Further along the corridor, Kinitz came across bodies and parts of bodies. He also found the survivors. He had no time to talk to the well or help the injured. He ran faster. At last he came across a tableau that brought him to a quick halt, his phaser coming out. Hander Morl stood in the center of the corridor, tapping his foot impatiently, while his bodyguard bent over the other Assassin, lying on the floor, and slapped his face hard and regularly, trying to bring him back to consciousness. The man on the floor stirred and groaned and tried to raise his arm to protect his face.
"All right," Hander Morl snapped. "That's good enough. Get him to his feet and let's get moving."
"Moving back into your cells," Kinitz said calmly. Morl and the Assassin spun around, and the bodyguard poised himself. "Don't," Kinitz said, grinning at him. "I know what you are, but this is faster." The Assassin relaxed again.
Kinitz had made his second, and last, major mistake. Worried first about Hander Morl, the prisoners' leader, and then more immediately about the deadly Assassin bodyguard, he had dismissed as unimportant the Nactern warrior women. They had both pressed themselves up against the corridor walls when they'd heard his footsteps, and they were hidden from his sight by the bulge of a turboelevator shaft. "Back into the detention cells," Kinitz repeated, stepping forward, his phaser held unwaveringly on the two men before him. They backed away as he moved forward, drawing him past the two women's hiding place.
He saw the movement from the corner of his eye, but before he could react, a boot slammed into his wrist, knocking the phaser flying, and something hit him in the small of the back with a crushing, stunning blow. Kinitz's legs folded under him, and even as he fell, he was hit on the side of the neck.
Kinitz lay helpless on the corridor floor, his vision fading. He heard a man laugh, and he could see one of the Nactern warriors' boots in front of his face. At the end, he realized it had been the women, not the Assassin, who had broken his back and neck. He willed his lungs to breathe, but the will that could cow the strong men who worked in the Security section could not control his own body, and Kinitz's consciousness and life slipped away.
Hander Morl wasted no time on triumph. "Pick up his phaser and follow me," he snapped. He himself had the phaser the Assassin had brought back with him. The Assassin and one of the Nactern women half-carrying the other bodyguard between them, the group hurried after Morl. The other Nactern warrior caught up with him. "What about the Onctiliian?" she said.
Morl shrugged. "If he shows up, he can rejoin us. I never entirely trusted him, anyway." From the plans he had studied while designing his substitute starship, Hander Morl knew enough about the Enterprise's layout to be able to find the turboelevator that would take them to the bridge. By the time they all piled into it, the second bodyguard had recovered sufficiently to stand unassisted, and they were all armed with phasers picked up along the way from the dead left behind by the Onctiliian. The wounded they passed, they finished off.
The elevator hummed and lurched along silently. The group of United Expansionists within it waited stolidly, weapons at the ready. When the doors swished open, showing them the bridge spread out before them, they moved quickly.
Sulu was in the command chair, talking into the communicator. "I'll get back to you," he was saying. Morl raised his phaser, aimed at Sulu, and pressed the firing stud. Sulu jerked as the beam hit him, then collapsed against one arm of the chair. Until that moment, the attention of everyone on the bridge had been concentrated on the huge viewing screen at the front of the room, where the two Sealon ships could still be seen maneuvering for another pass at the Enterprise. Now they found themselves staring into the muzzles of the phasers held by Hander Morl and his followers, and there was nothing any of them could do.
Hander Morl stepped jauntily over to the command chair, rolled Sulu out of it onto the floor, and sat down. "All right, everyone," he announced. "I'm in command here. Get back to work and get us out of here. I want this ship headed for the nearest point in the Romulan Neutral Zone as soon as possible and at the highest speed available. You," he said to Uhura, who was still staring at him in openmouthed amazement, "you're the communications officer, right? Where's your captain?"
"Uh, he's down on the surface of Trellisane," Uhura replied, her response to a question from the command chair virtually automatic. A moment later, she cursed herself for having said anything.
