Approaching a left turn in the corridor, Kirk slowed down and peered past the corner. His friend did the same. At the end of the passageway, the captain could see the orange doors of the transporter room. In between, there was nothing and no one.
“The invaders got away,” said Gary.
Kirk turned to look at him. “Is that your sixth sense talking?”
“It’s my common sense,” Gary told him. “If the security team had caught up with them, the battle would still be raging.”
[131] The captain nodded, then eyed the doors again. “Good point. But let’s be careful nonetheless.”
Then he approached the transporter room. Naturally, his friend was right behind him.
Just before they would have registered on the bulkhead sensors and activated the entry mechanism, the captain gestured for Gary to veer off to the left. Kirk himself then moved to the right.
For a moment, the captain studied the corridor behind them, to make sure he and his navigator wouldn’t be ambushed from behind. Then he slid a half-meter closer to the transporter room entrance and raised his phaser. On the other side of the hallway, Gary did the same.
The doors parted, revealing several figures from Kirk’s perspective. Three of them were lying on the deck. Two more were kneeling beside them and two others were standing.
When the latter four caught sight of the captain, their phasers swung in his direction. Then they glimpsed Gary as well and two of them trained their weapons on him. But before they could unleash a barrage, Kirk shouted at them to hold their fire.
“It’s the captain!” he added.
“And Lieutenant Mitchell!” said the navigator from his position on the other side of the passage.
The armed figures within, all of them security officers in scarlet uniform shirts, relaxed and lowered their weapons. They looked tense, drawn.
“Sorry, sir,” one of them told Kirk.
“That’s all right,” said the captain.
Tucking his phaser into the back of his waistband, he entered the transporter room and took a closer [132] look at the bodies stretched out unceremoniously on the deck—six of them in all. The admiral and her landing party, he realized, as well as Lieutenant Kyle.
For a moment, Kirk feared they were all dead—all victims of whatever or whoever had beamed up with them. Then he saw one of the victims move her head, as if trying to shake off the effects of a stunning blow.
It was Phelana. She groaned, tried to sit up and was eased back to the floor by one of the security officers. The captain knelt beside the Andorian and took note of the dark blue bruises on her face.
“Call Dr. Piper,” he told the officer nearest to him—a man named Rayburn. “Tell him to hurry.”
“Aye, sir,” said the security officer.
Kirk turned to Matthews, another security officer. “I take it you found them like this?”
“We did, sir,” Matthews reported.
“You didn’t get a look at the intruders?” the captain asked.
The man nodded. “That’s correct, sir.”
Kirk gazed at Phelana, brushing a stray strand of platinum hair out of her face. “Commander Yudrin,” he said softly, trying to keep his anger and concern in check, “what happened down there?”
As the Andorian gazed back at him with her large, black eyes, her antennae bent needfully in the captain’s direction. “They took me by surprise,” she responded hoarsely. “I thought I was ... thought I was dead. Then I woke up and found I was being carried over someone’s shoulder.”
Kirk bent closer. “Carried by whom?”
[133] Phelana’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head slowly from side to side. “That’s classified—”
“Don’t give me that!” he rasped. “They’re loose on my ship, dammit! I need to know what’s going on!”
The Andorian seemed ready to hold fast to her position for a moment. Then she must have seen the sense in what he was saying, because she relented. “They’re Klingons,” she told him.
The captain absorbed the information, but it didn’t seem to ring true. Mangione and her people had gone down to the planet armed with phasers and presumably knowing what to expect. And they had been caught unaware by a bunch of unarmed Klingons?
“There’s more to it,” he concluded. “There’s got to be.”
Lieutenant Kyle stirred then. One of the security officers went to see to the man.
Phelana licked her lips. “They’re not ordinary Klingons,” she explained. “They’ve been enhanced. Made stronger and quicker.”
Kirk shook his head. “How?”
“I’m not sure,” she told him.
Hearing a tapping sound, the captain looked up and saw Gary drumming his fingers on the surface of the transporter console. No doubt, he was inspecting the system’s log.
“One thing’s clear,” said the navigator, “and that’s the way they got up here. They waited until the admiral and her party were caught in the transporter effect and then they hitched a ride.”
“How many of them?” asked Kirk.
[134] Gary frowned as he consulted the log again. “Judging from the amount of material that came through the pattern buffers, it looks like there were five or six of them.”
“Bloody bastards,” growled Kyle, propping himself up on one elbow despite a security officer’s attempts to restrain him.
Kirk turned to the transporter technician and saw the bloody gash over the man’s eye. “It’s not your fault,” he told Kyle.
The man sighed. “I noticed something was wrong, sir, but it was too late by then. They were through already.”
“And after that, they brought some friends up,” the navigator noted, still analyzing the transporter log. “Ten more of them, to be precise.” He regarded the captain. “That would make fifteen or sixteen intruders in all.”
Fifteen or sixteen intruders didn’t appear to pose that serious a problem, Kirk reflected, even if they were armed with the weapons Mangione’s party had been carrying. And despite what had happened, he doubted these Klingons were as dangerous as Phelana seemed to believe.
