Two weeks later the Enterprise slipped into orbit around the pale blue and brown planet of Triskelion. Chekov had managed to navigate them there based on incomplete data, broken readings and memory alone. A small part of him had hoped for an error. A hundred reprimands would be better than returning to Triskelion, he felt. It was with an unexplained sinking feeling that he had heard Kirk's command to join him, Uhura and a security team on the surface. Contact with the Providers had proved fruitless. The next logical step, Mr Spock had pointed out, was to beam down to the surface. He stood glumly on the transporter dias as Lieutenant Kyle prepared the controls before moving to a cabinet by the wall.
. "Standard issue tricorders, Captain?" he asked in his soft English baritone.
"Yes, thank you, Mr Kyle", replied Kirk, fixing his phaser onto his belt as stepped up next to where Chekov and Uhura were waiting.
Kyle dished out the tricorders from a storage shelf in the wall before moving back behind the control panel.
"I'm beaming you down to the co-ordinates you were picked up from last time, sir" called Kyle, his blond head bobbing down to adjust a setting on the front of the panel.
"Very good, Mr Kyle", responded the Captain. He looked round at Uhura, Chekov and the security team. "Ready?" he asked. He eye alighted on Chekov. He looked grey "Mr Chekov? Are you feeling alright?"
Uhura looked over at the navigator. He stood holding himself erect but tense. He looked pale and distant as he had in the meeting as few weeks previously. Stupid, stubborn boy, she thought to herself. Perhaps I should have ordered him to sickbay while I had the chance. Now the Captain had noticed that something wasn't quite right with him. Chekov forced out a brief nod in response to the captain before Kirk turned back to Kyle.
"Energise" he commanded.
Uhura lost herself briefly in the cool, tingling sensation of the golden transporter beam. Gradually the Enterprise began to dissolve and the planet below them began to take shape in its place. When their surroundings finally coalesced Uhura found herself back in the arena she had hoped never to have to see again. It was familiar and yet not so. The paved arena floor looked exactly as it had done a few months previously but the ruined walls that had surrounded it had been hastily built up and restored. The gates to the enclosure had been pulled off their giant hinges and lay abandoned on the floor. Beyond the rubble walls there was now a kind of open air structure made of giant stones. Almost like a henge, she thought. It was a symmetrical arrangement of stones with what looked like script carved onto them. The script continued onto the walls surrounding the arena. She readied her tri-corder. From a distance the writing looked like a mixture of various Federation languages, but she couldn't be certain.
The security team began to fan out. "Is that writing of some sorts, Lieutenant?" asked Kirk, gesturing to the carvings with his phaser, which he had readied in advance.
"Yes, I think so, sir. I'll start analysing," she replied, walking over to the closest stone on the far left.
"Judd, go with her," muttered Kirk to one of the guards. Although the scene was peaceful, something about it had all his senses on edge. He didn't want to take any chances. "Mr Chekov, Mr Elazari, have a look inside that structure beyond the walls and find out what you can. This place isn't as we left it... See if you can get any readings on the Providers, Ensign. They should be here..." Probably watching, he thought to himself.
Kirk moved off with the last of the guards to patrol the grounds. Chekov fought down a shiver and slowly followed Elazari out of the arena and into the henge beyond, avoiding Uhura's look as he walked past her. He knew she would be angry with him for not reporting his concerns about returning. But how could he report nothing? The hot sun overhead made the air shimmer in the stillness, making the henge feel strangely claustrophobic. He watched Elazari's back as he strode ahead of him, his broad, muscular shoulders testament to the hours he put in the gym. I've been given the short straw with him, Chekov thought gloomily. He was known to be a bully to junior officers and resented anyone cleverer than himself – which was unfortunate in his case as studies were obviously not his forte. Still, Chekov told himself, he was good in a fight and would lay down his life for anyone of the crew, even a lowly ensign like himself. Chekov turned his attention to his tricorder. He had been given a job to do too and he had to concentrate on it, even if the place gave him the creeps and he had to endure Elazari for a short while. Elazari did not disappoint.
"So how come a navigator gets to go on away missions, Ensign?" Elazari's voice, tinged with vague annoyance, cut through the still, thick air. He pronounced the word 'ensign' with an obvious curl of his lip. He had to point out his junior rank, Chekov noted. "I'd have thought on an away mission like this the captain would only need security. It's not like we're going to need a walking map."
Chekov looked up from his readings and pursed his lips. It seemed to him that it was every security guard's mission to goad him. He wanted to reply that he wasn't a walking map and that there was more to navigating a starship than just following a route planner. The security lieutenant was prowling around the outer edge, his impenetrable black eyes scanning into the dense undergrowth around them. Chekov wasn't sure where the question was leading.
"The captain told me to come. I don't question his orders, sir," he said neutrally, feeling the urge to peer into the perimeter with him.
