Inspired by Where No Man Has Gone Before, a teleplay by Samuel A. Peeples.
TALOS is personal project, just for fun: a short-story retro-imagining of classic Star Trek original series episodes, told from the perspective of the unseen crewmembers down in the lower decks.
THE FARTHER I AM FROM HOME, the more I dream of it.
The ground is cool and dry on my bare feet, the air is pungent with ripening fruit. Alexi is chasing me along the dirt path between our barn and the wall of plinch that marks the edge of the east field. It’s harvest time, and the fruit is draping from the stalks in purple curtains. I snatch a rotten plinch and fling it in his direction. It misses. He laughs. I race for the entrance to the field, hoping to lose myself in the plinch maze, but Alexi just turned thirteen and his legs are longer than mine and he catches me and lifts me, twirling me akimbo until I’m upside down. I’m out of breath and can only gasp as he tickles me. He throws me over his shoulder and marches to the house.
The aroma of dinner floats out of the kitchen window, and I can see dad toiling over the stove, stirring a pot and staring sternly at its contents. He looks out the window and rolls his eyes at my muddy clothes and stick-infested hair. My brother, none too gently, tosses me to the grass like a sack of bones.
“Go get washed up, Pip,” he orders.
I stick my tongue out at him. He grins like a devil that has been granted due cause for torture, and dives to tickle me again. I writhe and kick until I’m helplessly engulfed by my own squeals. We both look up as my dad appears at the kitchen door, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel—
I thrust myself upright in bed, heart pounding. The smell of freshly-cut grass and dad’s plinch stew vanishes into the metallic odor of recycled air. For a moment I’m not sure where I am. There’s an incredibly loud shrieking noise and a flashing red light above the door to the small room I’m in.
Then I remember.
Oh, no.
I can tell it’s not a drill because of the alert klaxon. For drills it goes whoop-whoop pause whoop-whoop. This is a steady, unending whoop-whoop-whoop… which means Alert Condition Red, the highest priority of all.
My feet hit the cold metal deck. I feel the vibration of the engines through my bare soles. We’re decelerating. I’ve always been a white-knuckle flyer, so I’m hyper-sensitive to the mechanical hums and throbs of the ship’s systems. Every little rumble, burp, and bang startles me, every unanticipated whine or whir convinces me that some crucial mechanical system is failing and we are moments away from a catastrophe. The feeling is much worse now that we’re out here at the galaxy’s edge. Even my most hardcore shipmates are nervous this far from home. I try to recall the smell of dad’s stew, but it’s gone, the brief, sweet memory overcome by urgency.
This is my first real red alert, unexpected and terrifying. My roommate Andrea is standing duty on the bridge, so I am alone in our cabin. I stagger into my green jumpsuit and rush out the door for my emergency station down in the engineering hull. I’ve got pillow-hair and my teeth need brushing, but Lt. Kelso was clear after our last drill: when you hear the alert siren, drop everything and run like hell to your station. The lives of everyone on the ship may depend on your speed.
So here I am, stumbling down a gangway while trying to shove my hair into an elastic band, boldly going where no farm girl has gone before. In this case, the fleet motto is literally true: we’re headed for the north galactic frontier and beyond; we’re slated to be the first human starship to exit the Milky Way galaxy and navigate into intergalactic space. Right now, I’m unimaginably far from my family’s farm on Deneva, certainly farther than any Denevan has gone before. It’s taken three months to get here from our last port of call at the Aldebaran colony, three tense months of straining engines racing through unexplored space, where at any moment we might unknowingly trespass into hostile alien territory or fly right into an uncharted spatial anomaly or God knows what.
My friend Kyle is delighted. We’re making history on this ship, he once informed me. Someday we’ll all be legends. Heloves this stuff. Not me, I assured him. I’m just here for the paycheck. He winked and laughed, thinking I was joking. He’s been in a good mood lately. At breakfast yesterday he sat with Lt. Sulu, the department head from astrosciences, and he swears that Sulu was checking him out. I love Kyle but he’s got a one-track mind. I tell him that there’s no way he and Sulu will ever have a chance. It’s forbidden for officers to fraternize with enlisted personnel. Tell that to our new captain, he smirks.
I pile into a turbolift alongside a blueshirt bridge officer. My head is still clouded by sleep, so it takes me a moment to remember that his name is Alden. I ask him what’s going on. He tells me that we’ve received a radio distress signal from an Earth ship. I ask him what an Earth ship is doing this far out. He doesn’t know. A bosun’s whistle sounds attention and a calm, confident voice comes over the intercraft:
This is the captain speaking. The object we’ve encountered is a ship’s disaster recorder apparently ejected from the USS Valiant almost 200 years ago. We hope to learn from the recorder what the Valiant was doing here and what destroyed the vessel. We’ll move out on our probe as soon as we have those answers. All decks, stand by.
I let out a little sigh of relief. Okay, I tell myself, that doesn’t sound too bad. We’re just stopping to recover some space junk.
The turbolift doors whoosh open and I hurry into the corridor, listening to the bulkheads groan as we continue to decelerate. Did you know that the outer hull of the ship is only as thick as the width of your pinky finger? I mean, I know it’s duranium and that stuff is pretty strong (at least according to Lt. Kelso), but I also know that at our incredible speed a collision with a speck of dust makes an explosion the size of an atom bomb. I learned from my Engineering Systems class at boot camp exactly how our deflectors protect the ship from random space particles, so I know that if the equipment glitches for even an instant and lets a single molecule of dust hit the hull, the impact will be the death of us all. It will happen so fast that we won’t even know it. Fact is, pretty much every moment of every day we’re a microsecond away from instantaneous death by cosmic explosion.
Even when we’re not underway it’s never safe. We’re one of three ships in the Starfleet’s exploration division, which means that we’re almost always headed into uncharted territory. That’s bad enough, but it gets worse when you also consider the reputation of our captain. He’s the youngest starship commander ever, and Kyle says he’s a “goddamned narcissist whose only goal in life is his own glory.” Kyle says the fleet commander assigned him to our ship because he craves the highest-risk assignments. It’s true. I looked him up. He has lots of medals, all of which were supposedly earned for conspicuous gallantry, heroism, and valor. In my book those are all red flags for reckless behavior. Case in point: a few years ago he was an officer on one of our sister ships when over half the crew was killed during an alien encounter. The official report doesn’t mention him by name, but there are plenty of rumors that he played a role in the disaster.
You should see the guy parading around the ship like a strutting rooster. He’s not like any of the other senior officers I met during basic training at Camp Hellas, certainly nothing like the bootcamp CO, Captain Lindsey. Lindsey was aloof and respectable and serious and you knew she had your best interests in mind whenever she made a decision. Not our captain. The man can’t pass a glass comm panel without admiring at his own reflection. Just yesterday I saw him and his buddy Lt. Commander Mitchell walking down the corridor after a sweaty workout without their shirts on. What kind of officers do that? It’s shameful. Kyle just laughs and says I need to loosen up. My roommate Andrea is the captain’s yeoman. She seems to crave the man’s attention but it makes me want to throw up. Kyle says both the captain and Mitchell are old-style serial womanizers. There are so many rumors swirling around their exploits it must be true.
It’s just my luck to be assigned to this particularly awful ship. I only joined the Starfleet because my parents told me they were going to kick me out of the house on my eighteenth birthday. They were serious; they’d done the same to my two older brothers, both who’d gotten safe and secure jobs with the colonial government as truck drivers. My dad didn’t really care what I did for a living; as a plinch farmer at the mercy of the weather and the commodity markets his biggest criteria for a job was long-term stability. To him, a regular paycheck was the height of ambition.
I never wanted to be a plinch farmer or a truck driver. I always thought I’d end up a math teacher at the local middle school like my mom. I never really expected for my application to the Starfleet to be accepted. When I first walked up to the recruiter at my high school career fair, she kind of scowled at me and pointed to the banner above her booth: Boldly go where no man has gone before! I think it was obvious by simply looking at me that bold wasn’t one of my strong points. I was the smallest girl in school and probably the least athletic person who’d ever approached her table. She shoved a brochure into my hand and turned to smile at Jer Kanby, one of the football players in line behind me.
My dad was thrilled when I showed him the brochure. The Starfleet is a solid organization, he insisted, though in his entire life he’d never stepped foot on a spaceship, not even a sub-orbital shuttle. It pays well, the benefits are great, and you won’t find that kind of job security anywhere else. My mom was happy to drive me over to the recruiting station in Pomartown. Honestly, I don’t think she wanted me to work as a teacher and she certainly hoped I would shoot a little higher than my truck-driving brothers. I played along, knowing that there was no way that a paramilitary organization like the Starfleet would want me. I wasn’t Starfleet material, and I was fine with that.
When the recruiter at Pomartown told me that the Starfleet didn’t discriminate on physical ability, I was sure the battery of psychological tests would weed me out and my parents would have no choice but to let me stay at home until a job opened at the middle school. It’s not that I particularly enjoy working with kids, but a teacher makes a steady paycheck and the job is pretty safe. I’m not a coward, I just don’t see why anyone would intentionally put themselves in danger when there are so many safer alternatives for a career. The only reason I signed the enlistment papers that day was because the recruiter assured me that I’d probably be given a shore assignment at an office on Earth, considering my obvious physical limitations.
