“If what you say is true,” Pike hurried on, “you can save Romulus. You have a second chance to…”
“Yes.” Nero overrode him. “Which is a gift I won’t waste on mercy. My purpose, Christopher, is not simply to avoid the destruction of the home I love, but to create a Romulus that can exist free of the Federation. Only then can her future be assured.”
Pike turned away and half closed his eyes. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.”
The commander of the Narada sighed anew. “As you wish. Given the determination you have displayed thus far it is, while time-wasting as well as disappointing, no less than I expected of you. I regret the discomfort that is to come.”
In addition to the newcomers, a brace of attending crew moved forward to close in around Pike. One handed Nero a pair of gleaming metal tongs, the other a sealed box.
“The frequencies, please.”
“Christopher Pike, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Registration NCC-1701.”
“As you wish.”
Pike braced himself, but the instrument was not directed at him. Instead, Nero inserted the tongs into the container and probed inside briefly before withdrawing them carefully. Clasped firmly between the metal tips was an alien arthropod of a body type and configuration unknown to Pike. A pair of long tentacles extended from the head while the abdomen squirmed in a futile attempt to gain freedom.
Nero regarded it thoughtfully. “This is a—well, no matter. We’re not here to discuss Romulan entomology. I can tell you that it likes neither the light nor cold. What it prefers is a warm, dark place safely inside another creature where it can estivate in peace until it is ready to emerge and spawn. As the bulk of its favored host creatures have an understandable dislike of its presence, it seeks to prevent being ejected from various bodily orifices by clamping itself securely around a portion of its host’s spinal cord. This ensures that it cannot easily be dislodged and expelled.” As he spoke he was bringing the metal tongs and their writhing carapaced prisoner closer to Pike’s face.
“When thus settled it secretes a fluid to ensure that it does not damage its host’s nervous system nor prevent it from functioning properly. When released within sentient beings, however, the fluid has an interesting side effect. It blocks deception. When asked a question, someone hosting one of our migratory little friends invariably responds with a truthful answer.” He nodded at the crew surrounding the prisoner.
Pike struggled violently, to no avail. His mouth was forced open, the squirming arthropod dropped into it, and his mouth closed tight. He was forced to swallow. He could feel the intruder kicking and writhing as it went down his throat.
He did not expect it would be pleasant when it forced its way out of his stomach and went hunting for his spinal cord.
Nero seemed to read his thoughts. “Don’t worry, Captain Pike. You’ll be given adequate local anesthetics to mute the pain of its passage. We want you healthy and alive when the first secretions start to loosen your memory.”
“What—what happens—afterwards?” He fought not to throw up, nor to think about the creature that already must be starting to chew its way through the inner lining of his stomach.
“Afterwards?” Nero looked thoughtful. “Why, afterwards you will be invited to watch the annihilation of your own home planet and its entire resident population. After which, you will be permitted to join them.”
XIII
Lately it seemed to Kirk as if all he was destined to do was to endure painful falls from very high places.
Vision and consciousness returned simultaneously, though not efficiently, as he struggled to free himself from the encumbering safety harness. He had not gone quietly. At least he had departed the Enterprise secure in the knowledge that sedation had been administered by someone other than Bones McCoy. The good doctor might have disagreed with him on strategy and chosen to side with that pointy-eared usurper, but he had also opposed the need to ban Kirk from the ship.
“I can keep him quiet and out of trouble while he’s on board,” McCoy had insisted.
“With all due respect for your medical expertise, Doctor,” acting Captain Spock had responded, “from what I have seen and know of Lieutenant James Kirk, short of placing him in permanent stasis it is not possible to do either. And even then I would have my doubts.”
Groaning, Kirk pushed himself forward out of the deceleration chair and tried to focus on the bank of blinking instrumentation in front of him. Other than insisting that he was alive and more or less intact, which conclusion he had already reached independent of mechanical confirmation, the readouts were not especially informative.
