RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  BY
  PETER MORWOOD
  POCKET BOOKS New York London
Toronto . Sydney bkjo Singapore This book
is a work of fiction. Names,
  characters, places and incidents are either the product
of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
  An Original Publication of POCKET
BOOKS
  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon and
Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020
  Copyright Q 1990 Paramount
Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
  "STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of
"119 0 * Paramount Pictures.
  This book is published by Pocket Books, a
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  ISBN: 0-671-66129-9
  First Pocket Books printing February

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  POCKET and colophon are registered
trademarks of Simon and Schuster Inc.
  Printed in the U.s.a. This book is
dedicated to The Miami Cruisers and "The
Toronto Celebrants and to walk-on players
everywhere Historian's Note
  This adventure takes place sometime between the
events chronicled in Star Trek: The Motion
Picture and those related in Star Trek it: The
Wrath of Khan. Readers may wish
to consult those two movies, as well as the televi-
sion episode "Errand of Mercy," as referents.
Chapter One
  To: Morrow, Randolph H., Admiral,
Chief of Staff (opera tions), Starfleet
Command. From: James T. Kirk, Captain,
NCC-1701 U.s.s. Enterprise, inbound
Star Base 12. Sub ject: Border zone
3-39, with special attention to Organian
influence, it any. Body: Sir, I am pleased
to report at the end of this present tour of duty that
the Enterprise has com pleted a full
exploratory patrol of the above sector without
incident I can advise Starfleet that although we were
scanned by Klingon vessels on three (3)
occasions [3/72 5.3, com5.83, com5.91
refer], at no time was any overt or covert
hostile maneuver or activity directed at this
ship and that as a consequence of this atypical Klingon
reluctance to under take offensive action, this sector
may presently be regarded as one of the Organian
Treaty Zones, with all policing and protection
appertaining thereto. With regard to the Informa tion
received by Fleet Command (ref: dispatch SFC/PST
2624301 dated SID 2107.16) it is
my opinion that the Organian Peace Treaty is
being honorably maintained. End.
  Captain's personal log, stardate 2213.5:
It appears that, whether through Organian or some other
influence, such as Klingon Imperial policy, this
particular area of the frontier corridor is at
peace. The Enterprise is on a heading away from
sector 3-39 and on course for Star 1 RULES
OF ENGAGEMENT Base 12, where her crew will be
able to clear some of their accumulated shore leave and
enjoy the period of RandR to which they are entitled.
This may involve pulling rank, but in this instance I
regard such an act as being in a good cause. This
last mission has turned out to be both
nerve-wracking and boring. However, there are more
relaxing places to be bored than the Klingon
Neutral Zone. Unfortunately, there is no
way to tell how actively the Organians will
enforce their treaty without an actual outbreak of
hostilities. No comment needed about that. End entry.
  THE WORDING of both dispatch and log entry seemed
fine, but James T. Kirk looked carefully at
both for one final time before committing one to a
transmission chip and the other to secure storage. This
mission had initially been a simple one
involving astrography charting and stellar analysis.
However, proximity to the Neutral Zone had given
the mission a flavor of espionage, which made
Kirk distinctly uncomfortable. He had felt the
same way and for the same reason on several occasions
in the past; the longago mission into Romulan space
to "acquire" a cloaking device was one instance that
kept coming back to mind. It had been necessary and even
vital to restore the balance of power, but espionage
and intelligence missions invariably left a bad
taste in his mouth afterward, and that one's flavor had been
particularly nasty. A bit like the past three
months along the patrol corridor of debated
space that separated the Federation from the Klingon
Empire. Astrography, maybe; but the
Klingons. never took kindly to exploration in what
they regarded as their own backyard. They called it
spying and reacted accordingly. And since there were no
recorded ineastances of Organian enforcement of their
treaty restrictions in this sector, there was always that
nigeagling suspicion that maybe they didn't
enforce, at 2
  least not here, and when the Klingons found out about it
... Well, apparently the Organians did
enforce the treaty. Or the Klingons hadn't
found out that they didn't, which wasn't quite the same thing.
At least nobody had tried to blow anyone else
to plasma. One more mission successfully concluded.
Home, James, and don't spare the horses.
Kirk smiled thinly at the notion. Home, in this
instance, would be Star Base 12, and the horses were
crystalline dilithium. At least James
remained more or less the same. He stood up,
pulled on his tunic, and then, as the desk-mount
communicator chirped, made a sound that might have
been a little grunt and sat down again. "Screen
on," he said. "Allfinished, Jim?" Dr.
McCoy grinned at him and Jim repeated the little
grunt, knowing what was coming next. "One grunt for
yes and two grunts for no. was The chief medical
officer was evidently in a fine mood, no different
from any other member of the crew, now that the Klingons
and the boredom and the possibility of unpleasantness were
being left farther behind with every second that passed. One
bit of unpleasantness, however, remained to be dealt
with.
  "Yes, Bones, I'm all through. Just the rest of the
paperwork to deal with, and then-was
  "Then, Captain, I'll expect you in
sickbay in ten minutes for that full
checkup you've been avoiding. You're already two
weeks overdue, and you're holding up our schedule
down here. his
  James T. Kirk rolled his eyes, but with
McCoy watching from the screen with that knowing little smile
on his face, it was beneath Kirk's dignity
to rummage for any more excuses. "Make it
fifteen minutes?" 3
  "Fifteen. McCoy out. his
  The screen went blank, and Kirk let out the
groan he had been repressing. Flag rank,
years in the center seat, multiple decorations,
commendations, and mentions in dispatches and he still hated
medical examinations with the passion that others reserved for
toothaches and taxes. Jim grinned a tight little
grin that any dentist would have recognized, never mind
Fleet medics with specializations in psychiatry,
and looked at the desktop with its controlled clutter
of pad screens and report-data chips. Just this
once he wished there was some real paperwork-on
actual paper that could be scrunched up and flung
vigorously into a real metal wastebasket with a
real and very satisfying thunk. He hadn't been able
to spare the time to do anything but captain the ship and
oversee the crew members who were collating
the mass of data that always accumulated when a
Federation vessel ventured anywhere near hostile
space, and his inactivity showed. Especially around his
waist. McCoy would have words with him about that. Kirk
moved a few things, straightened edges, shifted
items from one place to another-but he didn't clear
the desk. He had come to regard that as unlucky.
An omen, perhaps, of an extended shore leave-like the
last one, two and a half years behind a desk console
as chief of Starfleet Operations-or a reminder of
Fleet Admiral Nogura's ruthlessly clear
desktop. His last serious visit to Nogura's
office had lasted no longer than the three minutes
he had anticipated. . That had been long enough for him
get his ship back. Keeping it, and staying fit enough
to keep it, was his business now.
  "Heart, respiration, blood pressure,
reflexesthey're all fine, Jim. Of course,
you're a little overbled
  weight, but you don't need me to tell you that.
Too much time sitting in the captain's chair and not enough
watching out for the captain's health." McCoy glanced
a final time at the readouts, then switched off the
analysis unit. "You're off duty, I
presume?"
  "Since an hour ago. I'm working on my own
time."
  "Me, too. Bringing my schedule up to date."
Bones grinned and opened the drinks cabinet that-with his
own brand of sympathy or sarcasm, as
required-was as much a tool of his profession as
any number of anabolic protoplasers.
"'Take a little wine, for your stomach's sake and your
other infirmities." Not so often, in your case, but
when they arrive they're beauties and you hate them."
  "I don't like to be sick."
  "Quite so. Romulan ale?"
  "Kill or cure, eh? I thought you mentioned
wine, not illegal substances." I "I merely
quoted an authority for my prescription. And this
is purely medicinal. Here you are."
  Jim sat down at McCoy's desk and eyed the
glass warily as he took it. Its contents were the
same rich, clear blue as a gem-quality
sapphire and looked beguilingly innocent. He
knew about Romulan ale and how deceptive that
innocent look could be. There were any number of
drinks that seemed as harmless as distilled water ...
though none of them, he reflected wryly as the blue
ruin scorched its way down his throat, were quite
as murderous. "Feeling better?"
  ""Bettee is not how I'd put it, but yes.
I think." Jim got to his feet, put the glass
down very gently, as if it might explode, and
picked up his uniform tunic. "I'll be in Rec
One. I want to see how the crew's doing, now that
we don't have Klingons breathing down our necks."
  "Sensible idea. I could make a good
diagnostic psychiatrist out of you, Jim."
  "I've already got a job, Bones. Don't
bother." He pulled on his tunic and glanced back
at McCoy as he walked out the door. "I'm a
starship captain, rememberTt
  Rec Deck One was in its usual state-noisy
and full of off-duty crew members enjoying their first
truly tension-free time off since mission's end.
Kirk paused just inside the doorway, unnoticed
as yet, and cast a near-patemal eye over his
crew. It was a feeling that came over him now and
again, more and more often as he grew older and the new crew
members became younger with every fresh posting from the
Academy. There were those, of course, who were unable
to provoke the captain's fatherly interest simply
by their fresh-faced youth. It was difficult, for
instance, to look at a Sulamid ensign or
an Eyren or Lieutenant Naraht and say which
particular section qualified as the "face," much
less whether its complexion might be called fresh.
Craggy, perhaps, in Naraht's case. Now, there was
one crew member who could manage a stony poker
face with no effort at all. Of course there was a
game of poker going on. Three, in fact. And
four games of chess, including one of the interestingly
explosive 4Do variety that was reaching a
flashily apocalyptic endgame even as he
watched. The cheerful computer-generated phutflash of
pieces annihilating one another didn't
completely drown out someone's voice saying
"Check" comanother popping flash of light as
punctuation-"and mate," with the sort of enormous
satisfaction that usually accompanied credits
changing hands. Heedless of such nominally
intellectual pursuits, the usual mixed bag of
people had gathered in the largest
  conversation pit and were indulging in a noisy
sing-along that included all of the keys of Z and
several contrapuntal a cappella variations. They
were always at least a semitone off pitch as they chased
their theme up and down what had to be a sliding
scale. The lyrics-which, given the
circumstances, were not surprisingly something
scurrilous about Klingons-were of a piece with the
melodyonly worse.
  That sort of reaction was almost a standard response
to the end of a duty tour near any of the Neutral
Zones, with the butt of the humor shifting from Romulan
to Klingon as occasion demanded. The same response
was manifested in the games played in both the main
and the repeater holo tanks. Before and during the
mission, Jim had seen games based on the
historic dramas of a dozen cultures; computer
generated artwork ranging from Terran
Post-Impressionist to Vercingetorig
architectural design, which also had a certain
Post-Impressionist look to it; and some of the more
humorous games held in the Enterprise
datastorage facilities. But now that the mission was
over ...
  He didn't need to move from where he was lounging
quietly by the door to know what was being played this time.
The sounds of cheering, jeering, explosions, and music
told him all he needed to know. This particular game
had started life as a sober, serious and very
businesslike Andorian-designed sim ulator
program for helm training on their little
atmosphere-capable customs cutters. Its
cartographi cally correct land- and starscape
subsystems had formed a pleasant evening's
relaxation for anyone aboard the Enterprise who
wanted to be in full control of a small ship every
once in a while. And then somebody-Kirk
suspected the Sulu-Chekov team
  had put a word in Harb Tanzer's ear and come up

  another optional subsystem that had nothing to do with
landscapes. Instead of In-Flight Training,
Tri-D Simulation 22715.33-its earlier
dryly descriptive title-the game had become
as screechily noisy as any of the old-style
video arcade games and was now known only as
Space Cadet. It was as realistic as careful
programming could make it, even though the design
criteria for every ship it featured had been stretched
to, and once or twice beyond, all the presently
accepted limits. Sulu had done the same thing
once before, with his notorious and never beaten 3.0
version of Simulated Sublight Maneuvers for
DeepExploration Starships. But recently he had
crosslinked the two games and started to tweak all
of the Klingon and Romulan ship
capabilities toward optimum for each vessel's
class, and as a result, Space Cadet was fast
becoming known as the Most Evil Game in the Known
Universe.
  There were five Klingon ships in the tank right now;
they were engaged in confused, confusing, and
spectacularly messy combat against a Federation
fleet of twelve. All seventeen vessels were
performing exactly as their full-size counterparts would
have done. For the sake of fairness the enemy ships
wore only the plain gray-blue of the Klingon
Navy rather than the jazzy yellow and black warp
nacelles sported by Sulu's enhanced designs.
Beyond that, realism took a holiday, for instead of
shipboard quiet or the absolute silence of
space, the holo cube providedat players"
discretion, naturally-thrilling music, gunfire, and
an abundance of main-drive sound effects.
  "Yes, Captain, they're at it again.
Coffee?" Harb Tanzer had a cup in each hand.
He held one out to Jim without taking his eyes off the
performance of the twelve crewmembers who "flew"
against far from the 8
  worst that the master games computer could throw at
them. "Thanks, Mr. Tanzer." Jim
took the coffee gratefully; with luck, its
caffeine would do something to offset the effects of
Romulan ale on an empty stomach. "Looks
as if you're being kept busy down here." The chief
of recreation wiggled the flat of his free hand in a
yes-no-maybe gesture. "The Rec facilities
are busy, but I've had an easy time of it. Most
of them know exactly how they want to spend their time
without needing me to tell them how. Like that, for instance."
  Lieutenant Athende from Maintenance executed a
neat firing pass, producing the first big jump in the
game's score tally. The maneuver was greeted with
cheers and a quick and dirty rendition of a fanfare.
Coiling four of its tentacles in a gesture of
pleased excitement, the Sulamid twiddled its
console pad with three of the remaining tentacles and
sent its ship into a flashy victory roll. One
of the Klingon vessels responded like a shark in
bloodied water; it whipped around in a turn tight
enough to set off inertiacompensation warnings aboard any
ship flown, then fired a bracketing salvo of
disrupter bolts from its forward batteries. Athende
forgot all about being pleased with itself and began
concentrating again on staying un-blown-up.
  The Klingon's brother-ships reacted
to Athende's first strike by following their consort into a
rightechelon formation that brought all of their forward
weapons to bear on the Sulamid's ship.
"Uh-oh," said Jim under his breath as the Klingons
locked into firing position, then laughed aloud as
Athende directed its ship into a simultaneous
pitch and yaw that not only took it out of the direct
line of fire but left the rightmost Klingon vessel
on a collision course with one of its own consorts.
As the entire Klingon 9
  formation broke every which way, the halo tank's voder
cried "Hurrah!" in a tone that could only be
described as sarcastic, then produced another of
those brassy fanfares that sounded like a jazz
trumpet full of molasses. "The music was your
idea, I presume?" said Jim as the horrid
echoes died away.
  Harb smiled. "The simulator was fine, but I
thought the game version lacked something:"
  "Like razzing the players when they score a
point?" "Captain, just wait till someone loses.
Oh, it can produce more subtle music if that's
what they want. This bunch doesn't."
  Right then there was a small but impressive
explosion from the games tank, where two of the
other Federation pilots had plainly not been watching
where they were going and had rammed first each other and then the
second Klingon cruiser at a game speed of
.73c. This time the voder played the first ten notes
of Haydn's Funeral March at four times proper
speed and finished with a flatulent chuckle.
  Jim cleared his throat and looked at Harb, whose
face was carefully devoid of expression except
where the laugh lines around his eyes made their
telltale crinkles. "Lieutenant Tanzer,"
said the captain, sounding like a man who was choosing his
words with care, "you are, without a doubt, sick."
"Why, thank you, sir. I'll keep up the good
work." He might have said more, but right then there was another
fairly rude noise, this time not from the games
tank. It came from the ambient-sound system of the
holography stage. "Good," said Harb, sounding
relieved. "He's got it working at last." "Uh,
Lieutenant, is this something I should be warned about?"
"No, sir, it's just more of Mr. Freeman's
imageprocessing work. You remember the archived
two10
  D material that he started rechanneling a while
back?" "He's still at it? I was under the impression
it was up and running. What's the problem?"
  "Well. . ." Harb took a reviving swallow
of his coffee. "Jerry told me the image-enhancement
and data-reprocessing chips have had a little trouble at
the base scan level. They refuse t6 read
anything but standard-format tapes."
  "So? Everybody in the Federation uses standard
tapes nowadays." "Everybody in the Federation,
aye," said Harb enigmatically. He didn't
explain further, but Jim suspected that he was about
to get all the answers he wanted.
  The holo stage made another noise,
remarkably like that of a man clearing his throat. Or,
more accurately, like Lieutenant Jerry Freeman
clearing his throat. He was standing in front of the
holo's main control console holding its all-call
mike in one hand and a tape cartridge in the other.
Almost everyone on the rec deck was looking in his
direction, and even the Space Cadet game had
been set on pause. Jim couldn't help noticing
that the crew members who had noticed his presence were
dividing their attention more or less equally between Mr.
Freeman and the captain-as if they were expecting
something interesting to happen in both directions.
"Friends, gentlebeings, and audience," said Jerry,
smiling like man satisfied with a job well
done, "you've been very patient. You've waited, and
now here it is: mayDuj BortaSo!"
  Even though he had been expecting a surprise
of some sort, Jim knew that his face probably
twitched most satisfyingly at the news that a
Klingon space opera was about to have its Federation
premier on his rec deck-and at the sound of
high-phase
  Tlhinganaase being spoken on board the
Enterprise again. It had always meant trouble in the
past, or at the very least an unwanted ripple in
shipboard routine. He smiled, the humor of the
expression perhaps a bit thinner than Lieutenant
Freeman's efforts deserved; but right then Jim
wasn't thinking about Freeman or about rescanned
sterry tapesi We were in Star Base 12's area
the last time, too, he thought, before most of this crew
had even entered the Academy. Certainly before any
of them knew of Klingons as anything but "the enemy
"comcardboard cutouts marked "villain. was It was a
long time ago, but now it seems like yesterday. I
wonder how many of these children read The Final
Reflection before they joined Starfleet?
  Certainly a great many of them had read it since and
then, not content with fiction, had raided the
ship's library for anything else that they could find on
the subject of the Klingons and their empire. According
to library records, a lot of the reading had taken
place while the Enterprise was in the Klingon
patrol corridor. Jim had noticed the increased
turnover in data and hard copy printouts and had
been sufficiently concerned to pay a visit both
to Rec One and to sickbay. Recreation was a
subdepartment of Medicine, and Harb Tanzer
reported directly to Dr. McCoy on anything
concerning the crew's leisure activities that might
in his opinion indicate something amiss about their
physical or mental health. There were attitudes
and states of mind concerning, and held by, the nominally
fictional characters-both Klingon and Terran-in The
Final Reflection that could have had an unfavorable
effect on morale. If that had happened, Jim
wanted to find out sooner rather than later. The two
conversations-one could scarcely refer to anything so
informal as a staff meeting-had laid his 12
  apprehensions to rest, and with the peaceful conclusion of the
mission he had thought no more about them. Until now.
  "Battle Cruiser Vengeance? Coincidence, do
you think?" he said very softly, for Harb's ears
only.
  "Half and half. I'd say that the patrol
mission had something to do with it, but those old tapes have
been available as xenosociological material for
years. Ever since the Federation ambassador to the
Empire brought them back from the Klingon homeworld
when he was recalled. Nobody ever bothered to look
at them until Mr. Freeman decided to run them
through his conversion program." Harb's amused
expression changed, growing just a bit more serious.
"Captain, I don't know of any restrictions
covering nonclassified material from nonaligned
sources."
  "Such as Klingon space operas?"
  "Especially Klingon space operas. Have you
any objections to it being run? I mean, would you like
an advance viewing to check it for. . ."
"Propaganda? Threats to morale? Improper
conduct? I don't think I need to worry." Harb
looked relieved, probably more for Jerry
Freeman's sake than for any other reason.
Jim had seen the lieutenant's face when he
realized that the captain was attending his premiere, a
mixture of pleasure at the compliment and
apprehension that it wasn't a compliment at all but a
prelude to his being hauled over the coals.
That nervous little pause was enough to make Jim raise his
voice a bit, just enough to be overheard. "Mr.
Tanzer, I doubt that a space opera-even a
Klingon space opera-is likely to harm the
physical or mental welfare of this crew." Then,
much louder, "Well, let's see it,
Lieutenant. Have you arranged for popcorn?" It was
a poor attempt at a joke-Jim had just finished
a long day-and the laughter that greeted it 13
  was out of all proportion. Relief of tension, he
thought. Good grief, did he scare the new
recruits that much?
  "You're a genuine galactic hero as well as a
captain, sir. What you think matters," Harb
said.
  Jim looked around sharply and blinked at the rec
chief. "Harb, you've been taking mind-reading
lessons again."
  "Just putting two and two together, sir. And if you
really want it, two of the smaller processors have
already been programmed to provide popcorn."
Harsh metallic music blared from the ambientsound
system, making people jump. Jim-who had started only
very slightly-listened with his head cocked to one side,
fascinated by this new experience. There had
been all those encounters in the past, when he had met
Klingons, spoken to them, fought with them; but this was the first
time he had ever heard their music. Presumably this
was the main title introduction, because he had only just
become used to the alien scale and tuning when a
chorus of fierce voices burst into song. Somehow
Jim had never imagined Klingons singing, but if he
had, this was without a doubt how they would have sounded.
"HI-CHMEY tuj, Som chuStaH. . . was ft was
about hot guns and a noisy hull. The song crashed
to a conclusion in a brazen atonal scream of
trumpets and a rattle of percussion. There was a
silence-nothing from the holo stage, nothing from the
audience, neither applause nor comment nor even the
sound of breathing. Everybody in Rec One seemed
shocked speechless. Then a single voice spoke up
from the back of the huge room. "Hey, Jerry! You
didn't say this was a kids" show! I wanna see
the toys!" Even Jim laughed; it had been a long
time since Earth's children's-entertainment channels had
pre-
  RULES Of ENGAGEMENT
  sented programming whose first and often only
purpose was to sell a line of toy products.
Spin-offs, they were cAlled. But through his
laughter Jim felt a touch of unease as he
watched a Klingon warship going into action on the
holo stage. Enterprise had been on the receiving end
of firepower from that sinister crankwinged vessel too
many times for her commander to regard such a battle
cruiser with anything like equapimity, and the prospect
of his crew of largely untried youngsters seeing that
same ship as no more than part of an entertainment
disturbed him. Especially when it was cutting up one
of the old Constitution-class starships, as it was now
doing on the holo stage. Enterprise had been a
Constitution class vessel before her refit.
Despite the reassurances from Bones that the morale
of the crew was unaffected, the laughter struck him as
just a touch unhealthy. And then he heard that same
laughter again and shifted his concentration back to the
translated dialogue. It had never occurred to him
that Klingons, might have had a gift for comedy, and
indeed there was no indication that there was anything intentionally
humorous in what the crew was watching. It was just that the
whole thing was so deadly serious that after a while it
became impossible to take seriously. Klingon
officers snarled Battle Language at their
subordinates, line members conspired against their
enemies and one another, commanders moved
fleet elements as they might move pieces on a
klin zha board, and ships blew up other ships in
what might have passed for combat maneuvers in an
effects studio-but fell a bit short of reality
on the Rec Deck of a Federation starship. And all
was done without a smile, without a laugh, without a
single joke to lighten the oppressive mood of
determined glory-seeking. They aren't like this, thought
Kirk. Kor wasn't, at least not much, and
Koloth certainly wasn't. So what's 15
  the matter with this show? Doesn't the Empire dare
to show that its military might have a sense ofhumor?
Or do they regard humor as subversive? He
shrugged, not understanding.
  Spock might, indeed probably would, have given
a logical, rational and lengthy explanation of it
all, but Spock was in his quarters, either fast
asleep or in a recuperative trance after far too
long on duty. During the last three days on
patrol, a sensory-scan ghost had suggested that
Enterprise was being shadowed by something with higher
power-output readings than the average chunk of
space debris. Debris didn't usually run
at matching warp speeds, either. Of course nothing had
come of it, and Spock had finally isolated the
problem as a repeater echo in one of the longrange
scanner chips. That discovery had taken Kirk's
first officer sixty-seven hours without a break
by shipboard chrono, because-logically, of coursethe
long-range units couldn't be taken off line in
potentially hostile space and Spock had therefore
run diagnostics on each separate chip
by one-at-a-time backup substitution. It was the
sort of thing that Spock liked to do. No, not
liked-considered the only thing to do, after a process of
thought as ruthlessly diagnostic as the mechanicals
he had brought to bear on the recalcitrant chips.
  A Klingon of the Imperial race stood on the
shattered bridge of a Romulan Warbird,
flanked by his personal guards, and gazed at the
members of the Rom vessel's crew as they knelt
on one knee to acknowledge his victory and their
defeat. "SoH70" one of the Romulans asked.
"Who are you?" The Klingon captain put his hands
on his hips and glanced about him at sparking consoles
and smoke-blackened bulkheads. He smiled that
toothy Klingon smile that has nothing to do with
humor.
  "HoDo Qot1h jIH, was he said.
comQot1h BortaS. je 16
  Dujvam tevwIj maj. was Harsh music
swelled triumphantly as the image froze. Then
both sound and picture faded slowly away. "This
ship is my prize, was eh? thought Kirk. He'd
never been in a situation like that, where he could claim a
ship as plunder- Starfleet just didn't do things like that.
All the same, it did have a certain ring to it. "I
am Captain Kirk. Kirk of the Enterprise. And
this ship is. . ." No. It didn't work. Jim
showed his teeth in a smile that was unconsciously very
Klingon. Maybe in that grim Mirror universe,
but not in this one. Thank God. "Are there many more of
those tapes, Mr. Freeman?" he asked as the
lieutenant leaned over to twiddle furiously at the
holo console. Freeman straightened up with a jerk,
not having noticed Jim's quiet approach across the
busy Rec Room. A tape cartridge started
to slither, and he stopped it with a flat slap of one
hand.
  "Uh, about ten, sir. They're all in Xeno."
  "Mr. Tanzer told me. That's an
impressive bit of work, if Xeno base tapes
are of the same quality as the batch I saw last
year. Rigellian, they were."
  "Thank you, sir." Freeman cleared his
throat, a little uncomfortable with the compliment in front
of so many of the crew, and took refuge behind the tape
he had saved from, failing. "Sir, about the rest of
these ... Now that you've seen one, do you have any
objections to my recoding the others for ship's
channels?"
  Jim shook his head. "None at all, Mr.
Freeman. I'll have it so noted when I log in
tomorrow morning. In the meantime, good night, all."
"Thank you, sir. And good night."
  There were the usual murmured salutations as Jim
made his way back toward the turbolift entrance,
thinking pleasant thoughts about being horizontal in
  the warm dark of his own quarters with his eyes shut,
and responding to the ripple of "good night,
Captain's" almost automatically. Harb's coffee
had balanced McCoy's Romulan ale just
nicely enough for his own overworked system to announce how
tired it was and how very much it would like him to go to bed
soon, please. He was almost into the lift and on his
way to E deck when the annunciator beside the door
spoke his name in Uhura's voice: "Bridge
to Captain Kirk. his
  For the barest instant Jim closed his eyes tight,
knowing from comexperience and the tone of his communication
chief's voice that it was going to be the only chance he
would have for quite a while.
  6'Kirk here," he said. "Rec One."
  "Captain, I'm sorry to break into your
off-duty period, but Repeater Station Three has
a Captain's Personal signal on closed-line
scramble holding for clearance by your command ciphers. was
66 Captain's Personal?" echoed Jim, all
sleepiness gone. It wasn't quite the highest level
of Starfleet coding, but it was high enough . 6'Give
me the code groups, please." His voice was quite
steady. Jim had always wondered what his reaction would
be to a CP dispatch, and he was pleased to notice that
it was at least creditable.
  "Cadesfollow. was Uhura read off a series
of numbers: 111-69-201956-31. P tilde
iority one emergency. Oh, great. Them wasn't a
war in the offing, but there had to be something very unpleasant
lurking in the body of the message to justify that I
I I group.
  "I'll take it in my quarters, Uhura. Have
Commanders Spock and Scott and Dr. McCoy
join me there. Kirk out."
  None of the other crew on the rec deck had
noticed 18
  the brief exchange or the change in their
captain's demeanor, and if they had noticed, they
were all Starfleet Academy graduates,
officers and gentle- beings who would have regarded the
whole thingquite rightly-as none of their business.
  Jim's mind touched on, and flinched from, a dozen
possibilities in the second and a half before the
turbolift car arrived. V'ger had involved a I
I I-group coding, but even it hadn't rated a
Captain's Personal dispatch-at least not when the
alert had begun. And there had been a I I I for
that horrible business when the Romulans
field-tested their plasma projector and cloaking
device. But then-and Kirk was actually smiling by the
time the lift car's doors hissed openthe tribble
alert had been group I I I as well. Jim was
actually smiling by the time the lift car's doors
hissed open. Be preparedfor the worst, he thought, but
always hope for the best, because whatever you ask for, you may
get.
  The lift doors shut, and he was on his way.
  "GooDo EVEMNG, CAPTA-IATION," said
Spock as Jim came around the curve of the
corridor and found the Vulcan waiting at the door
to his quarters. 6'First as always, Mr.
Spock," said Jim. Not merely first, but wide
awake, wearing immaculate full uniform, and in
full possession of his breath. Of course, Jim
wouldn't have expected anything else. All senior
officers had their quarters on the same deck, but those
of the first officer were in an area of the primary-hull
saucer that was diametrically opposite those of the
captain; the distant placement was designed
to prevent accident or attack from taking out the first
two levels of Enterprise's command structure.
In addition to being some distance away, the first officer had
been asleep or in meditation when Uhura's call
came through. But neither of those mitigating factors
meant anything to Spock. He managed to be the first
to arrive despite them.
  "I am early only because I was conveniently
situated to respond to your summons, sir, since
the radial corridors of this deck-was "Quite so. And of
course running along the said corridors never entered
your head."
  "Running, sir? No, sir. Such an
expenditure of energy appeared superfluous in the
present circumstance."
  However tired Spock had been when he logged off
the bridge, he had plainly taken
advantage of his rest time. His carefully pedantic
conversation and vocabulary were a sure indication that he
was feeling thoroughly full of beans. It was just as
well that somebody was, thought Jim as he went
inside and through to the work area at the back of the inner
office. Until he got some sleep Spock would
be thinking for both of them. "We have a problem," he
said, gesturing Spock to a chair. "A code-group
I I I problem." Jim hated the
melodramatic sound of that, and he could feel
Spock's eyebrow going up long before he turned from
the desk screen and saw it.
  "More tribbles? Or merely a Klingon declaration
of war?" "No further data yet. I won't
clear the ciphers until"-the door opened-
"everyone's here. Mr. Scott, Dr. McCoy,
good evening."
  "So much for your evening in Rec One, Captain,"
said Bones. "I take it this is business rather than
recreation."
  "You presume right. Scotty, is main drive
behaving itseIP" "Aye, sir, that it is."
Commander Scott's mustache moved as he permitted
himself a thin smile. "It wouldna dare be otherwise.
I've been down in Engineering, supervising
things."
  "One hundred and ten percent efficiency, then?"
"Och, no. A hundred suits me fine."
  "Good. We may need it." Jim swiveled his
chair and fed cipher clearance into the screened terminal
on his desk. "Communications, this is the captain.
Implement transfer at your discretion. Kirk out."
  "Transferring. Transfer completed. Bridge
out."
  The light of an optical scan flickered
briefly, checkling Kirk's retina to make
certain that he was who he claimed to be. It was
unusual and rather unsettling; most incoming dispatches
considered his personal codes sufficient authority
to clear. "Kirk, James T., Admiral," said
the terminal's voder tonelessly. "Identity
confirmed. Verification complete." Jim took a
deep breath. Here it comes. "Run transmission,"
he said, and was aware of his officers leaning just a little
closer. For their benefit he added, "With audio."
  "To.- Kirk, James T., was came the
transmission, "Admiral, Cmdr NCC-1
701 Enterprise."
  That use of his full rank was significant.
Jim didn't like it. "Effective immediately:
Shore leave clearance is rescinded for duration of
present operation. You are ordered to proceed with all
due haste to coordinates 00315122970 mark
816.83, there to rendezvous with support ships
enumerated below. Under your command all vessels will
make best speed to planet 4725 Cancri
IV, a.k.a. Dekkanar. Enterprise will
provide escort for SPE subsequent
to breakdown of diplomatic relations with planetary
government. Be advised that this is not an exercise.
Signed Nhoma, OX, Commodore, SFC
225 Iraz VYH-ODEL CC: Farey, N.,
Cpt, Cmdr NCC2360 Vanguard; North,
G., Cpt, Cmdr, NCC-2382 Sir
Richard; Johnson, T., Col, Cmdr 22
Diplomatic Protection Group, Morrow,
R.h., Admd. CoSo (ops) SFC Earth
(sol I1117erra). Additional data follow.
  "Stop," said Kirk, and touched A panel that
polarized the screen. "Audio off." He turned
from the terminal to survey the three thoughtful faces
gazing at him. One in particular drew his eyes.
"Bones? You look as if you have something to say."
  "Never mind the recreation," said McCoy as he
stared at the screen, "wave good-bye to shore
leave as well. And just when I was really starting
to look forward to getting back on terra firma."
  "Doctor," Spock said quietly, "Star
Base Twelve is a deep-space facility.
Even allowing for the loosest possible interpretation of the
term "terra firma," you would be some
twelve-point-two-seven-five light-years from
anything firm enough to stand on, and it would be a form of
frozen methane rather than the "solid earth" of your
statement."
  "Spock, I don't know how I'd survive
without you."
  "Gentlemen." Jim caught Scotty stroking his
mustache in an effort to hide the expression lurking
behind it; he rapped the desk to restore some decorum
to the proceedings. "This is hardly the time. I'm already
presuming that all departments are running at a
reasonable degree of efficiency," said Jim. "I
know that at the end of a patrol things tend to slide a
bit. But is this ship capable of returning to active
status within the somewhat limited parameters of this
signal?"
  "All science departments are already at optimum
stand-down capability, Captain. Commanders Uhura
and Chekov reported like status for
Communications and Defense respectively as of
yesterday."
  "I wasna makin'jokes about Engineering,
Captain. She'll give ye right to warp ten if and
when ye need it."
  "Dr. M'benp's working on the crew's medical
roster right now," McCoy said. "There's not a thing
wrong with any of the whole four hundred ninety, and the
report summary'll be ready for your inspection in a
few hours. But speaking as your doctor, if you're
planning to stay awake and read them-was "No,
Bones, I'm planning to get some sleep. But not
until we've reached some sort of conclusion about this
damned signal. I'll take it as read that we can
answer 23
  Commodore Nhoma's signal with a confirmation of
immediate response. So let's see what we're
letting ourselves in for. Audio on. Hardcopy
printout to science station. Resume."
  Jim's suspicions were more than justified. The
mission looked like trouble. After a bloodless coup on
4725 Cancri IV, the new Dekkan
government had served deportation orders on the
Federation personnel, their families, and the various
independent neutrals presently
planetside. On the face of it, the mission was no
more than the provision of top cover for the peacekeeping
unit running a standard SPE'-A
services-protected evacuation of the sort so beloved
by Training Command. Except, of course, that comth was for
real.
  "Captain," said Scotty, "if they havena
yet laid claim to the Federation facilities on the
surface and in the orbital chain, then all of this is
more a matter for the diplomats and the politicals than
a starship. The expulsion orders would have shown more
forceful wording if it wasna in their plans
to renegotiate the terms of Federation occupancy.
Doubtless when the dust settles it's just more wealth
they'll be after." ,Spock laid the sheets of data
neatly on the desk in front of him and squared their
edges, then steepled his index fingers and tapped them
against his lips before saying anything, almost as if he was
editing his words before letting them be heard. "Certainly
there appears to be a diplomatic element involved
in this," he said. "But unfortunately whatever
financial adjustments the government may have planned
are being overtaken by events. I'm sure that all
present will agree that the Phalange for Dekkan
Independence-the PDI, as they are more
popularly known-is an organization worthy of
notice."
  "You're dam right I agree! It doesn't
matter what highfalutin names they give themselves,
they're just the same sort of terrorists who always
crawl out of the woodwork when something like this happens!"
McCoy flicked a hand irritably at the screen
in front of Jim. "And you know what they're trying
to do with all this throwing their weight about? They weren't
able to make a name for themselves during the coup, so now they
have to prove how tough they are so that they'll get some
attention when the time for making demands comes around."
  "The employment of violence toward political,
or nominally political, ends has been
regrettably common throughout history," said
Spock. His face was somber. "Even on
Vulcan. An adequate demonstration of force will
invariably gain notice, and from notice comes
influence and power."
  Jim sat quietly and watched the discussion pass
to and fro among his officers, gleaning more understanding from the
workings of multiple minds than he ever could from
sitting alone, hunched before a securityscreened
terminal. "I suspect, Mr. Spock, that's why
Starfleet's sending us. Specially trained
personnel to carry out the evacuation, the Enterprise
in a highcover orbit-seems to me intended
to attract notice. But nothing else."
  He tapped a series of controls on the terminal
console, and more data appeared on the screen.
"Gentlemen, I am advised that the actions of all
Starfleet vessels and personnel are restricted
by the full provisions of General Order Twelve,
subsection seven-point-one, governing rules of
engagement. The most we're allowed to show is the
flag. No shields, no screens, and most
certainly no weapons. There are also indications that
General Order One may be invoked if anybody
gets too heavy-handed, and the 25
  Prime Directive in this instance will mean "get
out and stay out." Which brings me to the Klingons."
  "Never rains but it pours," said Bones softly.
Jim glanced at him and smiled crookedly. "Too
true. The Klingons-and the Orions. Both of these,
ah, nonaligned spheres of influence extend too
conveniently close to 4725 Cancri for Starfleet
to want to give either unfrly power the opportunity
to expand by virtue of our errors." "Which either or both
may already be contemplating." Spock riffled through his
printouts, gazed at one sheet with as close
to a scowl as he ever allowed himself to show, then neatened
them again, his eyes hooded and unreadable. "Perhaps
following an invitation . . ."
  "From one o' their own intelligence sources,
maybe." Scotty looked up unhappily from the
latest screen of data. "Captain, I hadna
thought the Firechain ran that' here."
  "The Fire-what?" McCoy leaned over
Scotty's shoulder, frowned at the screen, then
threw up his hands in exasperation. "Dammit,
Jim, I'm a doc- tor, not a soldier! Will
somebody-anybody-cut all the military jargon and
tell me what all this is about?"
  Jim stretched a bit, easing a crick in his
spine. A pain in the neck, he thought. Isn't that
always what these signals are about? He felt tired.
"It's about the usual: trouble. Computer, desk
terminal, off, main holo screen on. Show all
systems in the sectors bounded by these coordinates."
He fed in the figures and sector boundaries from the
dispatch, then watched as the big projection screen
fitted to the rear wall of his office came alive
with the stars and data of a standard chart display. "Show
destination." Immediately 4725 Cancri IV glowed
blue as it orbited its sun, the
holographic
  image passing unconcernedly through Jim's hand as
he reached deep into the display and tracked it with his
fingertip. "Access authority as before: command level,
classification one three-A three. Reveal and
flag Federation long-range surveillance and
early-warning installations in the same area:
designation: Firechain.
  Forty-odd red fireflies joined the 3-D
swirling of simulated orbits: drone
satellites fitted with an adaptation of the
Romulan cloaking device, like the one that had been
monitoring the ill-fated trio of Klingon
cruisers at the beginning of the V'ger incident;
false asteroids, and real ones hollowed out to no more
than a concealing shell; and one planet that glowed like a
jewel on Jim's finger, blue and red by turns.
Dr. McCoy stared for what seemed the longest time
at the slowly turning display, then raised his eyes
to glance from side to side with an odd mixture of
amusement and resignation. "Ali," he said.
"Dekkanar is right in the middle of it and so are
we."
  Jim said nothing, Scotty cleared his throat
slightly, and both of them looked at
Spock. The Vulcan met and held their eyes for
perhaps a second, lifted that one eyebrow
fractionally, and compressed his lips in an expression
that, on anyone else, would have concealed a rueful
smile. "Explanations," he said. "Very well.
Captain, if I might use your terminal to access
the computer ... That'
  4413e my guest."
  "Computer, this is Commander Spock, science
officer. Access authorities remain in force.
Classification now two one-B three."
  "Identity confirmed. Verification complete."
  Jim had noticed a peculiarity before and he
heard it again now. It might have been his imagination, but
he could have sworn that whenever the voder- 27
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  reproduced voice addressed Spock it sounded
less toneless and ... well, friendlier. But of
course, that was impossible. As Spock worked, more
charts and data flagging overlaid the first display
until it was cluttered with colors and information
flashes. Finally he glanced once from the desk
repeater to the main screen and back, nodded, and
pressed a single tab that returned the basic star
map. "The Dekkanar installations remain
mostly what they originally were," he said, "a part
of the industrial development and self-help
program first instituted thirty-seven standard years
ago. However, by virtue of Klingon Imperial
expansion in the years between the start of the project and the
Peace of Organia, it was, and I quote,
"necessary that, by virtue of its position in Federation
space so close to the Klingon sphere of influence,
a manned facility for detecting potentially
threatening incursions be installed in the 4725
Cancri system." At the time of construction, no
fully automated systems were considered for the task.
There is a footnote." To Jim's surprise,
Spock glanced back at the small screen; his first
officer didn't normally use, or need,
prompts. "It concerns misinterpreted DEW-LINE
data by ILLIAC-FOUR for NORAD and SAC in
Stone Mountain-on late twentieth-century
Earth," the Vulcan elaborated, plainly
disapproving of the plethora of acronyms confusing a
perfectly adequate language. Spock lifted
both eyebrows, plainly inviting an explanation before
he got one from the computer.
  "DEW was the original distant early warning
system," said Jim. He smiled wearily.
"In the late twentieth century Earth's discovery
of nuclear fission was still less than fifty years
old, Spock." It must have 28
  been a ticklish time. Either fifty years or
indefinitethat was the life span Vulcans had
calculated for a hominid culture that discovered
atomics. "Thank you, Captain. And the rest?"
  Jim winced inwardly, sensing the same reaction from
Scotty and Bones. It was not a piece of Earth's
history that any of them could be proud of. "There were
occasions," he said, picking his words with care, 66
when the warning system and the computers linked to it ...
made mistakes. The mistakes were passed down
line to commanders who didn't want to believe they were
mistakes; the errors then were sent to missile and
strategic bomber bases. Most of the errors
occurred when the warning system picked up offcourse
civilian aircraft ... though there was a persistent
rumor that war was almost started by a flock of migrating
geese."
  He leaned back in his chair and looked across the
office at nothing in particular. "We came so
close so many times. Every so often the recall didn't
come through until the bombers were in the air. Even now,
a few hundred years later, it's
unpleasant to think about."
  "But not unfamiliar," said Spock. "I
comprehend the need for personnel in the Dekkanar
facility."
  "Dekkani personnel," snapped McCoy.
  "Of course, Doctor." Spock's face was
expressionless. "It is their planet, but they
appreciate the Federation support."
  "You mean they did.
  "Quite," said Spock flatly. "Informing the
Dekkani would be informing them. This planet's
proximity to the Klingon-Empire is a two-edged
sword." "Look at the chart, man! One link in
a chain of fifty-odd isn't any great loss!"
  "Ah," said Scotty, "look at the size o'
the place. 29
  Ye're talkin' about the damned main station. It
controls all the analysis from the others."
Montgomery Scott was getting agitated: his
Edinburgh-educated accent was giving way to the harsher
sounds of old Glasgow and the shipyards of the Clyde
where he had learned the fundamentals of his trade.
"Ye'll no' be gettin' that much gear on any o'
those wee orbital drones or screenin' the energy
output from detection even if ye could. The
laddies from Klingon Intelligence would love that'
get their hands on the whole kit an' caboodle, so
else we keep everythin' quiet and let the
politicals get this all back that' normal-or
somebody gets that' beam the whole installation up
piecemeal; there's no other way that' deal 14il
x$91 "And how would this new Dekkan government-or
the PDI'-REACT if we tried that, without asking
permission? Which, of course, they, would refuse,"
Jim demanded, locking eyes with McCoy. It was
all very well for the chief medical officer to appoint
himself the conscience of the Enterprise, but trying to do the
same thing for the whole of Starfleet Command-that was way
out of his depth.
  All the tension went out of McCoy's body and
he settled back in his chair with an audible
release of breath. "Yeah. They're not up for
listening to reason right now, are they? And they'd be
likely to invoke the Prime Directive and then
invite the Klingons in just out of spite." He
grinned and managed to put a bit of humor into it.
"So it's a secret. And it stays a secret."
  Jim nodded, managed a little grin of his own.
Losing the planetary base would be bad enough; losing
the surveillance facilities to the Klingons
would be far, far worse.
  The Empire's diplomatic arm would try to use
it as political leverage both through the Organians
and in other, nastier ways-and, invited or not, they'd
be all over Dekkanar within a day of the Federation's
withdrawal. To say nothing of the Romulans, who always
regarded Federation difficulties as an
opportunity.... Much more of this and Jim knew he
would start to twitch. "Let's get the ball rolling,
shall we?" he said. "Apologies in advance to everyone
just coming off duty, but I'm bringing the ship back up
to active status. Thanks, everyone. Dismissed."
He tapped the desk communicator. "Attention
all hands, this is the captain. Now hear this: shore
leave has been postponed. Enterprise is
returning to active duty for an estimated ten
days. All stations and departments will go to alert status
immediately. Kirk out.,,
  "That was abrupt," said McCoy from the doorway.
Spock and Scotty were already out and away.
  "Probably," said Jim, knowing there was nothing
probable about it. "It's the way I feel. I was
looking forward to a little R-and-R as well, you
know."
  "I do know. It's a tacky way to wind
up the tour, Jim-cleaning up an intelligence
mess."
  "Somebody has to do it, and we're handy. You
hold the dustpan and I'll use the brush, eh?"
  "After you get some sleep."
  "I need to-was
  "Sleep."
  "Once I've answered my mail and pointed the
ship in the right direction. All right?"
  "All right. But I'll stay here for a while, just
to make sure. Jim sighed heavily. "There are
times, Bones, when you sound like my mother."
  "Oh, I'm far worse than that, Captain. is
McCoy smiled again, took a seat on the edge of
Kirk's bunk. "I'm your doctor!"
  "And what about a ship of your own, Pavel?"
  "Wen, what about it? I don't even know yet if
my transfer is to Nelson or Reliant, and
already you talk about a command! I don't know anything
at all!" Pavel Andreievich Chekov, acting
science officer, threw up his arms in mock
despair. "And if I had a choice, would I not
serve on something with a good Russian name, like
Sakharov or Ivan Groznyy?" "What about
Potemkin?" said Sulu. "Or Minsk?"
  "If I wanted to stay with this class of starship,
dorogoy moy, I would not move from this very one. S."
  They had been talking shore leave before the
message came in for Captain Kirk; now shore
leave and anything connected with it was a prohibited
subject, just in case too much assuming of things
brought disappointment. Their conversation was all about
promotions and transfers and whether the next patrol
would be more interesting than the last, because it was certain that
it couldn't possibly be duller. There were only the
three slightly raised voices on the bridge,
those of the old hands; other stations were secured by ensigns
and a solitary lieutenant, all of whom were keeping
quiet and clear of even friendly arguments between these
commanders with the legendary names.
  And then the annunciator uttered its two-tone
three-note whistle and even the legends went
quiet. "Attention all hands, this is the captain.
Now hear this. shore leave has been postponed. .
. -- was Sulu released a long breath that lacked
only sound 32
  to be a groan of disappointment. "That's ten I
owe you," he whispered to Chekov after the rest of the
message was done. "And a drink. Better make it
off duty rather than off ship-otherwise you
might have to wait awhile." "Just so long as the drink
isn't sake. Wodka, ifyou please." He
glanced across at Ensign Penney, who was once again
keeping Weapons and Defense ticking over, as she
had been doing on and off throughout a mission that had seen
no need for them at all. "Maintenance checks,
Ensign," he said. "And run a preheat on the
phaser banks before checking the warp drive power
bleed. Make sure any imbalance will cut in the
torpedoes. And if it doesn't, scream. Because I
will."
  Chekov had never liked the way the redesign had
interlinked phasers to main drive; damage to one would
rob Enterprise of the other. And the photon
torpedoes, while an admirable backup, were not
what he considered an adequate defense all
by themselves.
  "Klingons, do you think?" he asked nobody in
particular. Heads went up for an instant all around
the bridge before turning back to their allotted
tasks.
  "Not this far into Federation space." Sulu sounded
confident, almost like a man who was considering how he
might win his ten credits back. "Station
K-Seven was farther in," said Chekov
softly. "So was Organia." Uhura flapped one
hand at them in a shushing gesture and pressed her
transdator tighter into her ear with the other. "Watch
your screens," she hissed, head turned well
away from the comm pickup. "Further info coming up."
  Kirk's voice rang out on the bridge:
"Make the 33
  following signal to Commodore Nhoma: "Ref
your dispatch: sitrep noted, logged, Enterprise
acting.'Usual codes and salutations. Flag it as
a Priority One response, and send the message
and reply to all department heads. Any queries or
comments may be directed to Mr. Spock. was
Uhura touched controls, paused while the
verification lights came up, and nodded.
"Executed, sir."
  "Thank you, Commander. was There was a soft small
noise in her transdator that took Uhura a
second to recognize as an inadequately stifled
yawn. "Patch all coordinatesfrom Commodore
Nhoma's signal through to Heim and Navigation, and
have a course laid in directly for those
coordinates at warp eight-pointfive.
V-another yawn, more audible than the last one-
"think that's all for now. Good night. Kirk
out. "Aye, Captain. Good night, sir."
Uhura wiggled the transdator from her ear and set
it down on the co m console right beside the screen.
She read the words burning on that screen, words that the
captain's authority had put there, and said several
words of Amaationdebele kwaZulu under her breath.
Now and
  again occasions arose for which KiSwahili was inade
quate: it was too good-natured a language in which
to s I wear in effectively. Here we go again, she
thought, and hit the key that put Nhoma's signal
on line. "Your station, Mr. Mahase."
  The deck underfoot was vibrating with that familiar
soft subharmonic moan of acceleration when Uhura
finished tidying up and rose to return to the center
seat where she nominally held the con. Sulu had
laid in the course coordinates almost as fast as they
appeared on his board, and Enterprise was already
curving away from Star Base 12 and back out into the
uninhabited darkness near the Neutral Zone.
  As she settled back into the captain's chair,
Uhura touched controls to bring a star chart up on the
main screen. She looked at it for a moment, then
shook her head. The star called 4725 Cancri was
all alone out there. Oh, there were its seven
planets, but the only one of interest was their
destination, Dekkanar. The rest ... either too
close or too far out; cinders or snowballs. It
was an untidy system; literally so, with an orbiting
belt of asteroids and bits of space debris from
what had probably been an eighth planet sometime
long ago, most of them massive enough to overwhelm the
long-range navigational pressors that were, after
all, meant only to shunt micrometeors from
Enterprise's path. At least the Enterprise
navigators were too sharp to let the ship get
anywhere near the asteroids. Larger obstacles of this
sort were normally flung aside by the outermost
deflector screens after a sensor detection. At
present, however, the use of screens and shields was
forbidden under General Order 12, and once the ship
moved deeper into the star system, its sensors wouldn't
work. Because 4725 Cancri had yet another trick
up its metaphorical sleeve. It was a
"dirty" star, a testy, marginally unstable type
F2 that threw out vast quantities of ionized
radiation at all times, and right now it was at the peak
of a sunspot cycle. The star's ionization was as
effective as deliberate high-frequency jamming
and served quite adequately to scramble
shipboard helm sensors. The only way around the
problem was either to run those sensors at maximum
output or to activate the more powerful systems that were
expressly designed to bum through jamming whether it was
natural or deliberate. That, of course, was
impossible for the same reason that everything else was out
of the question right now-General Order 12.
High-emission sensors, any of which might
  be perceived as military hardware, were expressly
forbidden by Order 12; under the present rules of
engagement, they were considered provocative. This
system had better be well charted, thought Uhura.
Otherwise it's going to be interesting... She cut in
an orbital simulation program, set present
parameters and restrictions, and watched while it ran
a hands-off approach down through the display. The
program achieved a geosynchronous orbital
insertion comj-and Uhura winced feelingly. Almost any
approach from deep space was interesting, all right.
  Too damned interesting.
  "Looks wonderful." Chekov had been watching
the simulation in between setting the science station to rights, not
much liking what he saw. "And with Vanguard and Sir
Richard keeping us company right down to orbit. Right
into the radio pause. Boga radi-was
  "One good thing about all this is that we won't be
staying long." Sulu, having finished upgrading
checks on Helm and Navigation, keyed his department
head acknowledgment into the reader and cleared its
message to memory. "I've been on SPE
exercises before. The security people beam down
to protect the civilians and diplomats until
they can be brought out. All we have to do is give cover
from up top."
  47hat easy, huh?" Uhura shook her
head. "So why am I not convinced?" "Because the
exercise controllers like to throw in the occasional
curve. Like the time limitation, of course, and the other
civilians. On one exercise we had
sociologists, naturalists, and two families
off bird-watching somewhere in the fenland-on a planet
that was all fenland! We found them, directed squads
to pick them up, moved them all to the evacuation
points, and beamed them out, but it wasn't what I'd
call fun. This, though"-Sulu tapped the reader
  screen-"will have to be neater. If that signal means
what I think, then we go in, pick up the folks,
and try to get out again within a couple- of days. What
I read is 'Don't ruffle any feathers, it'll
mess up the talks."" "The Dekkani
act like spoiled children who want us to give them more candy
before they let us play in their yard," said Chekov,
sounding annoyed. "When I was very small, that kind of
behavior did not earn me candy. It got me
smacked." He smiled at a wry and probably
painful memory. "Few children tried it twice. A
pity that approach never works in politics. It would
save a lot of time and trouble."
  "Gunboat diplomacy, Pavel?" Sulu
shrugged, dismissing the idea. "I think the Klingons
use those methods on their subject worlds. I
don't recommend it."
  "I wasn't suggesting gunboats."
  Uhura looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
"If what you meant was some sort of orbital
smackprogrammable launcher," she said, "you're more
in need of a rest than I thought."
  TwENTY DRYD-OM surrounded the orbital
shipyard, and nineteen of them buzzed with activity.
The twentieth was in darkness. All but its running
lights and safety beacons had been shut down, so
that the ship hanging within its lattice was no more than a
huge shadow. Its gray thermoglaze showed no
reflections, but rather seemed to attract and absorb
even the meager illumination so as to reveal some
semblance of its shape. A solitary engineering pod
moved out from the main yard complex and drifted
unhurriedly toward Drydock 20. As the pod
drew closer, its protective shrouding retracted
so that its upper surface became a clear-view
bubble, through which those aboard could inspect what little they
could see of the ship. The pod's single passenger
glanced without speaking at its pilot, who nodded
acknowledgment of the look and tripped a toggle on his
command board.
  All the lights of Drydock 20 and of the ship
inside it came on at once. The pod passed
along one side of the support pylons and out beyond the
dock, then rotated slowly to face its entrance. The
ship was no longer a gray shadow,
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  but glittered like something carved from obsidian and
crystal. Even the most uninformed observer would have
known this ship had not been out of drydock. Its shape
was subtly different from that of others of its class,
and the patina of its thermocoat was still untarnished
by light-years of travel; it had not yet felt the
touch of phaser bolt or stellar dust or anything
harsher than the hands and implements of those who had
rebuilt it almost from the keel. As the pod
began a flyby approach, its passenger rose from
his seat and stood to attention, offering without speech or
other movement a salute to the ship that had once been
his and was now his again. Everything about it had been
remade; it was as pristine now as it had been when the
keel had first been flown years and parsecs long
past. The pigmentation of insignia and graphics had
been refreshed with newer, brighter colors, picked out
by selective spotlights buried in the hull. There
were even small areas of brilliance around the primary
weapon conduits where someone had taken the time and trouble
to polish the bare metal of their efflux nozzles and
blast tubes-and polish them with hand tools, for there was
no other way to achieve such a mirror finish. As
it approached the ship, the pod reduced its speed
until finally it was moving past the red-lit bridge
and out toward the warp nacelles at little more than
walking speed. Passing over one of them, it curved
around and then down to pass beneath the ventral surface
of the hull, initially so close that from horizon
to horizon of the pod's 180-degree view, there was
nothing to be seen but an infinity of plated belly.
The pod's passenger watched the massive hull, the
hull of his ship, flowing leisurely past, and the
fingers of one hand gripped the polarization
console of the viewport hard enough to make indentations in
its padding. The other hand, by contrast, tapped a slow,

