Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike

by Diane Carey

  Two of the creatures moved forward of the rest. They were both of the same species, each head heavy with arching horns, but one was a watercolor ghost of the other. Totally different colors. One had eyes of rum yellow and a complexion of bronze and rattan. The other was paler, with face of bony moon-gray and ivory slashes for eyes.

  Kirk cleared his throat, but paused. Did they want to make the first gesture or not?

  Stiff as a statue, McCoy managed to lean toward him.

  "Come on, we got used to Spock, after all "

  At

  the doctor's mumble, the splendid golden demon moved

  one of his elongated hands. At least he only had two

  of those. So far so good.

  The

  heavy voice thrummed, the same voice they had heard

  on the message over the Enterprise's comm system.

  "Are

  you having trouble.. seeing?"

  What

  a voice. Translators were working all right at the moment.

  Any little reassurance in a storm.

  Kirk

  found his own voice. "Yes. A little."

  The

  creature turned his disturbing head. Fog rolled around

  his horns. "Light."

  A

  mechanical sound, not a beep but more of a twinkle, chittered

  in the background, though they saw none of these

  creatures move. There must be others here too.

  Almost

  imperceptibly at first, the haze began to change.

  Slow as dawn, the area around them became easier

  to see. The sources of colored light intensified

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  FIRST

  STRIKE

  gradually

  until distinction came to the place where they stood

  and the creatures before them gained dimension.

  Like

  the Enterprise's bridge, this bridge was a circle and

  possessed two command chairs and a coffin-shaped helm console,

  but there the resemblance ended. This place was

  more like a voodoo temple than a mechanized vehicle's brain

  trust. Forms were carved into the bulkheads of

  animal-headed trumpet--might've been the alarm system

  or just decoration. Shields and wheels and double-headed metal

  masks, mostly of animal types separated by

  scrolls, banded the ceiling all the way around. Other

  facelike stone carvings stood in punch-outs in the

  bulkheads themselves, empty eye sockets staring, with grotesque

  head shapes and orifices barely notable as mouths

  or noses.

  "Skulls, Captain," McCoy

  murmured without moving his lips more

  than he could get away with. "Real."

  Kirk glanced at

  him. How McCoy knew those things were real and

  not just carvings, he had no idea. Maybe he saw tracks of

  veins or some other bio-clue. That was the doctor's

  job and Kirk didn't question the call.

  The skulls of

  enemies, possibly? Not the best doorbell. The golden creature

  took another step toward them. "I am Zennor,"

  it said. "Vergo of the Wrath."

  Kirk matched the

  step forward, in case such a motion turned out to

  be a custom of some kind.

  "I am Kirk,"

  he responded evenly. "Captain of the Enterprise." When the

  aliens didn't say anything, he added, "We appreciate

  your welcome."

  The huge horns

  bowed. "I cannot offer you welcome, until I know

  you are not the conquerors."

  Could be the

  translator. Or use of the word. Zennor hadn't said "conquerors,"

  but "the conquerors."

  Kirk let that

  one go. No sense claiming not to be the conquerors until he

  had some idea who these people thought were the

  conquerors.

  "Then we offer

  our welcome to you," he said instead. "You're new to

  this space."

  Diane Carey The creature like Zennor, with shell gray horns and a

  banshee face, parted his lips and asked, "This is your

  space?"

  "This space is claimed by the Klingon Empire," Kirk

  said, trying not to sound as if ownership would move the

  moment. "My ship and I represent the United Federation

  of Planets. Our space is not far from here."

  He moved forward now, and squared off with the

  white creature, then paused and with his posture asked

  the unasked question.

  Zennor angled to face them both. "This is Garamanus

  Drovid, Dana of the Wrath."

  Kirk started to respond, but only nodded, because he

  now noticed something very quizzical as his eyes adjusted

  to the eerie light. Each of these beings wore a

  stuffed doll on a belt, each doll about eight or ten inches

  long. Zennor's doll had little twisted horns and a bony

  face with glossy snakish eyes, as did the dolls of each of

  the beings who looked like him. Garamanus's doll was

  the same height as Zennor's, but about twice as stuffed.

  A horned wraith with a fat doll? What kind of day was

  this turning out to be?

  On the beings with the tentacles moving in their heads

  were dolls bearing long wiry strings on their stuffed

  heads. The creature with the rocky jade face had a doll

  with a green face and the same kind of clothing. The

  dolls had the same kinds of clothing the aliens wore,

  right d own to tiny crescent necklaces and animal-head

  brooches. The only trapping missing from the dolls

  seemed to be the circular medallion on the long chain.