A quick look around indicated that he was in a standard one-person survival pod. He ought to have been flattered that the Enterprise had dropped out of warp long enough to deposit him wherever the hell he presently was, but for some reason he was less than thrilled. No doubt the pain in his shoulder had something to do with his lack of appreciation. At least he had been put down somewhere inhabitable.
When he finally managed to squirm completely free of the couch and peer out the single port, he discovered that while his present venue might be habitable, it was anything but inviting.
Spread out before his gaze was a pale vista of ice, snow, slopes of raw rock, scudding dark clouds, and a lowering sky that loomed over a landscape that was anything but benign.
Welcome to the resort world of Antarctica Twelve, he told himself bitterly. Somewhere far out in space a certain Vulcan commander unexpectedly raised to the rank of captain was no doubt smiling at his younger colleague’s predicament.
No, Kirk corrected himself. Spock might be logical to the point of indifference, but he was not vindictive. That would have been un-Vulcan. Whereas he, Kirk, felt completely comfortable raging against the situation in which he currently found himself. Leaning toward the hatch, he winced and caught himself as his shoulder protested.
“Oh—that sonofabitch.” Reaching up, he felt the throbbing joint. A strain suffered on touchdown, he decided. At least nothing was broken.
Turning toward the pod’s nearest pickup, he began with the most obvious and necessary question. “Computer, where am I? And don’t tell me you’re incapable of responding, because I’m just in the mood to pound the circuits out of something.”
Ignoring the empty threat, the pleasant synth voice responded with gratifying promptness. “Current location is Delta Vega, Class-M planet, unsafe. You have been ordered to remain in this pod until retrieval can be arranged by Starfleet authorities. Please acknowledge.”
“Bite me. How’s that for acknowledgment?”
Wonderful, he thought. Another glance out the port confirmed what he could recall from studies of the world on which he found himself. Empty, hostile, unpleasant.
Well, it couldn’t be any more empty, hostile, or unpleasant over the next hill, and he was damned if he was going to sit in one place and suck survival concentrates until the six-legged cows or whatever organisms dominated this part of the planet came home.
The fact that he was clad in cold-weather gear showed that his marooners had prepared him as best they could for his abandonment. He felt confident that he wouldn’t freeze if he took a little hike. Slapping a hand down on the appropriate corner of the console caused the pod’s canopy to rise. Frigid atmosphere slapped right back, stinging his face and turning his breath to vapor. It might have reminded a more wistful traveler of the Pacific fogs that still sometimes swept over San Francisco. Kirk was not in a wistful mood.
“Warning,” the mechanical voice piped up immediately. “You have been ordered to remain in your pod until you are retrieved by Starfleet authorities. Your location has been recorded and sufficient supplies are available to sustain you until that occurs. Except in the case of an emergency, unwarranted excursion in this vicinity is not recommended. This area has been deemed unsafe.”
Even though there was no one to see his expression, Kirk smiled. “There is an emergency. If I have to stay here and lis
ten to you, I’ll go crackers.”
Putting his hands on the sides of the exit, he pulled himself out.
The immediate surrounds of his landing site did not vary much no matter which way he looked. Ice and snow gave way to ice and rock, which occasionally was supplanted by ice and gravel. The lack of variety in the terrain was vast and numbing. Still, he kept walking. For someone of his temperament the thought of squatting in the survival pod until someone came to pick him up and place him under formal arrest was intolerable. Anger at the state of affairs in which he found himself kept him going. Pulling out his tricorder, he muttered into it.
“Lieutenant’s log, supplemental. I’m preparing a testimonial for my Starfleet court-martial—assuming there’s still a Starfleet left by the time I’m picked up. The circumstances in which I find myself are embarrassing, debilitating, and due entirely to the actions of a certain Acting Captain Spock, whose rationale for marooning me on this dismal snowball I can comprehend but utterly disagree with.”
Preoccupied with unburdening himself of his self-righteous anger, he failed to notice that the ground nearby was in motion. Something was traveling beneath the ice and snow parallel to his present path. It was unseen, silent, and quite large. He continued speaking into the tricorder.
