“Well?” he said. “Time and tide and all that.”
The telepath couldn’t have been familiar with the quote, but he obviously understood the sense of it. “I am ready, my friend,” he told Mitchell, his voice echoing as well.
“Great,” replied the underclassman, pulling up his hood. He turned to the lieutenant. “We should get going.”
[229] “Yes,” said Kirk. “We should.”
“You’re certain you wish to help?” asked Lenna.
The minister had asked the cadets to take up positions along the ceremonial route. Of course, he had fifty security officers planted in the crowd already, which should have been enough. But after the attack on the bakery, Lenna hoped to err on the side of caution.
“Very certain,” Kirk assured him. “I mean, we’ve come this far. We’d like to see our mission through to its conclusion.”
“Laudable,” said the minister. “I will commend your helpfulness to your commanding officer.”
The lieutenant swallowed. He had been trying not to think too much about Captain Bannock’s reaction to all of this. After all, the man had gone out of his way to emphasize that the cadets weren’t to leave the bakery.
Under any circumstances.
Of course, if Kirk and Mitchell had obeyed orders, Perris Nodarh would still have been in the hands of his kidnappers and the Heiren’s prospects for reconciliation would have been obliterated. But to Bannock, that wouldn’t be the point.
Regardless of the results, the cadets had disobeyed a direct order from their commanding officer. Neither the captain nor anyone else in Starfleet would look favorably on that.
“Of course,” Lenna went on, “I should also inform your captain about your use of energy weapons in Heir’at. But under the circumstances, I believe I can forget that detail.”
[230] “That’s up to you, sir,” said Kirk. “I’m obliged to include it in my report either way.”
The Heir’tza looked at him with a smile pulling at the corners of his wide mouth. “You are a very dutiful young man, Lieutenant Kirk. Dutiful, perhaps, to a fault.”
Kirk smiled ruefully. “It’s the only way I know how to be, First Minister. But thank you all the same.”
Mitchell raised his arms again in a gesture of impatience. The lieutenant jerked his thumb over his shoulder to remind Lenna of the plebe’s presence at the entrance.
“We’ll be late,” Kirk said.
“By all means, go,” the minister responded. “And may fortune smile on you, Lieutenant Kirk.”
“On all of us, sir,” the lieutenant replied. Then he pulled up his festive hood and joined his colleague.
“I regret you cannot walk alongside me,” Perris Nodarh called to Kirk as the human walked by the temple’s central platform. “You have done such a good job escorting me to this point, it seems like a shame to say goodbye to you and Cadet Mitchell now.”
“We’ll still be watching out for you,” the lieutenant promised the telepath. “Just in a different way.”
Perris smiled. “Then I’m reassured.”
Kirk smiled back at the Heiren. Then he crossed the floor of the chamber and led Mitchell out into the street.
* * *
[231] It took Mitchell and his fellow cadet more than twenty minutes to reach a point along the ceremonial route halfway between the Eastern Temple and the Government House. And even then, they were several rows of onlookers away from the action.
But the plebe didn’t mind the poor vantage point or the press of Heiren bodies. He didn’t even mind the tall ceremonial hat on the heavyset female in front of him.
After all, the sun was high in the sky. The banners hanging from Heir’at’s windows were colorful and optimistic. And, from a more practical standpoint, Lenna’s red-and-white-uniformed guards appeared to be everywhere along Perris Nodarh’s path.
“Well,” said Mitchell, “this is it.”
“I guess so,” said Kirk, scanning the crowd.
“It’s all over but the shouting.”
“Looks that way,” the lieutenant muttered—though his tone said he didn’t believe it for a minute.
“You see a problem?” asked Mitchell.
“Not yet,” Kirk replied.
“But you expect one?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
“The sun could explode. That’s a possibility too.”
“It certainly is,” the upperclassman conceded.
The plebe sighed. “Don’t you ever relax?”
