Kirk raised one eyebrow as he looked at him. “Ensign?”
“Yes, sir,” Chekov said. “I was on duty when the torpedoes were smuggled off the ship.”
The captain considered him seriously for a long several seconds. “And you feel you were lax in your duties?”
“I regret that I was, sir.”
“What, specifically, did you fail to do, Mister Chekov?”
“I did not anticipate the security breach while we were in hostile territory,” he answered. “I did not ensure that our weapons were secure.”
“I see,” Kirk said, his left elbow on the arm of his chair, regarding the earnest young ensign. “You feel that you should have had guards stationed at the photon torpedo tubes, in case stealth drones were able to open them from the outside without tripping any alarms, sneak inside, and steal the warheads.”
Slowly, it occurred to Chekov that the captain was gently mocking him. “Sir . . .”
“Resume your post, Mister Chekov,” Kirk ordered him.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Chekov said, and slid quickly back into his seat.
“Good,” Kirk said. “Now that that’s settled, how long until we intercept the 814?”
Chekov referred to his console and answered, “One hour, sixteen minutes at current velocity.”
“Sir,” Spock said from his station, “by my calculations, the 814 will reach the Nalaing system in forty-six point eight minutes.”
The captain opened the comm on the side of the command chair. “Bridge to engineering. How is that pylon holding up, Scotty?”
“Still holding steady, sir,” Scotty answered, his voice tinged with relief, and a hint of disbelief.
“We’re going to warp five,” Kirk declared.
Both Chekov and Sulu pivoted in their seats as Kirk waited for a response from the engine room. Finally, Scotty said, “That wasn’t a question, was it, sir?”
“It was not, Mister Scott,” Kirk affirmed.
After another significant pause from the chief engineer, he said, “I’ll redirect as much extra power as I can to the structural integrity field. That should give us a little extra to work with.”
“Excellent, Scotty.” The captain closed the channel, leaned forward on the edge of his chair, ordering, “Sulu, increase speed to warp five. Bring her up by increments of point-one.”
* * *
They were able to push the Enterprise to warp four point seven, cutting significantly into the 814’s lead. Though not quite enough. “The 814 has just dropped out of warp,” Spock reported from his station, “and is now entering the Nalaing system.”
“Time to intercept?” Kirk asked, sitting forward in his command chair, both hands balled into fists.
Sulu answered, “Four minutes, twelve seconds.”
Kirk clenched his jaw, biting back the impulse to demand more. He had already pushed his overstressed starship to its limits, and then beyond. He had to discover what precisely Laspas was planning to do with his two stolen warheads. At this point, all he could do was hope four minutes would be enough time to stop him . . . and that the Enterprise would still be up to that task.
As the seconds on the astrogation console’s chronometer rolled forward at a painfully slow pace, Kirk noticed McCoy had arrived on the bridge and was now standing unobtrusively in the alcove in front of the turbolift. He said nothing in reply to Kirk’s questioning look, but just gave him a simple nod that said he was just there for whatever moral support his presence might offer.
“Captain.” Uhura turned in her seat, pressing her receiver to her ear. “The 814 is broadcasting to the planet.”
“On speaker,” Kirk ordered.
Uhura complied, and Laspas’s voice filled the bridge. “Nalaing! This is the Goeg Domain Defense Corps Starvessel Class III/814. It has been long suspected that the leadership of the terrorist organization Taarpi has been given refuge and material support on your world. We now have evidence proving the native government of Nalaing has been knowingly sheltering these enemies. . . .”
“Evidence they probably tortured out of that poor woman,” McCoy said angrily.
Kirk was inclined to believe that, just as he was inclined to disbelieve whatever “evidence” Ghalif might have surrendered. “Hail them, Uhura,” he said, as Laspas paused in his broadcast.
Uhura had already turned back and started manipulating her console. “Starvessel 814, this is the U.S.S. Enter—” she said, before a loud crackling blast of static sounded over the comm. Uhura winced in pain as she quickly yanked the remote receiver out of her ear.
