Allegiance in Exile Page 8

  • • •

  Trinh paced inside the mouth of the cave. In her hands, she held her tricorder, its sensors reaching out across the nearby landscape in search of life signs. She spied just one, in the wood to the southwest.

  “Anything?” Clien asked from over her shoulder.

  “One person moving in this direction,” Trinh said.

  “One of our people?” Clien asked.

  Trinh nodded. “They’re human,” she said. “They’re approaching through the wood, on a direct line, I think, from the da Gama.” She thought, but didn’t say, Or from where the da Gama used to be.

  Trinh felt the vibration in the floor of the cave before she heard it, but then a deep drone emerged from the surrounding rock. Dust trailed down from above like a dry mist. She turned toward Clien and saw his face flushing. She wondered if he could see the fear that she felt.

  “Another rocket?” Clien asked.

  Trinh consulted her tricorder, but she didn’t want to interrupt her scans for members of the landing party. While Martha and Noah had reached the cave shortly after Trinh, Clien, and Jackie, and Lieutenant Hadley had already been there, Lieutenants Sulu and Josephs remained elsewhere, though one of them clearly headed for the caverns. “I can’t tell,” she said, “but yes, I think it’s another rocket. I think we’re feeling the effects of a launch from somewhere in the vicinity of the city.”

  Clien lifted his tricorder and worked its controls. “I’m going to try to determine its target,” he said.

  Trinh wanted to ask him why he would bother to do so, since the scientists could do little more to protect themselves even with new information. But then she reconsidered the truth of that judgment. Perhaps if they made their way farther into the cave, deeper underground, they would stand a better chance of surviving a nearby—or even a direct—strike.

  “Clien, don’t wait,” Trinh ordered. “Take the others and head as far into the cavern as you can.”

  “What about you?”

  “I—” Trinh started, but didn’t know exactly what to say. What about me? she thought. She needed to protect herself as well as the people in her charge. “I have to stay here right now,” she finally told Clien. “Lieutenant Sulu and Lieutenant Josephs are still out there.”

  “And your staying here won’t help them get here any faster,” Clien insisted.

  “Go,” Trinh said. She felt tired, as though she lacked the strength to argue. Fortunately, as uncomfortable as she’d been issuing commands to Enterprise personnel with far more shipboard experience than she, she appreciated the fact that she didn’t have to explain herself. “Clien, you have your orders. Follow them.” She hiked a thumb back over her shoulder for emphasis.

  Clien didn’t move, but simply stared back at her. For an awkward few seconds, Trinh felt challenged, and she thought that he might not do as she’d bidden him. At last, though, he dropped his gaze, but before he moved off, he reached up a hand to her upper arm and gave it a squeeze—an act beyond the borders of professionalism or propriety, and one that surprised her. “Stay safe,” he told her.

  Trinh watched him retreat deeper into the cavern, until at last he reached the other scientists. She saw him speaking, and then motioning past them. She wanted to make sure that he indeed obeyed her orders, but then she glanced at the display on her tricorder. There, she saw that the person racing toward the cave had nearly reached it, but had unaccountably stopped moving. Suddenly, the life signs of a hundred humans and as many Andorians appeared on her readout.

  Then Trinh heard the missile soar past.

  • • •

  The tumult of the explosion surrounded Sulu, and the earth quaked beneath him. His fingers scrabbled at the terrain as he desperately attempted to halt his slide toward the fissure that sliced into the cliffside. The hard ground resisted his efforts, though, and Sulu felt the earth run out beneath him as he tumbled over the edge of the canyon.

  His stomach reeled as gravity sought to claim him. The realization of falling shocked him, the innate fear gripping him tightly. He saw a tremendous torrent of flame below him, and out beyond it, the vast floor of the canyon.

  Sulu slammed back against the wall of the fissure. In an eyeblink, he visualized his plunge not as a long fall from a great height, but as a series of crashes, his body fracturing as it struck over and over against the rock face. He would eventually reach the ground broken and battered, a bloodied rag doll twisted into an inhuman posture.

  But then Sulu didn’t fall. Profoundly relieved but also confused, he tried to look up. The back of his uniform shirt had been pulled up, though, and the tautly stretched garment prevented him from turning his head. He thought his clothing must have fortuitously caught on an outcropping in the side of the fissure, but then he heard a voice calling over the rolling sound of the blast below. He couldn’t make out the words, but in his peripheral vision, he saw a hand gripping the collar of his shirt.

  “Give me your hand!” the voice called.

  Sulu reached up with his right hand. A ripping noise suddenly filled his ear, and his body dropped another handful of centimeters. The terror of falling to his death clutched at his heart. He waited to plummet to the canyon floor.

  But then a hand grabbed his raised arm, and then a second hand did so as well. They pulled Sulu upward, his bare back scraping against the rock. He felt his shirt slacken, and then two more hands wrapped around his left biceps. Sulu felt himself yanked up, then hauled back over the edge of the cliff and onto the ground.

  He lay there for a long moment with his eyes closed. It seemed to Sulu that he could feel nothing. He considered the idea that he had actually fallen—perhaps even continued to fall—and that his mind had invented a different perception, protecting him from dying of simple fright on the way down. By degrees, though, he became aware of his chest heaving in great, desperate breaths and of rills of perspiration slipping down his face.

