“This isn’t over until I know every last speck of that thing is dead,” D’Gol had said to Spock. It was a sentiment with which Spock had strongly concurred.
The two of them stood together at the edge of the crater that now yawned where only minutes earlier the cave temple had stood. Infernal heat emanated in waves from the smoldering pit, turning the Kolasi jungle’s despised rain into a welcome comfort. Above and behind them hovered the QInqul. Hartür was using the shuttle’s sensors to search for any surviving traces of the Shedai meta-genome. As thorough as Hartür’s destruction of the temple had been, Spock and D’Gol both had pledged not to let any data about the Shedai leave this planet, nor to leave behind any samples of the bizarre alien genetic material for others to find and exploit.
A thin facsimile of Hartür’s voice issued from D’Gol’s communicator. “Grid eight clear. Starting deep scan of grid nine.”
“Acknowledged.” D’Gol surveyed the field of destruction. “What of the Chwii?”
“Still in retreat, Commander.”
“Good.” The Klingon lowered his communicator and turned a bemused look at Spock. “When I heard the tales of Gamma Tauri IV, I thought they were lies. Even now, having seen it myself, I still find it hard to believe.”
Spock understood the man’s reaction. “Witnessing something as profoundly alien in its form and consciousness as the Shedai can be a most disquieting experience.”
Amusement, confusion, and contempt collided on D’Gol’s furrowed brow. “I was talking about Klingons and Starfleeters fighting on the same side, acting with common purpose.” He spit, as if to expel a foul taste from his tongue. “That’s the part my captain will never believe.”
“Indeed. I expect a similar degree of resistance from mine.”
Hartür interrupted via the communicator, “Sensors have something in grid nine.”
D’Gol drew his disruptor pistol. “Guide us to it.”
“Sixteen qams from your current position, relative bearing two one point four, z-minus two point two qams.”
Spock drew his phaser but let D’Gol lead the way. They descended into the pit. Each step they took closer to its nadir, the hotter the ground became beneath their boots. The heat was uncomfortable within three steps. After five it reminded Spock of the coming-of-age ritual in which he had been required to traverse the rocky plain of Vulcan’s Forge barefoot. After ten steps he had to marshal his hard-won psionic discipline to block out the pain.
If D’Gol was in any discomfort, he hid it with superb aplomb.
They arrived at a large stone, roughly sixty centimeters wide and half as tall. It was radiant with heat, but D’Gol reached down and with gauntleted hands flipped it over as if it weren’t as hot as glass from a furnace.
Embedded in the searing-hot dust beneath where the rock had been was a smear of something biological. A bit of half-cooked flesh, perhaps. Maybe a crushed eyeball. It was difficult to identify what it once had been, other than organic in nature.
D’Gol kneeled beside it and looked up over his shoulder toward Hartür on the QInqul. “Is this what we’re looking for?”
“Maybe. Readings are garbled. Signal is weak.”
“Weak sounds about right.” D’Gol stood and took a step back from the charred mess. He looked at Spock. “Together?”
“Together.” Spock and D’Gol aimed their weapons at the smeared tissue. D’Gol counted to three, at which point they both opened fire—continuous full-power shots that lasted over five seconds.
When they ceased fire, there was nothing left of the smear. Just molten rock. Spock lowered his weapon. “Détente.”
D’Gol nodded. “Détente.”
Hartür’s tone turned to one of alarm. “Commander? I’m not sure that was the only—”
A long shaft of sharp smoky crystal exploded from D’Gol’s chest.
Klingon blood sprayed into Spock’s face. He staggered backward and only then saw the tentacle of black vapors that had risen from a fissure a few meters farther down the pit. And crawling out of that fissure was a grotesque chimera—Doctor Chunvig’s head, shoulders, and arms mounted on a crustacean-like thorax, which was being pushed upward by a mangled insectoid abdomen with tentacles instead of legs.
Next to Spock, D’Gol’s body slid off the crystalline spike. A shroud of black crystal formed around the corpse as it rolled down the pit’s slope into its fiery center.
Retreating out of the pit, Spock fired at the abomination pursuing him. At the top of the crater, Singh, Razka, and Chekov all had come running at the sound of his weapon. He continued to shoot at the monster as he yelled to the others, “It’s the Godhead! Shoot to kill!”
The trio spread out to get clear shots at the creature. Spock had almost reached them when his communicator beeped twice on his belt. He pulled it free and opened its grille with a turn of his wrist. “Spock here!”
