The Captain's Oath

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Kirk and the others traded a look, recognizing that the confusion of this apparent attack would be their best chance to slip away unseen. As one, Kirk and Lieutenant Hauraki lunged at the distracted guards, clasping their manacled hands to use as clubs aimed at the Nacmorians’ carotid arteries. But their balance was imperfect, so neither succeeded in taking out his guard with one blow. Kirk grappled with his guard as the man tried to bring up his weapon. He managed to swing the guard around, allowing Mitchell to strike him between the shoulder blades, dazing the guard enough for Kirk to pull his gun away and whack him in the jaw with it. The guard slumped, and Kirk glanced over his shoulder to see that Hauraki had taken care of his guard single-handedly. Kirk tried not to be envious; this was the man’s job, after all.

  Diaz knelt over the first guard and felt in his pockets for the keys. “Next time, leave one for me, okay?” she quipped, even though the guards were half again her size.

  “Careful what you wish for,” Kirk told her. “We still don’t know who’s out there.”

  As if in answer, the rear lock was blown off and the doors flung open. The humans braced themselves. A tall, lean Nacmorian woman with short, shaggy bronze hair leaped into the back of the truck, armed with a truncheon and ready for battle. She was dressed in the local equivalent of a tank top and fatigues and wearing goggles and a bandana to protect her from the gas. But on seeing that the prisoners had taken out their guards, she immediately relaxed.

  “It’s all right,” she told them, pulling down the bandana and lifting the goggles to reveal a youthful, strikingly lovely green-gold face. “We’re here to liberate you.” Gasping at the sight of Kirk, she reached out and gingerly touched his flat, pink forehead, stroked his hair. “Oh, you poor people. What have these monsters done to you?”

  “Daramoy, come on!” a male voice called from outside.

  The young woman shook herself. “We can discuss it later. Now, if you desire your freedom, please come with us!”

  Ten

  Remember, kids! The state depends on all of you—not just your daddies and mommies, but also you young people—to do your part to fight off the invaders from space. Every meal you go without—kills a spaceman. Every dukor your parents take out of your allowance—kills a spaceman. Every piece of gold or scrap metal your parents turn in to the state—kills a spaceman. And Ultimate Premier Ribaul thanks you all for your sacrifice and your courage as we stand together against the enemy from the stars.

  —Nacmorian propaganda broadcast

  Derostur City

  “Astonishing.” The rebel leader, Daramoy, peered closely at the eyes and foreheads of Kirk and Mitchell as they sat in a dimly lit cellar in Derostur’s run-down industrial district. Her lieutenant, a cowled male named Seljuron, subjected Diaz and Hauraki to similar scrutiny. “This is truly horrific,” Daramoy went on.

  “Hey, we don’t look that bad!” Mitchell protested.

  The young woman instantly grew sympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive. It’s not your fault that this was done to you.” She shook her head. “I knew Ribaul would stop at nothing to sell his fantasy of an invasion from outer space—murder civilians, burn and bomb our own cities—but subjecting innocent people to surgical mutilation? It’s obscene!”

  “Remarkably sophisticated work, though,” Seljuron observed. “I can’t even see the scars. And the eyes are extraordinary—the circular pupils even contract in response to light. I had no idea Ribaul’s surgeons were capable of this. I shudder to think what else they might do with these techniques.” He peered closer at Diaz. “Odd that they altered you so much less than the others, miss. If they removed the men’s frontal glands, they might also have attempted to amputate your—”

  “Yes, I get the picture,” Diaz interrupted. “Maybe . . . they thought we would look more alien if both sexes had similar facial traits, but were otherwise distinct.”

  “Hmm, yes, quite possible.”

