by Diane Carey
nodding at Spock as if anxious to be understood.
"We watched as the nearest solar system broke to
hyperlight and was vaporized. We managed to hold our
ships to positive mass by diverting all our power to the
shields. We were down to one one-hundredth percent of our mass when the effect stopped. We..." He paused,
measured the impact of what he was saying, then decided
to admit, "We did lose one ship."
Everyone everywhere was utterly still. Even McCoy
71
Diane Carey stopped in the middle of applying a field splint to
Spock's back.
As they all stared at Kellen, the whine of transporters
cut into the tension.
To Kirk's right, six pillars of garbled energy buzzed
into place, then quickly and noisily materialized into the
forms of McCoy's emergency medical staff of interns
and nurses.
McCoy waved at them without saying a word, and
they dispersed to triage the wounded.
"I have recordings of this," Kellen offered, pulling
Kirk's attention back. He spoke with control, as if
completely convinced they would want these. He raised
his arm, and pulled from his belt a Klingon tricorder.
"The de vice has a translator."
He held it before Kirk, and did not lower it.
Kirk tilted his head to his left, toward Spock. "Over
there."
Without pause Kellen took the one step necessary to
hand the tricorder to the yeoman with Spock, but he
never took his eyes off Kirk.
The yeoman blinked as if he didn't know what to do,
but a wag of Kirk's finger at the tricorder snapped him
out of it. He keyed up the instrument, working as well as
he could with a Klingon mechanism, then faced Spock
and ran the recordings on the small screen for him.
"I was transporting back to my flagship," Kellen went
on while Spock watched the tricorder, "when my beam
was diverted to another place. At first I believed I was on
some distant planet, for there were caves and growing
moss and a source of light and heat. I explored this place
and discovered solid metal walls and electrical lighting
with signal panels. But also there was a corridor of
skulls."
"I'm sorry?" Kirk interrupted. "Did you say 'skulls'?"
"Skulls. Bare, boiled skulls. Of inconceivable shapes
and kinds--creatures scarcely imaginable, Captain
Kirk. Each was set in a niche of its own from which moss
bled and lichen grew. Then, it... came out of the wall."
72 FIRST STRIKE
"What came? A skull?"
"No. No skull... the lraga itself."
The Klingon general nearly whispered the word, as if
speaking the profane, yet he was trying to be clinical and
scientific.
Iraga. Didn't sound familiar.
Kirk canted forward slightly enough to get across his
do-I-have-to-keep-asking expression.
"A... vision from our past," Kellen said, sifting for
words. "A gathering of evils in one body, with snakes
living out of its head and flame in its eyes. It means
nothing to you, but to Klingons it is our past coming
back." ....
"We have legends of snake-headed beings," Kirk mentioned,
"but I don't recall anything with fire for eyes. Mr.
Spock?"
"I am unfamiliar with any such legend, Captain," the science officer said. "Research may prove of service."
"Captain, please," McCoy wedged in.
Kirk gave him a shut-up nod, then looked at Kellen.
"Let's deal with facts right now. You say there was a power source? Readout panels? And you could breathe?"
"Yes. I felt the engines of the ship."
"Demons don't need atmosphere or conventional
power. And they certainly don't need engines."
Kellen acknowledged that with what might have been
a shrug. "Whatever is going on, legends and reality have
come together and this might be the end of things for us
all. Whatever has been our collective nightmare for cons
has now come to ruin us again. We must work together
now. Compared to those, we are so much alike that I
would rather be your slave than live on the same planet
with them. Now that the invaders are here, there is no
difference between you and me anymore."
A hot breeze coughed down the incline between the
two breasts of rock and across the warm belly of the
shale flats. Kirk found himself suddenly sweating under
his shirt. He didn't like the feeling, He wanted to scratch
his chest as perspiration trickled down his ribs.
73
Diane Carey
He glared at Kellen. The sun enhanced his flown. His
eyes were hurting.
"Captain," Spock called.
Kirk pursed his lips and crossed the ten steps or so to
where Spock was sitting on the boulder.
Grimly Spock said, "He is telling the truth. At least, he
is truthfully relating what he saw. And according to
vessel-stress readings and analyses of the computer registry,
there did seem to be a mass falloff. Their records
also have a visual log of a solar system's burst to warp
speed."
"Could his records be falsified?"
"Of course."
"But you don't think they are?"
Spock sat as stiff as an Oriental statue. "No, sir."
