Star Trek: The Original Series: From History's Shadow

by Dayton Ward

  Arriving on Earth in what on the humans’ calendar was the year 1944, Adlar and his fellow operatives had found no sign either of the Na’khul agents or their influence on the massive conflict that had been dubbed “the Second World War.” Rather than being dominated by the nation-states of Germany and Japan, the United States and its allies instead were on the offensive against both enemy powers, in keeping with the planet’s allegedly “correct” timeline.

  A massive invasion of the European continent had forced the German military toward ultimate defeat, followed mere months later by Japan’s unconditional surrender. The latter victory had come at a tremendous cost, with the Americans being the first in their world’s history to unleash the overwhelming fury of nuclear weapons on an enemy target.

  In the wake of the war, an unprecedented era of prosperity was taking hold, particularly here in the United States. Still, new enemies and tensions were making themselves known, with another powerful nation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, asserting itself as the primary contender against American interests throughout the world. Scarcely three years after the end of the war, and already it was apparent that tensions between the two factions likely would dominate the political discourse for years, or even decades, driving the military-industrial complex of both nations along with smaller powers across the planet to push for ever more advanced weapons and other technology.

  “The longer we remain here,” Gejalik said, “the more obvious it becomes that Earth’s proper timeline—or, most of it, at least—appears to have been restored. And, the longer we go without contact from our people, the more I think that events there are not the same as they once were, either. Is the war over?”

  Adlar shook his head as he bit into a piece of bacon from his plate. “We have no way of knowing,” he replied after swallowing.

  It was even possible that in this timeline, Earth no longer posed a threat to his people. With no means of contacting anyone off-world, it was not possible to learn whether the temporal conflict had ended, let alone what might have brought about its conclusion or its lasting impacts on the many affected planets and civilizations. Returning to Certoss Ajahlan without external assistance was not an option, at least so far as utilizing the time-displacement mechanisms that had engineered their transport to Earth. Faced with being marooned here for the foreseeable future, the operatives by consensus had decided that their first duty aside from avoiding discovery was to carry out their mission’s other objective: preventing humans from gaining the technology required to one day pose a threat to the Certoss people.

  From the information on Earth’s future history he and the others had been given, Adlar knew that the aviation advances currently being made—including yesterday’s first successful supersonic flight—soon would give way to the aerospace age as the United States and its most formidable competitor, the U.S.S.R., fought for supremacy beyond the confines of their small planet.

  It was this push for space that, if Adlar’s grasp of human history was correct, would provide the Certoss agents their best opportunity to accomplish their mission. It was the realization of that goal that was proving difficult, owing in large part to the fact that much of the technology that their group might purloin from humanity for their own uses had not yet been invented.

  “We cannot wait too long to regain contact with Jaecz,” Gejalik said. “Etlun will be here within the week, and after that we’ll be forced to make a decision.”

  Adlar nodded in agreement. He looked forward to Etlun’s return, as he had missed her presence during the past weeks. During their time on Earth, they had forged a personal bond on which he had come to depend for emotional comfort. Though such bonds had been exchanged between all four of them at one point or another, he had come to rely upon Etlun’s companionship more than the others’, and his feelings for her seemed to increase the longer she was away.

  Like Jaecz, it had been weeks since her last contact, for understandable reasons. For some time, she had been working to infiltrate yet another military installation, attempting to gather new information regarding the ongoing development of nuclear weapons technology. Such work was carried out under the strictest safeguards, and even with the proper forged documentation and a human alias crafted with meticulous detail, penetrating the multiple layers of security surrounding these continuing projects required care and persistence.

  “If we do not hear from Jaecz by the time Etlun returns,” Adlar said, “then we will dispatch another message and alert him that we are moving. Once we reach our agreed destination, we will apprise him accordingly.”

  With their own equipment carrying the risk of discovery if used to any great extent, the agents had adapted to various forms of Earth-based communication in order to keep one another informed of their individual progress. The practice of corresponding via hardcopy transcription and sending it for delivery to predetermined locations was perhaps the most secure avenue, its major drawback being the significant delays incurred while waiting for the receiving party to respond in kind. Radio communication was unreliable and subject to monitoring, as was the use of telephones. The operatives even had developed a system of sending messages via short missives printed in prominent newspapers that could be obtained in most major cities, but this method, like the mail, involved waiting for one’s query to be read and answered.

  “Patience?” Gejalik asked, smiling.

  Adlar nodded. “You know me too well.”

  Patience was not merely a watchword for him, or even a “virtue,” as he had heard it described by some humans. Instead, it had become a way of life, particularly given the time he and his companions had spent here, trapped on Earth. It was a protection against the humans, who must never know that aliens lived among them. At least, not yet; not while there was still so much to do, and not just by the Certoss agents, but by humanity itself. After all, the coming technological advancements would play a major role in the tumultuous history to come. Left to their own devices, the people of Earth might well bring about their own destruction if certain events or circumstances unfolded in a manner unlike what history supposedly had recorded. The slightest deviations here or there would be all that was necessary to effect a much different outcome.

