The Soldiers of Fear

For Jerry & Kathy Oltion

LIEUTENANT ROBERT C. YOUNG, Bobby to everyone who knew him, sat with his feet on the lip of the console before him. He had the stout build of an athlete and blond hair that sometimes got a little longer than Starfleet regulation allowed. He had modified the regulation chair so that it tilted backward easily, comfort being his highest priority. Life on Brundage Station was dull, routine, and his punishment for telling Admiral Kirschbaum that nothing in Starfleet compared with snow skiing down Exhibition in Sun Valley, Idaho. On Earth.

Bobby hadn't realized he was talking with an admiral at the time, only some pompous fool who seemed to believe that every officer aspired to interstellar travel. Bobby had gone to Starfleet Academy at the urgings of his mother, a dear woman who was afraid that Bobby would spend his entire life on the slopes of the sector's snow-covered mountains and therefore never achieve anything of importance. She was afraid he would die broke and without skills; he, on the other hand, believed skiing was skill enough for any man and more than enough to live a full life.

But he loved his mother. He had joined. And because he had been a good cadet who had done well in officer training, he had gone to one too many off-campus parties, and insulted the wrong admiral.

Friends later told him that if he had made the same comment to Admiral Zlitch, she would have laughed, agreed, and then compared the latest in ski-boot technology with him.

Admiral Kirschbaum had merely said, If you find all of the galaxy boring, young man, I have the assignment for you.

Brundage Station, armpit of the galaxy. Some wag another skier, obviously fifty years before had given the station the Brundage nickname after a famous ski hill in McCall, Idaho, because, rumor had it, Brundage stood on the slippery slope to nowhere.

Brundage was now officially known as Brundage Point Listening Station. Sometimes, in the oldest references to the station, it was called the Furies Point Defensive Listening Station. Over eighty years before, some incredibly powerful beings had come through a point in space near the post, and had eventually declared themselves the enemy. In coming they had destroyed an entire solar system, the remains of which now swirled slowly in the screens. Bobby had seen the old holos, read the old materials, and studied everything he could about the battle that had taken place deep in Klingon space, not because he was interested, but because it was required.

Starfleet believed the Furies would come again.

They hadn't, of course.

Other lieutenants had run Brundage Station, shifting to real duty after three years of service, always swearing they would never watch an empty part of space again.

Bobby had been here two years. After three days, he had been ready to write the admiral an apology. Now he understood what the wily old man had been about. The admiral had given Bobby easy duty to show him that truly active duty was better than sitting on his duff all day, guarding the site where a supposed enemy had appeared the year his grandfather was born.

In most ways, the duty was like any other. The station was small, and sometimes ships stopped. Bobby commanded a team of three others. In addition to the Furies Point, they monitored forty unmanned listening posts, most along the Klingon border. Occasionally they saw something. Usually they didn't.

His evening watch promised to be no different.

He had holographic brochures of several nearby ski resorts in his room, including a low-grav, highly specialized ski center on Regal III. He planned to go through all of them before he slept tonight. His first extended vacation was coming up, and he planned to enjoy every minute of it.

The observation room always seemed big to him, even though it was the size of a shuttlecraft's piloting area. The two viewscreens, opened to the vastness of space, gave an illusion of size. So did the constant emptiness and the inactivity on the control board.

He had some diagnostics to run through, but they could wait. His evening shift had a routine that kept him awake and functioning through the long, lonely hours.

A red light flashed on the control board. The light intermittently illuminated the sole on his black regulation boot. He frowned, sighed, and sat forward.

A malfunction.

At least it would give him something to do.

But the light flashing wasn't the one he expected to see.

Something had triggered the warning devices at one of the listening posts.

His hands shook with excitement, and he had to remind himself that the last time this happened, it had been caused by space debris in the listening post's delicate trigger mechanism.

His fingers flew over the console as he ran a quick systems check.

Everything was in order at both the station and the outpost. But there seemed to be a slight drop in the mass of the outpost. That made no sense at all. How could the mass of an outpost drop?

He tapped his comm badge. "Wong! Airborne! Judy! I got something happening up here."

"On our way," Wong's clear voice came through the comm. "Run the diagnostics."

"Already done," he snapped back. Wong had no right giving orders, even if he was the only one with engineering experience.

But for good measure, Bobby ran a second level of diagnostics. No sense making a mistake when he had time. It would take the others a few moments to get to the control room. They had been in their quarters. Bobby always took the graveyard shift, never liking the concept of artificial night or artificial day.

The second diagnostics checked as well. The mass of the listening post continued to drop slightly, even though that seemed impossible. Something was clearly going on out there. Just what was the question.

He let the air whistle through his teeth. Behind him the door hissed open and Wong, a slender man twice Bobby's age, hurried in.

Wong grabbed the empty chair beside Bobby's, leaned over the console, and ran a third set of diagnostics, his fingers flying over the board almost faster than the eye could follow.

"Mine already checked out," Bobby said. "Both times."

"Hmm," Wong said, apparently unimpressed. When the diagnostic finished, he said, "That makes no sense," and began a series of other tests that Bobby had only heard about. Bobby didn't stop him; better to be careful. Bobby's mouth was dry. He had never thought about what he would do if something real triggered one of the outpost alarms.

Judy hurried in next. Her long silver hair was still down, and she wore a robe over her nonregulation lounging clothes. She was tiny, in her mid-fifties, and the unofficial leader of the group. She had two fully grown children, both in Starfleet, and she liked to cook. Sometimes they even called her "Mom" and she never objected.

