“Logical,” Spock replied.
“So this adheres to the Naazh’s armor and deploys cables to wrap around it and immobilize the wearer—but the cartridge contains a miniaturized version of Doctor Tristan Adams’s neural neutralizer mechanism, in order to suppress brain-wave patterns.”
Kirk stared. “That technology was restricted over a decade ago. On my recommendation.”
“We got special dispensation for the sake of the emergency. My science officer Selek’held collaborated with the team that developed it, and he’s confident it can work.”
Kirk was distracted by Spock’s intense attention toward a member of the Palmares security team, a short-haired Vulcan woman with her head lowered. Kirk did not recognize her, but something about her apparently made Spock concerned. No, not just concerned—if Kirk was any judge of Spock’s expressions, he had just had a hypothesis confirmed.
Spock moved forward abruptly and clenched the woman’s forearms, pinning them to her sides and making her drop the case she was carrying. “Spock to bridge,” he said. “Intruder alert in cargo bay.”
Nd’Omeshef stared. “What is the meaning of this?” As he spoke, the intruder alarm began to sound, and the security personnel on the catwalks around the bay straightened to attention and drew their energy batons.
Instead of addressing him, Spock spoke to the Vulcan woman, who stared at him with cool contempt. “You have disguised yourself well, Specialist. But once we learned that the Naazh included Federation citizens motivated by xenophobia toward telepaths, I began to suspect that your death was not as it appeared. I did not wish to impugn your memory without evidence, so I kept my suspicions private. But I have been anticipating your return … T’Nalae.”
Kirk stared, but his understanding came close on the heels of his shock. Now that Spock had pointed it out, he could recognize the young V’tosh ka’tur despite the surgical alterations to her features. “Of course,” he said. “You led several others into the side lounge to escape the red Naazh … then the gold Naazh appeared inside and started killing them. We thought you were one of its victims, but—”
She laughed. “Yes. You wondered how we penetrated the shields? I was already inside, the anchor who brought the others through.”
Kirk grabbed the neural neutralizer cartridge from nd’Omeshef, loaded it into the gun, and aimed it at T’Nalae. “Why?” he demanded with cold fury. “How could you hate these people so fiercely that you’d commit such slaughter?”
She chuckled. Her new face was more angular than the old, harder and more fitting for her true self. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Admiral Kirk. The creatures you defend so nobly are the real evil here, an aberration that threatens the proper order of things. The Naazh are champions of justice, putting an end to their perversion.”
“You’ll have no chance to hurt them, T’Nalae. This bay is surrounded by subspace damping fields. You won’t be able to summon your armor or call for reinforcements.”
T’Nalae laughed louder. “Primitive fools. You think your petty four-dimensional tricks can stop us? I’ve studied all your defenses. And I’ve spent a year honing my skills, upgrading my armor. I need no assistance this time.” Her smile grew smug and sinister. “I don’t even need to use my hands.”
She looked straight ahead and shouted one word in Vulcan: “Mesuvulau!”
Spock was thrown back as a swirling sphere of energy formed around her. A second later, it faded, and the gold Naazh was revealed. Her armor was more elaborate now, with heavier torso plating and more pronounced hornlike protrusions atop the featureless golden visor.
Kirk immediately fired the neutralizer cartridge. Almost faster than he could see, the cartridge shot out its cables and wrapped around T’Nalae, binding her arms. He heard a chillingly familiar hum as the miniaturized neural neutralizer engaged. But she had already moved a hand over her belt crystal and activated it, the neutralizer having no apparent effect. Another swirl of energy surrounded her, and when it faded, the cartridge and cables had vanished, presumably into whatever extraspatial realm the Naazh used to come and go.
“New weapons aren’t much use against someone who infiltrated the design team,” T’Nalae pointed out, her smugness not concealed by the helmet’s voice filtering.
