Spock lowered his phaser and stepped forward to stand beside Mara. “This is Doctor Chunvig?”
Mara kept her weapon trained on Chunvig. “In the flesh. The foolish, arrogant flesh.”
Outside the caves thunder growled, slow and ominous, its rumbling clearly audible through the circular skylight in the audience chamber’s ceiling. But in the shadowy confines of the antechamber behind the throne, Spock was more keenly aware of Doctor Chunvig’s rapid and shallow breathing, her psionic emanations of fear and shame as she tried to cover her naked body, and her overall affect of confusion and disorientation.
He returned his phaser to his belt and edged cautiously toward her. “Doctor Chunvig, do you know where you are?”
The frightened scientist didn’t answer, but Mara asked, “What are you doing, Spock?”
He sidestepped, putting himself between Chunvig and Mara’s disruptor. “I am attempting to ascertain if Doctor Chunvig can be saved.”
“She can’t. We need to finish her, right now.” Mara grasped Spock’s shoulder, prompting him to look back at her as she added, “It’s the reason my team and I were sent here. To kill her.”
He looked back at Chunvig, who remained huddled on the ground, wrapped only in her own arms. There was sorrow in her eyes and fear in her voice. “Please help me.”
“Do you know your name? Or how you came to be on this planet?”
Chunvig shook her head. Being unable to answer Spock’s questions seemed only to deepen her despair. He faced Mara. “I cannot ignore her request for aid.”
Fury welled up behind Mara’s cool façade. “Then you are a fool.”
From the audience chamber D’Gol shouted, “Kill her, Mara! While we can!”
Doctor Babitz countered, “Don’t let her, Spock! We have a duty to help her.”
Deep thunder rolled, and on its shoulders rode strange atonal howls.
D’Gol snapped, “Someone kill Chunvig! Now!”
Keekur hefted her siege gun and aimed it toward the antechamber, only to be blocked by Singh and the other portable cannon. Half of Hartür’s face was caked in blood, and he was sitting on the floor because he could barely stand, but he drew his disruptor as ordered—only to have Sulu step on the weapon with his one good leg.
Looking down at Hartür, Sulu asked, “Orders, Mister Spock?”
Ilucci and Razka took up defensive postures behind Spock, who remained locked in a battle of wills with Mara. “Violence might be the easiest choice, Mara, but that does not make it the right one.”
She studied him with a quizzical look, as if she were debating a madman. “What do you think your pantomime of mercy will accomplish, Spock? Other than delaying the inevitable?”
“I want to find a solution to this crisis that isn’t rooted in cold-blooded violence or wanton destruction.” He regarded the sad form of Doctor Chunvig. “I want to show that there are paths to redemption, no matter how grave our mistakes.”
Mara’s countenance shifted from confusion and anger to sorrow and regret. “Spock… the resolutions you seek? Those are artifacts of hope, not logic. I thought Vulcans had learned not to let their emotions cloud their reason.”
“And I thought Klingons believed in courage and honor. Where is the courage in killing a naked, defenseless woman? Where is the honor in that?”
“Honor is a privilege reserved for those who respect it. Doctor Chunvig is a traitor. She stole the Empire’s only copy of Shedai meta-genome data and fled with it, to this backwater ball of mud, so she could defy nature and turn herself into a monster. All to serve her own warped ambitions. She forsook any claim to honor long ago.” Mara moderated her tone and took half a step toward Spock. “She is a danger to both our peoples, Spock. And remember our covenant: no copies of the meta-genome research can be allowed to leave this world. That includes Doctor Chunvig’s memories of her work. For the sake of peace, she must die here.”
There was reason in Mara’s argument. Spock faced Doctor Chunvig and raised his phaser. His finger hovered in front of the trigger. Logic told him he should do as Mara had asked, that he should fire one last shot, vaporize Doctor Chunvig, and end this fiasco.
It was what logic demanded. He heard it as clearly as he still heard his father’s voice haunting him in his dreams. But when he forced his thoughts to be still, when his mind was quiet, he could also hear his mother’s voice guiding him with her own gentle wisdom.
Logic could make powerful arguments for action—but it had no compassion. And it would bring him no comfort when the time came to confront his inevitable regret.
He lowered his phaser and faced Mara. “Forgive me. I cannot kill in cold blood.”
She shouldered him aside. “Luckily for us all, I can.”