  controlled rhythm on the console's metal
frame. When the pilot noticed it, he smiled,
then concealed the expression behind a busy tapping of his
own on controls that illuminated an autodock
display above the command board. Once clear of the farther
side of the hull, a few seconds more maneuvering
with the reaction thrusters brought the pod into line with its
docking port. There was a soft, solid noise as the
multiple latches engaged, a brief hiss as
air and pressure equalized in the outer lock, and
then silence.
  As the protective shrouds slid back
into place, the passenger watched them as if he had
never seen such a thing before, then walked to the rear of the
pod and opened its access hatch. He paused with one
hand still on the controls, facing the red-lit corridor
of the ship beyond, then turned to look at the pilot, who
was busy with shutdown routine. Finally, and after
evident consideration, he spoke into the silence.
"Thank
  y$91
  The pilot was on his feet immediately. "This
need not be said." "I say it. Thank you for the tour of
inspection." Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh
of the Klingon Imperial race smiled thinly,
deciding to let at least some of his amusement show.
"And for the music. Especially for the music. Tales
of the Privateers, indeed."
  "This one considered the circumstances appropnate
for music." He touched a control and the flight
console ejected a tape. "And all of the themes from
Battle Cruiser Vengeance are overused."
  "Appropriate, zan Askel?" said Kasak
tonelessly, wondering if the ears of Security were
listening. "And what of propriety? Privateers
are not something mentioned to the one when he assumes command
of a new ship." "The reputation of
sutai-Khornezh is such that no 40
  impropriety could be implied or suspected,"
said Askel formally. Kasak narrowed his eyes,
wondering if his science specialist was daring to hint
at something else entirely. Perhaps he was with
Imperial Intelligence, Kasak thought. Nothing
else could have made him so bold. That one word
"reputation" never failed to make Kasak's liver
move in his chest while he reviewed the other words that
had been uttered with it, searching for the hidden
slight. It had been his reaction for so long that it was
almost a reflex now, pointless in most cases and
certainly where Askel was concerned. Imperial
Intelligence or not-and the matter had never been more
than idle speculation-the specialist was as close
to being a friend as Kasak had ever allowed anyone
to become. He dismissed the thought as not of immediate concern,
not with a shiny new ship to be inspected. The ship was
Hakkarl-"Vanguard." He was named for a piece in
the game known as Win zha. His registry number was
KL- 10 17, and he had started life in these
same orbital yards at Taamar five years
ago, as the first of the K'Vinga class battle
cruisers. Kasak had commanded the ship's proving
flight, as he commanded the first flights of all new
vessels, and had found himself a fine ship, strong,
responsive, and swift, And then, as always, the
vessel had been taken away and given to someone
else, someone who was considered more politically sound.
  As politically sound as the fools who had lost
three of Hakkarl's brother ships to the energy
field that the Federation had called V'ger, no
doubt. And now he was back, refitted, uprated,
and a little more besides-and he was Kasak's to command again. For a
while. Kasak showed his teeth and stalked
aboard his ship.
  It had all gone wrong years ago during
Kasak7's cadet cruise, even though the
voyage had been commanded by no less a captain than
Koloth vestai- Lasshar himself.
  The incident at Space Station K-7 had
turned a relatively simple mission into a
fiasco, and a flurry of negative security
notations had dogged all members of that ship's crew
throughout their careers. Only the cadets had emerged
relatively unscathed, and then only those not
sufficiently capable to have drawn attention to themselves.
Midshipman Vasak, as he had then been known, was
not one of that fortunate mundane majority. His name
had come up too many times for Imperial
Intelligence not to take notice when they were looking
for scapegoats to carry the blame for the loss of
Sherman's Planet, the capture of one of their
deep-cover agents, and the infestation of an entire
battle cruiser with the furry vermin yiHmey...
  All the corridors were shadowy, lit only with the
deep red glow that Kasak associated with combat,
emergency, and imminent violence. Now that was
appropriate. What was not appropriate, or
even comfortable, was the atmosphere. It was too
cool, and painfully dry. Kasak found that he
needed to breathe shallowly through his nose to keep the lining
of his throat from being dehydrated. He had expected
something of the sort, given what had been done to the
ship, and equally, he hadn't expected to like it.
Askel caught up with him near one of the
turbolifts. "Pod's secure," he said.
  "Good." Kasak stopped, pressed for a lift
car, and when it arrived lifted his eyebrows at the
heaterhumidifier and airlock flush clamped to its
ceiling just inside the door. "You'll like this," said
Askel, following Kasak's gaze to the overhead
installations. They began to operate as soon as the car
was sealed and on
  its way, filling it with warmth and moisture at
least for the duration of transit.
  "Bridge," Kasak said. He found himself wishing
that the ride from amidships out to the command pod was not quite so
fast, and gave serious consideration to putting the car on
hold for a few minutes while their desiccated
nostrils got back to something approaching normal.
Then he decided not to bother. The others would be
waiting on the bridge, and while as captain he could
do much as he pleased without reproof, the longer he
took getting to the preflight briefing, the
longer it would take to wind it up and get back to air
that everyone could breathe. At least it was just a briefing,
nothing more; there would be no need to waste time' in
impressing the officers of this crew....
  In the time after his cadet flight, Vasak had
often wondered what had saved him from the fate of the
others, be it legal termination on trumped-up
charges, suicide by command, or simple disappearance.
It was true that he was of the Imperial race; but it was
equally true that being such was no real protection.
Indeed, on Koloth's ship, crewed largely
by human fusions, membership in the Imperial race
had served only to point out those of pure blood for
special punishment, on the assumption that regardless
of how low their rank might have been, they at least should
have known better. It might have been his line, whose
members were not without influence and had certainly acted
in his support and defense-just as soon as it was safe
to do so and in exchange for his incurring heavy debts
both of cash and obligations.
  And his survival might just as easily have been
due to the fact that he was too useful to dispose of
simply for the completeness of things. Certainly it had
been his usefulness ever since that order came through; an
43
  order not for termination but for promotion to ensign and the
change of name it required, and an immediate posting
to active duty in the hot spots along the
Romulan frontier.
  Ensigns had little enough time to call their own, and still
less when under a more stringent level of security
surveillance than everyone else, but Kasak had
managed to scrape together the few minutes he
required before they shipped him out to the waiting
frigate. It was there, on Orbital Facility
3, that he had stood at a viewport and looked out
at the naked stars that surrounded all who sought glory
among them, seen or unseen. It was there that he had
chosen to play the Perpetual Game. And there,
filled with pride and thinking himself the first of all
Klingons to do so, he had vowed to write his own
rules for himself. He had learned very quickly that in
komerex zha there were no other kinds of rules.
  Kasak had exercised the usual privilege
granted to first-flight commanders, of putting forward a
list of names for consideration as department heads, based
on his evaluations during previous cruises. This
flight was a little different: he had recommended an
entire crew. All eight of them. They came
to attention as he stepped out onto the
bridge, all the familiar faces, familiar
names. They had changed only in age and rank and in
the appearance of scars here and there. They looked
pleased enough to see him and to have been singled out for this
honorable if not necessarily glorious duty.
Some looked as quizzical as it was proper to appear
before the captain gave his briefing-and all of them were as
unhappy with the ship's atmosphere as Kasak was.
  "Captain," said Weapons Specialist
Katta, when the formal greetings were completed, "what
is this?"
  Kasak looked at her mildly. He knew
exactly what 44
  she meant, having perceived all the facets of the
question, all the layers of the answer. Not just why they were the
only crew on the entire ship, or why the
atmosphere was so unpleasant, but why the bridge
had neither control boards nor any seating other than
the small and uncomfortable inspection pads on which they
were now perched.
  Katta saw the look, remembered him of old,
knew what his first reply was likely to be, and said
quickly, "Besides a battle cruiser, that is."
"Kai, was Kasak said, mocking softly. He
gestured to Askel. "This is a matter for
Science to explain. The sooner it's done, the
sooner we can move from this bridge to the proper one."
That drew curious looks, as he had intended it
should. "Specialist Askel?"
  Askel nodded. "You will all have noticed the low
temperature and humidity levels aboard this
ship." There was no reply, since his words were not a
question but a statement of fact. "Some or all of you
may have guessed the reason. Let me confirm.
Hakkarl is crewed by computer."
  Eyes widened and pupils went narrow. Captain
Kasak's chosen crew members were all
sufficiently senior to know about the occasion when
Starfleet had launched a fully computerized
ship-and what the consequences had been. Askel
waited a few seconds, then smiled thinly. "But
before you all ask for a transfer to somewhere safe-perhaps
unarmed interdiction of the Rom zones-it isn't like the
Federation's khestn M-5. We know better than
that, and so do they. At least, they know it now." His
audience laughed; they would have heard the same sort of
joke many times before, but never so aptly timed.
  "These"-he slapped his hand against one of the dark
metal casings that shrouded every work station on the
bridge-"are beam-linked repeater arrays

  boosted through a Z-eight primary core. Neither
the repeaters nor the core act for themselves: you will
control them, just as you would if you sat here. However, you
will not. You and the captain will be here. was The main
screen, virtually the only piece of equipment on
this cold, dry bridge that had remained unchanged,
lit up with a view back from the com- mand pod toward
Hakkarl's main hull, and this time, despite the
crew's discipline, Askel heard gasps of
astonishment. There was a Bird of Prey scout
hanging there, maneuvering thrusters at station-keeping,
far too close for in-dock traffic separation.
"Tazhat," said Askel. "Registry number:
KL, 10 18. He will be Flier to our
Vanguard." Tight smiles too full of teeth
greeted the joke. "Now attend, and learn.
Life-support and artificial gravity functions
are sited in Tazhat, and in him only."
  Askel surveyed the watching faces and smiled
thinly but with much satisfaction. "Good. Then I need
explain that much less to you. Our captain told me
that you were swift." He gave the last word the klin
zha intonation, but there was no response of humor.
Not now; his audience was too intent on all
the strata of meaning in their science specialist's
words to pay much heed to further jests that might, or
might not, leaven his briefing. Askel noted this, and
was content. They would remember more for their concentration.
  "Without crew, and the needs of crew, Hakkarl no
longer has the need to hold back, as it were, when in
combat. This cruiser, similar though he may be
to all others of the K't'inga class, can tolerate
accelerations and maneuvers far beyond that of his fellows.
Of course, an observer will not know this until it is
far, far too late.... Also, the main drive has
no drain other than thrust and shields and weapons.
This is far 46
  removed from earlier designs in which perhaps a third
of all energy output went to light, heat, gravity,
and life support."
  Kasak's people glanced at one another, filling in
the blanks in what the science specialist had said and
thinking what that difference could mean in a battle.
Too often, skirmishes with Federation or Romulan
vessels had to be broken off because the parties were too
evenly matched. This ship, and perhaps-if their cruise
was a success-this class of ship would make all the
difference and maybe break that balance.
  "Physical connection is by regenerable
monoweb filament," Askel continued. His fingers
played across a diagnostic keyboard, filling the
main screen with diagrams and graphs and figures.
Engineer Aktaz stared at them for the drawing of a
breath, then laughed softly underneath that same breath and
said nothing that the laugh had not made plain already.
Among the others there was greater or lesser comprehension
dependent upon training and specialization, but all of the
small and intimately acquainted crew were plainly
aware that this ship was unlike all others they had
flown. It was the next generation-if it worked.
  "All connections to the cruiser's weapons
systems are nonphysical and powered from the scout.
Also, and note this well, the two vessels have
separate cloaking devices. Both ships can lie
in wait together, and the scout, when cast off, can remain
concealed from an enemy as effectively as the fathership,
can-was
  Askel broke off, hearing as he had expected
to hear at this point the outrage of honorable
Klingons who had just been told that they were expected
to hide from the foe instead of striking at him and thus
gaining glory. He let the birthing argument die
stillborn, then surveyed them with all the coldness of
one who had heard such outcries in the past and
had paid 47
  them no heed then, either. "Have you said enough?" he
began in that low voice that was feared even more than his
rage by two generations of ensigns. Then he fell
silent as Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh
took a long step forward.
  "My children," Kazak said. All of them, even
Askel, were hushed by the honor done them through this form of
address. "I understand your anger, your concern, your
fear for loss of glory to your lines. Know this: if
Hakkarl responds only one-half as well as the
specialists who built him claim he will, there will
be glory overflowing for all of you and, yes, for
generations yet unborn. The naked stars themselves will
watch you, as will the Emperor himself, and all will say,
"Truly, these are Klingons!" Know this, my children,
as you know me and all my past endeavors for the
Empire: when we are done with Hakkarl, our names
will be spoken as is that of the Emperor Kahless of
ancient times. We will be Unforgettable." In
another commander the shift in language and tone might
have been unconscious, but Askel knew Kasak
too well to assume anything he did was
accidental. So the shift from high-phase oratory
to Battle Language was most certainly
premeditated. Askel listened to the cheering and the
cries of "kai kassad" and kept what he was
thinking in the private place behind his own cold
eyes.
  He wondered what this enthusiastic crew would say
if they became aware of the truth behind their captain's
intentions for this fine new ship. What they would
say-and, more important, what they would do. That was why
he was here-not as science specialist, no matter
what Kasak sutai-Khornezh might think, but as
an operations master of Imperial Intelligence.
Askel's "collusion" with I.i. had been a
running joke between the two officers since their days in

  the Houses, lifetimes ago. Askel had always
been the quiet one-too thoughtful for his own good was the
usual interpretation. A Klingon who thought too much
wasn't considered an especially healthy phe-
nomenon, particularly in a navy career where
unthinking obedience to superiors was as much a
requirement as arms and legs. The I.i. connection
had started out as an insult, but time had worn it
down. Only the cream of the jest remained, and that was
something Askel was not about to share. Intelligence had
become aware that there was likely to be more to the
first voyage of KL- 10 17 than just the usual
shakedown cruise. The source of the information had
confirmed a great many suspicions and provided
answers to several of those niggling questions without which no
intelligence executive would be complete.
  The amount of time and money spent by a certain
passed;-over captain to make sure he would
acquire this ship, for one thing. That sort of
activity in a politically unreliable officer was
invariably well worth watching, particularly when his
reputation was that of Kasak sutai-Khornezh.
He had achieved his present status only through a
diligent accumulation of glory along the Rom
frontier and had used that status as a lever to further
himself politically, cultivating powerful supporters
both in his own line and among his superior officers
by ensuring that his successes reflected well on them.
Askel had been impressed by the subtlety the
captain had displayed in this undertaking. It had proven
so effective that Kasak's surveillance file
contained records of regret expressed by high
officials that the Empire could not, because of the black
mark in his past, reward so worthy an officer in the
manner he deserved. Askel had read that twice and
then sat for several seconds staring at the name
of the epetai-a Thought Admiral no less-who had

  spoken those words. Stared, and shaken his head in
disbelief. The most that could be done had been done.
Kasak had been honored by being entrusted with
first-flight command of every new class of ship to leave the
yards. It was a backhanded compliment at best, for it
implied that if anything went wrong during a test
flight, he would be a lesser loss to the Empire
than an officer who was considered fully reliable.
There was no-and there never had been-taint of treason
about Kasak. Only the understandable discontent following
the business with the tribbles had blighted his career. Of
course there was always a first time for everything. I
Particularly when his expensively cultivated chain
of contacts was discovered. There was nothing treasonous
about that either; Askel had checked, was personally
certain, and that sufficed. The certainties of I.i.
operations masters were not questioned by lesser forms of life.
The data had crossed his desk at irregular
intervals for two years now, and at the very most it
seemed that Kasak was making moves to feather his own
nest through a little privateering on the side.
  And that was where the most important questions were asked.
If this particular captain never had a
vessel of his own except for the initial proving
voyages of each ship class, then how, and with what,
was he intending to become a privateer at all?
  And then suddenly the yards refitted a
full-size battle cruiser to run with a maximum
crew of eight, and it became all too likely where
his ship was coming from.
  There was another matter, stranger still, and it was the
only reason Operations Master Askel had not
simply handed the file over to Imperial Security
with a termination order attached. It involved
Kasak's con50
  nection with a planet in Federation space, a
planet presently in the throes of some internal
dispute.
  The Federation called it Dekkanar.
  The next briefing was finished in much less time
than those among the crew who knew him would normally
have expected. Although zan Khitar specialized in
communications and was skilled at making tight-beam
tachyon packets do things their manufacturers
hadn't intended, when it came to the preflight
lectures that were customary in the navy, his
specialization went out of the nearest lock. Khitar
had brought the word "boring" to an art form.
Askel watched the others shift on their inspection
pads with every indication of pleased relief, and wondered
which of them was doubling for Security. Khitar,
maybe: Communications was a good position from which
to transmit reports. Or maybe it was too good,
too obvious. Or maybe that was what he was meant
to think, and Security was running another double
bluff. Askel smiled his meaningless smile again.
I.i. knew most things, but the learning of some of them
was more difficult than the learning of others. It would be
typical if he went off on this questionable cruise not
knowing who his allies were. There was no love lost
between Security and Intelligence, and it was not
uncommon for the two bureaus to act against each other
through sheer professional spite. There was, thought
Askel, probably a better way to run things.
Security was too quick with its disruptors, and not quick
enough with its questions. It was very difficult to inteffogate a
corpse.
  He glanced back at Captain Kasak, who was
listening to something Marag was telling him. Maragacting
security officer, for no other reason than that a
Klingon ship, even the tiniest deep-space
shuttle, always had a security officer.
  Marag was another longtime friend of the
captain's. They were all friends insofar as the title
could be applied to subordinates of a commander known
to hold himself at a distance from the junior grades.
At least they were acquaintances, officers who had
served with Kasak in the past and had gained by it.
During his many successful commands he had gained the
respect of his subordinates as well as that of his
equals and superiors, through his reputation for success
and, more important, because of his unselfish sharing of
glory. There were doubtless some who saw this as weakness,
but Askel was not one of them. He saw instead a
cunningly woven web of strengths, each individually
of small account, but when drawn together into the right
place at the right time, a most imposing instrument of
persuasion that could draw as tight around an
unsuspecting throat as a garrote.
  Although there was as yet no name to match the eyes,
Kasak sutai-Khornezh was quite well aware that
he was being watched. There had not been a first flight
yet without at least two covert operatives from
Imperial Security, and he saw no reason why
this one should be any different. There might even be
someone from I.i. along for the ride, to keep an eye
on what Security was doing. He refused to be
concerned. What he was doing was no act of
treason.
  His contacts were a source of confidential information,
the sort of information that seldom came lower down the
line than an admiral's private
correspondence. Most of it was useless: Kasak
had no interest in House politicking, at least not
yet. But sooner or later something of real use was
bound to reach his ears. It had; it did; it was a gift
of glory from the naked stars themselves. He knew of more
than just the internal squabbling on Dekkanar and the
expulsion orders served on the Federation
diplomatic staff. He knew
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  why. A large part of his private fortune had paid
for the situation to arise in the first place, and his present
position as first-flight commander would let him take
best advantage of it. That the present ship,
Hakkarl, required so small a crew that he could
virtually guarantee himself support was just one more
gift from whatever spirit guarded honest captains. The
coup, when it succeeded-for there was never any doubt in
Kasak's mind but that it would succeed comwas his chance
to restore to his name and to his fine all the honors
that had been withheld for so long. There would be a
promotion to squadron leader, maybe even
to admiral, and perhaps the right to start a House and line
of his own. All this, and as much more as he dared to dream,
would be his through a simple act of provocation. There
would be ships of the Federation Starfleet in orbit around
Dekkanar. That was standard practice. When some world
or other threw its diplomats offplanet, the
Federation always sent ships to protect them. They were a
liverless lot, thought Kasak contemptuously, and a
far remove from Klingon diplomats, who were well
able to take care of themselves, and who indeed were selected
as representatives of the Empire only after they
had already proved themselves as warriors. And where there were
ships there were weapons and the chance of forcing their use. Just
one burst of overreaction, one phaser blast or a
solitary photon torpedo directed at a
vessel of the Klingon Navy, and the Organians would
come interfering. In their usual fashion the gdayt
glowbugs would condemn the aggressor-and cede the questioned
planet to the Empire.
  The Klingon Empire, of course, would be
ignorant of what had happened, and official hands
would be thrown up in official horror that any
captain should place a new and untried ship in
jeopardy from the 53
  warmongers of Starfleet. Neither the
emperor nor any of his Thought Admirals could dare
to authorize such an undertaking, for fear of the whole
plan blowing up in their faces should the Organians
probe too deep. And so Kasak had determined
to act independently. If he failed-not that the
possibility entered his mind, so awash was it with
schemes and plotting-then there would be no possible
allocation of blame against the Empire or against
Kasak's line, while if he succeeded ... when
he succeeded, it would not merely be a great stroke
to bring him all that he desired; it would be an
admirable and cunning move in the game of komerex
zha, the greatest of all games, giving Kasak
sutai-Khornezh good repute and, more than that,
casting perpetual doubt on the abilities of those
who down the years had judged him unworthy. There was
just one single hurdle left to clear: the theft or,
at the very least, the unauthorized borrowing, of the ship
that he was here to test.
  All the briefings were completed. Kasak glanced
quickly around the bridge and noted that all of his crew
were doing as their captain had been doing these five
minutes past-breathing shallowly and not through the nose.
Kasak said, "Enough of this meat freezer. I
transfer my flag to Tazhat, and I do it
now."
  That was a questionable remark at any time, since he was
no admiral and had no flag to transfer anywhere,
but his crew stood to attention for an instant to salute
him. While none smiled outwardly, since that would have
been unseemly, Kasak could sense that this present
duty had the full support of his crew. He
nodded, the only acknowledgment that was required, and
said, "Stations."
  As was the custom, the crew went together in the first
lift car so that they could make the scout ship's
bridge ready for Kasak's arrival. The captain
and his 54
  first officer rode together in the second car. As the
door of their car closed, Kasak and Askel said
nothing for a moment, only grinned like children with the pleasure
of having warm, moist air to breathe again. "Who'd be
a computer?" said Askel finally.
  Kasak smiled thinly and tugged mock points on
his ears. "I could never get used to the shape," he
said. He laughed, then cut the laugh abruptly
to silence. "What's your opinion of the ship?"
  "Impressive," Askel said, "but I'll
trust it when I see it work, and not before. Designers
can say what they please, but they don't go out
in the khest'n things."
  "Good."
  "Your opinion?"
  "Mine exactly." Kasak leaned forward to boost
the controls on the heater-humidifier and inhaled the
resulting vapor luxuriously. "That's why I
insisted on a crew I could rely on."
  "Honored, Captain," said Askel.
  "No compliment, "Kel. Just fact. If I
can't trust the ship, I'll have to trust the crew."
Kasak stared hard at his exec before he spoke again.
"I can trust them, can't IT"
  "There'll be the usual complement of security
watchers," said Askel. "And given the ship's
capabilities set against the small number of
crew aboard, there's probably at least one
I.i. agent among them." He paused. "But then
you know about me already, don't you?"
  Kasak roared with laughter. It was an amusing
concept, and that was why Kasak had laughed. It
didn't in the least suggest that he was not suspicious
of his first officer, and indeed the ploy was so obvious that
its use had already increased his watchfulness. I.i.
was not so much his concern, however, as Security.
Intelligence officers were, by their very title
and despite the usual contradiction that it carried,
reason55
  ably smart. Certainly they were more than commonly
capable of seeing future developments based on
current actions. They concerned themselves with the why and the
wherefore, rather than just the what observed by Security.
Put another way: a security operative
discovering the planned theft of a ship wouldn't even
give Kasak time to explain. An I.i. agent
wouldn't need the explanation anyway.
  Neither officer was interested in further sight-seeing
around the battle cruiser's hull. Instead, as
soon as they boarded the travel pod, Askel
took the little vehicle up and over Hakkarl's
back in a single smooth parabola that brought them
into precise alignment with the main docking port on
Tazhat's spine. Kasak watched without comment.
After his display of good humor in the turbolift, he
had decided that it was time he became "moody," that
being another facet of his reputation and one the crew
might be expecting to see during departure from
drydock. Leaving port in a new ship was never the
most comfortable time for either captain or crew. More than
one captain had been relieved of a command before it had
gotten properly under way because some clumsy
helmsman had dented either the ship or the dock
facilities on the way out. That the accidents might
have been a result of faulty systems did little
to remove negative notations from their files. There
was probably not even much satisfaction in executing
the helmsman on the spot. Kasak's moodiness was
only half a performance for the benefit of others. The
rest of it was genuine concern.
  When he stalked onto the scout ship's bridge,
everyone was already heads-down and busy. Birds of
Prey were built around a nominal crew capacity
of twelve, but that had been before the remotes and 56
  repeater arrays at every station. Even then, the
clutter and the atmosphere within the scout ship-thick,
foggy, and warmer even than normal, thanks to the
surplus power already being bled off the battle
cruiser beneath them-was far preferable to the spaciousness
and the dry, grinding chill of the computerized bridge they
had just left.
  Kasak sat down in the command station and laid both
hands flat against the arms of the chair. No one, not
even Askel, met the slow glance with which he raked the
bridge, for a head raised meant a station
unattended, and the crew knew what that might lead
to. "Screen," he said. The images
came up at once, a multiple overlay of
computer-enhanced windows that showed exterior visuals
from several points together: from Tazhat, from remotes
on the structure of Drydock 20, from Hakkarl.
It was the next best thing to omnipresence.
"Status."
  "All systems fully active, Dock
Control Clearance confirmed. Interlinks live,"
said Krynn at the helm. "At your command."
  "Action."
  "Acting. tilde
  Kasak felt a brief thrumming of
subharmonic vibration underfoot as Krynn brought the
scout ship down through that last few meters of
separation, handling its thirty thousand tonnes of mass
with the delicacy of a dancer. Again the thrumming, and at
last, long after he expected it, a deep soft
boom that seemed to make the very air shudder in his ears
as Tazhat settled on Haldcarl's back. There
was no sensation of impact, but Krynn sat back from
her close-maneuvers board, which was now all blue
lights, and said, "Secured."
  "Then take us out. Maneuvering thrusters forward,
impulse power one-third at your discretion."
  "Affirm."
  "Course, Captain?" said Navigator
Khalen.
  Kasak analyzed the question for an instant. Of
course the navigator needed to know which way to point the
ship, but there was bound to be someone aboard, maybe
even Khalen himself, who awaited the reply with rather more
than professional interest. "Present heading?" he
snapped. "Two-seven-zero, green, standard."
  "Then why ask?" Khalen stuck his head down
again, suitably chastened. It was a response that
gave away no secrets other than that the captain
was for some reason out of temper and requiring the
bridge crew to read his mind. That in itself would leave
them with enough to think about besides extracurricular
duties. Kasak waited for a few minutes while
they stewed and then said, "Departure angle on
viewer."
  The Taamar facility filled the screen, receding
only slowly as Hakkarl's reaction thrust
overcame the inertia of two hundred thousand
tonnes. "Distance from Dock Twenty now eight
hundred forty meters, climbing, acceleration factor
zero by five, climbing," said Krynn. "The ship
is sluggish. He dislikes the extra weight."
  The main display had already told Kasak
that much, and the repeater displays to either side of his chair
augmented with further information. It had taken Hakkarl
this long to cover just over three times his own length;
though both ships of the combination had been uprated from
standard, it appeared that someone, somewhere, had failed or
forgotten to boost the cruiser's maneuvering drive
to take into account the additional mass of a scoutship
riding piggyback. Kasak touched keys on the command
chair and noted that fact, then recorded the pertinent
figures for his first-flight report. No matter just
now about his future intentions for this ship, the
conscientious execution of
  duty was a habit not easily broken-and besides, it
would look strange even to those members of the crew not
on the lookout for strangeness if he was not compiling
such a report.
  "Increase thrust."
  The lattice of drydock webbing began to shrink a
little faster, but still not fast enough. What if this vessel
or one like him were in a situation where impulse and warp
were both impossible but swift acceleration was vital
to the survival of ship, crew, and mission? Kasak
wondered. He leaned back in the chair and began
composing a scathing comment intended to make it plain that
while only the navy's officers and men went
out in carelessly constructed ships, there was an increasing
chance that the more careless constructors would start to go out-b
without any ship at all. And then the alarms went
off.
  "We are being scanned!" Askel looked up from
his science station and punched data through to the captain's
repeaters. Kasak glanced at the information as it
came up, then at the screen. The drydock continued
to shrink in their wake, even more swiftly and yet still not
swiftly enough. There were no other images moving
there. Nothing had changed-yet. He was not about
to wait. "Degh . . . was Krynn did not raise
her eyes from helm control, but her right hand
anticipated the coming command and moved to rest lightly
on the main thruster controls. "StO qWill!"
  Now Kasak knew he was being watched: the shift
into Battle Language was not something any
selfrespecting spy could ignore. It was of no
account. He looked once more at the unchanging
screen, then made his decision. "chuyDah
HoSla!"
  "vangff"!- Krynn pushed for thrust, boosting

