Hearts and Minds

by Dayton Ward

  “Thank you for seeing me, Captain. I apologize for calling on you, as I know your shift has ended.”

  Picard’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the captain, Mister Taurik. I’m never really off duty.” He waved for the Vulcan to enter the room so the door could close behind him. “Let me guess: you’re Admiral Akaar’s point man on whatever this is about.” He gestured to his computer screen.

  Nodding, Taurik replied. “Yes, Captain. I was personally briefed by Admiral Akaar during our time in Federation space. It was a most . . . illuminating discussion.”

  “Perhaps you’d care to share the details with me?” Pointing to the chairs positioned before his desk, Picard indicated for Taurik to join him.

  “Thank you, sir.” Taking the seat to Picard’s left, Taurik seemed to relax not the slightest bit as he settled into the chair. “First, Admiral Akaar wanted me to tell you that our present circumstances are not due to an external threat, and neither are they a reflection on you or any member of the Enterprise’s crew.”

  “So why are we here, Commander?”

  To his surprise, Picard observed that Taurik appeared . . . nervous? The engineer glanced over his shoulder, as though expecting Worf or someone else to come barging in at any moment. Though Taurik’s hands were clasped and resting in his lap, Picard noted how he was almost fidgeting in a most un-Vulcan manner.

  “As it was explained to me, sir,” said Taurik after a moment, “the Enterprise’s next mission and the problems we may soon be facing stem from decisions and actions that were undertaken more than three centuries ago . . .”

  BEGINNINGS

  2

  Near Bloomingdale, Georgia

  March 16, 2031

  Finding the ship was easy. The trail of fallen, burned pine trees on either side of a shallow, curving trench of scorched, overturned soil simplified that part of the problem.

  Moving step by cautious step from the relative safety of the trees south of the crash area, Gunnery Sergeant Erika Figueroa stopped her advance, inspecting the newly carved trough for signs of other activity. She switched the optical gun sight mounted atop her M4A3 carbine assault rifle to thermal mode, peering through the illuminated reticule and noting the pockets of heat that marked the ship’s violent passing. Other areas along the ground that were farther away from the craft’s final resting place retained some residual warmth, but much of the disturbed terrain had already cooled in the night air.

  Lucky dirt.

  Despite the first official day of spring being just four days away and the notable lack of humidity that would soon plague this part of eastern Georgia in the coming months, sweat still ran down Figueroa’s chest and back beneath her black T-shirt and uniform jacket. Recent rains had made the ground here soft, and she felt the soles of her combat boots sinking slightly into the damp soil. On the far side of the ragged furrow, just visible within the first line of trees that had escaped destruction, she saw half of her six-person team moving with a deliberate caution similar to her own.

  “Smitty, any radiation?” she asked. Despite her speaking in soft tones, it was still sufficient to be picked up by the transceiver tucked into her right ear, and transmitted over her team’s secured communications frequency.

  “That’s a negative, Gunny,” replied Sergeant Matthew Smith, Figueroa’s assistant team leader, from the other side of the crash line, and through the thermal optic of the heads-up display built into her helmet’s eye shield, she could see him raise his left hand and wave in her direction. “Everything’s in the green.”

  All of them had received extensive familiarization in the areas of nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare and defense as just one more component of their multifaceted training. Smith was the team’s undisputed NBC expert, and the one tasked with carrying one of the unit’s two compact Geiger counters. The spare was in a pouch on Figueroa’s tactical vest, along with a similar device for detecting hazardous chemical and biological agents.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Figueroa raised her left hand and signaled toward the trees ahead of her. “Keep moving,” she said. “Let’s get on with this. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  Her team was but one aspect of a larger response following a tactical alert after radar stations controlled by the United States Space Command detected the presence of an unidentified craft flying along the country’s east coast earlier in the evening. A pair of F-35A joint strike fighters dispatched from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia had intercepted the craft in minutes, at which point the craft had deviated from its slow, seemingly meandering course south along the Atlantic coastline and initiated aggressive action against the two fighter jets. At last report, a rescue team had already found the pilot from one plane that had endured an attack by some form of energy-dampening beam. The second pilot had better luck, firing on the ship and disabling it with a missile that sent the craft tumbling toward the ground just after sunset, where it eventually devastated a sizable chunk of Georgia forest northwest of Savannah.

  As for Figueroa and the other five members of her team, they had been activated from their base of operations at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and dropped into this area via parachute from a Marine Corps transport plane. Support craft including a helicopter for extraction was en route, but for the next hour or so and as the hour crept toward midnight, Figueroa and her people were on their own.

  “Walkabout, this is Homestead,” said a male voice in her ear, employing the code names selected for the night’s activities. “What’s your status? Do you have eyes on the target?”

  “Getting there, Homestead,” replied Figueroa, minding her footing as she stepped over the rotting trunk of a fallen pine tree. “Just making sure it’s a decent neighborhood.”

  “We’re on a tight schedule, Walkabout. We need to pick up the pace.”

  “We do, huh? Is there something we don’t yet know about down here?”

