Final Frontier

by Carey, Diane

  He glanced up. The crags got steeper from here on. Trapped, utterly trapped. Even if there was some way to force his own injured limbs to climb, there was no hope now of getting the Romulan up there. He turned back to t’Cael.

  “I see it,” t’Cael gasped, fighting for control. “Futile.” He rearranged himself against the rock wall with distinct effort. “Please, though, make the attempt yourself. They may be busy with me long enough for you to—”

  “Can’t,” George snapped, not wanting to hear it again. “My leg won’t take it.” He struggled to recharge the power pack on his hand-cannon, then squinted up at the rocks. “I think I see some loose rubble. Maybe . . . if I do it right . . . just maybe I can jar enough rocks loose to cause a rock slide. Take cover.”

  He braced himself on a crag and held the weapon in both hands, aiming as carefully as he could in the fading light, fighting the desire to look down until he’d at least made one attempt. The laser bolt shot upward in a clean glow, and pecked at his chosen outcropping. Pebbles flew, specks of stone spitting down into his face, but he kept firing until the falling rocks were the size of a man’s fist. Then he ducked back toward the Romulan and waited.

  A shower of rocks tumbled past their hiding place, making a jangling racket against their mother mountain. When the last chips had sprinkled, George crawled out and looked down.

  On the face of the cliff, there wasn’t a sign of the predators. Nothing. Not a whisker.

  “They’re gone,” he said, confusion showing in his voice.

  “Impossible,” the Romulan said.

  He was right. As George watched the last pebble settle, lumps of fur began rising from a dozen hiding places. Then more. And still more. How could animals that big find places to hide on this boulder?

  Gradually, more and more of the creatures appeared, their grizzly faces intent. The hunt resumed.

  George slithered backward and pressed against the rocks as he checked the intensity of the hand-cannon and looked up again, trying to find another weak spot on the cliff face above.

  “You’re wasting your weapon’s energy,” the Romulan said.

  George glared at him. True, these rocks seemed too stable to shake loose with this little weapon, but he didn’t particularly want to be told that right now. He’d have to wait, pick the animals off one by one as they attacked, and hope he had enough firepower to do it. How many of them were there? Two dozen? Four? More?

  He felt as though he was slipping his head into a guillotine, and waiting—waiting those long last seconds for the blade to fall.

  “We should’ve foreseen this,” t’Cael continued, forcing his breath to slow a little more with each word. “They’ve been deliberately crowding us up the rocks. Packs must have strategy.” T’Cael leaned heavily against the rocks and let his mind go numb for a few seconds. Giving in to the pain, even for those few seconds, was refreshing. It gave him the strength to keep fighting.

  He grinned ruefully. After a moment he even chuckled.

  George’s brow furrowed. “You think this is funny?”

  T’Cael looked up. “Ironic,” he admitted, hoping he was using the word correctly, “for two spacefarers to die as prey for the beasts.”

  “I guess.” George hugged his sore arm and took a deep breath to steady himself.

  The Romulan raised a lone eyebrow. “You humans have no sense of humor.”

  George looked up, self-conscious at being told that by somebody who looked like a Vulcan.

  He pursed his lips. “What’d you say your name was again?”

  “T’Cael.”

  “Well, t’Cael, you think like a victim.”

  The insult was plain. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve given up.”

  T’Cael shrugged. “Foolish to fight when there is no hope,” he said.

  George shook his head. “I’d never take you for a Romulan.”

  At this, t’Cael snapped his head up and his expression changed. The pain had cleared his head and limited his tolerance. “And what do you know of Romulans that lets you make such a statement? You’ve fueled yourself on outdated hearsay. Your ignorance has made you pompous.” His dark brows drew together. “You insult me.”

  Under the blistering attack, George held his breath and returned the glare.

  T’Cael spoke now in a deriding, toneless manner. “What I know of humans,” he went on, “I know because I learned it. What you know of my people you know because you think it.”