  maximum in a single sweep of the levers. The
ships vibrated slightly as their combined
weight fought for a moment against the pressure of
acceleration, then gave up the struggle. On screen,
Taamar and its dock facilities became a bright,
fuzzy blot as they seemed to jump into the distance-and
then spawned a flurry of smaller specks that
came glittering in Hakkarl's wake.
  "Show mag six," he said, and watched as the
screen image expanded, cluttered now with small
ships against a distorted drydock background.
"Identify."
  "Gunboats," said Khalen. "Dock security
contingent, twenty-plus." "Sir," said Khitar,
"I have a communication from head of security, Taamar
facility. He orders this ship back to Dock
Twenty at once."
  Security Officer Marag laughed. "They
haven't told him about the test," he said. "Too
much for his brain to comprehend."
  "More realistic this way," said Kasak to nobody
in particular, even though his words carried all over the
bridge. "Shall we see what Hakkarl can do?" There
was no reply, not even a cheer. If they were starting a
test exercise early, and without the knowledge of the station
security chief, then the testing was likely to be more
stringent and the exercise more realistic than any
of them had anticipated. Assu ing that it was an
exercise, and not any one of several other
possibilities. But they were ready, whatever it
was.
  "Battle alert," said Kasak. "Secure for
combat maneuvers. Zan Katta, weapons
free." That did bring him a stare, which still did nothing
to reveal potential spies and traitors, because no
matter for how briefly, the stare came from everyone
on the bridge.
  Captain Kasak sat back in the command chair and
stroked the palm of one hand over his forehead crest,
silently inviting someone-anyone-to make a
com60
  ment. No one did, certainly not while the
fingertips of his other hand were doing a little dance along the
grip of his holstered sidearm. Then he grinned
wickedly and let the tension break. "Disrupters
only. Set for heavy stun."
  The release of breath was a soft sighing that was not
really audible through the other sounds of the scout ship's
bridge, but Kasak fancied that he heard it
anyway. For just one minute there his loyal crew had
truly begin to wonder what sort of mission this was,
and then just as suddenly had been completely
reassured. He silently thanked Marag for his
comment, an observation which, coming from the ship's security
officer, carried more weight than if it had been
uttered by anyone else on board. Certainly a
combathardened soldier's opinion was worth more than that
of a desk-bound paper-pusher like the Thamar head of
security, and he could plainly detect the amusement
in Khitar's voice as the communications specialist
relayed yet another message.
  "More from Station Security, Captain. He
demands that Hakkarl be returned immediately or he will
personally take steps."
  "Not without an environment suit, I trust?" said
Kasak mildly. The laugh was better than the
joke deserved, and it was not just crew members
responding dutifully to their commander's wit. They
meant it. "Ignore all further communications from that
source. Weapons?" "Preheat cycle completed,
sir, running hot. Prelocks engaged on-was
Katta hesitated, looking again at her board as
if seeing it for the first time. "We have prelocks
confirmed on all targets, Captain. All
twenty-three of them."
  "Screen: tactical."
  He had never seen a tactical display
so crowded with information. Velocity, trajectory,
vector, status
  comall of that and more for each of the station interceptors,
and each one of them overlaid by the green triangle
of a target lock. Once he gave the order
to lock on and those triangles changed to blue, they
would designate a certain hit. At least, so the
designers claimed. "Helm, stand by on impulse
power. Engage cloaking device on my command. Have
the gunboats raised their shields?"
  Askel consulted a readout. "Not yet, sir."
  "Good. Raise ours."
  "Acting!"
  "Helm . . ." Kasak watched the complex
tactical display, waiting for the first change in
status aboard the pursuing gunboats, the first
indication from his sensors that they might do more than
follow. As they detected the raised shields,
weapons data went from standby to active on five of
them, and he had seen enough. "Helm, impulse
power, evasive corkscrew down starboard, go!
Engage cloaking device!"
  With one hand Krynn hit maneuvering controls that
sent Hakkarl-Tazhat into an accelerating twist out
of the line of fire, and with the other she cut in the
cloak, so that neither Kasak nor anyone else on
the bridge were quite sure what produced the kick in
their livers that was like the effects of a very bad
Saurian brandy. All that concerned Kasak was the
way in which the gunboat formation broke apart as
HakkarlTazhat vanished from screens and sensors
and visual all at once and all together. Light
flared from four of the gunboats as they fired wild at
Hakkarl's last known position, and Askel leaned
over his console. "Incoming fire," he said, "at
five-two, five-nine, six-six, six-seven.
All clean misses." "Zan Katta, you may
return the favor."
  Risking her captain's wrath, Katta stared at
him, 62
  knowing that what he had ordered was impossible. Her
thoughts were shared by everyone. They were still cloaked, and no
ship yet built could fire from cloak.
  To even attempt it was to create a power drain
massive enough to shut down the main drive, the
gravity, the environmental ... And the life
support.
  Kasak slammed his clenched fist against the arm of the
command chair and snarled at her. "I command! Obey!
baHwI, baHave!" Katta blinked,
swallowed-and hit all the firing controls at once.
On the screen, coronae of blue incandescence
bloomed among the gunboats as dis- rupter
batteries stabbed lances of energy from target
to target. By the time a certain startled Klingon
gunnery officer could draw breath twice, the entire
formation of twenty-three small ships was tumbling
all over the screen and the sky it displayed, crews
stunned and controls useless. Hakkarl's
power-consumption gauges had barely flickered.
Kasak watched for a moment in absolute
satisfaction, then said, "Stand down from battle
alert, secure from combat and evasive maneuvering-but
remain cloaked. After this, every Imperial vessel in
the quadrant will try to gain a sort of glory
by making us look as foolish."
  He stood up and stretched as if he had been
slightly bored by the whole business. It was another
mannerism, one for which he was well known, having
once visibly yawned at the sight of a fleet of
Romulan ships that outnumbered his command by seven
to one, and the end of an engagement would not have seemed the
same without it. "Cruise stations," he said to the
bridge in general. "Forward angle on the screen.
Once we are clear of the Thamar primary,
come to warp 63
  four. Maintain speed and course until I
instruct otherwise."
  Kasak turned to leave the bridge, then stopped
and swung back toward his crew. Praise was not
expected, nor was the giving of it a requirement of
good command, but ... Kasak eyed them all slowly, the
gaze seeming to see more than perhaps it ever could, making
the innocent writhe as much as the guilty. Finally he
relented and permitted them the honor of a salute.
"A good first combat," he said. "The others will be
better." Praise, promise of glory, and
veiled threat all in one. Klingon was an
economical language. The crew returned his
salute as he walked to the waiting turbolift car
that would take him to his quarters and to the other, less
dramatic work that awaited all captains. A
voice that might have been Krynn's or Katta's,
but never Askel's, said quietly behind him,
Vapid', joHwl. -- Kasak entered the lift and
turned so that they could see his face, and its total
lack of any expression. "Success, my lord""
the voice had said. He would have both, the one giving
promotion to the other. And perhaps a consort besides. The
lift door closed just in time to hide his
smile.
  THE U.s.s. ENT-MPIUSEvery slid down out
of warp and into normal space in a coruscation of
hard radiation that sleeted off her skinfield.
Normally there was nobody to see the flaring Cherenkov
corona that formed her bow wave, but this time she had an
audience.
  Vanguard and Sir Richard hung in the shadow
of a planetoid, dark and silent to both the visual
and the electronic senses of any who might be
traversing a sector of Federation space where none but
Federation vessels had a right to be. Still, their
presence here was sufficiently unusual to raise
eyebrows from the fringes of the Romulan Star
Empire to the Imperial Palace on the Klingon
homeworld and all points between, if they were spotted.
Which was why both ships were quiet, and their
respective commanders probably flinched just a bit
at the relative commotion made by the arrival of the
starship. Frontiers and Neutral Zones and
official protests had not stopped Klingon spy
ships before and were unlikely to do so now. And the presence
of the Enterprise herself would, if observed, likely
cause comment. At the very least.
  Jim Kirk sat back in the center
seat and felt himself relax just a little bit. There was
always just the smallest chance that something unexpected
might be waiting for a starship dropping out of warp, and
until the lack of surprises was confirmed he
preferred to stay at yellow alert. "Lower
shields," he said finally.
  "Hailing frequencies are open, sir,"
Uhura said, "and I'm receiving transmissions from
both Vanguard and Sir Richard. was "On
screen, Commander."
  "Jim, are you well? You sure look well!
They can't be working you hard enough!" Captain
Farey's faceor, more accurately, Nicholas
Farey's bearded grincame up in one section of the
screen. Uhura had considerately windowed it so that
both Captain Farey and Captain North were
visible. "Hi, Jim. Welcome to the back end of
nowhere." Gytha North looked as lean and dangerous
as she had the last time Jim encountered her. She had
taken to wearing her silver-shot hair loose around
her highcheekboned face, but it would still be regulation
and if necessary she would be able to quote him each and every
pertinent paragraph. Captain North had always
made a point of understanding Starfleet regulations.
It made them easier to bend. "Admire the
scenery. There. Didn't take long, did it?"
"Yes, Nic, I'm well, and, no, Gytha, it
didn't," Jim said, and smiled thinly. "So much
for the small talk. How much information did you two
get?" "That's Jim, straight to business." Farey
shrugged. His expression turned suddenly grim.
"Well, if you got Nhoma's signal, you know as
much as we do."
  "Understood," said Jim, getting to his feet.
"Well. This may be a secure transmission-but
we should have these talks in person. I'll meet you
both in our transporter room."
  "Er, Jim, there'll be three of us."
  "Three ... T" Jim was momentarily at a
loss before his memory dropped a name into place.
"Oh, yes, Colonel Johnson." He paused
to check how his next question would sound when it came out.
"Why wasn't he on one bridge or the other?"
  "Bridges for Starfleet captains and shuttle
bays for constabulary colonels. That's what he
told me." Nic Farey smiled a bit, not
looking much upset. "In fact the man has had a
lot more to do than stand in the comer like an aspidistra.
Nobody bothered giving us an exact time of
rendezvous, and "best speed" as per
signal can vary just a bit, so we-was "Nic,
Jim's waiting for us."
  "Right. Sorry, Jim. We'll be with you in,
uh, five$91
  Farey was as good as his word. Five minutes
later, three whining spindles of light expanded out and
became Starfleet officers standing on Enterprise's
transporter pads-actually, two Starfleet
officers and one in khaki one-piece work
fatigues. The name seemed all too
appropriate, for Jim privately thought that the
man wearing them looked tired. Too tired for what
the mission had in store for him-even though there was nothing
tired about the precision of his salute.
  "Colonel Todd Johnson, Diplomatic
Protection Group. Permission to come aboard?"
  He was a big man, middling tall, solidly
built, with dark, closely cropped hair. He
seemed young to be a full colonel. To Kirk's
eye Johnson looked like someone who had spent time
as a duty sergeant before climbing the commissioned
ladder. His rank tabs would probably have been new
and shiny had they not been of the same material as his
fatigues, a few shades darker for the sake of
contrast but not enough to
  be an obvious target. DPG personnel were
supposed to get in the way of unpleasantness before it
reached anyone more important, but that didn't mean
they had to dress to attract it.
  "Permission granted, Colonel Johnson,"
said Jim. "Welcome aboard the Enterprise. his
  "Thank you, sir. Excuse my appearance."
He gestured at the coveralls, ignoring the fact
that they were perfectly clean and had creases sharp enough
to shave with. "I wasn't expecting a briefing as
soon as you arrived. I didn't have time to change."
  "The colonel was running an equipment maintenance
exercise on board the Richard, and he won't
order his people to do anything he hasn't already done
himself," said Captain North. There was no inflection
in her voice, but Jim thought he could hear
disapproval in there somewhere. "He pushes hard.
Sometimes too hard. You're not indispensable if
you're there all the time."
  "Sorry, Captain." Johnson was smiling;
plainly he'd heard this more than once already. "But you
can only trust equipment if you've checked through it
yourself."
  Nic Farey said, "And then you're quite sure whom
to blame?" "If you're still alive and
unhurt, why blame anybody?" They were walking
along G deck from the transporter room to the main
briefing room, and that was where McCoy and Spock
caught up with them. The doctor was grousing as
usual, but in a more understated way than usual and not,
for once, trying to include Spock in his
grumbling-for which the Vul- can looked as relieved as
he was willing to let show. McCoy seemed to be
suffering from some sort of depression, but Jim
didn't ask about it; he already 68
  knew the reason, having given the order himself, and
equally, knew that he would hear all the details just
as soon as Bones had polished up his choice of
phrases and was ready to hand them out.
  For the first part of the briefing, the computer merely
reiterated what all present knew already: the
"request" by the Dekkan Planetary Council that
all Federation personnel be off world within a certain
time span, and the evident enthusiasm shown by the PDI
terrorist organization to be responsible for those
kinds of acts for which the council had stated bluntly
they could not be held responsible.
  Spock put the library computer back to standby and
stared at its controls for a few seconds. "It would
appear, from study of the available data, that
even if the Planetary Council members
reconsider their position-and that cannot be guaranteed-the
PDI terrorists will put up an armed resistance
to any such weakening of purpose, and given the
historical context of similar situations, will give
in only when it suits their purpose to be
"defeated by overwhelmingly superior numbers and
firepower" oe'-he looked around the table-"or when
they are wiped

  out.
  Spock's somber pronouncement fell with leaden
finality into the middle of the discussion. Todd
Johnson glanced briefly at the Vulcan and then
nodded as if satisfied with what he had read there.
"Mr. Spock is quite correct," he said. "He
also knows, as do you all, that employing "overwhelming
firepowee is something that we must not do-and indeed, are
not equipped to do."
  "The terrorists know it, too," said Jim. "They
know it because they're dealing with the Federation and not with the
Klingon Empire." 69
  "Impasse," muttered Nic Farey. "They can
do what they like, because we can't do anything of the sort.
Wonderful."
  "So what can we do?" Gytha's voice, and her
impatience or incipient frustration, brought the words
out as an irritable snap, unusual enough during a
high-level briefing to turn heads.
  It was Spock who gave her an answer, and they
could all see how inadequate he felt that answer
to be. "Initially, Captain, we can do nothing at
all. I have been reading through the finer print of
General Order Twelve. Computer: correlate
subsection 7. 1, rules of engagement, with
function of the present assignment."
  "Working," said the computer's calm, synthesized
voice. It took maybe three minutes to relay
what Spock had requested, and when it was done they
all sat in silence and digested what they had been
told. "This," said Johnson finally, "might as
well have been written by the other side."
  The Starfleet officers knew already about the
dangerously tight restrictions on shipboard
navigational and defensive systems, but what with one
thing and another involved in bringing the ship back from
near-leave to fully operational status, none of those
aboard Enterprise had been able to find the time
to wade through reams of impenetrable officialese and
learn what else was involved in General
Order 12. The fine print that Spock had mentioned
made for unpleasant reading, written as it was by some
bureaucrat light-years from any of the risks he was
so casually dismissing. Most of its instructions
referred to ground units, in this case the five
hundred men and women of Johnson's
Diplomatic Protection Group. Among all the
other "whereas" and "notwithstanding" jargon was 70
  the nasty requirement that, in order to indicate the
peaceful nature of their mission, helmets and body
armor were strictly forbidden "unless proven necessary
by subsequent events."
  "Which means," said the colonel, "that we aren't
allowed any protective gear at all until
someone gets shot at, maybe killed. Because until
that happens, we don't have any need of
protection."
  "No weapons either. Not even hand phasers."
Gytha North smiled crookedly. "You all heard
that, I'm sure: 'Under no circumstances may any
weapon be carried by Federation personnel unless and
until conditions outlined in paras. seven through
twelve are met or exceeded. In such situation
issue of phasers may..." etcetera,
etcetera, blah, blah, blah. But:
"this restriction is and remains absolute when
taken in reference to hand phasers to avoid the
potential of provocation that is concomitant with the
carrying and/or wearing of any and all concealed
weaponry."" She finished the quotation with a sort of
bitter relish in her voice, then glanced along the
table at the other Starfleet officers. "Dear
God. Now, how many times have you gentlemen beamed
down into known hazard without one of those little lifesavers
at the back of your belt, eh?" "There will be no
beaming down here," said Spock. "Commanders Uhura
and Sulu have advised me that the system's primary
planet is at a peak of sunspot activity.
Bearing in mind the prohibitions on sensorrelated
operations, navigational systems will be disrupted to a
greater or lesser extent, but communication both to and from
the planet and intership remains relatively
immune. My analysis has also revealed a most
unpleasant energy fluctuation. Its pattern is a
natural equivalent of the electronic coun-
termeasures employed against transporter beams.
In effect, any attempt at particle
transmission and coher71
  ent matter reassembly within the 4725 Cancri
system would be ... scrambled." Jim's
mouth tightened at an ugly and still-painful memory.
He had seen what Spock so dryly described,
most recently-too recently-on board the Enter-
prise just before the V'ger incident. He had lost
two good friends on that occasion, and he preferred not
to think about a similar accident involving the eight
twenty-person transporters aboard each of the
support ships. Bones had evidently thought about it
already, but had more on his mind than that. "It seems
to be your day for making cheerful observations," he said.
"Anything further to add?"
  "Only to observe that unless this situation
improves drastically during the next thirty
hours, all landings and evacuations from Dekkanar must
be undertaken by shuttlecraft," said Spock, "and
to admit a certain surprise at your reaction,
Doctor. With your wellknown dislike of the
matter-transporter system, I would have expected
you to be pleased at the announcement rather than
otherwise."
  "Normally you'd be right, dammit. But not this time.
Have you seen what's being done to my sickbay?"
  "I have not seen," said Spock, pedantic to the
last, "having been at the science station on the
bridge during all of my most recent
duty shifts." The Vulcan paused, and then
continued more gently, "But I do know, and why it troubles
you."
  Jim glanced at McCoy. His guess about what
had been bugging Bones was right. To put a starship's
sickbay on full emergency readiness was a
drastic step, but he had taken it earlier that day.
The order had come through McCoy, of course, but even
though they both knew what it entailed, the actuality
was never pleasant to see.
  The sickbay was designed to handle day-to-day
health care for the four hundred-odd individuals of
various species who made up Enterprise's
crew and who were working in an environment that was as safe
as the ship's designers could make it. Minor
illnesses and injuries and now and then the equivalent
of an industrial accident were all that McCoy and his
staff expected to encounter in the normal course of
events. To all intents and purposes, it was a
small-town hospital. That it should suddenly be
stripped of all nonessentials and converted to the
dressing station for a major disaster, clea red for a
500 percent increase in patients, and equipped for
emergency trauma surgery on a massive scale
was enough to unsettle even the phlegmatic
chief medical officer.
  That same step had been taken aboard Vanguard
and Sir Richard; not only did the three ships have
a combined crew complement of over a thousand souls, but
there were Johnson's people to consider and most of all the
civilians trapped on a planet whose government
no longer wanted or protected them-and whose
lunatic fringe seemed more and more likely to take some
advantage of that lack of protection. That the standard
evacuation of these civilians and the medevac of
anyone injured during the operation was now restricted
to shuttlecraft came as something of a shock to those who
had been seeing matters in terms of mass
beam-ups.
  "And because of all this concern about provoking the
Dekkani," said Captain Farey to the briefing in
general, "we're here with a pair of support
vessels and a starship designed primarily for
deep-space exploration-but none of those vessels
are capable of making planetfall! Jim, no
insult to Enterprise, but Starfleet Command must have
known what was needed for this operation-something that could go down
there, fill up with people, and then leave.
  Something big enough to do the job in only one trip-at
the very least a couple of bulk transports
to make this all a whole lot simpler," Nic
finished irritably, breathing hard.
  Jim looked at Vanguard's captain and
remembered when he, too, had been full of sound and
spit. Maybe getting older and more sensible wasn't
so bad after all. "It would be simpler still if we were
serving in the Klingon Empire, Nic," he said.
"You know how they respond to rebellions on their
subject worlds. But I don't see anyone in this
room wanting a transfer. . . . was McCoy
stared at him, then looked once more at the tangle of
red tape whose words comed the main screen and muttered
something under his breath. "I missed that, Bones. Again,
please?"
  "What I said was, we're the good guys."
  "That's the theory."
  "And the good guys never shoot first, right?"
  "Right."
  McCoy sighed heavily. "That's what I was
afraid of. 91
  The Enterprise and her consorts came out of warp
three days later, a respectable distance from the
tangle of ionization and debris surrounding 4725
Cancri and its inner planets. Time-sensitive
though the mission was, Jim and the other
captains had agreed that there was no sense barging
into such a mess any faster than safety
permitted-and besides, a high-speed ap- proach was
prohibited as being too provocative.
Provocative or not, any approach was
dangerous, and at any speed. They held station just
clear of the system-and of the Dekkan long-range
scannerswhile Enterprise once again played host
to the other captains and the DPG colonel during the
last bit of peace and quiet any of them could
expect to enjoy for the next several days. All
three ships had been running 74
  on alert status for close on a week now, and
Jim decided to take advantage of this short
pause for breath before the heavy work began. He was
senior officer here, and until Johnson was on the
planet's surface and command of the mission passed
to him, he was responsible for any decisions that might
affect the other ships in his little fleet. After a quick
consultation, Jim cheerfully gave clearance that all
three vessels should maintain a listening watch but
otherwise stand down from alert until they began their
tippy-toe nonaggressive no-bumping-into-things
approach. Feeling rather pleased with himself, he took the
turbolift from the bridge and went down
to join his guests in the officers' wardroom on C
deck.
  They were sitting quietly in the lounge area,
watching Uhura's disturbing simulation of the approach
to orbital insertion around 4725 Cancri IV on
one of the big wall screens and, judging by the
expressions on their faces, were not enjoying the view.
Jim looked briefly at the screen and made a
sound of faint but emphatic disapproval. "I've
already seen this one," he said. "It doesn't get
any better. Nothing on another station?" There were a
few halfhearted grins at that. "I just hope your
entertainment channels are as good as they're supposed
to be," said Nic, lifting the screen's voder
remote and tabbing it to active with his thumb. "Show
entertainment channel One, please."
  "Hechu'ffjIS-AHBE'!- barked the speakers
an instant later. "chuyDaHave!" Nic eased the
volume down to a tolerable level and tried
to pretend he hadn't almost jumped out of his skin.
"What interesting programs you people watch, to be
sure," he said carefully, and stared as a Klingon
warship powered its way across the screen on the
thrusters its commander had just called for.
  Captain North and Colonel
Johnson looked at the screen, then at each
other, then at Jim, and realized rather sheepishly that
they had both reacted in exactly the same way.
Very slowly they removed their right hands from the place
on their belts where a phaser would have been. Gytha
then sat up very straight, narrowed her eyes, and
watched the Klingon cruiser for a few seconds more.
  "Since when has Battle Cruiser Vengeance
been available from the entertainment library?" Then she
grinned. "And where can I get a first-generation
COPYTI
  Jim laughed and saw Dr. McCoy laughing with
him, though almost certainly for reasons of his own.
Jim hadn't forgotten that crack about making a
diagnostic psychologist out of him, and he smiled
to himself at the thought that Bones wasn't so far from the
truth after all. As usual. "Have a word with our
Mr. Freeman. He'll be happy to oblige."
Jim sauntered up to the bar, got himself a drink,
sipped it, and felt even more pleased at his inspiration
to give everyone some time offeven though McCoy had
been there before him and the only beverage readily
available without resort to the processor was a jug
of pungent mint julep. He could see a bright,
irregularly shaped speck through the
viewports at the rear of the lounge. Seen
naked-eye at five kilometers' distance, it was
clearly one of the two support ships, but at such a
distance impossible to identify as either Vanguard or
Sir Richard.
  Jim swirled his drink around its glass and
watched for a moment. The three Starfleet vessels
formed the points of an equilateral triangle, and the
empty space between them was currently busy with a
scurry of shuttlecraft that flitted from one ship
to another and back again as pilot-qualified DPG
personnel accus-
  tomed themselves to rapid transit without benefit of
transporter beams. Every now and again Jim would catch
a glint of light as one of the little wedge-shaped craft
went into the tumbling maneuver that had become standard as
the quickest method of presenting docking ring to docking
port, but for the rest of the time they might as well not have
been there at all. Earlier in the ship's day,
Colonel Johnson and two of his junior commanders
had spent several hours out there in an
engineering-section travel pod, watching the exercise
for real rather than on screen and instrument monitor.
Those same men were now standing by the viewports, close
enough to feel the soft breath of chill that flowed
eternally from the clearsteel no matter what level of
field insulation might be installed to prevent from
seeping in. And yet they weren't noticing. Indeed,
they weren't noticing anything except what they
watched through binoculars. Professionalism could be
taken to extremes, thought Jim, and took care
to keep the thought away from his face. He had been
accused on more than one occasion-(usually
by McCoy)-of being too professional in his
approach to command, but he had never been so
single-minded as these young officers. They saw nothing
of the strange, magnificent grandeur beyond those
viewports, none of the worlds, the life, the
civilizations, that had drawn him into Starfleet and out
among the stars. They saw only what they had been
trained to see-the movement of men and of ships. Maybe
if the risk of imminent dissolution had been absent,
they would have been acting differently, but somehow Jim
doubted it.
  Their colonel was rather more approachable, he thought,
sampling the julep with appreciation. McCoy had
outdone himself, as he always did when Enter- prise was
playing host to visitors.
  Johnson had already been through the coldly pro-
77
  fessional stage of his career, and with that acting as a
buffer against misplaced opinions, he had shown himself
able to relax just a little more. But not enough, not yet.
Jim always felt uneasy going into a hazardous
situation in company he wasn't sure of. Maybe
Johnson would eventually forget their difference in
rank and unwind enough to talk to Jim as he talked to the
other two ship captains instead of giving the
impression of standing perpetually at attention even when
he was sitting down. Then they might be able to get on
a little better than they were doing now. Jim smiled;
maybe he really should get some training in
diagnostic psychology. Or maybe someone-such as
Bonescd explain to the colonel that Admiral
James T. Kirk resented his promotion just as much
as the colonel probably treasured his, and then
...
  His gaze strayed to the ports and the view beyond, and
all thoughts froze. Two of the shuttlecraft were no
longer just blinks of reflected light. Now they were
identifiable vessels, framed between the warp
nacelles and growing larger as they closed with
Enterprise for yet another of the interminable touch-and-go
docking runs. Except that this time they were both on
approach for the same docking port, just one
deck overhead ... giass hit the Afterward it seemed
to Jim that his floor and exploded into fragments a
measurable time before he came down from his own
vault-over the back of a row of chairs-with his hand
already slapping the emergency override on the nearest
communicator.
  "Break right! Break!"
  He was yelling and didn't care who heard him,
didn't care "about the dignity of rank, didn't
care about anything except the twenty tons of metal
on a collision course with his ship. All over the
sky 78
  shuttlecraft flinched sideways at the sound of the
one order no one ever paused even to think about. They
simply slid to a dead stop until the emergency was
resolved.
  Except the two closest to Enterprise. They
entered the break properly enough, but one was already far
too close to the other for the arc of its turn to do
anything but intersect with that of the other vessel. At
first there was only a glittering puff of chipped-off
thermoglaze as nose and tail came violently
inffcontact; but an instant later one of the
shuttlecraft began tumbling end over end as two
of its maneuvering thrusters jammed at
full power. And this time it was headed straight for the main
viewports.
  There was no running about, no screaming, no
panic-not, as McCoy speculated later, because
Starfleet personnel were any braver than ordinary
mortals, but simply because there was no time to start before
the incident was over. It ended as suddenly as it had
begun when the shuttlecraft jolted to a standstill as
abruptly as if it had run into an invisible wall,
only spinning on its own axis now until the
pilot thought to cut all power. "What in blazes
... T" said Jim aloud in a voice that sounded
ridiculously calm.
  "Gotcha, ya haunless wee bugger," said
Scotty's voice over an open channel. "Git
away from ma engines." The Glaswegian accent that
surfaced only under stress was thick enough now to defy
understanding by most of the crew aboard the Enterprise, and
even some of the other native Scots were probably
having trouble. There was a moment's silence as the
carrier hissed on empty air, and then the speakers
crackled briefly with the unmistakable sound of someone
clearing his throat. "Ahum. Engineering to Captain
Kirk. his
  "Kirk here. Uh, thank you for that,
Mr. Scott. Tractors, I presume?"
"Aye. was Again Scotty paused, this time not so much
to get his rogue accent under control as to consider how
to say something that might be interpreted the wrong way.
"I, er, I wasna intendin'any insult to the
colonel's pilots, Captain, but wi' all those
little ships runnin' about this confined space I thought it
best that' keep an eye on them. And that' keep all
the tractor installations manned ... fist in case
somethin'shd happen. was Jim was finally able to let his
grin of relief shine through. "It did happen,
Scotty, even though the worst part of it didn't.
Just stay on those tractors."
  "I think, Admiral," said Johnson, very
stiff and proper, at attention in his dress uniform,
"I should check on the health of my men." "And I
think, Colonel, that you should first join me in a
drink"-Jim looked the colonel up and down and
thought he recognized the symptoms-"to celebrate
that both pilots are still alive for you to tear their
stripes off. Agreed?" He glanced out of the
viewport at where the last act of the brief drama
was taking place. The tractor
virtuoso-probably Montgomery Scott himself,
though the chief engineer had been too modest
to say so-had one of the damaged shuttlecraft in tow
and was drawing it down toward the hangar bay at the
stem of Enterprise's secondary hull. The other
was being escorted toward the same destination by two
engineering work bees. "I . . ." Todd
Johnson retained that ramrodstraight posture for a
few seconds longer, then relaxed into a more comfortable
stance. "Agreed." "Good," said Jim. "I can
particularly recommend the mint julep." He
smiled at Bones, who after all his fussy performance
over making up the drink was 80
  starting to look smug, and then eyed the floor where his
own julep had landed. "At least this time it didn't
melt the carpet."
  "Captain on the bridge."
  Chekov touched control keys on the center seat and
waited the brief moment for confirmation before coming to his
feet. "Keptin, you have the conn." "Thank you,
Mr. Chekov." Jim settled back and cast a
quick glance down the latest pad screen before initialing
it. "Status?" "All stations and departments report
green, Keptin, although we are already encountering a
degree of interference from the primary. Systems
requiring shutdown under General Order Twelve
are holding on standby response."
"Communications remain unaffected, Captain," said
Uhura. "You can advise the Dekkan Planetary
Council of our approach at any time."
  "Best do it now, before they pick us up and start
getting agitated. Standard friendship messages, then
tell them who we are and why we're here."
  "Just that, Captain?"
  "For the time being, yes. I think they'll understand that
an exchange of pleasantries would be somewhat out of
place at this stage of the proceedings. If they have
anything to say, however. . ."
  "Noted." Uhura smiled to herself as she turned
back to the comm. board. It was well known that when the
captain was officially annoyed with someone or something,
the first thing he did was to take refuge behind the
punctilious good manners that were as close as any
Starfleet officer could come to insultand right now, he was
very much annoyed with the Dekkani. That annoyance had a
lot to do with the approach 81
  parameters worked out by Navigation. Sulu had worked
well beyond the end of his shift to provide them, and
by all reports had barely missed a beat even when
it seemed likely he was going to be sharing the bridge
with half a shuttlecraft. Initial speed was going
to be no more than .425c, tapering right
down as they entered the garbage-rich zone farther into the
4725 Cancri system. Given the present
attitude of the Dekkani toward the Federation in
general, and most likely Starfleet in particular,
Jim liked the notion of a slow and cautious
approach to Dekkanar almost as little as he liked what
was at the end of it: an unshielded, defenses-down
close orbit of a potentially hostile planet.
Bad enough with only the Enterprise to worry about, it was
far more than three times worse with a pair of
equaUy defenseless ships tagging along.
  Uhura took the transdator out of her ear and
looked at the inoffensive piece of equipment as if
it had bitten her. "Well!" she said, and then,
louder, "message ... acknowledged, Captain."
  "One of those acknowledgments, Commander?"
  "Yes, sir, one of those. Essentially "Come,
go, good riddance."" She put the transdator
back in place and touched a key to log the message
and response, then shook her head in mock
regret. "I hadn't realized until now just how
well the comm translation circuits can handle
idiom. What they used to call "earthy and
colorfid.""
  Jim glanced at her sympathetically.
"Contact Vanguard and Sir Richard. Let them
know we've received approach clearances. And,
Uhura, get a hard copy of all communications from
this point on."
  "It's already being done, sir. Even including the
exact text of the Dekkani acknowledgment."
  "Good. There's no sense in waiting any longer.
Mr. Sulu, one-half impulse power."
  "One-half it is, Captain."
  "Take us in. . . ."
  Sulu's approach was, as usual, a balance
between precision and inspiration. Because they were already
traveling well below light speed, all three
vessels had to be flown. It was less exciting
than Uhura's simulator approach, but more wearing
on the nerves because of the extra time it took. And at
a point just outside the orbit of 4725 Cancri
IV. "Keptin! We're being scanned!"
  "Very good, Mr. Chekov, noted and logged. No
active response at this time." Jim looked
quickly at the data and didn't like what he saw. The
sensors currently sweeping over his ship were the
search and target-acquisition systems that usually
preceded a phaser or a photon torpedo target
lock. Damn.
  "Go to yellow alert, shields to standby. Do not
adopt any defensive posture, and do not power up
weapons without my express order." "Understood,
Keptin."
  "I know. Just making sure. Uhura, shipwide
intercom, please." The communicator beeped
obediently. "Attention all hands, this is the
captain. Enterprise is being scanned
by weapons-level sensors. Ignore the scan. This
is not-I repeat, not-an act of hostility. Just
bad manners. We're going to get a lot of
behavior like this from the Dekkani before we're through, because
right now they don't like us much. Don't give them
reason to like us less because someone overreacted.
We're not supposed to provoke them-don't let
them provoke us. Kirk out."
  They really don't want to make this easyfor us,
he thought gloomily, then shrugged the gloom aside.
It could have been a lot worse: he could have ended up

  sitting behind a desk in Starfleet somewhere reading
about all this. "Mr. Sulu, at your discretion,
take us into orbit."
  Orbital insertion was trouble-free. Vanguard
followed suit thirty minutes later and
Sir Richard twenty minutes after that. And there they
sat, the representatives of the United Federation of
Planets, doing nothing but the starship equivalent of
twiddling their thumbs until such time as the Dekkan
government chose to acknowledge their existence and
implement the transfer of Federation personnel. For a
government so keen to be rid ofunwanted guests,
thought Jim after the first hour had gone by in silence,
they're in no great hurry to start shifting our
diplomats out. In accordance with General Order
12, Enterprise and her consorts had shut down
all of their active sensors, which might have shown up
on other screens and been perceived as an unfrly
gesture. It didn't, as Captain North had
pointed out, prevent the Starfleet vessels from
maintaining a watch on Dekkanar-just to avoid any
unpleasant surprises. All the surveillance
equipment they were using worked on the same principle:
passive systems quietly registered the presence
of movement, heat, or radiation. The two support
ships showed up as bright on-screen blips,
reassuringly tagged with each vessel's name,
registry, and ID code. A constantly changing
pattern of communications and weather satellites
tracked to and fro, emitting radio waves
from their big transceiver dishes and infrared heat
traces from their power packs- comThen all of
Enterprise's alarms went off at once. "Three
vessels leaving the planet's atmosphere,
Captain." Spock peered over the science console.
"Make that eight-all heading directly toward us."

  All around the bridge people scrambled to their stations-and
stopped there, poised and ready for action.
  Jim sat with forced calm in his center seat and
waited for more information as he watched the eight
computer-enhanced signals, bright with infrared from what
could only have been old-style rocket exhausts.
"Analysis, Mr. Spock?"
  "Sensors indicate rocket propulsion of a
fairly primitive type." "But propelling
what? Guided missiles? Are we being fired
on?" "Difficult to say, Captain. The
rockets are producing so much raw IR that a more
detailed-was
  "Best guess, and fast. What are they?"
  "Keptin, range is now fourteen hundred
kilometers and closing!" Jim swiveled in his
chair. "Spock?"
  "Circumstances dictate caution,
sir. If they are guided missiles-was "Battle
stations. Shields up, lock phasers; on." Jim
took one last look at the screen, blinked, then
barked, "Belay that last order!" The rockets were
shutting down. Within a matter of seconds all
eight rocket flares had winked out, and without that
inadvertent jamming the sensor-linked computer started
to
  some hard data at long last. There was one more
moment of on-screen confusion when the contacts
multiplied, but then it became clear that this was not some
form of deception but merely a dumping of strap-on
fuel tanks before the original targets came
coasting on toward orbit. They were
shuttles-clumsy wide-winged orbiters that reminded
Jim sharply of the old Enterprise pictured on
one wall of the rec deck. He let out a 85 1
  long-held breath between his teeth. "Will somebody
please shut off that noise," he said, and somebody
did, the red-alert siren expiring in mid-whoop as
the bridge lights came back to normal.
  "Sensors indicate life signs aboard all
of the recently launched orbital vessels,"
Spock said.
  The Dekkan shuttles continued on their
way around the planet, each one shifting gradually
under the impetus of its reaction jets so that by the time
they went sliding around the curve of Dekkanar's
horizon and out of sight they were moving in a loose
arrowhead formation like a gaggle of geese.
  "That's strange." Sulu touched controls on his
helm console, and the cloud-whorled image on the
screen became overlaid by a computer schematic.
More controls created a projected flight pattern
for the shuttles-a pattern which plainly indicated that
if they had wanted to rendezvous with the Federation ships
they could have done so as soon as they left orbit.
"They'll be back in this location in ...
seventeen-point-two minutes," he said, almost
to himself, "and then we'll see."
  "What are we expecting to see, Mr. Sulu?"
said Spock. "Sir, I'm not sure." Another
overlay joined those already on screen-more flight
predictions based on trajectory, orbital
velocity, and as many variables as Sulu could think
to run into the computer. "But I don't like the look of
it. Because I don't think they're carrying
evacuees." "And you think we'll find out in
seventeen minutes?" "Yes, Captain, I do."
  "It is now sixteen-point-four-five
minutes," said Spock. Jim swung the center
seat around just enough to give his science officer a
sidelong look. It was 86
  returned with the bland lack of expression that he
knew so well. "Approximately," said
Spock. "And counting."
  "Of course. Thank you, Mr. Spock. Carry
on." Jim took care to hide any suggestion of a
smile. He couldn't think of any mission that had
gone so far wrong as to stifle Spock's occasional
exercise of the sense of humor he claimed not
to possess.
  Uhura's comm station beeped. She listened
briefly, then turned toward Jim. "Captain,
incoming communication from Vanguard. Captain Farey
wants to know if you"-she touched the transdator again
and smiled briefly-"if you saw the veterans'
flypast or if you arranged it yourself."
  "On screen, please, Uhura." Sulu's
navigational plot broke up in shimmer and became
Nic Farey's grin. It was more strained than Jim
had last seen, and the reason was plain enough to see:
Vanguard's bridge was just coming down from a red
alert. "So they got you, too?" "Oh, yes, they
got us all right. Silly sods don't
know just how lucky they were that I don't have a jumpy
crew." Nic glanced pointedly over his shoulder.
"At least I didn't until now."
  "Why, what happened? I mean, they caught us
on the bounce when they came up without warning, but-was
  1,9
  "So they didn't buzz you? Lucky man.
  "Buzz? Nic, what's been going on.
  "They- 11
  "Apologies, Captain Farey," said
Uhura, interrupting. "Captain North for
Captain Kirk. Priority One."
  Nic Farey's image shrank into one-half of the
screen, but where Gytha North's face should have come
up on the remaining half, there was only static.
  "Uhura? Jamming, or. . ." Kirk didn't
want to say the immediate alternative, because saying such
things in the past had so often seemed to make them
true.
  "dis . . hear us, Enterprise? This is
NCC-2382 Sir Richard calling
NCC-1701 Enterprise. Respond please.
Do you copy?"
  The voice came swimming up through interference like
something that had lain drowned at the bottom
of a pond. Then with a crackle harsh and sudden enough
to make everyone on the bridge jump, sound and
picture both came through loud and clear.
  Captain North's eyes were dark and wide with
something Jim failed to recognize for the first second.
Not fright-that didn't go with the Gytha North he
knew. And then he placed it: rage. It was leashed
in as only command conditioning could do, so that there was no
trace of it in her voice, but it had drawn the skin
and muscles of her face down tight against the underlying
bones until it became a still, expressionless mask.
Only the eyes burned behind the mask like coals, and
he thought how fortunate it was for good relations that the
Dekkani could monitor only sound. Or maybe
it wasn't so fortunate after all.
  "We have had five red alerts in as many minutes,
Jim," said Gytha. She was speaking slowly,
probably as aware of the planetside listeners as
anyone else, and picking her words with care. "We have
come within the flexing of a finger of blowing each and every one of
those flying freight trucks back to where they came
from. And they have come within meters-not tens of meters, but
meters-of ramming my damned ship! I tell you,
if they're looking for trouble they're certainly going
about finding it the right way."
  "Captain North, that's enough." Jim sat
back and looked thoughtful to conceal the fact that he was
slowly counting to ten. Gytha wasn't about to do it,
  and somebody had to before somebody else got
severely hurt or severely dead. He had reached
eight when Enterprise's red-alert alarms all
went off in wailing chorus once again.
  "Chekov!" Jim barked, counting forgotten, and was
just quick enough to freeze his weapons officer's hand in
midair as it came slapping down on the
shieldactivation toggle. "Not without my express
order, Mister, and the word hasn't been given yet."
  "But look at this!" Chekov's other hand moved,
fingers splaying over touch pads, and the faces of the
other captains were banished to window inserts in the
viewscreen as a tactical display filled it almost
from frame to frame. "A classic attack
profile, Keptin. In a classic attack
formation. A Klingon attack formation."
  Jim glared at the computer-animated blips.
Pavel was right. The Dekkani shuttlecraft were
swinging back around the curve of the planet, but they were
no longer an untidy gaggle of metal geese but
as neat a formation as any he had ever seen.
"Spock, scan for weapons. Because I
don't think they have any."
  "Scanning, although Captain, the passive
systems-was "Spock?"
  "I can detect no weapons, Jim. This
guarantees nothing."
  "It guarantees we won't shoot first. Stand
down from red alert." Jim got to his feet and
walked around the bridge so that he could look over
Chekov's shoulder at the weapons console. "And
turn the alarms off, please." Almost before their last
echoes had died away, the sirens were back in full
cry again as one of the passing shuttles illuminated the
Enterprise with some archaic form of targeting sensor.
The sensor didn't achieve a 89
  lock, wasn't even trying for a lock, and had
been activated only for the instant needed to set off
every automatic warning on the ship. The fifth
shuttle did exactly the same thing, but spiced its
electronic harassment with a flyby so close that it
passed up between the warp nacelles and all but
scraped the top of the primary hull. "Sirens,
some- one," said Jim for the fourth time as he returned
to the center seat. There was a weary resignation in his
voice and his face and his very posture, that of a man
faced with the prospect that his next duty
shift-and the rest of the mission-looked set to be one very
long day....
  HAK-XBLEDEAu hung dead in space.
  All his systems were shut down, even to the running
lights, and the only suggestion of movement around that
whole huge dark bulk was the firefly glimmer of a
work pod's lights as Askel and Chief Engineer
Aktaz, aboard the pod, made a final exterior
inspection before proceeding to the next stage of this
first-flight checkup. For three hours now the engineer
had been virtually a part of his diagnostics board,
looking up from it only for long enough to make sure that
Askel was directing the remote sensor probe
correctly. The science specialist found the look
more than slightly insulting, but not so much that he
troubled to take issue with it. At least, not yet.
  "Structural analysis, main drive
nacelles, external casings," mumbled Aktaz,
more to himself than to the diagnostics recorder. Askel
listened for a few seconds as the engineer went off
into a long monotonous checklist that was no more
interesting now than it had been when they were inspecting the
other end of the hull. It was at times like this, and there had
been a few before now, that Commander Askel really
understood the sheer size and complexity of a
battle cruiser. And how incredi- 91
  bly boring it all was. Askel's interest lay
more in the complexities of the mind, in the multifarious
ways of plotting, and in the equally varied ways of
suppressing those plots-or turning them to a different
use. There had to be a plot involved here. The
smell of intrigue was one his nostrils had grown
accustomed to recognizing, and they had recognized it
aboard Hakkarl almost at once. That Captain
Kasak was working so determinedly to suggest that there was
no such thing made Askel all the more suspicious.
  Every Klingon officer was involved in something or
other, be it only jockeying for power and promotion within
his own line families. For Kasak to expect his
first officer to believe that of all captains in the
Imperial Navy he, the famous
sutai-Khomezh, was without some complex subterfuge
to better both career and position was tantamount
to calling him a fool to his face and before witnesses.
But until he learned the details of Kasak's
scheming, he could not be certain just how deeply he had
been insulted. For the present it was enough to know that once
that information had been obtained, Imperial
Intelligence had agonizer booths enough and to spare for the
captain and all who had assisted him.
  Unless, of course, there was more profit in
supporting Kasak than in handing him over to the
appropriate authorities. That was the one great
problem about working for I.i. The bureau valued any
ability to see both sides of a problem; it meant that
agents could better understand its complexities and more
easily work against it from the inside. But it also meant
that the advantages of a given stratagem were as plain
to an I.i. operative as basic, blatant
treachery usually was to a member of Imperial
Security. And the intelligence for which the organization
was named was also a faculty that enabled its members
occasionally to see that their 92
  loyalties need not always lie with the more obvious
side. Nal komerex, khesterex, the saying went.
"That which will not grow will die." Askel always thought of it
inverted, being thus more appropriate to his present
station: nal khesterex, komerex. As did his
captain of the moment and, curiously, a Thought Master
among the DoytSo line of humans long ago whose
use of the saying, once it had been translated
into Federation Standard, which Askel understood, made the
most sense of all. That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.
  "dis . . dreaming, Commander?" Aktaz's
irascible voice cut through his thoughts. "I said, the
analysis has been completed. We can proceed."
Why were engineers and surgeon specialists always so
easily irritated? thought Askel as he absently
shifted the travel pod's flight controls. Was it
because the machines they worked on constantly broke down
and needed their services? Shrugging the thought aside,
he opened a channel to the cruiser.
  "Askel to bridge."
  "Bridge. was It was Krynn who responded.
Krynn, one of the two females in the crew. One
of the captain's two favorites. One of the two who
most bore watching comfor reasons other than the
obvious. "Engineering reports completion of
external checks. Restore power to all systems.
We will observe. Ou$19
  "Affirm. Acting. Bridge out.
  Yes indeed, most efficient. Perhaps Krynn was
too efficient, if there could ever be such an officer
on a Klingon ship. It was a matter of small
account to Askel, unless Captain Kasak's plan
involved some privateering on his own account before
returning Hakkarl to the Taamar drydock, and
unless Kasak's security and intelligence officers
agreed with his mis93
  use of imperial resources. Of course, if the
profits were high and the ship was indeed to be brought back
intact, they might be persuaded to agree. If that was
the case, then so far as Askel was concerned nobody
was too good at his job. Or hers.
  He watched with interest as the battle cruiser
came back to life, like some vast monster from the old
legends aroused from sleep. First came the glimmer
of the skinfield, not so much an illumination as a haze
like that of heat, spreading out over the main hull and then
up the boom to the command pod, running along the
generator grids that covered Hakkarl like a
protective net. Running lights were next,
jeweling his ghostgray armor-proper adornment for so
mighty a vessel. Last of all, and brightest, were the
anticollision warnings, the safety beacons, and the
insignia spots that made Hakkarl's imperial
trefoils glow against the darkness of space under the
gaze of myriad naked stars.
  Askel watched and felt his liver shift in his
chest at the promised glory of it all.
  "Captain," said Krynn, "mains are back on
line. Blue lights on all systems. Power
to max at your discretion."
  Kasak checked the readouts before he
nodded. "Good. Then have the pod brought back on
board and we- No. Signal to zan Askel.
Hold station. Tazhat will exercise separation
sequence from Hakkarl. Observe and report." He
waited until the signal had been acknowledged, then
studied the data once again. "Maneuvering thrusters
forward, one-half power." "Affirm." Krynn
pushed for thrust, and Tazhat vibrated slightly,
a rumbling that was felt in the bones as power graphs
flickered and screens began to register more than
drift. The entire console swiveled on its plinth
until Krynn was aligned with another and quite 94
  separate bank of controls, these shrouded with
security covers that retracted into slots as she
keyed in an unlock code. At their own stations on
the bridge, other officers did likewise.
  "Zan Khitar, interlink status?"
  "Interlinks live, full communications
confirmed."
  "Good," Kasak said again. "Helm, on my
command, execute a full combat breakaway
to cloak. Make one-quarter impulse on both.
Affirm action." He glanced once around the
bridge and smiled. The members of his crew were
nervous, as might be expected, but they were as
eager as their captain to see how this ship fulfilled
its expectations. They would see soon enough.
Kasak sat straight-backed in the command chair and
stared straight ahead out of the viewscreen and toward the
naked stars. "Degh, was he said, and his helm officer
tensed. "yIchuHa' " his
  "Acting," said Krynn, and tabbed all the
release toggles together.
  Neither Askel nor Aktaz was exactly sure
what to expect or what to look for. Certainly the
first suggestion of movement as the thrusters powered up was
imperceptible except on instruments. Despite
their respective specializations, and despite the
numerous computer simulations they had watched in the
past, they had yet to watch the actuality of a
separation. They saw it now.
  When the monoweb filaments connecting Hakkarl and
Tazhat were degenerated, the smaller vessel was
supposed to push clear of the battle cruiser with
pressors. Nothing dramatic-no flash of
explosive bolts such as occurred when a ship's
boom broke away from its main hull. So at least
went the description and the simulations. Reality,
especially under the command of the sutai-Khornezh, was
somewhat different.
  Instead of the leisurely parting that they had seen 95
  on computer screens, Tazhat seemed almost
to leap away from the father ship. The impulse drive
conduits on both ships glowed red, and a brutal
kick of acceleration sent them surging out on divergent
courses. They moved so fast that before Askel's
brain could comprehend the full implications of what
he saw, they had diminished to the apparent size of a
child's toys. Toys whose outlines were already hazy,
evaporating as the cloak took effect. Tazhat
and then Hakkarl shimmered and were gone.
  "Kai Imperial Engineering!" Aktaz laughed
aloud and pounded his fist against the diagnostics board,
not noticing or not caring that Science Specialist
Askel was failing to share in his delight. What
Askel had seen was not a matter deserving
applause, but one deserving curses-at Kasak for
such a consummate move and at himself for having failed
to foresee the possibility of such a development from the
first instant he had been assigned to fly the
inspection pod. The captain's latest tactic was
masterful indeed. Even if Askel survived long
enough to be picked up by whatever Klingon vessel next
passed through this quadrant, he would not last very long
afterward. A cool specialized area of his
mind was already calculating how long the power and air in
the inspection pod would last, assuming Aktaz ...
died and only he remained to use it. Imperial
Intelligence took a dim view of operations
masters who allowed their surveillance subjects
to give them the slip in so inglorious a fashion.
Askel looked at the chief engineer's back and
wondered when he should kill him-before or after a
distress call had been sent. Certainly sooner
instead of later, no reason to wait until the air
turned bad. In fact, no reason to wait at
all. His eyes fixed on a certain spot at the
nape of the engineer's neck, and he flattened one of
his hands into a chopping blade....
  And the sky outside the viewport was abruptly
ftffl of ships. The angular masses of metal
swallowed up the stars as they condensed out of cloak
less than two hundred meters distant. Tazhat
was once more in his accustomed place above the battle
cruiser's main hull, hanging there for several
seconds while the monoweb connections regenerated
before settling onto Hakkarl's back.
  "Opinion?" The voice from the communicator was
Kasak's own, and sounded as pleased with events as the
sutai-Khornezh ever permitted.
"Impressive." Askel might have wanted to say
a great deal more than that, and not about the ships, wanted
indeed to roar like a stormwalker and let someone feel
the teeth of his anger, but to do so would be to confess what
he was and why he had feared such an act of desertion
by this ship and this captain. "All operations were
flawless."
  "And recorded?"
  "Affirm. Is the one gratified by the performance of
this new ship?" "I am content. Return. There is
much to do.
  Askel looked at the ships, and at Aktaz the
engineer who would never know how close he had come
to service in the Black Fleet. There was indeed much
to do, and a deal of that involved revision of his own
ideas. Either the captain was genuinely innocent of the
plot that I.i. suspected he had hidden somewhere,
or he was infinitely more subtle than any of them
suspected. For either reason, Askel's place was
by his captain's side. He stared at the pod's
command console as if he had never seen it before; then he
engaged the thrusters that would take him home.
  The eight Dekkani shuttles passed all
three Federation vessels ten times before changing their
orbit. In
  those ten flypasts, they had set off the alarms on
twenty-two occasions, not all of those occasions
sequential. They were in a low polar orbit now, as
far from the Starfleet geosynchronous positions as it
was possible to get. It was not much of a respite.
  Jim had heard more bad language on the
bridge in the past hour than ever before. His crew
seldom swore, they were usually too busy with doing
to trouble much with saying, but orders and circumstance
meant that right now they could do nothing at all, except
exercise a vocabulary of invective that should have
gone on tape for xenosocioanalysis. Mr.
Freeman would have welcomed a chance to take the more
complex usages to pieces; there was probably a
doctorate waiting in there for somebody. It was
impossible to say if there was any sign of fraying
nerves among all the fraying tempers, but Jim had
already put a call through to Bones, summoning him to the
bridge to lend a professional ear. McCoy would
be the first one to notice whether everything was running
smoothly or not. "What the billy-be-damned
blue blazes is going on out there?" said the voice
from the turbolift behind him even before its doors were
fully opened. Jim didn't even blink.
Apparently Bones had decided for himself
already that things weren't running smoothly at all.
"They're trying to annoy us," he said.
  "They're doing a damned good job of it." The
chief medical officer stalked out of the lift
angrily, and its doors shut behind him with what might
well have been a mechanical sigh of relief.
"Can't you do something?" "Bones, you were at the
briefings; you know
  damned well I can't." The cursing was
infectious, dammit, thought Jim, mentally damning
his own
  damning before realizing ruefully that he was chasing

