“I’m a nurse, not a doctor,” he reminded her, sweating and breathing hard. “And I like to think I saved a life.”
“That you did, Nurse.”
They were all running on adrenaline now, but the crowd had righteous fury on its side. Despite the security team’s flashing blades, the landing party was forced to give ground as the roof filled up with crazed Cyprians out for their blood. The sheer weight of their numbers drove the Starfleet personnel back toward the brink. If the crowd didn’t kill them, Number One realized, a five-story plunge soon would.
“Keep it up!” Tofrum cheered the mob on. He shouted and shook his fist in the air. “For Elzy . . . and Cypria!”
Jones slashed her knife back and forth, carving out a narrow space between the landing party and the crowd hemming them in. “I’m not sure they’re getting the message, Number One,” she stated. “Any suggestions?”
I wish, Number One thought. “Hope for the best . . .”
But expect the worst.
She suddenly flashed back to that moment on Talos IV when she had set her laser pistol for a forced chamber overload, choosing self-destruction over allowing the Talosians the opportunity to breed a colony of human slaves. That, she reflected, would have been a rather more exemplary way to depart this mortal coil. Falling victim to a misguided mob, worked up over a false rumor, was just embarrassing
“Let me through!” Tofrum pushed his way through the crowd. The ruby radiance of a laser burned at the tip of a weapon he brandished above his head. “I’ve got a score to settle with that dark-haired demon!”
Number One’s heart sank as she recognized the device.
“Oh, hell,” Olson moaned. “He’s got my scalpel.”
Tofrum grinned sadistically. “Let’s give the Earthers a taste of their own medicine.”
Number One kept her eye on the scalpel as Tofrum crept toward them, backed up by more berserk Cyprians than even she could count. Outside of jumping to their deaths, she really couldn’t see any way the landing party could get away from the mob on their own. The Enterprise was the only hope left to them.
Any time now, Christopher . . .
The familiar tingle of the transporter effect filled her with relief. The beam locked her into place as the overcrowded rooftop seemed to blur into a crackling, golden haze. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been quite so relieved to be taken apart on an atomic level. The process took just long enough for her to hear, over the energetic whine of the transporter, Tofrum howling in frustration.
“No! We had them!”
She could not find it in her heart to sympathize with him.
But we still haven’t got that ryetalyn.
* * *
Yamata’s excitement sounded over the intercom. “We’ve got them, Captain!”
Music to my ears, Pike thought. “Shields up, Yeoman!”
“Way ahead of you, sir!” Colt worked the controls at the nav station like a natural. “Shields up . . . at sixty percent, that is.”
Not as much as Pike would have liked with a hostile battle cruiser bearing down on them, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Helmsman, get us out of here!”
“Absolutely, sir!” Mohindas replied. “This neighborhood is rather too noisy for my tastes.”
That’s one way to put it, Pike thought. “Somebody see to Tyler.”
The stricken navigator was still sprawled on the deck of the command circle, looking far from his usual chipper self. The Rigelian bug had him down for the count; he moaned and twitched spasmodically. If he wasn’t in stage three of the fever, he was knocking on its door. Lieutenant Burstein, who had been manning the environmental systems station, scurried over to check on Tyler. He placed his hand against Tyler’s brow.
“He’s burning up, Captain.”
“Get him to sickbay,” Pike ordered. He could scarcely afford to sacrifice any more warm bodies on the bridge, but the environmental monitors would just have to go unattended for the moment. “Call security for assistance.”
The turbolift door whooshed open, and Spock hurried onto the bridge. Pike was glad to see him. Babysitting Merata had to take a back seat to defending the Enterprise at the moment. Spock’s keen eyes instantly took in the unconscious navigator and the slagged consoles around the bridge, but betrayed neither shock nor alarm. Pike could always count on Spock to keep a cool head in a crisis. He was like Number One that way.
“Situation, Captain?” the Vulcan asked.
“Heading away from Cypria, Mister Spock, and straight toward the Klingons.”
