Allegiance in Exile

by David R. George III

  “Track the alien vessel, Lieutenant,” the first officer told him. “We will attempt to capture its crew.”

  “Aye, sir,” Sulu said. He activated a sensor-tracking program.

  Several seconds passed, and when no word arrived from the transporter room, Spock said, “Lieutenant Kyle?”

  Sulu thought that the intercom channel had been closed, a fact confirmed a moment later when the boatswain’s whistle sounded and a voice spoke from the transporter room; it did not belong to Kyle. “Spock, this is the captain,” Kirk said. “What happened? Is the ship all right?”

  “Lieutenant Sulu, raise the shields,” Spock said. As Sulu did so, the first officer went on. “Captain, we were attacked by six smaller vessels evidently crewed by the same beings who demolished the city on the planet in system R-Seven-Seven-Five. We have destroyed three of the vessels, incapacitated two others, and are tracking the sixth, which we believe set out to attack your landing party.”

  “It did,” Kirk said. “And it would likely have killed us all had you not beamed us aboard when you did. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Spock said, a reaction Sulu hadn’t anticipated. He thought he heard a measure of emotion in the normally stoic Vulcan’s voice—not because the ship’s captain, James T. Kirk, had appreciated his actions, but because his friend, Jim Kirk, had survived. Sulu understood completely.

  “I’ll be up to the bridge shortly,” the captain said, “after I stop in sickbay. Kirk out.”

  Sickbay? Sulu thought, and again, he looked away from his scanner. Did somebody get injured on the planet? Did Trinh?

  Across the bridge, at the main science station, Chekov peered in the direction of the helm. Pavel said nothing, but Sulu could see his own concern reflected in his friend’s face.

  • • •

  Kirk waited impatiently in McCoy’s office, pacing back and forth. The entire landing party had somehow survived an attack on the city that the captain identified to himself as Dresden. Spock had plucked all six of them from the surface of the planet and deposited them back aboard Enterprise after they had survived the first, apparently errant missile strike, and before a second could land. But when they materialized on the platform in the transporter room, it turned out that not all members of the landing party had returned to the ship unscathed.

  The captain had been among the last group of three beamed back on board, along with Lieutenant Stack and Ensign Trinh. Doctor McCoy and the other two members of the landing party stood in the middle of the transporter room, looking battered and disheveled, but otherwise all right. Kirk himself had suffered bumps and bruises on his sprint away from the city square, and in his tumble to the ground when the first missile struck. It would turn out that had been true of everybody in the landing party.

  But when the golden sparkle of the transporter effect had cleared from the captain’s eyes and he’d found himself back aboard Enterprise, he witnessed far more serious injuries. Standing on the pad beside him on the platform, Lieutenant Stack held a hand across his left biceps and triceps, where a sizable gash had been opened in his flesh. Blood covered that side of the security officer’s uniform, and his arm hung at an awkward angle that left no doubt that it had been broken.

  When Kirk had peered around to the back of the transporter platform, though, he’d witnessed a far more gruesome scene. Ensign Trinh lay across two pads, her body mangled and covered in blood, her chest barely rising and falling with her respiration. Kirk saw no burns or other marks that indicated she’d been caught in an explosion, but clearly something terrible had happened to her. A complex mix of emotions roiled within him: pain and sadness for Trinh, anger at the aliens whose actions had caused her injuries, guilt for the role he had played in endangering members of his crew.

  McCoy had immediately jumped up on the transporter platform, his hands already working to open his medkit, and while the doctor had spared a glance at Lieutenant Stack, he’d rushed directly to Ensign Trinh. Kirk moved in the other direction, leaping down from the platform and crossing to the transporter console. He heard Spock’s voice speaking to Lieutenant Kyle, but the captain ignored his first officer and punched the intercom control with the side of his fist, closing the channel and opening a new one. “Transporter room to sickbay,” he said. “This is the captain. We have a medical emergency.”