  “We don’t really know what their thinking was,” Kirk said, throwing Diaz a cautioning look, “so it’s probably best that we don’t speculate.” The young science officer nodded, getting the point. It might be expedient to let these Nacmorians invent their own explanation for the humans’ appearance, but attempting to elaborate on it too much could inadvertently make things worse. Kirk reflected on the time that Jonathan Archer and Malcolm Reed of the original Earth starship Enterprise had dealt with a similar situation by claiming they were genetically augmented supersoldiers created by the captors’ enemy nation, a claim that had backfired by exacerbating the planet’s military tensions. Historians still debated the degree to which Archer and Reed had triggered or escalated that world’s subsequent wars. Kirk had no desire to go down in history the same way.

  All things considered, it was best to invent as little as possible and discourage the rebels from asking too many questions. “It was . . . a traumatic experience,” he went on to Daramoy. “We’d really just prefer to move past it.”

  Daramoy placed a kindly hand on Kirk’s arm, the other on Mitchell’s. “I understand. But when you feel ready, we’ll do everything we can to get you treatment, to undo what was done to you.”

  “We appreciate that,” Kirk said.

  “Yeah,” Mitchell added, putting his hand atop hers and smiling. “Your kind companionship is a great comfort in my time of need, Daramoy.”

  The Nacmorian gingerly extricated her hand from his and stepped back. “Yes, well. Unfortunately, there is more at stake here than only the four of you.” She paced before them, her tone growing cooler, more commanding. “The fact is, you could be of enormous help to the resistance. I regret the need to ask, but you know what’s at stake. As long as the people believe Ribaul’s atrocities are the work of enemies from space, they will continue to submit to his ever-tightening grip on our freedoms, on our very lives. They must be made aware that he is the true enemy.”

  The turn this conversation had taken made Kirk uneasy. “We’d really prefer not to get involved, if you don’t mind.”

  “But you are the only ones who can give us what we need!” she insisted, moving closer. “You have been inside the government bunker. You can give us valuable intelligence about its layout and procedures. We have partial information thanks to our inside source—the one who tipped us off to your existence and enabled us to free you,” she added pointedly. “We know the layout of their research floor, where we can find the proof we need to expose the hoax. But our source knows little about the security floors, the guard postings—the obstacles we’d need to surmount to reach the research level and get out alive. Your knowledge of the bunker interior could help us complete our picture.”

  Daramoy moved closer to Kirk, holding his gaze urgently. “Please, Kirk. Please, all of you. I know you come from a distant land. Our people have done horrible things to you, and you have no reason to trust us. But my people are immigrants here too. We were welcome here for generations, but then Ribaul came to power on his rhetoric of hate and fear, of conquest of outsiders and overwhelming force as the only way to ensure security and order. Now it is those like us, the outsiders, who are disproportionately targeted. He uses the false space war to murder our activists, to destroy our businesses, to leave us impoverished and helpless, yet win our allegiance by convincing us we share a common enemy that only he can protect us against.”

  She clutched his arm. “We truly do share a common enemy, Kirk, and you know it is Ribaul. That is why I plead with you to help us, for the good of all Nacmorians. We must expose the government’s conspiracy and tell the people the truth: that aliens are not among us!”

  Daramoy’s plea gave Kirk pause, though not for the reasons she hoped. “If I could have a moment to speak with my people,” Kirk said.

  “Of course. Take all the time you need.”

  Kirk led the others into a side room, turning off the communicator’s translation function for good measure. “You hear that?” Mitchell asked. “They want us to break them int
o the research floors. That’s got to be where our phasers and gear are.”

  “I know,” Kirk told him. “That’s the only reason I’m even considering this.”

  “What’s to consider? We can’t leave that stuff there. How long before they find the right setting on a hand phaser and blow out a wall?”

  “I agree, sir,” Hauraki said. “It could be our only chance to retrieve our equipment.”

  “But we’re being asked to help one faction in an internal dispute gain an advantage over another,” Kirk told them. “If Daramoy gets her proof, it could bring down Ribaul’s government, and we’d be partially responsible for that.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Mitchell said. “Ribaul is a mass murderer. He needs to go down.” Hauraki nodded.

  “It’s not up to us to decide that for them! They have to achieve their own change from within, or it’ll never last.”

