“You’re starting to vex me,” the white Naazh growled at Uuvu’it.
“You’ll be more vexed when I finish you!” Uuvu’it pressed the firing stud.
The white Naazh laughed as it held out its hand. With a flicker of light, the gun vanished from Uuvu’it’s grip and reappeared in its own. “You talk too much,” it said, and fired.
The bolt drilled through Uuvu’it’s breastplate, blasting its gray-and-brown material apart in a spray of incandescent fragments, mixed with dark violet Betelgeusian blood. With a piercing, hawklike cry, Uuvu’it convulsed and fell to the deck, the impact dislodging the helmet from his bald, dark blue head.
“Hrii’ush!” Worene cried in anguish. The gold Naazh had frozen at the sight, giving Worene an opening to leap to her fallen friend’s side. Even the red Naazh had paused to observe the scene.
“Was that necessary?” the gold Naazh demanded.
The white one tilted its antennaed head dismissively. “A sacrifice for the greater good.”
Worene cradled Uuvu’it’s head in her lap, her feral features twisted in grief. But Uuvu’it gasped a chirping laugh, seeming pleased with himself. “At last,” he wheezed. “This will … finally … earn my name.”
Uuvu’it slumped, and Chekov knew that the vivid, intense, frustrating Betelgeusian who had been a welcome thorn in his side for so long would never move again. “You Cossacks!” he cried, resuming fire on the red Naazh, and taking advantage of its distraction to circle around it closer to the New Humans and the Aenar. Worene gave a low, frightening feline growl and pounced on the white Naazh, while th’Clane moved in to back her up. The gold Naazh merely stood there, shrugging off Nizhoni’s renewed fire.
Miranda Jones’s voice came over his wrist communicator, and he heard an echo of it from Kirk’s. “Captain, this is Ambassador Kollos. My habitat is outside the rec deck, and I have a last-ditch plan.”
Kirk raised the communicator to his face. “I’m listening, Ambassador.”
“I wish to enter and let the Naazh see me. Do you understand?”
Chekov saw that Kirk grasped the proposal, and so did he. Kollos clearly hoped that the Naazh would be incapacitated by the sight of a Medusan.
“It’s too risky,” Kirk said. “We don’t know how they’ll react—it could make them more violent.”
“That hardly seems possible, Captain. At least it would disorient them long enough for me to get the Aenar out.”
“Assuming their helmets don’t filter out the effect.”
“Unlikely. Filters have to be designed specifically for that purpose.”
“What about sighted personnel?” Chekov asked.
“You’ll have to withdraw for your own safety. I assure you, my habitat is robust, and Medusans are difficult to kill. Trust us, Captain. This is the lateral move we need.”
Chekov watched the decision play across Kirk’s face. But he was James Kirk, so he arrived at his decision swiftly. “All right, Ambassador. Come in.” He raised his voice. “All personnel! Retreat and form up on me!”
“Wise choice,” the red Naazh said. “I told you the rest of you were free to go.”
By now, the Aenar had retreated into the rear corner of the deck, and zh’Lenthar looked outraged and betrayed at their apparent abandonment. But the New Humans held their line. Palur helped the injured Zabish stagger over to Chekov, but DiFalco held his gaze unflinchingly. “We aren’t going anywhere,” she said. “With your permission … we all choose to stay and fight. They’re family, sir.”
“What about … Kollos?” he implored her. The Aenar would be safe from the sight of him, but the New Humans were another matter.
“We’ll take our chances. At worst, Doctor Jones can help us afterward, like she did for Spock.”
Chekov turned to the captain. Kirk held DiFalco’s gaze for a long moment, then nodded, gesturing to Chekov to follow him out. With luck, he’d have the chance to apologize to zh’Lenthar and the Aenar in a little while.
As Ambassador Kollos’s habitat hovered into the rec deck, the surviving guards evacuated briskly, keeping up fire on the Naazh in hopes of slowing them down temporarily. The Naazh chuckled as they stood patiently, for they seemed to be getting what they wanted. Chekov prayed this wasn’t a mistake.
