The Darkness Drops Again Read online

  Raya stopped herself from snapping at him. It was as valid a point of view as any other. Just smaller in scope than what the Payav as a whole required. “I understand, Cadi. But it can’t be that way for me.”

  He grew somber. “I wish that upset you more. You don’t see us as anything permanent, do you?”

  “Oh, Cadi.” She stroked his head. “I need you. I do. I need a respite from the struggle. I need someone who can take my mind off it from time to time. The fact that you don’t feel it as urgently as I do is why I cherish you now. But it’s also why we must part someday.”

  He pulled away. “And the sooner the better, to you.” He walked out.

  Raya hoped he would come back. He usually did. She wished she could offer him more. But her passion was devoted to a greater enterprise.

  She would win Mestiko back from the mar-Atyya, no matter what it cost her.

  Part III

  Stardate 8006.5 (December 2282)

  VosTraal, Mestiko

  “H ave you all gone mad?”

  Odra maVolan’s unclouded eyes glared sternly at the members of the ruling Synod, but they refused to flinch before him. Asal Janto spoke for the majority. “On the contrary. We are facing reality. The people are on the verge of revolution.”

  “Then we must crack down harder, not make concessions!”

  “The more we crack down, the harder they resist. We must not forget that it was the people who put us in power, because we promised them a better world, better lives. And now they will take that power away from us if we do not begin serving their needs again!”

  “They do not know what they need! They have been seduced by the blasphemy spread by Lon, by elMora’s speeches smuggled from that alien hell she rightly inhabits. They are lost souls too deafened by their growling bellies to hear God’s voice. They need us to interpret it for them.”

  “Because we are the only ones with enough to eat?” countered Mokar maNashol, one of the mar-Atyya cleric-administrators who had come around to Asal’s side. “They hate us, Odra, and we have given them reason. If we hope to avoid being strung up by the necks like Nal Kotyar was in Tazokka, we must show the people we are listening to them!”

  “By casting aside our control altogether? By abandoning everything we have fought for this past twelveyear and more?”

  “Are you so certain,” Asal asked him, “that we have no chance of winning a free election? If that is so, then do we even deserve to rule?”

  “God decided that I was to rule. And I chose you to rule with me. So be cautious, Mokar, when you speak of being strung by the neck. That is the fate I dole out to enemies of the state.”

  “And that is why we keep gaining more enemies,” Asal insisted. “Study your history, Odra. Killing off resistance always multiplies it rather than eliminating it.”

  “Then how do we retain our power if we give the rabble the license to throw us out? When they stand outside our walls right now screaming Raya elMora’s name, how can we think that handing them power can save us?”

  “It can save our lives, at least,” maNashol said. “If we step back now, we can survive to carry on the fight.”

  “And be exiled, as the Zamestaad were? Be separated from the soil with which we share our very souls?” MaVolan shook his head. “Better to die here and stay as one with holy hur-Atyya.”

  “You martyr yourself if you like, Odra,” said Asal.

  “But you’re overruled. We’re accepting Lon’s proposal. Free elections, monitored by the Federation.”

  MaVolan grimaced. “Even worse—to bring those heathens back.”

  “At least,” maNashol said, “they are the one thing we all have in common. Everyone resents them equally.”

  Asal was not so sure of that. Dr. Lon’s resistance movement had been very effective, both at spreading its alien plants and at disseminating their results to the people. It had become increasingly impossible to deny that the alien methods were far more effective at restoring the ecosystem than the mar-Atyya strategies could ever be. A twelveyear ago, the mar-Atyya had won the people over by promising that they could have their old, familiar plants and animals back rather than settling for a mix of alien imports and engineered native species. Now, the people were eager to see anything green and growing and alive, no matter how unfamiliar it was. Indeed, the whole generation just reaching adulthood had grown up in the wake of the Pulse; to them, hur-Atyya’s native life-forms would have been no more familiar than the alien forms introduced by the Kazarites. More and more, the old hostility against the Federation was fading. Many of the people now felt they had been better off with the Federation, while the long-standing resentments held by others had faded in the light of their more recent problems.

