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

by Dayton Ward

  Whatever reply Wainwright might have offered dissolved in his mind as saw something moving behind the other man. The Certoss once more was on his feet, aiming his pistol in their direction.

  “No!” Wainwright said, pushing at 937 with his free arm and raising the pistol in his other hand. His shot struck the Certoss in its chest, forcing it back a step, and Wainwright kept firing until the .45’s magazine was empty and the pistol’s slide locked to the rear. At least a couple of the rounds had hit the alien, including one in its face. The Certoss stopped its advance as its arms and legs went limp, its body falling forward to land with a heavy thump in the dirt.

  Leaning against the car, one hand over his ears, 937 turned to look over his shoulder. He stared at the body of the now dead Certoss for a moment before saying, “You saved my life. Thank you.”

  “Just returning the favor,” Wainwright said, dropping the pistol to the ground before his knees as the man’s partner helped him to rest against the side of the car. Was it his imagination, or did he hear sirens somewhere in the distance?

  “Captain,” said Agent 176, and Wainwright heard the man’s urgency. “They will be here momentarily.”

  “Don’t worry,” said another voice, a woman’s. Allison?

  Agent 937 stood. “Miss Lincoln? What are you . . . ?”

  “There’s an ambulance that’ll be here any minute,” the woman said, “along with some people from Wainwright’s group. They’ll take care of the . . . well, you know.”

  Struggling to keep his eyes open, Wainwright saw 937 gesture toward the other car, the wrecked one. “What about Agents 201 and 347?”

  “That’s taken care of,” said the woman, and Wainwright thought he detected a note of sadness in her voice. “But we need to get you two out of here right now.” She moved into his line of sight and Wainwright saw that she was very young—early twenties, he guessed—with bright blond hair. Kneeling next to him, she reached for him and then he felt her putting something into his inside jacket pocket. “Someone will be coming for those, Mister Wainwright. We can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done here today. You likely helped to avert a nuclear war.”

  What? Her words were making less sense with each passing moment. He was falling deeper into shock, he knew. It was a fight just to keep from closing his eyes.

  “I don’t.” He coughed. “I don’t understand.” His vision was narrowing, and her voice sounded hollow, growing more and more faint.

  The woman smiled, reaching out to stroke his face. “That’s all right,” she said as Wainwright allowed his eyes to close. “When you wake up, you won’t remember any of this, anyway.”

  THIRTY

  McKinley Rocket Base, Cocoa Beach, Florida

  March 30, 1968

  The hospital was small, occupying a single-story structure near the base’s rear gate, far from the mission control center and its associated buildings and related activities. On any other day, security would be light if nonexistent, but even the single military police sergeant on duty outside the pair of rooms at the end of one hallway would not present much of a problem.

  Wearing a doctor’s white lab coat and carrying a clipboard—both of which he had found in a linen closet at the other end of the building—Gary Seven rounded a turn in the hallway, the heels of his loafers echoing as he walked across the white linoleum tiles. As he approached, doing his best to look as though he belonged in the hospital at this early hour well before dawn, the sergeant nodded at him.

  “Good morning, sir. May I help you?”

  His servo already in his hand, Seven said nothing but instead triggered the device and it emitted a small electronic snap. The sergeant’s eyes widened in surprise and his body stiffened, and Seven took his arm to make sure he did not fall.

  “Sergeant, you’re going to come with me, and I’m going to let you have a seat in the room. All right?” The man’s only response was a nod, and Seven escorted his charge into the first of the two hospital patient rooms that were his target. Already inside the room and waiting for him beneath the open window was Isis, his cat. Her black hair made her almost invisible in the dark room, which was illuminated only by light from the moon filtering through the thin curtains hanging before the windows. Upon seeing Seven, Isis emitted a soft meow, perking her head up.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Seven offered. “Some of us still have to sneak into places the old-fashioned way.” He directed the guard to the chair situated in the room’s far corner. “Have a seat, Sergeant. You look tired. Take a nap.” Isis reacted to that, and he realized it was the second time that day he had issued such directions. Earlier, it had been the security police sergeant near the mission control area of the base. That minor event, and everything else that had filled his first day here on Earth, already seemed like distant memories.

  Saving the world certainly makes for a busy day, Supervisor 194.

  The level of difficulty he had encountered had been unexpected, to say the least. First, there had been that business of his transporter beam being intercepted by the Earth ship from the future, interrupting his transit to and from the Aegis homeworld. It had been a minor yet costly delay, in that by the time he had escaped the Enterprise, it only was to find out that Agents 201 and 347 had been killed in an automobile accident in Florida. He had been aware of their mission to sabotage the rocket launch at McKinley Base and prevent the orbiting of a nuclear weapons platform by the United States. His knowledge of that operation had allowed him to step in and complete their mission in their stead, despite additional complications introduced by James Kirk, the captain of the ship from the future, and his crew.

