by Greg Cox
“Understood,” Una said. “I would do the same in your place. But tell me, what do you know of the Newcomers? When and how did they come to Usilde, and how did they manage to enslave so many of your people?”
“The Newcomers are not known in your land?” Onumes asked. “They have not yet taken possession of your home and your people?”
Una answered vaguely. “We have heard tales and rumors, but would hear the story from your own lips.”
“But if your land is truly free of the Despoilers,” Onumes said, “perhaps my own people could find refuge there, far from the foulness that is despoiling the great forest? To abandon our captive brothers and sisters would surely break my heart, but if it would mean a new and safer life for those under my care . . .”
The naked hope in his voice tugged at Una’s heart, putting her in an awkward position. The last thing she wanted to do was give the Usildar false hope . . . unless Captain April could be persuaded to intervene on their behalf?
“Our land is very far from here,” she hedged. “Farther perhaps than you can even imagine, and very different from your forest as well. You might find life there too strange to endure. And it may be that the Newcomers pose a threat to the Federation as well. Perhaps if you tell us more about them, we can better judge what might be done.”
Onumes frowned, clearly disappointed by her noncommittal response, but accepting of it for the present. Perhaps he recognized that it was premature to ask the strangers for refuge when both sides had barely begun to get to know each other.
“Very well,” he said. “You shall hear our woeful tale, and then perhaps you will find it in your hearts to render what aid you can.” He took a deep breath before launching into his narrative. “It was many cycles ago, the strong rains having come and gone nine times since that fateful day, when the Newcomers and their dreadful island suddenly came into being, appearing out of nowhere as though they had fallen from the sky . . . or risen up from the deep waters that now guard their stronghold.”
“The citadel in the lake,” Una said. “We’ve seen it.”
Eager to hear more, she started to lean forward, then thought better of it. Her attentive chaperone took hold of her arm anyway.
“But how did the Newcomers arrive on Usilde in the first place? Did they come in vessels of some kind, perhaps from the sky?”
“No one saw them come,” Onumes insisted. “One day the citadel, as you call it, was not there. The next day it was. Thunder and lightning heralded its coming, and it is said that strange, shimmering lights could be seen in the sky and waters that terrible night. I was only a youth at the time, but I will never forget the first time I gazed upon the Newcomers’ misshapen forms.” He sighed mournfully. “Little did I know what an unparalleled calamity had befallen our precious forest.”
Una tried to make sense of the leader’s story. Starships and aliens were obviously outside the Usildar’s frame of reference, but she found it hard to believe that the Newcomers’ towering citadel had suddenly sprung into existence overnight. Granted, she and the rest of the landing party would have also seemed to have appeared out of nowhere when they beamed down to the planet, but transporting an entire fortress across space? That was beyond the practical limits of any transporter technology she was familiar with. The energy demands alone defied feasibility, and that still begged the question of where the citadel could have been transported to Usilde from. A gargantuan starship big enough to carry an entire outpost in its transporter room? A mobile spacedock, perhaps capable of warp travel?
The mind boggled.
“Go on,” she urged. “What happened next?”
“A nightmare . . . from which we have yet to wake. At first, the Newcomers kept to their citadel, so that only the thunderous noises coming from the island disturbed the forest, but all too soon they emerged to bring fear to Usilde and enslave my people.”
“How?” Una asked. Captain April would want to know what kind of weapons the Newcomers had at their disposal. “You surely outnumber the Newcomers. What threats did they employ against you?”
Onumes bristled. “Are you suggesting that the Usildar are weak and easily cowed?”
“Not at all,” she assured him hastily. “I’m sure your people did not submit readily to the invaders, who must be very powerful to have forced so many of your people into servitude. I merely seek to know what weapons and powers the Newcomers possess, so that my companions and I are not taken by surprise.”
Her explanation appeared to mollify Onumes. “Yes, you should know of what dangers you face, should you encounter the Despoilers and their sorcery.”
“What kind of sorcery?” she asked. “You said something earlier about them ‘un-making’ people. What exactly did you mean by that?”
“No less than what I said,” Onumes replied. “There were indeed those among us who dared to defy the Newcomers and defend Usilde from their corrupting touch, but that was before the Despoilers revealed that they could make their enemies vanish in the blink of an eye, as though they never existed.” He shuddered at the memory. “Brave men and women, even entire tribes and villages, were made to disappear . . . to teach us what became of those who opposed the will of the Newcomers.” He threw up in his hands in despair. “How could we fight such sorcery? How could anyone?”
Una tried again to interpret Onumes’s words. Was he talking about disintegration beams? Transporters? She wondered if the “vanished” Usildar had actually been transported to another location, such as the alien fortress itself.
“What about their citadel?” she asked. “Do you know what they’re doing there?”
Onumes shook his head. “No Usildar has ever set foot on that dread island, or at least none who have tried have ever returned. It is said that a few unlucky Usildar have been taken to the citadel against their will, but they too are never seen again. What becomes of them within the Despoilers’ lair is a mystery that I prefer not to think of.”
