Star Trek: The Original Series: No Time Like the Past

by Greg Cox

  “I’d listen to him,” Kirk advised, stepping forward.

  His intervention surprised Seven, who wondered what Kirk hoped to accomplish by speaking up. Cheron’s fate was already engraved in history, its population destined for extinction. Was Kirk attempting to change history, or merely to ensure their own survival for the time being? She trusted that he was simply trying to gain control of the situation long enough for them to complete their mission.

  “Who?” Udik finally got around to noticing Kirk and Seven. Pocketing her phaser, he took a closer look at the aliens, whose “disguises” now barely qualified as such. Only traces of their facial makeup remained. Torn gray fabric exposed pink, monotone flesh. Udik gaped in surprise, taken aback by this unexpected development. “Who . . . no, what are you?”

  “As though you don’t know!” Rathis seemed to regard Udik’s startled reaction as just an act. “As though you haven’t plotted together to destroy everything good and decent on this planet!”

  “Quiet!” Udik punctuated his order with another kick. “I’m not talking to you now.” He advanced on Kirk and Seven. “Again, who are you . . . and whose side are you on?”

  Kirk kept his phaser at his side. “We’re just visitors, accidentally caught in the middle of your war. We’re on nobody’s side.”

  “Your paint job says otherwise,” Udik noted. “At least what’s left of it. Why choose to pattern yourselves after our oppressors?”

  “What can I say?” Kirk shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. From what little we knew of your world, it was obvious that there were . . . disadvantages . . . to looking like one of your people. We were simply hoping to avoid being persecuted during our stay here. Surely you can understand that?”

  As Kirk spoke, Seven attempted to slowly edge her way toward the fallen fragments, which had been forgotten during this dramatic sequence of events. Ultimately, Cheron’s bygone race wars were just a distraction. She needed to remain focused on their sole objective: finding the next component and continuing their quest.

  “Perhaps,” Udik said warily. “But you’ll forgive me if I question your motives, given that I find you in the company of our enemies, at the very nerve center of an insidious plot to poison us!”

  A white-right female, with long brown hair and a murderous expression, accosted Udik. She reeked of smoke and chemical explosives. “I don’t like this! We should kill them, just to be safe!”

  “Not so fast, Fissa,” he replied. “We could need allies in the days to come. Our battle is not yet won.”

  Rathis chuckled humorlessly. “I knew it. I knew you were in league with these aliens. You bestial savages could have never pulled an uprising on this scale without help. You’re not disciplined enough!”

  “One more word out of you, Major,” Udik snarled, “and I’ll show you just how ‘bestial’ I can get!”

  An explosion upstairs rattled the bunker. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. The smell of smoke grew stronger and more oppressive. Seven coughed hoarsely. The strain of these events was beginning to tell on her. She felt herself succumbing to fatigue once more.

  “Stop this, all of you!” Lael shouted, growing increasingly agitated. “You don’t understand. None of this matters if the virus gets loose! We have to call off the fighting, secure this facility, or we’re all doomed!”

  He got too close to Udik and was brutally knocked aside by Fissa. The scientist’s force field was no match for the rebel’s; it flickered weakly but absorbed only a fraction of the blow. Seven deduced that Lael had little experience in using his field in combat. That didn’t stop the desperate scientist from trying to avert a disaster.

  “Please! This is insane! You have to listen to me. . . .”

  “No!” Udik shouted. “The time for listening to your kind, to your empty promises and excuses, is over. No more decrees from the master race, no more threats and lies! Starting today, all that changes! We don’t have to listen to you any—”

  A thunderous roar, coming from above, cut off his oratory. It sounded like a maglev train going off its track, or perhaps a starship plunging into a dense atmosphere. All eyes turned upward in alarm.

  “Too late,” Lael whispered. “We’re too late. . . .”

  Fissa closed her eyes and concentrated, as though tapping into some unknown source of data. A second later, her eyes snapped open. Naked fear showed on both sides of her face.