Somehow I survived boot camp, which was a miracle. My scores for math were good, so they put me in the navigation and engineering track, which meant that I spent most of my days in class learning about how to maintain sensors and comms equipment. I did well in class, which apparently made up for my dismal performance in the physical training exercises. According to my company commander, I was the scrawniest kid he’d ever seen pass through boot camp; my physiology made it literally impossible for me to achieve the minimum fitness scores. Even in the light Mars gravity, not once in sixteen weeks did I finish the obstacle course in the required time; the camp CO had to write me a waiver so I could graduate.
The Starfleet recruiter back at Pomartown who’d assured me I’d get a cushy shore posting on Earth had lied. I didn’t get a shore post, my first assignment was a starship! And not just any starship, but a ship in the exploration division, recently departed from Earth for a five year, long-range mission! Out of my graduating boot camp class of beefy, gung-ho boys and ambitious, athletic girls I was the only one posted to a starship. The detailer told me it was my math scores, but I think it was just bad luck, which seems to follow me around.
My mom was thrilled, my dad was relieved and my brothers both thought I was crazy. I spent two weeks at home saying goodbye to my friends before reporting to the embarkation facility at the Craven spaceport. The trip to rendezvous with my new ship at the Aldebaran colony took three terrifying weeks on the Antares, a century-old cargo ship that rattled and creaked as if every bolt, nut and rivet holding it together were loose.
Upon arrival to my new posting, as a raw, non-rate crewman I was assigned to Lt. Kelso’s engineering support team. I will admit that Lt. Kelso is a pretty cool boss. I know it’s part of his job to mentor his underlings, but he actually seems to enjoy spending extra time with all of us, encouraging us, helping us study for our rating exams, advising us on both career and personal matters. My friend Kyle says we’re really lucky to work for Kelso; he insulates us from the big boss, the Engineering department head, a by-the-book hardass who never gives his subordinates an inch.
Until I pick a rating specialty, I pretty much just sweep the decks and clean the toilets and do whatever other manual job needs doing. Most of the time I work alongside Kyle, who’s an Earth boy a couple of years older than me. Kyle has a crush on Lt. Kelso, and I can see why. Our boss looks like the guy on the Starfleet recruiting poster back at my high school career fair: tall, blond, blue-eyed with perfect white smiling teeth. When there’s nobody else around Kyle refers to the lieutenant by his first name: Lee. He’s obsessed with the lieutenant’s personal life. Did you see that Lee sat with Crewman Rodriguez from Security Division at lunch? As far as I can tell, the social life aboard a starship is a lot like middle school. You’re stuck with the same people all the time in a difficult, confined space. The only difference is that in middle school you don’t have to worry about the school building exploding at any moment.
—
IT TAKES ME LESS THAN TWO MINUTES to get to my station at the Emergency Manual Monitor, a control room that overlooks the Main Engineering section. The compartment is crowded, claustrophobic, and smells of sweat and panic. Kyle is already here, along with the two engineering techs who operate the console. The ship hums with the nervous babble of more than four hundred anxious souls. From below, I hear voices from Main Engineering. The chief engineer is grumbling about something. He’s always grumbling about something.
As a rookie fresh from boot camp, my duty is to stand behind the console operators and wait for them to tell me what to do. Luckily, in all the red-alert drills we’ve done so far (and our first officer loves to conduct drills), I’ve never been asked to actually do anything. Now that it’s for real, I’m terrified that one of the techs will turn to me and order me to fetch the lithium gizmo or the plasma thingie and my mind will blank and I’ll freeze and the ship will explode because of my panic. I don’t belong here. I’m a farmer’s daughter. I’m supposed to be a middle-school math teacher. I don’t know anything.
A few minutes later I hear the chief engineer shout orders. In front of me, the console operators start doing something. It’s their job to monitor and manage the distribution of power from the ship’s matter-antimatter reactor. It’s very technical and I don’t for a moment understand what they do.
I hear the space warp engines rev up and feel the vibration in the deck plates. On the console, a red light flashes and one of the operators begins to frantically push buttons and flip switches. A moment later I can hear the whine of the deflectors going to full intensity. That would only happen if we were about to encounter something in the path of our ship.
What’s out there, I wonder? I try to keep my focus but in my mind’s eye I see us hurtling toward a massive asteroid or a black hole or God knows what. I wish I was on the bridge where the action was taking place. At least I would know what was going on. Here in the bowels of the engineering decks nobody ever knows what’s happening to the ship. All we get are mysterious orders to divert power from system A to panel B, or to transfer energy from the warp core to the deflectors, etc. It’s only after the action, sometimes days later, that we are told what really happened. Even Kyle hates this part. One of these days, he once promised, I’ll be a bridge officer.
The space warp engines whine and the lights dim. The main console pops and sends a shower of sparks and a puff of acrid smoke into the small room. The operator yelps and recoils. The fire alert sounds. Below, the curses of the chief engineer echo angrily in the engine room.
Nothing like this has ever happened in any of the drills. The ship judders and I hear the lateral thrusters fire in several short bursts. Everyone in the room lurches and one of the console operators falls to the deck. I am suddenly and keenly aware of how tiny this compartment is, buried deeply inside the ship’s hull, surrounded by ribs of groaning structural framework that could collapse at any moment. The metal walls seem to be contracting inward and it’s getting hard to breath and I feel an overwhelming urge to bolt and run but there’s nowhere to go, there’s no outside to escape to. We’re trapped here, buried inside a floating metal coffin—
A bright pain stabs through the back of my skull and exits like forked lightning through my eyes. For the briefest instant I feel as if my soul is being ripped from my body. I reach to steady myself against the rear wall of the compartment and encounter my reflection in a glassy console. A panicked, wild-eyed kid stares back. Her eyes are bright with light, as if the lightning I can feel in my skull is threatening to burst through them.
I reel. Kyle grabs my arm. For an instant, through the pain, I hear mom’s voice. I can’t make out her words, but she sounds scared. The agony is momentary. I press my palms against my temples but the pain is already gone, leaving only the streaked afterimage of a lightning bolt. I blink frantically and the afterimage fades.
The deck judders, and we hold each other to keep from falling. Kyle looks horrified. Okay, this is really bad, I realize. The ship isn’t supposed to judder under any circumstances. The inertial dampeners should prevent us from feeling any form of acceleration; it’s why starships don’t have seatbelts. Something is seriously wrong. My brain screams at me: This is it—this is how you die, and I believe it with every fiber of my being. My entire existence has led to this moment, and in another few seconds, it will all end. I will end.
But I don’t. Things stabilize as the roar of the ship’s engines fades to silence. Smoke lingers in the air. Kyle lets out a breath and smiles at me, but I can tell he’s rattled. Somehow his panic is reassuring. I’m not alone in fear. If we die, we’ll all die together. I grasp at the feeling of camaraderie, slim as it is.
“Damage control reports, all stations,” barks the voice of the first officer over the intercraft.
“All decks this is bridge engineering. Go to emergency condition three,” comes the voice of our boss, Lee Kelso.
Kyle’s smile evaporates. Emergency condition three means that the main engines are out, and that the ship is running on emergency battery power. I feel lightheaded, and realize it’s not just panic when the intercom announces that gravity is down to point-eight of normal. The two console operators are conversing in rapid, urgent technobabble. I can only catch a few of the phrases: …negative energy surge…gravity control switching to batteries…overheat condition, starboard impulse pack…
“What do you think is happening?” I whisper to Kyle.
“Hell if I know.”
—
THEY CALL IT OUT OVER THE INTRASHIP. Seven engineering crewmembers and two life sciences officers are dead. Dead! A wheeled tool locker broke free from its bulkhead moorings during the heavy maneuvering. They say it crushed two techs before their shiftmates could secure it. Kyle says they probably didn’t feel a thing. I wonder if I knew any of them. The other casualties were randomly scattered throughout the ship. One of the damage control techs told us that something fried all their brains and killed them where they stood. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened, and the senior officers apparently aren’t talking.
There are… there were… ninety-two engineering specialists aboard. Now there are only eighty-five, and the ship is only four months into our five-year mission. At this rate we’ll run out of engineering personnel sometime during our third year.
Even worse, our space warp engines are damaged. The chief engineer is storming around down in main engineering, growling and barking out orders. Thankfully, despite the reactor problem, the impulse engines seem to be okay, but that doesn’t calm me very much. Without our space warp engines, we’re years—thousands of years, from home. Unless they can be repaired, we’ll die of old age out here.
Lt. Kelso comes by an hour later. He tells us not to worry about the warp engines, but he isn’t very convincing. He tells us that even in this thinly-explored part of space, there are supply caches seeded by the early automated survey ships. Spares and consumables are prepositioned at each location for vessels in need. Well, we’re in need now.
“Come with me,” says Lt. Kelso. Kyle nudges me. It takes me a second to realize the lieutenant is looking at me. His eyes are startlingly blue. “Yes, sir,” I say.
—
LT. KELSO DOESN’T SPEAK as we ride the turbolift from the engineering section up to the impulse decks, and he remains silent as he leads me through the control room and into a narrow maintenance corridor. The crew up here are harried, scared, and there’s a definite smell of smoke and charred plastic. One of the corridor walls is bashed inward, blocking the passage. A DC team is busy cutting through the debris, their saws spraying a curtain of sparks that engulfs the passageway. This is where the two techs died, I realize. Lt. Kelso points to a heavy hatch cover, yells over the screech of the metal saws. “Help me get this open.”
