“Bearing 0-8-7…” Masada reported. “0-8-8…”
And then, without warning, blue light flashed on the viewscreen, in the form of twin energy beams blasting from the Kuvak’s weapons array.
As the Vulcan ship drifted closer, the Enterprise misinterpreted their actions and raised its defensive screens.
A part of Syvak’s mind admitted that, not having been informed of his intentions, the humans were behaving completely logically in taking this defensive precaution. He quickly dismissed that thought, however, in light of the fact that humans had always been irrationally defensive toward Vulcans and other non-Terrans; assuring them of one’s nonhostile intentions would do nothing to change that.
“We have reached position, Captain,” Sepek reported from the helm.
Syvak nodded, rose, and returned to the science station beside Stonn. “Any difference in readings?”
“Yes, sir,” Stonn replied, his voice rising a bit more than was seemly. From the closer range and with the superior sensors, the faint cloud of ions was resolved into a solid, symmetrical object. “It is a ship,” the younger man opined. It appeared generally disk-shaped, with two clearly identifiable warp nacelles held away on opposite sides from the main hull.
Syvak was about to ask if the image resolution could be refined any further. Before he could, though, the image cleared of its own accord. The ship became fully visible, as did the markings on the hull—the same image that flew above those who marched against Surak at Mount Seleya…
“Weapons!” Syvak shouted, forgetting all his training. “Quickly, bring all weapons to bear on that ship! Now!”
The Vulcan shot missed by only meters. Kelso sprung out of his chair and shouted, “Return fire!”
A violent volley of high-power phaser beams lanced out from Enterprise’s dorsal emitters, pounding the shields around the Vulcan ship. They shimmered visibly around the vessel, and then flared out of existence. Seconds later, a single photon torpedo homed in on the target, striking the primary hull dead-center. The giant ring encircling the Vulcan ship seemed to fill with fire as the warp plasma inside the coils glowed with the brilliant energy of an unregulated matter/antimatter reaction. In a matter of milliseconds, those energies filled the ship’s entire volume, then burst through the exterior hull, leaving nothing of the Kuvak but an expanding cloud of radiation and shrapnel.
“Holy shit…” Kelso’s mouth hung open as he watched the fire in space quickly burn itself out. His brain threatened to snap shut at the enormity of what had just happened, but he was in command, and he knew he didn’t have that luxury. “Stiles, I didn’t order photon torpedoes!”
“That was no photon torpedo, sir,” the navigation officer answered in a tone of bewilderment, then turned to face him. “And we didn’t fire it.”
“Then who—?” Kelso began to ask, and then stopped as something new appeared on the forward viewscreen. Though it did not in fact fully appear, but presented itself as an opaque specter of a curved metal-gray ship’s bow, rising up from the bottom of the screen, somehow wavering just on the edge of existence. As more of the object came into view, the head and outstretched wings of a great bird of prey were revealed painted on its ventral hull. “What is that?” Kelso asked.
“I don’t know,” Stiles said, “but I’m pretty sure that’s who fired the last shot at the Kuvak.”
The image of ship wavered and faded almost completely into transparency as it accelerated past the Enterprise, heading out of orbit and into space.
“Lieutenant Kelso!”
Kelso spun toward the new communications officer, who winced as she pulled a small wireless receiver from her ear. Kelso noticed that practically every light on the console behind her was either lit up or blinking madly. “We’re being hailed by Babel Central and half the ships in orbit,” Penda reported, “demanding to know what’s happened. We’re also getting demands—”
“Sir!” Leslie interrupted. “Five—six Coalition cruisers are closing on us, weapons running hot!”
“—for our immediate surrender,” Penda finished.
As Tharlas’s forensics team reached the end of their directory of tests, the Andorian colonel returned to where T’Pring stood watching. “Subcommander,” he said, his antennae pointing accusingly at her, “you had attested earlier that no members of the Vulcan diplomatic contingent were absent from the ambassadorial suite during the period in question. Do you wish to amend that statement?”
