Faces of Fire

by Michael Jan Friedman

  "As you wish, First Minister."

  Carol Marcus would have sworn she was alone in her garden, planting new neighbors for the remaining fireblossoms, until some sixth sense prompted her to look up—and see Mr. Spock standing at the entrance to the enclosure.

  Gathering her composure, she asked, "Have you been there long?"

  The Vulcan shrugged, though it was a more subtle gesture than a human would have made. "Just a few moments," he responded. And without offering anything more, he slowly scanned the garden.

  His eyes were darkly inquisitive. And it wasn't only by sight that he explored the place; every so often, his nostrils flared as if he were breathing in the commingled scents.

  But had he really come to sample the botanical variety, or was he on to her? Had he stumbled cross the truth about David, despite her efforts to prevent it? She couldn't be sure, not just by looking at him. Vulcans didn't exactly wear their hearts on their sleeves. Nor could she very well ask.

  But she wasn't comfortable with the silence, either. So she said: "I understand you're making good progress with G-seven."

  Spock nodded. "Some—though not as much, or as quickly, as I had hoped." He indicated the Klingon specimens with a tilt of his head. "And you?"

  She smiled as pleasantly as she could. "Plugging away. Trying to see if we've got anything tough enough to keep up with the fireblossoms."

  For a moment, he scrutinized the Klingon plants, and his eyes seemed to lose their focus for just an instant. The first officer straightened, his lips fattening in a frown, as if he felt guilty about abandoning his work even for a minute, then he returned his attention to her.

  "Thank you," said the Vulcan formally, "for allowing me to enjoy your garden."

  This time, it was Carol's turn to shrug. "My pleasure," she told him, though she couldn't mean it under the circumstances.

  As Spock walked back to the lab dome, she sighed like a balloon with a slow leak. Apparently, her secret was still safe.

  From the playground, the domed colony buildings in the distance looked like pearls half buried in the ocher-colored ground. And the lab dome, David noted, looked like the biggest pearl of all.

  That's where his mother was, probably. Unless, of course, she was in her garden.

  The lab dome was also where Mr. Spok was bound to be, talking with Dr. Boudreau about the G-7 unit, which was about all he'd done since he got here nearly a week ago. Mr. Spock was supposed to fix something the unit was doing wrong—though Dr. Boudreau didn't seem to think it was doing anything wrong.

  It was all kind of confusing. But it was also important, especially to David's mother, so he tried to understand it. Sometimes he even joined his mom in the lab for a while, listening as she explained what kind of problem she was facing that afternoon and how she was trying to solve it.

  Unfortunately, he couldn't visit the lab today, even if his mother was in it. He was supposed to avoid Mr. Spock as best he could—just as he'd had to avoid all the other people from the starship, when they were still here.

  The only exception had been Dr. McCoy. Everyone else was off-limits.

  His mother hadn't made it very clear why any of that should be. In fact, she hadn't seemed entirely sure herself. But she'd emphasized it over an over again, so David knew it was a big thing to her. Even if he didn't have any other reason, he guessed that one was good enough.

  "Hey, Marcus!"

  He turned. Riordan was sitting on one of the top rungs of the playground's white plastic monkey bars. Pfeffer and Wan were twisting themselves around a couple of the lower rungs, while Medford and Garcia tossed a football back and forth.

  "Daydreaming again?" Riordan jeered. "How come you're always a million miles away?"

  David didn't answer. He just walked over to the white plastic swingset and sat down on one of the swings.

  "My dad says daydreamers never get anywhere," Pfeffer added, looking to Riordan for approval. "He says they dream their whole lives away."

  "Sounds right to me," the older boy decided. Then he whispered something down to Pfeffer and they both laughed, their breath making white puffs on the air.

  Since the fissure-jumping incident, their jabs at him had become more frequent. He imagined he could hear what they were whispering.