He had barely completed the thought when Dr. Piper rushed into the room with three of his nurses in tow. The security officers backed off to give him room. Bending over the nearest injured party, who happened to be Admiral Mangione, the doctor ran his medical tricorder over her. Then he checked his readings and turned to the captain.
“She’s suffered severe head trauma,” said Piper. [135] “I’m going to have to move her to sickbay and keep her under close watch.”
Kirk nodded. “Whatever you say, Doctor. But you can’t take her there through the corridors. Whoever caused that trauma is still running loose on the Enterprise.”
Piper looked ready to protest. Then he appeared to remember that there was an alternative.
Gary must have understood, too, because his fingers were already flying over the transporter controls. “Be with you in a minute,” he said.
By the time he was ready, the doctor’s nurses had reported on Tarsch, Brown, and Rodianos. Their injuries were serious as well, it seemed, though Mangione’s remained the worst of them.
“Energize,” said the captain.
In the next second, Piper, his nurses, Mangione, Rodianos, and Tarsch were enveloped in shimmering cylinders of light. Then they vanished as if they had never been there in the first place.
“Captain Kirk,” said Phelana.
He turned back to her. “Yes?”
“Let me help,” she asked. With a loud grunt, she dragged herself up to a sitting position.
Kirk knew what she was asking and he admired her courage, but he had to deny her request. “You’re no good to me like that,” he told her. “Besides, we’ve got a good security force on this ship. We’ll find those Klingons before they do any harm.”
The Andorian looked more than a little skeptical. But what she said was, “I hope you’re right.”
The captain would have reassured her, b
ut he [136] didn’t get the chance. Before he could get a single word out, Phelana was claimed by the splendor of the transporter effect.
Kirk watched her disappear, along with Brown and Kyle. Then he turned to his navigator and the team of security officers.
“We’ve got work to do,” he told them.
Chapter Eleven
SCOTTY CURSED beneath his breath. “Klingons, sir?” he asked. “Right here, on the ship?”
It was difficult to believe. Nonetheless, Kirk’s intercom voice cut through the throbbing sounds of the engineering room, confirming what he had said a moment earlier.
“Right here on the ship, Mr. Scott—as many as sixteen of them, some armed with phaser pistols. And that’s not all,” the captain elaborated. “These Klingons have been enhanced somehow. They’re stronger and faster than the kind we’re used to.”
Scotty glanced at the half dozen engineers sitting at control consoles or working up on the catwalk. They looked worried about the news. To be honest, the chief engineer reflected, he was a bit worried himself.
Kirk went on. “It’s possible that they’ll try to find [138] the engine room and take the place over, then use it as a bargaining chip. Certainly, that would be one of the options I’d consider if I needed a way off the ship.”
“Aye, sir,” Scotty agreed. “What is it ye’d like us t’ do?”
“There’s a security team on its way,” said the captain. “In the meantime, keep these Klingons away from the engines. It’ll be a lot easier to deal with them if they’re not holding a gun to our heads.” The engineer nodded. “I understand, sir. An’ ye need nae worry—we’ll take care o’ the place until help comes.”
“Thanks, Scotty. Kirk out.” The Scotsman looked around at his staff. Naturally, they were all Academy trained, all capable of handling themselves in an adversarial situation. But they weren’t armed.
And if the captain’s report was accurate, the Klingons were. If that wasn’t cause for concern, Scotty didn’t know what was.
If he were an intruder on the Enterprise, Kirk had decided, one of the first places he would try to reach was the shuttlebay.
After all, there was little chance that the Klingons could secure a well-fortified, largely inaccessible place like engineering before they were stopped. The odds were much better that they could get hold of a shuttle, sneak it out of the larger vessel and find a hiding place for it on the planet’s surface.
Then the shuttle’s rightful owners would be forced to beam down or descend in another shuttle to [139] locate it, opening themselves up to all kinds of perils and uncertainties. And Kirk dearly wanted to avoid all that.
So once he had contacted all the intruders’ most likely targets and lodged warnings with the personnel in charge of them, the shuttlebay became the captain’s top priority. And it remained that way until he and his security team reached the corridor that led to it ... and established that the area was devoid of Klingon life signs. “Are you sure?” asked Kirk. Rayburn consulted his tricorder, aiming it at the orange doors that led to the shuttlebay. “Aye, sir,” he responded. “There aren’t any Klingons here. At least, not—”
Suddenly, a blood-red phaser beam blasted the man in the back, slamming him face-first into the bulkhead in front of him. As Matthews and the other two security officers rounded the corner to return fire, Kirk and Gary pulled Rayburn back out of harm’s way.
Fortunately, the security officer was still alive. The beam that hit him hadn’t been discharged at a lethal setting, the captain reflected.
But then, the Klingons probably weren’t all that familiar with Federation technology—especially if they had been on the planet for the last fourteen years or more. It might not even have occurred to them that a phaser had more than one setting.
Suddenly, a beam caught another of the security officers square in the chest and sent him sprawling. As Gary went to pull him out of the line of fire, Kirk took the man’s place.
