Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain

by Tony Daniel

  The crowd’s disdain.

  They’re not going to kill her. Not on my watch, Kirk thought.

  “Spock, you have the conn,” said Kirk. He turned to Uhura. “Have a ten-member security team meet me in the transporter room on the double, Lieutenant. We’re going down to the planet surface.”

  • • •

  Captain’s log, Stardate 6417.1. Concerned that the Exos terrorist movement is trying to seize control of Vesbius, I have beamed down to the Vesbian colony in order to prevent a mob from freeing would-be assassin Bellamy Hox. He was found to have links to an Exos terrorist organization and, while acting under some personal duress, was found guilty of sixteen counts of attempted murder for the ideological cause of genetic supremacy. The moral dilemma created by the genetic engineering of humans has resulted in political turmoil and factionalism. It seems that in the attempt to create paradise, humanity cannot help but breed toxic weeds as well.

  • • •

  “Listen to me,” said Hannah. “I bear Bellamy Hox no ill will. It is true that he was threatened by the death of his family to do what he did, and I forgive him. But to forget what he has done, to let him get away with doing this, and to open ourselves to the possibility he will do so again—this we cannot permit.”

  Hannah looked out over the crowd. Far from being mollified, the mob seemed to surge toward her. They were coming for her. She had failed.

  Nearby, Jasper Torn laughed. “Did you really think you could fight those who are your superiors?” he roared.

  Hannah ignored him, but she flinched at the mob’s approach.

  Ferlein and Meredith placed themselves two steps down from her, ready to defend her with their lives.

  There were too many out there, and many of them were just as well armed as her bodyguards. The mob would make short work of them all once it surged.

  So this is the end, she thought. I don’t even get to find out if the asteroid was diverted. Or to see him one last time.

  Suddenly, between her and the mob a line of men and women with drawn phasers materialized. It took Hannah a moment to recognize that this was Jim and an Enterprise security detail.

  “Stand ready,” Kirk ordered as soon as he had fully materialized. The Enterprise crew formed a phalanx that looked forbidding. The sight of a row of phasers pointing straight at them caused the crowd to step back. But still they did not disperse.

  No, no, thought Hannah. This is not the way. This will solve nothing.

  • • •

  “Jim, what are you doing? Firing will only make things worse in the long run.”

  Kirk turned away from the mob and looked at Hannah. “I can’t let them storm up here and kill you . . .”

  “Yes, please, Captain, shoot them,” said Jasper Torn. “Go ahead and shoot them all. And then watch us rise up and destroy you.” The man laughed. “We are the superior beings. You understand this, don’t you, Captain? You know it in your bones.”

  Wasn’t this the Council member Torn, who’d spoken to us before? The one who’d reminded me of Khan?

  “I made the mistake of indulging an Augment for too long in his fantasies once,” said Kirk. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Kirk raised his phaser and fired point-blank at Torn with the phaser on stun. The man crumpled onto the courthouse steps, stunned into unconsciousness by the phaser blast.

  The mob roared at the sight and surged forward. But the Enterprise’s security detail, now joined by Ferlein and Meredith, held their ground and stared resolve straight back at them.

  “You have to give me another chance,” Hannah begged Kirk. “I have to get to them, or this will spiral out of control.”

  If anybody had a chance, it would be Hannah Faber. In another universe, Kirk reflected, she might’ve made a hell of a starship captain.

  “All right, talk to them,” he said. “Nobody’s taking that prisoner anywhere. I have the ability to beam Hox up at any time and throw him in the brig.”

  “Yes, Jim, I know.” Hannah touched his arm. “He’s only a minor matter now, however.”

  Hannah walked down the three steps to the officers forming the security detail and put her hand on a leveled phaser. The security officer looked to Kirk, who nodded. The man allowed Hannah to lower his weapon. And then the next allowed her to do the same, and the next, and the next, and the next, and, finally, Hannah’s own bodyguards.

