STAR TREK: TOS #85 - My Brother's Keeper, Book One - Republic

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “You heard what Bintor told me,” the lieutenant declared. “As far as he’s concerned, we’re just window dressing.”

  “Hey, it’s no problem at all,” said the underclassman, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “I understand the street across from the north wall is nice this time of year.”

  And he left in the Heir’tza’s wake.

  Kirk bit his lip. Damn him, he thought.

  “Mitchell’s not going to make this easy for you,” Phelana noted.

  “I guess not,” the lieutenant said.

  Mitchell stood alongside his fellow cadets on a narrow street opposite the ancient bakery. Throngs of mixed Heir’tza and Heir’och flowed past them like a [176] great, radiant river, flashing one garish color after another in the glare of the midmorning sunlight.

  “Can you tell the difference between the factions?” asked Phelana.

  Kirk shook his head. “I doubt the Heiren can tell the difference themselves right now.”

  Mitchell had to go along with that view. After all, these people were one race, one species, with a common heritage and common ancestors. Only their politics had split them in half.

  Just as Kirk’s politics had split his friendship with Mitchell in half. But the underclassman didn’t make that comparison out loud. He put it aside and did his duty, helping to scan the crowd for anything suspicious.

  Not that we’re really going to spot anything, he mused. We’re too close to the crowd to have any real perspective on what’s going on.

  For that matter, so were the teams of Heir’tzan guards posted up and down the street on either side of them. They gave the appearance of surveillance, but that was about it. If anything bad happened, they would be hard-pressed to catch a glimpse of it.

  “This isn’t working,” Kirk said suddenly.

  Mitchell turned to him. He wasn’t surprised at how closely the lieutenant’s thought mirrored his own. After all, anyone with half a brain could have come to the same conclusion. What did surprise him was Kirk’s willingness to express the sentiment out loud.

  “Did I hear the voice of dissent?” the plebe asked no one in particular.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the [177] lieutenant dart a look at him. “It’s just an observation,” Kirk told him.

  “One I happen to agree with,” Mitchell responded.

  Then the upperclassman surprised him again. “I don’t suppose you’ve given any thought to an alternative?”

  Mitchell hadn’t. But since Kirk was posing the question, he looked around—and found an option close at hand.

  “What about this building?” he asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the structure behind them.

  Phelana looked concerned as she followed his gesture. Her antennae were straining forward, looking for all the world as if they were trying to free themselves from her head.

  But it was the lieutenant who responded. “What about it?”

  Mitchell shrugged. “The place looks empty, doesn’t it? Maybe even abandoned. If we could get up on the roof, we’d have a much better idea of what’s going on.”

  That was when the Andorian’s concern turned into resistance. “Let’s not forget—the security minister specifically assigned us this position. And Captain Bannock told us to follow the minister’s orders. I don’t think it would be wise to disobey either of them.”

  Mitchell glanced at Kirk. The upperclassman wasn’t dismissing Phelana’s point, but he also wasn’t bowing to it.

  “Bannock did tell us to follow the Heir’tza’s orders,” Kirk conceded. “But he also told us to make [178] ourselves useful, and as things stand now, we’re nothing more than decorations.” He considered the building Mitchell had indicated. “Of course, if we stay here and something happens to one of the telepaths, no one will blame us.”

  The underclassman sighed. That was it, then. Once again, the lieutenant had opted for the better part of valor.

  “Then again,” said Kirk, still craning his neck to look at the building, “I’ll blame us.”

  Phelana looked at him, stricken. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we need to do something,” he returned. “We need to make a contribution. Otherwise, what’s the point of being here at all?” And, without another word, he jogged off down the crowded street.

  “Where are you going?” the Andorian demanded of him.

  “To find a way up to the roof,” the lieutenant called back.

  Phelana shook her head, her antennae curling backward. “You can’t do that. It’s a direct violation of our orders.”

