by Diane Carey
Cadet Kirk was so shocked that he stood frozen in place for three critical seconds. Ensign Spock had to reach to him, spin him around, and yell, “Go!”
“Swingle!” A shot from the Klingon almost knocked McCoy’s head off. “Joe! Come out now!”
Scarcely more than a shadow at his side, Spock gave the medic a sharp push too, and less than a second later the red beam of rifle laser seared into the nose of the runabout right where McCoy’s head had just been. He felt the electrical charge snap through the air. The buzz of energy raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he dodged away. He caught his boot on a stone and went sprawling. Sparks rained onto his bare face and hands, making a hundred tiny scorch marks.
A side hatch whined open on the runabout closest to them, and the three men who were supposedly in the hills searching for them came rushing out! It was a trap!
Spock was trying to haul him to his feet when more laser bolts cut through the open air overhead and drove them both to the ground. When McCoy looked up, they were surrounded. The muzzles of four laser rifles bobbed inches from his head and shoulders. He and Spock were caught.
He tried to see Jimmy Kirk, and wondered why the cadet hadn’t used the laser rifle when he had the chance—but then realized that, if this was a trap, these men expected them to come here and wouldn’t let them get their hands on a charged rifle.
Sure enough, he saw Jimmy crouch and try to shoot, but the rifle just buzzed flatly, its energy cartridge drained. The red-haired kidnapper tackled Jimmy, drove him to the ground, and yanked away the laser rifle.
Jimmy twisted around on the ground, lashed out with the heel of his boot, and clipped the red-haired man in the chin, knocking him flat.
But it was only one hit, and it was instantly over.
The other men instantly surrounded the cadet.
Above McCoy and Spock, the thin black-haired man glared down in scalding anger. “Get up,” he said, his words like acid. Then he looked past them and snapped, “Bring that one over here, Zenoviev. Get him over here!”
“I’m comin’, I’m comin’.” The burly redhead appeared out of the shadows, shoving Jimmy Kirk roughly in front of him. “He hit me, Joe.”
“Aw, he hit you. Poor you.” The man called Joe Swingle cocked a hip and mewled without sympathy at the big man. “He hit Crawler too. So what? You need a cotton ball? We’ll stick it up your face. Maybe it’ll keep both of you quiet.”
Hmm, McCoy thought, sweet guy.
“Line ’em up,” Swingle cracked. He waited until all three young men were shoved arm to arm and held there with well-aimed laser rifles. Then he asked, “Who are you punks?”
“Starfleet to you,” Jimmy Kirk snapped back, matching the man’s acidic tone.
McCoy felt his eyes go wide and he held his breath. Talk about asking for trouble!
“Oh, goody—a hotshot,” Swingle moaned. “That’s all I need. You want to be brilliant, smarty? Tell me how come I expend good energy yanking a transport off course and all I get is three piglets in standard sparkle. Where’s Richard Daystrom?”
“Not here.”
“I can see that, pinky. Who are you anyway? You’re not an officer—”
Jimmy stuck his chin out. “Maybe I’m in disguise.”
“Yeah. A teddy bear disguised as a plebe. Hey, fellas, look at his baby-face, will ya? How old are you, baby boy?”
“Seventy-two. I’m well preserved. Who are you?”
“I’m a shanghai specialist, little man. I’m a hijacker, and I don’t like it when I spend a lot of time and expense setting up a hijacking plan and end up hijacking for no good reason. You cadets are no good reason for sure. So if you want to keep your value as a living creature, you’d better tell me why Richard Daystrom isn’t on his assigned transport.”
“He didn’t want to be exposed to you,” Jimmy said. “He’s allergic to slime.”
Swingle responded to the cadet’s insult with a tooth-jarring slam across the face with the back of his hand. Jimmy went sprawling backward into the Klingon, who shoved him to the ground.
Spock flinched, but was pressed back by Zenoviev’s laser rifle.
“Easy, ears,” the big man rumbled, and flicked one of Spock’s pointed ears.
The Vulcan tilted away, but made no other move.