“No,” T’Pring said, holding herself up straight. “It is an accurate statement.”
“In spite of this new evidence?”
“The evidence is circumstantial,” she said, even though the Romulan hair they’d found in fact exonerated Sarek. She would have preferred not to have allowed the cloud of suspicion to remain over the councillor—Sarek had been a generous benefactor to her for many years, and she owed him much. But as much as it pained her to be so circumspect, she could not reveal all the facts to these individuals, not just now. “While it appears to suggest the presence of another Vulcan—”
T’Pring suddenly stopped talking, interrupted by the death screams of one hundred and forty-seven Vulcan minds. They cried out inside her head as their ship burned around them, loosed katras trying to touch another mind—any mind—except for a single one looking specifically for her…
“Stonn!”
Before Tharlas could ask what that meant, the shrill blaring of a klaxon filled every corner of the utilities room. The colonel, his antennae pressed flat to his scalp, pulled a communicator from a holster on his hip and shouted above the din, “Tharlas to Central! What’s going on?!”
“Code Four!” the voice on the other connection shouted back, giving the call sign for a threat in planetary orbit. “The Enterprise has just fired on the I.C.V. Kuvak!”
“No…” Captain Pike whispered, his face a picture of disbelief and horror.
Almost as if in response, the voice on the speaker continued, “No…it’s been destroyed! The Earthers destroyed the Kuvak!”
Pike turned to T’Pring, as if to plead his innocence, but he had no other words. T’Pring had to push back hard against a surge of fury toward the human, calling on all her logic to remind herself that he could not be responsible for Stonn’s death. Stonn’s commitment to Space Command would have been over in just three more years, and then they would have been together. Except now they would not…
She secured her emotions back behind the suppressing barriers of her mind, to be dealt with at the appropriate time, and refocused on the situation at hand. Pike had turned away from her and shifted his gaze to the other members of Tharlas’s investigative team. He found no more sympathy from any of the non-Vulcans gathered than he had from her. “There has to be a mistake,” he said, as much to himself as to any of the individuals now glowering at him, betraying emotions that ranged from mistrust to murderous rage. Pike reached for his communicator in his right hip pocket…
…and collapsed in mid-motion, as a phaser beam struck him between the shoulder blades. “Human filth!” Pike’s Zaranite assailant shouted through her fluorine breather. A Betazoid technician quickly restrained her, as T’Pring dropped to her knees to check on the stunned human.
He had apparently bitten his tongue when he hit the floor, and his strangely miscolored blood flowed freely from his mouth. A large reddening welt just below his hairline suggested additional traumatic cranial injuries. His breathing was shallow, and his pulse was nearly nonexistent, though for all she knew, sixty beats per minute could be a perfectly normal heart rate for his species. He was, however, unconscious—very deeply so, she determined with a quick brush of her fingertips across his temple.
Around her, Tharlas and his people were shouting at each other, emotion building on emotion like layers of lava and ash building a volcano. Amid this cacophony, she heard the electronic chirp of Pike’s communicator. She reached over his body, pulled it from his pocket, and lifted the hinged grille cover. “Enterprise to Capta
in Pike!” a female voice called. “Come in, Captain Pike!”
What T’Pring did next would certainly be deemed illogical by Sarek and the rest of her superiors. However, in the brief time she had spent with Christopher Pike, she had determined that ensuring his continued existence was in fact a most logical objective. “Enterprise, your captain has been injured,” T’Pring said into the transceiver. “Beam both him and myself aboard.” She hesitated imperceptibly before adding, “Code V’Shar, kef-yet keh-kuh steh-kuh.”
The ceiling above Kirk’s bunk was far from the most interesting feature of his quarters, but that’s where he fixed his attention for the bulk of his time in confinement. He felt exhausted—he’d gotten little if any sleep since his encounter at the reception, what with all that followed—but his mind was unwilling to shut down, going over and over the events of the last twelve hours.
