“More cowardly, you mean. Talking and debating endlessly as an excuse not to strike!” Grun turned to his subordinate. “Remv, tell me. Could this be just random noise?”
Remv quailed at the fire in his voice. “No, Force Leader! I know the pattern! It is artificial, upon my life!”
Grun clapped his shoulder. “Good hunter.”
Dral sneered. “He sees what you command him to see! All that proves is that he fears you!”
The commander turned to face his subordinate, looming over him. “And you do not, Dral?”
“No!” Dral stepped back. “You wish me to act? Then I will act. Force Leader Grun, you are a hyperaggressive fool whose obsessions have blinded you. You are defying a direct order based on a delusion! You are no longer fit to lead this pack!” He drew his disruptor. “And so it falls to me to take over your—”
Dral broke off, silenced by the realization that he had been a complete idiot. At least, that was how Grun liked to interpret it. Perhaps the second had realized nothing. But as usual, his insistence on talking rather than simply acting had doomed him—as had his preference for technologically advanced weapons over simple, honest blades. He had left Grun plenty of time to reach the hidden button in his gauntlet that set off the concealed charge in Dral’s disruptor. The shaped detonation had blown out backward and turned the rear half of the disruptor into shrapnel, which drove itself clear through Dral’s body armor and into his heart.
“Now then,” Grun said to his horrified crew, nonchalantly resting a leg atop Dral’s twitching frame as the former second bled to death. “Where were we? Oh, yes. Tell the third cluster ship to set course for the Ranth sector. The rest of us will rendezvous with them when our mission is completed.” He glanced down at Dral, meeting his eyes, where a faint spark of life still lingered. “Is that a satisfactory compromise, Second? Surely we do not need all three ships now that we know where our quarry lies. Not when we hold the high ground.”
Dral expressed his approval by finally dying.
“Good! Then it’s settled.” He turned to his security officer. “Rhuld. You are now promoted to second. Have your predecessor escorted out of the command pod.”
Rhuld gave a toothy smile of gratitude and approval. “Yes, Force Leader,” he said. “Shall I ready the ships for atmospheric entry?”
“Your enthusiasm is commendable, Rhuld, but there’s no hurry. We know they’re down there, but they have plenty of room to hide. Let’s send down a scouting party in a pilot vessel first—take the lay of the land. Once we’ve got their exact position, we can take them out with an economical strike.”
“Yes, Force Leader. I am yours to command.”
He liked the way that sounded. I should’ve killed Dral weeks ago.
* * *
“Oh, depths,” Linar cursed as she saw the single Dassik cluster ship enter warp, leaving the other two behind. “I really thought that would work.”
She turned to see Choda patting the flank of “Mister Hyde,” as Balok had taken to calling his Dassik simulacrum ever since Ambassador Bailey had come aboard the Fesarius. “Don’t fault our oversized friend here for his performance. We programmed the voice accurately from the signal intercepts the Jesoliar relayed. And the ‘interference’ should have kept them from getting a good look, same as always.”
“It’s not the same,” Linar reminded the Fesarius’s lead engineer. “We’ve never had to use him to fool actual Dassik before.” Balok’s usual approach to hide the puppet’s imperfections was to feign a dense, roiling atmosphere, which added to the sense of alienness and mystery, at least with outsiders who hailed from standard oxygen environments. But the Dassik knew perfectly well that their kind breathed air as clear as the Linnik’s, requiring the use of the signal interference dodge instead. Although Linar reflected that it could have been worse. If “Hyde” had been aboard Balok’s pilot vessel when he had fled days before, they would not have been able to attempt this deception. She wondered whether Balok had actually planned for this contingency or if it had simply been a lucky outcome of his erratic decision-making. With Balok, it was often hard to tell.
“But it must have worked,” Choda pointed out, “or none of them would have left. And they’d probably be looking for us now.” The Fesarius was staying safely out of sight in orbit of a dwarf planet in the outer Oort cloud of Cherela’s system, running dark to blend in with the comets and planetesimals out here. The sheer volume of the cloud was enough to minimize the chance of a searching ship coming across them, unless that ship extrapolated the vector of the fake transmission they had sent.
