Star Trek Prometheus -Fire with Fire

by Christian Humberg

  “Mr. Fraxa?” The gray-haired Tellarite glanced questioningly at the blue-skinned, bald man at traffic control.

  Fraxa checked his displays. “Dock 7 is vacant,” the Bolian answered.

  Agram nodded toward Karen. “Lieutenant, docking permission granted.”

  She opened a channel. “Lakota, this is Starbase 91. Docking permission granted for Dock 7.”

  “Coming in for Dock 7. Thank you, starbase.” The communications officer lowered his voice, adopting a less official tone. “Is that you, Adams?”

  Karen glanced uncomfortably toward Agram whose eyes were still fixed on her.

  “Affirmative, Lakota.”

  “Ah, I understand, you can’t talk.” The man chortled. “Well, this is Lieutenant Komari. Would you like to have breakfast with me again when you finish work? That was great fun last time.”

  Karen barely managed to keep a straight face. Komari wasn’t a bad guy but he tended to be far too talkative, even for her liking. If she agreed to a date with him, her free morning would be out of the window. Besides, she’d rather meet up with Cox. They really needed to write this information request for the Vulcan Science Academy. “I’m sorry, Lakota, but that won’t be possible.”

  “Oh, come on, Adams. Don’t be a spoi—” His tone of voice abruptly changed. “Understood, Starbase 91. Lakota out.”

  Agram loomed over her. “Problems, Lieutenant?”

  “Erm, no, sir.” Karen felt her cheeks glowing.

  “It sounded like it.”

  “That was nothing. Just…” Her mind raced while she tried to come up with an excuse. She didn’t want to get Komari in trouble. After all, she also used official frequencies for private chatter now and then. “You know, we—”

  Suddenly, Marceau cried out. “What on Earth was that?” His voice expressed bafflement and anxiety, which was enough to divert Agram’s attention away from Karen, to the latter’s great relief.

  “Report, Lieutenant,” the commander said briskly.

  “Sir, for a brief moment I had the feeling that…” He hesitated.

  “Yes?” Agram prompted him.

  “As if I had spotted something out there.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It all happened so fast. I briefly noticed something that might have been a particle signature from a sublight drive.”

  “Might have been?”

  The slender man shrugged. “Well, the computer didn’t raise the alarm. It didn’t consider it a noteworthy phenomenon. Still… it looked weird to me.”

  Agram leaned forward. “Did we record that?”

  “Yes, sir. One moment.” Marceau’s fingers danced over the sensor console and brought up the data. Once he got what he wanted, he pointed at the display. “There. You see? Right at this timestamp. That looks like traces of drive plasma, but they seemed to kind of evaporate instantly.”

  Curiously, Karen glanced at the screen and there was indeed a very brief spike. But it was tremendously weak and couldn’t possibly have come from any kind of vessel. “Are you sure it’s not some kind of sensor malfunction? Maybe a ghost echo from the Lakota’s docking maneuver?”

  Marceau shook his head. “I don’t think so. We only serviced the system two weeks ago. There shouldn’t be any false readings.”

  “Could an unauthorized work drone be out there?” Agram asked.

  The thought wasn’t far-fetched. Sometimes, technicians snuck out for a secretive trip at night—it was a popular date spot, as the closer view of the Lembatta Cluster was spectacular.

  “I’ll check.” Karen’s fingers danced across the touch screen. “Negative, Commander. All drones and shuttles are docked.”

  “Sir,” Marceau said, “if one of our small vessels was out there, we would see it. There isn’t anything. The sensors show nothing but empty space.”

  Agram straightened himself. “Put it on the main screen.”

  The sensor officer executed the order, and a vast star field appeared on the ops main screen, the Lembatta Cluster visible in the distance. Within its depths the Ancient Reds glowed like demonic eyes, lurking beyond the stellar veil.

  The Tellarite stroked his bushy beard. His small, cavernous eyes narrowed. “I can’t see anything.”

  Everyone in ops was now interested in Marceau’s glitch. Julie Butchko at tactical said, “It could be a ship using a cloaking device, sir.”