“This is Hartür! Get your people to cover! NOW!”
Overhead, the QInqul’s impulse engines whined as Hartür powered them up.
There was no time to argue tactics. The situation was out of Spock’s hands, and he knew it. He closed his communicator and shouted to his team, “Fall back! Find cover!”
Chekov and Singh retreated, but Razka held his ground at the crater’s edge until Spock got to him. The Saurian reached down, took Spock’s hand, and hefted him out of the pit with one powerful motion. Even as they sprinted away from the pit, Spock felt compelled to look back.
The creature’s tentacles flailed in the air and its hideous cries resounded through the jungle, all as Hartür pushed the QInqul into an almost vertical climb, directly above the pit.
Razka and Spock caught up to Chekov and Singh, and together they huddled behind a cluster of large boulders inside the jungle, over a hundred meters from the pit.
In the sky, the QInqul vanished into the storm clouds.
Seconds later the Klingon shuttle reappeared, its forward disruptor cannons blazing, the craft now in a full-power nose dive toward the pit—and the creature.
Tumbling down after the QInqul were its ejected antimatter pods.
The Shedai Godhead pulled its damaged, nightmarish body over the edge of the crater, only to be knocked back into the pit by a merciless rain of disruptor pulses. The creature tried to retreat but the hail of wild energy pursued its every step—until the QInqul slammed into the creature at nearly the speed of sound.
A flash of fire filled the jungle with white light and bone-breaking thunder.
And for one shining instant, it stopped raining.
Sulu’s maneuvers had Babitz pinballing against the bulkheads and clutching the anchored portion of the climbing rope for dear life. She watched the dragon’s flank swing toward the open hatchway as Sulu banked to port to ram the creature again. He had hit the beast several times in the past minute, but it continued to follow Mara down the river, apparently unwilling to give up an easy meal bobbing on the surface.
The creature dipped under a dense mesh of vines, and Sulu followed it, nicking the lowest-hanging vines as the Kepler sped beneath them. A kick of acceleration sent Babitz stumbling aft, while outside the hatchway the wall of jungle trees melted into a green blur.
She regained her balance and staggered forward to ask Sulu what was happening when a portion of the dragon’s head bashed through the open hatchway just an arm’s length from her. She fell against the starboard bulkhead as the creature shrieked, filling the shuttlecraft with its carrion-stench breath and lapping the overhead with its forked tongue. Then it broke free and swung wide, apparently to build up speed for another lunge at the shuttle.
Sulu looked back at Babitz. “I think we got its attention!”
“You don’t say.” She glanced out the forward viewport and her jaw went slack. “No. Tell me that’s not—”
“The waterfall,” Sulu said, finishing her sentence. “Thirty seconds out.” He winced and fought to retain control as the dragon slammed against the rear port quarter of the shuttle. “If you’ve got any bright ideas, Doc, now’s the time.”
Twenty-five seconds until Mara goes over the waterfall.
Babitz faced the hatchway, drew her phaser, and put her back to the starboard bulkhead. “Sulu! When I fire, yaw ninety degrees to port!”
“When you what? What’re you—?”
She leapt from the hatchway with her harness’s anchored climbing rope’s slack paying out behind her before he realized she was gone.
At the apex of her jump, in that microsecond before gravity took hold, as the dragon was swooping toward her and the shuttle, she fired her phaser on heavy stun and hit the beast square in the face. And then she and the monster both were falling, plunging like stones toward the river.
Babitz had just enough time to tuck her phaser under her poncho, put her feet together, and cross her arms against her chest before she struck the muddy rapids. She arrowed through the surface into its cloudy, roiling depths, and was shocked by how cold the water was. Kicking as hard as she could, she fought to get back to the surface—and then the climbing rope went taut and towed her out of the dark, back into the rain-swept morning air.
Above her was the Kepler, rolled ninety degrees to port as she’d ordered. Sulu struggled to keep the shuttle steady as he piloted the craft on its side, but at least now he could see Babitz in the water directly beneath him. Whether he could hear her, she was about to find out.
She pointed at an obstacle jutting from the river ahead of her. “Rock! Steer left!” Sulu stretched back and craned his neck to look down at Babitz through the open hatch. He pointed at his ear and shook his head. Babitz pointed with her whole arm as she repeated, “LEFT!”
