Chapter 9
Kirk surfaced into the land of the living and tried to lift his head. The pain that resulted instantly dissuaded him. McCoy stuck his face in close, invading his personal space.
"Back with us, I see."
He scowled at his CMO. "Well, that's debatable."
"Head hurting?"
"I'm fine, Bones." He tried to rise into a sitting position and his stomach protested.
"I'll take that as a yes." McCoy placed a hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him down. "Don't even think about it! I've just scraped your brains together and stuffed them back inside your head and you're medicated up the wazoo. You're not going anywhere other than keeping me company for the next few hours. The ship is in Spock's capable hands and we have managed to calm down the Matli assembly member, who nearly had a conniption after his transporter jaunt." McCoy snorted. "I can relate."
"What's happening on the surface?"
"Beats me. I'm always the last to know anything here." Well, that was an out an out untruth.
"Bones!"
McCoy glared. "I am going to call Spock here to report on the latest, because if I don't, you're going to fret and work yourself into a lather. Then, Captain Kirk, suh-hurr, you will rest, and you will delegate to your capable crew."
He did not have the stomach for argument — literally — and shut up. McCoy, used to his intransigence, worried at such ready capitulation and busied himself with another pass of a medical sensor. What he saw was evidently no cause for real alarm because he relaxed.
"Nausea?"
"I'll say." He concentrated on his breathing. "What happened to Siran?"
"The kid that whacked you?"
"Yes."
McCoy moved back and to one side. "Another patron of my establishment."
He battled nausea enough to turn his head. The Leonard McCoy Hostelry had a limited guest list, only he and Siran occupied bio-beds, and the kid lay motionless upon the one furthest away from him.
"He's not doing too well," McCoy said.
He'd guessed as much.
"I've sent word to Gurad and asked them to send us a healer, because the kid doesn't seem able to initiate a healing trance, but even if one arrives promptly, I'm not sure one will be able to help."
What are the extent of his injuries?"
"A really bad concussion that's got me worried, shoulder wound, broken right arm, and he's lost a fair bit of blood, too. Those are the highlights. It hasn't helped that someone, who doesn't know their way around Vulcan physiology, attempted to treat him. His system is flooded with a drug that's making him hallucinate. Can you believe it? DeMarco still wanted to throw him in the brig."
"He has that effect on people."
"And a story for when you're feeling better, I think." McCoy laid something atop his belly and turned to go. "Just in case. I mean it, Jim, once Spock finishes his report, you rest."
He puzzled over what McCoy had left him and he must be out of it, because it took him a moment to realise it was an emesis basin and prayed he wouldn't need it. He despised throwing up. It always made him revert to the emotional state of a small child.
xxx
"Captain? Jim!"
Kirk opened a bleary eye. "Spock?" What the hell had McCoy dosed him with? He'd just nodded off in the space of a few minutes.
"I can return later, if you wish to rest, Captain."
He huffed. "Et tu, Spock?"
An eyebrow rose toward a hairline. He swallowed, and again found the need to concentrate on his breathing. This was enough for Spock, who rose to leave.
"I'm alright. Please stay. I apologise for my grumpiness, but you haven't had to put up with McCoy's fussing. The doctor is becoming an old lady in his dotage."
"I heard that!"
Spock ignored cheesy human levity and eyed him with concern. "It was a serious injury, Jim."
"And my own damn fault. How's DeMarco by the way?"
"Suffering a severe case of professional embarrassment."
"Thought he might. I don't know why, though. I was the one who ordered Siran's cell opened, and then turned my back on the occupant." His friend's curiosity was engaged at his use of Siran's given name, his gaze flicking toward the other occupied bio-bed, yet he would never pry. "That was my own stupid error of judgement, not DeMarco's." He snorted, when Spock offered no contradiction, merely maintained a politic silence. "I heard DeMarco almost threw Siran into the brig?"
"Indeed. At first, I confess I was of a similar mind. Whatever our intentions, it became moot as soon as Doctor McCoy saw the boy's injuries."
"McCoy says he has a serious concussion and is out of his mind on some Matli quack remedy, so I'll give him a break."
"Captain, do you recall I said when we recovered the male Vulcan, we would know then whether his bondmate survived?"
"I do."