  What Seven’s own superiors had kept from him was the agents’ other mission of tracking and attempting to capture alien operatives living and working in secret on Earth for more than twenty years. Only after a review of the secret, protected records stored within the Beta 5’s memory banks had that aspect of 201 and 347’s work become clear. Indeed, tracking the movements of the Certoss had been a task handed down from the agents’ predecessors, dating back to the 1950s. Not for the first time, Gary Seven pondered the wisdom of his benefactors and their penchant for withholding what others might consider key information. The deaths of Agents 201 and 347, at first perplexing to Seven, now at least made sense. They had been killed while in pursuit of one of the Certoss agents, who also had died during the incident, thanks to the bravery of the man now occupying the hospital bed before him.

  “So, this is our hero of the day,” Seven mused, eliciting a loud purr from Isis. James Wainwright lay in deep sleep—assisted by a combination of pharmaceuticals prescribed by his doctor—recovering from the injuries he had suffered the previous day. A review of other Beta 5 records told Seven that Wainwright, along with his partner in the adjoining hospital room, Allison Marshall, also had been tracking the movements of the Certoss for more than a decade as part of their involvement with the Air Force’s ongoing investigations into extraterrestrial activity. As a consequence, they had experienced their own encounters with the mysterious aliens from the future. Their efforts had taken them to McKinley Rocket Base where, for reasons Seven did not yet understand, fate had seen fit to have them cross paths with Agents 201 and 347.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Seven said, “and leave Mister Wainwright to his recuperation.” Opening the room’s small closet revealed to Seven what remained of Wainwright’s clothing and personal effects. The suit he had been wearing was gone, of course, having been cut from his body when he was brought here for treatment. Among the items he had carried—wallet, keys, identification—was a pair of what looked to be identical silver fountain pens; the servos belonging to Agents 201 and 347.

  “There we are,” Seven said, retrieving the devices and inspecting them for damage. Both units appeared functional, and he deactivated the homing signals that had allowed him to track them. Seven could only surmise that his subordinate agents had entrusted the servos to Wainwright in order to avoid hav
ing them confiscated by local authorities, but that would indicate either 201 or 347 had given the devices to him prior to the accident that had taken their lives. It did not make sense, but Seven was at a loss to offer any reasonable alternative theories.

  As for any other secrets the Aegis agents might reveal even in death, Seven already had dealt with that possibility. Infiltrating the morgue at the medical examiner’s office on the base had allowed him access to their bodies. Their Earth identities would withstand any background checks and other attempts at information retrieval by base authorities and other law enforcement agencies, and Seven already had put into motion the necessary arrangements to have their bodies returned via normal channels to New York, where he would see to it that they were returned to the Aegis homeworld for proper interment. A check of their clothing and personal effects verified that neither agent had been carrying other items or equipment that might arouse suspicion.

  When Isis meowed again, Seven held up the servos and eyed the cat with a raised eyebrow. “I know, but I don’t have time to look over all the information they recorded.” From his jacket pocket he retrieved a small scanner device, into which he inserted one of the servos. The scanner’s display activated, telling Seven that the servo had belonged to Agent 201, and a quick review of the data stored within its compact memory cell told him that both agents had kept notes about their mission with respect to sabotaging the rocket launch as well as their pursuit of the Certoss. There also were references to Wainwright, Marshall, and Project Blue Book. It appeared that some form of cooperative action had taken place, though Seven did not yet know what information Wainwright and Marshall possessed about the Aegis agents’ true identities and purpose here on Earth. Seven made a mental note to cross-check that information with the Beta 5 upon his return to New York. For now, though, he had everything he needed.

  Isis offered another quizzical meow as Seven deactivated the scanner and returned it along with the two servos to his jacket pocket. “Yes, of course I remembered to bring it,” he said, retrieving from another pocket another device. It was the same approximate size as his scanner, and while its function also was similar, this unit was not designed for accessing data recorded on physical storage mediums. Extracting a small probe from the side of the neuroscanner, he affixed it to Wainwright’s right temple. Wanting a better view of the proceedings, Isis leapt onto the bed and rested herself atop the sleeping man’s chest, after which she released a contented purr.

  “You should stay there,” Seven said as he adjusted the neuroscanner. “It’d be very therapeutic for him, you know.” Isis’s reply was to lick her left paw and wipe it across the back of her ear.

  It took only moments for the neuroscanner to perform its work, manipulating Wainwright’s memories of Agents 201 and 347 to remove any possible references to their true identities. So far as he would recall—Marshall, too, once Seven performed this procedure on her—the agents were members of some other clandestine government organization. This might prove useful, should Seven or some other Aegis agent ever have some future need to make contact with either officer.

  “That should do it, I think,” Seven said after the neuroscanner emitted a beep indicating it had finished its work. Pocketing the device, he collected Isis from Wainwright’s chest, then rested his hand on the sleeping man’s arm. “Thank you for your service, Mister Wainwright. Others may not ever appreciate your sacrifices, but we will.”

