And now, part two of a very special Beyond Antares...

Under Attack

The intruders set off targeted explosives, shorting out the security door circuitry, and engaged the release mechanism. Uhura ordered everyone to take defensive positions and get ready to fight. "Phasers set on maximum and shoot to kill!" she shouted. This wasn't the time for warning shots or fancy shooting. This was life and death. Uhura was hunkered down along with technicians and engineers, but they had all gone through basic Starfleet academy training and should be prepared to defend the ship with their lives.

When the first raider charged through the door, Uhura took her shot. The Orion disintegrated before her eyes, but she didn't have a chance to react to that killing before the room was flooded with raiders who were willing to risk death to get inside. Uhura and her team fired shot after shot after shot. A good many of them missed, but they held off the invaders until reinforcements arrived from the rear. Uhura covered her ears as she heard the first surprised screams of the dying just outside the door. But no one else came through, as the fight was now outside in the outer area.

Still, Uhura and the other officers stayed in their defensive positions until the last shot fired and all was quiet outside. The first red-shirt who stepped through the door nearly got blown away by an overzealous technician, but luckily whoever fired was a poor shot.

"Whoa!" the security guard said with hands up, "It's the Calvary." The room quickly filled with security and the leader went to the intercom to report to Mr. Scott. "Auxiliary control secure, Sir."

"Good. Maintain your position until further notice," Scotty said.

The security chief answered, "Aye, sir," then the security detail took up positions at the door and in the outer perimeter while the auxiliary crew went back to monitoring their stations. The heat of the battle was over. The ship was no longer being bombarded with phaser fire and their shields were holding steady with the help of the Vulcans. The raiding ships disappeared just as easily as they had appeared.

Damn! Uhura thought as she watched the ships escape through a viewer. Those pirates had cloaking technology now? Even with cloaks, why the hell did they attack the Enterprise? Were they looking to take the crew as slaves? What if those Vulcan cruisers hadn't been here? The Orions hit so hard and fast they didn't have time to get out a distress signal. Besides, another Federation ship would have been too late to help them. They got lucky today.

Now that the crisis was over, Uhura felt it was ok to leave auxiliary control. Cleanup crews were on the scene in the outer area and she had to weave around them on her way out. On her way back up to her quarters, she climbed over debris and dodged maintenance crews patching up the ship. While she waited for the turbo lift, seeing all the destruction angered her at first, and then it frightened her.

What if the Orions had captured the ship? What would have happened to the crew? What if the ship had been destroyed? What if they had shot her? The very idea made her nauseous, but she maintained control of her emotions. She got on the lift while more maintenance crew members got off leaving her alone.

With the adrenaline wearing off, the grim reality of the attack set in for Uhura. Both pirates and Enterprise crew had been killed. She had killed a pirate, maybe a few of them. Instead of going back to her cabin alone, she headed for the largest rec room on the ship. It had been set up as a makeshift infirmary for triage so that the injured could be treated efficiently by the overwhelmed medical staff.

Uhura wasn't injured, so she got roped into providing first aid for minor injuries like cuts and scrapes. The worst injuries of radiation burns, electrical shock, and smoke inhalation cases were taken to the sickbay.

After what seemed like hours of patching up her fellow shipmates, Uhura was exhausted. She went over to the food dispenser and ordered a hot black coffee. She hadn't had a good cup of coffee since... she couldn't remember when. She'd forgotten what it even smelled like. Her life had changed so much in the past few months she hadn't had time for a coffee break. She'd been kidnapped, married, bonded, had a katra in her mind somewhere, had gone through a Pon Farr that only happens to Vulcan males, and now she'd killed someone.

As she looked down at the hot steaming brew, the smell of the coffee suddenly turned her stomach and the cup slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor. Scalding hot liquid splashed her legs, but she didn't even flinch. She just stood there staring at nothing while her entire body trembled.

She'd joined the service for adventure, to see new worlds, meet different races, learn new cultures from people different from herself. Orion slavers were not on the Starfleet academy recruitment pamphlets. Neither were Triskelion gamblers, or genocidal space probes, or augmented humans with enhanced genetics willing to murder you for your ship. The pamphlets never mentioned shooting raiders at point-blank range and watching them disintegrate before your eyes, snuffed out forever.

Someone rushed over and touched her shoulder when she didn't move to clean up her mess. "Nyota, are you okay?" She heard the concerned voice but she couldn't answer. She knew they were talking to her. She knew people surrounded her. But she didn't know what they were saying or doing anymore. All she could see was the surprised look on that Orion's face before he was gone.

She gasped for air, hyperventilating. She needed to get somewhere safe. Where was Spock! She wanted to scream for help but the words wouldn't come out. She needed Spock. She needed to getaway. Where was he? He would know what to do. Why didn't he come back for her, she cried. Why was she all alone?

When Dr. McCoy reached Uhura, she was in a full panic. She didn't even acknowledge his presence, so he administered a sedative hypo and ordered her taken to the sickbay.

This wasn't like Uhura, McCoy thought as he followed the guards carrying Uhura. She'd been in tight situations before and she always kept a cool head. Hell, what she'd been through the past few months would fell a lesser individual, but Uhura kept right ongoing. Perhaps that was it. Maybe everything was finally catching up to her, and she was finally having a long-overdue breakdown.

