Lorelei sat in his command seat, attention focused on the viewscreen. Kirk's gaze flickered from the woman to the picture of his crew diligently working on engine repair, then returned. In that fraction of a second, Lorelei had sensed the intrusion and hit the alarm button. Red lights flared and the general-quarters warning flashed on and off.
Spock and Kirk began firing their phasers. Chekov and Sulu slumped forward, stunned. Uhura tried to interpose her body between the beams and Lorelei's slim body. She succeeded in taking a double blast. All the while, Lorelei moved quickly to the emergency stairs leading to the deck below.
Air blew against Kirk's back. He spun, to face the closed doors to the turbolift. McCoy and Neal had gone down, to try to head off the Hylan. The others on the deck rushed forward, only to be stunned by Spock's accurate fire. In less than fifteen seconds, all lay peacefully dozing.
"Damn, Spock, she got away from us."
"We have control of the ship, Captain. The bridge is vital if she wants to regain power."
Kirk dropped into his seat, flipped a code on the buttons and waited. No red lights blossomed on Chekov's panel.
"She deactivated the gas canisters, as I thought she might. We may have the bridge, but she has the rest of the ship. By the time she reaches auxiliary control, we're going to have a problem on our hands."
"The turbolift is now disabled. The only way to reach the bridge is up the stairwell."
"Or through the dome." Kirk looked up at the glasteel skylight magnifying the stars. An atomic torch might cut through it in a few minutes. They'd have warning, but it'd avail them little. The sudden decompression would kill them. He tried to force from his mind the thought of the engineering team working on the dome rather than the warp drive. His frontal attack had almost succeeded.
A near miss—and in this case, a millimeter might as well have been a parsec. Lorelei had escaped unscathed, in full control of the crew and able to bide her time. For Kirk and the others, time worked as their enemy.
"Sir, I have Mr. Scott on the intercom."
"Report, Scotty."
"I have secured a portion of the engine room. Heather McConel is likely to be back in full form soon enough. The lass seldom washed her ears." He chuckled at this. "The others, now, they'll pose a wee problem. I have them locked in a tool bin."
"Weld the door shut. And weld shut the door leading into the engineering section. We didn't get Lorelei. She will have the rest of the crew down on our necks any minute now. The best we can do is slow her down."
"Aye, aye, sair."
Scotty clicked off, leaving Kirk to his bleak thoughts. The hum of Spock's phaser pulled him back. Three crewmen collapsed at the head of the stairs. When the turbolift doors opened, Kirk was ready. His phaser stunned six inside. The doors closed and the elevator dropped back.
"I thought you had the turboelevator shut down."
"Sorry, Captain. Lorlei has established herself in the auxiliary command post. She overrode me."
"Is there any part of the ship you have total control over?"
"Negative, sir. Mr. Scott might allow me some slight control, but with the warp engines still powered down and most internal energy coming from batteries and impulse power, there is not a great deal we can do."
"Shut off the air-circulating fans. We were only running them at fifty paircent."
"Lorelei has overriden control already. We cannot affect any of the life-support units. Nor can I overload by switching in other power-draining equipment."
"Keep trying. We can't give it up now. We can't."
Even as he spoke, the viewscreen blurred and the repair crew vanished, to be replaced by Lorelei's sad face.
"James? It is truly you. You are a most remarkable man. It is a pity you so steadfastly refuse to forsake the ways of violence."
Kirk swallowed hard. Even the sight of the woman affected him. Pheromones, harmonics, more? He didn't know. The wax filtered out the worst of her persuasive tones, but he still shivered at the impact of her words.
"Filter her down even more, can you, Spock?"
"At once, Captain."
The picture remained, but herringbone patterns crisscrossed her visage now. The words came slurred and indistinct, but Kirk still understood them all too well.
"You cannot escape or triumph. Please surrender, James. I do not wish to see you come to any harm." When he did not respond, she smiled sadly and added, "Your Dr. McCoy has been captured."
"Bones!" Kirk half-rose, hands on the armrests, poised to explode outward.
