As the starship curved around to the other side of the asteroid, Spock announced, “Captain, I am now detecting a Fesarius pilot vessel.” He altered the viewer angle to display the small craft, a cluster of pale gold spheroids of various sizes. A beam of light burst from its leading spheroid and struck at one of the raiders. At least someone was trying to defend the Fesarius.
“Is it Balok?” Kirk wondered. “Uhura, hail the pilot vessel.”
“They’re hailing us, sir.”
“On screen.”
The face that appeared on the viewer was not the bald, childlike visage of Balok, but a familiar human face—a young, light-complexioned man with dark blond hair, narrow eyes, and a prominent chin. “Enterprise, this is David Bailey.”
“Yes, Mister Bailey, this is Kirk. We read you.”
“Captain, you’re just in time. The attackers are trying to board the Fesarius. The crew is trapped inside—the radiation out here is too intense for them to withstand in their pilot vessels. Only Balok was able to get away before the cubes had us completely surrounded. I’m big enough to withstand a larger dose, so I’ve been playing goalie out here, defending the hatch the best I can. But I’m close to my limit. And this thing’s only got a mining beam, not combat-level phasers.”
“Understood, Mister Bailey.” Kirk wasn’t sure whether it would be more appropriate to address him as Lieutenant or Ambassador. “You get back inside—we’ll take over tending your goal.”
“Negative, Captain. The Fesarius won’t be secure or mobile until the hatch is closed. If you run interference for me, I think I can tractor the damaged leaf back into alignment and seal the hatch. This thing’s a fortress when it’s closed up.”
Kirk considered it. The Bailey he remembered had been a hothead, favoring action over judgment. Was he being just as reckless now? Yet he was choosing a defensive action over an aggressive one, which was a change. And he knew the situation better than Kirk. So the captain chose to defer to his judgment. “Agreed. But as soon as your radiation tolerance reaches its limit, you’re to withdraw inside. Is that understood, Lieutenant?”
Bailey didn’t miss the significance of the title Kirk chose. With only a slight hitch in his voice, he replied, “Aye, sir.”
Sulu deftly maneuvered the Enterprise into position in front of the enormous, gaping hatch. Each of the large domes that dotted the Fesarius’s surface was big enough to hold the Enterprise inside it, and each leaf of the unfolded shell was covered in six of those domes, with three smaller domes at their points of intersection. Before the starship rotated to face the oncoming raiders, Kirk caught a glimpse of the gaping interior of the Fesarius, with a similar array of domes dotting the inner shell and a complex latticework surrounding a cluster of spherical reactors at the core. Kirk shuddered to think what would happen if the raiders managed to destroy one of those reactors. “Deflector shields to maximum extension,” Kirk ordered. “Don’t let anything get past us.”
Of course, the downside to taking up a stationary position was that it left the Enterprise vulnerable to the raiders’ tractor beams. But the Fesarius crew was not idle. Mining beams shot forth from emitters in the black, textured hull layer underneath the domes, firing through the gaps between them, and prevented the raiders from holding still long enough to get a lock on the Enterprise. Sulu, freed from the need to maneuver the ship, supplemented their efforts with phaser fire. The maneuverable raider ships were able to dodge the mining beams with ease, but they had less practice avoiding Sulu’s keen aim, and several of them were struck. Their own plasma bolts retaliated against the Enterprise, rocking the ship, but the shields held.
Before long, Spock reported that the raiders were attempting another strategy. “Several attacker ships have seized fragments of asteroidal matter in their tractor beams. They are accelerating them toward the Enterprise.”
“That’s how they jammed the hatch in the first place,” Bailey advised from his pilot vessel. “Those tractors pack quite a punch.”
“Sulu, divert those chunks,” Kirk ordered. “Mister Gabler, extra power to the shields.”
Sulu’s aim remained true. Rather than wasting energy attempting to blow apart the asteroid chunks, he struck them obliquely, vaporizing a portion and using the vapor pressure as thrust to angle the chunks off course. They struck only glancing blows against the shields and bounced away harmlessly.
