The Latter Fire

by James Swallow

  “No!” said Ead’Aea, before Kaleo could act. “Cease, cease, you animal! There is great delicacy in these mechanisms, and unity between them! You wound the ship if you break them!”

  “Is that so?” Kirk let his weapon hang, and with his free hand he removed the communicator on his belt, flicking it open. “Icarus, this is the captain. Uhura, do you hear me?”

  The reply came quickly, but it was heavy with distortion. “Reading . . . sir. We are away . . . navigation is difficult . . . no sign of pursuit.” A rattle of static briefly blanked out Uhura’s words. “Sir, what about you and—”

  “Get to safety, Lieutenant,” he ordered, cutting her off. “Kirk out.”

  “We are allowing the small-craft to exit the conflict zone,” grumbled Ret’Sed. “Now you surrender to us.”

  Kirk shook his head. “I don’t think we will.” He pointed at the vacant console. “Kaleo, if anyone makes a move against us, destroy that panel.” She nodded, taking up a ready stance.

  “You are truly low,” spat Zud’Hoa. “That could cause great harm to all of us, even you!”

  “We are desperate!” Kaleo said angrily. “You have made us so, by turning your star-blighted monster on our worlds!”

  “That is only what you have earned,” said Ead’Aea. “You did the first harm. Your kind.”

  “And how much harm is it going to take?” said Kirk, pitching his voice at a steady level. “Tell me. You are the co-commanders, you are in charge here. How many of the Syhaari must you see dead in order to sate your need for revenge?”

  “It is not revenge, it is balance.” Ret’Sed’s eyes flicked back and forth. “Punishment is done, and enough that this known-kind will never venture beyond their cloud-home again.”

  “They want to terrify us into hiding on our worlds,” said Kaleo. She bared her teeth. “I have news for you, alien. The stars do not belong solely to you!”

  “You are the aliens!” Zud’Hoa barked, taking a menacing step forward. “Your kind, not us!”

  Kirk’s lip curled. “That’s not how it is at all,” he told them. “Every one of us is an alien out here. We are not born in the void. That’s the one thing that we all have in common, don’t you see? And we have only two choices before us, no matter if we’re Breg’Hel, Syhaari, or human. We can share the stars in peace, or we can fight over them in violence. I come from a coalition that wants the former, not the latter.”

  Ead’Aea glared at him. “And yet your Federation allies with murderers.”

  “I saw the evidence,” Kirk allowed. “Yes, I admit it is damning. Tormid—the one who attacked your people on the scoutship—he did something terrible, driven by fear and weakness. He must answer for his actions, none of us disagree on that. But he was just one being. This indiscriminate killing in the name of his misdeed . . .” Kirk shook his head, searching for the right words. “How is it right? How many must die? Haven’t you done enough?”

  Kaleo opened her mouth to speak, and something like a sob escaped her. She stiffened, trying again. “Are our lives worth so little in your eyes? Please, I beg of you. Stop this. Whatever you are doing to control that planetoid, turn it away. End it.”

  “The punishment,” Zud’Hoa began, faltering. The fire that had burned in the Breg’Hel’s words faded in the face of Kaleo’s plea. “It must be carried out in full. That is our way.”

  “This is war you are waging, not a quest for justice,” Kirk told them. “It went beyond any fair definition of reprimand the moment you unleashed that beast on the Syhaari.” He looked around, taking in all of the Breg’Hel. “And you have to know, if you make such warfare without consideration, if you leave a trail of destruction across space, you will draw the same fate upon yourselves.”

  “Is that a threat, now-known?” Ret’Sed glared at him, baring needle-sharp teeth.

  “It’s a warning,” Kirk countered. “Out here, habitable worlds are few and far between. But you light fires in the dark, and you’ll draw the attention of others. There are more intelligent species in this region than you realize. As we speak, survey ships from the Klingon Empire are scouting the edges of this sector, vessels crewed by a warrior culture who live only for conquest. They would look upon the Breg’Hel and Syhaari and destroy you both out of hand rather than risk tolerating any threat you might represent.” He sighed and felt like a great weight was settling upon him. “Violence only begets violence. We have to break the cycle.” Kirk threw up his hands, imploring them. “Tell us! What do we have to do to stop this?”

