by Diane Carey
Like the Enterprise's bridge, this bridge was a circle and possessed two command chairs and a coffin-shaped helm console, but there the resemblance ended. This place was more like a voodoo temple than a mechanized vehicle's brain trust. Forms were carved into the bulkheads of animal-headed trumpet—might've been the alarm system or just decoration. Shields and wheels and double-headed metal masks, mostly of animal types separated by scrolls, banded the ceiling all the way around. Other facelike stone carvings stood in punch-outs in the bulkheads themselves, empty eye sockets staring, with grotesque head shapes and orifices barely notable as mouths or noses.
"Skulls, Captain," McCoy murmured without moving his lips more than he could get away with. "Real."
Kirk glanced at him. How McCoy knew those things were real and not just carvings, he had no idea. Maybe he saw tracks of veins or something other bio-clue. That was the doctor's job and Kirk didn't question the call.
The skulls of enemies, possibly? Not the best doorbell.
The golden creature took another step toward them.
"I am Zennor," it said. "Vergo of the Wrath."
Kirk matched the step forward, in case such a motion turned out to be a custom of some kind.
"I am Kirk," he responded evenly. "Captain of the Enterprise." When the aliens didn't say anything, he added, "We appreciate your welcome."
The huge horns bowed. "I cannot offer you welcome, until I know you are not the conquerors."
Could be the translator. Or use of the word. Zennor hadn't said "conquerors," but "the conquerors."
Kirk let that one go. No sense claiming not to be the conquerors until he had some idea who these people thought were the conquerors.
"Then we offer our to welcome you," he said instead. "You're new to this space."
The creature like Zennor, with shell gray horns and a banshee face, parted his lips and asked, "This is your space?"
"This space is claimed by the Klingon Empire," Kirk said, trying not to sound as if ownership would move the moment. "My ship and I represent the United Federation of Planets. Our space is not far from here."
He moved forward now, and squared off with the white creature, then paused and with his posture asked the unasked question.
Zennor angled to face them both. "This is Garamanus Drovid, Dana of the Wrath."
Kirk started to respond, but only nodded, because he now noticed something very quizzical as his eyes adjusted to the eerie light. Each of these beings wore a stuffed doll on a belt, each doll about eight or ten inches long. Zennor's doll had little twisted horns and a bony face with glossy snakish eyes, as did the dolls of each of the beings who looked like him. Garamanus's doll was the same height as Zennor's, but about twice as stuffed.
A horned wraith with a fat doll? What kind of day was this turning out to be?
On the beings with the tentacles moving in their heads were dolls bearing long wiry strings on their stuffed heads. The creature with the rocky jade face had a doll with a green face and the same kind of clothing. The dolls had the same kinds of clothing the aliens wore, right down to tiny crescent necklaces and animal-head brooches. The only trapping missing from the dolls seemed to be the circular medallion on the long chain.
Kirk felt completely baffled. Here he stood, among horrific beings with a strong ship and heavy weapons who wore soft little toys on their belts. And why was Zennor's doll skinny? Was Garamanus's fat doll a rank thing? Social order?
Suddenly he started paying more attention to who said what, and why Zennor had included Garamanus in a conversation barely begun. What was "Dana" of the Wrath, and in what designation compared to "Vergo"?
Made a difference.
As the questions flashed through his mind, he decided to lay some questions at the aliens' feet too.
"This is Leonard McCoy, Chief Surgeon of the Enterprise, and Lieutenant Uhura, of Communications. When you appeared in this space," he began, "there was a drop in mass to zero. A solar system was completely disrupted. The Klingons assume this is a weapon."
"We have no such weapon," Garamanus rumbled.
"Then can you explain what happened?"
"To your solar system?" Zennor spoke. "No. We have nothing to change mass."
Kirk paused. One plus one usually equaled two, but when things came down to push or shove, was there any way to prove correlation between the mass falloff and the appearance of this ship?