The line went taut as Sulu adjusted the shuttle’s position—and towed Babitz straight into the massive, water-smoothed boulder. Over the rush of the river and the whine of the shuttle’s engine she didn’t hear her two lower ribs cracking, but she damned sure felt it. She glared up at Sulu. “Your other left!” But cursing him was a waste of time as the Kepler slammed through another pocket of vines, raining fragments into the river behind Babitz.
She fished for her communicator under the water and pulled it from her belt. I sure hope this thing’s waterproof. Pushing it above the water, she opened its grille with a flick of her wrist. “Babitz to Kepler! Do you read me, Sulu?”
A garbled voice answered, “Go ahead, Doc!”
“Watch the rocks! Shift me left, then—”
The rope snapped tight and dragged her half out of the water as it pulled her left.
“Easy! Too high!” The rocks shot past on her right. Up ahead she saw the foaming churn that defined the top of the waterfall—and she saw Mara being pulled inexorably toward it, all but powerless to save herself. “Get me right of center! Line me up with Mara!”
“I can’t see you both at the same time!”
“Just do as I say! A nudge to the right!” The rope went from loose to tourniquet in an instant and pulled Babitz rightward. “Almost there! A little more!”
Ahead of her, Mara was just a dozen meters from the edge.
The Kepler drifted by such a small degree that Babitz could barely see the difference, but she watched as Mara shifted closer to being in front of her—and then she was there.
“PUNCH IT!”
The shuttle’s thrusters roared, and at the end of the rope Babitz sliced like a knife through the rapids. Under the water, hidden rocks, thorny vines, and unseen predators nipped at her, each taking its bit of flesh as she raced past, while ahead of her Mara drew closer to the edge—three meters… two meters…
“SULU!”
From above, a bang like thunder as Sulu fired the Kepler’s impulse engine. Icy water stung Babitz’s face as she rocketed through the river’s last meters of froth.
A thud of collision with something else in the water—and hoping against hope, Babitz clutched whatever she had just struck, wrapping her arms and legs around it.
A split-second submerged in the great spume at the waterfall’s crest—
—and Babitz broke free into open air, dangling at the end of the climbing rope, with the barely conscious Mara locked in her full-body embrace. Babitz grinned at her. “Gotcha!”
Stunned and perplexed, Mara took in the rain-swept landscape spread out beneath them. Then she stared up the rope at the shuttlecraft towing them through the air. “Are you insane?”
“Probably. But I’m an officer, so who can tell?”
Spock and the rest of the landing party emerged from the jungle. Razka and Chekov were on either side of Master Chief Ilucci, helping the engineer limp along while keeping his weight off his wounded left foot. Ensign Singh, once more wielding only her Starfleet-issued phaser, walked several paces ahead, scouting the area for any signs of Chwii activity—or surviving Shedai biomass. A few dozen meters out from the tree line she continued to signal all clear.
There was nothing left of the temple. Its previous modest crater had been widened to a much larger one. This new pit’s sides were smooth slopes of blackened glass littered with jagged chunks of scorched duranium from the hull of the QInqul, and the heat from the shuttlecraft’s fiery sacrifice meant no one from the landing party could risk getting within twenty meters of its precipice. Waves of heat radiation rippled above the crater, and the rain—which had returned with a vengeance just as swiftly as it had been dispelled—sizzled when it struck the black glass.
Singh regarded the devastation with a sad expression. “Not one of our finest hours.”
Stopping beside her, Spock replied, “I regret that I must concur.”
The others hobbled to a stop a few meters behind Spock and Singh. Ilucci asked, “Any chance that monster’s still alive?”
“It seems unlikely, but few things are ever truly impossible, Master Chief.”
Spock’s communicator beeped. He raised it and opened its grille. “Spock here.”
Sulu replied, “Shuttlecraft Kepler inbound to your position. ETA twenty seconds.”
“Acknowledged, Mister Sulu. Were you able to rescue Lieutenant Mara?”
“Affirmative. Doctor Babitz is treating her wounds right now. She’ll be fine.”
“Good work. Before you land, make a sensor sweep of the area for Chwii activity, and then make a second scan of the crater, to confirm there are no traces of Shedai meta-genome.”
“Scanning now. Stand by.”
Spock looked south and saw the Kepler appear above the treetops, cruising toward the landing party’s position on the eastern riverbank. “Ensign Singh, please guide Mister Sulu in.”
“Aye, sir.” Singh jogged several meters away from the landing party to an open patch of level ground. As soon as she had a clear line of sight to the Kepler, she raised her arms to signal Sulu that she was directing him to a safe landing zone.
