"Truly, I'm sorry, Lieutenant. If there had been another way of avoiding the damage, I assure you I would have employed it."
They emerged on the bridge to be greeted by a number of uncertain stares. As soon as it was made abundantly clear to all that the four officers were back in their original selves, the bridge personnel relaxed.
One who was waiting to greet them on their return strolled over to the command chair as soon as Kirk had seated himself.
"If you've no objection, Jim, there's something I'd like to request of you." McCoy indicated Uhura, Sulu, and Spock. "Of all of you."
"What is it, Bones?"
"When we're well on our way, I'd like to interview you four and record the interviews. I think the results would make an excellent monograph, one I'd like to submit for publication in the Journal of Starfleet Physicians. Mind-to-body transposition has been accomplished surgically, via transplant, but never before by transporter. If we could determine how to do it safely and repeatedly, there could be enormous potential benefits for—"
Sulu glanced back over a shoulder from his position at the helm-navigation console. "Just as long as I don't have to go through it again, Doctor."
"Nor I, Lieutenant," added Spock from behind the science console, in a tone that was not truly emotion-laden but that carried plenty of impact.
Kirk checked the main viewscreen. Stars showed brilliant against the velvet blanket of space where Briamos had recently rode. They were well on their way. "The Klingons should be opening the stasis box about now. Don't you think so, Mr. Spock?"
"Yes, Captain."
Kirk was unable to suppress a sly smile. "Wonder what they're going to say when they find nothing inside except a small generator projecting a simulated stasis field?"
Spock sounded unexpectedly uncertain. "The scenario you envision is not entirely in keeping with the facts, Captain."
Frowning in puzzlement, Kirk turned in the command chair, stared at his first officer. "What do you mean, Spock?"
"It was not my idea, Captain." Spock almost sounded embarrassed. "It was done at Chief Scott's insistence. I remonstrated with him, insisting that it was a juvenile notion, but the chief can be difficult to dissuade when he fixes on a particular idea. Also, he has less tolerance for the Klingons than most of us. I could, despite my personal position, see no harm in allowing him to proceed."
"Proceed? Proceed with what? Spock, what are you talking about?" Kirk didn't know whether to be upset or consoling. Here he was sure the entire Briamos incident was behind him, and now Spock seemed to be hinting that something had been done without his, Kirk's, knowledge. The first officer's comment about Scotty's well-known dislike for the Klingons only made him more nervous. They had escaped Briamos with a solid commitment from its inhabitants, while avoiding any dangerous encounter with the Klingons. But now—
What had Scott done . . .?
Kumara and his science staff had adjourned to a sealed, double-walled room. They stood behind a portable shield, watching through the superdense but transparent plate as the field nullifier continued to hum at the stasis box.
"Something's wrong," Kumara muttered uneasily. The nullifier had been operating for several long moments, yet the blue aura surrounding the box had not disappeared as it should have.
"I do not understand, Honored Captain," his equally concerned science chief said. "All settings and power levels are correct. The instrumentation is not complex and follows precisely the schematics set down in the manuals for such a nullifier. The aura should vanish. It should have vanished long before now."
"Try successively lower power settings, Klaythia," the Klingon commander suggested.
"I will try, sir." Klaythia adjusted controls on the remote he held. The third setting he tried produced an audible click. The blue halo vanished instantly. Everyone in the room was satisfied, except Klaythia.
"I don't understand, sir," he murmured uncertainly. "This stasis-field generator is operating at a much lower output than any previously recorded level for a Slaver box.
"There's a first time even for stasis boxes, Klaythia. Since the box itself generates the field, anything is possible. Maybe this box is especially old and its power has failed." He sounded pleased. "It may contain a particularly valuable device, to have been sealed for so long."
He was leading the assembled science officers toward the box, which sat on a low table in the center of the otherwise empty room. This was a great moment for the Empire!
A low whine sounded from within the box, rising rapidly in volume to a dangerous howling. The party of Klingons froze.
"Is that normal, Honored Captain?" asked one of the lower-ranking specialists.
"No. No, I've never heard of it happening before," declared Kumara, taking a cautious step backward.
The whining increased. Powerful lights began to glow, pulsing unevenly from the slowly opening top of the box. The whine became a scream and the box started to quiver and bounce on the table.
Kumara and the other Klingons continued their steady retreat, eyes glued in fascination to the dancing box. "Something went wrong with the nullifier, Klaythia. We've set off some kind of previously unknown type of Slaver self-protection device."
"No . . . Honored Captain." Even now Klaythia was more afraid of his commander's wrath than of what the increasingly energetic box might do. "I assure you, all was checked and rechecked before the nullifier was activated. It is operating properly. I admit I cannot account for the way the top of the box is opening without manual assistance but—"
There was a loud bang from within the box and several howls of despair from the assembled officers and specialists. The box jumped several meters, hit the right-side wall, leaped to the ceiling, then fell to the deck again, while the Klingons scrambled to open the sealed door.
The box lay still. Two officers paused, half in, half out the opened doorway.
A violent explosion blew the top of the box roofward. Most of the Klingons broke and ran in terror, shoving each other aside in their haste to escape. More colored lights shone from the box's interior. Flashes of bright, colored smoke appeared, formed glowing symbols in the smoky air of the chamber.
Kumara squinted, coughing in the haze. He discovered he recognized the symbols. They were Federation script and spelled out:
FEDERATION FOREVER!
And below that:
DOWN KLINGON!
Now the noises from inside the box organized themselves into a coherent pattern. Klaythia, who had flattened himself to the deck at the initial violent explosion, looked up thoughtfully. Kumara lay next to him and was climbing to his feet.
"I believe, Honored Captain, that those sounds are an electronic rendition of the Federation Interstellar Anthem."
"Imbecile!" Kumara belted his science chief hard across the mouth, even as he was drawing his sidearm. "I am all too familiar with the insulting propaganda contained in that wailing that passes for music among humans!"
Aiming the sidearm at the cheerfully tooting box, he fired. There was a small ke-rummp as the box blew apart. The music died out slowly and rather pitiably. Kumara fired again, at the glowing words floating in the atmosphere of the chamber. The burst passed through the letters, blew a smoking hole in the far wall. He could only hope the infuriating words would fade before anyone else saw them. He turned away, confronted the face of a security officer who had gathered enough courage to peek back into the room.
"No one," he said angrily to the soldier, "is to enter this room until those obscene symbols have been cleansed from the air, and this debris disposed of. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Honored Captain." The security officer withdrew hurriedly.
Walking back into the room, he holstered his sidearm and kicked contemptuously at the shattered rubble of the box. Most of the container had been vaporized or melted by his weapon.
"Let this remain always in your memory, Klaythia," he told his science chief, "as an indication of the fiendish way in which the human mi
nd works."
"It will, sir," said the subdued Klaythia. He stared mournfully at the remnants of the box. "What a shame, sir . . . All that valuable Slaver metal, gone."
Kumara let those words sink home. Realization filled him.
Kirk was just a light-minute too far away to hear the stream of curses that filled the chamber on board the Klingon cruiser.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
SLAVER WEAPON
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
Alan Dean Foster, Star Trek - Log 10
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