Invasion! First Strike

by Diane Carey

  "But we have not found proof," Zennor said again, his voice echoing in the huge chamber now that the chanting had fallen away.

  "It is proven to me," Garamanus said, "and to them." He made a long, confident gesture at the circle of Furies, while above it all McCoy huddled fearfully in his straw prison in the middle of the circle. The Dana was very different now from the way he had been when Zennor had embarrassed him on the Enterprise.

  Zennor was different too. He was defending the future and Garamanus was defending the past. A pure, strange clash of two things which could never meet, but which today found embodiment in these two beings.

  "Listen!" Zennor called to his crew. "You will decide between us! Come around us and listen."

  His hands tingling and cold, Kirk slowly slipped the strap of the medical tricorder over his head and slipped one arm through. He reached around behind his back and drew his palm-sized phaser unit and brought it around front. It rested in his palm, warm with ready energy. If he opened up on all these beings, wide dispersal, he could betray the oaths both he and McCoy swore they would live by, slaughter them all in an instant.

  Or he could aim at McCoy and do as he had sworn he would. The most duty-binding promise anyone could make to another—I'll end your life before the pain comes.

  The desire to rush forward almost crushed his lungs. But what could he do? Pull that woven straw apart with his bare hands? It was as tight as steel cord.

  Could he phaser it open with a narrow beam? Yes … if he could get close enough. But there were fifty strands of that stuff to cut apart before he could get McCoy out, and that would take time.

  As the crew moved closer, uneasy, Garamanus faced Zennor. "The Klingon recognized us. They all know us. He knows who we are." Pointing at Kirk, the Dana narrowed his strange eyes. "This is our quadrant and you are colluding with the conquerors!"

  "He led us here," Zennor accused, calling to the crew and pointing at Garamanus. "The planets to which he brought us are gone. I have seen the place. There are no planets, there is no proof, there is nothing. Now he wants us to kill these people and take what is theirs. We have squandered whole lifetimes in the Danai quest for power. Shall we crawl into the pit with them and their errors? I will not! The Danai are our inner conquerors! Which of you will come forward to defend this one?"

  His voice drummed. He was fighting to get his crew back.

  And they were vacillating, Kirk could see.

  Garamanus raised one hand, scarcely a gesture at all, and dropped his medallion to fall again to the bottom of its chain; from the circle of beings there came a dozen or so breaking off from the others and charging toward them.

  Kirk plunged backward against the nearest wall, but the charging Furies weren't coming for him—they were coming for Zennor. He tried to think of this happening on his ship, with his crew, but couldn't.

  Perhaps here, with their odd rules, this wasn't considered mutiny at all. Garamanus was in charge, and he had made his order, unthinkable though it seemed.

  "Zennor!" Kirk snapped. "Do something or I will!"

  He raised his phaser. Abruptly he realized why Zennor let him keep the weapon. He was the living failsafe. If things went too far wrong, everything would be ended here and now.

  But the other captain ignored him and even ignored the rushing creatures of his own crew. He countered the rush by plunging directly at Garamanus.

  Instantly the two horned beings twisted in a bitter embrace, glowing with crackling electricity generated somehow by their bodies. Yellow lightning knitted their horns and ran up their arms and ringed their necks. Their eyes changed color as if boiling from within from some kind of biologically generated energy base.

  Kirk shielded his face. All he could do was press his hip against the wall and fend off the sparks with his arms.

  The Furies skidded to a halt and gave ground as Zennor and Garamanus whipped toward Kirk; then balance changed and the two grappling leaders plunged toward the wicker mannequin, falling against it and causing the straw to smoke and turn black.

  McCoy huddled back, but there wasn't far for him to go, and there was nowhere for him to hide.

  With the Dana's huge hands coiled around his throat, Zennor grimaced horribly and seemed to call up the determination given to him by his own secret hopes for his civilization. He freed one of his own hands from his own grip on Garamanus and reached out for a strand of the coiled straw.

  Kirk craned to see. The coiled straw was stiff and firm as a dockline. How could it be moved?

