Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself

by James Swallow

  “Saru isn’t the only one on the rescue team with that knowledge,” insisted Burnham. “Any engineer would have it too.”

  “True,” admitted the captain, “but none of them ran off on their own to undertake an unauthorized mission. None of them showed a serious lapse in judgment. The niceties aside, Saru knew what was expected of him, and he chose to proceed despite that.” She shook her head. “I don’t like this line of reasoning any more than you do, Michael. Saru has served under me for a long time, and he is a valued member of this crew . . .”

  “But no matter how unpalatable, we have to consider all the possibilities,” concluded the first officer. “He may be under duress. He may be compromised in some way. Captain, I think security should check out Lieutenant Saru’s quarters. Look for anything unusual, anything amiss.”

  “I’ll do it,” Burnham broke in. “You’re right, Commander. If anyone knows Saru best on this ship, it’s me.” That might not have been true, but again she felt compelled to defend the absent Kelpien. “I don’t need security to accompany me. I can do it alone.” She looked to the captain. “I’ll be . . . discreet.”

  At length, Georgiou gave a nod. “All right, Michael. See that you are.”

  • • •

  “Do you have family?” Hekan asked the question as she stared down at the floor of the elevator. The Peliar engineer looked up and met Saru’s gaze. “Is that something your species possess?”

  “Yes,” he replied, and clicked his tongue. It was a uniquely Kelpien action, a way to fill an awkward pause rather than give a direct answer. “I have been away from my homeworld for quite some time.”

  Hekan blinked. “All I want is to see my daughters again. Do you think, when they do it, it will be quick?”

  All at once, he realized that the engineer believed they were being taken to their execution. “No! I mean . . . Hekan, they’re not going to kill us.”

  “How do you know that?” She threw a worried glance at the red-bands, and the weapons they carried. “The things I have heard about them . . . I dismissed it all as rumors spun by the narrow-minded, but now I can’t help wondering. What if those stories are true?”

  “What stories?”

  “That the Gorlan tribalist society is inherently aggressive. They actually have a culture that believes in ephemeral deities, and some people say those beliefs direct them to violent behavior against all outsiders, all aliens.” Hekan spoke as if she was sharing a secret with him.

  “Who says that?” asked Saru. “People from your planet?”

  “No.” Hekan seemed taken aback by the suggestion. “Betans try not to prejudge, it’s how we are raised. I meant people from Alpha Moon. They’re more forthright in their views.”

  “Like Commander Nathal?”

  Hekan nodded. “Most command cadre are from Alphan nobility. Nathal comes from a long line of starship officers.”

  “Were the Alphans the ones responsible for the Gorlan . . . ?” Saru searched for the right word. “The Gorlan relocation?”

  The flash of guilt on Hekan’s face told him that they were not. “Peliar Zel only wanted to help them!”

  “Did you think to ask the Gorlans what they wanted?” said Saru, without weight to the question.

  “We did our best. But they make it so difficult to communicate with them. Sometimes I think they can understand us but they choose not to. I have tried myself, but it never seems to bridge the gap, and we do not have the advanced universal translator systems as you do in Starfleet, and . . .” She caught herself and trailed off. “I apologize. I am afraid. It makes me talkative.”

  “I am afraid,” Saru agreed with a sigh, “most of the time. But I’ve learned to live with it. And I am still learning to understand when a threat is truly apparent, and when it is not.”

  She studied him. “You are an unusual being, Saru.”

  “I am told that quite often,” he noted as the elevator slowed to a halt.

  Once again, Saru was marched onto the command deck of the Peliar freighter, and it struck him how sparse it seemed. Only a handful of the operations consoles and podiums dotted around the chamber were online and active, the rest of them in some form of standby mode. He cast around, observing the few Gorlans standing sentinel there. One element of his mind was considering what function each podium control performed, while another more basic part of him looked for potential avenues of escape.

