The Captain's Oath

by Christopher L. Bennett

  U.S.S. Sacagawea

  Gary Mitchell bounded down off the transporter pad the instant the beam released him. “Jim!” he crowed, and seemed about to throw his arms around Kirk until he saw the other officers standing by Kirk’s side and remembered his Starfleet discipline. “I mean, Captain,” he said, extending his hand, which Kirk clasped warmly. “It’s great to see you again. And great to be back aboard the Sac.” He looked around the transporter room. “She’s looking good. New paint and everything. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done with the bridge.”

  “Well, it certainly hasn’t been the same without you,” Kirk said. “Speaking of which . . .” He gestured to the tall, gray-haired, leathery-featured man by his side. “Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, this is Commander Eshu Adebayo, my first officer.”

  Adebayo shook Mitchell’s hand firmly and spoke in a booming voice with a Nigerian accent. “Welcome aboard, Mister Mitchell. The captain has spoken highly of your navigation skills—and your proclivity for fun. We should do just fine so long as you remember to practice them both at the appropriate times.” He softened it with a smile and a wink.

  “I’ll try my best, sir,” Mitchell said, returning the smile.

  “You’d better try harder than you did aboard the Anggitay, Gary,” Kirk said. “Captain Sabatini sounded downright glad to send you back to me. He seemed to think I was the only one who could keep you under control. Seriously, Gary, the Betazoid ambassador’s sister?”

  Mitchell shrugged, though he blushed a bit at the same time. “What can I say? We just clicked. I tried to tell Sabatini, she was the one who made the moves. I tell you, Jim, it was like she could read my mind. Knew exactly what I wanted and was happy to take me up on it.”

  Next to Kirk, Commander Sherev chuckled. “Go easy on him, Jim. I’ve met a few Betazoids myself. Let’s just say they’re a very . . . open-minded people.” She extended a hand. “Welcome aboard. Rhenas Sherev, science officer and second officer.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” Mitchell told her. “The captain’s had nothing but praise for you in his letters. Sounds like you helped him through some rough times. Glad you were there for him when I couldn’t be.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I was the only one.” Sherev smiled up at the other new arrival, who was only belatedly stepping down from the transporter pad. “Don’t be shy, Sawbones, come say hello!”

  Leonard McCoy flashed her a quick smile, but he still seemed nervous. “Don’t mean to be rude, Commander. I just needed a moment to make sure all my molecules were still attached. I hate traveling in these blasted contraptions.”

  Adebayo laughed. “Oh, I think I’m going to like having you aboard, Doctor. Half my age and you’re already a more crotchety old coot than I’ll ever be. Takes the burden off me to act my age.”

  McCoy shook his hand. “Always glad to see a seasoned veteran like yourself on one of these things. It gives me hope that I’ll actually survive this mission and make it to my own golden years.” He turned to Kirk. “I swear, Jim, I still can’t believe you finally talked me into coming back aboard a starship. All this gallivanting around the galaxy, poking uninvited into other species’ business . . . I still say it sounds like nothing but trouble.”

  Kirk chuckled, aware that McCoy was hardly a novice at starship duty and was just putting up his usual grouchy front. “Then why’d you agree?”

  “Damned if I know. Maybe I just missed playin’ poker with you and Rhen.”

  Mitchell’s eyes lit up. “Poker? I wouldn’t mind getting in on that action.” He leaned over to McCoy and muttered, “I love playing against Andorians. They don’t even notice what their antennae are giving away.”

  Sherev cleared her throat. “Unless that’s just what we want you flat-headed races to think.” That shut him up quite effectively.

  As Kirk led the party out into the corridor to show them the refitted ship, he felt a great sense of contentment. It had been satisfying to get the Sacagawea back, but she had felt empty with most of her former crew gone. The most senior officer who remained from the ship’s tenure at Starbase 24 was the chief engineer, Kiran Desai, but he and Kirk had never established more than a professional relationship. Sherev’s friendship had helped fill the void over the past six months, and Eshu Adebayo had proven a stalwart ally as first officer. Unlike many Kirk had served with, Adebayo had no reluctance to be subordinate to a younger man; on the contrary, he was happy to pass on the lessons of his half-century in Starfleet to a new generation. “Young minds, fresh ideas,” he was fond of saying.