She braced her disruptor rifle against her shoulder and lifted it to aim at Chunvig.
Then came the storm.
Rending the air with shrill cries, two massive serpents of inky vapor plunged through the skylight into the audience chamber, both racing like a river in flood. In a rush of sheer momentum they plowed through the mixed landing party, hurling Klingons and Starfleeters through the air like leaves in a gale. Spock and Mara threw themselves to the floor, and the huge tentacles of jet-black smoke hurtled past above them—
—and slammed into the frail, naked form of Doctor Chunvig.
In a flash the tentacles enveloped the female Klingon scientist—and then she absorbed them into her body, which swelled and transmogrified in the most hideous of ways, transforming her in a matter of seconds back into the terrifying grotesquerie of the Godhead.
Much too late Spock raised his phaser and fired—only to see the beam have no effect on the creature. A tentacle shot from the beast’s body, ripped the phaser from Spock’s hand, and crushed it into splinters as if it had been nothing but a cheap toy.
He backpedaled, pulling Mara with him. “Fall back!”
A flurry of tentacles lashed out at the wounded, weary allies, who scrambled backward before heeding an even more impassioned order from D’Gol:
“Run!”
No one cared if the retreat was orderly. All any of them cared about now was running as fast as they could go, staying more than a step ahead of those tentacles that could crystallize flesh on contact, and getting as far as they could from a horror that refused to die.
Moving with the singular purpose of self-preservation, they all ran like they had never run before in their lives—right up until the moment they turned the corner at the end of a long passageway to find a doorless, windowless dead end.
In front of them, a wall of mortared stone.
Behind them, a swiftly approaching invincible foe with the touch of Death itself.
Keekur and Singh moved to the corner, determined to hold the line as long as possible. Behind them, Mara, Hartür, Ilucci, and Razka loaded fresh power cells into their weapons. Against the far wall, Doctor Babitz did what she could to dull the pain caused by the black crystal spreading up and down Sulu’s wounded left leg.
From the far end of the long passageway behind them came the bloodcurdling shrieks of the smoke-serpents hunting the landing party through the underground labyrinth.
D’Gol stood next to Spock, his anger palpable even in the dark. “What now, Vulcan?”
To Spock’s utter consternation, he had no idea.
Keekur and Singh took turns filling the long passageway with storms of disruptor pulses from their siege guns. Each of them would push her weapon to its limit and then duck back to cover just before the emitter assembly fractured or the barrel melted, and then the other would turn the corner and unleash a fresh barrage to keep the Godhead’s vaporous avatars at bay.
The members of the team who had only small arms to add to the fight darted out one or two at a time to fire past the heavy gunner. Mara had no idea whether they were really helping or just wasting their power cells, but she had a more pressing dilemma to solve.
She seized the Vulcan by his arms to compel him to train his attention on her. “Spock! Snap out of whatever mystic Vulcan trance this is and help us find a way out of here!”
His expression remained frozen in a mask of confused dismay, and his voice sounded distant and haunted. “I… don’t know how.”
D’Gol was on the verge of pointing his disruptor at the Vulcan, Mara was sure of it. Keeping hold of Spock, she shifted her position to put herself between him and D’Gol. “Spock! Talk to me!” She watched his lips tremble as if he were speaking, but no words issued from his mouth. That marked the end of her patience.
She slapped Spock’s face hard enough to whip his head to his right. “Spock!”
He blinked and once again his eyes were clear, as if he had been freed of some spell. He recovered his composure and stood tall. “My apologies.”
Mara shouted to be heard over the echoed screeching of the team’s disruptors and phasers. “What happened back there? Why didn’t you shoot?”
He averted his eyes from hers, as if in shame. “My logic became… uncertain.”
His was the worst excuse Mara had ever heard for freezing during combat. She wanted to slap him again just on principle. “That’s it? Your logic was uncertain so you decided to spare a monster from a species that we know can destroy entire planets?” She gestured toward their comrades, who were struggling to prevent the Godhead from advancing up the passageway. “How’s that working out for you?”
In his eyes Mara saw both torment and conflict. When Spock glanced at D’Gol, it was with intense apprehension. The Vulcan invited her with a tilt of his head to follow him to the farthest corner of the dead end. With great reluctance, Mara did exactly that. He took hold of her left arm and pulled her intimately close to him. When he spoke, she felt the heat of his breath on her face and the pressure of his fingers digging into her bicep. “I recently experienced a profound rite of adulthood, one that Vulcans prefer not to speak of with outsiders. A marriage—”
“You mean pon farr?”
