by David Mack
Bowen was frustrated beyond belief, and his annoyance colored his retort. “How the hell are we supposed to do that? This is Starfleet we’re talking about. Handling more than one crisis at a time is what they do. Unlike half the people Kayo installed in your cabinet, Starfleet officers know how to walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“In situations such as this,” Kolova said, “the problem is always one of motivation. We know that Starfleet’s personnel are eminently capable. So what we need to do is adjust their priorities until they align with our own.”
Nervous looks between Omalu and Chandra made it clear to Bowen that they didn’t like where the governor was going with that train of thought; he was fairly sure he wasn’t going to like it, either. “I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate on that last point, would you?”
“Not yet. Let’s just say I have a few notions I’m kicking around.” Kolova poked an index finger with a perfectly manicured nail against Ishii’s chest. “But we’ll need time and resources.”
Ishii regarded the map of the city projected on the bunker’s situation table. “If you mean what I think you do, then Mister Bowen is right—we’ll need to abandon this bunker. We have a limited cache of weapons here, but we’re far shorter on personnel.” A shrug of surrender. “If you really want to take a stand, you’ll need to recruit.”
“We have the constabulary,” Kolova said.
“Most of whom were stunned and captured five minutes ago,” Medina said. “And in another five minutes, the Starfleet security teams sent down here to arrest us are going to open this bunker’s door with some kind of military-grade master key. At that point, if we’re still in here, we can try to resist, but one photon grenade lobbed through that door, and we’re done.”
Bowen could see that Kolova was vacillating, unable to choose between a futile last stand and a desperate if temporary flight from justice. He knew he didn’t have time to wait for her to reason it out on her own, and neither did anyone else who was trapped in the bunker with her. “Madam Governor, if we go now, we can take shelter in the deep maintenance passages connected to your city’s infrastructure. Down here,” he said, pointing at the city schematics, “beneath the water mains, near the waste processors. Make that our base of operations, and we’ll be able to move anywhere in the city within minutes. Then we can plan a real tactical response, and set up fallback points to drag out the chase when they come after us.”
Kolova looked for advice from Ishii, who said, “It’s a sound strategy, Madam Governor.”
At last she seemed swayed. “Let’s move out. Leave anything nonessential. Prioritize weapons and water.” Reacting to a questioning look from one of her bureaucratic underlings, she added, “This mess won’t last more than a day, if that. Either Starfleet stops the Juggernaut, or else it kills us all. Either way, this seems like a good time to travel light.”
* * *
The mound of rocks blocking the passage to the deepest caverns disintegrated at a rate of roughly half a meter per second as Saru and Una bombarded it with steady blasts from their phasers. It had taken a few minutes to cut their way past the obstruction—a task made necessary by the presence of minerals in the local bedrock that interfered with the integrity of transporter signals. Consequently, the air in the ancient tunnel had grown oppressively warm, as well as humid, thanks to the vaporization of water trapped in the rocks.
Saru loosened the collar of his jumpsuit to get more air to his throat spiracles, but he kept his phaser hand steady and his finger on the trigger. When he chanced a look in Una’s direction, he was surprised to find her showing no reaction to the increasing heat or humidity. It was as if nothing could affect her unless she wanted it to. A most enviable gift, Saru thought.
The last few meters of fallen rock crumbled, revealing a fathomless darkness on the other side. Based on the plethora of echoes Saru heard of his and Una’s activity, he surmised the open space ahead must be vast. Una ceased fire, so Saru did the same. He lowered his weapon as Una tucked hers back onto her belt, and then she kneeled down and shrugged off her backpack. From a small pocket on its side she pulled a replacement power cell for her phaser and proceeded to swap it for the nearly depleted one in her weapon. As she worked, she asked Saru, “Did you bring a spare power cell?”
“I did, as per Starfleet landing party protocol.”
“This might be a good time to make the switch.”