“My commander will not like this,” the Klingon snarled. “He paid you to get a computer expert, not a shipload of cadets.”
“You keep your mouth shut,” Swingle said. “I’ll make good on my part of the deal. Awright,” he drawled, “let’s get back to the compound. Klaag, you get on the communication web, find out when the next transport comes through here, see if you can dig up a passenger manifest that’s accurate this time. Zenoviev, you and Crawler slam these three junior jockeys in a box till I figure out what to do. Maybe we can trade ’em for Daystrom. Starfleet’ll have to pay attention when we tell them we’ve got three of their cherubs on ice. Let’s go, before I decide to wipe that smug look off baby boy’s face.”
The “box” was a janitor’s shed on the Atlantis Outpost compound. And it was just about a real box—four steel walls, used as a storeroom for tubs of cleaning fluids, janitorial supplies, brushes, brooms, a tin of rubber gloves, and that was about all.
“We’ve been kidnapped by this Joe Swingle and his crew, who evidently work for a Klingon commander. The Klingon commander hopes to capture Richard Daystrom for his computer innovations, then hold him for ransom. Swingle wants his cut and seems to be ruthless about getting it. He was furious when he discovered Dr. Daystrom was not among us.”
Ensign Spock wasn’t happy. He hovered on one spot near the bolted door of the shed, thinking out their problem.
McCoy had watched him for a half hour now, curious about watching a Vulcan stew with anger and battle to hold it in. He was sure he could see the boiling frustrating just beneath the surface of that resolute expression.
Spock’s face was like a mask, but he was clearly vexed as he glared at Leonard McCoy and Jimmy Kirk.
“Why did you attempt to rescue me?” he asked. “Now you are also captured. What have you gained by your risk? Regulations specify that you were compelled to wait for reinforcements.”
Sitting in a corner, Jimmy Kirk grumpily lied, “Maybe I never heard of that regulation.”
He hugged his knees and looked away.
McCoy felt sorry for him. The poor cadet had tried to do the right thing step after step, and everything he had done backfired. He was trying to be flexible, to combine rules and regulations with improvisation, but somehow he hadn’t learned the recipe yet.
Shifting toward the young man, McCoy quietly said, “It’s not your fault, you know.”
Jimmy Kirk sulked more deeply, angry with himself and everything around him.
Then he sighed. “I don’t get this…. I followed regulations, sent out a mayday, and it brought them down on us. I tried to stage a textbook rescue, and they were ready for us every step. They knew I’d try what I tried. If regulations give you away to your enemy, what good are they? How can following regulations get us into deeper trouble? I thought Starfleet had all this figured out.”
“You’re dreaming,” McCoy grumbled. “Nobody can guess everything that might happen. Not even Starfleet. First they teach you all the regulations, then later they teach you what to do when regulations don’t apply.”
The cadet grimaced. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trying to think of a good way to illustrate his point, McCoy pressed his shoulder against the wall. “You ever taken a vacation at the beach?”
“Sure.”
“Did your mother ever tell you not to go in swimming alone?”
“Of course.”
“And if you saw a two-year-old kid drowning, would you jump in alone anyway?”
“Of course!”
“See? Regulations don’t cover everything. That’s why we have a command structure—because experience counts for something. When you’re little
, the rule is ‘Do what your mother says.’ Later you learn how and when to bend that rule. At the Academy, they start with ‘Follow regulations.’ Later … well, you learn how and when to improvise.”
Troubled, Cadet Kirk stared at the rocks, then up at the distant fire, which was already beginning to go out and turn to puffs of black smoke.
“How can I know when?” he asked then.
McCoy offered a shrug. “That’s what years of experience are for. I guess you find out if you did the right thing when they either court-martial you or put a medal on you.”
Staring at the fire, Cadet Kirk seemed to be truly concerned that he had followed regulations and gotten them into deeper trouble, gotten Spock captured, and now didn’t know what to do next. The idea that there wasn’t a regulation for everything, or that he might have to fake his way out of this trouble really bothered him.
