Michael A. Martin's solo short fiction has appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several
Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm and numerous Star Trek novels and eBooks, including the
USA Today bestseller
Titan: Book One: Taking Wing; Titan: Book Two: The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award-winning
Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 Book Two: Trill -- Unjoined; Star Trek: The Lost Era 2298 -- The Sundered; Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Mission: Gamma: Vol. Three: Cathedral; Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31 -- Rogue; Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #30 and #31 ("Ishtar Rising" Books 1 and 2); stories in the
Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War, and
Tales from the Captain's Table anthologies; and three novels based on the
Roswell television series. His most recent novels include
Enterprise: The Romulan War and
Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many.His work has also been published by Atlas Editions (in their Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Star Trek Monthly, Dreamwatch, Grolier Books, Visible Ink Press, The Oregonian, and Gareth Stevens, Inc., for whom he has penned several World Almanac Library of the States nonfiction books for young readers. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their two sons in Portland, Oregon.
THE UNDINE WAR UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL Chef’s Personal Log,U.S.S. Cochrane(NCC- 59318) Crewman Bradley S. Cowper, recording Stardate 73968.8*
Commander Drake, the agent from Starfleet Intelligence, has spent the past two days conducting lengthy interviews with every member of the crew who might have witnessed any part of the… incident that resulted in the sudden arrest and removal of Captain T’Vix, First Officer Donovan, and Security Chief Patel at Draken during one of the Cochrane’s routine patrols of the Romulan Neutral Zone boundary. Even I got interviewed for a couple of hours, and I was nowhere near the bridge when whatever was supposed to have happened there happened. After all, I’m just a cook.
It didn’t take long for me to size up this Drake character as an inherently untrustworthy bastard. Commander Donovan probably would have described him as “oleaginous,” but I’ll settle for smarmy, or maybe just oily. Adjectives aside, I don’t trust him any more than I trust those… creatures that Ensign Farquar tells me he somehow unmasked impersonating the captain, Commander Donovan, and Chief Patel. Which is why I’m making this recording on my own personal tricorder rather than on the Cochrane’s computer system. Before he leaves us, Drake will no doubt purge the main computer of any explicit reference to what’s just happened to the top of the Cochrane’s chain of command. That is, if he hasn’t got around to doing it already.
This afternoon, Drake called me in to the temporary Starfleet Intel HQ he’s set up for himself in Captain T’Vix’s ready room. He assured me that I’m above suspicion now, though he won’t tell me exactly why that is. Has he managed to run some sort of medical scan on me without my noticing? He isn’t telling. Still, it was a relief to hear that I’m no longer considered a serious risk of suddenly transforming into a vicious, three-meter-tall praying mantis.
Then the oily bastard told me what he expects me to do next—entirely in my capacity as chef for the officers’ mess, of course. Apparently, Drake is convinced that T’Vix, Donovan, and Patel weren’t the only disguised monsters still trying to blend in among the Cochrane’s senior staff. He suspects that there at least two others, and he hopes an experimental food additive that SI has just developed—to be dispensed discreetly by me—will flush out any remaining infiltrators.
I almost wouldn’t put it past him to give me poison to spike the food with, so that anybody who doesn’t have to rush to sickbay before dessert will stand revealed as an enemy infiltrator.…
JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #S-13
Kaferia (Tau Ceti IV), just outside the spaceport city of Amber
A man of early middle age greets me at the seafront resort, where a strip of low, modern hospitality structures fronts a wide swatch of fine white sand that borders a preternaturally calm, cerulean ocean. A few families and small children stroll the beach and wade out into the peaceful waters. When I turn my gaze inland past the buildings, I see groves of slender Kaferian apple trees swaying gently in the warm breeze. Although this place is the stuff of holosuite fantasies, I have it on very good authority that it is indeed real. If I had lived this man’s life—that of a soldier who had survived an attempt to beard the Undine/8472 monster in its lair—I suspect I’d be sorely tempted to retire to someplace as peaceful as this.
Speaking with a faint but unmistakable Texas twang, the man introduces himself as Paul Stiles, a former Starfleet ensign turned enlisted private in the MACO (Military Assault Command Organization) during the “hot” part of the Undine War. He tells me he’s now a master sergeant, retired, though a MACO is always a MACO.
