Both necessary gestures, given the presence of Uhura and the other humans on the bridge. They would expect such behavior.
"Congratulations, Captain," said Spock. "You seem to have achieved a stalemate."
"Thank you, Spock." Kirk leaned back in his seat. "But it won't hold them forever."
Unless, he thought, we drive the nail of doubt deeper into their minds.
The android reflected for a moment, made his decision.
"Lieutenant Uhura—of the two ships still close to the freighter, which is their flagship?"
"The one on the right, sir," said Uhura. "That's where the signal came from."
"Good. Give me some thrust, Mister Sulu. We're moving in."
"Aye, Captain," said the helmsman, his fingers dancing over his console.
The Enterprise moved forward. On the viewscreen, the freighter and its antagonists loomed gradually larger.
"Head straight for that flagship, Lieutenant. I want to come nose to nose with her."
Kirk watched the flanking ships carefully. After a little while, he was satisfied that they weren't moving to cut him off.
And why should they? The Enterprise wasn't approaching quickly enough to be considered a threat. But the fact of its approach, in and of itself, would have to be pondered, analyzed—buying them more time than they would otherwise have had.
Would the human Kirk have thought of this? No doubt. But he'd never have had the stomach to actually do it.
Suddenly, there was someone at Kirk's side and just behind him. He looked up over his shoulder at Spock.
"Captain," said the first officer, looking straight ahead at the viewscreen, speaking so softly that no one else could easily hear him. "It is not too late to stop and consolidate our position. You have already achieved your purpose—the Romulans seem confused."
Kirk too looked ahead at the screen. The Romulan flankers were almost at the edges of it now, still frozen in their tracks.
"I have achieved nothing," he said, "if I stop now. It will show us to be weak, underconfident. A bluff must be bold, Mister Spock, or it is no bluff at all—something a Vulcan would know nothing about."
It was a hint for the first officer to back off. He was carrying authenticity too far.
"Yet it remains a matter of time," Spock persisted, "before your bluff is exposed. And the closer we get to the Romulan flagship, the more vulnerable we will be when that moment comes."
Kirk found that the fingers of his right hand had curled into a fist. He willed them to relax, watched them do so.
"Your input," he said, "has been duly noted. Return to your station."
For a moment, Spock seemed to hesitate. Then he was gone.
There is something wrong with him, the captain told himself. When we return to Midos Five, I will have to eliminate him. Create another duplicate of Spock.
Then he remembered that that would not be possible. By now, Brown would have had the Vulcan destroyed—along with the others.
Still, I can't have him questioning my authority. It is necessary that he be eliminated.
* * *
Abroad the Ka'frah, Commander M'nai T'bak did his best to conceal his uncertainty. Young as he was, he did not wish to give his crew a reason to doubt his abilities.
Nonetheless, a curse escaped his lips.
"Perhaps," said Subcommander T'ouru, "he was telling the truth after all. Certainly, it would be foolhardy to approach us unless he truly has allies under cloak." He grunted thoughtfully.
T'ouru's opinion was a respected one. He had served T'bak's father well until the old man's death.
"Then you think we are at a disadvantage?" asked the commander.
T'ouru shrugged. "Unless it is simply a bluff. This Kirk has been known to take such gambles."
T'bak would not come out and ask his second-in-command what to do. Nor would T'ouru tell him, unbidden.
It was up to the commander to decide.
And he couldn't wait much longer—that is, if he were to act at all. But wasn't Kirk inviting him to act? Daring him to act?
T'bak had the eerie feeling that he was on the verge of a blunder. That he had missed something obvious, something that might have unlocked this puzzle for him. He felt he was about to undo all he and his compatriots had accomplished in the Praetorate.
Still, he gave the order.
"Sir!" Spock's voice rang out suddenly. "The flanker ships are starting to move—and quickly."
Kirk saw that they were no longer on the screen. He blinked. When had they left it? While he was thinking about Spock?
He came forward in his chair, tried to get a grip on the situation. "Evasive action, Mister Sulu. First Officer, I need a visual on those ships—"
Before he could finish, the Enterprise staggered beneath them. And again.
"Direct hits," said Chekov. "Demmage to shields two end three."
"Get us out of here, Mister Sulu," barked Kirk.
The helsman turned to glance at him. "We're at maximum impulse speed now, Captain."
"Romulan vessels in pursuit," announced Spock. "Firing."
Another impact, worse than the first two. The ship lurched, catapulting Kirk halfway out of his command chair.
"Demmage to number four shield, sir."
"Get some emergency power to those shields," ordered Kirk. He depressed a button on his armrest. "Weapons room—can you get a bead on them?"
"No, sir, not yet. They're dogging our … wait. We've shaken one loose. We're locking weapons on him now, sir."
A long, tense moment.
"Range, sir."
"Fire," said Kirk. He waited.
"We have hit one of our pursuers," reported Spock. "But it has not diminished the vessel's capacity for pursuit."
Another blow, one that wrenched the deck out from under them.
"Return fire," bellowed Kirk.
"Returning fire, sir."
