As he drew close, they didn't move, apparently unintimidated. He stopped and stared at them, looking cocky and self-assured, but in fact not sure they would interpret his body language correctly. The Sealons had been almost standing—crouching, balancing on their haunches and the knuckles of their forepaws. Now, slowly, they all sank forward into their normal resting posture on land, lying almost prone, their powerful upper portions resting on their elbows. Spock knew this was as close to a backing down as he could hope for.
Spock stepped forward again, slowly this time but with determination. The Sealons shuffled aside to make room for him, the movement spreading across the ranks of dark, aquatic bodies like ripples. He walked forward steadily, the crowd of Sealons separating before him. Finally they stopped moving away; there was no sign of danger or defiance, but they simply refused to move out of his way. Before him rested a huge Sealon, still massive and powerful despite the sagging folds of skin around his mouth that probably signified advanced age. This one was still standing, or as close to it as a Sealon could manage on land, without the slightest sign of fear or hesitancy. Even without his great size and almost upright posture, which combined to make him tower above the others, there was an air of authority and self-confidence that made this Sealon stand out from the others. Despite his translator's inability to deal with the unknown Sealon language, Spock guessed that this was Matabele, the ruler of the Sealons who had made the mistake of inviting the Klingons in.
The Vulcan advanced slowly, raising his hand toward the Sealon's head. There was a stirring and growling among the other Sealons, but their ruler stayed where he was unflinching and allowed Spock to place his long fingers gently on his broad, frog-like face. The Vulcan mind-meld began.
Yes, it was Matabele. As the Sealon stiffened with amazement at the contact with the powerful Vulcan mind, Spock was sifting fascinatedly through the flood of images pouring into him from the brain of the Sealon. Clearly, this being and his culture were more complex than the Trellisanians had realized. But then a more specific image surfaced for a moment, and Spock grasped it quickly and fished urgently for the more submerged details. There! He had it. This uprising was part of something greater, and on Trellisane, even at this moment …
It was rare for the Klingons to overlook military details, but their long string of successes with subject peoples had made them overconfident, and it had come to seem impossible to them that anyone would even dream of revolting against their rule. The dome on the sea floor of Trellisane had no external defenses, since the Klingons knew the Trellisanians would not fight back and they simply did not think their tame Sealons would attack them.
When the environmental monitors indicated a leak in one segment of the dome, a call was automatically dispatched through the surrounding water for a Sealon maintenance team to repair any damage from the outside. The Sealon team leader quickly signaled back that he and his fellows were already at the site, working on the damaged area. Indeed, that was quite true, since it was that team of Sealons that had created the tear in the dome in the first place, and now they were clustered around the tear, working vigorously at enlarging it. Beneath them, on the other side of the tough fabric, were store rooms, and the Sealons were betting that the leak would therefore not be noticed directly by any Klingons, and that the monitoring computer would not send out a call for Klingon attention until it was too late. Occasionally one of them would have to swim up to the surface for air; then he would force himself quickly down again to rejoin his comrades sawing, cutting, even chewing away at the fabric of the dome. Elsewhere along the swelling, smooth surface, other groups of Sealons were doing the same. There were some waterproof bulkheads within the dome, and the Sealons wanted to be sure that there were no safe pockets of air left where Klingons might survive.
In his office within the dome, the Klingon officer who'd interviewed Kirk and Spock when they'd been taken prisoner was poring over some papers detailing the next steps he was to take. The conquest of the land would be gradual, by usual Klingon standards; that was largely to ensure that the Sealons weren't able to kill all Trellisanians off—the upper strata, the technically capable, were to be kept alive, for they could be of great service to Klingon in the future.
A sudden tremor shook the floor of his office and made the stylus lying near his hand roll back and forth. The Klingon frowned in surprise: Trellisane was supposed to be a geologically inactive world. He sneered at the thought. That probably had much to do with the Trellisanians' repellent timidity. Dismissing the matter as unimportant, he returned to the documents before him. Another, even sharper, tremor shook the room, and this time he rose from his chair and started toward the door, flaring into furious anger. It is Klingon nature to find an underling when something unpleasant happens and to blame and punish him for it, even if the unpleasant thing is utterly beyond his responsibility and control. The officer, disguising his deeply buried fear from himself as annoyance, stalked through the door to look for some lower ranking Klingon to punish.
