Curtain Call

A/N: I do not have any ownership of any part of Star Trek. This story is based on the J.J. Abrams 2009 and 2013 films as well as the 1966 The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King." Introductory quotes are things I have found in my own research. And, in case someone believes I may not be qualified to write on genocide and mass murder, in fact I am. My historical Weltanshauung is something I am willing to defend, if any reader would like to take issue with my conclusions or my wording of something.

Warning: This work of fiction is rated M for violence. Do not read if you are sensitive to that sort of thing. Also, there will be no "shipping" of anyone or anything other than what we have seen on screen in the works I referenced above. So, without further ado –

"I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind." ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

o0o0o

A rather skinny blond teenager stepped off the shuttle. He carried only a rucksack and he was alone on the shuttle platform, alone in the sea of other people. He breathed the air of Tarsus IV. Under the reek of the rather old and ramshackle shuttle, so old it still burned fuel derived from crude oil and had that charred smell, the teen could smell the clean forest around him. He had been told to go to the main settlement on this small earth-colony planet, so here he was.

I suppose it's all I deserve after I drove Dad's car off a cliff into a quarry.

The young man found a bench and sat down heavily. He had only a few clothes in the rucksack and only a little money and not even one book to his name. He had been left with a datapad, but there was nothing he wished to write down or find in it. His mother had confiscated his communicator when he stepped on the shuttle to Tarsus IV.

I don't want to hear one word from you for the whole year you will be off-planet with your aunt, he remembered her saying. Maybe spending some time away from Earth will do you good, away from people who cut you slack because your father – And there he remembered his mother's voice failing, and one last shove from her onto the shuttle.

Looking around, he didn't see anything much different between this place and the one he'd left, except Riverside, Iowa had never had so many trees, and it had never smelled so clean and fresh to him. In the 2240s, it had been over four hundred years – since the 1840s – since that part of Iowa had been wild and untouched in a way he could tell this place still was.

He thought he might like it here. Final judgment would have to wait until he met his aunt, of course, but really, anyplace was better than Earth with his mother or stepfather. Anywhere.

Even here.

o0o0o

Cadet James Kirk swaggered into his military tactics class at Starfleet Academy. He was not hungover, for once, which was almost as remarkable as the fact that he was in class at all.

What do I need to go to class for if I only show up to the tests and get full marks? Better to drink and have fun rather than sit here and listen to a stuffy professor who don't know what he's talking about.

That assessment fit far too many Starfleet instructors, Jim Kirk thought. These were the same sorts of people who were unamused by beaming incidents involving beagles, that one keg of Romulan ale rolling down a hill into an Admiral's vintage car, and thought Jim's reputation as a skirt chaser was actually deserved. Stuffy, ignorant, and self-absorbed.

I've lived more of life than any of them and I'm only 22.

But Jim Kirk was in class. Bones, being in this class at a different time but in the same semester with the same instructor, had seen this lecture yesterday morning, and had said he needed someone he could talk to about it. So Jim actually showed up.

A favor for a friend, I'll do. Even if it means going to class.

The professor cleared his throat at the podium and began, "Good morning class."

There was a murmur of "good mornings".

"We are going to be spending this morning continuing our unit on the ethics and laws relating to military actions against civilians."

Jim was starting to feel a bit green. Dammit Bones!

"For today's example, we have the all too recent case of Tarsus IV." The professor sounded bored. "Can anyone tell me something about what happened on that Earth colony in 2246?"

The cadet who still wouldn't tell Jim her first name raised her hand and was called upon. "A major crop failure led to the deaths of 4,000 people."

"True, but not the whole story. Admittedly, that was all that was put into the major news networks at the time. Anyone else?"

4,000 people dead in the capital alone, ten times more than that in the outlying areas. And crop failure only killed half of them, though that would have been bad enough.

Jim told himself to breathe. He could have a panic attack when he was back in his dorm room and his doctor roommate could watch him to make sure his airways didn't close. It took every ounce of self-control to stay seated, not vomit, and even halfway look like he was paying attention.

The professor called on the person Jim had memorably dubbed Cupcake. He might actually have been named Hendorff. Jim really couldn't care right now. "Governor Kodos took full military control of the colony and distributed food rations according to who he felt was most valuable to the survival of the colony."

Also true, but you have no idea what that actually looks like, when a eugenics-crazed madman decides that all nonhumans won't eat, when women will eat half rations, when children will eat half rations if they eat at all, when the household of the governor eats and few others, when in order to get food one couldn't deviate from one's orders even a smidge.

