Star Trek®: Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows

by Marco Palmieri

  She undid the clasp on her minimal top and let it fall. But Jaza grasped her wrists, still preoccupied. “As my slave, perhaps. But slavery…it’s so contingent on the good intentions of the masters. It can so easily be corrupted.” He felt a twinge of guilt, remembering his own feelings when he had first purchased Christine. He had relished the opportunity to debase a Terran, to avenge the evils her breed had inflicted on Bajor. He had not beaten or raped her, but he had enjoyed making her work herself to exhaustion or humiliate herself for the amusement of his friends. But she had borne it with unexpected strength and quiet dignity, defying his expectations about Terran barbarism. He had come to respect her, showing her more kindness, giving her more liberties to make amends for his earlier treatment. He had learned of her sharp intelligence and taught her literacy and science and Bajoran culture, and she had amazed him with her ability to grow into a truly civilized being despite her heritage. She had given him her body freely by then, and he was irrevocably in love with her before he even realized it.

  “What if something happened to me, Christine? What if I died or had to give you up, and you ended up the property of someone like Khegh?”

  Christine held his gaze. “I would die before I would live without you. Belonging to you is what gives my life meaning. I am nothing except what you made me, Najem.”

  Then her lips and hands went to work again, and he let himself forget his doubts and surrender to her passion. He may have owned her life, but she owned his heart. And it was immensely comforting to know that she would always stand by his side.

  “Mr. Riker, Ms. Lavena, report to the bridge, please.”

  Will Riker didn’t look up from sharpening his mek’leth, merely scoffing at the arbitrary formality the captain insisted on as though they were a military crew instead of a small bunch of raiders. But Aili Lavena hopped out of the bed they shared and began donning the moisture suit and hood that she wore most of the time to keep her blue-green skin and the two wispy gill crests on her head and back from drying out. Back on her homeworld, her people stayed close to the water, an option she didn’t have on this crate. It wouldn’t be long, in fact, before the Selkie outgrew her amphibious phase and had to spend the rest of her life underwater. Riker wouldn’t miss her, though; in fact, he was benefiting from it now, for she was looking forward to the life of hedonism that came in a Selkie’s aquatic, postparenting phase and was thus eager to indulge her sexuality as much as possible in order to feel more “mature.” And once she entered that phase, not only would she be unable to do it on land, but her four ample breasts would flatten out for streamlining. At that point, Riker would have no more use for her.

  Once Lavena had dressed, she glared at Riker. “Are you just going to sit there? The captain wants us.”

  “Yeah, yeah. When I’m ready.”

  Her glare redirected itself to the mek’leth. “Honestly. You love that hunk of metal more than me.”

  “Perceptive girl.” Indeed, this blade had never let him down. It had belonged to his family’s Klingon owner on Luna, where he’d grown up. He’d used it to kill the father who had beaten him constantly for fifteen years, and then to kill the Klingon and escape the Sol system. He’d shaped himself in its image—cold, sharp, ruthless, a precision instrument that killed and never asked why.

  “Hasn’t there ever been anyone you cared about, Riker? Anyone who taught you what it was like to feel for another person?”

  “You mean love?” He scoffed. “A trick of our genes, using us to propagate themselves. Nobody uses me. I use them.”

  “Oh? Then how come, after five years in the resistance, you’ve never had your own command?”

  In an eyeblink, he had her against the bulkhead, the mek’leth at her throat. “Do you want me to gut you like a salmon?”

  She trembled, knowing he was capable of it, but remained defiant. “Never mind. I just got the answer to my question.”

  After another moment, he let the sword drop, not wanting to waste it on her. He backhanded her across the cheek instead. “What makes you think I want a command in this gang of soft-hearted fools? I just stick around for the action.” He leered at her, making it a double entendre.