“Yes, sir.” He retrieved his phaser’s backup power pack from his belt and exchanged it with the one from his weapon. As he did, he saw that he had expended more of its charge than he had thought. “Do you expect to face resistance inside the cave?”
“I have no expectations whatsoever,” Una said. “However, it would be prudent before entering an unsecured and unexplored area to make certain all of our options are ready for use.” She stood and fixed her phaser back into place on her hip. Then she opened the top flap of her backpack and removed two pairs of high-tech goggles. She handed one to Saru after he put away his weapon. “Put these on. They’ll adjust to suit the environment.”
“I don’t need them,” he said, and tried to hand his pair back. “My people live most of their lives underground. Our vision is optimized for environments such as this.”
Una refused to accept his return of the goggles. “Just put them on. As good as your natural sight might be in the dark, these will make it better.” Perhaps sensing his reticence, she added, “Trust me, they’ll adjust to maximize compatibility with your biology. I promise.”
“If you insist.” Saru fixed the goggles into place. He noted a few brief pulses from sensors inside the goggles as they identified his species’ retinal structure. It was a common feature for general-issue equipment such as this. Because Starfleet personnel hailed from many species, it was an inconvenient reality that not all humanoids’ eyes perceived the same range of electromagnetic information or reacted the same way to enhanced-vision technology. For that reason, Starfleet enhanced goggles adjusted their output to best suit the optical physiology of the wearer. Within moments his eyes adjusted to his new holographic view of the cavern.
The color response of the goggles was restricted in Saru’s case to a variety of grays and greens, with some nearly white hot spots and a few regions of inky shadow. But the limited palette did nothing to diminish the natural majesty of the space that yawned around him and Una.
Great pillars of stone, formed from fused stalactites and stalagmites, joined the jagged labyrinth of the massive cavern’s floor with its distant, pearlescent ceiling. Underground streams snaked through eroded rock formations, or spilled from cracks in the walls, and they all converged in a vast central lake. Superimposed over the image of the cavern was sensor data gathered by the goggles, indicating the direction that Saru was facing, and the approximate distance to whatever object he focused upon. When he strained to see the far end of the cavern, the readout indicated his shadowy would-be destination was more than eleven kilometers away.
He faced Una, who was busy surveying the cavern through her own goggles. The lenses’ oval shape gave the human woman’s visage an almost insectoid quality that amused Saru. When she noticed his attention, he masked his stare by remarking, “A far superior solution to flares.”
“And a less disruptive one.” Una started down a gradual slope, on a direct heading for a cluster of what appeared to be artificially shaped stones. “There might be life-forms down here that evolved to exist in the dark. The last thing we want to do is disturb their habitat. Our goal is to make our survey and depart, leaving as little trace of our presence as possible.”
Saru refrained from pointing out that he was well aware of Starfleet’s policy with regard to survey protocols. It was, after all, just good science to minimize one’s impact on the subjects of one’s interest. But he also understood that for Starfleet it was about something more than that: it was about respect for all life, and its right to be free of undue external influence. That lesson had been the cornerstone of his education
at Starfleet Academy, though he doubted its sanctity.
I’m just glad the Starfleet officers who saved me on Kelpia had the compassion to know when to break that rule.
Within a few minutes he and Una were down in the twisting paths among the towering rocks. Fragments of a long-dead primitive civilization lay strewn about. Everywhere Saru looked he saw blanched bones, crude tools, shards of unknown provenance, and scratches in the timeless stone. The entire cavern, he realized, was a buried maze of ghosts and shadows, an epitaph for a culture reduced to dust and whispers from the farthest reaches of antiquity.
Una slowed her pace. “Curious that so many artifacts and remains should be clustered here, so far below ground.” She stopped, lifted her tricorder, and aimed it at a nearby pit. Saru waited while she scanned the deep, circular excavation. The whistling tone of her tricorder returned to them from all directions, not just repeated but amplified. When she finished, the echoes abated until a deathly silence enveloped them. “Multiple layers of oxidized organic compounds suggests this was a funeral pit used for cremations over a period of several hundred years, with the last activity taking place approximately nine million years ago.”
