Mudd in Your Eye

by Jerry Oltion

  "Did she—?" Did she suffer? Did she have any last words? But he couldn't bring himself to ask.

  "She died instantly," Kirk said. "She was…completely vaporized. There was nothing we could do."

  They could have stayed out of danger in the first place, Nordell thought. They could have taken someone else. They would have done just that if she hadn't been available.

  But she had. If he hadn't practically driven her out of their quarters, she might still be alive. He looked at the empty laliska glass in front of him, the condensation around its base leaving a ring on the table. He picked it up, hefted it in his hand. The captain watched while he decided whether or not to smash it, but the urge passed and he set it back down.

  "We fought," he said, not looking up. "We fought all the time. But I loved her."

  "I know," said Kirk. "Sometimes it works that way."

  "But you never appreciate what you've got until it's gone, do you?"

  The captain shook his head. "No, you never do."

  Nordell took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Kirk seemed to be waiting for him to speak, but he had nothing to say.

  After a minute, the captain said, "Are you going to be all right? Should I call someone to be with you?"

  "No, I'll be fine." Nordell wasn't at all sure if that was true, but if it wasn't then he certainly didn't want someone else around to watch him go to pieces.

  "I…have to get to the bridge," Kirk said, glancing upward. Nordell realized the yellow-alert siren was still sounding. He had completely blanked it out the moment the captain entered.

  "I should be in engineering," he said, standing.

  "You don't have to go if you don't want to," Kirk said.

  "I want to." If he was at his job, then maybe he could keep his mind off the mess his life had suddenly become.

  Kirk nodded, obviously understanding. Nordell got up, steadied himself against the table, then accompanied him out the door, wondering if he would have the courage to come back later tonight.

  The turbolift ride to the bridge seemed to take forever, but Kirk knew no amount of time would erase the image of Nordell's face when he learned of his wife's death. He knew, as Nordell did, that only action would keep him from dwelling on it.

  There was plenty of that waiting for him on the bridge. Kirk took in the situation at a glance. Chekov had returned to the navigator's station while they were on the planet, and Scotty was manning the engineering station. Uhura and Spock were also at their posts, and everyone looked tense.

  "Captain," Sulu said as soon as Kirk stepped out of the turbolift. "We've just tracked a starship leaving the atmosphere."

  "Harry's ship?" Kirk asked.

  "I'm not sure. It doesn't have a registry beacon, and it doesn't correspond to any known starship type."

  Kirk rounded the railing separating the upper workstations from his command chair and looked over Sulu's shoulder at the situation monitor. The ship was a tiny wedge of silver against the blue-green planet. "Put it on screen," he said.

  On the main viewer the ship was bigger, but no more recognizable. But then Kirk hadn't expected the androids to build a Starfleet ship. "Any life-form readings?" he asked Spock.

  "None, Captain," Spock replied.

  "Keep tracking it. Uhura, have you reached the Grand General yet?"

  "Yes, sir," she replied. "He rejects our offer of assistance. He says… he says we've done enough damage already."

  "Maybe he's right," Kirk said, settling into his command chair. "What's the situation on the planet?"

  "Still fighting, sir," Sulu said. "There's still an awful lot of transporter activity going on between Distrel and Prastor, too."

  "Both ways?" Kirk asked.

  "Yes, sir. But so far very little fighting has broken out on Prastor."

  "At least none that we can detect at this range," Scotty amended. "I'm workin' on increasing the sensor range, but I think we'd be able to see disruptor fire if it was goin' on over there like it is here."

  "That's odd. I wonder why people are beaming over there if not to strike back."

  "We cannot be sure the beams are carrying passengers," Spock pointed out.

  Sulu checked his monitors again and said, "The starship is headed for Prastor as well."

  Something wasn't right here. Lots of transporter activity, but no fighting, and a starship suddenly launched on autopilot.

  "It's a bomb!" Kirk announced. "Spock, scan that ship for explosives. Or maybe just a triggering device for whatever they're beaming over."