  Figueroa knew that the support team monitoring their communications from the mission operations center at Camp Lejeune had already heard the few words she and her people had exchanged, and everything was couched in euphemisms such as “neighborhood” to denote the crash site and other distracting language in the unlikely event someone else might be tapping into their transmissions. The personnel back at Lejeune also had direct access to the visual feeds provided by the heads-up displays in the team’s helmets. Therefore, and despite their apparent impatience, they were about as informed as they could be regarding the current and evolving situation without actually being forced to traipse through the dense Georgia forest.

  Damned keyboard commandos.

  Over the encrypted comm frequency, the voice replied, “Given the neighborhood, local law enforcement is already mobilizing assets to investigate. We estimate no more than six zero mikes before you have company.”

  “Crowd control’s on the way, right?” According to the terse pre-mission briefing she received while en route to the target location, Figueroa had been assured that additional support personnel with the authority and ability to cordon off the crash site would be in place no more than an hour after her team’s entry into the area. She knew that they were on borrowed time. Even though the unidentified craft had crashed in a secluded area of forest north of quiet out-of-the-way Savannah, its fiery descent would not have gone unnoticed. Given its population of fewer than 2,500 people and a small emergency response capability, Figueroa guessed that keeping local police and fire department personnel out of the area would be a simple matter, provided the proper support assets found their way here first. Otherwise, she might be in for an interesting conversation with a disgruntled town police chief who had been roused from bed in the middle of the night.

  One problem at a time, Gunny. Let’s do this.

  Looking once more over her shoulder, she caught sight of Corporal Eric Tate and Lance Corporal Jason Bayley, who stood silent and unmoving in the darkness, several meters apart and waiting for her signal to continue their advance. Ahead of t
hem, illuminated by moonlight on this cloudless March evening, a dark shape sat at the end of the trench. The ship had come to rest with its angular front sitting between the trunks of two massive pine trees and all but buried by the dirt it had churned up during its landing. Fewer trees had been uprooted or chopped off at varying heights as the craft’s plunge through the forest had slowed, though a few of the larger pines had still paid the price for being obstacles to the downed vessel.

  “Homestead,” said Figueroa, “we have visual on the target. Commencing our initial approach.”

  “Understood, Walkabout. Proceed with caution.”

  Instead of replying, Figueroa turned back toward Tate and Bayley and made a show of rolling her eyes. The response earned her wide smiles from her subordinates.

  Maneuvering around fallen trees and other torn up vegetation was becoming less problematic the closer they moved to the ship. The worst of the damage was farther back at the point of the ship’s initial contact with the forest before plowing into the soft earth, uprooting or crushing everything in its path before sliding to a halt. For the first time since finding the crash site, Figueroa stepped from the concealment offered by the trees around her and onto open ground. The muzzle of her M4 led the way as she proceeded forward, eyes scanning the large, unfamiliar object ahead and the area surrounding it. Dark panels at the craft’s rear indicated a form of engine bell, but they looked nothing like anything Figueroa might see at the tail end of a rocket, or even some of the other odd vessels she had encountered since joining her current unit. She noted the numerous dents and gashes in the ship’s dull, unpolished hull, doubtless incurred during its headlong flight through the trees.

  “No markings,” said Sergeant Smith, who was mirroring Figueroa’s movements as he advanced toward the craft along its right side. He was close enough now that she could hear his voice from the far side of the trough at the same time as his words piped through her transceiver. “Anybody recognize its shape? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  A chorus of replies from the rest of the team confirmed what Figueroa was already thinking. “Looks like we’ve got us a new player.” Adjusting the filters on her helmet’s HUD, she looked from left to right across the crude clearing the ship had created as part of its landing. The display’s thermal optics showed her nothing but the other members of her team.

  “Gunny,” said Corporal Tate, and when she looked to her left, she saw the young Marine aiming his rifle toward the ship. “Open hatch.”

  Even without the helmet’s enhanced vision capabilities, Figueroa was able to make out the darker oval along the craft’s port side. Raising the barrel of her rifle so that she now was aiming at the portal, she searched for signs of life but saw nothing.

  “Everybody do another sweep. Double-check our flanks and rear.” Even as she gave the order, she was moving toward the craft’s open entry. With every muscle tensed, it was an extra moment before she noticed her fingers were beginning to tingle from gripping her rifle so tightly, and an ache in her teeth told her she was clenching her jaw. Coming abreast of the open hatchway, Figueroa angled the muzzle of her rifle through the portal, searching for signs of life or danger. The inside of the craft was as unfamiliar to her as its exterior, filled with surfaces that might be inert control consoles. At the same time she realized there had been a fire inside the ship, she recoiled at the smell of burned . . . something, and her gut told her that someone or something had died as a result.

  “We’ve got a live one over here!”

  Turning from the open hatchway, Figueroa saw Tate and Bayley moving toward a cluster of trees, aiming their rifles at something she could not see. The two Marines came at their target from the sides, converging as they moved forward, and then she saw what had grabbed their attention.

  Son of a bitch.