  “You assume,” t’Cael went on, “that a bad system is made up of bad people. You forget that greed and power abuse the closest people first—one’s own people. My people are the first victims, those who have paid the longest for our ways. We no longer have a mechanism for change.” He winced as he readjusted his shoulder against the rock, and he gazed out at the strangely colored sky. “Your own history of wars should prove that to you. A few leaders using drum-beating and patriotic rhetoric to convince the masses of things no sensible person would otherwise approve of. Such power can make naked evils seem like duty. And people will do that duty unconditionally. My culture or yours, it makes no difference, Kirk.”

  George turned to face t’Cael squarely. “Are you telling me there’s no difference between your people and mine?” He leaned slightly toward the Romulan and made the question into an accusation. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me that?”

  “No,” t’Cael said quietly.

  George settled back. T’Cael’s presence here, in this unforeseen situation, proved George’s point for him, and not pleasantly.

  They sat against the rock in the cramped mossy space, not facing each other. All they could see from here was sky and more rocks. And they knew the predators were coming.

  The two soldiers—two predators, now victims themselves—waited in silence.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “DRAKE, GIVE ME a report.”

  “Fête du diable, sir. A real mess—but we’re learning.”

  “What are we learning?” April slid into the command chair, staring at the Romulan ship as it dodged by them, and at the planetoid beyond.

  “That even with reduced shields and low maneuverability compared to them,” Drake reported, “we are still, shall we say, a class act.”

  “Carlos, give me a sense of time, please.”

  Florida gathered himself. “Mr. Kirk landed on the planetoid at fourteen hundred. He was planning to rendezvous with the enemy commander, but at fourteen-fifty-four the enemy ship suddenly moved in and fired on their location.”

  For the first time April’s eyes left the screen. “You mean they fired on their own man?”

  “It looks that way, sir.”

  “Unless the shuttle they dispatched was some kind of drone,” Hart suggested. “A decoy to distract Mr. Kirk.”

  April ran his finger along his lower lip. “That,” he murmured thoughtfully, “or it’s a sacrifice to get to our top officers.”

  Drake drew his shoulders in. “Mighty unsavory both ways.”

  “They’ve hit the planetoid twice so far, sir,” Florida finished. “Their ship is more maneuverable and they slipped by us.”

  “Twice?” April looked at him again, his brow furrowing under the bandage. “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know, but Mr. Reed had us move in and fire a blanket pattern with what weapons power we’ve got. Until the warp engines are at least partly restored, we’re limited on firepower. Short-range sensors are operational again, though. I think we hurt them, because they’ve been trying to keep their distance for the last few minutes.”

  “You suppose they’ll hit again?”

  April leaned forward. “Why would they fire more than once? I can only imagine it’s because they’re not able to ascertain whether or not they were successful the first time.”

  Drake folded his arms and grinned his infectious grin, proud of himself for having come to the same conclusion earlier. “That George of ours may still be kicking, eh,
sir?”

  April blew out a nervous sigh, then clamped his lips tight. He knew he didn’t have a real sense for battle, no killer instinct to help him make decisions or project what the repercussions might be if he did this or did that.

  “Captain, they’re moving in!”

  Carlos Florida’s warning cry was cut off by a bolt of energy from the Romulan ship that struck the starship like a hard punch. The ship rocked. A boom racked the bridge. Everyone scrambled to stay on their feet as the bird-of-prey slanted by and fell out of forward sensor range.

  “Good God!” April gasped. “Was that them?” He collected himself. “How can a ship that size pack that kind of wallop! My God!”

  Panting, Drake hauled himself back up to a functional level. “A tugboat, sir. All power. No quarter.”

  “Good God . . . I’d never have guessed!”

  “They count on that, sir.”

  “Weapons status?”

  “Port weapons show ready at seventy-two percent efficiency,” Florida read out. “Starboard weapons ready sixty percent. All weapons amidships show ready at forty-three percent.”

  From the captain’s seat, there was silence now. Florida looked around, but Captain April was simply gazing out at alien space and at the Romulan ship as it veered around and repositioned itself at a great distance.

