The Face of the Unknown

by Christopher L. Bennett

  * * *

  Sulu clung to a post as the Vea-Shol module heaved around him, tossed by storms in the atmosphere beyond and in its own suspension fields. Not this again, he thought. The Fiilestii collapse had been enough to give him nightmares; the last thing he needed was a reenactment. His eyes scanned the skyline of this largely urban module, watching for towers on the verge of collapse. The sight was oddly reassuring; the skyscrapers here were only a few dozen stories high, maybe a hundred tops, downright tiny next to the Fiilestii towers.

  “Too much for you?” Ne-Kewii asked as she pulled him forward. “The brave starship pilot can’t handle a little turbulence?”

  Sulu stared at the Fiilestii dissident. “You’re grinning. I think.” It was a bit hard to tell with her anatomy. “Why are you grinning? This is your world that’s shaking apart around us!”

  “Exactly! Just like we’ve been warning for years! Don’t you see, Hikaru? This is vindication! This—” She laughed. “The scandal will surely bring down the government! A few rotations from now, we’ll be running this place.”

  Sulu gaped. “That’s what this is about to you? Still, after all this? People are dying, Ne-Kewii!”

  “That’s the Triumvirate’s doing. We’re the ones who’ll hold them accountable for it.”

  “The hell with that! We’re trying to stop them from dying in the first place!”

  “Oh, of course,” Ne-Kewii said with a dismissive wave of one pinion. “I’m just saying, at least some good will come of the loss of life. The whole Web will finally be forced to see that we were right.”

  Sulu wanted to grab her and scream that she was out of her damned mind. This small-minded cliquism was the very thing that had brought the Web to the brink of disaster. But he reminded himself that there was no time for that. They had to get the remote transmitter into position, and anything else was secondary. If Ne-Kewii couldn’t keep that in mind, then he had to. “Just come on,” he said, striding forward.

  The sky lit up behind them. For an instant, all he saw were their shadows stretching out amid a field of blinding white light. Oh, God. One of the fusion charges got through! “Don’t look!” he cried. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the red light beyond his eyelids to subside.

  Then he spun to look behind him. There, past the skyline and the module dome, a dimming fusion fireball rose languidly through the air. Normally, that would’ve been a terrifying sight. But here, it was the least of their problems. Before it, a ripple of fractured light spread out across the dome as it shattered under the shock wave. Sulu’s eyes widened. “Get to cover!” he cried. He pulled Ne-Kewii under the awning of a nearby building an instant before the sky lit up with blue flame. Just as in that nature module, the high-pressure hydrogen and methane beyond, heated by the blast, had mixed with the oxygen within and combusted. A nice, clinical, scientific explanation. But it looked to Sulu like the wrath of God descending from on high.

  After a few moments, he realized he could still breathe. The rupture in the dome was high enough that there was still uncombusted oxygen at ground level. But Sulu knew there would be other problems coming soon. “Come on, we have to get to the control center fast!” Ne-Kewii was blinking, her wide, dark eyes unfocused. “Are you okay?”

  “I looked,” she said. “The light . . . it hurts.”

  Sulu waved his hand before her face. “Can you see me?”

  “Mostly. With one eye, and it’s blurred . . .”

  “That’ll do. It’ll get better, come on, hurry!”

  He dragged her into the street, envying her for her inability to get a clear look at the Brobdingnagian blowtorch over their heads. Glancing up, Sulu saw that the tops of several skyscrapers were aflame, ignited by the heat. Windows were blowing out, falling, so he ran faster, dragging Ne-Kewii by her forelimb. A wind was picking up, a hot wind striking down and splashing out through the canyons of the city streets. As they reached an inter­section, a gust blew them sideways, almost knocking them over. But a large window pane smashed down right next to where they would have been. Ne-Kewii shrieked as shrapnel from the pane slashed her. The helmsman checked her out quickly; the bleeding was minimal. She slowed down, moaning, but he cried, “Move, move!” in his sharpest tone.

