Purgatory's Key

by Dayton Ward

  That was the question Kirk had been pondering almost from the moment the Enterprise had set course for Usilde. “The way I see it, the only thing the planet offers is the citadel, and for the moment, the citadel is useless to the Klingons without the Transfer Key.”

  The captain paused, drawing a breath. There was no easy way to say what had to be said. Glancing at McCoy, he added, “We may find ourselves facing a difficult situation with respect to the Jatohr citadel. If the Klingons find a way to exploit it, we might be left with no choice but to destroy it to keep it out of their hands.”

  “You mean before we can use it,” said McCoy. “Before we can rescue Joanna and the others.”

  “It is a distinct possibility, Doctor,” Spock replied. “If we are unable to make use of the citadel without Klingon interference, or if the Klingons attempt to take the Transfer Key from us, we will be left with very few options.”

  McCoy glared at the Vulcan. “I understand all of that, Mister Spock, but we’re still talking about fifteen people trapped in that other universe.” He threw his hands up. “And those are just the ones we know of. There may be more; innocent people thrown into whatever the blazes might be over there. We can’t just leave them.”

  Unaffected by the emotional outbursts, Spock replied, “Doctor, it is important to remember that we do not know whether any of our people are even still alive. While the presence of those Jatohr who transferred into our universe strongly suggests that Sarek and the others survived transition to the other realm, it is not conclusive. We know very little about Jatohr physiology and nothing with respect to that universe.”

  Spock’s matter-of-fact delivery did little to assuage McCoy’s feelings. “Blast it, Spock. That’s my daughter you’re talking about with your detached, logical analysis.”

  “I am aware of that, Doctor.” Then Spock drew a small breath and added, “I am sensitive to the emotional strain you are presently enduring.” It was a rare display of empathy for the Vulcan; the equivalent of throwing his arms around the other man and offering a warm embrace.

  Though tempted to say something to defuse what might fast be devolving into a war of words between the two men, Kirk opted to remain silent. Sympathetic to his friend’s feelings, he also refused to believe that all of this was for nothing. Joanna and the others were still alive. He felt it, in his gut. For his part, McCoy seemed to hear and understand not only Spock’s words, but also their unspoken meaning.

  “Sorry, Spock,” he said, shifting in his seat. “I know you’re worried about your father too. I . . .” He stopped, casting his gaze down to the conference table, before shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Kirk tapped his fingers on the table. “Don’t worry, Bones. We’re not giving up on Joanna or any of the others as long as there’s the slightest chance we can get them back.” The words “dead or alive” crossed his mind, but he was not about to say them aloud. Until given empirical proof otherwise, Joanna McCoy, Ambassador Sarek, Captain Una, and everyone else who had been transported into the other universe was still alive, waiting for the Enterprise to rescue them.

  So that’s what we’re going to do.

  The whistle of the ship’s intercom echoed in the room, followed by the voice of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura.

  “Bridge to Captain Kirk.”

  Reaching for the small control panel set into the top of the conference table, Kirk pressed the button to activate the three-sided display screen situated at the table’s center. All three screens flared to life, coalescing into the image of the Enterprise’s communications officer.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” replied Uhura, “but you asked to be informed when we received a response from Starfleet Command. Admiral Komack reports that the U.S.S. Defiant has been rerouted to join us in the Libros system. The Defiant’s captain has already sent along a report that they expect to be on station within twenty-two hours.”

  “Twenty-two hours?” asked Scott. “That’s a wee bit of a gap to fill.”

  Kirk agreed, but there was nothing to be done about that now. Instead, he asked Uhura, “I take it the Defiant is the closest ship?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the lieutenant. Her expression was one of regret. “The admiral apologizes. He is trying to find another ship to send our way.” She paused before adding, “There’s another communication, Captain, addressed to your attention only.”

  “I can guess what that one will say,” replied Kirk. “I’ll take it in my quarters, Lieutenant. Please send my acknowledgment of both messages to Admiral Komack. Kirk out.” He tapped the control to terminate the communication before leaning back in his chair. “Well, you’ve heard me say this before, but it looks like we’re on our own, at least for the time being.” He looked to his chief engineer. “Scotty, you know what that means?”

  The other man nodded, the fatigue in his eyes now seeming more evident. “We’ll have the old girl squared away before we reach Usilde, Captain. You have my word.”

  “Good enough.” Kirk rose from his seat, his senior officers responding to his nonverbal signal that the meeting had ended. “There are a lot of people counting on us, gentlemen. Let’s make sure we don’t let them down.”

  Eight

  My wife . . .

  Captain Una awoke, her mind flooding with the odd, unknown voice. Looking around the remnants of the now compromised prison cell, she saw that she remained alone except for her two former shipmates, Lieutenant Commander Raul Martinez and Ensign Tim Shimizu. The voice certainly had not belonged to either of them. Had she heard it or simply imagined it?

  Where am I?

