Star Trek Prometheus -Fire with Fire

by Christian Humberg

  Laughing, the Bolian placed Jassat’s glass in front of him on the counter. “Don’t give me that! I’ve heard thousands of stories about the Academy. There’s always something going on there. You have completed an education and become a Starfleet officer. That must have been some adventure in itself.”

  To what end?

  Jassat took a sip from his drink, and suddenly he was glad that he didn’t have to answer straight away. When he had decided to join Starfleet, diplomatic relations between his people and the Federation had already been far from ideal. The Renao had gradually turned their backs on the rest of the quadrant. Old trade agreements had been terminated, former alliances had fallen into oblivion. Jassat had never quite understood the reasons, but in those days he hadn’t cared much either. He was no politician, and in all honesty, he couldn’t understand his people’s isolationism—not then, and not now.

  Especially because it led to absurdities—many people close to him took offense to his career choice. Some even called him a traitor… not to his face, but behind closed doors. Kumaah, Moadas, and Evykk had been his best friends. They had been through thick and thin with him since their childhood days. But they abandoned him as soon as he decided to pursue his dream of a life in Starfleet, away from the Home Spheres. During his four years at the Academy, contact had been sporadic, and finally broken off altogether. Jassat regretted that, but he suspected his friends’ only regret was that Jassat had done what he did.

  “So?” Moba smiled, inviting and genuine. “Let’s hear it.”

  Jassat took his glass. “Forgive me, but I’m not in the mood for stories today. Some other time, Moba. Thank you for the juice.” With that he turned around, walking toward the windows on the other side of the room. The bartender with his admirable permanent optimism and the inexhaustible supply of questionable aphorisms meant well, but that didn’t alter reality.

  Silently, he stared into space while the minutes passed by. The “Cloud of Evil” was clearly visible beyond all the debris. It completed the picture, Jassat mused, as if it had been created just for him: at the front floated the destroyed remains of one Home Sphere, before the backdrop of the impenetrable nebula, which contained the other one. Both were a mystery to him. He didn’t feel at home in either of them anymore. They both had become unfamiliar… or maybe he had become unfamiliar. This sensation hurt him more than he could possibly put into words.

  Jassat sipped his juice. The thick liquid trickled down his throat. He remembered the time before attending the Academy when everything seemed to be much easier. When he had been able to sit next to Jenna and the others in Starboard 8 without having to worry about skeptical looks. The juice still tasted the same. A taste could also be a home, Jassat pondered, but not one that was sufficient.

  “You seem to be deep in thought, Lieutenant.”

  The quiet voice was right beside him, but Jassat hadn’t realized that he had company. Surprised, he turned around.His surprise increased when he recognized Spock by his side. The diplomat wore a simple robe made of rough fabric. “Am… Ambassador.” Jassat gulped. “I beg your pardon, what did you say?”

  “That you seem to be deep in thought. And apparently, these thoughts are not pleasant.”

  Jassat was amazed. One of the most famous personalities in the Federation concerned himself with his innermost thoughts? That was… absurd, surely?

  “I venture that you experience a sensation of being uprooted,” the half-Vulcan said, turning his gaze toward the red cluster beyond the debris. “So close to the Home Sphere and yet, metaphorically speaking, further away than ever. More unfamiliar. And you feel prejudged—here as much as over there.”

  The young Renao swallowed. With a few short sentences this old ambassador had summarized him even more precisely than he himself had managed after days of brooding. “Yes,” he said quietly.

  Spock steepled his fingers. “Are you, by any chance, familiar with the events that occurred one hundred and nineteen years ago between my former ship, the Enterprise, and the Romulan flagship Algeron?”

  Jassat wracked his brain. “I’m afraid my history seminars have furnished me with too much knowledge, instead of…”

  The man next to him nodded understandingly. “The Enterprise encountered Romulans for the first time since the Earth-Romulan War ended. Several outposts along the Neutral Zone had been destroyed by an unknown attacker. When we followed the distress call, we discovered the Romulan ship. My predominantly human crewmates found out on that day that there’s an undeniably close relation between my people and the Romulan people.”