Jim forced himself to breathe and not panic. The professor had accepted Cupcake's answer and had said also that that wasn't the whole story either.

"Anyone else?" The professor seemed disappointed when no one else had anything they wished to say. "All right, then I will have to continue the narration by myself."

Jim nearly threw up when he saw the images the instructor had put on the screen at the front of the room. It was an image of Tarsus IV as the Starfleet forces had found it: a view of the governor's house in the background, while in the foreground were ten to fifteen different humanoid bodies in various states of decomposition. All but the two in the immediate foreground were emaciated, so starved their ribs jutted like bird feet and their bellies had swollen in the last stages of malnutrition. The noted two were dressed in soldier's uniforms, and they had the marks of death by phaser.

"This was how Starfleet found the capital of the colony late in the year 2246. There were many, many dead who simply lay in the streets where they had fallen. There were also a small number of soldiers who resisted Starfleet forces and had to be subdued by force."

Next slide. An image of a Tarsus farm, burned. Skeletons could be seen of the family that had once occupied it. The evergreen trees in the foreground were missing all leaves and branches in reach.

"In the spring of 2246, crop failure brought on by blight led to starvation. People had already eaten their winter food stores and with the failure of the next crop, the hunger began. By late summer people would eat anything they could find, including the evergreen branches, even including each other in some cases. Disease killed perhaps 1,000 people in the capital and at least 15,000 in the outlying areas and farming communities."

Next slide. A firepit, one Jim recognized. Bones, burned and cooked, cracked for the marrow, on the stone hearth.

"Even in Kodos' house, scenes like this were found. It seems the soldiers who seemed well-fed had been eating the dead and dying colonists. Such behavior was certainly not limited to soldiers, and was likely more common than any remaining evidence as found by Starfleet."

Next slide. The capital's arena and theater, and mustering point, from the outside looking so innocuous, even dirty. A building that looked as innocuous as a warehouse for grain and goods.

"In the early fall of 2246, of the original 45,000 or so colonists on Tarsus IV, between 25,000 and 30,000 people remained. All remaining food on the colonized planet was collected by Kodos' soldiers to be distributed as rations, and all colonists were named, numbered, and listed so that proper rations could be assigned."

Next slide. The arena from the inside. The sand on the floor had been brushed aside, showing bloodstains on the stone foundation. Phaser burns covered the inside walls.

"Not more than a month after the collection of remaining food, Kodos ordered all those whose, in his words, useless mouths would eat so much that they would kill everyone with hunger, shot."

There was a collective gasp from the Starfleet cadets. Jim Kirk stared at the bland photograph on the screen. Starfleet had come to Tarsus IV too late to record for memory the real horrors. All that could be demonstrated now, almost ten years later, was the aftermath.

"It is estimated that in fifteen minutes of utter pandemonium, Kodos' soldiers killed no less than 3,000 people in this very warehouse." The instructor paused for a collective gasp from the audience. "It took another two weeks for the remainder of the… undesirables… to be tracked down and killed."

Next slide. Jim nearly had a panic attack. He recognized that pathetic hovel, that so-ugly-it-was-overlooked hiding spot. He knew it. He had been there.

"This was a partisan's hideout during some of the three-month period between Kodos' first genocidal action and Starfleet intervention. It was unclear what had happened to the people who had lived there, but…"

Next slide. Inside the hovel, a squat and squalid little yurtlike hut so similar to so many other dwellings on Tarsus IV (though admittedly finding them in a remote woods location would be unusual): Dirt floor, ragged blankets, a cooking fire.

"The image shows no scale, but I am told this hut was not sized for adults, but for children. There have been no other hideouts found from this era in Tarsus IV's history. It seems apparent that the residents of this place, like so many of the other colonists who had cause to hide from Kodos, were murdered or died of starvation with all the rest."

No no no no no you're wrong some of us lived some of us lived some of us remember but all the rest died so so so many died and their bodies stank and then the flies ate them and the rats ate them and we ate the rats –

"There were some survivors of Kodos' massacre and genocide." Next slide, image of a child on a biobed being healed by a Starfleet-garbed nurse. "Most of the 10,000 or so survivors of Tarsus IV were young adults. Several children were found who had lied about their age to survive or who had hidden in basements or walls. However, the majority were Earth men between the ages of 16 and 35. Almost everyone older had died by phaser or starvation, and almost everyone younger as well. Many women did not survive, as Kodos had decreed they were to receive half rations."

