MUDD COULD HARDLY believe his luck. Finally separated from the last of these infernal androids! Not by nearly enough distance, but the Enterprise was the best shot at a permanent escape he was likely to get. Maybe he could convince Kirk to warp out of the system before she could catch up again. It would mean leaving behind the secret of the interstellar transporter, but that was a small price to pay for freedom. There were plenty of other opportunities in the galaxy for a man of sufficient ambition.
"Thank you, Kirk," he said, meaning it. "Consider your debt to me paid in full." He held out his manacled hands to one of the guards flanking the Grand General, and after receiving a silent nod from his leader the guard produced a key and unlocked them.
"The feet, too, please," said Mudd. "We don't want to make Kirk carry me to the beam-out point, now, do we? I'd owe him a favor if we did that."
He might have to be carried even so—his left knee still hurt where he had twisted it in falling on the stairs, but it held his weight now, although shooting pain ran all the way down to his foot when he stood on it. He would try, at least, to walk out of here on his own.
He shook the circulation back into his extremities, then tucked his ripped shirt back into his belt as best he could. His side hurt where he had hit the stone floor when the Stella android had shoved him out of the way during the heat of battle, but it wasn't bad enough to require immediate attention. He wanted nothing to slow down their departure from this place.
"Shall we be off?" he asked Kirk. "I know you're a busy man, worlds to save and all that; I'd hate to cause you any unnecessary delay."
Shaking his head in his sardonic, holier-than-thou fashion, Kirk said, "Harry, you really take the cake."
Mudd replied as he always did to a snide remark. "Why, thank you, Captain." And then, purely for the sake of playing with Kirk's head, he turned to the android, took its right hand in his own, and said, "My dear, I shall count the hours." And the days, and the weeks, and the months, he thought, but he prudently left that unsaid.
He considered a parting remark to the Grand General, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor in this instance as well. You don't insult a man in his own castle, and Mudd could think of nothing to say that couldn't be taken as an insult if the General chose to take it that way. So he merely led the way out of the throne room and began the long trek down the hallway to the outer wall and the fortified transporter points, trying not to limp. The others followed, and the two palace guards who had brought them in accompanied them back out.
Dr. McCoy walked alongside Mudd, waving a diagnostic scanner at his side. Its irritating whistle cut straight to the inner ear. And no telling how deep its scanning beam penetrated.
"So what's your verdict, Doctor?" Mudd asked him. "Will I live to see another sunset?"
"Probably," McCoy said. "But I'd suggest staying clear of white Palko fruit for at least a month. You've got enough of the purple toxin in your system to trigger a deadly reaction just breathing the fumes from a white slice. What were you doing, living on the stuff?"
The news was slightly alarming, but a man of Mudd's girth grows used to the notion that food can be as harmful as it is pleasant. He laughed and said, "I make it a point not to turn down a delicacy, Doctor. You never know when the next opportunity will arise."
"Well, Harry," said Kirk, "You'll be dining on simpler fare where you're go—" His communicator bleeped for attention, and he immediately snatched it from his belt and flipped it open. "Kirk here."
Lieutenant Uhura said, "Captain, we're picking up increased transporter activity outside the palace. It looks like Prastor is beaming another attack force just beyond the walls."
"Understood. Get a lock on us. As soon as we're past the shield, or if the shield goes down, beam us away immediately. Kirk out." He closed his communicator and returned it to his belt. "You heard her," he said. "Let's get to the beam-out point before all hell breaks loose."
Mudd wholeheartedly agreed, but they had hardly made half the distance to the outer wall before they heard a tremendous explosion and the entire palace shook with the blast. A bright flash lit up the far end of the corridor, and another explosion sent dust and smoke rolling toward them.
"I believe they have breached the walls," Spock said with his characteristic understatement.
All of the Enterprise crew, and the two Distrellian guards who accompanied them, had drawn their weapons. The Enterprise crew stood their ground, but the Distrellians rushed off toward the source of the explosion without a backward glance. Typical, thought Mudd. Headlong into glory. It was hard to comprehend how an otherwise sane people could embrace violence so completely.
