Invasion! First Strike

by Diane Carey

  Basking in the compliment, somewhat embarrassed that there wasn't a veiled insult in there somewhere, Kirk leered at him. "You're a frustrated psychoanalyst, McCoy."

  The doctor tightened his arms and bounced on his toes. "I'm not frustrated at all."

  "Those skulls over there … you're still sure they were real? Not just decor?"

  "Dead sure. Ah—bad choice of words."

  "Noted. I want you to check on Spock now, while we have the chance."

  "Yes, I intended to do that."

  "Do it right away. Mr. Kyle, hail the bridge and inform General Kellen that we're having visitors from the other vessel. Have Security escort him down here if he feels like facing his fears."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then clear the board and energize. Let's take the bull by the—uh—"

  "Sir?"

  "Just bring them over."

  Chapter Ten

  "AH, GENERAL."

  The corridor suddenly turned burlesque with possibilities as Jim Kirk led the vagabond demons out of the transporter room.

  Kellen said absolutely nothing. Behind him, two Security guards stood at attention, but they couldn't keep the shock out of their faces at the diabolical creatures following their captain.

  Impressive in his tense stillness, Kellen stood with his thick arms tight to his barrel-like body, the wide silver tunic shimmering under the corridor's soft lighting. Only now did Kirk notice that the general had left his body armor behind when he'd beamed aboard. A convenience? Or a gesture of some kind that Kirk had failed to read? Too late now, if so.

  The big Klingon didn't move a muscle, but there was abject horror plastered on his face as he stared at the gaggle of visitors, his eyes growing large. He stood dead still, his lips pressed into a line, and glared with all the appeal of a broadax.

  Kirk slowly—perhaps too slowly—led the way toward the general, hoping the extra seconds would give them time to get used to each other, and was gratified when Zennor, Garamanus, and their crew followed him like a clutter of travel-stained gypsies.

  He stood to the side and gestured between the general and the aliens, and hoped for the best.

  "General, this is Zennor, Vergo of the Wrath," he said, careful of pronunciation. "Vergo Zennor, may I introduce General Kellen of the Klingon Imperial High Command."

  Sometimes it could be that simple. Just introduce them. Push them past that bump, and maybe there'd be communication.

  "You are allies?" the ghostly Dana asked, his voice a growling sound that engulfed the corridor and startled the Security team.

  "We are not allies," Kellen quickly said. He seemed to be making good on his promise to be ashamed of having asked for Kirk's help in the first place and having it all come to this, a pointless parlay in a ship's corridor. "You must turn around and return to the depths from which you emerged. We will fight you if you do not."

  "General," Kirk interrupted sharply, "they're my guests at the moment. I brought them here so you could see firsthand what you were attacking, in hopes that an understanding might come about."

  "I already understand them," Kellen snapped back. "They are the Havoc. The tainted souls released from imprisonment, returned to torture us with their poisons. Look at them!"

  Furiously he pointed at the being with the white tendrils on its head, then at the tall thin one behind Zennor with expanding skin flaps that moved in and out with the appearance of wings.

  "Iraga!" he belted. "Shushara!"

  "Yes, I see them," Kirk said, and stepped between Kellen and the visitors. "Are you prepared to strike up a dialogue?"

  "There is no dialogue, Captain," Kellen ground out. "I came here to destroy them before they destroy all of us. If you will be this foolish, then I will take my leave of you and return to my flagship."

  Kirk squared off before the general's wide form. "You'll stay here until the sector is secured."

  "Are you holding me hostage?"

  "I'm holding you to your agreement to stay here until I decide the situation is no longer volatile. Ensign Brown, escort the general back to the VIP quarters and maintain watch there."

  It was a polite way of telling the ensign to stand guard and keep the Klingon under house arrest. Brown glanced at him, then snapped to attention.

  "Aye, sir!" the guard's deep voice boomed. "This way, General." A meaty six-footer, Brown stepped aside to let Kellen pass by, and it seemed for a moment that the corridor was filled from wall to wall with just Kellen and the guard.

