by Greg Cox
The embattled trio took off down the hill. Disruptor blasts chased after them. They zigzagged from tree to tree, keeping their heads down to avoid being stunned. Bulging roots threatened to trip McCoy. His heart pounded in his chest. Sheer adrenaline gave his legs an extra boost, like a judicious dose of cordrazine. Kirk was right behind him, firing back at their foes as he bounded down the slope as nimbly as a wild stallion. Dazzling blue stun beams zipped past the Orions’ wild green shots. Wary pirates fell back, preferring to unleash a blistering barrage from atop the hill. Angry shouts and curses gave voice to their frustration. Crude obscenities betrayed a lack of breeding.
“Faster, Bones!” Kirk urged him. “Full speed ahead!”
McCoy panted loudly. “I’m giving it all I can!”
“That’s what Scotty always says! Get your own material!”
Seven refrained from comment but managed to keep up with the two men. McCoy was impressed by her stamina, given how exhausted she had appeared only minutes ago. The advantages of her “enhanced” physique and metabolism? Despite his reservations about such tinkering, he had to admit that she did seem to be physically superior to the average human.
Then again, they said that about Khan, too.
“After them!” the one-eared Orion leader shouted at his men. He gnashed his teeth. “Don’t let them get away!”
Why not? McCoy thought sourly. Sounds like a good idea to me.
The rough terrain grew even steeper beneath their feet. It was all McCoy could do to keep from tumbling head over heels down the precarious incline. An energy beam missed him by a hair, shaking loose the leaves of an undeserving tree. He stumbled awkwardly over fallen branches, logs, and roots. The bottom of the hill seemed impossibly far away, yet came upon them with alarming speed. Miraculously reaching the bottom without breaking their necks, the trio plunged into the waiting cornfields. Tall, leafy stalks stretched above their heads. Stems and husks whipped McCoy’s face, but he kept on running, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the green-skinned buccaneers on their trail. A stitch in his side reminded him that he was a doctor, not a track star.
“Stick together!” Kirk called out. “Keep your heads down!”
Disruptor blasts seared the air above them. For a second, McCoy feared that their foes might set the fields ablaze, but no, the Orions wouldn’t want to risk burning up Seven by mistake. Even if Jim and I are expendable.
“Where to now?” he asked Kirk, who was lagging behind them.
“Just keep going.” Kirk caught up with McCoy and Seven. The physician in McCoy noted that the fit young captain wasn’t even breathing hard. A close encounter with a jagged branch had torn Kirk’s yellow tunic, baring one shoulder. Scratch marks gouged the exposed skin. “We just need to find someplace where Sulu can pick us up.”
Pushing through the densely packed stalks was more tiring than McCoy had anticipated. Unlike Kirk, he was soon gasping for breath. Sweat dripped down his face and glued his black undershirt to his back. Weary, his muscles ached, while the stitch in his side felt like a laser scalpel burning into his flesh. Random scratches stung like paper cuts. Fatigue threatened to overcome adrenaline. The oppressive heat and humidity added to his discomfort; McCoy found himself pining for the planet’s once-controlled climate. At least things hadn’t been quite so blasted muggy under Vaal. . . .
A row of stalks parted before him, and he suddenly found himself confronted with a wide-eyed Vaalian child, who appeared to be no more than three years old. McCoy froze in his tracks, less than a meter way from the pint-sized orange humanoid, who was proof positive that the formerly chaste natives were no longer anything of the sort. The child, who had apparently wandered away from the village, froze as well, looking just as startled as the bizarre pink-skinned apparition before her. Painted white eyes widened in fright. Tiny fingers let go of a crude doll fashioned from corn husks. She shrieked in terror.
“Hush!” McCoy pleaded, worried that the child’s cries would attract their enemies. His skills as a pediatrician were a bit rusty, but he hastily adopted his most soothing manner. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”
His words did nothing to calm the child, who turned and fled madly away from him, squeezing between the stalks in her panicky flight. McCoy was relieved to see her running away from the direction of the pirates. He could hope that she would make it back to her village safely.
