“Now what?” asked Gary, who was kneeling alongside the unconscious form of Rayburn. “We call security for help? Or just change the settings on our phasers and try again?”
The captain frowned. It was difficult to know how much phaser power it would take to bring these Klingons down. Too much might be lethal, and he didn’t want to kill the intruders if he could avoid it.
The former option was more appealing. With the help of reinforcements, they could catch the Klingons in a crossfire.
“We call security,” he told the navigator.
And quickly, he added inwardly. Otherwise, the invaders would figure out how to adjust the settings on their own weapons, and then—
Before Kirk could complete the thought, his eye was attracted to the doors. It seemed to him there was a discoloration in one of them. No—not a discoloration, he decided. A hot, red glow ...
And that could mean only one thing.
“They’ve figured out how to use the phasers,” Gary said hollowly.
Cursing inwardly, the captain nodded. “So they have.”
Security officer Scott Darnell was getting dizzy trying to track the Klingon intruders’ progress on the security section’s massive array of internal sensor monitors.
[145] The largest concentration of the invaders had just appeared outside the shuttlebay and forced the captain to retreat behind the facility’s doors. That situation at least appeared stable for the moment.
But the rest of the Klingons had split up, making them a lot more difficult to find—and therefore, a lot more dangerous. In fact, it was Darnell’s guess that a couple of the invaders had already crawled into Jefferies tubes and were making their way who knew where.
“I still don’t get it,” the security officer told Ensign Beltre, who was standing next to him and peering at the monitors over his shoulder. “How did these creeps get on the ship in the first place?”
Beltre shook her head. “They didn’t tell me either, sir. But then, does it really matter? The job is still the same—locate the Klingons, flush them out and neutralize them.”
Darnell grunted, trying to follow the progress of an armed invader on Deck Three. “It may not be as easy as you make it sound, Ensign. Did you see what that group of four did to the captain’s party?”
Beltre’s brow creased and she pointed. “What are they doing now?”
Darnell turned to the indicated monitor, where the Klingons were attacking the shuttlebay doors with high-intensity phaser beams. “Damn,” he said. “The doors won’t last long under that kind of barrage.”
Suddenly, the captain’s voice rang out in the security station. “This is Kirk,” he said. “We need help down here in the shuttlebay.”
Darnell was about to contact a team in the field [146] when some abrupt movement on one of the other monitors caught his eye. It turned out to be a skirmish between a couple of Klingons and a squad of security officers.
“Where did they come from?” Beltre asked.
Darnell didn’t know either. But then, that no longer mattered very much. What mattered was that the security specialists were getting the stuffing beaten out of them. As Darnell watched, horrified, the intruders took the officers down with one vicious phaser strike after the other, then stepped over their bodies as if they were just part of the scenery.
“My god,” said the ensign.
Darnell was about to say something too. Then a flurry of action on another monitor drew his attention. Again, a firefight exploded in front of his eyes. And again, his comrades got the worst of it.
Beltre pointed to a third monitor. “Look!”
It was the same story. The Klingons seemed to come out of nowhere, catching a security team unawares and raking them with phaser fire.
Suddenly, the captain’s voice broke through over the intercom. “Repeat,” he said, “this is Kirk. We can use a hand down here.”
Darnell licked his lips, unable to take his eyes off his monitors. As he looked on helplessly, a fourth battle erupted near engineering.
“This is Darnell,” he managed to respond. “I’ll send some of our people over as soon as possible, sir. But I should tell you, we’ve got trouble all over the ship.”
“Be more specific,” the captain told him, obviously less than thrilled at the news.
[147] Darnell tried to stay calm, tried to remember his training. But it wasn’t easy watching his friends get their heads handed to them.
“I don’t know how, sir,” he told Kirk, “but the Klingons keep getting the jump on us. They’ve hit three—” His eyes were drawn to yet another violent confrontation. “Make that four security teams. We’re not hunting them anymore,” he concluded bitterly. “They’re hunting us.”
