Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night

by David R. George III

  Now all they had to do was get back to the Empire.

  40

  People ran.

  Lieutenant Sarina Douglas occupied a T-shaped intersection in the docking ring, her phaser on one hip, her tricorder on the other, and both hands busy gesturing and pointing and even pushing as she attempted to direct people toward Deep Space 9’s cargo holds. With the station’s cramped corridors, dark recesses, and prevalent shadows, it often felt claustrophobic to Douglas, and even small. But with Chief Blackmer’s discovery of an explosive device in the lower core, and then—once they knew where to look—other security officers finding another three, the great size of DS9 made itself apparent. Nearly nine hundred crew and fifty-eight hundred civilians put the total number of people aboard just south of seven thousand.

  Up ahead, amid the charging throng, Douglas saw two small children, a boy and a girl, racing ahead of a Bolian woman, presumably their mother. Sensing trouble before it happened, the lieutenant watched in horror as the young girl stumbled and fell. The boy continued running, but the woman tried to stop and reach down to help the girl back up. The tide of people pushed past the woman, though, its currents swift and strong, and soon enough she too fell to the deck.

  Douglas launched herself forward like a missile. She yelled to the crowd, but to no avail; the sound of scurrying feet, panicked voices, and the computer’s looping announcement to evacuate the station buried her words. Douglas struggled forward, leaning into the multitude, pushing along one of the bulkheads as she actually shoved people away from her, trying to forge a path to the fallen woman and girl. She felt sweat running down her face, and only then did she note the rising temperature in the over-full space.

  The Bolian boy struck Douglas’s leg. She saw the terrified look on his face as she looked down and saw his wide eyes searching the corridor. As he bounded past her, unable to break free of the swarm, she reached down to grab his arm, but her hand missed its target. She lunged instinctively, and her fingertips caught in the fabric of his shirt. Having little choice, she closed her fist and hauled him backward, feeling the shirt tear, but not caring. She heaved him up into her arms, and he clung to her as though trying to keep himself from drowning.

  Douglas turned back into the horde, and with her hands around the boy, she put her shoulder down. With the bulkhead to her left, she butted through the masses, until finally she reached the woman and girl, huddling together on the side of the corridor. Douglas pushed around them, turned, and set her back to the running people. She took one hand from the boy and reached to help the woman up. When both the woman and the girl had gotten back to their feet, Douglas moved to transfer the boy into the woman’s arms, but he would not let go. She had to reach up and physically turn his head, until at last he saw his mother’s face and threw himself into her embrace.

  “Go!” Douglas yelled to them, though even she could barely hear the sound of her own voice. Still, the Bolian family moved, the woman clutching the boy in one arm and herding the girl before her with the other. They sped down the corridor and around the corner of the intersection in just seconds, like so much flotsam bobbing down a rushing river.

  Douglas followed, returning to her position at the junction. There, the crowd split, moving either left or right along the docking ring. Some people attempted to reverse direction, probably thinking that they had gone the wrong way, or maybe realizing that they had gotten separated from a loved one, but Douglas pushed them forcibly along, bellowing out her instructions that it didn’t matter which way they went. She insisted that everybody would get evacuated.

  She could only hope that she spoke the truth.

  Douglas knew that Captain Ro had ordered all available ships to assist in the mass transfer of people from Deep Space 9 to Bajor. Not wanting to leave the station vulnerable to attack during the exodus, the captain placed Defiant on patrol, but she dispatched all six of the station’s runabouts to aid in the evacuation effort, and had also enlisted all civilian vessels presently docked. Douglas also knew that the U.S.S. Canterbury, posted to the orbit of Bajor during the program that allowed civilian Typhon Pact ships through the wormhole, had also been called in to help. While the half-dozen runabouts could collectively transport between one hundred and two hundred individuals at a time, and the group of civilian vessels perhaps a few hundred more, the Galaxy-class Canterbury would be able to carry a thousand or more.

  I just hope we have enough time, Douglas thought.

