[117] “I knew it was a possibility,” the admiral replied.
“You might have warned me,” Kirk told her.
Mangione’s eyes blazed all of a sudden. “I’ll warn you if and when I believe it’s necessary, Captain. Now power down your weapons and relax.”
The Vulcan looked to his commanding officer. Reluctantly, Kirk nodded and turned back to the forward viewscreen.
Seven years ago, the Klingon vessel they encountered had slowly wheeled to face them. This one didn’t even bother. It simply maintained its attitude and its orbit as if the Enterprise didn’t exist.
“Establish a synchronous orbit,” said the admiral, “on the side of the planet opposite the Klingon vessel—just in case someone decides to get an itchy trigger finger.”
“No one on my ship would do that,” the captain pointed out.
“I’m not just talking about your ship,” Mangione responded. “Believe me, Captain Kirk, those Klingons don’t like the sight of us any more than we like the sight of them.”
Kirk turned to his helmsman. “You heard the admiral, Mr. Kelso. Establish an orbit.”
“Aye, sir,” came the reply.
A moment later, the Enterprise began to veer to port—away from the battle cruiser and toward the point on the planet’s equator directly opposite. The captain stole a glance at Mangione. She seemed satisfied with the way things were going.
And still Kirk had no idea what his ship and his crew were doing there. It was like tearing through the [118] void without a forward sensor array, he thought. In the old days, before the advent of interstellar flight, they would have called it flying blind.
As they neared the planet, the Klingon battle cruiser began to vanish over the horizon, setting like a small, defiant sun. Finally, it drifted out of sight altogether.
“My team and I will be beaming down to the planet’s surface,” the admiral announced abruptly. “We’ll supply your transporter technician with the coordinates at the appropriate time.”
“I see,” said the captain. “And can you tell me how long you intend to remain down there?”
Mangione’s expression became a wary one.
“It makes sense for me to know,” he insisted. “If something’s gone wrong, I’ll need to pull you out.”
The admiral thought about it a moment longer, then nodded. “Half an hour, tops. Anything longer than that and there’s been a screwup. But I must tell you, I don’t expect anything of that nature.”
Who ever does? Kirk mused. But he kept the question to himself.
Deftly, Kelso slipped the Enterprise into orbit around the planet. As soon as he disengaged the impulse engines, Mangione left the bridge.
The doors closed behind her with a soft hiss. That’s when Gary turned around in his seat to look at the captain, the sourness of his expression a mirror of Kirk’s own.
The navigator seemed on the verge of passing a comment about the admiral, but thankfully he refrained. After all, Mangione was still their superior officer and this was still a Starfleet ship.
[119] The captain glared at the viewscreen, where the planet’s raw, red surface seemed to mock him. What was waiting down there? he wondered. What was so important to both the Klingons and the Federation that both sides were willing to suspend their customary hostilities for it?
Too many questions, Kirk reflected, and not nearly enough answers. And the way it looked, that wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.
“Captain,” said Alden, “Mr. Kyle reports that the admiral’s team has beamed down safely.”
Kirk nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Any moment now, he told himself, Mangione and the others would be wading into the heart of one of Starfleet’s biggest mysteries. They would be basking in the knowledge of it.
He would have given anything to be down there on the planet’s surface among them ... to see with his own eyes, once and for all, what in blue blazes was going on down there.
As he thought that, he saw Gary turn around again. But this time, he didn’t look quite so disgruntled. He tilted his head toward his monitors as if he were inviting the captain to see something.
Kirk approached the navigational controls and peered over his friend’s shoulder. Most of Gary’s monitors reflected the Enterprises position in space. Only one of them showed him something else—the prevailing conditions at a particular spot on the planet’s surface.
The captain scanned the information on the monitor. The sensors were reading five life-forms—three humans, one Vobilite, and one Andorian—not far [120] from the planet’s north pole. No other signs of sentient life.
But there was also evidence of an energy barrier—no, two of them. And each one was blocking one end of a twisting, high-walled box canyon. Unfortunately, the ship’s sensors couldn’t penetrate either of the barriers—no surprise there—or the canyon walls. Obviously, there was some mineral in the latter that resisted long-distance sensor scrutiny.
And just as obviously, there was something in that canyon that the Federation didn’t want seen. Something it didn’t want released, even if it was just on the planet.
Intriguing, Kirk thought. His friend’s expression said that he found it intriguing, too. But neither of them had the information they needed to solve the admiral’s mystery.
“Carry on,” the captain told his navigator with a sigh. Then he returned to his center seat and awaited word from Mangione.
Phelana Yudrin shielded her eyes from the blue green oven of a sky. Then she gazed at the immense, yellow graviton field that stretched majestically across the entrance to the rust red box canyon.
The graviton barrier seethed with phase-synchronized energies strong enough to withstand even a prolonged, type-X phaser barrage. In fact, she reflected, this was the same technology that Federation starships used to deflect space debris in flight.
There was just one problem with it.
Wiping perspiration from her brow, the Andorian [121] turned her attention to the small, black, eight-sided energy storage unit she held in her hand. The device’s readouts were dead, signifying that it had malfunctioned—which meant that the graviton projector it powered had malfunctioned as well.