  Still, having Gary Mitchell back aboard already made the ship feel more like home again, and having both Sherev and McCoy along as well brought him even greater satisfaction. He looked forward to what they would achieve together in the months and hopefully years ahead.

  Captain’s Log, Stardate 1148.2.

  The Sacagawea has entered orbit over planet II of star system UFC 5179, which we have confirmed as the source of the weak radio emissions that science officer Sherev detected three solar days ago. This world, named Nacmor by its dominant culture, hosts a humanoid civilization at an estimated level F on the industrial scale, corresponding to the early twentieth century on Earth. In addition to radio broadcast capability, our atmospheric scans confirm the presence of fossil fuel–powered industry and transportation, as well as radiation signatures consistent with crude nuclear power and weaponry. As a precaution, we are maintaining extended orbit with deflectors configured to prevent radar detection. This should permit us to observe and assess the Nacmorian civilization without risk of interference.

  “All of us at this remembrance gathering are being murdered one by one,” announced the sharp, methodical voice on the bridge speakers. “That means the killer can only be one of you four.”

  “Surely not I, Investigator Kalamul! It was I who invited you, remember.”

  “True, Councilwoman, but while I know I am not the killer, I cannot be sure I am not one of the intended victims!”

  A dramatic sting of music followed this proclamation, after which an announcer intoned, “Kalamul’s investigation will continue in a moment. The investigator may be trapped within the estate during the curfew, but you won’t have to feel trapped in a Gernilod brand family shelter. Gernilod shelters are so roomy and well-ventilated, you’ll feel like you’re still aboveground!”

  “Wow,” said Gary Mitchell. “I know this will probably all make sense once the anthropologists get a handle on their culture, but right now this is one of the most confusing things I’ve ever heard. I mean, I counted. There are six people in the estate besides Kalamul.”

  “But two of them are servants,” Kirk reminded him.

  “What, the Nacmorians never heard of ‘The butler did it’?”

  “Maybe there’s some social taboo we aren’t aware of,” Rhenas Sherev suggested. “Or maybe the writers of the mystery show don’t want to put any ideas in the servant class’s heads by portraying them as potential killers. We could be dealing with some pretty rigid social stratification.”

  Mitchell tilted his head. “Or maybe it’s just lousy writing.”

  Eshu Adebayo had been pacing the front of the bridge as the crew listened. Now the aging first officer rested his hands on the front of the helm console. “I think we may learn more from the advertisements than the main programs. These shelters suggest a fear of nuclear war.”

  Sherev nodded. “A pretty normalized fear, if they’re promoting them so casually.”

  Kirk chimed in. “And a curfew so rigid that even a police detective is bound to obey it. It’s a lot to unpack.”

  The radio drama soon resumed, and the bridge crew listened raptly as Investigator Kalamul dodged a murder attempt, failed to save another victim, and ultimately nabbed the murderer, though his explanation bewildered the crew. “I realized it had to be your forehusband, Councilwoman, when I remembered that the day he claimed to have traveled to Hormag Island fell on an even multiple of eighth-day feasts after your
hindwife’s induction.” The councilwoman and the other surviving guests gasped in shock. “Yes, that’s right. His transport would never have been approved! Therefore he must have been the extra figure whose presence tainted her induction and led to her suicide! The guilt of that compelled him to reduce the number at this remembrance to one, in order to balance the scales.”

  The bridge crew spent some time spinning hypotheses to try to explain what they’d just heard, though Mitchell stuck to his opinion: “No, I still say the writers are just hacks and it wouldn’t make sense even to a Nacmorian.” He sighed. “This is fun up to a point, but are we really just going to sit here in orbit this whole time, watching from a safe distance? Or do archaeology in uninhabited parts of the planet?”

  Sherev quirked her antennae at him. “It’s a lot harder to do archaeology in an inhabited part.”

