The turbolift came to a halt, and when he entered sickbay, Kirk was surprised to find Doctor Deeshal there. Kirk looked questioningly from the Goeg to McCoy. The smile Bones gave him only raised more questions in the captain’s mind. “Doctor Deeshal,” Kirk said, turning back to him. “When did you come aboard?”
“Right after the ships decoupled,” Deeshal answered. “I have to say, the more I experience your transporter, the more unsettling I find it. Being taken apart atom by atom and then projected through empty space . . .” he said, and shivered as he trailed off.
“Preaching to the choir here,” McCoy said.
“Why are you here?” Kirk asked.
“I’m curious about that myself.” Nurse Chapel stood in the doorway, leading Ghalif into the office. She stared at Deeshal, while the Abesian, dressed in an unadorned duty jumpsuit, considered the Goeg with an air of resignation.
Deeshal turned to Chapel, telling her, “Because the prisoner will still require someone to look after her. I’ve decided to take on that responsibility.” He shrugged slightly, adding, “I felt it was my duty as a physician.” A wide smile spread slowly across Chapel’s face.
“That’s a noble gesture, Doctor, but what happens when your ship leaves?” Kirk asked.
“It’s not my ship anymore,” Deeshal said with a shake of his head. “I requested that my assignment be suspended so I could do this.”
Surprised, Kirk asked, “Laspas approved this? You told him about . . . ?”
“I didn’t tell him everything,” Deeshal admitted, dropping his voice again. “He’s a lifelong Defense Corps man; he wouldn’t have reacted to the things I discovered any better than Fallag did. But Commander Laspas and I have known each other for years, and he respects my judgment, even when he disagrees with it.”
McCoy nodded and told Deeshal, “I think that shows some pretty good judgment on his part.”
“Thank you, Leonard,” Deeshal said, and then turned to Kirk. “I know you probably think pretty poorly of the Goeg people, Captain. Perhaps with good reason.”
“I try not to judge entire people on the basis of a few,” Kirk assured Deeshal. The doctor had definitely proven himself to be a perfect example for not making such sweeping judgments.
The doctor nodded in gratitude. “You should know that it wasn’t easy for Laspas to call for support. He regrets the breakdown of the relationship you two had formed.”
“Yes,” Kirk sighed. “So do I.”
Before Kirk could reflect too long on that revelation, the intraship whistled for attention. “Sickbay,” McCoy said as he opened the channel.
M’Ress’s voice answered. “Mister Fallag has signaled again.”
Kirk moved to the wall-mounted comm unit. “Acknowledged, Lieutenant. Tell Fallag that his passengers will be there shortly,” he said, putting an emphasis on the plural, and grinning to himself as he switched the unit off.
“I suppose we shouldn’t keep him waiting,” Ghalif said. She looked to Kirk and McCoy and said, “Thank you for trying to help.” Her eyes flicked briefly Deeshal’s way, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to make eye contact with the Goeg.
“Yes,” Deeshal added, nodding to both men before turning to Chapel. “And thank you, Christine . . . thank you, for everything.”
Chapel moved over to where he stood, wrapped her arms around him in a hug, and placed a small kiss on the side of his face. “And thank you, Deeshal.”
* * *
Under the power of its own impulse engines, the Enterprise entered orbit of the planet Wezonvu and approached its large repair facility. It consisted of cross-hatched latticework curved into a circular cylinder, with five smaller cylindrical slips positioned at regular intervals around its outer circumference. Spock had been impressed when he had reviewed the repair base’s specifications: the facility was largely automated, utilizing robotic drones to perform almost all of the extravehicular repair work.
“NCC-1701, code 2-32, negative twenty-one,” the voice of the base’s traffic controller ordered over the open comm channel.
“Copy, negative twenty-one,” Sulu answered back unhesitatingly, and reduced their forward velocity by the proper percentage. Spock sat in the captain’s chair, calmly observing their approach, while at the same time noting that the 814 had broken off and was now proceeding to one of the smaller docking slots.
