The Darkness Drops Again

by Christopher L. Bennett

  And now, things were reaching the boiling point. Odra maVolan had sent in the military to shut down the elections altogether, declaring them a violation of holy law and thus invalid whatever their outcome. That was what had brought Clark Terrell down to tackle the situation firsthand.

  Frankly, Chekov was surprised it had taken this long. Terrell may have been a more laid-back, soft-spoken commander than James Kirk, but he was very like Kirk in his readiness to lead the way into danger, his distaste for being left behind in a safe, familiar bridge while his crew made new discoveries or took risks on his behalf. Only his need to monitor the situation planetwide had kept him on the ship until now. As usual, Chekov had insisted on coming along to watch his back, and Terrell had cheerily welcomed the company.

  Now, Terrell sighed and shook his head at the sight of the army troops blocking the entrance to the polling place, brandishing their weapons menacingly at the crowd. “People are alike all over,” he said. “My great-granddaddy used to tell me about how his great-granddaddy had to go through nonsense like this to get his right to vote.”

  “Russian history has such stories, too,” Chekov said. “Back in the—”

  “Wait.” Chekov followed Terrell’s gaze to where a group of voters was arguing loudly with the soldiers. It looked as if violence could break out any moment.

  “Damnation,” Terrell muttered before striding forward determinedly.

  “Excuse me!” Terrell called as he came closer to the soldiers, his voice at once commanding and amiable. Many heads swung toward him, along with some video cameras operated by the local media. “Excuse me. Hello. I’m Captain Terrell of the U.S.S. Reliant. What seems to be the problem here?”

  The leader of the troops strode forward to confront him. “Stay out of our affairs, mar-Tunyor. This gathering has been declared blasphemous and in violation of holy law. We are here to shut it down.”

  “Why is that, exactly?”

  “Because our great and wise leader, Odra maVolan, has declared it!” The crowd booed.

  “No…” Terrell waited for the noise to die down.

  “No, I meant what exactly makes this election so unholy? What specific doctrines does it violate?”

  “It is impure!” the squad leader said. “It is contaminated by alien influences.”

  Terrell shrugged. “It was your own people who asked for it. Your own Synod who approved it and invited Federation monitors. And all the voting equipment is your own. The monitors and Starfleet personnel have only acted to ensure that everyone has fair access and the votes are counted fairly.”

  “Your very presence here contaminates it!”

  Terrell caught his gaze. “What’s your name, son?”

  The squad leader paused, taken aback. “I am Squad Leader Var Nysul.”

  “Tell me, Var—is that what you believe? That this election is wrong?”

  “I serve the will of the faithful.”

  “But is that what you believe? Look around you, son. Are you willing to start shooting these people to keep them from voting? Do you believe that would be good for your world? For your people, even the faithful?”

  “Those are my orders. I serve as I am commanded.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question, Var.”

  Chekov noticed that the news cameras were fixed on Terrell now. He jogged over to the nearest one.

  “How wide is your coverage?” he asked the operator.

  “Can they see this planetwide?”

  “No,” she replied. “For anyone but the state, access to the airwaves is erratic.”

  “I think I can do something about that.” With the operator’s permission, he tied his tricorder into her feed and called Kyle on the Reliant. “Can you send this all over the planet?”

  “If I bounce it off the right satellites, sure.”

  “Then do it.”

  By now, Terrell was turning to the other soldiers around Nysul. “How about you, young lady? Or you? Do you believe this election shouldn’t happen?”

  “They do as they are ordered!” Nysul shouted, though without much conviction.

  “That’s still not the question. What do you believe, people?” he asked the soldiers again. “What do you want for your world? What do your families want? What do you think is best for them?”

  “You attempt to influence the election!” Nysul objected.

