"You can't . . . do something?"
"Not in this life."
Lieutenant Diver wrapped her arms about herself, shivering. "W-we can't just leave him there."
Spock, well aware by now of the human need for ritual even in the most unlikely cases—such as now, with the death of a perfect stranger and a spy as well—did not argue. Wordlessly, he gathered rocks, wordlessly piled them over the body, aided by the others. "Now there remains the question raised: Who sent him?"
"The Master," Rabin said. "Who or whatever the Master may be."
Ensign Kavousi muttered, "Some religious fanatic, no doubt," and spat. "We do not need an alien Mahdi."
Rabin glanced at Spock. "Looks like we have one. Feel up to the challenge, oh Fiery One?"
Spock frowned ever so slightly. "What do you know of the religious beliefs of these people, Captain Rabin?"
"Not as much as I might. They're pretty closed-mouthed about that. There's your basic Force for Good, and yes, your basic demonic Force for Evil, the Fiery One."
"How is that one usually portrayed?"
"Redheaded, fiery eyes . . ." Rabin's voice trailed into silence as he stared at Spock. "But never anything about pointed ears or black hair or dark eyes!"
"Indeed. Then we have a new question. Since I do not look at all like their image of Evil, how did he know to call me the Fiery One?"
"He . . . couldn't have known, could he? Unless he had been told."
"By this mysterious Master, who would seem to be acquainted with the appearance of Vulcans. Or perhaps with Romulans. Either implies an off world origin for the Master, or too-great familiarity with the Romulans."
Rabin groaned. "And someone or someones from a Romulan Warbird did just beam down, didn't they? Nothing's ever simple, is it?"
"That, I take it, is a 'rhetorical question.' "
"Spock, in times like this, I can only say . . . nothing at all except good night and try to get some rest."
The morning found the ancient shuttlecraft soaring as best it could, heading closer to the mountains. The flight went without incident or evidence until midday, when Rabin noted, "You're going off-course, Ensign Prince. Heading should be twenty-nine point six West, Forty-three point two North."
"Aye-aye, sir."
"That's twenty-nine point six, Ensign."
"No disrespect, sir, but I'm trying to stay on course. There's a tricky wind starting up. Ship doesn't want to—"
The shuttlecraft rocked as though a giant hand had slapped it. Ensign Prince gave up attempting to explain and concentrated totally on holding the course steady.
Spock and Rabin exchanged quick glances. "Weather reading, Mr. Kavousi," the human ordered.
"Doesn't look too good, sir," the ensign replied after a moment. "Sudden shift of wind: hot air swirling up off the desert floor hitting the colder air coming down off those mountains."
He didn't have to explain anything more to the others. All the party knew that this sudden desert shift of winds, very probably with the layer of colder air forced underneath the hot, could only mean one thing: a sandstorm was being born. This was not a sandy desert, but that didn't mean there wasn't enough grit and dirt to form a true menace.
Yes. With eerie swiftness, a wall of dirty brown was rousing off the desert floor, swirling higher, higher. Spock knew that similar storms had been known to reach heights often or more kilometers and had to force himself to remain properly, logically calm and not grip the armrests of his seat.
Rabin, of course, couldn't, as captain, show his alarm either. His voice was almost convincingly steady as he said, "Take her higher, Ensign Prince. Upper stratosphere if you can. Get us out of here."
"Right." The ensign was too busy fighting the controls to worry about formality. "Should be a calmer layer up there. Somewhere."
The shuttlecraft lurched, then climbed abruptly—only to be just as abruptly thrust down again, banking sharply, shuddering, engines whining.
"We can't get above the storm," Ensign Prince cried. "The wind's too fierce!"
"Ensign Kavousi," Rabin snapped. "Get us a reading. What's beneath us?"
Kavousi struggled with the sensors, at last admitting, "Can't tell, sir. There's far too much static."
The wind was still rising, engulfing the wildly lurching shuttlecraft in a world of swirling brown. "This old wreck isn't going to hold together much longer!" Ensign Prince warned.