I stare at the damage. Two of my shipmates perished right here in this corridor. They’d been at their emergency stations, same as me, when a reactor containment vessel had smashed through the wall and crushed them. They’d been alive an hour ago. Now they weren’t, and they would never be alive again.
Why them and not me? Had they felt the certainty of imminent death, just as I had? What were their names? Where were they from? How old were they? How will their parents react to the news? I have a vision of my own parents, sitting together on our living room sofa, hands clasped, eyes wide in shock as a uniformed officer regretfully informs them of my death.
Nineteen years old. Dead. Gone. Forever.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Lt. Kelso is staring at me with an expression that is both stern and compassionate. His shoulders are broad. He smells good, though I can’t identify the aroma. He shouts over the sound of the cutting tools, “Stay focused.”
I try. The label on the hatch cover says STARBOARD IMPULSE RELAY PACKS. The cover is thick and heavy and I worry that we won’t be able to lift it, but thankfully it swings open easily after we remove the fasteners. Inside are two rows of thick metal cylinders. A couple of them are discolored and one is obviously corroded. Lt. Kelso shakes his head in astonishment. “Will you look at that? How did he know?”
“How did who know?” I ask, but Lt. Kelso only shakes his head again. He gingerly takes the melted cylinder and tugs it out of its position, holding it up for examination.
“What is that thing?”
He sighs. “It’s a main power relay switch. Look here at the attachment point, see how it’s burned? If we’d tried to fire up the impulse engines with this point in this condition, it would have ended badly.”
“How badly?”
“Badly.” He makes a fist, mouths a silent boom, and pops open his fingers to simulate a large explosion.
I shudder. I can’t help it. Lt. Kelso notices but says nothing.
—
I BARELY EAT ANYTHING at dinner. Andrea, my usual tablemate and my roommate, is conspicuously absent. Around me, others are discussing the turn of events in low, worried tones. I hear an engineer’s mate swear that the controls on his console were moving without being touched, toggles switching and dials rotating as if by some invisible hand. His companions scoff. I also gather that something has happened to one of the bridge officers. Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell, the captain’s friend, who collapsed on the bridge. He’s been in sickbay since the incident, with security guards posted outside his door.
Andrea is in our quarters when I arrive after the meal. She’s lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, still wearing her duty uniform. I wonder how long she’s been here. Her eyes are red. She doesn’t acknowledge me.
“You okay?”
She nods without looking at me. I hesitate. She was on the bridge during the red alert and I desperately want to ask about what transpired, but her mood doesn’t seem much different than mine. She obviously doesn’t want to talk.
I step into the bathroom and confront my reflection in the mirror. My green coveralls are smudged and filthy, as are my grease-stained hands. My face is covered in soot. My eyes are red-rimmed holes, deep and hollow. I stare at the image for a long time, trying to find anything recognizable.
I can’t. The thing in the mirror is not my face.
It’s something new.
“Five years,” I say to myself.
I’m not going to make it through our five-year mission. None of us are.
—
AFTER WE TURN INTO OUR BUNKS and extinguish the cabin lights, I realize that I’ll never sleep. I speak into the darkness.
“What happened today on the bridge?”
Silence. Eventually, Andrea replies, and there is no trace of her cheerful and annoying manner. “We… found something. The science officer said it’s an energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy.”
I consider this. “I didn’t think there was such a thing as an edge to the galaxy. I thought it just petered out until there were no more stars.”
“Apparently not. There was definitely some kind of barrier. It looked like a glowing purple cloud. We couldn’t go around it, so the captain tried to go through it. That’s when the ship got damaged and Gary Mitchell and Dr. Dehner were hurt.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. There was a flash of light, and they just collapsed. Dr. Dehner seems to be okay, but they took Mitchell to sickbay.”
“I heard there were others who also collapsed, all over the ship. Some of them died.” I thought of the brain flash and momentary pain I’d experienced during the event. Had the people who’d died felt the same, only worse?
She doesn’t respond.
“So, let me get this straight, our captain ordered us to fly into a glowing purple space cloud even though he didn’t know what it was?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t explain his decisions to me.”
“But you’re his yeoman. You work with him every day.” I lower my voice. “Does he seem incredibly reckless to you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, maybe.”
“Maybe? Really? Think about it, Andrea, we just found the disaster recorder of a ship destroyed here two hundred years ago, presumably by the purple space cloud, and our captain immediately ordered us to fly into the very same purple cloud? He knew it was dangerous. Why didn’t we spend time studying it first? Send in an unmanned probe or two?”
Her response is small and hollow. “I don’t know.”
I stare into the darkness. I’ve never heard fear in Andrea’s voice. She’s one of those annoyingly optimistic people who always sees the sun beyond the edge of a raincloud. She was probably a cheerleader in high school.
“I thought we were all going to die today,” I say.
She expels a tremulous sigh. “Me too.”
“Do you know what happens next? Are we stranded out here forever?”
“I don’t know.”
I prop myself on my elbow and turn in the darkness to face her bunk. “Andrea, what are you not telling me?”
I’m about to repeat the question when she answers in a hoarse whisper. “I was right next to Gary Mitchell when he collapsed.”
“And?”
“He was unconscious for a few seconds. When he woke up and opened his eyes…”
I waited for her to finish the sentence. After a few seconds of silence I prompted, “And?”
“His eyes were shining. They were shining.”
“What do you mean, shining?”
“I mean glowing. Bright silver, like light reflecting from a mirror.”
“What caused it?”
“I don’t know. They took him to sickbay. Next thing I know, he’s under guard and the captain won’t talk about it.”
I don’t know what to say. I lower my head to the pillow. Something deep in my gut slowly rotates, like a slimy eel waking from a slumber. What are we doing out here? We’re at the edge of everything, far from home. Utterly alone in a fragile tin can, floating in nothingness. And somewhere outside, lurking just beyond our thin metal hull, there’s Andrea’s mysterious purple space cloud. A barrier, she’d called it. A barrier between what, and what?
There aren’t any windows in enlisted crew cabins, which is a good thing. When I look out a window, my mind expects to see familiar agricultural fields under a comforting blue-green sky. A few clouds maybe, and the always-present Denevan starlings flitting above the plinch stalks. The first and only time I looked out the window of a starship, my mind utterly rejected the infinite emptiness, the blackness that engulfed us, and I’m certain the specter of Andrea’s purple space cloud would send me beyond the edge of panic.
—
COMMAND IS SILENT. There’s been no pep talk from the captain or first officer over the intercraft, no scheduled crew briefings on our situation or what they’re planning to do about our dilemma. Three days have passed with only hallway and galley rumors about what happened on the bridge. My boss Lt. Kelso, who usually keeps his staff informed, is uncharacteristically reserved. There’s the sense that something has happened that is even more frightening than the damage to the ship. The senior officers are conducting endless meetings in the briefing rooms. Lt. Commander Mitchell is still in the sickbay, and there are still guards at the door. The names of the dead crew are circulated informally, but there’s no official word on what caused their death, and no announcement about memorial services. I learn that some of my shipmates felt the same stabbing skull pain I’d experienced during the event, but not everyone. As the lack of word from command continues, the rumors are growing darker, scarier. I’m having trouble sleeping. Andrea and I have spent the last few nights playing card games in our cabin, trying not to freak out about our situation.
Focusing on work helps. Lt. Kelso has tasked me and Kyle with removing the burned-out transfer circuits in Main Engineering. Thankfully the chief engineer is mostly absent during our work; he’s either on the bridge or participating in the closed-door meetings with the other senior officers. Kyle admires him, but I think he’s a cruel bastard. Once, on my third day aboard, he looked over my shoulder while I was trying to open a panel during a training exercise, proclaiming loudly enough for everyone in the whole compartment to hear, “What do you think you’re doing, lassie?” He laughed derisively. “You’re turning the bolt the wrong direction! It’s leftie-loosey, righty-tighty. Do ye fash nothing at all of simple tools? Don’t they teach you empty-brained bairns anything in boot camp?”
For the millionth time I marvel that they let non-rated, untrained crewmembers actually work on the ship. What if I inadvertently touch something wrong or unplug something wrong and set off a chain reaction that blows us up? It’s insane, the responsibility they give us. When I once mentioned my doubts to Lt. Kelso, he’d only smiled and said, “We learn by doing.”
Kyle and I both look up when Lt. Kelso enters the compartment. The other techs do, too, and the hum of conversation and clatter of tools goes silent.
“Gather around,” he says. Kyle and I join the others in the center of the room. The lieutenant takes a breath, clears his throat. “I have lots of good news, and a little bad news. First the good news, and it’s really good. By some enormous miracle, we’re within impulse range of an automated lithium mining station called Delta Vega, and the chief engineer believes we can make it there in less than a week. He thinks we’ll be able to find or scavenge the parts we need to repair the warp drive. So, we’re not stuck out here at the edge of the galaxy!”
My heart leaps. The others applaud. Kyle gives me a broad smile, and I want to hug him. Lt. Kelso raises his hands and gestures for silence. “So now the bad news. I know some of you felt head pain during the event, or maybe even passed out. If you did, raise your hand, please.”
