by Diane Carey
One by one, they scanned other areas of the ship. The hold, the galley, main salon, midships salon, racks—
“Empty,” McCoy noted. “How could he be nowhere?”
“It’s a big ship, Doctor. Let’s check the docking collar itself.”
“Why would anybody be in there except to load or unload?”
“Let’s look anyway.”
Pictures flashed of other parts of the Pandora’s Box, now a seamy hole in space, littered and untended.
“Can’t you just sabotage this console beyond repair?” McCoy asked. “He can’t have you send signals if everything’s smashed.”
“He’ll just find another way,” Uhura said as she continued scanning the ship through the security line. “This way, at least I know where everything’s being moved to. You don’t think I’m staying here much longer, do you?”
“Does that mean you have a plan for escape?”
“No. I’m just psychically willing Maidenshore to have an infarction or something. Meanwhile, all we can do is manipulate him into keeping us alive and letting us see each other every few days.”
“He lets us see each other,” the doctor muttered, “to keep us pliant and willing to protect each other. He’s holding us hostage with each other’s lives. I could compromise his health, but he knows that and he’s on watch for it.” He sighed. “I suppose . . . I could incapacitate him . . . medically.”
Uhura turned to him, reached out and clasped his hand tightly. “No one’s asking you to do that, Leonard. Besides, I believe him when he tells us he has backups if he ends up out of the picture. Eventually, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock will figure out the messages aren’t really giving them any information and they’ll start asking questions. Until then, we have to hang on and stay alive.”
McCoy rubbed his arms and paused, then said. “I think I may have the ticket to that.”
She looked at him. “How so?”
“You’ve managed to impress him. He wants to impress you. We can use that.”
She shied back. “Are you out of your little ol’ mind? What do you mean, exactly?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. Give me a—look! It’s him. There he is.”
Uhura’s hands drew fluidly over the console as she focused in on the form of Billy Maidenshore, standing with—
“Of all the gall!” Uhura blurted.
“Vellyngaith!” McCoy leered with contempt. “Dealing with the Kauld! Why didn’t we figure that out? Now that I see it, it makes perfect sense. Can you move in? Can you get sound?”
“Yes. I just have to keep from initiating any feedback.” Uhura turned the dials carefully, very carefully, each hand moving independently from the other. Tap this switch with the ring finger without disturbing the dials . . . nudge that one, disconnect this one . . . Element by element she summoned years of experience with touchy and delicate modulation equipment. A less experienced technician wouldn’t have been able to do this at all, with equipment so heavily filtered and inhibited. The slightest crackle would incur Maidenshore’s suspicion.
She hungered to get sound out of the inhibited system. Maidenshore was talking to Battlelord Vellyngaith of the Kauld. Vellyngaith was a stunning man, strongly built, with his long white hair decorated with feathers and beads, his gull-wing complexion starting to look normal as Uhura got used to the residents of this cluster, the blue-pigmented Blood and Kauld. As outrageous as this was, it suddenly made sense. So that was where the skimmed olivium was going!
But what could Vellyngaith be giving Maidenshore in return? Nothing else was of more value out here.
Voices. She could hear the beginnings of a sound pickup.
“There we go,” she murmured, victorious.
McCoy leaned close. “Very good.”
“And the doctor had doubts.”
They fell to silence as the voices of Maidenshore and the senior Kauld veteran crackled through the system. She filtered out the residual noises, and they began to listen.
“You people, you don’t even know what you want,” Maidenshore was saying, dripping with disrespect for a man who, though an enemy, deserved respect. “You got two choices. Fold to the Federation, or get your asses kicked then fold to the Federation. Either you’re going to be their friend, or they smash you and make you be their friend. That’s what they do. Except they don’t have me. You have me. I’m giving you a third choice. The Blood have already folded. You still have a chance.”
Battlelord Vellyngaith glared at Maidenshore in something that sure wasn’t affection. “These things are new to us. We have never dealt with other cultures come to live in our place. No one else has ever come. We know only Blood and Kauld. Every day we must learn new lessons.”
