Star Trek (10 page)

C
orsi crouched low, her face centimeters from the crushed ferns, waiting her chance. It had to be done right, according to honor, if it were to work.

At last the horrible sound of chopping ceased. How many dead? A hundred? Two? She forced the thought from her mind, making sure the eyes she turned toward Copper carried no rage.

“Now.”

“Now,” the K'k'tict around her murmured and pulled back.

Lefty, Copper, and two of her recent guards delayed for a moment, standing up stripped saplings and jamming them firmly into the loamy earth. Then they withdrew without haste.

Corsi uncoiled, coming to her full height in the center of the challenge square.

The Smaunif froze. Some with their swords half drawn, some stooped to drag bodies from the way, one with his hand halfway to his crossbow. For a long moment there was no sound.

She knew she was a sight, bruised and wounded in her hand-tied uniform. But she was a humanoid, the first non-Smaunif humanoid the invaders had ever seen. And where she stood right now spoke to their very core.

“Sonandal!”

The Smaunif leader snapped from his daze at the sound of his name.

“Your lack of honor and failure to take responsibility for your mistakes has cost innocent lives.” Corsi based her challenge on forms Pattie—and someone named Solal—had explained, trusting the language file transferred from Pattie's combadge to choose the most stinging phrases. “The lives of my friends require recompense. I challenge you, now, here, to defend what honor you hope to possess.”

Sonandal looked at his troops. The troops looked at Sonandal. If he hoped to ever lead again, he had no choice.

He gestured to a young male close to him. The trooper pulled his sword from its sheath.

Clean, Corsi saw. Perhaps the slaughter had not been going on as long as she'd imagined. The K'k'tict bodies stacked like cordwood said otherwise.

She had hoped Sonandal, seeing her unarmed, would choose to fight hand to hand. It would be harder to keep her promise to the K'k'tict with swords.

Holding it by the blade, Sonandal tossed the clean sword to Corsi as he stepped into the ring.

She caught the hilt, twirling quickly to parry his charging lunge. When he spun back around, she was ready, guiding his scything blade up and over with the broad of her sword.

The Smaunif sword was more a cutlass that anything else. Nowhere near as subtle and balanced as the saber she had trained on at the Academy. Almost a chopping tool.

In fact, she realized as she wove it in front of her, parrying Sonandal's attacks, it probably was just that, more machete than sword. These blades had probably traveled to Zhatyra II as part of a wing assembly or a bulkhead.

And Sonandal was not a swordsman. With each flurry of chops and thrusts he came at her as though she were a tangle of vines.

Which was a very good thing, Corsi realized as she almost missed a step. She was not fully recovered from her fall; her left side was beginning to betray her. Against a master swordsman she'd have been hard pressed to keep her feet, much less keep her opponent at bay.

She had to end this before her body gave out. But not with swords.

Ignoring the tremor in her left thigh, she lunged forward, slapping at Sonandal's blade with the flat of her own sword. Startled, he staggered back, barely able to keep his blade up as she drove him across the square with rapid fire slaps; loud, frightening, and harmless if he'd had his wits about him enough to realize what she was doing.

Corsi stopped abruptly, letting the Smaunif stumble a few steps clear of her. She fought to breathe steadily, not let her chest heave. The stamina wasn't there. Flourishing her sword, she leaned right and drove its point into the ground just outside the square.

Hoping she wasn't making a mistake, she held both hands toward him, palm up, then beckoned with her fingers.
Come get me
.

Sonandal reversed his own sword, thrusting it into the ground. Technically it was still inside the ring, but Corsi suspected stopping proceedings now on a point of order would be counterproductive.

The Smaunif surprised her.

Leaping forward like a frog, he planted his hands on the ground two meters in front of her and spun. It was an awkward-looking round-off, but before she realized his target he drove his heels into her left thigh.

Pain spiked from her knee to her scalp. She barely managed to pivot away without breaking the joint.

Clinging to balance, she turned to take his next attack.

Rolling out of his frog kick, Sonandal came up from the ground with all of his weight behind a smashing roundhouse.

Corsi almost thanked him.

The edge of her hand met the back of his fist, deflecting the force of the blow away and down as she rolled her hand to grip his wrist. Her other hand came up, catching Sonandal below the shoulder blade. Turning at the waist, she let herself fall away, pivoting, and leveraged her weight into his momentum.

The redirected energy of his lunge tumbled the Smaunif leader through the air. He landed with a hollow thud, the breath forced from his body.

Corsi danced lightly to her right, hoping her bounce did not reveal the electric shot of pain stabbing up from her left knee with every step. A duller ache radiated from the center of her back and a ghost of numbness flowing down from her elbow warned her not to depend on her left hand's strength.

She wasn't going to last much longer. If she was going to win, she had to win quickly.

Taking advantage of Sonandal's slow roll to his feet, she turned to Copper, standing closest to the violence of all the K'k'tict.

“If I am to prevail, I must attack.”

“Then do not prevail.”

Sonandal's bear hug caught her from behind, crushing the breath from her. The Smaunif arched his back, raising her in the air, then slammed her to the ground.

Her senses reeling, Corsi rolled away, scrambling to gain distance. Roaring in triumph, Sonandal came at her, his arms wide for another grab.

Coming up on her hands and damaged left knee, Corsi lashed out with her right leg; the from-the-hip kick connecting solidly with Sonandal's knee. He shrieked, stopping himself before his forward drive snapped the joint backward. Getting her right foot back under her, Corsi pushed off from the ground. The right move, the power move, was to come up in a left mule kick to the Smaunif's gut followed by the heel of her right hand to his nose, driving the shattered sinus bones back into his brain. But she knew her left knee couldn't take the impact.

