They dragged Kaj’s semiconscious form out and dumped her on the floor. Then the gate to Vaughn’s cell opened and a man with a bloody nose beckoned him out. In his other hand, a shock-prod hummed like a hornet trapped inside a bottle. The inference was clear: the easy way or the hard way.
Vaughn walked out, his hands at his sides, and went to Kaj, lifting her up from the floor. She could barely stand, and all the Klingon’s weight went on him. She was a lot heavier than she looked, and he grunted with the effort.
One of the other Thorn men sniggered, and Vaughn shot him an acid look. “Don’t feel you need to help,” he said. “I don’t want to keep you from all the other women you need to beat on.”
“Shut up and walk, Starfleet,” said the one with the broken nose.
He was grateful for the slightly lower-than-Earth-standard gravity in the corridors outside: it made handling Kaj a little easier. The major staggered, managing to plant one foot in front of the other, and by degrees she shook off the effects of the attack. Her head drooped so she could whisper in Elias’s ear. “They’re going to kill us,” she said.
The denial came automatically to him. “You don’t know that.”
“If they wanted to torture us, they would have done it by now,” she went on. “I tell you this so you may make peace with your gods, Lieutenant.”
“I never really believed in that kind of thing,” he admitted.
Kaj eyed him. “Pity. You have courage. We might have been able to find you a posting in the Black Fleet.”
“I’m not ready for Valhalla just yet,” said Vaughn. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“I told you to shut up!” shouted the Kriosian. His new injury made his voice thick and nasal.
The rest of the forced march went on in silence. They were directed up the main spinal corridor to the levels at the northern “pole” of the elliptical asteroid. As far as Vaughn could tell, the Thorn base was arranged like a terrestrial building with tiers stacked one atop another, some cut into the rock, others fashioned across the naturally occurring caverns and places where minerals had been mined out.
They followed a spiraling ramp and emerged at a wide airlock gate that opened back into the main landing bay. The compartment was the largest open space Vaughn had seen inside the asteroid; at the far end, a wide slot looked out into the void, illuminated by a ring of force field projectors. The semitransparent barrier flickered now and then with discharges of blue light, keeping the atmosphere of the base contained but still permeable to objects of larger mass. Similar technology was used in starship shuttlebays: anything smaller than a man would be repelled by the energy membrane, but ships could enter and depart freely. Out beyond the barrier, a different curtain of light glowed: a holographic screen generated to conceal the mouth of the landing bay from any ships that might pass within visual range.
Despite the size of the bay, the space seemed cramped. There were clusters of cargo pods and wheeled tender-tractors here and there, remnants from the asteroid’s days as a mine works. Among them stood the Chon’m, resting low on its landing gear with wings raised and boarding ramp down. The scoutship looked very much a mythical giant hawk settled on its talons, waiting to take flight. Several of the Thorn swarmed around it, apparently off-loading anything from inside the ship that might be of value. Vaughn heard Kaj hiss through her teeth at the sight of her vessel being plundered by the Kriosians.
Nearby, tucked under the bird-of-prey’s port-side wing, the dart-like Kriosian cutter was crowded in with repair gantries. Hull panels lay discarded on the deck, and Vaughn could see exposed sections of the in-line warp nacelles where they had been damaged during the earlier engagement. The elderly cutter had been forgotten in favor of the captured Klingon vessel, and there were men moving equipment from one ship to the other in preparation . . . for what?
Kaj nudged him and jutted her head. “Look there.”
He turned and saw the woman Gattin and her cohort Tulo supervising the movement of a metallic drum the length of a photon torpedo casing. Vaughn’s blood ran cold to see the device again. “It’s the subspace weapon,” he began. “But it wasn’t complete. It wasn’t ready . . .”
“It is now,” she grated.
Tulo guided the grav-trolley bearing the device in a slow, languid turn to orient it toward the bird-of-prey’s boarding ramp. Gattin said something and left him to complete the task of loading, then strode toward the prisoners.
“What are you going to do with my ship?” Kaj demanded, as the severe woman approached them.
“Your ship?” Gattin mocked. “Not anymore. And as for the rest . . . ask him.” The Kriosian nodded toward one of the other corridors that issued out into the echoing bay.