“Here’s one,” Maidenshore said snottily. “Ask yourself, why is the Federation so hot to come here? Why are they staying on this decimated planet? Why are the Blood here? Why are you in trouble? It’s because of this stuff that moon spat all over the solar system. You’ve tried to knock them off the planet twice, and it didn’t work. So let ’em have it. Just own the stuff.”
“I understand,” Vellyngaith said, “but why are you taking the olivium in so loud and thundering a manner? Now everyone knows it’s being taken!”
“Oh, damn!” Uhura blurted. “He’s about to tell him! Quiet, quiet, quiet! Oh—”
“What?” McCoy flinched. “Tell him what?”
On the little screen, Maidenshore paused. “What’re you talking about? Nobody knows anything yet.”
“Everyone knows!” Vellyngaith raised his hands in fists. “Your mechanical devices are blasting their way into containment facilities all over the planet, taking huge amounts!”
“I don’t have any mechanical . . .” Maidenshore stepped back a few paces, stopped to think, then looked up at Vellyngaith. “Wait a minute . . . you mean somebody’s stealing more than me?”
“It’s not you?” Vellyngaith asked. “I was certain it would be you.”
“Quiet. Let me think about this a minute.”
At Uhura’s side, McCoy lowered his voice instinctively, even though they couldn’t be heard. “Somebody’s been stealing the olivium? More than him?”
Uhura also spoke quietly, silly as that was. “I’ve been hearing reports from the captain and others. I didn’t tell him. I hoped an investigation would lead them to us.”
“What’s going on?”
“No one knows for sure. Some kind of mechanical units have been raiding olivium stores down on the planet, taking huge amounts and streaking off into space at high warp. Whatever they are, they can swallow a full phaser hit, so their tech is way beyond our power to stop them. I hoped that if we could keep the information from Billy, somebody would pick up on the fact that our broadcasts never mention any trouble—” Frustrated, she interrupted herself. “It doesn’t matter now. Vellyngaith’s spilled the beans.”
“Tell you something else,” McCoy told her, “look at Vellyngaith.”
“What about him?”
“Look closer. Maidenshore’s so full of himself, he doesn’t even notice that man is ill.”
Uhura squinted, only now noticing Vellyngaith’s dry lips, his sallow gray complexion, his sunken eyes. “He doesn’t look good, does he?”
“Something’s wrong with him. His complexion’s sallow, his eyes are glazed . . . listen to his respiration. He’s got fluid in his lungs. And both legs are braced. He’s having trouble standing. He doesn’t want Maidenshore to know.”
“What do you think is wrong with him?”
As Uhura waited, McCoy studied the visiting enemy battlelord as closely as the small screen allowed. “Almost everything.”
On the screen, Maidenshore was just now pacing back toward Vellyngaith, waving his still-unlit cigar. “This could be perfect,” he decided. “It could cover my tracks. I’ll have to find out more about this. Mechanicals, you say? Robots?”
Vellyngaith just stood there, completely annoyed, as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
Unaffected by the presence of the formidable general, Maidenshore treated Vellyngaith like another of his thugs. “What about the Peleliu? Did you kick that ship in the tail?”
Vellyngaith’s features further hardened. “We could not stand against that ship even during the Blind.”
Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Maidenshore put on a show of disappointment. “Can’t you jerks do one simple thing?”
“We fought them!” Vellyngaith thundered. “They were stronger. They deserved to prevail.”
“Did you do some damage, at least?”
“Yes, much—”
“But not enough. They’re still coming.” Maidenshore pointed rudely at Vellyngaith’s face. “Look, I don’t care what it takes. You have to beat them right now, hit ’em again while they’re weak. When’ll they get here?”
“Perhaps a day. Two.”
“When they get here, Kirk’ll set Montgomery Scott on it and fix that ship. If you don’t wreck the Peleliu while she’s down, then there’s two fully operational Starfleet ships out here and I can’t handle two. If Peleliu has time to be repaired and joins forces with Enterprise, you’ll have a fight to make your little spat with the Bloods look like a footnote. You’ve seen what the Federation can do—do you want two of them here?”