“Sure,” said Kirk, looking everywhere but at his companion. “When my mission is over.”
Mitchell looked at him, amazed. “But right after that, there’s another mission. And another one. It never stops.”
[232] The lieutenant smiled an ironic smile. “Isn’t that the whole point of being in Starfleet?”
“Always being on your toes?” Mitchell asked.
“Always being challenged.”
The underclassman pondered the question, as well as the man who had posed it. “For some people, I guess it is.”
“And for others?” Kirk inquired—still vigilant, still inspecting everything and everyone.
Mitchell shrugged. “There’s time to sit back and consider what you’ve done. Especially when you’ve done it as well as we have.”
The lieutenant didn’t answer him. But it wasn’t because he was at a loss for words—the plebe was pretty certain of that. It was because the man didn’t want to be distracted.
The underclassman looked out over the sea of Heiren that surrounded them. Sure, he conceded, it was possible Perris Nodarh’s kidnappers were somewhere in the crowd, hoping to finish the job they started. But Minister Lenna had planted so many guards among the onlookers, it didn’t seem likely there would be any danger.
Even as Mitchell thought that, a cheer erupted from the Heiren positioned closest to the temple steps. Obviously, the telepath had chosen that moment to make his appearance.
“Here he comes,” he told Kirk, feeling a thrill of anticipation.
The lieutenant grunted.
“The Heir’och telepath is beginning his historic journey.”
[233] Another grunt.
“In a few minutes,” Mitchell noted, “Perris will reach the Government House. Then he and the Heir’tza telepath will shake hands and exchange pleasantries, and we can all go home happy.”
This time, the plebe got a dirty look. “Are you trying to disturb my concentration on purpose?”
Mitchell smiled to himself. “Who, me?”
“You know,” Kirk reminded him, “I could order you to shut up.”
The plebe sighed. “Listen to you,” he said. “You haven’t learned a thing, have you?”
“Learned?” the lieutenant echoed.
“That’s right,” Mitchell told him. “You need to ease up if you’re ever going to—”
Suddenly, something caught the cadet’s eye.
A face.
A face he recognized.
Grabbing Kirk’s shoulder, he jerked his head in the face’s direction. “Look over there,” he grated.
The lieutenant followed the gesture. A moment later, his eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that—?”
“One of Perris’s abductors,” Mitchell finished for him. “The man with the scar across his face.”
The last time they had seen the man, he was getting thrown into the wall behind him, propelled by the force of a dark blue energy beam. Apparently, the Heiren had made a complete recovery.
Like the cadets, the kidnapper was a few ranks back from the space cleared for the telepath. But he was close enough to take an energy weapon from his [234] pocket and stun Perris as he walked by ... or even kill him, if that was the scarred man’s intent.
To that point, the kidnapper hadn’t noticed the offworlders. He was too intent on the ceremonial route.
Mitchell turned in the direction of the Eastern Temple. He couldn’t see the telepath—but from the reaction of the c
rowd, it seemed Perris was still a good couple of minutes away.
Kirk cursed. “There’s another one.”
The plebe looked at him, then at the crowd. “Where?”
The lieutenant pointed with his thumb, keeping it hidden between them. “Over there.”
It took a moment, but Mitchell found the Heiren in question. He was one of the kidnappers they had found in the room with Perris.
“And there’s another,” Kirk rasped.
The underclassman found that one, too. By then, his heart had begun pumping like a jackhammer.
“What do we do?” he wondered. It wasn’t a question so much as a way of ordering his thoughts.
The lieutenant answered it anyway. “We remain calm,” he said. “We ... Wait a second. What’s he doing?”
Kirk was staring in the direction of the Heiren with the scar. It appeared the kidnapper was signaling to someone—but not, it seemed, to either of the accomplices the cadets had spotted. No, it was someone a good deal closer to the ceremonial route. ...
