Chapter 17
Bones yelped and flattened his body over a wounded security officer when slivers of crystal from a chandelier overhead rained down all around them. The foyer was littered with dead guards, but Starfleet had suffered its fair share of casualties too, far too many with wounds he couldn't treat without immediate access to Sickbay. That's what sickened him the most. People shouldn't have died from injuries that were treatable, from injuries he could have saved them from if they weren't in the heat of combat.
"Kirk to second mission team," Jim's voice said from his communication device. "We've got problems in the basement. Daddy Tyrant was successful in creating emotionless androids. As soon as you can get away, rendezvous with us in the basement to lend support."
Spock, taking cover near a central staircase, had to shout to be heard over the fighting. "Fall back in groups of two! Arta, instruct your brethren to abandon their posts and make their way to the rendezvous point to help Captain Kirk."
A quick hypospray injection full of a mender cocktail stabilized the patient Bones was treating. He helped the man get tucked away behind the stairs where he could stay out of range and then dashed back to Spock in a crouch. Technology was evil! How long had he been saying it? Years at least, but no one wanted to listen to him. They all chalked it up to his overly-suspicious nature. Maybe people would believe him after the clusterfuck that was attempting to arrest the To Tyrants.
"Have your security officers pull back to the library. We can bust through there and circumvent the guards hunkered down on the opposite side of the foyer," Arta instructed.
Too many things were going on at once, because Lieutenant Sulu chose that moment to contact them, at which point he said, "We're in position to make a wounded pick-up. The grounds are clear of guards, so send them out the west door to be extracted."
"Do you have Ritha and her team?" Bones asked.
"Yes, Sir. They're safely aboard the shuttle," Sulu responded.
Relief was so profound he actually took a moment to sigh and allow his shoulders to slump. There was one less person for him to worry about getting shot up. The healing power of a good fuck didn't magically make him head over heels for her, but being that intimate with her made him care more than he should have.
Rather than sticking around to make sure the wounded got out safely, time Jim might not have, Spock instructed security officers to oversee the extraction of the wounded. The hobgoblin shoved out of his crouched position and bailed out of the foyer after Arta, Bones hot on their heels. One of the doors in the entry hallway led them into a large library filled with old fashioned books. It reminded Bones of his father's library back home. His father was an avid collector of antique books.
Bones flinched when Arta charged a wall, the force of her body impacting against it tearing a gaping hole that allowed the rest of them to duck through into a kitchen. From there, the Mechanic led them down a short hallway filled with crumpled bodies of imperial guards and to a laundry facility where an automated machine gun was little more than wreckage on the floor. At least they knew they were going in the right direction.
More guards came rushing down the hall from the opposite end with guns drawn. He tried to get Spock out of the way in time, had hold of the hobgoblin so he could shove him into a recessed alcove, but he was too late. A bullet lodged in Spock's shoulder, accompanied by a gush of green blood. The only thing Bones could do was jab him in the neck with his ever-ready hypospray and whip out his phaser while dragging both of them into the alcove for cover.
Blasts from his phaser were fired around the corner as the rest of the security officers rushed forward to engage the guards, giving him the time he needed to asses Spock's injury. Vulcan anatomy had thankfully saved Spock from any critical damage. The bullet could be extracted when they were back on the Enterprise, but it was a close call.
Between Arta and the security officers, the guards in the hallway didn't last long, so their group pushed into the laundry facility where sounds of combat drifted up the stairs. Loud shouts from Mechanics working together, Jim barking commands, and things breaking prompted Spock to dart toward the opening, but Arta brought him up short in order for her to take point.
***
Hissing, Jim wiped his uniform sleeve over his forehead to keep blood from trickling into his eyes from a gash he'd sustained. He jumped away to escape the android fist swinging at him, quite certain his skull would be crushed if he took that blow. A pile of rubble on the floor behind him proved his undoing when he tripped over it to land on his back with a hard thud. The android was more than willing to seize the opportunity, but Jim scrambled backward to stay out of reach until he came up against the wall.
The first thing that came to hand was a stack of ornate chairs, so he shot to his feet, grabbed up one of the chairs, and swung it as hard as he could. Wood splintered as it broke apart against the android's metal body. A slight yelp left him as he stared stupidly at the remnants of the chair leg in his hand. Obviously, someone had replaced his brain with cottage cheese if he thought wood would do any damage to a metal skeleton. He grabbed up another and hurled it at his opponent while leaping onto a nearby desk and bailing off the other side.
Putting the desk between them only bought him a few moments, because the android made a standing leap from one side of the desk to the other, its open palms smacking against Jim's chest hard enough to shove him back into a concrete wall. Then it was on him. Hands closed around his throat, threatening to crush his wind pipe. He had the oddest thought while trying to find some way to get himself out of this situation; had someone written "choke me" across his forehead in invisible ink?
Black spots were beginning to form in front of his eyes when his hand closed around an old copper grounding rod. He went still and allowed his eyes to roll to the back of his head as though having succumbed to suffocation. Metal hands eased their grip slightly, and when that happened, he moved in a sudden burst of speed and rammed the pointed end of the grounding rod through the android's eye and into its skull interior.