“What was that?” Kirk asked. “What happened?”
“That,” Spock answered from the science station, “was the detonation of a photon weapon, in high orbit above Nalaing.”
“This was a demonstration of the power that will be brought to bear should the native government refuse to surrender the Taarpi criminals,” Laspas then continued, “and those who have acted to shield them from justice, to us immediately.”
“Damn!” McCoy said. “Did he just threaten to use a photon torpedo on a populated planet?”
“Open a channel!” Kirk told Uhura, grabbing the back of her chair and leaning over her station. Once he saw that she had established a connection to the other ship, he shouted, “Laspas! Commander Laspas, this is James Kirk. Respond!”
“They are receiving, sir,” Uhura told him after several seconds without a response.
Kirk leaned in even closer to the audio pickup on Uhura’s console. “Laspas, hold your fire! You can’t detonate a photon torpedo inside a planetary atmosphere! If you do, you will kill every living thing on that planet!”
Kirk and Uhura both watched the controls that would indicate a hail being received. After what seemed like an interminable pause, it finally illuminated. Uhura punched the control, and Kirk turned to the image of the 814 command center that now filled the main viewscreen. Laspas and Satrav stood front and center. Just behind Laspas, Kirk noticed Chief N’Mi looking on, her expression serious and agitated. “Laspas!” Kirk said, marching to the front of the bridge.
But the Goeg commander was pointedly not looking at the captain. Rather, he looked past him, toward the starboard side of the bridge. “Mister Spock,” he said, “Chief N’Mi informs me that you Vulcans do not lie. Is this so?”
Spock stood up from his seat and answered, “Yes, Commander.”
“And what Kirk just said about using photon weapons on a planet’s surface? Was that true?”
Spock looked almost as surprised to be called upon as the arbiter of scientific truth as Kirk felt. “Yes, it is,” he told Laspas. “Unlike the strikes you have previously witnessed, against a relatively small ship in the vacuum of space, a photonic detonation inside the matter-rich environment of a planetary atmosphere would result in an uncontrolled matter/antimatter chain reaction—”
“Of course he’s going to support his superior’s claims,” Satrav interrupted. “How can we believe that a man who says, ‘I am not lying,’ is not a liar?”
“Because he is saying the same thing I told—”
“Chief!” Laspas snapped irritably at N’Mi. The Liruq engineer dropped her chin to her chest and fell silent, though from the way her jaw and neck muscles tensed, it was taking a significant effort on her part to keep her tongue still. Laspas, however, noticed none of this as he turned away from her and back to Kirk. “Why tell us this now?” he asked. “This seems like the kind of information you should have shared when you offered these weapons to us.”
Kirk was sure that the universal translator had suddenly malfunctioned, and turned, mouth agape, toward Uhura. “Those weapons were stolen off my ship,” Kirk said as he turned back, making sure he spoke each individual word as clearly as possible. “They were never offered.”
Then it was Laspas who looked to have been shocked by what he was hearing. But before he could say anything, Satrav snarled, “This is outrageous! Now you regret the deal you struck with Fallag to ensure the repair of
your ship, and so you make this accusation against us to try and save your Taarpi confederates!”
Laspas looked from Kirk to his executive officer, the expression of shock on his face shifting as it slowly dawned on him that it hadn’t been the Federation strangers who were lying to him. Before he could express his thoughts aloud, the voice of an unseen third party joined in.
“Defense Corps Starvessel: this is highly unusual. Nalaingers have long been partners to our Domain allies, and have always done all, within reason, to cooperate with you. We would be willing, as always, to enter into negotiations to consider your grievances and—”
“Code 8-9!” Satrav called out to his communications technician, and the voice of the Nalaing spokesperson was cut off midsentence. The second commander pointed then to another of the crew members arrayed behind him. “Weapons! Standby code 3-1.”
“Bozhe moi,” Chekov said. “There are seven billion people on that planet!”
