Ensign O'Connor crouched in the cell terrified. Her head still felt groggy from being stunned. She had only woken up an hour or two ago and had very little idea of exactly how much time had elapsed. Any minute they would come and kill her. She waited for what seemed like hours before the door opened and she gave an involuntary whimper. Light spilled into the room and a Vulcan came in. He wasn't Silkar but his face had the same cruel gaze. She nearly fainted as she tried to stand up on her wobbly legs. The man reached out and grabbed her "you're wanted "before she could say anything he half-dragged her from the cell to a small room. She trembled with fear as she recognized the person there.

His face was angry. He looked at her, "what do you want with me?" O'Connor found the strength to ask.

Silkar looked at her for a moment his eyes staring into hers " I have a job for you to do."

"And when I say no, and tell you to go to hell what are you going to do" O'Connor said her words much stronger than her feelings

Silkar smiled at her comment and said" You won't say no, if you did I would kill you in such a painful way that each second would seem like days of agony; you would be begging to die" As he finished speaking he reached out across the table and touched her temples. O'Connor felt a staggering sensation of pain that coursed through her mind obliterating all thought, that seemed to last for hours before the feeling, vanished leaving her gasping for breath.

Slkar said "that was just a taste, I think you'll be a little more cooperative now, or do you need another" he reached towards her.

O'Connor jerked backwards, and said her voice hoarse "what do you want me to do?"

Silkar smiled and began to outline his plan, as she listened horror closed in . If she did as he wanted, she would be betraying her friends if she didn't they would be killed, there was no alternative. She found herself agreeing to the plan; inwardly she was sickened with herself.

XXXX XXXX

"I don't understand, Uhura was supposed to evacuate on this shuttle "McCoy said confusedly.

O'Connor forced herself to smile "Well Mr. Spock sent me to tell you about the change in plans."

"I still don't understand why Uhura's leaving on the devlin" McCoy said his brow furrowing

O'Connor fidgeted nervously aware of the Vulcan standing behind her pretending to work at a panel, in his hand concealed was a phaser; he was one of several vulcans dotted around the room. Silkar had made it quite clear if she couldn't get the crew to leave without Uhura then they would have to be killed.

"Doctor, Spock thought it better if she evacuated with us since we'll be on the planet a little longer than everyone else, so when can have the best chance of getting communications through while we're here. "Seeing that he wasn't fully satisfied with her explanation, she continued speaking lowering her voice like she was telling him some of the gossip that Uhura and Spock had spiralling around about them. When in reality she was telling him a small part of a rumour she had heard earlier and the rest was a story she had invented on the spot.

"I think they had an argument and they made up because, Uhura came to say she was evacuating with us and Spock sent me to tell you of the change in plans." She said praying he would take her word and leave without asking to talk to Spock.

"Hmm, they made up. Well that just goes to show, some people can't take sound advice and have to be burned to learn a lesson." McCoy muttered to himself

O'Connor watched him nervously hoping he had accepted her story, and wondering what McCoy was talking about.

"Well, if he wants his girlfriend evacuating on his shuttle then, who am I to care.I'm just the doctor who nobody ever tells anything until at the end." McCoy said fuming, he glanced back at O'Connor and said "don't let me keep you ensign. We've only got a few minutes before we take off."

"Aye, sir" O'Connor said breathing a sigh of relief as McCoy turned away and simultaneously feeling guilty. She had saved McCoy and the crew from an untimely death, but she knew that Silkar had a reason for wanting them to think that Uhura was evacuating elsewhere. He probably didn't want anybody asking questions, because he had her, and if he did whatever he was planning wouldn't be good.

She walked away the Vulcan unobtrusively walked behind her. She could feel the hidden phaser trained on her. She forced herself to be silent as she passed more crew members in the corridor. She longed to say something, to ask for a help or to make some signal. But anything she did would be seen by the Vulcan and he would kill her and whoever she tried to ask. As they branched off into another corridor the people thinned out until it was deserted .The Vulcan moved closer until he had her arm his fingers biting painfully in her. They walked for a few minutes before they arrived at the door of a room, he keyed it open and pushed her inside then followed her in closing the door behind him. Silkar was there, watching her fingers arched. The guard who had came in behind her said "she did as you asked."

"Excellent, I was sure we would have no problems after we reached an understanding."

"What are you going to do with Uhura?"

