Home Is the Hunter

by Dana Kramer Rolls

  Kral turned to see where Kirk was indicating. There, several hundred yards away, its spires visible above the tops of trees, was indeed the castle. "You're right." He paused. "So … how do you propose we do it?"

  "Do it?" said Kirk.

  "Which one of us will attempt to kill him?"

  Kirk's eyes widened in amusement. "How do you suggest we do that?"

  "You have your phaser. And I must reiterate my anger over not being allowed to carry a phaser or blaster of my own."

  "What, this?" Kirk held up his phaser. "Just out of curiosity," and he pointed and aimed the weapon. He squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  "Oh, splendid," said Kral.

  "He didn't interfere with our weapons capabilities last time we were here, and one of his people died," observed Kirk. "Obviously he wasn't going to allow the same thing to occur."

  "Which means he knows we're here," said Kral with surprising softness.

  "Yes," said Kirk. "And the question is, what's he going to do about it?"

  There was a soft thwop sound at their feet.

  They looked down.

  A grenade was lying less than three feet from Kirk.

  "Move!" shouted Kirk, even as he leaped backward to get away.

  Kral hurtled through the air and slammed into him and the two of them tumbled backward into the shelter of the brush just as the grenade went off.

  They broke out of the other side and started to roll down a short embankment. Around them flares of plasma fell and set small fires that quickly extinguished themselves.

  Kirk and Kral tumbled, arms and legs flailing, and when they reached the bottom they scrambled to their feet as quickly as they could. Kral was limping slightly, clutching his leg, and Kirk refrained from tossing off a remark about the weaker of the species.

  Just ahead of them was a run-down hut, and Kirk hesitated to make for it, not wanting to endanger the occupants. But then the ground to his left exploded in a hail of blaster fire, and the decision was made for him. Besides, Kral was already ahead of him, leaping forward and smashing in the door with his shoulder. Kirk saw no choice but to follow him.

  He leaped into the darkness after Kral.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Scotland, 1746

  EVEN SCOTTY, used to the stark expanses of space, was moved to sighs by the pristine beauty of the rolling fields, still white with snow, and here and there by the thunder of a waterfall, its sparkling cascade dancing with a raw power that this simple world could not create nor control.

  Marching next to Scotty was Seamus, grinning broadly, thrilled to be a part of it all. Truth to tell, so was Scott.

  They marched southwest, down past Loch Ness, her black, still water shadowed by even starker ragged mountains which cheered the highlanders twice over, once for the reflection of their hardy souls, and once for the knowledge that Cumberland's men would find no succor here, so harsh a land it was.

  And so down the Great Glen they marched and through the narrow Glen of Birds, its air chill in the perpetual shadow of the gorge. The blare of the pipes uplifted their spirits.

  Fort Augustus stood gray, her stony foundation arising from a stony field, hard by the stony shore of the loch. Above the walls stood wooden pickets, adding both height and invulnerability to the structure. The army camped silently, not lighting fires which would give the enemy their position and number.

  The command staff stood on a hill overlooking their goal.

  "Well, Lochiel, any suggestions?" Keppoch asked.

  "We'll rush at it, and they will quiver with fear, and let us in," he proclaimed.

  "It is suicide, sir," Scott burst in, shaking his head, "and I would advise against it."

  Keppoch shook his head. "We cannot afford a long siege. If we were pinned here, sooner or later a messenger would escape and reinforcements from Fort William to the south would crush us as a smith flattens a piece of iron between his hammer and his anvil. But have you a plan, sir?"

  "We could mine the wall with a few barrels of gunpowder," Scott suggested. "At least we'd have a breach to rush."

  "There is little cover," a captain pointed out. "We'd lose anybody who tried to plant it."

  "You know," Keppoch said thoughtfully, "in the old days we would be building a siege tower."

  "In the old days there were old trees," Lochiel pointed out. "Can't build one out of saplings."

  "Could we get someone in? Then he could sap the wall from the inside, or open the gate for us," another captain suggested.