Palur and Zabish followed Chekov out, and the remaining guards gathered up the wounded Lance, Sakamoto, and M’sharna, helping them out into the corridor along with the others. Doctor Chapel was already on hand with a medical team, and they soon swept the wounded away on antigrav stretchers.
“Now what?” Chekov asked the captain.
“Now … we wait. And trust that Kollos knows what he’s talking about.”
They waited, but for long moments, nothing happened. In time, Doctor Jones emerged from the nearby turbolift and joined them outside the rec deck entrance. “Any word from inside, Doctor?” Kirk asked.
She shook her head. “Kollos is concentrating on his attack. The effect Medusans have on humanoids … it’s involuntary, but they know how to amplify it if they need to.”
Chekov stared. “They have never told us that.”
Her icy gaze turned in his direction. “Can you blame them? They’re feared enough as it is.”
“Let’s hope,” Kirk said grimly, “that this Medusan lives up to his mythical namesake. And that the Naazh don’t have a Perseus among them.”
Jones frowned at him. “Are you so sure Kollos isn’t the Perseus here? After all, there were three Gorgon sis—”
The deck shook, and a deafening blast sounded within the rec deck. Chekov staggered, and by the time he regained his footing, a decompression alarm was sounding. His first impulse was to rush inside—but if the deck was decompressed, he’d be unable to open the doors.
Doctor Jones gasped. “Kollos!” she cried, then fainted into Kirk’s arms.
“Doctor! Miranda!” The captain called her name again, but could not revive her. “Nizhoni, get her to sickbay.”
With this done, Kirk raised his communicator to his lips. “Kirk to bridge. Spock, report!”
The Vulcan’s voice was uncharacteristically tentative. “Captain … the entire recreation deck has been breached to vacuum. The aft windows and hull were ruptured by a massive burst of energy, cause unknown. The energy discharge in proximity to the starboard nacelle’s acquisition sink destabilized our warp field and triggered an emergency shutdown. We have returned to normal space.”
“Life signs?”
A longer pause. “Sensors show … no life signs, and no bodies. Any … remains … must have been vaporized in the blast or jettisoned in the decompression.”
“My God,” Kirk breathed, and Chekov understood why. Sucked out into space, and into a collapsing warp field … there would be nothing left to identify or bury. Just a trail of molecules scattered across a billion cubic kilometers.
“We’ve lost,” Kirk said heavily. “The Aenar … are extinct.”
Seven
It took more than a day for the Enterprise to limp back to Andoria at low warp, the most its damaged spaceframe could handle. Sector Headquarters offered to send a tug, but Kirk felt it important for morale to bring the ship in under her own power. The crew felt helpless enough as it was.
Spock shared somewhat in the crew’s frustration, in large part due to his inability to explain just what had caused the explosion that had destroyed the recreation deck and all who remained within. Whatever Kollos had done to amplify his disruptive neurological effects had disrupted internal sensors as well, and Spock had been unable to extract any useful data from the noise.
“Can you at least speculate?” Kirk asked as he, Thelin, and McCoy stood around Spock’s science station on the bridge.
Spock frowned up at him. “You know I dislike speculating.”
“Yes, but you have a pretty good record at it nonetheless. So I keep asking.”
Emitting a sigh of mild exasperation, Spock leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers. “It is conceivable that one of the N
aazh, rendered mentally unstable by the sight of Kollos, inadvertently or intentionally summoned an explosive device from their extradimensional space.”
Thelin frowned at him. “They were so traumatized by the sight of a Medusan that they were driven to suicide?”
“Or they attempted to summon a different weapon and selected the explosive device by mistake.” Spock shook his head. “However, it is a problematical conjecture. If they had such a device in their arsenal, why not use it on the Aenar compound in the first place rather than resorting to blades and small arms?”
“I said it before,” McCoy said. “Some sick types like to kill for sport.”
“I did get that impression from the massacre site,” Thelin said. “But that raises the reciprocal question: If hunting their prey individually was their goal, why have such a powerful explosive in their arsenal at all? It is logically inconsistent.”