  It took her a moment to clear her mind and recognize her surroundings. She had awakened slumped against the stone wall of the cell into which she and her companions had been confined but that now served as a simple shelter. Beyond the boundary of what had been the cell’s far wall, twin suns shone brightly, illuminating the clear blue sky above a nearby lagoon of shimmering gray water. As she had noted before, her surroundings were conspicuous in their near total lack of ambient sounds.

  How long had they been here? Despite her usual keen and precise capacity to track the passage of time, Una still found herself questioning that ability. Had it been days, or weeks? She glanced to her shipmates, who had been trapped here far longer. Somehow, the nature of this place seemed to exact an influence upon their minds that she had somehow managed to escape. While her thoughts remained clear, her friends appeared to suffer from the loss of all but the most recent of their memories. They would be of little assistance, she knew, in understanding their current situation and finding a way to return all of them to their proper existence.

  My wife . . .

  That voice. Was it real? Una thought she had dreamed it, or that it might be the result of some trickery played by her own mind as it worked to provide her answers. Pushing herself to her feet, she tried to retain some feeble grasp upon the words that already were fading from her mind. To whom did the voice belong? From where had it come? It was not a memory; of that she was certain.

  “Did anyone else hear that?”

  As her eyes acclimated to the daylight, she turned her attention to her colleagues, neither of whom had responded to her question. Shimizu, one of her closest friends going back to their days at Starfleet Academy, was sprawled across the cell’s smooth floor. She looked at him with regret for their irretrievable loss: years’ worth of shared experiences, career accomplishments, exploratory achievements—everything they had hoped their lives might be.

  Slumped against the cell’s opposite wall, Martinez sat with his arms crossed over his bent knees so as to give him a place to rest his head; his present state troubled her even more than Shimizu’s. An able-bodied and highly capable leader during their shared service aboard the Enterprise, Raul Martinez had inspired confidence and no small admiration in the younger Lieutenant Una
. At the beginning of their mission to Usildar, he never questioned Captain Robert April’s orders for her to lead the ill-fated excursion to the planet’s surface. She had spent years blaming herself for that day, continually revisiting her decisions and actions and how they led to the loss of the entire landing party to this mysterious universe. Seeing Martinez now only served to bring forth those feelings once again. After years existing in this inexplicable place, this once commanding presence with a bright future in Starfleet was the merest shadow of his former self.

  She could not get them those years back, she knew, but she could get them home.

  “Guys, we need to get moving.”

  Her words stirred Shimizu just enough that he rolled onto his back while Martinez did not budge. “Tim! Commander! Wake up!” When that did not work, she resorted to shaking them until they responded.

  “What?” asked Shimizu as he reached up to wipe his eyes.

  Una replied, “Time to go.” Crossing to Martinez, she knelt beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Commander, you need to wake up now.”

  Finally, Martinez lifted his head. “Captain, is everything all right?”

  Una had to admit that his use of her current rank sounded odd.

  “Nothing’s wrong, I promise. We need to get moving.”

  In truth, if night in this strange realm had not fallen so quickly, Una might not have suggested the three stay in the cell to which they had been summarily relegated after meeting with the tyrannical Jatohr warmonger Woryan. Even after making one of its walls disappear as a demonstration to her companions of the potential mental powers they wielded in this realm, it had made sense to use the cell for shelter until daybreak. Her ability to make such a thing happen, to manipulate the elements of this world as she had trained herself to do, surprised her as much as it had her crewmates. It had not taken Una long to realize that one of the apparent debilitating effects of exposure to this realm was short-term memory loss.

  Had her enhanced mental discipline allowed her to combat this affliction? There was no way to know.

  “I heard a voice,” she said. “Before, in my mind. A male voice. I’m not sure why, but I think he might be able to help us.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Martinez said.

  Shimizu replied, “Me neither.” He frowned. “Wait. You say you felt him in your mind?”

  “Not exactly,” Una said. “I mean, not fully, at least. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I figure it must be somebody who’s trapped here like we are. We need to find him, before Woryan does.”

  “Woryan,” Martinez said, and Una felt a twinge of hope as he seemed to remember the alien’s name and possibly their meeting with him in the Jatohr city across the lagoon from where they now stood. “We need to keep him from finding his own way back to our universe.”

  “Yes! Exactly, Commander,” Una said. “So, let’s get moving.”

  Shimizu said, “Wouldn’t miss it.” He flashed a familiar, welcome smile. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure,” Una said, “but I have an idea for getting there.”

  Leading them out of their cell, Una proceeded to the edge of the gray, dreary lake. She crouched at the lagoon’s edge, extended her hands over the water, and closed her eyes. After a moment spent in concentration, she focused on a single goal, as she had done the previous evening when she had made part of the cell wall disappear. Now she wanted to conjure something from nothing.

  Concentrate. See it, and make it real.

  “What the hell?” said Shimizu. “How are you . . . ?”

  Una ignored him, though she did pause long enough to realize her suspicions about her friends’ loss of short-term memory seemed to be confirmed. Setting aside that thought, she returned her full attention to her objective.

  She opened her eyes when she heard the water start to churn, and she smiled. Emerging from the lagoon’s depths was a dull metallic facsimile of an antigravity skid.