"Actions speak louder than words. I interpret his bellicosity as a demonstration of his desire to get to his bondmate and protect her."
And to think all that time ago, he'd worried at how Siran's wedding would progress. "She's alive?"
"As of a few hours ago, I would certainly think so. Currently, we are combing the security files Mr DeMarco recovered at considerable danger to himself."
"Trying to redeem himself by putting his own skin at risk?" A memory surfaced of DeMarco's unhappiness at his captain coming along for the ride.
Spock stared.
"Yeah, that's not very fair. Ignore me, I'm still smarting from my own stupidity. Besides, it is the sort of thing I would do."
"Yes," Spock agreed, again a little too readily for his battered pride. "In fact, I sanctioned the exercise. The data we have mined made it a move worth the risk."
"Oh?" Concussion and outraged digestion notwithstanding, he sat up straighter.
"Jim, we have concrete information on the location of the base of First Minister Jomadai's offworld allies.
xxx
Six hours later, after a brief conversations with Farragut's and Apollo's captains for an update on what exactly they'd found at the co-ordinates Spock relayed hours earlier, Kirk returned to the bridge. McCoy hadn't wanted to let him go, but his head had responded to treatment, though his nausea remained; he had no patience for lingering in sickbay, when he had work to do.
Spock rose out of the command chair at his arrival and stationed himself at his side.
"Report, Mr Spock."
Dark eyes examined him, but reassured by what he saw, Spock launched into a summation of current developments on Matli. Trukoi's decoy was still paying off in spades, with Jomadai's people turning riverside warehouses upside down in their search for their Vulcan quarry; apparently they had no idea Trukoi had moved Siran to the security facility and had attacked the place because they believed Trukoi had attempted to hide there from the first minister's thugs. The jury was still out on what Jomadai's forces made of Trukoi's absence, but it wouldn't take much for the penny to fall and the realisation it wasn't bad intel but Enterprise's involvement.
"Does Jomadai, and his people, know we have their codes?"
"It would appear not. The newly evolving political realignment on Matli has thrown the first minister and his supporters into disarray.
"Ha!"
"Assembly Member Trukoi and his staff remain aboard Enterprise."
"Still?"
"We identified the target the Matli ship struck."
"I'm not going to like your answer, am I?"
"As I suspect you may have inferred it was Assembly Member Trukoi's house. However, he anticipated such a reprisal and had abandoned the property. The situation on the surface remains an ever volatile one and, at the moment, I am at a loss to determine where might be safe for him."
"Alright, we'll cross that bridge when we need to. Any news on our remaining lost lamb."
"Nothing certain. I do believe we may have a likely location for her, although again transporter suppression fields do not allow for sensors to offer a confirmation. I am concerned that as Jomadai's fortunes sink, so rises her level of jeopardy. Trukoi and Iskar have both commented on his vindictive streak."
"Yes," the same concern worried him. He swivelled his seat around. "Lieutenant Uhura, my compliments to Assembly Member Trukoi and ask him if he would join me on the bridge.
"How is Siran?" Spock asked.
"McCoy says he is fading fast. Any sign of that healer?"
"Gurad assures me one has been despatched in a ship capable of warp eight."
So breaking orbit to rendezvous with the incoming vessel wouldn't reap much of a benefit, not when the developing situation on the surface also demanded Enterprise's attention.
The turbo-lift decanted both Trukoi and Eselleese, the latter appointed to the task of wrangling her boss. Just as well, he was the sort to get lost.
"Your ship is a wonder, Captain," said the Assembly Member.
"Thank you," he said. A quick smile and then down to business. "Trukoi, I have a favour to ask."
"Name it."
I want you to contact Arok Jomadai and arrange for me to meet with him to talk prisoner release."
xxx
On three Kirk and his fiver person security team burst through the entrance.
First Minister Jomadai and another Matli, probably a lieutenant, rather than a bodyguard, reached for the holstered weapons at their side, before they registered the phasers Enterprise's crew trained upon their persons and froze.
"Wise move," he said, "hands above heads, if you please, or take a phaser hit." He waved two of his security people, Masekela and Riggins, forward to confiscate the nasty projectile things the Matli relied upon as personal sidearms.
Jomadai goggled at them. "How…?"
