Constellations

by Marco Palmieri

  “Get Merrill, Spock, and Uhura up to the bridge immediately,” Kirk said.

  “Jim, what about the rest of the station crew? There’s still almost a hundred people over there!” McCoy demanded.

  “I haven’t forgotten them, Doctor,” Kirk snapped. “Maybe you’d like to walk over and evacuate them by hand?”

  “Well, there must be something we can do!” the doctor argued.

  “We can’t stand between two attack groups at our current power output,” Kirk said. “I’d be leery of doing that even at full power. We have to withdraw, at least until we can get our main systems back online.”

  Kirk eyed the formation of Outsider ships as they continued to tighten their web around the now-defenseless station. Most of the structure beacons and viewport illumination on the station had gone black now, and support pylons were searing and buckling under the strain of the collapsing web. Kirk could almost hear the station’s alloys screeching under the strain.

  The bridge elevator doors slid aside at that moment, and Spock, Uhura, Glasser, and Merrill stepped onto the bridge. “Kirk, what’s the meaning of beaming me off my station before it’s evacuated?” Merrill demanded.

  Kirk motioned Spock to take his station. “I need you and your command crew here. Every attempt to get the rest of the station evacuated is being made.”

  “I told you what you were dealing with,” Merrill said, gesturing toward the viewscreen where the Tholian’s energy web was already contracting around M-33. “They’ll crush the station before the Assembly ships get here. And now that you’ve broken the transfer agreement, we can’t even count on help from them!”

  “What about that hydrogen field?” Kirk said. “Merrill, you’ve been planning to tap that power. Can we find a way to channel the energy to the Enterprise?”

  “On a ship like this?” Merrill said. “Sure, if you’re using it to kick-start a dead engine.”

  “What?” Kirk said, but he saw Scott nodding in understanding.

  “Aye,” the engineer said. “To use raw plasma like that you’d have to bypass the intermix and flush the new plasma directly into the warp coils. We’d have to drain the engines completely before trying it on battery power. But at the rate we’re losing power we’ll be down to batteries sooner rather than later.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” Merrill said. “We still retain some control over the Veil satellites; we can use them to channel the plasma we need for our own use. In fact, we can do a lot better than that from a tactical standpoint.”

  “Meaning what?” Kirk asked.

  “Meaning we can ignite the rest of the field once we’re through. If we draw the Outsiders in the right way, we could take a hell of a lot of ’em down from the blast—if not half of the gas giant with them.”

  Kirk frowned, trying to divide his attention between Scott and Merrill and the cascade of data from the tactical screen. “Doesn’t that obviate your plan for using the Veil as a power source in the future?”

  “To hell with that,” Merrill said. “The only way to keep the Veil out of the Outsiders’ hands right now is to destroy it. It’s what the Assembly wants in the long run.”

  “Explain,” Kirk said.

  “I believe I can, Captain,” Spock said suddenly. The Vulcan had been intently studying readings from his science station viewer but now stepped away from the station with an unaccustomed sense of urgency. “It is imperative that we not interfere with the Ifukube Veil in any way. The Veil is the point of contention between the opposing Tholian forces.”

  “What are you talking about?” Merrill demanded.

  “Commodore, your personnel’s study of the Tholians you have encountered has been extensive but incomplete. You have failed to note the connection between the Ifukube Veil and the Tholians.”

  “What connection?” Kirk asked.

  “Tholians are indeed silicon-based life-forms, as we have long suspected. But examinations of their physical structure have not revealed any definable internal organs. I suspect that these internal structures are not corporeal or even igneous in nature, but rather focused energy, organized and refracted through the internal facets of the Tholians’ crystalline exoskeleton.”

  “Mr. Spock,” Uhura said as she conferred with Lieutenant Palmer at the communications station. “I still have telemetry from the translator node we attached to Naskeel’s ship. It sounds like the holding chamber on the station is depressurizing.”