  But Zennor was moving it. Somehow he had the strength to bow out the strand, to pull it toward him. Roaring for a last surge of power, he thrust Garamanus's head under the strand, then let the straw snap back into place, taking the Dana with it.

  Caught by the throat between two cords of straw rope, the Dana clutched at the thing strangling him, but Zennor cranked hard on the wicker and took hold of one of the horns in Garamanus's head, pushing him deeper into the deadly netting.

  "Who is Vergobretos?" Zennor boomed at the undecided crew.

  His voice filled the huge chamber, and echoed over and over. He swung his free arm violently and pushed Garamanus farther down with the other.

  The Dana struggled. Not dead yet.

  The Furies stared, waved their fists—or whatever—and bellowed some kind of chant that Kirk didn't understand.

  Now Zennor took that free hand and grasped the straw vein nearest to Garamanus. He gripped it hard and it began to smoke. The energy that had flowed through the two angry, dangerous beings now flowed into the strand of straw and set it smoldering.

  Sparks cracked, and the straw grew hotter, then popped into flame.

  Zennor held on despite the heat. The snapping flame crawled toward Garamanus, who was now bluish in the face and hands as his throat was crushed, though he continued to struggle.

  "Bones, keep back!" Kirk called over the crackle as the flames ran up the straw form, drenching McCoy in smoke so that he could hardly be seen.

  He came up behind Zennor, though he couldn't dare touch the body of the other captain while it was still charged with energy. "Zennor," he called. "Stop what you're doing. He's down. Back off."

  But Zennor's hand remained tight on Garamanus. Flames crawled up the outer superstructure of the effigy's left leg and chewed at its torso, stretching out tall into the upper regions and rolling along the left arm.

  Huddled in the thigh of the right leg, McCoy waved furiously at the smoke and counted seconds. "Jim!"

  Kirk rushed to the right ankle of the giant. "Hang on!"

  The creatures of the Rath's crew began to howl a cheer and wave their arms, encouraging the climbing flames. Now the straw giant had no head, but only a rolling ball of fire. Kirk witnessed with a shiver the loyalty that a commander could possess as opposed to a secondary influence. Maybe this could only happen on a ship, but it was happening here.

  "Zennor! Back off!" Kirk called, disappointed that a struggle and a quest that had gone on for millennia now apparently came down to a physical fight between leaders of two factions. He always wanted things to be loftier than that, and so often complex circumstances came down to shows of muscle, driven to victory or failure only by the intensity of belief driving them.

  Grudgeful and clearly vexed, Zennor gave the Dana's convulsing form one last shove, then stepped away.

  The creature called Morien and a dozen others plunged in to scoop up the choking Dana, who was too weak to struggle against them, and to Kirk's shock they shoved Garamanus through the burning slats of wood and strands of straw and into the burning leg of the colossus.

  In a moment, the hall began to echo with the screams of the Dana as he was burned alive.

  Zennor covered the space between the giant's legs in three strides, then grasped the unburned straw of the right leg. His hand began to shine and show its bones with that inner energy he could somehow generate when he was irreconcilable. There were apparently advantages to being hopping mad on the other s
ide of the galaxy.

  Propulsively Kirk hurried behind him, his own hand hot on his phaser.

  Yanking hard on the straw line, Zennor snapped the straw cord at the place where he had burned it. He did this again, then again, gradually chewing his way upward as far as he could reach.

  "Bones!" Kirk called. "Climb down! Can you hear me? Follow my voice!"

  Through the curtain of boiling smoke he couldn't tell if McCoy were even still conscious.

  Continuing to burn and yank, Zennor systematically opened a jagged gash in the straw giant's knee.

  "Bones!" Kirk pawed at the smoke. It was hot—getting hotter. Sweat drained down his face and under his uniform shirt.

  A hand, human, came out of the smoke, then a blue sleeve dusted with soot and smoldering matter.

  Kirk grabbed it and pulled.

  Scratched in the face by the rough burning edges that Zennor had broken away, McCoy tumbled out of the straw knee and drove Kirk to the ground. They sprawled into the smoldering twigs.

