STAR TREK (R)
THE GREAT STARSHIP RACE

PROLOGUE

Aboard the Romulan
Cruiser Scorah

"Valdus, you are a coward. I vomit on
cowards. Cowards should be cooked and eaten. No--
not cooked. And not swallowed. They should be chewed
raw, then spat out. When we return to the
homeworlds, you, your face, your body, your
uniform, your helmet, your smell ... will be
removed from my Swarm, walked off this ship and
stripped of rank. I never again want even to see
you or any sons you may unexpectedly sire.
If I had another pilot, you would be off the
bridge already. Take your post and turn your
eyes away from me. Anyone else who freezes
at the controls will be put outside the ship and
dragged home on a tether. Someone other than this
worm step up here and give me a report on that
vessel out there. And someone clear this smoke from
here!"
The scorn in Primus Oran's voice was
almost enough to move the smoke aside by itself.
Behind him, the object of that scorn,
Subcenturion Valdus Ionis Zorokove,
stepped away, actually stepped backward, and was
particular about keeping his eyes down even after he
turned to his helm. The Primus's blue
jacket and the red fur up the right arm seared his
memory instantly.
Smoke obscured sight of his own feet, andfor
an instant he was disoriented. Malfunctions,
malfunctions. Living and mechanical.
He maneuvered by simple habit through the
cramped bridge--low ceiling, subdued light,
shadows designed in, everything the colors of the
smoke, bulkheads angled to make the crew always
feel as if they were crawling about the underside of a
giant insect. His comrades turned away as he
squirmed past, partly for his benefit, partly for
theirs.
For some reason he kept hearing his own name over
and over in his mind. Before ten minutes ago, he
had been the pride of his family. Suddenly he
wanted to be anyone else, anywhere else.
The Primus is right. Cowardice endangers
all. And I am a coward. I am the
day's disease. Perhaps if I concentrate, I can
find a way to go home in even more humiliation.
Already he had accumulated a demotion, on
top of sitting on his backside in backspace,
in the back of a patrol vessel, doing
exploratory mapping work while the great war between
the Empire and the Federation raged. There would be no
guarding borders or putting down uprisings for this
lucky Imperial Swarm. The wars would
probably be over before the Scorah and its crew
finished drawing pictures of the stars out here.
Valdus didn't understand it, but the war with the
Federation planets was sucking the Empire dry.
Conquest had seemed guaranteed against this
foolishly openhanded, eager fledgling assembly
of planets that didn't even have a dominant
race among them. Surely, at first strike they
would crumble, and the Empire would have control over
vastly more space and resources.
But that's not what had happened. At the
Empire's first strike on an outpost, the
Federation had pulled together with an indignation never
expected, and began to fight back. The Empire
had attempted to skin a sleeping animal. Soft
and slothful while dozing, the beast had awakened at
first cut, ready to fight to the death.
"Unidentified ship is approaching," Commander
Rioc reported. "A very old and simple
design. Low warp capability only. No
response to any hails."
"Move us closer," Oran said. "They could be
a hostile ship in disguise."
Valdus chewed on his lip, and eased the
Scorah forward. He felt the coldness of his
fellow crewmen toward him. Somehow they were
expected to work with him for a few more days without having
anything to do with him.
Mutterings, orders, responses rumbled like
thunder in the distance, but for several seconds
Valdus could make no sense of it past the cloud
of his personal shame. He dreamed of turning to the
Primus, announcing how much he wished to leave
duty on board the Scorah now. Almost as much
as Primus Oran wanted him off. Alm.
But even after the Primus's condemnation and
sentencing, he still didn't have the courage to do it.
Valdus started plotting possible pivoting
maneuvers, just to be ready. In his mind Valdus
saw the Primus's large sunken eyes and
angular beard, and listened.
"Condition of our Swarm ships?" the Primus
asked. "And distance--"
Then Oran tripped and fell onto his side
against a support strut.
Valdus quickly turned away, like a dog that
had been slapped. The other four crewmen
occupying the small bridge paused, but no one
moved to help. Even Tarn--theirthe bold, dark,
intuitive centurion who everyone said would command the
sky some day--stayed back in the corner near
engineering access. Along with cowards, the Primus
had clarified to the crew that he loathed assistance
for old wounds. He barely tolerated help for
new ones.
Valdus gritted his teeth. And I will
give no help.
Only Rioc approached the fallen fleet
leader, but even he made no attempt to assist.
"Burn this foot," Oran grunted. "I should
have had it cut off." He forced himself up onto an
elbow, then over onto his knees, and managed
somehow to grip the support strut and rise to his
feet. "Condition?"
"All ships are on alert, ready to assist."
"Distance of the nearest ship? Don't make me
bark, Rioc."
The commander gazed at him, and coughed on the
smoke that was barely starting to clear despite the
whine of ventilators. "Worshipper and Whip
Hand are nearest, Primus. They can each be here
in one-third day."
As he straightened, Oran glanced at the
small sensor screens. "Alert to be ready."
The snapping, inaccurate, hard-to-read
screens were near Valdus, who had to fight not
to lean in the other direction, away from Oran.
He felt the Primus's glare sliding past him
like a creature of the deep caves.
The ventilators choked, and the smoke swirled
around them again, antagonizing everyone.
Improvement came slowly in the Empire.
Too often their brightest engineers were penalized,
demoted, even executed for failures in
experimentation, so there was less and less
experimentation. All that was left were the worst
engineers, the timid ones.
Someday we will have better, Valdus thought,
or we will go out and take better.
Shabby engineering. Poor manufacturing.
Eccentric controls. Officers who were ...
"I have more detail on that ship," Commander
Rioc reported. "Not a ship, precisely.
More like a long-.tance, long-term capsule.
Minimized living space, primary area is
storage. Presumably food, possibly
medicine. Three life-forms. Correction ...
four."
"Five, sir," the centurion corrected
again. "This blip in the corner--"
"Very well, five."
Bluntly, Oran interrupted, "Dock with
them."
Tightening his elbows against his ribs, Valdus
blinked and bit the inside of his lip. Yes,
dock with them. Give no consideration to caution, no
rein to the advance. That was the reputation of the
Primus Oran. He was famous for this trait.
He had won battles with it. His name was known in
the Tricameron for it.
Valdus lowered his eyes and forced a swallow.
I will never again be cautious.
Roaring, the Primus demanded, "Do I have
to say it again?"
"Prepare to dock," the commander related to his
crew in a subdued tone, for they could not move on
the Primus's command alone unless the order
affected the entire six-ship patrol Swarm.
Rioc looked at Oran as though waiting for
something else. Some clarification or
meticulousness.
None came.
The bridge manipulation officer said,
"Universal cowl ready, Commander."
Rioc nodded. "We are ready to dock,
Primus."
"Have I gone deaf, Rioc?"
Rioc sighed and gestured a silent order
to begin docking.
The procedure was awkward and irritating. They
had to abort and approach again four separate
times. Each time the Primus's face grew a
shade grayer, until at last the crew was ready
to crawl outside and force the cowl to fit.
Finally, by tilting their own ship until the
thrusters whined, they were able to link up and make the
"leakage" lights go off.
"Open the hatchway," the Primus snapped
instantly. No sensor checks, no tests of
any kind.
"What if their air is poisonous?"
Rioc asked.
Now Valdus did look up, and so did
everyone else. Poison?
The Primus snapped, "Then we hold our
breath. Or shall we all be as priggish as you are,
Rioc? I can send you to your quarters, where you will have
more time to build those little replicas of ships you have
battled. All those pointless Federation
duplicates you have dangling from your private
ceiling, as though you conquered them alone. Now, the
hatch."
Commander Rioc seemed to shrug without moving.
He gestured again for the crew to act, for the hatch
to be cranked open.
Then Valdus heard Rioc quietly utter
to the centurion, "Put the translator on
line. Prepare to turn it off whenever I look
at you. No more than a look, do you understand?"
"Yes, Commander, I understand exactly," the
centurion murmured back.
"Hands on disruptors."
So the commander and the centurion would commit caution
on the Primus's behalf.
The centurion motioned three of the bridge
crew to back away, in case the foremost were
attacked or struck down when the hatch opened.
Valdus was one of them. He moved back without a
^w because now he knew what he was. Cowards
always moved back.
His disruptor was cold, unassuring against his
palm. He looked for fear in his mind, his chest,
his limbs, but felt none. Perhaps it had been
pushed aside by humiliation.
The hatch slid open, to the side, then upward,
out of the way. Five faces s tared at them, piled
up like victims of a crash. Faces from yellow
to copper, all with large wide eyes, innocuous,
gawking, flat brows up, mouths open--how could
five creatures all have the same expression?
Primus Oran huffed, relaxed visibly,
turned to the commander, but swallowed a comment.
The visitors were already climbing through the hatch--
And the first one through plunged at the Primus and
took him in a body embrace that pitched them
both backward into Rioc, then all three against the
pilot console.
Startled, Valdus also flailed away and
bumped the bulkhead, and two others drew their
disruptors.
"No!" Rioc blurted. "Wait."
Slowly Valdus realized that this was no
attack. In fact, if it wasn't pure
delight, it was pure stupidity.
Both, he decided as he regained his balance.
"Translator," the Primus grunted,
canting his eyes toward Rioc.
Primus Oran didn't even push the
visitor off. The visitor was just hanging there
around the Primus's neck like a big decoration,
giggling and babbling in a language Valdus
didn't recognize. Nor, apparently, did
the senior officers, who had been much farther and
wider in their experiences than Valdus.
The other four visitors were through now, not even
one staying behind for safety. No caution here either.
They came through, also babbling, grinning, and
grasping hands with the Scorah's bridge crew.
Their clothing, a very basic space survival
suit with hook-up accesses for ... anyone's
guess. Valdus hadn't seen a suit like that
since early training, andfora few moments it stole
his attention.
When he roused himself from this bout of curious
nostalgia, the hatch was closed, Primus
Oran was free from his manacle, and a bizarre
standoff had begun.
The centurion held a medical unit up
near the five big-eyed strangers, but only
scowled at what he saw. An unimpressed
kind of scowl.
"Weak," he said quietly, toward the
Primus.
"I can see that. Is the translator on line
yet?"
Rioc didn't answer or even nod. He
touched the panel he had been preparing.
""Happy"' ... ".tance"' ...
"wait"' or "waiting"' ... "population"'
or "p"' ... "alone"' ...
"astrotelemetry"' ... "quasi-stellar"'
