STAR TREK
FROM THE DEPTHS
BY
VICTOR MILAN
POCKET BOOKS Now York London
Toronto Sydney bkyo Singapore
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
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Any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
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Copyright C 1993 by Paramount Pictures.
All Rights Reserved.
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For Joan-Marie
Prologue
Blinking iNT-O molten silver sunlight,
Aileea dinAthos emerged from the ranch house to find
her father sitting on the afterdeck, clad only in
khaki shorts. A cup of black chai steamed in his
hand. A white eyeshade shielded his face from the
glare of tiny Eris, burning a hole in the
blue-white sky to the east, not far above the ocean that
was their world. She stood on tiptoe, stretched arms
high above her head, hand locked on wrist, back
arching. She wore just a white thong swimsuit
bottom and a sidearm belt. Eris light fell on
her bare brown skin like a rain of needles. The sky
was clear but for a bloated gray worm of smoke
sprawled across the southern horizon and a bank of
slate-colored clouds to the northeast. That would
probably not last past noon, but like any true
Vare she was prepared to enjoy the moment to the fullest.
She came up behind her father then, making no
more noise than she customarily did, which was none,
despite the light fall of volcanic ash that dusted
the deck. Before she reached the edge of his peripheral
vision, he said, "You're up late. A body comes
by slovenly habits in the city." She laughed
and sat down on the arm of his chair. A mild sea
was washing over the white flotation cylinders that
supported the deck. The float rocked gently.
A soft breeze ruffled her shag-cut hair.
"If that's the worst habit I've picked up in the
city," she said, "we're all luckier than I
thought we were." Aagard dinAthos saluted his
daughter with his mug, which was white porcelain and
chipped at the brim. Much as it exasperated her,
he refused to throw it away. It had history, he
claimed. "It's never too late to come home.
Ranch life is hard, but-it's honest and clean."
"My work's honest, too," she said. She stood up
quickly and instantly regretted her comsharpness of tone.
Her father just grinned at her through his short grizzled
beard and nodded. She sighed. She knew her father
both loved and respected her. And she had been a
full adult for years, since her fourth birthday,
self-owning and self-reliant. She was seven and a
quarter now, but he had never let go of testing her.
It was A major reason she could never come home
to stay. When Mom was alive, it was different.
Aagard and Aileea dinAthos were made of the same
stuff. Sanabar comgentle, resilient, and utterly
unlike her husband or her daughter-had
been the safety rod that prevented them achieving
critical mass. One of the sudden ,terrible storms
that wracked the planet had washed
her from their lives, leaving a void that could not be
filled. There were many reasons they called the world
Discord. Aileea wandered near the rail, shaded her
eyes to gaze away to the smoke bank in the south.
Nearer to hand a pair of Hinds floated above a
raft, each on six red win , seeking the
life-forms crawling in and on gs the matted seaweed.
"New volcano?" she asked. "We never wandered out
this way when I was a kid." "Just sticking her head
above water," her father said, nodding. "That's why I'm
keeping the float ever so slightly under power, so that
we can steer clear of the plume. May even have to lay
on more thrust, bear a hair north"-he brushed at
the gray grit film that had accreted on the arm of his
chair- "so we don't have to go around wearing
respirators."
She nodded. "Maybe FlIscoot down that way
and have a look at our new arrival."
"Best take a flyer. She's an active
baby." As if to emphasize his words a rumble,
almost subliminally low-pitched, rolled in from the south
to vibrate in their bones and teeth. Before her
the surface of the Ocean of Discord bowed upward and
then broke with a quiet, insistent rushing, not twenty
meters from the ranch house. Water cascaded from the
mottled dark blue back of a prawn. The
Waverider crest had been laser-burned a
centimeter deep and a meter wide in the beast's
carapace, which was thick as battleship plate and
nearly as hard. Like most of Discord's native
lifeforms, the giant crustaceans metabolized and
made use of the, metals superabundant in the
planet's crust.
As always, Aileea was awed watching the beast's
back, ten meters wide at its broadest, rolling
like the top of a great wheel turning, to vanish again beneath
the waters. The house rocked to the swell of its
passing. The fifty-meter-long prawn was a sea
grazer, utterly nonaggressive, relying on
size and armor sufficient to deter even the
rapacious predators of the world called Discord. A
constant tone emitted by the household sonics,
inaudible to the ears of Aileea and her father, kept the
beast from approaching dangerously close. The
breeze blew the rank salty smell of sea
life to her, and something else, at once sweet and
pungent. "That's Old Lucy, isn't
it?" she asked.
"The matriarch herself."
"She's ready to be scraped."
"True enough. But she's just done spawning.
Didn't want to gripe her."
Out on the water the wavelets danced white-bright
like broken porcelain shaken on a table. A
scooter skimmed the surface, snaking a line of
froth across the shards. A ranch hand, riding herd on
the pod of giant crustaceans or inspecting the
pod-shaped robot 66 wranglers" that contained and
guided the huge sea beasts. The figure raised
an arm and waved. 6'Who is that?" Aileea
asked, waving back. "I can't make out."
"It's Gita, of course," her father said
gruffly. "You can tell by the reckless way she
careens around."
He eyed his daughter critically. "Your
childhood playmate, and you don't recognize the
way she rides?" Aileea felt her mouth
tighten. She was all too aware of the gap that now
yawned between her and the woman who had been a virtual
sister to her. Not that
she didn't get along with Gita. It was just that
they had ... grown apart, and she felt an
aching hollowness within. "It's been a long time since
I've seen her ride, Father." "You're losing touch
with where you came from, girl." She glared at him.
He regarded her with eyes sharp and black as
obsidian. "Come home, Aileea," he said in a
quiet voice. "You know the sea as well as any
Vare-you're a very part of her. And you'll soon pick
the ranching life back up, right enough."
He showed her a sardonic grin. "And I don't
think you'd need worry about growing bored. We see
action aplenty." A grimace flickered across her
face. like a cloud transiting the sun. "I've
seen all the action I everwant to, Father. And then
some."
She paced the slow-rolling deck, hugging herself.
"The Stilters come frequently?"
"Very much so, these days."
She turned. "But you're handling them?"
It was a foolish question, she realized at once.
Evidently. Or we wouldn't be here.
"Well enough," her father said. "But it's starting
to cut close- his
A shrill beeping sounded. He reached down,
picked up a palmreader, and frowned at the screen.
Aileea felt a chill run down her
spine. "The perimeter wranglers are picking up
something on sonar." It was not a question.
Her father nodded, murmuring quick commands into the
handheld unit. Cable of lightweight
hightensile-strength alloy played out of a housing
atop the
ranch house, allowing the radar eye slung beneath the
captive polymerized aluminum balloon to ride
higher, to see farther past the horizon. , "Speak
of Leviathan," Aagard dinAthos muttered when
he saw what it showed him. "Speak of the Devil in
the Sea. . .
"Get below," Aileea said sharply. "You can
control the wrangle rs from the command center."
"I can control them from here, too, daughter," he
said, rising to his full height, which was impressive
for a man of their Gens. He spoke without heat, but
firmly.
Her eyes fell away from his. It was a
measure of the strangeness of her chosen profession that
for a moment she had been unaware of the incongruity of
casually giving orders to not just her father, but any
Vare.
She didn't have a lot of time to stand around being
abashed; at once she was in motion, across the
deck in a flash of long slender legs burned dark
by the relentless sun, into the cockpit of her own
scooter, moored at the stem of the float. It
retracted its fragmentproof canopy to her word of
command. Despite her state of undress she slid
into the formfitting black seat without hesitation and
slipped on the lightweight headset. She had no
need of an emergency flotation vest or a breather,
but she might have reason to miss the envir onment suit
she was accustomed to wear to work, if only for its
armor. She cast off, started the electric
impellers cycling water through tubes that ran the
length of the tiny craft. As it picked up speed she
allowed herself the luxury of a glance back at the
float where she had been bom and raised. Her father still
stood on the after- 6
deck, arms crossed over his wiry-muscled
chest, staring off at the horizon over which the intruders
would soon appear. She caught a glimpse of
giant Mansur hulking in the doorway with his
cleaver in his hand, and then she turned her eyes forward
and gave the scooter full acceleration.
Head-up holos sprang into existence between dark
jade eyes and the windscreen, feeding her
simultaneous streams of information. Still
several minutes until contact; she left the
canopy back. She would feel the wind in her face
and her hair as long as she could.
"Waveriders," she said to the communicator.
"Who's out there this morning?"
"'Sleep late enough, MET" Gita came
back. "Almost too late. Who else?"
The others sounded off crisply Krysztof,
Lev, Haidar, Jasmine. Not just employees,
they were all stockholders in the ranch. It was their
home and their property they would be defending.
She would give instructions and they would follow them,
though they were Vares and fiercely protective of their
liberties. Not simply because she was the senior
stockholder's daughter, nor even because they were all
friends and Krysztof and Haidar had, like Gita, been
her childhood playmates. Hers was not the most
respectable profession, perhaps, but her expertise
at it was unquestioned.
"We have three bogies inbound on bearing two
ninety, speed one hundred fifty klicks per
hour," she said, reading the data relayed from the
wranglers and the household sensors. "Look like
hydrofoils, sixtytonners. Cossack
class."
The Stilters were getting smarter. In the past they
had favored conventional surface craft, larger and
full
of firepower but slower. That made them potent
foes-but also inviting targets for Vare missiles and
torpedoes. Their advisers from the stars were teaching them
well, it seemed.
comKofirlar, was snarled Lev. None of them knew
it had once meant "religious infidels"; to them it
signified "intruders, interlopers." It was the name
they gave their ancient enemies' new friends.
"They'll be there," Haidar agreed, "but just a
few. The crews will be Stilters."
Holding her lower lip between her teeth, Aileea
nodded. Haidar had the knack of looking at the
brightest available side of things, but he was most
likely right.
"Moment," Krysztof said in his slow, heavy
way. "I'm getting a return from Seventeen.
Vessel in the thousand-tonne range, same bearing,
fifty kilometers farther out."
"That'll be the carrier, the mother ship," she said.
"Keeping out of our range," Lev said.
"Do you blame them?" Haidar asked with a laugh.
"There are still seventy and more of them to the six of
us," Jasmine warned.
Gita's laugh pealed in Aileea's ears.
"Unfair odds," she said. "Perhaps half of us should
stay behind."
As they spoke the six were riding an intercept
course, spread out in an arc covering three
kilometers of ocean. The scooters were tiny
craft, without armor to speak of, relying mainly on
speed for defense. But like so many of Discord's
smaller life-forms, each carried a deadly sting.
She called for the data from Wrangler 17, quickly
skimmed it, brought up the feed from the robot's
camera. "That's a tender, all right. Looks like
a Goebbels. was She used the Vare codename for the
craft. She knew the Stilter name for it,
too-Vare electronic surveillance was good, much
better than Stilter countermeasures, and after almost
forty years of constant warfare Vare and Stilter could
translate one another's language. But the Vare
names were easier on the mouth comspeaking Stilter was like
trying to tie a half hitch with your lips.
She frowned. "The Goebbels is built to carry
four Cossacks. Stay alert, everybody-there
might be another one out there." "Should some of us hang
back and keep an eye out for him?"
Krysztof asked.
"We're too few as it is," Jasmine said.
"She's right," Aileea said. "Now be.
careful. We'll be in range of their rockets
soon."
Up ahead she saw them now, three notches of
white cut from the blue horizon, the bow waves of the
speeding hydrofoils. She brought up a magnified
display. Cossacks, all right, stubby wedge-shaped
hulls painted in jagged patterns of blue and
black and white to break up their silhouettes,
bristling with weaponry like a seaspine on a reef.
And clumped much too close together, in approved
Stilter fashion. She wondered if the Kofirlar were
trying to break them of that. She punched up a
private sideband. "Dad, did you catch that? There
may be a bogey unaccounted for."
"I'll be fine, child. I've been fighting
Stilters longer than you've been alive."
"That's Stilters, not these new friends of theirs, with
their alien technology and their energy weapons."
"Fah. They aren't superhuman."
"At least go below, please, Father? You'll be
safer below the waterline, and you can read your displays as
easily in the command center as on deck."
"I have no desire to be safe while my people
fight. Including my own flesh and blood."
She bared her teeth in a grimace of defeat.
It was an expression she'd had little use for in her
life-except for her dealings with her father.
"It's a free planet," she said wearily.
"That it is," her father said. "That's why we fight."
His image vanished.
There was a ripple of flashes as the starboard
hydrofoil launched rockets. Surges of water
foamed over Aileea's bare legs, left and right,
as she zigzagged her craft. Up here in the forties
of latitude the water was blood warm, but it felt
chill after Eris's hot caress. Its coolness
exhilarated her. The spray in her face and the moist
salty air and the nearness of danger filled her with
searing wild pleasure.
She looked across the sea, which was beginning to chop as
the wind freshened. There was Gita, canopy back,
her nebula of heavy dark hair flying free behind.
She seemed to sense her old friend looking at her and
raised a fist in joyous defiance. Aileea
grinned and waved back, but she was already forcing down the
sense of exaltation. It didn't do to get too
giddy. She wondered if Gita could control
her own exuberance in action. The rockets struck,
creating a brief flurry of geysers far astern of
Aileea's scooter. The outriders quickly called
in. She already knew the volley had fallen wide.
"Uh-oh," Haidar said from her right. "Someones
locked onto me."
"Go deep!" Aileea yelled.
Her old friend was already sealing his canopy as he
threw his craft into violent lurches Gita might
envy. He extended his dive planes and began
nosing under even before it closed. The scooter
vanished.
A second later water fountained from the roil of
water left by the submerging craft.
"Haidar!" No answer. She had come almost
abeam of the starboard "foil, swinging wide and then
curving toward the craft at full throttle. The
three bigger craft sped on toward the float. They
were after bigger game than the scooters. Aileea
raked the 'foil with her twin machine guns. They were
light weapons, too light for the work. The
hydrofoil showed no sign of damage.
Haidar's scooter burst from the sea like a
broaching volk, clearing the water in an upward
avalanche of spray. Aileea watched with
her heart in her throat, fearful that Haidar had
pushed his luck too far and was about to smear himself all
over the uneasy plane of the sea.
He struck down amid a splash like another
missile going off. Aileea saw his scooter begin
to drift counterclockwise. Then it straightened and
streaked away. A line of lesser spouts from a
Stilter automatic canon stitched across its
wake. Haidar's triumphant shout burst in
Aileea's ears.
An indicator in Aileea's head-up display
flashed, showing she had a lock-on. She quickly
triggered a missile of her own toward the nearest
'foil. An orange box surrounded it in her
display, allowing her to follow its flight. It
guided true, curving slightly to intercept the
craft.
At the last instant the hydrofoil banked hard
into its
port foil, throwing up a crescent ridge of
water. The missile blasted through the top of this bow
wave, skipped twice on the surface of the sea,
and exploded harmlessly half a kilometer beyond its
target.
"Damn!" Aileea cried, frustrated.
One thing the Stilters were good at was dodging. And,
unlike their bigger ships, the hulls of their new
hydrofoils were largely nonmetallic
composites, giving Vare targeting radars little
to bite on. So far she had had to give few
instructions-and now her comrades were doing something she
wouldn't dream of asking them to do. They had begun
darting back and forth in front of the 'foils,
dangerously close to the dazzle-painted hulls.
The 'foils were not notoriously stable beasts. Though
they dwarfed the scooters, a collision with one at
speed would tumble a 'foil if not tear it to pieces.
The bigger craft were slowing down and beginning to swerve
themselves to avoid their tormentors. Aileea turned
her scooter and raced to join their dangerous game.
Stilter gunners blazed enthusiastically away
at the scooters. Their targets were small, fast, and
agile, and the Stilters were outstandingly bad shots. As
they lost way, though, the 'foils" hulls settled
back into the water. It slowed them down, but it also
rendered them less vulnerable to impact. The vessel
she had shot at was headed away in a wide arc
west, possibly running, possibly circling to come
in again. For the moment it was out of the fight. Aileea
overtook what had been the central craft,
turned to cross its bow. Ahead of her she saw
Gita , actually steering toward the "foil, guns
firing. The hydrofoil lunged forward at full
power, trying to catch the outrider before its foils bit
and lifted it
out of the water again. Aileea shouted wordlessly as she
watched the big craft run her friend down. She
hurled herself at the 'foil, which was continuing
to accelerate, hoping to surprise the outrider@. and
break past them to the ranch float. Aileea streaked
down the vessel's flank, raking it fore to aft with a
shuddering burst of her guns, fighting to hold the
scooter steady against the recoil, The water seemed
to boil around her as the 'foil gunners opened up on
her with everything they had.
Then she was past, circling the hydrofoil's
stem, cursing that she was now too close for her
remaining missile to arm itself. She prepared for
another run along the central 'foil's other
side. It would expose her to the point-blank fire
of two enemy craft. She didn't care.
As she lined up for her pass something flashed through the
corner of her peripheral vision. The hydrofoil's
stem exploded into two pulses of yelloworange
flame.
Victory cries rang from'her
communicator. She at heered to port and let her
scooter lose way as the hydrofoil began
to settle by the stern. Long-legged figures darted the
canting deck in panic, tumbled, thrashing, in the
water. Later she would see to rescuing
survivors-if a later happened. Half a
kilometer astern of the burning 'foil, dead between the
spreading legs of its wake, a single scooter
bobbed. "Gita?" Aileea said.
"I dove under the seaslug,"eaher old friend's
voice came back. "I guess I fooled him.
Fooled you, too, didn't IT" Aileea opened
her mouth, but her words clogged her
throat. "Some vacation, huh, Aili?" Gita
said with a laugh like a silver bell.
Lev uttered a harsh cry of triumph as the
third hydrofoil turned right about and fled. The
vessel Aileea had launched at, meanwhile, was
making good progress toward the horizon. "Good
job, people," Aileea said.
"Daughter," Aagard dinAthos's voice said,
"well done-was "It was Gita, Father."
"But I'm afraid it isn't over yet-was
The image of another hydrofoil
appeared in her display, transmitted from the float.
Beside it was a map, showing a blinking red dot
rapidly closing upon the steady white glow that
represented the ranch house.
"Father!" Aileea exclaimed, blasting power to her
impellers. "Why didn't you warn me?"
"You all were busy. I didn't want to distract
you." As he spoke he worked controls outside her
field of vision. At his back she saw
blue-white sky. He still stood on deck.
"Besides, I have the situation under control."
She felt her lips peel back from her teeth.
The other riders were lining up in a V formation,
trailing to port and starboard of her. They rode
flat out, bouncing off the wavetops like skipped
stones. It was a race to see who would reach the ranch
house first, scooters or lone "foil.
Aileea's eyes flicked desperately from
windscreen to display. Seven hundred meters,
six, five. The enemy vessel was only a little
farther from the float. "I think they're going to try
to board, Father," Aileea said.
Aagard dinAthos uttered a caw of triumph.
"No chance of that now! I've got-was
A lance of red light struck Aagard.
For an instant he became a figure of light,
pale in the sun's glare. Then the red beam
vanished, as did Aagard dinAthos and a section of the
rail.
"Father!"
Water spouted from beneath the Stilter craft's
starboard foil as a wrangler, transformed
by Aagard's signal into a homing mine, struck. The
foil itself was torn away. For a moment inertia
carried the vessel along, poised on one foil.
Then, with apparent deliberation, it began to tilt
toward the water. It veered right, went broadside,
went over. And then it was bouncing up again, stem high,
tumbling across the waves, disintegrating as it went.
When Aileea flashed past the float, the foil was
no more than a finger of burning wreckage pointing
toward its intended victim.
"Aileea," Krysztof said. "The tender is
preparing for missile launch."
"I am taking appropriate steps," came the
basso rumble of Mansur. "Aileea, I am
sorry about your father."
Aileea cried out in grief and frustration and
rage. The Stilter over-the-horizon missiles
weren't very accurate, but they were big enough that you
didn't want to linger too near to where they might be
landing.
"Scatter!?"' she yelled to her friends. She herself
turned and lined out to the north at full power.
Behind her, the float on which she had begun her
life began to sink beneath the waves.
The headquarters had been hewn from lava rock
by raw gouts of power. Only the floor had been
fused to a
glassy smoothness. Walls and ceiling remained
jagged, ready to claw at the unwary.
Klingons were not indifferent to comfort. But they liked
to act as if they were.
The young ensign prostrated himself on the polished
black stone where he had been thrown by two burly
ratings. "Qeyn HoDo waMuch, was he said to the
polished boots of the man who stood before him. "We
lost two craft-Pajwl'and "urng died with them."
He raised his head. His face was young and pale.
A bum glowed on one cheek. His beard was still far from
full and resembled seaweed trailed across rocks by the
tide. "The herd beasts ran again, First Captain,"
he said. "The fault is mine. We failed."
A rumble ran through the officers assembled at the
captain's back. They had been on this
accursed planet for nearly half a Klingon year,
fighting with one arm tied against a foe far more
resolute and resourceful than their allies.
Frustration and the grinding discomfort of life on this
hot, wet, foul world was beginning to eat away at
morale like the surf that battered down islands almost as
quickly as the planet's hyperactive mantle could
cast them up.
Captain of the First Rank Kain gazed down on
the youth with his one good eye. He stroked his long chin,
which was shaven clean in a departure from the normal
Klingon style. As if to compensate, his mustache
swept dramatically to either side of his fulllipped
mouth. Tall, broad in the chest and shoulders, narrow
in the hips, he was a striking figure, by Klingon
standards or by human.
For a moment the black-gauntleted tip of a thumb
brushed the patch that covered his right eye.
"I know the taste of failure," he said in a
resonant voice, far smoother than the usual
guttural Klingon snarl. Those who didn't know
him sometimes made fun of what they considered his
prissy mode of speech.
Once.
"Likewise its price." He dropped
his hand to the hilt of a curious circular,
multiple-bladed weapon slung at his waist. The
ensign lowered his cranial ridge to the floor. "I
request permission to die by my hand, to atone for my
failure."
"Denied."
The youth looked up. Again the rumble from behind
Kain's shoulder, louder this time.
"We are few," Kain said, "too few to waste.
IuHoHta " -- The last was spoken over his right
shoulder to his aide, a handsome young woman who wore
the insignia of a senior lieutenant on her gold
rank sash. "The ensign is sentenced to ten
minutes' confinement in the QI-GHPEJ. his
The face of the young ensign sagged in a parody of
relieved disbelief. Ten minutes in the agonizer
booth, which directly stimulated the pain center of the
brain, was a virtual eternity. Yet it would mean
he lived, and kept honor intact. Such lenience was
an act of grandmotherly kindness. Behind First Captain
Kain's left shoulder a heavy face twisted in a
snarl and a heavy hand snatched for a phaser. "Your
father's toadying to the terangan turned you soft and
spineless as they are!" the grizzled operations officer
roared. "Die, worm!"
At least he meant to roar. The words got lost in
the sudden gout of blood around the kligat, the
curious
throwing weapon that was suddenly lodged between his beard
and the collar of his tunic.
For a moment Kain stood looking down at the
would-be mutineer as his life gushed onto polished
black stone. "That kligal slew my
bond-brother, Juk," he murmured. "It's
really more than you deserved."
He bent, pulled forth the weapon, wiped it
carefully clean on JU-KNOWLEDGE'S tunic. He held
it negligently in his hand as he turned to face the
other officers.
"Is anyone else inclined to mistake
judiciousness for weakness?" he, asked. No one
spoke.
"Let us not forget what we do here," Kain said,
raising his voice so it rang off the snag-toothed
walls. "We have not come to wrest this planet from the
lost lera'ngan on behalf of our foolish
allies. When the time comes we shall take it for
ourselves.."
He made a snatching gesture with his free hand.
The others nodded and growled assent. This was
how a Klingon talked. Juk must have been crazy.
"It matters little how the war goes. All that
matters is that it goes. We are here to forge the
weapon that will split the hated Federation asunder-here
to serve the Devil in the Sea. And we are bait.
Set to draw the Earther who has done our empire
more harm than any other. 99
He slung the kligat, walked to the ensign, and
hauled him to his feet by the back of his torn
tunic. He ,easent him stumbling toward
IuHoHla' with a shove. She caught his arm and
held him upright without deigning to show strain. "Already
the rock rolls downhill, gathering momentum. Our
allies have summoned the Federation, thinking it is their
own idea. When that rock strikes bottom"-he
smiled-"it will crush the man who cost me my eye and
my brother.
"And we are the stone upon which James Kirk and his
Enterprise shall be broken!"
And his officers, one again with him, raised their hands
to the air and roared in the happy fury of the hunt.
"MR. ScorThat," Captain James Kirk
said in surprise. He was walking back toward a
comer of Min and Bill's Pub in Starbase 23,
to a table where Lieutenant Commander
Montgomery Scott sat with his legs stretched out
before him and a book in his hands. The pub had a very
relaxed atmosphere, which made it a popular
place for crews in from space to dissipate tens i
ion. At the moment, though, the captain and Scott
were the only patrons visible. "I'd never expect
to see you here, with the Enterprise undergoing such an
extensive retrofit."
Scott started,, and looked up guiltily.
"Captain," he said, placing the book on the table
and starting to his feet, "I'd be right there overseeing
"round the clockyou know that, sir-if only I could.
But Commodore Snodgrass made me leave! She
said I was working more'self to death." He shook his
head. "Imagine! Tossing me out of my own engine
room. If she wasn't a woman, I'd give
her a piece of my mind."
"Then be glad she is a woman, Mr.
Scott. People who try the Commodore on for size
usually wind up with more than their minds in pieces."
The chief administrator of the Starbase's
extensive drydock facilities had a reputation
for being a poor choice to trifle with.
Kirk slapped Scott on the shoulder. "Sit
down, sit down. If the Commodore has
actually gotten you to take a break, I don't
want to cause such a heroic achievement to go
to waste. Here, what're you reading?"
He glanced down at the book. Its screen showed
a column of English phrases accompanied
by transliterations of equivalent phrases in an
alien tongue. It made Kirk's throat hurt just
to read the rasping consonants, harsh-gutturals, and
glottal stops.
And then the sounds came together in his mind, and he
raised an astonished gaze to his engineering officer.
"Mr. Scott," he said, "a Klingon
dictionary?"
Scott nodded. "Aye, Captain." He
wouldn't meet Kirk's eye. Trying to hide a
grin, Kirk sat down. "Regardless of what
Captain-Lieutenant Korax said back at
Station K-7, half the sector is not learning
Klingon. You'll remember we got the better of
them pretty decisively on that occasion-not to mention
a few times since."
"Oh, aye," Scott said, nodding and smiling at
the reminiscence. Though he wasn't carrying too much
extra flesh- all things considered-his chin tended
to double when he nodded. "I guess we
taught those Sassenach to speak ill of the
Enterprise. his
"Ah-yes. I guess we did." Kirk sat
down. "Why are you learning Klingon, then, Mr.
Scott? I didn't know you had a passion for
languages." Almost five years with this crew, he
mused, and I'm still finding
things out about them. The fact did not disturb him; it
was just another voyage of exploration, and that, after
all, was what he lived for.
"Oh, I do not, sir," Scott said. Kirk
raised an eyebrow at him, a gesture he'd
unconsciously absorbed from his first officer. "It's
just that, what with the Klingons giving technical
assistance to the Romulans, and then this latest round of
peace talks with the Federation, there's a great lot of
Klingon engineering manuals floatin" around-was
Kirk gazed at his chief engineer and sighed a
deep sigh. "Scotty, you truly believe you are
relaxing, don't you?" Scott looked at him.
"Why, of course, Captain. What else would you
call it?"
The chirp of his communicator spared Kirk having
to respond. He took the unit from his belt and
flipped it open. "Kirk here."
"Chekov, acting captain, Enterprise, was a
voice said. Though the starship was currently in the
charge of Commodore Snodgrass and her merry
elves, she was still Kirk's responsibility.
Kirk could hear the young officer's pride at being in
command of the mighty vessel-and therefore due the courtesy
title of captain-warring with his impatience at having
to stay aboard while the rest of the bridge crew got
shore leave. "Admiral Satanta requests your
presence in his office as soon as convenient, sir."
"is Mr. Spock aboard?"
"No, sir. He's currently at Rosa's
Cantina."
Kirk was taken aback again; hanging out in a bar
was not a common form of recreation for his Vulcan first
officer. "I'll collect him myself, then-it's on
the way. Thanks." He started to close the
communicator, then raised it again. "Carry on,
Captain.
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Scott looked up from his book, which he'd snagged
the instant Kirk's attention was deflected. "Will you
be needing me, sir?"
"No, no, Scotty. Stay here and-relax."
Beaming with relief, Scott stuck his
nose back in his book. Kirk swung toward the
door and almost bumped into Min, the stout, cheerful
Terran proprietress, bustling up with her apron
and her tray to take his order.
"I'm sorry, Min. Have to run."
"Hurry back, Captain. You're always
welcome here." She smiled a great smile of
welcome. Most of the Terran crew of the
Enterprise-most of the humanoid crew, in
fact-said Min reminded them of a favorite grandmother.
It was one of the reasons the place was so popular. Of
course, the crew didn't spend all their R and
R time there.
Behind the bar loomed her husband, Bill, washing
glasses. The Atarakian was over two meters
high, with long, jointed antennae and huge, yellow,
selfluminous eyes, which his species, incapable of
speech, used as signal lamps for communication.
He nodded his great green chitinous head to Kirk,
flashing his eyes-literally-at the captain's wave of
greeting and farewell. -- The corridor of the
Starbase's civilian reservation was beginning to fill
with Starfleet personnel and the crews of ships from
half a hundred planets, members and
nonmembers of the UFP (united Federation
of Planets) alike. Starbase 23 was not built
on a planet, or in orbit about one; it had been
carved out of a metallic asteroid floating in the
debris belt of a blue giant whose enormous,
rapidly rotating mass was too great to permit the
formation of worlds. Instead of day
or night, the lives of its occupants were ruled
by shift change. The arched ceiling of the passageway
was high, and deliberately left rough, to provide
a contrast to the rectilinear regularity of most
starship interiors. The irregular metal
surfaces caught and danced with blue and orange and
red and yellow glints thrown out by the taverns and bars,
the restaurants and cabarets and shops, and the meditation
rooms of myriad faiths and philosophical
disciplines. Kirk sidestepped a snouted
Tellarite, who was rolling down the passageway
with a pugnacious swagger, paused to allow a pair of
Vulcans in the yellow robes and filigreed
golden ear clasps of savants from the lyceum
to emerge from a coffeehouse, and nodded greeting to a
blue Andorian standing before a shop that offered for sale
the Hii-dou-rai ceremonial stones, bits of
petrified wood laboriously hand-rubbed
into glossy-smooth round shapes, for which his
race was admired throughout the galaxy.the Andorian
bobbed his antennae politely.
Kirk continued, but had to brake almost at once
to avoid blundering into an altercation that came crashing out
the front door of an Orion pub. TW-O
pale pink-skinned male humanoids pummeled
each other with their fists, fighting with more passion than
skill. Whether either or both were Terran, Kirk
couldn't tell, though to his annoyance one wore a
red Starfleef General Services tunic.
Starfleet service was less onerous than
virtually any military service in the history of
any of the galaxy's known warrior races, among
whom Earth's humans were prominent. Starships were
spacious, clean, and well appointed. Most
menial tasks of cleaning and maintenance were performed
by machines. And
Starfleet personnel were all well-trained
professionals, not grunts or swabbies and
particularly not conscripts. They were where they wanted
to be, and had worked hard to get there. But Starfleet was
a demanding master. While combat was
only-thankfully-a minor component of Starfleet's
job, its main missions of the policing of the Federation,
internal and external diplomacy, and its
overriding task of scientific exploration were
extremely high-tension pursuits. Stress was as
much a part of a starship's atmosphere as oxygen,
especially here, near the F6deration's outward
fringe.
And despite everything twenty-third-century
technology could do, space was steaa harsh, hazardous
environment. A moment's carelessness-or even blind
chance-could kill not just a crewman or comwoman, but
an entire ship.
So for all the Federation's psychology and human
engineering, space crews were not much less prone to the
more extreme forms of blowing off steam than their
surface- navy predecessors had been. The
only consolation was that- with a few exceptions, like the
ultra-self-disciplined Vulcans-the Federation's
other races were little better behaved than humans.
I Kirk felt conflicting impulses-the one
to lay the hard arm on both combatants for the breach of
discipline, the other to'find out who was at fault and
knock him on his fanny. What he did was wait
a moment until the pair fell down on the
walkway, then step gingerly over the writhing, punching
tangle, through the cloud of profanity and the aroma of
cheap Orion distillates they exuded, and go
his purposeful way. Satanta was a friend of long
standing, but when a flag officer invited a captain
to wait upon him
at earliest convenience, it meant "Shag butt
down here at warp factor eight."
Rosa's Cantina wasn't exactly en
route, but it wasn't far off, either-a jog down a
dark and narrow side passage that at first glance
didn't seem meant to carry traffic at all.
Access way or afterthought, a few steps along it
curved left and led Kirk into the sound-and-fight
spill of Rosa's.
The cantina was darker than Min and Bill's, and the
atmosphere less wholesome-it was the sort of place
the crew went when they grew tired of Grandma. The
music floating out the open door surprised
Kirk-not the usual jarring Saurian jazz or
Orion Chrome-5, but the unmista kable, near
discordant wail of a Vulcan lyre.
Accompanying it was an equally unmistakable
contralto voice.
"Lieutenant Uhura!" Kirk said, stepping
into the cantina. It was dark, scarcely lit by dim
swirls of red and violet light. It was packed with
bodies, standing or perched on high, narrow
stools. Kirk recognized scattered Enterprise
crew. In a clear comer stood Uhura in a fall
of yellow light, her voice filling the bar without
necessity of a microphone. Sitting behind her
playing a swan-necked instru m-ent was none other
than the Enterprise's first officer.
The communications officer was just finishing her song.
Kirk made his way to her side through the applauding
crowd. She met him with a radiant smile.
"My set's over, Captain," she said.
"Sorry you didn't get here sooner."
"So am I. I have to admit I'm a bit
surprised to see you here, though." The Enterprise's
communications and electronic- warfare suite was
undergoing an even more extensive upgrade than her
engines, and the
newly promoted communications officer was, if
anything, more obsessive about overseeing work done on
her system than Scott was.
She laughed. "If I had my way, I'd still be
aboard making sure everything was done just right," she
said. "But I didn't have any choice in the
matter."
"Oh? Did Commodore Snodgrass run you
off, too?" "No," a gravelly voice
said from behind Kirk, 7 did." "Bones?" Kirk
said, turning.
Dr. Leonard McCoy nodded. "I swear,
I've got a crew of compulsives to try to keep
inside their skins. You, Uhura, Scott-each of
you is worse than the next. You just don't know when
to quit. At least Sulu has his hobbies to keep
him sane." Ignoring the obvious implication,
Kirk said, "What about you, Doctor? Between you and the
Commodore, Uhura and Scotty are taking time out.
Even Mt. Spock is letting his hair down."
Placing his instrument carefully on a stand, Spock
shot him a scandalized look.
"You, on the other hand, are still on duty, aren't
you?" said Kirk. "Looking after your charges like a mother
hen."
"Confound it, Jim, that's different," said
McCoy. Kirk nodded. "Uh-huh. his
Spock straightened. "You were coming to ask me
to accompany you on some business, I believe,
Captain."
Kirk looked at him. "How'd you know that?" "You
strode in here in a highly purposeful manner. You
showed surprise at seeing Dr. McCoy and
Uhura, but none on seeing me. Therefore, it
was I whom you were seeking. And the tendency which you are
visibly
struggling, not entirely with success, to control-to
bob upon the balls of your feet-indicates
impatience to be somewhere." ""Brilliant
deduction, Holmes."" He held out a hand.
"Shall we?"
Spock turned to Uhura. "It was, as always,
an honor to accompany your singing, Lieutenant.
The mathematical subtleties displayed-was
"Spock!" McCoy exclaimed in disgust.
"You'd explain away a sunset, too, wouldn't
you?"
The Vulcan cocked a brow. "What is so
esoteric about that, Doctor? It is merely the
occultation of the primary-11
Kirk took him by the arm. "If you'll excuse
us-was He towed Spock out the door.
Five meters down the alley, an
eight-foot-tall Gorn, was hoisting Sulu into the
air by the head.
"SuLu!" Kirk whipped his hand phaser from his
belt and pointed it at the monster's scaled back.
The reptilian creature lowered Sulu until
his boot soles touched the stone floor. It
removed its taloned hands from his head.
The helmsman rolled his head on his neck.
"That's much better," he said. "I don't know if
it'll ever replace shiatsu, but it works."
Kirk glanced over his shoulder at Spock. The
Vulcan stood a step behind him, erect and
unruffled. "Gorn massage techniques are
renowned for their therapeutic qualities," Spock
said. "Their rather rough-and-ready nature has, however,
made their acceptance slow within the Federation."
"Captain-Mr. Spock," said Sulu, nodding
past the enormous masseur. The creature started
to turn. Kirk hastily stuck his phaser back in
his belt, thanking fate that the Gorn had a
predator's forward-looking
eyes. "I'd like to introduce my friend, Mr.
Horatio Homblower." "Horatio ...
Homblower?"
"Your people cannot pronounce my name," said the Gorn
via the translator medallion hanging over his
steel-hard pectoral scutes. The unit was set
to produce a high, almost adolescent voice.
"Among you I have chosen to go by the name of a great hero of
your history." He held out a scaly claw.
Kirk hesitated just an eyeblink, then
took the creature's hand and shook it firmly.
"Our-history. Ah, good choice. You pay great
honor to our traditions."
The being swelled visibly, which Kirk took for a
good sign. His sole personal experience with the
Gorn race had not been a particularly happy
one. Since that time the warlike reptilian beings'
relationship with the Federation had regularized somewhat, and
was for the most part peaceful. "To brave the fearful great
expanses of your planet's seas must have required
an extraordinary man," the Gorn said. "Such
bravery-to risk one's life to an environment so
powerful and chaotic."
"Not much open water on the Gorn homeworld,
Captain," Sulu explained. "Horatio, here,
is science officer on a Gorn exploratory
vessel undergoing repairs in drydock."
"Captain," Spock said.
"Right, Spock. Mr. Sulu, I'll let you
get back to your discussion of comparative therapeutic
techniques. Next time you're thinking of trying any
radical experimentation, though, you might first check with
Dr. McCoy."
Sulu laughed. "I'll do that, Captain."
As a student at Starfleet Academy,
Kirk had gotten the impression of then-Captain
Douglas Satanta as an individual who
seldom sat. As a lecturer in Principles of
Exploration he had not been a nervous man by any
means; when he stood he stood still, except when he
talked. Then he accompanied his baritone voice with
deliberate, powerful sweeps of his hands. The
admiral was standing with his back to the door when it
hissed aside to admit Kirk and Spock. He
seemed to be studying the image of a world on a
wall-sized viewscreen. At least Kirk
guessed it was a world; all he could see around the
admiral's looming figure was featureless blue
disk, as if the Starbase's computer were tardy at
drawing in the planet's ter- rain.
The admiral turned. Black hair hung. in
glossy braids to the epaulets of his Starfleet
uniform, framing a heavy dark face, massive through
cheek and jaw. The face was scarred and pitted as an
asteroid. Satanta had been a planetary scout
and first-contact specialist before he became a fighting
starship captain. He was a man who seldom
spoke of his exploits. Plenty of others were more
than willing to do that for him. He nodded
deliberately. "Kirk. Mr. Spock."
His formality told Kirk that something was up;
otherwise that ominous- looking face would have split in
a starling grin, and it would have been "Jim," an
engulfing handshake, and a clap on the shoulder.
"Admiral. I came as quickly as I could round
up my first officer." He gave Spock a
sidelong glance and grinned. "I found him in a
nightclub on Third Level."
Satanta raised his eyebrows. "Mr.
Spock, carousing in a pub?"
"Lieutenant Uhura requested that I
provide instru32
mental accompaniment for her singing," Spock said
imperturbably. "I have observed that her voice
has a salubrious effect upon the morale of the
crewtherefore, it was only logical to comply. Besides,
she was most insistent." He cocked his own eyebrow.
"With all due respect I believe that hardly
comprises "carousing," Admiral."
"If you gentlemen have finished your male bonding
rituals," a cool voice said, "I believe we
have business to attend to." Kirk turned his head.
A woman in civilian clothes of conservative and
expensive cut sat in a chair swiveled away from
the conference table. Dark red hair was pulled
back from a stem face. Her eyes were green. He
had the impression that she was tall, but that might have come
from the stiffly erect way she held herself.
"Commissioner Wayne is correct," Satanta
rumbled, his normally deep voice dropping an
octave. "Commissioner, may I present Captain
James T. Kirk of the starship, Enterprise and his
first officer, Mr. Spock. Captain, Mr.
Spock-Moriah Wayne, the Federation deputy
commissioner for interspecies affairs. She
monitors compliance with the Prime Directive."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Commissioner,"
Kirk said. "I've heard a great deal about you,
Captain Kirk. In fact, certain of your accounts
of first contact with nonhuman races are required
reading for our department."
"Ah," Kirk said, trying not to make himself look
furtive by sneaking a glance at the admiral.
"Your approach is direct, not to say abrupt,
and frequently lacks sensitivity. Your handling of the
Gamma Trianguli VI situation, for instance.
On that
occasion you definitely violated the letter of the
Prime Directive, if perhaps not its spirit."
Kirk's expression hardendd.
"A Starfleet review board found the
captain's actions were entirely justified,"
Spock said. "After all, the computer named Vaal was
in the process of attempting to destroy the
Enterprise when Captain Kirk destroyed it."
"Your defense of your captain does you credit,
Mr. Spock, but it is unnecessary," Wayne said.
She rose, only slightly less briskly than
if she were standing to attention, and gave Kirk a look
of frank appraisal. She was tall, he noted.
"The qualities he displayed on Gamma
Trianguli VI may be precisely what we
require for our mission."
Now Kirk did look at Satanta. The
admiral nodded. "We're pretty much on the
fringe of the galaxy here, as well as Federation
Space," the admiral said. "There isn't much beyond
us for a couple of hundred million light years,
till you get to the next galaxy. But there are a
few systems out past the boundaries of the Federation.
One of them contains a planet called Okeanos."
He stepped aside to clear their view of the great
blue disk. It appeared as featureless as before.
"It was found by a ship of the First General
Survey, UES Herndn de Soto,
back in 2092. The primary is cafled Joan-
Marie's Star, after the navigator. It was her
turn to name something. The chief steward, of all people,
named the planet itself. Its classification is M.
Computer, rotate."
At first the disk didn't change. Then dots
appeared halfway down its curve-chains of
islands, twining back and forth across the equator like
tawny snakes. A few of the islands were
respectably large, but none approached continental
size.
"As the name suggests, it's a water world. Land
masses represent less than three percent of the
surface. Beyond that not much is known. The de Soto
gave it a once-over with scanners and went its
way."
"Why was not more attention paid to the planet?"
Spock asked. "In the early days of Terran
space exploration, human- habitable planets were
at a distinct premium."
"The classification is a generous one, Mr.
Spock," Commissioner Wayne said. She had a good
voice, a rich, well- modulated alto. "The
planet is nearly as hot as Vulcan, and equally
bombarded with ultraviolet radiation. In
addition, it has a dense crust, containing a high
proportion of heavy metals." "Which means high
levels of background radiation," Kirk said.
