"Who?"
"Ah, of course, you wouldn't know. Geldop is the current head of the Food Provenders' gemot." He raised himself slightly in his chair and looked around. Then he sighed heavily. "I see he is not with us. Perhaps he was trapped elsewhere by the war, or possibly even injured or killed, poor man. Still," he said, looking righteous again, "that gemot has many able men in lower positions, and this laxity is inexcusable." He gestured over his shoulder at the line of quiet waiters standing against the wall behind them. "Just feast your eyes on that row of healthy, young yegemot. Truly shocking."
McCoy bridled. "Well, now—" But at this point, he was interrupted by the beginning of a speech, and by the time it was over, he had lost his train of thought.
Later, as he was leaving the banquet hall, satisfied with the drink if not with the food, McCoy encountered Spenreed strolling down the hallway, looking jubilant. "Doctor!" the yegemot burst out, grabbing his hand. "I was hoping to find you here. I don't know what you did to me when you operated on me, but I think you saved my life twice. I'm still alive!"
"I've noticed you are," McCoy said, extracting his hand from the slave's powerful grip. Flexing his hand, he added, "But it wasn't anything I did. Don't you see, it was just some foolish superstitious idea you had, and as I told you, those are nonsense no matter what planet you're on."
Spenreed laughed joyfully. "Oh, yes, Doctor. It's all nonsense, all right. You've changed my attitudes about a lot of things." He walked on down the hallway, whistling, with a bounce in his step. McCoy grinned after him, shook his head, and went about his own business.
Chapter Fifteen
Honorable warriors they might be, but the Romulans were not above monitoring Federation communications from within the Neutral Zone. They had caught even less of the message from Trellisane than had been recorded by the colony on Trefolg, so they had no idea the Klingons were in any way involved. Nonetheless, a war within the no-man's-land, in a system not too far removed from their own borders, and an appeal for help to the Federation disturbed them mightily. Patrols in the general direction of Trellisane were increased both in number and strength, special bases were established to listen for more messages, and military forces in the area were ordered to be even more alert than usual. If a patrol should occasionally, overcome with zeal and devotion to duty, stray beyond the Neutral Zone in order to patrol more effectively, no one was reprimanded. There were powerful factions within the Romulan military command and high imperial circles who were eager to renew the war with the Federation.
Sulu watched the four points on his screen for long moments, wondering whether patriotism would be better served by speaking out or remaining silent. At last, loyalty to his ship won out over other questions and he said, "Something's headed our way." There was no response from the command chair, where Hander Morl was staring at him uncomprehendingly. "I'll put it on the main screen," Sulu said, hiding his sneer with only partial success.
The starfield on the main screen wavered and dissolved and was replaced with a view that at first glance seemed similar. However, near the center of the image, four bright points moved together against the background stars. Sulu looked over his shoulder quickly at Morl, but the man who should have been issuing commands was staring at the screen in obvious puzzlement. "Ships, probably," Sulu said, open contempt in his voice. "I'll magnify." Again the image wavered, dissolved, then resolidified. This time, the dots took shape as four strangely shaped warships, growing steadily larger as they sped toward the Enterprise. Sulu felt a prickling at the back of his neck. "Romulans," he whispered. In the sudden, tense silence on the bridge, the whisper carried to every corner.
Hander Morl sat frozen, his eyes bulging. Earlier, he had reveled in the feeling of being in control of this great weapon, at the nerve center of this embodiment of Federation might. He had looked forward to the final confrontation with the Romulans, the moment that would both end and epitomize his career. Now that moment was here, and he was suddenly paralyzed with fear. Those ships, those fiendish, evil shapes rushing down on them! How could they survive? How could they escape? He looked around the bridge. The Enterprise personnel were concentrating on their instruments, sparing only an occasional glance at the screen, and Morl was overcome by a wave of admiration for their courage and sense of duty. His own people were watching him for a cue. "Have we reached the Neutral Zone yet?" he tried to ask Sulu, but his voice came out as an incoherent croak. He cleared his throat and repeated the question, this time intelligibly.
