THE LAST fire-gold sliver of Rakatan's sun slipped below the flank of the volcano, leaving a deep rose afterglow huddled in the western sky. A hand fell on Uhura's shoulder, warm against the sudden high-altitude chill.
"It's over," Sulu said.
Uhura lifted her head from her arms, but it took her a moment to be able to listen for the sound she'd blocked out of her mind an hour before. The distant lash of a whip rising and falling no longer echoed off the rock wall behind the Elasian mining camp. She heard nothing else in its place, neither groans nor whimpers nor curses.
"Do you think he passed out?" Uhura asked, looking across her shoulder at Chekov. No matter how annoyed she had been at Oben, she couldn't believe that any sentient being deserved this much punishment for a simple error in judgment. The fact that the Elasians accepted it without question made her aware of how truly alien they were, despite their superficially similar appearance.
"I doubt it." Chekov's face was half-hidden by the cold pack he kept pressed to his swollen cheek, making his expression unreadable. "A direct hit with a photon torpedo might make an Elasian pass out, but not much else would."
Uhura shivered. "But he hasn't made a sound since they started. . . ."
"That's because he'd rather die than cry out," Chekov said matter-of-factly.
Sulu looked up from the remains of the tricorder they had salvaged from the Dohlman's quarters. He'd been tinkering with it all evening, substituting spare components from his shuttle repair kit in a vain attempt to make it work. "And you like these people?"
"I never said I liked them." Chekov dropped the cold pack, showing them his scowl as well as the spreading bruise across his cheekbone. "I said I understood them."
"Well, I'm glad someone around here does. I can't decide whether Israi is a psychopathic monster or just a royally spoiled brat." Uhura paused, then shook her head, annoyed with herself for the comment. "No, that's not fair. She's only what her culture made her."
"And it made her to be an absolute despot," Sulu said soberly.
"That doesn't matter." Despite—or perhaps because of—his bruised cheek, Chekov's gaze had lost none of its Slavic intensity. "Commander, our mission here isn't to understand the Elasians or to like them. It's to find out whether or not they have a valid claim to this planet. Have we done that yet?"
"I'm not sure." Uhura flung an exasperated look at the dead tricorder. "I had just gotten the last translation from Israi when the earthquake hit. I haven't had a chance to correlate her information with the original astral chart."
Silence fell, strained and tense with frustration. From the open shuttle behind them, Uhura could hear the clatter of plates and the hum of the food synthesizer as Murphy constructed their evening meal. As the junior member of the landing party, the task of making supper had fallen to him. Uhura looked up when the dark-skinned security guard emerged from the shuttle at last, more than willing to be distracted from her worries.
"So, Ensign, what have you persuaded the synthesizer to give us this time?"
"Vegetable soup and cheese sandwiches, sir." Murphy slanted a doubtful look at his tray of steaming bowls. "At least, I think it's vegetable soup. It has some little green things floating around in it."
Sulu groaned and fell over backward, clutching the broken tricorder against his chest. "Little green things? I have to eat little green things for supper?"
Chekov snorted, taking the bowl Murphy apologetically offered him. "Why not? You do it all the time on shore leave."
"That's different," the helmsman informed him, sitting up to take his own bowl. "Those are real green things, not synthesized green things."
Murphy cleared his throat. "Should I take some supper out to Dr. Mutchler, sir?"
Uhura glanced around, only now noticing the geologist's absence. He'd been so uncharacteristically quiet since they'd left the Dohlman's ruined quarters that she'd forgotten about him. "Where is Dr. Mutchler?"
"On the other side of the shuttle. I've been keeping an eye on him from inside." Murphy pointed under Gamow's stubby nose, and Uhura finally saw the geologist, prowling restlessly back and forth across the dry streambed that was their new landing site. "I asked him about supper before I went in, but he said he was busy taking atmospheric measurements and didn't have time to eat."
"Well, take him some anyway," Uhura ordered. "And make sure he eats it."
"Yeah, that way we can all suffer together." Sulu poked one of the green chunks in his soup with a suspicious spoon, putting it down untasted as soon as Murphy disappeared behind the shuttle. "You know, I can't remember the last time we had good food on a planetary mission. Do you think the synthesizers have been programmed to—hey!"
Uhura looked up from her soup and blinked in surprise. In reaching for a sandwich, Sulu had slid the tricorder from his lap to the ground beside him. It hit with a small thump, rattled briefly, then warbled into glowing life.