On the main cargo floor below, Kirk saw, the New Humans had already jumped into action, with the telekinetic adepts forming up around Jones and Xiang while the rest retreated toward the portside cargo enclosures. But T’Nalae ignored them, turning and running aft along the catwalk. The two nearest guards in that direction met her and struck with their energy batons, but the weapons had no effect; T’Nalae must have adapted her armor to them as well. She knocked one guard into the outer bulkhead and the other off the catwalk railing; one of the telekinetics reached out and slowed that guard’s fall so she made a safe landing.
A third guard, thinking fast, closed the double pressure doors separating the cargo bay catwalk from the landing bay. T’Nalae leaped off the catwalk and arced several meters aft, alighting onto the shuttle elevator platforms that had been converted to extra berthing space. Kirk wondered why she was running away from the New Humans that were her targets.
Spock cried out the answer just as it started to coalesce in Kirk’s mind. “The landing bay doors!” They exchanged a look. If T’Nalae shot out the clamshell doors and the atmospheric containment field across them, she would vent the entire vast space to vacuum.
“Secure the bay access doors!” Kirk ordered. While most of the guards on the platform level closed on T’Nalae, the guard nearest the control console ran to it and entered the command to begin closing the wide, two-deck-high segmented doors between the cargo and landing bays. Meanwhile, Kirk, Spock, and nd’Omeshef ran aft along the upper catwalk. The guard who had shut the catwalk doors before had already reopened them and preceded the command officers through. Kirk recalled her name—Emily Jackson—and resolved to give her a citation for quick thinking.
As Kirk ran along the catwalk directly above the elevator platforms, he saw the guards hurling their bolas, attempting to ensnare T’Nalae. The cables that wrapped around her upper torso had no effect, for her armor blades sliced through them with a single flex of her arms. But one cable wrapped around her legs and made her tumble. By the time she began to cut her legs free with the blade on her forearm, the guards had closed in with batons, ramming their tips into her armor like cattle prods. They had little effect, and after a moment, she broke free and shot upward in an improbable spinning leap, her slashing blades felling at least two of the guards and slicing a third guard’s baton in two.
With another prodigious leap, T’Nalae reached the guard at the door console, grabbed the edges of his breastplate, and hurled him into the path of the closing bay doors. He scrambled to get free of the support channels for the massive metal doors, but T’Nalae entered the command to reverse their closing, then smashed the console with her armored fists.
By now, Kirk and the two captains had reached the forward edge of the landing bay floor, where they formed a defensive line alongside several guards armed with batons and phaser rifles. But before T’Nalae could resume her run toward him, a group of New Human telekinetics leaped into view from the cargo floor, their jumps almost as prodigious as T’Nalae’s. As they landed on the elevator platforms below him, Kirk saw that Miranda Jones and Arsène Xiang led the group. He suppressed a surge of fear for Miranda’s safety. Whatever they now shared, it didn’t make her helpless. With her abilities, he reminded himself, she could defend herself as well as anyone on the Enterprise.
The New Humans formed an arc around the gold Naazh and struck at her with telekinetic surges. T’Nalae reeled back only slightly, then used her belt-stone flash to disperse their psionic fields. They fell back, and she summoned a firearm from dimensional space, opening fire on the telekinetics with plasma bolts. One woman was struck in the arm, screaming in agony as she fell, but the others dodged with preternatural speed, as if sensing the
bolts in advance. The Enterprise guards merely waited until the battle had moved forward, then came to the aid of the fallen woman. They recognized that the fight had escalated beyond their level.
What happened next stunned Kirk. As T’Nalae continued to fire, Xiang grabbed a heavy blanket from one of the cots set up on the elevator platform and tossed another to Jones. Wrapping the blankets around themselves, they closed their eyes and concentrated …
… and with a quick flash and shimmer, the blankets transformed into silver armor!
Rather than the faceless, insectile suits of the Naazh, the New Humans’ armor and helmets left their faces bare. Xiang’s was stylized to resemble the lamellar armor of a Tang-dynasty infantryman, while Jones’s had more of a European look, its chestplate bearing an impressionistic relief carving of Medusa’s head, like the aegis of Greek myth.
