by Diane Carey
Kirk wasn’t fooled. “Can’t stay. Since you’re here, I’ll pass along some things to you. You may want to brief your captain.”
Instantly Keller understood. Since he was here?
How had Kirk come on board? Not even another captain could board a ship without permission, and couldn’t tour around without escort. Not properly anyway.
But then, this was James Kirk. Not exactly Sir Propriety.
Obviously Kirk had no intention of considering Roger Lake right now. He was skirting around Peleliu’s assigned master and going for a completely different—and inappropriate—target.
Keller resented him for it. Officially, he couldn’t resist or shoulder away Kirk’s attention. He didn’t have authority, and though he wished he could be rude, something stopped him. He wanted to hear what Kirk had to say. Would rank provide an excuse?
“Awright,” he submitted. “I’m listening.”
No “sir.” No conciliations. Equal ground.
Thus, they crossed over the first line of scrimmage.
“Your name,” Kirk began. “Nick, isn’t it? Am I remembering right?”
Strange way to begin. Names didn’t matter that much. Other things did. Where was this leading?
Keller only nodded.
“I’ve always been grateful for rank insignia,” the captain went on casually. “Never been that good at names. Something tells me to remember yours.”
Hooking his thumbs in his trouser pockets, Keller gave in to his fatigue and impatience. “Nick Jacob Keller. Thorn Bluff, New Mexico. Nearest city, Santa Fe. Help you any?”
The famous amber eyes flashed at him. “Just Nick? Not Nicholas?”
“No, not Nicholas. Captain, if there’s something I should report, can we sort of pole-vault over to it? I’ve had a wicked week.”
He made a little jumping gesture with one hand.
Kirk offered a reserved smile. “Yes. Most of the colonial expedition ships were either sacrificed to the moon-moving project or to fight off the Kauld’s two attacks. We’ve been starved for parts, power, and the skill to use them, but between Shucorion’s single-man scouts and a few picket shuttles, we’ve set up a fair defense perimeter on this side of the solar system. A few satellites here and there, in a cone formation that guards the solar system. You’ll get a warning beacon if any ships pass into the cone. It only works if you stay close to the planet and don’t get distracted.”
Dazed with lack of sleep and the sudden strain of this encounter, Keller nodded. “I’ll study the layout.”
“Good. We’ve given the Kauld a bloody nose. The fact that they’ve been out harassing the Peleliu tells me they haven’t decided to either go away or make nice. Until the Federation can send a diplomatic corps out here to deal with them, they’re not proving to be very friendly.”
Stuck in his mire of middlemanland, Keller shrugged. “Could send Zoa . . .”
“Who?”
“Sorry, nothing.” Though he didn’t really want to get into a conversation with this man—not now, or here—Keller couldn’t stop the next sentence. “I saw the reports about your combat with Battlelord Vellyngaith on the frontier. A couple of Starfleet ships and sixty-some civilian vessels, most of the people-movers that didn’t even have their own engines, going up against a whole fleet of fighters and battlebarges . . . sphering the ships was a brilliant maneuver. Defensible, without being on the defensive. A Starfleet officer on every bridge to add stability . . . I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Scares me.”
Kirk bobbed his brows. “Experience takes time to ferment. I wanted to give each ship self-confidence, for one thing. You have to fight using your soldiers’ minds as well as their bodies and weapons.”
Now Keller was even more scared. Why hadn’t he known that?
“The sphering of the ships,” he pushed on, “did you get that from the old British square phalanx maneuver? Rotating its front line to make for constant fire?”
“Partly. The other model was Roman tortoise formation. And a little bit of circling the wagons.”
“But the British element was flexibility,” Keller insisted. “The enemy couldn’t get a grip on any weaknesses because the ships were constantly shifting into the geodesic. You kept opening and tightening the formation as needed. And you coordinated their weapons into barrages. Dang sphere spindled like a blowfish when it lit up. Enterprise’s visual logs showed eight Kauld fighters atomized in a single seizure. Made me glad I wasn’t looking from outside.”
The captain shrugged. What was that—modesty? Did Kirk the Great have modesty?
