by Jerry Oltion
"Ginn Donan's?" Mudd asked the guard who had accompanied him. He had heard the tales of the Nevisians' biggest hero—over and over again in speech after speech as he had negotiated for peace.
"That's right," said the guard.
"Those were on the list," Mudd told him. "Find something to hold everything in while I look for the other items we're supposed to save." Nice as they were, Mudd had no need for royal finery—he needed something a bit more portable and concealable—but that should keep the guard busy while he took inventory.
No doubt Kirk and his cronies were growing ever more fidgety out there in the hallway, but Mudd didn't particularly care about that. They wouldn't leave without him for the simple reason that only he knew where they were going. When Mudd was good and ready to go he would entrust the guards with the sack of swag he had chosen for them to "preserve," and he would walk out with his own treasure safely stowed away and they wouldn't suspect a thing.
Diversion, that was the key to this sort of operation. He found a suitably impressive diamond necklace and palmed it while he selected an even larger ruby brooch to hand to the guard, and a moment later he added two rings and a bracelet to his own stash while asking the guard if the jeweled tiara in his other hand was the genuine article or just a clever duplicate for show.
When the guard assured him it was real, he gave it to him to add to the scepter and crown, then hitched up his pants and slipped the necklace, rings, and bracelet into a pocket as he turned to look for more.
A soft whirr and a thump from out in the hallway drew his attention, and he stuck his head out the door far enough to see the guard out there slumped on the floor. A moment later the security officer who had accompanied Kirk came into view, holding out her phaser. The Enterprise crew had apparently lost their patience.
Mudd sighed in exasperation. Kirk always had to spoil things just when they were starting to pay off. Well, there was no sense getting into a firefight over it, so Mudd said to the remaining guard, "Here, help me with this, will you?" and bent down as if to scoot a jewel-filled chest near the door out of the way. That put the guard with his back to the door, and the moment he bent over, the security officer stunned him as well.
Mudd snatched up a double handful of gemstones and poured them into his pockets, added a bar of platinum for good measure, then stepped over the unconscious guard and met the woman at the door. Kirk and the others were right behind her. "Have you no discipline?" Mudd asked them. "I told you to wait. I had just earned their confidence and was about to—"
"I don't care what you were about to do, Harry," Kirk said. "We're about to be overrun. Now move it." He grabbed Mudd roughly by his collar and pulled him out of the vault, then propelled him down the corridor with a rough shove against his back.
"Really, Kirk," Mudd said as he struggled to keep his footing, "I must protest this treatment! I—"
A steady barrage of disruptor fire swept through the intersection of hallways in which Kirk and the others had been hiding. Where it struck the walls, great sections of stone blew free and tumbled to the floor.
"I see your point," Mudd said, rushing ahead.
But the battle had been working its way inward from the outer walls along both of the main-spoke corridors flanking the treasury. As they reached the next one, more disruptor fire lanced past the junction, and a detonation against a cornerstone sprayed them with rock chips.
Mudd's pockets rattled as he leaped backward, nearly knocking over Kirk in his haste to avoid the battle. A few baubles fell to the floor and rolled away.
"If we get caught up in this because of your little shopping expedition," Kirk growled, "I'll make you wish you were back with the androids."
"Too late," Mudd told him. "I already wish for that. At least they didn't shoot at me."
The security officer brushed past him and stuck her head around the corner, then pulled back fast as more disruptor fire peppered the walls. "They're coming fast," she reported. "If we're going to get across this passage, we've got to do it now." Without waiting for Kirk's order, she stuck her hand around the corner and fired her phaser a few times blindly; then she shouted "Go!" and stood out in the corridor, firing rapidly.
The other security officer leaped across, then Kirk and Spock. McCoy was preparing himself for the jump when a disruptor beam caught the woman solidly in the chest, spinning her around and slamming her up against the corner. McCoy grabbed for her just as two more beams struck her, and this time their combined molecular dispersion charges finished the job the first one had started.
Mudd stared aghast at the spot where she had been. Not even a shoe remained. She had been completely vaporized. This woman had died right before his eyes, and he didn't even know her name.
The other security person fired back down the corridor. "Come on!" shouted Kirk, and Mudd backed up for a running leap across the perilous junction, but when he looked beyond Kirk he stopped cold. A flood of blue-clad Distrellian defenders were retreating toward them from that direction, too, and the fighting looked even more intense there.
"Look out behind!" Mudd yelled. He turned to look behind himself, and winced to see smoke and the flash of disruptor fire there as well. They were trapped.
"The vault," said Spock in a loud voice. "It is the only defensible position."
"We can't let them box us in," Kirk protested. "We've got to get out of here."
"On the contrary, Captain," Spock said as he reached out over the security officer's head and contributed his own phaser to the return barrage. "We need only wait for the attackers to knock out the shields, which is undoubtedly their first priority, and then the Enterprise can beam us away."
"Spock, you're a genius," Mudd said, meaning every word of it, for the Vulcan's plan meant that he didn't have to cross the gauntlet of disruptor fire.
