Star Trek Prometheus - in the Heart of Chaos

by Christian Humberg

  “We will pray,” he repeated quietly. Kharanto’s citizens were pouring into the temple from everywhere, and he had no intention of having this conversation in front of an audience. “Anything else would be a sin against harmony. A Renao knows their place, and this is ours—whether you like it or not, Hisk.”

  And why don’t you like it? Brossal didn’t like to admit it, but his family’s changing attitudes presented him with a horror that welled up inside him. That horror was colder than the air inside the temple. His neighbors and work colleagues were one thing. They displayed appalling stupidity, but that was their problem. But Hisk and Aly and Kynn were his family. The most important home I have, and I don’t understand them anymore. Worse, he was scared for them. The violence that lingered in Kharanto like an as-yet-unspoken curse made him fear for their safety.

  Would he be able to protect them if things boiled over? Would they let him protect them? Or would the three people with whom he shared his life want to stand in the front line when fists began flying?

  Is my entire world doomed to descend into madness, and I’m the only one immune to it?

  Filled with concern and fear and regret, Brossal closed his eyes and began to pray.

  The brief evening ceremony was about to come to an end when the sirens began wailing. Confused, Brossal looked around. Not many of Kharanto’s inhabitants had turned out today—their numbers dwindled daily—and wherever he looked, he saw confusion and bewilderment that matched his own.

  And then he heard the fire. It began quietly—a gentle sizzling and crackling sound reached his ears from behind him—and increased in volume with every passing second.

  Brossal whirled around. At first, he doubted his senses. Dark specks had appeared on the back wall of the small temple and they grew as fast as lightning. Small but steadily growing flames ate their way through the wooden entrance door while black smoke billowed underneath into the temple.

  The vestibule is on fire!

  Seconds later, the broad and colorful mosaic window to the right of the visitors’ seats shattered, shards flying everywhere, broken by a narrow tube the size of a forearm that had been thrown through it. It hit the temple floor, rolling a bit before lying still and flickering.

  “Explosives!” someone yelled.

  Immediately, panic broke out. Brossal felt Kynn’s hands on his arm, and he heard Aly’s frightened gasping. The small lamps on the tube flickered faster than before.

  Horrified, he grabbed Hisk’s and Aly’s hands, dragging them with him. Kynn clutched his arm as if the world was an ocean and she was about to drown in it. They reached the door in no time.

  Another attendant of prayers was already attempting to kick the door down. He was successful but his robe caught fire. The people around him had to roll the panicking man around on the floor in order to extinguish the flames.

  Brossal glanced into the vestibule… or what was left of it. An inferno raged there, the entire entrance engulfed in flames. The algae farmer had never before experienced heat like this on his skin. They would not be able to escape this way.

  Still, they had to try. They couldn’t go back, so they had to risk going forward.

  “Stay close to me, all of you,” Brossal shouted. “Kynn, Hisk, follow me. Aly, come here.” Grabbing the horrified little girl, he cradled her in both arms, leaning forward to shield her with his upper body as best he could—and darted forward.

  Just as soon as he stepped into the vestibule, the temple exploded.

  * * *

  The night was pleasantly cool, which was at least something. But Brossal ak Ghantur hardly noticed it. It seemed to him as if he would never be able to feel anything ever again.

  “Kynn.” Devastated, he knelt beside the body of his partner. Hiskaath and Alyys had miraculously made it out without sustaining any noteworthy injuries. He himself had received several burns, but nothing fatal.

  Kynnil on the other hand… “Kynn.”

  After the blast of the detonation, the temple roof had caved in. Debris had buried several people who had been trying to escape. Kynn had been one of them.

  Brossal had noticed it too late when he was outside. When the rescue forces arrived to fight the fire, survivors had been sitting by the wayside, suffering from shock. They had cried, hoped, and despaired. The rescue teams had doused the flames eventually, but they could only recover dead bodies.

  Like Kynn’s.

  And they had uncovered who was responsible for this atrocity. Now that most of the smoke had dissipated, they could see it clearly: a head-high scarlet symbol had been painted by hand on the outside of the temple wall.

