Allegiance in Exile Page 7

  As Sulu made his way across the field, the ground suddenly rumbled beneath his feet.

  Four

  Jim Kirk couldn’t stop thinking about the Klingons.

  The captain sat in the command chair on the Enterprise bridge, his gaze fastened on the main viewscreen, where the graceful curve of the world he had come to think of as Ağdam hung in the void like a jewel. He mused that perhaps the people who had settled upon it had seen it that way as well, with a romance and a poetry that promised a shining future. In the end, though, it hadn’t turned out that way for them.

  Had the Klingons spoiled that vision? Kirk wondered. Their empire comprised scores of conquered worlds and decimated peoples. They took what they wanted, aggressively seizing planets and resources they deemed of strategic importance. They lived in a state of perpetual war with their neighbors, and practiced a form of institutionalized violence that Kirk had never quite been able to understand.

  They’re not all like that, Kirk reminded himself. The captain had on a number of occasions found it possible to deal reasonably and effectively with his counterparts in the Klingon Imperial Fleet. Captain Koloth had demonstrated an ability to negotiate and even compromise, as had Commander Kang. Still, the military nature of the Klingon leadership allowed for—and even rewarded—savagery.

  Kirk knew that his last experience with the commander of the Klingon vessel Klothos probably colored his thoughts. Not all that long before, Kor had attempted to lure the Enterprise crew into a firefight with three Klingon D7-class heavies. When Klothos and Enterprise inadvertently became ensnared in a pocket within the fabric of space-time, though, Kirk and Kor worked together to save both crews and return the ships to their reality. But that success apparently didn’t satisfy the Klingon commander, who planted an explosive aboard Enterprise—an explosive that came within seconds of detonating aboard the Starfleet vessel.

  It’s more than that, Kirk thought. More personal than that. Although it had taken place three years earlier, he had not forgotten his experience on the planet Organia. Kor had threatened to employ Klingon mind-sifter technology on Kirk, and he had used it on Spock. The Empire’s soldiers utilized the brutal device to extract information from captives reluctant to talk, ripping through an individual’s thoughts, potentially crushing their very essence. Only Spock’s Vulcan heritage and mental discipline allowed him to withstand the interrogation, but he’d suffered lingering effects from the incident. Kirk knew that his first officer had spoken with a Starfleet psychiatrist about the terrible event, and once, Spock had discussed it with Kirk, revealing that vestiges persisted of the attempt to invade his mind and tear apart his consciousness.

  So I have good reason to hate the Klingons, Kirk thought, but the truth is that it just doesn’t make any sense that they were involved here. Although the Klingons often acted out of territoriality and expansionism, Ağdam lay nowhere near the Empire. In fact, given the great distance of R-775 from both the Federation and the Empire, as well as from the other known powers in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, the star system didn’t measure up as a target of value. Moreover, even if the Klingons had found a reason to attack, wouldn’t they have occupied the planet? And if they had attacked, wouldn’t the Enterprise crew have detected the energy signatures of Klingon disruptors?

  No, not the Empire, Kirk concluded. And not the Romulans or the Gorn or the Tholians, either, for many of the same reasons. In truth, the Enterprise crew hadn’t even determined with any degree of certainty that the city on Ağdam had been destroyed as the result of an external attack.

  But it was, Kirk thought. He could feel it. The implications of that would—

  “Captain,” Chekov called from where he manned the primary science station. In his dense Russian accent, the word came out as Keptin. Spock had transported with a landing party to the center of the city to continue searching for answers about what had taken place there, and in his absence, Chekov had substituted for him at his console. “I’m reading a massive energy surge on the planet’s surface.”

  Even as a jolt of anxiety coursed through Kirk, he took action. Rising quickly to his feet, he brought the side of his fist down on the right side of the command chair, onto the intercom control. “Bridge to transporter room,” he said, his voice steady but containing a note of urgency. “Lock onto all landing party personnel and prepare to beam them aboard.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied Lieutenant Kyle. “We’ve been monitoring the locations of the shuttle crews and Mister Spock’s party, so it won’t take long to establish locks.”