They said they couldn't do such a thing. There would be no point in insisting they had.
"Then," he began carefully, "perhaps you should tell as why you're here. Tell us what you want. We may be able to help you find it."
Zennor and Garamanus stared at him like wall paintings for a moment; then Zennor simply said, "We have come from a great distant place to this place to see if it is ours."
His deep voice took on an abrupt tenor of threat.
It could have been his imagination, just those shining marbled eyes, or the firedog horns scuffing the ceiling.
"If it's yours?" Kirk echoed, then realized he had spoken too sharply. Instinct had made him match that sense of threat. At once he was glad Kellen hadn't come here, or there'd be another incident. "We have a history of more than two centuries in these areas of space."
Garamanus dipped his rack once, slowly. "Our history is more than five thousand years."
Kirk felt his eyes widen. The translator got that one all right.
Five thousand years. That was a lot of years.
If that's what impressed them, he had a few extra centuries to pull out of his back pocket.
"We do have a history of over a hundred thousand years on our various home planets, proven by detailed archeological and cultural evidence. Perhaps we're better served by your telling us where your home planet is?"
"We do not know it," Zennor said again. "We know only where we have been for five thousand years."
"Jim …" McCoy murmured, but when Kirk looked at him he said nothing more. His face suggested a troublesome suspicion, though he seemed not to be able to back it up now, and remained silent.
Making bets with currency he didn't have yet, Kirk turned to Zennor, taking "Vergo" for what he guessed it was. Command couldn't be done by committee, so he addressed the one he thought was the captain, and would let Zennor handle the affront.
"Why don't you tell me your story?" he asked, and held out a beckoning hand.
Perhaps it was the hand, perhaps his tone of voice. Zennor's strange eyes moved this time as he pondered what he heard, then blinked slowly, and Kirk suddenly realized he hadn't seen Zennor or Garamanus or the other one with the horns blink at all until now. That, possibly, was why they appeared more like engravings than living creatures.
Zennor looked at Garamanus and for a brief time the two seemed alone here, though they said nothing to each other.
Then Zennor turned a shoulder to the being he called his ship's Dana and faced Jim Kirk instead.
"Five thousand years ago," he began, "there was a war between two developed interstellar civilizations. When the war ended, one civilization lay in defeat. The survivors of the vanquished, many races from many planets, were banished to a far distant place in the galaxy, 'relocated' well away from the victors, dropped in the barren middle of nothing, with nothing. No technology, no science, no supplies.
"Many millions perished in the first few decades. The civilization fell apart, fell back to barbarism, splintered, regressed to the primal. There were plagues, wars, and ultimately a massive, extended period of dim, raw survival.
"As they began to crawl out of this thousand-year dimness and to populate three of the planets to which they were banished, a belief emerged about another place, the home space, where they were meant to be. As society and science clawed upward again, the splintered spurned began to draw together under one common belief.
"This belief has become the driving force of our culture as we evolved once again to high technology. Because of the thousand-year dimness there are no records with facts
of locations, but only words passed from descendant to descendant. On the parent's knee every offspring learns of the fury to regain our place. It is our unifying purpose—to reach out and repossess the section of space from which we were evicted.
"We are the unclean, the out of grace, ill-bidden castaways with the fury in our minds, disowned and cast down, thrown together by our collective loss of war, with only one thing in common—our singular commitment to find the way back. It is a culture-wide investment … and we are here to spend it."
Jim Kirk had stared at a lot of inhuman creatures in his life, but somehow none of those moments ever exactly repeated itself. This one was completely new. Evidently there was an invasion of sorts going on, but it was the most polite invasion he'd ever witnessed.
He shifted his feet, stalling for a moment to think, to bottle and distill all he had just heard and decide what to say back. "So you aren't sure you're in the correct … area?"
"We are sure," Garamanus spoke up. "Our Bardoi and the Danai have studied for centuries."
"Studied what?"