"He will be beamed back to the planet. I will try to explain to the being comprising that planet of the situation. No disciplinary action will be taken against McCoy. He must only learn to live in harmony with the ecosystem."
"You'll kill him. None of us can live there. We're intruders. That's a totally symbiotic system!"
"I have the screen set for mark two filter, Captain. She can neither see nor hear you clearly."
"She's got McCoy." He sank back into his seat, suddenly weary to the core of his soul.
"James, please do not react in so violent a fashion." Kirk repeatedly rammed his fists into the armrests of his command seat. He trembled with the need to act, to do something—and the frustration of being totally helpless. "Dr. McCoy is not being harmed. If anything, he is better off now than when you sneaked back aboard. Many minor injuries have been tended to. Nurse Chapel is quite able to handle such wounds as the doctor sported."
"Lorelei, you're going to beam him back down to the planet."
"I cannot have dissension among the crew. Violence is a seed spawning nothing but more violence. I tried to reason with you and failed. McCoy is similarly committed to a course at odds with the True Path."
"He'll die on the planet. The ecosystem is—"
"I am aware of the unified order of life on the planet," the woman broke in. Kirk felt the vibrancy of her voice, the light she brought to an otherwise darkened universe. She promised so much. Why did he oppose her so? Peace was his for the asking. All he had to do was to listen, to listen, to listen.
"Captain," shouted Spock, breaking the spell the Hylan wove around him. "It is not wise conversing with her for even short periods of time."
Jim Kirk shook himself. The wax in their ears did not do more than take the edge off the woman's harmonic attacks. She pitched her voice perfectly, insidiously. But he resisted, knowing what weapon he faced. A weapon was the only way he could consider her voice.
It didn't matter that what Lorelei preached—and truly believed, he was certain—was peace. That philosophy would cause any human to die quickly on the planet below. Kirk wondered if Lorelei herself could survive in the uni-life-form system. It transcended symbiosis; it became one huge organism living and responding as a unit. Anyone—human, Hylan, Tellarite—that intervened became a cancer to be removed before the system suffered. It was a potent evolutionary development, and one Kirk wished he and his crew had time to study further—at their leisure and in such a way that the life form did not view them as intruders.
"Lorelei, don't send McCoy back down to the planet. He doesn't belong there."
"He no longer fits in aboard the Enterprise, either, James. Nor do you. In the scheme of things, the old order must make way for the new. You are not adaptive enough to embrace the ways of peace. The ways of war are no longer needed."
"Lorelei," he started, then switched off the viewscreen. An exterior view of the repair work being finished on the port engine replaced the woman's drawn face.
"This is quite a strain on her," he told Spock. "Do you see the sadness in her eyes, the way she looks?"
"Undoubtedly it is a strain, Captain. She cannot like what she does in the name of peace. Any being proclaiming allegiance to pacifism knows the planet below will slay. She is only offering a tenuous chance to survive."
"It is an effort," mused Kirk.
"No, Jim, that won't be good enough to defeat her. She conserves her personal strength well."
/> "I can't let her send McCoy down. I'll stop her. Spock, keep trying to box her in with the controls. I'll try to rescue McCoy in the transporter."
"Sir, I have an idea that might work. It requires considerable computer work on my part, however."
"Get me down to the transporter room; then do what you have to."
"Aye, aye, sir. Ready."
The doors to the turbolift slipped open. Kirk walked forward as if he marched into the maw of a giant beast preparing to devour him. Never had he felt more alone than when the doors slid shut and the elevator dropped at breathtaking speed. Kirk had barely steeled himself for the hostile reception committee waiting as the doors opened on the transporter deck.
Swift reflexes saved him. Half a dozen members of a security team bracketed the hall, phasers set on stun. His own phaser fired first, slid along the line of waiting guards and dropped them in one efficient motion. Lorelei controlled his crew, but their reflexes had yet to adapt to her words. They fought themselves, her enforced philosophy eventually triumphing. But the small delay between obedience to the Hylan and her pacifistic views and attacking a senior officer gave Kirk a slight edge.