  “Not the point. There’s only so much you can learn about people if you don’t get up close and personal. You know, walk among them, get a feel for their lives. These folks are pretty humanoid; it wouldn’t be hard for Doc McCoy to whip up some prosthetics for a landing party.”

  Kirk shook his head. “The risk of cultural contamination is too great. It’s not worth it for a preliminary survey like this. Once Starfleet gets our report, it’s up to them to decide whether to chance a more in-depth follow-up mission.”

  Mitchell gave him a long-suffering look. “Still the stickler for rules and regulations. I guess we’re stuck with the radio, then. Hey, Chalan, can you pick up any sports on that thing?”

  “Sorry, sir,” the communications officer replied. “Not for another couple of hours, sounds like.”

  Instead, the next program appeared to be an espionage-themed adventure show, whose announcer introduced it with a bombastic appeal to the listeners’ nationalist pride and the defense of what made their nation great. “This could be interesting,” Adebayo said. “We might learn something about the political conflicts between their nations.”

  The spy adventure proved easier to comprehend than the mystery drama, as its plot points were based on straightforward action and physical conflict rather than the nuances of Nacmorian cultural traditions or class and gender roles. Contrary to the first officer’s musings, the antagonists seemed to be a nongovernmental rogue faction, a subversive group seeking to undermine the peaceful global order that the drama’s protagonists were fighting to preserve—fighting quite ruthlessly, with very loud and frequent firearm sound effects, and showing no quarter or mercy to the villains, whose deaths were depicted as an unambiguous good.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” Ensign Kamisha Diaz asked during another advertising break, this time for some sort of furniture wax. The slim, dark junior science officer was leaning against the communications console, using her skills in cultural anthropology and linguistics to assist Ensign Chalan in refining the computer’s translation algorithms for the radio transmissions as they came in.

  Chalan looked up at her, blinking his huge, catlike eyes. “What’s strange?” the Cygnian asked.

  “How analogous all this is to Earth just a couple hundred years ago. It’s remarkable how many civilizations there are in the galaxy that are within just a few centuries of each other technologically,” Diaz went on. “Think about it. Human civilization’s some eight to ten thousand years old. We’ve been an industrialized society for about five hundred years, spacegoing for barely two hundred. But the galaxy is thirteen billion years old. Even assuming it took billions of years for the galactic radiation environment to subside enough to be habitable, we’re still talking at least five or six billion years for life to evolve in. So, statistically, what are the odds that your civilization and mine, for instance—let alone so many others, the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Rigelians—all began their space ages within one or two millennia of each other? And that we keep running across worlds like Nacmor that are just a few hundred years behind?”

  “It’s a big galaxy, flush with life,” Eshu Adebayo reminded her. “In just the first seven months of our mission, how many worlds have we charted with Stone Age societies, or with only primitive, subsentient life? And in my time, I’ve walked on dozens of worlds with ruins from civilizations that died out hundreds of millennia ago—and caught glimpses of alien races so far beyond our level that they might as well have been gods.”

  Rhenas Sherev chimed in from the main science station. “Still, Diaz has a point. Even with the sheer number of species we encounter, the percentage that are close to the same technological level—including most of the Federation’s members—is disproportionate. It’s an enigma in galactic archaeology.”

  Kirk, who had been quietly following their conversation, noted something familiar in Sherev’s tone. “Something tells me you have a theory to offer, Commander.”

  “There isn’t one firm theory, just a number of speculations. Some past galactic cataclysm hundreds of millennia ago that either wiped out life or served as a stressor to drive new evolution on multiple planets, so they were all reset to a similar starting point at the same time. Some ancient race that manipulated different species’ biological or technological evolution around the same time. Some universal telepathic field that causes different species to resonate with each other and innovate the same ideas around the same times. None of them really holds up that well, but the paradox keeps us looking.”

  Diaz flashed her senior science officer a blinding smile. “Nice to know I’m not the first to notice.”

