screamed in his ear. "We can't get inside! Call
it off!"
"Never!" Racher shrieked back, spitting
flame across the distance, feeling his own heat and power
to the exclusion of all else. A lick of flame
caught Mitchell's abandoned snowmobile,
incinerating it in a thunderous fireball that rocked the
pack ice and the great ship.
The conning tower shuddered under the impact.
Melody had barely slammed the hatch shut
behind Kirk when the blast sent her sprawling the
full length of the stairs this time, right
into Gary Mitchell's waiting arms.
"Some reception committee!" Mitchell grinned,
his humor restored now that he was inside. "Can I
play?"
"Civilians!" Melody spat, dismissing him,
and Kirk, who stood wringing his hands (with fear, she
thought),
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
lurched over to where Jason was getting readouts on
blast damage.
"You all right?" Jason grabbed Melody,
concerned.
"Been better!" she remarked, feeling around her
teeth with the tip of her tongue. "Think I bit my
tongue. Look at us, will you, Jason tennis
togs and stocking feet! Some defenseteam! How
bad?"
Nyere showed her the readout. "Exterior stress
fractures and partial bulkhead rupture.
We'll know the next time we try to go under."
Melody meanwhile was scanning the body
readings on the infrared, memorising where they were
inside the buildings. She took Jason's
as-yet-unfired laser rifle from him without
resistance.
"Time we put a stop to this!" she declared, bolting
the stairs to the tower with eight generations of Alabama
marksmen behind her.
Laserallyifles make very little sound. Melody
picked off three of Racher's dozen before they knew
what hit them. One was the lieutenant who had
pleaded for retreat. He fell inches from his leader,
who never turned to look. The others, recognising
futility at last, wheeled and ran for the
snowmobiles.
Only Racher remained, his metal-and-plastic
body, lizard-cold, yielding no heat reading on
infrared. In full awareness of a cause lost, he
did not relent. Revving the flamer to its highest
setting, he leaped into the clear, charging the great ship
alone, spitting flame, admixture of dragon and
perverse Quixote, howling vengeance like some reborn
Teutonic berserker.
Whatever else Racher was, he was part of the
diversity of creation. His weapon, human-made,
fueled not by vengeance but only napalm, proved the
less invincible. Its semisolid fuel, rendered
too solid in subzero air, jammed in the feeder
tube and began to drip onto Racher's
arctic fatigues, saturating them. Racher's
destiny came in a howling column of flame,
beacon in a frozen hell, transmogrifying
whatever 350
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
might have been human in him into a charred lifeless
husk toppling under its own weight, smoking feebly
in the snow and stolid starlight.
"They are in retreat, sub!" Melody
reported, scanning the fleeing snowmobiles from the
helm. The ultimate irony of Racher's
incendiary end was that no one saw it. "Request
permission to have a look around, see if they left
any wounded."
She knew the three she'd dispatched were dead she
never missed but she had to
somehow goad Jason out of the well of weariness in
which he was in danger of drowning.
"All right, dammit," he breathed now. "Let
me at least get my boots on. Kirk, how'd you
and your friend like a breath of air?"
"So fill me in, James," Mitchell said out
of the side of his mouth as Sawyer none too subtly
led them out onto the ice at gunpoint. "What have
I missed? What fun times have you and the
lady psychiatrist been having in my absence?"
"You'll be briefed," Kirk mouthed back,
eyeing Melody over his shoulder. "As soon as you
tell me what the hell you're doing here against
orders."
"Oh, we-cl . . ."
Kirk understood completely why Jason wanted
them out here for the body count; if he were in command, he'd
have done the same kept the unknown quantities out in
the open and away from the Vulcans, seen if they
reacted with anything like recognition to the bodies in the
buildings, or if there was anything on the dead
to connect them with the living. Then, too, if there were any
live ones still lurking in the vicinity, Kirk and
Mitchell would do for cover.
"No ID on the three inside," Melody
reported. "But the weapons were Ground
Forces-issue."
"Doesn't necessarily mean what you're
thinking,
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Sawyer," Jason grunted, watching a pale
newborn sun flush the ice at his feet from blue
to pink. A heaping yellow-grey storm
front on the opposite horizon, promising
blizzards, moved in on them with ominous speed.
"Lot of terrorist splinter groups have access
to GF hardware his
"Sold to them by GF regulars looking to foment
insurrection and keep themselves in business. It's an
old trick, and one I wouldn't put past that tin-star
general who was here."
"Sawyer, conspiracy theories are as old as was
Jason began, but Jim Kirk saw an
opportunity and seized it.