"Harry," Kirk said, "do you know another way out of here?"
"Indeed I do," said Mudd, thinking furiously. There were dozens of transporter stations around the perimeter of the palace, but all of them would be guarded. And if Mudd and the others showed up without their Distrellian escorts, they would probably be denied access beyond the shields.
But what if they went to an outbound transporter station? Those were less heavily guarded, because they were normally shielded except when the transporter was in use to beam someone away from the palace.
And Mudd knew one of the operators. He had bought the schematics to the transporter from him. Even if his post was guarded now, he would vouch for Mudd—he would have to, for fear that Mudd would betray him if he didn't. Yes, that would work, and it proved once again what Mudd had always maintained: It definitely paid to have contacts in as many places as possible.
Now, which way was that transporter station? Mudd turned once around, looking for clues. The palace was laid out like a wheel with corridors radiating outward like spokes from the center, so it was easy to navigate from the Grand General's residence in the hub, but the farther out you got along one spoke the harder it was to go anywhere else. They'd been going north, and the station he wanted was in the library wing on the west side, so they needed to turn left. Mudd had picked the transporter operator in the library to approach, figuring that in a military society his station would be seldom used, and that he would be bored and glad to have someone to converse with. His reasoning had paid off at the time, but now it meant circling a quarter of the way around the palace.
The zip-crack of disruptor fire echoed up the hallway, and a few bright blue energy beams lanced past the T-intersection at the end where the two guards had taken up positions to shoot from cover.
"Harry, do you know another way out or not?" Kirk demanded.
"I said I did, Captain, and I do. I was just getting my bearings. This way." Mudd led off through an archway into a curving side corridor. It wasn't one of the main routes around the center, but right now that might be just as well. And if Mudd remembered correctly, a northward jog a little ways ahead would take them past the one room he hadn't been able to search before: the vault where they stored the palace jewels. Though no doubt considerable wealth was stored there, Mudd had considered it a low priority compared with the interstellar transporter, but now under the confusion of the Prastorian attack he might as well at least see if he could pick up a memento of his stay here.
And maybe, just maybe, he could use it to pay for one final favor from the transporter operator. If Mudd could get him to activate just one segment of the outgoing beam a moment before the Enterprise activated their transporter, he could make his escape right here and now. He would still have to beam aboard the Enterprise, since it was the only interstellar ship besides the android's available, but he could aim for a cargo bay somewhere and hide out until the ship was safely out of the Nevis system. Mudd hadn't liked the tone of Kirk's voice when he'd made that crack about "simpler fare"; it would be better to take his chances as a stowaway than accept whatever Kirk had planned for him. Kirk wouldn't think to look for him on board; he would assume Mudd had escaped to somewhere else on Distrel, so Mudd could bide his time until the Enterprise called at some more desirable port.
Spock would probably calculate his chance of success at about 1.63 percent, but Mudd could think of no better option at the moment. Sometimes you just had to trust in your own ingenuity.
The hallway they were in ended at a wide meeting room. The walls were covered with paintings of former Grand Generals, and shelves and pedestals around the perimeter held busts and medals and other bric-a-brac. Mudd led the way across it, aiming for the rightmost of the triple doors on the opposite side, but a gleaming silver dagger with a jeweled hilt hanging on the wall just to the left of the doors caught his attention and he steered closer to it. It was impossible to tell at a glance if the jewels were real, but they were certainly impressive. A dagger like that could fetch a fine price with some collectors Mudd knew. So he stumbled just as he reached the doorway, reached out as if to catch himself against the wall, and smoothly lifted the dagger from its support as he passed on through the doorway.
An alarm instantly began clanging overhead. Well, that answered the question of its value.
"Drat the luck," Mudd said quickly, not even breaking stride. "The door must have been wired."
"The knife you were attempting to steal was more probably the cause of the alarm," said Spock dryly.
Confound the Vulcan; he would notice. Putting a wounded tone in his voice, Mudd said, "Certainly you don't expect me to proceed into a conflict unarmed when there are weapons to be had? A dagger is a poor substitute for a phaser, I admit, but it's better than nothing. Unless of course you'd like to trade me."