  Now it was Jassat’s turn to nod as he began to remember. This remarkable mission had been the subject of seminars, of course. But why did Spock tell him about that now?

  The ambassador answered that question immediately. “The crew suspected me of treason because the hostile Romulans looked like me. They no longer regarded me as their partner; instead, they thought I had allied with the enemy. They became skeptical and scared and…”

  “Dismissive,” the Renao finished the sentence. Spock’s hint of a smile told him that the Vulcan had expected that. “Ambassador, I had no idea.”

  Spock made a dismissive gesture. “It was a long time ago, Lieutenant. But history is repeating itself, regrettable as that may be. Premature judgment is passed far quicker than well-founded judgment. That aspect of what is sometimes referred to rather ethnocentrically as human nature has not changed, unfortunately. Emotional species have a tendency to project the deeds and opinions of one person onto entire peoples.” He fell silent for a while, dwelling on his thoughts. “These are uncertain times, Lieutenant. Times that will leave scars on all of us. Wherever fear reigns, ideals end up being sacrificed. That was the case a century ago, and I would surmise that it will be the same today.”

  Jassat had the urge to swallow again. He remembered the talk show, the looks from his colleagues, the whispering. One question was on the tip of his tongue, and he was almost ashamed to ask it. He couldn’t keep it to himself any longer, though, because it had been nagging him for too long. “And what if it’s true?” he blurted out. “What if these atrocities have really been committed by Renao? I couldn’t possibly imagine an explanation for that, Ambassador, but I also saw those videos!”

  Spock gazed intently at Jassat. “If it is true, we will attempt to understand their reasons. Lieutenant, we are never just a crowd, never a generality. Each one of us—be they Vulcan, human, or Renao—decide for themselves, and thus everyone is responsible for their actions individually.” His tone of voice was calm and friendly as before, but in his eyes stood sobriety and compassion. “It is simple—one might even say simplistic—to look at the atrocities of individuals and extend suspicion to an entire nation. But there is only one standard we can truly apply—our personal standard.”

  Jassat lowered his head. He didn’t have an answer to that, but at the same time he felt that he had never before wanted to say as much as he did in this particular moment. And he was grateful.

  “Stay true to yourself,” he heard Spock say. “You owe it to your Home Spheres. Both of them.”

  When Jassat looked up again, the Vulcan had already departed. Jassat noticed the door to Starboard 8 closing behind him. He also realized that the engineer had left in the meantime.

  “Another one?” Moba shouted from his counter, happily waving an empty glass around. His smile was broad and warm. “For the good old sense of home?”

  Jassat ak Namur nodded, walking over to the counter. “To home.”

  19

  NOVEMBER 10, 2385

  Ki Baratan, Romulus

  Dark storm clouds hung above the Romulan capital city. Thunder rolled. Above the Apnex Sea nearby, where Ki Baratan’s founders had once settled, lightning brightened the dark skies.

  Thokal pulled his cloak’s hood deeper over his face, walking faster. The city’s streets quickly emptied, especially the area where Thokal was heading.

  The Chalandru neighborhood wa
s old, older than most other neighborhoods in the city, and it showed. It was full of multistory buildings with blind glass window panes and dirty façades. Abandoned small stores with poorly covered windows and doors probably housed entire populations of Nhaidhs and other vermin that bred in there. The resident holoemitters probably hadn’t projected their three-dimensional adverts onto the perma-concrete sidewalks for longer than anyone could remember.

  There wasn’t a location in this coastal metropolis where you could feel further away from the government district with its huge palaces made from rodinium, stone, and transparent aluminum, and the impressive state hall where the senate sat. This was the very last location where you would expect to meet a member of this elitist circle.