  Spock went to work, but a moment later announced, "They're out of range, Captain."

  "Chekov, lay in a course to follow them. Sulu, warp factor two." That was plenty fast within a solar system; in fact if they kept it up for long they would overshoot and find themselves in interstellar space.

  The Enterprise leaped out of orbit, but the ship on the viewscreen continued to dwindle. "They've gone into warp as well," Sulu said.

  "Warp three," Kirk said. At that speed they would catch the ship in seconds—and flash past Prastor only seconds after that.

  But the other ship accelerated to warp three as well, then dropped back to normal space the moment it reached the planet.

  The Enterprise dropped into orbit only a few thousand kilometers behind. "Scanning," Spock said.

  "Somebody's beaming down," Scotty announced at the same time.

  There was no intercepting the beam. If that was a bomb…

  "Red alert," Kirk said. "Sulu, get ready to take us out of here. Chekov, target that ship and blow it out of space if it moves another inch closer to the planet. Spock, what beamed down?"

  "Materializing now, Captain. Scanning…" He paused, narrowed his eyebrows, and said, "It's an android."

  "The Stella android?" Kirk asked.

  "It appears to be."

  "Uh-oh," Kirk said. Thinking aloud, he said, "She's supposed to monitor Harry, and judging by her performance in the cellars she's programmed to protect him as well. But she couldn't find him when the battle broke out because we had left her behind with the Grand General. You don't suppose she's going to try to stop the whole war, do you?"

  "How could she do that?" Chekov asked.

  "I don't know, but I think we'd better stop her from trying. Spock, send those coordinates to transporter room one." Kirk punched the intercom call button on his armrest and said, "Transporter room, lock on to that android and beam her aboard. Inside a confinement field."

  "We are unable to do that," Spock announced. "She has entered a shielded area."

  "Dammit!" Kirk said. These two planets had more shields than a Roman legion. But he couldn't let the android run amok down there; if it thought Harry was in danger there was no telling what it would do. "All right, then, we'll do this the hard way. Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty, you come with me. Spock, you have the conn."

  He rose from his command chair and headed once more for the turbolift, wondering who he would lose this time.

  Chapter Ten

  CHEKOV HAD BEEN DRINKING when the yellow alert had sounded. Not heavily, but the events of the day had seemed to require some kind of finishing touch, and after watching two men hack away at each other with swords only a few feet away from him, a good stiff drink seemed the most appropriate response.

  Technically, since he was off duty and it was only a yellow alert, he was not required to respond. He nearly decided not to—he could feel the effect of the vodka—but he hadn't gotten to be chief navigator by shirking his duty over a technicality. Yellow alerts most often led to red alerts, and his place then was on the bridge unless he was totally incapacitated.

  Now as he left his station with the captain, Sulu, and Scotty, he wished he had hit the bottle a bit harder. Not so he would have been left behind, but to knock down the jitters he felt about this whole situation. Besides what he had seen for himself on the monitors, Sulu had given him that "Here we go again look," and Scotty had passed out extra power packs for their phasers; neither act exact
ly inspired confidence.

  Nor did the captain's words on the way down in the turbolift. "Remember, gentlemen, this is an android. Phasers will have little effect on it except at full force, and we can assume that it will defend itself if attacked. Our best bet is to try to reason with it; let it know that Mudd is already dead and that there's no point in continuing on with whatever it intends to do."

  "What if it already knows he's dead, and it came here for revenge?" Chekov asked.

  "Then we disable it," Kirk said.

  Chekov and Sulu exchanged another look. Right. Disable it. Simple.

  The captain wasted no time in the transporter room. The moment the turbolift delivered them to deck seven he strode across the hallway and in through the still-widening doorway, said to Ensign Vagle, "The same coordinates we just gave you," and took up his position on the platform. Chekov and the others hurried to take their places as well, and the moment they were on the grid he said, "Energize."