“Congratulations, Bones,” Kirk commented. “You’ve just become the boogeyman.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” McCoy muttered. He would have thought that his heart couldn’t race any faster, but apparently he was mistaken. He clutched his chest. “Gave me a bit of a jolt, I admit!”
Seven eyed the path taken by the retreating toddler. “I suspect she was more alarmed by you than you were by her.”
“Who said I was alarmed?” McCoy protested. “I was just startled, that’s all!”
“If you say so, Doctor,” Seven replied.
“Enough chatter.” Kirk glanced back over his shoulder. Egged on by their determined commander, the Orions were making their way down the slope after the outnumbered landing party. The most eager among the raiders slid upon their leather-clad rears, the faster to reach the bottom. Dislodged leaves and ground cover raced them to the base of the hill. Kirk looked ahead, unwilling to lose their lead. “Keep moving.”
The chance encounter with the Vaalian child had cost them precious moments. They angled east toward the jungle to avoid leading the pirates the way the frightened toddler had gone. An irrigation ditch, connecting the fields to the river, crossed their path. They ran down into the shallow ditch and waded into the water, which was no more than ankle-deep. McCoy’s heels sank into the slippery mud. Hot and sweaty, he was tempted to scoop up a handful of trickling brown water to wet his parched throat but thought better of it. The last thing he needed right now was a gut full of nasty intestinal parasites.
Water was never his favorite beverage, anyway.
The trio was halfway across the ditch when Seven cried out in pain. She collapsed into McCoy’s arms, a cluster of yellow thorns embedded in her back. Too late he spotted a stand of bright purple flowers sprouting from the loamy side of the ditch. Another blossom rotated toward him.
“Jim!” he shouted. “Watch out! It’s those blasted flowers!”
Kirk was already on it. A crimson beam shot from his phaser, incinerating the flowers, which glowed incarnadine for an instant before disintegrating. McCoy was grateful for his friend’s swift reflexes.
But was it already too late for Seven?
Kirk took a second to make sure there were no more lethal blossoms in the vicinity before rushing over to McCoy, who gently rested Seven against the sloping wall of the ditch. The doctor plucked the thorns from her back and angrily flung them into the water, where they were washed away by the current. Kirk looked on anxiously.
“Can you help her, Bones?”
The last time they had visited this planet, McCoy had managed to save Spock from the thorn’s poison, but a human crewman had died instantly. At the time, McCoy had credited Spock’s green blood as much as any immediate treatment he’d received. Now McCoy prayed that you didn’t need to be Vulcan to survive the neurotoxin. . . .
“I don’t know,” McCoy confessed. He yanked open his medkit and extracted a hypospray preloaded with masiform-D. A powerful dose of the drug had helped save Spock before, so McCoy had prepared the hypospray in advance, just in case. The hypospray hissed as he pressed it against her shoulder, administering the powerful stimulant directly through her suit. “Her constitution is . . . unusual, but she’s still human, basically. I can’t promise this will work.”
The injection roused Seven, who sat up slightly. Against all odds, she somehow managed to speak.
“I was . . . inattentive,” she said weakly. “My apologies.”
She sagged against McCoy, who struggled to support her weight. That she was still alive at all was a p
romising sign, but the doctor knew they were not out of the woods yet. Her elegant face took on a sickly pallor, and her eyes dilated. Her smooth skin turned cold and clammy to the touch. She seemed groggy and only semi-conscious. “Must . . . regenerate,” she murmured.
“How is she?” Kirk asked.
“Well, she’s not dead, Jim, but I need to get her to sickbay, stat!”
They could hear the Orions crashing noisily through the corn rows behind him. From the sound of it, they were less than a quarter of a kilometer away. Kirk gave the racket a dirty look. “Somehow I doubt that’s what our boisterous friends have in mind.”
Abandoning Seven was not an option. She was arguably more valuable than the Enterprise itself. The Orions could not be allowed to get their greedy mitts on her.
No matter what.
“Yeah, I’m getting that impression, too,” McCoy agreed. He wondered how he was going to fight off the pirates and take care of Seven at the same time. He glanced up at the sky. “Where the hell is Sulu?”
“Probably trying to find us in this chaos.” He reached for his communicator. “Kirk to shuttle. Can you read me?”
