Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike

by Diane Carey

  show them to whoever sent them here."

  "You believe they are communicating with someone

  on the other side of their portal somehow?"

  "What good would it be if they couldn't?"

  "Very little... Zennor says he cannot go back."

  "That's what he says."

  Silence dropped between them for a few moments,

  long enough for them to hear the emptiness of sickbay,

  the passive twitter of the diagnostic panel above Spock,

  the whisper of some machine in the lab that had been left

  on to do whatever it was doing, the mournful presence of

  that sliced-up poppet beyond that door over there.

  "I am sorry, Captain."

  Kirk looked up. "For what?"

  Spock's face was cast in regret and he didn't mind

  showing it. "I know you have forged a kind of synthesis

  with Captain Zennor... a friendship."

  Bitter, Kirk gazed at the deck. How often had this

  happened to him in his life? To find synthesis, to have

  commonality, to make friends with someone, only to

  have that friendship blistered and ultimately sundered

  by some outside consideration. Competitors at Starfleet

  Academy, at Starfleet itself, in space, where his drive for

  the win had also driven a stake into the heart of any

  chance for amicable feelings when all was over.

  And in deep space, there had been flat-out enemies he

  wished he could've known better.

  But when the smoke cleared, he always stood alone.

  Some fences damned mending, and certainly climbing.

  He'd had to turn away time after time, leaving animosity!

  where he had wished to have comradeship.

  That was why, he realized in this moment particularly,

  he cherished and so unflinchingly defended and pro-!

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  tected both Spock and McCoy. They had stood with him

  and never given in to the differences between themselves

  and him, as so many others had.

  Differences. Differences.

  Damned differences.

  Suddenly he was mad again. "The friendship's about

  to be tested."

  "How soT'

  "I'll tell you how. I'm beaming over to that ship and

  get our doctor back. And while I'm there I'm going to see

  exactly what it is that we're up against."

  He punched the nearest comm. "Kirk to bridge. Put

  Captain Zennor on."

  The blade in his voice evidently came across for all it

  was worth, because Nordstrom didn't respond.

  Very quietly, Spock asked, "Are you going to tell him,

  Captain?"

  "I don't know. I promised I'd help him .... "

  The Vulcan's face was limned with concern. "That

  could be most imprudent."

  "I know."

  "This is Zennor."

  "We have a problem. Your Dana and others have

  attacked my first officer and kidnapped my doctor."

  "Garamanus. . . kidnapped your McCoy?"

  "He did and I'm not taking it well." '7 must go to my ship immediately."

  "I'm going with you, and I'm bringing a Security

  team."

  "They will be killed instantly. You must come with me

  alone, if you insist upon coming. We can only go there one

  time. I will give you the modulation to drop the block of

  your transporter beam, but as soon as we go, they will

  change it again. But we must go immediately. It is your

  McCoy's only chance."

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  "VERY daNgEROUS for you to be here now. If there is

  reaction, I cannot protect you."

  "I'll take my chances. Where's my chief surgeon?" .

  "Come with me. Prepare yourself."

  Not very reassuring, as phrases went.

  The tour through Zennor's ship was skin-chilling. Like

  wandering through a cave behind a suddenly agile bat.

  Zennor, who had moved with such cautious reserve

  down the broad, bright, open corridors of the Enterprise,

  now skirted down shoulder-wide passages coated with

  dark velvety moss and overhung with some kind of web.

  Kirk stumbled several times until his eyes adjusted,

  then stumbled a little less, but the deck was nearly

  invisible in the dimness. He felt he was stepping foot by

  foot through the chambers of a hornet's nest. Somehow

  they had beamed directly into these veins and now were

  moving through them.

  There was something beneath his feet, not carpet or

  deck, but a litter of crunchy and mushy matter, all

  different sizes, different textures, as if he were treading

  over a dumping ground. Fungus gave under his weight

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  and puffballs popped as he stepped on them. Other

  things cracked. The air was thick and musky with smells

  both plant and animal.

  When he thought he couldn't stand another meter of

  the cloying dimness and moss that grasped at his hair

  and arms, Zennor led him out into a broader cavern,

  though still coated with growing plant life--and a sense,

  if not a visible presence, of other life, of eyes watching

  him. To all outward senses, he and Zennor were alone

  here.

  But Kirk had spent his life being looked at. He knew

  when it was happening. There were beasts in the walls.

  No, the walls didn't have eyes, but they did have

  punctures, dark recesses from which more of those skulls

  peered out, many skulls, but not humanlike skulls. There

  were many kinds, some belonging to creatures he hadn't

  seen yet but now assumed were here. Unless they were

  dragging along the skulls of aliens they met on their

  voyages, Zennor's amalgamated crew was even more

  amalgamated than Kirk had first guessed. These were

  most likely the skulls of fallen comrades.

