Surefoot 09: Rising Star

Now he saw the worry in her eyes. "Land? We can't-"

He rose to his feet again. "Colonel, there's no choice. I take it you don't want to abandon the Rising Star and everyone in stasis?"

Her expression tightened. "You take it correctly."

He nodded. "The ship's emergency landing systems, the extendible re-entry wings and balloons, are still operating, and I think we can get enough power to the manoeuvring thrusters to assist in the landing. Tell your pilots to start preparations."

Nika paused.

"What is it?"

"Our most experienced pilot is in the shuttle on the planet. Those onboard have some skills, but...but I am sure they will do their best."

"I see." He held out his hand. "Give us our combadges back."

Nika stared at him, before reaching into the pocket of her jumpsuit and almost angrily slapping them into his palm. "There. Leave. We don't need you. Yeban'ko maloletnee."

Her last words didn't quite translate, but he got the idea. Jonas never took his eyes off her as he handed Soolamea her badge and pinned his own back onto his uniform, tapping it. "Ostrow to Sureswift, come in, please."

Rrori's grateful voice filled the air. "Jonas! Mother's Cubs, you and Soo have to shut down the thoron interference and get back, now!"

"Prepare to beam Soo back. I'm staying, however." He secretly enjoyed Nika's reaction to that announcement. "And you're having yourself beamed over here as well."

"Uh... excuse me?"

"No time to go into detail now, but we have to get this crate landed safely, and we'll need a talented, brilliant and dauntless pilot - and you're it."

"Jonas, you can't be serious! Landing that old wreck? Do you want to kill yourself?" Rrori paused, and then added, "Seven Hells, Jonas, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that-"

"Forget it. And this isn't suicide - I know what that looks like - it's simply an incredible risk." He looked at Nika. "And I gave my word. By the way, it's a direct order. Unless you want to join Nancy in mutinying?"

There was a moment of silence on the channel, before Rrori concluded with, "Aye, Aye, Sir. You'll still have to shut down that thoron leak if you want Soo beamed back here."

"Acknowledged. Stand by." He looked at Nika again. "Shut down your thoron generator; you were only using it for your weapons systems, and they couldn't do any damage to us, anyway."

The Russian girl stared back, looking a little embarrassed at her earlier judgement of him, before barking the order to one of her crew.

Jonas looked to a concerned Soolamea. "You'll be in charge of the shuttle. Stay put and stay in touch with the Surefoot, update them. You'll be fine."

The Rigelian girl looked at him - and then quickly embraced him tightly. "Don't you die, you hear?"

Jonas was taken aback by the reaction, but managed a quick hug back, before drawing away, feeling himself flush as he replied, a little too glibly, "Don't worry, dying's the last thing I'll ever do."

Rrori's voice returned. "The thoron interference has stopped; energising now."

Soolamea was enveloped by a column of transporter energy, vanishing and leaving a circle of startled faces at the process, something Jonas realised he took for granted before now.

"Why are you staying?" Nika asked, bemused.

He turned to her. "Because I promised I'd stay until you were all safe. I'm in Starfleet; we keep our promises."

"And your friend will be able to pilot us down safely?"

"He's a talented and experienced Flight Officer; he'll be the first to confirm that. But I should warn you... he's not human."

She tensed. "Not human? You mean, like your friend?"

He smiled. "He's... different."

As if on cue, another transporter column appeared, producing the tall, tailed figured of the Caitian, his white-furred hands already raised in a peaceful gesture as the startled, anxious members of Nika's crew reacted, some raising their weapons in his direction. His tipped ears twitched nervously as he looked around. "Hello, everyone. Please try not to kill me, at least not before I save all of our lives."

Jonas looked to the astonished Nika. "His people are called Caitians, the same race as our Captain and Counselor. They're felinoids, as you can probably tell."

She stared at the new arrival. "Is he- is he dangerous?"

Rrori smiled. "I might break your heart, Colonel, but otherwise, no."

"Colonel," Jonas spoke again. "The sooner he gets familiar with your bridge controls and talks with your people-"

"Of course. Jean-Claude! Take it to the bridge! Cooperate fully with it!" As they departed, she looked back at Jonas. "We need to secure the ship for the emergency landing. Will you- Will you assist us, Jonas? Please?"

He smiled. "Lead the way."

