Chapter Eighteen
"Take us into standard formation, Lieutenant," James T. Kirk said quietly, every muscle in his back like a tightly strung instrument, as they seemed to drift into perfect position along with the other three black starships at point-five of impulse power. Beautiful Rigel III turned gently below, in the distance.
"Entering standard formation," Lt. Rhada nodded. She blinked as if a tiny droplet of sweat had got into the corner of one eye, as she worked just ahead of him at the helm. The forward lips of the other vessels spread out before him like great black balconies curving out on a starry night over R-3.
He compared the situation on board his ship, with that of the Ticonderoga—Spock was trying to keep up the fiction of "keeper control" here. And on board Captain Safeer's vessel, they'd stunned their keeper, and (probably) just thrown it into the brig.
"Signal Ticonderoga," he said, half turning to Lt. Palmer at communications. "Coded transmission, private channel: Enterprise sends its regards. Suggest you put your newest captive… in a semi-conscious state, to avoid suspicion among the telepaths." But how they could ever manage this without practiced telepaths of their own on board, to maintain control, was anyone's guess. He wasn't even sure Spock and Vina could manage it, even with Dr. McCoy manipulating "their" keeper's brainwaves, and with an unusually agreeable Klingon standing by to distract any human who might be overwhelmed next.
"Ticonderoga confirms receipt," Palmer nodded, turning briefly toward the center of the bridge.
Of course, there was no formal protocol for this sort of situation, though it resembled some "behind-enemy-lines" adventure, that was also, somehow, a wary struggle against invaders, who'd gotten behind his own lines, as well. But, he knew, very few things were ever entirely clear-cut.
Now, Kirk thought, we just have to figure out a way to invade our other two ships, and get behind those enemy lines…
"Captain," a young ensign said, from the helm next to Rhada.
"What is it?"
"It looks like the other ships are breaking-off from Rigel."
This was so strangely reassuring to Jim Kirk that he simply could not believe it, at first.
"Show graphic," the captain said, standing up, and stepping forward, between the two crewmen. Up on the viewscreen, curving grid-lines popped up to show where the other ships should have been continuing on toward the planet, and how they'd gradually veered, like lines on a graph, off to starboard. Even Ticonderoga, with its freed crewmen, had hastily changed course to stay with the pack. It wasn't much of a correction, but enough to miss Rigel entirely, from this distance.
"Any change in speed?"
"They're preparing to warp out, sir," Rhada said, her voice straining to be clear and precise as she studied energy fields at her fingertips.
"Course?"
There was the usual endless moment while Rhada (or any navigator) tried to examine the new headings, and the various obstacles that naturally lay in the way, before she spoke again, more quietly.
"Vulcan. Or Andor. Or possibly Earth," Rhada answered, as Vulcan and Andor were more or less within a line between Rigel and Earth, on a 3-D map.
"And they leave Rigel III behind, untouched…" Kirk nodded, thinking along the same lines. He began pacing, stepping down from the raised middle section where the center-seat and the helm were an island together.
"Why," he asked, lightly running one hand around the red railing that separated the upper control ring, as he walked back toward the lift, and around past the engineering console. "To generate… fear? Terror? Obedience? Or, because they're already there? And now they can make some… huge drama out of the previous starship attacks… to destroy the Federation's link to this part of space…"
Lt. Rhada could only shake her head, not knowing, as she watched the other ships continuing to power-up to leave the system.
"Shall I match for headings, Captain?"
"Yes, Lieutenant," Kirk said, pondering the sudden alterations to the ten-thousand light-year-wide chessboard before him. His only hope lay in how much it had changed already, in just the last five hours or so. He had his ship back, and at least one other ship of the line had gained its freedom, too.
The super-imposed grid-lines on the viewscreen gracefully collapsed back against the black sides of the other ships ahead, as the Enterprise changed to follow, and Rigel slipped from view. As far as the other ships were concerned, the Enterprise was in complete alignment with them again.
And finally, to Kirk's undying relief, the lift doors behind him opened up and Mr. Scott stepped out, in his red tunic and black slacks. He didn't look weary or ashamed anymore. Instead, as Kirk exchanged a purposely vague little nod with the head of engineering, he decided the Scotsman looked predictably angry, though he held his temper in check as he stood at Kirk's side, both men behind the captain's chair.
"Any sleep?" Kirk asked.
"Aye, just enough," Scotty allowed, glowering at the viewscreen as the other three starships' great engines began to fire up.
"Better get us up to speed, Engineer," Kirk smiled, conceding to the inevitable pursuit.
"We'll be right there, Captain, with 'em to the end of it," Scotty said, his mind clamping down on the task at hand, like a bulldog. He pulled himself up to the engineering console, where an ensign had kept everything in hand for the night. And with barely a brush of his hands, you could hear the entire warp-power of the Enterprise kick-in, humming up from the depths of its good night's rest.
"Standing by, Captain," he said, now fully alert and feeling useful once more.
"Helm," Kirk said, leaning back against the rail, as if to prepare for the incomprehensible acceleration to come, as if there was no such thing as inertial dampeners in the 23rd Century. "Estimate warp settings of formation."
Lt. Rhada inhaled and read back and forth, at least twice, the sensor data along the wide instrument panel. "Looks like they're going for maximum sustained warp, factor eight, Captain."
"Engine status?"
"Standing by," Scotty nodded, all business now.
"As soon as they go," Kirk said, watching and feeling like an imposter walking into some hideous costume ball, sure to be found out at any moment.
"Ready."
The silent "blip" of each ship whisked them away, one by one, leaving only a momentary illusion of three separate "pinched" spaces, where they'd been just a second before. And then the Enterprise did the same, so the other ships were suddenly visible again, in the computer generated image on the screen, amidst the rush of the stars.
"Take the con, Mr. Scott, keep us alive. I'll be down… in sickbay." He gave one more glance at the viewscreen before he finished speaking, wishing he had some kind of a plan.
"They've been like that the whole time," McCoy said very quietly, as Kirk stared at the Vulcan and the beautiful blond castaway, leaning over either side of the captured keeper. The halo of brainwave focusing antennae rose like two matching ski-jumps around the very top of its head. And, looking bored out of his mind, K'Toinne sat on a chair nearby, arms folded.