Said android twitched and started pulling itself off the rod. Having the contents of its skull cavity scrambled like eggs should have killed it, but the thing was still moving. Jim fumbled with his phaser to open the battery pack compartment, because the only thing he could think to do was shove the electric battery against the copper rod. Charge was conducted through the rod into the android's innards. The thing fell over and started thrashing on the ground. Within moments, it ceased all movement.
There was no time to get his harsh breathing under control when another enemy broke off from fighting the Mechanics to head in his direction. It was brought up short when Arta suddenly leaped from the middle of the stairs to come down on top of it. Her fingers plunged through its opaque eyes and soon dragged out a small processor. His would-be opponent stopped moving.
"Next time we have to arrest a pair of criminals, we're blowing up the Goddamn building!" Bones shouted when he booked it in in Jim's direction.
The doctor stabbed him in the neck with his hypospray, making him flinch in response. No one else flinched when Bones injected them! "Hey, I was the one who wanted to blow it up in the first place, so yell at Spock. He's the one who talked us out of it." His glance found Spock trying to subdue an android with Arta's help.
Jim forced himself back to his feet. Despite Bones' protests, he jerked the grounding rod out of the android and launched himself back into the thick of things. At least he had a blueprint on how to kill them, but every second the battle lasted was a second Tobra and Tien could come up with some insane plan to escape. The battle had to be brought to an end before the pair of them went underground.
A feminine cry jerked his attention away from the android he'd just staked. He was expecting to see one of their security officers being killed, but that wasn't the case. Arta was staring across the basement in what he could only describe as horror. The reason for her reaction became evident when he found Voren on the ground. Certaktin coated the floor in a pool around him. An android ripped the Mechanic's head off, reached inside, and came out with a handful of processors that were crushed when it closed its fist.
He shouted. He slammed the battery of his phaser against the copper rod with more force than necessary, jerked the rod free when the charge dissipated, and sprinted in Voren's direction even though he logically knew it was too late. Fury welled up inside him, fury for the loss of so much life, fury that another life had to be given in order to stop Tobra and Tien, fury at Jiet Je Jong for creating these beings with the capability of feeling grief, because he could not wipe Arta's look of horror from the insides of his eyelids. She felt what he would feel if Bones or Spock had been killed. She felt, and it twisted his insides up in waves of nausea.
Kicking the asshole in the face to get him away from Voren's body, he used his makeshift weapon as a baseball bat. It connected solidly but not hard enough to leave a dent. The android, its face expressionless, spun around the pole and fisted its hand in Jim's shirt. Before he could be hurled across the room, Arta grabbed its shoulders and jerked backward, allowing Jim a split second to turn the android's brain into pureed soup. Jim delivered an electric charge that was conducted straight into its body. It fell to the floor convulsing.
The instinct was there to reach out and wipe certaktin tears from Arta's face. How many others had felt the same grief over eons of time? Sentience was not all it was cracked up to be, he surmised. But Jim didn't reach out to try to offer her some comfort. Comfort had no place in combat. All they could do was keep fighting, secure justice for Voren and every other Mechanic and Organic who had suffered at the hands of Tobra and Tien. It was all he could give her.
Pockets of fighting thinned out as the androids were slowly pressed together into a corner where they would be less mobile. The final chaos of battle ended when the last android was dropped, but that didn't mean they could stand there taking it all in. Security officers were already engaging guards who had amassed at the top of the stairs, so the only way to truly put an end to the fighting was by putting Tobra and Tien in handcuffs, finding the scrambling device, and then beaming out of the area.
"Spock, find a way to open the damned door. The corner over there opens when the two walls shift inward," Jim said before rushing over to the stairwell to lend support to the security officers.
The number of guards willing to fight and die for Tien and Tobra was almost frightening. He could only hope they were mercenaries rather than men actually loyal to the idea of an imperial government. One thing that was glaringly obvious was the need for Federation to give the people of Istabul Major more support in stabilizing their new government.
A crash from behind him jerked his attention around to find Spock and Sodrin toppling over a wardrobe to expose a small access panel. God, he really hoped Spock knew how to circumvent the thumb print activation, but the elf was a member of the USS Enterprise. That meant they would be forced to somehow get a jackhammer to the basement to tear up the concrete to gain access. If their situation wasn't so dire, he would have settled the back of his hand against his forehead and engaged in southern belle hysterics when, after a few cut wires on the access panel, the corner opened up. Jim offered up a cocky smile that said he was damn well going to enjoy this when he caught sight of Tobra and Tien's surprised expressions.
"Tam To Tien and Tien To Tobra, I hereby place you under arrest for the murder of over forty Starfleet personnel, God knows how many Mechanics, and the attempted take-over of a Federation-sanctioned planet," he said, his tone dripping with pleasure.