“How do you know it’s a funeral pit and not a cooking pit?”
“There are bone fragments in the sediment that are consistent with those we have seen elsewhere in the cave. In addition, there appears to be no mechanism for keeping food at a consistent distance from the flames that would have filled this pit, nor anything nearby to which such a mechanism might be secured. All of which suggests that whatever was burned here was most likely subjected directly to the flames. It might have been an altar for burnt offerings of a superstitious nature, but because it would be very difficult for people living in this cavern to dig graves for their dead, I think this was most likely a cremation site.”
I should know not to ask uninformed questions. “Most logical, Commander.”
She squatted to pick up a piece of what appeared to be a stone tool. “Would you agree that the people who dwelled in this cave likely had not advanced beyond stone-age or perhaps bronze-age technology?”
“I would concur with that assessment, yes.”
“Can you think of a reason why they would choose to live here, underground?”
Saru considered that. “They might have evolved from a cave-dwelling species.”
“If so, how did they learn to harness fire?” Una stood and regarded the cavern with a worried expression. “Something about this feels wrong to me, Saru.”
He inferred her supposition. “You think they were a surface-dwelling species driven underground by the arrival of the Juggernaut, much as my people were driven underground by the coming of the t’rrask.”
“I do. What I don’t understand is why. This was not an advanced culture. So why did the Juggernaut come here? Why did it target them? What purpose would that serve?”
“I don’t have enough information to answer that, Commander.” Saru gestured toward the path that led deeper into the cavern, toward what looked like an ominous structure of pale stone. “But perhaps if we dig a bit deeper, we might glimpse the heart of this mystery.”
“A capital suggestion, Lieutenant. Lead on.”
Energized by her approval and invitation, Saru took the lead as they continued their venture into the dark. Out in front was not a natural place for a Kelpien to be—but for the first time in Saru’s life, he had started to see the appeal of feeling like a leader.
Darkness, here I come.
14
* * *
After nearly thirty years in Starfleet, Philippa Georgiou had learned it was possible for a starship to be lacking nearly anything essential to its operation. It was a rare day on any starship that nothing was said to be in short supply. But it was only after she reached the upper echelons of the command division that she had learned there was one commodity that was always present in abundance on every vessel and in every facility: bad news.
Today’s unwanted delivery was arriving courtesy of the Enterprise’s commanding officer, whose holographic full-body image shimmered in front of the Shenzhou’s forward bridge viewport. “Our landing parties searched every room in the Executive Complex, and then they spent fifteen minutes cutting their way inside the governor’s secure underground bunker. Care to guess what they found?”
Though weary and annoyed, Georgiou played along. “An empty room?”
“Pretty much,” Pike said. “The governor and her people raided the water rations and weapons lockers before they bugged out, but they were nice enough to leave us a note. Your man Gant tells me it reads, ‘Do your jobs, and maybe then we’ll talk.’ ”
Georgiou massaged her aching temples with the thumb and middle finger of her right hand. “Exactly the kind of additional complication we don’t need right now.” She sighed, then asked Pike, “Do we know where Kolova and the other colonists are now?”
“All we know for certain is they aren’t in the Complex or the bunker, and they’re not out in the streets. But that leaves a lot of private structures all over the capital, not to mention a few hundred kilometers’ worth of underground maintenance tunnels.”
Engineering officer Weeton looked up from his station. “Captain?” He waited until she acknowledged him before he continued. “If I were them, I’d be underground. It would maximize their mobility and their cover, not to mention give them control over the city’s power and other utilities. Plus, with all the metal in the natural rock, and all the power being moved around down there, they’d be pretty well hidden from our sensors.”
“Thank you, Mister Weeton.” She faced Pike’s holographic avatar. “Did you and your people catch that?”
“We got it. And for what it’s worth, that was our conclusion, as well. So, the ball’s in your court, Captain. How do you wish to proceed?”
