First Strike (part of the Invasion series) [030 4.9]

By Diane Carey

Synopsis

Klingons and the Federation at each other's throats; space-faring outcasts
from across the Galaxy returning to reclaim their rightful territory --
(or is it)? alien beings ... or are they? Kirk, Spock and the crew of the
Enterprise and a Klingon general struggle to save the Galaxy in this first
part of what proves to be an exciting series, which spans the Star Trek
generations!


INVASION!
"THE TALES ARE ALL TRUE.
THE DEMONS HAVE RETURNED."

General Kellen of the Klingon Empire spoke to his
crew, his normally calm voice brimming with terror
and anger. "They have come back and they are on
that ship out there.

"It will take all of us to defeat them," the general
continued. "Call the Empire for reinforcements.
Track that ship, but do not go near it. I will go for
help."

"For help?" his first officer asked. "From where?
From whom?"

"We need a demon to fight demons," the general
said at last. "I will get one. I will get Captain
James T. Kirk."

Look for STAR TREK Fiction from Pocket Books Star Trek The Original Series The Ashes of Eden Federation Sarek Best Destiny Shadows on the Sun Probe Prime Directire The Lost Years Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country Star Trek V The Final Frontier Star Trek IV The Voyage Home Spock's World Enterprise Strangers from the Sky Final Frontier

1 Star Trek The Motion Picture

2 The Entropy Effect

3 The Klingon Gambit g4 The Covenant of the Crown

5 The Prometheus Design

6 The Abode of Life

7 Star Trek 11 The Wrath of Khan

8 Black Fire

9 Triangle

10 Web of the Romulans

11 Yesterday's Son

12 Mutiny on the Enterprise

13 The Wounded Sky

14 The Trellisane Confrontation

15 Corona

16 The Final Reflection

17 Star Trek Ilk The Search for Spock '
18 My Enemy. My Ally

19 The Tears of the Singers

20 The Vulcan Academy Murders

21 Uhura Song

22 Shadow Lord

23 Ishmael

24 Killing Time

25 Dwellers in the Crucible

26 Pawns and Symbols

27 Mindshadow

28 Crisis on Centaurus

29 Dreadnought/

30 Demons

31 Battlestations!

32
Chain of Attack

33
Deep Domain

34
Dreams of the Raven

35
The Romulan Way

36
How Much for Just the Planet?

37
Bloodthirst

38
The IDIC Epidemic

39
Time for Yesterday

40
Timetrap

41
The Three-Minute Universe

42
Memory Prime

43
The Final Nexus

44
Vulcan's Glory

45
Double, Double g46 The Cry of the Onlies
47 The Kobayashi Maru

48 Rules of Engagement g49 The Pandora Principle
50 Doctor's Orders

51 Enemy Unseen

52 Home Is the Hunter

53 Ghost Walker

54 A Flag Full of Stars

55 Renegade

56 Legacy

57 The Rift

58 Face of Fire

59 The Disinherited

60 Ice Trap

61 Sanctuary

62 Death Count

63 Shell Game

64 The Starship Trap

65 Windows on a Lost World

66 From the Depths

7 The Great Starship Race

68 Firestorm

69 The Patrian Transgression

70 Traitor Winds

71 Crossroad

72 The Better Man

75 Recovery

74 The Fearful Summons

75 First Frontier

76 The Captain's Daughter

77 Twilight's End

78 The Rings of Tautee

78 Invasion 1 First Strike Star Trek The Next Generation Kahless Star Trek Generations AI! Good Things Q-Squared Dark Mirror Descent The Devil's Heart lmzadi
Relics Reunion Unification Metamorphosis Vendetta Encounter at Farpoint

1 Ghost Ship

2 The Peacekeepers

3 The Children of Hamlin
4 Survivors

5 Strike Zone

6 Power Hungry

7 Masks

8 The Captains' Honor

9 ,4 Call to Darkness

10 ,4 Rock and a Hard Place
11 Gulliver's Fugitives

12 Doomsday World

13 The Eyes of the Beholders

14 Exiles

15 Fortune's Light

16 Contamination

17 Boogeymen

18 Q-in. Law

19 Perchance to Dream

20 Spartacus

21 Chains of Command

22 Imbalance

23 War Drums

24 Nightshade

25 Grounded

26 The Romulan Prize

27 Guises of the Mind

28 Here There Be Dragons

29 Sins of Commission

30 Debtors' Planet

31 Foreign Foes

32 Requiem

33 Balance of Power

34 Blaze of Glory

35 Romulan Stratagem

36 Into the Nebula

37 The Last Stand

38 Dragon's Honor

9 Rogue Saucer

40 Possession

41 Invasion 2 The Soldiers of Fear Star Trek Deep Space Nine Warped
7 Warchild The Search
8 Antimatter

9 Proud Helios

1 Emissary
10 Valhalla

2 The Siege
11 Devil in the Sky

3 Bloodletter
12 The Laertian Gamble The Big Game
13 Station Rage

5 Fallen Heroes
14 The Long Night

6 Betrayal
15 Objective Bajor Star Trek Voyager

1 Caretaker
2 The Escape
3 Ragnarok
4 Violations
5 Incident at ,4rbuk
6 The Murdered Sun
7 Ghost of a Chance
8 Cybersong

FIRST STRIKE

DIANE CAREY

INVASION! concept by John J. Ordover and Diane Carey For orders other than by individual consumers, Pocket Books
grants a discount on the purchase of I0 or more copies of
single tiffes for special markets or premium use. For further
details, please write to the Vice-President of Special Markets,
Pocket Books, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019-6785,
8th Floor.

For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon &
Schuster Inc., 200 Old Tappan Road, Old Tappan, NJ 07675.

POCKET BOOKS

New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased
this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to
the publisher as "unsold and destroyed." Neither the author nor the
publisher has received payment for the sale of this "stripped book."

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
products Of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Copyright 1996 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of
Paramount Pictures.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

All rights reserved, including the right to reprcluce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 ISBN 0-671-54002-5 First Pocket Books printing July 1996

109876 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

SPACEQUAKE

Danger is never the barometer of an officer's
conduct.
-Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim

Chapter One

"THE SUN IS GROWING!"

"Impossible. Is it an illusion?"

"No! No! Also reading a reduction in mass! Seventy-one
percent and dropping!"

A relatively small star system--only five planets. Two
livable, one worth conquering.

Now, through some unimagined power, the sun was engaging in a practice heretofore reserved for balloons.
It was expanding. Dilating. It was growing.
"General, the planets! Same effect!"

"I'm standing next to you. Calm down when you
speak. Is the speed of orbit increasing with reduction in
mass?"

"Yes! And they're spinning faster and faster!"

"Stop shouting. No one else shout anymore. We will
look at this and decide."

The crew of the Klingon patrol cruiser Jada swung to
look at the rows of auxiliary monitors showing views of
the five planets. Two of the planets, the two nearest the
sun, were dilating too--blowing outward from their
cores as if puffed up by breath. A second later, the other

Diane Carey

three puffed also. And all solar-system bodies and debris
were racing faster around the sun with every passing
second.
But the first two planets were not only blowing
apart--they were charging out of their orbits like balls
swung on strings that had been suddenly released. No
longer held in a curve around the sun, they were
launched on elongated orbits. The arc was widening--distorting.
In horror and shock, the crew and their general
measured the impossible occurring around them. The
sun, minutes ago as normal as any other, now had
swollen to fill their main viewscreen. The screen mechanisms
whirred to compensate for the blinding light that
had flared too fast and set the crew to shielding their
eyes.
It could not happen, but it was happening. Their
general swung his squat, broad-chested body to the main
screen when the light finally dimmed. The light still hurt
his eyes but this was something he had to see for himself.
His voice was very quiet. "Are we falling toward it?"
"No!" the tactical officer punctuated, then remembered
what the general had said about shouting. "Position stationary. But the shipreit--we... we..."
"Speak, man."
"Reading a reduction in registered mass for us as well!
All other ships reporting the same!"
Suddenly the helmsman said, "Ship's speed is increasing,
sir! But I have not done it!"
To their left, the tactical officer turned to the center of
the bridge, stared at Captain Ruhl, and confirmed, "All
five other ships reporting the same thing happening to
them."
"Compensate." Ruhl was the newly assigned captain
of this ship, a narrow-bodied individual with a missing
tooth in front. When the general did not stop him, he
gained confidence and snapped his fingers at hit officers.
"Keep the speed down."
"Trying," the helmsman uttered, but he was involved

FIRST STRIKE
in a struggle. "Point four five of sublight... point five
zero... still increasing..."
"Everything is speeding up," the tactical officer
abridged, gasping as an animal does on the run.
Lack of inhibition about his own ignorance was Ruhl's
only good trait, and in fact was the qualification that had
gotten him this command. He had no ego at all. No
problem turning to their elder and asking, "General
Kellen, what should we do?"
Sensing the panic about to erupt around him, the
general held out one hand for silence. Five ships to
protect, a vaporizing solar system... they wanted answers
from him. Solutions. He had none.
He would do as he always did in wild situations--he
would become calmer than anything or anyone around
him. He would lower his voice, contain his stance, raise
his chin, and deliver a glacial demeanor. He had long ago
discovered the best key to winning When the situation
becomes tense, become correspondingly calm. He could
win over anyone that way. Being a Vulcan among Klingons,
controlled and contemplative, would supersede any
Klingon. Most Klingons despised Vulcans. That made
his advantage even greater.
Now he was a general of the highest mark. Unexcit-ability
had served him so well that it had become the
mantle of his reputation. He rather enjoyed that.
Except in situations like this, when there was a panic
but no thinking enemy to outthink. He could not out-calm
a natural disaster. He found himself irritated by
that, and by the blustering fear demonstrated around
him.
Critical seconds ticked off as Kellen maneuvered his
wide body toward the science officer.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"MymI"
"His name is Karn," the helmsman blurted, anxious
enough to interfere.
"Karn," Kellen repeated, "explain what you think is
happening."

Diane Carey

Pressing both hands to his head as if to hold in the
flurry of details, Karn looked at his instruments, then
back at the general. His mouth opened and closed
several times before he found his voice.
"Mass," he began, "is failing to register on my instruments.
Not the matter... just the mass!"
"The sky is falling and we seem also to be falling,"
Kellen said evenly. "Keep talking."
Frantic, Karn battled to control himself. He put his
hands out between himself and his commanding officers
and made shapes as if sculpting his words.
"Every moving thing possesses a certain amount of
energy. How quickly it moves depends upon how much
energy and how much mass. Velocity is mass versus
energy. If the mass drops away but energy doesn't,
velocity must increase. If one or the other is taken away
or added, the nature makes it balance. Mass is slipping
away, but the energy is still there. So everything is
speeding up!"
His eyes were wild with confusion. The anchors of his
life, the precepts of concrete science, were slipping their
hold.
"How can mass be taken away?" Kellen asked him.
"I do not know that! But you see it happening?
"I feel it happening. And when one of my girth
becomes lighter, one notices."
Karn nodded, breathing as if he'd just come up
through water. "If it reaches zero... if it reaches zero .. Once the mass of all those planets and the sun hits
zero--if there is only energy and no mass--everything
will go to light speed! Every particle!"
"Like photons," Kellen considered. "Are you sure this
will happen?"
Seeming frustrated that his general was content to
discuss this theory--which was quickly manifesting
itself as much more than theory -- the sad scientist
continued to lose color from his bronze fate. "I am sure
of nothing! This has never happened before! But I think it will happen?

FIRST STRIKE
"Nothing in nature can go to light speed," the helmsman
argued. "It makes no sense."
Karn cranked around. "Neither does the mass dropping!"
"So the planets explode," the helmsman said. "So
what?"
"Idiot!" Karn slashed a hand toward him. "Don't you
understand? We are all part of the existing universe!" He
pointed frantically at the internal readouts. "Our mass is
going away too. The moment it hits zero, every one of
our molecules will move away from each other at the
speed of light! The energy has to go somewhere!"
Ruhl squinted at him. "We explode too?"
Karn nodded so hard that his hair bounced up and
down at the back of his neck. "At the speed of light!"
After a lifetime in space, Kellen understood immediately
and paused as comprehension dawned on each of
the others, blanching their faces one by one.
"Read out the mass falloff," he requested quietly.
Karns gnarled face was chalky with fear as he stared
into his instruments, but he took his general's example
and tried to rein in his panic. "Forty percent now and
still dropping, sir."
Ruhl glared at him. "Is it a weapon?"
Pressing a lock of neatly clipped hair away from the
side of his face, Kellen ignored the question and snapped
instead, "Go to battle mode. Deflectors up."
Ruhl pulled himself to the helm, rather than bothering to shift the responsibility to anyone else, and with one
finger punched in the shields-up.
All at once a hand of nausea swept down upon them
all, and they were released from their own weight. The
deck slid away from their boots.
Loss of mass--loss of gravity!
As he grabbed clumsily for a handhold, Kellen called
out over the noise, "Compensate. Compensate, you
clumsy amateurs!"
"Trying, sir!"
"Trying, sir!"

Diane Carey

"Compensating, sir!"

They were trying, he could see that. The helmsman
fought with his controls while holding himself to his seat
with his knotted legs. The ship raced through open space
on a nonsensical course around the solar system, leading
the other five ships in the fleet as they all struggled for
control.

Planets blew to bits, no longer possessing mass
enough, therefore gravity enough, to hold themselves
together. Moons dislodged from their orbits, then also
expanded as if inflated from inside. Asteroids bloated to
dust, and the dust scattered.

Now only thick clouds of ejecta rushing far faster than
ever nature intended, the freewheeling satellites continued
to distend, continents shattering, oceans spraying
out into space to become ice clouds. Like the pulsebeat
of a superbeing, the sun dilated more and more, sending
its incendiary kiss out to the rubble of planets it had
moments ago nurtured. No longer bonded to each other,
the sun's burning particles ballooned outward. The gassy
inflation consumed the rubble of the first planet. Life on
the planets was already destroyed. Millions of years to
evolve, seconds to suffocate.

A sunwa huge thermonuclear fusion bomb held together
by the natural magic of gravity. When the gravity
goes, the bomb starts to explode.

From where he hovered over the helm, Kellen stared
at the viewscreen and monitors, one after the other,
slightly less familiar than those on his flagship, and he
imagined what those life-forms must have feR just now.
Terrible things. This nausea, the loss of weight. The
ground falling from beneath their feet, the air gushing
out of their lungs as the atmosphere flew outward as if
torn away in a great sheet. The land around them
crumbling, trees launching toward space, no longer
rooted, for there was no more soil.

How advanced had they been? There hadn't been time
to investigate. Had intelligence come to them yet? Did

10 FIRST STRIKE

they have the sense to be afraid? To understand the last
glimpses of each other as they vaulted toward open
space, into a sky no longer blue?

Instruments on the bridge chattered and screamed for
attention, reading out the disaster on molecular levels
and striving to compensate for the changes pouring in
through the sensors.

He heard the sound of his men's panic throbbing in his
head, calling for him--Kellen! Kellen! Kellen!--but he
couldn't respond or turn from the hypnotic destruction
on the screens. Certainly what he heard was only his
sanity calling to him in the midst of madness. For the
first time in his life he honestly did not know what to do.

He wasn't even on his own ship, with his own science
officer.

"Hail the Oul," he said steadily. "I want to speak to
my own science officer."

"Yes, General!" the shuddering helm officer choked.
Abruptly he looked at Ruhl, frightened that he might
have overstepped his post by not waiting for the ship's
commander to relay the order, but Ruhl nodded and the
contact was made. "Go ahead, sir."

Kellen drew himself closer to the communications link. "This is Kellen. I wish to speak to Aragor."
"We can't find him, sir."
"You can't find him?"
"Not... presently."
"Find him anyway."

"Yes, Commander. Stand by."

"Give me a view of the fleet," Kellen ordered as he
waited.

The tactical officer jumped to the necessary monitor.
The screen flickered, but came on, showing all five other
ships, greenish white hulls drenched in solar flush. Their
bottle-shaped forms jerked unevenly through space on
Qul's beam, and clearly they too were having problems
keeping their speed from increasing out of control. None
of them knew how to fight against this.

Diane Carey

"General Kellen, this is Aragor! Are you there?"
Kellen twisted back toward the comm unit, and almost
made another full twist around--he was losing his
grip on the deck. Losing mass. "Of course I am here.
What's happening to us?"

"Our instruments are reading a reduction in mass! It
seems to be continuing--I cannot explain it. Artificial
gravity is--!"

"I want a way to protect ourselves from it. Think of
something."

"We must keep our mass!" Karn shouted from behind
him. "Some part of it--a fraction of it! We mus t not go
to zero!"

"He is right, General. We might be able to shield
ourselves from the effect." Aragor's voice bubbled through the communications system, stressed and gaspy.
"With what?" Kellen asked.

"With... shields. If we divert all possible power, we
might be able to stall the effect--"

"Do it. All fleet science stations and helms tie in with Karn and Aragor. Match what they do. Aragor, do it."
"Yes, General."

Karn flinched, then said, "Yes, General."

The tactical officer panted, "Mass at twenty percent
and dropping!"

"Triple shields." Aragor's voice funneled through the
communications system, no longer directed at Kellen,
but at the science stations on all six ships. "Sending the
deflector formula through now. All systems accept and
confirm."

Karn and the tactical officer worked frantically at the
controls while bracing themselves in place against seat
backs and other crewmen.

"Ten percent and dropping..."

"Outside mass reading is separating from inner reading
." Karns voice shuddered with a ring of success.
"All stations report inner mass reading ...."

Solar matter continued to fly outward through the
system, cooking the planetary refuse, bombarding the

12 FIRST STRIKE

fleet's shields and tormenting the crews with the garish
noises of primitive assault.

Kellen hadn't been weightless since his first training
missions, yet the sensation was familiar, one of those
things the physical body never quite forgets. He recognized
the bizarre release of his internal organs from their
own weight, the light-headedness, the loss of equilibrium,
and fought to ignore those distractions. No control
over gravitymwithout it they dared not go to warp
speed. That meant they were trapped fighting to stay at
sublight against an effect that would ultimately drive
them to light speed, in the midst of a slaughtered solar
system about to go nova down to the last particle.

"Outer reading, five percent... inner reading, five
point one percent..."

As he listened to Karns voice, Kellen paused to think.
Decrease in mass causing increase in velocity... mass
shrinking, but with the same amount of propellant
energy. As they fell apart the outer planets were moving
faster and faster, whipping around their expanding sun.
Such a sight! If he died seeing this, certainly there were
worse deaths.

"Outer reading, two percent... inner reading, two
point zero four... zero three... zero two..."

Rubble from the decimated planets and space debris
rattled against the hull of the ship and caused an awful
percussion from bulkhead to bulkhead. The bridge crew
clamped their hands over their ears, and so let go of their
handholds and free-floated, bumping into each other in
midair.

Soon they were all tumbling.
"Outer mass at one percent!"
"Inner, one point zero five!"

"Divert impulse power to the shields!"

"Outer at one point zero one percent--"

The drone of numbers began to buzz in Kellen's mind.
How long had it been? The effect of gravity suspension
couldn't travel faster than light... that would affect
things. The pull of the sun had been suspended long

13

Diane Carey

enough to release the inner planets from their orbits, but
it would take four or five light-hours for that effect to

reach the decimated outer planets. For now they were

just clogs of shattered ejecta crashing along in their

regular orbits. When the suspension of the sun's gravitational pull reached them, they would free-fall out of

orbit as the inner planets had. If the effect lasted more

than a few minutes--if the mass reached zero--the sun

would never recover. The system would be gone forever,
just dust particles racing through space in all directions.

If it did stop, the velocity would drop and there would

be a primordial system again, as there was five billion

years ago. The whole configuration of this part of space

would be forever changed.

"Inner mass at one-sixtieth of one percent!" Karn was

hovering near the port auxiliary monitors and tipped

entirely onto his head in order to read the mass change.

"Mass outside of our shields is zero, sir! Zero!"

Between the "zz" and the "o" of his last word, the

planets of this solar system, now hardly more than

loosely grouped areas of rocky debris, seemed to vaporize
before them, molecules flashing in a million directions
. All but the sun was decimated. The sun itself, too

big to move far, expanded to unthinkable size now at the

speed of light, well off their scales and engulfing all their

screens. The shapes of the other five ships on the

auxiliary monitors were only glazed silhouettesin

And suddenly there were only four other ships.

"The Shukar!" Ruhl shouted. "General!"

Kellen stared at the brightening screens until his eyes

watered. The Shukar, blown into warp in a billion bits.

An explosion so fast as to be virtual vaporization.

Molecules suddenly radiating away from each other at
the speed of light. They had failed to hold mass.

"Inner mass, one one-hundredth of one percent!"

Karn whimpered, shielding his eyes with both hands as
he hovered upside down.

"One one-hundred
twentieth--we can't hold it!"

14

FIRST STRIKE

"Feed all weapons power to the shields."
Aragor was fighting to keep control, but Kellen knew
him and heard the tremors in his voice. They barely had
any mass at all, in practical terms it was nothing, but in
physics the difference between something and nothing was a universe of difference. They were managing to
remain intact while everything exploded around them,
but the power drain was fabulous. Seconds were slipping
away.
The planets were gone. The sun was still expanding. In
a few more minutes--
Suddenly a great hand swatted Kellen toward the
deck. His arms and legs flew upward, and he hit the deck
on his considerable stomach. Ruhl landed on top of him,
stunning them both. Confused by the sensation of their
own weight, the bridge crewmen rolled about momentarily,
searching for equilibrium. Was down once again
down?
Kellen put his palms on the deck and heaved upward,
pressing with his shoulder blades. For a moment he felt
like a bird-of-prey in battle poise, wings down, shoulders
tensed, knuckles in.
Ruhl rolled off and was dumped to the deck at Kellen's
heels. Kellen pressed down his need to vomit and clawed
toward the helm. "Status of gravitational forces system-wide!"
The crew shuffled dizzily to the shelf of readouts on
the starboard side. Ruhl's reddish hair had come loose
and was hanging in his face like a ragged mop. He was
still trying to do too much himself. Promoted too
quickly, it seemed. Not used to delegating responsibility.
Sometimes promotions happened that way when a family
was too well connected. He would learn.
"All readings returning to normal, sir!" Karn called.
He swung around to look at the forward monitor.
Kellen did the same, as did everyone. The sun would
tell.
Before their eyes the swollen, overextended mass of
solar matter was drawing inward toward its core again,

15

Diane Carey

shrinking with a terrible violence to its normal size--but

some of the solar matter flung off during the loss of mass

was too far away to be pulled back and spun outward in

all directions.

Now shorn of any life or growth, with the bits of living

bodies crushed amid the rubble, the planetary material

was bashed to primordial rubbish, thrown away at light

speed, and all bets were off. The sun would have to

gather itself, then slowly begin once again nipping at

deep space to draw bodies to orbit it. The eons had

begun again.

"Aragor," he said. "Aragor, are you there?"

The long silence was unfriendly. Had the same tragedy

happened to Qul as to Shukar? He began to look from

screen to screen.

"Aragor, sir," the comm system rasped. "The... sun

has moved several millions of miles... recoalesced

because of its size once gravity and mass returned... It

is no longer actually a sun, but a hot cloud of gas
beginning to act again as nature intended The
planets
are gone....

Random
observations, coming as Aragor thought of them.
He was deeply shaken.

"Everything
has stopped," the science officer continued
before Kellen has a chance to encourage him on. "The
velocity must have been reduced to its previous levels
somehow as the mass returned .... It must have something
to do with natural conservation of energy.
.. Energy has to come from somewhere... it cannot
just appear .... As long as we maintained the slightest mass, we remained... intact..."
He was searching for words. Saying what they were all
thinkingwthat these things cannot happen, but they just
had. Where had the energy come from that had caused
this?
"What stopped the effect, Aragor?" Kellen prodded.
More silence came back at him. He glanced at Karn,
who stared at him, waiting for Aragor to bear the weight.

16

FIRST STRIKE

"Nature stopped it."
Another stretch of silence
Kellen could sense Aragor thinking and thinking. "Mass... energy. and velocity are all related.
When mass was taken away, nature balanced with more
velocity, all the way to light speed When the mass
suddenly returned, velocity of the matter substantially
decreased."
"But velocity is only measured relative to other
things," Kellen broke in. "It decreased relative to what?"
They were all staring at him now. He felt the tense
stares of men on the other ships too. They were all
waiting for him and his science officer to find the answer.
"I do not know. "Aragor sounded whipped. He hadn't
wanted to say that. 'I could be completely wrong. I see
it, I can describe it... but I cannot explain it."
"Sir!" Ruhl gasped, moving on shaky legs back toward
his own command chair to where Kellen stood near the
helm. "Could it have been a weapon?"
"If it was theirs," Kellen said, "they have destroyed
themselves with it. If it was someone else's, then we have
a new war on our hands."
Ruhl came to hunch beside him over the shuddering
helm. "Starfleet?"
Kellen did not respond There were some things even a
Klingon preferred not to guess.
Starfleet. Their old enemy His oldest. Certainly those
people were capable of developing a mass-blanking
weapon, but he wondered if Starfleet would use such a
thing. Yes, but not without provocation, and there had
been none lately.
Kellen knew that, because he had asked to do some
provoking and been turned down.
The solar system remained in chaos. As the sun
broiled fiercely during its reintegration, alone in space
now.
Nothing left to conquer. Had the predator been
starved by the prey's self-immolation?

17

Diane Carey

If not a weapon, then what?
He turned to Ruhl, and found himself about to speak
to a shag of reddish hair, and it threw him off for a
moment. He shook his own combed locks as if in
example.
"RUM, at least get your hair out of your face when I
speak to you."
Pawing his hair out of his face, RuM caught part of his
long mustache on a fingernail and ended up with one
hand caught near his ear. He shook it loose, embarrassed,
wondering if he had just been given an order or
only a suggestion, and muttered, "Yes... yes, sir."
Rather than appease him with acknowledgment,
Kellen said "Assess damage in the fleet and make a full
sensor scan of the area."
Ruhl's small eyes grew wide. "What shall we scan
for?"
"Whatever you find."
"Yes, Commander .... "
"Karn," Kellen began, and turned to face the startled
science officer of this ship, so Karn would not look bad
in the eyes of his own crewmates. "Was the suspension
limited to this solar system? How far did it reach?"
Karn struggled to avoid thanking the general for his
attention, and poured himself into the readouts. "Long-range
sensors suggest it reached at least sixteen light-days."
"Dispatch immediate reports of all this to the Empire."
"Yes, General."
"General," Ruhl interrupted, "we should tell them the
Uri Taug star system is now devoid of life. Otherwise
they'll wonder why we failed to conquer."
Kellen held a hand toward the godlike ruin on the
screens. "We'll tell them we did conquer. After all, the
system is ours now. What's left of it."
"Sir!"
Both Kellen and Ruhl turned toward Karn. "Yes?"

18

FIRST STRIKE

"Sir... sir!"
Kellen swatted the young man's arm. "We are both
here. Say something!"
"A... a... change!"
The baffled science officer stepped aside with forgivable
gratitude as Kellen pressed toward the science station
and Ruhl pushed in after him.
In the middle distance, reading only a light-year away,
a core of turbulence had opened up on their screens. On
each screen it looked different, for each screen picked up
different elements--spectra, energy, spatial disruption.
Not a swirl, but not a crack, yet still it moved. Like a
piece of woman's fabric strung in space and waved by a
giant hand, it taunted them.
Squinting, Kellen wondered aloud, "What is that?"
"Some kind of... storm?" Ruhl sounded compelled
to invent an answer.
"A storm with good timing? I doubt that."
"Then what do you think?"
"I think we're seeing the cause of what he have just
felt." Kellen straightened and reacted briefly to a sharp
pain in his left shoulder from their experience. "I should
be on my own flagship for whatever is coming. Continue
to monitor that phenomenon. Remain at battle configuration."
"Yes, sir," Ruhl said.
"Aragor, are you still standing by?"
"Yes, General.t"
"Are you reading this phenomenon?"
'I.... see it, sir."
That was Aragor's way of admitting to Kellen that he
hadn't a clue what the waving veil was.
Using the confusion of the moment to shade the fact
that he didn't feel like walking all the way to the
transporter room, Kellen plucked his handheld communicator
from its holster and snapped it open.
"Pick up my coordinates and beam me back directly
to the bridge immediately. We will find out what did

19

Diane Carey this. If it is an accident, we will explain it. If it is a
weapon, we will own it. Activate transporter beams
now."

"Transporter officer, energize beams. Bring the general
directly to the bridge."

Aboard the Border Fleet flagship Qul, Science Officer
Aragor drew a long breath of relief that soon General
Kellen would be back aboard and would take command
during this strange time. Though he tried to appear
supremely Klingon in front of the bridge crew, Aragor
was frightened. The impossible had just happened before
his eyes, and his whole body was still quaking. Had
the mass drop continued a few more seconds, they would
have become part of an uncontrolled whirl of hyperlight.

A drop in mass! Unthinkable! It couldn't possibly
happen naturally.

The general would figure it out. He would find the
answers. The two of them would piece together the data,
and Kellen would decide what happened. Kellen was the
smartest warrior in the universe.

The whine of transporter energy chewed at Aragor's
ears, and he turned toward the open area of the bridge to
which Kellen was being beamed. Seconds now.

A pillar of expanding lights appeared, many bands,
bringing the disassembled atoms of their commander
across the emptiness of space, to be reconstructed here.
The pillar coalesced into shoulders draped with fabric, a
broad torso clad in stiff metallic fiber. For a moment
there was a short clean-cut beard and bronze hair
trimmed above the shoulder. A thin mustache, as if
stenciled on.

Then, the wide pillar of light began to fade. The whine
rose to a scream. The lights thinned out.

"What is this!" Aragor struck the communications
pad. "Transporter officer! What are you doing?"

There was no response. Before him, General Kellen's
partially formed face frowned as if sensing the transpor

20 FIRST STRIKE

tation going wrong. His right hand turned slightly outward
from his robe, toward Aragor, and the fingers
opened in beckoning.

"Transporter!" Aragor called. "Bring him in!"

"Trying," the comm buzzed. "There is interference,
sir!"

"Fight for him!" Aragor waved the other bridge personnel
back, away from the pillar of sparkling light, so no
one etse's physical presence would attract any of the
particles trying so desperately to reassemble.

What was happening? The transporter should easily
be able to do this. Ship-to-ship transportation at this
distance was nothing. Nothing!

The pillar of lights surged once as if succeeding, but
then suddenly sizzled completely away. The dim bridge
lighting seemed somehow much dimmer now.

Aragor swung around to glare at the main screen,
which showed a picture of the fleet ships. "Ruhl! Do you
have him?"

"Not here," the other captain's voice came back, high
with tension. "We do not have him!"

"Where is he? Where is he?" With the heel of his hand
Aragor struck the intraship unit. "Transporter! Where is
he!"

His transporter officer's voice was thready, shocked.
"Sir, the beams... they went into that twisting form
out there. I do not understand how it could happenmhe
was drawn in, as if magnetized!"

Aragor jumped to his science station, where he was
met by the tactical officer, and together they stared into
the science readout screen.

More of the impossible--the transporter beams,
presented in an image of chittering energy, looped like
the tail of a running animal, then were swallowed by the
phenomenon out there.

As they stood together and watched the screen, a form
began to take shape, emerge from the gash in open space.
A solid form. A vessel... a ship...

21

Diane Carey

"Taken," the tactical officer murmured. "Absorbed!"

With both hands Aragor gripped the rubber rim of the monitor. "I want him back, Vagh "

He
plunged to the helm, hammered the controls until the
main viewer switched to a sheet of black space incised
by the waving valence of new energy.

He
stared into the vision. His wall rattled the bones of his
crewmates.

"I
want my general back!"

Chapter
Two

22 VOLCANIC
WIND... perfumed, reeking atmosphere... and
a sound of engines.

Kellen materialized
gagging.

As soon
as the transporter beams released him, he stumbled back
against a hard surface, and choked. The air here
was heavy, vaporous; the surface against which he leaned
was mossy. He huddled against it until his eyes adjusted to
the dimness.

The ceiling
was only an arm's length over his head. Higher in
some places. A tunnel of some sort? A cave?

Hard ground
beneath his feet. Skin itching. Plant life--sedge, burrs
and creepers, algae, spotted cabbage, puffballs,
adder's tongue... He recognized some of them;
others were familiar but had the wrong color, the
wrong shape, or the wrong smell. He was no botanist.

Pungent
odors...
If he could only get a whole breath. Then he
could think.

Think, think.
Cling to self-control.

He had
been transporting from Ruhl's ship to his own. Now he
was on some planet, in a cave.

23

Diane Carey

"But there were no planets left," he rasped. The sound
of his own voice anchored him. "Especially none with
life ...."

He pressed his hand to the wall. Parasites jumped
from the moss onto his hand and skitt ered in confusion.
Life.

Small life, but company was company.

At least he could eat.

He pushed off the cave wall. He took one step, then
stopped as he thought of something else. Kneeling, he
peered at the ground. There was growth here too, but
vetchy, flattened growth. Flattened by other footsteps?

Where he could walk, so could others.

Others...

He brushed the ground with the side of his hand, to
tidy it a little, then stood up. That soundmhe remembered
it now, and in remembering heard it again. After
so many years in spaceships he had come to ignore the necessary thrum of power generation.

"Engines," he validated.

His experienced ears knew the sound of a power
source, but he could see none, nor discover any specific
direction from which the dim thrumming came. He
must be near a factory of some kind. A power generator.

If there was power, he could use it to get back to his
fleet, or at least to send a signal.

So the mass drop must have been some kind of
weapon or distraction, and now he, the fleet leader, was
kidnapped.

Speculating made him uneasy. He would deal only
with the facts. Footmarks and power, on a planet with
aves.

And light? Where was the light coming from? Another
power source? The sun they had watched blow up and
shrink back?

He paused to see whether the light changed at all. It
remained hazy, but steady. No way to judge whether it
was natural or not. No draft, no wind, yet the air was
tolerable now that he was breathing more slowly.

24 FIRST STRIKE

Where was he? A planet with atmosphere.

A momentary panic struck him that he could be on a
distant outer planet, waiting for the second wave of
gravity gap to wash outward from the sun for a second
apocalypse, yet he had seen those planets shatter, and
even if they were balled up again there could be no life,
no moss or insects left.

No. We reached zero mass. There is no planet left here.
Dismissing the possibility that he could still be in that
mutilated solar system, he selected a branch of the cave
at random and moved through it. The tunnel was
narrow, but roomy above his head. Within twenty steps
he found himself in another open area. Here the sound
of the power source was stronger and he became more
sure that he recognized the tenor of it. In fact, he noted
the pitch was higher than normal... normal for what?

There was nothing here but another tunnel. He went
through it into a darkness that nearly turned him back.
As the blackness closed in, he paused to let his eyes
adjust and to shore up his courage to move forward and
not back into what he already knew. The fleet would be
looking for him. He had to contrive a way to let them
find him.

The darkness became blackness. The blackness
pressed inward against his shoulders, down across the
crest of his brow. He pressed back with his will, blinking
his eyes as if they were the problem. The tunnel closed
tighter at his sides--he could feel the change. He saw
nothing, yet he sensed much.

A throbbing glow--with a regular pulse. Red... blue
... red... blue... He moved toward it. Only a few
steps now. He must control himself.

He came out into a wider area, greatly to his relief, and
all but ran forward, chased by the narrow dark section.
Stumbling out into a broader area, he sucked air as if
surging up out of a pool in which he had nearly drowned
and only then realized he had been holding his breath.
Taking it again nearly set him on his backside. He
stumbled against the cave wall.

25

Diane Carey At his side his dagger thumped against the rock--the
sound was strange. Metallic. On moss?

With one hand on his dagger and the other on the
moss, he pushed himself from the wall and took further
steps into the chamber, where suddenly his heart recoiled
within his chest and he stared to the point of pain.

Draped with shrouds of green witoh's hair, the walls
stared back. Within the spongy, foul moss, churning
with what must be insect life, lichen wept from dozens of
niches, each the size of a half-grown Terran pumpkin.
His favorite food rode into his mind on this irrational
bolt of fear, but gave him no comfort nor any anchor.
Fear held on, for in most of these dark punch-outs,
perhaps two-thirds of them, were perched bleached and
staring skulls.

Though all had eye sockets and peeled-back grinning
mouths, those were the only common elements. Some
had stumps of horns, others a dozen small holes over the
gaping eye sockets, others were of such shape and
description that churned the ugly bowels of Klingons
lore in Kellen's head. Constructed to terrorize, tales of
imminent evil rushed forward out of his childhood,
beasts of prey infused by the wills of demons, who then
had the abilities of both.

Blood-chilled, Kellen's body convulsed and he staggered
sideways, catching his heel upon the ragged floor
and staggering further. Shivering, he struck the wall
again and felt his dagger bang the wall again. Again, that
metallic noise--and this time a faint red-then-blue glow
coming on and off, on and off, under the moss.

He yanked his dagger from its sheath and sliced into
the moss, a long gash as if taking an enemy from throat
to belt. The moss pulled apart and the lips of the gash
quivered. Kellen dug his fingernails into it and ripped
the moss away in sheet.

Through a cloud of spoory dust, two panels of variegated
lights blinked at him, casting red, yellow, and
amber haze. Below the panels, a pulsebeat of technical
readouts blipped up and down on a screen.

26 FIRST STRIKE

Kellen tore the sheet of moss further all the way to the
floor. It came away cleanly, but for its own green cloud,
and there was a manufactured metal wall, a right-angled
corner, and part of a tiled floor.

He stared at the wall, kicked it, then looked up into the
skull niches and the eyes of the catacomb corridor. All at
once, the sound he had been hearing made sense to him.

He knew what he was hearing.

"A ship... a spaceship."

His voice startled even himself, and he flinched, but
even more horribly it startled someone else.

The wall was looking at him. A pair of eyes--real
ones, live ones--opened in among the tenleaf and creepers
on what he had thought was a cave tomb. White-ringed
and wide, the eyes were yellow as the middles of
eggs, each pinpointed in the center with a black dot
focused like a drill on Kellen.

The eyes came forward slowly from the witoh's hair,
bringing strands of it stretching along.

Suffused with horror, unable to call upon his tremendous
discipline this time, Kellen watched as a creature's
form took shape and pulled out of the growth. The top of
its head was being eaten by a mass of moving white
tendrils, each alive and fingering the green wall hungrily
as the creature drew farther and farther out into the
corridor.

No, not eaten--the tendrils were part of the creature's
head! Growing out of it like things he had seen in the sea!
Grotesque, poison-tipped things.

Instantly he looked up at the skull niches and searched
until he found the one nearest him with the holes in the
top. It was the skull of that--that.t The creature peeled out of the wall and with measured
movements shed itself of the gluey membranes pulling at
it from the wall. Each as long as Kellen's forearm, the
anemone-tendrils on the beast's head swirled to one side
and back to the other, seeking the open air as if driven by
currents. Some of them still reached and snipped at the
fungusy wall, plucking at it with tiny suckers.

27

Diane Carey

A ship, specter-crewed!
As his renowned sobriety crumbled, Kellen raised his
thick arms and warned the creature back with a senseless
shout, but had no effect.
He scoured his earliest memories, and called the thing
by name.
"Iraga./" he shrieked.

"Approach pattern SochDIch on my mark!"
"Yes, Science Officer!"
"Forward vessels, disruptors on full double-front! Target
engines! Repeat, engines only until we have made
our pass!"
"All are ready, sir. Three ships in forward configuration,
two behind us!"
"Tell all the others to put their shields on priority. For
us, I want scanners on priority, set to seek out Klingon
physiology. Transporter, stand by."
Science Officer Aragor gripped the command chair
with both hands until his fingernails made impressions
on the simulated animal hide. The sudden silence on the
bridge made him realize that he and the bridge crew had
been so excited they'd been yelling at each other. In each
echo he heard the ghost of Kellen's voice--Be quiet.
Speak softly. Calm down.
He battled to contain himself. He wanted his general
back and he would get him back. Now he had a target.
A ship had come out of that crack or hole or blur in
space. There had been a great shaking, not as great as the
mass drop, but enough to send the fleet spinning for a
few seconds. When they gathered themselves, there was
a ship there.
Configured like no ship Aragor had ever seen, this
alien vessel was the length of their entire fleetJsix ships
laid beak to tail--and shaped like a corkscrew. Great
fans of black and purple hull material fanned out and
overlapped each other in a spiral against each other,
archirig forward like welded petals into a point. There
28

FIRST STRIKE

was no top or bottom, no visible bridge or command
center. Seeming almost to flex its way through space, it
was constructed perfectly to screw through that opening
out there. The more he stared at the hornlike ship, the
more Aragor became sure these last moments were no
accidents. The mass falloff had something to do with
these newcomers.
Interlopers, he charged. Unlawful entry into Klingon
space. Kidnappers. Invaders!
Thought after thought, he built himself into a mode of
attack. This wasn't his job, but he would accept it. Never
in his life had he seen an effect such as that ship's entry
into this sector from wherever it had come, and no
power of that magnitude could be taken lightly. He
would have to get Kellen back, and Kellen would agree.
Together they would conquer before they were them-
selves taken. It was the Klingon way.
Or at least, it would be today.
"All is ready for the run, sir," Tactical Officer Mursha
reported, and looked at Aragor as if to confirm.
"Handle the scanners yourself, Mursha," Aragor said
in a last-minute change. "Find him."
Mursha looked afraid for an instant, then straightened
so sharply that it seemed to hurt his shoulders. "I will!
I'll find him!"
Aragor felt an urge to chide him for his hesitation, but
Mursha had just taken the tactical position two days ago.
Aragor left him alone.
"Attack configuration. Flank speed. Keep full speed
until we get within transporter range. No veering off
until my order, do you understand?"
"I understand, sir," the helmsman said.
"Fleet... advance!"
With three ships forming a point before it and one
other ship riding behind its starboard beam, the Qul surged to full impulse. The five ships rocketed through
open space toward the massive arrangement of curves,
targeting the deep pulsing mauve glow of the conical

29

Diane Carey ship's engines. Aragor recognized the surge of matter-antimatter
propulsion and was reassured by it, but the
color was unexpected. The color of Klingon blood.

The fleet ships arched in, keeping formation tight and
maneuvering for position as they reached the invasion
ship. The outer ships opened fire. Phaser energy blanketed
the other ship and brightened a veil of otherwise
unnotable particles of dust in space. Suddenly the whole
area was shimmering.

At once the unfamiliar ship declared itself an enemy
shipreit fired back. Globular bolts were launched from
the inner folds of the huge purple-and-black fans, striking
the first three Klingon ships without wasting a shot.
Energy foamed over the Klingon ships' deflector shields
and skittered into space to wash across the Qul and its
flanking ship.

The Qul shuddered under Aragor's chair. Phaser wash
broke between her hull plates and shriveled the outer
mechanics in their trunks.

"Some systems overloading, sir," the helmsman called
over a sudden braying alarm.

"Lock down," Aragor said. "Never mind trying to
repair now. And cut off that cursed noise!"

The alarm growled down to a sorry woooo, then broke
off. Closer and closer the Klingon fleet raced, skating the
length of the enemy vessel as if measuring it.

"Keep firing," he said, too softly to be heard.

The other ships had their orders--they fired relentlessly
and took the incoming blue foam of return fire on
their forward shields, maneuvering to protect the Qul,
whose power was concentrated on sensors. Qul had some
shields, but not enough to take direct hits of that
magnitude. And if Mursha found the commander's
physical blip, Qul would have to hammer a hole in the
enemy's shields, then drop her own shields completely to
beam him up.

"The phaser fire is bouncing off the invader ship!" the
helmsman blurted. "But I don't see any conventional
broadcast deflectors at all!"

30 FIRST STRIKE

Aragor squinted and watched. That could make his
task easier. The enemy ship was taking the direct fire on
its many fan-shaped hull sculptures.

"This must be their manner of defense," he said.
"There must be another ship, the real ship, hidden inside
the outer fan arrangement. That makes it almost impossible
for a moving vessel to hit. In order to incise that
inner ship, an attacking vessel would have to hover over
/ and fire down between the fans."

"That would be suicide," the helmsman said, and
gripped his controls tighter, as if afraid he'd made a
suggestion that might be taken.

"Well?" Aragor roared at Mursha when his nerves
took control and thoughts of a second run began to form.
He didn't want to make a second run. The lead ships
were being pulverized. Their shields wouldn't take a
second bombardment.

"Scanning..." Mursha had his mustache to the readouts,
both hands on the curved adjustments, looking for
Klingon life signs.

The bridge erupted in sparks and smoke puffs as
damaged systems began to overload. More hits broke
through the formation and began to pry it apart. If the
forward ships couldn't hold their position, Qul would
have to bear off.

Tense silence gripped the bridge. No voices. Only the
sounds of the ship straining around them as they maneuvered
their deadly tight course.

On the main screen, huge hull fans blew past beneath them, like a petals of a massive orchid.

"Sir!" Mursha gulped. "I believe--"

Aragor shoved out of the command chair. "Activate
the beams immediately! Beam him up! Transporter
room, do you hear me? Activate beams?

"Vergozen!"

"Speak softly, Morien. Your voice is hurting me."

"Many of us were resting or eating in the Barrow when
a strange creature came there?

31

Diane Carey

"We are all strange creatures, Morien. You mean you
did not recognize this one?"
"Or his kind. Not at all."
"Describe him."
"He had a helmet for a head, black hair around it, a
skeleton on the outside of his chest, and long sleeves
almost to the ground. He shouted at me and danced!"
"He danced?"
"Then he churned into lights and disappeared. What
does it mean? Have we done something wrong?"
"No. The others have already reported an intruder
aboard. We were sending the guards when those ships
came and somehow he was plucked away. Now we have
alterations to make on our equipment. We must be sure
this cannot happen again. And send a message back
along the wrinkle. Tell them we seem to have betrayed
our arrival and now there are ships following us. There is
apparently a destructive effect involved in the process of
transferring. Suggest it be corrected before the fissure is
opened again."
"Yes, Vergozen."
"Morien, tell me... how many eyes did this creature
have?"
"Two that I could see. Unless there were others
hiding."
"Two eyes... well, it's a beginning."

"Why did you bother with me! Why didn't you beam
an antimatter explosive into that ship while you had the
chance! They had no shields! At terrible damage to the
fleet you came in to rescue me, and now we have lost the
chance to destroy them!"
The booming voice was glorious anger to Aragor as he
stood without moving while General Kellen shouted at
him. Aragor didn't care that he had made a mistake,
because he had his commander back and he would walk
fire for Kellen.
The crew stood before the general in utter numb
shock. They had never heard him yell before. Never.

32

FIRST STRIKE
The general's clothing was coated with fine green dust,
his usually neat hair disturbed by burrs and bits of
mold, and he was consumed with shuddering in terror,
but he wasn't hurt. He vented his terror by shouting at
Aragor and glaring wide-eyed at the enemy ship as
it slowly moved away on their main viewscreen. Its
purple fans were reflected softly in the lenses of his
eyeglasses.
At last he gave up on Aregot and swung on the tactical
position.
"Mumha! Analyze the enemy ship. Can we still beam
in?"
"No, sir. They have made some kind of energy web
around their ship that resists transporter beams. Not
deflectors as we know them, but--"
"But our chance is lost!"
Aragor continued staring. That voice -- so loud, so
completely uncharacteristic.
"Sir... sir," Aragor began, "we had no salvo prepared
for penetration. We thought we should take the
opportunity to rescue you before
Kellen rounded on him again. "You had one chance!
You will not have that chance again! Next time the
choice is to save my life or take an enemy life, take the
enemy life!"
Nobly said, but Aragor remained confused. He lowered
his voice to compensate for the boom of Kellen's.
"Sir, why do you want to destroy them? What did you
see there?"
Breathing heavily, Kellen fell suddenly still and his
eyes fogged with fearful memory. He gazed again at the
enemy ship. His voice changed. The skin around his eyes
tightened.
"All these things we tell our children to scare them...
things we pretend to have conquered in our own minds
... they're all true, Aragor. There are demons. Real
demons."
"Demons? Which demons, sir?"
Two strong shudders washed through Kellen's large

33

Diane Carey body, but he valiantly controlled himself and spoke with
steady confidence.

"I saw the Iraga first," he told them, and paused.

A chill washed through the bridge. Aragor's heart
began pounding. The other crewmen were looking at
him as if to wonder whether to be afraid of their
general's sudden insanity or afraid of what he was
saying.

They didn't really think he was insane. They knew he
was not.

That meant he had seen... it.

Kellen's frazzled condition and overheated excitement
ran like a virus through them all.

"Then there were others," he added.

Aragor's hands were clenched. He could barely find his
voice to speak. "More... Iraga?"

"No, other kinds. After the Iraga came out of the wall,
others came too. Demons with vestigial membranes
expanding from their shoulders... they spread their
arms and the membranes opened and filled the space
before me..."

"Shushara!" the helmsman gasped.

"Others had fingers that reached to the ground...
and w ith fangs protruding from their foreheads..."

"Hullam'gat!" Mursha whispered, his face blanched.
He looked at the helmsman, and together they were
terrified.

Watching realization dawn in his crewmen's faces,
Kellen nodded slowly. As he transferred his excitement
to the crew, he seemed to grow more like his usual self,
recapturing the restraint that had brought him ultimately
to power.

"The tales are all true," he said. "They have come
back as they promised they would... and they are on
that ship out there."

His knees barely steady enough to support him,
Aragor moved toward Kellen. "What should we do?
What can we do?"

"I know what to do," the general said. "It will take us

34 FIRST STRIKE

all to defeat them. Aragor, you beam onto Ruhl's ship
and take command of the fleet. Call the Empire for
reinforcements. Track that ship, but do not go near it.
Do not. I will go for help."

"For help? From where?"

"I said it would take us all," Kellen repeated.

Once more he turned to the viper's tongue of a ship on
the main screen. He began distractedly plucking the bits
of moss and dust from his hair.