Sulu’s voice returned over Spock’s communicator. “Both sensor sweeps are clear, sir. The nearest Chwii are twenty-one kilometers northwest and continuing to move away, and scans of the crater show no organic matter in it, around it, or under it.”
“Very good. Land, but do not power down. Stand by for immediate takeoff once the landing party is aboard.”
“Understood, sir.”
Guided by Ensign Singh, the Kepler slowed until it arrived above the landing area, and then Sulu initiated a slow, smooth vertical descent that culminated in the landing gear sinking several centimeters deep into the mud.
As soon as the shuttlecraft was securely on the ground, its portside hatch slid open. Doctor Babitz was the first person to exit the shuttle. She was covered in half-dried mud, from her matted blond hair to her river grass–entangled boots. Once on the ground, she turned and helped Mara out of the shuttle. The Klingon woman was just as mud caked, and where the middle of her uniform had been cut away, a prominent scar was visible on her abdomen.
Ilucci seemed amused by the women’s disheveled state. “Damn, Doc. You look like the air-dried winner of an Argelian mud-wrestling match. And she looks like the loser.”
Babitz glared at him, visibly in no mood for his brand of juvenile banter. “I can still choose to amputate your foot, Master Chief.”
Duly chastised, he gave her a nod of contrition. “Copy that, sir.”
Sulu remained inside the shuttlecraft, at its controls. Through the open hatchway Spock noted the tangled mess of wet climbing rope and a water-logged orange climbing harness on the deck between the pilot’s and commander’s seats.
Mara beckoned Spock toward the shuttle with a tilt of her head. They met far enough away from the others that they could speak confidentially, thanks to the shuttle’s engine noise.
“Are you all right, Lieutenant?”
She nodded. “Yes. Thanks to your pilot and doctor.” She touched the scar on her belly. “I don’t know how she was able to remove the parasitic crystal, but I am grateful she did.” Her mood turned somber as she regarded the black crater. “Where are D’Gol and Hartür?”
“Your commander was slain by the Shedai Godhead. Your pilot sacrificed your shuttle and his life to kill the creature. Both fought with dignity and valor.” He glanced at his landing party. “They, and the rest of your team, saved our lives.”
Mara lifted her chin slightly, a gesture of pride. “We stood together against a shared enemy. Honor demanded no less.” Her pride turned quickly to melancholy. “And the Shedai meta-genome data?”
“Destroyed. The last sensor logs of the meta-genome were lost with the QInqul.”
“Then our pact is fulfilled.”
“It is.” Spock gestured toward the Kepler. “If you wish, you are welcome to leave with us.”
She refused with an ironic smile and a shake of her head. “I fear that would raise more questions than I am prepared to answer. But if you would be so kind as to inform Captain Kang that his wife Mara is alive and in need of a ride back to the ship?”
A small nod. “I shall do so.” He faced the landing party. “Everyone aboard.”
Chekov and Razka carried Ilucci past Spock and Mara, and helped the portly noncom to his seat inside the shuttlecraft. Singh escorted Babitz back to the Kepler’s hatchway, where Mara stopped Babitz with a gentle hold on her arm. “Before you go?”
Singh gave the two women a look. The doctor nodded her assurance, and Singh boarded the shuttle, followed by Spock, who lingered near the hatchway.
Alone outside the hatchway with Babitz, Mara seemed almost apologetic. “It can be difficult for Klingons to express gratitude. I am… thankful to you and Lieutenant Sulu for saving my life—but especially to you, for coming into the river to get me.”
Babitz shrugged. “I’m sure you’d have done the same for me.”
“No. I wouldn’t have…. At least, not before today.”
The doctor smiled. “And what about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, we shall see.”
Babitz shook Mara’s hand, and then she climbed inside the shuttlecraft. Spock stepped in front of the open hatchway as he prepared to close it for takeoff, and he paused as Mara stepped back, stood at attention, and smiled at him.
“Strength and honor, Spock.”
He raised his hand in the traditional Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, Mara.”
He closed the hatch and secured it as Sulu began the shuttle’s lift-off.
From his place in the commander’s chair, Spock saw Mara through the forward viewport as Sulu steered the hovering Kepler onto its departure vector. As the shuttlecraft made a smooth vertical ascent to clear the jungle’s canopy, ragged veils of mist and rain swept over the riverbank below and stole Mara from sight.
Then Sulu fired the shuttle’s thrusters and sent it racing skyward into black banks of lightning-laced clouds, toward an uncertain and likely perilous rendezvous in orbit.