"That would be illogical," said Spock. "Though we have not tested your skills as a marksman, there is a high probability that I am a better shot than you; therefore the phaser would be more valuable in my hands."
"There you go," said Mudd, as if that closed the argument.
Another loud bang echoed down the main corridor they had left only moments before. Shouts of alarm and the zip-crack of more disruptor fire followed close behind. It sounded as if the fighting was closer now; the Prastorians had evidently made it through the gap they'd blown in the wall. At least nobody was likely to come investigate an alarm with that going on so near.
Kirk apparently thought otherwise. "Hurry it up, Harry," he urged.
"I'm limping as fast as I can," Mudd snapped back at him. "It's not much farther." They came to another cross-corridor, and Mudd paused to peer around the corner. Yes, he had guessed right; two soldiers stood outside a heavy door about twenty feet away, both looking anxiously down the hallway in the other direction, from which even more battle noise sounded.
Mudd backed up and held out a hand to stop the others and whispered, "Wait here. I'm going to have to talk our way past these guards."
"Are you sure that's smart?" Kirk asked him. "What if they've already heard about you?"
"They haven't," Mudd told him, earnestly hoping that was true. If it wasn't, well, Kirk and the others had phasers; they could probably get him out of trouble if he couldn't talk himself out of it. And nothing ventured, nothing gained, Mudd had always believed, so before Kirk could protest any further, he stepped out into the hallway and walked toward the guards.
"What's your status here?" he asked as he drew closer, tucking his dagger prominently into his belt. "Do you need reinforcements?" It was always best to take the initiative in situations like this.
"No, sir," one of the guards said.
"Good," said Mudd. "As you can no doubt hear for yourselves, things aren't going as well elsewhere in the palace. The Grand General has sent me to ensure that the most valuable items here don't fall into enemy hands."
The guards exchanged a puzzled glance, then one of them asked, "In what way?"
"I have been instructed to prepare what I can for relocation if that should become necessary."
"Relocation!" the other guard said. "Is it that bad?"
"An attack force came up through the catacombs before we got the shields up," Mudd replied, neglecting to mention that they had been nullified already. "The Prastorians are already inside the walls." That much was true; he could hear them uncomfortably well.
Even so, the first guard said, "We'd have to have word directly from the Grand General before we could let you remove anything, sir."
Mudd nodded. "Of course, of course. But you understand why he couldn't speak to you himself; he's a bit busy at the moment." Another barrage of disruptor fire echoed down the long corridor, lending credibility to his remark. Mudd said, "He told me to leave it to your discretion when to move; I am merely supposed to prepare the…ah…items for transport. You may accompany me inside and assist if you wish." That should mollify them, and if he couldn't palm a few precious trinkets under the noses of two soldiers, his name wasn't Harry Mudd.
They were nervous about the situation, he could tell, but the increasing clamor of battle helped them make up their minds. "All right," the first guard said to the second, "you go give him a hand, and I'll keep watch. But we're not moving anything until we're absolutely sure we have to."
"Oh, you'll know when the time comes," Harry told him. "Don't worry about that." That was true enough as well. As he waited for them to open the door for him, Mudd told himself that he was probably doing them a favor. The way things sounded near the outer wall, they very probably would have to flee with whatever they could carry before this battle was over. Of course Harry planned to be long gone with the best of the treasure by that point, but he could certainly fill a sack with his leavings for them, and the Grand General would probably be grateful to have that much rescued from the invaders.
Provided he survived the attack, that is.
Mudd knew it probably only took a few seconds, but the combination lock seemed to take forever to open. At last the guard spun the lock wheel and pulled the massive steel door outward, and as the interior lights flickered on, Mudd nearly gasped with delight. Oh, yes, this was a vault. No piddly little collection of insignificant sentimental artifacts; this place held real wealth. He stepped inside and turned once around, taking it all in. Shelves along all four walls held silver and gold artifacts of all description: figurines, chalices, jewelry boxes, and more. Cloth sacks and wooden chests on the floor spilled over with coins and jewels. One corner of the vault was stacked high with bars of what appeared to be platinum, and atop the pile, as if tossed there casually by the last person to need them, rested a gold crown, a jeweled scepter, and a richly brocaded mantle fit for a king. Distrellian blue, of course.
