Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity
Page 19
“We don’t have a treaty with them,” McCoy snapped back at Spock, “nor would we sign one with a government that didn’t believe in due process, or in decent treatment of their prisoners.” McCoy turned back to Kirk. “You saw Chekov. I just had four other patients, all of whom became ‘very clumsy,’ all at the very same time that the 814 cut communications. What do you imagine they’re going to do once they get their hands on Ghalif?”
Kirk slammed his glass down on the desk. “Doctor, I watched the summary execution of the rest of her people. I assure you that I have no illusions about what they may have in store for her.”
After a moment of stunned silence in the office, Kirk slid his glass away and pressed the heels of both hands against his eyelids. The captain dropped his hands and looked up again. “I’m sorry, Bones,”
“Don’t worry about it,” McCoy said softly. “I know you have your back against the wall.” As helpless as he felt, the doctor knew that Jim was experiencing the same feeling for all of his crew.
As he reached for the bottle to refill his glass, McCoy heard his name, and turned to see Joe D’Abruzzo standing in the office doorway, back in his red security uniform. “Excuse me, sirs.”
“Lieutenant,” Kirk said, brightening. “It’s good to see you on your feet and back to work.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, returning the captain’s smile.
“How’s that arm doing?” McCoy asked. “That’s not the reason you’re here, I hope.”
“It’s . . . okay,” he said, rotating his left shoulder and betraying only the slightest hint of discomfort. “I may not be able to throw you so easily anymore, Captain,” he said, “but all things considered, I’m doing fine.”
“Good to hear,” McCoy said, then asked, “To what do we owe this visit?”
D’Abruzzo answered by stepping to one side, allowing another man to move into the doorway. “I’m afraid that I imposed upon Joe’s good nature for this favor,” Doctor Deeshal told the group.
“What in blazes?” McCoy growled as he pushed his chair back and jumped to his feet. “What do you think you’re doing back on this ship?”
“Yes, I’d like to know that, too,” Kirk added, looking irately from the Goeg to D’Abruzzo.
“Please, Captain, if you would hear me out, before ordering the lieutenant to throw me off your ship,” Deeshal pleaded. “I’ve uncovered some information that I think you’ll want to have.” He paused, waiting for Kirk to decide whether he was going to listen or have him ejected forcibly.
“What sort of information?” Kirk said at last.
“The kind of information,” Deeshal answered, “that I don’t think my government would ever want to get out.”
* * *
Fallag had a most disconcerting tic, in that he tended to flick the tip of his tongue out after every sentence or so and lick his upper lip. Taken with the Goeg’s morphological similarity to Terran lions, it created the impression in Kirk’s mind of a very hungry predator eyeing his prey. He could only imagine how Ghalif felt, as she was escorted in by Doctor McCoy, being the direct object of his seemingly ravenous attention.
The doctor held her gingerly by the elbow as he led her to the chair set in the center of the briefing room. The captain knew that she was recovered from her injuries and that McCoy was playing up his role as caregiver. Kirk wasn’t sure that was such a wise strategy; most predators had no compunctions about attacking the weak and wounded.
Once the Abesian woman was seated and McCoy had taken a position directly behind her, Kirk said, “Computer, begin recording.”
The machine positioned to his right came to life and said, “Recording.”
Kirk then struck the bell set on the table before him and said, “This hearing, for the purpose of considering the extradition of Ghalif, is hereby commenced. Present are Fallag on behalf of the government of the Goeg Domain, and Doctor Leonard McCoy, as defendant’s advocate.” Fallag considered Kirk’s formalities with amusement, languidly running the tip of his tongue across his teeth. “You may begin your questioning, Mister Fallag,” Kirk said, suppressing the impulse to punch him.
The Goeg envoy stood up from his seat beside Kirk and casually paced around to the front of the briefing room table, keeping his dark-eyed glare steady on the detainee. “Tell us, Ghalif, when did you first join the Taarpi?”
“Objection,” McCoy said. “You haven’t asked her if she is a member of the Taarpi yet.”
Fallag stared at McCoy, and then back at Kirk, who pointed out, “He’s right; you didn’t.”
The Goeg shook his head slowly, then turned back to Ghalif. “Are you a member of the Taarpi?”
“I am,” she answered, proudly.
“And now that we have established that,” Fallag said, “when did you first join the Taarpi?”
“Nine years ago.”
“And in those nine years,” Fallag demanded, pushing in closer to her, “how many deaths have you been responsible for?”
If Ghalif was at all frightened or shaken, she showed no sign of it. “I’ve never counted.”
“Let’s start with the first one, then. When was that?” Fallag asked.
“Objection,” McCoy interrupted. “This is turning into a fishing expedition.”
“A what?” Fallag asked him.
“What he means,” Kirk said, “is that you’re not making any specific allegations.”
The envoy’s previous amusement with Federation legal niceties appeared to be coming to an end. All the same, he turned back to Ghalif and continued, “Then let’s start with your most recent atrocity. Tell us about how you destroyed Civil Transport Class I/043.”
McCoy quickly retorted, “It hasn’t been established how the transport was destroyed.”
