by Greg Cox
Kirk realized that they had to be ready for company. He opened a channel for a shipwide broadcast. “Attention, all hands. This is the captain. We are likely to be boarded by armed intruders. All crew members are instructed to secure their posts and assist in any efforts to repel the invaders. Let’s make them regret that they ever set foot on our ship. Kirk out.”
He turned his attention back to the bridge. “Dispatch security teams to defend the bridge, engineering, the warp nacelles, and other high-value locations. Lock down the crew quarters and sickbay.”
Ensigns and lieutenants scrambled to carry out his orders.
“Kirk!”
Habroz found his voice again, despite Uhura muting the audio moments ago. She shrugged apologetically; apparently the Orions had managed to override the blockage somehow. Once again, as when they’d jammed the Enterprise’s ship-to-planet signals at Gamma Trianguli VI, they seemed to know more about Starfleet comm protocols than Kirk would have liked. More proof that they had a mole aboard?
“That was rude of you, Kirk, cutting me off like that.” Habroz smirked. He obviously enjoyed having the upper hand. “It’s not too late to avoid any further bloodshed. Just give me Seven . . . and I won’t be forced to slaughter everyone aboard your ship.”
“No deal.” Kirk was already fed up with Habroz’s threats and bullying. Times like this, he wished the universal translator wasn’t quite so reliable.
The translator . . .
Inspiration struck him. He threw a pointed look at Uhura and tapped out a message on the armrest of his chair, employing old-fashioned Morse Code. He had every confidence that the savvy communications expert would pick up on his signal.
She smiled slyly back at him.
“Captain!” she exclaimed so convincingly that Kirk was impressed by her acting skills. “That last blast was too much for the translator. It’s crashing . . . !”
“What was that?” Habroz glared suspiciously in Uhura’s direction. “Is this some kind of vexaly pwaformee sug?”
His indignant queries devolved into what sounded like gibberish.
“Ren! Mujo kopsa geb?”
“I’m sorry. What are you saying?” Kirk didn’t need to feign confusion. As instructed, Uhura had disabled the universal translator, just to make this stunt more convincing. She threw her hands up in the air, acting uncharacteristically helpless. Kirk stared in bewilderment at the viewer. “Can you repeat that?”
“Cuomm fids sug?” Habroz looked equally baffled by what Kirk was saying. He turned angrily toward a subordinate. “Veet kow nial yedraf?”
Uhura, who spoke Orion like a native, typed quietly at her control panel. Subtitles appeared below Habroz’s face, translating the agitated pirate’s words for all to see:
“Is this a trick? What the [EXPLETIVE] is he saying?”
His flunky shrugged. “Efderae gom likt.”
“I don’t speak Standard.”
Habroz looked like he wanted to tear the hapless Orion’s tongue out with his metal hand. Letting out an inarticulate howl of frustration, which Uhura didn’t even try to interpret, he slammed his fist down on the armrest of his throne. His irate face vanished from view as he gave up trying to communicate with the Enterprise.
“Good riddance,” Kirk muttered. “So much for trying to negotiate the terms of our surrender.”
Additional security personnel poured onto the bridge, staking out defensive posts at every entrance and strategic position. The bridge itself, Kirk recalled, could be sealed off with force fields in order to defend it from hostile forces, fires, hull breaches, and other emergencies. In theory, the bridge could withstand a full-scale siege, and the saucer itself could separate from the rest of the ship, not that Kirk had any intention of abandoning any part of his ship or crew. Habroz didn’t dare risk destroying the Enterprise as long as Seven was aboard. His hands were also tied to a degree, even the metal one.
“Notify Starfleet of our situation,” Kirk ordered.
“I’m already trying to do so,” Uhura said, “although they’ve attempted to jam our signals again.” She attacked the controls with fierce determination. “Uh-uh. Not this time.”
Another salvo rocked the bridge.
“Yes!” she exulted a moment later. Judging from her triumphant tone, she had succeeded in getting through whatever interference the Orions had thrown up against her. “Emergency message transmitted, sir.”
