Star Trek: Starfleet Academy #3: Cadet Kirk

by Diane Carey

  “Oh, perfect! When they find us, they’re going to predict us right over the nearest cliff! Don’t inhale this stuff. You either, Ensign—much as you might not want to admit it, Vulcans are as mortal as the rest of us. Move away from the shed.”

  As the cloud dissolved in the open air, Spock said, “Take cover. They may have heard the explosion. This way.”

  They ran across a slab of open courtyard to a place behind a long warehouse of some kind. Once under cover of the shadows, they ducked between the warehouse and the struts of a water tower.

  “I thought you always follow orders, Cadet,” Spock said. “I don’t recall ordering an escape attempt.”

  Jimmy glanced at McCoy, then back at Spock. “The situation changed, sir. I adjusted. Are you going to put me on report?”

  Perplexed, yet somehow enheartened by the younger fellow, Spock gazed back at him with a twinkle in his small black eyes. “Though I’m not ready to believe that logic cannot fit every situation, your actions have given us options. I appreciate that outcome. You acted appropriately.”

  Jimmy blinked at him a few times. “Thank you.”

  “Well, team,” McCoy began as he pushed between them, “now we have to decide what to do. Do we head for the hills? Do we try to make it back to the Spitfire and beat it out of here?”

  “I would prefer to attempt contacting Starfleet again,” Spock said. “In order to do that, we must shut down the damping field put off by their tractor beam.”

  Jimmy nodded. “Before we can take off in the Spitfire, we have to knock out the tractor complex anyway. And I want it knocked out just to make sure these people can’t do this to anybody else. I wouldn’t feel good about leaving the planet without taking away their ability to kidnap others.”

  “That,” Spock had to admit, “is logical.” He stepped closer to the cadet. “You seem to have a talent for understanding these men’s motivations. Do any of your ‘books’ suggest a course of action?”

  The reference to Jimmy’s little old-fashioned library back in the Spitfire seemed to have an effect on the cadet. With the decision handed to him so openly, Jimmy balked at taking charge of whatever came next. He twitched a bit, flexed his fists open and closed, narrowed his eyes to a catlike glare, and pressed his lips flat.

  “I think,” he ultimately said, “we should get ahead of the bad guys and stay there.”

  “We can’t beat those men!” McCoy exclaimed. “They’ve got rifles! And they outnumber us! We can’t overpower them!”

  “You don’t have to overpower people bigger than you. You just have to surprise them. We can outsmart them.”

  “How? What can we do that they won’t expect?”

  “We’ve already started. We’re out.”

  Spock gazed at the young man, but didn’t say anything.

  After glancing around the complex, Jimmy decided, “I think we should go on a series of hit-and-run raids. We should make this outpost as useless to them as we can. We’ll have to improvise some weapons out of available material. If I can find a computer terminal, you might be able to use it to effect shutdown of some parts of the station. Maybe even the tractor beam.”

  “The tractor beam mainframe is inside the building these men are using as a headquarters,” Spock said.

  McCoy faced him. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw them when they brought us to the shed.”

  Jimmy Kirk seized on that idea. “If we can get them to evacuate that building, can you manipulate the computer?”

  “Of course,” Spock said blandly. “I could encrypt the shutdown order and—”

  “Great!” Cooking with excitement now, Jimmy snapped his fingers. “If I can find some medical supplies, or even the right combination of chemicals, maybe McCoy can figure out a way to tranquilize these men—gas them or make them itch—something like that. Stay here for a minute or two, and I’ll make a quick run around and see what I can pick up.”

  “Very well,” Spock told him. “You have five minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” More comfortable with having his ideas treated as orders, Jimmy melted off into the darkness.

  Aware of the crunch of gravel under his feet, McCoy came close enough to Spock to be heard at a whisper.

  “Has your computer brain lost some of its circuits?” he asked. “This is incredibly risky! He’s just a first-year cadet! He hasn’t been anywhere except inside the pages of those books. He’s barely been in the Academy long enough to know his way from the Jefferson Rose Garden to the girls’ dorm!”