"Another hit," called Spock. "Same vessel. Extent of damage still … Captain! A third ship is approaching off the port bow!"
A third ship?
Kirk had allowed himself to become preoccupied with the Romulans on his tail. He had forgotten about the others.
The first jolt incapacitated basic systems, plunging them into darkness. The next one fire-shot that darkness full of blue sparks.
As the backup systems cut in and the lights went on, Kirk climbed back into his command chair. Someone was moaning, someone injured in the last salvo—but he didn't concern himself with that. After all, it was only a human. He opened a channel to engineering.
"Damage report, Mister Scott."
The answer seemed to emerge from a chaos of urgent voices.
"They've stirred up bloody hell down here, sir. Th' engines are useless—impulse and warp-drive. A' … hold on, sir."
Kirk heard another voice making report. Then the chief engineer returned.
"We've got a breach in deck four, Captain. It's been locked off, but a'll need t' send a repair crew right away."
"No," said the android. "We're in the middle of a military confrontation here, mister. I want all available hands working on those engines."
There was a pause, as of disbelief.
"But we canna allow th' breach t' go untended. It'll put too much strain on th' inner locks, sir—suck 'em out like—"
"That wasn't a suggestion, Scotty. Get those engines running."
Kirk tapped another stud on his armrest.
"Weapons room—report."
"We're still in working order, Captain. But we've lost a couple of monitors. We've got a blind spot."
"Use what you do have to watch for the enemy. If they cross your sights, fire. Don't wait for an order."
"Aye, sir."
Kirk saw that his helmsman and his navigator had hauled themselves back into their respective seats. Naturally, they were unharmed.
"What about those shields, Mister Chekov?"
The ensign checked. "Shield one is no longer in operation," he said. "The
others are up, but et only twenty to forty percent of …"
He was drowned out by McCoy's voice, crackling over the ambient speaker.
"What in blue blazes is going on?" he raged.
The captain depressed the button for sickbay.
"Everything's under control, Doctor."
"The hell it is! We've got critically injured people all over the ship, Captain. I need help if I'm going to bring in those that can still be saved."
"Then you'll have to find it yourself, Doctor. I've got my own work cut out for me."
"Blast it, Jim, I'm talking about lives! All you—"
"Uhura," called Kirk, turning in her direction.
"Aye, sir," responded the communications officer. She had sustained a cut over one eye, but seemed otherwise functional.
"Override the channel to sickbay, please."
McCoy's voice still scalded them. "… so damned busy you can't …"
"I gave an order, Lieutenant."
"Aye, sir," said Uhura. And with obvious reluctance, she cut McCoy short.
In the wake of the chief medical officer's tirade, it was strangely silent on the bridge. Even the moaning had stopped, the injured party having removed herself in the turbolift.
It gave Kirk a moment to think, to determine what had gone wrong. But try as he might, he could not think of anything he would have done differently.
It was one against four. Not even an android can prevail against that kind of odds.
Yet he was not just any android. He was the leader. He should have found a way.
Again, the chasm seemed to open at his feet, dark and bottomless and deadly.
No. It's not over yet, he thought. I still have my ship and my crew. I can still win.
He regarded the forward monitor. It showed him three of he four Romulan ships—two at either edge of the screen, in he foreground; the flagship at the center, diminished by greater distance. And beside the Ka'frah stood the freighter, still at T'bak's mercy.
For now, the Romulans were making no move to finish off he Enterprise. They were being cautious. Obviously, they vere not yet convinced that the ship was crippled, unable to maneuver.
Kirk tapped his fingertips on his armrest. He felt as if all eyes were upon him—Sulu's, Chekov's, Spock's. Those of he frightened, fragile humans.
Even T'bak's, off in his catbird seat.
There must be something I can do to beat him. There must be.
* * *
K'leb raised himself off the deck, propped himself against the bulkhead. His hand rose to his temple, feeling the swelling there. It hurt where he touched it.
Then, gradually, a greater pain rose inside him. Not from his own injuries, but from those of the others who had sprawled all up and down the long corridor. As they came to, their minds spilled over with anguish.
It broke over him like a wave, threatening to drown him in its intensity. But he fought it, struggled to block it out as best he could—as he'd been taught by his mother long ago. And after a while, he emerged from the pain, shaken but whole.
By then, however, the corridor had become another kind of chaos. There were moans of torment, shouts for help. Someone was at both of the talking wallboxes within K'leb's line of sight.
He heard the word "sickbay" more than once.
Suddenly, K'leb remembered what he'd been doing—and whom he'd been doing it with. K'liford. Where was K'liford?
He looked around, but there were people rushing down the length of the corridor, carrying other people. For a moment or two, he couldn't see much. Then they were past, and he spotted someone who looked like his friend.
The man was lying against the opposite bulkhead. And he wasn't moving.
K'leb crawled across the corridor, his belly flooded with fear. Slowly, gently, he turned the man's head away from the wall.
It was K'liford—and he was alive. Bleeding from a gash in his forehead and from his nostrils, but still breathing.
K'leb didn't know what to do. His friend needed help, but he didn't know anything about healing.