"No." It was Chekov who answered him. "We're some distance from it yet. Those ships penetrated beyond it."
Morl felt relief and triumph. "Then they've already precipitated the war by violating our space!"
Scott, still standing calmly next to Uhura, said, "I doubt it. This area wasn't covered in the treaty. It's outside both our space and theirs."
"Then we can't fight them here!" Morl said desperately. "We've got to reach the Neutral Zone first. Increase our speed!"
Sulu shook his head. "Sorry. We'll need the screens up if they're chasing and firing at us, and that means no more speed than we already have." He doubted if Morl would know better.
"I'm getting something," Uhura said. "They want us to kill the warp drive and stand by for boarding. They want to know what we're doing here."
"Boarding!" Morl went pale. If he allowed the ship to be boarded and captured, that would be the certain end of all his plans. "All right. Kill the warp immediately." Sulu and Chekov exchanged a glance of triumph, thinking that Morl was defeated at last; their pleasure kept them from noticing the sudden determination in his voice. Sulu's fingers moved over the buttons of his console and, with that psychophysical wrench, the Enterprise dropped back into normal space.
"Speed at zero," Sulu said happily. It would be more honorable to be taken prisoner by the Romulans, he reflected, than to be part of a plot to cause a war.
While Sulu, Chekov, and the others turned from their work to watch the Romulan ships approach ever closer on the main screen, Morl asked Scott, "How will they board us?"
Scott shrugged. "Hard to say. They might use a shuttle, or they might decide to beam directly onto the bridge."
Morl nodded in satisfaction. He pushed himself from the chair and strode energetically over to Sulu's chair "Out," he said. "Quickly."
Sulu laughed but stood up. Morl sat down in his place. Sulu grinned at his back and said, "Don't touch anything, kid."
But Morl ignored him. His fingers moved carefully but rapidly over the buttons of the helmsman's console. He had spent months studying the blueprints and operating manuals for such starships as this one, and he had spent the last many weary hours carefully watching Sulu's actions. This and his intelligence stood him in good stead now. Sulu, watching him, lost his grin and felt instead grudging but genuine admiration. Morl finished composing the series of commands, checked them quickly on the small screen on the console, and then stopped with his finger over the button that would start the execution of the commands. With everyone else, he watched the Romulan ships in the main screen.
The four ships were arranged as the vertices of an almost precise square. They retained that formation, approaching and slowing until the Enterprise was at the center of the square. There they stopped. The tension of waiting increased. Nothing further seemed to be happening. Scott stepped quickly to the science officer station and pressed his face to the visor of the small computer console. "They're scanning the bridge now,' he announced. "Probably trying to establish coordinates for their transporter. Yes, here it comes."
Simultaneously, half a dozen vaguely manlike shapes began to resolve themselves on the Enterprise bridge in the display of twinkling lights characteristic of a transporter, and Morl pressed the button on the console firmly. There was a sudden jolt of impulse power and the six shapes, fixed in space, seemed to move sideways sharply and out through the walls of the bridge into space as the Enterprise moved away from them. Almost immediately, the warp engines cut in
and the Romulan ships on the screen disappeared. Morl grinned at Sulu who, struck with horror at this callousness and imagining himself in the position of the Romulans in the transporter beam, yelled at Chekov, "Get that on the screen! Full magnification!"
Chekov fumbled with his console for a moment, then succeeded. The scene was shrinking rapidly as the Enterprise sped away, but even so Sulu could make out the six shapes in airless space, writhing and struggling as they suffocated and their tissues ruptured. Just as they were lost in the distance, he thought they twinkled out of sight, brought back aboard their ships by transporter, but he knew it was probably too late to save their lives. For a Romulan above all, he thought, that must have seemed a filthy, evil death, killed by trickery and dishonesty. And cruelly and uncleanly. The Romulans would not let them go now.