  Kirk hoped it wasn't too obvious that he had picked the bigger of the two ensigns to stand guard over Kellen. He wanted to make a point, but not to be rude. Not yet, anyway.

  "Ensign Fulciero, please conduct our visitors on a general tour of the primary section and labs. Inform Mr. Scott and request he show them around main engineering."

  The other ensign nodded, still wide-eyed. He held out a hand, gesturing down the corridor. "This way … please …"

  Turning to Zennor, Kirk held out his own hand, in the opposite direction.

  "My quarters, Captain," he invited. "We'll have a chance to talk privately."

  Without the gawkings of my crew or the hauntings of your Dana.

  He was glad there were relatively few crewpeople striding the corridors. The few they did pass managed to choke back their shock at Zennor's size and volcanic appearance, but Kirk was relieved to finally usher the alien commander into his quarters and have the door whisper shut behind them. He hoped Scott would warn his engineers that there were visitors coming and prepare them for just what that could mean in deep space.

  Then again, the chief engineer would probably do his share of gawking. Scott didn't trade much in discretion.

  "Excuse me one moment," he said, and tapped the desk comm. "Kirk to sickbay."

  "Sickbay, Nurse Chapel."

  "Nurse, is Dr. McCoy still down there?"

  "Yes, sir. He's with Mr. Spock. I'll get him. One moment, please."

  "Standing by."

  He let quiet settle as he waited and as Zennor moved away from him and looked around the quarters. There was a constant aura about Zennor, a sense of omen, perhaps, and a sound in the back of Kirk's head like a tuning of cellos before a performance of Faust. He had no idea what he was sensing, but in this creature and those others, there was a sorcerous spirit of the familiar.

  "Captain," Kirk began, "if you'll look at the computer screen on the desk, I'll call up a visual tour of the starship and other Starfleet vessels. You can adjust the speed with that dial on the side of the monitor."

  Zennor turned to the desk, and Kirk keyed up the program, careful to call up the nonsensitive data tour, the one reserved for dignitaries without telling too much. Then he edged away to let the ship show itself off.

  "McCoy here."

  He blinked and shook his attention back to the comm. "Bones, how's Spock? Any better?"

  "He's no less stubborn. I was hoping to have that organ removed, but I don't have a long enough drill."

  "Give me a report, please."

  "I've reduced the level of antigrav and begun to put weight on his spine again. If there's any more swelling around the disks, I'll have to increase it again."

  Kirk let his chin drop a little as his gut twisted. Like the first gnawings of space sickness in his teenage years, the feeling of being without anchorage rushed in. "Has he had a chance to review the information Lieutenant Uhura brought back?"

  "Yes," McCoy said, "and he wants to go over it with you at your earliest convenience."

  "Understood. Tell him I'll be there soon."

  "Yes, Captain. Lieutenant Uhura says she has a few things for you also."

  "Very well. Kirk out."

  He cut off the comm before McCoy had a chance to give any details. The doctor didn't know Zennor was here, and Kirk wasn't ready to tip any of his hand.

  Zennor continued to gaze at the computer screen as it scrolled—damned fast—before him. He had it on full speed and was apparently soaking up all it
could give in spite of the fact that Kirk could barely make out the photos at that speed. "Your ship is clever. Many technologies we have not thought of. You and this Klingon … you are enemies?"

  "Yes, traditionally we're enemies. Occasionally we have an uneasy truce, as we do today."

  "Strange that you would be enemies. You are so much the same."

  "You see no difference between Kellen and me?"

  "No difference between any of you. You, your crewmen, your Klingon …"

  "There's a big difference between us and the Klingons," Kirk said, letting flare a touch of defense. "For instance, just today we were engaged in a land skirmish between an aggressive Klingon commander and my crew. We had to hold them back from innocent people they would've annihilated, all because those people refused to do business with them."

  "You were on a planet?"

  "Yes."

  "Could the Klingon not simply lay waste to the planet with those long-necked vessels?"