"We need a demon to fight demons," he said. "I am
going to get one."

35

! begin to like you, Earthman. And ! saw fear in
the Klingon's eyes.
--Maab of Capella IV
"Friday's Child"

Chapter Three

"LEvr qK, secure position and open fire!"

Ah, life in space. Weeks of tedium broken by moments
of terror.

For centuries they'd said that about being at sea. It was
dead true about both.

Dust rolled off the ridge from photon salvo bombardment
and turned into a shimmering heat in the valley
below.

Two hundred enemy troops. Maybe more. Almost the
whole crew of a large battleship. That meant there must
be more than one ship up there now, and probably a
conflict going on in space.

The captain's dirty hands and torn uniform tunic
attested to a stressful morning. Barely noon, and there
had been four major skirmishes already.

Through the shaggy hair of his attacker he had shouted
to his own men, while chiding himself for having been
surprised, for concentrating so much on the movements
of the troops that he'd let himself be jumped. His face
cracked into a grimace as he took a numbing blow to the

39

Diane Carey

side of his head and had to damn away the dizziness in
order to keep fighting. If he had to be close to a Klingon,
this was at least the way. Punching.
Beneath his soles the dry earth drummed with the
thudding boots of men fighting all around on the jagged,
jutting terrain. He sensed a shift in the attack pattern.
Saw nothing, but he knew what he would do in this
terrain, with these objectives, and made a bet with
himself that the enemy would do it too. The chips were
the lives of his men, the pot this planet and its sixty
million tribesmen, some of whom had no idea the others
existed.
The sky here was unforgiving, cloudless. His opponent
twisted sideways and forced the captain's face into the
sun, blinding him, and he staggered. The Klingon's
shoulder crashed into his cheek. He felt his own teeth cut
the inside of his lip, and the sudden warm salty taste of
blood filled his mouth. It made him mad.
He spat the blood into the Klingon's glossy bronze
face.
The Klingon arched backward and took the captain by
both arms. They sawed at each other for a terrible
instant before the grip was broken and the captain
managed to land a knot of knuckles where they did some
good. The Klingon spun and slashed downward with his
hard wristband.
The captain raised his own arm to block the blow.
Bracing his shoulder for the impact, he took it full force
but managed to deflect it to the side and keep his skull
from being cracked open, though the force drove him
facedown to the ground. He sprawled. His skin shriveled
in anticipation of a hit, but luck was with him. The
Klingon stumbled.
Bracing his palms on the ground, the captain shoved
upward, balling his fists in a single surge into the
Klingon's solar plexus. He felt his hands go into the soft
organs beneath the Klingon's rib cage, slamming the air
out of the big alien's lungs.

40

FIRST STRIKE

The Klingon gagged, staggered, and went down, suffering.
The captain scraped to his feet, knotted his rocky
right fist, and delivered it like a piledriver into the soft
spot at the base of the Klingon's skull. The attacker went
down and didn't get up.
One down, two hundred to go.
Chest heaving, he straightened and looked around.
Disruptor fire glazed the air and raised a crackle of
burning ground cover and scrub brush. Hacking, shouting,
and shooting, the Klingon wave was attempting
another surge over the grade to the captain's left, their
disruptor fire hampered by the rock formations, but
creating dangerous shrapnel out of the stone.
He drew a breath and shouted.
"Spread out! Separate!" If his men weren't close
together, there was less chance of having them mown
down. "Go right! Move! Move, move!"
They swerved and scrambled in the direction he
waved, the knuckle of rocks bearded with dry growth
that would provide cover long enough for them to take a
breath, reorganize. Motion diluted the terror with the
twisted passion of combat.
"Take cover!" he shouted.
Not retreat, and they didn't.
Below, on this side of the narrow gravelly ramp
leading between two towers of rock, his battered men
lined the gully. Their red and gold backs created a
necklace of ruby and amber jewels across the bright
throat of the ridge as disruptor fire cracked over their
heads. Among them were the native Capellans, taller
than the humans by a head, and flamboyant with bright
blocks of color on their long-sleeved suits and snug
hoods that imitated helmets.
Hand-to-hand fighting had broken out in four places
that he could see--make that five. Anxious to be in five
places at once, he forced himself to keep low. The valley
was dotted with solid patches of color--the Starfleet red
and gold, the native purple, black, blue, green, and even

41

Diane Carey

pink now and then. They looked like giant Ninjas in
goon boots and windbreaking capes, with fur stitched
across their chests and hanging in long stoles over their
shoulders.
He didn't care if the natives wore fishnet stockings as
long as they backed up his troops, and they were doing
that. He brought his palm-sized communicator to his
lips and flipped open the antenna grid.
"Kirk to Enterprise."
The ship didn't answer. Why not? Where were they?
In his mind Jim Kirk saw the giant cruiser looping the
planet in orbit, emptied of a third of her crew because he
needed them down here, and he gritted his teeth. Why
wasn't the bridge crew answering? What was wrong?
At dawn, when he ordered his ship piloted away from
the planet, everything had been peace, quiet, mission
accomplished. He'd secured mining rights and turned
the leaders of this province away from dealing with the
oppressive Klingons. Now look.
Unfortunately the Klingons hadn't gone away pouting.
They weren't satisfied at having been legitimately edged
out. If they couldn't have this planet by trickery or
bribery, they would take it by force. They'd come in with
the sunrise over this region.
Leaning his communicator hand on his bruised knee,
Kirk paused to catch his breath and scan the battlefield.
It figured. Just when he got complacent, easy in his place
as a spacelanes wagoneer, the universe snapped his axle.
This was nonaligned space, and that was the problem.
Having made the treaty, Kirk was obliged to veer back in
and protect the Capellans against the insulted Klingons.
It was a good thing he was obliged to come in, because he
was mad and would've come in anyway.
He had ninety-four men on the ground, plus sixty
Capellans from the nearest tribe. Others had been summoned
in the night from far-distant tribes, but they
wouldn't make it in time. The battle was here and now.
The next few minutes would tell.

42

FIRST STRIKE

The line of Starfleet crewmen was jagged because of
the terrain of bulging rocks. Above them, in the taller
and deeper rocks, native Capellans bombarded the oncoming
enemies with stones and sling-pellets. Not
deadly, but confusing. Soon the enemy would be funneled
into withering fire from the Starfleet hand phasers.
The enemy surge was a litter of silver tunics and black
sleeves, dark beards and sweaty bronze complexions,
faces furious as if their land were being snatched instead
of the other way around.
"Kirk to Enterprise," he said again, then again. With
bloody fingers he tried to adjust the gain. "Enterprise, come in. Mr. Scott, come in."
The instrument only crackled back at him. No answer.
He readjusted it for local communication.
"Kirk to Spock. Kirk to Spock..."
Nothing.
He looked up, scanned the bright rocks for the form of
his first officer.
There was no other slash of color like Spock in this
battlescape. All other Starfleet forces were command or
security troops, wearing gold or red tunics. Commander
Spock's lone blue shirt stood out. Among the hundreds
of Terrans, Capellans, and Klingons, he was the only
Vulcan.
He had been the only Vulcan for a long time, the first
in Starfleet, and bore his solitude with grace. Kirk
watched with appreciation, but also annoyance. Why
wasn't Spock pulling out his communicator and answering?
The Dakota-like terrain, baked by midday sun a few
shades brighter than Earth's, was hot and dry as baked
clay. His men maneuvered in companies of twenty, each
under a lieutenant. If he couldn't talk to them, how
could they be ef fective?
The captain slid to one knee, barely realizing his own
flash of weakness, and shook the communicator.
"Kirk to Spock, come in!"

43

Diane Carey Neutralized somehow. He couldn't reach the ship, but
also couldn't reach his own men down here. Without
communicators, he was back in the 1800s, orchestrating
ground assault with hand signals, smoke, and mirrors.

He looked around, picked a huddle of his own troops down the incline, and skidded toward them.

"Jim! Where'd you come from?"

Kirk waved at the dust he'd raised and looked toward
the voice.

Ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy's face was almost
unrecognizable, his squarish features coated with sand,
brown hair caked with sweaty dust until it was the same
color as his face. His tunic, the only other blue one on
the terrain, wasn't very blue anymore.

"What happened to you?" Kirk asked.

"What d'you mean, what happened to me? Klingons
all over the place, Capellans knocking me down left and
right, and Spock doing his Wellington imitation in my
face!"

"Give me your communicator." Without waiting he
snatched the doctor's communicator from his belt and snapped it open. "Kirk to Enterprise."
The empty crackle aggravated him.
"Kirk to Spock. Kirk to anybody."

"What's wrong, sir?" A skinny lieutenant named Ban-non
sagged back against a rock for a moment's rest and
knuckled his dust-reddened eyes.

"Instrument failure. Try yours."

The red-haired lieutenant tried, then looked up guiltily
when he failed. "Sir..."

"You too," Kirk said to the three others, all ensigns,
huddled in this clutch of rocks.

"How can they all be broken down?" McCoy asked as
Kirk tossed him his communicator. He rattled it at his
ear.

"They can't."

Lieutenant Bannon rubbed his bruised jaw. "Can't we
reach the ship, sir? They could break through the com

44 FIRST STRIKE

munications trouble from Lieutenant Uhura's console,
couldn't they?"

Nettled, Kirk frowned until his face hurt and didn't
meet Bannon's questioning eyes. "Probably."

One of the ensigns glanced at Bannon, then asked,
"Does that mean they're in trouble up there? They can't
come after us?"

"Don't worry," McCoy supplied, sparing Kirk having
to answer. "Mr. Scott's a no-guff man. He'd step over
anybody's line. I wouldn't get in his way. If the Klingons
do, it's their own bad luck."

Kirk looked out between two knuckles of rock at the
Starfleet company nearest to the ramp. "That's Lieutenant
Doyle's group. Phasers up... they're looking for a
target. Awfully quiet down there all of a sudden..."

"Maybe the Klingons are retreating," McCoy suggested
with hope in his blue eyes.

"Not likely." Kirk leaned forward with both hands on
the rocks. "The local Klingon commander's in trouble.
He lost his mining deal with this planet when we showed
up. If he goes back a loser, his career's in the dumper."

"Jim, keep your head down! They can take aim on you
from up there!"

Dropping only a couple of inches in response, Kirk
glanced up, up, up to the highest crags, where Klingon
lookouts had taken position.

Below that, Lieutenant Doyle's bright blond hair
shone in the hot sun, but he was behind cover, huddled
with about fifteen other Starfleeters and a handful of
Capellans. Kirk saw the lieutenant's arm move as he
gestured weapons up.

A dozen hand phasers came nose up, then leveled and
took aim.

"He sees something we can't see." Kirk made silent
bets with himself about what Doyle saw. "They're taking aim... I see the Klingons."

"Where?"

"Over the top of the incline."

45

Diane Carey

"How many?"
"Not enough for a dozen phasers, that's for sure. And
they're not charging. They're moving back and forth up
there, trying to get attention."
"You think it's a trap, sir?" Bannon asked.
"I think it's something. Trick of some kind...
Doyle's being enticed to fire. I need communications!"
"I'll go, sir!" Bannon thrust to his full height, almost
as tall as the native Capellans but about half as thick.
McCoy grabbed him and forced him back down, out
of the line of fire from the upper rocks. "Down, boy?
Bannon's red hair was plastered across his pale forehead
and he seemed exhausted, but there was determination
in his eyes. He was willing to go.
"All right, go," Kirk said. "But keep low. Don't get
any closer than you absolutely have to. I don't want all
my people bunched up."
"Aye, sir!" The young officer took his own phaser in
his hand and scraped away on the slanted slabs.
Klingon activity on the top of the incline was increasing.
Still no advancement, just more figures moving this
way and that, taking potshots with disruptors at the
hidden Starfleet forces. Rocks splattered and splintered
with every miss, but they kept shooting, even without
clear targets.
Bannon made a red and black streak of color as he
moved across the lower landscape, picking his way
toward Doyle's company. Slow going. As Kirk watched
he felt bad hbout the terrain. Down on the plain the
ground was nearly level. Large groups could move more
freely, attack more openly, but there would be death by
the hundreds. Here, the ground was ungiving, stony, and
damned, but there was cover.
Before Bannon came within earshot, Kirk saw Doyle's
men stretching out their phaser arms. In his mind he
heard the order--Ready.. aim...
"Not yet," he uttered, feeling the sweaty tension of
McCoy at his side. "Not yet--"
46

FIRST STRIKE

Ducking blue disruptor shots from above, Bannon was
moving slowly, but he was nearly there.
Fire!
A globular burst of red-pink phaser fire launched from
the huddled Starfleet group and struck out at the incline.
The up there Klingons ducked out of sight. Not one was
hit.
Instead, an answer came from overhead--a gulp of
bright bluish energy sprayed from the cloudless sky and
landed squarely on Doyle's men as if a giant flyswatter
had just come down. The sheer whine of sound drove
Kirk, McCoy, and the three ensigns plunging for the
ground, cuffing their ears.
Kirk forced himself up instantly and looked down into
the valley.
The bodies of his crewmen and several tribesmen
streaked the dusty flats. Two hundred yards short of his
goal, Bannon lay knocked flat. Fury rolled in Kirk's
chest. He'd been outthought by the enemy.
"What the blazes was that?" McCoy gasped, peering at
the sky, then back down at the draped bodies.
"Some sort of response to the phasers," Kirk muttered.
"From where? A ship?"
"Maybe a shuttlecraft."
"Let me go down there!" the doctor asked. "I can treat
those men."
"You stay put." Kirk heard the anger in his voice and
valiantly tried to keep it from lopping over from his own
self-recriminations and onto McCoy. He didn't bother
pointing out that those men were probably beyond
treatment.
"Captain!"
The familiar baritone call caught him fast and he
turned and headed toward it.
"Here!" he called. "Spock, over here!"
From among the whey-colored rocks, First Officer Spock kept low but hurried to them, carrying a bow in
47

Diane Carey one hand and an arrow in the other. He'd holstered his
own phaser, and that meant something.

"Did you see the flash?" the Vulcan asked without amenity. "Disruptor backwash came from the sky."
Kirk nodded. "What do you think it is? A ship?"
Spock shook his head, squinting. "Too low. More
likely a satellite keyed to Starfleet phaser energy. You
will recall that Klingon disruptor fire did not set it
off."

"Could it be affecting our communicators?"

"I have no facts to corroborate that, but the theoretical
conclusion bears some logic." Spock's dark eyes scanned
Kirk's blood-splattered gold shirt. He was assessing his
captain for injuries, but he said nothing about it. He too
was breathing hard, despite this hot weather's being
more natural for him than shipboard climate.

Kirk looked up, scanning the sky. "If Scotty could get
in close with the ship, he could knock any orbiter out
with one shot."

"We must assume he is occupied." The Vulcan's
words were laced with portent. He offered nothing more
specific, but there was concern in his dust-grooved expression.

"We're on our own. McCoy, corral those three ensigns.
We're going to need runners to communicate with the
field positions."

"Yes, sir," McCoy responded, with fear clutching his
sudden sense of purpose. At least he didn't argue.

"All right, if that's the way it is," Kirk huffed to his
first officer as they watched they doctor pick his way back
to the grotto. "They neutralize our weapons, then I want
theirs."

Spock nodded, scanning the enemy lines. They hung
together in silence for a few seconds, and Kirk listened to
the sound of his own heart pound in his ears.

His left middle finger was hurting. Probably a sliver.
Felt like it might be under the fingernail. He glanced
down, but didn't see anything through the dirt plastered

48 FIRST STRIKE

to his fingers, and thought the sight of their captain
picking at a tingeruail might not do his crew any good.

He shook his head. Out of all the bruises and cuts, a
silver was distracting him. Battle could be a fun-house
mirror sometimes.

As the ground cover crackled behind him he spun
around and almost lashed out, but Spock pressed him
back somehow, subtly, only raising one arm a little. Kirk
glared at what had startled himmMcCoy and the three
ensigns slipping into the cover of the rock with them.

Steadying himself, he tilted a silent thanks to Spock
and motioned the others toward him, then gestured
them to huddle.

Crouching behind the big flat slab, Kirk looked at his
men one by one. "We think the Klingo ns have deployed
a satellite or shuttle that blankets the immediate area
with destructive power when it detects Federation phaser
tire. Your job is to get to our commanding officers and
relay information. Standing order is phasers down, indigenous
weapons only. Consider the phasers neutralized.
Draw the enemy into hand fighting if possible. It'll
give us a more equal chance than letting them have wide
berth. New goal--capture Klingon disruptors."

"Sir, I don't see how we can tight disruptors without
phasers," Ensign Dunton said, a gaunt scrapper with a
gap between his front teeth.

"Phasers can target thousands in open ground," Spock
said calmly, "but at close proximity, it may not be any
better than a sword or knife, Ensign."

"It's awful," Dunton uttered, glancing out at the
collapsed forms of his shipmates. "They shouldn't have
to die in the dirt like that."

"We're here to knock the Klingons back," Kirk said
firmly. "That's the bet all spacefarers make. Our lives
might come down to this."

He saw in their faces that they suddenly understood
something they'd never thought of before--that this
might be the real fate they'd signed up for. No stars nor
bright nebulae, but the dust of some distant alien planet

49

Diane Carey

between blood-crusted teeth, and the taste of foreign soil
on a dying breath.
Beside Dunton, Ensign Fulciero looked up at him like
a kid on Santa's knee who was hoping for the right
answer. "All we gotta do is hold them off from the
villages long enough for the battle in space to be won,
right, sir?"
Kirk placated him with a nod. "And Starfleet to send
reinforcements."
He didn't estimate how much time that might take.
"What if they get past the ship?" the third ensign
asked. "They could lay waste to half the planet from
up there."
Kirk landed a fierce glance on him. "They won't."
Fulciero blinked into the sun. "Why not?"
"Because they won't. We don't have time for lessons,
gentlemen. You have your orders. Disperse."
Being on the move with a message to deliver would be
good for them. Better than sitting here, anticipating
disaster and asking questions that would take time to
answer.
Tense, he and Spock and McCoy watched the ensigns
fan out, trying to reach companies of Starfleet forces
before anybody else used a phaser. His skin crawled in
expectation of the thready whine that could come any
second, from any quarter. Twice he thought he heard it,
and glanced at the sky, waiting for the bright pounding
response, but he was wrong both times. His unit commanders
were better than he remembered. He had
become too custodial. Forgotten that they could see the
sky too, knew a plasma burst when they saw it, and were
good at their jobs. They weren't using phasers. In several
places he saw his crew holstering their hand weapons and
taking up the crude weapons of the planet--rocks,
sticks, Capellan swords and klegats.
For a moment he wanted to tell his men not to try
using the klegats. The bladed disks were used efficiently
by the strong Capellans, but they took training. They
were deliberately not very sharp. Injury came from raw

50

FIRST STRIKE

force and bone breakage. It was a crushing weapon as
much as a slicing one.
"Captain," Spock snapped, "here they come."
He pointed to the upper ground, now swelling with
living enemy soldiers who were met by advanced Star-fleet
guards, swinging and hacking.
"Typical," McCoy threw in. "They know they've
knocked out our phasers, so they're advancing." Frustration
showed in his eyes as the doctor gripped the ledge
and watched their own men fall wounded, and clearly he
wished he could sneak out and begin treating them.
"Why aren't they using their disruptors?"
"Terrain," Kirk said. "Too many obstructions."
"I believe there is more." Spock pressed a hand to the
rock and straightened to look over. "Klingons prefer
hand-to-hand fighting. They consider it more honorable
to kill at close quarters than with a long-range weapon. If
they can arrange for that, they will do so."
"So we'll give it to them," Kirk said. "We can--"
At his hip, his communicator suddenly whistled.
He snatched at it, missed, and had to grab again.
"Kirk to Enterprise--status report!"
"Scott here, sir. We punched through the communications
blanket."
"What's going on up there?"
"Battle, sir. Three cruisers. We're holding our own now.
But we've got a new development. More Klingons coming
in, and I don't know what to make of it."
Kirk glanced at Spock. "More Klingons. Lovely. Why
don't you know what to make of it, Scotty? What're they
doing?"
"Unidentified bird coming in at warp six, with wings
up, weapons systems off, broadcasting interstellar distress
call."
"A distress call while at warp six?" Kirk let the
communicator drop a little and looked at Spock again.
"Not ship distress, then."
"Unless they are under hot pursuit," Spock suggested.
"Not likely." Kirk brought the communicator up

51

Diane Carey

again. "Let the situation play out, Scotty. Don't fire on
them until you figure out their intent. If you don't like it
when you find it out, blow them out of the sky." 'Aye, sir."
"And there's a satellite of some kind of hovering
mechanism over our locality that's keyed to our hand
phasers. Can you knock it out?"
"We've picked up on it and we're targeting it. If we
overshoot, we could hit you there on the surface."
"Understood. Hurry up."
"Aye, sir. Scotty out."
"It's good to hear his voice." Kirk pressed the back of
his hand to his bleeding mouth. "Gentlemen, I think I've
finally reached my limit."
They both looked at him, and Spock asked, "Sir?"
"I'm sick of Klingons."
He pushed away from the rocks.
"On your toes. This is it." He stood up and started out
into the open.
"Jim!" McCoy snatched him by the arm. "They'll see
you?"
"I want them to see me. Come on, Spock."
Enemy forces were plowing over the ridge, nearly two
hundred of them at a quick sweeping estimate. Their
silver tunics and black sleeves were crisp in the unforgiving
sunlight, their howl of charge more chilling than the
whine of their disruptors. Screams of injured and dying
men looped up like sirens. The survivors on both sides
scrambled for new cover.
But none for retreat. It was good to see.
He knew better than to micromanage. His men knew
he was here. They'd fight in pairs or triplets or any kind
of unit they could form. Enthusiasm carried them up the
incline to meet the enemy, and it dimmed their sight of
the Klingons' fury until they could match it with their own.
He plunged out into the open and scooped up a raw
wooden club and a stumpy sword from the body of a
fallen Capellan.

FIRST STRIKE
"Spock!" When his first officer turned, Kirk tossed
him the sword.
"The doctor is right," Spock said by way of warning.
"They will target a commanding officer if they can pick yOU Out."
He was plumbing for Kirk's plans.
All right.
"If I don't give them a target," Kirk told him, "they'll
lay scattering fire and wound as many as they can hit. If I
let them spot me, they'll concentrate on trying to knock
me out, preferably hand-to-hand, for the glory of it. I can
make them fixate on me. Goad them into letting me
manipulate their battle plan."
With a nod of understanding, Spock let disapproval
creep into his expression, but he couldn't fight the sense
of it.
"Problem is," Kirk added, "they might target you tOO."
Spock passed the sword from his left hand to his right.
"Acceptable, sir."
"I thought you'd say that. Let's go."

52
53

Chapter Four

As atom KLiNgONS came roaring down the incline, disruptors
holstered and daggers gleaming, Kirk and Spock
charged out to meet them, pushing as close to the center
as possible when they finally met the enemies head-on.
Kirk had to work to draw attention to himself, convince
the swarming enemy that he was the leader.
Ordinary in all ways but the fire in his mind, Kirk knew
he cut no particular swash among the combatants,
especially the seven-foot Capellans. But if he wanted his
enemies to identify him, and today he did, he'd have to
be conspicuous.
As he clubbed away the first Klingon who charged him,
he loudly gave orders to his men and waved his arms
with the captain's slashes on the wrists. He stayed as
close as he could to the center of the action, and in
moments the Klingons were looking up from their own
fights, spotting him and Spock.
Around him, his own men met the howling Klingons
with clench-jawed purposefulness. The Starfleet team weren't spoiled brats who couldn't fight with anything
but phasers. They held clubs across their bodies like
54

FIRST STRIKE

battle staffs, one hand on each end, effective for blocking
or ramming, and the humans were lighter and faster than
either the Klingons or Capellans. His men weren't being
bogged down by their own weight, as some of the others
were.
He was charged by the gleam in his men's eyes. They
were enjoying this, in a twisted, unfortunate way. They
had to enjoy it a little in order to survive it--stretching
their intelligence, daring themselves to live up to the
worst, the ugliest .... There was something electric in
forcing an enemy back. This land fighting was refreshing
in the shock of reality it gave a ship's crew, so long
sequestered in the isolet of their vessel, who so rarely got
the chance to fight their enemy eye to eye. Driven to
impose their will on their enemies, here they were
unharnessed.
They knew their duty, and Kirk knew his. It was the
captain's bravery that made men face the enemy again
after fighti ng all morning, the message in his manner that
he would not only fight with them, but for them, that
made them rather die fighting than scrambling. Safety no
longer had flavor. None asked himself anymore the lurid
question, What am I dying for? The question had an
answer--not for this distant herd of unfriendly people
nor for this speck of land on a speck in the sky. What am
I dying for?
For the captain.
Why?
Because he would die for me.
Jim Kirk knew how they felt. He set himself constantly
to live up to their devotion. He remembered his captains
and what he expected of them. Determined to be worthy
of what his men were doing out here, answering that
ringing question in their minds over and over until they
could summon their own inner fortifications, he willed
himself visible among them.
Fighting twenty yards apart, he and Spock were an
attractive target. Klingon soldiers were veering toward
them, each hungering for the glory of killing the leaders.

55

Diane Carey

A Klingon soldier charged down on him fast, not
checking his speed at all as he flew down the incline. He
struck Kirk with a full-body blow that sent them both
bruising to the ground, then tumbling.
Kirk waited until they stopped rolling, then raised his
free arm and drove the elbow into the Klingon's throat.
The soldier gagged, rolled off, and crawled away on his
hands and knees.
Lashing out with his right leg, the captain caught the
crawling soldier's knees and knocked them out from
under him. The Klingon sprawled, still choking, and
Kirk snatched for the disruptor--this Klingon didn't
have one. So Kirk went for the dagger at the soldier's
belt. He looked up to see two more plunging down on
him, and he'd better be upright to meet them.
Dust puffed up all around him from the scrape of hard
soles and the impact of thunderbolt disruptor shots. So
much for honor.
Some of the Klingons on the high ground were trying
to aim between the fighters, but were mostly hitting the
dirt as they tried to avoid killing their own crewmates.
The sizzle of energy bolts raised the hair on Kirk's arms
as the shots whistled past him.
Where was Spock? He couldn't see his tint officer
anymore. Concentration was stolen by the two Klingons
bulldozing at him through the combatants, with two
more right behind them, all with their eyes on him.
There were negatives to this manipulate-the-enemy
theory.
They could charge him together, but unless they
cooperated they couldn't hit him at the same time, and
they wouldn't cooperate. He hoped.
Hoped hard as he made his bet and raised his right
arm to take on the Klingon who was a millimeter closer.
Slashing outward with his dagger, the Klingon danced
out of the way--Kirk had bet wrong--and faked to one
side, leaving Kirk's unprotected midsection for the second
soldier.

56

FIRST STRIKE

Kirk couldn't bring his dagger down in time. The
second Klingon caught him in a brutal embrace and with
sheer strength began squeezing the life from him, keeping
him from breathing.
Adrenaline surged as Kirk felt the queasiness of death
close at his throat. Over the shoulder of the Klingon
attacking him he saw the other two roaring in, eyes
blazing and teeth bared. He struggled to raise his knee--at
least he could get one of them--
A shadow crossed his face. A bulky ensign--looked
like Wilson--who had hands like bear paws and no neck
at all, plunged in and took on the other two, knocking
one flat with the sheer force of his charge.
A growl of anger boiled up beside Kirk. Now those two
Klingons were furious at Wilson for having blocked their
way, and the one on the ground slashed out at Wilson's
legs with his dagger while the ensign was throwing
punches at the other one. The ensign tried to dance
away, but the Klingons used their combined power to
drive him into the blade.
"Break!" Kirk shouted. "Ensign, break o"
Wilson flashed a glance at him and tried to obey the
order, but couldn't do it. His mouth burst open with
shock as the blade chewed into his spine.
Whipped up by what he saw, Kirk found his hands
between his own body and the chest of the Klingon
grappling him, forced his elbows upward.
As the Klingon's body went stiff with pain and the grip
on Kirk fell away, Kirk shoved the soldier over and
yanked the disruptor from the belt. Now he had one, but
it was warm in his hands, nearly drained.
The trick was not to waste it.
He swung around, jockeying for aim; he found Wilson
still fighting, and blocking a clear shot.
"Down, Ensign!"
Wilson couldn't drop back, but managed to tilt to one
side, and Kirk aimed, took a breath, let out half of it, and
fired.

57

Diane Carey The disruptor buzzed in his hand and spat a clean
string of energy into the chest of one of the Klingons.
The soldier buckled and fell backward.

The other Klingon ignored the fate of his partner, but
knew the disruptor was coming around to him and tried
to shove the wounded ensign down in order to lash out at
Kirk with a hard metal wristband. He would've made it,
too, except that Wilson leaned back in and took the blow
meant for his captain, a savage crash to the top of his
head.

The Klingon's thumbnail caught Kirk's uniform and
ripped into his shoulder. He felt fabric give way, then
flesh, as if he'd been caught in a briar bush.

He raised a knee, kicked the Klingon backward into
his disruptor sights, and fired.

The Klingon shouted an unintelligible word as the
beam blasted him into the rocks and he fell hard.

In Kirk's hand the disruptor started beeping--drained.
After a morning of firefights, he had gotten its
last two shots. Furiously he pitched it at the skull of one
of the downed Klingons and was gratified by the crack.

As Ensign Wilson staggered, Kirk snatched the unfortunate
crewman from behind, desperate that the boy's
last seconds not be his loneliest. Blood from his wounds
drained across Kirk's uniform and trousers. He felt the
thick body shudder in his arms, wobble, and go limp.
Suddenly he slipped out of Kirk's hands. Dead or alive,
there was no way to tell.

Rage boiled up behind Kirk's eyes. His disruptor was
junk, he'd lost his knife, so he grabbed Wilson's club,
tucked it at his side in both hands like a lance. Lips
drawn back, face chalky with sweat-plastered dust, uniform
torn at the shoulder, he charged into the tangle of
fighting men.

He plowed through the formless battle, assisting his
men and allies with his club, landing almost every blow
to good effect, each time freeing another of his men to
move forward. Only when he tripped and went down on

58 FIRST STRIKE

a knee was his momentum interrupted--and that was
when he twisted around to get back on his feet and ended
up looking back the way he had come.

Against the rattan landscape a blue dot caught his eye.

At first he thought he'd found Spock, but he was wrong.
"McCoy!"

The doctor had been rooted out of his hiding place
somehow and was up against the rocks, defending himself
against, luckily, only one Klingon. In hand-to-hand
fighting, McCoy could hold his own for a minute or two,
but soon he would falter. Surprise him and he would
fight, but after a few moments he'd catch the eyes of
someone fighting him, notice a muscle in a taut neck,
and the living condition of his opponents would get to
him. His inner compass would steer him away from self-preservation,
and the doctor would pause.

One of these days the pause would get him killed. Kirk
had learned to watch for it.

McCoy was waving a sword he'd found, but he was
doing it only in defense. So he'd already crossed that
line. He was backing up, tighter and tighter against the
unforgiving rocks.

Any second he'll hesitate. Kirk looked around frantically,
snatched the arm of a crewman rushing past him
and shouted at another one. "Brown, Mellendez! About face! Help McCoy!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Aye, sir!"

They took off at barreling run.

He swung back to the shouts and clacks of men and
blades and throttled his way into the fray with the club.
Then he threw the club down and scooped up one of the
short Capellan swords and hacked his way through to the
higher ground. Disruptor fire crackled past him--a jolt
of hope hit as he realized some of those shots were
coming from his own men, those who had managed to
lay their hands upon Klingon disruptors and were turning
them on their owners. Still, the high-powered weapons could only be of so much use in tight quarters, no
more use to the Starfleeters than to the Klingons themselves.
Still, the odds were beginning to balance.
Hot shale sprayed up and stung his cheeks, then went
on to rattle across the rocks. As he scrambled upward, a
half-dozen Klingons broke from their struggles and
followed. Their ambition was getting the better of them. It's working. They're disorganized.
Taunting them with a few swipes of the sword, he got
several to follow as he climbed the rocks, then kicked
two of them off balance. They tumbled and crashed to
the jagged talus below, and when he saw what happened
to them, he realized how high he'd climbed and that he'd
better not slip.
When he glanced up to make sure he wasn't boxing
himself into a trap, he caught a blue flash in his periphery.
McCoy? Up there?
He looked down, across the battle area, and saw the
doctor standing good ground with Brown, Mellendez, and two other Enterprise crewmen.
He swung around to the other swatch of blue. Spock.
The Vulcan was trapped on high ground, being funneled
to the point of a slanted arm of rock by at least
eight Klingons. Kirk's plan had worked to the worst--t hey'd
targeted his first officer.
Holding his own against the Klingons but not against
the shrinking footing, Spock was markedly stronger, but
not faster or meaner than an angry human crew up
against a Klingon force. He would try to fight logically,
and that might not work against Klingons.
As Kirk frantically searched for a way to get over
there, fly maybe, Spock fought with grim deliberation
using the sword Kirk had given him, but he was losing.
He was just plain outnumbered.
Kicking at the Klingons trying to reach him, Kirk
divided his attention and picked out one of his most
experienced field officers.
"Giotto!"

FIRST STRIKE

The lieutenant commander of Security didn't hear
him, so he shouted again, and again until Giotto's
squared face and silver hair turned up to him. Giotto
assessed his captain's situation and shouted, "Coming,
sir!"
"Belay that!" Kirk shouted. "Assist Mr. Spock!"
Giotto swung his wide shoulders, scanned the rocks,
then yelled, "Security detail!"
Seven men around him, three short of a full detail,
broke from what they were doing and managed to follow
as Giotto charged toward Spock's outcropping.
Kirk's heart pounded. They weren't going to make it.
Pebbles chipped from the ledge under Spock's feet and
rained onto the unforgiving talus below. One of the
Klingons had made it all the way up and was sparring
with Spock, enjoying the Vulcan's situation, and the only
thing saving Spock for the moment was the next Klingon
down, who wanted the glory for himself and was holding
on to the top Klingon's ankle and keeping him back.
Desperate, Kirk ignored the Klingons encroaching on
him, took his sword by the blade, wheeled it back over
his shoulder, and launched it like a throwing knife.
It wheeled through the air just beautifully, and struck
the top Klingon, but not with the blade. The hilt came
about and knocked the Klingon in the back of the neck.
He stumbled, and the second Klingon pitched him off
balance. The top one gasped audibly and skidded off the
ledge to land on a shoulder below.
Kirk winced as he heard the Klingon's clavicle snap in
two even under the protective vest.
Spock wasn't wearing anything like that.
Where were Giotto and the Security detail? There--they'd
gone behind a clutch of overgrowth to find a way
to climb the rocks. Too slow, too slow.
It's my fault. They've been fighting all morning.
They're tired. They won't get to him in time.
He'd thrown his sword and now had nothing to fight
with, so he kicked downward at the Klingons trying to
get to him. They could shoot him off, but he saw in their

61

Diane Carey

hungry eyes the desire to defeat the enemy leader with
their own hands. Only the fact that they were competing
instead of helping each other was saving him for the
moment. If his luck held out--
The crack of rock sounded clearly across the open
terrain, and Kirk looked up at the exact horrible instant
that Spock's last inch of footing gave way.
Kirk reached out. He saw his empty hand against the
sky, Spock's form a hundred yards too far from his
outstretched fingers, arms flung outward as the Vulcan
toppled backward and disappeared.
"Damn it!" Kirk choked.
He stared at the empty air where Spock had been a
moment ago, then shifted his rage downward at the
Klingons trying to get to him.
They saw the change in his face. Though he was
weaponless and at the disadvantage, at least three of
them started to back down.
He put all his anger into a downward plunge. After all,
there were nice soft Klingon noses to land on.
He felt a dozen impacts on his body--thighs, ribs,
elbows, knees--as he body-slammed his way straight
down through the Klingons and drove himself and all of
them into a tangle, scraping and scratching down the
slanted shelf. By the time he struck the bottom, he had
scraped off at least two of the Klingons and landed on
the rest of them.
His body screamed for attention. He ignored it and
tried to get to his feet, but fell twice and shuffled outward
on one foot, a knee, and the heel of a hand. His left arm
was numb from the elbow down.
Slowly he made his way past the stunned Klingons. He
had to get to Spock. If his first officer somehow survived
the fall, the other Klingons would rush in and slaughter
him where he lay. Inhaling dust, Kirk willed himself
forward.
"Stop!"
He looked up. Who was that? No voice he recognized .. one of the Capellans?

62

FIRST STRIKE
Out into the middle of the battling armies, striding as
deliberately as if on parade, came a thick-bodied Klingon
officer.
No, not just an officer... a general!
But there was no Klingon general in this sector ....
The wide newcomer strode into the middle of the
action and held out both his short meaty arms, hands
upright in a halting gesture.
"Stop the fighting! Stop! Stop this!"
The general now turned to the upper rocks and
shouted--roared--at his own kind.
"I said stop!"

63

Chapter Five

LEFT ARM NUMB, his chest constricted from the dust, Kirk
scraped between the stunned combatants as they stood
heaving and staring, and managed to keep from going
down on his knees again.
"Spock!" he called.
No answer. He didn't really expect one.
The Klingon general lowered his arms and watched as
the captain crossed the battleground. The general
seemed to understand and stood like Henry VIII on a
jousting field, watching as Kirk came around the gravelly
talus skirt.
Kirk first saw Spock as a swatch of blue and black
quilted against the stones, surrounded by Giotto and his
men, who ringed the fallen body and stood off several
Klingons who wanted to deal the death blow if it hadn't
been dealt already.
He thought the Vulcan moved, but there was so much
dust ....
Everything had stopped, just stopped. Klingons, Star-fleet
crew, Capellans, all standing still--those who were
still standing--looking at the Klingon general who

64

FIRST STRIKE

waited like a lone monolith at their center, and at Kirk as
he moved between the bodies of the fallen.
Maybe this was some kind of demand for surrender. A
full general?
He glanced at the Klingon general in something like
contempt or dare--even he wasn't sure--but kept to his
purpose. One thing at a time.
Giotto's men parted for him, but kept their weapons
up and didn't slack their stance against the Klingon
soldiers.
It felt good to kneel finally. The ground had been
pulling at him--it felt good to give in.
Spock was looking up, blinking, dazed but conscious,
at least. His lips were pressed in frustration and effort,
pickle-green blood showing in scratches on his forehead
and the point of his right ear.
As the gravel cut into his knee, Kirk pressed his good
hand to Spock's tattered sleeve.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Stunned," Spock said with effort, and with pain that
he was trying to hide. His voice was as gravelly as the
stuff he was lying on. Cautiously he raised his head,
brows drawn, then in something like amusement added,
"And, I believe, grazed here and there "
"Where?"
Kirk persisted.
Suddenly aggravated at not being able to self-diagnose,
Spock glanced up at him and belittled himself with a bob
of his angular brows. "I am not certain."
Glancing up at the needle of rock above them, Kirk
realized it was about two decks higher than he'd estimated
from way over there. "How did you survive that?"
"Starfleet training," Spock said lightly. "I rolled."
Kirk pressed out a sympathetic grin. "Think you can
get up? We've got a new development."
Faced with that, Spock pressed his palms to the stones
and tried to lift his shoulders. His voice cracked as he
grunted, "Shall certainly attempt it."
"Mr. Giotto, give us a hand."
In the back of his mind he could hear the protests of

65

Diane Carey common sense as he and Giotto pulled the injured first
officer to his feet, but it was important to Kirk that the
enemies see the Starfleet officers upright and thinking.
Once they got him up it became clear that Spock
couldn't stand on his own and Kirk accepted that he
might be making a mistake.

He waved in a yeoman to help Giotto, then said,
"Bring him over here. I want him to hear whatever goes
on."

At the center of what was quickly becoming a scraggly
ring of mixed combatants, the Klingon general turned in
place. "Who is in command here?" he bellowed, but he
was looking from Klingon to Klingon, not at the Starfleet
team.

Behind the Security detail, Kirk straightened and
watched. Was this some kind of crank?

"I am!" A Klingon commander came up over the
incline and hurried down, clearly infuriated. "Why have
you stopped our victory?"

The general's big body turned and he raised his arms
in contempt. "I see no victory here. What's the matter
with you? Why are you squabbling over this bit of dirt?
Wasting men and munitions, and for what? A few
shipments of toparine? You're a fool."

The commander waved his hand at Kirk. "They killed
my representative!"

One of the big Capellans stepped forward and contradicted,
"I killed your representative. After he betrayed
US."

The blunt honesty silenced the Klingon commander,
and Kirk took that as a cue to move in. He didn't care
about their inner quarrels. He forced himself not to limp
as he put his back to the commander as a kind of insult
and raised his chin to the general.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

The high-ranker squared off before him. "I am General
Kellen."

Behind Kirk, the other Klingons collectively gasped
and relaxed their postures in respect.

66 FIRST STRIKE

Kellen? Kirk repeated. "Of the Muscari Incident?"
"Yes."

The general waited until his identity sank in all
around. Even if they didn't know what he had done in
the past, they had heard his name and they knew his
reputation. So did Kirk. General Kellen... the only
calm Klingon Kirk knew of.

That kind of thing gets around.

The general didn't seem particularly impressed with
himself, but he was clearly counting on Kirk's being impressed with him.

And it was close.

They stood together on the printless stone flat, face-to-face,
sizing each other up.

After he'd ticked off a measured pause, the general
asked, "Your ship is the Enterprise?"

Narrowing his eyes in the bright sunlight, Kirk felt his
brow tighten. "Yes..."

"Then you are Captain James B. Kirk?"

"James T. So what?"

"Then I am here to ask for your help on behalf of the Klingon Empire and your own Federation."

"Help about what?"

"We need your help, Captain. The demons have
returned. The Havoc has come."

"Does this mean you're declaring a cease-fire?"

The question had already gotten its answer, but Kirk
wanted his men and the Klingon men to hear it from the
local top, which at the moment was General Kellen. He
didn't want anyone ending up with a dagger in the back
from the overzealous among them.

Peering over those funny glasses, Kellen nodded hurriedly.
"Yes. And I should mention that your starship is
about to punch holes in my cruiser. Instruct them not Perhaps the general was fishing for an act of trust, or at
least balance, or maybe he just wanted what he said he
wanted. A chance to talk.

67

Diane Carey

Either way, there would be a chance to pause and
regroup. Never taking his eyes off Kellen, Kirk snapped
up his communicator and flipped open the antenna grid.
"Kirk to Enterprise. Go to defensive posture... cease
fire and stand by. If you don't hear from me in ten
minutes, open fire." Without waiting for acknowledgment
from Scott, he lowered the communicator sharply
enough to make a point. "I appreciate who you are,
General, but you can't have this planet."
Kellen held out both hands in acquiescence. "I do not
want this planet. I don't know why some elements do. It
has always been my standing to let the Federation tend
these backward herds. Then we'll take the planets when
they're worth something."
Kirk snorted. "Wanna bet?"
"It has always been a mystery to me when the Federation
will fight and why," Kellen said. "That you will fight
to the last man to defend something you do not care to
possess. A planet like this is not worth the loss of a ship
of the line. I give you this planet without contention.
Congratulations. I have already spoken to your Starfleet
Command. They have agreed to let me approach you if I
agreed to stop this battle. It is stopped. Now I must speak
with you, Captain Kirk."
His voice, though he was a large man, was high-pitched,
Kirk noticed now, not low as one might expect a
large man's to be, yet it had a certain ring of authority--probably
out of sheer practice.
"You'll have to wait your turn," Kirk said. 'I'll be
back in when I've taken care of my men."
Kellen said nothing, but clasped his hands behind his
wide back and struck a stance of impatience.
With a measured glance at Spock, Kirk swung around
and scanned his surprised crewmen and the disgruntled
Klingons, all standing among each other, eyeing each
other's weapons, none of them sure what to do.
He turned another quarter turn and spotted McCoy,
kneeling at the body of Ensign Wilson.
Good a place as any to start.

68

FIRST STRIKE
With a purposeful stride he hurried--but not too
fast--to the doctor and kept his back to Kellen.
"Well," he muttered, "how do you like that?"
"Not much," the doctor muttered back, gazing at poor
Wilson as he rose to his feet.
Kirk surveying quickly the surgeon's bruised face.
"Are you hurt?"
McCoy blinked, frowned, rubbed his hands together,
and said, "No, Captain, I'm not hurt."
"Then get started with your triage."
"Yes, sir."
As the party broke up and others gathered around for
instructions, Kirk dashed off orders to others standing
around.
"Log that I gave a field commission to Zdunic. He's
now a lieutenant."
"Acknowledged," Spock said from behind him.
Weakness in the baritone voice registered suddenly.
Kirk turned to his first oflScer and realized Spock had
been answering him as if nothing was wrong, but the first
officer was still leaning heavily on the yeoman, picking at
his tricorder, valiantly trying to record the details of the
aftermath and his captain's orders.
"Mr. Spock McCoy!
Over here first. Yeoman, set
him
down." Kirk moved in as Spock was gingerly
lowered
to sit on a handy boulder, and carefully pulled
the
tricorder strap up over Spock's head to hand it to the
yeoman.
"Spock... sorry."

There
was more pain in the Vulcan's face now. He was
having
trouble masking it. His lean frame was clenched,
stomach
muscles tight, shoulders and arms stiff as he
pressed
down on the boulder, though he didn't take his
eyes
from the Klingon general. Distrust pulled at him
through
his pain.

unous,
Captain," he said, watching the Klingon
general,
"that he would concern himself with a skirmish."

"He's
got me curious," Kirk acknowledged.

"What
happened?" McCoy asked as he hurried to

69

Diane Carey
them. If he had seen Spock a moment ago in the
background, he hadn't noticed that the Vulcan was being
held up by the yeoman beside him.
"He fell," Kirk said. "From up there. I can't believe
didn't see it happen."
Y'U'I was busy." McCoy ran his medical tricorder from
Spock's shoulder to his pelvis. "Jim, my God--you
shouldn't have moved him! He's got spinal injuries."
Priorities screwed on backward. Kirk knew he'd made
a mistake. Always thinking of Spock as not just half-human,
but superhuman.
Spock was pale as sea wake. Deep-rooted pain etched
his face. He still watched Kellen.
"Take him back to the ship, emergency priority," Kirk
said, letting himself feel guilty.
Spock looked up. "Captain, I would like to stay."
There was something behind his eyes. Havoc...
whatever that was. Spock knew something and he
wanted to hear what Kellen had to say.
And I need him here, if he knows something.
Under his swatch of dusty brown hair, McCoy was
glaring at Kirk. Pretty clear message there, too.
"A few minutes," Kirk decided. "McCoy, you take
care of him here for now. Contact your staff and beam
down a full medical team to take over triage."

'captain," the doctor began, protesting with his tone.
"I said a few minutes. Until we find out what's going
on."
Fuming, his blue eyes boiling on Kirk, the doctor
cracked open his communicator. McCoy to Enterprise. Patch me through to sickbay."
Plagued not by the glare but by the reason for it, Kirk
was suddenly motivated to pierce the mystery fast and
get Spock to the ship.
He swung around and stepped back to Kellen. "All
right, General, I've taken care of my men. Now let's talk
about you."
Kellen nodded. "The Havoc has come and we have to
deal with it."
/0

FIRST STRIKE

Kirk eyed him. "I don't like the sound of that 'we."
What's 'havoc'?"
Spock tipped his head to one side. "In Klingon lore,
'Havoc' is essentially an apocalypse. The releasing of all
captive souls to wreak revenge on those who imprisoned
them."
"Yes," Kellen confirmed, wagging a finger at the
Vulcan. "Yes, yes."
"How do you know it's coming?" Kirk asked.
"My squadron encountered the beginning of it. The
coming of the Havoc ship."
"The apocalypse comes in a ship?" Cynicism blistered the air between them. "General, I'm not in a good
mood."
"And I am not here to put you in one." Kellen's
weathered face didn't change. He utterly believed that he
was here for the right reasons. He looked like a latter-day
Ben Franklin waiting to see whether he'd be the father of
a nation or on the business end of a noose.
Kirk drilled him with a meaningful glare. "What
happened to you? Start from the beginning."
"There was a mass falloff," the general began. "At first
we thought our instruments were failing, but then the
sun of a nearby solar system began to expand and the
planets to disintegrated. This continued until all things
went to zero--"
"Nothing could exist in a zero-mass environment,"
Spock countered, as McCoy worked on him. "Everything
that moved would accelerate to the speed of light."
"We came within seconds of that," the Klingon confirmed,
nodding at Spock as if anxious to be understood.
"We watched as the nearest solar system broke to
hyperlight and was vaporized. We managed to hold our
ships to positive mass by diverting all our power to the
shields. We were down to one one-hundredth percent of our mass when the effect stopped. We..." He paused,
measured the impact of what he was saying, then decided
to admit, "We did lose one ship."
Everyone everywhere was utterly still. Even McCoy

71

Diane Carey stopped in the middle of applying a field splint to
Spock's back.

As they all stared at Kellen, the whine of transporters
cut into the tension.

To Kirk's right, six pillars of garbled energy buzzed
into place, then quickly and noisily materialized into the
forms of McCoy's emergency medical staff of interns
and nurses.

McCoy waved at them without saying a word, and
they dispersed to triage the wounded.

"I have recordings of this," Kellen offered, pulling
Kirk's attention back. He spoke with control, as if
completely convinced they would want these. He raised
his arm, and pulled from his belt a Klingon tricorder.
"The de vice has a translator."

He held it before Kirk, and did not lower it.

Kirk tilted his head to his left, toward Spock. "Over
there."

Without pause Kellen took the one step necessary to
hand the tricorder to the yeoman with Spock, but he
never took his eyes off Kirk.

The yeoman blinked as if he didn't know what to do,
but a wag of Kirk's finger at the tricorder snapped him
out of it. He keyed up the instrument, working as well as
he could with a Klingon mechanism, then faced Spock
and ran the recordings on the small screen for him.