Rein emerged, crossing the metal deck quickly and purposefully. Valeris was a few steps behind him; she showed no interest in Vaughn’s or Kaj’s condition. To illustrate her opinion of the situation, the major drew up a mouthful of purple, blood-laced spittle, and ejected it onto the ground.
The Thorn’s leader glared at her, offended by the action. He gestured for the guards to step back and caught sight of the man with the broken nose. “Which one of them did that?”
“The woman,” came the terse reply.
Rein laughed. “Never underestimate the desperation of a cornered animal.” He gave the two of them a measuring look. The Kriosian addressed Vaughn: “I admit, you did well. I was taken in at first; had there been time, you might even have won me over. The ship, you see . . . the ship turned my head.” Then he glared at Kaj. “But as so often happens with beings like you . . . you underestimate us. You think that because you are citizens of your great Federation and Empire, you are somehow cleverer than those of us who hail from a single world. But we’re not the parochial naïfs you believe us to be. Krios Prime was an empire of its own, long before your Federation even existed, human.”
“Such an imperium,” Kaj snorted. “A handful of dull worlds ruled by a cadre of moneyed snobs.”
Gattin made a fist. “You know nothing about us, tyrant!”
Vaughn’s patience was eroding by the second; he was sick of all the posturing. “Why the hell are we here, Rein?” he demanded. “If you think we’re going to give you anything, you’re way off base.”
“Give me something?” Rein laughed again. “You think I want to interrogate you? Ransom you? Why would I waste my effort?”
He flicked his hand toward one of the guards, and two of the men came in and cracked Vaughn and Kaj across the backs of their legs. Elias staggered forward and caught himself before he collapsed to the deck. Beside him, Kaj was on her knees, her bruised face lit with fury.
Rein came closer. “You’ve already given me more than I could have hoped for.” He pointed at the Chon’m. Running lights snapped on along the tips of the scout’s wings, and the hum of internal systems grew louder: the vessel was making ready to depart. “I’ll tell you a truth. Before you came along, I estimated that the chances of the Thorn making a third, successful strike against a tyrant target were less than one in five. I believed that, like the others before it, this would be a suicide mission, and even then it might not be enough to reach the objective.” He looked at Kaj. “But then you came, with your lies, your subterfuge and your disrespect for us . . . And you brought your pretty ship. It’s only right that it belongs to us now, because of your arrogance. A Klingon weapon turned against its masters. There’s poetry in that, I think.”
Vaughn blew out a breath. “You’re actually going to do it, aren’t you? Stand there and gloat at us like some kind of storybook villain.” His jaw was set in a hard grimace, defiance etched on his features. “If you’re waiting for us to do the whole begging-to-be-spared thing, that’s not going to happen. So do what you have to do and be on your way.”
At his side, Kaj gave a curt nod of approval. “What the human said.”
Rein made a mock-sad face. “Oh, such bravery. But there will be no one to scream you into your idiotic afterlife, Kl
ingon. And no one to remember your name, human.” He took two steps away and then stopped. “Wait. No. That’s not true. There is someone.” He turned and beckoned. “Valeris. Come here. It’s time to say farewell to your erstwhile comrades.”
Vaughn stiffened as the Vulcan did as she was told.
“What is it that your people say? ‘Live long and prosper’?” Rein went on, playing to his men. “That’s a rather sarcastic farewell, considering how little life these two have remaining to them. I have a better idea, a better way to say good-bye.” He drew a disruptor from his belt, grabbed Valeris’s wrist, and slapped the butt of the pistol into her open palm. “There. That’s much more honest.”
“Rein . . .” Valeris met his gaze. “Is this necessary?”
“Yes,” Gattin answered before anyone else could speak. “Because as corpses these two will become useful. We’ll drop them near the detonation site, and if anything of them should happen to survive the subspace rupture, the DNA traces will set the tyrants running in circles for months.”
“A Klingon and a human involved in the worst terrorist atrocity ever to strike the Empire. What will people say?” Rein cocked his head. “Kill them, Valeris. It’s not like you’ve never done it before. Just two more.”