  When Ret’Sed spoke again, it was with a sorrow that Kirk had not heard before from the reptilians. “Our ninth-born children were crew on the scoutship that met the known. Broodlings grown, splintered off on a daughter-vessel. They were at the start of their own family-dynasty. Then killed. All their potential lost forever.”

  Kirk broke the silence that fell in the wake of the words. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Can you restore life to them, Human-Kirk?” Ead’Aea said quietly. “Give breath again to those we carried in our wombs, whose eggs we warmed? What can you give in return to staunch the ever-pain?”

  There was a clatter of metal on stone, and Kaleo let her baton drop. She pulled at the fastener on her uniform and let it fall open, revealing her bare torso beneath. “I will balance the loss,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “In my people’s stead. I will trade pain for pain. Life for life.” She placed a long-fingered hand on her belly.

  Kirk’s blood ran cold as he realized what Kaleo was offering. “No, wait—”

  “A child,” said the Syhaari commander. “My life and that of my unborn child, in payment.”

  * * *

  “Mister Spock,” Sulu spoke up, drawing the first officer’s attention, “the remaining Syhaari forces are regrouping into a spearhead formation. Extrapolating their heading, I think they’re intending to make a direct run at the Breg’Hel flotilla.”

  “They’ll never get close enough to take a shot,” said Leslie. “There’s a mad moon between them.”

  Standing beside the empty command chair, Spock folded his arms. “Lieutenant M’Ress, contact Tormid and warn him once again of the folly of any direct attack.”

  “All Syhaari ships are ignoring our hails, sir,” she replied.

  “As if that’s a surprise,” Scott said dryly.

  “They’re moving in,” added Sulu.

  Spock made a decision, not pausing to wonder what half of him—human or Vulcan—might have motivated it. “Bring us closer, Lieutenant, three-quarters impulse power. Maintain minimum target aspect toward the intruder.”

  Sulu’s hands traced over the helm panel, and the Enterprise shifted up to speed, pushing away from its holding position and curving back in toward the conflict zone at high thrust. At his side, Leslie was already bringing the deflectors back up to full power. The navigator hesitated with his hands over the prefire controls for the starship’s offensive subsystems.

  Spock said nothing, only gave Leslie the slightest shake of the head. He noted the human’s momentary pause—the smallest iota of disagreement—but then the young lieutenant nodded.

  “Tormid’s ship is at the tip of the formation,” said Scott. “Leading from the front this time, it seems.”

  “If he hopes such an act will make a statement, it may well be his last,” noted Spock.

  “They’re going for it!” said Sulu.

  On the main viewer, the Syhaari defensive force came at the leviathan in a wall, dozens of silver darts moving at maximum velocity in an attempt to make a high-speed pass around the rogue planetoid and target the Breg’Hel. It was a bold maneuver, but a flawed one, and even as the ships committed to the act, Spock saw the firestorms being born in the depths of the leviathan’s atmosphere.

  As the Enterprise drew closer to the leading edge of the defender fleet, there was a moment when it seem
ed as if the blunt Syhaari tactic might actually work. But then the shroud around the cosmozoan erupted with rods of amber fire that blazed out in every direction.

  Some of the Syhaari commanders, those either possessed of foolish courage or dogged relentlessness, carried on regardless. Many of their ships were caught and immolated. Others, perhaps not the veterans, these captains the less space-hardened of their pilot corps, lost their desire to cross the line of destruction and veered off, stressing their craft almost to the breaking point. A few were too slow, fires burning the hulls of the ships open as they skimmed the nimbus of lightning fields.

  It quickly became a rout. Command and control among the Syhaari ships fragmented before the unchained rage of the leviathan. The living planet spat blast after blast into the space around it, beating at vessels that were already torn open long after they were no longer a threat.

  Spock caught sight of The Light of Strength as the craft threaded through the blinding forest of lightning towers. It was already firing missile barrages ahead of it into the magnetic zone, in the vain hope that a random shot might make it the distance to strike at one of the Breg’Hel craft.