  … father … got no father …

  Planting his feet and launching himself backward, he began to swing. Immediately, the air felt even colder against his face. And as he kicked higher and higher and lost himself in the hard, blue sky, he found it easier and easier to forget Riordan and Pfeffer and their little cruelties.

  In fact, if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself somewhere else. He could almost make himself think he was back on Earth.

  That's where he was born, where the whole human race started, before it expanded out into space in a thousand different directions. And it was green there, lush and full of life—full of grass and trees and birds and animals.

  Not like the planets his mother had taken him to over the last several years, places that had no growing things, or so few there might as well have been none at all. Some were cold like this one and some were hot, but none of them was even the least bit like Earth.

  "Hey, Marcus!"

  It was Riordan's voice, of course. No doubt he'd seen another opportunity to call David a daydreamer and was pouncing on it.

  This time, though, David would keep his dream intact. He would stay inside it, happy and safe. And Riordan could shout himself purple—he wasn't going to get the satisfaction of a response.

  "Hey, Marcus! Marcus!" That was Pfeffer, joining in on the fun.

  Ignore it, David told himself. Don't give in. Don't let them take your green place away from you.

  "Marcus!

  The last yelp hadn't come from either Riordan or Pfeffer. It was a girl's voice—Medford's.

  David opened his eyes. The other children were clustered around the swingset, their eyes drawn to the colony buildings. He looked that way also and saw a bunch of dark figures making its way from dome to dome. From a distance, they looked as tiny and harmless as any of the colonists.

  But they weren't colonists. And they weren't the Starfleet officers, either. As David leaped from the swing and landed on the sandy ground, he saw a flash of light among the domes and heard someone down there cry out.

  That's a cry for help, he realized. And that flash came from some kind of weapon. But why? Why would anyone want to hurt the colonists?

  And then, while he was still trying to put the pieces together, he heard Pfeffer moan a single word that explained everything.

  "Klingons."

  Chapter Nine

  DAVID TOOK A second look at the dark figures scurrying all around and knew that Pfeffer was right. They were Klingons—the worst killers in the galaxy.

  It didn't seem real. Those were their homes down there, the places where they lived. How could there be strangers there with ugly bumps on their heads and eyes full of hate?

  He swallowed. Their parents—his mother—they were all interrible danger.

  "They need us," Garcia said in a surprisingly husky voice. "We've got to help them."

  As he started down the hill toward the colony, Medford grabbed his arm. "No way," she said. "Are you nuts? You think you can stop the Klingons all by yourself?"

  Garcia struggled, but Medford wouldn't let go. He began to drag her after him down the hill. Before David knew it, he had a hold on the boy's other arm. Together, he and Medford kept Garcia from running off.

  "Let me loose!" the dark-skinned boy wailed. "Let me go!"

  But after a while, his white-hot burst of courage seemed to fizzle out, to turn cold. And finally, they were able to let go of him.

  After that, no one moved. No one knew what to do.

  For what seemed like a long time, they stood there, watching the dark figures swarm over the domes. Every so often, there was a flash, but there were no more yells for help. Wan began to cry, silently at first, and then a lit
tle louder.

  Her sobbing, soft as it was, roused something in David. It got his brain working again. It brought him back to reality.

  "They're going to come for us next," he said out loud. "Pretty soon, they're going to check the colony roster on the computer and realize we're missing. And then they'll come after us."

  Pfeffer looked at him. "But we're just kids."

  David shook his head. "No. We're humans. I don't know what they're doing here, but you can be sure they don't want witnesses, even if we are just kids."

  Medford darted a glance at him: "Does that mean they're going to …" She couldn't quite finish the thought.

  But David finished it in his head: kill our parents. "I don't know," he replied. "Maybe they're just going to lock them up, so they can't see anything."

  Medford nodded. Wan, too. That's what they all wanted to believe. But David knew there were no guarantees, even if he wasn't saying so.