The captain seemed to ponder the information for a moment—then a curse exploded over the intercom. “It’s their sense of smell,” he concluded. “It’s got to be.”
Distracted by the carnage he was witnessing on his monitors, the security officer shook his head. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“A normal Klingon has a sense of smell superior to yours or mine,” Kirk explained succinctly. “But a Klingon whose natural abilities have been boosted, amplified ...”
Suddenly, Beltre yelled for help. As Darnell whirled to find out why, he saw a dark, shaggy form fling the ensign into a bulkhead. She hit the duranium surface with a thud and slumped to the deck.
By then, Darnell’s training had taken over. He reached for the phaser pistol on his hip, intending to knock the intruder senseless with a directed energy beam. But the Klingon was on top of him before he knew it, dragging him to the deck and pinning him with his weight.
The security officer got in a blow beneath his adversary’s hairy chin, snapping his head back. The maneuver would have staggered a human being, [148] maybe even maimed him. But the Klingon just shook it off. And before Darnell could strike again, his enemy grabbed him by the throat.
Darnell tried desperately to break the Klingon’s grip, to pry his long, thick fingers away, but he couldn’t do it. Despite his best efforts, he felt consciousness begin to ebb.
Then the intruder leaned in closer, his breath stinking of something foul, and growled something Darnell could barely make out. When he didn’t answer, the Klingon growled again—this time, taking a bit more care to make clear what he wanted.
“Life-support,” he rumbled, his eyes glittering with a hideous bloodlust. “Where are the controls, human?”
The security officer knew the stakes. If he didn’t answer, his life might be forfeit. But there were more important things than his own survival.
The Klingon’s mouth twisted with frustration and his grip tightened on Darnell’s throat. “Answer me! Where are the life-support controls? Answer or I’ll snap your neck!”
Darnell didn’t answer the invader’s question. All he said to the Klingon was “Go to hell.”
Then came the darkness.
Chapter Twelve
KIRK STUCK HIS HEAD into the shuttlecraft Galileo, where Njalsdottir and a couple of her red-suited technicians were hunched over a section of exposed propulsion circuitry.
As the captain looked on, the shuttlebay chief applied a needle-thin phaser beam to one of the circuit junctions. Njalsdottir’s features were caught in a bright red glow for just a second. Then the blond woman rocked back on her heels and turned to Kirk.
“That should do it,” she said.
The captain nodded. Then he drew back from the shuttle and took another critical look at the doors to the place. What had been an almost imperceptible glow a couple of minutes earlier was now a dark, defined hot spot the size of his fist.
In another minute, maybe less, the Klingons’ phaser beams would blacken the duranium surface [150] of the door and punch through it. Then the wound would widen, little by little, until the enemy could get inside and eventually take over the facility.
But that wasn’t the worst of Kirk’s problems. After all, he had heard what sounded like a skirmish
and then lost contact with Darnell, which forced him to believe that security had fallen to the Klingons. And judging from what Darnell had said before he was cut off, the invaders were prevailing in other parts of the ship as well.
The captain’s jaw clenched. Obviously, he had underestimated the enemy. But he still believed that, in the end, he and his people would prevail. And in the meantime, the Klingons would find their prize—their escape route, which had to lead through this shuttlebay—had effectively been eliminated.
Suddenly, Gary was beside him. “We haven’t got much time,” the navigator reminded his friend.
“I guess not,” Kirk agreed. “How are Rayburn and Keyes?”
“Could be worse,” said Gary.
The captain grunted. “We’ll need to be ready for the Klingons when they penetrate the doors. You and Matthews will take up positions on the right side of the shuttlebay. Njalsdottir and I ...”
He stopped himself, realizing that something had changed. He sniffed the air once, then again.
“What is it?” the navigator asked him.
Kirk held his hand up and drew in another breath. It confirmed his suspicion. There was a strange smell in the air, as if something had gone wrong with the ship’s ventilation system.