Damned Vulcans, he thought over and over. First they took his wife and his son from him, and now they’d ended his career. He’d probably end up spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth because of some pointy-eared con man…
Stop that, he told himself, angered by how pitiful those thoughts sounded inside his head. Jim Kirk had never thought of himself as a victim of fate. He’d never believed there was such a thing as a no-win scenario, but rather, that there were always choices he could make. Loath as he was to admit it, he couldn’t place all the blame on the Vulcans. He’d made his choices, as the captain said, based on his prejudices. And he would be made to pay for his choices.
Kirk was jarred out of his contemplative state by the blaring of the Red Alert siren. He bolted out of his bed and instinctively started for the door before stopping and reminding himself how he came to be in his quarters to begin with. He stood there in the middle of the room for a moment, feeling ridiculous, useless. He moved to his desk and hit an embedded power control button. “Computer.”
The machine chattered to life and replied: “Working.”
“Computer, what’s happening?”
More chattering. “Please specify.”
Kirk frowned. The Enterprise computer was not always very helpful unless one asked very focused questions. Rather than taking the time to try to rephrase his initial query, Kirk instead asked, “Is Captain Pike back aboard?”
“Negative.”
“Then who’s in command?”
“Lieutenant Lee Kelso.”
Kirk grimaced. Lee was a good guy, but he tended to get a little nervous in crisis situations. Kirk switched off the computer interface and hesitated. Having been confined to quarters by his commanding officer, he was under a moral obligation to obey that order and stay put. At the same time, he was obligated not to blindly adhere to orders when doing so could put his ship and crewmates at risk.
A moment later, Kirk was in the turbolift, his knuckles white from his grip on the control throttle. After the slowest ride Kirk could remember, the turbolift doors opened onto the bridge.
“—and prepare to be boarded, or we will be forced to fire on you!”
Kirk stopped on the threshold of the turbolift as the image of the Coalition fleet commander from the reception—Rawgor-something-or-other—glared from the main viewscreen down at Lee Kelso. To his credit, Lee held himself steady and firmly answered, “We are not responsible for the destruction of your ship. The attackers have already left orbit—”
“Enough of your ‘invisible ship,’ Enterprise!” the alien shouted back. “You have sixty seconds to comply!” The wild-haired captain disappeared from the screen, replaced with the image of two Gral-class ships targeting them.
“Sir, we have a response on the captain’s frequency,” Lieutenant Penda called out as soon as the ship-to-ship signal was broken. “But it’s not the captain.”
Lee called back over his shoulder, unable to tear his eyes from the threat bearing down on them. “On speaker, Lieutenant.”
“…captain has been injured. Beam both him and myself aboard. Code V’Shar, kef-yet keh-kuh steh-kuh.”
Kirk noticed the communications officer’s eyes go wide at hearing that. “What? What’s it mean?”
The young woman looked up at Kirk and hesitated. Kirk practically lunged at her, grasping both of her shoulders. “Lieutenant?!”
“‘V’Shar’ is the Vulcan Security Directorate,” she blurted. “The code is security override for Babel’s transporter screen.” She grimaced, almost as if surrendering that bit of knowledge was physically painful to her. Kirk studied her face, wondering how this young lieutenant had come across such intelligence, though not for a moment doubting it.
“It’s a trick!” Stiles yelled, his eyed glued to the screen. “They’re trying to get us to lower our own shields!”
“And in half a minute, they’re going to try to blow us out of the sky!” countered Leslie. Kelso looked from one man to the other, and then back to the two ships hovering on the viewscreen before him…
“Lower shields, Mister Stiles!” Kirk commanded, then reached over Penda’s shoulder and stabbed a pair of controls. “Transporter room, lock onto the captain’s communicator signal, two to beam up, authorization code being fed to your board. Stiles, raise shields again as soon as transport is complete,” he ordered as he released the first two switches and thumbed a third. “Bridge to sickbay. Emergency team to the transporter room.” He paused just long enough to hear the “ayes” coming back from all stations, then moved down into the command well. “What was the fleet commander talking about, an ‘invisible ship’?” he asked Kelso.