  Suddenly several men came charging down the middle of the courtyard toward the thread of smoke still rising from the janitor’s shed. Spock motioned McCoy back. The two of them sank into the shadows.

  “The cadet has an intuition about the weakness of his enemies,” Spock went on quietly. “He also understands how to use the skills of the people around him—at the moment, you and me. There is a certain roguish logic about his methods, and he does eventually succeed. That should not be ignored.”

  “I think you’re reading too much sense into this horseplay,” McCoy complained. “He might just be running on luck. Whether it’s good or bad, who can tell?”

  “I do not believe in luck. After we damage the complex, we’ll confiscate one of their runabouts and escape the planet. Until then, we shall attempt Cadet Kirk’s mischief, and hope it works.”

  McCoy pulled at Spock’s arm as the Vulcan peeked around the corner of the warehouse at the men who were now looking for them. “And if it doesn’t?”

  “If it doesn’t,” Spock echoed, “those men will kill us.”

  “I want those Starfleet kids found, Zenoviev. Take your Klingon lapdog and find them!”

  “What do you think we’re doing, Joe? We already looked in ten buildings. Ten! And you know what? They’re all getting cold! It’s freezin’ in every building!”

  “I know it’s freezing. We’re in one of the buildings. What does this look like—a church?”

  “I wish it was a church. Then we’d have some candles.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Joe Swingle clamped his arm around his skinny chest and tried to keep warm. “There’s some kind of breakdown in the atmospheric control system for the complex. Go find the main furnace and air-conditioning control and fix it!”

  “Okay, Joe.” Zenoviev started to turn toward the door, but then he paused. His wide face worked with confusion. “Uh … I thought you wanted me to look for those cadets first….”

  Swingle squinted at his big stooge. “You are truly a hammerhead. Do one thing, and tell Klaag do the other thing! Can’t you even think of that? Do I have to give every little order specifically? Do I have to tell you when to breathe in and out? I don’t care who does what! Just get it done! Get out! Go!”

  Zenoviev hulked out of the building, his breath going before him in chilled puffs. Swingle knew he would find that gargoyle Klaag, and the two of them would argue for twenty minutes about which one would do which job. Idiots. Morons. Hammerheads.

  As he tried to keep warm in the frigid building, he felt the gazes of Crawler and Bonyor. Irwin and Hovitch were still out searching for the little rats who had wrecked the plan.

  Bonyor looked at his bulky tricorder, his pride and joy, and said, “It’s ten degrees colder than it was five minutes ago. We’re down to twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It’s gonna start snowing in here in a minute. We’re going to have to leave the building.”

  “This is where the computer complex is, you gas pellet!”

  “I know, Joe, but we can’t just stay in here and turn into Popsicles! Can’t we track down the air-conditioning malfunction and fix it? It’s got to be in the coolant lines!”

  “Fine! We’ll leave long enough for you to find the problem and kill it. Go on! Head for the door!” Swingle ranted as his men flinched and moved toward the door. “It was perfectly simple. Rig a tractor beam, pluck off Richard Daystrom and his driver, put a knife to the driver’s throat to make Daystrom giv
e up his new computer program, then kill the driver and ransom Daystrom back to Starfleet. The Klingons get their credits, I get my cut, and it’s all over! Where does it say that three junior jockeys get to come in and blow everything! Three inexperienced, glossy-cheeked idiot cadets, and they’re blowing everything!”

  On the way to the door, he grabbed Crawler by the collar.

  “Musclehead, you get out of here and blanket the area with infrared sensors. Track down any movement at all. If a mouse moves out of its knothole, I want to know about it. I’m gonna send those cadets back to Starfleet in a sealed bag!”

  Chapter 12

  “They’re leaving! They’re evacuating the warehouse!”