"I was transporting back to my flagship," Kellen went
on while Spock watched the tricorder, "when my beam
was diverted to another place. At first I believed I was on
some distant planet, for there were caves and growing
moss and a source of light and heat. I explored this place
and discovered solid metal walls and electrical lighting
with signal panels. But also there was a corridor of
skulls."

"I'm sorry?" Kirk interrupted. "Did you say 'skulls'?"
"Skulls. Bare, boiled skulls. Of inconceivable shapes
and kinds--creatures scarcely imaginable, Captain
Kirk. Each was set in a niche of its own from which moss
bled and lichen grew. Then, it... came out of the wall."

72 FIRST STRIKE

"What came? A skull?"

"No. No skull... the lraga itself."

The Klingon general nearly whispered the word, as if
speaking the profane, yet he was trying to be clinical and
scientific.

Iraga. Didn't sound familiar.

Kirk canted forward slightly enough to get across his
do-I-have-to-keep-asking expression.

"A... vision from our past," Kellen said, sifting for
words. "A gathering of evils in one body, with snakes
living out of its head and flame in its eyes. It means
nothing to you, but to Klingons it is our past coming
back." ....

"We have legends of snake-headed beings," Kirk mentioned,
"but I don't recall anything with fire for eyes. Mr.
Spock?"

"I am unfamiliar with any such legend, Captain," the science officer said. "Research may prove of service."
"Captain, please," McCoy wedged in.

Kirk gave him a shut-up nod, then looked at Kellen.
"Let's deal with facts right now. You say there was a power source? Readout panels? And you could breathe?"
"Yes. I felt the engines of the ship."

"Demons don't need atmosphere or conventional
power. And they certainly don't need engines."

Kellen acknowledged that with what might have been
a shrug. "Whatever is going on, legends and reality have
come together and this might be the end of things for us
all. Whatever has been our collective nightmare for cons
has now come to ruin us again. We must work together
now. Compared to those, we are so much alike that I
would rather be your slave than live on the same planet
with them. Now that the invaders are here, there is no
difference between you and me anymore."

A hot breeze coughed down the incline between the
two breasts of rock and across the warm belly of the
shale flats. Kirk found himself suddenly sweating under
his shirt. He didn't like the feeling, He wanted to scratch
his chest as perspiration trickled down his ribs.

73

Diane Carey

He glared at Kellen. The sun enhanced his flown. His
eyes were hurting.
"Captain," Spock called.
Kirk pursed his lips and crossed the ten steps or so to
where Spock was sitting on the boulder.
Grimly Spock said, "He is telling the truth. At least, he
is truthfully relating what he saw. And according to
vessel-stress readings and analyses of the computer registry,
there did seem to be a mass falloff. Their records
also have a visual log of a solar system's burst to warp
speed."
"Could his records be falsified?"
"Of course."
"But you don't think they are?"
Spock sat as stiff as an Oriental statue. "No, sir."
"What could cause a mass falloff?."
"A weapon." Kellen surged, plunging two steps closer
before a handful of Security men stepped between him
and Kirk and Spock. "A shot fired across our civilization's
bows, Kirk. For after it, there came the vessel of
demons. We have to put aside hating each other for
now."
"Put aside decades of trouble just like that?"
"What do you want?" Kellen asked, becoming much
more agitated than anyone would expect from the calmest
Klingon in the Empire. "You want me to imprison
my grandson? You want me to find a husband for your
ugliest sister." Tell me! This is important, Kirk! If you
could have one thing from the Klingon Empire, what
would you want?"
Irritated by the pettiness Kellen seemed to take for
granted, Kirk bristled. "You know what I want. The
same thing the whole Federation wants. Freedom and
peace for all our peoples."
"You want us to leave you alone."
"Not enough. You have to leave your own people alone
too."
The whole idea crossed the general's face as utterly
foreign, but he didn't laugh or show any sign that Kirk

74

FIRST STRIKE
had asked for something he wouldn't consider today.
Kellen seemed willing to hand over the galaxy if he could
get the help he wanted.
"Just a minute," Kirk stalled. He turned his back on
the general and lowered his voice to Spock and McCoy.
"Opinions?"
"Obviously profound," Spock murmured, "if the effect
on him is so profound that the tension between
Klingons and the Federation seems childish to him
now."
"Whatever's going on," McCoy nearly whispered, "it's
got Kellen spooked. And from what I've heard about this
particular Klingon, he doesn't spook lightly."
Kirk looked at him. "Are you saying we should go?"
"Captain, I'll say anything you want if you'll let me
take Spock to sickbay."
"Captain," Kellen interrupted, and waited until Kirk
turned back to him. "I do not know if I can give you the
things you ask," he said, "but I give my word as a
warrior--I will do everything I can for the rest of my life
to work toward a treaty. You help us survive today...
and I will dedicate my life to your wish."
What?
The Klingons around the battleground stirred and
audibly choked at what they had just heard. Kirk's men
held very still, cocooned in disbelief.
"You can take me aboard as hostage if you like,"
Kellen added, "but help us against them!"
Was this Klingon bravado? A bet Kellen was making
with himself?. An experienced general knew the Federation would never take hostages.
So I will.
"Fine. You'll stay with us." Through Kellen's surprise,
Kirk finished, "We'll go out there, and we'll see what this
is."

75

WE ARE

THE IMPENDING

Chapter Six

"Bor, rEs, How is HE?"
"Not good."
"Tell me."
"Vulcans have thirty-six pairs of nerves attached to
the spinal cord, serving the autonomic and voluntary
nervous systems. Spock has some level of damage to
thirty percent of those, mostly in his lower thoracic area
and lumbar plexus. No major fractures, probably because
of the angle of the stuff he fell on, but there are
a series of hairline fractures to the white matter of the spinal column. Add that to the impact to his muscles
and tendons, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured
wrist."
"He broke his wrist?"
"The left one."
"I... didn't notice."
His own left arm throbbed now, reminding him of his
own hurts and the hits he'd taken, and magnifying what
Spock must be going through. Without thinking, he
rubbed the sore elbow.
McCoy noticed. "Spock's shoulder is back in place

79

Diane Carey and the wrist bones are fused, but he'll be sore for a
while ."

"Can his spinal injury be fixed with surgery?"
Folding his arms, the ship's cranky chief surgeon
pursed his lips and shook his head, almost as if still
deciding.

But right now he was just plain galled.

"I'm not going to operate unless I have to. I'm not a
neurological specialist, Captain, and we're damned far
from anybody who is, let alone a specialist on Vulcan
neurophysiology. The irony is that he's lucky he hit that
skirt of gravel on his spine instead of his skull, or right
now we'd be wrapping him up for a real quiet voyage
back to Vulcan and you'd be writing a note to his
parents."

A chill shimmied down Jim Kirk's aching arms. Those
awful notes--he'd spend his whole night writing them,
one by one, with hands scratched and sore from today's
battle. He had to do them before he slept, or he'd never
sleep. He would describe the situation on Capella IV and
explain its importance to the Federation so families
would know their young men died for something important.
He would log one posthumous commendation after
another, feeding them through to Lieutenant Uhura,
who would launch the sad package through subspace to
the parents, wives, children of those who'd given their
lives today in the line of duty.

He was glad he wouldn't have to write a note like that
to Ambassador Sarek and his wife.

"We're lucky," Kirk murmured. "I'm lucky."

"Will he recover?" he asked.

Silence told him that McCoy wanted to make the
prognosis sound upbeat, but the captain was the only
person on board the starship who had to be deprived of
bedside manner. The captain always had to be given the
cold raw truth.

"I can't tell you that conclusively," McCoy said.
"We'll just have to wait and see. I've got him mounted g0 FIRST STRIKE

on a null-grav pad, to keep pressure off the spinal column. He can walk, but I'm not going to let him yet."
"Is there anything else you can do?"

McCoy responded with a bristle of insult. "Even with
advanced medicine, there are some things the body has
to do for itself. His metabolism is higher than ours and
his recuperative powers are different. I'm not going to
tamper unless there's an emergency. Don't second guess
my judgment, Captain, and I won't second gues s yours."

Kirk turned to him. "If McCoy, say it."

you've got something to say, The doctor stiffened. His eyes flared and he went off
like a bow and arrow ready to spring. "Fine. I processed
nineteen bodies this morning and fifty-two injuries,
twelve of those serious, and two men are still listed as
missing in action. That's seventy-three casualties logged
up to a petty skirmish of questionable strategic value."

"It's my job to defend those settlements. Would you
prefer processing the corpses of innocent families or
official personnel sworn to protect them? You're the one
who was stationed on that planet, you're the one who
knew these people personally. Would you advocate
abandonment?"

"There had to be some better way, is all I'm saying, something less savage than a ground defense."
"That's not for you to judge."

"Maybe not, but my patients are filling up four
wards--"

"They're not your patients, Doctor, they're my crew.
And they're Starfleet officers and they know what that
means. The Klingons might have slaughtered those people.
That's where we come in; we were there to stop it."

McCoy's blue eyes were bitter cold by now. "Maybe
there was and you chose to ignore it, just as you chose to
ignore common sense when you moved a trauma victim
simply because you needed another opinion. The fact is,
you're likely to get to an injured crewmen long before I
am, and as such it befalls you to know what to do and

81

Diane Carey

what not to do, which means holstering that dash and
moxie of yours long enough to give the correct first aid!"
If the doctor hadn't been trying to whisper, he'd have
been shouting.
Kirk heard it as a shout. His throat knotted and he felt
his jaw go stiff, his lips tighten, the skin around his eyes
crimp. He stared in challenge at McCoy, reflexes telling
him to demand his rank rights to civil treatment.
But then he looked through the door toward Spock's
bed.
He raised one hand and pressed his palm to the door
frame.
"It was unpardonable," he said.
He felt McCoy's glare, maybe one of surprise, maybe
sympathy, burrowing through the back of his head.
Evidently the doctor had gotten what he'd wanted, or
perhaps he'd decided the captain was tortured enough,
because he sighed, then came up beside Kirk and spoke
more evenly.
"I'm controlling his pain, Jim."
"Understood," Kirk uttered, as if he did. With his
tone he asked McCoy to stay behind, let him deal with
this himself.
He walked into the ward.
Spock lay on what seemed to be an ordinary diagnostic
bed, with all the lights and blips and graphs silently
moving on the panel above, monitoring his vitals.
As he moved closer to the bed, he noted the four
antigrav units locked two-each to the sides of the bed,
whirring softly, keeping Spock's body hovering a millimeter
off the mattress, making his organs and bones float
as if he were hovering out in space. Only the pillow made
any contact, and that just barely, probably because it
bothered McCoy to see his patients without a pillow, A
patient in antigravs didn't really need one.
Spock's graphite eyes were glazed and pinched, his
face and hands still lime-pale. Sickbay's washed-out
patient's tunic didn't help much, seeming to suck color

82

FIRST STRIKE
out of anybody's complexion. With his sharp hearing,
he'd probably heard the two of them talking out there.
"Captain,', he greeted, sparing them both the awkward
moment.
"Spock... I'm sorry to disturb you."
"Not at all, sir. Are you all right?
Kirk shrugged self-consciously. "A few cuts and
scratches. My uniform had to be buried at sea, though."
"Beside mine, most likely. Is General Kellen on
board?"
"Yes, and without an escort, too. His flagship did a little ,posturing, but he backed them down. You
should've seen it. Whatever this thing is that he experienced,
it scared him enough that he's pocketing his
dignity. Certainly got me curious."
"And the Capellan situation?"
"Capellan space is cleared. He sent the other ships
home. That Klingon COmmander wasn't
too happy. His career is pretty much wrecked."

"Yes," Spock rasped. "He is not allowed to start a war,
but neither is he allowed to lose a skirmish. How long

will we have to wait?"

"We didn't wait. We're at warp five. Starfleet's sending

the Frigate Great Lakes and two patrol sweepers to hold

ground until the treaty takes affect. I've already signed off

the situation."

"And the Klingon vessels?"

"Kellen's flagship is out in front, leading the way. .

the other four are trailing."
"So far, SO good."

He waited for a response, but there was none.

Spock's lips compressed. The pain indicator bounced

at the top of the screen.

Kirk put his hand on the blanket and pressed it, as if that would help.

Second by second, the wave of pain subsided and the indicator drifted down a few degrees. Not enough, though, to make either of them feel much better.

"This is my fault," he forced out. "I wasn't thinking

83

Diane Carey
clearly. I should've had you beamed directly here without
moving you."
Spock blinked his eyes in a motion that otherwise
would've been a nod. "Being distracted by complex
circumstances and failing to think clearly are not the
same, Captain."
Poof. You're forgiven. Forget it.
"We'll be approaching the location of the incident
Kellen described within twelve hours. I need someone at
the science station. Do you have a recommendation?"
Offering an uncomplaining gaze, Spock pressed down
the undertones of common sense. "I would prefer to be
there myself, sir."
A half-smile bent Kirk's cheek. "And I'd like you
there. But part and parcel of dangerous duty is recuperation.
McCoy deserves to have his satisfactions too, once
in a while, and we've given him a hell of a day. Least we
can do is let him hover over you for a watch or two.
Besides, all this is going to turn out to be nothing.
Something spooked a combustible Klingon and now he
wants attention. That's all it is."
"General Kellen is hardly a man given to idle combustion.
And a systemwide mass falloff could be considered
grounds for becoming 'spooked." I am quite eager to
examine the circumstances myself."
"Don't worry, you'll get your chance. For now, stay
put. Mend well... I've got a few things to keep me busy."
He took a step back.
"Rest," the captain said. He touched the blanket
again. "Get better. I'll keep you posted."

"There it is, sir. Just popped onto our long-range."
"Visual, Mr. Chekov?"
"In a few more seconds, sir. Sensors are assessing the
vessel's configuration now."
"Clear for action. Go to yellow alert. Sound general
quarters. Magnification one point seven-five as soon as
you can. Mr. Sulu, reduce speed to warp one."
"Yellow alert, aye."
"Magnification one point seven-five, sir."

FIRST STRIKE
"Warp one, aye, sir."
With amber flashes of alert panels blinking on and off
in his periphery, Jim Kirk paused as his orders were
echoed back to him from various positions on the
bridge, a long-held naval tradition borne of common
sense, to make sure orders were heard and understood
over the howl of wind. Protocol was a good, stout handle
to grip.
Here there was no wind, but there was the constant
whine and bleep of systems working, the almost physical
thrum of engines deep below, and there was the undeniable
tension of the bridge. Imagined in the minds of all
here with a capital T, this tension existed in some form
even in the most mundane of days, for this was the brain
of the starship, and the starship was the security of the
sector. Down not very deep, all hands here knew that.
And the tension was different, tighter, when the captain
was on the bridge, even though all orders might
remain the same, course unchanged, situation stable,
status unremarkable, for days on end. It was different if
he stood here too.
Always had been. Centuries.
Normally he was the most comfortable here, on the
bridge, but today there was the added presence of
General Kellen, standing on the lower deck beside the
command chair as if he deserved to be here. He was
obviously used to such a position and was unimpressed
by his rank privilege to stand here, even on a ship full of
those he considered enemies. He said nothing, and had
said very little. He watched the main screen obsessively,
but with the keen eyes of a soldier seeking weakness.
"Position of the other vessel?" Kirk requested.
"Two points forward of the port beam, sir," Chekov
reported. "Distance, two standard astronomical units
.. roughly eighteen light-minutes."
"Reduce to sublight."
Sulu touched his controls. "Sublight, aye, sir."
Kirk flexed his sore hands. "Mr. Chekov, where's that
visual?"

85

Diane Carey

"Here now, sir." The young navigator picked at his
controls, tied in to the science station -- not the best, but
workable for now -- then looked up at the screen.
There it was.
Big. Well, they could see it, but that wasn't much help.
It looked like --
"Looks like a big... pasta noodle," Chekov said. "A
little overboiled, maybe..."
"It's a hunting horn, sir," Sulu offered.
Uhura swiveled to look over the heads of Sulu and
Chekov. "Looks like a cornucopia to me."
Engineer Scott canted his head to one side. "I think
it's a giant purple foxglove kicked on its side. Y'know,
the flower part."
"Enough," Kirk droned. "You're at alert."
"Aye, sir," Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu uttered, each
suddenly attentive to stations.
Satisfied, Kirk rubbed his elbow again and eyed the
new ship. It did look like all those things. Like a porridge
of those t hings. Huge collars of hull material set n a
pattern, purple plates fanned out like playing cards.
Maybe Scott was the most right. The structures were like
flower petals, winding down to a point. Yet there was a
decidedly nonfloral ferocity about it.
He could see why Kellen would be shaken. The ship
was the color of Klingon bloodplum fans shimmering
in the light of the nearest sun, twisting down, around and
around, into shades of night orchid, etched in sharp
black.
"All stop. Hold position relative to the other vessel.
Communicate orders to the Klingon ships."
"All stop," Sulu said as his hands played the helm.
"Compensating for drift, sir."
"Fire!"
General Kellen's big voice became a thunderbolt
under the low ceiling.
Kirk spun and belted, "Security!"
Kellen plunged for the helm console, his wide hand
aimed specifically at the phaser controls. Another
inch--

86

FIRST STRIKE

Sulu pressed upward out of his helm chair, driving his
knobby shoulder into Kellen's chest and almost disappearing
under the bulk. Ensign Chekov lunged sideways
from the navigator's position and pushed his own skinny
shoulders over Sulu's head and under Kellen's chin,
while Kirk himself made a grab and caught a handful of
hair and silver tunic with his weakened left hand. With
the other hand he clutched the arm of his command chair and hauled away.
The chair swiveled, then caught and gave him purchase.
He drew back hard. It took all three of them to
hold Kellen away from that critical inch.
An instant later the two Security guards made it down
from the turbolift vestibule and grappled Kellen by his
arms, muscling him back from the helm and plunging
him against the bright red rail until his great bulk arched
and his face screwed up in anger. Not too soon, though,
for Kirk's mind flashed over and over that Kellen's hand
had been halted directly over the phaser control. No
guesses. Kellen knew exactly where those firing controls
were, though there were no markings.
Once the Security men hit the lower deck, the crisis
ended, but Kellen strained against them and bellowed,
"Shoot while you have the chance!" He pivoted toward
Kirk. "Fire on them!"
"I don't know them!" Kirk pelted back, squaring off
before him.
The big Klingon's face bronzed with excitement. "But
I have seen what they are!"
Angry now and reminded of it by the screaming
muscles and throbbing bones in his left arm and both
knees, Kirk said sharply, "You've described a Klingon
legend. I told you before, legends don't use conventional
power ratios. Barbarians don't drive around in ships like
that."
The general stopped hauling against the red-faced
guards. He seemed to accept Kirk's charge of the moment,
and fell again into that disarming, nearly bovine
self-control which had garnered him a reputation even in
Starfleet circles.

87

Diane Carey

"What are your intents?" he asked.
As the passive bright lights flickered in Kellen's spectacles, Kirk said, "I intend to hail them."
"You will give us away."
"I've already done that by entering the sector, General.
We neither explore nor protect by stealth. Will I have
to call more guards?"
The general squinted at him as if in challenge, but let
his arms go slack in the guards' grips and acknowledged
with his posture that this was not his bridge. The power
of such a concept rang and rang. Command. One per
ship, one only.
"Bring us into short-range communications distance,"
Kirk said, without taking his eyes from the general's.
"Aye, sir," Sulu responded, and beneath them the ship
hummed its own answer.
"Shields up, Mr. Chekov. Keep weapons on-line."
"Phaser battery on standby, sir. Shields up."
"Captain," Communications Officer Uhura spoke in
that crystal-clear teacher's English, "Mr. Spock is calling
from sickbay. He requests to speak to you."
Kirk allowed himself a smile, but didn't allow Kellen
to see it. "Somehow I'm not surprised. On visual."
Spock's angular face appeared on the darkened monitor
on the upper bridge, just above the library computer
access panel. Kirk stepped up to meet it as if his first
officer were there, at his post, as usual.
"Captain," Spock greeted. "Permission to monitor the
encounter with the unidentified vessel."
Kirk eyed the face on the screen. "And just how did
you know we were approaching the unidentified ship at
all, if I may ask?"
But he already knew, and glanced at Chekov, hunkering
down there at his navigation console and scouting
Kirk in his periphery.
"Collusion, sir," Spock admitted.
"I see. And once you've monitored?"
"I shall analyze the information and make recommendations."

88

FIRST STRIKE

"As usual. I see again. You intend to do all this from
sickbay?"
"As necessary."
"How?"
"If Lieutenant Uhura will give you a wide view..."
Without waiting, Uhura skimmed one hand over her
board, and Spock's monitor clicked to a wide side view
of the Vulcan laid out on his diagnostic couch, with the
antigravs working silently at his sides, but with a new
development. Above him was mounted a small monitor.
"And who did that?" Kirk asked, as if asking which of
the kids put the soccer ball through the bedroom window.
"Scotty."
Burying a wince, he turned and glanced up at the port
aft station, main engineering, where Chief Engineer
Scott tucked his chin guiltily and peered out from under
the squabble of black hair.
"Wouldn't want him to get bored, sir," the stocky
engineer excused, letting his Aberdeen accent make him
sound quaint, "lyin' there, an' all."
"And which of the ship's heads did you lock McCoy
into while you were doing this?"
Scott held his breath. "Don't recall mentioning it to
him, Sir."
"Nor do I," Spock confirmed.
"They both forgot to mention it to me."
McCoy sauntered out of the turbolift when Kirk
looked toward the voice, and came to join the captain on
the starboard deck.
"Flummoxed," the doctor said. "Right in my own
sickbay. That's what you get when you try to hold down a pointed-cared bunco artist." He cast a glower at Scott.
"Or his sidekick, Jock the Jolly Tinker."
Scott actually blushed, and Kirk crushed back a grin.
"I should be able to assist effectively," Spock said, and
there was unmistakable hope behind his reserve. He
managed not to frame a question with anything but his
eyes, gazing across the silent circuits at his captain.
McCoy didn't approve, according to his expression,

89

Diane Carey

but he said nothing, and Kirk felt the decision go thunk into his hands from the chief surgeon's.
"I'd go stir-crazy myself," he allowed. "Glad to have
you on duty, Mr. Spock. I'll leave it to your better
judgment not to overburden yourself."
"Oh, he won't be overburdening himself," McCoy
said. "He's scheduled for a sedative."
"When?"
"The minute I decide he's overburdening himself!!"
"Oh, of course. You heard it, Mr. Spock. You're on
duty, but you're also on medical probation."
"Thank you, sir."
Kirk nodded to Uhura. "Keep Mr. Spock's channel
open, Lieutenant." While cannily watching Kellen press
his hair back into place, Kirk left McCoy's side, swiveled
toward Uhura's communications station, and spoke very
quietly to her exotic, expectant face. "Note to Starfleet
Command, scramble. Klingons have intimate knowledge
of our bridge control configuration. Suggest necessary
changes in color code and location with next design
upgrades. Kirk, commanding, Enterprise, stardate...
so on. And while you're at it, give them our location."
She turned her eyes up to him. "Right away, sir."
"Captain," Sulu interrupted, "coming into short-range
comm, sir. Thirty seconds."
"Open channels. Let's see if they'll talk."
"Talk," Kellen snapped. Cranking his thick arm
around his own body, he dug between the silver tunic
and the protective molded vest that Klingons had started
using only lately and only in battle, and yanked out his
personal communicator.
"Stop him!" Kirk shouted, but the Security men
weren't fast enough in snatching the communicator from
the big fist.
Snapping it to his lips Kellen spat, "Aragor! High.t
Tugh!"
The guard grabbed the communicator and Kellen's
hand and cranked hard. Kellen's face twisted into a
grimace, but he knew he'd gotten his message through

FIRST STRIKE

and gave up the communicator before arms were
broken--a toss-up just whose arms.
"Captain, the Klingon ships are moving around us!"
Chekov gulped. "Attack formation!"
"On screens!"
The main screen and four subsystems monitors
changed to show the five Klingon ships swinging freely
around the Enterprise as if swung on strings. In open
space, the starship could easily have outmaneuvered
them, but in these tight circumstances the lighter-weight
Klingon ships were like hornets buzzing around a swan,
racing away toward the unidentified vessel at full impulse,
and they got the best of the bigger ship on short
notice.
"General, order them back!" Kirk demanded.
"They have their orders," Kellen answered, strangely
calm now. He watched the screen as a man watches a
house burning down.
Kirk grabbed for his command chair's shipwide announcement
control. "Red alert!"
Bright poppy-red slashes lit the bulkheads in place of
the amber ones as the alert klaxons rang through the
lower decks, announcing to the crew that the ship was
coming into action. On the main screen, the Klingon
ships shot into the distance and closed on the unidentified
ship and opened fire the second they were within
range, pelting heedless and relentless lancets of phaser
energy onto the wide purple fans of hull material.
Sparks flew and bright en ergy wash pumped down the
fans, but was quickly drained away. There might've been
some spray of debris, but it was difficult to see from this
distance, moving at this speed.
Spinning full-front to the main screen, Kirk cast his
order back to Uhura.
"Warn those ships off!"

91

Chapter Seven

"THEY WILL NOT go off, Captain," Kellen said. "You have
no choice now. You will have to fight with them."
"We'll see about that. Mr. Sulu, ahead one-half impulse.
Mr. Chekov, take the science station. Ensign
Donnier, take navigations."
The assistant engineer blinked in surprise and
dropped to the command deck. Chekov jumped up .to
Spock's library computer and science station. Donruer
slipped into Chekov's vacant seat and barely settled all
the way down. He was a competent assistant for Scott,
but he'd never been on the bridge before. He was young
and particularly good-looking, which got him in many
doors, only there to stumble over his personal insecurity
because of a stuttering problem that he let slow him
down. He'd requested duty only in engineering. That
was why Kirk had ordered him to put in time on the
bridge.
The unidentified ship began to return fire--one, two,
three globular bulbs of energy that looked more than
anything like big blue water balloons wobbling through
space toward the Klingon cruiser. Two missed, but one

92

FIRST STRIKE

hit and drenched the cruiser in crackling blue, green, and
white destructive power. The cruiser wasn't blown up,
but fell off and spun out of control.
"Heavy damage to the cruiser, sir," Chekov reported.
"Main engines are seizing."
"Analyze those bolts."
"Analyzing," Spock's baritone voice answered from
up on that monitor.
Kirk glanced up there. He'd been talking to Chekov.
He stared at the main screen, where the remaining
four Klingon ships were dodging those heavy blue globes
and pummeling the unidentified ship so unbrokenly that
Kirk winced in empathy. "Stand by photon torpedoes."
"Photon torpedoes r-ready," Donnier struggled,
barely audible.
As if he were standing at Kirk's side, Spock read off his
analysis. "The unidentified ship's salvos are composed
of quadra-cobalt intrivium... phased incendiary cor-osite
plasma... and, I believe, plutonium. They also
seem to have some wrecking qualities based on sonics."
"Everything's in there," Kirk muttered. "Fusion,
phasers, fire, sound... effective, but not supernatural.
Double shields shipwide."
"Double shields, sir."
"They will use their mass-dropping weapon if you give
them the chance, Kirk," Kellen rumbled. "They can
negate the gravity in the whole sector. You must attack
them before they use it."
"If they have that kind of technology, General, then we're already sunk," Kirk responded, watching the action. "And they don't seem to have it."
"How can you know?"
"Because your ships are getting in some good punches
and the visitors haven't used that 'weapon' again.
They're using conventional defenses. If they have hand
grenades, why are they shooting with bows and arrows?
Helm, full impulse."
"Full impulse, sir."
"Good," Kellen whispered, then aloud said again,

93

Diane Carey
"Good. Fight them with this monster of yours, while we
have the advantage."
"Just keep back," Kirk warned. "Helm, come to three-four-nine.
Get between those Klingon ships. Force them
to break formation."
"Kirk? Kellen pressed forward and the guards had to
grab him again.
Around them the giant Artemis hummed as she powered
up to her full potential and all her systems came online.
A choral song of heat and imagination, she took a
deep bite on space and moved in on the clutch of other ships, cleaving them away from each other with the sheer
force of her presence and her sprawling shields.
Two of the Klingon ships were pressured to part
formation, while one other was forced off course and had
to vector around again, which took time.
In his mind Kirk saw his starship plunge into the
battle. He'd put her through hell in their time together
and she'd always come out with her spine uncracked.
She'd picked herself up, given a good shake, and brought
him and his crew back in under her own power every
time. This was one of those moments when he felt that
esprit with sailors from centuries past, who understood
what a ship really was, how a bolted pile of wood, metal,
and motive power could somehow be alive and command
devotion as if the heart of oak actually pumped
blood. How fast? How strong! How much could she
take? How tightly could she twist against the pressure of
forces from outside and inside? How far could they push
her before she started to buckle? How much of herself
would she give up before she let her crew be taken? How tough was she?
Those were the real questions, because the ship was
their life. If she died, they died. When a ship is life, it
becomes alive ....
"Port your helm, Mr. Sulu, wear ship, he said. "Mr.
Donnier, phasers one-half power and open fire."
"Wear the ship, aye," Sulu said, at the same time as
Donnier responded, "One half f-f-phasers, s-sir."
94

FIRST STRIKE

Firing bright blue streamers, the starship came about,
her stern section and main hull pivoting as if the
engineering hull were held on a string high above.
Kirk gripped his own chair with one hand and Don-nier's
chair back with the other. "Ten points more to
port."
"Ten points, sir."
"Good... twenty points more... keep firing, Mr.
Donnier."
The ship swung about, showing them a moving panorama
of stars and ships on the main screen, swinging
almost lazily from right to left.
When he couldn't see the unidentified ship on the
main screen anymore, he said, "Midships."
"Midships," Sulu said, and tilted his shoulders as he
fought to equalize the helm.
Donnier glanced at Kirk, plainly confused by the term
"midships" on something other than a docking maneuver.
Good thing Sulu was at the helm instead of someone
with less experience. Maneuvering a ship at sublight
speeds, in tight quarters, had entirely different characteristics
from maneuvers, even battles, at warp.
At warp speed, the helm maneuvers were very slight
and specific, designated by numbers of mark and course,
and even moving the "wheel" a pin or two had sweeping
results of millions of light-years.
But at impulse speed, things changed. And changed
even more in tight-maneuvering conditions. Helm adjustments
became more sweeping, bigger, sometimes a
full 180 degrees, or any cut of the pie. "Midships" meant
"find the navigational center of this series of movements
and equalize the helm."
Forcing her crew to lean, the starship dipped briefly to
port, then surged and came about to her own gravitational
center and ran her phasers across the hulls of the Qul and the MatHa; knocking them out of their attack
formation. The point of Donnier's tongue was sticking
out the corner of his mouth and his backside was hitched
to the edge of his seat as he concentrated on his phasers,

95

Diane Carey following not the angle of his phaser bolts but the
position of the moving Klingon ships out theremit was
exactly the right thing to do. Like pointing a finger.

The two Klingon ships wobbled, shivered, nearly
collided, and bore off, one of them forced astern and
down. Kirk hoped Kellen took note that the starship's
punches were being pulled.

"Good shooting, Mr. Donnier," he offered. "Maintain."

Sweating, Donnier mouthed an aye-aye, but there was
no sound to it.

The other two cruisersrobe forgot their names--kept
wits and plowed in again, opening fire now on the
Enterprise. The ship rocked and Kirk had to grab his
command chair to keep from slamming sideways into the rail. His scratched fingers burned with the effort.
Full phasers.

He didn't want to respond in kind. He wanted to make a point, not chop four other ships to bits.

Well, not yet.

Problem was that their commanding general was here,
out of communication. They might take that as final
orders and fight to the death.

Qul was back in the fight now, firing on the unidentified
ship, and Donnier was doing an amiable job of
detonating the Klingon phaser bolts before they struck
the giant fan blades. He managed to catch three out of
four bolts. Not bad.

Kirk pulled himself around the helm against the heel
of the starship. "Keep it up, Mr. Donnier. Photon
torpedoes on the Klingon vessels, Mr. Sulu. Fire across their bows and detonate at proximity."

"Aye, sir."

New salvos spewed from the Enterprise, making a
spitting sound here within the bridge, much different
from the screaming streamers of phaser fire, much more
concentrated and heavy-punching, exploding right in
front of the Qul. The Qul flinched, probably blinded by

96 FIRST STRIKE

the nearby explosions, m-d bore off on a wingtip, forced
to cease fire and try to come about again.

"Call them off, Kellen," Kirk said. "I'll open up on
them if I have to."

"What right have you to do that?" Kellen bellowed. "I
brought you here to be my ally!"

"But I'm not going to be your mercenary. Call them
Off."

But Kellen only glared at the screen and damped his
mouth shut.

"Fine," Kirk grumbled.

As the firing intensified, the fans on the unidentified
ship's long twisted hull began to close inward, lying
tightly and protectively upon each other and creating a
shell instead of a flower. The curve of the hull itself
began to straighten out, like a snake uncoiling its body,
thinning the field of target and making it harder to hit.
Talk about looking like a living thing...

The strange ship continued to fire those sickly-blue
globes on the Kl ingon vessels that strafed it.

"All right, General, have it your way," Kirk ground
out. "Mr. Donnier, phasers on full power. Mr. Sulu,
photon torpedoes full intensity, point-blank range. Fire
as your weapons bear on any Klingon vessel."

Kellen cranked around against the guard's hold on
him and glared at Kirk. "No!"

"It's your decision." Kirk met the glare with his
burning eyes. "Call them The Klingon's lips parted, peeled back, then came
together again in a gust of frustration. He all but
stomped his foot. Yanking one arm away from the guard
on his left, he reached for his communicator, still being
held by the other guard. As if it were all part of the same
order, the guard let him have it.

Kellen snapped the communicator open and barked,
"Qul! Mev! Ylchu'Ha."
Short and sweet.
Worked, though.

97

Diane Carey
The Klingon vessels swung about, joined each other at
a notable distance, then dropped speed and came to a
stop in some kind of formation Kirk hadn't seen before.
Good enough.
"You seem to have the ear of your squadron, General"
Kirk said. "Mr. Donnier, cease fire. Helm, minimum safe distance, then come about and all stop."
"Aye, sir," Sulu said tightly.
"Safe distance," Kellen protested, shaking his big
head. "Warriors coming home shredded and shamed,
spewing tales of a Federation devil with hands of fire and
steel in his eyes. 'I fought Kirk! My honor is not so
damaged as if I fought a lesser enemy!" It's become an
acceptable excuse to lose to Kirk. Some want to avoid
you, some want to challenge you because it would be a
better victory. I expected you to come in and shake
planets. And this is you? Talk? I wanted a warrior. All I
find is this--you--who will not act. I will go home and
slap my commanders who spoke of you."
"Your choice," Kirk said, ruffled less than he would've
anticipated at the Klingon's lopsided insults that actually
were kind of complimentary. Matching the general's
anger with his own control, he countered, "When you
met them before, did you try to talk to them at all?"
"No!"
"So you opened fire without announcement."
"They kidnapped me. My fleet came in and took me
back. Of course we fired. I brought you to fight them, not
to defend them."
"You brought me here to handle the situation. So let
me handle it."
"I am disappointed in you, Kirk," the general said.
"You do not deserve to be Kirk!"
"That's your problem." With a bob of his brows, Kirk
raised his voice just enough. For a moment he gazed at
the alien ship, then cast Kellen a generous glance. "Be
patient. Mr. Sulu, move us in again. Let's see if they'll
talk to us."

98

FIRST STRIKE

"How many ships?"
"We count six ships, Vergozen."
"Count again, Morien. Sweep the area. Be sure. They
have stopped firing?"
"Yes, Vergozen."
"Fame, hold position. Make no movements."
"Yes, Vergozen."
"Morien, speak to the engineer. Have him take some
time repairing the damage done to the ship as we came
through the fissure."
"Time?"
"Have him go slowly. Keep the power down. Otherwise
Garamanus will expect me to destroy those vessels
instead of simply closing the cocoon and firing a few
light shots at them. I do not want the repairs complete
until I am ready for them to be complete."
"I understand, Vergozen."
"Speak to him personally, Morien, not on the communications line."
"I will."
The doors of the bridge were low and wide, and took
several seconds to open, then to gush closed again, and
this time they seemed to take longer. When they closed,
Morien was gone, yes, but something else had changed
too.
"Zennor... so you have found them."
"Garamanus--I did not expect you to come to the
bridge yet."
The mission commander turned to meet his vessel's
Dana and resisted any movement of his facial features.
Briefly he thought the Dana had heard his instructions to
Morien, but as he forced himself to be calm he realized
that Garamanus had just come in as Morien was leaving.
Garamanus was watching him too carefully.
That was the Dana's purpose. Not the ship or the
danger, but the commander and the mission. To make
sure the latter two meshed as the chieftains instructed.
And the chieftains did as the Danai told them, for the
Danai had special gifts.

99

Diane Carey

Holding his long hands before him in a relaxed position,
with the traditional white streamers falling softly
from his wrists, Garamanus bowed his heavy head. Over
many years his horns had grown thick and bent his
shoulders noticeably, but even so he was taller than
Vergo Zennor by a hand's breadth. His presence chilled
Zennor, and chilled the bridge.
"You have made contact with the conquerors," the
Dana said. "Play the tape."
"They have not yet identified themselves," Zennor
countered, speaking with cautious measurement. "I prefer
to make personal contact first. Otherwise we will be
assuming we are in the right place and that these are the
people who deserve our coming. After so many centuries,
after the millennia indeed, we should be prudent.
Look--those ships are not familiar in any way. Some
fired on us, but the large one stood them off. I would like
to comprehend their conflict. We will give them a chance
to speak to us before we give ourselves away. I appreciate
your flexibility in my decision at this very special and
important moment, Garamanus. Thank you."
The vapor-pale face and heavy horns dipped slightly
under their own weight as Garamanus turned to look
from the screen at Zennor, and Zennor knew he had
lost.
Garamanus nodded as if in polite response, but his
manner became a subtle threat.
"Play the tape," he said.

"Witness you conquerors... we the grand unclean,
languishers in eternal transience, come now from the
depths of eermore. Persistent... we have kept supple,
fluid and... changeable... because we were destined to
return. You have... cowered through the eons, knowing
this day would come .... It has come. Because we are
forgiving, we shall give you the opportunity to leave this
.. sector... or you will be cast away as we were cast
away... or you will be destroyed as you have done to us.
With your last moments you will know justice. We are...

100

FIRST STRIKE
the impending. Now gather all you own, gather your kin
.. and stand aside."
The message thrummed and boomed through the low
rafters of the bridge, then echoed into silence. Not
ending, just silence. Waiting.
Everyone held still, and watched the captain.
The sound of the heavy, eerie, haunted-house voice
remained in every mind, and spoke over and over. Stand
aside...
Tightening and untightening his aching arm, aware of
McCoy watching him because he'd never reported to
sickbay for his own treatment, Kirk indulged in a scowl
and tipped his head to Uhura. eutenant, what's the
"Li
problem with that translator.
r
"I don't know, sir," she said, playing her board.

"Having some trouble distilling the accurate meaning of

some of their words and phrases."

"Fix it. I don't want to have to guess."

"Trying, sir. I don't understand why--"

"Was it a living voice, far as you could tell?"

"Given the inflections and order of sentiments, I

believe it was a recorded message, sir. Or it's being read

to US."

"I thought so too."

He moved away from her, back to where McCoy was

staring at the screen, eyes wide.

"That's a mighty poetic mouthful," the doctor uttered.

"Any idea what it meant?"

"I'd say they're inviting us to get out of their way."

"I told you." Kellen stepped forward, but made no

advances toward the helm this time, especially since the

guards flanked him snugly now. "Attack them, Kirk.

Your chance will slide away under you. Do you see it

sliding? I see it."

"Something tells me I'll get another chance, General
Mr. Spock, are you reading any shieldin o
, ?"
...... ,
g
n that ship.

,o, sir, me upper morntot
said. "No energy shields
at all, except for the way
clover-leaved
hull
plates
fold

down."

101

Diane Carey

"Not battle attitude, then," Sulu offered.
"Not ours," Kirk said, stepping down to his command
center and sliding into his chair. "But we don't know theirs
yet, other than the defensive posture we've just seen.
Maintain status."
"Aye, sir," said Sulu and Donnier at the same time, and
tensed as if they'd realized they were relaxing too much.
Kirk moved back to the rail, where McCoy stood over
him. "Opinion?"
"Pretty lofty talk," the doctor said. "But there's a ring
to it. I can't put my finger on it."
"Mr. Spock?"
By not looking at the monitor, he could imagine that
Spock stood up there, next to McCoy, bent over his
sensors, adding his deductions to the information being
drawn in by the ship's eyes and ears. Spock wouldn't
have admitted it, or wanted it said aloud, but there was a
lot of intuition in that man.
"There is a common tone in the phrases," Spock said,
his voice rough, underscored with physical effort. "'Witness
you conquerors,' for instance. 'Eternal transience,'
'destined,' and the suggestion that we have been expecting
them, that they have been wronged, and that they
believe they are returning from somewhere."
"Conclusion?"
"We may have a case of mistaken identity."
"That may not make a difference," McCoy warned.
"They're inviting us to leave, remember? They might not
take our word for our intentions."
"They can't take anything for anything until we've
identified ourselves."
"Captain," Spock's rough voice said from the monitor
, "I suggest you answer their immediate request first."
"Set the pa rameters? Yes... I agree."
There it was. The reason he needed Spock here. He
hadn't thought of that. Just answer them. The simplest
answer had almost slipped by. Set the line of scrimmage
before he offered anything else.
"Challenge them!" Kellen insisted. "Demand they

102

FIRST STRIKE
stand down and allow us to board and inspect Then
we'll be inside!" -
Kirk rubbed his hands and, gazing at the screen, shook his head.
"I think Mr. Spock and I have something else in mind.
Lieutenant Uhura," he said slowly, "tell them...
'No.""

Chapter Eight

"'No'? That's all they say?"
"Nothing else. The translation has no error, Vergozen.
They say only 'No.""
ergo Zennor gazed through the smoldering constant
vapor at the wide band of screen curving halfway around
his bridge on either side of where he stood. He thought
he had gotten used to the moisture necessary for some
members of his crew, but today, for the first time since
years past, his skin began to itch.
This was a beautiful portion of space. Or perhaps he
only wanted it to be beautiful. Ordinarily he would sit,
but with Garamanus on the bridge, he felt compelled to
stand.
Shrouded in the mystique of his order, the echo of
subtle power held dear by all Dana, Garamanus made no
comment as the answer came in from the conqueror
ships.
No?
Zennor bowed his own heavy head. His horns tingled.
So he was more tense than he let on, even to himself.
His own feelings were lost to him. Simple desires of a
104

FIRST STRIKE

straightforward mission had become suddenly and almost
instantly entangled in the mechanisms of those
ships out there. He had hoped to explore awhile before
facing those who lived here. He wanted to search around.
No longer possible. Now there were beings to be
confronted, the tape had been played, and the answer
had come back. No.
How strange. How simple. He had trouble with simple
things.
The ship at the front was a sizable arrangement of
white primary shapes--a circle, an oblong, two cylinders,
joined to each other by graceful necks of white
pylons. Behind it were ships more familiar to him in raw
form, more like the green dawn silhouettes of creatures
in hunting flight, heads down, wings arched, muscles
tight and tucked.
None was moving forward now. No, they had said. No.
Zennor forced himself to turn away from the Dana
and shiver down the waning-moon eyes that followed
him. Unlike Morien and the helmsman Fame, Gara-manus
was of Zennor's own race, the horned ones
among the many, yet Zennor felt nothing like him and
when Garamanus was on the bridge the place became as
foreign as this space.
"They want us to speak to them," he said quietly.
"You have had more communication than this with
them?" Garamanus rumbled.
"I sense they want to speak. When they contact us
again, I will answer them myself."
"That is not the procedure." The Dana's voice was
like wind. Low wind.
Zennor tightened his thick neck muscles and tensed
his shoulders, which raised his head and the curved
horns upon it. He saw his own shadow move like a
wraith against the oblong helm as he turned to face the
Dana.
"This is not your forest grove or sacred Nemeton," he
said. "This is my ship and my mission. We can never go

105

Diane Carey back, and now the situation complicates. I have done
your bidding and played your sanctimonious tape. Nothing
else is required of me yet. The next decision is mine.
And I want to speak to them. When the time comes to
destroy them, that will be my decision too."

General Kellen fumed with disappointment, but he
was standing on the port side of the command chair,
flanked by the Security team, saying nothing. He cast the
guards no attention and as such seemed to understand
why they were here.

At least he wasn't insulted by the fact that he was being
treated like a delinquent.

Kirk offered him a glance, as if to communicate that
he understood what the general was feeling, whether or

not he intended to act upon it.

"No

"Two minutes, sir," Sulu reported.

action out

there."

"Nothing on the open frequencies, sir," Uhura confirmed.

Kirk nodded, sighed. "All right. We'll do it by the book. Uhura, ship to ship. Universal Translator on."
"Tied in, sir. Go ahead."

He moved to his command chair, but despite his
raging muscles did not sit down. Not with another fleet's
general on his bridge.

Clearing his throat, he parted his lips to say the words
that were so practiced, yet so different every time he said
them, because they were said hundreds of light-years
away from the last time, and each utterance was something
completely new and critical.

"This is Captain James T. Kirk, commanding the
U.S.S. Enterprise. We represent the United Federation of
Planets and request you communicate with us on peaceful
terms. We await your reply."

Channels remained open as he paused. There was a
different sound about it, an openness, like a cave without
an echo, a tunnel waiting for someone to shout through
it.

106 FIRST STRIKE

They waited. All the others took their cue from him,
and he didn't move or make any sounds. Let the greeting
distill, see what would happen. Let the listeners hear the
ring of his voice and decide on its honesty, let them
decide what to believe.

A full minute. Nothing came over the waves.

Ten more seconds. Sweat tickled his spine.

Finally he asked, "Recommendations, Mr. Spock?"
Gravelly and contemptuous, Kellen spoke before
Spock had a chance. "Recommendations," he intoned.
"Recommendations. The great shipmaster asks for recommendations.
The cavalier of Starfleet asks of his
subordinates what to do. The Federation's headmost
uphelmer parries to his rear and mocks the rash faith
given to him by those he flies before. Recommendations.
Certainly the stories that come back to my people of
Starfleet's Argonaut will be different after today." He
gestured to the deck at his feet and added, "The arrogant
falls before me."

Kirk glared at him without really turning his head, but
with only his eyes shifted to the side.

Kellen was sizing him up and was no longer impressed
. That bothered him.
It shouldn't, but it did.
"! am . . ."

The bridge changed suddenly. All eyes turned to the
screen, to the alien ship holding position out there.

The two words were long, sonorous, even distorted,
like distant foghorns sounding over a cold ocean. Then
the voice paused as if listening to itself, testing the open
frequencies.

Or maybe they were just changing their minds.

Kirk felt the eyes of his crew. He kept his on the
screen.

"I... am... Zennor. . . Vergo of the Wrath."

There was a sense of echo. Something about the tenor
of that voice. Like the last upbow on a cello's low note.

He glanced up at McCoy and mouthed, Vergo of the
Wrath?

107

Diane Carey
The doctor shook his head and turned one palm up.
No idea. Uhura the same.
On the science station monitor, Spock's brow furrowed,
but he said nothing yet.
Kirk shifted his feet to take some of the ache out of his
back. Maybe it was empathy. What a morning.
Square one.
"Thank you for answering," he said, though it
sounded clumsy. "Where are you from?"
"Here."
Kellen bristled, but didn't interfere, though he stared a burning hole into Kirk's head.

"According to.our history, our laws and treaties," Kirk

attempted, "this area is claimed by the Klingon Empire.

Nearby is a neutral area of space, beyond which is space
charted and occupied by the United Federation of Planets
. We have no records of the configuration of your ship,
or any planets in this vicinity which could support

advanced life. Can you give us the location of your home

planet?"

"We do not... know it."

Putting one foot on the platform that held his command
chair, Kirk cranked around to Uhura. "Can't you

fix that translator? We're not making sense here."

She shook her head in frustration and touched her

earpiece. "I don't think it's in the system, sir. I think

it's endemic to their language or their brain-wave pat
terns."

"Scotty, take a look."

"Aye, sir."

As the engineer crossed the deck behind him, Kirk

pressed an elbow to his chair's arm and grimaced. What

would help?

"Our communications equipment has visual capabilities
," he said, speaking a little slower and more clearly.

"Will you allow us to open our screens so we can look at

each other?"

Another pause.

Kellen looked at him. Kirk ignored him.

108

FIRST STRIKE

"It is against our custom," the booming voice came
finally, "to display living faces on screens .... "
The voice drifted off as the translator struggled along
after it.
All right, next step.
"Very .well," Kirk responded, measuring his tone.
"Perhaps we can meet face-to-face. Will you come to this
ship as our guests?"
"No--" Kellen choked, balling his fists.
Waving him silent, Kirk went on, "We have the ability
to transport you here in minutes."
He stopped and waited. Over the years he'd learned
that extra talking didn't usually serve. Make the statement,
and wait.
Hell of a long pause.
Were they making this up as they went along? Why not? I am.
The alien ship turned passively on the screen, drifting
not from power but on a breath of solar wind from the
distant red giant sun that drenched its purple fans in
bloody glow, and the leftover momentum from the battle
so shortly arrested.
"You may..."
The voice paused, as if listening. Kirk held his breath.
His crew did the same.
"... come here."

"One moment please."
A ges ture from him caused a click on Uhura's control
board that cut off the frequency.
"What's the atmosphere like over there?" he asked.
Chekov started looking for that, but from the subsystems
screen, Spock already had the answer. "Scanning .. reading oxygen, nitrogen, argon, with faint traces of
methane and other gases... rather thin and quite
warm. Breathable for controlled periods of time."
"How controlled? Bones?"
The doctor flinched as if coming out of a trance. "I'd
recommend an hour at a time, Captain."

