by Rick Barba
“I doubt this girl can walk all the way back to campus,” said Uhura. “Let’s drag her to the Powell Street shuttle. It’s just a few blocks.”
Kirk nodded. “For a price,” he said.
Uhura narrowed her eyes. “Are you kidding?”
“Just tell me your first name,” said Kirk, smiling at her in a way that made most girls swoon.
Annoyingly, Uhura just stared at him.
“So . . . no deal?” asked Kirk. Uhura rolled her eyes and started after Gaila. “Okay, well, I’ll help you anyway,” called Kirk as she hurried away, “whatever your name is.” As Uhura ducked into the restroom without responding, he added: “I’ll be waiting right here, sweetheart.”
Kirk spotted McCoy nearby and quickly pulled the doctor away from a few prospective “patients.” “We need to escort Uhura and Gaila to the shuttle landing,” he said quickly.
“Why?” asked McCoy. “It’s just four blocks away. And you’re kind of interrupting something here,” he said, motioning discreetly to a cute blonde sipping a pink drink.
Kirk winked at her. She winked back. Focus, he told himself.
“It’s foggy out,” replied Kirk. “Dangerous.”
“Are you joking?” exclaimed McCoy. “These women are Starfleet-trained in self-defense, Jim! They can handle themselves just fine.”
“I know that,” says Kirk. “But Gaila is messed up, bad. Uhura needs help getting her back to the dorm.”
“Good god, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a babysitter,” said McCoy, his eyes returning to linger on the blonde.
“Some medical skills might be useful here,” said Kirk.
“That girl doesn’t need my skills.”
Kirk grabbed McCoy’s jacket. “Look, I need you, Bones,” he said. “This Orion woman scares the hell out of me.”
McCoy grinned. “Well, that’s a first.”
“And I think we’ll need a couple more guys,” said Kirk, scanning the club.
Ten minutes later, Glorak and Braxim stood with Kirk and McCoy near the door to the women’s restroom.
Tellarites and Xannons were both stout, strong races, so this duo was a nice addition to the escort detail. And Braxim, like most Xannons, was a fun-loving fellow who loved company. With his big barrel chest and bony forehead protrusion, he seemed to be forever leaning forward.
“I love nights such as tonight!” he exclaimed, giving his chest a quick thump. “I find coastal fog to be most bracing and romantic, particularly when it lacks a methane component!”
McCoy nodded. “Yes, methane fog does put a damper on romance,” he agreed.
Suddenly Uhura burst from the women’s room, alone. “Did she come out?” she asked, frowning.
“Gaila?” asked Kirk. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
Kirk looked around. “We’ve been here ten minutes or so,” he said. “When did you see her last?”
“Just a minute ago,” she said. “She was in a stall. I went out to wash my hands, and then she was gone.” Uhura ducked back into the restroom, then popped back out.
“The window’s open!” she said angrily.
“Crap. Let’s go,” said Kirk.
The five cadets hustled to the club entrance. “Bones, you check any alleys around the club with Glorak,” said Kirk quickly. “Braxxy and I will head up to Chestnut. She can’t be far.” He turned to Uhura. “You should stay here in case she comes back looking for you.”
“Oh, she won’t,” said Uhura with irritation, stepping outside and scanning the foggy sidewalk. “She’s on the prowl. I’ve seen Gaila like this before. She’s relentless.”
“I fear for the men of this city,” muttered McCoy.
“She is quite inebriated,” said Braxim, squinting out at the fog. “How far could she go?”
Kirk looked at McCoy.
“Pretty far,” they said simultaneously.
The cadets split into two search parties—the result of good Starfleet away-team tactical training. McCoy, Uhura, and Glorak deployed toward the Powell Street shuttle landing, four blocks up Russian Hill—a steep climb. Meanwhile, Kirk and the brawny Braxim started tracking up and down Marina District streets. A sudden inland gust churned up the milky fog around them. It drifted in jagged tendrils, seeming almost alive.
“Still like the fog, Braxxy?” asked Kirk, wiping his eyes.
Braxim smiled wryly. “It does seem unfriendly now,” he admitted.