  Feeling the heat burning through his resistant uniform, Kirk rolled to his feet, still holding McCoy's arm, and hauled away.

  The doctor came flying out of the kindling and stumbled against the wall. Kirk hauled him up and held him away from the flames. McCoy blinked his watering eyes and grasped his right thigh as if it were hurt, but he was standing on his own. Together they turned and looked.

  "Where's—"

  "They threw him in there," Kirk said.

  Astonishment rocketed across McCoy's face. "My God! He was innocent!"

  Zennor followed them away from the straw giant. Now it was burning and the Furies were building to a shrieking frenzy. "Go back the way we came, through the Barrow and into the Ritual Shafts. That area is not shielded and you will be able to beam out. Go now, before they notice."

  "I want our files," Kirk attempted corrosively.

  For the first time, Zennor reached out and touched him. His hand was a shock of dry cold despite the temperature here and the moisture of the air. "There is no time. I will find them and destroy them. Go away … go now!"

  Towering over them, the straw giant was now a giant of fire. Black and yellow flame rolled along its arms and coiled in its wide legs. The basic structure had apparently been built to survive until the last minute, so the thing would remain standing while the innards were consumed. Along with whoever they had decided to put in there. How many "criminals" had been disposed of in this way over the past five thousand years?

  "My mama always warned me I'd end up here if I wasn't good," McCoy wheezed.

  Kirk blinked into the stinging smoke. "Let's go."

  "They'll burn their ship. . . ."

  Glancing upward at the ceiling, where the smoke was separating into four distinct funnels and being sucked out before it could gather, Kirk told him, "It's venting. They've done this before."

  Deeply troubled, he looked at the other leg of the straw man, and saw the outline of the Dana, sketched in flame, and knew he was watching the torture of an innocent person and that he had failed to stop it.

  Though he took the doctor's arm, McCoy was unable to resist hovering briefly, just to take in the full sight of a sixty-foot man-shaped inferno, flames going on its arms like rolling pins, and the wild-eyed wraiths rallying and howling around it, thudding their drums. Together they watched the holocaust of the colossus.

  McCoy's face glowed. "Captain, this may be the most poignant log entry of your career … 'Jim Kirk discovers Hell.'"

  It's hard to dance with the Devil on your back.

  —"Lord of the Dance,"

  a folk song

  Chapter Seventeen

  "YELLOW ALERT. Mr. Donnier, lay in a direct course back to—Mr. Spock."

  Donnier and BSyers turned to gaze at him, caught briefly in the concept of laying in a course to the first officer, but that was what being on edge could do to concentration.

  Jim Kirk paused on the middle step down toward his command chair, pulled himself back to the upper deck, and moved forward on the starboard side.

  "Mr. Spock …"

  "Captain."

  Standing much too straight for comfort, Spock swiveled unevenly on a heel. He looked supremely in place here, living a life before the wind.

  For the first time Kirk noticed a dull bruise shading the right side of Spock's face from the bad roll he'd taken on Capella IV. Somehow he hadn't seen that yet.

  "Mr. Spock, you haven't been released from sickbay."

  "Considering the circumstances, sir," Spock said with undertones, "when you left the ship, I invoked Special Order Number Four Two Seven, Subsection J-Three, regarding the right of senior officers to override any departmental authority in a crisis."

  "There's no such subsection."

  "But Nurse Chapel did not know that. And since I am here already, I suggest we not embarrass her."

  "As opposed to McCoy's reprimanding her when he finds you gone?"

  "Is the doctor all right?"

  "A little scorched, and don't change the subject."

  Spock nodded, only once and with monkish reserve, being careful of his condition and trying not to move or twist, but he gazed at the deck for a moment, thoughtfully. "I am ineffective in sickbay, sir."

  "But you're injured. Patients in sickbay aren't supposed to be effective, Spock. I want you back in recovery. I appreciate your dedication, but you're providing the wrong kind of example. The rest of the crew deserves to know that they're valuable too."

  While nothing else would've gotten to Spock, that last bit did. There were some advantages to their knowing each other too well.