"Any word, any… commentary?" Kirk suddenly seemed as impatient as the Klingon.
"Something about 'going higher,'" McCoy said, shaking his head, as the two men watched the motionless struggle. Kirk remembered being back on Saldana several days ago, and the sight of Spock similarly transfixed, before that terrible… thunderstorm: eyes clenched tight, and then staring at nothing, transfixed. Vina just seemed … angry, her brow lowered, her glistening hair almost brushing the naked, throbbing head on its pillow.
"'Higher,' as in brainwave activity? Can you adjust the frequencies, Bones? Bring it a little more awake?"
"Without getting Spock's advice first? I don't know if that's a good idea, Jim. We don't even know what he's up to, in there."
"Just try the smallest increment upward," Kirk urged, intrigued by Spock's strange words, and wondering if they could be stronger against the keepers through some minor tinkering.
Shaking his head again, McCoy gingerly stepped around behind Spock, hoping the Vulcan might snap-out-of-it enough to realize what was happening, and cast his own vote in the matter. But the science officer just kept his head down, next to the keeper's: his sharp-cut dark bangs hovering back and forth, ever so slightly, like a buzz saw against their captive's temple.
The antennae had only a few dials, and McCoy was careful to check the enigmatic screen above the bed, to watch for any sudden activity. Now there was a wavering, electronic whir, as the wavelengths grew shorter and more energetic.
Kirk didn't hear the swish! of the outer sickbay door when it opened but, unexpectedly, General Hof slowly entered the wardroom from the office, as if called in from across the ship by the high-pitched warbling. He seemed to be wandering deep in thought, or lost in some slow-moving fog, visible only to himself.
He paced, like a sleepwalker, across toward the keeper on its tablet. It was impossible to read the general's expression, but perhaps he most resembled a concert pianist about to strike the first dramatic chords in some immortal symphony, before a great assemblage in a darkened theater. His hairy arms came up, as he reached the foot of the bed, and his back seemed arched in his big colored, transparent suit.
The Tellarite stood there, breathing roughly, a wetness coming into the usual faint snorting through his snout. And, in a strange, pitiable way, his lower jaw was working back and forth, as if he were trying to eat something impossible to digest, like a starving man chewing on his leather belt. And now and then, as Kirk watched and listened, Hof also seemed to swallow a tear at the back of his throat.
McCoy barely acknowledged this strange sight though, with four beings crowded around (counting himself), it was getting a little close in the air above his patient.
General Hof stood there for at least a full minute, as Spock and Vina sat frozen in grim concentration, near the two cerebral antennae, and Dr. McCoy adjusted the wavelengths again, very slightly. Finally, the Tellarite sunk to his knees at the side of the bed, and tenderly grasped the sleeping keeper's hand in his great paws. His chest shook with sobs as he pressed the little hand close to his shining black eyes.
"Take me back, master, take me back," Hof sobbed quietly, as he knelt on the floor, to Kirk's undying embarrassment. Finally, the starship captain walked up behind him, and gently lifted him to his back legs once more, still shaking with tears. The captain wrapped his human arms around the Tellarite, and helped him to sit on the next bed. The general had nothing else left, but his captivity.
He looked at one corner, where the bulkhead met the ceiling, and then at another corner, up above, as if he thought the room should be much higher, or he should be much smaller. He would not regard the others in the wardroom, even as Jim Kirk hoisted himself up on the bed, sitting next to him. It was beginning to look like an old time hospital amphitheatre, with all these people crowded around one motionless alien, as if some delicate World War One operation were going on, and Spock and Vina were holding down the patient's body.
There was a horrible silence, as the Tellarite simply stared at nothing, or nothing of significance. Frozen in place, he seemed incapable of any movement.
"Now I am nothing," he said, at last.
"What are you talking about," Kirk said quietly, so as not to wake the fearsome creature before them, on the next bed.
"Nothing!" Hof said, as if it was obvious. "I do not even have a self. This is all the hangover of a million false dreams."
"You… stood by me," Kirk said, becoming fiercely loyal, and sitting up straighter now. "You kept me from killing an innocent woman," he remembered, though in the end Mrs. Vedder was almost literally swallowed-up by the mob, anyway. You helped me through the ordeal on Saldana, going down into the mass murder and the waste pits with me, even though you were unarmed. You saw me through the collapse of the super-tower; and in the escape from my own ship, hunting me down to kill me. You even sang and drank with me, though I should have felt like a fool! You stood by me every step of the way. So… if you're just the hangover of a million dreams, General…" Kirk trailed off, shaking his head in amazement, "I'd be… afraid… to meet the original!"
General Hof, or whoever he was anymore, let out a wet little laugh at that, sounding surprised and amused and perhaps a little scornful of flattery all at the same time. He blinked once, as if he'd made some life-altering decision.
"Why do they work so hard to keep it alive," he muttered, bitter at the folly of dreams.
"It might be the only thing that can save us, ironically, till we can regain the other ships." And Kirk explained again how they hoped to follow the Biruni and the Defiant, and the freed Ticonderoga, all the wayback toward Earth if necessary, to prevent any more terrible death and destruction along the way.
"Then I was right to kneel! You see? I was quite right, at that particular moment!" Suddenly, far from shame and even ending it all, the Tellarite was unexpectedly bursting with pride again.
"Well, I suppose—" Kirk shrugged. But it was too late for any subtle planning, as Hof leapt back down to the deck again, on his knees, along-side of Spock, and grabbed that tiny alien hand again, as if he'd push his entire world's history into the keeper in just a few seconds, if it would help distract the sleeping telepath, and help the others in their scientific experiment.
Then, very gingerly, and politely, but with quick simplicity, Mr. Spock's left hand came down along the side of the bed, and up into the crook between Hof's lowered head and his shoulder, to give the general a quick, strategically delivered neck pinch. The Tellarite tumbled harmlessly to the floor, where Kirk quietly rearranged him, so he'd be a little more out of the way. He looked up to see the Klingon watching him, from behind.
