Chapel crossed to her office, where she tapped the intercom on her desk. “Chapel to Captain Sulu.”
“Sulu here.”
“I’ve just finished my initial examination of the Neyel corpse Fenlenn found. I haven’t even started the invasive autopsy yet, but I’ve already learned something rather ... startling about our alien friends.”
“And what’s that, Doctor?”
[167] Chapel nearly blurted out what she’d learned, then thought better of it. “Let’s just say that you and Ambassador Burgess are going to want to see this for yourself. Immediately.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“I really don’t think you have any reason for concern,” Lojur said.
“I certainly hope that’s so,” Chekov said, sitting behind the desk in his quarters. He gestured toward a guest chair, where Lojur took a seat. “But as executive officer, crew morale is my special area of responsibility.”
“Even when we might be under attack soon by some extremely territorial Tholians?” Lojur said quietly.
“Especially then. I have to make sure the captain and I can count on you in a crisis, Commander. And I would be remiss if I pretended I didn’t know certain things about you.”
Lojur thought that Excelsior’s exec looked, as usual, far more comfortable dispensing photon torpedoes than advice. But he knew Pavel Chekov better than that. With Captain Sulu in charge of Excelsior’s overall operations, the welfare of the ship’s crew fell squarely on Chekov’s shoulders.
“Granted, sir,” Lojur said. “But I think Lieutenant Akaar overreacted when he asked you to ... psychoanalyze me.” Lojur felt tremendous gratitude toward Chekov, whose mentorship had been invaluable to him. Still, there were certain areas of Lojur’s life that he wasn’t eager to talk about, even with the man who had sponsored his entry into Starfleet Academy.
“Possibly,” Chekov said. “But you’ve just suffered a tremendous, sudden loss. And don’t forget, I know Akaar’s background about as well as I know yours. He’s been able to smell pent-up violence ever since he was a little kid.”
Lojur smiled in spite of himself. “I find it hard to believe that L.J. was ever a ‘little’ anything.”
“He was cute as a bug. But not even your lieutenant [168] commander’s bars will save you if you ever say that to his face. Don’t forget, Akaar was born to rule the Ten Tribes of Capella. That’s why his mother is still financing the ongoing construction of a huge tomb and monument for him on their homeworld, to let everyone know that he’s the one who has the rightful claim to the title of Teer.”
Lojur had first heard of the Tomb of Leonard James Akaar back in Starfleet Academy. He had been appalled then at the Capellan obsession with death.
But a lot had changed since those carefree days.
“Akaar was only five when the coup happened,” Chekov continued. “And it was his warning that prevented a nasty Cossack named Keel from murdering him and his mother in their tent. You might ask him to tell you about that sometime.”
Despite Akaar’s renowned laconic manner—Lieutenant Tuvok must have envied it—Lojur already knew these details about his friend. It was no secret to anyone that Lojur, Tuvok, and Lieutenant Akaar had been close colleagues and friends for more than three years now. So Commander Chekov must have been well aware that he wasn’t “telling tales out of school,” as humans sometimes described the practice of repeating gossip.
Lojur merely nodded, contemplating the violence that had such an impact on Akaar’s life, and his own.
He was halfway through his eighteenth summer, an adult on the cusp of becoming eligible to marry and establish his own Freehold, when the Federation rock-buyers first arrived in Kotha Village.
The first thing that impressed Lojur about the Starfleet negotiating team was their clothing. Maroon jackets and black trousers, very precisely assembled and tailored, looking nothing like the motley congeries of homespun robes and cloaks that adorned most of the people of Halka. The Halkans of Kotha Village favored slow, tranquil, farm-tethered lives, and [169] that had not changed appreciably in several millennia. By contrast, the men and women who came to bargain for Halka’s energy-saturated crystal formations dressed in a uniform fashion that spoke of progress, change, efficiency. They went to far places and brought back knowledge beyond any Halkan former’s wildest dreams.
