by Diane Carey
The Starfleet man shook his head. “It was terrible. Just when you think you’ve got some technology licked, it throws you sideways a few thousand light-years and you’ve got a mess on your hands.” He paused then, and lowered his weapon in a sorrowful kind of awareness. As he stared at the rocks, he said, “I guess the Romulans didn’t ask for this either.”
T’Cael nodded and said, “Even to a warrior race, the taste of bloodshed sours after a time.”
“Let’s hope you’re not the only one who thinks that,” George snapped back. “Do you think they’ll fire on my ship now that I’ve gotten you away from them?”
[192] “Possibly,” t’Cael responded, still being cautious, “though a few of them will be glad to see me gone.”
“I’d better get you back to the starship. As long as you’re available to them, they’re not going to deal with me. I’ll take you back, then I’ll have to talk to them again.” He stepped from one rock to a higher one, just to check the landscape one more time before moving out. “Who knows? Maybe this is their idea of a joke.”
T’Cael grinned. “Were the circumstances less somber, I would find you very funny.”
“Yeah, well—” George suddenly caught his breath. Funny? Funny?
He whirled around. His alleged hostage was gazing at him with this weird grin—definitely a grin. Definitely.
They stared at each other.
George’s voice caught in his throat. “You’re not a Vulcan ...”
T’Cael shook his head, slowly and clearly.
George almost fell off his rock.
“Then ... who are you?”
T’Cael felt a sudden desire to fabricate a comforting lie for the human, rather as he might comfort a child who was about to be severely disillusioned about his own deductive abilities. He really didn’t want to make this man feel stupid. There was no advantage in a humiliated enemy.
He straightened his back, and folded his hands innocuously in his lap. The weapon lay on his thigh, carefully unthreatening.
“I’m t’Cael Zaniidor Kilyle, Field-Primus of the Second Imperial Swarm in the praetor’s service,” he announced with both a touch of pride and a touch of apology. “And who are you?”
The fleet officer paled and sank back against the rock, still staring. “I’m an idiot,” he groaned.
T’Cael smiled again. “I prefer not to call you that, if I need not.”
“You look like a ...”
“Obviously there’s a genetic link in the distant past between my race and the Vulcans,” t’Cael said, “but they have forgotten us.”
The Starfleet man’s weapon snapped up between them suddenly, and his face grew fierce. Insulted, perhaps?
The smile slipped a little from t’Cael’s lips, but didn’t disappear entirely.
“All right—” George choked. “All right, then, that’s how it is ... you’re ... you’re my prisoner then. If that’s how it has to be.”
T’Cael moved his shoulders in a small shrug. Before saying [193] anything, he held out the second laser in an attempt to give it back before creating the wrong impression. “We came to negotiate. It’s not too late. Tell me your name.”
Perspiring, George half circled the Romulan, snatched back his laser, and leveled the hand-cannon at what was probably the enemy’s heart. Or at least a lung. “Kirk,” he rasped. “Acting first officer.”
“You actually are the first officer, then.”
George drew his brows together. “Yes ... why?”
“There was a question on my bridge when you took over the conversation from the captain. We thought your captain was feigning illness and sending an expendable lackey in his place. To reduce our leverage over you.”
“Then why’d you agree to come?”
“I read confidence in your voice. You didn’t pause to take signals before you spoke. It was a gamble.”
Beneath his skin, George’s nerves buzzed like hot electrodes. He hadn’t been ready for this, and he felt like the butt end of a jackhammer. He wondered how diplomats ever learned which questions to ask or which answers to give, and how to know when truth was coming back at them. He stared at the person who had suddenly gone from ally to enemy, and tried to read the calmly bemused expression. But for George, who had spent his life tilling his emotions like topsoil and cultivating his opinions not far beneath, reading such opaque signals was as tough as learning a new language.
“I haven’t come to make any deals,” he said. “We just want to get out of your space, preferably as fast as we got into it, and preferably with the whole incident forgotten.”