Assuming we survive our return through the storm, Spock mused, keeping his thoughts to himself for once.
Kirk rushed onto the bridge of the Enterprise as soon as the turbolift doors opened. He bounded down the steps into the command well, straight to his command chair. As he arrived, Lieutenant Commander Scott was already vacating the center seat. “Report, Mister Scott.”
“Seventeen minutes ago sensors picked up a major explosion on the planet’s surface, near the center of the landing party’s assigned mission area.”
Taking his chair, Kirk asked, “What kind of explosion?”
Scott’s expression turned grave. “Hydrox and deuterium.”
A yeoman approached Kirk’s chair with a cup of coffee on a tray, but he waved her off. Alarm was enough to quicken Kirk’s mind this morning. “As in, the fuels from our shuttle?”
“That was my first thought, as well. But thirty seconds ago we picked up a heat bloom in the lower atmosphere, over the mission area. Ionizing particles and chemical traces consistent with a prolonged hydrox burn by a modified Class-F shuttlecraft.”
Kirk looked at the image of Kolasi III on the main viewscreen. The bluish-white orb with its iridescent rings looked so placid, but the belt of black storms around its equator was anything but peaceful. “If that burn was the Kepler, she’ll be flying blind into the Klingons’ patrol route.”
“Aye, sir. That she will.”
Keenly aware of the seconds elapsing on the ship’s chrono, Kirk pondered an ever-growing set of variables with mounting concern. The shuttle. The Sagittarius. The Klingons. And whatever classified findings the landing party might have made on the surface. “Mister Nanjiani, has there been any sign of the Klingons’ shuttle in pursuit of the Kepler?”
The science officer looked up from the hooded display. “None, sir. No indications of other contacts in the planet’s atmosphere. Also, I’ve just confirmed that the explosion we detected earlier contained trace elements consistent with Klingon starship-hull alloys, and was of a magnitude consistent with the volume of hydrox fuel and deuterium I estimate the Klingon shuttle would have had left after making a flight from orbit to the surface.”
Alarmed, Kirk looked back at his acting first officer. “Scotty, if that explosion was the Klingons’ shuttle being destroyed, then regardless of the cause…”
“Aye. We might have an interstellar crisis on our hands.”
“What are the odds the Klingons detected the explosion?”
Scott’s worries were plain to see on his face and hear in his voice. “Better than fair, sir. And I’d lay even odds they’ve registered the heat bloom and identified it as one of ours.”
Kirk reflexively curled his hands into fists. “So. Kang’s guard will be up, and he’ll be looking for payback. Not the news I was hoping for this morning, Mister Scott.”
“No, sir. But like it or not, our shuttle is still on its way.”
“Yes, it is. Which means it’s time for us to bring our landing party home.” Kirk deftly swiveled his chair as he doled out orders around the bridge. “Uhura, hail the Sagittarius. Tell Captain Nassir I’m initiating our emergency retrieval operation. Lieutenant Benson, plot a course to take us into orbit at full impulse. Put us between Kang’s ship and the shuttle’s recovery point inside the rings. We can’t let Kang have a clear shot at the Kepler.”
“Aye, sir,” Benson replied as she entered the new course into the helm.
From the comms console, Uhura replied, “Captain Nassir signals ready, sir.”
“Very good. Mister Waltke: arm all weapons, and raise shields.” Kirk used the control pad on the armrest of his command chair to open an intraship channel. “All decks, this is the captain. Red alert. All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill.” With another push he closed the channel and shot an apprehensive look at Scott. “Time for the fun part. Lieutenant Benson, take us into orbit. It’s time I had a talk with Captain Kang.”
The sensor readings of the storm’s interior were constantly in flux, but Spock was starting to suss out patterns and predicates, enough that he was able to predict the worst of the storm’s lightning strikes and thunder. “Helm, shift two point seven degrees starboard, nose up four degrees, and engage auxiliary impulse power.”
“Adjusting,” Sulu confirmed as he turned Spock’s orders into actions.
The Kepler’s forward viewports were again protected by their closed blast shutters, which meant Sulu was once more piloting by instruments alone. Without seeing the maelstrom outside, Spock felt it, just as he had during the shuttle’s descent days earlier. In spite of his efforts to steer the Kepler away from the storm’s most violent zones, it continued to be rattled by thunder, buffeted by hurricane-force winds, and jolted by lightning that made interior panels vomit sparks.