  The emblem of the Purifying Flame.

  “Because we didn’t do anything,” Hisk mumbled. Brossal held him in his arms, just like the sobbing Aly. But although Hisk’s tone of voice indicated sadness, he didn’t cry. “That’s the reason why this happened. Because, otherwise, we wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  That’s the reason why this happened. Brossal looked at his eldest child. Incredulity mixed with consternation when he realized how matter-of-factly his offspring spoke about what had happened here. How detached and insightful. That’s the reason.

  Action and reaction, guilt and atonement, sacrilege and tenet. Kynn was dead—and three other Renao along with her—because people with the same mindset as Hisk believed they should send a message to people with Brossal’s mindset, to make their point clear. Misguided people who might even have lost their minds and probably felt that their assassination was necessary and justified. The sphere was everything, after all, and every Renao knew that. And the bombers of Kharanto apparently considered the protection of the spheres more important than an individual life—or four. If the result hadn’t been this horrific, Brossal would have almost understood them.

  Helpless, he hugged his children even closer while the night surrounded them. Kynn, his beloved Kynn, had fallen victim to the madness that had infested his home. That realization was too much for him, and he closed his eyes.

  He had no idea how much time passed. Eternities, moments, or something in between. It didn’t matter. Time didn’t exist any longer… not in this new reality without Kynn. Brossal felt the warm bodies of his children next to him and Aly’s salty tears on his chest. He smelled her scent, and that was all that mattered. The now. The past had just become too painful to bear, and the future looked to be even worse.

  Eventually, Brossal looked up. Mounim ak Hazzoh, Brossal’s shift colleague from the growth station, approached him from the crowd and stood by Kynn’s lifeless remains. Behind him was the smoldering debris of the temple. Brossal had no idea why Mounim was here.

  “All this is your fault,” Mounim said in a scathing whisper. He had a glint in his eyes that was brighter than the earlier fire and told of unfathomable fury and outrage. “All of you. You brought this upon yourselves. You refuse to face the truth. Instead of fighting back and defending the harmony, you’re clinging to yesterday.” He shook his head. His hands were clenched to fists, twitching uncontrollably. “Bross, you shouldn’t be surprised that today is trampling all over you. None of you should.”

  Brossal opened his mouth but was unable to say anything. Licking his lips, he tried again. “Wh… What are you saying?”

  Mounim glanced over his shoulder and watched the rescue teams work among the debris, the other mourners, and the gawkers, then turned back to face him. “Join us, Bross. Come to your senses. You’re in the way of the sphere if you reject today. You stand in the way of safety. And we can’t and won’t have consideration for the likes of you anymore. The enemy is right within our spheres, Bross! They have thrown their worlds into chaos, and now they come to destroy ours as well. And our governing bodies stand idly by!” Mounim spat on the ground contemptuously. “No, you hear me? We won’t let that happen! We need to act now in order to prevent things from getting worse. We need to take a stand. We need to make sacrifices. Listen to me, Bross: the time for compromises and waiting is finally
over. Not just in Kharanto, right? Everywhere! On Xhehenem, on Onferin, on Acina and Catoumni—everywhere. Because there’s no other way. Because we need to get involved if we—and all living beings in all other spheres—don’t want to lose everything. The flame must purify, my friend. Else we will suffocate in dirt. So you should be smarter in future, Bross. Do me that favor. Do it for your offspring. For the good of home, of harmony—and for your own good.”

  With these words Mounim turned away and disappeared into the crowd.

  Take a stand. Make sacrifices. The phrases bounced around in Brossal’s mind like echoes in the caves down by the sea. Act in order to prevent things from getting worse. Everywhere. And suddenly, it dawned on him who had hurled the explosive charge through the window.

  It was true—the perpetrators deemed their actions to be the justified means to a vindicating end. Renao attacked Renao and called it self-protection. Sphere-protection. They didn’t even see the error of their ways, the terrible disgrace they brought upon themselves.

  “Do you understand now?” asked Hisk. Tears had welled up in his son’s eyes. He looked at his father with a trembling lower lip. Not just from mourning, realized Brossal, but from regret.