Lojur found it simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
He watched for days as the four Starfleeters moved about the village, whose people welcomed them with open arms and huts. The visitors repaid the village’s generosity in kind during their stay, helping with an irrigation project, and providing medical aid to some of the outlying families whose fortunes had been ruined by the recent unseasonable floods and the grainblight that had caused so much devastation during the last Harvest.
Judging from the long faces the Starfleet people wore toward the end of their stay, they—like the handful of other Federation negotiating teams that had preceded them in earlier decades—had ultimately failed to persuade the Council to allow them to mine the rocks they sought.
On the night before the Terrans’ vessel was to return to Halka to retrieve them, Kotha Village threw a great feast for its honored visitors, replete with song, dance, and the traditional tribal story pantomimes. Lojur exchanged shy glances with Kereleth, a girl two summers his junior. She was as yet betrothed to no one, as far as he knew. The future stretched before them both, promising anything and everything.
It was a joyous, hopeful time to till the soil and breathe the air.
Then the green men came, with their rifles and pistols. They shot at everything that moved. Lojur wasn’t certain how many of them there were. But they made it clear that they wanted the rocks as well. And they employed a very different bargaining style from that of the Starfleeters.
“Orions!” one of the Starfleet people, a woman, had [170] shouted just before one of the invaders’ dreadful weapons vaporized her. The remaining three Terrans raised weapons of their own in defense of Kotha Village, despite the protestations of lathen, the Village Elder, who deplored the notion of using violence in order to curb violence.
Lojur hated the idea as well, was sickened by it. Peace was all he knew.
And yet, people are dying right in front of me.
The rest of the afternoon was a blur. Two dozen villagers, vaporized, blown apart, or maimed. Kereleth gone, her fate never discovered. Two more Terrans dead, and another lying injured, pierced through the shoulder by fragments of a hut blown asunder by an Orion explosive device.
The injured Terran’s weapon, lying discarded in the dirt. People continuing to die, everywhere Lojur looked.
No more. No more of my people will die.
Lojur remembered crawling through the dirt, grasping the cold weapon with shaking hands. Hiding behind a charred stump as he aimed the hideous deathtool at a cluster of brutally laughing Orions, coarse, evil men who had expected no protest from the Halkans and thus had not made the slightest preparation for it.
And then Lojur was firing and running, running and firing, tumbling into a blood-red haze. His heart burned, ached, exulted, wept.
More people died, many more. But none of these were residents of Kotha Village.
Afterward, Lojur remembered little of the horror, at least consciously. He still thanked Halka’s gods every night for that gift of forgetfulness. But there were also the other nights. The nights when the awful truth of what he had done exhumed itself from its shallow grave and visited him in his dreams.
After the bodies were interred—Halkan, Terran, and Orion—Kotha Village turned its entire attention toward [171] rebuilding itself. Though injured, the sole surviving Terran, along with a few others from his newly returned vessel, assisted with the physical reconstruction. Winter was descending quickly, so every remaining Kothan was grateful for the help.
The injured Terran, tended by his own medical people as well as by a Kothan Healer, never asked for so much as a single crystal in return.
Gray, sad-eyed lathen still led Kotha Village, despite the loss of his right arm during the Orion attack. And though most of the people stood by listening, lathen’s harsh words on that cold, long-ago morning were clearly intended for Lojur alone: The violence you have done does not belong in the Halkan heart. We repudiate it. We banish it. We send it into exile.
“And the same we do with you.”
“But I helped save your lives,” Lojur said. No one responded. Of course not. It doesn’t matter. Halka would rather embrace its own death than soil its hands with the blood of others. Even the blood of those who would kill us without a second thought.
The Elder’s pronouncement settled upon Lojur like a millstone tied about his neck. Bleakly, he stared across the village square as Elders and rank-and-file villagers alike waited for him to say something in his own defense. He didn’t bother. What was the point? They’re right: I have raised my hand in violence. I have taken lives.