  Ro Laren leaned in beside Chief Blackmer as two other security officers worked to determine how to remove or disarm the bomb. Other teams, she knew, worked at the other bombs, all of them searching for a solution. At the moment, as the evacuation of the station continued, nothing had yet been attempted, since trying to move, open, or transport the devices might cause them to detonate. Scans failed to penetrate the outer structures of the devices, but traces of revitrite, a known Andorian explosive, had been found on their exteriors.

  Ro saw the raised glyphs on the bomb’s surface. While she had certainly learned to read some Andorian words during her years in Starfleet, she recognized the writing on the silver box for a different reason. Nearly a year earlier, around the time that Andor had seceded from the Federation, a separatist faction had worked to make that happen. Beyond simply making their arguments or searching for political will among their people, the group had employed terrorist acts to attempt to further their cause.

  “The Treishya,” she read, then backed away from the two officers working over the device, giving them room.

  “The group that pushed for secession?” Blackmer asked, following her back.

  Ro nodded. She had no idea whether Ensign th’Shant sympathized with the Andorian group, but the accusation Lieutenant Douglas had leveled against him had taken on new meaning. Had the investigation Ro had ordered back then not fully cleared th’Shant, she would have ordered the engineer taken into custody upon the discovery of the first bomb. Likewise, she felt grateful that Blackmer and Douglas had also been exonerated.

  “But the Treishya achieved their goals when Andor seceded, so why this?” Blackmer asked. “The Andorians haven’t declared war on the Federation, and as far as I know, none of them—not even this group—are suggesting that they should.”

  “I don’t know,” Ro said. “I think we probably don’t know enough about the group’s current aims to make that determination. But if this is their handiwork, then I suspect that they’ll let us know soon enough. Once they—”

  “Ops to Captain Ro,” called the voice of Colonel Cenn.

  Ro took several more steps away from where the security team worked over the bomb, then activated her combadge. “Ro here,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  “The Canterbury has just left with its third load of evacuees,” Cenn said. “They’ve taken more than three thousand people from the station.”

  “Good,” Ro said. “How many people does that leave here?”

  “All of the crew,” Cenn said. “Several of the civilian ships left without taking anybody aboard, and a few others haven’t returned once they off-loaded their evacuees. But with the ships that are continuing to help, and some others that have arrived from Bajor, and with the runabouts, we’ve got about thirteen hundred civilians left on the station.”

  “So twenty-two hundred total,” Ro said.

  “Yes,” Cenn confirmed.

  “What about protecting the wormhole?” Ro asked. “Have we heard back from Starfleet?”

  “Yes,” Cenn said. “The Brisbane and the Venture are the closest ships. They’re both on their way, but it’ll be at least a day before either of them gets here.”

  “All right,” Ro acknowledged. “That’s good work, Desca. Keep me informed. Ro out.” She looked over at Blackmer. “Jeff, let me know how it’s going down here.” She started to leave.

  “Captain,” Blackmer said. “You should think about getting off the station yourself. There’s not much more you can do here, and the last thing Starfleet needs is to
lose another senior officer.”

  “I still need a plan to evacuate the crew,” Ro said, “as well as strategies for protecting the wormhole, both before and after reinforcements arrive,” Ro said. “Once that’s done, and once every other person has been removed to safety, then sure, I’ll think about leaving.”

  “Captain—”

  “Keep me informed, Chief,” Ro said, and she turned on her heel and headed for ops.

  Kira Nerys brought her hand down hard on the control surface, locking the door that led into the cargo bay. The crowd moving through the docking ring had thinned as people left the station, but if she let any more into the hold, there would be panic when not all of them could board Xhosa. Kasidy’s ship had already made two runs to Bajor, ferrying a few hundred people each time. Kira had suggested not bothering to dock on their return to DS9, but it turned out that Xhosa’s antiquated transporters would have had difficulty beaming over masses of people in a timely fashion. At the same time, evacuation efforts onto other civilian vessels occupied all of the station’s transporters.