"Earth humans cannot survive long on the
surface without drugs or shielded environments,"
the admiral said. "Not exactly a tourist
paradise," Kirk said. "But a beautiful world, if
one is prepared to meet it on its own terms," the
commissioner said, looking at the image with
half-closed eyes.
"You have a great love for the sea, Commissioner?"
Kirk asked.
"I have a great love for any world where the elemental
forces of nature still hold sway, unconquered by our
so-called civilization. I'm an ecologist
by training, Captain."
461 see. 99
"The survey crew was surprised to find the
planet in the first place," Satanta said.
"Outside the spiral arm, all you generally see are
ancient Population Two stars, which almost never have
planets-and when they do, they're gas giants. The
ship was actually making a side
trip to do a close-range study of a pulsar
twenty-five light-years distant from
Okeanos. Spectroscopic observation revealed the
nearby presence of a Population One star, and a
closer took showed it had solid planets,
including several in the biozone." "So the de Soto
decided not to waste much time on a marginally habitable
world and moved on to look at the pulsar," Kirk
said. "I'm a little unclear as to what this all has
to do with the Enterprise, Admiral."
46 You're going there," Satanta said. "More
precise-ly, you are transporting Commissioner
Wayne there."
In surprise Kirk looked first at the
admiral and then at the commissioner. At close
range she was as tall as he was. She also might
conceivably have been called attractive, if she
hadn't gone to such lengths to make herself look like a
stern schoolteacher.
"Your commission concerns itself with the affairs of newly
discovered alien races, does it not?"
"We prefer the term "sentients."" Wayne
gave a slight smile. "They're not alien
to themselves, Captain. But yes."
"Then what official interest do you have in an
uninhabited, radioactive swimming pool at the
tail end of the Milky Way? However
beautiful it may be."
"In their haste to return to more congenial reaches of
space, Captain, the crew of the de Soto
overlooked a few important details,"
Wayne said. "Such as the fact that the world they called
Okeanos was inhabited by an intelligent
species." "They call themselves the Susuru,"
Satanta said. "We know nothing about them beyond the
fact that they contacted us by subspace radio
sixty-two stardates; ago."
"I'm sure the commissioner is eager to meet this
new race and make certain that the Prime
Directive is
honored. But the Enterprise is still undergoing
upgrade. She's scheduled for twelve more days in
drydock."
"You'll be cutting that short," the admiral said.
"Starfleet orders."
Kirk frowned at him. Frowning at a flag
officer was not usually considered healthy for one's
career, but Kirk had never been one for letting his
career get in the way of doing his duty as he saw
it.
Fortunately, Satanta was no man to hold it
against him. "Jim," he said, "you haven't
heard the whole story yet. According to the Susuru, they
are not alone on Okeanos. There are also Earth
humans."
"Oh?" Kirk turned to Wayne. "So you're
going to Okeanos to open relations with both groups."
She shook her head firmly. "According to the
comSusuru, the humans are unwelcome
intruders," she said. "They're doing what Earth
humans always dooppressing the native peoples and
ravaging the environment.
"I am going to Okeanos to convince them to leave-with the
Enterprise to back me up."
f'daU VE You Nomcm,
CmTA-IATION?-MR. Scott's voice came
echoing back past the seat of his uniform trousers-"how
these Jeffries tubes have the nasty habit of getting
narrower and narrower as years go by?"
Kirk let the hand that held the palmtop screen
displaying the blueprints for this sector of the ship rest
on a rung of the vertical access tube and sighed.
Scott was his senior by a respectable margin. It was
only natural that he should feel a certain discomfort
at the constant widening of the gap between him and his youth.
Telling yourseble"...t is a great way to avoid
admitting that you've been noticing the same
thing, said Kirk's internal voice. A side of his
mouth quirked up in a grin; strange how much that
voice had come to sound like Bones's. When it didn't
sound like Spock's.
"Marked and recorded, Mr. Scott," he said.
"Carry on.v9
"Well, one thing's for certain, Captain. No
matter how often they lift her face, she's always the
same, and always a lady," Kirk grinned at
Scott's boot soles. The romantic side of
his own nature was stirred by Scotty's undying
devotion to his first and only true love. But the
sad fact was, a man far gone in the grip of his
passions could get to be a dead bore. Even to someone
who, like Kirk, shared that passion to a large extent.
"And speakin' of the ladies, Captain," the engineer
said, turning a grin down past his paunch at
Kirk, 66 you'll no doubt be aware our
distinguished passenger is by way of a bonny lass
herself." , Kirk met his eye. "Really, Mr.
Scott? I hadn't noticed."
The engineer turned a grin down to him. "Oh,
aye, Captain, I understand. I do indeed." And he
winked. Kirk scowled, but held back the angry
words that rose in his throat. What am I
getting so testy about? he chided himself The chief
engineer was just making conversation as they worked.
They were in the process of refamiliarizing themselves
with the starship. Though the Enterprise's overhaul had
been interrupted by the mission comto Okeanos, much had
been completed, and the journey was serving as a shakedown
cruise. In fact, the ship carried several dozen
technicians from Starbase 23 who were still hard at
work installing and fine- tuning.
Naturally, Mr. Scott had to eyeball each
and every "improvement"-quotation marks his-himself And
now he had no gimlet-eyed Commodore to send him
packing. Kirk felt bound to accompany him as much
as he could. Generally Kirk didn't have a great deal
of' patience with detail. His tendency to improvise
had
early been marked by his instructors at
Starfleet Academy, and not with unqualified
approval. That tendency-and ability-had kept him
and most of his crew alive through nearly five years
of galactic exploration. Even if it did tend
to make his superiors tear their hair.
But one area where Kirk had a positive hunger
for detail was the Enterprise herself. He believed in
knowing his ship to the finest resolution possible,
making her every capability and weakness as much a part of
him as his DNA code. "Bridge to captain."
Spock's voice echoed down the Jeffries tube.
There were intercom panels in the access
passageway, of course, but none happened to be
convenient. Kirk unclipped his communicator from his
belt and snapped it open. "Kirk here."
"Commissioner Wayne requests your presence on
the bridge at your earliest convenience, sir."
Kirk frowned. Was Spock's voice even
crisper than usual? The deputy commissioner had
permission to be on the bridge, as a matter of
courtesy-it was neither Starfleet's policy nor
Kirk's to be too stiffnecked about that kind of thing.
But what she might be up to requesting the captain's
presence there he couldn't imagine.
"I'm on my way, Mr. Spock." He
snapped the communicator shut. "Well, Mr.
Scott, it looks as if I'm going to have to leave you
to yourown devices for a while. Have to keep our
distinguished passenger. happy. At least, if there were
anything seriously wrong, like a Romulan attack,
I'm sure Mr. Spock would have mentioned it."
"Our fair commissioner can't seem to get enough of your
manly compresence, Captain," Scott
said. 16 The
lass'll scarce give me the time of day herself.
I reckon there's no accounting for taste."
"That will be more than sufficient, Mr. Scott,"
Kirk said briskly, and scrambled down the
handholds to the passageway below.
"What seems to be the trouble?" Kirk asked as
he strode onto the bridge.
Commissioner Wayne stood beside Spock, who
occupied the captain's chair. She held her head
high, as if in defiance. Her hair was wound into a
tight bun that glistened like spun copper. With her
body language it made her look haughty, almost
aristocratic, rather than severe. Her skin looked
smooth and shiny and hard, as if it were covered in
glaze, or a coat of ice. She wore a tight
tunic and trousers in black and gray in a style
currently fashionable among the UFP
bureaucracy. Kirk sensed tension, and it didn't
take him long to localize it. Spock was
unreadable as always. Sulu-7 Sulu customarily
sat at his helmsman's station in a posture of
relaxed alertness, flexible but ready to respond
instantly. Now he held himself rigidly erect,
his spare frame drawn so tight he
practically vibrated.
"Captain Kirk," Wayne said, turning
to face him as the elevator doors hissed shut behind
him. "I regret to inform you that your Mr. Sulu is
in serious violation of Federation law." Kirk
stopped, and looked from the civilian to Sulu.
Sulu looked straight ahead, at the field of
stars seemingly rushing into the main viewing screen. The
stars were beginning to thin out as the starship drove into the
outer reaches of the galaxy at multiples of the speed
of light.
"What's the charge? Reckless driving7"
"This is hardly a joking matter, Captain."
"Very well." Kirk's expression hardened.
"We will discuss this in the briefing room. Mr.
Kyle, you have the con. Mr. Spock. Mr.
Sulu. If you'll accompany me.tl
"Aye, Captain," Sulu said. He rose, still
not looking at either Wayne or the captain. Kyle
slid into his seat. "Commissioner," Kirk said.
"Surely we can discuss the matter here as
easily-was
"Now. 11
"Computer," Mr. Spock said as they entered the
briefing room.
"Recording," said the computer in a feminine
voice. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Spock,"
Kirk said, seating himself near the three-faced screen
at the table's head. No one else made a move
to sit. "This is not yet a formal proceeding.
Computer, don't record these proceedings."
"Acknowledged, dear," the computer said. Kirk
felt his face get hot. The commissioner's eyes were
darting green laser beams at him.
"I thought we had that little problem fixed," he said
apologetically.
"This isn't a court martial?" the commissioner
asked with a poisonous smile.
"No. It's a simple discussion at this point."
"I thought the military mind loved its little
formalities." "Ibis military mind loves
having a firm grasp of the facts before taking action.
Excuse me, Mr. Spock?" "Just clearing my
throat " Captain."
Kirk gave him a few heartbeats of hard
eye. The first
officer remained unruffled. Kirk turned back
to Wayne. 4'ationow, just what is it that Lieutenant
Sulu is accused of, Commissioner?"
"I overheard him talking on the
bridge. He spoke quite candidly of transporting
possibly dangerous life-forms in his quarters."
Kirk cocked his head. "Really, Mr. Sulu?
What exactly are you keeping in there now?
Denebian slime devils? A mugatu?
Tribbles?"
"No, Captain. It's a mycellium."
"A what?"
"A walking slime mold, from the Gorn
homeworld. Mr. Hornblower gave it to me. It's
really a fantastic organism, Captain. It's
a kind of carnivorous yellow and purple carpet.
It can travel up to half a kilometer a day."
Sulu was a man of many enthusiasms, and he was
warming up to one of them. "That's something of a record,
sir."
Kirk looked at him a moment longer. "A
slime mold." He gave his head a little shake.
"It is truly an unusual organism,
Captain, possessing many unique attributes,"
added Spock.
"Thank you, Mr. Spock. Is that what you
heard the lieutenant talking about, Commissioner?"
"Yes, Captain."
He took a deep breath. "I fail
to see how a walking slime mold constitutes a
threat to the security of the Federation. No matter how
fast it walks."
"Certainly, Captain, the potential for
ecological devastation is enormous should such an
organism be released on a world other than its
planet of origin," Spock said. Wayne shook
her head. "I find it unsettling that a
man in your position could be unaware of such a
basic
fact."
"Commissioner, I'm not unaware of the danger.
Neither is Lieutenant Sulu. And I'm sure
he has no intention at all of letting his ...
specimen ... go, on anybody's planet."
"But the danger of accidental release always
exists," Wayne said. "That's why Federation law
explicitly forbids the transportation of such
organisms."
Kirk sat back in his chair and drummed fingers,
on its padded arm. "Commissioner Wayne, we are
transporting you to your destination in what I'm sure
you'll admit is a fair degree of comfort. But that
does not mean we're a cruise liner. Nor is
Mr. Sulu an irresponsible tourist
trying to smuggle an exotic alien animal home
With him for a pet.
"The Enterptise is a ship of exploration. Her
crew are picked and trained specialists in
exploration. Collecting-yes, and
transporting-alien organisms is an
important part of our mission."
"The law-was Wayne began.
"Does not apply in the present case,
Commissioner," Spock said. "Section
Five-oh-Four A, paragraph three, of the
Federation Environmental Statutes clearly
provides an exemption to exploratory and
scientific vessels and their crews."
Kirk stood up. "Really, Commissioner, Mr.
Sulu's slime mold will not be ravaging any
ecosystems. We know how to handle these things."
Commissioner Wayne exhaled and lowered her head,
seeming to lose a centimeter of statute. "Very
well. I won't pursue the matter. Mr.
Sulu, I hope you understand there's nothing personal
involved. I'm just trying to do my duty, to nature
and the Federa- 44
tion. Sometimes"-the ice cracked, ever so
slightly66sometimes I can be a bit
overzealous."
Sulu glanced at the captain. "Sure,
Commissioner. I understand."
"That will be all, gentlemen," Kirk said. The
two men left. Wayne started to follow.
"Commissioner," Kirk said. "A word with you?"
"Certainly." She let the door slide to behind her
and leaned back against it. It seemed mildly out of
character for the unyielding Federation commissioner.
"I understand that you have to do your job as you see fit,
just like the rest of us aboard," Kirk said. "But I
would appreciate it if in the future, should you have
any accusations to make against any of my crew, you
come to me directly. Public humiliation is not
exactly good for morale."
The commissioner frowned. Kirk met her furious
gaze head on.
Her expression softened particle by particle.
"Fair enough." She paused, studying him as if she
had never really looked at him before. "You're very
solicitous of your men, aren't you?" The question took
Kirk aback. Almost in spite of himself he
smiled. "That's my job."
"And you're very good at it."
"Starfleet seems to think so. They let
me keep it. Now, Commissioner, if you'll please
excuse me, I have a starship to run."
WrrHave A SHPJLL Yip Lieutenant
Sulu sprang forward and disstruck Captain
James Kirk on the side of the head with a stick.
The helmsman stepped back. "You need to keep your
left- hand stick higher, Captain," he said, his
voice muffled by the duraplast faceplate of his
protective helmet. "You make it too easy
to sneak one in, otherwise."
Kirk resisted the urge to try to rub the side of
his head. His helmet was thoroughly padded, as were his
hands, knees, and elbows, not to mention his
protective cup. The sticks, half- meter
lengths of hard polymer, were likewise padded. Still,
the blow had stung. Sulu possessed a wiry
strength that was surprising in view of his size. "Shall
we try again?" "Sure, Captain. Remember-in
a lot of ways escrima is a lot like boxing.
Martial arts all pretty much work according to the same
principles." They
had the aerobics room to themselves. Sulu's words
echoed slightly. "You're a pretty fair boxer,
so you should pick it up fairly quickly."
Kirk raised an eyebrow. Pretty
fair? he thought. He had been the consistent
runner-up in the middleweight division at
Starfleet Academy, losing year after year to the
detested Finnegan. His tormentor graduated at
the end of Kirk's junior year. It still rankled
Kirk that only as a senior, without Finnegan
to face, had he finally been able to take the
championship. He had not kept up with boxing. It
was hard enough to find time to stay in shape, even with Dr.
McCoy harping at him constantly. But Sulu's
words pricked his vanity. He raised his sticks.
"Look to your own guard, Mr. Sulu," he said,
and launched a quick swing at the helmsman's he-ad.
Sulu danced back, and Kirk took great
satisfaction in the fact that his parry seemed rushed.
He aimed a whack at Sulu's advanced left
knee. A beat later he fired an overhand stroke
at Sulu's head. There were advantages to a combat
art that used two weapons, he thought.
To both sides. Sulu countered both strikes with
solid blocks and leapt to the offensive. He
became a whirlwind. Kirk found himself staggering
back, batting ineffectually at the sticks that whistled
and flashed inches before his face. Sulu's left
stick darted around and down, delivering a
resounding whack to Kirk's unprotected ribs. As
Kirk tried to block, Sulu's right came down in
an overhand blow that landed directly between the
captain's eyes. Kirk reeled back three
steps and sat down hard on the resilient mat that
covered the gym floor.
Sulu was instantly at his side. "Captain,
are you all right?" He tried to help his superior
up.
Kirk waved him off. "I can stand on my own,
Mr. Sulu. Nothing's turt except my
pride."
He caught the helmsman trying to swallow a
grin. "I think you're enjoying this altogether too much,
Mr. Sulu."
"Oh, no, Captain," Sulu said a little too
quickly. "But maybe we should take it a little slower,
until you get the hang of it?" Kirk shook his
head. "I won't be coddled, Mr. Sulu. You can
instruct me on the niceties of form later. If
I'm going to spar, I'll spar all out."
A trickle of sweat ran tickling down his
nose. He removed the helmet. "I think I will
take a bit of a breather."
Sulu nodded, took off his own helmet,
and tucked his sticks under his arm. Kirk turned
away to mask his hand feeling gingerly at his ribs.
He'd been lying when he said the blows hadn't
hurt. He felt as if he'd been kicked by a
horse. "I thought you were devoted to fencing, Mr.
Sulu," he said, a trifle plaintively.
"That's still my first love, Captain. But I
don't spend all my time with it. I don't want
to go stale."" Reflecting that there wasn't much
risk of that happening to his mercurial helmsman,
Kirk went and got a drink from the water fountain.
Sulu followed.
"I'm working my way through the martial arts,
actually," Sulu said. "I've been studying
Orion dancefighting, which is a lot like Brazilian
capoeira. Before that I did Tellarite
dag-jumag, except to really get that right a
human-sized person has to practice it on his
knees, which gets wearing. Escrima's a lot of
fun. And
it's very practical. Did you know Ferdinand
Magellan was killed by an escrimador with
rattan sticks?"
"I can't tell you how reassuring that is,"
Kirk said as the other bent to- drink,
"since I'm in the same line of work Magellan
was."
"From what I've heard, you're a lot nicer
to work for," Sulu said with a grin.
Into the exercise room came Commissioner
Wayne, wearing a pink leotard over white
tights. A cloth circlet consisting of a pink roll
braided together with a white one kept the sweat that sheened
her forehead from dripping into her eyes. Apparently
she had been working out on the machines in the neighboring
compartment'
"Oh, Captain," she said. "I heard
voices-I hope I'm not disturbing anything."
"Not at all," Kirk said, wiping his face with a
towel. "Mr. Sulu was just instructing me in the fine
points of Filipino stick- fighting."
"Uh, Captain-if you don't mind, I'd
better go. I'm on duty soon."
"Certainly, Sulu. And thanks for the workout."
"Sure," the helmsman muttered. He nodded
to the commissioner without looking at her and sidled out of the
room. She looked after him with a puzzled
expression. "He seemed uncomfortable. I wonder
why he hurried out."
"You don't know?" Kirk said,
surprised. She shook her head. "You did accuse
him of a serious crime, Commissioner. One that
carries a very stiff sentence."
It was her turn to look surprised. "But I was
only doing my job!"
Kirk shrugged. For an obviously intelligent
woman,
who had risen high in the ranks of Federation
officialdom, she showed some startling gaps in her knowledge
of people. Wayne looked at the helmet, sticks, and
gauntlets Kirk had left sitting by the wall.
"Are you a martial artist, Captain?" "No. Not
really. I try to stay limber enough to stay alive on
strange new worlds."
She laughed. "Ali, yes. Landing Party
Kirk. Never content to stay behind on the bridge
while others beam down into danger."
"You seem to know a lot about me," Kirk said,
starting to feel nettled.
"Is that so surprising, Captain? You've
become quite a legend in the Federation service in the
last five years." She gave him a sidelong
glance, half sly, half shy. "Would you care to spar
with me? Or don't you fight with women?" He rubbed
his aching nibs. "I have an unfair
advantage in mass," he said. "I'm a good deal
heavier than
you. 19
"But I'm not exactly small. And I'm
pretty good at taking care of myself. My father
insisted that I learn."
Kirk looked her over appraisingly-something he
had not really done before. His status inhibited him from
dealing with her entirely as he might another woman,
he had to admit to himself.
He knew she was tall, and not overweight. The
utilitarian clothes she affected did not conceal those
facts, but also failed to call attention to any
particulars. Now he saw that she had a lithe,
long-legged ranginess to her-a figure carrying little
excess pad- 50
ding, but still entirely feminine. She moved with a
dancer's grace and held herself well balanced.
He gestured at the escrima props. "Are you
a stick-fighter too?"
She shook her head. "Bare-handed."
He shrugged. They stepped out on the mat and faced
each other. "Any rules?" she asked.
"Don't do any damage my ship's doctor
can't fix."
"Fair enough-,,
She began to circle counterclockwise.
Crouching, hands up, he turned to keep facing her.
After half a minute it became clear she was waiting
for him to initiate an attack. Obligingly he
came forward in a half-speed lunge.
She grabbed his hand, turned away from him, and
jackknifed forward. He went flying over her
shoulder to land flat on his back with a resounding whump.
All the air exploded out of his body.
"I'm sorry," she said, standing over him. "I
thought you knew how to land."
"I ... do," he said. He felt as if he were
lying there in several pieces. It took some time
to pick himself up. "You just took me by surprise."
She grinned at him. "Try again. As if you mean
it this time." If that's what you want. He swung a
right-handed blow for the side of her head, palm open.
The fact was he didn't want to hit her with his bare
fist. Also, he knew he'd likely bust his
knuckles.
She whipped her left arm up in a forearm
block. At the same time she stepped into him, thrust
her right leg and hip past his, and drove the heel
of her right hand into his sternum with a snap of
her hips.
Kirk cartwheeled. This time he got a shoulder
tucked and rolled properly, taking much of the force
out of the impact.
64 Very good landing," she said, as he climbed
to his
feet.
"You're not so bad yourself," he said dryly. She
laughed. "Aikido and judo are the styles I
learned. I don't believe in causing unnecessary
harm. Even to an attacker."
"You're a pacifist, then," he said, massaging
his breastbone. "Not entirely," she said, "but
close."
He lunged for her, trying to grapple and power her
down. She grabbed his right wrist and he found himself
spinning through the air again. This time he had no time
to tuck; he landed flat and hard.
Instead of lying there stunned he rolled onto his
side and swept the commissioners legs, out from under her
with a scissors kick.- It was her turn to go down
hard and get the breath knocked out of her. Before she
could recover he was lying half on top of her,
pinning her wrists to the mat. "So," she gasped when
she could breathe again, 41 you're not just another
military jock, loaded down with male chauvinism
masquerading as chivalry, after all."'@. He had
to admire her for getting the speech out. "Maybe I
am," he said, lifting himself off her. "But I also
hate to lose." He held out a hand to help her
up. Her eyes narrowed, and the strength of her glare
rocked him back on his heels. Then she took his
hand and let him pull her upright. For a moment they
stood nose to nose, their bodAes touching. Wayne
looked into his eyes with an ex- 5 2
pression he couldn't read. It seemed almost like
wonder. A heartbeat before he reached for her she
pirouetted away. "I'd best not keep you from the
bridge any longer, Captain." He let go a
ragged breath. "You're right, Commissioner. Duty
calls."
They showered and dressed out in their respective
locker rooms. In the foyer to the gym complex they
met. "Will you walk with me to the bridge,
Captain?" she asked. It was on the tip of
Kirk's tongue to ask why she felt she needed
to be on the bridge. Master of unarmed combat though
she might be, she was still a highranking civilian
official, and he knew all too well that such
officials had their foibles. Even if they
did happen to be decidedly handsome women. "My
pleasure," he said, and gestured for her to go ahead.
Dr. McCoy was just walking toward them, down the
corridor from the turbolift. "I just ran
into Sulu," thedoctor said, his round face crinkled
with concern. "Shall I have Nurse Chapel bring a
gurney for you?"
"Very funny, Bones."
"I'm just an old country doctor," McCoy
said, "so you don't have to pay me any more mind than you
usually do. But if you won't stop gadding about the
surface of every hostile planet we make orbit
around, at least you can refrain from getting yourself
knocked to pieces in the safety of your own ship."
"Healthy exercise does him a lot less harm
than sitting in his captain's chair getting fat,"
Wayne said. "I should think you'd know that,
Doctor-unless
your medical ideas are as antiquated as the
speech patterns you affect."
The doctor stiffened. "Among my antiquated
ideas are certain notions about the proper manner for a
gentleman to address a lady," he said. "On the
other hand-- Kirk held his hands up. "Bones.
Commissioner Wayne. Peace. Dr.
McCoy and I are old friends, Commissioner-,
we've been going on like this for years, and we're both
too old to stop."
"Speak for yourself, Captain," McCoy said.
"Do you think it's appropriate for a subordinate
to address you that way?" Wayne asked. She seemed
sincerely puzzled. "Yes. 91
.mcCoy's blue eyes bored into her. "Do you
think it would be better for morale if we had a
uniform shirt stuffed full of Starfleet regulations
for a captain? Our people aren't Romulans."
"Perhaps the Federation would be better off if they
were," Wayne said. "Our citizens are
undisciplined and self-indulgent." "I thought you were
the grand antimilitarist, Commissioner," McCoy
said. "Why are you suddenly hipped on discipline?"
"Discipline and a military mind-set are not
synonymous, Doctor. For all the efforts of the
Federation government to mandate an environmentally
sustainable lifestyle, the fact remains that-was
"I find this debate endlessly fascinating,"
Kirk said. "But unfortunately I have to go to work.
If you'll excuse me"...99 "I'll be in
sickbay," the doctor said, eyeing Wayne with
distaste, "puttering with my horse needles and
patent medicines."
He stalked away. "A strange man,"
Wayne said. "And an angry one."
"He just likes to act irascible. It's part of his
self-image- 19 The commissioner gave him a
skeptical look. He thought of pointing out that she
didn't strike him as being all that different from
McCoy. Then he thought better of it. They walked
down to the turbolift. The crewfolk that they passed
smiled and nodded to the captain. Kirk returned the
greetings.
In the lift, Wayne said, "Your crew seem
to like you, Captain."
Kirk shrugged. "I just believe in 'treating people
decently." "They're not required to salute you?"
Kirk laughed. "Excuse me, Commissioner. I
don't mean to be rude. But I have to say that, while
you seem to know a lot about me personally, you have some
gaps in your knowledge about Starfleet."
"You're right. Your contacts with xenoforms fall under
the Commission's purview. Starfleet protocol
does not."
She studied him under lowered brows. "Captain,
we're going to be working together very closely under
circumstances that will no doubt prove
extremely trying. I know your dossier well, but
I don't really know you. It would be appropriate
for us to become better acquainted. Perhaps we should have
dinner together."
"An excellent idea." Without thinking, he
added, "My quarters, twenty hundred hours?" --
Commissioner Wayne looked at him with eyes like
chips of sunstruck glass. He froze,
belatedly consider- 55
ing the consequences should the prickly commissioner
misconstrue his invitation. He was no careerist, but
he did like his job.
She smiled. It made her seem a different
person. "I'd be honored, Captain. I'd like
to show you that I'm not the total ogre I sometimes
seem to be."
"I HOPE OUR CUISINE is Up to the
standards you're accustomed to, Commissioner," Kirk
said.
64 main concern with food is that it should be
nutritious and wholesome, Captain."
"I ... see. Will you take some more wine?" A
pause, a hesitant smile. andallyes, please.",
Kirk poured, hoping the gesture would distract
attention from his expression. He was seasoned
in the ways of Federation bureaucrats, not to mention
women. But he was having a hell of a time reading her
signals.
Moriah Wayne sipped her wine. To his
surprise she had turned up in a simple gown
of a dark lustrous gray, one that left her arms bare
and emphasized the color and clarity of her eyes.
She wore her hair tied up at the crown of her
head-a less severe bun than usual, at least.
"I see you surround yourself with relics of the sea,"
she said. Kirk's quarters, while spacious, were
a long way from luxurious. The main decorations were
the artifacts she referred to-the wooden wheel of
an ancient sail ship, a ship's bell, a
model of a threemaster under full sail. "You asked
me back at Starbase Twenty-three if I have a
great love for the sea. I might ask you the same
question."
Kirk did care about food. Tonight's
faretournedos of beef with asparagus tips and steamed
Andorian taqq-was special even by the
Enterprise's usually excellent standards. He
ate with his usual appetite and savored his meal
well. Between bites he said, "I do love the sea.
But my first love is exploration. Look
around, and you'll also see a model of the original
Lunar Excursion Module and the first manned
starship." "Men and their toys," she said, smiling and
shaking her head. She sat slowly back in her
chair. "I thought your first love was the Enterprise.
his
A shrug and a laugh. "Perhaps I'm ckle. He
leaned forward, holding up, his hands-and trying not to think
about McCoy's frequent observation that if you chained
his hands behind his back, Kirk would be mute. "I'm
an Iowa farinboy who grew up loving the stars. I
wanted them. There was so much to see in the universe, so
much to learn, to do." He sat back and grinned. "The
Enterprise gives me the stars. So maybe I'm
not faithless, after all." "So do you love the end,
then-or the meansThat" Kirk stared into his own
wineglass. Then he laughed. "I don't think
I'm prepared to be that profound, just now. And I'm
doing all the talking."
"Well. . . ." She had eased her plate to the
side and
held the wineglass on the table before her, rotating
the stem slowly in her fingers. "I'm a city girl
myself. I was born on Jotunheim."
"The industrial world?"
She nodded. "A huge ball of metal circling
a dim red sun." That explained why she had given
him so much trouble in their sparring match. Jotunheim
had a gravity a bit over IO percent greater
than Earth's. She had grown up working her
muscles proportionally harder than a woman on
Terra would. "Growing up in the domes . . . I
hated it. It was like living in a terrarium. You grew
up longing for the stars. I grew up longing for the warmth
of unfiltered sunlight on my face, the wind in
my hair, the feel of grass beneath my feet. For
air that didn't s " mell of the millions of
other people who breathed it and moved in it and sweated in it.
The recyclers and the hydro- ponic trays never could
make the air smell fresh. . . ." Her words
dwindled away. A strand of her hair had fallen
free and hung beside her face, gleaming like burnished
metal. It made her look vulnerable-and entirely
beautiful. Her reminiscence reacted in Kirk's-
mind with something McCoy had said. "Jotunheim-are
you related to Councillor Wayne?"
A sad smile. "He was my father."
"I see." Cornelius Wayne had spent
twenty years as Federation Council member for
Jotunheim. He had been a notable foe
of Starfleet, insisting that it posed a threat of
military dictatorship. A lot of older
Starfleet officers spoke of him with the fondness they
usually reserved for Orion pirates, Klingons,
and the catastrophic decay of dilithium crystals.
Kirk himself had
no particular feelings about him; he had died of a
brain aneurysm shortly before Kirk entered
Starfleet Academy. "My father died when I was
an adolescent," Moriah said. "I-I guess
I was angry at him for a while, for abandoning me.
He was a harsh man in a lot of ways-not very easy
to get along with. He wasn't abusive, don't
get me wrong-nothing like that, ever. Really. He was just
... demanding. "Soon after he died I went away
to college on Earth. He wanted me to go
to Harvard, ashe had, become a lawyer, and go
into government right away-as he had."
She seemed to be gazing at the point of Kirk's
chin. But her eyes were focused beyond, years ago and
light-years away. "I went to the University of
Oceania instead, for their environmental sciences
program. I knew what had been missing in my
life when I was a child-closeness with nature. We
evolved outdoors, Captain- "Jim,"
he said, sipping. "Please."
A beat. "Jim. We humans spent
millions of years on the savannas of Africa.
Only for the past six thousand years or so have we had
cities. That's not long enough for us to adapt to a total
artificial environment-to life indoors, to life
under glass." Spock would probably quibble with that,
point out that on world after world-Earth included-life
tended to adapt very rapidly to changes in
surroundings, if it adapted at all. If it
didn't, it died.
But Spock wasn't here. "I agree," Kirk
said. "I thought if I became an ecologist, that
would get me outdoors. And I really was concerned about
the environment. All I had to do to see what was at
stake was look at my homeworld."
She held forth her glass. "May IT"
"My pleasure." Kirk poured.
"I know the Federation had reasons for allowing
unrestricted exploitation of Jotunheim-no
atmosphere, no life, no environment
to protect. But the industrial 'plexes, the mines
gaping like open wounds ... they were ugly. 1, "But the
Federation is very concerned about the environmental welfare
of living planets," Kirk said. "To an
extent." She shrugged. "I wanted to do more. That's
why I chose that school and that major."
Kirk had finished his own meal. He sat at
ease, looking at her. It was an easy thing to do.
"Was that the only reason?" he asked after a
time. She dropped her eyes. Is she actually
blushing, or am I seeing things?
"All right." She brought her face up sharply.
Spots of color glowed on the prominent
cheekbones, and her eyes were hot. "You're right. I
was rebelling against my dead father-the rebellion I
never had the guts to make when he was alive. Does
it make you feel more manly to score a few cheap
points off me?"
He held up his hands. "A truce. Please."
He felt a touch of guilt. That crack about men
and toys had stung-, he wanted to see if he could
shake Wayne's forbidding composure. He was beginning
to realize that the game, as Bones would quaintly put
it, was not worth the candle. "I was teasing, I admit
it. Please accept my apology. It was
inappropriate."
"No, no. Please." She reached across the table,
took his hand, squeezed it. Then pulled her hand
back as if it were in danger of being bitten.
"I don't always react well. It's my fault.
I've never been that good with people, I know. I didn't
have much social life when 1
was young. I was always-you know-studying and training." A
wan smile. "My father had high expectations of
me. I was his only child. And after all, it was a sign
of high regard that he never settled for anything but the
best from me."
"I-uh-I suppose so." Kirk rose, went
to the wall near his model of the Old Ironsides,
and pressed a button. A panel slid open,
revealing a wide-bottomed bottle of brown
glass. The neck was long, and curiously angled.
"Would you care for a taste of Saurian brandy?
I've been saving the bottle for a special
occasion. If the presence on board of such an
illustrious personage doesn't qualify, I
don't know what does."
"I'd be delighted."
She stood. At a spoken command from Kirk table
and dirty dishes retracted into the wall. Kirk
opened the bottle and poured a minuscule portion of the
amber liquid into two brandy snifters.
"I'm not being stingy," he said, bringing a snifter
to her. "This stuff is as potent as mercury
f4iminate and should be treated the same
way -gingerly."
"Oh, I know. I've had it before."
"I guess you probably have."
Kirk sat in a chair facing the commissioner. He
held up his goblet, admiring the way the faint light
made golden play in the depths. "To what shall we
drink?"
She leaned forward. "To success."
"I'll always drink to that," Kirk said. They
drank, and savored, and settled back into their
thoughts. In time Wayne raised her eyes to his.
They met with something like a shock, locked, and held for
half a dozen heartbeats that seemed to ring very loudly
in the ears of James T. Kirk.
She rose and came to him. She stood above him and
held out her hands.
He took them and stood. "I must be going," she
said. "I'd like to thank you for a truly wonderful
evening."
He felt the warmth of her body washing over the
front of him like surf. "It was my pleasure," he
said. She swayed forward against him. By reflex he
slipped an arm around the small of her back. She
let her head fall back, eyes almost
shut, lips parted.
He kissed her.
Her body seemed to flow against his, like water
joining water. Her mouth opened under his. Her
tongue flicked against his, tentatively, then
surged against it. And her eyes snapped opened, and
rolled, like the eyes of a trapped animal. The
muscles of her back turned to wound wire beneath his
hands. She backed out of his grip as if breaking
bonds, stared at him with wild eyes, and was gone.
Two days later they reached the system of
JoanMarie's Star.
"JoAN-M"...m's STAR," said Spock,
bending over so that the displays of the science console
licked at his face with light. "General Survey
number one dash one-one-two-three dash five-
three-seven. Spectral classification FO,
yellow-white, diameter one point seventwo times
ten to the sixth kilometers, mass one point
nine-two Sol, luminosity nine point eight-oh
Sol. Surface temperature, seventy-five
hundred degrees Celsius."
He straightened and looked at the star's image
blazing on the main viewing screen. "It is rather
unusual for such a hot sun to possess
habitable planets, Captain."
dis"...I have the impression, Mr. Spock, that
we're going to encounter very little at all that is usual
on this mission. Mr. Sulu, go to half impulse
power."
The door to the turbolift hissed open.
Moriah Wayne stepped onto the bridge. She
was wearing a somber navy and black today.
She nodded politely to Kirk's greeting. He
looked hard to see more than politeness in the
glass-green eyes, but if it was there it eluded him.
As she had been eluding him the last couple of days.
He shrugged. He'd been more than busy enough,
surveying the alterations to the Enterprise with Scott,
helping oversee the technicians who continued to work
on his ship. He'd been running himself to the edge of
exhaustion, in fact. He had more important
matters on his mind right now than an ambiguous
encounter with Wayne.
"The star possesses an Oort cloud of comets
and seven planets," the science officer continued.
"The outermost two are gas giants. Our
objective is the fifth planet from the primary."
"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, "can you give us a
look at Okeanos?" "Aye, sir." He
manipulated controls on his console. A cloud-
marbled blue disk expanded to fill the screen. At
the navigator station, Chekov let out a whistle.
"Look at that storm system in the northern
hernispherel" "in truth, Mr. Chekov, it would
seem to differ little from the storm system visible in the
southern hemisphere," Spock said. He resumed
his recital. "Okeanos orbits at a distance of
three point one-three astronomical units, with a
period of three point nine-nine-six Standard
years- 99
The turbolift door opened again, this time to admit
Dr. McCoy. "So that's our destination," he said,
peering at the viewscreen. "I hope I'm in time
for Spock's lecture. He's as close to a
textbook case of numerolalia as I'm ever
likely to see."
"The compulsive uttering of numbers, to which I
presume your unwieldy neologism refers,
is not a syndrome recognized by the Federation
Psychiatric Union, Doctor." "It will be,
Spock, once I publish my paper on you."
He gestured at the screen. "Say on, say on.
Science is waiting." "The planet has a
diameter of twelve thousand seven hundred
seventy-five kilometers, and a gravity of one
point two. Its rotational period is
fifty-five thousand nine hundred five seconds.
Does that satisfy you, Doctor?" Sulu
whistled. "Fifteen and a half hours."
"Fifteen hours, thirty-one minutes, and
forty-five seconds," Spock said.
16 Isn't he beautiful?" McCoy said.
"You'd barely have time to go to bed before it's time to get
up again," Sulu said.
"I think they make up in quality of daylight
what they lack in quantity," Kirk said dryly.
"Indeed, Captain," Spock said. "While
Okeanos receives almost precisely the same amount of
irradiation as Earth does, a much higher percentage
of it is in the form of ultraviolet light."
"We'll have to remember to wear our sunscreen,"
Kirk said. "The atmosphere consists of
seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty percent
oxygen, and two percent argon, with traces of
carbon dioxide and water. Concentrations of sulfur
compounds range from annoying to hazardous, depending on
proximity to volcanic activity."
"Twenty percent oxygen's pretty thin for a man
to breathe," McCoy said dubiously.
"A greater atmospheric density than Earth's
brings 66
the oxygen content well within the range of human
comfort." "I don't get the idea comfort is a word
it's going to occur to me to use much in connection with this
planet, Spock."
"Unfortunately not, Doctor. However, I
anticipate that I shall find the climate eminently
salubrious. The average daytime temperature at
thirty degrees latitude is three hundred
eleven degrees."
Wayne had been gazing raptly at the screen.
The statement jolted her from her reverie. "Three
hundred degrees? My God, that's almost as hot
as Venus. How can there be liquid water?" "Mr.
Spock is using the Absolute scale," Kirk
said, eyeing his science officer. "He means
thirty-eight degrees Celsius." "Which is still
almighty hot," McCoy said. "Reminds me of a
story from back home. A Southern gentleman
once remarked that if he happened to own both hell
and Texas, he'd rent out Texas and live in
hell." He gestured toward the screen.
"Obviously, he never heard of this place."
"Obviously, Doctor, since that
quote predates even the crudest spaceflight
by almost a century."
Wayne made an irritable gesture. "Your
numbers are just that-numbers. This is a beautiful
planet, Mr. Spock. V9 "But potentially a
very deadly one."
"All planets are potentially deadly,
Spock," Kirk said. "If there's one thing our
travels have taught us, it's that." Commissioner
Wayne crossed her arms. "How very masculine,
to see the unknown as a threat."
"I beg your pardon, Commissioner,"
Lieutenant
Uhura said, "but on the Enterprise we've found
that very often the unknown is a threat."
The commissioner turned a glare on her. Uhura
didn't flinch.
"Captain-was
"What is it, Mr. Sulu?"
The helmsman frowned. "I'm not sure, sir.
The planet's magnetic field is extremely
powerful, and the flux is incredible. It's causing my
sensors to give back anomalous readings, but I'm
getting somethingthere. his
His finger stabbed a button like an
entomologist pinning a rare insect. A little
designator box appeared at the lower left comer
of the disk. "There's a vessel in orbit around
Okeanos, Captain. Just coming around the edge of the
world."
"Shields up, Mr. Sulu. Go to full
impulse power." Kirk leaned forward
unconsciously. "Can you bring it up on the
screen?"
"Aye, Captain. Going to full magnification
... now." The ship resembled a sinister bird, with
downturned wings and a long, slender neck.
Commissioner Wayne caught her breath.
"YJ-INGON battlecruiser," Ensign Chekov
said in wonder. "It's magnificent," Commissioner
Wayne said. She held the fingertips of her right hand
pressed against the notch of her clavicle, as if she
were touching an invisible amulet. 661tvs just what
we needed," Kirk said. He wasalm amused by the
situation. Fate never threw him a fastball down
the middle, that much was certain.
"Captain, the vessel is broadcasting a standard
Klingon recognition sequence," said Uhura.
Kirk made a sound low in his throat.
"What are they doing here?" Wayne
asked. "No good, no doubt," Kirk said. "Open
hailing frequencies, if you please,
Lieutenant."
"Aye-aye, sir. Hailing frequency open,
sir."
"This is Captain James Kirk of the USS
Enterprise, calling the Klingon ship in orbit
around the fifth planet of this system. Identify
yourself, please."
A snarl of syllables that sounded like a lion
gargling came from the bridge speakers. "comtaj
mayeaDuj t1h1ngan wo at -- was The
translator kicked in. "comImperial Klingon
Battlecruiser Dagger. Leave the system at
once or you will be destroyed!" "It's nice to be
made to feel welcome," Kirk said. "They're not
transmitting any visuals, Captain," Uhura
said. "No, wait-I'm getting something now."
Wayne had stepped forward. "I am Federation
Commissioner Moriah Wayne," she said. "I
demand to know-was A face appeared on the screen. It
was darkly handsome, notwithstanding the bony ridge that
thrust up from the crown of the skull to part heavy black
hair that hung to broad shoulders. A long face,
punt almost, with black mustaches sweeping
down to either side of a full-lipped mouth and a jutting
narrow chin. A pale scar slashed down from the high
forehead and across the right eye to gouge deeply into the
cheek. The eye itself was covered with a black patch.
His good eye more than made up 'for its lack of a
partner. It was as hot and black as the core stuff
of a sun. Energy and dangerous charisma seemed
to shine from him like hard r adiation.
"To know"-Moriah Wayne stood openmouthed,
making a vague spreading gesture of the handswhat
you're doing here." "We tender fraternal assistance
to the natives of this world, who are being unjustly
oppressed by members of your race." "This from the
galactic experts on the subject," McCoy
muttered under his breath.
Apparently failing to hear him, the face turned.
"Ah, Captain Kirk! Welcome! You honor
us with your presence." The speaker settled back in his
command chair, which had the shaggy black and purple
pelt of some animal thrown over it. The motion
permitted the watchers on the Enterprise bridge
to see more of him. He wore the customary Klingon
jerkin of silver mesh, and over it the gold sash of his
rank. "I see, Captain, that the years have been
kinder to you than they generally are to members of
your species."