A telltale null spot in the sensor readings rippled toward the shuttle.
“Ionic disruption in three seconds. Full thrusters.”
The disruption wave rolled through the shuttle, leaving nauseated stomachs and dizzy heads in its wake. Inside the Kepler lights flickered and went out, along with half the command console, but the shielded reserve batteries kept the helm online, and Sulu managed the transition from impulse power to thrusters without losing any of the shuttle’s acceleration toward orbit.
“Expertly done, Mister Sulu. Impulse drive back online in five seconds.”
“Acknowledged, Mister Spock.” When perhaps he thought Spock wasn’t looking, Sulu blinked hard and gave his head a mild shake.
“Mister Sulu? Are you experiencing a reaction to the distortion field?”
Sulu feigned nonchalance. “It was nothing, sir. I’m fine.”
“Perhaps we should get a medical opinion.” Spock swiveled his chair to look back at Doctor Babitz—only to find the exhausted medical officer fast asleep in her chair’s harness, snoring softly, and seemingly oblivious of the mayhem rocking the tiny spacecraft.
Razka looked at Babitz from his seat across the aisle, and then he shrugged at Spock. “I think it would be a shame to wake her, sir.”
With a genial smile Sulu added, “Really, sir. I’m fine.”
“Very well. Continue on this heading. We should clear the storm in ten seconds.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Spock tracked their progress on the sensor display. Right on time they broke free of the storm and shot upward through the tenuous higher altitudes of the planet’s atmosphere.
“Ten seconds to vacuum. Adjust heading to bearing three-one-five mark two-seven.”
“Aye, sir. Course laid in for recovery rendezvous point.”
After the wild ride through the stormhead and the days of continuous rain and thunder that had preceded it, the abrupt blissful silence felt peculiar, verging on eerie. There was nothing more than the thrum of the engines, the soft purr of the ventilation system, and the gentle feedback tones from the flight and command console. In some ways it reminded Spock of going to the library as a child, in the Vulcan capital city of ShiKahr. Blissful, sacred quiet.
Shattered by a rapid, shrill alert beeping from the console in front of him.
He silenced the alarm and checked the sensors. “Contact. A large vessel on an intercept course for our position.” He paused for a second to verify the sensor reading. “A Klingon D4 battle cruiser.” Reasoning there was nothing to lose by verifying the enemy vessel’s presence with his own eyes, he lowered the blast shutters.
Outside the viewports, beyond the multichromatic beauty of the planet’s rings, loomed the dark-gray-meets-olive-drab hulking mass of Kang’s ship, the I.K.S. SuvwI’. It was parked directly on top of the Kepler’s predetermined rendezvous point for recovery by the Enterprise—which was arriving at that same moment with the Sagittarius by its side.
A light flashed on Spock’s command console. It denoted an incoming comm signal—from the SuvwI’. For a moment Spock considered first checking in with Captain Kirk on the Enterprise, but he reasoned that Captain Kang might not be the sort of person to exhibit patience under circumstances such as these.
Spock opened the channel and a dramatic masculine voice issued from the Kepler’s console speakers: “Attention, Starfleet shuttlecraft. This is Captain Kang of the Klingon battle cruiser SuvwI’. Your presence in the Neutral Zone is a violation of the Treaty of Organia. Cut power to your engines and prepare to be towed by tractor beam into our shuttlebay, where your vessel will be boarded and you will be taken into custody. Any attempt you make to flee or resist will be taken as an act of war and met with lethal force. You have thirty seconds to confirm your receipt of and intention to comply with these orders. If you fail to do so, you will be destroyed without further warning. Acknowledge.”
Sulu looked at Spock. “Kang sure likes the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he?”
“So it would appear.” Spock noted the Enterprise and the Sagittarius taking up attack positions relative to the SuvwI’, and he decided that the most logical course of action would be to give Captains Kirk and Nassir as much time as possible to deal with Kang, an outcome that would be best served by not provoking Kang into prematurely destroying the Kepler.
He opened a response channel. “Captain Kang, this is the Starfleet shuttlecraft Kepler. We confirm receipt of your transmission and will comply without resistance. Cutting our engines now.” He nodded at Sulu, who powered down the shuttle’s impulse drive. “Our shields are down, and we stand ready to be towed by your tractor beam. Kepler out.”
From the back of the shuttle, Chekov sounded shocked. “Mister Spock, you’re not serious? We’re just giving up without a fight?”