"Hey!" Sulu dropped his sandwich and knelt down beside the battered instrument, rubbing red-gray dust off its display screen. "I think it's showing us the Elasians' astral chart!"
A spurt of relief ran through Uhura, easing some of the tension that had coiled in her stomach. "Oh, thank God." She set her soup bowl down and went to join Sulu, pulling her salvaged computer notepad from her trouser pocket. "See if you can get it to download my translations onto the map. The entries are keyed to the number of pictograph symbols in each star's name."
Sulu plugged the notepad into the tricorder's data port and tapped a command into the smaller instrument. It whirred and clicked as it dumped its file of translated Elasian names and dates into the tricorder's memory. Uhura sat cross-legged in front of it, propping her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms while she watched the spiderweb lines of Elasian pictographs transform into English letters. "Chekov—"
"I'm here." The Russian hunkered down on her other side, squinting at the screen. The copied image of Israi's chart flickered slightly, some bands of pixels refusing to light even when Sulu tapped gingerly on the display. "Maybe we should take this into the shuttle and transfer it to a bigger screen."
Sulu made a wry face. "I'd rather not. Whatever circuit connection's loose in there, it's not one I can replace. Better not to move it while it feels like working." The helmsman studied the tricorder, his face hushed with concentration. "I recognize most of these systems," he said at last. "But the distances between them don't look right. Is this an old chart, Uhura?"
"One hundred Standard years old, according to the tricorder's spectral analysis."
"Then we're seeing galactic rotational drift. That would explain the change in distances."
"Where did these discovery dates come from?" Chekov demanded. "I can't believe the Elasians recorded their history in Federation Standard years."
"No, they used a dynastic chronology. I translated the dates using Israi's royal genealogy." Uhura pointed at the star system at the center of the chart. "The oldest discovery date she gave me was for their neighbor, Troyius: twentieth year of the reign of Teslah, ninth Dohlman in the line of Sevuth. According to my calculations, that works out to about two hundred and thirty-five Standard years ago."
Chekov drummed his fingers on his cold pack thoughtfully. "That sounds about right. According to the military history of this quadrant, the Elasians launched their earliest nuclear-powered spaceships about two hundred and fifty years ago."
"And it makes sense that they would discover Troyius first," Sulu agreed. "It's in the system of their home star. Even those old Elasian fission-powered ships could have made that journey fast enough. What could they do, Chekov, about two-tenths of light-speed?"
"Maximum," his former navigator agreed. He gnawed on his lower lip, a habit he had when he was calculating something in his head. "At that speed, it would have taken them four years round trip to Troyius. Not much worse than Earth's first mission to Mars."
"Well, what about Rakatan?" Uhura leaned across Sulu to tap the five-planet system in the far corner of the astral chart. The line of English text displayed under it flickered, then steadied again. "It's got the latest discovery date on the chart—only one hundred and five Standard years ago."
"Ouch!" Sulu made another face. "That's fifty years before the Vulcans ran across it."
"I know." Uhura looked up at her companions, frowning. "But something about that doesn't sound right to me. I just can't put my finger on it. . . ."
Silence fell again as they peered at the flickering screen, but this time it was the comfortable working silence of a crew used to solving problems together. Sulu broke it with a single triumphant word.
"Time."
Uhura blinked at him, unsure of what he meant, but Chekov's indrawn breath told her he understood. He dropped his cold pack again, this time to stare at her. "You said this chart was one hundred Standard years old, yes?"
She nodded, still puzzled. "That's how old the tricorder said the plastic was."
"So only five years elapsed between the Elasians discovering the Ordover system and making the chart." Sulu shook his head. "That's not enough time."
Chekov grunted. "Not a hundred years ago, not for the Elasians. They were still using fission-powered ships when they came under Federation control."
Uhura felt her breath catch in her throat when she saw where they were going. "So one hundred years ago, they couldn't travel faster than light!" She darted a look at Sulu. "How far away is Elas from Rakatan?"
"Fifteen and a half light-years," the helmsman answered. "At sublight speeds, it should have taken the Elasians at least eighty Standard years to get home and report their discovery."
"Not five." Chekov scowled, then winced and brought the cold pack up to his cheek again as the expression tugged at his bruises. "Commander, this chart is a forgery."