109

Diane Carey

"Noted. Lieutenant Uhura, inform the transporter
room that we'll be visiting that vessel out there. I want
the coordinates kept updated at all times, in case we have
to come back in a hurry. The transporter officer'll have
to stay on his toes."
"Yes, sir."
"'Vergo of the Wrath,'" he muttered, narrowing his
eyes at the big quartz ship on the screen. "Could that
mean 'captain' of the Wrath? Could 'Wrath' be the
name of the ship?"
"Possibly," Spock answered from the monitor. "However,
I caution against applying our own use of words
and concepts based on something that sounds familiar,
sir."
Kirk sighed. "Never mind how complicated it might
end up being to deal with people who name their ship 'Wrath.""
He avoided looking at Kellen. The Klingons named
their own ships with words like that.
"Dr. McCoy, you come with me, and I want a Security
detail with us also. Palm phasers only. I don't want to
appear too threatening."
Placing a hand on the rail, he climbed the three steps
to the quarterdeck and stood over Uhura's station. She
continued to look at her board and tap at her fingerpads,
and that bothered him.
"Ship to ship," he said, and waited for the click from
Uhura's board before he spoke again to the unknowns.
"This is Captain Kirk. I will come to your ship with a
greeting party. We will come directly to your bridge,
unless you have other instructions."
Silence fell in. He got the feeling things were being
discussed over there and anticipated their changing their
minds, but--
"Come."
"Thank you. We'll be there in a few minutes. Kirk out.
Mr. Sulu, drop the hook. We'll be staying awhile."
"All systems stabilized, sir. Holding position."
"Secure from red alert. Stand by at yellow alert.
Damage-control teams get to work. General Kellen, you 110O

FIRST STRIKE
may communicate with your ships and assess their
damage. If they need any life-savine assistance, we'll
provide if." '
Kellen raised his neatly bearded chin. "Imagine my
gratitude."
"Inform them we're going aboard the unidentified
ship. If they make any aggressive movements, Mr. Scott
will drive them back again. Is that clear, Mr. Scott?"
"Crystal clear, Captain."
"General, do you want to join the boarding party?"
"IT' Kellen's face turned horrible. "I will never go
there again."

"Fine." Kirk turned away and looked at Uhura again.
"I need a linguist. Do we have one on board?"
"Yes, sir. Me."
"You?"
Her almond cheeks rounded in a smile. "What do you
think 'communications' means? 'Small talk'?"
"Sorry," he said. Then he hesitated. Take her along?
He paused for a moment and pressed down the twinge
in his stomach. "Lieutenant, I'd like you to join the
landing party."
Uhura's face lit up. She didn't get asked very often,
and the couple of times before had turned out to be near-disasters.
Still, she seemed excited.
Aye, sir, she said, for the same reason Scott had said
it, and in almost the same tone.
"Very good," he offered,,and moved around her. "Mr.
Spock, you have the conn. '
The crew's eyes came up to him in a nearly audible
snap. Silence from the monitor up starboard. Uneased,
nobody spoke. How inappropriate it would have been
for anyone, however well intended, to point out the
captain's colossal error.
Kirk scowled at himself. "Mr. Scott," he corrected,
"you have the conn."
Scott nodded with more sympathy than was comfortable
for either of them. "Aye aye, sir."
It was the eternal ideal response to a commanding

Diane Carey

officer, the one that saved any situation and would get
anybody off the hook. Didn't work quite so well at the
moment. It got Scott and Spock off the hook and relieved
the bridge crew of their tension, but did nothing for the
captain who had made the blunder.
He charged over it. "Uhura, bring along a tricorder
tied directly in to Mr. Spock's computer access channel,
so he can see what's going on. Let's go."
"Captain," Kellen broke in, coming to the rail below
the bright red turbolift doors, "you are out of order here.
I organized this mission. I am its commander."
"You're a guest on my ship," Kirk corrected. "You can
act that way, or you can go back to your own fleet and all
bets are off."
"This transport is folly," the general insisted. "No one
with any sense goes over to an enemy ship in the middle
of a battle!"
"It was your battle, not theirs. They didn't fire on us until you opened fire. And part of the mission of this
vessel is to contact new life forms on an amicable basis if
at all possible."
"It is impossible. This is the Havoc. There is no
amicable basis."
"We'll see. I'll be back in an hour. Gentlemen, let's
take a look at who these people are."

112

What's the mission of this vessel? To seek out
and contact alien life and an opportunity
to demonstrate what our high-sounding words
mean.

James Kirk

Chapter Nine SOMETIMES THE STUNNING ART of transporting seemed to
move beyond physical science and into magic. And sometimes it seemed to take days instead of seconds.
This was one of those times.

Jim Kirk tapped a mental foot during those seconds. It
was always like this when a new form of life lay in wait
for discovery on the other side of immaterial state.

As his mind gathered itself and the transporter room
of the Enterprise dissolved into fog, he realized he
couldn't see and wondered for a heart-snapping moment
if something had gone wrong. When he felt his feet
beneath him again and his arms at his sides, the fog was
still there. Had the transport been completed?

There was moisture here. He felt hot. At least all his
nerve endings were still with him.

Starting to think like McCoy. Scientist though he was,
McCoy was a medical biologist and physics often intimidated
him, especially when physics separated biology
into a billion bits of molecular energy and claimed to
reassemble it in perfect order. Some people still didn't
believe that planes could fly.

115

Diane Carey

Kirk blinked the anxiety away and waved his hand at
the fog in front of him, not so much to clear it but to
sense its texture. The tendrils of cloud moved like smoke
rather than moisture, but felt like moisture. What did
that mean?
Smelled like a pond in here. The deck under his feet
felt pulpy, but it was definitely flat as a floor and hard
underneath. There was a source of low light, but he
couldn't pin down the location. Immediately before him
were two more sources of light, one cranberry red, the
other a bleeding purple. He glanced to his left, at McCoy.
Washed in the blended light, the doctor stood staring
and disconcerted by the strange surroundings. The back
of his head and shoulders were bathed in soft pearly
light--another light source, this one behind them. Kirk
didn't look around. That would be the job of the Security
team.
For a moment he held still, with his hand up in the
middle of a wave, and listened.
A faint vibration came up through the soles of his feet,
a throbbing of mechanical regularity. Engines. Kellen
had been right. Motive power and tangible hardware.
Obvious now that the ship had been seen, but the
sensations here were familiar enough that Kirk guessed
the power sources might be similar to those of conventional
ships. At least they weren't dealing with a race so
different from their own as to make the contest one-sided.
Nearby was the murmur of other mechanical systems,
though much more subtle than any on the Enterprise. He
saw no ceiling, and though he felt the deck he couldn't
see it. The fog was thick up to his knees, then became a
lazy haze.
There was a smell too, but not like a ship smell.
Fungus? Weeds, mosses, moisture. Algae. Spock probably
could're told him what species. Yet the foresty smell
was overlaid with a chemical presence too, almost industrial,
like glue or cleanser, and it insisted there was a
technical presence here.

116

FIRST STRIKE
His gut began to shrink, giving off warnings.
I'
ve seen aliens before, plenty of them. Some unthinkably
strange, defiant of any known evolutionary pattern. I
haven't even seen these people yet. Why am I already
flinching?
He knew the answer. Kellen. What could shake an
experienced spacefaring Klingon general with a long
record of bravery and a reputation for disarming composure?
Had Kellen set him up? The thought flashed, unwelcome
and distasteful, that he was failing into a trap. Was
he so distracted that he hadn't thought of that dimension?
Exhausted, losing so many crewmen, worried
about Spock--
Not good enough. There wasn't anything that would
take him off the hook for the entirety of his job, and here
he was, beamed in with a team, and only now thinking of
a seriously viable possibility.
On the other hand, this ship was here. Might as well
throttle up. If he had to strangle Kellen later, well, an
option was an option.
"Is this their bridge, sir?" Uhura asked just behind his
right elbow, speaking low, as if walking through a
graveyard and worried about waking someone.
"That was the plan," Kirk a nswered. "We homed in
on their communications signal. Tricorder."
She raised the powerful little unit hanging from the
strap over her shoulder and clicked it on. "Reading life-
forms, sir, lots of them."
"Proximity?"
"Nearby... the readings are.. 2' She paused,
frowned, tampered with the instrument. "I can't get a fiX."
"Jim," McCoy murmured at Kirk's side, scarcely
above a whisper. His blue eyes were wide, unblinking,
bizarre in the glowing fog.
Kirk looked at him.
"The ....
y re here, McCoy stud, his throat tight. "They're
in here now."
Put on edge by the doctor's intuition, Kirk lowered his

117

Diane Carey
right hand until it hovered near the small phaser hidden
on his belt. He didn't touch the weapon, but he kept his
hand there.
He took one step out from his boarding party and
raised his voice.
"I'm Captain Kirk," he said through the choking
humidity. "Is there anyone here?"
For several moments, possibly a minute, there was no
change at all, as if he had spoken firmly but pointlessly
into an empty cave.
The fog began to shift. For an absurd instant he
entertained the idea that the fog itself might be the life-form
they were seeking. A fog with a voice, though?
McCoy would have something to say about the vocal
chords of a fog.
No, not the fog. There was physical movement beyond
it. Shapes of upright beings began to form, broad shoulders,
high heads, like gray chalk etchings on concrete.
lbout our size, he noted instinctively. Six feet...
seven. . not out of line for humanoids.
The huge numbers of humanoids discovered by the
Federation in its outward expansion had upheld theories
of scientists who believed that intelligent industrial life
had to be of a certain size, not too big, but also not too
small, in order to develop industry and eventually space-flight.
There would have to be some form of propulsion
with which to go against the stream--legs--and some
form of sensors at the other end with which to avoid
running into walls--hands and eyes and sometimes a
nose. There would have to be at least two hands with
which to alter their environment, and at least two eyes
for depth perception.
So despite the thousands of planets out there, it hadn't
turned out so unusual that there were Klingons, Romulans,
Terrans, Orions, and others, each with roughly the
same appendages and a head each. Also not so strange
that the horta, a creature based on silicon, with no arms,
legs, head, or eye, though intelligent, had no industry.
Like Earth's cetaceans or Alpha Centauri's big mamma-118

FIRST STRIKE

1oids. Didn't matter how smart they were if they had
hooves or fins instead of hands and couldn't manipulate
their environment.
All this flashed through Kirk's mind as he waited for
the beings to show themselves. He lay in the hope that he
was dealing with humanoids, with whom he automatically
had some common ground. For a civilization to
advance, there had to be some level of cooperation, they
had to take care of their offspring, and they had to have
common goals. Those communal elements were his
anchors in exploration. He could make himself understood
to beings who understood those.
He motioned to his boarding party to stand very still
and let the next movement be those of this ship's crew.
That was how he would want it on the...
Eyes. Yes--there they were.
Like a cat's stare catching candlelight, a dozen sets of
eyes came toward them. A cold stake of shock bolted
from Kirk's stomach to his feet. His innards shriveled at
the forms moving from the fog toward them.
McCoy stiffened beside him. Uhura drew a sharp
breath and tightened her arms to her sides, but didn't
step back.
A Pandora's box of demons pushed the vapor aside.
I'll-shaped and colossal, three of them were an amalgam
of triangles, with long bony faces and eyes the shapes of
sickles, and huge twisted ram's horns upon their heads,
as elegant and horrifying as could be. Between those,
other creatures appeared with dozens of serpentine
white tentacles undulating from their skulls as long as a
man's arm and freely moving, caressing the faces and
shoulders of the beings they decorated as if searching for
something.
To Kirk's left, another creature had two sets of arms
and an elongated face like a jade tiki. Behind that one
there were others, some skeletal, others swollen, and at
least one had no face at all that Kirk could see. This was
an utterly amalgamated crew.
And there were others he couldn't make out yet,

119

Diane Carey
except for the distorted shapes of their heads and their masklike faces east in shadows and highlights, caressed by fog.

Most of them wore some kind of clothing, and lots of jewelry. Recumbent half moons, demon-headed brooches like the things carved into the walls, and each one wore an engraved bronze medallion about three inches across with scrolled designs and a small handle, dangling from a long chain.

Two of the creatures moved forward of the rest. They were both of the same species, each head heavy with arching horns, but one was a watercolor ghost of the other. Totally different colors. One had eyes of rum yellow and a complexion of bronze and rattan. The other was paler, with face of bony moon-gray and ivory slashes for eyes.

Kirk cleared his throat, but paused. Did they want to make the first gesture or not?

Stiff as a statue, McCoy managed to lean toward him.
"Come on, we got used to Spock, after all "
At
the doctor's mumble, the splendid golden demon moved
one of his elongated hands. At least he only had two
of those. So far so good.

The
heavy voice thrummed, the same voice they had heard
on the message over the Enterprise's comm system.
"Are
you having trouble.. seeing?"

What
a voice. Translators were working all right at the moment.
Any little reassurance in a storm.

Kirk
found his own voice. "Yes. A little."

The
creature turned his disturbing head. Fog rolled around
his horns. "Light."

A
mechanical sound, not a beep but more of a twinkle, chittered
in the background, though they saw none of these
creatures move. There must be others here too.

Almost
imperceptibly at first, the haze began to change.
Slow as dawn, the area around them became easier
to see. The sources of colored light intensified
120

FIRST
STRIKE

gradually
until distinction came to the place where they stood
and the creatures before them gained dimension.

Like
the Enterprise's bridge, this bridge was a circle and
possessed two command chairs and a coffin-shaped helm console,
but there the resemblance ended. This place was
more like a voodoo temple than a mechanized vehicle's brain
trust. Forms were carved into the bulkheads of
animal-headed trumpet--might've been the alarm system
or just decoration. Shields and wheels and double-headed metal
masks, mostly of animal types separated by
scrolls, banded the ceiling all the way around. Other
facelike stone carvings stood in punch-outs in the
bulkheads themselves, empty eye sockets staring, with grotesque
head shapes and orifices barely notable as mouths
or noses.

"Skulls, Captain," McCoy
murmured without moving his lips more
than he could get away with. "Real."

Kirk glanced at
him. How McCoy knew those things were real and
not just carvings, he had no idea. Maybe he saw tracks of
veins or some other bio-clue. That was the doctor's
job and Kirk didn't question the call.

The skulls of
enemies, possibly? Not the best doorbell. The golden creature
took another step toward them. "I am Zennor,"
it said. "Vergo of the Wrath."

Kirk matched the
step forward, in case such a motion turned out to
be a custom of some kind.

"I am Kirk,"
he responded evenly. "Captain of the Enterprise." When the
aliens didn't say anything, he added, "We appreciate
your welcome."

The huge horns
bowed. "I cannot offer you welcome, until I know
you are not the conquerors."

Could be the
translator. Or use of the word. Zennor hadn't said "conquerors,"
but "the conquerors."

Kirk let that
one go. No sense claiming not to be the conquerors until he
had some idea who these people thought were the
conquerors.

"Then we offer
our welcome to you," he said instead. "You're new to
this space."

Diane Carey The creature like Zennor, with shell gray horns and a
banshee face, parted his lips and asked, "This is your
space?"

"This space is claimed by the Klingon Empire," Kirk
said, trying not to sound as if ownership would move the
moment. "My ship and I represent the United Federation
of Planets. Our space is not far from here."

He moved forward now, and squared off with the
white creature, then paused and with his posture asked
the unasked question.

Zennor angled to face them both. "This is Garamanus
Drovid, Dana of the Wrath."

Kirk started to respond, but only nodded, because he
now noticed something very quizzical as his eyes adjusted
to the eerie light. Each of these beings wore a
stuffed doll on a belt, each doll about eight or ten inches
long. Zennor's doll had little twisted horns and a bony
face with glossy snakish eyes, as did the dolls of each of
the beings who looked like him. Garamanus's doll was
the same height as Zennor's, but about twice as stuffed.

A horned wraith with a fat doll? What kind of day was
this turning out to be?

On the beings with the tentacles moving in their heads
were dolls bearing long wiry strings on their stuffed
heads. The creature with the rocky jade face had a doll
with a green face and the same kind of clothing. The
dolls had the same kinds of clothing the aliens wore,
right d own to tiny crescent necklaces and animal-head
brooches. The only trapping missing from the dolls
seemed to be the circular medallion on the long chain.

Kirk felt completely baffled. Here he stood, among
horrific beings with a strong ship and heavy weapons
who wore soft little toys on their belts. And why was
Zennor's doll skinny? Was Garamanus's fat doll a rank
thing? Social order?

Suddenly he started paying more attention to who said
what, and why Zennor had included Garamanus in a
conversation barely begun. What was "Dana" of the
Wrath, and in what designation compared to "Verge"?

122 FIRST STRIKE

Made a difference.

As the questions flashed through his mind, he decided
to lay some questions at the aliens' feet too.

"This is Leonard McCoy, Chief Surgeon of the Enterprise,
and Lieutenant Uhura, of Communications.
When you appeared in this space," he began, "there
was a drop in mass to zero. A solar system was completely
disrupted. The Klingons assume this is a
weapon."

"We have no such weapon," Garamanus rumbled.
"Then can you explain what happened?"

"To your solar system?" Zennor spoke. "No. We have
nothing to change mass."

Kirk paused. One plus one usually equaled two, but
when things came down to push or shove, was there any
way to prove correlation between the mass falloffand the
appearance of this ship?

They said they couldn't do such a thing. There would
be no point in insisting they had.

"Then," he began carefully, "perhaps you should tell
us why you're here. Tell us what you want. We may be
able to help you find it."

Zennor and Garamanus stared at him like wall paintings
for a moment; then Zennor simply said, "We have
come from a great distant place to this place to see if it is
OURS."

His deep voice took on an abrupt tenor of threat.

It could have been his imagination, just those shining
marbled eyes, or the firedog horns scuffing the ceiling.

"If it's yours?" Kirk echoed, then realized he had
spoken too sharply. Instinct had made him match that
sense of threat. At once he was glad Kellen hadn't come
here, or there'd be another incident. "We have a history
of more than two centuries in these areas of space."

Garamanus dipped his rack once, slowly. "Our history
is more than five thousand years."

Kirk felt his eyes widen. The translator got that one all right.

123

Diane Carey

Five thousand years. That was a lot of years.
If that's what impressed them, he had a few extra
centuries to pull out of his back pocket.
"We do have a history of over a hundred thousand
years on our various home planets, proven by detailed
archeological and cultural evidence. Perhaps we're better
served by your telling us where your home planet is?"
"We do not know it," Zermor said again. "We know
only where we have been for five thousand years."
"Jim.. 2' McCoy murmured, but when Kirk looked
at him he said nothing more. His face suggested a
troublesome suspicion, though he seemed not to be able
to back it up now, and remained silent.
Making bets with currency he didn't have yet, Kirk
turned to Zennor, taking "Vergo" for what he guessed it
was. Command couldn't be done by committee, so he
addressed the one he thought was the captain, and would
let Zennor handle the affront.
"Why don't you tell me your story?" he asked, and
held out a beckoning hand.
Perhaps it was the hand, perhaps his tone of voice.
Zennor's strange eyes moved this time as he pondered
what he heard, then blinked slowly, and Kirk suddenly
realized he hadn't seen Zennor or Garamanus or the
other one with the horns blink at all until now. That,
possibly, was why they appeared more like engravings
than living creatures.
Zennor looked at Garamanus and for a brief time the
two seemed alone here, though they said nothing to each
other.
Then Zennor turned a shoulder to the being he called
his ship's Dana and faced Jim Kirk instead.
"Five thousand years ago," he began, "there was a war
between two developed interstellar civilizations. When
the war ended, one civilization lay in defeat. The survivors
of the vanquished, many races from many planets,
were banished to a far distant place in the galaxy,
'relocated' well away from the victors, dropped in the

124

FIRST STRIKE
barren middle of nothing, with nothing. No technology,
no science, no supplies.
"Many millions perished in the first few decades. The
civilization fell apart, fell back to barbarism, splintered,
regressed to the primal. There were plagues, wars, and
ultimately a massive, extended period of dim, raw survival.
"As they began to crawl out of this thousand-year
dimness and to populate three of the planets to which
they were banished, a belief emerged about another
place, the home space, where they were meant to be. As
society and science clawed upward again, the splintered
spumed began to draw together under one common
belief.
"This belief has become the driving force of our
culture as we evolved once again to high technology.
Because of the thousand-year dimness there are no
records with facts of locations, but only words passed
from descendant to descendant. On the parent's knee
every offspring learns of the fury to regain our place. It is
our unifying purpose--to reach out and repossess the
section of space from which we were evicted.
"We are the unclean, the out of grace, ill-bidden
castaways with the fury in our minds, disowned and cast
down, thrown together by our collective loss of war, with
only one thing in common--our singular commitment
to find the way back. It is a culture-wide investment...
and we are here to spend it."

Jim Kirk had stared at a lot of inhuman creatures in
his life, but somehow none of those moments ever
exactly repeated itself. This one was completely new.
Evidently there was an invasion of sorts going on, but it
was the most polite invasion he'd ever witnessed.
He shifted his feet, stalling for a moment to think, to
bottle and distill all he had just heard and decide what to
say back. "So you aren't sure you're in the correct
area?"

125

Diane Carey

"We are sure," Garamanus spoke up. "Our Bardoi and the Danai have studied for centuries."

"Studied what?"

"Legends, history, biology, customs, and the designs
we saw in the skies. The positions of stars in the galaxy as
they have moved over the centuries."

"Of course, stars lying on the fabric of space," Zennor
said, "may appear side by side while being lifetimes
apart. I would like hard proof."

Garamanus glared fiercely and the others in the alien
crew stared at their captain.

Kirk looked from one to the other and sensed Zennor
was taking a mighty risk. But Zennor hadn't said anything
any sensible spacefarer wouldn't know. Why were
they staring at him that way?

To keep distraction on his side, he elected to take the
wildest, least predicted step available to him--the one
McCoy would really hate.

"Let me invite you to our ship," he suggested, "where
there are extensive historical and scientific records more
easily at hand."

Ignoring Garamanus's silent assault, Zennor gazed at
Kirk for a moment, during which the sulfurous eyes
seemed not to see. The Vergo and his Dana could easily
have been etchings on these bulkheads. But for the
undulation of the tentacles on the heads of those other
creatures, the whole gathering might have been merely
fresco.

"You may find our ship too cool. We'll go ahead of you
and prepare the atmosphere so you'll be more comfortable.
I'll inform our various divisions and labs. Join us
on board and we'll... look."

"Morien, when they take us to their ship, I want you to
analyze this beam of theirs. Find out how it is done, to
adjust the body and make it travel through open space.
Then make sure our adjustments to the ship's surface
cannot be brought down unless we bring them down.
One mistake, and we could be destroyed from within.

126 FIRST STRIKE

Centuries of scientists designed this ship to be invulnerable,
and within minutes of arrival we found ourselves
vulnerable. What other surprises await us? We must
anticipate everything."

Morien gazed at him in rapt appreciation, then uttered,
"I will check it all, Vergozen!"

With his tentacles twisting excitedly, he rushed away
into a clutch of other technicians, who also gazed at their
leader with disclosed awe at his suspicions.

Zennor nodded to them modestly, then freed himself
by turning away, and found he had made the mistake of
turning toward Garamanus. "And we should send the
analysis back through the wrinkle, so it can be studied
and copied. Then our people will also have the ability to
go through open space without a vessel."

"You are intelligent to think of that," the Dana said.
"It is my role to think of it," Zennor responded,
looking at the ships on the curved screen before them. "I
must imagine ways for the enemy to use his own talents,
or he will think of it first."

"Are they our enemies, then? These people with whom
you speak so freely?"

Zennor looked at him without turning his head, sliding
his eyes to the side as far as they would go. "Until it
becomes proven that they are not."

His judicious answer apparently satisfied the Dana, or
at least even Garamanus was inclined to wait for a
different moment before designating enemy status. Now
began a struggle for the hearts of the crew, Zennor knew,
between the day-to-day leader and the leader of cons,
between the Vergo who made the mission real and the
Dana whose spiritual strings had kept the people unified
and motivated. The crew would be devoted to Zennor
for the crude purposes o f the mission, but these were the
most fervent of the fervent and would follow Garamanus
too, should Zennor falter.

In his knowledge of this, Zennor carefully said nothing
else.

The Dana moved slightly forward, so Zennor had no

127

Diane Carey

choice but to look at him. "You told Vergokirk too much."
Evidently he was not so satisfied after all.
"That is my option as Vergobretos of the mission,"
Zennor said. "We have no reason to hide our past."
"You implied this may not be the right place." Gara-manus
lowered his voice. "The Danai have studied for
generations. You have been a mechanic in comparison. It
is not in your realm to decide what to do, but only when
to do it."
"I may not be Danai," Zennor said, "but I know the
sacrifice of our people. I will not have it wasted."
Garamanus hovered in place. "The crew is not sure
why you hesitate. These are the conquerors. Conquer
them."
"The crew will not agree to aggress against the innocent.
We have waited a hundred generations. We can
wait a day longer."
"You gave up advantage when you told him who we

"Others will not tell us who they are if we do not tell
them who we are. And Vergokirk took the first risk. Now
we will take one. Aralu, Fame, Rhod, Manann, you will
go with the Dana and me. Make the formation here
around me which they explained to us. Rhod, this way
another step. We must be correct. Very good. Aesh,
maintain defender status until we contact you. Fame,
signal to them that we are ready."

The transporter room seemed unaccountably bright
after the auramine bridge of the other ship. Fresh air
flooded into their lungs in place of the pungent, moldy
stuff they'd been breathing for the past few minutes.
Leonard McCoy plunged off the platform and let out a
huffing breath and brushed at his sleeves as if to cast
away hidden weevils. "I felt like all my granddad's
stories came to life before my very eyes! That bridge was
like a cross between a temple and its catacombs. And 128

FIRST STRIKE
I've never seen a crew like those people before. Did all
that make you as nervous as it made me?"
Not once they spoke up." Jim Kirk followed his
surgeon off the platform and reached over the transporter
console to the comm. "It's when they won't speak that
I get nervous. Kirk to environmental sciences."
"Environmental. Ensign Urback speaking, sir."
"Adjust the ship's temperature up by eight degrees
and increase humidity to ninety-five percent relative."
"Are you cold on the bridge, sir?"
"Visitors coming aboard, Ensign."
"Oh--right, sir, sorry, sir."
"And inform the crew so nobody tries to repair it."
"Right away, sir."
"Carry on. Kirk out. Lieutenant, did you get anything
out of that?"
Uhura blinked her dark eyes. "Only that I don't
believe 'Wrath' is what we think it is. I do think it's their
ship, but I'd like to zero in on the translation. And I'd
like to work on the terminology 'Vergo' and 'Dana." I
could also run the visuals of those carvings and their
clothing and jewelry through the library computer. I may
be able to have something for them when they get here.
Assuming, sir, you want me to help them."
"Until we have a reason to oppose them, we should
help them. Do it from sickbay. Give your tricorder to
Spock and let him get what he can out of it."
"Aye, sir."
"And dismiss the watch. Send them to breakfast. I
want a fresh team on duty while these people are
visiting."
"Aye, sir," she said, and stepped between the two
guards without a glance at either of them.
Kirk waved to the guards. "Security, stand by in the
corridor."
"Aye, sir."
"Aye aye, sir."
He swung to the transporter officer. "Mr. Kyle, pre-

129

Diane Carey pare the transporter to bring aboard six visitors from the
bridge of the other vessel. I told them what to do and
they should be in position in another minute."

"Aye, sir," the lanky blond lieutenant said, then politely
attended to his console and didn't look up again.
That was one of the things Kirk liked about Kyle--his
"ignore" mode. Sometimes a transporter room needed
to be as intimate as the captain's office, and a transporter
officer with discretion was worth his weight in precious
metals.

Kirk stepped around the console to the auxiliary
screen, where one tap pulled up an unassuring view of
Zennor's massive ship and two of the Klingon vessels.

"Captain," McCoy began, "I know you like to bring
'visitors' aboard because there's less chance of their
taking potshots at the ship with their own people aboard,
but, if you don't mind my asking, are you out of your
mind?"

"Probably." Kirk gazed at the ships. "But I know how I'd like to be treated and they reminded me of us."
"Only if 'us' are looking in a fun-house mirror."
"It's their similarities to us you're reacting to."
The doctor scowled. "Pardon me?"

"The scariest aliens are the ones who are distortions of
ourselves. We look at them and see something vaguely
familiar. An upright silhouette, the same kind of
movements... arms and legs, mouths, an eye or two
... a verbal language. Aliens like the horta or the
Melkots aren't as frightening because they're so completely
unlike us. It's those like Zennor and his crew that
shake us up, and all because we see a glaze of something
we recognize that's been stretched out of shape. Once we
get over that, we can look at the similarities for what
they are."

McCoy folded his arms and canted his head. "That's
what's different about you, Captain."

Kirk looked at him. "About me? I don't follow."

"Yes," the doctor sighed. "No matter how far out we
go, or how much space separates us from somebody else,
130 FIRST STRIKE

you always see how we're all alike instead of how we're
all different. And you talk to strangers as if you've
known them a year. That's what sets you apart from me
and Spock and all the rest of us. Even from the other
starship captains. Everybody else goes out into space
expecting to see things that are alien and weird. You look
at the alien and weird, and you see a piece of us."

Basking in the compliment, somewhat embarrassed
that there wasn't a veiled insult in there somewhere,
Kirk leered at him. "You're a frustrated psychoanalyst,
McCoy."

The doctor tightened his arms and bounced on his
toes. "I'm not frustrated at all."

"Those skulls over there... you're still sure they were
real? Not just decor?"

"Dead sure. Ah--bad choice of words."

"Noted. I want you to check on Spock now, while we
have the chance."

"Yes, I intended to do that."

"Do it right away. Mr. Kyle, hail the bridge and
inform General Kellen that we're having visitors from
the other vessel. Have Security escort him down here if he feels like facing his fears."

"Yes, sir."

"Then clear the board and energize Let's take the bull by the--uh--" '

"Sir?"

"Just bring them over."

131

Chapter Ten

"AH, GENERAL."

The corridor suddenly turned burlesque with possibilities
as Jim Kirk led the vagabond demons out of the
transporter room.

Kellen said absolutely nothing. Behind him, two Security
guards stood at attention, but they couldn't keep the
shock out of their faces at the diabolical creatures
following their captain.

Impressive in his tense stillness, Kellen stood with his
thick arms tight to his barrel-like body, the wide silver
tunic shimmering under the corridor's soft lighting.
Only now did Kirk notice that the general had left his
body armor behind when he'd beamed aboard. A convenience?
Or a gesture of some kind that Kirk had failed to
read? Too late now, if so.

The big Klingon didn't move a muscle, but there was
abject horror plastered on his face as he stared at the
gaggle of visitors, his eyes growing large. He stood dead
still, his lips pressed into a line, and glared with all the
appeal of a broadax.

Kirk slowly--perhaps too slowly--led the way toward

132 FIRST STRIKE

the general, hoping the extra seconds would give them
time to get used to each other, and was gratified when
Zennor, Garamanus, and their crew followed him like a
clutter of travel-stained gypsies.

He stood to the side and gestured between the general
and the aliens, and hoped for the best.

"General, this is Zennor, Vergo of the Wrath, "he said,
careful of pronunciation. "Vergo Zennor, may I introduce
General Kellen of the Klingon Imperial High
Command."

Sometimes it could be that simple. Just introduce
them. Push them past that bump, and maybe there'd be
communication.

"You are allies?" the ghostly Dana asked, his voice a
growling sound that engulfed the corridor and startled
the Security team.

"We are not allies," Kellen quickly said. He seemed to
be making good on his promise to be ashamed of having
asked for Kirk's help in the first place and having it all
come to this, a pointless parlay in a ship's corridor. "You
must turn around and return to the depths from which
you emerged. We will fight you if you do not."

"General," Kirk interrupted sharply, "they're my
guests at the moment. I brought them here so you could
see firsthand what you were attacking, in hopes that an
understanding might come about."

"I already understand them," Kellen snapped back.
"They are the Havoc. The tainted souls released from
imprisonment, returned to torture us with their poisons.
Look at them!"

Furiously he pointed at the being with the white
tendrils on its head, then at the tall thin one behind
Zennor with expanding skin flaps that moved in and out
with the appearance of wings.

"Iraga!" he belted. "Shushara!"

"Yes, I see them," Kirk said, and stepped between
Kellen and the visitors. "Are you prepared to strike up a
dialogue?"

"There is no dialogue, Captain," Kellen ground out.

133

Diane Carey
"I came here to destroy them before they destroy all of
us. If you will be this foolish, then I will take my leave of
you and return to my flagship."
Kirk squared off before the general's wide form.
"You'll stay here until the sector is secured."
"Are you holding me hostage?"
"I'm holding you to your agreement to stay here until I
decide the situation is no longer volatile. Ensign Brown,
escort the general back to the VIP quarters and maintain
watch there."
It was a polite way of telling the ensign to stand guard
and keep the Klingon under house arrest. Brown glanced
at him, then snapped to attention.
"Aye, sir!" the guard's deep voice boomed. "This way,
General." A meaty six-footer, Brown stepped aside to let
Kellen pass by, and it seemed for a moment that the
corridor was filled from wall to wall with just Kellen and
the guard.
Kirk hoped it wasn't too obvious that he had picked
the bigger of the two ensigns to stand guard over Kellen.
He wanted to make a point, but not to be rude. Not yet,
anyway.
"Ensign Fulciero, please conduct our visitors on a
general tour of the primary section and labs. Inform Mr.
Scott and request he show them around main engineering."
The other ensign nodded, still wide-eyed. He held out
a hand, gesturing down the corridor. "This way...
please..."
Turning to Zennor, Kirk held out his own hand, in the
opposite direction.
"My quarters, Captain," he invited. "We'll have a
chance to talk privately."
Without the gawkings of my crew or the hauntings of
your Dana.
He was glad there were relatively few crewpeople
striding the corridors. The few they did pass managed to
choke back their shock at Zennor's size and volcanic
appearance, but Kirk was relieved to finally usher the
134

FIRST STRIKE

alien commander into his quarters and have the door
whisper shut behind them. He hoped Scott would warn
his engineers that there were visitors coming and prepare
them for just what that could mean in deep space.
Then again, the chief engineer would probably do his
share of gawking. Scott didn't trade much in discretion.
"Excuse me one moment," he said, and tapped the
desk comm. "Kirk to sickbay."
"Sickbay, Nurse Chapel."
"Nurse, is Dr. McCoy still down there?"
"Yes, sir. He's with Mr. Spock. I'll get him. One
moment, please."
"Standing by."
He let quiet settle as he waited and as Zennor moved
away from him and looked around the quarters. There
was a constant aura about Zennor, a sense of omen,
perhaps, and a sound in the back of Kirk's head like a
tuning of cellos before a performance of Faust. He had
no idea what he was sensing, but in this creature and
those others, there was a sorcerous spirit of the familiar.
"Captain," Kirk began, "if you'll look at the computer
screen on the desk, I'll call up a visual tour of the
starship and other Starfleet vessels. You can adjust the
speed with that dial on the side of the monitor."
Zennor turned to the desk, and Kirk keyed up the
program, careful to call up the nonsensitive data tour,
the one reserved for dignitaries without telling too
much. Then he edged away to let the ship show itself off.
"McCoy here."
He blinked and shook his attention back to the comm.
"Bones, how's Spock? Any better?"
"He's no less stubborn. I was hoping to have that organ
removed, but I don't have a long enough drill."
"Give me a report, please."
'I've reduced the level of antigrav and begun to put
weight on his spine again. If there any more swelling
around the disks, I'll have to increase it again."
Kirk let his chin drop a little as his gut twisted. Like
the first gnawings of space sickness in his teenage years,

135

Diane Carey

the feeling of being without anchorage rushed in. "Has
he had a chance to review the information Lieutenant
Uhura brought back?"
"Yes," McCoy said, "and he wants to go over it with
you at your earliest convenience."
"Understood. Tell him I'll be there soon."
"Yes, Captain. Lieutenant Uhura says she has a few
things for you also."
"Very well. Kirk out."
He cut off the comm before McCoy had a chance to
give any details. The doctor didn't know Zennor was

here, and Kirk wasn't ready to tip any of his hand.
Zennor continued to gaze at the computer screen as it
scrolled--damned fast--before him. He had it on full
speed and was apparently soaking up all it could give in
spite of the fact that Kirk could barely make out the
photos at that speed. "Your ship is clever. Many technologies
we have not thought of. You and this Klingon...
you are enemies?"
"Yes, traditionally we're enemies. Occasionally we
have an uneasy truce, as we do today."
"Strange that you would be enemies. You are so much
the same."
"You see no difference between Kellen and me?"
"No difference between any of you. You, your crewmen,
your Klingon..."
"There's a big difference between us and the Klingons,"
Kirk said, letting flare a touch of defense. "For
instance, just today we were engaged in a land skirmish
between an aggressive Klingon commander and my
crew. We had to hold them back from innocent people
they would've annihilated, all because those people
refused to do business with them."
"You were on a planet?"
"Yes."
"Could the Klingon not simply lay waste to the planet
with those long-necked vessels?"
"Yes, but they wouldn't. That would be an act of war.

136

FIRST STRIKE
In a skirmish, they can always claim they were ambushed."
"I do not understand this." Zennor's voice was heavy,
deep, as if speaking through a long tube.
Kirk couldn't quite read the ferocious bony mask of
the other captain's face, or the smoky reddish orbs of
eyes. Klingon command is set u, in cell .... hs
t-'
, lie explained
. "The area commanders have a great deal of
autonomy in their areas, but aren't allowed to commit
the Empire to interstellar war. Each is responsible for a
specific area, and can conquer it if it's within his skills to
do so, but if he fails in his aspiration, then all the Empire
doesn't suffer for it. The commanders aren't allowed to
drag the Empire into a war. That's for the High Council
to decide. If the local commander oversteps his authority
in the course of his ambitions, he can be demoted rather
than promoted. They could have reduced the planet to a
blackened char, but they know the Federation would
never put up with that. As it turned out, General Kellen
overruled the local commander because he was more
worried about you."
"About us..."
"You saw how emotionally you affect him. And he is a
particularly cool customer among his kind. His restraint
is famous."
"He claims we are... trouble?"
"Havoc. It's a Klingon myth about an apocalypse. A
final reckoning."
"Myths can be powerful. Given enough time, myth
becomes religion. Mysterious legend becomes immutable
fact. My culture moves on this kind of sea also. That
is why he hates us so."
"He fears you." Kirk offered a cushioning grin. "He
doesn't know you well enough to hate you."
"If it comes to be proven that we are not in our space,
we will destroy the Klingons for you."
The grin fell off Kirk's face and he almost heard the
crunch. "I can't sanction that."

137

Diane Carey

"But if they are conquering, they must be stopped.
Why would you allow them to continue?"
Oh, tempting, tempting...
"We prefer other pressures. A war brings a high death
toll. People can and do change, given time. We're working
on them in other ways."
"I do not understand that," Zennor admitted. "Perhaps
I will eradicate them anyway."
Despite the words, there was something sincerely well-meaning
in the way the alien leader said what he said.
Enjoying the whole idea for a raucous instant in the
privacy of his own heart, Kirk nodded in some kind of
arm's-length comprehension, then got control of himself
and calmly pointed out, "We protected you from the
Klingons. We'll protect them from you for the same
reasons, if you force us to."
Zennor's heavy head lay slightly to one side. "You are
... spirited," he said admiringly. His almond-shaped
eyes flickered and actually changed color, like camp
matches flaring briefly in the woods. "When my ship's
power is fully restored, you will not be able to stop me."
That grin came sneaking back to Kirk's lips, and he
felt his own eyes flare a little. Undercurrents of mutuality
ran between them. Dare though this might be, still
there was something about Zennor's convictions that ran
close to Kirk's heart, and he understood what Zennor
meant and wanted, the intense sense of right and wrong
that might have been a bit skewed but still smacked of
strong decency.
And underlying all this, a spicy challenge, as when
Spock asked him to play chess.
"Let's hope we don't have to find out," he deferred
gently. "Vergo, I'm curious about where you came from.
You say it's a great distance. Can you tell me the area?"
The twisted horns tipped forward and cast a shadow
as Zennor's triangular face pivoted downward. "On the
opposite side of the mean center of the galaxy from this
place."
"And yet you said it wasn't a transporter that brought

138

FIRST STRIKE
you here. Not a mechanism of the sort that we use to
move from ship to ship."
"We have no such instrument. We came here from the
far distant side of the galaxy, using a device that causes
space to wrinkle, thus offering passage of large distance
in a short time."
Kirk waved his hands in casual beckoning. "Explain
the technology,"
"We do not understan d the technology. We only know
that it works."
Kirk felt his brow pucker. He had always assumed that
people using a science at least understood the science.
When he didn't offer much sympathy for that, Zennor
picked up on it and evidently decided he wanted to say
more.
"For many centuries this thing hovered in space above
my people's central planet. It passed between us and our sun, regularly throwing its elongated black shadow upon
our planet. Because it was known to be the machine that
delivered us to our banishment, it became a symbol of
evil and doom, a god that glowered upon us and kept us
in misery. Anything bad was credited to it, this great
black shape dooming our sky to ugliness. Our women
conjured spells against it, Young men dreamed of flying
up to destroy it. We said it was of the conquerors."
"The conquerors--you said that before. Who do you
think the conquerors were?"
"Those who cast us out. To my people they are the
highest evil. My people are from many tribes and groups
and clans--"
"I noticed that."
"We warred for eons with each other, blaming each
other for our conditions, claiming collusion with the
conquerors, until finally we realized we were all cast out
together and it was no one's fault but those who exiled
us. Worse than killing us, they took the place where we
were born. Took it. If we fail to take it back, then justice
has not been served. Gradually this became the driving
force of our unity. Century upon untold century, the

139

Diane Carey

shadow of the conquerors' machine passed over us,
forging our unity stronger and stronger with every pass.
Ultimately our scientists figured out what it was. Only a
ball of mechanics. What for eons we had dreamed of
destroying turned out to be the tool of our future.
Fortunately we came to our senses before we could react
emotionally and destroy this valuable piece of lost
technology. We found out it uses time as a dimension,
and thus allows interdimensional travel. And we figured
out how to activate it."
"Your entire culture turns on this one cog? Don't you
find that a little... obsessive?"
"Yes, I do. But a culture must have a common
purpose. We spend generations storing enough energy to
push this ship through, packed with sensory equipment.
We have no idea what powered the machine originally,
and have been centuries developing enough power to
pass through to where we believe we came from. We do
not know why it goes, but we know how to make it go."
"That much energy must be a powerful space distorter," Kirk said. "It explains the mass-drop effect."
"Which was not our intention."
"That doesn't repeal your responsibility for it. Every
ship's master is responsible for his own wake."
"I do not understand that reference."
"According to our laws of space travel, it befalls you to
anticipate the effects of your ship's passage."
"These are insignificant things you speak of. We have
spent a hundred generations preparing for this. The
Danai and the Bardoi of our cultures have spent uncounted
years, centuries, on the direction and purpose of
my mission. I must keep perspective."
"What if they're wrong?"
"Then I will go against them myself. I am willing to
cast away the work of a hundred generations if we are
wrong."
"You must suspect they could be," Kirk said, "or you
wouldn't be here, talking to me." He paused, using his

140

FIRST STRIKE
senses to decide how hard he could push. "Am I right?
Do you have doubts?"
Turning away from him, Zennor's long hands coiled
the chain of his medallion as he scanned the simple
decor, the military trim of the bunk and desk, the lack of
carvings or haze, and his strange orange eyes narrowed.
"If the belief in the giant shadow god was silly," he
said, "what about the rest of our legends? If that was
wrong, what else is wrong? Shall I kill everyone on this
side of the galaxy based on myth? Was that the only part
of our mythology that we misinterpreted?"
Probing like a sea lawyer, Kirk asked, "Is there something
specific you're suspicious about, Vergo?"
As he swung around, Zennor's dangerous eyes scoped
him and for a moment Kirk thought the amicability
might be over. Then Zennor admitted, "I am not entirely
sure we were thrown across the galaxy. It appears we did not evolve together, but who knows? We could
have been moved to save our lives and grew the opposite
belief out of fear and superstition. The Danai seem to
me to have made many leaps. I would not wish to see my
civilization expending all its wealth and energy to make
war on strangers based on legends."
"But you do believe your civilization was wronged and
unnecessarily barnshed.
"We certmnly were banished, most coldly and without
resource. Many millions died, including some whole
races, because they could not survive the changeover."
"What must be proven to you?" Kirk asked carefully.
"That we were cast out... that this is the space we
were cast out from... that these are the descendants of
those who cast us out. Unlike Garamanus, I am unwilling
to assume. I think we are in the wrong place. I hope
to prove that. Then my people can begin to live a future,
rather than endlessly hunt for the past."
Seizing his chance, Kirk offered, "You can do that
now. Give up the idea of conquering the conquerors and
embrace the idea of cooperation. You can settle here,

141

Diane Carey

start a whole new civilization. There are many planets
crying for colonization and development. We'll help
you."
Zennor's great horns scuffed the ceiling as he nodded
slowly. "For myself, that would serve. For my people,
certain steps must be taken first. If I can prove the Danai
wrong, the crew will not attack anyone who is not the
conqueror. They will not become what they hate. Then
the Danai will be obsolete."
"How do you know your people won't just try again?"
"The Danai insist this is the right place. How can they
insist again about somewhere else?"
"It's that simple?"
"Yes. But how do I disprove a thing? The Danai say
this is the place. How can I say it is not?"
"One step at a time." Kirk watched Zennor for a
moment, then asked, "What's the first step?"
Zenmor kept to the shadows of the captain's quarters,
perhaps seeking instinctively the shrouding veil that
twisted in his own ship, but moved toward Kirk and
deposited on the desk his crescent brooch. When he had
taken it off Kirk had no idea, but now it was in his long-boned
hand, and now it was on the desk.
With one pale fingernail, Zennor flipped the crescent
over. Etched on the inside of the curve were dots and a
series of curved lines. Kirk recognized it instantly.
"Star chart?"
Zennor nodded once. "We can tell from a few preserved
etchings how the stars looked at differing periods
five thousand of your years ago. The Danai have based
their decision on these pieces. The surviving originals
are very old, but there is a definite arrangement of stars.
What you see here is an extrapolation of stellar motion
over the generations, and how those stars should be
arranged now. These are regarded as absolute. This one
is the most certain, and it shows what the Danai believe
is the home system of the creatures like Manann."
"Manann... the ones with the wings?"

142

FIRST STRIKE
"Wings? Those membranes are for temperature adjustment."
"Yes, of course .... General Kellen told me those
creatures are called 'Shushara' in the Klingon legend of
Havoc. Does that word sound familiar to you?"
"No."
"Perhaps that's good."
"Perhaps it is. This is the strongest piece of solid
evidence we possess. If this is disproven, then the
Danai's theory will collapse. If there is no planet there
which has had life in the past five thousand years,
Garamanus will have to back down."
"If those creatures lived on that planet only five
thousand years ago," Kirk said, "there's got to be
evidence of it. Let's overlay this and see if there's a
correlation."
Without waiting for Zennor to comment, Kirk
scanned the piece of jewelry into the computer access,
then said, "Computer."
"Working," the flat female voice replied back.
"Identify this star system."
The machine paused as if shut down, but he knew it
was searching, and in moments a star system appeared
on the desk access screen. The arrangement of stars
wasn't exact, but this was evidently the closest the computer
could find. Abruptly the odds struck himw
anything could look like anything, given enough monkeys
and enough years.
"We must go there," Zennor said. His maize eyes
remained unchanged, unimpressed.
"Computer," Kirk continued, "specify location of this
star system."
"It is the Kgha'lugh star system, located in sector nine-
three-seven, Province Ruchma, Klingon Star Empire." A low protest rose in Kirk's throat.
Deep into Klingon space. Deep, deep.
Zennor read his expression and evidently understood.
"For me to balk would be suicidal. It is not what

143

Diane Carey we spent so many generations to do. If I do not go
there, Garamanus will take over, and our people will go
there."

"You're talking about violating entrenched Klingon
space, Captain," Kirk told him. "You'll be beaten back
before you make it halfway there."

"We will get there. My Wrath can broach any challenge."

"You're underestimating. All you've seen is a few
midweight border cruisers. You don't realize what a fleet
of heavy cruisers can do to your ship."

"I can destroy their fleet," Zennor assured, not seeming
to intend the bravado with which Kirk read the
claim. "When we came through the wrinkle, our power
slackened somewhat and the Klingon s inflicted some
minor damage, but that is no longer a problem. My ship
is no longer in any peril from you, but you, Vergokirk,
are in grave peril from us, and that is my concern. If I fail
to do this, or if the Klingons push an attack too much on
me, I will have to destroy them. If I do not destroy them,
Garamanus will take over and destroy all of you. And
that is my concern."

Kirk shoved off the desk and stood straight. "Vergo
Zennor, you're either a very skilled liar or you're putting
a great deal of trust in me."

The fiery eyes looked down at him. "I have made a
decision to trust you. And you must honor that trust,
Vergokirk, and help me keep control," Zennor finished
with slow impact, "or you will be dealing directly with
Garamanus."

Yes, well, Kirk said with a guttural response to what
he read as a dare. "You have Garamanus and I have
Kellen. For the moment, they're both quiet. While they
are, my officers are putting the ship's considerable resources
to work on information you've given them. Your
party will tour the ship and with luck gain some understanding
of us and see that we're not these conquerors
you speak of. Meanwhile, I think you and I should
144 FIRST STRIKE

attempt to iron out this problem between your people
and the Klingons."

"General, these are your quarters. I'll be right outside
if you need anything."

"Thank you, but I need only this."

