STAR TREK: TOS #86 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Two - Constitution

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Kirk certainly hoped so. Come on, he encouraged the landing party, a silent cheerleader. What in blazes are you waiting for? Give me the signal so I can beam you back.

  But there was no signal. Not yet, at least. There was only the subtle, almost imperceptible hum of the warp engines and the birdlike noises of his officers’ control panels.

  Kirk sighed and sat back in his chair, the most useless man on the bridge. All he could do was remain alert—so when Gaynor’s team did establish contact, he could pull them out of there without a second’s delay.

  Maintaining his position at the threshold of the comm center, his phaser at the ready, Gaynor couldn’t help studying the alien who lay stunned alongside the bulkhead behind Chafin.

  [225] He was a good seven feet tall, hairless and lean to the point of what would have been emaciation in a human being. He had skin the color and texture of parchment, and all he wore was a loose-fitting black garment gathered tightly at the waist.

  As for the alien’s countenance ... it was long and gaunt with tiny black eyes, mere nostril slits for a nose, and an unpleasant gash of a mouth. Gaynor couldn’t even begin to identify the oval prominences displayed on either side of its neck, but the sheer size of them seemed to indicate they served some important purpose.

  It had been more than a minute, maybe as much as two, since Chafin had blasted the alien and dragged it to its present location. The fact that reinforcements hadn’t arrived already told the chief that their visitor wasn’t responding to an alarm when it ran into them. More than likely, it hadn’t suspected a thing until it saw Chafin and got knocked off its feet by the man’s phaser beam.

  Gaynor looked in on Borrik and Polcovich, perhaps for the twentieth time since the pair had gone to work. By then, the Dedderac and the science officer had exposed all six of the comm center’s power cells and were in the process of disabling their fourth. So far, the chief told himself, everything was proceeding according to plan.

  Kirk’s plan, he couldn’t help thinking. Frankly, he didn’t like the Constitution’s new second officer or anything about him, but he had to give credit where it was due.

  Suddenly, Gaynor heard another set of footfalls. [226] His pulse accelerating, he craned his neck to look down the corridor.

  Once again, Chafin was pointing. As before, the chief gestured for him to stay where he was. Then he repeated the gesture for Reboulet at the opposite end of the passageway.

  Borrik and Polcovich had to be close to achieving their objective, he thought. If he and his security officers could hang on just a little longer, they would be all right.

  He listened for the footfalls. They were getting closer, closer ... and then something unexpected happened; The unconscious alien sprawled behind Chafin started to make a clicking noise.

  For a fraction of a second, Gaynor thought the alien had shaken off Chafin’s phaser stun and was waking up. Then he realized that wasn’t the case at all. The clicking was coming from the oval nodes on either side of the unconscious alien’s neck.

  Why? the chief wondered. And more importantly, why now?

  Could the nodes have been some kind of subcutaneous communications devices? And had they been activated because the alien hadn’t been heard from in a while? To someone else, it might only have seemed like a possibility. But to Gaynor, whose instincts had been honed by twenty years of security experience, it was a dead certainty.

  Suddenly, the footfalls stopped. Someone called out in a voice that sounded like the rustling of dry reeds—someone who must have heard the clicking and recognized that no one was responding to it.

  [227] It was a whole new ball game, Gaynor told himself. Whoever was trying to contact the unconscious alien might keep trying, allowing for the possibility that the problem was a mechanical one.

  But the alien around the corner—the one who had stopped dead in his tracks—might not take the time to investigate. He might report the clicking to his superiors. And they, in turn, might realize that the failure to respond was taking place in the vicinity of their comm center.

  We’ve got to move quickly, the security chief thought. We’ve got to take him out before he can alert the others.

  Chafin must have followed the same logic, more or less, because he didn’t wait for instructions—he just rounded the corner as quickly as he could and went after the alien. Gaynor didn’t hesitate either. He followed on his officer’s heels, just in case.