“It was pliant,” he demurred. “Sometimes you need that. The part that nibbled at my nerves was hoping every ship would have the fortitude not to move, no matter what hit them. Have to give the civilians credit. Nobody folded.”
“Any formation’s only as strong as its weakest point,” Keller agreed. “It was pretty foxy, that carousel you put ’em on.”
Kirk’s amber eyes were like a quiet yellow alert. He was almost grinning. “You know your strategics.”
Not sure whether that was a compliment or a dare, Keller squeezed the coin in his pocket and shrugged. “I like military history. Just never had a chance to use it . . . or watch it being made.”
Again their eyes connected in the way that proved there were underlying things being said between them.
Now Kirk let that little smile out. “Thank you.”
“Welcome, sir.”
“You may get your chance in the next few days,” the captain said, vectoring back to his reason for being here. “We’ve beaten the Kauld off the planet twice. They know we’ll be bringing more and more ships out here. Vellyngaith will be more cautious now. They were once superior in the cluster. Now they see themselves as doomed. That makes for desperation, and desperation is by far more threatening than anger or belligerence or greed.”
Uneasy, Keller folded his arms and stretched his shoulder muscles. “I ’magine it is, sir.”
Pouncing on the agreement, Kirk stepped closer to him, shortening the gap between Keller and trouble. “Don’t give them an opening. Stand your ground here, in orbit. We don’t need exploratory missions. You have no reason to leave the planet until Peleliu is back to full strength.”
“We don’t have to leave it,” Keller said. “We just have to keep the peace.”
“Peace might not be an option.”
With a scowl, Keller disapproved, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that peace isn’t always the way.” Kirk shifted his feet and pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on. “My father told me something that I’ve never forgotten. He got it from a Romulan friend . . .‘There’s a lot of peace in a prison camp.’ ”
Ominous words, and he meant them. This wasn’t the kind of lesson anyone expected from a wise senior. Don’t expect peace? Don’t believe it or accept it if it seems to come?
Keller slumped, pressing his shoulder to the bulkhead. “You’re giving me a brain ache.”
“Yes, McCoy usually blames that on Spock.” Kirk paced a few steps and waited for two tech crewmen carrying an interfactor housing to pass the inlet of an adjoining corridor before continuing. “It’s my recommendation,” he went on, “that you make good use of the tools you have.”
Time to do the stone-faced act, pretend to perfectly understand what a superior officer was alluding to. Actually he had no idea what Kirk was talking about. Phasers? Peleliu’s banks were unstable. Patrol? With a half-wrecked ship?
Finally he gulped his pride and just asked. “What do I have?”
Kirk had been waiting for Keller to break down, or break through, as if he knew it was coming.
“You have Shucorion,” he said.
“Oh . . . him.”
“He’s spent his life learning to anticipate the movements of the Kauld. He’s survived against these people with much less powerful ships. It’s something to be respected. I’ve already asked him to be at your disposal as an advisor.”
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br /> Irritably Keller shifted his feet. “I don’t think we want Shucorion around, sir. Captain Lake doesn’t trust him. I don’t particularly warm up to him either.”
With some kind of warning Kirk’s eyes brightened dangerously. “I can’t order Lake to take advice. At least you know what’s at your disposal. Use it. Don’t let your guard down. Stay alert.”
There it was again. Kirk wasn’t talking about Lake. He was talking to Keller.
Protocol and everything else resisted. “Sir, shouldn’t you be telling this to my captain?”
“Probably.” The agreement was flat, unpretentious. Having made it, Kirk simply went on with his line of discussion. “Most of the known deposits of olivium have been stuffed back into the Quake Moon. Mr. Spock believes the two remaining ’bots might be the last ones. When they warp out, we’ll be following one of them, both if possible. We may be back in a day, or a month, a year, or never. We’re going to be following the probe at warp nine. I don’t know if we can sustain. If we have to confront it out in space in ways that we didn’t dare near the planet, we may end up stranded in the interstellar void. If we do, not even Peleliu in its best condition could rescue us. You’ll have to forget about us the moment we leave here. Assume you’re on your own. You’ll have to take over defense of the olivium.”