  “Maintain communication with the vessel if possible, Lieutenant,” Spock said before turning back to Kirk. “Captain, the Tholian internal structure—its life force, if you will—consists of highly organized high-energy plasma.”

  Kirk’s eyes widened as he turned to look back at the screen and the red glint of the Ifukube Veil. “Plasma…like the plasma contained within that hydrogen cloud?”

  “Affirmative, Captain,” Spock said. “In our communication with the Outsider captive it indicated that this system was the site of a sectarian massacre of almost inconceivable proportions that occurred millennia ago. Billions of Tholians were killed in the orbit of that gas giant, enough to leave a cloud of ionized hydrogen several thousand kilometers in diameter.”

  Kirk stared at the hydrogen cloud on the bridge screen. Its abstract shape now took on a blood-chilling new aspect. “And they’re only now returning to the site of the incident?” Kirk asked.

  “Only after thousands of years of Tholian society’s attempt to eradicate the memory of the event,” Spock said. “Their own regimented social order has aided in that goal. Racial memory of the massacre is part of the genetic makeup of a segment of the Tholian population—the Outsiders. But the Tholians can repurpose such deviant individuals and in effect program out the drives that might ultimately bring them here.”

  “But the reverse is also true,” Glasser cut in. “That must be why the Assembly was so eager to capture the pilot we snagged. As a Tholian Mage it can reprogram Tholian individuals itself and keep the insurrection alive, repurpose individuals so that they can break away from the Assembly. And Tholians who step outside their defined functions disrupt not only their own roles but those of countless connected Tholians around them—a domino effect.”

  Kirk looked at Merrill. “Then they’re not pirates. They’re…pilgrims. That’s the rift developing in Tholian society. The need to explore this ancient tragedy and the Assembly’s desire to sweep it under the rug.”

  Even Merrill now looked humbled. “No wonder they wouldn’t communicate with us. We were about to tear apart a mass grave…stir up the blood of a billion massacre victims.”

  “Not blood, Commodore,” Spock said. “Something far more vital. I’ve cross-correlated my sensor readings of the interior of the Tholian vessel with the Enterprise and station sensor readings of the cloud. Without the key of an individual Tholian’s energy signature to compare it with, it would all add up to meaningless complexity. But it is now clear the cloud contains billions of distinct, individual energy signatures that correspond to the internal plasma configuration that exists within Tholian exoskeletons.”

  “Souls.” McCoy, who had been silent up to this point, suddenly seemed to surprise even himself by speaking. “You’re talking about souls, Spock.”

  “In the case of the Tholians, a scientific reality,” Spock said. “The magnetic and gravitational forces present here have created an environment in which these entities can still survive even after the destruction of their physical bodies.”

  Merrill stared at the viewscreen and the crimson haze of the Veil just past the space station. “And we were going to drain that cloud…kill them all a second time.”

  “Merrill, can we deactivate those satellites from here?” Kirk said urgently. “Get them away from the Veil somehow?”

  “I can deactivate them for sure; maneuvering all of them away from the cloud would take time.”

  “Have your people deactivate them at least!” Kirk said. “The Outsiders must see the station as a threat to thei
r dead.” Merrill pulled out his communicator and began talking to his first officer. On the viewscreen the Tholian web had all but sealed off the station; Kirk saw lights winking out on the external structure of M-33 as the station began to collapse under the strain.

  “Captain, Assembly forces on intercept course. They’ll be here in seconds,” Sulu reported.

  Attack beams and plasma volleys began to erupt on both sides of the station now, and glancing blows hammered the hull of the Enterprise. In the space around the starship and the helpless space station, two forces of delta-shaped, glinting vessels converged, and Kirk had to shield his eyes for a moment from the glare of weapons fire and detonations flashing on the forward viewscreen. The civil war had begun.

  “Several Tholian vessels of unknown design are flanking the Assembly attack group,” Spock said, “on course for the Veil.”

