Strange New Worlds IX

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Agent K, of course, answered none of his questions. He merely responded with a frivolous remark about the weather or an insult to the commander’s mother and received a blow to the stomach for his good humor.

  Kling had been going in circles for hours with K. Many beatings and no answers. The commander’s breath stank of bloodwine and gagh, and he leaned in close to K, growling in a manner he thought intimidating.

  K was not impressed. After facing down the sight of a Planet Killer, a little thing like a surly Klingon wasn’t very intimidating.

  K simply laughed in Kling’s face. He again felt the Klingon’s fist slam into his jaw. Kling barked at Titan and his lackeys to dismember K and he stormed out of the chamber.

  Titan chuckled at his good fortune. He pulled a laser torch off the wall and activated it. K saw the thin red beam lance out and wondered how he kept ending up in these situations.

  Titan leaned in so close to K that he could see the serpent worms stuck between his teeth.

  “Have you ever smelled burning flesh, human?” Titan asked.

  “More times than I care to remember,” K answered.

  Titan laughed. “Well this one will make all your bad memories look happy.”

  Before Titan could bring the torch closer, K whipped his legs up around the Klingon’s neck. He squeezed as hard as he could, enjoying the look of the Klingon’s eyes bugging out.

  K heard Tubby screaming at Ichabod and heard Ichabod demanding reinforcements in the interrogation deck. K raised his shackles and forced Titan to cut through them.

  Satisfied that he had his hands free, he kicked Titan back with his legs and leapt to his feet. Titan roared, lowering his head to charge the human.

  K ducked to the side, extending his leg; the Klingon went flying head over heels, landing flat on his face.

  “Prisoners do not fight back,” Tubby said. He grabbed a bat’leth and swung at K. K ducked and aimed a hard chop at Tubby’s gullet.

  Tubby choked, grabbing at his throat, releasing the bat’leth. K grabbed the weapon and hit Tubby in the nape of the neck with it, knocking him cold.

  Ichabod grabbed K from behind. K bent at the waist, dumping him to the ground. He placed his foot in the center of the skinny Klingon’s chest and put the bat’leth to his throat.

  “Stay down,” K said.

  “Death first,” Ichabod responded.

  “Your call,” K said, punching the blade through the Klingon’s chest.

  K felt a blow to his kidney and knew that Titan was on his feet again. He staggered, releasing the bat’leth.

  Titan brought his ham-sized fists together, crunching massive knuckles. The warrior was out for blood.

  K cracked his much smaller knuckles and gave the Klingon a good rap in the mouth and two jabs to the stomach. Titan just stood there impassively, not really sure if the puny weakling was serious.

  “Damn,” K said, realizing that Titan was going to be one of those kinds of opponents. K shrugged and did the unexpected; he grabbed the Klingon by both sides of his face and gave his head a good twist followed by a bone-chilling crack.

  K took no joy in killing; he was a soldier, not a monster, but he was thankful for all of the early-morning sparring sessions he’d had with Sulu.

  K had nary a moment to take a breath as the chamber was peppered with disruptor blasts. K leapt behind the table; he saw a large piece of mirror shattered in the melee.

  “Over here,” he shouted at the security team. It consisted of four large brutes armed to the teeth. Seeing their quarry challenging them, they fired as one.

  K raised the mirror, deflecting the blast back at them. They entered Sto-Vo-Kor together. K dropped the red-hot mirror, his twinging fingers scorched by the heat of weapons fire.

  K turned and entered the cell block. He still had a mission to complete.

  Kirk had been surprised to find that he was neither on a starship nor on the hidden world of the Preservers. He was actually on a cloaked substation deep in the Beta Quadrant. Kirk realized the station had to be the size of a small planet.

  “Not quite that big,” Seven responded. “More the size of a large moon.”

  Kirk whistled, impressed. It was beyond anything they could achieve in the twenty-third century and he supposed the twenty-fourth. To the Preservers, it was child’s play.

  They stepped into a large domed chamber. It was empty save for a chair in the center of the room.

  “Under normal operating procedures, we spend years training our agents in the proper uses of our weapons and technology.” Seven gestured to the chair. “Please have a seat, Captain Kirk.”

