Star Trek®: Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows

by Marco Palmieri

  Riker dragged her back toward the force field. “Mr. Riker!” Tuvok called from the floor.

  “Save yourself if you can,” Riker told him. “This mission’s a bust. I’m getting out of here!” He took her out through the field, not sparing his comrade another glance.

  “You really…don’t care about anything…but yourself, do you?” she managed to get out.

  “Oh, I care about you,” he told her. “I care about the revenge I promised you.”

  “My master…will save me.”

  His breath was hot against her neck. “You’ll be calling me master before you die.”

  Tuvok gave little thought to Riker’s abandonment; it was only to be expected. What mattered was the success of the mission. With Ree dead and the equipment largely destroyed by the native animals, the research had suffered a major setback. The remaining priority was to ensure the escape of the surviving Irriol.

  So when Orilly Malar and the other survivors came toward him, he told them, Leave me! You must escape and organize resistance.

  No! Orilly sent back. I will not leave you! Too many have died already!

  My death is by no means a certainty, he told her, though he kept the actual probability of his survival to himself. Go! You, above all, should understand that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

  Finally, reluctantly, she turned and led her people out through the force field. The animals remained, continuing to attack the base personnel and impede pursuit. It was the best Tuvok could hope to achieve under the circumstances.

  And so he allowed himself to succumb to oblivion, uncertain if he would ever awaken. His last conscious thought was of his wife and children.

  At last, Riker thought as he stroked Deanna’s bulkhead. You belong to me now.

  With escape being a priority, he hadn’t been able to devote as much time as he’d wanted to dealing with the slave woman. At least he’d made sure it was memorable while it lasted. But whatever satisfaction he’d had to forgo with Vale was more than made up for by the thrill of finally stepping onto Deanna’s bridge and knowing it was all his. “Let’s get out of here, fast,” he told Bolaji.

  “Where are the others?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Dead. And we have to move if we don’t want to end up the same way!” Bolaji was slow to move, wasting time with some useless feeling about the deaths of the others, so he flung her forcefully aside and took the helm himself. This ship was his now, so he should be the one controlling her.

  She proved a bit rough to handle as he took her up. She had a lot of power, and she fought him, bucking like a bronco. But he rode her hard, knowing he could break her soon enough. The struggle to impose his will was so enthralling that he barely noticed they’d broken atmosphere until an alarm sounded. “They’ve sent a ship after us!” Sortollo cried.

  “Let’s see them try and catch this beauty,” Riker said, and kicked in the warp drive.

  But the ship lurched and squealed, and nothing happened. “What the hell?”

  “We’re too close to the gravity well, you idiot!” Bolaji said. “You forgot to recalibrate! It’ll take over a minute to reinitialize warp!”

  “Then we’ll ditch them at impulse.” He swung the ship around, down into the atmosphere. She bucked and shrieked in protest at the friction, but he pushed her forward, confident she could take it.

  “She’s coming in too steep!” Bolaji cried. The ship shuddered as a disruptor bolt detonated off their bow. “Give me the helm, Riker! You have no feel for her, you can’t maneuver well enough in atmosphere! You’re burning out the shields!”

  “I’m through taking orders! She’s mine now, and she goes where I tell her!”

  Another bolt grazed them, the impact sending Bolaji and Sortollo to the deck. “Dammit, Riker, you’ll get us all killed!”

  “Speak for yourself,” Riker said, forcing the ship to swerve hard to evade another bolt, fighting the friction. “I plan to live forev—”

  He overcorrected, his swerve taking Deanna directly into another disruptor bolt. The shields had burned out a second before. Riker finally had his wish: Deanna would never belong to another, and he would never take orders from anyone again.

  As soon as the animals had been subdued, Jaza led the surviving security forces after Christine. He ordered them to patch up the Vulcan—Tuvok, she had called him—and bring him along, willing to trade him for her if it came to that.