  He heard something—A voice?—as though from a distance. He thought he would open his eyes and look around, but then the sound began to fade. Everything began to fade.

  And then Sulu passed out.

  Five

  On the Enterprise bridge, Spock spun the control wheel on the side of the hooded viewer projecting from the primary science station. As he studied the device’s internal display, he manipulated an increase in the magnification, bringing into sharp focus a region of R-775-I’s surface. He had already attuned the scanner to process the data collected by a pair of probes that the crew had directed down to the planet. Both of those probes had been lost to the alien missiles, but not before gathering vital information.

  Planetside when the Enterprise had been attacked, Spock learned upon his return what had taken place. The first pair of missiles that struck the ship caused significant damage, including to the engine and weapon systems. Chief Engineer Scott and his staff quickly restored the impulse drive, though, allowing the captain to order the ship out of orbit, with the intention of escaping the range of the missiles. That effort succeeded approximately two hundred thousand kilometers from the planet, and the engineering staff then effected repairs to the sensor grid and phasers; work on the damaged warp nacelle continued. Bringing the ship back into range, Captain Kirk tested the effectiveness of the phaser banks against the alien weaponry. Once satisfied that the missiles could be destroyed before they reached the Enterprise, the captain ordered the shields down and the members of the four landing parties back aboard.

  Pulling away from the scanner, Spock reached for a control on his console. “Switching to the main viewscreen,” he said. He turned toward the forward portion of the bridge to confirm his handiwork, then looked to the captain.

  “That’s the city in the lower left-hand corner?” Kirk asked from the command chair.

  “It is,” Spock said. He reached for a button on his console, one of several he’d programmed as context-sensitive graphics tools. On the main viewer, the image of the city appeared to lift from the scene and pitch upward
, providing an edge-on view. Lacking an intact metropolitan skyline, the profile of the mounds of broken buildings revealed the completeness of the destruction there.

  The first officer pressed the button again, and the city returned to its overhead representation. He then tapped another control, which highlighted three areas on the screen. “The red circles indicate the launch sites of the missiles,” Spock said. “As you can see, one is proximate to the ruins of the city, while the other two are spread out across the same continent, but some distance away.”

  “Are there others?” the captain asked.

  “Not that we have yet been able to find,” Spock said, “but we have reason to believe that there may be.”

  “Explain,” Kirk said.

  Working his console once more, Spock caused the picture on the viewer to shift, the point of view zooming in to one of the red circles and displaying in detail a portion of the planet’s landscape. “This is one of the known launch sites,” he said. The image on the screen showed rolling hills covered by uncultivated vegetation—and nothing else.

  “Camouflaged?” asked the captain.

  “It would appear so,” Spock said. “Before the Enterprise’s sensors were damaged, they recorded the physical coordinates on the surface of the energy surges, which marked the precise locations from which the missiles were launched. The probes scanned those areas. It would appear that a three-dimensional projection hides each site, and that some form of shielding prevents it from being detected by sensors.”

  “So we have no notion what’s inside the missile complexes,” Kirk said.

  “That is correct,” Spock confirmed.

  “And there’s no way of beaming through the shielding?” Kirk asked.

  “Negative,” Spock said. “Without being able to scan within the launch site, it will not be possible to target the transporter.”

  Kirk lifted an elbow onto the arm of the command chair and dropped his chin onto his curled fingers. As the captain continued to regard the image on the main viewscreen, Spock noticed his features harden and a distant look come over him. The first officer had spent enough time with Kirk through the four years of their association to surmise what occupied his thoughts. When the landing parties had returned to the ship, the captain had learned that four of the crew had been killed, each of them dying as the result of a missile strike on an Enterprise shuttlecraft. Kirk clearly understood the dangerous nature of their mission of exploration, and within that context, he acted as best he could to safeguard the people he led. Although he never let it cripple him, the captain clearly felt deeply the loss of any crew member.

  Spock knew that he could say little that would ease his commanding officer’s burden, and certainly nothing on the bridge, in front of the crew. He took note of the captain’s reaction, though, and resolved to say something later, in private, if it seemed necessary. More than simply their relationship as shipmates, as captain and first officer, the two men had become friends.

  Lifting his head back up, Kirk said, “Analysis, Spock.”

  The first officer placed his hands behind his back, the fingers of one hand wrapping around the opposite wrist, and made his way down to the lower portion of the bridge. He stopped beside the command chair. “It would appear that there are sensor mechanisms on the planet that monitor alien visitation,” he said.

  “Sensor ‘mechanisms’?” Kirk said. “You don’t think that there are beings on the planet who are scanning the ship and making these attacks?”

  “No, sir,” Spock said. “We have not been contacted or warned away, and the fact that the attacks cease when the Enterprise moves beyond a specific distance from the planet suggests automated defenses. Since the ship was not immediately fired upon when first we arrived, it is also reasonable to assume that the defensive emplacements respond either after the prolonged presence of a ship in orbit, or after visitors appear on the surface.”

