by L. A. Graf
The persistent sound of banging roused Uhura from something deeper and more painful than sleep. She woke with her face pressed into a tangle of shock webbing, one arm numb beneath her chest, and her mouth thick with the taste of smoke. The afterglow of burnt circuitry shed a faint reddish light over the cockpit, but the rest of the shuttle lay shrouded in predawn darkness.
The banging sound echoed through the metal walls again, angrily insistent. Something stirred and groaned under Uhura's outstretched hand. With an effort, she turned her head against her ropy cushion and saw Sulu peering back at her through the ruby-veined darkness.
"You all right?" The pilot's voice was hoarse.
Uhura nodded, not sure she could speak past the dry rasp of her own throat. She pushed herself up to her knees and promptly bumped her head on a crumpled sheet of metal that had punched its way through the cockpit door above her.
"We have—" Uhura heard the ragged whisper that came out as her voice, swallowed, and tried again. "We have to check on Murphy and Mutchler."
Sulu groaned again, but hauled himself up by means of the broken instrument panel. "What happened to Chekov? He told me to take off—I assumed that meant he was on board."
"He was, almost." Uhura scrubbed her hands over her eyes, trying to shake off her persistent muzziness. Lack of sleep gnawed at her, worsening the ache of abused bones and muscles. Her last glimpse of Chekov's face gnawed at her, too, a pale blur of remembered shock against the darkness. "I heard phaser fire just before he fell. I think they must have shot him."
"Damn." Sulu stood in dismayed silence for a moment, then staggered past her, slithering down on his knees to duck below the obstruction in the door. From somewhere farther back in the shuttle, the pounding had started again. "All right, we're coming—"
Uhura didn't bother getting to her feet. She simply crawled below the crumpled sheet metal, then crouched on the threshold of the shuttle's main cabin, trying to make her eyes resolve shapes out of the vague darkness. After a moment, she thought she could see the charcoal outline of a sprawled body against the far wall. She scuttled in that direction, carefully feeling for shrapnel on the floor. After a moment, her searching fingers hit warm flesh instead of cold metal.
"Wha—?" Mutchler's voice was a startled croak, as if her touch had jogged him awake. "What happened?"
"We hit the defense shield and crashed." Uhura slid her fingers down his arm, hunting for the safety strap she'd thrown over him. She found it jammed tight under his shoulder and worried the clip free to unhook it from around him. "Are you hurt?"
The geologist's bark of pain as he tried to sit up answered her. Uhura reached out to hold him still. "Don't move. Where are you hurt?"
"Leg. Left leg." Mutchler's fingers clamped vise-tight on her wrist, and he gasped brokenly. "Don't touch it! I think—I think it's broken."
Patiently, Uhura waited until he caught his breath and let her go. "There must be an intact medical kit in here somewhere. I'll get you some analgesics for the pain." She turned back to the dark interior of the shuttle and saw a familiar slender shadow move toward her. "Sulu, did you find Murphy?"
"Yes." The bleak tone of the helmsman's voice told her without words that the security guard was dead. Uhura couldn't answer, newly aware of the raw ache in her throat. "Here. I found you a medical kit for Mutchler."
She reached out with a wordless murmur of thanks to take it from him, but froze before their hands touched. The metal walls around them had begun to vibrate again with the echo of muffled pounding, and it certainly wasn't coming from Mutchler. Instead, it sounded as if it was coming from the back end of the shuttle.
"Good Lord!" Uhura spun around so fast she nearly fell over a dislodged seat. "Sulu, do you hear—"
"Yes. Don't go near it." Sulu scrabbled over debris to the far wall of the shuttle. Uhura heard the crisp pop of a locker door unsealing; then her eyes burned with the sudden light of an emergency lamp. When she managed to squint them open again, it was to see shadows chasing themselves up the back wall as Sulu approached it.
"Be careful," she said when he paused and cocked his head to listen. "It might be a trap."
Sulu shook his head, a torn scrap of his uniform collar fluttering with the motion. "No. I can hear someone crying." He leaned forward and dragged at a tortured metal panel whose red and white stripes identified it as the access to the warp core. "I think—" He grunted with the effort of pulling. "—that someone's stuck inside here."