"Spock and the rest of them have hidden themselves away somewhere I can't allow them to escape and possible alert others to our plan, and we can't find them, Uhura's bait. "

"What? I don't understand they won't even know you have her! There—"

Silkar broke in cutting her off "The rest of them won't know but Spock will feel that I have her. He will come, and after I have him, I will extract the hiding place of the others and kill them all"

"You can't-"O'Connor said realizing fully what she had done

"I can and if I was you I would worry more about yourself. you've outlived your usefulness." O'Connor felt a cold fear settle in her stomach, as Silkar gestured she saw the guard raise his weapon and fire. She felt a searing pain travel thru her chest, she twisted and fell to the ground her legs folding and she tried to gasp a breath that wouldn't come. Then a wave of darkness swallowed her.

XXXX XXXX

Kirk paced back and forth, not even trying to restrain himself. Where were they? The away team had been gone for almost a day and a half and in that time only three communications had been able to get through the anomaly's interference to be picked up by the ship. The last communication an hour ago had been a garbled transmission and from the little that had been understandable it seemed to indicate that the crew had finished helping repair the ships and were coming back to the Enterprise.

What worried Kirk was that for the past ½ hour they had also been receiving distorted transmissions from the planet's surface, outside of standard Starfleet frequencies. The messages couldn't be deciphered because the interference had so damaged the low grade signal that the transmission had degenerated into an indecipherable mass of random sounds and words.

The communications officers who were working on translating the messages had only gotten from the messages what they believed were the words… was kidnapped... Romulans are… stranded… killed. But due to the degradation of the messages they had only a 35% chance of those being the correct words. Still Kirk felt something was wrong.

"Captain, the are shuttles coming back" Kirk glanced at the lieutenant hunched over his console. "There's only – three of them" the young man said glancing back at the captain.

"Three of them?" Kirk said coming to stand behind the lieutenant at the science console. "are you sure?"

"It looks like there's only three captain" the lieutenant said his fingers running across his console as he checked the sensor readings.

Kirk turned toward the ensign on communications and said "open a channel to one of the shuttles" the young woman complied instantly.

A distorted crackly image of a young man filled the viewscreen. "Lieutenant Roth , here Captain"

"Mr. Roth our sensors are indicating that only three shuttles are with you. Where is the Devilin?"

"I wouldn't know sir" the image blanked for a moment before coming back "when we left the planet , the Devlin said that they would be leaving the surface a little later than us to collect data from when the shuttles departed, but they should have left behind us and be pretty close right now." The image crackled an audio disappeared for a moment then Roth continued "We couldn't detect any of the other shuttles , until we got further away from the anomaly sir. So we didn't find it that odd that we couldn't detect the Devlin"

"Thank you Lieutenant Roth" Kirk said.

Roth replied "aye Sir" Then Kirk indicated for Ensign Lara, the young woman at the communication console to cut the transmission and open a channel to the other shuttles. Similar inquires indicated that nobody knew what had happened to the Devlin after the had taken off, but nobody had thought this odd, because all the shuttles had lost contact and sensor detection of each questions confirmed that Spock, Uhura, Chekov and several other crew members were missing.

Within the next five minutes the three shuttles docked, and the interference of the anomaly had experienced enough of a lull that a channel to the surface of the planet could be opened. Ensign Lara was opening the channel when McCoy burst out of the turbolift, Kirk glanced at the doctor.

"The Devlin's missing? " McCoy asked. Before Kirk could reply a distorted image of a young Vulcan woman. appeared on the view screen

"Is this the Enterprise?" the woman inquired

The communications ensign looked back at Kirk and apologetically said "Captain this transmission just cut into our channel; it's blocking our signal from reaching the planet"

Kirk nodded at the ensign and turned toward the viewscreen. "This is Captain Kirk of the U.S. S Enterprise who is—"

"Captain Kirk there's no time for pleasantries." The woman said agitatedly cutting him off. "Your crew is in danger, one of them at least has been killed. Silkar has Uhura, and the others are hidden. We are—"

"Wait T'Kas what are you talking about?" McCoy said recognizing the woman.

Kirk looked back at the doctor thoroughly aggravated. He was going to have a conversation with Bones after this was all over about interrupting official transmissions.

"Dr. McCoy" The woman said glancing at the doctor and continuing "this colony is not what is seems. We are not Vulcans, at least not in philosophy or training. The Ro—"

The transmission cut out, the screen going entirely blank. The ensign at communications said "Its gone Captain. I can't get it back. Someone on the planet is blocking us from receiving the transmission." Ensign Lara said .

Kirk turned to McCoy

"You know that woman?"

"That's T'Kas. She's a doctor and that Vulcan Solkar's daughter; she has a twin brother Silkar, the one who has Uhura."

"So you think she's telling the truth?"