Spock found the question almost amusing. “I suspect the captain has spent our time away preparing for this moment, and that the best way we can help is to do nothing at all.”
Kirk listened to Kang’s lengthy transmission to the shuttlecraft Kepler, and then to Spock’s terse reply. Well done, Spock. Keep him on the hook, right where we want him.
Around the bridge of the Enterprise, everyone was calm but fully alert. Benson was preparing evasive-action plans at the helm. Waltke was precalculating firing solutions to force the SuvwI’ away from the shuttlecraft. Nanjiani was monitoring every energy emission he could detect from the Klingon battle cruiser, ready to warn Kirk of any hint of Kang’s next move.
At the communications console, Uhura monitored their now-restored coded frequency with the Sagittarius. “Sir? Captain Nassir confirms he has a phaser lock on the SuvwI’.”
“Good. Tell him to hold steady, Lieutenant.” Kirk straightened his posture and struck a proud pose before he added, “Hail the Klingon ship. Tell Kang I want to speak with him.”
It took only a few seconds before Uhura replied, “I have Kang on ship-to-ship.”
“On-screen.”
The image of the SuvwI’ with its tractor beam locked onto the Kepler was replaced by the visage of Captain Kang. Swarthy and bearded, the Klingon starship captain had a piercing stare and an almost noble bearing that Kirk secretly found admirable. But Kang’s demeanor took a turn for the smug. “What do you want, Kirk? To plead for the lives of your shuttle crew? Or maybe you wish to surrender and spare yourself the shame of defeat?”
“Far from it, Kang. I’m giving you thirty seconds to release my shuttlecraft, stand down, and let us depart in peace.”
“ ‘Us’? Ah, yes. Of course.” Kang smiled like someone who finally had figured out the punch line to a joke. “Unless I’m mistaken, that’s an Archer-class scout ship off your starboard bow. Has Starfleet finally assigned you a chaperone, Kirk?”
“You now have ten seconds to release the shuttle.”
Kang smirked. “Or else… what?”
“Five seconds, Kang.”
The Klingon was unfazed. “Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.” He looked up. Around. To either side. Then back at Kirk. “Well? I’m waiting.” He adopted a mocking tone of feigned pity. “Was something supposed to happen, Kirk? Maybe you thought you’d detonate a cluster of improvised gravitic mines you so carefully hid in the planet’s rings.” He called up an image of his ship’s cargo bay as an inset frame; in the middle of that image was a pallet stacked with the devices improvised and deployed by the crew of the Sagittarius. “Perhaps these six gravitic mines? All of which my crew found and disarmed an hour ago.”
Kirk squinted at the inset image. “Well, that’s odd. I count only five gravitic mines.”
Kang snapped, “Look again! There are clearly six!”
After studying the image for a few more seconds, Kirk frowned and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. But let me get a second opinion. Mister Scott?”
His chief engineer and acting first officer left his station and descended into the command well to stand next to Kirk’s chair. “Aye, sir?”
“Scotty, have a look at that inset image. How many gravitic mines do you count?”
A quick glance, and then Scott answered with confidence, “Five, sir.”
On the viewscreen, Kang was furious. “There are six! Why do you waste my time, Kirk?”
“What do you want me to say, Kang? When I look at the feed from your cargo bay, I see five gravitic mines—and one isolitic pulse device disguised as a gravitic mine, with a sixty-second trigger linked to the detection of stray graviton particles from a Klingon tractor beam.”
Fury and pride faded from Kang’s face, leaving only a slack stare of horror. “No!”
Spock interjected over the open channel, “Captain Kang: before you lose comms, I bring a message from your wife, Mara. Send her another shuttle at your next opportunity. Spock out.”
Kang lost any semblance of composure. “Damn you, Kirk! You and your whole crew of yIntaghpu’! ghe’torDaq luSpet ’oH DaqlIj’e’! Sop—!”
A brilliant flash of white light washed out the inset vid frame, and then the entire comm signal from the SuvwI’ distorted before collapsing into a hiss of static followed by silence.
Kirk felt pleased with himself. “Lieutenant Uhura, I didn’t catch the last part of Kang’s message. Did the universal translator fail?”
“No, sir. Our database for tlhIngan Hol remains limited. Apparently, it wasn’t able to translate Kang’s last remarks before we lost contact.”
“No matter. I’m sure he’ll be happy to repeat them the next time we meet.” He looked at the main viewscreen and smiled at the image of the SuvwI’ floating derelict and powerless. “Fine work, Mister Scott. That ought to keep them busy for the next hour or so.”