... "galactic voice"' or "noise"'
... "hopeful"' ... "lost hope"' ...
"foreign search"' ... "think"' or "thought"'
... "unproductive"' or "fruitless"'--"
The computer translated the foreigners' ^ws,
at least key parts of sentences, halting along in
a grim, utilitarian monotone completely
opposite to the motions and expressions of the people
talking. It was entertaining, had Primus Oran
been the type to be entertained.
Rioc glanced at the centurion, then at
Oran as the translator snapped off.
"Can you get anything from that?" the Primus
drawled.
"They've been looking for something and didn't
find it," the centurion supplied from a shadow.
"They were looking in space," the engineer offered.
"The computer is confused," Rioc said. "Too
many of them talking. Which is the leader? All their
uniform markings are the same. They all look
hungry."
"Engineering report," Oran requested.
The engineer leaned past a strut. "Their ship
is basic early interstellar exploratory
vessel, all equipment of a picture-taking or
measuring nature. They have very weak sensor
capability, no defenses, no weapons, only
primary light speed and limited maneuvering
capabilities at sublight."
The visitors were touching and laughing again, in
fact almost dancing with delight.
Valdus smiled. His muscles had been
welded by the Primus's excoriations, and now he
was suddenly smiling.
But so was everyone else ... was Oran smiling?
A man who'd had those muscles surgically
removed with his first promotion?
"Get them basic drawing materials,"
Oran said. His voice was lilting as he clasped
the hand of the next shaggy-haired visitor who
approached him. "Prepare a holographic star
map. Get them to show where they are from. Location of
their--" As he was engulfed in another embrace
... his--engaging, resourceful little planet."
Several Empire officers smiled and bounced
to action, backslapping each other in a manner
reserved for weddings and only among clan members
who trusted each other. Suddenly men who had never
trusted each other were standing side by side. Tensions
melted away. The joy of these idiotically
naive visitors was infectious.
We're going to get credit for finding them!
Valdus drew in a refreshing breath. He
knew what was happening. The Primus would get that
information, and this ship ... would suddenly be crewed
by heroes.
An unexploited planet. A rare prize
with sufficient resources to support a culture
intelligent enough to be turned into a workforce. A
whole planet to be mined, milled,
to provide materials and a reasonably skilled
herd of people who could be taught to manufacture
whatever the Empire needed in its war with the
Federation. Advanced enough to be useful, primitive
enough to offer no resistance.
An Imperial dream. A planet of
slaves.
"Maps, maps," Primus Oran chanted,
"this sector."
"Coming," the commander said.
An electrical fizz hurt their ears, then
a pop, and abruptly a wall-size
holographic star chart of this portion of deep
space filled the center of the bridge. Rioc and
two other crewmen were briefly awash in primary
colors as they stepped through it to get out of the way.
Silence fell on the bridge. All gazed
at glowing stars, hovering nebulae, streaking
comets, overlaid by thin red navigational beams.
The newcomers paused, and the one who had first come
through the hatch frowned at the holograph. He
glanced at his shipmates, conversed briefly, but
they were clearly confused. Not by what they were
supposed to do, but by the picture they saw.
"They see nothing familiar here," Commander
Rioc said.
Oran nodded. "Expand the grid."
The holograph swelled, grew more
intimidating, demanding attention.
The visitors fell suddenly silent--
startled. They blinked their large light-catching
eyes and retreated nervously toward each other.
The mood of joy began to slip.
Valdus felt his own smile fall away, and
held very still.
Primus Oran motioned to the aliens, then at
the holographic star map. "Well? Show us."
The visitors flinched, drew their shoulders
inward at his tone. A steady tone, yes, but with a
huff of threat.
They want to show us, Valdus realized,
but they don't know how to read the map. Have they
ever seen a picture of space? Primus
Oran wants that planet--
"Can the computer explain," Oran said with his
teeth tight, "in their language?"
The centurion leaned over a screen.
"Insufficient primary vocabulary. Doubtful
accuracy as yet."
"Don't we have a linguist on board?"
"No, Primus, there is not a linguist on
board anywhere in the Swarm, and you know no one
puts a linguist on any Empire ship that is not
a diplomatic ship, and that in the current
circumstances we have no diplomatic ships
either."
Valdus stared at the centurion, who continued
to stare at the small screen without apology.
Reaching out with one hand in a motion he hoped was
unthreatening, Valdus caught the arm of the first
visitor and pulled him toward the humming star
map, pointed at the visitor's chest, then at the
map.
Gaping at him, the visitor seemed to want
to comply and moved forward again toward the star map,
frowning and looking for a point of reference--
Then fate turned against them. The visitor's
clumsy boot came down on Oran's old
injury, and because of the thickness of the old-style
space boot, the visitor didn't realize
until too late that he was standing on his host's
foot. Didn't realize--until Oran choked
in pain and lashed out. His knuckles crashed across
the alien's cheekbone.
Apprehension burst over the well-bbing. Thunder
broke on the bridge. The alien flew
backward and landed among his own kind like a
gamepiece in some arena contest, and they all went
down. The aliens sank back in fear.
In the corner, Valdus felt his senses
blur. Distrust welled inside him.
"I want your planet!" Oran shouted,
bearing down on them. "I will boil your hearts
to get what I want!"
Rioc slammed into him, pushing him away from the
aliens and on top of Valdus, who did all
he could to push back while the officers shouted over
him.
"What are you doing!" Rioc demanded.
Oran struggled. "I'm interrogating them!"
"Not very well!"
"Will it be your heart I boil, Rioc?"
Paranoia washed over Valdus. He looked
at the faces of shipmates with whom he had served
for two seasons, and those faces became enemies
before his very eyes. Enemies, enemies. He had
to get out from beneath them, had to get out of this trap--th
deathtrap--
Suddenly the engineer pushed at his assistant.
The assistant lashed out with the side of his
disruptor--when had weapons been drawn?
A bright reed of energy pierced the bridge
headers, cutting downward into the controls, and
sliced one of the visitors cleanly in half.
Suddenly everyone was fighting, arguing, defensive.
What moments ago had been a crew in harmony
now suddenly was a tangle of vulgarities.
Slipping on the mutilated visitor's
blood as it pooled, Valdus pushed past his
crewmates. He had to get away from here.
Away from all these who were against him.
I can't breathe--they'll kill me by stopping
me from breathing--
Even as Oran was propelled into a support
strut, he bellowed, "It is the natural way
to conquer or be conquered! I will not perpetrate
immorality by failing to take advantage of this
natural treasure!"
"Not me," Valdus gasped. "Not me !"
Terror spread through him. In a corner, the
aliens crouched together. Valdus saw them as the
horror they were. Their faces were pinched, pale,
their eyes contracted. His hands turned cold.
He felt his face pale to ash, saw his
comrades' faces go gray too.
But there was horror too in his crewmates--
all this time they had been enemies, and he had been
duped into working with them. His chest grew tighter,
tighter--
He pressed his shoulder blades against the
bulkhead and tried to breathe within the cloud of ghoulish
discomfort--ghoulish because it came from within himself. This
grisly sense of dread--his life in danger.
He pushed away from Rioc and Oran as they
shouted at each other, but not soon enough.
Not quickly enough to avoid being splattered by blood
as Oran drew a utility blade and slashed
Rioc across the throat.
Rioc gagged, twisted away, snatched at his
exposed windpipe with one hand and at Valdus with the
other, then crumpled against Valdus, forcing him
to trip.
Valdus choked with sudden savage terror,
trying to pull away from the clawing corpse.
Oran spun on the visitors, his knife
dripping. The aliens shrieked and huddled, faces
filled with doom as they realized what would happen
to them now.
Oran plunged at them, and in the span of a
gasp two aliens were sliced to death,
gushing dark red blood all over the others. Then
the centurion attacked Oran, the engineer
attacked the centurion, the sensor officer and the
guards all turned on each other, and Valdus
saw it spreading before him ...
A clear path toward the engineering corridor.
While slaughter erupted behind him, Valdus
ran. He wanted to get away from the enemies
all around him. He drew his disruptor and ran
through the tight corridors.
A sudden explosion threw him against the wall.
He struggled up and looked back the way he had
come. Crackling electrical fire chewed at the
ceiling.
Explosions in engineering!
So there were enemies there, too--somehow they had
infiltrated the ship--somehow they were everywhere.
If enemies had control of engineering, then the
ship was being hulled and all would die.
"I will make them all die," Valdus
spat. "I will make you all die! All my
enemies will die!"
He crouched and fired his disruptor down the
narrow open corridor, in wide circles,
until there was nothing but sizzling fire and the access
panels were exploding. One enemy who jumped out
a hatch lay twisting in flames on the deck.
"Burn, burn!" Valdus choked. His hands
shook so hard that the muzzle of the disruptor waggled
and cut across the wall when he opened fire again.
"You can't follow me now!"
Down through the Scorah he crawled, shooting
wildly into each section behind him until its
conduits exploded, then going on, locking
hatches so he couldn't be followed.
Barely in control, Valdus slid into the
long, thin access tube to the life pod, and was
automatically dropped into the pod.
He smashed his palm against the controls. How
did they work? Which control would launch the pod?
Why couldn't he remember?
Finally he reversed his disruptor and smashed the
panel with the weapon's handle until the pod began
to buzz around him, bumped, and launched.
Alone in a pod meant for three, Valdus
gasped for breath as though just coming up from under water.
He crawled to the sensor screen and poked at it
until the visual snapped on and provided a
view of near space, of the Scorah.
As Valdus watched, the bird-winged
patrol vessel shrank away, farther away, a
metal button on the black canopy around him
...
Andwith distance, the paranoia began to retreat from his
mind. His thoughts began to clear, filter back
to what they were before those aliens had been brought on
board.
Crew ... the ship ... Commander Rioc ...
those aliens--
Those aliens ...
The Scorah heaved like an animal in its
death throes. Blue flame belched from the aft
sections.
Before his eyes, the ship that minutes ago had
been his home cracked and fell apart. Then the
two halves tore themselves to bits in tandem
explosions. First one, then the other.
Bodies appeared, spinning through the vacuum of
space.
Valdus watched, his hands shaking, his mind
clearing.
He pushed himself up onto his knees, still staring
at the screen.
And he rasped, "What did we do ..."