  It worked!

  “Am I seeing things?” asked Shimizu.

  Martinez replied, “Only if I am. Where the hell did this come from, Captain?”

  “It was my grandfather’s,” replied Una. “As a kid, I always loved riding it on his farm on Illyria.” Despite it being designed for hauling equipment and crops, she had been allowed to use it for recreation when her work was completed. Its nose was dented and the paint covering its body panels was scraped and worn.

  “And you just . . . wished it here?” asked Martinez.

  Una nodded. “Something like that.”

  The key was belief, she now realized as she reached for one end of the skid’s bed and pulled it toward shore, a simple task thanks to its antigravity properties. Between whatever physical properties governed this realm and her own advanced mental control, it seemed that almost anything might be possible.

  Shimizu asked, “Does it work?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  Climbing into the cab, she settled into the cushioned bench seat. “It’s just like I remember.” With practiced ease, she thumbed the control to bring the sled’s twin gravity nullifiers to full power. She smiled at the vehicle’s signature peculiarity, a rhythmic tremor caused by output variations from the rear emitter that her grandfather never had been able to remedy.

  “Unbelievable,” said Martinez.

  Una gestured to the bed behind the cab. “Climb on, and let’s get out of here.”

  Once her friends were settled, she grasped the control grips and moved the sled forward. After an initial lurch, the vehicle glided onto the lagoon and across its smooth surface, and Una noted that the water remained undisturbed despite their passing. She recalled the phenomenon from her previous crossing of the lake. Something that had escaped her notice before now caught her eye: a tree line not far from the shore of the lake. It would offer them concealment from the Jatohr as well as shelter should they need rest. How she had missed a forest nagged at her thoughts for a moment, but she concluded it must be yet another aspect of the general unpredictability that defined this place.

  “Where are we heading, Captain?” asked Shimizu.

  It was a good question. Una had no clue as to the location of the owner of the mysterious voice in her mind. Might the same abilities that had allowed her to conjure the sled also be used to trace his presence?

  Perhaps.

  * * *

  Watching the holographic image of the odd, graceless anti­gravity vehicle making its way across the lagoon, Anadac felt a wave of trepidation sweep through hir form.

  Hir concerns grew not from the possibility that the vehicle’s human occupants might realize they were being watched. The sentry globe providing the visual feed remained well above detection range. Neither were hir concerns rooted in the remarkable abilities exhibited by the being known to hir as Una, although Anadac never had seen such a power demonstrated by any being in hir lifetime.

  Anadac had held hir breath the first time s/he had watched the image of the being raise the sled from the lagoon. However, upon repeated viewings of the incident with images as enlarged and enhanced as hir equipment made possible, the Jatohr scientist concluded the vehicle had not simply been raised from the water. Instead, s/he was convinced the vehicle had been created by Una, transformed from the material of the lagoon itself—or perhaps by nothing at all—by the human using some unseen means. Hir mind reeled with questions. Was this ability psychic in nature? Was Una the only outsider possessing this transformative power over the environment, or was it an innate trait of her species? Did such ability pose a threat to the Jatohr? Had Anadac just witnessed the first hints of an invasion force from the other universe?

  Though these questions were concerning, Anadac was worried even more by the prospect of Woryan’s response to this new revelation. There could be no doubt that the supreme leader would marshal hir forces in a bid to
hunt down all outsiders. Anadac already had seen too many battles waged against the Usildar. Such brutality against other life-forms deeply disturbed hir as it did many if not most Jatohr.

  And yet, conflict and tyranny were the way of things under Woryan, who gained power and position over the Jatohr by feeding their worst fears: life from elsewhere, perhaps from the very realm to which the Jatohr hoped to travel, proving a greater threat than even their own dying universe.

  As a being of curiosity and discovery, Anadac had resisted such thinking. S/he had resolved never to raise arms against another and had managed to keep that pledge by serving Woryan’s regime from a scientific station. ­S/he knew that once Woryan learned of Una’s abilities, the supreme leader would use that to stoke still more fear of all outsiders. Once unleashed, Woryan would not stop until every outsider was eliminated.

  There was no alternative, Anadac decided. S/he would keep this admittedly incomplete report to hirself, at least until s/he could make more observations and offer an objective explanation for the phenomenon.

  “Anadac!”

  The voice startled hir, and s/he utilized one of hir mechanical graspers to deactivate the image display. S/he turned hir head in time to see Zened, one of Woryan’s top advisors, approaching hir. The bulky gastropod was gliding over the laboratory’s smooth floor, albeit slowly.

  “Your leader seeks an update on the portal’s progress,” said Zened without preamble.

  Anadac sighed. The centerpiece of Woryan’s plan to ensure the survival of the Jatohr was the construction of a transdimensional portal capable of forcing an opening between this world and their former stronghold on the Usildar’s native planet. Since the entirety of the Jatohr occupiers had been flung here by the transfer-field generator invented by Anadac’s fellow scientist, Eljor, Woryan wanted a means of exploiting its dimension-bridging abilities on hir own terms. However, such occurrences were infrequent and unpredictable.