"What could cause a mass falloff?."
"A weapon." Kellen surged, plunging two steps closer
before a handful of Security men stepped between him
and Kirk and Spock. "A shot fired across our civilization's
bows, Kirk. For after it, there came the vessel of
demons. We have to put aside hating each other for
now."
"Put aside decades of trouble just like that?"
"What do you want?" Kellen asked, becoming much
more agitated than anyone would expect from the calmest
Klingon in the Empire. "You want me to imprison
my grandson? You want me to find a husband for your
ugliest sister." Tell me! This is important, Kirk! If you
could have one thing from the Klingon Empire, what
would you want?"
Irritated by the pettiness Kellen seemed to take for
granted, Kirk bristled. "You know what I want. The
same thing the whole Federation wants. Freedom and
peace for all our peoples."
"You want us to leave you alone."
"Not enough. You have to leave your own people alone
too."
The whole idea crossed the general's face as utterly
foreign, but he didn't laugh or show any sign that Kirk
74
FIRST STRIKE
had asked for something he wouldn't consider today.
Kellen seemed willing to hand over the galaxy if he could
get the help he wanted.
"Just a minute," Kirk stalled. He turned his back on
the general and lowered his voice to Spock and McCoy.
"Opinions?"
"Obviously profound," Spock murmured, "if the effect
on him is so profound that the tension between
Klingons and the Federation seems childish to him
now."
"Whatever's going on," McCoy nearly whispered, "it's
got Kel
len spooked. And from what I've heard about this
particular Klingon, he doesn't spook lightly."
Kirk looked at him. "Are you saying we should go?"
"Captain, I'll say anything you want if you'll let me
take Spock to sickbay."
"Captain," Kellen interrupted, and waited until Kirk
turned back to him. "I do not know if I can give you the
things you ask," he said, "but I give my word as a
warrior--I will do everything I can for the rest of my life
to work toward a treaty. You help us survive today...
and I will dedicate my life to your wish."
What?
The Klingons around the battleground stirred and
audibly choked at what they had just heard. Kirk's men
held very still, cocooned in disbelief.
"You can take me aboard as hostage if you like,"
Kellen added, "but help us against them!"
Was this Klingon bravado? A bet Kellen was making
with himself?. An experienced general knew the Federation would never take hostages.
So I will.
"Fine. You'll stay with us." Through Kellen's surprise,
Kirk finished, "We'll go out there, and we'll see what this
is."
75
WE ARE
THE IMPENDING
Chapter Six
"Bor, rEs, How is HE?"
"Not good."
"Tell me."
"Vulcans have thirty-six pairs of nerves attached to
the spinal cord, serving the autonomic and voluntary
nervous systems. Spock has some level of damage to
thirty percent of those, mostly in his lower thoracic area
and lumbar plexus. No major fractures, probably because
of the angle of the stuff he fell on, but there are
a series of hairline fractures to the white matter of the spinal column. Add that to the impact to his muscles
and tendons, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured
wrist."
"He broke his wrist?"
"The left one."
"I... didn't notice."
His own left arm throbbed now, reminding him of his
own hurts and the hits he'd taken, and magnifying what
Spock must be going through. Without thinking, he
rubbed the sore elbow.
McCoy noticed. "Spock's shoulder is back in place
79
Diane Carey and the wrist bones are fused, but he'll be sore for a
while ."
"Can his spinal injury be fixed with surgery?"
Folding his arms, the ship's cranky chief surgeon
pursed his lips and shook his head, almost as if still
deciding.
But right now he was just plain galled.
"I'm not going to operate unless I have to. I'm not a
neurological specialist, Captain, and we're damned far
from anybody who is, let alone a specialist on Vulcan
neurophysiology. The irony is that he's lucky he hit that
skirt of gravel on his spine instead of his skull, or right
now we'd be wrapping him up for a real quiet voyage
back to Vulcan and you'd be writing a note to his
parents."
A chill shimmied down Jim Kirk's aching arms. Those
awful notes--he'd spend his whole night writing them,
one by one, with hands scratched and sore from today's
battle. He had to do them before he slept, or he'd never
sleep. He would describe the situation on Capella IV and
explain its importance to the Federation so families
would know their young men died for something important.
He would log one posthumous commendation after
another, feeding them through to Lieutenant Uhura,
who would launch the sad package through subspace to
the parents, wives, children of those who'd given their
lives today in the line of duty.