  As it turned out, it was a good thing he did—because as the chief approached the corner, he saw Chafin go flying across the mouth of the corridor, propelled by a thin, silver-blue beam. Clenching his teeth, Gaynor dropped, rolled, and squeezed off a shot of his own.

  Fortunately for him, the alien was lumbering full-tilt after Chafin, apparently oblivious of the possibility of other intruders. The chief caught his adversary square in the midsection, doubling him over and collapsing him into an awkward-looking heap.

  Gaynor scanned the corridor for other aliens, but he neither heard nor saw any. Grateful for that, at least, he went to see about Chafin.

  [228] The man was still alive, but his right shoulder was a bloody ruin. More than likely, the chief decided, Chafin’s collarbone had been shattered. And yet, despite the pain he had to be feeling, the officer still seemed to have his wits about him.

  “Come on,” said Gaynor, draping Chafin’s good arm over his neck and lifting the man up, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I’m with you, sir,” the officer gasped dutifully, his face little more than a grimace.

  Supporting Chafin’s weight, the security chief hauled him back to the comm center and sat him down just inside the entrance. Borrik and Polcovich glanced sympathetically at Chafin, but didn’t comment. They were too busy trying to disable the fifth of the six power cells.

  “They’ll be on us any second now,” Gaynor told them. “And more importantly, they’ll be warming up their backup system.”

  “Cutting down somewhat on our opportunity to destroy them,” the Dedderac noted efficiently. “However, I believe there will still be an opportunity of some magnitude.”

  As he finished his sentence, the security chief saw a red light go out in the center of the naked power cell. Five down and one to go, he thought optimistically, as Borrik and Polcovich turned their attention to the last of the cells.

  Then he heard the stamp of footsteps again. But this time, it was more than one set. It was several. And unless he was mistaken, the sound was coming from more than one direction.

  [229] Glancing at Reboulet, Gaynor saw that she was maintaining the position he had assigned her. But with the aliens approaching them from both ends of the corridor, it seemed more prudent to pull her back—and try to defend the operation from the cover of the comm center, cramped as it might be.

  “Reboulet!” he barked. “Back here!”

  As the woman responded to his command, the chief kept watch on the portion of the corridor that stretched in the other direction. He listened, as well. And what he heard wasn’t encouraging.

  As the aliens got closer, their approach sounded like a stampede. Gaynor couldn’t even begin to guess at the numbers their commander was throwing at him. He began to wonder how long they could hold out.

  Three minutes? Two? Maybe as few as one?

  He glanced inside the comm center at Borrik and Polcovich. They were still working on the last power cell, sweat gathering in the creases of their necks, their very postures taut with urgency.

  It didn’t look good for the team’s survival. And if Kirk had to take the time to beam them off the alien ship, it looked even worse for the outcome of their mission.

  With these things in mind, Gaynor made a decision—a hard one, but the only conclusion he felt he could come to under the circumstances. As soon as the Dedderac and the science officer disabled the last power cell, he would advise Kirk to blow up the mother ship ...

  With the landing party aboard.

  Holding on to his phaser with his r
ight hand, the [230] chief reached for his communicator with his left and snapped it open. Then he peered out into the corridor, where he expected to see the aliens come charging around either corner at any moment.

  “Let me know as soon as you’re done,” he told Borrik.

  “I will,” the communications officer assured him, his voice remarkably calm and even despite the tenseness of the situation.

  Gaynor had worked with Borrik for a number of years. He wondered if the Dedderac had an inkling of what the chief was about to do. If so, he gave no indication of it.

  Chafin groaned and his superior spared him a glance. Hang in there, Gaynor thought. It’ll all be over before long, pal—the pain and the uncertainty and everything else.

  The thunder of the aliens’ approach was growing louder and louder. They would turn one corner or the other any second, the chief thought—maybe even both corners at once.

  He suppressed a chuckle as he considered what kind of medal they would give him for this. In life, he hadn’t been able to get Augenthaler to make him second officer. In death, they would probably make him a commander ... for all the good it would do him.