Seventy-four Years Later
The Last Whistling Post

"Asteroid! Collision course!"
The technician's cracking voice woke the
senior scientist out of a good snooze so
abruptly that she thought she was still dreaming.
"Look at the size of it!" Halfway out of
his chair, the technician was pointing at the row of
screens monitoring the solar system and as much
space outside it as possible. One clearly
showed a streaking yellow-green line and a blip
moving from left to right at hideous speed. "It's
almost a fifth the size of the planet!"
The senior scientist stumbled from her chair and
pressed against her colleague's shoulder, deciding
with every step that he was wrong, looking at the wrong
screen, leaning on a dial--but he wasn't
wrong.
A projectile was coming in, and coming in fast.
Dead on course, right toward their planet.
"Beneon, what should we do!" her technician
belched. "What--what--"
Terror spread across his ruddy cheeks, and his
eyes contracted as he realized what he
was seeing.
Beneon pressed her long unkempt nut
brown hair out of her own eyes, thought for a painful
instant how long it had been since she had made
herself presentable--no one needed to be presentable
on a moon station--and checked to be sure the garish
yellow-green line was not a malfunction.
It wasn't. Out of nothing and nowhere, she was
staring at her planet's death.
"Vorry, check ... check the ..."
"I did!" Vorry wailed. "I checked!
Look at it!"
"Why didn't we see it sooner?"
"I don't know! It just dropped out of nowhere
at us! How can that happen? How can it happen?"
He dissolved into sobs, tears streaming down his
blotched cheeks.
"Whistling Post, Whistling Post, this is
Planetside Assembly, do you read?"
Beneon forced her hand to move, to touch the
communications panel. "I read."
"Dr. Beneon, do you see it? Are you
tracking it?"
"Yes," she admitted, "we see it."
"We can't confirm the size ... readings are
fluctuating! How can it move that fast? Can we
deflect it?"
Their request, and all their hopes, rested on
her shoulders. For a second, it almost pulled her
down.
"We have nothing that can deflect it,
Assembly," she said.
The yellowish line grew longer, closer.
"Did you ... not see it earlier?"
She almost choked. "We picked it up just as you
did. At the same time."
"How can that be?"
"I don't know. I don't know how ..."
Her voice petered out. There was nothing left
to say.
Apparently Planetside comprehended that. The
channel remained open, but no one spoke again.
They were watching the yellow line, too, and they
knew the ^ws of their culture were about to come to an
end. No point scraping up a few more.
As Vorry dropped into his chair and clawed
at his controls, Beneon drifted back to her own
chair, sank into it, and stared at the yellow moving
line until her eyes hurt.
Above the row of screens that so cleanly
documented their death dangled a lovely
handwritten note, and rather than staring at the terrible
glowing line, she ended up staring at the note.

The long-range manned exploration program
will not be reinstated due to diminished interest, past
cost of lives and resources, and diminished hope
of success. Thank you for your suggestion, but the
Science Assembly's decision will have to stand. We
are sorry. We are very, very sorry.