Morl stood up and returned to the command chair, a spring in his step. "That's how to do it!" he said, not trying to hide his pleasure. "That's how a patriot takes care of those animals. Now, get the screens up if they get close enough to fire. Otherwise, just keep us ahead of them until we can penetrate their home space."
Sulu returned to his position, feeling ill. He raged at himself. Wasn't there something they could do against this madman, despite his underlings and their weapons? For the first time that he could remember, he felt more kinship with the Romulans than with his own kind.
Unity through diversity. That is the philosophy of the unit called Spock. Spock: the new union had not destroyed old emotions. Nor were feelings hidden from the new partners, even if those feelings had once been partially, unsuccessfully hidden from herself. The wave of feeling ran from the human body to the other three and rebounded. But with it came warm support and commiseration, sympathy and empathy for unrequited love.
A good philosophy. It describes our union and its beauty.
It is what Hander Morl and the others do not see—what we did not see, before … before …
Before the death of the original fourth member. This time, it was the human partner who supported and soothed the others, calming the panic-hurt of the terrible wound.
Therefore the United Expansion Party must be stopped. Hander Morl and his followers must be shown their error and persuaded to halt.
The being moved toward a turboelevator, waited until the doors swished open, and then stepped inside. The process happened twice, for the being had two bodies, and one of those was in three parts and moved with difficulty. A momentary pause, while the memories of the human member were searched and she—Chapel to herself, still, but less so with every passing minute—struggled to speak. "Bridge."
"Bridge has been ordered closed to all personnel not already working there." The voice was almost apologetic.
Again the memories were searched. "Medical emergency. This is Nurse Christine Chapel. Check my voice pattern and comply with my first command."
The pause was long, as if the computer, presented by a second demand to override its command from the bridge on the basis of an emergency, had grown suspicious. The voice pattern did not match precisely that in its files for Chapel, but the deviation was within the allowable amount, despite its strangeness, and it had no choice but to comply. Had the bridge foreseen this, it would have commanded the computer to notify it of any override, but Morl had not thought of that.
As the elevator began to move, the ship's warp drive cut off once more, and the Enterprise dropped back into normal space. The effect was insignificant to the machines onboard, and even to most humans; once they had had a chance to grow used to it, the wrench of transition, more psychological than physical, was only a minor nuisance. To the new being in the elevator, however, the transition was a shattering blow. The transition took place when the elevator was passing through a region of the ship where the shielding against its effects was inadequate. The wrenching effect would have been much greater than normal for any other being, but still bearable. Not so for this four-part creature.
Chapel crumpled to the floor nervelessly and lay there unmoving and unthinking for long minutes. The other three cried out in pain as she fell and then grew silent, watching her in confusion. Shakily, bewildered, she rose to her feet.
Who is this strange human with us?
A threat!
Shall we kill it?
She stared back at them, filled with an unutterable loss. Contact had been broken, communion lost. She remembered her previous state, but they, reeling from their earlier losses, their subsequent brush with death, and the new union with so alien a mind as Chapel's, scarcely remembered her. She felt their intentions and pressed herself against the farther wall in fear. They poised themselves for an attack.
And then the elevator passed into a well shielded area and even the transitory effects still remaining from the transition to normal space vanished. Slowly a trickle of telepathic contact began, growing quickly to a rush, a flood of sensation and memory, and the four minds rushed together again into the communion with a cry of gladness both physical and mental. The merger was deeper than ever. Chapel and the others knew with even greater keenness than before what they had gained and how fragile it was.