“I see.” Spock arched an eyebrow. “A curious strategy, Captain.”
“Not my first choice,” Pike said. “Believe me.”
The Fek’lhr could be seen on the viewscreen now, approaching the Enterprise head-on. Its bulbous prow seemed to increase in size as the distance between the two vessels shrank. Scorch marks on the battle cruiser’s hull and a breached cargo hatch revealed that it had not come through the Cyprians’ laser barrage unscathed. Pike had to wonder how much of the Klingons’ shields were left.
“Hail Krunn!” he ordered. “Tell him we’re coming through!”
Pike felt like he was playing a high-stakes game of chicken with the suspicious Klingon commander, who seemed to be in no hurry to let the Enterprise pass.
“Evasive action,” Pike said. “Hard to port!”
“Aye, sir,” Mohindas responded. A sharp turn pushed the limits of the ship’s inertial compensators as the entire bridge seemed to tilt sharply before the artificial gravity adjusted itself. Pike’s ribs smacked into the side of his chair while the rest of the crew fought to keep their balance. Spock stumbled across the deck, making his way to the science station, where he relieved Weisz. On-screen, the Fek’lhr seemed far too close for comfort as the Enterprise zoomed past it, barely escaping a collision. Pike held what was left of his breath, waiting to see if Krunn would take a shot at them.
Shields at sixty percent, he thought. Barely a passing grade.
Tense seconds passed as the Enterprise left both Cypria and the Klingons behind. To Pike’s slight surprise, no Klingon disruptor beams assailed his ship. The bridge remained steady.
“Shall I return to our previous orbit, sir?” Mohindas asked.
“And then some,” Pike answered. “Let’s put a little more distance between ourselves and those lasers.” He glanced at Spock. “What are the Klingons doing?”
“Coming about, Captain,” he reported, “and veering away from the planet as well.”
Pike hoped that Krunn was simply taking his own ship out of range of the Cyprian defenses and not preparing to attack the Enterprise at last. By now, he guessed, the Klingons were already scanning the Enterprise in hopes of finding out whether that fractured warp manifold was real or not.
Let them, he thought. The ruse had served its purpose. Number One and the landing party were safely back aboard and the Enterprise was still intact, despite lowering her shields for a crucial instant. That was victory enough for the time being.
A ragged cough tore at his lungs, shaking him like a leaf. He squeezed his eyes shut for moment, to shut out the sharp pains stabbing his eyes. He just needed the universe to go away for a few seconds.
“Captain!” Spock shouted, yanking him back into the crisis. “A hasty review of the sensor logs indicates that the Klingons also lowered their shields at the same time we did . . . and took advantage of the opportunity to beam a boarding party onto the Enterprise!”
Fifteen
Seven Klingon soldiers, in full environmental suits, beamed onto the Enterprise’s spacious hangar deck. One of them did not survive the experience.
An anguished howl escaped Mokag as he materialized midway into the port nacelle of a parked Cyprian shuttlecraft. His flesh and bone fused with the unyielding metal on a molecular level as two objects sought in vain to occupy the same space at the same time. Death was inevitable, but a brilliant green disruptor blast from his commanding officer spared him needless suffe
ring. The top half of Mokag’s body disintegrated into a blazing shower of atoms.
Lieutenant Guras scowled as he lowered his pistol.
“An ugly death, but a brave one,” he pronounced to his surviving men. “Mokag knew the risks.”
The assault team had deliberately beamed into the shuttle hangar, which was believed to hold the largest open space aboard the Enterprise, in hopes of avoiding just such an accident, but fate had not been kind to Mokag. Still, Guras was grateful to have only lost one soldier in the risky operation. Beaming blind into an enemy vessel was always fraught with peril. Guras could only fight to ensure that Mokag’s sacrifice would not be wasted.
