"How long?" Dr. Rathbone asked.
Kirk shook his head, then rubbed sweat from his eyes. "They should come through the atmosphere in about five minutes. Maybe less."
Kor snapped his communicator back onto his belt.
"The attack comes," he said to Kirk.
Kirk nodded. "We need to warn the colonists to take cover. "
"I will do it," Kerdoch said. He turned and, with the other colonist who had been helping him dig, headed at a full run toward the domed structures of the colony.
"I will go to the western disrupter cannon," Kor said. Without another word he also turned and moved off, striding as if it were just another normal day instead of the day he would most likely die.
Kirk glanced around at the two bunkers they had built. Shallow holes in hard dirt. Nothing more. Against plasma-beam weapons, the bunkers would be useless. They at least needed covers.
Scanning the area quickly, Kirk saw what might work. The colony domes had been constructed of prefabricated panels about four feet wide by eight feet long. If they were light enough to be carried, they might do the trick.
"Quickly," he said, gesturing for his away team to follow him.
At a run he made his way to the edge of the colony and to a mostly destroyed housing dome. The body of a Klingon man, clearly dead, was pinned inside . Kirk hoped that the man wouldn't mind them using his home to survive.
With a quick yank he pulled one prefabricated panel free and studied it. About the size of a normal door and four inches thick, it weighed no more than twenty pounds. The panels were much lighter than they looked-a nice piece of Klingon design. They would never withstand a direct hit from any maj or weapon, but they would servej ust fine as heat shields.
He turned and handed the sheet to Rathbone . "Use this as a cover for the bunker-the one the Klingons dug."
She struggled with it for a moment, also clearly surprised at the panel's light weight. Then she picked it up, lifted it over her head, and moved off.
"Didn't know she was that strong," McCoy said, watching her go.
Kirk turned and, with Sulu's help, yanked another panel free and tossed it to the Doctor.
McCoy grabbed at it. "That explains it," he said as he easily picked it up and followed Rathbone .
Within another few seconds Kirk and Sulu had freed two more and were headed back to the bunker.
Rathbone had managed to get her panel across the top of the waist-high trench and was frantically pushing dirt over it to camouflage it.
McCoy was fitting his beside the first. Within another thirty frantic seconds they had the four panels covering the open bunker and enough dirt on top of them to make them look almost natural. The bunker was open on either end, but there wasn't enough time to do anything about that now.
Kirk took a deep breath of hot air and scanned the bright horizon. Through the heat waves, in the distance, low and just above the small foothills, he saw several bright cuts in the sky, as if someone had painted silver lines on the horizon.
Alien attack ships. They were just as Kordach had described.
"Take cover! " Kirk shouted.
With Dr. Rathbone and McCoy in the center and Sulu near the other open end, Kirk took his place, phaser in hand. He doubted there was much he could do with a phaser, but at the moment it felt good j ust holding it.
Chapter Seven
KERDOCH HEADED INTO the center of the colony at a full run, his hard steps kicking up the dust between the domed colony homes. "Take cover," he shouted every few steps. "The enemy returns. "
His voice carried far ahead of his running pace and as each neighbor in turn heard his warning, they paused, then went into quick action.
Women and children scrambled for the cover of their prefabricated homes.
Husbands took up weapons and ran for the perimeter of the colony, ready to fight with anything they could find.
Kerdoch continued his mission, running and shouting his warning through the center of the colony until he reached his own home. His wife stood outside, obviously having heard his call. She now waited for him. His children were already inside, out of sight. He knew , however, that his oldest son stood guard just inside the door and would hear him.
He stopped in front of his wife and took her shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. Her muscles were firm under his grasp and for an instant he never wanted to let her go. Then he took a deep, hot breath and said, "Get yourself and the children as far under cover inside as you can. There are many ships coming."
"You go to the guns?" she asked.
"I will fight," he said. "In any fashion I can."
She nodded. "I will guard the children and our home. Fight well, my husband. "
"We shall not let these cowards take our land," Kerdoch said. And inside he felt it. Deeper than he'd ever felt anything before. And with more anger and force than he had ever felt.
He still worried about his wife and his children, but he did not fear for his own life. If he died fighting on this hot afternoon, he would have died well.
He squeezed his wife's shoulders with both hands one more time, then turned and at a full run headed for the fight.
But he was too late.
The first wave of ships flashed over the colony before he'd run another hundred steps, their flat hulls gleaming like mirrors in the light of the two suns.
They were firing as they went, the same wide beams as before.
Kerdoch instinctively ducked and covered his head with his arm, but this time he didn't make it to the ground. The explosions and concussion wave from their high speed knocked him backward, picking him up and tossing him into the air like a leaf in a very hot, very strong wind.
The last thing he remembered as he was thrown into the remains of a dome was being angry that he had not reached his place on the big gun.
Very angry.
Then his head hit something hard as he crashed through the dome, and the blackness took him.
Kor could see the gleaming cuts in the sky headed his way-at least ten small ships flying in a tight wedge. Good. A tight formation was the flight of idiots. It would increase the chances of a hit from the big gun.