  They soon reached the area where Christine had arranged for the rebel ship to land, but Jaza feared it might take too long to pinpoint it through the sensor interference. That fear was mooted when the ship rocketed off within eyeshot, replaced with a new fear that Christine was now in rebel custody. “Contact the patrol ship,” he ordered. “Tell them to capture that vessel intact at all costs!” Still, he ran toward the takeoff site, hoping desperately that the Terran had let his hostage go once he’d reached his ship.

  Then he began to find Christine’s torn clothing strewn about, and his hope turned to dread. Moments later, he found her…what the Terran had left of her. He had laid her out carefully to make it clear exactly what he had done to her before ending her life.

  Jaza didn’t even remember screaming. He only became aware of himself kneeling over her body, dazed, his throat raw. The guards helped him to his feet, but he felt as if he were floating, detached from reality. How could he be part of the universe when the anchor of his existence was gone?

  Then he caught sight of the Vulcan, and something within him felt tangible again. It was rage. “How could he do this to her?!” he screamed at the prisoner. “One of his own people! One who embodied the best of what Terrans were capable of being!” Tuvok only examined him stoically.

  He caught sight of her again, the travesty that the terrorist had made of her perfection, and could stand it no longer. “Get her out of here,” he ordered the guards. “Let her rest with some dignity.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Leave him with me.” He brandished his weapon, letting the guards know he would be all right. As they obeyed his instructions, he drew closer to the bound prisoner. “Is that why he did it?” he asked. “Because she was better than him? Because he couldn’t stand the reminder of his own deficiency?”

  “I did not know Mr. Riker well enough to speak with authority concerning his motives,” the Vulcan said with infuriating calm.

  “You knew he was Terran! Isn’t that enough?” He sucked in breath through clenched teeth. “I thought she was proof that Terrans could be more than they are. That maybe there was some hope of redeeming the breed. But she was one of a kind, wasn’t she? The rest, they’re all like him! Killers and monsters! Their misbegotten race will never produce the likes of her again, because they’ll destroy any good one that comes along before she even gets the chance. We might as well kill them all now and be done with it!”

  Tuvok studied him closely. “You genuinely cared for her. Did you not?”

  Jaza glared at him. “I loved her! Not that that’s anything you’d understand, Vulcan.”

  “I understand that such empathy for a slave is a rare commodity within the Alliance. I submit that it would be a waste of that commodity if you allowed it to transform into hatred and violence—commodities of which the Alliance already possesses an overabundance.”

  Struck by his words, Jaza fell silent. After a moment, he went on more calmly, “The Terrans have no shortage of those qualities themselves.”

  “That is the nature of hatred and violence. They tend to inspire equal hatred and violence in their victims. Thereby, a cycle of mutual retribution is created and perpetuated. Each side claims the other is innately corrupt due to its brutality—yet fails to recognize the contradiction as it embraces the same brutality in retaliation.”

  Jaza didn’t want to admit that he’d had the same thoughts, had wondered whether the Alliance was provoking the violence with its hard-line tactics. He wanted to hate Riker and the Terrans for taking Christine from him. “Tha
t’s just making excuses. Any civilized species would find another way.”

  “Are you familiar with the alternate universe?”

  Jaza frowned at the non sequitur. “Yes, I’ve read about the contacts.”

  “Then you should be aware that the alternate Bajor endured a brutal Cardassian occupation until less than a decade ago. That its people organized a resistance movement, employing whatever tactics were available to them. As with most resistance movements against vastly superior forces, these tactics included acts of terrorism and random violence intended to demoralize the occupying population and diminish their support for the occupation. This tactic ultimately proved successful, but only after generations, and it naturally brought aggressive retaliation against the Bajorans. That Bajor suffered far worse under the Cardassians, and far more recently, than your Bajor did under the Terrans.”

  He took a step closer, though there was no threat in it. “If not for a twist of fate, Dr. Jaza, you yourself might have grown up in the same kind of conditions that produced Mr. Riker. And you might have turned out much as he did.”