Una couldn’t help speculating anyway. What would the Newcomers want with any abducted Usildar? Lab specimens? House servants? Dinner? Una was reluctant to contemplate such horrific scenarios, but knew that, realistically, they could not be eliminated from consideration. She had seen enough of the universe to know that not every culture was as humane and enlightened as Illyria or the Federation. The outer reaches of space still held its fair share of darkness.
“We heard loud rumbling noises coming from the citadel,” Martinez said. “It sounds like they’re pretty busy in there . . . at something.”
Onumes nodded. “The citadel never sleeps. Although my people have learned to stay well clear of that accursed place, we have heard those noises too. Sometimes the ground itself shakes from whatever unspeakable evil is under way within the lair of the Despoilers. And there are those who say that the citadel is slowly growing and changing like a living thing.”
“Do you believe that?” Una asked.
Onumes gestured at the jungle around them. “Why not? All things grow and take new forms with the passing of time. Even rocks and rivers are reshaped by nature and the primal forces contained within them. Why should the dread citadel not do the same, in twisted mockery of our own sacred sanctuary trees?”
Definitely something to look into, Una thought. If the aliens’ citadel was indeed a work in progress, Captain April needed to be informed of that. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I really want to get a look inside that fortress.”
“Me too!” chirped Gagre from overhead. “I want to see!”
“Shush!” his mother scolded him, clamping her hand over his mouth. “Do not say such things!”
Gagre tugged her hand away. “But it’s true!” He called out to Una. “Have you seen their flying boats? They’re incredible!”
“We’ve seen them,” Una said. “Coming and going from the citadel.”
“Is that how you came here?” the
boy asked. “In a flying boat from far away?”
“Something like that,” she conceded. “Although we have nothing to do with the Newcomers, I assure you.”
Gagre’s bright green eyes grew even wider, if that was possible. “What’s that like, flying above the forest? Can you take me for a ride?”
“Enough!” The boy’s mother slapped him. “We are Usildar. We do not fly.”
Gagre wasn’t convinced. “But—”
His mother raised a warning hand. “Hush!”
The boy grudgingly fell silent, but Una suspected that his unquenchable curiosity remained unabated. Too bad that there’s no Starfleet Academy on this planet, she thought, and that the Usildar are still millennia away from space travel. Gagre would be a natural.
And even if his people were merely free to forge their own destiny, perhaps he could still become a great explorer here on Usilde, venturing to uncharted corners of his own planet like a Magellan or a Dona Cestrix. If only the Newcomers were not stealing the Usildar’s future from them.
“My apologies for the disturbance,” Onumes said. “Gagre’s restless spirit will be his undoing someday, unless he learns to curb it.”
“No harm done,” Una said. “We were all young once. But is there anything else you can tell us about the Newcomers? Anything at all?”
Onumes hesitated before answering.
“They call themselves the Jatohr,” he divulged, spitting out the name as though it tasted foul upon his tongue. Startled gasps greeted the disclosure. “Although the word has become a curse among my people, and we do not speak it.”
Una did not recognize the name, which she was fairly certain was not to be found in the Enterprise’s computer library.
“That name is unknown to us,” she said. “But I thank you for sharing it. The more we know about the Newcomers, the better.”
“But to what end?” Onumes demanded, losing patience. “Speak truthfully. Will your Federation grant us refuge . . . or defend us against our enemy?”
“I can’t answer that,” she said honestly. “Not yet at least. We are strangers here and still have much to learn about your situation.”
“What more do you need to know?” Onumes sprang to his feet atop a swaying branch. His voice rose with his temper. “They enslave my people. They despoil our world. Their corruption spreads daily, turning our green world gray.” Grabbing onto an even higher branch, he pointed an accusing toe at Una. “How can you not wish them gone from Usilde?”
Una saw his point, but watched what she said. “I hear your words and appreciate what is at stake. But, as you just lamented, the Newcomers are powerful in ways that make them deadly to oppose . . . unless we understand more about them and their ‘sorcery.’ And, to be honest, this is not my decision to make. I answer to our own leader, who must decide for us.”
“And where is this leader of yours?” Onumes asked.
“Waiting to hear back from us,” she said. “But, knowing him, he’s going to want to know more about the Newcomers—where they come from, what they want, how they ‘unmake’ their enemies—before he makes any decision.”
Onumes pondered her answer. He lowered himself back onto his original perch. “And how do you mean to find such answers? For your oh-so-cautious leader?”
She looked to Martinez for guidance. “Perhaps a closer look at that labor camp in the valley,” she suggested. “With all due stealth and discretion, of course.”
“Your mission, your decision,” he stressed. “But maybe a bit more snooping is in order, assuming the captain approves.” He squinted up at the sunlight filtering through the canopy. “What time does it get dark around here?”
Eight
Nightfall brought little relief to the enslaved Usildar, who were still laboring in the valley well after sundown. Levitating globes cast a cool white incandescence over the central complex and adjoining fields, providing light enough for the captive workers to keep toiling miserably, although Una wanted to think that there had at least been a change of shift since the last time the landing party had spied on the sprawling labor camp. No interior lights escaped the windowless wooden dormitories, where she hoped some Usildar were getting a little much-needed rest. Trees were toppled at the receding edge of the endangered forest. Bonfires crackled, throwing sparks up into the smoky air.
