Chapter Nine
“1 suppose most of us overlook the fact that even Vulcans aren’t indestructible.”
—Amok Time
“IN HIGHER PHYSICS, concepts are not expressed as laws and certainties, but as probabilities. There is only a 62 percent chance that transwarp will work. The danger is not that it will fail, but that the test ship would fail to return from interdimensional warp travel. Professor Mornay and Vice Admiral Rittenhouse were willing to take that chance. Perren does not realize that Mornay still intends to.”
Sarda struggled to hide the vestigial weakness left by Mornay’s phaser attack. He knew we didn’t quite understand the science he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. We understood the danger. ff from nothing other than the careful lack of inflection, Sarda made us understand the nightmare of being forever caught between dimensions.
“Seems there’s a lot about Mornay that Perten doesn’t realize,” Scanner commented. “She said she’s got no more use for you,” he told Sarda. “How long before she doesn’t need Perten anymore?”
By this time I had been standing silent for many minutes. All the parts of this puzzle were wild. A deviant professor whose theories, when twisted into reality, became a galactic threat; a renegade Vulcan, no less, whose thought patterns could barely be pre-
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dicted by another Vulcan, much less a 1oopy pack of humans who’d come into this wholly unprepared; a starship about to become a sitting duck, no doubt sabotaged from inside by Boma—but how? Could one man shut down a whole starship crew? Even ff he was a leading astrophysicist, even if he had built some of the finest war machines of the past decade, even if he did resent Enterprise officers for a court-martial that ruined his military career—then again, maybe he could do it.
More than anything I hated being trapped. If I had to fail, why did it have to be this way? If determination was a factor for Boma, then it would have to become one for me. I was on the inside, the captain was on the outside. I should be the one getting him in, not him getting me out.
I began to stalk the doorway, The guards knew they were being watched. They glared at me and shifted, lips twisting. Sometimes they rearranged the phaser rifles in their arms. They looked dirty. They looked ready. Exactly the kind of people Mornay would hire. Not an ethic to share between them.
I stared at them. Moved to the opposite wall. Stared some more.
One of the guards kicked the bottom of the door and swore at me, his lips curled back in silent rage.
My eyes narrowed. I kept staring. This was a delicate art. I had to hate them.
“Piper,” Scanner warned quietly, “those blizzard brains are gonna come in here and gently reprimand you if you don’t cut that out.”
The wall was gritty against my shoulder, its stone cold and forbidding. It fortified my burgeoning resentment. I continued to irritate the guards with my eyes. “You can feel it,” I murmured. Then, more strongly, I said, “There’s a rift between Mornay and Perren. I mean to widen it.”
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“Yes. We must,” Sarda agreed. “If Perren supports Ursula now, he will be immoral. He is in a dangerous dilemma for a Vulcan to face.”
I spun around. “And we can use that. Perren’s already vacillating. I saw it in his eyes.” His doubt surfaced immediately. “Piper…” “Don’t tell me I didn’t,” I snapped immediately. Under the sharp wave of my hand he fell silent. “The lives of the test ship crew—that’s the angle to take with him. Either Mornay hasn’t told him about using Enterprise as a test ship, or she’s somehow convinced him it’s safe enough to risk. But what are they going to do with over 400 crewpeople? It doesn’t seem r~ossible that two scientists could take over a whole stafshj’p full of military personnel.”
“The logical assumption is that they will incapacitate the crew in some way,” Sarda said.
“Or trick them into beaming down,” Scanner added.
“Or blackmail them into beaming down.” Once again the stone floor rolled beneath my feet. Back and forth, back and forth, pause for a heavy stare at the guards, back and forth again. “This is getting us nowhere. We could guess all night and still be wrong. We’ve got to get out of here and deactivate that sensor screen or tie up the guards or something, anything to help Captain Kirk get in here and do what he wanted to do in the first place. He’s got to be informed about Boma and Enterprise.”
Scanner stretched and arched his back. “I’ve heard of pipe dreams before, but not Piper dreams.”
I returned to the window. My reflection was caught in the blue caste of the duraglass. Did I really look so tired? I felt old, but not experienced. Years had passed in minutes, all laden with this terrible impotence. Outside somewhere—my mind went out to the Arge- !ian hills with their red and blue foliage, bathed in the light of the banded moonsmthere, somewhere, Kirk
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was waiting for me to take action. Had he understood my message? Did he know he was on his own?
The mercenaries in the hall started moving around, casting rude glances at me. The more I stared, the more they twitched. I couldn’t get out, but they could get in. Their anger would bring them in. It was only a matter of degrees.
A fierce man with missing teeth and a long grassy moustache was the first to lash out. He struck the duraglass window with the butt of his phaser rifle. It bounced off. The glass hummed.
I refused even to flinch. My stare became a leer. I mocked him with my steadiness. Never mind being frozen with fear, of course. This seamy type of planet-trotter would have no trouble killing all of us with nothing but a shrug as explanation. In the reflection I saw Scanner tensely reach for the lid of a crate. Not much of a weapon, but ff I had him scared, imagine what I was doing for the guards.
I didn’t have to imagine. Vexation colored the faces outside the blue duraglass.
“Piper,” Scanner began, a tremor giving him away, “people are morons until proven otherwise. You’re courtin’ live examples.”
Several responses popped into my mind, but to answer him would be also to destroy the string of rage building outside the door. By now I had pressed up to the blue window tight enough to see both ends of the short corridor and keep all four guards itchy. They mumbled at each other, but they couldn’t speak out loud. They didn’t like my intense interest. Grass Moustache could barely stand to blink his eyes anymore, because he knew I would still be there when they opened. His three compatriots had better control, but were slowly losing it. But I had singled out my target.
I focused on the pair of large coffee-brown eyes above that moustache. Eyes that loathed me. Ah, but
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there is no peace in the land of pensionaries. You hire yourself out for a questionable living, you take what you get. Sometimes you get stared at.
This was more than being stared at. As the moments ticked by, I owned him.