We all glance at each other. I raise my hand slowly. So do two others. Kyle looks sharply at me, his brows raised.
Lt. Kelso nods. “All of you with your hands up, I want you to report to Dr. Dehner for a checkup.”
“A checkup? Why?” somebody says.
Lt. Kelso shrugs, trying to look unconcerned. I can tell by the hard set of his jaw that he is faking indifference. “They just want to make sure you’re okay.”
—
DR. DEHNER IS A TALL and completely intimidating woman. Her confidence is inspiring. As soon as I enter her office, she smiles and I immediately feel better.
“Crewman Melina,” she says. “Good to see you again.” Dr. Dehner was a fellow passenger aboard the transport that delivered me to the Aldebaran colony, and we’d had a couple of casual conversations during that time. I’d learned she was a psychiatrist, the ship’s new counselor, and that she was studying crew reactions in crisis situations. Well, she’d signed up for the right ship, and the right mission.
She stands, comes around her desk and shakes my hand. She’s half a meter taller than me. There are two armchairs in front of her desk. She sits in one, and motions for me to take the other. She smiles again, bright and carefree, as if we are friends meeting at an outdoor coffee shop in Paris, not victims of a reckless captain trapped in a damaged starship thousands of lightyears from home. She holds a PADD, which she places in her lap.
She asks me how I have settled into my duties, and how I like working in Engineering. I lie and tell her that it’s a dream come true. She nods, but one side of her mouth crinkles in a knowing grin.
“How old are you, crewman?”
She must already know this, she has access to my records, but I reply anyway. “Eighteen. I’ll be nineteen next month.”
She nods, still smiling. “This is quite the first mission for you, eh?”
It slips out before I can think. “You can say that again.” I add a hasty, “Ma’am.”
She laughs, and this time it’s completely genuine. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m—” Something uncontrollable wells up from my chest. My throat constricts as I start to answer. Words lodge in my windpipe. I sit like an idiot, unable to speak.
Dr. Dehner leans forward and takes both of my hands. Her smile fades, replaced by warm understanding and an almost motherly concern. She pauses while I collect myself. Her voice is reassuring. “On my first mission,” she tells me, “We discovered a new civilization. I was sent down as part of a covert survey team to observe the indigenous culture. They were a reptilian species at a bronze-age stage of development. They lived in underground cities which they’d carved out of these huge mountain ranges. For food they cultivated a brown fungus which only grew in damp caves. Now, I don’t like mushrooms, I’m claustrophobic, scared of snakes, and a bit afraid of the dark. I was completely terrified by every aspect of the mission, but I couldn’t let my boss know, could I?”
I nodded. She continued. “Things went fine until we ran into an unexpected snag in our plans. It turns out the city we were exploring was feuding with an adjacent underground city, and fighting broke out. Our entire landing party was trapped for four days in a tiny, dark fungus-cave whose walls were covered with the foulest-smalling slime you can imagine, worried that at any moment we’d be discovered and eaten by alien anacondas. Our communicators didn’t work that far underground, so the captain couldn’t locate us to beam us out, and the Prime Directive prevented her from sending a rescue team.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
She nodded. “I was twenty-two, fresh out of the Academy. For four days, I was convinced that I would never be twenty-three. It took everything I had to hold it together. And I mean everything. But I did, somehow. Our lieutenant and my landing party mates were old hands. I didn’t realize it at the time, but all their constant laughing and joking about our situation was for my benefit. To calm the nerves of the terrified rookie.”
“That’s me,” I admit.
She laughs. “Yes, it is.” She tightens her grip on my hands, looks me in the eye. “Here’s the thing I learned, and you’ll learn too. The crew on this ship, including you and me, we’re not just a random collection of people. Far from it. I don’t know why you enlisted, and I don’t care, but I do know this: you wouldn’t have been admitted to basic training, nor graduated, unless you were special. The selection process for enlisted personnel is far more vigorous than you can imagine. For every thousand candidates that apply for the Starfleet, less than ten are accepted, and from that ten, only two make the cut for starship duty. That’s two-tenths of one percent. You and me, Crewman Melina, along with every soul on this ship, are members of that two-tenths of one percent. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t take the pressure. Neither would I, or anyone else aboard.”
I nod, but she sees something in my expression that she doesn’t like. She pulls me close. “We’re human, you and me. We get scared. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared too. But our survival, and the success of our mission, lies on the other side of our fear.”
She leans back to examine me. My expression, my posture. She is evaluating me, I realize. The professional psychiatrist, studying her subject. “You are an integral part of something incredibly unique, Melina. Trust yourself. Trust your shipmates. Trust command. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I start to mention that the seven crewmembers who’d died during the event were also part of the two-tenths of one percent, and that they’d no doubt trusted their captain and shipmates, but thought better of it. Instead, I tried to look confident.
“I understand.”
Dr. Dehner gives a mild scoff. “No, you don’t. Not yet. But you will, you’ll see. You’re going to make it through this crisis with flying colors.” She takes a deep breath, picks up the PADD from her lap. She taps the screen with her stylus, reads something. “Speaking of crisis, I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind. I’m surveying the crew about their experience and reactions during the accident. All your responses are completely confidential and anonymous and won’t be shared with command or anyone else, so answer as truthfully as possible, okay?”
I nod.
She starts with innocuous questions about where I’d been when the event happened, what I’d been doing, who else was present. She asks me what I’d eaten for breakfast, how I’d slept the night before. She asks me how I feel about my superiors. I tell her I adore Lt. Kelso, but don’t mention the awful chief engineer. She asks about my state of mind when the red alert was declared, and what I was thinking as I rushed to my post. She asks me to describe in detail what I experienced when the ship attempted to pierce the purple cloud, which she calls a “force barrier.”
I answer each question guardedly. Eventually, she pauses, taps her stylus on the PADD’s screen, and gives me a piercing look. “I see here that you scored remarkably high on the esper-empath scale during your recruitment evaluation. Eighty-eighth percentile. That’s quite high for an Earth-human.”
She seems to expect a response, but I don’t know what to say.
She clears her throat. “With this in mind, did you, ah, feel that you experienced any sort of premonition, or perhaps something you might classify as a hallucinatory vision during the encounter with the force barrier?”
Dr. Dehner’s reassuring smile doesn’t falter, but I can tell this is the question she’s been leading up to for our entire session. I make a show of considering the question, but I’m wondering why she is suddenly so tense.
“No,” I answer, trying to keep any trace of emotion out of my voice.
“This is important, Crewman Melina. Some of your fellow shipmates with high esper scores experienced odd sensations during the events. Can you describe for me exactly your state of mind when it happened? Did you perhaps see any flashes of light, feel any pain?”
“No,” I say.
“Did you hear anything unusual? Voices, maybe?”
“Just my team shouting.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What about visual artifacts? Anything that might be classified as a hallucination or vision, no matter how insignificant it seemed?”
“Nothing,” I lie.
She stares directly into my face. I see disappointment and a hint of suspicion. I also see something that might be desperation. The slithery fear in my gut moves again, and the room suddenly feels colder.
—
I DREAM IN FULL COLOR. They say that’s rare. My dreams are almost always lucid, too, which means I’m aware that I’m dreaming. I can even sometimes control the events in my dreams. That’s supposedly rare, too.
In my dreams I have a superpower: I can fly. This may sound like great fun, but my flying dreams are almost always nightmares. You see, I can fly, but I can’t control my flight once I leave the ground. I’ll leap into the sky and experience a few seconds of exhilaration until invariably I realize that I’m rising too fast, and that no matter what I do, I’ll keep rising. Sometimes I grasp for tree branches to stop my ascent but they’re always just out of reach. Up and up and up until the air grows cold and thin and there’s not enough oxygen and I’m gasping for breath and I know that I have only a few more seconds of life. My corpse will keep rising until it departs the Earth to travel through the infinite darkness, forever, until it passes the edge of the universe.
I wake, gasping, and stare at the dark bulkhead above my bunk. I’ve had this nightmare for as long as I can remember. Now I’m living it.
—
“LIEUTENANT, if we’re the first Earth starship out here in two hundred years, how does there happen to be a mining station already here?”
My duty section is gathered in Main Engineering for our morning briefing. Lee Kelso stands before us, PADD in hand, ready to dispense our task orders for the shift. He always looks so perfect in the mornings, his uniform crisply pressed, his hair neatly combed, his easy smile radiating benevolent confidence. He’s the sort of young officer whose natural temperament has destined him for command. I completely understand why Kyle has a crush on him. If I were true to myself, I’d probably admit that I have a crush on him, too.
The lieutenant nods at the question. “Some of you may already know this, but the Tellarites sent out a fleet of self-replicating mining droneships centuries ago. There are thousands of similar stations built by their drones all over this galactic arm. Nobody knows exactly how many, not even the Tellarites. The machines are programmed to locate and refine valuable ores and stockpile the alloys and minerals in underground warehouses. The robots then use some of these materials to build even more droneships, which spread out looking for new worlds to exploit. The stations were designed to send out subspace beacons so the Tellarites could find them. Luckily, we picked up one of the beacons.”
“I’ve heard the mining stations are defended,” says one of the techs.
“That’s true. We can’t just go down there and steal what we need. There are security and access protocols we have to follow, but the Tellarites are our allies, and we know the protocols. All we have to do is pay their insane fees, but that’s HQ’s problem, not ours.”
