2295
49
In the Hour of
Broken Dreams
Consul Spock and Marlena Moreau stood together on the floor of the
Common Forum and awaited their executioners.
They faced each other, the tips of the first two fingers of their
right hands pressed solemnly together, a sign of their bond of
affection. Even from this slight union, Spock was able to touch
Marlena’s troubled thoughts; he counseled her to remain calm, to be
at peace with the end that was coming for them both.
Deep rumbles shook the floor under their feet, and a sound like
rolling thunder filled the hall.
Energy weapons screeched somewhere outside.
He felt her love and quiet admiration as she looked into his eyes.
“It was nice while it lasted,” she said.
Spock lifted his eyebrows, a sly admission of amusement. “I presume
you are referring to the Republic.”
“All of it,” she said. “The Republic, your reforms … us.” She
paused as the clacks of marching boots echoed louder outside the
doors. “It was all worth it,” she continued. “Even if it couldn’t
last, I’m glad I lived to see it.”
“My only regret is that its tenure had to be so brief,” he said. “I
am curious to know how this great experiment might have fared on a longer time
scale.”
She smiled sadly. “Yes. That would have been
interesting.”
Interesting, but impossible, Spock reminded
himself. Given the state of political relations between the Terran
Empire and its neighbors in local space, Spock had known from the
outset that a cautious, gradual transition of the Empire to a
republic would never have succeeded. There had been too many
variables to contend with. Just as important, Sarek had been right;
at the first sign of weakness, the Klingons had redoubled their
aggression against the Empire. Keeping them, the Romulans, and the
Cardassians at bay had taxed the Imperial Starfleet almost to its
breaking point.
Then, just more than one year ago, against the counsel of all his
senior advisers, Spock had proposed the unthinkable: unilateral
disarmament. Entire fleets of ships were mothballed; hundreds of
defensive installations were ordered to stand down; millions of
troops found themselves discharged from active service. Then,
before the furor over such a gross dereliction of executive duty
could engulf the legislature, the invasion had begun, and the time
for debate was ended.
Today, Spock’s civilization was reaping the bitter harvest of all
his decisions. The invasion force of allied Klingon and Cardassian
ships had overrun the defenses of the nascent Terran Republic. The
Klingons had unleashed a fleet of birds-of-prey that could fire
while cloaked, a tactical advantage that had proved all but
invincible. Entire fleets of Terran ships had been annihilated, and
one world after another had fallen with alarming speed.
Sixteen hours ago, Earth itself had been blockaded by an Alliance fleet. A hundred thousand Klingon
and Cardassian shock troops were landing on the planet’s surface
every hour. Virtually unopposed, they had wiped out the planet’s
military and political targets and subdued its civilian
population.
Thirty minutes ago, they had begun their siege of the Terran Forum.
Ten minutes ago, the Forum’s external energy barrier had fallen,
and its few remaining security personnel had mounted a doomed
counterattack.
Two minutes ago the shooting had stopped.
One minute ago, Alliance troops had entered the building.
Booming impacts at the locked doors of the Forum chamber heralded
the enemy’s arrival.
Spock and Marlena waited in silence for the doors to break open.
This moment, Spock had known since the beginning, had been
inevitable … and necessary.
Watching the door, Marlena maintained a serene yet defiant cast to
her features that was almost Vulcan in its reserve. It moved
Spock’s human half deeply, and he could not remain silent. “Though
I have rarely expressed it, Marlena, I want you to know … that I
love you.”
“And I love you, Spock,” she said, her poise unbroken.
At that, they turned their eyes back to the doors, which heaved and
buckled under constant, brutal assault from without.
The doors splintered apart. Regent Gorkon entered the Forum chamber
with Legate Renar, the supreme commander of the Cardassian Union.
In the wide corridor behind them, the floor was littered with the
corpses of Spock’s elite Vulcan guards.
Two platoons of foot soldiers—one Cardassian, the other
Klingon—followed their leaders into the Forum chamber, fanned out, and flanked Spock and
Marlena. Gorkon and Renar stopped a few meters in front of the
couple.
