. “You were at Jinoteur. Remember how well that enco
unter with the Klingons went?”

  The memory elicited a somber nod from the Vulcan tactical officer. “Very good, sir. An excess of caution it will be, then.” He raised his voice. “Helm, rig for silent running. Ensign Taryl: Find us someplace nearby to hide. And act with haste, please. Time may be a factor.”

  The crew set to work, and Terrell breathed a low, weary sigh.

  Here we go again.

  10

  Vanessa Theriault awoke to many pairs of golden eyes radiating malice. She was on her back, lying on the ground, looking up at faces that gazed back with hostility. All she could do was hope that, like many humanoid species Starfleet had encountered through the years, this one reacted positively to seemingly common benign gestures and expressions. She mustered a feeble smile and hoped it would be seen as friendly. “Um . . . hello.”

  Masked warriors responded by pointing their pole-arm blaster weapons at her. The young alien female in the great cloak of feathers—the leader, Theriault surmised—wore a stern expression that seemed ill-suited to her pretty, yellow-freckled, pale-green face. “Quiet.”

  Through the forest of legs that surrounded Theriault, she saw other warriors use their weapons to nudge Dastin, Tan Bao, and Hesh back to consciousness. None of the other members of the landing party had their tricorders, so Theriault slowly and subtly pressed her arms close to her sides and confirmed that her tricorder, communicator, and phaser also were missing. She turned her head away from the rest of the landing party and glimpsed their equipment gathered in a pile near a small fire. A native warrior in a quasi-feline headdress inspected one of the phasers.

  Panicked thoughts fluttered through Theriault’s mind. Don’t press the trigger. Please don’t press the trigger. She masked her unease as best she could while imagining the young warrior vaporizing himself with a careless sequence of pokes and pushes.

  The girl in the cloak of feathers paced along the feet of the landing party, who had been set parallel to one another in a dusty jungle clearing. Her discerning eye passed from Theriault to Dastin, then from Tan Bao to Hesh. “You are not Tomol. Who are you?”

  “Friends,” Theriault blurted.

  Her outburst brought feather-girl back to her. “That remains to be seen.” The girl threw a narrowed glance at the three other members of the landing party, then trained her suspicions on Theriault. “The others follow your example. Are you their leader?”

  “Yes.” Volunteering information might be a risk, but Theriault wanted to bridge the divide of mistrust that lay between her and the natives. “My name is Vanessa. Vanessa Theriault.” She pointed at the other members of the landing party and named them in order. “That’s Faro Dastin, Nguyen Tan Bao, and Sengar Hesh.”

  Some of the girl’s ill will abated. After a moment, she replied, “I am Ysan, the High Priestess of the People. Why have you come to Suba?”

  “Suba? Is that your name for this world?”

  “It’s our name for this island. This world we call Arethusa.” The question must have struck the priestess as odd, because her dark suspicion returned. “Why are you here?”

  “My friends and I are explorers. We travel to different places looking to meet new people and learn new things. We come in peace and mean harm to no one.”

  Dubious whispers passed among the masked warriors. Ysan silenced them with a raised hand and a fierce stare. She softened her mien when she faced Theriault again. “Then why did you and your friends attack us and help Nimur escape the Cleansing?”

  Dastin interjected, “That wasn’t us.”

  Theriault aimed a wide-eyed glare at the Trill scout and hoped he would intuit her unspoken command: Shut your mouth and keep it that way.

  Ysan did not seem convinced by Dastin’s protestation of innocence. “An odd claim, since your weapons seem to be the ones that felled so many of our Wardens.”

  Lying was a calculated risk, but one that Theriault felt might be justified under the circumstances. “What weapons?” She sat up as the priestess pointed at the pile of ­tricorders, communicators, and type-1 phasers. Theriault feigned confusion. “Those aren’t weapons.”

  “Really? Then what are they?”

  “Trinkets. Nothing more than fancy boxes and—”

  The screech of a phaser beam cut her off. The warrior in the feline headdress had succeeded in firing one of the compact phasers, unleashing a blue beam that sheared a thick branch off a nearby tree, leaving behind a smoldering stump.

  Ysan fixed Theriault with a withering look. “You were saying?”

  “Okay, some of them are weapons. The jungle’s a dangerous place, you know that.”

  Another young female Tomol joined the group studying the landing party’s equipment. As the teenaged girl picked through the pile of high-tech Starfleet gear, the priestess stepped between Theriault and the other woman. “Where are you from?”

