Legacies

by Greg Cox

  She broke from the shadows, counting on the pod’s landing to serve as a distraction. Shimizu called to her, his anxious voice drowned out by the loud buzz of the descending aircraft.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “Hang on!” she said. “I’ll be right back!”

  She dived beneath the parked pod, scooting forward on her stomach to get closer to the meeting farther ahead. Reaching the nose of the aircraft, she hid between its landing struts and watched intently as the arriving pod touched down, its wings converting into landing struts. A hatchway slid open to disgorge a ramp onto the pavement. Two more Jatohr oozed down the ramp. A glistening trail of slime marked their passing. The natural secretion presumably eased their way over any rough or slippery surfaces.

  Una examined the aliens at greater detail than she’d been able to do before. Their glossy oyster-white exoskeletons were more or less identical, but their exposed heads and feet displayed a wide variety of colorations and markings. Stripes, whorls, rings, speckles, and blotches helped distinguish one slug from another, as seemingly unique to each individual as a face or fingerprint. They were larger than the average humanoid, measuring more than two meters from their brow to the sole of their large foot. Despite their notable lack of legs, they surely towered over the captive Usildar. Their sturdy exoskeletons appeared to be made of overlapping layers of some hard, chitinous material, while their metallic forelimbs did indeed appear to be prosthetic “waldoes” of a sort.

  Their faces were strikingly inhuman. Unlike Andorians, whose twin antennae supplemented their conventional countenances, the Jatohr had tentacles instead of standard eyes and noses and ears. The tallest pair of tentacles bore recognizable eyes at their tips. Una theorized that the two smaller pairs of tentacles picked up olfactory and auditory stimuli instead. A triangular mouth occupied the bottom of their “faces,” extending nearly to their chins. There was no evidence of sexual differentiation anywhere on their bodies; Una recalled that most gastropods were hermaphrodites.

  Wonder what kind of pronouns they use? Genderless ones, I imagine.

  The Jatohr greeted one another. Checking to make certain that her universal translator was still activated, she strained her ears to listen in, but all she heard was a wet, phlegmy gurgling that was certainly not any language known to her. She waited impatiently for the translator to kick in, but it seemed just as flummoxed by the alien tongue as she was. Scowling, she held back a few choice Illyrian epithets that might have fried the device’s delicate circuits.

  Just my luck, she thought. The Jatohr are certainly not making this easy for me.

  One of the aliens turned back toward the hangar. A harsh, genderless voice issued from a speaker embedded in the neckpiece of hir armor: “Work crew, come here. Begin unloading the cargo transport.”

  At first, Una thought that the universal translator had finally cracked the Jatohr’s speech, but then a team of weary-looking Usildar emerged from the hangar and trudged toward the parked aircraft. She realized that the Jatohr had issued its command in the language of the Usildar, which the translator could handle, unlike the invaders’ own incomprehensible tongue, so that she could understand the Jatohr when they were addressing their Usildar slaves, but not when they were conversing among themselves.

  That’s something, I suppose.

  She registered the mechanized, artificial quality of the Jatohr’s command. Perhaps their natural vocalizations did not lend themselves to humanoid speech? She pondered the implications of that even as she recorded more of the Jatohr’s gurgles for further study and analysis. It was possible that the computers back on the ship could decipher it, and there were other resources she could consult as well. If Spirit Claw couldn’t find a way to translate her recordings, nobody could.

  Or maybe the translator just needs to chew on the Newcomers’ lingo a bit longer, she thought hopefully. Ordinarily it worked almost instantaneously, but the Jatohr’s language might be a tougher nut to crack.

  Oblivious to her presence, the Jatohr gurgled at one another as they crossed the airfield diagonally toward the front entrance of the hangar, accompanied by Usildar bearers weighed down by cargo. Judging that she had obtained an adequate sample of the slugs’ speech, Una decided that she should scoot back and rejoin Shimizu, who was probably having a warp-core meltdown by now. She started to back away furtively, only to catch an unexpected movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Oh, no, she thought. What’s he doing here?