"I suppose you think this all looks very civilized," K'Toinne said, with great diplomacy, and a faint little smile, in his chair against the wall.
"No, I'm afraid I don't," Kirk admitted, hovering over the Tellarite, who was breathing softly, but not moving. Suddenly he remembered the Klingon's words, of how it seemed that humans dragged their madness around with them like a child and its toy.
"Not that I'm trying to lord it over you," the young Klingon shrugged, where he sat. "But one does get a bit tired of the other side always claiming to be… more advanced." This, as the silent voodoo-like scene, the reverse-exorcism of good spirits into bad, continued before them.
"Our dreams are our greatest asset," Kirk said, unapologetically. "It would be… unreasonable to assume they'd never become our greatest liability, too."
"Wouldn't it be much simpler if you all just said what was on your minds, instead of trying to be all prim and proper, and bury things to the point where they woke you up in the middle of the night? No Klingon ever loses sleep over… well, over anything, really." The whole idea of humanoid guilt and shame seemed utterly alien to him.
"That certainly explains a lot," Kirk said, watching as General Hof came out of the nerve pinch's effect. His transparent colored suit, with its glitter-trimmed panes of dark red and blue and amber and green, shone in the lights as he stirred.
"Oof, my head," the general said, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. Suddenly he was panting, as if he were in pain.
"Not so fast," Kirk said, putting a hand on his big ursine shoulder.
"I'm not in the cave?" He sounded almost hopeful and a little embarrassed. But he still seemed a bit dizzy.
"No," Kirk said.
"What are you doing down here," the Tellarite demanded, quietly.
"It's all right."
"You've a Klingon one side, and a keeper on the other, and you tell me it's all right?" Hof said, clearly wondering if Kirk himself might be the one who really was back on Talos IV.
"The enemy of my enemy," K'Toinne quoted, from long ago, "is my… Whatever. I get confused."
Judging from Kirk and Hof's expressions, the Klingon wasn't the only one.
There were still burning pedestrians walking along with all the others, on the busy street, like nobody's business. And their flames still whipped up like huge, Chinese dragons. Gradually, the young Lieutenant Spock worked his way into the crowds flowing this way and that, and got his tricorder up next to one for a reading… which was odd, because the older First Officer Spock knew perfectly well these unfortunate beings, these walking infernos, were only apparitions from deeper down in the slumbering Talosian's mind. But, for the sake of consistency, the older Vulcan sent his younger self out into the street to have a look. It would not do, to rouse the keeper's slightest suspicions, by simply ignoring the fiery manifestations.
Now, overhead, there was the faint, flickering image of Dr. McCoy, a giant towering over the city, as he delicately raised the keeper's mind slightly closer to consciousness. The flames of the passersby flickered up like unregarded offerings from the street.
"Too much," Spock tried to think at McCoy, though the chief medical officer still appeared and disappeared overhead, like a sun behind the clouds.
"What's that, Lieutenant?" Captain Pike had also waded into the crush of people swarming this way and that.
"Too much," both Spocks repeated. Then, only the younger, more easily entertained Vulcan elaborated: "It's an old slang term from your Earth. It refers to something that is 'exceedingly unusual.'"
"Too much," Pike nodded in agreement, looking around. And, to his own relief, Spock noted the doctor's image overhead had faded away, into that choking yellow color again that was this planet's sky. Another flock of black starfish spun by again, far overhead.
"They read as perfectly normal," Spock said, barely glancing up at the sky again. And, normal or not, each member of the landing party still seemed vaguely horrified, as another person went walking by, perpetually burst into flames, for every thirty or fifty others who passed, unaware. That was even stranger, the total acceptance of the billowing infernos that moved among them.
"This is not Hurana VI," Number One said, after staring at the sun, and holding her own tricorder up to the daytime sky for familiar stars that only it could see. Deep inside, Vina knew it could only be Talos IV.
"Transporter malfunction?" Pike sounded unusually disinterested, or perhaps more interested by the narrow, narrow focus of each set of humanoid eyes he tried to catch, on the busy street. You could have kissed your foot on the busiest street corner, and no one would have stopped to notice.
"Equipment registers normal, Captain," the first officer replied, even as the young Vulcan checked his own scanner, too.
"Can you get our position?" Pike asked, looking down into the little screen, his square jaw next to hers.
"Uncharted world, some similarities to—Captain, this is not the present day." She didn't sound alarmed, but like a companion checking a large map in growing interest.
"Check your figures, Number One," Pike said, barely able to suppress a smile, as he used her own well-worn phrase against her now.
"Interstellar positions indicate we're approximately… a 750,000 years ago—I mean, back in time, three-quarter million standard years. That also makes this system's place and name harder to get, by our own records."
Spock hurried to check her figures, too. But he knew better than to give a more exact number. Instead, he held his own tricorder up to the sky, as they stood, out of the way, against a tall building's stone facing.
"Fourth planet in a system of at least seven worlds," the science officer said, slowly turning to get the full half-sky.
"Contact the ship," Pike nodded, "I want to know what happened." Even he barely glanced now, as another raging fire got out of another cab, along with a non-burning wife and two children.
"Aye, sir," Number One said, opening a communicator. After a few tries, she closed it again. "Some kind of interference, blocking our signal."
"Let's see if we can get out in the open. Is there any sign of a signal-dampener around here?"
"Scanning," the Vulcan said, his gaze becoming fixed on the little computer that hung from his neck.
"Captain," Number One said, quietly, pointing upward.
One of the black starfish was slowly spinning down toward the street above them, its arms seeming to flash in and out of existence, coming down like the arms of the creature hoping to grasp something between the buildings. It may have connected for a second to a few of the upper floors of this building or that, but, one arm and then another, was here and gone, here and gone, so they couldn't quite figure it out.
"Some kind of transport?" Pike watched as the starfish seemed to relax and slip back up into the sky again, as another spinning flock drifted by, and the flames licked up from the sidewalks. Maybe the spinning arms, or wings, were strobing, spinning so fast they seemed intermittent, but it was just one more element of an almost painfully strange world. It could have been some alien technology, some technological effect he was seeing, but it wasn't like any cross-town lifter he'd ever seen before.