"Or at least this entry on it is." Uhura took in a deep breath, the vague sense of unease that had been plaguing her finally put to rest. "I thought the Ordover system looked a little sharper than the others on the chart."
"Added later to an authentic map," Sulu suggested. "That way the tricorder wouldn't detect it unless you specifically told it to analyze the age of the ink it was drawn with." He glanced at Uhura, his smooth Asian face barely visible in the darkness. They had been so intent on the tricorder screen, Uhura hadn't noticed Rakatan's day-night terminus creeping over them. "Do you think the Dohlman would agree to that test?"
Uhura surprised herself with a snort. "I don't think Israi would agree to breathe right now if I told her to." She saw her teammates' perplexed looks and sighed. "She's feeling a little put upon because Dr. Chapel tranquilized her on board the Enterprise. I think she's holding me personally responsible for the insult since I'm the Dohlman of the ship."
"So what do we do?" Chekov asked irritably. "Wait for Her Glory to get over her temper tantrum while buildings fall down on our heads?"
Uhura tapped a finger against her lips, considering their options. "I think we already have enough information for the captain to act on. Let's call him." She reached for her communicator. "Maybe he can put some pressure on—"
A strangled choke from the darkness interrupted her. Sulu and Chekov sprang to their feet, closing in on either side of Uhura, but it was too late. Without so much as a foot scrape of warning, a wall of Elasians materialized out of the night. Momentarily blinded by her focus on the bright tricorder screen, Uhura couldn't make out their expressions, but she saw the shivering glints of starlight that marked Klingon disruptors. She didn't need the fierce grip of Chekov's hand on her wrist to warn her against activating her communicator.
Something hit the ground, the solid thud of a body falling. After a moment, Uhura's night vision cleared enough to show her Murphy's unconscious body sprawled before them. Behind him, a large chunk disengaged from the solid wall of cohort and resolved into their leader. With one hand, Takcas held Scott Mutchler pinioned in a taut arc of pain. With the other, the kessh held his own disruptor steady against the geologist's throat.
"Thieves and liars." Takcas's voice sounded deeper than usual, as if he spoke through fiercely clenched teeth. "Throw down your communication devices or you will die in howling agony."
Uhura believed him. Carefully maneuvering her communicator up from belt level, she tossed it into the open space between them. Reluctantly, Chekov and Sulu followed her example.
"Weapons, too."
In the lifeless night silence of Rakatan, Uhura could hear the tense breathing of the man beside her. She reached back and gripped Chekov's forearm, squeezing it as hard as she could. She might not understand male Elasians the way the security chief seemed to, but even she could sense that this was no hormone-driven confrontation. If Chekov didn't obey them, he would be killed.
Uhura heard the small but unmistakable rasp of gritted teeth, then Chekov's phaser followed the communicators onto the pile. "Are you going to tell us what this is all about?" the Russian asked evenly.
"Do you tell a worm his crimes before you crush him?" Takcas stepped back and motioned at his cohort. Four of them circled around to drag Sulu and Chekov away from Uhura while a fifth burly shadow stooped slowly and painfully to pick up the equipment. Uhura stared at Oben, barely able to believe that anybody bruised as badly as he was on chest, arms, and back could still walk, much less want to obey the kessh who had beaten him for hours. Chekov had been right about Elasian pride and endurance.
Uhura tore her gaze away, forcing herself to meet Takcas's narrow-eyed stare with one just as steady. "And am I a worm, too, kessh Takcas?" she demanded, fighting to keep the softness of shock out of her voice. Arrogance is all these people respect, she reminded herself, but it was hard to be arrogant in front of twenty Klingon disruptors. "The Dohlman Israi owes her life to us. Is this how she thanks people?"
Takcas shook Mutchler and the geologist choked again, his narrow face pale against the darkness. "Another of this crawling reptile's tricks! We have learned from the Crown Regent how his machines made that earthquake."
"But we rescued—"
"All part of your plan to rob us of this planet. The Crown Regent even told us how you would twist Her Glory's words to make our claim invalid—just as we heard you do tonight!"
Uhura opened her mouth to argue further, but a grunt of pain stopped her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Sulu double over as one of his guards clubbed him for a second time in the stomach. There was a small flurry of motion to the right as Chekov struggled briefly and was subdued.
This time Uhura didn't have to counterfeit the fury in her voice. "What was that for?"