  This brought jeers of derision until Scotty said, "Wait now. That just might do the trick. There is gunpowder aplenty inside, and if one or two men were to get in, they could set a charge from there. But it would be a suicide mission."

  "Do you think you could do it, Mr. Scott?" Keppoch asked.

  Scotty groaned. Rule number one in anybody's army is Never Volunteer. "I think so, my lord," he said with resignation.

  Just after sunup Scott and Seamus snaked their way across the field, seeking what little cover there was behind rocks and shrubs and pitiful little clumps of dried grass.

  "How are we going to get through the gate?" Seamus asked.

  "I'm not sure yet, lad. But something is bound to turn up," Scotty said, adding to himself, "My lips to God's ear."

  The sound of marching men and creaking wagons drifted on the breeze. Soon the two men could see the patrol and a couple of wagons shambling up the road.

  "There, lad, I told you," Scott said, adding a thanks to whatever deity had provided their good luck. They scrambled close to the road, and as the first wagon rolled by, they rolled out into the road, missing the great wheels by inches. The shaggy hooves of the horses drawing the next wagon were kicking dust into the men's faces as they scrambled to their feet, crouching. Scuttling clear of the horses, they rolled under the hitching tongue. Scotty grabbed onto it, and Seamus grabbed onto Scotty. They dragged along, Scott grateful that the wagon was moving at a slow walk. Finally Scott hauled himself up into the understructure of the wagon. Seamus did the same as they halted at the great gate.

  They both hung on, straining every muscle as the wagon launched ahead and into the fort.

  Seamus hit the ground with a thud.

  "Something fall?" a man asked in English.

  "Not here, Henry," another answered.

  Seamus rolled into a pile of hay. Scotty let himself down from the belly of the cart rather gingerly. When he joined Seamus, he allowed himself a painful groan as he rubbed his stiff joints.

  "Now what?" Seamus whispered.

  "We wait."

  While they sat huddled and silent, Scott tried to keep track of the passage of the occasional soldier on guard duty. The day dragged by endlessly. By night, when the yard was deserted, Scotty had the guard drill figured out.

  Clump! Clump! Clump! Scotty waited for the guard to march by, then hissed "Now!" and he and Seamus broke loose of the straw bed and ran for the big building in the center of the compound. It had to be the magazine.

  "It's locked," Seamus whispered.

  "Here, let me," Scott said, pulling a slender blade from his boot, working the lock with a skill that clearly impressed his young companion. The big lock dropped open. "In. Quick," he said, pushing Seamus ahead of him.

  Clump! Clump! Clump!

  "That was close," Scott muttered, wiping his brow and trying to still his thumping chest. What he would give right about now for a light. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the tiny glow of moonlight that filtered in through the few windows. There were crates and barrels … and the smell of gunpowder.

  They rolled one of the powder barrels to the door, and Scott wrestled it over the doorsill as Seamus went back for another.

  "Halt!" A musket was thrust up to Scotty's face. He slowly, very slowly, stood up with his hands in the air.

  Chapter Forty

  Moscow, 1942

  SHORTLY AFTER being "recruited," even though there was still an occas
ional twinge in his arm, Chekov was hustled off to a secret training school about five miles from the main airport. He found a small airstrip and a few low buildings that housed the primitive facilities of the Red Guard squadron. Chekov felt resplendent in his new uniform. He also felt nervous as hell. Although Chuikov, who had since returned to Stalingrad, had accepted his flimsy background story almost without question—motivated by his own desires, Chekov suspected, both for family and for more soldiers—Paulvitch had kept looking at him with great suspicion. Paulvitch had been even less enthusiastic when the general had rather forcefully insisted that Chekov be placed in the elite Red Guard flying squadron. He had also ordered that identity papers be cut for Chekov immediately.