  Swinging down from the roof of the hangar, Gagre dropped deftly onto the bales piled against the building’s east wall. Crouching among the stacked supplies, he gazed intently at the unguarded pod—and its open hatchway.

  It was all too easy to guess the boy’s intent. He was out to sneak aboard the aircraft in hopes of taking a ride aboard the tantalizing flying machine. Maybe he even wanted to hitch a ride to the mysterious citadel of the Newcomers to discover what wonders hid behind its opaque walls. Una understood the impulse, but was alarmed nonetheless. According to Onumes, no Usildar had ever returned from the citadel.

  But now what was she supposed to do?

  Mission or no mission, she had to save Gagre from his own reckless curiosity. His mother’s anxious face surfaced from Una’s memory, steeling the young lieutenant’s resolve. She couldn’t let the boy get aboard that pod, not if she ever wanted to live with herself again.

  “Psst!” she hissed from beneath the other pod, trying to get Gagre’s attention, but he was too intent on his target, and probably too far away, to hear her hushed entreaty. “Over here.”

  By now, the Jatohr and their heavily laden work crew were halfway back to the hangar, with their backs to the newly arrived pod. Seeing his chance, Gagre crept out from the shelter of the bales and scurried toward the beckoning hatchway.

  No!

  His impatience forced Una’s hand. There was no time to devise a clever strategy; she could only scramble out from beneath the parked pod and chase after Gagre, while hoping that, against all odds, they could both somehow avoid being spotted by the distracted Jatohr.

  What was it that Shimizu had said earlier about her pushing her luck?

  Not that she had any choice in this instance. Catching up with Gagre, she grabbed him from behind and clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out. Maybe she could still drag him back into the shadows before it was too late.

  “It’s me!” she whispered urgently. “Your friend Una!”

  But she had underestimated the young Usildar’s strength. Startled, he yanked her hand away from his mouth and starting kicking and squirming in her grasp. Wiry arms and legs flailed wildly.

  “Let me go!” he wailed, far too loudly for Una’s peace of mind. “I want to fly!”

  As she feared, the disturbance did not escape the Jatohr’s attention. The aliens wheeled about and made agitated noises. Globe-lights converged on the commotion, spotlighting Una and Gagre. The other Usildar made themselves scarce, no doubt fearful of being caught up in the incident and incurring the wrath of their overseers.

  “Halt!” a Jatohr demanded in (translated) Usildar. “Stand and be questioned!”

  Una spun Gagre around, away from the pod, and shoved him away from her.

  “Run!” she ordered. “Back to your mother!”

  The boy finally grasped that he was in danger. Frightened by the upset Jatohr, who were rushing toward the intruders, flailing their forelimbs, he fled in panic back the way he had come, bounding onto the bales of supplies, then shimmying up a drain pipe onto the roof of the hangar and disappearing from sight. Una watched him make his escape, then took off herself, racing across the airfield in the opposite direction in order to draw any pursuit away from the boy.

  “Forget him!” she shouted. “I’m the one you want!”

  She reasoned, correctly as it turned out, that the Jatohr would be more concerned
with an unexplained alien in their midst than a fleeing native child. The Jatohr chased after her as she raced across the tarmac away from Gagre’s forest home. They bellowed in both Usildar and their own unintelligible language.

  “Stop! You cannot escape!”

  Possibly not, she conceded, but she was certainly going to try. She had no desire to provide the Jatohr with a hostage or any more information about Starfleet’s presence on and above Usilde. Sprinting as fast as she could, as though competing for yet another trophy, she deliberately avoided retracing her steps so as not to draw her pursuers back to Shimizu. She could only imagine what was going through her friend’s mind as he saw their whole covert scouting operation blow up like a supernova. Una hoped he would be smart enough to stay hidden and not try to play hero.

  Don’t do anything stupid, Tim. I’ve screwed up enough for the both of us.