His lips peeled back again as the rage boiled up-ward. His shoulder blades hammered against the opposite wall as he pushed himself off and brought the phaser rifle up. One coal-hard eye snapped shut, the other lining me up instantly in his sights. ff only it had been courage holding me there, I would have had a better story to take home.
My legs turned to jelly. I was held in place only by sheer astonishment that my ploy had worked—too well.
“Piper, get down!” Sarda shouted. He slid off the crate, but not soon enough.
Grass Moustache fired his phaser rifle. A single lance of bright orange light decorated the gray corridor and made the diogen touches glow. I dropped to a crouch, covering my head. Above me came the sickening sizzle of cooked metal and melting duraglass. As ú the window disintegrated, I also heard Grass Moustache’s fierce growl. Then shuffling, and another voice.
“Idiot! Cease firing. We haven’t got any place else to keep them!”
“We’ll keep them in an old shoe!”
“Get hold of yourself! Don’t lose your pay over nothing.”
Cautiously I looked up when the sizzling began to fade. The upper corner of the door was dissolved, along with a ragged portion of duraglass. Along the edge of the glass, a phosphorescent red glow was darkening as it cooled. Not enough. Not big enough. My hope sank.
I pressed my hands on the floor, wondering if I
dared stand up and show myself again through what remained of that window.
The chance never came. An explosion rocked the lab, a great boom that threw us all to the floor and vibrated in our bones. It was very close—maybe even this building. The ceiling crumbled and dropped chunks of plaster and stone in dusty clouds.
“Take cover!” I shouted across the room. I was gratified to see the two of them huddled beside a huge cooling cabinet as part of the side wall expanded into a barrier of loosened bricks. Unfortunately, it didn’t collapse. On the other hand, if it did, would it take the whole ceiling—and us—with it?
From across the compound came another explosion, much more distant this time, but much more powerful. It set off a string of popping noises, as though pressurized containers were being exposed to too much heat.
Commotion broke out in the corridor. From the floor, I listened. “What’s happening?” “Hellfire, that’s what! Come on!” “We’re assigned here, not out there.” “Move, I said!” Then, new voices from down the corridor: “Where’s Lugrode?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find anybody from the city side.” “What do you mean, you can’t find ‘em?” “They’re gone, that’s what I slavin’ mean!” “Two of you come with me 2’ “Ain’t movin’ 2’
There was a distinct thud and a groan as authority was rudely reestablished. “You! Stay on that door.”
I got warily to my feet, still hunched down, but now able to peek through the bottom of the duraglass at the scampering mercenaries. The voices were a cacoph-
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ony now, impossible to separate. Only when a man skidded in from the south side with a startling announcement did I begin to feel the revitalization of hope.
“The security signal on the weapons locker is jammed !” the man howled, as though somehow it was pinching him to be cut off from his weapons supply.
I spun toward Scanner and Sarda, fanning my way through settling stone dust. “They’re cut off! And people are missing! He’s in!” “Huh?” Scanner blustered. “Who’s in?” “Captain Kirk! I don’t know how, but-he’s inside!” He slumped and rolled his eyes. “Aw, Piper, I wish yawI’d get off that nag and ride a real horse for a change.” He sat down wearily.
I dragged him to his feet. “Get up,” I growled. “We’re getting out of here.”
He stiflened, but the doubt lingered. “How?”
I had been gazing at the mutilated bricks of the wall, but now I spun on him. “Stop asking that and start thinking it! You heard. They’re down to two guards on us and they’re stuck with the weapons they have in hand.”
“Sure,” he complained. “Those puny little phaser rifles you could shoot a moon down with !”
“Get used to it, mister, we’re getting out. Now.”
Scanner raked both hands through his hair. “Dang! You’re even starting to sound like him!”
His statement caught me by surprise. And an even bigger surprise—I didn’t like it. My own silence sat on me like a rock. My lips clamped shut, my face aching. The smoke hurt my eyes.
Sounds of demolition continued to filter through the outside walls, punctuated by electrical crackling. Sarda was already palming the damaged wall. If he carried any of Scanner’s doubts, he never let me see them. He may or may not have believed we could
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break through that wall somehow, but he knew none-theless that I would never be satisfied unless we tried. What he didn’t realize yet was that I would never be satisfied until we succeeded. I’d die in this place before I would force Captain Kirk to have to rescue me. Somehow he had already managed to get inside, confound the guards, put several of them out of commission, cut off their weapons supply, and set off a chain of explosions to cripple Mornay and Perren. He was a tough act to follow. I would never be satisfied to merely applaud. If I went down on Argelius, this stage would have the marks of my fingernails in it.
Scanner’s words, fraught with annoyance and the truth of fatigue, haunted me. I began to question my driving force even as .we picked at the bucking stone wall and tried to wedge leftover computer parts between the large bricks. No more bursts of courage came to mask my fear; now I had to deal with it all. With the silence came an overwhelming need to get back into space, into space vehicles, to systems I knew and weapons I understood, to the place where I had experienced one great triumph before. I began to focus on that. If only I could get back into space…
Before you can outguess an enemy in three dimensions, you’ve got to be able to maneuver in two.
“Fine,” I spat under my breath.
This drew unwanted attention. Sarda hesitated. “I beg your pardon?”
“Both of you get back.” I moved in on the wall, not really knowing what I would do when I felt the cool, broad bricks beneath my palms. The bricks had shifted against each other, leaving uneven gaps where moments ago there had been only creases. There had to be a weak spot somewhere. “All right,” I said through, gritted teeth, agreeing with yet another unheard urge from you-know-who in my memory, “when in doubt, do it the hard way.”
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“I’m afraid t’ask,” Scanner muttered.
“Where’s something we can throw at it? What’s in those crates?”
I moved toward the heavy metallic storage crates, ignoring the shuffle behind me and the errant conversation.
Sarda’s voice was lowered. “… useless to attempt to talk her out of it.”