“Consul Spock,” Gorkon bellowed, filling the empty reaches of the
hall with his voice. “Your Starfleet is destroyed, your capital
occupied, your government fallen. Kneel and surrender.”
Evincing neither pride nor despair, Spock replied, “No.”
His answer seemed to perplex the Klingon Regent.
“Surrender, Spock,” Gorkon demanded. “Kneel before me and I will
show mercy to your conquered people.”
“I do not believe you,” Spock said. “And I do not
surrender.”
Renar stepped in front of Gorkon and smirked at Spock. “You’re
right not to trust him,” he said, tilting his head at Gorkon.
“There won’t be any mercy for your people. I’ll see to that.” The
Cardassian’s smirk broadened to a grin, and that erupted into a
mocking laugh. “You really are a fool, aren’t you? Diplomacy?
Disarmament? What were you thinking?”
“I did what was logical and necessary,” Spock said.
Spock watched Renar wind up to strike him. He could have caught
Renar’s hand before the blow landed, twisted his wrist, broken his
arm. Spock might even have been able to kill Renar before the
troops on either side of him shot him down. Instead, he remained
still and let Renar backhand him across the face. Spock’s lower lip
split open on impact. He ignored the throbbing sting and the warm
trickle of blood on his chin. It was only pain, a mental
illusion.
Seething with contempt, Renar loomed over the Vulcan. “Your people have been the most brutal
overlords in the quadrant for nearly a century! Did you really
think we’d pass up a chance to destroy the Terran
Empire?”
“You have done no such thing,” Spock said. “I destroyed the Terran
Empire—two years ago, with a single declaration. What you have
conquered is the republic that replaced it.”
Gorkon moved forward to stand beside Renar. Looking down at Spock,
the Regent appeared bewildered. “You have delivered your people
into ruin, Spock. Presided over the end of all you were trusted to
defend. Are you so cold-blooded that you feel not a whit of
remorse? Not a single pang of guilt for your failure?”
“I regret nothing,” Spock said. “I concede no defeat. I admit no
failure.” He weaved his fingers between Marlena’s and clutched her
hand tightly.
Legate Renar turned to one of the officers in his platoon. “Start
recording this,” he said to the man. “I want the entire galaxy to
see what happens when fools lead empires.” The junior officer
activated a scanning device to make an audiovisual recording. Renar
looked back at Spock. “Any last words?”
“With the fall of my civilization begins the end of your own.
Freedom will overcome. Tyranny cannot prevail.”
Renar snorted derisively. “It can if it tries hard enough,” he
said. “And if people like you lack the will to oppose it.” He and
Gorkon stepped back. The Cardassian Legate lifted his arm, and then
the order was given.
A flash of light was all Spock saw of the killing blow, but in that
moment he knew he had won.
The skies of Vulcan turned dark with the ships of the
enemy.
Klingon and Cardassian troops came by the thousands to every major
city and met no resistance in any of them. No violence hampered the
Alliance’s efforts to establish total control over the planet. No
one protested when curfews were imposed, or when the planet’s
interstellar communications capability was disabled and placed
under Klingon control.
On the first day, President Sarek surrendered immediately and
unconditionally. Kang, the new Klingon governor, responded by
cutting off Sarek’s head and leaving it with Sarek’s body in the
main square of ShiKahr.
When a crowd gathered to claim Sarek’s remains, the Cardassians
slaughtered them all in the street, laughing uproariously amid the
screeching of their weapons. The new masters of civilization seemed
determined to prove themselves infinitely crueler than their
predecessors.
The second day brought mass executions. Little reason was given for
who was put to death or why. Government bureaucrats. Law
enforcement personnel. Clergy and adepts from Mount Seleya.
Journalists. Artists. Teachers. Musicians.
Landmarks and symbols were the victims
on the third day. An orbital bombardment reduced the temple at
Mount Seleya to shattered stone and radioactive glass. Lost now
were the ancient teachings of Surak, the eons of preserved memory
in the Halls of Ancient Thought, the arcane mysteries of fal-tor-pan and the Kolinahr. The Vulcan Science Academy lay in
smoldering ruins. Hundreds of museums, universities, and libraries
were demolished, their contents incinerated, their faculties
slain.