"I'm sorry, too," Beneon murmured.
Behind her own voice she heard Vorry's
sobbing. She wanted to go over there, comfort him
somehow, but the yellow line ...
"What more could we ask of them?" she uttered.
"We tend to draw back at first trouble. The best
way to survive is to not do the dangerous thing.
"If everyone who goes into the valley gets
eaten, then don't go into the valley."' But we
had hope ... we wanted to find someone out there in
the black wilderness ... we wanted to be
neighbors with the galaxy. We wanted to find out
we weren't the only intelligent life in the
galaxy. Seventy-five, eighty, ninety
years of long-range probing ... good people, good
ships, resources, donations, time ... just
to celebrate our centennial by shutting it all
down ... because we were listening to the silence in our own
tomb. Because there is no one out there."
Beneath her narrow hips the seat was cold. It
stayed cold somehow. No warmth in her body
to affect it, probably.
She looked at Vorry, broken and miserable,
horrified and sobbing. The yellow line had
completed one screen and had branched over to the
next screen.
Inside the solar system.
She was sobbing too, inside. She was just too
wrapped with hopelessness to release what she was
feeling. So she sat on the cold chair, feeling
every bone in her pelvis and remembering the
childhood lessons about evolution that built those
bones over millions of years, and she felt every
muscle in her thighs and her hands, resisting every
impulse she had to run.
There was nowhere to run.
I wish we had found someone ... this would be so
much easier. Can this be all? We come out of the
slime, live for a million years, and
now we die. Without the support of the planet, the
colonies will never survive. Is this all the
galaxy has to whisper to us? That intelligent
life might have been a mistake all along?
Sobs wracked inside her, not coming out, until
she thought she would suffocate on her own fear.
The two of them were alone, the last two
Whistlers. The ones who hadn't given up. The
last two.
"The last," she murmured. "And now we have
to be the first to see that ..."
t. The slaughter of their culture. A
comet, asteroid, something big enough to decimate the
planet, coming directly at them at almost the
speed of light.
Plenty of size, plenty of speed.
The yellow line daggered toward the center of the
second screen. When it got all the way
across--
Something happened to the screen. The line began
to falter.
Vorry gasped, "It's slowing down!"
Beneon licked her cracked lips.
"Something's wrong with the tracker."
"I read a change of mass," Vorry said.
"It's disintegrating!"
They watched their screens and listened to the pounding
of their own hearts.
Mopping his wet face with one hand, Vorry
slumped forward across his panel and fingered his
controls. "No ... it's slowing down! How can it
slow down?"
Pushing to her feet and moving on legs that almost
folded beneath her, Beneon checked the controls herself
before her assistant blew himself into a dozen
frantic pieces.
"It can't slow down," she said.
How clumsy--reassuring him that they were
definitely going to die and that there were no
miracles.
"Whistling Po/! Did it slow down?"
She struck communications. "Do you read that it
slowed down also?"
"allyes! How can it slow down?"
Beneon grabbed the messy braids hanging
down her chest and pulled her hair to be sure she
was still alive and this wasn't some bizarre afterlife
delusion, even though she didn't believe in such
things. She also didn't believe asteroids could
stop in flight.
"It can't," she said. "It didn't
disintegrate either ..."
"But we read that it's shrinking!"
"We never adjusted our instruments to read
apparent mass at near light-speed. Why would
we? Nothing moves that fast ... nothing other than
light ... no mass does ... Vorry, what
have you got now?"
Her poor technician had his fingernails
deep in the foam cover of the control panel, which was
chipped and torn from their months of picking at it
during their isolation.
"Only three hundred thousand tons now," he
rasped. "More or less. But how can it slow
down?"
Beneon twisted sharply, stumbled across the lab
toward the broadcaststreception center, tripped
on her own panic and slammed to the floor,
staggered up, pushed the crated equipment out of her
way so violently she was bleeding when she got to the
auriscopes and crossover coils. As her hands
clutched at the close-range broadcasters, she
could barely remember how to turn it on.
"Turn it on, turn--turn--turn it
on--" she gasped.
"The tape!" Vorry spat from across the lab.
"Put the tape in!"
"Yes, I know, tape, yes, tape, tape
..."
She dropped it twice.
Somehow she finally crammed the prerecorded
information tape about her planet, her race, her
history, her culture, and rudimentary
language into the slot.
"Work! Workffwas She pounded it with her fist.
Vorry gulped, "The switches! Turn it
on! I'll--I'll help--"
But he couldn't even move.
Half blind with shock, Beneon knew she would have
to do it by herself. She jabbed at the controls until
the lights came on and the steady flashes told her
the message was broadcasting.
Sending ...
And then, receiveg.
The computer didn't have much of a voice, but it
could have been singing to these lonely listeners.
They flinched at the sound.
"Attention ... sending culture ... this the
hood ... want to meet ... do welcome us?"
Beneon stared at the receiver. A
computer's voice. The voice of the galaxy. The
tomb wasn't empty.
Begging to believe, she murmured, "The
"Hood"' ..."
"The "Hoodea"'" Vorry whispered.
They looked at each other.
Suddenly the scientist and her technician
broke into cheering, screaming, jumping up and down so
hard andfor so long they forgot they'd just been asked the
most important question in the history of their world.
"Ans--ans--!" Vorry was gasping, his
voice on a high pitch of panic.
Beneon shoved him away, stumbled to the
broadcast keyboard and typed in permission for the
computer to translate any incoming messages and
respond to them. Her fingers were frozen and tangled
up. She had to type the commands three times--four
times--
Her chest constricted. Frustration was a stupid
way to die. She took deep breaths and forced
herself to do the work, symbol by symbol, digit
by digit.
"Wait ... don't leave ... please wait
... please don't leave us ..."
Somehow Beneon finished the order, somehow
committed it, and pushed back.
The computer worked silently, except for a few
crackles left over from poor repairs and
antique parts. It worked hard, for a machine.
A moment later--
"We would ... speak together to faces ... shall
we visit you?"
Vorry's fingers dug into Beneon's arm. Her
fingers dug right back.
Just like that, after a million years of nothing but
past, suddenly--they had a future.
Beneon tapped out another ^w, and committed it.
Yes.
The computer swallowed the order, and winked and
blinked pathetically, without the simplest idea of the
cruciality of what it was doing.
Drawn-out seconds later, a message
came through in the computer's voice.
"Thank you ... we will be there in one
minute."
Vorry almost collapsed.
Out of habit and a sense of responsibility,
Beneon clasped his arm and said, "It can't be.
Must be miscommunication. The computer's
translator is too old, Vorry.
They'll need time to listen to the tapes ... to learn
about us ... learn our basic vocabulary."
"I think I'm going to throw up," Vorry
said.
Beneon shuddered through a smile. "How would that
look to them? We should occupy ourselves while we
wait ... we should make ourselves presentable.
Change suits or--"
An electrical whine pinched her ears. She
and Vorry both winced, and glanced around for the
source. What was happening? [ they being
attacked?
The whine grew louder, and the room started
to shimmer as though lightning was striking.
Beneon stared at the lights, and Vorry had
to yank her back, try to protect her--
As the lights began to take shape.
Shape!
Elongated oval shapes--then the shapes of
living beings!
Beneon almost dropped to her knees, but
Vorry held her up somehow. They both stared
impotently.
The lights settled and began to fade. In their
place, they left four beings. Four people.
Two eyes, two ears, hair cut short,
two legs, two arms--
Like us, Beneon thought distantly, but not
exactly. More like the birds in the hills. Sharp,
quick, aware.
The creatures didn't approach or make
any threatening movements. In fact, their
expressions were cautiously hospitable. They
wore clothing that was exactly alike except for the
bright solid colors. Their faces were different
too, Beneon saw instantly. Small eyes,
different shapes. All the fiction described
aliens as nearly duplicates of one another.
Imagine all the fiction being wrong ...
Two of them held small boxlike tools that
hummed and beeped.
The one in front nodded--a simple gesture.
His eyes seemed small to her, but all the
newcomers were like that. His hair was short and
black, his face lighter than hers, and he
seemed too young to be in front.
He fixed his eyes on Beneon and Vorry,
as though they were his sole purpose. He held up
a silver mechanism to his mouth, and he stepped
slowly toward them.
His lips made a different movement from the sound
that came out, and Beneon understood that the mechanism
was some kind of general translator--mch more
advanced than anything she could have anticipated--and
even his translator had a friendly voice.
"I bring greetings to your people," he said, "from the
United Federation of Planets. I am
Captain Kenneth Dodge, commander of the Starship
Hood."