  Kirk obliged, feeling very comfortable. The chair molded itself to his body and seemed to be giving him a massage to boot.

  I could have used one of these on the Enterprise.

  “Unfortunately we do not have years to train you, so we have to resort to slightly unconventional means to bridge the technological gap for you.”

  “And how do you intend to ‘bridge’ that gap?” Kirk asked.

  “Are you familiar with a planet called Sigma Draconis Six?”

  He should be; a native Eymorg invaded his ship and stole the brain of his first officer, intending to use it to control the computers that protected their civilization. In the end, Bones had discovered that the indigenous people had devolved from their technological roots, preventing them from utilizing any form of advanced technology.

  The technological gap had been filled by a device called the “Teacher.” It uploaded the information needed to maintain their society directly into their brains. But it only lasted for a limited duration before fading from their memory. Bones had had to don the Teacher to restore Spock’s brain.

  “Same principle,” Seven responded. “But to a different degree. We’re not going to be uploading the complete knowledge of a civilization to your mind. Merely the knowledge needed to accomplish your mission. Do you have a problem with this?”

  “Will it change my personality or brainwash me to make me more compliant with Preserver dogma?” Kirk asked. His effectiveness relied on his autonomy and his individuality. He’d fought too many thinking computers in his time to let himself be reprogrammed by one.

  “No,” Seven answered. “Our Teacher is a tool to educate. Not control. Besides, if we had wanted to brainwash you we could have done so before reviving you.”

  Kirk nodded. It did, after all, make sense. And a fish out of water could use every edge he could get.

  “Let’s do it,” Kirk said.

  Seven lowered a helmet down over Kirk’s head. Like the chair, it molded itself to his contours. It was surprisingly comfortable for a steel hat. Seven pressed a button on the chair. Kirk didn’t know what to expect. He figured it would be like the floodgates opening or the lights in a darkened room suddenly being switched on. It was nothing like either of those. It was just going from a state of not knowing to knowing everything he needed to. It wasn’t a transformation. It was merely information.

  “Are you ready, Agent K?” Seven asked.

  “I’m ready for anything,” Agent K answered.

  K found Doctor Bosworth at the end of the cell block. The doctor was in her early thirties, tall and blond. She reminded him of Carol Marcus: beauty and brains in one all too frail package.

  K lowered the forcefield; the scientist looked up at him. Her face was stained with tears. K felt a pang in his heart for her. Her suffering was unacceptable.

  “Who—who are you?” she asked.

  “Kirk, James Kirk. I’m here to help,” he said.

  A disruptor beam struck the bulkhead above him. The scientist shrieked in terror. K ducked into the cell, phaser in hand.

  He could see a warrior at the end of the corridor shouting at reinforcements in the main chamber. K fired at the Klingon, wide dispersal, and the Klingon fell back.

  K checked his tricorder, matching his location against the schematic. It showed he was directly above the engineering deck.

&nbs
p; “Doctor, please stand back,” K said, placing his final photon charge on the floor. K pushed her to the wall and shielded her with his body.

  The charge cracked the floor open. K scooped the scientist into his arms and leaped through the gap in the decks. They landed in engineering; K felt the impact with the floor radiate up into his hip. He hated it when he felt his age.

  I’ll have to have Bones patch that up later.

  Taking Bosworth by the hand, K ran for the door, phasering an engineer who thought it would be a good idea to swing on him with a hydro-wrench.

  The door opened up, revealing a scar-faced Klingon bearing a qhon’Doq dagger in his hand. K recognized him. It was Commander Kling.

  “Fight me, human, if you have honor!” Kling demanded.

  “I don’t really have time for this,” K said, aiming his phaser. The commander’s eyes were a dark void from which no light escaped; they reminded him of Kor, and that was enough to compel K to throw his phaser aside.

  “Earth scum, I will eat your flesh strip by bloody strip,” Kling said.

  They circled like sharks, each sizing up the other. K didn’t know nor did he care what the Klingon thought of him, he just knew that Kling didn’t measure up to a warrior like Kang or Kruge or any of the countless Klingons he had met in battle.

