by David Mack
Three
Even in silent-running mode, the bridge of the Enterprise hummed with an undercurrent of intense energy and focus. Lieutenant Uhura’s voice cut through the tense sonic backdrop to snare Kirk’s attention. “Captain? Mister Spock reports the Galileo is ready to launch.”
Kirk answered over his shoulder, “Tell him to stand by, Lieutenant.”
He swiveled his command chair to face the science station, where Ensign Jana Haines hunched over the hooded sensor display. Trim and golden-haired, the science officer was in her early forties, an uncommon later-in-life applicant to Starfleet Academy. She looked up as Kirk asked, “Ensign, are we still picking up that Klingon cruiser on long-range scans?”
“Negative, sir,” she said. “Its last known heading took it back into Klingon space.”
“Let’s hope our luck holds.” He turned toward the main viewscreen, which showed a static field of stars. One of those points of light was the Libros system, home to the planet Usilde and an alien machine that could open doors between universes never meant to intersect.
Technically, the Libros star system was located in neither Federation nor Klingon territory—hence its official status as being of “disputed” sovereignty. To Kirk’s discontent—and to the detriment of Captain Una and her shipmates from the Enterprise of eighteen years earlier—the Federation tended to interpret “disputed” as meaning “hands off,” while the Klingon Empire almost always took such ambiguities as an invitation to plant its flag.
They certainly did in this case, he brooded.
Looking around the bridge, Kirk found the number of unfamiliar faces troubling. Lieutenant Stiles manned the navigator’s post—normally Chekov’s station on this duty shift—next to helm officer Lieutenant Beggs Hansen, who filled in for Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. Both of them were eminently qualified for their roles, but in times of crisis Kirk had grown accustomed to surrounding himself on the bridge with the Enterprise’s best officers. Though he had been reluctant to deprive himself of the counsel of all but one of his most accomplished officers, he knew it was the best strategy for success—not least because Spock had assured him it was so.
The soft pneumatic swish of turbolift doors parting turned Kirk’s head just enough to note the arrival of Doctor Leonard McCoy, the Enterprise’s chief surgeon and his trusted friend and adviser. The lean, perpetually exhausted-looking physician emerged from the lift and descended the short steps into the command well of the bridge to stand at Kirk’s side. Though he had a reputation for emotional outbursts, on this occasion he lowered his voice to a confidential volume that did nothing to conceal his ire. “Jim? Have you lost your mind?”
“This is neither the time nor the place, Doctor.”
“I disagree. You’re about to put four good men in the Klingons’ crosshairs. Now seems like the perfect time for me to ask: Why?”
Kirk shot a glare of reproach at his friend. “Because it’s what needs to be done. And you of all people should know that on this bridge, my orders are not up for debate.”
His rebuke prompted McCoy to deliver his rebuttal as a whisper. “Dammit, Jim. How can you take a risk like this, the night before the treaty conference?”
“Because I made a promise, Bones. To Captain Una.”
“But if Spock and the others are caught—” McCoy looked around to make sure his next words were safe from eavesdroppers. “It could start a war. Or they could be charged as spies—”
“And put to death,” Kirk said, finishing the grim thought. “I know. And so do they.”
“Seems an awfully high price to pay for a promise,” the doctor grumbled.
“Your objections are noted, Doctor.”
Rebuffed, McCoy apparently had nothing more to say as he withdrew from the command well to loom over Uhura’s shoulder on the upper deck of the bridge. Kirk let his friend retreat from the conversation as he stewed over the unsettling truth he had been forbidden to share with anyone else on the ship except Spock: It had never been Kirk’s decision to send the bulk of his senior staff on a covert operation to Usilde. After he told Starfleet Command of the Transfer Key’s existence—and its theft by a Romulan sleeper agent—they had dictated this mission to him in spite of his objections.