  Abandoning the open airfield, she tried to lose herself amidst a warren of outbuildings on the other side of the landing site, but the levitating globe-lights stuck to her like Denevan bloodhounds, depriving her of the shadows. To make matters worse, the globes emitted a deep, booming siren that called out to her pursuers wherever she ran. Drawing her laser pistol, she blasted one particularly persistent globe, which crashed to the ground, spewing sparks, but her expert marksmanship was to no avail; more globes swooped in to replace the one she had shot down. Commands blared from loudspeakers in the globes.

  “Attention: Unknown Creature. Stand and be questioned!”

  So much for her exemplary stealth and infiltration skills; she couldn’t have attracted more attention if she’d flown a shuttlecraft into the middle of the camp in broad daylight. The only positive was that she hadn’t been fired upon yet, if the Jatohr even employed hand weapons, which was an open question that she was in no hurry to have answered.

  Fuel barrels blocked her path and she hurdled over them like the champion she was. Her eidetic memory called up the layout of the camp, as viewed from the hillside earlier, while she tried to calculate the swiftest route back to the jungle. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that she had temporarily left the slow-moving Jatohr behind, even if she couldn’t say the same for their floating sentry globes. Their low-pitched, almost subsonic alarms unsettled her even more than they should have. She gritted her teeth, feeling a headache coming on.

  This way, she concluded, rounding the corner of a storage facility and charting a course for the rows of long, rectangular dormitories at the eastern side of the central complex. As she recalled, only a wide strip of cleared land separated the ugly, utilitarian dorms from the adjacent forest. If she could make it past the buildings, she had a straight shot to the jungle, assuming the Jatohr let her get that far.

  If only I could stop running long enough to contact the Enterprise . . . .

  A narrow pathway ran between the parallel dormitories. Una sprinted down the center of the corridor, grateful for the rigorous exercise regimen that kept her in peak physical condition at all times. The globe-lights kept pace with her, their booming alarums no doubt disturbing the exhausted workers housed within the buildings. She felt a twinge of guilt for adding to their woes and vowed to make up for it if she ever got the chance.

  “Halt!” the globes demanded. “You cannot escape.”

  We’ll see about that, she thought, spotting the forest looming ahead, beyond the cleared terrain past the dormitories. Would the globes pursue her into the woods? Would the Jatohr? Even if they did, she figured she had a better chance of shaking them in the overgrown depths of the forest than on their home ground. The night-cloaked jungle beckoned to her, no more than fifty meters away. Hope, mixed with adrenaline, fueled her desperate flight. Reaching deep, she pulled out a fresh burst of speed. Her pounding boots ate up the distance between her and safety. She wasn’t even breathing hard yet. I’m going to make it.

  Three Jatohr appeared at the far end of the pathway, blocking her way. They raised their forelimbs in a menacing fashion. An amplified voice rang out.

  “Surrender, creature. You can go no farther.”

  Skidding to a halt, she spun around to see two more Jatohr advancing on her from behind. They slithered forward, making a hasty retreat problematic.

  “Stand and be questioned,” a Jatohr repeated. “You have nowhere to go.”

  It was hard to dispute that assessment. She looked around for an escape route, but found herself penned in, with Jatohr ahead and behind, and the steep wooden walls of the dormitories to either side of her. Each dorm was four stories tall and lacked anything in the way of windows or adornment. Gazing up at them, she envied Gagre’s opposable toes and innate climbing abilities. She might be able to scale the walls if she had time, but not before the Jatohr closed in on her or brought any weapons to bear.

  She was trapped.

  A closed doorway, midway along the length of one building, called out to her. Darting over to the entrance, she tried the door, only to find it locked. She pounded on the door with her fist, hoping that the roused workers might help her escape. Once she was inside, she could try to find a back way out.

  “Help! Let me in!”

  But the door remained firmly shut. She briefly cursed the Usildar inside, but then realized that the door was surely intended to keep the workers locked up, so that they couldn’t try to slip away from the camp between shifts. Chances were, the poor souls warehoused inside the building couldn’t admit her even if they wanted to.