  Terrell smirked. “You’re the one saying there shouldn’t be an election—why should you care?” The crowd laughed. “But all I’m asking is whether these men and women really believe that opening fire on their own people to stop a free election is good for the Payav—or the mar-Atyya, or whomever. And if so, why? All of you, please,” he went on, meeting the soldiers’ eyes one by one. “Can you tell me why this is the right thing to do? Can you go home to your families and tell them?”

  After a moment, one soldier cursed, lowered her weapon, and broke formation, moving to stand with the crowd. A moment later, a second soldier followed. Then a third, a fourth, and more. “You are all traitors!” Nysul cried as the hemorrhaging of troops continued. “We are serving holy law!” He waved his rifle at the defectors, who readied their own weapons to defend the crowd. “Get back into formation! Now! I order you! I will open fire!”

  “And what would that accomplish?” Terrell demanded. “You’d kill one or two of your own comrades in arms before they killed you. You’d probably start a riot that would get thousands of people killed and destroy any chance of avoiding a bloody revolution. And what would it get you? Would it save the mar-Atyya regime or just destroy any chance that it could avoid getting slaughtered?”

  Now the rifle swung to bear right between Terrell’s eyes. “You do not tell me what to do, alien!”

  Terrell didn’t flinch. “No. That’s a decision you have to make for yourself. What you choose in the next moment could determine the whole course of this world’s history from this point forward. Just make sure that you think about what you’re doing and why before you do. Too many people use guns as an excuse to react instead of thinking. But when you’re holding a gun on someone, when your finger’s on the trigger, that’s when you need to think the most. Because that’s the most important decision you’re ever going to make.

  “Right now, Var Nysul, you may be the most important person on hur-Atyya. What happens next isn’t up to maVolan or the Synod or even God. They may have put you here, but you’re the man with his finger on the trigger. And which way that finger moves is up to you.

  “So make your decision, son. Make it your own.”

  Terrell’s gaze didn’t waver. But before long, the rifle barrel did. A moment later, it clattered to the ground. But the tail end of the clatter was lost in the roar of the crowd. Terrell led Nysul aside, patting him on the back, as the rest of the troops stood down and allowed the voters to stream into the polling place once more—and then began moving to the backs of the lines themselves.

  Soon, Chekov managed to catch up with Terrell, who’d just handed Nysul off to some of his fellow troops. “Captain,” Chekov said, “that was amazing!”

  Terrell sagged against the wall, and Chekov could see he was shaking. “Don’t ever let me do a damn fool thing like that again. From now on, I’m leaving Russian roulette to you Russians.”

  “Nonsense, sir. You have the heart of a Russian.” He clapped his captain—his friend—on the shoulder. Yes, this man was very much like James Kirk, in all the ways that mattered. “No matter what they throw at you, Clark, you will always triumph.”

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Raya elMora stood before the bridge viewscreen, staring down the destroyer of her world. “It looks so innocuous,” she said as the pulsar flickered on the screen, occasionally obscured by a burst of static. In the seventeen standard years since the irradiation of Mestiko, the spinning neutron star had traveled some one hundred thirty-two astronomical units, well beyond Hertex’s planetary system though within the boundaries of its Oort Cloud. “Perhaps because I no
longer fear it.”

  Spock would have found her sentiment commendable in other circumstances. “Nonetheless, Madam Councillor, it remains a serious navigational hazard. Ideally, we should not even be this close. The gravimetric interference—”

  “Is not critical at this range, Captain Spock, as you explained before. The election is already under way. We must take the most direct route possible. I trust Engineer Scott to maintain the warp-field balance until we are clear.”

  Spock frowned. “I am also concerned that—”

  Suddenly, the ship shuddered, and a second later, it underwent a violent deceleration. Spock caught Raya before she was flung into the forward railing, clutching the helm console to retain his own footing. “What was that?” Raya asked once she caught her breath.

  “An uncannily well-timed example of the concern I was about to express,” Spock replied, an eyebrow climbing toward his hairline. “We have fallen out of warp after taking weapons fire—no doubt from a ship using the pulsar’s sensor interference for cover.”