*

T'Varik looked up from her PADD. "We have just received an update: The Rising Star was damaged when it attacked the Sureswift, and its orbit is decaying. Cadet Soolamea has been returned to the shuttle, but Cadet Ostrow has remained, and ordered Cadet Rrori to beam aboard to assist in landing the larger vessel onto the surface of Sigma Lambda II."

Across from her, Security Chief Prakesh Abed blanched. "Why the hell wouldn't Jonas have taken the chance to escape?"

"Evidently Mr Ostrow is assuming responsibility for their current plight, and believes he can assist them."

"That's crazy!" At the reaction of Kami, sitting beside him listening to the audio logs on a receiver, Abed added, "Sorry, Counselor. But he's on a ship full of murderous xenophobic fanatics!"

"According to Cadet Soolamea," T'Varik pointed out, "Jonas believes most if not all the adult crew died in transit, and that with the exception of Maxim Golov, the rest are young people brought to colonise the world, espousing the xenophobic attitudes as rote rather than genuine belief."

At the head of the table, Hrelle looked to his wife and Counselor. "What's your assessment of Jonas based on the audio logs?"

Kami removed the receiver from her pointed ear. "I'm not detecting any signs of duress. In fact, very little stress at all, considering; Jonas is actually managing very well, keeping the situation calm, asking open, probing questions, using first names to engage with this Colonel Bunina, while ensuring he had an open link to provide us with intelligence. I'm genuinely impressed with him, given he's has no formal command or psychological training."

"He has no experience assessing a situation like this," Abed pointed out. "We need to exercise caution, and assume the worst."

"I tend to agree with Mr Abed," T'Varik added, calling up an image on the main screen of a tall, broad-shouldered human with an iron-grey hair and matching beard, bright blue eyes and an avuncular smile. Surrounded by smiling children, he looked to Hrelle more like some grandfather than a terrorist mastermind. "Mr Golov maintained a carefully-constructed public persona while he still resided on Earth, but subsequent investigations following his disappearance indicated expected psychological issues involving paranoia and megalomania.

Vulcan's initially guarded relationship with Earth was largely shaped by the actions of the terror squads sent by Mr Golov's organisation from Toralsk, who in his time had been responsible for the deaths of fourteen Vulcans, thirty-six Rigelians, and forty-four Denobulans... but these numbers are significantly dwarfed by the estimated one hundred and nineteen thousand humans murdered in a series of biological and nuclear acts of mass destruction, designed to appear as accidents or attacks caused by 'Aliens', in order to trigger a shift in Terran policy against interaction with other worlds."

The table went silent. Hrelle frowned; despite his experience, he found it difficult to understand the mentality of someone willing to murder so many people in some twisted intention of saving them. "Mr Abed, ready a full security team, including cadets with both Primary and Secondary Security training. Commander, contact the Federation Judiciary Council, if possible reach Craig Whitham, an attaché there."

"For what purpose?"

"To find out what the Federation's legal stance is regarding a known criminal like Golov." Then he looked to Kami. "Young people raised to believe everything this man says... if someone like Jonas tries to shake them out of those beliefs, even unintentionally, how might they react?"

She frowned. "It depends on the person, and the circumstances. But even those who recognise Golov's true nature might refuse to accept it. Because the truth, that the weight of the actions they might have taken, can be too emotionally devastating to face."

*

They moved along the length of the ship, sealing hatches and doors, securing loose furniture, crates and equipment, and double-checking the emergency life support and lighting units in each section. Nika noted how Jonas located these last without any instruction. "You are very gifted."

"Me? No, not really. I've had experience decommissioning a lot of these antiques."

"Antiques," she grunted. "When I was a child, I stood in the fields surrounding Mr Golov's private spaceport. I was surrounded by bluebells and daffodils and heather of the deepest purple, and I looked up at this ship, perched on the launchpad supported by gantries and gravity struts... and I thought it was the most advanced, most amazing machine on Earth."

"It was," Jonas agreed sympathetically. "It's all relative. Someday, someone will be decommissioning my starship, with its Warp 9 drive and holodeck and phaser banks, and think it's the most quaint thing ever." He helped her with a stubborn latch. "How did you get involved with Golov?"