Kirk was trying not to stare. It was not the Klingon
way to so much as offer greetings. Here was a Klingon
being effusive. "You have the advantage of me, I'm
afraid."
A black-gauntleted hand dropped to the hilt
of a curious multiple-bladed knife slung at
the Klingon's waist. "Much time has passed since
last we met in the flesh, Kirk. I am Kain,
now Captain of the First Rank and officer commanding the
Klingon Imperial advisory detachment to this
unhappy world."
Kirk sat back in his chair as if the other had
reached through the screen and punched him in the sternum.
Kain! The years, the savage scar-if he looked
beyond them, Kirk thought, he could just recognize the
youthful junior lieutenant, fresh- faced for a
Klingon and painfully eager to prove himself, who had
stared
warily out from behind his father's shoulder in the receivin
line.
"The Axanar peace conference," Kirk said. "It
has been a long time, Captain."
"Our paths have crossed since theneai" the
Klingon said. "They have?"
"Indeed. I was a senior lieutenant on the
Fist of Retribution at Endikon, Captain.
I commanded a certain landing party." Kirk goggled.
"That was you?" I can't laugh. Now, of all times,
I have to keep a straight face.
Kain nodded. "We Klingons, believe that third
meetings are fateful, Captain."
"Is that your ship in orbit?" Wayne asked.
"It is, Commissioner. I am not aboard her,
however. I speak to you now from our mission on
Homesward, the chief island of the Susuru
archipelago- 9Very
He smoothed a wing of his mustache with a thumb.
"Now perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what you
are doing here.""
"We're here in response to a call from the
Susuru," Wayne said. "They are being
victimized by human interlopers." "So they say,"
Kirk said.
"You have summed the situation admirably,
Commissioner. Yet I admit I'm puzzled.
Klingon generosity is widely known." "That's
true," Kirk said. It was known in precisely the
same way Klingon. mercy was-for the purity of its
absence. "We have come to help them, with strong
hands and strong hearts. Why then would they
summon"-he
was able to keep most of the contempt from his voice-
"Earthers?"
Kirk sucked briefly on his lips. "Their
message to the Federation said, 'Theyeaare your people-come
comand get them."" Kain laughed. It was a hearty,
rich laugh. It put Kirk in mind of flaying
knives and white-hot pokers. "So they do not
slight us. It is good." The Klingon smiled. His
teeth were very white. "I must say, Captain, your
arrival greatly eases my mind."
"It does?"
Kain nodded earnestly. "The situation here is
highly volatile- skirmishes and worse occur
daily." He leaned forward. "Surely with your
powerful assistance we will find a peaceable solution
to the problems of this world."
"No doubt we shall," Kirk said, "one way or
another. Captain-First, it's an honor to speak with
you, but I have to cut this short. I have other people to talk
to."
Kain nodded. "I await your calLike Captain.
And that of your very capable commissioner." . The screen
went blank. "Now, how did he know she
was capable?" Dr. McCoy asked. Wayne was
staring at the now blank screen as if she still saw
something there. "What an extraordinary man," she
breathed.
"He is that," Kirk said.
The commissioner beamed. "With him working together with us,
surely we'll have the situation here cleared up in just
a few days."
Kirk took a deep breath. "Commissioner," he
said, "I certainly hope so. Lieutenant
Uhura, see if you can find me a channel to the
Susuru."
A mommqThat's DimblefcAmation, and then Kirk
was standing shin deep in grass. He looked down,
surprised, then glanced left and right at Spock and
Commissioner Wayne, who had beamed with him to the
surface of Okeanos.
"Greetings, Captain Kirk, Commissioner
Wayneea11' a familiar voice said. Kirk
looked up to see Kain striding across the sere grass
at him. "And you, of course, are the remarkable Mr.
Spock."
46I am12
Kain walked up to the commissioner, took her hand,
and raised it to his lips. Her hand looked
fragile and white against his black gauntlet.
Kirk restrained the impulse to either goggle or
roll his eyes. Instead he blinked past Kain's
shoulder. Despite the grass, the coordinates to which
they had beamed were indoors. The ceiling seemed to be
a low, flattish dome with a broad circular
skylight to admit the light of the brief Okeanos
afternoon. The glare of
Joan-Marie's Star was muted heavily by red
filters, so that the chamber was filled with a murky
dimness.
"I hardly expected to find you here,
Captain-First," Kirk said. "Where are our
hosts?"
"We are here, Captain," said a voice like
water over smooth stones. A figure resolved
itself out of the gloom, with a number of others trailing
behind.
The creature was small, perhaps a meter and a half
tall. It walked tentatively on the toes of
long slender forelegs-which looked horribly
uncomfortable to Kirk, who was feeling the pressure
of 20 percentgreater-than-usual gravity in his
knees and ankles and lower back. Its hind legs
were held together at the rear of its short and
narrow but long torso. Slim hands were folded across
each other on the body's centerline. The head was
narrow and long, with huge forwardlooking liquid amber
eyes above a muzzle covered in soft, honey-
colored fur. The nostrils were wide and
sensitive-looking. The ears rode high up on the
crested skull, long and pointed and mounted to track in
all directions, like a Terran horse's. At the
moment their focus was twitching nervously from Kirk,
to Wayne, to Spock, and back to Kirk again.
The being stopped three meters in front of
Kirk, performed a complicated gesture that was part
prancing, part genuflection. The captain saw that the
fur of his muzzle was hoary. His hands were almost
human, bony knuckled and sparsely furred. They
gave the impression of substantial strength
despite their slenderness.
"I am Swift," the creature said. His front
teeth were broad chisel-shaped incisors, yellow and
worn. "The Susuru follow where I walk."
"I am Captain James Kirk, USS
Enterprise. This is Mr. Spock, my first
officer, and this is Deputy Commissioner Wayne,
of the Federation."
The Susuru was backing slowly away as
Kirk spoke. The other twenty Susuru backed
with him, scrupulously maintaining position so that he
stayed in front. When he had retreated to about seven
meters he stopped and raised his head. His body was
golden, with white on the belly and a ruff like a
collie's around his neck of darker fur shot through with
gray. The tips of his ears were black.
"And these four Fives are They Who Walk in the
Vanguard," Swift said, indicating his
companions. "You would call them our council of
elders. The fifth Five, who brings the number
to perfection, is, of course, myself. We bid you
welcome." The other Susuru spoke what Kirk
took for a ritual greeting in chorus, and performed
an abbreviated version of Swift's earlier
gesture.
"Our browse and water are yours," said Swift.
Commissioner Wayne walked forward. The Susuru
leader went rigid. The others backed away, whining
softly. "Commissioner," Spock said, "I believe
you are invading Swift's personal territory."
She turned a furious look over her shoulder.
"Mr. Spock, I'll thank you to let me do
myjob! I am Deputy Commissioner for
Interspecies Affairs."
Spock raised an eyebrow. Wayne turned
back to Swift, who cringed visibly.
"You communicated your need to the Federation," she
said. She dropped to one knee. "I have come to help
you."
The Susuru had pulled up one foreleg. The
toes
were long and tipped with thick pads. The creature
leaned so far back it seemed impossible that it
didn't topple backward. "You are not planning
to leap for my throat?" Swift asked, tucking his
chin deep in his ruff.
Wayne gave him a wondering look. "But I'm
from the Federation. 1'rrLike here to help you."
"Besides," Kain boomed in his rich baritone, "I
am here to keep you safe."
"If you'll forgive my curiosity, Captain,"
Kirk said, "just why are you here? Are you seriously
expecting the commissioner to leap for his throat?"
Kain chuckled. "Not at all. I'm here
to advise the Lead Walker. Their experiences of your
fellow Earthers has been anything but reassuring."
"They are your people," Swift's sibilance turned
to a jagged shrill keening, with a piercing
fingernails-onblackboard edge that made
Kirk weak at the knees. "Come and take them!
They despoil our world. They enslave our wild
sea beasts, they rape our ocean bottoms and befoul
our water with their mining! All to serve their insatiable
greed."
The Vanguard Walkers set up a wail,
rising higher and higher in pitch even as Swift's
voice dropped. 16 And they kill us. Our youths
who venture upon the sea, our mothers and young in our
bomb-shattered habitations. Your people. Yours!"
The wailing rose until Kirk's eardrums
bulged inward. "Oh, you who run in the van guard of
your human herd," the Susuru leader cried above the
intolerable sound. "The blood of innocence cries out
for justice. Hear now my words should you not act, in
two fives of days, with the aid of our friends from far
stars, we
shall mount a mighty offensive and scour your folk from
the face of the planet!"
Dr. McCoy was waiting as they stepped off the
transporter platform back aboard Enterprise.
"Well? How'd it go?" Moriah Wayne held
her fingertips over her ears and shook her head. "That
wailing! Such grief-I can't get that awful sound of
loss out of my ears."
"That well?" McCoy said. Kirk shrugged.
"It is illogical to give such free rein to the
natural response of grief," Spock said.
"How can you speak of logic at a time like this?"
Wayne flared at him. "We are talking about pain,
Mr. Spock. The pain of the loss of loved ones.
Or does your green Vulcan blood run too
ice cold for loss to have any meaning to you at all?"
-- "I never thought I'd say this," McCoy said,
"but you took the words right out of my mouth,
Commissioner."
Spock looked at her. "I, too, have known
loss, Commissioner," he said. "Even Vulcans
mourn. But there is a danger in abdicating control
so completely. It is frequently difficult
to regain."
"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk said as he
strode onto the bridge, "see if you can raise
one of the human cities."
"They're very impressive structures,
Captain," Sulu remarked. "The Okeanians
aren't going to be happy to leave them behind."
The Enterprises sensors had revealed seven of
them, sprawling metallic clusters apparently
floating free on the endless ocean. Four
occupied the northern
hemisphere, three the south. None approached the
equator nearer than twenty degrees latitude.
There was a great deal of broadcast traffic between the
cities, as well as with a multitude of smaller
settlements. Few of these encroached far into the
equatorial zone.
"They don't have any choice in the matter,"
Wayne said crisply, stationing herself next
to Kirk's command chair even as he settled into it.
"The only question is how many transports we'll
need to take them off-planet."
"That's not necessarily the only question,
Commissioner," Kirk said. "We haven't even
spoken to these people yet." She stared at him in
disbelief. "But didn't you hear those beings down there?
Didn't you feel their loss reverberating in your
bones?"
"Believe me, Commissioner, I heard them. But
we have not yet heard what the humans on Okeanos
have to say."
She tossed her head. "What difference does that
make? They're intruders. They have to go."
"Situations are seldom as clear-cut as they
seem upon cursory examination,
Commissioiier," Spock said. "Surely we cannot
take action on the basis of such incomplete data
as we now possess."
"Captain," Uhura said, "I can't seem
to get anybody to respond to me."
"What do you mean, Lieutenant? Are you trying
to tell me that no one's the least bit interested in being
contacted by visitors from outer space?"
"No, sir, that's not the problem. Everyone I
reach is willing to talk. They're bubbling over with
questions, in fact-and they all seem to be able to speak
English."
"Well, at least we won't have to rely on our
transla78
tors." The "Universal Translator" Also
technology was relatively new. While
Starfleet made extensive use of it, it was known
to display some highly embarrassing glitches from time
to time. "What seems to be the problem, then?"
She swiveled her seat to face him. "I can't
find anybody in a position of authority, sir.
Everybody I speak to just laughs when I ask to be
put in touch with their planetary or local
government."
"Maybe they don't have one," McCoy
said. "Ridiculous," Wayne said. "They
possess cities and technology. They can't be
complete anarchists."
"If they have had extensive dealings with the
Klingons," Spock said, "perhaps they have grown wary
of spacefaring cultures in general."
"That sounds dangerously close to bigotry,
Commander," Wayne said. "Captain Kain is
obviously a man of great integrity and
sensitivity." I
"Those aren't traits the Klingon culture
values highly," Kirk said. "It's hardly
bigotry for Mr. Spock to base his observation on
facts that are, after all, pretty widely known."
"What is widely known, Captain," Wayne
said, "isn't always true."
"She's got you there, Jim," Dr. McCoy
said. Kirk rubbed his jaw. "I know," he said.
"Captain," Uhura said, "I have somebody
who's agreed to speak to you."
Kirk raised his eyebrow at her and sighed.
"Are they transmitting a visual?"
"Yes, sir."
"Put them on the screen, if you please."
The screen showed three people seated in a
room. It was dark except for three lights shining
down on them from the ceiling. What he could see of the
room was
devoid of decoration. The three occupied a low
dais. At their backs a window opened on night
and a gray sea whipped to thrashing frenzy by a storm.
He took all that in in a flash. Then his
attention snapped to the people themselves.
"What?" whispered Moriah Wayne. She
didn't seem aware that she had spoken.
Kirk tried hard not to stare himself. These are
supposed to be humans. What's going on?
The three individuals onscreen appeared
to belong to three entirely different species.
"I am Captain James T. Kirk of the
United Space Ship Enterprise. We have come in
the name of the United Federation of Planets-was
"We offer you and your people an enthusiastic
welcome, Captain," said the man who sat in the
middle. He looked entirely normal-a
light-skinned black, theatrically handsome, with
pronounced epicanthic folds to his eyes. He
was dressed in a russet jacket and trousers over
a collarless black shirt, with black thong sandals.
"But you might as well save your breath.
It doesn't matter to us whom you claim
to represent."
"Oh, really?" Kirk said. In the comer of his
vision he noticed Uhura paying perhaps stricter
than regulation attention to the spokesman.
The man nodded. "Really. But I forget my
manners. This is Aileea dinAthos of
Securitech, and this is Mona Arkazha,
representative of the Deep-ranger Syndicate.
I am Jason Strick. I'm an arbiter
by trade."
Kirk frowned. "Are you speaking for the duly
constituted government of your planet?"
That elicited polite laughter from Strick and the
woman named Aileea, who sat at his right. "There
isn't any such thing," she said in a singsong accent
much like the man's. "Unless you talk to the
Susuru." Her face hardened. "They seem to have a
lot of fancy ideas along those lines."
Lightning cut a brief purple wound across the
sky at their backs. Kirk studied dinAthos
briefly. She looked to be in her early
thirties, and wore a dustye-green vest over a
white top that left her midriff bare, and dark
green slacks. She looked human,
too-beautiful, in
fact. I
at But the hair she wore in a shag to her
shoulders was a deep green, and down the sides of her
slim neck ran slits that reminded him of gills.
"Just whom do iou represent?" he asked.
"Ourselves," said the third person. She-Kirk saw
comwas a squat being, hairless, with rubbery-looking
black skin. A clear respirator mask covered
the lower half of her broad face. A dark metal
yoke enclosed her short neck and flowed down over
the tops of her shoulders. It surrounded her with a
constant irides at cent shimmer of mist. She had
webbed hands and feet, two vertical slits for a
nose, no external ears-holes in the sides of
her head. Where the skin was close to bone, on
knuckles and feet and under her square jaw, it showed
yellow highlights. She wore no clothes except
for the mask and yoke, and a harness holding small
implements whose function Kirk didn't
recognize. She looked like some kind of
amphibian, only vaguely humanoid.
"Jason says I speak for my syndicate, and
in some matters L do. In this matter I have no
authority beyond my own skin." Her accent was
harsher than the others', and sounded somehow familiar.
"But understand something, Captain-you are unlikely
to get a different answer from anyone else on
Discord." "Discord?"
The man held his hands out. "Our world. This world."
"It isn't your world," said Commissioner Wayne.
"And who are you to say so?" demanded Arkazha. "I
am Moriah Wayne, Federation Deputy
Commissioner for Interspecies Affairs." "The
what?"
Wayne drew herself up. "I have been sent
to prepare you to evacuate this world in order that it be
returned to its rightful owners."
Lightning blazed again, powerful enough to tumble the
image momentarily into a flurry of horizontal
lines. When reception cleared the green-haired
woman was standing, legs braced, fists clenched.
Kirk saw that she wore a heavy-looking handgun
on a beft at her hip. "This is our world!" she
exclaimed. "Our ancestors came here when Earth
rejected them. They mixed their blood with sea and
crust to make it theirs."
"The Susuru-was Wayne began.
"The Susuru are the interlopers! They weren't
here when our mothers landed. And they are
murderers, Captain. We're willing to let them have
the land, and the freedom of the seas. But they want it
all-and they want our lives as well."
"Aileea, please-was Strick said.
"If the Stilters want to take one they'll have
to take the other," dinAthos declared. "They'll have
to kill us all." She thrust a finger at Wayne.
"You can have Discord on the same terms, Commissioner.
And that's the only way you'll get it."
She sat down again, cheeks flushed, jade eyes
glaring. "Not so fast," Kirk said. "We're not
going to rush
into anything here. Ms. dinAthos, I'd like to come
down to the surface and meet with you in person, set
up talks between you and the Susuru-was
"And what of the Susuru's new friends?" asked
Arkazha. Kirk shrugged. "We'll deal with them,
too."
" What a merry party that's going to be," McCoy
muttered. Strick held up his hands. To Kirk's
surprise they were callused hands, workman's hands.
"You have the freedom to land where you will, Captain. In
fact, I invite you and all your crew to come down
freely as our guests. In this I do speak for most
Discordians. We're a hospitable
folk, and it's been a long time since we've had
news from Earth.
"But if you're looking for someone with the authority
to speak for all Discordians-that person doesn't
exist. And please understand that, so far as we're
concerned, you are here as private citizens. We do
not recognize your Federation, nor any power you
derive from it."
"You have no authority here," said Arkazha. "You
are tourists-no more."
The screen returned to the image of
OkeanosDiscord, the settlers called it.
Wayne slowly unclenched her fists. "I don't
think there's any more room for doubt," she said
quietly. "Doubt of what, Commissioner?" Dr.
McCoy asked. "That what those beautiful Susuru
said was true? These so- called Discordians are no
more than bandits."
Kirk sighed. "I'm calling a command conference in
the briefing room to discuss the situation. Fifteen
minutes." He rose.
"I thought the Susuru said the colonists were all
human," Sulu said.
"Perhaps we all look alike to these Susuru,"
Chekov suggested. Wayne scowled.
"I have to admit I was somewhat startled myself,"
Kirk said. "I wonder what races were
represented. I couldn't place the two of them, the
dinAthos woman and Arkazha."
"Arkazha speaks with a good Russian accent,
Captain," Chekov announced. "It has
undercurrents of St. Petersburg." "Thank you,
Mr. Chekov. That's an interesting datum."
"Sensor readings"-Spock bent to the science
console- "indicate that all three persons belong
to the same species- Homo sapiens."
He turned and straightened. "They are all every
bit as human as you yourself are, Captain."
"Tim moBum we've got to deal with now,"
Kirk said, "is how to proceed from here."
46 Surely that's self-evident, Captain,"
Wayne said. She alone declined a seat at the
table. "The humansif they can be called that-are
invaders. Our instructions from the Federation require
us to persuade them to leave. Duty and justice
alike require that we c . arry out those orders."
"I dinnae like xeaCaptain," Scott said.
"To uproot a whole people from their homes, move "em
clean across space to God knows where ... it goes
against the grain."
"Do you examine all your orders to make sure
they're in accord with your sentiments before you obey them,
Lieutenant Commander Scott?"
Scotty worked his mouth and glared, but could find
nothing to say. "Mr. Scott," Wayne said,
smoothing her tone. "It's not just a question of orders.
It's a
question of right. If a burglar breaks into your house,
does he have a right to be there?"
Scott eyed her suspiciously. "No,
ma7am," he said. Since she was neither part of the
ship's complement or the Starfleet chain of command, she
didn't rate the honorific sir. Or at least
he didn't feel compelled to apply it to her. "But-
if he should somehow manage to stay a week-does that
give him a right then?"
"No. 99
"What's the statute of limitations, then, Mr.
Scott? When does theft turn into ownership?"
Scott moistened his lips. "I cannae answer
that," he said. "But clever words and fair countenance do
not make wrong into right, Commissioner."
"As distasteful as the fact may be," Mr.
Spock said, "it is common knowledge throughout the galaxy that
time does, in fact, confer such
legitimacy. There are few cultures today who do
not occupy at least some land that their forebears wrested from
another culture.
"Because it's accepted, does that make it right,
Mr. Spock? Is the Federation about righting
injustice, or papering it over with rationalizations and
legalisms and so perpetuating it?" "'allyour
arguments are at base emotional," Spock said.
"Logic tells us that any attempt
to systematize justice will entail a degree of
compromise."
"Then set logic aside. What does your
heart say?" "My heart is incapable of speech,
Commissioner." Wayne stared at him. "Is he
making a joke, Captain?""
"He's Vulcan," Kirk said. "He can't
make jokes."
He saw the sideways flicker of McCoy's
eyes, the ghost of a grin, hastily hidden.
Wayne walked around the table to stand near Spock.
"Mr. Spock, tell me, as a Vulcan, how
does it make you feel that your people are dominated
by Earth humans." She held up her hands. "No,
wait. I know Vulcans don't like to admit they have
feelings. So-what is your response to the
fact of your domina- tion?"
"The Vulcans are not dominated, Commissioner,"
Spock said matter-of-factly.
"But look around you. What do you see? Vulcan
faces? Hardly. Any nonhuman faces?
None. Mr. Scott, the doctor, Lieutenant
Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, the captain-all
human. Doesn't that suggest an imbalance.
"Vulcan has its own space service. Most
Vulcans inclined to venture into space choose
to join it." He paused. "They find the Federation
service somewhat beneath them."
disren't Vulcans superior to humans? Are you
not stronger than a man? Are you not quicker, more
resistant to heat and radiation ... more intelligent?"
66I am. 99
"Commissioner," Dr. McCoy said, "do you really
think the ends of this mission are served by inciting our first
officer to rebellion?"
Kirk held up a hand. "Bones. Let her have
her say." "Then why is a Vulcan not head of the
Federation? Why isn't one captain of this ship?"
"Because that would not be logical."
She blinked. "Not logical? How is it not
logical?" "Leadership requires a
certain ambition, a drive, a desire to lead-or
to conquer. We Vulcans lack that ambition. When
we forswore emotion, Commissioner, it was in fact
primarily to expunge precisely those drives, which
had caused such great devastation to our
people and our planet. Our Romulan cousins, on
the other hand, indulge their ambition, to the detriment of
their culture and galactic peace."
Wayne raised spread fingers near her temple
and dropped them again in a gesture of defeat.
"Doesn't anyone see what the Federation is like?"
"I see a century of peace and harmony,"
Scott said. "Haven't there been wars, with the
Klingons and Romulans and Gorn? Haven't you
buried your own dead?" "Relative to the bulk of
human history, Commissioner," Kirk said, "I
think one would have to say the Federation era has been one
of unprecedented peace."
"How exactly does it come to pass that a high
official of the Federation is arguing so vehemently against
the Federation?" McCoy asked.
"Don't misunderstand me, Doctor. I'm not
saying the Federation is evil. I'm saying it could be
better. Don't you feel that the UFP has the
obligation to be as ethical as possible?"
"Yes," he said reluctantly. "I do."
"The fact is that Earth humans dominate the
Federation. That is wrong. The fact is also that that
"human history" you spoke of, Captain, is
nothing but a litany of rape, degradation, murder,
and exploitation. And that is what the Susuru are
facing on Okeanos today."
"Commissioner," Kirk said, and then had to pause with
his hands on the table before him to order his thoughts.
"I-I can't agree that human history is as
black a picture as you paint it. No, wait,
please-r-that doesn't have any bearing on our
discussion here-was
Wayne would not be restrained. "It has every
bearingff91)
"The key point is that we do not have all the facts
about what's going on down there. And as Starfleet
officers, I submit, we have a responsibility
to withhold action until we know more."
"Hear, hear," McCoy said. A ripple of
concurrence ran around the table.
"You all saw the meeting with the Susuru leader on
the viewing screen," Wayne said, almost pleading.
"You heard his words, his passion. How can you doubt
what he said?" "His passion was no doubt
authentic, Commissioner," Spock said. "Yet that
does not mean that he told the whole story. I do not
mean to imply that he lied. He may have told the
truth as he knew it-and saw it. All we have to go
on are unsupported allegations made by mutually
hostile parties. It would be the height of recklessness
to proceed on no better grounds." Wayne looked
around, her lovely haughty face with scorn. "How
like Earth men, was she said. "What other
Earth-derived men say is all that's
important-the outcries of native beings count for
nothing."
"Two of the spokespeople for the Discordians were
women, Commissioner," Uhura said quietly.
Wayne dismissed the objection with a flip of her
hand. "The leader was a man. They're a
maledominated, exploitative society. The
women were figureheads-nothing more. They'll recite
the lies they're told to."
"This ship is commanded by a man, Commissioner,"
Uhura said. "Does that mean I and all the other
women aboard are nothing but puppets and emptyheaded
liars?" "Lieutenant, I don't think I like your
tone."
"Commissioner, I don't think I like
yours."
"Crew," Kirk said, "Commissioner. Let's not
de- 8
scend to personalities. Commissioner Wayne,
my bridge crew and I seem to agree that we need
to learn more before we act." "Do you run your starship as
a democracy, then, Captain?" Wayne asked
with a sneer.
"What's wrong with democracy?" McCoy
demanded. "The answer, Commissioner, is no,"
Kirk said softly. "The Enterprise is not a
democracy. No starship is or can be. The
decision is mine, and mine alone.
"But my officers are professionals, the best
Starfleet has to offer. We have served together for
nearly five years. They know my decisions may
affect whether they live or die. When the situation
permits, I respect them enough to hear what they have
to say before I decide."
"Even if that brings you inffconflict with your
ordersr, "Even then."
She s tared at him a long moment, nostrils
flared. "Sometimes," she said quietly, "I feel
as if I'm talking to myself." She marched from the
briefing compartment. Into the heavy silence,
Kirk said, "Tomorrow we will beam down to the surface and
see if we can't find out what's really going on
here. Now, dismissed."
Kirk had just collapsed on his settee and
pulled his boots off when the door annunciator
chimed. "Damn," he said. He stood up and
clumped to the door, dangling his boots from one hand.
The door opened to his command. Moriah Wayne
stood there.
"I knew it was you," he said. "No one else
would have timing that perfect."
Her face was serious. "Could I come in? I-I
don't want to intrude."
He, looked at her a moment, then shook his
head. "You aren't intruding." He waved her in with the
boots. "Come in. Make yourself at home."
She entered. He tossed the boots down by the
door, walked wearily back to the settee, and
dropped bonelessly onto it. "Would you like something
to drink, Commissioner?" She shook her head. She
had walked over to stand staring at comhis model of the
USS Constitution in its illuminated niche. The
lights in his quarters were turned down to a mellow
glow. The ship seemed to float in a pool of
yellow glow. He noticed that two strands
of her hair had come loose. They hung fram- ing
her face, softening, mellowing.
"If you're here to continue our policy debate,
I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. I'm just not up
to it."
"No." She reached out a finger as if to touch the
model, with its bellying white sails and intricate
rigging. He tensed. Irrationally, he didn't want
her touching his ship. Instead she withdrew her finger and
turned toward him. "Why does the crew dislike me
so? Everyonethey all seem to be against me."
He inhaled deeply and let it out through his nose
with a sound like a snore. "Commissioner-was
"Moriah." Her eyes glowed.
He stood. She flowed forward to stand before him.
"Moriah, you have a positive talent for alienating
my bridge crew. You accuse Sulu of a major
felony, you patronize Uhura, you accuse
Bones of being a
male-chauvinist quack, not to mention impugning his
standing as a Southern gentleman. You make Spock
out as a puppet and a bad imitation human. All you
need to do is call Scotty a whiskey-addled old
soak who doesn't know his spanner from a hole in the
ground, and you'll have made a pretty clean
sweep."
"Am I so undiplomatic, Jim?"
"'UndiplomaticThat Moriah, you-was He
held his hands- up, almost cupping her face. "You
make Kahless the Unforgettable look like
Talleyrand."
She turned her face aside, took his right hand
in hers, brought it to her mouth, and kissed the palm.
He felt as if someone had tou ched a cattle
prod to his coccyx. He straightened, fatigue
forgotten.
"You're a strong man, Jim," she said,
pressing his palm against her cheek. The skin was cool
and smooth. "You stood up to me today."
"I hardly thought it was going to have this effect on
you.
"I know you stand up for what you believe. That's
important." She looked into his eyes. "We
need a man like you." "We?" He drew back,
dropping his hands. "I'm not sure I understand."
"We. The Commissioner, me. The nonhuman
races of the Federation. We need your strength."
"Moriah." He shook his head. "I don't
know what to tell you. 1-1 care about the status of
nonhumans. I don't think many
Starfleet officers have introduced more new species
to the Federation. I fully understand-I fully feel-the
ramifications of what I've done. Even with the
Prime Directive, and all the procedures the
Federation has in place to ease the shock, contact
with a galaxy-spanning civilization can be terrifically
dislocating for a culture."
He turned away. "But I still feel that the
Federation gives more to its members than it takes
away. If I weren't convinced of that I could never do
what I do."
He felt a hand on his arm. "James."
He turned. Her arms went around him.
"I need a strong man, too. It wears me
down, always being so self-sufficient, so steadfast,
me against the world. Sometimes I need a strong chest just
to ... lean against." She laid her head against
Kirk's chest. He held her to him and stroked her
hair.
In time she raised her face to his. He kissed
her. This time she did not pull away.
UGHT spiLLED iDowationwARD like a shower of
gold dust from a point two meters above the deck.
A shimmer, and Kirk, Spock, and Moriah
Wayne stood on a mat of some woven
sea-green fiber.
Kirk looked around. He and Wayne wore
wraparound sunglasses with a chip inside that kept the
fierce tiny dot of Joan-Marie's Star blacked
out in a constant eclipse. Even at that his first
impression was of ferocious glare. His second
impression was of body-blow humid heat, and a
gravity that seemed much greater than one-fifth more than
he was used to. His knees started to buckle. The
world whirled around him.
Get a grip on yourse1r, he commanded
sternly. You're the intrepid explorer. It wouldn
I do to set fqot on a new world only
to collapse in a helpless puddle of protoplasm.
Grinning at the image, he grasped the rail-which
thankfully was sheathed in some fibrous material that
shed heat-and forced himself upright. They stood on an
observation deck three stories above a city of
glass and metal and open water, all dazzling in the
sun's white glare. The city obviously lacked a
powerful planning commission; it was a jumble, towers and
turrets and domes and horizontal cylinders
thrusting every which way, split by waterways of varying
widths and linked by catwalks and skyways in a
weird thronged web. "Chaos," said
Wayne, sniffing. "Total confusion."
"Commissioner," Spock said, "as of local
sunrise this morning, our sensors revealed the
presence of some one million, one hundred
thirty-five thousand, two hundred sixty-two
human occupants. Whatever system of living the
inhabitants have evolved, it is certainly not altogether
dysfunctional." "It's a blight," she said. "A
silver scab on the sea." "Freefolk," a
voice said from behind them. They turned into a wind
tanged with astringent metal smell to see the trio
they had spoken to last night emerging from a low domed
metal structure. The light of the primary made it
resemble the hemisphere fireball of a nuclear
explosion at ground level, frozen in time. Behind it
was sky like a gray blanket that had been slashed with a
knife. Painful blue shone through the rents.
The speaker was Jason Strick. He wore a
brightly colored dashiki over white duck trousers
today. "Welcome to Discord." "The city as well as
the planet," added Aileea dinAthos. She wore
a loose cream-colored blouse over khaki
shorts, and soft knee-length moccasins. She was still
wearing her gun belt. "They both have the same name."
"Your name," Wayne said, her words so
frosty even
the sun couldn't melt them. "The natives no
doubt call it something else."
"The Susuru call the planet by a name that means
Island," Aileea said levelly, "if that's who
you're referring to. The Susuru aren't native
to this world, any more than we are."
"Thank you very much for your welcome," Kirk said
loudly. "We're here to uncover the facts of the
situation on this world, whatever it's called."
Strick offered his hand to Wayne, who accepted it
after a moment's hesitation. DinAthos shook hands with
Kirk. Her grip was surprisingly strong-strong
enough'that he had the impression she might have been
able to crush his hand if she chose, despite the fact
that she was shorter than Wayne and lightly built.
"That is very impressive technology," said
Arkazha, shaking Spock's hand. "The means by which you
arrived here." , "Transporter beams," Kirk
said, shaking hands with Strick. He was armed, too,
Kirk saw. The butt of a handgun projected from
under the tail of his dashiki, behind his left hip. "A
lot has happened on Earth since your ancestors
left."
"No doubt," Strick said. "And
we're eager to hear all of it."
"Those-transporters?-cause a lot of interference
without communications," dinAthos said. "When you beamed
in 'ust now it made all our electronics go J
crazy."
"That can occur when transporter beams function
near unshielded electronic components of a certain
rudimentary stage of development," Spock said.
The three looked at him, more curious than
miffed, it seemed. "I suppose we do seem
primitive to you."
Wayne opened her mouth to say something. "Actu-

ally," Kirk said, "I don't think we're
all that far ahead of Y." He glanced up at the
sky, which was clear overhead, though cumulus balls
rolled along the western horizon like white
tumbleweeds. "I just hope we're not due for one of
your colossal electrical storms. Big
lightning discharges interfere with our transporters
something fierce."
"Our meteorological observations indicate
no major storm cells are likely to form in or
move through this area for at least the next eight hours,
Captain," said Spock. "And Mr.
Sulu will, of course, alert us should conditions
change."
"Excellent, Mr. Spock."
"Would you care to see something of our city,?"
Jason Strick asked. "We can walk a little
ways, if our heat and gravity aren't too much . .
."
"We'll survive," said Kirk, who
privately doubted it. As appalling as heat,
humidity, gravity, and glare were, they were nothing
compared to the invisible stuff-high UV output from the
primary, background radiation from heavy metals in
the crust. Dr. McCoy had fussed over the party
before they beamed down, slathering them with sunblock and
hypospraying them full of antiradiation drugs.
"This'll keep you alive," he said, "but nothing
on Earth or Okeanos is going to make you
comfortable."
"We call our sun Eris, was dinAthos said.
"For the Goddess of Discord, who disrupted the
banquet of the gods b y rolling the golden apple
inscribed 'For the Fairest" into their hall on
Mount Olympus, I presume?" Spock said.
"That , s the one," the green-haired woman said with a
grin. "An arbitrary bitch, but she
keeps us all alive."
They walked to a broad stairway and down to ocean
level. The motion of the sea made itself felt as a
gentle rocking, barely perceptible. The walking
surfaces were all covered in the resilient fiber
mats, which seemed a very efficient insulator. Not
even colonists well adapted to this hellhole to go
abroad in daylight lightly clad and bareheaded could
endure contact with bare metal heated by the tiny sun.
"Captain," Spock said quietly from Kirk's
left elbow. Their hosts were descending the stairs behind
them, while Wayne preceded them, turning her head
left and right with a pinched expression. "I find it
remarkable that these people can have adapted so completely to the
extremely rigorous comlocal conditions in the two
hundred years or less for which they can have occupied the
planet."
"Two hundred years, Mr. Spock? You
seem awfully definite." "Zefram Cochrane
demonstrated a practical warp drive some two
hundred and seven years ago," Spock said.
"Inasmuch as this planet is rather more than three
ihundred light-years from Earth, and human
spaceflight of any kind is a mere three
centuries old, it is highly unlikely
that these colonists' ancestors departed, Earth before the
advent of warp drive."
"An excellent point, Mr. Spock,"
Kirk said. "The rapid adaptation of these
Discordians is another mystery. As if we
didn't have enough."
The spaces between buildings were comfull of people,
walking, hawing, debating, splashing in the sea,
batting a handball against a wall. The first thing
Kirk noticed about them was that both Strick and
dinAthos were fairly conservative in their style of
dress. The norm seemed to be bold, almost gaudy
colors in clothing of flamboyant cut in which
coverage from the sun seemed a minor consideration and
modesty none
at all. People dressed like Arkazha were more in
evidence than ones dressed like her companions, and not
only the amphibians.
The people themselves presented a variety as astonishing as
their garb. There were hulking humanoids covered in
pliable gray armor plates like rhinoceroses,
stocky men and women no larger than Tellarites,
others the same height-waist high-but so slight
Kirk at first took them for children. A creature like
Arkazha leapt from a canal onto the
walkway before them in a great surge of blue-green
water, straightened, turned toward the approaching
party, nodded politely, and walked past them.
Wayne's eyes widened; the being was nude, and
emphatically male.
A moment later a much more humanoid woman,
equally naked, plummeted past Kirk's elbow in
a dive from a third-story window. Kirk had an
impression of aquamarine hair streaming back over
a pale slim body with a delicate fringe of fin
running down each arm from wrists to short-ribs. Then
she was gone, leaving barely a ripple.
Wayne stopped and scowled back at Kirk, her
arms tightly crossed over her sternum. "Are we
going someplace, or just wandering at random through this
warren?" Aileea's jade eyes got narrow and
dangerous. Strick smiled easily.
"At your pleasure, Commissioner," he said. "You
are our honored guest. We'd like you to see something
of the way we live."
"I've seen more than enough urban blight in my
time." The party caught her up and passed her by.
After an angry moment, she followed.
"One thing puzzles me," Kirk said
emphatically.
"Mr. Strick-ahh, is there any particular
title I should call you by?"
"Mr. Strick is fine," Strick said with a
smile. "Or Freeman Strick, or Jason.
Or you can simply pointit's all the same to me."
"Just when did your ancestors leave Earth?"
"In two thousand seventy-two," dinAthos said.
Wayne gave her a look that glittered like glass.
She was white-faced and taut,. and seemed to be
building toward an explosion. He felt
disoriented. Last night they had been so close.
Today they were walking a ragged edge. He had a long
way to go to understand the commissioner.
"At the height of Earth's Third World War,"
Spock said. DinAthos nodded. "You might say
we sneaked out when no one was looking."
"And what had you done that made it necessary for you
to sneak off?" Wayne asked.
"We were born," the Discordian woman said with a
defiant head flip that shook green bangs from her
eyes. "We left to escape extermination," Mona
Arkazha said. Her bulging eyes studied Wayne
with evident disdain. "It seems our mothers chose
wisely."
"Now, Mona," Strick said
soothingly, "look at Mr. Spock, here. They
allow Vares on old Terra, evidently."
Spock arched a brow. ""Vares," Mr.
Strick? I am unfamiliar with the term."
"Our own name for ourselves," Strick said. "It's from
"Variants.""
"From the human somatotype," dinAthos added.
Spock blinked. "I beg your pardon, sir, but
my own departure from the human norm arises from the
fact that I am half Vulcan."

FROM THE DEPTHS
Strick stared at his face. Spock bore the
scrutiny with his customary dignity.
"You mean you're half alien?" the Discordian
asked.
"Xenoform," corrected Wayne.
"I am," said Spock.
Strick's face split in a huge grin.
"Marvelous! So old Terra was able to overcome her
fear of difference after
"Quite evidently," Spock said, "since the
Federation now comprises several score of humanoid
races' Strick looked at his companions.
"Maybe it's good our isolation's ended.
Perhaps Earth is ready to accept u9t
"Do not rush into happy conclusions, Jason,"
Arkazha said warningly.
DinAthos grinned. "He's a professional
optimist. It serves him well in his line of work."
They had come into a sort of plaza around a broad
artificial lagoon in which a dozen children-actually
children, as a second look verified-of various types
frolicked, without apparent consciousness of difference.
People took late breakfast or early lunch under
brightly colored awnings. Others browsed through stores
selling underwater -- breathing rigs, entertain- ment
electronics, and lightweight weapons systems for
nautical vessels. Kirk noted that even those people
who showed no obvious physical departures from the
norm often showed flamboyant cosmetic
differences, such as bright blue hair or orange
skin.
He felt a prickling at the back of his neck
and turned. A person who appeared to be half
woman, half calico cat sat on a low wall
covered in a fiber mat colored like a Persian
rug next to a cafd whose name was written in what
looked like Chinese ideograms.
She noted his attention and gave him a
slow smile with a long, curved fang at either edge.
Her eyes were yellow, with vertical slit pupils.
"Fascinating," he heard Spock murmur.
"Mr. Strick," he said, "there's no tactful
way to ask this, but how in heaven's name do you come
to be-that is, why-was He held his hands up in a
helpless gesture. Aileea -- dinAthos laughed.
"Why are we such an odd assortment of freaks,
Captain? Genetic engineering."
"We are as we have chosen to be," said Arkazha.
Kirk and Wayne stared at them, thunderstruck.
4'YOU'-GENE engineer-yourselves?" the commissioner
asked. "The gene sculptors among us shape us
to our request," dinAthos said, looking curiously
and a bit warily at the commissioner. She got a
queer tight smile. "That bothers you, doesn't
it?"
410f course it does!" Wayne flared. Her
face was drained of color. "You people tamper with the
natural order!" 1 14 So does Dr.
McCoy, Commissioner," Spock said, "when he
cures someone of a disease that, if untreated, would
otherwise prove fatal."
"But they're ... perverting themselves. Their children.
Twisting themselves into monsters on a whinil"
"Moriah, get hold of yourself!" Kirk snapped.
She glared at him. "Do you need further evidence?
These people aren't just alien to this world. They're alien to the
cosmos! They're unnatural!"
Jason Strick's cheeks looked as if they had
been dusted with a fresh fall of volcanic ash.
Aileea dinAthos was looking at Wayne as if
she were a poisonous sea creature that had flopped
up onto the
walkway. Only Arkazha was showing no sip of
response, though with her heavily modified
physiognomy she probably had a limited
range of facial expression. Kirk took
Wayne by the arm and steered her a few steps away.
"Commissioner," he said, pitching his voice low, "you
are comporting yourself in an entirely inappropriate
manner." "Inappropriate?" Her laugh was like
glass shattering. "The very existence of these people is a
crime!" "We're not within the Federation now. Our
laws don't apply." "We have come to bring this
planet under the rule of Federation law.
Remember?" Color was coming back into her face
now, starting with the points of her cheekbones. Her
eyes were fever bright. "That's going to be a
positive pleasure!" Kirk moistened his
lips, which were beginning to prickle a little from the incoming
ultraviolet. He tasted the medicinal tang of
sunblock. Better not lick this stuff off, he
thought irrelevantly. It was supposed to be
impervious to that, but experience had taught him
better.
"I don't know what these peoples status is
under Federation law," he admitted. "But I won't
have you abusing them. Your tone suggests mobs with
torches and ropes, Commissioner." "Are you speaking
of lynch mobs, Captain? Or of those old
horror movies, where peasants with torches storm
the castle to destroy the mad scientist and his
monsters?" Kirk turned away in disgust. Strick
and dinAthos stood with heads together, speaking in low
tones. Spock looked up from conversing with Arkazha.
"Dr. Arkazha has been explaining something of the
Discordian culture to me. She and others of her
Gens, for example, have been optimized to survive
in the ocean depths without the need of life support
or the need to decompress after returning to the
surface." He tipped his head to the side. "It
is, indeed, a highly efficient system."
Kirk felt a pulse of queasiness in his stomach
and hated himself for it. Much as he found
to admire about Moriah Wayne, he did not want
to resemble her in any particular just now.
He put a hand on his science officer's biceps
and steered him out of earshot of the others. Wayne
continued to stand by herself, looking off into the sky.
"Spock, you know gene engineering of sentient
species is forbidden under Federation law."
