Star Trek - TOS - Battlestations

by Diane Carey

  uglies behind her question. His face went verdant with

  bottled emotions as, with effort, he answered, "An

  associate. Merete AndrusTaurus. A Star Fleet physi-

  cian. She was loosely involved with Piper and Sarda

  when they interfered with the dreadnought affair."

  His humiliation was obvious, even through the Vul-

  can shields. He knew damned well he was betraying

  something sacred when he defiled the privacy of the

  training melds he had shared with Sarda. Was it habit?

  Had Mornay exerted subliminal control over him for

  so long that he had forgotten his responsibilities to

  anyone else?

  Ursula Mornay thought about what he had told her,

  then nodded and put her needly glare on me again.

  "Your friends out there can be traced. You've kindly

  supplied me with the means to attract their attention."

  She awkwardly gathered the tileorder into the same

  hand that held the communicator and said, "They'll be

  sure to answer a distress call from one of their own

  signals." She handed the two instruments to a guard

  and reset her phaser, then looked up at Perren. "See

  that they are locked up in the storage room. I promise

  you they won't be hurt unless they themselves force

  me to act. Such things are sometimes necessary, aren't

  they? For the ultimate kindness, we must fortify our-

  160

  selves. Take them immediately. The guards will go

  with yore Then meet me in the main lab."

  Mornay knew Perren's weaknesses very well after

  all their years together. My heart sank to see it work-

  ing.

  Once again I locked my lips, redirecting my frustra-

  tion long enough to help Scanner lift Sarda. Con-

  sciousness was seeping back as the phaser stun dissi-

  pated, but he needed help to walk. A short, cold walk

  to a small, cold room.

  When we got inside, I let Scanner take Sarda to a

  crate where he could sit down. I turned instead to

  Perren. The mercenaries remained outside, and with

  my voice low, only Perten could hear me.

  "Can you really think of selling transwarp to hostile

  powers?" I asked, my tone one of unexpected inti-

  macy.

  He tossed his head in a motion of frustration and

  said, "I assure you, Commander, I will destroy

  transwarp and myself if necessary, before I allow the

  flux technology to leave Federation hands."

  That took me by surprise. For a moment I just

  gawked at him in confusion, then blurted, "So it's all a

  bluff."

  "No," he said. "Not a bluff. Ursula will do what she

  threatens to do. She has her purposes and I have mine.

  For the moment, they are parallel. When the time of

  divergence comes, I will be able to control her."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Question me no more, Commander!" he snapped.

  "You begin to irritate." That was obvious enough,

  judging from the way his lips curled in when he said it.

  With a fan of dark hair, he spun and left. The door

  clanged shut. We heard the grinding of a mechanical

  lock.

  "Huh," Scanner grunted. "Vulcan is skin-deep."

  He glared at the door for a count, then turned back to

  161

  Sarda. The contempt he felt earlier for Sarda had

  apparently found new targets. There was none left

  here. He began busily rubbing sensation back into

  Sarda's arms and knees, ignoring those tiresome pro-

  tocols about not touching Vulcans. Scanner never did

  pay much attention to them, and this wasn't the occa-

  sion to change him. "Come on, Points, you're okay.

  Here, lean on this. Atta boy. Got any feet down there

  yet?" He paused, then asked, "How are you?"

  Sarda blinked to focus his vision and slowly said,

  "Unwell."

  I flinched at the weakness of his voice and the effort

  he put behind it. I lowered myself onto the next crate,

  facing him. "Do you feel horrible?"

  Only then did the whole impact of his regret surface

  and only for an instant. A sadness touched his down-

  turned face. "I feel foolish," he murmured. The in-

  tense honesty startled us.

  Scanner stared in amazed empathy and started to

  say something. I cut him off with a quick shake of my

  head.

  Carefully rephrasing, I asked, "Do you think you're

  hurt?"

  Sarda made a laudable effort to straighten himself,

  though his arms and thighs shook. Without thinking,

  Scanner and I each caught an elbow. "Nothing perma-

  nent," Sarda uttered weakly. "She has always . . .

  resented my association with Perren."

  The effort drained him and he fought a bone-deep

  shudder, but the gloss was returning to his eyes now

  and his complexion was regaining its luster.

  "We've got to talk," I said. "Come up with a plan of

  action."

  "What action?" Scanner howled. "She's got us

  hemstitched?

  "Never stopped us before," I muttered back. "The

  captain's out there somewhere, expecting us to be

  ready for him."

  162

  Sarda blinked hard and straightened a little more.

  "Captain Kirk? Here?"

  "Yes, with Spock, McCoy, and Merete."