  his own tail. "None of what they're doing is
offensive-was "Oh isn't it!"
  "You know exactly what I mean. Under the rules
of engagement. They're just acting like a bunch of
kids, ringing doorbells and then running away."
"Don't you know what to do with kids like that, Jim? You
catch them at it one more time, and you tan their little
hides."
  "A photon torpedo isn't a slipper,
Bones, and we can't detune the phasers enough to just
deliver spankings.%1
  Chekov exchanged a significant
glance with Sulu and Uhura. Muffled laughter
escaped from all three of them.
  "Mr. Chekov?" sd'Jim. "If you can make
the phasers do it . . ." he persisted. Sulu and
Uhura suddenly became terribly interested in their
control consoles, while Chekov made a small
snorting noise and went red in the face.
  And then everyone went red in the face as the bridge
lights shifted and the alarms went off again.
  The noise and the scarlet lighting lasted only a
matter of seconds before Spock shut them both off.
"Another nonspecific targeting scan,
Captain. Di- rected by one of the orbiters as it
passed apogee."
  "Not so far out of range as we thought, Mr.
Spock."
  "It would appear not."
  "Good psychology, property applied,"
muttered Bones. He caught the quirky glance
directed at him and shrugged slightly. "I'm not
giving their actions any sort of approval, Jim,
so you needn't get that look in your eye. But they know
what they're doing."
  "By not poking at us all the time? Obviously. You
jump harder from rest than from halfway through
the last jump. And that's not psychology, Doctor,
it's good tactical sense."
  "Different words, same meaning."
  "That is not in fact the case, Doctor," said
Spock. McCoy rolled his eyes in mock
anguish and didn't care who saw him. "There is
indeed a sound tactical reasoning behind the Dekkan
action," Spock continued. "Although our passive
sensory systems are a pale shadow of the
active-scan units, if they received a signal of
sufficient duration I could analyze the unique
features of the Dekkani targeting controls and by a
subprogramming input override response to all
but a full prelock contact."
  "Tune them out, you mean? Then why didn't you
say so?" "But I did, Doctor, adding
sufficient detail only to make the procedure
coherent."
  "'Coherent" is not the word that I'd have used,
Spock. Not by a long shot." Spock said nothing.
He merely raised one eyebrow the merest fraction
and held it there until he had turned back to his
viewer. For all that McCoy had the last word,
Jim couldn't help thinking that Spock had won the
point. At least his ship's surgeon had
stopped grousing about the alarms going off.
  Until the next time.
  Hakkarl was running at an easy warp 6.2,
well within capabilities for those uprated engines that
had no other demands on their energies right now than
to drive the ship and power his enhanced sensor suite.
Captain Kasak had insisted on the sensors being
fully activated, holding that the prestige gained
during their departure from Taamar would all be lost if
they were caught unaware by another ship of the many that were
doubtless searching for them at this moment.
  Any who want tofind this ship will have to look long
and hard, thought Askel as he took his place in the
small inspirational theater aboard the scout ship
  Tazhat. Not only the sensors but also the
cloaking devices were up and running, with no
diminution that the science station could reveal in the power
curves of the battle cruiser's warp engines. It
was becoming increasingly clear that for once Design
Engineering had told the unglazed truth about its
latest product. That was sufficiently unusual
for the captain to have made special note of it in his
report. "All's well?" said Marag from the
door.
  "Blue lights," Askel said.
"What's this about?" "Inspirational theater." Marag
took a seat. "We're to be inspired." "To do
something Security can monitor before you die of
boredom?" Marag showed just the points of his side
teeth in an expression that only loosely could have
been called a smile, but said nothing. It was true
enough that on this ship, with so small a crew and a minimum
rank among its members of lieutenant commander, a
security officer had little to do. Other members of that
crew, those not on duty monitoring sensor input,
trickled into the theater, nodded or waved casual
salutes according to their mood, and settled down to be
advised, instructed, inspired, or whatever else it
was that the captain had in mind. They could all just as
easily have gathered on the bridge, but with the computer
relays and general lack of space in which to move, the
meeting would have been, at the very least, intimate.
  The screen hummed, glowed, and flicked into life
with a picture of the bridge. Captain Kasak was in
his command chair. Behind him Surgeon Specialist
Arthag sat in Askel's place at the science
station. Arthag appeared to be on the crew roster
only because a ship was required to have a surgeon. So
far he had treated two small electrical bums
and a finger nipped by the unsecured lid of a
diagnostics board, and he seemed relieved to be
doing something that would
  take him out of the empty quiet of sickbay. With
so many other things on his mind, Askel was more than
willing to let him do it. "Theflight goes well, was
said Kasak. "This ship can do all that has been
claimedfor him. A lesser captain and a lesser
crewflying a lesser ship would be content with this alone.
I am not. I have said I was content. It is not S.

  Askel sat up very straight and began to listen
hard. "This, was the captain said, "is my intention.
To give Hakkarl a first flight worthy of his
capabilities-and worthy of the crew I chose
to fly him. The Roms have done what I now plan,
testing their cloak and their plasma torpedo, but since
the interference of the g'daya busybody Organians,
no ship of the Empire has done so. Until now.
In ten standard minutes we leave neutral space
and enter that claimed by the Federation. was And suddenly
Askel knew. All the pieces fell into place:
the planet in Federation space, torn by dissension that
had led its people to order their Federation guests off-world and
so leave themselves in need of a protector; their own
lack of authorization and their departure from
Taamar's Drydock 20. That had been no
exercise but a theft, so that no Organian could
blame the Empire's policyrnakers for the doings of
an independent privateer, no matter how much the
Empire stood to gain through those same doings. All
of this and so much more made sense at last, as the
captain continued to address a theater-and a ship-gone
totally silent with shock or disbelief or
admiration. Askel had one source at least for all
of those emotions: himself The disbelief did not last
long, for I.i. had required him to believe things
far more unlikely than this, and to gather evidence about
them. This dramatic play was not merely possible, it
was capable of such vast success that all concerned
  could wallow in glory and everything that glory brought.
Marag stirred. The security officer had been
sitting still as a statue while Kasak was speaking, but
now he came to his feet. Askel tensed, watching
and waiting for his reaction so that he could match it. There
was a small pellet pistol in its customary
place within his tunic, and if Security's
response was such as to spoil his chance-all their
chances-for advancement beyond that of a lifetime's service
to I.i., then Askel was ready to use the pistol and
justify its use afterward to whoever needed
explanations.
  It was not required. "Kai the captain!" roared
Marag. "Kai kassai, Klingon!" All the
others in the theater followed his example, stamping and
saluting. Askel relaxed; it was going to be all
right. It would be even more right once he had learned which
of these enthusiasts were the khestn covert Imperial
Security operatives and what their true feelings
might be. And had acted accordingly. But not right now.
Askel stood up slowly and walked across the theater
through a steadily increasing atmosphere of suspicion
about why he among all of them should not be cheering his friend
the captain. Askel ignored the stares and the leaden
silence until he reached the communicator panel
near the wall and switched it on, then turned to face
the captain's accusing eyes and fixed them with his
own-yellow, hot, unblinking.
  "Bridge, was said Kasak's voice from the comm
grid and from the screen. "They are cheering the one down
here," said Askel, his voice quite neutral. "And
you?"
  "This one wished to speak instead of cheer."
  "Then speak. his
  Askel smiled, at the screen and at the other
membleajc
  bers of the crew who had watched him with such doubt,
a smile with all his teeth on show. He raised his
right hand, empty of weapons, and when he closed it in
salute the renewed shouts of approval all but
drowned his words.
  "Success, my lord."
  "Captain, I have a transmission from Colonel
Johnson. The shuttles are ready to go."
  James Kirk scribbled his initials on yet
another duty pad and glanced up at the main
viewer. It showed the same scene as before, a
planetscape overlaid with tactical traces as
Chekov kept an eye on the doings of the Dekkani
orbiters. Other than that, nothing. Certainly none
of the communications that he wanted to see. "Uhura,
are the Federation diplomats ready to leave the
planet?"
  "Still no contact, sir, due to a combination of
deliberate signal interference and all this sunspot
activity."
  "All right, Uhura, understood. But keep
trying."
  "If I could just run enough power into the system, those
upgrades to the duotronic circuitry should be able
to bum a decohesive tight-beam squirt
clean through without annoying anybody."
  "Except the Dekkani, because right now they're in
the business of being annoyed at anything we doand
Starfleet Command, once they found out, which they would, from
the Dekkani. I've been thinking about it, too.
I've even considered dropping messages in
bottles."
  "They would think we were bombarding them from orbit,
Keptin," said Chekov unhelpfully. "Or trying
to bribe them with the promise of full bottles next
time around."
  Jim pulled a face at that and returned his
attention to the screen. At least the Federation people on

  Dekkanar would know where to assemble for the evacuation.
It was standard procedure in these operations that
planetside personnel would be landed- either
by transporter or by shuttlecraft comonly at
designated sites within areas of diplomatic
immunity, and evacuees would have made their way to those
same sites for pickup.
  At least the PDI terrorists hadn't tried
to interfere. So far. If they were there at all. Jim
blinked, shook his head slightly, and put that
hopeful, potentially dangerous notion right
out of his mind. Don't assume, he told himself
severely. Assumptions led inevitably
to carelessness and to surprises of the most unpleasant
sort. Worst of all, they could result in
casualties.
  "All right, Uhura," he said wearily, knowing
perfectly well that things were moving out of his direct
control. "Open a general channel." "On line,
sir, and standing by."
  There was a trace of perspiration on his hands and an
uncomfortable tickle of impending moisture on his
upper lip. "This is Captain Kirk of the
Enterprise. Commence rescue operation." Jim
pressed his palms lightly together as the green
confirmation lights came up on his armrest console.
"Go quickly, go carefully, and may your gods go with
you. Kirk out." "It's not like you to be so worried,"
said Bones very quietly from behind him.
  Jim twitched, caught off-guard. He
didn't, couldn't, deny the little start. He hadn't
even heard the turbolift doors open and shut.
"It's not like me to be this angry, either."
  "No." McCoy took a quick look around the
bridge. Everybody was on station; everything was in
place and running smoothly. "A word with you
in private, Captain."
  "I can't leave the-was Jim started to say, then
shrugged. He could indeed leave the bridge, at least

  for a short time, and Bones wasn't about to take no
for an answer anyway. "Mr. Spock, you have the
conn."
  The lift door closed and Bones said,
"Sickbay." Nothing else. Jim turned, stared
at him, and raised his eyebrows to invite another
comment.
  "It's not just the anger, Jim; you're pushing again."
  "Until Johnson establishes a ground
control, I'm in charge of this." "When did your
duty shift end, Jim?"
  "Never mind that. Bones, I have to get back to the
bridge. If we ever establish communications with
whoever's in charge down there-was "comUhura will find you.
I think this is nothing more than a reaction to that last
mission, trailing up and down the Neutral Zone,
waiting for something to happen that never did. Now you've
got some action and you're going to make the most of it."
Dr. McCoy shook his head. "But that's not
everything, is it?"
  "No, dammit! It's the fact that if
Dekkanar and the Federation's diplomatic corps had
been willing to listen instead of just talk, we wouldn't
be sitting here in the first place!"
  "The fault's on both sides, then. Is that
what you really think, or are you working with advanced
hindsight?"
  "Stop trying to psychoanalyze me, Bones."
Jim spoke without heat, but there was something final about
his tone of voice that made McCoy hold back
on whatever else he might have said. "Of course the
fault's with both. You must realize that an
organization as large as the United Federation of
Planets can afford to be magnanimous in a
confrontation with one small world that isn't even a
member. Bend a little. I don't think anyone even
thought to make the effort to be generous; otherwise
Colonel Johnson and his men wouldn't be walking
into a mine field right now. What 106
  was it you called the Federation? The good guys?
Well, maybe. We try; we all try. But
we're not there yet."
  They stood in silence as the lift car came to a
standstill and its doors opened. Bones stepped out
into the corridor, hesitated, then swung around and
jabbed a finger at Jim's chest. "Well?
Sickbay's this Is
  way.
  "I was going back to the bridge."
  "Yes, you were. Until I changed my mind.
I was going to tell you to go back up to the bridge,
supervise the shuttle departures, finish whatever
extra duty you've awarded yourself, and then come down
to sickbay for a routine checkup. And then I thought
to myself, ('Leonard McCoy, you've waited
fifteen days over schedule for this officer's last
medical. Don't let him get away again. So come
along."
  "Bones . . ."
  "Jim, do you want me to invoke all those
fitness-ofcommand regulations? Because I will if I have
to."
  "Doctor, I'm up to here with regulations, and now
you're the one who's pushing." Jim raised his hands in
mock surrender-and then slapped one of them against his
forehead. "And you're right, I must be getting tired.
Or old, or slow." Intrigued, Bones watched
as Jim made for the nearest communicator wall mount
with what had to be the beginning of a silly grin spreading
over his face.
  "I should have thought of this hours ago," he
said over his shoulder. "Engineering, this is Kirk."
  "Engineering aye, was said the voice of
Montgomery Scott. "Scotty, are things
running smoothly down there?" "Aye, sir, all's
well. Ifye couldjust keep the alarms ftom goin'
off so much, we'd be delighted. his
  "If you can, er, pull the same people you had on
duty during the shuttlecraft drill, I think
something could be arranged." There was perhaps a second's

  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  silence at the other end of the connection, and then the
speaker crackled as Scotty's laughter
overloaded it.
  ,eaationow, there is a happy man," said Jim
to Bones as the sound of orders being issued came
drifting out of the comm grille. "The
tractor-pressor teams are already on their way
to station, Captain, was said Scotty, still chuckling.
"An' then we'll see how those damn hotshots
want t'playrough or smooth. Engineering out. was
"Tractor-pressor units aren't classed as
weapons under the current rules of engagement,"
Jim said, "and they don't even register on most
low-grade sensors. All we need now
is for Spock to be able to detune the automatic
alert systems, and those Dekkani shuttles can go
fly a kite." "Unless they want to get serious,"
said Bones. "Enterprise can handle getting
serious." The door into sickbay hissed open and
Jim stepped insidethen stopped and looked slowly from
side to side at what had been the chief
surgeon's lab and office. He remembered
Bones's complaints at the initial briefing about
what emergency standby had done to his
sickbay-remembered them with more clarity than he
might have expected-but he hadn't had a chance to see
it for himself. Until now. The place was stark, and there
were no longer any concessions to comfort at all. Even
the holoprints had been removed from the walls.
Silvery emergency blankets and folding standby
beds were now stacked where the few chairs had been,
sealed readydispensers of medical
supplies-mostly sedative painkillers and
trauma dressings-were set in any remaining
floor space, and the elaborate microdiagnostic
equipment had been replaced by heavyduty
anabolic protoplasers and medical tricorders

  locked off at their coarsest setting.
Jim stared at it all, and only slowly became
aware that one corner of his mouth had quirked back in
an instinctive expression of disgust, not at how the
place now looked but at what that look implied.
  "I don't care who can handle getting serious,"
said McCoy bitterly. "Just that it's always my
staff people who have to clean up afterward." "It won't come
to this, Bones." Admiral James T. Kirk was
standing almost at attention now, his face somber, his
voice quiet and serious. "If it's in my power
to avoid it, you won't need to use the place like this."
"Jim," said Bones, "I hope to God you're
riandt$11
  Every alarm the designers had ever fitted went off
at once, a solid wall of noise slapping through
Tazhat's overcrowded bridge and reverberating
back from every console until it was enough to rattle the
teeth. Kasak sutai-Khornezh sat bolt
upright in his command chair and glowered at every single
member of his crew, not assigning specific blame
but more than willing to hand it out on a more general basis
if he had to. "Shut off that khestn noise," he
snarled in a voice so soft that the klaxons should have
drowned it out, "before I shut off the one
responsible."
  The silence on Tazhat's bridge was so sudden
and complete that it echoed. "Better," said Kasak.
"But not much. Explain."
  Askel stood up, saluted, and presuming on his
friendship immediately assumed an easy posture, then
caught the expression in Kasak's yellow eyes and
snapped right back to attention. "One of the purposes
of the first flight is to establish the development of
faults in a new design," he said. "This is
already known." The captain leaned for- 109
  ward, looking as predatory as any Klingon of the
Imperial race might do whose liver had just been
jolted in his chest. "Enhance."
  "Sir, one of these faults has just become
apparent." He touched a control on the science
console and the bridge viewscreen went blank.
"If the one will permit?"
  "All right, zan Askel." Kasak leaned
back and dropped that dangerous rank-linked
formality. He could see relief spreading across the
bridge like ripples in a pond, although no member
of the crew was so presumptuous as to relax until
instructed. "Carry on$91
  "Acting," said Askel. "Engineer Aktaz,
put the interlink schematics on the
screen. Also the monoweb connectors."
  He spoke for the next several minutes,
indicating the operation of stress points between the two
ships, both while joined and when separate. The
combat breakaway had altered pickup alignments
between the beam-linked repeater arrays, and the pickups
had been shifted still further out of sync by vibration
since the ships reconnected. "This is why no
alarms were sounded when Tazhat and Hakkarl first
rejoined," Askel explained. "Signal
cross-transmissions were sufficiently strong at that
time so that this did not register as a fault. Whereas
now . . ."
  "And how is it to be repaired, Science Master
Askel?" "The receptor and transmitter
installations on this ship must be released from their locked
calibrations and coded for signal homing on source
to and from Hakkarl. 11
  Kasak looked thoughtfully at his science officer.
Askel was Imperial Klingon, but the captain
wondered idly if there might not have been a Vulcan

  fusion somewhere in the ancestry of his line. "What
must be done to achieve this?"
  "A full systems shutdown to prevent
overload. Otherwise once one pickup is
unlocked and recoded it will become the sole
transceptor channel for all data passing between
both vessels-and if that happens, we'll be
resetting circuit breakers for a week."
  "Indeed." Kasak allowed a smile to cross his
face. "Then this is an eventuality to avoid.
Zan Khalen, present heading and location?" The
navigator flipped a schematic onto the
screen. "Heading is standard, location is as
indicated. We are on course. Without power, we
cannot maintain warp speeds, and to avoid
relativistic and temporal distortions we should not
drift at a high sublight velocity. Therefore time
to target will be seven-pointsix hours at
point-forty-five can. was "Work time is estimated at
six-point-two hours, Captain," said Engineer
Aktaz.
  "Then our speed will not decay significantly,"
said Khalen. "We will enter the outer planetary
system during the period of shutdown, above the
ecliptic plane to avoid most potential
obstructions, but power will have been restored long before
there is need for orbital maneuvering." "Good." A
shutdown approach was a tactical bonus
Kasak had not anticipated. "All is well."
The captain studied his crew, all of them standing by for
his word of command. He nodded, once. "Action."
  Jim leaned back and watched another quartet of
Starfleet shuttles start their run from Sir
Richard's hangar bay down to the planet's
surface. His mind ran over the problem in simple
arithmetic for what he hoped was the final time. There
were four shuttles on each ship, with room on board
each shuttle for seven ill
  of Johnson's people and one Starfleet crewman
to bring it back. And there were five hundred
Diplomatic Protection Group personnel
to shift. That meant something like eleven flights for each
shuttle-five round trips and one final descent
before starting it all over again with the Federation refugees.
He grimaced and rubbed his eyes; even on this
small scale, the niggling time-and-motion puzzle of
logistics had the ability to take over all his thought
processes and leave no room for anything else.
Better leave it to Spock and the computers.
  Every flight was a potential target, but so far the
Dekkani and the PDI had kept quiet. Even the
orbiters had ceased their intermittent harassment of the
Starfleet vessels, recognizing perhaps that
there was too much potential here for matters to get out
of control. They had played their part, indicating to the
all-powerful Federation that their ships, tied as they were
by red tape, were not quite so powerful after all. If
Scotty's guess about the purpose of all the
posturing was correct, this forthcoming round of
negotiations would probably begin on a basis of
restrained aggres- sion and progress through disposal
of the more outrageous demands and arguments to something that at
least resembled a sensible dialogue. Just so long as
nobody with a gun tried to interfere. It was right then that
the alarms went off again. Jim muttered something under his
breath and glared at Chekov. "What is it this time-more
Klingon attack formations?"
  "No, Keptin." Chekov sounded so uneasy that
all at once the hackles on the back of Jim's
neck began to rise. The viewscreen flickered and the
image changed from Sir Richard's shuttles to a
crank-winged shape that was equally familiar but far more
ominous. "This time it's Klingons!" Jim stared at
the screen. The other Federation ships 112
  were not yet aware of the new threat, shielded from it as
they were by their geosynchronous positions on the farther
side of the planet. As usual, it was all up to the
Enterprise-and it was that which put a sort of
smile back on Kirk's face, because General
Order 12 had just taken on a whole new meaning.
"Uhura?"
  "I've been trying, Captain. The usual
greetings on a standard hailing frequency. They
haven't responded."
  "Nothing at all?"
  "Not even a standard ID, Captain. Just
static."
  "Good. In that case I shall quote one of the other
provisions of General Order Twelve." Quick
grins were suppressed all over the bridge as the
crew's recent familiarity with that damned order
allowed them to pick up immediately on what Kirk was
about to say.
  ""On the approach of any vessel when
communications have not been established, Starfleet
safety-ofpersonnel requirements indicate that said
vessel should be treated as potentially hostile
until proven otherwise, and in consequence a standard
defensive posture should be adopted."" "Changes
of situation and shipboard status duly noted and
logged, Captain," said Spock. There was a cool
satisfaction in the way he said it, though the
Vulcan would never have admitted any such
thing. "Thank you, Mr. Spock. You may restore
all sensors to active status. Raise shields
and bring weapons to operational readiness." There was no
leaping for positions on the bridge this time. Everyone
was there already. "Uhura, transmit on all
frequencies: "Captain Kirk, commanding
U.s.s. Enterprise, to all Federation vessels
and personnel. We have detected a ship entering this
system. Ship has refused to answer hails or
transmit IFF/ID. Visual indicates
ship to be a
  Klingon KT-INGA class battle cruiser.
Enterprise will intercept. Continue evacuation
procedure. All ships are cleared for battle
stations. I repeat: battle stations. Kirk out."
And, Uhura, keep an ear open for what the
Dekkani have to say."
  He glanced at the battle cruiser's sinister
outline on the long-range display. For all the
menace that it represented, the Klingon warship was more
easily dealt with than all this sitting around. "Mr.
Chekov, lay in an intercept course. Mr.
Sulu, full impulse power. Take us out."
  ENTERMUSE WAS NO MORE than a few
seconds clear of orbit when the yelling
began from planetside. The approaching Klingon
ship was still millions of kilometers beyond the range
of Dekkan Central Control. What they saw, and
what they now reacted to, was the trio of
so-recently defenseless Starfleet vessels going
into a maneuver that could either be defensive-or a
preparation for attack.
  "The entire Dekkan Planetary Council's
screaming down there, Captain," said Uhura. She
pulled the transdator from her ear and reset its
systems for reduced transmission volume before
reluctantly puVting it back. "And some of their
language is getting beyond "earthy and
colorful."" "Anything of importance, or just
opinions of Starfleet in general?" "Opinions
of the fleet commander in particular," she returned
dryly, "and imaginatively worded ones at that. They
are not pleased."
  "Mmf." Jim looked again at the K't'inga
class battle cruiser on the screen. "Give
them something else to think about. Patch that Klingon ship
through to the planet on visual for a few
minutes-enhanced im- 115
  agery, so they're in no doubt about whom it belongs
to-and then give me an open line to anyone
who wants to listen."
  Uhura nodded and began working with the visualimage
coders, building her picture around that on the main
screen but thoughtfully adding declassified
schematics and silhouette data until the shape,
provenance, and destructive capabilities of the
Klingon ship were made plain even to the most
uneducated layman. "Transmitting now,
Captain," she said, "and opening your general
transmission in seven minutes. Until that time,
you're not available to Dekkan callers?"
  "Seven minutes, unless it's more important
than what they've had to say so far." Jim had had
enough of the council, the Dekkani, the planet they
lived on, and the whole damned mission. "Advise
Captains North and Farey to make no independent
reply to planetside queries. All information must
be channeled through Enterprise. was He swiveled the
center seat a little. "Time to interception, Mr.
Sulu?"
  "Six-point-three hours at point-forty-five
c, sir. Much faster and we'd start running
into timerelativistic distortion."
  "And miss the whole party? Not a chance. Hold
her steady at point-four-five."
  "We may need the extra time to sort out whatever
has happened here," said Spock, sitting back from
his viewer and looking puzzled. "I think,
Captain, that you should see this." Even without that
unprecedented request for a second opinion, his
expression and tone of voice were already sufficiently
unusual to have Jim out of his seat and up to the science
station. Spock touched controls, and schematics
scrolled across the monitors, but none of the output
made sense. Jim looked at one particular power
con
  sumption readout and then back at the main
viewscreen, frowning. "I have restored full power
to all of the science sensors," Spock said, "and
correlated with the information available in the main ship's
computer concerning this class of Klingon vessel, but
there are more anomalies than matching data. This is
most unusual. And more unusual still, despite the
Klingon vessel's nominal crew complement of
five hundred thirty, I can pick up life
signs for only eight."
  McCoy had emerged from the turbolift as
Spock was speaking, and now he peered over the
Vulcan's shoulder at the display whose readings
mirrored those of a medical tricorder.
He tapped its screen, an irritable tapping he
regarded as the last remedy for recalcitrant
electronics when all else has failed. "Have you
tried reading for non-Klingon life-forms?" he said.
"Yes, Doctor, I have. To no effect. The
possibility of rebellion or theft by a servitor
race has already occurred to me."
  "And what about disease?"
  "This unit has detected the life signs of
eight Klingons, all in perfect health. Unless
they are the fully recovered survivors of some
strange plague, I see no reason to assume
illness aboard this ship"-Spock evidently saw
McCoy's next question coming-"or any accident
involving biological or chemical weapons."
  Bones humphed and shrugged his shoulders. "It's
damned strange, whatever's behind it."
  "Stranger even than that," said Uhura.
  6'Strange in what way, Uhura?" Jim
asked.
  "Captain, as you requested, I ran image
enhancement on the Klingon ship before putting it through to the
Dekkani Council. Most of that was just 117
  additional detail work, but I've been
processing the residual signal and ...
well, it's done something very peculiar to the Klingon's
outline. On the main screen now."
  Even with full magnification and the
resolutionboosting circuitry already built into the
Enterprise's main viewer, a battle cruiser
at a distance of some twelve light-hours was still an
infinitesimal speck from which the viewer could only
infer details. It had done the best it could,
assembling the usual twenty points of similarity
against whichever silhouette in its memory banks was
a closest match and then generating a
computer-corrected image based on that assumption.
It was only when Uhura had cross-checked that she
discovered there was more to this particular Klingon battle
cruiser than the viewscreen's cursory first glance
suggested. Much more ... "What the ... ?" Jim
stared at the scout ship riding piggyback on the
battle cruiser and tried with no success at all
to work out what function it might serve by being there. He
turned back to his science officer, who was studying
the screen with an expression of mild interest that
usually concealed intense curiosity. "Any
opinions, Spock?" "At present, Captain,
my opinions are uninformed and consequently of little
use. However, interrogation of the library
computer should presently alleviate the situation, if
only by providing data for enhanced guesswork."
"At least it starts to explain the limited life
signs," Bones said. "Except that there are no
known Klingon scoutclass vessels with a crew of
less than twelve," Jim put in. "This one's
still running light on personnel, and it doesn't
explain the cruiser underneath."
  "Captain, the computer now indicates several
explanatory possibilities," said Spock.
He brought the 118
  data up on his department monitor and raised one
eyebrow at what he saw there. "Fascinating."
  "How so?"
  "I ran only a very fast and shallow inquiry
scan in search of similarly attached vessels,
Captain, and yet five of the examples the computer
provides are of Earth origin; they cover a
period from the third to the seventh decades of the
twentieth century, and ... one of them involves a
ship known as Enterprise. his
  "Captain, I'm getting a transmission in
clear from the Planetary Council. Will you reply?"
Uhura's voice cut through the amused confusion in
Jim's head; part of his mind was insisting that
Spock had just made a joke, while the rest was
refusing to believe any such thing. At least this news
was sensible.
  "What message?" He looked toward Uhura.
"And what sort of language9" The comin chief
laughed softly. "Very polite language, for a
change. They want to speak to Admiral
  I "irk."
  "Do they indeed?" Jim wasn't sure how
to take this: being referred to by his full rank had
invariably meant trouble in the past, and if some
Federation bureaucrat had gotten involved with the
Dekkan councillors and was starting to throw his weight
around, he would find that weight swung both ways.
"Put them on the screen."
  The Klingon battle cruiser disappeared in
shimmer and became ... ... A Klingon face.
  Jim had already returned to the center seat and
composed himself to receive whatever message secessionists
transmitted to admirals. McCoy had not.
Instead he stared at the image on the screen and sat
down hard on the nearest thing convenient.
  "Doctor," Spock said very calmly, "that is
probably 119
  not the best method of input through a
keyboard. Move, please." It had been one of
those oversights in a busy operations schedule: what
with getting down to orbit, organizing the landings,
arranging when and how to evacuate DPG and Federation
personnel without either offending the Dekkani or
risking injury to anyone involved, Jim realized
nobody had gotten around to advising the chief
medical officer of just exactly what the
inhabitants of Dekkanar were.
  Kirk took a longer breath than was
absolutely necessary to begin a conversation, and let it out
again slowly before he felt entirely capable of
speaking to the face on the screen. It belonged to a
ferociously white-whiskered old Dekkan male
whose forehead, while lacking the lobster-back ridge
of a pure Imperial race Klingon, was still
sufficiently knobbed and furrowed for the family
likeness to be unsettlingly plain. "You are the
Kirk Admiral, the fleet commander, said the old
Dekkan. "I am Admiral James T.
Kirk, yes. But when I command a ship my title
is Captain."
  "S. was Hot yellow-irised eyes stared from the
screen for a moment, then turned away as their owner
relayed the information to someone else beyond
range of the video pickup.
  Jim could distinguish at least three additional
voices and wondered when he would see the three
faces, assuming one of the voices wasn't
originating on the incoming Klingon warship.... He
muted the mike on his own pickup and glanced quickly
over one shoulder at Uhura. "What about the
battle cruiser? Transmissions, energy
surges, anything?"
  Uhura checked the comms console and shook her
head. "Communication silence, sir." She looked
at the viewer, where the white-haired Dekkan was still
in discussion with his off-screen companions, and 120
  tapped controls on her board at top speed.
"Voice analysis and the ambient sound of this
transmission indicate that all four voices
originate from the same point source."
  "Well done, Uhura!" Jim's mouth stretched
into a brief, tight grin. "I am Varn Chief
Councillor, -- said the old Dekkan, coming back
on line and making Jim freeze the last remnant
of grin from his face, "and I am Varn Political
Leader. You will address the council and the party through
me. -
  Jim stared at him for several seconds,
expressionless and saying nothing, while he sifted his
own immediate and irritable response out of the more
diplomatic statement that the situation required.
"Councillor Varn, I need say no more than was
said when our ships first entered orbit. Our purpose
is to escort the Federation personnel expelled from
Dekkanar to safe haven aboard our ships and then
to leave."
  "Your ships are military. You came with
soldiers. "Our ships are armed, yes, but they are
not military. They are exploration vessels that are
often required to explore dangerous and unknown
territory. Their weapons are defensive."
  "And the soldiers?" Vam's old voice grew
sharp. "Will you say that soldiers are not military?"
  "I do say it. They are not soldiers. Their job
is to defend our people against those of your people who would use
violence. Or do you deny the existence of the group
calling themselves the Phalange for Dekkan
Independence?"
  "PDI is a gang of bandits. Their title is
grandiose, their intention no more than theft. They do not
represent the council or the party. -- "But the
council and the party have said they cannot protect Federation
personnel against these ... 121
  bandits. Therefore the Federation must act to protect
its own." "With soldiers?"
  "With whatever is necessary. At present, with nothing more
than men and women in uniform. Our present
regulations forbid these uniformed crew members
to carry weapons until weapons are needed."
  "Soldiers without weapons? This isfoolish.
  "Less foolish than causing hurt or death
by accident, Chief Councillor Varn." Jim
shifted in his seat, the movement of a man bored with
pointless talk and intending to bring it to an end. "If
there is no more to be said than this, which has all been
said before, then I and my ship have work to do."
  "Wait!"
  Aha. Jim lifted his hand clear of the cutoff
switch and looked back at the screen with an
expression of studied disinterest. "Kirk
Admiral, what of this new ship reported to be
entering our system?" "That is a part of our work,
Councillor. It is a warship of the Klingon
Empire, and it has no business in this galactic
sector, much less this system."
  "Kiingons. . . ?" The councillor's voice
was a case study in innocence. "Why would Klingons
come here at this time?"
  "Perhaps they heard of Dekkanar's falling-out with the
Federation and wish to offer protection to a nonaligned
world against potential invaders," said Jim with a
saccharine smile. "Perhaps the form of that protection will
be an offer to join the Klingon Empire. Perhaps they
were invited." Councillor Varn stared at him, and the
heat went from the Dekkani's eyes until they
looked like chips of muddy topaz. They looked,
thought Jim, like the eyes of someone realizing he just
might have made a 122
  mistake. Like someone who might want to speak quite
soon to one of the diplomats at present leaving his
planet. Well, let him ask for the meeting-but not
right now. "We will doubtless speak of this again,
Councillor. For the present, good day." He
turned away from the screen and only then said
clearly, "Kirk out.
  "Uhura, standing order for Communications: all
transmissions originating from the surface of
Dekkanar will be monitored as usual, but no
trans- mission from the Planetary Council will be
acknowledged or replied to until further notice."
  "Noted and logged, sir. And if they or the
Klingons attempt to open communication with each other
... T"
  "Jam the frequency and let me know at once."
  "Sir." She worked a moment at the main console,
then tabbed an activation toggle. "Jamming
circuitry is enabled." Uhura smiled wearily.
"Of course, that does mean there'll be another alarm
going off."
  "One more won't make much difference on this ship,"
said Jim. "And I think we could go back to standard
illumination." The bridge lights flicked back
to normal. "Better. The ship will remain at
condition one, but there'll be time enough for a full red alert
when we reach intercept range. Until then I
prefer to see what I'm doing. And now, Mr.
Spock"-he returned to the science station-"let's
see what you've got. I@. Spock touched
controls on the library computer, bringing its memory
buffer back on line. "The parameters I set,
Captain, were most basic: known historical
examples of a similar arrangement between two ships.
Once fed into the computer, these parameters were of
necessity expanded to include atmosphere craft.
It was at this point that the search began to prove
successful."
  "You said there were five examples from Old Earth,
Spock. I'm curious." "Most are
military," said Spock, "which is hardly
surprising. During the twentieth century the
military had first demand on governmental funds."
"As usual," said Bones, standing off to one side and
speaking almost to himself Jim glanced quickly sideways,
but his science officer let the comment pass as one not
needing a reply.
  "The first example and the last, however, are
civilian, and are, I believe, of as much
significance as all the others combined. Especially
the final example."
  Spock pressed a control and fell silent,
allowing the dry, synthesized voice of the library
computer to speak for him. "Nineteen thirty-eight,"
it said. "Operator, Imperial Airways,
London, England. Short Stwenty-three
Empire class flying boat Mercury carrying
floatplane Maia. Purpose: extended-range
mail delivery. First nonstop transatlantic
mail flight. "Nineteen forty-four. Operator,
Deutsches Luftwaffe, Germany. Unmanned
Junkers Ju-Eighty-eight bomber carrying
Messerschmitt Bf-One-oh-nine or
Focke-Wulf Fw-One-ninety fighter. Name:
Mistel Two combination. Purpose:
crude guided missile, forward fuselage converted
to carry three-point-eight-tonne shaped-charge
demolition warhead."
  "Stop," said Jim. He turned to Spock.
"How old is the K'Vinga class of battle
cruiser? Old enough to warrant using one like that?
To carry a warhead?"
  "Doubtful, Captain. Latest intelligence
reports indicate that, like Starfleet, the Klingons
have a policy of constant upgrade and
refit-except of course when ships are sold to the
Romulan Empire, and stripping out appears more the
order of the day. It is not beyond speculation that there is
a Klingon engineer with talent equal to that of Mr.
Scott, since the effective result to many of their
vessels is similar to what has 124
  been done to the old Constitution class
Enterprise-a new ship built on the structure
of the old. I find it unlikely that any situation
could arise where this ship would be used as a disposable
weapon. Almost certainly the same applies
to Klingon vessels."
  "Point taken," said Jim.
  "Nineteen-fifties," the library computer
continued. "Operator, USAF
Strategic Air Command, America. Convair
B-Thirty-six carrying Grumman FF-One
Goblin hook-recoverable parasite fighter within
aft bomb bay. Purpose: point defense during
mission. Also: Convair B-Thirty-six carrying
Republic FE-IGHTY-FOUR-F
trapeze-launched fighter semi-scabbed onto
bomb bay. Purpose: extended-range recon
missions.
  "Nineteen seventy-seven. Operator, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. Boeing
Sevenforty-seven Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
carrying Orbiter Enterprise-One-oh-one.
Purpose: ferry flights, airworthiness tests,
and manned free-flight tests during initial
phase of space shuttle program."
  But the Klingons saw no need for orbiters or for
research programs and no need for any of the rules
and regulations that bound the Federation. "What about our
intruder? What category does he fall into?"
"That thing's military, Jim," said Bones.
"Otherwise it wouldn't be here. It wouldn't dare be
here!"
  "The K'Vinga class has never been anything but
military, Doctor," Spock said.
"However, some of its later variants have converted their
troop-carrying capability into research space.
Although I can do nothing more than surmise from the information
presently available," he said, evidently picking
his words with care, "I suspect it is possible that the
Klingon fleet has been experimenting with fully
com125
  puterized onboard systems and that we are on
course to meet one of their prototypes."
  "You mean an M-Five clone?" Jim and
Bones said much the same thing at once, both men
simultaneously imagining the devastating consequences
should another central command computer-this one programmed
by Klingons-decide to run amok.
  Spock looked at the schematics readout and
shook his head. "More probably a ZD-EIGHT
modification. The most reliable information available
at present indicates the Klingons' continuing
refusal to adopt centralized artificially
intelligent units."
  "They don't trust smart machines,"
translated McCoy. "I always thought there was something
good about the Klingons, if you only looked hard
enough."
  "I suspect that the smaller craft
contains the control systems," Spock continued, "and the
battle cruisees remote-command structure is
designed around them. Although the Klingons are
scarcely safety-conscious and are therefore
notoriously profligate with lives during the testing
of new equipment, it seems most likely that the
scout detaches itself before passing maneuvering
instructions to the cruiser."
  Bones gestured toward the viewscreen. "if that
thing's new, Spock, then it's been kept
secret. You know the Klingons well enough: they
might not have much concern for safety, but when it comes
to security they're red hot. So what in hell is
that ship doing here?" Jim was staring at the screen as
if hoping to read some hidden answer from it; he
didn't need to hear Spock's reply. He had
pulled enough science station duty in his younger days to know his
way around the monitors, and those energy readings had
niggled at him. In a ship of the battle cruiser's
size the curve had indicated no more than shutdown
decay, and even when the crewed scout had been added
to the equa-
  tion its energy readings were borderline
residual. Even the vessel's motion was no more
than an unpowered freefall into the gravity
well of 4725 Cancri, and it was a bad system
to enter at the best of times, never mind blind and unable
to maneuver.
  Something most unpleasant had happened to that
ship-those ships, he corrected absently-and as had
so often been the case, Enterprise just happened to be
right on the spot. Except that right now the spot was
six-plus hours away.
  Jim stifled a yawn, and realized with pleasant
surprise that he actually had some time to call his own
before they reached the interception point. Six-plus
hours of leisure. Enough time to catch up on at least
some of the sleep he'd missed.
  "Uhura, if you could log me off shift,
please?" he said, and headed determinedly for the
turbolift. "And fend off Councillor Vam if
he gets importunate. I'll speak-to him
later ... this morning, isn't it?" "Later tonight,
Jim," growled Bones. "You're two shifts out.
Leave it. Go, go." He restrained himself from
actually making shooing motions, but not by much.
  "Throwing the captain off his bridge is mutiny,
Doctor," said Jim, but the effect was spoiled
by another huge yawn. "Spock, you have the conn
again. Good morn-ah, g'night, everyone."
  "Good night, sir," said Spock and the rest, but
until Jim was in the lift and for once on the way
to bed without any interruptions, he didn't really
believe them.
  The bridge was dark, and almost silent. Kasak
could hear only the sound of his own breathing and, as if in
the far distance, unless he adjusted the gain on his
helm headset's receptors, the voices of
Askel and Aktaz as they worked on the remote
transmitters. He 127
  and the rest of the crew had donned environmental
suits at Askel's suggestion and without argument.
Kasak loathed the all-over constriction and the strange
smells that always lurked in the suits no matter how
new or how clean they were, but the alternative
meant being unprotected if the central
life-support system decided to shut down. He
and his crew had all served long enough to have seen the
aftermath of an environmental accident, and it had never
seemed a sufficiently pleasant way to die for
any of them to find running such a risk appealing.
  For all that, Kasak tried not to breathe through his
nose more often than necessary.
  It was only after he had suited up that he began
to realize just how long six hours of
shutdown was likely to seem. Complaining would be of no
use; the work had to be done or Hakkarl would
rapidly become just one more piece ofjunk that had
left the imperial yards with such high hopes and never
come back. He did not much relish the prospect of
returning to Thamar without the major portion of his
command. Still less did he like the idea of continuing with his
scheme for the planet Dekkanar in only a scout
ship, lacking the battle cruiser's destructive
potential. He did not intend to use his weapons,
of course; the whole point of the plan was to entice
Federation ships into firing first, thus outraging the
Organians. But no captain in the Klingon
Imperial Navy felt anything except unease
without considerable-and preferably overwhelming
comfirepower at his disposal. Kasak glared at the
blank monitors, the useless sensors, the dead
screen, and curled his lips back from the points of his
teeth. This enforced blindness, not knowing who or what was out
there, was unsettling in view of what navigational
intelligence had said about traverse of the Dekkan
system. Before systems shutdown, Navigator
Khalen had triple-checked their pro128
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  jected route for debris and had
pronounced it clear. Khalen had been most
cautious before making his announcement, and with good
reason: Kasak had informed him, in front of the rest
of the crew, that even a minor collision would prove
fatal-for him, even if for nobody else. That had
been two hours ago. The navigator was still
alive, and the ships were undamaged except for whatever
Askel and the engineer had been doing down among
Tazhat's electronic entrails. Kasak
snorted softly, regretting it a moment later as
one of those in-suit aromas reminded him of its
presence. He began punching up the codes to access
the first-flight Captain's Log on his pad
screen, then augmented his previous observations about
whoever in Design Engineering had been responsible
for the intership data link. He had no idea when he
would deliver his final report, but when he did-he,
Kasak, the captain whose stratagem had acquired
an entire planet for the Empire-that data-link
designer would be finished. And not merely so far as his
career was concerned. He would be terminated. Kasak
had done it before. On one occasion he had been so
enraged that he had simply drawn his duty sidearm
and disintegrated the offending designer where he stood
gaping across the bridge. After that incident
had been passed around, design engineers had grown
very skilled at devising reasons not to accompany
Kasak sutai-Khornezh on the proving flights
of their own ships. He closed the file, closed his
eyes for just a moment, and then locked off the pad
screen. "Zan Askel, progress report,"
he said to the microphone array within his helm.
  "Blue lights, Captain, was came Askel's
voice. "Progress continues. We are testing
each transceptor for individual homing as we
unlock and recalibrate. From Aktaz. completion
estimate is now reduced by point129
  three hours. We will advise when the systems can
be set for warm-up cycle. Askel out. his
  Kasak made a mental note to add positive
notations to each officer's file. Possibly even
a commendation. But that, and indeed anything else stored in
his own memory, would stay there until all of this was
over. Mental notes were easier to change than hard
copy, and awards one day could so easily become
demerits, or worse, the next. It made the
life of a captain so much simpler if the
justification of changed reports didn't need to be
done in public....
  Wearing heavy-duty work coveralls and a
clear-view visor, Science Specialist
Askel took care to keep his facial muscles
well under control even when Aktaz wasn't
actually looking in his direction. Inside, however,
he was laughing. Because both of them were full commanders and
neither was in the mood to argue seniority based on
date of graduation, they had di- vided the labor
equally. It meant in essence that Aktaz performed the
engineering tasks of freeing the transceptor heads
and installing the new signal-seeker hardware. After
that, the more ticklish operation of recalibrating and
cross-checking fell to Askel. It was hardly such
heavy work as lugging the electronic power units in
and out of their location slots-an awkward and often
dangerous business in zero-G, when their mass was
far less controllable than just their simple weight-but
it was boring, repetitive, and, given the captain's
reaction to less than perfect work, just as dangerous.
That, at least, was what Askel had said. For an
Imperial Intelligence operations master it was also the
perfect opportunity to set things up in preparation
for whatever the future might hold.
  Askel had already decided that his most immediate
advantage lay in Kasak's scheme for personal
and 130
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  political advancement. Perhaps the captain meant
to capture Dekkanar by double-bluffing both the
Federation and the Organians-a plan so elegant that
Askel was almost eager to see it succeed. Or perhaps
Kasak simply intended to turn privateer and gain
wealth and glory by becoming a thorn in Starfleet's
flank.
  Still, the Thought Admirals of the Advanced
Strategies Board might object to any or all
of Kasak's plan. That was why the sternmost data
transceptor had been programmed not just with the
ability to home on its mate in Hakkarl's hull
but also with an override that enabled it to transmit
messages from Askel's science board on
Tazhat without any tiresome need to go out through
Communications. The installation would operate quite
normally until he cut in his override, and that would
act only for the nanosecond required by a
tightbeam tachyon squirt. Since the aberration would
show as nothing more than a brief signal fluctuation,
nobody else would know. Aktaz certainly wouldn't
mention it, least of all to this captain whose view of
shoddy workmanship was already notorious, and Askel
himself didn't intend to breathe a word. Not that
the thing was any more than theoretical until the mains
were back on line and he had a chance to test it.
  But at least it was there.
  The chimes at midnight pulled Jim out of a
sound sleep and back to the realization that he had dozed
off facedown with his uniform and boots still on. And his
mouth open. Yech. It felt as if someone had been
storing used dilithium crystals in it. He sat
up and swatted groggily at the wake-up's off
switch. There was no doubt at all in Jim's mind
that another six hours' sleep would have been just what the
doctor ordered-indeed, just what Bones had been
ordering.
  At least he was awake enough to suppress two-way