He backed away to give the others room, and one by one Kirk, the security officer, and Spock leaped across. An energy beam narrowly missed Spock, blasting more rock chips from the corridor, one of which sliced into his cheek. Bright green blood welled out of the cut, but he hardly seemed to notice.
"Into the vault, Harry," Kirk said unnecessarily, for Mudd was already moving toward it, but he froze when a phalanx of Prastorian soldiers burst into the corridor from the other end. They stared at him for a moment, obviously unsure whether to shoot or not. He and Spock were wearing blue, but the one remaining security officer wore red, and Kirk was in his usual olive green. The vault guard that the security officer had stunned lay sprawled a few feet in front of them, but Mudd couldn't guess how that would affect their decision.
Their hesitation lasted only a few seconds, however, before one of them shouted, "It's the aliens! Get 'em!"
Mudd ran for the doorway, but it was a losing race. Time seemed to telescope for him; he imagined he could actually see the disruptor beams stretch up the corridor toward him. The first of them lanced past on the right, but telescoped or no, he had no time to dodge the next one. It hit him in the right leg, which buckled immediately and pitched him forward. That might have saved his life, for the next beam passed overhead, but as he reached out to catch himself against the wall he leaned directly into the path of the next one, which hit him in the side. The same side that the android had injured, Mudd realized as pain washed over him and he fell back against Dr. McCoy.
They both fell to the floor, McCoy cursing frantically. Mudd heard him as if from a long ways away, and he saw Kirk and Spock and the security officer firing back down the corridor, but his vision was growing indistinct. He dimly felt another shock to his other leg, but everything, even the wound in his side, now seemed filtered through thick haze.
Someone grabbed him by his arms and dragged him into the vault. His head banged the door sill on the way through, adding insult to what Mudd was just beginning to realize was a serious injury. Whoever had rescued him laid his head on a sack of money, then Mudd heard the whirring of medical instruments.
The vault door boomed shut. The light immed
iately went out, then a moment later a flashlight beam shot out, wobbled a moment, and shone into his face.
He tried to tell whoever held it to quit blinding him, but he couldn't get his breath. Not at all, he realized with growing alarm.
Shadowy forms hovered over him, just outside of the light beam. Through the steadily increasing hum in his ears, Mudd heard Kirk ask, "How is he, Bones?" and he heard McCoy answer, "He's fading fast, Jim. I've got to get him to the Enterprise."
"As soon…shields…down," Kirk said, his words fading in and out. Mudd heard the chirp of a communicator and Kirk said something else, but his voice sounded like the buzzing of an insect now.
At least the pain was fading as well. Mudd tried to move his arms, his head, tried to blink his eyes, but nothing responded. He could only lie there on the floor with his head on a sack of money and stare into the light.
Someone else turned on another light and swept it around the vault. Jewels glittered in its beam like stars twinkling through an atmosphere. Not a bad last vision, Mudd thought, if it came to that. He had always said he wanted to end his days surrounded by fabulous riches, and here he was.
But where, oh where were the beautiful women that were supposed to go with it?
Chapter Nine
KIRK TRIED to bring his breathing under control. His heart pounded and he felt twitchy as a cat in a kennel. Being shot at always did that to him. Usually afterward, when he had time to think about it, but somehow the reaction always seemed even worse for the delay. Once the fighting was over he had far too much time to reconsider his actions and berate himself for all his bad decisions.
He had plenty of them to think about now. The look of shock on Ensign Lebrun's face when she was hit would haunt him forever. She'd had no time to feel anything before she was hit again; her death had been painless, clean, and sanitary—but she was just as dead.
Kirk would love to blame Harry Mudd for that. Mudd had, after all, delayed their getaway with his greedy side trip to this vault. But he had already paid dearly for his avarice, and in truth the vault had probably saved the rest of their lives. Without it they would have been caught in the crossfire somewhere farther along and not had any place like this to retreat to. Kirk could hear fighting outside even through the massive door. This was no small-scale skirmish; this was an all-out assault on the planetary government. The Prastorians were sweeping through the entire palace.
Besides, if anyone was to blame for her death, it was Kirk. Lebrun had been doing her duty, which was to protect her crewmates—and especially her captain—from harm. If he hadn't brought her here, or if he hadn't come in person to do a job that could probably have been done by communicator if he had insisted on it, she would still be alive.
He knew his reasoning was faulty. Spock had told him so often enough in similar circumstances. If he followed that argument to its logical conclusion, then Admiral Tyers was responsible for ordering them here in the first place, or it was Lebrun's own fault for joining Starfleet before that. But Kirk felt personally responsible even so. Maybe everyone was to blame, including himself. There was certainly plenty of guilt to go around.
Mudd groaned feebly, and Kirk looked down at him. His normally round features looked harsh and angular in the flashlight beam, and his eyes had rolled up in their sockets, giving him a blank white stare that sent shivers down Kirk's spine. All the anger he felt for Mudd fled at the sight of him lying there, helpless and dying, at Kirk's feet.
"Can you do anything for him, Bones?" he asked.
