STARFLEET ACADEMY, 2281

Walk not the night, you foolish raw cadet. Know you not that the night
at this place of learning is held in the palms of The Order Of The
Ancient Destroyer? For so is the day, but the light is harder to supress
and make to vanish. It is at night you must needs most greatly and
gravely fear your Masters.

Do not say you have not seen them. Have you not looked about, and seen
those no more eld than you, yet they are given no lessons to rote in?
Have you not stopped and wondered warily why it is that your
instructors, so haughty and kempt as you hem and haw answers that are
never meet or fit, stop and shudder when certain young folk are about?
It was not always so.

Once, a cadet who was named George told Admirals most high that they may
have no club apart, and this he did in open forum. Once, a cadet named
James broke every rule, and it was said, every heart that lined up
merely to be broken, so that it could be said such hearts were broken by
the best of all. But the night came, as the night always does. Now, you
foolish thing, kiss not any companion, even to the one who wears your
ring. Now, do not speak untowardly, or better at all. You have rights,
you say? You have the rights I have, and these are the rights our
Cadet-Masters choose us to have, and this is to say, none at all.

Do not ask why they are put above us, for you may learn the why, the
horrid why. For they hate better than we. While it is we roll our eyes
at a Vulcan's salute, it is they who smash those strong fingers to pulp.
Each darkness in us is made flesh in them, and before them all flesh is
grass. By the same choice we keep such debasement in, they give it free
reign and they are in turn given reign over us. And they are those as
would strike and maraud even if this were not the whole of their law.

What do you ask? Is there one who may hold them to account, and make
those terrible servants of the Hall fear as though they were like us?
Oh, yes, there is such a one. But know certain that he is more terrible
than they. Read you, in less strict times, of those fanciful tomes
concerning magic and a boy that lived? Well, this is the boy that died.
Not once or twice, but many thousands of times. And when he came back?
Many say that he was still dead, and that he still is.

By chance or not, he is called Grayson, but if you merely look at his
face, it is the face of a dead thing. Not by rot or stench will you know
that he is dead. Nor is it by the many reports which proclaimed his
long-ago murder, for those shoddy things also said that there was no
body. It is his eyes, the eyes of the thing that sharks swim around, and
that wolf packs break ranks rather than face. They are also the eyes of
his woman, and of the man they both call father, and how many times has
that leader of men been called a dead thing? What is glimpsed in the
Captain and father is made real in the cadet and the son.

When he came here, the face was seen but discounted, for as has been
said, that boy is well known dead. Yet can a pair of spectacles, the
mantle of a dandyish fop, or the life of a studious social outcast truly
obscure the sight of giants among us? Did we not all see that the
laughter of the wicked became slightly muted, and that their brazenness
became mere officiousness and insistence upon procedures written by and
for them?

Yet still they had the night, and in this they were comforted, til the
false Grayson decided that in fact the night was his. He began his march
by giving erasure to those Admirals sent to look over the Masters'
nightly patrols. Since so many of these were among those, who, it is
whispered, ended his innocence by force and blood and flesh, this seemed
no surprise at first, and no shock at all.

Yet it was when no Admiral was sent forth as overseer, the erasures
went on. Unthinkably, the Masters' ranks began to dwindle, and their
once-sacred nightly practice of lining up we poor lessers for their
pleasure ceased. As their scope narrowed, only those stupid enough to
seek dark corners became their prey, and it was thought that now an
equilibrium had been found. Then, as whole patrols began to vanish,
those crafty Masters sought to make a balance of their own, and this was
balance held by buckets of blood.

Would You Know More?

-----------------------------

Ready you? Well, know that many nights came and went as before, ere the
Masters' plan came to its own. On the last night, a girl ran and ran,
and her tunic seemed scattered threads barely held to her body.

"Help a cadet! Oh, help, I say, what gawkers and peepers there may be!
Make the authorities aware that I and my person are under assault by the
direst and most rapacious of all fiends!"

But those gawkers and say remained such, content to hide away and speak
next morrows of how they viewed no thing that they ought not, and this
was a means of remaining whole and alive. For it was that the authority
was hopelessly corrupt, and in this it sought to become well and truly
even more so.