  Kirk felt completely baffled. Here he stood, among

  horrific beings with a strong ship and heavy weapons

  who wore soft little toys on their belts. And why was

  Zennor's doll skinny? Was Garamanus's fat doll a rank

  thing? Social order?

  Suddenly he started paying more attention to who said

  what, and why Zennor had included Garamanus in a

  conversation barely begun. What was "Dana" of the

  Wrath, and in what designation compared to "Verge"?

  122 FIRST STRIKE

  Made a difference.

  As the questions flashed through his mind, he decided

  to lay some questions at the aliens' feet too.

  "This is Leonard McCoy, Chief Surgeon of the Enterprise,

  and Lieutenant Uhura, of Communications.

  When you appeared in this space," he began, "there

  was a drop in mass to zero. A solar system was completely

  disrupted. The Klingons assume this is a

  weapon."

  "We have no such weapon," Garamanus rumbled.

  "Then can you explain what happened?"

  "To your solar system?" Zennor spoke. "No. We have

  nothing to change mass."

  Kirk paused. One plus one usually equaled two, but

  when things came down to push or shove, was there any

  way to prove correlation between the mass falloffand the

  appearance of this ship?

  They said they couldn't do such a thing. There would

  be no point in insisting they had.

  "Then," he began carefully, "perhaps you should tell

  us why you're here. Tell us what you want. We may be

  able to help you find it."

  Zennor and Garamanus stared at him like wall paintings

  for a moment; then Zennor simply said, "We have

 
; come from a great distant place to this place to see if it is

  OURS."

  His deep voice took on an abrupt tenor of threat.

  It could have been his imagination, just those shining

  marbled eyes, or the firedog horns scuffing the ceiling.

  "If it's yours?" Kirk echoed, then realized he had

  spoken too sharply. Instinct had made him match that

  sense of threat. At once he was glad Kellen hadn't come

  here, or there'd be another incident. "We have a history

  of more than two centuries in these areas of space."

  Garamanus dipped his rack once, slowly. "Our history

  is more than five thousand years."

  Kirk felt his eyes widen. The translator got that one all right.

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  Diane Carey

  Five thousand years. That was a lot of years.

  If that's what impressed them, he had a few extra

  centuries to pull out of his back pocket.

  "We do have a history of over a hundred thousand

  years on our various home planets, proven by detailed

  archeological and cultural evidence. Perhaps we're better

  served by your telling us where your home planet is?"

  "We do not know it," Zermor said again. "We know

  only where we have been for five thousand years."

  "Jim.. 2' McCoy murmured, but when Kirk looked

  at him he said nothing more. His face suggested a

  troublesome suspicion, though he seemed not to be able

  to back it up now, and remained silent.

  Making bets with currency he didn't have yet, Kirk

  turned to Zennor, taking "Vergo" for what he guessed it

  was. Command couldn't be done by committee, so he

  addressed the one he thought was the captain, and would

  let Zennor handle the affront.

  "Why don't you tell me your story?" he asked, and

  held out a beckoning hand.

  Perhaps it was the hand, perhaps his tone of voice.

  Zennor's strange eyes moved this time as he pondered

  what he heard, then blinked slowly, and Kirk suddenly

  realized he hadn't seen Zennor or Garamanus or the

  other one with the horns blink at all until now. That,

  possibly, was why they appeared more like engravings

  than living creatures.

  Zennor looked at Garamanus and for a brief time the

  two seemed alone here, though they said nothing to each

  other.

  Then Zennor turned a shoulder to the being he called

  his ship's Dana and faced Jim Kirk instead.

  "Five thousand years ago," he began, "there was a war

  between two developed interstellar civilizations. When

  the war ended, one civilization lay in defeat. The survivors

  of the vanquished, many races from many planets,

  were banished to a far distant place in the galaxy,

  'relocated' well away from the victors, dropped in the

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  FIRST STRIKE

  barren middle of nothing, with nothing. No technology,

  no science, no supplies.

  "Many millions perished in the first few decades. The

  civilization fell apart, fell back to barbarism, splintered,

  regressed to the primal. There were plagues, wars, and

  ultimately a massive, extended period of dim, raw survival.

  "As they began to crawl out of this thousand-year

  dimness and to populate three of the planets to which

  they were banished, a belief emerged about another

  place, the home space, where they were meant to be. As

  society and science clawed upward again, the splintered

  spumed began to draw together under one common

  belief.

