Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike
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tossed the tricorder to Kirk.
"If I don't make it, you've got to take that to Spock,"
he said urgently. "I don't mind being right, but this time
I was even more right than I had the sense to know. It's
not just a coincidence that these people look like our
legends and myths of evil. They are our legends and
myths of evil!"
A sight within a sight.
Furies and fire.
In the center of the great hall, twisted with manufactured
fog and looming nearly to the ceiling, the straw
giant had no face and no hands, only the bound strands
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FIRST STRIKE
of thatch to make up the most base form of' intelligent life. On the walls, carved forms of animal heads and
double-headed statues flared down in carnal images of
the beings dancing below.
"Have you got your phaser with you?"
McCoy's question was subdued.
"Yes," Kirk said. "They didn't take it away. I don't
know if that's courtesy or they're just not afraid of it. It's
not because they're stupid, I'll bet."
Around them a drumbeat began, low and not very
steady, timpani made of skin stretched over some kind
of iron cauldron. Horned beings like Zennor were
pounding them with thighbones the same as the one
McCoy had shown him.
"Jim," the doctor began.
Kirk turned. "What?"
"Ify..u .can't. get me out of her,e, and they light this up,"
McCo stud with great struggle, use the phaser on me"
Anguish pushed at the backs of Kirk's eyes as le
looked up and saw McCoy for the fullness of his character
at that instant, McCoy hadn't asked him to open up
on these creatures in order to get him out of here, to
incinerate them in order to spare him incineration,
never mind that a single phaser could easily do that.
Hundreds could be killed in a single sweep, much more
painlessly than the death they were offering the doctor
now.
McCoy didn't want that. He'd take the death, but he
wanted to make sure that his life was the only sacrifice
and that, if there was still a chance for peace, he should
die to smooth that path of possibility.
"Understood,"
throat. "I
Kirk accepted. Sympathy tightened his
promise."
Each knew a heavy price was being asked here, and a
terrible guilt to be risked. The space between them was a
cursed thing.
He stepped back, through the chanting circle of aliens,
to where Zennor stood waiting, colossal in his own way,
perhaps vile in the same way.
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"You know I won't let them do this to him," Kirk said.
"Nor would I, were he mine," Zennor said. "There are
customs."
Abruptly petulant, Kirk squared off in front of him.
"Where I come from we have laws instead of customs to
rule us. We have trials before we have punishment. What
about that?"
"He mutilated Manann's soul. He admitted it. He
wished to atone. This is atonement."
"This is villainy. One crime doesn't absolve another.
Are you going to stand there and let this occur?"
Zennor did not answer. In fact, he was no longer
looking at Kirk.
"There are other crimes," Kirk pushed, not caring
anymore if he was being rude. He all but shouted across
the chasm of distrust that had cracked between them.
"Theft, for one. Garamanus stole several computer
records from my ship. That's Starfleet property. I want
them back, untouched."
"What is upon them?"
"Give them back. Then we'll discuss it." In mortal
panic of pressing the situation too far, too fast for
McCoy's good, too fast to get back the records and the
volatile information upon them, Kirk reined in his tone.
He held out a supplicant hand. "There has to be some
line of trust between us, or we have nothing and our
cultures have nothing on which to build. I know you
don't want that."
The entreaty burned in his throat, for it was a lie. He
knew the tangled truth and dared not tell yet. If possible,
he would introduce these people to the weird truth
slowly to explain it, gradually enough to make them
digest the distance in time from the common element,
whatever that element turned out to be, and that whatever
happened five thousand years ago, there was no one
here to answer for it anymore. Slowly, he hoped, enough
to explain that whoever the conquerors were, they
couldn't have been Terrans, Vulcans, Romulans, Orions,
or even Klingons. The years just weren't right.
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FIRST STRIKE
That message had to' be delivered with finesse, of
which at the moment Kirk possessed not a drop.
Zennor looked past him, gazing instead at a new
presence moving out of the greenish haze toward
them.
Spinning quickly, out of instinct, Kirk found himself
staring up at the imposing half-moon eyes of Garamanus.
Zennor stepped out and met him. "Why have you
done this?"
"You know why," the Dana said. "This is our home
space. The Danai are correct."
The galloping crew slowed down and few by few began
to stop and watch the power struggle play out. None
seemed surprised, though all were tense, and Kirk drew
the sensation that this was an old struggle between the
quest of the Dana/and the hard science of machines and
pilots, a struggle thousands of years old, today coming to
a head.
"You have no proof," Zennor said when his crew
dropped to a sizzling quiet and listened. He stepped
closer to Garamanus. "You have told them a lie."
The reaction of the crew was bizarre--but somehow
familiar to Kirk, who had seen many kinds of humanoids
and aliens and had learned to read for clues. Color
changes, changes in the shapes of eyes, altered posture.
He saw all those now. Had anyone ever called a Dana a
liar before?
Kirk entertained a particular shiver and kept his
mouth shut.
"I know their secrets
, the Dana told him. "I have
seen their memories. They are the conquerors."
The priest indicated Kirk somehow without moving very much at all.
Relatively clear. Somehow he had managed to read the files even with mechanics from all the way across the galaxy.
While they were gone, power had shifted. How could they get it back?
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"We are not conquerors," Kirk said. "I refuse to
concede the point. The past you're talking about is all
finished and all you have left is a festered memory. I'm
urging you not to act on it."
"It is not festered," Garamanus said. "It is the Veil of
Evermore and as real as you are. When we light the effig y
and burn the one who cuts souls, it will be the beginning
of our onslaught. We know who you are." He clasped the
medallion hanging at his
chest and turned it upward for
the mirror side to show. Kirk saw the flickering reflection
of his own face. "And we know who we are."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kirk demanded.
Garamanus clasped his own medallion, but did not
hold it up. "We each wear a mirror, to be sure we will
never forget what the damned look like. Until now, we
held them only to ourselves. But that is all changed. Now
we are not the cast-out, the despised, the unclean
anymore... you are."
The Dana kept the small mirror up, and in it Kirk
continued to see his own flushed face.
He reached out and pushed the mirror down.
"We did what you asked," he went on persistently,
unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. His
words sped up. "We investigated your data and it turned
out to be nothing. There's no scientific proof--"
"You have not disproven us," the Dana said.
"But not proven either," Zennor claimed.
In the full flower of his newly acquired mantle, Garamamus
raised his opal horns. "Thousands of years ago
the Danai decided you would not understand these
things. There are millions of little clues."
"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
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FIRST STRIKE
different now from the way he had been when gennor
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'!l 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
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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
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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 what cretin
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
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Diane Carey 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