  Never mind, then.

  She turned away from the door as the Jatohr converged on her. They formed a half circle around her, approximately two meters in radius, so that she was backed up against the building. Multiple globe-lights caught her in their search beams, nearly blinding her. She raised a hand to shield her eyes.

  “The chase is over, creature,” a Jatohr declared. “Surrender to our custody.”

  Una shook her head. “Sorry. That’s against my orders.”

  She raised her laser pistol and fired a warning shot over the heads of her pursuers. A crimson beam struck one of the hovering globes, which exploded in a shower of sparks. She was reluctant to shoot first—and in a first-contact situation, no less—but the Jatohr weren’t giving her any choice. She couldn’t allow herself to be captured and interrogated; she had already compromised the mission enough. Lowering her weapon, she took aim at the Jatohr directly before her.

  “Please allow me to depart peacefully. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  She assumed that her translator would convert her words to Usildar at least, so that the Jatohr could understand her, but was unnerved when her captors gurgled energetically to one another, leaving her out of the loop. Their gastropod faces, so unlike her own, also made it hard to read their intentions.

  “Please, speak to me to me in Usildar,” she implored. “I can’t understand your own language.”

  Ignoring her request, a Jatohr spat out a phlegmy command. Una held her fire, uncertain what was being said, and kept her eyes on the Jatohr, who had yet to brandish any recognizable weapons. Her finger remained poised on the trigger of her laser.

  Too late she realized that she should have been keeping watch over the floating globes as well. While on guard against any hostile moves by the Jatohr, she was caught by surprise when one of the globes dived sharply and slammed into the back of her head. Not only did the impact stagger her, knocking her face-first onto the pavement, but an intense electric shock jolted her nervous system. She convulsed upon the ground, losing her grip on her pistol.

  A cattle prod, she realized. The damn globes are cattle prods, too.

  The globe retreated into the air, leaving her dazed and disarmed. Her head ringing, she could not fight back as the Jatohr yanked her onto her feet and confiscated her equipment. Cold metallic claspers closed on her wrists like manacles as she was walked roughly across the grounds by two brusque Jatohr escorts. She counted herself lucky th
at she wasn’t being dragged by her feet instead.

  “What now?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

  “To be questioned,” one of the guards stated. “Answers are mandatory.”

  A brief hike brought her back to the airfield. Not a good sign, she realized, fearing that she might be seeing the inside of the Newcomers’ citadel sooner rather than later. A small crowd of Jatohr was assembled on the tarmac, talking among themselves. She guessed that she was the number one topic of discussion, no pun intended.

  Her guards held her in place as another Jatohr approached her. Swirls of brown blotches, not unlike the distinctive epidermal markings of a Trill, mottled the slug’s otherwise olive-colored flesh. Protruding eyestalks scrutinized Una.

  “What are you?” the Newcomer demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  The Prime Directive, not to mention the security of the Enterprise and its crew, weighed on Una’s mind as she chose her words carefully.

  “I mean you no harm. I was merely observing.”

  “But what are you? Where do you come from?”

  She wondered if she could convince the Jatohr that she was merely some exotic breed of Usildar from a different corner of the planet. All humanoids probably looked roughly the same to them, and how thoroughly had they explored this entire world so far?

  Maybe we should have disguised ourselves after all.

  “I am simply a visitor to these parts.”

  The Jatohr examined her, noting her unusual clothing, while its companions inspected her gear, passing it back and forth between themselves. She winced at the loss of her tricorder, wanting it back almost more than her communicator and laser—all that data that she had recorded and hoped to deliver to the captain.

  “Are there others like you? Speak truthfully, creature.”

  “My name is Una. Not creature.”

  Which wasn’t entirely correct, but now was no time to get into the finer points of her complicated nomenclature.

  “Answer the question, creature,” the Jatohr said, ignoring her protest. “Are you alone or are there more of you?”