  So they kept the skulls of some, and the "souls" of

  others. And who could tell what else? Foreign cultures

  could be very complicated.

  Suddenly he wanted the chance to get to know them

  better, and felt that chance slipping away as he dodged

  behind Zennor up their icy slope.

  He forced himself to ignore the skull niches as he

  hurried behind Zennor, also forcing himself not to

  bellow an order to move even faster.

  All at once they burst out into a blinding brightness,

  creased with the noise of hundreds of voices making

  disorganized, wild cheers and chants. Kirk shaded his

  eyes and paused until they adjusted, then tried to look.

  The chamber was enormous, as big as a stadium and

  half again taller, lit with green and yellow artificial light,

  and twisting with a white haze created by vents dearly

  spewing the stuff near the ceiling. From the configuration

  of the Rath, he guessed they were near the aft end. So the

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  propulsion units weren't back here, but somehow arranged

  elsewhere. He'd have to remember that--

  But thoughts of hardware and strategy fled his mind as

  he looked up, and farther up.

  In the center of the huge foggy chamber stood--yes, stood--a giant mannequin in humanoid form, with a

 
head, two arms, two legs, like a vast version of one of

  those poppers, except that this mannequin was a good

  six stories tall and made entirely of slats of wood and raw

  tree branches, and veined with braided straw or some

  kind of thatch. Its arms stood straight out like a rag

  doll's, bound at the wrists with some kind of twine; its

  legs ended at the ankles, with only stumps of chopped

  matter for hands and feet.

  Bisecting the hollow arms, legs, and torso of the

  wickerwork giant were narrow platforms -- scarcely

  more than slats themselves, but enough to stand upon--and

  there, in the middle of the straw giant's see-through

  right thigh, Leonard McCoy hovered twenty-five feet

  above the deck.

  The doctor clung pitifully to the twisted veins of

  thatch, looking down upon a gaggle of cavorting beings,

  all types of misshapen vagabond demons, from the

  snake-headed beings to the horned ones to those more

  squidlike than anything else, and the others who looked

  as if they had wings.

  Evidently this was Zennor's crew, dancing around the

  straw legs of the monster, laying more straw and twigs in

  heaps around the giant's ankles, and chanting while they

  did this.

  The Furies. Even if it wasn't them, it described them now.

  Kirk stared, measuring the critical elements, consumed

  for a moment with astonishment and a bad chill.

  He knew a preparation for a bonfire when he saw one.

  Stepping forward from the entrance way, he felt the

  green-tinted light reflect off the topaz fabric of his

  uniform shirt and sensed how bizarre his facial features

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  must look with that light cast from below, like something

  boys would see playing with tlashlights in a pup tent.

  "Jim!" McCoy knelt on the slats and called down,

  pushing his face between the veins of thatch.

  Kirk turned to Zennor. "What is this?"

  Zennor gazed at him with ferrous eyes that held no

  apology. "Punishment."

  The crew of the Rath, at least the off-duty crew

  presumably, jumped and rushed, chanting all the way,

  around the giant straw mannequin in a gansly kind of

  organization, each going his own way at his own pace,

  but all going in the same direction. They deposited

  bundles of straw, branches, and even whole trees at the

  ankles of the giant. Their metal wristbands, chains,

  medallions, bracelets, and belts bounced and rang, creating

  a fiendish jangling in the huge hall. On their metal

  belts, many of them had those linen poppets, each in the

  rough image of the wearer, doing another kind of dance.

  As Zennor stood before him in his dominating and

  statuesque manner, Kirk was careful to stand still, not

  attract any more attention than necessary until he could

  size things up.

  A sundry train of beings broke off from the dancing

  circle and hurried toward him and Zennor. It took all of

  Kirk's inner resolve to stand still and let Zennor handle

  his own crew.

  The horrendous gagsic descended upon them in a rush

  until the last four feet, when they skidded to a stop and

  made Kirk glad he was still wearing his portable translator,

  because they were all speaking at once.

  "We're home!" a winged thing said to Zennor.

  "The Dana told us the news!" crowed an elongated

  creature that seemed to have no bodily mass other than

  bones thinly veiled with rubbery brown skin. It would've

  looked like a Halloween skeleton, appropriately enough,

  except that it had four arms.

  A tentade-head repeated, "The Dana told us the

  good news!"

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  "This is our place!" someone else trilled in a high

  voice, clearly meant to congratulate their leader.

