The Darkness Drops Again

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Payavists?”

  “Or just ordinary citizens who’ve been swayed by their rhetoric. The placards are condemning alien contamination of their holy ground.”

  As the shuttle touched down, a Kazarite party came out to greet them, and the increasing hostility of the protesters’ cries made it clear that the “contamination” they found offensive was not limited to moss, birds, and trees. To Sulu, the Kazarites’ dark-hued, simian features, backswept black manes, and loose, homespun robes bespoke a quiet dignity and simplicity, but the translator caught cries of “Beasts!” and “Hideous savages!” from the protesters. He hoped Uhura could help overcome that perceptual gulf, but he doubted it would happen here and now. “Let’s get inside quickly,” he advised. “Make sure your phasers are on stun, but don’t do anything provocative.”

  Sulu tried to get through the exchange of greetings with the Kazarites as quickly as possible, and they appeared to share his desire. “Maintain a calm bearing,” their lead ecopath, a soft-spoken female named Hogach, suggested once hasty pleasantries had been traded. “Show no fear. But avoid eye contact with the crowd.”

  It was a nice theory but of little avail against someone already resolved to lash out violently. The protesters grew more agitated with each new person who exited the shuttle—each new alien polluting their soil, Sulu thought. But this was especially true with Bolek and Havzora. Someone actually screamed when the Zaranite disembarked, and a furor began to surge through the crowd. Sulu supposed he could understand being startled by one’s first glimpse of the slit-eyed gas mask that supplied Havzora with fluorine, but this kind of panic seemed beyond the pale on a world whose people had been aware of alien life for more than eight years now.

  But then Chekov sidled up to him and pointed to several tattoo-free Payav at the front of the crowd, facing the protesters and rallying them. “Mar-Atyya,” he said. “They’re stirring up the crowd, driving them into a frenzy!”

  “Get everyone inside, now!”

  But the crowd was already surging against the fence, and projectiles began to arc over it. Sulu prayed that this was an unplanned attack, that they were only rocks or bottles. But even those could be dangerous. “Cover!” he cried, leading the landing party back toward the shuttle.

  But then Hogach and the other Kazarites stepped forward and spread their hands, humming in the backs of their throats. The projectiles changed course in midair as though struck by a powerful wind, falling short of their targets. Sulu realized he’d just seen the Kazarites’ telekinesis in action. It wasn’t as powerful as the abilities of a Platonian or a Thasian, say, but it was good enough for Sulu.

  The protesters saw it differently. Already stirred up into a superstitious panic, the Payav reacted with utter horror to the Kazarites’ seemingly supernatural abilities. Now one of the mar-Atyya was preaching loudly enough for Sulu’s translator to pick his voice out of the crowd. “Do you see, my brethren? This is the work of demons! With their foul sorcery they will collapse our tunnels upon us, crush our hearts in our chests merely by willing it! Unless we stop them here and now! Unless we purify our world!”

  “Yes! Purify!” The cry went up through the crowd, the preachers echoing and reinforcing it. Sulu began to get a bad feeling, remembering that religious purification rituals generally involved one of two elements: water or…

  Fire! As if making his thought manifest, a crude incendiary device flew over the fence. But Chekov darted forward and hit it dead-on with a phaser beam, vaporizing it in midair. “Good shot!” Sulu cried.

  But other firebombs were flying over the fence now, and even with Sulu adding his own expert marksmanship to Chekov’s, they couldn’t stop them all. They did come prepared after all, he thought as some of the firebombs made it through, shattering on the ground and splashing flaming liquid on the foliage around them. Within moments, the trees were burning, the fire spreading from several points.

  No, it’s even worse than that, Sulu realized. This was a well-planned attack. We were just the diversion—the excuse. They want to burn down the forest!

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  “This is a disaster!” cried Marat Lon as he gazed at the image of the forest fire on the bridge’s viewscreen. “Kirk, we have to do something at once!”

  Instead of responding to the doctor, Kirk spoke into the com pickup. “Sulu, assessment?”