Nika's face darkened. "My family lived in St Petersburg. I dreamt of being a cosmonaut, of working on Luna and maybe even making it to the new Martian Colony. Then the Aliens released a virus. My mother, father, grandparents, my brother Leonid... all died. I was sent to an orphanage. It was there that Maxim Golov visited us, and heard my story. He adopted me, brought me to Toralsk, to his facility in Budyostal. He said he was sorry that he couldn't bring my family back, but he promised me he would help me fulfil my dream... only I would end up going much further than anyone else. And he was right. He was..." Her face tightened. "How can Earth have forgiven the Aliens for what they've done? I don't understand."

He wanted to tell her the truth, wanted to open up and reveal to her that everything Golov fed her had been a lie, that he himself had been the one to engineer those terrible atrocities that claimed her family and so many other families. That with the exception of the horrible Xindi attack nearly fifty years after the Rising Star left, and the odd probe or machine entity, Earth had never faced any attack. But it seemed inappropriate at this juncture.

Instead he looked at her. "It's one of two things: either aliens did commit those crimes years ago, but humans have learned to look past this and forgive them. Or... what you were taught wasn't necessarily the whole truth."

She looked challengingly at him, but thankfully dropped the subject to say, "Come, we have more to do."

They descended to a lower deck, where stacks of black cryostatic capsules flanked the narrow, claustrophobic corridor. Jonas glanced at the datascreens on each, noting the few that had malfunctioned, glad to see so many still working, especially given how young the occupants were according to the data.

She stopped at a door, peering through a window slit to the interior. Jonas joined her, seeing a single capsule inside in the centre of the room, reminding him of a Pharaoh's sarcophagus. "Is that-"

"Yes." She continued to stare inside. "Jonas... I want to trust you."

"I want you to trust me. What can I say or do?"

"You and your friend have made mention of you... attempting suicide. Was this just banter? Or did something actually happen?"

His smiled dropped. He didn't want to admit to it. He'd had enough of people asking about it, talking about it, judging him on it, making cheap jokes about it. He wanted to put it behind him. He wanted to be seen as strong and confident and self-controlled in this woman's eyes.

And yet, at the same time, he wanted to be honest. He wanted to be open. Especially in light of their risk of imminent death when this wreck started its descent in earnest. And yes, he did promise to be honest with her as well. "Yes. Ten weeks ago, I tried to kill myself. A friend rescued me, almost dying himself in the process. He was an Alien, by the way."

She regarded him. "Why did you do it?"

It was asked with curiosity, not condemnation, making his response easier. "I felt worthless. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I was nothing, that all my friends and loved ones shouldn't waste their time with me. I felt without hope, without escape. I felt like my whole body was a dull relentless ache, and that anything was better than feeling this way - even death.

Luckily for me, my friends didn't give up on me. I opened up in Counseling sessions, spoke to others who had experienced the same things. I'm not feeling that way any more. I'm fighting. I'm staying alive."

She nodded. "I too have felt such feelings. The weight of responsibility on my shoulders have often felt too much. I am glad we have both found the strength to continue. I am sure your girlfriend is glad, too."

"Girlfriend? Me?" He frowned in confusion, and then laughed, a little embarrassed. "I don't have a girlfriend! I've never even kissed one!"

Nika stared enigmatically into his eyes - then turned to a wall monitor to switch it on. "Bridge, what's our status?"

A young man's voice replied, "All systems operational, we are aiming for the best landing site per our previous surveys, and we will begin our final descent in thirty minutes, according to the Werewolf."

Jonas smiled and asked aloud, "Is that right, Werewolf?"

Rrori's lilting growl took over. "Yes. The controls are primitive - I strongly suspect if I looked underneath the panels I will find prehistoric animals operating the mechanisms - but it is nothing I cannot handle. I do not know what a Werewolf is, but I do not think I like it."

Before Jonas could respond, Nika leaned in and announced, "We will join you before descent starts. Bunina out." She switched off the intercom and took his hand, squeezing. "Come, hurry."

Wordlessly he let her lead him away, down a corridor, up a ladder and then along the main deck towards an aft section filled with tiny compartments he recognised as living quarters, much like the sleeping berth on the Sureswift. She took him into one, a cramped, cluttered interior with little furnishings.