  They materialized in a crowded street paved with large flat stones. There were no vehicles in evidence, just red- and orange-clad Prastorians. There were plenty of them to fill the avenue, all pushing past one another and yelling to be heard over the din of their own voices and the loudspeakers on every corner that blared the message, "Citizens in squadrons twelve through nineteen, please report to your duty stations for battle assignments."

  Chekov was keenly aware of his own greenish yellow uniform. Wrong color here. Every Prastorian he saw—men and women alike—wore a disruptor pistol, and everyone who saw him reached instinctively for the weapon. They only relaxed when they realized he and the others weren't Distrellian.

  Chekov smelled sweat and fear, some of it his. He glanced uneasily around at the buildings. Not a palace in sight, which either meant that the Stella android wasn't going after the Padishah, or that the Padishah didn't live in a palace. Where the android had gone was harder to determine, but Scotty solved that by consulting his tricorder.

  "There," he said, pointing toward a long, low building across the wide street and down a few hundred feet. "Something with a fusion power pack just passed through here, at any rate, headin' that way."

  "That's got to be her," Kirk said. "Come on."

  "The building's shielded," said Scotty. "The shield extends right out into the street."

  Kirk nodded. "Understood. That's undoubtedly why she beamed down here instead of inside. But that may buy us the time we need to stop her." He led the way through the crush of Prastorians, who parted before them and closed up the gap again behind.

  It was nearly impossible to see far through the crowd. The Prastorians averaged a few inches taller than humans, and their stiff hair stuck up even higher. Sulu solved the problem by climbing up on an ornamental planter and peering over their heads. "There she is!" he called out, pointing off to the left of where they had been headed.

  He jumped back down and they moved off after their quarry, bumping their way along and calling out "Make way," and "Excuse me," and occasionally "Move!" when someone blocked their path.

  However, the Stella android was much more massive than her pursuers. She merely bowled aside anyone in her way until she reached the doorway in the long, blank wall of the building. They drew close to her while she tried to figure out how to open the door with the control panel on its face, but they were still yards away from her when she gave up with the controls and simply kicked down the door.

  A flood of disruptor fire erupted outward through the doorway, narrowly missing the android, which leaped backward. Prastorians screamed as some of their own people were hit, and they backed away, pushing the ones behind them back with them.

  The android, realizing her mistake, backed into the crowd as well.

  "Now," said Kirk, shoving past the few remaining Prastorians between them and grabbing the android by the arm. She spun around, ready to knock him away, but stopped when she saw who it was.

  She looked like she might finish the motion at any time. Chekov prepared to help subdue her if that proved necessary, but she decided to speak instead. "I don't care if you are the captain of a starship," she said in the shrewish screech that had previously been reserved only for Harry Mudd. "You'd better have a darned good reason for accosting a lady in the middle of the street like this."

  Chekov nearly laughed out loud. Stella, a lady? But he kept his opinion to himself.

  "Unfortunately, I do," said Kirk. "Whatever you're trying to accomplish here, just wait a minute. Harry's already dead, and you can't bring him back to life, so let's talk it over before you start an interplanetary incident here for nothing."

  "Harry is dead?" the android asked, her Stella voice and personality making even that seem like some terrible failing on his part.

  No more disruptor fire came from the doorway, but Kirk pulled her deeper into the crowd anyway. "I saw him die. We were ambushed in the palace on Distrel before we even made it to the Enterprise."

  "That…cannot…be." Her voice slowed and grew monotonous. Apparently all her computing power was going into changing her mental map of the situation.

  "It's true. We tried our best to save him, but he'd been hit too many times. He's dead."

  One of the Prastorian women nearby had overheard him. "You were in the Distrellian royal palace just now?"

  "Yes, I was," Kirk said brusquely. "And I lost a good friend there because of this ridiculous war of yours."

  "That's unfortunate," the man next to her said, not sounding very sincere. "But think of the tales you'll have to tell each other when you're reunited in Arnhall."

  "Yeah, right," Chekov said, sarcasm oozing from his voice.