The patched fabric of her trousers popped in the wind as she snapped her left leg up and around in a roundhouse. Pain flamed up her leg as the top of her bare foot slammed into his cheek, spinning him bonelessly away.

Corsi's back muscles spasmed, turning her pivoting recovery into a crablike stumble.

Sonandal hung, his arms limp, slowly swaying forward, away from her. If he fell, he'd be outside the ring. The fight would be over, she would have won, but not the way she wanted. Not the way that mattered.

Lunging forward, she caught a fistful of the Smaunif's uniform just as he fell. Hauling back with all her strength, she pulled him into the ring; tripping him over her right ankle so he sprawled in the bloody mud.

Her left arm would not respond, still bent against her ribs by her spasmed back. Corsi had to turn her back on Sonandal, even as she saw him gathering himself, to reach his sword. Grabbing its hilt, she yanked it from the earth, backstepping with the same motion and slashing it backward.

Her back screamed as she halted the swing.

On his knees, Sonandal met her eyes along the length of the bloody blade.

Corsi deliberately dropped her game face. She let her professionalism drop from her like a cloak and let her horror and disgust at the slaughter show through. Digging deeper, she focused on Spot, her life blood spilling as the Smaunif blade—the blade she held in her hand—split her body, willing the butcher to see her hate and rage.

He saw it. She could see in Sonandal's eyes he saw her hate and knew he was dead.

There was a moan from the K'k'tict, low and despairing.

From the Smaunif, stony silence.

Her left arm would not move. She needed her left arm for what she had to do. But it was still trapped uselessly by her traitorous body's leftward crouch. She was going to have to improvise.

With a curse she flourished the sword, the blade flashing dully as it spun. Reversing her grip, she drove the point of the blade into the ground. Keeping a firm grip on the hilt, she risked switching her weight to her left leg. She took a moment to gather her focus, then she lifted her right foot and kicked down to the side, against the flat of the sword.

Her luck held. The blade snapped first try. And she stayed on her feet.

Corsi brought the broken blade up, almost in a salute, then flung it away.

“We share life,” she said quietly. Then again loudly so the nearer crowd could hear. “We share life!”

“We share life!” the K'k'tict chorused. Her combadge—and another, she was sure, now somewhere close behind them—carried the words clearly to the Smaunif.

She felt tears streaming down her face, but she didn't care. She swung her right arm wide, indicating the K'k'tict, the Smaunif, and the bloody corpses strewn about the killing field.

“We are one spirit!”

“We are one spirit!” the K'k'tict repeated.

Corsi leaned close to the kneeling Sonandal. She'd had a speech prepared, what she would tell these invaders when she had the chance. But as she looked into the bewildered eyes centimeters from her own she realized none of those things were right.

None of those things were K'k'tict.

“We all share life,” she said quietly. “We are all one.”

C
orsi stood across from Captain Gold's desk in his ready room. He hadn't invited her to sit. He was reading her report, rereading it, she knew. He didn't look happy.

“What would you recommend for the Zhatyra system, Corsi?” he asked at last. “What would you like to see happen next?”

“I'd like to see the Smaunif sent packing,” she answered promptly, keeping it formal. “Failing that, relocate their colony to the southern continent.”

Though Copper and his tree town had not known of other volcanic birthing caves, the anthropological satellites had documented dozens more, all in the northern hemisphere and around the equator. The southern continent, with its placid plate tectonics and lack of volcanoes, was the only uninhabited region on Zhatyra II.

Gold sighed. “How would you characterize your compliance with the Prime Directive?” he asked.

“Under the circumstances, fair,” Corsi replied. “Particularly given both Pattie and I were injured and unconscious when contact was made. Except for our combadges, the natives saw no advanced technology function.”

All of their personal equipment, the Waldo Egg, even Pattie's Klingon dagger, had been recovered by transporter without witnesses. Just as Corsi and Pattie had been.

“Starfleet may determine your actions on Zhatyra II warrant an inquiry.”

“Sir?”

“You're a Starfleet officer,” Gold said. “Blue isn't held to the same standard you are because she hasn't had your Academy training. You're expected to know, and to uphold, the Prime Directive.”

“Neither Pattie nor I ever did or said anything to indicate we weren't native to Zhatyra II,” Corsi said, careful to keep her voice in report mode. “Nor did we at any time mention the possibility of life on other worlds.”

Gold rubbed the back of his left hand. A sure tell he was worried. “Of course protecting developing cultures from the disruption of advanced technology or life on other worlds is part of the Prime Directive,” Gold said. “But those considerations are not the key, not the fundamental reason behind the directive.” He sighed, leaning back from his desk. “The purpose of the Prime Directive is to remind us we do not have the right to impose our moral view, our cultural values, on another people simply because we have better weapons. It's there to keep us from playing God. ”

Corsi blinked.

“You mean I shouldn't have done anything?” she asked. “And we aren't going to do anything?”

Leaning back in his chair, Gold again sighed. “The answer to your first question is no—absolutely, you had to act. And, in fact, what you did may not have been to the letter of the Prime Directive, but it was definitely in the spirit. By letting the Smaunif know what the K'k'tict really are, you made it more likely that they'll stop damaging the K'k'tict's culture. But it also means the answer to your second question is yes. We can hope the Smaunif remain bound by their own honor and allow the K'k'tict to flourish. But the Federation can't interfere with events on Zhatyra II without being as arrogant as the Smaunif invaders; certain of their place as the crown of creation.”

“But when we see something wrong and don't fix it…” Corsi let her voice trail off, gathering her thought. “Doesn't the Prime Directive let the Federation avoid its responsibility to the rest of the universe?”

“On the contrary, Corsi. The Prime Directive, by its very strictness, requires and enables the Federation to honor its greatest responsibility: To respect the right of all peoples to find their own way.”

THE END