The Darkness Drops Again

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Exactly. I know it sounds harsh, Jim, but given the current political reality there, Lon simply can’t do any good. Not as much as he can do on Verzhik, certainly.” He sighed. “I can admire a man for tilting at windmills as much as you can, Jim. But there are two worlds at stake here, and Lon can’t save either of them where he is. Take him to Verzhik, and he can at least save one.”

  Kirk wanted to argue further, but he knew Morrow was right. For all his personal investment in Mestiko, he was part of the admiralty now, and that meant looking at the bigger picture. That was the advantage of being an admiral—the opportunity to do more good on a larger scale than any mere starship captain…

  Oh, who am I kidding? If there was an upside to this, it was that he would get to feel a deck rumbling beneath his feet again and not have to keep looking up at stars that stayed unnaturally still. “All right, Harry. I’ll assemble a crew.”

  Hertex Star System

  “A pproaching occultation point, Captain Spock.”

  “Very good. Take us out of warp, Mr. Haarv.”

  The Rhaandarite helmsman acknowledged the order and counted down to normal space reentry. The maneuver was carried out without a hitch, and the prismatic flare of warp distortion on the viewscreen collapsed into a fairly close view of Daroken, the next planet out from Mestiko in this system—albeit just barely at this point. The passage of the pulsar PSR 418-D/1015.3 fourteen years before had radically altered the structure of this planetary system. Of the original seven planets, only four were still orbiting Hertex; the outer three, which had been less strongly bound by the star’s gravity, were now technically rogue planets on hyperbolic courses out of the system, although it would be decades more before they passed the magnetopause into interstellar space. The outermost remaining planet, now the system’s lone gas giant, had been flung into an orbit tilted more than seventy degrees out of the ecliptic plane. Daroken itself was in a highly eccentric orbit, which, at its point of closest approach, brought it within eight million kilometers of Mestiko, near enough to appear as a resolvable disk to the naked eye.

  The passage of PSR 418-D/1015.3 had also disrupted Hertex’s cometary belt and asteroid field, so that the system had become comparatively cluttered with debris on still-changing and unpredictable courses. As a result, even the insular mar-Atyya regime on Mestiko had recognized the need for an aggressive space monitoring and defense program, lest their world be subject to another extinction-level catastrophe as an aftereffect of the first. Although they had wasted an inordinate proportion of resources on an impractical network of radiation-shielding satellites (whose continued inability to function as the regime promised was ameliorated only by the profound unlikelihood that they would ever be needed at all), some members of the administration had evidently been sensible enough to allocate some of the project’s funding toward antimeteoroid defenses—winning the support of their paranoid leaders by designing it to double as a defense against hostile spacecraft. By all accounts, it had proven very successful in that function, driving off Starfleet vessels, smugglers, and other interlopers alike. Hence the need for the Enterprise to conceal its warp egress behind the mass of Daroken. Stealth was essential for the success of this mission. The proximity of Daroken to Mestiko at this point in its orbit also helped, serving to minimize the length of time that Admiral Kirk’s shuttlecraft would need to be in the open, at risk of detection.

  If Admiral Kirk was indeed the one to go on the mission. Spock rated that probability as more than ninety-five percent, but he still felt the need to argue otherwise. “Admiral,” he said, swiveling the command chair to face the man Spock still considered its rightful owner, “may I again urge you not to undertake this mission personally? According to Commander Uhura’s signal intelligence, the political climate on Mestiko is still unfailingly hostile to extraplanetary life. Should you be recognized as human—”

  “I know the risks, Spock,” Kirk said, a faint smile conveying his appreciation for Spock’s solicitousness.

  “But you command the Enterprise, I command the mission. That’s the way it works. Besides, Morrow sent me to retrieve Dr. Lon. His well-being was my responsibility five years ago, and it still is today.”

  Spock rose and moved to his friend’s side, his hands reflexively tugging his jacket straight. “I am more concerned for your well-being, Jim. On our recent missions together, you have shown a tendency to treat dangerous situations as… invigorating. Even refreshing. I believe that last time, Dr. McCoy used the term midlife crisis.”