A few chuckles from my shipmates. Lt. Kelso refers to his PADD, then looks up at us. “The chief engineer has asked me to form a landing party to assist with the surface operations. We’ll beam down to the mining facility and find the spares and materials we need to repair the ship and regenerate the engines. Understood?”
An excited mutter and a few “ayes.” Next to me, Kyle stiffens, and I see raw eagerness on his face. In the Starfleet, landing party duty is the most sought-after assignment of all. Feet planted on the dirt of an alien planet. Breathing a foreign atmosphere. Exploring strange new worlds and all that. I shrink back and slide behind Kyle and try to become invisible.
Lt. Kelso nods. He reads a list of names as I and I bite my lip.
“Cho, Kowalczyk, Leslie, Kyle…”
Kyle does a fist pump and mutters “Yesss!”
Lt. Kelso glances up and grins, then turns his eyes back to the PADD and continues down the list of names. “Eshetu, Melina, Hendorf and Barnhart.”
I am shrinking so forcefully into myself that I almost don’t recognize my name as the lieutenant calls it. Kyle is beaming; he elbows me with delight.
Lt. Kelso is still talking. “Those of you whose names are on the list, grab your away bags and your toolkits and report to Transporter Room 1 at 0900. Delta Vega is Class K-M, so you won’t need environmental suits, but it’s a bit cold, so bring your field jackets. We may be on-world for a few days, so pack some extra socks. The rest of you, report to the Chief Engineer for your shift assignments. Dismissed.”
I am buffeted by my crewmates as they disperse, some brimming with excitement, others slumped with disappointment at not being chosen. I barely hear any of it. Kyle gives me a crinkled brow, mystified by my apparent stupor. “You okay, Melina?”
I shake myself, clear my throat. I attempt a smile. “Yes, I’m good. Woo-hoo, lucky us!”
He pushes his fist playfully into my shoulder. “Cheer up, crewman. This is what we’ve been waiting for, right? Landing party duty!”
I nod. “Yeah. Landing party duty. What we’ve been waiting for.”
—
EVERY MEMBER OF THE STARFLEET collects Planet coins. The command awards them to you after you visit a new world as part of your duties, and you can buy them yourself on worlds you visit on shore leave or as a tourist. I have two: a tourist coin from Deneva, where I grew up, and an official fleet coin from Mars, where I attended boot camp. I briefly visited the Aldebaran colony, but that was just a transfer through the orbital spaceport after graduation, so it doesn’t count.
Planet coins are colorful cloisonne medallions, elaborately decorated, art forms unto themselves. The official fleet coins are the most sought-after, but even the tourist coins carry bragging rights. Kyle showed me his collection once, displayed proudly in a velour-lined case. He has three official fleet coins and two tourist coins. Some of our older shipmates have many more. Cho has seven fleet coins, Barnhart has nine, and Eshetu, who is almost thirty years old, has as astonishing seventeen.
Delta Vega will be my third Planet coin, and my first while on starship duty. I try to focus on that accomplishment as I pack my away kit. I stuff four extra pairs of socks into the bag plus a second tube of toothpaste, just in case of emergencies.
Andrea is jealous. Yeomen are almost never assigned landing party duty, unless there’s paperwork to be done. She gives me a tight hug and admonishes me to be careful. I tell her I’ll bring her a pebble from Delta Vega as a souvenir.
I’ve never had a friend like her. In high school, she would have lived in an entirely different circle than me. She would have sat with the pretty kids at lunch, dated the popular boys. She would have completely ignored me, and I would have assumed she was a jerk. I’m quickly learning, though, that out here in the black nothingness deep space, those petty distinctions mean nothing. Out here, we are sisters.
—
I’M IN THE SECOND BATCH OF ENGINEERS to transport down. The six of us wait at the rear of the Transporter Room, behind the operator’s console, watching as the first team assembles on the platform. Their expressions are a mix of confidence, trepidation, and raw excitement, as if they’re beaming down to Disney World instead of an uninhabited alien rockball trillions of miles from home.
Landing party duty! The reason we all joined the Starfleet! Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations! Boldy go where no man has gone before!
To my surprise and consternation, the ship’s chief engineer is operating the transporter instead of the usual transporter chief. Is there some danger that requires his presence? Is something wrong with the transporter? I swallow and watch as he manipulates the dials and switches. Eventually, he seems satisfied. He glances at Lt. Kelso, who is standing next to me.
“Energize,” says Kelso.
The chief engineer slides a set of levers. The powerful stators beneath the transporter platform begin to whine and warble. The six crewmen on the platform stiffen as the whine intensifies and the transport field forms around them in a cascading flash of lights.
Then they are gone. The lights and sounds fade. Lt. Kelso motions toward the silent and empty platform. “Our turn,” he announces.
Best of times, worst of times, I mutter to myself. One of my favorite books is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. At the end of the novel, the hero must climb the stairs to the guillotine, where he will sacrifice his life for the cause of liberty. For some reason as I climb the three small stairs from the deck to the transporter platform, I hear his final words echo in my head: Tis a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.
I am aware of my own ridiculous melodrama, but I can’t dismiss the feeling of dread that has been building inside me since the incident at the galactic barrier. My legs are pendulous weights that I must lift and swing as I ascend the steps. There are six pads on the platform, transparent disks just large enough to stand on. I take my place on one of them.
I’ve used transporters before, dozens of times. Still, it’s impossible for me not to flinch-and-clench as the beam is energized. I mean literally, the machine is about to destroy my physical body, convert the subatomic particles that are uniquely me into a data stream, and then reassemble me on the planet’s surface, hundreds of miles away, hopefully in the exact same configuration as before. It will still be me, the transporter scientists say, even though the actual matter that makes up my body isn’t technically the same matter as before. Transporter accidents are few and far between. It is statistically the safest way to travel. Almost foolproof. It has been a long time since the last reported malfunction, but when it does go wrong, the results are always horrific. People materializing inside-out, their organs flopping to the transporter pad, still alive. Partial materialization, missing limbs and decapitations. Nothing but goo, where once was a person. Materializing inside a wall or a table or a chair. And scariest of all, there have been reports of a perfectly normal transport where the subject never materialized at all. Where did they go? Some other dimension? Back or forward in time? Or maybe, nowhere at all…
“Energize,” says Lt. Kelso. He winks at me, which startles me out of my dour reverie. I see him chuckle. He knows I’m timid. It’s probably why he assigned me to landing party duty. To give me confidence.
The smug bastard. I hate him, but not really.
I feel suddenly lightheaded, and I almost panic until I realize that the transporter is adjusting the artificial gravity of the platform to match that of the planet’s surface. The whine and warble of the transporter fills my ears. I press my eyes shut as the lights begin to flash.
—
EXHILARATION SWEEPS AWAY MY FRIGHT. Alien gravel crunches beneath my boots. My ears pop with the sudden change of air pressure. My lungs are filled with dry, dusty air as I take my first breath on Delta Vega. There are mountains, craggy and soaring. Oddly, I can see them even though it is night. The sky is black, almost devoid of stars, which I guess I should have expected this close to the edge of the galaxy. There’s an eerie moaning sound in the distance that might be the wind, or some nocturnal creature’s forlorn mating call. The only obvious sign of life is the brittle yellow grass that carpets the flat valley between the mountains.
My spirit soars and I stifle back tears of relief. I’m outside, for the first time in months, since the moment I stepped on the shuttlecraft at the Craven spaceport, waving goodbye to my family. Outside, with a sky and a horizon and grass and non-recycled air. Delta Vega may be an alien world, but it’s a world, and I’m on it, not in it. To a girl who grew up on a farm beneath the endless skies of Deneva, outside is home.
In front of us is the Tellarite mining station. Towers of machinery stretch into the distance, lit brightly by floodlights, bigger even than the enormous grain silos at Pomartown, which, until now, were the biggest man-made structures I’d ever seen. The artificial light from the station bathes the surrounding mountainsides, making them visible in the night. Clouds move above, bottom lit by the floodlights.
Somebody nudges me. It’s Kyle, grinning obscenely.
“Amazing, huh?”
I grudgingly admit that he’s right. It is amazing. I am swept away by the powerhouse of emotion that can only come from being alone on an entire planet, unimaginably far from home. Me and my shipmates are the first humans to step foot here, ever. Maybe the first sentient beings, not counting the Tellarite’s automated mining machines.
My face hurts, I am smiling so widely. I am boldly going. Me. Teodora Melina, daughter of a plinch farmer and a middle-school math teacher from Pomartown, East Continent, Deneva Colony.
I glance at Lt. Kelso. He gives me another wink. This one isn’t to reassure me. This one is an I-told-you-so wink. He knows how it feels, your first time visiting a new, unexplored world.
I wonder if this ever gets old? Based on the expressions of my more seasoned shipmates, apparently not. Everyone in the landing party, without exception, seems to be experiencing a mild state of awe as they take in our surroundings.
Despite our reactions, it isn’t a particularly pretty planet. Nothing but desolate rock and grainy soil and dry grass. It smells dusty and musty. The air feels dead, probably due to the low oxygen concentration. It will be a depressing place to be stranded if we aren’t able to make repairs.
The lieutenant points to a nearby building. Above the wide door, beneath a scribble in the loopy Tellarite script, is engraved GALACTIC MINING COMPANY, DELTA-VEGA STATION in several languages, including Standard English.
