Shadows of the Indignant

by Dave Galanter

  “One down,” Kirk said, thrusting Skinny’s limp body away. “Two to go.”

  Phobos growled.

  “Okay,” Kirk said, backing off a pace. “Two and a half if we count you fairly.”

  Unwilling to let Phobos go down the way he had, and the way Skinny had, Curly took off his jacket and it dropped to the floor. He came at Kirk, fists balled into rocks, and pounded first a right, then a left, toward his head.

  Kirk dodged low and to the left. He pushed Curly back into where he’d stumble into Skinny’s flaccid form. Phobos bolted forward, moving deceptively quick for someone of his bulk. Kirk punched the larger man twice with his right hand, putting his weight into the thrust, but it didn’t faze his opponent. Both hands shaped like cement trowels, Phobos snapped Kirk on either ear. Pain flashed hot into his eyes but he shook it off with a grunt in time to see Curly was unwrapping Skinny’s hand, in search of his knife.

  Kirk spun, dropped to the ground with a roll, and slipped his legs between Phobos’s. He twisted and took the moon man off his balance until he fell to the deck. If he was going to do this, fight two larger men at the same time, he could only really have either one on his feet at any one time. Sweat bubbled over his lip; Kirk was beginning to tire. Phobos weighed over a hundred and thirty kilos, easily. What wasn’t easy was bringing that amount of bulk down.

  Knife now in hand, Curly was taking his second run at Kirk as Phobos grunted angrily and tried to scramble to his feet. There would be one chance at this and now was the time, Kirk realized.

  As Curly thrust the dagger at Kirk’s midsection, he pulled to one side, grabbed Curly’s wrist, and braced his back on the wall. One foot stuck out, Kirk heaved Curly over and down, his outstretched arm forcing the knife into Phobos’s massive torso. Curly yelled, Phobos yelled, and Kirk decided that was enough. He jumped over Skinny, reaching down for his jacket and lugging it along as he went.

  By the time he was aboard the small ship, McCoy had all the systems online and had even cleared departure with the dockmaster.

  “What happened out there?” McCoy asked as Kirk slid into the pilot’s seat.

  “We got what we came for,” Kirk said. “We don’t know what exactly is going on, but it’s damn certain something is.”

  “Is that it? Can we go home now?”

  Kirk shook his head and disengaged the moorings from Indalo Station. “Fizzy didn’t come back here. That means that someone warned her off—so we’re heading for Mestiko.”

  With a sigh, McCoy sank into the copilot’s seat. “Oh, joy.”

  Chapter Five

  Approaching Mestiko was awkward for Kirk. Upon requesting orbit he didn’t want to register his ship there under his name, but he somehow felt that was a breach of the trust he’d tried to foster with the Payav. Still, he didn’t want to announce his presence to Space Central by broadcasting that Admiral James Kirk had arrived. If there was anything he’d learned from his last visit, it was that those who could be working with the Klingons could well be anyone.

  So Space Central got the fake name and registry that Indalo Station had, and Kirk settled into first an orbit, and then a landing approach.

  “If you think you can survive without me,” McCoy began as they gathered their gear once they’d landed, “I’m going to see if I can find Dr. Lon.”

  Kirk looked up with surprise. “He’s stayed on this long? It’s been years…”

  “Surprised me too when I learned of it. I’ve kept in contact with him now and again. He’s become quite fond of this place, I think.”

  Already at the door, McCoy was ready to open the hatch and Kirk had to wave him off. “We’ve landed, but the platform has to be pulled underground before we can disembark.”

  While Dr. Marat Lon’s air-scrubbing satellites had done wonders for Mestiko’s ravaged atmosphere over the last few years, much of the planet’s surface was still relatively uninhabitable for long periods. It wasn’t enough to have a breathable atmosphere for an hour, a day, or even a month—the air had to be clean enough to sustain life for year after year without causing long-term health problems. Mestiko was some years off that standard, and so the vast bulk of the populace was still living under pressure domes or underground. More domes had been built in the years since Kirk’s last visit, but landing pads were still open to the air and needed to be pulled underground for ship storage. Should Kirk and McCoy need to make a quick escape of the planet as they had Indalo Station, that wouldn’t be an option.