  Abruptly, Gaynor caught sight of the thing he had been waiting for—the vanguard of the aliens’ rush. The first corner they came around was the one Chafin had been guarding, weapons in their hands and hissing sounds erupting from their long, pale throats.

  [231] The chief fired his phaser into the crowd, then pulled his head back to avoid a return barrage of blue fury. After a moment, he peered out into the corridor and fired again. Stationed just behind him, Reboulet was doing the same thing.

  Together, they cut down three or four of the aliens—enough to make the rest of them think twice and retreat from the corridor. But no sooner had they withdrawn than another pack of them swung around the corner at the opposite end of the passageway.

  As before, Gaynor and Reboulet unleashed red-orange beams into their midst. But there were more of them than in the last bunch and they didn’t give up so easily. The security officers didn’t have a chance to duck after each shot—they simply had to keep firing and take their chances.

  Then the chief felt someone touch him on the shoulder and declare in his ear, with Dedderac precision, “That’s it, Jack. We have disabled the final power cell.”

  About time, Gaynor thought.

  Pulling his head in, he poked the button that activated his communicator, instantly establishing a channel to the bridge of the Constitution. “This is Chief Gaynor,” he bellowed over the tumult.

  “Kirk here,” came the immediate reply.

  The chief licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. His heart was beating like a hammer against his ribs as he spoke the words he had been contemplating: “You’ve got a sitting duck, Lieutenant. Blow her up while you’ve got the chance!”

  “But what about—” the second officer began.

  [232] “Blow her up!” Gaynor bellowed, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables. “Do it now!”

  A sitting duck, Kirk thought.

  He eyed the forward viewscreen, where the alien vessel hung in space looking every bit as deadly and powerful as it had moments earlier. But according to Gaynor’s advisory, it had been cut off from its satellites.

  The aggressor ship was vulnerable all of a sudden, though it was impossible to say for how long that situation would prevail. If Kirk moved quickly enough, if he gave the appropriate command in time, he could destroy the vessel in his sights and put an end to the Sordinians’ travails.

  Of course, he would also be destroying Gaynor and Borrik and their team along with the aliens. He would be killing his own people to save billions of other beings.

  The second officer prepared to give the order to fire. He began to do what he had failed to do on the Farragut—what he had failed to do on the Constitution as well, the last time he had had a landing party in jeopardy. He began to make the tough decision.

  And then he stopped. Something inside him was stopping him from saying the words that would spell his people’s doom.

  The second officer cursed himself. You’ve got to do it, he thought. You’ve got to make the tough decision, damn you, even if it means sacrificing a few lives. You’ve got to weigh the five of them against the welfare of an entire planetary population.

  [233] But Kirk still couldn’t bring himself to give the order. As much as he wanted to help the Sordinians, as much as he recognized the danger the aggressor vessel represented, he couldn’t kill his own crewmen.

  He just couldn’t.

  Gaynor was right, he mused bitterly. You’re not fit to command. When push comes to shove, you don’t have the guts to run a starship.

  It stung the second officer to think that way. It hurt like hell. After all, he had devoted his life to becoming a Starfleet captain. He had trained for years to face this moment and others like it.

  But still, he didn’t open his mouth and give the order to annihilate the alien vessel. He was incapable of it, he realized, as long as there was even a slim chance of recovering his people.

  Gary was staring at him. What’s more, Kirk knew what the man was thinking. Gaynor will die anyway, Jim—him and Borrik and the others. They’ll die at the hands of the aliens. And they’ll die cursing you, because now their deaths won’t have meant anything.

  But the second officer wasn’t about to let them die—not at the hands of the alien aggressors or anyone else. All he needed, he told himself, was a few seconds to get the Constitution back within transporter range.

  Then Kirk could recover his people and blow away the aliens’ mother ship, and the Sordinians would be safe as well. He could have his cake and eat it, too—and he would, he promised himself, he would ... because he damned well wouldn’t accept any other possibility.