Linar shook her hairless head. “Whatever the reason, Choda, we’ve failed to lure the Dassik away from Cherela. I doubt any more staged orders will do the trick, and Dassik aren’t the sort to respond to distress calls.”
The science head, young Almis, came over from his sensor monitor station. “What worries me,” he told his fellow executive officers, “is the timing. It’s hard to get clear readings from this distance, but something happened a short while ago to generate a neutrino burst from Cherela.”
“Cherela itself?” Linar asked. “Not the sun?”
“From the planet,” Almis confirmed. “Which suggests that some kind of high-energy event has happened involving the Web.”
“Or the Enterprise,” Choda said. The Dassik’s intership communications had made it clear that the humans’ starship had reached this system and disappeared around Cherela, suggesting that it had found its way down to the Web. That in itself was disturbing enough. For all of Ambassador Bailey’s agreeable qualities, his people were still large, aggressive, and more inquisitive than was good for the First. What if, in their recklessness, they had done something to tip off the Dassik to the secret Cherela’s clouds had hidden for millennia?
Linar wished she could send a signal home and ask what was happening. But it was a fleeting impulse. Staying low and quiet to avoid detection was second nature to her. That she had even considered the possibility was proof that she’d been too influenced by Balok and his intrepid ways. Curse that tranya-addled fool, she thought with long-suffering affection.
But where was Balok? It was natural enough that he’d fled the battle; that was the preferred reaction of any Linnik, given the chance. But instead of coming back, he’d simply vanished—and he’d apparently sent a transmission to the Enterprise, one that had led them to Cherela, for reasons Linar could hardly fathom. Her frustration with the commander had never been so acute. He was supposed to save his deceptions for outsiders, not his own crew! What madness had possessed him?
All Linar could do was wait. If Balok had sent the Enterprise here, it stood to reason that he would come himself, sooner or later. She just hoped that, when and if he arrived, he would not find himself at the mercy of the Dassik cluster ships. Something as small and fast as a pilot vessel might be able to slip past them using Cherela’s bulk and its radiation field for concealment—so long as they stayed together rather than splitting into cells. But if he pulled off a stealth approach to Cherela, then the Fesarius might never detect him, given his evident lack of interest in contacting his own crew.
It made no sense to Linar. There was nothing Balok loved more than the Fesarius. This orbship was his home, even more than Cherela. What could possibly be urgent enough to transcend that?
* * *
“Bailey will be fine,” McCoy reported to Kirk when he could finally get away to check in on sickbay. “The shrapnel didn’t penetrate too deep, and the burns are minor. And I’ve already released Anne Nored—she suffered only mild smoke inhalation and some muscle strains. Determined girl, that one.”
“I’ll remember that,” Kirk said. Nored was a fairly recent transfer to the ship, and this was the first time she had really been tested in the field. He was glad to know she had what it took. The way things stood, he would take his successes where he could get them.
Bailey sat up to greet Kirk as he entered the recovery ward. “Captain.”
“I’m glad to see you’re recovering, Lieutenant. Rahda asked me to pass along her thanks.”
Bailey nodded. “I was glad to help, sir. What’s our status?”
He delivered the depressing litany. “We’re in bad shape, I’m afraid. We blew the starboard impulse manifolds and all but two dilithium circuits. The inertial dampers are burned out along with the tractor emitters. Deflectors are at minimum power. The lightning fused the port nacelle intercoolers, and a chunk of debris damaged the starboard Bussard intake.”
“I see,” Bailey said after a moment. “So we have no warp drive, no impulse power, and hardly any shields?”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning if we try to leave this place, the Dassik will make short work of us.”
“In our current state, we could barely get out of the atmosphere.”
“How many were lost in the module collapse?”