"But who—" Uhura broke off as the metal panel sheared free of its splintered brackets. Light from Sulu's emergency lamp shot into the empty space behind it, striking golden sparks from heavily jeweled arms. Slowly, a dark head lifted from those cradling arms, showing them a sharply angled and familiar face.
"Israi!" Uhura blinked in utter astonishment. "What are you doing here?"
This time, the Dohlman of Elas did not flare up in instant fury at the use of her name. "My kessh hid me here, Uhura. He thought I would be safe." Tears brimmed from her almond eyes, sliding down to join the trickle of cinnamon brown blood spilling from her split lip. "I've been pounding on that door for hours. I couldn't make it open from inside, and I thought you were all dead—"
"Hey, it's all right." Sulu reached down to pull her out. "Where are you hurt?"
"Just here, from the torn metal." Israi brushed her snake-thick curls back as simply as a child, to show him a brownish line of drying blood across her shoulder. "And my face. It's nothing."
Despite herself, Uhura smiled at the Dohlman's tone of quavering bravado. "It may be nothing," she agreed, reaching for the medical kit Sulu had dropped beside her. "But we still don't have to ignore it. Just wait until Sulu and I have splinted Dr. Mutchler's leg, and we'll bandage you up." She paused, waiting for the pilot to join her. She was surprised when he didn't move. "Sulu, did you hear me?" Another, longer pause. "Sulu?"
Slowly, the helmsman turned his head to look at her. There was an odd rigidity to his expression, an unnatural stiffness around the mouth that usually smiled so easily. The wooden look clashed with the fierce leap of panic in his dark eyes. "I—Uhura, I can't—unless the Dohlman orders me—"
"Oh, my God." Uhura's appalled gaze went from Sulu's wet fingers to the equally wet smudge of tears on Israi's bare arms. The Dohlman gasped in comprehension, then reached up and touched the moisture on her face. She transferred her fingers to her mouth and tasted them in amazement.
"The tears." Her voice shivered, torn between apprehension and delight. "Finally, I am mature. I have the tears of a Dohlman." After a moment, she lifted her head and laid one hand proudly on Sulu's shoulder. "And you, Starfleet pilot, are the first true bondsman of my cohort."
Chapter Sixteen
"HAVE WE GOTTEN sensor readings on the shuttle's location yet?"
At the security station, Ensign Howard looked up as Kirk and his first officer exited the turbolift behind him. Faint dark smudges underlined eyes already glossy with fatigue, and it occurred to Kirk that he couldn't say for certain when Howard had last been off the bridge. Just counting back quickly in his mind, Kirk could place the young ensign here for at least the last two shifts.
"No, sir." Exhaustion made the ensign's voice uncharacteristically despondent. "We're having trouble getting clear readings from the surface past the Elasian armada."
Kirk frowned, trotting down the short flight of stairs. "Are they jamming us?"
Howard sighed. "Not exactly, sir. The Crown Regent has positioned her flagship in firing range in orbit above the Elasian mining camp. The single-man fighters in her armada have, well …" Howard waved in frustration at whatever played across his security screens. "Dispersed! They're scattering all over the outer atmosphere, shooting their phasers at random and exciting the ionosphere until it's impossible to get any kind of coherent signal through."
"Firing at random?" Kirk glanced curiously at Spock, then slipped behind Howard's shoulder to look where the ensign pointed. "I doubt that." He felt Spock move u
p beside him.
A three-dimensional globe representing Rakatan inched around on its axis as the Enterprise circled it in real time. Bright scarlet blips marked each of the three hundred Elasian gunships, speckled all throughout the upper atmosphere like mites on a sun-warmed log. Between them, flashes of white and yellow displayed the path of their phaser bursts as they fired across the ozone at each other. Shot answered shot, beam met beam until each and every salvo was contacted by another ship's phaser blast and stopped in midflight, rendered useless. Kirk watched the intricate net they wove between themselves for almost a full minute before he recognized the antiquated pattern they made.
"Not random, Mr. Howard," he announced, leaning over the ensign's shoulder to tap a finger on his screen. "Very carefully planned. Haven't you ever seen a geodesic defensive array?"