And pulled him into a kiss. The breath caught in his lungs as her mouth ground onto his, her tongue slipping into his mouth and exploring. He froze, caught completely off guard, even as he was aware of her desperately trying to kick off her boots while still maintaining contact with his mouth. Finally she pulled back long enough to utter, gasping, "Hurry- Not much time-"

Jonas felt his heart pound until it threatened to burst from his chest. He wanted to make sure she was certain about doing this, if was wasn't simply acting on impulse or something, to be the gentleman and inform her that he had birth control implants, and a hundred other stupid, pointless things.

Instead he pulled back and followed her movements to undress, looking over her pale, lithe body, his desire driving him as they practically collapsed naked onto her bed.

*

The ship was beginning to shake violently by the time Jonas and Nika staggered onto the bridge and collapsed into the unoccupied seats behind Rrori and the two crewmembers assisting him. The Caitian had to raise his voice over the sounds of the thrusters and the turbulence pounding against the rapidly-descending starship. "You two cut it fine, where were you?"

Jonas felt his face burn as he secured himself into his seat harness. "We had to double check the rest of the crew in the living section."

"What's our status, Noel?" Nika barked, breathing hard. "Why are we shaking so much?"

"We're waiting until the optimal time to deploy the re-entry balloons; too soon and they risk collapsing before we really need them."

"Don't worry, Colonel," Rrori assured her, both hands gripping the manual steering column in front of him. "I can't tell you how many times I've done this very thing!"

Nika spared a look at Jonas, before saying, "If you save us, Mr Rrori, I will owe you everything."

"Well, Colonel, among my people, we prize human females. They make excellent pets."

"He's joking," Jonas assured her, his fear at being on the bridge of a working DY ship entering a planetary atmosphere eclipsing the sheer pleasure of the sex he had just shared with Nika. He stared at her. She stared back.

Their hands met across the aisle.

Then Jonas' attention briefly returned to Rrori, who had twisted in his seat to glance behind him, his black-tipped muzzle twitching as he sniffed something in the air. Then he shot Jonas a sly grin.

*

Soolamea watched the tactical display, seeing the image of the Rising Star circle around the planet and disappear from view, and opened a channel. "Sureswift to Surefoot: the Rising Star has begun its descent. They should make planetfall in 62 minutes. No problems reported, with them or with us."

"Acknowledged, Sureswift. Our ETA is 68 minutes. Surefoot out."

Sitting opposite her in the cockpit, Nancy Yeager sipped at a hot mug of Raktajino, not having said a word since Soo had returned and Rrori had departed.

Soo looked at her. "Wonder what it's like, descending without inertial dampeners or shields. Must be rough on the kidneys."

Yeager remained silent.

"It was some journey they'd made in that thing," she continued, trying to break through the other girl's defences. "It's really quite robust if you think about it, but it makes perfect sense. The ship was made in an era where, if you broke down even only a light-year from help, help would never get to you in time. So their equipment may be slow compared to ours, but it's a hell of a lot more durable. Same with the crew. But then, you're the historical expert, aren't you? Maybe when this is over you can talk to them? You must have questions."

Yeager stared into her mug. "Yes. I have questions. Questions like, 'How can you sleep at night knowing you were responsible for the deaths of over a hundred thousand innocent people? People killed for your political ends? How do you justify killing humans in a self-declared war to protect humanity?"

"Nancy-"

"Don't 'Nancy' me. The moment we confirmed that it was a ship full of terrorists, we should have phasered them out of existence."

"They're just a bunch of kids!"

"So were the Hitler Youth. So were Green's Young Purifiers. So were the Vega Obscura. Fanatical little offspring, child soldiers prepared to kill innocents just as readily as adults, if not more so-"

"Nancy, stop this! Please!"

Yeager continued to stare into her mug, her voice dropping to a murmur. "I'm sorry. But these people..." She set aside her Klingon coffee and stared out into the void through the cockpit screen. "I told you my family was big on history. Other families took their children to Pacifica, Risa or Disneyworld Luna. Mine took me to the Giza Pyramids, Zefram Cochrane's Launch Site, the Xindi Memorial and the wreck of the Valley Forge.

I loved it, though. I learned that humanity lived as savages for thousands of years... until we began to grow up, on April 5, 2063. When the Vulcans arrived, and showed us that we were not alone... and that we could do better than we'd done. We'd begun to put aside our old hatreds, our greed, our fear, and began to work together, with each other, and with other worlds. Everything we enjoy now - peace, prosperity, unity, the Federation - is because of those people."