  “The fire’s spreading quickly, sir. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem for pine trees, but these are young and thin-barked. They might not survive.”

  “Neither will the animals,” Lon added, his tone still urgent. “The eel-birds are nesting; their eggs will be lost, and they won’t breed again for another year! Not to mention the millisnakes, the groundhoppers—even if they could outrun the fire, where would they go?”

  “All our firefighting resources in the area are being mobilized,” Raya elMora said, her face appearing in an inset on the main viewer. “But it will take time, and we have little still functional on the surface.”

  “There’s no time for that,” Lon said. “Kirk, isn’t there anything we can do from here?” Lon had come aboard to supervise the transfer of supplies but now sounded as though he blamed himself personally for abandoning his work down below.

  Kirk pondered for a moment, pacing the bridge. “Spock, how about using the ship’s phasers to cut a firebreak in its path? Sacrifice some of the trees to save the rest?”

  “Feasible, Captain. Although it may not completely suffice on its own, it should delay the spread of the fire enough to allow ground crews to contain it.”

  “You want to fire weapons on our planet?” Raya asked. “Captain, you must understand how tenuous the public’s sentiments are right now. Even the appearance of aggression from Starfleet, however beneficial the result, could spark a far greater conflagration than this.”

  “We don’t have time to cater to Payav paranoia!” Lon cried, then reined himself in. “With respect, Madam Councillor, the preservation of that valley is urgent. The restoration plan is on a precise timetable, countless elements all carefully balanced, and losing this facility would be a massive setback for these species. Surely the people can be made to understand that.”

  Kirk could see the struggle in Raya’s eyes. Those eyes met his, seeking his opinion, and he sent her his wordless encouragement. I trust your judgment and will support it.

  “Very well,” she said. “Proceed with your plan, Captain Kirk. I will issue an immediate public statement explaining your action and urging calm.”

  “Thank you, Madam Councillor,” Kirk said, settling back into the command chair. “Chief DiFalco, plot our new orbit. Ensign Ledoux, engage.”

  As the two women guided the Enterprise to its new orbit, Kirk listened to the feed as Raya made her announcement to the people. In the meantime, Spock calculated the optimal location for the firebreak and sent the data to Ensign Nizhoni, Chekov’s second-in-command, at the tactical station. The young Navajo woman had the firing solution prepared by the time Monique Ledoux had settled the ship into a forced orbit over the burning valley. “We’re ready to fire, Madam Councillor,” Kirk reported.

  “You may proceed.”

  “Nizhoni—fire phasers!”

  Kirk watched the viewscreen as the beams speared down through Mestiko’s atmosphere and struck the valley. He ordered magnification, but between the smoke from the fire and the vapor and dust that billowed around the impact point, there was little to see. Ledoux switched the viewscreen to terahertz imaging to cut through the smoke, allowing Kirk to see the wide swath the phaser beams were scything through the evergreen forest.

  In minutes, it was over. The fire was still burning, but they hoped it would remain contained within the firebreak. Kirk ordered Ledoux to keep station over the valley in case another firebreak was needed. “Spock,” he said, “is there anything else we can do to fight the fire from up here? Say, use a tractor beam to suck away its air supply?”

  “Doubtful, Captain. The intervening column o
f air is several dozen kilometers deep, and—”

  “I fear we have more immediate concerns,” Raya interrupted. “Apparently, my address was ineffective. I’m getting reports of riots breaking out in dozens of major cities.”

  VosTraal, Mestiko

  Raya slumped behind her desk as she watched the monitors, which cycled among images of the riots raging across half of Mestiko. The government’s security forces were being overwhelmed in city after city—at least, where they hadn’t broken ranks and stood with the rioters. No, Raya. This is beyond rioting now. Call it what it is—a coup.

