Glass Empires

by Various

  She smiled sadly. “Yes. That would have been interesting.”

  Interesting, but impossible, Spock reminded himself. Given the state of political relations between the Terran Empire and its neighbors in local space, Spock had known from the outset that a cautious, gradual transition of the Empire to a republic would never have succeeded. There had been too many variables to contend with. Just as important, Sarek had been right; at the first sign of weakness, the Klingons had redoubled their aggression against the Empire. Keeping them, the Romulans, and the Cardassians at bay had taxed the Imperial Starfleet almost to its breaking point.

  Then, just more than one year ago, against the counsel of all his senior advisers, Spock had proposed the unthinkable: unilateral disarmament. Entire fleets of ships had been mothballed; hundreds of defensive installations were ordered to stand down; millions of troops found themselves discharged from active service. Then, before the furor over such a gross dereliction of executive duty could engulf the Legislature, the invasion had begun, and the time for debate was ended.

  Today, Spock’s civilization was reaping the bitter harvest of all his decisions. The invasion force of allied Klingon and Cardassian ships had overrun the defenses of the nascent Terran Republic. The Klingons had unleashed a fleet of birds-of-prey that could fire while cloaked, a tactical advantage that had proved all but invincible. Entire fleets of Terran ships had been annihilated, and one world after another had fallen with alarming speed.

  Sixteen hours ago, Earth itself had been blockaded by an Alliance fleet. A hundred thousand Klingon and Cardassian shock troops were landing on the planet’s surface every hour. Virtually unopposed, they had wiped out the planet’s military and political targets and subdued its civilian population.

  Thirty minutes ago, they had begun their siege of the Terran Forum. Ten minutes ago, the Forum’s external energy barrier had fallen, and its few remaining security personnel had mounted a doomed counterattack.

  Two minutes ago the shooting had stopped.

  One minute ago, Alliance troops had entered the building.

  Booming impacts at the locked doors of the Forum Hall heralded the enemy’s arrival.

  Spock and Marlena waited in silence for the doors to break open. This moment, Spock had known since the beginning, had been inevitable…and necessary.

  Watching the door, Marlena maintained a serene yet defiant cast to her features that was almost Vulcan in its reserve. It moved Spock’s human half deeply, and he could not remain silent. “Though I have rarely expressed it, Marlena, I want you to know…that I love you.”

  “And I love you, Spock,” she said, her poise unbroken.

  At that, they turned their eyes back to the doors, which heaved and buckled under constant, brutal assault from without.

  The doors splintered apart. Regent Gorkon entered the Forum Hall with Legate Renar, the supreme commander of the Cardassian Union. In the wide corridor behind them, the floor was littered with the corpses of Spock’s elite Vulcan guards.

  Two platoons of foot soldiers—one Cardassian, the other Klingon—followed the officers into the Forum Hall, fanned out, and flanked Spock and Marlena. Gorkon and Renar stopped a few meters in front of the couple.

  “Consul Spock,” Gorkon bellowed, filling the empty reaches of the hall with his voice. “Your Starfleet is destroyed, your capital occupied, your government fallen. Kneel and surrender.”

  Evincing neither pride nor despair, Spock replied, “No.”

  His answer seemed to perplex the Klingon Regent.

  “Surrender, Spock,” Gorkon demanded. “Kneel before me and I will show mercy to your conquered people.”

  “I do not believe you,” Spock said. “And I do not surrender.”

  Renar stepped in front of Gorkon and smirked at Spock. “You’re right not to trust him,” he said, tilting his head at Gorkon. “There won’t be any mercy for your people. I’ll see to that.” The Cardassian’s smirk broadened to a smile, and that erupted into a mocking laugh. “You really are a fool, aren’t you? Diplomacy? Disarmament? What were you thinking?”

  “I did what was logical and necessary,” Spock said.

  Spock watched Renar wind up to strike him. He could have caught Renar’s hand before the blow landed, twisted his wrist, broken his arm. It was possible that Spock might even have been able to kill Renar before the troops on either side of him shot him down. Instead, he remained still and let Renar backhand him across the face. Spock’s lower lip split open on impact. He ignored the throbbing sting and the warm trickle of blood on his chin. It was only pain, a mental illusion.