With his back to the husky young Starfleet guard, and
without even bothering to turn, Kellen used a new
dagger and an old trick. He raised his chin and braced
his feet for balance, locked his elbow, and thrust his arm
straight backward. In his fist was the warm hilt, behind it
the blade.

Without even witnessing his own act, he felt the blade
pop the skin of the guard's body and grate against a rib.
The guard's breath gushed out against the back of
Kellen's head and the boy fell forward against Kellen's
shoulder.

Only then did he turn to see the boy, to turn him over
quickly so there would be no telltale blood upon the
deck, and finally to drag the body into the quarters
where Kellen was supposed to wait in complacence,
which was as much his enemy as Starfleet itself and
almost as alien to him.

So much more alien than he expected--this compli-catory
inaction was unexpected and he cursed it. Kirk
was a thorough disappointment. As the door of the VIP
quarters hissed closed behind him and hid his kill for the
moment, he thought about how far he could push the
Federation. It had always been in his mind, through all
his years in the Imperial fleet. Klingons had not survived
so long by being stupid. He knew the Federation tolerated
much more than any Klingon would, but when
they did turn and fight they were not a pleasant enemy.
They would fight ruthlessly and methodically. There
were other Kirks out there who deserved to be Kirk, and
one disappointment would not fool Kellen. Unlike
Klingon honor, the Federation had a sharp sense of right
and wrong as their barometer. When they believed they
were right, they fought with unmatched ferocity.

145

Diane Carey

This had always been a mystery to Kellen--when the
Federation would fight and why. Always a minefield to
walk. He could spit in a human's face--something a
whole Klingon family would go to war over--and the
human might shrug and walk away. Yet step on the toe of
something they had no interest in and the Federation
would marshal all its forces to defend a thing it did not
care to possess.
Like this Kirk. Why had he refused to fight so obvious
a threat? Certainly there were primogenial memories in the Federation of those demons, just as there were for
the Klingons. Even time beyond recall could be recalled
when the common danger was disclosed.
Some predictions could work, though. He had gambled
and won that these people were too polite to make a
body search of a visiting dignitary, even a Klingon
dignitary. They hadn't. He had kept his dagger hidden,
and beside it a shielded communicator which he now
withdrew and powered up.
"Qul... Aragor, do you read me? Come in, QuL" Communicator shields often worked in both directions
and impaired broadcast. He kept the signal weak,
not sure how much of a signal would trigger this ship's
security systems and notify them that he was attempting
to reach out from here to his own ship.
He started walking. No turbolifts. Too entrapping.
There would be ladders, tubes, other ways to go down.
"Qul... Qul..." Over and over he murmured the
name of his ship, slowly adjusting the gain on the
communicator until they would hear him calling.
And here was a tube--with a ladder. He asked and
was answered.
He peered down the tube to be sure there was no
technician coming up whose head he would have to
crush, and swung his thick leg around the ladder.
"General... this is Aragor. Where are you?" Clinging to the rungs and wedging his way into the
tube, which barely accommodated his girth, Kellen
paused. "I am in the starship. I believe Kirk is about to

146

FIRST STRIKE

betray us. Call for reinforcements, as many as you can
find. Make no obvious movements, but be ready to
attack. Contact the Jada and tell that idiot Ruhl to
prepare the squadron's defenses, but quietly."
"Sir... the commanders will not be allowed to attack
a Starfleet ship under a flag of truce without provocation
or gain. How will we make them believe you saw?"
"I must be believed! Or it is disaster."
'I believe you, General, but the commanders will
demand proof."
Anger welled and he wanted to shout at Aragor, yet he
knew this was not Aragor's doing. His science officer was
neither fool nor petty stooge. A truth was a truth.
"There will be proof. I will find it somehow. You call
them. Give them the facts as we know them. Show them
the tapes. I am going to main engineering to disable this
vessel. Make preparations to beam me back when I make
signal No more communication."
"Understood. Out."
The tube was narrow but bright, and he felt closed in,
trapped, even as he moved freely downward through the
veins of the starship. The voices of the crew from deck to
deck were his only contact with the Starfleeters, giving
him reason to pause now and then to be sure no one saw
him pass through the open hatchways and companion-ways.
He could be easily cornered here, but his size
forced him to move slowly, with cautious deliberation.
To slip and tumble because of nervousness would be
shameful.
Tours. Guests. Open arms to demons and friends.
Havoc embraced. A Kirk who was no Kirk. Seek out the
unshatterable and discover only crumbs.
The rungs were cool against his palms. Rung after
rung, the ship peeled away beneath his hands and boots.
Nearer and nearer he climbed down toward the pulse
and thrum of the warp core. He felt it vibrate through
the ladder and heard it hum in his ears. That was the
power source he must cripple, or the starship would once
again stand in his way.

147

Diane Carey When the thrum was strongest, he went one deck more
to make sure he had indeed zeroed in on the main
engineering deck, then climbed back up and cautiously
extracted his bulk from the tube. This was a wide-hailed
ship, with room to stretch his arms from bulkhead to
bulkhead even in the passages. They wasted space, these
people, attempting to create an environment too much
like planetary architecture. They came into the depths of
space, then tried to pretend they were otherwhere. They
coddled their comforts too much in sacrifice to efficiency
and quickness. No one needed this much room. And
with every extra bit of indulgence, there had to be that
much more thrust, so they wasted energy to accommodate
their waste of space.

That could mean they had power to spare. He would
have to consider that in his sabotage.

He moved slowly through the offices to the functioning
engineering deck, keeping himself hidden from humans
in red shirts who moved from panel to panel, reading
and measuring what they saw, and crossed walkways
overhead. At the far end of the deck he saw the
cathedral-tall red glow of the warp core throbbing placidly,
off-line as the ship lay at all-stop.

Finding an angular elbow between three tall storage
canisters, Kellen paused to assess what he saw and
decide how best to inflict injury that would be hard to
find and take time to fix.

As he studied the movements of the engineers and
listened to their faint conversations, wicking general
information about these panels, he almost failed to
notice the most important change when it came--the
demons were here.

There... nearly obscured by the thing he was hiding
behind, but they were here! On their tour... doing just
as he was doing, seeking information and scanning the
uncovered consoles and all this technology these idiots
kept out in the open and freely showed to any and all
who came. Even demons could see.

That other ensign now tagged behind. The gaggle of

148 FIRST STRIKE

evil was led instead by a senior engineer, who seemed
uneasy at the creatures following him. He spoke little,
but gestured for the creatures to disperse about the deck
and gaze about.

The other engineers paused in their work and stared at
the ghastly amalgam who came here now, the long-faced
horned beasts, the winged Shushara, the hideous Iraga
with those white snakes in its head. Even the vaulting
humans who spoke so large and pretended nothing
bothered them today could not hide their disgust. They
acted as if they did not remember these ill-biddens, did
not recognize what they saw, but it was in their eyes and
the tighten ing of their shoulders as they looked upon the
erictees who now returned unasked.

No matter how they lied to themselves, they did
remember. It was their Havoc too.

Kellen held his breath as the Iraga crossed the deck,
shuffling upon its ugly limbs toward him, coming to look
at something on this side of the high-ceilinged chamber.
Its leprous face was more terrible than any mask,
crowned with those arm-long snakes that moved independently,
reaching and retracting, as if tasting the air.

He backed into his nook and held very still. There was
a cool and convenient shadow here, not quite big enough
to engulf his entire body, but dark enough to obscure
him.

The profane thing passed by him and moved into a
secondary chamber, passing within inches. He smelled
its licheny body and drew his chin downward in disgust,
wincing as the tentacles whipped toward his face and
licked at the canister's edge. If they had eyes, the Iraga
would know he hid here.

What would the horror be, to be overrun by these, the
condemned, even to survive and be forced to do their
filthy bidding? The thought shuddered through him. He
held his breath.

But his shadow served him. The beast moved past.

Kellen raised his right hand and sifted through his
outer robe for the familiar palm-filling shape of his

149

Diane Carey dagger's hilt. It was a good dagger, not his family dagger,
which he had already given to his son, but a good
weapon that had known too little use. Now it would have
its moment.

The general rolled out from between the canisters,
walking casually across the open archway because that
would gain less attention than if he attempted to sneak
across.

Without changing his stride he walked up behind the
Iraga, reached as high as he could, snatched a handful of
the gory tentacles moving in the creature's skull, and
drove his blade into the haze of white gauzy doth
covering the creature's body.

Chapter Eleven

150 UNLIKE THE BODY of the ensign whom Kellen had just
killed, the Iraga's wound gushed no liquid onto his fist,
but instead puckered around it. He felt no spine, but
assumed there was one in there somewhere, and aggravated
the blade across the body from side to side.

The Iraga gasped and arched backward against him.
Its mouth stretched open and its limbs thrust outward.
Kellen pulled it down until he could twist the tentacles
around the creature's face and stuff them into its
mouth and down its throat, guttering any cry it tried to
make.

He waited for it to die, but it would not die. It cranked
to this side, then that side, trying to pull itself free of his
grip and the blade digging into its back. Soon it began to
go pliant in his arms and he let it drop.

It slid down his legs and rolled to the deck at his feet,
staring up at him with bitter green eyes that had no
pupils.

"Security to Mr. Scott. Emergency."

Kellen looked up, and stepped to the archway. The
senior engineer was reaching for the nearest panel.

151

Diane Carey

"Scott here."

"Sir, Mr. Giotto here. Captain says to notify you of
intruder-alert status. We've had a call from deck four.
Yeoman Tamura went to ask the Klingon general if she
could bring him dinner and she found Ensign Brown on
the floor of the VIP quarters. He's been killed, sir, and
there's no sign of the general. We're attempting a bio-sweep
for Klingon physiology, but we haven't pinpointed
anything yet."

The engineer's face turned stony, and for a moment he
glared at the comm as if it had done the killing. When he
spoke his voice was like metal grating on metal. "Acknowledged.
Scott out." He looked up and snapped his
fingers. "Mr. Hadley! Go to Security alert status two in
the lower section. Double guards at every entrance. Let's
clear this deck of all but assigned personnel. Arm the lot
and set up in teams."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Scott. Johnson, come with me! Elliott,
come down here!"

Suddenly there was confusion all over. The demons
were rounded up and shuffled out of Kellen's sight.
Guards with phasers jogged through, and his plans for sabotage were snuffed before his eyes.

So the plans must be altered.

He stepped back to the poisonous body, yanked his
dagger clear of the Iraga's back, and quickly retracted
the two claw extensions. Taking the hilt in both hands,
he braced his legs wide, raised the heavy center blade as
the creature looked up beseechingly at him, and brought
it down with all the power in his thick upper body. The
blade erunched through the Iraga's throbbing neck and
went a tingeifs length into the deck.

Sawing deliberately, he ignored the free flood of white
fluid and gray organs. Finally he twisted his left hand
into the frantically jerking tentacles and pulled as he cut.
The eyes flared as if the demon knew what was happening
to it. The lips moved open, closed, open, closed, as if
trying to speak to him, and there was sound from the
ravaged throat that soon dissolved into a froth.

152 FIRST STRIKE

He sawed relentlessly. In moments the beast's eyes
began to roll and the tentacles began to coil around and
around Kellen's hand and wrist, growing thinner as they
tightened. He was disgusted at the greasy sensation, but
forced himself to maintain his grip and continue to pull
and cut.

The neck muscles were twisted like cord and resisted
even the razor-sharpness of his dagger blade. The bones
of this demon's throat grated fiercely, but he gritted his
teeth and applied his strength, and soon the Iraga's lips
peeled back to reveal its pointed teeth, and its head
flinched off into his hand.

Kellen stumbled back with the force of his own pulling
as the last of the ligaments snapped. Before him the
Iraga's body winced and jolted, its long fingers scratching
at the deck, air sucking with futile desperation into
the exposed tube endings through which it had been
breathing only moments ago. It was trying to live.

He had no idea whether it would succeed, but he had
its head and that was what he needed. Now there would
be movement, action against the Havoc, which he had let
slip through his grip by failing to destroy the Havoc ship
from within when he had the chance. Since then, everything
that had happened had done so because of the
price of his own life.

He would not make so great an error again. The
Klingon who stopped the Havoc would be the icon of the
next age.

And more, far more, the disaster to his people and all
people would be shoved back into the maw of legend.

With his gut-stained hand he shoved his blade into his
belt and clawed for the communicator. The instrument
nearly slipped between his wet fingers. If it fell, it would
ring the deck as loudly as a klaxon and they would come
and find him.

He brought the instrument to his lips. "Qul. Qul.
Activate transporter. I have the prooff"

153

Diane Carey

"This is a mighty odd invasion, as invasions go."
McCoy adjusted the antigrav on Spock's diagnostic
bed down another few degrees, then tilted the upper-body
section of the bed so Spock could at least feel as if
he were sitting up some.
The science officer's computer accesses were still at
fingertip convenience and Spock wasn't moving much,
but his face had lost its sea-foam pallor. The therapy of
work had done him good.
McCoy wished there were something that could do
some good for a furious captain whose arms were
knotted at his sides and who couldn't seem to stop
pacing in bitter rage.
"I've got a crewman murdered by a dignitary with
whom I made a treaty, and a potential flashpoint on my
hands," he snarled as he swung around and started back
toward Spock after coming nose-up to a shelf full of
vials. Every time he paced over there he caught a sour
vision of himself in a mirror behind the shelves.
It made him madder.
He struck the nearest comm unit and for the fourth
time clipped, "Kirk to Security. Progress report."
There was a pause, though he could tell through raw
experience that the line was open.
"Captain, Giotto here. We've completed our bio-sweep.
There's no Klingon on board anymore. The
general must've gotten off the ship somehow."
Big surprise.
"Understood. Shields up. No more beaming unless I
authorize it personally."
"Aye-aye, sir."
He snapped the comm off without acknowledging and
twisted back to Spock "Have you got anything? Anything
at all?"
Spock's straight brows furrowed some as the responsibility
hit him squarely between them, but he tapped on
his keyboards and brought up on the screen a stylized
watercolor painting of a creature disturbingly like one of
Zennor's party.
154

FIRST STRIKE

"in Klingon legend, the Shushara was a winged demon,
or group of demons, given to consuming unsuccessful
warriors, beginning with their feet and eating its
way up the body while the victim witnessed this and
contemplated his failures. Like many other demons, they
were ultimately banished, but promised to return with
the Havoc to consume the weak. Kellen may see Zen-nor's
crew as a manifestation of the Empire's failure to
expand since the establishment of the Neutral Zone by
the Federation."
"Havoc is their punishment for having let themselves
be contained?"
"Yes," Spock said. He moved his hand to his lap,
rather gingerly, slowly, and scooped up the crescent
brooch, looking at the scratch of stars and comets upon
which Zennor's civilization set its hopes. "Regarding
this etching, taking into account the ten differing periods
of their standard year and the speed and movement of
stars, there is a legitimate corollary in the Danai research.
They seem ready to jump to a conclusion, but
n othing is disprovable yet. Any arrangement of stars
may look like something else five thousand years later
from any angle of your own choosing. I must admit,
though, this is an excellent correlation to this particular
stellar group, given the millennia and the constant
movement of celestial bodies. I find myself deeply impressed
that they managed to do this, especially from
across the galaxy, Captain. The technology--"
"Not the technology now, Spock. How likely is it that this is the actual place?"
Spock let the brooch slip back onto his thigh and
moved his eyes to Kirk. "Not very likely."
Kirk flattened his lips. "As I understand it, Zennor
and Garamanus are competing for the loyalty of their
crew. Garamanus is, more or less, the spiritual force
aboard, like the priests who went on board the ships
the Spanish Armada and were the political force that the
captain had to deal with. When Zennor didn't move to
destroy us and the Klingons, Garamanus had a reason

155

Diane Carey

not to trust him. Zennor's required to take certain steps.
If he doesn't take them, Garamanus can have him
removed."
"And one of those steps," McCoy prodded, "is to
prove that we're the conquerors, whoever they were?"
"Or that we're not. 'Conqueror' to them is like saying
Kodos the Executioner to us. We have to establish that
we weren't involved in the conquest that banished their
civilization and that they have come to the wrong place
to look for their home."
"They have ferocious religious beliefs, evidently,"
Spock said, "and these have taken care of them over the
generations."
"But Zennor seems to be some kind of agnostic," Kirk
added. "He wants our help to disprove that we're the
conquerors. Their priests have settled on this area for
their own reasons, and the scientists have been afraid to
challenge. They put all their cultural energy into coming
here, but Zennor doesn't want to come here and become
just another conqueror. He has a mission inside his
mission--to disprove the mission."
"Interesting," Spock murmured. "The galaxy is prohibitively
huge, Captain, and they have risked everything
to come to this one area. Either way, the trip is one-way
for Zennor and his crew. No matter what happens, they
cannot go back. They are here now. Such commitment
takes great fortitude. I am impressed with Vergo Zennor
for taking on convictions above and beyond belief in his
assignment."
"So am I," Kirk said with a reckless sigh.
"The priests of their culture are taking this as hard
fact," McCoy said, holding out a hand to Spock. Then he
looked at Kirk. "They'll only take hard fact to knock it
down. What're we going to do?"
Kirk glowered at the edge of the bed, not really seeing
it. "If we go there and there's no such planet around the
star they've targeted, or there is a planet but there's
never been life on it, then their plan falls apart. Zennor

156

FIRST STRIKE
wants it to fall apart, but we have to go there to pull it down."
"Vergo Zennor believes his ship can stand up to a
Klingon fleet attack," Spock said. "I have checked and
double-checked their vessel, and yes, it is powerful and
may be able to stand down a squadron of patrollers. But
a fleet of heavy cruisers -- I tend to doubt."
"I don't want to find out," Kirk said. "If it comes to
that, I'll have to side with Zennor. The Klingons are
being completely irrational about this. They're acting on
an instinctive leveL"
"I can understand it," McCoy offered. "Our crew's
having the same reaction. And so am I. These people
look... I don't know, familiar somehow. Even though
I've never seen anything that looks like any of them
before."
"Regardless, I've got a decision to make. Do I violate
Klingon deep space now that I've put my foot in this? Or
do I abandon Zennor at the Neutral Zone and see to myself?. No, scratch that. I've made a commitment to the
situation."
The doctor frowned. "Jim, shouldn't you ask permission
from Starfleet Command before you make any
tactical movements farther into Klingon space?"
"I've already been given permission once. Why ask
again and give them a chance to say no? Those orders
aren't withdrawn. The mission isn't over. It's still my
option. I won't hand that option away to a bureaucrat.
All right, Spock, you've found a threadmfollow it. In the
meantime, I'm going to let Zennor set the pace. He
knows the pressures he's dealing with and I believe him
when he says he wants to knock the knees out from
under the driving forces. There's a short road to defusing
this situation and unfortunately it leads directly into
Klingon territory"
Scooping up the crescent brooch, Kirk rubbed his
thumb across the etching on the inner curve, then held it
out before them.

157

Diane Carey

"This is it, gentlemen," he said. "If we can disprove
this, the invasion falls apart."

The crew of the Imperial patrol cruiser Qul shrank
back like beaten children, huddled into the recesses of
the bridge, and covered their faces with shuddering
hands. Before them writhed the unthinkable, the incarnate,
twisting between the fingers of General Kellen as
he held high the proof of Havoc.

Kellen felt like a living beacon as he held the straining
tentacles of the Iraga before his witnesses.

"All screens on! Broadcast this on all frequencies to
the squadron and on long-range to the fleet and all
Imperial receivers, wide dispersal! There will be no more
doubt!"

No one moved. Aragor, Mursha, Karg, Rek, Horg--they
all stared with eyes like eggs at the thing in his
hands, which stared back with its slowly blinking green
eyes and moved its lips in ghastly beckoning at them.

"Quickly!" Kellen roared. "Before it dies!"

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;

A tousie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge

He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafter a' did dirl.

Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shaw'd the Dead in their last dresses...

Robert Burns

"Tam O'Sbanter"

158

Chapter Twelve

"The ship is run at sublight speed by an internally
metered pulse drive. We call it impulse."
"We have something similar."
"I know you do. There's quite a bit that's similar
about your civilization and ours. If we can reach an
understanding, perhaps your people will be satisfied to
settle here and exchange knowledge, share a few things."
"Vergokirk... you underestimate the passion of my
civilization. You are too comfortable in your identity.
You and your friends, and the Klingons and others here,
all have a sense of home. You all know where you came
from. You have no doubt in your souls about defending
it. When we find our space, we will defend it."
Each corner of the captain's cabin and office had been
thoroughly roamed, and now Zennor had found himself
the most amenable corner from which to contemplate
the place and people among whom be now found himself.
He hovered behind the perforated privacy partition,
which cast a gridlike pattern of shapes and shadows
upon his face and form. Standing there in the dimness,
he was as bizarre a visage as Jim Kirk had ever seen.

161

Diane Carey

"You say that with great conviction, but I'm not sure I
accept what you say," Kirk told him. "You've admitted
you think the evidence is too scant."
"Scant or not, it is taken as religion now." Zennor
turned to Kirk, and his bony face was terrible as it
caught the brittle shadows. "I do not believe you are the
conquerors."
Strange how his words were so antithetical to the
appearance of this enigmatic alien. He was indeed a
ghastly visage hovering there in the shadows, the light
designed mostly for humans stamping in confusion
across the angles and twists of his skull and horns. And it
had no idea what to do with those eyes.
"If we find this is the wrong space, we can live among
your Federation. There is something here upon which to
build, and my people are builders."
"And we'll welcome you," Kirk said. "We'll welcome
you right now, if you'll let us."
Before Zennor could answer, the comm unit behind
Kirk twittered and he turned to it. "Kirk here."
"McCoy, Captain. As soon as you can, would you
please come down to sickbay? I've got an emergency and
I believe you should know about it."
Abruptly interested, Kirk pressed his elbow to the
comm and leaned closer. "Is Spock all right?"
There was a pause. "It's something else, Captain.
Please come alone."
Come alone? What was that supposed to mean?
Instantly he knew what it meant. Leave Zennor up
here, something's been found out.
"If you'll excuse me," he said quickly, "my first officer
was severely injured this morning and I think my ship's
surgeon is trying to cloak any weaknesses in my staff. If
you wish to leave here, push this button and Security will
answer. They'll escort you back to the bridge or to the
others in your party. As I understand it, they're enjoying
their tour of the ship."

162

FIRST STRIKE

"Bones? What's going on?"
Sickbay's main door panel to the corridor closed
behind Kirk.
"I'm in here, Captain," McCoy called, and appeared
in the doorway of an auxiliary examining room.
Kirk glanced into the main ward, where Spock was
confined, but didn't go in there. "All right, what's your
crisis?"
"Captain," the doctor said, "there's been a murder."
As he looked at McCoy's sober face and hoped for a
punch line, Kirk felt his feet go cold. "You mean, other
than Brown? A second one?"
"Yes. But not one of our crew. This is one of Captain
Zennor's people. It was just discovered about twenty
minutes ago. Security delivered the body down here and
I instructed them that I would notify you."
Ramifications tumbled across Kirk's mind, piling one
upon the other. A visitor from an alien vessel in a
volatile situation, murdered. Here.
Horrible.
But only a little more horrible than the body McCoy
led him to. This wasn't just a murder. This was a
slaughter.
Kirk stood over the mutilated cadaver lying on its slab
in the lonely and so rarely used morgue, unfortunately
today occupied by the bodies of crewmen killed in the
land battle with the Klingons. In a few days, they would
be buried in space with full honors, once matters at hand
were dispensed with and the crew could adjust to the loss
of shipmates. It was never easy.
This, though--this thing on the slab...
He cleared his throat. "Where's the head?"
"I don't know," McCoy said straightaway. "We
haven't been able to find it. I suspect--"
"That Kellen took it with him."
"Then you do think he did it?"
"We'll know in a minute." He reached for the comm
on the wall, the least-used one on the ship. "Kirk to
Security."

163

Diane Carey

"Security, Hakker."
"Do a biosweep of the ship for Klingon biological
readings. Hail sickbay with the results."

"Right away, sir."

"Kirk to bridge."

"Bridge, sir."
"Bring the ship to double yellow alert. And hail the
Klingon fleet."
"One moment, sir."
The moment was a long, ugly one. Kirk stared at the
remains, and McCoy stared at Kirk, both supremely
aware of each other.
"What're you going to do?" McCoy finally asked when
the pressure got to him.
"I don't know," Kirk said. "But I have to decide the
next move, or Kellen will decide it for me."
"How could he get off without tripping some alarm
somewhere?"
"I'd get off."
"Captain, bridge. The Klingons refuse to answer our
hail, sir."
"Any movement out there?"
"None yet, sir."
"Notify me if there's the slightest change. Kirk out."
Stiff-lipped and severe, he circled the foot end of the
corpse.
Its pale hands were chalky with lack of life, long
fingernails nearly blue now, and there seemed to have
been very little blood, or whatever fluids this creature
possessed. Its clothing was nearly pristine. There hadn't
been much of a struggle, but considering Kellen's
strength and experience, that was no surprise.
"You didn't do an autopsy, did you?"
"I wouldn't do that without consent," McCoy said
with a touch of pique. "I sterilized the body and had the
scene of the crime searched and sealed off. If they want it
back, or want back any of this jewelry it's wearing, we're
prepared to comply. By the way, look at this." He
plucked up the round bronze piece hanging from the

FIRST STRIKE

chain, similar to Zennor's and all the others'. "This
medallion isn't a medallion. Did you notice? It's a mirror."
He turned the oblong disk over to the undecorated
side, and sure enough there was a crudely polished
surface there that could be used as a mirror when held up
by what now looked like a small handle.
"They each carry a little mirror?" Kirk looked, but
didn't touch. "Why would they do that?"
"I certainly don't know. Would you carry a mirror if
you looked like that? But, Jim, there's something else. If
you'll come with me..."
He led the way into a smaller examining room, where
a normally clean metal experimentation table was cluttered
with a matte of shredded cloth and separated piles
of what appeared to be dried leaves, nuts, hair, and some
kind of chips.
"What's all this?"
"I found it on the body. Take a look."
At closer examination Kirk realized what he was
looking at. "It's the doll. Each of them carries one. You
dissected a doll? This is a new low for you, isn't it?"
"It's more efficient than reading the handwriting on a
wall. Besides, it smelled funny and I wanted to see why.
Now, take a closer look."
"Yes, I see it. It's got strings in its head and clothes like
that. The doll looks like them."
"No, no. It looks like him." McCoy pointed at the
headless corpse. "With the head on, I mean. Look at
it."
Irritated and impatient, Kirk pointed at the doll,
whose guts lay spread all over the table, but whose little
wormy head was still mostly intact. "I don't get your
meaning."
"That corpse is of that species and the doll is also, but
look closer. It's got the same features, the same coloring,
the same hair--well, yarn--and it's missing the same
finger that the corpse has been missing for most of his
life."

165

Diane Carey

"You mean, if one of them loses a finger he cuts it off
his doll?"

"A finger, or whatever they've got. And one leg is a
little shorter than the other, just like the corpse, and it's
got the same scars marked on it as the real body has. And
it's wearing tiny versions of the same jewelry that's on
the body. Jim, this doll isn't just any doll. It's a poppet."

Kirk looked up and let silence ask his question before
he barked it out.

Getting the message, McCoy held one hand over the
piles of hair and leaves and bits. "All these things filled
the doll. It's not just stuffing. You could throw this in a
pot and make soup. Here you've got bits of hair,
fingernails--not from the same person--buttons, something
that might be a kind of bullet, pulverized nutshells,
candle wax, caraway seeds, dried rosebuds, berry leaves,
various worts, cloves, spider's web, and over here is the
dried heart of some kind of small animal. And these
things didn't all come from the same planet." The doctor
looked up at him and meaningfully said, "I think this is a
chronologue of this creature's life. They're relics of his
experiences. If I didn't have the body, I could even
roughly guess his age from just this mannequin. It's a
facsimile of that very person over there."

"Yes," Kirk murmured, glancing back. "Zennor's has
little antlers, a crescent brooch, bands on its wrists, and
it wears his clothing. If it gets filled gradually, over a
lifetime, older beings would have more items inside their
doll than younger beings." He paced around the table
again, thinking. "So Garamanus is older than Zennor."

Seeming satisfied that he was getting his analysis across, McCoy sighed and nodded. "Very likely so."
"What was that other word you used?"

"Poppet. I was getting to that. It's a medieval practice
that came out of witchcraft and sorcery, which basically
was the first practice of medicine. Poppets were one
method of mixing mysticism with herbal medicine,
invoking sympathetic magic."

166 FIRST STRIKE

"But that's Earth. It's trillions of miles away from
where these people come from. What're you getting at?"

"That's what I'm getting at." McCoy leaned over the
table. "I'm talking about Earth. That other one--they introduced him as Garamanus Drovid, right?"

"Yes. So?"

"I did a little skipping around in my medical-history
files and there's a match. The word 'drovid' has roots in
Old English, and that was where I found the references
to poppets and midwives and sympathetic medicine."

"Bones, make your point before I stuff this mess back
in the doll and stuff it down your throat."

"First ask me where the other two wise men are."
The doctor stood back a step, pointed at the piles of
herbs and bits, then swept his hand toward the corpse on
the table in the next chamber.

"Drovid," he said. "The drovids. The 'infernal of our
past, the sinister, the banished'? Jim, don't you hear it?
These people are druids!"

167

Chapter Thirteen

"THAT'S THE WILDEST leap of logic I've ever heard," Kirk
accused. "As near as we can calculate, it's a leap across
galactic quadrants."
'I' agree." With typical sleepless diligence, Spock
scanned the information McCoy had handed over for
analysis.
Druids?
Every time Kirk heard the word in his head, he
squinted as if looking through a fog. How many times in
his career had he been faced with the inconceivable and
asked his crew to believe? Now he couldn't seem to give
himself that much cooperation.
He rubbed his sweaty palms and waited for Spock to
do the dirty work.
Spock's hands and eyes moved as he keyed information
into the monitor mounted over his head. The
screens rolled with gory pictures of ancient myths that
bore startling resemblances to Zennor's crew.
"With uncharacteristic efficiency," the Vulcan barbed,
"the good doctor has stumbled upon some interesting
data."
168

FIRST STRIKE

"I do not 'stumble,' sir," McCoy aggrandized. "I am a
superior scholar in my field. I know my poppets."
Abandoning what may have been an effort to ease
pressure on the captain, Spock became suddenly clinical
and looked at Kirk with disclosed sympathy. "Lieutenant
Uhura is still working on some o the nomenclature
and linguistics using Dr. McCoy's theory, focusing on
the crossover between the old woodland religions of
western Europe and the encroachment of Christianity.
The simple folk of those times easily believed in both."
"Old religions die hard," Kirk said. "Zennor's people
are living proof. They're hanging on to theirs and looking
for scientific data to back it up."
"Real scientists do not form a theory first and look for
data second, Captain," Spock said. "However, I would
be deluding myself to deny the surprising similarities
between Zennor's race and the pantheon of Celtic folklore."
"Specifically?"
Spock hesitated, as if walking on thin ice, but offered
his typical straightforwardness. "Specifically, the
Horned God, ruling deity of winter and the hunt. It was
a beastly vehicle, usually portrayed in stag form, with
horns."
"And Zennor... sure has horns," Kirk said. "But
some of those beings have wings. Doesn't make them
angels."
"No, of course not," the doctor agreed, "but I think
this is the key to a peck of trouble. You've been going
about this all wrong, Mr. Spock, looking at arrangements
of stars and searching for archaeological evidence. These
beings look a lot like common archetypes in humanoid
culture, but not just any archetypes. Specifically archetypes
of evil. Antlers, horns, snakes, skulls -- they'll find
so much that looks like them that they'll say, 'See? We're
from here." People who are this much into their myths
will be very convinced by ours. Jim, you'd better disprove
this, because if I were them, all this Celtic stuff
would bother me."

169

Diane Carey

"Celtic," Spock said unsparingly.
McCoy looked at him. "Pardon me?"
"You said 'Soltic,' Doctor. The word is 'Kltic." The
'C' had a hard sound in the ancient Gaelic language. It is
often mispronounced by the ignorant."
"Now wait a minute, Mahatma. Didn't there used to
be a baseball team called the Boston 'Soltics'?"
"Basketball," Kirk corrected, and was instantly mad
at himself for bothering.
Keenly Spock raised one punctuating brow. "An ideal
case in point."
McCoy's squarish features deployed a barrage, but he
didn't say anything.
Tilting a scowl at an innocent wall, Kirk squeezed
back a headache and reached for the nearest comm.
"Kirk to engineering."
,, ' ' Hadley, sir."
Engineering,
"Request Mr. Scott join me in the sickbay right away."
'
irn"
"Yes, sir, I'll find him.

Impatient, Kirk paced a few steps away, as if to

distance his officers from the stain of his responsibility

and the tilt of this conversation. Myths.. gods of this

and that... poppets and witchcraft. he didn't like

any of it as a basis for any decision.

"Zennor's people seem very fierce, but tolerant of each

other, as races go. They've had to live together and work

toward this common cause, and as such they've had to

believe in it, proven or not. It forced them to respect

each other's various cultural habits. They're actually

better at tolerance than the Federation, except for this

one clubfoot. This group-space idea. Zennor is smart

enough to realize the holes in all that."

"Who did they have this war with?" McCoy asked.

"Do we have the foggiest idea?"

"It was five thousand years ago," Kirk mourned.

"Maybe more than that."

"Could it have been one of the early Klingon cultures,
and maybe that's why it seems to fulfill a legend of

Chaos?"

170

FIRST STRIKE

"Havoc," Spock adjusted. "I doubt that. The Klingons
had no spacefaring capabilities in their sectors that long
ago. I suspect it was some advanced race, now long
gone."
"Or still there, in some other part of the galaxy," Kirk
pointed out. "Don't make their mistake and assume this
is the right place. Zennor said their archeologists pretty
much proved they didn't evolve on their planets. They
were all transplants. After all this time, there's no way
even to know whether they were persecuted, or if they
lost a legitimate war."
"Legends become distorted over five thousand years,"
Spock said. "The people writing them tend to skew them
in their favor. Havoc, heresy... all these are inventions
of those who wish to maintain control through threat of
supernatural punishment. In fact, the word 'heresy' is
from the Greek. It means 'free choice.""
"Well, they're exercising free choice right now, that's
for sure."
Kirk scuffed his boot heel on the deck and anchored
himself to the sound, the hard sensation of his ship
around him. The hollow ache of having lost crewmen,
especially young Brown, ate at him. And what was he
going to do with that headless body in there?
"Spock, what about their ship? What exactly are we up
against?"
"I have done extensive sweeps, but there is much
sensor masking. The ship remains essentially an unknown.
I do believe they have the raw power to push
back the Enterprise, but could they push back all of the
Klingon squadron and us as well? I have no conclusions."
"Neither do I," Kirk told him, "and I can't put my
finger on it, but there's something about his ship that
Zennor's not telling."
"Intuition, Captain?"
"If necessary."
The Vulcan frowned into his monitor screens. "I am
also questioning Garamanus's astronomical data regard-

171

Diane Carey

ing the Klingon solar system as seen from the other side
of the galaxy, given the distorted nature of the galactic
core. It can not even be seen through. To send out a
probe of any effect would take hundreds
He moved one arm to tap an order to his computers,
and apparently moved too much. He suddenly stopped
speaking, choked silent by a spasm somewhere in his
injured body. Kirk covered the space to the bedside in
one step, but somehow McCoy got there first and hurriedly
adjusted the antigravs to take some pressure off.
So much for pain being a thing of the mind.
"Are you all right?" Kirk asked.
"Well enough, Captain." The voice was a scratch now,
still twisted with effort, and more seconds passed before
the pinch left Spock's narrow eyes and his hands began
to relax again on the fingerpads.
As they waited, the outer door parted and Chief
Engineer Scott thumped in, looking untidy and frustrated
with the day's tensions. His emblematic red shirt
was rumpled and bore the burns of a splatter of sparks.
He clearly didn't want to be here.
"You wanted me, sir?" He reached up to check the
mountings on the monitor. "All right with this, Mr.
Spock?"
Kirk squared off behind him. "Scotty, what do you
know about Celtic mythology?"
Scott twisted around, one hand still poised overhead.
"Celtic what, sir?"
"Druidic myths of supernatural beings," Spock filled
in, burying his effort. "The primary deity of hunting and
survival. The Horned God."
"Me?" The engineer looked from each to the other.
"Not much. Where'd you ever come up with all that,
sir?"
"We just wondered if all this meant anything to you,"
Kirk told him, keeping his tone even, not wanting to
hedge his bet.
"Because I'm Scottish?"
"Any port in a storm."

172
FIRST STRIKE
"Oh..." Scott's expression turned pained. "Sir...
you're barking up the wrong kilt. That Celtic druid stuff,
that's a lot of hooey!"
"That hooey may be the key to our situation. You have
druid ruins in Scotland, don't you?"
"Have we. We hang our laundry from 'em. That'n
postcards is about all they're good for."
Kirk simmered. "You don't know anything at all about
that folklore."
Glancing with a pathetic face, Scott's round eyes
bobbed in a shrug and. he looked like a street urchin
being asked where the neighborhood hiding place was.
"Well... give or take Tam O'Shanter, not a blessed
thing."
"What's that?"
"Everybody's heard the story of Tam O'Shanter's
ride."
"Give me the high points."
"Oh... well, it's a Robert Burns poem about a fellow
who takes a look inside a haunted kirk -- oh, sorry, sir--a
haunted church." Uneasy at relating folklore instead of
phase inversion ratios, Scott struggled to scrape the dust
out of his memory. He made a disapproving sound in his
throat and forced himself to speak. "Inside are demons
and unconsecrated dead dancing about, and perched in
the window is the devil, shaped like a beast, wheezing his
pipes for all he's worth. I saw a reenactment of it once,
right there near the actual kirk in Alloway--"
"Wait a minute!" McCoy cut in. "The devil plays
bagpipes?"
The engineer screwed a glare at him. "Welcome to
heaven, here's your harp, welcome to hell, here're your
bagpipes."
"Oh, fine."
"Can I go now, sir?"
"No," Kirk snapped. "What other details are there?"
Scott shifted his feet. "I don't rightly recall, sir....
I'm sure it's in Mr. Spock's computer someplace. This
Tam has to get away from the demons, and there's

173

Diane Carey
something about how demons can't cross running water,
so he makes for the bridge."
"Logical," Spock fed in.
McCoy shook his head. "Logical!"
"Scotty," Kirk pressed, "why can't demons cross running
water?"
"I wouldn't have a' clue, sir."
"Is there a point to it happening in the ruins of a
church?"
Desperate, Scott shrugged. "Why does Hamlet happen
in a castle, sir?"
McCoy leaned forward. "Why's the devil in the shape

of a beast?"

,, ' not talking to
Doctor, the engineer groaned, you re

a man who thinks there's a monster in the loch."

Unsatisfied, Kirk let his brow crimp. "Very wel.!

Scotty, dismissed."

"Aye, sir!" Flushed with relief, Scott vectored for the

door, then abruptly looked back. "It's all got to do with

that lot we beamed over, doesn't it? If ever a bunch

needed a ruined kirk about 'em, those are the ones."

Before anyone could stop him, he dodged for freedom

and the sickbay door hissed shut on empty air.

"Well, there's one generalization gone up in smoke,"
McCoy commented.

"I
disturbed
Kirk paced, embarrassed.

shouldn't have

him."

tone,
Gentlemen, Spock said with an anchoring
"this is interesting information, but it is entirely anecdotal
. Still only folklore."
"But dangerous information, Mr. Spock," the doctor
insisted. "Sometimes myth can be much more explosive
than fact."
Kirk turned to Spock and waved his hand. "McCoy's
right. You and I need hard evidence, but Zennor's crew
may well be satisfied with anecdotal evidence. We can't
take that chance. All this will become a moot point if we
can get to this Klingon solar system and find no proof
174

FIRST STRIKE

that it's their home system. That's my intention. We are
not having a war. We' re not having these people warring
against the Klingons, the Klingons against them, and the
Federation scrambling in the middle. I'm not having it. I
want both of you to--"
"Red alert. This is the bridge. All hands, red alert."
Suddenly angry that his aggravation was being interrupted,
he assaulted the comm. "Kirk here."
Sulu's voice came through, sounding tight. "The
Klingon squadron, sir, they're moving into attack position
and swinging under us toward the other ship."
"On my way. Contact Security and have them bring
Captain Zennor to the bridge. Kirk out. McCoy, Spock,
you two keep on this line of research. And hurry it up. If
this is legitimate, I want to know it. If it's not, I want
something concrete that I can put in front of Zennor and
Garamanus to show them that it's not."
"Yes, sir."
"We'll do our best, Jim."

"Status, Mr. Sulu?"
"The Klingon squadron swung around us to attack the
visitor's ship, sir. They've opened fire several times, but seem to be only making glancing blows. They may be
looking for weak points. Impulse power's on-line and
helm is answering."
"Mr. Donnier?"
"Phaser batteries on standby, sir. Photon torpedoes
powering up."
Hardly had the tube cleared when it opened again and
Zennor came out into the shadowed area beside the
glossy red doors. Kirk glanced at him.
As the Klingon squadron separated into a new attack
formation on the forward screen.
Kirk dropped to the recessed deck and gripped his
command chair, but didn't sit. He couldn't quite make
himself do that, not with Zennor haunting the upper
deck's turbolift vestibule, looking quite zombieish with

175

Diane Carey
the soft bridge lights teasing his bony features, sulfurous
eyes, and twisted horns and glinting off all that carved
jewelry.
"Sensors full capacity. Come full about starboard,
impulse one-quarter. Intercept course. Gentlemen, I
thought I ordered change of watch. What are you all still
doing here?"
Donnier swung around as if he'd committed a crime,
but his mouth hung open without making a sound.
Sulu turned too, but didn't take his hands from the
helm. "The order just came up, sir. We were waiting for
our relief to show up. I think the lower decks have all
changed over."
Kirk glanced over his shoulder. "Vergo Zennor, I
assume you'll want to return to your ship to confront this
action."
Zennor's horns caught the bridge lights ,and played
with them. "My ship is strong, Vergokirk."
"As you prefer," Kirk said, a little irritated. He'd want
to be here, and suddenly that seemed like a sign of
weakness. He trusted his crew, but this was his responsibility,
not theirs.
Strange, though, to be so completely unconcerned
as if a bunch of delinquent children were hitting his ship
with sticks. Zennor was either very confident in his
ship's technology or he was putting on a hell of a show.
Grudgingly Kirk accepted the first divisions between
himself and Zennor that weren't physical.
The turbolift door gushed open and an engineer came
out, but didn't go to the port side. Instead, the short and
thickly built fellow stepped down to the helm and looked
at Sulu, then at Kirk.
"Lieutenant Byers, sir, relieving the helm."
"Not nOW."
"Sir?"
"Not in the middle of action. Stand by."
"Aye, sir." Byers blinked at him self-consciously, then
at the screen. He was new to the bridge and Kirk guessed
176

FIRST STRIKE

that a department head somewhere below was pushing
him. Happened sometimes. Sooner or later the lowliest
technician got a hitch at the wheel, just to see what it felt
like, not to mention in case of some catastrophe that
blistered the whole crew and left one confused yeoman
to steer. That happened sometimes too. Usually those
were historical acgounts, but one could never tell.
Byers rubbed his wide hands on his thighs and shifted
from foot to foot, not knowing whether to vacate the
bridge and wait to be called, or take a position on the
upper deck and wait there, doing nothing.
"Up there." Kirk pointed sharply to the engineering
systems station. He couldn't keep the irritation out of his
voice, nor did he want to take the time to explain that
the lift tube should be kept as clear as possible during
action, especially not to someone who should know it.
Maybe I expect too much of them, he thought vaguely
as the ship swung full about and space turned on a
pendulum before them. In a moment the pinecone form
of Zennor's ship swung into full view, harassed by the
Klingon cruisers.
In the privacy of his mind Kirk damned Zennor's calm
and set himself to match it.
Too competitive?
Maybe.
Too bad.
He glared at the screen, at the Klingon ships, four of
them, sweeping up and around the horn-shaped vessel.
He could almost hear the whoosh. They laid fire down
across the visitor's hull, then spun wildly toward the Enterprise.
"They're trying to keep us from increasing speed,"
Sulu muttered aloud as he countered the moves of the
Klingon ships.
"Doing it, too," Chekov put out of the corner of his
mouth as he looked down from Spock's station.
Kirk ignored them. There had to be weakness. There
had to be one moment when those ships weren't all

177

Diane Carey

coordinated, when at least two of them weren't sure what
the other two were doing. He was waiting for that
moment. "Mr. Donnier, prepare to open fire."
"Ready, Captain."
"Captain Zennor, are you agreeable to evasive action?
High speed to your target solar system?"
He turned enough to look.
In the lift vestibule, Zennor appeared as still as a
gargoyle and moved not at all to answer. "Yes."
Had his mouth even moved?
Telepathy?
"Would you like to inform your crew?"
"They know it."
He didn't offer how that could be possible.
Kirk didn't ask, sensing that the answer would be
vague and his crew would become uneasy.
"Mr. Donnier," he said instead, "reduce phasers to
two-thirds. Mr. Sulu, one-half sublight."
Donnier looked over his shoulder. "Two-thirds, sir?"
"We'll have a reserve if we need it. And there's no
point draining everything we have to destroy those ships
when all we have to do is get away from them. Prepare to
dump a wash of heavy radiation behind us once we get
clear. While they choke their way through it, we'll make
distance. All right, gentlemen, let's drive them away
from the other ship and make our getaway. I've always
considered ass'n elbows a perfectly legitimate battle
tactic."
"Aye, sir," Sulu said, and grinned.
Donnier nodded and smiled too. "Yes, sir."
The attitude on the bridge went up two notches.
The ship groaned with the effort of snug turns, a long-legged
foxhound trying to turn like a basset. She was
powerful, but she was no road-hugger. The Klingon ships
worked a baffling pattern that kept one always in the
starship's path while the others cut across her lateral
shields and fired on her. Every few seconds a hit racked
across her hull and sent tremors through it. Every time

178

FIRST STRIKE

he said "fire" Donnier tried to coordinate phaser controls
with the flash-by of whatever ship was in range.

Engulfed in a shameless relief that the so-called truce
was over, broken by the Klingons' first shot--if there
were any doubts--Kirk flexed his hands as if they'd just
been unmanacled. The old kids' excuse from any playground
was at perfectly good work here He started it.

Zennor's ship took relentless strafing in the most
leisurely fashion Kirk had ever witnessed, and it annoyed
the hell out of him. He wanted movement, panic,
retaliation from the other ship. That was how Klingons
needed to be treated. But Zennor's vessel did virtually
nothing but turn its aft end to the incoming Klingon fire
and let the destructive energy wash across its folded hull
plates.

"Make tighter turns and continue evasive," he said,
authorizing a risk Sulu couldn't take on his own. "Come
about."

"Coming about, sir."

On the screen, the Klingon ships veered out from each
other in a practiced formation, then began angling
erratically, so their patterns couldn't be plotted. Then
two of them broke pattern and swept toward the Enterprise
as it came in firing and knocked the other two off course.

The two steady cruisers kept their heads, executed a
perfect maneuver, and laid into the starship's upper hull,
strafing the bridge.

Kellen knew what he was doing. Decades of experience
could serve in a pinch.

He had drawn a breath to give a maneuvering order to
Sulu when a huge wing suddenly appeared in the forward
screen, blanketing their view of everything else--Kellen's
flagship!

Where had he come from? Some daring twist Kirk had
failed to anticipate, he realized as his gut twisted as if to
show him what he'd missed. Disruptor fire danced
across the starship's brow, splintering the shields and

179

Diane Carey
piercing the hull above the bridge before double shields

could be put up there.

The forward half of the ceiling blew downward in

shards and sparks, engulfing Sulu in a flush of electricity.

Donnier plunged sideways and was only scorched, but

Sulu was shaken hideously, then slammed to the deck

and fell limp.

Kirk shielded his face. "Sickbay! Get him off the

bridge!" The second order really canceled out the first,
indicating that he didn't want to wait, or have an injured

crewman to trip over in the middle of ship's action. The

upper-deck technicians and engineers understood, and

three of them shuffled Sulu toward the turbolift.

"Mr. Byers! Here's your chance. Take the helm."

Byers had almost gone into the-turbolift, but now

turned back t o the center of the bridge and picked his

way to the helm. He brushed the smoking shards off the

seat and gingerly sat there on part of his backside. He

stared at the helm for a moment, his hands hovering

over the instrumentation without making contact.

"Put your hands on the controls, Mr. Byers," Kirk

said firmly, and knew his own work was cut out for him,
taking an inexperienced helmsman into battle. "Come
about starboard..-that's it Mr.
Donnier, Ver,e.

Good.
. all we have to do is clear the way for Zennor s

ship."
Did the other ship have warp drive? It just now
occurred to him that the subject hadn't come up. Fine
time to think of it, James.
They had to have warp drive, or some force of science
that allowed them to go to hyperlight speeds. Examining
a quadrant at sublight would take thousands of years.
They had it, they had it. Stay the course.
Enemy re crackled like pulsebeats over the ship's
deflectors, but she stood up to them. Returning fire was
a different trick and took more than just a stuck-out
jaw.
Byers hunched forward and concentrated on keeping
hold of the bull elephant in his hands, tapping maneu-
18o

FIRST STRIKE

vers through to her impulse engines in a manner that was
making the power center heave and howl.
"Fire as your weapons bear, Mr. Donnier. Target the
ship abaft starboard and fire. Mr. Byers, don't let them
work our stern like that again."
Byers pressed his hands to the controls and attempted
a dry swallow before speaking. "Sir... I... I can't do
this very well... respectfully submit you call up somebody
with more experience. Shouldn't Mr. Chekov--"
"Mr. Chekov's needed at the science station." Kirk
stole a moment from the battle and said, "We pilot the
ship by changing the field geometry of the warp-coil
timing. How well each helmsman can do that is a
personal thing. It's the closest thing to subjective activity
on the ship. Experience is a factor, but it's not all there
is. Sulu does it his way. You do it yours. We'll deal with
it."
Byers stared at him a moment, then nodded and faced
the helm again. Permission to screw up, if necessary.
That done, Kirk shifted his concentration to the
movements of the ships outside, arranging them in 3D in
his head and anticipating every movement he could see
as the sensors on the upper monitors read the courses of
each ship.
On the main viewer, Zennor's ship had come full
about and was facing Klingon space. Just a few more
seconds. Just a chance to get past Kellenm
"Down more, starboard... mark two... Don't use
the sensors, Mr. Byers--follow them with your eyes and
feel your way through. Three degrees port... present
our profile to them .... Mr. Donnier, fire... good...
Byers, if you see a window don't wait for my order.
There--get through it! Quickly, angle ten degrees port.
Midships... fre."
For an instant there was silence, and then the whine of
the. phaser controls cutting across the power-packed
Klingon ships. Two of the ships bloomed in hot strikes.
Another swung past, launched a shot, then veered off as
if afraid it too would be hit at proximity.

