by Greg Cox
Koloth stroked his goatee thoughtfully. It was regrettable that he would have to destroy the colony below, and all that valuable genetic expertise, but he could not risk letting Paragon’s scientific secrets fall into the hands of the Empire’s enemies. “Prepare to fire,” he ordered curtly. Set at maximum power, the battle cruiser’s powerful phase disruptor cannons would make short work of the colony’s protective dome.
“Captain!” Lt. K’rad shouted from the auxiliary tactical station, where he had been assigned to keep watch over the Enterprise. The silver mesh on his uniform reflected the crimson glow of the bridge lights. “The Earthers’ ship is moving to block our cannons!”
Koloth scowled. Captain Kirk and his crew were not making his mission any easier. He had hoped that the photon grenade his first officer, Korax, had planted at Paragon’s primary deflector array would be enough to terminate the colony’s existence, but sensors indicated that Kirk and the colonists had somehow managed to keep the dome intact despite the sabotage. Now here was the Enterprise, complicating matters once again.
“Shall I reposition the ship?” the helmsman, Kinya, asked.
Koloth shook his head. The Enterprise would no doubt simply shift position as well, and Koloth had no desire to spend the rest of his career playing a never-ending game of feint and parry with the Starfleet vessel. We could be stuck above this wretched planet until Kahless comes back, he mused sourly.
“We should blow them to atoms,” Korax snarled. Koloth’s first officer stood, as was proper, at his captain’s side. A black eye and a split lip bore testament to Korax’s earlier encounter with Paragon’s genetically enhanced security guards. “Obliterate Enterprise, then those genetwisting freaks on the planet!”
“All in good time,” Koloth counseled, cautiously regarding the Constitution-class starship obstructing his view of the planet. He had not risen to his present high command by taking unnecessary risks. A pity, he reflected, that the Gr’oth lacked a cloaking device of the sort recently developed by the Romulans; such foolproof camouflage would have allowed him to break this stalemate by striking out at the colony before the Enterprise could get in the way. We must exert more pressure on our so-called allies to share their cloaking technology with the Empire.
“Captain!” The communications chief, Vlare, called out from his station behind and above the command chair. “The humans are hailing us.”
Of course they are, Koloth thought. Humans would always rather talk than fight. “On screen,” he ordered.
The face of Kirk’s Vulcan first officer appeared on the main viewer, confirming Koloth’s assumption that Captain Kirk was still on the planet’s surface. “This is First Officer Spock,” he stated, with an irritating lack of inflection, “currently in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise. We have observed your attempt to target the human colony on Sycorax and urge you strongly to reconsider. We are prepared to defend the colony if necessary.”
“This is no affair of yours, Vulcan,” Koloth retorted. “The Paragon Colony is not yet a member of the Federation and therefore beyond your jurisdiction. We have every right to take action against a legitimate threat to Klingon security.” He smirked at the viewscreen. “For that matter, the colony violates the Federation’s own ridiculously stringent prohibitions against human genetic engineering. You should thank us for striving to enforce your laws so forcefully!”
Spock raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your sarcasm is duly noted, Captain,” he said dryly. “Nonetheless, the colony remains under our protection until its future political affiliation can be determined. I suggest you return to your own recognized region of space, which does not, at present, include the planet Sycorax.”
“He’s bluffing!” Korax insisted. Sneering, he spit contemptuously upon the grilled metal floor of the bridge. “Vulcans have no will for battle.”
Koloth was not so sure. He knew, better than most of his more obstreperous brethren, that a keen intellect and unemotional demeanor did not preclude skill in warfare. Indeed, in many ways, a cold-blooded enemy could be the most dangerous of all.
Ultimately, there was only one way to find out if the Vulcan was bluffing.
“Lock cannons on Enterprise,” he said, manually cutting off the communications link between the two ships. Spock’s alien countenance disappeared from the viewer, and Koloth fixed a predatory gaze upon the Starfleet warship.
“Fire!”
Bursts of brilliant green disruptor fire exploded against the Enterprise’s raised deflector screens. On the bridge, the concussion rattled the floor, jarring Spock where he sat.