"But, Jim, these people don't belong to the Federation."
Kirk sighed. "That's true. But you have to understand.
On Earth we had some very unfortunate experiences with
genetic engineering of humans."
Spock nodded. "The Eugenics Wars of the last
decade of the twentieth century."
"And you've seen firsthand some of the results of that
conflict, not to mention one of the prime movers behind it.
Like everybody on the Enterprise.
"The passengers of the Botany Bay. was
"Exactly. We distrust gene-engineered humans.
I know it's irrational-but you might say it's in our
genes."
"Captain."
He turned, a little too quickly. "Mr. Strick
"I understand why we might ... unsettle you.
The Discordian spokesfolk had approached to a
discreet range. "We left Earth
to escape bigotry," Aileea said bitterly.
"It's nothing new to us."
Strick held up his hand, "Aileea." She
scowled but said no more. -- "We make no
apologies for the way we are," said Mona
Arkazha. "In fact, it was in part to preserve the
right to choose our forms for ourselves that we left Earth.
But we did not, initially, become this way
by choice."
"In fact, we owe our existence to an
individual of whom you may never have heard,"
Strick said, "since his heyday ended almost three
centuries ago. A twentieth-century tyrant
named Khan Noonian Singh."
61 IC
.jhmea91 Kw.k EcHow.
"You've heard of him?" Strick asked.
"There were so many dictators on Earth back around
then," Aileea said. "Hard to believe you can even
tell them apart after all this time."
"Mm." Kirk glanced at Spock and envied him
his Vulcan poker face. "We have a very
comprehensive political history program at
Starfleet Academy."
"In fact," Spock said, "I
believe I am familiar with a few of the particulars
of your case. As I recall, your forebears were
subject of UN Resolution Fiftywone, of
two thousand thirty- eight., You will remember, no
doubt, that was the resolution that determined that no Earth
citizens could be held liable for the- acts of their
ancestors. A rider to the resolution confirmed the
human status of certain human-variant strains
who had been created in the gene research
laboratories that created Khan and his fellow
tyrants. This was the so-called 'Khan's
Stepchildren" resolution."
"You're very diplomatic, Mr. Spock,"
Aileea said. "What they really called us was
Khan's bastards."
Spock raised his brows. "Perhaps my sources
elected to be circumspect."
"Captain Kirk," Aileea said with a flip of
her head, "I apologize for speaking sharply to you a
little while ago. I made the mistake of reacting
to something ,someone said. Speech is free."
"That's why we fight," Strick added. "No
apology necessary, Ms. dinAthos," Kirk said.
"Why not let your people walk among us?" Arkazha
asked. "They can decide for themselves whether
we're monsters or not. Otherwise"-she hooked a
thumb at Wayne, still standing off in splendid
isolation-"all they'll have to go by is what she tells
them."
Kirk rubbed his jaw. He looked at Wayne,
looked around at the denizens of Discord City, and
looked at Spock. . "Captain," his first officer
said. "During our sojourn at Starbase
Twenty-three, leaves were of necessity cut
short. Indeed, a quarter of the crew got no leave
at all. And leave within the sealed environment of an
orbiting Starbase produces far less favorable
effects upon morale than leave upon a planetary
surface."
"You're the only person in our crew who'd find
this an ideal port of call, Spock," Kirk
said. As a Vulcan Spock needed neither
sunglasses, shots, nor sunscreen. Kirk
thought for a moment, watching the children splash in the
lagoon. These people seemed open and friendly enough. Still,
there was the fact that they seemed fond of carrying
weapons. And there were the Susuru allegations
to consider. Wayne was certainly correct that they could
not be dismissed out of hand.
I'm the one who talks about getting
thefacts before I
make a decision, he thought. A trickle of
sweat ran down his neck into the collar of his shirt.
Maybe I should put that into practice.
"I appreciate your offer of hospitality,"
he began guardedly. "But I'm responsible for the
welfare of my crew. So far I've seen no more
than a couple of blocks of your charming city. I'm
not yet really in a position to evaluate the risks
involved." "Sonic fields keep the sea beasts
at bay," Arkazha said. "The storms are
savage, but if you stay inside a dwelling, you're
safe enough, if not always comfort-able."
"It's an unknown environment," Aileea said,
somewhat to Kirk's surprise. "He's right to be
cautious."
"He could let the crew decide for themselves what
risks they're willing to take," Arkazha stated.
"Come, Mona, that's not their way," Strick said.
"And x"...ness hardly up to us to reform them, is it?"
"If we want to be left alone, we must know
how to leave alone," Arkazha agreed. "You are
correct."
"We cannot compel our people, you understand, but in fact
you'll be welcomed almost anywhere you choose
to go," Strick said. "We Discordians are mostly
friendly folk, and I think most you run into will be as
eager to hear about what's, been happening on Earth and
in the galaxy the last two hundred Terran years.
I'd warn you to stay away from the equator, though."
"Why's that?" Wayne asked. "What've you got
to hide?" ""Fools from harm-thougheat's not our
usual way," Aileea dinAthos said. "Here at
fifty degrees north you're fairly safe from
Stilter attack. Close to the equator, you're
fair game for them and their friends."
"Is there anything in particular you'd care to see?"
Strick asked. "I should start calling soon,
to make arrangements." "The Susuru say you're
destroying the environment," Wayne said abruptly.
"How about showing us your mining and sea- ranching
operations?"
"Destroying the environment?" Strick drew his
handsome head back. "Why in Eris's name would we comd
that? We live on this planet! Why would we do it
harm?"
"And what business is it of yours?" dinAthos
demanded. "We don't live by your laws!"
Wayne gave her a look of ineffable smugness.
"That might be a place to start," Kirk
said. "It would help us understand how you live.". He
looked at Wayne. "And it might lay certain
ecological misgivings to rest."
"Apparently environmental self-righteousness still
persists on Earth," Arkazha said, "as well as
fear of Variants. Perhaps not that much has changed,
Jason."
Strick ran his hands backward through his short,
crisp hair. "In fact, I think the welfare of
our planet means more to us than it can to you. Most of us
live on intimate terms with the sea." Wayne
gestured around her. "All I see is that you
surround yourselves with steel and glass. Artifice, not
nature." "This is a city, was dinAthos said.
"Don't you have cities in your Federation?"
"Far too many."
"If we were to commence our tour," Spock said, "it
might save us all a great deal of profitless
debate."
Arkazha showed her teeth in a startling grin. They
were wholly human, which made her appearance all
the more jarring. "I like you," she said. "You are a
man after my own heart. Practical."
"Logical," Spock amended.
Strick nodded and reached for his waist.
Wayne stiffened, eyes going wild, but he merely
came up with a hand communicator of his own.
"I should call and arrange a flyer first."
"That's hardly necessary," Kirk said. He grinned.
"How would you like to experience our 'impressive
technology" firsthand?"
The Discordians looked at him like kids at
Christmas. "Could we really?" Strick asked,
forgetting for the moment to be cool and dignified.
"You can do more than that." Kirk flipped out his
communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Mr.
Sulu, lock onto my coordinates." Kirk
turned to Strick. "Care to show us the scenic sights
of Discord?"
It was night at the mine at eighty degrees
south. A low black cone thrust up from the ocean,
its outline vaguely saw- toothed, like a fractal
design. Waves driven by a fifty-kph wind
hurled themselves against it, as if trying to batter it down
for its presumptions in challenging the supremacy of the
sea. Spotlights poured light out in actinic
pools on the seamount. In their glow, forms moved,
human and mechanical. The wind and waves did not
seem to hamper their activity. "I don't envy them
out there," James Kirk said, face almost
pressed to the armored glass port of the submersible.
The small craft lurched as a wave too big for
impellers and gyros to compensate for rolled past.
Kirk clenched his jaw and thought about the men who
had ventured forth on the sea in the wooden sailing
ships whose models he displayed in his quarters. Then
he tried not to think about them.
"If the motion of the sea troubles you," Arkazha
said with a slight smile, "be thankful for your
wonderful transport beams that placed us here
directly without the need to traverse many uneasy
kilometers of sea. 99
"The workers don't envy us," said Aileea. She
turned a frankly malicious glance at Wayne,
who sat next to the port across the cabin from Kirk and
Spock. Her pale redhead's skin had taken on
a greenish tinge that made her almost look as though she
had Vulcan blood. "Th ey're Grunts. They were
bred for heavy labor-strength, endurance, low
volition and intelli- gence. When we were freed, they
chose to reclaim their wills and intellects."
"Now they can perform physical tasks virtually
on autopilot, leaving their higher minds free,"
Strick said. "They give us some of our greatest
philosophers and theoreticians."
"The wind and the spray don't bother them?" Kirk
asked. The thick hull muted the fury of the wind, but
he could feel its howl in his bones, a lonely
souldevastating sound. "These chose further
modification for this environment," Strick said. "You
see, we Discordians prefer to shape ourselves to our
environment as much as possible, instead of vice
versa." This last was directed to Wayne. Unlike
their other two guides, Strick was still making every
effort to win the commissioner over. She ignored him,
though whether she rejected what he said or was merely
too seasick to respond, Kirk couldn't tell.
"There would seem to be a risk entailed in
adapting yourselves too closely to a given
environment," Spock said. "Throughout the known
universe, overspecialization is a consistent road
to extinction."
"As individuals, our human intellect always
gives us further scope to adapt," Arkazha said.
"Our minds help us adjust to changing situations, as
humans have through history. If you consider us as a
whole population, I think you would agree that we
maintain an adequate degree of diversity."
"Indisputablyea.doctor Arkazha."
Kirk glanced at his first officer and friend.
Spock was showing the Discordian more deference than he
generally offered humans. The keen intellect she
displayed, notably unblunted by sentiment,
obviously commanded his respect. "Ready to dive?"
The voice of the pilot came back over the
intercom. She was a beautiful woman of early
middle years with orange hair, cropped close and
shot through with gray. She was also one meter tall.
She belonged to a strain known as Micros, or
sometimes Pixies, who had been developed by the
Eugenicists as pilots and operators of craft
where mass or volume were at a premium-fighter
aircraft, space vehicles, deep- sea
probes. They had faster-than-normat reflexes,
greater tolerance for G-loading and pressure, and
keener eyesight. "I'm getting tired of fighting the
seas with this bitch."
"We're ready, Mattie," Strick said, and the
craft submerged. Bubbles seethed upward past the
ports as ballast blew. The pitching instantly
eased as the drive planes bit and carried the
submersible below the action of the waves. The moaning of the
storm went away.
The craft canted to port and swung around. Even
Wayne could not restrain a muted
exclamation of wonder as the seamount came into view.
The seamount was a hive of activity in the blaze of
spotlights. The lava upthrust was honeycombed with
tunnels. Deep-rangers-Vares similar
to Arkazha-moved in and out, wrestling cutting lasers
and guiding ore pods. "They work the most recent
flows," Strick said. "The metals just lie there in
layers, from beryllium, cobalt, and copper, down
through iron and iridium and on to uranium. There for the
taking."
Spock stirred himself. "He has a tendency
to oversimplify." Mona Arkazha said. "But not
by much, in this case.tv "Do you restore the
habitat when you've finished with your plunder?"
"Not much of a habitat to begin with," Strick said.
"We catch the seamounts as soon as they seem to have
grown dormant." "What if you guess wrong?"
"Accidents happen," Arkazha said. "Life
goes on."
"Life is cheap, to the exploiters," Wayne
said. "Exploiters?" Arkazha's rubbery lips
proved more than adeeableduate to sneer. "We need
the metal. We pay to get it. Where is
exploitation?"
"What about the workers?" Wayne asked,
gesturing out the port.
"I was one such worker, for this very corporation, when I
was young. I was born in Exile, which floats not far
from here. As a deep-miner I earned money for
school."
Her tone got distant. "I saw friends die, when
a plug blew. Life is risk."
A trio of Swimmers, as Aileea's Gens was
called, swam slowly past the submersible with lazy
sweeps of the fins strapped to their feet. They wore
goggles and wetsuits, but their necks were bare,
to allow their gills to work oxygen from the water.
"Why do they wear suits?" Kirk asked. "We
don't have polar caps, the way Earth does,"
dinAthos said. "But the water does get a bit
chilly way down here." "You know a lot about
Earth," Kirk said. "We remember where we came
from."
"Would you like to visit Earth?"
Aileea gazed out the port. "I'm happy
here."
Outside the city Storm, where it was afternoon, they
looked at a surface plant where minerals were
extracted from seawater. In the city itself they saw an
artistic competition, where looming metal
sculptures were revealed to the discordant
electronic music and the cheers-or catcalls-of
crowds packed into stands.
It was morning at Qara-Qitay. An
Asian-looking Micro flew them over the city, a
loose and sprawling collection of metal
structures anodized in shades of gold and
yellow, then landed them on a float next to an
electronics plant on the fringe. They spoke
to a foreman, a rhino-skinned Grunt with a
hdTdhat perched atop his disproportionately
small head. He assured them that by-products were
preserved and sold to other fabricators who could
make use of them.
"Discord is rich, but harsh," he said in a
highpitched whisper. "When we first came here, it was
a struggle just to live. Webledencearned to throw away as
little
as possible." A mountainous shrug. "Besides,
there's money to be made selling what we can't
use."
Wayne sneered.
In Harmony, where insulative matting was made
from seaweed, the people displayed few weapons of any
kind. In the baking heat of their central
square they besieged Spock with questions about Vulcan
philosophy, and even listened sympathetically
to Wayne when she criticized their fellow
Discordians as self-centered individualists.
They An turn pressed upon her their theories of
nonauthoritarian communal living. Their efforts were
hampered by the tendency of the proselytizing to dissolve
into shouting matches, until the whole plaza was
packed with teamed discourse carried out at the tops of
lungs and the party gratefully escaped via
transporter beam.
Rakatau drifted through the Sea of Smokes.
Despite a brisk rain even Spock had to don
a respirator against the stinging sulfur fumes
issuing from seamounts and bubbling up from subsurface
vents. Neither stench nor downpour bothered either their
hosts or the locals, whose faces showed strong
Malay traits ---- coneven the heavily
gene-modified ones. They wore colorful sarongs
and carried wavy-bladed kris daggers in pref-
erence to firearms. They mined the, vents and seamounts,
and built ships and habitations. They didn't seem
to draw much distinction between the two.- Wayne asked a
passing Swimmer with long black hair and a
profusion of gold jewelry bright against her
mahogany skin if the city discharged its wastes into the
sea.
"Of course not!" the Swimmer replied, gills
flaring
in indignation. "It's broken down by gene-engineered
bacteria and sold as fish food. Eris, what a
question. We swim in this water!"
There was excitement in Serendip. At twenty
degrees north it was the closest of the Discordian
cities to the equator, and suffered accordingly. A
Susuru surface force had attacked a fishing
fleet thirty kilometers to the southwest of the city,
sinking two boats and killing eight. Casualties
among the Susuru were reported to be high. Kirk
knew full well that reports of damage
inflicted on an enemy tended to be floridly
optimistic. Still, the distant black column of
smoke rising into mauve dusk indicated that someone
or something had been damaged severely.
Since the Klingons' arrival, the Susuru had
become aggressive about launching over-the-horizon
missile attacks to test the Discordian
antimissile defenses. So far these had proven
excellent. When the party arrived the city was just coming
off an alert'.
When Aileea-dinAthos learned of the attack,
she walked to a rail and stood staring off at the
setting sun for a few moments before rejoining the others.
Serendip by sunset had a pronounced Indian
flavor, with skirting music and exotic cooking
smells riding the breeze off the sea. The dusk
light was an alkaline white, which seemed to cut age
deep into the faces it touched.
The sunset itself was beautiful and somehow ghastly.
Distant Eris had an apparent size less than a
sixth that of Sol as seen from Earth. The tiny ball
had fallen into a puffy pile of cumulus way beyond
the horizon, with dense slate bands of cloud in
front of it, and lit it into a yellow fireball.
The surfaces of the cloud slabs above and below the sun
glowed yellow like heated
metal; the sky between them was lemon yellow as
well. Above and below the sky shaded orange, then
red. With a start Kirk realized it looked like nothing
so much as pictures he had seen of thermonuclear
explosions.
It seemed ominous, given the fact of the earlier
raid. Would the Klingons give their clients
nuclear weapons? He shook his head. Kain was a
rogue, but no account had ever made Kain
out to be a fool. Not even the fact that Kirk had
bested him on Endikon-Kirk had been quicker then,
that was all. Introducing nukes to a planetary
conflict like this would bring a Federation battlefleet
at warp factor eight, with the full weight of the
Organian Peace Treaty to back them up.
He found his mind adrift, as the cities themselves
drifted on the endless face of the sea. He was
feeling sunburned, footsore, and utterly spent.
Discord's gravity and heat had been squeezing him
for hours like a giant hand; the rapid shuttling back
and forth between the, surface and the climate- controlled
comfort of the Enterprise's transporter room had
reached the point of overstressing his system rather than
refreshing him. The arc welders of the great Indra
shipyards spouted eerie spumes of blue light on
the horizon, but he couldn't take any more.
"Let's.call it a day," he said. Nobody
argued.
SnPP-ING GPATEF-ULLY oFF the
transporter stage for what he hoped was the last time
today, Kirk turned to his three hosts. "I thank
you all for a most educational day," he said. "Now, in
a small way, perhaps I can repay the favor. If
you'll just follow me-was
On the bridge Kirk was pleased by the effect his
starship, had on his er/while guides-they reacted like
kids at the zoo. At the sight of Discord spread
out in all her blue-and-white- whorled glory on the
main screen, Aileea cried out in wonder,
momentarily a little girl again. Jason Strick stared
about him with wide amber eyes.
Even Mona Arkazha seemed impressed. "The
engineering that has gone into this creation," she said.
"Magnificent!" Kirk smiled indulgently.
"You'll have to meet my chief engineer. If he
hears you talking like that, you'll have a friend for life."
DinAthos turned toward him. "Captain, this is
wonderful. But I'm afraid we're going to have
to cut this visit short." "Why is that, Ms.
dinAthos?"
She was vigorously massaging her upper arms.
"Because we're freezing to death."
Commissioner Wayne did not accompany them back
to the transporter room. No one complained at her
absence. Spock took over the bridge.
"What do you think of my earlier invitation,
Captain?" Strick asked, trying to stop his teeth
chattering. "I think," Kirk said, "that I'll just
take you up on it." He stepped to the
wall communicator. "Kirk to bridge."
"Spock here."
"Mr. Spock, kindly see to having a schedule
of leaves drawn up. I'd like to give the crew a
chance to stretch their legs."
"Certainly, sir."
"Kirk out."
He turned away to find dinAthos standing behind him,
well within his personal space, looking at him
challengingly. "Well?" she demanded. "What have you
decided?"
"To permit my crew to beam down for leave."
"No, Captain. What are you going to do about us?
Are you ready to start driving us aboard the cattle
cars, the way she wants you to?"
She really is most breathtakingly lovely,
Kirk thought, and then Whoa, son. You've already
let your romantic nature complicate the situation
once this mission. "No. Speaking frankly, I
hope it never comes to
that. But keep in mind, Ms. dinAthos, the
Susuru are threatening to launch a final offensive
to wipe you out." Her eyes blazed dark green
fire. "Let them try! We're ready." "What
I most want," Kirk said levelly,
"is to institute peace talks between you and the Susuru.
Maybe it's time your peoples tried to learn
to coexist."
Aileea's face seemed to snap shut. She
whirled away and walked to stand by the transporter
platform, looking away from him.
"I take it that plan doesn't meet with her
approval," Kirk said to the others.
"She's had a loss, Captain," Arkazha
said. "The Stilters raided her family's ranch
two weeks before you came. They killed her father and
sank the house. Or maybe these Klingons of yours
did it; they used one of their off-world energy beams that
makes a man vanish if it so much as brushes
him."
"She's still on compassionate leave, Captain,"
Strick said. "That's why she has the leisure
to help serve as liaison. The thought took her
by surprise, that's all. Like most of us, I'm
sure she'd like to see the war ended."
"Keep in mind that it will be a complicated
process to get us Discordians to agree on the
terms of a peace. Most will not honor an agreement
they were not personally party to," Arkazha said. "Still,
we do not attack-much as some of our
hotheads would like us to. We defend only. If the
Susuru quit molesting us, there will be peace in
fact."
Kirk nodded. "That's my first goal, then.
To tell you the truth, peace negotiations are never
anything but a complicated process, and in my
experience "brief
peace talks" is an oxymoron as great as
"military intelligence." Getting the parties
to talk is usually the most important step."
Arkazha and Aileea made brief farewells.
DinAthos wouldn't meet Kirk's eye.
"Captain," Strick said, sounding almost
diffident. "A word with you before we beam back down?"
"Certainly."
They walked a few steps aside. "That
communications officer of yours, the one with the lovely
eyes-was "Lieutenant Uhura."
"That's the one. I'd like to extend my personal
invitation to introduce her to our world."
Kirk looked at him oddly. "Let me see
if I get this right- you're asking me for permission
to ask my communications officer on a date?"
Strick laughed. "I don't want to violate
your customs' Captain. So far you've
been scrupulous about honoring ours." "The
lieutenant is one of my most valued officers.
She's one of the most intelligent people I know. She
possesses excellent taste and judgment. That being
the case, all I can say is"-he shrugged-"go for
it."
Bone-weary though he was, Kirk called a
command meeting in the briefing compartment to relay what had
been learned that day. "The customs of the human
colonists of Discord-and never forget, please, that
they are all just as human as we are-are so different
from ours that they might as well be aliens. Still they
seem reasonable enough, and by no means belligerent,
in spite of the sidearms. Therefore, it is my
judgment that tomorrow we shall get in touch
with the Susuru and try to get peace talks going
between the warring species. Any comments?"
"I'm a doctor, not a diplomat," Dr.
McCoy said, "but it seems to me it's always better
to have folks talking than fighting." "For once your
sentiment is in accord with logic, Doctor,"
Spock said.
The other bridge crew murmured agreement.
Kirk was just nodding, pleased at the easy consensus,
when Commissioner Wayne spoke from the far
end of the compartment, where she stood with arms tightly
folded.
"Your plan is-unacceptable, Captain."
"In ... whatt ... particular," Kiric
asked deliberately. He was trying to hold his
temper in check.
"Our mission is not to serve as peacekeepers.
Our purpose is to remove alien organisms that
have illegally been introduced into the planetary
environment."
"You're talking about people as if they were vermin again,
aren't you?" McCoy asked.
"Doctor, from an ecological standpoint, people are
the most destructive vermin of all."
I "Might I remind the commissioner," Spock
said, "that Starfleet's primary mission is always
keeping the peace." "Not when orders signed off on
by Captain Kirk and stored in your computer memory
countermand it," Wayne said. "Starfleet instructed
you to help me remove the colonists." She looked
around. "And frankly, all this talk of peace
strikes me as unutterably naive. Despite
your captain's remarkably ingenuous assessment,
these people spring from an armed and neurotic society,
poised always on the edge of violence. There
is no
doubt in my mind that they will resist our carrying out
our mission with the fury of cornered rats."
"People's being willing to resist being taken from their
homes by force doesn't make them psychotic,
Commissioner," Uhura said.
"You're forgetting that these people are outlaws,"
Wayne said. "They reject the concept of authority
within their own culture. They practice a
technology that has been banned, on Earth and
later by the Federation, for almost three centuries. And
they conduct wanton attacks against the rightful
inhabitants of the planet."
"They defend themselves," Sulu said. "So they
say. Are you so prejudiced that you reflexively
take the word of a human over the word of a
nonhumanoid?" She tossed her head. "Or do
I even need to ask?" Sulu's handsome face
darkened, and he looked quickly down at the table.
"She makes a good point, Jim," McCoy
said ruefully. "We can't just take what these people say
at face value simply because they're human."
"You are, of course, correct, Commissioner,"
Kirk said. "I have every intention of examining the story
more thoroughly from the Susuru's side.
Tomorrow."
"I think you'll find the charges substantiated,"
Wayne said. "After all, their allegations of
ecological devastation have been amply borne out."
"What?" exclaimed Kirk. "Commissioner, that's
ridiculous. Will at ve just spent an entire day in
that pressure cooker down there looking at recycling
measures and hearing sermons on ecological
consciousness that would do credit to a twenty-first-
century city council! What in the hell are you
talking about?"
"Commissioner," Spock said, "a single
moderately active volcanic vent of the Sea of
Storms discharges more waste into the ecosystem in one
hour than all human habitations upon Discord do in
one day. Simple mathematics suggest this to be
true, and sensor readings confirm it."
"What about waste heat?"
"As we observed today, the human settlers make
extensive use of solar, wind, and wave power,"
Spock said. "None of these energy sources
introduces extra heat into the system." "They also
have fusion generators in those cankerous cities of
theirs."
"Computer," Kirk said.
"Yes, darling." Wayne flashed her eyes at
him. He ignored her. "Show us the planet listed
in your memory as Okeanos." "Yes, dear." The
cloud-swirled blue disk appeared in the
three-faceted viewer at the table's head. . .
"Now display all hot spots of, oh, one
hundred degrees Celsius over ambient
temperature. On second thought, make it
fifty."
The image glowed with red spots as if it had
developed a bad case of acne. "Now
subtract all those. sources that are of artificial
nature. Flash each one white as you delete it."
"Yes, dear."
"Stop that."
"Affirmative ... dear."
Kirk sighe d. Dots flickered out, one by one.
He noted that about twenty percent of them were on
islands in the Susuru archipelago.
" "That leaves," he said, "almost all of them.
That's lava, Commissioner, being discharged by the tonne in
some places. The level of human activity
we're observing isn't making much dent in that."
"The humans still commit ecological rape on
an enormous scale, Captain,"
Wayne said primly. "You saw the way they
ravaged the seamount. You saw the factories by which they
plundered the sea of its very substance."
. "If such-standards were applied across the
Federation," Spock said, "they would seem to forbid
any level of technological activity at all,
or indeed any form of interaction with the environment.
Surely you're not proposing the end of all of
technic-civilization , Commissioner?" 461'm not
too sure that's a bad idea," she said. "What
about beavers?" Sulu asked.
"Or mud daubers?" asked Uhura.
"They're part of nature," Wayne said.
"Unless you subscribe to certain fringe theories to the
effect that sapience was taught to the ancestors of all
present sentient races by some undiscovered
agenCY, was Spock said, "intelligence evolved
quite naturally1
"The Susuru had their hot spots, too,
Commissioner," Kirk said, "from power plants and
foundries." "Incorrect," the domputer said.
Wayne turned him a look of triumph.
"Explain," Kirk said.
"Five heat sources are identified as
foundries, six as assorted
manufacturing operations, and four as fission-fired
nuclear power plants. The remaining three sources
are imperfectly shielded mobile
matter-antimatter generators of standard Klingon
issue."
""Imperfectly-shielded?"" Mr. Scott
echoed. The
computer's words had jolted him loose from the
polite fugue in which he always spent conferences not
directly connected with nuts and bolts or matters
of immediate survival. "But any decent mstam unit
converts output into usable energy with a hundred percent
efficiency."
He shuddered at the shoddiness of Klingon design.
Kirk grinned at a vision of him chucking his
Klingon dictionary and technical manuals down a
disintegrator chute at the first opportunity.
"All this is entirely off the subject,"
Wayne said stiffly. "You have your orders,
Captain, and frankly it is unacceptable for you
to waste further time in implementing them."
Kirk lowered his chin to his clavicle and stared at
her. "Then orders be damned, Commissioner. To herd
those people into transports at gunpoint and whisk them
away from the planet on which every last one of
them was born would be an act worthy of a Hitler-or
a Khan."
He raised his head. "You will recall that, in both
of those cases, "only following orders" failed
miserably as a defense." "Captain, I warn
you-was
He held up a hand. "Save your warnings,
Commissioner. If on the conclusion of my investigation
I ascertain that the presence of Earth human
settlers upon Okeanos places an intolerable
burden on the planet or on any of its indigenous
species, I will see to their removal. By whatever
means necessary.",
McCoy started to his feet in outrage.
"Jim-was "Sit down, Bones. I'm a
Starfleet officer. I've sworn to follow my
orders-we all have. If those orders are lawful.
If in my judgment they are not, Enterprise will
return to Starbase Twenty-three with those orders
unfulfilled. In no case will I take action
until I'm certain it is the right action to take."
Wayne dropped her voice. "This could cost you
your ship, Captain," she said, almost sadly.
"I'm aware of that," he said. "But it won't
cost me my Soul."
"LIEUTFNANT. May I speak with you a
moment?" "Why, certainly, Captain."
The briefing was breaking up, the bridge crew
returning to their duty stations or, in the case of
Uhura, heading for their quarters. As Kirk himself
hoped to be soon. "Do you remember the spokesman
for the Discordians-the man who came up to the bridge
with the two women?" "The tall one with the gorgeous
eyes-is that the one you mean, sir?"
"Um. Yes. I believe he's going "to offer
you an invitation soon."
"'Oh, really.
"y es. And while it wouldn't be wise to get
too tangled up with a participant in a dispute
we're going to try to settle- whether the Commissioner
wants it settled or not-there's no reason you
can't"-he
made a rotary gesture with his hands-"enjoy
yourself."
"I certainly will, Captain," the lieutenant
said with a gleam in her eye.
"Of course, you know a degree of discretion is
called for-was How is it that so often I wind up
sounding like a father lecturing his adolescent daughter?
he wondered.
64111 uphold the finest traditions of
Starfleet, Captain," Uhura said, "and I'll
be sure not to do anything you wouldn't do. Good night,
sir."
"I was afraid you'd say that," he said to her
retreating back.
"Captain."
Kirk stopped. Seeing the expression on his
face, the crewfolk walking the other direction
along the passageway gave him plenty of sea
room. Or remembered errands they'd forgotten back
the way they had come.
"Commissioner," he said, as the purposeful
footsteps caught up to him.
Moriah Wayne's face was white with fury.
"Why wasn't I consulted on allowing the crew
leave Among the settlers?" "I'm the captain.
This is my ship and my crew. How I schedule my
leave rotations is my concern. It's no more my job
to check with you on the subject than it is for Bones
to ask your permission to order more supplies for
sickbay."
Her eyes took on a dangerous glint. "I
believe you are deliberately trying to sabotage this
mission, Captain," she said. "My
report will so state."
He stared at her. "Because I'm allowing shore
leave?"
"Precisely. You're playing on the crew's
natural sympathy for humans over what they think
of as aliens-even though those, those ersatz humans
below, are at least as alien as the Susuru. You
want to create a situation in which it will be impossible
to compel the settlers to evacuate without risking
mutiny."
"Mutiny?" His first impulse was to roar at her.
That died quickly, to be supplanted by the urge to laugh
in her face. He gave in to that one.
"Commissioner, really. You have the most amazing view
of how Starfleet operates."
He held up a finger. "First of all, let me
remind you- Enterprise is not a democracy."
Another finger. "Second, let me point out to you that
everyone on board, except a few civilians and
yourself, has sworn an oath to uphold the laws and
ideals of the Federation, and to obey all lawful orders
of their superior officers, regardless of their
personal preferences. These are people who have already
obeyed my orders many times when they might-have
preferred not to, even at the risk of their
lives." "What about the example you gave them
earlier in the evening by defying my ordersThat"
"You're a civilian, Commissioner. You're
outside the Starfleet chain of command. And every man and
woman in the crew knows that, should you profess charges
on my return, I will face a board of
inquiryor a court-martial. There's a price
to disobedience, one even I am prepared to pay."
He held up his hands before him. "Don't you see
how you're insulting them, Commissioner, when you suggest
they'll mutiny if I give them an unpopular
order?"
She sagged so abruptly that he was aft-aid she
would collapse to the deck. Instead she leaned her
back against the bulkhead.
"Jim," she said, "I'm sorry. I ... I
guess I'm getting too close to the situation."
He turned away from her, raised a forearm, and
braced it against the bulkhead. He could not honestly have
said what he was feeling at that moment.
A touch on his arm. He spun angrily away
from it. "What are you trying to do to me?" he demanded.
The planes of her face shifted, as if she were
trying on various emotions and finding none of them
fit. She settled on something that seemed
halfway between hurt and haughtiness. "I might ask
you the same thing.
"Moriah, I'm trying to keep separate my
dealings with you as a person and my dealings with you as a
Federation commissioner. You're not making it particularly
easy."
"You're angry with me because of our-policy
disagreements." "Policy disagreements? You keep
telling me how you're going to have my job the moment we
set foot back on Federation soil, over just those
"policy disagreements. "You really can9t
separate the business from the personal, then?" she
asked in a hollow voice.
"That's not it," he said, facing her once more.
14or that's not all of it. It's just-was A chopping
motion of one hand. "I remember what you had to say
about the Discordians this morning, Commissioner, and. the
tone of voice in which you said it." He shook his head.
"That showed me a person I don't find it very easy
to
She came to him and clutched at his arm. "But,
Jim, you don't mean that old movie remark? That
was a joke! That's all it was."
"It wasn't easy to tell, under the
circumstances."
She laughed weakly and shook her head. "I
guess that's another area where I've got a lot
to learn about dealing with people."
He sagged at the knees, Is this conversationfor
real? "Maybe it is. But, Moriah, you had
plenty to say about the colonists, and I don't think
it was all supposed to be funny." "No. It --
wasn't Maybe I reacted a little stronglybut it
was an honest reaction."
She dirifted a 'IvWill steps down the
corridor. "I remember reading about the Eugenics
Wars when I was a little girl. I saw the
pictures of the devastation Khan and the others wrought.
And I saw the pictures of the things they'd created in
their labs."
He came up behind her and put a hand on her
shoulder. "Don't you see that these people were Khan's
victims? They didn't ask him to experiment on
them."
"Khan and his cadre and the other tyrants were
products of gene engineering, too, don't forget."
Kirk winced. He couldn't very well forget,
since two years before the Enterprise had come across the
Botany Bay adrift in space-the sublight
"sleeper" colony ship in which Khan and a
handful of his comrades had fled Earth in 1996.
Khan had taken the Enterprise by treachery, and
several crewfolk died before the ship was recovered.
Kirk had marooned Khan and his followers,
including the Enterprise's historian, who had
become infatuated with him, on Ceti Alpha V.
"They were the rulers," he said. "A
self-proclaimed
master race. These people were bred to be their slaves,
Moriah."
She pivoted toward him. "But you're missing
something vital. They perpetuate it. I've been
reading about their ancestors in the computer's
historical archives. After Khan fell, the
tyrants" altered humans were declared wards of the
United Nations. They were sent to live in a series
of camps in isolated areas. Normal humans had
suffered enormously in the wars. Some blamed
Khan's creations for their hardships-made them
scapegoats, I'm aware of that. Others simply
feared them. So they had to be kept carefully
segregated and under guard." "That's a terrible
tragedy, Moriah. It seems-to me someone of
your pronounced compassion might find some to spare for people
whose forebears went through a thing like that."
"But don't you see? The United Nations banned
gene engineering of humans. As I said at the
briefing, it's still illegal. I was raised to regard
the very concept with horror. So were you, Jim. So was every
other human child in the Federation." "Well ... yes.
That's true."
"They kept it alive themselves. Defied the UN
ban, kept passing the forbidden knowledge along, kept the
equipment carefully hidden away in the camps. They
not only passed their own artificial traits onto
their children, they created new ones. They made that
decision for their children-imposed xeaon them, for all their
atomistic raving about the sanctity of individual
choice. Can you honestly say that isn't monstrous?"
"I don't know. You met those people. You talked to them.
Do they really seem like monsters to you?"
She turned away. "Yes. And the testimony of the
Susuru bears that out."
He threw up his hands. "Commissioner, I
suppose we will have to agree to disagree. Until our
fact-finding mission bears fruit. Now-good
night."
A hand on his forearm. "Jim." Her eyes glowed
as if they had incandescent arcs behind them. "Let's go
to your quarters an tal about-other t ings.
About your plans and aspirations. About the future.
About US. 11
He filled so full of things to say that none of them
made it out of his mouth.
"Not tonight," he finally managed to say. And he
turned and left her standing alone.
"Bmow," said Captain of the First Rank Kain
with a grand sweep of his gauntleted hand. "The
majesty of Island."
Standing next to Spock, Dr. McCoy, and
Commissioner Wayne on a weathered granite knee
looming high above the ocean, Kirk beheld. It was
morning and the sky was miraculously clear. He had
to admit the sight was majestic indeed, despite the
awful heat.
At eleven hundred meters the promontory was
the highest point in the Susuru archipelago. A
few active seaniounts were higher, but there was no
current volcanic activity along the equator.
Across a strait so blue it was painful to look at
lay the western end of Madagascar-sized
Homesward, colored more shades of green than
Kirk ever knew existed, from the dark green of the
interior jungles and terraced mountainsides to the
pale yellow-green of the cultivated
coastal areas and cleared plateaus. To left and right
other islands shouldered up from the sea, some large enough
for habitation, others little more than the nubs of
long-dead searnounts, all so thickly furred with the
vegetation that sprang up whenever and wherever it was given
a chance that they appeared to be wearing green wigs above
the black mar-gin where wave action kept the lava
scoured clean of growth. Kain pointed out the most
prominent of them "There lie the Sea Dragon's
Teeth, there Fever Tree, Tribulation,
Sulfur Island. That bare spit of black stone,
the nearest point on Hornesward, is known as
Cape Sorrow."
"Gloomy damned set of names," remarked Dr.
McCoy. "Okeanos-Island-is a harsh world," said
Wayne in a distant voice. She stood atop a
small boulder, apart from her Federation companions and
rather nearer the Klingon. She had her arms crossed and a
dreamy expression on her face. The brisk
breeze whipped loose hair like whisks of copper
wire against her forehead. "She lays a heavy
burden on her chil- dren.
"You are very perceptive" Kain said. "Ids a
world not unlike my own."
"Leaving aside the fact that Klingon
is cold and dry," McCoy said, "whereas this
place is the Devil's own sauna."
"Its similarity lies in the fact that both worlds
are exacting environments, Dr. McCoy," Kain
said. "But the very ferocity of the world adds savor, do you
not think? Beauty without danger is insipid, like a
rose without a thorn."
He walked forward to stand next to Wayne and point
out a particularly interesting feature to her. McCoy
put his head near Kirk's.
"Now, tell me if the sun's getting to me,"
he said, "but I thought the KJ-INGON appreciation for
natural beauty ran along the lines of, 'Up on
thai crag a few well-armed warriors could stand off
an army.""
"Maybe our Captain Kain has the soul of a
poet."
"Maybe pigs have wings." ,
"Gentlemen," Kain called in his molten-amber
baritone, "shall we head back down to the flyer? We
are due to meet with the Lead Walker soon. Permit
me, Commissioner." He held a hand up for
Wayne. After a heartbeat's hesitation she took
it and jumped down.
"Beware of Rornulans bearing
gifts," McCoy said under his breath, "and polite
Klingons."
Kain and the commissioner led the way down the long,
slow slope that fell away inland from the
promontory. The trail vanished almost instantly
into a tunnel backed through unbelievably dense
vegetation. Humidity and the smell of green decay
seemed to enfold their heads like wet blankets.
"Confounded steep mountains they have on this planet,"
McCoy said, batting at a gigantic fleshy
triangle of leaf that Kain had happened to allow
to swing back into his face. "Notice that the
extremely durable stone of the outcrop, on which we
stood was polished quite smooth by erosion," Spock
said. "The archipelago is quite ancient."
. "Given how jagged these islands still are after
millions of years of being exposed to the tender
mercies of the elements," Kirk said, "I think
I'm just as glad I wasn't around when they were
formed."
"There just isn't much peace to this planet, Jim,
and that's a fact," McCoy said.
The ground leveled off into a broad extended
hip. The flat expanse was occupied by a clearing,
natural or otherwise. The flyer that had
brought them here was parked at the far side. "I feel
like, if I were wearing snowshoes, I could skim right
across the tops of this stuff," McCoy said as they
trudged through the grass, dew heavy and knee high.
"Hardly practicable, Doctor," Spock said.
"But I know what you mean, Bones," Kirk said.
"This is unbelievable growing land-soil to gladden a
farm boy's heart." "It is fortunate for the
Susuru that the soil is so fertile," Spock
said, "since such a small percentage of their land is
arable."
"I wonder why this plot isn't under
cultivation?" Kirk asked. "Because it's a park,
Captain," said Wayne, who had paused to let the
others catch up. "Look."
To the side of the clearing a Susuru. family
frolicked, two children racing in circles about what
might have been a mated pair of adults. As
Kirk watched, the larger adult, possibly the
male, darted toward one of the young ones with an
exaggerated spraddle-foot walk. The young
Susuru promptly fell down in a tangle of
gawky forelimbs. Its sibling hopped from foot
to foot, hooting at it. The elder Susuru
extended a foreleg to help it up. Then the
three skipped through a complicated trefoil dance
while the smaller adult sang in a sweet
soprano voice. "Look at them," the commissioner
said. "Peaceful, playfuLike They're not carrying
guns." She headed off toward the Klingon
aircraft.
"Y'know, Jim," McCoy said. "When I
look at these
critters the main word that comes to mind is cute.
"He shook his head. "Hard to see them as the
demons the colonists make them out to be."
"But the colonists do not demonize the Susuru,
Doctor," Spock said. "They speak of them
mainly in terms suggesting amused contempt."
Except Aileea, Kirk thought, vaguely
troubled. And she's not without a reason to dislike them.
He wondered then why he cared how dinAthos
felt about the Susuru-and why he made excuses for
her.
The larger of the two young Susuru froze, legs
apart, the fur of its ruff extended, staring across the
grass at the little group of humanoids. It uttered
a whinny of fear, stamped its forelegs. The other
Susuru looked around, saw the party for the first time, and
bolted into the undergrowth.
"Most curious," Spock said.
The flyer grounded in a field on the outskirts
of the largest city of Homesward. A trio of
field workers fled at their approach, running with
startling leaps across orderly rows of bushes with
thick-lobed, succulentlooking leaves. Ignoring the
fact that the field was cultivated, the Klingon
craft settled down, crushing several rows of
bushes into the friable black soil. Showing no
concern, Kain leapt down from the craft and assisted
Wayne out after him. The Klingon pilot followed,
and all three tramped off across the cultivated
rows. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy climbed out more
gingerly. "These Klingons sure have quite a way about
them," McCoy said, eyeing the Susuru farmers who
watched from several hundred meters away, twitching
from forefoot to fo refoot in agitation.
"For a fact, they seem a bit abrupt for
"fraternal advisers,"" Spock said.
"Mingons have a different concept of brotherly
love than the rest of us," Kirk said. "It's an
example of what the commissioner would call cultural
diversity."
They set off after Kain and the commissioner. The city
was laid out in concentric rings, with
progressively decreasing distances between them. As the
rings grew closer together, the character of their comsurroundings
changed from rural to urban. The structures tended
to be low and sturdy, to stand up against the violent
weather-pentagonal structures of cement and stone that
had been melted and poured into forms. The doorways and
windows were all five-sided polygons, with
vertical sides parallel and two shorter sides
angling together in an arch at the top.
"Observe, Captain," Spock said, "how the
number of structures in a ring is always a
multiple of five."
"Play us some slack, Spock," McCoy
growled. "We don't all have a surveyor's
transit for eyes."
Spock raised a brow. "Doctor, surely
you're aware a transit is used to measure
angles, not as an adjunct to enumeration." , "You
should learn to listen to what I mean, man, not what I
say."