  “Do it and stand by,” Kirk said. “Keep this channel open.” He then turned toward Chekov and asked a question for which he feared the answer. “Was the energy surge in the city?”

  Before Chekov could respond, Kirk heard a soft but unmistakable tone. He turned toward the console that stood before the command chair and that housed the helm and navigation stations. In the middle of the console, at the front, a large indicator flashed red in sync with the tone. “Deflector contact,” reported Lieutenant Naomi Rahda, one of the ship’s relief helm officers. Without waiting for an order, she worked her controls, and the sensor and targeting scanner began to quickly unfold from within the station.

  “Chekov?” Kirk asked, glancing over at the ensign. The captain needed more information. Considering the presence on the planet of a wrecked city, he wanted to raise Enterprise’s defensive shields, but doing so would make it impossible to transport the four landing parties—thirty crew members—to safety.

  “I’m now reading several energy surges,” Chekov said, leaning over and peering into the hooded viewer at the science station. Kirk could see a pale blue glow fluctuating across the line of the ensign’s eyes. “Two surges near the city, but several others much farther away. There seems to be—” Chekov suddenly bolted upright and spun toward the center of the bridge. “Captain, sensors are tracking two missiles headed for the city.”

  Kirk didn’t hesitate. “Transporter room,” he said, looking toward the intercom in the arm of the command chair. “Beam up the landing parties at once.”

  Kyle said something in response, but Rahda spoke over him. “Captain, there are missiles closing in fast on the Enterprise.”

  “Transporter room, belay that order,” Kirk said at once. “Shields up.”

  “Raising shields,” said Rahda, but as her hands flew across her controls to translate the captain’s order into reality, the alien weaponry pounded into the hull of Enterprise.

  • • •

  Trinh watched what looked like a rocket for only a few seconds before it disappeared from view, and then she saw a fireball roiling up into the sky out beyond the edge of the city. Standing amid the scraps of a settlement driven into the dust in an unknown set of circumstances, the A-and-A officer feared for her life. Even more than that, though, she worried about the safety of the people she led.

  “What was that?” Clien wanted to know. The archaeologist had raced up beside Trinh, peering out to where something terrible had clearly happened.

  With an effort, Trinh tore her attention away from the yellow-red flames. She turned toward the Andorian, grabbed the tricorder he held in his hands, and forcefully lifted it to his face. “Find out,” she ordered, although she already thought she knew. “Scan for the da Gama.”

  For a moment, Clien only stared at her. She didn’t know if the situation had stunned him or if it had simply been her stony manner, but Trinh suspected they would have little time to secure their own safety. Before she had to say anything more, though, Clien appeared to emerge from his trance. “Yes, sir,” he said, and started operating the tricorder.

  As the whine of a sensor scan rose in the still air, Trinh turned to the rest of her scientific team. She saw Jackie Trieste between heaps of rubble that had once been buildings. The scientist stood looking toward the site of the explosion, her mouth agape. Trinh hurried over to her. “Where are Martha and Noah?” she asked. But she already knew. Martha Hunt and Noah Ontkean,
archaeologists specializing in architecture and urban settings, respectively, had split from the group in order to collect as much data as they could in their survey of the downed structures within the city.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Trinh said, more to herself than to her colleagues. She reached to the back of her uniform pants and retrieved her communicator. The device chirruped when she flipped it open. “Landing party to Enterprise,” she said. “This is Ensign Trinh.”

  She expected an immediate response. When she didn’t receive one, she glanced at the communicator to make sure it still functioned. Seeing that it did, she tried again. “Landing party to—”

  “Enterprise here,” came the voice of Lieutenant Uhura. “What’s your status, landing party?” The communications officer spoke in a rush, and Trinh thought she heard a commotion in the background.