Morl laughed. "Wonderful! Get me in touch with him, right now." Uhura turned grudgingly to her equipment, and Morl spoke to Chekov, who had turned around to stare at him. "If your captain's down there," Morl asked him, nudging Sulu with his toe, "then who's this?"
"That," Chekov said, anger thickening his accent, "is Mr. Sulu, and if you've hurt him, all your weapons won't help you."
Hander Morl smiled. "A commendable sentiment, but the welfare of the Federation should count for more to you than the well-being of your friend." He gestured one of his bodyguards over. "Now this man, you see, will wake your friend up and then see to it that Sulu dies in grotesque agony while you watch, unless you follow the orders I gave a moment ago."
Chekov looked at the tall, heavily muscled Assassin and at the man's utterly cold expression; then he gritted his teeth and turned to his console to plot the course Morl had requested.
"I have the captain," Uhura said, her voice sullen.
"Captain Kirk?" Morl said into the chair's communicator.
"Yes! Who is this? Where's Sulu?"
"Sulu is well, Captain, for now." As Morl spoke, the Sealon ships made two more passes. After the first attack, Sulu had corrected his mistake and had ordered full power to the ship's defensive screens. The Sealons' phaser beams now caused only a slight tremor to run through the hull of the Enterprise, and there was no damage. The personnel on the bridge didn't notice even that, for their attention was riveted on the drama happening near them and on Morl's taunting words to their captain. "Good-bye, Captain," he said at last and signaled Uhura to break the contact.
Chekov had laid in the course and alerted the engine room. He felt there must be some way he could relay the appropriate orders to Scotty, some cryptic phrase he could use, that would alert the chief engineer to the situation on the bridge. His mind seemed frozen, though, and he could only speak and act mechanically, as if the man in the command chair were Captain Kirk himself and the orders Chekov was following were routine. He thought of laying in a course to the nearest starbase instead of to the Neutral Zone, but something in Hander Morl's intelligent face told him that the man would know if he did so, and Sulu's life would then be forfeit. Well, Pavel Andreievich, he told himself, it will take a couple of days to reach the Neutral Zone. There are only a few of them, against more than 400 of us. That should be time to think of something. What would Captain Kirk do in this situation?
But while Chekov searched for alternatives, the Enterprise responded to its engines, left orbit under impulse drive, and then headed from the Trellisane system at warp speed, leaving the puzzled Sealons behind.
Chapter Six
Whatever small encouragement Veedron had drawn from the arrival of the Federation officers on Trellisane had instantly deserted him once he realized that, with the loss of their ship, they were now as weak and ineffectual as he was. "I'd better request another council of the gemots," he said gloomily. "We must decide on a new course."
Kirk had been staring into space, not lost in thought, but helpless and hopeless, stunned by the loss of his ship. He had never felt quite so abandoned, so lost, his very foundation removed. McCoy leaned toward him and said softly, "Jim. Captain Kirk!"
Kirk shook himself. "Thank you, Bones. Veedron, you said you had abandoned space flight. What about your ships?"
"We destroyed them, I'm afraid. Those few that were left, that is, after the initial Sealon attacks. None of our ships had weapons or defenses, you see."
"Of course not," Kirk said bitterly.
"Captain," Spock said, "the Trellisanians' ships could not have been used to pursu
e the Enterprise, in any case, since they lacked warp drive technology."
"That wasn't quite what I had in mind, Mr. Spock." A tremor shook the room and there was a muffled booming noise from overhead.
"The Sealons," Veedron said, collapsing still further. "Now that your ship is gone, they've gone back to their original mission of bombarding us." He shook his head. "I cannot bear to think of all the deaths."
"You surely have medical emergency teams, don't you?" McCoy asked.
Veedron looked bewildered. "We have our hospitals, of course, and physicians, and emergency services for individual medical problems. Much of that becomes inoperative during these attacks, however. Ambulance pilots cannot fly during bombardments. Power supplies to hospitals are disrupted. We pride ourselves on how well we handle individual medical emergencies, but the system breaks down in these conditions. Even if we could get all the wounded to hospitals, the staffs could not handle such numbers."