  "Yes, but they wouldn't. That would be an act of war. In a skirmish, they can always claim they were ambushed."

  "I do not understand this." Zennor's voice was heavy, deep, as if speaking through a long tube.

  Kirk couldn't quite read the ferocious bony mask of the other captain's face, or the smoky reddish orbs of his eyes. "Klingon command is set up in cells," he explained. "The area commanders have a great deal of autonomy in their areas, but aren't allowed to commit the Empire to interstellar war. Each is responsible for a specific area, and can conquer it if it's within his skills to do so, but if he fails in his aspiration, then all the Empire doesn't suffer for it. The commanders aren't allowed to drag the Empire into a war. That's for the High Council to decide. If the local commander oversteps his authority in the course of his ambitions, he can be demoted rather than promoted. They could have reduced the planet to a blackened char, but they know the Federation would never put up with that. As it turned out, General Kellen overruled the local commander because he was more worried about you."

  "About us …"

  "You saw how emotionally you affect him. And he is a particularly cool customer among his kind. His restraint is famous."

  "He claims we are … trouble?"

  "Havoc. It's a Klingon myth about an apocalypse. A final reckoning."

  "Myths can be powerful. Given enough time, myth becomes religion. Mysterious legend becomes immutable fact. My culture moves on this kind of sea also. That is why he hates us so."

  "He fears you." Kirk offered a cushioning grin. "He doesn't know you well enough to hate you."

  "If it comes to be proven that we are not in our space, we will destroy the Klingons for you."

  The grin fell off Kirk's face and he almost heard the crunch. "I can't sanction that."

  "But if they are conquering, they must be stopped. Why would you allow them to continue?"

  Oh, tempting, tempting …

  "We prefer other pressures. A war brings a high death toll. People can and do change, given time. We're working on them in other ways."

  "I do not understand that," Zennor admitted. "Perhaps I will eradicate them anyway."

  Despite the words, there was something sincerely well-meaning in the way the alien leader said what he said.

  Enjoying the whole idea for a raucous instant in the privacy of his own heart, Kirk nodded in some kind of arm's-length comprehension, then got control of himself and calmly pointed out, "We protected you from the Klingons. We'll protect them from you for the same reasons, if you force us to."

  Zennor's heavy head lay slightly to one side. "You are … spirited," he said admiringly. His almond-shaped eyes flickered and actually changed color, like camp matches flaring briefly in the woods. "When my ship's power is fully restored, you will not be able to stop me."

  That grin came sneaking back to Kirk's lips, and he felt his own eyes flare a little. Undercurrents of mutuality ran between them. Dare though this might be, still there was something about Zennor's convictions that ran close to Kirk's heart, and he understood what Zennor meant and wanted, the intense sense of right and wrong that might have been a bit skewed but still smacked of strong decency.

  And underlying all this, a spicy challenge, as when Spock asked him to play chess.

  "Let's hope we don't have to find out," he deferred gently. "Vergo, I'm curious about where you came from. You say it's a great distance. Can you tell me the area?"

  The twisted horns tipped forward and cast a shadow as Zennor's triangular face pivoted downward. "On the opposite side of the mean center of the galaxy from this place."

  "And yet you said it wasn't a transporter that brought you here. Not a mechanism of the sort that we use to move from ship to ship."

  "We have no such instrument. We came here from the far distant side of the galaxy, using a device that causes space to wrinkle, thus offering passage of large distance in a short time."

  Kirk waved his hands in casual beckoning. "Explain the technology."

  "We do not understand the technology. We only know that it works."

  Kirk felt his brow pucker. He had always assumed that people using a science at least understood the science.

  When he didn't offer much sympathy for that, Zennor picked up on it and evidently decided he wanted to say more.