  vision on the communicator before opening a channel
to the bridge. Spock was on the other end, looking as
usual annoyingly crisp and well rested. "Good
morning, Mr. Spock," said Jim, hoping his
voice sounded more the way his first officer appeared than
the way its owner felt. "Current situation
report, please."
  "Good morning, Captain, was said Spock formally.
"I have continued sensor scans of variable intensity,
but the intrud tilde r ship still reads as
virtually dead on all scopes. Enterprise is
continuing to close, with a present estimated intercept
time offorty-seven minutes. was He paused an
instant to recheck something, then stood up and moved to the
science station. "Reduction in range has enabled me
to confirm that this is indeed an augmented modification
of the Ktinga class cruiser. Withinforty-five
minutes, therefore, Enterprise will be entering the two
hundred twenty thousand kilometer extreme firing
perimeter of their main disrupter batteries. Do you
wish to hold off out of range? Given the intruder's
present course and heading, it would be simple to run
parallel with him for"-Spock glanced sideways at
another monitor- "at least three hours before
further action became necessary. was A ndfor you to get some
more of the sleep you need. The Vulcan had said nothing
of the sort and would never have dreamed of doing so, but his
suggestion was clear enough. Jim thought about it for a
moment, then dismissed Spock's offer. Even though
he still felt in need of a shower, a shave, and a fresh
uniform, his brain had kicked itself back up to full
running speed and there seemed small purpose in
letting it relax back into the warm dark for any
shorter time than the six-hour absolute minimum
he needed to fully recover.
  "Thanks, Spock, but no. There's no point in
letting the Klingons get farther into the system than
neces132
  sary," he said, more briskly. That briskness
helped put another thought into his head, one that had
been wandering around as he fell asleep and had
evidently been biding its time ever since. "Is there
any reason to believe that this ship is a derelict?"
  "Thirty-two-point-four-four percent
probability, said Spock, "based on scanning
observations that suggest the existing crew are
presently incapable of operating the vessel by themselves.
The ship is following an uncontrolled course
into a populated system and toward an inhabited
planet whose present traffic patterns are in
excess of those laid down as safety- minimal.
Under the current laws ofspace salvage, all of
thesefacts constitute sufficient reason to consider and
treat the offending vessel not merely as salvable but as
an actual and continuing hazard. Of course,
acquisition by salvage of a military vessel that
is the property of a known sovereign power is
somewhatfrowned upon. Even if we can somehow persuade
the entire crew to request political asylum in
the Federation, we will be obliged by law to hand
the ships back to the Klingon Empire. was Spock
paused. "Eventually. -
  "Spock, did you ever consider a legal career?"
"No, Jim, I did not. -- There was a smile in
the voice if not on the face. "Vulcan law,
while precise and elegant, has always been less
aesthetically challenging than my present career, and
as far as Earth's legal practices are
concerned"-Spock shrugged, a very small,
massively dismissive rise and fall of one
shoulder- "A system where parties hire
professional exponents of argument, and where those who
can afford to hire the best, most skillful or indeed
most persuasive arguers are most likely to win
any given case regardless of its actual merit,
strikes me as singularly lacking in logic. -
  And I always thought he just didn't like court133
  martials, thought Jim. Well, there go several
thousand miles of books. "Thank you, Spock.
No further questions. I'll be there in fifteen
minutes."
  "Captain on the bridge," announced the duty
comm officer as James T. Kirk-looking and
feeling much more like a starship captain-stepped out of the
turbolift.
  "Magnification up three points, pan right
to left along the command pod and boom," Spock was
saying.
  "Thank you, Mr. Mahase," Jim said to the
communieations officer. "Log me in, please."
He looked at the Klingon warship on the
viewscreen, its hull crosshatched with the amber
rectangles of camera angles, and then at his
science officer. "Are you directing or producing this
one, Mr. Spock?" The Vulcan vacated the
center seat. "Neither, Captain. Otherwise I would
have called on Mr. Freeman's talents. These
are visual records for Starfleet."
  Jim glanced at the ominous shape filling the
screen as he sat down, scribbling on the duty
pad Spock handed him. "Ah. Of course."
Another glance at the battle cruiser. "Yes, that
thing most certainly has the potential for hostility.
Any further contact with its crew?" "Mr.
Mahase?" said Spock.
  "Nothing whatsoever, Mr. Spock, Captain,"
said the Eseriat. "When Commander Uhura went off
shift she left a comprehensive list of suggested
approaches and analyses that she had already tried and
which needed to be repeated. I regret
to admit that I experienced as little success as she.
I think they're either deaf or dead," he finished
irritably, "or doing a good impression of it."
  "Not dead at least." Spock flashed up the
life-sign sensor on the main screen. "Still
eight, still healthy,
  although deafness is not beyond the bounds of possibility,
as a side effect of explosive decompression."
  Jim studied the Klingon ship, or more
accurately, ships, since a slight alteration in
approach vectors was giving a clearer view of the
scout riding on the cruiseesprimaryhull.
"Magnification up seven," he said. "Let's
see what we can see."
  Whatever else the high-mag scan revealed, it
showed no trace of the structural damage normally
associated with a hull blowout: no ruptured
plates, no fans of frozen air around the point of
venting. And yet ... And yet there was that lack of
energy readings, and the life sips that suggested too
small a crew even for the scout ship alone.
Theories jostled for prominence in Jim's mind, as
they had doubtless jostled in Spock's-with as little
apparent success. More and more he kept coming back to the
library computer's examples, trying
to force their historical realities into some shape that
would fit modem uncertainty. Might this vessel have
been designed as a long-range ferry similar to the
sleds employed by Vulcans, something more capable of
self-defense than a warp shuttle and perhaps intended
for high-ranking imperial officials? Hardly.
If a Starfleet admiral needed to travel any
great distance within the Federation, he used an existing
vessel, and if his mission was delicate or the
territory dangerous, he used something like the
Enter-" prise, rather than a specialized ship that
shouted its function and its occupant to even the most
casual observers. There was no reason to believe that
a Klingon Thought Admiral would act any
differently comalth the speculation had a convoluted
entertainment value of its own. If the scout ship
wasn't a double-range courier, which in any case was
unnecessary with warp technology; and if it wasn't
riding a flying bomb, which was improbable; and if it
wasn't some means of giving the 135
  cruiser additional protection, which the K't'inga
needed like a cat needs pajamas-then what in
blazes was it?
  It's something controlled by computer, and the smaller
ship has come along as an ohserver.
  That thought came back up out of the tangle of
discarded notions and seemed to bounce off the front of
his brain with a flat solidity that Jim felt sure
was almost audible. It wasn't the only
possibility, but it was certainly less unreasonable
than most of the others, in practical terms at
least.
  It was unreasonable in a great many other ways,
however, especially when the one considering it had suffered
more than his fair share of problems with
megalomaniacal computers. Daystrom's M-5
had been only one of them, and far from the worst. There
had been too many others. V'ger, that unpleasant
echo of NOMAD, was the most recent. To be coming
into firing range of something with the same potential, but
programmed with a Klingon military mind-set, was more
than disturbing; it was downright scary. James Kirk
had never been ashamed to admit to fear-for his friends, for
his crew, for his ship, and sometimes for himself, at least
privately. He was afraid now, for all of those
things and more. If this robot battle cruiser somehow
reactivated and was subjected to the same
provocations around Dekkanar as had been flung at
the rescue ships of Operation Backtrack, Jim
could imagine how it would respond. And the
requirements of General Order 12 wouldn't mean
a damned thing.
  Granted, Spock had talked about the Klingon
distrust of artificial intelligence and machines with the
capacity to make their own decisions, but facts
obtained by espionage could be incorrect, out of
date, or the result of disinformation. The Vulcan
had also 136
  suggested that the scout ship might be some kind of
master controller. If it was then it would be better for
all concerned-perhaps even the Klingons, considering that their
new baby had apparently thrown some sort of
tantrum already-if Enterprise took the whole thing
into tow. The only problem seemed to be in letting those
eight Klingons know just what was going on. The
situation around 4725 Cancri was quite troublesome enough
without starting some sort of panicky small war out here
on the rim. Jim then considered towing first, boarding
second, and communicating last of all-once it had
been established that communication was possible. Jim
began wondering what sort of strain the
Enterprise's tractor beams could take, then
decided his chief engineer should be up here; no need
to set up the briefing room for what looked like one
of the quicker tactical discussions.
"Engineering, this is the captain." It wasn't
Scotty who answered, but Roz Liddle, one of the
new draft of lieutenants. "My compliments
to Commander Scott, Lieutenant," said Jim, "and
I'd be grateful if he could drop whatever
miracle he's working on and get up to the bridge.
Kirk out."
  The turbolift doors hissed open behind him and
McCoy strode out. "Since you won't come to the
doctor, I guess the doctor will just have to come to you,"
he said with mock severity. "Yeah. You look
better. But I've got you rescheduled for that
checkup later today."
  "Later today is fine, Bones, just so long as it's
not right now. Chief of security to the bridge,
please."
  "Dammit, Jim, what did I do wrong this
time?"
  "Security's not coming for you. I'm assembling a
boarding party," Jim said over his shoulder, then
swiveled the center seat around to face McCoy.

  "Bones, get someone from Medical with knowledge of
Klingon physiology. Have him rig a suitable
medical pouch and then get him to the
transporter room." "Let me get this straight:
you're sending a boarding party over there?" "Only
eight crew aboard, and they evidently can't control
it. Damn thing's a hazard to system traffic."
  Bones took a deep breath and grimaced
ruefully. "I took the time to read up on what those
battle cruisers can do, Captain, and believe
me, that ship is a hazard to a damn-sight more than
traffic!"
  "Recalibration complete, Captain," said
Askel, stalking onto Tazhat's bridge as
though it were his ship and not Kasak's. "Blue lights
all across the board$91
  The captain let that small impudence pass, at
least for the present-although his mind noted it down against the
commendation he had been considering for his science
specialist. Time would tell which one would be erased and
which set down for Command to see. Certainly Askel
seemed confident enough in the quality of his work, for he
had taken his visor off and tucked it beneath one arm.
Kasak noted that as well; it was a flamboyant
gesture worth remembering, even though by rights
Askel should have spoken privately with the captain so
that such a gesture might first have been his own.
  Perhaps he is ambitious after all, thought
Kasak, and endeavoring to enhance his reputation among the
crew. No matter. At least, not yet. And not on
this ship.
  "Power has not yet been restored," Kasak said
aloud, mildly critical after a meaningful glance
at the still-dark chair repeater screens. "If the
one's statement is correct, then why not? Explain
this to me, zan Askel." Kasak
sutai-Khomezh was never so dangerous as
  when he sounded patient and understanding. Too many
subordinates had fallen into the error of assuming that
because, against all reason and expectation, their captain
appeared calm, a mistake or breach of
regulations had been overlooked. No Klingon
captain ever overlooked anything of the sort. "It is
for the one to order restoration of power," said Askel,
"and for others to obey that order."
  "S." Kasak nodded in sage agreement, but
inside he was showing his teeth in a smile that was more
than half a snarl. Askel had not shown such
careful respect for the privileges of rank after the
external check. Then he had addressed Krynn
even though he had known the captain was also present
on the bridge, and without needing or requesting further
clearance she had begun the battle
cruiser's power-up sequence. Askel could as
easily have spoken to her now, or to Kasak, by way
of the comm array all wore within their suit helms or
their visors; and he could just as easily have advised the
captain that his ship was not in fact evacuated to hard
vacuum, instead of which he had chosen to make a
dramatic personal entrance. It had been a good
attempt on the first officer's part, to impress and,
an instant later, to cover his mistake. Neither had
worked, both knew it, and honor was satisfied.
  For the moment.
  Kasak unsealed his own helm, removed its
headset, and then opened a shipwide channel on his
chair communicator. "All stations, commence
all-system warm-up. On my command, action,
affirm action."
  "Acting," said a chorus of voices, and data
displays all over the ship came glowing back
to active status.
  "And beam a security team in here. was Jim
indicated the command pod of the Bird of Prey on a
three-view projection.
  Security Chief Tomson studied the
diagram, then operated controls to run through its
deck plan. "I'd suggest another here,
in the engineering section," she said. "Just in case
somebody has second thoughts about being taken in tow."
She smiled the icy smile that had become her
trademark, a smile that had all the humor leached
out of it. "Warp drives can be useful to a
saboteur."
  "Two teams of twelve, then, and a medic with each
one. Do you approve, Bones?"
  "As much as I've ever approved dealing with the
Klingons, yes." Bones didn't look at all
happy with the arrangement, but he was putting his best
face on it.
  ",Captain, we're now on a parallel
course and starting convergence to transporter range."
Sulu followed the information with a tactical
schematic. Behind the overlay, the Klingon battle
cruiser and its scout grew steadily larger on the
screen.
  "Yon's a big bugger, Captain," observed
Scotty. He had all the politely leashed
enthusiasm of a hungry man staring at a roast of
beef and knowing he was going to have first hack at it.
  "Can the engines and the tractors handle it?"
  "Handle that wee thing?" Funny how sizes
change depending on what's being called
into question, thought Jim, and hid a smile. "Och aye,
no problem. It's well under the critical handlin'
mass."
  "All right, then, people, let's move it. Ingrit,
you and your people use the emergency transporters on
Q deck; that way we'll put all of you over at
once. If memory serves, Mr. Scott's people
used to be quite good at slipping things unnoticed onto
Klingon ships." He returned the smiles,
noticing that even Tomson's had a touch of
amusement in it this time, and then went back to being
serious. "Set phasers on 140
  heavy stun-and remember, this is a rescue, not a
raid."
  "Aye, sir, noted and logged. I should-was
  A siren began to yelp, and Jim turned quickly,
looking toward Uhura in case it was the jammer she
had installed. Her shake of the head was only half
completed before the bridge lights snapped back to red
and all the other alarms came whooping in. Jim
looked at the screen, at the suddenly climbing
energy output that could only mean a main drive
powering up, and immediately he knew
  The Klingon ships were coming back to life.
  There were no dramatic open-handed slaps
at the controls in the arm of the center seat; the time for that
was past. Instead, Kirk's index finger came down
very lightly, opening the one internal channel that meant
something right now. "This is the captain," he said, his
voice unnaturally calm and sounding huge over the
intercom. "Red alert, red alert, all hands
to battle stations. Secure for combat maneuvers.
This is not a drill."
  Kasak had always thought that to emerge from any form of
blindness was a pleasant thing. He had learned that he was
wrong. When the first thing one saw was a Federation
starship at almost point-blank range, the ignorance
of unsight was to be preferred.
  "wIy cha!" he barked over the screeching
klaxons, and glared at the tactical display as at
the naked throat of his worst enemy. The Federation
vessel was already too close, running almost in formation
with Hakkarl and sidling nearer with every second. The
display was running wild as all the sensors on both
his ships came close to overloading it with data-and a
that data had to do with the Starfleet vessel's readiness
for combat. 141
  Kasak showed all his teeth. He saw that his own
crew was just as ready, weapons showing lock and
preheat, shields at attack standard.
"baHwI-cha yIghuSo!" He saw Katta's
hand poise over the torpedo controls, fingers spread
wide for volley fire, and the Federation starship pinned
by the triangle of a target lock. They would all go
to the Black Fleet together. And then, as he looked
at death and glory in the maw of the enemy's phasers,
his head cleared and his blood began to cool. "We
want them to shoot at us," he said so that all his
crew could hear. "But in a time and place of our own
choosing, where it will do us the least and them most harm. That
time and place is other than here. Communications
specialist?"
  Khitar stiffened at the honor of hearing his title
used in ftill, but remained immobile at his station.
"Standing by," he said. "Open a standard hailing link
to the Starfleet captain$99 Khitar was not the only
one to turn and stare, but he was the first to compose himself and
get back to work. "Affirm," he said, his voice
far from steady.
  "Yes," said Kasak sutai-Khornezh, and
stretched luxuriously in the command chair. "Before the
Organians decide to interfere, let's have a
cozy little chat.""
  "THEY'VE DONE wHATT" snapped
Captain Kirk. Of all the surprises
that had come sneaking up behind him with a sockful of sand
since the mission began, this was one of the most
improbable.
  "Opened a hailing frequency, Captain," said
Mahase. Just to be sure, he rechecked the comm
board for a third time. He had made the first two
checks because he hadn't believed his ears, or the
transdator stuck in one of them. "It's a
Federation frequency, too, prefaced with the level
three friendship message and greeting."
  "Is that so?" Jim stared at the screen, and the
battle cruiser that filled it. For just the merest
instant he hadn't a notion what to do about the
situation; then command conditioning, years of experience, and
his own wit came back on line. "Reply to them,
Mister; reply, and use level four." He rubbed
his chin thoughtfully. "I'll be damned if I'll
let any Klingon commander out-polite me."
  "Yes, sir!"
  "If that's the situation, do we stand down from
battle stations, Captain?" "We will do nothing of the
sort!" Jim swiveled his 143
  seat around so that he could stare at whoever had
spoken. "Ah yes, Lieutenant Stewart. Bear
in mind, Lieutenant, that the Enterprise
was designed principally for research and exploration.
She can defend herself against attack-but that ship out there
was designed first and foremost to make such attacks.
So why would we want to give up our small
advantage of readiness by standing down?"
  "Demonstration of good faith, sir. Indicating
peaceful intent." Larry Stewart looked faintly
uncomfortable to have brought himself to such exalted notice
with what had evidently been the wrong thing to say.
He tried to set matters right. "As per General
Order Twelve, now that communications have been
established-was
  "Lieutenant his, Spock said severely, sounding
like what he was, a teacher whose prize pupil was
getting uppity, "it is the captain's place
to interpret regulations, not yours."
  "Spock, please." Jim held up one hand in
a gesture for silence that looked more like some sort of
benediction. "We're talking here about doing things by the
book. The lieutenant hasn't seen enough service
to know that books provide guidelines, not rigid
fences."
  "If the flexibility of rules is to be a part
of his education, Captain," said Spock, "might I
suggest a tour with Captain North?"
"Noted, Spock." To unfamiliar ears the
Vulcan sounded angry; only Kirk and the small
core of Enterprise veterans knew that Mr.
Spock had deigned to make a joke in public.
  "Reply acknowledged, C aptain," said Mr.
Mahase. "The enem- Sorry, sir, the Klingon
commander wishes to speak with you."
  "Does he indeed? Then put him on the
screen."
  It was the first time that most of the younger crew members
had seen a Klingon of the Imperial race 144
  except for those depicted in Mr. Freeman's
sterries of Battle Cruiser Vengeance, and an
entertainment tape, even one that had originated in the
Klingon Empire, had none of the impact of the real
thing. For those accustomed only to holos of the
ordinary-looking fusions, the face that now glowered from
the viewer was A disturbing one. To Jim's more
experienced eye, it had all the characteristics of a line
long kept pure. There was the naked dome of skull
with its high, bony crest, rising above a
swan-back sweep of thick black hair that from in
front had the appearance of horns; the heavy brows
above yellow-irised eyes that burned within their deep
sockets like something lethal hiding under a
shelf of rock; and the coarse beard and whiskers
surrounding a mouth that looked as though it could wear a
smile only if one was surgically inserted. And then
the mouth did smile, in a slow and careful sequence
of muscular contractions, its owner evidently quite
aware that what passed for smiling among humans was very
different from that acceptable to his own people. "Kai
kassai, was the Klingon said in that guttural voice
Jim knew rather too well for comfort. "HoDo
QaSaq jIH. HaQarl QaSaq.
gavanneSo lolaHave gholwIj. HI-JA'NESo
nuqneHave?"
  Jim muted his voice-pickup before glancing
toward Spock. "What's wrong with the translator
circuit?" he muttered, trying not to move his mouth;
lip-reading was not unknown in the Federation and among its
opponents. "Hold transmission and repeat on
request," said Spock to the still-open channel. Then
he shut off his own mike. "I took the liberty of
putting comms on a ten-second-plus variable
delay. The Klingon instruments will read it as a
slight signal breakup, requiring no more than a
repetition. If they register it at all. 1
  wanted to hear the Klingon commander's introduction for
myself before switching to simultaneous
translation."
  As Jim listened to Spock with one ear, he could
hear with the other that the Klingon had also swung
sideways in his command chair and was snapping orders
at someone offscreen. With the translators out, his
words made no sense, but almost certainly he was
tearing several stripes off his own communications
officer.
  "And?" Jim asked when a pause in the lecture
seemed to require it. "His manners are
exquisite," Spock said. "Too much so. He
has already employed two honorifics where-excuse
me, Captain-none were appropriate or
required. This approaches the level of insult,
though of the most delicate kind; one that is doubtless
appreciated by his crew, but otherwise unnoticed
because of translator limitations. Therein of course
lies the humor. I caution you not to match him like for
like."
  "Match what, Spock? What did he say?"
  "He is Captain Kasak," said the Vulcan.
"Kasak of the Hakkarl. was "That's not an unusual
opening; I've picked up similar ones on
Freeman's tapes. Where was the insult?"
  "He then said: "I am honored
to salute my worthy adversary. Do me the honor
of telling me what you want.""
  "Oh. I see. was Jim stared at Spock very
hard. "And he really thinks that he can get away with
that?" He could sense and almost hear the bridge crew
around him; the older hands fizzing with indignation and the
inexperienced wondering what all the fuss was about.
They would learn, in time, that Klingons were seldom this
polite even to one another, except when address-

  ing a very highly ranked superior. Using any
form of address so exalted that it became absurd was
always an insult: a captain would customarily
promote a slacking ensign to admiral or, far
worse, general, somewhere in the course of a
dressing-down. To do the same to a Federation officer in
the near-certain knowledge that he could not react-because he was
unlikely to speak even basic Tlhinganaase, and
his translator would filter out the subtle nuances that
gave the words their weight-would be a rich jest indeed.
"DaHave choQoylaHla?" said the Klingon
captain, not waiting for anybody's clearance
to resume transmission. "YIS-OV!
qaboQtaHave DI-VFH-OI vIjatIhtaH.
was This time, every translator on the bridge
was active, even though the main comm system was still
switched off. They heard nothing overtly
impolite. "Can you hear me now?" Captain
Kasak said, and then, "I know! To assist you I will
speak the Federation language. was Only those who
knew Klingons of old were able to pick up the
patronizing undertone to his choice of words. James
Kirk kept the way he felt under a perfect,
near-Vulcan control, as Spock stepped forward like
a good first officer and handed him a pad screen. Jim
glanced down at it, and more than ever had to fight
to keep all expression from his face. There were words
on it, but not just the usual data-for-signature.
  These words were Klingonese.
  "Thank you for that consideration, Captain Kasak,"
said Jim in English. He hesitated for a moment,
just long enough to see the sidelong smirk of
satisfaction start to cross the Klingon's face,
then sprang Spock's trap. "badh JiHave,
lach VITWI was he continued, and though his larynx
immediately sent a note of protest to the pain centers of
his brain, he gave every syllable its full value.
"pup t1hinganII-JQU'HOI nai%tilde
. wIyqjIW. was 147
  Jim cleared his throat daintily and
gave Kasak an amiable smile. There was no
indication on the Klingon's harsh features that what
had been said had registered at all, but his impending
smirk had collapsed into a thin straight line that
left his mouth like the slot of a data-solid reader.
That was proof enough.
  "I am honored, but it is not necessary," Jim had
told him. "We understand your Klingon language
perfectly here." It might have been the carefully
placed emphasis or the discovery that his secret
joke was not so secret after all-or it might just have
been that Kasak had pledged himself to speak in the
enemy's tongue and had learned too late that such a
step was now unnecessary and consequently a humiliation.
"Enough of these courtesies," Jim said before the
Klingon could brood long enough to do something they might
all regret. "We're both captains of our
respective ships: shouldn't we begin to speak as
such?" Kasak stared at him as though considering something
much more violent than words; then settled back
into his high-backed chair and nodded. "Very well.
We shall indeed speak as captains. But first, one
further ... courtesy. The only one remaining.
Your name and your ship?" "Of course." He would have
thought that Enterprise was already close enough to the
Klingon battle cruiser so that its occupants could
read name and registry from her primary hull.
Evidently not. "My oversight. This is the
Federation Starship U.s.s. Enterprise, and I
am Captain James T. Kirk." The Klingon
jerked upright from his posture of studied indolence as
though someone had run an electrical current through
his chair, and stared from the screen with unsettling
intensity. There was a heat 148
  in his eyes that would have been more appropriate had
he been squinting down a gunsight rather than along a
communication link that spanned fifteen kilometers of
empty space.
  Jim had never become truly accustomed to the
reactions his name or his ship were prone to create in the
most unlikely circumstances. In their long career
together, he and the Enterprise had left a lot of friends
behind them in a great many different places. They had
left enemies as well, dangerous enemies with long
memories, in places and on planets that he had
no intention of ever visiting again.
  And then the moment was past, and Kasak was relaxing
back into his command chair again. To be arrested and
taken in charge for illegal entry by one of the most
notorious ships in Starfleet was
probably enough to give most Klingons a turn for the
worse, reflected Jim. And even without involving
the Organians, it couldn't look good on their
reports. "Captain Kasak, you are doubtless
aware that the star system we call 4725 Cancri
is in a Federationlisted sector," Jim began.
"So why do I find a warship," he paused, then very
deliberately corrected himself, "or rather, two
warships of the Klingon Empire in an area of
space prohibited to them by treaty, by accord, and
by accepted practice?" Kasak stared at him and then
past him, with eyes like yellow flints. "Ask your
Vulcan about the condition of both my ships until
bare minutes ago. was "Kasak," said Spock, and
saluted with spread fingers, refusing to be nettled
by the Klingon's insult. "I am no one's
Vulcan. I hold captain's rank in UFP
Starfleet, and I am science officer of the
Enterprise. was "Two captains. . . was Kasak
muttered something offscreen that the pickup relayed as
"They must be running out of ships. was "I agree with
your contention that your ships were 149
  without power when they entered the system perimeter,"
Spock said. "But I state that without power a ship will
continue in the same direction as its last
course set under power. Therefore I reflect my
captain's curiosity as to why a course had been
set toward this system at all."
  "Would you accept that this vessel combination suffered a
systems failure during first-flight shakedown?"
From the way he said it, Kasak didn't seem
to care about acceptance or denial, but then both Kirk
and Spock knew how much face-saving was involved in
holding command of a Klingon ship, and accepted the
aggressiveness for no more than what it probably
was: posturing to impress subordinates.
  "In the case of a new or refitted ship,
Captain," said Jim, "I would accept that almost
anything is possible. But regardless of your shakedown
problems, Captain Kasak," he said, stubbornly
probing for something he felt sure the Klingon was
avoiding, "it still begs the question of why you were heading
toward this system in the first place. For the record,
I should like to hear your explanation of that. his
  "Certainly, Captain Kirk." Kasak
looked sideways through the warm and comfortably humid
mists of the bridge, and received immediate nods of readiness
from Askel and from Khitar on Communications.
"Prepare your comm board for a transfer of the distress
signal we received." He watched the
moments of fussing on the Federation ship and heard the
muttered speculations. They have no patience,
Kasak thought. A few seconds more and they will know,
but still they have to debate and wonder what it is I send
them.
  "Ready to transmit," said Khitar.
  was We are ready to receive your transfer, was said the
gray humanoid who sat behind Kirk and off to the
left in 150
  the big, bright circular bridge. Kasak
looked quickly toward him and suppressed yet another
smile. Ready to receive it, yes: but to accept it? That
must yet be seen.
  "Transmit," he said.
  It took less time to do than to say. Almost
immediately after the word of command, Khitar sat back from his
console and announced, "Transmission com-
pleted." Askel leaned over the comm board, did
something to the controls that made lights chase each other
across the readouts, then straightened up and walked over
to his accustomed place just behind the command chair. "Now
it's completed," Askel said, drawing an
inquisitive look from the captain and another from the
communications specialist. "I fed a scramble
signal into it from one of the intership
transceptors and sent a random squirt in the other
direction at the same time. Let the Feds try
to analyze it, if they have five years to spare." With
malevolence in both his face and his voice he added,
"Unless zan Khitar would prefer that I make
cracking our codes a little easier for them?" Khitar
said nothing. Nothing at all.
  "Captain Kirk, have you received my
transmission?" said Kasak, taking care not
to smile at the wrong time no matter how he felt
inside. There was a long silence from the bridge of the
Federation ship, but nobody had thought to cut the
visual connection when they shut off the sound, so
Kasak was able to enjoy the spectacle of his
message cassette being passed from hand to hand as
gingerly as if it were coated in one of the more interesting
contact poisons.
  Finally Kirk reopened the voice channel. For
many seconds he sat in his chair and stared
alternately at the cassette, at its printed
copy, and at Kasak's face on his own
viewscreen. Meanwhile, the sound link spat and
whistled through the interference of two sets of 151
  shields, transmitting nothing of more interest than
the fact that the Federation captain was breathing
hard.
  "This, was Kirk said at last, "is a forgery. his
  "Then I am scandalized, Captain Kirk, that
I should have come so close to precipitating an
incident because of an untruth."
  The Starship captain looked straight at the
viewscreen, and straight out of it, as if he stood
nose to nose with Kasak rather than on his own
bridge. Kasak presumed that this was what was called
a "dirty look." He was not impressed; any
Klingon cadet proctor could do better, and make
it feel worse with the live end of his shock wand.
  "Do you really expect me to believe this?" said
Kirk again, after another swift and silent discussion
with his two officers. Kasak still dismissed the
Vulcan as unimportant-why else would he serve
on a ship commanded and crewed by non-Vuleans? The
other, Makhoy-if he was a surgeon
specialist, why had he the name of a soldier?-was
more interesting. He had the fire, the passion, the klin;
and sometimes, for no reason at all, his body moved
like that of a Rom. That fascinated Kasak, because he
had seen Romulans move, both in the cube and in
the Year Games, and while he might have expected
it of the Vulcan, to find a human with the
same kinesics as a Romulan was to find a human
who deserved much closer examination. There was a story
behind Makhoy, more probably several, and given
adequate facilities and sufficient time, Force
Leader Marag could extract them all. "No, I
don't expect you to believe it," said Kasak.
"Then why send it?"
  "Because you should have evidence of the false signal that
led us astray." The Federation captain stared toward his
viewer and toward Kasak. He was a worthy
adversary indeed. Kasak had called him so in
jest, but it was true. He was quick, wise, and
difficult 152
  to deceive. That would make his final defeat so much the
sweeter. For he would be defeated. Kasak had
sworn it before the naked stars in the instant when the name
of the man and the name of the ship had shown him just what a
gift had fallen into his hands. Kirk would eat
deck scrapings and dust from the soles of Kasak's
boots for every one of the vermin tribbles he had
transported onto Captain Koloth's
cruiser-and even that would not begin to make him suffer as
Kasak sutai-Khornezh had suffered. At the
last he would be denied even the Black Fleet, and
his spirit would wander through cold darkness between the
living and the dead, bewailing its fate for all the years
to come....
  Captain Kasak dragged himself out of the dream and
waved one hand idly in the air, as humans did when
they dismissed a matter of small account. "We
picked up a distress call," he said calmly,
daring Kirk to call him a liar to his face. "This
was during the initial exercises for Hakkarl. We
had a ship beneath us that was new and fine, one that would
strike fear into all wrongdoers."
  Surgeon Specialist Makhoy made a
snorting sound and hid part of his face behind one hand.
  "And even in the Klingon Empire, the one does
not receive warnings of the imminent invasion of an
unprotected planet every day."
  "Not unless you listen to your local station, was he
heard Makhoy mumble amid chuckles from behind his
hand.
  Kasak chose to let that pass; but the remark and the
ill-timed laughter joined all the other notes in the
locked file at the back of his mind. It would be a
useful lever later, when it came time to learn what
stories Makhoy had to tell. "This planet was in
the Federation sector; but Hakkarl's long-range
scans could
  detect no Federation vessel coming to assist.
Therefore we came instead." "Captain, was said
Kirk, "you will excuse me, please. Has it not
been true in the past that the Klingon Empire enters
Federation space only when it sees a chance for
profit or expansion, and preferably both?"
"Thanks to the gdayt glowbugs- Excuse me.
Thanks to the wise and farseeing policies of the
Organian people, the Empire is not at war with the
Federation." Kasak spelled it out as though to a
small and backward child. "Is it not, therefore, the
duty of all to further friendly relations between our two
races by offering whatever assistance is at our
disposal- whenever and wherever it may be required?"
  Kirk cleared his throat again, not as he had done
after speaking Klingonese, but in that significant
way Kasak had heard humans use before. He
supposed it might be the eroded remnant of a shout
for attention by the leader of any given group, but now it
merely sounded as if one was announcing to the other that he
felt unwell. "Sofar as offering assistance is
concerned, Captain Kasak, a KT-INGA class
battle cruiser seems like an overenthusiastic
response to me. was He looked again at the
cassette whose message Askel and
Khitar had labored over for almost a day, until it
sounded just right. "And I still don't believe this. Neither
what it says nor where you say it came from."
  "Believe it or not, Captain Kirk, we
came here in good faith, and when this new ship
developed faults in the propulsion and
life-support systems, we almost lost our
lives. Allow me and my crew to believe we
came so close to the Black Fleet in the service
of something useful."
  "Captain Kasak," suddenly Kirk sounded very
tired, "you could almost be in politics. Ifyour ship
is back to full and proper operation-and my ship's
sensors tell me it is-then I should be grateful
if you 154
  and it would make best speed back within the boundaries
of the Klingon Empire. his
  "Not quite, Captain Kirk." Kasak noted with
great satisfaction that Kirk rolled his eyes and
concealed a groan, almost as if he knew what was about
to happen. "Since it was a respect for the terms of the
Organian Peace Treaty that brought us here and
placed our lives and our vessel in jeopardy-was
  "So you say," muttered Makhoy from behind his
captain. "comthen under the terms of that same
treaty, 1, my crew, and my ship may rest and
resupply at the M-class planet known as
Dekkanar."
  "Captain, was said Kirk, 'for some strange
reason I have been expecting that statement from the moment
you opened hailing frequencies. was "Then,
Captain"-Kasak allowed himself a broad smile
that showed the points of his teeth to best advantage-
"since you have had so much time for preparation, I see
no reason why either of us should linger here a moment
longer."
  Askel could not believe his own boldness. He had
not only made his first use of the transceptor
override, but he had done so through Communications in
full view of its department head and of the captain.
He had even risked testing Khitar's resolve with
that stupid excuse about the double-random signal, and
he had been proved right. For all his ability-and the very
fact of Kasak's selecting him as crew said
everything that needed saying about that-the communications officer
was lacking in any form of courage. Even though he
had certainly noticed something irregular about the
readback following Askel's signal, he hadn't
dared say anything about it. Either the captain would
respond as he always did when equipment
misbehaved, or Askel would deal with him 155
  personally. Having weighed the relative
prospects, Khitar had chosen silence as the
safest course.
  That was just as well. Those for whom Askel's
signal was intended were not the ones with whom Captain
Kasak would have wanted to make contact. Not yet,
at least. But it was essential that Imperial
Intelligence be made fully aware of what was
happening here. The message Askel had just
transmitted outlined Captain Kasak's first
intentions, as the captain had relayed them in the
theater: to become the protecting power for this planet
once they had thrown the Federation off it, and to so
obtain the planet for the Empire by provoking an
Organian intervention if such became required-but
until then displaying no loyalty to any other than
himself. Now things had changed, and Askel suspected
that the change was not one for the better. Meeting
Starfleet ships had always been a part of Kasak's
plan, that much was beyond question, but meeting this particular
ship and this particular captain had put a different
complexion on the matter. The science specialist
had seen Kasak's reaction to the names of Kirk and the
Enterprise, and though the captain had
covered it instantly and well-well enough at least
to fool those who didn't know him-that reaction had been
enough to make Askel's liver shift in his chest.
Kasak had wanted to kill.
  This new attitude had nothing to do with the plan, and
Askel had decided there and then that another message
would have to follow the first if everything was not to fall apart.
Perhaps Kasak would restrain himself, and be satisfied
with the ignominy that would fall on Kirk for the loss of
an entire planet; that revenge would be sweeter
than a simple killing, re- flecting as it did
what had happened to Kasak all those years ago.
But Askel could not bring himself to believe 156
  in it. I -- t was approaching the time when his own
plan would need to be set in motion if he was
to salvage anything from all of this. Even his life.
  "Of course it's a forgery, Captain; but it's a
particularly good one." Commander Uhura had come
back to the bridge, and for the past half-hour she and
Mr. Mahase had been shredding down the supposed
distress signal and subjecting even the least
crackle of subspace static to a battery of
cryptology tests. "It's so good that I'd raise
the question of whether it originated aboard the Klingon
ship at all."
  "So maybe someone on Dekkanar did invite
them after all."
  "It's entirely possible." Uhura waved
several sheets of hard copy and then slapped them
down on her working console. "Even though nothing was ever
detected, we've taken the thing apart, and the carrier
wave, the signal corruption, all of it points
to a planetside source of transmission. Although
whether the planet was Dekkanar or the Klingon
homeworld remains to be determined."
  "Wonderful." Jim scrubbed the heels of both
hands into his eye sockets in a weary gesture that
had as much to do with how fed up he had become with the
Dekkani as with how little sleep he'd been getting
lately. "The Klingons have always been capable of this
sort of deception, so I guess I really shouldn't
have put it past them." Jim glanced up at the
viewscreen. The Klingons, for their part, seemed
unconcerned that they were the focus of attention for four
hundredplus pairs of eyes or species-variable
alternatives, or that every available sensor,
camera, and recording device was being run over their
vessel. Instead, they seemed more concerned with their own
punctilious observation of Starfleet's mandatory
traffic limits. 157
  Tazhat's crew held their linked ships
exactly at the boundary of minimum separation, five
kilometers bang on the nose.
  Just how exactly came out an hour later during
an engineering grid-laser scan to cross-check the
Klingon battle cruiser's dimensions against
official intelligence figures. One of the many
additional figures that came out of it was that the
Klingon ship was holding formation at a distance
correct to the millimeter and eight decimal
places. "Very impressive, I'm sure," said
Jim, not sounding impressed at all. "But how
does the ship perform under combat stresses?" "If
you're asking for opinions," said Bones from his usual
place behind the center seat, "then mine is that I'd rather
not find out."
  "I doubt the Klingons know themselves." Scotty was
on the bridge as well, having brought the stationkeeping
data up in person. Jim knew that his chief
engineer would sooner turn teetotaler than admit
to anything like interest in the Klingon ship, but now that he
had lost the opportunity to take it apart, he was
gazing at the battle cruiser with a wi/l expres-
sion on his face.
  "Well, Mr. Scott, what do you
think of him?" Jim took care to use the correct
pronoun for the Klingon ship, and was amused when
Scotty snorted something that might not have been
Gaelic but was certainly rude. "A bucket
o" bolts, sir. Oh, aye, it'll be the
usual." Jim raised his eyebrows. "Cheap an'
nasty rubbish, all but the guns. And automated
forby. I wouldna like to run a ship on automatics
an' then take it into any sort of combat. Not even
this one." He patted one of the bridge railings
affectionately. "No, I dinna think the
Enterprise would have much trouble wi' that thing."
  "Um." Jim leaned forward a bit and looked more