  He lowered his eyes again and murmured, "Yes, sir, I understand." Then he looked up again as if just remembering. "Sir, did you retrieve the files?"

  "No," Kirk sighed, and paced around to the other side of Spock. "It was all we could do to get out of there with our skins. Zennor killed Garamanus."

  He felt the guilt rise on his face.

  "Indeed," Spock murmured. "To free McCoy?"

  "Partly. There was a power play going on. I think it had been going on a long time. Not just the two of them, but everything they both stand for. Now he's got command of the ship and possession of the files, I'll just have to trust him."

  Almost as he said it, he realized how foolish that was. Wanting to trust someone and actually being able to were entirely different game boards.

  He glanced at the helm. "Shields up, Mr. Donnier."

  "Shields up, sir."

  The turbolift slid open and McCoy hurried in, cranky and agitated, spotted them, and angled toward them, a sling on his right arm and a computer cartridge in his left hand.

  "Subsection J, my backside, Mr. Spock," he scolded. "Nurse Chapel is a lot more upset than she deserves to be."

  "I apologize for my deception, Doctor, and I will be returning to sickbay."

  "Yes, you will be." McCoy handed him the cartridge. "That's all the information I collected on my medical tricorder over in that other ship. Jim, I confirmed everything. The ages of those bone fragments and hair, the biological roots and the planetary origins. There's no doubt about it. Those people had some contact with this quadrant on the order of four to seven thousand years ago."

  Conveniently forgetting to remind them that he'd been ordered off the bridge by the only two people who could do that, Spock had turned stiffly to his library computer and inserted the cartridge, and was looking through his sensor hood at the readouts, probably running them through about five times faster than Kirk could've read them.

  Kirk couldn't see inside the hood, but he heard the machine whir faintly, or imagined he did.

  His movements hampered by pain, Spock slowly straightened and faced them again, his face expressive and heavy with import. He didn't like what he'd seen.

  "This is unprecedented. Obviously the track we were on before is far more accurate than we guessed."

  "Do you have a conclusion?" Kirk asked.

  "I have a hypothesis."
r />   "I'll take it."

  "If there was some massive interstellar war roughly five thousand years ago and these people were the losers and they were banished, as Zennor insists, we might postulate that some survivors could have been stranded on Earth, Vulcan, and other planets that supported humanoid life. Beings with 'horns', or 'wings'—"

  "Or snakes in their heads," McCoy filled in.

  "If these were advanced beings who only wanted to survive," Spock went on, "among the nomadic Klingons, early Terrans, Vulcans, and Orions, and possessed powers unknown to these ancients—for instance, energy weapons, extreme speed, advanced healing techniques—"

  Again McCoy interrupted. "Acts which in those days could only be taken as miracles."

  "Or sorcery," Spock agreed. "Natural powers taken as supernatural. The 'Furies,' if you will. Trying to escape the mass relocation, they may have hidden on our worlds, and as they lived and died slowly, they floated into our mythos. These refugees may well have been the pathways along which legends have come down to us, and why we feel we 'recognize' them. Their physical traits could easily have been taken as animal parts, skull extensions as antlers or horns, feeding tendrils as snakes, stings for the power to turn people to stone, cooling skins for wings, bony feet for hooves."

  "And in the changes of religion on these planets," Kirk uttered, thinking hard, trying to encompass millennia in his concrete mind, "they would have had to be considered. That druid Horned God … Zennor's race."

  "The Hunter God was ultimately absorbed by Christianity, but they had no place for him in their pantheon. In order to turn the lay public to the new religion, the priests painted him as a devil. Satan."

  The bell rang so loudly in Kirk's head that he almost glanced for the red-alert flash.

  "This is not guesswork, Captain," Spock said, seeing Kirk's reaction. "We do know this happened." He gazed into his sensor hood briefly. "The woman's household tools were turned into elements of witchcraft when male physicians wanted to take over the healing arts. Now we have the image of the soot-darkened woman flying on a kitchen utensil and casting spells from a cooking pot. In the same way, the Horned God's pitchfork, a symbol of male toil, became associated with devils when Christianity moved him out of their way. These things are relatively easy to track."