  This was not lost on the crowd: Hannah’s actions seemed to have a far greater effect than any of her words. The crowd’s incessant murmur began to moderate to a more conciliatory tone. When she had pushed all the phasers down and they were hanging harmless, Hannah mounted the stairs once more and turned to address those gathered. They had grown respectfully silent, waiting to hear her, a crowd instead of a mob.

  Still, much would depend on what Hannah said next.

  “Live and let live,” Hannah began. “We are a world where you can do what you want and make your way as you choose. A world where the bureaucratic rules of the galaxy do not apply. There is only one law we have ever needed here: Live and let live.

  “Freedom can only exist where others do not determine our fate for us. Murderers take that away from us, and they do not deserve to go free.

  “Live and let live. Bellamy Hox couldn’t do it. He couldn’t follow the one rule, the one code, which makes us Vesbians. That’s why he can’t be among us anymore.”

  Hannah’s speech, amplified and carried over the newsfeed by the reporter, seemed to have a slow ripple effect across the gathered crowd. Many now were nodding their heads in agreement. There were one or two more shouts of abuse, but the crowd began to disperse. With the Enterprise’s security officers standing a mute guard, Hannah and Kirk watched from the courthouse steps as the people left.

  Hannah moved closer to Kirk and whispered in his ear, “Remember our dance? The kiss on the veranda?”

  “Yes.”

  “So simple and easy,” she said. “Nothing will ever be that simple and easy again.”

  “No,” Kirk said.

  “No,” whispered Hannah.

  It was in this moment that Kirk knew that, aside from all biological and physiological reasons, Hannah must remain here with her people. Asteroid strike or no, this society was at a crossroads. It could go the way of peaceful coexistence with the humanity it had left behind, or it could go the way of Khan and his Augments. Hannah represented the way of peace. She had a destiny, and she must see the people of this planet through to a new dawn.

  “Hannah, I’ll leave the detail here overnight to guard the building. Hox will not be sprung from his cell. He will not become an Exos rallying point.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said.

  “What do you want done with . . .” He touched his boot to Torn’s prone body. It might be morning before the man regained consciousness.

  “Jasper Torn. He is—was—a member of the Planetary Council.”

  “Shall I take him back to Enterprise?” the captain asked.

  “No, Jim, you must let him go,” Hannah said.

  “Hannah, he’s dangerous.”

  “I know,” she said. “You must leave this matter to us.” She smiled a conspiratorial smile. “Torn is a fool. He’ll lead my people to the others. We’ll gut the Exos from the inside out.”

  “He’s a fool who nearly had you killed,” Kirk said. “You’re playing with fire.”

  “Politics is nothing else but playing with fire, Jim,” Hannah replied sweetly.

  “I have to get back to my ship. There’s much to do.”

  Hannah nodded sadly. “Yes, I must get back to my people. The shelters are almost ready, and the ships must be tended. Goodbye, James T. Kirk.”

  “Goodbye, Hannah.”

  • • •

  Kirk had barely settled into his captain’s chair upon returning to the bridge when Spock approached him.

  “Captain, may I speak with you?” Spock asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Whi
le I was negotiating with the Horta, Slider Dan offered me an interesting proposition,” Spock began. “Using the data Mister Scott has compiled from his seismic survey, I have been able to alter the dig pattern of the Horta. It’s my belief that, with these new parameters, we will save twelve hours from the time required to complete the asteroid coring.”

  “But you have more to say? Go on.”

  “Yes, sir,” Spock continued. “Slider Dan expressed reservations about the colonists’ preparations of their underground shelters.”

  “How does he know about them?”

  “I told him, sir.”

  “When?”

  “After his rescue. He is a very inquisitive being, sir,” Spock said. “One most given to curiosity.”

  “He thinks the tunnels won’t work?”

  “He likened them to an eggshell under a boot heel.”

  “Could he be mistaken?”

  “Undoubtedly he could be,” said Spock. “But the Horta possess a certain . . . intuition when it comes to matters of digging.”

  “What did he propose?”