He calmly took firmer hold of the arms of the chair, unperturbed by the attack. It was only logical; placing themselves between the Klingons and their prey necessarily made the Enterprise a target. Now the task at hand was simply to survive the conflict without sacrificing the planet below.
“Return fire,” he instructed, before the glare of the Klingon’s first salvo had fully faded from the viewscreen. At the navigation station, to the right of the helm, Yeoman Martha Landon triggered the already-energized phasers. Beams of sapphire energy shot forth from the underside of the Enterprise’s saucer section, converging on the enemy battle cruiser. Spock watched with interest as the phaser energy crackled along the edges of the Klingon ship’s deflectors.
The targeting scanner telescoped out from the helm station, permitting Sulu to fully gauge the effects of the phaser strike upon their adversary. “A direct hit on their shields,” the Asian crewman reported. “No obvious damage to the cruiser itself.”
“Yet,” Yeoman Landon added, with a touch more martial zeal than Spock deemed seemly. He made a mental note to recommend her transfer to Security, should they all survive the present conflict.
The Klingons responded by launching another volley of high-intensity disruptor fire. Blazing emerald energy spewed from the cannons mounted on the battle cruiser’s wings. The resulting shock wave, stemming from the violent intersection of disruptors and deflectors, rocked the bridge and caused the overhead lights to flicker momentarily. Spock judged the impact perceptibly more damaging than the previous blast.
“Shields down to ninety-two percent,” Chekov reported.
Ninety-two-point-eight-five, Spock estimated. “Fire at will, Yeoman Landon,” he ordered. A glance at the astrogator revealed that the force of the disruptors had pushed the Enterprise a few degrees off mark. “Maintain intercept position, Mr. Sulu,” he urged. “We do not wish to provide the Klingons with an angle from which to attack the colony.”
“Yes, sir!” the helmsman said, a trace of mordant humor in his voice. “I’ll keep us right in the line of fire.”
Phasers clashed with disruptors just beyond the boundaries of the planet’s atmosphere, barraging the viewscreen with flashes of scintillating blue and green energy. Spock felt the steel-and-plastiform construction of the bridge vibrate beneath the strain of the cataclysmic forces battering the ship’s deteriorating shields, each fresh disruptor blast sending a bone-rattling jolt through his entire skeleton. An unexpectedly potent strike caused his jaw to snap shut on his lower lip. He tasted copper on his tongue.
Ignoring any physical distractions, Spock coolly assessed the tactical situation. The warring ships were evenly matched, but the Enterprise was handicapped by having to defend the colony as well as itself, thus severely limiting its maneuverability. With evasive action out of the question, the Enterprise clearly required some manner of competitive edge. Spock’s computerlike mind quickly considered and discarded dozens of possible strategies, both time-tested and untried. It was while reviewing the successful battle tactics of Earth’s preunified past that a promising idea occurred to him.
“Yeoman Landon,” he requested, rising from the captain’s chair, “please step aside.” There was no time to explain the intricacies of his stratagem to the young crewmember; it would be faster and more effective to man the weapons controls himself.
Landon promptly surrendered the navigation station, and Spock
took her place to the right of the helm. He rapidly reprogrammed the phaser controls to vary the intensity and protonic frequency of the phaser bursts at a significantly accelerated rate, roughly 118.731 times a second. The rapid shifts would, inevitably, lessen the offensive strength of the phasers, but, according to his calculations, might well serve to provide the Klingons with an unwelcome surprise.
He pressed the firing controls, initiating the sequence. On the viewscreen, the incandescent phasers flashed at high speed along an entire spectrum of colors, producing a prismatic strobe effect that left Ensign Chekov blinking in confusion. “What in the name of Mother Russia . . . ?” He scratched his head, a baffled look on his face. “Mr. Spock, are the phasers supposed to be doing that?”
“Affirmative, Ensign,” Spock stated, simultaneously adjusting the phaser controls to enhance the strobing. “With their deflectors on full, the Klingons’ sensor arrays can only scan along a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We lack the sheer phaser power to overwhelm their shields, but I theorized that it might be possible to use the phasers to disorient their remaining sensors.”