  Lieutenant Saru never enters a room without knowing at least three ways out of it, Commander ch’Theloh had once said of him, and the Andorian had been mocking him. But he was right, and Saru saw nothing unwise about it.

  The speaker Vetch disengaged from a hushed conversation with the white-haired Gorlan and approached. He produced the universal translator that had been taken from Saru what seemed like a lifetime ago, and the Kelpien saw immediately that the device had been half dismantled and then reassembled with an ugly clutter of new components fitted to it.

  His heart sank. “What did you do?” Without a fully functioning UT, communicating with the Gorlans would become a hundred times more difficult.

  Vetch slapped the rodlike device into his open palm. “We improved upon it. The unit functions far more efficiently now.”

  Saru blinked. Rendered through the translator, Vetch’s previously broken, stilted speech pattern was now an order of magnitude more precise. He held up the UT and saw that among the new components rigged to it were a complex sensor antenna and a signal processor. As Vetch spoke, Saru felt the tingle of the ever-present Gorlan aura-field, and it seemed that the modified translator now had the capacity to pick up on that energy and merge it with vocal patterns, tones, and inflections.

  “Our species may have the appearance of simplicity,” Vetch went on, showing his teeth in a smug grin, “but as you can see, we too have a mastery of technology. But we do not choose to let it dominate every aspect of our life, unlike some cultures.” The speaker eyed Hekan.

  Saru studied the translator closely. “If you could do this, why wait until now? You had the chance to speak directly to us when you were on board the Shenzhou.”

  “Sometimes, it is better to be underestimated by those around you,” said Vetch. “It reveals the truth of things far sooner.”

  “And we have learned not to trust those who have mouths full of promises,” said the white-haired Gorlan, coming closer. “It is our way to find a path through adversity without relying on the charity of others. All too often, gifts come with a price.” He glared at the Peliar engineer. “She knows.”

  “Madoh, if you will?” Vetch addressed the other Gorlan. “Let me deal with this. I am speaker, after all. It is my role.”

  “I will help you make them understand,” Madoh replied, and made no move to leave.

  “That is what we want,” said Saru, seeing an opening. “To understand.” He weighed the translator rod in his hand. “Thank you for this. Now that we can speak more clearly to one another, I hope there will be no more need for conflict between us.”

  “Are you not angry that your companion was injured?” said Madoh. “Do you not want recompense?”

  “This . . . is not the time for that,” Saru said warily.

  Madoh made a guttural noise accompanied by brief, hard jolts of invisible aura-static. The translator rendered it as derisive amusement.

  Undaunted, Saru pressed on. “Before, when we used only the vocal component to converse, much was unclear. But I understand there is a more ephemeral element to your communications.” He gestured at the air. “An electromagnetic aura. My species has a similar sense.”

  “The Peliar and the humans are dead to it,” Vetch replied dismissively. “We know it as—” The translator struggled with the term, briefly unable to parse the name into something Saru could grasp. Eventually, the device rendered the term as the circle.

  That makes sense, Saru thought. The collective aura-field of a Gorlan community is a circle, a unity that encloses them all. It wasn’t that they were a group conscious
ness or a mass-mind like some hive species the Federation had documented. What the Gorlans seemed to possess was something simpler than that. A connection that existed beyond words, a shared, almost tangible sense of harmony.

  “I do not understand,” ventured Hekan.

  “Of course not,” said Vetch, a little sadly. “How could you?”

  Saru turned to the Peliar. “You must have seen avians flying in a flock on your world. Have you ever wondered how it is they can move and turn in unison? The Gorlan ‘circle’ is their equivalent of that group connection. I believe it is the basis of their higher communication, and a core component of their societal structure.”

  “You do not speak like an engineer,” said Madoh, looking the Kelpien up and down. One of the Gorlan’s hands drifted toward the disruptor pistol clipped to his vest.

  The Kelpien hesitated. “You are correct. I am Lieutenant Saru, I am a scientist.”