  "This belief has become the driving force of our

  culture as we evolved once again to high technology.

  Because of the thousand-year dimness there are no

  records with facts of locations, but only words passed

  from descendant to descendant. On the parent's knee

  every offspring learns of the fury to regain our place. It is

  our unifying purpose--to reach out and repossess the

  section of space from which we were evicted.

  "We are the unclean, the out of grace, ill-bidden

  castaways with the fury in our minds, disowned and cast

  down, thrown together by our collective loss of war, with

  only one thing in common--our singular commitment

  to find the way back. It is a culture-wide investment...

  and we are here to spend it."

  Jim Kirk had stared at a lot of inhuman creatures in

  his life, but somehow none of those moments ever

  exactly repeated itself. This one was completely new.

  Evidently there was an invasion of sorts going on, but it

  was the most polite invasion he'd ever witnessed.

  He shifted his feet, stalling for a moment to think, to

  bottle and distill all he had just heard and decide what to

  say back. "So you aren't sure you're in the correct

  area?"

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  Diane Carey

  "We are sure," Garamanus spoke up. "Our Bardoi and the Danai have studied for centuries."

  "Studied what?"

  "Legends, history, biology, customs, and the designs

  we saw in the skies. The positions of stars in the galaxy as

  they have moved over the centuries."

  "Of course, stars lying on the fabric of space," Zennor

  said, "may appear side by side while being lifetimes

  apart. I would like hard proof."

  Garamanus glared fiercely and the others in the alien

  crew stared at their captain.

  Kirk looked from one to the other and sensed Zennor

  was taking a mighty risk. But Zennor hadn't said anything

  any sensible spacefarer wouldn't know. Why were

  they staring at him that way?

  To keep distraction on his side, he elected to take the

  wildest, least predicted step available to him--the one

  McCoy would really hate.

  "Let me invite you to our ship," he suggested, "where

  there are extensive historical and scientific records more

  easily at hand."

  Ignoring Garamanus's silent assault, Zennor gazed at

  Kirk for a moment, during which the sulfurous eyes

  seemed not to see. The Vergo and his Dana could easily

  have been etchings on these bulkheads. But for the

  undulation of the tentacles on the heads of those other

  creatures, the whole gathering might have been merely

  fresco.

  "You may find our ship too cool. We'll go ahead of you

  and prepare the atmosphere so you'll be more comfortable.

  I'll inform our various divisions and labs. Join us

  on board and we'll... look."

  "Morien, when they take us to their ship, I want you to

  analyze this beam of theirs. Find out how it is done, to

  adjust the body and make it travel through open space.

  Then make sure our adjustments to the ship's surface

  cannot be brought down unless we bring them down.

  One mistake, and we could be destroyed from within.

  126 FIRST STRIKE

  Centuries of scientists designed this ship to be invulnerable,

  and within minutes of arrival we found ourselves

  vulnerable. What other surprises await us? We must

  anticipate everything."

  Morien gazed at him in rapt appreciation, then uttered,

  "I will check it all, Vergozen!"r />
  With his tentacles twisting excitedly, he rushed away

  into a clutch of other technicians, who also gazed at their

  leader with disclosed awe at his suspicions.

  Zennor nodded to them modestly, then freed himself

  by turning away, and found he had made the mistake of

  turning toward Garamanus. "And we should send the

  analysis back through the wrinkle, so it can be studied

  and copied. Then our people will also have the ability to

  go through open space without a vessel."

  "You are intelligent to think of that," the Dana said.

  "It is my role to think of it," Zennor responded,

  looking at the ships on the curved screen before them. "I

  must imagine ways for the enemy to use his own talents,

  or he will think of it first."

  "Are they our enemies, then? These people with whom

  you speak so freely?"

  Zennor looked at him without turning his head, sliding

  his eyes to the side as far as they would go. "Until it

  becomes proven that they are not."

  His judicious answer apparently satisfied the Dana, or

  at least even Garamanus was inclined to wait for a

  different moment before designating enemy status. Now

  began a struggle for the hearts of the crew, Zennor knew,

  between the day-to-day leader and the leader of cons,

  between the Vergo who made the mission real and the

  Dana whose spiritual strings had kept the people unified

  and motivated. The crew would be devoted to Zennor

  for the crude purposes o f the mission, but these were the

  most fervent of the fervent and would follow Garamanus

  too, should Zennor falter.