  “What are you saying, Vulcan? Are you asking me to forgive him?”

  “I am pointing out the illogic of vengeance. It does not bring justice or compensate for loss; it simply reproduces the same destructive impulses that create injustice and loss in the first place, guaranteeing greater injustice and greater loss. It is a waste of life and energy, nothing more.

  “Consider, Dr. Jaza. You are a Bajoran who chose to reach out to a Terran and see the potential for a peaceful, mutually beneficial relationship with her. That is the way of thinking that can break the cycle of injustice and loss, if applied more broadly. Would that not honor Christine Vale’s memory more than embracing the same vengeful mentality that killed her?”

  Jaza pondered the question. He couldn’t deny what Tuvok said about the Alliance. If they hadn’t come here to exploit the Irriol, the rebels would never have come to sabotage the project. If he hadn’t chosen to participate, he never would have brought Christine here into harm’s way.

  And if he had treated Christine as an equal from the start, if she had had the right to choose, perhaps she would not have been so willing to follow him to her own doom.

  “I do—I did what I could to try to make a small difference. To lead a decent life in indecent times. But it wasn’t enough. How could it be? I’m only one man.”

  Tuvok quirked an eyebrow. “You would be surprised at the power one man has to remake his society from within. If that man has the right strategy, the right resources, and the right allies.”

  Jaza studied him. “Are you offering yourself as the latter?”

  “That depends upon your intentions.”

  For a long moment, he stared at the stained ground where Christine had lain. “We have to break the cycle,” he muttered. “Or we’ll all stay trapped in it together.”

  He moved behind the Vulcan and released his bonds. “As for my intentions…I think I will report to Governor Khegh that my Vulcan prisoner was devoured by wild animals. Then I will report that with Ree dead and the Irriol proving too hard to control or keep alive, the enhancement project is no longer feasible. That, at least, is not far from the truth.”

  A thought occurred to him. “Then I think I will persuade Khegh to sell me his Elaysian slave, to replace…the one I have lost. He’ll probably be glad to get rid of her. Then I will take her with me on my private yacht…and I will beam you aboard and take you away from here. You can take the Elaysian with you, find her a nice low-gravity planetoid to live on.”

  He fell silent. “And then?” Tuvok prompted.

  “Then…I will go home to grieve the woman I loved. After that…” He met Tuvok’s eyes. “Understand—I am a patriot. I believe in the Alliance. It’s simply lost its way. What I do, I will do to save it from its own worst impulses, not to destroy it. There are others like me, people I can organize. Scientific minds on whom the Alliance depends for its progress. We can exert pressure to improve the Alliance from within. To turn it away from slavery.”

  Tuvok frowned. “I am skeptical of your odds of success. However, I commend you for the undertaking. If it were to succeed, it would prevent much loss of life in the future.”

  “Yes,” Jaza said. But all he could think was that no matter what he did, he could never bring back the one life that had mattered most to him.

  You got what you wanted, Christine—to live your life without freedom. And this is where it led you. I wonder if, at the end, you understood.

  For Want of a Nail

  David Mack

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE: This tale takes place at the end of 2376, approximately one year after the events of Saturn’s Children from Star Trek Mirror Universe: Obsidian Alliances and prior to the events of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Warpath.

  David Mack is the author of numerous Star Trek books, including Wildfire, A Time to Kill, A Time to Heal, and Warpath. With editor Marco Palmieri, he developed the Star Trek Vanguard literary series, for which he has written two novels, Harbinger and Reap the Whirlwind.

  His other novels include the Wolverine espionage adventure Road of Bones, and his first original novel, The Calling, which is scheduled for publication in 2009 by Simon & Schuster. Other upcoming projects by David Mack include the as-yet-untitled fifth novel in the Star Trek Vanguard series, and Promises Broken, an original novel based on the TV series The 4400.