  “I told you to bring us engineers!” Vetch shot a hard look at the Gorlans that had escorted Hekan and Saru to the command deck.

  “I insisted they take me instead,” Saru continued. “I am the senior officer. I will not send my people into any danger I am not willing to face myself.” The words were paraphrased from a page of the Starfleet Officer’s Leadership Manual, and he could not help thinking they sounded a little hollow as he repeated them.

  “You want to show courage, is that it?” Madoh came uncomfortably close. “I think you have little experience of such things.”

  “Nevertheless, I am here.” Saru stood his ground. “What do you want with us? You already have control of this ship.”

  “No, they don’t,” Hekan said quietly.

  Vetch made a spitting noise. “The female is right. The Peliars are devious.”

  Saru was about to ask what the speaker meant by that, but Madoh interposed himself and continued to stare at the Kelpien. “You think you know what is going on here. You are mistaken.” Madoh’s hooded gaze reminded Saru all too much of a hungry predator considering its next meal. “Do you know why my kind are on this ship?”

  “The government of Peliar Zel is relocating you on another planet,” said Saru. “Although I believe there may be more to that action than is apparent to me.”

  “Good answer, outworlder.” Madoh showed his teeth. “The reality of this was hidden from you and your Starship Shenzhou.”

  “Hidden from all beyond Peliar Zel, I do not doubt,” added Vetch.

  “We are here because the Peliars forced us onto these ships!” Madoh’s temper darkened. “They withheld food and shelter, they told us this was the only way for us to survive! We made planetfall on their Alpha Moon, but they would not allow us to remain there.”

  “He omits the fact that they landed on Alpha without permission,” retorted Hekan.

  “We had no choice,” Vetch told her. “Our vessels were overloaded. Damaged and failing. We had to abandon them.”

  “Some of her kind accused us of being the vanguard of an invasion force,” Madoh told Saru, pointing at the engineer. “As if we could have done such a thing. A few hundred thousand of us, desperate and clinging to life.”

  “We helped them!” Hekan said hotly, looking to Saru. “I know for a fact Beta Moon donated a huge amount of supplies to the relief effort!”

  “We did not want your pity and charity,” Madoh said coldly. “A measure of trust would have been enough.”

  Saru held his silence. Where was the truth in all of this? He felt out of his depth here. It was one thing to attempt to better communicate with an alien race, but quite another to be drawn into a hijacking and armed revolt. Finally, he came to the question he knew would have to be answered. “You had Hekan and me brought up here for a reason. What is it?”

  “Show him,” growled Madoh.

  Vetch led Saru to what appeared to be the freighter’s main helm. Although the iconographic Peliar text was foreign to him, Saru soon grasped the layout of the panel, finding the equivalent of an astrogator display and the ship’s course-correction controls.

  Aside from the navigation screen, where a dot representing the freighter made slow progress along a curving line, every other control was totally inert. Vetch made a show of tapping several controls, each time rewarded by a sour bleating tone from the console. “This ship is fixed on a preprogrammed course to its final destination,” said the Gorlan. “It appears to be a fail-safe measure triggered automatically in the event the crew are neutralized.”

  “They want us to unlock it for them,” said Hekan.

  “We want full control of this vessel,” Madoh insisted. “The freedom to go wherever we wish.”

  Saru studied the command screen closely. “Deactivating this system is a complex task. It would involve decompiling the entire helm control matrix. That is a lengthy process at best.” He paused, studying the astrogator. “The final destination point is an M-class planet in a star system two days distant from our present location.”

  “The sanctuary,” Vetch said with a snort. “The world where the Peliars decided to dump us.”

  “We prefer to seek our own destiny.” One of Madoh’s hands dropped to his pistol once more. “You will unlock the helm, Lieutenant Saru. If you refuse, I will be forced to compel you.”

  “For beings who think little of charity, you ask for a great deal of assistance,” said Saru, and his comment earned him a narrow-eyed glare in return. “Even from a cursory examination, I can see this system is protected by a multimodal recursive encryption algorithm. Breaking the code through brute-force means would take until the heat death of the universe.”