“From our crew, nobody, thank heavens. From the Web, it’s upward of thirty-eight hundred.” He tried not to make it sound like just a number. It was obscene to reduce so many sapient lives, so many unique personalities and memories and aspirations and dreams, to a mere statistic. They were the lives James Kirk had failed to save . . . lives he might even have cost. But there was no way to put into words what that meant to him. All he had was the hideous inadequacy of arithmetic.
Bailey closed his eyes in acknowledgment of the loss. It was a while before he spoke again. “What . . . what’s the reaction from the First?”
“Chaotic. They’re preoccupied right now with the emergency. They have to relocate all the refugees, and they’re still working to stabilize the Web. The loss of a module has imbalanced the system, created new stresses, and they’re working to restore the balance. They’re afraid that if the Web’s equilibrium is too badly compromised, they won’t be able to cancel their thermal and atmospheric signatures, leaving them detectable from space. And that would bring the Dassik down for sure.”
“Is there anything we can do to help, sir?”
Kirk winced at his plaintive expression, then let out a heavy sigh. “They’ve rejected our offers of assistance. They don’t want us anywhere near their systems. We’re floating in open atmosphere now, the calmest air we can find, thousands of kilometers from the nearest module.” He took a breath. “Next time they contact us, it’ll probably be to demand my surrender for trial.”
Bailey stared. “You, sir? No. No, Captain, it was my idea to interface our systems. This whole thing . . .” He took several sharp breaths, almost gasps, as the weight of his words sank in. “This whole thing is my fault. All those people . . .”
“No, Lieutenant. The decision was—”
Just then, the red alert klaxon sounded. Kirk ran to the wall and hit the intercom. “Kirk to bridge. Report.”
“Spock here, Captain. The First have sent an atmospheric craft. They are attempting to board the Enterprise.”
“I’m on my way.” He ran from sickbay, with Bailey close behind, ignoring McCoy’s protests. Kirk felt the deck shudder beneath his feet. Flipping open his communicator, he said, “Kirk to bridge. Are we under fire?”
“Affirmative. They attempted to override our deflectors again, but our countermeasures were effective.” The deck trembled again. “They are now resorting to cruder methods.”
“Shield status?”
Scott’s voice came on the channel. “Weak, Captain. Barely enough to stop a transporter beam, let alone a weapon. We’re doin’ all we can to boost it, but they won’t hold long at this rate.”
“Correction, Mister Scott,” Spock said. “Their transporters are more powerful than anticipated. The beams are breaking through now. Multiple parties, Captain, including one near your—”
Spock’s voice broke off as the sound of weapons fire came over the channel. Kirk ran faster, but as he rounded the corner toward the turbolift, he saw a security team at the next intersection, pinned down in a firefight. Ensign Zhang spotted him and Bailey and called, “Sirs, stay down!”
Kirk drew his own phaser and hugged the wall, sidling over to the guard’s side. “How many?” he asked her.
“Six of them. Stun weapons, but powerful ones.” The bronze-skinned ensign tilted her head to indicate Crewman Konaka, who lay unconscious with a nasty burn on his red tunic. Gilbert and al-Rashid had dragged him to safety on the other side of the intersection.
“Give Bailey a weapon,” Kirk ordered.
Gilbert tossed a phaser to the lieutenant, who held it warily. “I don’t want to fight them, sir. Now, least of all.”
“Neither do I, Lieutenant, but they’ve boarded my ship—again. If we have to fight, you need to be ready.”
Bailey grimaced. “All right,” he finally said, but he took care to ensure his phaser was on light stun.
Kirk peeked around the corridor. The boarding party was the usual eclectic mix of Firsts, and once again, Nisu was in the lead. That meant they probably knew he wasn’t on the bridge.
The bridge. He raised his communicator again. “Spock, are you there?”
“Apologies, sir,” Spock’s voice came over the continuing weapons fire. “It was necessary to find a more protected position.”
“Good thinking. I have a plan to deal with this.”
“Captain Kirk!” It was Nisu’s voice calling out. “I know you’re there. Order your people to stand down!”