Vellyngaith paused, his tense muscles obvious even over the small screen. “No.”
“See? I knew you had a brain cell still working. Let that second ship get back to strength, and you’re dead. Stop it right now, and we’ll have olivium and the power to use it. This is your last chance to hit them behind the knees. It’s time to finish off that ship.”
“I have no magic to bring me close to that planet, close to that ship while it remains damaged—”
“I have the magic,” Maidenshore claimed. “Leave it to me.”
The Kauld battlelord clearly didn’t trust Maidenshore, but seemed to be making some kind of bet whose boundaries he didn’t understand. “How do you know, Maidenshore, that I won’t betray you?”
Maidenshore chuckled. “What difference does that make?”
“I want to know why a man trusts me who has no reason to. I give trust to you because I must have an ally among my enemies. What is your reason?”
“My reason is you don’t have any choice but to trust me. Second, you don’t know how to use the olivium. I’ve got access to technology that’s magic to you backward buzzards. I can make you more powerful than the Federation, because you’ll be right here with the motherlode and they’re still way the heck over there. Proximity to the lode is an advantage we can use. Third, you can blow me out of space, but I have it set up that if I disappear, messages beam directly to Captain Kirk about who’s got their olivium and he’s gonna be knocking at your door with photon torpedoes.”
At Uhura’s side, McCoy mumbled, “Sweet Uncle Billy, always thinking of others.”
On the screen, Vellyngaith wavered, irritated, but mightily kept his temper in check. “I only asked for one reason. I won’t be cheating you, will I?”
“Nope,” Maidenshore declared. “People don’t cheat me.”
“You are a disgusting creature,” the Kauld leader said. “I have no joy in dealing with someone so despicable.”
“Thanks. Give us a kiss.”
“How do I know you won’t cheat me instead?”
Maidenshore waved his unlit cigar. “Oh, you don’t. If it was in my advantage I probably would, but it’s not right now. At least you know where you stand.”
“Yes,” Vellyngaith tightly observed, his voice hardly more than a chafe. “I know where I stand.”
“Then you better get going, gather up some fire-power to hit Peleliu when she comes limping in,” Maidenshore instructed. “I’ll figure out a way to distract Enterprise so you can hit Peleliu. Don’t look at me like that, chump. How long do you think you have? Every month they’ll be sending in new ships and new supplies. I know the situation between you and the Blood. You were about to win. Then the Federation shows up, the Blood toss in with them, and Kirk hands you your purple head—twice. Now you’re about to lose. Do what I say and things might change. Take the olivium I give you, fly it back to your solar system, stick it on the second planet on the left, and get a good night’s sleep on your way to beat the Peleliu to cream.”
With an artistic pause, Maidenshore pulled out a pocket lighter and flipped the red-hot diode merrily in Vellyngaith’s face, toying with the idea of lighting his cigar without actually lighting it. “Get together every ship you can find. Get ready to attack Peleliu. This time, make it count. Get ready, but let me tell you when to attack. Got it? Don’t do anything till I signal you. This is how you can win. So cheer up.”
The discussion ended. Maidenshore had gotten all he wanted out of the encounter, and more than he expected, and now it was over.
Without farewell Vellyngaith turned, moving cautiously, and simply stalked away, apparently to return to whatever vessel had docked with Pandora’s Box, to go off and prepare to hit Peleliu again, thus encouraged.
Uhura shivered as her skin prickled. “Something tells me our survival just became a lot less important.”
Aching for a way to warn the incoming Starfleet crew that they were in trouble again. Uhura took a chill all over her body, and McCoy’s beside her, as Billy Maidenshore gazed upward in the general direction of the sensor camera. Slowly he lit his cigar and indulged in a long draw, then exhaled the bluish smoke in a single unbroken trail.
“Uh-oh,” McCoy murmured.
