by Diane Carey
“How’d he get over there!” Troy rasped from the deck. “He was—coming from the—other direction—”
“Kirk decoyed them with the shuttle cluster. In tight formation, the shuttles read as a single vehicle while Enterprise did an end run around them at higher warp. Pretty good . . . the Orions thought they were turning to face the starship, and ended up putting their weakest shields and thrust assemblies square into his sights. Nice move . . . he completely faked them out.”
They fell to silence, watching in disbelief as the starship cut into the remaining two Orions. Mercilessly it cut the hull apart on the next closest slaver until the Orion attempted to veer off, but instead blew itself to a sparkle.
Unceremoniously the Enterprise turned on the third remaining Orion, while in the background the first two, who had netted the Impeller, raced out of the area, abandoning their last compatriot to the starship’s unsympathetic punishment.
Michael slid to his knees beside Troy, with Sylvie shuddering over them.
“Did it,” he murmured. “He did it. . . .”
They watched in numb relief as the Enterprise bore down like a rogue elephant on the single suffering Orion Plunderer and simply chewed it to pieces. The sight seemed brutal, and gave Michael Kilvennan a sense of viciousness in James Kirk that legend had somehow cleaned up with time. He thought of his family as he watched the last Orion ship being cut up by the starship’s unbroken phaser stream. He thought of his wife and his little kids, his sister, parents, and gentle-hearted brother Quinn dragged off some incalculable distance and put in chains for the rest of their lives.
He watched those phasers, and was gladdened.
“Captain Kirk,” he murmured, “I’ll follow you anywhere.”
The buzz of transporter beams sang like a choir through the main deck of the Hunter’s Moon. Ten minutes had passed since the destruction of the last Orion and the escape of the other two. Jim Kirk materialized onto a heap of wreckage that had once been the privateer’s main companionway.
The area was secure. Hovering nearby, the crippled Yukon and the sorely battered Impeller were flooded with damage-control teams and security squadrons from the nine shuttles that had provided Kirk’s distraction maneuver. He knew what Impeller would do—whatever he ordered them to do. He needed to know what the colonists were intending. The best barometer for that answer was right here on this privateer ship—its captain, Michael Kilvennan.
With one hand on his holstered phaser, just in case of surprises, Kirk picked his way through the wreckage to the upper casement and climbed to the quarterdeck. There he found Michael Kilvennan leaning on a support column, picking at the fried helm controls, alone. Probably he had sent his crew down to their microscopic idea of a sickbay.
Ragged, dirty, and injured, Kilvennan looked up and met Kirk with undisguised relief. “Made it,” he commented. He slumped back against the helm. “Didn’t think you were getting the signal.”
“We got it,” Kirk assured unnecessarily. “So they were Orions after all.”
Exhausted, Kilvennan managed a nod. “Slavers. How’d you know?”
Not willing to take much credit for that one, Kirk let out a sigh that had been waiting about three weeks to come out. “Just an educated hunch. Are you hurt badly?”
Valiantly trying to stand a little straighter, which didn’t work, Kilvennan coughed out the last gulp of smoke and pressed an arm to his middle. “Broken ribs . . . glad to see you.”
Offering a mellow grin, Kirk let him know tacitly that he understood all the emotions involved in fighting to near-destruction and pulling a last-minute rabbit out of a hat. “I’m glad to see you too. What’s the status on board?”
“Nine dead, about twenty hurt. Lost one of my family’s best friends . . . Tom Coates.” Kilvennan slumped at the sullen announcement, as if the hard facts were just now sinking in and he could be something other than a captain. “How’m I gonna tell Lilian and Reynold?”
“I remember him,” Kirk obliged. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Coates if you like.”
Kilvennan let his head hang. “It’s mine to do. His son’s only ten. When I get my hands on Billy Maidenshore, his name and about five body parts’ll be a lot shorter.”
Awkward and inadequate to do the emotional cleanup after throwing his thunderbolts, Kirk let a few seconds pass in respect for the many dead and their family and friends who would endure the rest of the voyage without them.
“If there’s anything I can do,” he attempted, “you deserve all our gratitude.”