  Of course, Raya elMora had long denounced the Federation in her smuggled rhetoric. She had toned down that theme in recent years, focusing more on the need for self-reliance and the power of the Payav to achieve their own salvation. But it still remained clear that she was anything but a partisan of the Federation. That made it all the easier for the people to trust the Federation as impartial election monitors. (Besides, who else was there? The Klingons? No one would risk going down that road again.)

  MaVolan stood, dismissing the meeting in his own mind if no one else’s. “Your lack of commitment will cost you dearly. But let elMora and the Federation come. Those of us who stand firm in our conviction still have the means and the will to deal with them.”

  He stormed out, and a few others on the Synod left with him—some decisively, others more timidly. Those who remained exchanged uneasy looks. The minister of security had been the first to follow maVolan out the door; naturally, the mar-Atyya leader made certain that the people in charge of the armed forces were unfailingly loyal to him. Asal had hoped that maVolan could be persuaded to accede to the elections so that matters could proceed without bloodshed. Now, that possibility seemed increasingly remote.

  But she stiffened her resolve. “It doesn’t change anything,” she told the others. “This is still what we need to do. The cost in lives will be far worse if we do not. We have nothing to lose.”

  “But what does the Federation have to lose?” maNashol asked.

  “They will no doubt send Starfleet to monitor the election.” She sighed. “They are soldiers. They are accustomed to risking their lives.”

  MaNashol nodded. “Better theirs than ours.”

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Captain Spock rose from the command chair as Raya emerged from the turbolift. He and his crew looked so formal and intimidating in the deep-red jackets and metallic insignia they wore now, as though Starfleet had finally decided to drop its friendly pretense. “Madam Councillor. Welcome to the bridge. I trust you and your colleagues find your accommodations acceptable?”

  “Most acceptable, Captain,” Raya replied with a hint of irony. “We are accustomed to making do with much less.”

  “Well, not for much longer, I’d wager,” said Dr. McCoy. The surgeon was hovering behind the command chair, and Raya had to wonder what he was doing on the bridge. “You’re goin’ home!”

  “Yes,” she replied, throwing a wistful glance at the image of Kazar on the viewscreen. “Most of us are. Perhaps even to stay, if the people are willing. Though I fear we will not find it much of a home when we arrive, thanks to the treatment it has suffered from its current warders.”

  Spock gave what Raya supposed would qualify as a frown on a Vulcan. “Although you are naturally a welcome guest aboard the Enterprise, Madam Councillor, I must again suggest that a return to Mestiko might be best postponed until after the election results are in. So long as the mar-Atyya remain in power, your safety and that of your people—”

  “My people, Captain, are the millions back on Mestiko crying for responsible leadership. I must be there to stand before them on the day of the election. I must step forward and face my opponents before all and be ready to take my place immediately if that is their will, or I will not be seen as an effective
leader—either in their eyes or my own.” She thought back to her long years among the refugees—arduous, difficult, painful years that had plowed many furrows in her face and raised thick calluses on her hands, but rewarding years during which she had worked side by side with her fellow Payav, not as a detached leader spewing proclamations but as a fellow refugee scrabbling in the soil, carrying her share of the load right alongside the others. She had come to believe that personal connection, that refusal to put herself above her people or ask them to do anything she would not do herself, was the key to effective leadership. Perhaps if she had known that a twelveyear ago, she would not have lost the Payav’s trust. Now she had won it back, or so it seemed, and she was determined to be worthy of it.

  “Very well,” Spock said, lifting an eyebrow. “Ensign T’Lara, take us out of orbit. Ensign Domenick, plot course for Mestiko.” He depressed a button on his chair arm. “Engineering. Mr. Scott, prepare for warp speed.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Raya noticed McCoy looking at her quizzically.