  Drake approached the command chair and quietly suggested, “We have a strong ship, sir. Stronger than theirs. Time to use it, eh?”

  April glanced at him. “I hesitate to do that.”

  Drake nodded. “Sir,” he said then, very slowly, “as far as we know, they’ve killed George.”

  Hearing it said aloud changed April’s expression. “Yes . . .” he whispered, and a rare anger rose. The smile lines around his eyes couldn’t work with the unaccustomed hardness that touched his features now. “I don’t understand this,” he murmured. “We’ve made it plain that we don’t want trouble. We’ve told them we’re only here because of a malfunction, that we’re doing everything possible to leave their space peacefully. Why are they treating us this way?”

  Drake watched the captain and felt helpless sympathy rise in his chest. He thought of George and what George would say, but there was no way to explain that not everyone was Mahatma Gandhi in a sweater. Some people, some races, just found it impossible to trust others.

  “It’s a dangerous galaxy, Captain,” he said solemnly. “Sometimes we have to be dangerous back.”

  For several moments, April simply gazed into space. There was a miserable truth in what George had been trying to teach him. The Federation would be little use to its members if it had strength but no courage to use it. If he allowed the starship to be taken, then nothing he’d dreamed of for her could ever take place.

  He drew a long breath.

  Grimly he said, “Yes. All right. Drake, your advice?”

  Drake snapped around. “Me, sir? You’re asking me, sir?”

  With a tolerant scowl, April nodded. “Yes, you. Make a suggestion.”

  “How about we let them pass and strike at their engines as they go by?”

  April leaned toward him. “I’m sorry, say that again?”

  “Strike the engines from aft as they go by.”

  “Ah, I see. Debilitating but humane.”

  “Brilliant, sir. My compliments.”

  April straightened in his chair. “All right, then. All hands, battle stations.” He said it so quietly, and to a bridge full of nonmilitary types, that it took several seconds before anyone thought to key in the ship’s automatic battle-ready sequences and signal the red alert.

  The captain rubbed the sweat from the palms of his hands and said, “Carlos, do whatever it takes to get between that ship and the planet. We’re going in.”

  • • •

  The stench of burning fur filled the air. T’Cael watched, not commenting, as Kirk lowered his weapon slightly to look at the sixth animal he’d had to gun down. The weapon’s power wouldn’t last forever, and the carnivores were still coming.

  “Drake, you orangutan, get that ship over here,” Kirk grumbled as he dug another—the last—power pack out of his kit. He wasn’t going to think about how much energy it took to cut through the hides of these beasts—he could’ve taken out a small army with what he’d used so far on just six of them.

  T’Cael could hear them coming nearer, claws scraping on the rocks just over the cleft where he and Kirk were hiding. The carnivores’ pack strategy had worked all too well. He didn’t know if Kirk could hear the animals yet—they were very quiet about their stalking—so he said nothing. As he mentally prepared himself for death, he discovered an odd sympathy in himself for his human companion, who refused to give up. He had noticed that as Kirk realized his energy packs were running out, he had given up trying to kill the animals outright and instead had started to go for the eyes. Apparently he hoped to injure them enough that they would lose their sense of purpose. A risky tactic, since the beasts went wild in their pain and loss of direction. The last one had thrown itself against the rocks until it collapsed, but its thrashing had nearly taken both men with it.

  “We’ve got to move,” Kirk said.

  T’Cael was silent, knowing Kirk wouldn’t want to hear what he had to say. The fight was wasteful. Yet it made him curious. Very alien, this tenacity in the face of hopelessness. Humans didn’t have the Rihannsu sense of discipline, and with discipline comes a point of acceptance, a time to give in to the inevitable. Kirk had none of that. Perhaps, for them, this unshakable stubbornness had replaced it and could actually work in its place.

  A smile touched t’Cael’s lips as he imagined arguing the point with the smug academicians who saw everything non-Rihannsu as inferior. He thrived on such argument; he would miss it even more than life.

  The animals hunting them knew nothing of such philosophy. All they knew were the instincts of the past. And something in the instinctive strategy said this was the time to move in.