Then Scanner, more like a hiss. “Talk her out of it? Hell, I’m not even going near her!”
“Keep an eye on those guards at the door. Make sure they’re not watching,” I said as I shoved one of the crates toward the weakened wall, then doubled back for a second crate. “Help me lift this.”
Insanity must be contagious, because I didn’t get any arguments. Scanner heaved a doubtful sigh but made no comments as the three of us wrestled the second crate onto the top of the first. Sarda’s Vulcan strength allowed him to serve as anchorman while Scanner and I lifted and steered the crate into place, wincing at the screech of metal against metal.
“Okay,” I said. “One more.”
“One more?” Scanner howled. “We jus’ barely got that one up there!”
“That one in the corner should do.”
“But that one’s empty!”
“I know it’s empty. How else could we lift it that high?”
“Piper, I think yawl need shore leave.”
“No thanks. I just had all I need of Captain Kirk’s idea of shore leave. Come on. We haven’t got all day.”
The empty crate was soon in place easily enough, high atop the other two crates, looming just under the plaster ceiling.
“Now what?” Scanner asked. The same question, silent now, hovered in Sarda’s expression.
I wiped my palms on my thighs. “Help me get up there.”
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“What?”
“We’ll never find enough junk in here to add up to the weight of a person, so I’ll provide the weight to break the wall. It’s simple.” “It’s nuts! You’ll kill yourself.” “Beats staying in here. Come on, help me.”
I didn’t want to have to make it an order, yet they both sensed the nearness of that extreme. I wasn’t yet comfortable with command status, but if I had a phaser I would use it, and rank was a kind of weapon. Beside me, Sarda stood silent, hardly blinking. I looked at him.
Softly, perhaps seeking approval, I told him, “It has to be done. There isn’t time for alternatives.”
His hands disappeared behind his back. Slowly he nodded. “I would prefer to take the risk myself,” he said.
“I know.” My voice hovered between us. “But it’s my responsibility.”
Chivalry wasn’t dead; they helped me climb into the highest crate. The metal was cold against my thighs and shoulders as I huddled inside and shut the crate, then braced myself as well as possible. A shiver wracked my arms and legs. Seconds passed as I fought to control it. I had to be ready, body and mind. My weight had to be used correctly. “Ready,” I said. Lying, of course. “On three.” Three came a lot sooner than I expected. I rocked the top of the tower while Scanner ticked off, “One ú.. two… three!”
Into my small, dark world came the sickening sensation of the ground dropping out from under me. The planet tipped. My head struck the crate’s metal wall. My own weight crushed down onto the back of my neck, forcing me into a ball. Then came an abrupt jolt as the crate struck stone. Within the crate, no~se doubled on itself and pummeled my eardrums. I was falling again, turning again.
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Another jolt. This one bent the crate into a weird geometric form, and me with it.
The crate struck the floor and continued to tumble at least one whole turn. The door was ajar now, bathing my confused eyes with raw yellow light. Diogen! The corridor!
Twisting painfully around, I kicked the door outward and rolled out of the crate onto a pile of destroyed bricks in time to see Scannerand Sarda stumble through a ragged opening in the wall. At the same moment, the two remaining guards, eyes bugged with astonishment, skidded around the corner to gawk at us, too stunned even to raise their phaser rifles.
It was Scanner who bolted to action first. He swept up a chunk of brick and pitched it hard. It flew down the corridor and struck one guard where his hand was gripping the phaser rifle. He choked and dropped the weapon between his knees.
Sarda was ready. He moved in quickly, wrestling the guard down, bracing the phaser rifle between them. Without thinking, I grasped a brick and gave it a two-handed heave at the second guard. He saw it coming, but never had a chance to dodge. The square of gray brick slammed into his chest and drove him against a door. He collapsed, gasping. Only then did Sarda succeed in pinching his own opponent unconscious.
He swirled around, his eyes afire, his arms flexed and ready.
For a head-clearing moment I remained on one knee among the rocks, gathering eye contact with my crew before plunging onward into the storm. We needed it. I shoved myself to my feet, quaking with conviction. “Let’s get out of this squirrel cage.”
The outside of the lab building was even in more disarray than the inside. Once we escaped into the dark openness, my sense of immediacy was prickled
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with a sense of vulnerability. Caution returned where moments ago it would only have been a burden. Sarda and Scanner followed me as we twined our way across a compound, hiding from running mercenaries who were scattered about, desperately looking for something to shoot at. Us.
I pressed my shoulders back against a wall as I peeked around its corner, motioning for Scanner and Sarda to close up tight behind me. My fingers made the shape of a phaser.
Keeping his voice low, Sarda asked, “What are you planning?”
“Find the captain,” I said. My skin tightened as three mercenaries trotted past our hiding place, heading for the main lab. Surely by now they knew we were free. Well, we were out; free was something else.
“How we gonna find them without communications?” Scanner asked. “They could be anywhere in a kilometer radius.”
“They’re inside this compound, Scanner,” I insisted. “The explosions we’ve been hearing have got to be Mornay’s booby traps. Somehow Kirk and Spock are setting them off. It’s just a fabulous tactic, that’s all, letting the enemy provide the firepower behind the confusion. I should’ve thought of it the minute Perren mentioned the security system. Kirk should’ve been an urban guerrilla.”
“With his track record,” Scanner pointed out, “he prob’ly was. I dunno if we should try horning in on his business.”
I relaxed for a moment and peered at him. “You never want to try anything. You’re always afraid to take a risk. Why’d you ever join Star Fleet? Why didn’t you stay in Tennessee and raise pigs?” “I’m ‘fraida pigs.”
Simple question, simple answer. He ducked a swat from me, and I shook my head, unable to hide the grin that pushed its way up.
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“If Mornay’s going up to Enterprise,” I thought aloud, “we’ve got to get back to Rex.”
“Like I said,” Scanner pointed out, “we need a communicator to key into the automatic transporter link.”