  Kirk glared. “I’m too young to have a midlife crisis.” He leaned in closer, smirking. “Actually, my plan is never to have one. Call it taking advantage of Zeno’s Paradox. If I never officially reach the halfway point in my life, then it never has to end.”

  Spock quirked a brow at this sentiment, which was excessively whimsical even for Kirk. He could already see the excitement in the admiral’s eyes, his thrill at the prospect of adventure. For a moment, he wished that McCoy’s medical relief mission to Verzhik had not precluded his presence here; perhaps with the doctor’s help, Spock could have persuaded Kirk to change his mind. But he decided it was just as likely that McCoy would end up accompanying Kirk into the lion’s den as usual. In that case, perhaps it was just as well that the doctor was safely occupied elsewhere.

  “Very well,” Spock said. “But I am responsible for your safety also, Admiral. Therefore, I am ordering Lieutenant Commander Leslie to accompany you and Commander Uhura to Mestiko.”

  Kirk brightened as the square-jawed, curly-haired security chief stepped forward at the mention of his name. “Well, I think I can live with that. It’s a pleasure to have you back in the fold, Mr. Leslie. It’s been too long.”

  Leslie simply nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He had always been a man of few words, never drawing attention to himself despite his wide proficiency in fields ranging from security to engineering to flight control to paramedics. Some might fault him for that, and for the relatively slow rate at which his career had advanced, but Spock found such a humble, dutiful approach to life quite admirable.

  “And it’ll be good to have another familiar face along,” Kirk added, looking around the bridge. “We weren’t able to corral much of the old team this time, were we, Spock?” he asked. For the benefit of the bridge crew, he tried to keep it airy, but Spock could see the wistfulness in his eyes.

  “We all have our own commitments, Admiral. Those often take us in different directions.” McCoy and Scott were both separately involved in the massive supernova-relief effort, along with Dr. Chapel and many other Starfleet personnel. Commanders Chekov and Kyle were aboard the Reliant, patrolling the Klingon border while so many other ships were occupied in the Minara and Beta Niobe sectors. And Commander Sulu remained posted in San Francisco to oversee the raising of his daughter—a responsibility no less important than the others. Though Spock could understand the admiral’s nostalgia, he felt the collective talents of the crew Kirk had trained were being put to good use where they were. “But there is always the possibility that our duties will bring us together again in years to come.”

  “I wonder,” Kirk murmured. But he was never one to dwell on introspection for long when his duty beckoned. Shaking himself free of his mood, he said, “Well, then. I suppose we’d better get down to sickbay for our disguises.”

  Spock nodded. “I’ll alert Dr. Duane to expect you.”

  “Mr. Leslie, Commander Uhura, let’s go,” Kirk said. But he hesitated a moment before moving to the turbolift.

  “Something wrong, Admiral?”

  “No, Spock,” he said softly. “It’s just that… I’m a little nervous about having my head shaved. I just hope it all grows back.”

  This time, Spock kept the words midlife crisis to himself.

  Mestiko

  The landing party used a Wraith-class stealth shuttle to make planetfall, its black hull blending in with the night sky, its antigravs making barely a sound as it landed. Nonetheless, they came
down some distance from the capital city of vosTraal, traveling the rest of the way on foot. They had to wear thermal gear and rebreather masks, for the night was frigid and the oxygen thin. The terrain was barren save for a few scraggly plants sticking up through the snow. “And it’s late spring in this hemisphere,” Kirk said. “Things have regressed so much in just five years,” he added for Leslie’s benefit.

  Uhura shook her head in disbelief. “The government’s broadcasts show none of this. They can’t exactly claim it’s a garden world, or they wouldn’t be able to justify keeping people in the domes and tunnels, but it’s hard to find any images of the surface in the media. Just platitudes about slow but steady progress.”

  Kirk sighed. “They can’t admit how profoundly their policies have failed.”