At dawn on the fourth day in ShiKahr, Alliance troops began
dividing the Vulcan population by age and gender, by profession and
body type. Parents found themselves riven from children, siblings
were forced apart, lovers and spouses were torn asunder. By the
tens of thousands, the people of Vulcan were marched into
ramshackle internment camps, implanted with biometric transceivers,
logged and identified and “processed.”
The old and the sick were disposed of on the fifth day.
By the end of the sixth day, the Alliance determined where all its
new, pacifistic slaves would be of the most use throughout their
newly expanded empire, and so they began the long and continuing
process of herding millions of Vulcans onto transport ships. Each
man, woman, and child was branded with the mark of a slave,
collared, and manacled.
It was sunset in ShiKahr on the seventh day of the new galactic
order. Saavik, clothed in dirty civilian garb, marched with
plodding steps in a line of prisoners. She was one of ten thousand
newly bound slaves being shepherded toward a massive transport
ship, which was perched atop the rubble of the city’s once-glorious
library. The line jerked forward,
stopping and starting and stopping again. A cluster of Cardassian
officers and clerks, working at the bottom of the transport’s main
ramp, processed a few slaves at a time.
Bitter smoke from nearby burning buildings lingered heavily in the
dry, hot air as Saavik neared the front of the line. At its head,
the prisoners were funneled to one of ten processing clerks. She
overheard the people ahead of her being questioned by the
Cardassian officers.
“Name, city of residence, profession,” asked a Cardassian officer.
It was always the same question, asked the same way.
“Temok, LalKan, particle physicist,” a man answered, holding out
his hand.
A Cardassian clerk scanned it, logged the information from the
man’s subcutaneous transponder, and confirmed his identity. The
Cardassian officer nodded, said, “Research division,” and waved the
enslaved scientist past him, onto the transport.
“Name, city of residence, profession.”
T’Shen, PelHan, engineer. “Construction corps.”
Sokol, KorLir, surgeon. “Domestic servant.”
Kolok, ShiKahr, architect. “Construction corps.”
T’Shya, LorEm, computer programmer. “Research division.”
Saavik moved to the front of the line. She listened to the
Cardassians talking between themselves, speaking about the Vulcans
as if they were deaf or incapable of understanding. “These are the
best slaves we’ve seen in a long time,” said one officer. “Sturdy.
They’ll hold up well on planets like Harkoum.”
“The pacifism’s my favorite part,” another officer said. “Makes
them easy to control. Not like the Andorians.”
“I heard Gul Merdan’s people had to
wipe out most of Andoria,” a clerk interjected.
The officers nodded, and the one who had spoken first said, “Some
people just aren’t meant to be slaves.” He smirked and nodded at
the line of prisoners. “And then there’s this filth.”
A guard nudged Saavik with the muzzle of his rifle and ushered her
toward an open processing desk. Following the example she had
observed while waiting her turn, she halted in front of the table,
just within arm’s reach of the Cardassian officer and his
clerk.
“Name, city of residence, profession.”
“L’Nesh,” she said, using the alias she had been given upon her
return to Vulcan two years ago. “ShiKahr, stone mason.” She held
out her hand and kept it steady as the clerk scanned the chip that
other Cardassians had implanted into Saavik’s palm.
A soft tone signaled confirmation of Saavik’s cover
identity.
The officer’s face was drawn with boredom as he mumbled, “Domestic
servant,” and waved Saavik onto the transport.
Continuing past the processing desk, Saavik concealed her amazement
that Spock’s prediction had proved so accurate. Until that moment
she had continued to harbor doubts that his strategy would work,
but now, watching it unfold on such a massive scale, she allowed
herself to believe he had been right.
The Klingons and Cardassians, like despots everywhere, looked upon
slaves and servants as nonentities, as an underclass to be almost
universally ignored so long as it remains under control. Lulled by
the Vulcans’ cultural professions of pacifism and logic, the
Alliance had walked blindly into
Spock’s trap and fallen prey to the greatest disinformation
campaign in galactic history.
Flush with overconfidence after their swift military victory, they
were unwittingly ushering a hundred million touch-telepath sleeper
agents into their homes and halls of power.