Then, all at once, the buildings of the city seemed to heave a great sigh, like a sleeping jellyfish, and everything came down from the "inhale" in a distinctly different shape—the buildings all seemed to have come out of a totally different school of architecture, as quickly as that. Where they had been fairly typical spires and arches and hopeful as upturned hands in prayer, the whole skyline seemed twisted, with curving, intertwining trunks that stretched up a hundred floors or more, and many of which ended in a kind of tornadic wind-swept shape, like the tops of bare trees stretched off toward… the north? They were like the flaming humanoids themselves, now, raised to gargantuan stature.
"Did you see that?" Pike asked, unnecessarily.
"Affirmative," the young Spock said, pursing his lips in the exact same manner as the older Spock, in sickbay, where he was bent over the keeper.
"The people, in flames, the buildings that look like flames… at the top: like torches carried over… some angry mob." Chris Pike seemed like he was about to say something else, but he thought better of it. Things were crazy enough, without added speculation. He turned to examine the entire visible city with growing suspicion.
"Something's going on here," was all he said, after a long pause, no longer staring at the building-tops, like torches, or the torch-like people hurrying by.
"Agreed," Number One said, giving a serious nod to the two security men, who took their phaser-pistols in hand.
"Captain!" It was the young Spock, looking down at his arms, which were in flames. For a full three seconds, everyone in the landing party simply stood and stared, against the tall building's foundation. They couldn't beam him back to the ship without a clear signal and, at the same time, it didn't appear a body engulfed in flames posed any real concern on this inexplicable world.
Spock quickly stripped himself of his equipment, handing the tricorder and communicator and compact phaser to Number One for safe keeping. And just that quickly, his whole body was a raging inferno, fueled by what, they could not say. They could barely make out his features beneath the sheets of fire.
"How do you feel?" Pike asked, as Number One held out her own tricorder, scanning the science officer for medical readings. The sound of the flames was a steady deep rustling, a kind of slowed-down, campfire's roar.
"No change," Spock said, though he saw them, and the whole city through a veil of fire.
"No sign of blood combustion," Number One said, quizzically, but seeming to try to reassure the other officers, as people continued streaming in front of them on the sidewalk. That was one particular concern about Spock, under the circumstances: the literal explosiveness of certain components in his blood. Whole songs and books and operas had been written around the phenomenon (which seemed to be tied to the copper content of his hemoglobin)—but, like so many romantic notions, all those fictions were forgotten in the moment of greatest danger. Now Spock's entire appearance was only the outline of his usual self, beneath some man-shaped bonfire, somehow constructed on this walkway, against all code.
Captain Pike stretched out his hand, into the flames, along-side Spock's head. It seemed dangerous and tender at the same time, like a loving father reaching out to his son in some very obvious kind of destructive turmoil. Then, after a moment, he pulled his hand back, looking at both sides in wonder.
"This is crazy," Pike said. His own flesh wasn't burnt at all.
"Request permission to go engage one of the others like… myself," Spock said. They could barely see his eyebrows risen up on his forehead, in youthful strategizing, behind the flames.
"Affirmative, Science Officer," Pike said, with a glint in his eye, at the young man's impetuousness. "At least we'll never lose him in the dark, now," he smiled, at the two hulking security guards nearby.
Number One handed him back his tricorder, now apparently quite safe in spite of the undeniable wraith of fire, and he was off, marching out into the steady flow of people and cars, gingerly jumping over that endless purple snake's body.
After the slightest hesitation, Pike and the others followed, too.
"Gentle being," Spock said, lightly placing his hand on the upper arm of a man in some kind of tailored business suit, likewise engulfed in mesmerizing orange and yellow flames. The man turned, with a mild start. "Excuse me," the young Vulcan hurriedly added, as their flames roared up overhead, "but could you explain this harmless display of pyrotechnics?"
There was something strangely cold and fixed in the man's eyes, which the older Spock recognized right away.
Chapter Nineteen
CAPTAIN'S LOG Stardate 2307.15: We continue in formation with ships commandeered by the telepaths of Talos IV, on apparent course toward Earth. First Officer Spock, and Vina (a former castaway and specimen on Talos) are probing the mind of one of her former jailors, looking for some practical way to halt the invasion, and the destruction, of the Federation.
"I don't know, Jim," Doctor McCoy said quietly, slipping around behind Spock, and out into the area between the two rows of beds. Dr. Aristide had come in to relieve him, being a xeno-neurologist by training. The small blond Latina hopped up on the adjacent bed and fixed a very cool, steady gaze on the neural antennae rising up on either side of that great Talosian brain, as if she were a cat who could wait indefinitely, outside a mouse's hole.
"I don't know either," Kirk was rubbing his own temples now, as if he'd been the one using his own brain to keep the keeper from regaining consciousness for the last hour. Spock and Vina looked like they were deep in fervent prayer, over the alien's skull, and General Hof and K'Toinne were crouched against the wall at the end of the room, looking like bored prison inmates, once more.
"Look, it's not my place to say, I'm not some great strategic thinker or anything," the doctor said quietly, as they stood in the doorway to his office, "but if the Enterprise and Ticonderoga are just pretending to go along with this madness, why don't we fire on those other two ships first, and disable them before any more innocent lives are lost?"
Of course, the same thing had occurred to the captain. But he had the luxury of a few days' travel time, and who knew what might happen till they reached the Earth? He didn't dare send a message there, not knowing if the home world too had been devoured, by mad passions and bizarre delusions.
"We still can—or, maybe Spock can find some other way. Or," Kirk shrugged, with a great show of nonchalance, "maybe we'll find a whole boat-load of Klingons around here, somewhere, and we can sneak them onto the other ships…" The prospect was exciting, but seemingly impossible. The Klingons would require so much security, just to get them on board the other Biruni and Defiant… and God only knew what would happen once they got there…
"If we could get just… one Klingon up on each bridge… through the escape pods?" Kirk was suddenly enthralled by the idea. He couldn't help glancing down the row at K'Toinne, imagining his sudden emergence on one of the enemy bridges… If Captain Safeer could give up her own Klingon, too, the giant G'vul, they could finish the job in half the time.