  Lavena shook her head and stormed out. Riker wasn’t bothered; he knew she’d come back to his bed, for want of other options. After wiping the blade clean of her skin oils, Riker set it down with a sigh, figuring he should get to the bridge before that gray-haired fool of a captain started pestering him. It was a short trip, since this was a small vessel for its power. In moments, he was on the bridge, seeing through the ports that they’d dropped to impulse around a planet that must be their destination, Lru-Irr. Lavena kept her eyes on the helm console, studiously ignoring him.

  “This spy of yours better be on the level,” Riker told the captain.

  Ian Troi turned his balding head to take in his first officer. “Not to worry, Will,” said the seventyish rebel commander. “Christine Vale has earned a position of trust among the researchers. Otherwise, she would never have been left alone to contact us. I think we can be confident this isn’t a wild-goose chase.”

  “I still say it’s a trap.”

  “You say everything’s a trap,” Troi said, a smile crinkling his rounded, avuncular face.

  “And sometimes I’m right.”

  “I can vouch for her,” Lavena said, not speaking directly to Riker but refuting him to the bridge in general. “Christine wouldn’t betray us.”

  The other occupant of the bridge spoke up. “Trap or no,” said Tuvok, “it is imperative that we take the risk. Even aside from our ethical obligation to protect the Irriol, we must prevent the Alliance from harnessing their psionic abilities as a weapon.”

  “So what if the way to do that is killing them all?” Riker shot back. “Are we here to spout platitudes or get the job done?”

  “Your eagerness for bloodshed notwithstanding, Mr. Riker, it would be prohibitively difficult for the few of us to eradicate a planetary population. Our goal is to sabotage the Alliance research outpost and foment resistance among the Irriol. Remember, they would be as great an asset to us as they would be to the Alliance.”

  “You and the captain can worry about that,” Riker told the Vulcan. “I’m here to kill Alliance scum. You want that place blown to hell, I’ll take care of it. But if any of the locals go up with it, I won’t shed a tear.”

  “That, Mr. Riker, is self-evident.”

  “Enough, you two,” Troi said. “We shall do this my way. We protect the Irriol if at all possible…but if, and only if, it comes to that, we do what we must to keep the Alliance from exploiting their abilities. Understood?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Tuvok said. Riker just grunted, but inwardly he was seething. What kind of a leader did this man think he was, anyway? His idea of a command decision was to compromise right down the middle.

  Oh, well. With any luck, the old fool would get himself killed, and Riker could take over the Deanna. Captain Troi had named the ship after some long-lost kid of his who’d died or been stolen or something; Riker could never be bothered to listen to the old man’s sob stories about his tragic family history. But the captain nurtured and tended the ship as though it were his own child. As a result, Deanna was one of the most beautiful, swiftest, and smoothest-running ships in the rebel fleet. Riker had to give Troi credit for that, at least. But that wouldn’t stop him from claiming this ship for his own when he got his chance. He deserved her—her speed, her power—more than the old man did. And once he could possess her, he could cut loose of this pitiful rebellion and be his own master, dependent on no one.

  Riker kept this to himself, of course. Troi was not so circumspect, laying an affectionate hand on the bulkhead. “Once more unto the breach, my girl,” he whispered, as though a hunk of duranium could hear him. “Ms. Lavena, do you have the vector Ms. Vale gave us?”

  “Aye, sir. I’m reading a narrow gap in the sensor grid. I should just be able to squeeze her through it.”


  “I have no doubt you can, Aili. Take her in.”

  After penetrating the orbital grid, Deanna entered the atmosphere around the curve of the planet from the Alliance outpost and proceeded at low altitude, using a mountain range for cover from ground sensors. Upon landing, Captain Troi, Riker, Tuvok, and Lavena disembarked, leaving Olivia Bolaji and Gian Sortollo to mind the ship. Tuvok surveyed the landscape with interest as he exited the vessel. As a disciple of the late Emperor Spock, Tuvok valued scientific curiosity for its own sake as well as for its tactical benefits, though naturally the latter took primacy. And the empathically linked ecosystem of Lru-Irr was well worthy of study.