[151] What’s more, he knew what had caused it. “Life-support.”
Gary regarded him. “What are you saying?”
The captain frowned. “There are life-support controls in security. The Klingons have found them.”
Understanding dawned on the navigator’s face. “They’ve changed the mixture of breathable gasses.” He took in the expanse of the shuttlebay with a glance. “We’re breathing something meant for another species.”
Kirk nodded. “That’s my guess.”
A few moments ago, he had been thinking about how to fight the Klingons outside in the corridor. Now, he had an adversary on his hands that he couldn’t fight—an enemy that couldn’t be seen or heard or touched.
On the other side of the shuttlebay, Njalsdottir began to cough. “The air,” she said wonderingly. “It’s getting hard to breathe ...”
“It’s the Klingons,” one of her technicians concluded, a worried expression on his face.
“The Klingons,” the captain confirmed.
“They got hold of the life-support system?” asked another technician.
“Right again,” said Gary. He turned to Kirk. “Which means we’re in a lot more trouble than we were before.”
The captain got an idea. “Not necessarily,” he replied.
He turned to the orange doors and saw the sullen glow of the hot spot their adversaries had created. That meant the Klingons outside hadn’t yet received word from their allies in the security section. [152] Ignorant of the life-support situation in the shuttlebay, they were still trying to create an entrance for themselves so they could take the place over.
“Not necessarily, sir?” the navigator said.
Kirk thought it through as he spoke. “Those Klingons out in the hallway obviously don’t know we’re having trouble breathing. If we supplement their energy barrage with one of our own, we can poke a hole in that door before they know what’s happening. Then we’ll have access to what they’re breathing—which will probably be fine for us.”
“But we’ll still have to worry about the Klingons themselves,” Njalsdottir pointed out, her breathing noticeably labored.
The captain was feeling light-headed, too. “One thing at a time,” he told the shuttlebay chief. Making an adjustment on his weapon, he raised his voice so everyone in the shuttlebay could hear him. “Set your phasers on maximum intensity and aim for the glow. If those Klingons want to get through the doors so badly, we’ll give them a hand.”
Then he pointed his weapon at the hot spot and fired.
Lieutenant Commander Spock had been aware that there was a problem on the bridge for some time. After all, Kelso, Alden, Brent, and Yeoman Smith had all begun to complain of difficulty in breathing.
Then Captain Kirk contacted the bridge and confirmed it.
“The Klingons control the Enterprise’s [153] life-support?” Spock echoed, confirming the captain’s report.
“And maybe ... other systems as well,” Kirk told him over the intercom, clearly starved for oxygen himself. “But we don’t need ... to worry ... about anything else right now. Just life-support.”
“Understood,” said the Vulcan, who was only beginning to experience some discomfort himself. “Did you have a plan in mind, sir?”
“Affirmative,” came the captain’s response. “But I don’t ... want to discuss it ... over the intercom ... in case our friends the ... the Klingons are listening in. Just do what you can ... to defend the bridge, Commander.”
Spock frowned, troubled by the lack of information but forcibly resigned to it. “Aye, sir.”
“Kirk out,” said the captain.
The Vulcan looked around at his companions. All four of them were waiting for him to say something, waiting to see how Spock would respond to Captain Kirk’s orders.
The first officer acknowledged the weight of the phaser hanging at his hip. Fortunately, he had thought to ask Yeoman Smith to bring a handful of the weapons up to the bridge, just in case. Now, it seemed, the decision might prove to be a critical one.
That is, if Kelso, Alden, Brent, and Smith could maintain consciousness—a circumstance which was far from assured. All of them were red faced already, making subtle wheezing noises. If the Klingons continued to poison their air at the same rate, it [154] would be impossible to mount the level of defense the captain required of them.
“Sir?” said Kelso, a little impatiently.
Spock returned the man’s scrutiny with characteristic calm. Until something changed, he told himself, there was only one tack he could take—only one thing he could say.