“Move out!” he barked to his troops. There would be time enough to toast Mokag’s memory after they had achieved their objectives. Guras’s deep voice reverberated inside his sealed helmet, which he’d worn just in case the hangar had been depressurized. Heavy magnetic boots stomped across the deck. “Move, you lazy targs!”
A pair of marksmen, armed with long-range disruptor rifles, opened fire on the control booth overlooking the hangar deck in order to keep any startled Starfleet operators from responding too quickly to the incursion. And if a few humans were killed in the process . . . well, such were the fortunes of war.
They should have thought twice, Guras thought, before holding the general’s daughter hostage.
Twin blasts from the rifles shattered the control booth’s transparent observation window. Seared fragments rained down on the deck and empty shuttlecraft. Had he more time, Guras would have paused to sabotage the Cyprian shuttle, but the large clamshell doors at the end of the hangar were already beginning to open, exposing the hangar to the deadly vacuum outside. Some clever human had finally roused himself to action, apparently, and was attempting to flush the intruders out of the hangar. Emergency alarms began blaring as well.
So much for the element of surprise, Guras thought, not overly concerned. He had never expected the humans to overlook their arrival for long. Let them try to halt us!
Opening the space doors was a good idea, but the humans had not reacted fast enough. The rest of Guras’s team, minus the unlucky Mokag, had already reached the nearest exit from the hangar. Guras rushed to join them, his heavy boots weighing him down only slightly. A mighty wind blew against him as the voracious vacuum outside the ship swiftly sucked the air from the hangar, but the Klingons had come prepared for that tactic. Guras was grateful for his helmet and magnetic boots as he arrived at the hatchway, which had automatically sealed itself when the space doors started to open.
“Stand aside!” Guras ordered. “Must I do everything myself?”
A well-aimed blast from his disruptor pistol destroyed the locking mechanism, so that his men were able to pry the door open with their gloved hands. They scrambled through the doorway just as an emergency force field activated to seal off the hangar. Intended to merely keep the rest of the ship’s atmosphere from escaping into the void, it was a feeble field that Guras pushed through with little difficulty to reach the pressurized corridor beyond. At worst, he felt a mild static shock through his spacesuit.
“Stay sharp!” Guras said. “Fire at anything that moves!”
A gauge on his wrist confirmed that the corridor held sufficient air to breathe. Guras tugged off his bulky helmet to reveal a ridged brow and stern features, along with a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He took a deep breath and quickly surveyed his surroundings, which struck him as surprisingly deserted. According to Klingon Intelligence, a Starship-class vessel like the Enterprise housed more than two hundred crew members; Guras would have expected the halls to be bustling with activity instead of empty of targets. Was the entire ship taking a nap?
His lip curled in disdain. Such idleness would never be tolerated on a Klingon warship.
But now was no time to mock the enemy, not when there was still a mission to carry out. Guras consulted a handheld scanner that verified the presence of the ship’s warp core only a few decks above them. Shunning the turbolifts, he quickly located an emergency access ladder leading upward. He called to his men, who were busy removing their own helmets.
“Over here! Climb!” he growled. “Or would you prefer to wait for the humans to come looking for us?”
“Pity the human who does!” said a young soldier, grinning in anticipation. His dark face was agleam with the joy of battle. “It will not end well for them!”
“Save your breath for battle!” Guras snarled impatiently. “Climb!”
Getting the message, the other warriors clambered up the ladder, one after another, save for a single sergeant, who broke off from the rest of the team as planned. Wragh was a brash young soldier, replete with the cockiness of youth and handsome despite his regrettably smooth brow. Slick black hair tapered to a widow’s peak above his eager eyes. A thick mustache bristled above his upper lip, but his chin was clean-shaven, the better to show off its strong lines. Like Guras, he too carried a handheld scanner, albeit calibrated to detect a different kind of signal. He squinted at the readout.
“Is it working?” Guras demanded. “Do you have her?”
Wragh nodded. “The transceiver is functioning perfectly.”
“Then make haste . . . and do not return without our prize.”
Wragh grinned confidently. “I will recover her or die trying!”
