Agents of Influence

by Dayton Ward

Banking away, the smaller, sleeker enemy vessel fired as it withdrew. The Enterprise shuddered from the force of the impact against its own shields but Leslie followed with another strike of his own. This time his aim was true and he was rewarded with a flash along the Klingon scout’s aft shields. Spock saw its starboard impulse engine sputter before failing altogether.

  Chekov said, “They’re moving off, Mister Spock. Sensors show they’re running on half power, and their maneuvering ability has also been compromised. It looks like they’re retreating.”

  “The other ship’s coming around,” Rahda warned.

  Dividing her attention between her instruments and the helm console’s tactical scanner, she made a series of rapid course adjustments to bring the Enterprise around to face the new threat. On the viewscreen, the second Klingon scout ship was coming into view, arcing around another of the asteroids. The instant it was clear its forward disruptors flared red, each launching a double dose of energy bolts.

  “Evasive,” Spock ordered, but Rahda was already reacting. Her rapid action was enough to avoid two of the disruptor bolts but the remaining pair still found the Enterprise’s shields. The impact this time was enough to rattle everyone on the bridge, and for the first time an alert sounded in response to inflicted damage.

  “Starboard shields down to sixty-eight percent,” Chekov called out.

  On the viewscreen, the Klingon ship was maneuvering for another shot but Leslie was ready, unleashing a full spread of phaser fire against the other vessel’s shields. Spock saw the barrage push through to reach the ship’s hull.

  Rahda, peering once more into her tactical scanner, said, “You hit their forward disruptors.”

  “They’re altering course and accelerating away,” added Chekov. “Nice shooting, Mister Leslie.”

  Spock said, “Agreed. Well done, everyone.”

  Behind him at the communications station, Lieutenant Palmer said, “Mister Spock, engineering reports only light damage. Our shields absorbed the worst of it, and repairs are already underway.”

  “Excellent.” Rising from the command chair, Spock turned to Nogura. “Admiral, with respect to your earlier point, it is obvious the Klingons are unhappy about our presence in this area. If they did not previously believe we possessed knowledge of their disruption-field technology, they surely do now. We have to prepare for the possibility they may return with greater force. With this in mind, I submit we need to clear the asteroid field at least long enough to transmit to Starfleet the information we have collected to this point.”

  Crossing his arms, Nogura cast his gaze toward the deck as he considered the suggestion. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Mister Spock, but I have another perspective. If we go with our theory that this is all some sort of experiment being conducted in secret, then chances are good the facility supporting this testing is small and with limited resources. The asteroid field provides perfect cover for this sort of thing. Remember, we had no prior knowledge of anything like this, even with the reports we were getting from agents like Morgan Binnix and her team. That’s usually a good indication it’s an effort being carried out from within a cell of Imperial Intelligence. Information would be highly compartmentalized to a point where even the High Council might not be aware of the project’s existence. This means they would have to operate without attracting attention. You can’t do that and deploy a heavy military presence to what’s supposed to be a top-secret outpost in the middle of nowhere.”

  Before Spock could reply, he was interrupted by the sound of the turbolift doors opening. He looked up to see Leonard McCoy walking onto the bridge, wearing a blue short-sleeved medical smock in lieu of a standard duty uniform tunic.

  “Spock, you’ll be happy to know there were no serious casualties during that last ruckus,” said McCoy, forgoing any sort of formal greeting. “One broken ankle and a couple of minor lacerations. My staff’s patching everyone up and they should be cleared for duty in the next few hours.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Spock replied. Certain he already knew the answer to his next question, he asked it anyway. “I presume you opted against sending this report over the intercom for some other reason?”

  As always, McCoy got right to the point. “Yeah. Now that we know Klingons are crawling all over this asteroid field, when are we going after Jim and the others?”

  “We were just discussing that, Doctor,” Nogura said. “In a manner of speaking, anyway.” He returned his attention to Spock. “Commander, if I’m right, then whatever facility is here overseeing this project will be lightly defended. We may not have a better opportunity to investigate and—if necessary—neutralize it.”