“Maybe it was an accident,” Kirk suggested. “The way they were able to materialize armor and weapons at will, from some kind of higher dimension … that had to take a lot of energy.”
“Their crystals did appear to respond to their intentions,” Thelin said. “And our scans of the crystals recorded a psion-particle signature consistent with readings from the massacre site. If they were thought-controlled, then a Naazh suffering from exposure to the sight of Kollos might have inadvertently triggered an overload or self-destruct sequence.”
“Granted,” Spock replied. “However, their technology appeared quite advanced. It seems unlikely that it would lack basic safeguards to prevent catastrophic failure from user error alone. The steps necessary to create an overload would likely have been too complex for a mentally impaired individual to execute, certainly not before Kollos could have observed it and intervened.”
McCoy was skeptical. “Let me remind you that the last time Kollos showed his face—or whatever—to someone aboard this ship, it led to Larry Marvick throwing our engines into overdrive and somehow flinging us clear out of the universe. That took some pretty complex steps.”
“And I can assure you,” Spock replied, “that the ambassador deeply regretted that unintended consequence of his act of self-defense. I am certain he would not have repeated the tactic lightly or recklessly.”
“I agree,” Kirk said. “Naturally, it was a calculated risk, a desperation move. There were plenty of things that could’ve gone wrong. But if either Kollos or I had thought anything remotely this bad was possible, he never would’ve suggested it and I never would’ve approved it.” He paused, emotions fulminating behind his eyes. “I have to believe that Kollos knew what he was doing. As far as I’m concerned, he was a hero. He sacrificed his life in the attempt to defend the Aenar and the Enterprise, and that’s how he should be remembered.”
* * *
The memorial service was difficult for Hikaru Sulu. He had been close to both Marcella DiFalco and Hrii’ush Uuvu’it in different ways, and all he wanted was to weep for them and lean on his remaining friends for support. But as second officer, it was incumbent upon him to support the rest of the crew, to speak to them of the fallen and help them process their own grief. It was a struggle to find the right words, and to say them without breaking down.
“Marcella was always the kind of person who got carried away with her enthusiasms,” he said to the gathered crew in the arboretum. “I admit, I found most of them kind of frivolous—and I’m one to talk, I know.” The comment spawned more laughter than it deserved; the crew needed the release. “So the truth is, I never took her belief in the New Human movement all that seriously. No denying, she did develop some esper skills, but I figured it was just another fancy that would pass in time. Even two years later, I just thought of it as an eccentricity, a sort of game she played with the other espers.”
He stopped talking, and it was a few moments before he could start again, his voice trembling. “But I did her, and the other New Humans, a disservice. What they shared wasn’t a game—it was a way of life. And when it came down to it, they showed the depth, and the courage, of their convictions. They stayed and fought for their fellow telepaths, even knowing that they would probably die or be driven mad. They acted without thought for themselves … because they truly believed they had become part of something greater. Part of a cosmic consciousness that transcended their individual selves.” He lowered his head. “I hope they were right.”
Talking about Uuvu’it came more easily somehow, even though Sulu had probably been closer to him than to DiFalco these past two years. The Betelgeusian had been an uncomplicated sort, a being of clear ambitions and goals, and one had always known where one stood with him. “I always felt responsible for Hrii’ush and the other ’Geusians. You probably don’t know this, but the Betelgeusian exchange program with Starfleet was kind of my idea—or at least, I suggested it in passing to the head of a ’Geusian argosy a few years back, and they liked the idea and made it happen. I’d always liked their people ever since I first encountered them, and I was glad to see them take an interest in Starfleet.
“And I think Hrii’ush took to it better than most. His relentless competitiveness could be annoying, but once you got to know him, you realized that challenging people was his way of making friends with them—and that he’d challenged himself to befriend everyone in the crew. He may have felt jealous later on when Chavi’rru and Shuuri’ik both won the right to go back to the argosies and start their own prides before he did, but I always felt he stuck around the longest because he was in no hurry to leave.” He directed a supportive glance toward Worene, who stood with her copper-haired head lowered and her arms and tail wrapped around herself protectively.