“Acting Captain Spock, whose only form of expression is apparently limited to his left goddamn eyebrow, has abandoned me on Delta Vega in what I believe to be a violation of Security Protocol Forty-nine-oh-nine, governing the treatment of prisoners aboard a starship. According to the relevant Starfleet regulations, I am entitled, as an officer being kept under detention, to a standard holding cell on board a ship equipped with the minimum of civilized amenities, as opposed to being dumped on the friggin’ icebox of the galaxy!” He took a deep breath of the frosty air, which helpfully seemed to contain a slightly higher than Earth-normal percentage of oxygen.
“On the plus side,” he continued heatedly, “it’s really great here—if you like staring at nothing! Or if your favorite color is white. Even a damn hospital isn’t this white!”
He halted, swaying slightly. Without knowing how long he had been walking, it was impossible to determine how far he had come. Not that it mattered. Here looked the same as there, and there the same as anywhere. Rock and ice, ice and gravel. His head tilting back slightly, he howled at the uncaring sky.
“Sonofabitch-bitch-bitch! There’s nothing here-here-here! You pinch-faced neck-pinching mother—!”
“Nurrrgghhhhh!”
Uh-oh.
He turned slowly. Though not half the xenolinguist Uhura was, he had still been required to take and pass the usual minimum of courses in alien languages, and what he had just heard did not sound like a convivial greeting in any of them.
Glaring back at him out of a pair of black orbs that screamed murder was a massive furry shape that resembled the bastard offspring of a polar bear and a gorilla. How enchanting, he decided as he took an uneasy step backward. A polarilla. No, that’s a…drakoulias. It snarled again, exposing dentition that had not evolved for masticating vegetables. Painfully aware of his lack of access to any defensive weaponry more advanced than a rock, Kirk continued his studious retreat.
“Um…s-stay…?”
The monster took a step toward him, in one stride making up all the distance the diminutive human had thus far managed to put between them.
“Sit?” Kirk opined plaintively.
“RAAURRRRHH!”
Whirling, Kirk bolted.
Though not built for speed, the land leviathan’s stride allowed it to keep pace with the fleeing biped as Kirk sprinted for his life. So this is how it ends, he told himself as he ran as hard as he could. As a quick snack for some heartless carnivore on an out-of-the-way planet in a nowhere system. No one would find his body. There would be nothing to bury, no one to grieve over him, and no honorable career to memorialize. He would end up a single-line footnote in the annals of Starfleet, the least memorable of an otherwise unforgettable class.
It was gaining on him, it was going to eat him alive, it was going to pop his head off his shoulders like a cap on a drink bottle, it was…
The ground exploded beneath his pursuer as something massive, crimson-hued, multiarmed, and far more alien in contour than the drakoulias enveloped the startled carnivore in its tentacles and proceeded to cram it down an enormous circular gullet. The fur-covered meateater had been almost familiar in shape. The scarlet monstrosity that was now burping it down looked as if hell’s own crab had collided with a giant squid. A hengrauggi. Where am I pulling these names from? Willing himself to all but fly over the icy surface, Kirk somehow managed to increase his pace.
“…shoulda—stayed—in the pod.” He was breathing like a freight train.
A panicky glance behind him showed the monstrosity gaining rapidly. Too big, he decided. Too many legs. And him with only two, and short ones at that. He looked back again. Tentacular red terror now filled his gaze.
It was replaced by sky as the ground dropped out from under him.
The slope was long and steep, but as he fell he managed to miss most of the protruding rocks. Snowdrift cushioned the rest of his descent. On the occasions when his head happened to be facing rearward he saw that the creature, after a moment’s hesitation, was still coming after him. It was almost as if, by temporarily escaping its clutches, he had enraged it even more. That might be all to the good, he told himself. The angrier it became, the more likely it was to tear him limb from limb quickly instead of taking its time and dismembering him like a plucked chicken.