  “A place far away.”

  The priestess looked at Hesh, with his pinched Arkenite features and peculiar three-lobed head. Next her gaze lingered on Tan Bao’s eyes, with their pronounced epicanthic folds, and his drooping mustache. Then she raised an eyebrow at the pale brown spots that framed Dastin’s face and trailed down his neck and under the collar of his olive jumpsuit, a common cosmetic feature among Trill (and also Kriosians, Theriault had learned). The variety in their physical appearances seemed to intrigue her as much as it confused her. If she thought the landing party’s members hailed from three different species, she said nothing to betray her suspicion.

  Just then, one of the communicators in the pile of confiscated equipment beeped. The cat-masked Warden reacted by aiming his captured phaser at it and firing.

  A white flash vaporized the beeping communicator.

  The priestess was furious. “Kolom! Put that down! Now!”

  Startled, the Warden hesitated a moment, looked at the phaser in his hand, and then he lobbed it back into the pile with the rest of the landing party’s confiscated hardware.

  Theriault was grateful the phaser hadn’t gone off while pointed at her or a member of the landing party. I just hope that call from the ship wasn’t for anything important.

  Ysan pointed at the scorch mark on the ground where Theriault’s communicator had been only moments earlier. “What was that?”

  Recalling the rules of the Prime Directive, Theriault chose her words with care. “A tool for talking to people far away. That beep meant that someone wanted to talk to me.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I can’t even begin to explain it to you.”

  The younger female Tomol moved to stand beside Ysan. “We’re wasting time.”

  “Patience, Seta.” Ysan nudged the fragile-looking teen behind her. Then she looked at Theriault with a steely quality in her gaze, one that seemed out of place in a person so young. “We need to find Nimur, the one who escaped. Where did you hide her?”

  “That wasn’t us.”

  “Who else could it have been?”

  Theriault was still debating how much to tell the Tomol when Dastin made the decision for her. “It was the Kling­ons. They have weapons like ours. We saw them attack your Wardens and help your friend escape.”

  All the Tomol turned their attention on Dastin. Pole-arms were subtly angled in his direction, and Ysan moved to loom over him. “Where did they take her?”

  “The northeast part of the island.” Dastin pointed, though Theriault had no idea how the scout could have any idea in what direction he was gesturing, since dawn was hours away and they had all been moved while unconscious. “Six Klingons took your friend there.”

  Ysan and the other Tomol appeared energized by Dastin’s news. Then the priestess’s manner turned menacing. “And these Klingons are friends of yours?”

  Hoping to regain control of the dialogue, Theriault answered first. “Far from it. We have a long history with the Klingons�
��most of it less than friendly, some of it bloody as hell.”

  “Then you are enemies?”

  “At the moment? More like rivals.”

  “I fail to see the distinction.”

  Theriault waved off the semantic debate. “Not important. What matters is, we don’t want to let the Klingons get away with your friend any more than you do.”

  “Why not?”

  As Theriault struggled to concoct a diplomatic answer, Dastin said, “Doesn’t matter. If they want something, we want the opposite. So for now, that makes you and us friends.”

  The priestess remained wary. “You presume much.” She turned her back on Dastin and spoke to Theriault. “Help us bring Nimur back to the Well of Flames for her Cleansing, and then perhaps we will call you friends.”

  Theriault tilted her head at the landing party’s equipment. “We’ll need our things back.”

  “After you have led us to Nimur.”

  The first officer’s tone was firm. “No, before. Without our tools, we can’t help you.”

  “Please, there is no time to waste arguing. We must bring her back to—”

  “If there’s no time to waste, I suggest you give us our tools and let us get to work.”

  “You may have the talking boxes and the ones with straps, but not the weapons.”

  “It’s all or nothing,” Theriault insisted. “I won’t be held hostage with my own weapon.”

  Ysan glanced at the hardware on the ground, then at the landing party. “If we give you all your tools, will you help us bring Nimur home to complete her Cleansing?”

  “If Nimur attacks us, we’ll defend ourselves. We won’t help you attack her, but we also won’t stop you from doing so. We’ll help you find your missing friend, and we’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect you, your people, and ourselves from the Klingons. Agreed?”

  The terms did not seem to please the priestess, but after a moment’s thought she nodded. “Very well.” She beckoned the younger Tomol female, who on closer inspection Theriault estimated was no older than fourteen or fifteen years of age. “This is my eldest disciple, Seta. She’s going to come with us, as will a company of my strongest Wardens.”