  The key, Adlar knew, was finding where and how to introduce those deviations, without being discovered, and perhaps doing so without ever receiving help from their homeworld.

  Patience.

  FIVE

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Earth Year 2268

  Spock studied the female Certoss prisoner as she knelt on the floor in the middle of the brig cell. Her legs were tucked beneath her, and her hands rested on her thighs. She maintained a straight posture, facing directly ahead with her eyes closed. With the exception of raised cheekbones and a slim, angular jaw, her features were almost flat. A pair of small holes above her mouth indicated nasal passages, with no cartilage or other bone structure forming a nose. The same was true of her ears, also represented by a pair of openings on either side of her head. According to the medical data banks, what at first could be mistaken for secondary auditory canals instead were part of larger organs within the skull that assisted in maintaining balance, much like Andorian antennae.

  Her skin’s copper tinge complemented the light blue coveralls she had been given to wear in lieu of her bodysuit, and the small room’s overhead lighting reflected off her hairless head’s smooth surface. She appeared to be meditating, and for a moment Spock listened for any signs of humming or any other sounds she could be making to enhance whatever ritual she might be observing. Instead, he heard only the low hum of the force field that was the barrier containing the prisoner within her cell. She had not moved or offered any other indication that she was aware of his presence.

  Precisely eighty-seven point four seconds after stepping in front of the brig’s entrance, Spock saw her wide yellow eyes open and focus on him.

  “Commander Spock,” Gejalik said. “Are you ready to resume our conversatio
n?”

  The first officer nodded. “I have briefed Captain Kirk on what you’ve told me. He’s asked me to convey to you his thanks for your cooperation.”

  “I see little point in offering any resistance to your queries,” Gejalik replied. “The fact that we stand aboard a vessel of such sophistication and built by humans tells me that our mission was a failure.”

  “From our perspective, the obvious evidence would support your conclusion. However, an alternate reality may very well exist in which your efforts proved successful.”

  Pushing herself to her feet, the Certoss smoothed wrinkles from her coveralls before stepping closer to the force field. “Do you believe in the theory of parallel, alternate, or branching timelines? Even when we were taught such things during our mission briefings, I found it hard to accept.”

  “I have studied several theories and other data supporting the existence of such branching,” Spock said. “Prior to that, I was skeptical about such hypotheses. However, I recently was reminded that there was a time, not that long ago, when my people believed time travel to be impossible.”

  Gejalik smiled. “So, you believe what I’ve been telling you?”

  “Mestral has corroborated several aspects of your account. Other portions are supported by information we already possessed. For example, your statements pertaining to the Temporal Cold War in which your planet was embroiled.”

  Though most aspects of this conflict remained unknown to the populace at large, Spock and Captain Kirk had learned of the time-spanning campaign after the bizarre accident that had resulted in the Enterprise traveling back to Earth of the year 1969. Following that incident and the chaotic sequence of events that had ensued as Kirk and his crew worked to return to their proper place in time without disrupting history, the captain and Spock had been debriefed by Commodore Antonio Delgado at Starbase 9. The flag officer had provided Kirk and Spock’s first insights into the secret war that had waged across centuries and involved a still-unknown number of planets and civilizations. The revelations had been surprising, coming as they did in the wake of the Enterprise’s accidental detour to twentieth-century Earth.

  “Upon learning of the conflict,” Spock said, “I conducted my own research, comparing the sensor readings collected during our time in the past against available historical records. I was unable to find anything that might indicate influence by your people, or any of the other ‘factions’ known or believed to have been involved.”

  According to Delgado, the Temporal Cold War—from Earth’s perspective—had been resolved earlier in the century, prior to the conclusion of the Earth’s Second World War.

  Gejalik nodded. “We suspected the same. Our theory was that whatever happened to end the war took place while we were in transit from Certoss Ajahlan, and that we somehow were insulated from changes in the timeline. We believed that our planet was affected by whatever happened to bring about the end of the war, preventing us from contacting it.”

  “And despite this obvious disruption to your mission parameters,” Spock said, “you chose to continue pursuing your goal of interfering with human history.”

  “We are soldiers, Commander,” the Certoss replied. “Without instructions to the contrary, our orders were to proceed with our mission until informed otherwise.”

  Not for the first time, Spock wondered if Commodore Delgado, himself in apparent command of a cache of information pertaining to the Temporal Cold War and its impacts, was aware of the Certoss agents’ time on Earth and the goals they had pursued. The commodore had made no mention of this during his debriefing after the Enterprise’s return from 1969. That might well have been for security reasons, given the classified nature of the conflict and everything connected to it. Might there still have been Certoss operatives on Earth at that point, working in secret even as Kirk and his crew were forced to interact with several people and events of the time? Indeed, the Enterprise’s encounter with a pilot of the United States Air Force, Captain John Christopher, almost had ended in a massive alteration of history that might well have aided the Certoss’s efforts.