  The doors cycled open and a squad of Klingon warriors flooded the deck, disruptor rifles in hand.

  So much for honor.

  “I thought this would be a fair fight,” K said.

  “Oh, it will be. They’re only going to kill you if I lose.”

  “How sporting,” K replied.

  The commander swung; the human grabbed his hand in a wrist lock and threw him hard. Kling went flying into the warp core, disintegrating instantly.

  “The twenty-fourth century isn’t so tough,” Kirk said.

  The Klingon warriors stood there for a moment, mouths agape, stunned by how easily their commander had fallen. Seeing the opening they had given him, K spun, firing his phaser and blasting the warp-core regulation unit.

  Alarms blared throughout the ship, signaling its final death throes. The Klingons turned, realizing what a blow the human had dealt them. K grinned defiantly, tossing his phaser to the deck.

  “I’ll see you in Gre’thor,” he said.

  It was clear that they weren’t making Klingons of the same stuff they were made of in his day. Instead of facing K as warriors they turned and ran for the door.

  K smirked and grabbed Doctor Bosworth and slung her over his shoulder. He ran. According to the tricorder they had only minutes.

  The bird-of-prey was a relic from his own time. After weeks living aboard the Bounty following the Genesis fiasco, he knew this model like the back of his hand.

  He ran down the corridor, ignoring the shrill alarm and the flood of escaping Klingons, and ran through a door, which slid open and revealed a transporter room. K dropped Bosworth on the pad and entered coordinates into the transporter console. They were swept away by the beam moments before the Executor exploded.

  Bones would hate this, K thought.

  Though there was no longer a ship for K and his charge to beam to, there was a cloaked relay station tracking him the entire time. It compensated for the limited transporter technology of the Klingons and shunted the duo halfway across the galaxy to headquarters.

  K felt the tension drain from him as he saw the Preserver transporter room appear around him. He knew that somewhere the bird-of-prey was being consumed in a supernova of his making. But he didn’t care about that, not really. He had saved the girl and by doing so, saved the Klingon Empire and ensured peace in the galaxy once more.

  K knew it was finally over. The mission, and perhaps his adventures. At least he was going out on a high note.

  “Are we safe?” Doctor Bosworth asked.

  K smiled charmingly. The woman was quivering like a leaf. She’d been through hell and he’d brought her back. It would take a long time for her to get over it.

  “We’re safe, Doctor,” K said.

  “Thank you,” she said. Bosworth clearly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead she leapt into K’s arms and gave him a kiss full on the lips. She was just happy to be alive.

  K grinned from ear to ear; everything was just how he remembered it from his youth.

  “I don’t know how to repay you for this,” Bosworth said.

  “I think you were doing just fine,” K replied. Bosworth smiled and leaned in to kiss him once more. K, not one to argue, accepted her gratitude just in time to see the doctor dissolve in the transporter beam once more. She left him standing there with puckered lips and a bewildered expression on his face.

  This sort of thing never happened in the old days.

  The door to the transporter room slid open and Gary Seven stepped through.

  “The girl, what did you do with her?” K asked.

  “She’s been taken for memory modification. The Klingons can’t take from her what she doesn’t have,” Seven answered.

  “She’ll be returned to Earth, unharmed?” K asked.

  “I’ll see to it personally,” Seven responded. “And Captain Kirk, you’ve done well.”

  Kirk nodded gratefully. “Thank you, Mister Seven. I take it you’ll be returning me to Earth as well?”

  Kirk could swear he saw a look of sadness and regret pass over Seven’s face, and he shared in it. As eager as he was to get home and see what had become of his people, he was sad that it was nearly over.

  “There’s a whole galaxy waiting to honor you, Captain Kirk,” Seven said. “Unless—”

  Kirk froze, knowing that there was something to that unless.

  “Unless?” Kirk asked, a glimmer of hope in his tone.

  “You could work with me and continue to make a difference until the day you die,” Seven said.

  It didn’t take Kirk a moment to decide.

  “Sounds like fun,” Kirk said, extending his hand to shake on the deal.

