by Diane Carey
Shucorion stared at them. His idea had been to cut the string of Federation ships into three units, then hammer them to pieces and give Billy Maidenshore the prizes he had bargained for. The Orion files of information about Federation ships had provided technical information and tactical habits. This wasn’t one of them. James Kirk had made it up.
By pulling into the sphere arrangement, Kirk had denied his enemies their chance. But it gave him no option of running!
Could it be they had no intention to run? Fight here, win or die here, and no other alternatives? Such thoughts were foreign, bizarre, even mystical! Being weaker, the Blood had always fought by stealth—sneak, hit, fight, run, come back later.
Instead, James Kirk had made one huge battleship out of his fleet of many, causing them to work in special arrangement with each other, no straggling allowed, and combining the firepower in such a manner as was unimaginable in the cluster.
Vellyngaith was out there somewhere, hidden in the Blind now, contemplating whether or not Shucorion had betrayed him with this strange turn of events.
“You mean to go forward, Captain?” Shucorion asked bluntly. “Continue onward into the cluster?”
Kirk didn’t look at him, but continued to study the screens. “That’s right.”
“How will you live, caught between us as you will be?”
“Maybe your war will have to stop. You said yourself, things are different now that you have star-drive.”
“But . . . why would you want to live in such strife when you don’t have to?”
“We’ve survived worse. Humans are a hardy race. We have more to do in life than just live day to day. We have things to accomplish.”
Shucorion moved a few steps forward, to bring Kirk’s stony expression into clear view. “Your settlers will be forever in our war.”
Like darts, the captain’s eyes grew slim and speared Shucorion. “I’ve stopped wars before. I’ll do it again if I—”
He started to say something else, but stopped, distracted by flickering lights on the consoles near the man called Sulu, who apparently was arranging movement of all these vessels, somehow coordinating the great dance from this one post, and the woman Uhura, whose job was a mystery to Shucorion.
“Here they come, sir!” Uhura warned.
Out of the Blind came a hundred Kauld fighters, formed in ranks of three, spearing directly toward the sphere rather than rushing around it.
Kirk stalked the helm. “Hold fire. Let’s see what their attack plan is. . . .”
“Holding,” Uhura responded.
Sulu clung to his console through the mortal noise of damage. “They’re targeting specific areas of the sphere, trying to break us open!”
“All ships, hold position!” Kirk called out. “Don’t buckle!”
Chapter Twenty-four
ENEMY FIRE blew between the ships and outward from one area of the sphere, cutting through the two layers of defense and scoring the Enterprise with mortal noise. The shields crackled, but held. Vellyngaith had learned from his mistake.
“They’re concentrating on Hunter’s Moon,” Spock said, “and the five ships surrounding it.”
Kirk scowled. “Maidenshore probably told them to target Michael Kilvennan out of some perverse theme of retribut—”
His words were cut short as a diabolical flash on the starship’s port side lit up four independently scanning screens. Kirk raised a hand to shield his eyes, but somehow still clearly saw the blistering of the combat support tender, caught between one of the larger Kauld ships and the vessel it was trying to repair.
“They’ve hit the Beowulf,” Uhura said miserably. “Direct rupture to the plasma containment . . . sir, she had her access hatch open. The shot went right inside.”
Sulu squinted in empathy and shuddered. “A lucky shot. One in a million.”
Helpless, they passed a heart-stopping second of horror as the Kauld’s white-hot pellets bounced around inside the support tender, held in by her reinforced hull, freely killing and destroying in a mindless way. It must be a furnace in there. Flashes of greenish yellow rupture from inside gave them the only real clue of the hell vomiting through Beowulf’s guts.
Suddenly the Tender valiantly broke away from the other ships, flashed her impulse engine once, suddenly ejected a sprout of plasma, turned down at a sickening angle and floated away to die in the center of the sphere.
“Oh, no . . .”Uhura uttered.