  “You lie,” Vetch snapped. “We are right to distrust you. You are in alliance with the Peliars, as suspected.”

  “I am telling you the truth,” Saru replied defiantly.

  Madoh’s gun came out of its holster and he aimed it at Hekan’s chest. “Are you certain of that?”

  The sound of the disruptor discharge that had struck Johar echoed in Saru’s thoughts, and he tensed. He thought of the terrible wound that even a glancing miss from that weapon had left in its wake. A direct hit would mean instant death for the Peliar engineer.

  What should I do? The stated policy of Starfleet Command was not to negotiate with terrorists, but Saru had already compromised once on that point to prevent deaths aboard the Shenzhou. Now he was backed into the same corner. If I refuse, will they kill Hekan and bring someone else up here? Make the same threat again until I comply? Or will I be the next to perish?

  He met Madoh’s gaze. It was hard and unreadable.

  At length, Saru turned back to the helm console. “I can give you no guarantees. But I will make the attempt.”

  7

  * * *

  A low tremor resonated through the Shenzhou’s deck, and Burnham felt it rise through the soles of her boots. She paused by a viewport and glanced out, watching the star field slip past as the ship began to pick up speed. The engineering team had worked flat out over the last day to repair the damage to the vessel, and although there was still much to be done, the cruiser’s impulse drives were finally back on line. At last, they were moving again, and if they were moving, then they were doing something to save their missing crewmates.

  A couple of noncoms farther down the corridor gave a ragged whoop of triumph, but then they caught sight of Burnham and stiffened. She waved away the moment and gave them a tired smile. If ch’Theloh had seen it happen, the first officer might have given them a talking-to about decorum, but Michael could relate.

  The past hours had dragged on everyone; the impotent sense of being hobbled and left for dead by the sneak attack was a weight bearing down on the entire crew. Little was worse than feeling like you could do nothing to help, she thought, passing the two technicians as she made her way toward the senior crew quarters.

  Now that they were on their way, the crew’s focus would be renewed.

  Burnham imagined that Lieutenant Commander Johar would have been proud to see how hard his engineers h
ad worked to get Shenzhou mobile again, many of them putting in double or even triple shifts. Still, they were a long way from being warp capable, and at interstellar distances it would take forever for them to catch up with the missing Peliar freighter. But this wasn’t about the cold facts; it was about belief.

  Thinking of the chief engineer made her dwell on the fate of the rest of the rescue party. Were they still alive? Johar, Saru, Weeton, and the others? Burnham had lost friends and crewmates in the line of duty before, but each time she felt the pain of it anew. For all her embrace of Vulcan stoicism, there was an undeniable kernel of human empathy in her that never went away. Perhaps once upon a time, I would have wanted to silence it. But not now.

  Burnham halted outside the door to Lieutenant Saru’s cabin, pausing to check the setting on the tricorder hanging on the strap over her shoulder. Setting the device into scan mode, she pulled a data card from her pocket and inserted it in a hidden slot near the door’s locking mechanism. An override code provided by Commander ch’Theloh did the rest, granting her entry into the Kelpien’s quarters.

  She hesitated on the threshold, self-consciously looking left and right down the corridor to see if anyone else was observing. Burnham wanted to tell herself that this was in Saru’s best interest, and that she would be proving he wasn’t under any kind of malign influence. But any way you looked at it, entering his quarters without permission was a violation. Being here alone might be an attempt to protect his privacy, but if she was honest with herself, Burnham’s own curiosity as a xenoanthropologist was piqued by the opportunity to learn more about her standoffish crewmate.

  The door hissed closed behind her as she stepped through and Burnham took a breath, committing to the act. “Okay,” she said aloud. “What do you have to tell me, Saru?” She cleared her mind and tried to take everything in, attempting to get a sense of the being who lived here.