  McCoy’s fingers were almost numb from clinging to the high windowsill. He stood on his toes, on top of a crate full of granular fertilizer, and watched as Swingle and two more of his men burst out of the warehouse across the courtyard.

  He jumped down from the crate. “You did it, Spock!”

  “Of course,” the Vulcan said coolly. He withdrew his delicate hands from the air-conditioning controls mounted inside this narrow tower. “The temperature in the buildings will go as low as five degrees Fahrenheit, depending upon the height of the ceilings. I’ve also redirected the coolant damage sensors, so they will be unable to find where the problem is. At least, not right away.”

  “I hope to give them too much to think about,” Jimmy Kirk said. He jumped up on the crate and clawed his way to the window to make sure McCoy was right. “I suggest we get in there and get to the computer before they figure out what we’re up to.”

  McCoy scooped up the box of chemical supplies Cadet Kirk had rounded up, and rushed out the tower door behind Spock. The cadet was already halfway across the dark courtyard.

  In a few hours, it would be morning and they wouldn’t be able to sneak about so easily. Or their luck, the thing Ensign Spock didn’t believe in, would just plain run out.

  The inside of the warehouse was crisp and frosty, like walking outside during a Minnesota winter. Instead, they were going inside. It felt very strange to go from the comfortable courtyard into a building, and be suddenly so cold.

  In a way, the cold was a victory. And it was on their side.

  “Do you know what to do?” Jimmy Kirk asked McCoy.

  McCoy put the box of chemicals on a desk and said, “Does sulfur stink?”

  The cadet swung to Spock. “The computer is over there.”

  Spock went to the main computer terminal. In seconds the screen was jumping with information. As McCoy hurried with his chemical bottles, he glanced up now and then to see numbers and diagrams running across the screen.

  “Remarkable…” Spock gazed in awe at what he saw. The screen flickered in his ink-drop eyes. “This complex is magnificent. Fabulous power usage, detailed programming … the huge energy required to equalize rainfall, the efficiency of climate control—I’ve never seen anything so cleverly organized.”

  McCoy leaned toward Cadet Kirk. “I think he’s in love.”

  The cadet took one step—only one—toward Spock. “Sir…”

  The screen flipped again. Spock studied it. “I see why they selected this planet for this experiment. There is moderate energy in the natural system here. Weather control is much more difficult when there is too much natural energy in the system.”

  “Sir…”

  “For instance, heating something up is much easier than to cool it down. The manipulation of conditions is quite complex. Warming appropriate air masses by satellites, cooling others … causing wind that moves air masses to certain areas…”

  “Sir, if you don’t mind—”

  “Applying solar heat to bodies of water to create moisture—water absorbs huge amounts of energy when it evaporates. This alone adds tremendous energy to the ecosystem—”

  “Sir!”

  Spock looked up. “Are you trying to say something, Cadet?”

  McCoy shook a chemical burn from his finger and said, “He’s trying to tell you to shut up! We’ve got things to do!”

  Raising his eyebrow, Spock held Jimmy with a glare. “Is that what you’re saying, Cadet?”

  “No, sir!” Cadet Kirk blurted. “I would never say that to a senior officer!”

  “But that’s what he meant,” McCoy insisted. “Get on with the tractor beam, would you? I’m almost finished with these grenades. Just shut it down before Swingle and his dingoes come back.”

  “I have been working on the tractor beam,” Spock said, with a smile behind his eyes. “I can shut it down, but not disable it. To keep it down, the power must be cut. The subsystems transmitter must be disabled at the source. It is located in … Building D, diagonally across the courtyard and behind the greenhouse.”

  “I’ll go,” Cadet Kirk volunteered instantly.

  “You’ll need help.” Spock started to get up.

  “No, no…” Wiping chemicals from his hands, McCoy waved him back into his seat. “You keep shutting things down. And don’t forget to locate those two runabouts so we can steal one and get out of here. I’ll help him.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What if we can’t get it to shut down?” McCoy asked as they headed for the door.

  Jimmy Kirk cast back, “Then we’ll blow it up.”