“Don’t let all this get to you,” the young medic offered. “Everybody does his best, and after that somebody else takes over. That’s the way it is.”
“Maybe. But I don’t have to like it. They don’t take us seriously.”
“Who?”
“The bad guys. They lock us up in a shed like dogs because they don’t think we can hurt them.”
“We can’t! We’re just Academy students, not full-fledged Starfleet officers.”
Jimmy’s eyes grew narrow again. He really hated what he was hearing. He didn’t like not being taken seriously.
“Look, I’ve seen a lot like you,” McCoy said. “Starfleet’s teaching you to follow orders, but eventually they’re going to want you to learn when not to follow them. When orders don’t fit the situation, you’ve got to bend. That’s what a good officer is.”
Jimmy Kirk’s flashing hazel eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
McCoy shrugged. “Because that’s what a good medic is too.”
With that hot sideward glare, Jimmy dissected McCoy, until McCoy felt as if the boy could see right into his head.
Then the cadet looked away again. “Maybe … that’s how I could’ve beaten him….”
“Who?” McCoy asked.
Jimmy glanced at him, as if he’d let some secret out. He tightened his grip on his knees. “A senior at the Academy who picks on me all the time.”
“Picks on you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing. I just stand there and take it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s—” Jimmy paused, embarrassed. Then he admitted, “It’s against Academy regulations to hit an upperclassman.”
“It’s against regulations to hit anybody,” McCoy said. “This kid actually hits you?”
“All the time.”
“Hmm.” McCoy stretched his legs out in front of him and looked at his shoes. “It’s not allowed to harass an underclassman that way. Why didn’t you report him?”
“Because we’re supposed to handle things ourselves.”
“Well, as I said, when regulations don’t fit…”
“Are you saying I should’ve hit him back?”
McCoy shrugged. “Seems to me that he knew you were paralyzed by not knowing what to do. So you did the predictable thing. Maybe if you’d just acted unpredictably one time, he might’ve thought twice about picking on you.”
“I wish I had, now,” Jimmy sighed. “Doesn’t matter anymore, though. He’s been transferred to a ship. I’ll probably never see him again.”
“Oh, well, sooner or later every bully gets what he deserves.”
“I hope so,” the cadet agreed. “Only, now … I want to be the one to give it to him.”
There was a new fire in his eyes, a new muscle to his tone of voice. He really wanted to go out and hit somebody now, to burn off all the anger he felt at having failed again and again.
“How am I going to learn when to break the rules for the right reasons?” he asked, his voice very quiet. “What do I do first?”
“I don’t know,” McCoy admitted. “Medics don’t have to make that kind of decision. We just patch you cannonballs together after you plow through each other’s hulls.”
“Your lesson is quaint,” Spock interrupted then, turning toward them, “but dangerously illogical, Doctor.”
“Oh?” McCoy leaned back, folded his own arms, and looked up at him. “Well, suppose you just polish it up for me, since we seem to suddenly have time on our hands.”
The young Vulcan, tall and lean, his head nearly touching the ceiling of the shed, folded his arms casually. “Sending the signal was regulation procedure. This time strict adherence to regulations happened to work against us, as I suspected it might. But we have them for good reason. There are rules about when to send distress signals, when to fight battles, how to pilot ships, how to handle supplies, even regulations on how we should treat each other. Although there are instances where following rules may not be the most efficient thing to do, overall we get the best results when we follow regulations. That is why we have senior officers and the rank system—experience is crucial in balancing the rules with the situation. Experience which, unfortunately, we all lack. You should never take casually the importance of following the rules, Cadet. What you did was right.”
“Right?” the cadet asked, disbelieving.
“Yes. You followed textbook strategy for rescue. The area appeared relatively unguarded, the odds close, and although I might disagree with your decision to attempt to rescue me, I do understand the logic of it.”
“But they expected us to do that and they set up a trap for us!” Jimmy protested. “I fell right into it.”
“Yes, this time logic and predictability worked against you. However, you would hardly have tried to rescue me when I was most heavily guarded, rather than the most lightly guarded.”