  [234] “Take her in,” he told Medina. “Transporter range.”

  The helmsman hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he said, “Aye, sir,” and manipulated his controls accordingly.

  Gary gazed at him a little longer. Then, without comment, he turned back to his navigation board. But his feelings seemed clear nonetheless.

  Ignoring them, the second officer tapped the communications stud on his armrest. “Transporter room, establish a lock on the landing party.”

  “Aye, Lieutenant,” said the transporter technician, a man named Rawitzer, “but it could take a minute or two. Sensors show the team is no longer alone in the vicinity of the communications center.”

  “We haven’t got a minute or two,” Kirk informed him. “Get a lock on them now, dammit!”

  “Aye, sir!” said Rawitzer.

  “Kirk out,” the second officer barked. He turned in his chair to face the helm again. “How much longer, Mr. Medina?”

  “Fifteen seconds,” the man told him.

  Kirk glared at the viewscreen. The alien mother ship was beginning to wheel around in response to their hasty approach—and though they hadn’t quite gotten within transporter range yet, they were almost certainly within range of the enemy’s weapons.

  “All available power to the shields,” he called out. After all, they wouldn’t have any use for their phasers until after they had recovered Gaynor and the others.

  “Acknowledged, sir,” said Gary, carrying out the second officer’s orders with grim efficiency.

  [235] Kirk’s hands were clenched into fists on his armrests, his teeth grinding so hard they hurt. After the beating the Constitution had taken at the hands of the aliens, he knew the ship wouldn’t be able to take much more—maybe a couple of barrages at the outside. If his transporter technician couldn’t get a fix on the landing party—and quickly—the second officer would have a lot more than five fatalities on his head.

  He would have an entire ship’s worth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GAYNOR SQUEEZED OFF a shot at the aliens, then quickly pulled his head back into the communications center. A half-dozen light blue energy beams hit the bulkhead beside him a split secon
d later, pounding the sleek, dark metal from two different directions.

  Reboulet stuck her head out next and released a ruby-red phaser stream of her own. But as the aliens fired back and she tried to withdraw, one of their energy shafts struck her in the ankle. Unable to support herself, the security officer spilled awkwardly into the corridor.

  Without thinking, Gaynor darted out from cover to grab his comrade and pull her back inside. But as soon as he exposed himself, the aliens unleashed another hellish crossfire.

  [237] Somehow, the security chief got his officer back inside. And somehow, he did it without getting smashed to pieces by the enemy’s barrage. Then he looked at Reboulet and saw why. She had inadvertently served as a shield for him, absorbing so many shots to her left side that her uniform was drenched with blood.

  Somehow, though, the woman had hung on to her phaser. Borrik took it from her and moved up beside Gaynor. The Dedderac’s eyes told the security chief he wouldn’t be any easier to discourage than Reboulet was.

  But then, that came as no surprise. Gaynor knew what Borrik was made of.

  But the man in charge of the Constitution was another story. Blast it, Gaynor raged as he fired another sizzling phaser beam at the aliens. What in blazes was Kirk’s problem? Why was it taking the second officer so long to attack the enemy ship?

  Kirk frowned as he watched the huge alien vessel bring its weapons ports to bear on the Constitution. “Mr. Medina?” he prodded hopefully.

  “Just a moment more, sir ...” the helmsman answered, watching his monitors. Then he announced, with a distinct note of triumph in his voice, “We’re in range, Lieutenant!”

  Charged with urgency, the second officer tapped the intercom stud in his armrest. “We’re in transporter range, Mr. Rawitzer. Have you got a lock yet on the landing party?”

  “Not yet, sir,” came the reply.

  [238] “What’s wrong?” Kirk asked, trying to control his impatience.

  “I’m having trouble discerning our people from the aliens,” the technician explained. “They’re in close proximity now, and their bioprofiles aren’t all that dissimilar.”