done it at last--they had a pirate, and now his
ship. He
called Scott.
"Scotty, I've got a pirate ship on the
surface we
need someone to disassemble and beam up here.
Think you can find some volunteers who'll risk
it?"
"Aye, that we can," Scott said exuberantly.
"Did
we catch a pirate, Captain?"
"That we did, Scotty."
Scott emitted a low rumble in his throat.
"I'm not
responsible for what I might do to him, sir.
What kind
is he?"
"I'll know soon, Scotty. I'm on my
way down to the
brig now. How soon can you get some people down
there?"
"Yesterday, sir."
The Vulcanoid behind the force field was tall,
lean
and aristocratic of bearing, but there the similarity
ended; the expression of open hatred on his face
negated the possibility of his being a native of
Vulcan.
Romulan, then; but he did not fit Kirk's
idea of what a
Romulan should look like, for he did not wear his
hair
in the Romulan style. Thick and wavy, it was
brushed
straight back from the widow's peak on his forehead
and curled onto his shoulders. Nor did he wear
the
sedate Romulan military uniform; his bright
red tunic
fit snugly underneath a long, loose-fitting
vest.
He had apparently not been blessed with the discipline
and courtesy of the Romulan culture, for as
Kirk
approached the brig he spat at him. The
spittle hit the
force field and slid to the floor of the brig without
hitting its target.
It did not surprise Kirk to see a
Romulan dressed as
a pirate. The Praetor's Empire placed
heavy demands
on its subjects; nothing less than excellence
was accepted,
whether one served the Praetor in the military
or as a civilian, and dropouts were not tolerated
within
the society. Those who did not fit into the spartan
way
of life were dispatched, or they escaped to become
outcasts... or pirates.
"Murderous whelp!" The pirate cursed
Kirk.
Kirk answered coolly in his best imitation of his
first
officer. "I've murdered no one. The death of
your
cohort was an accident. You, on the other hand, have
no doubt killed a number of
Aritanians and quite
possibly some of my people as well. What were you
doing under our protective shield?"
The Romulan eyed Kirk as though he were
insane.
"Shield? I encountered no shield."
"Perhaps you used a shield neutralizer." Kirk
watched carefully for a reaction. "Are you working for
the Praetor?"
The Romulan laughed scathingly. "Shield
neutralizer!
You are a stupid human. I work for no one but
myself."
"What were you doing on Aritani?"
"My friend and I were merely flying over the planet
surface when you attacked us--"
"We beamed you aboard," Kirk said calmly.
"Yes, and in your incompetence, you killed my
friend to And you accuse me of killing people--"
Kirk leaned forward, his voice so soft the
Romulan
had to strain to hear it. "I regret that. I would like
to
MINDSHADOW
have two of you, so you could try to corroborate
each other's story. Why wasn't your cloaking
device
on?"
The Romulan's eyes widened. "Such
accusations! I
don't know what you're talking about."
"We'll see. We have your ship."
"I don't believe you." The Romulan's
sneer faded
slightly.
"It really doesn't matter," Kirk continued in
the
same low voice; he clenched his fist as a wave
of
irrational hatred swept over him. The
Romulan
seemed to sense it and pulled back slightly from the
force field. "Why don't you relax now? Our
medical
officer will be down later to talk to you and give you a
little something to help relax you."
"You Federation types are pathetic. What makes
you think you have anything that could make a Romulan
talk? We are impervious to your
interrogation
methods."
Kirk smiled tightly. "You meant to say, the
trained
and disciplined members of the Romulan military
are
impervious . . . to almost anything. But you aren't
Vulcans. We can get information out of you."
"I have nothing to hide." The pirate turned his
face
away.
"We'll see," said Kirk. He left while
he could still
control his impulse to put his hands around the
Romulan's
neck.
Emma and McCoy were in the laboratory looking
at
another brain scan; Emma sat at the counter
with the
printout spread out in front of her while
McCoy leaned
over her shoulder--a little too closely, Kirk
thought,
even for colleagues. They were laughing when
he
came in, but when they saw his face, they stopped
abruptly.
"What's happened, Jim?" McCoy asked.
The captain
was no longer weighed down with fatigue and
concern; his movements were electric, purposeful.