He turned into the corridor and stopped. The air pressure shot up unbearably, lessened suddenly, and then shot up again. He fell to his knees clutching his ears in agony. Despite his ruined ears and his hands over them, he could hear a rush of sound in the abnormally dense air—a scream, and a roaring, thundering noise, then groaning, ripping sounds from the fabric of the building. The floor heaved violently, flinging him forward onto his face. Dazed, he got his hands underneath himself and raised himself, unwittingly imitating the common Sealon posture. The walls at the end of the corridor before him swelled inward and then burst, disappearing into the vast wave of foaming green seawater that rushed through. He opened his mouth to shout an order or a curse, but before any sound came out, the water smashed into him, carrying him before it like any other piece of flotsam, and crushed him against the farther walls of the corridor.
Only then did the water elsewhere in the dome reach the central power generators, and all lights went off, leaving the few Klingons who yet survived in trapped pockets of air in the dark. Their commander's body bobbed limply against the ceiling in his own office, up and down, as the sea's abrupt entry into one open room or corridor after another sent waves and ripples through the whole body of water inside the dome. Finally that ended and the water became still.
The Klingons who survived called out to each other cautiously and began to organize themselves, increasingly confident that, despite the pitch blackness, they could regroup and somehow escape. But their calls to each other provided all the signal the Sealons, inside the dome for the first time, needed. The silent, black water was their pathway to revenge. Not all the surviving Klingons were stabbed or bludgeoned to death. Some were dragged beneath the surface where crowds of Sealons, their eyes evolved to see dimly at these depths, could watch them struggle and drown.
* * *
Veedron put his hands over his face and groaned. "How awful! To die out there, under the sea."
McCoy snorted. "My heart bleeds for them." When Veedron had come to tell him of the huge bubbles filled with debris that had been seen bursting upon the surface of the sea and had said that Trellisanian experts were sure that it was a sign of the collapse of the Klingon's underwater base, McCoy had not tried to hide his pleasure. He still didn't try.
Veedron looked up at him in outrage and horror. "How can you be so callous? You're a medical man!"
McCoy nodded. "Yes, I'm a medical man. I'm also humane and compassionate, and I have a high empathy rating, which I try hard to hide beneath a crusty exterior. But I've also had many contacts with Klingons over the years, and I can tell you that the only good one is a dead one. To coin a cliché. If I hadn't felt that way before, what I've seen in this system would have convinced me."
Veedron was outraged. Before he could say anything, a messenger came into the room and muttered something to him. Veedron's face lost what little color it still had. "The Sealons are bringing the Klingon bodies ashore all along the coastline and leaving them just abo
ve the high tide line." He rose to his feet, his face suddenly brightening. "Perhaps this is their way of asking for help or offering peace!"
"They could contact you directly if they wanted to do that, Veedron. Don't be so naïve. I think this is a warning of what's in store for us, and also an attempt to intimidate us before the invasion begins. Undermine your courage, so to speak," McCoy added with heavy sarcasm. "I just wonder what they're waiting for." And I wonder why I've been waiting so long to initiate my own confrontation. "Veedron," McCoy said suddenly, not giving himself time for second thoughts, "I want to change the subject considerably. I've discovered that the yegemot have a brain implant of some kind put in them when they're children. Now, I know that you and your class have something like that, too, but I suspect they serve a very different function in your case."
"True," Veedron said distractedly. "Ours are for the purpose of communication."
"And theirs?"
"Oh." Veedron waved his hand. "For control."
"Hmm. There're different kinds of control, aren't there? Behavior control, population control … Those occur to me right away. What kind of control do you mean?"
Veedron shook off his distraction and stared at McCoy. "Why, for both of those, of course, as well as others. Come, come, Doctor: surely you've noticed how well discipline is maintained in our society."