  “And they will, Jim. The rebels will lead the attack. They’ll publicize what they learn. We’re secondary to that.”

  “You heard Daramoy. They can’t get in without our help.”

  Diaz spoke up tentatively. “On the other hand, sir . . . The information they’re requesting is nothing alien to Nacmor. It’s just specifics about the interior of a building. Without us, they might still get that information some other way, at a later time. All we’d be doing is moving the timetable up a bit so that we can get our equipment out.”

  Kirk nodded at her. “Thank you, Ensign. Your opinion is noted.”

  He moved to a corner of the room, contemplating. After a few moments, Mitchell came up beside him. “I know you like to consider all the angles, Jim, but is this really that hard a decision? It’s just bending the Prime Directive a little to prevent breaking it outright.”

  The captain glared at him. “You can never ‘just’ bend the Prime Directive. Compromise it a little and it makes it easier to compromise it more the next time.”

  “Sometimes you still have to.”

  “But is this one of those times?”

  “What’s the alternative? Even if we could beam into the bunker, we wouldn’t know where to go, and we’d probably get shot before we found our gear. Daramoy’s people are our only real chance of getting in there. And to get their help, we have to give our own.”

  Kirk cradled the communicator in his hand. “If only we were in range to consult Starfleet Command.”

  Mitchell put a hand on his shoulder. “The reason Starfleet Command put you in the big chair is because they trust you to figure these things out for yourself. So don’t worry so much about rules and regulations. Just trust your instincts. Be the captain I know you can be.”

  Kirk held Mitchell’s eyes for a long moment . . . then made his choice. He flipped open the communicator. “Kirk to Sacagawea.”

  “Adebayo here, Captain! We’ve been waiting for you. We read you apart from the Nacmorians now. Do you want us to beam you up?”

  “No, Commander,” Kirk said. “We’ve been liberated by a resistance group, but we still need to retrieve our equipment from the government bunker, and the rebels are our means to do so. What I need is for you to scan the bunker as thoroughly as possible. Give me detailed information on its internal layout, guard movements, anything you can find.”

  “Aye, sir. We’ll get right on it and contact you again.”

  “Very good. Kirk out.”

  Mitchell stared at him, shaking his head. “Wow. When you decide to bend, you really bend. So much for not giving them anything they couldn’t find themselves.”

  “Technically, we’re still only giving them information indigenous to Nacmor, as Diaz said. They don’t need to know how we got it.” He turned to take in all three of the others. “But if we’re going to do this, I want to give us the best possible chance for success. We must not allow ourselves to be captured again.

  “Ribaul will just have to invent his own aliens from now on.”

  * * *

  As the landing party worked with the rebels to plan the assault on the bunker, Kirk could not help but be struck by Daramoy’s natural leadership, her intelligence, her passion for her work, and her empathy for the Nacmorians in whose name she fought. Her physical beauty, as impressive as it was, felt incidental in comparison. And he could tell the attraction was reciprocated, despite how strange he must appear to Nacmorian eyes. As they planned together, the two leaders meshed easily, their thoughts slipping smoothly into sync, their strategies resonating with and improving each other.

  She sat across from Kirk when they ate, examining his features without the pity or revulsion he saw in the other Nacmorians’ eyes. “It’s not an unattractive appearance, if you consider it the right way,” she told him, as if attempting to cheer him up about his “mutilation” at Ribaul’s hands. “It’s somewhat . . . well, feminine, but that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

  Kirk granted her a smile. “I’ve never believed so, no.”

  Still, he resisted the urge to return her flirtation. He was a Starfleet captain on a sensitive mission; she was a rebel leader fighting to free a world. Both of them had obligations to their people first and foremost—and the Prime Directive formed an impenetrable shield between them. Gary mocked him for his seriousness and self-discipline, but they were needed in a situation like this. So he forced himself to maintain an objective detachment toward Daramoy.