“Ursula may not reach the starship,” Sarda said then. His voice was a sudden, steadying buffet against the frantic compound noise and Scanner’s Tennessee twang. “Captain Kirk may be able to prevent her from doing so 2’
“I can’t make that assumption,” I said, more sharply than I intended. “I won’t let him down again.”
The determination in my voice caused silence be-hind me. It swelled up like a cloak and covered my shoulders. Whatever happened, I had to make it true. He was counting on me.
As I stood there against the cold stone, every mus-cle in my body knotted, knowing that lives depended on my next decision, I realized the essence of the schooner Edith Keeler. Whoever the woman was, _ whatever she had been to James Kirk, she was now personified in square yardage of sailcloth, gleaming brightwork, brass, and bowspritmshe was what saved him from the horror of these hard moments in the life of a starship officer. It didn’t get easier, as I had once hoped. I understood that now. I would never get used to these moments. I could only save myself from them, find some ship to sail away on, to become sane again and gather up what I needed to go back to space, just as he had learned to do. Even with cold ground beneath my feet, I felt once again the surging of the deck under me, with the deadly and beautiful ocean an arm’s length away, nicely mastered. I heard once again the wind whistle inside the main, and I almost looked upward. If I could learn to pull those halyards and sheets at the right moments, maybe… just maybe ú . . I could pull the fight ropes here and get us out of this alive.
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Key word: maybe.
No–I didn’t want to hear thatú Shut up, Piper, and get to work.
“Come on,” I said before I’d even planned where to go from here.
We made it safely across to the next building, a shed of some sort with a maze of wooden fences in pathetic disrepair, but terrific material to hide behind. Unless they spotted our actual movements, they’d never be able to pick out our forms in this mess.
“Sarda,” I began, “they must have some kind of communications board around here.”
He moved close, keeping himself balanced in an awkward position by holding onto the cross beam of a crooked fence. “Indeed. In Ursula’s main lab. She had to be able to contact supply ships, and her guards, of course.” “Just point in the right direction, will you?”
He ignored my irascibility and quite simply pointed. We skulked across the paddock area, skirting fences upon fences, halfway around the farm until only a short expanse of open area lay between us and the main lab.
“I‘11 go alone,” I said.
Both arms. Not even a chance to get up. I looked to one side—a stern Vulcan truth. And the other side— Tennessee smoke.
I let my head drop for a moment and took a deep breath. “Listen, both of you. ff I fall, then you’ll still be free to try again. You heard what Captain Kirk said. This mission is more important than any one of us. Maybe more than all of us.”
Sarda’s expression never flickered. He had no intention of arguing, any more than he intended to let me go in there alone.
It was Scanner who spoke. “ff we let you go, how’re we gonna know what crazy thing to try next? Face it, Piper. Nobody thinks like you.”
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“Oh, thanks, Scanner, thanks a lot. And here I was, waiting for an oath of loyalty.”
“Oughta know better by now.”
I stole a glance at Sarda and was relieved to see that his mouth was drawn upward on one side and he was deliberately not looking at Scanner.
“All right,” I conceded. “I’ve got enough to fight. I don’t need to be fighting you too. But stay in close formation. Sarda, you know the way in.”
“Roughly. I was not permitted to roam freely.”
“You lead then. Scanner, right behind him.”
Scanner moved into position. “Bet you wish you had a phaser,” he teased as he shifted past me.”
“Hell, I wish I had a slingshot,” I admitted. Only then did it occur to me that I probably could have made one out of available materials if I’d had my training screwed on straight. Luckily, neither of them thought of that, and I got away with it. “Go,” I said quickly, taking advantage.
My nerves electrified as we hurried across the open area, dodging searchlights as the beams swabbed the ground in search of us. Mornay must have been planning the theft of transwarp for some time—at least since the failure of Vice Admiral Rittenhouse’s scheme with the dreadnought. She must have had this compound set up immediately afterward, and had the security system already activated when she, Perren, and Sarda arrived, though I now believed Mornay and Perren had planned this from the moment Vice Admiral Rittenhouse died. Even now, sporadic explosions and crackling voltage told us the chain reaction of sabotage was still running. Kirk must have found some way to trigger those booby traps. It was the only explanation that made sense—and I really needed things to make sense right now.
Except the part about Dr. Boma. My heart withered as I remembered that element. I deeply wished it hadn’t made such sense. I had a sudden, absurd,
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overwhelming desire to stand up straight and yell at the top of my lungs, “CAPTAIN KIRK, YOUR SHIP IS IN DEEP TROUBLE! WHERE ARE YOOOOOOOOO?” Luckily, I managed to keep it to myseff for the moment. Somehow, I’d find him. Together we’d make our way back to that distant schooner with the mysterious name.
Even as the reassuring thought filled me with strength, we slipped into an alcove and were met with a sight that siphoned the strength out again.
A few meters away, between the main lab and a carefully arranged pile of file crates, stood Ursula Mornay and four mercenary guards. They held their phaser rifles sighted coldly upon Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.
I crouched, almost by reflex alone, and pulled Sarda down beside me. Scanner saw our movements and dropped instantly. Our blood cooled as we watched and listened.
The captain and Spock stood side by side, unflinch-ing before the phaser rifles, but definitely sobered. She had them. Somehow she had caught them. But what about McCoy and Merete?
“How’d she get them?” Scanner whispered.
“Shh. Listen.”
“… really think you can pilot a starship with a handful of hired guns?” Kirk was putting to Mornay.
“I have crewpeople, Captain,” Mornay said as she opened and tuned a hand communicator. “All I have to do is pick them up. And you’ll help me do that, or your crew will remain in their semicoma until they die. I have a knife at your throat, Capta’m Kirk. I promise, I will cut you.”
Scanner’s voice buzzed faintly at my ear. “What’s she tawkin’ about? She got ‘em strapped down in front of old movies, or what?”
“Obviously she has the crew hostage somehow,” Sarda whispered back, even more faintly.
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“A whole starship?”