“I might, now,” the boy said roughly. “That might be the time they’d least expect it. Maybe next time I’ll try that.”
“If there is a next time,” McCoy tossed in.
Jimmy shook his head. “Maybe I’m not cut out to make command decisions. I’ll probably be a cadet all my life.”
His face turned ruddy with anger again. He didn’t say anything else.
“Well, now that we have something to chalk up to experience,” McCoy went on, “what do we do?”
His arms still folded, Spock paced a few steps this way and that, running his thumb along his lower lip. “I have assessed the situation and I determine that the best action is to wait for Starfleet either to pick up our distress broadcast or to log us missing. They will dispatch a security detail to the area and attempt to track the exhaust trail of the Spitfire. These mercenaries are armed, dangerous, and they are working for the Klingons, so anything that happens here might be a powder keg. Whatever we do might explode into a diplomatic nightmare for the Federation. Therefore, for us, the wisest action to take is no action. Swingle and his men will consider us harmless and may stop paying attention to us. We will at least be safe.”
“Sounds fine to me.” McCoy crossed his legs. “I guess I might as well make myself comfortable.”
“Wait a minute.” Jimmy didn’t look up, but scowled at a pile of bottles of chemicals. “All that would be fine if we were fighting Vulcans.” Now he looked up and added, “But if I were these guys, I wouldn’t think like that. If we don’t try to think like them, how can we expect to beat them?”
McCoy fixed a studious glower on the boy. Brother, did this kid learn fast! The medic watched as a key character trait seeded itself in the seventeen-year-old cadet. Jimmy had analyzed in his head Spock’s hope of beating these men the decent, logical, predictable way, and was now deciding that decency might not work against indecent people.
Jimmy got to his feet and faced Spock. “I still feel like Dr. Daystrom is my responsibility. If I can keep these criminals from getting their hands on him, I want to do it.”
Facing him squarely, Spock lowered his arms to his sides and straightened. “We are unarmed and locked up.
Your intentions are noble, but useless. I suggest you sit down and save your energy, in case these men decide not to give us food or water. We’ll need all our strength, in case the stay is a long one. By being predictable, we allowed ourselves to be captured. Now, by being predictable again, we may save our own lives.”
With a sigh, McCoy pursed his lips, but didn’t say anything. Jimmy Kirk didn’t say anything either, but he was sizzling with frustration. He hated being cooped up like this. He glared at Spock for a few seconds, then stalked off to the other end of the shed. He disappeared behind a large pile of paint drums.
McCoy stood up and murmured to Spock, “He doesn’t like this. Can’t say I blame him.”
“I would prefer an alternative, if there were one,” the Vulcan admitted. “However, this is the logical course to save our own lives. We should remain calm, lie low, and keep from angering these men further.”
Boom!
Just as Spock’s words finished, part of the shed exploded, blowing shards of metal and chipped paint into the small building, driving McCoy and Spock to the floor.
The door had been blown open!
Chapter 11
When the acrid, choking smoke began to billow out the smashed shed door, McCoy managed to catch a gasp of fresh air. Crouched close to the floor, he could scarcely see a thing. Greenish-brown smoke puffed around him, piling out the door.
“What happened?” he gasped. “Did they throw a bomb?”
Two long-boned hands appeared out of the smoke and coiled around McCoy’s arm, then hauled him to his feet. Spock—
“This way, Doctor.” The Vulcan’s velvet voice came through the smoke as if part of it.
McCoy crammed his eyes shut against the stinging chemical smoke. “Did they try to kill us? Who blew up the door?”
“I did.” Jimmy Kirk appeared just ahead of them at the shed’s mutilated doorway and stepped out into the crisp night air. “I used the cleaning fluids in there and blew the lock.”
“You blew it, all right!” McCoy stumbled against the outer wall and coughed. “Why did you do that?”
“We’ve tried to beat them by being decent, logical, and predictable,” Jimmy said. “It hasn’t worked. I decided I should do what you said. I should be unpredictable.”