  With Isis purring in approval, he reached up to stroke the cat’s neck. “All right, Isis. Let’s see to Miss Marshall.” Once they were finished here, Seven knew that he and his new associate, Roberta Lincoln, still had one more meeting with James Kirk before the captain took his starship back to the future from whence they had traveled. Despite Seven’s initial misgivings about possible interference by Kirk and the Enterprise as he attempted to accomplish his mission, it seemed history had intended for the captain and his crew to play some minor role in the previous day’s events. That said, Seven would be relieved to see the ship return to its own time, if only to minimize the risk of accidental tampering with Earth history. Indeed, there was something about this entire affair that felt unresolved. What that might be, Seven could not identify. Perhaps his uncertainty stemmed from the odd elements—the Certoss, the Enterprise, and Wainwright and Marshall being chief among them—that had all converged at this point in time.

  Perhaps.

  Only time, Gary Seven suspected, would tell.

  THIRTY-ONE

  New York City

  April 3, 1968

  Despite the early hour, Gejalik took her time ensuring that the apartment was free of occupants. From what she had been able to determine, the suite of rooms was leased for use as a business office for some form of data collection effort. Learning anything more would require accessing the apartment itself, which Gejalik had refrained from doing until she learned the routines of the people who worked here. To that end, she spent the past week watching it, noting the arrivals and departures of the three people who came here each workday. Thanks to that surveillance, she felt comfortable making her infiltration well before any of the office’s employees arrived.

  With her harness giving her the outward appearance of a human female dressed in conservative business attire, Gejalik entered the office building and, along with several other people, rode the elevator from its ground floor. Thankfully, she was the only one to get off on the twelfth floor, allowing her the freedom to work at gaining entry to Apartment 12B. It was an easy task to defeat the door’s simple lock, and within seconds she was inside the suite’s front room, which resembled the reception area of any other business office with a desk, chairs, and couch, along with file cabinets and a typewriter on its own stand. With her portable scanner, Gejalik inspected the room’s two other doors, finding a closet and the entry to another, larger office. As with the reception area, this part of the suite also appeared normal.

  But appearances are deceiving, are they not?

  Though the office furnishings, ornate as they were, held no interest for her, Gejalik turned her attention to the set of shelves along the rear wall, which held a selection of glassware. The scanner indicated an energy source coming from behind that wall that was inconsistent with current human technology. Data and power connections also ran behind the wall the length of the office to a large bookcase set into the wall near the door. A brief scan of that area was enough to tell Gejalik that the bookcase acted as a panel to conceal something behind it. She adjusted the scanner and the unit emitted a series of melodic tones. In response, the bookcase swung outward, revealing not a doorway or tunnel but instead what could only be an advanced computer interface. As the workstation slid into place, its large black panel began flashing a series of multicolored lights Gejalik could not decipher, and a circular display screen activated.

  “Computer on,” intoned a stilted, feminine voice. “Unidentified intruder. Unauthorized access.” The entire workstation deactivated itself, but Gejalik was ready for that and pressed another control on her scanner, after which the black panel resumed its activity. “Standing by,” it said.

  “Remarkable,” Gejalik said, nodding in appreciation at the level of obvious effort Jaecz had devoted to his study of this equipment. According to what he had told her and Adlar, he had stumbled upon the advanced computer’s presence almost by accident several years earlier, while conducting scans with the equipment he had constructed at his base of operations in Trenton, New Jersey. After determining its location in New York, Jaecz spent considerable time studying the computer and its operating software via his own scanning equipment, looking for a way to breach its security protocols without alerting its owners to his activities. The process was slow, taking years, during which he almost had revealed himself to the mysterious humans overseeing the computer. The humans also possessed matter teleportation and scanning technology, setting them far apart from the rest of Earth’s inhabitants.

  Careful probing actions of the computer’s vast i
nformation library had given Jaecz little insight into the identities of its users. His original intention had been for the three of them to infiltrate the office and access the device in order to gain more information, but Jaecz’s timetable had been disrupted by the acceleration of the nuclear weapons platform development and testing at the rocket base in Florida. Then, his own scanning equipment had detected the spacecraft in orbit above Earth five days earlier, as well as this computer’s own scans of the vessel, and Jaecz realized an opportunity to escape this planet might well have presented itself.

  Jaecz, however, was dead. At least, that’s what Gejalik now believed. In a rare breaking of security protocol, Adlar had contacted her via phone from Florida the evening after the launch from the McKinley base and the subsequent explosion of the rocket in low Earth orbit. Using coded phrases they all had devised over the years, Adlar informed her of Jaecz’s discovery by the human agents, the ensuing chase, and the resulting confrontation that presumably had resulted in all their deaths. At the very least, Jaecz now was in the custody of the American military. The mysterious space vessel had disappeared from orbit, and Adlar had instructed Gejalik to travel from Trenton to New York and see what she might learn about the incident from the human agents’ own records.

  Gejalik adjusted the scanner once more as Jaecz had instructed her during their training sessions, after which the unit emitted another series of tones that elicited another sequence of flashing lights from the computer’s flat black panel. “Computer,” she said, addressing the workstation, though unsure about how to proceed, “identify yourself.”

  “I am a Beta 5 computer,” replied the mechanism in the same formal, feminine tones. “I am an advanced artificial intelligence capable of examining information and rendering independent analytical decisions. My purpose is to assist agents assigned to this planet in the accomplishment of their mission.”