"Your request is illogical, Doctor. I
can hear only that which you actually deign
to vocalize."
Kirk listened to their banter with half an ear.
Usually he took an active interest in
their fencing matches, even after five years of listening
to them; they were inventive, if nothing else, each one
always finding something new to tweak the other with. More to his
sui-prise, he was paying little attention to their
surroundings, although the thrill of encounterin an
alien civilization close up for the first time was
usually his intoxicant of choice.
Instead he kept watching Wayne and the Klingon
captain walking side by side, close together, and
speaking very earnestly.
Except for Spock the Federation
representatives were all staggering visibly when they
reached the innermost circle, a broad green lawn
around the sprawling pentagonal building that housed the
seat of Susuru government. There was no pavement.
The Susuru Lead Walker and his entourage emerged
from the grand five'-sided portal and went down a
short flight of steps directly onto the grass.
"Delay is unacceptable!" shrilled Swift as the
offworlders approached. "The humans must leave our
planet or face extermination!"
"I have tried to impress the urgency of that fact
upon the captain," Wayne said. "So far I have
failed."
"Lead Walker," Kirk said, "just how
well do you know your enemies, the Discordians?"
Swift snapped his fingers, an apparent sound of
annoyance. "Well enough. They are intruders and
ravagers." He glanced at Kain, who stood with
Wayne by his side. "What more do we need
to knowThat'
"Perhaps if both sides understood each other
better, you'd feel less like booting them offyour
world," McCoy said. The Lead Walker eyed him
narrowly, with his ears angled down and out. Then he
looked at Kirk. "You permit voices to speak from
the herd? Anarchy, anarchy.
"The doctor is one of our own ruling Five,"
Kirk said. "And I can only echo his sentiment.
Why don at t you sit down with the Discordians and
talk? You
might not find them that unpleasant a set of
neighbors." Swift stamped his right foot. His
Vanguard Walkers set up an ear-piercing
ululation.
"No! They are not our neighbors! They plunder,
they kill-was 16 Perhaps if you were to show us some of the
damage they have done to your dwellings," Spock said,
"it might help us to frame a more perfect understanding
of the situation." Swift went up on his
toes leaned back as if to flee, and looked at
Kain in something like panic. The captain only
smiled back encouragingly-if a Klingon's smile
could be said to be encouraging.
"It cannot be," Swift said slowly, lowering his
weight again. "Security concerns forbid."
- He dropped his muzzle to give Kirk a
glance of sly appraisal. "They are your fellow
humans, after all. How do we know you won't
report to them what we show you."
Kirk felt his cheeks get hotter than the sun
was already making them. "I am not human," Mr.
Spock said. "I can assure you of my complete
impartiality."
"You all look alike to me," Swift said
suspiciously. "As Commissioner Wayne said at
our first meeting, we have come to help you," Kirk said,
back in control of his temper. "But surely it will be
easier for us to help you if you'll meet us
halfway."
"No! No halfway!" Swift's grizzled
ruff bristled. "Thi's planet- ours! You are
humans. The intruders are human. We called you
to take your people off. Take them off, or we destroy
them!"
"It is our impression that you have been waging
warfare with the humans for almost forty of your
years," Spock said. "In all that time, neither
side has achieved a decisive result. How do
you propose to defeat them now?" Swift thrust his
muzzle at Kain. "Our friends from the stars. They
give us much-show us much."
"Introducing advanced weaponry to a planetary
conflict constitutes a violation of the Organian
Peace Accords, Captain," Kirk said. "The
Discordians describe new weapons being used
against them since your arrival, which sound suspiciously
like phasers."
"They lie," Wayne said.
Spock arched a brow. "Indeed? How then could they
describe them so accurately?"
"My people are warriors, Captain, as you're
well aware," Kain said. "They are under strict
orders not to violate the Peace Accords.
Nonetheless, in the heat of battle, their blood might
overwhelm even their sense of duty." A shrug.
"I shall make inquiries."
"I trust the usual Draconian standards of
Klingon discipline will be applied," Kirk said.
"Of course." Kain fingered the hilt of the
bladed weapon at his belt.
"Then what is the answer to Mr. Spock's
question?" . "Really, Captain Kirk, do you think
it's appropriate to badger him?" Wayne
demanded.
"The Susuru are apt pupils," Kain said.
"In fact, properly stimulated, they have a marked
talent for tactical innovation. The Earther
colonists can expect no end of surprises in the
not- too-distant future."
"But those who walk before you have ordered you to help us,
Captain," Swift said. "We will not need those
surprises-will we?"
"Lead Walker," Kirk said deliberately,
"the uproot- 1 4 3
ing of an entire people is something that the Federation
views very gravely. Under most circumstances" comhe
looked at Wayne- "it is considered a heinous
crime. I appreciate the depth of your feelings.
But I am not willing to undertake an act of this
magnitude without exhausting every possible
alternative." "No alternative!" cried
Swift. He calmed himself, looked at Wayne.
"You speak for those who walk before all, whom all
follow. Do they not command him to our help?"
"They do."
"Do you then disobey your leaders, Captain?"
"In the Federation'we have a rule of laws, not of
beings. I am faithful to those laws. I intend to go
on being so. Accordingly, I'm not going to take any
action until I get you and the settlers together
to talk. Do you understand?" The twenty elders started
screeching again. "And that damned racket isn't going
to make me change my mind!"
Swift stamped his foot. The wailing ceased.
"There's something I must ask you, Lead Walker,
something that might work to your benefit. My crew need
recreation, need to feel the wind and sun on their
faces ... even this sun. Will you let leave parties
beam down among your islands so that my people may walk
among yours and learn of them? It would help us
to better appreciate your plight."
"No." Swift was too angry even to shriek.
The guard hairs of Swift's ruff quivered to the
intensity of his emotion. "This world is ours. Ours
alone. We will have no humans upon it. Not the ones
who invaded from the sky forty years ago. Not the ones
you bring
with you on your ship, with your flat faces and your
thick, ungainly, ill-placed legs."
He drew himself up to his full height.
"Island belongs to us. We want it back. There can
be no negotiation. Remember, Captain-nine
days. And then ... annihilation."
THE DOOR ANNUNCLATOR to Kirk's cabin
chimed. Sitting at his desk reading a digest of
reports on Okeanos comor Island, or
Discord-James Kirk lifted his head, thought about
rebelling, and finally said, "The hell with it. Come
in."
The door slid open to admit Dr. McCoy.
"You look relieved, Jim."
"Maybe it's the sight of that bottle in your
hand." "This?" McCoy held it up. Brown
liquid sloshed inside. "Just a product of the
local culture."
He tossed it to Kirk, who only just managed
to field it. He peered at the label.
""Hagbard's Select"?" "Literary
reference, they tell me." McCoy went to the
settee and sat down.
"The seal is broken," Kirk-said, "and there
appears to be some missing."
"Well, since the stuff is manufactured by a
belligerent in a war you're trying to stop,
it'd be a clear
dereliction of duty for me to permit my captain
to drink the stuff without subjecting it to rigorous
scientific analysis first." He rubbed his
stomach. "It passed the taste test with flying
colors. And it hasn't killed me yet. So I
feel confident in pronouncing it fit even for a
starship captain. Especially one with a load of
travails."
"You can say that again." Kirk squinted at the
bottle a little more closely. "Except-tell me
one thing. Just what grows on this planet that
sQmebody might be able to distill "fine sipping
whiskey" from?"
"Some things, Jim, a man isn't meant to know.
Now drink, don't analyze. Prove you're a
man instead of a Vulcan." Kirk went to the
sideboard, took out a couple of tumblers, and
poured a couple of fingers in each. He handed one to the
doctor.
"You first."
"What? You don't trust me?" He hoisted the
glass. "To the wonders of modem medicine." He
tossed it off, smacked his lips, and sighed. "Ah.
Five or six more like that and I'll forget
what it's like on that infernal Dutch oven of a
planet." Kirk sipped his cautiously. It
rolled silkily over his tongue and down his
throat-then seemed to ignite like a kerosene spill.
"My," he gasped, "that's-was
"Smooth. But beware the afterbite
"I'll say." Kirk paused, sucking on his
lips. "You know, a man could get accustomed to that."
"The way you sounded when I rang," McCoy said
as Kirk poured himself another, "I figured you thought
I was the Terror of Red Tape Mansion."
"She's still safely down on the planet, continuing
her own inquiries." Kirk sat in his
desk.chair. "For some reason the Susuru don't
mind her staying on."
"She tells them what they want to hear. Also,
I think their bosses, those "forward walkers" or
whatever you call "em, are only too eager
to give their shiny new ridge-headed friends anything their
black hearts desire."
He looked closely at Kirk. "Funny you
should use the word safely in this context. If I
didn't know better, I'd swear that silver-tongued
Klingon bastard is beating your. time."
Kirk laughed weakly. "Do you really
think that's likely, Bones?"
"Well, now, Klingons and humans are
anatomically compatible, reproductively speaking,
much as it might gripe them to admit it-was
"I mean-do you really think a woman in her
position-was McCoy was leaning back. "I think that
Deputy Commissioner Wayne has so many demons
crammed "into her head there's no telling who's
running the show at any given moment. By all accounts
Daddy Cornelius was as tyrannical an old
reptile as you'd care to run across. Moriah was his
only child. Now, I'm a doctor, not a
headshrinker, but I'd say that's a situation
tailor-made to produce a confused overachiever
who's always looking to please Daddy. And never, ever
can." Kirk stared into his glass. "You mean to say,
you think her interest in me was based on a desire
for a father figure?" McCoy grinned.
"Bones, I'm a year or two older than she
is, if that. And the idea of Kain as a father
substitute-was
"The human mind is a wondrous contrivance,"
McCoy said. "Who knows what gyrations it's
capable of?" He crossed his legs and the two men
drank in companionable silence. After a
few moments Kirk went and retrieved the bottle.
"How did that Klingon son of a gun Kain get
to be so damned smooth, anyway?" McCoy asked
as Kirk poured. "Most Klingons think
etiquette means you don't wipe your hands on your
sash after you stab the person next to you at the dinner
table. This boy's fit to be presented to the Queen of
England. Most Klingons talk like a handful of
gravel being shaken on a washboard. This one has a
voice Wu Shanxi would kill for." He referred
to the Federation's leading operatic baritone. "He
does show a lot of polish for a Klingon" was
Kirk said. "For example, you contradicted him
over the similarity of Discord and his homeworld, and he
didn't even try to kill you."
McCoy blinked and swallowed. "Yeah. Well,
he sure doesn't come by it honestly."
"Oh, but he does, Bones. His father was a
diplomat." "A diplomat?" McCoy raised
an eyebrow. "I didn't know the Klingons grew
any of those."
"They don't, many. But even a fanatical
warrior culture needs a negotiator sometimes.
And given the stakes that're liable to be involved
wherever YJ-INGONS are concerned, they tend
to be good ones. That's how I met him, in fact-he
accompanied his father to a conference I attended, when I
was still at the Academy."
"Axanar."
"That's the one. His father was a big man, imposing,
very dignified. To tell you the truth, aside from
height, Kain doesn't look a thing like him.
Krodan, we knew him as, though I guess his
real name's more along the lines of QoDang."
He was slumping lower in his chair as the fierce
Discordian whiskey relaxed him. "Want to know
something ironic? I think that's why Kain is such a
swashbuckler. He's trying to compensate for the
dishonor of his father's occupation." He shook his head.
"And in his heyday, Krodan was one of the four or
five most powerful men in the Empire."
"From the way he was talking to you, you and he have some
history beyond the Axanar talks."
"I guess so." Kirk shrugged. "He and I
never saw each other. Planet called Endikon.
I was still a lieutenant on Farragut-after
Captain Garrovick died. We and the Klingons were
vying for the right to trade for life-extending
pharmaceuticals from yet another crabby, zealous
race with bony heads. The Klingon
captain sent a party down to steal a valuable holy
relic to hold for ransom."
"What happened?"
"It-ahh-disappeared before they had the chance."
McCoy squinted at him. "Are you telling me
you stole the relic yourseIP"
"I thought of it as removing it for safekeeping."
The doctor roared. "Then what happened?"
"Somehow the local authorities had been tipped
off. The Klingon group walked right into their arms.
Repercussions blew them clean off the planet."
He tossed off the tag end of his drink. "I
remember now, the party was commanded by a kid ensign.
I guess that was Kain."
"Given the usual Klingon response
to failure, that was a pretty rough trick to play
on a kid."
"I suppose it was. That wasn't the kind of
thing I thought about back then, when I was young and wild
and full of beans." "And now you're old and wild and
full of beans."
Kirk stood, and swayed. "Who's old?"
Ask the man in the mirror." McCoy leaned
forWard and held his glass between his knees. "I
wonder what our friend Kain is doing wearing
a kligat. his
Kirk looked at him. "The knife? It looks
familiar, somehow." McCoy laughed. "Are you
getting old, or is the booze clouding your
memory? That's a kligal, favored weapon of the
inhabitants of Capella IV. One of whom just
happens to be my godson."
"Teer Leonard James Akaar," Kirk said.
"Does have a bit of a ring to it, you gotta admit."
McCoy rubbed the back of his neck. "Of course,
I still have a knot on the back of my head left
over from where his mom cold-cocked me with that rock.
My old friends the Capellans are even crankier
than Klingons comz that Kfingon spy found out. What
was his name, anyway?"
"Kras."
"Very conspirators he had talked into killing old
Teer Akaar, Senior, whacked him out with one of those
flying can openers ... I wonder if Kain knows how
to use his."
"Probably."
McCoy shook his head. "If they've got many
more like him, we're in a peck of trouble."
"There's only one Qeyn HoDo waDI-CHILD, was
Kirk said, making fairly heavy weather
of the Klingon, "in either the Empire or the
Federation."
McCoy held up his glass. "Thank God for
that!" He chuckled. "Though I think our lovely
commissioner may have a point. You are a pretty
close counterpart ... say, this thing's empty."
"So's the bottle."
McCoy eyed him blearily. "I still see before
me a man in the throes of stress. As your
physician, I prescribe more of the same
medicine. What do you have in the cupboard?" Kirk
held up a brown glass bottle. "How does
Saurian brandy sound?"
McCoy pursed his lips. "Extremely
fancy. How come I rate a shot of it?"
"Well, I.was saving it for a special
occasion-was "And?"
Kirk shrugged and poured two generous'snifters.
"It came," he said, "and went."
McCoy accepted the goblet and gazed into the depths
of the liqueur. Then he looked up at Kirk.
"What if he's on the level, Jim?"
Kirk smiled. "What-was that you said, about pigs
having wings? Prosil. his
Where the deep submersible drove there were
no lights except those she projected from her own
stubby bull. Screens in the cramped interior
offered views generated by a variety of sensors,
including visual imaging of radar and sonar
returns. Right now they were displaying a seafloor
bare of vegetation, across which small, strange
organisms crept. "I admit to perplexity,
Dr. Arkazha," said Spock. The pilot glanced
back over his shoulder. He was a curly- haired
young man with plump red cheeks, wearing a mustard-
yellow jump suit. He belonged to a
Gens of stature similar to the Micros, but
chunky and round- faced, and tending to thickness around the
middle. They called themselves Hobbits.
Mona Arkazha nodded her heavy head. Her
mister was turned off, though water still circulated through
the yoke that covered the gill slits in her neck.
Her skin only required moistening in direct
sunlight.
Spock looked to the screen. It showed what
seemed to be a glow coming from the ocean floor itself, It
was surrounded by an abundance of submarine vegetation,
like an oasis in a desert.
"What is that, Doctor?"
"Volcanic vent. They provide the
energy sufficient to run a tidy little ecosystem.
Each is in effect its own little world. Right now, in
fact, they are my main area of study."
I The large gelatinous-looking eyes studied
him for a moment. "But you asked about the war. We found
no Susuru when we arrived, though we scarcely
had the opportunity to make an exhaustive
survey of the planet. We did not encounter them for
some three local years-about twelve Terran
years."
"How did the initial contact transpire?"
"A boatload of Swimmers noticed sips of
activity on an island. Thinking there might be someone
shipwrecked, they stood in to investigate. What they
found were Susuru, who opened fire on them with
projectile weapons."
Spock frowned. "Are you certain your people did
nothing to incite them?"
"Mr. Spock, we Vares, are a contentious
lot, and frequently- flamboyant. And I am
sure you are aware that the fact of persecution does
nothing of itself to render a group more tolerant; generally
it has quite
the opposite effect. But we tried our best
to learn from our travails. We have never
wanted to do to anyone what was done to us.
"More than that-do we strike you as people who would fear
or hate something because it was different? I'm almost as
alien to young Jason or Aileea as the Susuru
are, no matter how human my genes are. Do you
think we would reflexively attack them?"
"Why should they attack you?"
The pilot laughed bitterly. at If you learn
the answer to that one, please let us know," he said.
"When we capture Stilters, all they ever say
is that we're a danger to them. And unless we catch
them, they won't talk to us at all."
"Most odd. When we visited them, the Susuru
seemed anything but a belligerent race."
The pilot turned a stunned look over his
shoulder at the Vulcan. "But they shoot at us on
sight!" "Almost forty-two years have we lived on this
planet," Arkazha said. "For thirty-nine of those
years we have been at war. And never have we had any
idea why. "Coming up on our objective,
Mona," the pilot said. "Thank you,
Suleyman." Arkazha hunched her squat form
around to better see the screen. Her body
language bespoke excitement. "Look at this,
nowlook!"
The oasis surrounding the vent had fallen behind. The
ocean floor spread flat and featureless below. Then
a line appeared across the "horizon." It grew
wider as the submersible approached, became a
crack, a chasm, a canyon, and then what seemed
a split in the world.
"Hellsgate Rift," Arkazha said. "Ten
kilometers deep and more."
The submersible was over the abyss now. Even the
small craft's artificial senses showed
only'blackness below. "Bad waters," the Hobbit
pilot grunted. "Craft disappear around here all
the time. It's Leviathan takes them. We're
precious near the lair of the Devil in the Sea."
"Superstition," scoffed Arkazha. "No one
knows what's really down there, save volcanic
vents in plenty. They roil the water so our sonar
works poorly, and the strong electromagnetic
activity associated with volcanism on this world
befuddles our radar."
"Fascinating."
She nodded. "It is that, Spock." She placed
greenish black fingertips on the screen. "I
hope to help unlock the mysteries of
Hellsgate. I've already glimpsed things
down there-but I don't know if I can trust Y."
Spock looked at her quizzically. "Why not,
Doctor? I have dealt with you as openly as I am
able. In fact, I must say, I've found our
association ... most congenial."
She smiled. "As have I, Spock, my friend. But
I keep forgetting ... you work for the State. For
Leviathan comour ancient enemy, whatever form He
takes. I just don't know if I can trust you."
"What does my employment with Starfleet have to do
with my trustworthiness?"
"You owe a duty to your State and to your
superiors. If they should decide to stick their boot
on our necks, the way Commissioner Wayne wants
to do, you will be bound to relay anything I tell you."
"It is difficult to see how what lies at the
bottom of an oceanic trench might constitute
usable intelli-gence. 11)
She turned her head aside. Her rubbery lips
twisted in a strange smile. "Ah, but you never know
what might be down there. Perhaps even the lair of
Leviathan."
Spock raised an eyebrow. Still, Dr.
Arkazha possessed a most refreshingly logical
mind for one of her species. He could not
hold the occasional descent into fanciful thinking against
her.
She could not help herself, after all. She was only
human.
THE LetterrmEvery AiRcRAF-RATHER flew two
thousand meters above a sea like a sheet of sapphire
with milk-white stars for wave crests. "Aren't you
worried about the Susuru ultimatum?" Kirk
asked from the passenger seat on the cockpit's
starboard side. "Three days left."
Aileea dinAthos snorted a
laugh-unladylike but charming, he thought. "If they
could have wiped us out, they would have done so forty years
ago."
"They have help now."
"The Kofirlar. -- She sneered. "We can handle
them, too, Captain, so long as they don't range
their weapons of mass destruction against us."
She gave him a sideways glance. "Where do you
stand? If their ship of space takes us under fire,
what will you do?" "Warn her," he said. A pause.
"If she doesn't stop, I'll blast her out of
orbit. That kind of intervention is way outside the
rules, and the Klingons know it."
She flipped her head, clearing
shag-cut hair from her forehead. "Then we will
endure. Just the way we always have. We're good at
enduring, Captain."
"Jim. 19
Aileea nodded. "There it is," she said, banking
the aircraft to circle an assembly of three
shiny metal cylinders fastened together in parallel,
one above the other two, with an oval tower rising from
one side and a white fiber-matted deck extending from
the other. "My home float."
"Your home?" Kirk shook his head, puzzled.
"I thought Dr. Arkazha said the Susuru sank
your home."
Aileea looked at him from the pilot's seat and
smiled thinly. "No. Mansur submerged it,
to avoid the Stilter missiles."! To his blank
look she explained, "It's a submarine, too, you
see. Practically every dwelling on Discord is.
It's the only sure way to beat the real killer
storms-though a big city can ride one out. That's one
of the attractions to living in one9' "I thought you
made your home in Discord City now." "I'm
based there. This is my home." She brought the
craft level and began a descent. "Even now."
"So you're still a country girl at
heart?" Kirk asked. He sat turned in his
seat, with his left arm propped on the back. She
looked, at him with a slight frown of incomprehension
pulling her brows together. With her green bangs
hanging almost to her eyes she looked quite
cute-despite the ominous mass of the pistol hung
to a nicely rounded hip. Watch yourself, he thought.
This trip is purely business. Which wasn't
entirely true; Bones had threat- 1

ened to write him up unless he found time to get a
little R and R himself. With the clock running out on
planetwide escalation, it seemed strange to be
beaming down for shore leave. Yet with the Susuru
stonewalling the very concept of peace talks, Kirk
could find no excuse not to go along when dinAthos
asked him if he wanted to see what life on a
Discorthan sea ranch was like. There was nothing to do that
he hadn't already done. Her face brightened. "I
understand," she said. "You mean, my heart and soul still
belong on the ranch. That's true." He nodded.
"Thought so. I'm an old Iowa farm boy myself.
I know all the symptoms."
She nodded absently, speaking into the microphone
of her lightweight headset. Wallowing in
the surface chop, the craft slowed. With a creaking
sound the high-mounted wings rotated upward, allowing the
broad props to hold it up instead of the airfoils.
Aileea held the ship steady, then steered it
expertly over a round platform floating beside the main
house, hovered briefly, and settled down to an
easy landing. Kirk made an appreciative
face. He was a Navy man, not a flyboy; as
her name implied, Enterprise bore a much closer
relationship to an old Earth aircraft carrier than
the craft that flew from its decks. But he knew
neat piloting when he saw it. He carefully said
nothing. His hostess's prickly pride might
interpret a compliment as condescension when it concerned
such a workaday task. Starting with nothing but will,
resourcefulness, and the equipment they had been able
to carry on board their sleeper ship-which Kirk knew
must have been next to nothing, given the space the
cryosleep units and crude
warp drive took up-the colonists had done a
mapificent job of building a technic
civilization. Nonetheless they were markedly less
advanced than the Federation, and inclined to be
defensive.
Aileea hopped out, to be met by a
pair of meter-tall women with short hair and round
faces, stockier in build than the Micros. They
traded hugs with the tall woman, then helped her
make the aircraft fast to the pad and cover it with a
tarp as Kirk stood by with his seabag over his shoulder,
wanting to help but feeling as if he'd only get in
the way.
"This is Captain Kirk," Aileea told the
two. 16 He's one of the men from Earth everyone's
talking about. Captain, these are Ranit and Yuki.
They've been with us for years."
"He's very handsome," said Yuki.
The other looked skeptical. "Is it true that
you'll try to make us leave Discord, Captain?"
she asked. "Where would we go?" "I don't want
to move anyone anywhere. I want to bring peace."
The two laughed. It was not a cheerful sound. He
followed Aileea across a short floating walkway
that bobbed alarmingly underfoot. She was wearing white
shorts and a short loose top that left her flat
tanned stomach bare. He reminded himself of how it
would look to a board of inquiry if he got too
intimately involved with one of the very people he was
supposed to be seeing off the planet with all
deliberate speed.
Kirk stepped aboard the float proper and
stopped. Jutting above the topmost cylinder of the
ranch house was a rack of tubes tip ,ped with sharp
con' es.
"What're those?" he asked.
11Koman ship-killer missiles," she said
with grim satisfaction. "Supersonic,
hundred-kilometer range. They guide o'n
data provided by our wranglers. A solid hit
with one can sink the biggest ship the Stilters have. 19
She glanced at him sidelong. "They're just
installed comwe haven't got the protective shrouds
up yet. The Stilters won't find us such an
easy mark next time, Captain' was 4 61
see." Aware that she was gauging his reaction, he
paused a moment, staring up at the ominous shapes,
their white noses ringed in yellow. They seemed
to serve as a reminder of just how tough the task facing
him was. He allowed himself to show her a frown of
concern. She led him into the house. Inside it was
climate- conditioned to perfect comfort-by Discordian
standards. That mean' t only moderately
sweltering, though for the moment, out of the unforgiv ing eye of
Eris, it felt blessedly cool, in fac that. He was
skeptical as to how roomy the ranch house
could be. The main cylinders were twenty-five meters
long and six across, which didn't seem to offer much
space for the twenty or so people Kirk understood lived
and worked there. Then Aileea led him down a
circular stairway, and he realized that, like an
iceberg, much of the house lay under water. In a
narrow passageway with exposed pipes in red and
yellow and white running overhead a couple of
cylinders down, Aileea pushed open a door.
"This'll be your cabin, Captain. It's
probably nowhere near as grand as you're used to, of
course." It was a small chamber, with a bed that
seemed to be built into the curving hull. It was
clean and well lit.
A port showed seawater surging without, with shafts
of white sunlight falling through like searchlight beams.
It felt like a Turkish bath.
He smiled. "This will do nicely indeed, Ms.
dinAthos." "Aileea, Captain."
""Agreed-if you call me Jim."
She grinned. "It's a deal. Would you like something
to eat before we see how the ranch works?"
"I feel as if I could eat a whale."
"No whales on Discord, Jim. But wait
until you see comour prawns."
com11 A
I he uppe, cyluiderserved-as mess 'Hall.
caret 11ongta-b ran down the center.
Extensive ports looked out over the deck on the
one hand and the sea on the other.
A giant Grunt in a white apron served them
dishes of stew- of sea pulses steamed with
shellfish-with hard-crusted bread on the side. He
acknowledged Aileea's introduction of Kirk with a
ponderous nod and left without speaking.
"That's Mansur," Aileea said. "He
hasn't been with us all that long-three or four
years. He came here not long before I went off
to school. But he's the backbone of the ranch. He
pretty much runs things now."
"And he's the cook?"
"He enjoys it. A Grunt needs something to do with
his hands or he fidgets himself crazy."
"I guess the way you live is determined to a
great extent by what Gens you belong to."
She stopped with her spoon halfway to her mouth.
"No. The way we live is influenced by our
genes, same as everybody else. We're aware of
our differencesEris, we cherish them. But it's up to us
to choose our lives. Our chance-and our
responsibility."
The hatch to the outside opened, allowing a
dtagon's breath of the metal-smelling sea air
inside. Three ranch hands came in, two men and a
woman, to greet Aileea with happy cries and a
back-thumping group hug. Aileea introduced them
as Haidar, Krysztof, and Jasmine. They went and
drew bowls of stew from the counter at one end of the
mess and joined the two at the table.
"We have to thank you for bringing our Aili back
to us," said Haidar. He was a short brown young man
with a shock of straight black hair and a round face
that reminded Kirk of Chekov. He had more than a
little of the Enterprise navigators ebullience,
too, though from the tiny network of wrinkles at the
outsides of his pitch-black eyes it was clear he
was older than Chekov.
"We see her all too little since she went
away," said Jasmine. She was a brown-haired,
brown-skinned Swimmer woman of early middle
years, with amber eyes and a long, somewhat sad mouth.
She gave the appearance of having faded from
spectacular youthful beauty to a wiry, weary
handsomeness. Like the other two hands she was dressed
only in brief swim trunks and a
utility belt supporting, among other implements,
a bolstered sidearm. "We feared to see her even
less after the attack."
"This will always be my home, Mina," Aileea said
in a subdued voice.
"And now our Aili's gone and lured lovely
Gita off to the city to join her company," Haidar
said. "We have to wonder who'll go next."
"Haidar," said Krysztof sternly. The third
outrider was a large man with a craggy, sharp-nosed
face, wild and wiry blond hair and beard, and
an impressive blond-haired paunch. Like
Haidar he showed no
outward sip of modification. He might have been
a Norm, who in fact had none,
Realizing that his remark wasn't in the best of
taste, given the death of Aileea's father, Haidar
flushed and paid close attention to his stew.
"I know you work for some kind of security company,
Aileea," Kirk said. "But I don't actually
know what you do." Aileea looked away. "Aili,
listen," Jasmine said. "What you do is no
disgrace. We won't hold it against you. Your handsome
guest won't either.""
She looked at Kirk. When something
engaged her interest, her eyes were lively bright.
"That spaceship of yours-she's a warship, is she
not?"
Kirk nodded. "I don't really like to think of her
that way. Enterprise's primary mission is
exploration. But she's pretty well armed, and I
do draw my pay from an outfit called
Starfleet."
"See?" Jasmine said to Aileea.
The green-haired woman nodded. "All right.
I'm a soldier, Captain-a professional
warrior."
Kirk frowned. "But you work for a security
company- 99 "Our Aili commands a squadron of
one thousand," Haidar said proudly. "She holds the
rank of colonel."
"We don't have standing armies on Discord,
Captain-Jim. And we've been fighting a long
time. We have two types of warriors, volunteers
and professionals. I'm a professional,, under
contract to the Discord City Service
Corporate."
"She's a wizard pilot and a dead-eye shot,"
said Haidar. "Even before she went off to get
trained, she was as good as the best."
"Not quite, Haidar," Aileea said. "And in the
raid, it was Gita who played the heroine."
"That's why you took her from us," said Krysztof.
"She's freeborn, "Sztof," Jasmine said
sternly. "She makes her own destiny, like all
Discordians."
"You take your individualism seriously,
don't you?" Kirk asked.
"It's one of the reasons our ancestors left
Earth," Haidar said. "Along with the fact that the
place was busy blowing itself up at the time."
"I'm surprised to see you eating in a communal
setting," Kirk said. "It seems to run contrary
to your individualist natures." Haidar laughed.
"Do we look as if we dislike each other? We
are all free, we are all ourselves, and we live as
we choose. But being individuals doesn't mean
we cannot work together. The ranch, our profits, our very
lives depend on our cooperating. Neither does it
mean we cannot enjoy spending time together."
"sometimes," Krysztof said.
"When we want privacy," Jasmine said, "we
have our quarters. And we always have at the sea."
Like a moving island, the prawn undulated through
clear sun-shot water. Kirk propelled
himself alongside the dark metallic bulk of the beast
with strokes of the fins strapped to his feet. He
hoped he didn't look too hurried in his
attempt to keep pace with his hostess.
He was bucking the surge of water displaced by the
prawn's two hundred-tonne bulk, a slow
tidal push, and the pulse of the propulsor
membranes, which ran like ribbons along either side
of the underside of her carapace, rippling like
peristalsis. Moving like a slim fish, silver with
sun under water, Aileea swam right up to the
creature near the stylized wave combrand and patted
its shell.
Kirk followed, bubbles from his respirator
mask
rising in tickling clouds past his ears.
He'felt naked beside that armored va/s. He nearl
was-in the I y womb-warm ocean of Discord there
was no need to wear more than the almost indecently brief
trunks Aileea had lent him. There was tension
in-his guts and throat; no mistaking the fact that
the merest accidental twitch by the monster would break
him like a cheap toy. But that was wariness, not fear.
What he really felt was awe.
He reached to touch the shell. It was cool
and hard as a starship's hull. "You eat these things?"
he asked. The button mike glued over his
trachea picked up his words without his needing even
to vocalize and transmitted them to the bone- conduction
speaker behind Aileca's right ear. "Now, this is what
I call a jumbo shrimp."
Aileea laughed. "We won't eat Old
Lucy. As near as our biologists can reckon,
she's over a hundred of our years old. She'd be
pretty tough, wouldn't you think?" "She'd take a
lot of cocktail sauce, that's for sure." He
did his best not to sound breathless. He was swimming
nearly flat out to keep pace with the giant's
unhurried roll. Even Aileea seemed to be
exerting herself-a little bit, anyway. His hostess
eased off, let the creature gain way on them.
Kirk became aware of the rest of the pod at graze
about them, from infants no larger than he was to monsters
nearly as intimidating as the matriarch. The
microscopic sea life that they sucked into wide
funnel-shaped mouths shimmered like fairy dust in the
water around them.
"She still lays eggs, though not as often as a younger
prawn would," Aileea said. "They're our main
stock. We eat the eggs, and we eat the
younger prawns. They also exude a waxy substance
between the scutes of
their belly. We scrape that off and sell it.
It's very valuable-it's used in a number of
pharmaceuticals and cosmetics."
"You must get a lot out of Old Lucy,"
Kirk said. "We do." She grinned at him. She,
of course, wore no masLike The gills along her
neck pulsed to a leisurely rhythm. In her own
environment, to which the Discordians" outlaw science
had fitted her, Aileea did not seem at all
exotic. She seemed as natural-and as
beautifid-as the sea life that teemed around them at
a respectful distance from the prawns. If only
Moriah could see her like this, Kirk thought., With a
pang he realized that would do no good; the deputy
commissioner would never see past the woman's
differences- and their source. It made him uneasy
to think that a woman he felt such honest respect and
affection for-a woman with whom he had been more than
slightly intimate-could be so blind. "She's really more
the ranch than we are," Aileea was saying.
"She's been alive since long before humans got
here, and she'll still be swimming long after all of us are
dead."
"Those are impressive," Kirk said, eyeing the
three. meter dragonflies that hovered over the
raft. They had six wings like ruby sheets. Their
armor showed blue tiger striping over dull scarlet
bellies.
Aileea had the scooter heeled well over
to port to circle the thick seaweed mat. Spray
raised by their booming passage through the waves misted
the left side of Kirk's face and body.
Miraculously, it felt coot "We call them
Hinds," she said. "I'm not really sure where that
comes from. I think it has something to do with the time our people were
in Russia, after the
Soviets captured SS General Prester and
his geneengineering project from the Nazis-at the end
of the Great Patriotic War." World War II,
he translated mentally. While the Vares came from
all races of Earth, ethnic Russians,
Pacific Rim Asians, and Polynesians
predominated. Mona Arkazha's birth city of
Exile in the far south was as thoroughly Russian as
contemporary Volgograd-to the delight of
Chekov, who was fit to bust waiting for the rotation
to allow him to beam down on shore leave.
Discordian cultural referents tended
to be a lot like the ensign's.
""How does a beast that huge fly?" Kirk
asked. They still wore their communicator patches,
allowing him to make himself heard above the rush of air
and water without shouting. -- "High metabolic
rate. Discord's a fantastically high-energy
ecosystem, Jim, what with all the highfrequency
photons Eris puts out. The air those bugs pump
out through their exhaust spiracules is only
slightly cooler than live steam We have to put
computer filters on our heat-seeker rockets
to keep them from locking onto the Hinds."
Kirk grimaced. That was another facet of
Discordian life-talk of weaponry was never
absent long.
"What do they eat?" he asked.
As if in reply a Hind dipped down to the mat
and rose up again clutching a wildly waving
joint-legged thing in its chitin- covered palps.
"They'll eat you, if you give them half a chance,
though they couldn't lift a full-grown Micro.
There are reasons we carry guns, James
Kirk, and not just what your delightful Doctor
McCoy would call our cussedness. Hang on."
The clear metal-crystal canopy
sealed itself above
them, cutting off the spray and the sound of their
passage. The scooter nosed down; the sea bubbled
up at Kirk's face, and then they were flying
underwater, beneath the raft. He marveled at the
life-forms that thronged around, and in its shaggy green
undersidesteel-spined worms like demon
caterpillars; moving blobs of brightly colored
jelly; things like rolling tangles of knotted gray
string, strung with plump yellow nodules.
Three-eyed raft-dodger fish, fat and agile,
played tag with the scooter.
The scooter was not properly a two-person
vehicle. Aileea had adjusted her padded pilot
seat so that Kirk could slide in between her and the back,
where he got to ride about the sea at alarming speed
@. clutching handrails, down by his thighs. With the
craft sealed off like this it was even harder than before not
to be aware of the fact that he had a beautiful,
virtually naked woman pressed against the front of
him. He forced his mind off the subject. Aileea
drove too fast for his comfort, but he had to admit that
Haidar was right about her piloting skills. They
flew among schools of eels like animated
ribbons, giant swimming insects holding
serious-looking pincers before them, clouds of colorful
fish that looked a lot like ... well,
M.
"If it wouldn't cost you time in our decompression
chamber, I'd take you to see the bottom,"
Aileea said. "It's only three hundred meters
down here. Our seas are mostly shallow- though
Hellsgate Rift is ten klicks deep in
places, and more." The canopy shook. A sound like
thunder reached Kirk's ears and shivered in his marrow.
"What was that?" "Detonations."
"Are you under attack?" Visions of himself getting
caught up in a battle flooded his mind like
water through a breached hull. He could imagine what
Commissioner Wayne would make of that when they got
back to the Federation. He realized in a rueful
flash that he had begun thinking of her as an
adversary. It was an uncomfortable transition to have
to face.
Aileea was shaking her head. "That's Lev and the
new 'rider, Magda, trying to drive off
predators with rockets. Our wrangler robots
project sonic vibrations to keep predators out and
our stock in, but sometimes predators sound beneath the
coverage-or just come through regardless."
"What kind of predators do you need to hunt with
rocketsr" Kirk asked, looking around the ocean
with a whole new interest. "Sea dragons,
akyula, volk, kraken. They are-let me
remember my lessons of Earth-similar
to plesiosaurs, sharks, reptilian orcas, and
giant squid."
"They prey on the likes of Old Lucy?"
She laughed. "We ranch fish and other sea
creatures a lot less spectacular than the
prawns. With the prawns our main problem is
parasites. Not even a big kraken would dare try
to drag Old Lucy down. Unless the legends are
true."
"11.eaegends?"
She glanced back. "Are you easily alarmed,
Captain?" His turn to laugh. "I guess not.
Any creature big enough to eat Old Lucy, we
wouldn't make a decent hors doeuvre for." "Good
saying, Captain. Our legends speak of the
mightiest of all kraken Leviathan, the Devil
in the Sea."
"I wouldn't want to meet him. Or her."
A shrug. "I wouldn't worry. Leviathan
doesn't really exist. He's just a story
we use to scare ourselves with-and a personification of the
all-powerful State we all fear. Thomas
Hobbes, and all that."
"They teach you a lot about Earth in school."
"We remember where we came from. Terra
rejected us, not vice versa."
When they returned to the float the sun was already
low-that short rotation period again. The eastern
horizon was weighed down under towers of white cloud
that bulked upward until the jet stream shaved their
heads off flat.
Aileea froze on the deck, shading her eyes
to stare off to the east. Kirk looked that way, and
shortly made out a tiny black fleck sliding
across the sky. It slowly grew larger. She lifted
a communicator from her belt and called the tower.
"Mansur," she said, "are we expecting company?"
The gray giant had a voice like a wire brush
skimming steel. "The aircraft is friendly. Do not
be afraid."
She looked at the communicator. "That's all
he's going to say, isn't it?" She stuck the unit
back on her belt and stood watching the sky.
It seemed natural to Kirk to come and stand right behind
her right shoulder. She did not move away.
"Storm coming," was all she, said.
The fleck grew larger, became another verti like
the one Aileea and Kirk had flown out in, "with
similar bulky pods affixed to the sides of the
fuselage. As it rotated its wings upright to hover,
Aileea gestured
Kirk back against the ranch house.- With the
floating pad occupied, the only place for the craft
to touch down was on the deck itself
It landed in a whirlwind of farnace-hot air.
The hatch on the pilot side opened and a young woman
dropped lightly to the mat. She was shorter than
Aileca and emphatically rounder in a loose white
blouse and blue and red pantaloons. Her skin was
cinnamon, her hair a luxuriant dark blue
mane. Aileea ran to her and hugged her. The two
waltzed each other in a laughing circle.
"Gital" Aileea said. "What a wond erful
surprise to see you!"
"Yes," the newcomer said in one of those
contraltos that ran down your spine. "It's been
all ofthree days since I saw you last."
"I still haven't gotten used to having you around all
the time."
Holding her arm around the shorter
woman's waist, Aileea steered her toward
Kirk. "Jim, there's someone I'd like you to meet.
Her name's Gita. She's my oldest friend, not
to mention the newest recruit in my unit."
Gita stepped forward, away from Aileea, and
walked right up to Kirk. She had a long straight
nose and black eyes deep as Hellsgate
Rift. At close range she had the same sort
of brute- force sultriness of an Orion slave
dancer, except she wasn't green.
"'So this is your starman, Aili," she said,
reaching out a fingernail to run down the center of
Kirk's chest. Over her shoulder he saw
AilPea droop. The proud and competent warrior
suddenly looked like a wet, sad bird. What's
going on? ,
Gita spun to face her friend. "Well, guess
what? I couldn't let you outdo me. So I brought
home one of my own!" Around the snout of the
aircraft came a compact
figure wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a
Panama hat, and swim trunks. It held a
seabaijust like Kirk's over its shoulder. It
stopped.
"Captain?"
"Mr. Sulu?"
The helmsman faltered. "Um, Gita-maybe
comth isn't such a hot idea-was
"Nonsense, Mr. Sulu. At ease. Man
does not live by slime mold alone."
Gita went to Sulu's side. He slid a
hard brown arm around her.
"I'll say," he said.
CM-TA-IATION KA-JATION held up the glass of
heavy but expertly cut crystal so that the green
liquid within caught the torchlight and seemed
to sparkle. "To the success of your mission," he said,
"and the return of peace to this planet."
His black eyes met the green eyes of
Moriah Wayne. They drank.
The Klingon mission was headquartered in bunkers
blasted out of the lava of cliffs on comthe coast not far
from Swift's capital. Klingon doctrine preached
austerity and resistance to discomfort, but the Klingons
weren't deranged on the subject. Or at least
Kain wasn't. He kept the rock-walled
bunkers air- conditioned to approach the norm of the
Klingon homeworld. Several hours before he had had the
climate controls adjusted so that this chamber actually
warmed a few degrees, to a temperature
an Earther would find pleasant. Kain wa s a most
considerate host.
Wayne looked at her glass. "Wonderful
vintage, Captain. It's tart, but marvelously
refreshing. It tastes comx tastes like spring somehow.
Is it Klingon?"
He shook his head. "No. It is a Susuru
beverage, fermented from a fruit they brought with them-was
He paused, scowled. "Brought with them-was Wayne
prompted. "From a distant archipelago, on the other
side of the world. It's, ah, it's extinct there now,
of course. The Earther intruders clear-cut the
island where the treasure fruit grew, left the
ecosystem so devastated it could never recover."
"Really"? How tragic." She shook her
head. Tonight she wore a sheer green off-the-shoulder
gown. Her hair was done up in an intricate
knot, and the torches burning in black iron
sconces on the walls sent highlights chasing each
other through it like tiny flames. "And the settlers
claim they don't use the land for anything at all."