“Well done, Lieutenant,” Kirk congratulated her. It was important to keep Starfleet informed, even if there was little the brass could do for them this far out on the frontier. Not only were the nearest reinforcements light-years away, but Starfleet could hardly send in the cavalry while the Enterprise was smack-dab in the middle of the Neutral Zone, not without provoking an open conflict with the Klingons. Still, at least the folks back home would have the full story if something happened to Enterprise. “Make sure Command is provided with regular updates.”
“Shields at eighteen percent,” Seven reported. “Defensive integrity is nearly compromised.”
“Then we need to get you out of here,” Kirk decided. The bridge was the first place that Habroz’s foot soldiers were going to look for Seven, and there was no guarantee that even its defenses could hold off the Orions forever. “Scotty! Get Seven to the shuttlebay. The Enterprise can try to hold off the Navaar long enough for you to get away.”
With Spock out of the picture, there was nobody Kirk trusted more than Scotty to keep Seven safe and out of the grasp of the Orions. Sulu was probably the better pilot, but Kirk needed his best helmsman on the bridge during this three-way battle. And Chekov, although brave and enthusiastic, was simply too green to be trusted with such a vital responsibility, not when the time line itself might be in jeopardy.
That left Scotty.
“If you say so, Captain,” he responded readily, “although I don’t like leaving you in the lurch.”
“Seven’s safety is our top priority now,” Kirk said. “The future may depend on it.”
“Understood, Captain.” Scotty nodded grimly and gestured toward the turbolift. “After you, lass.”
Seven turned away from the science station but did not immediately head for the exit. She approached Kirk’s chair instead, deftly managing to keep her balance despite the blasts jolting the bridge. Kirk got the distinct impression this wasn’t her first space battle.
“While I appreciate your determination to keep me away from our enemies, perhaps there is another way.” She leaned in toward Kirk, lowering her voice so that only he could hear. “Allow me to suggest an alternative strategy.”
Kirk remembered how she had handled herself on Yusub, Gamma Trianguli VI, and Cheron. He was more than willing to take advantage of her obvious smarts and resourcefulness.
“I’m listening.”
Twenty-four
“Our shields have been breached, Keptin! The Orions are beaming aboard!”
Damn, Kirk thought, even though he’d been expecting this ever since the Navaar and the O’Spakya opened fire on them. He braced himself for the siege to come, glad that Scotty and Seven were already en route to the shuttlebay. Now if only Seven’s audacious plan went off as planned. . . .
In the meantime, he had a starship to defend.
“All right, people,” he said firmly. “Just because our drawbridge is down, doesn’t mean we have to turn the Enterprise over to the invaders. This is our ship, and no one is going to take it from us.”
He was pleased to see Chekov, Sulu, and the rest nodding in agreement. He knew he could count on every member of his crew to stand fast against the Orions—except maybe the traitor he still feared was lurking somewhere aboard.
There was no time to worry about that now, though. Pillars of coruscating emerald energy manifested all around him, indicating that the Orions had launched a direct assault upon the bridge. It was a brazenly reckless move, as multiple phaser pistols zapped the invaders as soon as they fully materialized. Azure beams, expertly aimed by t
he alert security forces, stunned the Orion boarders without hitting a single Enterprise crew member or workstation. Kirk was impressed by—and grateful for—the guards’ marksmanship.
Looks like all that Academy target practice paid off.
A single Orion, notably faster than his comrades, managed to deflect a phaser beam with an ablative steel wristband. He lunged at Sulu, no doubt hoping to seize control of the helm, but Sulu’s reflexes were too fast; leaping to his feet, he met the charging raider with a sideways kick to the gut. The Orion was propelled backward into the sturdy red handrail around the command circle. He grunted with pain as his back slammed into the rail. A second phaser blast from another guard dropped the raider onto the deck and ensured that he wouldn’t be getting up again anytime soon.
“Well, that was different,” Sulu remarked before resuming his place at the helm. Chekov, who had instantly taken over steering the Enterprise from his own console, returned control of the ship to his comrade. Sulu took a moment to catch his breath. “I don’t often get my hands dirty on the bridge like that.”
Chekov grinned at him. “What hands? Looked to me like you used your boot.”