As his innards curdled, Kirk mentally analyzed the nucleization going on inside Beowulf, how many hideous deaths among her valuable crew of repair specialists had occurred in that incredibly rare hit. The nearly impossible shot that had now cost the Expedition its last Starfleet ship other than the Enterprise herself. Beowulf was out of the game. A crippling loss.
He turned to the helm. Only now did he remember about Crewman Austin, standing her post at the helm.
The young woman wasn’t watching the screens on the port side, but she’d seen them. Her face was stiff and struggling. Was her father alive? She was doing the right thing—divorcing herself from herself. She fixed her eyes on the forward screen instead, watching the enemy vessel trying awkwardly to veer away after attacking the sphere. Good.
Kirk moved to her side, very close, careful not to actually touch her.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s hit them back. Anterior vessels . . . pirouette!”
“Pirouette, aye,” Sulu responded as he and Uhura broadcast the order to the appropriate ships.
Apparently expecting the order, half of each sphere of ships, internal and external, swung about to face the cavern in the middle. Shucorion tightened his shoulders, both intrigued and dreading what he saw. If they didn’t aim just right, the tenders and the Enterprise in the central cavern and the ships on the opposite side of the sphere would be in their lines of fire.
“Careful, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk murmured.
“Understood, sir.”
“Spock, check the targeting solutions on all the anterior ships.”
“Very little time, Captain.”
“Take the time.”
Kauld ships menaced the Hunter’s Moon and the ships surrounding it, trying to break a hole in the sphere. Kirk hoped their shields would hold a few more seconds.
Spock straightened. “Ready, sir.”
“All ships, fire!” Kirk instantly ordered.
The whole sphere lit up again like a Times Square ball, but this time all the power blasted out of one concentrated area. The spiny urchin turned into a giant devil’s eye, shooting a death ray through its pupil. Kirk had succeeded in turning the ball into a cannon.
Out in space, the forward two dozen Kauld ships were simply atomized into a cloud. Another dozen fighters piled into the boiling cloud, while still others suffered to veer off.
“Fire again!”
As Vellyngaith’s fighters turned on their wings and tried to escape, another unified blast bore through the sphere’s funnel and obliterated the retreating ships. Nearly half of the attack force, destroyed or crippled! Vellyngaith would be in a rage!
The starship trembled with the sheer power of energy fire blasting past it and from it. Only now did Shucorion fully understand the critical nature of holding position, and why there was no option of running away. This was a defensible formation, but not on the defensive. The sphere shimmered with self-confidence. No matter what percussion rocked the sphere, no ship faltered or fell back, but each bore its damage valiantly. They were depending critically upon each other, and none had betrayed the next. Such action would never be possible without total cooperation. How did Kirk know they would hold their ground? How could he control them all so completely in their minds?
“Rotate the phalanx, Mr. Sulu!” Unmistakable jubilance rang in Kirk’s voice.
“Rotating, sir!” his choreographer responded, then sent the appropriate orders.
Confused, Shucorion watched in awe as the two geodesic spheres melted into each other, then spread once agai
n into two, this time with the previously interior ships on the outside perimeter. At Kirk’s order, the whole arrangement had turned itself inside out!
“Considerable damage to ten percent of the inner circle, sir,” Uhura reported.
“Mr. Sulu, draw the most severely damaged ships into the cavern. Tighten the spheres to fill in the gaps.”
Different ships with fresh weapons and shielding now braced the spheres. An amazing stratagem—Vellyngaith’s forces could not get a grip on weakness he had inflicted because the ships were constantly shifting. The shrinking sphere became more and more prickly. In the cavern, the feisty repair ships yanked disabled vessels out of formation, sprayed them with sealant or made quick repairs, and shooed them back into the formation, with Mr. Sulu nudging the florets of vessels into adjustment with each change. This was like watching patterns in a kaleidoscope, shifting, changing, chattering—
“Captain! Orions!”
As Shucorion’s arms tightened, he hoped his posture would not give away his thoughts as the two Orion ships buzzed out of the Blind and rushed toward the now weak opposite pole of the sphere.