He stood behind a chest-high earthen wall that had been quickly erected to help protect one of the colony's large disrupter cannons. Beside him were six colonists, hand weapons aimed at the coming ships as if they might bring down a ship with one. Kor acknowledged their courage. They were true Klingons. The Federation man also stood in the bunker beside him, phaser in hand. He too had courage.
Behind Kor the cannon stood no more than a man high on a thick concrete platform. One of his men and one colonist grasped the gun. It would take both of them to track and fire at the small fast-moving ships. The disrupter cannon had been designed to defend against attacks from the air. It was not extremely accurate, but the force was powerful enough to knock almost any craft from the sky.
"At my command," Kor said to those on the gun base, as across the hot surface of the planet the ships became more distinct. Then, quicker than Kor had time to react, the ships were on and over them, a fast wave of shining metal firing wide-focus plasma beams. He had been caught by surprise before , but never like that. The ships' speed was at least ten times what he had been expecting.
The impact of the plasma beams and the shock waves of the passing ships caught Kor as he instinctively turned away, smashing him down into the dirt at the base of the big gun. In all his years he had never felt such a force, like a giant's fist pounding him square in the back.
But soon the giant stopped pounding.
Kor fought his way back to his feet. An extra sensation of heat covered his right arm and shoulder, and it took him a moment to realize his uniform jacket was on fire.
In one quick motion he stripped off the jacket and tossed it aside in disgust, leaving only his shirt on. Beside him the colonists behind the earthen burn were shedding their shirts andjackets or rolling on the ground to smother the flames. The federation crewman lay
in the bottom of the bunker, a nasty gash across his forehead.
Kor glanced around. The first wave of attack craft already beyond the colony and out of range of the big gun. He cussed at them. If they returned, he would be ready.
His officer and the colonist who had manned the gun were lying together in a burning heap about twenty feet from the gun. They had been standing in the open, and the full force of the plasma beam had caught them. Kor knew he had been lucky to be behind the earthen burn. The barrier had most likely saved his life and that of the other colonists.
He glanced quickly around. In the distance a second wave of craft dropped down out of the sky and became shimmery slits in the sky headed for the colony.
He started to stand his ground, then thought better of it. There was a time to face an enemy and a time to duck an enemy's blows. This was a time to duck, so that he could throw a blow of his own later.
"Get down ! " he shouted to the colonists. "Now! "
He barely had time to drop to his stomach and cover his head as the second attack wave struck.
This time the heat and the force of the ships' passing smashed him flat into the dry ground, knocking the wind from him. But that blow j ust served to make him angrier.
The moment the force let up, Kor j umped back to his feet. No other wave of ships seemed to be forming, so he turned to follow the last wave as they burned more crops and then climbed into the sky, disappearing into the distance.
Slowly the intense rumble of their passing faded, leaving only the crackling of fires and the cries for help from the wounded. Behind him the colonists staggered to their feet, patting out random flames on each other's clothes.
Kor stared at the destruction throughout the colony. Everything seemed to be burning. He stepped up on the platform base to see if the big gun still functioned. A quick check showed that it was operable. But before the next attack they would need to protect it better.
Suddenly a faint rumbling sound spun him around.
Gleaming slits in the low sky filled the horizon.
"Kor! " one of the colonists shouted. "Get down! "
He dove for the protection of the bunker, but for the second time that day Kor was caught by surprise.
The impact twisted him through the air. He landed hard and rolled, pushed along by the force of impact wave from the ships.
Part of his warrior brain said that rolling was the right thing to do. Rolling would put out the flames on his clothes. The other part of his mind said he should stand and fight.
The instant the shock wave let go of him he rolled up and onto his feet, balanced to fight.
Everything around him spun, and a sharp, biting pain cut through his chest.
"You will pay," he said to the swirling images of the departing ships.
Then the blackness swirled in from all sides, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Or his fall toward the ground.
Nothing.
Kirk had thought the day hot before. Now it had suddenly turned into a roaring inferno as the alien craft sped by over the covered bunker. He'd seen them as small cuts against the sky forming a wedge low on the horizon. He'd counted ten of them. If Spock's count was correct, and it usually was, that left at least ten more to form a second attack force. He wondered where they were and exactly what they were attacking.
Almost before he could get his head back under the cover the ships were over and past.
The ground shook like an earthquake , and heat washed through the open-ended bunker like a blast of fire.
McCoy shouted over the rumbling, "Cover your eyes! "
But Kirk already had his arm over his face , protecting himself. He hoped Rathbone beside him had done the same thing, because he could feel the burning against his forehead and scalp. If they survived this, they would have very strange-looking sunburns .
Then as suddenly as the intense heat and loud rumbling had hit them, it was gone, leaving somewhat cooler air swirling into their small shelter.
And quiet. Ear-ringing quiet.
Sulu and Rathbone instantly began coughing, but both indicated to McCoy that they were all right. They'd just swallowed some of the hot air, and their lungs were reacting.