“You need to say ‘objection,’ Doctor,” Kirk reminded him.
“I figured it was assumed,” McCoy said with a shrug.
Fallag stalked over to the table, his patience finally at its end. “Captain Kirk, you told me that this hearing of yours was to establish the facts of this woman’s actions, not the obfuscation of those facts.”
“You’re correct,” Kirk told Fallag. “It is time we got to some facts here.” He then turned to the Abesian at the center of everyone’s attention and said, “Tell us about the other two people we recovered with you from the escape pod.”
Ghalif shifted her eyes away from her questioner. “They’re dead; what does it matter?”
“We’re trying to establish facts,” Kirk said. “It’s my understanding that there are no Urpires in the Taarpi. Why were they on your ship, and in your escape pod with you?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” Ghalif said.
Kirk looked sideways at Fallag, knowing that he would certainly mistrust anything she had to say, but hoping he might still be open to other evidence. “When we reached the wreckage of the transport and scanned it for survivors, only one of the one hundred twenty-eight bodies found was Urpire, even though there were three Urpires listed on the passenger manifest.”
Fallag spun around, an almost comical look of shock on his face. “What?”
Kirk nodded, and slid the data slate he had in front of him to the other man. Fallag quickly reviewed the list displayed, and then snapped his head back toward Ghalif. “So you kidnapped them, and destroyed the transport to cover your tracks.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. “Of course, because something like that draws so little attention.”
“Why Urpires, though?” Kirk asked, the question directed as much to Fallag as to Ghalif. “The Urpires are neutral; the Taarpi have no dispute with them. Why them? Who were they?”
“Captain . . .” Ghalif began, betraying her apprehension for the first time. She knew exactly who they were, and she didn’t want that information to come out here. Kirk thought he understood why, but it would do no good to let that knowledge die with her.
“Who were they?” Fallag demanded, momentarily forgetting the prisoner.
“Members of the Urpire Curia?” Fallag gaped. “Traveling secretly on a civilian transport?” Kirk held the slate out to him, and he immediately snatched it away and studied the file. The captain hoped the revelation would distract him from asking how Starfleet had tapped into the Domain’s genetic identification database. Doctor Deeshal had shown extraordinary bravery bringing his findings to them, and he wanted to provide him cover.
With the thought of keeping Fallag off balance, Kirk pressed on. “There was one other thing we discovered. We compared our findings at the transport site against the passenger and crew manifests. It seems there was one additional Abesian passenger who also was traveling under a false identification, and was unaccounted for among the wreckage.”
Fallag looked from Kirk to Ghalif, then back to Kirk again, genuinely confused. Ghalif—probably as much of an alias as the one she had used to book passage on the transport— appeared to be annoyed with Kirk for both discovering and then revealing all he had. “The Curia secretly reached out to the Taarpi several weeks ago and asked for a meeting,” she began. “The Urpires are not blind to the injustices the Goeg Domain has perpetrated against their subject worlds. They’re beginning to realize that they can’t just stand idly by and allow Goeg despotism to—”
“This hearing is over,” Fallag announced, tossing the data slate onto the table. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to the lunatic conspiracy theories of a murderous criminal.”
“Oh,” McCoy said, sounding disappointed, “but we didn’t even get to the extra Goeg body yet.”
In spite of himself, Fallag took the bait. “What?”
“There was one more Goeg body in the wreckage than was listed on the manifest,” Kirk confirmed, tapping a finger on the slate. “There’s no way of knowing who he or she was, of course . . .”
“His name was Neefrem,” Ghalif volunteered, as Kirk had hoped she might. “He was from Corps Intelligence. He tracked me onto that transport, sabotaged the ship trying to stop our meeting, and—”
Fallag lunged across the briefing room, putting his muzzle within centimeters of the Abesian’s face before either Kirk or McCoy could stop him. “You will be quiet now,” he growled deep in his throat, then pulled away before McCoy could physically force him to do so. “This woman will be remanded to my custody as soon as we reach Wezonvu,” he pronounced. Fallag marched out of the room, where one of the Enterprise security guards waited to escort him back to his ship in the shuttlebay.
“Now I know what you meant about him,” McCoy told Kirk, before getting down on one knee beside the Abesian. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine,” Ghalif said, then looked to Kirk. “I don’t know what you thought you were going to accomplish. I could have told you he would never believe any of it.”
“I hoped he would,” Kirk admitted, moving out from behind the table toward her. “But I couldn’t turn you over to them while keeping what I knew to myself. I’m sorry that it doesn’t seem to have changed anything.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ghalif told him. “Once a Goeg makes up his mind, a herd of wild gaats won’t make him change it.”
“Now what?” McCoy asked Kirk.
It was Ghalif who answered. “Now, I wait until we reach Wezonvu, and I’ll go with Fallag.”
McCoy shook his head vehemently. “No. We can protect you,” he said, and looked to Kirk to back up that promise. The captain said nothing, unwilling to admit how few options he had.
“Who will protect you and your crippled ship if you do? No, even if you could face off against the whole Goeg Domain, I couldn’t hide here on your ship like a coward. To do so would be an insult to everyone who has fought and sacrificed for the cause,” Ghalif said.