“Nicely done, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said, unsurprised by the helmsman’s talent for hand-to-hand combat; he and Sulu had fought side by side on numerous occasions. “Too bad you didn’t have a sword at hand.”
Sulu shrugged. Fencing was his sport of choice. “Lucky for him I didn’t.”
Six Orions had beamed onto the bridge, only to be dispatched with admirable efficiency. Kirk waited for the second wave of the assault, but the Orions seemed to abandon any direct attack on the bridge. The battle for the ship was hardly over, however, as every moment brought more reports of deck-to-deck fighting throughout the Enterprise. Multiple windows opened up on the main viewer, picking up images from the ship’s internal sensors. A computer algorithm of Spock’s design filtered out any irrelevant images and selected the views Kirk needed. He frowned at what he saw.
Hordes of raucous Orions rampaged through the ship’s gleaming corridors. The pirates whooped and hollered with savage glee. Starfleet intel had it that Orion raiders ingested massive quantities of ultra-testosterone before going into battle. A squat buccaneer, making his way toward the bridge, spotted a security scanner in the ceiling and opened fire with his disruptor pistol. A blinding green flash masked the image before that window went black and vanished from the viewer. Moments later, Kirk heard disruptor blasts slam against the reinforced blast doors protecting the gangway to the bridge. A security window caught the Orions trying to force their way past the barricade. Although the turbolift was shut down, the gangway on the starboard side of the main viewer provided alternative access to the bridge in the event of an emergency. Alas, this was the wrong sort of emergency.
“Security protocol Delta-Six,” he ordered. “Flood all access corridors and turbolifts to the bridge with anesthezine gas.”
The potent knock-out gas was expressly intended for scenarios like this when dangerous individuals needed to be subdued quickly; Kirk had used the same gas to reclaim the Enterprise from Khan and his followers. He watched intently as billowing white fumes vented into the corridor directly outside. For a second, he thought the anesthezine was just what the doctor ordered, as the Orions started coughing and choking on the vapors, but then the experienced boarders extracted collapsible air filters from their belts and clamped them over their mouths and nostrils. Adhesive edges held the filters, which resembled transparent surgical masks, in place. Within minutes, the pirates resumed their attack upon the blast doors, even as the swirling fumes gradually dispersed.
Kirk scowled at the pirates’ countermeasures. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Funny,” Chekov said. “It’s almost like those Cossacks know our standard security procedures.”
Kirk remembered the possibility of a mole. “Let’s assume they do. We can’t afford to underestimate our foes for an instant.”
“What about gassing the rest of the ship?” Chekov suggested. He stared at the viewscreen, where Orion boarding parties could be seen swarming all over the ship. “We still have plenty of anesthezine left.”
“Don’t bother.” Kirk figured that the other pirates were equipped with filter masks as well. At worst, gassing the rest of the Enterprise might just knock out the ship’s embattled personnel, leaving them unable to defend themselves. “Seems we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
Uhura contemplated the stunned Orions littering the bridge. Security teams were busy placing restraints upon the unconscious prisoners even as their fellow officers stayed on guard against further beam-ins. The downed raiders were dragged into an out-of-the-way corner of the bridge.
“You know,” she observed, “we have hostages of our own now.” Kirk knew she had to be worrying about Spock and McCoy. “Maybe we can propose an exchange?”
“I appreciate the thought, Lieutenant, but that’s probably wishful thinking.” He hated crushing her hopes, but he had to be realistic. “Habroz strikes me as the type who is perfectly willing to sacrifice his own people to get what he wants, especially when there’s a sizable bounty at stake.”
He could only imagine how much the Klingons would pay for Seven and her untapped knowledge of the future. Everything Kirk knew about the Orions suggested that Habroz wasn’t going to quit until he had Seven.
“Kirk to engineering,” he ordered via the intercom in his chair. “I need our shields up and running again, no matter what it takes.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlene Masters replied from the engine room. Was it just his imagination or had the able young officer picked up a trace of her mentor’s Highland brogue? “I’m doin’ all I can.”