Howard's eyes danced all over the display as he tried to retrace his captain's reasoning. "Uh … no, sir …"
"Understandable, Ensign." Spock came to his defense with a reproving sideways look at Kirk. "It is an outdated battle tactic developed in the twenty-second century, primarily to thwart ground-based missile fire."
"But, sir …" Howard craned a frown back at Kirk. "Why would the Elasians be defending against ground missiles on an uninhabited planet?"
"Because," Kirk sighed, motioning for Spock to step aside so he could slip from behind the security console and back out onto the bridge, "a geodesic defensive array has exactly the side effect you've already noted. It disrupts everything from radio signals to transporter beams." He crossed his arms and scowled at the planet hanging before him on the viewscreen. "For some reason, our friend the Crown Regent doesn't want anyone beaming off Rakatan."
"Or escaping it by shuttlecraft." Spock answered Kirk's questioning glance by pointing at the Klingon frigate hanging motionless against the glare of the rising sun. "In her current position, the Crown Regent can easily intercept any shuttle attempting to dock with the Enterprise."
"You know, Spock—if the Elasians really do want Rakatan for its dilithium resources, cutting off everyone's access to the planet isn't exactly winning them any favors."
Spock dipped a small, acknowledging nod. "And yet, judging by our experience with her, the Crown Regent is efficient to the point of ruthlessness." He cocked his head and followed Kirk's gaze to the viewscreen. "The only logical explanation is that she has some other goal in mind."
"And it isn't very hard to guess what that goal is."
"Captain?"
Kirk turned to face his first officer, drumming a fist on the arm of his command chair as his mind raced ahead of his words. "Think about it, Spock—as Israi's guardian, the Crown Regent is the de facto ruler of Elas. As her aunt, she's also the heir to the Dohlmanyi." He waved toward silent, sea blue Rakatan. "All she has to do is get Israi killed on some dangerous, unsettled planet, and she'll rule Elas permanently."
Spock considered for a heartbeat, eyebrows raised. "Given the ties the Crown Regent appears to have established with the Klingons, Captain, such an outcome could prove disruptive to peace in that quadrant of the Federation." He flicked dark eyes back to Kirk. "However, if the Elasian claim to Rakatan is proven valid, and if there are, indeed, significant dilithium deposits here—"
Kirk waved that line of thought aside. "I'm starting to doubt there's any dilithium at all on Rakatan. You've talked to Bascomb—it must just have been an excuse to get Israi here." Suddenly decisive, Kirk bounded up to the turbolift. "Mr. Howard—have Mr. Scott called up to the bridge, then relieve yourself of duty." He shook a stern finger at the ensign, but smiled to lessen the sting. "Take a full shift off, or I'll report you to your boss. Mr. Spock, you're coming with me. We're going to see if we can't rescue a certain young Dohlman from her aunt's tender loving care."
Spock followed him to the turbolift at a more appropriately dignified pace. "You have a plan by which to bypass the Crown Regent's defenses?"
"The simplest one in the world, Spock." Kirk ducked into the 'lift when the doors were barely open, then paused to hold them wide so his first officer could enter. "We're going to come at her from the direction she least expects us—from below."
The silence inside the wrecked shuttle seemed endless to Uhura. Israi was smiling at Sulu, not her usual flash of amusement, but a slow radiant smile like a sunrise. Sulu stood pinioned by her dark gaze, suspended between fascination and terror like an insect transfixed by a stalking reptile. The shuttle's medical kit, containing their only supply of antidote to Israi's tears, dangled forgotten in his hands.
"Your Glory," Uhura said quietly. "Would you please tell Sulu to bring me the medical kit for Dr. Mutchler?"
The Dohlman swung to face her, almond eyes alight. "So! You acknowledge my bonding of this male from your cohort?"
Uhura didn't have time to wonder if that had been a tactical mistake. "Dr. Mutchler needs painkillers and a cold pack for his leg," she said, trying as hard as she could to keep her voice calm. "Can I have the medical kit?"
"Of course." Israi's chin lifted with a more confident arrogance, despite her blood-streaked shoulder and bandaged arm. "But I cannot let your former bondsman run to your bidding now that he is mine. Come and get from him what you need."