“And he, too, gave his life freely when the time came. He was always fearless, embracing his impulses without hesitation—often without thought. But it wasn’t selfishness or vanity. Above all else, he was driven to earn his successes. To prove himself worthy of a home and family to call his own.
“All Hrii’ush sought was a place where he belonged … and so he dedicated himself to protecting the places others belonged. I hope that, at the end, he realized that we were his pride all along.”
With no New Humans left alive among the crew, it was up to Ensign Palur to attempt to address their loss from a telepath’s perspective. “In my people, the empathic gift is rare and jealously guarded. For many Argelians, it is not a trait they would wish to share, for we are a people who pride ourselves on our lives of love and peace, and we believe that knowing the darker sides that others lock away would only create needless strife. But Marcella, Edward, Jade, and Daniel believed that knowing one another’s minds gave them greater peace, and greater love for each other. Some may have thought they set themselves apart from humans without their gift, much as my priestess ancestors once did. But I know that they all felt that their gift was evidence of the limitless potential of all humans, and it made them feel closer to the rest of you, not more distant. I wish more of us had understood that while they were among us.” She wept as she returned to her seat, where Chief Onami embraced her comfortingly.
Commander Thelin spoke only briefly about the fallen Aenar; going into too much detail might seem accusatory toward the crew, so that was best saved for the services on Andoria. Instead, he focused on the courage of their defenders, and expressed his gratitude toward them for choosing to remain in harm’s way to allow his daughter a chance to escape. “That selflessness in defense of others was a quality they shared with this vessel’s crew,” he said, “and I believe that in those final minutes, we and they found a truer understanding than ever before.”
Not all of the lives lost had been veteran members of the crew. By all accounts, Specialist T’Nalae had been one of the first casualties, killed in the attempt to protect the Aenar from the gold Naazh. Few of the crew had really known T’Nalae, but Spock spoke movingly of her sacrifice nonetheless.
“T’Nalae believed strongly that all beings should be true to their inherent natures,” he said to the gathered crew.
“I feared that she interpreted this principle too narrowly, and I expected to have my work cut out for me as a teacher in order to broaden her perspective. But at the end, she greatly exceeded my expectations, and proved that her own truest nature was nobler than she, perhaps, had believed.”
Spock also spoke on the loss of Ambassador Kollos, for with Miranda Jones still recovering from their forcible separation, he was the one who had known the ambassador most intimately. “There was much I perceived during my brief joining of minds with Kollos that I could not begin to comprehend, or to express in any language I know. Yet I clearly perceived his essential qualities: his intelligence; his optimism; his joyful curiosity toward all beings, especially the ones most unlike himself. We may rightfully lament that the unknown aggressors that he sacrificed himself to defeat could not share the same joy in infinite diversity. But I can say, at least, that knowing Kollos has given me an improved understanding … of the concept of beauty.”
* * *
“Thank you for your words at the memorial, Spock,” Miranda Jones said from her sickbay bed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there myself.”
“You were in no condition to attend,” Spock replied. “I regret only my own limited ability to do justice to the ambassador’s memory.”
Jones was quiet for a time, her expression introspective. This ward was empty aside from them; M’sharna and Sakamoto were still recovering in the opposite ward, but the other injured personnel had all been treated and released.
“I honestly don’t know what I could’ve said if I had been there,” she eventually told him in a quiet voice. “I can barely process the idea of Kollos as someone separate from myself. I … I’m a stranger to myself right now. I’d lost track of … which parts of me were Miranda and which were Kollos. I’ll have to … to rediscover that. I feel for something in myself and it isn’t there … Oh, I thought I knew loneliness before.”
Spock gazed at her with sympathy. “I confess I can barely comprehend your experience, for my own merger with Kollos was quite brief,” he said. “Still, I may be the one person who has any direct insight into what you have lost. As such, I place myself at your disposal. Whatever you may need, Miranda, I shall endeavor to provide.”
The Higher Frontier Page 11