"Stay under cover," Kirk said, then stuck his head out and did a quick scan of the surrounding area. The alien force was obviously using the wide-focus plasma weapons again, since j ust about every building was left standing, but everything that could burn was afire.
Luckily the Klingons had made the prefabricated sheets for their domes fireproof. Otherwise there would have been nothing left standing and no one left alive, including them. "If I live through this, I'll write a note of thanks to the Klingon who invented these panels," he said to himself.
He eased himself out of the bunker to check the direction the ships had gone. They were already out of sight. Kirk scanned the horizon, looking for them.
Nothing but burning buildings and fields almost as far as the eye could see. It wasn't until he'd turned back in the direction from which the first wave of
ships had come that he saw the second wave dropping
down toward the horizon to make a run at the colony.
"That explains where the other half of the ships went," he said to himself. "Right here.
"Cover yourself! " he shouted to the others as he dived back under the prefabricated panels that served as a cover for their bunker.
He hit the dirt, face down beside Rathbone, as the ground shook and the second blast of heat smashed into them. Kirk was amazed his clothing didn't just burst into flames. He'd felt that level of heat before, but only when opening an oven to remove a freshly roasted real turkey. And that had been years ago, back when he still had time to cook, and a kitchen to cook in.
Then, again as quickly as they had come, the ships and the intense blast of heat were past, leaving swirling dust and smoke in their wake.
Kirk sat up, his face instantly dripping wet, his clothes sticking to every inch of his skin. Beside him Rathbone also sat up and leaned back against the dirt wall. Her face was streaked black with grime and sweat, and her brown hair was plastered to her head.
"Not my kind ofsauna," McCoy said, trying to pull his shirt away from his skin.
"You mean you get this hot on purpose?" Sulu said.
McCoy only snorted.
"We're going to need water, Bones," Kirk said. "How much do we have?"
"Not enough for this kind of heat," McCoy said. "But whatever you have, everyone, drink it now. Doctor's orders."
Kirk and Bones didn't have canteens, but both Sulu and Rathbone each had carried one. The four ofthem split the contents of the two canteens, while staying under the cover of the bunker.
As they were finishing Rathbone said, "Do you think the attack is over?"
Kirk had been wondering the same thing. It didn't make sense to end the attack withj ust two runs at the colony. Unless that was all the firepower the small ships could carry. But plasma weapons didn't take up that much room, so Kirk doubted that was the case. If Spock were here, he'd tell them exactly what the odds were for another attack.
Suddenly the ground around them shook, and they barely had time to cover their faces before the intense heat hit them again, this time smashing them into one another, since they weren't braced. Kirk found himself being pushed over Rathbone , his head ending up on McCoy's back.
After the attack eased, Kirk pushed himself up and away from Rathbone. "I think that was your answer. Everyone all right?"
"I was hoping for a different one," she said. She pushed some wet hair out of her face. "I'm fine, I think. "
"What kind of ships were those?" McCoy asked.
"I have no idea," Sulu said. He pulled out his tricorder and assessed the area around them. "Those aren't standard plasma weapons, either. They've been modified somehow. "
Kirk gazed at his crew. He was proud ofthem. They instantly returned to business. Rathbone looked shaken, but she was fine as well.
&nbs
p; They had never faced anything quite like this before. No wonder the Klingons had been upset. No wonder they had tried to figure out what was happening, and no wonder they had blamed the Federation at first. These attacks were deliberately aimed at the colony, as if someone did not want the colony on the planet.
"Dr. Rathbone," Kirk said. "Signi Beta was uninhabited when the Federation planned the settlement, am I right?"
"Of course," she gasped, as if her lungs still hadn't recovered from the searing heat. "We'd never colonize a settled planet."
"I doubt the Klingons would either, Jim," McCoy said. "They might have conquered it, but they wouldn't have colonized it. "
Kirk gazed up at the now empty sky. "Those attacks were meant for the colony. Who would attack farmers? And why?"
"Who knows?" McCoy said. He was checking the people around him, making certain they weren't
seriously inj ured. "Maybe we should find out who the
Klingons have angered lately and who would like to attack them," McCoy said.
"Destroying a food supply is the best way to get to
the heart of a culture, " Rathbone said.
Kirk looked at her. She was right. He had no data points besides this one. For all he knew, Klingon farming communities all over the sector could be
under attack. He shivered despite the heat.
"Well," he said, "they gave us a small reprieve. Let's see what we can do with it. "
He knew the ships would be back. They seemed to
use a concentrated attack formation, and they had a
scorched-earth policy-something he'd studied at the Academy, something Earth hadn't seen since the
twentieth century.
Barbaric.
And dangerous.
And effective.
It destroyed the defenders' ability to mount an attack, and destroyed morale by inj uring home, hearth, and kin.
Kirk wiped his hand over his brow. He was sweating profusely. He wasn't used to the heat, and neither were his companions. Their water was gone.
And the attacks weren't over.
This was going to be a very long and very hot afternoon, and if they didn't get water soon, it would be their last.
Day of Honor - Treaty's Law Page 6