  “It’s a stealth bomber, losing altitude. It’s coming down, right on top of us!”

  “What?” Udik exclaimed. “I don’t understand. How—?”

  Numerous explanations quickly presented themselves to Seven. A suicide attack. Aerial combat. Anti-aircraft fire from one faction or another. With an entire planet at war, there was no shortage of reasons why an aircraft might be crashing.

  “Whose bomber is it?” Udik demanded, fixating on the only question that ever mattered to him. “Is it one of ours . . . or one of theirs?”

  “That is irrelevant,” Seven said. “Seek cover . . . now!”

  She threw herself on top of the precious fragments, shielding them with her body, even as Kirk and the others dived for safety. Only Lael made no effort to seek shelter. He simply dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.

  “There’s no hope,” he murmured. “No hope for any of—”

  An earth-shaking crash, exceeding all the previous explosions, rocked the bunker. The ceiling buckled, and mangled support beams were driven into the floor, flattening workstations and terminals. Viewscreens shattered, spraying the room with jagged shards. The emergency lights went black, so that only the erratic glow of individual force fields provided any illumination. Sparks flared from damaged equipment. Seven feared that the entire ceiling might collapse, burying them all alive, but, to give credit where it was due, the bunker proved more solidly constructed than that. The walls held even as dust and ash rained on her. She held her breath in a singularly human fashion.

  The past, she concluded, left much to be desired.

  Eighteen

  Long moments passed and the deafening impact of the crash gradually gave way to scattered moans and coughs, as well as the crackle and hiss of various small fires. The ceiling groaned alarmingly, suggesting that its structural integrity could not be relied upon for long. Sparks fell from severed cables and conduits. A smoky haze added to the confusion. Trapped individuals, buried beneath rubble, whimpered or pleaded for help. Dazed rebels and guards, their personal energies exhausted, lay strewn about the ruined command center. Seven suspected that little of the building above had survived.

  She hoped the worst was over, but she knew better than to count on it.

  Priorities asserted themselves. Rising from the floor, Seven inspected herself for damage. Her gray suit was shredded, and numerous bruises and lacerations hurt to a degree disproportionate to their severity, but she appeared largely intact. Wincing, she extracted a chip-sized shard from her shoulder and brushed off a thick layer of ash and dust before checking on the vital fragments.

  Scattered flames and sparks provided erratic lighting, but her ocular implant soon adjusted to the murky haze. To her relief, the wedges had survived the crash; she had discovered aboard the Enterprise that a great deal of energy was required just to cleave a sample from them for analysis. Their stubborn durability, which had frustrated her earlier, was now cause for celebration.

  But what of Kirk?

  “Captain?” she called out.

  A pained grunt answered her from a few yards away. “Over here.”

  She found Kirk pinned beneath a fallen steel beam, unable to extricate himself. The beam lay across his chest, wedging him against a crushed workstation and trapping both his arms. He had been fortunate; the beam could have easily crushed his skull had it landed at a slightly different angle. She strained to lift it high enough for him to slide out from beneath it, but the mass of the beam was more than even her Borg strength could overcome. The effort exhausted her, yet f
ailed to budge the twisted length of metal. She paused to catch her breath, feeling more than ever the need to regenerate, and a more efficient solution came to mind.

  “Your phaser?” she inquired. “Do you still have it?”

  He nodded. “Held on to it for dear life.”

  “A wise decision. Can you pass it to me?”

  “I think so, maybe.” He squirmed awkwardly beneath the beam that stretched diagonally across his chest. The task required considerable grunting and exertion, but he succeeded in stretching his arm far enough to bring a portion of the phaser within her reach. “Here. Take it.”

  The weapon was crude compared to the advanced models she was accustomed to, but she judged that it would serve her needs. Setting the phaser to its highest setting, she proceeded to slice through the beam to free Kirk. The crimson beam shone brightly in the darkened bunker. She could feel its heat as it slowly burned through the metal.

  “Careful with that,” Kirk said unnecessarily. Perspiration beaded on his brow, causing what was left of his makeup to run. “Don’t cut through anything I might need later.”