  “We just witnessed a rocket in the air and an explosion out past the edge of the city,” Trinh reported. “I think the da Gama might have been hit, and that we might be under attack. Request an immediate transport of all personnel currently on the surface.”

  A burst of static issued from Trinh’s communicator, and she thought she would hear nothing else. But then Uhura’s voice resumed, apparently in the middle of a sentence. “—struck the ship. We’ve just raised the shields, and so we cannot beam you aboard at the present time.”

  Trinh’s heart sank. As the ranking officer and leader of the scientific team, it would fall to her to keep the others safe. She had trained at Starfleet for such eventualities, but never before had such an event been anything more than an exercise for her.

  Except that Lieutenant Sulu leads the full landing party, she realized. Into the communicator, she said, “Understood. Trinh out.” She reached up and closed the channel with a touch to a control, then said, “Trinh to Lieutenant Sulu.” She waited through another silence, but unlike her contact with the ship, she anticipated an eventual response.

  It never came.

  Instead, Clien ran over to her. The pale blue flesh of his face had flushed a deeper hue, an autonomic Andorian response, she understood, that accompanied fear or anger. “The shuttle . . .” he managed to say, but he needed no additional words to convey what had happened. Trinh knew that da Gama had been destroyed.

  And how many of the landing party with it? she asked herself, and then didn’t even try to formulate an answer. She needed to concern herself not with the dead, but with the living. Again, she spoke into her communicator. “Trinh to Lieutenant Sulu.”

  Again, she received no reply.

  Maybe communicator signals can’t reach him inside the cave, Trinh thought. She clung to the idea, trying to allow it to push away the image that formed in her mind of the rocket they’d seen moments earlier. Still, she imagined the missile streaking with violent force into the body of da Gama, reducing it to slag.

  But then another image rose in Trinh’s mind: the cave. She quickly returned her communicator to its place at her hip and took hold of her tricorder. She scanned for the complex of caverns that stretched beneath the surface near the great canyon. When she located it, she searched for the opening closest to her scientific team. Finding it, she turned to the other scientists. “Follow me,” Trinh told them. “Quickly.” Using her tricorder as a guide, she started through the city at a trot. On the way, she would contact Martha and Noah and order them to do the same, to identify the nearest cave entrance and make their way to it.

  And if we’re lucky enough to get there safely, Trinh thought, maybe taking cover underground will be enough to protect us from whoever launched an attack against the shuttlecraft. Trinh didn’t like relying on an if and a maybe, but she didn’t see any other reasonable choice open to her.

  • • •

  The second brace of missiles landed on Enterprise. Kirk felt the deck buck beneath him, but he kept his balance with a hand to the back of Lieutenant Rahda’s chair. “Report,” he said, though not to the helms-woman.

  “One missile struck the underside of the primary hull,” called Chekov from the science station, “and the other detonated against the engineering section.” He paused a moment, then said, “Minimal impact on ship’s systems. Shields are down to ninety-five percent.”

  “What about our weapons?” Kirk asked Rahda.

  “Engineering crews are working to replace the phaser couplings, and should have at least one bank available before too long,” she said. “The photon torpedo tubes have been compromised at multiple points, though, and will take considerably longer.”

  “Understood,” Kirk said. The first set of missiles had assaulted Enterprise when its defensive shields had been down. Although the weapons showed no particular degree of sophistication, the high-yield warheads caused considerable blast damage. A pair of hull breaches cost the lives of three crew members, and a hit on the port nacelle made faster-than-light travel impossible. The attack also compromised the sensor net, overloaded the phasers, and knocked both the impulse drive and life support off line.

  Kirk had prioritized the repair of the latter two systems over all others, including the phasers. The crew required the impulse drive to maintain—or break—orbit, and they obviously needed heat and water and atmosphere to keep themselves alive. It helped to know that, with the shields raised, Enterprise risked no further damage, at least not in the near term.