  “They’re webships too,” Sulu said as he sighted five of the new ships. They looked like a cluster of Tholian spearhead-type webships fused together around a diamond-shaped core, and each vessel was larger than the Enterprise. As the starship drifted, the five vessels and their escort ships brushed past the Enterprise and the M-33 station almost as if the two Federation constructs were beneath notice. Between them a blazing web of energy filaments stretched out to form a web that grew in size by the second as the vessels fanned out. The web stretched until it was a hundred kilometers wide, then five hundred, finally a thousand and more.

  “They’re going to snare the Veil,” Merrill said, shaking his head. “They probably want to drag the thing out of here once and for all.”

  “Or destroy it,” Spock said. “The Assembly is likely to repeat the same mistake it made millennia ago.”

  “Uhura, hail the Assembly attack force commander again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kirk stood behind Sulu and Chekov and watched as Outsider ships broke away from their concentration on M-33 to go after the giant Assembly webships. Shields flared on the massive vessels as the smaller Outsider ships fired on them, but their trajectory toward the Veil was unaffected.

  “The satellites are all shut down, Kirk,” Merrill said, closing his communicator.

  “The Assembly ships are closing on the Veil,” Chekov announced. “Contact in six seconds.”

  On the screen the yawning web, stretched so thin it was now almost invisible, maneuvered to ensnare the crimson swath of ionized gas. Kirk frowned as something changed; he blinked, not quite certain he was seeing right.

  “Extreme activity inside the cloud,” Spock said, looking up from his viewer.

  “It’s moving!” Sulu exclaimed. Kirk had seen the shift, too, as tendrils seemed to snake out from some of the edges of the cloud while its center compacted. The red glow of the Veil seemed to intensify into some color Kirk couldn’t describe. An arc of energy flickered out from one wispy tendril and licked the hull of one of the Tholian Assembly ships, and for a moment the energy filaments snaking out from the ship’s body flickered and faded before flaring back to life.

  The Veil was defending itself. Kirk held his breath for a moment, stunned by the enormity of what he was seeing. Were those ten billion souls inside the Veil awakening now, lashing out in anger at their murderers’ descendants?

  “Sir, the Assembly ships are slowing,” Sulu said, turning back to look at Kirk. “I don’t think they expected that either.”

  “What’s happening, Spock?” Kirk asked.

  “Unknown, Captain,” the Vulcan replied. “But clearly some kind of mass consciousness is retained by the surviving energy signatures within the cloud.”

  “One of the Assembly vessels is answering our hail, Captain,” Uhura announced. “And I’m picking up another broadcast—from the Outsider pilot the station captured. It’s escaped the station and appears to be communicating with the Outsider forces.”

  “Can you translate what it’s saying?”

  “No, sir,” Uhura said, nodding toward the viewscreen. “But I’m guessing it’s a request for their forces to stand down, too.”

  “Patch me through to the Assembly ship,” Kirk said. If there was a time to talk, it was now. “This is Captain Kirk of the Enterprise,” he began. “We request negotiation and the cessation of hostilities, between all vessels in this star system.”

  The triple-toned voice of the Tholian Assembly commander came after a moment’s pause. “The Assembly’s agreement was not with you, Enterprise.”

  Merrill added his voice. “That’s right. It was with me. I’m commander of the Federation station here.”

  “You were informed of the consequences of refusing transport of your prisoner to us. Now your interference has exacted its cost.”

  “Your agreement with Commodore Merrill was to keep your people away from this system?” Kirk asked. “Why? Why not claim this space for yourselves?”

  “We reject this area,” the Tholian voice said. “We reject the Outsiders who keep its memory within themselves. We were content that your people eradicate it for your own uses.”

  Kirk glanced at Merrill for a second. “We will not take part in the eradication of your history…or in the suppression of a part of your population.”

  “Your principles are unimportant, Enterprise. Our survival is paramount. All in our society have their place and their function. The memory of this place endangers that. Those who remember forget their function and soon they join with the Outsiders. Their numbers grow, and they serve no purpose but disruption.”

  “Then what will you do here? What will your ships do with the cloud?”