[140] It was then he saw what they were up against. There were four dark, hulking, wild-haired forms in leathery garb at the far end of the passageway, each one armed with a phaser.
But if they were Klingons, they weren’t like any Klingons the captain had ever seen. Their brows jutted out over small, wild eyes, they had bony foreheads that receded well past what should have been their hairlines, and their teeth were long and savage looking.
Before Kirk could squeeze off a shot, he saw one of the intruders point his weapon at him. Flattening himself against a bulkhead, he saw the bright red phaser beam zip within centimeters of his face and splatter against the duranium wall behind him.
Damn, he thought. If the behemoths didn’t know anything else about phasers, they sure knew how to aim them.
The captain fired back, but to no avail. His Klingon target ducked in time to avoid his phaser beam. Then, more quickly than Kirk would have imagined possible, the invader unleashed another beam of his own.
As it happened, he missed the security officer at whom he appeared to have aimed. But he didn’t miss by much.
Clearly, thought the captain, the Klingons had them at a disadvantage here in the open. He hated the idea of backing off from a threat on his own vessel, but the smarter move was to regroup and make use of the opportunities the Enterprise offered them.
“Fall back!” Kirk shouted, his voice ringing in the [141] corridor over the shrill whistling of competing energy volleys. “Somebody contact the shuttle chief and tell her to open those doors!”
He waited just long enough for the two officers with him to retreat beyond the bend in the hallway. Then he fell back as well, just in time to avoid another fiery red blast from the enemy.
Behind the captain, Gary and one of the security officers were lugging their stunned comrades back down the corridor, while the other security officer used his communicator to contact the shuttle chief.
Kirk didn’t know how long it would take for the Klingons to press their advantage. A second? Two, maybe? If the shuttlebay doors didn’t open by then, they’d be fish in a barrel.
But the doors did open, sliding apart with an audible exhalation of air. They revealed the tail, blond figure of Njalsdottir, the woman in charge of the shuttlebay this shift, and a couple of her technicians.
All three of them were armed with phasers. But then, the shuttlebay had a dedicated weapons locker for just such emergencies as this one.
“Hurry!” bellowed the captain, training his phaser at the bend in the hallway as he backpedaled.
“Move it!” added the navigator, dragging Ray-bum toward the shuttlebay as fast as he could.
Then the Klingons made their move. They poured into the corridor like a dark wave, snarling with bloody intent and filling the place with one fiery discharge after another.
Unfortunately for them, Kirk and his crewmen weren’t the least bit taken by surprise. The captain’s [142] shot struck an invader’s shoulder, sending him spinning into one of his comrades. Njalsdottir’s beam hammered another one in the midsection, dropping him to his knees.
The shuttle technicians and the unburdened security officer were busy as well. Their phased emissions lanced out and skewered the intruders, hitting them in the knee, in the chest, and even in the face. One by one, the Klingons staggered and fell.
But to Kirk’s dismay, the invaders didn’t remain there on the deck. They dragged themselves to their feet again and returned the defenders’ fire, shrugging off the effects of stun-level phaser beams the way a boxer might shrug off a glancing blow.
Gritting his teeth, the captain delivered another blast, catching one of his adversaries beneath his hairy chin. Then he glanced over his shoulder to see how the others were doing.
Gary and Matthews had dragged the two unconscious security specialists past the threshold of the shuttlebay. Njalsdottir and her people were standing inside the threshold as well.
Only Kirk and a single security officer were still left out in the corridor. If the shuttlebay doors closed, they
would be trapped outside them. On the other hand, they didn’t dare wait much longer to secure the area.
“Shut the doors!” the captain bellowed over the din of the battle. Then he whirled and squeezed off another shot, driving one of the Klingons into the bulkhead behind him.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Kirk heard the first, subtle stirrings of the door motors, [143] telling him he had maybe two seconds to retreat or get torn limb from limb.
“Go!” he commanded the security officer.
Without any choice in the matter, the man fell back behind the threshold. At the same time, the captain seared the air with another phaser assault. Then, without waiting to see what effect it had, he turned and took a couple of steps and then launched himself through the air.
He could see the shuttlebay doors sliding purposefully toward one another, directed energy beams kicking off their duranium surfaces with spectacular effect. For a single, panicky moment, Kirk was certain that he wasn’t going to make it. Then he hit the deck and slid forward on his stomach, and his momentum carried him through the steadily narrowing gap.
Pulling his legs in after him, he eluded the closing of the doors by a hair. Then he took a deep breath, basked momentarily in the knowledge that he and his people were safe, and got to his feet.
“Are you all right, sir?” asked Njalsdottir, who was kneeling on the floor and had covered his retreat.
“I’m fine,” the captain assured her, brushing himself off.
“I thought you might have been exaggerating about those Klingons,” the shuttle chief confessed to him, glancing at the doors to her facility. “But you weren’t.”
“Not even a little,” he agreed.
Kirk empathized with Njalsdottir. After all, he hadn’t had any firsthand knowledge of the enhanced [144] Klingons to go by before this. But he could see now that Phelana hadn’t overestimated the intruders’ abilities. They were every bit the threat she had described.
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 11