Spock and Rabin glanced at each other, each knowing the other was remembering being caught in another, equally perilous storm from their boyhood. "When positive data are lacking," Spock said, "extrapolation of the last known facts becomes necessary."
"In other words," Rabin retorted, "guess. Take her down, Ensign Prince."
"Yes, sir."
Engines whining with strain, the shuttlecraft descended through brown and brown . . . descended . . .
"We're coming in!" Ensign Prince yelled suddenly.
And then, with bone-jarring force, they were down.
EIGHT
Intrepid II, Obsidian Orbit Year 2296
"Captain's Log," Uhura began her entry with vast satisfaction. This was one piece of communications equipment she had tested but never thought to use. "Stardate 9814.3. Commander Uhura, Recording, Intrepid II.
"Captain Spock has beamed down to Obsidian's surface along with Chief Medical Officer McCoy, and Lieutenants Clayton and Diver. Lieutenant Clayton has already filed a preliminary report and requested additional plant pathology data. We are conducting a full-planet scan for intelligent life while Captain Spock, Captain Rabin, Lieutenant Diver, and several of the outpost's key personnel are overflying an area in which nomads have recently been seen. It has been approximately forty-nine point one eight—"
Is that accurate enough for you, Spock? Uhura thought with a grin.
"—hours since Captain Spock has reported in. This is only partly due to increased ionization levels. I have placed an emergency transmission reporting the likely presence insystem of a hostile ship, most probably Romulan, to the nearest starbase, but do not expect to receive an answer for several days.
" I have become concerned about Captain Spock; Meteorology reports a growing storm in precisely the sectors for which his flight plan was filed.
"Uhura out."
He had praised her logic in public. I won't let you down, Spock, and I'll keep the ship safe for you.
She could almost hear his reply, dry, but with a sly amusement far in the back of those wise, dark eyes: " Certainly, Commander. I would expect nothing else of you."
Nothing less, he meant.
"Commander?" Lieutenant Richards turned from the massed screens of the science officer's station. "That dust storm in planetary sectors seven point three four to nine point six eight that I've been monitoring—sensors are showing turbulence up to about ten kilometers into the atmosphere."
The outpost's shuttles might be old, Uhura thought, but they were built to withstand deceleration through atmosphere. They ought to be able to withstand some dust . . . shouldn't they?
"Storm's already built up to what would be Force I hurricane strength on Earth," Richards continued. "Now, it's showing signs of turning into a coriolis storm."
Uhura raised an inquiring eyebrow. I haven't got time for a learning experience, mister.
Richards missed the significance of that eyebrow. "A coriolis storm," he continued earnestly, "gains strength from the rotation of the planet itself."
That struck home. Given the composition of Obsidian's deserts, a storm like that could carve the flesh off bones, then reduce the bones to splinters. Small splinters. As long as the shuttle maintained altitude, it could ride out the storm. But what if Spock decided to land? Or what if he had to?
"Open a hailing frequency, mister," Uhura ordered Lieutenant Duchamps. "Uhura to Captain Spock. Narrow beam. Encrypt."
Her ears, attuned after a career spent with such equipment, detected infinitesimal shifts in tone as Duchamps tried to filter out the storm-b
orne static and refine his signal. Her fingers itched for the familiar duty station, and she bit back the words, Out of the way, mister. That's my job, that threatened to leap out at the unsuspecting officer.
It wasn't her job. Not anymore. Now, her job was to sit there while Duchamps sweated with frustration.
As she opened her mouth to acknowledge Richards's efforts, the science officer broke in, "Commander, I'm reading increased sunspot activity and a buildup of energy that could mean a massive solar eruption."
Oh, wonderful. Just what we needed.
Richards bent over his duty station, and what had to be one of the most threatening spectroscopic analyses Uhura had ever seen exploded onto a viewscreen: perturbations deep within the solar core, building up until they erupted out from Loki into deadly prominences and hard radiation.
"How long?"
"Until the flares actually erupt? Loki's treacherous even in its timing. It could be six minutes or six hours from now. Or six weeks. Look at the fluctuations in Loki's corona—" He projected what looked like a halo in convulsions above the star's blacked-out disk. "Here's historical data superimposed on the present scan."