  The rebels’ plan to penetrate the bunker relied, in a way, on the government’s contempt for the cultural heritage of its subjects. In building the bunker, the regime had thoughtlessly dug into and demolished an archaeological ruin, a series of underground aqueducts and sewers serving the ancient city that had preceded Derostur. Kirk was grateful that Sherev was not here; such callous destruction of a historical site would have enraged her. But through their lack of interest in their planet’s history, the builders of the bunker had failed to learn of another, lower level of tunnels passing directly underneath the facility. Daramoy’s resistance had already managed to dig up to the cement floor of one of the bunker’s steam tunnels; breaching it would get them into the facility undetected. The problem was getting through the intervening levels to the research floors without being captured or killed, and that was where the landing party’s knowledge of the bunker layout (augmented by the Sacagawea’s sensor scans) would prove critical.

  Daramoy’s four-person team and the four members of the landing party entered the base wearing replica guard uniforms. It was an overly large group for an infiltration, but Kirk had convinced Daramoy that they would need to split up, with his foursome retrieving valuable property that Ribaul’s people had taken from them while her group gathered the proof of the government’s staged attacks. The humans wore Nacmorian-green makeup once again, with the men cowled to hide their hair; it wouldn’t convince anyone up close, but Daramoy and Seljuron hoped that it would let them pass from a distance, or at least keep the base personnel off their guard long enough for the interlopers to overpower them if necessary. The Starfleet team’s information let them choose the route likely to bring them into contact with the fewest guards as they made their way up to the research level.

  Indeed, as they emerged from the maintenance tunnels on the detention level and made their way to the fire stairs, they were spotted by a soldier passing through a nearby intersection, but the man merely spared them a cursory glance and nod before going on his way, preoccupied with the clipboard he carried. Kirk and Daramoy watched the intersection warily while Seljuron worked to disable the door alarm, but the rebel scientist avoided making noises that would draw the receding soldier’s attention. They made it into the stairwell without incident.

  Unfortunately, the fire stairs did not go all the way up to the research level; rather, for security reasons, both the lower and upper levels’ stairwells connected separately to the main administrative level, which contained the only exits from the bunker (until now). The team would have to make their way through a portion of the main level to reach the upper stairwells. As they crept through t
he corridors, pausing at intersections to peer around corners, Kirk felt a moment’s gratitude that the Nacmorians had not yet invented surveillance cameras.

  Finally their luck ran out, and the infiltrators were spotted by a pair of soldiers who rounded the corner ahead of them. “You there,” the taller of the two cowled men said, striding toward them. “I don’t recognize you. Show me your identification.”

  Hanging behind the Nacmorians, Kirk saw Daramoy and one of her fighters reach for their knives. Trading a look with Hauraki, Kirk lunged forward at the soldiers, the security chief right behind him. A few quick, efficient, Starfleet-trained blows later, both men had knocked out the soldiers, whom they began dragging toward a maintenance closet Kirk had spotted near the corner.

  “What was that?” Daramoy asked Kirk as they dragged the soldiers into the closet and began to bind them.

  “I’d rather not have anyone die because of us, if it can be avoided,” Kirk said.

  “Admirable, but we don’t always have that luxury. They may not kill the four of you if they retake you, since you’re still of value to them. The rest of us may not be so lucky.”

  Kirk kept his eyes on the soldiers’ wrists as he secured their bonds. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “But we have our own rules to follow.”

  Once they finished binding and gagging the guards, they made it through the rest of the level without discovery. Once they made it up the stairs to the research level, Daramoy paused at the exit. “Given your principles, Kirk, are you sure you want your group and mine to split up completely? You might be safer if one of us goes with you.”

  “No.” Kirk shook his head. “Your priority needs to be your own mission. What happens to us isn’t as important. As long as we retrieve our possessions, that’s all that matters to us. You should carry out the rest of your mission as if we were never a part of it. And that means that if you can’t find us when you’re done, just get out—don’t stop to look for us. We’ll make our own way home.”