The Face of the Unknown

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Captain,” Lekur Zan said, “I’d like a word with you . . .”

  * * *

  At an opportune moment, Spock and Nisu slipped away from the reception for a private conversation. “I have much to thank you for, Spock,” the newly minted ambassador said. “When we met, I thought you were the one in need of rescue. But you have done so much, not only for my world, but for me. You have opened my eyes.”

  “We have assisted each other,” Spock assured her. “You owe me no debt.”

  “Still . . .” Her gaze moved toward his. “I wonder if you have given more thought to what your future might hold.”

  “I believe it is more important to concentrate on the present for now, Nisu. As you helped me to realize, I have been influenced by drives of which I was not consciously aware. I must refocus on understanding and mastering myself before I can properly assess the best path for my future, whether professionally or personally.”

  “That is wise,” Nisu replied. Some moments later, she added, “Spock . . . I would be glad to aid you in . . . further exploring your inner self. We shall have much time together on the trip to your starbase.”

  Though Spock had found her assistance invaluable, he hesitated at the subtext he sensed from her. “Nisu . . . one thing I can say for sure is that I am not currently seeking a new bondmate. That, too, is a decision I should not make until I have gained greater understanding of myself and my needs. Now that I understand the impulse within myself, I should be able to contain it.

  “Nor would it be appropriate to seek any commitment from you at this time. You have just become aware of a new range of opportunities in your own life, and you should be free to explore all the options available to you.”

  She absorbed his words in contemplative silence. “You’re quite right,” Nisu finally said. “We should both be open to all the possibilities the universe has to offer. If we come together again in the future, let it happen because we deemed it the best of all the available options.”

  “A logical approach.”

  “Most logical.” They paused, having reached Spock’s quarters. “Still,” Nisu pointed out, “we do have the next few days.”

  “Indeed,” he replied. “I am sure there is still much we can learn from each other.”

  He opened the door and escorted Nisu into his quarters. The panel slid shut behind them, and her eyes rose and locked with his.

  Captain’s Log, supplemental.

  With no Dassik raids reported for more than a week, Ambassador Nisu well on her way to Earth aboard the Ulysses, and Commissioner Gopal’s belated ­approval of David Bailey’s official status as ­diplomatic liaison between the First Federation and the Dassik, I believe we can now put the Dassik crisis behind us at last. As for the Enterprise, Mister Scott’s teams and the repair crews of Starbase 8 have nearly completed the new upgrades to the bridge and main engineering, and the starbase engineers have been eager to study the gift provided to us by the First Federation, a holographic environment simulator for our recreation deck. While Lekur Zan assured us the technology was safe so long as it was properly used, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers is wary when it comes to untried alien technologies and will observe the Enterprise as a test bed before deciding whether it is safe to distribute the technology to other starships.

  Now, with our upgrades and crew rotations completed, the Enterprise is ready to resume our mission of exploration. Unfortunately, we will soon be losing Ensign Chekov, who has requested a temporary ground transfer to undergo Starfleet security training and will be departing the ship at our next rendezvous. But his replacement, Lieutenant Arex Na Eth, comes highly recommended, and I am confident that he will fill the navigator’s seat ably until Chekov’s return.

  “Stellar cartography reports the latest star maps are uploaded and integrated, Captain,” Chekov announced, tapping a few last adjustments into the astrogator display. “Setting course for intercept point with the Arcadia. Estimated time to rendezvous is ninety-one hours.”

  “Try not to sound so eager to leave us, Ensign,” Kirk teased him.

  “I am not, sir! There are things I am eager to do . . . but I wish I did not have to leave to do them.”

  “It’s fine, Mister Chekov. I’m sure we’ll find a way to muddle through without you somehow.”

  “Starbase 8 has granted clearance to depart, Captain,” said Uhura, one hand against the receiver in her ear. Her newest trainee, a bronze-maned Caitian female named M’Ress, watched over her shoulder as she worked.

  “All moorings cleared,” Sulu reported, looking back over his right shoulder. “We’re ready to go fill in the gaps in those star maps.” Kirk was still getting used to the sight of the secondary exit that had been installed to the port side, beside the main viewscreen.

  “Engines ready and rarin’ to go, sir,” Scotty added with a huge grin.

  After a moment, McCoy tapped the captain’s shoulder. “Jim?”

  “I heard, Bones,” Kirk said. “I was just thinking. About the Web of Worlds . . . about what it would be like not to have this opportunity to see the stars.”

  “An opportunity that will now be available to them all,” Spock added, coming down from his station to stand behind the captain’s chair in a position that mirrored McCoy’s. “So there is no longer any need to dwell on its absence.”

  McCoy frowned. “I wonder, Jim. Are they really better off now?”

  Spock riposted with a lift of his eyebrow. “Without our intervention, Doctor, they would have ceased to exist within two decades.”