THE CAPTAINS' MEETING

Chapter One

Twelve Years Later
Starbase 10

"It's not fair. There's nothing fair about it."
"If you want fair, don't enter races."
The room was full, decorated with ship's
pennants and flags, and very bright. The restaurant
at one of the Federation's farthest reaching starbases.
Uneasily situated between the two people snapping
at each other, Starship Chief Surgeon
Leonard McCoy felt fundamentally out of
place. He was the only person in the room who
wasn't a ship's master, or a line officer.
He crushed his hand into a fist to keep from reaching
over, restraining his captain's arm, and whispering a
phrase of caution.
"Don't enter races?" What kind of thing
is that to say at a time like this?
Usually the doctor didn't hesitate to tag
along behind his captain into command briefings. No
matter the glares he got, he was used to glaring
back and knew nobody would have the gumption
to tell the captain of the U.S.So.
Enterprise he couldn't have his doctor, his
dentist, his favorite carpenter, or his dog
groomer at his side if he wanted to,
security clearance or not. And Leonard
McCoy was known as a man who could glare as good
as he got.
But this was the first time McCoy had been among
shipmasters who weren't all dressed in uniforms
of the Fleet and who didn't have to abide by the same
regulations he did. Or any regulations. After
a twenty-year career in Starfleet, he realized
how awkward it might be for him to step outside again
someday. He who had always claimed to be out of
place in the Fleet ...
Captains, captains e verywhere, but only four
of them from Starfleet. Merchant captains, alien
captains, privateers, yachtsmen, and any other
description of ship's master he could come up
with--and looking at this crowd, he could come up with quite
a few.
So McCoy was still out of place, even at this
time of bright conviviality, with captains of every
stripe gathered over fruit and doughnuts, winking
and beaming at each other as though they had a
secret. At least half of them had spoken
to him, but even so, he got the feeling he was just being
tolerated.
Interrupting from a table on the other side of the
dining area, near the huge windows, backdropped
by docked spacecraft and floating workbees,
Captain Buck Ames leaned his bulky frame
forward, and spoke.
"Look, fellas," he boomed, his heavy
voice filled with zest and anticipation,
"apparently some of you don't feel this way, but
I for one am tickled pink about racing against all
these vessels, including whatever Starfleet can
throw at us."
He pointed boldly at the three uniformed men
and one Vulcan woman. The Vulcan's eyes
--only her eyes--grinned at him in amusement.
She was elegant, yes, subdued, yes, but still
she was amused. The human Starfleet captains
were trying to be gallant and restrained, but the
Vulcan lady was canting an alm-grin at
Ames.
McCoy knew that look.
No feelings, my backside.
Somebody else made a crack about not
really wanting to tickle Buck Ames pink, and the
other captains smiled collectively.
Most laughed when somebody added, "Or any
other color."
Captain Nancy Ransom didn't. "It's
supposed to be a sport, but how can it be with them
here?" she snapped in a deep southern accent.
"Those Starfleet ships change the whole
texture of this race. They've got heavy
shielding, reinforced framing, automatic reaction
control, combat-trained crews--"
McCoy frowned. Ames sat back again and
shoveled himself a handful of complimentary
chocolate-covered raisins. "Consider it a
challenge, babe."
Ransom glared. "Build a successful
corporation without government help. Then you can
"babe"' me, porky."
Grumbling threaded with laughter throughout the room,
and even Buck Ames chuckled, "Got a
point, babe."
Everybody laughed, and Nancy sat down.
A six-foot-four man in a baseball cap
with a dark beard and cheerful narrow eyes
proclaimed in a Virginia accent, "Now,
darlin', I'm glad they're here. I'm looking
to show 'em up."
Somehow Pete Hall's "darlin'" wasn't as
compromising as Buck Ames's "babe."
McCoy felt a sense of agreement ripple
across the room. Captain Ken Dodge of the
Hood pointed at Pete and said, "Somebody
shake him. He's dreaming."
At the front of the room a broad-chested man
in his forties, with black hair, bright eyes and a
salt-and-pepper mustache, stood and waved both
hands in the air for attention.
"Okay, Captains, let's keep this on a
gentlemanly plane, all right? As most of you
already know, I'm John Orland, chairman of the
Race Committee. I'm here to pass out some
information and answer your questions. Sure, this race is
public relations, entertainment, whatever else you
want to call it, mostly a way for our hosts
to drag some attention out to that black tundra where
they live--"
The gathering of captains, shipmasters of every
description, and one uneasy doctor, chuckled
again, but kept listening.
Orland smiled like a salesman and
shrugged. "This is the first real exchange of
culture, a kind of coming-out party for the Rey. Before
twelve years ago, when Ken Dodge and the
Hood answered a little blip out in the middle of
nowhere, the Rey were all alone. Not that they were
lonely, mind you. Population's over five
billion, and every one of those is friendly. Captain
Dodge can tell you--y never saw such hospitable
people, people so excited about becoming part of the Federation.
Up until now only diplomats, a few
natural and medical scientists, and cultural
transition teams have interacted with these people, hoping
to prevent the usual future shock that can happen
when a new race rushes too quickly into the
Federation. But these people," he laughed, "we had
to hold 'em back for their own good. I swear
they've organized this race just to get the Federation
to hurry up letting 'em in."
Sudden warmth and an extra measure of
eagerness touched each face. Orland seemed
to notice that, and got a little more serious.
"But it's also a real race. Don't forget
that. Like the Interstellar Olympics, the New
Braemar Highland Games, the Pentathlon of
Alpha Centauri, the Rigel Passage
do'Arms, the Triple Crown, the Grand
National, the America's Cup, the Great Tea
Race between the clippers Ariel and Taeping, the
Grand Prix ... it's a strict and real
competition. There's going to be a winner, and the first
winner of the Great Starship Race will be remembered
forever, ladies and gentlemen." He paused,
scanned the room, and said, "The acceptance of
Gullrey, and its associated colonies, into the
United Federation of Planets almost doubles our
perimeters."
He opened his mouth to say something else, but was
blasted down by applause--a solemn
applause, not the sports-event rattle from before.
The captains were absorbing the scope of what they
were doing in the next couple days--and what they had
done in the past twenty-five years.
Orland took advantage of the pause to hand
stacks of red leather folders to three stewards,
who began distributing them to the tables.
"In these packets you'll find a list of
ships participating, their flaggings and captains.
You all know by now that any ship within specified
gross tonnage and thrust brackets can join the
race. We might get a few more coming in
at the last minute, but I don't think that's going
to be very many. We'll have some non-Federation
entries meeting us out at the starting line at
Starbase 16, but we pretty much know who they
are. A Tholian entry, a couple from Federation
protectorates, and candidate members like
Sigma Iotia, and a few others who didn't
want to make the trip all the way here
to Starbase 10 just to turn around and go back
to 16. Also, I know some of you have a problem with
gambling, but there's nothing we can do to stop it. The
area between Starbase 16 and Gullrey isn't
officially Federation space yet. If you have some
moral objection to gambling, better get out of the
race here and now."
Coffee cups clinked and shoulders shifted, but
nobody got up and left. McCoy knew that in
this crowd, they would if they wanted to. Orland
moved his eyes from side to side, then relaxed.
"Okay, good," he sighed. "Had to ask."
He squinted toward the right side of the room, where
the Starfleet captains--and McCoy--had
gathered. "The rules of communication for this race
are going to be basic Maritime Standard. That'll be
comfortable for the civilian vessels, but you
Starfleet people will have to do some adjusting."
From McCoy's right, Kirk spoke up
"We'll adjust."
Three tables over, a robust dark-haired
man of fifty with a black beard winked and said,
"You're a wolf, Jimmy."
McCoy blinked at Ben Shamirian.
Just like that. We'll adjust. Snap a finger
and undo years of training in our people. Start talking
like barge drivers.
"We'll have no problem," Ken Dodge added.
Dodge was still as dark-haired and pink-faced as he
had been when McCoy had first met him eight or
so years ago.
"There won't be any Starfleet channel,"
Kirk said. "No one has to feel intimidated
when talking to any of our ships."
"Don't intimidate me none, spud,"
Buck Ames's deep voice announced from behind.
Eyes shifting, James Kirk turned and
resettled himself so he could look back there and
rest one arm across the back of his seat.
"We've made it a Starfleet Academy
tactical exam to devise something that does
intimidate you, Buck," he said.
"That's why Starfleet's in the race,"
Captain Dodge said. "To intimidate
Buck."
As the room's laughter cushioned him,
McCoy sank back against the soft chair. He
wasn't used to this kind of frivolity coming from lone
wolf captains--and all captains were lone
wolves in their ways. That much he was sure of.
"And right here," John Orland continued, "is a
copy of the rules."
As attention floated back to the front of the
dining room, he held out a piece of paper. It
was blank. He turned it around for them to look
at, and held it high.
Also blank.
"As you can see, there's nothing on it," he
pointed out. "That's because there aren't any rules you
don't already know. Just basic, run-of-the-mill
maritime rules of the road. This race is taking
place outside of Federation space, so there
isn't even any law that applies across the
board. I mean, you can't take potshots at
each other to disable a contestant or anything, but this
is like one of those strongest-survive field
tests. Whoever comes out first ... wins."
Someone from the other side of the room asked,
"When are we going to get some details about this
"host"' planet?"
A high-pitched elderly voice toward the
front of the room demanded, "Do they have any
laws we can apply out there?"
"A background of these people is in the command
packets. They don't have any interstellar laws
because they hardly have interstellar travel, never mind
regulations about it." He pointed at Captain
Dodge. "Hell, when Ken Dodge first
contacted these people, they were shutting down their space
programs and just sending signals. Lucky for them
we caught them when we did. Maybe you can
corner Ken on the way out, but don't bug me
about it. If he's gonna be the guest of honor,
he oughta pay."
All eyes brushed briefly over the man who
had started it all by answering a faint blip
twelve years ago.
"I'll get you for this, John," Dodge
promised.
A surly-looking, overweight red-headed young
man with a short beard suggested, "Sneeze on his
lunch."
Through the laughter somebody else added,
"Class act, Ian."
"Look," Orland said, "I'm just up here so
I don't have to drink that coffee."
More laughter allowed for a pause while stewards
milled around filling coffee mugs and offering
trays of fresh doughnuts.
Orland looked at a list, nodded to himself, then
chose a subject, and continued.
"Oh, there's no cargo transporting
allowed."
A very young, dirty-looking captain in a
patchwork jacket moaned, "Aw, what's that for?
I'm carting textbooks."
"Can't do it. Can't take any chances of
contraband or border disputes. You'll have
to present your ship's bill of stores to the Consul
of Foreign Ports for holding until the end of the
race. Any cargo being carried will be stored in a
bonded warehouse on Starbase 16, which is as
far out as Federation jurisdiction goes to this new
system."
"Just how far out is it?" Nancy Ransom
persisted.
"Trust me," Orland said. "It's far. Now,
as I said, there aren't any rules, but I'm going
to impose one here and now." He widened his eyes
in a manner more amusing than threatening, but no one
chuckled this time. He was serious. "When there's
any vessel dead ahead of you, the following
vessel must either alter course or power back
to adjust for ahead reach. We don't want
anybody cramming into the back of the ship in front
of you, got it? Anybody not understand that?"
McCoy almost raised his hand out of natural
bullheadedness, but stopped himself. He tried
to glance around without moving his head. Everybody
else seemed to know what all that meant. He'd have
to choke an explanation out of a junior engineer
later.
"There are beacons and buoys placed throughout the
sector to mark dangerous areas," Orland went
on, "and don't forget there are plenty of those.
Don't go around hawking, "I know this space,"'
because you don't. Nobody does. Globe
topmarks are for gravitational anomalies,
diamonds are electrical clouds,
triangles are sensor blind spots, and flashers
mark storms. All of these are as close as
possible, but we're not infallible. These
suckers move around. Starfleet patrols
double-checked the markers yesterday and already had
to move five of them. Now, these are not coasting
markers!"
The room heaved with collective laughter.
McCoy grinned like a cat and pretended he had
some idea what Orland meant.
"Please do not," Orland added, "attempt
to follow these things from point to point! Or
somebody's gonna have to throw a big chain into some
goddamned twister and pull you out, okay?"
More chuckling.
A movement at McCoy's side made him
flinch. Jim Kirk's hand was up.
"What's the distress frequency?"
Orland nodded and pointed at him. "Good!
Thanks. Damn, I knew there was something I'd
forget. The distress frequency is five thousand
megacycles subspace. Just having your
equipment on that channel will constitute SOS, so
if you leave your lights on, even by mistake,
don't be surprised if somebody knocks."
Apparently Kirk wasn't satisfied, because
he pursued, "No safety ships or
draggers?"
"Aren't any. The only vessels who can
respond to trouble will be your fellow competitors
or the spectator ships that will be dotting the
routes here and there. But those are big, clunky
cruise ships and I wouldn't hold my breath.
If you get in trouble, just put yourself on the
distress frequency, as Jim pointed out, and
we'll try to determine your EP and come get
you."
McCoy watched his captain intuitively.
He knew what the problem was.
Race or not, competition, sport, fun and
games or not, the lack of official safety
nets meant that the Starfleet ships would be the
lifeguards unofficially. Everyone would expect
that.
Seeing the way Dodge and Kirk looked at
each other and at the other two Starfleet
captains, McCoy realized the raw joy of
sport had just slipped an inch for these commanders, and the
tempting danger just hiked up. He couldn't tell
which of those two they would rather have--but he had a
suspicion.
Then Nancy Ransom stood up.
"I still protest the participation of
Starfleet," she insisted. "We were told this was a
general public competition. Why weren't we
told these enforcers were going to get to run the race?"
Suddenly uneasy, Orland shifted back and
forth and rubbed his hands on his thighs, then held them
out in a pacifying manner.
"Look, Nancy," he began, "even at this
moment the Starfleet ships are being handicapped for
just the reasons you're concerned about. They're in
spacedock or box docks, being mechanically
deprived of hardware advantages and having their
power reduced across the board by twenty percent.
They're big ships, but they'll have to swim with their
legs tied. Don't know what more we can do for you."
"I do," she said bluntly. "It's not fair
for us to have to go up against spacehawks like him."
She turned and thrust a pointed finger toward
Jim Kirk.
Kirk's face took on the demeanor of the
hawk she accused him of being. He shoved his command
packet into McCoy's hands and stood up to face
her.
"I'll be a good sport and shed my bars when
my ship crosses the starting line," he said, "but
until then, you watch your sportsmanship.
Fairness doesn't get anybody anywhere. Every
running river knows that. Some rocks get washed
away. Some hold their ground and eventually they
turn the river. Why run a race where everything's
"fair"'? You'll never know how you really did."
The room fell silent.
There was ^wless applause in the eyes of not just his
Starfleet comrades, but in the eyes of other
captains as well, who understood what he meant.
McCoy knew from past experience there was either
adoration for James Kirk or hatred, but no
middle ground.
And Nancy Ransom wasn't in the middle.
"I still think the starships shouldn't try to win,"
she barked.
Kirk's eyebrows flared.
"What you think," he snapped, "is your
problem, Captain. I've got advantages,
but so do you. You've got full power. This is a
test of smarts as much as it's a test of ships.
And it's supposed to be sport. The losers
won't get executed, the winners won't gain
ultimate power, so relax and get ready for a good
hard game we'll all remember for the rest of our
lives." He leaned forward on the table and
spoke to her as though they were alone in the room.
"Or withdraw now. Because I don't enter any
race not to win."