  “And who exactly would be flying around out there, cloaked?” Agram snapped. “Klingons? To what end? They are our allies. Romulans? I don’t believe that for one minute. The Romulan Star Empire is too far away. What’s more, they would have had to sneak past the listening post as well as the automatic tachyon detection grid on the periphery of the Neutral Zone, which is plain impossible.”

  “With all due respect, sir, it’s unlikely but not impossible,” Butchko said. “The Romulans deployed a completely new cloaking technology about six years ago with the Scimitar of former Praetor Shinzon. The ship emitted no tachyons, and left no residual anti-protons, which are the only two ways to track and locate a cloaked ship.”

  “Didn’t a cloaked ship make it all the way to Earth three years ago?” Ensign Goldwasser chipped in from his station. “You know, the attack on the Utopia Planitia Shipyards?”

  “Did Romulans do that?” Fraxa asked beside him.

  “No idea. But a cloaked ship was involved, I’m sure of it.”

  “There!” Marceau shouted, agitated. “There’s another spike.” He pointed toward the display where he had frozen his readings. “That looks like drive plasma.”

  “It’s definitely not Romulans,” Agram growled. “Their cloaking devices haven’t leaked drive plasma for years.” He raised his voice. “Computer. Scan sector sixteen. Anything out of the ordinary there?”

  “Negative,” the female voice of the station computer responded. “No relevant parameters exceeded.”

  The Tellarite grumbled, dissatisfied.

  “Do you want me to go to yellow alert, sir?” Butchko asked.

  “Are you serious?” Agram snapped. “It’s the middle of the night. Do you want me to wake two thousand people because our instruments might show something that could be a ship?”

  “The spike was damn small in both instances,” Goldwasser added, after bringing up the sensor data on his console. “These results surely can’t derive from a warbird.”

  “Lieutenant Adams, hail them,” Agram said. “Maybe our potential visitors will identify themselves when they think that we’ve spotted them.”

  “Aye, sir.” Karen opened all standard hailing frequencies. “Starbase 91 to unidentified starship. We have picked you up on our sensors, and we’re watching your approach. Please identify yourself.” She waited for a while before adding several other, rarely used frequencies, and repeating her transmission. “No answer, sir.”

  “Sir, we could have Echelon sweep the vicinity,” Goldwasser said. “If anything is able to detect our timid friend, it’s the sensor array.”

  Agram nodded. “Do it.” Karen noted that the Tellarite sounded not entirely sure of himself. Karen figured he was second-guessing his decision not to wake Captain Dimitrios Charistes. But while Karen didn’t always like the watch officer, she agreed with him in his initial decision. So far, they only had two minor sensor spikes to go by. It was too soon to take this beyond gamma shift.

  “Reprogramming Echelon 1.” Goldwasser’s fingers danced across the console. “Echelon 1 ready.”

  “And?” Agram stared at Marceau.

  “Scanning for tachyon emissions.” Karen’s seatmate made some adjustments. He furrowed his brow while he concentrated on his displays. “Negative, sir.”

  “Try residual anti-protons.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Suddenly, Karen’s receiver emitted some sounds she had trouble identifying at first. “Sir! I’ve got something here!”

  “Lieutenant?” Agram immediately went over to her.

  “Sir, I�
� I believe I can hear singing.” Putting her hand over her receiver, she looked at him, bewildered.

  “Singing?” Agram met her gaze incredulously.

  Karen touched a control. Monotonous chanting in a low voice began sounding out from the speakers in ops. It reminded Karen of Klingon ritual chants, but the language was certainly not Klingon.

  “That’s impossible,” Fraxa said. “Sound waves don’t carry across a vacuum.”

  “But sound waves can cause a spaceship hull to reverberate,” Goldwasser said, “when the singing is loud enough, or when the ship is very small.”

  Marceau frowned. “But to measure for a reverberating ship’s hull, we’d have to pick up reflected tracking impulses from point-blank range. That means…” His eyes widened.