  Chekov was somewhat old for a cadet and was looked on with some amusement … at first. But he made quite a splash among his fellow cadets on his first flight. He had been taken up in a lend-lease P-39. Chekov quickly mastered the feel of the vehicle, impressed his flight instructor with his skill and astonished the other cadets with his aerial acrobatics, pushing the propeller-driven pursuit vehicle to its limit. They were finally convinced he was some sort of saint when he was ordered to report to the Kremlin.

  The order did not thrill Chekov, however, for he had his own game plan.

  He was determined to get out of Russia.

  At first he had felt a patriotic devotion to the people and place that he had grown up in. But he was rapidly beginning to realize that his vision of the past was heavily romanticized. The Russia of this time was completely alien to him. The general air of fear and oppression that hung over the country like a gray sheet was suffocating.

  The problem was, he wasn't sure how to get out. Borders were carefully watched, and for that matter, so was he.

  The usually silent, almost spectral Paulvitch had, it seemed, made Chekov his special case. He had hand delivered Chekov's new papers to him and said nothing, but merely regarded him with those ghostly, glowing eyes. He didn't have to say anything to Chekov, really. His thoughts were clear. Paulvitch did not trust him, not for a moment.

  It seemed to Chekov that, whenever he turned around, Paulvitch was somewhere in the background. Paulvitch, or one of his cronies.

  It wasn't paranoia, Chekov told himself, if they really were out to get you. And what he had was a serious situation on his hands.

  As the old saying went, he knew too much. Too much about Russia, about what would happen. Nowhere in the world was more dangerous for Chekov than the Soviet Union, and yet here was the place he was stuck.

  He had to get out, and the only way to do that was in the air.

  So his intentions were hardly honorable, and the constant paranoia from the oppressive KGB made his people seem more like the Klingons than the enlightened society he remembered.

  Informed by his commanding officer that his presence was required at the Kremlin, Chekov blanched inwardly. Insane as it sounded, he was sure that somehow the KGB knew that he was from the future. He envisioned another small room with shining lights, Paulvitch leering down at him.

  "Why me?" he asked, a question directed both to his C.O. and to the heavens above.

  "Why, to meet Stalin, of course!" said the C.O. incredulously. "It will be a great honor to meet Stalin, no?" Chekov's commander said, shaking his new cadet's hand and sending him off to the waiting car.

  The sound of the tires bouncing over the cobblestones of Red Square was a drumroll of fear and thrill to Chekov as he sat stiffly in the backseat of the car, his stomach doing flip-flops. The splendor of old Saint Basil's, with its fairy-tale onion domes, soared toward the gray sky, a surrealistic blend of color and fantasy set in a wasteland of somber government buildings.

  And then he was in the Kremlin. After miles of corridors, and dozens of identity checks, Chekov was finally deposited outside the doors of an office, on a graceful chair whose tattered brocade seat and carved woodwork bespoke a more gentle time. He was fetched by a staff aide who outranked him by a decade or two of well-earned promotions.

  One figure loomed in the center of a group of officers who were discussing some papers spread on a large map table. Even with his back turned, Chekov knew who it was. It was almost as if an electric field emanated from the man. If he ever doubted what charisma really was, now he knew.

  The man turned, the Georgian peasant who had risen to be the new czar of the People's Republic. Chekov snapped to attention. Stalin was younger than Chekov had remembered. Remembered from what? The pictures in school? He pushed away the dangerous thoughts the excitement of the moment had unleashed. He saluted, drinking in every feature of the man, his hard paternalistic manner, made more so by the old-fashioned moustache, the sheer physical strength, and the eyes. Those piercing eyes, which were both kind and cold. But Chekov's stomach remembered that this man had "purged" countless millions of peasants during the terrible years of collectivization, and things more terrible than that to come.

  And then he saw, lurking in the corner, Paulvitch. He was glowering at Chekov in that unmistakable way, as if waiting for Chekov to suddenly lunge forward at his leader.

  "So you are the candidate for the medal, are you? Do you think you deserve to be a Hero of the Soviet Union?"