Then, in a solemn ritual, the Elders began turning their robed backs on him. Looking on from farther down the main dirt thoroughfare, women, young men, and even the children followed suit. Lojur called out to them, his voice thick and heavy as though he were caught in the grip of some horrible dream.
“I saved you! You would all be dead now if I had not acted!”
[172] But no one would acknowledge him. No one would tell him whether Kereleth had died, or if she yet lived and was merely avoiding him. He was now a cipher. A non-person. A ghost.
Where will I go now? How will I stay alive?
Nothing moved in Kotha Village, save the gathering chill wind and the door of the Healer’s hut. The injured Terran emerged, the rest of his colleagues evidently having returned to the skies. How much had he seen and heard of what had just transpired?
The shorter man’s eyes were dark and piercing. Angry. But Lojur sensed that he was not the target of that anger. The Starfleeter extended a hand in Lojur’s direction. Lojur approached the Terran silently, and no one in the village made a move to block his path.
The wind was kicking up leaves and dust, its icy fingers cutting right through Lojur’s thin robe, making him shiver. He had never felt so cold and alone before in his young life.
The Terran was glaring at the crowd, which regarded him with wide-eyed curiosity. Then he slowly and deliberately removed his maroon uniform jacket, placing it gently around Lojur’s narrow shoulders. The Elders remained standing statuelike in the square, their faces impassive.
The human removed a small device from his belt and spoke into it. As long as he lived, Lojur would never forget the peculiar lilt and inflection of the man’s speech.
“Chekov to Reliant. Two to beam up.”
Lojur noticed that Chekov was staring at him inquisitively. “Commander, are you listening to me?”
“Violence has no place in the Halkan heart,” Lojur repeated, startled out of his reverie.
“Violence is often the way of the universe, Commander,” Chekov said, leaning forward. “And that universe is [173] inhabited by many who are considerably less gentle than the people of Halka.”
His earlier anger at Lieutenant Akaar now largely spent, Lojur found himself nodding. “I think there are few who understand that better than I do, sir.” Especially now.
Chekov’s eyes reflected concern. “I don’t doubt it. If you need some time off to help you through this—”
Lojur interrupted. “No, sir. Staying busy is the way to healing. As are the writings of Tharn the Wise.”
“Such as?”
“ ‘When one sheds the blood of others,’ ” Lojur quoted, “ ‘the stains are indelible. In war, even the victor can never come home again.’ ”
Rising from behind his desk, Chekov said, “That’s a good principle to live by. When the universe lets you get away with it, that is. If you need to discuss this further later on, Lieutenant, my door is open. Now I’d better get to the bridge, in case either those territorial Tholians arrive early, or the Neyel finally decide they want to talk to us.”
“Yes, sir,” Lojur said, also rising.
After Chekov had dismissed him, Lojur wandered the corridors aimlessly, his next duty shift not due to begin until early the next morning.
Shandra was dead.
A familiar, though long-absent, burning sensation welled up from somewhere deep within him. He had not known it since the day the Orions had descended upon Kotha Village. It was a demon that he’d hoped his transgression—raising Chekov’s dropped phaser in anger—had exorcised forever.
Shandra is dead.
Despite all that his people had taught him, in defiance of a lifetime of faith in the ways of peace, he now wished only suffering and death upon the aliens who had consigned the woman he loved to the abyss. We should destroy them. Crack [174] their hull open like a ripe h’eka nut. Those animals would surely do the same to us were we to let them. And they won’t even deign to speak to us.
No one on Halka, or even in Starfleet, could sanction such thoughts. Probably not even a man like Akaar, who had been born to blood and violence.
As Lojur continued toward his quarters, hot tears seared his cheeks. Maybe Thorn the Wise was more right than he knew. Not only can I never go home, I can’t even seem to find or make one of my own.
As Sulu, Lieutenant Hopman, and Ambassador Burgess simultaneously descended upon the sickbay pathology lab, Chapel desperately wished she had a way to account for the test results. Unfortunately, the results themselves would have to serve, at least until more data arrived to explain the inexplicable.