  A voice answered at once, and Kirk recognized it as belonging to one of the ship’s surgeons, Doctor M’Benga. “Acknowledged, Captain,” he said. “We’re on our way.”

  That had been nearly thirty minutes earlier. Kirk had waited with McCoy for the emergency medical team, and then had accompanied the group to sickbay. Though anxious to head to the bridge, he first wanted a report on the condition of Ensign Trinh. He’d checked in with Spock from sickbay, providing the first officer with no details on the status of the landing party personnel, but making sure that nothing required his own immediate attention on the bridge.

  You just don’t want to face Sulu without knowing that Trinh will be all right, Kirk thought cynically, castigating himself for his cowardice. In the first moment he’d seen her on the transporter platform, the captain had believed her dead, such had been the extent of her injuries. He felt relief when he saw her still breathing, but he also knew that small fact afforded no guarantee of her continued survival.

  Kirk heard footsteps approaching one of the open doorways on the inner side of McCoy’s office, and he turned in that direction. A moment later, the doctor entered. He still wore indicators of their visit to Dresden: a small tear at the bottom of his uniform shirt, a scratch along his left cheek, a smudge of dirt above his right eye. “How is she?” Kirk asked without waiting.

  McCoy looked grave. “Not good, Jim,” he said. “Doctor M’Benga’s having her prepped for surgery.” The captain didn’t have to wonder why the ship’s chief medical officer wouldn’t perform the operation, because he knew that McCoy had just spent hours hiking through a dead city before facing his own mortality in a missile attack. “Something large fell on Trinh . . . crushed her body. She’s suffered extensive internal injuries, and she very nearly bled out. Doctor M’Benga and I believe that most of her damaged organs can be repaired to some degree, and in one or two instances, replaced, but . . . the base of her spine has been badly compressed and she has several vertebral fractures and significant nerve damage.”

  Other than finding out that she had died, Kirk didn’t think the news could have been any worse. “Will she suffer paralysis?” he asked.

  “It’s very likely she will,” McCoy said. “But there’s no guarantee that she’ll even survive today’s surgery, and the operation today is only the first of many she’ll require.” The doctor looked away, and in that brief interval, Kirk hoped that the awful prognosis would not get any worse.

  But it did.

  “Jim,” McCoy said, looking back up at the captain, “even if we are successful in repairing the damage and restoring function, it’s unlikely that Trinh will survive her injuries for very long.”

  Kirk felt as though he’d been kicked in the gut. “How long?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s impossible to say with any certainty right now,” McCoy told him, “but I’d say a matter of months, maybe a year. She might even live another three years, but I’m not sure that would be a good thing for her.”

  Kirk stared at the doctor without saying anything. What could he say? What was there to say? The two men stood in a laden silence. At last, Kirk simply said, “Bones.”

  “I know, Jim,” McCoy said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can Sulu see her?”

  “Not for several hours, at least,” McCoy said.

  Kirk considered how Sulu would feel, and what he’d want to do. “He might want to come down here anyway,” he said. “To wait.”

  “Probably,” McCoy agreed. “I’ll make sure we take care of him.”

  “Good,” Kirk said. He wanted to say more about Trinh, to do more, but what could he do? “What about Lieutena
nt Stack?” he asked.

  “Oh, uh, he’s fine,” McCoy said, as though he’d completely forgotten about the security officer. “He suffered a closed, non-displaced fracture of the humerus, as well as a deep laceration. We knitted him up. I took him off duty for a couple of days and sent him to his cabin.”

  Kirk nodded. “I’ll be on the bridge,” he said. “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Kirk turned and crossed McCoy’s office to the outer door, which opened at his approach. He stepped out into the corridor and headed for the nearest turbolift. As he walked, his mind wandered back to Starbase 25, to his meeting with Admiral Ciana. She’d told him to keep doing what he’d been doing aboard Enterprise, that Starfleet Command valued his service.