Una and Shimizu crept around the fringes of the camp, taking care to stay outside the radiance cast by the floating globes, which proved to be the source of the odd, atonal warbling she had heard before. The globe’s darkened upper hemispheres were opaque in order to direct all the light downward. Some of the lamps appeared more or less stationary, but others patrolled the grounds in patterns that resisted easy recognition. The overhead misters had turned off now that the relentless heat of day had passed and the temperature had dropped to a comfortable twenty degrees centigrade or so.
The telltale song of a globe, which reminded Una of a classical theremin concert she’d once attended on Octaro II, alerted her and Shimizu to the approach of yet another prowling searchlight. They ducked behind a stack of piled logs barely in time to avoid being caught in the cold white glare. Huddling behind the timber pile, they waited for the sphere to move past them. Una noted an annoying subsonic thrum beneath the device’s discordant melody. It made her teeth tingle.
“You don’t think we’re getting too close, do you?” Shimizu whispered.
Una shrugged. “That’s the idea.”
After checking in with the Enterprise, and explaining that they weren’t quite done on the planet, the landing party had spread out to investigate the huge camp from a variety of angles and approaches. The plan was to rendezvous later at a designated spot back in the nocturnal forest. Una hoped to have obtained valuable new data regarding the Jatohr by then—and she wasn’t going to get that by playing it safe.
“There’s a difference between getting close and too close,” Shimizu said. “Why do I feel like you’re pushing our luck?”
“Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” she insisted. “Don’t I always?”
A floating lamp scooted away and she took advantage of the opportunity to dart between a rough-hewn timber shed and a towering silo. The shadows between the two outbuildings, she judged, offered concealment enough to slink deeper into the central complex without being detected. Shimizu scurried after her, joining her in the narrow alley.
“Okay, now we’re definitely pushing our luck,” he said.
She was vaguely offended by his lack of faith in her ability to keep out of sight. Hadn’t she once managed to slip in and out of a Klingon listening post to recover stolen Starfleet intelligence? Not to mention that time she and Tim had broken curfew at the Academy without being caught. He ought to know by now that any risks she took were calculated ones. And that you should never underestimate an Illyrian.
“Do you want to dig up some good intel on the Jatohr or not?” she asked him. “I for one am not reporting back to the captain empty-handed.”
Una particularly wanted to make some compelling discovery that would persuade April to intervene on the Usildar’s behalf. It was clear to her that the Jatohr’s rampant colonization efforts were an unfolding atrocity, to say nothing of being a blatant violation of the Usildar’s planetary autonomy. And it wasn’t as though the Jatohr were all that deeply entrenched on this world yet; despite the worrisome degree of environmental contamination, the invaders had arrived less than a decade before and remained largely confined to a single citadel. There was surely still time to reverse the incursion and give the Usildar their planet back if Starfleet—or maybe just the Enterprise—moved swiftly enough.
I know what course I would choose, she thought, if I were captain.
Clinging to the shadows, she and Shimizu worked their way around the silo to where it abutted a hangar at the edge of the landing field. She kept one eye on the airborne globe-lights
as she peered around the corner of the hangar. Bales of unfamiliar equipment and supplies, contained within some kind of artificial webbing, were stacked along one wall. A silent pod, its wings tilted downward to serve as landing gear along with an additional support at its tail, was parked just up ahead. She scanned the materials with her tricorder, but detected nothing incriminating. She made a mental note to examine the readings more closely back on the ship.
“I still wonder if we should have tried disguising ourselves as Librosians,” Shimizu whispered.
“Usildar,” she corrected him. The notion of resorting to disguise had been discussed and rejected quickly at the outset of the scouting mission. “I don’t think there’s enough dye and body paint on the planet to make us pass for Usildar except maybe at a great distance, but feel free to strip down to a loincloth if you think it will help.”
“I’m good,” he said. “I guess it’s unlikely that the Usildar have the run of the place anyway, given the whole slave-labor thing.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “Despite the visible lack of tight security.”
She noted again how few Jatohr overseers appeared to occupy the camp. This was a mixed blessing when it came to spying on them. On the one hand, it made it easier to skulk about undetected; on the other hand, it was hard to covertly study the invaders when they were so scarce on the ground. Frustration gnawed at her patience. Despite her best efforts, they still didn’t know any more about the Jatohr than they had before sneaking into the camp. Not even how exactly they “unmade” dissidents.
The telltale buzz of an approaching pod caught her ear. Spying on the paved airfield beyond the hangar, she saw a gleaming aircraft coming in for a landing. A pair of Jatohr emerged from the far end of the hangar to greet the new arrivals.
This is it, she realized. An opportunity to observe the Jatohr close-up and perhaps even eavesdrop on a conversation. She couldn’t let this lucky break slip by. “Here’s our chance,” she said. “Watch my back.”