  In the moments following the Enterprise’s abrupt appearance in low-earth orbit, Christopher had been sent to intercept and investigate what had been an “unidentified flying object,” much like the numerous sightings reported all over the world throughout that period. The threat presented by Christopher’s aircraft and its arsenal of weapons—primitive though they may have been by twenty-third-century standards—had forced Kirk to order the pilot brought aboard after the ship’s tractor beams destroyed his plane.

  Christopher’s learning of the Enterprise and its crew and how they had traveled from the future had put Kirk in the unfortunate position of decreeing that the pilot could not be returned home, for fear that his knowledge might contaminate and somehow alter history. Things only grew more complicated when Spock learned that Christopher’s future son, Sean Geoffrey Christopher, would in years to come command Earth’s first manned space exploration mission to Saturn. This necessitated leaving the Air Force pilot in his proper place and time, and only added to the challenges faced by Kirk and his crew in their own quest to return home. So far as Spock had been able to determine in the aftermath of those events and after a careful review of historical records, the Enterprise’s visit to the twentieth century and its subsequent interaction with Christopher had left no lasting effects on the timeline.

  We cannot always expect to be so fortunate, Spock reminded himself. Despite the misgivings Kirk had communicated to Delgado regarding the hazardous potential of attempting to engage in any method of controlled time travel, the commodore was very interested in the techniques Spock and Scott had employed to bring about their return from the twentieth century, and it was that fascination with the process that had brought about the Enterprise’s recent, sanctioned time-travel mission to 1968 Earth. Spock was certain that the relative success of the mission would only further motivate Delgado to continue his impassioned research into the possibilities such knowledge presented. Was it this sort of obsession, harbored either by Delgado or others like him—whether part of the Federation or some as yet unknown species—that ultimately brought about the Temporal Cold War in the first place?

  An interesting hypothesis.

  And what of Gary Seven, the mysterious human living on Earth in the twentieth century, himself an agent from an unknown alien organization possessing advanced technology and at least some knowledge of future history? What role, if any, had he and his benefactors played in the conflict? Delgado seemed to have no knowledge of Seven prior to their most recent debriefing, but that did not mean the commodore was being truthful in that instance, either.

  “You seem preoccupied, Commander,” Gejalik said, and the first officer realized he had been engrossed in his silent contemplation for longer than would be considered a polite pause in any conversation.

  “I apologize,” he said, opting against offering any further explanation. “You earlier said that you were one of four operatives dispatched by your military to Earth. Were similar teams deployed to other locations or time periods?”

  Again, the Certoss seemed at ease with providing what Spock might consider privileged information. “There were other teams receiving the same training, though the information they were given was specific to their mission and target destination and time period. So far as I am aware, ours was the only team assigned to Earth, and we were the first group to be transported through our time-displacement generator. I do not know what happened to the others.”

  Spock nodded. “If, as you suspect, the changes brought about by the end of the temporal conflict came about while you were in transit, this may have had the effect of altering your planet’s history to the point where the reality in which your mission was launched no longer exists in any recognizable form.”

  “It’s a possibility to which I’ve given much consideration since arriving here,” Gejalik replied, and Spock noted the change in her demeanor. Though her facial f
eatures did not seem to lend themselves to a broad spectrum of expressions, he still believed he was seeing what his human colleagues might describe as “melancholy.” He had encountered such reactions while in the company of his human shipmates through the years, but he often was uncertain how best to act in such situations.

  “Even if I’m able to return to my homeworld,” she continued after a moment, “I’m still generations out of time. I won’t be born for more than a century.” She paused again, and the smile returned. “I long ago fell into the habit of measuring time as humans do. It was necessary to adapt to their world in every conceivable way, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Even when we were alone, we continued to display human mannerisms and speak in the relevant language, going so far as to adopt slang or other colloquialisms. It became second nature to act like our human counterparts and even to think like them. There were times when I thought I might be more human than a member of my own people. I certainly will be an alien to them should I return now.”

  Spock considered her plight, knowing that in a very real sense, the predicament she faced was quite similar to that posed by the Enterprise crew when they had thought themselves marooned in Earth’s past. Faced with three centuries of foreknowledge, every single member of the ship’s complement represented a danger to the timeline, and it was a dilemma Captain Kirk—and Spock himself—had contemplated as they considered the choices available to them.

  What options, if any, were available to Gejalik? While there were those parties who almost certainly would deem her an enemy of the Federation for her actions, there was the intriguing matter of her being from a timeline quite different from the one she now occupied. Could a soldier, operating under orders as in Gejalik’s case, be held responsible for the decisions and decrees of an authority that no longer existed? It was a question Spock suspected would occupy the attention of Federation science and legal experts for some time, assuming the issue even was brought to their attention. Would other parties—Commodore Antonio Delgado, for example—move to quell this matter and see to it that it never received that sort of scrutiny? If so, what would become of Gejalik herself?