  What service? he asked himself. Paralyzing members of my crew? Destroying their lives? What good did all his achievements do if he could not keep safe all the people in his charge?

  “No good at all,” he said aloud, then glanced around to make sure he was alone in the corridor.

  When he reached the turbolift and entered the car, he took hold of the activation wand and stated his destination as the bridge. As the lift began its ascent, Kirk thought about what he would say to Sulu, and then asked himself again what good had come of his captaincy if he had to deliver such news. And again, he answered himself out loud.

  “No good at all.”

  • • •

  Sulu heard the doors to the turbolift slide open with their familiar squeak. As he’d already done three times since the landing party had been recovered, he turned at the helm to see who had arrived on the bridge. He didn’t expect Trinh to appear there, but Sulu wanted to speak with the captain, to make sure that Trinh hadn’t been hurt while down on the planet’s surface.

  At last, the open doors of the turbolift revealed Kirk behind them. Sulu saw at once that the captain still bore the marks of his visit to the planet’s surface, and quite probably of the attack on the landing party: dark smudges of grime fouled his gold uniform shirt, a ragged tear left his pants open at the knee, and a slash of red climbing up the side of his face revealed where his flesh had been sliced through and subsequently repaired. He stepped out of the car and peered toward the center of the bridge, to where Spock sat in the command chair. In his peripheral vision, Sulu saw the first officer begin to rise, but then Kirk held up one hand, palm out, clearly signaling to Spock that he should remained seated.

  As the captain walked to the portside opening in the railing and descended to the lower level of the bridge, Sulu sought to make eye contact with him, but Kirk did not look his way. Before the helmsman could speak up, the captain addressed Spock. “What’s the status of the attacking vessels?” he wanted to know. Sulu turned back to his console, but he would listen for a break in the conversation so that he could talk to Kirk.

  “I regret to inform you, Captain, that they have evaded us,” Spock said.

  “What?” Kirk said. “I thought you disabled two of their vessels, and were tracking the one that attacked us on the planet.”

  “Both of those details were at one point true,” Spock said. “But the vessel that attacked the landing party exited the atmosphere and returned to space at considerable velocity while utilizing effective evasion techniques. As a result, we had no clear opportunity to capture or incapacitate the craft before it engaged its warp drive.”

  “And our warp drive isn’t functioning?” Kirk asked.

  “The aliens’ sustained attacked compromised the shields around the starboard nacelle, which then suffered several direct missile strikes,” Spock said. “Mister Scott reports that the damage does not rise to the level of that done to the port nacelle in system R-Seven-Seven-Five. Nevertheless, it will require at least a day to patch, and four more days at a starbase to effect permanent repairs.”

  “What about the two vessels you disabled?” Kirk asked.

  “We have scanned the system, but have been unable to locate them,” Spock said. “Readings are inconclusive, but suggest that the attackers might have had sufficient time to mend their craft and depart the system at warp.”

  “All right,” Kirk said. “What about our shields?”

  “They have been restored to full strength,” Spock said.

  “Very good,” the captain said. “As long as we’re in orbit here, keep them raised. And I want continuous sensor sweeps at maximum range. We need to know at once if the attackers return.”

  “Understood,” Spock said.

  Sulu heard a pause between the two men, and when it extended a few seconds, he turned in his chair so that he could ask to speak with the captain. To his surprise, Kirk was already peering down at him. “Mister Sulu,” he said, “come with me.”

  The helmsman knew right away that something had happened to Trinh. All at once, his mind seemed to exist outside his body, which he could no longer feel, as though he had just been stunned with a phaser. He turned back to his station for a moment and secured the helm, then stood up slowly and followed the captain into the turbolift.

  Once the doors had glided closed, Kirk took hold of an activation wand and specified their destination. He called out a deck number rather than saying “Sickbay,” as Sulu had expected, but they equated to the same thing. The lift began to descend. Without waiting for the captain to speak, Sulu said, “What happened to Trinh?”