  McCoy asked, “Did I miss a meeting? Do we think the Klingons captured Jim?”

  “No,” Spock replied. “We have not yet heard from Captain Kirk or his party. For the moment, we continue to abide by this mission’s communications protocols.” Even as he spoke the words, he saw the doctor’s expression turning to one of disapproval.

  “Protocols?” McCoy glanced to Nogura before adding, “I think we can all agree this mission’s nothing like we thought it was going to be when we started. We can’t just leave Jim and the others out there with everything else that’s going on. Everybody knows we’re poking around out here anyway, so let’s get our people before the Klingons do.”

  “Doctor,” Nogura said, his tone turning hard. “Are you always this insolent?”

  “When it comes to the safety of this crew, you’re damned right I am.” After two full seconds of silence, McCoy cleared his throat. “Sir.” It was enough, Spock noted, to garner from the admiral the faintest hint of a smile.

  Attempting to defuse the growing tension, the first officer said, “Doctor, for now the Klingons seem focused on us. We have no indications the captain and his team have been compromised, and neither do we know if they have found the Endeavour. Until we have such confirmation, the logical course is to avoid doing anything that might expose their activities or our connection to them.” In a concession to Nogura’s observations, he added, “Indeed, by increasing the intensity of our own investigation, we may well draw all of the Klingons’ attention away from anything that might endanger the rest of our people.”

  “Let’s also not forget,” Nogura said, “if we’re right, then the Klingons are conducting secret military operations in nonaligned space. It’s likely the Empire will disavow any knowledge of the project, as it’s definitely a treaty violation. Meanwhile, we can’t give them a chance to relocate this technology and continue perfecting it to a point it can be more aggressively deployed against us.”

  McCoy frowned. “So you’re saying it’s now or never.”

  “That is exactly what I’m saying, Doctor.” Nogura placed a hand on McCoy’s arm. “I know you’re worried about your captain and shipmates. Believe me when I tell you I am as well. But even with the unexpected developments this mission has taken, it’s still the one we all accepted. We’ll find them, Doctor. I promise.”

  “I’m holding you to that, Admiral.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” Nogura turned to Spock. “Commander?”

  In response to the prompt, Spock said, “Mister Chekov, do you have sensor readings for the retreat course taken by the Klingon ships?”

  Turning from the science station, the ensign nodded. “Yes, Mister Spock. At least, until the asteroid field’s background radiation disrupted our sensors.”

  “Utilize all available information to formulate a search pattern,” Spock said. “We will begin immediately.”

  It was not much, he knew. Still, it was a start.

  Twenty-five

  Darkness. Total, all-encompassing darkness.

  Holding up his hand, Kirk was only able to see the material of his suit thanks to the soft glow of his EVA helmet’s internal lighting along with the feeble illumination of the life-support controls on his chest. Looking down, he could just make out the hard, unyielding surface of the asteroid’s canyon floor. The grav
ity here was just under one-sixth of what he was used to feeling aboard ship. Beyond the rock outcropping he had chosen for cover and concealment, visibility dropped off beyond just a dozen meters, succumbing to unrelenting blackness. Behind him, the Endeavour’s saucer section loomed in the near darkness. What illumination there was came courtesy of the ship’s running lights and whatever escaped through those few ports that had not been lost during its rough landing. Kirk at first had considered asking for the external lights to be shut off, but in the end he preferred to see at least something of the terrain in front of him.

  Looking out from his hiding place, he could not help the sense of déjà vu washing over him. The darkness reminded him of the seeming eternity he had spent adrift in an interspatial void, caught in the doorway between universes that had claimed the Enterprise’s ill-fated sister starship, the U.S.S. Defiant. He had been utterly alone, his only companion the sound of his own increasingly labored breathing as his suit’s oxygen supply inexorably dwindled.

  At least now, Kirk could take some comfort from knowing he was not alone, either in this universe or even out here at the bottom of this canyon.

  “The tour guide promised us spectacular sights,” said Morgan Binnix, her voice filtering through the speakers inside Kirk’s helmet. “I’m starting to feel cheated.”