We hustle into the building, through a short corridor to a control room with windows that look out over the mining station. Lt. Kelso gives us our instructions. We are to locate a specific list of repair parts. If we can’t find them in the station’s inventory, we are to cannibalize them from the station’s operational machinery. If we break something, so be it. Starfleet Command can reimburse the Tellarites for any damage we inflict.
We all nod. The lieutenant assigns Kyle to be my partner. He instructs us to procure a short list of repair components. He consults the station diagram on his PADD, then points down a corridor, telling us we should look for an equipment bay in that wing of the facility.
—
IT’S A BIG BUILDING. We get lost, even though Kyle is consulting the station diagram on his tricorder. It takes almost an hour, but we manage to find the equipment on our list and make our way back to the control room. Lt. Kelso congratulates us, but something is troubling him. Some new development.
I want to ask him what’s happened, but I don’t dare. There’s a blueshirt here too, and I recognize Lt. Alden. He’s bent over a control panel, removing a hardwired panel. He glances up at me and Kyle, his face tense.
Lt. Kelso’s communicator bleeps. He flips it open, and the chief engineer’s grouchy brogue sounds loudly. “What’s your status, Lee?”
Lt. Kelso answers in clipped tones. “Almost ready. We have everything except a few modules we’re cannibalizing from the control room. Thirty minutes, max.”
“Better hurry lad. The captain’s beaming down with Mitchell and Dr. Dehner. Meet them at the entrance.”
“Aye, aye,” says Lt. Kelso. He closes his communicator, turns to Lt. Alden. “You heard him, Alden. Things are about to get interesting.”
Alden nods without looking up from his work. He’s sweating.
Lt. Kelso motions to another blueshirt whose name I can’t remember, and they hurry out of the room, leaving me and Kyle gaping behind him, holding our bags of spare parts. We both move to the window. Below us, a sparkling mass of light indicates that more personnel are beaming down from the ship. Kyle slides the window open, and we can hear the whine of the transporter.
It’s the captain, the first officer, the chief medical officer, plus Dr. Dehner and Gary Mitchell. Mitchell is slumped, and as soon as the transporter’s confinement field releases them, the captain and first officer lunge forward and grab his shoulders to keep him from falling. Something is clearly wrong with him, and I recall Andrea’s disturbing description of his glowing eyes.
I can’t see his eyes from here. Lt. Kelso and the blueshirt join them. The captain turns to Kelso.
“Can you do it, Lee?”
“Maybe, if we can bypass the fuel bins without blowing ourselves up.”
Next to me, Kyle frowns.
What’s going on?
Below us, the captain nods, gestures toward Mitchell. “Take him.”
Everyone but the captain and Dr. Dehner cluster around Gary Mitchell. Lt. Kelso leads them into the building.
Alone with the captain, Dr. Dehner gazes at the far mountains. “There’s not a soul on this planet but us?”
The captain isn’t in a reflective mood. His reply is terse. “Nobody but us chickens, Doctor.”
He spins and rushes into the building. Dr. Dehner hurries after him.
—
KYLE AND I RETREAT from the window where we’ve been eavesdropping just as the party accompanying Mitchel enters the room. We busy ourselves at a wall console as they hustle past us into one of the adjoining corridors. Lt. Kelso remains in the control room. The captain and Dr. Dehner arrive moments later. Dehner disappears down the corridor after Mitchell. The captain stays.
Lt. Kelso moves to Alden, who has finished removing a control circuit board. Alden lifts the board from the console.
“I think I’ve got the 203-R set, Lee.”
“Good, Alden. Transport it up with you, will you?”
“Okay.” Alden hurries to the exit corridor, the control board tucked under his elbow.
Lt. Kelso moves to the room’s main console where the captain is standing, hands clutched behind his back.
“The fuel bins, Lee. Could they be detonated from here?”
Lt. Kelso hesitates. “A destruct switch? I guess I could wire one up right there.” He points to a small panel on the main board.
“Do it,” the captain orders.
A destruct switch? Blow up the fuel bins? What the hell is happening?
The first officer strides into the room. This is the closest I’ve been to him since the day I reported for duty, and I suppress a shiver. There are only a handful of non-humans serving in the Starfleet, and none with such a high rank. I try not to stare at his ears. They say he’s half human, but it’s not obvious. He’s wearing a phaser pistol on his waist. I’ve never seen a senior officer wear a sidearm before. My own internal red alert begins to chime.
“He’s regaining consciousness,” the first officer reports.
The captain takes a deep breath, then he and the first officer rush into the corridor where the others had taken Mitchell.
As soon as they are gone, Kyle and I both look to Lt. Kelso. He gives us a grim nod. “We may have to blow this place to hell,” he says. “And I need your help to make it happen.”
All my optimism surrounding the imminent repair of our engines vanishes. So does the raging excitement of being on a new world. Cold fear returns, along with the slithery feeling in my stomach. I’m in an alien situation, and something alien and awful is about to happen.
“Why?” asks Kyle guardedly.
Sadness tints Kelso’s expression. “Something happened to Gary Mitchell when the ship hit that energy field. He’s gone crazy. He’s become a danger to all of us, and he’s getting more dangerous by the minute. The captain has ordered us to maroon him here on Delta Vega. If that doesn’t work, then, well…” he hesitates. “Then I guess we’ll blow up this whole place to make sure he can never leave.”
Gone crazy? There’s certainly be more to it than that. If he is simply delusional, why did they bring him down here? Why the plan to maroon him on a deserted planet? Why not put him in treatment, or at worse, confine him to quarters or the brig? How could one lone person be such a threat that the captain is willing to blow up this entire station to keep him from leaving?
—
LT. KELSO SUPERVISES US as we stretch wires between the main console and the breaker panels on the rear wall of the control room. Crewman Leslie is installing a big red button on the console, and we’re wiring it up to the breakers that control the containment fields inside the enormous fuel bins that we can see through the control room window. They look like three-story-tall eggs clustered around the bases of the lithium cracking towers that line the valley floor. Each one of them holds enough compressed hydrogen-3 to make a significant bomb. All of them together make a bomb big enough to flatten the surrounding mountain ranges.
As expected, there are many, many layers of safety measures that we must bypass in order to rig a destruct switch. We work feverishly, each of us probably wondering what the hell could have happened to Gary Mitchell to cause such a calamity.
Lt. Kelso is a whirling dervish. It’s remarkable to watch him work. He’s moving quickly between me, Kyle and Leslie, guiding our work, assisting where necessary, apparently holding the entire complex wiring diagram in his head. He never consults his PADD or tricorder. He seems to know exactly where every wire must go, where every detailed component in this hastily jury-rigged system fits together, and in what order. Almost nothing is labeled, and where there are labels, they’re usually in Tellarite. When this is over, I promise myself to ask him how he does it.
—
WE FINISH OUR WORK just as the captain returns, but before he can get a report from Lt. Kelso his communicator chirps. It is the chief engineer.
The captain barks into the communicator, “Status, Mr. Scott.”
“The engines are almost fully regenerated, captain. We’ll be able to make warp presently.”
“Has Alden arrived with the control unit?”
“Aye, that he has. We’re installing it now.”
“Will it work?”
“It fits like a glove, Captain.” The chief engineer pauses. “Oh, did Mr. Spock get the phaser rifle we sent down?”
The captain looks confused. “I didn’t order any—” His reply is interrupted as the first officer enters the control room with a tactical assault rifle cradled on one arm. “Affirmative. Landing party out.”
The captain looks angrily at the phaser rifle, and he and his first officer stride across the room to the window. I’m not meant to hear their words, but from my position at the adjacent console, I can’t help it. The first officer is speaking in hushed tones. “He tried to get through the force field again. His eyes changed back faster. He didn’t become as weak.”
The captain spins to face him. “Doctor Dehner feels he isn’t that dangerous. What makes you right and a trained psychiatrist wrong?”
“Because she feels. I don’t. All I know is logic. In my opinion we’ll be lucky if we can repair the ship and get away in time.”
The captain considers his first officer’s words. He moves back to the central console where Lt. Kelso is waiting. The console has been completely stripped except for the destruct switch. Kelso flips open the protective cover, points to the red button we just finished installing. “Direct to the power bins. From here you could blow up this whole valley.” Kelso puts his hands on his hips, gives the captain a solemn look.
The captain glances back at the first officer. He inhales deeply, bitterly. For an instant he seems indecisive, then his features harden. He turns to Kelso. “If Mitchell gets out, at your discretion, Lee, if sitting here, you think you’re the last chance, I want you to hit that button.”
Kelso nods gravely. Kyle and I exchange anxious glances with crewman Leslie. None of us reacts until the captain leaves the room. When he’s gone, all our eyes turn to the lieutenant. He takes a deep breath, holds it, releases it slowly.
“You heard the captain. It’s time for you to get back up to the ship. We need to be prepared to warp out of orbit, and soon.”
—
LT. KELSO ORDERS the bulk of the landing party, more than twenty engineering crewmen, to return to the ship. We’ll beam up in groups of six. Kyle volunteers to be in the last group, to stay and assist the lieutenant. I surprise myself by volunteering too.