"Good Lord, man," McCoy said angrily, "don't you ever have natural disasters or wars?"
Veedron's distaste was evident. "None of us lives where there is a chance of natural disaster. All of our cities are restricted to the safest zones. And we have not had a … war … since the most ancient times. Surely you don't have wars in the Federation now?" His voice rose. "Surely such a civilization as yours can avoid natural disasters?"
McCoy's mouth quirked into a wry smile. "Let's just say that a starship medical officer learns to handle large numbers of injuries under less than ideal conditions." He turned to Kirk. "Jim, maybe I could help these people organize teams, medical strike forces. That all right with you?"
"Yes, Bones, of course. Veedron?"
"Do you mean you could help us deal with the injured?" the Trellisanian said. Hope appeared on his face for the first time. "Come with me, Doctor! We'll give you whatever support you request." He jumped to his feet and led McCoy from the room.
After they had left, Kirk said quietly, "Well, Mr. Spock, I see now even more clearly what we're up against here. The Trellisanians have an enviable reputation for ingenuity and ambition, but it seems they avoid adversity rather than meeting it face-to-face."
"Yes, Captain. I noted that Veedron offered Dr. McCoy whatever support he feels he needs, rather than asking him just to help them with his broader knowledge. They expect him to take the lead, to provide all the initiative, because their dilemma is unprecedented and frightening. Captain, you expressed a desire a few minutes ago to use a Trellisanian ship in some manner, but not to pursue the Enterprise. May I ask what your plans are?"
Kirk hesitated for a moment. "I don't think I should tell you too much, Mr. Spock, for your own sake. Even if I manage to bring all of this to a successful conclusion, it won't look too good on my record. We're in this situation because of my insistence on heading for Trellisane with the prisoners still on board. If I don't pull off what I have in mind, then my career is certainly over." He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. "You don't attain command of a starship in Star Fleet without making some enemies along the way, and they don't go away. They stay around, waiting for their chance. I may have just given it to them. You're still clean, and I want to keep you that way. You made your objections known to me when I first decided to come here before delivering the prisoners; that was your duty. If you know what I plan next and help me despite knowing, and if I fail in the end, then your own career might be ruined along with mine. I don't want to be responsible for that, too."
Spock nodded. "Sufficiently logical, Captain, Tell me only what you wish."
"Good. What I want is to get in touch with the Klingon naval commander on Sealon. However, I want to be able to speak to him from a position of strength. Therefore, I don't want the Trellisanians to contact the Klingons and surrender abjectly. I wouldn't want them to do that, in any case, but without some sort of meaningful Federation protection, I expect that's just what they're going to end up doing."
Spock raised his eyebrows. "There is a limit to how much interference we can risk, Captain. We cannot violate either the Prime Directive or the Organian Peace Treaty."
"I'll keep all that in mind, Mr. Spock, but the alternative may be a full-fledged war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. The choice of risks is a clear one for me."
Those below had no hint of it at first, but this attack on Trellisane was to be different from all those which had preceded it. The bombardment tapered off, but the Sealon ships didn't depart from orbit and return to Sealon as the Trellisanians had learned to expect. Instead, the two which had not been disabled by the Enterprise raised the already high inclinations of their orbits until both ships were in virtually polar orbits.
The high inclinations of the three ships' initial orbits had been chosen to allow them to pass over the major industrial, scientific, and urban targets in both the northern and southern hemispheres. To the Trellisanians manning the radar stations and other orbital sensor installations on the planetary surface, nervously watching their screens and readouts, the purpose of the change to polar orbits seemed obscure. But to Kirk and Spock, who were with Veedron when he was told of the orbit changes, a reason suggested itself immediately.
Veedron had been conducting them on a depressing tour of a rubble-filled site—the aftermath of a recent Sealon attack. The damage was cleared away and the buildings replaced as soon as the Trellisanians could manage, but destruction always takes less time than construction, and the Sealon attacks had been so frequent and closely spaced that the Trellisanians could not hope to keep up. The site Kirk and Spock were being shown when the message was delivered had been the last remaining subspace transceiver on Trellisane. The Sealons must have intercepted the Trellisanian appeal for Federation aid, for it was immediately after that initial transmission, the recording of which Kirk had heard on Trefolg, that Sealon ships had appeared at Trellisane for another attack; the transceiver had been their primary target.