  Then a sword blade made of yellow sun fire carved up out of the leviathan’s exosphere and sliced the command ship in two. The aft section, where the warp core and main engines were mounted, detonated into a storm of debris almost immediately, the matter-antimatter reactor consuming itself in a fraction of a second. The shockwave slammed into the remains of The Light of Strength and sent it tumbling away. Spock grabbed the red rail around the lower section of the bridge as the same blast wave buffeted the Enterprise a second later.

  “Sir, we get any closer and we’ll be hit too!” said Sulu.

  “I am aware, Lieutenant,” Spock replied.

  “Commander!” Scott called out to him. “I can save some of these people, if you give me shields and transporters—­but you’ve got to do it now!”

  Spock weighed the decision in less than a heartbeat; again there was something of him that wondered where the choice was coming from. After all, a Vulcan captain aboard a Vulcan starship would never be where he was now, with the vessel under his command willfully going into danger for a people who did not want their help. A Vulcan captain aboard a Vulcan starship might simply have stood by and watched the leviathan wreak its havoc.

  “Proceed,” Spock commanded. “Mister Sulu, on Mister Scott’s word, reverse course and get us out of the danger zone.”

  “The Light is coming apart,” said Haines. “Losing crew life signs.”

  “We’ll do something about that,” Scott replied, and he dropped the deflectors, for one terrible moment rendering the Enterprise totally vulnerable. “All transporters locked in sequence and—energizing!”

  On the viewscreen, what was left of the Syhaari command ship came apart and vanished into the cloud mass surrounding the leviathan.

  * * *

  I’m a fool, Kirk told himself. I let her come with us, and I never once stopped to consider how much Kaleo had at stake. Suddenly, half-finished comments and unspoken exchanges between Kaleo and Rumen clicked into sudden clarity. He reached out to the Syhaari. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

  “Is it your concern?” Kaleo challenged him. “I think not.” She gave him something like a smile. “I’ve learned a little of your human ways. You would have insisted I remain on Syhaar Prime, out of reach of any potential harm. It is not how my people do things, Kirk. Parenthood does not preclude me from my duties.”

  “It’s one thing to risk yourself, but an unborn child . . .” He trailed off as several of the Breg’Hel closed in around them. But the manner of the aliens was not hostile—they seemed fascinated.

  “If we did not accept risk,” Kaleo replied, “my race would still be living in the trees. You reminded me of that, my friend.”

  One of the Breg’Hel co-commanders dared to come forward, reaching out a thick-fingered hand, pointing. “The unhatched are the most precious resource,” said Ead’Aea. “Worth more than the purest star-crystals, the densest of metals. You offer that?”

  Fearlessly, Kaleo reached out and took Ead’Aea by the wrist. She pulled the Breg’Hel close and placed its hand on her belly. “The life of my life is here. If we are the cost of stopping your advance, I will pay the price. Stop this, let the human go. Take my . . . take our blood in kind.”

  Kirk said nothing, knowing it would be up to Kaleo’s bravery to carry the day. From the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the other Breg’Hel bridge crew muttering intently into what had to be a communicator device with a field of flashing indicators before it. Something’s wrong, he guessed, but the co-­commanders didn’t appear to notice.

  “Is that enough?” Kaleo was saying.

  Ead’Aea drew its hand away and looked questioningly at its partner. “In truth,” began Ret’Sed, “we never considered your kind capable of such a thing. The known are . . .” It paused, rephrasing its words. “The Syhaari were thought to be bestial and heartless.”

  “I’ve been traveling through deep space for many years,” Kirk offered. “I’ve met many new life-forms, some like me and some not.” He nodded toward Kaleo. “And what I’ve realized is that the capacity for selflessness is in all of us. Just as we are all capable of anger and fear and hatred.” He held out his hands, in the universal gesture that said I have no weapon, I conceal nothing from you. “All we need to do is decide now that we will try to make a peace, try to repair the damage done.”

  Ret’Sed and Ead’Aea exchanged a long, unreadable look. Was that sorrow there? he wondered, wishing for a moment that Xuur was with him to interpret the alien response.