This day had been years in the making. The network of Vulcan
sleepers had grown slowly at first, as each new recruit had been
brought into the fold with extreme caution. But as the network
added members, its rate of expansion had accelerated. Spies and
turncoats had been exposed and eliminated with prejudice. Only the
faithful insurgents remained now, Spock’s loyalists … and soon they
would be ensconced in the First City of Qo’noS, in the Central
Command of Cardassia Prime, on the capital ships of the Alliance,
in the shadowy redoubts of its secret military research
facilities.
Saavik knew that toppling the Alliance—and, one day, the Romulan
Star Empire—would not be easy, nor would it be swift. But she was
certain now Spock had been right.
It was inevitable.
Acta est fabula
As ever, my first and deepest thanks belong to my beloved wife,
Kara. Her encouragement and support make my labors both bearable
and worthwhile.
The original edition of this book marked my first time working
directly with editor Margaret Clark. It was she who called me out
of the blue one day and asked if I would write the story of Emperor
Spock for her just-approved Mirror Universe project. Knowing a
tremendous honor and opportunity when it comes knocking, I said,
“Yes.” Two years later, when she asked if I could double its length
and transform it into a full-length novel, I again had the good
sense to respond, “Yes.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido, as always, was a great help during the
conceptual stages of this tale, and his devotion to teamwork and
collaboration led him to send me pages from his Mirror Universe
Voyager book that dovetailed with my story.
For being a good friend and a good creative partner, I tip my hat
to him.
During his tenure as a Pocket Books editor, Marco Palmieri helped
make certain that a number of continuing story threads I set in
motion in this story were carried forward into the other Mirror
Universe projects.
One of those subsequent projects was the short-story anthology
Star Trek Mirror Universe: Shards and
Shadows. It contained James
Swallow’s tale “The Black Flag,” which put a Mirror Universe spin
on characters and situations I helped develop for the Star Trek Vanguard literary series. Returning the
favor, I incorporated details from James’s excellent yarn into this
expanded edition of The Sorrows of
Empire.
Another pair of authors to whom I owe a debt of profound gratitude
is Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. For the Trill portion of
this book’s story, I borrowed liberally from the work they did in
their short novel Unjoined, which was part
of the collection Worlds of Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine, Volume Two. Saavik’s dive into the pools beneath
the Caves of Mak’ala, and her encounter with the caretakers and the
Annuated, are a direct homage to the sequence Mike and Andy wrote
for Ezri Dax in Unjoined.
Working on a project like this, I would have been lost without the
first-rate reference works of Michael and Denise Okuda (The Star Trek Encyclopedia, The Star Trek
Chronology) and Geoffrey Mandel (Star Trek
Star Charts).
I also apologize belatedly to Chalmers Johnson for borrowing the
elegant and evocative title of his 2004 non-fiction work of
political science.
And, lest I forget, none of this would exist at all if not for the
brilliance of “Mirror, Mirror” scriptwriter Jerome Bixby, and the
rest of the cast and crew of the original Star
Trek television series—including the original “one man with a
vision,” Gene Roddenberry.
David
Mack is the bestselling author of fifteen novels,
including Wildfire, Harbinger, Reap the
Whirlwind, Precipice, Road of Bones, Promises Broken, and the
Star Trek Destiny trilogy: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls. He developed the Star Trek Vanguard series concept with editor Marco
Palmieri.
His first work of original fiction is the critically acclaimed
supernatural thriller The
Calling.
In addition to novels, Mack’s writing credits span several media,
including television (for episodes of Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, magazines,
newspapers, comic books, computer games, radio, and the
Internet.
Mack’s upcoming novels include Zero Sum
Game, part of the Star Trek: Typhon
Pact miniseries; More Beautiful Than
Death, a tale set in the continuity of the 2009 feature-film
version of Star Trek; and a new Mirror
Universe saga titled Rise Like Lions. He
also is developing a new original supernatural thriller.
He currently resides in New York City with his wife,
Kara.
Visit his official site, [http://www.davidmack.pro/]
http://www.davidmack.pro/ or follow him on Twitter
(@davidalanmack).