Kirk pointed to an old-fashioned neon sign, PAK’S GROCERY, glimmering on the corner just ahead. “Your turn,” he said. “I’ll scout ahead a bit.”
As Braxim ducked into the store to search for Gaila, Kirk moved along the street looking for alleys.
Suddenly, he heard Gaila. She was singing.
“Gaila!” he called out. “Yo, girl!”
Kirk followed the sound to the entrance of an alley running behind some classic row houses. Abruptly, the singing stopped . . . replaced by a hissing metallic voice. Now Kirk heard Gaila gasping. He ran up the alley until he could see a vague outline of Gaila with another murky figure, dark in the pale fog, wrapped like a black cloak around her. He hesitated for a brief moment, wondering if he was interrupting something. Was Gaila gasping or choking?
Kirk decided she was probably not enjoying the encounter. She sounded like she was convulsing. If he was wrong, he’d deal with it. He had to make sure Gaila wasn’t in trouble.
“Hey!” shouted Kirk. “Hey, you!”
As Kirk shouted, the figure that had been all over Gaila reared up—huge now, maybe seven feet tall. The hissing morphed into a familiar sound, but Kirk couldn’t place it. Kirk shouted again, using his “command voice” (learned in Fleet Command and Control Methods) but the dark entity did not move.
Then Gaila groaned in agony. Now Kirk was pissed.
He dropped low, lunged, then sidestepped and unleashed a jab kick. He was sure he had a clean, easy shot at the attacker, but his foot struck nothing but air. Suddenly he was locked in a vise grip. The guy was incredibly strong. Kirk couldn’t move his arms. Then it got worse—fast. He felt a sticky sheet being pulled over his head. The sheet tightened across his face. He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t breathe.
Then Braxim burst through the fog.
“I called the police!” he shouted at the attacker, holding up his open hand-held communicator. “I called 911!”
Suddenly the sheet peeled off of Kirk’s face. He fell to the ground, gasping for air, and looked up to see the fog rolling toward Braxim’s feet.
In an impossibly deep voice, the entity spoke a phrase in a language that Kirk did not recognize. He seemed to be speaking to Braxim.
Then the attacker completely melted away into the thick fog.
CH.3.12
Two Exams
The next day at Starfleet Medical College, the Academy’s chief medical officer, Dr. Charles Griffin, ordered a team of top cadet physicians, including Leonard McCoy, to assist in a full examination of Cadet Gaila. Although the San Francisco police participated in the initial crime scene investigation, conducted interviews with Cadets Kirk and Braxim, and filed an official report, the incident was considered a Starfleet matter now, under military jurisdiction.
The Orion girl, unconscious following the attack, woke up with no memory of the incident. Other than a lingering dry cough, she seemed largely unaffected. In fact, she was in remarkably good spirits; Gaila found young male doctors like McCoy so interesting.
“Please, don’t move while the doctor is conducting a scan,” McCoy said for the third time.
Gaila glanced around the small exam prep room. “What doctor are you talking about?” she asked, confused.
McCoy held up the scanning attachment of his medical tricorder.
“Me!” he said, exasperated.
“Oh,” said Gaila. “Do doctors always refer to themselves in the third person?”
“I have no idea,” said McCoy. “Stop moving.”
He activated the scanner and moved it s
lowly upward in front of Gaila to conduct preliminary imaging and analysis of her torso.
“It’s hard to sit still,” whispered Gaila.
“Why?” asked McCoy. “Are you in pain?”
“No,” replied Gaila.
McCoy frowned at the tricorder read-out screen. “Then what is your problem, woman?”
She wriggled on the examining table. “This hospital gown is like . . . it’s like sitting on sandpaper.”
“So take it off.”
Gaila widened her eyes as McCoy punched a few buttons and held the medical device out for a second scan of Gaila’s body. When he looked up, she gave him a sly look.
“Is that a Code Seven medical directive, Doctor?” she asked, lowering her gown off her shoulders.
But McCoy simply looked back down at the device in his hands. As his eyes followed the tricorder upward, he saw something just below Gaila’s chin. The doctor reached out and ran his index finger across the nape of Gaila’s neck.