  From both sides of the cleft, massive wolfish faces, fenced with those dense teeth and dripping with saliva, appeared and rose over the rocks.

  Kirk aimed arbitrarily at one of them and fired; meanwhile several other beasts crawled up and over. To one side, t’Cael remained predictably silent, though he couldn’t help pressing tightly up against the cliff as the animals closed in.

  T’Cael suddenly wished he could comfort Kirk somehow; surely death would be very hard for the human to accept if he continued to fight. This was the ultimate agony of refusing to give up—being forced to.

  A tiny beeping sound surfaced above the grinding of teeth and the sound of animal breathing. T’Cael glanced around—it hadn’t been his personal warning system. Beside him, Kirk froze. The beep came again.

  All at once Kirk scrambled to dig out his communication device and in his panic almost dropped it. Somehow he got the instrument into his hand and snapped up the antenna grid.

  Then t’Cael was being abruptly dragged up. Why? Did Kirk want him to start fighting too? There was nowhere to run, and there was no chance of having a rescue ship dispatched in the next few seconds, for seconds was surely all they had left. As t’Cael drew back, Kirk got a handful of blue jacket, but it was enough to lever t’Cael to his feet. The communicator came up.

  Kirk took a short breath. “Emergency energize! Now!”

  “Kirk, what are you doing?” T’Cael tried to pull away, confusion tangling his features. “Kirk!”

  The nearest beast raised its paw for a killing strike. The communicator flew out of Kirk’s hand.

  “Kirk!”

  T’Cael heard his own voice wobble. The light around him faded. Had he been struck? Was this death, finally? He had expected to have to control much more pain than this.

  Suddenly t’Cael fell backward to bump a wall. Not rock—this wall had a slight give, and the light here was different. Artificial. No shadows. Kirk still had a grip on him, and obviously wasn’t surprised by the sudden change of scene.

  The
human turned toward the young blond man in front of them. “Wood! Notify the bridge—”

  But Wood wasn’t in a condition to notify anybody. His boyish face was ghost white, his mouth open only slightly wider than his eyes, and he was staring past them with an expression of horror. For an instant, t’Cael wondered if his appearance could possibly be that startling.

  Kirk stared back, then realized. He closed his own eyes for a terrible instant and whispered, “Oh, shit—”

  Kirk whirled around, raising his hand-cannon once again.

  T’Cael smelled it then—the heavy, soaked stink of moist fur. He turned, and found himself face to face with a wall of teeth.

  The transportation effect had dazed the animal, but their grace period didn’t last long. By the time Kirk swung around and raised his weapon, the merciless claws were already coming down at him.

  Kirk yelled. Instinctively he used his gun hand to protect his face, and the claws knocked the cannon from his grip. It clattered across the deck as Kirk hit the floor on his injured left side and was stunned for an instant.

  That instant was a nightmare.

  A vast black form, smelling of dirty fur and clinging moss, spread itself in the air above Kirk. There was a guttural snarl, and the beast landed in the center of the room, growling and snorting in terror and confusion. As it skittered into the wall near the door panel, the door hissed open. The animal flinched, its claws scratching at the deck, and it made for the open corridor. At his feet, t’Cael saw Kirk roll over in time to see the door panel close again, and in the last glimpse of the corridor they saw a red eye glance back at them.

  “Hell!” Kirk vaulted from the platform to the control island in one leap. “That’s all we need! A goddamned werewolf loose on board—where’s the intercom! Where’s the intercom!”

  Wood was still in shock, t’Cael noticed, but Kirk reached over the console and yanked his collar. “The intercom!”

  The boy blinked, then aimed a trembling finger at a switch.

  Kirk hammered the switch. “Attention! This is the first officer. Intruder alert! Clear the corridors! There’s an alien animal loose on the ship. Repeat—intruder alert! Clear all corridors! Lock yourselves in until further notice!” He switched off when he realized he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Nothing that would help, anyway. “Damn it all . . .” he muttered, and looked back at the transporter platform.