  Shifting his position allowed him to look to his left, where Binnix stood just beyond an arm’s length from him. Her silhouette already visible thanks to the Endeavour’s lights, her own helmet’s interior illumination highlighted her face. The telltale indicators of her suit’s life-support system marked her location. She was his partner out here. Other members of the Endeavour’s crew along with Lieutenant Sulu as well as agents Phillip Watson and David Horst were out here, positioned in similar fashion at different points around the saucer’s rear half, supplementing the four teams tasked with operating the phaser cannons already deployed atop the ship’s hull. In the meantime, Captain Khatami and additional Endeavour personnel were in the process of donning whatever EV suits remained and preparing to augment the group already deployed outside.

  “This isn’t exactly what I signed up for,” Kirk said. “When you’re training for starship command, defending a fixed position isn’t something they typically spend a lot of time teaching at the Academy.”

  Studying such things was a component of his history courses as a cadet. Everything from the Spartans at Thermopylae to the Western Front during the First World War had captivated his attention. While his instructors had little to say so far as referencing these battles to modern starship combat tactics, Kirk enjoyed the challenge of translating the ancient strategies into something useful. The more unconventional, the better, so far as he was concerned. Such thinking served him well during his tenure at the Academy in everything from training simulations to exercises pitting classes against one another in ground combat drills designed to emphasize teamwork and ingenuity. Though it was many years ago, Kirk still took a bit of shameless and admittedly immature pride at having never lost any of his class’s Capture the Flag exercises. A few of those were even conducted on moons or planets with atmospheric conditions requiring the use of EV suits, something Kirk had not enjoyed but to which he adapted because that was what victory required. As it happened, those same bits of unorthodox strategy and wayward thinking he learned in school came in handy during the ensuing years.

  And here’s hoping they don’t fail me now, he thought.

  A tone sounded from the speakers in Kirk’s helmet, signifying the activation of a new communications frequency, and was followed by the voice of Captain Khatami.

  “Endeavour to Captain Kirk. Are you all ready?”

  Consulting the tricorder he brought with him, Kirk checked the diagram he had programmed into the device. It now displayed a technical schematic of the Endeavour’s saucer along with icons representing twenty-four people distributed in twos along the hull. Four of the pairs were assigned to the phaser cannons already deployed by the ship’s security contingent, while the others were arranged in a pattern designed to provide a unified front along with overlapping fields of fire for the phaser rifles every person carried. Kirk had already directed the phaser cannon crews to maneuver the larger weapons into a formation designed to provide maximum protection for the Endeavour’s aft section that housed the precious impulse engines. They also would offer covering fire for everyone else if they ended up retreating to secondary fire positions along the ship’s hull.

  “As ready as we’re going to be,” he said. “What about our visitors?” He knew that the Endeavour’s captain had ordered the reactivation of the starship’s starboard impulse engine. Though only operating at one-third its normal capacity, that was still enough to allow use of the sensors, communications, and other shipboard systems they needed.

  Khatami replied, “Sensors show at least fifty life-forms on the surface, all Orion. They’re spreading into a skirmishers line, but so far there’s no indication of their point of attack. We’re jamming their communications and their ships’ sensors, which also means their personal scanners or tricorders or whatever the people on the ground are carrying. That’ll confuse them for a while, but it won’t matter when they get close enough to start shooting.”

  “They have to get here first,” Kirk said.

  “We’re not going to have to wait long,” said Commander Katherine Stano. Kirk knew the Endeavour’s first officer had taken up a position opposite his on the defensive perimeter’s far side, coordinating her actions with his so they could divide the task of overseeing the effort. “According to scans, the first of them have closed to within a hundred meters.”

  Adjusting the settings on his tricorder, Kirk reduced the size of the device’s Endeavour schematic, allowing him to study a graphic representation of the canyon floor. Fifty green icons now were visible, arranged in a curved line and moving toward the crippled starship across the vast swath of broken ground he had taken to calling “No-Man’s-Land.” It took him only a moment to see the formation for what it was, taking advantage of the terrain to cover the entire open area to the vessel’s rear. Their line was shrinking as it advanced, indicating some level of communication between them.