  “My measurements are precise,” she assured him. “Provided you remain still and make no unexpected movements.”

  Despite her words, she was not entirely as confident as she sounded. Her hand was beginning to shake again, despite her best efforts to keep it steady, and her carpal exoskeleton was cramping. She switched the phaser to her other hand, taking advantage of the fact that she was ambidextrous, yet found her ability to concentrate flagging. Her vision blurred.

  “Seven?” Kirk asked with understandable concern. “Are you all right?”

  Her implants obviously needed energizing, yet she could do little about that here. Instead she switched off the phaser and retrieved Doctor McCoy’s hypospray from the remains of her suit. Thankfully, it had also come through the crash intact. Starfleet equipment was rugged and durable, even in the twenty-third century.

  “Allow me a moment, Captain.”

  The hypospray hissed as it delivered a powerful stimulant into her bloodstream. Within moments, her vision cleared and her hands stopped shaking. She was grateful for the doctor’s foresight and prescription.

  “Seven?” Kirk asked.

  “Remain still,” she reminded him as reactivated the phaser. “And quiet.”

  With her fatigue momentarily at bay, she cut through the steel beam until it broke apart into two smaller pieces. Working together, she and Kirk succeeded in sliding him out from beneath them. Kirk rose stiffly to his feet. He winced in discomfort.

  “Are you functional, Captain?”

  “Nothing a few hours in a sickbay and a good massage won’t cure,” he insisted. He glanced around the smoky ruins. “Which way out?”

  She handed him back his phaser and rescued their tricorder from beneath a crumpled workstation. Placing the fragments in her pack, she guided Kirk toward the nearest emergency exit, which was partially blocked with rubble. She hoped Kirk’s phaser had enough charge to disintegrate the debris.

  “Going somewhere?” a voice intruded. “Drop your weapon before I give you a taste of your own medicine!”

  Udik stumbled out of the wreckage, clutching Seven’s stolen phaser. Blood dripped from a scalp wound, turning his white side red. He limped toward them, favoring one leg. His hair and clothing was singed. A torn tunic revealed patches of black-and-white flesh. Purple bruises blurred the distinction between them.

  “Just let us go.” Kirk lowered his phaser, but did not let go of it. “You have no quarrel with us. See to your people, tend to your injured, fight your senseless war if you have to, but leave us out of it!”

  Udik shook his head. “Not until I know whose side you’re on!”

  “I keep telling you,” Kirk said, losing his temper. “We’re not on either side. You have nothing left but hate, and no future either. You’ve doomed yourselves, and you don’t even know it!”

  “Shut up!” Udik shouted, waving the phaser wildly. “You don’t know us! You don’t know our struggles, the pain and humiliations we’ve endured!” He tottered unsteadily on his feet, grimacing in discomfort. “We’re fighting for justice, for freedom, for—”

  A painful convulsion gripped him, and he clutched his gut with his free hand. A violent cough racked his body, and he spit up a mouthful of greenish bile. Viscous tears streamed from his eyes. Black pustules formed on the white side of his face, while white pustules swelled on the black side. He stared in horror at his white hand, which was similarly afflicted.

  “What is this?” he screeched. “What have you done to us?”

  The virus, Seven realized. It was loose and spreading swiftly. Agonized groans, broken up by the sounds of coughing and vomiting, could be heard throughout the wrecked command center. Sprawled bodies went into convulsions. Force fields flickered impotently before burning out.

  “You did this to yourselves,” she stated. “Both of you.”

  “No! This is your fault!” Udik swung the phaser back and forth between Kirk and Seven, who was unable to tell if it was still set on stun or not. “Monotone monsters! You don’t belong here!”

  Seven tensed, calculating her odds of disarming the diseased revolutionary before he could fire at both her and Kirk. She exchanged a look with Kirk, who appeared poised for action as well. They awaited their moment, should Udik give them one.

  “Fissa was right,” Udik snarled. “You both need to die!”