Diane Carey
"Two good hits, sir!" Donnier said, surprised that he'd
done so well.
"Good, Mr. Donnier," Kirk awarded. "Now if we can
push aside the others, we'll get past term." . .
"Sir," Chekov called over the poundimg ot uniorgvng
disruptors, "their upper hull plates are only double-shielded."
"Noted. Mr. Donnier, there's your target. Mr. Byers,
get us in over their heads. Ten degrees port.. good.
midships."
"Midships," Byers murmured, his lips dry.
"Hold that... fire... five degrees starboard."
"Five starboard, aye..
"A little more starboard."
"Little more, aye..

"Midships. ."
With one hand on Donnier's chair and the other on
Byers', Kirk drove his ship as though rushing whitewater
in his favorite canoe. He moved his shoulders with the
rhythm of the ship, flexing his knees as the deck rose and
dropped, tipped and rolled around them. "I
"Sir, they're dog-fighting us," Byers choked. can't
get past them."
"You don't have to. Just distract them until Zennor's
ship gets past."
Phaser blast after phaser blast vomited from the ship's
ports and crashed across space to torment the Klingons,
who returned fire shot for shot without remittance.
"Static pulses, sir? one of the engineers gasped from
upper port side. "Shield power's fibrillating!"
As they were hit again the engineer's response was
swallowed in howling alarms and a puff of chemical
smoke. Metal splinters rained on them and for a few
seconds all they could see of each other were hunched,
headless shoulders.
On the main screen, Zennor's dark ship loomed enor-
182

FIRST STRIKE

mous, so big that Kirk had to shudder down a desire to
duck.
"Sir, I..." Byers stopped, unwilling to say the obvious.
He couldn't get past the swarming cruisers, not and
protect Zennor's ship at the same time. The starship was
simply too big and too sluggish at low sublight speeds to
handle a well-manipulated squadron of lighter, quicker,
tight-turning buzzards.
"Stay with it, Mr. Byers."
From the upper deck, Zennor's bass voice hummed.
"Vergokirk."
Kirk turned.
Zennor looked down at him, and came forward a step.
"Allow me to clear the way for you."
An instant before he would've told Zennor to hold
position, that the Enterprise could take these ships with
the right maneuvers and a certain amount of sacrifice,
Kirk clamped his lips. Here was a chance to see what
that uninvited vessel could do, and he suddenly didn't
want to give that up.
He gestured to the communications station. "Would
you like to contact your ship?" he offered again.
"I have," Zennor said.
"Sir!" Chekov pointed at the forward screen.
Kirk cranked around.
The giant ship of purple shadows and tightly laid
shingles was turning color--not overtly, but as if some
mystical stagehand were backstage, changing the spots
and footlights. The purple colors bled to hotter electric
blue, then bundled together and ran down the pinecone-shaped
hull to blast out the twisted point and blow into
space.
Two Klingons vessels were hit directly and knocked
violently off course, and the others were kicked into a
spin, left struggling to regain their gravitational balance.
"Sir! We're clear!" Chekov called suddenly, and then
coughed on a puff of chemical smoke. "Sir!"
"Captain Zennor, I hope your ship knows to follow us," Kirk called.

183

Diane Carey

"They know."
That voice. Like cellos and concert basses moaning in
another room.
Damn it, how could they know?
He refused to ask.
"Very well. Chekov, dump that heavy radiation."
Chekov plunged four feet down the starboard side and
hammered the controls. "Dumped, sir!"
"Mr. Byers, warp factor five, right now."

184

Chapter Fourteen

"The Klingon SQUAD is falling behind, Captain,"
Chekov clipped, unable to keep the victory out of his
voice. "The radiation is choking their thruster ports.
Captain Zennor's ship is matching our speed."
"Very good. Go to warp six, Mr. Byers."
"Warp six, sir," Byers answered.
"Captain," Lieutenant Nordstrom spoke up, her hand
on her earpiece receiver, "General Kellen is hailing us."
"Is he. Put him on."
"Go ahead, sir."
"General, this is Captain Kirk. You're seriously overstepping."
"Are you out of your inadequate mind?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You are streaking into Klingon space with those
fiends. Why?"
"Because there's a chance of resolving the conflict. I
request you secure clearance for us from your High
Command."
"I refuse. You are giving asylum to a threatening

185

Diane Carey species. I have summoned the Assault Fleet. You turn
around and leave."

"I'm here at your request," Kirk pestered steadily.
"You're the one who came aboard my ship, then murdered
a visiting dignitary from another government.
That will not go unanswered, I guarantee. If I turn
around and leave without resolution to the problem,
you're going to look pretty foolish, not only in front of
my government, but in front of yours. Who in the
Klingon Fleet will take your word for anything anymore?"

"They have taken my word, and they are coming. I
asked for help from you and this is what I've been given.
We will take care of the Havoc ship ourselves. If you
interfere, then there is war between us."

"I hope to have this resolved before you and your fleet
can reach us. In any case, I'm lodging a formal protest
with the Klingon High Command, stating that we have
been invited here and attacked while authorization was
never officially revoked."

"Lodge what you want. I would expect no better from
such as you. I did not attain my position by waiting for
my bidding to be done by others."

"Sir, he cut us off," Nordstrom said before Kirk could
answer, as if he had an answer.

They had left behind the immediate problem, but
not the lingering question. With a sigh, Kirk scratched
the back of his head and wished he had time for a
backrub. Or somebody around whom he wanted to
give it.

He glanced back and caught in his periphery the sorcerous form of Zennor in the lift entrance.

No point avoiding the inevitable.

Gripping the bridge rail for sustenance, he pulled
himself to the upper deck.

"Vergo," he began, "we have a situation in sickbay
that demands your attention."

186 FIRST STRIKE

"Let me apologize ahead of time for what I must show
yOU."

Jim Kirk led the way into sickbay. Zennor followed,
having said very little on the way down, as if he
anticipated something dire and unmendable. Kirk un derstood
that. A captain's sixth sense. He could feel
when something was crooked.

He avoided the area where Spock was recuperating
and instead gestured in the other direction, toward the
morgue.

"If you'll come with me..."

McCoy appeared at the door of his office, his face
suddenly blanched as he saw Zennor. He didn't say
anything, but stepped out as if to follow them.

Before they reached the specially sealed doorway of
the morgue, the hiss of the outer door panel made them
turn.

Kirk had been anticipating speaking to Zennor alone
about the murder, but that wasn't going to happen
now.

Garamanus's tall form filled the doorway, chalky and
bloodless, his skullish face and animal eyes immediately
untrusting.

How could he know?

"Gentlemen," Kirk said, and gestured again.

McCoy silently stepped forward and keyed in the
security code. The morgue door slid open on a breath of
suction.

Without ceremony he led them to the body of their
crewmate--the headless body.

Zennor came a few steps into the room, then stopped.
Garamanus never made it past the doorway.

"We believe General Kellen did this before he arranged
to have himself beamed off our ship," Kirk said.
"I want you to know that none of my crew would ever be
involved in such an atrocity and that I stand in utter
condemnation of this act. I intend to log an official
request for extradition of Kellen for trial at Starfleet

187

Diane Carey

Command, although... the Klingons don't have a stellar
history of complying with Federation law."
Sounded too prepared, though he hadn't prepared it.
Some things had to be said, logged for official reasons, no
matter how stilted they sounded.
Neither of the horned beings said anything. No response
at all. They simply stared and stared. They didn't
blink.
McCoy stood aside, also not blinking, but he was
staring at the two of them instead of the body.
Kirk allowed them a couple of silent minutes--long,
long minutes--to absorb what they saw. He had no way
to tell how they felt about the dead person, whether their
astonishment was couched in loyalty of one crew member
to another, or actually in the devotion of friendship.
For all the clues he read in their faces, it could've been a
female and married to one of them. He just couldn't tell.
Finally he stepped between them and the body. "Can I
help explain this to your crew, perhaps?"
"We could never explain this," Zennor said tightly.
Slowly Garamanus shook his large horned mantle. His
voice was like gravel turning in a drum. "We could never
bring Manann back this way."
Zennor quickly said to Kirk, "You will have to dispose
of him before any of our crew sees this."
"A you wish," Kirk assured. "We'll do everything we
possibly can to ease the situation. How would you like us
to dispose of the body?"
Zennor looked at Garamanus for a moment, then
turned to Kirk and for the first time seemed dubious
about which course of action to take. "What... do you
do with your dead?"
In his sudden desire to offer at least one straight
answer, Kirk said, "Most of our cultures bury the body.
Some burn them. On the ship, if possible, we launch the
remains into a sun."
"Burn..." Garamanus visibly shuddered.
Zennor's eyes paled from red to sulfur. "In our culture,
we burn only the living."

188

FIRST STRIKE
Kirk stiffened. "The living?"
"Criminals," the Dana said. "Burning is punishment.
The dead must be honored."
Zennor added, "Some of our groups require keeping
the skuls of the dead with us for four generations before
they can be smashed."
Kirk didn't ask. They'd probably just explain and he
didn't want to hear that one.
Garamanus turned from the body and didn't look at it
any more. "Where is the soul?"
Perplexed, Kirk glanced at Zennor, then back to
Garamanus. "I'm sorry?"
"Manann's soul," the Dana said. "We must have it"
don't understand."

.
Suddenly McCoy's face went as white as Garamanus's

robe. "I think I do... gentlemen..."

He motioned toward the experimentation room and

led them to the archway.

Garamanus and Zennor had to dip their horns to go

inside, and once there they stopped in their tracks and

stared at the table.

Stared and stared, as if slugged. Far worse was this

stare than that with which they had looked at the

remains.

There on the cold table lay the piles of herbs, nuts,
clippings, hair, and assorted other relics, and the cut
pen remnant of the popper itself, its limp arms and legs

no longer supported by stuffing, its open chest showing

loose threads, its tiny head d those yarn tentacles

canted to one side.

Garamanus turned away from what he saw, and his

eyes were terrible on Kirk. "What are you people?"

Silence fell like an ax blade.

Feeling suddenly unwashed, Kirk felt patent shame at

not having trodden his course more delicately.
transgressed more sensitive ground
They had and he had let it happen.

than mere territory,
"We meant no insult," he submitted. "We didn't

189

Diane Carey
realize how important this is to you. To us, it's just a
stuffed doll."
"Vergokirk," Garamanus chafed, "do you devour your
young?"
Kirk weighed the question, but saw no other way to
answer it. "No, of course we don't."
"Neither do we. But if we did, this is what it would be
like."
"You're joking!" McCoy reacted, then suddenly realized
he might be committing another error, glanced at
Kirk, and clamped his mouth shut.
"The mannequins are representatives of each of us,"
Zennor told them slowly. "Wherever we go, they tell our
life stories. When we go into battle, we leave them
behind, or send them in a safe pod. It is honored as if it is
the person. This... it is desecration."
"Oh, no," McCoy uttered, so softly that only Kirk
heard. His face blanched, his eyes like a cat's in a
flashlight. "I'm truly sorry," he said genuinely. "I didn't
realize!"
With a crisp warning Kirk began, "Bones--"
"No, no, it was my blunder. Please don't blame
Captain Kirk for this, or any of our crew. I take full
responsibility. I had no idea this would be any kind of
affront. Is there some way I can apologize to your crew?
If there's anything I can do, I'll gladly do it."
"McCoy, stand down," Kirk snapped.
Irritated and jaundiced with deep mortal panic,
McCoy started to speak again, but caught the captain's
glare and managed to stop himself before the error
compounded.
Kirk smoldered with the level of tension he'd been
driven to, but an instant later demanded better of
himself. He understood what McCoy was going through.
As a starship captain, his successes had always been
magnified, but so were his blunders. He'd learned the
hard way that a well-maneuvered pause could ease a bad
situation and ordered with his eyes and posture that
190

FIRST STRIKE

McCoy give himself that pause before anything else
happened.
What else could happen? He had trouble imagining
the shuddering rage in Garamanus's face compounded
any more than it already was. Not only was the victim's
head gone, but McCoy had cut apart the poppet.
Measuring each word with what could only be caution,
Zennor looked at Garamanus and declared, "Accidents
were inevitable."
Feeling his skin contract, Kirk bit back the weighty
declaration that this was no accident, but damned cold-blooded
murder. He knew instantly how lucky he was,
and Zennor also was, that Garamanus chose not to point
that out himself.
Kirk had no way to establish, even for his own
comfort, how dangerous that silence was. And when he
couldn't think like those around him, he had no anchorage.
That bothered him. Bothered him big.
In a last bid for compassion, for both crews, for both
civilizations, he turned to Zennor.
"Let me help," he pleaded.
A shadow cast itself upon him and he stepped back.
Garamanus was beside him, above him.
The Dana's voice was like the slamming of a gavel.
"We will wait to see what the stars say."

"Absolutely nothing? You're sure?"
"We're sure, sir."
"Give me the rundown again."
Chief Barnes, head of the astrogeology, gave him a
pained look and pointed again at the row of bridge
monitors on the science side. "There's not much here,
sir."
Beside the chief, stellar cartographer Amanda Alto
and her brother, solar chemist Josh Alto, both looked too
young to be able to do the kind of jobs they were doing.
"As far as we can tell, sir," Josh said, "this sun went
through its first red-giant stage three to four thousand
years ago and incinerated all its inner planets, which is

191

Diane Carey

where life generally occurs. Actually, we don't even have
any way to know if there even were inner planetsre"
"Except for the number and orbits of the outer planets,
which may have changed considerably during the
expansion stage of the star," Amanda filled in. "There had to be something there."
"But there's no way to prove it," her brother added,
not to be outdone.
Kirk turned. "Any of the rest of you?"
There were seventeen science specialists and staff
technicians on the bridge, crowding both the upper and
lower decks. As he gazed at them, all the young faces,
peppered with a few older ones, all their minds crammed
with numbers and probability and measurements, extrapolations
of known data and theories of unknown
data, the culmination of thousands of years of learning
and in fact the very reason the starship could be out here
doing what it did, he was struck with the sad realization
that all these people were needed just to replace Mr.
Spock.
And he still needed Spock anyway.
From beside the command chair, Astr obiologist
Cantone broke the silence. "The remote cluster quark
resonance scanners, spectrometers, and thermal imagers
just aren't picking up anything that indicates there was
ever life in the solar system, sir."
"That doesn't mean there wasn't," Specialist Angela
Godinez from the astral life sciences department
pointed out. "It only means that any evidence of life was
destroyed when the sun went red giant."
"Chemical compositions of asteroids that might once
have been planetary matter don't give us any clues
either, sir," confirmed Astrogeologist Ross.
Others just nodded or shook their heads in canny
agreement. They all knew what he needed, and none
could provide it.
"If there ever was life here, sir," said Chief Barnes,
"there's no possible way to know it anymore."
Destitute. Billions of miles into space, and there was

192

FIRST STRIKE
nothing to show for it. An unthinkable risk, flying
haphazard into Klingon space, using the thinnest of
permissions to do so, likely as not a revoked permission,
and like an errant child Kirk had a chilling sensation
that the worst was yet to come.
He looked at the forward screen, showing Zennor's
ship cruising at warp speed two points off the port bow.
"They came to search for the past," he uttered, "and
there's none to find." He parted the sea of blue tunics
and pressed his thigh against the bridge rail.
"We'll keep looking, sir," Chief Barnes said with
unshielded, and rather pathetic, sympathy for him. "But
we won't find anything."
"I understand that," Kirk told him grittily, aggravated
that a stellar incident four thousand years ago should
have so biting an effect on the eighty-odd years allotted
to him in which he might get something done.
He turned toward the turbolift. "Captain?"
Against the shiny red lift doors, Zennor was a living
gargoyle, with one errant shadow creasing his horns.
Beside him, Garamanus was like something out of a
reversed negative in an old photograph, the image of
Zennor, with little of the color. Pale skin, white robes,
and for the first time Kirk noted that his pallor might
very well be from a life indoors, poring over historical
information, piecing together details, with little intimacy
to the outdoors and the brightness that bestows russet
cheeks. Even on the other side of the galaxy, things
couldn't be all that different.
"I'm sorry," he said to them both. "You've seen the
data. There's nothing left here to use as proof for any of
our theories."
He watched their faces and realized he was beginning
to glean expression from those bony, deerlike features
and the chromatic eyes. He thought of what McCoy had
said to him about seeing aliens as like himself instead of
unlike, and saw it now. Just a matter of getting used to
them, and then space began to grow smaller between
peoples.

193

Diane Carey
Was Zennor pleased? Was that the expression Kirk
was reading? If so, the other captain was trying not to
show it in front of Garamanus.
Made sense.
"If there is no proof," the deep voice began, "then we
must change our plans."
"There is no proof against us," Garamanus spoke up,
not facing him, "The Danai will not change yet."
But Zennor did turn. This evidence is insufficient. I
will not launch invasion based upon poor data. We must
have absolute proof."
"No proof is nothing," the Dana said, gritting his--whatever
those were. "This is our space. All things lead
to this area."
Zennor seemed to grow taller. "You wanted it to."
The two massive beings squared off as the Starfleet
audience watched from below, and it was as if the two
were alone, as if Kirk and all the others had skidded
away on the thin ice beneath them.
"I always suspected you of being an unbeliever,"
Garamanus charged. "Why, if you did not believe, did
you sign up for this mission? The most important mission
of all our civilization's history?"
"Because I do believe we were cast out. But I do not
want our civilization impaled upon that belief. There is
no greater evil than that which was done to us. I will not
have us become what we hate."
Sensing that he was losing control of the bridge, if not
the situation, Kirk yanked it back by stepping toward
them and saying, "No one says you can't come here. If
your civilization wants to move, there are ways to do
that. There are habitable planets in Federation space.
You're welcome to them. We'll help you. You can live in
peace, settle, raise your--"
Flocks, herds, spawn?
"Young."
They were both looking at him now, and if he could
indeed read their expressions, then the expressions were
very different.
194

FIRST STRIKE

"You two can debate about this later," he plowed on,
"but we've got to get out of Klingon space. I know you
think well of your ship, but you don't know what the
Klingon fleet really is. We'll give you sanctuary, but we
must leave now."
"I've seen your ships," Garamanus rumbled. "You
have no idea what you stand against. You are less than an
annoyance to us."
Angry, Kirk raised his voice. "I don't stand against
you. Not yet."
Zennor stepped between them, raised his long clawed
hand to Kirk, but turned to face Garamanus again. "Are
these the conquerors? The drooling, snarling visions of
evil you have held up to us for generations? Every
essence of meanness and torture, delighting in agony?
Why do you not admit you are wrong? The stars are not
here, the proof is not here... the crew will be against
you when I show them this. We have come to find evil
and found the opposite. Can we fail to grow?"
He paused, waited to see if Garamanus would speak,
and when the Dana did nothing but stare, Zennor
gestured again at Kirk.
"We tell the conqueror we come to drive him out. He
offers us sanctuary. We are damaged. He offers repair.
We are attacked. He defends us. We tell him we have no
home. He offers to make room for us. Garamanus
Drovid, Dana of the Wrath, Keeper of the Magic Eggs
and the Gold Sickle, call up your wisdom and not just
your research, and tell me... is this the conqueror?"
The large tawny hand clenched so tightly that the long
fingernails seemed nearly to break the skin, then fanned
open and made a sharp gesture at Jim Kirk's chest.
Challenge boiled between the two impressive creatures.
Tension rolled heavily across the bridge, bringing
an ache to every head and a clench to every throat. No
one moved.
Standing on the tripwire, Kirk knew better than to
move and hoped his crew would take his example.
Reaching critical mass, Garamanus glared in bald

195

Diane Carey

provocation, but despite anticipation there was no
spring of attack, no roar of rage. When he finally spoke,
his voice was as passive as a foghorn. His decision,
evidently, had been made in those tight seconds, and
now he would abide.
"I wish to go back to my ship and be with my people."
Unsure to whom the sentence was directed, Kirk took
it upon himself as host to respond. "Transporter room
two will be standing by when you want it."
"Go back to the ship," Zennor sanctioned. "We will
send a message through the wrinkle. The conquerors are
not here. Our place is not here."
Without another word or look, Garamanus flowed
toward the turbolift and like some piece of a drifting
wind was suddenly gone.
The tension, most of it, went with him.
Well, some of it.
Kirk turned to his science staff. "Duty stations," he
ordered.
The flood of blue uniforms toward the lift was as much
a flood of relief. There was an uneasy pause as they
waited for the tube to clear and another lift to appear
there, enough for about half of them to 'leave; then
another two minutes lagged as the remaining science
staff huddled the hallway and Zennor by himself in the
other half until a third lift was able to arrive.
Then they left, and Zennor was again alone up there.
He and Kirk looked at each other.
Without turning away, Kirk said, "All stop."
He was surveying Zennor as if scanning a sculpture
and thinking about what he was going to say.
"I'm glad," he said at last, "that you found enough--or
enough lack--of information to convince you we're not enemies."
Zennor's weighty head bowed slightly out of the
shadow. "I am convinced not by what we found, but who we found." He offered Kirk a pause that was indeed
heartwarming. "If I had found only the Kling, we would
be occupying this space by now."

196
pFIRST STRIKE

Feeling suddenly better, and supremely gratified, Kirk
discovered after a few seconds that he was grinning. He
hadn't felt that coming on.
"Captain," Chekov said, straightening sharply at the
science station, "long-range sensors are reading a heavy
surge in warp-field exhaust, sir! The Klingon fleet is
coming inma very large fleet--at high warp speed!"
Kirk nodded and motioned t'or the young officer to
calm down, set a better example, and comprehend the
vastness of space. They had time to move. Not much,
but they had it.
He looked at Zennor. "We'd better wear ship and get
out of here or they'll hem us in. Now that we know
there's nothing here, there's no reason to stay."
Zennor--if that face could--offered what might've
been on the other side of the galaxy a smile. "You go. Let
me linger. I will happen to be here when they come. If
they attack, I am no conqueror to destroy them."
"It's tempting," Kirk allowed, "but no."
The thick horns drew an imaginary pattern on the
ceiling. "No matter, Vergokirk. Once we are among you
and you have our technology, you will be able to take
care of them yourselves." He lowered that drumbeat
voice and added, "You know you will have to eventua lly."
"People change, Vergo," Kirk wagered. "We have to
give them that chance."
He started to turn to the helm to usher Byers into a
new course, but Zennor said, "No, they don't change.
Good is good. Bad is bad."
Stifling any disappointment he might've been tempted
to show, Kirk took the high road. Mildly he said, "I guess
that's just another difference between us."

Every hospital has a morgue, and none wants one.
Leonard McCoy was in his, doing all those hundred
things a doctor is obliged to do once he has saved all he
can save and there is only clean-up work to do. Logging
the names of the dead, matching physical attributes and

197

Diane Carey

body marks to the official file of each, to make sure there
is no error, that no family gets the wrong letter from the
captain, and so each family knows with absolute certainty
that the body wrapped in silk and sent into the nearest
sun was indeed the son they would never get back. No
one should ever wonder. That was his job now, and he
took it with supreme care.
Now, after the battle, after the ground assault, after
the incident that asked of a serviceman the bottom-line
sacrifice, came the time that came so rarely, and he
realized in the midst of this sorry duty how lucky he
really was to have Jim Kirk for a captain. Kirk had many
reputations, saint or demon, depending on--what had
he said?--whether or not somebody agreed with his
work. And some who liked his work still didn't like him.
Call it jealousy, call it impatience, call it just another
method of doing business, some people just didn't like
him. A lot of people, in fact.
But he was a leader, not a politician, and being liked
was the last on his list. Some of his own crewmen didn't
like him, but that didn't matter. This shooting star they
were riding still had the lowest transfer rate of any ship
in the Fleet. And the waiting list was the longest of all
twelve starships.
Space was no fairyland and a charming captain did no
one any good. They signed on because they knew he
would fight for their lives. Down to the last man, he
would fight for each of them.
What mattered was times like this, when hundreds of
men had gone into battle and only nineteen failed to
come out of it. More than any other starship captain,
Kirk had a reputation for fundamentally despising the
death of a crewman. It was his own tragic flaw. He took a
shipmate's death personally. Sometimes too personally
for his own well-being, McCoy felt.
In order to be a physician he had long ago learned to
reconcile his bone-deep desire to preserve life and the
quality thereof with the analytical callousness every
doctor needed at times like this.

198

FIRST STRIKE
He placed the cool, rubbery hands of one' of the
Starfleet boys on the corpse's chest and covered him.
That was ten done. Time for a break.
He looked up, and found himself gazing at the...
whatever that poor individual was. It lay stark white and
uncovered, headless and horrible on its bench. He'd
been unable to go near it since the others left, timid
about breaking any more taboos before the captain and
the other captain decided what they wanted to do with it.
Yet it tugged at him. It was here, and though dead still
under his care. He found himself reticent to ignore it.
They all begged a few moments' final attention, and he
ached to give.
A sound in the outer ward shook him hard and he
fought to control himself. His nerves were on edge. Silly.
"Mr. Spock, if that's you getting up, I'll have your
stripes," he called.
He wiped his hands, scooped up the medical tricorder
he was using, and strode out of the morgue, gladly
leaving behind the chilly room for the time being. After
all, nobody in there was in any particular rush.
And he hungered now for a conversation, even a little
lashing back and forth with Spock. He was in the mood
for a semijovial insult, and didn't particularly care in
which direction the barbs flew. Barbs could make him
feel alive and he needed that.
The sight he met as he stepped out into the outer
offices was not Spock leaning on a doorjamb proclaiming
that he was perfectly well, thank you, but instead the
elongated and cloud-woven form of Garamanus.
McCoy froze, drew a breath, then bolted back on a
heel before he caught the edge of a desk and stopped
himself. He chided himself for not being used to aliens
by now, but these aliens...
Behind Garamanus was another of the horned beings,
and behind that one was a tall bony creature with
expanding membranes at rest between its arms and
thighs. Probably some form of perspiration control, or
mating consideration. Certainly locked in the appear-

199

Diane Carey

ance of otherworldliness, though, in the truest and most
supernatural sense of the word.
He tried to be clinical as he gazed at the creatures
crowding his door, blocking his way.
"May I help you?" he asked.
They said nothing, but moved a few steps into the
room, so the doorway no longer cramped them.
"Oh," he murmured after a few seconds, "have you
come for the remains? I haven't touched the body... I
didn't want to make any more mistakes or insult you
further in any way... if you'll come with me, I'll help
you prepare the body."
Perhaps that was just another mistake. They probably
wanted nothing to do with him, wanted him as far away
from their dead as they could push him.
Scarcely had his hand left his side to gesture toward
the morgue than the two beings behind Garamanus
disappeared...
No, they hadn't disappeared, but had simply moved so
fast that he didn't see, for they were on top of him.
He choked out halfa word, halfa cry for help or sense,
but there would be none of either, and they had him. The
horned being embraced him from behind in a grip like
sculpture, and the being with the membranes raised its
long thin arms. One of the membranes dropped over
McCoy's head and formed itself to his face and
shoulders as fitting as a fishnet. His lips pressed into the
rubbery membrane, he felt it compress into the hollows
of his eyes, bend his eyelashes, and cut off his breathing.
He could see nothing now but the milky membrane and
the outline of Garamanus moving toward him.
One feeble kick was the only motion of protest McCoy
could manage as he was lifted clear of the floor and
tipped sideways like a rolled rug on its way to the
cleanefts. Balance went to the wind. They were carrying
him--they were taking him away. They were kidnapping him.
They had to carry him through the main sickbay

200

FIRST STRIKE
entrance way in order to get out. Spock would be able to
see from the other ward. Spock would call for help.
He heard the swish of the door panel, but there was no
call from Spock, no demand that these brigands let the
doctor go.
What had they done to Spock?
As he waited for common sense to descend, for them
to come to their right minds and unroll him and apologize,
McCoy's last conscious thought was of the hard
pain caused by the medical tricorder as it gouged against
his chest.

201

Chapter Fifteen

"SPOCK. SPOCK, say something."
"McCoy. ."
"I think he's only stunned somehow, sir," Nurse
Christine Chapel said as she and Kirk knelt beside
Spock, whose narrow form lay sprawled on the deck a
few steps from his bed. "That's what I'm getting on these
readings. I've given him a muscle relaxant and a nerve
stimulant. He should come around in a minute."
"With his nerves and muscles arguing, no doubt."
"No doubt. Sir," Chapel added, glancing up at the
monitors and fingerpad desks set up at Spock's bedside,
"Mr. Spock had a stack of computer files here...
they're all missing. He might've had them put away, but
there hasn't been anyone in here to do that except me,
and I didn't do it. Do you think whoever did this
could've taken them too?"
Kirk kept a grip on Spock's arm, but was careful not to
push or pull, despite the urge to put his first officer back
on the bed which had been doing him so much good. But
he wasn't going to make that mistake again.
202

FIRST STRIKE

He was glad he had left Zennor on the bridge. Glad for
now, at least. "Is it safe to move him?"
The nurse gave him a floorside medical nod. "I'm
checking, sir."
"McCoy..."
"What about his other injuries?" Kirk asked the nurse.
"Has his recuperation been compromised in any way?"
"I don't think so," the nurse said, her voice rough with
concern. "They knocked him off the bed, but the antigravs
held on to him long enough that he had a relatively
soft landing. He might have some bruises."
"Spock." Kirk fixed a gaze on the narrow inkdrop eyes
and demanded of the Vulcan that he meet the stimulant
halfway and bring those thoughts out into the open. "We
know they took McCoy. Who did it? Did you see?"
He knew, and the suspicion was a cold metal ball in
his stomach. Garamanus.
Lying on his back, his knees supported by a pillow
hastily shoved under there to assist blood flow, Spock
blinked and struggled for consciousness. He looked like a
man coming out of phaser stun.
Might be exactly that. Zennor's technology packed a
punch, but there were explanations for that. Otherwise,
their power consumption and energy ratios weren't all
that unfamiliar. There was no notable reason their
,nethods of stun would be much different either.
Unless they had some kind of Vulcan neck pinch of
their own, which was a possibility too.
Spock fixed his eyes on Kirk and anchored there. He
caught Kirk's arm and used it for leverage as he tried to
raise his head.
His voice was a scratch.
"It was... the Furies..."

Fu ries.
What was that supposed to mean? Had Spock made
up a word? No, that didn't make sense. It also had never
happened before. Spock wasn't a making-up kind of
man.

203

Diane Carey

"Well?"
Kirk pressed up against the side of the diagnostic bed
until the edge cut into his legs.
Nurse Chapel watched the readout panel, nodded,
then sighed. "Much better now. Let's have a little more
of the magic bullet--"
She checked her hypo, then pressed it to the hollow of
Spock's shoulder and made it hiss.
Tense with effort, Spock suddenly relaxed and was finally able to quiet the interior struggle and look at Kirk
with lucid eyes.
"Pardon me, Captain .... "He seemed greatly relieved
to be able to make the connection between the
complex racing of his mind and the articulation of his
voice. "How did they get off the ship with the doctor?"
"They stunned the technician manning it the same
way they did you. You're on to something, Spock. What
is it? You said 'Furies." What's that mean?"
"I was still dazed, sir."
"But you said it. What does it mean?"
Spock's expression told Kirk that whatever had been
discovered was probably not scientific.
"A myth?" the captain pushed. "Some of that material
McCoy found? You said you were going to follow that
thread. Come, Spock, it's critical."
"Yes, of course... I was studying early civilizations
in our quadrant and their mythological bases for fact.
Kirk gritted his teeth, then said, "And you found..."

"I found a striking, in fact quite disturbing, similarity
between Zennor's people and a clutch of mythological
figures called the Furies." His body tightening with
strain, Spock reached for the fingerpads, then paused.
"The files--did you take them, Captain?"
"No. The people who attacked you took them."
Spock's brows drew tight. "Why would they have
taken my files?"
Kirk felt his hands go cold again. "They knew we were
doing research into the past, to try to identify them. And

204

FIRST STRIKE
they know you're the science officer. I told Zennor we
were looking through our historical data, searching for
correlations. He probably told Garamanus. I doubt he
suspected Garamanus would do anything like this. What
difference does it make? You didn't find anything conclusive,
did you?"
Genuine alarm burst out of Spock's controlled expression,
long enough for Kirk to get the gravity of the theft.
"Captain... this is dangerous."
"What is? Can you show me?"
"Let me call it up."
The access to the fantastic log of information was
eerily silent for long seconds, then came to life suddenly,
as if pleased to show off what it had found.
Above, three of the screens popped full of pictures of
horrendous fantasy beings, Medusa-types with snakes
for hair and flamelike wings, nappy green skin, and
pointed teeth.
Kirk hadn't paid attention to this stuff since he was ten
years old. Fantasy. He was instantly ill at ease. Numbers,
flight plans, light-years--he could deal with the concrete.
But not this.
"The Furies," Spock said, "are images from Greco-Roman
mythology. They were beings, generally portrayed
as female, who pursued and punished crimes that
had gone unavenged. Quite unpleasant.-Ultimately they
were associated with demonic behavior, but always with
the element of reprisal."
"Reprisal chasing down the '
,

conquerors and
kicking them out."
Spock moved his brows. "It certainly could be taken
that way. The element of banishment or uncleanliness is
deeply rooted in our cultures, Captain, and particularly
in Earth culture. We would be quite remiss in our
research if we failed to recognize the surprising similarity
between these beings and images like the Furies, and
witches and goblins as manifested in our own histories.
These are images of which we are inherently afraid."

205

Diane Carey
Lips cracking as he pressed them flat, Kirk asked,
"Mr. Spock, are you trying to tell me that these people
are witches?"
Pliantly Spock's dark eyes left the screens and moved
to Kirk. "There are not true witches in the colloquial
manifestation. I am saying they are archetypes. General
representations, or they look like general representations
found easily in our cultures."
"So Bones was right."
"Yes, the doctor was right. These people now have my
files, and they will see themselves all over our culture, or
at least things like themselves, and they may take those
similarities as some form of gospel. And they'll also see
that we are inherently frightened of them. They have
built a civilization of very small clues, and thus will take
these pictures quite seriously."
"If you're kicked out of your homeland," Kirk said,

'le" He
"any little bits you have left become valuable." He picked up the crescent etching from the table beside
Spock and looked at it, feeling as if half the galaxy were
about to bump up against the other half with himself in
the middle. He put his other hand on the edge of Spock's
bed as if to connect himself to the ship physically. "If all
you have is your beliefs, you cling all the more tightly to
them."
"Yes," the Vulcan said. "And--"
"Captain?"
Uhura. They hadn't even heard the gush of the corridor
panel.
"In here," Kirk called.
"Sir?" She was there, but couldn't see them from the
other side of the two diagnostic beds.
"On the deck," Kirk added.
"Oh, my!" She came plunging around the foot of
Spock's bed, arms loaded with computer cartridges.
"Sir! Mr. Spock, what happened?"
She knelt quickly beside Nurse Chapel.
"Just a friendly attack," Chapel reported sandily.
206

FIRST STRIKE

"Oh, Mr. Spock..." Uhura's lovely dark face, usually
the essence of reserve, now became animated with
concern.
"Don't worry," Chapel said. "He's in the best of
hands."
Aware of her attention, which had proven in the past
much less curable than a bad spinal injury, Spock looked
past her to Uhura. "You have a report, Lieutenant?"
"Oh, yes, yes," the communications specialist said.
She held up one of the cartridges. "Dr. McCoy's lead on
old druid culture turned up a half-dozen matches right
away. 'Verge' could be 'vergobretos' or 'bretan,' which
was a tribal chief. A captain of sorts, sir. The 'Danarms'
were the priests, or those with special gifts."
"Those are too close for comfort," Kirk commented as
he snatched another pillow from the bed and handed it
to Chapel, who carefully put it under Spock's head so he
would be more comfortable while she stabilized him.
"It certainly made me shiver," she agreed. "And I was
bothered by the ship's name, so I tracked that in old
Gaelic. It's not 'Wrath' as in 'anger." It's 'Rath' without a
'w." It's an Old English derivative of the word 'rathe,'
meaning 'early.""
"Early..."
"Yes, and it's also an ancient Irish word meaning
'earthwork' or 'hill." I would say the most accurate
translation would be 'fortress.""
"An early fortress." With a thoughtful frown, Kirk
looked at Spock. "A scout ship?"
"It fits," Spock confirmed as he lay there on the deck
with Chapel working over him.
"This makes a big problem for us," Kirk said. "If
they're anchored in their myths, then they're willing to
act upon them. If their myth tells them to find their
home space, and they want it back, that means they're
prepared to take it back."
Spock tilted his head. "Meaning?"
"Meaning you don't send just one ship for that.

207

Diane Carey

Zennor's not telling me something and I think I know
what it is. I think there might be a fleet waiting for
instruction from him. Him... or Garamanus."
"We have no proof of that."
"I can't afford to wait for proof. I have to act on my
instincts. Now Garamanus has those files and he can
show them to whoever sent them here."
"You believe they are communicating with someone
on the other side of their portal somehow?"
"What good would it be if they couldn't?"
"Very little... Zennor says he cannot go back."
"That's what he says."
Silence dropped between them for a few moments,
long enough for them to hear the emptiness of sickbay,
the passive twitter of the diagnostic panel above Spock,
the whisper of some machine in the lab that had been left
on to do whatever it was doing, the mournful presence of
that sliced-up poppet beyond that door over there.
"I am sorry, Captain."
Kirk looked up. "For what?"
Spock's face was cast in regret and he didn't mind
showing it. "I know you have forged a kind of synthesis
with Captain Zennor... a friendship."
Bitter, Kirk gazed at the deck. How often had this
happened to him in his life? To find synthesis, to have
commonality, to make friends with someone, only to
have that friendship blistered and ultimately sundered
by some outside consideration. Competitors at Starfleet
Academy, at Starfleet itself, in space, where his drive for
the win had also driven a stake into the heart of any
chance for amicable feelings when all was over.
And in deep space, there had been flat-out enemies he
wished he could've known better.
But when the smoke cleared, he always stood alone.
Some fences damned mending, and certainly climbing.
He'd had to turn away time after time, leaving animosity!
where he had wished to have comradeship.
That was why, he realized in this moment particularly,
he cherished and so unflinchingly defended and pro-!

208

FIRST STRIKE
tected both Spock and McCoy. They had stood with him
and never given in to the differences between themselves
and him, as so many others had.
Differences. Differences.
Damned differences.
Suddenly he was mad again. "The friendship's about
to be tested."
"How soT'
"I'll tell you how. I'm beaming over to that ship and
get our doctor back. And while I'm there I'm going to see
exactly what it is that we're up against."
He punched the nearest comm. "Kirk to bridge. Put
Captain Zennor on."
The blade in his voice evidently came across for all it
was worth, because Nordstrom didn't respond.
Very quietly, Spock asked, "Are you going to tell him,
Captain?"
"I don't know. I promised I'd help him .... "
The Vulcan's face was limned with concern. "That
could be most imprudent."
"I know."
"This is Zennor."
"We have a problem. Your Dana and others have
attacked my first officer and kidnapped my doctor."

"Garamanus. . . kidnapped your McCoy?"

"He did and I'm not taking it well." '7 must go to my ship immediately."
"I'm going with you, and I'm bringing a Security
team."
"They will be killed instantly. You must come with me
alone, if you insist upon coming. We can only go there one
time. I will give you the modulation to drop the block of
your transporter beam, but as soon as we go, they will
change it again. But we must go immediately. It is your
McCoy's only chance."

209

Chapter Sixteen

"VERY daNgEROUS for you to be here now. If there is
reaction, I cannot protect you."


"I'll take my chances. Where's my chief surgeon?" .

"Come with me. Prepare yourself."

Not very reassuring, as phrases went.

The tour through Zennor's ship was skin-chilling. Like

wandering through a cave behind a suddenly agile bat.

Zennor, who had moved with such cautious reserve

down the broad, bright, open corridors of the Enterprise,
now skirted down shoulder-wide passages coated with

dark velvety moss and overhung with some kind of web.

Kirk stumbled several times until his eyes adjusted,
then stumbled a little less, but the deck was nearly

invisible in the dimness. He felt he was stepping foot by

foot through the chambers of a hornet's nest. Somehow

they had beamed directly into these veins and now were

moving through them.

There was something beneath his feet, not carpet or

deck, but a litter of crunchy and mushy matter, all

different sizes, different textures, as if he were treading

over a dumping ground. Fungus gave under his weight

210

FIRST STRIKE

and puffballs popped as he stepped on them. Other
things cracked. The air was thick and musky with smells
both plant and animal.
When he thought he couldn't stand another meter of
the cloying dimness and moss that grasped at his hair
and arms, Zennor led him out into a broader cavern,
though still coated with growing plant life--and a sense,
if not a visible presence, of other life, of eyes watching
him. To all outward senses, he and Zennor were alone
here.
But Kirk had spent his life being looked at. He knew
when it was happening. There were beasts in the walls.
No, the walls didn't have eyes, but they did have
punctures, dark recesses from which more of those skulls
peered out, many skulls, but not humanlike skulls. There
were many kinds, some belonging to creatures he hadn't
seen yet but now assumed were here. Unless they were
dragging along the skulls of aliens they met on their
voyages, Zennor's amalgamated crew was even more
amalgamated than Kirk had first guessed. These were
most likely the skulls of fallen comrades.
So they kept the skulls of some, and the "souls" of
others. And who could tell what else? Foreign cultures
could be very complicated.
Suddenly he wanted the chance to get to know them
better, and felt that chance slipping away as he dodged
behind Zennor up their icy slope.
He forced himself to ignore the skull niches as he
hurried behind Zennor, also forcing himself not to
bellow an order to move even faster.
All at once they burst out into a blinding brightness,
creased with the noise of hundreds of voices making
disorganized, wild cheers and chants. Kirk shaded his
eyes and paused until they adjusted, then tried to look.
The chamber was enormous, as big as a stadium and
half again taller, lit with green and yellow artificial light,
and twisting with a white haze created by vents dearly
spewing the stuff near the ceiling. From the configuration
of the Rath, he guessed they were near the aft end. So the

211

Diane Carey

propulsion units weren't back here, but somehow arranged
elsewhere. He'd have to remember that--
But thoughts of hardware and strategy fled his mind as
he looked up, and farther up.
In the center of the huge foggy chamber stood--yes, stood--a giant mannequin in humanoid form, with a
head, two arms, two legs, like a vast version of one of
those poppers, except that this mannequin was a good
six stories tall and made entirely of slats of wood and raw
tree branches, and veined with braided straw or some
kind of thatch. Its arms stood straight out like a rag
doll's, bound at the wrists with some kind of twine; its
legs ended at the ankles, with only stumps of chopped
matter for hands and feet.
Bisecting the hollow arms, legs, and torso of the
wickerwork giant were narrow platforms -- scarcely
more than slats themselves, but enough to stand upon--and
there, in the middle of the straw giant's see-through
right thigh, Leonard McCoy hovered twenty-five feet
above the deck.
The doctor clung pitifully to the twisted veins of
thatch, looking down upon a gaggle of cavorting beings,
all types of misshapen vagabond demons, from the
snake-headed beings to the horned ones to those more
squidlike than anything else, and the others who looked
as if they had wings.
Evidently this was Zennor's crew, dancing around the
straw legs of the monster, laying more straw and twigs in
heaps around the giant's ankles, and chanting while they
did this.
The Furies. Even if it wasn't them, it described them now.
Kirk stared, measuring the critical elements, consumed
for a moment with astonishment and a bad chill.
He knew a preparation for a bonfire when he saw one.
Stepping forward from the entrance way, he felt the
green-tinted light reflect off the topaz fabric of his
uniform shirt and sensed how bizarre his facial features

212

FIRST STRIKE
must look with that light cast from below, like something
boys would see playing with tlashlights in a pup tent.
"Jim!" McCoy knelt on the slats and called down,
pushing his face between the veins of thatch.
Kirk turned to Zennor. "What is this?"
Zennor gazed at him with ferrous eyes that held no
apology. "Punishment."
The crew of the Rath, at least the off-duty crew
presumably, jumped and rushed, chanting all the way,
around the giant straw mannequin in a gansly kind of
organization, each going his own way at his own pace,
but all going in the same direction. They deposited
bundles of straw, branches, and even whole trees at the
ankles of the giant. Their metal wristbands, chains,
medallions, bracelets, and belts bounced and rang, creating
a fiendish jangling in the huge hall. On their metal
belts, many of them had those linen poppets, each in the
rough image of the wearer, doing another kind of dance.
As Zennor stood before him in his dominating and
statuesque manner, Kirk was careful to stand still, not
attract any more attention than necessary until he could
size things up.
A sundry train of beings broke off from the dancing
circle and hurried toward him and Zennor. It took all of
Kirk's inner resolve to stand still and let Zennor handle
his own crew.
The horrendous gagsic descended upon them in a rush
until the last four feet, when they skidded to a stop and
made Kirk glad he was still wearing his portable translator,
because they were all speaking at once.
"We're home!" a winged thing said to Zennor.
"The Dana told us the news!" crowed an elongated
creature that seemed to have no bodily mass other than
bones thinly veiled with rubbery brown skin. It would've
looked like a Halloween skeleton, appropriately enough,
except that it had four arms.
A tentade-head repeated, "The Dana told us the
good news!"

213

Diane Carey
"This is our place!" someone else trilled in a high
voice, clearly meant to congratulate their leader.
"The Dana had no authority, Morien," Zennor said.
His voice had a tenor of bottled rage. "You should be at
your posts."
"But we have a criminal, Vergozen," the tentacled
person said, and looked at Kirk. "Is this another one?"
The "it" gestured at Kirk.
"He is here for the final visitation," Zennor snarled,
and Kirk couldn't tell whether it was sarcasm or not.
Then Zennor motioned for Kirk to move past them.
"Fetch me the Dana."
Morien quickly said "Yes, Vergozen!" and skittered off
into the crowd.
Kirk took his cue and moved toward the wicker
colossus. Other creatures seemed uninterested in him,
though many glanced up in mild curiosity. They were involved in their work and looking forward to what they
were about to do. They didn't seem to care about visitors
who walked in with their captain.
He came to the bottom of one straw leg, as big around
as a warp engine, close enough to speak to McCoy in a
normalish voice, without attracting attention.
"Bones," he began tentatively, "you all right up
there?"
"So far." The doctor gripped the reedy filaments of the
colossus. "Did they hurt Spock?"
"They knocked him off his bunk. Chapel's taking care
of him. I've never seen her so happy."
"Are the Klingons here yet?"
"Just popped onto our long-range. We were about to
make a border run when you turned up missing. Now I'll
settle for anything I can get away with."
Frustrated, McCoy glanced around, then reached
down with a toe and found a lower slat, and climbed
do wn through the wooden webbing until he could stand
inside the giant's right leg, just above the knee. He could
only make it about another seven feet down before the
straw webbing stopped him.
214

FIRST STRIKE
"Jim... they're going to set fire to this."
Caught with empathy, Kirk nodded and tried to be
clinical. "Yes, I know. I'm working on it."
"I broke their laws with that damn doll. You might not
be able to do anything about it."
"Don't make any bets."
"I don't want to," the doctor said. "Jim, listen--when
they put me in here, they shoved in a lot of other things.
They put my medical tricorder in with me, and all this
other stuff." He maneuvered with difficulty, having to
stand on slats of bowing straw twisted to provide a
foothold that was obviously temporary, and scoop up
bits of material from around him. "There are thigh and
hand bones here ... and hanks of hair, skin scrapings
.. and this bony plate is the back part of a cranium."
"The place is full of skulls."
"Yes, I know. But this skull is Andorian!"
"That's not possible," Kirk said, but it came out with
a terrible resignation that surprised even him.
McCoy raised a long gray bone, scored with cracks.
"And this thighbone... it's human. From Earth. It's a
perfect D.N.A match." He leaned on the slat with one
knee and held up his medical tricorder with his other
hand.
"Could they have acquired it here in the past twenty-four
hours?"
"They could've. Except that they'd have had to raid an
archeology lab for this. It's old as a bristlecone pine!"
"How old is that?"
"As nearly as I can estimate, it's over four thousand
years old. A human bone!"
"Bones, are you sure about this?"
"I've had nothing else to do in here"
"They put those in there with you just now?"
"Just a half hour ago. I think they're raiding their own
coffers and placing things in here that look physiologically
like me. At least to their minds. Some kind of
symbolic connection--who knows?"
"Can you explain the D.N.A link?"