“Worried about my first mate,” Kilvennan wheezed. “Got some bad electrical burns. You were right about Impeller. The Orions concentrated—their attack on the cutter . . . gave me the chance to notify you.”
“The Orions would’ve been monitoring the cutter’s signals,” Kirk confirmed. “I didn’t think they’d pay attention to yours.”
“Impeller took the—brunt. Gotta give them—credit . . . sorry—hard to breathe.” Though Kilvennan tried to continue his report, a spasm of coughing demolished his attempt.
“You’d better sit down.” With gentle force Kirk took Kilvennan’s arm and piloted him into a locker bench. Then he pulled out his communicator. “With your permission, we’ll move your mate to the sickbay on Enterprise and bring a medical team over here for your crew. Relax, and excuse me a moment. Kirk to Impeller.”
There was a brief crackle of damaged circuits, then an almost immediate response. “Impeller, Merkling here. Captain Kirk, I wonder if I have to tell you how welcome you are. You must’ve pushed the Enterprise into another record with that maneuver.” Merkling’s voice was strained and breath came hard, but to his credit he was trying to cover that up.
Kirk tried to keep his empathy from showing in his voice. “We’re just the cleanup crew, Captain Merkling. You comported yourselves with exceptional bravery. I’ll be forwarding commendations for your entire complement.”
“Whoever piloted those shuttles, I want to shake their hands.”
“Her hand. It was Lieutenant Commander Uhura in the lead shuttle, maneuvering the other shuttles by remote autopilot, in case the whole ruse went wrong. What are your casualties?”
“I’m still counting. At least twenty-nine dead, over sixty injuries. Relatively light, considering what hit us, grim as that is to say. My bridge is a wreck. Mr. Chekov took over at auxiliary control.”
“How did he do there?”
“Oh, he did some things I wouldn’t have done, but I’m not complaining. He’s got a command style no magic mirror could predict. Managed to disable two of the Orions even though we could hardly move. That’s why we’re here to tell it. When’re you gonna push that maverick out of your nest?”
“I’ll take that as a recommendation,” Kirk accepted. “Can you make warp speed?”
“Yes, our core’s intact.”
“Four?”
“Possibly five, with some strain.”
“Then you can report back to Federation space from here. Make Starbase nineteen within—ten weeks?”
“Ten weeks at warp four point five. We’ve already calculated it. I agree that’s the best course for us. It leaves you shorthanded, though.”
Kirk winced a little at the brave offer. “No, no, Dan, you’ve done more than your part. We’re covered. Captain Briggs of the Tugantine Norfolk Rebel and his Wreckmasters are on their way here. We anticipated having to do some towing and repair. Impeller was going to turn back once we reached the lightship anyway. You might as well go now. Get your ship and your crew back to the help they need. You have my authorization to break off duty on the Expedition. In fact, I need you to go back and report the Orions’ activities in case they decide to try this with anyone else. This is the first time they’ve worked with a human operative. Usually they don’t let anybody in.”
“I guess Billy Maidenshore’s offer was too tasty to turn down. You’ve got your hands full with the Conestoga. They’ve got sixty-two dead over there. Civilians . . . it’s hard t
o predict how they’ll take something like that.”
“They’re pioneers,” Kirk suggested. He met Kilvennan’s sad eyes, though still speaking to Merkling. “The wagon trains that crossed the continental United States in the Old West averaged a grave every eighty yards. It’s a hard lesson to learn so far from home.”
“Yes . . . Merkling out.”
Belting his communicator, Kirk still heard the conversation continue in his mind, captain to captain, misery to misery. “We’ll have to make some quick repairs,” he contemplated, “get those energy webs off your hulls and get all of you back to the Expedition.”
“We’ll be weeks catching up,” Kilvennan sighed, then winced. “I assume they’re not waiting for us.”
Kirk shook his head. “I sent them on their way, with Beowulf and Republic as a rearguard, in case the Orions got aggressive. We’ll repair your ships and catch up by the time they reach the lightship Hatteras.”
“Mmm . . . going from the prairie into the jungle. Gamma Night.”