He was glad he wouldn't have to write a note like that
to Ambassador Sarek and his wife.
"We're lucky," Kirk murmured. "I'm lucky."
"Will he recover?" he asked.
Silence told him that McCoy wanted to make the
prognosis sound upbeat, but the captain was the only
person on board the starship who had to be deprived of
bedside manner. The captain always had to be given the
cold raw truth.
"I can't tell you that conclusively," McCoy said.
"We'll just have to wait and see. I've got him mounted g0 FIRST STRIKE
on a null-grav pad, to keep pressure off the spinal column. He can walk, but I'm not going to let him yet."
"Is there anything else you can do?"
McCoy responded with a bristle of insult. "Even with
advanced medicine, there are some things the body has
to do for itself. His metabolism is higher than ours and
his recuperative powers are different. I'm not going to
tamper unless there's an emergency. Don't second guess
my judgment, Captain, and I won't second gues s yours."
Kirk turned to him. "If McCoy, say it."
you've got something to say, The doctor stiffened. His eyes flared and he went off
like a bow and arrow ready to spring. "Fine. I processed
nineteen bodies this morning and fifty-two injuries,
twelve of those serious, and two men are still listed as
missing in action. That's seventy-three casualties logged
up to a petty skirmish of questionable strategic value."
"It's my job to defend those settlements. Would you
prefer processing the corpses of innocent families or
official personnel sworn to protect them? You're the one
who was stationed on that planet, you're the one who
knew these people personally. Would you advocate
abandonment?"
"There had to be some better way, is all I'm saying, something less savage than a ground defense."
"That's not for you to judge."
"Maybe not, but my patients are filling up four
wards--"
"They're not your patients, Doctor, they're my crew.
And they're Starfleet officers and they know what that
means. The Klingons might have slaughtered those people.
That's where we come in; we were there to stop it."
McCoy's blue eyes were bitter cold by now. "Maybe
there was and you chose to ignore it, just as you chose to
ignore common sense when you moved a trauma victim
simply because you needed another opinion. The fact is,
you're likely to get to an injured crewmen long before I
am, and as such it befalls you to know what to do and
81
Diane Carey
what not to do, which means holstering that dash and
moxie of yours long enough to give the correct first aid!"
If the doctor hadn't been trying to whisper, he'd have
been shouting.
Kirk heard it as a shout. His throat knotted and he felt
his jaw go stiff, his lips tighten, the skin around his eyes
crimp. He stared in challenge at McCoy, reflexes telling
him to demand his rank rights to civil treatment.
But then he looked through the door toward Spock's
bed.
He raised one hand and pressed his palm to the door
frame.
"It was unpardonable," he said.
He felt McCoy's glare, maybe one of surprise, maybe
sympathy, burrowing through the back of his head.
Evidently the doctor had gotten what he'd wanted, or
perhaps he'd decide
d the captain was tortured enough,
because he sighed, then came up beside Kirk and spoke
more evenly.
"I'm controlling his pain, Jim."
"Understood," Kirk uttered, as if he did. With his
tone he asked McCoy to stay behind, let him deal with
this himself.
He walked into the ward.
Spock lay on what seemed to be an ordinary diagnostic
bed, with all the lights and blips and graphs silently
moving on the panel above, monitoring his vitals.
As he moved closer to the bed, he noted the four
antigrav units locked two-each to the sides of the bed,
whirring softly, keeping Spock's body hovering a millimeter
off the mattress, making his organs and bones float
as if he were hovering out in space. Only the pillow made
any contact, and that just barely, probably because it
bothered McCoy to see his patients without a pillow, A
patient in antigravs didn't really need one.
Spock's graphite eyes were glazed and pinched, his
face and hands still lime-pale. Sickbay's washed-out
patient's tunic didn't help much, seeming to suck color
82
FIRST STRIKE
out of anybody's complexion. With his sharp hearing,
he'd probably heard the two of them talking out there.
"Captain,', he greeted, sparing them both the awkward
moment.
"Spock... I'm sorry to disturb you."
"Not at all, sir. Are you all right?
Kirk shrugged self-consciously. "A few cuts and
scratches. My uniform had to be buried at sea, though."
"Beside mine, most likely. Is General Kellen on
board?"
"Yes, and without an escort, too. His flagship did a little ,posturing, but he backed them down. You
should've seen it. Whatever this thing is that he experienced,