  "Ah, a skeptic." The Prastorian man turned to look at him more closely. "I have always wanted to meet one." He smiled wide while reaching to his waist, and his expression distracted Chekov just long enough that he didn't see the disruptor until the Prastorian had fired it at him, point blank, right into his chest.

  It hurt like hell, but just for an instant.

  Sulu had been watching the Stella android, which seemed to have seized up at the news of Mudd's death, when he heard the snarl of unleashed energy and Chekov's scream. Chekov fell to the paving stones, his chest smoking from the fist-sized hole blown into it. He had the most surprised expression on his face that Sulu had ever seen.

  Sulu reacted without conscious thought. Some part of him must have known he couldn't draw his own weapon and fire quickly enough, so he chopped downward with his right hand and knocked the disruptor pistol from the Prastorian's grip, then grabbed that same arm with his left hand and spun the man around, bringing the arm up behind his back until it nearly touched the back of his head.

  "Ow!" the man shouted. "What did you do that for? Let me go!"

  Sulu didn't trust himself to speak. He grabbed the man's free arm and pinned that one behind his back too. Holding both arms in one hand, he pulled himself close to the Prastorian to use him as a shield in case the others tried to shoot.

  They didn't seem inclined to do so. Most of them simply stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. A few even laughed.

  "You—" Sulu tried to speak, but his tongue got all tangled up in his mouth. "You—" he tried again. "You killed Chekov!"

  Indignantly, the man said, "Well, yes, but it was a practical joke, nothing more."

  "A practical joke!" Sulu screamed. "I'll show you a practical joke." He yanked upward on the man's arm, but Kirk stopped him short of breaking it.

  "Don't," Kirk said, pushing down on Sulu's hand. Sulu didn't lower it, but he didn't push upward any higher.

  "But—but he—" Sulu couldn't say it again. Not Chekov! Killed in cold blood over some stupid mistake that he didn't even know he'd made, a mistake that Sulu still didn't understand, would probably never understand.

  Kirk was having trouble finding his voice as well, but he swallowed hard and said, "It's too late for him. Don't get the rest of us killed too."

  The man he was holding tried standing on his toes to relieve the
pressure on his arms. "Oh, come now. Surely you can't all be skeptics. I didn't think there were that many on the planet."

  "We're not from around here," Kirk snarled at him. "In case you hadn't noticed. Bring him along, Mr. Sulu. He can stand trial for murder on the ship. Mr. Scott, bring Chekov." He glared at the Prastorians who surrounded them, and slowly, deliberately, drew his phaser. "Now, let us pass and nobody else will get hurt."

  But the Prastorians merely laughed. The woman who had first spoken to them said, "Look, now, he was just making a point. Your friend is probably—"

  Whatever else she said was drowned out in a roar of voices and screams from across the street. The zzzt of disruptor fire carried through the screams, and someone nearby shouted, "Incoming!"

  The woman who had been arguing with Kirk turned without another word and ran off toward the commotion, drawing her disruptor as she ran. She didn't get twenty feet, though, before an energy beam caught her in the shoulder and she staggered backward and fell to the ground.

  "Distrellians!" someone else yelled, and through the gaps in the milling crowd Sulu could see people wearing dark blue uniforms pop into existence and begin firing their weapons at whoever stood in front of them.

  The Enterprise crew stood in the worst possible place. The blank white wall of the building behind them stretched away for a hundred feet in either direction, putting them on display like targets in a shooting gallery, and its energy shield extended out into the street, preventing beam-out. Their best hope of survival was to fight their way directly across, toward the attacking Distrellians, and get out from under the shield so the Enterprise could pull them to safety.

  Fortunately, that was the direction most of the Prastorians were going. Obviously welcoming their chance to die gloriously for the cause, they rushed ahead with disruptors blazing, shooting down the invaders the moment they appeared. Not without taking heavy casualties themselves, but that didn't slow them for a second. They attacked like wasps, more and more of them piling into the melee in a seemingly endless supply until their victims were hidden behind the crush of bodies.