"We got one, Bones," Kirk gloated.
McCoy's face broke into a broad grin.
"What did you catch?" Emma searched Kirk's
face
and then McCoy's until she understood. "A
pirate?"
Kirk nodded. "Romulan."
"Is he really a pirate," asked McCoy,
"or one of the
Praetor's boys?"
"That's what I want to find out. I'm going
to need
you later, Bones. We're bringing up the
wreckage from
one of the ships, and I want to examine it before we
question him, but after that--"
"You'd like me to concoct a little potion to loosen
his tongue."
"Exactly."
Emma looked surprised. "Do you really have a
truth serum effective against Romulans?"
McCoy shrugged. "It sometimes is. A lot
depends
on the individual. With a little perseverance, we can
usually find out what we need to know."
"Would you like to come along with McCoy during
the questioning?" Kirk asked. "Your knowledge of
Vulcan psychology might be useful."
She wheeled on him with such angry indignance that
Kirk drew back, surprised. "Vulcans and
Romulans
are hardly similar when it comes to psychology,
Captain,
although I suppose most humans as
sume they are
the same since they share a few minor racial
characteristics.
Their cultures and philosophies are
completely
different--"
Kirk held up his hands. "Sorry, Doctor.
I didn't
mean to overgeneralize. It was stupid of me. Still,
have more experience in psychology than either of
MINDSHADOW
"What time?" she said, suddenly cool.
"Leonard
and I were going to have dinner later."
McCoy did not need to look in a mirror to know
his
cheeks were flaming; and he was even more embarrassed
that such a perfectly normal statement would
embarrass him. Everyone else had a love
life; it was
perfectly normal. What did he have to blush
about? He
waited for the captain to make some taunting remark,
to say, "Excuse me, Leonard, I didn't
know"'' but
he did not.
"I don't wish to interfere in Dr. McCoy's
social
life," Kirk said in clipped tones, "but I
am unable to
predict when we'll be finished searching the ship.
I'll
call the minute I know something. But first, Dr.
Saenz,
I'd like to talk to you about those test results on
Spock."
The door to Engineering opened to reveal total
chaos. Pieces of metal had been strewn all
over the
deck; Kirk could recognize pieces of the
debris as
parts from a surface fighter. One of the pieces was
a
small, streamlined cloaking device, and he
picked it
up, marveling at its size--the one he had stolen
from
the Romulans scarcely three years ago had
been
twenty times the size.
Scott wriggled out from under a large piece of
bulkhead on the floor; nearby, a small
engine had been
completely dismantled. Kirk smiled to himself; at
least
part of Scott's thoroughness was not motivated
by his
desire to find the shield neutralizer as much as
by the
chance to tinker with someone else's engines. Scott
brushed dust and ash from his rumpled tunic and
walked over to Kirk, who knew the moment he
saw
the engineer's expression that they had not found
anything yet.
"I dinna understand, Captain." Scott shook his
head. "Ye kin see the little cloakin' device
there, but
that thing's designed to consume a goodly amount of
fuel. They couldna stayed cloaked more than seven
hours with it. They weren't under the shields to begin
with."
"So Spock was right." Kirk turned the device
over
in his hands. "Scotty, there's got to be something
else
here to explain it."
"But sir, we've just about finished checkin'
everything,
and there's not one piece of equipment here to
explain either how they got past the shield or how
they
stayed cloaked more than seven hours."
"Just about finished." Kirk looked up at
Scott.
"That isn't the same as completely finished, is
it,
Engineer?
"Well, no, sir, I suppose not, but the
only thing that
remains is to tear apart every bulkhead and see if
the
device is concealed somewhere--but I can't believe
it
could be small enough for that and still work."
"Keep looking, Scotty. I've got to know
something
before I go in to question the prisoner."
Scott's expression was dangerous. "I wish
I could
go with ye, Captain. I have a few things I'd like
to
clear up with that murderous divvil--"
"I know," Kirk said softly. "But I need you
here.
Keep up the good work, Mr. Scott. Give
me a call
when you've found something."
"We will, sir."
The instant the door to Engineering closed behind
the captain, Scott muttered, "But I
guarantee ye we
won't find a bloody thing." He eyed the
wreckage on
the floor and suddenly gave a piece of it a
disgusted
kick.