  Kira turned away from the door and toward the hatchway that led into Xhosa. There, Kasidy and Luis García Márquez directed people inside, where the rest of Kasidy’s crew would send them deeper into the ship, most of them to the freighter’s own cargo bays. Kira waited for the last few evacuees to head through the hatch, and as she saw García Márquez dart in after them, she started forward.

  She had nearly reached Kasidy when the hold began to brighten. Through a growing white haze of illumination, Kira saw her friend urging her on, motioning her forward with her arms. Kasidy’s mouth moved as she clearly called out, but Kira heard nothing. For just a moment, Kira thought that one of the bombs must have detonated, and that she faced the end of her life.

  But it’s not a bomb, she realized. She felt herself smile as the brilliant light engulfed her, drowning out the rest of her existence. No color reached her eyes, no sound her ears. She had a moment to think that she was about to be handed a gift, and she waited for it to come for her.

  And then she was gone.

  Kay Eaton walked out of the Arthur Trill Building and onto Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. She finished pulling on her gloves and cinched her long coat tightly closed around her. After yet another impossible day in the offices of Incredible Tales, she put her head down and hied along the street. She thought she could use a long soak in a hot bath, with a white landscape of bubbles tickling her chin. She tried to envision herself there, but instead, her mind called up the image of her hands around the skinny neck of Pabst.

  “She was not the commander of the spaceship,” she muttered to herself as she hurried through the rush-hour crowd. “She was the pilot of the U.S. Temple, the second-in-command, and he killed her.”

  Although he had hired her, although he continued to purchase her stories and get her words into print, Douglas Pabst had in some ways become Eaton’s enemy. The editor of Incredible Tales, Pabst actually had a fair degree of technical, and even artistic, ability, but his slavish devotion to the cowardly sensibilities of the publisher undermined him, and in turn, sabotaged his writers. Mr. Stone paid for the magazine, paid for its bullpen of writers and its one illustrator, but he kept his eyes only on the bottom line. He published science fiction—potentially visionary fiction—and yet he displayed no apparent desire, and certainly no courage, to embrace the future.

  Eaton had turned in a story last week that she considered one of the best works she had ever written—maybe the best thing ever to come out of her typewriter. “Horn and Ivory” moved, filled with action and mystery, with heart and the idea of a greater purpose. Everybody in the office had loved it, even Herbert, who tended not to like much of anything. Even Pabst had offered up his encomium for the story.

  But today, he had squelched it. “You can’t have a female first officer on a spaceship,” he’d said. “Who would believe it?”

  What am I supposed to do? she thought in frustration. Am I supposed to make every woman in every story a damsel in distress? A stewardess? If I can’t have the freedom—

  A hand tugged at Eaton’s arm. She didn’t look around, but pulled away and kept on walking. Only when she heard her name—one of her names—did she stop.

  “Miss Hunter?”

  Eaton looked back over her shoulder to see an attractive Negro woman standing on the sidewalk, one arm held out in front of her. “You are Miss Hunter, right?” the woman said. “Miss K. C. Hunter?”

  “Ye-es,” Eaton said, unsure whether she should even speak to the woman. But she looked familiar, and she wore an expression of great sadness. Even before she had said anything but Eaton’s pseudonym, she elicited sympathy. “I’m K. C. Hunter,” Eaton said.

  The woman paced cautiously forward, as though she feared she might spook Eaton and send her darting away. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Cassie Johnson.” She paused for a second, then chuckled awkwardly. “Cassie,” she said. “Kind of like K. C.”

  “Kind of,” Eaton agreed. “Do … do I know you?”

  “You might have seen me around,” Johnson said. “I’m Benny Russell’s girl.”

  “Oh, Benny,” Eaton said. “How is he?” Russell had been one of the finest writers Eaton had ever read, and certainly that she’d ever known, but he’d also been deeply tortured. He’d eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and been carted away to an asylum. How long ago was that? Eaton wondered. Two years, maybe?