"And you've become Mr Spock's new apprentice I hear." He stopped and turned back into the outer circle, dropping his phaser down to his side. "You're becoming quite the celebrity on board."
Chekov watched him lean against one of the stones, uncertain how to reply and knowing it was only jealousy that motivated him.
"The crew likes to gossip. Mr Spock asked me to work with him in the Sciences. It's part of my general training as an ensign, sir."
He didn't tell him that Spock had asked him because he knew that he had excelled at all the cosmological sciences at the Academy and that he thought he could see potential in him to become a First Officer. He didn't think that kind of a response would go down too well. Elazari obviously wasn't listening though He looked over his shoulder and surveyed every leaf and twig behind him.
"Well, I'm not so sure I'd be trusting the navigation of ship in the hands of a teenager," muttered Elazari.
"I'm not a teenager, sir. I'm twenty three," replied Chekov, finally feeling insulted.
His tricorder gave an urgent beep. He turned his attention to it with a certain relief at gettong away from Elazari. He set off past the outer stone circle and through into an inner ring, his head bent over the readings. He thought he had seen a fleeting sign of a transporter signal. Elazari looked at him in concern, leaning over his shoulder to try to see what he was looking at. Suddenly a rustle in the tall, brown, dead undergrowth to his right at the edge of the circle made his head snap up. Elazari had heard it too. He looked back over his shoulder to where he thought the noise had come from, peering through the stones, whipping his phaser up to the ready. Chekov strained his eyes but he couldn't see anything. Probably an animal, he reasoned, trying to calm his screaming nerves. Elazari pushed him to one side, moving off to where the noise had come from before disappearing out of the circle and into the undergrowth. Chekov turned back and continued to look around him, nervously eyeing the stones. Here in the middle was a large flat plinth stained a dull green, blue and reddish brown. The rough surface was level with his hips and seemed to have been fashioned by hand and had been cut very crudely, as if in a hurry. He walked up to it and adjusted his tricorder. Was it an altar, perhaps? The tricorder beeped out its analysis results onto the screen. The stains were of three types of blood and had been laid down recently, over the past two months. At least two were humanoid types – Centauran and Procyon in origin. But there was something under the altar. It seemed to be an energy source. Could this be the transporter signal he had seen? He put his hand out to touch the rough chipped stone.
"Sacriledge!" An barely audible vicious hiss cut through the sultry afternoon air from beyond the inner ring of stones. Chekov snatched his had away as if burnt and spun round, looking intently to where the sound had come from, his ears straining.
"Elazari?" he called out for the guard. There was no reply. Only silence. Something wasn't right. Where was Elazari? He had to get back to the others. He suddenly became aware of someone emerging from behind the larger stones behind and to the sides. Three or four large figures, he wasn't sure. He made to run as the men rushed towards him but they were fast and strong. Chekov didn't even make it as far as the outer circle before one of the aliens caught him by his legs and brought him crashing down to the ground. His head impacted with the ground, cutting his cheekbone on a rock and leaving him winded, weak and disoriented. In an instant the others were upon him, pinning him down to the dusty earth, crushing his mouth into the dirt, before hauling him with dizzying swiftness to his feet, one of them clamping a large, foul smelling hand over his mouth before he had even had a chance to cry out. He was held fast.
"Kill him!" a man with a thick mane of white hair and ochre skin rasped at his side with an insane smile. "He has defiled the temple!"
The man holding him ignored the exhortation. "That's for the Provider to decide," growled his captor. He put his mouth to Chekov's ear. "One word from you, Navigator, and your crewmates die." A fleeting thought entered his mind: how did they know he was a navigator? But the icy determination of the voice pushed this aside as temporarily irrelevant and compelled him look though the circles and back into the arena. To either side on the walls he could see humanoids of various species lying in wait, watching Kirk and the others as they moved about. The aliens moved silently out of the way of the guards, remaining unseen and undetected. He froze and swallowed hard, hoping his obvious sign of submission would ally any thoughts of attack on the landing party. In response, he suddenly felt himself being hoisted up by his arms and being dragged back towards the altar. The blow to his head had left him too weak to struggle and his legs gave way under him. He felt sick and hopeless as he was thrown on his back onto the rough surface of the stone. The noon sun above burnt his eyes. He wanted to throw his arms across his face but he found them to be held down by his captors. He expected the slab to be cold but was dimly aware that it was warm, tingling and vibrated slightly through him. An animal fear ran through him at the thought of the blood on the stone beneath him. He didn't want his to be the next to be added. He had to get away. A surge of adrenaline and panic tore at his throat. He tried to struggle free from the hands that held him down but they were too strong. He tried to call out but only a groan escaped his lips. Suddenly the tingling feeling he felt through the stone became stronger. It flooded through him, unpicking every molecule. A transporter, he thought, before he passed out.