  Once out of the ship, Kirk and McCoy walked toward the underground city that had become Mestiko’s market capital simply because it was both the home of the Zamestaad—their main governing body—as well as their Space Central agency, which now had more than a few cargo transports provided by several shipping concerns who wanted to do business with Mestiko.

  Both men were used to navigating around strange, new worlds and so they went their separate ways, McCoy off to see Lon and Kirk to the Mestiko office of elFizda. Even though Fizzy wasn’t to return to Mestiko for another day, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something for Kirk to learn at her office.

  Walking through the “city,” Kirk was astonished with how the Payav had adapted to their hindered lives underground. Whereas the last time he’d visited the people were living in more makeshift accommodations, it was clear changes had taken place. Shops with doors and even windows were on either side of the main causeway and the grade was an upward angle that soon gave way to ground-level streets under the pressurized dome. The air inside the dome was clean and smelled amazingly fresh considering that just outside, the atmosphere was still thick with muck. Kirk looked up past the dome and into the sky. The reddish-brown hue was mostly gone, but that didn’t mean much to one’s lungs. From the reports he’d read it wasn’t sound to breathe the outside air for longer than a few hours.

  Mestiko was most assuredly a work in progress, which psychologically must have been something to deal with for her people. As a planet they’d just started touching the stars when the Pulse pounded them back a few hundred years. But it didn’t just beat them back; it also knocked them forward quickly. It was a dichotomy: the same disaster that forced them to live primitively in relation to where they’d been was also forcing them to step too quickly into the realm of interstellar relations. There were growing pains.

  As Kirk walked to the relatively nearby customs office, many Payav looked at him from the periphery only, refusing to make eye contact. That wasn’t strange—many cultures crowded for space considered direct eye contact almost a violation of privacy. What did concern Kirk was that the universal translator had a more sensitive “ear” than a human, and it was picking up some under-the-breath comments from people he passed by.

  “A’sloointa Dinpayav,” one man spat quietly. “Step off from me.” The first word wasn’t in the translator’s language base but Kirk knew “Dinpayav” was their word for offworlders, and the rest was pretty clear. Many other similar comments were being made, and one mother instructed her child not to look at the “offworld filth.”

  Upon his last visit there was a growing anti-Federation feeling among many—even Raya’s grandmother. One would have thought she’d have had a bit better perspective since she was closer to the real story of all that had happened, but if anything Kirk remembered worrying whether she was going to influence Raya into turning down Federation help. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened. And after the incident with Klingon interference in Payav politics it would seem the anti-Federation feeling had become an antialien feeling. That was probably why outside of the landing deck itself, Kirk had seen no other offworlders, only Mestiko natives. It crossed his mind that they might even have certain regulations about where Dinpayav could travel unrestricted, but not only would he know that from his position at Starfleet, Space Central would have informed him if something had recently changed. No, this was probably a voluntary segregation, and that perhaps made it even more uncomfortable.

  The customs office was in one of the
older buildings that hadn’t been destroyed by the Pulse. It had obviously been braced by thermoconcrete, probably from the Federation, as the technology for such materials was as yet beyond the Payav. Well, the know-how wasn’t beyond it, but their level of industry was completely geared to subsistence still, and most of that came from offworld. There was yet another dichotomy. The Payav relied on trade for their lives, yet didn’t want to deal with those who supplied the very source of their survival. It was going to take decades for Mestiko to rebuild its economy to the point where it could be fully independent—if ever. Kirk mused how Earth might be if she decided not to trade with other worlds. He was sure it would be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. It wasn’t in the nature of spacefaring cultures to be economically isolated. Just as tribes gave way to city-states, which gave way to nations, and finally planetary governments, local economies gave way to national, then global, then interstellar economies. Enterprise was going under an almost total refit and if Starfleet were to remove all the non-Earth technology, there would be little more than an empty skin to the ship.

