Mitchell turned to the helm-navigation console, where one of the M’tachtar was handling the piloting controls a lot more roughly than he needed to. And judging from the speed at which they were leaving stars behind on the viewscreen, the warrior still hadn’t coaxed the propulsion system to do better than warp six.
“I need this ship to go faster,” Qadar rumbled menacingly. “And I need it to do so now.”
The navigator frowned. “It’s not possible,” he said. “Not with all the damage you did to her.”
It was a lie, of course. He could have accelerated their progress if he wanted to. All it took was a little know-how.
But Mitchell wasn’t going to tell Qadar that. Not if it would help him to accomplish whatever the Federation had been trying to prevent for the last fourteen years.
Qadar eyed him for a moment, as if trying to decide if the human was telling the truth. Then he reached into his belt with terrible quickness, took out his phaser, and shot at Corbet.
The red beam hit the science officer in the throat, breaking his neck even before it sent him slamming into the console behind him. Limply, Corbet slumped to the deck and came to rest in an awkward heap.
[198] Mitchell swallowed, sickened by the sight. And angered as well, though there wasn’t anything he could do about it—not with two other M’tachtar training their weapons on him and Swift.
Qadar turned to the navigator a second time, his eyes full of hatred, and pointed his phaser at him. “I don’t believe you,” he said savagely.
Mitchell winced at the nearness of the energy weapon’s aperture. But he wasn’t going to give in to this monster, he told himself. Not even if it cost him his life.
“It’s the truth,” he insisted, lying a second time. “The ship needs repairs. Until she gets them, she won’t go any faster.”
He could see Qadar’s finger starting to press down on the trigger. Suddenly, the Klingon swiveled his weapon away from the navigator and unleashed a burst of energy at Swift instead.
The crewman flew backward under the force of the crimson beam and hit the bulkhead with a disheartening thud. By the time Swift hit the deck, he was as dead as Corbet before him.
The navigator wanted to howl with pain and rage. He wanted to take Qadar by the throat and make him feel what Corbet and Swift had felt before they died. But he did neither of those things.
He just stood there, controlling himself as best he could, because there was something hanging in the balance that was more important than his life or the lives of Corbet and Swift.
Mitchell didn’t want to help the M’tachtar make the Enterprise go any faster. But he also didn’t want [199] any more of his comrades to be killed. So he had to sell Qadar on the idea that he had to make repairs before Qadar could get what he wanted—or perish with the sad, awful knowledge that the M’tachtar would keep on spilling blood until they found someone weak enough to bend to their demands.
Qadar turned his phaser on the navigator again, holding it just a few inches from the man’s chest. “I ask for the last time, human. Show me how to make this ship accelerate.”
Mitchell eyed the aperture on the M’tachtar’s weapon as if it were an enemy unto itself. “Shoot if you want,” he declared. “But it’s not going to get you what you need. And if you keep slaughtering us, there’ll be no one left who can give it to you.”
Qadar became so angry that his eyes looked as if they would pop out of his skull. His mouth twisted and the hand that held the phaser trembled with raw, naked fury.
This is it, the navigator thought. This is where he kills me. He braced himself for the bone-jarring impact and the cold touch of death.
But it never came.
Slowly, gradually, the Klingon got his rage under control. His teeth still clenched, he took a deep, rasping breath and lowered the phaser. Then his eyes narrowed beneath his brow ridge and he nodded.
“Very well, human. Make your repairs,” he snarled. “But you will do so under the eyes of an armed guard. And if he believes you have lied to me, I will kill you and twenty of your comrades before [200] you have any idea what might have happened.” He leaned closer to Mitchell—so close that the navigator could smell the stench of his breath. “Is that clear?”
Mitchell nodded. “It’s clear,” he replied, still shaky from his ordeal and not at all ready to believe his good luck.
Qadar turned to one of his warriors and gestured to the turbolift with a thrust of his chin. The M’tachtar nodded and shoved the navigator back in the direction of the double doors.
As they slid open, the Klingon leader said, “One more thing, human.”
Mitchell turned back to him, wondering if his luck had run out after all. “Yes?” he answered.
Qadar scrutinized him with a dark malevolence. “Few of your kind understand that individual lives are meaningless compared to the triumph of the group. But the way you accepted your comrades’ deaths a moment ago ... you seem to be an exception.” He grunted. “If I did not know better, I would suspect you were a Klingon in disguise.”
Thanks for nothing, the navigator thought. But what he said was “If that’s a compliment, I accept.”
The M’tachtar leader seemed to find amusement in the remark—but only for a moment. Then he returned to the center seat.
“Take the human where he needs to go—but watch over him,” said Qadar.
“As you wish,” said Mitchell’s escort.
Then the navigator was shoved back into the waiting turbolift.
* * *
[201] As the lift doors slid apart, Kirk got his first look at a living, working Klingon bridge. Having studied the operations of Klingon ships based on fragments recovered from military encounters, he wasn’t surprised by what he saw—a place that was cramped, dimly lit except for the ghostly red or green glow of monitors, with a high, dark chair looming over four freestanding consoles and a number of peripheral stations.