The Vulcan walked slowly toward them, checking the settings of the gun in her hand. Kaj spat again and turned her head, unwilling to meet the eyes of a traitor, but Vaughn watched her all the way, never breaking his gaze.
“I regret it came to this,” Valeris told him. “But there is no other way.” She raised the disruptor, aiming it at his chest.
Carefully, Vaughn set his muscles and tensed, waiting for the right moment. Closer. Just a little closer. “Was there anything you said or did that was not a lie?” he asked her. “Any single act of real loyalty?”
“ ‘Loyalty’ and ‘treason’ are relative terms,” she replied. “They can be defined only by the points from which they are observed.” For a fraction of a second Valeris’s gaze broke away, flicking down to the weapon in her hand.
It was the instant Vaughn needed. He exploded into motion, throwing himself at the Vulcan with all the force he could muster. They collided, and he grabbed for the barrel of the disruptor, forcing it up and away. Valeris tried to block him, her free hand coming up to snag his, and for a brief second they struggled against each other. The Vulcan was stronger than her elfin frame made her appear, and Elias felt his joints lock as they pulled and pushed.
Then he felt something being pressed into the palm of his hand. Something small, hard-edged, the size of a coin. He looked up in surprise and confusion. Valeris mouthed two words to him.
Trust me.
Her hand came up in a palm strike and connected with Vaughn’s jawbone. Bright, sharp pain echoed through his head and he stumbled backward, crashing back to the deck on his hands and knees.
“Enough of this,” he heard Gattin say. “Kill the human first.”
The object in his hand—the object Valeris had forced on him—was a piece of a mechanism. He recognized it at once: an emitter module from an energy weapon.
Elias looked up just as Valeris pulled the trigger.
The emotion behind Vaughn’s eyes—was it surprise? Resentment? She couldn’t tell. Would he understand? Would either of them understand?
Valeris didn’t hesitate, knowing full well that the chance before her would not come again. She squeezed the disruptor’s trigger plate and the energy weapon buzzed in her hand, turning hot with the discharge. A lightning bolt of red-orange flashed from the barrel and slammed into the lieutenant’s right shoulder, the energy turning into a puff of flame as it atomized the outer layers of his clothing. The shock effect punched him back and spun Vaughn to the deck of the landing bay.
The gun was burning her skin, the power coils overcharging as the Vulcan pivoted and fired again at the disguised Klingon, even as the woman tried to spring at her. The second bolt hit Kaj in the chest, another chug of fire bursting briefly over her torso. The major fell hard, her limbs splaying. Wisps of thin white smoke curled from the beam weapon’s accelerator coils.
“It’s done?” asked Rein.
Gattin raced to the fallen Klingon, a broad push-dagger instantly in her grip, drawn from a pocket in the Kriosian’s sleeve. She had a fierce grin on her lips, and it occurred to Valeris that the woman wanted some kind of souvenir from the body of her enemy. One of Rein’s other people, the male with the facial injury, moved toward Vaughn.
Valeris turned back to where the Thorn leader stood waiting for her. He held his hand out for her to return his weapon. “You see?” he said. “Two. Two hundred. Two thousand. After a while, it’s nothing but numbers.”
What happened next occurred with great rapidity.
The man with the broken nose let out a wordless cry of alarm that was cut short by a sudden, concussive grunt. Vaughn, very much alive, landed a powerful punch in the Kriosian’s gut, then followed it with a knee-strike to the crotch. The lieutenant threw his assailant off him and snatched at the pistol on the other man’s belt, wrestling it free.
At the same moment, Kaj sat up sharply with such force that her forehead butted Gattin in the face, pulling a muffled howl from the other woman. Even though the major’s cranial ridges had been smoothed for her alien camouflage, the density of a Klingon skull was still much greater than that of a Kriosian one, and the blow knocked Gattin aside. Her dagger fell from her hand and she staggered away.
There was a flurry of motion as multiple weapons were torn from their holsters, muzzles rising to draw a bead. Valeris was ready, however, and she pressed the trigger tightly, heat flaring in the gun once more. The Vulcan drew the disruptor across herself in an arc, sending a fan of crackling energy in the direction of Rein and his guards.