  Tuvok opened his mind, taking care to do so passively, for preserving the secrecy of Vulcan telepathy was of the highest priority. But he detected little that he could be sure of, only a subliminal awareness that might be a mere projection of his own expectations. As he scanned for life signs, however, Tuvok noticed something. When their ship had landed, the local avians and fauna had fled the area, and now more distant animals seemed to be retreating as well. This could be simply because those animals saw or heard the flight of the avians, but the overall movements of the life signs seemed more coordinated than one would expect.

  As the party gained distance from the ship, they began to see various small animals following the normal pattern for this world—the four limbs typical of most vertebrates, plus a pair of extra appendages flanking the mouth. The specific forms those buccal appendages took varied from species to species, though. Tuvok knew the Irriol had two thick probosces ending in grasping digits and were covered in rhomboidal keratinous plates. But in the avians he saw, the buccal appendages had evolved into short, somewhat beaklike pincers. A small, spiny ground mammal had short appendages ending in heavy claws for burrowing. And in the trees, he spotted an animal brachiating past using its long prehensile trunks and hind limbs, while its forelimbs hugged its babies to its chest.

  While Riker dismissed these animals once he’d determined they were no threat, Captain Troi continued to observe them, suggesting that he, too, valued scientific curiosity. He seemed disappointed, though, and after a time said, “I’d expected to see more evidence of symbiotic behavior.”

  “The gestalt,” Tuvok explained, “is not a full symbiosis but merely a subconscious awareness of large-scale patterns within the biosphere. According to the reports smuggled out by Ms. Vale, it is more an intuitive response to perceived conditions than a conscious cooperation. Superficially, it would not appear very different from the normal homeostatic processes of any planetary ecosystem.”

  “I see. We’re looking on too small a scale to see it.”

  “Indeed.” He showed Troi the scanner readout. “For example, our arrival has driven the animals of our landing zone into retreat. This has served to concentrate them more at the perimeter of the zone, and that, in turn, is drawing a number of predators. Holistically speaking, this could be seen as analogous to a body’s immune response; the increase of predators surrounding a potential danger could serve as a defense mechanism to protect the larger biosphere.”

  Riker had his phaser out. “Are they about to attack?”

  “No—merely present in increased numbers on the periphery.”

  “You heard Tuvok,” Troi added. “They’re not reacting to us but to the way their prey animals have moved in response to us. As long as we don’t provoke a reaction by confronting them directly, we should be all right. Yes?”

  “As ‘all right’ as one can be in the wilds of any planet.” Troi nodded, taking Tuvok’s point and remaining alert. Tuvok was impressed with the man’s intelligence and wondered what he might have become in the free and democratic society that Spock had envisioned—and what the odds were that such a society could be created in what remained of the Terran’s lifetime.

  Soon they reached their rendezvous point, a crevice in a mountainside. The fistrium deposits made scanning difficult, so Tuvok listened carefully for predators or Alliance troops. His ears registered only one set of light footfalls, mere moments before an auburn-haired Terran, no doubt Christine Vale, emerged from cover. Her stealth was impressive.

  But perhaps unwise, given what the captain called Riker’s “itchy trigger finger.” The large bearded man spun, swinging his weapon to bear. But Lavena was already rushing forward. Riker held his fire but did not lower the weapon. His fingers tensed on its grip as Lavena and Vale fell into each other’s embrace and kissed passionately.

  “Ohh, I’ve missed that,” Vale said once they disengaged. “It’s been too long, Aili. You don’t know what it’s like, having to pretend with that Bajoran scum.” She shook her head. “He thinks he’s so enlightened, the way he coddles and patronizes me, as if it makes up for all the humiliation—” She noticed the others and broke off. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to them. “I’m babbling, aren’t I? It’s just been so long since I’ve been able to talk openly about what I feel—”

  “Quite all right, Ms. Vale,” the captain said. He introduced himself and his team, then added, “But we must dispense with further pleasantries, since we have a lot of Irriol to save. Can you help us contact their leaders?”

  “They don’t have leaders in the usual sense,” Vale told him. “It’s more of a loose clan structure. But I can take you to the nearest village. At least,” she added with a grimace, “the nearest one that isn’t being culled for research subjects right now.”