Lee stared back at him. “Jim, you were relieved—”
“And the tribunal can add mutiny to the list of charges against me,” Kirk snapped back. “Now, the ship?”
Lee faltered for a split second, then reported, “It was…invisible. Until the Kuvak fired at it. Then it fired this plasma weapon back—they destroyed a Sitar-class ship with one shot, Jim!”
“Then it was visible?”
“Barely. Sensors only picked it up as an ion cloud. But we saw it.”
“McCoy to bridge.”
Kirk turned to the command chair and keyed a button on the right arm. “Kirk here.”
“Captain Pike has been stunned and concussed, but he should be all right. And there’s also someone here who—”
McCoy was abruptly interrupted by a calm feminine voice. “Commander Kirk, open a subspace channel to Fleet Commander Ra-ghoratreii immediately.”
Kirk was not thrilled to learn Sarek’s aide had beamed up with Pike. But, seeing as he’d already trusted her this far, he signaled to the communications officer to comply. “Hailing frequencies open,” she said.
“Fleet Commander Ra-ghoratreii, this is Subcommander T’Pring. Hold your fire, and stand down.”
It occurred to Kirk that, although he wasn’t familiar with the Coalition’s rank structure, a subcommander was probably out-ranked by a fleet commander. And yet, the previously fearsome Space Command leader responded with a simple, “Understood,” and on the main viewing screen, both Coalition vessels broke off and moved away from the Enterprise.
As Kirk and the rest of the bridge crew watched in mild disbelief, T’Pring hailed the bridge again. “Commander Kirk, did you detect an unidentified vessel leaving orbit shortly after the destruction of the Kuvak?”
“We did.”
“Evidence indicates both Lady T’Pol and Councillor Sarek’s impersonator are both aboard that vessel. I suggest the Enterprise break orbit as well and set in pursuit.”
Kirk took a moment to absorb that. Then, he looked around to find the entire bridge crew staring at him expectantly. “You heard the lady,” he said. “Mister Leslie, take us out of orbit.”
T’Pol took a long, deep breath, and then screamed as loud as she could.
She had been imprisoned in a small cell aboard a warp-capable ship, and was surely about to be executed. Fear and anger and frustration and self-pity welled deep in the well-guarded part of her psyche, ready to boil up and erupt violently. Letting
it do so would accomplish nothing, but at the same time, repressing those feelings would be equally futile. What logic was there, she asked herself, in using the little energy left in her aged body to show the empty room her stolid Vulcan demeanor, when it would feel so much better to rant and scream and pound her fists against the cold metallic walls?
So she screamed and screamed, until the door opened and a helmeted Romulan guard entered, a handheld disruptor aimed at T’Pol’s chest. Following directly behind him was the man who had posed as Sarek, now wearing the same uniform as the guard, with a red and black sash over his right shoulder to indicate command-level rank. “Are you all right?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“What would it matter to you if I were not?” she asked, slightly winded. To her disappointment, she did not feel any better now than she had before.
“In fact, yes, it would,” the Romulan answered. “I regret that we meet in this way. Our mission was only to disrupt the Coalition’s talks with Earth, and prevent any unification. It was never my intention to bring any harm to you.”
“And yet, you have,” T’Pol said. “This entire ship and everyone on it is doomed.”
“Empty threat,” the helmeted soldier scoffed.
T’Pol fixed him with a withering look. “Even this deep inside the ship, I could tell when we were fired upon, and hit. The ship then went to high warp, sustained it for approximately two hours, eighteen minutes, and then came to a stop. Given the location of Babel, it would have been impossible for this ship to have reached its home territory. We are most likely then in a position of relative safety—inside a nebula or the magnetosphere of a large planet—where you hope to effect repairs before getting back under way.”
The Romulan commander gave her a respectful nod. “The reports about you were not exaggerated.”
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