Uhura gritted her teeth in dismay. Israi's pride in her newfound maturity was going to make what she had to do a hundred times harder. And Sulu wasn't helping. He stood with his back to Uhura, unable even to hold the medical kit out toward her without Israi's authorizing command.
Taking a deep breath, Uhura slipped Mutchler's hand out of hers and tried to give him a reassuring pat. The geologist's gray eyes had fixed on Israi with all of the fear and none of the fascination that Sulu showed. "Don't worry," Uhura told him on the merest thread of a whisper. "I won't let her cry on you."
Mutchler's gaze darted toward her. "But him—can't you do anything—"
Uhura laid a shushing finger across his lips, afraid that Rakatan's intense silence would carry his hoarse whisper to Israi. The geologist's eyes narrowed and he fell silent.
The canted floor of the shuttle shifted as Uhura crossed it, settling with an odd groan as if the ground beneath it were not entirely solid. Uhura slipped and caught her balance with a gasp, figuring it couldn't hurt to make Israi think she was scared. She was scared. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, driven by the knowledge that she only had one shot at this.
"Sulu." Uhura tugged at the medical kit, but couldn't force it from his frozen grip. She swung around to frown at Israi, who watched her with an odd mixture of triumph and teenage mischief in her almond eyes. Uhura had to force words out through her teeth to keep her anger from showing. "Israi, please tell Sulu to give me the medical kit."
The Dohlman smiled again. "Give your former Dohlman her medical kit, bondsman."
Without a sound, Sulu relinquished the medical kit to Uhura, and she slipped a hand inside to rummage among its contents. Tiny ampules of inhalants and cans of spray bandage tumbled together beneath her fingers, but she didn't dare look down to separate them, knowing that would attract Israi's attention.
"We'll need a splint for Mutchler's leg too," she said, talking at random to cover her lack of movement toward the geologist. She found the hyposprays and fingered her way along them, knowing from McCoy's briefing that the antidote to Israi's tears was stored in the last of the five side pockets. "You'll have to tell Sulu to open the locker for me, Your Glory." Uhura fumbled with the pocket flap, her fingers sliding in at last to reach for the reassuring coolness of a hypospray. "With the power gone in the shuttle, I can't—"
It happened almost too fast for Uhura to follow. With all her strength, she yanked the hypospray of antidote out of the medical kit and stabbed it toward Sulu's shoulder. At the same moment, a dark hand snapped out and caught at her wrist with steel-wire strength. Uhura stopped as if she'd run into a forcefield, the hypospray held quivering only a few centimeters away from its target.
"What," Israi asked coldly, "is in that medicine dispenser?"<
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Uhura bit her lip to moisten a mouth gone dry with failure and fear. Her life rode now on how well she could judge Elasian psychology. If she made another mistake—
"It's a chemical antidote to your tears," she told Israi bluntly. "Because I don't want to give my bondsman up to you."
"Ah." Israi stared at her for a long measuring moment, then reached up with her free hand to wrench the hypospray out of Uhura's fingers. Its automatic trigger released a useless spray of mist when she slammed it against the wall beside her. Uhura tried to swing the medical kit out of her reach, but the Dohlman was too quick for her again. She yanked it free and sent it hurtling out the shuttle door into darkness, with one negligently powerful snap of her slender arm.
"The painkillers—!" Uhura protested.
"You had other doses of antidote in there," Israi said, turning calmly to face her. Sulu stood at their shoulders, face rigid with his inability to intervene in the confrontation. "If not, you would have thrown the kit away when you tried to free your bondsman."
Uhura flinched at the accuracy of the Dohlman's interpretation of her actions. Just because she's young and arrogant, Uhura reminded herself, doesn't mean she's stupid.
"Dohlman Uhura." Israi reached a hand out to close around her wrist again, gently this time. "I do not blame you for trying to retain your cohort. It is what an honorable Dohlman should do." A frown crept onto her face and her grip tightened. "Although you should not have used such a craven method as an antidote. You should have challenged me, tears against tears, to see which of us is the stronger."
Uhura took a deep breath. "Since I am not of Elas, Your Glory, that would not be—" She paused, searching for the best word. "—diplomatic."
Israi snorted and released her. "Diplomacy is for the spineless. From now on, Uhura, you and I will settle our differences without it. Agreed?"