Keller indulged in a disapproving scowl. “Olivium? What about the people here? They can’t just turn around and leave.”
“No, they can’t. We passed up that option.” Was there sympathy in the captain’s face? In his heart? It didn’t show. “Do what you can for them. But the olivium, Keller . . . this discovery is nearly unmatched in the leap of technology that can be milked from it. We’re not even sure how far we can go with it. What we do know is we can’t let anyone else take it away, or the whole Federation could be the price, not just a colony. If hostile powers gain exclusive possession of this find, and believe me, they’re thinking about it, you’ll have to weigh these sixty-four thousand lives against the billions of people back home. Either we all have possession, or nobody does.”
How could this corridor be sweltering and freezing at the same time?
“But we have it, don’t we?” Keller asked. “These ’bot probes, they’re just sticking it all back in the Quake Moon. All we have to do is dig it . . . back out . . .” He paused, hearing himself fall into a trap. “The other shoe hasn’t dropped, has it?”
Kirk’s airbrushed brows went up. He almost made no sound as he murmured, “No.”
His innards suddenly tight, Keller couldn’t move. “It could all happen again? Worse?”
This time the captain only nodded, and offered Keller time to add up the numbers.
Headache. Like sudden thunder. Keller paced away a few steps, trying to think. Disrespectful, but he didn’t care. “Most of the planet suspects the Kauld are running the ’bots. I take it you don’t?”
“If the Kauld had the kind of technology to do what I’ve seen these things do—pass through a planet without disrupting it, take a full photon hit with a chuckle and shrug—they wouldn’t need quantum olivium.” Taking a moment to rub his nose with a casual gesture, Kirk seemed almost human. Almost. “I’ve run into this kind of thing before. Mechanical probes capable of absorbing enormous energy. I never figured out just how, but I learned to deal with them in other ways. I had to. I also suspect there’s a potential danger that hasn’t shown itself yet. You may find yourself sitting in the path of something very dangerous going on here.”
“Sir . . . what’re you saying?” Keller abruptly demanded. “If there’s something specific—”
“If there were something specific, I’d tell you. Starfleet can’t send help or evacuation facilities in any less than six months, and we’ve already proven we can’t fully evacuate ourselves. The Blood aren’t the most secure of allies. You’re alone out here. It makes for unsavory choices. I have to make one now. I have to turn my back on this colony and chase one of those probes into empty space because a geological oddity is so important to the galaxy—if it’s falling into the wrong hands, if there’s something bigger going on here—”
Clearly embittered, Kirk cut himself off. His shoulders were knotted under the field coat, his arms and legs tense, working. He hated the choice, yet he’d made it and was willing to stick to it.
Keller hadn’t expected to see this. A captain—an admiral—possessed unthinkable power. He could do almost anything he wanted.
Or could he? Was command the beginning of freedom, or the end of it?
To hide from the future, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and slouched some. His fingers struck the Challenger coin given to him by Tim McAddis, who had gotten it from Zane Bonifay, who had spirited it all the way here from Earth, where it had survived two centuries, now to be in deep space, in Nick Keller’s fist, hinting to him of decisions yet to be made.
“One thing I’ve learned the hard way,” Kirk grumbled, as if to himself, “is if you wait for something to happen, it’s usually a lot worse than if you go out and make it happen.”
At first this sounded like pomposity to Keller. He bristled some at the imperiousness of the man before him, medals and fame and all, because the medals and fame didn’t really follow Kirk out into space and didn’t hold much weight. The Kauld, the Blood, the ’bots, none of them knew what James Kirk had done in his past to open up space or either save or ruin lives, the long roster of accomplishments and ancillary failures that such a man carried with him . . . yet Keller knew the history, and forced himself to remember. Before him was a man who had moved a moon to make happen what he wanted to happen. Pardon me, God, but I don’t like the arrangement of these planets. Mind if I shift that one slightly to the left?
“I know what you’re thinking,” James Kirk bluntly declared.