Kirk could think of nothing to say to her. “Bones, do you want to escort her back to sickbay?”
McCoy looked to be on the verge of snapping off an impertinent answer, but instead bit his tongue, took his patient by the arm, and led her out of the room. Once they were gone, Kirk dropped into the chair Ghalif had just abandoned and sat there for several minutes more, alone with his thoughts and his guilt.
Eleven
Once the conjoined vessels dropped out of warp on the outskirts of the Wezonvu system, the engineering crew began the process of making the Enterprise an independent ship again. In the ship’s labyrinthine lower levels, teams were working hard at the disassociation of the two drive systems, dismantling plasma transfer conduits and control systems. As Scott walked his inspection circuit, checking up on the progress being made, he reflected that what had been built in a cooperative effort by mixed teams a fortnight ago was being torn apart by Starfleet crew alone. Outside the ship, Chief N’Mi’s crew took sole responsibility for physically detaching the two vessels from each other. As glad as he would be once the Enterprise was its own ship again, Scott couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of regret for the way things were ending.
He returned to the main engineering control room and checked the master situation board, which had been reconfigured to monitor the workings of their jury-rigged dual system. Almost all of the indicator lights now glowed green, for those systems that had been fully transferred back to Enterprise, or had gone dark, for those that were now defunct. Once there was only one connection left, a voice came over the engineering intercom. “Mister Scott,” Chief N’Mi said, “would you meet me at the connecting airlock for our final disengagement?”
“Certainly, lass,” Scotty said after only a momentary pause. He and his counterpart had had only the most perfunctory of exchanges since the engagement in the Nalaing system; Scotty was unsure why she had specifically asked for one last face-to-face before the two ships went their separate ways. But he took the turbolift down to the ship’s lowest level, and there found the Liruq woman waiting inside the access tunnel, standing on the rungs at the midpoint between its two ends. “Chief,” he said. “Is everything all set on your end?”
“Yes, Commander Scott, thank you for asking.” Scotty cringed at the sarcastic undertone of her voice. She no doubt knew how close the Enterprise had come to forcibly separating the two ships, which would have done significant damage to her ship. But then N’Mi took a more conciliatory tone, saying, “It was quite a feat we pulled off together, making this journey. You and your people should take pride in the accomplishment.”
Scotty gave her a grateful smile. “Thank ye, Chief. The same should be said for you and yours, especially since it was you who dreamed up this mad scheme in the first place.”
“My people have a custom when guests take their leave,” she said then, reaching into a pouch at her uniform belt and withdrawing a gray data card, “of presenting gifts for the journey ahead.”
“Oh,” Scotty said in surprise, and then silently scolded himself for not giving the woman enough credit to think she’d be willing to extend an olive branch as they parted company. He climbed down the rungs on the opposite side of the connecting tunnel, stopping directly across from her. “Well, that’s awfully nice of you,” he said as he accepted the offering and turned it over in his fingers, checking for any hint of what might have been encoded on it. N’Mi started on her way back down to the 814, and Scotty called down, “I’m sorry I don’t have anything to give in return.”
“Don’t be,” she told him as her feet hit the deck below. “You people have already given us quite a bit.” She placed her hand on the panel by the airlock hatch and said, “I wish you and your ‘old girl’ well,” before the heavy door slid into place.
Scotty stared down curiously at the seal
ed panel, and then considered the data card in his hand. It wasn’t until the warning lights began to flash above him, alerting him that the explosive bolts holding the connecting tunnel in place had been armed, that he scrambled back up into the Enterprise and sealed the other end of the tunnel.
* * *
“Decoupling complete, Captain,” Scotty’s voice reported over the comm, as on the main viewscreen, the bridge crew watched the 814 drop away from their keel. A sense of relief and liberty rippled through the bridge as they were at last under their own control again.
“And good riddance,” Chekov added as the other ship slipped away. His physical injuries were completely healed, but Kirk knew the ensign had not recovered from his experience with the Domain.
“We are not free of them yet, Mister Chekov,” Spock reminded him as he swiveled in his seat away from his station. “814 is matching our course and speed, seven hundred meters off our stern.” Laspas’s ship would shadow the Enterprise for the rest of the way to the repair facility, and then put in for minor repairs and crew transfers.
“And let’s not forget our friend, Fallag,” Kirk added. The government envoy was aboard his ship in the hangar bay, waiting for the transfer of the Abesian prisoner to his custody that, per their agreement, was to take place once the Enterprise and the 814 had separated.
Lieutenant M’Ress turned in her seat at communications and said, “Captain, Mister Fallag is hailing from his vessel. He wants to know—”
“Yes, Lieutenant, yes,” Kirk sighed. “Let him know I will be there shortly,” he said as he stood up and headed for the turbolift.
All the way down to sickbay, the captain tried to convince himself that he wasn’t throwing Ghalif to the wolves because it was the most expedient course of action. Kirk reminded himself that, even if he were in a position to offer political asylum, she had already preemptively rejected the idea. With all the evidence Deeshal had brought them, there was still the very real possibility that it was Ghalif, and not Neefrem, who was responsible for sabotaging the transport.