"Excuse me, Captain, but maybe it's not so
far- fetched," he offered. "Who else would know that
you're out here with the Vulcans, without your crew, and on
radio silence? Would it be the first time Ground Forces
acted ahead of the council's decision?"
Melody was nodding sagaciously, but Jason had
had enough.
"Kirk, do me a favor?" His voice was
pained. "Shut up!"
Kirk did, but not before planting the seed of doubt
in Nyere's mind.
"Wait'll you see what else I found,"
Melody said, leading them across the ice to where
Racher's smoldering remains left an
ugly smear of ash against snow and ice melt. "I
hear tell GF is doing android research. You
tell me what you make of that, Captain suh."
Together the four of them examined the mass of burned
flesh and plastic fused and melting into charred metal.
"Never mind this!" Nyere looked ill. He'd
been crouched over the carcass, got to his feet
now, listening. "Tell me what the hell you make of
that!"
"Chopper, sub," Melody confirmed, picking the
uneven eggbeater sound out of the silence and a sudden
vicious wind coming in ahead of the storm front. "Question
is, whose?"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Back inside!" Jason ordered her against the
wind. "Make sure the others are secured. Swing
>
the tower light around if that chopper comes in; that
storm's going to make it darker than midnight in a
minute."
"SuhI" Sawyer was running.
The helicopter Jason heard was only the lead
chopper in a convoy. Further out toward the coast, before
the sun was up, the inhabitants of two snowbound
snowmobiles had watched them go over.
"No markings," Noir observed, scooping snow
off the roof of the second mobile while Kaze
checked the runners. "Could be anybody."
"Too many of them," Red said, hunched inside her
parka. "It's heating up. I'm for getting out."
She'd become the unofficial spokesperson for the
traveling circus following Easter's unofficial
abdication. Easter hadn't moved from the driver's
seat of his snowmobile throughout the long arctic night,
sat singing antiquated Sinn Fein marching songs
until even Aghan had gotten disgusted and scrambled
out.
"His brain's froze," was the November
terrorist's cheery opinion. "Not that it wasn't
always stuck between gears. His fuel's gone, leaked out
overnight. He's off his head. I say we leave
him."
"We could've blasted that guy that came through last
night!" Red spat. "If that idiot hadn't
stopped us. Took his mobile, made it to the
rendezvous."
Aghan shrugged. "It's all over now, with or
without us. Racher's probably dead. Crazy to go
up against a ship that size alone."
"It was your idea, cockroach!" Red
reminded him, stamping her feet on the ice.
Several more choppers went by overhead. "Enough! It's
running?" she yelled to Noir, who was back
inside the mobile. Noir nodded. "Good!
Unload the hardware. We'll give it to Easter
to keep him warm."
The motley foursome unloaded the back of the
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
second mobile, toted rocket launchers and
grenades and vaporisers and the neutron cannon
into the back of Easter's vehicle. Their supplier
could always get them more; they could travel lighter without
them. Throughout this brilliant piece of deduction the
sullen Provo didn't move, sat with his eyes
glazed staring through the windshield, singing his
anachronistic songs.
"Now we all fit!" Red announced as the
foursome squeezed back into the second
snowmobile. "We go home. Anyone asks,
we tell them we're journalists looking for
spacemen. Only there aren't any."
They were gone in a roar and a skidding of runners,
back in the direction the choppers had come, heading for the
coast and a way out.
Aghan's assessment was correct. Easter's
brain was frozen, partly by paralyzing cold, partly
by paralysing failure. He should have captured last
night's cruising tourist, blown his brains out,
taken his vehicle. He should have beaten Racher to the
rendezvous and ambushed him. He should have captured the
spacemen single-handed, or died in a blaze of heat
and light.
Instead he sat paralysed, living out the death he
feared most.
""A nation once again . . ." was Easter
crooned hopelessly, his eyes frozen on nothingness,
his rancid breath the only heat source, fogging the
windshield. The numbness crept up past his
knees, deceptively warm. ""And Ireland long
a-promised be, A nation once again . . .""
"We've lost "em," the lead chopper's pilot
told her VIP passenger as they emerged from the
cloud cover without their unwanted escort and roared in
ahead of the storm, swooping down like an oversize
grasshopper on the three figures transfixed
on the Ice.
From inside the ship, Melody nailed the chopper
with the tower light. Jason, watching it loom on him,
gripped his weapon and wondered if maybe
Melody
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
and Kirk were right, and this whole thing had been
orchestrated to eliminate the Vulcans and blame it
onuntraceable terrorists. He kept Kirk and
Mitchell well out in front of him for cover; the
laser rifle rose slowly in his hand.