  closely at the steadily increasing raft of data
that various departments were accumulating about the Klingon
cruiser. A lot of it was as opinionated as
Scotty, and a lot more was inspired guesswork, but the
general view seemed to bear out what had just been said.
  He sat back again and stared at the battle
cruiser's hulking outline on the screen. "Still, I
echo Bones on this one. I hope we never have
cause to learn what it can do." Jim put his thoughts
of the Klingons aside for a moment. "Estimated time
to orbital reinsertion, Mr. Sulu?"
64 Three-point-seven hours at present speed
and heading, Captain." "Good. In that case,
Uhura, patch me through to Captains North and
Farey. It's been too long since I had an
update."
  "He is an admiral?"
  Askel heard the edge in Kasak's voice and
scowled inwardly. He would have preferred that his
captain not find out any more about Kirk's career than
he already knew, and had said as much, but Kasak was now
standing behind him and speed-scanning the data as it
appeared on the library computer monitor in the
captain's private office, so there was no way
to prevent him from extracting the information.
Intelligence had been working hard where James T.
Kirk was concerned. The human's name had a
considerable entry against it, and Kasak had demanded
to see the lot. Seeing it had not improved his
temper. As he grew calm again, he was grateful
that some errant need for secrecy had brought him behind a
closed door, because it was never good for a crew to see
their commander lose his temper and his control so
completely. He had only bared his teeth at first,
but later 159
  he had raged, and twice now he had
flung the collated hard copy across the room. This
latest piece of outrageous information was as much as he
could bear.
  Kasak took a deep breath of the warm, moist
air, and then another, but it was only with a third that the
burning began to fade from his chest and from behind his eyes.
"That Kirk should be an admiral by now is a thing that
I can understand," he said slowly. "But that by all
accounts he should resent the promotion is an
insult!" Askel stood by the computer console and said
nothing, his face devoid of any expression that
might be misconstrued. "An insult to the rank,
to the institution of rewarding merit, to the others like him
who have lived long enough to earn such rewards, and
to ambition itself."
  "If it pleases the one to say so, then it is so."
  "And what do you say, Thought Master Askel?
What is behind the careful phrases that will not give me
offense? Speak."
  "He is an admiral who would prefer to be a
captain. You are a captain who would prefer
to be"-Askel hesitated for an instant, debating
the wisdom of his words, before he went on-"to be the
captain of your own ship, one that is not taken from you
after every flight. To be your own master instead
of their servant$99
  "Be careful," said Kasak in a voice that had
gone flat and dead. "Be very careful indeed."
  "Killing the speaker will not kill the truth," said
Askel. The boldness of his words took Kasak
by surprise, disarming whatever threat or action his
statements might have provoked.
  fifiso$99
  "And killing Admiral Kirk will be a poor
satisfaction$'i Kasak stared for several
seconds at his science officer, then turned a
chair out from the desk and sat
  down. "How are these issues connected?" he
demanded, curious. "In this fashion: your rage would
have you kill him by some means not offensive to the
Organian wewwI'vethpu', and once he is
gone, what then?" "He will be my servitor in the
Black ('Fleet," growled Kasak, "and I will
slay him again a thousand times, laughing."
  "This will be in any case. But would it not be a more
elegant revenge to make him you, and you him?"
  "Explain," Kasak said, using Battle
Unguage to indicate his impatience. "Kirk
resents his promotion to admiral," said Askel,
"because it takes him from the bridge and the
direct command of his ship, and from any further chance of
gaining glory."
  "And?"
  "Death in action is an eventuality he must have
faced before, many times. He will be prepared to face it
again, and to accept it if need be. Therefore the killing
of Kirk will be a lesser punishment than to let him
live."
  "Why?" Kasak continued to use Battle
1eaanguage, for though his irritation with Askel was
fading, his idea was of sufficient interest to require
minimal prompts. It had occurred to him that
Askel would have continued even if his captain said
nothing at all, but Kasak had decided that his
science, first, and executive officer needed to be
reminded who was in command on this ship. It would teach him
humility and a sense of place; and if it pushed him
into losing his temper, then Kasak already had several
punishment details in mind that would do the job just as
effectively. Askel probably suspected
something of the sort, because Kasak could actually see the
other officer pulling himself back under full control.
That was 161
  sufficient: superiority had been reestablished,
so the captain could become magnanimous
once more. "Relax, "Kel," he said, gesturing
to the computer console's chair. "Relax, sit down,
and continue at your own pace." Askel remained where
he was for a moment, standing quite still, and inwardly Kasak
went tense. If he had pushed too hard, as he
had done to other junior officers in the past, then this
was the moment to be most wary. There was something about being
criticized and then patronized immediately afterward that
touched a raw nerve in the Klingon psyche. Then the
science specialist nodded-a short, sharp jerk of his
head-and sat down, and the moment was past, until the
next time. "Captain Kasak," he said, "all
know that the Federation is weak and lacking in the true
komerex klin, that strength of purpose which gives
Klingons their superiority. It is unable to punish
even its own criminals as they deserve. Sentence of
execution has been erased from its books of law
except as penalty for a few most particular
crimes. Incompetence is not one of them. Therefore--
he leaned forward and began counting points off on his
fingertips- "one can safely assume that even after you
disgrace Kirk by causing the Organians to hand over
this planet's development to us, he will not be
terminated by his own superiors-was
  "And this," interrupted Kasak, amused
and confused in equal measure, "is intended to be more
stimulating than cutting out his liver?" "Yes,
sir, it is. Because after that, do you believe Starfleet
will ever give him command of his own ship again? They will
enforce his rank and the duties of that rank, and leave
him to rot behind a landbound desk. Oh, they'll call
on his experience, and allow him out once in a while
to inspect vessels in close orbit, but 162
  if ever he travels out among the naked stars again,
it will be as a passenger on some other captain's
ship, where he will be of no more account than a piece of
baggage." Askel grinned savagely and closed his
fist. "And always he will know and helplessly remember
how he was brought so low, and he will speak your name with
curses. As you have spoken his for far too long!"
  Kasak gazed at him through eyes half-hooded
by their heavy lids, and said nothing at all.
  was * . . initial upheaval downstairs after the
ships went to battle stations, but things have calmed down
more or less. his
  "Noted, Gytha," said Jim, more relieved than
he was willing to admit. He and the Enterprise had
been away from the action for almost twelve hours, and
he kept thinking of a line from one of Freeman's more
peculiar tapes: "Anything can happen in
the next half-hour." He remembered vaguely that
the line had been delivered as someone called battle
stations. Well, at least most of the possible shocks
hadn't happened. But the PDI had made its
presence known. "Anything further on the fight
planetside?" "Negative on that, Jim.
Somebody started shooting at Johnson's people as
soon as they landed. Three hit, including the
colonel. Nothing serious, but after that the DPG had
clearance for self-defense. -- Captain North
smiled dryly. "It all got very peaceful very fast.
Evacuation is proceeding, and Nic has some good
news for Y. his
  It was indeed good news, unmitigated by buts or
maybes. Vanguard's geosynchronous position was
such that she was now on the dayside of Dekkanar and able
to run a direct astroscan on the system
primary. Her science officer, Lieutenant
Commander T'rell, had observed, logged and later
confirmed that the 163
  sunspot activity had passed its peak and was
tapering off rapidly. "If it continues into recess
at its present rate, Captain, was she told
Kirk, "the last phases of the personnel evacuation
may be safely undertaken by transporter
beam. I shall of course continue to monitor. was
"Thank you, Commander," said Jim. "Kirk out."
He closed the channel and smiled. Things were finally
starting to look up. Now if he could only work out
what to do about the Klingons.
  Uhura's comm board beeped, and Jim thought,
No.... She touched the transdator in her ear,
frowned slightly, and said, "It's Hakkarl, sir.
Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh wishes
to discuss a matter of importance."
  Jim turned enough to lift an eyebrow at her; that
use of full title and line, rare between Klingon and
human, suggested that this might be more than just a
social call.
  "Recorders and voiceprint analysis up and
running, Captain," said Spock softly.
  "Let's hear what he has to say."
  The Klingon was no more beautiful now than he had
been at first sight. Age and experience had left
their mark on his face, and it was probably one even
a Klingon mother would find hard to love, but Jim was
getting used to it. "Captain Kasak," said Jim,
and nothing more. "Captain Kirk. was Kasak was still
speaking Federation Anglish, and this time he was showing no
sign that doing so annoyed him. As far as
anyone on Enterprise could tell, the Klingon had
more on his mind than that. "Within this system and holding
separation distanceftom a Federation starship, may it be
said that I am within Federation space?" He already
knew as much; he had known it before 164
  he came here, and Jim had taken him to task about
it since. So what was going on? "Captain, this
sector is officially nonaligned, but the planet
4725 Cancri TV is under Federation
territorial protection. So, put simply,
yes, this is Federation space."
  "And you in your rank as admiral are the most
senior Federation officer?" Jim hesitated,
wondering how in hell he knew that, then remembering
that his Klingon intelligence file was probably
hefty. Even so, he didn't have to act as if he
liked it. "Yes."
  The Klingon's yellow eyes had gone cold and
wary, though Jim had the feeling they weren't watching
him, but someone-several someones-on Kasak's own
bridge. "Then, Admiral Kirk"'tilde comdid
he really come down harder on that "Admiral" than
he needed to?-"V and my crew require and
request that at this time you grant us your protection and
political asylum within the borders of the
Federation-
  And all hell seemed to break loose.
  "STATIONS!" BARKED KASAK as he cut the
transmission link. The whip-crack imperative of
Battle Language had a more immediate effect even
than the heavy disrupter pistol he had drawn the
instant he spoke his final words to Kirk. Six of
his crew dropped back into their proper places.
Surgeon Specialist Arthag and Security
Officer Marag stood right where they were, watching the
pistol and remaining very still. Neither had a duty station
on the bridge and they were there only because the captain
had ordered them present to witness his discussion with the
Federation commander. They were not alone in their surprise
at what they had just heard. Or in their desire
to extract the traitor's lungs and make him eat
them. Kasak knew it. That was why he had brought the
pistol. It wasn't meant for use-unless that was
absolutely necessary-but to buy him the moments he would
need for talking. After that, either he would no longer need
the pistol or he would need it as he needed breath:
to live. "Better," he said, and having framed out
what he would say an hour and more ago, went on, "and
it
  pleases me that all of you are loyal."
One or two were surprised by that; the others heard
only sarcasm and responded according to their custom, with
glares of silent hatred or snarled curses.
Kasak nodded slowly, having expected nothing
else. "Otherwise I would not have dared to act in this
fashion. Or in this." And he returned the weapon
to its holster. It was not an act of such daring and trust
as he intended it to appear, for he did not reseal the
strap that looped across the pistol's grip to hold it
secure, and he was comfortably at ease with the speed of
his own gun hand. If anybody made a hostile
move, Kasak knew well enough that he could have the
weapon clear of its holster again fast enough. But it was
the gesture that mattered, the gesture that was meant
to impress, and it succeeded. There was some muttering, but
all made acceptably relaxing movements as they
settled back to listen.
  For his part, Kasak did not relax until
Arthag was seated at Damage Control and Marag
had perched himself at the position normally occupied
by Environ- mental Engineering. Both systems were
now on automatic, their overrides run
respectively through Engineering Central and
Medical Sciences, but the chairs were still in place.
Most important, Force Leader Marag
was now almost a full radius of the bridge away from
his supposedly treacherous captain, and given
Marag's well-established reputation, that was still
barely far enough.
  "Now that you are willing to listen," said Kasak,
"hear what I have to say and study it well." He
leaned back in his command chair, and swept a long,
slow stare across the faces of his chosen crew. This was
the moment for which they had been
  selected, handpicked both for their abilities
and-far more importantly-for the frequency with which
  they had served under Kasak in the past. Loyalty

  aboard a Klingon ship was a difficult thing
to ensure at the best of times; there was too much
jockeying for future position, for arranging the
downfall of a superior if that downfall would bring with
it more benefits than would continued support.
  He had always taken care to judiciously spread
his own personal glory among his subordinates,
even when their accomplishments were of a lesser magni-
tude than his. In that fashion they were continually
reminded of the source of their most immediate advantage,
and furthermore they were continually presented with
indications of their captain's esteem. At
no time would such a policy, even in its most
blatant form, be considered an attempt to buy the
loyalty of a crew member or an entire crew.
The usual interpretation was that a given captain was
recognizing the part played by his crew,
individually or collectively, in his latest
success. Just as, if they were responsible for his
failure, he would kill them. Their faces showed
Kasak that they knew this. There was not a single
Klingon on Hakkarl's bridge who had failed
to benefit in some way from service with this captain. For
all that he could be cruel, his cruelty had never
been pointless: it was widely known that the
sutai-Khomezh regarded energy wasted to no
purpose as wasted energy and nothing else. But if
there was some advantage to be gained ... There were
stories about that, too. Stories to scare cadets
with.
  It was this same attitude that controlled his
granting of benefits; he did not hand them out
purely as a bribe in the hope of future
support, as some captains were known to do, but as
payment for hard striving in the duties Kasak set.
And when they were so earned, he gave them immediately,
publicly and with much praise.
  "An attempted mutiny is not in itself a
mutiny," said Kasak. "But an attempt to act
without thinking first is always thoughtless. And unwise. There
are other captains who would have left you dead. All
of you. Or you might have left me dead, and then none
of you would know the reason why I spoke as I did
to the Federation Captain Kirk."
  "And maintain shields at full power," Jim
said. "That ought to buy us time to think of something else."
Mr. Scott said something skeptical that Jim almost
lost in the whooping of the red-alert siren, but he could
guess the content. "We won't be firing first, no,"
he went on. "And not because of the rules of engagement.
At least not ours." He looked up at the blinking
alert lights, decided that by now everyone had gotten
the message, and ordered the alarm shut off for the nth
time today. "I'm more concerned now about the Organians
sticking their noses into this mess."
  "Phasers locked on target, Keptin," said
Chekov from the defense station. "But it looks as if
those Cossacks are just sitting there."
  "Easy does it, Mr. Chekov. Hold
fire. They'll sit there until they've sorted
matters out between the captain's faction and the rest. And
then the winners will make their move. Whatever
that's likely to be." In the instant after Captain
Kasak's astonishing request for asylum, as the
comlink image broke up on a scene of imminent
chaos and death on Hakkarl's bridge, Jim had
sounded yet another red alert and called for immediate
defensive and evasive action. The shields had
never been fully down since interception, but they had
been reduced to standby intensity as one of those token
gestures of good faith Lieutenant Stewart had
been talking about-and they had come 169
  right back up to maximum in the first of the seven
seconds at full impulse power that had flung
Enterprise far away from the Klingon cruiser. The
Klingons had an unfortunate
propensitydemonstrated for the first time at Donatu
V and all too frequently thereafter-of resorting
to an unre- stricted level of violence when
settling in-ship disputes. Since the ultimate
demonstration of this tended to be the detonation of their own
warp drive system (and consequently all other
parties in the area), high-speed retirement to a
safe distance had become the standard response for
anyone caught in the vicinity of a Klingon crew
reconciling their differences about internal politics.
  Jim eyed the main screen's readouts and
felt somewhat more at ease to see that Sulu had already
enabled an override circuit linking Enterprise's
own warp engines to a tight-focused sensor scan
locked on the battle cruiser some hundred thousand
kilometers distant. In this particular situation, at
the first hint of matter-antimatter overload, the
override would cut in and wrench them from their present
station-keeping position to warp factor four in less
than a second. Even that savage and stress-laden
acceleration was cutting matters far too fine, since
by their very nature certain parts of the energy pulse were
themselves warp-capable. This time there were more sweaty hands
on the U.s.s. Enterprise than just those of her
captain, as they and he watched and waited.
  And then waited some more....
  Although he was hearing it with his own ears, Askel still
found it hard to believe that any Klingon officer of
Kasak's fame should lay himself so open
to ridicule. Had he or any of the others spoken
of the captain's history in his hearing, as Kasak was
speaking of it 170
  now, he could and would have burned them on the spot and
been applauded for it. What the rest of the crew thought
of his tale of tribbles being deliberately
introduced to infest a ship he couldn't
tell, apart from the usual and instinctive reaction of
disgust. Askel loathed the useless fluffy little
horrors as much as any of them, even though he had
gained a few seconds of amusement when he
discovered that his people's word for them, yIH, exactly
matched a human noise of distaste. However, it was
plain that while they found the rest of Kasak's tale
of ability passed over something to be regretted, they
were unable to understand why the captain was subjecting them and
himself to this embarrassing and humiliating ordeal.
Until he named the Federation starship and the Federation
captain who had been responsible.
  And then Askel understood. Mentally he lashed
himself for his obtuseness, for missing the links that an
Imperial Intelligence operations master should have
spotted even before Kasak began to speak. And then
he calmed somewhat, knowing that he was blameless, since
he had lacked essential data. He had not known,
for instance, that Kasak put revenge on Kirk and the
Enterprise above his own reputation.
  That he was convinced, however, did not mean that any
covert Imperial Security operative had also
taken the unusual step of believing what he or she
was told. Captain Kasak was still in considerable
danger from ... whom? Without seeming too
obvious about it, Askel began to watch the other
faces. "I hear you wondering among yourselves,"
Kasak said, "if the one has taken leave of his
senses." Now, that was exaggeration, for whether through shock
or because they didn't want to miss a word of what he
said, nobody had spoken since he began. "You
wonder then if what you heard him say to the Feds was

  something spoken only in your imagination. I tell
you it was not. I said it. But I spoke those words not
to betray the trust placed in me by the Empire, or
the honor given me by those I command on this first
flight. I used them as I would use any other
weapon: against my enemy."
  Laughter bubbled up under Askel's immobile
face, threatening to disrupt his composure with an
unseemly outburst. Of course! Once the clues
were assembled, the science specialist found himself
having to fight down an impulse to leap cheering to his
feet. It was so simple and yet so brilliant that
it deserved to-no, it had to succeed.
  "Kirk is torn now between his suspicion of my
true motives and his hope that what I said to him is
true," Kasak continued. "The longer we can
maintain the illusion that we would meekly
deliver Hakkarl and Tazhat and all their
secrets to him in exchange for what passes for
life somewhere in the Federation, the more blinded with anger
he will be when he learns that the only truth is his own
fear of our superior race! When we power up and
begin to move away, oh, so slowly, he will see his
great prize and all its glory snatched from his
grasp. And how will he try to close his grip, zan
Katta?"
  Katta twitched from immobility as if waking from
a doze during some dull lecture at the
Academy, and her answer was the hasty rattle of
words Askel had heard from his own students in just that
situation. Except that Katta's answer was
correct. "The one will act like any wise commander:
free fire at impulse engines to disable the prize;
precision fire to sever warp nacelles, thus
preventing destruct option; finally tractor towing."
"Exactly, except for the Organians. Kirk
may call down fire on us, but I doubt if it will
leave his phaser 172
  tubes. While we, who have been visiting a
planet permitted to us under the light. bulbs" own
peace treaty, will be the innocent victims of
Starfleet aggression. Now what would an
Organian make of that? Krynn?" Askel
covered his smile with one hand, admiring Kasak's
technique. He had begun this so much on the
defensive that he had needed a disrupter as backup,
and now if it went on much longer he would be setting
off-duty work assignments and written examinations.
  Krynn answered in much the same manner Katta
had, as student to teacher. "Terms of Organian
Treaty regarding development of planets located
in Treaty Zone. Respective signatory
parties to send envoys. Purpose: demonstration of
respective abilities to develop planet in
peaceful useful manner. Rights granted to party showing
best ability or most acceptable to native
population. Failure to abide by terms of
agreement: physical interdiction of offending party from
planet, which is then ceded to nonoffending party."
  "And what do we learn from this, bearing in mind that our
distant line-cousins the Dekkani have already ordered the
Federation from their planet? Marag, what does it
tell you?"
  "That Kasak sutai-Khornezh still has a mind
sharp enough to cut throats," rumbled the force leader from
somewhere deep in his chest. "Since we will be there when the
Feds leave, these Dekkan cousins might
be persuaded to accept us as their new protectors.
And if a Fed starship goes so far as to fire on
us, or even to attempt it, the planet and its
surrounding spatial zone will become part of the
Imperial zone of influenceand the one will have exacted his
revenge, gained much glory, and won the Empire a
foothold in Federation space."
  Marag rose from his seat and came to a full
salute. "The one is no traitor," he said.
"All of Security is with him."
  Whether that was Marag making a somewhat cumbersome
joke about the fact that he alone was overt security
on this mission, or a barely veiled warning to the
coverts who acted as one or other department head on
this ship where all of the crew were heads of department,
Askel didn't really know.
  "Captain, Hakkarl has just reopened the comm.
channel," said Uhura. "Message is: "Still
on course to Federation planet 4725 Can IV, still
awaiting your reply.'That's all." Uhura
took the transdator from her ear. "And that is, in
fact, all. It's the only signal that has left
the Klingon double-ship combination since we broke
contact, and they haven't received anything$19
  "That includes the subspace
transmission detected by Lieutenant Mahase
during the Klingon transfer of their spurious
distress call, Captain," said Spock. "It is
a closed-satchel code of the type favored by my
father the ambassador, but in this instance neither
Communications nor Cryptography-was "Nor even
Mr. Spock himself," Uhura chimed in generously.
"comhas been able to make sense out of the signal
content," Spock continued without missing a beat.
"My own opinion is that it constitutes a decoy
in- tended to make us believe there is more of
significance going on aboard the Hakkarl than there
actually is."
  "You're saying the transmission is just gibberish."
  "Yes, sir. Although there is a chance that the
signal does in fact contain information, and is
directed toward whichever imperial orbital
facility built this particular cruiser. If that is
so, then I speculate the signal content to be
congruent with those of the 174
  automatically deployed drones carried
by experimental Starfleet designs for such a
purpose. Essentially the Klingon ship has
reported its own imminent destruction."
  "To cover their defection," Kirk said.
  "Presumably. I should not be surprised if we
receive a request for clearance to point-detonate
several photon torpedoes so as to leave an
appropriate heat and radiation footprint. The
number of torpedoes requested should provide a
reasonable indication of what sort of accident was
reported."
  In fact, the request to time-set twenty photon
torpedoes came in from Hakkarl less than two
minutes later.
  Jim turned to look very hard at Spock,
raising both his eyebrows. Spock responded as
he usually did, with the raising of only one. Twenty
photon torpedoes going off at once would make
an estimable flare. It would not look much like an
accident where the warp drives of both cruiser and
scout had run totally beyond control. That would
require more torpedoes than the Klingons and all the
Federation vessels put together had on board.
Instead, it would resemble a situation in which shutdown
had begun but failed to take effect. Even that was an
impressive bang, and Jim was relieved that he
wouldn't have to stay and watch it. "Chura." Jim
swung his chair around and grinned a bit at his comm
chief "I'm sure you've already made the
appropriate signal.to Sir Richard and
Vanguard concerning what's about to happen."
  "Yes, Captain. And to the Dekkan
Planetary Council. I did that in the sequencing
squirt to Colonel Johnson."
  "Right." He shook his head slowly and ruefully;
there wasn't really much else he could do in the
circumstances. "Very good, Uhura. Thank you.
Ad175
  vise the Klingon captain that he may begin
deployment of his own torpedoes. Advise him
further that we have locked our torpedoes on his command
pod. And if that isn't an accurate statement,
Mr. Chekov, please make it so." "Change of
lock confirmed, Keptin."
  "Messages acknowledged, sir. Captain
Kasak advises you that he intends a low-velocity
launch and will complete the deployment process using
tractors."
  "Sensible of him." Jim touched the call key on
his chair communicator, Scotty having hurried
back to Engineering when it first looked as though sudden
demands might be put on his beloved engines. "Mr.
Scott, have you been monitoring this?"
  "Aye, that I have. This lad's got it
all worked out. "Then it's practical enough from an
engineering point of view?" Vch aye, he's done his
homework right enough, though he's overdoin'the
torpedoesfist a wee bit ... or not, maybe. was
Jim knew quite well the sound of Scotty having
second thoughts. He waited. There was a sudden
scraping noise over the pickup as Scott
consulted one of the heavy-duty engineering-section pad
screens. "We've been runnin'a few computer
simula- tions, Captain, based on what we
scanned in the last close pass. If the engines
on that Klingon tub are boosted, an" the
waste-heat readin's are suggestin' as much as
thirty-five percent, then he's calculatin'the
big bangfist right. his
  Boosted engines had not come up for discussion before, and
Jim didn't like having the news sprung on him in
such a backhanded fashion. The way things had been
jumping today, it wasn't anybody's fault, but
Spock's various opinions about the cruiser
Hakkarl had already been enough to make Jim wary of
what other little surprises the ship might have in
store. 176
  "Mr. Spock," he said, was when you have a moment,
I'd like a program initiated to collate
what we've learned so far about the Klingon vessel.
At present the information is all over the place, so
that I've only now been told that Mr. Scott
thinks it has a boosted warp drive. If somebody
somewhere on this ship has any more theories that might
give the Klingons an advantage, I want to know
about them."
  Jim knew he was drifting along the outermost
edges of irritability. At present that didn't
matter, but once the diplomatic part of this mission
got back under way, he would have to be careful. The
six hours of missed sleep were taking their revenge.
  "Torpedo deployment completed, Keptin."
Chekov tapped controls on the weapons console.
"Tactical on the viewer."
  The swarm of red-glowing fireflies that were the
Klingon torpedoes looked as ominous to James
Kirk as they always did, regardless of the fact that this
time they were tracking away from Enterprise rather than
toward her. His next order wasn't so much the
issuing of a command as the utterance of a private
desire.
  "Right. Mr. Sulu, let's get out of here."
There was no need for course or speed instructions:
they were continuing on their original course
back to Dekkanar, and since Sulu had no more
love for Klingon ordnance than his captain, they would
be moving just as fast as they were able. Since Hakkarl
had already been advised of Jim's intention, it was the
Klingon helm officer's responsibility to keep
up. Enterprise was not staying in the vicinity of four
teratons' worth of explosive power, not for the sake
of a dozen newly surrendered battle cruisers.
  Sulu pushed her sublight velocity to the limit
and held it there for almost five minutes, watching as the
countdown numerator spindled down to zero. The 177
  Klingons were thirty thousand kilometers off
to starboard and the same distance astern, a whisker over
half a second behind them. Their helmsman's
reflexes were evidently of the sort that made steel
traps hide their teeth in shame, and Jim made
various mental warning notes to himself on just that
subject.
  "Aft angle on the viewer," he said.
"Shields four, five, and six to maximum power and
deflection angle, all hands brace for possible
flux turbulence." And as if on cue, the
torpedoes went off. There was a sudden blink on the
screen, a pinpoint of intolerable brilliance that
expanded violently into a flare of unleashed
energy. Enterprise seemed to quiver in the same
instant that the glare of the detonation reached her
viewscreen, and a low rumble like that of her warp drive
shivered through the starship's hull and decks as a
warp-speed disturbance passed through her systems.
Artificial gravity flickered maybe half a
G to either side of normal. Uhura's
transdator, lying on the communications board,
emitted a multiple-harmonic squeal that could be
heard across the bridge and would certainly have deafened
her. One of sickbay's diagnostic beds claimed
that the three tricorders resting on its mattress
pad were suffering from high blood pressure.
  And then it was over.
  Jim took a quick look around the bridge and
noted that everything seemed to be where he had last seen
it, then glanced at Ensign Penney. "Damage
report, Yvonne," he said. "Then defense station
weapons status readout. Uhura, signal for a
similar condition report from the Klingons, please.
And thank you, Mr. Sulu; that was nicely
judged."
  The reports came in on all three ships, and
every one of them showed the reassuring "no damage"
flash Jim had expected to see. But there
was one additional item in the report from the Klingon
ship that he 178
  definitely had not been expecting, and it took
him just a little bit off-guard.
  Kasak wanted to come calling.
  And Askel wanted to know why.
  "It will deepen Kirk's trust in my good faith,
that I will cross to the vessel of an enemy and meet
with him face to face," Kasak said. "And he will be
all the angrier, and easier to provoke into rashness and
stupidity, when his trust is so humiliatingly
betrayed." The speech sounded easy, not naturally so
but with the ease that came with careful rehearsal.
Askel guessed that the captain had known his latest
decision would not go by without someone asking about it, and he
had prepared his answer accordingly.
  It might have worked with the rest of the crewexcept of
course for the security operatives, whom Askel,
to his chagrin, had not yet uncovered-but surely
Kasak did not expect his science specialist
to swallow the same bait. Except that as they
continued to discuss the matter in the mess room, it
became increasingly plain that, yes, the captain was
expecting just that.
  Unless of course, Askel reflected
to himself while Kasak punched up food and drink for
them both, the captain is expecting nothing of the sort
and is provoking me for another test reaction. He
determined, in that moment while Kasak's back was
turned, that he would provide no such thing. He would
be more serene than a sleeping Vulcan, more
difficult to read than an unwritten book, and he
would use that position of strength to do some subtle
testing of his own.
  He had already sent another intelligence
communication, during the flurry of activity that
accompanied the shepherding of twenty live time-set
photon torpedoes. His message had been primed
in the same 179
  instant that Krynn sent Hakkarl in pursuit
of the Federation starship, and he had transmitted it under
cover of the Magnificent explosion. Even if it
had chanced to be overheard by some snooper either on the
Enterprise or on his own ship, it would have sounded just
like any other flux-distorted random squawk.
  And now, thanks to Kasak's sudden desire
to pay deceitful social visits, it had all
to be done again.
  He looked at the tray of fruit nectars and
plain pastries, selected one of each,
ate, drank, and tasted neither. "When and how many?"
he asked finally, all business.
  Kasak sipped at his glass of sweet fruit
nectar before he replied. "At once and alone."
  Askel was immediately wary of the real motive behind
Kasak's sudden decision, and his mind began
to race. "This may not be," he said, taking great
care over the inflection of his speech. It would hardly
help if he put the wrong weight on the wrong word
and Kasak turned stubborn, because the last thing
Askel wanted was for his captain to go alone to meet
James T. Kirk. For various reasons. "It
would be wrong if the one went unaccompanied. It would
lack propriety. A captain of such repute should
have an honor guard. . . ." His voice trailed
off when he noticed the way Kasak was looking at
him, a strangely speculative look that turned
Askel's liver to lead within his chest. He knows about
LL, he thought. He knows about LL and he knows
about me!
  None of that could be seen on Askel's face, of
course. Nobody attained the rank of operations
master by letting people read what they were thinking, and several
operations masters in the past had gone so far as to wear
dermally implanted prostheses of
cosmetic plastic to permanently mask their
features. Askel was not one of these, although with further
advancement 180
  he might become one. At present he hid his
thoughts by not allowing them to show, ever-except
deliberately, for effect. In this instance it was just as
well, for his fears were banished by Kasak's next
words. "Then the one will accompany his captain onto
the Enterprise, together with others yet to be named," said
Kasak. "And we shall wait until we achieve
orbit, so that the stripping of the ship of all but a
watchkeeping crew will not seem strange."
  "Honored, Captain," he said. "And the others?"
"Yet to be named, I said. But Marag certainly.
It is always good to have security in a hostile
environment."
  "Agreed." Though he ran that one several times
through his mind and sifted all the layers of meaning out of
it, Askel still wasn't sure whether it was a
simple statement or some kind of very subtle joke
at someone else's expense. And not necessarily that
of the security chief. Marag had, however, already
stated that he approved of Kasak's plan. Though
he might question this latest development, his inclusion in
the boarding party would put most of those doubts
to rest. "Do we beam across? "No. We will use a
shuttle. Though its intensity is slackening, the
present level of sunspot activity prevents
our use of the particle transporter." Askel
shook his head and drew breath to say something, but was
silenced with an upraised hand and a grin so that he
knew at once and mirrored it with one of his own.
"At least, so they will believe aboard Enterprise.
You know and I know that with Hakkarl's extra power at
his disposal, Tazhat's transporters can easily
bum through naturally occurring interference. But the Feds
don't know it yet, and they will only find out as a very
unpleasant surprise. S." He finished his own
pastry, drained the last mouthful of nectar from his
glass, and stood up. "Hangar bay, ten minutes
after orbital 181
  insertion. Duty uniform and sidearm, but dress
sash with all decorations and commendation clasps.
Let's go talk to the Federation."
  "Oh, God," said James Kirk very softly,
and meant it. "Six of them? How could terrorists
get their hands on six armed orbiters?" "Because my
people couldn't get to the landing fi6ld, except on
foot," said Todd Johnson from the main viewer.
He was cradling the bandaged mess that something
low-velocity and heavy-caliber had made of his
left elbow. He and his men had been observing
Starfleet's self-assigned rules of engagement
right down the line from the first moment of setdown, so they
hadn't been wearing any defensive armor when they
put their own bodies between the Federation civilians and
whatever the PDI chose to throw at them. The middle
of a terrorist attack had never really been the
place for medics, and for all the availability of
modem medical care aboard the orbiting starships,
Johnson had been patched up with field dressings
and tom strips of fabric as if he were a soldier
in one of the ugly wars back on Earth a few
centuries ago.
  "Noted and logged, Colonel. We'll take
all appropriate precautions. "If we'd been
able to beam-jump across ftom the embassy grounds
Johnson didn't bother to finish the sentence.
  Jim sympathized: he knew exactly how the
DPG commander must be feeling, including the slug through
his arm, and even that wasn't as painful as knowing for
certain that he could have done something to change the situation
had circumstances been different. Having a force of
nature working against you-in this case the lethal
sunspot interference in the transporter
beam-was infinitely worse than twenty-twenty
hindsight. 182
  The background noise of the channel was suddenly
brutally dominated by the rapid-fire hammer of some
sort of automatic weapon, and immediately afterward by the
screech of multiple phasers. They had the
unmistakable top-frequency whine of a stun
setting, and Jim's mouth quirked in a harsh
smile. Despite all the malicious
provocations, supported or at least connived at
by Varn and the rest of the Dekkan Planetary
Council, despite the brutal stupidity of the
PDI, even despite being perforated by a chunk of
metal that had made a jigsaw puzzle of his elbow
joint, Johnson was holding a full two steps
down from the intensity of response that the rules of
engagement now permitted. Jim began to understand how the
colonel had acquired his tabs so young.
  "According to my science officer, we'll be
transporter capable in just over four hours."
  "Good. Once all this is over, your Dr.
McCoy and my elbow will have to get together. In the
machine shop. There's not much for him to heal any more. his
  So that's what a stiff upper lip sounds like, thought
Jim, wincing inwardly at the thought of what
Johnson had dismissed so dryly. I've often
wondered. "Affirmative on that, Colonel," he
said aloud. "Keep your head down till then.
Kirk out." The screen blanked out, then once more
filled itself with the image of the Klingon battle
cruiser.
  "Looks like fun down there," said Bones. "A
whole barrel of laughs." His voice had the hard
edge that always crept into it when he was confronted by the more
avoidable human stupidities.
  "Our people are doing their damnedest not to get pulled
into the spiral, Bones."
  "I know, I know. Jim, we may well be the
good guys, and we may be shooting only to stun, but that
still doesn't make it any more acceptable. It
doesn't make us right. If the Federation hadn't
sited their Firechain 183
  installation on Dekkanar, we'd have one reason
less to drop those young people into that shooting gallery down
there."
  "You are an idealist, Dr. McCoy."
Spock meant it gently, perhaps even as a compliment,
but Bones was in no mood to hear any such thing. He
didn't interrupt as the Vulcan continued to speak,
but he simmered in a restless silence and
wasted a whole clip of furious glares on the
armor of Spock's passive exterior. "In your
own words," Spock went on, "the evacuation site
has become a shooting gallery. To extend the
analogy, therefore: are the targets in such a gallery
guilty of aggressive behavior? If a third
party defends the targets from harm by standing in front of
them and advises the marksmen that this passive defense
will become active if the shooting continues, who then
carries the burden of responsibility? I put it
to you that a moment spent looking at the viewscreen will
indicate that the situa- tion has changed very little.
The Firechain system has prevented such scenes
on an infinitely greater scale."
  "Are you sure you never cherished any secret
desire to practice law, Spock?" said Jim
quickly, before Bones could dominate what was left of the
discussion. The doctor, he had noticed, was
displaying all the indications of someone prepared
to defend a wrong opinion to the death. Something came
through on Uhura's console and she acknowledged. Her
slow sideways look toward the screen revealed the
transmission's source before she said anything.
  "It's time, Captain. Klingon shuttle is
departing scout ship Tazhat as of now.
ETA seven minutes."
  "Thank you, Uhura," said Jim, and turned
back to the screen. For a moment there was no change, and
then a tiny bright speck drifted free and curved
away 184
  from the cruiser. "Mr. Tomson, Mr.
Matlock, designated honor guard, please
make your way to the landing bay reception area." He
turned to Spock and McCoy. "And now,
gentlemen, if you'll agree not to continue your
difference of opinion in the turbolift, don't you
think we'd better get down there and say hello?"
  By the time they reached the shuttle observation
gallery, Montgomery Scott was there already.
Supervising, he said, except that he was dressed in
a standard uniform instead of the radsuit that was his
normal duty wear. It was far more likely that he was
making sure the Klingons didn't dent anything
important with their ship during the landing cycle. There
was no insult intended, at least no more than usual,
and certainly not a Klingon-specific one; when it
came to unfamiliar shuttlecraft pilots,
Scotty was like this with all of them.
  "Doctor, Mr. Spock," Scotty greeted
them absently in the manner of a man with things
on his mind, and then turned to Jim. "Captain, how
long are these Klingons goin' to be aboard?"
  "Captain Kasak has requested political
asylum," said Jim. "That could well mean they'll
be with us until we transfer them to a courier ship
off Star Base Twelve."
  "Ach, isn't that jist great."
  "Objections, Scotty?"
  "No more than usual, sir. I jist don't like
the idea of those creatures messin' about wi' the
Enterprise, that's all."
  "Not to worry," he said, trying to sound
reassuring. "I don't intend to let them have the run
of the place, just in case one of them changes his mind
about the benefits of life as a Federation citizen."
  "So long as they dinna come near Engineering." His