As the docking procedure continued, Spock heard the rear turbolift doors hiss open, and turned to determine who had arrived. “Lieutenant Uhura,” he said, “you’re not due back on duty for another thirteen hours, eighteen minutes.”
“I know, sir,” she said, turning to him. “I came up here with this.” She held up a plain gray data card. “Chief N’Mi gave it to Mister Scott just before we uncoupled from the 814.”
“What is it?” Spock asked, curious.
“Gifts,” Uhura said, showing him a wide beaming smile. “Letters and other documents from the 814’s belowdecks crew, to the friends they had made on the Enterprise.” Spock heard a barely discernible epithet muttered by Ensign Chekov, but opted to ignore it. “Lieutenant Fexil sent several recordings of her mother’s musical performances,” Uhura said, as she turned back to M’Ress and handed the card to her. “I believe I also saw a file in there with your name, too, Mister Spock,”
“Yes, there is,” the Caitian officer confirmed as she scanned the data card and the names indicated on the files. “Would you like it sent to your station, Commander?”
“Please do, Lieutenant,” Spock said, standing and moving over to the science station. He found the transferred file and opened it on the monitor before him. It was a photographic image, showing Chief N’Mi with a young child seated on her knee. Judging from her appearance, the image had been taken approximately ten years earlier. The child, though he shared the characteristically prominent incisor teeth and high eyes of the Liruq race, also posed a prominently extended muzzle and a wispy gray-haired mane encircling his face. There was also linked to the picture a short piece of text: “Spock: This is my son N’Lar. You are one of very few people I could ever let know about him. He will never reach high rank in the Defense Corps, but I do hope he can grow to be as confident in himself and his nature as you are.”
Spock considered the small half-Goeg child, and the life he must have lived within the Domain. Even having experienced the prejudices and animosity of others while growing up due to his mixed heritage, Spock still doubted that he could fully realize what this young boy would experience.
“Thirty seconds to full stop,” Sulu announced from the helm, pulling Spock’s full focus back to the present.
The Vulcan closed the file and returned to the captain’s chair, sparing just a moment to reflect on how fortunate he was.
* * *
A swarm of robotic drones covered the Enterprise’s starboard pylon like picnic ants on a dropped piece of cake. Scott watched in quiet fascination through the panoramic transparent port that formed the front half of the repair slip’s observational car. Gleaming metallic disks, each just over a meter in diameter, examined every square nanometer of the support structure’s duranium skin. The globe-shaped compartment was one of four that could be maneuvered along the massive lattice-like frame that now encircled the Enterprise. From the car’s control chair, where he was now seated, Scotty could monitor the activities of each one of a thousand small robots on a small screen to the right. To the left, another screen displayed a composite vid image meshed together from each of the robots’ visual pickups. Scott watched as long, jagged, and highly magnified microfissures were targeted by the drones’ re-fusion beams and repaired.
The engineer had to admit to being impressed by this facility, as he nudged the control lever at his right hand and guided the car down one of the vertical girders, down the length of the damaged pylon. Once below the level of the nacelles, he could see where the 814 was moored in a neighboring repair slot, just beyond the Enterprise. It appeared, from what he could see, that their repairs w
ere close to finished and that they would soon be on their way. Now that their odyssey was nearly over, Scotty wished that he might have had more opportunity to interact with the Chief N’Mi, though with fewer complications. As part of her farewell gifts, she had included for him a Goeg technical journal. He’d only had the chance to skim through it briefly before they’d docked, but from what he had read, Scott imagined it would be his preferred bedside reading for most of their journey back home.
His thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of his communicator. He stopped the observation car and flipped the device open. “Scott here.”
“Enterprise here, Mister Scott,” replied Uhura. “Just checking in for your hourly progress report.”
“Everything’s continuing apace,” Scotty told her, quickly referring to the screen to his right. “We’re right on schedule, maybe a wee bit ahead.”
“How much is ‘a wee bit’?” she asked, and quickly added, “Mister Spock is going to ask.”