  “I’m the ranking officer here,” Kirk reminded her. “If push comes to shove, you can say I demanded that you come with me.”

  The Andorian took a few steps after him. “But what about you? Think about your career, Jim. After what happened on the Republic, they could drum you right out of the Fleet for this.”

  It was a good point, thought Mitchell.

  “Maybe they will,” the lieutenant conceded, “and [179] maybe they won’t. Right now, I can’t worry about any of that. I’ve got to follow my instincts.” He pointed to the building beside him. “And my instincts are telling me I’ve got to get up to the roof.”

  Until that moment, Mitchell had been silent ... and rather stunned at the upperclassman’s behavior. He was accustomed to the holier-than-thou Kirk, the by-the-books Kirk, the play-it-safe Kirk. This was a Kirk he had never laid eyes on before.

  “Who are you,” he called after the lieutenant with a straight face, “and what have you done with our fellow cadet?”

  The upperclassman didn’t answer. He just shot Mitchell a look of disapproval and continued his progress alongside the building, as if that were reply enough.

  The Andorian hesitated for a moment, despite Kirk’s invitation. Obviously, she was torn in two directions—between loyalty and duty. In the end, she opted for loyalty, and fell in behind the lieutenant at a trot.

  Mitchell was only a stride behind her.

  After a while, Kirk found a door in the façade of the building. Since advanced technology wasn’t allowed in Heir’at, he grasped a knob and tried turning it. The door unlocked itself.

  Swinging it inward, he saw that the building was dusty and dark inside. But it wasn’t so dark or dusty that he couldn’t make out a circular stairway a few meters away, at the end of a short hallway.

  [180] He went inside. The place echoed with the scrape of his footsteps on the plain wooden floor.

  As Mitchell had surmised, the building was empty. Kirk knew that even before his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. There were no sounds of habitation, no one to stop the lieutenant as he made his way up the stairway, passing one floor after another in his ascent.

  Finally, he reached a door at the top. Opening that as well, he was blinded by a flood of bright sunshine. Obviously, he had achieved his objective. He was on the roof.

  He was glad to see that his comrades were right behind him. Like Kirk, they flinched at the assault of light on their eyes after the darkness within. But before long, they all managed to make their way to the roofs edge.

  There, the lieutenant saw the whole of Heir’at spread out below him in elegant geometric order, each block easily distinguishable from the next. A flood of Heiren surged and roiled and eddied their way through the city’s plazas and thoroughfares, looking to Kirk like a living mosaic. They caught the sun’s brazen rays on their metal skullcaps and diadems, on their metal collars and brooches and their whimsically painted metal breastplates.

  “This is beautiful,” said Phelana, having apparently forgotten her objections to the ascent.

  Kirk thought so, too. More important, from a height of five stories he and his fellow cadets could see everything that was going on below. It made him wonder why the Heir’tza hadn’t adopted such a tactic themselves.

  [181] “It’s beautiful, all right,” Mitchell agreed. “Not to mention a damned sight less fragrant than where we were before. Nothing like a hot, pe
rspiring mob of Heiren to make you yearn for the wide, open spaces.”

  The Andorian turned to him, her features screwed up in disgust. “Was that absolutely necessary?”

  The underclassman shrugged. “Just calling them the way I see them, Cadet Yudrin. Or, in this case, the way I—”

  “Let’s not forget what we’re doing here,” the lieutenant interjected, cutting the two of them short. “We could do with a little less talk and a little more reconnaissance.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Mitchell. “Whatever you—”

  This time, he cut himself short. His brow wrinkled as he stared at something down below,

  “What is it?” Kirk asked him, trying to figure out what had so riveted the underclassman’s attention.

  Mitchell pointed. “Look!”

  The lieutenant followed the other man’s gesture—and saw a Heiren body lying in an open doorway of the bakery. Judging by the splash of green on the Heiren’s tunic, he was bleeding.

  Bleeding, Kirk thought. As if he’d been stabbed.