"Legends, history, biology, customs, and the designs we saw in the skies. The positions of stars in the galaxy as they have moved over the centuries."
"Of course, stars lying on the fabric of space," Zennor said, "may appear side by side while being lifetimes apart. I would like hard proof."
Garamanus glared fiercely and the others in the alien crew stared at their captain.
Kirk looked from one to the other and sensed Zennor was taking a mighty risk. But Zennor hadn't said anything any sensible spacefarer wouldn't know. Why were they staring at him that way?
To keep distraction on his side, he elected to take the wildest, least predicted step available to him—the one McCoy would really hate.
"Let me invite you to our ship," he suggested, "where there are extensive historical and scientific records more easily at hand."
Ignoring Garamanus's silent assault, Zennor gazed at Kirk for a moment, during which the sulfurous eyes seemed not to see. The Vergo and his Dana could easily have been etchings on these bulkheads. But for the undulation of the tentacles on the heads of those other creatures, the whole gathering might have been merely fresco.
"You may find our ship too cool. We'll go ahead of you and prepare the atmosphere so you'll be more comfortable. I'll inform our various divisions and labs. Join us on board and we'll … look."
"Morien, when they take us to their ship, I want you to analyze this beam of theirs. Find out how it is done, to adjust the body and make it travel through open space. Then make sure our adjustments to the ship's surface cannot be brought down unless we bring them down. One mistake, and we could be destroyed from within. Centuries of scientists designed this ship to be invulnerable, and within minutes of arrival we found ourselves vulnerable. What other surprises await us? We must anticipate everything."
Morien gazed at him in rapt appreciation, then uttered, "I will check it all, Vergozen!"
With his tentacles twisting excitedly, he rushed away into a clutch of other technicians, who also gazed at their leader with disclosed awe at his suspicions.
Zennor nodded to them modestly, then freed himself by turning away, and found he had made the mistake of turning toward Garamanus. "And we should send the analysis back through the wrinkle, so it can be studied and copied. Then our people will also have the ability to go through open space without a vessel."
"You are intelligent to think of that," the Dana said.
"It is my role to think of it," Zennor responded, looking at the ships on the curved screen before them. "I must imagine ways for the enemy to use his own talents, or he will think of it first."
"Are they our enemies, then? These people with whom you speak so freely?"
Zennor looked at him without turning his head, sliding his eyes to the side as far as they would go. "Until it becomes proven that they are not."
His judicious answer apparently satisfied the Dana, or at least even Garamanus was inclined to wait for a different moment before designating enemy status. Now began a struggle for the hearts of the crew, Zennor knew, between the day-to-day leader and the leader of eons, between the Vergo who made the mission real and the Dana whose spiritual strings had kept the people unified and motivated. The crew would be devoted to Zennor for the crude purposes of the mission, but these were the most fervent of the fervent and would follow Garamanus too, should Zennor falter.
In his knowledge of this, Zennor carefully said nothing else.
The Dana moved slightly forward, so Zennor had no choice but to look at him. "You told Vergokirk too much."
Evidently he was not so satisfied after all.
"That is my option as Vergobretos of the mission," Zennor said. "We have no reason to hide our past."
"You implied this may not be the right place." Garamanus lowered his voice. "The Danai have studied for generations. You have been a mechanic in comparison. It is not in your realm to decide what to do, but only when to do it."
"I may not be Danai," Zennor said, "but I know the sacrifice of our people. I will not have it wasted."
Garamanus hovered in place. "The crew is not sure why you hesitate. These are the conquerors. Conquer them."
"The crew will not agree to aggress against the innocent. We have waited a hundred generations. We can wait a day longer."
"You gave up advantage when you told him who we are."
"Others will not tell us who they are if we do not tell them who we are. And Vergokirk took the first risk. Now we will take one. Aralu, Farne, Rhod, Manann, you will go with the Dana and me. Make the formation here around me which they explained to us. Rhod, this way another step. We must be correct. Very good. Aesh, maintain defender status until we contact you. Farne, signal to them that we are ready."