  She glanced over to the two large guards who stood inside her office door, mirroring the two who guarded its other side and the two more inside the outer office door, and so on. She was beginning to doubt they would be enough. Kirk had offered to send down his security people to protect key government facilities, but she knew that would only make things worse. The mar-Atyya had orchestrated their coup deftly, stirring the people into a xenophobic fury. They had provoked Starfleet into action with the fire and used its response as an excuse to launch an open revolt. There was no way it could have happened so swiftly had it been spontaneous. They had been plotting insurrection for some time, just waiting for the right excuse. Perhaps even waiting for Kirk himself. Asking for help from Enterprise security would only add fuel to the fire.

  Besides, Raya had heard from Theena about what the Enterprise’s crew was like now. So many aliens in one place, of more species than Raya believed she had even heard of, and many of them downright frightening in appearance. Raya liked to consider herself cosmopolitan, but her dealings had been mostly with humans, Klingons, and Vulcans, species who differed only marginally from the Payav norm. It had been something of a shock when she’d met her first Kazarite, and she’d barely avoided an embarrassing outburst of fear at the first demonstration of their psionic abilities. She knew that the rank and file of Payav would react even more badly to the alienness of Kirk’s crew than she would, and would not be as circumspect in expressing it.

  Now, there’s an understatement for the ages, she told herself as she studied the monitors. The Kazarites and other offworlders had already been beamed to the Enterprise or the other ships in orbit for their protection. But Raya had no such recourse. Kirk had implicitly offered it, but she would remain with the Zamestaad for as long as that institution existed.

  “Madam Councillor?” It was Blee, calling from the outer office. “Councillor Asal Janto is here to see you.”

  Raya’s eyes widened. What could she possibly want now? Raya had grown too cynical to imagine that her estranged friend would want to—what was the human expression?—“kiss and make up” in the face of crisis. “Blee, advise the councillor to return to her chambers and wait there. Have a guard escort her.”

  Blee’s voice was tentative. “Uhh, Madam Councillor… she has several guards with her already. And I don’t think they’ll react well if I send her away.”

  Raya absorbed that for a moment. Perhaps I haven’t grown cynical enough. “Send her in, then.” She nodded to the guards to permit it. No point asking them to throw their lives away for a lost cause.

  Asal dared to look apologetic as she entered the room. Her guards waited outside but held the door open. “So,” Raya said. “You’re their figurehead.”

  “More than that, Raya. I stand for the majority of Payav who support the mar-Atyya movement in its opposition to alien incursion and its commitment to shielding our world from all external threats, natural or otherwise.”

  Raya stared. So this was about her absurd radiation-shield plan? The mar-Atyya must have promised to support it in exchange for her allegiance. “They’re a band of fanatics, Asal! Can you really believe the policies they’ll impose will have any grounding in reality, any chance of solving the problems that face us?”

  “They chose to place their support behind me, a secular leader. That should answer your question.”

  “You, secular?” Raya scoffed. “In title, perhaps. But you have always been driven by faith. You always assume that your own self-righteousness will let you triumph over any problem.”

  “Look around you, Raya. We have triumphed.”

  “No. You have merely compounded the problem. In fact—” Unable to contain herself any longer, she struck Asal across the face. “You may have just doomed our world to extinction!”

  Asal rubbed her cheek but remained calm and confident. “Restoring Mestiko—pardon me, hur-Atyya—is still our top priority. But we will do it our way. Without alien contaminants.”

  “How? By wishing very hard and hoping that entire extinct taxa will resurrect themselves?”

  “We’re not the primitives the Federation imagines. We have genetic sciences. Samples of defunct forms can be found and cloned.”

  “With what resources? What animals’ wombs will they incubate in? Who will perform this highly skilled work when we are starving to death in the absence of offworld food shipments? And where will you find the budget and the skilled personnel while you are wasting it all on building a shield against a nonexistent threat?”

  “You accuse me of overdependence on faith, but you have none in your own people. We have endured much this past twelveyear, and in the ages before. We are a resourceful people, and I believe in us.”

  “I believe in us, too, Asal. But we do not have to do it alone.”