  And Brossal nodded. “Yes, son,” he whispered with a heavy heart. “Yes, I understand.”

  There was only one way out. He needed to leave his home sphere.

  10

  NOVEMBER 26, 2385

  U.S.S. Prometheus, en route to Bharatrum

  “The packet for Memory Alpha is on its way, Captain,” Winter reported.

  “Thank you, Ensign.” Adams glanced around the bridge. They were on their way back to Bharatrum along with the Bortas, where they would arrive in the late afternoon, ship time. The repairs had almost been completed, Kirk and Mendon were pondering an improvement for the shield regeneration routines, and Doctor Calloway tended to the sick telepaths of his crew. There wasn’t much for him to do at the moment.

  “I’ll be in my ready room,” he announced, getting up and leaving the bridge. He crossed a short corridor to reach his room at the back of bridge deck. After he entered, he went straight to the small replicator in the corner. “Coffee, special blend Adams-02.”

  With a shimmer, a coffee mug containing steaming dark brown liquid appeared. Lifting the mug with both hands and bringing it to his nose, Adams deeply inhaled the wonderful aroma. He sighed appreciatively.

  Of course, every replicator on the ship was capable of making coffee; the special blend Adams-02, however, was only available from this device. He had had Kirk build in a special sample buffer where he had stored some of the quadrant’s finest coffee blends, straight after grinding them with his manual coffee grinder, producing the desired fineness. It took a certain degree of decadence to drink a Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee—of which barely twenty thousand barrels were harvested each year—while being in the middle of a war zone, but Adams had decided very early on that a captain was allowed to entertain at least one guilty pleasure.

  He had just settled behind his desk and taken one sip when the door chime sounded. Adams briefly closed his eyes, before placing the mug in front of him on the desk and straightening himself up slightly.

  “Come.”

  The door slid open, and Roaas stood in the doorway. “Captain, do you have a moment?”

  “For you, Roaas, always. Come in.”

  The Caitian entered and the door hissed closed behind him.

  “Coffee? I still have some of my Blue Mountain blend in the replicator.”

  Roaas shook his furry head. “No thanks. You know that I don’t have any appreciation for good coffee. It doesn’t taste any different than the brew they serve in the mess. It would be a waste of your special blends.”

  “It was worth a try,” Adams replied, smiling. “At least take a seat.” He gestured toward the chair across the desk from him, before grabbing his coffee mug and sipping from it. “What can I do for you?”

  Roaas sat. His ears were twitching the way they always did when something bothered him and he didn’t know how to handle it. He sat silently for a moment, seemingly gathering his thoughts before speaking up: “Captain, I’m not here for myself, but for you.”

  “Am I giving you reason to be concerned, old friend?”

  “Let me put it this way—I’d like to prevent you from making a wrong decision.”

  “Explain.”

  “Captain, I know how much you dislike Kromm’s behavior. I feel more or less the same way. He’s hungry for glory and a warmonger—even worse than usual for a Klingon, and they aren’t good traits while we’re in the position we’re currently in.”

  Adams grimaced. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He took another sip from his coffee. The Blue Mountain blend was truly a culinary delight, but the reminder of Kromm’s narrow-mindedness had somewhat spoiled it.

  “I also know,” Roaas continued, “that you want to bring the situation within the Lembatta Cluster to a peaceful end under all circumstances, just like Admiral Akaar and President zh’Tarash do.”

  “Who doesn’t? Except for a few hardliners inside the High Council. The Renao as a people are not our enemy. At best, only a handful of misguided fanatics in the shape of the Purifying Flame are, and even that is questionable, considering our latest discovery on Iad. Are those fanatics really culprits? Or are they just victims of a creeping horror that the Son has instilled into them?”

  Roaas nodded. “All that is true. But we must not lose sight of the facts. Thousands have already died on Starbase 91, Tika IV, and Cestus III. We must prevent another attack at all costs.”

  “That goes without saying. What is your point?”