“Commander Laspas,” Kirk shouted, drawing the Goeg’s attention back to him. “You remember the conversation we had after the first time you used our photon torpedoes against the Taarpi. Surely you must realize that I never would have agreed to just hand those weapons over.”
“How we got them is irrelevant,” Satrav sneered at Kirk, and then turned to Laspas, meeting his look of disillusion and disappointment with defiance. “We have the means to eradicate the Taarpi now.”
“Along with all seven billion sentient beings on that planet,” Kirk reminded him, “the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with the Taarpi! Laspas, whatever disputes we have, whatever the differences between us, I know what we share is the importance we place on what we do, the decisions we make. We agonize over our choices before we act, and long after. Think about what you’re about to do, and about how you’re going to live with it for the rest of your life.”
Laspas stared at Kirk, his expression unreadable. Then he turned away, and called out to his crew, “Weapons, counter code 3-1. Communications, code 8-11.”
The muscles all up and down Kirk’s back and neck released their tension at once. Behind him, he thought he heard more than one sigh of relief. He turned to Uhura to confirm that code 8-11 was an order to reestablish communications with the Nalaingers on the planet.
“Commander Laspas, code 10!”
On hearing Satrav give the order relieving Laspas of duty, Kirk turned back to the viewer to see the second commander now holding a handheld weapon on his superior. “Satrav,” Laspas growled in disbelief, “what do you think—”
“You’ve let yourself be swayed by these . . . aliens,” Satrav told him. “I have no other choice. Code 10, Commander.”
Laspas clenched and unclenched his fist as he stared daggers at his mutinous executive officer. “All this time we’ve served together, Satrav, I never would have thought you capable of something like this.”
“I cannot allow a compromised leader to continue to lead. We have our orders, and we will carry them out.”
As the confrontation played out on the viewscreen, Kirk felt the shift in the vibration of the deck under his feet and the telltale signals that the ship was dropping out of warp. He leaned over Sulu’s station to take a quick look at the readout. They had finally reached the Nalaing system and were on approach to the planet at full impulse. “Sulu,” he said in a rushed whisper, “once we reach orbit, put us between them and the planet, and raise shields.” Sulu nodded quickly and initiated the maneuver.
But they were too late. “Code 3-1,” Satrav ordered his weapons officer.
“Don’t!” said another voice, and when Kirk turned back to the viewer, he saw Chief N’Mi at the weapons station, grabbing the wrist of the Rokean stationed there. The weapons officer looked from her to the two opposing Goeg, at a complete loss as to what to do and whose orders to follow.
“You are way out of line, Chief,” Satrav told her, baring his teeth at her while at the same time keeping one eye—and his weapon—on Laspas. The commander continued to clench and unclench his hands, clearly frustrated by the powerlessness he was feeling.
“You’re holding a pistol on the vessel commander,” she shot back fearlessly. “I’m not the one who’s out of line.”
“Keep your Liruq mouth shut, pyurb, unless you—”
Suddenly, the communications link was severed, and the viewscreen switched to an image of the 814 above Nalaing, growing closer as Sulu brought them into defensive position. Kirk pivoted toward the communications officer. “Uhura, what happened?”
“I cut them off, sir.” Before Kirk could ask why, she answered, saying, “I believe Laspas was trying to send us a message, the way he was flexing his fist. He was flashing three fingers, one finger, then a fist, same pattern repeated.”
Kirk cast his mind back, and realized that, yes, he had noticed the variation in his hand movements. 3-1. The same code Satrav had issued to the weapons officer: launch weapons. That couldn’t have been what Laspas was trying to communicate, though. Why would he order the Enterprise . . . ?
“Sulu, are we in place yet?” Kirk asked.
The helmsman nodded as he manipulated the impulse drive controls on his board. “Now positioned directly below the 814, sir,” he confirmed.
Kirk turned to Chekov and ordered, “Target their main power generators and fire phasers.”