I shushed them with a swipe of my hand, and myself was stilled by the expressive glance Kirk exchanged with Spock. I ached to read his mind the way Spock could. I saw a thousand thoughts in that one glance, truly a trade of minds, perhaps of plans. So close…
I pressed my hands on the jut of wood that partially hid us in our alcove shadow, pressed until the wood cut hard into my palms and forced me to accept the damning reality that Captain Kirk was out of reach, at least for the moment. My drumming message would have to stay inside my head even longer.
Mornay brought the communicator to her lips. “Samuel? Have the guards beamed aboard?”
From the instrument in her hand came a dull buzzing voice. “All who checked in are aboard now. Some are still missing and we can’t seem to find them.”
Mornay paced a few steps and eyed Captain Kirk, who remained carefully impassive. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “As soon as you’re ready, beam up the captain and Commander Spock. I’m sure they’ll be cooperative, but have the guards ready just in case.”
“They’re ready, believe me. We’ve dealt with those gentlemen before.”
The voice was distorted by the distance between us and the communicator itself, but there was no mistaking that arrogant cadence. Boma.
My message to Kirk fizzled within me. He already knew. And Boma had already won. The Enterprise was in orbit, and Boma was in control. It seemed unfathomable that one man could incapacitate 400-plus people who were supposedly Star !eet’s best, but then again, I was supposedly Star Fleet’s best too.
I drew my shoulders inward, fighting a terrible shiver. Luck does run out, even for Star F!eet’s best. Perhaps my luck had been spent on the dreadnought affair. Maybe that was the best I’d ever do. Maybe I couldn’t beat that act. It was hard enough trying to get
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used to being called Lieutenant Commander when I hadn’t even completely gotten used to being called Lieutenant. Everything I did seemed to be running about ten minutes tardy.
Incapacitate a whole starship crew? Damn her, that wasn’t fair! I gritted my teeth and forced my insecurity to become anger. Anger was workable stuff, and she could only kill me once.
I dug what was left of my fingernails into the slat of wood and listened harder.
Mornay was fiddling with the communicator. “Per-ren, are you there?”
Static from the damaged electrical system caused the frequencies to jump, but soon the cool voice came through. “I am making final installments in the portable memory.”
“Hurry up. We’re ready to go.”
“What about the guards?”
“They’re already aboard the starship. We’ll prepare to leave the solar system as soon as you beam up. We’re going now.”
“I shall be there momentarily.”
Without the courteous, if mechanical, sign-offs usually used over communications channels, Mornay flatly readjusted her instrument and hailed the ship again. I kept my eyes on Kirk. He was absolutely unmoved, as relaxed as he had been during those long, quiet hours of ocean crossing when there was nothing to do but watch the sea roll. He wasn’t tensed, ready to attack, waiting for that minute flinch that would give him his cue. Spock also stood calmly. Only when the eerie whine of a transporter beam caused my skin to tingle did I realize why the two officers made no effort to free themselves; they wanted to get back on board the starship. If there were fights to be fought, at least Enterprise would know its guardians were where they belonged, doing what she needed them to do.
As we watched, the clutch of oddly matched person-
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alities dissolved into elongated prisms, and dissappeared.
Without a pause, I redirected my thoughts. “Let’s go. The main lab, Sarda.” “This way.”
We got about three steps before Scanner grabbed my arm and said, “Hold it. Yawl aren’t gonna believe this. Look what I see.”
What he saw was two familiar figures clumsily skulking their way across the compound, heading in the opposite direction from where we were going. Before I could stop him, Scanner had stuck his fingers in his mouth and let fly a. shrill whistle. Seconds later, McCoy and Merete were gathered into our little nest.
“Where’ve you been?” McCoy hissed, eyes wide.
“Where’re you been?” Scanner retorted.
“Looking for you.”
“I can top that,” Scanner crowed. “We bin lookin’ for everybody.”
I squirmed between them. “Scanner, shut up or I’ll cork your face. Doctor, what do you know?”
“Didn’t you hear that conversation?” Dr. McCoy flipped a hand back at the now-empty compound.
“Only the end of it.”
“Oh.” His eyebrows worked as he steadied himself to tell us what he had hoped we already knew. In one way he hated having to repeat it. In another, he was quaking to get it out. The conflict within him showed on his face, at once anguished and enraged. “Boma waited until the ship was in Orbital status, then he gassed the whole ship with a hypnogenetic compound.”
“A who?” Scanner blurted.
“A narcotic. Sleep-inducing gas. Deep and dangerous sleep. It causes severe reduction of metabolic rate.” He inched closer, as though to intensify his words and used one hand to illustrate the terrible, intangible truth. “Anyone who ingests it can literally
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sleep himself to death unless an antidote is provided soon enough.” “The knife at Kirk’s throat,” I murmured.
“It’s more than that,” Merete said, glancing at Dr. McCoy as though she knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling. “It’s a progressive coma. The time element makes a difference. Mornay didn’t tell the captain that. Maybe she doesn’t even know it.”
“That class of drug is an idiot’s playground,” Mc-Coy insisted, his fist now clenched. Suddenly I saw something in him that I hadn’t before. He’d always seemed amusing to me in his moments of exasperation, but now he moved beyond exasperation to down-fight bitterness. He seemed to feel about the Enterprise crew the way Mr. Scott felt about the ship itself. The crew was his. His children. His expression grew stony with violence as he thought of what Mornay had done to them. “Many drugs in that category don’t have antidotes at all,” he said, nearly growling. “She might not know that or even care. She might just as easily be lying to Jim by telling him that she can undo what Boma’s done. The crew might already be dead.”
His fatherly wrath, and the accompanying sense of helplessness, spurred me to convictions even beyond my own. I leaned toward him and promised, “You’ll get your chance to turn the tables, sir. We’ll get there somehow.”