“Fascinating,” Spock breathed. “Direct transmutation of available matter!”
As primitive as it looked, the transmuted armor was effective, deflecting T’Nalae’s plasma bolts. The remaining telekinetics fell into formation behind the two armored leaders for protection. T’Nalae cupped a hand before her belt stone and drew from it a long sword with a glowing, energized blade, a trick that amazed Kirk just as much as when he’d seen the red Naazh do it a year before. Did the belt stones link directly to the other-dimensional space they used?
But the surprises weren’t over yet. Xiang and Jones reached out, and two fallen energy batons flew off the deck and into their hands. With another shimmer of energy, the batons transmuted into swords that the two armored figures used to engage with T’Nalae. Whatever the blades were now made of, they were strong enough to match the Naazh weapon. How could Miranda have gained this kind of power? Kirk wondered.
Thunder sounded, and the deck heaved beneath Kirk. He almost fell, but Spock caught him. The fighters below, already off-balance from their clash, were knocked down.
“Bridge to Captain Spock,” came Sulu’s voice. “We’re under attack by a Federation scout ship that appears to have Naazh enhancements.” Another blast rocked the ship. “Powerful ones.”
“Engage and evade at your discretion, Commander,” Spock instructed him, even as nd’Omeshef drew his own communicator and ordered the Palmares to retract the docking tunnel and clear for maneuvering.
The attack had allowed T’Nalae to break free of the scuffle below, and she ran straight for Kirk, who fired futilely with his phaser while the guards joined in with their rifles at full power. The barrage slowed her only marginally, but it was enough for the telekinetics to regroup and hit her from behind with another psionic surge, making her tumble into the shuttlecraft storage and maintenance hangar underneath the bay floor where Kirk and Spock stood. They and the guards spread out and moved aft, trying to stay ahead of the sounds of the fierce battle beneath their feet. Kirk heard groans, scrapes, and thuds suggesting that entire shuttlecraft were being dragged across the deck and thrown at T’Nalae.
My God. What have we gotten in the middle of?
The report of a Naazh plasma pistol sounded again several times, and a hole was blown in the deck a few meters in front of Kirk. The sounds of the battle came through more clearly now, and occasionally another shot came through to enlarge the hole before the New Humans presumably impeded T’Nalae once again. “They won’t hold her long,” Kirk said to Spock. “And I don’t know what we can do once she gets up here.”
“I may have an idea, Admiral,” Spock said, nodding toward the side of the bay. Kirk followed his gaze and grinned.
Each side of the landing bay contained small hexagonal docking ports for three work bees—boxy yellow Cargo Management Units just large enough for a single operator, used for hull inspection, maintenance, or cargo hauling depending on what attachments were used. The CMUs were hardly combat craft, but they were sturdy and significantly bigger and heavier than a suit of armor.
Kirk had barely managed to unplug the work bee from its charging boom and extend it on its docking sled by the time T’Nalae’s armored form leaped up through the hole in the deck. He popped the canopy and climbed into the bee’s control seat, an awkward fit for an operator without an EV suit. A shot from T’Nalae’s weapon grazed the canopy as it shut, damaging it enough to prevent a secure seal. But she had fired in passing as she made her way toward the clamshell doors, evidently not believing Kirk could pose much of a threat. He silenced the pressure alarm, engaged the work bee’s antigravs, and fired its maneuvering thrusters to join the fight.
By now, Jones and Xiang had also emerged from the hole and were charging at T’Nalae once again, Miranda firing psionic surges while Xiang went at her with his sword. But another blow from the attacking ship outside staggered the New Humans again, whereas T’Nalae held her ground, having braced herself an instant before as if she’d sensed it coming. She drove her sword through Xiang’s gut with a savage yell, then let him fall to the deck with the energized blade still inside him. Then she stepped toward the clamshell doors and opened fire at the containment-field emitter strips along its sides. Their violet light flickered, the field starting to break down. If she managed to blow a hole through the doors next, the bay would depressurize explosively within seconds.