  “Captain, are you sure their comms are jammed?” he asked.

  “So far as we can tell while basically working with one arm tied behind our back down here,” Khatami replied. “It’s also possible they’re using a frequency outside the normal scanning range.”

  Binnix said, “Sounds sneaky enough for a bunch of pirates.”

  “We can reconfigure our systems,” the Endeavour captain continued, “but it’ll take a minute or so. By then, the first of them might already be on you.”

  Kirk said, “Do it anyway. Jamming their personal comms will add to the confusion once we engage them, and we’ll need every advantage we can get.”

  “Copy that,” Khatami replied.

  Not content to rely solely on his tricorder, Kirk looked across the canyon floor and tried to see past the maze of jagged rock jutting up from the asteroid’s uneven surface. Left unchecked, the darkness along with the topography of No-Man’s-Land would do an excellent job of masking the Orions’ advance until they were almost on them. Sound certainly wouldn’t be of use out here in vacuum. He strained, searching for even the barest hint of light or movement, anything that might give away the position of someone approaching.

  “Captain Kirk,” said Commander Stano through the open frequency. “They’re getting close. Everybody stand fast.”

  Next to him, Binnix held up her own tricorder, which like his had been programmed to provide a tactical overview of the area. Glancing at his own scan, he noted the canyon floor’s broken terrain was providing their attackers with the same sort of cover he and his fellow defenders now enjoyed.

  He adjusted his suit’s communications frequency to the channel set aside for every member of the hastily assembled Endeavour defense force. “This is Captain Kirk. Those of you with tricorders already
know the first line of Orions is almost on us. Final check for all weapons on heavy stun. Don’t wait for my signal. If you have a target, neutralize it. Phaser cannon crews, the moment you see an opportunity, take it. Wide beam.”

  “I have no idea what kind of tactical training your typical Orion gets,” said Binnix. “But if they have any brains at all, they’ll go after the cannons the instant the first of them fires.”

  Kirk agreed. While he hoped the cannons were his ace in the hole, perhaps successfully stunning the majority of the Orions before they got too close, experience and harsh lessons learned long ago had taught him differently.

  “Plan for the best. Expect the worst,” he said.

  Binnix replied, “I prefer something I came across years ago, while reading about twentieth-century warfare. Something called Murphy’s Laws of Close Combat. One of them was, ‘No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.’ It’s actually pretty adaptable to all sorts of situations.”

  “Sounds about right,” Kirk conceded.

  He was once more studying the schematic on his tricorder when the first hint of movement caught his attention from somewhere to his left. It was fleeting and when he tried to focus on the source it seemed to disappear.

  “Get ready.”

  That was all Kirk had time to say before the darkness was pierced by a brilliant shaft of green-yellow light aimed in his general direction. The beam went far enough to his left that he was in no danger, but that was enough for other members of the Endeavour crew to take action. More than a half-dozen streaks of blue-white phaser energy erupted from the defensive perimeter, searching for the source of that initial shot. This, of course, provoked more fire from various points out in No-Man’s-Land. Within seconds the area was being blanketed with streaks of crisscrossing weapons fire. Despite the visual cacophony erupting all around him, Kirk heard nothing inside his suit helmet.

  “Kirk to Endeavour! Hit the lights!”

  Now the darkness was beaten back as the lights scattered across the starship’s hull flared to life. Seeing his own arms and Binnix hunkering beside him behind the jagged outcropping made Kirk push himself even closer to the rock, doing his best to present as small a target as possible. To his right and left, members of the defensive team were taking advantage of the illumination to find targets, unleashing new volleys from their phaser rifles. Just at the edge of the lights’ reach, Kirk saw more than a dozen figures scrambling for cover, each of them clad in EV suits that were nearly as black as the darkness they used to conceal their movements. They ducked behind outcroppings or jumped into depressions, craters, or whatever else presented itself.