“You’ve illegally boarded my ship, Nisu!” he called back. “If you stand down, then we can talk!”
“You are not the wronged party here, Kirk! In the name of the Council of the First, I hereby order you, James Kirk, to surrender to lawful arrest! You are to be tried for your acts of this day. If you turn yourself in, we will leave your ship and crew unharmed.”
Zhang hefted her phaser. “Don’t worry, Captain. We won’t let them take you.” She readied herself to jump out into the corridor.
But Kirk touched her shoulder with his fingertips. “Stand down, Ensign. Everyone, stand down!” he repeated more loudly.
“Captain, what are you—”
“I mean it, Spock!” He took a deep breath, released it. “Nisu! Tell your forces to stand down, and I’ll turn myself over!”
A moment later, the sounds of weapons fire halted. “It is done,” Nisu said.
“I’m coming out.” He stepped forward slowly, hands raised, and once he was in view, he knelt to place his phaser on the ground. He gestured to the security team to fall back. Down the corridor, Nisu and her people moved forward gingerly. “You promise my crew won’t be harmed?”
“They were only following your orders,” the chief protector said. “And many of them acted commendably to save lives.” At least the contempt she radiated was reserved for Kirk alone.
By the time Nisu’s protectors pulled back his arms to cuff him, Spock had arrived in the corridor. “Spock, just in time.”
“Captain.” The Vulcan turned to the Kisaja. “Nisu, this is unnecessary. I implore you to reconsider.”
“I cannot do that, Spock. This is greater than either of us. The safety of our home has been threatened. That overrides all other considerations.”
“If Captain Kirk believed that,” Spock countered, “then we would still be fighting you. We would never have risked our ship to come to your aid in the first place.”
“Spock,” Kirk said. “They’re within their rights. I made a bad call. I’m not going to hide from the consequences.”
Spock stared at him. “Jim . . .”
“You have the conn, Mister Spock. Keep my crew safe.”
* * *
Kirk was taken back to the cliff-top government building in the Syletir world module, but this time there was no grand tour. As he was led in restraints along the skywalk between the hangar and the admi
nistration tower, he saw crowds of Linnik, Bogosrin, Fiilestii, and others gathered to watch, held back by cordons and security personnel. They shouted and hissed at him as he and his escorts went past, and while there were too many overlapping voices for his translator to parse clearly, he picked up enough. They blamed him, blamed his crew, for the destruction of the Fiilestii module. Some cursed him for bringing the Dassik, screaming that it would surely lead to the destruction of the Web.
Kirk had heard Spock and Uhura’s report about the xenophobic reaction they had received in the Linnik warren. It was not the only such incident his crew had reported in their exploration of Cherela’s world modules. But such reactions had been infrequent, and he had dismissed them as anomalies—until now. The captain realized that he had been so drawn to Triumvir Aranow’s fascination with space that it had blinded him to the other Firsts’ fear of it. Out there, the Dassik and other predators had devastated their worlds, their kinfolk, and it was only by retreating here beneath the clouds that they had survived. Their dread of the destroyers had been so entrenched in their psyches that the Dassik had remained their default bogeymen for countless generations, the face of fear itself to this very day. And now the real Dassik loomed overhead, searching for them, one lucky break from finding them and inflicting their ancient horrors once again. That fear must have been lingering below the surface of all the friendly Firsts his crew had met. As a basically decent people who took pride in the safe refuge their home offered, most of the Firsts had resisted that fear and tried to be welcoming. But all it had taken was one tragic incident in which outsiders had been implicated to make that free-floating fear coalesce into open xenophobia. It was a pattern all too familiar from human history, Kirk reflected.
Once inside the administration tower, Nisu unceremoniously escorted him to a meeting chamber adjacent to the triumvirs’ situation room and left him there under guard to await their convenience. It was a long wait, and Kirk’s attempts to make conversation with the protectors were met only with icy silence. They wouldn’t even meet his eyes. Kirk tried not to fidget; it seemed disrespectful under the circumstances. But he had never been good at sitting still.
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