  Scanner added, "Yeah, and now they know we're in

  trouble."

  I nodded, my nose wrinkling at the reminder. "And

  thanks to my bad acting, Mornay's ready for them.

  They'll walk into a trap."

  "Maybe," Scanner agreed, "but she still doesn't

  know it's the captain, and that's goana make her

  underestimate."

  Nervous now, I slid off the crate and paced to the

  room's only opening, a newly mounted metal door

  with a wide, tinted duraglass window. I pressed my

  shoulder against the glass and peered into the stone

  corridor, where four mercenaries were eerily lit by

  those inexpensive little diogen torches. Those guards

  looked too casual about their job, casual in a danger-

  ous way. Casual as though they did this for a living.

  Casual as though the phaser dries were extensions of

  their own arms. My nervousness doubled. "We've got

  to buy Captain Kirk time. Mornay thinks he's on

  board Enterprise. The starship should be here soon."

  "When?" Sarda asked.

  I threw my hands up, only to have them clap down

  onto my thighs. "How do I know? Kirk never tells me

  anything! All I know is that Mr. Scott and Dr. Boma

  are bringing the ship in while Kirk lurks around here.

  We were supposed to break you out, and here we are

  locked up like penned ducks! We've got to get out of

  here and get on with our mission."

  "Uh-uh," Scanner complained. He took that as a

  cue to lean back against the wall next to Sarda and put

  his hands behind his head. "Our mission was to sepa-

  rate Sarda from the witch and the warlock. We done

  that. He's separated."

  I ignored him. It was that or whack him one, and I

  figured I'd save my strength. A few strands of thick


  163

  hair fell around my face as I stared at the floor,

  cloaking me from their eyes. I'd have liked to think of

  my hair as golden, but somehow it never got past

  pyrite. The worse the situation got, the browner my

  hair felt. Even after all those weeks under Earth's

  gaudy sun ....

  How did my hair get into this? I widened my eyes

  and shook my head to clear it. A deep breath helped

  me cope. "There's something weird about this," I

  grumbled, my brow knitting until it gave me a head-

  ache. "Something about Mornay isn't fitting with what

  we were told. I don't think she's as unenlightened as

  Spock thought. She was careful not to say things to us,

  as though she..."

  I faltered, staring into a convenient wall.

  "As though she what?" Scanner prodded.

  My eyes narrowed as I thought harder, forcing

  myself to add up things that were abstract at best.

  "Perten doesn't know much about humans, does he?"

  Sarda frowned. "Why do you ask?"

  "He can't see through her. She's stringing him

  along. Saying the things he wants to hear. Like I said,

  she's not so ignorant. I don't think we should underes-

  timate her. She knows better than to try to ransom the

  technology by itself. She knew enough to build the

  device. Is that going to be enough for her? You heard

  her talk about testing transwarp. It's the next logical

  step. She intends to take her leverage as far as it'll

  go!"

  "Piper," Sarda said calmly, "your logic is accept-

  able, but Mornay has no support for such a project.

  Beyond ransoming the technology, she has no lever-

  age. The dreadnought was supposed to be the test for

  transwarp, but it's not an option any longer." He

  paused then, fatigued by the long talk, and closed his

  eyes. Soon they opened again, slightly dulled from the

  strain. He was recovering, but I knew what full phaser

  stun felt like, and I frowned sympathetically.

  164

  "She might have more support than we realize," I

  went on, pacing now. "Rittenhouse had plenty of

  support. Star Fleet is only scratching the surface of the

  corruption. Who knows how deep it runs? Mornay

  probably knows exactly who to contact when she

  needs something."

  "Even so," Sarda argued, "she will need special-

  ized scientific help to mount transwarp on a ship, and

  that is assuming she can call upon people who know

  how to select an appropriate vessel. That takes spe-

  cialized knowledge. She cannot simply call upon new

  scientists. Herself, Perren, and I are all who remain of

  Rittenhouse's science team."

  I stopped pacing. Scanner and Sarda both gazed up

  at me, and I down at them, and I think we all stopped

  breathing. "No," I said. "You're not. You're not at

  all!"

  The little stone room echoed.

  "Boma," Scanner murmured.

  "And he's already on board Enterprise," I finished.

  Sarda's eyes widened as he stared at me. We had the

  same thought at the same time. We said it together.

  "The test ship!"

  165

  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-

  166

  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 Ente rprise 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 deli-

  cate 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 resent-

  ment. 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."

  167

  "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 rossible

  that two scientists could take over a whole stafshj'p full

  of military personnel."

  "The logical assumption is that they will incapaci-

  tate 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

  168

  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