Most galling of all had been the addendum that directed Kirk to take full personal responsibility for the mission—so that if it backfired, it could be dismissed as a rogue operation, the brainchild of a maverick starship captain acting without authority. The rationale for the order had been apparent to Kirk from the start. It was there to safeguard the treaty negotiations from any blowback that might occur if the mission went sour. And because Kirk would ultimately be responsible for the conduct of all personnel under his command anyway, it had been deemed preferable to portray him as a renegade rather than as a commander who had lost control of his ship and crew. In the abstract, Kirk agreed with his superiors’ reasoning, though he harbored concerns that it might foster a false impression of his command style and encourage copycats.
Can’t worry about my image, he decided. If this is what Starfleet needs me to be, or seem to be, then that’s what I’ll deliver. Kirk had always considered himself a loyal officer, a by-the-book man who put his mission, his ship, and his crew ahead of his self-interest. And so he would remain—no matter what mistaken impressions history might have of him in ages to come.
But that didn’t mean he had to be reckless.
He turned once more toward Uhura at the communications console. “Lieutenant? Any signal traffic to or from Usilde on Klingon military channels?”
She pressed a deep brown hand gently to the receiver tucked into her ear, listened with keen attention for several seconds, then shook her head at Kirk. “None, sir.”
“Very well, then. Inform Mister Spock the Galileo is clear to launch.”
As Uhura relayed his order down to the ship’s shuttle hangar, Kirk said, “Mister Stiles, aft angle on-screen, please.”
“Aye, sir.” Stiles keyed the command into the forward console, and the image on the main viewscreen changed to show the aft section of the Enterprise’s cylindrical secondary hull. A few seconds later, a small silver flash shot from the starship’s open clamshell hangar doors. Within moments the brilliant streak of motion retreated into a pinpoint of light that shrank and disappeared into the endless spray of stars.
From behind Kirk, Uhura confirmed, “The Galileo is away.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Monitor their emergency channel at all times until their return.”
Kirk stared at the stars, alone with all the doubts he knew he could never share. Had he done the right thing? Had he just jeopardized the treaty negotiations, and with them, the fates of billions of sentient beings? Most damning of all, had he sent his friends and shipmates to their deaths? Only time would tell, but for now all his misgivings had to remain his alone.
Because that was what it meant to be a starship captain.
* * *
Journeys of a thousand miles may all have begun with single steps, but Captain Una had long since forgotten the step that launched her upon her interminable path.
It was easy, in the monotony of the desert, for one’s mind to wander. Even with a distant landmark upon which to fix one’s gaze, the endless flats, the barren horizon, and the empty sky all conspired to lull one into a walking hypnosis, a perpetual dream state of denial.
Una blinked and found herself in the high-walled confines of a rocky mountain pass, with no recollection of how or when she had transitioned from the salt flats onto a narrow trail strewn with jagged stones and drifting veils of beige dust. Suddenly cognizant of her new environment, she stopped. Craned her head back. Turned in a slow circle. Wind-blasted spires of tan rock scraped the bleached-white heavens above. On either side of her lonely road towered imposing, rugged cliffs. She saw no sign of caves or other shelter, high or low. As much as the desert had been a was
teland, so was the mountain pass.
Her training asserted itself. Una knew she must have been walking for an extended period of time, but she had only the vaguest memories of nightfall and sunsrise, of her shadow circling her as it would the gnomon of a sundial. Had she imagined the suns’ transits of the sky? Had the stars overhead been nothing but delusion? It seemed implausible, yet she couldn’t deny the obvious: Had she been awake for several consecutive days, in the absence of pharmaceutical assistance, she would now be experiencing severe symptoms of sleep deprivation. Yet she felt almost entirely lucid, rooted in the present moment, however surreal it might be.
Other conundrums nagged at her. She had come well prepared to venture beyond the dimensional barrier, her backpack loaded with water, provisions, and a first-aid kit. But had she eaten anything since her arrival? Had she drawn so much as a sip from the canteen? It hung on the side of her pack, heavy and silent, which suggested it remained full. But if that were so, how had she escaped the effects of dehydration? If she had yet to dig into her rations, why had she not begun to feel the consequences of hypoglycemia?