“Well, well . . . turn the anterior ships to meet them, Mr. Sulu. Ensign Austin, full about and skim the interior. Follow those ships! Mr. Spock, turn sensors on those Orion ships. Find the—never mind. I’ll do it myself. Mr. Shucorion, stand aside please.”
His eyes flaring with seismic delight, Kirk stood over the navigation console and punched and tuned the controls himself. Had he hungered to fire the ship’s weapons personally? Had he lost faith in the woman at his side or the men and women on the bridge who were controlling the battle at his orders?
A column of glittering light appeared on the upper part of the deck. Shucorion stumbled back. Had they been struck? The hull ruptured?
The shimmer of light began to settle, to gather into a form.
Shucorion held his breath as he came to recognize the shape, the shoulders, the face. Soon the sound and the lights twinkled away, leaving only the man.
How had Kirk done this? Pluck one person from passing ships?
For the first time, the technology of Federation seemed outlandish and magical. Still more underestimating. Shucorion made his oath again.
James Kirk straightened and faced the upper deck.
“Hello, Billy,” he said.
“Gave myself up for dead. Thanks for pulling me off, Jimmy boy. Some pretty foxy maneuvers you’ve got going here. You want to arrest me now, or should we have a cigar first?”
The irredeemable Billy Maidenshore was somehow both welcome and unwelcome as Jim Kirk stepped to the upper deck and squared off with him.
Kirk leered with a merry wickedness. “The bridge is a no-smoking section.”
Maidenshore held his hands out, his wrists crossed. “Go ahead, put me in custody. Shielded cabin, three squares a day, entertainment tapes, court-appointed attorney, and a couple of years of due process. Sounds plenty cushy to me after that Orion stink-box.”
“Be careful,” Kirk warned. “This isn’t Federation space. Governor Pardonnet’s new laws don’t look kindly on treason. Justice out here involves your being turned over to the people you tried to sell into slavery. No questions asked.”
For the first time, a flicker of fear drew down the brow of this man who was so vacant of human conscience. “That’s not fair play!”
“Fair?” Kirk echoed, spinning the irony. “It’s a new Earth, Billy, with new laws. ‘Fair’ has yet to be defined.”
“Security to the bridge,” Uhura smoothly ordered, without waiting for Kirk to say it.
Kirk managed to keep from glinting a silent thankyou at her for her motherly attentiveness. That was her way of telling him she thought Maidenshore didn’t matter right now.
She was right, but there was something fun about this even if the enemy wave was coming again. It would wait a couple of seconds.
He met her eyes. “Quickly, have the Tugantine get a grip on Beowulf and tow it into the cavern.”
“Sir, I doubt—” Though her expression made the rest of her statement, she clearly didn’t want to speak in front of Austin. Beowulf’s hulk was hardly worth salvaging in that blistered condition. There might not even by anybody alive on board.
Resolution gritted Kirk’s teeth. “I’m not leaving it out here. We’ll tow it all the way to Belle Terre if we have to.”
“The Orion ships are coming around the sphere, Captain,” Spock prodded.
“Mr. Sulu, let’s make an example of them. I’m sure our Kauld friends are watching.”
With only that, he turned again away from the unexpected prisoner and returned to his command center to use his supreme gifts upon the Orions.
Shucorion met Billy Maidenshore’s shameless glower with his best expressionless reaction. Would this false-hearted fool reveal their secret? Use their conniving to save his skin from the retribution offered?
There were no illusions, after what Shucorion had seen here today, that the Orions who dared face Captain Kirk in this mood would ever return to their home. They were no longer simply honest enemies, but playthings, and Kirk a raging child greatly fond of his powers.
He deserved to be. With sheer rigor and cleverness he had thwarted a superior force. He had taken risks that Shucorion found beyond comprehension—and Shucorion had long believed himself a risk-taker. Yet these roguish, freewheeling acts of risk! These enormous strides!
From the lower parts of the ship, two soldiers ran onto the bridge and in moments Billy Maidenshore was in custody, and being escorted from the bridge. Outside, almost as a secondary notice, the two Orion ships were speared with energy lancets from the starship. Demolished.