  “To enlarge the planetary tunnels and shore them up on a crystalline level. In the process, the Horta may be able to create the shelter space needed to at least allow the stranded settlers to weather the initial strike.”

  “The Horta can dig enough space for thirty-two hundred people in half a day?”

  “Slider Dan called it child’s play, sir,” Spock replied.

  “Some of the colonists won’t like it,” said Kirk.

  “There is one other consideration,” Spock said. “I have been unable to factor in time for evacuation of the Horta, should we beam them down.”

  “The Horta on the planet would have to weather the asteroid strike along with the Vesbians?”

  “That is correct,” Spock replied.

  • • •

  Not all the clans volunteered. The Tunnel Borers couldn’t be bothered, but many of the Sand Blasters had decided to come along.

  And then there was Star Clan. Slider Dan liked the name of his newly created, very small family. The links of the other four Horta affiliations truly were broken, and a new clan was formed. Slider Dan now felt shame for the selfishness of his Tunnel Borer kindred, although he would always take pride in the clan he’d been born to.

  However, his current clan membership was far more satisfying. The Star Clan Horta seemed to have more . . . more individuality than any Horta he had ever encountered, excepting the All Mother herself.

  Was this what it meant to grow up?

  All might be for naught. They had taken on a daunting assignment, and an asteroid strike was nothing to trifle with. A Horta could withstand enormous stress, but Slider Dan knew that there were limits. The All Mother had taught them as much. Pure magma was death. A Horta could dissolve in minutes, possibly seconds, depending on the surrounding temperature.

  A direct hit in the immediate vicinity would create a raging caldera of enormous proportions.

  And yet here they were under the surface of Vesbius, attempting to help out. This made Slider Dan feel . . . very useful. He liked that feeling. Daring, even.

  “They don’t seem to care for us much,” said Missile-in-Rock, Slider Dan’s Star Clan compatriot. She was working the wall beside him. Star Clan had given the Sand Blasters the honor of digging deeper, and they were concentrating on shoring the walls in the caverns the humans had already created.

  “It’s natural,” Hot-John, a former Melter Clan member, replied. “They are hideous in appearance and they likely are embarrassed and shrink from our view.”

  Slider Dan blew a puff of steam from an anterior orifice, the Horta equivalent of a chuckle. “I do not think so,” he said. “It is we who appear hideous to them.”

  “Impossible,” said a former Sand Blaster male, Crumblecake. “The miners like us well enough.”

  “These are not the people of Janus VI,” said Slider Dan.

  As if to prove his point, a human child who was wandering by in the corridor approached Missile-in-Rock. She prepared for the human’s touch, which she expected to enjoy, and thought she might even caress the little one in turn.

  This was interrupted by a scream from behind the child. Adult creatures, presumably the small human’s parents, charged after the little one. They arrived just as it was about to touch Missile-in-Rock and yanked it away so forcefully that the child made a sound of startled outrage like gas from an escaping constriction point. The larger humans dragged the smaller one away as quickly as they could, casting glances back over their oddly shaped carapaces; Slider Dan supposed it was to ensure that no Horta were following them.

  “Missile-in-Rock would not have harmed you,” Slider Dan called after the retreating Vesbians, but to no avail. There was no common communication, and no time to establish the methods used with the Janus VI miners.

  “Primitives,” said Crumblecake. “They probably think we are lavagoblins or an escaped Ghost-in-the-Rock.” These were underground monsters from frightening tales that the All Mother had told the Horta to entertain them during rest shifts. Nobody older than six months believed them. Slider Dan was not so sure they might not have some basis in truth, but he didn’t want to bring that up now.

  “They are afraid for their young one, nothing more,” he said. “Not so different from us.”

  “If you say so,” Missile-in-Rock replied. Huffing out a derisive laugh of steam, she returned to shoring the tunnel. It was funny what the humans thought was secure. These tunnels were fairly well constructed by human standards, but by Horta standards they were claptrap affairs of almost no utility.