The chair was Kang’s, of course. He was sitting in it at that very moment, his back to the captain. On the hexagon-shaped viewscreen ahead of him, Kirk could see a distant but eminently familiar shape.
“The Enterprise,” he breathed.
Kang turned in his chair and acknowledged the human’s presence. “So it is,” he confirmed. “And now is the moment of which I warned you, Kirk—when I again require your counsel.”
Leaving his escort behind, the captain advanced to the Klingon’s side—continuing to peer at the viewscreen all the while. He had never seen his ship from so far away. But then, under the circumstances, it felt pretty damned good to see her at all.
“Before long,” said Kang, “we will come within tactical range. No one knows the Enterprise’s vulnerabilities better than you do. In the interest of our common goal—our common interest in stopping the M’tachtar—I urge you to divulge those vulnerabilities to me.”
Kirk looked at him askance. “And place the Federation’s Constitution-class fleet at the mercy of the Klingons?”
[202] Kang’s eyes narrowed. “What is the alternative?”
It occurred to the human that there was an alternative. “I can disable my ship,” he said, “without divulging a thing about her.”
The Klingon commander looked skeptical, even suspicious. “And how can this be accomplished?” he wondered.
The captain frowned. After all, he didn’t like the idea of giving away even this much. “My ship is programmed so that certain command codes will shut down her engines and key operating systems. All I have to do is transmit those codes at a frequency the Enterprise’s comm system will recognize and the computer will take care of the rest.”
Kang looked at him. “And you can do this from here?”
Kirk nodded. “I believe so. But I’ll need some privacy if I’m even to make the attempt.”
The Klingon grunted. “So your worthy enemy doesn’t witness the procedure, I take it.”
“Exactly,” the captain responded.
Kang pondered the problem for
a moment. “Very well,” he said finally. “I will allow you to use an auxiliary tactical facility. But first, we will block its ability to interface with the ship’s other systems—so you don’t learn any of our procedures.”
“Agreed,” Kirk replied. “And while you’re at it, you can disable the facility’s connection to your main computer. I wouldn’t want to leave a record of the proceedings for you to study later.”
The Klingon regarded him with a hint of a smile on his lips. “Of course not,” he said.
[203] The captain glanced at the viewscreen, where the Enterprise looked marginally closer than when he had looked at her last. He felt he had taken at least a half-step toward recovering her.
“So what are we waiting for?” he asked Kang. “Let’s get cracking.”
Chapter Sixteen
KIRK WATCHED the dark, heavy door slide closed behind him, leaving him alone in the dimly lit tactical facility—alone, that is, except for the throbbing of the Klingon vessel’s warp engines and the bleating of the room’s only control console. He planted himself on the seat in front of it and studied its large, hexagonal screen.
It was divided into orange, blue, and green fields. The captain had a pretty good idea what the various colors represented. In effect ... nothing.
Or at least, nothing yet.
Plying the console’s unfamiliar controls as best he could, Kirk established a link with the battle cruiser’s external sensor grid. Then he brought up a schematic of the Enterprise, which appeared in a brilliant white across the three colored fields.
Finally, the captain assigned each of the three [205] colors to an aspect of the data collected by the sensors. As he did this, the outline of the Enterprise turned green and the area where its engines were located became orange. Blue vanished from the screen altogether, though Kirk trusted it wouldn’t be gone too long.
Step one was complete. Now it was time for step two.
Working the control panel, the captain accessed the Klingon vessel’s communications grid. Then, making certain there were no recording devices creating feedback on the line, he punched in the command code known only to him and his Vulcan first officer.
The code had been designed for just such an emergency as this one. It provided a starship’s captain with a way to immobilize his vessel without doing any real harm to her. Thank god for the foresight of Starfleet engineers, Kirk reflected, sitting back in his chair and keeping an eye on the sensor screen.
For a while, nothing happened. The captain began to wonder if something had gone wrong—if, for instance, the Klingon vessel had failed to send out the code exactly as he had tapped it in.
Then the orange part of the schematic began to fade, indicating that the Enterprise’s engines were shutting themselves down. At the same time, a smaller blue area began to assert itself—an area that represented the ship’s auxiliary power generators.
Of course, Kirk reflected, they wouldn’t provide enough power to keep propulsion or any of the Enterprise’s tactical systems alive. However, they [206] would provide plenty of juice for essentials like life-support and communications.
The captain smiled grimly. He had done it. He had incapacitated his ship. Now the rest was up to Kang, he thought, as he got up from his seat and headed for the door.
Qadar was livid.
One moment, he had been sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise, watching stars stream by on the forward viewscreen and picturing Grannoch’s throat in his grasp. The next moment, both the bridge and the viewscreen had gone dark.
Almost immediately, Qadar had been able to see again by the faint, blue glow coming from a series of recessed light panels. But the viewscreen was still dead—and judging by the looks of dismay on his followers’ faces, it wasn’t the only thing in that state.
“My lord,” one of them growled in shock, “the engines have stopped! We have no power!”
“The ship’s weapons are useless!” reported another, his voice thick with disgust.
A third warrior pounded his fist on his console. “Shields and tractor beams have been sabotaged as well!”