  The ship shook again. “Three vessels, sir,” Lieutenant Worene reported from tactical. “Mestikan design.”

  “Warp engines are offline, sir,” T’Lara reported from the helm.

  “Evasive maneuvers at impulse,” Spock ordered.

  “The mar-Atyya!” Raya exclaimed. “They will stop at nothing to cling to power.”

  “Fortunately, our shields were already raised against the pulsar,” Spock said.

  But the next hit was a strong one, making the power systems fluctuate. “Sir!” Worene cried. “Their weapons read as Klingon disruptors! Their engines show Klingon signatures, too.”

  Spock strode over to the tactical station to peer over the Aulacri’s shoulder. From his usual place at the aft railing, McCoy asked, “Did the mar-Atyya make a deal with the Klingons again?”

  “They would never deal with offworlders,” Raya answered.

  “But apparently,” Spock added, “they are not above using leftover technology from the Norrb alliance with the Klingons—or perhaps from Alur orJada’s smuggling activities. These readings match Klingon technology from that era.”

  “So much for purity,” said McCoy.

  “Lieutenant, return fire. Aim to disable only. Mr. Pilar,” Spock continued, turning to the Argelian at communications, “attempt to hail the Reliant and request assistance.”

  Pilar made the attempt, but the results were as Spock anticipated. “Too much interference, sir.”

  “Very well. Helm, continue evasive while attempting to clear the pulsar’s ionization field.”

  T’Lara acknowledged the order. The young Vulcan handled the helm with great skill and efficiency, though without the artistry of a Hikaru Sulu. However, the three ships were able to keep the Enterprise confined within a tetrahedral englobement, using the pulsar itself as the fourth point. Worene’s fire failed to penetrate their shields, which must have been Klingon-made as well—and considerably overpowered, judging from the emission curves they displayed. Spock surmised that the xenophobic and paranoid mar-Atyya leaders had spent years constructing the most powerful ships possible to defend their world against alien threats. Their technology was secondhand and more than a decade behind the times, but the sheer power driving it made it formidable.

  Spock lamented the absence of James Kirk’s tactical brilliance in this situation. But what intuition could achieve in one leap, careful reason and hard work could arrive at as well. Needing more information, Spock relieved Lieutenant Haley and took the science station himself. Despite several years as a captain, he still felt most comfortable there, at the heart of the information flow. He scanned the pulsar as well as he could through the interference, filling in the gaps with preprogrammed simulations updated with the latest readings, displayed on one of the science station’s circular screens. He modeled the enemy’s englobement strategy, observing the shifting vectors on an adjacent screen. From knowledge came ideas.

  “Well, Spock? Do you have a plan?” Ahh, yes—the inevitable goading from McCoy. Once it had been a distraction, but now it felt like a natural part of his decision-making process, keeping him “on his toes,” as Kirk might say.

  “Always, Doctor. Ensign T’Lara—take us in toward the pulsar. Use the course and timing I am sending you,” he added, working the transfer controls of his console.

  “You want to take us closer?” McCoy exclaimed over T’Lara’s acknowledgment. “When did that become a good idea?”

  “At impulse, the primary hazards are electromagnetic and particulate radiation, plus tidal stresses should we draw too close. However, it should not be necessary to come that near.”

  “Pursuers are slowing, sir,” Worene reported.

  Spock raised an eyebrow at McCoy, wordlessly inquiring if he saw it now.

  Indeed, the doctor was beginning to smile. “Of course. After what that thing did to their world, they’re afraid to get too close to it.”

  “Correct. I imagine it must have strained their discipline even to draw close enough to hide in its interference field. I noted that they began their attack in its outskirts.”

  “Captain,” Raya asked, “are we not drawing too close to—” She blinked, for the pulsar had vanished from the screen before she finished speaking.

  “The emission cones?” he finished for her. “Our course was carefully timed to pass between their sweeps.”

  She let out a nervous laugh. “I doubt they will follow us through that.”