McCoy shook his head sadly. "I'm trying to stabilize him, but he's just too badly hurt. Those damned disruptors don't leave a doctor anything to work with. I'll have to put him on full life support within the next couple of minutes or I'm afraid we'll lose him."
Kirk considered ordering the Enterprise to target the palace's shield generators so they could beam out immediately. It was only a matter of time before they went down anyway. But it would undoubtedly be considered an act of war, and Starfleet would have his head if he tried it. He couldn't take that kind of action just to save one man.
Now every harsh word he had heaped on Mudd was coming back to haunt him. The man hadn't deserved that kind of treatment. He was a fraud and a charlatan and a con artist to beat all con artists, but he was not a scoundrel. He even had an odd sense of honor about him, as long as you realized that he honored wealth and comfort most of all.
And Kirk could hardly fault him for womanizing, now could he?
In another life, Kirk could easily imagine himself and Mudd hoisting a few frothy mugs of Romulan Ale and arm-wrestling for the right to dance first with the prettiest woman at the party. He even knew how it would turn out: Kirk would win, but Mudd would cut in before the song was half over. And they would both go back to drinking and swapping tall tales afterward. Only chance had thrown them together as adversaries.
He knelt down beside Mudd. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way, Harry," he said sadly.
"I'm losing him, Jim," McCoy warned.
Kirk took a deep breath, then pounded his fist into his palm. "No, dammit! I won't let it end like this." He snatched the communicator from his belt, flipped it open, and said, "Kirk to Enterprise. Lock phasers on to the palace shield generator and—"
"Jim!" McCoy shouted.
He looked down to see Mudd shimmering away to nothing.
"Belay that order," Kirk said as Mudd faded away completely. But as seconds passed without beam-out for the rest of them, he said again, "Enterprise, what's the holdup?"
"You said to belay the order, Captain," Uhura replied. "We're still waiting for the shields to go down."
"What? They're still up? Then what happened to Harry?"
"I don't know, sir. What did happen?"
"He disappeared, that's what. I thought you'd beamed him aboard. Bones, could the disruptor charges have had some kind of delayed reaction?"
McCoy shook his head. "I suppose it's possible. I don't know that much about these Nevisian weapons. But it looked more like a transporter effect to me."
"Spock?"
"I concur," said the first officer. "However, if the shields are still functional, there are few places he could have gone. He must still be in the palace."
"Then we've got to find him. Uhura, scan the palace for his transporter trace."
"It won't matter, Jim," McCoy said. "He's dead now anyway."
"You don't know that. He was still—"
"No he wasn't. His heart had already stopped and his brain activity was practically gone as well. I couldn't have saved him even if we had got him on board. Wherever he is now, he's dead."
The vault shook, and over a second later a loud rumble came through the walls. Somebody had blown up something big, far enough away that the sound had taken a moment to reach them.
"Shields are down, sir," Uhura said. "Transporting."
And a moment later, the four surviving Enterprise crew members stood on the platform back on board the ship. The yellow-alert klaxon was still sounding.
Kirk drew a deep breath. He would have loved to take a minute to calm down, but unfortunately duty called.
"Bones, get ready for casualties," he told McCoy. "Gorden, report back to security and let them know what we're up against if we're attacked. Spock, back to the bridge. Hold the fort until I get there."
If his first officer had been anyone but Spock, he would have gone directly to the bridge himself, but he knew Spock would be able to handle the situation for the few minutes he needed to take care of his other duty.
He went to the intercom on the wall and said, "Computer, locate Lieutenant Nordell."
"Lieutenant Nordell is in his quarters," the computer answered.
Kirk already knew where that was, since he had just been there a few days ago to discuss wedding plans. He still held his communicator open, so instead of using the intercom again he spoke into that as he hurried out of the transporter room and into the turbolift with Spock. "Uhura, keep scanning for Mudd,
and transmit a message to the Grand General offering medical assistance." That much they could do without violating the Prime Directive. At least not too badly.
"Yes, sir," Uhura replied.
As he and Spock rode the turbolift upship, Kirk looked over and noticed the cut in Spock's cheek.
"You're hurt," he said.
"Not badly," Spock replied. He wiped the trickle of green blood away with the back of his hand, then cleaned his hand on his pants leg.
"Have Bones look at it anyway when you get a chance," Kirk told him, knowing that Spock wouldn't do it unless ordered to.
The turbolift stopped at deck four and Kirk stepped out to perform the duty every captain hates most.
Simon Nordell knew what had happened the moment he saw the captain at his door. He had stood up from the table as he called out "Open," but even before Kirk spoke, he felt his legs go weak and he had to sit back down.
Kirk stepped into the small living room and said, "I'm sorry."
Nordell tried to speak, but his throat had suddenly constricted. Finally he managed to croak, "How?"
"Protecting everyone else's lives," Kirk said. "We came under heavy attack and had to cross a corridor under fire. She was hit by a disruptor."
Nordell had to struggle to make sense of the captain's words. This wasn't just some random security officer Kirk was talking about; this was Nordell's wife. How could something like this happen to her, so soon after their wedding? He tried to imagine her getting shot, then wished he hadn't. The image chilled him to the core.