  The hot wind was spreading the flames. The fires seemed to chase them as they ran through the city. Crowds of panicking citizens, an eclectic mix of species, ran screaming from the buildings, obstacles in their path, oblivious to their need for haste. Sulu saw a small, frail Linnik, or possibly a child, fall beneath a Bogosrin female’s paws and be instantly crushed. Ne-Kewii gasped in horror.

  Mercifully, the emergency transporters began to engage and thin out the crowds. Sulu had to swerve to avoid the beams lest he be snatched away before he could emplace the transmitter. But the beams came too late for many. They ran under a burning building, dodging and hurdling the broken bodies of citizens who’d desperately leaped from the upper floors. Ne-Kewii slipped in the pooling blood and came up with her free forepaw covered in it. Dozens more screamed from the flame-licked windows, and Sulu could do nothing but drag Ne-Kewii away, keeping his stinging eyes relentlessly forward as he heard the building groan and thunder into rubble, the screams peaking, then vanishing into the noise.

  Finally, they reached the control center, which was mercifully free of flames for the moment. Once they were inside someplace relatively quiet, Sulu could hear Ne-Kewii sobbing and choking. He whirled at her, about to shout, Are you still glad this is happening? But then he saw the haunted, horrified look in her eyes, the tears streaming from them freely. And he knew there was nothing more to say.

  * * *

  “Damn fool place to live! Who ever thought this was a good idea anyway?”

  Koust growled in his throat as the physician McCoy kept up the monologue of complaints that he had continued almost without interruption since he had ­arrived in the secure hospital to obtain the release of the Enterprise rescue team. Koust had been surprised and somewhat gratified to be asked to participate in Kirk and Spock’s plan, but he was regretting his decision to guard the feeble healer so that the other, more qualified Enterprise personnel could be free to pursue their own assignments. McCoy had quailed at first, no doubt frightened of the Dassik, but had relented when a member of the protector force, a strong, gray-skinned Niatoko named Targus, had agreed to accompany them. But since then, he’d kept up an unending chain of complaints about their circumstances, and Koust was increasingly tempted to kill the doctor himself just for peace and quiet.

  Their current situation had only exacerbated the doctor’s grumbling. The Quapep world module containing their targeted control center would normally have been an easy terrain to navigate. It was a grassland preserve module, largely empty except for the surface entrance to the Linnik warren below, a cluster of low domes spread out some distance apart on the level, grassy plain. But the upheavals in the Web had left the module with a rather severe tilt, or at least it felt that way; since the module’s antigrav field was out of alignment with the giant planet’s much more powerful pull, the force resisting their uphill motion was stronger than the actual slant of the ground would suggest. And by ill fortune, their destination was almost directly uphill from the module’s main transporter terminal, and they’d arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm, making the grass slippery and difficult to climb. Koust lamented the loss of his heavy boots. And they were getting little help from the Linnik themselves; the timid creatures were all huddled within their tunnels, useless in the face of peril. It was hard to imagine that such fearful, weak creatures had brought down the mighty Dassik race—or that the Dassik had been forced to live like them for so many millennia. Koust resented the fact that it was a module full of betrayers he had been sent to save.

  “And would it kill them to at least beam us right where we need to go instead of making us slog through all this?” McCoy went on. “No, they said. Too much power,
they said. Emergencies only, they said. Like this whole thing isn’t one big emergency! Serves them right, living in giant tin cans that need antigravs to hold them up! The ground shouldn’t tilt beneath your feet, damn it! Why couldn’t these people build on solid rock like any sensible ­person?”

  “Be quiet!” Koust finally snarled. “Save your energy for striving!”

  “I’ll use my energy however I damn well please, Mister Koust! Staying mad helps keep me motivated!”

  Koust blinked, forced to admit the doctor might have something resembling a point. Dassik hunters used battle cries and ritual chants to fire up their passions before a hunt or combat, focusing their energy. Still, Koust couldn’t see how the doctor’s constant rehearsal of his own fears and weaknesses could do anything more than dishearten him. Not to mention the foolishness of broadcasting those fears and weaknesses to enemies or admitting them to allies who needed to believe they could trust him. Koust and Targus were left knowing that if danger struck, they would be unable to rely on ­McCoy’s courage.