"That was for you." Takcas handed his prisoner to Oben and strode toward Uhura, stopping a respectful pace away. "You are a Dohlman, Your Glory, and our Dohlman says we must not touch you or do you any insult. But if you do not come quietly down to the punishment cells with us, we will crush your cohort one by one until their screams reach all the way to your ship."
"Spock, report."
Kirk knew that all the lighting and environments on the Enterprise were artificially created, but the bridge still looked different to him in the middle of third-shift night from the way it did during his normal first-shift day. Some of it, he knew, was the faces—people he could recognize in passing, but whose work styles and speeds he didn't know inside and out. The rest of the difference could be attributed to adrenaline, pumped into his bloodstream whenever the intercom awoke him in the middle of the night for any emergency that couldn't be handled without him.
He took the steps to his command chair quickly, pausing by the arm as his first officer turned to face him.
"Captain, we are being approached by a fleet of three hundred unidentified vessels. They have not responded to repeated hails, nor have they altered their course."
He turned the chair and sat. "Are our shields up?"
Spock nodded once. "Shields were activated when the lead vessel entered firing range, Captain. The fleet has activated its own defense array, but has taken no other hostile action."
"Hmm." Rakatan's blue-gray profile bisected the viewscreen, hanging against a sprinkle of stars and the flat black circle that was Rakatan's shadowed moon. "Can you get the ships on visual?"
The pilot glanced down at the helm scanner, then shook her head. "No, sir. They've taken up a fixed position just outside visual scanning range."
Damn.
"Captain." Spock's distracted tone told Kirk the Vulcan was bent over his science station. "I may be able to enhance scanner sensitivity by temporarily converting it to make use of the unusually high ultraviolet output of the Ordover system." He lifted his head. "That should give us a higher-frequency signal, but there will be no visual color."
Kirk would take what he could and be grateful for that. "Give me what you can, Mr. Spock."
"Aye, Captain."
"Captain?" The navigator glanced over his shoulder, hands poised above his console. "Shall I maintain standard orbit, sir? It will take us out of sensor range of the fleet in approximately ten minutes."
Kirk leaned forward to squint at the empty screen. No matter how many years he spent in space, he would never learn to like facing an enemy he couldn't see. "Hold on for now, Lieutenant," he said at last. "Once we've passed over Rakatan's horizon, bring us back on a steep polar loop. I want to be out of their sight for at least five minutes." Maybe they could catch the mice playing if they thought the cat was on the other side of the planet.
"Mr. Howard?"
The guard at the security station glanced up. "Aye, sir?"
"What sort of reading can you get on their weapons?" Dark eyes flicked across scanner readouts. Kirk watched the light on the young ensign's face shift from amber, to green, to amber again. "Most of the ships are single-person close-quarter fighters, sir. They carry light phasers, but no torpedo banks. The lead ship's a lot bigger, though, and carries both." He paused again, leaning to his left to check another screen. "The flagship is just under Soyuz-size, but the ionic output from the power source looks like …" Eyebrows rose, and he shot a startled look at Kirk. "… like a Klingon cruiser, sir."
Kirk tightened his hands on the arms of his command chair. "Keep our phasers trained on that flagship, Ensign."
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Spock, any luck with that conversion yet?"
"Coming on-screen now, Captain."
Rakatan's horizon line broke and rippled, and all color washed out of the screen like sand sliding between two plates of glass. A ghostly black-and-white image fluttered into focus, barely detailed enough for the viewer to pick out individual vessels from the shifting blur. The flagship stood out most clearly, smooth and sinister as a snake, with sharp, well-tooled edges and the sweeping arc of a warp pylon jutting out to either side. The myriad smaller ships were more primitive, bullet-shaped, their outlines blurred into harsh checkerboard patterns wherever the ultraviolet was absorbed by weld seams and converted into heat. Kirk chewed his thumbnail as he studied the motley armada.
"The big one looks like it used to be a Klingon heavy frigate," Howard remarked to no one in particular. He sounded hesitant, and a little confused.
"Yes …" Kirk pulled his gaze away from the viewscreen long enough to reward the ensign with a grim nod. "They've made quite an industry out of retooling their older vessels for sale to non-allied systems. But those smaller ships …" He glanced a question back at Spock, and the Vulcan raised both eyebrows as though surprised the captain had to ask.
"I believe we are in the presence of the Crown Regent," he said, quite formally. When Kirk only frowned, Spock nodded toward the viewscreen. "Captain, what we are seeing is the Royal Armada of Elas."