The Romulan tilted his head thoughtfully. “Interesting, since your appearance here is an act of war, according to our agreement with the Federation about the treaty zone. You expect us to forgive the transgression without so much as a question?”
George felt his neck itch. “I’m trying to keep an accident from becoming an incident. The Federation doesn’t even know where we are. They’re not responsible, but neither are we.” He caught his tongue realizing he’d made a mistake in admitting that they were completely alone here, without backup, without hope of rescue, without the knowledge of those who would stand up for them if the Romulans decided to take them hostage for a bigger price. His hand squeezed tight on the cannon’s grip. A loud bleeping sound suddenly pierced the grotto. The Romulan stood up abruptly, and his gaze shot [194] skyward. The bleeping noise was coming from his belt, accompanied by a flashing green light on a thin mechanical device that George was only now able to see.
Suddenly the Romulan slashed his hand toward George. “Get down! Down quickly!”
Standing pressed against the rock, George glanced around in confusion. The bleeping noise got louder, and from the sky itself came a contained reddish glow.
T’Cael ignored the weapon in Kirk’s hand and dove toward the other man. With a twist he pushed the laser aside and slammed them both to the ground.
The red glow in the sky became a rage of energy. With it came a whine, a predatory shriek that caused the two enemies to huddle together with their arms clamped over their ears. Then—whine-BOOM ... whine-BOOM ... whine-BOOM ...
Again and again, blast sheets pummeled the landscape. Each wave burned deeper and deeper into the face of the planetoid, until the ground was seared clean of vegetation and a burning stench filled the air. And still they came, sheet after sheet, for a full minute or more.
Silence, when it returned, was even more terrifying, for now it shuddered with the memory of what might come again.
The sky became blue again. The stench thickened.
George opened his eyes and pulled his hands away from his ears. Next to him, the Romulan crawled to his feet, undisguised astonishment on his face. Together they gaped outward at an incinerated landscape.
George waved his hand-cannon limply and stammered, “We ... we didn’t do that ... you’ve got to believe me.”
The Romulan was still as the stone, unblinking as he looked through the mossy spires to the valley where his ship had been, and saw instead a twist of bubbling wreckage, melted and charred beyond recognition. “I know,” he whispered. As he sank away from the sight, slipping downward against the stone wall to stare now at nothing, he repeated, “I know.”
From above, George watched desolation set in on the Romulan’s fine features. He bent his shaking knees and crouched on the rock buttress, looking down at the Romulan. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “What does it mean?”
With shallow breaths, the Romulan lowered even more, until he [195] was slumped against the outcropping. His arms were limp, and there was a look of desolation on his face.
His words, though spoken softly, were blistered with sorrow.
“It means,” he whispered, “I am alone.”
“Mr. Reed, they’re veering away!”
Florida’s shout took the bridge crew by surprise.
Drake spun around and almost tripped, wishing that nothing would happen to necessitate his givin
g any orders. He caught the last glimpse of a black wingtip slipping out of view toward substarboard. “Switch viewer,” he said.
The screen wavered and solidified again on a disconcerting scene: the Romulan warship opening fire on the planetoid in the middle distance.
“They’re cutting loose on the planet!” Florida yelled, louder and angrier, this time.
“George ...” Drake moved to the center of the command arena, though he didn’t take the command chair—it wasn’t his. What would George do? he wondered. What would April do? “Looks like carnival spirit has hit the streets of Trinidad, old friend,” he whispered.
Florida twisted around to look at him questioningly. “Mr. Kirk’s down there! We should do something!”
“Like what, do you think?”
“I don’t know ...” Florida’s hands stiffened on the helm controls. He didn’t want to be the one to confirm the abrogation of the treaty.
Drake didn’t feel the same kind of responsibility. He would do whatever was best, and if there was a war, it was surely someone else’s fault. “Warning shots, how “bout?” he called out. “Fire between them and the planet. Let them know how we feel about it, eh?”