“Captain!” Sulu’s voice crackled over the communicator. “What’s going on down there? I’m registering weapons fire!”
McCoy briefly wondered how they could contact the shuttle when their communications to the ship were jammed. Maybe the problem was in space, at the Enterprise’s end of things? That was the only explanation that made sense.
“We’ve run into some unwanted company,” Kirk informed Sulu, “and Doctor Seven has been hurt. What’s your position?”
“Approaching your coordinates,” Sulu reported. “And looking for a suitable landing spot. I can see open meadows ahead, inhabited by a large herd of the local wildlife.”
“Yes, we spied them before.” Kirk’s eyes lit up with a crafty look that McCoy knew too well. A smirk lifted the corners of the captain’s lips. He glanced to the west. “Over by the river . . .”
He’s up to something, McCoy realized, with a mixture of hope and alarm. That look usually meant that life was about to get even more interesting. “Er, what exactly do you have in mind, Jim?”
“Just look out for Seven,” Kirk said tersely. He splashed out of the water and up onto the lip of the ditch. Scoping out the terrain, he kept in touch with the shuttle. “Listen closely, Mister Sulu. Here’s what I need you to do . . .”
The shouting of impatient Orions kept McCoy from hearing the rest of the captain’s instructions. Drawing nearer by the moment, the pirates called out harshly to each other as they spread out through the fields in search of their quarry. McCoy felt like a fox being hunted by a pack of baying hounds. Only these hounds had disruptors.
I don’t know what you’re planning, Jim, he thought. But you’d better do it soon!
Seven went limp, making McCoy the only thing holding her up. Blood trickled down her back where the thorns had pierced her skin, making her harder to hold on to. He shifted his grip while trying to keep the small wounds away from the mud and the possibility of infection. He considered dragging her out of the ditch and laying her down on dry land, if only to free up his hands to fight the Orions when the raiders finally caught up with them, which was going to be any moment now. Probably not a bad idea, he thought. Maybe I can try hiding her among the stalks. . . .
Before he could try moving her, however, there was a loud whooshing noise overhead. A shadow fell over the creek. Startled, McCoy tilted his head back in time to see a Starfleet shuttlecraft soar over the ditch. The boxy spacecraft cruised past at an altitude of approximately ninety meters. Twin thrusters, mounted to its undercarriage, glowed like cobalt pontoons. The speed of its passage rustled the tops of the corn stalks, causing a leafy green wave to ripple across the fields. Sulu was flying the shuttle like an old-fashioned barnstormer, coming in fast.
But to what end? The Orions were already firing at the shuttle, trying to bring it down. At the moment, it was flying too high for their disruptor pistols, but as soon as Sulu tried to bring it in for a landing, the raiders would be targeting the shuttle with everything they had. Even if Sulu managed to get the shuttle to the ground in one piece, he wouldn’t be able to lower its shields long enough for McCoy and Kirk to haul Seven into the shuttle and take off again. At the moment, the airborne shuttle remained maddeningly out of reach. McCoy wondered what Kirk thought he was up to.
If we can’t get to the shuttle, what’s the point?
The answer came moments later as the shuttle reached the far end of the grassy meadow beyond the fields, then executed a smooth loop and an inverted roll that brought it swooping down over the teeming hordes of rhinooses. The shuttle came in low over the animals, throwing the herd into a panic. Booming honks issued from their throats. The thunder of heavy hooves rocked the ground as the frenzied rhinooses stampeded away from the shuttle, straight toward McCoy and the others. Kirk dove into the ditch, even as the panicked beasts crashed through the wooden fence defending the fields. Pounding hooves trampled over scarecrows.
“Down!” he hollered to McCoy and Seven. “Flat as you can!”
The quaking ground was all the prompting McCoy needed. “Hold tight!” he warned Seven as he threw the two of them down into the shallow water. The abrupt movement tore an anguished gasp from Seven, but the poisoned time traveler was conscious enough to grasp what needed to be done. They lay flat against the muddy floor of the ditch, turning their heads to one side, as a veritable tidal wave of galloping ruminants jumped the ditch, their flying hooves passing only centimeters above the humans’ heads. McCoy hugged the ground, while shielding Seven with one arm. The roar of the stampede was deafening. Dislodged soil and rocks tumbled into the ditch, splashing into the water. McCoy hoped to God that the Vaalians had indeed cleared the field of any explosive stones—and that none of the agile beasts missed a step. A single hoof would punch through his skull or spine like a high-g press.
