The other humans were showing signs of waking as well. Qadar was about to instruct his followers to handle them as he had handled the dark-skinned one. But before he could open his mouth, one of their adversaries sprang to his feet and drove his fist into Chi’ra’s jaw.
Chi’ra didn’t fall. But he didn’t strike back, either. Obviously, the blow had stunned him.
Qadar was confused for a moment. He hadn’t thought humans capable of such resilience—or such power. Then Chi’ra absorbed a second blow and staggered backward, giving Qadar a better look at the Starfleet officer ... and in that instant, the Klingon’s confusion was dispelled.
It wasn’t a human at all, he realized. It was a Vulcan—a member of a much stronger and more durable species. And at the moment, he was bolting for the still-open turbolift, no doubt hoping to escape this place and report what had happened here to his superiors.
Qadar’s mouth twisted. There would be no escapes. He had waited much too long for this opportunity to leave the tiniest detail to chance.
As the Vulcan tried to slip by him, the Klingon reached out and grabbed him by the arm. Then he planted his feet and whipped his adversary over the [158] orange red rail, sending him flying into a freestanding console.
The Vulcan hit it with enough force to knock out most sentient species. Nonetheless, he found the strength to grab hold of the console and pull himself up to one knee.
Qadar respected strength. He admired dedication. But his respect and admiration didn’t outweigh his need to accomplish his objective—and accomplish it quickly.
Extending his phaser pistol in the Vulcan’s direction, he unleashed a sudden, blood-red beam. The officer recoiled from the impact, hit the console again and lay still.
Qadar grunted. “See to the others,” he told his followers.
Glaring at the Vulcan, Chi’ra used his knuckle to wipe crimson spittle from the corner of his mouth. “I’ll see to him,” he said.
Qadar grinned as the other Klingon advanced on the unconscious officer. “Just leave him alive, Chi’ra. Who knows? I may need him.”
After all, he mused, examining the bridge a little more closely, this was a big vessel—and an unfamiliar one. He didn’t know yet who among its crew he might keep and who he might decide to throw away.
Kirk regained consciousness in the grasp of two burly but unarmed Klingons, each of them a full head taller than he was, in what he immediately recognized as one of the ship’s turbolift compartments.
His head hurt and his lungs hurt even worse. He [159] could only guess how he had wound up here or where he was headed. But he knew one thing for certain—he wasn’t about to let the element of surprise slip away from him.
Driving the heel of his boot into the side of one captor’s knee, the captain used the leverage it gave him to smash the other one in the jaw with his elbow. The Klingons groaned and cursed at him, and for just a fraction of a second he was free to maneuver.
But his adversaries recovered more quickly than he would have liked. As he launched another blow at the one he had kicked, the other one caught him from behind with a savage strike to his shoulder.
It drove Kirk to his knees and numbed his right arm. And before he could get up again, he felt a second punch knock him flat. Nor did the Klingons let him lay on the deck for long. They dragged him to his feet and held him as they had before, except more securely.
The captain resolved to wait until the compartment came to a halt before making another attempt at escape. But a moment later, as the lift doors slid aside, he realized the futility of such a plan.
Even before Kirk saw the Klingons on his bridge, he heard them. The sounds they made were deep throated, savage, more like rocks grinding together than actual language.
Glancing about, he saw that the invaders were everywhere—at the communications console, at engineering, at the science station, at the helm, and at navigation. And, of course, in the captain’s chair.
The Klingons behind him shoved Kirk out of the [160] lift compartment. He stumbled, then caught himself and looked around some more.
For a second, the intruders stopped to study him or, in some cases, to chuckle at the human’s helplessness. But only for a second. Then they returned to their respective duties.
Only then did the Klingon in the center seat rise and turn around to regard him. Coming around the sleek, dark chair, he ascended to the level of the lift doors as if to get a better look at his captive.
The captain looked up into the Klingon’s face. It was craggier than any of the others, his forehead bonier, his eyes more deeply set and more malevolent over a cruel gash of a mouth. And unlike his brethren, he exhibited no facial hair—only a thick, dark mane gathered in a long, plaited pigtail.
He glanced at Kirk’s sleeves, which bore the gold stripes of a Starfleet captain. “You are the commander of this vessel,” the invader snarled, his voice deep and guttural. “True?”
Kirk shrugged. “Who wants to know?”
He had dealt with Klingons before, after all. He knew that he had to maintain an air of bravado if he was to maximize his chances of survival.
But this was not the kind of Klingon he had dealt with in the past. Instead of sneering at his remark, the warrior brought his hand back almost too quickly for the captain to follow and lashed him across the face.
Kirk’s head snapped back under the impact, his mouth filling with the taste of blood. Turning and spitting it out, he glared at his tormentor.
[161] “He looks angry,” one of the other Klingons taunted.
“Perhaps we should be frightened,” another gibed.
They laughed at the remark. But not all of them—not their leader. He just gazed at the captain appraisingly.
“If you are seeking to impress me,” the Klingon growled, “I should tell you I am not easily impressed. Now I ask you again, for what I assure you is the last time ... are you the commander of this vessel?”
Kirk raised his chin. “I am.”