"Jim, you think they wouldn't know you're clamped right there on the dome in a shuttlecraft?"
"Maybe," Kirk allowed, with a smile at the challenge of it all. He turned to leave, knowing the good doctor was about to explode, now that the captain had winked and taken the bet.
"And what happens if this keeper should suddenly revive when we've got no Klingon?" McCoy no longer cared about maintaining hospital silence, as he charged after the captain, back into the outer office.
"If it doesn't work? No promotion for you," Kirk guessed.
"You can't promote me," the chief medical officer said, practically shouting now, "because I don't want to be captain!"
"Neither do I," Kirk said, barely aloud, and walking out into the busy corridor.
When McCoy turned back into the wardroom, his jaw clenched, the Tellarite and the Klingon were speaking quietly at the end of the bed rows.
"I suppose I looked like a great fool," Hof said quietly, looking straight ahead, though he was speaking to K'Toinne next to him on the deck.
"Why?"
"I wanted to go back, to go back into captivity. I only want to live and die in proud dreams."
"That's funny," K'Toinne said, humorlessly. "Where I come from, they put you in captivity if you aren't wrapped up in some proud dream."
Jim Kirk was half-way down to the turbolift when he heard a familiar shuffling behind him. It was General Hof, appearing around the curve of the main corridor of deck five. In an instant, the captain could see the Tellarite was anxious to come along.
"One more adventure, General?"
"Of course, and then one more after that!" Hof exclaimed, as they were closed-up inside the capsule, and it rode back to the ship's neck, then down toward the shuttle bay. Clearly, he had forgotten all about his dread of his own anonymity.
"Feeling up to it?" Kirk asked quietly, though it was generally considered a potentially rude question, among males of any species.
"Of course, of course!"
Kirk dared a brief, side-long glance at the freed captive, who longed for his captors just minutes ago.
"You don't believe I am capable!" Even in his misery, a Tellarite could issue a blustery challenge with the best of them. He sounded ready to start a fistfight right there in the lift, to prove his worthiness for combat. His crinkly plastic suit took wild reflections from the capsule lighting, and his elbows came up till nearly half the lift seemed full of him, looking fearsome.
"All right, all right, you win," Kirk smiled, astonished that he ever doubted the brave warrior.
"Don't smile, Earth man! I told you!"
"All right, all right!"
"When Earth men smile, it means goodbye! It's bad luck!" the general repeated, very stern and quiet now.
"Not for Earth men," Kirk shrugged, with devilish pleasure.
"Ugh!" The Tellarite was not amused. The lift doors opened in that little passageway outside the hangar airlock.
A half a minute later, they were walking into the great open space of the shuttle bay, where their—or, by right of honor and commitment, where K'Toinne's deadly black scout ship had been resting.
Two lieutenants, Kyle and O'Brian, were sitting under the vicious-looking little craft, standing on its black jointed struts, both junior officers looking up into one of the miniature phaser cannons.
"How's she holding up, gentlemen?" Kirk asked, as the two crawled out from under, looking a bit envious.
"I'd hate to come up against one of those in battle, Captain," Kyle laughed. O'Brian, a man of few words, and seemingly endless astonishment, only nodded his head in admiration.
"I'd take you along," Kirk said, as he touched the sensor-pad by the hatch. The thick black doorway popped open with a very serious k-chunk! "But… the fewer humans, the better, I'm afraid."
"This is what I say, too," General Hof nodded, climbing up into the hatch first, being of superior rank.
They seated themselves back in the familiar padded seats, and Kirk initiated the warm-up pre-flight, as Kyle and O'Brian disappeared back into the ship's protective airlock.
"You will not take the Klingon?" Hof rubbed his fore-paws along his thighs, nervously.
"We'll pick one up along the way, General," Kirk said, watching the big curving hangar doors slowly open before them.
"They will not gladly part with theirs," Hof said, quietly.
"I don't think it's the same situation over on the Ticonderoga," Kirk said, philosophically.
"How then?"
"They don't have any telepaths, at least none that I'm aware of, over there. So… theoretically…" and now the black scout ship was floating out the back end of the Enterprise, "they won't have their keeper anywhere up near consciousness. And if their keeper isn't conscious," Kirk reasoned, "they don't need a Klingon to protect them. At the moment." He made it all sound very neat and tidy. Almost.
"You could steal a bride from the altar, Earth man," the general snorted.
Kirk was careful not to smile.
Just as easily, the scout ship slid across the formation, into the bay of the blackened Ticonderoga, and its great segmented doors slid shut in silence. Once the pressure was restored by the blowers overhead, a ground team ran out from the airlocks to secure the craft to the deck, and the two senior officers climbed out. At the airlock, Captain Safeer did not look too happy to see them.
"Klingons have become a precious commodity, all of a sudden," she grumbled, resting her hands on her hips, in a great show of command stoicism, and the ground crew ran back to the airlock behind her. A missive of steam shot out the top of the black scout ship, as if to indicate something near the boil.
"I promise to bring him back in one piece, Captain," Kirk said, feeling like a teenager asking to borrow the car on a Saturday night. At the airlock, two big security men appeared with the even bigger G'vul. None of them looked very happy.
"You're just going over there by yourselves?" Safeer said, quiet but incredulous.
"A Tellarite must do what a Tellarite must do," General Hof nodded, completely assured now.
She looked at them as though they were both insane, but then gestured to the pair of red-shirts across the bay. It took both of them, seemingly, to push the Klingon across the deck, and their phasers never wavered from the kill-shot.
As they approached, Kirk drew his phaser, just to show good faith in their judgment. G'vul had his arms behind him, and his wrists shackled in glowing saddle-hoop handcuffs, the same color as a brig's force-field. He looked as fearsome as ever, though.
One of the security men had a foot on the little ladder to the hatch, and you could see his giant bicep flex in his sleeve, as he hung from a grab-rail on the side.
"You're staying here, boys," Captain Safeer said, ruefully.
"Could you manage to part with Lieutenant Stamfield?" Kirk asked. But this was clearly more than Safeer could brook, and her arms went straight down to her sides, breaking that pose of heroic indifference.
"Now just a minute," she snarled.
"I just want to make his mother proud!"