“Mister Bailey has engaged his tractor beam,” Spock announced. He put the sensor feed on one of the auxiliary wall screens. While keeping an eye on the larger battle, Kirk watched as the lieutenant’s pilot vessel grabbed on to the misaligned hatch with an invisible force beam. The pilot vessel trembled and flickered as it heaved at the enormous hatch. Kirk hoped Bailey’s tractor beam was as potent as the one Balok had used to tow the Enterprise years before.
“Incoming,” Sulu warned. The raiders were proving the potency of their own tractor beams, hurling asteroidal debris from multiple directions, and even Sulu and the Fesarius crew together could not target them all. One chunk got through and struck a ringing blow against the deflectors, and the Enterprise heaved mightily.
“Eighteen percent deflector shield drain, Captain,” Gabler reported. “We can’t take many more of those.”
“We may not have to,” Spock announced. “Mister Bailey’s efforts appear to be efficacious.”
On the auxiliary screen, the enormous flap of the Fesarius’s hull was moving, shifting back into alignment on its massive hinges. Before long, it appeared to click into place, whereupon all six leaves began to close inward. “It’s done,” Bailey announced. “Heading in now. Captain, I suggest you bring the Enterprise inside after me.”
“Negative, Lieutenant. The Fesarius is still damaged. Once we’re free to move again, we can cover your retreat.”
A pause. “Acknowledged, sir.”
Three raider ships made a last-ditch attempt to dive toward the closing hatch. The crossfire from the Enterprise and the Fesarius forced them to veer off. After another few moments, the tips of the six hull wedges locked against one another, and one last dome unfolded from between its neighbors and locked into place over the center point. With the orbship now sealed up tightly, the raiders abruptly broke off the attack and fled, the more badly damaged ones being tractored by their fellows and towed into warp.
Bailey’s image appeared on the main viewer. “I appreciate your help, Captain,” the lieutenant said, sounding winded. “Since I’m the ambassador, I guess I’m entitled to thank you on behalf of the Fesarius crew. We could probably use your help with repairs, if you don’t mind.”
“We’d be glad to, Mister Bailey,” Kirk said. “And in exchange, I trust your First Federation friends can tell us something about who these raiders are and what their goal is.”
Bailey grimaced. “Honestly, Captain . . . I was hoping you could get some answers out of them. All I know is that a fairy tale seems to have come to life.”
Two
Spock was gratified to find that the crew of the Fesarius had modified its interior spaces with more headroom to accommodate Lieutenant Bailey. Thus, it was unnecessary for him, the captain, Doctor McCoy, or Mister Scott to crouch when passing through its doorways or corridors. There were also spaces within the orbship’s interior that were quite expansive, large interior domes landscaped as park areas under simulated skies or as arenas for sporting or recreational activities. A few observation domes provided impressive views of the expansive mineral extraction and processing facilities that filled most of the Fesarius’s interior, along with the cluster of large, pulsating reactor spheres at the heart, the power sources for the external field emitter domes that provided the ship’s propulsion and defenses. There was even a recreation room that could create tactile holographic simulations of planetary environments—though not of living beings, which was why the First Federation instead relied on robotic simulacra for that purpose. But for the mo
st part, the Fesarians seemed more comfortable in tight, enclosed environments.
All in all, the orbship’s interior was quite luxurious for a complement of ten Fesarians and one human. According to Bailey’s reports, the crew spent years aboard it at a time, and thus it needed to be a home for them as well as a ship. It also had the facilities to carry large numbers of passengers and cargo. Spock noted the anomaly of this, for it implied a sizeable population for the First Federation despite the evident dearth of inhabited planets within their territory.