Tobra actually stepped in front of his father, an older man whose black hair was streaked liberally with white, and said, "I had you in the palm of my hand. I, son of the great Emperor Tam To Tien, killed the invincible James T. Kirk when I sent those men to Jiet Je Jong's apartment."
Jim's brow imitated Spock. "You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to legal council before, during, and after court proceedings. You have the right to a trial by a jury of your peers on your home planet if said planet is a member of the Federation."
"I killed you!" he shouted, raising his voice for the first time. "Had the assassins I sent been a little more thorough, your doctor wouldn't have been able to revive you."
"You have the right to attorney and client privilege. You have the right to be treated fairly and humanely under Federation regulation three two nine paragraph R addressing the treatment and transport of suspected criminals."
"You were dead because the might of the Istabulian Empire is far greater than that of your weak and cowardly Federation."
"You have the right to receive private visitations from all listed family members. You have the right to directly face your accusers, and you also have the privilege of being given the opportunity to call off the guards trying to come down the stairs to somehow prove you aren't a mindless killer."
The old man suddenly started laughing, a raspy sound as though he couldn't quite catch his breath. He laughed so hard he was forced to grip his son's shoulder for support lest he fall. "My son was right about you, Captain James T. Kirk. You are indeed stupid. If you are the best the Federation has to offer, the entire coalition will collapse."
A muscle in Jim's jaw ticked. He was getting just a little sick of everyone calling him stupid. "Oh really, and I guess you're going to tell me just why I'm stupid this time."
"Captain Kirk is far from unintelligent as you falsely assume," Spock cut in.
Not even Tobra seemed to know what his father was laughing about if his expression was any indication of his state of confusion. "Your Imperial Majesty," he said softly.
"Article forty-seven paragraph two of Istabul Major's agreement with Federation to change the government structure from an imperial monarchy states that neither I nor any of my blood relatives may be charged for any alleged crime committed on Istabul Major soil. We have impunity for everything that's taken place here."
"Bullshit!" Bones shouted from behind them.
"There is a precedence for such clauses to be included in Federation agreements with imperial governments. However, I believe you will find the clause only relates to past crimes committed while acting as emperor. We have every right to charge you for crimes committed after the inception of the new government."
"Alas, Commander Spock, you are wrong in this instance. The article states we are given impunity for any alleged crime on this planet or any other land holdings on neighboring planets. It says nothing about limiting the impunity to past crimes."
"Federation interpretation of the clause limits the impunity to crimes taking place while acting as emperor," Spock reiterated.
"Yet I have a right to be tried by a jury of my peers on my home planet, thus all interpretation of any clauses, regulations, or by-laws is left up to the sentiments of Istabul Major. Sentiment on Istabul Major does not limit the impunity."
Jim was either going to get killing mad or throw up. The bastards had found a loophole to exploit, so the urge was there to just shoot them both and have done with it. None of the security officers or Mechanics would have even thought twice of turning him in had he shot them both square in their foreheads. But as long as neither of the pair attacked, he couldn't legally or morally justify blasting them.
"Well isn't that just dandy," he spat. "Okay, so we can't arrest you, but we damn well can take you into custody for questioning and hold you for forty-eight hours without arresting you while I find a legal way to nail your sorry hides to a wall."
"The Federation will never allow them to escape prosecution for the deaths of our crew members," said Spock.
"Nah, it'll just take the court systems nine years to get their heads out of their backsides to do it. Their lawyers will think of every possible motion to dismiss and continuance in the books to exploit."
He wanted their damn heads on a silver platter, but until this mess was sorted out, he would have to content himself with temporarily throwing them in the brig. His visage squirreled up in a look of supreme annoyance, Jim turned on a heel and tossed back over his shoulder, "You want things to go your way? Fine. Call your damn guards off before I'm tempted to use the two of you as shields."
"You're just going to let them get away with it?" Arta asked in disbelief. "Everything they've done to my people, everything they've done to your crew members and this planet, and you won't be able to charge them? Voren will never have justice?"
"We'll find a way to make sure they pay for what they've done. Spock, have them taken into custody for questioning. Search the facility for that damn scrambling device so we can beam out of here. Bones, find Jiet Je Jong and release him."
The sound of Tobra's self-assured laughter tempted him to end it then and there with two phaser blasts. A pair of cackling hyenas would have grated on his ears less than the confidence they oozed. He knew just how much pleasure they were taking in getting one up on the Federation, knew there was a very real possibility they could walk if Istabul Major's court system interpreted the clause in their favor. The very idea of those two breathing free air and being given further opportunity to destroy everything the people of Istabul Major had fought for gutted him. Jim was a lover, not a hater, but he hated Tobra and Tien with the fury of a thousand suns.
Arta's expression shifting from one of extreme anger mixed with a healthy dose of grief to deadpan calm was the only warning he got. If he was honest with himself, he didn't move as fast as he could have to grab her arm when she jerked the phaser from her holster. People were shouting at her, but Jim uttered not a single sound before two successive shots stopped the terrible laughter behind him and plunged the basement into an eerie silence.