  "Comrade Premier," Chekov said shakily, "no more nor less than every man and woman who fought in Stalingrad with me." Stalin's eyes softened a bit, and Chekov stumbled on, "There are thousands, and all are heros." Then he stilled himself, before the skilled strategist drew any more from him.

  Stalin reached out a hand, and an officer obediently handed him a small box, his face impassive in the presence of this powerful dictator. Then Joseph Stalin pinned a gold star hanging from a red ribbon on Chekov's chest. Chekov stood at attention. He saluted, his mind a torrent of mixed emotions, and waited for the signal to withdraw.

  But Stalin looked him in the eye, this time with the frost of winter. "And who do you admire the most among my staff?" he asked.

  Chekov's eyes flicked uncontrollably to the men in the room. There was Marshal Zhukov. That was the man, without any doubt! But Zhukov's eyes held a warning. To acknowledge the fact that he was a brilliant and beloved war leader could be his death warrant at the hands of this dictator.

  Chekov looked back into Stalin's eyes, allowing himself to be drawn into the charismatic power of the man. Then, with what he hoped would pass for perfect sincerity, he said, "If Lenin was our grandfather, then you are our father. All the other officers are our uncles and brothers. We each do our best for the state, and some do better than others, as is their talent, but it is you, sir, who is the greatest People's Hero."

  Stalin looked at him and raised his eyebrows. "You have political sense, lad, but I want a name. Someone I can reward, perhaps."

  "Then I name General Chuikov." Chekov could feel the relief in the room. That certainly was the only answer that would have no political repercussions. Stalin seemed satisfied and dismissed Chekov, who managed to march out without tripping on the rug, walking into the doorway, or otherwise making a fool of himself, despite the fact that he was shaking like a leaf.

  The driver was long gone, and with the shiny new medal on his chest, and feeling obvious and embarrassed, he set out to hitchhike back to the base. This time he got to experience the enormity of Red Square, stone by stone. A troop carrier going in his general direction rumbled by, and he waved it down, running and shouting until the bored driver rolled to a stop.

  "Where you headed?" the driver asked, eyeing the medal.

  "Er," Chekov began, knowing that his destination was classified, "sort of northeast a few miles."

  "Oh, the secret Red Guard training base. Sure," the man said cheerfully.

  They both grinned. And then a hand fell upon Chekov's shoulder.

  He turned to see Paulvitch glaring at him.

  "I know you are not what you seem," said Paulvitch. "And somehow, soon … I will find a way to prove that."

  He turned and stalked away, and Chekov felt a chill come over him.


  He had a distinct feeling that the sooner he got out of there, the better.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Japan, 1600

  THE SOUNDS OF metal on metal told Sulu that the camp was under attack.

  His captors momentarily distracted, Sulu moved quickly. His left foot lashed back, slipping around and behind the man who was holding him. He yanked fast and the two of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Sulu rolled away quickly and kicked the man in the face. Then he leaped to his feet, ready to take on another opponent.

  The hall was empty.

  Sulu blinked in surprise. Maybe there was something to that ninja magic after all.

  Suddenly he was smashed on the back of the head, and cursed himself for forgetting about the man he'd just flattened. He rolled forward, coming to his feet, and the ninja leaped at him, a sword already drawn. There was a knife on the floor, just out of Sulu's reach. He tried to get to it, and the ninja blocked his path. Sulu braced himself, arms up, ready to try and ward off an attack even though he knew he didn't have a prayer.

  And suddenly a man on horseback smashed through the paper-thin walls. Sulu looked up in amazement. So did the ninja, which was the last thing he had the chance to do, for he went down under the pounding of the horse's hooves.

  The horseman had cloth wrapped around his face for protection. He gestured briskly, and Sulu, not one to pass up an offer, leaped onto the back of the mount. They turned and hightailed it out of the compound.

  There were other men in the compound, also in simple peasant clothes of dark blue indigo, their faces covered with cloths. But the swords they were using with deadly efficiency were not simple peasant farm tools. Sulu's savior threw a supporting arm under Sulu's armpit, and tossed what turned out to be a smoke bomb.