  They came to their entry point into the underground city just before dawn. Five years ago, this had been one of the Kazarites’ bioengineering facilities, but the mar-Atyya regime had completely demolished it and sealed off the tunnel leading to it. But once Uhura’s tricorder found the entrance, it didn’t take long for Leslie’s phaser to disintegrate the overlying rubble. There was no airlock per se, but there was a double set of doors. Once they had gotten inside the inner doors and pushed them shut, the three humans shed their protective gear, under which they wore garments that, according to Uhura’s signal monitoring, would be nondescript and socially acceptable by current standards. The tunnel was warmer than the outside but still cold, so they made their way toward the city at a brisk pace.

  Once they emerged into the artificial lights of the underground city, Kirk tried not to stare at Uhura and Leslie. He was still getting used to their faux-Payav appearance. Uhura looked odd with no hair and parchment-pale skin; she managed to pull it off with her typical elegance, but Kirk still preferred her usual look. As for Leslie, he and Kirk had much the same problem trying to pass themselves off as long-necked Payav, even with the uncomfortably tight straps beneath their garments that flattened out their trapezius muscles. They compensated by wearing collars and neck tattoos carefully designed to create an illusion of greater length, but still had to hope that no one would look at them too closely. Kirk wished he could be as good as Leslie at blending into the background.

  It quickly became evident, though, that blending in would be harder than Kirk had expected—for the simple reason that he, Uhura, and Leslie were all adequately nourished. All the Payav Kirk could see in the city streets were gaunt and hollow-cheeked, moving slowly or seated on the ground. Kirk could imagine the profound compassion and anger that would be on Bones’s face if he were there. “My God, Jim, we have to do something for these people!” But how much angrier would he be, knowing that Kirk’s mission was to take something more away from them?

  Most of the Payav on the streets seemed to be waiting in queues that stretched around multiple corners. But they just stood still, leaning against the walls or sitting in place. When the party finally came in view of the front of one of the queues, they saw it led into a facility with a mar-Atyya religious symbol above its door. “A charity or a state bread line?” Kirk murmured.

  “Probably a bit of both,” Uhura said.

  Higher above the door was a large video screen displaying the visage of Odra maVolan, the mar-Atyya spiritual leader who ruled Mestiko alongside Asal Janto, or rather ruled through her; although the regime was nominally a constitutional republic, the mar-Atyya held supreme authority over social policy and the religious doctrines to which the secular legislators were obligated to conform. MaVolan gazed sightlessly out of the screen with his cataract-clouded eyes and spoke in a measured, soothing tone, insofar as his gravelly voice was able. “Conserve your energy,” he said. “The needs of the body are a distraction. Wasting energy wastes life. Cherish the life of the mind. Seek stillness in meditation and prayer. Commune with God, and you will be free. Give yourself to God, and God will give back unto hur-Atyya. Through prayer will our world be saved.”

  “Wonderful,” the McCoy in Kirk’s head was saying. “So the world falling apart around them is the people’s fault for not being devout enough.”

  As the humans moved through the streets, Kirk noticed many eyes watching them. They all looked away when Kirk looked at them directly, but in those fleeting moments, he detected fear and resentment. Well-fed people were out of place in this part of town—probably in every part of town except where the ruling elite lived. So much for being inconspicuous. “We’d better find the resistance and get out of sight quickly,” he whispered.

  “But how, sir?” Leslie asked.

  Uhura gestured toward a nearby square where a crowd seemed to be gathering, looking up at another large screen. “This way. I think it’s a news report.”

  The screen showed a state-sponsored news feed, reporting largely on events in the daily lives of the leaders and actions taken against enemies of the state. Those actions included a mass execution, using nominally humane methods but broadcast in its entirety for public consumption. “Let us all take comfort,” the newsreader intoned, “in the knowledge that these criminals and heretics were redeemed by this sacrifice. For every one of them removed from our midst, two to four more children may be fed. Thus is hur-Atyya renewed, one soul at a time.”