The chopper pilot had a voice augmenter.
"Hold your fire, Jason. I'm a friendly!"
Jason had to laugh, recognised Raven
Takes-theBow, Aeroationav Aux South's ace
pilot.
"Raven!" he shouted, waving both arms to let
Melody know it was okay. "What the hell are you
doing here?"
"Can't stop to chat, Jace. Got a VIP
to unload and a passer of reporters on my tail."
"Reporters?" Jason repeated. Raven was still
hovering; could do it for hours, she was that good. "Come
down here and quit blowing my hair
around!"
The chopper lowered ponderously onto the ice and
cut her motor to half. A solitary figure in
a dark coat and watchcap stepped
uncertainly over the pontoons to confront Jim
Kirk, whose face lit up like the sun coming out from behind
a cloud. Of all the improbable chimera this old
Earth had to offer
"Spock!"
Chapter Ten
'LSPOCK! BEIWEEN THE wind, the chopper's
noise and sheer disbelief, Jim Kirk could
barely draw breath to speak. "I can't tell you;
I never expected to see you again! Certainly not
here."
"Indeed, Captain. I might say the same of
you."
"We have to talk!" Kirk shouted. "Captain
Nyere, shouldn't we go inside? The storm his
"Hold your water a minute, Kirk!" Nyere
shouted back; he was leaning inside the chopper to talk
to Raven. "Who is this guy? And what reporters?"
Raven shrugged. "He's from the Peace
Fellowship. Reporterstre from everywhere. Had
to let 'em through. Freedom of Information Act, or
some such. Best you take your guest aboard and maybe
roll up the shutters for a few days. Law says
we have to bring 'em in here, but no law says
you have to bring 'em aboard."
"There's one more thing!" Jason shouted, and he
told her about the terrorist raid, the three dead
inside the buildings, the one in the snow. "Tell
Command. Someone's going to have to come in and get them out of
here."
"Not till this blows over." Raven nodded in the
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
direction of the storm front. The wind had gone from
freight-train roar to banshee howl, and stinging sheets
of sleet threatened the rotors. "tilde Give the
reporters something to work on. Have to go."
Jason had barely stepped over the pontoons
before she lifted off, wheeling around the worst of the
front and heading back with a cheery wave. Nyere led
his charges inside.
First Mate Melody Sawyer was not on the
bridge where she should have been.
Maybe it had to do with her killing three people, something
she'd on
ly had to do once before, and then because Ja
tilde n's life depended o.. it; Jason
alone knew how soft she was beneath the John Wayne
exterior. Maybe it had to do with conspiracy
theories and the arrival of yet another of
Kirk's mysterious friends, onthe heels of a
terrorist attack and in a VIP helicopter no
less. Maybe it had to do with her not sleeping well
since she'd furst set eyes on a Vulcan, and
not sleeping at all within the past twenty-four hours.
Maybe it had to do with nothing more than the descrambled
message still beeping through on the comm screen
Council's decision expected within the hour. Stand
by.
Melody wasn't supposed to know Jason's
Priority One access code. Obviously
she'd known enough of it to descramble the message, which had
flung her into action without bothering to acknowledge it.
Jason acknowledged by reflex, thinking: What
action?
"Oh, dear Godl" he breathed, seeing the
weapons locker open, the marksman's laser rifle
replaced, his. small hand pistol gone.
"Kirk, you and your people stay here.",
Jim Kirk had sized up the situation at the
same time Nyere did. Maybe it was having most of
his crew back 357
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
that galvanised him, but this time Kirk wasn't
taking no for an answer.
"Melody said she'd kill the Vulcans if she
had to, to keep you clear!" He gripped the big
man's shoulders, shook him hard. "You've got
to let us help. If there were time, I'd tell you who
and what we are his
"There's no time!" Jason roared, flinging Kirk
back to where Mitchell had to grab him.
Footsteps made them all turn. Elizabeth
Dehner came up to the bridge, unaware of any
new crisis.
"Melody said Jim was looking for me," she ex-
plained, saw Mitchell and Spock, stopped in her
tracks. ""I -- 97
"Where is Sawyer now?" Jason demanded,
wild- eyed, voice shaking. Unthinking, he
slipped a second laser pistol into his belt,
then stopped, put it back inside the locker,
slammed it shut. Dear God, was this what it came
down to: friend against friend for the sake of strangers and a
difference of opinion?
"She said she was going to the infirmary to give the
others the All-Clear," Dehner said, totally
bewildered.
"Captain," Jim Kirk began.
"No, Kirk," Jason said. "My
ship. My
responsibility."
Strangers from the Sky Page 40