Officers' Lounge

A vital place, somehow.
Carpeted, soundproofed, trimmed with cherry
molding and rough-hewn ceiling beams, decorated
with paintings--not pictures--of ships through the
ages, from Federation planets far and wide.
But in spite of the heartwarming decor, it was the
big viewing wall, a great clear wall divided
only by the smallest and fewest possible support
threads, which was the real attraction of the place.
McCoy strode in slowly, scanned the
lounge, found what he was looking for, then crossed
the spongy carpet and sat down in the lounge chair
near the viewing windows.
In the chair beside him, feet up on the low
window ledge, Captain James Kirk didn't
move, glance, sigh, or in any way acknowledge
that he wasn't alone anymore. He just kept
gazing out the viewport, at the busy black
canopy of open space. Gazing and grinning.
This wasn't like the dining room viewing windows that
looked inward at the core of the starbase, the
"inside", where ships were docked for tours and
interior maintenance. This was the outer rim of the
starbase, where the view outside was a view of
space. This view stirred a cathedral reverence
and a certain library quiet in the lounge.
Kind of like the difference between looking at a
swimming pool and looking at an ocean.
Jim Kirk was looking at an ocean. A young
man with electricity in his eyes. One side of
his mouth was pulled up in that grin.
McCoy gazed briefly at the few other people
milling quietly around the lounge, some also just
sitting and looking out.
Some were captains. Some were people trying to get
away from captains.
"So," he bridged, "what're you doing?
Waiting to see a green flash?"
Kirk didn't move a muscle. He was
looking up, out, and slightly to the left.
McCoy sat down next to him, pivoted in his
chair, and followed Kirk's gaze. Together, they
looked.
"That's how she was the first time I saw
her," Kirk said. "Hovering in a box of
lit-up red girders like some kind of living thing.
Not a machine at all, Bones."
McCoy nodded. From below, the ship had a
stirring effect upon the men who served her, who
relied upon her, and who time after time had insisted she
press on through the hell of space. A kind of
courage seemed to glow from her white plates, with
strips of shadow lying across her underside cast from the
box dock's hexagonal struts. She looked
as though she was almost breathing.
"How did it go in there after I left?" Kirk
asked.
McCoy blinked at the sound of his captain's
voice. "Hmm? Oh ... you mean after you strode
out, leaving your handprint on Nancy Ransom's
face? What is it with you and her anyway?"
"She hates me."
McCoy crossed his legs and scowled.
"Does anybody besides us like you?" he drawled.
"How far do we have to go into space before we find
somebody whose eggs you haven't cracked?"
Kirk shrugged. "She washed out of the
Academy. She was in my command competition team.
Blamed me for bad leadership."
"Was she right?"
The captain smiled devilishly. "Who knows?
Not even the Academy can replace hard
experience. I might've been "perfect"'
back then, by the book, but I wasn't "gd."'
A few years ago, I told Ransom that. But
it didn't help. She hates my guts, and
she's not going to stop. So if that's how she wants
to play the game, that's how I'll play it."
He sounded casual, and a lot more indestructible
than McCoy knew he was.
"Don't worry, Bones," he said, "It's
just a race."
The doctor didn't buy it. "It is when you
say it fast."
Without looking at him, Kirk said, "Ships have
been racing for centuries. It's a tradition.
That's what made me accept the invitation. Even
the fishing vessels out of Gloucester or
Portugal had to race. They raced to be the first
back to port. It wasn't the fullest ship that
got the best price--it was the fastest."
"Want me to find you a pipe to smoke?
Take your boots off. That story would sound
better if you had bare feet."
Kirk chuckled. "I can see myself whittling
on the corncob pipe now. Open that folder,"
he said, "and see if there's a manifest of ships
and masters."
"It's right on top." The doctor dug into the
leather packet, and handed the paper toward Kirk.
But the captain didn't move, didn't look
away from his ship. He leaned back and sipped a
drink. Looked like ice water.
"You still on duty?" McCoy asked.
"Until fourteen hundred. Read the list off
to me."
"Oh." McCoy sat back awkwardly.
"Well, all right, let's see here. It starts
with Helmut Appenfeller commanding the
Drachenfels, flagged for Colony
Drachenfels--I remember when that ship was
launched. It's a German legend or
Norwegian. Means "Where the dragon
fell."' Somebody killed a dragon, and that's
where they built a town or dug a hole or
something. Course, if there was a dead dragon lying
there, I'd dig a hole too."
"So would I," the captain chuckled. "Read,
man, read."
"I'm reading, Jim, don't be a
midshipman. Buck Ames, Haunted
Forest, a private yacht ... Hunter,
Dominion of Proxima from Proxima Beta
... Sue Hardee on Thomas Jefferson.
Federation Museum Ship ... Lar--Legarr
... Leg-something in command of Orion Union
... Nancy Ransom, Ransom Castle,
from Ransom Carnvale Interstellar Mining
Company ... Ben Shamirian, Gavelan
Star, private explorer ..."
"Yes," Kirk said. "Good to have friends in the
line-up."
"Yup, nothing like beating the drawers off an
old friend. What else've we got here ...
Leo Blaine--isn't he Starfleet
retired?"
"If so, it's before my time."
"You're only thirty-six. Everything is before
your time. I think he retired as a decorated
captain. They offered him a starship, but he
turned it down and went off on this thing he
calls--"
"Cynthia Blaine. Named after his mother.
Flagged for the company she started."
"Why did you ask me to read you this list if you
already memorized it?"
The captain grinned. "I like the sound of your
voice."
"Who's this Ian Blackington? Says
"private."' Must be a yacht."
"No yacht," Kirk said, sounding slightly
offended. "Working ship. Merchantman. At least,
that's the legal term for what he does."
"What's the illegal term?"
"Pirate."
McCoy cleared his throat, then found out he
probably shouldn't make a comment on that, and
retreated to the list. "Alexandria, Captain
Pete Hall ... I met him once."
"He's kind and capable," Kirk said. "Has
a lot of finesse."
"Irimlo Si, from Zeon, Captain
Loracon ... Bluenose IV, Captain
Mitchell Rowan, Earth ... oh, this is
interesting--I'd like to see this one myself. The
Hospital Ship Brother's Keeper under
Surgeon General Christoff Gogine. I
didn't know that General Gogine was a licensed
captain."
"He's not." Kirk leaned forward and peered
suspiciously at a work pod as it approached and
attached itself to the engineering section of the starship.
"He's got a flight master who does the
actual maneuvering. Gogine just gets the
credit. That's one thing you'll find out, Bones.
Credit is negotiable ... blame isn't."
McCoy looked up.
"Now, where did that come from all of a sudden?"
The captain's expression suddenly changed as
he eyed his ship. "Look at that ship, Bones.
Look at her. Only twelve of those in the
Fleet, only twelve people in the galaxy who
get to drive them ... and this time I get a chance
to show her off. Win or lose, the Enterprise
is going to be seen by people who only hear about her.
The people who paid for her."
The doctor felt as though a curtain had parted
and the mystery dropped away. In spite of the
swaggering that went on when more than one ship's commander
was in a confined space, in spite of having been
dragged off patrol for what seemed at first to be
a silly public relations game, Jim Kirk
was looking forward to showing off his favorite girl.
All at once McCoy understood the
captain's eagerness to participate, to seeing old
friends, dressing the ship in rainbow fashion,
soaking up a little appreciation and drenching the crew
in some well-deserved merrymaking while somebody
else faced off with the unknown for a while.
Kirk was looking forward to this. The best leave--
a leave when he could enjoy the ship. No
planets, no music, no women--well,
maybe women. But most of all, the ship. Out in
space where the public followed for a change, where
attention of the Federation was focused on the starship,
with tourists flocking by the boatload to have a look,
the captain could do something very rare. He could puff
up and show off, and nobody would expect anything
else.
A ruddy pride flushed in the captain's
face, and in his eyes too.
"Have'm," the doctor sighed and went on
skimming the list. "That's a relief ... deep
space can do without us for a while. I could use a
break from roughhousing with the warring Birdbathians as
they clash with the Knobheads of New Wherever.
Jim, look at this--seems a lot of these are
ships representing systems or planets that I
know for a fact don't have any spacefaring
technology of the required tonnage and thrust
yet."
"They're flagged for those systems. Like
Argelius," Kirk pointed out. "They want
to participate, so they hire a ship, muster a
crew and captain, and put their flag on it. The
Tellarites aren't coming at all, in spite of
their insistence upon joining the Federation."
"Snubbing us, are they?" McCoy drawled.