  “But perhaps you’ll be the one to find the answer,” Kirk told her. Diaz beamed even brighter at his words, but he wasn’t offering idle praise. Kamisha Diaz had an energy and drive that Kirk found very familiar, much like himself when he’d started out aboard the Farragut. It was his hope that he could cultivate the young Regulus native’s potential, much as Captain Garrovick had done for him.

  “Sir!” Ensign Chalan interrupted, adjusting the receiver in his ear. “I’m picking up a new transmission now. It’s interrupting normal programming on every band.” He paused the translated playback of the spy drama, worked with Diaz for a moment to check the computer translation of the new broadcast, then played it for the bridge crew.

  “We interrupt now for an urgent warning. A massive fire has broken out in the Vinorga residential district of Minerith City. The fire is spreading rapidly due to the closely packed and decrepit condition of the structures in the area, one of the oldest in the city, and the overcrowded conditions make it difficult for rescue forces to minimize the death and injury toll. The fire has not yet spread beyond Vinorga, and emergency crews are doing all they can to contain it there. Whether this fire is the latest attack from the sky is not yet known, but all citizens in the vicinity of Minerith City are advised to remain in their homes or move toward the nearest shelter in an orderly manner. Watch for government responders and follow their instructions to the letter. They are your best protection.”

  “ ‘Attack from the sky’?” Kirk repeated. “Sherev, sensor report.”

  The Andorian was already taking the scan and studying the readouts. “I can detect the fire, sir. It’s raging across seven or eight city blocks. But none of the aircraft I’m scanning in the vicinity appear consistent with a military bomber, and none have a course and speed consistent with having recently passed over the area of the blaze.”

  “Exhaust trails from missiles?” Adebayo suggested.

  “I don’t register any. In fact, I’m not reading any indications of energy or chemical residues consistent with explosives. This could be a spontaneous fire. The area’s construction does fit the description of slum-like conditions, so if a fire did begin accidentally, it would likely spread rapidly.”

  “And yet,” Kirk said, “the announcement made it clear that there have been earlier attacks, even if this isn’t one of them.”

  “Sir,” Chalan said, then put another update on speakers:

  “Our brave watchers of the skies have issued a report. They confirm that classified military detecto
rs have tracked four craft moving too swiftly and flying too high for the naked eye to see. These craft descended into detector range only moments before the fire broke out, and they are now retreating toward outer space. Military aircraft are in pursuit, but the intruders are swiftly outpacing them. Authorities advise us to remain sheltered until the all-clear is given, but it looks like our air defenses have scared off the enemy from beyond once more.”

  Kirk traded a stunned look with Sherev and Adebayo. “An alien attack? Sherev, you looked for aircraft. Any sign of spacecraft?”

  The science officer bent to her console, her antennae twisting in deep confusion. “Sir, I’m picking up no sign of any vehicular activity in the upper atmosphere, and nothing else in orbit. The city’s in our line of sight—nothing could be hidden behind the planet.”

  “I confirm,” Mitchell said. “Nothing on my screen either. No engine signatures, no ion trails besides ours.”

  Kamisha Diaz had stepped over to assist Sherev at the science station. “They said the craft couldn’t be seen. What if they have some kind of stealth ability, like the Xyrillians?”

  “They also said their military trackers were able to pick them up,” Sherev reminded her. “These people have nothing but primitive radar. If they can see them, we should see them.”

  Kirk rose to his feet. “Still—if there’s even a chance that someone out here is attacking these people, then we have to investigate.”

  “Investigate how?” Sherev asked. “You were just reminding us of the Prime Directive.”

  “General Order One obliges us to shield the Nacmorians from all interference,” he told her, “not just our own. Knowingly leaving them at someone else’s mercy would be as bad as attacking them ourselves.” He threw his navigator a look. “Seems you’ll get to wear one of those disguises after all, Mister Mitchell. Chalan, contact sickbay and let McCoy know we’re on our way.”

  “You’re going yourself, Jim?” Sherev asked.

  Kirk hesitated. “Given the short notice, Rhen, it’d take some doing for Bones to hide your antennae.”