“Yes, we must,” Sarda interrupted. “Perren cannot possibly know about this aspect. He would never participate. I’ll take you to the lab.” He started away. The quickness, the suddenness of his movements triggered a foreboding deep inside me. He was hurrying now, but his motivations had shifted. Some hidden imperative in his movements told me that, and the echo on his heels was Perren, Perren, Perren. Was there enough logic in the galaxy to turn Perren now? Sarda disappeared into a narrow doorway, leaving only the question behind.
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I motioned Dr. McCoy and Merete after him, meaning to bring up the rear guard.
Scanner stepped past me. “Don’t worry. It’s just hero worship.” Sharply I answered, “I can’t count on that.” Unease set in on top of the fear. I set my determination on kill and pushed my motley group onward into the lab building after Sarda. My memory kept scouring the vision of Kirk’s face, his glance at Spock, Spock’s silent response, for some hint of their plans, or at least their opinions. No answers yet, though. I was still on my own. Rats! Things were really getting bad when I couldn’t even pretend that Captain Kirk had all the solutions in his pocket.
Sarda paused at the end of one hallway, confused by the dimness and trying to remember which corridor held the main lab. The passages were narrow and moist, the stone walls considerably older than those of the building we’d been held in. We had no idea how long the farm had been abandoned, but a faint animal scent still clung to the mossy walls. The corridor was a dead end, with only one doorway at the left.
“Sarda,” I called quietly before he reached the door.
He stopped, halting the whole line of us, and I squirmed past the others into the lead.
“Stay behindme,” I told him. Leading with my shoulder and a good dose of nerve, I peeked into the lab. Nearly stripped bare, the lab held only a few engineering consoles, a computer outlet, and a few empty metal crates. There weren’t even any chairs left, if there had ever been any in the first place. I motioned the others inside. Scanner nudged the door shut.
There was only a little more lighting in here than in the corridor, though these lights were electrical rather than the diogen filament torches that ran through the hallways for function rather than for close work. Evi-
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denfly Captain Kirk’s handiwork with the electrical system had depleted the power leading to the labs. But that didn’t matter any more. There wasn’t anyone left but ourselves. The work done in these labs was ominously complete.
Sarda appeared beside me. “The communications board should be near the mainframe outlet. They would have no reason to take it with them.” As he spoke, he hunted through the piles of discarded equipment and storage crates. “Yes, here it is. Partially dismantled.”
The two of us lifted the portable console up onto a nearby cabinet. It looked like a computer board with a hangover.
“Can you fix it?” I asked, grimacing in empathy with the mangled board.
“They likely did not intentionally dismantle it,” Sarda said, “but merely cannibalized some parts. We may be able to bypass those and create enough signal to trigger your ship’s transporter.” “Scanner, what do you think?”
He moved in between us and thoughtfully twisted his mouth. “Doesn’t look too bad. You want me to try?”
My shoulders drooped. I gave him a deadly glare.
“Okay, I’ll try,” he said, and put his hands on the console.
The doctors and I spent several minutes gathering the bits and pieces that fit Scanner and Sarda’s descriptions of what they needed, and the communications console quickly began looking more like its own kind. Scanner pulled up a crate and sat down before the tilted mechanism, and began attempting to contact the automatic pilot aboard Rex. “He’s up there, I know he is,” he muttered self-consciously.
“Can you boost your gain?” I asked.
“Rex‘11 answer, don’t worry.”
I couldn’t help it. I still had trouble trusting a ship
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that looked like the remains of a brewery explosion. I leaned over his shoulder, trying to make sense of the red blips on the tiny screen as they ran through white cross hairs, seeking matched waves. “Maybe you need more power. There’s got to be a—”
Nonregulation bulldozers hit us from behind. We never even heard them coming. Only their vicious warning growls preceded the impact, and only by a fraction of a second. I was struck hard in the middle of my back with just enough balance of force and re-straint that I was momentarily stunned but still quite conscious. The room spun, a whirl of pain and faces. My legs withered under me as the pain in my back took hold and my nervous system responded. Something gripped my arms and pulled me up and around, then crushed me back against a pile of crates, and a gnarly hand cupped my throat. For an instant I almost tried to strike back. Mercenaries were only human, after all—
But these weren’t Mornay’s hired guards. These faces hated us well beyond the value of a credit payment.
A Klingon disruptor brushed my cheek. Stale breath wreathed my face.
His head at a menacing tilt, Gelt snarled his satisfaction. “Dance with me.”
With great effort I pulled my eyes from his and confirmed the nightmare: four Klingons at attack stance held disruptors cleanly on Sarda and the others.
“Where is it?” Gelt demanded. “The science you’re making here.”
“We’re not the scientists,” I choked past his grip. I tried to keep the pain out of my voice for the sakes of my friends. “As you can see, they took their equipment and left. We’re not even sure what they were doing.” Nary a flicker of belief damaged his anathema.
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“Transwarp,” he whispered. Well, so much for that bluff. “Where is it?”
All right, if he wanted answers; I’d give him answers. “About 35,000 kilometers away from here by now, I’d say.”
His grip at my throat tightened, clawing inward under my ear. My carotid artery pounded, and I had to drag in what little breath he let me have. Starved for oxygen, my lungs began to ache and the pain in my back throbbed enough to make me dizzy. “Straight up, I’ll wager,” Gelt said.
His smugness enraged me, as it had once before. I bumped my arms against his hard chestplate just to show him how I felt, and forced my voice to rasp past his grip. “That’s right, fossil face, and there’s nothing you can do against a starship.”
There was something intensely satisfying about be-ing despised by a Klingon. Not particularly pleasant, but satisfying anyway. If my mouth hadn’t been rock dry, I’d have spat at him. Past his ugly face, McCoy and Scanner were refining the art of astonishment.
Gelt’s lips peeled back in hatred as he fanned his gun arm outward and barked at his nearest fellow taran-tula, “Hlch Qorch.t Toogh!”