  That was precisely the reason why Thokal lived here, and had done so for decades. The old Romulan with his white hair, bulging forehead, and paunch had settled down here shortly after his arrival in Ki Baratan. Back then, Chalandru hadn’t been this dilapidated, but its future had been easily predictable. Thokal had seized the opportunity and had bought a three-story, narrow house in a side alley. Since then he had hardly spent a night elsewhere—although his duty had sometimes forced him to do so. But these days were also long past.

  The Romulan hadn’t set foot in his old office in the city center for years. He didn’t have any intention of doing so, either. Quite the contrary—he sometimes thought that there wasn’t anyone in the whole of Ki Baratan who enjoyed his retirement more than he did. Not a day went by when Thokal didn’t thank the gods of Vorta Vor that he wouldn’t have to deal with diplomats, rulers, and the never-changing scheming in the government district ever again.

  Thokal was happy. And he intended to stay happy. With a grateful sigh he walked up the four steps leading to his front door. He took off his hood to allow the scanner that was embedded in the wall to read his wrinkled face and his iris, before comparing the scan with the databanks in the house computer. The door recognized him and opened.

  Ignoring the wailing sirens that seemed to draw closer from parallel streets, Thokal entered his home. He was an experienced inhabitant of Chalandru and as such was well used to those kinds of background noises. They were part of the everyday routine and just as normal as the adolescents lurking at every corner or the derelicts inside the former parking lot near the transit station.

  He closed the door and set his luggage down.

  Silence. Finally, silence.

  “Computer, dim the window panes,” he said into the void. The house technology, which boasted quite remarkable features, followed that order instantly. Within a few fractions of a second the house’s windows were impenetrable for both prying eyes and any spy drones that might be nearby. Of course, nobody would be able to realize that from the outside.

  “Light.”

  Two old-fashioned floor lamps in the room’s rear corners switched on, illuminating the entrance area with a discreet but warm light. Thokal looked at his cramped bookshelves reaching all the way up to the ceiling, his comfortable wing chair, and the small table where he had been writing his memoirs, although he knew they would never be published. Everything seemed fine and the way it had been prior to his departure. Everything seemed as usual.

  Reassured, the old Romulan took his coat off, hanging it on the hook on the inside of the door. He groaned while taking off his boots, and heard the pouring rain that had just started outside. He hadn’t come home a second too early.

  It was then that he noticed the difference.

  “I’m growing old,” he mumbled a little surprised and a little annoyed. When he was younger, he would have noticed the blue book in the middle shelf immediately, and not half a minute later. “Old and blind.”

  The shelves lined the entire right wall of the room. They were testament to his many interests, but they also mirrored his almost archaic fondness for non-digital reading. First editions of appraised lyricists stood next to polemic pamphlets of ancient theologians, political treatises were next to escapist fiction, upscale erotica hid behind standard works of historians. No one else would have found their way around this mixture of genres, but Thokal knew exactly where he’d find which volume, which information and which adventure. Just like he knew that the thriller The Raptor’s Stroke of Wing had never been published in a blue cover.

  The small book in the middle shelf was a computer-created fake, and usually was white in color.

  If it presented itself in blue, the house computer wanted to relay a message to its owner inconspicuously.

  The book hadn’t been blue for months. An uneasy feeling crept up on Thokal. He put on his slippers, switched the lighting off in the room and stepped out into the hall. Several steps later he stood atop the cellar stairs.

  “Light,” he ordered again, and a circular overhead lamp illuminated the square room beneath his house.

  Thokal went down the stairway and looked around. The shelves down here were considerably less beautiful. They lined the walls, holding various belongings of Thokal’s life: memorabilia from strange worlds that he had once visited, imported animal food that his also imported pet hadn’t been able to eat all of—and that he didn’t have the heart to dispose of—models, tools, etc.

  He went to the back wall. To the inexperienced eye it might not have seemed special, but he knew that it reached half a meter too far into the room. Grunting, the old Romulan pulled a blue toolbox from the middle shelf, which lowered into the cellar floor immediately.