So it's as bad as I feared, McCoy thought, remembering Veedron's vain attempt to discipline an impertinent Spenreed from whom the brain transplant had been removed, and remembering, too, a hole burned in a shelf. "So you give 'em the evil eye, and their brains get vaporized! Handy. The ancient Romans would've loved it." But what about that waiter who collapsed? Total brain death. He hadn't insulted anyone. And the capsules on the shelf—Spenreed talking about his death being forecast, or whatever. So it wasn't just a superstition. . . . "And you schedule lots of them for death even if they haven't done anything to offend anyone, don't you?"
"Of course," Veedron said offhandedly. "I assumed you were aware of that."
"Aware of it! Scarcely! Hell, I thought you were civilized beings, not barbarians. You're worse than barbarians. They at least don't hide from the facts. When they kill each other, there's blood involved, and the killers know what they've done. You've tried to sanitize it, so that you can be coldblooded about being bloodthirsty, and all the while you can pretend that you're not doing anything out of the ordinary. They just drop to the floor, nice and clean, and you go on about your business. And then I suppose the bodies have to be carried away by other yegemots, poor bastards. And all this time, you've been trying to pretend to us that you're somehow better than the Sealons."
Veedron responded with anger of his own. "Who are you to assume a pose of moral superiority? We made you and your shipmates welcome on our world, and you partook gladly enough of our hospitality. You ate our meat with us, and yet you must have known how ritually and symbolically important that is to us."
McCoy was thrown off balance by this seeming non sequitur. "We knew that you're vegetarians, mostly. I don't understand."
Veedron sneered. "Then it's time you did. Come with me." He grasped McCoy's arm and pulled him from the room. Ignoring McCoy's protests and struggles, and displaying a surprising strength, he dragged the Earthman along behind him. They hurried down corridors until they were outside the building.
Still moving, Veedron pulled McCoy down a quiet street, a beautiful avenue marred by the rubble of an earlier Sealon attack. To McCoy's repeated and increasingly angry questions, Veedron at last replied that they were going to observe food preparation, and then he would say no more. Finally they reached a small, isolated building that seemed to be Veedron's destination. Breathing heavily, the Trellisanian paused for a moment before it, and then he strode into the building, still dragging McCoy behind him. A sickeningly familiar smell attacked McCoy; he knew what it must be, but he refused to admit that truth to himself.
They entered a large, high-ceilinged room. A group of Trellisanians stood with their backs to the door, hard at work, hands rising and falling steadily. By the noise and the motion, they were chopping. They became aware of the presence of the newcomers, and some of them turned to see who it was. They knew Veedron, of course, and one of them came forward to greet him subserviently. Now McCoy could see everything.
The men wore butcher's aprons, and they were spattered with blood. Beyond them was a long table, and upon it lay a dismembered corpse. And in a far corner of the room, McCoy now became aware, halves and quarters of torsos hung upon a row of hooks.
Chapter Eighteen
"Too late!" Karox growled, slapping his palm against the yielding arm of his command chair. "Too late. The Romulans know we're approaching their territory."
The peremptory challenge had come over the ship's communications a moment earlier. Karox and his ship had stayed well beyond the sensor range of the Romulan ships they were pursuing, but the Romulans were now beyond the boundaries of the Neutral Zone, and the Romulans had powerful installations along that frontier to watch for approaching vessels. These installations had detected the Klingon approach and issued the challenge. That Karox had not foreseen this was strong evidence to Kirk that the Klingon captain's confidence and relaxation were masks for a worry and tension that were interfering with his judgment.
"I'm not ready to fight them," Karox muttered. "I'll have to stop soon to avoid penetrating the Zone, and if I do that, the Enterprise will escape from me. I'll have to attack now, risk a war."
"Wait!" Kirk said. "Release me. Take me to your transporter room. You can send me to the Enterprise before she's out of range. Her shields are down, and the Romulans won't be expecting that. I'll bring her back out."