Looking up at “them,” Maidenshore now spoke clearly, and with certainty that someone was listening.
“Isn’t that right, milady?”
Vellyngaith’s Kauld Battlebarge
“ ‘Gather up firepower.’ ‘Strike while they are weak.’ And what are we? We are the weakest fighting force ever to exist.”
“Battlelord.” Fremigoth greeted Vellyngaith glumly, holding a breathing-treatment mask in case their general needed another one today.
Vellyngaith knocked the mask away. “Stop keeping me alive, physician. The sooner I die, the better for my memory.”
“With so many already dead in our army,” Fremigoth assured, “we need you more. Stop whining.”
“Before I die, I think I’ll kill you first.”
“What did the ghastly man say?”
“He spoke a ghastly truth.” Vellyngaith slumped onto the bench outside the spacelock as the vault slid closed, blessedly cutting him off from Maidenshore. A sound worth worship.
No one else was here, and he was glad of the solitude. The barge was tomblike, so few men remained standing to man it.
So many dead, suffering, ill—
“Half our fleet is dead. Our army, crawling to their beds,” he murmured. “The rest, doomed . . . how can I man a dozen vessels to face the two of Starfleet? Nine, ten men to a ship that requires fifty? Hardly enough to keep moving forward. . . .”
Beside him, Fremigoth slumped against a computer housing. “He wants us to attack again? When? How soon?”
“He will tell us when to attack.”
Fremigoth, unsatisfied with that answer, slumped more and began wiping his own face with a moistened cloth so vigorously that Vellyngaith found bizarre fascination in waiting for the physician to wipe off his deep blue skin completely. In their condition, this was not so much a fantasy.
“That insufferable man,” Fremigoth uttered.
“We must suffer him,” Vellyngaith said. “We’re helpless to win in a fair fight. We must use trickery and guile and have help. All those are Maidenshore—”
The bile he had managed to hold down now belched into his mouth and out his lips. Blood and bits of flesh splattered his knee. He hadn’t turned his head quickly enough. Another cough brought up even more solid matter, speckled with the white pustules from his poisoned lungs. He stared at the mess, seeing the fate of all Kauld military men who had been living in their base, their only fortress, as the contamination spread in
that one horrible day.
They hadn’t even known they were being poisoned. There had been no panic, no warnings, no chance to escape. Experiments with the systems of dynadrive had done this to them, and there was no undoing it. Nearly all the Kauld fighting forces were contaminated. A great secret. How could he fight two Starfleet ships, and keep the awful truth hidden?
“We’re weak, Fremigoth. Poisoned, weak, dying, dead . . . our soldiers, young and old . . . I have watched both my own students and my own teachers die twisted deaths in the past months. The rest of us will be gone before the next eclipse . . . punishment for housing all our fighting men in one place. We must somehow preserve our civilization until a new army can be trained, to carry on our work, protect our people from Blood and Federation. For this, we need . . . the ghastly Maidenshore.”
Fremigoth said nothing. He seemed smaller than ever before, as if he had actually shrunken by a percentage.
Vellyngaith wiped his bloody lips on his sleeve, catching a decorative bead briefly on the corner of his mouth. For a moment he gazed hatefully at the bead. “This is a universal payment to us. We were willing to fight Blood to extinction. Now they have Federation, and we face extinction ourselves. We waited too long. We should have erased Blood Many when we had the chance.”
“They would do the same to us,” Fremigoth wheezed. “They would admit it. Even Shucorion, who flirts with Federation in person and calls them friends.”
“Shucorion is not the only Blood avedon. He’s only the most dangerous one at this time. He uses them as we must use Maidenshore. When he is done with them, we will be done with him. I will use his skin for my fire shroud.”
To provide a kind of example, if only to himself, Vellyngaith forced himself to his feet, battling his own clouded mind to think clearly for one more moment, one more day.
“Gather all the men who can still stand,” he ordered. “Give them treatments and put them in ships. Make ready to assault Peleliu and this time rend it to ruins.”
Chapter Seven