Florida’s face hardened, and he leaned forward. “Yeah!” He turned the navigational disk and laid in a new heading, then flicked his helm toggles and urged the ship into motion. “Executing.” He turned to Drake then and asked, “Lasers or particle shots?”
Drake blinked. “Which do you think?”
Florida shrugged and bit his lip.
“Better they feel something, eh?” Drake thought aloud. “With lasers they’ll only see it. Particle beams are different, yes?”
“Yes, they disperse somewhat. There’s a definite blast haze around the target.”
“Even if they don’t hit something?”
[196] Florida looked at him, and this time even grinned. “Yes.”
“It’s a fallout effect,” Hart explained from her updeck station. “The beam’s corona should give them a good slap. Even a miss will rattle them.”
“I want them rattled,” Drake said, then waved his hand at Florida and invited, “Rattle hard.”
“Full power?”
Drake leered at the viewer. “Definitely.”
“One shot?”
“One ... no.” Drake watched the screen and murmured, “How ’bout four? Four quick shots alternating around their ship. Bing, bing, bing, bing. Wouldn’t want them to think we missed by mistake, eh?”
Florida’s hands crisscrossed his board, then he hit the firing toggle.
Fuzzy blue bolts of energy sliced outward from outer-hull firing locks at an angle, giving the Romulan vessel a hard shake. The Romulan ship wobbled, and slanted away from the planetoid at high speed.
“Yes!” Florida shook his fist at the screen and bounced in his chair.
Drake shook his fist at the retreating Romulans. “Put that in your stocking and jig it!” As soon as he heard his own words, he remembered George. The planetoid had already been fired upon.
He turned to Sanawey and asked, “Can we communicate with Commander Kirk?”
“I’ve been trying. Either there’s some kind of atmospheric disturbance blocking my frequencies,” Sanawey said unhappily, “or there’s nobody down there to receive it.”
“Keep trying, eh?” Drake looked at the command chair’s intercom panel, found the right button, and punched it with his little finger. “I say, sickbay?”
There was a pause that would never have been there had the ship boasted its full complement. Then—
“Sickbay. Poole. What do you want?”
“Advice, if possible, milady.”
“No, he can’t come up.” The doctor’s voice was laced with anguish. She went on without waiting for his next question. “I had to put him in surgery to relieve the subdural pressure. You’re just going to have to do without him. Let Kirk handle things. He wants to anyway.”
“Yes ... well ... you see, as they say in elite circles, there’s the rub. George is not exactly here.”
Another pause. “Exactly where is he, and exactly why?”
“He had to leave the ship.”
[197] “He WHAT?”
Drake wrinkled his nose, knowing how this was going to sound.
Before he got the chance, Dr. Poole had figured it all out. “Are you telling me he actually took them up on their offer?”
“Well, in a way. You see, he was taking Captain April’s place.”
“Captain April is a qualified diplomat! George Kirk is a balloon without a rubberband! He’ll get himself killed! Can’t you get him back?”
“If I only could,” he murmured. “In any case, missus, I’d truly love to speak to Captain as soon as he’s in a speaking condition, right-o?”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Sarah blustered back at him, cut off communication with a hard snap.
Drake moved away from the command chair as though the doctor was about to come through it and slap him around. “All right, Geordie,” he muttered, “we shall do it your way, then. Let’s see if these birdies can take strong juju.”
The little grotto was filled with melancholy. Ill-omen still lingered in the sky. Vapory clouds congealed in the lower atmosphere as the planetoid rebounded around the hole that had been punched in its airspace.
George understood the concept of a military defeat, and that wasn’t what he saw in the dispirited enemy who sat so grief-stricken on the grotto rocks. There was more than disappointment in the Romulan’s empty eyes, in his immobility. He seemed inconsolable.
Suddenly inclined not to hold his weapon quite so stiffly, George asked, “Do you have an explanation for this?”