“Aye.” Scotty looked at the numbers and decided they were on track to finishing about six hours ahead of his original estimate. “Tell him an hour to an hour and a half maybe,” he told Uhura, secretly smiling to himself.
“Sounds good,” Uhura replied. “Also, Sulu wanted me to mention to you, there seems to be some sort of intermittent glitch in the proximity detectors.”
“What kind of glitch? Is he there?”
“Right here, Scotty,” Sulu answered. “It was just a couple of times, from the sensor cluster at Deck Nine. An alarm was triggered, but shut off automatically in less than a second. Ensign Strassman ran a level-four diagnostic, but didn’t find anything wrong.”
“Odd. Tell her to go ahead and run a level three,” Scotty said. “I’ll see what I can see from out here.” He pocketed the communicator and then pulled the control lever to the right, directing it onto an intersecting mag-track that would bring him toward the fore of the ship. There could be still undetected damage that had escaped the overwhelmed sensors. They would need a full inspection when they returned to a starbase, and no doubt a plethora of additional repairs. But there was no point in putting this one off now that it had been identified.
The car moved forward past the engineering hull and below the saucer section. Looking up through the transparency, Scott spotted one of the disk drones hovering near the sensor cluster in question. “Well, what are you doing out here?” he asked, and turned to the drone control panel. None of the drones he was working with had been deployed here.
He pulled out his communicator again. “Sulu, that proximity sensor you said had a glitch. What are you reading from it now?”
“Right now, nothing, sir,” Sulu said, as Scotty watched the small automaton hovering almost directly in front of the sensor cluster in question. “Why?”
Scotty heard a quiet alarm starting to sound at the back of his mind. “Are those sensors still modified to detect nystromite?”
“No,” Sulu said, “we reset them after leaving the Nystrom system.”
“Reset them for nystromite,” Scott ordered. Then, realizing what else was in the vicinity of that sensor cluster, he said, “And send security to check on the lower torpedo launch tubes.”
“Sir?”
“Now, Sulu.” Scott set the communicator aside and hit the control button to deploy another drone from the cache carried by the observation car, and manually targeted it to intercept the rogue. It didn’t detect the other drone until Scotty finished keying the nystromite detection protocol into its sensor programming. Then it was able to detect not only the drone, but the photon warhead it had smuggled out through the Enterprise’s opened torpedo launch tube.
“You rutting bastards,” Scotty spat, forgetting for a moment that he still had an open comm channel to the bridge. “You seeing this now, Sulu?”
“I see it!” Sulu shouted excitedly. “I’ve alerted security.”
“The board is still showing the torpedo tubes closed and sealed,” Chekov chimed in.
“They must’ve installed a backdoor program when they took control of the launcher the first time.” I should have looked for that after the incident at the Nalaing system, Scott berated himself, but he pushed such recriminations aside. Right now, he had to stop the other drone, and hope that doing so wouldn’t detonate the photon warhead. If that happened this close to the hull . . .
Whoever was controlling the rogue drone detected Scott’s on an intercept course. The torpedo-laden robot attempted to run away from the Enterprise—toward the 814. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Scotty growled as he pushed his drone to maximum acceleration. The gap between the two closed quickly, as the mass of the warhead kept the thief from gaining velocity. Then, unexpectedly, the other drone changed course and headed for the underside of the saucer. It then adjusted its course again to avoid collision, but at the same time, released its hold on the photon warhead, which continued on a straight line toward the hull.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Scotty cursed. “Enterprise! Incoming!”
Seconds before striking, small shimmering circles of light rippled out and away from the tumbling weapon, as if it had just hit the surface of a lake. The deflectors arrested its momentum and brought it gently to a standstill, mere centimeters before contact.
“Well done, Sulu,” Scotty said as he returned his focus to the fleeing drone. With new determination, he rammed his own drone into the little thief, causing a brilliant explosion of sparks. Scotty engaged the manipulating servos and made sure the propulsion systems of the captured drone were well and truly disabled. He executed a maneuver to bring it around back toward the ship. “Enterprise, prepare the shuttlebay,” he said as he programmed his drone to bring the damaged one in. The engineer took hold of the car’s control lever to bring it back around to the hard docking connection to the ship. The rest of the repairs would wait.