All the details of her predicament felt remote from her experience, as if she were but a spectator to her own life. Maybe this is a peculiarity of the alternate universe. If its physical laws differ from those I take for granted, these oddities might be evidence of a new paradigm.
On its face it seemed a rational explanation, but part of her mind refused to accept it. Even if this universe operates by different physical laws, wouldn’t my biology continue to obey those by which it was made? Is it possible that transiting the dimensional barrier changed me?
It was a deeply confusing notion. How could she adapt her behavior to suit physical laws of which she had no knowledge? I can only address the phenomena I perceive, Una decided.
Resolved to confront her circumstances as they presented themselves, she pressed onward, deeper into the mountain pass, toward what appeared to be a sky rich with hues of waning daylight. Though she hoped the variegated textures and terrain of the pass would keep her mind engaged as she pushed ahead, she soon found herself drifting through the same phantasmagoric haze that had enveloped her on the salt flats. One bit of jagged stone soon came to look like most others, and any hope of remaining rooted in the elusive present to which Una had clung slipped away, lost in the eddies and currents of unchained thought.
Her mind drifted through backwaters of recent memory, then dived into the depths of her life before Starfleet, before her days of being hailed as exceptional, to her developmental years on Illyria, her youth of insecurity and struggle, her childhood of rejections and condemnations. Never good enough—that was the lesson she had internalized from her mother, that cruel mistress whose rhetorical quiver had never held one shaft of kindness for all of Una’s efforts.
When, at long last, Una’s age of independence had drawn near, she had known there would be no path she could take in life that would win her mother’s approval. So she had chosen the road that made her happy, that set her on a course to pursue her own dreams and measure out her life not in bitter words but on her own terms, as a grown woman and a freethinking being.
Ironically, that was the only day of Una’s life her mother received her not with a frown but a smile, not with criticism but with a hopeful benediction: “Good luck, my dear.”
Looking back, Una was at a loss to imagine any other way her mother could have raised her to be the woman she had become.
It’s almost as if she spent my youth teaching me to break free of her.
A jab of sharpened stone in Una’s ribs disrupted her nostalgic reverie. She halted, lifted her hands slowly, then shifted to look back at whoever it was that had waylaid her on the pass.
A trio of Usildar, their jade-green hair and lithe bodies camouflaged with stripes of stone-colored dust, had ambushed her from behind. Adapted for an arboreal lifestyle, they had long limbs and opposable thumbs on hands and feet alike. Though they tended to cross open ground with their hands swinging low, their lankiness served them well in situations such as this: two of Una’s three interceptors dangled upside down from rocky ledges while hoisting spears with flint heads. The third had crept up behind her to jab the business end of his weapon into her back.
They did not appear mollified as she smiled at them. “Hello again.”
“Declare yourself, stranger.”
She hid her disappointment. Though few of the Usildar she had encountered on Usilde had recognized her after her nearly two decades of absence, she had hoped any of their kin she encountered here might know her face. Instead, she had to hope they remembered her name.
“You know me as Una.”
Confused looks passed among the three Usildar. The one who was poking her lumbar region said, “We know of no Una.”
“My friends and I came from a distant land, to help your people fight the intruders.”
This time her words sparked a different, less hostile, but still wary reaction. The Usildar at her back retracted his spear. “You are a friend to the outlanders?”
“I am.”
The leader thrust his spear point under Una’s jaw. “Prove it.”
“I come from the Enterprise. My friends’ names are Martinez and Shimizu.”
The moment she spoke the names, the mood of the Usildar changed. The leader turned his weapon aside, and the dangling pair behind him bowed their heads. Extending his hand in the human fashion to Una, the leader of the trio said, “I am Feneb, Ranger of the Usildar.”
She took his hand. “I am Una of the Enterprise, and I come to you as a friend.”