  “Benny’s in trouble,” Johnson said. “I’m sorry, Miss Hunter, I know you don’t know me, but Benny always spoke so highly of you. I just need somebody to help me help Benny.”

  “Aren’t there doctors at the—” She hesitated, not wanting to use the word asylum. “—at the hospital?”

  “They’ve taken him out of that place,” Johnson said. “They say he tried to escape.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “They took him to jail,” Johnson said, tears forming in her eyes.

  “Jail,” Eaton echoed. That seemed wrong. Benny had been troubled, but he posed no threat to anybody but himself. So what if he wanted to leave the asylum? Eaton could only imagine how they dealt with him there, considering his treatment at the hands of “polite society.” “I think that’s terrible, Miss Johnson,” she said, “but I don’t know what I can do to help.”

  “I just thought if you could talk to them at the police station,” Johnson said, her words coming in a rush. “Make them see that Benny’s a good man, just maybe a little sick. He belongs in a place where he can get help, not in jail.”

  Eaton understood what Johnson was saying, and even agreed, based on what she knew of Benny, but—“I just don’t know why the police would listen to me.”

  “I need somebody to talk to them,” Johnson said. In her emphasized word, Eaton heard more than what she said. Johnson didn’t just need somebody to talk to the police; she needed somebody white.

  “I’m just a …” Eaton started to say, and then left her statement unfinished. I’m just a woman, she thought, and hated herself for it. No, I don’t hate myself, she thought. I hate Pabst and Stone and men like that, and women who think what I just did.

  “All right,” Eaton said. “Let’s go.”

  The relief that showed on Johnson’s face almost made Eaton cry herself. Johnson grabbed her by the hand and led her back along Broadway. As Eaton ran to keep up, Johnson rounded corners and didn’t stop.

  Finally, just as Eaton thought she might collapse onto the pavement, her breath coming in deep, noisy gasps, Johnson pulled up in front of a police station. Johnson immediately started up the stone steps, but Eaton reached for her arm and stopped her. “Wait,” she said as she tried to catch her breath. “Give me a minute.”

  Johnson turned and put an arm around Eaton. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean … I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Eaton said between gulps of air. “I’ll be fine. I just have to rest a minute.” She put her hands on
her hips and waited for her breathing to calm. Her coat fell open, but she no longer felt cold in the autumnal air.

  Eventually, she said, “My name is Kay.”

  “What?” Johnson said, obviously confused. “You’re not who I thought you were?”

  “No, no, I am,” Eaton said. “Because I’m a woman, I have to write under a pen name, otherwise the magazine won’t publish my work.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Johnson said.

  “Of course it is,” Eaton said, pleased for the support, if only from a relative stranger. “Anyway, I write under the name K. C. Hunter, but I’m actually Kay Eaton.”

  “Well, it’s nice to officially meet you, Miss Eaton,” Johnson said.

  Eaton smiled. “If I’m going to help you spring Benny from jail,” she said, “maybe you’d better call me Kay.”

  “Cassie,” Johnson said.

  “Okay, Cassie. Lead on.”

  They climbed the stone stairs and entered the police station. Inside, a tall, well-worn desk sat in the center of one wall. Dingy green tiles lined the floor, and a number of mismatched wooden chairs sat beneath the windows along the front of the room. Several closed doors in the side walls led deeper into the station, their frosted-glass inserts covered by metal grillwork.

  Johnson stepped over to the desk and peered up at the uniformed officer who sat behind it. “I’m Cassie Johnson,” she said. “I need to talk to somebody about Benny Russell.”

  Without looking up, the officer said, “Whozzat?”

  “Russell, Benny Russell,” Johnson said. “He was brought here earlier today.”

  “Don’t know him,” the officer said, still not bothering to take his gaze from whatever he looked at on the surface of the desk.

  “Look—” Johnson said, but Eaton put a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her back. Eaton herself stepped up to the desk.