  voice had that tone of finality Scots engineers
had been refining over four centuries when warning
lesser mortals out of the private property of the
engine room. The refining process had probably
begun when the first of them helped build some maritime
steam engine somewhere along the Clyde near Glasgow,
then got shipped out with it so that the ship's captain would
have someone aboard who knew what to do when the
ruddy pressure cooker acted up. That had been
back in the nineteenth century of Old Earth. By the
twenty-third the breed of men who went by the title of
chief engineer had evolved. It no longer mattered
whether they were men or women or Scots or even
human; they were all of a piece, a race of
callused-handed, tech-minded, hard-drinking miracle
workers who could persuade a dying warp drive not
only to work again but to do so at peak efficiency. One
did not cross a chief engineer lightly, and the wise
did not cross them at all. "Scotty, if they
get past the dorsal K deck, you can do as you think
fit, because none of the rest of us will be in a fit state
to care." "Aye. You're right. I-
  "Attention, attention," the annunciator
interrupted. "Incoming shuttle is now entering final
approach phase. All nonessential personnel
please evacuate the area. Landing bay systems
please stand by. was "Here they come," said Bones.
He twiddled with the memory selector and the scan
parameters of his tricorder, then locked off and
snapped the memory head shut. "As of now, don't
get sick, any of you. Not unless you're
Klingons."
  "Thank you for the warning, Doctor,"
Spock said. "Falling ill had not been among my
present intentions. As any humanoid life-form
whatsoever." Scotty was paying no heed to the
cross-chat behind him. He had swung a control
console out from its 186
  recess in the insulated rollover of the observation
gallery clearport, and it was already alive with a
crawling glow of vector and velocity indic "
ators. "Landin" bay control room, this is
Chief Engineer Scott. I'd like to bring this one in
myself his
  "Control room here, Mr. Scott. Your
request is noted, logged, and approved. I'm
transferring control to your station. his
  "Thank you, lassie. Advise shuttle:
disengage all manuals at this time, bring drive and
maneuverin' thrusters to station-keepin'."
  "Manual controls off line. Three, two,
one, mark Incoming shuttle now secure and holding
station. You have control. was Scotty rubbed his hands
together, interlinked his fingers and flexed them until the
knuckles cracked, then twiddled them in the air like
a concert pianist about to play. "Right," he said,
"let's show them what a proper landin' looks like."
  "Scotty, behave. No power
fluctuations, if you please. I don't want our
guests rattled around the inside of their shuttle like
ice in your whisky glass."
  "Och, Captain, I'd never dream"-a
deliberate pause and a slow, wicked smile-"of
puttin'ice into a dram o' good Scotch whisky.
Or of that other wee matter either." He turned
back to the console and began touching controls on the
main panel. "The atmosphere containment field is
up an' runnin'; bay doors are comin'open as of
now."
  Below them, the great clamshell doors began
to retract, opening to reveal at first no more than a
slice of darkness, but expanding steadily until at
last that slice became a blunted, starshot wedge
of the ancient night lying beyond the man-made
fragility of Enterprise's glowing interior. Those
stars seemed to dance and shimmer as their glitter passed
through the containment field that kept the airless cold at
bay, but one 187
  of them blinked with a steadier rhythm and the harsh
blue-white light of a visual location beacon. The
shuttle hung immobile in the grip of the landing-bay
tractor for the few seconds that it took Scotty
to run his final sequence of checks, and then
began to move smoothly closer. For all his chief
engineer's tacit mock threats, Jim had never
seen a better landing. The shuttle, a squat
chisel-nosed vessel, settled onto the floor
of the bay with a lightness that would have put most feathers
to shame. Its grim gray thermoglaze and imperial
trefoils looked distinctly out of place aboard a
Federation Starship. The beacon that had been no more
than a particularly bright blink at two
kilometers was now a strobing lightning flash within the
confines of the hangar deck, leaving purple
afterimages on the retinas of those who chanced
to look straight at it. Jim was not the only one who
felt heartily relieved when some Klingon hand
reached out to switch the damned thing off.
  Either the Klingons inside the shuttle didn't know
about the atmosphere containment field or they knew but
didn't trust it. Whatever the reason, the hatch
didn't open until the fantail doors had been
shut and proof of breathable atmosphere provided by the
appearance of Commanders Tornson and Matlock and
their honor guard of security personnel. At
Colin Matlock's suggestion, none of the security
people wore their standard helmets or armor, but Ingrit
had insisted on the Type IV phasers that
all of them wore in plain view at their uniform
belts. No matter how friendly these Klingons; had
become, they were still Klingons, and it would be all too
easy for a well-intentioned gesture of going unarmed
to be mis- interpreted as that most dangerous thing
to suggest where Klingons were concerned, a sign of
weakness. 188
  The shuttle's hatch swung out and up, its
boarding ramp out and down, and one by one, six more of that
small and select band of Klingons who had managed
to set foot aboard the U.s.s. Enterprise
stepped out onto her deck. "Honors, hut!" said
Ingrit, and stepped smartly to one side as the file
of security guards formed a double rank. One of them
raised the boatswain's pipe that hung from its
lanyard around her neck, and piped the visitors
aboard.
  Jim and the others could hear the pipe's shrill
squeal even up in the observation gallery, and they could
see momentary confusion on all the Klingon faces in
the instant before the foremost of them realized that he was being
paid a courtesy. That officer relayed this information to the
others, provoking very human-seeming sidelong
glances before all six re- sponded with a salute.
  "Well, that's over," said Jim,
becoming uncomfortably aware that his nails had been
digging into the palms of his hands from the instant that
Scotty touched the shuttle down. He reached forward
to the console communicator panel. "Kirk to honor
guard."
  "Security chief here. his
  "I think Rec One will be an appropriately
neutral ground for whatever Captain Kasak
wants to discuss with me."
  "Affirmative, Captain. Rec Deck One.
ETA four minutes. Tomson out. was "Four
minutes. That gives us about two, gentlemen. Shall
we?" -. "Why not the officers lounge, Jim?" said
McCoy as they headed for the turbolift. "One of the
privacy areas."
  James T. Kirk shook his head decisively
and gave Bones a crooked smile. "Because that's
exactly what they'll be expecting, somewhere small
and pri- vate. The rec room's as far from that as
we've got on 189
  this ship. It'll keep them confused and off balance,
give us something of an edge, and it'll give Kasak
a surprise to make up for the ones he's been
springing on me.l tilde
  "Ye dinna think he's serious about this
political asylum business, Captain?" said
Scotty.
  "No. I won't believe that until there's a
crew of my choosing aboard his ship and it's safely
on the way to spacedock-was "I will feel more at
ease," said Spock as he stepped into the
turbolift car, "when the data we requested from
Starfleet Intelligence on Captain Kasak
gets here. The name Kasak has an uncomfortable
ring of familiarity about it, and yet not so familiar that
I am able to place the context." "And you're almost
ready to concede defeat and admit it annoys you,
Spock?" "No, Doctor, in fact I am not.
It is an inconvenienoe, but by no means an
insoluble problem. Current transmission time
to Starfleet Headquarters is some
three-point-seven-three hours, so the information may
well arrive while we are entertaining its
subject."
  "Now that I want to see."
  "Just be prepared to duck, Bones," said Jim.
"If Kasak has run across the Enterprise before,
I doubt he'll remember the occasion kindly.
Few Klingons would."
  "Och, now, that Captain Kang was all
right, once we got things sorted out." "Funny
thing, Scotty, but I seem to remember you trying
to cut his head off with a claymore."
  "That wasna a claymore, Captain; it was a
Scottish regimental basket-hilted
broadsword an' well you know it."
  "But I notice you're not correcting me on the
way you wanted to use it." "Aye, well . . ."
  "Just watch him, that's all. I don't know
what's at the bottom of all this. If it's nothing
more than a bunch of dissatisfied Klingon officers
defecting to put their opponents in a bad light,
I'll be pleasantly surprised." The lift
slowed to a standstill. "And very, very grateful . . ."
They stepped out of the lift car and into Rec One. And
into yet another demonstration of the nearproverbial
speed with which starship gossip traveled.
  It had been something like ninety seconds since
Jim had given his instructions to Security Chief
Tomson, and already the rec deck had more crew
members in it than was usual at any one time. It
seemed to Jim that all the off-shift personnel who
weren't there already were strolling with elaborate
high-speed nonchalance in from the corridor or out of the
number two turbolift. He found himself
wondering what Kasak's people would make of
Enterprise's multispecies crew, because he had
noticed that all of the Klingons were of the Imperial
race. That suggested at the very least a certain
elitism, and at worst racial intolerance and
xenophobia. It also suggested that the more eyes there were
watching them, the safer it would be for all concerned-.
  "Attention, everyone," he said, projecting hard
to cut through the murmur of many speculating voices.
The background noise faded away as quickly and as
smoothly as though someone had rotated a gain
control. "You all know more or less what's going on
here. I haven't got time for a pep talk, much
less a briefing. Just be careful. These Klingons
are all Imperials and are probably unfamiliar
with the way a mixed crew works. Show them. And
remember, your Starfleet commissions state that you're
all officers and gentlebeings. So act that way.
Even the ensigns . . ."
  The laughter had barely died before both
turbolifts hissed open and there were Klingons on the
rec deck. 191
  "Captain Kirk," said Ingrit Tomson,
doing the honors in a neutral voice that came from
an expressionless face, "may I
introduce Captain Kasak sutaiKhornezh,
commander of the Imperial Klingon Vessel Hakkarl,
and officers of his crew."
  "Captain, greetings," Jim said carefully.
  "Kirk," said Kasak, giving the consonants their
full Tlhinganaase value, though whether as
compliment or veiled insult was unclear.
"Greetings. As it is our intention to speak with one
another as equals, it would please me to be called
by my own name."
  Now, that was definitely not an insult, even though
Jim wasn't certain of the reasoning behind the request.
"Honored, Kasak. Welcome aboard the
U.s.s. Enterprise. You and your-officers."
He had almost said "men," but saw the Mingon female
just in time.
  He gestured to a small group of seats.
"Captain, make yourself comfortable. Your people may sit
with us or, if they wish, mingle freely with my
crew. We have much to talk about. All of us."
  ScmationcEvery SpEciAusThat AsKu sat
quietly on the sidelines of what at present was
nothing more than an exchange of insincere and
inconsequential pleasantries. He had hoped that
an argument might develop between the two
captains-nothing violent, since that would have been
counterproductive, but what the humans liked
to call a "frank exchange of opinions." In
other words, the sort of mutual criticism that
sometimes became brisk enough for either or both parties
to let slip things that might best have been left
unsaid. To his mild annoyance, however, Kirk and
Kasak were both too experienced to indulge in any
petty name-calling.
  He sipped at his glass of juice, finding it
sharp and thin even after two additional pushes of the
processor console's sweetness selector. The
machine proved stubbornly incapable of synthesizing
rich fruit nectars in the Klingon style. Most
of the others had settled for double-sweetened juices of
one kind or another. Some had not: Dr. Makhoy,
the Enterprise surgeon specialist, had been
most persuasive, and now Force Leader Marag was
holding a tall glass in a silver holder and
looking at it with all the suspicion he usually
reserved
  only for security matters. The glass was full
of crushed ice and sprigs of a green herb whose
astringent scent Askel could smell from where he sat.
The outside of the glass was so cold that it was
frosted with condensation. That made the holder more sensible
than elegant; there were few creatures more touchy
than a Klingon trying to retain his good manners
while his fingers froze.
  It was a peculiarity of the humans that they seemed
to enjoy their recreational drinks either dangerously
hot or ridiculously cold. Even those
drinkingjuice put ice in it; Askel had seen them
punching the appropriate button on the
selector. He wondered about that for a few
seconds, and what relationship it might have with the way
that humans were known to behave. Then he shrugged,
dismissed the matter, and paid more attention to his
surroundings and to those who shared them.
  Apart from the humans of the security detachment sent
to fetch them here from the shuttle bay, he recognized
only Kirk's companions. Makhoy and the
Vulcan Spock he knew already, from Tazhat's
viewscreen, and Engineering Master Scott from the
brief introduction when Kasak's party first came
into the recreation hall. Askel knew perfectly
well that the official name was "rec deck," but the
abbreviation seemed inappropriate for such an
enormous two-level vaulted room. He had
seen inspirational theaters on planetary
installations, never mind spacegoing vessels, that were
not so large. And as for the crew members who filled
it, they were ... diverse. From where he sat he needed
only to turn his head to see representatives of a
dozen different races in as many shapes and colors.
The ubiquitous humans alone had several different
skin colors, and the varying shapes that went with each
somatotype. Khitar from Communications had struck
up a conver. 194
  sation of sorts with one of them, a female as dark
as any Klingon who was easily keeping pace with his
convoluted specialist vocabulary-despite the
speed of its delivery after being lubricated
by frequent drafts of black Saurian brandy from
the glass in his left hand. Askel made a mental
note to discipline him later, not so much for drinking
to excess as for having a loose mouth under its
influence. Among the humans, talking, laughing,
drinking with them, were several other species, all
behaving like equals on this human ship instead of like the
kuve they undoubtedly were-not having insisted on
serving aboard ships crewed by their own race. And they
were just the biped crew.
  As one trained in the sciences-Askel knew about
the Sulamids and the four races of the
Denebian worlds, and even the Janusian living
rocks, one of which was shuffling across the floor right now.
But that didn't mean he had to like them, or the idea
of a crew made up of people from twenty different
races. Let the Vulcans propound their IDIC
theory as much as they pleased. Then show him the extent
of their empire and the terror and respect in which it was
held. Strength lay in unity, not diversity. The
unity of his common purpose with Kasak
sutai-Khornezh was a case in point. If he
and I.i. had not supported the captain's scheme,
no display of strength would have brought them to where they now
sat, in a vessel of the Federation Starfleet,
busily engaged in deceiving its most senior officers.
It might, thought Askel with a sardonic inner
smile, have enabled them to cruise to and fro among its
drifting ashes, but the effect would not have been the
same.
  Kasak's strength had been evident from the first,
when he had defied the suspicions of everyone from
Thought Admirals and chiefs of security on down
to the crew he had chosen himself. At each stage of his

  gradually revealed scheme he might have, been
arrested, or just gunned down by one of the
interested parties who were following orders or who
stood to gain comby doing so. Marag, acting for
Security, perhaps; or whichever clandestine agent was
aboard, also acting for Security; or Askel
himself, acting for Imperial Intelligence; or a
quiet member of the crew who might act only out of
loyalty to the Empire. That Kasak was well on
his way to success and glory said something about his luck.
"Setting sunspots to one side, Kirk,"
Keaasak was saying when Askel tuned the content of
his speech back in, "it is the belief of my race
that the one has only so much luck this side of the
Black Fleet. Especially with transporters.
Hence the shuttle."
  Kai, Kasak, thought Askel. That would reinforce
the notion in Kirk's mind, and in the minds of his
security people, that to keep hold of these Klingons and
thus of their ship, all they had to do was to stay between the
visitors and the shuttle bay. It would not matter that
sensors surely indicated another three crew
members left behind on Tazhat and Hakkarl. Those
three could maintain the life-support and
environmental systems and monitor the cruiser's
standard orbit, but they were capable of little else. The
Federation officers could not know about the boosted
transport hypercarrier wave that could beam safely
through even deliberate jamming, nor did they
realize that in an emergency the captain could control
both ships from his command chair long enough for the scout
to escape. Kahlesste kaase-Kahless's Hand
indeed, except that now a captain had no need
to tie his hand to the chair with his sash in order that none
might say he fled before his crew.
  He listened briefly to Kasak, and his hidden
smile grew wider. The captain's deception was
perfect. It was almost possible to believe that he
really did intend 196
  to hand himself, his crew, and his secret new ship
over to the Federation. Almost, but not quite. There were enough
clues visible to the quick mind and the sharp eye. It was just
as well that none of the Starfleet officers knew what
to look for....
  James T. Kirk knew there was something wrong
about this whole business, and yet try as he might,
he couldn't place it. The Klingons were all being just
as nice as pie. Some of them, like the comm officer, had
become far too friendly with the hospitality bar and were
becoming deadly boring and repetitive as a
result. Jim was watching that one almost as closely
as the other five put together. He knew that
drinking alcohol was as much a part of Klingon
culture as it was of human social life, but from
past experience on and around Space Station K-7
he also knew what happened when you mixed Klingons,
Enterprise crew members, and an open bar in the
same cubic parsec of space-trouble. At least this
time there were no tribbles getting underfoot and trying
to eat the buffet. That would have been the last straw, and
not just for the Klingons.
  Still, all that Kasak had told him so far had
been the truth. Starfleet Intelligence could vouch for
it. But Jim couldn't shake the sensation that he was being
made use of-mocked, teased, toyed with, all those
things he hated and had to put up with as a
representative of the United Federation of
Planets. Except that the mockery of a Klingon was
something to be wary of rather than simply to endure. He
wished more than anything else right now that the information about
Captain Kasak would get here. The annunciator
whistled right then and said "Bridge to Captain
Kirk" so pat on cue that Jim almost jumped.
  Can't be, he told himself as he made some sort

  excuse to the Klingon captain and tried. to hurry
from his seat without moving obviously fast.
  "Kirk here."
  "Lieutenant Knight, sir, acting
communications Officer. A signal's coming in for you.
Shall I transfer it direct or wait until
instructed?" Comms department code words for "How much
privacy do you need for this, sir?" I don't
believe it! thought Jim, even though he wanted
to believe it very much indeed. "From Starfleet?"
  "Sorry, Captain, not yet. We're still
waitingfor that one.* was A jolt of hurt annoyance
that was the mental equivalent of a thumb in the solar
plexus ran through Jim, and he glared at the comm
grille. Knowing that this wasn't Kim Knight's
fault didn't help at all. He wanted
to thump the annunciator panel with his fist and say
all of the things that had come boiling up inside
him-anything to relieve his frustration. But with Kasak
and several of his crew carefully not staring in his
direction, he absolutely couldn't vent his
feelings here.
  "All right, Kim," he said at last in a
voice that surprised him with its control. "What is
it?"
  "From Colonel Johnson on the surface,
sir. He requested especially that he
talk to you. It sounded urgent. his
  Jim stared at the annunciator in silence for
six seconds that felt like six hours. The choice
was to put Johnson's message through and risk having
him say something out of place, or leave the rec:
deck and make it plain that he didn't want the
Klingons to hear this transmission. Not that doing so was
unmannerly, as Kasak would probably admit-the
sensor suites on board Hakkarl were probably
eavesdropping anyway comb it might give the
Klingons the idea that things 198
  on Dekkanar were worse than their Intelligence
reports suggested. Worse for the Federation, at
least; Kasak could make the inverse of that equation
all by himself, and perhaps conclude that there was more
advantage in staying loyal to the Empire than in
accepting asylum. Kasak could simply sit in
orbit while the Federation personnel were evacuated
and the ships carrying them moved out. Without a request from
Councillor Varn or the others to stay and
renegotiate their tenure, Kirk would be obliged
to conclude the mission as briefed, with a complete
withdrawal from the 4725 Cancri system.
  Hakkarl, as well as any other Klingon ship
claiming access under the Organian
Treaty, was so far under no such stricture, and Jim
doubted very much that any such would be obeyed, or even
issued, if no Starfleet vessels were present
to enforce it. With no source of protection other than
the weapons of the Klingon battle cruiser hanging in
an ominously close orbit right above their heads, the
Dekkani would waste no time in asking the Empire
to help them sort out their internal differences. And for the
Klingons, sorting out something they had probably
started-or at least organized by the usual method of
cultivating and arming a group like the PDI'-WOULD be
simplicity itself
  "Put him through," said Jim, wondering if he
looked and sounded as weary as he suddenly felt.
"On the main screen. I'll handle it from here."
With the rec: room's big viewing screen in operation,
Johnson would be able to see immediately that there weren't just
Starfleet ears listening to him, and he could edit his
words accordingly. That, at least, was the theory. He
thumbed the channel open.
  Little had changed since he had last spoken

  Colonel Johnson. The buildings in the
background of the screen image looked a little the
worse for wear, and there were dirty smears of
smoke around several windows. The colonel and the few
men and women who moved in and out of frame behind him were
also looking smoke-stained and rather frayed at the edges.
Jim was thankful to see that there were no more
injuries-at least, none that he could see.
  Johnson started to say something, then cut his words
short and leaned a little closer to the vision
transceiver of his field-comm pack, apparently
not convinced that he was getting an accurate picture
from the Enterprise. "Good God, was he said softly.
  "No, just Klingons," said Jim. "Captain and
part of the crew of IKV Hakkarl. They're
requesting political asylum."
  "Good God, was said Todd Johnson again, and
shook his head. "I knew that Klingon captains
turned privateer, but I've never heard of one
defecting until now. his
  Jim winced inwardly at Johnson's use of the
word "defect." It was the wince of a diplomat who
knew that he'd been getting somewhere in a delicate
negotiation, only to see the whole fraif house of
cards sent tumbling by a single instant's carelessness.
And it was the wince, doubled, of someone who knew that after
all the nice phrases had been stripped away, it
was the right word to use.
  "Colonel Johnson, my communications officer
told me this was urgent. What's the problem?"
  "The PDI have started playing for keeps. Seven
of my people have been killed by disrupter fire, Captain
Kirk. Ask your ... your visitors where those
weapons came from. Id be very interested to hear the
answer. was Johnson shook his head to clear away
the mists of whatever pain suppressant his field
medics had filled him with, then grinned crookedly.
It was the sort of grin that the Klingons probably
understood as well as 200
  anyone on board the Enterprise: all teeth,
no humor. "But we've got the last of the
civilians together and away. No losses there at
all. Their shuttle's lifting about now, and-was
  There was a shattering explosion from somewhere outside and
above the building in which Johnson had set up his
command headquarters. The viewer wailed and flared
white for an instant as light and noise overloaded
its pickups, then returned slowly to normal through
a blizzard of static. By then there were long plumes
of dust trailing down from the ceiling, and the image itself
had toppled seventy degrees to one side. It
came upright again with a jolt as somebody pulled the comm
pack clear of the thermoplast rubble that had
fallen on it, but for several more of those hour-long
seconds there was no sign of Colonel
Johnson. Just as the silent audience on the rec:
deck started to become seriously concerned, a shadow
fell across the screen and Johnson came back
into frame. He was limping, and his shoulders were
gray-white with dust. "The PDI'S stolen
orbiters have atmospheric capability, was he said,
and his mouth was tight with a pain that had no connection with his
arm or with his limp. "We didn't know. None of the
Dekkani bothered to tell us. Well, we know now.
They took out that last shuttlejust after it left the
ground, and. . . was He shrugged; there was nothing else
to say that could possibly have any meaning. "If the
Federation ever opens up this embassy again, it's going
to need another secretarial section. Because there's
nobody left from this one. his
  Jim stared at the screen and said nothing. He had
heard and seen the same thing far too many times, and every
one of those times, mere words had been inadequate.
  "Beam-up will be possible in four hours, you said?"
Johnson asked. 201
  "Nearer three now."
  "Then we'll wait. There are- was Johnson
stopped, and his eyes shifted from Jim's
face to stare instead over his shoulder at the Klingon
officers sitting behind him. Jim was quietly glad
that the colonel would be returning to Sir Richard or
to Vanguard rather than to Enterprise. Right now he
didn't look like the right man for further
diplomatic duty. "Captain, there are things
to clean up here. We'll deal with them and then
advisefor pickup. Johnson out."
  The stillness on Rec Deck One was a shocking
contrast to its earlier cheerful hubbub. Someone at the
back of the huge room was failing in an effort not
to cry, and even the Klingons had contrived to look
concerned. Jim doubted very much if there was any more to their
concern than worry about their own status. Right now,
at any rate, the last thing that he wanted was for any
one of them to speak.
  His unspoken wish went unheard, for Captain
Kasak stood up slowly, put his glass of
fruit juice to one side and said, "If the one may
prove of some assistance?" He sounded sincere, and for
just one second James Kirk hated him for it.
  Then the hatred went away abruptly, for a
disrupter screeched and its actinic blue bolt went
past Jim's ear like the finger of the angel of death.
Kasak's discarded glass exploded
into sweet steam and flying splinters. "Straav'!
Tokhe straavThat' There was a voice somewhere,
screaming, almost as loud as the disrupter's discharge:
"Willing slave!" the foulest insult in all the
dialects of the Klingon language and one that only
death could cancel out.
  Whose death? Jim dropped to the floor and rolled
for cover, his mind whirling with confusion, cursing himself for
not having carried a phaser and for not having insisted that the
Klingons check their duty 202
  sidearms with Security. Who was shooting? At
whom? Almost everyone, armed or not, had hit the deck
at the same moment-everyone except Ingrit
Tomson and two of Kasak's officers.
  No, three. One of them was the comms specialist
who had been boring Uhura and drinking too much.
Another burst of energy crackled from the pistol in his
wavering grip, and Jim wondered if the alcohol that
had somehow provoked the shooting had also affected his
aim just enough to save someone's life. His life,
maybe, or ... whose?
  For all that the human-built chair was awkward for
Klingon anatomy, Askel was out of it in the blinking
of an eye, and his own disrupter was out of its holster
before he was well clear of the seat. Now we
know, he thought. But to move here and now! Khest'n
Imperial Security.... The brandy had done its
work after all, but not by creating drunken
aggressiveness. This was both more and less
straightforward. Khitar had consumed just enough to make him
miss out on Captain Kasak's more subtle
kinesic indications of deception. He had assumed
that what he saw and heard was real. When Kasak
made his masterfully convincing offer of assistance,
Khitar had geen not an elegant move in klin
zha, but mutiny and treason. Imperial Security
had never been renowned for intelligence. The tall
female-Tomson, Kirk's own chief of
security-seemed strangely reluctant to open
fire, and for an instant Askel wondered if
Starfleet Security had a worse vice than
single-minded stupidity. Compassion had no place
behind a security badge or a security pistol.
Then he saw her reset her phaser down to stun, and
he remembered the Organians. No matter what

  he had done or would do yet, Khitar was an
officer of the Klingon Empire, and the glowbugs would
surely come interfering if he was shot- A flash of
blue-white light carved shadows sharp as
glass all across the rec deck, and Askel heard
the unmistakable shrilling of a disrupter at its
highest setting. Khitar was engulfed in white fire
and his screamed insults became a simple scream.
It faded swiftly as his body glowed, incandesced,
and vanished. Helm Officer Krynn straightened from
her aiming crouch, her pistol holstered again before the
last echoes of that horrid noise had fully died
away, and looked at the scorched place where
Khitar's silhouette could still be faintly seen against
the wall. con"HaDIMH, was she said softly, and
then to Kasak, comuteam His, joHwI. his
  "jIyaj. was The captain saluted her.
"majQa
  Captain Kirk and the rest of his crew picked
themselves up from the floor. There was some dusting of
knees, some adjusting of uniforms, and then Kirk
glared at Kasak. "Necessary or not, well done or
not," he snapped, "what the hell is going on?"
  "Apologies, Captain," said Askel,
cutting in smoothly, doing his best to sound calm even
though his mind was racing to shape the excuse it had just
formed into something that would pass for truth. "That officer
is-was-of a line we had all thought dead.
Extinct. That line has been at feud
with the captain's line, Khornezh, for Keth's
years. It would seem that one of them survived and
determined to resume what was considered done withand at
rest. This one and all of us regret it happened
here."
  "You regret!" Surgeon Specialist
Makhoy was blazing with anger, so filled with rage that
mere words were inadequate to express it and he was
forced to unwilling silence until he had regained his
selfcontrol. Askel was careless of mere anger,
no matter
  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  how intensely felt; all that concerned him was that his
words not be questioned. While the Feds were busy being
shocked at this demonstration of Klingon frightfulness,
they would not take the time to wonder about what really lay
behind its flaring up just now. But it was starting to occur
to him that telling the truth, or at least most of it,
about Khitar and Imperial Security might well
have been the wiser course. "Captain Kasak," said
Kirk with all the formal outrage he could muster,
"I want a full explanation of this incident, and
I want it now." "Kirk," said Kasak, "my
executive officer has told you- "That's
Admiral Kirk, mister, and your exec
has told me nothing." Askel considered comassuming
an affronted expression, then discarded the idea as
wasted effort. Kirk lacked Makhoy's hot, blind
fury, and was in just the mood to take exception to any
misplaced word or gesture. "I think that-was Kirk
was interrupted once again by the wall communicator and
broke off whatever pointless thought had been in his
mind, but before he turned to answer it, he gestured
to Tomson and to the armored and helmeted security
guards who had come rushing in from the corridor at the
sound of shots. Askel looked at the leveled
phasers, knowing without being told that they were all set
only to stun. And after the stunning, imprisonment. The
Federation was weak, it seldom executed prisoners.
But it kept them caged until their time of detention was
done or until it pleased someone to release them or
until the end of life. That thought made him shiver more
than any threat of death. And then he shivered again,
because Surgeon Specialist Arthag was nowhere to be
seen. So there were two of them! he thought. One loud,
one quiet. Then kai Security after all...
"Bridge, this is the captain," he heard Kirk
say, 205
  and the rasp of leashed anger behind the human's voice
was plainly audible. "What is it now?"
  "Captain, we've picked up a transmission.
Definitely Klingon, but a nonstandard frequency.
Commander Uhura's autojammer didn't
recognize or block it, so ... What did you
say? Confirm that! Excuse me, Captain, one
moment please. was During that moment, the dark woman
with whom Khitar had spoken clenched both her fists
and swore. The only other sound was the faint hissing
of an open channel from the communicator. Then the
voice at the other end came back, sounding
agitated. "We've gotten a confirmed lock on
the source of the transmission. Captain, it's
comingfrom Rec Deck One!"
  Jim felt his stomach jolt inside him harder
even than when the disrupter bolt had almost taken off
his head. "Confirm that, Kim? Rec One?" "Rec
One confirm, rear portside. his
  All eyes turned to stare at the only place
on the Rec Deck where even a Klingon could be
assured of privacy from prying or unfrly eyes.
The male rest room. People began to back away as
if the place contained a primed bomb, and Jim was
not the only one to realize that it might well do just that.
  "Captain Kasak," he said, "call your Dr.
Arthag and order him to come out peacefully.
But before he comes out"-he glanced pointedly at the
burn mark where Khitar had been-"you and your crew will
immediately surrender all weapons to Commander Tomson.
I want him alive and capable of answering questions."
  Kasak glowered at him, still managing to convey
irritated innocence. "Imperial Security-was the
Klingon began to say. "So they were both security
men, eh? I thought this was more than just a feud. Tell
your medical security 206
  man that he has nothing to fear from any of us. Any
of us, Captain Kasak-Starfleet or Klingon."
  The Klingon captain hesitated a moment meathen
gave a very human shrug. "If Arthag is truly
of Imperial Security, Kirk, I make no
promises that he will heed me."
  "I've had just about enough of this," said Jim under his
breath. Without taking his eyes from Kasak, he held
out his right hand, open and palm up. Someone slapped a
Type II-B phaser into it, and Jim leveled
the weapon's emitter cone at the Klingon's face.
"Give it a try, Captain," he suggested, "or
we'll get him out our own way.$9
  "Arthag!" shouted Kasak. "Specialist
Arthag, this is the sutai-Khomezh." Arthag
leaned suddenly around the comer of the rest room
partition and fired twice at his captain before ducking
back out of sight in a splatter of stun-level
energy flashes from Tomson's security people. Both
of Arthag's shots missed their intended target: one
of them shattered a screen in the information alcove below
the main viewer, and the other slammed a security
ensign flat on his back and gouged a smoking
crater out of the breastplate of his armor. The man was
unhurt and still in sufficient possession of his wits
to grab a drink and quench the hot woven ceramic before
his chest was seriously blistered.
  Of Surgeon Specialist Arthag there was no
sign. Jim flexed his fingers on the grip of his own
phaser and checked the weapon's setting.
Satisfied, he looked at the group of security
personnel. "Ingrit, set your phaser
to narrow-beam heavy stun. Mr. Matlock, Mr.
Fleming, set to wide-beam. Cover that entrance.
First sight you have of anything, hit x$9"
  As the first three settled into aiming position, he
turned to the others, deliberately ignoring the
remaining Klingons; until he was ready
to acknowledge their 207
  existence. "Mr. Gamble and daza Rrra'sku,
supervise a quick, quiet clearance of
Rec One. And Mr. Nakashima, if you're
feeling all right ... his Good. Then relieve these people
of their weapons."
  He was quietly grateful to see that Kasak's
people neither objected nor resisted being disarmed. Not that it
would have done them much good. Jim was too busy thinking
about how he could extricate Arthag without any
further casualties-and before the Klingon decided
to set his disruptees power pack to overload.
  Spock and McCoy appeared at his elbow,
easing out of the throng of crew members, all of whom
knew they were suddenly no more than targets. Bones
was cursing his lack of a medical pouch-not that he had
needed one so far-but Spock looked silently at
Kirk and seemed, as usual, to know what he was
thinking. "I am uncertain of the energy output
yielded by this type of sidearm, Jim," he said,
hefting one just acquired from Askel, his Klingon
counterpart. "However, I presume it is of similar
capability to the more recent variants of phaser."
  If the information was meant to be comforting, Jim
didn't think much of it, and said so. He was
uneasily aware that a Starfleet phaser in the
same confinedblast situation might blow this section of
Enterprise's primary disc clean off the
ship. Certainly it would explosively
decompress the rec deck and everybody in it.
  "Given that presumption," Spock continued, "I
feel that we have a method of neutralizing our
troublesome visitor close at hand."
  "Ah . . ." Jim nodded. "Lieutenant
Naraht, could you come here, please?" The Horta,
though basically a horizontal entity, had been
hunched up against a table, acting as a makeshift
shield for the people making their escape by turbolift
two. He slithered down and shuffled rapidly over

  Kirk with that unmistakable sound of granite
slabs rubbing together. "Yes, Captain?" his voder
said, earnest as ever. For all that Mr. Naraht was still
a relative juvenile of his race, he was also the
veteran of an intelligence mission that included a
covert free-fall descent from orbit onto the
surface of the Romulan homeworld-and he was
demonstrably resistant to both phaser and disrupter
fire. Jim felt no real qualms over what he
had in mind. "Mr. Naraht, you're the only
member of the crew who can capture and disarm the
Klingon officer in that rest room without inflicting or
suffering any harm; at least, you're the
only one right now." Despite the gravity of the
situation Jim felt a weak grin prickling at the
comers of his mouth. Rooting armed enemy agents out of
toilets was not one of the strange, new, and interesting
parts of the day's work that were mentioned in Starfleet's
cadet orientation material. "He has a weapon
identical to the one Mr. Spock is holding. And
this is just a request, not an order."" Jim was
aware that the other Klingons were staring at him with a
mixture of distaste and contempt for a captain who would
ask one of his crew-and a member of an "inferior"
race at that-to do something. That, thought Jim, was their
problem.
  Naraht shuffled his fringe and made the bizarre
crackling sound that was analogous to laughter. "Thank
you for that courtesy, sir," he said. Various
glittery crystals on his carapace surveyed the
Klingon disrupter in a gesture that might not have had
true visual connotations but at least looked as if
he was giving it a once-over. "If that's all
he's got, I won't feel a thing. And neither will
he. At least, he won't remember feeling it."
"Dr. McCoy," said Spock as Naraht rumbled
off about his mission, "I think that young officer is
picking up your patterns of speech."
  dis"...The boy's got style," said Bones, and
wouldn't be drawn further. The annunciator
called Jim's name again, and he muttered something under
his breath. He was rapidly becoming as tired of the
annunciator's three-note whistle as he was of the
red-alert sirens, but this time Lieutenant Knight
didn't even wait for him to respond. "Captain,
that earlier transmission has just been acknowledged-from
out of system. Same ftequency, same code
groups, but Signal strength and repeater fluctuation
indicate three-plus heavy cruisem 11
  Damn! "Any indication of speed or headingThat'
  "Yes, sir, I'm afraidso. The way their
signal broke up matched interference from an
acceleration to warp speed, and before we lost them they were
heading straight for- his
  The rest of what Knight had to say was lost in the
sound of a disrupter firing within an enclosed space.
Naraht was still well clear of the rest room, comalth
he was hurrying toward it now with the startling speed a
Horta could produce when pressed, but the brevity
of the pistol's discharge suggested to Jim and to everyone
else that there was no longer any need to rush.
  Naraht came out a moment later, moving much more
slowly, and all suspicions were confirmed
even before he spoke. "The Klingon shot himself,
Captain," Naraht confirmed grimly. "He's quite
dead."
  "Are you certain?" said McCoy, starting forward.
"Quite certain." Naraht sounded annoyed. He
probably felt that he hadn't moved fast enough
to prevent what had happened. "He was obliging enough
to set his disrupter low enough to leave most of a body, but
the setting was sufficiently high to leave my
diagnosis in no doubt."
  "Captain Kasak," Jim said, swinging around on

  Klingon commander, "what do you know about this?"
"Imperial Security would scarcely approve of
what I have attempted," said Kasak evenly. "The
one tried to stop me and failed. It seems that he was
less alone than either of us thought. These new ships
are moving to prevent the theft of imperial military
property; they have probably been following
Hakkarl at a discreet distance since he left
drydock."
  If Science Specialist Askel had an
opinion about that, he said nothing. Jim looked up and
down the line of Klingons and couldn't decide what
angered him more-what they had done or how little
they seemed troubled by the consequences. "It would
appear, Captain Kasak, that whether accidentally
or through deliberate malice, you have engineered a way
in which several Klingon ships can legally"-Jim spat
the word as if it tasted bad-"enter a restricted and
already sensitive sector of Federation-protected
space. You must realize, of course, that your
request for asylum is null and void, but you will
remain on Enterprise under close arrest."
  Kasak smiled venomously. "jol yIchu, was
he said to the empty air, and the LED telltale on
his communicator that indicated a transporter lock
began glowing red.
  Jim remembered then what he had forgotten during
the years behind a desk: that Klingon communicators
could and did run in a standby mode, without lights or
beacons to betray the fact. But a transporter, with
4725 Cancri still three hours away from being
safe? He didn't waste time thinking about it, but
stepped sharply out of the way and snapped "Fire!""
The security phasers flared uselessly almost a
meter from their targets as, in total silence, golden
light enveloped the four remaining Klingons.
"Arrest, Captain Kirk?" said Kasak's
mocking voice. "I think not. 211
  Katta, ghojol. was The light flickered,
faded, and they were gone. Jim stared for half a
second at the empty area of deck while thoughts and
words and actions roiled and fought for precedence inside
his head. He turned away from the embarrassing
emptiness, walked to the wall communicator, and with an
ironic little smile punched in the command code that
gave him all-call "Enterprise, this is the
captain." He paused, took a deep breath, and
thought, Here we go. Again. "Go to condition one. This is
a red alert. I say again, red alert. All
departments to battle stations. Kirk out."
  Then he squared his shoulders, unhooked the
wraparound of his tunic, brushed a trace of lint from
the rank pin on his sleeve, and headed for the bridge.
  "IT IS MY BELIEF," Spock said as the
turbolift got under way, "that they were employing some
form of enhanced or boosted carrier wave. It is
essentially the same kind of signal repeater as that
which creates noise in the Starfleet standard
transporter. However, being Klingons-was "They've
gone for the military application rather than the safety
aspect," said McCoy with an edge of disapproval
in his voice. "It's nice to know they're following
form, at least."
  "Quite so, Doctor. I doubt that you would like
Klingon transporters. Everything that you believe about
the equipment aboard Enterprise is true of theirs.
So much so that high-ranking officers have personal
transport controllers responsible for their
safety.""
  "Huh," said Bones noncommittally. It was
impossible to tell whether he thought the idea good,
bad, or distypically Klingon in that there was someone
to take the rap for a mistake.
  Jim hadn't become involved in the discussion; he
spent the short trip leaning against the back wall of the
turbolift car with his arms folded, waiting until
he 213
  reached the bridge, where he would find out what else
the universe had up its sleeve to throw at him.
One element of Spock's theory disturbed him,
though. "What about the power consumption?" he said.
"It's got to be ridiculously large."
  "The sensor scans give every indication that this
particular Klingon cruiser has a power-production
curve well able to match the most extravagant
demands," said Spock. Jim didn't like the sound of
what Spock was saying, and liked the sound of what he
didn't say still less: Anything they
want, it can dowith power to spare.
  The turbolift slid to a halt and opened onto
the bridge. Jim walked into a scene of controlled
scurrying as department heads took over from their
deputies. He realized that he had become more
accustomed to seeing the place in red-alert lighting
than in standard white. The superimposed tactical
plot on the main screen was one of the least encouraging
pieces of graphic design that he had seen for a very
long time; there were altogether too many contacts whose only
ID symbology was an assigned DK registry
and the words Unknown/hostile.
  Six new blips-the armed vessels stolen by the
PDI terrorists were rising steadily toward orbit.
There were none of the massive infrared traces that had
characterized the previous booster-assisted launches. That
meant there was no chance they might be a flight of
missiles, but it also indicated that these orbiters were
of a more advanced type than the old space shuttles
the Dekkani had used for their earlier harassment. The
effectiveness of their armament had already been
conclusively demonstrated. Nearest of all, the
image not quite hidden beneath the tactical overlay, was
KL 10 17 Hakkarl. The battle cruiser was
winding up from orbital shutdown to active
status, and the data readouts beside the crank214
  winged silhouette that was the standard tactical
symbol for a Klingon vessel were changing too quickly
for the eye to follow. "What a wonderful view
we're having today," said Bones. Spock lifted
an eyebrow at him. "Stimulating, certainly,"
he said. "And full of useful information."
  "Bridge to Engineering," said Jim, not taking his
eyes from the screen as he thumbed the seat
communicator. "How are we doing down there?" "Ye
can have power for shields or weapons or
maneuverin", but not for all of them jist yet, was said
Mr. Scott. "The intermix is readin'green, but
since we've had the mains off line we'll not be up
an' runnin'for another twenty seconds. his
  Jim clenched a fist and swore softly under his
breath. Scotty hadn't sounded accusing, bless him,
but Enterprise had still been shut down on the order of
her captain and nobody else. That'll teach you
to assume things about Klingons, thought Jim. It
didn't help that Vanguard and Sir Richard were in
the same situation and for the same reason; spreading a
mistake around didn't help change wrong toright.
"Divert all available power to the shields, and
Scotty . . .
  "Aye, sir?"
  "Quick as you can."
  "Aye, sir!"
  Hakkarl's data began to flash green on the
viewscreen as the battle cruiser achieved
nominal power output, but the figures continued
to change. "They're raising shields, Captain,"
said Spock. "Raise ours: shields two and
three full power, full deflection; one and four,
maintenance only-but watch out for any change in firing
arc." "Shield setting confirmed, aye," said
Chekov. "Shall I set up a precautionary
weapons lock, Keptin?"
  Jim hesitated for a moment. He didn't want
to start an escalating spiral of threat and
counterthreat, but bending the rules didn't seem to work
where Captain Kasak was concerned. The safest
refuge was in doing things exactly by the book.
"Yes, Mr. Chekov. Do it-but nothing else without
my direct command. We don't have any power
to spare."
  "You do now, Captain," said Spock, swinging
around from his monitors. "The mains are back on
line; we have full power."
  "Good timing, Scotty," Jim said to the
bridge in general. "Mr. Chekov, boost the other
shields up to defense standard. Mr. Sulu, stand
by to put some distance between us and the Klingons. One-third
impulse power, on my mark... ."
  Jim never gave that order, for the screen had
  developed some sort of a glitch and strange things
were happening. The data display for Hakkarl had
started to flicker between a single and a double image, both
readouts showed different instead of duplicated
information, and both were flashing green. Spock moved
controls on the sensor suite and the displays
stabilized. It wasn't a glitch after all, but the
informa tion from two separate ships-even though they
  weren't separate just yet.jim. 611t
  "Reset that phaser lock, Chekov," said
looks as if things are going to get busy around here."
The tactical projection broke up just then, and when
it reformed with updated information just a moment later,
Jim realized that he hadn't guessed the half of
it.
  The six PDI shuttles had achieved orbit a
few seconds previously, and now they were assuming
a standard small-ship attack formation. It was all
too likely that they intended to do more than simply
fly dangerously close. As if that
wasn't enough, the eight original orbiters that had
been such a bloody nuisance at the start of the mission
had broken out of 216
  their polar holding orbits, and were now sliding up
toward where the Federation ships were held immobile by the
requirements of a geosynch parking position.
  And that wasn't enough either.
  "Visual," said Spock abruptly, clearing the
screen of its tangle of plots and vectors.
"All recording systems are enabled and set
to automatic." "Ship separation, Mr. Spock?"
  "Imminent, if I read these power curves
correctly. A violently evasive maneuver
seems most probable in the . . ." Spock's
voice trailed to silence, and he shifted his attention
to the main viewer with a little intake of breath that Bones
and Jim recognized as annoyance. "Or perhaps not,"
he finished.
  Spock was not the only person on the bridge who
had expected a dramatic full-power breakaway.
What actually happened came as something of an
anticlimax. The Bird of Prey Tazhat
lifted clear of its parent vessel as slowly and as
cautiously as a newly qualified pilot taking
up a hover-flier for the first time.
  Tazhat's upward motion ceased, and it hung
bare tens of meters over the dorsal surface of
Hakkarl's main hull. With equal slowness, both
ships rotated until they were facing in opposite
directions, presenting starboard and port elevations
to Enterprise-like the ID profiles in the library
computer. It was almost as if Captain Kasak was
deliberately flaunting the size and power of his command
to the man who had hoped to seize it. Indeed, he
seemed to be daring Kirk to fire point-blank at
this target, render it immobile, and claim it as his
prize.
  "Captain," said Spock urgently, cutting off
that dangerous line of thought before it grew any more
attractive, "long-range scans are picking up
multi- ple contacts dropping out of warp. All of
them are Klingon." 217
  The scout and the cruiser went transparent,
shimmered, faded, and were gone.
  "Hell and damnation!" The words were relatively
mild, but they were spoken in a voice so loaded with
vicious sincerity that heads turned all over the
bridge to where Captain James Kirk cleared his
throat and went slightly pink. Only Mr.
Spock pretended not to have noticed anything.
"Feel better now?" said Bones, leaning over the
back of the center seat. Jim nodded, and smiled
crookedly at his chief medical officer.
"Somewhat. But I should have suspected a cloaking
device."
  "Suspect away. It wouldn't have helped even
if Kasak had told you about it himself. What could you
have done about it-opened fire?" "And blown all their
engines into scrap, yes. I was so tempted,
Bones. They were just sitting there, begging for it."
  "I suspect the Klingon captain hoped you'd do
just that, Jim," said Spock. "Hoped he could
provoke you into acting rashly and thus placing yourself
and the Federation in violation of the Organian Treaty.
If the behavior of those covert Imperial
security agents means what I believe, Kasak
and his ships are here without official orders and without the
knowledge of his government and his superiors. If necessary the
Empire can repudiate his actions and refuse to be
responsible for the actions of a mutinous
privateerunless of course the Empire stands to gain
something. If so, the Klingons will claim that Kasak
was acting under orders all the time." "Spock," said
Bones, "it's been a long day and I'm probably
getting a bit slow, but-what can the Klingon
Empire hope to gain from this?" "This planet," said
Spock simply. "Ceded to the 218
  Klingon Empire under the terms of the Organian
Treaty."
  "I worked that one out for myself down in Rec One,"
said Jim. "But the way I saw it, all Kasak
has to do is wait until we've gone and then
"persuade" the Dekkan Council to request
Imperial protection. Why drag the Organians
into it?"
  "As for that, Captain, I must confess to ignorance
based on a lack of information. When Starfleet
Intelligence answers your questions about Kasak
sutaiKhornezh, his reasoning may become a little
clearer. In the meantime there is a Klingon battle
group of nine more K't'inga class cruisers entering
this system, and their squadron leader wants to speak
with you on a matter of some urgency."
  "Does he indeed?" said Jim, and swung his
chair around to face the main viewer. "Then let's
find out just how urgent it can be."
  "I am Korzhan epetai-Kenek, was the
Klingon said, his speech heavily formal. "You are
Admiral Kirk of the Federation Starfleet. You have
possession Of a stolen thing that is not yours.
I want it back. was Although his title for this duty
was squadron leader, the rank insignia at his
collar was that of an admiral. It indicated several
things about the importance of this mission, and about the
importance of the ship that Captain Kasak had
stolen.
  Since the battle cruiser Hakkarl was nowhere in
sight, and since the Dekkan shuttles were the only
other ships in the area besides the Klingon and Starfleet
vessels, Jim wondered how Korzhan had reached
his conclusion. He realized, moments later, that the
Klingon admiral thought the other ships had been put
into cloak by a prize crew from' the Enterprise.