Standing off to one side, Landon watched the light show on the screen with wide, wondering eyes. “Is it working?” she whispered.
One minute, the main viewer had the Enterprise directly in its sights. The next, a flashing, kaleidoscopic display of lights and colors usurped the screen, offering Koloth nothing but visual static, with no view at all of the ongoing battle. “Qu’vatlh!” he swore, rising up from his command chair in surprise. “What is happening?”
At the chief tactical station, over Koloth’s left shoulder, Lt. Macck frantically worked the sensor controls, trying to restore the image on the screen. “It’s not working!” he growled. Frustrated, he hammered the control panel with his fist. “The processors can’t make sense of the EM readings!”
“Targeting sensors inoperative,” the gunman, Krevorr, reported from the weapons station. “We’ve lost our lock on Enterprise!”
“Navigational sensors, too!” Kinya called out. “We’re flying blind!”
Koloth suddenly felt as though he were being nibbled to death by tribbles. His fists clenched angrily as he glared with icy fury at the malfunctioning main viewer. The flashing pyrotechnics, devoid of usable data, made his head hurt. “Compensate!” he ordered his crew. How could he fight a battle when he couldn’t even see his enemy? “Compensate, for Kahless’s sake!”
“Mr. Spock!” Chief Engineer Scott’s voice exclaimed over the bridge’s intercom system. “What the devil are ye doing to me poor phaser banks?”
Still seated at the navigation station, Spock opened a line to Engineering. “My apologies, Mr. Scott, but there was no time to inform you of my intentions.” He observed the strobing phasers on the viewscreen, while signaling Sulu to reposition the Enterprise with regards to the Klingon vessel. “Although unorthodox, I believe my present use of the main phaser arrays will not exceed their operational capacities, provided our encounter with the Klingons is not too protracted.”
“If you say so, Mr. Spock.” The canny engineer sounded skeptical. “Just don’t be making a habit of this, mind you. Phaser settings were never meant to go spinning like pinwheels!”
“Your point is well taken, Mr. Scott.” Spock’s gaze never left the viewscreen, where fierce green disruptor blasts could be seen blazing across empty space, missing the Enterprise entirely; it certainly seemed as though the enemy battle cruiser was now firing blind. “Spock out.”
“It’s working!” Yeoman Landon exclaimed, looking over Spock’s shoulder at the viewscreen before them. “You’ve knocked out their sensors.”
“In fact,” he corrected her, “their sensors are not so much knocked out as overstimulated.”
“A brilliant move, Mr. Spock!” Chekov enthused. The emotive young Russian looked up from the RVS scanner to congratulate his commander. “Wherever did you get the idea?”
Spock took little note of the ensign’s fulsome praise. “From one of Earth’s own global conflicts,” he divulged. “Your second World War, to be exact.” He targeted the Klingon ship with a reverse tractor beam, giving the bedeviled battle cruiser a solid push so that, in theory, the Klingons would not even be certain of their own position. “Allied forces defending the Suez Canal from German Luftwaffe bombers fit ordinary searchlights with tin reflectors, then engineered the lights so that they would spin rapidly, projecting ‘cartwheels of light’ into the night sky that effectively dazzled the German pilots, rendering them unable to keep the canal in their bombsights. The ploy was successful, and the canal kept safe.” Much as Sycorax is now, he observed. “I merely adapted the same technique to modern technology.”
“I see,” Chekov said, grinning. “World War Two, you say? Sounds like a Russian’s idea to me.”
Spock arched an eyebrow, bemused by the ensign’s atavistic nationalism. “In fact, the strategy is credited to one Jasper Maskelyne, a British stage magician.”
Chekov frowned, eyeing Spock dubiously. “Are you quite sure it wasn’t Maskelynovich?”
An explosion buffeted the Gr’oth, causing the bridge to tremble like a frightened targ. Sparks flared from the tactical console, singeing Macck, who angrily snuffed out the flames with his bare hands. Only a few strides away, Koloth’s heart sank; a veteran of numerous battles, he knew the impact of a photon torpedo when he felt one.