As soon as his hand was free, Gelt ripped open his belt guard and pulled out the kind of dagger that’s so mean looking it draws blood with appearance alone. And it was still in a sheath! Gelt wanted to see the blade, though. With a snapping motion, the sheath struck the floor and bright silver glinted between his face and mine. “Your friends are corpses,” he said. “But you… you are what we call bortas choQ. Do you know the words?” His hand pressed tighter on my throat. His teeth were gritted, his whisper one of hunger. Only his lips moved. “Revenge meat.”
The blade rasped wide. Now there were claws on it. Never let it be said that Klingons had no sense of drama.
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I tensed, waiting for the impact. Die with a Klingon blade between my fibs?
The room erupted into flaming lances. From a hid-den alcove came a burst of phaser fire. First one Klingon, then another were blasted across the room into heaps. Not really understanding, I reacted first and thought about it later. I jammed my knuckles hard into Gelt’s right eye as he turned to look. He howled, and lost his grip on my throat.
Two more Klingons were sighting down at that alcove, exchanging disruptor fire for phaser bolts while trying to take cover behind a table and a lighting stand. Sarda dropped back onto a counter and brought his legs up, and nailed one of the Klingons in the side of the head with both heels. The Klingon went down, but roBBed over and staggered up again, to be caught by a phaser shot. He skidded into Gelt’s legs, and both went down.
Free now, I fought to stay up on thready legs. Gelt was trying to get up from an awkward position, tangled with his unconscious cohort, and I knew I had only seconds. I reached upward, grasped a heavy air-conditioning unit from a newly carved wall outlet, braced my feet on the wall, and heaved. It stuck. With an inelegant shift of my weight, the unit jolted loose and I pulled it down on Geit’s head, adding what strength I had left to the already weighty object. Gelt convulsed once, and went limp.
I slumped against the waft, gasping. My vision dissolved into a black tunnel before I could assimilate what was happening with the last Klingon. My ears roared, then whined, then began to accept the gift of blood and air again. I hung a hand on the open collar of my flight suit, glad it wasn’t a turtleneck.
I hadn’t realized I was slipping down the wall until Dr. McCoy’s voice beside me was accompanied by firm support from both sides. “Are you all right?” Scanner was there too. “Did he cut you, Piper?”
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I shook my head and blinked down at the fuzzy shape of a Klingon disruptor, still clenched in its owner’s hand. “How come,” I rasped, “we’re the only ones obeying… Argelian law?”
A sigh of relief fell from Scanner. He looked first at the inert form of Gelt, then at me. He shook his head, struck by my raw invertebrate-level hatred of Klingons. “You know, I think you must have some tribble in you,” he observed.
My vision was starting to return now that I could breathe. I coughed once, mostly to make sure I wouldn’t make a fool of myself when I answered them. With an indelicate shove, I straightened up. “Scanner, get back to work.”
“You all fight, though?”
“Sure … go on.” I pushed him back toward the communications console. Not very convincing; I was still leaning on Dr. McCoy, surprised at the strength in his slender form.
What had happened? Had I been imagining it when I saw Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock being beamed away? Were they here? Had the cavalry come in again?
I blinked and took deep breaths, willing my vision to clear.
But the form in the alcove was neither Kirk nor Speck.
Perren moved somberly from the archway. The phaser was still held upward, but he was looking down at the last of the Klingons, now a quivering lump at his feet. He was carrying a nondescript metal case by the handle, which left his right hand free for the phaser. Now he looked up and made a fleeting eye contact first with Sarda, then me. Clutching the metal case tightly, he moved out of the alcove, keeping his back to the wall and the phaser firmly raised.
I moved away from McCoy. Walking was an effort. My back throbbed where Gelt had bludgeoned it. I didn’t stop until my own crew were all behind me.
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Sarda came up at my side, though, and I knew there was nothing that would wave him back. “Thank you,” I said.
Perren nodded a single, simple nod. “You’re quite welcome.”
Disturbing moments shuttled past as we wondered if we were captive again. Five of us against one Vulcan and a phaser… incalculable odds indeed.
Perren, perhaps sensing that, provided the answer. “I have no intent of challenging you,” he said, not quite able to mitigate the edge of warning in his tone. He moved sideways, toward the door, the rich green quilt of his tunic making a shock of color against the gray stone. “I am sorry our goals cannot harmonize.’;
“Neither do yours and Professor Mornay’s,” I told him, also moving slowly toward the door, hoping he wouldn’t feel threatened yet. “Mornay intends to use Enterprise as a test ship for transwarp. She doesn’t care about the safety systems or the lives of the crew.”
“The crew will be beamed down when we reach our destination,” Perren said. “They will live.”
“They may already be dead,” Dr. McCoy spoke up forcefully, a distinct blade of professional experience giving credence to his statement. “Mornay’s either lying or fooling herself about how easy it is to provide an antidote. Narcotic gases shouldn’t be played with, and to her it’s all a game.” He nailed the words to Perren’s chest with a hammering truthfulness.
“She’s finished with safety, Perren,” I carried on. “If transwarp fails, she’ll take over 500 people with her into interdimensional hell, and if it doesn’t fail, the crew of Enterprise is already forfeited. She’s fooling you. Don’t let her.”
Doubt flickered on his fine Vulcan features, but only a flicker, and soon controlled. He swallowed stiffly. “Ursula has planned carefully. The narcotic is not lethal.”
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“She’s a theorist,” Merete interrupted in the tough-est tone I’d ever heard from her. “She’s not a medical specialist. No one can learn how to handle hypnoge-neticides overnight. It takes months just to isolate correct dosages. Are you going to believe her or Dr. McCoy?”
Perren wrapped his arm around the metal case, and I was stricken with the undeniable image of a child clutching a stuffed toy. For many seconds he never moved, nor even blinked. The inner battle slimmed his eyes and drew his blade-sharp brows together. Beside me, Sarda tensed with a kind of empathy only Vuicans could understand, a remote kind of blending in which the integrity of personal privacy was constantly at risk.
The wild, impossible victory against a sister ship recurred in my mind, and Captain Kirk fed me one of his favorite tactics from the reaches of my memory. Push, push, push till it explodes in your face.