"How did I know where to find you? You were kind enough to take my call, First Minister. Took mere seconds for Enterprise's communications officer to pick her way through the maze of that security wall you'd created and find your location. She's very efficient." Now that any threat from the first minister and his man had been neutralised, he allowed himself to examine his surroundings, taken aback by the size of the space in what he had been informed was a private residence. Enormous. City Hall meets Cistine Chapel. Delusions of grandeur, or what? A banqueting table, big enough to easily seat a small army, took up a sizable proportion of the space and an untouched meal, placed on on one end, awaited the first minister.
Masekela met his eye and gave him a discreet shake of the head. Damn. The first minister and his flunky carried only weapons on their person. Not to be stymied and thoroughly briefed by DeMarco, Masekela unshouldered a tricorder and commenced a scan of the room.
"What do you want, Kirk?"
He ignored the first minister's question. "My, this is a big place, but I bet it gets a little draughty on long winter's nights. Yes, big place. Not very secure though, even if some of your thugs have ever so hard jaws." He made a big deal of nursing sore knuckles. "Relying on those borrowed transporter jammers a little too much, yes?"
Jomadai took the hint, put two and two together, and his throat bobbed once, twice, thrice. If the jammers were down, his compound must now lie at the mercy of Starfleet's pride and joy. Enterprise might transport the first minister to anywhere her captain desired, including delivering him into the hands of Trukoi, now very much back on the surface, and Trukoi's friends.
"What do you want here? These are affairs that concern our world; you and your Federation have no business interfering." Jomadai talked a good game, but the bravado fell a little flat. Trukoi reported the first minister's supporters jumping ship. All unappealing intelligence to the first minister, no doubt. Rivers in Egypt and so on. Nevertheless, the imprint of desperation and fear, born of the unhappy truth that only failure and ignominy awaited him, and but mere hours away at that, registered on his face.
"Oh, we shall be on our way soon. Once you release your Vulcan guest into my care."
Jomadai scoffed. "The Vulcans have greatly offended me and all of Matli." Jomadai glanced toward the midpoint of the ginormous table and his gaze immediately veered away.
Hello.
"Masekela."
"Sir?"
"Concentrate your scan on that table." He pointed. "Start about there."
"Aye, sir."
"No, that big offence thing is a total crock. You have invoked a tradition, so old it hasn't been practiced in fifty generations. Now I know, and I suspect you know, Vulcans mostly mate for life, so your little design could have no purpose other than to perform the office of provocation, which it has done marvellously for thus am I here." He fashioned an elaborate bow.
"You would threaten us. We are not afraid of the firepower of your starship, Kirk."
"Really? Well, that's just plain silly."
Jomadai's lieutenant stirred, and security tensed, expecting trouble. Yet the man only moved his weight from one foot to the other. However small the movement, he was attempting to edge away from Jomadai.
"Silly, but not the way we do business in Starfleet or the Federation. Now you on the other hand. Oh, dear, where does one start? You, sir, might have had something good going for you. People respond to leaders with a vision. What was the platform on which you were elected? A strong, self-reliant Matli. A Matli with the vision to find new trading partners and acquire new technologies to secure a prosperous future for your world."
"You have the gall to criticise me for those aims."
"For that? No. I reserve my scorn for the manner in which you were prepared to mortgage Matli up to the hilt to pay for Gammenori technology and for how you dealt with fellow Matli, who had the colossal nerve to question matters, which in most instances appears to have won them either a disappearance or a violent end. Helpful having those Gammenori weapons to hand, eh? So, the only Matli you left standing were those too frightened for themselves, or for the safety of their families. Going after the children," he tsked, wagged his finger. "always a tactic bound to bite you in the ass in the long run."
More restless fidgeting from the lieutenant.
"The trouble with despots is that no one dares speak truth to power, no one dares to point out when you have overplayed your hand. You assumed fellow Matli would respond favourably to your engineered outrage with the Vulcans, but they saw through a scheme that only the immature and the foolish gave any credence to."
"The Vulcans put five of my people in the hospital."
"If I were married and someone came to abduct my wife, I dare say I would be a little peeved, too. Bet you didn't count on Vulcans finding their own way of getting even. How many ships have the Orions seized now? Ten? Twelve? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was the Gammenori who suggested you pick a fight with Vulcan?"