He was taken aback. “You know of pon farr?”
“It’s always wise to know one’s enemy. What happened?”
“A ritual challenge, initiated by my betrothed.”
Mara nodded, remembering her study of Vulcan customs. “The koon-ut-kal-if-fee.”
“Yes. The details are irrelevant. What matters is that for a time I lost all control over my emotions. I lost myself. I thought I had recovered my discipline, restored my logic, mastered my emotions… but when Doctor Chunvig begged me for mercy, I was overcome by a powerful wave of empathy. Seeing her as a person, I could not also see her as a thing to be destroyed.”
“There are worse things. I, for one, am glad to know you can see Klingons as persons. Not all Starfleeters feel as you do.”
Spock shook his head and did his best to suppress a frown. “You miss my point. At a critical moment, I made an emotional decision rather than a logical one. I thought I knew my mind, Mara. But did I let my emotions mar my logic when I needed it most?”
There was tremendous regret in Spock’s voice, a quality Mara heard even through the high-pitched din of phasers and disruptors firing almost nonstop. He needed to hear something that would reassure him, but giving comfort had never been a Klingon virtue.
“Logic can tell us what is advantageous, Spock. But it can’t always tell us what’s right.” Spock nodded, perhaps gleaning some insight from the only thing she could think of to say.
D’Gol stepped between Mara and Spock and forced them apart. “Are you done coddling him, Mara? Or do you think you might need to nurse him?”
“Mind your place, D’Gol! He—”
“My place is in command of this mission! And your Vulcan pet has led us to a dead end and our doom. To Fek’lhr with him!”
At the corner, the tempo of alternation between Keekur and Singh was accelerating as their weapons threatened to overheat due to lack of downtime between salvos. Razka and Hartür continued adding whatever firepower they could to the defense, but the monstrous roars of the Shedai avatar grew nearer by the second, and Ensign Chekov looked positively spooked as he fell back and jogged to his team leader. “Mister Spock! We can’t hold the passage much longer.”
Mara was embarrassed by D’Gol as he sneered at Spock, “Impress me, Vulcan! Logic your way out of a tomb of solid stone.”
Spock’s eyebrows climbed high on his forehead as he muttered, “Solid. Stone.” He held out his open left hand to Mara. “Your light, please.” Then he extended his open right hand to the ensign. “Mister Chekov, your phaser.”
Chekov handed his weapon to Spock, who faced the back wall, the terminus of the dead end. Spock passed his light over its pattern of mortared stones… and then at the adjacent walls, which were smooth rock, carved by eons of flowing water… and then back at the far wall. “This was once an open passage. But this wall is new. Our phasers could not tunnel through solid rock fast enough to let us escape—but I suspect this wall is anything but solid.”
He stepped back, raised the phaser, and fired.
It took only seconds for the mortar between the stones to crumble, causing the rocks to shift—and let in a cool, rain-washed breeze.
Spock handed Mara her light—and then he lunged at the far wall and threw himself against it, leading with his shoulder. He hit the wall with all the force he could bring, and it collapsed outward. Large stones tumbled over one another as the wall came apart in one blow. On the other side, Spock rolled clear and came up on his feet beneath a steady rain shower. Waving the phaser, he beckoned the others: “This way! Hurry!”
Doctor Babitz helped Sulu limp out of the cave. Mara, D’Gol, and Chekov were the next ones out. Spock waved everyone past him as he adjusted a setting on his phaser. “Keep going! Get as far into the jungle as you can!”
Mara followed the others to the tree line and then she looked back. Hartür, Ilucci, and Razka were behind her, and Singh and Keekur were the last ones out. Spock shouted over the rising whine of his phaser, telling them to run—and then he lobbed the overloading sidearm back into the cave tunnel before he sprinted toward the jungle behind the siege gunners.
A white-hot explosion with a resounding boom collapsed the cave entrance.
Within moments Spock had run past the rear ranks to rejoin Mara and D’Gol near the front of the ragged formation winding its way into the sodden jungle. He caught up to Doctor Babitz and helped her carry Sulu over the rough and muddy terrain.
D’Gol slapped Spock’s shoulder. “Not bad, Vulcan. So what’s next?”
With cool certainty, Spock replied, “Next, we destroy the Godhead, and end this.”