"Well, they've got the faces for it."
"The Klingons don't want anything to do with it
either. They say competition without solid reward is
a waste of time."
"Gosh, I'll miss them. Look at
this--Charles Goodyear the Ninth with a ship he
calls The Blimp. Better be a fat
ship." The doctor let the list drop into his
lap and rubbed his eyes. "You know, I'm beginning
to think there's nothing somebody won't name a ship."
"No one's done the S.S. Rest in
Peace," Kirk tossed back. "Guess that's
yours."
"No one's done the S.S. Butter
Cookie either, but I wouldn't go scanning
manifests. Jim, take your eyes off
that ship before you go blind!"
The captain sighed and said, "I don't get
to see her much, Bones. We spend all our time
trying to get from here to there and live to tell it."
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his
knees. "She's my ship ... but I never get
to see her from the outside."
"Never thought of that," McCoy admitted.
In contemplation they sat together for many seconds
in silence, gazing at the starship, its shadows and
its lights.
Then the captain said, "That's because you're not a
sailor."
* * *
"Welcome back, everybody. We'll try
to keep this session short. Lord knows I don't
want to look at this collection of faces any
longer than I have to."
John Orland pawed through his Race Committee
information and huffed impatiently while a steward
set up a computer access panel next to him.
Once again sitting beside Jim Kirk, Dr.
McCoy ducked as two more stewards bumped past
him, carrying a computer screen the size of a
tabletop. They set up the screen while the last
few captains settled back into chairs and the
room calmed down again.
"Okay," Orland said, and clicked it on.
"Take a look at this."
The screen came alive with a beautiful
schematic of simulated open space. He
clicked his panel a couple times until the
picture was overlaid with pulsing lights in a
jagged formation that only in a child's imagination could be
called a line, and only because they started in one
place and generally ended across the screen from there.
"This is a Klingon's-eye view of the
racecourse," he said. "Now, it's just a
representation! Don't go out there and start saying
to your crew, "Hey, on the picture the course
went in that direction,"' because this thing on the screen
is just intended to give you a general idea! I
mean, if we showed you what the actual course
looked like, there wouldn't be any game here, right?"
He scanned the room with a schoolteacher glare
until he got nods from most of the captains, but
still didn't look satisfied when he jabbed a
finger at the screen again.
"The point here is Starbase 16, where the
starting line is." He indicated the only
dot that wasn't blinking. "These other blinking
lights are beacons put in place by Starfleet
and the Race Committee. Basically, they spiral
out from the starting line."
An old man with muttonchop whiskers and bright
red cheeks laughed and rasped, "Bet them
beacons ain't sittin' on lightships, right?"
"Hell, no!" Orland boomed. "They go right
through the middle of all this trouble and strife. Real
tricky space, most of this, and the course is
laid out to make use of all the tricks. There
are twelve beacons alt. Each one has a
different frequency. At the starting gun, we'll
give you the frequency of only the first beacon.
When you're within a hundred thousand kilometers of
it, you broadcast your ship's recognition code,
and the beacon will log your arrival and transmit the
frequency for beacon number two. When you're
within a hundred thousand kilometers of beacon
two, you'll get the frequency of beacon three,
and so on. So don't try to skip a beacon, or
you'll be totally lost, not to mention disqualified.
We've done all we could to tricky-up finding the
beacons. It's gonna be like being in a canyon and
somebody rings a bell. You'll have to decide which
is the echo and which is the real sound. The faster you go
into warp speed, the more the distortion. The course
goes in a spiral that bends way out, then comes
back to the finish line, so don't assume you can just
head for the finish line and win. You can follow
somebody else, but there's no guarantee that guy
won't be on a wild-goose chase himself.
You're gonna have to use crazy thinking, wild
guesses, deceit, subterfuge, lies,
witchcraft, and my mother's knitting patterns
to get those signals."
his'Scuse me, John?"
"Yes, Ian?"
Everybody looked at Ian Blackington as
he asked, "What if nobody can find every
beacon?"
Orland shrugged. "Let's just hope we
didn't make it that hard!"
A sporting roar of camaraderie lifted across
the room. Bantering threats and jokes rippled in
a dozen directions.
"Hey, it's the first time we've done this,"
Orland said. "Maybe it'll be perfect at the
next starship race, right?"
More laughter.
McCoy took the moment to glance at Kirk,
but the captain gave him a bastard wink and
didn't say anything.
"After beacon number twelve," Orland went
on, "head straight for Gullrey. The finish
line is between two committee markers. First ship
between them wins," he said, pointing at the far right of the
screen.
He scanned the faces of the captains.
A pale woman in a bright red robe grinned
cattily and asked, "What do we win?"
"You get to be Byorn's bosun for a week,"
Ken Dodge said, flashing a grin at a
Norwegian man in back, who shook a fist and
grinned back at him.
"His personal bosun," the woman
accepted, and waved at the Norwegian.
McCoy leaned to his side. "Who's that
woman?"
"No idea," Kirk responded. "Look
at the list."
Trying to be subtle, the doctor scanned the
list, but was confounded by aliens' names. "Zeon,
maybe?" he whispered. "Or Lauru ifan
Ta from New Malura."
"Not Zeon," Kirk said. "Zeon's in the
far corner. Gray uniform."
"What about Eliior--Eminiar. Say,
weren't we there once?"
"Shh," the captain snapped.
They fell silent as John Orland raised his
hand. There was something between his thumb and forefinger.
"You get this," he said.
He held the small item up before them for a
moment, then brought it down to be scanned by the
computer panel, and the screen changed abruptly.
Now it showed a fairly accurate picture of his
hand holding a gold coin with rough edges, a
royal crest on one side, and a bird on the
other.
"A little chunk of gold?" Ian Blackington
boomed. "I wouldn't cross my bathtub to sell
that!"
Orland smiled and waited for the chuckling to stop.
"You don't sell it, flybrain, your sponsor
possesses it. Until the next race."
"When's that?" Kirk spoke up.
"We don't know yet. A year, five years
--depends how this race goes."
"Well, what is that thing?"
Blackington pursued.
"This," Orland said, "is a doubloon. It was
part of the treasure found aboard the galleon El
Sol, sunk off Spanish Wells in the
Abaco Islands of the Bahamas just as it left for
Spain. Spanish Wells, the last place where
the Conquistadors could get fresh water before
crossing the Atlantic. It's theorized that their
heavy coffers of water contributed to the ship's
turning over in a storm. Possibly a white
squall that they didn't see coming, because according to the
way the spars were arranged, there's evidence that the
vessel went down in full sail. Apparently
they didn't see trouble coming. They didn't reef
in at all. For the benefit of you non-Earth people, that
means pull their sails in part way," he added,
no.ing at the Andorian, the Orion, and a few
other aliens.
McCoy leaned sideways and grumbled, "As
if all the Earth people know what it means."
"Treasure hunters looked for El Sol
for almost a hundred fifty years, until it was
found nearly a thousand miles from where it was thought to have
gone down. Tales of a great treasure kept the
hunters going decade after decade. Lives were
lost, techniques invented, fortunes risked,
to find this ship ... and they did find it. All that
was recovered other than the ship itself, ladies and
gentlemen, was this single gold doubloon."
Empathic silence fell across the dining room.
Jim Kirk's brows drew into an expression
that could've been anger in another situation.
"Nothing else?"
"Not a thing else."
"That's mighty sad," the old man with the
mutton whiskers said.
"It's sad," the race committeeman agreed.
"They figure the ship was plundered by natives, because
it went down in less than forty feet of water.
Would've been easy to find, if anybody had
been looking there. Nobody did. It's been in
private hands until now, and the team who found it
wanted to do something encouraging with their one little find from
Earth's seafaring age. They didn't want to just
put it in a museum. Didn't seem a fitting
memorial to all those who risked everything to find a
treasure that wasn't there. So here it is. The
purse of the Great Starship Race ... our
doubloon."
He held the gold piece before them for a
moment longer, then placed it in a purple
velvet bag. Then he put the bag into a
magnetically sealed box. A burly Starfleet
guard stepped out of nowhere, and Orland handed the box
to him.
Orland cleared his throat, gazed at the
collection of ship's masters from the far reaches of
space, and nodded as though finally satisfied.
"Good luck, everybody," he said. "Let the
race begin."