The Klingon’s eyes narrowed. “You are trainable. That is surprising. I had heard your species was slow to learn.”
Again, there was rough laughter among the Klingons. And again, it didn’t come from their leader.
Instead, he stroked his chin. “You disabled your shuttlecraft,” he told the captain. “What was your purpose in this?”
“To keep you from escaping,” the captain responded defiantly.
His captor’s mouth crinkled at the corners—as close as it seemed he would come to a smile. “To keep us from escaping?” he said.
The invaders laughed again, perhaps harder than before. Kirk felt his face heat up. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
The Klingon eyed him. “We never had any intention of escaping your vessel,” he replied.
Not until then had the captain been able to appreciate the full scope of the invaders’ arrogance. [162] Now, however, he saw it in all its savage splendor. “Then you wanted to get into the shuttlebay—”
His captor made a derisive sound deep in his throat. “To keep you from escaping,” he said, finishing the human’s sentence.
Kirk swallowed back his humiliation. What a fool he had been. What a smug, overconfident fool.
What’s more, the Klingon knew it.
“When they come for you,” he grated, “as they surely will, tell them it was Qadar who took your ship and made you an object of ridicule.” He leaned closer, so that his aquiline nose was mere centimeters from the captain’s. “Don’t forget, human—it was Qadar.”
Kirk didn’t know what the Klingon meant by that. “When they come for me ... ?” he repeated.
Qadar didn’t answer, he just made a quick, sharp gesture of dismissal. As the Klingons on either side of him reached for his arms, the captain wondered if he was going to be executed or just taken away—and decided he didn’t want to wait to find out.
Driving his elbow into the midsection of the Klingon on his right, he doubled the warrior over. That freed up his righ
t hand, which he then drove into the jaw of the Klingon on his left.
As the invader staggered, the captain reached for the phaser pistol the Klingon had tucked into his belt. If he got it, he told himself, he would have a fighting chance—especially in such close quarters.
But he wasn’t quick enough. Before his fingers could close on the weapon, Kirk felt his wrist encased in the hardest grip he had ever felt. Then his hand was wrenched away from its objective.
[163] And he found himself looking up into Qadar’s face again.
Still holding the captain’s wrist, the Klingon glared at him for a moment, his eyes dark and supremely contemptuous beneath his brow ridge. “Remember” was the only word he said.
Before Kirk could even think of responding, Qadar belted him hard across the face again. Stunned and bloodied, the human fell backward—and found himself grabbed by two strong pairs of Klingon hands. Then he was dragged forcibly away from the center seat. What’s more, his captors continued to drag him until he was back inside the turbolift.
Then the doors closed, obscuring the Klingons from view—and the captain was forced to wonder if he had seen his bridge for the last time.
Chapter Thirteen
KIRK DIDN’T GO DOWN to the planet’s surface without a struggle.
In the turbolift, he tried again to free himself from his Klingon captors. And again, he was beaten down for his trouble.
Then, as they pulled him out of the lift compartment on the transporter deck, the captain attacked them again. He got in two good blows before they slammed his head against a bulkhead.
After that, he drifted in and out of consciousness. The next thing he knew, he was lying on hard ground under a blazing hot sun, Nurse Hinch’s face swimming over his.
“Try to lie still,” he heard her say, her voice deep with concern. “You’ve been beaten pretty badly, sir.”
Ignoring her, Kirk rolled over on his side and [165] propped himself up. He could see where he was now, but it wasn’t a pretty sight—not for him or for the hundreds of other crewmen who stood in the lee of a line of gigantic, ocher-colored cliffs, looking lost and defeated.
The whole crew, he thought at first. Then he realized it was only part of it. A little more than half, maybe.
And they were on the planet’s barren, craggy surface—the same unforgiving landscape that had served as a prison all those years for Qadar and his enhanced Klingons. In fact, the captain could see an immense yellow forcefield in the distance.
They had no food, he thought, no water—other than what they could scratch out of the land. Poetic justice? he wondered. At least from Qadar’s point of view?
Kirk found he didn’t care about the motive. All that mattered to him was that the Klingon had spared them.
“Captain,” said a familiar voice.
Kirk shielded his eyes and turned to it. There was a dark, slender figure standing over him, backlit by the sun but nonetheless recognizable.
“Spock,” he said.
The Vulcan held out his hand and the captain took it. As he pulled himself up with Spock’s help, he felt all the places where he had been pounded and pummeled in his attempts at resistance.
Then Kirk got a better look at his first officer and realized he wasn’t the only one who had suffered at the Klingons’ hands. An entire side of Spock’s face [166] was a mess of dark green bruises and there was dried blood in one corner of his mouth.
“You look awful,” the captain said.
The Vulcan grunted softly. “I am not the only one, sir.”
Kirk looked around at the vast stretches of fiery terrain, at the cloudless, blue-green sky. Then he looked at his people. “We’re not all here. Any idea what happened to the others?” he asked soberly.
Spock nodded. “Before I was beamed down, I heard a discussion among our captors. Their leader opted to keep half the crew as hostages—to make sure the Enterprise is not fired on by other starships.”