"You just want to make his mother cry, is more like it," Safeer disagreed, imagining the worst.
"We shall give him a phaser of his own," General Hof said, grandly, clearly above all of this tedious human travail.
"We've got phasers coming out our asses, thanks very much," Safeer said, a hard edge coming into her voice, and a look that even shook the general, a bit, combined with her gravelly voice. "What we don't have is a lot of people who can watch and think and get ahead of something before it's too late!"
Suddenly, for the one-millionth time, Jim Kirk realized how lucky he was on the Enterprise, with his own officers and crew. The great hanger arched overhead, and he tried to look humble in the face of her concern. Humble, and yet perfectly calm and certain.
She watched him, with growing amusement, cycling through his various boyish expressions for just the right combination of bravery and trustworthiness.
"Are you done?" she asked quietly, as he reached the perfect aspect of good salesmanship.
They listened to the guttural breathing of the Klingon for a second, like dangerous animal stuck in a pen.
"Males," she drawled, as if her dour resignation was exactly what all they ever really wanted to hear. Then she had to shake her head, realizing they might not be coming back at all.
"Transfer the prisoner," she growled, though she still wasn't sure how to keep her own Talosian asleep without killing him, or keep him awake enough to reassure the keepers on the other ships in their formation.
The Klingon seemed surprised and offended to be turned over to the little human and the pudgy Tellarite, under the authority of an old Earth woman, of all things. But, just like that, the red-shirts shoved him through the hatch, and hustled him down to the dank cabin that had been Krishtakonka's.
When Jim Kirk thanked the other captain, and he followed down the gangway after the redshirts, he could see they'd hoisted G'vul's giant arms up on to a peg in the wall, and somehow quickly pinned his great black boots to some support brackets in the corner. He did not look like he'd be any less trouble, even all trussed up.
Then Kirk heard boots clanging on the ladder outside, and the hatch closed, and he turned to see the young Stamfield looking both ways behind him, before tentatively squeezing up in to the gangway. Captain Safeer and her two guards walked back to the airlock, and the pressurized door closed behind them.
"Permission to come aboard?" The younger man said, in the narrow passageway.
"Granted, come up and have a seat," Kirk nodded, as he passed on the way up to the cockpit. Mrs. Stamfield's older son watched as the captain worked the controls and the great crescent-shaped louvers slid open ahead of them, in the vast Ticonderoga shuttle bay. Without any particular sensation of rising or moving, as far as either man was concerned, the bay slowly disappeared behind them, and they were out among the streaking stars. Behind them, General Hof folded his paws on top of Kirk's seat, looking perfectly calm.
It was just as quickly that Kirk saw the attacking phaser trails, splaying brilliantly past them, from the other ships. The Ticonderoga, behind them just a moment before, had spiraled away like a tiddlywink to escape the fiery rays.
In an instant, Jim Kirk knew that one of two things must now be true: either the keeper on board Safeer's ship had woken up, or it had fallen too deep asleep to maintain its part of some invisible telepathic network with his brethren. And now Kirk, and Safeer, and all of them were found out.
As he scanned the instruments, he could see the Biruni and Defiant powering up, and locking on him next for attack.
"Captain," the young Spock said, even as the roaring flames engulfed him, "this world is not as we'd assumed."
"Explain," Pike said, after watching the young Vulcan with the equally strange native, on that busy city street.
There was no point in lying about it, the real Pike had been dead for ten or twelve weeks now, but the keeper on the Enterprise must be fed with dreams, while they tried to stop its deadly work.
"These people, apparently consumed by flames, appear to be the ancestors of Talos IV. And all of this seems to be a construct of their world, before it was destroyed in some final war."
"How did we end up here," Pike said, his face going stern, though his voice sounded calm.
"Unknown," Spock prevaricated, or delayed explaining, as small trails of fire followed his fingers along the controls of his tricorder.
"Captain," Number One said, "all these beings have completely de-centralized circulatory systems. No hearts."
It was impossible to say, just from looking at them, for they had not even begun to evolve, yet, into the top-heavy beings they'd one day become, a three-quarters of a million years later.
"Are you able to communicate with it, Lieutenant? "
"Are you saying," Number One interrupted, "all these beings, like Spock, have burst into flame because of their telepathy? What survival mechanism does that serve?" She sounded more doubtful than curious.
"It may be protective," Spock conjectured, looking at the flames dancing on the arms of his blue tunic. "Just as minority groups may adopt seemingly dangerous characteristics, to avoid predation by the majority."
"But this was no voluntary adaptation on your part," Number One said, eternally testing the younger officer.
"Indeed," Spock said, though he also seemed pleased—even amused—by the transformation, at somehow being adopted into a dangerous minority. The flames roared off him like combustion fuel, but gave no actual heat.
All the while, the apparent Talosian, seeming perfectly humanoid in all other respects, stood before them, and the crowds squeezed past, unendingly. And no one seemed to notice the raging fires.
"As long as they remain peaceful," Spock said, with a start, as if understanding had suddenly dawned: "they are tolerated by the rest of the population." Then he turned to Captain Pike again, intrigued, his face shining bright through the fires. "Perhaps one day, 750,000 years ago, they ceased their non-violent behavior, provoking their final war!"
"Somehow," Pike looked away, at all the wealth and stature of a developed civilization, and all of them knowing what would one day come of it, "I can't quite share your enthusiasm, Mr. Spock."
A molten beam, like a tendril or a solar flare, crept out of the native's face, the one they'd been trying to communicate with till now, toward Spock's own forehead. The Vulcan did not flinch, but watched with mild curiosity as the fiery fountain slowly made its way at his own, like a tributary between great rivers, as their cape-like tails of orange and yellow whipped up around them.
"Analysis," Pike demanded, his arm coming up to sweep his officer a few steps back from the approaching flame.
"It doesn't read at all," Number One said, without surprise. As far as their instruments were concerned, not a single fiery raiment around them seemed to exist anywhere outside their visual senses.
"If these are the distant ancestors of the Talosians," Spock said, gently moving the captain's forearm away from his chest, "I suspect their telepathic abilities may still be somewhat less formidable."