  “No, Raya. Now more than ever, we do. We have to prove we are as capable as any other species in the universe, or we will always consider ourselves inferior.” Asal sighed. “You, on the other hand, will have to rely on aliens for assistance.”

  Raya studied her. “I’m to be exiled, then?”

  “You and your loyalists, yes. Those who survive,” she added, looking away. “It’s for your own protection, Raya. I fought for it. Whatever our political differences,” she went on, meeting Raya’s eyes again, “I would not wish you dead.”

  Raya returned her gaze coldly. “Then you show more concern for my welfare than for our planet’s.”

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Kirk rose from his seat as Raya entered the officers’ lounge. “Are your people settling in all right?” he asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” she answered as he escorted her to the seat nearest the door. “Thank you. Conditions are somewhat cramped, but we’re used to that. We’ve managed to find room for all the surviving members of the government in exile. Fortunately, you have a very spacious recreation complex.”

  Kirk sat across from her, on the couch next to Spock. McCoy watched from the opposite couch, and Dr. Lon paced before the windowlike viewscreens. “And you?” Kirk asked with a solicitous smile. “How are you bearing up?”

  She gazed into his eyes and let him see a sorrow and weariness he doubted she would show anyone else. “Well… I was betrayed by a very old friend today. I suppose that friendship ended two years ago, but it still hurts. And… I was unable to track down Elee,” she went on, referring to her beloved grandmother. “She was not at home, and I have no idea if she escaped the violence.” She strove to keep her voice controlled, but Kirk could sense her fear. After losing the rest of her family to the Pulse and its aftermath, he knew she would go to any lengths to save Elee from a similar fate.

  Kirk clasped her wrist. “Your elor is as strong as you are. She’ll survive.” She placed her other hand atop his and gave wordless thanks.

  After a moment, they broke apart, cognizant of the others’ gazes upon them. “Then I suppose the next question,” Kirk went on, “is where we’ll take you.”

  Raya nodded. “I would assume Starbase 49. That would be a good place to establish a command post for our efforts to retake the government. Most of the infrastructure is already in place; it’s just a matter of converting its purpose. Once we have a decent fleet assembled…” She trailed off, registering the looks on the Starfleet officers’ faces. “What is it?”

  “Raya… you know the Prime Directive won’t allow us to intervene.”

>   She stared, then laughed. “What? Isn’t it rather late to be worrying about the Prime Directive now? Surely that was rendered moot after the Pulse. Starfleet has been intervening directly in our world’s affairs ever since.”

  “With the invitation and consent of your world’s sitting government,” Spock told her. “That condition no longer applies.”

  “We’re not conquerors, Raya,” Kirk said. “We’ll provide humanitarian aid when we’re asked, but we’re not in the business of overthrowing governments.”

  “Even when they have overthrown your allies?”

  “It’s… not that simple.” Kirk faltered. How could he make her understand when he was having trouble with the concept himself?

  McCoy leaned forward. “Raya, think about it. Say we did help you stage a countercoup and put the Zamestaad back. Do you think the people would just accept that? Do you think they’d be willing to work with you then? You’d be too busy putting down rebellions to do anything else.”

  “But what is the alternative? You all know that if the mar-Atyya’s policies are enacted, all we have accomplished over the past twelveyear will be wiped out. They will destroy Dr. Lon’s plants and the alien animals, and Mestiko will go back to freezing and losing oxygen again. The survival of our families, our very world, is at stake!”

  “We won’t give up trying, Raya,” Kirk said. “We’ll use every diplomatic means at our disposal to encourage the new government to continue the restoration work.”

  “And you think they will listen?” She shook her head. “What has happened to you, James? There was a time when you would not hesitate to go charging in and take on a whole society if you thought its rulers were harming its people.”

  Kirk cleared his throat. “Those accounts have been… somewhat exaggerated. And I’ve learned that the consequences of such actions aren’t always positive in the long run. Especially if you ignore the beliefs and wishes of the people as a whole.”