The last of the security force had barely touched the deck when he burst into the transporter room. The transporter chief readied the unit and McCoy stood, hands bound behind his back.
"Off the plate, Bones," he yelled. "Deactivate transporter, Mr. Kyle." Again came the slight confusion, the merest of time lags. Kyle wanted to obey his captain; training so instilled died hard. But Lorelei had ordered him to beam down the doctor.
"Captain, I—" was all Kyle said before the phaser sent him reeling, to hit the wall and slide to the deck, unconscious.
"It's good to see you, Jim. You sure do cut it fine."
"Never mind that. We've got to get back to the bridge. Spock is trying to hold together what little control we have from there.
"How'd you get here? She took over from auxiliary." McCoy rubbed his wrists to get back the circulation that had been cut off due to the tightly fastened ropes.
"I…I don't know. Spock must have done it."
"No, James, I allowed it. Keeping you and the Vulcan together did not seem a good tactic for me." Her voice boomed from the intercom near the transporter console.
"Tactic, Lorelei? You speak like a general. A military commander. Are you declaring war?" He motioned for McCoy to leave the room and head for the turbolift.
"War? That is not possible, according to your definition of war. In a way, it might be war, if you redefine it to mean convincing another of your moral superiority. Force solves nothing. We must all reason together peacefully. You are unable to do so. You resist too strongly."
"Jim, my ears. I…I feel her voice."
With the swiftness of striking lightning, Kirk moved. The flats of his hands slammed into either side of McCoy's head, trapping the man's ears in a quick slap. The doctor yelped and put his own hands over his injured ears.
"Dammit, you deafened me!" he shouted, no longer able to hear his own voice and control the volume. He subsided when Kirk put a finger to his lips, cautioning silence. McCoy realized then the need for such action.
"Still you persist in opposing my guidance to the True Path. I like you, James. I wish we had met under better circumstances. I must send you, too, to the planet. You disturb the crew with your savage ways."
The door leading from the transporter room slid shut. Kirk knew Lorelei had control restored over many of the circuits he'd shut down. He never hesitated when he slid the selector switch on the hand phaser to full power. The fuchsia beam lashed out against the door. A smoking hole widened until both men were able to slip through. Bits of burning metal caught on Kirk's tunic and smoldered through to naked flesh. He swatted them out, hardly noticing what he did as he ran for the stairs leading to the engineering section. If Scotty still held out, there was a slight chance he might be able to use this as a base to launch a frontal assault on the auxiliary bridge.
"No, James, it will not work. Do not harm any of the crew. They are your friends. They mean you no ill. Help them. Work together with them." He stumbled as he ran, the full force of her voice working on his resolve. In his head, he tried to recite poetry, to go over the crew roster, to think about anything but the softly persuasive tendrils drifting through his mind. Without the wax stoppers in his ears he'd have completely succumbed to Lorelei's expert ministrations.
"James, you want to believe as I do. Barbarism is not the answer. Friendship is. Working with others gives good feelings. There is more than . . ." Shrieking feedback cut through Kirk's mounting stupor like a knife through butter. The intercom went berserk with high-pitched whines, subsonic whirrings that rattled his bones and vibrated his internal organs. McCoy supported him until he got control of himself.
The shriekings of tormented electrons came as music to his ears. He could not make himself heard over it. He mouthed out, "To the auxiliary bridge." McCoy nodded and followed.
Kirk phaser-stunned two guards outside the door, then shoved through, ready to continue the fight. There was no need. Lorelei sat in the auxiliary command seat, her face haggard and drawn from effort. She spoke and the words amplified, fed on themselves and blasted forth as twisted gibberish.
"James," she said, the name screeching like a fingernail on metal finish. He shared her sadness and regret in that instant. His thumb tightened on the trigger and a pure beam of energy bathed the Hylan woman. She collapsed onto the control console. McCoy hurried to her side, checked her vital signs and nodded. She'd live.
So would the Enterprise and its crew.