A filthy look was his only response.
Undaunted, he continued, "I'll take that as a 'yes'. This must be painful to absorb, but your role in all of this, First Minister, is that of a distraction. Your Gammenori friends wanted to start a proxy war. Well, not much of a war, but a conflict sufficient to afford the Gammenori enough time to make an orderly removal from this sector of space. I understand they've been working on setting up new supply chains, establishing new trading routes, elsewhere — tell me if any of this strikes a chord — get the Federation to concentrate on Matli, while your Gammenori friends use all the fun and games for their own advantage."
"Lies!"
"Spoken with your Gammenori contacts lately, have you?"
Silence.
"The Federation suspected for some time the Gammenori preyed on our shipping, but we have never been able to prove it. Starfleet is good, but we cannot be everywhere, nor had we been able to find the Gammenori staging post we suspected was in this sector. That changed as of a few hours ago. My fellow captains found Federation citizens the Gammenori had pressed into servitude, a matter of which we take a dim view. So, if you were hoping your friends might help you out, they've kind of got their hands full at the moment."
Jomadai chose that moment to launch himself at him, a move security had been anticipating. Masekela neatly tripped the enraged first minister, before he hauled him back to his feet, the Matli's desire for blood curbed with the application of a restraining hold.
The first minister struggled, until Masekela applied a little circumspect pressure. "At least the Gammenori shared their technology with us. Something your Federation would never do."
"Exactly how much were they extracting, no let's get this right, how much were they extorting from you for these benefits?"
Another sullen silence, followed by more bluster. He tuned out Jomadai, interested to see what the man's lieutenant made of this. Some of this was plainly news, if the expression of one who'd caught a whiff of something far more malodorous than three day old boiled cabbage was any indicator. Jomadai appeared hardly aware of his subordinate's presence; the subordinate, with Jomadai's back presented to him, had dropped the blank, reserved expression and his mouth was a tight line, his face slightly pink.
"That is no concern of yours!" Jomadai yelled.
Masekela gave a table pillar a whack and a panel opened. Jomadai burst forward and made two steps before this time Security pulled out a seat and made him sit.
"Well done, Masekela. Let's see what we've got, shall we? Ah, papers, an awful lot of Matli currency. Oh, here we go." He pulled out the small device, which looked like nothing other than a metallic lollipop and which had been their objective since they'd gate-crashed the first minister's party. As if it were offering a commentary on the situation, his communicator chirped. "Kirk, here."
"Spock, Captain. I thought you would like to know Ensign Gretel has reported fully fit for duty and we may now beam you up at your convenience."
He allowed a wry grin, eyeing the device in his hand. Spock had beaten him to it. "Very timely, Mr Spock. Stand by, Enterprise."
"I will never release the Vulcan bitch to you. I will execute her first, Kirk."
"Really? I imagine a little like…" he needed a closer inspection. "Ah, yes." The 'lollipop' might rotate. He gave it a savage turn and the device squealed like a pig as it broadcasted a signal.
Jomadai froze in his seat, his eyes widening; he covered the reaction by glancing down at his boots, but the smirk was the give away.
"Hey!" He snapped his fingers and made a bid to out-smirk the first minister, while wagging a finger at him. "Hey, now I know what you're thinking. Oh, you naughty dictator, you." He laughed. "Just a heads-up, but we have recovered the remaining member of the Vulcan diplomatic delegation and my first officer reports she is safe and well. The thing about neuro-lytic restraints is that a well appointed starship has absolutely no problems removing them from a subject without any nasty surprises. Although, I have to say the addition of a poison sac set up for a remote trigger, "and he brandished the device in his hands, "elevated diabolical to a whole new level."
Jomadai spat out something unintelligible.
"In case I was too oblique earlier: you have played the game, sir, and you have lost. Now it strikes me you can either figure out a way to make a deal with the incoming admin—"
"Never!"
"Figure out a way to make a deal with the new administration, or you can offer your services to the Federation. We require an intermediary with the Gammenori and you might be what we need. Either way, I'm not too bothered what you choose. I imagine one of your subordinates will serve in a pinch."
The first minister uttered another curse.
"Well, whatever. I'd watch your back if I were you. Enterprise, six to beam up."
xxx