215

Diane Carey

The doctor scowled. "I'm not saying that humans or
Klingons went out into space and met these people, but
I'm wondering if somehow these people ended up on our
planets a long time ago and affected our beliefs. If a
shipload of Vulcans showed up on Earth in the fourteen-hundreds,
they'd sure be taken for devils."
"And life has been around the galaxy for millions of
years. Is it really any surprise if Earth, Vulcan, the
Klingon homeworld, and a lot of other planets might've
had visitations?"
"Given the numbers, I'd be surprised if they hadn't."
McCoy squirmed for a better grip.
Kirk gripped the straw spokes too, as if to make a
connection. "The dangerous bottom line is that it's
beginning to look like this was their space."
"Then we'd all better get used to carrying pitchforks,"
McCoy said, "because I think that's the conclusion." He
held up the human thighbone and shook it. "Unless they
killed a human in the past twelve hours and somehow
made this bone appear to my readouts as if it were four
to six thousand years old. I think we got that mythological
stuff from our Greeks and Egyptians and druids, but I
think the Greeks and Egyptians and druids got it from them."
He swept the medical tricorder to indicate the circle of
aliens, then reached out between the wood and straw and
tossed the tricorder to Kirk.
"If I don't make it, you've got to take that to Spock,"
he said urgently. "I don't mind being right, but this time
I was even more right than I had the sense to know. It's
not just a coincidence that these people look like our
legends and myths of evil. They are our legends and
myths of evil!"

A sight within a sight.
Furies and fire.
In the center of the great hall, twisted with manufactured
fog and looming nearly to the ceiling, the straw
giant had no face and no hands, only the bound strands

216

FIRST STRIKE
of thatch to make up the most base form of' intelligent life. On the walls, carved forms of animal heads and
double-headed statues flared down in carnal images of
the beings dancing below.
"Have you got your phaser with you?"
McCoy's question was subdued.
"Yes," Kirk said. "They didn't take it away. I don't
know if that's courtesy or they're just not afraid of it. It's
not because they're stupid, I'll bet."
Around them a drumbeat began, low and not very
steady, timpani made of skin stretched over some kind
of iron cauldron. Horned beings like Zennor were
pounding them with thighbones the same as the one
McCoy had shown him.
"Jim," the doctor began.
Kirk turned. "What?"
"Ify..u .can't. get me out of her,e, and they light this up,"
McCo stud with great struggle, use the phaser on me"
Anguish pushed at the backs of Kirk's eyes as le
looked up and saw McCoy for the fullness of his character
at that instant, McCoy hadn't asked him to open up
on these creatures in order to get him out of here, to
incinerate them in order to spare him incineration,
never mind that a single phaser could easily do that.
Hundreds could be killed in a single sweep, much more
painlessly than the death they were offering the doctor
now.
McCoy didn't want that. He'd take the death, but he
wanted to make sure that his life was the only sacrifice
and that, if there was still a chance for peace, he should
die to smooth that path of possibility.
"Understood,"
throat. "I
Kirk accepted. Sympathy tightened his
promise."
Each knew a heavy price was being asked here, and a

terrible guilt to be risked. The space between them was a

cursed thing.

He stepped back, through the chanting circle of aliens,
to where Zennor stood waiting, colossal in his own way,
perhaps vile in the same way.

217

Diane Carey

"You know I won't let them do this to him," Kirk said.
"Nor would I, were he mine," Zennor said. "There are
customs."
Abruptly petulant, Kirk squared off in front of him.
"Where I come from we have laws instead of customs to
rule us. We have trials before we have punishment. What
about that?"
"He mutilated Manann's soul. He admitted it. He
wished to atone. This is atonement."
"This is villainy. One crime doesn't absolve another.
Are you going to stand there and let this occur?"
Zennor did not answer. In fact, he was no longer
looking at Kirk.
"There are other crimes," Kirk pushed, not caring
anymore if he was being rude. He all but shouted across
the chasm of distrust that had cracked between them.
"Theft, for one. Garamanus stole several computer
records from my ship. That's Starfleet property. I want
them back, untouched."
"What is upon them?"
"Give them back. Then we'll discuss it." In mortal
panic of pressing the situation too far, too fast for
McCoy's good, too fast to get back the records and the
volatile information upon them, Kirk reined in his tone.
He held out a supplicant hand. "There has to be some
line of trust between us, or we have nothing and our
cultures have nothing on which to build. I know you
don't want that."
The entreaty burned in his throat, for it was a lie. He
knew the tangled truth and dared not tell yet. If possible,
he would introduce these people to the weird truth
slowly to explain it, gradually enough to make them
digest the distance in time from the common element,
whatever that element turned out to be, and that whatever
happened five thousand years ago, there was no one
here to answer for it anymore. Slowly, he hoped, enough
to explain that whoever the conquerors were, they
couldn't have been Terrans, Vulcans, Romulans, Orions,
or even Klingons. The years just weren't right.

218

FIRST STRIKE
That message had to' be delivered with finesse, of
which at the moment Kirk possessed not a drop.
Zennor looked past him, gazing instead at a new
presence moving out of the greenish haze toward
them.
Spinning quickly, out of instinct, Kirk found himself
staring up at the imposing half-moon eyes of Garamanus.
Zennor stepped out and met him. "Why have you
done this?"
"You know why," the Dana said. "This is our home
space. The Danai are correct."
The galloping crew slowed down and few by few began
to stop and watch the power struggle play out. None
seemed surprised, though all were tense, and Kirk drew
the sensation that this was an old struggle between the
quest of the Dana/and the hard science of machines and
pilots, a struggle thousands of years old, today coming to
a head.
"You have no proof," Zennor said when his crew
dropped to a sizzling quiet and listened. He stepped
closer to Garamanus. "You have told them a lie."
The reaction of the crew was bizarre--but somehow
familiar to Kirk, who had seen many kinds of humanoids
and aliens and had learned to read for clues. Color
changes, changes in the shapes of eyes, altered posture.
He saw all those now. Had anyone ever called a Dana a
liar before?
Kirk entertained a particular shiver and kept his
mouth shut.
"I know their secrets
, the Dana told him. "I have
seen their memories. They are the conquerors."

The priest indicated Kirk somehow without moving very much at all.

Relatively clear. Somehow he had managed to read the files even with mechanics from all the way across the galaxy.

While they were gone, power had shifted. How could they get it back?

219

Diane Carey

"We are not conquerors," Kirk said. "I refuse to
concede the point. The past you're talking about is all
finished and all you have left is a festered memory. I'm
urging you not to act on it."
"It is not festered," Garamanus said. "It is the Veil of
Evermore and as real as you are. When we light the effig y
and burn the one who cuts souls, it will be the beginning
of our onslaught. We know who you are." He clasped the
medallion hanging at his chest and turned it upward for
the mirror side to show. Kirk saw the flickering reflection
of his own face. "And we know who we are."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kirk demanded.
Garamanus clasped his own medallion, but did not
hold it up. "We each wear a mirror, to be sure we will
never forget what the damned look like. Until now, we
held them only to ourselves. But that is all changed. Now
we are not the cast-out, the despised, the unclean
anymore... you are."
The Dana kept the small mirror up, and in it Kirk
continued to see his own flushed face.
He reached out and pushed the mirror down.
"We did what you asked," he went on persistently,
unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. His
words sped up. "We investigated your data and it turned
out to be nothing. There's no scientific proof--"
"You have not disproven us," the Dana said.
"But not proven either," Zennor claimed.
In the full flower of his newly acquired mantle, Garamamus
raised his opal horns. "Thousands of years ago
the Danai decided you would not understand these
things. There are millions of little clues."
"But we have not found proof" Zennor said again, his
voice echoing in the huge chamber now that the chanting
had fallen away.
"It is proven to me," Garamanus said, "and to them."
He made a long, confident gesture at the circle of Furies,
while above it all McCoy huddled fearfully in his straw
prison in the middle of the circle. The Dana was very

220

FIRST STRIKE
different now from the way he had been when gennor
had embarrassed him on the Enterprise.
Zennor was different too. He was defending the future
and Garamanus was defending the past. A pure, strange
clash of two things which could never meet, but which
today found embodiment in these two beings.
"Listen!" Zennor called to his crew. "You will decide
between us! Come around us and listen."
His hands tingling and cold, Kirk slowly slipped the
strap of the medical tricorder over his head and slipped
one arm through. He reached around behind his back
and drew his palm-sized phaser unit and brought it
around front. It rested in his palm, warm with ready
energy. If he opened up on all these beings, wide
dispersal, he could betray the oaths both he and McCoy
swore they would live by, slaughter them all in an
instant.
Or he could aim at McCoy and do as he had sworn he
would. The most duty-binding promise anyone could
make to another--I'!l end your life before the pain
comes.
The desire to rush forward almost crushed his lungs.
But what could he do? Pull that woven straw apart with
his bare hands? It was as tight as steel cord.
Could he phaser it open with a narrow beam? Yes... if he could get close enough. But there were fifty strands
of that stuff to cut apart before he could get McCoy out,
and that would take time.
As the crew moved closer, uneasy, Garamanus faced
Zennor. "The Klingon recognized us. They all know us.
He knows who we are." Pointing at Kirk, the Dana
narrowed his strange eyes. "This is our quadrant and
you are colluding with the conquerors!"
"He led us here," Zennor accused, calling to the crew
and pointing at Garamanus. "The planets to which he
brought us are gone. I have seen the place. There are no
planets, there is no proof, there is nothing. Now he wants
us to kill these people and take what is theirs. We have

227

Diane Carey
squandered whole lifetimes in the Danai quest for power.
Shall we crawl into the pit with them and their errors?
I will not! The Danai are our inner conquerors! Which of
you will come forward to defend this one?"
His voice drummed. He was fighting to get his crew
back.
And they were vacillating, Kirk could see.
Garamanus raised one hand, scarcely a gesture at all,
and dropped his medallion to fall again to the bottom of
its chain; from the circle of beings there came a dozen or
so breaking off from the others and charging toward
them.
Kirk plunged backward against the nearest wall, but
the charging Furies weren't coming for him--they were
coming for Zennor. He tried to think of this happening
on his ship, with his crew, but couldn't
Perhaps here, with their odd rules, this wasn't considered mutiny at all. Garamanus was in charge, and he had

made his order, unthinkable ,though it seemed.

"Zennor!" Kirk snapped. ' Do something or I will!"

He raised his phaser. Abruptly he realized why Zennor

let him keep the weapon. He was the living failsafe. If

things went too far wrong, everything would be ended

here and now.

But the other captain ignored him and even ignored

the rushing creatures of his own crew. He countered the

rush by plunging directly at Garamanus.

Instantly the two horned beings twisted in a bitter

embrace, glowing with crackling electricity generated

somehow by their bodies. Yellow lightning knitted their

horns and ran up their arms and ringed their necks.

Their eyes changed color as if boiling from within from

some kind of biologically generated energy base.

Kirk shielded his face. All he could do was press his

hip against the wall and fend off the sparks with his

arms.

The Furies skidded to a halt and gave ground as

Zennor and Garamanus whipped toward Kirk; then

balance changed and the two grappling leaders plunged

222

FIRST STRIKE

toward the wicker mannequin, falling against it and
causing the straw to smoke and turn black.
McCoy huddled back, but there wasn't far for him to
go, and there was nowhere for him to hide.
With the Dana's huge hands coiled around his throat,
Zennor grimaced horribly and seemed to call up the
determination given to him by his own secret hopes for
his civilization. He freed one of his own hands from his
own grip on Garamanus and reached out for a strand of
the coiled straw.
Kirk craned to see. The coiled straw was stiff and firm
as a dockline. How could it be moved?
But Zennor was moving it. Somehow he had the
strength to bow out the strand, to pull it toward him.
Roaring for a last surge of power, he thrust Garamanus's
head under the strand, then let the straw snap back into
place, taking the Dana with it.
Caught by the throat between two cords of straw rope,
the Dana clutched at the thing strangling him, but
Zennor cranked hard on the wicker and took hold of one
of the horns in Garamanus's head, pushing him deeper
into the deadly netting.
"Who is Vergobretos?" Zennor boomed at the undecided
crew.
His voice filled the huge chamber, and echoed over
and over. He swung his free arm violently and pushed
Garamanus farther down with the other.
The Dana struggled. Not dead yet.
The Furies stared, waved their fists--or what cretin
and bellowed some kind of chant that Kirk didn't
understand.
Now Zennor took that free hand and grasped the straw
vein nearest to Garamanus. He gripped it hard and it began to smoke. The energy that had flowed through the
two angry, dangerous beings now flowed into the strand
of straw and set it smoldering.
Sparks cracked, and the straw grew hotter, then
popped into flame.
Zennor held on despite the heat. The snapping flame

223

Diane Carey crawled toward Garamanus, who was now bluish in the
face and hands as his throat was crushed, though he
continued to struggle.

"Bones, keep back!" Kirk called over the crackle as the
flames ran up the straw form, drenching McCoy in
smoke so that he could hardly be seen.

He came up behind Zennor, though he couldn't dare
touch the body of the other captain while it was still
charged with energy. "Zennor," he called. "Stop what
you're doing. He's down. Back off."

But Zennor's hand remained tight on Garamanus.
Flames crawled up the outer superstructure of the
effigy's left leg and chewed at its torso, stretching out tall
into the upper regions and rolling along the left arm.

Huddled in the thigh of the right leg, McCoy waved
furiously at the smoke and counted seconds. "Jim!"
Kirk rushed to the right ankle of the giant. "Hang on!"
The creatures of the Rath's crew began to howl a cheer
and wave their arms, encouraging the climbing flames.
Now the straw giant had no head, but only a rolling ball
of fire. Kirk witnessed with a shiver the loyalty that a
commander could possess as opposed to a secondary
influence. Maybe this could only happen on a ship, but it
was happening here.

"Zennor! Back off!." Kirk called, disappointed that a
struggle and a quest that had gone on for millennia now
apparently came down to a physical fight between leaders
of two factions. He always wanted things to be loftier
than that, and so often complex circumstances came
down to shows of muscle, driven to victory or failure
only by the intensity of belief driving them.

Grudgeful and clearly vexed, Zennor gave the Dana's
convulsing form one last shove, then stepped away.

The creature called Morien and a dozen others
plunged in to scoop up the choking Dana, who was too
weak to struggle against them, and to Kirk's shock they
shoved Garamanus through the burning slats of wood
and strands of straw and into the burning leg of the
colossus.

224 FIRST STRIKE

In a moment, the hall began to echo with the screams
of the Dana as he was burned alive.

Zennor covered the space between the giant's legs in
three strides, then grasped the unburned straw of the
right leg. His hand began to shine and show its bones
with that inner energy he could somehow generate when
he was irreconcilable. There were appar ently advantages
to being hopping mad on the other side of the galaxy.

Propulsively Kirk hurried behind him, his own hand
hot on his phaser.

Yanking hard on the straw line, Zennor snapped the
straw cord at the place where he had burned it. He did
this again, then again, gradually chewing his way upward
as far as he could reach.

"Bones!" Kirk called. "Climb down! Can you hear
me? Follow my voice!"

Through the curtain of boiling smoke he couldn't tell
if McCoy were even still conscious.

Continuing to burn and yank, Zennor systematically
opened a jagged gash in the straw giant's knee.

"Bones!" Kirk pawed at the smoke. It was hot--getting
hotter. Sweat drained down his face and under
his uniform shirt.

A hand, human, came out of the smoke, then a blue sleeve dusted with soot and smoldering matter.

Kirk grabbed it and pulled.

Scratched in the face by the rough burning edges that
Zennor had broken away, McCoy tumbled out of the
straw knee and drove Kirk to the ground. They sprawled
into the smoldering twigs.

Feeling the heat burning through his resistant uniform,
Kirk rolled to his feet, still holding McCoy's arm,
and hauled away.

The doctor came flying out of the kindling and stumbled
against the wall. Kirk hauled him up and held him
away from the flames. McCoy blinked his watering eyes
and grasped his right thigh as if it were hurt, but he was
standing on his own. Together they turned and looked.

"Where's--"

225

Diane Carey

"They threw him in there," Kirk said.

Astonishment rocketed across McCoy's face. "My
God! He was innocent!"

Zennor followed them away from the straw giant. Now
it was burning and the Furies were building to a shrieking
frenzy. "Go back the way we came, through the
Barrow and into the Ritual Shafts. That area is not
shielded and you will be able to beam out. Go now,
before they notice."

"I want our files," Kirk attempted corrosively.

For the first time, Zennor reached out and touched
him. His hand was a shock of dry cold despite the
temperature here and the moisture of the air. "There is
no time. I will find them and destroy them. Go away...
go now!"

Towering over them, the straw giant was now a giant of
fire. Black and yellow flame rolled along its arms and
coiled in its wide legs. The basic structure had apparently
been built to survive until the last minute, so the
thing would remain standing while the innards were
consumed. Along with whoever they had decided to put
in there. How many "criminals" had been disposed of in
this way over the past five thousand years."?

"My mama always warned me I'd end up here if I
wasn't good," McCoy wheezed.

Kirk blinked into the stinging smoke. "Let's go."
"They'll burn their ship ...."

Glancing upward at the ceiling, where the smoke was
separating into four distinct funnels and being sucked
out before it could gather, Kirk told him, "It's venting.
They've done this before."

Deeply troubled, he looked at the other leg of the straw
man, and saw the outline of the Dana, sketched in flame,
and knew he was watching the torture of an innocent
person and that he had failed to stop it.

Though he took the doctor's arm, McCoy was unable
to resist hovering briefly, just to take in the full sight of a
sixty-foot man-shaped inferno, flames going on its arms

226 FIRST STRIKE

like rolling pins, and the wild-eyed wraiths rallying and
howling around it, thudding their drums. Together they
watched the holocaust of the colossus.

McCoy's face glowed. "Captain, this may be the most
poignant log entry of your career... 'Jim Kirk discovers
Hell.""

227

It's hard to dance with the Devil on your back.
--"Lord of the Dance,"
a folk song

Chapter Seventeen

"YELLOW ALERT. Mr. Donnier, lay in a direct course back
to--Mr. Spock."

Donnier and Byers turned to gaze at him, caught
briefly in the concept of laying in a course to the first
officer, but that was what being on edge could do to
concentration.

Jim Kirk paused on the middle step down toward his
command chair, pulled himself back to the upper deck, and moved forward on the starboard side.
"Mr. Spock.. 2'
"Captain."

Standing much too straight for comfort, Spock
swiveled unevenly on a heel. He looked supremely in
place here, living a life before the wind.

For the first time Kirk noticed a dull bruise shading
the right side of Spock's face from the bad roll he'd taken
on Capella IV. Somehow he hadn't seen that yet.

"Mr. Spock, you haven't been released from sick-bay."

"Considering the circumstances, sir," Spock said with
undertones, "when you left the ship, I invoked Special

231

Diane Carey

Order Number Four Two Seven, Subsection J-Three,
regarding the right of senior officers to override any
departmental authority in a crisis."
"There's no such subsection."
"But Nurse Chapel did not know that. And since I am
here already, I suggest we not embarrass her."
"As opposed to McCoy's reprimanding her when he
finds you gone?"
"Is the doctor all right?"
"A little scorched, and don't change the subject."
Spock nodded, only once and with monkish reserve,
being careful of his condition and trying not to move or
twist, but he gazed at the deck for a moment, thoughtfully.
"I am ineffective in sickbay, sir."
"But you're injured. Patients in sickbay aren't supposed
to be effective, Spock. I want you back in recovery.
I appreciate your dedication, but you're providing the
wrong kind of example. The rest of the crew deserves to
know that they're valuable too."
While nothing else would've gotten to Spock, that last
bit did. There were some advantages to their knowing
each other too well.
He lowered his eyes again and murmured, "Yes, sir, I
understand." Then he looked up again as if just remembering.
"Sir, did you retrieve the files?"
"No," Kirk sighed, and paced around to the other side
of Spock. "It was all we could do to get out of there with
our skins. Zennor killed Garamanus."
He felt the guilt rise on his face.
"Indeed," Spock murmured. "To free McCoy?"
"Partly. There was a power play going on. I think it
had been going on a long time. Not just the two of them, but everything they both stand for. Now he's got command
of the ship and possession of the files. I'll just have
to trust him."
Almost as he said it, he realized how foolish that was.
Wanting to trust someone and actually being able to
were entirely different game boards.
He glanced at the helm. "Shields up, Mr. Donnier."

232

FIRST STRIKE
"Shields up, sir."
The turbolift slid open and McCoy hurried in, cranky
and agitated, spotted them, and angled toward them, a
sling on his right arm and a computer cartridge in his left
hand.
"Subsection J, my backside, Mr. Spock," he scolded.
"Nurse Chapel is a lot more upset than she deserves to
be."
"I apologize for my deception, Doctor, and I will be
returning to sickbay."
"Yes, you will be." McCoy handed him the cartridge.
"That's all the information I collected on my medical
tricorder over in that other ship. Jim, I confirmed
everything. The ages of those bone fragments and hair,
the biological roots and the planetary origins. There's no
doubt about it. Those people had some contact with this
quadrant on the order of four to seven thousand years
ago."
Conveniently forgetting to remind them that he'd
been ordered off the bridge by the only two people who
could do that, Spock had turned stiffly to his library
computer and inserted the cartridge, and was looking
through his sensor hood at the readouts, probably running
them through about five times faster than Kirk
could've read them.
Kirk couldn't see inside the hood, but he heard the
machine whir faintly, or imagined he did.
His movements hampered by pain, Spock slowly straightened and faced them again, his face expressive
and heavy with import. He didn't like what he'd seen.
"This is unprecedented. Obviously the track we were
on before is far more accurate than we guessed."
"Do you have a conclusion?" Kirk asked.
"I have a hypothesis."
"I'll take it."
"If there was some massive interstellar war roughly
five thousand years ago and these people were the losers
and they were banished, as Zennor insists, we might
postulate that some survivors could have been stranded

233

Diane Carey on Earth, Vulcan, and other planets that supported humanoid life. Beings with 'horns', or 'wings'm"

"Or snakes in their heads," McCoy filled in.

"If these were advanced beings who only wanted to
survive," Spock went on, "among the nomadic Klingons,
early Terrans, Vulcans, and Orions, and possessed powers
unknown to these ancients--for instance, energy.
weapons,,, extreme speed, advanced healing techniques
Again McCoy interrupted. "Acts which in those days
could only be taken as miracles."

"Or sorcery," Spock agreed. "Natural powers taken as
supernatural. The 'Furies,' if you will. Trying to escape
the mass relocation, they may have hidden on our
worlds, and as they lived and died slowly, they floated
into our mythos. These refugees may well have been the
pathways along which legends have come down to us,
and why we feel we 'recognize' them. Their physical
traits could easily have been taken as animal parts, skull
extensions as antlers or horns, feeding tendrils as snakes,
stings for the power to turn people to stone, cooling skins
for wings, bony feet for hooves."

"And in the changes of religion on these planets,"
Kirk uttered, thinking hard, trying to encompass millennia
in his concrete mind, "they would have had to be
considered. That druid Horned God. Zennor s raThe
Hunter Go d was ultimately absorbed by Christianity,
but they had no place for him in their pantheon. In
order to turn the lay public to the new religion, the
priests painted him as a devil. Satan."

The bell rang so loudly in Kirk's head that he almost
glanced for the red-alert flash.

"This is not guesswork, Captain," Spock said, seeing
Kirk's reaction. "We do know this happened." He gazed
into his sensor hood briefly. "The woman's household
tools were turned into elements of witchcraft when male
physicians wanted to take over the healing arts. Now we
have the image of the soot-darkened woman flying on a

234 FIRST STRIKE

kitchen utensil and casting spells from a cooking pot. In
the same way, the Horned God's pitchfork, a symbol of
male toil, became associated with devils when Christianity
moved him out of their way. These things are
relatively easy to track."

McCoy's eyes were wide. "I'll bet the jewelry these
people wear is the same kind of thing! All attached to
something symbolic. Like those little mirrors."

"To look at the damned." Pacing past them, Kirk
rubbed the dozen tiny burns on his knuckles. "Satan...
wizards... witches, druid priests... all nothing more
than remnants of a war in space during a superstitious
time. It's mind-boggling."

Spock shifted his shoulders a little. "Before science
and medicine upgraded the quality of daily life, there
was little to turn to but superstition, Captain. Unfortunately
, these innocent refugees fell victim to that."
Kirk looked at him. "You really believe this?"

"It is not a matter of belief. Long ago, Vulcan was
indeed occupied, for a time, by beings we called Ok'San.
They resembled the Furies in many ways, and their
impact was keenly felt. Many Vulcans retain a distant
memory of the turmoil they brought us."

Kirk nodded. "Yes... we've also run up on this kind
of thing before. We know it's possible. According to
Zennor, the losing civilization was banished, unceremoniously
dumped on a handful of neighboring planets half
the galaxy away. They fell into a dark age, crawled out of
it, found each other, fought with each other, then found
out they had similar backgrounds and that they'd all
been kicked out at the same time. And during that time,
we caught up with them technologically."

"And now they're back," McCoy said. "And we're all
here together."

Kirk spun to him. "But it wasn't them!" He gestured
as if to point through the bulkheads of the starship to the
huge ship flanking them. "And it certainly wasn't us.
The winning civilization is dead and gone, and all its war
crimes are gone with it. I refuse to take responsibility for

235

Diane Carey
any action by anyone other than myself or my crew, and
I only take on the crew's because I'm the commanding
officer. We certainly don't owe them anything and they
don't deserve to take what's ours. Times change, history
moves along. No one is 'owed' by the children of others.
This is as silly as if I went back to some coruer of Roman
Britain and claimed it as my own, because some ancestor
of mine owned it a thousand years ago. I don't buy this
collective-memory group-rights mind-set."
"We have to accept that Zennor's people do buy it,"
Spock said. "And that will be our stumbling block. The
fixation on having been banished or punished is not a
new one. Neither is the link to fire which you both
encountered so intimately."
"How astute," McCoy drawled, and rubbed his sore
arlB.
"The concept of burning the guilty, or the 'damned,'"
Spock went on, ignoring him, "has a logical source.
'Gehenna' was a pit outside of Jerusalem where refuse
was buried. Parents frequently threatened children with
'sending them to Gehenna' if they failed to behave.
Hence the images of flame in a place of punishment.
Over the generations on Earth, that image took on
names like Orcu, Styx, Aralu, Jahannan, Doom, Hades,
Hell... and on other planets names such as Kagh'Tragh
and Aralua. Even Vulcan had such a concept, though we
dropped it generations ago. All involved banishment
and punishment."
"If they'd had this on the mountain," McCoy grumbled,
"there'd be eleven commandments."
"Captain," Spock cautioned, "although Zennor and
his crew have the physical appearance of devils, of
'Furies,' they do not seem to have the inner makings of
evil purpose. Legend was obviously written by the winners."
"Saints and demons can be the same," Kirk contemplated,
"depending on whether you approve of their
work."
He knew the bitterness was coming out in his voice,

236

FIRST STRIKE
but his feelings were boiling to the surface and he didn't
feel inclined to push them down. He was beginning to get
a picture of what his duty would be, and he didn't like
looking at it.
"They're not demons, no matter what they look like.
They're just people with a fixed purpose, no different
from any others who get their minds stuck on something.
Zennor's a decent, forthright captain on a mission and
he wants to do the right thing. It's just what I would do if
I had those beliefs. And I stood by and let him kill
Garamanus, even though I knew Garamanus was on the
right track. I should've stopped it."
Spock looked like a boy who'd broken a window with a
rock, but wasn't sure whether the building had been
condemned yet or not. He watched his captain. "Your
devotion to Zennor is most unexpected, sir."
Gazing at the forward screen, Kirk sadly said, "I like
him. We have a lot in common."
McCoy put one foot up on the stand of Spock's chair.
"Figures you'd get on so well with the Devil."
Crooking that eyebrow, Spock almost smiled. His eyes
smiled, at least, and Kirk was flooded with a sense of
possibility that blunted the torment of the moment.
"What do I do now?" Kirk considered. "Escort a
hostile power into Federation space? Abandon them
here to stumble on the truth, then to attack the Klingons?
Pretend they wouldn't find us eventually? I'll have
to notify Starfleet. Have them standing by."
At this moment he hated his rank. He hated being the
watchful renegade of Starfleet, who not only had trouble
dropped at his door, but who went chasing when it
appeared. He didn't feel as unshatterable as his reputation
and now remembered Kellen's expression when the
Klingon general had discovered that the great Kirk was
as much cautious sentinel as sword swallower.
Kellen had been right about everything all along. So
had Garamanus.
He moved between McCoy and Spock, running his
hand along the red rail. "I have to talk to him. I have to

237

Diane Carey
make him understand, think past that tribal clubfoot he
drags around."
"Captain.. 2' Spock spoke, but he had no more to
say, no way to bewitch logic so it could solve his
captain's trouble.
"Come-on, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, and took the Vulcan's arm. "It's that time. Back to sickbay. I want you
to walk very slowly."
Spock lingered a moment longer, still watching Kirk,
still searching for something to say.
In his periphery Kirk saw him, but this time didn't
turn, didn't glance. He tucked his chin to bury a shudder.
He would provide no excuses for Spock to stay. No
more mistakes.
"Captain?"
"Mr. Chekov?" His voice was a croak.
"Reading the Klingon fleet coming into short-range,
sir. ETA, thirty minutes, distance--"
The bridge went up on an edge as if it had been kicked
from under the port side. Sirens blared; red alert came
on automatically, changing the lights on all the panels
for emergency readings in case the main power wobbled.
Kirk slammed sideways and barely missed crushing
Lieutenant Nordstrom at the communications station,
where she was hanging over her console, pressed to the
board by the impact.
He skidded past her and caught himself on the aft
science board, bending his back painfully over the edge
and holding himself by his fingernails on the rubberized
edge. One foot came up off the floor. Around him the
bridge flashed to black and white as the lighting blinked,
searching for conduits that hadn't been ruptured. The
surreal forms of Spock and McCoy were crushed up
against the side of the turbolift doorway.
For a moment he couldn't turn his head. Artificial
gravity was being compromised by impact or energy
flush and he heard the systems yowl, but couldn't react.
Any momentJ
His arms and legs lightened abruptly and he shoved

238

FIRST STRIKE

himself off the console. He pushed Nordstrom back into
her chair and told her, "All decks clear for action."
"Aye, sir!" she said on a rushing breath.
Stepping around her, he caught both Spock's arm and
McCoy's good arm and provided leverage as McCoy got
to his feet; then they both pulled Spock up and held him
through the clutch of pain until he gained some control.
"Over here." Kirk drew them to the science station
and brought Spock to his chair. "Sit down." As Spock
valiantly reached for his sensor controls, Kirk dropped
to the command deck and glanced at the helm. "Mr.
Byers, visual checks."
Byers nodded and punched his controls, looked at
them, then punched some more.
Several of the auxiliary monitors lining the upper
bridge flickered on, snatching power from other systems
long enough to do their jobs, to show scenes of open
space around the starship, including, off the port beam,
the enormous purple plates of the Fury ship.
"Put our forward shields to him, Mr. Byers."
Again Byers didn't manage to respond, but only complied.
The plates still glowed with expended energy. No need
to ask what had happened.
"Hail him." Kirk braced himself.
"Channel open, sir," Nordstrom offered.
"Kirk to Zennor. Pleas e come in."
He was as cold as a beached carp. His hands scarcely
had any feeling. He knew what was coming and that
there was no way to backpedal.
Nordstrom's wide Scandinavian features buckled as
she touched her earpiece. "Channel's still open, sir. He's
hearing you."
He took her at her word. Drawing closer to his
command chair as if closer to Zennor, he spoke again.
"You looked at the files."
Moments passed with not so much as a crackle on the
comm. He waited. The bridge around him was dim now,
some lights still flickering, trying to come back on. The

239

Diane Carey
whir of ventilators told him there was a gaseous leak somewhere and compensation systems had come on.

The ship would take care of herself to some degree"I looked."

A glint of solid chance rang through with the sound of Zennor's deep voice.

"We have to talk about this," Kirk attempted. He almost winced. His sentence sounded hollow and point
less.

"There is no talk. I was wrong. The Danai were right all along. Garamanus was right. This is what he was trying to say when I ruined him. Now I must take on his purpose.

He picked the right place, and I will reclaim it in his name.

The fabric of this tenuous peace was ancient and crumbling. Kirk felt it shred in his fingers.

"He wasn't right," he insisted. "You still believe the things you told me, don't you?"
'I was right only when I told you that people don't change. You are the conqueror."
"You know that's not true. The past doesn't matter."

"The past is all that matters."
Gazing at the slowly turning alien ship on the forward
screen, Kirk gripped his chair. "We're friends. We're
alike. Isn't that a better foundation than what you're
talking about?"
He waited. Nothing came back.
No one on the bridge moved. The alarms and alerts
seemed to get quieter in anticipation.
"You knew about this." Zennor's words were heavier
even than the usual sound of his voice now, and the
personal wounding came through. "Is this how your
people wrecked our civilization before? With trust as a
weapon?"
"No," Kirk said desperately. "Those mistakes were
mine alone, not my culture's. Think... think! Be rational
for one more moment. No one has any right to a
particular piece of space. You have the right to live as
240

FIRST STRIKE
free beings in our society. Our hand of friendship is st'ill
extended. Don't knock it away."
In the corner of his eye he saw McCoy step slowly
down to the center deck and join him on the other side of
the command chair, providing what moral support he
could and trying nobly to join him in the responsibility
for what had happened. Now the two of them had
something more in common than they'd ever wanted!
McCoy moved forward a little and was about to say
something when the comm boomed again.
"Go to your civilization and tell them to get out." Kirk blinked at the screen.
Aggravated, he allowed himself a dirty expression,
"You want me to tell a trillion and a quarter people...
to pack up and move?"
"That is what you told us."
The statement burned, for it had its strange ring of
truth, at least truth as Zennor saw things.
"It wasn't us," Kirk abridged. "No one alive had
anything to do with what happened to your ancestors.
My offer stands. Come with us and be welcome in the
Federation. But you'll have to shed your attachment to
the past."
He waited for the threadlike moment of communication
to crack, but instead there was only another stretch
of silence. This time he wasn't going to-wait.
"Zennor."
When had this happened? At which moment had the
career, the job, the duty become his veins and the blood
flowing into them? When had the desire to drive a ship
and do some good turned into responsibility for the
whole Federation's well-being?
He'd crawled out of a rocky youth, or been kicked,
gone into Starfleet, where everyone insisted on conformity
yet gave him medals for fire eating. He'd innovated,
he'd survived, he'd swallowed fire, and they'd pinned
awards on him and handed him a few hundred other
lives and a ship with which to execute his appetite upon
the galaxy.

'41

Diane Carey

All for this?
Yes, exactly this.
"Zennor, answer me."
His answer came, but not in the form he desired.
"Captain--" Spock stared at his readouts, then
turned his chair until he could look at the main screen
without moving his head too much. "Something is happening
in space. A fissure is opening. Reading a large
solid object moving through. Coming toward us."
Kirk pushed forward, stepped up onto the platform
and stood in front of his command chair. "Dimensions."
"Are... roughly seven hundred thousand metric
tons .... Size... is... reading out at more than..."
Even Spock couldn't keep the astonishment out of his
voice.
"Length overall is in excess of one thousand meters,
sir."
Sweat broke out on Kirk's face. "On visual." Nothing
happened, and he was forced to snap, "Mr. Byers,
forward visual."
The big main screen dropped the image of Zennor's
purple and black pinecone and caught a wide view of
space in time to see a bizarre gash in the blackness of
space, as if someone had come along with a giant cleaver
and taken a random hack. Out of the gash spilled liquid
blue light, and from within the light came a vessel.
More than half a mile long, a thousand feet tall,
shaped like Zennor's ship, the enormous moving corkscrew
twisted itself through the gash in space, and when
it was through the gash sealed up with a snap that made
everyone blink.
"Any drop in mass?" Kirk quickly asked.
"None," Spock said. "They must have solved that."
As they watched, the giant vessel screwed itself
through open space toward Zennor's ship, and with
skilled excellence the two came bow-to-stern and executed
a flawless docking maneuver. Now Zennor's ship
provided only the forward section of what had become a
mammoth vessel.

242

FIRST STRIKE
Burning with the knowledge that his ugly guess had
been right, Kirk looked upon the greatest assault vehicle
he had ever seen. If its power matched its size, there
would be disaster today.
McCoy backed off to the ship's rail, apparently sensing
that this wasn't the time to be hanging on the captain's
chair, disturbing the bubble that was the command
sphere. Kirk sensed the change without looking. He'd
noticed that since the beginning of his career--the more
tense the situation, the more the crew tended to keep
distance, giving the officers room to think. He'd come to
use that as ajump-start for dangerous thinking, a kind of
personal red alert. He wished his head weren't throbbing.
He didn't really care if the crew saw him wince. Maybe
in a few minutes he would, if they lived.
"Emergency alert, all decks," he said. "We're about to
do battle with the damned. And they have nothing to
lose."

243

Your foes are determined, relentless, and nigh.
--"Lock the Door, Larrison,"
a folk song

Chapter Eighteen

"SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS."

He'd held off saying it, but the order was overdue.
Hope had kept it back until now.

"Battle stations... all hands to battle stations. This is
not a drill .... Secure all positions .... Damage-control
parties on standby."

"Mr. Byers, veer us off to maximum phaser range. I
don't want to take another of those hard punches at close
range. Get me some room to maneuver."

"Yes, sir... maximum phaser range, sir."

"Mr. Spock, any other contacts from behind that
fissure?"

"None, sir. They may regard their combined vessel as
some kind of dreadnought. In fact, there is no sign of the
fissure any longer at all."

"We know what kind of power it takes to open it,"
Kirk uttered, more to himself than anyone else. "Practically
have to float a black hole in here just to open the
door."

He should send Spock below while he had the chance,
he knew. An inner alert stopped him. He noticed,
247

Diane Carey

though, that McCoy wasn't saying anything. Spock
would be little better off being tossed about on the way
down to sickbay than here at his post, where all people
with spinal injuries should be, of course.
Kirk understood them both. He even understood
himself this time.
He settled into his command chair and forced himself
to steady down.
"Secure the ship. Shut down any nonemergency emissions.
Short-range sensors on priority. Impulse engines
prepare for tight maneuvering. Warp speed on standby.
Arm phasers. And someone get me a cup of coffee."
"Nonemergency emissions, aye. Short-range sensors
ready, sir."
"Impulse engines answering, sir."
"Phasers armed and ready, sir."
"Warp engines ready and standing by, sir."
"Cup of coffee, aye, sir."
The partoting back of his orders was reassuring and
bolstered him. Underlying energy swung around the
bridge from person to person, and through the ship like
blood pumping.
"Photon guidance on standby," he added, and Chekov
said it back almost immediately. Settling back in his
chair, with the cool leather pressing to his lower back
and reminding him of lingering aches from Capella IV,
he surveyed the forward screen and the now-huge vessel
that was at a notable distance now that the starship was
moving back. "How close is the Klingon fleet now?"
"ETA fourteen minutes, Captain," Chekov reported.
He'd been ready for that.
"Hail General Kellen."
"Go ahead, sir," Nordstrom said. "Channels open."
"General Kellen, this is Captain Kirk."
'I know what you think you are. I suggest you not
attempt to stop us again. I have my fleet now. Ten battle
cruisers. I am officially revoking your privilege to be in
Klingon space. Go home. Thi s is man's work."

248

FIRST STRIKE
"You also have my cooperation. And my apology. You
were correct about these people's ancestry."
"Hah."
"I'm not saying you're right about the mythology and I
don't believe in the thing you call Havoc. But there does
seem to be an inescapable connection between them and
this side of the galaxy."
'Thank you. Get out of my way."
"I will not get out of your way," Kirk blistered. "I will deal with this if you and your fleet will cooperate."
There was a pause, and he recognized it as the kind of
pause a commander takes when he's weighing his options and trying not to give any away.
"What do you want?"
Respect for Kellen boosted a few degrees. He wasn't
throwing the kettle out with the stew just because he had
been disappointed before.
Kirk indulged in a pause of his own and let Kellen
guess for a moment or two.
Then he said, "I want all of us to provide a united
front and make them think twice about their intents." 'Against them? You're going to fight?"
"Only as a last resort. I want to back them down only
enough to give me a chance to talk to Zennor."
"Talking again.
"Yes, talking. I want a chance to explain some historical data to him, without all this... fury."
How well the word fit.
Before him on the screen was a ship full of household
spirits, glen nymphs, tikis, banshees and zombies, were-wolves
and medusas, none hellborn as legend had rattled
down, but only a crew of Ishmaels. That wasn't hell over
there, but another starship, crewed by expatriates with
an ill-considered dream.
Still a dream, though. He didn't wish to wreck it, but
only to redirect it. So much energy, a whole civilization
and all its past for four thousand years, so much worth
and resolve, if he could have the time to make them
understand

249

Diane Carey

"No more talking," Kellen broadcast. "This is Klingon
space. You will stand aside."
Gazing in unexpected longing at the purple scales of
Zennor's now-vast ship, Kirk glanced at the upper
starboard screens and noted the visual picture of the
approach of ten full-sized Klingon battle cruisers,
flanked by more than a dozen lighter-weight patrol
cruisers. There weren't many overt differences between
the two classes of ships--the difference was more one of
hull weight and firepower--but to the trained eye, and
Kirk had one, the difference demanded consideration.
"Hail Zennor again, Lieutenant," he crabbed.
Nordstrom's console beeped behind him, like pins
going into his scalp. Went silent. Beeped again.
"No response, sir. He's closed his frequencies."
"Ship to ship."
"Go ahead, sir."
With a bitter hunch of his shoulders, Kirk leaned on
his chair's arm, pursed his lips, and felt his eyes burn.
"Very well, General. Both of you can have it your way.
Be advised we're moving off. Mr. Byers, clear the way for
the Klingon fleet to make their own maneuver against
the Fury ship."
Byers glanced at him, emotions crashing across his
round face. "Moving off, sir."

The Klingon fleet made no attempt to contact or warn
off Zennor's invasion ship. They came in fast and firing,
patrol cruisers rushing in first, with obvious intent
simply to blast the invaders out of Klingon skies, or
anybody else's sky. Kellen's determination had infected
the fleet, and clearly they meant to be sure this threat would not exist after today, here or anywhere. They
weren't going to leave enough of that vessel to limp into
Federation sanctuary, only to come back at them later.
Kirk might've been reading too much into what he saw
on the screen, but the sensations ran hot in his instincts and he didn't think he was misinterpreting much.
The patrollers led the way, strafing the closed purple

250

FIRST STRIKE
petals on the Fury ship, trying to punch weak points in
the hull where the heavier goosenecked cruisers could
then inflict deep wounds. The hematite blackness of
space erupted into waves of disruptor fire, sheeting off
the Fury ship's cornucopia hull as fluidly as water.
The resulting glow of released energy as it flooded into
space made him glad he had moved off to observance
range. Even from here he could see the quick, maneuverable
Klingon patrollers rocking in the waves of backwash,
wobbling like seagulls.
"Effectiveness?" His hands were clenching and un-clenching.
"None readable." Spock bent forward, leaning on one
hand and hanging on to the sensor hood with the other.
He had stood up when Kirk wasn't looking. "I suspect
Zennor's dreadnought is swallowing the power wash
somehow. It is accepting the impact, then absorbing the
energy as it attempts to dissipate. Possibly back into
their own power wells."
"You mean Kellen's doing them a favor by firing on
them?"
Spock nodded. "We may not have the capacity present
to overload Zennor's ability to absorb the punishment."
"Could it do the same to phaser and photon energy?

no way to judge that. The Vulcan glanced at him.

"Likely, though. To devise such an ability, they must have a remarkably resilient and adaptive culture."

"They had to be." Peering at the screen as if he were about to do surgery, Kirk mumbled, "Better do some
thing else, then."

At the forward science station, Chekov straightened suddenly. "Sir, the general's heavy cruisers are moving in!"

"Which is the general's ship?"

The young man pointed at the main screen, lower starboard. "He was broadcasting from the ship with the yellow ensign, sir."

Kirk squinted.

On the screen, flooding past them at proximity range,

251

Diane Carey

growing suddenly out of the edges of the screen, came
the elegantly massive Klingon war cruisers, with their
hulls of brushed silver, forms not so swanlike as the Enterprise, but instead mindful of the in-flight silhouettes
of cranes on a dark horizon. Their necks outstretched
with sensor bulbs chewing at space before
them, they flowed past the starship on a rendezvous with
General Kellen's version of foresight.
And there, on the right, was Kellen's own ship, banded
with a yellow collar for identification over and above the
other vessels, so everyone would know where the fleet
leader was. Klingons didn't believe in protecting their
leaders.
As soon as they reached short range they opened fire.
There was no approach strategy--they simply plowed
in, blasting away. The dozen patrollers vectored off, then
swung around in circles, up, down, and at angles, buzzing
about the attack scene and shooting whenever they
had clearance.
Space lit up in a holiday light show, flash upon flash of
bright blue-green energy, and there was so little damage
on Zennor's dreadnought that the scene was nearly
entertaining. Kirk felt detached, drugged with fascination
and regret, as he watched the patrollers zag about
the huge purple ship, having less effect than sparrows
smashing into a brick wall.
He pushed out of his chair. Moving toward Spock, he
hung an arm over the rail and kept his. voice down.
"Energy weapons seem to be about as useful as a waxed
deck."
"Zennor's technology has found a way to negate
enemy fire by absorbing it." Spock kept one hand on the
sensor hood, bracing his weak back. "His claims were
apparently not bravado. The ship is very strong. He has
not even returned fire yet ....
"If, as I suspected, Zennor's ship has some way of not
only funneling down the enemy fire, but drawing upon it
.. he may be taking the opportunity to build power
while draining the Klingons'."

252

FIRST STRIKE
Kirk turned to Nordstrom. "Lieutenant, ship to ship
with General Kellen."
Yes, sir. Ready.
"General, this is Kirk. Be aware your shots are being
absorbed somehow by Zennor's ship. We think you're
providing him with energy to fight you."
"Mind your own business."
Shaking his head, Kirk pushed off the rail and went
back to his chair, but didn't sit. "You're welcome.
Lieutenant, keep the channels open."
"Channels open, sir."
McCoy joined him there. "One tribe fighting another
tribe. And why? Because they're tribes. It's a sorry
sight."
"Your civilization depends on how much you suppress
the savage," Kirk told him. "They're giving in to it
instead."
"We all have our inner demons. Just think of all the
conflicts and stories and threats coming to a head today,
right out there. All the childhood nightmares and
confession-box repentances... it boggles the mind.
Makes me want to study my history files a little more
often. Just for the hell of it."
Kirk snapped him a fierce look. "Are you doing that
on purpose?"
His pique pinned the conversation to the deck and the
only thing that saved McCoy was Yeoman Tamamura
appearing in the turbolift with the captain's tray and
several cups of coffee.
"Sir," she greeted, but she was glancing at the action on the screen and almost dumped the tray onto the
captain's chair. She recovered in mid-slosh, handed the
captain his cup, then offered one to McCoy.
"Do we get popcorn too?" The doctor looked up, not
at the yeoman, but at Kirk.
Over the open channels in the background, communication
between Kellen and the other ship crackled as the
captains and their helms coordinated an attack that was
clumsy at best, but in essence the clumsiness didn't

253

Diane Carey matter. They kept opening hard fire, but the disruption
kept having no effect, just sheeting down the folded
petals of the Fury ship and somehow being funneled

away without cracking that scaly armor.

Petals... petals... scales...

He'd done and felt this many times before, yet each
time the tapestry was different. The lives were the same,
but not a thing else. No training scenario co uld anticipate
the real thing, with dozens of minds working
independently, and passions flying wild.

He flinched as an explosion on the upper left corner of
the screen took him by surprise, and his mind was
instantly back on the choreography of the battle.

The bridge crew flinched at the stabbing light and
didn't even have time to shield their eyes. When the light
faded, there was nothing left but tumbling hull plates,
motes of smoke, and a forest fire of sparks. Gases and
remnant plasma from the disseminated bowels of the
cruiser spun through space, burning themselves away without purpose, with nothing left to push on.
A full-sized Klingon cruiser--gone!
"What happened?" Byers stammered.

Ensign Chekov gawked at the screen. "Sir, did they
self-destruct?"

Realizing he too was staring like a struck midshipman,
Kirk didn't bother to mask his surprise. "Mr. Spock?"

But even Spock frowned at the scene. "I... suppose
they may have sacrificed shield power for disruptors ....
Perhaps they did not have time, or forgot, to divert
power back to their deflectors." He turned to his sensor
hood, determined to depend on the witness of science
instead of guessing. After a moment he reported, "Zen-nor
apparently opened fire, Captain. Reading the same
kind of energy flush signature as when we and Zennor
engaged the Klingons earlier. Much stronger now, however.
One Klingon battleship has exploded... a direct
hit. Complete thermal compromise. They must have
been hit squarely in the warp core. No survivors noted
as yet."

254 FIRST STRIKE

"Pretty sore price for a mistake." Aware of his crew's
glances, Kirk tried to be casual. He hadn't even seen the
Fury ship fire. It must have happened while one of the
other Klingon ships was masking the view. "Keep your
eyes open, everyone. I don't want to miss another
change. Keep the short-range sensors sweeping for life-pods,
Mr. Chekov."

"Yes, sir," Chekov answered.

Spock's face was blue with sensor light, and he
squinted as he spoke. "Residual energy is nominal...
dissipating. No solid objects larger than point-five-three
meters. No possible survivors."

Annoyed, Kirk peered from the corner of his eye.

"Keep' scanning anyway, Mr. Chekov."

"Aye, sir."

"There they go?" Donnier grasped the navigation
console with both hands and held on.

The nine remaining Klingon battle cruisers moved in,
using a dependable hourglass formation. Four ships
came in, firing hard, then bore downward; then two
more came in, separated, and strafed the flanks of the
pinecone-shaped hull; then the last three, making a
triangle around the enemy as they roared from the Fury
ship bow to its stern, grazing the purple scales with full
disruptor fire all the way.

Space before the Enterprise was no longer black, but
made up of plumes of electric blue and sargasso green.

As the last wave of cruisers scared by, the Fury ship
opened fire again. Lavender and yellow spirals of energy
built along the half-mile-tall stern of the dreadnought,
screwed down the body of the ship as pretty as anything,
then went out from the ship like sound waves to engulf
the passing Klingon fleet.