Then Mitchell saw it—a Heiren returning the [235] kidnapper’s signal. But it wasn’t just another person in the crowd.
It was one of Lenna’s guards!
The man’s red and white uniform was unmistakable. So was the eye contact he made with Scarface.
“Damn,” said Kirk.
“You see it, too?” the plebe responded.
“I wish I didn’t.”
“That guard is in league with the dissidents. That complicates matters,” Mitchell pointed out.
“Considerably,” the lieutenant responded tightly, the muscles rippling in his jaw.
After all, their orders were to alert the nearest guard if they saw a problem developing. But if the nearest guard was in cahoots with the enemy, that didn’t seem like a viable option.
“We’ve got to stop them,” said Kirk.
Mitchell nodded. “And without causing too big a commotion. Otherwise, we’ll just speed up their timetable.”
“Or put a crimp in the reconciliation ceremony,” the lieutenant observed, “and create an atmosphere of distrust.”
“Which will serve the dissidents’ purpose just as well,” the plebe acknowledged. He shook his head in frustration.
They couldn’t even transmit a call for help. Heiren custom had prohibited them from carrying communicators.
“Tell you what,” Kirk said grimly. “I’ll take the man with the scar and then the guard. You take the other two.”
[236] Mitchell nodded in agreement, knowing there was no time to argue about it. “And if we encounter some other problems along the way?”
The lieutenant looked as if he’d eaten something rotten. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“You’re the boss,” the plebe told him.
Then he started after the nearest kidnapper—and hoped desperately that he’d get there in time.
Chapter Nineteen
FORTUNATELY FOR KIRK, the Heiren with the scar was too intent on his objective to see the cadet circling around behind him. And when the kidnapper finally noticed that something might be amiss, it was too late for him to do anything about it.
Kirk’s first blow caught the dissident just above the belt and to the right—where it would have struck a kidney if the kidnapper had been human. And certainly, that would have been bad enough.
But in a Heiren, that area housed an even more important organ—one that controlled the aeration of blood in the body. Hitting it was like hitting a human in the lungs; it momentarily stopped the supply of oxygen to the kidnapper’s brain.
The effect was to stun the Heiren—to keep him off balance. The lieutenant’s second blow was a hard [238] chop to the nerve cluster at the base of the kidnapper’s neck. Kirk saw the man’s eyes roll back, a good indication that he had lost consciousness.
Had the crowd been packed less densely around the kidnapper, he would have fallen to the ground. As it was, his head lolled and he merely slumped against the celebrant beside him.
His work done for the moment, the lieutenant looked for Mitchell in the throng. He spotted the underclassman some thirty meters away, near the first of his assignments.
Like the scarred man, Mitchell’s target looked to have been knocked senseless. And in his case, too, none of his neighbors seemed to have noticed that anything was wrong.
So far, so good, Kirk thought.
Then he turned in the direction of the ceremonial route. It was impossible to see Perris Nodarh yet, but he could tell from the crowd’s excitement that the telepath was getting closer.
Unfortunately, there was no telling how long the traitorous guard would wait before making his move. Gritting his teeth, the lieutenant set out after him, forcing himself sideways between two burly onlookers.
“Where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked, his yellow eyes slitting with undisguised annoyance.
“Yes, where?” asked the other Heiren. “Didn’t your foster parents teach you any manners?”
Kirk understood the reference. Heir’tza traditionally gave their children to uncles and aunts to raise, [239] believing that bloodparents were liable to coddle their offspring.
He didn’t have time to explain that he hadn’t been raised on this world, or that he was human and an officer in Starfleet, or even that the Heir’och telepath’s life might be hanging in the balance. So rather than tender any answer at all, the lieutenant ignored the comments and continued to push his way through the crowd.
He incited additional antagonism along the way, but—in his own mind, at least—it seemed less and less important as he went on. Kirk was much more interested in Perris Nodarh, whom he could see every now and then over the heads of the intervening spectators.