Then Spock slammed into her with the nose of his work bee.
It knocked her down hard enough that she skidded several meters across the deck, but it appeared to do almost as much damage to the CMU, which flailed and scraped against the deck, its forward headlight cracked and its nose crumpled. T’Nalae recovered from her tumble and fired her weapon at Spock’s canopy, cracking and blackening it with her first shot. A second would surely get through.
So Kirk spun his own bee around to point its rear particle-beam thruster directly at T’Nalae and fire it at full power, while simultaneously firing his forward reaction-control jets to counter the forward thrust. The jets were too weak to counter the main thruster, so his bee accelerated forward and crashed into the bees’ attachment storage bay nose-first. But the collision spun the bee around enough for him to see through the side window that T’Nalae had been knocked down by the particle beam, which had left some mild carbon scoring on her armor. She was on her hands and knees on the deck, shaking her head and reaching for her dropped firearm.
But Jones had now been joined by the rest of the telekinetics, two of whom had the wounded Xiang’s arms over their shoulders, carrying him forward. As one, they reached out to the dazed T’Nalae and flipped her onto her back, pinning her to the deck as she struggled. One of them flicked a hand and sent her sidearm flying. Jones then strode forward determinedly, raised her sword, and drove it into T’Nalae’s belt crystal, shattering both sword and crystal with a blinding burst of light. By the time the light faded, Jones was on her back, dazed, and T’Nalae lay exposed on the deck, the last glint of her armor fading.
As Kirk climbed out of his work bee, the ship shook from another salvo. Spock, having extracted himself from his own CMU, jogged up to him. “We should get to the bridge, Admiral.”
“What about T’Nalae?” Kirk asked as he moved over to help Miranda to her feet. “I don’t want her to get away this time.”
“Don’t worry,” Jones said from the deck as she reached for Kirk’s hand and let him pull her up. “My people are holding her in place. The interference should stop them from taking her.”
It was only then that Kirk saw her eyes clearly for the first time since the start of the battle.
Eyes that glinted like polished silver.
He pulled his hand away, stepping back in shock and betrayal. He remembered Gary Mitchell’s eyes gleaming at him that way, his best friend’s warmth and humor replaced with cold, steely contempt as he used his exponentially growing psionic powers to play with Kirk sadistically before crushing him like an ant underfoot …
“What are you?” he demanded of her.
The ship rocked again. “Nothing you need to fear, Jim,” she told him, her voice seeming to echo in his head, as if he were “hea
ring” her words telepathically as well as aurally. “Trust me on that. The immediate threat is outside.”
That, at least, was undeniable. One problem at a time, he thought. “Spock, to the bridge.” He held Miranda’s gleaming eyes—briefly. “You too. With me.”
* * *
As soon as Kirk reached the bridge, it was clear that the battle was not going well. On the main screen, the Palmares was trailing plasma, its starboard shuttlebay was breached, and several of the slender, fragile subspace antennae protruding from its specialized long-range sensor pods had been broken off, along with the entire starboard pod. From the way its impulse vents were guttering, it looked like its main energizers had taken damage.
Glancing at the damage-control station, Kirk saw multiple orange and red damage lights along the Enterprise’s aft secondary hull, starboard warp nacelle, and impulse engines. “Aft dorsal deflectors at twenty-one percent,” reported S’trakha, the Saurian lieutenant at the weapons/defense station. “Force field holding at seventy-six. Overload to forward phaser power accumulators. Targeting is on manual.”
The Chrysaor had taken fire too, but the blobby Medusan craft was a diplomatic transport with minimal armaments, unable to do anything beyond trying to stay out of the way. Only the Asimov seemed to be holding its own; though it was an older vessel, its shields seemed to have weathered the attack better than those of the other two ships. Kirk reminded himself with a slight smile that Montgomery Scott was serving on that ship at the moment.
“Hostile ship on viewer, Mister Sulu,” Spock ordered.
The Higher Frontier Page 21