  “Something bothering you, ma’am?”

  She smirked. “It just seems odd for James Kirk not to be here. I never imagined him the type who would retire to a life of idleness.”

  McCoy’s expressive face showed ironic agreement, and there was an unexpected coldness in Spock’s voice as he said, “I would not presume to argue, Madam Councillor.”

  “Me, neither,” McCoy said. “Don’t get me wrong, Antonia Salvatori’s a fine woman, a great catch. But none of us saw it coming. I—” He stopped at a look from Spock.

  Raya wondered what this Antonia woman was like. Someone quiet and submissive, who would accept Kirk’s overbearing will without question and not stand up for herself? “Well. It is just as well he is not here. He has no right to show his face in these proceedings. The Payav Restoration Movement got where it is today in spite of his efforts, not because of them.”

  She was not surprised by the long silence that followed. She could understand his former colleagues being uncomfortable with hearing awkward truths about the man. But what puzzled her was the thoughtful, curious way that Spock looked at her. “Captain?”

  “As I said, it would be presumptuous to argue.”

  “If you wish to argue, please do.”

  “I am merely curious as to your interpretation of events. To what specific efforts of Admiral Kirk do you refer?”

  “You know full well, Spock. He refused to take any action against the mar-Atyya coup.”

  “Starfleet regulations—”

  “Have not stopped James Kirk when he was determined. Yet he did nothing.”

  “I see. Perhaps this is one source of confusion, for you specified ‘efforts’ rather than a lack of effort. But did he not facilitate your resettlement on Kazar?”

  “In a barren desert, yes.”

  Spock raised a brow. “It did not appear barren to me in our surface scans.”

  “Because the Payav have made it bloom. Because we put our sweat and our blood and our souls into it, and it gave back to us.”

  “Gave back?”

  “The will to keep fighting. The skill to rebuild a world. A rallying point and haven for Payav refugees everywhere, and an example to the people back home that we could truly save our world.”

  “Excuse me, Madam Councillor. I have made an extensive study of humanoid emotions, yet many nuances still escape me. Your exile to the Jarol Desert accomplished all this, yet you still feel anger at James Kirk for delivering you there?”

  Raya was taken aback, floundering for words. “That… that was not his doing. We built that success on the results of his inaction, his refusal to help.”

  “His refusal to overthrow the mar-Atyya regime.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Which the people of Mestiko itself have now learned they were in error to support.”

  “Yes! But only after years of suffering and terrible loss.”

  “Experiences that they would not have had at the time of the coup.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So they would have had no reason to agree with you that the mar-Atyya were unfit to lead. No reason to support your return to power, when they only knew your regime as one that had failed to restore their world.”

  “No, I… suppose not.”

  “Yet now they have tangible proof, not only that the mar-Atyya’s rhetoric is hollow but that yours is backed up with concrete evidence of success. Proof that Mestiko cannot be restored without the use of alien biota, biotechnology, and resources.”

  Raya pressed her lips together. “I see where you are going with this, Captain. That none of this would have happened without James Kirk’s choices. But Kirk does not deserve the credit. If any human does, it is Marat Lon. He did not simply retreat and leave things to work out for themselves. He went down to live among my people, to fight for them at profound risk to his life. He became one of us.”

  “Yes. All made possible through cosmetic surgery performed in the Enterprise sickbay.”

  McCoy smiled. “One of my finer pieces of work, if I do say so myself.”

  Spock turned to him. “If you can set your proclivity for subjective assessments aside for the moment, Doctor… is it routine for a Starfleet vessel’s chief medical officer to perform extensive cosmetic surgery on a civilian at his own request?”

  “No, Spock,” McCoy said, glaring a bit. “Even a starship this big only has so many supplies to go around. It takes authorization from the captain to do something like that.”

  “What if the surgery is pursuant to a personal mission to infiltrate a hostile civilization?”