They scattered, one of them screaming as he caught a burst across his face. Rein dove for cover, and Valeris tried to strike back at him, but succeeded only in throwing a last pulse of flame at his retreating back. Finally, the weapon crackled and spat out a cloud of acrid smoke, the mechanism fused. Missing the vital emitter module she had detached from the phasing chamber, the disruptor’s output had been reduced to mere sound and fury, enough to cause surface burning but not enough to disintegrate matter.
The Kriosians knew she had betrayed them. Beam fire erupted from all sides of the landing bay, scoring black gouges in the metal decking and stone floor. Valeris broke into a full-tilt run as she heard Vaughn shout out, his voice carrying over the melee. “Get to cover!”
She was aware of Kaj moving off to the side, the Klingon hesitating long enough to backhand Gattin before sprinting for one of the parked cargo haulers and the train of container pods behind it. Before her, Vaughn was moving with an old Mark II phaser in his hand, laying down spears of brilliant fire.
The air around Valeris was thick with particle beam discharges and the screech of superheated oxygen molecules. She reached the cargo pods and vaulted over them, landing hard behind the low cover as heat and light splashed over the steel containers.
Vaughn fell into place next to her, popping back up to fire a spread of shots in all directions before ducking down once more. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Saving your life, Lieutenant Vaughn,” she replied.
With a feral snarl, Kaj came up around the line of the parked cargo tractor. She, too, had a pistol in one fist, and Gattin’s push-dagger gripped in the other. “You shot me,” she growled. An angry purple-red weal marked her throat and cheek.
“I sabotaged the weapon. The injury was minimal to you both. There was no other alternative.”
“More games?” Vaughn barked. “How many double crosses have you got?”
“We will argue about this later,” said Kaj as more disruptor bolts and phaser discharges hissed over their heads. “We’re pinned down here. The confusion won’t last long; we need to move.”
Valeris was surprised by the Klingon’s calmness under fire: she seemed almost Vulcan in her manner, compo
sed and singular in her focus. The major was also quite correct in her evaluation. The cargo tender and the pods on the trailers lay in a V-shape to the side of the landing bay—a single point of cover between Rein and his guards near the corridors to the right, and Gattin and the Chon’m to the left.
Valeris dropped to the deck and peered beneath the skids of the trailer. She heard Gattin shouting, but the woman’s words were lost to her. Rein was visible behind a stanchion, and she saw him lean out of cover, gesturing wildly to his second in command.
“Gattin, the ship!” he was shouting. “Get to the ship! Forget them, just go!”
Vaughn heard the terrorist leader’s orders as well. “They’re going for the bird-of-prey . . .”
“No,” Kaj retorted. “Give me covering fire.” She tossed her stolen pistol to Valeris.
“Major, wait—”
The Klingon ignored the lieutenant’s words and leapt high, mantling the cargo pods, breaking into a run. Vaughn swore and started firing wildly in the direction of Rein and his guards, blasting shots into the air to keep their heads down.
Valeris did the same as Kaj sprinted out after Gattin. The Kriosian woman had a long lead on the Klingon, and she made it to the drop ramp beneath the Chon’m while the major was still precious meters away. With a savage yell, Kaj returned Gattin’s dagger to her, throwing it hard.
The stubby blade struck Gattin in the thigh, and she shrieked in pain; but the ramp was already lifting clear of the floor as thrusters along the underside of the scoutship rattled and ignited.
The ramp slammed shut, and with a surge of engine noise the Chon’m rose unsteadily into the air, wavering as whoever was at the helm got the feel of the flight controls. The bird-of-prey revolved in place, the massive wings swinging out as the ship’s bow turned toward the glowing maw of the landing bay. The Klingon screamed in frustration as her ship showed its stern.
Across the chamber, Rein broke from his concealment and ran toward the corridor, his men falling back with him, laying down blasts of energy. Vaughn ducked back behind the sizzling, half-melted shapes of the cargo pods, glaring at the diminishing charge on his weapon.
Star Trek: TOS: Cast no Shadow Page 29