“Aye, sir, but I can’t take the credit. The IPD was Mister DeSalle’s idea.”
“I see. I admire your honesty, Mister Scott, though you did just talk yourself out of a very good bottle of bourbon.” Kirk sat back and let his shoulders relax. “Mister Waltke, bring the shuttle aboard ASAP, and have the Sagittarius take station to starboard. Lieutenant Benson, set a course for Federation space. Five minutes from now, I want us all to be anywhere but here.”
Adrift. No shields. No weapons. No power, propulsion, or comms. Nothing but silence and the shame of defeat. Kang’s only solace was the darkness that hid him from the eyes of his crew.
Around him, the bridge of the SuvwI’ stirred with muted curses and the clatter of tools. His officers’ repair efforts were empty theatrics; they had to know as well as Kang did that there would be nothing they could do to reverse the damage of the isolitic pulse weapon. That burden rested on the shoulders of Chief Engineer Qurag and his legion of grime-covered tool-pushers.
It won’t matter anyway. By the time Qurag gets main power back online, the Enterprise and her little friend Sagittarius will be long gone. Revenge will need to wait for some other day.
He reflected on the last few reports his crew had made before their failed attempt to capture the Starfleet shuttle. In retrospect, the explosion that Boqor had detected on the planet’s surface before the altercation in orbit was most likely the destruction of the QInqul.
What could have happened to it? It was a question Kang knew would be impossible to answer without further information. How many of the strike team had been aboard? For that matter, how many were still alive? The one named Spock had made a point of telling Kang that Mara was alive, but he hadn’t mentioned anyone else. Did that mean Mara was the sole survivor? Or just that he hadn’t thought the others worthy of mention?
Too many questions. No answers. Just time wasted, sitting in the dark.
Kang felt as if his impatience was burning a hole in his stomach. There was so much he wanted to know about the strike team’s mission outcome. Did they find Doctor Chunvig? Were they able to neutralize her and purge her illegal research? And what was the Starfleet team doing down there? Had they also been seeking Chunvig? Did the strike team engage the Starfleeters in battle? If they had, this encounter would be only the beginning of a long and bloody debacle.
The notion of renewed hostilities with the Federation would once have pleased Kang. On some level, it still did. But he had seen enough of war to know that as with any good thing, it was possible to have too much of it. Conquest was always glorious, but so was a bountiful harvest. There were times for celebration, and times for remembrance. For strengthening the Empire’s foundations before once again expanding its boundaries.
Isolated in his command chair atop its dais, Kang wondered if there would be anything resembling victory to be wrung from this seemingly ill-fated encounter. It would be at least another hour or maybe even twice as long before he would know anything for certain. He would have no answers to his litany of questions until he could send another shuttlecraft to the planet’s surface to pick up Mara and bring her back to the SuvwI’.
If nothing else, I am thankful Mara did not go to Sto-Vo-Kor without me. But unless I think of a way to frame this fiasco for the High Command that does not make me look like an utter petaQ, they might well decide to take my command and deliver me to Fek’lhr.
It was a skill every commanding officer of the Klingon Imperial Fleet needed to cultivate if they wanted their careers to last longer than the life cycle of a zeet-fly: reframing a disastrous encounter to resemble a successful one. Part of what made the task challenging was that it would be accompanied by a copy of the ship’s sensor logs. Which meant it was necessary to persuade the generals of the High Command and the members of the High Council that what they clearly saw in sensor recordings was not in fact what actually occurred.
I can say the SuvwI’ is outdated. Too old to face off with a relatively new Starfleet battle cruiser like the Enterprise. And then take into account that the Enterprise had help from a second starship… He vacillated on how to describe the Sagittarius. It needed to sound threatening but also not directly contradict the sensor data. Then he had a flash of inspiration. Yes! A second starship, a special high-velocity stealth vessel, one with a tremendous tactical advantage that I can argue we should nullify by making a treaty with the Romulans for their cloaking technology.
He wondered if his superiors would believe any of that. Then he decided he didn’t care.
I have come too far to concern myself about the opinions of others. As long as Chunvig is dead and her research destroyed, the High Command will call me a hero, as will the Council.
But that would come later. For the next few hours all Kang would have were his regrets and his hobbled starship. Alone in the center seat, shrouded in shadow, there was nothing for him to do but rage in silence at the one soul who deserved to suffer for all of this.
Damn you, Kirk. Damn you straight to Gre’thor.