  The deeper tunnels the Sand Blasters were digging would be much stronger and much wider than these narrow corridors.

  But when Slider Dan of the Star Clan was finished with the existing shelter corridors, he’d wager a mountain of geodes that his walls could withstand anything. If the asteroid could not be averted, the Horta would have a chance to test his wager.

  Provided they survived. If they did not, Slider Dan thought ruefully, Speaker from the Stars was going to have some explaining to do to the All Mother.

  I’ll have to see that everyone makes it, Slider Dan thought. For I would never wish to put Speaker from the Stars in such a position.

  Anyway, he was planning to ask the Speaker from the Stars for a favor. Slider Dan had made up his mind to apply to Starfleet Academy.

  Sixteen

  Captain’s log, Stardate 6418.4. The Horta have completed coring the asteroid headed toward Vesbius. In a brave and inspired move, a number of the Horta have volunteered to shore up and dig deeper the fallout shelters on the planet’s surface. They have accomplished this quickly, and the thousands of Vesbians who would have been stranded without shelter in the event of an asteroid strike are now underground. However, there is no time to evacuate the Horta volunteers—a condition the Horta understood when they beamed down.

  The Enterprise must now attempt to complete the destruction and deflection of the asteroid using our phasers and tractor beams. The success of this operation is far from certain.

  The correct moment to blast the asteroid was after it passed within the orbital radii of the planetary moons. Spock had factored in the tidal force of the moons so they could aid in asteroid breakup—this was the way he had achieved his grant of extra hours needed to deploy the Horta digger teams on Vesbius.

  With the extra space the Horta had created, it had not been necessary to pack the Enterprise with two thousand colonists. With the option to enter the shelters, far fewer Vesbians had elected to leave the planet, and the Enterprise was carrying only two hundred and sixty evacuees—a population easily accommodated on a temporary basis. But “temporary” was the watchword, for within days they would all begin to experience the autoimmune response that would doom them, and so they must return to their planet.

  Provided there was a livable planet to return to.

  Captain Kirk wondered what he would do if there was not. He c
ouldn’t imagine he would merely watch them slowly die, but absent a medical breakthrough, what choice would he have?

  The Enterprise bridge was alive with activity. The time had come. The Horta had completed their task. Scotty had brought his tunnel buggy back, and, at the request of the Horta, was planning to deliver it to the mining colony at Janus VI. The rover might not only prove useful on Janus VI, but it would be a reminder of the friendship the Horta had formed with the engineer.

  “Spock, report,” said Kirk as he settled into the command chair that Spock had just vacated.

  “Horta operations planet side are now complete, sir,” said her Spock. “All settlers reported within the shelters. In 3.7 minutes we will be ready to proceed with the asteroid destruction operation.”

  “Very good, Spock. All the Horta are accounted for?”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” Spock said. “I have accounted for every last one of them.”

  Kirk smiled. “Of course you have, Spock.” Kirk grew more serious. “Let’s get this operation under way then.”

  The captain keyed his intership communications. “Mister Scott, have you got our firing solutions uploaded to the main computer?”

  “Firing solutions uploaded and ready, Captain,” said Scotty.

  “Very well. Stand by.” Kirk turned to Sulu at the helm weapons station. “Do you have phaser lock, Mister Sulu?”

  “Phaser lock established, Captain,” reported Sulu.

  “Mister Spock, final report on the Horta?”

  “All Horta secured, all Vesbians accounted for,” said Spock.

  The main viewscreen showed the asteroid speeding through the starry sky. It didn’t look any different. Although a host of Horta had been released upon it and they had honeycombed the monstrosity in a thousand different directions, it was still one huge mass of rock. The Enterprise was dwarfed beside it.

  For a moment, Kirk shook his head in wonder at the audacity of their plan. Let’s just hope it’s enough.

  “Mister Sulu,” Kirk said. “Fire phasers.”

  There was the familiar power surge, then the squeal of the phasers.

  “Phaser bank one fired, sir,” said Sulu.