“What you’re saying is impossible, Doctor,” Sulu said in answer to her terse announcement, his eyes riveted to the Neyel corpse that lay on the table.
“I’m forced to agree with the captain, Doctor,” Hopman said, her voice deeper than it had been the last time Chapel had seen her. She was in her male phase. “I mean ... look at him.”
“I know,” Chapel said, nodding. “But you can examine the DNA patterns for yourselves. The electrophoretic graphs don’t lie. Say ‘hello’ to your cousin. This creature’s DNA is as human as yours or mine.”
Hopman wrinkled her nose. “I think you can count me out of this family reunion, Doctor. The only thing human about me is something entirely vestigial.”
Chapel wasn’t sure she wanted to follow Hopman wherever she was going with this. Being around someone who could be a man one day and a woman the next took some getting used to. “Your appendix?”
“My married name,” Hopman said with a chuckle.
[175] Chapel smiled back. “Well, Lieutenant, that’s one bit of surgery I’m not qualified to perform.”
Looking impatient, Aidan Burgess moved silently along the length of the table, bending down as she studied the motionless, supine creature. Her eyes followed the curve of its club-tipped tail, which extended to the floor.
“How could a long-lost population of humans have gotten so far from Earth?” Sulu asked, his eyes alight with curiosity, clearly in his element.
Chapel shrugged, feeling genuinely at a loss. “Maybe they were blown here somehow by the weird winds of interspace.” She wasn’t at all certain that the bizarre interdimensional phenomenon that had swallowed up the Defiant could really account for the dislocation of these strangely altered humans. But it was an explanation that could serve as a scientific placeholder until something better came along. Perhaps Lieutenant Tuvok could find some definitive answers, once she certified that he was ready to leave sickbay.
Burgess straightened and met Chapel’s gaze. “If this creature is human, then how do you explain these ... features?”
Chapel folded her arms before her. “In the absence of any other information, my best guess is some sort of crash genetic engineering program. Recombinant DNA. Note the opposable thumbs on the feet. That wouldn’t be a difficult tweak to make to the human genome, and the extra
hands would be useful to people who spend most of their lives in variable gravity environments.”
“And the tree-bark skin?” Sulu said, laying a hand against the gray being’s rough thorax.
Chapel shrugged again. “It’s not impossible. Other species have similar, naturally occurring traits. Nasats, for example, are equipped with plates of biologically generated armor. They can withstand even hard vacuum for quite a long time.”
“A trick like that would certainly have come in handy [176] today,” the captain said in a low tone. Chapel wondered if he was thinking of the dead alien, or Lieutenant Docksey and the phaser specialists who had been blown out into space when the Neyel attack breached the hull.
“This is crazy,” Burgess said, shaking her head. “Human genetic engineering has been forbidden ever since Khan Singh was banished at the end of the Eugenics Wars.”
“Surely you’re aware that not everybody always follows the rules, Ambassador,” Chapel said. She was convinced that Burgess’s unauthorized revelations to the Tholians had not only led to Kasrene’s death, but also endangered Excelsior. She was gratified to see a spark of anger—mixed, perhaps, with guilt—appear in the ambassador’s green eyes.
Sulu seemed to be studying the dead being’s face. “Human, yet not human,” he murmured thoughtfully. “We can guess the ‘how.’ The real question is ... why? And what are they doing out here?”
“Great Bird,” Hopman said, looking stunned.
“Lieutenant?” Sulu said. All eyes turned to Hopman.
She recovered her composure a moment later. Pointing to the still form on the table, she said, “This is the reason Ambassador Kasrene was killed. She must have already known that the Neyel were a variant of the human species.”
To Chapel, that sounded like quite a leap.
“So you think that this is Mosrene’s ‘sensitive information,’ ” Sulu said, his brow furrowed as he considered Hopman’s idea. “That might explain Tuvok’s insistence that Kasrene wanted us to receive her information just as much as she wanted it kept hidden from the other Tholian castes.”
STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2298 - The Sundered Page 16