Part of Qadar wondered how his enemies had crippled his ship. But another part of him didn’t care. It only wanted to splinter the bones of whoever was responsible for it.
“Life-support?” he demanded.
One of his men checked his monitors, their crimson glow bathing his craggy features. “Still operational,” he responded.
[207] Of course, Qadar mused. Without life-support, his Federation captives would begin to perish. It only lent more credence to his observation that this was no accident.
“Lord Commander,” said another of his followers, who had been sitting at the communications console, “the ship received a data transmission just before everything went dark.”
Eyes narrowing, Qadar turned to him. “What kind of transmission?”
The Klingon pored over her monitors for a moment. Then she looked up, her mouth twisted with hatred. “It came from the battle cruiser behind us.”
Qadar felt his jaw clench. I should have killed the Federation captain when I had the chance, he told himself. I should have split his skull open and drunk his blood.
But he hadn’t. And this was the result.
“What are your orders?” asked one of his followers.
What indeed? thought Qadar, his belly roiling like the fabled fire mountain at Kri’stak.
For more years than he cared to count, he had been imprisoned on an alien world, cut off from his rightful place in the universe. Finally, by dint of painstaking vigilance, he had freed himself from that prison—only to find himself incarcerated in another one.
A prison whose walls were duranium bulkheads, Qadar reflected. A place from which there was no escape except the airless cold of space. Unless ...
Stabbing the intercom stud on his armrest with a [208] gnarled forefinger, he said, “Chi’ra, this is Qadar ...”
As Kirk returned to the bridge of Kang’s ship, he noticed three things. First, that the Klingon was busy giving orders. Second, that on the hexagonal viewscreen, the Enterprise hung in the void with no illumination except her emergency lights.
And third, that Spock and Kelso were on hand, flanked by a pair of Kang’s guards. The captain looked at them, wondering why they had been brought there. But before he could ask, another concern reared its head.
“He’s going to blow up the Enterprise!” Kelso blurted.
The guard nearest to him responded by shoving him hard into the bulkhead. But the Vulcan was still free to speak.
“It is true,” said Spock. “Commander Kang intends to take advantage of the ship’s lack of defenses by destroying her.”
The second guard tried to silence him the way the first had silenced Kelso, but the Vulcan was too quick for him. He grabbed the Klingon’s wrist and bent him back over a console.
Kirk was about to go to Spock’s aid when he heard a voice ring out. It belonged to Kang.
“Enough!” the Klingon bellowed.
Turning to him, the captain saw that Kang had trained his disruptor on the Vulcan. The captain locked eyes with his opposite number.
“I thought we were allies,” he said.
[209] Kang kept his weapon aimed at Spock. “We were,” he replied without inflection. “For a time.”
Kirk shook his head. “What does that mean?”
“It means we have your ship in our sights,” the Klingon explained. “And, as your officers have told you, we are going to reduce her to debris.”
The captain glanced at the Vulcan. “Stand down,” he commanded.
Spock hesitated for just a moment. Then he said “Aye, sir,” and released the Klingon in his grasp.
Kirk glared at Kang. “I thought Klingons prided themselves on how well they kept their word. I see I was wrong.”
Kang looked as if he had been slapped in the face. Lowering his weapon, he spat, “This is not a matter of holding to one’s word. It is a m
atter of necessity. I must destroy the M’tachtar while I have the chance.”
“You had this in mind all along,” the captain realized.
“Ever since you mentioned that you could disable the Enterprise,” the Klingon conceded. “The only reason I allowed you to return to the bridge was so you could witness your contribution to the success of our mission.”
“My contribution ... ?” Kirk sputtered angrily. “Of all the—”
Kang didn’t wait for his guest to finish. Instead, he turned to his weapons officer. “Arraq?”
The Klingon looked up from his console. “Commander?”
“Target the Enterprise,” said Kang.
“No,” said Kirk. He started for the Klingon leader [210] but found his arms pulled back by the guards who had brought him up here. “You can’t do this,” he told Kang.
The Klingon returned his look. “I have no choice.”
“Targeted,” said Arraq, a distinct note of eagerness in his voice.
But Kirk wasn’t about to let him go ahead with his assignment. “You’re not firing on my ship,” he insisted.
Kang eyed him wearily. “And why is that?”
“Because,” the human told him, “she’s my ship—and half my crew is still aboard. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you blast them all to atoms for no good reason.”
“No good reason?” the Klingon echoed. “Open your eyes, Kirk. You have seen the M’tachtar and what they can do. If I give them even the smallest opportunity to survive, they will make us regret it.”
But the captain stood his ground. “All I need is a small team and an hour—no more. If I don’t take my ship back by then, you can go ahead and blow her out of space.”
The Klingon’s brow creased as he considered the proposition. “You could not beat the M’tachtar before, even with your entire crew behind you. What makes you think you can beat them now?”
Suddenly, Spock spoke up. “It is said that four thousand throats can be cut in one night by a running man.”
Kirk looked at him. Then he looked at Kang. The Klingon’s eyes had narrowed with suspicion. No—not suspicion, the captain realized. Puzzlement.
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 16