  Korzhan was in no mood for explanations. "This
one has recorded information concerning the mutineer
Kasak sutai-Khornezh, was he said. "Information
that was transmitted from your own ship. It is proof of
treason against the Qomerex Tlhingan, and proof of
your collusion. was Jim listened to the Klingon, but
most of his attention was focused on the tracking
display that had been keeping an electronic eye
on all the Dekkan shuttles. It was only when
they had moved out of the immediate vicinity that he gave his
full attention to Korzhan.
  "Squadron Leader," he said, "neither I nor
the other captains of this force had anything to do with the
matter you refer to. Captain Kasak, on the
other hand-was
  "Requested political asylum so as to evade
punishment. He secured your cooperation by offering you the
secrets of his ship!" "Your information is not
accurate," Kirk said. "His request for
asylum was part of whatever game Kasak is
playing. I know neither the rules of that game nor its
ultimate goal." Unlike you, Korzhan. You
know all about it. Jim shifted in his seat and realized
that the Klingon might even know why Kasak was trying
to draw fire down on himself. If only the
Intelligence data had arrived before Korzhan's
squadron, or before Kasak's escape or ...
The communications console beeped. Uhura tapped
switches, looked at her repeater screen, and
smiled. "Captain, here's that information you re-
quested," she said.
  Jim released the breath he hadn't known that he was
holding. Better late than too late, he thought.
"Leave it on your screen please, Uhura. And
run a hard copy." He turned back
to Squadron Leader Korzhan on the
main viewscreen, inclined his head in
  the sort of curt nod that would never grow up to be
a bow, and got to his feet. "You will excuse me,
of course," he said. "Starfleet business." A
few minutes later, everything had become a great
deal easier to understand.
  "Squadron Leader," said Jim, "I may have
the answer to our mutual dilemma." Korzhan
looked puzzled and said nothing. "Is there an access
to personnel files from your flagship's main
library computer?" "What bearing has this?"
  "More than you might think. Have your science
specialist pull Captain Kasak's file and
cross-check with"-Jim read through the data on the
screen again, knowing that mistakes and consequent
delays were something he didn't need-"Captain
Koloth vestai-Lasshar; Space Station
K-Seven; the reams of information you must have on me and
on the U.s.s. Enterprise; and, uh,
tribbles."
  Korzhan looked at him as if uncertain whether
this Federation captain was insulting him or had simply
taken leave of his senses. Then he shrugged, turned
away from the screen, and started giving orders. Bones
looked again at the Kasak file. "Now,
that makes a whole lot of things a whole lot,
clearer. The crafty, sneaky little son of a bitch."
"It is probably as well that the
sutai-Khornezh preferred subtlety over a more
direct approach," Spock told McCoy.
"He had ample opportunity while he was aboard
the Enterprise to leave Jim in a state not even you
could put back together.".
  McCoy straightened up and looked at the
Vulcan in surprise. dis"...Why, Spock, did
I just hear a compliment?"
  "If a compliment is the recognition of
abilities it would be illogical to ignore,
Doctor, then, yes, you did."
  "Gentlemen," said Jim, "the admiral is
back."
  Korzhan looked confused. "Kirk, was he said,
"how much of this is true?" "All of it,
Squadron Leader, what you have read was
presumably drawn from your own intelligence
reports. If you question them, then I can't help you."
  "And where is Hakkarl?"
  "Cloaked, but I believe still somewhere in this
system."
  "Message from Vanguard, Captain,"
Uhura interrupted, sounding angry. "The
PDI'-HELD shuttles have opened fire on them.
No damage done, but Captain Farey
recommends caution."
  "Damn them! Why now?" muttered Jim.
"Engineering."
  "Scott here, Captain. We're shovelin' as
fast as we can. 11 "Scotty, get some of your
stokers up to the tractor installations. I think
we're about to have company."
  "You mean apart from Klingons? Captain, I
canna thank ye enough. was "Don't try. Just get
those tractors manned."
  "Tractors, Kirk?" scoffed Squadron
Leader Korzhan. "Can the Federation no longer
afford to fit phasers to its ships?"
  "The Federation doesn't use phasers on people it
is protecting." "Those same people have ordered the
Federation off their planet and out of their star system.
What reason remains for protection?" The answers
to that one were various, but since most were insulting
to Korzhan, his race, and his presence here, Jim
didn't bother to answer. "Here they come," said
Sulu, saving Jim from further questions. With the ship
already at condition one, there were no raucous
sirens when the sensors picked up the approaching
shuttles. Instead they were 222
  announced by a decorous chime and a tactical
plot superimposed in three colors on
Squadron Leader Korzhan's face,
  Jim, for one, found it an improvement, but was
too tactful to say so, "The epetai-Kenek will
pardon me," he said, "but this one has a matter of
imminent importance requiring all his attention.
Kirk out."
  The Klingon face broke up in sparkle and
became a double-V formation of spacecraft rising
above the curve of Dekkanar's horizon. They
looked more rakish-and more dangerous-than the cumbersome
orbiters that the Dekkani had first sent up, and they
moved with a good deal more purpose. "Weapons,
Spock?"
  "Scanning." The Vulcan stared down his hooded
viewer for several minutes, then punched its
download controls and sat back. "No energy
weapons," he said with more relief than he allowed
to show on his face. "They have a crude radar-based
targetacquisition system, and they are armed with
active- homing solid fuel missiles."
  "Primitive," said Jim. "But are
they dangerous? Are the missiles
nuclear-tipped?"
  "I doubt it, Captain. The one they used'to
shoot down Sir Richard's shuttlecraft was a
conventional warhead:"
  "Bridge to Engineerinand,"
  "Aye, Captain?"
  "Scotty, are the tractors ready on standby?"
  "They are that. Jis say the word. his
  "The word is 'careful." I'm authorizing free
fire at operator's discretion. Just don't pull
the shuttles into each other, or us, or anything
else-and that includes the Klingon ships."
  I "Och, Captain. was The sigh of resignation
was heartfelt, and Jim still didn't know how much of
Scotty's 223
  attitude was a put-on. "Aye, well, all
right, sir. Then I reckon it does. was "You
reckon right. Kirk out." Jim stared at the incoming
orbiters and wondered which one of them had shot down that
last shuttlecraft as it lifted from the Federation
consulate. Did the person who had done it care that
he had killed eight people, or would there be an
impassioned freedom fighters' argument to explain
why such things had to happen, to benefit the
Movement? He didn't really want to know, in
case the temptation to forget about the tractors and
instead issue that free-fire order to Chekov and his
phaser banks became too strong.
  One of Defense's threat receptors beeped as
a target-acquisition sensor swept over them, then
warbled an alert as it locked on. The orbiters
carried their missiles inboard on a rotary
ventral tray. The first of them was plainly visible as
it streaked from its launching rail in a flare of light
and heat toward Enterprise.
  "What do you think they're trying to prove?" said
Jim. "Pigheadedness or suicidal tendencies?"
  "They'd call it stubborn courage in the face of
odds," said Bones, "and what does Scott think that
he's doing, waiting all this-was The missile jerked
violently sideways in a ninetydegree change
of course that didn't merely break the homing lock
but broke the missile too. The massive stress
was too much for its structural integrity, and though the
long, slim body tried to flex, it snapped in
half like a stick of celery. Propellant and
warhead went up together in a vivid puff of flame;
but by that time Scotty's people were attending to the next one.
They dealt with the shuttles, too, flipping
them one by one and two by two around the Enterprise in
parabolic curves so wild and whirling that neither the
pilots nor their electronics had a chance to lock
on long enough to do the starship any harm.
  Jim's chair-arm communicator whistled, and when
he switched it on, Admiral Korzhan was
laughing at him. Spock half turned to look
toward the sound, then raised his eyebrow to an angle
that spoke volumes. "I have noticed this before," he
said. "Repeated encounters tend to confirm the theory that
Klingons are easily amused."
  "Kirk," said Korzhan, recovering his
self-control with elaborate difficulty, "I now
believe your claim of innocence in the theft of
Hakkarl. Nobody who lacks the nerve to defend
his own ship, as a ship should be defended, would have enough
blood in his liver to try to steal ftom the Klingon
Empire. his
  "I'm glad that you find all of this so humorous,
Squadron Leader," Jim said dryly. "At
least something's managed to convince you."
  The Klingon-accented chuckling stopped abruptly;
there was no point in a joke if the butt of it
refused to recognize the humor. "You are innocent
by default, Kirk, was rasped
Korzhan. His voice had gone cold and angry,
and Jim fancied he didn't like being so thoroughly
shot down in front of his own bridge crew. "But
it is my intention to remain here until I discover
where guilt is to be found his
  "Only if you're asked to stay, Korzhan.
Remember the treaty terms. If the Dekkani
don't want you in their sky, you can't stay."
  "And who will make me leave? You and your three
ships, Kirk? They will be tong gone once this
evacuation is concluded. And asfor these gadfly
shuttles, they would never dare make any move against
my squadron. 11 The angle of view on
Enterprise's screen was changing, tracking around
to follow the PDI shuttles as they regained a
semblance of formation after their mauling by the tractors.
Jim looked at it, then looked again, harder.
"Mr. Sulu, magnification level five,
please."
  What the lower setting had only suggested was.
revealed now to be completely true: the terrorists
were starting an attack run on Korzhan's
squadron. Bones stared, not believing that any
sentient being could be so crazy. "Jim, you were right when
you mentioned suicidal tendencies. They'll
be cut to pieces." He watched silently for a few
more seconds, then said, "Wam the squadron leader.
Ask him not to return fire."
  For a moment, Jim saw not the screen and his chief
medical officer, but a Starfleet shuttlecraft
exploding as finally as that missile had done,
spilling out dead people instead of electronic guidance
chips. Let the terrorists get what's coming to them,
he thought. We can't do it-we're the good guys-but the
Klingons will oblige. He shivered at letting such
a thought inside his head, then reopened his link to the
Klingon flagship and to Korzhan.
  It was very quiet on Tazhat's bridge. The
killings, the confusion, and the narrow escape had served
to' sober all of them. "Report status," said
Kasak. His first rage at the intruding squadron
had died down by now, but it was only the difference between
an oilsoaked blaze and a raked, banked,
slow-burning fire of coals.
  "We are cloaked," said Askel. "Hakkarl
is cloaked also. His power output is constant
full. All weapons are charged." He touched
controls, put a tactical display on the screen.
"Relative positions give free crossfire in
five directions, as I now show. And we
may escape-was "Escape?" There was threat in the
way Kasak said it.,
  "Execute withdrawal," Askel corrected,
"through this quadrant. Shown." He operated the
controls 226
  again and cleared the screen of all but its visual
image. "Awaiting orders." "Viewer track
right, show mag four, hold."
  They watched as the orbiters attempted to press
home an attack on Enterprise, and laughed
quietly as the starship employed tractors to fling
the little ships aside. Kirk showed a fine contempt
for kuve opponents, worthy of a Klingon; it would
make bringing dishonor to his name that much the sweeter.
But then they saw how the orbiters regrouped and
continued their assault on the next ships in their
path, regardless of the fact that those were the nine
K't'inga cruisers of Korzhan's squadron.
"Are they brave or stupid?" said Force Leader
Marag in wonderment. Weapons Specialist
Katta leaned over her console for a moment, comparing
her readouts with those scanned from the squadron.
"Both. Then dead." Invisible to eyes and sensors
alike, they settled back in comfort to watch the
sport until Captain Kasak said
"Stations" in the deadly tone of one who had not yet
given any order to relax. He studied them well
from where he sat in the command chair, then glanced at the
foot repeaters and said, "Weapons, precision
fire.gg@.
  "Targeting which shuttle, sir?" said Katta,
tracking prelock triangles from one to the other
until ordered where to stop and fire. "No shuttle.
Target the battle cruiser nearest to them."
  If the bridge had been quiet before, it was
stunned now into utter silence. No head turned or
lifted from monitor or station, but eyes slid
sideways to meet other eyes and to wonder what the
captain was planning now. There was no outcry of
protest as there might have been before: the
sutai-Khornezh had re227
  quested too many strange things on this first flight,
things that had later proved to be wise, or cunning,
and always the proper thing to do. Kasak took note of
it and struck his hands together. "Good!" he said. "You have
learned at last. Now: target starboard engine,
disabling only, affirm action."
  "Acting."
  "Lock on."
  "Affirm."
  "Fire!"
  It was the viewing angle, nothing more deliberate,
that put the Klingon battle cruiser Tarkan
square in the middle of the viewscreen at the moment
when his starboard engine and part of the supporting wing were
chopped away. Because of that accident of position,
only the bridge crew of the Enterprise and that
ship's visual flight recorder log saw that the
explosion had not been caused by any sort of
missile. The actinic blue track of a shipboard
disrupter had been brief, but all too plain. And the
most appalling part was that the firing ship hadn't needed
to decloak.... Admiral Korzhan's
response was typically Klingon: his flagship
locked every disrupter battery that could be brought to bear
onto the approaching targets and, without issuing
further warnings, opened fire. The leading Dekkan
orbiter instantly became an expanding cloud of
debris-and Jim's hailing frequency broke up,
swamped by the raw energy of the weapon discharge.
Whatever he might have said to Korzhan was lost in a
screech of static.
  The main viewscreen's tactical overlay showed
the other eight shuttles already within easy range, and the
Klingons weren't likely to waste time
scanning them when achieving a disrupter lock was just as
easy. Another orbiter flared up, then collapsed
into a spitting globe of irradiated scrap, and
made the Klingons' 228
  intentions for every other potentially hostile target
only too clear. Terrorists or not, the people on those
orbiters were under Federation protection. Until
Uhura managed to fifter the channel back down
to something that could be used for communication, there were only
two things Jim could do to prevent a massacre:
move Ente"...prise between the Dekkani shuttles and the
massed firepower of Korzhan's squadron ...
Or order Chekov to open fire.
  His stomach cramped into a knot as he thought of the
consequences of either decision. Federation starships were
well shielded, but not well enough to survive the
punishment that nine K't'inga class battle
cruisers could hand out if the Organians weren't
around to stop them. He could get himself and his entire
crew killed, and his ship destroyed, to protect a
bunch of terrorists who probably couldn't care
less about them. And the other alternative was worse.
  If the Organians regarded this sector as part
of the Treaty Zone, and didn't regard Jim's
action as correct and necessary, they would
immobilize Enterprise's phasers, so that the
Dekkani would be butchered anyway. The
Organians would also be completely within their rights
to hand Dekkanar over to the Klingon Empire as a
penalty for the violation of firing unprovoked on a
cosignatory. Just as Captain Kasak had
intended all along. A third armed orbiter
exploded, and Jim realized that, comright or wrong,
he had to do something before any more of these stupid,
malicious-and plainly helpless-civilian
terrorists were killed. Those who had committed murder
were probably already dead, and as for the remainder, their
only crime was to have made bloody nuisances of
themselves. It wasn't enough to die for. "Sulu,
one-half impulse power. Get Enterprise
into 229
  the line of fire before Korzhan's entire
squadron opens up." He was aware of shocked
stares from all over the bridge, and equally aware that
his own voice was far steadier than it had any reason
to be as he fitted a sort of weak grin onto his
face. "Maybe they'll be so surprised they'll
hold their fire."
  And then the hailing frequency came back on
line. The bridge crew of the Enterprise
had probably never been so happy to see a
Klingon's ugly face as they were to see Admiral
Korzhan now. Jim Kirk talked fast, as fast
as he had ever done in such a situation-and to such effect
that the Klingon admiral glowered doubtfully for no more
than a second before calling a general cease-fire.
On the tactical display that overlaid
Korzhan's face, Jim watched as the surviving
orbiters and their unarmed companions fled over the
horizon and out of the line of fire before making a very
fast unscheduled reentry and descent down to the
planet's surface. Only when they were safely
gone did he breathe a bit more easily. Jim
delicately wiped the perspiration from his palms and
brow and upper lip, drew another easy breath, and
began explaining facts and theories to Korzhan
epetai-Kenek. At a speed rather more appropriate
to comfort and to the dignity of their rank.
  "So that was Kasak's intention," said Korzhan
grimly. "To provoke you by provoking me. He
knew that the Organian glowbugs would not be troubled
by an internal quarrel among Klingons. Such
disagreements are.. . not uncommon. It was a good
planunless it worked against the Empire, as it might have
done hadyou persisted in this madness
ofmakingyour starship a shieldfor those Dekkan
fools. his
  He had watched the relevant part of the flight
recorder data, had heard statements from Sulu,
Chekov, and several others, and had been convinced

  comeventually. Jim was surprised by that;
pragmatism was not a trait he had encountered much in
Klingons. This squadron leader had evidently
been selected for good sense and restraint rather than
aggressiveness, in an attempt to put a stop
to all those instances along the borders of the Organian
Treaty Zones where overhasty Klingon captains
had burned their fingers and the Empire's. It was a
fortunate choice for all concerned; the present
situation had enough of a hair trigger already. The
admiral smiled, no more than a stretching of lips
back from teeth. "Kasak might have caused us
to forfeit an imperial world instead of gaining one. This
will not be forgotten. I will speak with you again, Kirk, was
said Korzhan, and broke off the connection.
  "Captain," said Uhura, "Chief
Councillor Varn is requesting you speak with him.
He's somewhat agitated and got more so when I told
him whom you were talking to. Shall I put him
up on the screen?" "Yes, Uhura. Thank you."
Talking to the wily Varn would be a holiday after
Korzhan epetaicomKenek, and Jim was no longer
disposed, or required, to put up with any of the old
man's bluster. The chief councillor would use
language appropriate to a diplomatic
exchange or Jim wouldn't listen to what he had
to say."
  In the event, Varn spoke like someone calling the
police to come and prevent his house from being burgled.
That was appropriate enough, thought Jim, if a little
late. Planetside, it seemed things had gone a
little crazy. The realization that an entire Klingon
battle squadron had somehow been invited
into orbit, and that as a result the Federation ships
present were heavily outnumbered, had thrown what
presently passed for the Dekkan government into a
panic.
  They had ordered the Federation representatives
off-planet, but failed to negotiate any
military or diplomatic protection to fill the
gap. The instant the 231
  Klingon squadron arrived, the Dekkani
realized that their world and their culture were wide open,
not for development but for exploitation. And
they knew that so far as the Empire was concerned, the
PD1 terrorists in their little ships were likely
to start something that only the Klingons would finish.
  It all came out in a tumble of words that little time for
breath and none whatsoever for the haughtiness Jim had
heard before. "Councillor Varn," he said during his
first chance to get a word in, "this is not a matter for
me to decide. There are Federation diplomats on the
other two ships of this force. As you should well know.
Address your problems to them. And, Councillor?"
  "What is it, Kirk Admiral?"
  "Remember the alternative. Kirk out."
  Klingons were hunting Klingons. Korzhan's
squadron was moving against the renegade Kasak,
outraged that this passed-over failure had succeeded in
making them all look like fools. All on board the
Enterprise were aware of their new allies by now, and the
general feeling was one of relief tinged with grimly
ironic amusement.
  James Kirk was not quite so relieved. The
Klingons' assistance was welcome in tracking down
Hakkarl and Tazhat, but it made the change in
situation all too clear. If Kasak's cloaked
ship was still in the sector and if Kasak had been
monitoring the frequencies as a sensible
defector should, he would know he could no longer
claim association with the Empire-but he would also know
that the political restraints on his actions were gone
now, and for the same reason.
  Spock, hands clasped behind his back, stood
quietly beside the center seat. "Kasak is now a
criminal, Captain. And any attack he might
make on the
  Enterprise or on you would be in the nature of

  personal rather than political aggression. Even
assuming that the Organians would intervene in this
system, there is a considerable doubt that they would do so
in such a circumstance. It would be outside the
restrictions laid down in the treaty."
  "What you're saying, Spock," said Bones,
"is that Kasak's still got a state-of-the-art ship that
we can't even see, and once he works all this out for
himself, he'll try using it?"
  "Laudably succinct, Doctor. It seerns-was
  And then Enterprise jolted, vibrating like a
tuning fork as raw energy splattered against her
shields and leaked through to the gravity and guidance
systems. The main viewscreen went black.
Bones grabbed the bridge handrail, but
even then almost fell as a sine wave of grav
fluctuations rippled through the ship. Her durasteel
hull members groaned with the intolerable anguish of the
stresses surging through them before shuddering back down
to stillness again. But not silence; for the sirens were whooping
again.
  "It seems you were right, Mr. Spock," finished
Jim, his voice deadly calm. "Have we got
visual back yet?"
  "Yes, sir." The screen came back to life
with an astonishing image: nine Klingon battle
cruisers were concentrating their fire on a single
point, the source of that last shot, so that they formed the
base of a distorted pyramid whose sides were a mesh
of blue fire. Its apex flared intolerably
bright: all that energy was splashing back from shields so
powerful that they were radiating out into the ultraviolet.
Suddenly the firing ceased, and Hakkarl was back in
view. Jim didn't know whether its cloaking
device was damaged, overloaded, or merely
bleeding off too much power now that it was involved in
full-scale combat rather than the hit-and-run raids
for which it was designed. All that mattered was that it could

  seen and destroyed, and he waited for the
other Klingon warships to close in for the kill.
  Nothing happened. Instead of pressing home their
attack until Hakkarl was no more than a swirl
of irradiated particles, the ships of Korzhan's
squadron fell back, withholding their final
salvo. Then Communications chirped the presence of
an incoming signal. At a nod from Jim,
Uhura transferred it to the screen.
  Squadron Leader Admiral Korzhan
epetai-Kenek gazed levelly at Admiral
James T. Kirk. He said nothing for several
moments, merely looked long and hard, as if
impressing Jim's face onto his mind. "There is
your enemy, Kirk, "he said at last. "Andyour
battle, if he has power enough remaining to make a
fight of it. Not mine. his
  The screen went dead.
  "They have given him to me," said Kasak softly.
He had replayed the monitored transmission
back three times before he spoke a single word.
"Kirk and his ship are mine to destroy."
  "This was not why we supported you," said Krynn.
"Where is all the glory that the one promised in the
winning of a planet for the Empire?" "That is past,"
said Kasak. He was growing impatient with
this pedantic insistence on less important
matters while the Enterprise and Kirk were waiting
to be killed. "Stations."
  They did not move. Kasak stared at them,
unbelieving for an instant, then grabbed for his
pistol. Marag's huge hand came down on top of
his and forced the disrupter back into its holster. "This is
mutiny!" snarled Kasak, his teeth bared to the
gums.
  "No, Captain, it is wisdom. Hakkarl's
cloak is destroyed, and you do not yet know what other
damage has been done." Askel leaned forward,
pulled the pistol's charge slide out and tucked the
weapon 234
  behind his belt. "Imperial Intelligence was
willing to defend even the wildest schemes of the
sutai-be Khornezh who was full of skill and
brilliance." He was fully aware of the shocked way
in which the others were all looking at him, and ignored
it. "But not the one who is bortaSo straav. ?"'
  "What did you say?" Kasak's voice had
dropped to no more than an exhalation of air; none
present had ever heard him made so angry.
"Only the truth. A captain may not lead his ship
and serve the Empire and yet be a slave
to revenge. Something must lose. P-he looked from
side to side and nodded at the agreement he saw
there- "we do not like to lose." "Then go. Get off my
ship."
  "It is not your ship but the Empire's." Askel
looked as though he might have said more, but the words
remained unspoken. "But we will leave it, just the
same. And leave it for you to hold as best you can."
Kasak stared at him for several seconds, then showed
his teeth. "Better than you think, mutineer. Say
what you will, this ship is mine, and Hakkarl is
mine." He swung back the padding on one arm of the
command chair and unlocked the security lid that covered
a key pad beneath it. "Mine to command," he said, touching
keys in a coded sequence that brought different
readouts to the data screens around the chair's base.
Kasak entered a last command series, closed cover
and padding, and pressed the switch that normally opened the
intercom circuit. This time it caused changes in the
very structure of the chair as panels slid back and
additional equipment swung up, locking in place
with small, solid sounds: thrust levers, a
sidestick controller, a sensors board, a
weapons status display-all devices more
appropriate to a single-seat fighter.
Kasak looked at them, then at his crew. "Mine

  control," he said, and dismissed them by turning his
back. Askel shook his head at this stubbornness and
made to follow the others from the bridge to the
transporter room and thence to the flagship of
Admiral Korzhan. But he paused at the door
of the turbolift and glanced over one shoulder at this
captain who had been his friend. "Success,
sutai-Khomezh," he said. "Whatever has
passed, you will be remembered with honor."
  Askel entered the lift car and did not look
back again. Its door closed, and he was gone.
  "Full sensor scan completed, Captain."
Spock studied the data for a few seconds.
"Energy readings are residual, decaying fast, and
more a result of irradiation during the bombardment
than of activity on board the cruiser. I would
say that Hakkarl is dead in space, except-was
"Except that it looked the same way last time,"
growled Bones. "Precisely, Doctor."
  "It sounds to me as if you don't trust your own
instruments, Spock," said Jim, swinging his seat
halfway around to study this phenomenon. "The
instruments are accurate. But I do not
trust that Klingon ship. That machine. Without a living
crew, it has no need for any power stages
except on and off. That makes every deactivation a
potential ambush." They looked more closely at
the battle cruiser, now hanging nose-down,
slanted across the screen in an attitude that made
it look totally derelict. Admiral Korzhan
had given this enemy to them. It was unlikely he
meant it as a gift or that his un-Klingon tolerance
would outlast any effort to capture it. He had
presented it as a target, whether in battle or as
a hulk on a 236
  live-firing range. And there was no one on board
anyway.... Jim reached his decision. "Mr.
Stewart, man the weapons console, arm photon
torpedoes. Mr. Chekov, lock phasers on
target; stand by on phasers and photon torpedoes.
On my-was
  "Captain! Power surge! Shields are tilde
his
  "Fire!"
  The photon torpedoes spat from both tubes in
a left-right-left-right ripple that for all its speed
was not quite fast enough. In the bare seconds between the
torpedoes" launch and their impact, the
Klingon cruiser had raised full forward shields
and at the same instant had begun the first phase of
an impulsepowered evasion sequence. It vanished
for a moment behind four blooms of white fire, an
incandescent daisy chain of destruction two hundred
kilometers long as the torpedoes altered course
to track their suddenly moving target, and for that moment the
watchers on the Enterprise shared a sickening feeling
that it had gone back into cloak. Spock was the only
person on the bridge who did not release an
audible sigh of relief when the battle cruiser
came back into view, and that only because his sensors
had told him an instant before everyone else. The
relief was shortlived, for Hakkarl was lined up on
an attack course. "Sulu, evasive," said
Jim, and saw the Klingon ship heel wildly across
the screen as Enterprise hit a savage combination
break of yaw and roll and pitch all at the same
time. He gulped as his stomach tried to keep pace
with what his eyes said he should be feeling, despite
insistence from his inner ear and the gravity field beneath him
that nothing was wrong. Sulu wasn't using the
automaneuvering protocols, that much was,
obvious: anybody trying to program that sort of
behavior into a starship's guidance systems
would be certified.
  But it worked. Hakkarl's incoming fire seared under
them and through where they had been with satisfying impotence,
ionization and hard radiation sleeting off in its wake
as the massive energy yield dissipated in
atmosphere.
  But any satisfaction generated by that evasion was
squashed by the way the Klingon snapped around in
pursuit. It was a maneuver that would have drawn
shrieks of protest from Scotty and the pylon-stress
monitors if Sulu had tried it with Enterprise;
more than that, if the inertial compensators so much as
flickered during such a wrenching turn, pulling
fortyplus G at rock-bottom minimum, the
entire crew would be smeared into paste. But Hakkarl
of course had no crew, and no energy drained off
to maintain their good health, for that matter. Jim
understood the thinking behind that very clearly now, because that
spare power, and there seemed to be plenty for every demand,
be it thrusters or weapons or shields, was now being
channeled through the disrupters-and threatening Enterprise
shields five and six with an imminent overload,
warpboosting or not. It kept happening with a frightening
inevitability: whatever impossible maneuver
Sulu attempted, Hakkarl matched and
exceeded, a little tighter, a little faster, much less
concerned about structural violations. Spock looked
up from a monitor, his expression grave.
"Captain," he said, "sensors indicate an
overall reduction of shield efficiency
to fifty-three percent of standard. Critical
overload and total failure will occur in
fifty-seven seconds unless we are given some
respite from this constant battering."
  In other words, do something or we're dead.
  But what? Against a computer-crewed ship that could
outmaneuver and outgun them a dozen times
  over, what could be done? Jim suspected that.
Hakkarl, unlike M5 or Nomad, would not be
talked into its own destruction, nor could they simply
pull the plug on it....
  Or could they?
  Jim smiled tightly-a smile that, a few
seconds. later, the rest of the bridge crew was
sharing, Mr. Spockea"of course, being the sole
exception. Now if it would work ...
  "We're in your hands, Mr. Sulu," said Jim
softly. "Do your best." "Sir," said the
helmsman, his acknowledgment coming as if from very far
away. Sulu leaned over the helm
console, checking readouts and tapping controls, then
straightened up, his hands poised. "Chekov, set
prelocks dead ahead and stand by; I'll only be
able to get away with this the first time, but you ought to have a
target in three, two, one-was Both hands came
down, fingers spread, on the. reaction-thruster
controls. It was as if the rearmost shield had given
way and let something through to the hull. Enterprise
shook, then rattled, as she simultaneously
dumped velocity and was shoved sideways out of her
line of flight. Taken unaware, Hakkarl went
streaking paststraight into the prelock zone. Two
photon torpedoes and the output from all of the forward
phasers hit square and punched through to the primary
hull, detonating on that section of plating where the
scout ship Tazhat was carried, and where remote
command transmissions were received....
  The battle cruiser reeled more violently than
seemed justified even by four clean hits. It
wobbled in space for what seemed like several
minutes. Then all-, at once it regained its
equilibrium and swung toward them again. And kept
on turning as Hakkarl swung by them 239
  and toward an area of space between Korzhan's
squadron and the other Federation ships. It was
an area where there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen,
even with full sensor assistance; and that was, of
course, the intended effect of a cloaking device.
  Hakkarl, brain-damaged and blind, as Jim had
intended, and lethal, was homing on the source of its
own command signals-a circumstance he had not
foreseen.
  "Weapons are locking on, Captain," said
Spock. On the viewer there was still nothing for them
to lock onto. "Firing." Or to fire at.
"Firing again."
  Tazhat shivered out of cloak, pitching up and
back on its plane axis like an animal
acknowledging defeat by displaying an unprotected
throat and belly. According to the screen readouts, the
display had no effect on Hakkarl
  "Cruiser is firing for a third time." Spock
glanced at a scrolling schematic and then returned
his attention to the main viewer. "The Bird of
Prey's shields are failing. Have failed. It is
defenseless." "Why has Hakkarl ceased firing?"
wondered Chekov. "It was programmed
by Klingons," said Jim. "They take prizes for
profit. Someone must have included
surrender-recognition parameters, like
dropping shields."
  "Maybe they've stopped talking to each other,"
said Bones. The statement was less facetious than
it sounded: Tazhat's transmissions would have been
combat maneuvers or weapon-firing instructions, and
by the look of its behavior, continuing to follow such
orders even when they became inappropriate,
Hakkarl had an unfortunately large resident
memory buffer. And then the message from Tazhat
came through. 240
  Captain Kasak sutai-Khomezh sat as
Jim had first seen him, on his bridge in his command
chair, but this time it was smoke rather than
atmosphere-moisture clouding the scene. Kasak
wore no respirator mask, but was breathing the
unfiltered fumes; he was already dying, from that as much as
from the wound that had mangled his body. Fire stained the
murk a dirty orange, and it was shot through with the
sparks that spat from shattered consoles.
  "Kirk ... I see you have survived again."
Kasak could have seen nothing of the sort. Splinters of
screen from an exploding monitor had made certain
of that. "Be assured, this cannot last. You have made
too many enemies during your years, and luck is a
finite commodity. Somewhere out among the stars
there will be another enemy waiting for you, one more
fortunate than I. One day you will know the bitter
flavor of the coldest dish, and in the Black
Fleet I will know, and laugh. his
  He laughed now, painfully, and blood shone on
his teeth. "So Hakkarl, too, is taken from me,
was Kasak said. "There will be no more. Tazhat I
keep. was Moving slowly, he stripped off his
officer's sash and used it to tie his free hand to the
command chair. "Kasakte kaase," he said.
"Witness it, Kirk. It would be good if you did not
forget. was He touched a control, then sat back and
made himself comfortable.
  "Hakkarl has resumed its attack run," said
Spock. Jim did not reply. He was staring across
a gulf that was more than simply empty space,
looking at what might have been himself, and wondering how
and when that gulf could be bridged so that a Klingon could
stand aboard the Enterprise without suspicions of some
ulterior motive. He was still wondering, still watching
that figure, all alone in the chair and tied there
by tradition far stronger than the mere fabric of a
sash, when Spock said, very softly, "Firing." The

  image on the screen flared white, then
black, and broke up in static. The battle
cruiser's firing pass lasted no more than a
second, and when it was over Jim sat in silence,
looking at the crackling interference on the viewer that
nobody right now would switch off without orders.
Finally he got to his feet. "Screen to exterior
visual," he said. Hakkarl hung there, truly
dead in space now, as dead as anything that had blown
out its own brains. Nothing but scrap. "Destroy
that," Jim said. "Completely."
  He didn't stay to watch his orders carried out,
but turned his back on the bridge and went to his
quarters and was alone with his thoughts and the darkness.
  "The Klingon battle group is leaving orbit,
Captain," said Uhura, "and their admiral wants
to speak to you. I told him you were taking your first rest
period after a long time on duty, and shouldn't be
disturbed, but he was very, er, persuasive."
  "Leaving orbit?" Jim was suddenly very much
awake. "Put him on, Uhura-and thanks for being
persuaded."
  Korzhan epetai-Kenek gazed at him from the
screen, and though Jim didn't know much about Klingon
facial expressions, it struck him that this particular
Klingon was at ease with his world. He was
soon to learn the reason why.
  "So you have seen our Great Experiment, Kirk,
  Korzhan said. "As have we all. No one
askedfor or agreed with my opinion of it, but all have
witnessed my vindication. was The image on the viewer
drew itself up much straighter, and it gave Jim a
small shock to suddenly realize just how very old, and
therefore highly placed, the squadron leader had to be
to get this particularly satisfying command. Vindication
in242 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
  deed, and satisfaction by the personal and
political bushel. "Know this, as they will know when I
return: Klingons need no machines to do their
fighting for them. Stand your force down from its battle
stations, Kirk. There will be no morefighting done
today, either by machines or hyflesh and blood. Maybe
we will meet again when both of us have different orders and
no interfering Organian light bulbs to prevent a
warrior ftom seeking glory. Until then, or
until the Black Fleet, I salute you. Kai
kassai, Enterprise. Kai kassai, Kirk. was
The picture changed from an elderly Imperial
race Klingon in a Navy uniform to nine bright
specks accelerating out of the 4725 Cancri
system, and James Kirk lay back on
his bed and breathed easily for the first time in days. The
Klingon withdrawal had been the only item missing
from a small catalog of good things that had quietly
accumulated over the past four hours. Bones had
repaired Todd Johnson's elbow, replacing the
smashed original joint with a pattern-linked
implant that was quite literally as good as new. The
colonel was back with his people on the surface again,
heading a peacekeeping police force that needed no
weapons, no armor, and indeed had very little to do
except sit in the sun-until the new, and by the sound
of them, very easy negotiations for Federation tenancy
began. Vanguard and Sir Richard had already
returned to normal duties. And Enterprise had
been cleared to leave Dekkan space and head for
Star Base 12. The news of that was probably
all over the ship by now, and Jim decided he might
as well put sleeping back on hold until he
had gone back to the bridge and made it all
official. As soon as he checked on readiness with the
department heads, they could actually get out of here.
He began to close his eyes for just five more 243
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT lazy minutes-and then
opened them again, very wide, when the ceiling somehow grew
a ... glowbug. Jim sat up very
straight and very fast, and stared as the globe of pure
energy drifted down to eye level.
"Ayelborne?" he hazarded, pulling the name up
through a dozen years of memory. Claymare,
corrected the voice in his head, without rancor for the
mistake. Organians, thought Jim, were
probably a sufficiently advanced race to know that
their energy forms were difficult to tell apart. Pity
about their sense of timing, though. There was no need, said
Claymore, making Jim glad he hadn't thought
anything more insulting. We merely observed. It is
pleasing that our intervention was not required All the
questions about that decision shot through Jim's brain, and he
hoped the Organian was not so advanced that it couldn't
recognize outrage when it heard some. However,
since all the answers to those questions inevitably
accompanied them, Claymare was saved the trouble of
accounting for each one. The conflicts ofpersonal
enemies, while regrettable, are not a part of the
treaty, it said, and do not warrant intervention
regardless of which party an individual might claim
to represent. The late Captain Kasak acted
throughout on a most erroneous assumption of our
response. Jim considered all of the ways that he
might have resolved the situation, ways he
had discarded as being provocative but which evidently
hadn't been anything of the kind, and slapped one hand
against his forehead. He groaned softly; for some
emotions, words were notoriously inadequate.
Kasak aside, said the Organian soothingly, the
reactions of both sides were most laudable. We are
extremely pleased by this, and await further
develop- 244 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT ments
with interest. Claymare's glowing light shrank and
began to fade. Captain James Kirk, we
salute you.... Jim gazed across the empty room
and blinked a couple of times to remove the purple
afterimages from his vision. He reached for the
communicator panel, then hesitated and decided that
since no intruder alert had been sounded, he would
save news of the Organian's visit for a more
appropriate moment. Jim made a brief
official note of the incident in his personal log.
That would do for now. Then he pulled on his boots,
shrugged into his tunic and made for the bridge.
  From the looks he got as he stepped from the lift,
Jim knew that his crew knew what had ended his
off-shift so early. Shipboard gossip strikes
again, he thought, and wondered what the grapevine would
make of the visitor-once he got round
to officially transferring the log entry. Right now there
were more urgent matters needing attention. Such as shore
leave. "Shore leave?" he heard Chekov mutter
in a tone of studied incredulity. "But my calendar
says that this was shore leave!" "Oh, no, Mr.
Chekov," said Jim, grinning. "This was just
practice. Now you get to survive the real thing.
Lay in a course for Star Base Twelve, if you
please. Mr. Sulu, take us out of orbit.
One-half impulse power till we're at the
perimeter, then warp factor six." They turned from
the planet and returned to the stars.