  “Deliberately helping a patient put himself in harm’s way? No way would I volunteer to do something like that. Again, I’d need orders from my CO.”

  “So I take it you received such orders in Dr. Lon’s case?”

  McCoy grimaced. “Cut it out, Spock. You were there in the damn room when Jim told me to do it.”

  “All right,” Raya said. “You have established your point—though you two could stand to improve your teamwork skills.” They exchanged a bemused look.

  “But you forget it was James Kirk who tried to take Lon away from our world three years ago.”

  “Who was ordered to take him away,” McCoy corrected.

  “And ultimately did not do so,” Spock added. “His superiors were not pleased. But they were mollified when Lon’s notes proved beneficial in restoring a degree of ecological balance to Verzhik.”

  “All right. You have made your position clear. But millions have died under the mar-Atyya, and countless critically endangered species have gone extinct. Kirk did not prevent that.”

  “No, he did not,” Spock answered bluntly. “But given the circumstances prevailing at the time, can you suggest how anyone else could have?”

  Only the chirping of the bridge’s consoles filled the long silence that followed.

  VosTraal, Mestiko

  Pavel Chekov always hated beaming down into a mob. It rarely turned out well.

  In this case, he thought hopefully as the transporter effect faded around him and Captain Terrell, at least the crowd of aspiring voters had not become a mob yet. And for the most part, they were probably not likely to take out their aggressions on Starfleet personnel. Over the course of this long, turbulent election day, the Reliant’s crew had been working tirelessly alongside the Federation election monitors, keeping watch over polling places scattered across Mestiko and ensuring that the Payav’s right to free and fair elections was not infringed upon.

  Since the polls opened, the reports from Lieutenant Commander Nizhoni and her security staff had felt more like a running commentary to Chekov and Terrell, who had monitored them from the Reliant’s bridge. Barely had one attempt at electoral fraud been exposed and neutralized than another was detected. Nizhoni’s people, and the Payav police forces sympathetic to their efforts, had captured numerous Payav attempting to sneak in devices that could hack the voting comput
ers or infect them with viruses. The science and engineering departments had been kept busy double-checking the voting computers to ensure they had not been tampered with, and in some cases purging those that had been (regrettably rendering many votes invalid but ensuring the legitimacy of those that followed). Government operatives and party loyalists had been caught attempting to vote multiple times at different polling places, using various assumed names culled from the swollen ranks of Mestiko’s dead. Visual surveillance and biometric scans had helped to thwart their efforts; not every polling place on Mestiko was so equipped, but all the monitoring teams had tricorders linked into a planetwide network. In some places, poll workers had been caught giving false voting instructions or trying to pressure people into voting for the sitting regime. In others, street gangs recruited as religious enforcers had been discovered harassing voters away from the polls.

  It seemed that, although the mar-Atyya government had nominally agreed to go along with the elections, many of its members only saw them as a means to quell public unrest by giving the illusion of legitimacy to their regime. Many, but not all, Chekov believed; a number of people in the government, notably High Minister Janto herself, had been unfailingly cooperative with the election monitors. They knew their regime could not survive a free election, but Chekov sensed they were as fed up with Mestiko’s decaying ecological and social conditions as the masses were. Perhaps they hoped to salvage some place for themselves in the restored Zamestaad by supporting its return to power; maybe they were even past caring about their own careers so long as they helped their planet survive. Chekov was skeptical of the latter, but given how bad things were now, he couldn’t deny the possibility that Janto and those like her had simply concluded they had nothing left to lose.

  But as the day had worn on, the attempts at election tampering had grown more blatant. The street gangs had attempted to assault the polls openly, either to shut them down or to engage in booth capturing—seizing the voting computers for themselves and entering multiple votes for the sitting regime. The Reliant’s sickbay had been called into action treating the Starfleet and Payav security personnel injured in repelling their attacks.