  The trust among the founders of the Federation took years to cultivate and now those relationships were their joint strength. Mestiko had been thrust into similar relationships out of dire necessity. It wasn’t easy, and the trust wasn’t quickly forthcoming, especially considering how it began.

  Taking a lift to the third floor of the customs building, Kirk approached Fizzy’s office. It was a small, two-room affair, with an assistant in the reception room, sitting behind a simple desk, and only two chairs for the long line of waiting Payav that flowed out into the hall. Beyond the assistant’s desk Kirk saw elFizda’s office behind an older wooden door that was painted with gold, official-looking lettering. He didn’t know what the lettering said, but he assumed it was her name and title.

  Pushing past those in line, and irritating many by doing so, Kirk made his way to the man behind the reception desk. He smiled, sure not to bare his teeth, as local custom demanded. “Hello,” he said, and let the universal translator relay the greeting in the Payav language.

  “Greetings,” replied the Payav man in Kirk’s own language.

  Admittedly, Kirk was taken aback. “You speak English?”

  “This is a customs office,” the man said in a monotone that was perhaps a universal standard for bureaucratic jobs. “I speak a variety of Terran, Vulcan, Andorian, Centaurian, and Orion languages.”

  Orion, too. Figured. “What about Klingonese?” Kirk asked, and searched the man’s pale features for a response. There was none. Perhaps it might have been easier to see a change in skin tone if the young man’s head and face had not been so covered with elaborate tattooing. The Payav were basically humanoid, and even rather Terran-looking, except for a porcelain pallor, longer-than-average necks, an extra thumb on each hand, and a complete lack of body hair. Any deficiency of decoration that a lack of hairdo might cause was often made up for with intricate tattoos.

  “I speak some Klingonese as well,” the man said after a long moment.

  Kirk nodded, offered up his fake name, and asked to see elFizda, even though he knew she wasn’t going to be there.

  “She’s out today,” the man replied expectedly. Which meant she was neither on Indalo Station nor on Mestiko. Or at least she wasn’t making herself available. All because Kirk was asking questions?

  “What are all these people waiting for?” Kirk asked, gesturing to the two seated people in the reception room as well as the long line of thirty or more people that meandered out the door.

  “Work,” the Payav man said flatly. “We don’t frequently have openings, but every day these number or more show up in hopes there will be something and they’ll be first to apply for it.”

  Growing pains everywhere, Kirk thought, and thanked the man for his time. On his way out he asked a few people what kind of work they hoped for, but his requests went ignored. People looked away or down, avoiding him completely. One man, who stood near the back of the line but whom Kirk hadn’t approached followed him to the street.

  “Federation?” the man called after Kirk.

  Turning back to the man, Kirk shrugged, not wanting to suggest he worked for the Federation. “I’m from Earth, if that’s what you mean.”

  Thin, pale lips curving into a tight smile, the Payav man put out his arms in the traditional greeting that Kirk had learned some years ago. Grasping the man’s hands, and having his grasped by those extra thumbs, brought back memories of his last visit.

  “You have questions that people would not answer,” the man said. He was an older gentleman, Kirk wasn’t sure how old by Payav standards, but his tattooing was a bit faded, and his skin showed signs of having lost some elasticity.

  “But you’ll answer?” Kirk asked.

  The man’s head lolled around in what was probably similar to a nod. “I do not dislike Dinpayav. I do not believe the conspiracies that tell us the Federation did this to us.”

  “I appreciate that.” Kirk gestured to a bench at what was probably a tram stop for the city’s mass transit system. “Can we talk?”

  They sat, the small man toward the middle of the otherwise empty bench, Kirk toward the end.

  “What’s your name?” Kirk asked.

  “Izra,” he replied. “Izra orCina. What is yours?”

  “My friends call me Jim.” Kirk smiled lightly, and then leapt into his questions. “What kind of work were you looking for with the customs service?”

  “Any kind,” Izra said. “I’m not so old that I can’t work on a ship, or be a clerk, or whatever job you have, I can do.”