A rich laugh rumbled up from Kain's chest. He
had a greyhound build, long-legged, narrow at
hip and belly, big in the chest and shoulders.
"In your experience, Commissioner," he
asked, 66are your people generally addicted
to truthfulness?" "My people are addicted to many vices,
Captain, she said, "but telling the truth isn't one
of them."
"What about indiscipline. Is that one of them,
perhaps?" She dropped her eyes to her plate. The
meal was steamed sweet grasses and broiled
fillets of the white flesh of some sea beast, served
with an astringent green sauce that reminded her of
Japanese mustard. It was an excellent meal.
It did not accord with the reputation Klingon cuisine
enjoyed in the Federation for being as fierce as the
warriors who ate it.
Should I be surprised? she thought. Captain
Aain is living refutation of most of our
stereotypes.
"Captain Kirk is a man who believes in
doing the right thing," she said softly, "just as you do."
"Is it right to defy the orders of one's
superiors?" "I'm not really in his chain of command,
after all. I'm only a civilian."
Why am I defending him? she wondered. He's
ready to sell justice down the river for his Earth
human prejudices. But something compelled her
to take Kirk's part. As something had
compelled her to defend her father against those who said he was
tyrannical and overbearing, that his personal ambition
and Just for power had done damage to the Federation.
"It isn't just that he disrespects you,
Moriah." She looked up sharply. His one good
eye was looking at her in just the right way-forthright,
challenging, yet not judgmental.
"Does he not also defy his own superiors of
Starfleet?" She dropped her eyes again.
"Yes," she almost whispered. "The duty. of the
warrior," Kain said, "is to serve. To obey, in the
interests of the greater good. Or is it otherwise in the
Federation?"
"We permit the individual greater rein," she
said brittlely. "Too great. Everyone thinks he
has the right to pass judgment for himself on any
issue-that his conscience outweighs the voice of the
community."
"Does that make you strong?" He turned the
wineglass in fingers that seemed to her capable of
crushing it, at a squeeze. She had never known a
man as powerful as this. Not even her father.
"It divides us. Makes us weak, makes us a
pack of
self-absorbed, self-interested"-she
groped for a word-"thrill seekers. The Just for
personal gratification overwhelms everything."
"We Klingons practice abnegation of the self
in service of the whole." He smiled. "Doubtless you
are more advanced than we."
"No." She shook her head. "It's you who are
the wiser." He sat back in his chair and studied
her. At length his shook his splendid black-maned
head.
"Moriah, Moriah. How long are you going
to let him do this to you?"
"He is strong," she almost whispered.
"Willhil. He's blind to what's happening here,
he's deaf to my words."
"An ancient Earther philosopher said there are
none so blind as those who will not see."
A tremor ran through the subterranean chamber, a
whisper of the song of sliding crystal plates way
off across the ocean floor. Such microshocks had
rattled the tableware on and off throughout the meal. Kain
held up a finger. "Listen. Do you not hear the
planet itself crying out for requital? You are not
deaf. Nor'are you blind."
She stared at her plate. "In three days the
Susuru launch their offensive. Maybe
they'll settle the issue."
Kain's lips curved in a bitter smile. "The
Susuru are peaceful folk, as you have seen-they have
no skill at bloodletting. We are mighty
warriors, but we are also few. The settlers are
violent criminals. They all have arms, and they have
no scruples about using them." He shook his head.
"All that is certain is that the seas of Island will
run red with blood." "What can I do?" She shook
her head, a desperate look on her face.
"It's his ship, his crew. I've sent
countless requests to Starfleet for support, but the
subspace delay is so great out here, and who knows
what his cronies in the military hierarchy might do
to cover up his insubordination." "You can act," Kain
said, and his voice rang with the steel of command. "You can
first master yourself comstop this self-pity and confusion. You
are stronger than that, Moriah."
She looked at him with huge and wondering eyes.
"Do you really think so?"
He nodded. "I know so. And after you have mastered
yourself-and only then-you can master the situation."
She bit her lip. "But I don't see what
I can do. Everything's so confused."
"Didn't your father teach you
self-discipline?" His voice was low. She snapped
her head back as if he had slapped her. "That's
better," he said. "Your spirit shines through your eyes.
When that. occurs, I can see the strength in you.
9
He rose. "The time will come when I can offer
concrete assistance, Moriah. But you must be
prepared to assist me in return."
She stood up slowly. "I can't do anything-that
is, your people and mine are enemies. At least on
paper."
"I will ask you to do nothing that isn't right, was he
said, and his lone eye bored through her like a
neutronium drill. "Everything I do, I do for the
good of this world, and the Susuru to whom it belongs."
She shook her head in confusion. He came
forward, extending a hand.
"Come. There is an observation port with armored
glass overlooking the bay. We can watch the fury
of
the storm spend itself on the rocks below and revel in
the wild power of this world."
He took her by the arms. For a moment she stood
there, quivering, seeming small and frail next
to him. Then she tore herself away.
"I-can't. I really must be getting back to the
ship."
She wore a communicator hung from a loose
elastic band around her right wrist. She flipped it
open. 6'This is Commissioner Wayne calling
Enterprise. was "Enterprise. Lieutenant
Kyle here, Commissioner."
"Lock onto my coordinates and beam me
aboard at once." "Yes, Commissioner."
Kain held his hands out to his sides. "Run
away, little girl," he said, almost gently."..."Run
away at the speed of light. You'll find you cannot
escape yourself."
So at e gave him a lambent look. She
became gold light, became a shimmer and a trill,
and then became nothing at all. He stood looking
at the place where she had been. Then he threw his
head back and laughed. It was not the polite laugh
he showed the Earthers hearty as it seemed to them. It
was a full-throated, Kfingon laugh, wild and
raw, like the roar of an elemental beast.
He heard the rasp of a boot sole on the stone
behind him. He turned. His aide stood behind him.
"Iuffoffia" Sogh n uqneHave, was he
snarled. (lieutenant Lu Kok Tak
what do you want. at
"Qeyn HoDo, waDI-CHILD, was she replied,
speaking his name and rank and offering the appropriate
salute. She was a tall young woman, who bore the
insignia of a senior lieutenant. She had a
straight nose and high, slanting cheekbones. Most
Klingons would have called her features
overfine-indeed, insipid. Kain
found her quite appealing. But then, everybody said he
had degenerate tastes, from long contact with Earthers.
Her name had the meaning-poetic and evocative
to Klingon ears-of They killed him. It hearkened
back to the upshot of a particularly glorious
episode in the long history of her clan. "The
monitors functioned perfectly," she said. "The
whole disgusting scene is recorded."
"maj, was he said, expressing satisfaction.
She stood beside the table, distaste twisting her face.
"You're still here," Kain said.
She reached out and picked up a plate. "Why do
you subject yourself to such insipid filth? Where is the
pipius claw, where the good serpent worm? The
thlIngan food?" She spilled the food
deliberately onto the white cloth that had been
laid across the table of native hardwood.
"Do you now find pale lerangan meat more to your
liking?" He looked at her. She took a step
back and set down the plate.
I "Lieutenant, you are an exemplary officer
and have made yourself highly useful to me. You are of the
lineage of t1heDon, my first captain, to whom
I owe a heavy debt of blood. Still, do not take
it upon yourself to presume too much upon my tolerance,
IuHoHta " his
She lowered her head, but her strong jaw worked.
Kain walked to her, put his hand under her chin, and
raised her face. "What?"
Her eyes blazed up at him. "Why do you
degrade yourself, catering to this foolish Earther
woman? She is no part of the plan."
He scowled. She did not give ground. "It is
my plan," he said. "It was my conception. It is
mine to implement."
"But-but what of your vengeance?"
Kain raised his head. "It, too, must wait."
Lu Kok Tak's dropped. For all that they were
bound by an iron discipline that knew neither mercy
norexception, it was unheard offora Klingon to place
anything in the way of revenge. Not even duty.
"But- was she began.
He walked to the far end of the table, turned, and
looked at her. "Who are you to talk of my
vengeance? Who?" The last word was a bark that rocked
her back on her boot heels.
"Do you think I do not know what Kirk has cost
me? When my- mission failed on Endikon, and my
party was discovered and trapped by the local
authorities, it was my captain on whom the bulk
of the bla equals fell. Your grandfather, Kledon.
A superior is responsible for the failures of his
underlings. Mine cost him his life."
He touched the scar above his missing left eye.
"I was permitted to atone by putting out my own eye
with a red-hot dagger."
The lieutenant stood listening with head bowed. She
had heard this story before. But a Klingon did not
interrupt her superior officer. Especially when
he was Qeyn, and when this mood was on him.
"That was the first debt I owe to James Kirk."
He dropped his hand to the kligat hilt. "And then,
two years ago, his allies on Capella Four
murdered QaSo, my brother, with this very weapon!"
"Then why do you delay, my captain?" blurted
Lu Kok Tak.
"bortaSo bIr jablu'DI-REHave
QaQqu" nay, was Kain quoted. ""Revenge
is a dish that is best served cold."" "My
grandfather is twenty years cold," Lu Kok Tak
said. "Your eye is twenty years gone. How much
colder must your vengeance be before you dine?"
Kain advanced and raised a hand. She still did not
turn away. Slowly he lowered his fist and walked
away from her. "There is more at stake here," he said.
"Much more. This planet is rich beyond imagining in
resources. Our empire is poor. Our enemies
are richer than we and more numerous. This planet is
not merely an instrument in my hands"-he made a
gesture first of scooping, then of crushing-"that I can
use up in the fulfillment of my vengeance and toss
away like an empty wrapper. It is a treasure,
which must be secured for the Empire. As for my
revenge-11
He turned to her with a smile. "It will come,
Lieutenant, it will come. But how much sweeter will the
destruction of Enterprise and her captain James
Kirk taste, when captain and ship have disgraced
themselves and their Federation by playing party to the destruction
of a colony of their own precious Earthers?"
FoRather DimaRather Mansur set up a table in the
observation dome atop the tower. They ate
to the accompaniment of a fabulous display of lightning,
lancing and pulsing overhead. "What happens if the
Susuru attack?" Sulu asked, nervously
eyeing the unattended sensor displays and control
consoles. "They wouldn't dare," Gita scoffed.
"We wouldn't, and they're not as good on the sea as we
are."
"it doesn't matter, anyway," Aileea said.
"There's always somebody monitoring the Command Center,
which is way below the waterline. That's where the house is
fought from." As she spoke she sidled over closer
to Kirk. She had put on a flimsy white
smock that came down to her hips for dinner. He was
both relieved and disappointed.
The meal was excellent, paced to the slow roll of the
sea. Gyros and computerized ballast. management
damped the rocking imparted by the waves, but did not
try to suppress it altogether. Discordians preferred
to live with the feel of the rhyt4ms of their ocean
home.
The soft, flickering amber instrument glow wasn't
romantic candlelight, but it would do in a pinch.
Kirk enjoyed the sense of easy camaraderie he
felt with Sulu. It wasn't something he experienced
often, except perhaps with Spock and Bones,
his two best friends. The invisible barrier of command lay
between him and the rest of his crew-even the bridge
complement. Not that Sulu paid much attention to him. The
helmsman spent most of the evening conversing with his
escort in whispers and giggles.
At one point Kirk noticed Aileea studying
Gita across the table with a curiously blank
expression. Her voluptuous friend was engrossed in
Sulu and didn't notice the scrutiny. Clearly
rivalry passed between these women as well as friendship.
Kirk suddenly reali2ed why Aileea had
seemed deflated by Gita's arrival She
assumed Kirk would make a dive for her old
friend's rather more obvious charms.
It's nice to know she cares.
He was awakened by almost being tossed from his bunk,
even though it was mounted on gimbals. He flailed
an arm, found the lamp mounted on the wall by the bed,
and flipped it on, Pulling on a shirt and
trousers, he staggered across the pitching floor and out
into the hall.
Aileea was already there, dressed in a light
robe. "I was coming for you."
"I guess the storm has caught up with us for
real," he said, as the hull reverberated
to a crash of thunder.
She nodded. "Come with me."
She led him up the circular stair, which seemed
to be trying to buck him off. The added gravity load
was only 20 percent, but with the storm rocking the ranch
house wildly it felt as if he had a
full-grown man strapped on his back and cackling
in his ear. Somehow he fought his way to the mess.
Gita and Sulu were already there, with the ports
unshuttered and the lights out. The sky was a
constantblaze of lightning. Black waves washed
over the deck and-reached black tentacles for the
uppermost cylinder. The float lurched in random
directions like a drunk trying to balance on a
medicine ball. "It's a little unnerving, isn't it,
Captain," Sulu said, "to know that if something goes
wrong we can't beam out of here because of the storm."
Kirk stared out at the storm. "You have a talent for
looking at the bright side of things, Mr. Sulu."
"I'm sure everything will work out fine, Captain."
Gjationo worries," Gita said serenely.
Aileea had been speaking into an intercom. Now
she came and stood beside Kirk. It seemed
natural to put his arm around her. She leaned against
him.
"Watch," she said.
The plunging of the float eased, even though the
waves rose up higher and higher. "to Captain,
we're sinking!" Sulu exclaimed. He gazed
wildly around, eyes agleam in the lightning glow.
"It's all right, Mr. Sulu. It's
intentional-I think."
Aileea nodded. "This one's too bad to ride
out. We're going under till it passes."
The water rose up in a black froth, seeming
to wash the pandemonium of the storm up and away. Then
they were floating in peace, surrounded by the weird
blue-fluorescing undersea life of Discord.
In time Kirk noticed that Sulu and Gita had
slipped away. He hugged Aileea close to him.
Then he kissed her hair and went away to bed
alone, feeling no end of virtuous, and a fool.
"Uh-oh," Aileea said. Her fingers stabbed at
the controls of her aircraft radio.
The storm had passed, leaving no trace. The
sky was dear, except for a few stringy clouds like
egg white trailed in hot grease. Waverider
Ranch had surfaced again, none the worse for wear.
Kirk had the option of beaming straight back up to the
Enterprise, but out of consideration for his
hostess he was making the long ride back to Discord
City with her. Aileea listened, her body taut,
then spoke into her headset microphone, too low for
Kirk to hear. She punched the computer keypad,
sucked her lower hp, and nodded. Then she puffed off
her headset and looked at Kirk. "Stilters in
small boats, attacking a Harmony harvest ship
forty klicks from here."
"What are you going to dor,
The banking of the aim-raft wings answered him.
6612m going to help. Those silly Harmonians
are the next thing to pacifists. The Stilters will tear
them apart."
She glanced at Kirk. "The storm is over,"
she said. "You can beam back up to your ship if you're
worried about your neutrality." She could not keep a
tincture of bitterness out of her voice.
"No. I should see this."
"You're armed," she said, with a nod toward the
phaser he wore at his belt. "Will you fightr
141 mlt9*
She showed her teeth and said no more.
In a few minutes Kirk could see the wakes,
white lines on blue, and then he made out the mass
of the seaweed harvester, and finally the Susuru
boats, circling like Orcas attacking a blue
whale.
"I've called the ranch," Aileea said.
"Gita will be here as soon as she can."
64 Sulu-was
"Will he fight?"
Kirk looked grim. "I'm sure he would, if
he had any choice. But he doesn't."
Aileea looked at him. "But you, as captain,
have the privilege of following your conscience and defying
your commissioner with impunity."
"Not exactly with impunity."
She shook her head. "It's a hell of a system
you live under." As she spoke she had descended
until the belly of the craft was almost brushing the
waves, which a fi-esh breeze blowing counter to the
current was whipping into a chop. A pink flash from
ahead-another. Aileea made an exasperated
sound at the base of her throat. "There go the
Harmonians. Missing again."
"You have lasers?" Kirk asked.
"A few. I put my trust in bullet
launchers. Lasers're energy hogs, and as much
energy as we've got access to, it's tough to make
it portable enough to make them useful."
She looked at him. "I suppose you've
solved that problem, with those phasers of yours. You and the
Klingons."
He nodded.
He goggled then, because they were c losing at a
fantastic rate with a small boat, from the fan
deck of which a pair of heavy machine guns were raking
the
harvester. From this angle it looked as if a
head-on collision were imminent.
Aileea flipped a cover up on the top of her
stick and rested her thumb against a button. Cross
hairs appeared on the windscreen in front of her.
She adjusted the bank of the aircraft and hit the
button briefly.
A snarl. The aircraft decelerated. Kirk
saw splinters fly white from the bow of the Susuru
boat. It instantly lost way and was settling by the
bows as Aileea pulled up her nose to flash
overhead.
"Chin Gatling," she said. "One down, five
to go." Then "Draft them all, anyway. They're
boarding !"
Kirk looked quickly and saw two of the boats
bobbing unattended, one to either side of the
tender's broad, flat stem. "No time to mess with
these fools," Aileea said. She zoomed a
hundred meters and hit the controls that changed the wing
aspect from horizontal to vertical. The verti
lost speed as if the air had suddenly gotten
thicker.
The aircraft vibrated. Kirk glanced out his
window and noticed a line of holes in the starboard
wing. "Those are-was
"Bullet holes," Aileea said, pivoting the
aircraft to face back toward the ship. "We're
low and slow. We're a good target right about now."
Before he could react to that good news she pressed
another button. Fire and smoke rippled
into Kirk's right peripheral vision. Explosions
fountained water next to the slab- sided hull of the
Harmonian vessel. A Susuru boat burst
through the spray curtain on its side and struck the
ocean upside down, plowing a great white furrow in
the water. "Strapped-on rocket pods,"
Aileea said. "Where're the other two boats?"
Kirk pointed. He opened his mouth. It took
him a moment to find his voice.
"Running," he said.
She nodded. "Good. Good boys.
They've got the idea." Like a giant predatory
insect the verti dropped its nose and swept
forward. Brown Susuru bobbed in the water ahead,
their ruffs matted miserably. Kirk tensed, fearing
his escort would machine gun the helpless beings in the
water. He wasn't prepared to sit still for that.
. But what am I going to do? he wondered. Stun
her with my phaser? She's driving.
She passed over the swimmers without a glance,
flying toward the harvest ship itself. A gun battle
raged on the deck. Several figures lay still or
kicking on the open afterdeck. Others fired
automatic weapons from the stern and a tangle of
machinery amidships, attacking the tall
superstructure forward. Kirk thought he could count
at least twenty figures in the boarding party. Not
all of them had the attenuated oddly proportioned
outlines of Susuru.
"This is bad," Aileea said. As she came
alongside the ship she was pivoting again,
clockwise, so that her gun bore along the
vessel's beam. A rush of Susuru was just
crossing the afterdeck. Several quick pulses of
Gatling fire swept them away. . Kirk
wasn't watching the carnage on the deck.
He was watching Aileea's face. He saw no
pleasure there, no exaltation-merely a
drawn-back grimace, as if she were doing something
necessary but unpleasant.
The ship stopped and hovered. From amid the
metallic tangle a pale flash. The windscreen
starred between Aileea and Kirk. Kirk ducked as
metalcrystal flakes showered him like snow.
"Surrender, you stilt-legged idiots,"
Aileea snarled. "I've got the drop on you!"
More shots reached out for them. An incautious
Susuru blasted away at them from the rail aft.
With apparent reluctance Aileea twitched the nose
that way and blew him apart with a short burst.
"'allyou don't like killing them!" Kirk said,
shouting over engine whine and gunfire.
"'ationot It's not a challenge. It's just sad."
She tweaked the collective for her left and right
engines, making the aircraft dip and bob. She
searched for clear targets. Muzzle flashes winked
among the machinery. Aileea fired a burst
amidships, spinning a cloud of debris into the air.
"No," she said angrily. "I can't just shoot up
the ship at random."
She reached behind her seat and came up with a
stubby machine pistol with a curved feed device in
front of the handgrip. "Forgive me for what I'm
about to do," she said. The aircraft darted forward and
dropped onto the afterdeck. The engine noise whined
down the scale as Aileea dove clear of the
aircraft, hit the deck, rolled, and came up
shooting. Kirk twisted in his seat. A pair of
Susuru in the stem dropped their own machine
pistols and dove over the rail. He already knew the
aircraft wasn't bulletproof. It was,
however, an excellent target. And even if no one
wanted to shoot at it per seeacom it was still big and in the
way. Kirk jerked open his own door and threw himself
down on the ubiquitous fiber mat that covered the
deck.
Aileea ran toward the amidships jumble. A
pair of Susuru stood up and opened fire on
her. Screaming, she held up her weapon and swung
it side to side,
spraying them. The one on her right went down under
repeated hits. The other threw his piece down and
fled. Bullets gouged the matting by the heel of
Kirk's right boot. He didn't know who was
shooting at him. Under the circumstances, he didn't
care. He tried to spring up.
Unaccustomed gravity staggered him. He got to all
fours and scrambled forward.
He started to lunge into an alcove surrounded
by comfortably solid-looking housings. A brown
furry figure blocked him-a Susuru clutching
some kind of short two-handed gun. It shied away and
started.to point the weapon at Kirk. He punched
it in the nose. It collapsed onto the
backward-angled knees of its forelimbs, covered
its snout with its hands, and began to cry.
Kirk stepped back. What the hell am I
doing Jwe? He felt like a bully.
Bullets from somewhere cracked past his head. He
dove willy-nilly into the machinery, managing
to avoid running into any more lurking foes or busting
a shin on anything. He ducked under a foot-thick
conduit and took stock of the situation.
Aileea was rampaging around the metal jungle
somewhere. He heard her hollering and shooting. Shots
were still cracking off in various directions, bullets
striking metal and tumbling off with nasty little
supersonic-edged whines. He felt the weight of the
hand phaser at his belt, longed to draw it; he was
at the mercy of anyone who stumbled across him. But
he, did not dare draw a weapon unless
he was prepared to stun anybody he saw with a gun,
Aileea included. And he was unwilling to drop her
and allow the Susuru to take the ship by default.
It was a strange sensation, tasting of copper in his
mouth like the trace-element tang of Discordian
food. He was Kirk, the fearless starship captain,
always in the first party to beam down into the unknown, always the
first to seize control of any situation. And he
couldn't do a thing. Enforced passivity made him itch
all over, as if he had been sprinkled with tiny
metal shavings.
Nor was he impartial as he should have been. He
ached to do something for Aileea. She was obviously good
at this. And the Susuru's morale was just as
obviously not good. But a lone woman, however
formidable, against twelve or twenty well- armed
foes was not sane odds. Sooner or later the
Susum were bound to get bold, or lucky.
A noise like a giant pillowcase ripping. A
ringing boom, and a ball of yellow flame rolled up
above the portside rail aft. Then Gita's
verti roared overhead, residual smoke drooling
from the rocket at pod with which it had just exploded one
of the Susuru boats moored at the harvester's
stem.
Kirk heard shrill despairing yips. Then he
heard heavy muffled thumps as Susum began
to toss their weapons out on the mat. He saw one
step out with hands clasped over the small of its back
in an unmistakable sign of surrender. "You can come
out, now, Captain," he heard Aileea call.
"It's over."
Frowning, he emerged to find the green-haired
Discordian herding Susuru into a disconsolate
huddle under the wing of her aircraft. Blood
streamed down the right side of her face. His heart in
his throat, he started forward. "You're shot," he
said.
"No. Just clumsy. I banged my head on a
flange."
"So what happens now?"
"We don't make a practice of feeding
prisoners," Aileea said. Kirk's eyes got
bleak. "So first we get Gita and some boats out
to pick up survivors from the boats I sank, and
then we find some scow to ship these critters home
to their pals in." and'allyou just ... let them go?"
"As I said, we don't want to feed them." She
grinned. "Besides, it drives their High Command
insane, figuring out what to do with them. Their
morale's shaky enough without survivors coming back
to spread tales of defeat."
"You don't hate them?"
She looked at the prisoners, sad slumps of
dejection. It was impossible to imagine them offering
anybody harm again. "But they killed your father," he
said, not because he wanted to reopen a wound, but because he
could not fathom how this young woman, so passionately
devoted to defending her sense of self, could not want
vengeance on those who had aggressed against her and hers-
Her response caught him completely
by surprise. She spun toward him, bringing up her
machine pistol one-handed. Her face was twisted into the
purest look of rage he had ever seen.
Too stunned by her abrupt betrayal
to respond, he watched as her finger tightened on the
trigger, saw the muzzle flare dance, and felt
impacts along his rib cage. But they were feather
pats, shockwaves from the mini-sonic booms the
bullets made in passing. Beside Kirk's right
boot a patch of deck glowed pink and vanished.
Kirk wheeled. A young Klingon with an ensign's
emblem on his sash and blood streaming down his face from
a gouge on his cranial crest staggered back
with half a dozen holes in his chest. A
phaser dropped from his hand. He clutched at himself and
collapsed to the deck. "You know who killed my father,
Captain?" Aileea called. "It was them. The
ridgeheads, the Kofirlar. For forty years we fought
the Stilters. For forty years we always beat them.
They never hurt us so badly that we really felt the
sting. "Now these Klingons have come, and everything has
changed. They're promising the Stilters the means
to wipe us off the planet-if they can't get you to do the
job for them." She ejected the spent magazine
onto the deck. "Now we have somebody to hate."
"AH, Emu," Chekov was sighing when Kirk
returned to the bridge. The young ensign had just
returned from his own leave rotation on the surface and
was, regaling Lieutenant Kyle with his
adventures. "They stuffed me with beef stroganoff
and wodka until I could barely move. And the women
-- -- Kyle gave him a skeptical look.
"What were they doing giving all this away? I thought that
lot were fanatical laissez-faire capitalist
types."
"That does not mean they don't know how to'be
hospitable," Chekov said. "They wanted me
to tell them stories and more stories of life in the
Federation, and the strange and wonderful
planets I've seen."
"And they didn't present you the check when you
left?" Chekov shook his head. "It was walue for
walue," he said. "They said the entertainment I
gave them more than paid for my room and board."
"Rum lot of capitalists, if you ask me."
"Bah. Don't talk to me of capitalism.
We Russians inwented capitalism."
With a sigh of satisfaction Kirk settled
into his command chair. He was back where he belonged.
The temperature was normal, the gravity was
normal, and the very light didn't make him itch as
if he were receiving a lethal dose of radiation. There
were plenty of unpleasant ramifications of the encounter
he'd been embroiled in earlier to ponder. He would
ponder them later. Rij now he was filled with the rather
foolish elation of once more having been shot at and
survived. He nodded to Chekov at the
helmsman's station, then looked at his communications
officer. "Lieutenant," he said, "you're looking
especially radiant today."
"Why, thank you, Captain," Uhura said.
"Is there something-different-about your appearance?" --
She turned her head to display an orange flower
behind her ear. "Jason gave it to me,
sir.- It's called a passion bloom." "Well,
it's hardly regulation, Lieutenant-but under the
circumstances I suppose we can overlook it."
"Thank you, Captain."
"Status report, Mr. Chekov."
"Captain, all systems are fully
functional. We have no personnel in the brig. As
of this moment, we have one hundred and seven crew
taking shore leave on the surface of the planet,
including Mr. Spock, who is at a deep-sea
research station in the southern hemisphere, near the
oceanic trench the human colonists call
Hellsgate Rift, and Mr. Sulu, who is-was
"In capable hands, I know, Ensign. What about
Commissioner Wayne?"
"She beamed aboard at twenty-three seventeen
ship's time last night, sir. She remains on
board-was
"Captain," Uhura said, "I'm receiving a
coded subspace communication from Starfleet. It's
directed to your personal attention. I-I'm
getting one for Commissioner Wayne, too." "Forward
hers to her quarters, Lieutenant," he said.
"I'll take mine'in the briefing room. And
kindly pass the word for Mr. Spock
to beam up as soon as compossible."
"Yes, sir."
Concern made Admiral Douglas Satanta's
prerecorded face heavier than usual.
"Captain, Deputy Commissioner Wayne says
you've been refusing to carry out your orders. She's
been raising seven kinds of hell with StarfLeet
Command. She's got Commissioner Hightower camped out
on the front steps of the Federation Council.
"You may not realize just how powerful
Interspecies Affairs has gotten. Starfleet
has been receiving a lot of heat recently, about
so-called human 6cultural imperialism" and
domination of nonhuman sentients. Hightowees been
capitalizing on that to increase his own power-and
Wayne's his fair-haired lass. The two of them
are making you out as accomplice to the rape of the
Susuru. And the Council's buying it."
For a moment he just looked out of the screen. Kirk
felt a crawling sensation at the pit of his belly.
There were few things in this universe Douglas
Satanta was afraid to confront. Even the truth.
"I don't know what you're doing out there, Jim.
I'm sure it's what you think best. But it's past
the time for that now. "A fleet of
transports just left this Starbase. Its commander
has orders to bring back the human colonists from
Okeanos. If you don't have them ready to leave at
that point, he has orders to bring you back in
irons."
He spread his big, capable hands. "Jim,
I've done all I can to run interference for you. But
it's out of my hands now." The screen went blank.
Kirk sat back in his chair and stared at it for a
long time.
"That's the trouble with feeling as if you're on top
of the world," he finally, said. "It's always a sure
sign you and it are about to swap places."
He got up and walked back to the bridge.
Uhura was working her console again. "Captain, a
message from the surface. It's the Susuru
leader, sir."
He waved. "Main screen, Lieutenant."
The face of Swift appeared. "Captain," he
said, 66 your delays have become insufferable. You
clearly
intend to take no measures to remove your people from
comour world."
Kirk took a deep breath. "Lead Walker,
I have told you I would take no action
until you and the Discordians had gotten together at the
negotiation table. At this point, it's you who's doing
the delaying."
The Susuru made a chopping gesture, inward
toward its keellike breastbone. "There will be no
negotiation. There must be an end. Therefore, I have
ordered my forces to prepare to launch
nuclear-tipped rockets at the Discordian
cities when my deadline expires, two days
hence."
"No," Kirk said softly.
The ears tipped forward. "I beg your pardon,
Captain?" "No. You are not going to do that. Because if
you do-if you try-I will blast every stick of your
military equipment that's bigger than a rifle
into slag. I'll sink your ships. I'll ground your
aircraft. I'll bring your'commerce to a halt."
Swift's ruff stood on end. "Captain, you
cannot-was "Oh, but I can," Kirk said, leaning forward.
"Just try me, Swift."
"I invoke the Prime Directive!" the
Susuru said. "You cannot intervene."
Kirk smiled. "It won't fly, Swift. You
invited us in here. You insisted that we come and involve
ourselves in the affairs of your planet.
Indeed, you said we couldn't refuse, because your
enemies were our people and therefore our responsibility.
Yes, the Prime Directive exists, Lead
Walker, and it exists to prevent starship officers like
me from interfering in the affairs of planets like yours.
But guess what? You waived it when you asked us in
here. his
"This is an intolerable breach of our
sovereignty!" "No, it isn't. If you want
to see one, though, make one move I can even
possibly interpret as leading up to a nuclear
attack on the Discordians. Kirk out!"
He sighed. "What else could go wrong?"
The turbolift door hissed opcn. "What is
going on here?" the voice of Commissioner Wayne
demanded.
"I should know better than to ever ask that question,"
Kirk said.
"What?" Wayne said, coming forward.
"Nothing, Commissioner."
She smiled. "I take it you've heard the news
from Starfleet?" she said. Her cheeks were flushed,
her eyes glittered with triumphant malice.
"I have."
"So now you will naturally comply with your
orders." Mr. Spock stepped onto the bridge.
"Captain, I understand you summoned me."
"Yes, Mr. Spock, I did. I just received
two disturbing pieces of news."
He saw Wayne frown, perplexed. "First, I
am informed that Starfleet has dispatched a fleet of
transports to remove the Discordians. I'm to have
the colonists ready to depart by the time they arrive."
A flicker of concern passed over the aquiline
face and was quickly suppressed. "Perhaps that should not
surprise us, Captain."
"Perhaps it should not. Second, the Susuru have just
announced that they intend to wage nuclear war upon their
neighbors."
"We cannot certainly permit that, Captain."
"I've already made that abundantly clear
to Lead Walker Swift."
"What did you tell him?" Wayne asked. Her
eyes were strangely bright, and her cheeks were
flushed.spock looked at her intently.
"I told him if he tried it, I'd phaser his
war machine into the middle of next week," Kirk
said. "He seemed to get the message, but he
wasn't happy about it."
"So you continue to intervene on behalf of the
intruders," Wayne said.
Kirk stared at her, momentarily unable to believe
what he'd heard. "Commissioner," he finally
managed, "what exactly are you saying?"
"That you'll do anything to help the invaders against the
native people. Simply because they're human."

FROM THE DEPTHS
"The use of nuclear weapons is strongly
proscribed by the Federation," Spock said.
"As your captain's friends down there love to tell
us, this isn't the Federation. You have no right
to intervene."
"But we are here acting as representatives of the
Federation," Kirk said. "If the transport
fleet arrives to discover we have permitted the
inhabitants of Okeanos to use nuclear weapons
on one another, you and I will both be sharing the wrong
end of a capital court-martial for genocide." .
Her answer was a defiant head-flip, clearing red
bangs from her eyes. "The issue would appear to be
moot," Spock said. "Lead Walker has
achieved his objective. Starfleet has sent a
transport convoy to remove the Discordians."
Wayne drew in a deep breath. Her
shoulders sagged as she let it out again. "You're right,
Mr. Spock. It was the principle I was concerned
with."
Kirk and Spock exchanged glances.
"Captain," Wayne said, "I'm beaming down
to the people at lanet surface. There are matters I
need to attend to."
Kirk spread his hands. Wayne left.
The bridge crew stared at Kirk.
"Captain," Uhura said hesitantly, "was the
commissioner actually saying she might let the
Susuru use nuclear weapons?"
"Either that or we're both hallucinating,
Lieutenant." "Captain," Spock said,
"Deputy Commissioner Wayne has begun to behave
in a most erratic manner."
"You've noticed."
The irony was lost on Spock. "I have taken the
liberty of reviewing the commissioner's records.
They
seem unduly cursory. She does seem to have
left behind her a string of c omplaints for high-handed and
impulsive behavior. In all instances, however,
she was found to have acted correctly."
"By Commissioner Hightower?"
"The records do not say. I would estimate the
probability as high."
He seemed about to continue. Kirk held up a
hand. "Spare me the exact percentage, Spock.
I'll take your word for this one."
Spock nodded imperturbably. "If you will not be
needing me, I should prefer to return to the research
station. Dr. Arkazha claims she has something of
great interest to show me in the region of the
Hellsgate Rift."
Kirk waved a hand. "Go, Spock. Might as
well gather ye rosebuds while ye may."
Spock cocked an eyebrow at him and left.
Kirk rose. "Uhura, contact sickbay," he
said. "Pass the word for Dr. McCoy to meet me
in my quarters immediately, if you please."
41 She refuses to let me examine her,
Jim," McCoy said. He stood with his back to the
bulkhead and his arms folded, beside the niche which contained
the model of the Constitution. "Since she's a
civilian, I can't insist."
Kirk paced. "What about her medical
records?" "She has no organic condition which
might account for her increasingly irrational
behavior," McCoy said. "Her
psychological records were not downloaded in the
ship's computer."
Kirk stopped and stared at him. "Isn't that
unusual, Bones?" "Not really. She's a highly
placed civilian official.
It's considered an invasion of privacy for the
likes of you and me to be prying into such confidential
information."
Kirk grimaced and went back to pacing. "I'm
just a country doctor, Jim," McCoy said, "and
not a headshrinker by any means. But I can offer a
possible explanation."
"Shoot."
"Now, this can't leave this room; I'm way
outside my field, and it borders on the
unethical to diagnose a patient I haven't
examined. You can't take any of this as constituting an
official opinion-was
Kirk made a chopping gesture. "All right,
Bones."
"To me, Commissioner Wayne seems to show all the
sips of being an abuse survivor who never dealt
with the fact."
Kirk frowned. "You mean her father-was "Was an
overweening old bastard. Imagine what it
was like growing up as his kid?"
"You actually think he beat her?" "I can't
say, Jim; I didn't examine him, either. As
another utterly unqualified guess, I'd say
it's damned likely. But systematic
psychological abuse leaves scars that are just as
deep, even if they aren't as visible."
"Why hasn't all this surfaced before?"
McCoy shrugged. "Maybe it has, Jim. But
probably not in such a severe manner."
"What do you mean?"
"She's under enormous stress out here. A virgin
planet, a previously unknown alien race in
conflict with human settlers-to her it seems a
textbook example of the sort of abuses
Interspecies Affairs was created to correct. And
she at eels both a strong psychological
identification with the Susuru, and a strong antipathy
toward the Discordians."
"Don't I know it."
"Then there's the Klingon presence to complicate
matters. More to the point, there's you and Kain."
Kirk looked at him sharply. "Explain yourself,
Doctor." "I'd say the poor child finds herself
caught in a conflict of father figures.
Combined with all the other stressors, it's causing her
to come apart."
Kirk stared at his friend. He felt his face grow
warm. "But I keep telling you I'm only a year
or two older-was McCoy shook his head.
"Doesn't make a bit of difference, Jim.
You're the man in command, and that's not just a matter of the
color shirt you wear. You're a strong man, a
strong personality type. You stamp your mark on
any situation you come in contact with. You press all
her daddy buttons at once. "And so does this
Klingon devil Kain."
Kirk took a deep breath. "If this is
true, why has she been entrusted with so much
responsibility?"
"Good heavens, Jim! The Federation can't
discriminate against someone simply because of the way he
or she was raised. Child abuse isn't as prevalent
as it was a couple of centuries ago, but it still goes
on. It isn't her fault; she's obviously a very
intelligent andcapable woman, who deserves the chance
to rise as high as her abilities will carry her."
"What about the fact that she hasn't dealt with her
past? Assuming that all of this bears any relationship
to reality." "I warned you this was all liable
to be spun sugar and moonshine, Jim."
"And that's never stopped you before, Doctor.
McCoy started to glower, then turned it into a grin
that vanished as quickly as it had come. "And I
won't let it stop me now. Dealing with a history of
abuse is a highly personal matter, Jim.
It's not something anyone outside you can force;
intervention is just flat counterproductive."
dis"...But she's vulnerable."
"Everybody's vulnerable, one way or another.
Can't hold it against us."
"I guess not." Kirk stopped, stood staring
down at his model sailing ship, as if imagining
himself riding its decks, through seas less poisonous
and strange than those of Discord. "Besides, it's all
academic now, anyway, from what you tell me,"
McCoy said. "She's got what she wanted."
Kirk reached a finger to touch the rigging. "Yes."
He turned to the doctor. "What would it take
to get hold of her psychological records,
Bones?"
"A request from me to Starfleet, countersigned.
by you as the captain." The seams of his face deepened
in a frown. "Jim, a request like that won't look
too good on your record at a Court of
Inquiry. It'll look like some kind of petty
revenge for her going over your head to Starfleet."
"Send it anyway. Might as well be hanged
for a sheep as a lamb." He snorted a laugh.
"Haven't you always wondered just what that expression
means?"
"Good thing Spock's not here," McCoy said
gruffly. "He'd probably tell us."
Kirk started for the door. McCoy hung back.
"Do it, Bones," the captain said. "I just have to know.
Even though there's nothing more she can do."
"And so we've won, Captain Kain,"
Moriah Wayne said. She sat by the great
hardwood table in the
Klingon's underground chamber. She was speaking
somewhat too brightly, like a chattering bird.
"Starfleet's sending transports to take the
colonists off Island. We've got what we
wanted."
Kain stood beside the table with one arm folded across his
chest, the other elbow propped upon it, the palm
cupping his chin. He studied Wayne with his single
eye. Then he shook his head.
"Moriah, Moriah," he said sadly. "How
you disappoint me." "What?" she cried.
"Surely you're not that naive, to believe you've
bested James Kirk so easily."
She jumped to her feet. "But he'll have no
choice! There'll be an admiral with the fleet.
He'll make Kirk obey-or relieve him."
"Kirk has slipped the noose before," Kain
said, "time and time again. What makes you think he
won't do so this time? He's a hero to the warmongers of
Starfleet. Do you really expect them to act against
him?"
In her agitation Wayne kept walking several
steps one way, then several steps the other. "But-was
Kain shook his head. "This will end as so many
similar episodes have ended-with more Earther perfidy.
Another helpless native race beaten down
by human arrogance, another planet falling victim
to human greed. A piquant irony, don't you
think-that your human-dominated Federation favors even
its outlaws over the natives they exploit.,,
She covered her face with her hands and pulled them
slowly downward as if trying to scour away
self-doubt. "Not again. Oh, Earth Mother, I can't
let it happen again."
"The men of Starfleet stick together. It's just a
fact of life." "He's going to get
away with it, isn't he?" Kain smiled. "Not if
you don't let him."
Yeoman Robison nodded politely as
Commissioner Wayne stepped off the transporter
stage. She walked purposefully around the control
console to where he
stood. I
"Can I help you, Commissioner?" he asked
cautiously. He was a properly respectful young
man, but he wasn't about to let any civilian,
no matter how top-lofty, go poking at his board
without due authorization.
She smiled a warm smile-thrilling, even.
Smiling like that the commissioner was really something to look
at, not at all the dragon scuttlebutt made
her out to be.
"Why, yes, Yeoman. I felt a strange
kind of dislocation as I beamed up-something like nausea.
I wondered if everything was adjusted right."
Of course it was, but he looked the slide
controls over again, just to make sure.
"Well, Commissioner," he said, trying not to sound
too condescending, "the fact is you can't feel much of
anything in the dissociated state-was
Concentrating on his console, he did comn
see the commissioner bring her hand out from behind her hip and
press a small gold tube to the side of his
neck. And then he didn't see anything at all.
Her heart in her throat, Wayne stood watching
the young man in the red shirt. Surely it hadn't
worked, surely he was still awake- She waved a hand
in front of his face. His eyes did
not move to track the motion, nor did he blink.
He did not seem to breathe.
It was as she had been told to expect. The
"ur, a spiny rock lizard from a little-visited world
of the Klingon Empire, produced a neurotoxin that
had the property of putting all its victim's
physical processes on hold. She had one
hundred seconds; then the handsome young yeoman would
begin to function again, with no memory of any
interruption-or of the preceding few minutes.
Being careful not to come in contact with the youth-she
couldn't bring herself to believe entirely in the toxin's
effectiveness-she manipulated the controls, locking
the transporter beam onto the first set of
coordinates she had memorized. She had no
experience of working a transporter unit, but the
steps were simple and she had committed them to memory.
Her father had made sure she kn ew how
to memorize things, quickly and infallibly.
She energized the beam. A trill, a sparkle,
and a dark metallic cylinder squatted on the
central disk. She left the console and jumped
lithely onto the platform to bend over the cylinder and
press a relay. A red light glowed alive on
top of the cylinder. Unreadable characters began to flicker
green on a small panel beside the pilot light.
Making herself breathe slowly and move without haste,
Wayne returned to the console and set the controls
to a different set of coordinates. Plenty of time,
she told herself. Nothing tofear. Nothing in the world.
She pressed the button once more. The cylinder
turned to light, wavered, and vanished.
Moriah Wayne shuddered. Then she composed
herself and walked quickly from the transporter room.
Yeoman Robison blinked and shook himself.
"Whoa," he said. "I must've been daydreaming
there." He rubbed his eyes. "Just zoned out there for a
moment," he told himself aloud. "Good thing
Lieutenant Commander Scott didn't wander in
to check up on me."