“Shields down to eighty-six percent!” K’rad reported from the auxiliary station. Warning lights flashed on his control panel, and he pounded on the recalcitrant instruments as though they were drums.
His swarthy face a veritable portrait of unchecked rage, Korax grabbed his captain by the shoulder. “We are under attack!” he growled, displaying an impressive grasp of the obvious. Spittle flew from his lips as he shouted into the captain’s face. “We must retaliate!”
Koloth struck Korax hard across the face with the back of his hand, reasserting his authority. “No!” he decreed forcefully. “I am not about to waste any more of our firepower by shooting blindly in the dark.” He sneered at Korax in disdain. “Only a fool throws spears at shadows.”
The intemperate first officer wisely withdrew his hand from Koloth’s person. Crimson droplets fell from Korax’s freshly bloodied nose and lips. Inwardly, Koloth felt relieved that Korax had backed off so readily; the last thing he needed right now was a challenge from his second-in-command. He had other problems to deal with, like a mission rapidly going to Gre’thor.
The useless visual clutter on the main viewer taunted him, and Koloth paced back and forth across the bridge, exasperated and irate. “Will someone fix that cursed viewer!” he cried out bitterly. “Am I surrounded by incompetents?” He felt his icy demeanor and self-control melting away. Was it just the fire in his blood, or was the bridge getting uncomfortably warm?
“Captain!” K’rad shouted. “I have it!”
Sparing his captain the tiresome technical details, K’rad stabbed at the backup sensor controls. Koloth’s hopes surged as the headache-inducing flashes gave way to a clearer, sharper view . . . of churning yellow clouds!
“No!” Koloth gasped as the truth hit home with the force of a disruptor blast. No wonder the bridge felt so oppressively hot; they were plunging into the planet’s acidic atmosphere. “Reverse course!” he yelled hoarsely, as Sycorax’s gravity seized his ship, causing the floor of the bridge to slope downward precipitously. Koloth grabbed on to the nearest support beam to keep from falling face-forward. Reacting less quickly, Korax tumbled head over heels into the base of the main viewer.
“Climb!” Koloth hollered. He could feel the sweltering heat of their descent all the way through their tattered shields. He heard the wrenching sound of inertial dampers being pushed beyond their limits. Black, acrid smoke erupted from half a dozen consoles as warning alarms blared throughout the bridge. “Climb!”
“Mr. Spock,” Chekov called out. “The Klingon vessel is escaping the planet’s atmosphere.”
&nb
sp; “Understood,” Spock said, acknowledging the report. “Their status?”
Chekov peered into the scanner, even as, on the viewscreen, the globular prow of the battle cruiser emerged from the murky depths of Sycorax’s turbulent atmosphere, followed by its extended neck and once-menacing aft wings. The outer hull of the vessel was visibly scorched, while plasma leaked from its ravaged impulse engines and disruptor cannons.
“Their shields are shredded!” Chekov announced jubilantly. “Less than forty-three percent operative, with holes you could fly a shuttlecraft through!”
“That should not be necessary, Ensign.” Spock gave the navigator’s post back to Landon and returned to the captain’s chair. The injured battle cruiser lurched awkwardly across the screen. Spock was gratified to note extensive damage along the entire length of the ship. Its running lights flickered uncertainly while phosphorescent vapor jetted from the emergency vents, as well as from the reactor cooling system below its engineering hull. Even the bolognium shielding on the warp nacelles was scarred and dented.
“Shall I take offensive action, Mr. Spock?” Landon asked, her fingers poised over the weapons controls.
“Phasers at maximum,” he instructed, unwilling to give Koloth and his crew a chance to recover from their recent reversals in fortune. “Target their sensor arrays and shield emitters, taking care not to hit their warp engines.” His fingers were steepled pensively beneath his chin as he contemplated the besieged battle cruiser. “We want to give the Klingons the opportunity to escape.”
“Yes, sir,” Landon said, sounding a trifle disappointed. Beams of azure energy assailed the Klingon vessel, slicing through its already battered hull. The last vestiges of its shields flickered impotently along its charred metal skin.