  The captain turned and made his way past the command chair, then climbed to the outer circle of the bridge. At the communications station, he peered down at Uhura. “Lieutenant,” he asked quietly, “what about our personnel on the ground?” During the first moments of the attack on Enterprise, Kirk had directed Uhura to field messages from the members of the crew who had transported down to the planet.

  “I’ve had contact with all four landing parties, sir,” Uhura said, looking up from her console. She matched the captain’s tone, also speaking softly. “All three shuttlecraft have been destroyed, and at least four of our people are unaccounted for.”

  The captain’s face froze into an emotionless mask. Already three dead on the ship, he lamented, and now four missing down on the planet. Nothing troubled him more than losing members of his crew. Over the course of his four years in command of Enterprise, dozens—scores—of Starfleet officers had perished while carrying out his orders. Kirk loved his position as a starship captain, but his responsibility for so many lives—and so many deaths—wore on him. Because of his decisions, husbands would not return to wives, mothers to sons, children to their parents.

  Kirk wondered if one of those missing on the planet was Spock, a man who in four years had become not only his trusted right hand aboard ship, but also the best friend he’d ever had. That thought led him to recollect another friend: Gary Mitchell. He and Kirk had met at the Academy and had quickly grown close. Fifteen years after that, upon his promotion to captain, Kirk had requested Gary’s assignment to Enterprise. Though Starfleet approved the transfer, his friend’s tour of duty neither lasted long nor played out in a way Kirk had expected. Only months into Gary’s posting to the ship, exposure to an astronomical phenomenon gave him superhuman abilities and a callous disregard for his crewmates. Not only did he die while serving aboard Enterprise, but Kirk ended up having to kill him. That bitter memory had never left him, and he couldn’t imagine that it ever would.

  For the second time during his shift, the captain realized that he had lost his concentration, that he had fallen into a pit of tragic remembrance. He looked to Uhura, who sat silently at her console. When they made eye contact, she began speaking again, and Kirk understood that she knew he’d stopped listening.

  “I’ve let the landing party personnel know we’ll be beaming them up as soon as possible,” Uhura said. “They’re taking cover as best they can.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. At the moment, without benefit of sensors, he couldn’t risk lowering the shields to transport up the crew members on the planet. Before leaving the communications station, he thanked Uhura. She offered him
a fleeting but seemingly genuine smile.

  The ship suddenly rumbled again, and Kirk reached out to the station beside him to keep from falling. He righted himself, then looked to the science station. “Report, Mister Chekov.”

  “Another missile has crashed into the primary hull, and another into engineering,” the ensign said. “Shields down to ninety-one percent, other ship’s systems unaffected.”

  The captain returned to the lower portion of the bridge and reached to the right arm of his command chair. After activating the intercom, he said, “Bridge to engineering.”

  Several seconds passed before Kirk received a response, but he knew how busy his chief engineer must be. “Aye, Captain, Scott here.”

  “Scotty, what’s happening down there?” Kirk asked.

  “Captain, we’ve restored life support,” Scotty said. “We’re now in the process of rerouting impulse power around the damaged section.”

  “Do you have an estimate?”

  “Seven minutes,” Scotty said.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” Kirk said.

  “Aye, sir,” Scotty said. “You always do.”

  “Bridge out.” Kirk climbed back into the command chair. He glanced at the main viewscreen without really seeing it. Instead, he focused on the steps he would have to take to pull the landing parties out of harm’s way. Once the impulse drive had been repaired, the crew could move Enterprise out of range of the missiles launching from the surface. Scotty and his engineers could then work on restoring the sensors. When the crew could detect incoming weapons, that would in turn allow them to safely drop the shields so that they could beam up the crew from the planet.

  Kirk doubted that another Starfleet engineer could accomplish in a shorter amount of time what Scotty and his team would. Enterprise could not have been assigned a more capable chief engineer. As long as members of his crew remained in danger, though, Kirk knew that those seven minutes would not pass quickly enough to suit him.