"We five will describe the help you will come upon, you cadet. Three
will hold squirming flesh steady, and two will strip away all coverings.
You will not need them anymore, I should think. Then two shall hold
phasers at your pretty head, two more shall provide service, and one
will be provided that service most personal of all, nor shall you
scream, filled up as you will be. Only when we are done will the spot
you pass on be made a small crater, so that no trace of you remains at
all, but that others know well that there are Cadet Masters about, and
these must be obeyed in all things."

Her head shook mightily to hear such vulgarity and vileness, and at
straws she did grasp as she drowned.

"But I will provide poor service, I think. For my knowledge of such
matters is a thing made all of limits."

"Then, you cadet--which is to say, you nothing, for these are the same
words to us--let us end your surcrease of such knowledge, and let us
cover all ends of such matter before we are done. You will not die
ignorant, for we are surely that kind."

A voice came through then, and this voice, brought up but a single
generation, could command four hundred, or four hundred billion, and
make none doubt why it was they chose to follow that sound.

"This cadet wants not your kindness, you fiends. I think that she wants
nothing that is yours. I will make this offer, then. Seek taverns and
parlors of dance, as you seek companions that are more greatly willing,
or to whom you may provide such compensation as they might demand for
this service you speak so crudely of."

The leader of these attackers smiled, to look at him, and spoke to one
unseen by way of his wrist's communicator.

"Admiral Brohan, know you that the true target has arrived. He is as as
been spoken of. He wears a nothing's uniform, and yet all he wields are
two strange and weird swords, which are no match for weapons made in
this late day."

But all that reported back was static, when it was not wholly silent.

"What madness is this? The Admiral's plan has come about fully, yet that
Brohan does not answer me any at all."

The sword-wielder, his eyes looking near as coal-like as his hair,
tossed down a package, and from this rolled a man's head, taken from him
forever and always.

"Admiral Brohan answered me very well, I should think. True is it,
though, that I chose to make him answer for the murder of a little boy,
whose death-screams I still hear as though my own. Or were they my own,
after all? And does it matter to you thieves any more than he?"

One thug, the least of all, raised his phaser, yet saw his body's top
half fall in front of the bottom, ere the light left his eyes. The next
least began then to aim his weapon at their still-shaking first target.

"Move not at all, ere she is dust, aye, and less than merely dust."

Yet the foolish one felt his own wrist snap and turn fully round, this
without any touch at all. From the spasm, his weapon discharged as
promised, and his new target was made less than dust, and this was
himself.

"You leader! Your men aim very badly or not at all. You should answer
for their training, which is very poor indeed to see it."

"We are lessened, Cadet Grayson, whose true name is Peter Kirk. But now
we command you surrender to an invisible empire grander than any, and in
this you have no choice."

That one surged forward, moving past the ruffians and bullies, his bag
open again.

"You say I have no choice? I say--you have no heads."

Five heads in all now fell down in this bag, a gift to Grand Admiral
Cartwright, and this gift was rawest crow to one who thought himself
untouchable. Yet now was this would-be avenger in gravest peril himself.
Metal touched his bare neck.

"How will you stop our three-headed lord, Peter Kirk? For you are
greatly foolish. You thought me a victim. But I was your Judas Fish, and
now you are devoured whole. Or have you grown faster than a phaser beam,
fired at no distance at all?"

But the weapon made only clicks, and the unkind one tsked her to hear
this.

"Milady's weapon has no charge. Go and inform your Hall of this failure,
ere I do. I will allow this, since there has been enough killing this
night."

Yet from her other side was produced another phaser, and she was
heedless of him and his entreaties.

"This one has a charge, you sorceror."

Her scream was brief, for now this phaser hit the ground, still gripped
firmly by the hand that held it, this hand still part of the arm that it
came from. The arm, however, had left her body.

"Milady has no arm. Now go, and inform your Hall, for I shall not be so
patient again!"

A phaser grenade taken from one of the fallen was her only answer, and
this was met with a last sigh.

"Milady has no head. I did not wish this. But now, join your fellows, as
I think that your soul surely has. And I shall make of you this night's
gift to the Admiralty, and a reminder that one day, I will have and
halve them, as well. For now, though, I seek my sweet one, my Saavik,
and I must shower first before seeing her."

So you see, foolish cadet, this place is a bad one for all, and growing
worse for some. For now are the cadet-masters even with all of us in
fear. For as our masters stalk us, so does their master stalk them in
turn. Yet until that bloodied hero rules it outright, so are you warned
again.

Walk Not The Night.