Emma was waiting for McCoy in front of his
quarters;
he'd stayed on duty a half-hour longer
to make up
MINDSHADOW
for being late that morning. "Hi," he smiled.
"Hello yourself." She leaned against the wall and
smiled up at him with an expression that could
hardly
be called professional.
"Look, I'm going to be a little late for dinner
tonight.
Why don't you go ahead and we'll take a
raincheck."
"No thanks, I thought I might go
along when the
Romulan is questioned. It sounds fascinating."
McCoy winced. "Did I ever mention that you
remind
me of someone sometimes--no, never mind. I
haven't heard from the captain yet today. It
seems he
has Scotty and half of Engineering going over that
pirate ship with a fine-toothed comb, and he wants
to
wait until they're finished before we question the
prisoner."
"Have they found anything?" Her eyes glistened
with interest.
"Oh, just the usual Romulan pirate
paraphernalia--cloaking
devices and whatnot. I take it dinher's after
the interrogation, then? Let me give Jim a
call and see
how it's going."
McCoy knew that something was urgently wrong
the instant he heard Kirk's voice on the
intercom.
"What is it, Jim?"
"I just got a call from Security,
Bones. It looks like I
won't be needing your help with that prisoner after
all.
He's dead."
Chapter Four
WHEN McCoy aND Emma arrived at the
brig, the
force field which had contained the prisoner was dark;
inside, security personnel were searching for
evidence.
Kirk stood where he had once faced the
Romulan,
but this time he confronted Security Chief
Tomson.
Lieutenant Ingrit Tomson was a colorless,
lanky
woman who stood a good half a head taller
than Kirk
in spite of her tendency to slump. She came from
an
icy colony planet that rarely saw the sun, and
her skin
and hair were so pale that she seemed lashless and
browless; when she blushed, the capillaries were
clearly outlined in red on her white
cheeks. Normally
serene of manner and countenance almost to the point
of apathy, she spoke to Kirk now with what was for
her an alarming degree of agitation. Her
se
curity team
had just made one of the most serious mistakes a
security team can make: they had lost a
prisoner.
Tomson had not been on the Enterprise long, and
she was keenly aware that her promotion to security
MINDSHADOW
chief was recent enough for any miscalculation on her
part to be interpreted as greenhorn incompetence
rather than simple bad luck. She spoke
slowly, choosing
her words with care so that the captain would
understand that the situation had been handled with
complete professionalism. The fact that the
captain
stood listening silently, jaw clenched, with a look
of
barely controlled fury on his face, did not
bolster
Tomson's confidence any.
"The facts are, sir, that Ensign
a!-Baslama was
guarding the entrance to the brig when he was stunned
by a phaser blast coming from someplace outside the
brig. When he came to, he discovered that the
force
field was down and the prisoner and his own phaser
were missing. At first he assumed that the prisoner
had
escaped, and he contacted me. We did an
internal scan
of the ship, but we couldn't locate a Vulcanoid
on
board, other than Mr. Spock in sick bay."
"Any idea how long all-Baslama was
unconscious?"
"By his condition, I would say the phaser was fired
on light stun. He was probably out three or
four
minutes at most. Then we found his phaser on the
deck
of the brig." Tomson handed it to Kirk for
inspection.
"It has the Romulan's fingerprints on it,
sir. I'm taking
it to forensics to see if it was fired.
"After all-Baslama notified me, I immediately
checked with the transporter room and the shuttle
deck. No one has left this ship, Captain.
So right now
we're checking the air in the room to see if we
can pick
up any random molecules."
Kirk's scowl deepened. "Of what?"
"Of someone who was recently vaporized."
"The pirate," Kirk said, understanding.
"Yes, sir."
"But how did the prisoner get the phaser in the
first
place?"
"I had trouble figuring that one out myself, sir.
My
best guess is that someone brought it to him."
"Someone on my ship brought it to him," Kirk's
irritability was increasing, "so that he could kill
himself?.
It doesn't make any sense. If someone was in
collusion with him, why wouldn't they help him
escape?"
"I don't know, sir. But there was no
way he could
have gotten past the force field to take it from
Ensign
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