"What she said made sense. Right before we left, one of the ensign's who was supposed to evacuate on the Devlin came to me saying that Uhura, who was evacuating with us , had decided to evacuate on the Devlin" McCoy continued "I did find that a little odd , but it seems that her and Spock have been having some disagreements lately, apparently the logical bullsh-, that Vulcan bastard likes to put down gets to h—"

Kirk cut the doctor off with a glare and pointedly cleared his throat, aware of the crew listening in.

McCoy only looked slightly chastened and continued. "Yes , well anyway, now that I think about it , I didn't actually see anyone from the Devlin after that. And I'm willing to bet nobody else did either. Maybe, somebody kidnapped Uhura , and made O'Connor tell me that she was evacuating with the Devlin so nobody would be suspicious. The ensign did seem a little more nervous than usual"

Kirk had opened his mouth to reply, when Ensign Lara said "Captain the colony is sending a transmission now"

"On view screen" Kirk said. The screen changed to show two Vulcans. One was Solkar and the other was a younger Vulcan who looked similar.

"Captain Kirk, you just tried to contact us earlier and your transmission was blocked by another signal." The elder male continued "I'd like to apologize for my daughter; she's somewhat disturbed. Her and a few of the other colonists are reluctant to leave this planet, even though it is the only way we will survive."

Kirk studied the man's face. It was impassive and showed no signs of deceit, but the raw desperation of the Vulcan woman had held more sincerity Solkar's words. Kirk spoke "we're looking for a missing shuttle, the Devlin, and she informed us that one of our crew was killed"

This time the younger Vulcan spoke "on that fact my sister was telling the truth. One of your people, a lieutenant Smith was killed in a cave in right before the Devlin departed, and we did detect an explosion shortly after the Devlin left. we're searching for survivors and will bring any we find with us when we evacuate."

Kirk stared at them. There was something wrong, and he could feel it."We'd like to send a party down to search for survivors ourselves" Kirk said

"Captain, that's not a good idea, it would be more logical for you to keep your crew on your ship-" As the Solkar spoke Kirk heard McCoy say under his breath "here we go again."

"We plan to evacuate within a few hours." Silkar paused, his dark eyes looking intently at them "If somebody else came down here, they might not make it back up."

Kirk studied the man, his words had sounded like a thinly veiled threat. Keeping his voice calm Kirk said firmly "I'd still like to send some crew down to search for our missing people"

"As you wish , Captain Kirk. We will be available to give you any assistance you may require" said Solkar. He continued "if you'll excuse us, we have to return to our evacuation preparations."

"Live long and prosper" Solkar said holding up his hands in the familiar Vulcan salute.

Kirk replied in similar fashion, and then indicated for the transmission to cut out.

"That's Bulls-" McCoy began angrily as soon as the transmission ended. 'They're a bunch of damn liars—"

Kirk was already moving towards the turbolift as he cut off McCoy's newest rant "Ensign Lara, tell security to meet me in the shuttle bay. He turned to Sulu "Mr. Sulu you have the Conn."

"Wait Jim you're going?" McCoy said

Kirk turned to look back at the doctor "I've stayed on this damn bridge, enough. One crewmember is dead and possibly more. I'm not sending another group of crew down without going myself, something's going on down there and I'm going to find out what it is!"

"But, Jim you're the captain. Is it really best if you go down and get yourself killed!"

"Damn it Bones, this mission is shot to hell anyway, half the bridge crew is down on that planet dead for all we know. According to that Vulcan, Uhura's being held hostage. I'm going down there!"

McCoy subsided, as he realized Kirk's mind was made up and nothing was going to change it.

"Well I'm going too" McCoy said gruffly after a moment.

"Bones, you need to stay—" Kirk began

"I'm going there's probably several people injured and you didn't say you were taking any medical personnel. So I'm coming" McCoy continued noting the look on Kirk's face "you can write me up for insubordination when we get back."

Kirk and McCoy stared at each other for a long moment before Kirk said "I might just do that," he continued "Okay get, your gear and meet us in the shuttle bay in 5 minutes"

Kirk turned away from his friend and to Sulu who had moved to the captain's chair. "If we're not back by the time the planet starts breaking up. I want you to leave and send a message to Starfleet. And if anything tries to get off this planet and we're not back…. Destroy it." Then Kirk stepped onto the turbo lift along with McCoy and the doors slid shut.

Next Chapter Update wil be February 22th. Thanks to all favouriters and followers. Special Thanks to all my reviewers. So Finally Kirk comes into the picture, things are about to get very interesting. Coming up... seriously angry Spock that will make the time he tried to kill Kirk on the bridge look like horseplay...Silkar interrogates Uhura...More moments with Chekov and Kelly...And somebody attempts to forcibly mindmeld with Kirk...Hope I've whetted your appetite.