Then he heard the word again, over the roil of desperate voices.
Sickbay.
And he realized where those people who'd passed him were going.
Carefully, he slipped his arms around K'liford, lifted him to a sitting position. Then, just as carefully, he pulled his friend up onto his shoulder.
Laboring under K'liford's weight, he headed for sickbay and Dok'tor M'Koy.
Denise DeLong crawled through the Jeffries tube, dragging her equipment and supplies along with her. She came of a section where the circuitry had been fused together, took out her laser, and set to work.
DeLong worked quickly. She knew that they were sitting lucks for the Romulans until the engines got going again—and that couldn't happen until she completed her assignnent. Sweat beaded up on her brow, and not entirely from he dry heat that sat with her inside the tube.
Still, there was a part of her that could observe, removed from the need to cut out this length of damaged circuitry and replace it with new.
I can't believe the captain told us to ignore that breach, she thought. Certainly, it's important to get the engines operating—but if we wait too long to repair the hull, we'll lose that whole deck. Maybe the ship itself.
It wasn't like Captain Kirk to make a mistake like that. To ignore the recommendation of his chief engineer.
Was this tied in somehow with his erratic behavior toward her?
It was one thing to be acting strangely toward a single individual—and quite another to endanger the ship with faulty command logic.
Suddenly, DeLong wanted very much to be wrong about he captain. Because if something had snapped inside him …
What chance was there that anyone on the ship would survive this?
"Your decision was the correct one, Commander. The enterprise has been subdued."
T'bak looked up at T'ouru. Frowned, nodded.
"Yes," he said. "The enemy seems helpless. And now that we have turned him over on his back, all that remains is to crack open his shell."
But he was not as confident as his words suggested.
Why not? he asked himself. Is this not what we fought so long and hard for in the Praetorate—bargaining for power where we could find it, quashing the objections of the elder lords by whatever means necessary? Was this not our goal when we so daringly plucked a freighter out of Federation space? And has this not been the sort of victory we imagined—swift, decisive, and devastating? One which the Federation could not possibly ignore?
Yet there was that voice in the back of his head, warning him that he was being lured into a trap. And that the Enterprise was the bait.
"Shall I give the order," asked T'ouru, "to move in for the kill?"
T'bak looked up again, considered his subcommander. T'ouru, of a minor house himself, had spoken up against the war movement more than once. He had said that the time was not right for full-scale conflict with the Federation—that they had neither the numbers of ships nor the technology to achieve any sort of victory.
Yet when T'bak's faction had carried the Praetorate, T'ouru had agreed to serve on the Ka'frah, to be among those who would incite the Federation to war. First and foremost, T'ouru was a soldier, and as such his duty had been clear.
Now, he was prepared to relay the order that would plunge them into the long and glorious fight—even though he did not believe it would bring them the glory T'bak and the others had envisioned.
"Commander?"
T'bak roused himself from his reverie, refocused his attention on the matter at hand. He peered at the Enterprise through narrowed eyes.
Trap … or no trap?
"No," he said finally. "Do not give the order, T'ouru." He paused, imagining the looks exchanged behind his back. "At east, not yet."
Kirk had been pacing the bridge like a caged tiger, riffling he human Kirk's memories for a situation similar to this one—and whatever remedy Kirk may have applied. Until his
point, however, he'd found nothing useful.
"Captain," said Spock, an urgency in his voice. "The Romulans are beginning to maneuver again."
Kirk turned to the viewscreen, saw the enemy vessels Kirk turned to the viewscreen, saw that the enemy vessels had indeed been set into motion—all but the flagship, of course.
Yet they did not seem to be approaching the Enterprise—at least not directly. They were moving at oblique angles to the Federation ship.
"First officer," he said after a while, "confirm that the Romulans are getting closer with each pass."
"Confirmed," said Spock. "They appear to be testing—"
"I know what they're doing, mister." Kirk came over to his command chair, lowered himself into it. He tapped the stud that connected him with the weapons room.
"Sir?"
"Are you scanning the Romulan vessels?" he asked.
"Aye, Captain. But they're not within range yet."
"They will be soon. When they get there, remember my order—fire immediately."
"I'll remember, sir."
Kirk was about to end the conversation when he noticed Spock at his elbow again.
"A suggestion, sir," said the first officer. "We can accomplish very little, other than the acceleration of our demise, by firing on the Romulans at this time. It may be more prudent to practice restraint, giving them the impression that we are defenseless. Then, when the other ships …"
It galled Kirk to have to hear this. He was the leader—not Spock. He was the one who would get them out of this.
Yet Spock went on. And something grew inside Kirk, something hot and powerful that made him tremble with the effort it took to contain it.
Until finally, he could contain it no longer.
"Mind your own business, Mister Spock!" He leaped to his feet, grabbed his first officer by the front of his uniform shirt. "I'm sick of your half-breed interference, do you hear me?"
No sooner were the words out than he realized where they had come from. Abruptly, he released Spock—but the damage was done. His invective seemed to hang in the air, indicting him.
He saw the stares from human and android alike. They were hardly expressions of admiration.
Double, Double Page 25