  He regarded the others. "I say we go back into the hills. We'll be safe there, at least for a while."

  They looked at one another, but in the end all eyes fell on Riordan, just as they always did. Expressionless, he shook his head. "No. It's stupid to run. It'll only get them mad at us."

  David was shocked. "What are you saying?" he asked. "That we should give ourselves up?

  It came out more like a challenge than he had intended. The older boy's eyes grew wide suddenly.

  And in that moment, David saw the fear in them—not the simple fear for family and self that resided in the rest of them, but something that ran much deeper. A wild and unreasoning fear—of what? Of losing control of the other kids? Of being thought of as a chicken?

  Whatever the reason for it, David saw it. And Riordan knew that he saw it and hated him for it.

  "All I know is," the older boy said, "if we run and they catch us, it'll make it ten times worse. Who do you want to have to face—a Klingon or an angry Klingon?"

  With staring clarity, David understood what Riordan was doing. He was scared to take to the hills, no matter how much sense it made. As calm as he appeared, he wasn't thinking rationally. And he was trying to make the rest of them scared in the same way he was, so he wouldn't look like a coward.

  But David wasn't about to let that happen. He wasn't going to let Riordan get them all killed so he could salvage his self-respect.

  They had to survive. They had to live long enough to help their parents—not Garcia's way, not by rushing in, but finding an opening and taking advantage of it.

  And if the opportunity never came, at least there would be survivors to tell Starfleet what happened. At least there would be someone to point a finger at the Klingons and say: "It was them. They did it."

  "They don't have to catch us," he replied. "We know those hills better than they do. We can hide in a million different places."

  "That's true," Garcia chimed in. "We can hide where they'll never find us."

  "Remember those caves?" asked Wan in her delicate Voice. "The ones we found the first time we went out there?"

  "She's right," Medford affirmed. "We could stay in the caves."

  Riordan licked his lips. He looked like a cornered animal. And cornered animals were dangerous.

  "You're out of your minds," the older boy said. "These are Klingons. They have sensors and stuff like that."

  That was true. David hadn't considered the point.

  "It doesn't matter," he responded. "Sooner or later, Starfleet's going to find out what happened and come help us. All we have to do is hold out until then."

  Riordan shook his head again. "You're talking like a little kid." His voice had gotten louder, more confident. "Dr. Boudreau hardly ever talks to Starfleet. It could be weeks before they figure out something's wrong and send a ship."

  "Maybe months, even," Pfeffer piped up.

  "No," David countered, remembering the Vulcan. "Mr. Spock is here. They have to come back and get him, right?'

  The older boy's eyes narrowed. He'd forgotten about Spock, obviously. "Still," he said, "it's going to be a while before they come back for him. And by then, we could all be tortured to death."

  "Tortured? To death?" Wan echoed.

  Even Medford seemed to flinch.

  David bit his lip. It was just like back at the fissure. Riordan was too good at making the others think what he wanted them to think. He could make courage seem like stupidity and common sense seem like cowardice.

  The older boy couldn't be beaten at that game. At least, not by any of the other kids.

  And, the longer they argued, the greater the chance that one of the Klingons would spot them. Then they'd be caught for sure.

  David looked at Pfeffer and Medford and Wan and Garcia. He saw that they were still on the fence—that they still might fall on either side of it. But only if he made them decide now. Only if Riordan didn't have a chance to sway them any further.

  He took a deep breath. "Look," he told them, "I'm not going to just stand here and wait for them to find us. I'm going. Who's with me?"

  Nobody moved, not even Medford, who had appeared to be on his side only a few moments ago. She seemed like she wanted to follow him, but she just wasn't a hundred percent sure David's way was the right way, and this was too big a decision to make lightly. There was too much riding on it.

  "Well?" he prodded.

  No one responded.

  Riordan sneered at him. "Nobody's going with you, Marcus. Can't you see that? They're staying here with me."