  He wavered, as though uncertain whom to shoot first. Seven got ready to jump him if he aimed at Kirk, but before any of them could make their move, a ragged figure lunged from atop a heap of rubble, tackling Udik and knocking him to the floor. They crashed against the scattered debris, only a few meters from Kirk and Seven, who were caught by surprise by the attack.

  “You lunatic! You half-white animal! Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  Doctor Lael had his hands around Udik’s throat, trying to throttle the life out of the other man. No trace of the civilized scientist remained, only a hate-crazed racist. Black-and-white pustules disfigured his face, as did his contorted expression. Veins bulged on his forehead. Failing force fields sputtered and died.

  “You killed us all, you filthy radical!”

  Udik spit in his face. “No! You did! This is all your fault!”

  They thrashed upon the floor of the ruined bunker, trying to kill each other with their last choking breaths. Udik lost his grip on Seven’s phaser, and she darted forward to reclaim it. She wondered for a moment if there was any point in stunning the two men before they murdered each other.

  Kirk tugged on her arm. “There’s nothing we can do here,” he said, visibly disgusted. “Let’s get the hell out of this place.”

  Seven was inclined to agree.

  Twin phaser blasts cleared away the debris blocking the exit, and they escaped into the smoky hallways beyond. The ceiling continued to buckle ominously. Flames spread through the corridors, where white-rights and black-rights were locked in frenzied hand-to-hand combat, even as the infectious virus consumed them. Choking and coughing on the smoke, Seven and Kirk made their way through corridors strewn with rubble and bodies. To her dismay, Seven felt the stimulant already beginning to wear off. Her legs grew limp and rubbery, like overcooked Talaxian pasta.

  “We need to hurry,” Kirk said. “This whole place is coming apart, in more ways than one.”

  “You need not state the obvious,” she said irritably, then regretted it. Fatigue was taking its toll on her temper as well, making her snappish. “My apologies, Captain. My nerves are . . . on edge.” She consulted the tricorder. “The signal is coming from this direction.”

  To her surprise, the signal led her to the small chapel she had noted before. Only a handful of worshippers remained, many of them already succumbing to the disease. They prayed hopelessly to be spared.

  Seven did not have time to pity them. “Out!” she ordered, firing a warning shot above their heads. “Vacate this location immediatel
y!”

  The sight of two ragged, soot-stained aliens bearing weapons was enough to ignite a frantic exodus that rapidly cleared the chapel area, surrendering it to the invaders. Kirk waited until the last straggler was gone, then he slammed the door shut. A phaser blast fused the locking mechanism.

  “That should give us a few minutes of privacy at least,” he said. “Now, where’s that fragment?”

  Seven took a moment to inspect their surroundings. Compared to the modern look of the bunker and command center, the stone walls and mosaic tiles of the chapel suggested that it predated the rest of the complex, which she theorized had been built on top of and around an older structure. She speculated that the chapel had been preserved in its original state, perhaps in deference to religious tradition or historical significance. A series of murals running along the tops of the walls depicted scenes of presumably theological importance. Seven noticed at once that the black-rights were invariably portrayed as virtuous, as opposed to the vile white-rights, who were consistently shown leering from the wilderness, despoiling unwilling black-right virgins, being driven back into the shadows, cast into darkness, and so on. It was obvious that the animosity between the two tribes was deeply entrenched in the planet’s myths and culture and had been for a very long time.

  The same point was made, rather unsubtly, by the imposing stone statue dominating the far end of the chapel, above and behind the altar. The sculpture, which was carved from fused black-and-white marble, depicted a heroic black-right champion of noble proportions standing astride a defeated white-right ogre. Sculpted shackles chained the subdued savage to the pedestal beneath. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the message repugnant.

  A shudder rocked the chapel, shaking loose some of the murals, which crashed onto the tile floor. Acrid black smoke seeped through the sealed entrance. The fires outside went from crackling to roaring. Ceiling tiles fell from above. Screams of rage and despair penetrated the chapel walls.