  "The Dana had no authority, Morien," Zennor said.

  His voice had a tenor of bottled rage. "You should be at

  your posts."

  "But we have a criminal, Vergozen," the tentacled

  person said, and looked at Kirk. "Is this another one?"

  The "it" gestured at Kirk.

  "He is here for the final visitation," Zennor snarled,

  and Kirk couldn't tell whether it was sarcasm or not.

  Then Zennor motioned for Kirk to move past them.

  "Fetch me the Dana."

  Morien quickly said "Yes, Vergozen!" and skittered off

  into the crowd.

  Kirk took his cue and moved toward the wicker

  colossus. Other creatures seemed uninterested in him,

  though many glanced up in mild curiosity. They were involved in their work and looking forward to what they

  were about to do. They didn't seem to care about visitors

  who walked in with their captain.

  He came to the bottom of one straw leg, as big around

  as a warp engine, close enough to speak to McCoy in a

  normalish voice, without attracting attention.

  "Bones," he began tentatively, "you all right up

  there?"

  "So far." The doctor gripped the reedy filaments of the

  colossus. "Did they hurt Spock?"

  "They knocked him off his bunk. Chapel's taking care

  of him. I've never seen her so happy."

  "Are the Klingons here yet?"

  "Just popped onto our long-range. We were about to

  make a border run when you turned up missing. Now I'll

  settle for anything I can get away with."

  Frustrated, McCoy glanced around, then reached

  down with a toe and found a lower slat, and climbed

  do wn through the wooden webbing until he could stand

  inside the giant's right leg, just above the knee. He could

  only make it about another seven feet down before the

  straw webbing stopped him.

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  "Jim... they're going to set fire to this."

  Caught with empathy, Kirk nodded and tried to be

  clinical. "Yes, I know. I'm working on it."

  "I broke their laws with that damn doll. You might not

  be able to do anything about it."

  "Don't make any bets."

  "I don't want to," the doctor said. "Jim, listen--when

  they put me in here, they shoved in a lot of other things.

  They put my medical tricorder in with me, and all this

  other stuff." He maneuvered with difficulty, having to

  stand on slats of bowing straw twisted to provide a

  foothold that was obviously temporary, and scoop up

  bits of material from around him. "There are thigh and

  hand bones here ... and hanks of hair, skin scrapings

  .. and this bony plate is the back part of a cranium."

  "The place is full of skulls."

  "Yes, I know. But this skull is Andorian!"

  "That's not possible," Kirk said, but it came out with

  a terrible resignation that surprised even him.

  McCoy raised a long gray bone, scored with cracks.

  "And this thighbone... it's human. From Earth. It's a

  perfect D.N.A match." He leaned on the slat with one

  knee and held up his medical tricorder with his other

  hand.

  "Could they have acquired it here in the past twenty-four


  hours?"

  "They could've. Except that they'd have had to raid an

  archeology lab for this. It's old as a bristlecone pine!"

  "How old is that?"

  "As nearly as I can estimate, it's over four thousand

  years old. A human bone!"

  "Bones, are you sure about this?"

  "I've had nothing else to do in here"

  "They put those in there with you just now?"

  "Just a half hour ago. I think they're raiding their own

  coffers and placing things in here that look physiologically

  like me. At least to their minds. Some kind of

  symbolic connection--who knows?"

  "Can you explain the D.N.A link?"

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  The doctor scowled. "I'm not saying that humans or

  Klingons went out into space and met these people, but

  I'm wondering if somehow these people ended up on our

  planets a long time ago and affected our beliefs. If a

  shipload of Vulcans showed up on Earth in the fourteen-hundreds,

  they'd sure be taken for devils."

  "And life has been around the galaxy for millions of

  years. Is it really any surprise if Earth, Vulcan, the

  Klingon homeworld, and a lot of other planets might've

  had visitations?"

  "Given the numbers, I'd be surprised if they hadn't."

  McCoy squirmed for a better grip.

  Kirk gripped the straw spokes too, as if to make a

  connection. "The dangerous bottom line is that it's

  beginning to look like this was their space."

  "Then we'd all better get used to carrying pitchforks,"

  McCoy said, "because I think that's the conclusion." He

  held up the human thighbone and shook it. "Unless they

  killed a human in the past twelve hours and somehow

  made this bone appear to my readouts as if it were four

  to six thousand years old. I think we got that mythological

  stuff from our Greeks and Egyptians and druids, but I

  think the Greeks and Egyptians and druids got it from them."

  He swept the medical tricorder to indicate the circle of

  aliens, then reached out between the wood and straw and