  “Sulu,” Kirk said, “I’m sorry. She’s been hurt very badly.”

  “How badly?”

  “She’s in surgery right now, and she will be for several more hours,” Kirk said. “According to Doctor McCoy, it’s likely to be the first of many operations she’ll need.”

  Sulu’s vision wavered as tears collected in his eyes. He took a deep breath and fought them back. “Will she live?”

  “The doctors don’t know,” Kirk said. “But even if she does, they don’t know for how long. It’s likely to be a hard life.”

  Questions posed themselves in Sulu’s mind—he wanted to know what had caused Trinh’s injuries, whether or not her mind had been affected, if he could do anything at all to help her, and when he could see her—but they all seemed to hide what he actually felt inside him, and he stopped them before they reached his lips. He looked down at his feet and tried to decide not only what he should do next, but how he should feel. When he peered back up at the captain, he could think of only one thing to say: “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly what happened,” Kirk said. “We scattered when we were attacked, hoping that multiple targets would increase the odds of our collective escape. While Trinh—”

  “No,” Sulu said. “I’m not asking how she got hurt.” He marveled at the calmness in his voice. “I want to know why you sent her down there.” Even with no anger in his tone, he suspected the captain perceived the rage growing within him.

  “Sulu,” Kirk said. He shook his head while glancing all around the lift, as though he might find an answer somewhere. “I don’t know what to say. You were there on the bridge. We found another dead city, and we needed to study it.”

  “I was on the bridge,” Sulu agreed. “And I heard a member of your senior staff telling you it would be too dangerous to send anybody down to the planet to explore.” Although Sulu hadn’t been asked his opinion at the time, he’d concurred with Doctor McCoy’s assessment about the hazards involved in transporting down a landing party.

  “Sulu,” the captain said, “there were differing views. I had to make a choice—”

  “You didn’t have to make that choice,” Sulu said. “I was also on the bridge when we found the first dead city, and I was on the planet when the landing parties were attacked.” Sulu’s voice had begun to rise in volume, but he didn’t care. “How could you not see how unsafe it would be to take the same actions when we discovered the second city?”

  The turbolift slowed as it reached its destination, but before the doors could open, Sulu reached out and wrapped his hand around an activation wand. “Hold,” he said. The lift s
topped, and the doors remained closed. He didn’t know how many regulations he might be breaking, but he didn’t care about that either.

  The captain looked at him. “Do you really want an answer?”

  “Do you have one?” Sulu said derisively.

  Kirk brought his hands together at his waist, then held them apart, palms out, in what seemed like a supplicating gesture. “There’s a risk in everything we do,” the captain said. “You know that. Right now, we’re standing in a tin can in the middle of a vacuum. Outside the hull, it’s two hundred and seventy degrees below zero. It’s impossible to be completely safe out here.”

  “That’s no answer,” Sulu said, almost snarling the words. “I’m not talking about being completely safe. I’m talking about you beaming a landing party down to a planet after missiles were launched against other landing parties—and crew members were killed—in almost identical circumstances.”

  “The circumstances weren’t identical,” Kirk said, but he did not sound entirely convinced of his assertion. “We scanned for hidden missile installations; there were none.”

  “Are you going to deny that we were attacked by the same aliens who attacked us the first time?” Sulu said. The captain didn’t reply right away, and Sulu didn’t wait before continuing. “When Doctor McCoy counseled against sending a landing party down to this planet, do you remember what you said?” Again, Kirk didn’t appear inclined to answer, and the helmsman didn’t wait for a response. “You said that you never risk anybody’s life unnecessarily.”

  “I risked my own life,” Kirk said very quietly. “I was down there too.”

  “And that’s your choice,” Sulu said. “But you also chose to put five other lives in danger, and at least one of them has paid the price for your hubris.” The captain’s head snapped back, almost as though reacting to a punch. “Tell me,” Sulu went on, almost spitting his words out, “what was so necessary that Trinh had to be hurt so badly?”