"What about radiation levels?" The Loki of Terran mythology, she knew, lay tied beneath a rock upon which a serpent coiled, dripping poison down upon him. This Loki spat its own poison in the form of hard radiation that, even this far out from the star, could put Intrepid's crew at risk.
"Uhura to sickbay."
"Mercier here." Station-born, Medical Officer Frances Mercier understood better than any groundsider who had spent his or her childhood sheltered by atmosphere the damage an ion storm could inflict, or the nasty things hard radiation did when it passed through material such as the hull of a starship. "I gather Loki's acting up again."
Uhura grinned to herself. McCoy must be teaching Mercier every trick in his little black satchel, including the telepathy and clairvoyance every medical officer seemed to have and that all of them lied about.
"I've started issuing new radiation badges," the medical officer continued. "I'm sending someone up to the bridge with yours, Captain—I mean Commander."
Captain. Now that was a hint if ever there was one.
"I'm going to move the ship so we're shielded by the planet itself," Uhura warned. "Better make sure you put away all the glassware, Doctor. When the storm hits, you could get some breakage."
"Aye-aye," Mercier said, and ended her transmission.
"Helm!" Uhura called. "Prepare to come about. Move us into Obsidian's shadow. I want planetary mass between us and Loki."
"God help them," murmured an ensign, one of the newcomers who was most shy of the former Enterprise crew.
"God help all of them down there," Uhura corrected. "Don't forget we've also got an outpost on Obsidian and several million people with provisional Federation status. We're already having . . . Any luck getting through there?"
A headshake. Damn.
". . . trouble reaching the captain. He'll know the storm's building up and expect us to take appropriate action to protect the . . . uh . . . the Intrepid and its crew."
She had almost said Enterprise. Better watch it.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Spock often said. Or the one.
He'd lived his belief. Once, he'd actually died for it when, in a desperate attempt to restore warp power to the Enterprise as it hid from Khan Noonien Singh in the Mutara Nebula, he had exposed himself to hard radiation. Once was far too often. I've lost Captain Kirk. If anything happens to Spock or McCoy . . .
The ship banked, its turn more perceptible in the smaller Intrepid than it would have been in the Constitution-class Enterprise. Had the original ship survived, Uhura realized with a little shock, it would be obsolete now.
A scream of static leapt from the science officer's workstation. Loki's disk in the viewscreen darkened as Richards augmented filters rather than burn out the screen. The corona rippled and acquired a ghostly afterimage.
"Better strap down," he said. "When that first shock wave hits . . ."
Uhura fastened the restraints over her thighs, glad that no one was going to try to ride this one out. "If any of the crew feel like going out for a breath of fresh air right about now, tell them to forget it," she said. Captain Kirk had always known when to joke.
The bridge crew laughed shakily, but at least they laughed.
"Got an ETA for the radiation front now," Richards offered. "Eight minutes thirty-five seconds . . . "
"Thank you, Lieutenant. Status report, Mr. Duchamps: any sign of that Warbird?"
"Negative, Commander. Negative." She could almost hear Duchamps' skeptical In this mess?
"Keep looking, mister. The cloaking device might distort the ion flux just enough so that we can spot it. Look for anomalies." Right. Loki was practically all anomalies. Besides, it was too easy to retreat into a technician's role now that she had the center seat. "Keep an eye on any 'dead' space. Wherever there's Romulans, there's usually something dead."
That drew another laugh. Gallows humor, thought Uhura. If there is a gallows, though, it's not going to be ours.
Groans. Stirrings. Then: "Anything broken?" Dr. McCoy asked.
Spock observed a reddish lump on the doctor's forehead and scrutinized him more closely: McCoy's pupils were not dilated, and he gave no more evidence of disorientation than "a man who'd been thrown out of the sky and dumped on his sore backside," as the doctor had managed to complain almost as they'd hit.
David Rabin disentangled himself from the collision gear. "Just Ensign Prince's pride, I'd say. Trying to stick Brother Abdullah with being seventy-ninth in line for the throne, mister?"