Without hesitation, the ensign powered the phaser banks and announced, “Firing,” as he launched a salvo against the 814. On the viewer, phasers shot out from the Enterprise emitters and struck the Domain vessel amidships. A section of new hull plating—one of the hastily applied patches that covered one of the points where the vessel had been physically connected to the Enterprise—went spinning away, burning a bright streak in the planet’s upper atmosphere.
“The 814 is returning fire,” Spock reported, and in the same instant a small flash of light blinked from the 814’s bow.
“Yes!” Kirk exclaimed, drawing curious looks from around the bridge. Their provocation had momentarily distracted the 814 from the nonthreatening planet below, and triggered an automatic retaliatory response with the weapon they had at the ready. “All hands, brace for impact,” Kirk ordered, his eyes glued forward as the stolen photon warhead was returned to them.
The Domain missile flew in a spiraling pattern, no doubt to confuse any attempt at evasive maneuvers by its target. The Enterprise held steady, though, and took the full brunt of its impact and explosion on her forward shields. The deck rocked under Kirk’s feet, and the bridge lights flickered briefly, but otherwise, the defensive systems had protected the ship from the worst of it, and more importantly, had protected the planet below. Kirk let out the breath he was only dimly aware that he’d been holding.
His relief, it turned out, was premature. “They’re launching another volley!” Chekov shouted.
“Not more photon weapons?” Kirk asked. As focused as he had been on the two stolen warheads, he hadn’t stopped to reason that, for a society on the technological level of the Goeg, it would have been reasonably simple, once they had the advanced weapon in their possession, to reverse engineer and manufacture their own.
“Negative,” Spock answered. “They are armed with standard cobalt fusion warheads.”
“Oh, what a relief,” Bones cracked from where he stood in the back of the bridge.
“And we are no longer their primary target,” Spock added.
Kirk saw Spock was right: the missile volley was spread in such a way that three of the four incoming weapons would miss the ship on their way down to the planet. “Phasers, Mister Chekov. Knock them down before they get past us.” The lower-yield weapons would not do as much harm to the planet as the photon warheads would, but they could still obliterate major cities and trigger a nuclear winter—a slow planetary death as opposed to a quick one.
Phaser beams lanced out from the Enterprise. Chekov’s expertise destroyed all three of the warheads intended for Nalaing. The fourth and last one, though, he could not
target in time before it hit the ship’s defensive screen and exploded. The force of the blast, though a fraction of a typical photonic detonation, was enough to knock out the closest shield emitter and trigger a string of failures throughout the ship’s overtaxed systems. The bridge went dark, and Kirk felt the hold of artificial gravity momentarily slip before the emergency power kicked in and he could plant his feet back firmly on the deck. “Report,” he called out as he took his seat again.
“Captain,” Spock was the first to respond, “our shields are gone.”
Kirk did not like the tone of finality he heard in his first officer’s voice. “Gone?”
Spock nodded. “Our power generation and distribution systems had been stressed to their limits. The loss of the single shield generator was enough to effect a total subsystem failure.” He paused, and then added, “We may need to withdraw, sir.”
Kirk knew that was the logical course of action. They’d accomplished their objective of preventing the use of their photon weapons against Nalaing. If Satrav was still intent on bombarding the planet, they wouldn’t be able to prevent it for very long without any defenses of their own. But could he in good conscience fall back and let that happen?
As the captain was weighing his choices, it occurred to him that the 814 had not fired any further salvos, either at Nalaing or the Enterprise. He watched the Domain ship hanging still against the backdrop of the galaxy, giving no sign of the hostile posture adopted only minutes earlier. The rest of the bridge crew also watched and waited intense silence. “Spock,” Kirk whispered, careful not to break the stillness that had fallen over the bridge, “what’s going on over there?”
“Unknown, sir,” Spock answered. “All their systems are operational. Our strike against them caused only minor damage, which cannot explain this current state of inactivity.”
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 21