Stiles’s handshake is as firm as duranium, and his eyes—or some of the memories lodged inextricably behind them—look every bit as gray and unyielding. His gaze, though superficially warm, only barely conceals a cold, distant cast that reminds me of the million-mile stare I’ve seen in the eyes of Jem’Hadar soldiers. I can’t quite tell whether his smile indicates genuine appreciation for an opportunity to record his combat experiences for posterity, or whether he’s merely eager to get this interview done so he can go back to the business of putting the horrors of the war behind him. After we’ve been speaking for a few minutes I notice that this man often straddles a line between what I call “military briefer mode”—an emotionally unconnected, stick-to-the-facts mode of communicating—and the strained, melancholic silences of a soldier afflicted with survivor’s guilt, a man who believes that he somehow let his fallen comrades down by making it safely home from the field of battle. I’ve encountered a lot of people like this. No matter what their counselors may tell them, no matter how many Christopher Pike Medals of Valor such men and women may receive, they will never measure up in their own uncompromising eyes, simply because they failed to do the impossible.
I notice right away that Sergeant Stiles is quick to scowl at my freely admitted ignorance of military lore, and that he is plainly uncomfortable hearing anything that sounds remotely like hero worship. Recollections of combat sometimes make him shudder visibly, making me wonder if the Undine stalk him in his dreams even now. But he doesn’t quite fit the profile of a chronic post-traumatic stress case, since he frequently dons a warrior’s bluster that fits him like a comfortable pair of running shoes. His boasts might impress a Klingon, though they sometimes make him sound as though he’s really whistling—or perhaps shouting—past the graveyard. But he is also quick to chuckle, and I get the feeling that he does so in response to some private joke rather than to any of my questions. I find that strangely reassuring—it almost makes me overlook the sense of hypervigilance the man radiates.
Almost, but not quite.
You were a junior officer on a path toward a solid Starfleet career when the Undine conflict entered its “hot war” phase.
I was an ensign. A junior tactical officer with pretty good prospects for promotion. I was expected to be career Starfleet. There’s always been a Stiles or three in the service, going back to the Earth-Romulan War. And we were a clan of web-footed wet-navy sailors before that.
So with all that tradition behind you, why did you transfer over to the MACO?
I have relatives who’d disagree with me loudly for saying this, but serving in Starfleet was never an end in itself to the Stiles clan. At least it shouldn’t have been. I always saw it as merely a means of keeping humanity safe from whatever Big Bad might be out there sharpening its claws, getting ready to snuff us out, be it paranoid Xindi or Romulans, or those giant three-legged stick bugs who call themselves the Undine.
But Starfleet was heavily involved in the Undine War from the very beginning, just as it was in those earlier wars with the Xindi and the Romulans.
Mister Sisko, there’s “involved” and then there’s “committed.” Those two concepts don’t overlap as much as you might think in times of war. The difference between them is the same thing that separates the chicken from the pig at an old-fashioned breakfast. You see, the chicken is “involved” with breakfast.
But the pig is “committed.”
That’s it exactly. I wanted to be closer to the real action. Not sitting on the bridge of a ship, launching torpedoes by tapping at some tactile interface.
So you wanted the pig’s greater “commitment” to the cause. But if you play that metaphor out to its conclusion, you’re talking about a level of commitment that nobody can survive. A suicide mission.
As a MACO infantryman, you have to make peace with a truth as old as the Trojan War: you might come back with your shield carrying you instead of the other way around. And that’s assuming that you were lucky enough to come back at all. I’ve lost count of how many of my buddies were either vaporized in space, or buried on some godforsaken nowhereworld after a slash from some Trike’s claws left him full of cooties that ate him from the inside out.
Trike?
Trike. Kickstand. Three-legged Deano. You know, the Undine.
Every war generates a fair amount of shorthand nomenclature, mostly pejorative, intended for referencing enemies. The Undine War is no exception to the grand military tradition that allowed such monikers as “Jerry,” “Fritz,” and “Victor Charlie” to enter the general lexicon. I understand the impulse. Still, I have to wonder how the many tripeds who served as MACOs during the war—Triexians and Edosians, to name only two species—feel when they hear a slur like “Trike.” But I sense that bringing that up might not endear me to the sergeant.
Of course. You’ve been in closer quarters with the Undine than most Starfleet officers have managed to get.
I suppose I got closer to Deano than even most MACOs did.
Even that might be a bit of an understatement. After all, you’re one of the relatively few humans who’s actually been aboard an Undine starship and lived to talk about it.
I just did what anybody else with the same training would have done: I tried to keep my buddies alive.
I’d like to discuss the boarding operation, if you don’t mind. Can you give me some of the details?
I was serving with a MACO deta...