The Romulan—what had he said his name was?—sighed.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “I have several.”
George took a step closer. “They’re going to fire on my ship, aren’t they?”
“Most likely.” He sounded despondent.
With a turn of his hip, George grabbed his emergency kit and dug into it for the communicator. He flipped open the antenna grid and wiggled a frequency modulator. “This is Kirk,” he began, unable to resist an urge to look up into the sky as though it would help. “We’re under attack. Take defensive action. Do you copy? Defend yourselves. Drake? Anybody? Damn it ...” He glared at the communicator, which did little more than whine and crackle at him.
“Unless that device is much more potent than it looks,” t’Cael said, “it can’t break through the imbalance in the planet’s electrical field.”
[198] George stopped fiddling, his finger poised on the frequency dial. “What imbalance?”
“Our plasma ray’s effect on the atmospheric activity in this region.”
“How long till it clears?”
“Several of your minutes, or longer. Difficult to say.” The Romulan lowered his gaze to the grotto floor, once again overcome by grief.
With a snap, the communicator grid clamped shut. George stuffed it back into the pack and said, “Then we have to get back to my shuttlecraft. It has a stronger gain.”
“They’ll track us,” the Romulan said. “They’ll blanket the area with another shot.”
“Maybe. But I’m betting my people up there aren’t going to sit back and make it easy. And there are you-and-me-sized animals all over, probably enough to confuse sensors for a few minutes at least. Let’s go while we still have the advantage. Come on.”
T’Cael stood up now, suppressing his anguish. “No. Please understand. Your chances are much better without me. You must suspect by now that I am expected to be dead.”
George nodded. “I know an assassination attempt when I see one.”
“Then you must know I can’t go with you to your ship.”
“This place is your coffin if you stay.”
“And yours.”
“I don’t intend to stay. Start walking.”
T’Cael pursed his lips and shook his head, his large eyes shaded. “If my fleet su
spects I’m aboard your ship, they’ll never let you go.”
“Don’t fool yourself.” George snapped, tight-lipped, his eyes suddenly hard. “They don’t intend to let us go. And you know it.”
As George watched the man who was supposed to have been the enemy’s ambassador and had now become their victim, the last of his fear slid away under cold realization and anger at the whole situation. “Is there something wrong with your people? This shouldn’t have happened. Act of war, my ass! We don’t want any war! Why should we? Why do you suspect us?”
T’Cael leaned against the moist stone. “Many of my people fear Federation strength.”
“Why?” George shot back. “Give me one reason! Tell me one time the Federation conquered anybody. Tell me one time we attacked anybody anywhere without being provoked first. Just one! Just one time we fought for any other reason than defense of somebody who’d been attacked from outside first. You can’t. There aren’t any!” Dirt [199] gritted beneath his boots as he paced the grotto. “If a Romulan ship stumbled into Federation space and needed help, they’d get it. We’d fix the goddamned ship, give them a candy bar, and send them home. But what do we get? This!”
“You sound bitter, Officer Kirk.”
“Commander Kirk, and I am! Damned right I am. Why shouldn’t I be? I don’t mind getting killed, but I’d like to get killed for a better reason than Romulan belligerence and greed.”
The elegant enemy touched the rock wall as though he had some rapport with it, and he spoke to it instead of to George.
“Not entirely greed,” he said. “Instinct. It’s very difficult for a warrior race to overcome that urge which has become instinctive. The Vulcans overcame it with logic. They sacrificed emotion to it. My people have remained unwilling to give up emotion. We have made efforts toward redirecting our warlike propensities. Some of us once turned to space exploration to channel our aggressiveness, our suspicion of other civilizations. But we were not galactically mature. Everywhere we went we found more reasons to revert to habits of conquest. My culture—our political system—allows the hunger for power to become ravenous. There is no inbred check to that power. From the lowest local official to the Supreme Praetor himself, our culture is built upon conquest.”