She shivered under his touch. “Mmm, that’s nice,” she said.
“Cadet, when did you bathe last?” asked McCoy, gazing at his finger.
“Yesterday,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, a little indignantly. She pulled up her gown, realizing her seduction attempt might be a lost cause. “And I would have showered this morning, but I woke up in an intensive care unit connected to a bunch of tubes.”
McCoy held up his finger. It was smudged black.
Gaila looked confused. “What’s that?”
McCoy stepped to a nearby console. He tapped another button and began recording a report:
“Preliminary physical exam reveals a chalky black residue on Cadet Gaila’s skin,” said McCoy. “Medical tricorder imaging scans also indicate internal traces of a microscopic contaminant, with hot spots concentrated in two internal organs.” He paused, then added: “Including one unique to females of the Orion race.”
Now Gaila was frowning too.
“Dr. McCoy, are you talking about an infection?” she asked.
“Possibly,” said McCoy. “Or maybe an injected substance. The medical tricorder analysis is inconclusive, which is odd.” He held up the device and glanced at the readings again. “Very odd.”
Now Gaila looked worried. “You think this guy infected me? With what?”
McCoy’s voice softened a bit. “Hard to say,” he said. “But I wouldn’t worry, Cadet. Your vital signs are perfect, and my scans show no toxins, nothing malignant or invasive attacking you. You seem perfectly healthy. And your friends stopped the attacker before anything serious happened, thank god.”
Gaila started to reach toward her neck but McCoy quickly grabbed her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to need samples of that for lab work.”
Gaila nodded, looking uneasy.
“So what happens next?” she asked.
McCoy pulled on sterile gloves, ripped open a sampling kit, and took out the swab. As he dabbed it on Gaila’s neck, he said, “The chief medical officer of the college, Dr. Griffin, will supervise a comprehensive full-body scan. Then we’ll take some fluid samples—blood, saliva, urine—and send them off to pathology for testing.” He smiled reassuringly at Gaila. “Just to make sure you’re okay.”
Gaila nodded again. She said, “I wish I could remember what happened last night.”
McCoy’s reassuring smile disappeared, and he grew serious again. “Young lady, the Marina District is upscale, but it’s still urban,” he said. “Running off alone into the city night is not a tactically sound plan of action. Especially when impaired.”
“Doctor, are you suggesting that I was asking to get attacked?” said Gaila, her nostrils flaring a bit.
“No!” said McCoy. “Of course not.” He cleared his throat. “But still . . .”
“Listen, Doctor,” said Gaila in a lowered voice.
Now McCoy looked nervous. “Yes, Cadet?”
Gaila leaned toward him. “You may be cute, but you need to work on your bedside manner,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not very good.”
Everybody knew that Starfleet Academy’s Command College was where the hardcore competitive juices flowed. It was where Starfleet’s best and brightest—the future flight commanders and bridge officers—were chosen. And those lacking the “right stuff” were weeded out. It was the theory of natural selection in action.
It was James T. Kirk’s favorite place on campus.
Except for today. Today, Kirk was getting his butt kicked by his Team Alpha nemesis, Cadet Viktor Tikhonov.
Worse, the butt-kicking was being administered in one of Kirk’s favorite activities—Advanced Tactical Training, or ATT.
Well-trained tactical away teams, i.e., landing parties, were critical to the success of the overall Starfleet mission. The training was very physical but also called for creative decision-making in extreme situations—the kind of command skills Starfleet wanted in its future leaders.
Only top-performing Academy students were invited to ATT, and fewer than half of those actually passed the course. Cadets were divided into teams of five and put through six hard months of intensive training and competition. The best two teams then entered a final testing round, a series of three tactical scenarios. Each scenario focused on one of the three primary away-team mission types: Security, Science, and First Contact.
“First Contact” was the Starfleet term for encountering a new race and conducting initial Federation diplomacy in the field.
The two remaining cadet teams were dubbed Alpha and Delta. Each team was required to select a leader for the final testing round: Kirk was elected Team Delta captain, while Team Alpha chose Tikhonov. The Academy faculty had already noted Kirk’s bold, intuitive leadership qualities, and his teammates liked and respected him. Two weeks earlier, Kirk had led Delta to the highest score in the First Contact mission final.