From his seat in the glassed-in control room
poised above the fusion bottle that provided power
to Harmony, Sonny Puleomua was
talking to his cousin Hannes in Storm. "No,
there's been nothing exciting going on around here
except for the visit by the space people. Didn't even
know they'd been here myfnobody tells me anything,
and I was onshift, and anyway I heard they were being
shown around by some of those snotty Discord City
types. I'll tell you one thing-hey!" The
readouts on his panels had gone crazy.
Interference lines crackled over his cousin's face
on the telephone screen. "What the hell's going
on here?" he demanded. "My displays are all
dancing around like spackle bugs in swarming season!"
He broke off, half rose, and leaned forward
to stare through the observation window. "There's some kind of
yellow light flickering down on the floor," he
said.
Something dark and heavy-looking had simply
appeared next to the foamed-cement containment bottle.
"Holy Mother Eris!" he exclaimed. "What's-was
"Captain!" Ensign Chekov exclaimed.
"Our sensors are showing something that cannot be!"
Kirk sat up straight in his chair. "What is
it, Ensign?" "I'm, detecting what looks like a
thermonuclear explosion of approximately
one-half megaton in the city of
Harmony!"
SpocKnowledge sAT iation THE cABOUT-IATION that had
been lent him in Deep-Sea Research Station
Five, anchored at a depth of five hundred
meters beneath the Southern Ocean, not far from
Hellsgate Rift. He gazed at a computer
monitor. In his hand was a control. To the twitching of
his forefinger screens full. of data flashed by his
eyes as quickly as cards being dealt from a bottomless
deck.
The things Mona Arkazha had shown him were
fascinating, from a scientific viewpoint. From one
perspective Discord was a violent world, but from
another its energetic ecosystem produced a
dynamism among its life-forms that was unparalleled
in the galaxy, to his extensive knowledge. And he was not
prepared to totally discount Arkazha's hints of some
greater discovery that she was not yet ready to share with him.
But the information he was scanning had nothing to do with the
undersea life of Discord.
It had nothing to do with native life-forms at
all. Or. so he was coming to believe.
The door opened. He glanced up.
Two Vares, a man and a woman, stepped quickly
into the room and split to stand flanking the
door. Both were Micros; each pointed a machine
pistol at him. In the doorway stood Mona
Arkazha. The gray bulk of a Grunt loomed in
the passageway behind her.
"I fear I must ask you to surrender your hand
phaser, your communicator, and that marvelous
tricorder of youp, Spock." Spock looked from
her to the Micros. Their reaction time was quicker than
his, he knew. They handled the firearms as if they
knew how to use themand were ready to. Resistance was
therefore illogical.
Deliberately he unfastened his belt and laid
it across the end of the desk he was working on. The nearer
Micro moved away from the wall, sidled to the
desk, snatched the belt, and danced back, being
careful to stay out of Spock's reach should he be
inclined to try anything melodramatic. Which, of
course, he was not.
"You not long ago broached the subject of trust,
Doctor," he said. "It would appear that you were
demanding of me something that you yourself did not merit."
Was that a ripple of pain across the amphibian
features? He had a hard enough time reading the facial
nuances of normal humans. He had no idea
what hers might signify. "Soon we will
find out who has kept faith and who has been
faithless," Arkazha said. "In the meantime, you must
come with me."

comreports seeing possible survivors-was
"comfloating debris at twenty-one forty-one north,
fifty-five thirty west-was
"commy God, it's gone, the city's just ...
gone."
Kirk closed his eyes. Sulu was back at his
station, monitoring surface traffic. The picture
it painted was far from complete, but it showed Kirk far
more than he cared to know. "What about Mr. Spock,
Sulu? Any chance of beaming him up yet?"
"Negative, sir. The storm has settled right
over the research station, and it shows no sign of
breaking up. It's not safe to try to use the
transporters."
Kirk thought of the few terrible times he'd seen the
results of interference in a transporter beam, and
his stomach did a barrel roll. Spock was his friend
as well as his first officer. The situation was not urgent
enough to demand that Kirk risk doing that to him. Yet.
The transporters were working overtime as it was,
trying to bring the Enterprise's current
leave rotation home as quickly as possible. He had
as yet no idea of the source of the blast that had
destroyed Harmony and most, if not all, of her
three- quarters of a million occupants. The
ship's computer had reviewed his last exchange with
Swift exhaustively and confirmed the Universal
Translator routine's rendering of his words He
had clearly been referring to fission weapons, not a
fusion device. And the destruction of Harmony had
unmistakably been accomplished by a runaway
fusion reactions hydrogen bomb.
So he didn't know that the war for Okeanos had
escalated catastrophically. But on general
principles he wanted to get the Enterprise's
strayed sheep back in the fold with all deliberate
speed.
Especially since it seemed increasingly certain
that five of his people would never be coming back.
Fortunately most of the crew had at least begun their
leaves in Discord City, where the first contact had
been made. Discord Citians-the term
citizens made them cranky-did not get along
all that well with Harmonians. The crew members
who made contacts elsewhere had mostly gone
to Storm or Serendip or Qara-Qitay.
But five had apparently wound up in Harmony.
Kirk listened to the broadcasts from volunteer
rescue flights and boats in part to learn as much as
he could about what had happened, in part to see if there
was any way Enterprise could help the survivors.
But mostly it was against the chance, thin as a
monomolecular line, that some or all of the five had
managed to survive.
"Captain," Uhura said, "a call coming through for
you from Discord City."
"Put it on, Lieutenant."
The face of Aileea dinAthos filled the
screen. Kirk managed a strained smile.
"Aileea, let me say-was
"Captain Kirk," she said, as if she hadn't
heard. "How could you?"
Her image flickered. An electric storm
squatted on top of Discord City, too. It
wasn't the same as the one over Deep-Sea
Five, a whole world away.
"What?" he askedeautterly confused.
"I know that you're a statistea'b in spite of that
I thought you were a good man. Now I know otherwise."
41What are you talking about, Aileea? What
have I done?" Her cheeks rode up and
turned her eyes to jade crescents. "Is this how
it's going to be? You're just going to deny knowing that someone
beamed down from your ship and sabotaged the Harmony
power plant?"
"What?"
"Our power plants are linked together by data
networks," Aileea said, "so that in case of disaster
at one the others will at least know how it came about.
The instrumentation at the Harmony bottle showed
interference of the same pattern caused by your
transporter-beams right before the blast."
She drew a breath. "Also, the chief
technician on duty at the plant was talking to a
relative by phone at the time. He spoke of
interference, then of something metallic-looking appearing
in a flicker of yellow
light-,,
A tear ran down her cheek., "Why, Jim?
Why?" He raised his hands and opened his mouth. It
took all his will to force out words.
"Aileea, you have to believe me-it wasn't us."
The intercom chimed. "Transporter room
to bridge,," said Mr. Scott's voice.
"Just a minute, Scotty," Kirk said aside,
"1-was "Captain, we've lost track of
our people remaining on yon planet. We cannae
beam anyone else aboard!" "We-we find
violation of the sacred rules of hospitality
repugnant," Aileea was saying. "But you have a
preponderance of power and we must protect ourselves.
Therefore, we have taken those of your people who remain upon
our planet into custody, and relieved them of
weapons, communicators, and other items that might
enable you to trace them. Even as we speak they are being
dispersed across all of Discord."
"Aileea?"
"Your people are now our hostages. There will not be
another Harmony." She vanished.
"Take the offensive," Moriah Wayne said.
"I beg your pardon?" Kirk said.
"It's time to crack down, Captain. You have
enor- 2 1 5
mous firepower on board; isn't it time to use
it? If you're concerned about preserving the lives of
these criminals, then try destroying some of the
property they hold so dear. Discord City might
be a place to start."
He looked at her. The regular bridge crew
was gathered in the briefing room to assess the
situation. It was bad. Few survivors
of Harmony had been located, and some forty-one
Enterprise crew members remained unaccounted for,
including the five almost certainly lost in the
explosion. The prevailing mood was shock, but
grief and confusion and fear were beginning to vent in
spikes of anger.
He tried to shallow an anger spike of his own.
"Commissioner, this is no time for jokes."
"I'm not joking," the commissioner said lightly.
She alone failed to share the grim mood. She
seemed elevated, almost manic. "You tried coddling
your precious human settlers, and look where it
got you."
"We don't know what's gotten us here,
Commissioner," Sulu said.
"We're not even sure where 'here" is," added
Dr. McCoy. "We don't know who set the
bomb, or why."
"What about the Discordians' charge that someone
beaming down from the Enterprise placed the bomb?"
Uhura asked. "Yeoman Robison was on duty
at the time," said Scott' "He swears nothing was
transported down at all. Sean's a good
lad-I trained him on the board myself. And you must
admit, someone beaming a bomb down to the
planet would be a wee bit hard to miss."
"The one thing we do know," Wayne said, "is that the
self- proclaimed Discordians have taken members
of this drew hostage." She leaned forward and
propped her arms on the table. Her eyes moved
from face to haggard face.
his, I'm surprised," she said quietly. "Where
is the military outrage, the fury at the fact that
your comrades-in-arms have been treacherously
imprisoned by their hosts? I'd think you'd all have
blood in your eye. Are you willing to let these people do
this to you?"
"No." All heads turned toward the head of the
table; it was Kirk who had spoken. "No, we cannot
let them do this to us. No matter what we may have
felt about the Discordians, as a group or
individually, we cannot tolerate having our people held
hostage. I refuse to tolerate it."
"What can we do, Jim?" McCoy asked.
"I've already told you what to do," Wayne said
airily. "Sooner or later, you p eople are
going to have to start listening to me."
"Confound it, woman, hasn't there been enough
destruction already?" McCoy exclaimed.
"There's a bigger problem," Kirk said.
"How can I attack a city without risking more of my
own crew? We don't know where they're being kept."
"Isn't it past the time for niceties like that?"
Wayne asked. "A strong commander knows when to,
write people off and get on with the campaign' his
""He jests at scars that never felt a
wound,"" McCoy quoted bitterly. "You speak
of military matters very confidently for a woman who
knows nothing of the military beyond the fact that she
doesn't like
"If that's strength," Kirk said, standing up, "then
I am weak, and proud of it. I write no one
off, Commissioner, until I see the body, or
until the danger to the living becomes too great
to press the issue-and even
then, I'll find a way to get back and perform a
rescue if I can. Lives must sometimes be
expended, yes. But no life is expendable. his
"So you will take your customary action," Wayne
said. "Which is to say, nothing. his
"I will act when I find a sensible action
to take." She nodded, as if pronouncing judgment.
"Then it's on your head," she said, and left.
"Now what. was that supposed to mean?" McCoy
asked.
Kirk strode down the corridor and headed for the
transporter room. There was no easily discernible
purpose to be served by the trip-Sulu's sensors
couldn't locate Spock or the other hostages from the
bridge, so there was little chance of detecting them down
there. But at just this moment there was nothing he could
accomplish on the bridge. At least the movement was
action, of a sort.
Besides, something was nagging at him, from the "back of
his skull. He had the notion that a trip to the
transporter might jog it loose from his
preconscious.
Thus distracted, he turned a comer and bumped
into a strikingly lovely young woman. He stepped
back. "Oh, excuse me-I'm very sorry-was Then
he noticed she was a Klingon. He snatched for his
hand phaser. She was faster. He saw a flash of
red. Then black.
"DR. ARKA-ZHA," Spock said, "your
course of action is entirely illogical."
Down and down the submersible went toward the center
of the planet-or at least the molten mantle. The
depths of Hellsgate Rift were a black more
absolute than space. The Rift embraced no
stars.
Mona Arkazha piloted the craft herself. She
respected her captive greatly. She did. not
want another to witness what she hoped-and thought-would
happen.
"You cannot hope to defeat the Federation in an open
confrontation," Spock continued. "Yet by your very
actions you are mobilizing the full might of the
Enterprise-and, eventually, of the Federation itself comagst
you. I do not understand what stands to be gained."
"Then consider what stands to be lost. If we
fight, we die- but we die both proud and free.
If we give in,
we stand to lose freedom, pride, our homes.
We lose the right to control our biological
destiny. We become again the helpless property of a
compassionate and caring state-too compassionate to kill
us, too caring to let us walk among its people, who
might be offended at our strangeness. Is that
logical, Spock?"
"While life remains, so also does the
possibility of altering circumstances for the better."
She showed him teeth. "We have you captive," she
said, "and life remains."
"What will you do with us?"
"Care for you. Indeed, make plans
to make restitution to you, if we can-for we know what
has been done is unlikely to be the. work of any
who were guesting among us. You are victims, and we will
not bide from the fact."
"if your intention is to care for me, why is it necessary
to convey me to the bottom of a tenthousand-meter-deep
trench?" "Because, Spock my friend," she said with her
eyes gleaming, "there's something down there that you must
see."
Rather to his own surprise, Kirk came back
to himself lying on the deck. Voices bounced off the
walls of a confined space and into his ears and made his
head seem to bulge. Familiar voices.
Unfortunately.
In the normal course of events, if he were
strolling through his ship and happened to bump into a
Klingon, who shot him, he would have to figure that was
it. But this clearly wasn't it, unless he was destined
to spend his afterlife in a place that also harbored both
Moriah Wayne and a pack of surly Klingons.
He refused even to contemplate the theo-
logical ramifications of that, and decided he must
be alive. It wasn't a fact he was
necessarily happy with. He knew somehow that he
hadn't been out long, which meant the phaser
had been set on the lightest possible "stun." But
the crude calibration of Klingon weaponry meant
he'd still taken a pretty hefty jolt. His head
felt as if somebody had drilled holes in both
temples to see if there really were little men in there or
what, and his stomach felt as if the little men were
actually in it-bouncing on a trampoline.
He turned and vomited. "I'm sorry you did
that, Jim," Moriah Wayne said. "It's going
to get a little close for you, locked in here with it."
He looked at her blearily and tried to get
to his feet. He was in a small storage compartment,
he realized. The flower of Klingon femininity who
had stunned him caught a fi/l of his shirt,
hauled him upright, and slammed him up against the
wall. She pinned him there with a forearm bar across the
throat. "How come," he managed to choke out, "all
the good-looking women I meet this trip wind up not
liking me?" She pressed harder. His vision started
to red out. "I am Senior Lieutenant Lu Kok
Tak," she said. "I want to kill you, but my
captain reserves that right for himself. You cost him his
captain, his eye, and his brother."
"I didn't mean ... to do those things," Kirk
gasped. "But ... you can tell him that ...
he's really starting to get me ticked." She raised
a hand to strike him. "No, Lieutenant,"
Wayne said sharply. "You are not to hurt him."
Lu Kok Tak gave her a look as if she'd
like to take a
crack at her. But she stood back and let
Kirk go. He slid down and landed on his tailbone
with impact that sent sparks shooting up his spine
to fountain up behind his eyes like sparklers.
He looked at Wayne. "Adding treason to your
long lists of accomplishments?"
"You're the one who's playing the traitor,
Jim," she, said. "You've ignored your orders.
You've refused to do your duty. It's fallen to these
people to try to set things right." "Klingons aren't usually
the first people I'd look to for setting things right," Kirk
said. "But if your definition of that includes murdering
three-quarter's of a million people, I guess then
it's right up their alley."
"I did that," she said. "My conscience is
clear. It needed doing. They were no more than cancer
cells."
It seemed to Kirk that there had to be something to say
to that. But his knees gave way beneath him, and he just
barely- stopped himself from hitting the deck with
his face. "We'll have plenty of time to discuss this
later," Wayne said. "Right now we have to go."
"Shall we leave a guard?" the Klingon woman
asked. She obviously did not like the taste asking
Wayne for orders left in her mouth.
"No, Lieutenant Lu. Too obvious.
Besides, just look at him." She laughed. "He's
helpless."
The lieutenant nodded curt agreement. Wayne
went out, followed by Lu Kok Tak and her two
male Klingon escorts. None of them troubled
to cover Kirk.
The door closed. A moment later Kirk saw
a red glow and smelled hot metal. They were welding
him in. He should have leapt to his feet and done
something
heroic and decisive then. Instead he huddled in
a miserable heap and let them do it.
Moriah Wayne turned away from the Mingon who
was kneeling to weld the door with his phaser. "When you
finish sealing him in here, take your men and rejoin the
others, Lieutenant Lu. If there's trouble on the
bridge I'll call you." Lieutenant Lu
Kok Tak stared at that pale throat and longed
to crush it. To endure the usual Earther
pronunciation of her name was bad enough. Lu was
grossly overfamiliar-the child name her grandmother called
her by before she was even blooded as coma hunter in the
cold hills of Klingon. The lieutenant knew
nothing of the commissioner's antecedents, which was as much as
she cared to. Merely by looking at her-her
carriage, the way she moved-Lu Kok Tak
knew that Wayne possessed muscle mass greater
than the norm for Earther women, both denser and
heavier. She had also clearly received some rudiments
of instruction in what passed for hand-to-hand combat
among the terangan. Lu Kok Tak could have cared
less. She considered herself, unarmed, the equal of a
male Earther warrior comif not his better. One of
their pallid flabby women was beneath her contempt. But
the lieutenant must let her live, for now. Not for this
arrogant Earther's sake, but out of obedience
to Kain. "It shall be as you wish," she said huskily,
and thought about dishes best served cold.
Moriah Wayne tried to effect the same
swagger when she stepped onto the bridge that Kirk
always
had. It was her bridge now, and she needed to let
these thick- skulled military types know it in a
hurry. She walked to the command chair and
sat down. The bridge crew began to glance at
her, uneasily and without friendliness.
"Mr. Sulu," she said, "lock main phaser
banks on the nearest Discordian city."
He ignored her. "Mr. Sulu," she said
sharply, "didn't you hear me?"
"I heard you," he said, looking straight ahead.
"Why aren't you obeying my orders?"
"With all due respect, you're not entitled
to give orders. Ma'am."
"I am assuming command, Mr. Sulu. Now do
what I say 61 No."
"Mr. Chekov," she said, "relieve Sulu of
his position. Security, escort Mr. Sulu to the
brig."
"Nyetea"...Chekov said. "Get someone else to do
your dirty work, lady Cossack."
She twisted in her seat to look at the two
security men who stood flanking the door.
"Security," she said, "what's the holdup? We
have a mutiny here."
"Security," Sulu said crisply, "please
remove Commissioner Wayne from the bridge."
The two men in red shirts started forward. Wayne
thumbed a button on a unit she held
concealed in the palm of her right hand.
'the turbolift doors opened. Klingons burst
upon the bridge. The security men wheeled. One
clawed for his phaser and was shot down himself before he
got the weapon clear. The other launched himself at the
man who had stunned his partner and grappled with him,
trying to wrest the weapon from. his grip. 224
Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak stepped from the
lift, saw the two struggling, and fired her phaser
at them. Both fell. Sulu had taken
advantage of the distraction to enter a quick code
sequence into the helm. Then he jumped up, reaching for
his own phaser. The Klingon lieutenant caught the
motion from the corner of her eye. She spun toward
him, dropping to one knee. His beam whined over her
head and splashed against the turbolift door. Hers
dead-centered his chest. He dropped. "Hikaru!"
Uhura cried, jumping to her feet. There were half
a dozen Klingons still standing. They covered the entire
bridge with their phasers. Uhura stayed where she
was. The Klingon lieutenant reached back and
pulled the manual override next to the
turbolift. This disabled the elevator and made it
impossible for hostile parties to reach the bridge.
She smiled. The Earthers did some things
right. A Klingon ran to the helm and stabbed at
buttons with his finger. Then he turned and snarled
syllables at Lu Kok Tak. Her lips writhed
back from her teeth. "The yIntag has locked the
board!" she exclaimed. "The controls will not
respond."
After the absolute blackness of descent the vent
seemed to glow like an irregular red sun. Arkazha
reached out and flicked off the interior lights, leaving
the submersible illuminated only by the fitful dance of
instrument displays and the vent's sullen glare.
"Now, Spock," she said, "open your mind."
"Why should I comply with your wishes, Doctor?"
"Because it costs you nothing. Because if you do not, a very
great wrong will be done. Because if you do not, your ship and
your captain might be in danger."
She leaned close. "And because if you do not, you will
spend the rest of your life wondering why I brought you
here," He stared at her in the darkness. Then he
nodded. Placing his hands on his thighs, he closed his
eyes and shut himself completely off from her, the tiny
instrument-crowded compartment, the awful impending sensation
of billions of tons of water pressing down from
overhead.
Then, having walled away distraction,
he willed his mind to open to what might come.
And then he began to scream.
KiWs BoDy was a bag of wet sand. He
got it upright again mainly by some form of levitation he
didn't know he'd mastered. Those Klingon phasers
must have more of a kick to them than he'd ever realized.
But he was coming out of it, slowly. He even had a
plan now. All he needed was the energy to put it
into action"
Which at the moment was like saying that if he had a long
enough lever and a proper ftdcrum, he could move
Discord. The only part of his body that had any
energy at the moment was his chest muscle where the
Klingon had shot him. That kept twitching, as if it
were a wild animal struggling to escape the rest of
him and live free roaming the passageways of the
Enterprise.
He took stock of his situation, which in
circumstances like this was always a mistake and
depressing but something he felt compelled to do. So
Kain had been up to some skulduggery all along; that
was not
exactly a surprise. The big question was what.
He still didn't have an answer to that one.
And Moriah ... He squeezed
shuteahis eyes, which made yellow sparks dance behind
them. Moriah, Moriah. He had found much in her
to admire ... in the beginning, at least. She had her
principles, her convictions. He respected her
obduracy because it was not much different from his own. He
had even loved her, or at least made love to her.
That episode seemed distant and unreal now, as if
it had happened in a dream, or to someone else. And
maybe that's because I don't want to accept that I
made love to ... something ... that could do what she
did.
He jacked his eyes upward, toward the overhead.
There was the outline of an access panel. His road
to freedom. If he could just convince his still-numb
limbs to get him there. "Levitation," he croaked.
"That's the secret."
A waver in air, a spill of gold. A new
Klingon stood on the bridge next to the helm.
He was of medium height, with black hair hanging
lank from his cranial ridge. In the breast pocket
of his tunic he wore a sheath of serpent-worm
skin, to protect, the fabric from wear by his light
stylus and other small instru- ments.
There was that about him which said he was coma computer
technician.
Watching from the main viewscreen, which in turn showed
him sitting in his hide-covered chair in his underground
command post, Kain nodded in satisfaction. "You may
relax now, Moriah," he said. "Q'reygh will
figure out how to unlock the fire-control
console long before the other terangan have discovered
anything is wrong."
The technician nodded and smiled at Wayne.
He was so impressed with her that he kept nodding and
smiling at her until Lu Kok Tak reached out from
behind and rapped him smartly on the ridge with her
fingertips. He whined a peevish complaint. Then he
knelt before the helm, unfastened the front panel,
and got down to work.
With a grunt and a heave, Kirk pulled himself up
through the hole in the overhead. His spasm of effort
knocked over the spare linen bundles he'd piled
up to stand on. Fortunately they didn't make much
noise.
For a moment he lay there sucking air through a gaping
mouth like a beached raft dodger, with his feet dangling
into the compartment. I've got to lose some weight. I
won't even make Bones nag me about it this time.
By centimeters he wriggled the rest of him up
into the Jeffries tube. Then he lay there
and devoted some time to the existential pleasures of
breathing. His head began to clear. He began to feel
less as if his entire body were one big funny
bone barked against a table edge.
He called into his mind the blueprints he and
Scotty had devoted so many hours to on the journey
out from Starbase 23. He had a rough idea of how
to get to the bridge already. But he needed reinforcements
in a hurry, and Security was not much use to him right
now. That competent witch IuHoHta' would have been
sure to seal the bridge. And there were only so many
burly security types he could jam in the access
ducts and air vents with him.
No, he told himself. I don't need them
anyway. This is still my ship.
"Helpless," he croaked. "I'll show you who's
helpless." Painfully but determinedly, he began
to crawl.
Spock raised his head and snapped his eyes open
like shutters. Arkazha tensed, not knowing what
to expect. He lunged forward for the controls. She
wrapped thick- skinned arms around him. He
struggled. She held him. The very surprise of the
fact calmed him slightly, returned him to a
semblance of himself.
"Must-go," he said, as if he had to wrestle each
word to get it out. "They-told me-there wasdanger.
Must-see."
She hesitated a moment, then let him go. He
lurched to the front of the tiny craft, bent almost double
in the cramped space, then folded himself into a space
meant for a being half his size. He looked
ludicrous with his knees up around his pointed ears, but
Arkazha felt no humor. She had too good an
idea what he was going through.
He set the craft onto a heading and turned on
the autopilot. Then he flung himself from the
pilot's seat to huddle against the bulkhead with his arms
wrapped tightly around his knees. "I first felt
them in my dreams, as I slept in Deep-Sea
Five," she said, settling herself beside him. "I thought
I was going mad. Then I went into Hellsgate, and
my head filled with the voices. I have no gift for
telepathy, though, so I could never make more of them
than a terrible pressure in the head." Spock
didn't answer. His eyes were squeezed shut.
His lips moved, though no sound came out. She
bent an ear hole near his lips and thought she heard
the ghost of a whisper "I-amSpock. lam a
Vulcan. lam alive. I am Spock.
She touched his forehead. It was as cold as the
viewport, through which no amount of insulation could keep
the lightless; depths from sucking heat.
Whether he heard her or not, she couldn't tell.
Maybe she wasn't talking to him, truly.
Maybe she spoke for her own benefit.
"One thing I knew-they mean no harm. They
cause pain by the strangeness of their thoughts. You are
strong-you will endure."
She took his head in her arms and cradled it against
her rubbery breast. In that way they fled through the
depths, him reciting the mantra that would perhaps
return his selfhood to him, her crooning an
ancient Russian lullaby in a cracked and
quavery voice.
Wayne sat in her chair of command with Lu Kok
Tak on one side of her and a giant Klingon
brute on the other, the picture of absolute
authority. She felt wonderful. At last things were
to be set right on Okeanos, and it was all her
doing-with plenty of help from the magnificent
Captain Kain and his crew. These Klingons could be
a fairly coarse lot, she had to admit. But she
could clearly see the innate nobility in them.
Kain, on the other hand, was bearing the delay
with far less 1 at race. He was slumping,
frowning, and drumming fingers on the arm of his chair when
the lumpy tech sat upright with a cry of compItally
It's done!"
Kain bobbed his head. "Excellent.
Lieutenant?" Lu Kok Tak jumped for the
helmsman's station.
She'd been itching to fire a ship's main
phasers her whole life. "The city Storm is right
below," Wayne said. "Lock phasers onto a main
governmental building."
"Commissioner," Uhura said scornfully, "the
Discordians don't have large governmental
buildings.v) "Oh. Well, then, find a
suitably large and impressive building,
centrally located."
Lu Kok Tak was already doing that. She had a
magnified overhead view of Storm up on the big
screen, relegating her captain to a smaller side
display. The picture scrolled this way and that as she
spun the trackbalI mounted on the console, looking
for targets. The tip of her tongue protruded from
her mouth in concentration.
"Lieutenant Uhura," Wayne said, "open a
channel with Storm." She smiled. "I
think it's only fair to warn them what's in store."
"They won't answer," Uhura said.
"Try anyway." She pointed her thumb at the
Klingon who stood beside her-her!-command chair.
"Or I'll have him shake you by the scruff of your
neck."
Tht big KI'-INGON growled. Uhura
turned toward her panel. "Here's something," Lu
Kok Tak said. She had found a circular
building, which by its appearance might be either a
freshwater storage tank or a sports arena.
Either way, it was a reasonably imposing target.
"Commissioner, I'm getting no response,"
Uhura said. "Then broadcast an
all-frequencies warning! Get the people out now."
The bridge crew, including Sulu, who was
reluctantly returning to consciousness, stared at
her, wondering why she was suddenly so filled with
compassion for the gene-altered human settlers.
"Maybe she's killed her limit," muttered
Sulu. It earned him a gouge in the ribs with a
truncheon from one of the two Klingons who stood
flanking him.
Lu Kok Tak had succeeded in locking on to her
target. With a triumphant cry she
slammed the heel of. her hand down on the firing
switch.
Onscreen, beams of light suddenly lanced the
large round structure. Metal glowed cherry red.
Metal vapor swirled up like steam.
"What are you doing?" screamed Wayne. "I
didn't give the order to fire!"
The Klingon lieutenant gave her a lethal
look and then a Can-I-kill-her-now? look to her
real commander onscreen. Kain gave her back a
minute shake of his head. She shrugged and depressed
the switch again.
"Forgive her, Moriah," said Kain. "She is
youngher natural exuberance has the better of her."
Wayne frowned and fidgeted in her seat. She was
disappointed; she had expected better discipline
than this from the Klingons. But she supposed no race
was perfect. A third blast from the phaser banks.
The structure exploded in a ball of rapidly
expanding gas. Then all that was left was a circle
wound, blue water ringed by white-glowing metal.
Wayne found herself leaning forward eagerly in the command
chair. She made herself settle back. "We'll
wait a few minutes," she said, "give them time
to assimilate it. Then we'll destroy
another building."
"I'm looking," Lu Kok Tak reported.
"See that your impatience doesn't overwhelm you
again," Wayne said. The Klingon ignored her.
Minutes passed. Behind Kain Klingons were
visible moving purposefully about. Wayne didn't
know what they were doing- nor did she care. She was
paramount here, this was her moment. She would show those
arrogant mutant bastards what power was!
"Commissioner," Chekov said, "the city is
break-+ UP- at 9 She glared at him. A
command to beat him unconscious quivered on the tip of
her tongue. Then she thought about what he'd actually
said.
"What on earth are you talking about, young man?"
He pointed to an auxiliary screen. A view of
all of Storm filled it. As she looked at it, the
fringes seemed to melt away before her eyes.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
Lu Kok Tak uttered what Wayne thought was a
curse. "I do not know. But look!" On the big
screen an entire block of buildings pulled
away from each other. A skyway fell into the water
with a splash. A long oval building submerged,
trailing broken catwalks like seaweed.
"It's unbelievable," she whispered. "What are
they doing?" "if you'd actually paid attention to the
Discordians," Uhura said, "you'd know. Every
house, every business, almost every building on Discord
is a ship. You can't threaten these people this way,
Commissioner. They just pull up stakes and leave."
"Well-shoot them, Lieutenant! Don't let
them get awayP1 Lu Kok Tak locked
phasers onto a large oval
building. It promptly vanished beneath the waves,
leaving nothing but a boil of bubbles.
"I'm trying," the lieutenant said, gritting her
teeth.
Gurg was a Klingon rating whose MOS was being
big and ugly, a task for which nature had generously
equipped him. He stood right up next to the command
chair, phaser in hand, intimidating these Denebian
slime-devils-who-walked-like-men with scowls from
brows that didn't so much beetle as battleship.
He was a man who loved his work, and he was an artist
at it.
His eyes were fixed ahead. With the science station
unmanned, the whole bridge complement was in his forward
field of vision-an Earther design feature a good
thlIngan could appreciate, at least one
who thought a bit more profoundly about such things than
Gurg. Gurg was more the direct experiential
type.
Of course, no one else was paying any attention
to what was going on behind them either. As a consequence
Gurg was the only one who wasn't surprised when
a phaser beam flashed from the Jeffries-tube
access panel next to the inactive turbolift.
Gurg was too busy being unconscious then. Kirk
had chosen to drop him first because he was the only
hostile on the bridge with a weapon actually in hand.
His next target was the lieutenant, who was already
spinning to draw her own sidearm. She was fast as a
leopard. She was smart, too. As she came around
she took a step to the right and went to one knee,
to spoil her enemy's targeting solution. James
Kirk was no slouch in the reflex compartment either. But
he was still fuzzy from being stunned himself; in his haste
to get off the first shot he overcompensated
slightly. His blast struck the biceps
of her weapon arm. The phaser dropped from her
fingers. She was a blur of motion, flying forward at
him. Before he could squeeze another shot her boot
scythed around and kicked the phaser spinning from his hand.
While this was happening, the Enterprise's
bridge crew was not exactly idle. Perhaps
inside-irrationally-they had been expecting something like
this. Their captain had a habit of coming through for them,
usually in the face of the wildest odds.
Lieutenant Uhura stood up abruptly. The
Klingon standing watch over her communications station
gaped at her impertinence. She kneed him in the
groin. As he bent double, she seized his head by the
hair and dragged his face down to meet her other
knee coming up. Then she let him go. He staggered
backward, trying to clutch himself in two places at
once. He backed into the technician, who was standing
there looking befuddled.
Ferocious Klingon instinct took over. Still
clutching himself with one hand, the guard half turned and
began striking savagely at what he took for his
new antagonist with the other. The tech wailed and
fell on his rump.
Sulu pivoted and plucked the truncheon from the
inattentive fingers of the Klingon on his left.
Snapping his hips back the other way, he drove
its heavy brass head into the solar plexus of the
Klingon to his right. Turning back again, he stopped
an overhand right to the head by whacking the Klingon hard
on the inside of the attacking forearm. Then
he slammed the trun- cheon upsid e the Klingon's
head. The Klingon went down. Senior
Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak had Kirk trapped
in the cramped Jeffries tube. She was firing
knees into- 2

him, trying to crush his groin. He had his hips
turned to the side, absorbing the blows on the great
muscle of his thigh. It felt as if a giant
aborigine of Taurus 11 was pounding him with a
stone-headed club.
He managed to get a boot up and give her a
desperate shove to the midriff. She reeled back
three steps and caught herself. Before she could start
forward again Kirk was on her, fists up, left
side ad-con" vanced.
She kicked at his groin. He got his hip in the
way. Screaming with fury, she struck at his face.
She could only use her left hand; her right still
dangled like a sock still wet from the laundry. He
deflected the blows with raised forearms. She cocked
her hand to strike for his eyes, fingers clawed. He
snapped his left arm straight. The jab caught her
right on her fine, narrow-bridged nose and broke
it. Lu Kok Tak straightened, eyes
wide, blood pouring down her upper lip. The
slimy Earther had actually hurt her"
About then the slimy Earther caught her with an
overhand right to the jaw. Bone crunched. She fell in
a graceless sprawl. Kirk looked around, trying
not to shake his right hand. It felt as. if someone had
exploded a bomb among his metacarpals. He was
just in time to see Sulu batter down the Klingon he
had poked in the belly with his own stick, and suddenly
the bridge was clear of functional enemies.
"Toucht!" Sulu cried.
"Aren't you getting your martial arts confused,
Mr. Sulu?" Kirk asked. "I'm sure real
escrimadores don't yell "touchd" when they
hit somebody."
Sulu showed teeth in a feral grin. "I don't
know
what they say, Captain. The videos don't
cover that-was "Captain," Uhura cnied, "the
turbolift-was
Kirk wheeled in time to see the turbolift door
close. The manual override switch had been
thrown the other way. He moved swiftly to his
command chair and hit the intercom button with his good
hand. "This is the captain speaking. Red
alert. I repeat-red alert. All hands to battle
stations. This is not a drill. I need all
available Security to the bridge immediately. We
need many sets of passive restraints."
He paused and glanced around the bridge. "AU
hands be on the lookout for Commissioner Moriah
Wayne. She may be armed and must be considered
dangerous."
He glanced around the bridge. Anger smoldered
in his belly, a feeling of violation.
"And as for'you, Captain Kain Kirk turned
to the side screen.
Only to see the Klingon shimmer out in a haze of
transporter-beam glitter.
Kum woKED AT his bridge crew. They were
all standing over the vanquished Klingons, lost somewhere
between daze and triumph.
"Don't we all have jobs to do?" Kirk asked.
"We're at war here, people. Attend your stations.
Make it march."
Everybody dove for his or her station at once.
Kirk ignored the brief resulting confusion, seating
himself in his chair as if nothing had happened. He
kept his right hand well away from everything.
"Mr. Sulu," he said, "shields
up. I want a lock on that battlecruiser
immediately. If she energizes her weapons you have
permission to blast her without warning. 99 641es,
Sir!,.
"Lieutenant Uhura, find me the channel
Ms. dinAthos called on earlier. I want
to talk to her at once."
"Aye, sir."
The- turbolift door opened and S "
ecurity came tumbling onto the bridge, bristling
with phasers and belligerence. "Officers," Kirk
said without turning, "the fight is over-here, at least.
All that remains is the cleanup phase of the
operation." Security began to shackle the
unconscious Klingons and carry them out. A sturdy
man with curly blond hair and a blond woman,
surprisingly petite for a Security officer,
helped a bloody-faced Senior Lieutenant
Lu Kok Tak to her feet. Her hands were bound behind
her. She swayed, and glared at Kirk. "It was
luck that let you beat me," she spat. "Luck
alone!" He started to toss off a flip line about it
really being all those years trying to beat Finnegan
back at Starfleet Academy. Then he checked
himself.
"It wasn't luck," he said in a quiet
voice. "Don't kid yourself. This is my ship,
Lieutenant. You never had a chance."
He waved his right hand in the air. It made him
feel as if somebody were hacking at its bones with a
white-hot saw. "Normally, I'd feel compelled
to apologize for hitting a lady. Somehow I get
the feeling you wouldn't appreciate the gesture."
She spat Klingon gutturals at him and tried
to writhe free. "Reichert, van Pelt," Kirk
said, "take care with that one. She's a handful."
The diminutive van Pelt gripped the
Klingon's left arm just above the elbow and squeezed.
Lu Kok Tak stiffened. "We know just how to handle
her, Captain," van Pelt said sweetly. The
two hustled the lieutenant out. "Sensors report
only a skeleton crew on board the
battlecruiser, sir," Sulu said.
com"...Where did the dewils go?" Chekov asked.
"I don't know, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said.
"But I have a feeling we'd better find out soon."
"I have Ai-Ms. dinAthos, Captain,"
Uhura reported. Kirk took a deep breath.
"Put her on."
Aileea's face filled the screen.
"I've heard of your attack on Storm,
Captain." She shook her head. Tears flew from
her cheeks like drops of rain. "I don't know how
I could have been so wrong about you!"
"Ms. dinAthos, your plant was sabotaged
by Deputy Commissioner Wayne, who, acting on her
own and in flagrant violation of Federation law,
beamed a Klingon explosive device next to the
fusion bottle in Harmony. She then apparently
beamed a party of Klingons aboard the Enterprise.
They took temporary command of the bridge and opened
fire on the city of Storm. They have now been
subdued, the Enterprise is back under our control,
and-damn, Just a moment."
He hit the intercom button. "Engine room."
"Scott here, sir. What's going on up there?"
"Pandemonium, Mr. Scott. Send four armed
men to secure the transporter room at once,
please," "I'll go more'self-was
"You'll do no such thing, Mr. Scott. I need
you right where you are. We may be needing full warp
power at any minute." "I'll have the drives alf
warmed up," Scott said cheerfully, "and purrin"
like a happy kitten."
"Excellent., Kirk out. Ms.
dinAthos, I apologize for putting you on hold,
as it were."
She blinked moistly at him. Then her eyes
narrowed to jade slits. "If this is some kind of
trick-was
Kirk nodded and gave her a big, happy
smile. "You've caught me, Colonel
dinAthos. All these Klingons you see being carried
out of here have kindly
agreed to pretend to have been bloody, battered, and
stunned to help me fool you into thinking we were
innocent. But you, clever woman that you are-you saw right
through me."
"I wish I could believe you-Jim," she said.
"But at well, we've been talking to your people. We
heard what you did to the people of Gamma Trianguli
VI, how you destroyed Vaal, their protector,
so that they would be forced to struggle to survive, to learn
suffering, sickness, and death-all for their own good.
What can we expect of you?"
"I am getting awfully tired of having that
goddamned tyrannosaur head with the horn on top
thrown in my face. So I got a little pompous in
the heat of victory, made a silly speech. The
thing was trying to eat my ship, damn it!
"I'm tired of fooling with you people, too. I am
delivering an ultimatum, and I want it spread
across the land. I want my people back, and I want
them now. Otherwise I'm going to start blasting every
scrap of weaponry that Mr. Sulu's sensors can
find. Starting with those Koman ship-killer
missiles you just in- stalled back at the old
homestead. Do I make myself clear?"
"Captain," Uhura said abruptly, "there's a
call-was "Please don't interrupt,
Lieutenant. I'm in the middle of some good
old-fashioned, overbearing gunboat diplomacy
here."
"But, sir-it's Mr. Spock!"
"Put him on."
Spock's face appeared in place of
Aileea's, looking haggard. Or maybe it was the
light. A jumble of readouts and instrumentation framed
him.
"Captain," he said, "I have just spoken to the
true aboriginal inhabitants of this planet."
"The Susuru?" Kirk asked.
"No, Captain. I havt been observing for some
time that the Susuru seem curiously maladapted for
life on this, their putative hoineworld.
They seem to have evolved as savanna browsers. The
question that springs to mind is, how did that happen, on a
planet where the vast preponderance of the surface is
cov- ered by water and what little dry land exists is
mountainous?" Kirk made a go-ahead motion with his
hand. He regretted it promptly. "And the answer
is?"
"They did not. They arrived here shortly after the
human settlers did."
"Now who told you this?"
The image changed into ... what? "I see
what looks like a r6d hole cut in a black
piece of paper, Mr. Spock. Do you care
to enlighten me as to what on earth it is?". "Nothing
on earth, Captain, but at the bottom of the
Helisgate Rift. It is a volcanic vent.
The intelligent indigenes, of Discord are
colonies of microorganisms that have grown up in
the Venus-like conditions surrounding these deep-sea
vents." "And you ... talked to them."
"I communicated with the vent-forms through telepathy,
a form of mind meld. I found the experience ... quite
harrowing." "I can see how you might. Such
intelligences would be even more alien than the
Horta-was
"Much as I would like to, I have no leisure
to reminisce at the present time, owing to another
matter of which they informed me."
"Which is?"
"Th."
It lay as if wedged at the bottom of the trench,
a
shadowed, vaguely triangular mass, ominous for
no reason he could put his finger on. He leaned
forward and squinted, as if that would do any good.
"I can't quite mak e out-"
"Captain!" Chekov sang out. "It's a
Klingon battlecruiser!" "No, it's not,"
Sulu said. "It's bigger. Much bigger." It was,
Kirk said. Instead of the attenuated turtlewith-wings
shape of the classic Klingon mayDuj, this ship was
a gigantic blocky arrowhead, its nose and
wingtips truncated at blunt angles. It gave
an impression of terrible strength. "She's huge,
was Uhura breathed.
Sulu was staring at his board as if in horror.
"Captain, I can't find her! She must mass a
quartermillion tonnes, and she doesn't so much as
twitch a needle."
"Consider, Mr. Sulu-she lies at
the bottom of an enormous mass of water-water with
an extraordinarily high metallic content. She
is surrounded by ten-thousand-meter metal walls, not
to mention. a powerfully fluxing magnetic field.
She is not invisible commerely hidden with great
skill."
The intercom chirped. "Captain, this is
Satterfield from Engineering. We've secured the
transporter room. Ve found Zellich and
Tenney drugged and taped up behind the transporter
control station. There's no sip of the commissioner."
"Well done, Mr. Satterfield. Call
sickbay to collect Tenney and Zellich. Stay
down there with your party, and stay alert for anyone beaming
aboard."
"Aye-aye, sir."
McCoy came onto the bridge. "It never
rains but it pours," Kirk said.
"You can say that again. Jim, what's been going
on?