Damn it! He was a doctor, not a psychiatrist! Luckily, they had an excellent psychiatrist aboard, one already familiar with Uhura's case.

"Have Dr. Noel report to the sickbay stat!" he commanded. He was going to get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all.

*/*/*

The Syrran and her sister ship fared far better than the Enterprise had in the final assessment. What the Vulcan cruisers lacked in offensive firepower, they more than made up for in defensive capabilities and maneuverability. There were some injuries, but the Vulcan physicians had it all under control, and there was little for McCoy and M'Benga to do on the ship. M'Benga had explained to McCoy that those with superior psi abilities would put themselves into a healing trance and those with little to no psi ability would need the help of healers to achieve the trance and that was something that neither human doctors could assist in so they beamed back to their own ship to render aid.

Spock and Kirk remained on the Syrran for a conference with captain T'Lann. There were plenty of questions asked, but very few answers were given. Captain Kirk was interested in one thing. How did the Vulcans detect the attacking ships before they de-cloaked?

However, he was not going to get a straight answer. Vulcans did not lie but neither did they tell you anything they didn't want you to know. As Spock reminded him, Vulcans did not bluff, and they did not blink. Captain T'Lann sat across the conference table and stared unrelentingly at Kirk while she denied for nth time having any technology that could detect cloaked ships.

When the meeting ended, Kirk and Spock had no reason to stay aboard, so they headed back to the transporter room. Before beaming off the Syrran, Kirk couldn't help but ask his friend, "What do you make of all this?"

"It certainly is fascinating Captain."

"Do you think T'Lann is lying?"

Spock looked at Kirk with surprise. "No."

"How can you be so sure? And please don't tell me Vulcans don't lie because we both know better than that."

"Captain, I do not believe she is lying, but she knows more about the situation than she is permitted to reveal."

"Permitted, what do you mean?"

"You suspected my family was behind our escort. You were correct."

Kirk was always happy to be correct, but not in this instance. "What makes you agree with me now?"

"Captain T'Lann and her crew speak the Golic dialect of the S'chn T'gai clan."

"What's that?" Kirk asked.

"My family. S'chn T'gai is our clan name. I do not think there was any luck involved with our Vulcan escort being here at the precise moment when the Enterprise was attacked."

"What the hell is going on? What does your family have to do with this? Why would Orion raiders attack a Federation vessel? Could it be a prelude to invasion?"

"I don't think so, Captain. Last intelligence reports say the Orion syndicate was branching out into other more lucrative areas of criminal activity in the outer reaches of the galaxy. As the Federation expands in the Alpha quadrant, the Orions have been operating closer to Klingon and Romulan space."

"Then what is it? Why did they attack us?" Kirk asked his friend.

Spock answered truthfully. "I don't know. An attack from the Orions is not unprecedented, however, we may never know why they attacked here and now. Orions are notorious for keeping their plans secret. Their operatives would rather die than testify, and those we manage to capture alive come to a mysterious end while in custody, despite our best efforts to preserve them."

As they walked back to the transporter room escorted by two Vulcan security officers, a wave of foreboding the likes of which Spock had not experienced before engulfed him. Something was wrong with Nyota. Reports from the Enterprise had reassured him that his wife was not among the dead or injured, so this feeling of unease was unexpected, as well as disturbing. Spock looked around his environment. Vulcans surrounded him, many of whom possessed psi abilities. To open his mind and let down his shields in their presence would be useless. He would have to filter through too many minds with little odds of success. But he felt the urgent need to be with his wife all the more.

Kirk noticed Spock's change in attitude. "Spock, what's the matter?"

"I sense something is amiss. We must return to the Enterprise immediately," Spock said. He spoke to the guards and they hurried to the transporter room. Once there, the guard gave a command to the transporter operator in that strange dialect of theirs. On the transporter pad, Spock addressed the group in farewell. "Live Long and prosper," he said, then he and the Captain vanished.

*/*/*

McCoy had almost given up trying to figure out what was causing Uhura's strange combination of symptoms, which were setting her back from regaining active duty. Angry outbursts and panic attacks were well outside of Uhura's usual psychological profile. Dr. Noel could find no explanation for it. Uhura was always a happy-go-lucky girl who dealt with stress in a healthy manner. But that all seemed to change since her marriage to Spock.

Now there was the recent development of her not eating and suffering from malnourishment. Something else he could contribute to Spock.

McCoy was ready to have Dr. Noel perform a new psychiatric evaluation. If the problem was not physical, then it was psychological. But it started with Spock. This all had to be mixed up somehow with Spock and his darn Katra. Uhura supposedly had a little piece of Spock in her mind. Who the hell knew what that would do to a human being. Even Dr. M'Benga had not heard of anything like the combination of symptoms Uhura was having. He had performed every human test imaginable and ran every scan he could think of twice, and it all came back negative. Whatever it was, it Vulcan related.

On a hunch, McCoy ordered his assistant to re-calibrate the medical scanners for Vulcan chemistry and physiology.

"Doctor, that won't work on the Lieutenant. It only detects Vulcan illnesses."

"Do you have a better idea?" He was going to find this so-called Katra or disprove its existence. It was a long shot that anything would come of it but...

The scanner beeped immediately, indicating it had found an anomaly. Holy moly, pay dirt!

McCoy read the result and then performed the scan again, just to be sure. "Well, would you look at this," he said to himself. Spock, you pointy-eared bastard!