  But Kirk, following Uhura’s lead, didn’t watch the broadcast. He watched the Payav watching it, alert for signs of anger, disbelief in the party line… and, most important, determination. The determination to fight for a change in the way things were. He had to be circumspect, though, for the kind of people he was looking for would be wary of the kind of people he and his landing party appeared to be and would try to keep their reactions to themselves. It was a contest to see who could hide in plain sight more effectively.

  But Kirk had been playing high-stakes poker for decades, both with cards and with starships. He knew the tells. And he knew determination when he saw it. Soon he spotted his quarry, a man and a woman on the edge of the crowd. He couldn’t quite make out their faces in detail—his eyesight wasn’t what it had once been—but he could see it in their body language, and a wordless exchange of looks told him that Uhura saw it, too. Just as subtly, Kirk pointed them out to Leslie, directing him to draw closer and keep them under surveillance. Leslie faded into the crowd, passing through it like a wraith.

  Soon the man and the woman went on their way, and Leslie tracked them for the better part of an hour, staying in touch through a subcutaneous communicator next to his ear. Kirk and Uhura followed at a fair distance, hoping their subjects’ path would take them to some isolated place where contact could be made. But they stayed in public places, and Kirk began to suspect that the two Payav were deliberately leading them in circles.

  Sure enough, it wasn’t much longer before he passed a dark alley and felt a weapon’s muzzle jab into the small of his back. “Make no sound,” a voice hissed. “Move into the alley.”

  Kirk obliged without resistance. After all, things were going according to plan.

  He just hoped the Payav on the other end of the gun wasn’t following a very different plan.

  “I’ll ask you once again—why are you here?”

  Kirk faced his interrogator as forthrightly as the blindfold over his eyes would allow. “To see Dr. Marat Lon.”

  “Why do you want to see him?” the angry male voice continued.

  “That’s something I’ll discuss with him.” He figured it was safe to assume Lon was still alive; otherwise, the resistance would not be going to such lengths to avoid answering questions about him.

  “That’s not good enough!” A hand struck the side of his face, hard. Despite himself, Kirk bit the inside of his cheek. I’ll say this for the Academy job—this sort of thing doesn’t happen nearly as often there.

  “Wait.” It was a female voice this time, young.

  “They’re Starfleet. This is Kirk himself. Maybe they can help us.”

  The man gave a bitter laugh. “Starfleet was here when the mar-Atyya took over. Where was their help the
n? Where has it been since? While we were fighting for our freedom, for the survival of our planet, Admiral Kirk here has been getting himself promoted! And obviously well fed at that.” Kirk caught himself unconsciously sucking in his gut. “So why come back now?” the man went on. “Lon’s the only human who stayed to help us. If the others are back for him, I doubt it’s for any reason that helps us. So we’ll continue this interrogation as I see fit.”

  Kirk sighed. He didn’t exactly have the moral high ground here, and he had to do something to establish a thread of trust. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth.” The man scoffed. “And you’ll know it’s the truth… because it’s the last thing you’ll want to hear.” He proceeded to tell his interrogators about Verzhik and the Federation’s need for Lon’s expertise.

  “I knew it!” the man exclaimed. “Not enough that you abandon us, now you want to take away our best hope of survival.” Kirk was pulled out of his chair by the front of his jacket and tossed roughly to the floor.

  “Maybe I should send Starfleet a warning to leave us alone… through you.”

  “You say you’re fighting for freedom,” Kirk called, hardening his voice. “Is this freedom? A man in a dark room, using his fists to decide people’s fate? Is that what you’re fighting to save?” There was no sound, no movement. The man was listening, at least.

  “Doesn’t Dr. Lon deserve the freedom to hear me out and decide for himself?”

  After another few moments, the man responded. “How do we know you wouldn’t just whisk him away with your transporters?”

  Well, there goes that idea. “Lon knows there are certain kinds of minerals that block transporters. Have him choose a shielded meeting place, and take us there.”