Karox looked at him with scorn and anger, but then his expression changed suddenly. "Yes. With Klingon guards to go with you." He sat up, his chest swelling, eyes blazing. "I won't destroy the Enterprise—I'll capture her! My most glorious victory." He barked a string of commands.
Kirk's wrists were freed, and then he was pulled to his feet and marched quickly from the bridge and through a short but bewildering series of intersecting corridors. At the end, he found himself in what was obviously a transporter room, much like the one on the Enterprise, but larger, as most things were on this ship, with many more transmission stations.
There was a short delay, and then three heavily armed and heavily muscled Klingons marched in and took up positions wordlessly on the stations beside Kirk's. Karox entered the room.
"Kirk. I know this handful of men isn't enough to take over the Enterprise, but they are enough to keep an eye on you and control the bridge. When you're back in command, bring her out and surrender her to me. If you betray me, they'll kill you and I'll destroy your ship. Well?"
Kirk nodded. He understood the conditions well enough and accepted them only because he had no choice.
Karox motioned to the technician at the transporter console. The man's fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard, and Karox's sneering face faded from Kirk's view.
The elevator door opened and the four-being group creature came onto the bridge unnoticed by those already there. The Chapel component moved quietly in one direction, and the other three rolled off the other way.
It was Sulu who noticed them first, catching a movement from the corner of his eye. He looked up quickly to see the three Onctiliians bearing down on one of the Assassins, the one still standing close to Hander Morl. The thought flashed through Sulu's mind in an instant that this weird creature, who had been brought up from the surface of Trefolg, must be in some way on the side of the Enterprise crew now; even if not, its attack on its former comrade could only help Sulu and his friends. Even though Sulu managed to stifle the exclamation which had risen to his lips at first, Hander Morl had noticed his astonished expression and had followed the direction of Sulu's gaze.
Morl turned his chair around just in time to see the Assassin crumple before the Onctiliians' unexpected assault. Then the Onctiliians changed direction an
d charged toward Morl. But Morl was already in motion, flinging himself desperately from his chair.
The new mental integration with Chapel was complete, but physically the three were still not quite balanced, missing the contribution of their dead partner and slightly disoriented by the need to reconcile visual images from two physically separate locations, theirs and Chapel's. They crashed into the chair, bending its base so that it spun about at a crazy angle. But they could no longer redirect themselves quickly enough or move fast enough to catch Morl, who scrambled frantically along the floor, then pulled himself across Sulu's console.
The bridge had erupted into life, with personnel shouting at each other and trying to keep out of the way of the Onctiliians. The Chapel component stepped up to the side of one of the Nactern warriors, moving warily because the memories provided by the Onctiliian components revealed how deadly a threat the Nactern could be to the safety of the Earthwoman body. She pressed a hypodermic against the Nactern's side, pressing the trigger as she did so. The Nactern whirled about, hands coming up for a fatal chop; but her legs wilted beneath her even as she turned, and she collapsed heavily to the deck. The other Nactern sprang to her side, oblivious to Chapel's presence or the maneuverings of Morl and the Onctiliians.
The Assassin standing near Scott stepped forward to enter the fight, and Scott, breathing a quick and silent prayer, stuck out a foot so that the man tripped over it and fell forward into the depression holding the command chair. Scott was on him before he could get up again, chopping repeatedly at the back of his neck. The Assassin slumped forward with a groan, unconscious, and Scott rose to his feet, breathing heavily, but inordinately pleased with himself. "Don't mess with my engines, laddie," he muttered.
Hander Morl and the Onctiliians were moving about the console cluster in a deadly dance that struck Chekov as curiously stately. Morl's phaser had fallen out during his mad dash to get out of the Onctiliians' path, and he had not been able to get back to it. It lay unnoticed on the floor near the command chair, and Morl could not see how he could reach it. Meanwhile, he circled the consoles slowly, trying to keep them between him and the Onctiliians. He wanted to call for help, but some instinct told him, even though he was afraid to take his eyes from the Onctiliians to look around the bridge, that he was on his own. He grasped the console nearest him for support, his knees shaking with the fear that overwhelmed him.
The Trellisane Confrontation Page 14