"What have we got?" she asked, sliding into the chair to Bobby's left.

"Something triggered one of the posts."

Wong grunted, and started yet another set of diagnostics.

"Have you run tests?"

Bobby glared at her. Did everyone think he was incompetent? "Twice," he told her.

"Hmmm," she said, as unimpressed as Wong had been.

Then Airborne burst in the door, his hair sticking up at all angles. He, like Bobby, had a tendency toward wildness. Airborne liked to jump out of anything moving, safe or not. His tall, lanky frame had survived more broken bones than Bobby could imagine. Over the past year Bobby had been convincing Airborne that jumping off things while on skis was more fun than anything he'd tried. But Airborne had been reluctant to put in all the time learning how to ski, just to jump off rocks. He said he could do that without skis.

"More space junk in the listening posts?" Airborne asked, rubbing a hand over his sleep-puffy face.

"No," Wong said curtly. "I'm reading a major drop in mass. There's something really strange happening out there."

His tone took the levity out of the room. Bobby forced himself to swallow.

"It's for real, then," he said. He leaned forward.

"I'll get Starfleet Command," Judy said, sliding her chair toward the communications console.

"Yeah," Wong said.

Airborne came up behind him, and placed both hands on the back of the chair. "Tell us now, Wong. No sense grandstanding."

"He's not," Bobby said. Wong never tried to take advantage of the others. He just usually thought the others were incompetent.

"Something has just destroyed the warning device at Point 473," Wong said.

Judy paused in midpunch, her hand extended over the console. "Destroyed?"

Bobby ignored her. He was pulling all the information he could on the point. "Information on 473 coming up on screen," he said.

"We don't need it," Airborne said, sinking into the only remaining chair.

Bobby glanced at him. Airborne's normally dark skin had turned a sickly shade of gray.

"The Furies Point," Wong said, his voice sounding to Bobby as if he were going to be suddenly sick.

"No," Bobby said. Sure, they'd all been prepped on the Furies battle, that was a condition of serving at the post, but the Furies tale sounded like one of those grandiose stories skiers told when they got off the hill, trying to make a normal run seem like something special.

Judy was punching the console frantically.

Airborne was double-checking Wong's information. Airborne had a thing about the Furies. He liked to goad the others with stories of them when the tour got too routine.

"Damn," he whispered.

Bobby didn't want to know. But he had to. "Did you scan the area?"

Airborne shook his head. "Just confirmed the point number," he said. "The listening post is gone and we got some strange things happening out there."

Before he lost complete control of the situation, Bobby had to do something. "Well, then, keep scanning it. I want to know exactly what's going on."

"I don't," Airborne whispered. But he bent over the console just the same.

His fingers flew over the console.

"You got Starfleet yet?" Bobby asked Judy.

"No, sir," she said, automatically slipping into protocol. Bless her.

Wong let out a breath. "There seems to be a very large temporal disturbance," he said, "almost as if a black hole has formed where the beacon used to be. Only it's much more than a black hole. More like a tear in space."

"Oh, man," Airborne said. He was hunched over his console. "Bobby ah, Lieutenant, sir I've got a reading near there of five ships. They just appeared."

"What?" Bobby hadn't seen any ships a moment before. He stopped the scrolling information, and turned the screen back toward Point 473. Even on full magnification, he still couldn't see anything.

"I've got the same thing, sir," Wong said. "There seem to be five ships surrounding the disturbance, all in stationary positions. And they're huge!"

"Can you identify the ships?" Bobby asked, making sure to keep his voice level.

Wong shook his head. Bobby scooted his chair over and looked at the readings. He'd never seen anything like them before. At least not in all the manuals he'd studied.

"Two have left position and are headed this way," Wong said.

"How long?" Bobby asked.

Wong glanced at the panel. "Three minutes."

"They've come back," Airborne said, his voice trembling. Bobby watched as Airborne seemed to shake himself, then take a deep breath.

"I've reached Starfleet, sir," Judy said.

Bobby let out breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Scramble this message," he said.

He waited the two beats until Judy nodded that it was done; then he started. "This is Brundage Point Observation Station. We have a Priority One Emergency."

Wong and Judy both gasped, and Bobby knew why. A Priority One Emergency was the highest there was in Starfleet. But if Airborne was right, then they would need all the help they could get.

"Two minutes," Wong said. His voice was shaking.

Admiral Kirschbaum's face filled the screen. Bobby was actually relieved to see his old nemesis. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."

Bobby squared his shoulders and made himself speak with authority, not panic, even though he could feel the rising tension in the room. "The beacon at the Furies Point was destroyed. Our scans showed a small drop in mass of the beacon before it vanished. Now a large temporal disturbance has formed where the beacon used to be and five very large ships of unknown origin have taken up positions around it. Two are headed this way and will be within firing distance shortly."

Bobby watched as Admiral Kirschbaum's face went pale and he swallowed hard. "Five ships?"

Bobby nodded. "Yes, sir. Five."

Admiral Kirschbaum leaned toward the screen. "Can you evacuate before they arrive?"

Bobby glanced at Wong. He shook his head.

"There's no time, sir," Bobby said. "Those two ships are almost on us."

Kirschbaum straightened and nodded once, the closest thing Bobby would ever get to an apology. "Remember your training, Lieutenant. Anything that comes from Point 473 must be considered a Furies vessel. Consider those ships hostile, and their approach an act of war. Respond accordingly. Understand? Relay everything you are getting through this channel for as long as you can."