  Suddenly Kirk’s heart sank. Izra wasn’t just being kind, he was looking for work and assumed that Kirk was an offworld trader with ships that needed employees.

  What now? Get more information, or risk disappointing him enough that he won’t talk anymore? Kirk sighed and couldn’t let the man assume something that wasn’t the case.

  “Mr. orCina, please understand, I don’t have any jobs. I’m not looking for workers, or…” He let his sentence trail off as Izra’s face fell into a deep, sad frown that suddenly made him look older still.

  “I understand,” the Payav man said, clearly crestfallen. “I appreciate your honesty. You are a journalist doing a story?”

  “Why would you think I’m a journalist?”

  “You are asking questions,” Izra said. “Is that not what journalists do?”

  “Maybe I’m just a trader new to Mestiko.”

  Izra laughed. “I assumed you were a trader who had come to look for help among those waiting for jobs because frequently Dinpayav do so here. But you are surely no one new to Mestiko.”

  Kirk looked quizzically at Izra, but couldn’t help but return the man’s laughter with a smile. “Why is that?”

  “You knew the hand greeting perfectly,” Izra explained. “So this is not your first visit to Mestiko. And you say you’re not looking for workers, yet you ask questions, so you must be a journalist.”

  If Spock were here he’d say that logic was flawless. Kirk didn’t answer the accusation, however, and instead wondered just what Dinpayav came to find workers here.

  “What kind of people come here to find workers?”

  Izra rubbed his chin with one hand in a motion that would look very human if it were not for the two thumbs at either side which met each other with a light tapping. “What kind of people? Dinpayav. Offworlders,” he said as if the question truly confused him.

  “Do you know from what planet? What they looked like?”

  “They had fur, like you.” He shrugged. “They were Dinpayav.”

  Kirk chuckled. To Izra, all Dinpayav looked alike. Well, that was fair. To Kirk, all Horta looked alike.

  “Have you heard of anyone working for Klingons?” Kirk asked.

  Izra’s face crumpled into sour disdain. “No, I would remember that. I do not care for them.”

  Nodding, Kirk patted Izra’s shoulder. “Can I tell you a se
cret?” He leaned in and whispered. “Neither do I.”

  Smiling again, Izra tapped Kirk back. “I wish I could be of more help.”

  “Do you know anyone who mentioned working on a ship or offloading cargo from a ship where something seemed out of the ordinary, or too secretive?”

  Looking up in thought, Izra was silent for a moment. “You know, I believe so. A friend of mine recently got a job offloading cargo and clerking for one of the traders. I asked if he could get me such a job as well but he said they would not likely hire me.” Izra leaned in as if confiding some great secret. “I have been told I’m too talkative, and Dedir said he could not recommend someone with weak lips.”

  Interesting. “Do you suppose I could meet Dedir? Do you know where he works?”

  Izra hesitated. “I… I do not want to cause trouble for him.”

  “What trouble could a journalist cause?”

  To that Izra laughed so heartily that he began to cough. “Forgive me,” he said when he could catch a breath. “There are few people more disliked on my planet. Perhaps only Dinpayav are considered more—oh, forgive me, I meant no offense.”

  Kirk waved off the comment. “No offense taken. And I promise not to tell Dedir who told me where to find him.”

  “Very well.” Izra smiled again. “His name is Dedir orTola. He works at dock seventeen of the main dock complex.”

  “You’ve been very helpful, Izra,” Kirk said as he clasped hands with the Payav man again. “And if I hear of a job, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Thank you, Jim. Good luck and safe journeys to you.”

  Chapter Six

  Dedir orTola was a stout figure, and that was an interesting sight for Kirk. It spoke to a rich diet, and when foodstuffs were scarce, that was what might be considered a real, live clue. If Dedir was eating well, that meant he was being paid well, and when there were people lined up for jobs, obviously trying to supplement whatever the government and help agencies could give them, a job that paid well meant someone needed very specialized skills. Hefting crates around, keeping track of them, and coordinating shipments didn’t require great expertise.