* * *
“Because you had them.”
Captain Kirk stared agog at Fallag, who in turn looked down haughtily at him from the viewscreen. “I beg your pardon?” He had just accused the Domain envoy of illegally violating his ship and stealing three of their photon torpedo warheads, and Fallag had reacted as if the concept of “sovereign territory” was completely irrelevant to him.
“You have these photon torpedoes,” Fallag said, “these advanced, dangerous weapons, more powerful by an order of magnitude than our own most formidable defenses. Did you think the Goeg Domain could simply sit back and let a rival power have a monopoly on such dangerous, destructive devices?”
“So you view the Federation as a potential enemy now?” Kirk asked.
“Is that even in question, given your support of the Taarpi?” Fallag countered. “Not to mention your theft and falsification of Domain data records.”
Kirk was tempted to ask how Fallag could simultaneously accuse him of taking data from the 814 and questioning the veracity of that data, but resolved not to be sidetracked. “And that gives you the right to engage in this sort of espionage?”
“We’re entitled to defend ourselves, our people, in any way necessary. Now your Starfleet will think twice before launching any sort of incursion—”
Kirk turned away from the screen and signaled to Uhura to cut the other man off in mid-screed. At the same moment, Scotty stepped off the turbolift, carrying a data slate and looking deeply troubled. “Sir, I tapped into the memory of our little Artful Dodger,” he said. “Just as you thought: the other two photon warheads it pilfered from us were brought straight to the 814.”
“Where’s the 814 now?” Kirk barked, no longer willing or able to contain his outrage. Just hours before, he was beginning to think that perhaps he could understand and excuse Laspas’s actions, and then this.
After consulting his computer, Spock answered, “We recorded them leaving their repair slip and exiting the system six-point-three minutes ago.”
Immediately after we realized what they were up to, Kirk thought, disgusted. “Heading?”
“The Nalaing syste
m,” Spock said.
“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, spinning back to the engineer, “your last report said our repairs were ahead of schedule. Are they far enough along that we could have warp drive?”
“Sir,” Scott said, deep lines furrowing his brow, “the damaged pylon is still far from one hundred percent—”
“That’s not what I asked,” Kirk shot back.
Scotty looked dismayed, but answered, “We can do warp four for a few hours, sir. But all it would take is one undetected subspace pocket, anything out of the ordinary that could knock our warp field—”
“Understood, Mister Scott,” Kirk said, looking the chief engineer straight in the eye, silently reassuring him that he wasn’t being needlessly reckless, and was as concerned about the ship as he was.
Scotty nodded, and sat at the engineering station. “Standing by to initiate an emergency separation from the repair dock,” he said.
Kirk couldn’t help but smile. “Always prepared, Scotty?”
Scott shrugged. “Aye. Compared to breaking away from a moving ship, this is a walk in the park.”
“Let’s hope so. Scotty, cast off.”
The entire ship vibrated around them, and Kirk could hear the straining of the mooring clamps resonating through the hull. “Warning,” sounded the base’s automated system through the comm, “shut down all drive systems immediately.”
“Turn that thing off, Uhura,” Kirk ordered, and moments after the voice subsided, so did the resistance applied to the outside of the ship.
“We’re clear of the station,” Sulu reported.
“Then set course for Nalaing,” Kirk ordered. “Best speed.”
The captain hoped their best would be good enough.
Twelve
There had been a field of unusual subspace activity about four light-years out from Wezonvu, which Chekov had noted during the journey in. They hadn’t been able to get detailed readings of its size or extent, but he made sure the Enterprise’s course back to Nalaing veered clear of the potential hazard, without adding an undue amount of transit time. Once they had passed its coordinates, and he felt the rest of their plotted course safe, he stood up from his station and moved to the side of Kirk’s chair. “Captain,” he said, straightening to full attention, “I hereby present myself for disciplinary action, sir.”
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 20