Keller came sharply back to the moment. Kirk was stabbing him with those animalistic eyes. Hypnotic eyes, like grappling hooks, the kind nobody could look away from. He knew. Somehow he’d figured it out. He knew something was going on aboard Peleliu and that Keller had decided not to tell him. As such Kirk was putting the responsibility on Keller to make sure it didn’t backfire, cost lives, whatever. All right, you’ve decided, now be sure to clean up your mess. Anybody can make a mess from time to time, but accept that it’s your mess and you clean it up. I’m going out to clean up mine, and I’m leaving you with yours.
“Yes,” Kirk uttered. “These sixty-four thousand lives may come second to a pile of rocks. That’s the ugly side of being in charge. Command isn’t choosing between a right and a wrong. After all, that’s easy.”
“If it’s not right and wrong,” Keller prodded, “what is it?”
He held his breath, cold to the gut, as Jim Kirk watched him to see if he were absorbing his words.
“Command,” the captain said, “is having the spine to choose between a wrong and another wrong.”
The portentous words rolled between them. Stunning—this wasn’t what any manual said, or any morality play, or any legend, rule, tall tale or proverb. Right and wrong. Light and darkness. Good and evil. Those were the only ones.
Evil and evil? Choose?
Keller realized he had just been handed the culmination of a lifetime’s hard choices. His expression crimped in some kind of resistance.
He bristled. “I’m not in command, sir.”
James Kirk’s eyes glinted at him now. Pride? Dare? He seemed satisfied at having done the devil’s work and shredded another man’s inner balance. “This is your turf, now, Mr. Keller. Protect it any way you can.”
Consumed with a sensation that Kirk had somehow gotten what he wanted out of this encounter, Keller felt the weight of the whole Federation shift over to his shoulders. How did that happen? How could he shove it back?
“Mind if I beam off from here?” Kirk pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on and pulled out his communicator.
Keller stepped back. “Go ahead on.”
“Thank you. Kirk to Enterprise. Beam me aboard.”
The captain paused as the faint buzz of transport began, and he tossed one more dart with his quick eyes and his warning words.
“Don’t go out at night, Nick. There are vampires in the dark.”
Chapter Eleven
Mine Ship Pandora’s Box
“HI, HONEY, I’m home. Time for another visit. I’d let you two room together, but then I’d be jealous. I’m not nice when I’m jealous, so I just avoid it.”
Billy Maidenshore skimmed into Uhura’s quarters with Dr. McCoy in one fist and a metal tackle box in the other, and locked the door behind him. This tactic was getting old, but it kept working. Letting her see McCoy just enough for her to know the doctor was alive kept control over her temptations to betray Maidenshore. She had no doubt he would kill McCoy, or do worse to him, if she misbehaved. Maidenshore had her pegged. She wouldn’t let the doctor die.
An imposing man, physically impressive and dashing in a low-life high-horse way, Maidenshore gave Uhura a fetching grin as he dumped McCoy on the bunk and held the tackle box before Uhura. “I brought you something. Open it.”
“A pair of dueling pistols?” she commented. The box wasn’t heavy. She opened it and looked in. Various accoutrements of a lady’s boudoir were neatly stacked and arranged in the compartments meant for electrical tools.
She looked up at him.
He swaggered in place, pleased with himself. “Makeup, perfume, talcum powder, eyeliner . . . see, even on a mining ship, there’s nothing Billy can’t get for you. Like it?”
“Oh, yes, I like it.” She closed the lid. “You know how women are.”
“Yeah, yeah, I do. Women have always done things for me.” Maidenshore put in the computer cartridge he kept securely in his pocket at all other times, enabling the communications system to receive current messages. He clicked the right buttons.
“Listen to this,” he invited.
“This is First Officer Spock. This is an encoded communiqué to all Enterprise crew personnel, authorized by Captain James Kirk. All current assignments and shore leaves are hereby canceled. Return to the Enterprise immediately and report to your department heads for security registration. The following personnel should report directly to the bridge: Dr. McCoy. Lieutenant Commander Uhura. Commander Braxton. Lieutenant Commander Fields. Chief Lebrewski. Chief Nelson. Engineer Herne. All personnel report in by zero-six-hundred hours, Stardate 4662.1. Spock out.”