The lieutenant looks at us questioningly but doesn’t object. He seems preoccupied by the weight of his orders. Same as the captain, he’d been a close friend of Gary Mitchell, and with his efforts he was condemning his friend to lonely exile and probable death on a remote, barren planet.
—
I’M SHAKING INSIDE as I listen. Lt. Kelso is pointing to the self-destruct switch we’ve rigged to blow up the mining station.
“There’s a thirty-second delay once we hit the switch. Just enough time to beam up. Listen to me. If something happens and you need to trigger the switch, call the ship first, and have the transporters ready to beam you up. Then hit the switch, okay? Otherwise there might be enough time.”
We both nod. The lieutenant puts a comradely hand on each of our shoulders. Kyle and I exchange a glance.
“I’m proud of you both for volunteering to stay,” he says, and he squeezes my shoulder. “Especially you, Melina. This is one hell of a first landing party deployment, eh?”
I try to smile back, but I imagine that my face is white as a sheet. He chuckles, releases his grip, and pulls out his communicator.
“Kyle to engineering,” he says.
The chief engineer’s reply is instantaneous.
“Scott here.”
“We’re ready, sir.”
“Has your jury-rigged bomb caused any instability in the station’s power systems? We don’t want anything to explode before we’re ready, and we don’t want it to go off by chance after we leave, either. How’s that reactor doing?”
Kelso nods as if the chief engineer is standing next to him. “Fission chamber three checks out. The station seems to be running fine.”
The pride is evident in the chief engineer’s voice. “You’re a talented thief, Kelso. Everything you sent up seems to be fitting in place.”
Kelso winks at me and Kyle. “I’m kind of proud of the job we’ve done. We’re going to be ready to transport up—”
It happens so fast none of us have time to react. One of the thick bundles of cabling that we’d stretched between the console and the breaker panel flies off the floor, wraps itself around Kelso’s neck and yanks downward, hard. He drops his communicator and his hands fly to his throat. The cables tighten and his torso is slammed against the console, his head cracking hard, the cables crushing his neck.
My eyes fly to the breaker console where the cables originate. There’s nothing there. The cables are levitating on their own.
Kyle throws off the astonishment that has rooted us in place. He rushes to the lieutenant’s side, grabs the cables and tries to loosen them from Kelso’s neck. “Help me,” he cries.
Me and Leslie rush to either side of Kyle, grab the cable. It is completely taut. It feels more like a solid piece of steel than a flexible cable. No matter how hard we pull, it doesn’t budge.
Lt. Kelso’s hands are flailing aimlessly. His eyes are bulging. The cable is crushing his windpipe, and still it tightens. I look around desperately for something I can use to cut the cable. All our tools have been packed away and taken outside to the beam-up point.
Kelso’s hands cease flailing, fall lifelessly to his sides. The cable continues to tighten. The only sounds are our grunts as we fight to release the pressure, and the sickening crackle of Kelso neck as it breaks.
The cable slackens. Kyle and Leslie stumble backwards. Kelso’s body slides off the console and makes a horrific thud as it flops to the floor. His face is the color of a tomato. His bulging eyes are pink from burst capillaries. His mouth gapes in a frozen cry of agony.
Another sound. Around us, the intricate web of cables we’d strung to create the destruct switch are tearing free of their connections, and in less than five seconds all our work is undone. We duck as the cables flail like angry snakes. Then they all fall to the floor.
Sudden silence.
I scream, and scream again. The others ignore me and cluster at Kelso’s side. Kyle tries mouth-to-mouth but can’t force any air though the lieutenant’s crushed airways. Leslie is on the communicator, desperately trying to raise the ship. I know basic first aid from my training at boot camp, but I have no idea what to do. Lieutenant Kelso’s neck is obscenely crushed. He’s clearly dead.
Dead.
I rock back on my heels and scream again.
—
SUMMONED BY LESLIE’S FRANTIC CALLS, the chief medical officer bolts into the control room and kneels at Lee’s side. Kyle and I lurch backwards to give him room. He notes Kelso’s condition, the angle of his head, the condition of his face. He grimaces, pulls out his medical tricorder, waves it over the lieutenant’s body. The tricorder warbles. He briefly closes his eyes, then turns to us and shakes his head. His voice is cold, bitter.
“Gary Mitchell knew Kelso was on the destruct button. That’s why he killed him.”
Kyle’s face is wet. His fury boils over. “How? How did he do this?”
“I don’t know. Mitchell has become a monster. Something we were exposed to at the galactic barrier changed him. He can see and manipulate objects at a distance with his mind.”
The doctor glances at our incredulous expressions. “I did a series of scans on his brain. It was physically changed by the shock he received at the galactic barrier. It’s changing still, and the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to maroon him here. If he can do this from his prison cell, he might be able to do the same on the ship, no matter how far away we are. In an hour, he might be able to project his power to another star system, or even all the way to Earth. He’s clearly lost his humanity, who knows what else he might be capable of?”
I glance at Kelso’s lifeless body and recall the conversation I’d overheard between the captain and the first officer: We’ll be lucky if we can repair the ship and get away in time.
“We need to get out of here,” says Leslie. “Get back to the ship.”
“No,” says the doctor. “It’s too late for that. We need to find the captain. Hurry!”
A male voice rings out in the room. It seems to come from the air itself. It is smug and self-assured.
“A new age is dawning, and try as you might, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
I jerk. The others look at me, startled.
I gasp, “Was that Mitchell?”
“What do you mean?” asks Kyle.
“That voice!”
“What voice?” says Leslie.
“You didn’t hear it?”
The others shake their heads.
The doctor is giving me a suspicious look. “What did you hear?”
I don’t have time to reply. The room is consumed by a bright flash, and I am struck by the same stabbing pain I’d experienced when the ship hit the galactic barrier.
Too late, I realize. Mitchell has found us.
Dr. Piper’s eyes roll up into his eyelids. He collapses. So do Kyle and Leslie. I stagger to my knees but manage to hold on to consciousness. Barely.
I see you.
Gary Mitchell’s disembodied voice. I don’t know how I know it, but he’s speaking directly to me.
I pound my clenched fists into my temples. I can’t feel the blows.
Darkness, in which two points of light glow.
Eyes.
Mitchell’s eyes? Or my own eyes, staring back at me?
Pain bursts like fireworks inside my skull. Within the flashes are indistinct shapes. Alien forms. Humans. The sphere of an immense jeweled starship. A glowing torus of stone, emanating vast power. An obelisk surrounded by trees in a beautiful forest. An asteroid, hurtles toward a blue-green world. A city floats in the clouds at sunrise. A warship, or is it an eagle? Golden eggs in a dark cave. An ancient weapon that eats planets. A tiny, furry, limbless animal, cooing and trilling. A dagger, dripping with blood. A spiderweb of light.
The flood of images threatens to overwhelm me, send me spiraling into darkness.
I hear a new voice. It is clear and unhurried. It’s a man’s voice, familiar, but this time it doesn’t belong to Mitchell.
Risk. Risk is our business.
I snap back to consciousness. I’m still standing. The others are scattered around me on the floor, sprawled awkwardly, like rag dolls. They’re not moving.
Now I hear a woman’s voice. It’s booming too, like Mitchell’s, but it’s somehow gentler. I realize with a shock that it is Dr. Dehner’s voice.
“My love has wings,
slender, feathered things
with grace in upswept curve
and tapered tip…”
I look around. She’s standing in the doorway to the control room, staring at me. Her lips aren’t moving, but I can clearly hear her words.
“It takes rare flight,
destination unknown,
through tempest of heart,
and storm of purpose…”
Her eyes are glowing. Silver light, like the full moon is shining from inside her skull. This is no vision. This is real.
She smiles at me. This time her lips move.
“He’s not a god, you know. I don’t understand it, but I can feel it. All of this,” She waves her hands in a broad circle that encompasses not just the control room but the earth and sky outside the window, “All of this that we call reality, it’s just…” She pauses, searching for the right word. “It’s an illusion. An illusion that can be manipulated, once you’re aware of the true nature of things. That’s what Gary is doing. He’s found the controls to the inner workings of the cosmos and he’s learning to use them.”
“He murdered Lee Kelso,” I point accusingly to the lieutenant’s body.
Dehner gestures mildly toward the destruct switch on the console. “Wasn’t Lee preparing to kill Gary?”
“In self-defense!”
She purses her lips. “Self-defense is a relative term, Melina. You could say that Gary killed Lee in self-defense.”
Her glowing eyes swivel to focus on something behind me. She smiles. I shudder and turn. Gary Mitchell is standing behind me.
“Crewman Melina, isn’t it?” His words echo, as if we’re in a stony cavern instead of a small control room.
I don’t move. Actually, I can’t move. I’m frozen in place, not by any power of Gary Mitchell’s, but by my own terror.
He nods amiably. “It is frightening, isn’t it? Your first voyage into space, and now you’re out here all alone, at the edge of reality.” He points to the motionless forms of Kyle, Leslie, and Dr. Piper. “You’re wondering if I’ve killed them. You’re wondering if I’ve killed everyone up on the ship. You’re horrified that you’re alone here in the company of monsters.”
Maybe he could read my emotions from my face, but I suspected he could feel them directly from within my soul.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t one of your nightmares, Melina.” He gestures, encompassing the room and the alien landscape out the windows. “This is, in ways which you don’t yet understand, as real as it gets.”
He raises his arm and points a finger at me.