  “Welcome to the Organization, Agent K. Now for the details of your next assignment—”

  The Rules of War

  Kevin Lauderdale

  A spray of bullets sent chips of cement flying from the building’s wall across Archer’s face. Instinctively, he held up his right arm to block them, even though his helmet had a shatterproof visor. One of the finger-sized chips tore into his uniform sleeve, but didn’t hurt him. Who would have thought it would ever come to this? Actual urban combat—fighting in the streets. This was the twentieth century; weren’t we supposed to be civilized?

  “Captain!”

  Sergeant Bengy was calling to him. Nathan Archer ducked back behind the corner of the building and started to walk backwards toward the armored M2 Bradley, all the while scanning the sky and nearby rooftops for Augment Alliance forces as Bengy provided cover with his AK-47 machine gun.

  Of all the cities Archer had seen in North Africa, Assab, Eritrea, was probably the most industrial. Just about every structure there was made of cement or steel. The midday heat rising up everywhere from the asphalt roads made the whole place seem to shimmer.

  Archer and Bengy climbed up and into the Bradley, joining the rest of Bravo Company.

  Sergeant Bengy, like every other member of Archer’s UNPD battalion, wore camouflage fatigues in black, white, and gray, along with a patch on his or her left shoulder of the United Nations emblem: a white azimuth map of Earth flanked by olive branches on a sky-blue background. Below each of their patches was the flag of the soldier’s home nation. Bengy wore the Union Jack; Archer, Green, and the rest of the company, the Stars and Stripes. Most of the battalion were Americans, though Archer knew that Charlie Company had a couple of sergeants from France who wore the Tricolor. “A real red, white, and blue battalion,” his grandfather might have called it, with a laugh.

  Green handed canteens to Archer and Bengy. “What did it look like, Captain?” The round-faced lieutenant had piercing, intelligent eyes, and, despite his youth, a wil
y, sharp look to him. And, god, he was so young. Just out of Annapolis and assigned to…this. Archer wondered, had he himself ever looked that young?

  Archer and Bengy had gone out to scout the area—the area! A street! They had walked along an actual sidewalk, passing stores and telephone poles. This wasn’t the place for a war. Wars were supposed to be fought in jungles, forests, and—like Archer’s first time in uniform only a few years earlier—the open expanse of deserts. Wars were not supposed to be fought in cities. Cities had narrow streets, mailboxes, and wires that blocked things. Yet, here they were.

  “It looked like a school,” said Archer. In the midst of blocks of office buildings, just two streets away, was a one-story structure with a few windows and a flagpole flying the four-color flag of the nation. Unlike the buildings surrounding it, this structure was set back from the sidewalk several feet. Off to one side, visible through a chain-link fence, had been the shattered remains of a swing set, slide, and monkey bars. “And it looked like there were kids in it.”

  Green frowned and looked at his global positioning unit. “That wasn’t on the map.”

  “Too right,” said Bengy. “Where’d that map come from anyway, the Assab Tourism Board? And when was it printed, the eighties?”

  Archer sighed. “I’m sure battalion HQ gave us the best that they could find.” He leaned to one side and looked out a hatch. He didn’t actually expect to see an Alliance tank coming down the street, nor spot a sniper making his way toward them, but it comforted Archer to actually not see them with his own two eyes. He closed the hatch. “Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Alliance has us blocked.”

  His battalion was there to evacuate civilians. The whole city was a war zone, with Alliance and UNPD forces shooting at each other. The UN currently held the western side; the Alliance, the eastern, including the port where they were massing to go across the Red Sea to Yemen, and then, clearly, the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

  And now there were reports of more Alliance reinforcements heading up from the south. Bravo Company was just trying to get the civilians out and onto transports. Unfortunately, they were restricted to land routes. The Alliance forces didn’t seem interested in harming the civilians; they just wanted control of the port and the city. They probably would have ignored the citizens of Assab altogether, if the UNPD hadn’t come in to expel them. But that wasn’t Archer’s responsibility. Today Bravo Company wasn’t there to fight; they were there to protect and guide noncombatants to safety.