"It's a dirty job," the ensign retorted, "but someone's got to do it. Sir, you know what they say about landings. A good landing is any one you can walk away from."
"Let's see what we've got left to walk away from."
Lieutenant Diver, hair fallen over one eye, was struggling to pull free of restraints and a warped chair, all the while calling up cartography from a flickering screen. "I—"
But her voice broke off in a startled yelp as the shuttle suddenly lurched and slid what Spock's kinesthetic sense told him was 3.2 meters—downward. A series of impacts boomed and vibrated on the shuttle's hull: rocks, Spock assumed, torn loose from a hillside above them. Were they merely on the side of a steep slope—or did the slope end in a cliff?
The entire craft seemed to swerve sideways, then slid again before it stopped sharply—1.59 meters later, Spock knew—its nose tilted awkwardly downward. Wind buffeted the shuttle, sending a shrilling storm of grit lashing at the vessel's hull.
"I would suggest," Spock raised his voice over the storm, "that no one move more than he or she must. This slippage leads me to conclude . . ."
Rabin held up a hand. "Spock, let me suggest that first we all shift our weight toward the far end of the shuttle as a counterbalance. Then, no one moves."
"Ensign Prince," Spock asked, "were you able to see our landing site at all?"
"In this mess, sir?" the ensign asked. "Got some quick glimpses of mountains or at least steep hills. Some cliffs. Then we were caught in the storm but good and even the instruments weren't registering much."
"Lieutenant Diver?" Spock raised an eyebrow.
Hastily brushing back her hair, she began again, " Cartography calls this the Rupathan Range . . . not sure about the accuracy, not with that rock composition . . . highly friable . . . hey!"
The ship lurched again under a fresh roar of wind and a new cascade of rocks. The shuttle was ruggedly built, but nothing was that rugged. They were already clearly on a precarious angle. If the wind was of sufficient force . . .
"Ensign Prince," Rabin ordered, "see if you can lift us off. Now!" he added as the shuttle slipped a little further.
The ensign's fingers flew over the controls as he muttered under his breath. "Landing gear's damaged. No . . ." he added, looking at his screens. "Landing gear's gone. Let me see . . ."
More keyboard tappings brought up a rockscape half shrouded by veils of blowing grit and larger debris. He leaned forward as though in disbelief, then spat something guttural.
"Surely not camels and goats, Ensign?" Rabin asked. "Let alone diseased ones?"
"Sir, that last slide brought us up against a large rock—the last thing between us and what looks like a drop of approximately one hundred meters. If we're dislodged by a big enough rock or if the cliif's edge crumbles . . ."
"Oh great," McCoy said. "A man goes over a cliff and grabs a root, and then the root starts to pull free . . ."
Rabin sighed. "So much for staying with the ship."
"But we can't sit out that storm in the open! Isn't a lot of the blowing grit volcanic glass? We wouldn't last a minute."
"Doctor," Spock began, "if we fall a hundred meters . . ."
"Spock, now's no time for a lesson in physics."
Spock ignored that. "What can we expect of this region, Captain Rabin? Are there caves?"
"Yes! There are caves all through here, like on the Forge. Lieutenant Diver, try to locate one with a sonic scan. Meanwhile," Rabin added, leaning over a console, "let's see if we can reach the base . . . bah, no. Nothing."
Spock thumbed open his own communicator and was not surprised when static, then silence greeted him. "I shall assume that the Intrepid has shifted orbit to place the planet between it and Loki. The communicator's power is insufficient to pierce this storm, much less planetary mass. When the storm subsides . . ."
"Dammit, Spock," McCoy snapped, "we may be confetti before this thing subsides, especially if—"
"I'm getting something," Lieutenant Diver said abruptly. "A cave . . . maybe fifty meters away."
"Yes!" Rabin exclaimed. Moving very gingerly, he pulled open the cabinets holding survival gear: rations, water containers, lights, heavy visors to protect their eyes. "Spock, what are the odds of our making it to that cave?"
"Before this shuttle falls from the cliff?" Spock asked. "Or are you asking what the odds are of our making it to that cave without rocks hitting individual crew members or of the cave being uninhabited by something inimical to life?"
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