Georgiou sat back and folded her hands in front of her chest, with her elbows on the armrests of her command chair. “Our number-one priority is the safety of the colonists. Their governor has fled her post, but seeing as we were about to take her into custody, the burden of providing leadership and security would have been on us all the same. First, we need to secure all communications within the capital, as well as all channels in or out of it.”
“Understood,” Pike said. “My people can take care of that. What’s next?”
“My crew will block all subspace signals to or from the planet’s surface. We can’t have Kolova agitating other nearby colonies, or bringing in mercenaries to muddle things up. As far as taking her and her accomplices into custody, that has to be a lower priority. As long as they stay hidden and don’t complicate matters, I’m content to leave them in peace until we finish dealing with the Juggernaut.”
Pike nodded. “That works for us. As for the Juggernaut, have you received any word yet from your first officer? Or from Lieutenant Spock?”
It was impossible for Georgiou to hide her dismay. “Not yet.”
“Captain, if we don’t hear from them by the deadline, you know what we need to do.”
“One disaster at a time, Captain. One disaster at a time.”
* * *
The city below the capital was like a foreign land to Kolova. She had always known that dozens of kilometers of utility passages sprawled beneath the city she called home; that had not prepared her to roam those dim pathways with barely any idea of where she was. As she and a few dozen of her fellow colonists retreated deeper into the city’s infrastructure, she had to put her trust in the engineers and mechanics who made their livings in this shadowy undercity.
“How much farther?” she asked Floyd Tanzer, the man at the front of the group.
The broad-shouldered fix-it man answered without looking back. “A ways. Not far.”
She chewed on the ambiguity of his assessment. “A ways” had seemed to imply a significant distance, but “not far” negated that interpretation. After careful consideration, all she could say she had learned from that exchange was not to
ask Tanzer for updates.
Behind her, the rest of the group marched single file. No one spoke above a whisper. There were few active surveillance devices in the sublevels, but Bowen, the rig foreman, had suggested the group keep a low profile in case Starfleet sent security personnel into the tunnels to stop them. It was a sensible suggestion, though their hushed transit of the tunnels had begun to make Kolova feel like a fugitive on a world where she was supposed to be the head of state.
Who am I kidding? I became a fugitive the moment I fled the bunker. She bit down on her resentment of the Federation and its oh-so-righteous meddling. We’d have been an independent planet if they hadn’t laid prior claim to this rock. But if the Federation didn’t want to settle it themselves, why should they get to make the rules for those of us who did?
There were no obvious answers that Kolova could see. So she stewed in silence and plodded onward through the confines of dark tunnels whose walls were lined with parallel rows of pipes and seemingly endless runs of multicolored optronic cables.
Her mind was still wandering when the claustrophobic passage opened onto a wide platform beneath what looked like a gigantic spherical tank suspended from the ceiling grid of duranium girders high above. Through the metal-grate floor panels of the platform, Kolova saw a deep pit with several layers of crisscrossing pipes. Gathered on the platform were a couple of dozen more colonists, including a handful of officers from the local police force. Everyone waiting on the platform had come with lightweight personal armaments: stun pistols, shock guns, and a few melee weapons. It wouldn’t be enough to win a prolonged stand-up fight against the crews of two Starfleet starships, but that had never been Kolova’s intention.
The rest of her group from the bunker filed out of the passageway behind her and spread out onto the large platform. As soon as she was sure they all were accounted for, she moved to the center of the platform and raised her voice to be heard over the background rumble and hiss that permeated the undercity. “Thank you all for coming. I’m sure you’re all aware that we’re facing a pair of threats right now. To be honest, I’m not sure which one I fear more—the alien thing in the sea that’s trying to kill us, or the Starfleeters who seem more interested in arresting us than helping us.” Turning in a slow circle, she read the nods of agreement in the crowd as a good sign. “I want to make this next point very clear: We did not come down here to hide. We’re here to plan our next move, and we need to make it quickly.”