  No one in the crowd seemed to notice. And before the lieutenant could respond, the body was dragged back into the building.

  “My god,” Kirk said, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “They’re after the telepath,” Phelana declared.

  “And they’re not taking no for an answer,” Mitchell observed.

  [182] The lieutenant leaned over the edge of the roof, hoping to alert one of the security officers below. Finding a couple, he waved at them.

  “Hey!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Listen to me! The bakery—they’ve gotten inside!”

  “It’s no use,” said Phelana, her voice taut with concern. “They can’t hear you down there.”

  “And they’re blocked off by the crowd from seeing that door,” Mitchell added. “As far as they know, everything’s still hunky-dory.”

  This isn’t good, Kirk thought, wishing Heir’at’s laws hadn’t kept them from bringing their communicators along. This isn’t good at all. We have to get down to street level and alert Ar Bintor’s people.

  But before he could move, he saw the door in the bakery open again. A festively dressed Heiren came out. Taking a quick look around, the Heiren gestured to someone behind him.

  “What’s going on?” asked Phelana.

  A moment later, the first Heiren was joined by a half-dozen others. They filed out of the building one after the other, each of them arrayed in the same sort of celebratory finery.

  Two of the Heiren shared the weight of something slung over their shoulders. It looked like a colorful, intricately woven carpet, rolled up for easier transport. But from the lieutenant’s vantage point, it seemed to him there was something inside it.

  Something vaguely man-shaped.

  “One of the telepaths,” Mitchell rasped. “He’s in that carpet.”

  Phelana looked at him. “Are you sure?”

  [183] Mitchell returned her look. “I don’t think they stabbed that guard to make off with a floor covering.”

  “He’s right,” said Kirk, surprised at how even his voice sounded all of a sudden. “It’s one of the telepaths.”

  Moments ago, he had been frantic, his mind racing to find a way to stop the kidnapping. But now that it was a fait accompli, he felt calmer, more certain of himself somehow.

  The guards down below still had no idea of what was going on. In effect, they were useless. Only the cadets were in a position to keep a bad situation from getting worse.

  “We’ve got to stop them,” Kirk said.

  “We?” Phelana echoed. “But the captain’s orders—”

  “Didn’t cover this,” Mitchell told her.

  The lieutenant had already come to the same conclusion. He watched the kidnappers make their way through the crowd. Unfortunately, it was four flights down to street level.

  “If we take the stairs,” he said, “we’ll lose sight of them.”

  “And they’ll get too much of a head start,” Mitchell added. He turned to Kirk. “There’s only one way to catch them.”

  Again, the lieutenant found himself in agreement. “One way,” he echoed, grimly eyeing the ground below them.

  The Andorian’s eyes opened wide as she realized what they were talking about. “Oh no, you don’t,” she protested.

  [184] Kirk looked at her. “We’ve got to.”

  “You can’t,” she insisted, beseeching the lieutenant with her big, black eyes. “You’ll break both your legs.”

  “Not if we’re careful,” Mitchell countered, though he didn’t sound as if he was altogether sure of it himself.

  Kirk frowned. “Come with us,” he told Phelana.

  She shook her head. “I can’t, Jim.”

  He hesitated for a fraction of a second, not wanting to do it without her. Then he had to make a choice.

  “I’m with you,” Mitchell declared. But what he really meant was “Are you with me?”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Gritting his teeth, he scanned the street directly beneath them, which was relatively clear of Heiren for the moment. Beside him, the underclassman fixed his gaze on the same spot.

  “On three,” said Kirk. “One. Two.”

  He screwed up his courage.

  “Three!” he roared.

  Together, he and Mitchell took a step toward the perimeter of the roof and launched themselves into the air. Legs cycling, arms extended for balance, they seemed to hover for a moment in the Heir’tzan sunlight like two big, awkward birds.

  Then the street rose to meet them with an acceleration that took the lieutenant’s breath away. At what seemed like the right time, he bent his legs and tried to keep his weight squarely above them.