  And McCoy dashed out of the big, cold building, seeing his breath go before him in frosty funnels. Again he was following the impetuous young cadet who really hated to lose. In spite of his shorter stature and compact frame, Jimmy was a fast runner. McCoy stifled an urge to yell, “Wait up!”

  But that would attract a little attention, wouldn’t it?

  He followed Jimmy as they skirted the edge of the courtyard, never running out into the open except to rush between the blocky buildings. The light of three moons cast a witchly glow on the courtyard’s slate floor. In the bizarre planetary night of this world, McCoy felt very alone.

  But Swingle and his handful of criminals were out here too.

  Looking for us. And when they find us …

  He shimmied between awning braces to where Jimmy Kirk was peeking into a window. This must be Building D.

  “There’s somebody in there,” the cadet whispered. “Wait here. I’ll take care of it.”

  “But…” McCoy didn’t know what he was about to say. They had to get in there and shut down the power source for the tractor beam. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to leave the planet.

  Leaning against the shell of the building, he could feel the coolness from inside rolling out the slightly opened window. All the buildings were like refrigerators now—virtually useless. Until now he hadn’t had time to think about how scary this situation had become.

  He was nervous, and getting worse. If they could only shut that tractor beam off, steal a flying craft and get out of here…

  All at once the window exploded! Crashing glass and narrow metal struts squawked as they blew outward and drove him to the slate walkway. Then something else hit him—something big! A terrible weight slammed him all the way down and held him there. He tried to turn his head and saw a big, thick arm lying across his neck, pressing his cheek to the slate. He smelled the breath of the man lying over him, and saw a streak of red hair.

  They had him!

  Chapter 13

  “He’s got me!” McCoy shouted. “He’s got me!”

  “He’s unconscious. Shove him off.”

  “What?”

  “He’s out. Shove him right off.”

  Stunned, McCoy pressed his hands and toes to the slate, heaved upward, and arched his back. The man called Zenoviev rolled off his back like a sack of sand.

  “Are you hurt?” Jimmy Kirk knelt beside him.

  “No … I don’t think so … what’ve you got?”

  “It’s his laser rifle.” Jimmy cradled the weapon and picked at its controls. “Self-defense isn’t exactly your best thing at the Academy, is it, sir?”

  “Why should it be! I’m a medic, not a sumo wrestler.”
r />   “Rats!” Jimmy held the weapon out. “It’s got a numerical safety! We can’t use it without knowing the combination!”

  McCoy gestured at the unconscious man. “You mean the Jolly Red Giant here knows the numbers, and that’s the only way the laser rifle can be fired?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Jimmy said with his teeth clenched.

  “So it’s useless?”

  “Not quite. This is what I smacked him with.”

  “Leave it here, then.”

  “Not a chance. We might be able to figure out something. If nothing else, they’ll be deprived of one weapon.”

  “Did you shut down the tractor power?”

  “Yes,” Jimmy said. “We should be able to get away now.”

  McCoy shivered in the chilly air blowing from inside the smashed window. “Assuming we can steal one of their runabouts.”

  “And we’ll have to destroy the other one,” Jimmy said as he straightened up.

  “Why?”

  “To maroon those men here until we can send the authorities.”

  “Can’t they go back and use the Spitfire to get away?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I disabled the ignition system before I got out.”

  “Can’t they just fix it?”

  “No, sir, I removed a couple of parts and hid them.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Thanks. We’d better get back to the warehouse before Mr. Spock turns into a really dignified ice cube.”

  “Or before they find him.”

  “Right. And what do you say we do a little damage on the way?”

  “Joe! Joe, five of the buildings are on fire! I can’t get the fire extinguisher system to come on!”

  “And the complex automatic defenses are crashed! Joe, can you hear me?”

  “Joe! Joe! Over here! There’s acid spilled all over the near-space communications unit! And somebody smashed all the hand-held communicators! We got no way to talk to each other anymore!”