  Before writing books, Mack co-wrote with John J. Ordover the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fourth-season episode “Starship Down” and the story treatment for the series’ seventh-season episode “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”

  An avid fan of Canadian progressive-rock trio Rush, Mack has attended shows in all of the band’s concert tours since 1982.

  Mack lives in New York with his wife, Kara. Learn more about him and his work on his Web site, www.infinitydog.com, and on his blog, infinitydog.livejournal.com.

  As soon as the Klingon sentry finished checking in with his base’s security command center, K’Ehleyr reached down, out of the shadows and rain, and broke his neck with one brutal, twisting grab. His body dropped limply as his knees buckled. By the time his back struck the muddy ground, he was nothing but a sack of meat and bone.

  The scouring downpour pelted his carcass. Lightning exposed the decrepit base’s many buildings in a flash of electric-blue light, and then darkness returned with a crack of thunder.

  Lowering herself headfirst, K’Ehleyr found the ground with her fingertips and gracefully cartwheeled to a standing position beside a nook of the base’s perimeter wall, where she would be concealed from view. She reached out, grabbed the dead Klingon guard, and pulled him into the nook beside her.

  “I’m in,” she said, in a whisper that would be rendered with perfect clarity by her implanted subaural transceiver. “Sitrep.”

  Her tactical coordinator stuttered over the secure channel, “You’re th–thirty seconds slow. Her transport’s l–landing already, on p–p–pad four.”

  The heads-up display that had been built into the mask visor of K’Ehleyr’s stealth suit lit up with a wireframe overlay of the base and directional guides to her target. “Got it,” she said, and she started making her way across a narrow gap between the perimeter wall and the closest building. “Do they know who she is yet?”

  “The whole b–b–base is on alert, and the c–commander is going to question her himself. So, yes, I think they know.”

  “Damn. That’s not good.”

  K’Ehleyr halted as she noted a hint of motion beyond the building. She pressed her back to the wall and turned her head sideways. At the edge of her vision, she saw a hulking brute of a Klingon reach the corner, turn on his heel, and begin marching his patrol back the way he’d come. Unfortunately for him and for K’Ehleyr, his sentry line crossed back and forth in front of the section of a wall she needed to scale in order to sneak inside the base’s detention facility.

  She skulked up behind him in long strides. Thoug
h she was nowhere near equal in size to the guard, her half-Klingon, half-human ancestry had blessed her with greater than average height—most of it thanks to her long, lean legs. She didn’t worry about the guard hearing her approach; whatever footfalls the stealth suit didn’t muffle would be masked by the white noise of the storm that was soaking the base.

  He reached the end of his patrol path, stopped, and turned back. K’Ehleyr plunged her d’k tahg through his larynx in a single thrust, and he pitched forward, silenced and bleeding. She caught his body as it fell and pulled her traditional Klingon dagger free of his throat. Then she dragged his ponderous dead weight to cover, between some empty fuel pods awaiting pickup for their return journey to some distant offworld refinery.

  As she covered the body with a loose tarp, her tactical coordinator’s voice nagged at her over the comm. “We’re l–l–losing time,” he said. “They’re t–taking her to the detention center. If they p–put her in a m–m–mind-sifter—”

  “I know,” K’Ehleyr cut in. “They could make her give up the entire movement.” She found a handhold in a corner of the detention-center wall, near some pipes that would help her scale the building’s exterior to a known vulnerable point on its roof. “That’s why we’re here—to get her out before that happens.”

  “But what if we’re t–t–too late?”

  “Then we do whatever it takes to contain the damage. Kill her, destroy this base, frag the planet—anything. Understand?”

  “Y–yes,” he replied. “I understand.”

  “Good.” She took hold of one of the pipes and began a fast ascent of the building’s wall. “Send me schematics for the crawl spaces.” She knew that a solo assault on the base was a terrible risk, but there was too much at stake to play it safe any longer. If she failed, Memory Omega would be destroyed, and more than a century of hard-won achievements would be wasted.