Hitting bottom, he rolled to his feet and resumed running just as the hengrauggi slammed into the ground on the exact spot where he had been lying a moment earlier. Scrambling up onto its multiple legs, it charged off in pursuit, unfortunately none the worse for wear from its fall. A desperate Kirk examined his surroundings. He was out of breath, out of energy, out of ideas.
Off to his left, a dark hollow in the rocks. A cave. Espying it sent a shot of adrenaline surging through him as he made desperately for the opening. Without even slowing down, his pursuer smashed into the too-small breach behind him. Rock and ice went flying as it battered its way forward, enlarging the aperture with each heave of its massive body. Running down its prey had become a matter of determination. It gave every indication of following Kirk all the way to the center of the planet, if necessary.
He was slowing, slowing. The last burst of energy that had enabled him to reach the cave had truly been his last. Slowing to a walk, he sought in vain for a smaller hole, a fissure or crack into which he might wedge himself. As he searched, something like a soft rubber cable wrapped itself around one ankle and jerked him off his feet.
The circular mouth that opened in the center of the creature’s forebody was more than wide enough to swallow him whole. Horrified at the prospect of being gobbled alive and slowly assimilated by unknown alien digestive fluids, he hoped that before that happened the muscular orifice would crush his chest or, preferably, snap off his head. Defiant to the end, he scrabbled at the hard ground with his hands, fighting for a purchase on available rocks. He might as well have been trying to resist the pull of a starship. Slowly but inexorably he found himself being dragged toward that waiting, gaping, hungry maw.
It was over. All of it, over. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
His backward progress halted.
Opening his eyes, he saw that the monster’s attention had suddenly been focused elsewhere. An irregular but bright light flashed, causing him to blink. Evidently it caused his gruesome assailant to do more than that, because the tentacle that had been gripping his leg abruptly released him.
Under the press of that flickering luminosity the monster drew back, recoiling reluctantly but inexorably. Now, Kirk saw that the source of the light was a torch, large and possibly fueled by more than just the large chunk of wood from whose tip flames danced. The creature’s retreat was understandable. On the frozen world of Delta Vega, fire
and heat would be perceived as alien and threatening to an indigenous species unfamiliar with a flame’s inexplicable distortion of the atmosphere. Additionally, the high level of oxygen in the atmosphere would make any fire that did start spread dangerously fast.
Advancing on the crimson-skinned monster, the figure wielding the torch continued to move forward until finally the predator gave up and conceded both the cave and the hunt. Tossing the torch aside, the biped turned toward the disbelieving but greatly relieved Kirk. Bundled against the cold beneath heavy furs and related synthetic materials, his savior was definitely humanoid. As his vision cleared and strength returned, Kirk could see that beneath the fringed cloak his savior was a…Vulcan. A very old Vulcan but unmistakably a member of that now nearly annihilated race.
Not that the identity of his rescuer mattered. At that moment Kirk would gladly have kissed the feet of a Netronian garbage macerator. He staggered weakly to his feet.
The figure commented evenly, “Notoriously afraid of heat.”
“Whoever you are—thank you.”
His rescuer continued to stare at him. Was his savior, considering his palpable great age, senile? Kirk hoped not. He badly wanted to ask a number of questions. As he debated how to proceed, the one who had rescued him finally spoke. There was uncertainty in his voice as he squinted at the still exhausted human.
“Jim?”
Kirk’s lower jaw dropped. “How—how’d you know my name?”
The Vulcan stared back at him, dark eyes that had seen much searching the human’s stunned visage. “How did you find me? Does Starfleet know of my presence?”
Kirk hardly heard him. “How do you know my name?”
No smile in response, no expression at all—or was that just a slight upturning at the corners of the Vulcan’s mouth? A weakening of logic confronted by overwhelming emotion?
“I have been, and always shall be, your friend.”
It was a nice sentiment, particularly here and now, but instead of warmth and recognition an aching Kirk felt only bafflement. Maybe the Vulcan confronting him was bordering on the senile. For saving him from the predator Kirk’s gratitude knew no bounds, but that did not mean he was ready to connive in an old man’s fantasies.