In the middle of explaining all of this to the two Star Fleet officers, Veedron stiffened and his eyes took on a glazed look. The three of them were standing on the edge of the crater that had been the subspace radio emplacement. What had once been parkland stretching away from the emplacement in all directions was now sterile, blasted earth, with here and there a jumbled pile of dead tree trunks. Veedron's bright, ankle-length robes stood out sharply against this dreary background, making him look like an exotic bird creature from elsewhere who didn't belong here. He stared abstractedly into space, ignoring his two guests.
"Spock," Kirk said softly to the Vulcan. "Some kind of seizure?"
Spock looked up from the handful of soil he was examining and glanced at Veedron's face. "I would say, Captain, that Veedron is in communication with someone."
"Telepathic contact, you mean?"
Spock frowned. "I've received no hints of that since our arrival, no impression of telepathic communication."
Veedron sighed suddenly and shook himself. "Captain Kirk. Mr. Spock. I must apologize for my rudeness. I've just been told that two of the Sealon vessels still in orbit about Trellisane have shifted into polar orbits rather than leaving for home. This has not happened before, and I fear it cannot be a good sign, although I am at a loss to explain their actions."
"Only two?" Kirk asked. "Three attacked the Enterprise."
"The third was crippled by your ship. It remains in its original orbit, but its altitude is low. Drag is significant, and its orbit is decaying."
Spock said, "Sir, a polar orbit suggests a detailed mapping mission."
"Perhaps you're right," Veedron said dispiritedly. "Perhaps they're choosing targets for future bombardments."
"Or," said Kirk, "sites for a landing. The beginning of their invasion."
Veedron's reaction to this suggestion was a mixture of amazement and horror. "Invasion! We thought we had much more time! Please excuse me. I must seek seclusion and summon another council of the gemots. I fear this will tip the scale in favor of an immediate appeal to the Klingons."
> As Veedron hurried off, Kirk said angrily, "Councils! Discussions! That seems to be their response to everything. There seems to be no one here, no individual, with the authority to act quickly in the case of a crisis."
"I would surmise, Captain, that Veedron and this world's other leaders or council members are linked electronically, by means of some sort of brain implant. That would explain both the manner in which he received that message and his current desire for seclusion. My inability to detect any form of telepathic communion supports my belief. If the ruling elite can all communicate instantly with each other, no matter where they are, their deliberations might be speedier and more efficient than one would at first think."
"Not efficient or vigorous enough to suit me. I can't let them invite the Klingons in. That would take away what little bargaining power I might have, and you know what would happen to this world under Klingon domination."
"I don't see what we can do to stop them."
"Perhaps not much by ourselves, but there must be someone on this planet with the guts and the will to fight back! We're going to find them, whoever they are."
Chapter Seven
Hander Morl did not delude himself that he and his four remaining followers were a match for the more than 400 trained personnel of the Enterprise. If he exercised sufficient care, there should be no confrontation: outside the bridge, no one would know that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
On a long trip, he knew, he could never have hoped to pull it off. There would have had to be relief crews for the bridge. Those off duty would have had to be guarded, which would have necessitated splitting his own tiny group up into two or three pieces. Food would have become necessary, eventually, and he could not imagine how he would have handled that. And it would have been inevitable that someone from elsewhere in the ship—Engineering, perhaps, or Medical—would have needed to talk to the officer in charge of the bridge. As it was, though, the trip should take no more than a day and a half, according to Morl's estimate, and he would simply keep the bridge sealed to outsiders, with his own two Assassins guarding the turboelevator doors rather than the usual two Security guards, and keep the present crew on the bridge for the duration. Once the Enterprise entered the Romulan Neutral Zone and was destroyed, his purpose would be accomplished and he would no longer have to worry about these petty details.
The Trellisane Confrontation Page 4