“Yes, Gamma Night.”
Kilvennan peered at him candidly. “You guessed right every step. The shadows were hostiles after all. They just looked like shadows.”
Somehow taking a compliment at this time twisted Kirk’s stomach. “Mr. Spock and Commander Uhura deserve the credit. They found the shadows beyond the sensor horizon and interpreted them.”
“If they were beyond the horizon, how’d you know they were there at all?”
“ ‘Beyond the horizon’ takes on a certain elasticity when Spock and Uhura get to work.”
“Hmm . . . but the traces could’ve been completely benign. Innocent ships on their own passage. What made you suspect?”
“Just my own despicable streak. If they’d been ships passing through, they’d have made better forward progress.”
“How did you know Billy Maidenshore was the one to watch?”
“Until he orchestrated the Yukon’s turn back, I wasn’t sure. When he suddenly changed his mind and decided turning back was the thing to do, everything clicked into place. And something else . . . as soon as you left, the rash of malfunctions completely stopped.”
“Must’ve made you happy.”
“It made me angry. I don’t like to be manipulated.”
“Doesn’t sound like ‘just a hunch’ when you lay it all out.”
“It was partly hunch, partly other things,” Kirk said. “Spock and Uhura deciphered the traces you were picking up. With your ship as a relay, we got much crisper shadows. Spock was able to apply spectral analysis to the exhaust and decipher the mixture as most probably Orion. Once we had the identity, we pretty much could guess what they were up to. And who put them up to it.”
With a scowl of resentment, Kilvennan pressed his lips tight with anger. “You were right about Maidenshore too. He was the broker.”
That sounded good somehow, to have the fact stated right out after stewing in suspicion for so many months. “Yes,” Kirk said, relieved. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t confirm it until after you left the Expedition. He went from brokering contraband to brokering slaves. A whole Conestoga full of them. Three thousand people, plus your crew and Impeller’s. Orions generally pick slaves from battle-survivors they can capture. It’s a relatively small pool. This would’ve been a monumental catch for them.”
“Kind of a prickly idea you had, y’know,” Kilvennan said with an ironic smile. “Using my family and all our friends as bait.”
Kirk offered an almost teasing scowl. “They were turning back anyway. We had to draw out the perpetrators, or we were headed for a catastrophe on a metropolitan scale. Maidenshore was right about nearly losing four thousand people on the Comanche. If he’d kept on doing his tricks, eventually I wouldn’t have been fast enough or clever enough to stop a disaster. All I could do was let his game play out as early as possible. Sometimes you have to walk into a blind canyon in order to find out what’s waiting there to jump you.”
“No, no—don’t get me wrong.” Kilvennan held up a scratched hand. “Not arguing.”
For a moment Kirk almost let the conversation flow into uneasy territory. He rarely had a chance to speak privately to another captain, and when that did happen it was usually captains of Starfleet. The code of social murmurings was different in uniform. It had limits. There were things left unsaid, images to maintain, the mirage of perfection to polish, and his own reputation usually chasing him. With older officers, he got either fatherly pride or tacit bitterness. With younger ones, either hero worship or jealousy. He’d learned to sense those, and field them, but they always curtailed the conversation. He couldn’t be completely honest. He had roles to play.
Here today, with Michael Kilvennan, a privateer who ran in other circles, the temptation pulled at Kirk to spill his thoughts, captain to captain, about the burdens they both understood, how the rungs on James Kirk’s ladder to glory were made of the bodies of those who hadn’t survived the assault. Pressing behind his lips was the deep compassionate blame every time someone thanked him, congratulated him, pinned another medal on him, of knowing more every year how many unlauded others had paid for his chance to stand on the podium one more time. With every passing year the glory became harder to swallow. What a joke that people thought he wanted more. They didn’t understand that with every triumph, as a hero progresses from win to win, luck to luck, medal to medal, the cost in lives and risks also increased. Glory could be a souring ingredient.
Maybe the mistake after all was for a man to have already done everything by the time he hit forty.