"And if you're mistaken, science officer?"
"I may not be any more severe than being split in half, as a child, between two cultures," the Vulcan said, with a challenging little smile.
Pike lowered his arm, sobered by the suggestion of youthful trauma, as Spock stepped toward the fountain of fire. Gradually, it splashed across his own face, too.
"It is a… voluntary stigmatization," the science officer said, as if he were translating a conversation into standard Federation-speak. "To show respect… to the majority… of non-telepaths…"
"Ask him how this can be Talos," Pike muttered, spuriously, looking up as another revolving black starfish descended overhead, swaying against the skyscrapers with its intermittent, flexible arms. As the situation was not yet dire, he could afford to be rueful about the strange reality of it all.
"How can this be Talos?" Spock repeated.
"It can be anything we wish," the burning native spoke into Spock's mind, and the Vulcan repeated it, as he heard the words emerge on the shore of his own consciousness, and the flaming stream twisted and wavered between them. "But we wish to maintain the present structure, for the benefit of our families… for the benefit of our conventional social structure… for the present, we wish it to be as it has always been."
"Telepaths are a persecuted minority on this world?" Number One seemed suddenly shocked and wary, though not a telepath herself. "Telepathy is the highest form of empathy, on most worlds," she said, as if she would run to the front of the line, to be the first to shake some sense into this whole world.
"And here, it's an object of disgust," Pike concluded, almost abruptly.
"Telepathy may be disgusting, if you're embarrassed about the way your own mind secretly works," the xeno-biologist, quiet till now, said philosophically. The two security men still had their phasers in their hands, on either side of Pike.
"If this burning, if these fires, are a voluntary gesture, to warn non-telepaths," Chris Pike said, speaking first to Spock, and gradually turning to the native, "then why is my science officer burning, too, without his permission?"
"It is… a protection," Spock said, not seeming to put any understanding or color on the short answer, as the flames poured directly against the middle of his face. The dark hair across his forehead seemed to rustle now and then, though it must have been a distortion of the blaze.
"Against his being arrested, or… punished?" Pike said, looking around the crowds that hurried along endlessly, all around. Even the other telepaths, streaking by like meteors in slow-motion, seemed to ignore Spock and the businessman, likewise in flames.
"Arrested by whom," Number One demanded, unwilling to go through some exhausting bureaucratic mess.
"It is not an arrest," Spock translated.
"Social pressure, social stigma, social violence," the xeno-biologist suggested.
"For many centuries," Spock said, trying to concentrate, even as the other crewmen were interjecting, "we were abused, hunted down, and murdered. Then we hit upon a threat display, the fires that would protect us, and also satisfy the majority, by suggesting some inherent, burning evil within."
"And validated their prejudice against you," Pike said, expressionlessly, which was as close to kindness as he usually cared to come.
Now all the others in the Enterprise landing party were listening, as if to strangely familiar music, a song of madness in the air.
"So now," Number One said, though it was actually Vina speaking, coming to an awful recognition, "we have to protect the telepaths of Talos IV, to prevent them from one day overcoming their persecutors, destroying them, and going on to capture, and enslave, anyone they can snare with their false maydays."
"From bad to worse," Pike nodded, watching the whipping tails of flame rippling up above his science officer and their burning guide.
"We might be able to change that future, Captain," Number One said, leaning in toward him, for it had suddenly dawned on Vina, inside of her: that her decades of suffering in a cage might never have to happen after all, if they could somehow plan it out, and change the past, through this one keeper's subconscious mind, before the end of this world, and the beginning of their slow extinction. And if she could re-live her own life, by re-shaping all of theirs', perhaps she'd then be free…
"How?" Pike was looking very intently at the flaming telepath. To the captain, changing the broad sweep of history was the subject at hand. But his deeper sympathy, and love, was for Vina. And she stood right next to him, without his knowing.
She was beginning to realize she'd never live long enough to wipe every keeper off the map of space, at her age, in her condition. But this new avenue, into one keeper's cultural continuum, suggested an even more enticing possibility, an attack from behind—750,000 years behind.
She felt a strange new thrill she'd never felt before. She didn't need Spock anymore, if this worked out, to supply Chris to her, in old unrevealed memories, to share him through the bodies of Lt. Freeman, or that walking computer, his first officer. Now she'd save them all, by travelling back through the star-sized brain she crouched over now, in the modern Enterprise, in its sickbay. And if she could somehow save the keepers before they went bad, through the doorway into this one, private universe…
After all, Kirk had the Klingons to save him now…
G'vul was writhing, and even twisting like a giant rotisserie chicken, as he hung diagonally from the trusses in the little cabin: his boots hooked to the corner in back, as he tried to free himself in the chaos of battle. Out in the gangway the red alert siren "whooped" again and again. And as far as he was concerned, he had no intention of saving anyone but himself, least of all anyone within the Federation. General Hof had left the cockpit, being of little use in modern battle, and stood against the wall outside now, arms folded, a menacing phaser-rifle folded between his fore-paws, just in case. When the ship shuddered in some sudden change of course, the Tellarite shook with it, but hadn't fallen yet.
Up in the cockpit, Jim Kirk had finally piloted the ship out to the periphery of the battlefront, out beyond the four starships, until they dodged back and forth again and, by then, they'd hopefully have made their big move. Till then, Kirk was trying to decide how to put himself at the weakest point for the two keeper-controlled behemoths out there, racing around with the Enterprise and the Ticonderoga, like cats circling before a fight.
"How can you get latched on to either one of them," Robert Stamfield said quietly, "when they won't stay still?"
"And how can we keep from getting blasted out of the sky by our own ships?" Kirk spoke the words, but he already seemed to be well beyond the formulation of the question, sending the scout ship right into the midst of the fray, shields up and both men strapped tight in their harnesses.
Finally, it seemed he'd found a way to predict the attack pattern of the Biruni, though the new Defiant was still a half a light year out of range, with a little-known captain and crew to replace her predecessor, which had been lost in a rift in space a year ago.