  Seething with contempt, Renar loomed over the Vulcan. “Your people have been the most brutal overlords in the quadrant for nearly a century! Did you really think we’d pass up a chance to destroy the Terran Empire?”

  “You have done no such thing,” Spock said. “I destroyed the Terran Empire—two years ago, with a single declaration. What you have conquered is the Republic that replaced it.”

  Gorkon moved forward to stand beside Renar. Looking down at Spock, the Regent appeared bewildered. “You have delivered your people into ruin, Spock. Presided over the end of all you were trusted to defend. Are you so cold-blooded that you feel not a whit of remorse? Not a single pang of guilt for your failure?”

  “I regret nothing,” Spock said. “I concede no defeat. I admit no failure.” He weaved his fingers between Marlena’s and clutched her hand tightly.

  Legate Renar turned to one of the officers in his platoon. “Start recording this,” he said to the man. “I want the entire galaxy to see what happens when fools lead empires.” The junior officer activated a scanning device to make an audiovisual recording. Renar looked back at Spock. “Any last words?”

  “With the fall of my civilization begins the end of your own. Freedom will overcome. Tyranny cannot prevail.”

  Renar snorted derisively. “It can if it tries hard enough,” he said. “And if people like you lack the will to oppose it.” He and Gorkon stepped back. The Cardassian Legate lifted his arm, and then the order was given.

  A flash of light was all Spock saw of the killing blow, but in that moment he knew that he had won.

  15

  An Army of Shadows

  F or a week since Spock’s execution, the skies of Vulcan had been dark with the ships of the enemy.

  Klingon and Cardassian troops had come by the thousands to every major city, and had met no resistance in any of them. No violence had hampered the Alliance’s efforts to establish total control over the planet. No one had protested when the curfews were imposed, or when the planet’s interstellar communications capability was disabled and placed under Klingon control.

  On the first day, President Sarek had surrendered immediately and unconditionally. Kang, the new Klingon governor, had responded by cutting off Sarek’s head and leaving it with Sarek’s body in the main square of ShiKahr.

  When a crowd had gathered to claim Sarek’s remains, the Cardassians had slaughtered them all in the street, laughing uproariously amid the screeching of their weapons. The new masters of civilization had seemed determined to prove themselves infinitely crueler than their predecessors.

  The second day had brought mass executions. Little reason had been given for who was put to death or why. Government bureaucrats. Law enforcement personnel. Clergy and adepts from Mount Seleya. Journalists. Artists. Teachers. Musicians.

  Landmarks and symbols had been the victims on the third day. An orbital bombardment had reduced the temple at Mount Seleya to shattered stone and radioactive glass. Lost now were the ancient teachings of Surak, the eons of preserved memory in the Halls of Ancient Thought, the arcane mysteries of fal-tor-pan and the Kolinahr. The Vulcan Science Academy lay in smoldering ruins. Hundreds of museums, universities, and libraries were demolished, their contents incinerated, their faculties slain.

  At dawn on the fourth day in ShiKahr, the Alliance troops had begun dividing the Vulcan population by age and gender, by p
rofession and body type. Parents had found themselves riven from children, siblings had been forced apart, lovers and spouses were torn asunder. By the tens of thousands, the people of Vulcan had been marched into ramshackle internment camps, implanted with biometric transceivers, logged and identified and “processed.”

  The old and the sick were disposed of on the fifth day.

  By the end of the sixth day, the Alliance had determined where all its new, pacifistic slaves would be of the most use throughout their newly expanded empire, and so they had begun the long and continuing process of herding millions of Vulcans onto transport ships. Each man, woman, and child was branded with the mark of a slave, collared, and manacled.

  It was sunset in ShiKahr on the seventh day of the new galactic order. Saavik, clothed in dirty civilian garb, marched with plodding steps in a line of prisoners. She was one of ten thousand newly bound slaves being shepherded toward a massive transport ship, which was perched atop the rubble of the city’s once-glorious plaza. The line jerked forward, stopping and starting and stopping again. A cluster of Cardassian officers and clerks, working at the bottom of the transport’s main ramp, processed a few slaves at a time.