“How’s your ship?” he asked. “Did the strain of continually broadcasting your sensor scans back to us cause loss of firing power?”
“Some critical burnouts,” the privateer said. “Worth it, though. Without the burnouts we might’ve done better helping Impeller, but you wouldn’t have known to come. Lose some lives, save some lives—doesn’t always add up. Everything’s some kind of . . . tradeoff.”
Impressed by Kilvennan’s instincts, Kirk let himself believe the other captain knew what he was feeling and was giving him a gift. Perhaps they’d just had the conversation he needed so badly. Just had it inside instead of out.
He was rescued by the bleep of his communicator. “Battersey to Kirk.”
“Kirk here.”
“Captain, I’m sorry. I’m just not set up over here for maximum security.”
Kirk tensed. “What’s wrong, Captain?”
“Billy Maidenshore escaped with the Orions. He must’ve had a homing device on him somewhere. With our shields down, the Orions must’ve beamed him out of the locker. All we’ve got is transporter residue and some foreign traces of exchanged atmosphere. I’m real sorry, Captain Kirk. I know how you hate to lose, especially once you’ve won.”
“Yes . . . I hate to lose. Some people do manage to be evil and never pay the price. Every now and then, a Stalin dies in his bed or a corrupt president retires in glory. Some scoundrels are never held accountable. Put it in your report, Captain, and see to your ship.”
“I will. Yukon out.”
Kilvennan watched as Kirk lowered his communicator and indulged in a bitter frown. “Sorry . . . we just couldn’t cover all the bases, I guess.”
“Don’t apologize,” Kirk said. “We might never have seen any of these people alive again if you hadn’t agreed to be our eyes. If we’d arranged for Impeller to do the broadcasting, the Orions would’ve picked it up and waited until Enterprise had moved on.”
Kilvennan touched his bruised jaw. “Figures they’d monitor all the Starfleet frequencies. With me pretending to go along with Maidenshore, he didn’t tip them off to keep tabs on signals from Hunter’s Moon. It was a good plan. You had a sharp sense of what they wouldn’t expect to happen.”
“I appreciate your taking my orders,” Kirk told him sincerely. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Dark eyes shaded, long sweaty hair making him seem like a half-drowned pirate, Kilvennan accepted the words with
a companionable shrug.
“Told you before,” he reminded. “There’s not one man in a hundred thousand worth serving under.”
Chapter Sixteen
“STOP IT! Stop it! You people are idiots, strangling a valuable commodity! I’m still important to you!”
Billy Maidenshore felt the cold grip of death closing around his vision. The stale breath of his business partner curled his lips.
“How are you important?” Tu demanded. His claw still tightened around Maidenshore’s jaw. “I am down by three ships! I go back in shame! Instead of a wealth of human cargo, I have only you to sell!”
“You—won’t—be selling—anybody,” Maidenshore choked. “Your own—dealers’ll—kill you. Get your—pickers off me—and let me talk.”
Tu shuddered with pure rage at this unexpected failure. He had been tempted, then tricked. The cost was enormous. Battling every wisdom, he dropped Maidenshore to the deck. “Then talk.”
“Ugly savage.” Maidenshore rubbed his jaw. “What d’you take me for? This was my new mother lode. I’ve got a lot hanging on this. You think I’m finished just because you had to beam me out of there? You think I don’t have a backup plan?”
“Tell your plan.”
“Just a minute. Let me get the blood back into my face.”
And time to think. Not a clue.
Backup plan, backup plan . . . He hadn’t wanted to be beamed over here unless the Orions were winning, but Tu had homed in on him and snatched him out anyway. Here he was.
Possibility—stall, get enough time to disable this clunker, maybe ex-out all these plugs in their sleep? Gas them? Poison?
He looked around at Tu, at Ri, De, Mu, and the others on this one-room ship as they watched him. Exing them wouldn’t be all that tough. They weren’t so bright at anticipating somebody else’s moves, or he could’ve beamed in here with a phaser and they’d never have seen it coming. Once they relaxed, he could easily shed them all.
Then what? Drive himself all the way back to Federation space from way the flip out here? Months in space with Orion food?