Flying mud and earth pelted his head and shoulders. The rank odor of the rhinooses nearly suffocated him. Cold, muddy water soaked him to the skin and shocked Seven into alertness. She stirred beside him.
“Are all your landing parties so tumultuous?” she asked.
“You have no idea,” McCoy muttered.
A clumsy fawn didn’t quite make the jump. Its rear hooves splashed down in the water, missing McCoy’s head by a hand’s breadth. It scrambled up the opposite side of the ditch, but not before kicking a clod of mud right into McCoy’s face. Sputtering, he spit a mouthful of muck into the water. It tasted worse than a Denebian slime devil.
Remind me why I joined Starfleet again. . . .
Not for the first time, he hoped Kirk knew what he was doing.
Twelve
“Get them, you motherless curs!” Habroz cursed his men. “I want that time traveler!”
He led the charge down the hill after Seven and her miserable Starfleet guardians. Stumbling against an unyielding tree, he scraped his shoulder before bouncing off it angrily. Frustration churned in his gut as he hastily descended the slope. This whole raid was taking too long; it should have been just a quick snatch-and-grab, not a goddess-damned chase! Every minute they wasted pursuing Seven left the Navaar in the Enterprise’s sights. What if K’Mara turned tail and ordered the marauder to depart?
He suspected that she would abandon him if necessary. Orion females often considered males expendable. She had ambitions of her own and was unlikely to risk the Navaar for his sake. Captains could be replaced easier than ships.
The raiding party reached the bottom of the hill. Waving curtains of crops hid his prize from him. Drawing his hatchet from his belt, he hacked at the irritating corn stalks, carving his way through the field. He wished it was a human he was slashing instead.
“Fan out!” he ordered his crew. “The man who finds Seven will win a greater share of the rewards! And you will all suffer my wrath if she gets away!”
Habroz had already put out feelers to the K
lingons, who had made it clear that they would pay a queen’s ransom for the woman from the future, although K’Mara had suggested auctioning Seven to the highest bidder instead. Habroz was not sure that was wise. It did not pay to anger the Klingons. . . .
None of which mattered, of course, if Seven was not theirs to barter with.
“Faster, you vermin!” he roared. “Search every acre of this wretched compost heap. Find me that woman!”
“Yes, Captain!” answered Pommu, his bosun. He was a pot-bellied old scoundrel with a scraggly chartreuse beard. A metal skullcap was screwed into his cranium, while a necklace of humanoid teeth hung around his neck. His belt was stuffed with more knives than one raider should ever need. “And the Starfleet swine?”
Habroz spat in disgust. He slashed his way through the stalks.
“Kill them!”
A shadow fell over them. Craning back his head, Habroz was dismayed to spy a Starfleet shuttlecraft zipping by overhead. “Cesspools!” he swore. Had the humans already sent reinforcements to the aid of their landing party? He had not been expecting that; K’Mara was supposed to be keeping the Enterprise busy.
This entire operation was going to hell!
Unlike his men, he didn’t bother shooting at the shuttle. He knew better than to waste his disruptor blasts on the high-flying craft, whose deflectors could easily repel mere sidearm fire. Raising his metal hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he watched as the shuttle made its way to the far end of the grassy plains beyond the fields, then reversed course. Moments later, a cacophonous roar came thundering across the meadows, sounding like a mounted cavalry staging a charge. Racing hooves churned up the fertile soil, raising a huge cloud of dust. The ground trembled beneath his boots.
A memory flashed through his mind of many large-horned herbivores grazing at a river. He had glimpsed them before while sneaking up on the Starfleet landing party. The shaggy beasts resembled the megayaks of his native Rigarus. In his youth, he had enjoyed hunting them from levitating blinds, but even then he’d known better than to get in the way of a terrified herd. He instantly recognized the sound racing toward them.