  It was bad enough that Koust didn’t even know if he should be here. Kirk’s and Nisu’s people were working to defeat the plans of his own commander. By abetting them, let alone aiding the betrayers, he was committing treason. But he had realized he felt no loyalty toward Force Leader Grun. After all, the leader had sent him to his own probable death after executing his triad subleader. And now Grun was attacking the Web without even knowing how many billions of lives he was endangering. Lives with no ability to fight back, lives that bore no share of the blame for the crime inflicted on the Dassik by the ­betrayers—­indeed, Koust reminded himself, by betrayers who had died millennia ago, whose distant descendants did not even seem to know of their crime. Koust had found himself reflecting on his own words to Kirk back in the prison, his insistence that the Dassik were more than the unthinking savages they had been in the past. Grun’s actions were doing little to prove that claim. So perhaps it was up to Koust to deliver that proof. And if the Dassik had matured in their long ages of seclusion, then perhaps the Linnik had as well.

  Besides, Kirk, Spock, and Sulu had treated Koust ­better than Grun ever had. He might not be sure if he should be fighting in the defense of the First, but he had pledged to fight alongside Kirk and follow his orders for the duration of their escape—and since they technically had not yet escaped the Web, Koust decided that pledge was still binding. Kirk deserved that much loyalty. Unlike Grun, he had earned it.

  A rumble came from up ahead, something more than thunder. Koust’s head spun in that direction. Beyond the Linnik domes were some low, rocky hills with a river flowing out of them. A bank must have given way, for a cascade of muddy water was descending toward them, bringing many rocks and small boulders with it. The pathways between the domes did little to diminish the deluge and even helped concentrate it, and it came on them fast in the high gravity.

  “Quickly!” Targus called. “Get in the entrance alcoves!” But the domes around them were quite wide and rounded, and it was a struggle to clamber up toward the nearest alcove even as the water from above began pouring around their feet. Targus had the best grip on the ground due to his weight and the powerful claws of his feet, so he helped push Koust and McCoy toward the alcove. The rocks were now close enough to begin striking them, and Koust raised an arm to shield himself long enough to surmount the corner and pull McCoy to safety. The arm sustained several forceful impacts, and so did his flank, but Dassik bones were strong and the pain merely motivated him. The trio made their way horizontally, relying on the slanted wall of the dome to support their weight, until they reached the alcove and were sheltered from the cascade.

  Targus pulled himself up to the alcove corner and tried to swing around, but then a large, sharp stone tumbled down and struck him in the head, felling him. Bright orange blood pooled around his head, a dense fluid that the rain and the spray of the flood did little to disperse.

  To Koust’s surprise, McCoy was instantly in motion, rushing into the path of the water and stones before Koust could start after him. Seemingly oblivious to the danger, McCoy knelt by Targus and began dragging him to safety—slow going until Koust joined him in the effort, as much to get the fool out of the path of danger as to help the Web protector who was probably past saving.

  “Thanks,” McCoy said absently as he drew forth his medical tools and began to work. Koust waited impatiently, noting that the deluge was beginning to subside, the rainstorm along with it.

  “We must go,” he said once it seemed clear. “Leave him.”

  “He’s dying!”

  “Then let him! It is a death to be proud of!”

  “He can’t be proud if he’s dead, you fool! Just give me another minute and I can save him!”

  “You have other lives to save! Surely one is expendable!”

  McCoy’s eyes met his with a fierceness that froze the Dassik in his tracks. “He’s not dead yet, Mister Koust! One life or a million, I’m not going to surrender anyone to death without a fight!”

  Koust recognized that fire in the doctor’s eyes. It was the fire of a warrior. He realized he had misunderstood this man profoundly. It had never before occurred to Koust that one could be a warrior against death. He had assumed that resisting death was an act of fear. But he could no longer believe that as he looked into McCoy’s eyes.