  Finally, Ead’Aea stepped back and spoke. “Cease,” it said. “Ship-speak to all. Cease the advance and draw back the control. We have done enough. Perhaps too much.”

  Ret’Sed gestured at Kaleo and Kirk. “No more lives will be taken. The Syhaari have known our pain. This mother-parent makes that clear to us.”

  Kirk held his breath, afraid that he had misread the situation in some way, and that the offer of a ceasefire would turn out to be something else. Then Kaleo was at his side, grasping his hands with her long, fur-­covered fingers. “We did it, James,” she said. “The two of us, we made them listen.”

  A grin split his lips and he nodded at her. “The two of you,” he corrected gently. “I just did what I could—”

  A low cry of distress from one of the other Breg’Hel cut through his reply, and Kirk’s head jerked up, finding the same operator he had seen moments before. The alien’s control panel was now a riot of strobing glyphs and twitching displays that exhibited complex waveforms. The captain was immediately reminded of subspace radio patterns, but they were unlike anything he had ever seen before.

  “I gave the command to cease,” Ead’Aea barked. “Why have we not been obeyed?”

  “Show visualization,” said Ret’Sed, arms raised to the air.

  Kirk blinked in surprise as a shimmering band of dark color appeared out of nowhere, suspended in the air. A thick ring of jumping, flickering dots formed into a mosaic of distinct images displayed in a 360-­degree arc. “A holographic viewscreen,” he said aloud. “It must be feeding directly from the exterior of this vessel.”

  “Look there. The rest of their flotilla.” Kaleo pointed at a cluster of unfinished shapes in one sector of the wraparound display, rock-and-glass forms that resembled the ships the Icarus had met in deep space.

  He nodded, finding the silhouettes of a dozen dart-shaped Syhaari rangers. Some distance beyond them, he picked out the distinctive ice-white hulls of the Enterprise and the wounded shuttle Icarus. He released a sigh of relief to see the vessels still intact, still safe.

  The possibility that there might be an end to this rose in him. But that certainty vanished in the next second.

  A dark form, broad enough to eclipse a full th
ird of the holographic screen, came into sight. Kirk saw shards of lightning crossing its nightside surface, in the shadows where the brightness of the star Sya did not fall. The leviathan was impossibly close, and the strange depths of the hologram made him feel as if he could reach into the image and let his hand sink into the cloudy mantle surrounding the planetoid.

  He had faced phenomena of great scale before—remembering the neutronium-hulled “doomsday machine” that had obliterated one of the Enterprise’s sister ships, a black sun, a gargantuan amoeba, even the hand of a self-proclaimed god—but none of them had radiated the same sense of unchained fury that this living world gave off. On some primal, animalistic level, Kirk felt profoundly threatened by the monstrous being. He was all too aware that it could destroy him without ever taking notice of his existence. It robbed him of his breath to be suddenly faced with so stark a sense of overwhelming menace.

  Ead’Aea was still berating one of the command crew. “Respond! Commit to the order and make it respond!”

  The operator’s head sank and membranous lids flicked over its eyes. “Father-Mother, I try, but the call goes unheeded. It refuses to respond to me!”

  “Again! Again!” snarled Ead’Aea.

  Kirk approached, trying to see more of the control panel. “Your leviathan . . . you restrain it with this system?”

  Ead’Aea glared at him, then looked away to Ret’Sed. “The leash slips.”

  Ret’Sed stiffened. “We have lost one craft already. We cannot afford to lose more, not if we mean to disengage.”

  “The call is refused,” reported the operator. “I hear nothing but rage in return.”

  “Oh no,” whispered Kaleo, drawing Kirk’s attention away from the Breg’Hel’s ominous declaration.

  The scatterings of amber-gold lightning weaving beneath the clouds of the leviathan were no longer moving in random shoals. As Kirk watched, he saw the same fiery collisions that he had witnessed via long-range sensors, but now so close they dazzled him. Breg’Hel crew members wailed in pain and covered their bulbous eyes as bright yellow fire filled the holograph screen—and then the planetoid ejected its wrath into the darkness.