Upon arrival, the party was greeted by a female Fesarian, as childlike and bald-headed as Balok and dressed in similar silver robes, but with less pronounced eyebrows. She introduced herself as Linar, and her role aboard ship seemed to be similar to that of an executive officer, though with a particular specialty in administrative and organizational functions. Two other officers, males named Choda and Almis, oversaw the engineering department and the scientific and medical department, respectively. Each of the three had two junior crewmembers sharing their specialty. The organizational structure reminded Spock of the geometry of the orbship’s surface domes, with each individual linked to three others, and with Balok as the center of the network, in overall charge of the entire orbship.
Linar seemed nervous and distracted when she greeted the Enterprise party, but she channeled her nervousness into giddy humor. “It is, yes, a pleasure to welcome you aboard our fine ship, Captain Kirk. Although I trust you have disarmed that fearsome corbomite device of yours!”
Kirk shared in her subsequent laugh, though rather less hysterically. “It’s fine—I left it in my other uniform.”
Linar somehow managed to laugh even harder. “Oh, Balok was right about you, Captain. He loves telling the story of your brazen corbomite bluff. To think—he was so proud of the trick he was playing on you, and then you turn around and trick him right back!” More laughter. “How did it go? An unstoppable weapon that would turn any destructive force back on any attacker? ‘Death has little meaning to us!’ ” She cackled. “Oh, Captain, he was rolling on the deck when he heard you say that! It took him two minutes to recover his composure.”
The captain smiled. “I’ll be sure to tell him how the ‘corbomite device’ came in handy against the Romulans a couple of years ago.” He paused. “Once we locate him, of course. I trust you can help us with that.”
Linar grew serious quickly. “I’m afraid it won’t be that easy. The attackers sent a ship after Balok when he fled, so it may take time for him to lose it, and he will maintain communications silence until then. And the Fesarius is in no condition to travel just yet, even with your gracious assistance. Normally we could repair the damage ourselves; we have more than enough maintenance drones aboard. But both of Choda’s junior engineers were hurt in the attack, and Choda’s stretched thin handling things by himself.”
“Lucky thing I’m here, then,” Commander Scott interposed. “If you could just show me where I can find Mister Choda, I’ll be glad to get my hands dirty.”
There was a slight catch in Linar’s voice as she replied. “All right, Mister Scott. But . . . don’t be surprised if he doesn’t warm up to you right away. We’re a proud people, and accepting help from outsiders is . . . still fairly new to us. Be patient.”
Scott smiled. “Ma’am, I’ve always found that, no matter where they’re from or how different they are, once you put two engineers together with a problem to solve, they’re family. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Excellently said, Mister Scott,” Linar exclaimed, clapping her tiny hands together.
“And if you could show me to your medical bay,” Doctor McCoy added, “I’ll see what help I can provide for your injured crew.”
Again, Linar hesitated slightly before agreeing. “Very well. I’ll escort you both. Mister Bailey, if you could show the captain and Mister Spock to the meeting chamber . . . ?”
Once Linar had led McCoy and Scott away, Bailey led Kirk and Spock down a narrow corridor. “This is tough for Linar,” he said with a hint of apology. “They’re a friendly enough people, really, but they’re very shy around strangers. Balok’s always been the most open-minded one, and without him . . . Well, Linar’s trying to fill his shoes, but it’s not easy.”
“I understand, Mister Bailey,” Kirk replied as the ambassador led them into the curtained alcove that served as a meeting room and directed them to cushions around a low table. “My main concern right now is to learn what they know about this species that Balok used as his scarecrow.”
Bailey grimaced. “Believe me, Captain, I’ve been trying to find out about them myself, but they just don’t want to talk about it. All I’ve been able to get out of them is that they’re some kind of bogeymen out of ancient legend, something they call the Dassik.”
“Dassik,” Kirk repeated. “At least we have something to call them other than scarecrows.”
“But they sounded pretty convinced that there were no Dassik. Laughed them off as something nobody would ever have to worry about in real life. They seemed pretty shaken when these Dassik turned up for real, but they refuse to tell me what’s going on.”
“Is it possible they don’t know?”