  This was the measure of Kirk’s kind, he realized. He and his people valued life, cherished it above all. And so they fought for life with a strength, courage, and commitment the likes of which Koust had rarely seen. Indeed, they fought as valiantly for the lives of strangers and enemies as for those of their own kind. Even when they would be safer allowing an enemy to die, they still took the risk of fighting for that enemy’s life. What fearlessness that must require!

  If this was what it meant to be a warrior in the name of life, Koust realized, he would be a weakling himself if he refused to embrace the challenge.

  “Then save him,” Koust said. “Let me have the transmitter. I will save this world . . . and the Linnik who inhabit it.”

  McCoy met his eyes, warily at first—but then he softened, nodded, and handed Koust the device. “Good luck,” he said.

  Koust nodded. “Victory,” he said to his fellow warrior.

  Fifteen

  For once, Balok had not been joking. The pilot vessel’s launch through Cherela’s atmosphere had been ballistic, and Bailey had been convinced the little craft would tear apart until it had burst through into the thinner atmosphere layers and finally into vacuum. They had emerged out of the line of sight of either Dassik ship, but given those vessels’ bombardment pattern, that would not last long. So Balok pushed the pilot vessel into warp as soon as he was far enough out of the Jovian’s gravity well to form a stable field.

  “How do you know where to find the Fesarius?” ­Bailey asked once his jaw finally unclenched. “I assume you don’t want to send out a general hail and risk attracting the wrong attention.”

  “I trained my crew, remember?” Balok answered. “They’ll be laying low out in the cometary cloud, in a sector that will let them keep an eye on Cherela, but far enough outside the ecliptic plane that they can monitor all approaches to the planet.”

  “But out from the plane in which direction?”

  “Knowing Linar, toward the positive coordinate. She doesn’t have my innate contrariness.” Balok waved his hands over the control column, giving the vessel instructions. “I’m scanning the cometary bodies in that sector for the best candidates to hide an orbship. I just need to tight-beam a subspace signal to those, and with luck, the Fesarius will hear and answer.”

  Bailey studied him. “So while we’re waiting, you want to tell me what that Kisaja was doing to you back in the prison?”

  “Oh, that. She was trying to erase a dirty little secret from my memory.” Balok gave the lieutenant a quick summary of the hidden history of the Linnik and
the Dassik, as revealed by the secret Council files he had unearthed.

  “So what was the ‘right thing’ I said that brought you back? Something about the Fesarius?”

  The Linnik captain chuckled. “It was something you know all too well, my friend—the first glimpse you ever had of my face, so to speak.”

  Bailey blinked. “You mean Mister Hyde? The scarecrow?”

  “Exactly! It still makes a fine diversion. You see, memories are about associations between ideas and sensations. Vulo tried to purge all my memories associated with the Dassik, but I associate my old friend ‘Hyde’ more with the Fesarius itself—and my memories of my ship are too dear to me for anyone to take away. Even Vulo knew better than to tamper with those. So I just conditioned myself ahead of time by thinking of Mister Hyde when I reviewed what I remembered about the government files on the Dassik. So after Vulo thought she’d severed every mental association that would let me recover that memory, she overlooked the back door I’d tucked away aboard my mental Fesarius.” He laughed. “I suppose you could say good old Hyde lived up to his name!”

  Bailey was saved from the need to react to that terrible pun by a signal from the communications panel. Balok grinned. “There. Didn’t I tell you?” Opening a channel, he said, “Balok to Fesarius. About time you got here!”

  Linar’s voice in return was cross. “We’ve been here for days, you insufferable—” She broke off, then sighed. “Well, I should have known you’d show up just when things were at their worst. If trouble doesn’t follow you, you make sure to follow it.”

  “I’m afraid you’re more right than you realize, old friend,” Balok told her. “The Web of Worlds has become unstable. The Dassik bombardment is threatening to destroy it. Our Enterprise friends have a plan, but there’s no guarantee it will work. So I need you to set course for Cherela and engage the Dassik.”

  “But, Commander—”