Kirk had faith in Masters’s abilities, but he found himself wishing that he had two Montgomery Scotts: one to work on restoring the shields and another to see Seven to safety. And he wouldn’t have minded having Spock and McCoy back at their posts as well. He felt like he was fighting for his ship without his right and left hands, and worrying about their safety at the same time.
He needed Spock and Bones. The Enterprise needed them.
The fighting throughout the ship filled up the viewer. From the look of things, the invaders were meeting stiff resistance from ship’s security forces, but they showed no sign of retreating back to the Navaar. Kirk looked for Habroz, but he did not spot the pirate captain among the intruders. Probably still aboard the Navaar, he guessed, waiting for his prize.
That was fine with Kirk. They had more than their hands full with the Orions already aboard the Enterprise. Kirk watched tensely as phaser fire and disruptor blasts scarred the ship’s pristine corridors. The conflict spread from deck to deck, turning his ship into a battlefield. A schematic on the viewer charted the intruders’ progress through the ship. Like the bridge, engineering was under siege, but it had not yet fallen to the invaders. Blast doors guarded the warp core and impulse engines. Emergency power reserves had been diverted to electrify the doors in order to shock the pirates into insensibility. To Kirk’s frustration, engineering teams were forced to turn away from crucial repair efforts to fortify the key propulsion units. On a separate viewer window, Masters directed the efforts from atop a metal catwalk, shouting orders to the workers below. Sweat drenched her attractive, dark-skinned features. Kirk wished her luck. He didn’t want any more of his people to fall victim to the pirates.
Now if Scotty and Seven could just make it to the shuttlebay in time!
• • •
“Hurry along, lass,” Scotty said. “We haven’t a moment to lose.”
Their heels pounded against the floor of P Deck. For the first time ever, he wished that the Enterprise was not so grand in proportions. The long blue-steel corridors seem to go on forever, and they still had a ways to go.
“I aware of the need for haste, Mister Scott,” Seven replied. “And I believe I am keeping pace with you sufficiently.”
“Aye, that ye are.”<
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Accompanied by a pair of heavily armed security officers, they raced for the shuttlebay at the rear of the engineering hull. Red-alert lights and blaring klaxons spurred them on, along with the unmistakable din of battle coming from adjacent decks, halls, and compartments. It was obvious that the Orions had well and truly boarded the Enterprise, making it all the more crucial that he get Seven off the ship as fast as humanly possible. Their entire plan depended on it.
“This way, lads!” Scott said urgently, gesturing with his phaser pistol. As the turbolifts were shut down for emergency purposes, they had no choice but to make their way by foot, while trying to steer clear of the worst of the fighting. Despite her recent stay in sickbay and her close encounter with a poison plant, Seven easily kept up with her three-man escort. Scotty was impressed by her stamina.
Guess they grow them hearty in the future, he surmised. Good to know.
Compared to the usual hustle and bustle of the Enterprise, the corridor was strangely empty; Scotty assumed that his crewmates were either engaged in combat elsewhere or else holed up tight at their designated emergency posts. It felt strange to have the hallway to themselves; if not for the klaxons and shouts and energy blasts echoing through the corridors, he would have thought he was aboard a derelict ship, haunted by the Ghost of Lasses Yet to Come.
“It appears we vacated the bridge just in time,” Seven observed, still very much corporeal for the time being. A tricorder was slung over her shoulder, while a Starfleet pack was strapped to her back. Her right hand gripped a phaser. “I suspect that Captain Kirk has the bridge thoroughly sealed off by now.”
Scotty recalled the numerous measures designed to secure the bridge against unwelcome guests. “Aye, these pirates won’t be crackin’ that nut anytime soon.” Still, it pained him to think of gangs of ill-mannered ruffians stomping uninvited through the finest ship in the fleet. “This sort of fracas ever happen in your time?”
“On occasion,” she admitted.
An intersection lay before them. The way appeared clear, so Scotty started to hurry forward, only to be called back by one of the security officers. “Hold on, sir.” Ensign James Pierce gripped a phaser rifle with both hands. He wore a Starfleet flak jacket over his red tunic for extra protection. His bright red hair was mussed. “Let me take point.”