And that was “Carry on.”
Kirk’s throat hurt as he tried desperately to suck in oxygen that was no longer available to him.
Holding on to a bulkhead for support, knees weak almost to the point of buckling, the captain continued to train his phaser beam on the hot spot in the shuttlebay door. However, only Gary and Matthews were still alert enough to join him, their faces as red as their energy emissions and their eyes popping with their efforts to breathe.
Most everyone else had already succumbed to the decline in breathable air, joining the two injured security officers on the floor. Njalsdottir was the only exception, and she wasn’t far behind. The shuttlebay chief had dropped to her knees and was struggling just to stay conscious, her phaser lying unused on the deck beside her.
Kirk’s head swam. If they didn’t punch through to the corridor soon, he told himself, they might never do so.
At this point, the captain could no longer tell if the Klingons were still working on the door from the outside. All he could see was the fiery splash of red emissions.
Kirk had barely completed the thought when he [155] saw Njalsdottir slump to the floor. Then Matthews’s phaser stopped emitting its beam—a bad sign, the captain knew. A moment later, the security officer clutched at a bulkhead, spun around and fell.
It left just Kirk and his friend still standing—still firing at the hot spot. Somehow, the captain continued to drag air into his tortured lungs and fight the darkness at the edges of his vision.
A heartbeat later, Gary fell to one knee. But he didn’t stop firing. His phaser beam continued to eat at the hot spot, reinforcing his friend’s beam, testing the durability of the duranium surface.
Kirk’s jaw clenched. I won’t fall, he promised himself. I won’t.
But he did. He felt his knees give way and he fell in a heap at the foot of a bulkhead. And in the process, his finger slipped off the trigger of his weapon, allowing its beam to die.
No, thought the captain. Not now. Not when we’re so close.
Forcing himself to stay awake, to concentrate, he found the trigger again, took aim and pressed down on it. Once again, the r
uby red phaser beam shot out and attacked its target.
But only for a few seconds. Then Kirk found that no matter how hard he tried to pull in oxygen, he couldn’t find any. His hand went numb and his weapon clattered to the floor.
He looked to his friend. Gary had stopped firing as well. He was on all fours now, his face the color of blood. The tendons in his neck standing out like cables, he fought to hold on to his senses.
As the captain watched, the navigator lost his [156] battle. He fell over on his side, having spent his last iota of energy. Kirk stared at him for a moment, hating the sight of Gary lying there.
Then he felt the cold of the deck against his face. And a moment later, he didn’t even feel that.
Phaser in hand, senses alert, the Klingon called Qadar coiled behind the lift doors. When they opened in front of him with a rush of air, he took in the enemy’s bridge with a single, economical glance.
He saw five figures—four males and a female, all of them dressed in Starfleet garb and all of them sprawled on the floor. Keeping his weapon trained on the nearest of them, Qadar came out on the bridge and gestured for his fellow M’tachtar to follow him.
The place still stank from the exotic gasses the M’tachtar had introduced to this place. However, Qadar and his comrades—who didn’t need much oxygen in the first place—had brought enough of it up in the turbolift to keep them going for a minute or two. Later, they could figure out how to contact security and have an oxygen mixture pumped in again.
Chi’ra grunted. “It was too easy. I had hoped for more opposition.”
“You hoped for too much,” said Rokh’ma.
Qadar ignored his warriors’ remarks. The engines throbbing beneath the deckplates, a counterpoint to the eager beating of his hearts, the Klingon approached the nearest of the Starfleet officers—a dark-skinned man lying face up beside a peripheral console. Reacting to the return of oxygen to the [157] enclosure, the human was starting to wake, to open his eyes—to cough and draw in air in great gulps.
Bringing his booted foot back, Qadar kicked the officer in the face, eliciting a groan of pain and surprise. Then the man’s head lolled to the side and he lay still again, though his chest continued to rise and fall as his lungs drank their fill.
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 12