244 -
There I was in my office, minding my own
business, reading The Farmer's Almanac, and
suddenly there are bells ringing and lights flashing and people
running all over the place, and my
sickbay starts filling up with moaning Klingons."
He stopped to glare at Kirk's hand. "What in
the devil's name happened to that? You haven't been
hitting people with your bare fists again, have you?"
"You know I've always been a fool for a pretty
face, Bones." McCoy started to make a
snappy rejoinder. Then he saw the screen and his
jaw fell slack. "What in the name of heaven is
that?"
"Nothing in the name of heaven, Bones. It's the
latest mark of Klingon battlecruiser. Though
maybe they'd be better off calling this one a
dreadnought, come to think ofddit."
Columns of bubbles began to rise around the dark
bulk. Veils of silt swirled around it.
Sulu's eyes bugged out. "Whatever you want
to call her, Captain, she's coming up!"
Soupm cAmm wELL through the water at the
bottom of Hellsgate Rift. Spock and
Arkazha clearly heard the rumble and clatter as the
great warship began to rise. Spock raised his
head. "We are close by the vessel," he said.
"Clearly, there is only one possible course of
action." "You comare absolutely right, my friend,"
Mona Arkazha said. He turned his head
to see her pointing his phaser at him. "Mona,
why?" he asked. She shot him. He slumped.
Ignoring the outcry from the communicator screen, she
tucked the phaser carefully into its holster and did the
same with his personal communicator and tricorder.
"I know you are not unconscious," she said, lifting
him under the arms as if he were no heavier than a child,
"merely immobilized. You are far more durable than
a normal human."
She propped him like a doll. against the after
bulkhead. He stared at her with eyes that had no
choice. "Understand that what I do is not a
sacrifice," she said. "What I do, I do for
myself You and your friends are welcome to share in the
fruits-if any."
She turned her face to the video pickup.
"Captain Kirk, one to beam aboard. I trust you
can lock on your friend's communicator?"
"Mr. Sulu's trying," Kirk said. "The
storm has broken up over your head, but the same
factors that hid the Klingon from us are making it tough
to lock him in."
"We've got him!" Sulu sang out.
Kirk nodded. "Are you sure you don't want us
to beam you up, too, Doctor? The big
boy is taking it slow now, so he doesn't lay
himself open on a jagged metal outcrop, but in half
a minute or so things are going to get mighty
uncomfortable down there."
She smiled. "I'll be fine, Captain."
She turned, bent, and kissed Spock on the
forehead. Then she climbed into the pilot seat and
took the controls. "Anytime you are ready,
Captain."
Her instruments began to fluctuate madly. The
lights dimmed, and she heard the strange song of the
transporter behind her.
"Farewell, my friend," she whispered, bleeding
power to the impellers. A great roaring rose around as
the vast warship engaged its impulse drives. The
slow irresistible surge of displaced water shoved the
little craft back, dangerously close to the deadly
canyon walls.
She played jets and vanes expertly to keep
clear of
sharp metal buttresses that seemed to reach for
her. The roaring grew louder as she oriented the
submersible. The canyon filled with a hideous
blue-white glare. She applied full forward power
and sent herself hurtling toward Uviathan.
Dr. McCoy was standing by the transporter
platform to catch Spock when he appeared and
toppled bonelessly forward. Nurse Chapel stood
by with a gurney. She helped McCoy maneuver the
immobilized Vulcan aboard.
Qeyn HoDo waDI-CHILD settled himself into his
captain's chair. The thrill of impending battle
sang in his veins, the rush all true Klingons
found more addicting than any drug. Moriah
Wayne stood at his side. He paid her no
attention. "Get me Kirk!" he shouted. "I
want to watch his face as he dies!" And he threw
back his head and laughed. He felt a tremor
run through his ship. He frowned. If they had kissed
a wall, his helmsman would kiss his kligal. He
had not waited and worked and forborne so long to have his
wild ride ended before it fair began.
"What was that?" he snarled.
"Captain," his instrument officer reported, "a
small undersea craft seems to have rammed us near the
outboard starboard impulse drive nozzle. There
was no damage."
"So one of your Discordian friends decided to make
a final heroic gesture." He reached up.
Moriah's pale hand slipped into his
black gauntleted one. "It was futile, as all
such ultimately are."
Wayne snuggled happily against his powerful
biceps. "Not all of them," she said.
He laughed again.
"Captain Kirk," said the handsome mustachioed
face on the screen. "We meet again. Prepare
to die."
"Bold words, Kain. Can you-back them up? Or
are they as hollow as your professions of peaceful
intent?" "My intent has always been peaceful,
Captain. I see you looking skeptical.
Well, hear this I shall not know peace until you are
dead. I am about to kill you. Then I shall be a
peacemaker indeed."
He swept his arm around. "Behold my ship,"
he said, "five years in the building, at a yard so
secret the Federation had no inkling of its
existence-until eight of our months ago. Then we
caught one of your robot probes skulking about.
We had to assume the facility was compromised."
He smiled. ""Our discovery of this world was a
gift of Destiny, Kirk. It enabled us to bring her
here and conceal her at the bottom of the sea, where you would
never find her with all your sensors and
spycraft, while the finishing touches were applied."
"Since you seem inclined to talk, Kain, just what
is that monster?"
Kain laughed. "She is a prototype
battleship, Captain. I helped design her
myself. When we have destroyed you, she and 1, she will have
proven herself worthy to spawn a long line of
warcraft."
He fingered his long jaw. "Monster, you called
her-and you spoke truly. I have the discretion of naming
this vessel. I have held off doing so, since it. is
most propitious to name a ship on the very brink of
battle, that she may be christened in enemy blood.

am a generous man. So I shall honor the
superstitions of your friends and allies.
"I name her bIQ-A'VEQ1ARGA, Great
Demon of the Ocean. Or, to be
succinct-Leviathan.
"The Devil in the Sea."
"Coming to kill you. Phasers fire!"
Five thousand meters of water still lay above
Leviathan. No matter; the water molecules in
the path of her phaser beams simply ceased to exist.
The weapons bored twin holes through the
water and leapt toward space.
Enterprise's shields coruscated. "Phaser
banks charged, readyj and locked on, Captain,"
Sulu said. "One-quarter impulse power, Mr.
Chekov. Hold her in this orbit. Mr. Sulu,
hold your fire."
"But, Captain-was Sulu looked back over his
shoulder. "I said, hold your fire, mister! Let
him waste his charge boiling water. I want our
banks to be full when he breaks the surface."
"The power of those weapons is unbelievable!"
Chekov breathed.
"I'm not sure our shields will hold long enough,
sir," Sulu said.
"Sure they will, Mr. Sulu. All you need is
a little faith. Engine room!"
"Scott here, sir."
"I need more power to the shields, Mr. Scott."
"We're already running at red line, sir. If
I give ye much more, the dilithium crystals may
blow out altogether. And then it's good-bye, warp drive."
"It's good-bye, warp drive, if he punches
through our shields, too. Not to mention everything else.
Give me more power, Mr. Scott!"
"You've got it, Captain."
"He's approaching the surface, sir!" Sulu
sang. "Five hundred meters and counting."
"He's coming fast, sir," Chekov said. "On
my mark, mister-wait for itl"
"Our shields, sir!" Sulu exclaimed.
"Here he comes!" cried Chekov.
"All phasers fire, Mr. Sulu!"
Red beams stabbed downward from the Enterprise
to drench Leviathan in deadly glare. "Captain,
our shields are going," Sulu said.
"Hold her steady as she goes, mister. Keep
firing." The shields went down. One Mingon beam
missed the Enterprise altogether. The other bit into the
strut that connected the central engineering hull to the
starboard warp engine pod. Kirk grimaced in
physical pain as he heard the shriek of metal
sublimating away into space, transmitted through the
fabric of the hull.
"Steady!" he commanded. Sulu turne d a strained
pale face to him.
The Klingon beams winked out.
"Their batteries are exhausted, Captain!"
Chekov exulted. "Keep hammering them, Sulul
Freed of the crushing weight of water Leviathan
accelerated quickly to hypersonic speed,
splitting Discord's sky with a scream. But she could
not move fast enough to escape the searing caress of
Enterprise's main battery. Her shields flared,
flickered, and fell.
Enterprise's beams touched the bare metal of
Leviathan's hull. Her armor was thick and tough,
but it simply vanished in puffs of superheated gas
at the touch of those energy lances. The twin beams
stabbed deep into the giant warship's guts.
"Captain, sensors show his phaser bank
accumula- 2 5 1
tors approaching full charge," Sulu
reported. "Our shields are starting to come back, but
they won't stand up long to what he's mounting."
"Full power to impulse engines. Get us around
the planet, Mr. Chekov."
Again Leviathan's phasers reached for them. The
shields immediately began to flicker. Energies leaking
through made Kirk's hair stand on end.
"Mr. Scott, forget about the shields. We
need more impulse.power now!"
The chief engineer didn't even bother to protest.
"You're the captain," he said, and gave the orders
to his people. And then they were around the world's edge, and her
blue limb cut off the enemy's beam.
The bridge crew cheered. "Belay that noise!"
Kirk snapped. "We haven't won anything but
time."
He stared at the image on the main
screenDiscord belying her name, looking utterly
serene. Unreal to think that death lurked behind its
placid face, that a killer used that face as a
blind. Unreal unless you thought about what the planet was
really like, as opposed to what it looked like from way up
here. "First things first. Mr. Chekov, shape us a
new orbit around the planet at comuse your
imagination. It won't do to come around the world on the
same trajectory he's seen us in. He's
liable to greet us with a spread of disrupter bolts."
The turbolift hissed open. "Jim," he
heard McCoy say, "I tried to stop him." --
"Really, Dr. McCoy, your concern is
misplaced. You would be better advised to tend the
captain's hand."
Kirk spun. "Spock! Are you all right?"
"Naturally, Captain. My indisposition was
no more than momentary." He walked to the science station
and bent over the panel as if he'd just stepped away
for a drink of water. Kirk had actually forgotten his
broken hand until Spock mentioned it.
Then it began to throb like Discord thunder. He let
McCoy call Nurse Chapel back up from
sickbay to dress his hand while he listened
to damage reports. To his relief he found that
no one had been killed or injured. There was
substantial damage to the strut, but not enough
to seriously compromise its structural integrity.
Or so the damage-control detail hoped.
"What about shields?" Kirk- asked.
"Virtually nonexistent, Captain."
"Mr. Scott, get me my shields back."
"There's only so much I can do, Captain.
We've got one dilithium crystal cracked
already. I've got a team replacing it-was "No
time. Shields, Scotty."
He punched off and looked around the bridge. "The
question is, how badly did we hurt him?"
"We hurt him, Captain," Sulu said. "I
saw enough to know that much."
"But the next time he hits us," Chekov said,
"he's liable to finish us."
Kain smelled smoke on Leviathan's
bridge and frowned. He had heard screams when the
Enterprise's beams struck home. It took a
lot to make a Klingon scream.
Screams and smoke-not good. Damage reports
showed he had taken heavy losses in lives and
metal. But Leviathan had both in profusion.
""It's stranget" Moriah Wayne said.
"I'm really surprised, but I wasn't
afraid."
"If you were a Klingon," he said, not hiding his
contempt, "lack of fear would be a given, not a
virtue."
He found himself oddly pleased at the way her
face crumpled, as to a blow. Then he gave his
attention to more important matters.
"Vang," he called.
"Captain," his tactical officer replied from the
weapons console.
"What is your assessment?"
Vang paused. He hesitated to offer opinions
to a man with Kain's reputation, either as a
tactician or as a man possessed of a
dangerously unpredictable temper. One time at which
Kain's temper was absolutely predictable,
though, was when his orders were not obeyed instantly and
fully. "Enterprise is wounded," he said
cautiously, "but remains a dangerous foe."
"Fagh!" spat Kain, dropping his hand
to the kligat hilt. Vang recoiled. "You're as
vague as an Earther. Tell me something I can
use, damn you!"
"We can wait, using impulse power to remain
stationary relative to the planet surface, and let
him come to us. We outgun Enterprise, Captain.
We can put that advantage to good use-was
He let his words trail off as Kain leaned
forward, a dangerous shine in his eye.
"You are advising us to sit passively and wait?
What are we, Susuru, that we fear to seize the
initiative? Is this the best you have to offer,
Tactical Officer? Perhaps you would prefer to watch
the final battle from outside the ship-without the
encumbrance of a suit."
Wayne gasped and clutched his arm. Vang
turned ashen. "When-when the time comes to close, we
should rush upon them as rapidly as we can," he said.
He rushed the words from himself, fearful of saying them, but
more fearful of holding back. And then what he dreaded
most to say "Response times for Federation crews
are ... consistently quicker than our own. We can
negate that advantage if we can dictate the
instant at which the engagement begins, and then get
close enough that our greater firepower can quickly
overwhelm our foe."
Kain smiled. "I begin to believe you can think,
Vang. Well done."
He leaned back and patted the commissioner's hand.
"Be patient, my dear. Soon you will have the
pleasure of watching James Kirk die."
"WHERE is HET" muttered Sulu.
"If only we could see through the planet."
"And if wishes were horses," McCoy said,
"then beggars would ride."
"Oh, but we can, Doctor," Spock said. The
glow of his board cast satanic highlights over his
face. McCoy blinked. "We can? Can what?"
"We can see through the planet."
"Why, that's absurd."
"Fortunately it is not. I am detecting a
clear neutrino track." He pressed a
button. A dot appeared, seemingly making its
way slowly across the ocean of Discord. "The trail
of Leviathan. As even you may be aware,
Doctor, most neutrinos lack both, mass and
charge, and can pass through the core of a planet
unimpeded."
"How is it possible that Leviathan's emitting,
Spock?" Kirk asked. "She must be
equipped with neutrino baffles just as we are."
"Was, Captain. Computer, bring up the
images of Leviathan captured during our firing
pass."
"Affirmative." In slow motion Leviathan
boiled out of the sea and hurtled into the air. Energy
beams flared like linear suns. "Generate and display
a graphic of structural damage detected
prior to contact with our phaser beams."
The image lost substance, became a schematic,
and rotated level, then side on. A red spot
appeared at the stem. "Impact damage
highlighted," the computer said. It was being good today.
Probably because Wayne wasn't present to take
offense.
"Now highlight the neutrino baffle on the
outboard starboard impulse drive."
A blinking yellow circle appeared around the
dot. "Mona Arkazha did not die altogether in vain,
it would appear," Spock said softly.
"I'll say she didn't! Plot an intercept
course, Mr. Chekov. Mr. Sulu, arm all
forward photon torpedo tubes. Mr. Scott,
how're repairs coming on those shields?"
"We've got enough to hold him off a wee
bit, sir," came the reply, "if he shines
nothing on us hotter than a flashlight." "We'll
try not to give him the chance to do more than that," Kirk
said.
"Just how do you propose to do that, Jim?"
McCoy demanded. "Appeal to his better
nature?" kirk bit the tip of his thumb. "No,"
he said after a moment's consideration. "Cheat. Mr.
Sulu, what's the status of that battlecruiser?"
"Shields are up, sir."
"How many aboard?"
"Before their shields were raised, sensor readings
indicated twelve individuals, all
Klingon," Spock said. "Two on the bridge,
four in engineering, and six manning phaser and disrupter
batteries. Inasmuch as the shields rendered their
transporter beams inoperative at the same
instant they blocked our scanners, it is logical
to presume the number has not changed."
"How long till we come in line of sight of
Leviathan?" "Twelve hundred twenty-one
point seven seconds, Captain." "Excellent.
Lieutenant Uhura, broadcast a message to the
Dagger. They have three minutes to lower their shields
and stand by to be boarded. Security, I
want six men with phasers and body armor in the
transporter room in two minutes." A moment's
hesitation. "Make sure they're volunteers. This
could get hot. Mr. Chekov."
"Aye, Captain?"
"Take over weapons control. Plot a
photon torpedo launch. When Leviathan
appears around Discord, I want them there and waiting
for her. Mr. Spock will continue to monitor her
neutrino track; if she changes course, inform
me at once and recalculate launch time and
trajectories accordingly. Understood?" "Aye,
sir!"
"Captain," Uhura said, "the Klingons are
responding ... are you sure you want to hear this?"
"The standard abuse?" She nodded. "I'll take
your word for it, Lieutenant."
He rose. "Mr. Spock, you have the con.
Unless the Dagger surrenders in-one hundred
fifty-one seconds-I want you to open fire on
her with a phaser banks, and continue firing until her
shields 90 down. Then cease fire. Understood?"
"Captain-was He stiffened. "Understood, sir."
"What about me, sir?" Sulu asked.
"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said, "you're a
would-be swashbuckler. Care to try buckling on A
swash for real?" "Would 1, sir!"
"Then follow me."
He turned to go. McCoy blocked his path.
"Jim," the doctor said, "have you lost your mind?"
"Probably. Now please excuse me-we all have
an appointment with Leviathan, and we don't want
to be late."
Kirk held his arms out to the side as Sulu
fastened the clamshell polymer armor vest around his
chest. It was crowded in the transporter room the
six security volunteers, Reichert and van
Pelt among them, gathered by the platform in a knot
of tense readiness they were all trying not to show; Dr.
McCoy and Nurse Chapel standing by with emergency
medical equipment; Mr. Scott himself at the
transporter controls. "Bridge to captain,"
Spock's voice said from the bulkhead speaker.
"We have taken the Klingon vessel under fire."
6'Well done, Spock. Keep pouring it to them
until they agree to lower their shields-or until
we batter them down." He turned to Scott.
"Remember, Mr. Scott-the very instant her
shields drop, beam me and Ensign van Pelt
onto the bridge. Then beam Sulu and his
party into her engine room. Then stand by to beam aboard
prisoners and any casualties."
"I'm ready, Captain," he said, refraining from
pointing out it was the third time Kirk had issued the
identical set of orders. "What about the Klingons
at the weapons stations, Captain?" Sulu asked.
"They're split into two groups of three. We
can isolate them in place, and I can't spare the men
or the time to secure them. The art of the cutting-out
expedition is the art of the possible." "Jim, this
isn't your job, was McCoy said pleadingly.
"StArship captains are supposed to command They're
not supposed to go haringoff on boarding parties with.
cutlasses in their teeth." Kirk laughed. "I'm
leaving out the cutlasses this time, Bones. Come on,
Doctor. All the years we've been together, you should
know by now I always beam across. I'm too old
to change now."
"Jim, adolescence has to end sometime. Even
yours." "Whatever phase of life I'm in,"
Kirk said, "my main concern right now is seeing that it
lasts longer than the next sixteen and a half
minutes."
"Captain, her shields are weakening," Chekov
reported over the intercom.
He glanced at van Pelt. The two stepped
onto the transporter stage and drew their phasers.
The security woman's looked huge in her dainty
fist.
"Kirk here. I'm standing by."
"Her shields are down-was
Before Chekov finished the Enterprise had gone
away. In its place the Klingon bridge took
form, cramped and dark " And crowded; a third
Klingon, a portly lieutenant with a fringe beard,
stood talking to the slight Captain-Third who sat
in the command chair. A warrant sat at the helm.
Three faces turned toward Kirk and van
Pelt, their beards surrounding toothy Os of
surprise. Three red flashes lit the cavelike
bridge.
Kirk gazed down at the three slumped
Klingons and
let out a slow breath. He felt a strange
sense of anticlimax. "Nice shooting,
Captain," van Pelt said,- moving forward to make
sure their victims were actually stunned and not
shamming.
"You're no slouch yourself," Kirk replied,
aware that she had fired twice to his
once. Well, she was the professional security
person; he was just a starship captain, as Bones
keptbbpointing out.
His communicator chirped. He unhooked it,
whipped it open. "Kirk here." ,
"Captain, this is Sulu. Engine room
secured, sir." Feeling acid in his gut, Kirk
asked, "Anybody hurt?" "Herring's down,
sir. He doesn't look good."
"Have Mr. Scott beam him back at once.
Keep me apprised of your situation. Kirk out.
Enterprise, give me a time check." "Nine
hundred twelve point seven seconds until
contact, Captain," Spock replied.
"Let me know if Leviathan changes course.
Kirk out." He snapped the communicator shut and
tried not to think of one of his people injured. It could be
worse, he knew, but just now that answer reeked of
self-justification. He sat in the captain's
chair. Van Pelt stood up from wrapping
restraints around three hairy sets of Klingon
wrists and stepped away from the captives, who were
beginning to stir and make seismic noises deep in
their bellies. She took out her own communicator
and hit the transmit button twice. The
Klingons glowed and disappeared in Enterprise's
transporter beams.
"What about the weapons crews, sir?" she
asked. As if in comresponse, a blast of Klingon
vocables came from the intercom. Kirk grimaced.
"Captain," Spock
reported, "the Klingons remaining on board the
Dagger have activated anti-intrusion screens. We
can neither beam boarders into those positions, nor beam
their occupants out."" "All right," Kirk said,
"my move." He snapped up a cover beneath his right
palm and depressed a rocker switch. A
klaxon. sounded.
"All compartments are now sealed by vacuumproof
blast doors," he, said, "with mutiny locks
activated. We should be thankful for Klingon
paranoia, Ensign. Nobody can move from his station
now-weapons stores and even service access
panels are locked out."
And that, he reflected, is one reason I was able
to take my ship back single-handed. Like the ancient
Japanese, the Klingon made an ideal of total
obedience; and like the ancient Japanese, they were
kidding themselves. Assassination and revolt were routine
means of advancement. If a superior was not
capable of protecting himself against the ambitions of his
underlings, he was clearly unfit to hold his position.
The warrior who supplanted him, with or without
confederates, was deemed his rightful successor.
Repugnant as the system was to Federation
morality, it worked in its way. But it produced
certain inefficiencies. One of them was that
unrestricted access to any part of a vessel did not
exist in the Klingon service, no matter how
severely that complicated damage control or even
routine maintenance. It therefore had not occurred
to Lieutenant Lu Kok Tak that Kirk might be
able to find a way out of his cell-or onto the
bridge. Naturally, it hadn't occurred
to Commissioner Wayne either. You underestimated me,
Moriah, he thought with a twinge. Again.
He pressed the intercom switch. "Attention,
all Klingon crew," he said. Klingon officers
all spoke English-advanced education was an
important mark of caste distinction among
Klingons. If the ratings didn't understand, their
officers could translate. "This is Captain
James Kirk, USS Enterprise. I am now
in command of this vessel. I am ordering you to put down
your weapons and surrender."
"Nevert" a voice shouted back from the speaker,
ragged with rage. "It is Lieutenant Vokh who
speaks, and I cast defiance in your pale face.
We shall die at our stations. And we shall take you com.with
us, tera'ngan.
"If that's the way youwant it," Kirk
murmured. "I know you can fire the weapons from up
here, Captain," van Pelt said, "but what about
sabotage?" "Good question, Ms. van Pelt. The
answer is, they'll have to cut their way in, which'll
take them a while."
"And we don't know how long a while, sir."
He shrugged. "No. So we'll just hope it's
long enough He studied the controls. They were labeled in
Klingon script, of which he had only minimal
command. It didn't matter. He wasn't as
obsessive about Klingon naval architecture as
Scotty was, but he had a good grasp of the layout
of a battlecruiser's bridge. Just as the Klingon
boarding party had known how to operate the Enterprise.
He checked the weapons systems. Phaser
banks were full and ready to fire. The two forward
photon torpedo tubes were loaded. Once they were
gone the tubes were useless, but as long as he did not
exceed performance norms-or take
damage- Kirk could
fly and fight the Klingon vesseJ. at At I
least until the Klingons in the'various weapons
stations figured out a way to cause mischief.
it took them just over ten minutes., The clock
display on the, Kliagon tobtic4l, display
showed one hundred eleven seconds wbm a purple
light began to blink on the arm of the captain's
chair.
"What does that mean, Captain?" van Pelt
asked. "I don't know," Kirk said, -- at but
I suspect nothing good. A roar of triumph
burst from the intercom "Qqpla? We have breached the
photon torpedo locker. We will now manually
detonate the torpedo and take you with us
to oblivion, Kirkl" "Are you sure you wan
play it this way, Vokh? It'll take you a
couple of tes yet to get the cover off the weapon's
manual override panel. By that time, your ship is
liable to be a plasma cloud anyway."
A pause. "Do not make sport of me,
Earther."
"Nothing could be further from my mind,
Lieutenant." He opened his communicator.
"Kirk to Enterprise. Mr. Scott,
begin beaming the boarding party aboard, commencing with Mr.
Sulu's group."
Seconds passed like eons. Kirk watched the
main screen, on which hung the image of Discord.
He was on the night side now. The planet was a
black disk. at At thirty seconds to contact
van Pelt shimmered out.
"Lieutenant Vokh," Kirk said over the
intercom, "this is your last chance to drop your intrusion
screens and be beamed to safety."
"Prepare for death, Earther."
"I have, Lieutenant."
He pressed a button. The Dagger's shields
snapped
on. He was cut off from rescue now-alone with the
Kfingons and their bomb, waiting for Leviathan
to rise with the sun in a handfWill of heartbeats.
"Captain," Spock's voice said, "are you
sure the course you are following is wise?"
"No, Mr. Spock. It's just the one that gives
us-or at least the Enterprise-the greatest chance of
survival."
And Eris struck the limb of the world alight.
"PHOTON TORPEDOES AWAY,
CAPTAIN," Chekov's voice
reported.
"Very good, Mr. Chekov. Reload and prepare
to engage on my command."
"Qeyn HoDo waWch, was Vang exclaimed,
46 sensors detect a vessel about to come into line
of sight!" "'He's early to our appoin tment,"
Kain said, tapping gauntleted fingertips on the arm
of-his chair. "All weapons lock-on." -- The
helmsman goggled at his panel. "IFF
transmissions received. She's taj, Sir! Her
shields are up." "Why has she changed orbit?"
"Perhaps she's managed to engage the Earthers,
Captain," Vang said.
"If that's so, I'm surprised she hasn't
been blown out of space-Enterprise could take her
at one swallow. Lock phasers on to her, and
keep an eye out for Enterprise. I smell a
trap."
Mang actually turned a startled glance back
at his captain, then obeyed. A moment later he
yelled, "She's locked on to us!"
"Open fire."
The Dagger's screens lit up like Federation Day
fireworks. Beyon i d the glare splash of
Leviathan's phasers against them Kirk
could see the monster herself, black and huge.
"Captain," Spock said from the Enterprise,
following the hijacked battlecruiser at a range
of ten thousand kilometers. "Jim. The Dagger's,
screens can withstand the force of Leviathan's main
batteries for no more than twenty point two
seconds."
"Don't I know it, Mr. Spock," he
replied, watching the shield- strength indicator bar
drop steadily toward zero. "Mr. Scott."
"Standing by, Captain."
Kirk's own phasers were blasting away at full
power. The display showed Leviathan's screens
straining to stand off the little cruiser's comparatively
puny weapons. Enterprise's first pass had wounded
the monster. But did we hurt him enough? The
indicator hit bottom. The fireworks on the big
screen went out.
"Now, Mr. Scott."
Kirk saw the whole front of the bridge begin
to glow red before his eyes as Leviathan's mighty
phasers reached for him. "Any time now, Mr.
Scott," he said.
"And now, Earther," Vokh's voice bellowed from
the intercom, "we all die!"
James Kirk felt a familiar twisting
sensation. He winked out of the captain's chair a
millisecond before an intolerably bright phaser
blast tore through the
bridge and reduced it to dissociated subatomic
particles.
"Be my guest, Lieutenant," Kirk said as
he materialized on Enterprise's transporter
stage.
"Qapla"!" Vang exclaimed as Dagger
blew up. "Success!" Moriah Wayne
clutched Kain's right shoulder. He scowled. "You
fool," he said, "we've just destroyed one of "
our own ships! Can't you see it was just a diversion?"
"Sensors indicate a vessel approximately
ten thousand kilometers aft of the wreckage of taj,
sir," the helmsman reported.
"Our shields still hold," Kain said, leaning
forward with a predator's smile. "You've bought yourself
a few seconds more to breathe, Kirk, no more. All
weapons lock on."
And Vang shrieked, "Photon torpedoes
incoming!"
Kirk appeared beside his own command chair in time
to see the remnants of the nebula that was all
that was left of Dagger fading from the screen. To its
left shone the three miniature suns that were
Enterprise's photon torpedoes, about to strike
Leviathan.
"Captain," reported Sulu, back at his own
station, "Leviathan has locked on to us."
66 All weapons fire, Mr. Sulu."
His earlier mention to Sulu of the nautical
adventure novels he had grown up loving
reminded Kirk of the blasphemous prayer of the
fighting sailor of rag wagon days. "For what we
are about to receive," he intoned, "dear Lord, make us
thankful."
Shields crumpled like wet tissue paper. A
beam lanced the living-quarters saucer through and through.
What it touched flared and vanished, bulkheads
scarcely less readily than human beings. It
cut upward, out, grazing the bridge'and 'sending the
atmosphere shrieking forth in a gale. It was common
bridge discipline to keep loose objects off the
bridge, against just such an eventuality. When it
came, it was astounded how much stuff had managed
to find its way there anyway papers, lightweight
computers, light pens, Kirk's favorite coffee
mug-and Sulu.
With a yell he sailed toward the hole that yawned
into blackness. Chekov just managed to catch him by the
legs, hug his boots to his chest, and cling.
And the photon torpedo spread hit.
One missed entirely. The second spent itself
overloading Leviathan's shields, leaving her
hull unprotected. The third missed the bridge
by mere meters and'ate its way along the centerline
of the ship, destroying the central warp drive tube
and the inboard impellers to either side. The torpedo and the
secondary explosions in its wake killed a
quarter of Leviathan's crew in less than half
a second. The final hit struck into the starboard
wing of the blunt arrowhead that was Leviathan. It found
the locker for the starboard photon torpedo tubes and
set off a chain reaction that simply ripped that
side of the ship away. Leviathan hurtled toward
Enterprise. All systems were failing fast. The
three hits had snuffed over four hundred lives,
and secondary ex losions continued to at p rip
at the mighty warship's guts. She was dead already.
But like the prehistoric monster her name and bulk
suggested, it took Leviathan a while to die. And
as she died, she struck back with demonic fury.
Leviathan and Enterprise passed each
other on nearly reciprocal orbits a mere
five hundred kilometers apart. In contemporary
terms that was broadside to broadside.
Leviathan's shields were gone, but her phaser
batteries were almost intact. Their awesome power
burned through Enterprise's remaining screens in
seconds. As the great ships passed, they clawed
each other's sides like beasts. Enterprise struck
Leviathan's bridge a glancing blow. The heat
of its passage sent random hyperspeed jets of
vaporized metal spurting away from it; one of these
caught Vang in the chest and threw him back,
burning. The upper part of him, arm still outflung in a
final macabre gesture, was sucked out the Me in a
black cloud of his own blood.
The same gas jet that killed the tactical
officer severed Kain's left leg just below the knee.
Ignoring the gush of blood, Kain seized
Moriah Wayne around the waist and, thrusting with all
his strength with his good leg and the raw end of his stump,
won through the afhatch a heartbeat before the armored
emergency panel slammed shut.
Depleted by being fired at Dagger, the charges in
Leviathan's phaser banks went first.
Enterprise's armament was weaker, but it
rang hell through the compartments and passageways of the
doomed ship before it'too winked out. Bleeding clouds
of debris and condensed air, the combatants hurtled
away from each other, around the world named Discord.
Eris, watching, laughed radiation. She was a
cruel goddess.
As part of her upgrade at Starbase 23
Enterprise had received a new system for rapid
sealing of breaches, as long as they weren't too
severe. When the computer detected a loss of
integrity a field sprang inffbeing, surrounding the
bridge with an airtight bubble of force. The
occupants could continue to breathe-as long as power kept
being supplied. Miraculously, none of the bridge
crew was hurt. The rest of the ship was not so lucky.
Kirk paid only enough attention to damage reports
to form an accurate assessment of his ship's fighting
capacity.
"Scotty," he said, "get us some shields
back."
Down in Engineering,, Scott's face was bright with
sunburn from the backscatter of the beam that had
ravaged his section. There were tear tracks in the
grime on his cheeks. "Our main reactors are
gone, Captain," he said. "So're
twenty of my bonny wee men and women.
Evidently y'think I'm a miracle worker."
Twenty dead in Engineering alone. Kirk
briefly closed his eyes. Don't think about it.
Ifyou reckon the butcher's bill now, you'll never
have strength to do what remains to be done.
"Evidently I do," he said hoarsely. "Don't
make me out a fool, Mr. Scott."
Leviathan circled Discord like a moon whose
face was gouged with glowing wounds. On one-quarter
impulse the Enterprise shaped orbit to intercept.
"This is Enterprise calling the Klingon vessel
Leviathan. Enterprise calling Leviathan. his
"I am here, Kirk." A laugh. Snow
flurried across the
main viewing, screen, and then there was Kain, a
bloody gash on his cheek and his patch ripped away
to reveal the pucker of pink scar tissue where his
left eye had been, huddled in the emergency
bridge with a handful of his officers. There was a crude
pressure bandage affixed to the stump of his leg. It
was already black with blood.
Commissioner Wayne stood behind him, the green gown
she had been wearing tom in an almost artful way, her
hair in theatrical disarray. She looked
entirely beautiful-and entirely mad.
"I am not so easy to kill as you expected,
eh?" "I didn't expect this to be easy,"
Kirk said in a full voice. "And it hasn't
been. But I don't want to kill you, Kain.
I'm calling on you to surrender. If you do, you and
your crew will be treated honorably."
The Klingon thrust himself up from his chair and
balanced on his surviving leg to shout, "Do you think
you can escape me so easily, Kirk?"
Kirk ignored the outburst". "I also call
upon you to surrender the person of Deputy Commissioner
Wayne." He moistened his lips. "She will be
returned to the Federation to stand trial on charges of
treason and genocide."
Wayne put back her head and laughed. It was a
jarring, wild sound.
"It's you who's fighting the Federation, Kirk!"
she shrilled. "It's you who's the outlaw rebel.
We serve the cause of peace and justice-was
Kain wheeled. The kligat flew from his hand, a
glittering wheel. It struck Moriah Wayne in
the pit of her stomach. Blood erupted. She
doubled over and collapsed into a mewing knot of pain.
"I grew tired of her yapping," Kain
said, "and she
had served her purpose. She comwas only a
means to an end, Kirk-only a means to strike at
you."
Kirk's eyes narrowed. Almost he gave the
order to open fire. It was like opening his flesh with a
knife to speak instea d. "Give it up, Kain.
What point is there in continuing this-this carnage?"
"Honor. Revenge.
Words. his
Kain pointed to his raw socket. "You cost me
an eye. Is that mere words? You cost me my
bond-brother as well. How, oh, how do you
explain that away?"
"Kras was your bond-brother?"
"He was."
"I'm-sorry. I didn't know."
Kain stared at him in white-faced fury. "Almost
twenty years of my life I devote to stalking you,
to planning the perfection of my revenge-for this? So you
can say you're sorry?" He raised his hands above his
head. "Phasers-was "comfire!" James Kirk
yelled.
Beams of destructive energy struck both
ways. Enterprise's shields, kept in
place by little more than Lieutenant Commander
Scott's raw will, held for a handful of
milliseconds. It was all they needed to.
Captain of the First Rank Kain, his crew, and
Leviathan all became a giant ball of
plasma that glowed like a sun and quickly dissipated
into nothing.
"IT sntmrims the limits of credibility,"
Spock said, "given the immensity of space, that
two sets of political refugees of utterly
different species, coming from entirely different
directions, should happen upon the very same previously
uninhabited planet within a few short years of
each other."
The Enterprise circled Discord, not whole, but
patched up enough to make it back to Starbase 23 for
repair. Some injuries would take longer to heal-the
seared and broken crewfolk in McCoy's
overloaded sickbay and the holes in the entity that was
Enterprise that the dead had left behind. Alongside
the starship orbited the transport fleet and its
escort, Enterprise's sister ship USS
Potemkin. A steady stream of lighters passed
back and forth between planet and fleet, storing up
provisions for the long journey to come. "Come
now, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. "Surely
stranger things have happened. Like-was
He held his hands up from his lap, apart, as if
holding open a book. Everyone else on the
bridge turned to stare at him. Silence stretched
long and loud.
"Well, ah," Kirk said, "anyone else who
thinks of one, feel free to jump right in."
"Well, it happened this once, anyway,"
McCoy said, "Gand the odds be damned. Maybe
this will make you rethink your belief in the omnipotence
of that precious logic of yours, Spock."
"A single anomalous event is as likely
to make me forswear logic, Doctor," said
Spock, "as the apparent success of a voodoo
doctor in making a seriously ill patient rise
up from his deathbed is to make you trade your medical
tricorder for a rattle and beads. Although"-and for a
moment Kirk could have sworn he was almost at risk of
smiling-"now that I think if it ... "Don't say
it!" McCoy said. "Don't even say it."
"Captain," Uhura said, swiveling from her
console, 46now that it's all over, I can't help
feeling sorry for Commissioner Wayne."
"A tragic case," Spock said.
An investigation had been launched back in the
Federation. Commissioner for Interspecies Affairs
Hightower had been a close friend of the late
Councillor Cornelius Wayne. He had
taken the councilloes brilliant but unstable
daughter under his wing. He had also, it seemed,
expended a great deal of effort covering for her.
Or maybe he was covering something darker, something
deeper, New evidence about the councillor himself was
coming to light, tales of violent outbursts which his
enormous influence had kept hidden for years.
Staff from the Wayne household on Jotunheim
confirmed that the councillor had brutalized
Moriah mentally and physically. Perhaps he had done
more than that. However much Hightower had known about
Cornelius Wayne's maltreatment of his
daughter, his efforts on behalf of his friend and his
prot6git had bought the commissioner nothing but trouble.
Moriah's defection had turned the spotlight of
scandal full-bore on the Commission for
Interspecies Affairs. A great many
irregularities were being illuminated. Two
traditional foes of Starfleet-Wayne senior and
Hightower-were in the process of being utterly
discredited. Kirk got no satisfaction
from the fact. The whole thing made him feel sad and
sordid. He would be happy to put Discord and its
memories behind him.
A call for Kirk came from the surface. He
accepted. Aileea dinAthos smiled from the screen.
69 How're the repairs coming, Jim?"
"Good enough for government work," he said, "though I
doubt you feel that's a very high standard. How about down
there?"
"We'll endure the loss of Harmony-we've
learned a lot about enduribledful over the years.
Storm is coming back together, but it's taking on a
whole new character and will probably wind up having a
new name ... the market decides that, too, in a
way." "How do you feel?"
"Relieved and happy and scared and sad, and somehow
kind of empty," she said. "It's hard to think about the
war being over after all these years."
"You'll miss the excitement, won't you?" A
shy smile and a nod. "I'm afraid so. That's one
reason Vares tend to look down on what I've
done for a living most of my life-it gets to be hard
to do
without. No matter how much we think we hate it,
when we're away, we start feeling a
craving for it."
Kirk looked thoughtful. How he'd feel when he
no longer got to command a starship ... was something that
didn't bear thinking about. "Sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof," as Bones would say.
"The funny thing is," she said, "I still can't
hate the Susuru. I won't make excuses for
them ... but it's easy to see why they were always
afraid of us."
The Susuru were afraid of everybody. For
excellent reasons.
Kirk never saw Swift nor'any of his Five
of Fives again. He didn't inquire too
closely into what had happened to them. The Klingon
captives taken aboard the Enterprise had been
contemptuously straightforward about their intention of
enslaving the Susuru and looting their planet, just as
soon as they'd served their function of baiting the
Empires worst enemy to his destruction.
Swift's successor as Lead Walker was a much
younger Susuru named Wise, which Kirk hoped
wasn't overly optimistic. Whether he lived up
to the name or not, Wise was much more forthcoming with information
than his predecessor. The Susuru had begun as a
peaceful, mainly agrarian people. Over what
seemed to Kirk an enormous period of time they had
developed a technical civilization, including
limited spaceflight. Then had come invasion by a
race of beings with only one discernible agenda
to exterminate all other intelligent life in the
universe. Three times had the Susuru started
fife anew on an uninhabited planet. Three
times their tormentors had found them and destroyed all
but a few who managed
to win free. The final time, somehow, the Susuru
had developed warp drive-or acquired it from
somewhere; the Lead Walker either didn't know or
didn't care to say. They had spent years
traveling through space, hoping to put enough light-years
between themselves and their enemies that they would never be found.
Then the warp drive broke down. In two hundred
years of sublight travel, the first marginally
habitable world they had been able to reach was Discord.
They didn't like it there-but they didn't have any
choice. They were horrified, half a local year
after their arrival, to find they were sharing the planet with a
race of backwards-built, hai " riess
bipeds. Naturally, the Susuru tried to destroy
them. Alien beings were a menace. If they could, they
would destroy the Susuru. The problem
was, the Susuru weren't very good at war. And the
Discordians wouldn't fight fair, and come onto the
land in bunches so they could be conveniently
eradicated. They made the Susuru come after them in
boats. The veldt-roving Susuru hated the sea.
They didn't like the Klingons, either, when the Empire
stumbled across them. But they were easy marks for
experienced operators like the Klingons. Their leaders
were hungry to consolidate power over their own people and
rabid at the prospect of being able to purge the
planet of the hated intruders. Even if the
intruders happened to have arrived first. And the Klingons
promised to do it all with a minimum of muss and
fuss, no down payment, easy monthly terms. The
Susuru were not the first race to bite on that one.
Kirk sadly doubted they would be the last.
"The strangest thing," "eea said, "the hardest thing
for me to get used to, in a way, is that, just because the
Susuru were willing to fight for Discord, it never
meant they liked it here. They just hated us worse
than they did the planet." "And now the Federation is
seeing to resettling them," Kirk said. "They'll still
have to learn to put up with neighbors. But at least
they'll be living on a comfortable planet."
Discord's true natives, the
colony-forms that inhabited the Venus-like
microenvironments of the volcanic vents at the
bottom of Hellsgate, had no objection to the
Susuru and the Vares continuing to inhabit their world. Quite
the opposite They were able telepathically to perceive
everything that occurred on Discord, above and below the
sea, and they found the colonists of both species
entertaining. But the Susuru had had enough of the world they
called Island and had taken the Federation up on its
offer of a ride out. "I wonder if they'll
adjust," Aileea said. "Do you care?" She shook
her head. "No." And he laughed a little and shook his
head, because he found her answer mildly appalling and
incomprehensible. And yet he knew she was a warm
person, willing to risk her life for a friend and extend
the hospitality of her childhood home to a near
stranger, one whose possible goals might include the
disruption of almost everything she held dear. She's a
complex one, that's for sure. "You're staying a few
days yet, aren't you?" she asked. "A few days
only," he said. "We're going back with the first
transports."
"Well, I know Hikaru wants to spend a little
more time with Gita before you go. And Jason and Uhura
wanted to visit the ranch. Why don't we
make an expedition of it, do some diving, teach you some
more about our local wildlife." A smile stretched
itself slowly across his face. "You know," he said, "I
think that might be just what the doctor ordered."
"Speaking of doctors," Aileea said, "why
don't you ask that marvelous Dr. McCoy along?
He's been working himself to death, and there's nothing more he
can do for your wounded now. My aunt Maritza's a
surgeon in Serendip. Maybe she could teach him a
thing or two." And maybe I'm not so eager to put
Discord behind me after all, Jim Kirk thought.