  Lying on the ground, the figure was dressed in some kind of dark suit that covered it from head to toe, and it was obvious from the clothing’s design that it was intended as some kind of protective garment. From her vantage point, Figueroa guessed from its silhouette it was at the very least humanlike if not actually human, but she had learned from experience with her current unit that all might not always be what it appeared to be. The suit, or whatever it was, also shrouded its wearer’s head, including an opaque face shield that concealed its features. As she drew closer, she saw that it was moving, but it was obvious to her that it was also injured. It seemed to be paying no heed to Tate or Bayley, who were yelling at it and ordering it not to move.

  “It probably can’t understand a thing you’re saying.” Figueroa lifted the muzzle of her rifle to point at the object of her subordinates’ attention. The people who had dispatched her team to recover whatever might be found at this location possessed technology that might be able to help them communicate with this . . . whatever it was. While she was curious about all of that, the priority for now was taking this individual into custody. Studying the figure through her thermal optics, she grunted in annoyance while observing the protective garment must also insulate body heat. That explained why she and the rest of her team had not seen it before, but it also made her wonder if it had any other friends out here.

  Oh, good. Paranoia. Just what we want right now.

  “Homestead, we’re definitely going to need a crew in here. The target isn’t in our catalog,” she said, employing still more evasive language to alert her support team that whatever this ship might be, it was absolutely not like anything they had seen before.

  “Copy that, Walkabout,” replied her support liaison. “Assets are en route. Estimated time of arriv—”

  “Gunny!”

  The shout from Corporal Tate cut off the rest of the reply, coming an instant before weapons fire erupted from the other side of the ship. Backing away from the hatchway and moving to the vessel’s rear, she saw Sergeant Smith aiming into the trees and firing off another burst from his rifle. To his right, the other two members of her team, Lance Corporals Martin Esparza and Alyssa Schmidt, had their weapons up and pointing toward the forest, though neither of the younger Marines had fired.

  “Hold your fire!” shouted Figueroa, just as her HUD’s thermal optics picked up something moving between the trees. The heat signature was too small to be a man and seemed to be floating above the ground, and it took her a few seconds to realize that whoever or whatever it was had to be wearing some kind of protective clothing similar to their new friend, but its head or part of its upper body was still exposed. Whatever it was, it was moving pretty damned fast.

  “Tate,” she said, “you and Bayley keep an eye on your find. The rest of you follow me.” Seeing the bobbing mass through her face shield, she started toward the trees.

  “Excuse me.”

  The voice, calm and composed, caught Figueroa completely off guard and made her turn toward its source. She was able to see what she thought might be a man standing near the side of the newly plowed trench and wearing dark clothing.

  “What the hell?”

  The words had barely escaped Figueroa’s lips before everything vanished in a brilliant white light.

  • • •

  You fool! How could you be so stupid?

  A red ember of pain burned in his left side, just beneath his armpit, and even though he pressed a hand against the wound, Jonathan McAllister still felt warm wetness seeping between and around his fingers. Genetically enhanced muscles helped in that regard, pushing him with speed and sure footing over the uneven terrain, while improved vision allowed him to see in the darkness even with the overhead tree canopy shielding the forest floor from the limited moonlight.

  Despite his injuries, he was still able to move with a degree of stealth, but McAllister could already feel himself beginning to slow down as his steps became more uncertain. The single bullet from the Marine’s weapon had caught him by surprise, knocking him off his feet. Then had come the shouts as the shooter alerted his friends that an intruder was in their midst.

  That would b
e you, Agent 6889.

  There had been precious little time to react to his discovery, and even less to cover his tracks as he plunged headlong into the forest, hoping to use the dense trees and his own protective garment to mask his movements and his body heat from the thermal sights carried by the Marines. He had heard the shouts from behind him as the small military unit pulled itself together before setting off in pursuit. He did not have much time.

  Likewise, the time allotted to him to respond to this situation had also been anything but generous. The craft—which even the Beta 7 supercomputer at his disposal was unable to identify—had been spotted and shot down while McAllister was in the midst of finishing up another assignment in China. The mission to sabotage the uranium-enrichment facility located near the coastal city of Fuzhou was yet another task given to him and his fellow Aegis agent, Natalie Koroma, along with a warning that time was of the essence and the covert action needed to be carried out as quickly as possible.

  The reasons for their employers wanting the facility taken out had not been made clear, at least not with any great deal of specificity. Likewise, the parameters for neutralizing the plant’s enrichment abilities had largely been left to the agents to determine. Over the past few years, along with decades of training in preparation for his assignment here on Earth, McAllister had learned two very simple facts about his benefactors: the Aegis tended to be very tight-lipped and left the details of the missions they directed to their onsite agents. Along with Koroma and other agents who had preceded them—Cynthia Foster, Ian Pendleton, Elizabeth Anderson, Ryan Vitali, and Gary Seven—and aided by people like Roberta Lincoln and Rain Robinson who had devoted their lives to the Aegis mission, McAllister knew what was expected of him and that he might not always be given complete information or the “full picture” about what his benefactors were trying to accomplish. It was an odd, occasionally irritating way to do business, he had long ago decided, and one hell of a way to shepherd a planet and its civilization toward a prosperous new age.