“You’re being used,” I insisted. “She’ll turn on you. Hundreds of lives will be the cost.”
“Piper is right, Perren,” Sarda said. “I entreat you, believe her.”
He hadn’t used the word “correct.” He had said “right.” A subtle difference; a moral difference.
Perren stepped.over one of the unconscious Klingons and reached the doorway, then hesitated. He seemed unwilling to leave us until he had made his conclusions and then explained them to us. That alone showed me his unsureness. His need to explain proved to me that we were breaking through.
‘I must tread a center course,” he said finally, and not without some diffidence. “I must stand by my calculations and my hardware. I am willing to do so for the sake of my goals. This–” He waved his phaser once over the fallen Klingons. “—is the sort of event I am trying to stop.” The twitching bodies of our ene-193
mies, still caressing their weapons, illustrated his point neatly. “Ursula underestimates Vulcans. It is a perfect cloak for me to wear.”
Sarda stepped toward him, now standing slightly to one side between me and Perten. “It is illogical to sacrifice the lives of an entire starship crew,” he said, reverting to simple didactics.
“It is illogical to sacrifice all I have worked toward on the basis of a danger that is only theoretical.” Perren’s voice jumped a shade toward that irritation I’d heard before. “If the starship crew is already dead, then they are no longer a factor. You are free now. I shall neither help nor hinder you. There is nothing your ship can do against a starship.” He looked from me to Sarda, the change evidenced by only the barest tightening of his mouth. “I regret that we must part.”
Sarda remained absolutely still. Only I, standing so near to him, perceived the advance of his tension and his efforts to hold himself back. “We need not part,” he said.
Older and fully trained in his Vulcan controls, Per-ren had less trouble subjugating his regret. Having been caught up in the rare experience of human-Vulcan friendship, I’d wondered for a long time now what friendship would be like between two Vulcans, if indeed this was friendship and not merely that strange training bond necessary between mentor and pupil. As Spock had pointed out to me, Perren and Sarda had much in common from the beginning—mostly the fact that each had had trouble fitting in to current Vulcan conformity. It must have been comforting for Sarda to find another Vulcan who understood his awkward place, someone of his own race that he wasn’t obli-gated to explain himself to. I wished I had thought of these things earlier. I’d have been more prepared for what was coming. Perren nodded, but not in agreement. It was some-194
thing different entirely. “Then I regret that we part before our objectives can be shared. It remains only for me to wish that you live long and prosper.” He spoke slowly now, without the edgy tone of underlying rebellion that had always been there before. Backing out into the corridor, maintaining his expression, he vanished.
My hand reached out for Sarda, who was already moving. “Sarda, wait!” I gasped.
He paused at the door, cast a glance back at me, and fitfully gripped the stone for an instant as though hoping to find something to say that would explain. He was torn in half. Even a Vulcan couldn’t hide that much torment.
He pushed himself off the door frame. We heard his boots on the hard floor of the passageway.
“Sarda!” I started for the door.
Scanner’s voice caught me back for an instant. “Piper, I got it!”
I drew an invisible circle around him and the doctors with my finger as I skidded to a stop at the doorway. “Beam up! I’ll contact youl”
Deep Argelian night had thoroughly penetrated the stone building now that most of the electricity had been strangled. I was tired of feeling cold. I’d only felt warm once since leaving Earth, and that was because of a Klingon growling at my throat. Even running through the building failed to heat my blood. The injured muscles in my back screamed with each stride, and my head pounded now whenever I took a breath. At every turn I caught a glimpse of Sarda. He was healthy and fast; keeping up with him was terrible work. At the turn of the last corridor, I gave in to a useless urge and called once again, “Sarda, wait—”
To my utter amazement, he whirled around and stopped. Was he surprised that I followed? Had he forgotten so much?
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He turned again, in time to see Perren’s distant form retreat into a smaller building.
I jogged to a halt a few feet from Sarda and steadied myself with a hand on the wall. He turned once again to me, hesitantly at best.
“He’s probably getting the last of his equipment,” I said, drawing a deep breath, “before he signals Mor-nay to beam him up.”
Sarda gazed once again through the night at the other building, now still and darkened. When he turned back to me, the quandary in his eyes was frightening. His fists balled up. I doubt he was even aware of it.
“I cannot leave Perren in this situation,” he said.
I closed the space between us by another step. “You’re not leaving him. He’s leaving you.”
With a step of his own, he widened the gap. “Piper, you do not comprehend Vulcan complexities. I have no time to explain them to you.”
With a nod I showed him that he was right. Slowly I asked, “Do you really think Perten doesn’t understand what he’s involved in?”
Inner struggle tightened his mouth. “That is no excuse to abandon him.”
My shoulders sagged as I tried to think of logical arguments. But even a partially trained Vulcan knows his own thoughts. If he had made up his mind to forfeit the past for the future, even a hazy future, I knew no power in the universe could pull him back.
When arguments were not enough, when logic could only fail, it was time to go beyond them. My shoulders squared as I backed away a pace, showing him that I was ready to accept his decision.
“Then you’ll have to choose.”
Sarda no longer glanced indecisively at the building that had swallowed Perten only moments ago. His eyes lost their focus as he gazed at me, and I felt
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utterly unseen. Perhaps he was searching for a way to explain the inexplicable. With my silence I hoped to show him that no explanation was necessary. As for my own message, my presence on this planet would have to speak for itself.
Sarda privately navigated his sea of uncharted emotions without help from me, for I could no longer help him, no matter how much I wanted to.
He raised his chin a fraction. “There is only one choice,” he said, his voice solemn and low.
I willed myself not to nod, to flinch, or even to breathe. I wouldn’t show the tiniest hint of feeling betrayed. I hadn’t been betrayed, after all; he had simply made the best decision for himself. That was all I had any right to ask of him.
Searching for the final words, the words that would get me smoothly out of this terrible last encounter, gave Sarda an extra few moments. His arms relaxed at his sides. “I go with you.”
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