“Then follow us, Friend Una.” He let go of her hand and bounded off, down the mountain pass, with his comrades close behind, his voice echoing off the stony walls: “We go to your kin.”
* * *
Through the front port of the shuttlecraft Galileo, Spock watched the gray-green orb of Usilde grow steadily larger against the starry curtain of the cosmos. He and the rest of the black-clad landing party under his command were nearly at their destination.
“Time to atmosphere, Mister Sulu?”
“Thirty seconds, sir.” The Enterprise’s senior helm officer guided the boxy shuttle with such ease that he made the clumsy-looking vessel seem downright graceful. Spock considered it a testament to the man’s exceptional piloting skill.
Behind the Enterprise’s helmsman and first officer, its chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, and its boyish new navigator, Ensign Pavel Chekov, argued under their breath while they tinkered with a cobbled-together gadget Scott had tied into the Galileo’s navigational deflector. “No, lad,” the Scotsman said, his frustration heightening his Aberdeen brogue. “This one goes here, that one goes there.”
Chekov’s Russian accent was just as heavy as Scott’s and tinged with a soupçon of resentment to boot. “In Russia, these connections would have been color coded.”
“A shame we’re not in Russia, then.”
“Gentlemen,” Spock said, short-circuiting their argument. “Will the sensor scrambler be ready before we reach the atmosphere? If not, I will give Mister Sulu the order to abort.”
“Aye, it’ll be ready,” Scott said. “If the lad can learn to follow directions.”
Chekov tensed to retort. Then he noted Spock’s unforgiving scrutiny and kept his protests to himself as he completed the final connections to the sensor-jamming device. “Scrambler ready, Mister Spock.”
“Mister Scott, if you would do the honors, please.”
“Aye, sir.” The chief engineer moved forward to the main console, while Spock slipped aft to make room beside Sulu. With a few swift adjustments to the shuttlecraft’s main panel, Scott powered up the device, which filled the passenger compartment with a low-frequency hum and a palpable tingle of galvanic forces coursing over and around the crew. Scott backed away from the console and nodded to Spock. “S
ystem engaged, sir.”
Spock returned to his station beside Sulu. “Well done, Mister Scott.”
It was possible his praise had been premature. Only after the Galileo had passed the point of no return would its crew know whether their stealth-approach trajectory, coupled with a jerry-rigged sensor scrambler designed to make them appear as ordinary meteoric debris burning up in the atmosphere, would be enough to fool the Klingon forces on the planet’s surface. If they had made the slightest error in their jamming device, or had underestimated the enemy’s technological sophistication, they were all about to pay for such a mistake with their lives.
The dark side of Usilde hove into view and blotted out the stars. Unlike the benighted hemispheres of most developed worlds in the Federation, the dark half of primitive Usilde was pitch-black, utterly devoid of artificial light sources. For Sulu that meant flying by instruments alone, because the surface would provide no visible landmarks by which to steer. Fortunately, it was a task for which the native San Franciscan was eminently qualified.
Spock pressed a button on the command panel and extinguished all lighting inside the Galileo except for Sulu’s piloting console. “Prepare to deploy as soon as we touch down,” he said to Scott and Chekov. With a tactile check, he confirmed his compact phaser was in place in the middle of his back and his communicator was secure. His tricorder was inside a slim-profile backpack that he pulled on and fastened with a tug of its straps. Though the rear of the shuttlecraft was steeped in darkness, his sensitive Vulcan ears picked up the soft brush of hands passing over equipment as Scott and Chekov verified their own gear was in order.
Roaring wind noise reverberated through the hull, and the ship shook—only a bit at first, then with increasing violence—as the Galileo plunged toward the surface of Usilde. The more fierce the turbulence became, the more confident Spock was that their arrival had not been detected by the Klingons. Had they recognized our sensor profile, they would have shot us from the sky by now. After Spock accounted for all the variables he knew, he calculated the Galileo’s chance of reaching the surface intact as greater than ninety-six percent.