  “That it is right on our doorstep already,” Agram finished the sentence for him. Suddenly, the phlegmatic Tellarite sprang to life. “Yellow alert. Lieutenant Butchko, raise station shields and…”

  “Sir, look, on the screen!” Karen gasped. “It’s decloaking.” Her mouth went bone-dry while staring at the thing that was darting toward them at high velocity. “My goodness, that’s a—”

  A fierce impact shook the entire starbase. Energy conduits exploded all over ops, sending sparks flying in all directions. Screaming, Karen fell to the deck, pain flashing through her left shoulder on impact. Suddenly, the world around her was aflame as a roaring, raging fire storm engulfed her.

  Then it went dark around Karen Adams.

  5

  TIME: UNKNOWN

  Place: unknown

  A flicker, followed by a crackling noise. Finally, an image appears. The camera shows the inside of a ruin, somewhere in a nameless desert. Bare walls made of alien stone, dilapidated. A large piece of pale cloth has been put up to keep away the brunt of the sunlight. Weapons leaning against the walls: phaser rifles, but also projectile weapons—black, shiny, and menacing.

  In the center of the image, a man is sitting cross-legged. He’s wearing loose clothing that covers almost his entire body. Its dark gray fabric is adorned with alien embroidery that is simple but also elegant in an exotic kind of way. His wide hood leaves his face in the shadow, but it doesn’t need a vivid imagination to guess his identity, nonetheless. The deep red skin, the weak glimmer of his nose jewelry, two eyes glowing in the dark like beacons… a Renao?

  “Are you listening now?” the hooded man calls into the camera. “Do we finally have your attention?”

  He’s clutching some kind of data display, where he’s probably stored his prepared speech, but he doesn’t look at it. His eyes are firmly fixed on the camera. On his audience.

  He remains motionless while the camera slightly changes its angle sideways in order to present what’s lying next to him in the desert sand, something crumpled-up and treated with contempt. It’s a flag, light blue with white letters. A star map surrounded by a laurel wreath: the seal of the Federation. Underneath, several other flags are partly visible. A quick zoom reveals that they are from the Ferengi Alliance and the Klingon Empire.

  “That was just the beginning,” the hooded man promises menacingly, while the camera pans back to focus on him. “What happened on the periphery of the Lembatta Cluster may seem a tragedy to many. But rest assured it was only the tip of the iceberg. We will not rest, nor relent, until our mission has been completed.”

  He puts down the data display before reaching behind his back, pulling out one of the phaser rifles. Even his hands are covered with dark gloves. Placing the scratched weapon across his lap, his motions exhibit an unmistakable air of pride.

  “You’re asking what our goals are? The reasons behind our actions?” He snorts derisively. A quiet curse in a foreign language escapes from his lips, and then he switches back to Federation Standard, which he pronounces with a noticeable accent. “You are the reason! Just you. You and your blind arrogance. You and your reckless stupidity. You and your barbarism. The galaxy has turned into a place of fear and terror, and that is your fault alone. War and invasions, wherever you look. Misery and suffering. Distrust and resentment. Recent years have inflicted more scars on this universe than entire millennia before! And why?” His voice cracks with outrage. His fury is as genuine as the weapon in his hands. Genuine and palpable. “Because you allowed it to go this far. You are disrupting the harmony in space. You refuse to stay in your own territories. Any child can tell you that we all have our place within the harmony of the universal scale of all things. Each creature has its sphere. You and all the other dominant powers in the galaxy refuse to accept this truth with stubborn naivety! You advance into places that are not yours. You harm the harmony of spheres—your own, and those you enter with your unnatural will to explore and expand. Don’t you realize that your unnatural aspirations are the reason for all the misery we had to witness in recent years? Don’t you understand that you are to blame for all the suffering, for all the deaths? You and your kind?”

  He brandishes the phaser rifle. “You simply don’t get it. Instead, you keep traveling. You strive to reach places that no human, no Klingon, no Romulan should ever set foot into. Therefore, you’re a danger to the galactic harmony of spheres—and to us all.” He shakes his head. “No more. We will no longer tolerate your nefarious activities, the sacrilege you’re committing against the harmony of spheres, and the treason against life itself! This is not a negotiation. Discussion is of no use, for you have ceased to realize how far you have strayed, how much damage you’re inflicting on yourself and other people. No, the time for words is past. The time for actions is now.”