  Bitter smoke from nearby burning buildings lingered heavily in the dry, hot air as Saavik neared the front of the line. At its head, the prisoners were funneled to one of ten processing clerks. She overheard the people ahead of her being questioned by the Cardassian officers.

  “Name, city of residence, profession,” asked a Cardassian officer. It was always the same question, asked the same way.

  “Temok, LalKan, particle physicist,” a man answered, then he held out his hand.

  A Cardassian clerk scanned it, logged the information from the man’s subcutaneous transponder, and confirmed his identity. The Cardassian officer nodded, said, “Research division,” then waved the enslaved scientist past him, onto the transport.

  “Name, city of residence, profession.”

  T’Shen, PelHan, engineer. “Construction corps.”

  Sokol, KorLir, surgeon. “Domestic servant.”

  Kolok, ShiKahr, architect. “Construction corps.”

  T’Shya, LorEm, computer programmer. “Research division.”

  Saavik moved to the front of the line. She listened to the Cardassians talking between themselves, speaking about the Vulcans as if they were deaf or incapable of understanding. “These are the best slaves we’ve seen in a long time,” said one officer. “Sturdy. They’ll hold up well on planets like Harkoum.”

  “The pacifism’s my favorite part,” another officer said. “Makes them easy to control. Not like the Andorians.”

  “I heard Gul Merdan’s people had to wipe out most of Andoria,” a clerk interjected.

  The officers nodded, and the one who had spoken first said, “Some people just aren’t meant to be slaves.” He smirked and nodded at the line of prisoners. “And then there’s this filth.”

  A guard nudged Saavik with the muzzle of his rifle and ushered her toward an open processing desk. Following the example she had observed while waiting her turn, she halted in front of the table, just within arm’s reach of the Cardassian officer and his clerk.

  “Name, city of residence, profession.”

  “L’Nesh,” she said, using the alias she had been given upon her return to Vulcan two years ago. “ShiKahr, stone mason.” She held out her hand and kept it steady as the clerk scanned the chip that other Cardassians had implanted into Saavik’s palm.

  A soft tone signaled confirmation of Saavik’s cover identity.

  The officer’s face was drawn with boredom as he mumbled, “Domestic servant,” and waved Saavik onto the transport.

  Continuing past the processing desk, Saavik concealed her amazement that Spock’s prediction had proved so accurate. Until this moment, she had continued to harbor doubts that his strategy would work, but now, watching it unfold on such a massive scale, she allowed herself to believe, finally, that he had been right. The Klingons and the Cardassians, like despots every-where, looked upon slaves and servants as nonentities, as an underclass to be almost universally ignored so long as it remains under control. Lulled by the Vulcans’ cultural professions of pacifism and logic, the Klingons and the Cardassians had walked blindly into Spock’s trap and fallen prey to the greatest disinformation campaign in galactic history.

  Flush with overconfidence after their swift military victory, they were now ushering a hundred million touch-telepath sleeper agents into their homes and halls of power.

  This day had been years in the making. The network of Vulcan sleepers had grown slowly at first, as each new recruit had been brought into the fold with extreme caution. But as the network added members, its rate of expansion had accelerated. Spies and turncoats had been exposed and eliminated with prejudice. Only the faithful insurgents remained now, Spock’s loyalists…and soon they would be ensconced in the First City of Qo’noS, in the Central Command of Cardassia Prime, on the capital ships of the Alliance, in the shadowy redoubts of its secret military research facilities.

  Saavik knew that toppling the Alliance—and, one day, the Romulan Star Empire—would not be easy, nor would it be swift. But she was certain now that Spock had been right.

  It was inevitable.

  Fo Tsrow Eht

  Sdlrow Htob

  Greg Cox

  To my parents,

  for putting me up while I wrote this story.

  And a whole lot more.