"Wow!" Donnier gasped. He rocked back in his chair
and his hands fell onto his lap.

That pretty much summed up the expressions Kirk
saw in his periphery.

The nearest three Klingon cruisers were knocked
straight sideways--and no ship was ever meant to take

255

Diane Carey

that. They squalled off, spewing mare's tails of expelled
gas and tumbling hot wreckage. Scorched bits of fragmented
hull material rolled through space and splattered
on the starship's shields.
Kirk and his bridge crew bit a collective lip at the
sight. Those crews must be flying around inside there
like so much trash in a tumbler. Artificial gravity would
be screaming. Kirk could hear the bones breaking. Their
propulsion systems were buckling. He could see it from
here.
What a punch Zennor packed with that combined
ship.
And not a word from him. Despite their dramatic
manner and archaic speech patterns, Zennor and his
people evidently hadn't come here to make speeches.
"Condition of the Klingon ships," he requested.
Spock studied his readouts. "Two ships veering off,
both venting plasma. One is adrift... being tractored
out of range by two patrol cruisers. Another is emitting
spotty motive ratios, but is limping away under its own
power .... The others are regrouping and coming back
in." He paused again, then cleared his throat and added,
"General Kellen's ship is shutting down partial life-support,
but is not veering off."
"Thank you. Mr. Spock, sure you're all right?"
Spock looked at him as though threatened. "For the
moment, Captain."
Might or might not be true. Spock was smart. He knew
a hollow reassurance that he was just dandy would
probably result in his being kicked below. Telling a hazy
version of the truth, that he was suffering some, had a
different effect and implied that he would speak up when
he couldn't handle it anymore.
He probably wouldn't.
Feeling McCoy's dagger gaze from the port side of his
command deck, Kirk deliberately didn't look over there.
Gripping his chair as if holding himself to the concrete
presence of the chair and the deck, he watched the
Klingon fleet as it was casually smashed.

256

FIRST STRIKE
"Lieutenant Nordstrom, contact the flight deck and
sickbay. Deploy four pilots and two interns in two
shuttlecraft to retrieve lifepods and treat survivors. Instruct
them to stay at safe distance until the engagement i s over, and to make their reports to Mr. Chekov."
" n
"Understood, sir," Nordstrom responded, and turned
to her board.
"Sir!" Chekov bolted straight and looked at the screen,
but there was no time for him to say anything more.
Turning its hornlike tip to meet the remaining Klingon
ships, the Fury ship turned violent with yellow and
thistle-purple electrical weapons that buzz-sawed
through the Klingon approach. Amazing that such a
knightly color as purple and all its florid shades could be
made so bitterly deadly.
Before their eyes three more Klingon cruisers had
their approach-side wings shorn off and were forced to
drag themselves away, or be dragged, their structural
balance sliced apart as if they had been caught in a bear
trap. The ship from hell was a hell of a ship.
The main force of the Klingon battle fleet, crippled in
minutes?
It was unthinkable.
"My God!" McCoy croaked. "All of them at once
Jim, Kellen's ship! .....
The remaining Klingon vessel, the general's ship had
turned up on a wingtip and was tilting drunkenly across
space toward the midsection of the Fury vessel. The
Klingon ships were very heavy, long-bodied, almost as
heavy and long as the Enterprise, and a little better
balanced. To see one skidding on an edge like this,
rolling off its line of gravity and shrunken to toy proportions
as it rolled nearer and nearer to the enormous
modified Rath, shook the bridge crew for a few critical
seconds.
Byers came halfway out of his seat. "It's going to
collide!"

257

Chapter Nineteen

As A man steps onto a guillotine ramp, Jim Kirk stepped
onto the platform that held his command chair, slid onto
the edge of the black leather seat, and spoke quickly so
that his crew would move quickly. , . ,"
"Mr. Spock, condition of the general s ship."
"Impulse drive is off-line. They are helpless."
"How much of a pounding can we take?"
"Unknown." Spock swiveled his chair around to meet
Kirk's eyes. "May I ask why, sir?"
"Because I'm going to move her in at close range."
At the helm, Byers turned and his eyes got big. "Sir?"
Kirk ignored the question. "Ahead one-quarter impulse,
Mr. Byers. Mr. Donnier, ready with tractor beams."
"One-quarter impulse, aye."
"Tractor beams r-ready, sir."
"Full magnification on Kellen's ship."
The Enterprise leaped forward with breathtaking ferocity,
as hungry to get into the cockfight as her captain
was. The ship was different in battle mode than cruising
mode, all systems warmed up, on-line, backed up,
251t

FIRST STRIKE

humming... maybe she actually did jump. Maybe it
wasn't just imagination.
Patrol cruisers zigzagged in and out of the screen as
the starship approached the scene of intensity. On the
screen was a huge magnified picture of Kellen's cruiser
sliding toward the sharp edges of the Fury ship's five-hundred-foot-wide
scales. Kellen's disabled ship was
still shooting, though it drifted at a nauseating pitch
toward the Ruth, making a last-ditch attempt to do the
impossible.
The aft scales on the Fury ship were the largest ones,
and Kellen's ship was sliding toward the big vessel's aft
starboard quarter. Only now did Kirk get a full perspective
of just how large Zennor's ship had become, with
that vast new section added on.
What was in that section? Was that the power base?
"Mr. Spock, where's the emission center of those energy spirals? See if you can zero in on it."
Without answering, Spock lowered gingerly into his
chair, ran his fingers over his controls.
Kirk waved over his shoulder for Nordstrom's attention.
"Send Starfleet a recording of what we've seen so
far. Do it right away."
"Deploying, sir." A crack came out in her voice. She
was getting scared.
"Tractor proximity, Captain," Donnier struggled.
"Get it on, Mr. Donnier, don't wait for orders when
you know what to do. Keep Kellen from colliding into that ship."
"Aye, s-s--" Donnier didn't get the response out, but
he did get the tractor beam on.
The starship hauled back on the tractor beams and
Kellen's drifting ship drew up sharply just as its sagging
starboard wing grazed the edge of a purple scale that
would've cleaved it in half.
"Power astern," Kirk ordered at the right instant.
"Astern." Byers was hypnotized.
Kirk leaned forward. "Let's go, move... don't baby
her, Mr. Byers. Throttle up."

259

Diane Carey

He wasn't watching the Klingon ship being drawn
away from the Rath. He was watching the Rath. Would Zennor fire on him?
"Position of the Klingon fleet."
The ensign shook himself and bent over his sensors.
"Eight vessels... three completely disabled... one
more moving at less than one-quarter power... four
others regrouping."
"They actually retreated," McCoy observed. "After
just a few minutes."
"How many patrollers left?" Kirk asked.
Chekov squinted into his screen. "Six... seven still
functional, sir."
Looking blanched and strained, Spock pressed his
wrist to the edge of his console and paused to look at the
screen. "A great deal of damage with very few shots."
"Unless we find weakness, we can't deal with that ship
under these conditions," Kirk agreed. "Bring her midships,
Mr. Byers. Back straight off. I want my intentions
clear."
"Aye aye, sir." Byers licked his lips as he worked to
equalize the helm while hauling the Klingon vessel
whose damaged systems were still trying to propel it
along its last ordered course.
If Kellen would shut down, this would be a lot easier.
"Pull, Byers. Faster."
"Trying, sir, but there's some kind of resistance."
"Yes, the cruiser's automatic drive--"
The petals of the Rat& filling the screen like huge
theatrical flats, began to glow with that sickly yellow-lavender
electrical presence.
Kirk drew a breath. "Uh-oh... double shields! Brace
yourselves!"
He turned to say something to Nordstrom, but suddenly
the ship heaved up as if in recoil and the night
opened up with purple dragons, cutting a blazing wave
across the primary hull and straight through the bridge,
throwing the captain and the standing crew to the deck
in a tangle.

FIRST STRIKE
"Overload!" Assistant Engineer Edwards shouted, the
first time since coming on the bridge that he'd said
anything at all.
Byers shielded his face from sparks launching from his
console, then waved at the smoke and shouted at the
screen.
"They fired on us! They fired on us right in the middle
of a rescue maneuver!"
Smoke boiled across the bridge. Ventilators came on
and sucked valiantly. Somehow the onrush of near-death
had shaken Byers out of his timidity and made him mad.
Good.
Generally, those two, Byers and Donnier, would be
nowhere near the bridge, yet they'd rallied here today,
under adverse conditions. Ordinarily in battle Kirk
preferred to have his senior crew there, Sulu and
Chekov, or Sulu and another navigation specialist, but
Sulu was down, Chekov was helping Spock, and Donnier
had just caught the bad luck of the draw.
Donnier and Byers would be able to claim having
served in the best crew in Starfleetmyes, they were the
best, but they were the best at their own specific jobs.
Nobody could be the "best" when thrown into somebody
else's job. Almost anyone could fake it at the
technicals of another position, but there would always be
a loss of art. Kirk knew that he could bull and cackle his
way around engineering, but that Scott would be a far
better captain than Kirk would ever be an engineer. That
was why people had specialties, and why the Enterprise was staffed with specialists. The art of the technology.
That was also what they needed today. A little creative
art among the technical business. A little sorcery...
Kirk waved at the smoke, motioned McCoy back
against the rail so he had something solid to hold on to,
and spoke past him to the engineering station, though he
couldn't see through the gushing smoke.
"Compensate," he authorized.
"There's a burnout on the crystal triodes, sir."
That was Nordstrom, but it came from the engineering

261

Diane Carey area. She was either helping Edwards or replacing him, if
he was down. The curtain of smoke went from the ceiling
to the upper deck earpet.

"Compensating," Donnier called from the starboard
side, up where Chekov had been. Unable to cough up
much volume, he spoke from the science subsystems station, leaving Byers to handle helm and weapons.
Was Chekov down?

Kirk flogged himself for not thinking to overstaff the
bridge. With Sulu down, he should've called an all-hands,
summoned the main watch, and just let it be a
little crowded up here.

Violent lights, shadows, and sparks argued all around
and hadn't settled when Zennor's ship turned loose another whip-crack of purple fire.

"Full astern! Byers[ Byers!"

He plunged for the helm console, found the chair
empty, poked through the smoke for the motive action
menu and forced his fingers to tap the impulse generation
up to full power.

"Power's wobbly, sir," Edwards reported innocently,
as if he didn't notice the ship being pummeled around
him.

"We've got to move off. Mr. Scott'll find the power."
The starship bolted again and his stomach went with
her. The deck groaned as if in convulsion beneath his
hands. A piece of the hull screamed past his face and he
swore it grazed him, but it was gone before he could raise
a hand to fend it off. The carpet and the deck beneath it
slammed him hard and drove his knees into the side of
his chair. The chair swiveled and he couldn't hang on.
He sprawled to the deck.

Splinters whistled past his ears and speared his shoulders.
He buried his head for an instant until the whistling
bore off, then grabbed for the sky and caught part of
the helm. He dragged himself to one knee, finally to
both, and was about to cheer his accomplishment when
he made the fatal error of looking up to scan the damage.

FIRST STRIKE

He saw Engineer Edwards' red and black form propelled
sideways by a vicious eruption at the port console,
slam into the bridge rail, and collapse to the deck.

The purple and sulfur twine of energy shined again on
the main screen. Zennor's ship basted near-space with
another razor of energy, and over Kirk's head--the
ceiling exploded.

262
263

Chapter Twenty

James KIrK waved at the smoke as it piled before him and
stung his eyes. Was the tractor beam holding? He
couldn't see the forward screen.
He grabbed for the foggy shape of his chair and hit the
comm. "Scotty, bridge? "Scott here."

"Trouble."

"See it, sir."
"Put everything to the shields and tractor beams.
Reduce life-support if you have to, but keep those shields

"No priority to the weapons, sir?"
"We can't punch through those hull plates. Just keep
the shields up."
"I like it, sir."
"I thought you would, Mr. Scott." He wheeled away,
toward starboard. "Mr. Spock?"
From the anterior glow of emergency lights, the blue-blacks
of Spock appeared out of the smoldering fabric of
the bridge. "Here, Captain."
"Where's Mr. Chekov?"
264

FIRST STRIKE

"On the deck, sir."
"Hurt?" He squinted into the rolling smoke near the
service trunks.
"No, sir," Chekov called, looking up from between his
arms, which disappeared past the elbows inside one of
the trunks. "Radiation wash in the bypass conduits, sir."
He stumbled across the English syllables as though he
believed he was speaking Russian.
Kirk turned, and realized the deck was at an angle.
"Are the tractor beams still on? Mr. Donnier, where are
you?"
"Here, sir?" Donnier dodged under a puff of sparks
near the main screen trunk and landed on both feet.
"Take over assisting Mr. Spock while Mr. Chekov
effects repairs. Lieutenant Nordstrom, take navigation
and weapons. You're going to have to learn to shoot."
"Coming, sir?
"Somebody have relief personnel sent to the bridge."
"I'll do it, Captain," McCoy called from the boiling
gray mist. "Relief personnel to the bridge. Repeat, relief
to the bridge, all stations!"
At once he realized they were all shouting. What was
all this noise they were shouting over? The red-alert
klaxon was howling, yes, and that god-awful whistle--must
be a hull breach somewhere up in the damaged
ceiling.
Somebody would pick up on it. Until it was sealed,
atmosphere would pour out in a bitter silver funnel into
the ice cold of space, and compensators would pump
more and more into the bridge so they could keep
breathing. The ship was exhaling herself to death to keep
them alive and she'd go down to the last quarter centimeter
of reserve oxygen before she gave up. She'd
sacrifice deck after deck, hoping her crew heard the
warnings and evacuated in time. If they didn't, they'd
die there while she tried to save the rest of the crew, until
failsafe made it all the way to the bridge. The bridge
would be the last to be sacrificed. She'd steal from her
own guts if that would work.

265

Diane Carey

And it just might. It would buy them time. The bridge
had to breathe if the ship was to be saved.
The turbolift wheezed two-thirds open, then jammed.
Four bridge relief crewmen poured out, followed by
three men in atmospheric suits. One of those carried a
collapsible ladder. They went to work on the sparking
ceiling while the relief crew dropped into appropriate
positions.
Byers was back at the helm. Kirk had no idea what had
happened to him, if he'd been knocked silly, if he'd
frozen with fear, or what. He was back now.
Two medical orderlies dropped at Edwards' sides
while relief personnel manned the engineering stations.
Kirk hadn't seen the medics come out of the lift, but
then he hadn't paid much attention.
The pair checked Edwards' vi tals, then scooped him
up and carried him to the lift. The lift wasn't happy
about having to close that jammed door and protested
with a metallic screech, but then that was done.
"Course, sir?" Byers asked.
"Away from the big ship any way you can do it, Mr.
Byers. Ensign, how are you doing on that radiation
wash?"
"I think I have a formula, sir," Chekov called as the
ship bucked and whined again.
He cursed himself for his trust, his hope. Zennor had
lashed out with no sign of regret or hesitation, and with a
greater punch than Kirk would've bet on. He'd hoped to
maneuver out of the trap, and now he had to fight his
way out. He hunched his shoulders and glared at the
screen.
"Magnification point five," he called over the whistle
of the fans.
Ventilators had cleared the bridge of about sixty
percent of the smoke, and he could see the action on the
forward screen as it backed off its zoom view. He saw the
tractor beams still holding Kellen's crippled ship, and he
saw most of Zennor's huge Rath.

266

FIRST STRIKE
He also saw the Klingon fleet moving in again.
"Ship to ship, General Kellen," he said. But no one
was at the communications console. He looked around
and found McCoy hovering at the starboard steps.
"Bones, get back up there and stay there."
".Oh--sorry." The doctor tucked his injured arm
against his side and pulled himself back up the tilted
deck to the communications station. "Ship to ship..."
he muttered as he poked at the controls. "I think this is
it. Try it."
"General," Kirk spoke up, "call off your ships."
"Fire! Fire, you coward! My weapons are down! Fire
at them!"
"I'm telling you, the disruptor fire is providing power
to Zennor and he's hitting us with it. Tell your ships to
back off and save their energy. I need time to tow you out
of here."
"Thank you for the tow. Now mind your own business."
"All right, but at least shut down your thrusters so we
can get out of here. Your ship is providing resistance."
There was no response at all this time.
"General! Damn it." He motioned for McCoy to cut
off the communication. Like the patrollers, he was
knocking his head against the same kind of brick wall.
"Captain!" Byers called.
Kirk looked at the forward screen again in time to see
four scorched patrollers soar past the Enterprise and
viciously strafe the Rath, looking completely ridiculous
in their total ineffectiveness. The energy they deployed
simply washed down the cone-shaped hull and disappeared
inside somehow. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Zennor's ship glowed in retaliation, and Kirk braced
to take another hit, but this one shot out in bright rings
right where the patrollers were passing and selectively hit
them. So the weapons were directional as well as area-wide--either
that, or Zennor and his crew were learning
as they fought.

267

Diane Carey

"Shouldn't we return fire, Jim?" McCoy asked, sensing
the starship would be next. "Isn't there some way?"
"It's a waste of effort. There has to be a weakness."
"I hope you find it."
"I hope so too."
He stepped to the bridge rail, and only now realized he
was limping--his hip was hurting. He must've struck it
on an edge when he fell. He reached up for McCoy to
take his forearm and hoist him out of the center of the
command deck, giving the repair crew more room to
maneuver as they climbed about inside the ceiling like
squirrels in an attic.
Byers ducked out of the way as much as he could, but
somehow managed to do it without taking his hands off
the helm, shuffling around in front of the console while
repair work was done above him.
The repair crew went about their business with a zeal
that suggested they were enjoying the terror, for it gave
them something to do. Within a couple of minutes, the
loud wheezing was reduced to a sorry whistle, then
finally to nothing, and the hull breach was sealed.
The ship sighed with relief. Everything suddenly became
quiet, as -if to feign that nothing was happening.
Between Spock and McCoy, Kirk watched the Klingon
patrollers being basted by the Rath's selective hits. The
patrollers shuddered and veered off, but one of them
veered in the wrong direction.
"It's gonna hit!" Byers gulped, only an instant before
impact.
The patroller decimated itself into the pleats of the Rath. The body of the ship exploded first, leaving for a
terrible moment only the wings flying through space,
unattached, before they too were caught by the points of
the scales and the plasma inside them blew up.
"That's it!" Kirk said, and the sound was much softer
than the thought. Only McCoy and Spock heard him.
Spock looked at him, but didn't have to ask.
"Look at the hull plates," Kirk said, pointing.
"They're bent."

268

FIRST STRIKE
Seemingly impregnable moments ago, the fifty-foot
plates of Zennor's ship were scored and misshapen
where the patrollers had stricken them, but most important,
they were peeled back several feet--several meters
even.
And under there, he could see the faintest shimmer of
bare hull.
Bare unshielded hull.
"That's it, that's our target... there it
He started to step down to the command arena again,
when, overhead, one of the repair crew fell out and
landed on his back across the command chair, then
rolled off, stunned.
Kirk picked him up roughly, then looked up. "Come
down from 'there! Is that secure?"
"Yes, sir!" another repairman called as he and another
one scurried down and folded the ladder.
"Then get out of here."
"Aye, sir!"
He stepped up to his chair, littered now with insulation
crumbs and sharp bits of ceiling material that
hadn't been cleaned off yet. Eventually somebody would
come up here and vacuum it up. For now, he would sit
on chips and fuzz.
"Sir, General Kellen's ship is no longer under thrust,"
Spock reported. "We are free to tow."
"I don't want to tow him anymore. Bring him out
behind us and drop him."
"Sir?"
"And bring the tractor beams to bear on the forward
points of those hull plates. Pick up as many as you can
without reducing tractor capacity. Then I want to heel
back and peel those plates up on whatever they have for
hinges."
Spock thought about this for a moment, then said,
"May I ask your intentions?"
"Yes, you can. We're going to fire straight down into
the cracks."
The bridge crew blinked at him for a moment.

269

Diane Carey
He glanced at each of them, waved his hands, and
snapped, "Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir!" Byers said, and licked a bleeding lip.
"Aye aye, sir!" Donnier nodded furiously.
Complying, Spock responded. He brushed crumbs
of hull material off his console, then looked again at Kirk
and waited for the order.
"Concentrate three-quarters from the aft end of the
ship. I want to target the area of Zennor's original ship.
That's where I think the command center still is."
"Aye aye, sir."
"I'm ready, sir."
"Ready also, sir."
Kirk settled into his chair, on top of the chips and the
fuzz and the grit. "Haul away, Mr. Spock. Mr. Donnier
.. prepare to open fire."
"I'm ready, s-sir."
"Fire."
As the tractor beams strained and the impulse engines
thrust furiously to pull back the scales of the Rath, one at
a time, the ship's volleys of phaser fire opened up the
bared hull between the sheared-back plates.
Cutting like a surgeon's lasers into the underskin of
the Rath, the phasers immediately gave Kirk gratification.
Sparks, hull matter, and atmospheric gases spewed
past the starship and out into space.
"Shields are fluctuating, sir," Chekov reported. "The
tractor beam is compromising deflector power consumption."
"We don't have any options, Mr. Chekov. Maintain."
Zennor's ship let loose another whip of glowing power,
thudding the Enterprise viciously, but this wasn't the
time to do anything but lie close and take the heat.
The tractor beams howled now, drawing power and
arguing with the shields.
"Shut down aft shields," Kirk instructed. "Forward
shields only. Keep pulling.. full traction.. good.
maintain fire."
Would the inner hull on Zennor's ship give first, or

27O

FIRST STRIKE

would the starship's shields go? There was no way to
judge that. It was a night at the gambling tables.
Plate after plate, the Enterprise chewed her way across
the Rath's acres-wide hull, phaser fire burrowing between
them and causing plumes of matter to erupt from
in there. The big dark ship slid away and fell off its
position, and he sensed that he knew where the havoc
was right now. A dreadnought designed for invasion,
vastly powerful, but untested in real battle, and a crew
who had heard their whole lives about their destiny to
invade but had never done any such thing, today were
both finding out that plans and hopes alone do not serve.
They had strength, delivered by the resources of a whole
civilization, but they had no strategy, for they had never
before needed one.
As the ruptures between the peeled-back scales began
some serious billowing and gushing, Zennor's ship
opened up again with another engulfing salvo of the
burning power, and the Enterprise rocked hard to her
starboard side, throwing everyone down hard. Not one
of the bridge personnel was able to stay off the deck.
Kirk saw the bridge whirl around him, then blinked
and found himself crushed into the crease between the
upper and lower decks, under the rail on the starboard
side. More smoke and sparks and putrid fluids and gases
spewed all around him.
He reached up, caught the rail, hauled himself up, and
instantly looked for Spock.
The Vulcan was on his hands and knees on the deck,
slowly raising one hand and searching for the edge of his
console.
"Spock, wait," Kirk said, and forced himself up there.
"Slowly."
He got a good grip on Spock and took much of the
Vulcan's weight as they both found their balance on a
deck now tilted nearly forty degrees.
"Thank you, Captain," Spock wheezed, choked with
pain again.
"Sit down and stay down. Don't get up again."

271

Diane Carey

"Thank you." The first officer gladly settled into his
now-dusty chair and closed his eyes for a moment, not
caring that he had repeated himself.
"Stop thanking me," Kirk muttered.
"Captain, the weapons!" Donnier called, without a
slammer. "We've lost weapons power! We can't shoot!"
"Confirm that, engineering." Whirling in the other
direction, Kirk dropped again to the middle deck.
"Confirmed, sir!" Davis called over the surging howl
of ruptured system.
"Not now... continue traction. Keep peeling those
plates back. Bones, hail Kellen again."
"Kellen ... yes, sir." McCoy swung around and almost
lost his footing on the tipping deck, but waved away
the smoke and found the same buttons he'd found
before. "Ship to ship, Captain."
"General, do you have weapons power?"
"You were shooting. Keep shooting."
"I can't. My weapons are off-line. How are yours?"

"Mine are on, but I have no engine thrust."
"You don't need thrust for what I have in mind."
"You want me to do what you say? You want Klingon
commanders to do your bidding?"
Kirk glared at the main screen as if at Kellen's face
and imagined the general standing before him and
expecting something spectacular.
All right. Fine.
"Yes, I want you all to do my bidding. I will take care
of this problem for you, but I want senior authority,
clearance to act on my own judgment, and absolution
from any breakage of treaty until the Enterprise is safely
on the other side of the Federation Neutral Zone, or I
veer off right now and leave you to the Havoc. It's your
turn to cooperate, General. I want you to make me
Commodore of the Klingon Fleet."

272

Chapter Twenty-one

HE reFusEd to ask again. He let Kellen hang out there,
without engine power, staring at the monolithic threat of
the invasion dreadnought, and he bided his time.
"I concur."
Kirk gave,,liis command chair a victorious pounding
on the arm. accept. Inform your commanders."

"They know."
"Good. My first order to them is that they cease
random fire and prepare for coordinated strafing with
specific targets, on my orders only. I want you to divert
all your power to weapons and stand by while I attempt
one last time to talk to Zennor."
"Talk Yt '

ou re gotng to talk again?"
"Yes, I'm going to talk," KIrk grolled indignantly, 'I'm
going to talk and you're not going to question me
anymore. You have your orders. McCoy, hail Zennor
and hail him good."
McCoy didn't respond, but jabbed at the communications board in what seemed childlike confusion, then
looked up and shrugged with his eyes. "Channel's open,
Captain."

The
Invasion
Continues

,BOOK TWO

The Soldiers of Fear

Diane Carey

He didn't add the implied I think.
Gnashing his teeth, Kirk felt his brows go down as he
glowered at the Rat& the early fortress.
"Zennor, this is Commodore Kirk of the combined
forces of the United Federation of Planets and the
Klingon Imperial Fleet. I know you can hear me. We've
discovered a weakness in your armaments and I'm about
to launch an assault against it. I give you one more
chance to stand down and let me try to explain to you
exactly what it is that you're acting upon. Legends and
folklore over five thousand years old, stories told to
children to frighten them into behavior... the stuff that
ignorant people allow themselves to believe because they
haven't learned any better. We've learned better... and
now we have a chance to mend the wrong done to your
civilization by people who are strangers to all of us."
His words rang, and tension set in. The Rath hung out
there, several of its hull petals torn backward, bent up
out of place, rupturing the floral symmetry of the huge
conical hull.
"I'm offering you one last chance to build instead of
wreck. Isn't that what you've wanted all along?"
Over the OPen channel came only the faint clicking
and crackle of distant damage, of voices barely more
than echoes calling out to each other in frantic desperation.
So it was only bare hull in there after all and he had
been right. There was a chink in the armor of the
damned.
Changing the timber of his voice to something he
reserved for other captains, he simply requested, "State
your intentions."
Then all would know, and all duties would be clear.
He waited.
Under his skin he sensed Zennor's eyes, watching the Enterprise just as now he watched the Rath, peering at
each other over the short gap of space, the long gap of
time, wondering if the weaknesses they saw in each other
were real, and if the time to crow was over.
"We will build."

274

FIRST STRIKE
Hope flared and Kirk leaned forward. Zennor's voice
was underlaid by the groan of damage over there, the
whoop of alarms, and the frantic voices of the alien crew.
"Upon the ruined cities of the conquerors' children, we
will build our rightful place. There is no giving up. History
renews itself and breathes life into the doomed. This is the
Battle of Garamanus. This is our place and we will defend
it. First we will smash the Klingon civilization, and then
we will come for yours."
The flare guttered and sank away. Kirk sighed, shook
his head, pressed his lips flat, but there wasn't anything
else to say.
'I regret... it has to be you," Zennor added then. 'I
did not expect to like the conqueror."
The station-sized ship began to hum and glow again in
a now-recognizable process of building to open fire.
Kirk nodded as if Zennor could actually see him. "I'm
sorry too."
He motioned for McCoy to close channels.
"Kirk to Kellen. Brace yourselves and prepare to open
fire."
"Ready."
"Mr. Donnier, tractor beams. Mr. Byers, full power to
thrust. Let's pull that ship apart. General, open fire."
The starship whined and dug in its heels, pit-bulling
the hull plates of the Rath up two by two. The Klingon
ship blasted photon salvos with accuracy down into the
grooves left exposed as each plate was squalled backward.
The blue balls of energy plowed straight down
inside, to detonate deep in the grooves, pounding the
inner hull of the Rath to bits and sending destructive
explosions ricocheting around in there.
Kirk crimped his eyes in empathy. He knew what was
happening to the interior of the Rath. But there was also
a naughty I-told-you-so swelling in his chest, and that
was the feeling he grabbed on to for stability.
Zennor's ship glowed and vaulted another heavy attack
at the Enterprise and Kellen's ship.
The bridge lights flashed, then went out completely for
275

Diane Carey

a moment, leaving only the bright glow of the main
screen and the scene on it. A moment later, small
emergency lights came on along the deck and about
halfway around the ceiling area, just enough to work by.
Around him the crew's faces were sculpted to the bones
by hellish red lights from below and creamy yellow lights
from above, the hollows of their eyes made deep by
shadows and their noses and chins turned to sickles.
"Captain, shields just fell!" the relief engineer called.
"We've got no protection anymore."
"Spock, confirm that."
"Confirmed, sir. No shield power left at all."
"Perfect. If they hit us again, it's all over."
"Sir," the engineer called again, "Mr. Scott says we've
lost the conduits to the warp drive. The engines are good,
but we can't engage them. We'll need twenty minutes to
reestablish."
"We've still got impulse, correct?"
"Yes, sir, we've got that."
"Understood. General Kellen, maintain fire. Attention,
Klingon fleet. All available ships begin strafing
maneuvers now. Come in at full impulse speed. Target
specified areas of weakness between the abutting ends of
the plates."
Zennor's ships built to fire again and tried to pick off
the Klingon ships as they rushed in like streaks of light,
but at high speed they were better able to avoid the
washing yellow-purple energy blasts, or at least to take
only glancing blows. Two Klingon cruisers were
slammed out of the way in the first attack, but others
made it through and hammered the exposed inner skin
of the Rath with blunt photons.
The Fury ship started to move, to fall away, trying to
gain some room, but the Enterprise stayed with it, and
Kellen's ship continued to fire down into the fissures
caused as the starship pulled up petal after petal.
The bridge crackled and fumed with new damage, but
the starship kept working. Kirk imagined the flurry

276

FIRST STRIKE
below decks to keep the systems on-line long enough to
succeed. Engineers would be tripping over damage-control
parties, who would be stepping between clean-up
crews. Everybody was hustling today.
"Sir, they're starting to pitch," Byers called out over
the whistle of a leak on the port side.
Before them Zennor's huge vessel began to tip downward
and to roll sideways, bucking and twisting like an
elk trying to throw off a clinging bobcat, but Kirk
wouldn't call off. Zennor didn't have tractor beams and
his technology hadn't anticipated them. That was why
this could work.
"Look!" Donnier choked, and pointed.
"Flux emanations are off the scale, sir!" Chekov sang
out, and also looked at the main screen.
Zennor's ship, the whole vast length and breadth of it,
was beginning to glow, but not like before. This glow
came from inside, shining out of the edges of all the
petals in the wide midsection, bright neon yellowish
white, and it was expanding through the ship, spilling
forward under the plates. Several of the plates were
blown completely off as the violence traveled.
"Building up to overload," Spock concluded as he
looked at his sensor screen. Sharply he looked up.
"Detonation any moment now."
Nobody had to tell Kirk that. Halfway across the
galaxy or not, he knew a main power core meltdown
when he saw one.
"Mr. Byers, full about! Ship to ship--General, we're
evacuating. Notify your fleet to clear the area at high
warp. Broadcast long-range warnings--"
"We have no thruster power. You go, Captain Kirk,
and we will continue firing until we all are a ball of fire.
We will personally take that demon ship to its own
prophecy!!"
"They don't need an escort. Donnier, shift tractor
beams to the general's ship."
"Shifting beams, sir."

277

Diane Carey

"We'll tow you out of the immediate impact range, General. With full shields you should be able to survive
the blast."
"Use your warp speed to get away, Kirk. All warriors
die."
"Yes," Kirk said. "But it's my turn today, not yours.
Our shields are down and we've lost warp maneuvering
power. We can't get far enough away from here to survive
without shields."
The crew tried to keep their faces still, but their
postures were revealing. Kirk was careful not to turn his
head, so none would feel lessened in his captain's eyes,
even as he spoke of their impending deaths.
The best crew in Starfleet. Didn't mean they were
icicles. He regretted not coming up with a word or two of
shallow comfort. They needed to hear that in his voice,
but he had none. The only gift he could give them was that they would die while saving others.
"We can tow you to safe range and your shields will
protect you." He glanced around at the sweaty faces of
his crew and noted how young they all were. "Everybody
has to die sometime. At least we're dying for a good
reason."
"Idiot." Kellen's insult was almost warm. "Do you
think you're dying today? Shields on extension mode."
As the two ships drew away from the Rath at painfully
slow speed, the Fury ship glowed brighter and rolled in
space furiously now. More and more hull plates blew off
as explosions tore through the inner core. A moment
later, the point of the horn-shaped bow blew off, leaving
a shorn stump through which plasma and radiation
boiled freely into space.
"Captain," Spock began, "General Kellen's ship has
extended their shields around us."
"That stretches him too thin," Kirk commented, but
didn't bother to call Kellen.
As he looked from Spock to the main screen again, the Rath reached its critical mass. The hull plates blew off all
over it.

278
FIRST STRIKE

Then, an explosion the size of a continent erupted
across open space, devouring the purple structure until
nothing could be seen but tumbling plates, spraying
matter and energy, and bright incendiary destruction.

Shock waves rocked the starship and the battle cruiser,
shoving them bodily backward through space. Kirk
clung to his chair as pressure hit him hard and artificial
gravity on the ship crushed him toward the deck as it
tried to compensate.

The Enterprise went up on a side, almost ninety
degrees. The crew tumbled, but they knew what to grab
for and managed to pull themselves into place as the
deck began to right.

The Klingon shields crackled and sparked around
both ships, but held. Wave upon wave of energy plied
space across them in a vast sphere.

Kirk waved at the electrical smoke and blinked as it
burned his eyes. On the screen, the Fury ship was gone.
Hell had gone to hell.

279

What is death but parting breath?
-"MacPherson's Rant,"
a folk song

Epilogue

"SECURE FROM RED ALERT. Establish contact with the shuttlecraft and have them report on any rescues and
return to the ship as soon as possible. We need a damage-control
party on the bridge."

The bridge gasped and spat around them, but there
was a sense of control again. Pausing to cough out the
acrid smoke that was tickling his lungs, James Kirk
prowled his bridge and checked on his people one by
one. In their sweat-streaked faces he saw the charity they
offered him for the decision he had been forced to make,
their willingness to do it all again if necessary, and a
respect he found somehow saddening.

One by one they assured him they were all right and
would now begin the slow process of piecing together the
damaged systems that had brought them through all this
alive.

There wasn't one of them who would jump ship at the
next dock after all this. These were the kind of people
who discovered themselves better for having fielded
mortal danger. No matter the fright, they hadn't
crouched scared or shrunk from the face of it or let it

283

Diane Carey

petrify them out of doing their jobs. Not even Donnier
and Byers, who had found themselves in the wrong place
at the wrong time, doing things they'd never imagined
they would have to do. But if the ship had been wrecked
under them, they'd have died with their hands on the
halyards. That was something to write home about.
One by one he congratulated them, and finally made it
around to Spock.
"Mr. Spock."
"Captain."
"Final analysis?"
"Zennor's ship has been completely decimated. Their
dreadnought attachment was apparently a massive power
factory, and once unshielded and ignited..."
Spock paused and shook his head, communicating
silently the ferocity of such a chain reaction.
"I am certain it was very quick," he added.
Gratefully, Kirk made a small, inadequate nod.
"Thank you. But Zennor made his own choice. I'm sorry
it had to happen, but I won't blame myself."
Spock seemed relieved by that. "Both the shuttlecraft Columbia and Galileo are on final approach, and both
report having picked up survivors from several Klingon
lifepods. Galileo reports she's towing what may be a
lifepod from Zennor's ship, but there are no life signs
aboard."
"I want to have a look at that. Tell them not to open it
until I get there."
"Yes, sir."
"Captain," McCoy interrupted, using his good hand
to hold the communications earpiece to his ear. "General
Kellen's requesting permission to come aboard."
Kirk glanced at him. "Fine. But tell him to come
unarmed this time and expect to be under armed escort
at all times."
McCoy paled at having to tell that to a Klingon
general, but turned back to the board.
"Captain," Spock went on, "I have also picked up
telemetry broadcast by Zennor just prior to the final

284

FIRST STRIKE

explosion, but it has not been sorted out yet. The signals
were scrambled and quite complex."
"Telemetry? Meant for us?"
"No, sir. I believe he meant it for broadcast back to his
own people."
"Do you think the message got through?"
Spock canted his head to the side, then winced and
straightened it again. "No way to tell. I know it was
successfully broadcast, but there was no evidence that
the fissure opened to receive it. Still, their technology is
largely an unknown."
"See if you can make any sense of it. I'll be on the
flight deck. Have the general brought there when he
comes aboard. McCoy, with me. And, Spock... thank
you again."
Spock clasped his hands behind his back, a casual
motion considering his condition. "My pleasure to
serve, Captain. As always."

The flight deck was organized chaos. Well, havoc, to
keep in the spirit of the occasion. The two newly
returned shuttlecraft lay in the open rather than in their .
docking stalls, having just come in with their various
acquired rescues and tows. Several Klingon lifepods
littered the deck, in various conditions from pristine to
burned and dented, unable even to sit on the deck
without tilting.
Wounded Klingon soldiers, also in various conditions,
sat or lay against every bulkhead. At first glance as he
and McCoy entered, Kirk guessed there were over three
hundred of them.
McCoy broke off immediately to collect reports from
the dashing interns, nurses, and medics. Orderlies and
ensigns moved about everywhere, passing out drinks and
something to eat that made most of the Klingons sneer,
but they were all eating whatever it was and trying to be
polite.
Those who were conscious looked up at him suspiciously
as he surveyed them and received reports from

285

Diane Carey the shuttlecraft lieutenants. He saw in their eyes their
fears, relying on rumors of the savagery inflicted by
Starfleet on any prisoners of war. They didn't seem to
have quite absorbed the fact that they were in fact allies
for the moment and were in the care of their commodore.

"Lieutenant," Kirk greeted as the commander of the Galileo approached him with a manifest.
"Staaltenburg, sir."
"Yes, I remember. Eric."
"That's correct, sir."

"You're the one who reported picking up a pod from
the big ship?"

"Yes, sir." Staaltenburg brushed his blond hair out of
his eyes and led the way around to the other side of
Galileo, where there lay a solid black pod without so
much as a running light upon it. In the blackness of
space, it would've been completely invisible if they
hadn't been scanning for things about that size.

"We practically slammed into it, sir, before we realized
it was there and wasn't an asteroid. I never heard of
a lifepod that didn't want to be found. No life signs at all
in there, by the way, sir. We've scanned it... no harmful
rays or leaks, and there is an atmosphere in there, so
it's properly pressurized. We can open it anytime you
like."

"Do so."

Staaltenburg waved up two men who had been standing
by, anticipating the order, who came in with phaser
torches and went to work on the locking mechanism of
the pod.

"Captain," Staaltenburg said then, and nodded to
ward the port side entryway.

Kirk turned.

General Kellen trundled toward him, flanked by two
Starfleet Security guards.

"General," Kirk greeted, not particularly warmed up.

"Commodore. My men are being taken care of, I see,"
the wide Klingon said, glancing about at the rows of

286 FIRST STRIKE

rescued soldiers. "I shall expect them to be completely
cooperative."

"So far, so good," Kirk said.

Kellen faced him and looked over the tops of his
glasses. "I congratulate you. You saved what is left of my
fleet. You are the Kirk."

Unable to muster any mirth, the captain--commodore--bobbed
his brows in response. He got a
little jolt of satisfaction at being reinstailed as the
resident buzzard of Starfleet.

"Thank you. You still have charges to face regarding
the murder of a Starfleet serviceman and a guest of the
Federation. Counsel will be provided if you require it."

Kellen made a small conciliatory bow. "I know. I shall
face those charges boldly. I accept your offer of counsel,
as it will go in my favor to have Federation lawyers
speaking to a Federation court."

"Very wise, and probably true, General. There are
considerable mitigating circumstances. Be forewarned
that I take the death of my crewman very seriously and I
intend to testify against you. However, I'll also testify
that you stopped the assault on Capella Four and by
doing that probably forestailed many other deaths. It'll
be an interesting few months for us both, I think."

"I am ready. I confess that I do not understand what
makes you humans fight. You did destroy them after all,
but even though I told you what these people were, it
took you a very long time to decide to act."

"On the contrary," Kirk pointed out, "I decided not to
act rashly. That too is a decision. You were right about
who they were, but you were wrong about what they
were. No one is inherently evil. That comes only from
the choices we make and the actions we take."

"Perhaps." Kellen's small eyes twinkled. "I wish you
people would fight against us. What a grand war we
could have!"

Kirk leered at him, now somewhat amused in spite of
everything. He felt an unbidden grin pull' at his cheeks.
"Maybe someday, General."

287

Diane Carey

"Sir!" Staaltenburg called. "it's open."
Kirk glanced around the vast, high-halled flight deck.
"McCoy! Over here."
He waited for the doctor to join them, then nodded to
Staaltenburg. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."
Together, Staaltenburg and the two other crewmen
hauled open a very thick hatch on the black pod. There
was no light inside, but only a slight gush of atmosphere
as the pod equalized.
"Get a light," Staaltenburg ordered, 'and one of the
crewmen passed him a handheld utility light.
The crewmen, the general, the doctor, and the commodore
pressed into a half-circle and huddled up before the
open hatch.
"Well, I'll be damned," McCoy spouted.
The light cast a bright blue-white glow inside the pod.
There, with tiny faces in many shapes, their bodies
stuffed with memories, lay carefully stacked what must
have been over a thousand linen poppets.
Kirk looked at McCoy.
"Rag dolls?" Staaltenburg blurted. "They bothered to
save a bunch of rag dolls?"
They stood back from the hatch, contemplating what
they saw there.
"You want me to have these disposed of, sir?" the
lieutenant offered, clearly aggravated that he'd gone to
the trouble of capturing and towing in a pod that turned
out to be stuffed with stuffed dolls.
Kirk gazed into the bubble of tiny sojourners and
remembered a moment, a conversation, that might have
flowered into something very good, had the past not
thrown out its tripwire.
"No, Lieutenant. I want these carefully catalogued,
then permanently stored in airtight containers. It's a
trust I owe to a friend."
Staaltenburg frowned, then shrugged. "As you wish,
sir."
The lieutenant and his men moved off to follow their
assignment, and McCoy was watching Kirk. He was the

288

FIRST STRIKE
only one who understood the strange order, and Kirk
found comfort in that.
"Very nice, Captain," the doctor offered. "I don't
know what else we can do."
"If that door ever opens again," Kirk said, "we may
need a peace offering. And their families will want to...
have those."
McCoy nodded. "Zennor would be glad to know you
picked them up, Jim. In spite of everything, I believe
that."
"Captain," Staaltenburg called from the bulkhead,
and motioned at the comm unit. "Mr. Spock, sir."
McCoy followed as Kirk headed over to the port side,
both of them a little too aware of that pod back there.
"Kirk here."
"Spock, sir, "the baritone voice came through. "I have
translated the telemetry. The message was launched at
nearly warp twenty-five. I had believed such speed impossible,
but they have somehow overcome that. I remind you
there is still no way to know whether or not the message
went through the fissure or will travel on its own to the
other side of the galaxy."
"Go ahead, Mr. Spock. I think I'm beyond surprises."

"I hope so, sir. The message is from Zennor himself It
states, 'The Battle of Garamanus is lost. We have not
survived, but this is our rightful place. Try again.""

289

The
Invasion
Continues

,BOOK TWO

The Soldiers of Fear

The message from Starfleet had been curt. Assemble
the senior officers. Prepare for a Security One message
at 0900. Picard hadn't heard a Security One message
since the Borg were headed for Earth. The highest
level code. Extreme emergency. Override all other protocols. Abandon all previous orders.
Something serious had happened.

He leaned over the replicator. He had only a
moment until the senior officers arrived.

"Earl Grey, hot," he said, and the empty space on
the replicator shimmered before a clear glass mug
filled with steaming tea appeared. He gripped the mug
by its warm body, slipping his thumb through the
handle, and took a sip, allowing the liquid to calm
him.

He had no clue what this might be about and that
worried him. He always kept abreast of activity in the
quadrant. He knew the subtlest changes in the political
breeze. The Romulans had been quiet of late; the
Cardassians had been cooperating with Bajor. No
new ships had been sighted in any sector, and no
small rebel groups were taking their rebellions into
space. Maybe it was the Klingons?

He should have had an inkling.
His door hissed open and Beverly Crusher came in.
Geordi La Forge was beside her. Data followed. The
doctor and Geordi looked worried. Data had his usual
look of expectant curiosity.
The door hadn't even had a chance to close before
Deanna Troi came in. She was in uniform, a habit she
had started just recently. Worf saw her and left his
post on the bridge, following her to his position in the
meeting room.
Only Commander Riker was missing and he was
needed. Picard waited anxiously.
It was 0859.
Then the door hissed a final time and Will Riker
entered. His workout clothes were sweat streaked, his
hair damp. Over his shoulder he had draped a towel,
which he instantly took off and wadded in a ball in his
hand.
"Sorry, sir," he said, "but from your voice, I figured
I wouldn't have time to change."
"You were right, Will," Picard said. "We're about
to get a message from Starfleet Command. They
requested that all senior officers be in attendance--"
The viewer on the captain's desk snapped on with
the Federation's symbol, indicating a scrambled communique.
"Message sent to Picard, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise
V," said the generic female computer voice.
"Please confirm identity and status."
Picard placed a hand on the screen on his desk.
"Picard, Jean-Luc, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Security
Code 1-B58A."
The computer beeped.
Picard's palms were damp. He grabbed his cup of
tea, but the tea was growing cold. Still, he drank the
rest, barely tasting the tea's bouquet.
When the security protocol ended, the Federation
symbol disappeared from the screen, replaced by the
battle-scarred face of Admiral Kirschbaum. His features
had tightened in that emotionless yet urgent
expression the oldest--and best--commanders had
in times of emergency.
"Jean-Luc. We have no time for discussion. A
sensor array at the Furies Point has been destroyed.
Five ships of unknown origin are there now, along
with what seems to be a small black hole. Two of the
.ships attacked the Brundage Station and we're awaitng
word on the outcome. I'm ordering all available
ships to the area at top speed."
The Furies Point. Pcard needed no more explanation
than that. From the serious expressions all
around him, he could tell that his staff understood as
well.
Picard's handtightened on the empty glass mug. He

set it down before he shattered it with his ri "We'r
on our way, Admiral."

g p'
e
"Good." The admiral's mouth tightened. "I hope I
don't have to explain--"
"I understand the urgency, Admiral."
"If those ships are what we believe them to be,
we're at war, Jean-Luc."
How quickly it had happened. One moment he was
on the bridge, preparing for the day's duties. The
next, this.
"I will act accordingly, Admiral."
The admiral nodded. "You don't have much time,
Jean-Luc. I will contact you in one hour with transmissions
from the attack on the Brundage outpost. It
will give you and you r officers some idea of what you
are facing."
"Thank you, Admiral," Picard said.
"Godspeed, Jean-Luc."
"And to you," Picard said, but by the time the
words were out, the admiral's image had winked
away.
Picard felt as if someone had punched him in the
stomach.
The Furies.
The rest of the staff looked as stunned as he felt.

Except for Data. When Picard met his gaze, Data
said quietly, "It will take us two point three-eight
hours at warp nine to reach Brundage Station."

"Then lay in a course, Mr. Data, and engage. We
don't have time to waste."

Look for Star Trek The Next Generation
INVASION! Book Two The Soldiers of Fear Wherever Paperback Books Are Sold
Available from Pocket Books JOIN

The OfFiCiAL

STA!

FAN CLUB

For only 19.95 (Canadian 22.95-U.S. Dollars)* you receive
a year's subscription to the Star Trek Communicator
magazine including a bimonthly merchandise insert,
and an exclusive membership kit/

Send check or money order to

Oflicial Star Trek Fan Club R0. Box 111000 Aurora, CO 80042
or call I-8OO-TRUE-FAN (I-8OO-878-3326)
to use your ViSA/MasterCard!
*Price may be subject to change

It is the Day of Reckoning
It is the Day of Judgement
It is...

THE; DAY Of HONOr

A Four-Part KlingonTM Saga
That Spans the Generations

Coming Summer 1997
from Pocket Books

1244

TIG IGT 1GRTIOI
INVASION! BOOK TVVO
THE SOLDIERS OF FEAR
By Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
A generation ago, another U.S.S. nterpriseTM repelled a deadly
invasion. Now, the exiled aliens known as the Furies have returned,
more powerful than ever, and this time their weapons include the
ability to project fear into the minds of their enemies. Picard and his
crew must conquer their darkest fears when they face the second
wave of the...INVASION!

INVASION! BOOK THREE
TIME'S ENEMY
By LA. Graf

An ancient starship, frozen for millennia in an icy cloud of space
debris, holds a deadly mystery for the crew of Deep Space NineTM-- and for the entire Federation. For the ruined ship contains clues to the
ultimate fate of Benjamin Sisko, as well as to the long-lost origins of
the...INVASION!

VOYAG R
INVASION! BOOK FOUR
THE FINAL FURY
By Dafydd ab Hugh
Far from the terrible war threatening the Alpha Quadrant, the U.S.S.
Voyage?encounters the unexpected a Starfleet distress call. The
signal leads them to the very source of the attack on the Federation,
where even now the enemy is massing for the final assault on all that
Janeway and her crew hold dear. Now only the Starship VoyageF stands between their far-off home and the...INVASION!

Available from Pocket Books