Yudrin turned left and then right, taking stock of the site’s two dozen other graviton projectors, each one set up on a tripod on the planet’s rocky, red terrain. They were all working perfectly.
It was only the projector directly in front of her, from which she had removed the faulty energy storage unit, that had gone dead as a stone. Fortunately, the Andorian told herself, its malfunction shouldn’t have had any significant repercussions.
It would only have left a narrow, barely noticeable gap in the graviton field—a gap the other projectors’ sensors would have noticed after thirty seconds. Then the projectors on either side of the gap would have widened their emitter apertures to fill it in.
But what if something had happened in those thirty seconds? she asked herself. What if ...
She stopped herself, deciding to act rather than continue to speculate. Removing her communicator from her belt, she flipped it open. “Commander Yudrin to Admiral Mangione. Come in, Admiral.”
Mangione’s reply came almost instantly. “What is it, Commander?”
“I’ve got a bad projector here,” the Andorian reported. She wiped her brow again, resenting the intense heat that seemed to come from all around her. “Its energy storage unit stopped working.”
The admiral cursed, then said something Yudrin [122] couldn’t hear. It seemed she was speaking to one of the other officers on the team. The other officer appeared to say something back.
“Commander,” said Mangione, “we may have a problem.”
Despite the temperature, the Andorian felt a trickle of ice-water in the small of her back. “What kind of problem?” she asked.
“We haven’t scanned the entire canyon yet,” she said, “but one of our subjects may be missing.”
Yudrin’s mouth felt uncomfortably
dry all of a sudden. “Missing?” she echoed, trying not to let her trepidation enter her voice.
“It may be nothing,” said the admiral. “But considering what you’ve told us about that projector, we’ve got to be as cautious as possible. You know how dangerous it could be if there was a security breach.”
The Andorian drew her phaser with her free hand. “Yes,” she replied with forced calm, searching the nearly barren countryside all around her. “I’m well aware of how dangerous it could be.”
“Good,” Mangione told her. “I’ll alert the others. In the meantime, I want you to work your way east. Commander Rodianos and I will maintain our position until you get here.”
Of course, the admiral could simply have had them beamed back to the Enterprise. But they had to remain on the planet’s surface until they determined if there had been a breach or not.
“Acknowledged,” she said. “Yudrin out.”
With another quick look around, she started off in Mangione’s direction at a trot. Her antennae leaned [123] forward in a position of alertness—not that they would help her in the least. Over millions of years, her people’s cranial appendages had become as vestigial as a human appendix.
Leaving the last of the three-legged graviton projectors behind, the Andorian hugged the sheer, red cliffs that rose on her left. On her right, the rock formations were shorter and a good deal less smooth, but just as devoid of vegetation—and therefore, she observed gratefully, devoid of hiding places as well.
Though she was in good shape, the heat began to get to her with surprising quickness. Her heart began to pound harder than normal and she could hear her breath rasping loudly in her throat.
Hang in there, Yudrin told herself, using her whole hand to wipe the perspiration away this time. Mangione’s position was less than two kilometers away when you started out. You’ll see it in just a few minutes.
Then something on her right caught her eye—some kind of movement. Instinctively, she whirled and fired her phaser at it.
The ruby red beam raised a cloud of ocher dust from the hillside and sprayed debris around. But as the dust cleared and the Andorian slowed down to see what she had shot at, it became apparent that there wasn’t anything there.
She swallowed, no easy task with her mouth so unbearably dry. She wasn’t mistaken, she told herself. She had seen something. But—
A sound drew her out of her reflection. A sound like the pelting of feet against the hard ground.
[124] As Yudrin whirled, a shadow fell across her, blotting out the sun. She tried to fire at it, but something hard and viselike crushed the strength from her wrist, forcing her to release her phaser. Then a terrible weight slammed her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
The bronze sun above her backlit her adversary’s shaggy countenance, making it difficult for the Andorian to get more than a glimpse of it. But what she saw was cruel, almost demonic.
A massive fist seemed to ascend into the sky, then plummet in her direction. The impact felt as if it broke her jaw and maybe her cheekbone as well. But somehow Yudrin clung to consciousness, the metallic taste of blood strong in her mouth.
“VeQ,” snarled her adversary.
Too late now, she realized what must have happened. He had concealed himself in a fold of the cliff face on her left, waiting for her to walk by. When he caught a glimpse of her, he had tossed a rock onto the slope to her right, hoping to draw attention away from him. And like an idiot, Yudrin had fallen for it.
Then he had raced across the distance between them and borne her down. And now, with the Andorian pinned beneath him, he was going to kill her out of his hot-blooded need for revenge.
Mustering what was left of her strength, the commander tried to push her way up toward her enemy’s eyes. If she could dig her nails into them, she thought, it would get him to roll off her.
But he was too quick for her, too powerful. He grabbed both her hands in one of his. Then he [125] wrapped the fingers of his other hand around her throat and squeezed.