  This technology wasn’t any less old-fashioned than the hardcover books upstairs on the ground floor. But Thokal liked this little gadget and preferred it to all holoscreens and energy fields. It had more style. And of course, since it was a physical mechanism, it was undetectable by scans.

  Behind the shelf that disappeared into the ground, a small column with an almost even surface came into view: the house computer’s core in a black casing. A small display was embedded at eye level, showing the emblem of the Tal Shiar—the Romulan intelligence service, and Thokal’s former employer. Below the display was a small, flat console. Thokal waited until the floor above the shelf had closed again, before approaching the column.

  “Sound shielding,” he ordered the computer. “Lock doors and windows.”

  “Affirmative,” the computer answered. Thokal had programmed the computer to acknowledge orders vocally only if the entire building was sealed and tap-proof.

  “Source of message?”

  “You have received an encoded message from the Federation starship Prometheus. The message is one day, six hours, and twenty-eight minutes old.”

  Prometheus? Thokal furrowed his bulging brow. He knew the name, but only from statistics and reports. It was difficult to imagine that a Starfleet crew would contact him—especially not by these means.

  “That’s impossible,” he mumbled. “This channel is secret, and only the reunification movement knows about it.” He raised his voice. “Computer. Who is the sender of this message?”

  “Unknown. Code does not permit identification or the extraction of any information regarding its contents.”

  Again the Romulan hesitated. If the computer was unable to decipher the incoming transmission, how should he?

  Thokal raised his eyebrows. “Computer, is the encoding based on a password?”

  “Affirmative,” the artificial voice answered. “In order to access the message, a question must be answered.”

  “Provide the question.”

  The voice coming from the comm system changed. “Is M’rek culprit or investigator?”

  Thokal recognized that voice instantly and relaxed. “Both, old friend,” he replied, thinking again about The Raptor’s Stroke of Wing. “You know that as well as I do.”

  The Tal Shiar emblem disappeared from the computer display. Instead, the face of a man whom Thokal had known for decades, and whom he valued as one of his closest friends, came into view. Together they had fought for the reunion of Romulans and Vulcans—a goal that hadn’t been accomplished yet
, but neither of them intended to give up on. Judging by the background, Spock sat in a starship cabin, and he was calm as always.

  “Greetings, Thokal. I hope this message finds you well.”

  “What do you want, Spock?” Thokal murmured, although he was talking to a recording.

  “The circumstances force me to ask you for a favor. I assume you still have contacts in the Tal Shiar?”

  Thokal snorted. “What do you think?” He might have been retired but that didn’t mean that he had broken with old habits… habits that had become second nature for him. Not a day went by when the former data analyst didn’t use his secret access to the servers in Tal Shiar’s central office in order to browse the latest reports at his leisure. Of course, no one in the central office was aware of this encroachment, and they never would be because Thokal had taken precautions on his last day at work before retiring.

  Spock told him in a few words about the events on the periphery of the Lembatta Cluster. Thokal was aware of most of this information already but mainly from the government news sources, as he hadn’t been able to access the secret service’s files during his short vacation. There was, however, one detail that he hadn’t heard of so far, and it amazed him deeply.

  “There is evidence amidst the starbase wreckage of a Romulan attack fighter. A Renao has confessed to the atrocities, which contradicts the origin of the vessel we found the remains of. Thus far our investigation has only resulted in illogical conclusions. What I require from you, Thokal, is information about this attack fighter. We must know if the Typhon Pact in general and/or the empire in particular are truly behind this attack. Or has Romulus provided the Renao with military equipment? I’m relying on your information-gathering skills.” He nodded. “You have my gratitude, Thokal. Spock out.”

  That was the end of the message. The emblem returned to the monitor, along with a blinking icon that indicated a data package that had been attached to the transmission. Thokal assumed it was all the information Spock had with regard to the Romulan wreckage found in the debris of Starbase 91.