"Ginn Donan's?" Mudd asked the guard who had accompanied him. He had heard the tales of the Nevisians' biggest hero—over and over again in speech after speech as he had negotiated for peace.
"That's right," said the guard.
"Those were on the list," Mudd told him. "Find something to hold everything in while I look for the other items we're supposed to save." Nice as they were, Mudd had no need for royal finery—he needed something a bit more portable and concealable—but that should keep the guard busy while he took inventory.
No doubt Kirk and his cronies were growing ever more fidgety out there in the hallway, but Mudd didn't particularly care about that. They wouldn't leave without him for the simple reason that only he knew where they were going. When Mudd was good and ready to go he would entrust the guards with the sack of swag he had chosen for them to "preserve," and he would walk out with his own treasure safely stowed away and they wouldn't suspect a thing.
Diversion, that was the key to this sort of operation. He found a suitably impressive diamond necklace and palmed it while he selected an even larger ruby brooch to hand to the guard, and a moment later he added two rings and a bracelet to his own stash while asking the guard if the jeweled tiara in his other hand was the genuine article or just a clever duplicate for show.
When the guard assured him it was real, he gave it to him to add to the scepter and crown, then hitched up his pants and slipped the necklace, rings, and bracelet into a pocket as he turned to look for more.
A soft whirr and a thump from out in the hallway drew his attention, and he stuck his head out the door far enough to see the guard out there slumped on the floor. A moment later the security officer who had accompanied Kirk came into view, holding out her phaser. The Enterprise crew had apparently lost their patience.
Mudd sighed in exasperation. Kirk always had to spoil things just when they were starting to pay off. Well, there was no sense getting into a firefight over it, so Mudd said to the remaining guard, "Here, help me with this, will you?" and bent down as if to scoot a jewel-filled chest near the door out of the way. That put the guard with his back to the door, and the moment he bent over, the security officer stunned him as well.
Mudd snatched up a double handful of gemstones and poured them into his pockets, added a bar of platinum for good measure, then stepped over the unconscious guard and met the woman at the door. Kirk and the others were right behind her. "Have you no discipline?" Mudd asked them. "I told you to wait. I had just earned their confidence and was about to—"
"I don't care what you were about to do, Harry," Kirk said. "We're about to be overrun. Now move it." He grabbed Mudd roughly by his collar and pulled him out of the vault, then propelled him down the corridor with a rough shove against his back.
"Really, Kirk," Mudd said as he struggled to keep his footing, "I must protest this treatment! I—"
A steady barrage of disruptor fire swept through the intersection of hallways in which Kirk and the others had been hiding. Where it struck the walls, great sections of stone blew free and tumbled to the floor.
"I see your point," Mudd said, rushing ahead.
But the battle had been working its way inward from the outer walls along both of the main-spoke corridors flanking the treasury. As they reached the next one, more disruptor fire lanced past the junction, and a detonation against a cornerstone sprayed them with rock chips.
Mudd's pockets rattled as he leaped backward, nearly knocking over Kirk in his haste to avoid the battle. A few baubles fell to the floor and rolled away.
"If we get caught up in this because of your little shopping expedition," Kirk growled, "I'll make you wish you were back with the androids."
"Too late," Mudd told him. "I already wish for that. At least they didn't shoot at me."
The security officer brushed past him and stuck her head around the corner, then pulled back fast as more disruptor fire peppered the walls. "They're coming fast," she reported. "If we're going to get across this passage, we've got to do it now." Without waiting for Kirk's order, she stuck her hand around the corner and fired her phaser a few times blindly; then she shouted "Go!" and stood out in the corridor, firing rapidly.
The other security officer leaped across, then Kirk and Spock. McCoy was preparing himself for the jump when a disruptor beam caught the woman solidly in the chest, spinning her around and slamming her up against the corner. McCoy grabbed for her just as two more beams struck her, and this time their combined molecular dispersion charges finished the job the first one had started.