The captain was relieved. It meant the other part of his crew was still alive. But as he thought about it, he realized they might not stay that way for long.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “hostages are no assurance. Starfleet will do whatever it takes to stop the Klingons from making off with the Enterprise—even destroy her, if it comes down to it.”
“Of course,” the Vulcan replied, “the Klingons don’t know that.”
Kirk frowned. He wished Gary was with him and Spock on the planet’s surface. But he knew in his heart that his friend was among those who had been kept on the ship.
“I wonder where they’ll take her,” the captain said out loud.
Spock shook his head ruefully. “Under the circumstances, sir, there is no way of knowing.”
“Yes, there is,” said a feminine voice.
[167] Kirk turned and saw Phelana approaching them. The Andorian was still bruised and battered from her encounter with the Klingons, but she didn’t look any worse than the captain felt.
“You know more than you told me,” he concluded.
“A little,” she said, her black eyes glinting in the strong sunlight. “According to the admiral, those Klingons are renegades of some kind. They have reason to hate the High Council.”
“So they’re headed for the Klingon homeworld?” Kirk gathered. “To seek their revenge?”
Phelana nodded. “That’s my guess.”
The captain swore to himself. His ship and half his crew were under Qadar’s control. If a starship on the Federation side of the neutral zone hailed them and got an inkling of what was going on ...
“Our comrades are in great danger,” Spock concluded.
“Yes,” said Kirk, “they are.”
Not that any of them could do anything about it. Not down here, alone and cut off from—
Suddenly, the captain stopped himself. After all, they weren’t alone ... were they? “The Klingon ship!” he breathed.
The Vulcan’s eyes narrowed. “What about it, sir?”
“If we can get their attention,” the captain explained, “let them know what’s happened on the Enterprise ...”
Phelana sighed. “But we haven’t got any communications equipment. Our captors made certain of that.”
[168] Kirk wiped his brow with the back of his hand. There’s got to be a way to contact those Klingons, he thought. There’s got to be.
The commander of the Klingon vessel Doj turned to his right and eyed his communications officer with a certain amount of skepticism. “A signal from the surface?” he said. “Are you certain, J’likh?”
“Quite certain,” came the response from the communications officer, his features bathed in the faint, green glare of his monitors.
The commander grunted and turned to his hexagonal viewscreen again. As before, it showed him a sweep of red-orange terrain, somewhere in which the M’tachtar’s prison was located.
But how could the M’tachtar have sent out a signal? And why hadn’t the Federation vessel on the opposite side of the globe already done something about it?
The commander scowled in his beard and listened to the drone of the Doj’s engines. Unfortunately, his orders prevented him from initiating any communications with the Federation ship. But clearly, the matter needed to be investigated.
He got up from his seat and gestured for his second in command to take charge. As Tupogh moved to the commander’s chair, the commander himself left the dimly lit bridge and headed down the even more dimly lit main corridor of his ship, his destination the Doj’s transporter facility. En route, he told himself, he would gather some warriors to accompany him.
[169] Then the commander would see for himself how the M’tachtar had managed to send a signal out—and he would make sure it didn’t happen again.
For what must have been the twentieth time, Kirk pressed the stud on the jury-rigged graviton projector and watched it send a narrow, yellow beam into the aquamarine sky.
But, just like the first nineteen times, there was no response. The ca
ptain rocked back on his heels and wiped the perspiration from his brow. The heat was starting to get to him, he reflected.
“Perhaps their sensors are not calibrated to receive such a signal,” Spock suggested. “Or they may have moved out of range.”
“Or a great many other possibilities,” Kirk conceded, a little annoyed with the scope of the first officer’s conjecture. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop trying, Mr. Spock.”
The Vulcan arched an eyebrow. “I did not mean to suggest we should,” he replied. “Only that we may wish to examine other options.”
“Such as?” asked the captain.
Spock frowned. “I am working on it,” he responded without rancor.
Kirk sighed. The Vulcan was only trying to be helpful, he told himself. He was wrong to have snapped at him. Just as he had been wrong to think the enhanced Klingons were just another group of intruders.
“I apologize, Mr. Spock.” He glanced at the expanse of bright, empty sky, then at the large group [170] of crewmen who had gathered on the rust red bluff behind him, and back again at the first officer. “It’s just that I was so certain this would work.”
“So was I,” said Phelana.
The Andorian was standing just a few meters away, in the shade of a rocky upthrust, alongside Alden, Kyle, and Kelso—the team that had helped the captain and Spock alter the projector into a narrow beam device. Their uniforms were all soaked through with perspiration.
“Maybe we didn’t calculate the wavelength right,” Kyle suggested.
“Or the conversion ratio,” Kelso allowed.
Alden shook his head. “No ... we did everything right. The Klingons should have received our signal and beamed down a long time ago.”
“You should be grateful,” said a deep, guttural voice, “that we responded at all.”
Whirling, the captain saw a squad of five armed Klingons advance to the forward edge of a rocky, red shelf. But to his relief, they were the kind of Klingons he had encountered before—tall, dark, and lean, with high cheekbones and upswept eyebrows. Nothing like the muscular, bumpy-headed supermen who had taken over the Enterprise.
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 13