  David didn't want to go up into the hills alone. He didn't want to leave his friends at the mercy of the Klingons. But he couldn't force them to do what they didn't want to do. Sighing, he turned his back on the other children and started up from the playground.

  He'd failed. Maybe the others hadn't been as undecided as he thought. Maybe Riordan had won the game before it ever began.

  He wasn't going to think about that now. He was going to concentrate on getting away from here and finding the best place to hide himself. Before he'd gone half a dozen steps, however, he heard a thin, high-pitched wail from down among the colony buildings. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw yet another flash. The scream ended.

  David shivered. That could have been his mother. Part of him wanted to rush down the hill as Garcia had, but he held himself in check. Suddenly, Medford started after him. He could see she had tears in her eyes, but she was coming along. And then, even more unexpectedly, Wan followed. And Garcia as well.

  That left Riordan and Pfeffer standing in the playground, in the shadow of the monkey bars. The older boy glared at David and his companions.

  "You're crazy," he barked. "You're just going to make it worse for everybody."

  But his words seemed strangely flat and lifeless. Riordan had lost his hold on them, David realized. He wasn't sure how, but Riordan's control over them had been broken.

  Pfeffer looked at the older boy as if he was seeing him for the first time. Riordan looked back.

  "Don't tell me you're going to go, too," he snickered.

  Pfeffer swallowed. He couldn't answer. But a moment later, he left Riordan to join the others.

  The older boy laughed. "Lamebrains. Skeezits. You're making a big mistake."

  Still a little amazed at the way things had turned out, David turned his back on Riordan and resumed his trek up the hillside. The others fell in behind him. He could hear the shuffle of their feet on the sandy incline.

  Maybe the older boy would come running after them, too, he mused. Maybe his fear of the Klingons would override his fear of being thought a coward and he would come marching up the hill with some clever remark calculated to distract them from his defeat.

  But Riordan didn't join them. He just shouted at their backs, his voice cracking like a whip in the chill air.

  "You'll see," he called after them. "You'll see I was right."

  Riordan was still standing in the playground, glowering at them, when they topped the rise and lost sight of him.

 
Carol saw it first out of the corner of her eye: a flash of blue-white light outside her garden enclosure. But when she turned toward the source of the flash, there was nothing there.

  She was about to chalk it up to her imagination when she saw a whole series of flashes, one right after the other. And then, as she sat back on her haunches and tried to figure out what they might be, a scream for help pierced the stillness.

  Her blood froze.

  Dropping the Vegan fern she held in her hands, she scrambled for the entrance and would have gone tearing out of the place altogether, were it not for the sight that stopped her like a duranium wall:

  Klingons.

  A lot of them, too—maybe as many as twenty—swaggering about in their heavy, dark body armor. And they were herding her colleagues out of Boudreau's laboratory dome, waving their weapons around as if they were only too eager to use them.

  Carol knew now what the flashes had been. Disruptor fire. Had they actually killed anyone? Her stomach clenched painfully at the thought.

  As she watched from the enclosure, one of the invaders shoved Irma Garcia, apparently to expedite her exit from the lab dome. But he pushed too hard, and the woman fell to the ground.

  The Klingon growled something Carol couldn't make out and brought his booted foot back as if to kick Garcia. But Boudreau came between them, his hands up in a gesture of peace. Unfortunately, peace wasn't what the Klingons had in mind. A second marauder dealt Boudreau a blow to the face that bloodied the scientist's mouth.

  Carol almost gave into her reflexes and came to her friend's aid. But she stopped herself.

  Or rather, he stopped her. Because as the Klingons picked up their victims and got them moving again, Boudreau happened to turn toward the enclosure and catch sight of her. Their eyes met, and his were full of fear. But he had the presence of mind to look away again—and quickly.

  That's when she realized that she hadn't been spotted yet and that if she played her cards right, she could be the colonists' ace in the hole. She pulled her head back inside the enclosure.