The telepath was already within a hundred meters of the traitor. If the guard had wanted to, he could have taken out a weapon and cut Perris down right then and there. But he seemed content to wait.
More than likely, the lieutenant mused, the Heiren was worried about screwing up his assignment. And the closer his target got, the less chance there was that he would miss.
Suddenly, Kirk felt himself grabbed and spun around by a powerful pair of hands. He found himself looking into a scaly, bronze face and a pair of angry, yellow eyes.
“I’ve been standing here all day,” the spectator complained. “Who are you to shove your way in front of me?”
The lieutenant didn’t respond to the challenge—at least, not with words. Instead, he stepped on the [240] Heiren’s foot as hard as he could, causing the fellow to forget about him for the moment.
Then, before he could be detained any longer, Kirk inserted himself between two other onlookers. He was making progress, he told himself—but was he making it quickly enough? Wiping sweat from his brow, he found yet another opening and wedged himself into it.
Darting a glance in the telepath’s direction, the lieutenant saw that Perris had come within sixty meters of the traitor. He cursed and worked harder, driving himself forward with more urgency.
It was like trying to run through a raging surf. But despite it, Kirk made headway, using his legs to push and his hands to thrust unsuspecting spectators out of the way.
With the telepath fifty meters away, Kirk slid between two Heiren females. With the telepath forty meters away, he stumbled over someone’s foot and nearly fell, but caught himself and plunged on. With the telepath thirty meters away, he nearly knocked a man over in his haste.
But it wasn’t going to be enough. The lieutenant could see that with terrible clarity. No matter how hard he pushed himself, no matter how desperately he tried to breast the sea of onlookers, he wasn’t closing with the guard as quickly as the telepath was.
Then the thing he feared, the thing he had been trying all along to prevent, came to pass. Before Kirk’s horrified eyes, the traitor reached into his pocket and took out a directed-energy device.
No one else saw it because no one else was paying [241] attention to h
im. Everyone in the crowd was focused on Perns Nodarh, the remarkable telepath of Heir’ocha, the hope of two worlds. With history unfolding before them, who even noticed a guard standing quietly along the ceremonial route, a weapon concealed in the palm of his hand?
Only Kirk.
He had to stop the traitor, just as he and Mitchell had stopped the other dissidents. But there were still four or five ranks of Heiren packed between the lieutenant and his objective. At this rate, it would take him a minute or more to get to the guard.
By that time, Perris Nodarh would be stretched out on the street and the ceremony would be in disarray. People would be screaming and running for cover and trampling their fellow Heiren in their confusion. Most important, the great reconciliation between the Hier’och and the Heir’tza would have died a stillborn death.
Kirk tried to shout a warning, tried to let some of the other guards know what was happening. But the crowd was too loud. He couldn’t have made himself heard if he bellowed all day.
What are you going to do now? the lieutenant demanded of himself. There’s got to be something ... there’s always something. Isn’t that what you teach your students? Isn’t that what your professors taught you?
Think about what others have done in similar situations. Construct parallels and analogies. Draw on the wisdom of your predecessors.
[242] But which of his predecessors had ever found himself in a situation like this one? None that he knew of. Kirk was alone, abandoned by Starfleet history, left to his own resources.
As his mind raced, the telepath approached the traitor. Calmly, the man raised his weapon. Just as calmly, he prepared to fire.
What are you going to do? the lieutenant asked himself again. How are you going to put an end to this madness?
How?
Then, out of nowhere, a more pointed question occurred to him: What would Mitchell do?
Suddenly, Kirk moved.
He didn’t think about it. He didn’t consider the implications. He just grabbed the Heiren in front of him and pushed as hard as he could, and kept pushing until the man toppled into the fellow in front of him, who pitched into the spectator in front of him ...
And so on and so on, down the line.
STAR TREK: TOS #85 - My Brother's Keeper, Book One - Republic Page 18