  “My point is that we shouldn’t sink our teeth too deeply into the problem of the Son. We thought that Iad was the key to this crisis. That may be the case, but defeating the energy entity on Iad should be a long-term objective. Isn’t it much more important to find the headquarters of the Purifying Flame first? The place from where they launch their solar-jumpers and kamikaze fighters?”

  Adams looked at him, thinking, If we can’t destroy the evil at the source, we need to contain its excesses. Those had been Kromm’s words during their meeting. “You think I’m throwing myself enthusiastically on the mystery of the Son because I don’t want to accept that fighting the Renao directly might be our only realistic chance to guarantee the safety of the Federation and the Klingon Empire?”

  His first officer nodded gravely. “I don’t like this situation either, believe me. I prefer a clearly defined enemy, like the Borg were. There was no room for hesitation or doubt. The Borg wanted to eliminate us, so we had to eliminate them first. This time, it’s all much more difficult—at least where the ethical side is concerned. But we still mustn’t forget that we’re a warship, and we have been sent to the cluster by Admiral Akaar in order to eliminate a danger for the Federation. We have been tracing this danger for almost a month now. We’re getting closer to our goal. Can we afford to be distracted by some scientific anomaly?”

  “An extremely dangerous scientific anomaly,” Adams said. “We haven’t heard from the Beta XII-A entity for years, but I’m sure there have been enough wars to satiate its hunger. Only the creature knows how many battles during these wars were caused by it. But one thing is certain—under no circumstances must another being of the size and potential power of the one we discovered on Iad become strong enough to roam freely in the galaxy. It would lead to chaos and destruction of unprecedented and horrific proportions. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to rely on the Q Continuum to come to the rescue of us mortals. After all, they stood by during the collapse of the Tkon Empire before intervening, according to that report Captain Picard made a while back.”

  The Caitian’s whiskers quivered. “Yes, I haven’t forgotten that, or that one of the Q rescued the Enterprise-D from first contact with the Borg.”

  Adams’s eyes focused on his first officer over the rim of his mug. “You don’t have to worry, Roaas. I
’m still keeping my eye on the big picture. Yes, I’m irritated with Kromm. Yes, the Son is influencing all of us, and not in a good way. And yes, I’m well and truly sick of war. That may all be getting me off-track, but I still have you, Spock, Rozhenko, and maybe even that damn Klingon captain to offer me new perspectives and focus my senses on the things that need to be done. So I thank you for your concern, my friend, unnecessary though it may be.”

  “I guess it’s my duty as first officer to be concerned.” The corners of Roaas’s mouth twitched slightly.

  “Absolutely. And I think we’re on the right track. The Purifying Flame has been very active on Bharatrum. So by going there, we’re combining our search for the White Guardian with the search for the core of the fanatics. Apart from that, we should wait for the data from Memory Alpha before deciding how to proceed. And if necessary we can separate Prometheus and be active in several places at once.” The communications system on his desk sprang to life. “Carson to Adams.”

  Adams saw that Roaas wanted to get up, but gestured for him to wait. Activating the intercom, he set his mug down. “What is it, Commander?”

  “Captain, we’re receiving a message from the Venture. Admiral Gepta demands to speak with you.”

  Adams and Roaas exchanged surprised glances. The deployment of the Chelon with rigorous military mindset to the Lembatta Cluster from Starfleet Command was a clear indication of just how concerned the decision-makers back home on Earth really were. He got to his feet.

  “I’m on my way to the bridge.” As Adams walked around his desk, he longingly stared at the hot drink standing there. The crisis within the Lembatta Cluster didn’t even permit him to have a good cup of coffee in peace.

  * * *

  “Captain, we have good news for you.” The turtle-like Chelon stared intently at Adams from the main screen. “A battle group consisting of Federation and Klingon ships were able to capture one of the Renao solar-jumpers within the Theris system on the periphery of the Lembatta Cluster. Annoyingly, we couldn’t capture the crew alive, and their navigation computer is encrypted, though we’re working on decrypting it. But we also managed to secure ten brand-new Scorpion replicas, and our specialists are examining them thoroughly as we speak. It’s only a question of time before we find out where the Purifying Flame get their materials from, and where they put them together.”