Preferably the former, Guras thought as he watched the sergeant dash off in another direction. This was supposed to be a rescue, not a suicide mission, and they had already lost one man. Guras did not fear death, but he loathed the idea of failure. May fortune be with us.
Turning his back on Wragh, he hurried up the ladder after his men. Speed and stealth remained paramount if they hoped to succeed in their mission. They had encountered little resistance so far, but Guras knew that was bound to change any moment now. The blaring alarms proclaimed that the human captain and crew were awake to the danger and were surely mobilizing in response. Guras had never invaded a Federation starship before, but humans, to their credit, were known to fight back when challenged.
They were almost Klingon that way.
* * *
“Intruder alert!” Pike announced shipwide. “The Enterprise has been boarded by an unknown number of Klingons. All security forces on high alert. All other personnel, clear the corridors and secure your posts.”
The turbolift opened and all eyes turned warily to the entrance, as though half-expecting a horde of Klingon berserkers to storm the bridge. A few able-bodied security officers drew their weapons, only to lower them as Number One strode briskly onto the bridge. Pike heard more than a few audible sighs of relief.
“Reporting for duty, Captain,” she said dryly. “Is this a bad time?”
Pike noticed that she was not her usual immaculate self. Her uniform was ripped in places, not to mention sweaty and dirty. An ugly purple bruise marred her smooth white brow. Nicks and scratches on her face and hands hinted at the hardships she’d endured down on the planet. She had obviously been through the wars and come straight from the transporter room, but Pike still found her a sight for sore eyes. Given that the ship was at red alert, he could see why she wouldn’t waste time freshening up first. He would have done the same.
“To the contrary, your timing is impeccable, Number One,” he greeted her. “Although you may wish you had stayed on Cypria.”
“Unlikely, sir.” She took her usual place at the helm, relieving Mohindas. “I believe I am exactly where I need to be.”
Pike had to agree, especially with his own health deteriorating. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep fighting the fever, which didn’t seem inclined to take a time-out while he dealt with an equally relentless adversary. His chest felt like it was being squeezed by shrinking duranium bands. His brain threatened to burst out of his skull. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he was taking a spacewalk without a pressure suit.
Of all times, he thought, for the ship to be boarded by hostiles, when half the crew is
down with fever and I’m not exactly at full strength myself. The Klingons have caught us at a bad moment.
“Shut down the turbolifts,” he ordered, hoping to contain the invasion, and looked urgently at the science station, where Spock was peering intently into a gooseneck monitor. “What about it, Mister Spock? Have you pinpointed our gate-crashers yet?”
“Negative, Captain,” Spock replied. The glow from his monitor highlighted the angles of his face, making him look older than his years. “I am attempting to employ the ship’s internal sensors to detect specifically Klingon life-forms, but they are, for better or for worse, not easily distinguishable from humans . . . or Vulcans.”
“Don’t let the Klingons hear you say that,” Colt remarked from the nav station. “They would probably consider those fighting words.”
“In my experience, Yeoman,” Number One commented, “Klingons consider all words ‘fighting words.’ ” If she was surprised to find Colt serving as a navigator, she gave no indication of it. “That’s what makes them so distinctly . . . Klingon.”
Pike lacked the strength or inclination to take part in the banter. He briefly flirted with turning command over to Number One, now that she was back aboard, but, no, he wasn’t about to step down while his ship was being overrun by Klingons. If the intruders wanted the Enterprise, they’d have to drag him off the bridge.
“Captain!” Garrison said. “I’m getting reports of weapons fire in the hangar deck.”
“Of course.” Spock looked up from his monitor. “That would be the most advisable location to beam an uninvited boarding party.” He frowned ruefully. “I apologize for not thinking of that immediately.”
“Never mind that, Mister Spock.” Pike needed answers, not apologies. “Where do you predict that the Klingons will strike next?”
Spock and Number One came to the same conclusion almost simultaneously.
“Engineering.”
Sixteen