Kirk went to the frail form and hoisted it in his arms. McCoy, phaser ready, trailed behind. No words were possible, even if the feedback from each activated intercom had allowed them.
James T. Kirk looked at the woman through the shimmer of a force curtain. Lorelei sat comfortably in the detention cell, unable to communicate with anyone on the outside. Kirk looked at his science officer. Spock nodded, saying, "The circuit is completed. It will work according to your specifications, Captain."
"Thank you, Spock." Kirk flipped the switch on a small black box. A single red light came on. "Are you able to hear me all right, Lorelei?"
"Yes, James," came the muted, frequency-altered reply. It sounded as if a basso profondo spoke and not the normal contralto that was Lorelei's. "You do not have to lock me up in this fashion."
"I'm sorry, Lorelei. I do. You threaten our mission. Only by keeping you isolated and in such a way that you can't use your…" He hesitated. He had started to say "weapon." ". . . so you can't use your persuasiveness against anyone on the ship can I ensure completion of our mission."
"You persist in going to Ammdon? A war will result."
"I don't believe that."
"The ambassadors are all dead. They were men of war, not peace. Their aggressions destroyed them."
"They died, but not from aggression. Humans are different. We don't fit the mold you tried to carve for us. Ambassador Zarv was a Tellarite. Not human, but enough like us, Mek Jokkor wasn't even vaguely human, except in exterior form, and he didn't fit into that planet's biosphere. Lorelei, it is difficult for you to accept, but there are places in the universe where humankind is not welcome, doesn't belong, will never belong."
"Peace is the answer."
"For the most part, you're right. It does not pay to pursue a warlike policy of expansion like the Klingons and the Romulans, but a peaceful society must be able to defend itself."
"Persuasion is enough."
"For Hyla, it might be. For humanity, it isn't." She gave him a pitying look, as if he'd missed the point entirely. He finally said, "I'll see that you're returned to Hyla as soon as possible."
"You will not kill me?"
"If you have to ask, you've missed the point." He flipped the switch on the black box and let the red light fade into darkness. Turning to Neal, he said, "See to it that no one else is allowed to communicate with her. The majority of th
e crew is still under her influence. According to McCoy's estimates, the effects will lessen over the next few days, with only lingering guilt by the end of a week. Till then, no chances. Right, Mr. Neal?"
"Aye, aye, sir." He saluted as Kirk and Spock left.
Once out in the corridor, Spock activated still another force barrier. Only then did he address Kirk. "Sir, Mr. Scott requests your immediate presence in engineering. His repair work has reached a crucial point."
"Very well. Carry on, Mr. Spock. Make certain that those with you on the bridge are absolutely loyal—to the Federation."
"Uhura, Sulu and Chekov are all cleared. I have used the Vulcan mind fusion to ascertain their true allegiances."
"Excellent." Kirk dropped down a stairway and worked his way through the confused jumbles of crew until he reached the engineering deck. The door had been pried open after Lorelei had been incarcerated. Repairing it might take as long as fixing the engines.
"Ah, Captain, I have something for ye to see." Scotty gestured for him to study the computer readouts.
"What is it? Hmm, here's the power level. Rising nicely. The port engine is fine. Good work."
"Captain, look at the starboard engine. The one we're workin' on now. The wee bairn's nae doin' so fine."
Needle-sharp power fluctuations confirmed Scotty's opinion. Kirk knew little about the details of the engines, but he'd trained long enough and had commanded a starship for enough years to recognize dangerous malfunctions when he spotted them. He looked up, frowning.
"Aye, sair, it's bad. I request pairmission to personally go out and dig about in the starboard matter-antimatter pod."
"There's no way you can use robot probes?"
"None, sair. 'Tis delicate work. Too delicate to trust to robotic waldoes."
"When you complete the matter-antimatter mixing balance the engine will run smoothly?"
"As smooth as a baby's bottom, sair!" he said proudly. Kirk had his answer. Scotty wanted his hands on the sensitive equipment in the pod, but he also had to do the work personally. None other had his talent, skill or experience.
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