Yudrin gasped desperately for air, but to no avail. A terrible pressure built up in the base of her throat. She could feel herself ebbing away, see the darkness closing around her.
Then she felt and saw nothing at all.
Chapter Ten
KIRK REALIZED that he was tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair and forced himself to stop. On the other hand, he couldn’t blame himself for being impatient.
It was bad enough to be denied knowledge of whatever Mangione was doing down there on the planet’s surface. But to have to wait up here in orbit the whole time ... that was pushing it.
Then he heard someone say “Sir?” in a taut, clipped tone of voice.
Turning, he saw that it was Spock who had asked for his attention from his post at the bridge’s science station. No, the captain thought, not just asked for his attention. Demanded it.
In the months that Kirk had known the Vulcan, Spock had barely exhibited so much as a frown. Yet [127] now, he looked positively agitated, his dark eyes wide with apprehension.
“What is it?” the captain asked.
“The admiral’s team is no longer alone,” the first officer reported with a distinct sense of urgency. “Sensors register other life signs in close proximity to the landing party.”
Kirk understood Spock’s concern. Getting to his feet, he emerged from the command center and ascended to the level of the communications station. Alden, having heard Spock’s announcement too, was already trying to raise Mangione and her officers.
“Anything?” the captain asked, grasping the back of the communications officer’s chair and hovering over him.
Alden shook his head unhappily. “Their communicators seem to be working, sir, but there’s no response.”
Kirk swore beneath his breath and made his way back to his center seat. Punching the stud that would give him a direct line to the transporter room, he snapped, “Mr. Kyle!”
“Aye, sir!” came the technician’s startled-sounding response.
“Get a lock on the admiral’s landing party and beam them back,” the captain told him.
“Will do, sir,” Kyle assured him.
Kirk turned to his friend Gary. The navigator looked more than a little concerned, as if one of his famous flashes of insight had shown him something he didn’t want to see.
[128] The captain glanced at Spock again. “Any more information on those life signs?” he asked the Vulcan.
Spock’s features were bathed in the crimson illumination of his monitors, his brow creased with concentration. “I believe—” he started to say.
“What?” Kirk prodded.
The first officer’s frown deepened. Then he returned the captain’s gaze. “I was going to say they were Klingon life signs, sir. But I cannot be sure of that conclusion.”
Kirk’s teeth ground together. What if Mangione had been wrong to trust the Klingons on that battle cruiser? he asked himself. After all, treachery seemed to be a Klingon specialty.
“Kyle’s got a lock on them,” Alden announced suddenly.
The captain glanced at the viewscreen, as if daring the red orange world to try to stop him from reclaiming his people. Then he tapped the intercom stud on his armrest again.
“Energize,” he snapped.
Seconds passed. There should have been a response from the transporter technician, but there wasn’t any.
“Mr. Kyle,” said Kirk, “is something wrong?”
That’s when he heard something ... but not what he had expected. The intercom brought him a series of snarls and guttural curses—the kind a pack of bloodthirsty Klingons might have made.
And suddenly, the captain understood.
Whirling to face Gary, he said, “Disable the transporter!”
[129] The navigator worked at his console for a moment. But when he looked up, it was with a look of frustration on his face.
“Too late,” he reported, “it’s in operation again!”
/> And the system couldn’t be disabled in the middle of a transport, Kirk reflected. It had been designed that way out of necessity, but now it was working against them.
Suppressing a curse, the captain tapped another stud on his armrest. “Security,” he said, “this is Kirk. We’ve got an intruder situation in the transporter room. Be advised that there may be hostages, including Admiral Mangione and her team.”
By that time, of course, the intruders might have killed them. But the captain didn’t care to contemplate that possibility yet.
“I’m on my way,” he added. “Kirk out.”
He had barely gotten the words out when it occurred to him he might want to take someone else with him, in case the security team wasn’t enough—someone who would know what he wanted before he wanted it. There was only one man on the ship who fit that description.
“Mr. Spock,” said the captain.
The Vulcan turned to him expectantly. “Aye, sir?”
“You’ve got the conn,” Kirk told him. Then he glanced at Gary. “Mr. Mitchell, you’re with me.”
Spock seemed surprised for a fraction of a second. Then he got up obediently and moved across the bridge to the captain’s chair. At the same time, Kirk led the way to the turbolift, telling himself he would ponder the implications of the moment later on.
The lift doors opened and the captain entered the [130] compartment. By the time his navigator joined him inside, he had already punched in the code for the transporter room.
Gary looked at him. “We’ll need phasers,” he said, as the turbolift motors began to whine.
“There’s a locker in the corridor,” Kirk replied, referring to the passageway between the turbolift and the transporter room.
His friend seemed to picture it, then nodded. “Right.”
They shot through the ship at a speed only suggested by the hum of the turbolift’s motors or the vibration in the floor beneath their feet. Before the captain knew it, the lift doors hissed open and they were swinging out into the corridor.
As he had pointed out to Gary, there was an emergency phaser locker a few meters down on the left. They paused long enough to open it with a command code and extract two of the phasers within. Then, as the panel slid closed again over the storage compartment, they pelted down the hall with their weapons in hand.
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 10