But Kirk’s rival, Tikhonov, was as good as he was arrogant. And he was very arrogant.
Now the Alpha captain was leading a devastating romp over Kirk’s crew.
That Monday’s exercise, called the Derelict Cairo scenario, was the Security mission final. It was an exhausting, dangerous test that pitted two away teams directly against each other aboard an abandoned, powerless, Constitution-class heavy starship cruiser, the USS Cairo.
Armed with phasers locked on light-stun setting, the two cadet teams were simultaneously shuttled into separate hangar bays in the Cairo’s cylinder-shaped secondary hull. Each team’s objective was to race up the ship’s connecting pylon onto the eleven-deck, saucer-shaped primary hull.
There, the goal was to secure the Cairo’s main bridge and hold it against the opposing team for two uninterrupted hours. A timer was installed on the helm console in front of the command chair; it had a red Delta button and a blue Alpha button. To secure the bridge, any cadet could press his or her team’s button to start the timer. If that person’s team’s button remained pressed for two consecutive hours, they won. If the other team managed to press their own button, the timer reset to zero.
Thus the Derelict Cairo scenario could go on for many hours. One infamous battle back in 2249 had gone on for two full days.
The task was complicated by the Cairo’s zero-gravity, low-oxygen environment. Cadets wore infinite rebreather masks that reduced visibility, and because they were weightless, cadets had to kick off walls and other surfaces to maneuver.
That morning, Tikhonov had been efficient and relentless. The Russian’s physical skills were unmatched at the Academy and perfectly suited to the setting of a powered-down starship. His team had secured the bridge in record time.
Now Kirk was desperately trying to rally his crew.
“Mr. Glorak!” he hissed into his communicator as he floated along a silver air duct. “Do you read me, over?”
A phaser bolt suddenly ricocheted down the duct. Luckily, it missed him. In a panic move, Kirk punched ou
t a duct grate just below his face, heaved through the opening, and floated down into a dimly lit room full of sofas.
“Glorak?” he said. “Anybody? Is anybody out there, over?”
Glorak’s voice crackled from the communicator. “Captain Kirk,” he snorted. “I’ve lost the squad, over.”
“What?”
“The squad, Captain!” replied Glorak, sounding tense and frazzled. “Gone. I’ve got Mr. Raynor and Mr. Marcus both down, unconscious, and . . . Yes—yes, it looks like Simmons has been taken prisoner.”
Kirk couldn’t believe it. “Are you kidding me?”
More phaser bolts ripped across the room.
Kirk caught a glimpse of two hostiles in their blue Alpha vests; Delta wore red vests. He clipped his utility belt to a nearby wall rung to keep from floating out into the open, and then quickly reviewed the situation.
Kirk had assumed that Tikhonov would take advantage of his superior strength and pull himself through the ventilation system on a beeline run to the main bridge, deploying the rest of Team Alpha to cover his trail. So Kirk had chosen to mirror that tactic. He’d sent his full Delta team, led by Glorak, along the most obvious route to the primary hull—straight up the torpedo exhaust vents. This way they would engage and occupy the Alpha squad. Meanwhile, Kirk would take a roundabout route via a series of forward observation decks. He’d scoot along air ducts to the Sickbay Complex and then veer up through five decks of crew quarters into the docking port directly behind the main bridge.
From there, Kirk planned to surprise Tikhonov, maybe gun him down in a classic duel, and hold the bridge. By himself. Kirk thought this was a great plan—in theory. He was now realizing this was not such a great plan in execution.
“I’m taking heavy fire here, Captain,” called Glorak. “Where are you?”
“I . . . don’t know,” whispered Kirk. “This looks like a recreation area. I think I took a wrong turn.”
“Nice,” said Glorak.
“How’d you lose so many guys, man?” asked Kirk, his voice rising a bit.
“Ambush,” replied Glorak. “Mr. Tikhonov nailed Raynor and Marcus from a torpedo launch tube! Very impressive accuracy, I must say.”