Before Shucorion’s eyes, the future completely reset itself.
Chapter Twenty-five
“AVEDON, WE’RE AMAZED to see you alive. I was afraid Federation would not give you up to us.”
Dimion stood aside as Shucorion stepped from the Federation shuttle onto his own ship.
The Blood Plume rested not far from the wagon train, just outside of the reaching distance of their transporter beams. A beam blackout had been instituted for the entire wagon train as it rearranged itself and effected its repairs. It was getting ready to go on its way, to pierce the star cluster and find its new home.
“Thank you for ‘rescuing’ me, Dimion.” Shucorion smiled grimly, still nagged by the idea that James Kirk suspected him of more than innocence. “Well, we failed for now, in some things. Is Vellyngaith going to come and kill us?”
“He was furious,” Dimion said. “But he wants to wait, to watch awhile, and contemplate the battle before acting again.”
“He is wise after all, then. I shall fear him more from now on.”
Dimion hovered at his side as they hurried through the Plume to the command area. “Do you think Maidenshore will give us away?”
“I have no guesses,” Shucorion told him. “He has said nothing, yet. He too, I imagine, is waiting and watching.”
He nodded dismissively at the others in the crew who turned to greet him, though no one really knew what would be appropriate to say. But they were Blood. They understood setbacks.
Shucorion came to the visual screens and stood in a kind of awe, gazing at the picture of seventy ships, all sizes and shapes, once again driving forward into the sparkling void. They were on their way again, now with a formidable reputation as their armor against the phantoms of night.
“We must continue to play our parts, Dimion,” he murmured. “Somehow we must convince Vellyngaith to continue playing his. How will this end? I cannot wonder. Either Kirk will vanquish Vellyngaith, destroying a legend and deflating the ego of the Kauld, or Vellyngaith will destroy Kirk, unleashing the fury of Federation upon the Kauld. Either way, Blood will stand by and win. If Federation discovers the truth and leaves the cluster, Blood will take over the area, for Kauld will be greatly weakened. If Federation stays, we will eventually have to deal with them. They will not allow our conflict to c
ome near them, and we may get the time to rebuild our strength. No matter what happens, Blood will eventually be the strongest force in the sector. Then they will have to deal with us.”
Dimion came to stand beside him, physically thinner and weakened from the pressure of his unwanted responsibilities. “We believe in you, Avedon . . . we will follow you, though we still do not understand.”
Shucorion nodded gently. “You will understand soon, I promise. I alone know the secret held at Belter . . . at . . . Belle Terre. I will hold it here within me, tell no one, let events play out with their natural intrigue.”
As he placed his hand upon his chest, where the secret of Belle Terre would be vaulted, his tone was cryptic, hurtful even to his own ears.
“The travelers have journeyed far . . . only to colonize their own tomb.”
Pocket Books
Proudly Presents
STAR TREK®
New Earth
BELLE TERRE
(Book Two of Six)
Dean Wesley Smith with Diane Carey
Available from Pocket Books
A preview of Belle Terre . . .
Captain James T. Kirk dropped into the soft sand and leaned back against a large log of driftwood. In front of him the dune slanted down to the beach and the green-tinted ocean beyond. He tried to think back to the last time he had simply sat alone on a beach and relaxed. He couldn’t remember ever doing that. But he also couldn’t imagine this was the first time, either. He must have relaxed on a beach before, although he had no doubt Dr. McCoy would swear it had never happened. McCoy always said that James Kirk never relaxed.
Kirk supposed that was true. Maybe it wasn’t too late to learn. Or more likely, it was time to learn.
He took a deep breath and looked around. There was a slight bite to the ocean breeze coming in over the waves, just enough to take the edge off the heat of the midday sun. The salt and brine smell drifted over the beach, strong enough to be enjoyed by a new arrival, but not overpowering enough to be noticed after the first few moments. The beach sand was almost a pure white, and stretched in a ribbon as far as he could see in both directions.