  The impact of his landing jarred his bones from his ankles to the base of his skull. It sent him stumbling face-first into the dirt. But when he picked himself up, [185] he discovered he hadn’t broken anything. In fact, he was in much better shape than he had a right to be.

  Then he turned to see how Mitchell had fared. The underclassman was sitting there next to him, an expression of wonder on his face. Suddenly, he started to laugh.

  “You all right?” Kirk asked him, extending a hand.

  Mitchell took it and pulled himself to his feet. “Are you kidding?” he whooped. “I can’t wait to go on that ride again!”

  All around them, Heiren stared in wonder and remarked on the craziness of their offworld visitors. One spectator even offered to help them if they were hurt, though the lieutenant waved the fellow away.

  Then he turned and looked up at Phelana. She was on her hands and knees on the edge of the roof, leaning over the brink to see how her comrades had fared. There was a distinct look of relief on her face.

  One last time, Kirk beckoned to her. Please, he pleaded silently. It’s not too late.

  But the Andorian shook her head emphatically from side to side. I’m staying right where I am, she seemed to say. If you feel you need to, then go on without me.

  The lieutenant bit his lip. Then, pulling Mitchell along with him, he plunged through the crowd in the direction he had seen the kidnappers take—and he didn’t look back a second time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  MITCHELL HAD a feeling that he was going to regret what he had done. Even worse, he had a feeling that Kirk was going to regret it. But either way, they had come too far to back down now.

  Making their way through the crowd, drawing angry stares from those they jostled to get by, they tried desperately to catch a glimpse of the telepath’s abductors. Finally, Kirk pointed to something up ahead.

  “I see them,” he announced.

  “Where?” asked Mitchell.

  “About twenty meters ahead of us. Past the man with the feathered headdress.”

  The plebe followed Kirk’s gesture and saw the carpet in which the telepath had been rolled up. “Got it.”

  A moment later, he caught sight of the kidnappers [187] as well. All seven of them wer
e present—three in front and two in back, with the two biggest specimens carrying the telepath between them.

  If they had noticed the cadets trailing them, they gave no indication of it. They didn’t even seem to be in any hurry. They just moved at the pace of the crowd, a part of it like any other.

  “We’ll catch them in no time,” Mitchell observed.

  The lieutenant turned to him. “We could. But then what?”

  Then what indeed, the underclassman thought. “If we accuse them in public, they could panic and kill someone.”

  Kirk nodded. “Maybe even the telepath.”

  “So what do we do?” Mitchell asked.

  The other man thought for a moment. “They must have a destination in mind ... a place where they plan on stowing their captive. We could follow them there and then alert the authorities.”

  The cadet watched the kidnappers shoulder their way through the crowd, toting their living cargo. “It’s a deal,” he said at last, unable to think of a better plan.

  So as the time of the ceremony grew nearer and nearer, they pursued the telepath and his abductors from street to street ... and hoped they had made the right choice.

  Kirk wasn’t surprised when the kidnappers headed for the edge of town. After all, they needed to end up as far from the site of the reconciliation ceremony as possible.

  [188] Though the dissidents looked back from time to time, they didn’t seem to expect any pursuit. Even so, the cadets took pains to conceal themselves effectively, ducking into alleys and doorways and hiding behind staircases at every opportunity.

  In time, they left the more crowded precincts of Heir’at behind and entered a warehouse district—an older area where the streets twisted like serpents and it became harder for Kirk to keep the kidnappers in view.

  Still, they hung on to the trail, knowing they were the telepath’s only hope—and maybe the Heiren’s as well. They didn’t acknowledge that out loud, but both cadets were all too aware of it.

  Finally, they came to a large, unadorned building the color of new corn, where the façade had been worn away in places to reveal the gray bricks beneath it. The lieutenant and his companion stopped on the near side of a big, wide-open plaza and watched their prey vanish inside.