Next slide. Kodos' inner rooms. His crumpled dead body visible behind his monstrous desk.

"There are nine known survivors of the genocide on Tarsus IV who saw Kodos' face. One of them, though which one is classified, killed Kodos." The slideshow faded to black. "Any questions?"

Several hands went up. The professor called on one in the front row. "Why did none of the colonists call for help?"

"They did as they were able. The vast majority did not have communicators capable of sending transmissions off-planet. Those that did, namely Kodos' government, did send transmissions begging for help from Starfleet."

"Why did Starfleet take so long to send help?"

"Many of our ships were tied up in a standoff with the Klingons, many light years away from Tarsus IV. By the time any ships were available to help, it was too late."

"How was Kodos identified?"

"His body was identified by the young man who had killed him."

At that, the class of cadets was too shocked for anything more.

"All right, I want you all to come to class next time willing to discuss what went wrong on Tarsus IV. I'm letting you go early before anyone is sick in here."

It took about five minutes before Jim Kirk could pull himself out of his chair and stumble back to his dorm room. He opened and shut the door to his room rather heavily. Bones – who had been curled up in an armchair reading a xenobiology textbook – jumped when he saw his roommate.

"Jim, what the hell happened to you? You look like the back end of a mule."

"Thanks, Bones. Class happened. I'll be fine."

"The hell you will."

Jim groaned.

"You did go to the military ethics class, right? The one on Tarsus IV?"

Jim's stomach tried to rise in rebellion against its contents again. "Yes, I went to class."

Bones gave him a searching look. "I don't remember anyone in my class looking as peaky as you."

No one else in your class had ever been to Tarsus IV, Jim almost said. But he did say, "Maybe I'm just a sensitive man."

Bones snorted at that.

Jim sank into a chair, too tired to argue. "It was... scenes out of another life," he finally said. "Another planet."

Bones gave him an odd look. "Well of course it was on another planet, Jim," he said as though to a child. "Tarsus IV wasn't Earth."

Silence. Jim could not bring himself to say anything more, and it seemed Bones had run out of questions.

o0o0o

Aboard the Enterprise, after the defeat of Nero, Captain James T. Kirk paced his office, thinking. They had been sent out on a series of small missions, no longer than a month each time, usually just supply runs.

I'm running out of patience for this crap. I was promoted in battle with an insane Romulan and even though I am the youngest captain in Starfleet history, they baby me.

A knock on his door disturbed his train of thought. "Enter."

Spock entered his quarters. "Captain, we have been given a new mission."

"Yes?"

"We are to take food and other supplies to New Vulcan. We are the nearest ship to the location of the supplies. Indeed, no other Starfleet ships are available for such a mission in this quadrant of space."

Hunger pain cold fear – old memories of being on Tarsus IV, not even old enough to shave but more than old enough to die if caught, and all the young ones with him –

"Captain?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Would you give the order over the Enterprise's intercom for this mission?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry, Spock."

Spock looked troubled.

"Out with it, Spock, what have you got to say?"

"Sir, on all previous missions you have appeared displeased by our mission parameters when such parameters have included short supply runs like this one."

Captain Kirk sat heavily in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. "Do you know what it feels like to be truly hungry, Spock? And I don't mean miss a meal, or even a whole day of meals, or even four days of meals; I mean missing weeks of full meals, never finding enough to eat for months on end. Have you ever been that hungry?"

"No, I have not, sir."

"Well…" Kirk wasn't sure how much he felt able to say to Spock. "I have been that hungry and I would do almost anything to keep other people from ever being that hungry if I can help it."

Spock nodded. "That would be logical, considering your life experience in the matter."

Kirk gave the order over the intercom. Spock turned and left. Kirk knew he had given much to Spock, indeed more than he had ever told McCoy (and Bones had been his roommate and friend!). Spock was likely too smart for his own good, and would figure out his story from what he said and from what he did not say.

But he shrugged and, rather than leave his chair and continue his pacing, went back to the paperwork he had been avoiding.

It is a testament to the foulness of those memories that I prefer paperwork to reliving them.

A/N: This story is compliant with the J.J. Abrams movies' alternative canon. From this point on, this story is AU, or will be as soon as another movie in this series is released (whenever that might be). I have fudged the information available on Tarsus IV to make it historically believable. Everything I have written about in this introduction actually happened, more or less, in the Holocaust or in the Holodomor. Feel free to message me with complaints about being OOC or historically invalid. Feel free also to send a nice review before I post the rest of this story, which should be about 5 parts long including this one.