  The camera zooms out a little to show the flags again. The hooded man raises his rifle, pointing it at them.

  “We’re ready for these actions,” he announces. “Your empires need to fall, and you must be driven back into your home spheres. That’s the way it should be. We are willing to be the igniting spark for the purifying conflagration that will reduce the galaxy to ashes. From these ashes, a new and better future will arise.”

  He gets to his feet. Shouldering his weapon, he takes two steps toward the camera. The beacons in the shadows of his face glow brighter than ever.

  “Your poisonous empires and alliances need to perish,” he says, and it sounds like a sacred oath. “They must burn. The slate needs to be wiped absolutely clean to make way for a new beginning.”

  Suddenly, he aims his rifle at the camera. The barrel points toward the audience, virtually hiding the man who might be a Renao.

  “The line has been drawn,” the man announces with a gravelly voice. “Remember the events from a few days ago, and you will realize that, too. Once you’ve done that… brace yourselves!”

  The barrel of the phaser remains motionless in the center of the image as if the powerful threat requires visual underlining.

  And… cut.

  6

  NOVEMBER 4, 2385,

  Paris, Earth

  The silence inside the council chamber was deafening. The oblong, windowless hall within the Palais de la Concorde where generations had held their debates and disputes on an almost daily basis seemed to hold its breath. Just like the many dozen beings that had assembled here.

  They were sitting in long rows on either side of the middle aisle. The lighting that was mounted on the narrow, waist-high partitions separating these rows illuminated the horrified faces of more than one hundred and fifty eloquent representatives of various Federation worlds. They all sat shoulder to shoulder, and they all sat equally speechless.

  Fleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar couldn’t blame them. He occupied one of three single, shell-type seats on a marble dais that was lined with marble columns. The seats had been arranged symbolically beneath the Great Seal of the Federation. He also had difficulties finding appropriate words, although he had watched that particular holovid three times during the past few hours. It hadn’t enlightened him in the slightest.

  Akaar was Starfleet’s commander-in-chief. The man from Capella IV was almost one hundred and t
wenty years old, and had been holding this post for more than four years, following a long and distinguished career in Starfleet that dated back to the late twenty-third century. While these days he spent most of his time either in his office at Fleet Headquarters in San Francisco or here at the Parisian seat of the Federation President and the Council, in his time he had seen far more than he had ever imagined possible. Not many of those things had been pleasant.

  President Kellessar zh’Tarash stood at the lectern to his right. She had only been inaugurated four days ago, but she spoke with the tone of someone upon whom the burden of the presidency was weighing heavily. “One of our automated subspace relay stations near Ventax received this message approximately seventy minutes ago. It was sent all across the galaxy, into Federation, Klingon, and Cardassian space at least, and it appears to have been sent to the Typhon Pact powers as well. Whoever the sender might be, he wants to be heard. He wants our attention.”

  Silence. Wherever Akaar looked, he met completely stumped gazes. He knew that many of these would turn into an expression of determination soon enough. They usually did. Tragically, the Federation Council had gotten very good at dealing with horrifying messages of late.

  “This message does not come without context,” zh’Tarash continued. Her voice was calm and steady; her demeanor conveyed inner strength and confidence. “You know that as well as I do. I have asked Fleet Admiral Akaar to join us, so he can clarify that context for us once more. Admiral?” The Andorian woman faced him with an encouraging nod, before taking a step back from the lectern.

  Akaar rose unsteadily—the shell-type seats had been designed for beings whose average height was far below that of a Capellan—and approached the lectern, straightening his crisp black and red uniform. Attentively, he waited until the president was seated. The glaring spotlight that some cruel interior decorator had embedded into the ceiling directly above the lectern began heating his head, and he could feel sweat starting to collect beneath his flowing white hair.

  “Three thousand nine hundred seventy-four,” said Akaar, touching a small key on the lectern’s surface. Immediately, a frozen image of Starbase 91 appeared behind him at the wall, straight below the Federation emblem. “That’s how many were on board Starbase 91 and the ships docked there three days ago. Remember that number. The ‘beginning’ mentioned in the recording you have just watched consists of almost four thousand lost lives.”