Mudd stared aghast at the spot where she had been. Not even a shoe remained. She had been completely vaporized. This woman had died right before his eyes, and he didn't even know her name.
The other security person fired back down the corridor. "Come on!" shouted Kirk, and Mudd backed up for a running leap across the perilous junction, but when he looked beyond Kirk he stopped cold. A flood of blue-clad Distrellian defenders were retreating toward them from that direction, too, and the fighting looked even more intense there.
"Look out behind!" Mudd yelled. He turned to look behind himself, and winced to see smoke and the flash of disruptor fire there as well. They were trapped.
"The vault," said Spock in a loud voice. "It is the only defensible position."
"We can't let them box us in," Kirk protested. "We've got to get out of here."
"On the contrary, Captain," Spock said as he reached out over the security officer's head and contributed his own phaser to the return barrage. "We need only wait for the attackers to knock out the shields, which is undoubtedly their first priority, and then the Enterprise can beam us away."
"Spock, you're a genius," Mudd said, meaning every word of it, for the Vulcan's plan meant that he didn't have to cross the gauntlet of disruptor fire.
He backed away to give the others room, and one by one Kirk, the security officer, and Spock leaped across. An energy beam narrowly missed Spock, blasting more rock chips from the corridor, one of which sliced into his cheek. Bright green blood welled out of the cut, but he hardly seemed to notice.
"Into the vault, Harry," Kirk said unnecessarily, for Mudd was already moving toward it, but he froze when a phalanx of Prastorian soldiers burst into the corridor from the other end. They stared at him for a moment, obviously unsure whether to shoot or not. He and Spock were wearing blue, but the one remaining security officer wore red, and Kirk was in his usual olive green. The vault guard that the security officer had stunned lay sprawled a few feet in front of them, but Mudd couldn't guess how that would affect their decision.
Their hesitation lasted only a few seconds, however, before one of them shouted, "It's the aliens! Get 'em!"
Mudd ran for the doorway, but it was a losing race. Time seemed to telescope for him; he imagined he could actually see the disruptor beams stretch up the corridor toward him. The first of them lanced past on the right, but telescoped or no, he had no time to dodge the next one. It hit him in the right leg, which buckled immediately and pitched him forward. That might have saved his life, for the next beam passed overhead, but as he reached out to catch himself against the wall he leaned directly into the path of the next one, which hit him in the side. The same side that the android had injured, Mudd realized as pain washed over him and he fell back against Dr. McCoy.
They both fell to the floor, McCoy cursing frantically. Mudd heard him as if from a long ways away, and he saw Kirk and Spock and the security officer firing back down the corridor, but his vision was growing indistinct. He dimly felt another shock to his other leg, but everything, even the wound in his side, now seemed filtered through thick haze.
Someone grabbed him by his arms and dragged him into the vault. His head banged the door sill on the way through, adding insult to what Mudd was just beginning to realize was a serious injury. Whoever had rescued him laid his head on a sack of money, then Mudd heard the whirring of medical instruments.
The vault door boomed shut. The light immediately went out, then a moment later a flashlight beam shot out, wobbled a moment, and shone into his face.
He tried to tell whoever held it to quit blinding him, but he couldn't get his breath. Not at all, he realized with growing alarm.
Shadowy forms hovered over him, just outside of the light beam. Through the steadily increasing hum in his ears, Mudd heard Kirk ask, "How is he, Bones?" and he heard McCoy answer, "He's fading fast, Jim. I've got to get him to the Enterprise."
"As soon…shields…down," Kirk said, his words fading in and out. Mudd heard the chirp of a communicator and Kirk said something else, but his voice sounded like the buzzing of an insect now.
At least the pain was fading as well. Mudd tried to move his arms, his head, tried to blink his eyes, but nothing responded. He could only lie there on the floor with his head on a sack of money and stare into the light.
Someone else turned on another light and swept it around the vault. Jewels glittered in its beam like stars twinkling through an atmosphere. Not a bad last vision, Mudd thought, if it came to that. He had always said he wanted to end his days surrounded by fabulous riches, and here he was.
But where, oh where were the beautiful women that were supposed to go with it?