* * *
Hander Morl raged futilely as he paced about the bridge. "You!" he screamed, pointing at Scott. His finger and his voice both shook, but he was beyond noticing either. "Why did this happen?" He had ordered Sulu to demand warp speed again from Engineering section, but the reply from below had been that the warp reactor had stopped and could not be restarted. Morl knew what Scott would reply—that he had warned Morl this would happen if he was not allowed to replace those mysterious parts in the reactor—and he could even guess at the smugness of Scott's smile as he gave this answer. Therefore he gave Scott no chance to answer. "Never mind. Just get back down there and fix it as soon as possible." As Scott headed for the elevator doors, Hander Morl motioned quickly at one of his Assassin bodyguards to follow the engineer. But even as he did so, he wondered why he was bothering. Did it make any difference now? He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something: there must still be something he could do, even now.
The Romulans had been caught by surprise by the shift from warp drive and had overshot the Enterprise, but not by much. Now they too had returned to normal space and were heading swiftly back toward their prey. "Full power to shields," Sulu ordered calmly, filled with that icy coolness that overcomes some men in battle, all the more so when they are sure they will not live through it. With so little room or power to maneuver, the Enterprise must either surrender or face the concentrated fire of the four Romulan ships. Her shields would not hold up for long under such a bombardment. Perhaps there would have been a chance with a superb tactician like Captain Kirk in command, Sulu thought. He had pulled them out of even worse situations before. But with this madman in control, either surrender or death was inevitable.
The small display above the elevator doors indicated that another elevator had arrived and was queued, waiting its turn, waiting for Scott to leave for Engineering in the elevator already there. Scott noted that fact with some surprise and then noted that no one else was aware of it. It might be help on its way, he told himself. In that case, I can do much more good up here on the bridge than down in Engineering.
The doors had not yet opened, since Scott had not yet stepped within range of the sensors. He turned to the Assassin walking close beside him and said conversationally, "Sometimes you have to keep reminding these elevators that you want them, or else the computer forgets about you." He stepped to the side and pressed the array of buttons beside the elevator doors quickly, appearing to be summoning an elevator. In fact, he had issued an override command, ordering the computer to dispatch the waiting car elsewhere and instead allow the queued one to come up to the doors. Then he stepped back to his previous position, trying to look calm, but burning with hope.
"Here they come," Sulu muttered. The four Romulan ships swept down upon the Enterprise and matched trajectories with her. The Federation ship was at the center of t
he square, with a Romulan at each corner.
"They demand surrender," Uhura said.
Hander Morl gritted his teeth. "No!" he hissed. "Fight the animals!"
Sitting ducks, Sulu thought. That's what we are. Aloud, he said, "Arm photon torpedoes."
Chapter Sixteen
It had been a few days since McCoy had had the opportunity to remove a capsule from the brain of a slave. Now he had just done it again, and after closing the patient's skull, he stepped over to the shelf where he had been keeping the capsules removed previously to add the new one to the collection. To keep them from rolling away, he had put the lot of them in a bowl. Now, bowl and capsules were gone, and so was part of the shelf. Where the bowl had stood was a hole in the shelf. The wood had been burned through in an almost perfectly circular pattern, with charred edges bearing mute witness to the heat required. He bent down to examine the underside of the shelf above, and it too was blackened, although it still seemed strong enough to hold the beakers he had placed on it. Below the hole, on the next shelf down, he had put replacement units for the hypospray charge. Some of these, directly beneath the hole, had melted, spilling their contents across the shelf. The others were discolored, the fluids in them opaque. McCoy cursed. "Spenreed!"
The slave had attached himself to McCoy as permanent assistant, assuring the Earthman that he would no longer be needed at his previous place. Now he came running. "Look at this mess!" McCoy said. "These hypospray units are worthless now. Throw them out and see if I have any more in the stuff I brought down with me from the Enterprise. Do you have any idea what happened here?" He pointed at the hole in the shelf.
Spenreed shook his head, looking mystified.
"All right, all right. Get going." As the slave hurried from the room, the bundle of ruined hypospray units clutched in his arms, McCoy muttered, "I wonder if there was something funny about that bowl. . . ."
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