  “We can notify Starfleet to keep Federation vessels away from this system,” Kirk said, “but I don’t want to leave other ships and crews who might visit here in danger.”

  “Understandable,” Spock said.

  The captain stood from the command chair and made his way around the combined helm-and-navigation console, his eyes regarding the seemingly benign setting on the main viewer. He appeared to study the scene for a few moments, and then he turned to face Spock. At their stations, Lieutenant Rahda and Ensign Chekov looked up at him. “Spock, whatever projections and shields protect those sites from our scans, they must come down when missiles are launched.”

  Spock considered the statement, but he could not entirely agree with it. “Possibly,” he said. “But physical objects can readily pass through light, and it is possible that the missiles can travel through the shields.”

  “Yes,” the captain said, “but even so, the shields would not remain totally intact when a missile passed through them; there would be a gap at the point of contact.”

  “A gap occupied by the missile itself,” Spock pointed out.

  “Yes, but would it be possible to perform a sensor scan through the missile and into the emplacement below it?”

  Spock contemplated the captain’s question. “It is possible,” he decided, “especially given the lack of technological sophistication in the missiles themselves. They were able to destroy the shuttlecraft and damage the Enterprise primarily as a result of the element of surprise, but with our phasers and shields intact, their effectiveness has waned. That suggests that the concealment of the launch sites may not easily resist our attempts to penetrate them.”

  Kirk nodded, then peered down at the navigation console. “Mister Chekov, lay in a course to return us to the planet.” After retrieving the members of the landing parties, the captain had ordered Enterprise back out of orbit, beyond the range of the missiles.

  “Aye, Captain,” replied the navigator, who began operating his panel.

  The captain turned his attention to the helm. “Ms. Rahda, same drill as before. Shields up, fire phasers as necessary to destroy any missiles headed our way.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rahda. Like Chekov, she immediately worked her controls.

  Finally, Kirk looked back over at Spock. Understanding what the captain’s plan required, Spock did not wait for an order. Instead, he headed back to the science station. There, he started to calibrate the ship’s sensors, in preparation for the mission to come.

  • • •

  The view of the launch site had cleared from the main screen, and Kirk watched from the command chair as the orb of Ağdam grew in its stead. If the sensors could penetrate into any of the lairs from which the missiles had been fired, he had no intuition of what they would discover there. He suspected Spock would prove correct—as he typically did—in his estimation that they would find only automated installations. In that case, Kirk at least hoped that the crew could shut down the facilities, protecting any other ships that might enter the system and explore the planet.

  But Kirk also wanted more than that. Seven of my crew were killed, he thought angrily. He did not wish to let that harsh fact stand without explanation. The captain did not want vengeance, but he wanted answers.

  “Sir, we are crossing the two hundred thousand kilometer threshold en route to establishing orbit about the planet,” reported Lieutenant Rahda. Kirk saw her lean left and peer into the sensor and targeting scanner on the helm. “I’m reading two energy surges on the planet’s surface, one from each of the sites away from the city,” she said. “Two missiles are headed directly toward the ship.”

  “Spock?” the captain asked, wanting to ensure his first officer’s readiness.

  From his position at the main science station, Spock said, “I have directed the ship’s sensors toward those sites. The next time missiles launch, I will endeavor to scan beyond them.”

  “Understood,” Kirk acknowledged. “Lieutenant Rahda, you may fire at will.”

  “Waiting for the missiles to enter optimal firing range,” Rah
da said. She waited, her hands poised to take action at her controls, her gaze glued to her scanner. After a few moments, she began counting down from five. When she reached zero, her fingers moved swiftly atop her console, unleashing Enterprise’s firepower.

  Kirk watched the screen as twin streaks of brilliant red light leaped from the ship’s circular primary hull. The audio effect providing confirmation of the use of Enterprise’s phasers, almost like the short blast of a hydraulic pump, sounded on the bridge. The beams sliced through space and disappeared from view as they hurtled down toward the planet. Kirk could not see the two missiles racing toward Enterprise, but he saw the fiery explosion in Ağdam’s atmosphere that claimed them.

  “Direct hit,” said Rahda. “Both missiles have been destroyed.”

  “Well done,” Kirk said.

  Rahda continued looking into her scanner. The bridge quieted, with the background hum of the impulse drive a steady rhythm beneath the intermittent beeps issuing from various consoles. The captain sensed expectation growing around him, and he felt it himself.

  When Rahda announced the detection of two more energy surges, Spock said, “Scanning.” Kirk waited a moment, then found himself rising and padding over to the steps on the starboard side of the bridge. There, he climbed to the outer deck and took up a position near his first officer, who peered into his viewer.

  “Sensors are penetrating into the launch sites,” Spock said. “I’m reading sizable spaces, a considerable amount of equipment . . . and dozens of missiles.” He stood up and turned to face the captain. “I detect no life-forms.”

  Kirk spun toward the main viewer again. As Enterprise had dropped into orbit about Ağdam, he saw, the image of the planet had grown until it covered the bottom half of the screen. He imagined the complexes Spock had just scanned, automated defense centers filled with destructive weapons, dormant until an unknowing crew arrived to explore.