The transporter room seemed unaccountably bright after the auramine bridge of the other ship. Fresh air flooded into their lungs in place of the pungent, moldy stuff they'd been breathing for the past few minutes.
Leonard McCoy plunged off the platform and let out a huffing breath and brushed at his sleeves as if to cast away hidden weevils. "I felt like all my granddad's stories came to life before my very eyes! That bridge was like a cross between a temple and its catacombs. And I've never seen a crew like those people before. Did all that make you as nervous as it made me?"
"Not once they spoke up." Jim Kirk followed his chief surgeon off the platform and reached over the transporter console to the comm. "It's when they won't speak that I get nervous. Kirk to environmental sciences."
"Environmental. Ensign Urback speaking, sir."
"Adjust the ship's temperature up by eight degrees and increase humidity to ninety-five percent relative."
"Are you cold on the bridge, sir?"
"Visitors coming aboard, Ensign."
"Oh—right, sir, sorry, sir."
"And inform the crew so nobody tries to repair it."
"Right away, sir."
"Carry on. Kirk out. Lieutenant, did you get anything out of that?"
Uhura blinked her dark eyes. "Only that I don't believe 'Wrath' is what we think it is. I do think it's their ship, but I'd like to zero in on the translation. And I'd like to work on the terminology 'Vergo' and 'Dana.' I could also run the visuals of those carvings and their clothing and jewelry through the library computer. I may be able to have something for them when they get here. Assuming, sir, you want me to help them."
"Until we have a reason to oppose them, we should help them. Do it from sickbay. Give your tricorder to Spock and let him get what he can out of it."
"Aye, sir."
"And dismiss the watch. Send them to breakfast. I want a fresh team on duty while these people are visiting."
"Aye, sir," she said, and stepped between the two guards without a glance at either of them.
Kirk waved to the guards. "Security, stand by in the corridor."
"Aye, sir."
"Aye aye, sir."
He swung to the transpo
rter officer. "Mr. Kyle, prepare the transporter to bring aboard six visitors from the bridge of the other vessel. I told them what to do and they should be in position in another minute."
"Aye, sir," the lanky blond lieutenant said, then politely attended to his console and didn't look up again. That was one of the things Kirk liked about Kyle—his "ignore" mode. Sometimes a transporter room needed to be as intimate as the captain's office, and a transporter officer with discretion was worth his weight in precious metals.
Kirk stepped around the console to the auxiliary screen, where one tap pulled up an unassuring view of Zennor's massive ship and two of the Klingon vessels.
"Captain," McCoy began, "I know you like to bring 'visitors' aboard because there's less chance of their taking potshots at the ship with their own people aboard, but, if you don't mind my asking, are you out of your mind?"
"Probably." Kirk gazed at the ships. "But I know how I'd like to be treated and they reminded me of us."
"Only if 'us' are looking in a fun-house mirror."
"It's their similarities to us you're reacting to."
The doctor scowled. "Pardon me?"
"The scariest aliens are the ones who are distortions of ourselves. We look at them and see something vaguely familiar. An upright silhouette, the same kind of movements … arms and legs, mouths, an eye or two … a verbal language. Aliens like the horta or the Melkots aren't as frightening because they're so completely unlike us. It's those like Zennor and his crew that shake us up, and all because we see a glaze of something we recognize that's been stretched out of shape. Once we get over that, we can look at the similarities for what they are."
McCoy folded his arms and canted his head. "That's what's different about you, Captain."
Kirk looked at him. "About me? I don't follow."
"Yes," the doctor sighed. "No matter how far out we go, or how much space separates us from somebody else, you always see how we're all alike instead of how we're all different. And you talk to strangers as if you've known them a year. That's what sets you apart from me and Spock and all the rest of us. Even from the other starship captains. Everybody else goes out into space expecting to see things that are alien and weird. You look at the alien and weird, and you see a piece of us."