A shock of alarm crosses Dr. Dehner’s face. “Don’t hurt her,” she says.
Mitchell’s smile widens, and he casually lowers his hand. “Of course not. A god should care for the innocent, isn’t that right?”
I still haven’t moved. Mitchell winks at me, scornfully. “The universe is both smaller and larger than you know, crewman. Far more complex and yet more stupidly simple than humankind has ever imagined. I can imagine it, though, for I have peeked through the curtain at the edge of the galaxy and glimpsed the truth.”
He is nonsense-talking, like a villain from an old horror movie.
He laughs. “Villains are often misunderstood heroes, crewman, as you will discover.” He raises his hand again and takes a step toward me. Dr. Dehner tenses, and I steel myself for the worst.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” he whispers. He reaches out to touch my forehead with his index finger.
I don’t know what to expect, something apocalyptic, I suppose, but all I feel is a warm and slightly moist finger-tap. His expression doesn’t change as he drops his arm to his side. His voice assumes a conspiratorial tone.
“Destiny is real, Melina. It’s woven into the fabric of the universe just as surely as time, energy and space. Inside the galactic barrier I saw the machines that weave reality, glimpsed the weavers. Now I am becoming a weaver, and you, Melina, are a thread in my tapestry. How shall I weave your destiny? Into which pattern will I embroider you? How long is your thread before I chose to cut it?”
His gaze lingers thoughtfully on me, then he turns to Dr. Dehner and indicates the window where the dawn has painted the mountains a deep gold. “Now come with me, Elizabeth. Wonders await.”
—
THEY’RE ALL STILL BREATHING, Kyle, Leslie and the doctor. I shout and shake them in turn, to no effect. It is only after I’ve rocked back on my heels that the doctor stirs. He gropes for his medical kit. I open it for him, and he selects a bottle, from which he swallows a stimulant pill. I help him to his feet. He quickly examines the unconscious forms of Kyle and Leslie, pronounces them stable, then asks for my help in finding the captain. He leans heavily on me as we hurry through the mining station corridors.
The captain and the first officer are tumbled in a heap near what was presumably the cell where they had detained Mitchell. I hold back in the corridor while the doctor rushes to the captain. He kneels, and as the captain wakes, offers him one of the stimulant pills.
“It hit me, too, whatever it was. Kelso is dead, strangled. At least Spock’s alive.”
The captain shakes his head to clear it. “Dr. Dehner?”
“She went with Mitchell.”
The captain indicates the first officer’s prone form. “Don’t give him a pill until after I’m gone. It’s my fault Mitchell got as far as he did. Did you see their direction?”
“Yes, there was some morning light. They were headed across the valley, to the left of the pointed peaks. There’s flatlands beyond.”
The captain struggles to his feet, begins limping toward me, headed for the exit. He gives me a somber glance, turns back to the doctor.
“When Mr. Spock recovers, you’ll both transport up immediately to the Enterprise.”
“But Captain—”
The captain leans and retrieves the phaser rifle from the first officer’s limp arms. “If you have not received a signal from me within twelve hours, you’ll proceed at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with my recommendation that this entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation.” The captain spins the rifle’s cylinder, switching it from the stun setting to the highest lethal mode. “No protest on this, Mark. That’s an order.”
He brushes past me. The doctor shakes his head and I hear him mutter something that sounds suspiciously like, “He’s a damned fool.”
—
MEDICAL ORDERLIES ARE WAITING when we beam back to the ship, and they take Kyle and Leslie, both conscious but badly stunned, to the sickbay for examination. I slide out of the compartment before anybody notices.
I shuffle like a zombie around the curved corridor to a turbolift and tell it to take me to deck thirteen in the ship’s dorsal structure. Positioned at the rear of the ship’s primary hull, the dorsal is a thin, wing-like structure that connects the primary hull to the lower hull where the engineering compartments and shuttle hangar are located. The hollow spaces inside the narrow connecting dorsal are mostly consumed by turbolift shafts and utility connections between the hulls, but there are also a couple of small observation galleries. I exit the turbolift into one of these galleries.
I’m alone, as expected. The ship is still at alert condition, so the crew is occupied. The compartment is long and narrow, with windows lining both long walls. Three couches are arranged along the room’s centerline. The lights are dimmed. Somebody has left music playing. I don’t recognize it, but it’s soft and melancholy, some kind of jazz.
The windows are closed. I take a deep breath.
“Computer, open the window guards please.”
I close my eyes and listen as the protective outer shields slide open. I let out a slow exhale and open my eyes.
Delta Vega is a swollen mass of drab browns, grays and golds. It’s impossibly huge, completely filling the port-side windows, moving slowly beneath the ship as we orbit. I can see incredible details, dry riverbeds, dune fields, the enormous and almost featureless prairie that girdles the equator. Tiny straight lines radiate for thousands of kilometers from a central hub, which I realize must the be mining station. Gary Mitchell, Dr. Dehner and my ship’s reckless captain are still down there. They are the only souls on the entire, vast world. I turn and peer out the opposite set of windows. Nothing but infinite blackness. Not a single star. There’s no sign on the purple barrier.
I hear a voice, Mitchell’s, echoing as if from a far distance.
Morals are for men, not gods.
I look frantically around the room, but I’m still alone. A few moments later I imagine I see a ripple of nothingness radiating like a shockwave from the location of the mining station. I blink, but it’s gone.
—
I PASS THE CAPTAIN on my way to my quarters. He’s accompanied by the ship’s doctor and two medical orderlies, apparently on the way to sickbay. He sees me, slows. His shirt is torn and he’s filthy and bruised. He gives me an appraising stare. Normally I would squirm but I’m too tired and still reeling from the events on the planet.
“Good work down there, crewman…?”
“Melina, sir.”
“Melina, eh?” He squints. “This was your first landing party, wasn’t it?”
I nod. He makes a grim snorting sound that is anything but a laugh.
“Is Dr. Dehner okay?” I ask.
He looks exhausted, possibly in shock. “Both Dr. Dehner and Lt Commander Mitchell were lost. They gave their lives in performance of their duties.”
Two more dead. That made twelve shipmates lost in the past few days. Twelve souls that the captain must carry on his conscience, the outcome of his reckless actions. Including Gary Mitchel, his friend, maybe his best friend.
Had the captain killed Mitchell with the phaser rifle? Had he gunned down Dr. Dehner, too? I search for remorse in his expression and find none.
—
WE LINE UP AT ATTENTION in two rows, stiff in our dress uniforms. The captain is reading a letter to Starfleet Command. All of us who took part on the landing party are to be commended. His face is clear of doubt, his voice strong. I can see pride glowing in the faces of my comrades.
Next, the captain announces the schedule for the memorial service for “those shipmates we tragically lost in the line of duty.” His voice never falters; he might as well be announcing plans for a Thanksgiving dinner.
Finally, just before we’re dismissed, the first officer passes out the Planet coins we earned for trodding on the alien soil of Delta Vega. The coin is heavy in my palm. It’s gold, with a diagram and the name of the planet on one side, the Starfleet symbol on the reverse. The primary color is blue, which symbolizes First Contact, the first humans to ever land. The most sought-after color of them all.
I stare at it. Why would I possibly want to keep a memento of the awful experience? Every time I look at it, all I’ll see is Lee Kelso’s bulging eyes as he was murdered. I’ll throw it in the trash recycler as soon as I get back to my quarters.
—
WE MAKE WARP early the next morning. I’m still in bed but I can hear the engines spooling up, feel the rumble rising through the frame of my bunk. I will report to duty this morning and tomorrow morning and the day after, but my boss, Lt. Lee Kelso, won’t. He’s dead, his body frozen in the ship’s morgue along with ten others.
I eat a silent breakfast alongside Andrea and Kyle. Both their faces are slack, but I see something in them that’s completely missing in me: a steely determination. They will not let their shipmate’s deaths be in vain.
I have no such determination. As far as I can tell, all the terror and sacrifice out here at the edge of the galaxy was a complete waste. We shouldn’t be out here at all. What did it get us? Death, death, and more death. Wasted young lives, ended in senseless violence.
Kyle and Andrea, they’re afraid, just like me. And yet here they are, and I know neither of them will turn back. They’ve swallowed the Starfleet Kool-aide; they’re drunk on the madness of it all. The glory of stars and starships. Hell bent on sharpening their steel against the hardest edges of the universe. Living the adventures of a thousand lifetimes on the final frontier.
Not me. I couldn’t care less about our much-ballyhooed five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. I’m eighteen years old. I should be at home breathing fresh air under cloudless skies. Dating boys, trying to find a good teaching job. Joining the Starfleet was a huge mistake. Maybe I’m a coward, or maybe I’m the smartest person on this ship, because I don’t want glory. I simply want to live.
Five years.
Five goddamned years.
The TALOS stories (so far…):
Episode 01: Delta Vega (Where No Man Has Gone Before)
Episode 02: Mudd Pie (Mudd’s Women)
Episode 03: The Countdown (The Corbomite Manuever)
Episode 4: Blood and Salt (The Man Trap, coming ???)
This is a work of fan fiction. It is a labor of love and is offered freely and generates no form of revenue for the author or anyone else. Star Trek is a registered trademark of Paramount Global (previously ViacomCBS and/or Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Broadcasting, Inc.). The author is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Paramount or CBS.