  The pause this time was long. “It was thought that we would remove the dead from this system and dispose of it in our own way. We have avoided this necessity for thousands of life spans, but you have made the choice for us.”

  “Yet you’ve hesitated,” Kirk said. “Why? Because you see that something still survives inside that cloud?”

  “We know the dead exist there. The dead have no meaning to us, only to the Outsiders.”

  “Yet this cloud moves…it shows life. Understanding,” Kirk argued.

  This time it was Spock who raised his voice. “What you describe as ‘dead’ is in fact billions of Tholian consciousnesses…perhaps even a mass consciousness that mirrors your own society. Would that not be worthy of preservation…even study?”

  “There is no such function in our society, Enterprise.”

  A sudden thought struck Kirk. “But there could be,” he said. “What about the Outsiders?”

  “The Outsiders disrupt society—”

  “But what if they could be made to serve society?” Kirk demanded. “The Tholian pilot you pursued here is one who alters the functions of your people from caste to caste so that they may serve the Assembly better, correct? Couldn’t individuals like him do the same with the Outsiders? Modify them to do what they seek to do—study, perhaps even merge with this…well of souls, and bring its knowledge, the knowledge of your own past, perhaps many things you do not yet understand, to be shared by the Assembly for its greater good?”

  “Our society is defined. There is no role for Outsiders. They disrupt—”

  “But they disrupt because they have no role!” Kirk argued. “And as long as the Outsiders have no role, as long as racial memory stretches back to this tragedy, the ranks of the Outsiders will grow and Tholian society will continue to fracture.”

  “Even a logically ordered society must grow and evolve,” Spock said simply. “Tholians are among the most complex and unique life-forms in the galaxy. They should be capable of adapting to the inevitability of change as well as or better than other species.”

  Kirk looked at Spock and raised his eyebrows appreciatively. A little flattery couldn’t hurt, and the Tholians seemed to have a formidable streak of arrogance in them.

  “The Mage Naskeel is an Outsider, a fugitive. Why should Naskeel agree to serve the Assembly?” the Tholian commander asked after another long pause.

  “I still have a transponder
lock on Naskeel’s ship, Captain,” Uhura announced.

  “We have established communication with Naskeel, Commander,” Kirk said. “We would be happy to assist you as a mediator to help you reach an agreement with the Outsiders if you desire it.” Kirk glanced at the crumpled remains of M-33 still visible on the main screen. He looked back to where Merrill stood at the back of the bridge, diminished and disassociated from what was happening. The next steps would be even more painful.

  “Under the circumstances, Commander,” Kirk began, “we would be willing to discuss relinquishing our claim on this area of space. Clearly the history of this region is Tholian, and perhaps it’s a history better explored and understood than buried.”

  Silence.

  “Quite generous, Enterprise,” the Tholian voice came after a long moment. “We will take your proposal under advisement and begin discussion with Mage Naskeel.”

  Kirk stepped up to the rear level of the bridge where Merrill stood next to a watchful McCoy. “Commodore, I can’t think of anyone more suited to negotiate between these two sides than you.”

  Merrill stared at Kirk numbly. “You mean someone suited to sell out the Federation? Is that what you mean?”

  “You wanted an alliance with the Tholians. Rather than precipitating a civil war by helping the Assembly crush dissent, why not forge one by knitting their society back together?”

  “There’s something I still don’t understand,” McCoy said. “How do these Tholian ‘Outsiders’ relate to this cloud? What are they getting out of contact with it?”

  “Perhaps a communion of sorts with their ancestors,” Spock said. “Perhaps something more. It is clear that Tholians have a rigid internal life clock that allows them a relatively brief and explicitly defined life span.”

  “You mean they know the time of their own deaths,” McCoy said.

  “Precisely, Doctor. Clearly the Veil offers Tholians direct evidence that their lives, their ‘souls’ if you will, can potentially survive beyond their deaths. By entering into the cloud before their prescribed death time they may be able to merge with the ionized mass around them and achieve a kind of afterlife.”