  “I know that, Spock. But what they had before . . . peace, security . . . hundreds of worlds and cultures to explore without needing to expose themselves to the dangers of the galaxy . . . it was their own Shangri-La. A kind of paradise.”

  “Cherela posed its own dangers, Doctor, as you remarked at great length during our stay there. And the cultures of the Web had their own internal dissent and conflicts—even aside from the price their extended isolation would have inflicted upon the Dassik. Paradise is an illusion and invariably an impermanent one. There is no value in living an illusion.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” McCoy said. “Some illusions can be pretty useful. Like scarecrows. And corbomite.” He threw Spock a sidelong look. “Or the supposed absence of emotion, hm? Isn’t that just as much a false front as Cherela’s clouds?”

  “What illusions would you prefer, Doctor? The illusion of fear? Of hate? The false fronts that leaders like Tirak and Grun employ to entrap their followers by catering to their baser emotions? Logic provides the one thing Cherela did not, Doctor: clarity.”

  The doctor studied him. “Mister Spock, I’ll grant you that fear is one of the worst emotions to live your life by. But when the right emotion hits you—like love, or awe, or even grief at times—it can bring you greater clarity than anything else in this universe. And I pray that one day, you will experience that for yourself, Mister Spock.”

  “And on that day, you shall weep, Doctor,” Spock said. “For you shall have no more worlds to conquer.”

  McCoy stared, dumbstruck. Kirk chuckled along with the rest of the bridge crew, then said: “Alexander, Spock? I think that for today, at least, I prefer Tennyson. ‘Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.’ ” He leaned forward in his chair. “Mister Sulu, ‘my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset.’ Ahead, warp factor two.”

  Acknowledgments

  The main acknowledgment here must go to Jerry Sohl, writer of “The Corbomite Maneuver,” which was the first Star Trek episode I ever saw. I was five and a half years old, and I was intrigued by the promo I’d seen for a show called Star Trek, which as far as I could tell was about a funny-looking airplane that only flew at night. So my ­parents let me stay up to watch it with them when it came on, and it was “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and I was ­utterly hooked. Seeing that episode was my introduction to
Star Trek, to space, to science, and to science fiction, and it therefore set the course of my entire life. So naturally this episode has always been a particular favorite of mine, and I’ve long wanted to do the definitive novel about the First Federation. I first developed such a proposal for editor Marco Palmieri in 2008, but various circumstances led to the project being indefinitely postponed. I’m grateful to my current editor Margaret Clark for allowing me to do it at last.

  Aspects of my portrayal of the First Federation are influenced by the novel Star Trek: The Next Generation—Gulliver’s Fugitives by Keith Sharee, which is the only previous prose work, as far as I know, to depict members of Balok’s species other than Balok himself. The designation “Fesarian” for that species was established in Star Trek: Seekers #1—Second Nature by David Mack. I estimate that novel takes place less than two months after this one, soon enough that knowledge of the species’s true name might not have fully propagated across the Federation. My descriptions of the Enterprise bridge were assisted by the U.S.S. Enterprise Revised Bridge Blueprints by Michael McMaster, published in 1978 by Pan Galactic Press.

  Lieutenant Rahda (Naomi Pollack) was introduced by John Meredyth Lucas in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “That Which Survives.” Her first name of Manjula was coined by Steve Mollmann and Michael Schuster in Star Trek: A Choice of Catastrophes, although “Rahda” is apparently a Germanic surname (the Hindi one is spelled “Radha”).

  Anne Nored and Gabler were created by James ­Schmerer in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “The Survivor.” Gabler’s first name of Frank comes from Alan Dean Foster’s TAS novelizations. Ensign Lou Prescott of security is meant to be the same character as the Lieutenant Prescott who briefly appears in Troublesome Minds by Dave Galanter; presumably he got a promotion in the intervening year. The full name I gave him is a nod to Star Trek: The Animated Series producers Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott. The holographic recreation deck is a nod to the proto-holodeck introduced by writer Chuck Menville in the Animated Series episode “The Practical Joker”; I would assume that its malfunction in that episode turned Starfleet off of holographic recreation centers for the next century. Chekov’s departure and Arex’s arrival are depicted in James Swallow’s novel The Latter Fire, which presumably takes place immediately after this novel.

  About the Author

  Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of ­Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such ­critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina and The Buried Age; the Star Trek: Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea; the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History; and the Star Trek: Enterprise—Rise of the ­Federation series. His shorter works include stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores, as well as the DTI novellas The Collectors and Time Lock. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman and several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines, several of which have been compiled in the e-book collection Hub Space: Tales from the Greater Galaxy. More information, annotations, and the author’s blog can be found at christopherlbennett.wordpress.com.

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  ISBN 978-1-5011-3242-1

  ISBN 978-1-5011-3243-8 (ebook)