  As they proceeded, Lavena and Vale held hands and conversed softly. Tuvok was aware that Lavena had recruited Vale during her months on Bajor; as a member of a neutral species, the Selkie had been able to travel freely there, providing valuable intelligence to the resistance leaders on Terok Nor. However, as he told the captain sotto voce, “I was not aware that the relationship between Ms. Lavena and Ms. Vale was an intimate one.”

  Troi gave him a wry look. “I didn’t think Vulcans had much interest in gossip.”

  Tuvok lifted a scathing brow. “We do not. But our trust in Ms. Vale is based upon Ms. Lavena’s assessment. If her objectivity is in doubt—”

  “I trust Aili’s judgment,” Troi said. But then he softened and gave a slight shrug. “But I still look out for her. I checked up on Ms. Vale before I approved this mission. Her story checks out. Dr. Jaza is well known for his resentment of Terrans, and he’s been seen humiliating her in public.” He shook his head. “I can only imagine what he’s done to her in private. In fact, I prefer not to.”

  Tuvok frowned. Ian Troi was more agreeable than many in the resistance and was looked on by many as a father figure of sorts. But that also appeared to be his weakness. He had been involuntarily separated from his family over three decades ago, and that deprivation seemed to have created a yearning in him, an eagerness for surrogate familial bonds. He trusted too easily as a result. A case in point was his willingness to bring William Riker on this mission. Tuvok had worked with similar Terrans before and found them too driven by their own self-interest and bloodlust to be reliable. Riker in particular had a frustrated ambition for command that led him to see Troi as a rival. Tuvok was not convinced the man would protect the captain if it came to that. Which was why Tuvok considered it incumbent upon himself to stay close to Troi and see to his safety.

  Tuvok realized he was reacting with excessive anxiety. While it was logical to be alert to possible threats, the emotional component of his response was distasteful. His control was no doubt weakened due to the erratic meditation schedule that life in the resistance enforced. He quashed the anxiety and focused again on logic.

  Up ahead, Riker seemed to have managed his initial jealousy toward Vale and was speaking to the two women, making a lewd suggestion involving the three of them. Vale took offense and struck his cheek. Lavena, despite her initial curiosity at Riker’s suggestion, spoke angrily in support of her friend. But Riker ignored her, grabbing Vale’s wrist and shouting, “Nobody does that to me!” as she cried out in pain.

  “Will! Stop that!” Troi was running
forward before Tuvok could react. Just then, a signal from his scanner distracted him. They had just come around a large fistrium-laced outcropping, and on the other side—

  “Ambush!” he cried. But it was too late. In moments, they were flanked by a pack of predators built somewhat like le-matya or Terran felinoids but with four long, tusklike claws on either side of the mouth. An additional predator jumped down from the outcropping, cutting off their retreat. But another was already charging Troi—perhaps recognizing the aged captain as the weakest member of the pack. It pounced before he could finish drawing his weapon, knocking him down. Tuvok was firing his own phaser before they hit the ground. But it was too late. Those razor-sharp tusk-claws had dug into Troi’s neck, and the impact of the massive creature had shattered bone. The dead weight of the creature collapsing atop him in this high gravity finished the job.

  Tuvok realized he had been a fool. The anxiety he had felt had been a perception of the empathic gestalt of this world, a legitimate warning of an approaching threat. On this world above all, he should have trusted his intuition.

  But there was no logic in self-recrimination during a crisis. Riker and Lavena were already firing at the predators, clearing a path for their retreat. Tuvok joined them and Vale in making for the nearby trees, firing back at the pack hunters as they ran.

  Then a screech came from the sky. Riker spotted a large avian swooping toward him and raised his arm to fire, but the beaklike pincers ripped his phaser from his hand, almost taking the hand with it. Tuvok shot down a second avian as it dove toward him, but a third ripped through Lavena’s hood and tore her gill membranes. Luckily, that was not a serious injury in this phase of her life cycle.