“I just can’t say, sir,” Bailey said. “I’ve been trying to get answers, believe me, Captain, but the more you push these people, the more defensive they get.” He sighed sharply, clenching his fists. “It’s ridiculous. They won’t even tell me the name of their home planet.”
“Their caution is understandable,” Spock pointed out, “given their inherent vulnerability.”
“That’s just it, Mister Spock. It’s not just Balok’s people. I’ve met some of the other First Federation member species. They aren’t all small and vulnerable. There’s this one, the Bogosrin—skilled engineers, but they’re built like bears with gazelle horns. And even they won’t say a word about their homeworld. Three years and change, and I don’t know where anyone in this federation actually lives, except the ones who live on ships and stations.” He thrust himself to his feet and began to pace.
“Relax, Mister Bailey,” Kirk said, keeping his tone gentle. “I knew this would be a challenging assignment when I offered it to you.”
“Challenging? Sir, it’s like chipping away at the Great Wall of China with a spoon.”
“Mister Bailey,” Kirk said, hardening his tone. “Commissioner Gopal is of the opinion that you’ve failed in your assignment as ambassador and should be replaced by someone better qualified to get answers. Are you saying you agree with her?”
Stunned to silence, Bailey stared at Kirk. “Do you, sir?” he finally asked.
“I’m asking you.”
Bailey straightened his spine and set his jaw. “No, sir. At least I have a relationship with Balok. He tries to convince the others to open up to me, at least in small ways. Anyone that Balok didn’t know or like wouldn’t even have that. They’d be starting from scratch.”
Kirk gave a small smile of approval. “All right, then, Lieutenant. It seems to me that what we need to do is to find Commander Balok.”
Bailey’s relieved expression was short-lived. “That could be easier said than done. Like Linar said, he was fleeing pursuit last I saw him. And his people are very good at hiding.”
* * *
Linar and her crew proved reticent to assist Kirk in searching for Balok, insisting that they could take care of their own. Kirk was not ready to accept that answer. On returning to the Enterprise, he ordered Lieutenant Uhura to send out hails to Balok’s pilot vessel, in hopes of letting him know that they were seeking him. Bailey added his voice to the hailing message to reassure Balok that the Fesarius and its crew were essentially intact.
Some hours later, Uhura picked up a reply. “It was only a single burst transmission, a tight beam aimed directly at us,” the lieutenant reported as Kirk, Spock, and Bailey clustered around her station.
“At us? Not the Fesarius?” the captain asked.
“That’s correct, sir. They wouldn’t have heard it at all. I’m amazed they have the technology to target subspace transmissions that precisely over such a distance.”
“It is logical,” Spock opined as he approached from his station, “that a civilization so concerned with self-concealment would master such a technique.”
“Should we pass it along?” a confused Bailey asked.
Kirk considered it. If Balok had seen fit to send the message solely to the Enterprise, maybe there was some reason he didn’t want his own crew to know about it. “That can wait, Lieutenant. For now, Uhura, what was the message?
“It was strange, sir. Only one spoken word, ‘Hide,’ and a set of nine numbers.” She handed Kirk a data slate inscribed with the digits.
“That’s it?” Bailey asked.
“Nine figures, none more than two digits,” Spock said. “Coordinates, perhaps?”
“It could be,” said the former navigator. “The First Federation uses an astronomical coordinate system based on Euler angles—three coordinates, each measured in a three-part system like our degrees, minutes, and seconds. It could be the course to the system where he’d be hiding.”
“Unwise,” Spock said, “if he was concerned with Dassik pursuit.”
“Still . . .” Kirk carried the slate down to the navigation station. “Mister Chekov, run these coordinates. Is there a star system on this bearing?”
Chekov calibrated the circular astrogator display beside his seat to handle First Federation coordinates and entered the figures into the dial, then examined the result. “Negative, sir. The nearest star on that bearing is twelve hundred parsecs away in the galactic halo.”
Bailey gave a bitter chuckle. “First Federation ships are fast, but not that fast.”
The Face of the Unknown Page 4