There they were, in the main space-lanes between Earth and Rigel. And on the widest magnification, Lt. Stamfield was watching as one private ship after another came sailing through the battle, abruptly changing course as each civilian crew realized the sudden danger ahead, to freighters and transports and private craft. Now and then a small Earth vessel would go zinging right through the phaser blasts and photon torpedo barrage, but so far each one emerged from that bubble of targeted, brilliant explosions and searing light, seemingly unscathed.
More torpedo blasts exploded against the shields of the Enterprise, with a flash like the old-style fusion bombs; and veils of light pounded against the crackling barriers as Enterprise turned and fired her phasers in response.
And here they went, in the little spy ship, right into the midst of it themselves, tilting this way and that, diving and climbing, relative to Biruni. But she wasn't slowing down for anything, being so engaged in battle with the Ticonderoga. It almost seemed that both ships were nearly more brutal flashes of light than nutronium or nacelles, as if Captain Safeer, and the senior commander on the Biruni had made up their minds that there was no turning back, en route to Earth.
The weapons of the starships sawed brilliantly, back and forth against each other's hull, and they turned to fight again and again, firing as they strafed across each other's path. And the little black ship, just now catching the first stray phaser blasts, swept in closer above Biruni's saucer from behind, in the very worst of it, as the Ticonderoga went roaring overhead, and they crept across the upper hull of the Biruni. If her captain had heard any bump as Kirk tried to match for course and speed, there didn't seem to be any extra punishment, beyond the non-stop pounding of the firepower. The main distraction now was the hailstorm of phaser blasts coming down from Ticonderoga, and the whip-saw dizziness of the Biruni careening to evade, diving away from Kirk again and again.
The noise of Ticonderoga's attack had become nearly constant now, crashing against their own shields too. He guessed that Captain Safeer must have seen his approach, and was doing everything in her power to distract the other dark starship, which was coming around to fire back, even as Ticonderoga spun for another jousting charge, phasers blasting out along all possible paths of escape.
Lt. Stamfield called up a damage report, after two or more sudden, distinct impacts. A hologram of the scout ship appeared above the controls, and Kirk glanced over to see their hull flashing red in one spot, and blue in two others where the shields had just about broken down. They were skimming very slowly toward the armored bubble of the bridge, atop the two decks in the center of the vast saucer section. Jim Kirk popped his harness open, and half rose out of his seat to spot the smooth fittings around the built-in escape pods up ahead through the portals.
Like terrible red lightning, one of Ticonderoga's phasers had blasted through Biruni's shields entirely, and they could barely keep from looking as part of the starship's hull shuddered and crackled and partially dissipated off to port.
"We may not get a better distraction than that," Kirk muttered, feeling awful for feeling relieved. He tapped on the controls until he found a dry schematic of the lifeboat mechanisms he was determined to make his point of break-in.
"Hell, blasting through those heat-shields," Kirk muttered, as they drifted up the lower bulge, beneath the bridge. The perfectly flush rectangles around the outside of the bridge were designed to serve as the leading edge of the tiny re-entry capsules, if they could make it to planet-fall after some cataclysmic event on the starship.
Stamfield nodded, and both men tried to concentrate as the Biruni beneath themdove across the path of the oncoming Ticonderoga, and more phaser spray blinded their view. Ticonderoga was sporting a trail of sparks off its forward lip, spreading fire behind her as she passed. She looked enormous as her scanner dish tilted up to the left, and her phasers rained down from the sideways saucer right overhead.
Neither ship could take much more punishment like this, each from their own kind, and Kirk he steered the black scout ship till its largest under-belly hatch was able to clamp down on one of the lifeboats below. Both men had unclipped their harnesses, and when they turned they could see that General Hof was hunkered against the gangway bulkhead, halfway down, phaser-rifle firmly in his grip.
And when Kirk and Stamfield scrambled down, they could see why—G'vul had one arm free, and was dangling with renewed energy, to break out of his shackles altogether. The general did not speak, but it was clear from his lowered brow and bared fangs that he'd made up his mind he had only one task now: to shoot the Klingon the second he freed himself and preferably before he hit the deck.
Kirk glanced back and forth, noting the tension of the Tellarite, glaring into the cabin across the narrow passageway. He bent down to lift a heavy grating above the lower hatch, and Stamfield hauled that patch of metal away against the wall, as the captain leaned down into the underpinnings of the ship.
The hull of the Biruni seemed perfectly normal when he popped the hatch: though still blackened by Protocol Eight, this little section of the central tower was smooth and unblemished by the battle going on all around. He reached down with a tricorder, adjusting to simulate an evacuation signal.
He thought he heard a sudden hiss of air pressure flowing into the lifeboat below, but it could have just been the distant echo of another phaser blast, striking against the saucer.
He hoisted himself back up into the scout ship, and made a sort of magician's theatrical gesture, as if a beautiful woman were about to burst up through the gangway. Nothing happened, and Robert Stamfield tried to suppress a smile.
Then, big as pair of control consoles, piled one on top of the other, the lifeboat slid up into their cargo bay, clanging into the grates under Stamfield's boots. Kirk pulled himself up, and climbed across the top of the escape pod. Then, standing before the Klingon's make-shift cell, he unfastened his phaser from his belt.
"Time to go," the captain said, without any trace of amusement. General Hof was right behind him, holding the rifle like a hussar on parade, as G'vul gradually stopped writhing in his remaining restraints, trying to guess Kirk's next move.
When he approached, however, the Klingon took a wide swing at him with his free arm, perhaps out of pure psychological warfare. The captain raised his phaser to show he wasn't kidding around.
"You can't see them without me, Earther," the Klingon warned, a sharp-toothed grin spreading across his face as he hung there, otherwise powerless.
"You're a big boy," Kirk nodded, as G'vul hung there like a butcher's goose. "I'm sure we'd only waste… a few minutes if I have to drag you down there, half-dead."
"By that time you'll have lost at least one of your mightiest ships," G'vul taunted him.
"And then we won't need you," the captain whispered, right into his dark bronze ear, all the humanity drained from his face. Suddenly he was that feral Kirk, from out of the shadows, the one he always kept in hiding. They stood there for a moment, both of them just smelling bilge water, from the previous occupant: worse than the smell of rot.
When Hof and Stamfield came in, G'vul came down without a problem.