  “They are no doubt already circling at a greater distance,” Spock replied. “If we tried to make an end run for Mestiko, they could still intercept us at warp. We must make our stand here.”

  “Can’t we at least get some distance from the pulsar, so they can’t trap us with our back to it again?” McCoy asked.

  “Negative, Doctor. This is exactly where I wish us to be.”

  “Because of the psychological advantage it gives us?” Raya asked.

  “That is helpful. But it is not the only power the pulsar provides us with.”

  “Mar-Atyya ships coming around again,” Worene reported. “Closing to intercept.”

  “Resume fire, but reduce energy level by twenty percent. Allow them to believe we sustained damage in our passage.”

  “Make them overconfident?” McCoy asked. “One of Jim’s old bluffs.”

  “A proven tactic, Doctor. Helm, reverse course. Make it appear we are repeating the previous maneuver. They may well be emboldened to approach the pulsar more closely this time. Tactical, continue firing with aft phasers, but target a torpedo on the pulsar itself.”

  McCoy and Raya both cried “What?” at the same time. Spock attempted to explain quickly.

  “In passing through Hertex’s stellar wind, the pulsar has gathered a thin layer of hydrogen, fused to helium by the intense surface gravity. But the helium layer has not become dense enough to fuse further. The torpedo should trigger a fusion cascade, producing a burst of intense radiation in all directions.” He turned back to Worene. “Tactical. Forward shields and navigational deflector to maximum.” He hit the shipwide intercom. “All personnel, secure for radiation burst. Take all forward sensors offline, and deploy blast shields over all forward ports. All nonessential personnel clear forward compartments.”

  “You’re going to blind them?” McCoy asked. “And hope we don’t get fried in the process?”

  “Doctor, have sickbay prepare hyronalin injections as a precaution.” McCoy glared for a moment, then left the bridge to see to it personally.

  “Captain,” Raya asked, “is there any risk this could trigger a starquake?”

  Spock contained his surprise. It should not have been unexpected that the leader of a world ravaged by a pulsar would have studied pulsars in detail. “The risk is exceedingly remote, Madam Councillor.”

  “But not zero.”

  “No.”

  “If a starquake were to happen, the gamma burst would be devastating for light-years around.”

&nb
sp; “Possibly. It depends on the attributes of the pulsar.”

  “I can’t let you risk subjecting Mestiko to another Pulse!”

  “At this range,” Spock told her evenly but quickly, “the populace would have eighteen hours’ advance notice to retreat to shelter. There is little more damage that could be done to the environment than has already been done. The ozone layer would be destroyed again, but the equipment for its restoration is already in place. And again, the odds are very remote.”

  “And what would happen to us?”

  The ship shuddered from weapons fire again.

  “Madam Councillor… shall I proceed?”

  She held his gaze for a moment, then set her jaw and said, “Yes.”

  “Lieutenant, status of attackers.”

  “Still pursuing, sir. But starting to slow.”

  “Fire torpedo.”

  The pulsar’s sensor interference no doubt blinded the attacking ships to the torpedo launch. Its impact went unseen by the Enterprise as well, but Spock could hear the crackling that began some moments later as the intense radiation burst induced electrical discharges across the ship’s outer hull. Bridge consoles sparked and flickered as some of the discharges leapt over the circuit breakers. The air temperature rose by several degrees within moments.

  But soon enough, the discharges faded, and Spock ordered the sensors back online. “The pulsar?” Raya asked.

  “We are still here, Madam Councillor. Therefore, there was no starquake.” While Raya absorbed that, Spock ran a scan. “They are on random trajectories; at least one is drifting. Life readings are nominal, power readings fluctuating. We have gained the advantage.”

  After that, it was short work for Worene to knock out the ships’ remaining shields, then neutralize their weapons and propulsion systems with pinpoint blasts. “We can beam the crews aboard and detain them until their disposition is decided by the proper authorities,” Spock told Raya.