  "For many centuries this thing hovered in space above my people's central planet. It passed between us and our sun, regularly throwing its elongated black shadow upon our planet. Because it was known to be the machine that delivered us to our banishment, it became a symbol of evil and doom, a god that glowered upon us and kept us in misery. Anything bad was credited to it, this great black shape dooming our sky to ugliness. Our women conjured spells against it. Young men dreamed of flying up to destroy it. We said it was of the conquerors."

  "The conquerors—you said that before. Who do you think the conquerors were?"

  "Those who cast us out. To my people they are the highest evil. My people are from many tribes and groups and clans—"

  "I noticed that."

  "We warred for eons with each other, blaming each other for our conditions, claiming collusion with the conquerors, until finally we realized we were all cast out together and it was no one's fault but those who exiled us. Worse than killing us, they took the place where we were born. Took it. If we fail to take it back, then justice has not been served. Gradually this became the driving force of our unity. Century upon untold century, the shadow of the conquerors' machine passed over us, forging our unity stronger and stronger with every pass. Ultimately our scientists figured out what it was. Only a ball of mechanics. What for eons we had dreamed of destroying turned out to be the tool of our future. Fortunately we came to our senses before we could react emotionally and destroy this valuable piece of lost technology. We found out it uses time as a dimension, and thus allows interdimensional travel. And we figured out how to activate it."

  "Your entire culture turns on this one cog? Don't you find that a little … obsessive?"

  "Yes, I do. But a culture must have a common purpose. We spend generations storing enough energy to push this ship through, packed with sensory equipment. We have no idea what powered the machine originally, and have been centuries developing enough power to pass through to where we believe we came from. We do not know why it goes, but we know how to make it go."

  "That much energy must be a powerful space distorter," Kirk said. "It explains the mass-drop effect."

  "Which was not our intention."

  "That doesn't repeal your responsibility for it. Every ship's master is responsible for his own wake."

  "I do not understand that reference."

  "According to our laws of space travel, it befalls you to anticipate the effects of your ship's passage."

  "These are insignificant things you speak of. We have spent a hundred generations preparing for this. The Danai and the Bardoi of our cultures have spent uncounted years, centuries, on the direction and purpose of my mission. I must keep perspective."
r />   "What if they're wrong?"

  "Then I will go against them myself. I am willing to cast away the work of a hundred generations if we are wrong."

  "You must suspect they could be," Kirk said, "or you wouldn't be here, talking to me." He paused, using his senses to decide how hard he could push. "Am I right? Do you have doubts?"

  Turning away from him, Zennor's long hands coiled the chain of his medallion as he scanned the simple decor, the military trim of the bunk and desk, the lack of carvings or haze, and his strange orange eyes narrowed.

  "If the belief in the giant shadow god was silly," he said, "what about the rest of our legends? If that was wrong, what else is wrong? Shall I kill everyone on this side of the galaxy based on myth? Was that the only part of our mythology that we misinterpreted?"

  Probing like a sea lawyer, Kirk asked, "Is there something specific you're suspicious about, Vergo?"

  As he swung around, Zennor's dangerous eyes scoped him and for a moment Kirk thought the amicability might be over. Then Zennor admitted, "I am not entirely sure we were thrown across the galaxy. It appears we did not evolve together, but who knows? We could have been moved to save our lives and grew the opposite belief out of fear and superstition. The Danai seem to me to have made many leaps. I would not wish to see my civilization expending all its wealth and energy to make war on strangers based on legends."

  "But you do believe your civilization was wronged and unnecessarily banished?"

  "We certainly were banished, most coldly and without resource. Many millions died, including some whole races, because they could not survive the changeover."

  "What must be proven to you?" Kirk asked carefully.

  "That we were cast out … that this is the space we were cast out from … that these are the descendants of those who cast us out. Unlike Garamanus, I am unwilling to assume. I think we are in the wrong place. I hope to prove that. Then my people can begin to live a future, rather than endlessly hunt for the past."

  Seizing his chance, Kirk offered, "You can do that now. Give up the idea of conquering the conquerors and embrace the idea of cooperation. You can settle here, start a whole new civilization. There are many planets crying for colonization and development. We'll help you."