  1

  D ead warriors guarded the entrance to the burial mound. The petrified mummies stood facing each other across the weathered stone archway, clad in the ceremonial garb of Vulcan executioners. Veils masked their skeletal faces. Withered ears tapered to a point. Their bare chests exposed dry brown skin stretched over protruding ribs. Leather nooses hung from the faded blue sashes girding their waists. Each mummy gripped the shaft of an upraised lirpa, holding the traditional weapon aloft so that the sharpened blades at the end of the weighted staffs met above the portal.

  Luc Picard eyed the shadowy opening with anticipation. It had taken hours to clear away the packed dirt and clay that had concealed the archway, but at last he was ready to explore the ancient tomb itself. Heaps of excavated earth were piled up behind him. Perspiration gleamed on his brow. His coarsely woven shirt and trousers were soaked with sweat. He couldn’t complain, though. All this hard work will be worth it, he thought, if I find what I’m looking for.

  He tapped the combadge affixed to his scuffed brown vest. “September 28, 2371 A.C.E.,” he dictated to his ship’s computer, stubbornly clinging to the old Terran dating system even though all reputable archeologists now used the birth of the Alliance as their chronological touchstone. “I have exposed the entrance to a Sakethan burial mound on New T’Karath. The mound resembles those found on Calder II, which bodes well for this expedition. A preliminary inspection suggests that the tomb has been undisturbed for at least two millennia.”

  Picard smiled. He had been afraid that another tomb raider might have already beaten him to his prize. Looks like I’m the first person to visit this site since it was sealed up hundreds of centuries ago. Although uninhabited now, and under Alliance dominion, New T’Karath had once been home to a small colony of Vulcan dissidents and mystics. Probably just as well that they died out several generations back, before they lived to see their homeworld laid waste by the old Terran Empire.

  Although eager to step inside the mound, he didn’t rush in blindly. Instead he peered suspiciously at the gleaming blades of the lirpas as they hung suspended above the threshold. An inscription was carved into the stone archway. Picard thought he got the gist of what the ancient pictographs said, but he pulled out his tricorder just to be sure. The device’s built-in automatic translator had been programmed with over a dozen obscure and forgotten Vulcan dialects. He scanned the glyphs with the tricorder.

  “ ‘Go no further,’” it translated, “ ‘lest Mind and Body part for all time.’”

  A
death threat, in other words. He nodded gravely. I figured as much. He hadn’t lasted this long as a treasure hunter without learning to take a few reasonable precautions. Bending over, he extracted a fist-sized rock from the ground and hurled it past the immobile guards into the murky tunnel beyond. The rock clattered to a stop somewhere in the shadows. To Picard’s surprise, the raised weapons remained where they were. He arched an eyebrow. Perhaps the armed mummies were purely decorative?

  “Not bloody likely,” he muttered. He walked over to his backpack, which was propped up against a pile of rubble, and retrieved a miniature antigrav pallet, about the size of a shoebox. Ordinarily, the pallet was used to transport heavy objects, but Picard had a different purpose in mind. “There’s more than one way to trigger a trap.”

  He keyed a negative amount into the pallet’s graviton inverter, then gave it a shove toward the marble archway. Momentum carried the floating pallet over the threshold while its antigrav unit projected the weight of an adult humanoid onto the tomb’s dusty stone floor.

  The razor-sharp lirpas came swinging down, slicing the empty pallet in two. Sparks and smoke erupted from the bisected device. Metal components crashed to the ground.

  That’s more like it, Picard thought. Confident that the archway’s ominous threat had now been carried out, he stepped over the lowered blades and ventured into the tunnel. A beam of visible light from his tricorder illuminated the way ahead, revealing a sloping passageway that descended steeply beneath the surface of the planet. He swept the tricorder from side to side, recording visual and spectrographic data for later analysis. He looked forward to examining the scans at leisure…after he had found his prize, of course.

  His footsteps echoed off the dense limestone walls, which contained enough kelbonite to seriously inhibit any long-range scans or transporters. As a result, Picard had been forced to explore the forgotten tomb in person; he couldn’t just beam up the artifact he was looking for, as he had on Calder II. No matter, he thought. To be honest, he preferred it this way. He liked getting his hands dirty.