THE STARTING GUN

RACE MANIFEST

Note The columns of this table follow each
other in this order VESSEL COMMAND; FLAG.

Drachenfels Helmut Appenfeller;
Colony Drachenfels.
Haunted Forest Buck Ames; Private.
Dominion of Proxima Hunter;
Proxima Beta.
Ytaho Legarratlinya; Orion Union.
Ransom Castle Nancy Ransom;
Ransom Carnvale Int. Mining Co.
Gavelan Star Ben Shamirian;
Private.
Cynthia Blaine Leo Blaine;
BlaineAerospace Inc.
New Pride of Baltimore Miles
Glover X; Baltimore, Maryland,
United States, Earth.
Blackjacket Ian Blackington;
Private.
Irimlo Si Loracon; Zeon.
Bluenose IV Sinclair
Rowan; Canada, Great Britain, Earth.
U.S.So. Hood Cpt. Kenneth
Dodge; Starship, Starfleet.
U.S.So. Enterprise Cpt. James
Kirk; Starship, Starfleet.
U.S.So. Great Lakes Cpt. Hans
Tahl; Frigate, Starfleet.
U.S.So. Intrepid Cpt. T'ationoy;
Starship, Starfleet.
Brother's Keeper Christoff Gogine;
UFP Hospital Ship.
The Blimp Charles Goodyear IX;
Goodyear Inc.
Unpardonable Lauru ifan Ta; New
Malura.
Thomas Jefferson Sue Hardee; UFP
Museum Ship.
Eienven Thais; Andor, Epsilon Indi.
Alexandria Pete Hall; Alexandria,
Virginia, United States, Earth.
Yukon University James Neumark;
Yukon University, Earth.
Specific Im; Melkot Sector.
552-4 Kmmta; Tholus.
Chessie Samuel Li; CandO
Spaceroads Inc.
Valkyrie Bjorn Faargensen; Skol
Brewery, Rigel IV.
River of Will Eliior; Braniian
College, Eminiar.
Forbearant Steve Daunt; Argelius.
Ozcice Sucice Miller; Host entry.

NOTE LIST MAY BE INCOMPLETE.
OTHER ENTRIES EXPECTED. SOME COMMANDS
MAY CHANGE AL. PICK UP FINAL
MANIFEST FROM RACE COMMITTEE AT
STARTING LINE. THANK Y.

Chapter Two

U.S.S. Enterprise

"Welcome aboard, Captain."
The distinguished baritone voice warmed the
bridge and blended so naturally with the blips and
whirrs of the starship's command center that James
Kirk and his ship's surgeon almost forgot
to respond.
Dr. McCoy blinked as the two of
them paused on the quarterdeck and heard the
turbolift doors gasp shut behind them.
Kirk inhaled as though to draw in the aroma of the
bridge, looked at the forward viewscreen's
breathtaking picture of the box dock girders as
they peeled away, then he turned to their right.
"Thank you, Mr. Spock," he said.
"Ship's condition?"
A bit of the night came toward them from the upper
bridge.
First Officer Spock was ten legends in one--
not all from the same planet. Triangular eyes
and upswept black brows, olive complexion,
and ears that came to points, all framed by the
black Starfleet collar and blue Science
Division shirt. Even for McCoy he was an
oasis of familiarity on the bridge.
With a twinge of annoyance, McCoy noted how
incomplete any starship's bridge would seem
to him without a Vulcan hovering about.
A light from the ceiling glowed in a purple band
across Spock's slick black hair as he
approached them with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Leaving spacedock as ordered, sir," he
said. "Preparing to leave the jurisdiction of
Starbase 10 and set course for Starbase 16.
All propulsion and maneuvering systems are down
by nineteen percent. Despite his somewhat understandable
disgruntlement, Engineer Scott is striving for the
extra one percent, as requested by the Race
Committee for Starfleet vessels. Sensors
are reduced to merchant level, as are any other
applicable systems. A complete report is in
your office, ready for review."
"Thank you again," the captain said.
"And the host observers have been beamed aboard and
issued guest quarters."
Kirk's glare sharpened. "The who?"
"Host observers. Every ship has at least one
citizen of Gullrey on board, as specified
by the Federation diplomatic corps."
"Since when?"
Spock frowned as though he didn't understand the
question. His voice had a shrug in it. "Since
twelve hundred thirty hours, sir."
McCoy bit his lip on a snide remark and
waited.
"Who are these individuals?" Kirk asked,
somewhat sharply.
If Spock was disturbed at all by the
tone, it was only with a faint curiosity.
"Their names," he said, "are Royenne,
Osso, and Tom."
"All right, if we have to have them on board, I
want them assigned two yeomen whose duties--"
The captain paused and blinked at him.
""Tom"'?"
"Yes, sir."
"As in Tom Sawyer? Tom Jefferson?"
"Yes, sir," Spock said. "These people were
highly enthusiastic and emotional upon joining the
Federation. Tom took an Earth name several
years ago."
McCoy leaned past the captain's shoulder and
asked, "Why would he do a thing like that?"
Spock raised one eyebrow. "This culture
had to be talked out of changing the name of their
planet. They were debating among "ationew
Earth"', "Earthfarea"' and, I believe,
"Earthvale."'"
"They shouldn't do that!"
"We did succeed in convincing them not to,
Doctor, but only with the intervention of Captain
Dodge, who is highly revered on
Gullrey."
Moving from one band of shadow to another, Jim
Kirk stepped away from them. He trailed his hand
along the red rail that separated the upper bridge
from the command center and gazed at the large forward
screen, at the picture of distant space and the
dozen vehicles peppering the vicinity of
Starbase 10.
"Gullrey," he murmured.
The ^w settled peacefully around the bridge,
and it seemed silly that anyone would want to change
the planet's name from something so melodic.
Spock didn't follow him. "That is the
English equivalent. Phonic only, and
somewhat clumsy. The ^w appears in the Western
alphabet as something quite other."
He stepped to his library computer console and
waved a magician's touch over the controls, then
looked up. A series of letters appeared on one
access screen.

dguibbealeaichaiereuw

"That's the name of their planet?" the captain
commented. "And it's pronounced Gullrey?"
"Call Scotty," McCoy said.
"That looks like Gaelic to me."
"Observant," Spock agreed, "but I
doubt Engineer Scott is any more proficient
in ancient Celtic linguistics than you are in
Middle English."
McCoy pressed his lips. "Spock, you're
the only man who can give a compliment and take it
back in the same breath. What do these people look
like?"
"I have yet to encounter them personally," Spock
said as he cleared the screen. "The developmental
parallels are remarkable regarding the arts and
sciences, though much slower. Their flight and space
programs took nearly seven hundred Earth
years to reach low warp capabilities, while
Earth took less than a century and a half."
"Captain," a resonant voice interrupted
from the back of the bridge. As the three turned,
Lieutenant Uhura's exotic eyes swept
over them from the communications station. "I'm receiveg
coordinates from the Starbase, sir."
"Those are for the starting line-up at Starbase
16, Lieutenant," Kirk said. "Log and
acknowledge."
"Aye-aye, sir, logging."
"Then feed them through to the helm."
"Aye, sir." She played her equipment
lightly, then nodded at the Oriental
lieutenant at the helm. "Mr. Sulu, can you
confirm for me?"
Using his hand like a pointed spade, Sulu
stabbed his controls with the abruptness of a construction
worker. His method was very different from the coaxing touch
of Uhura or the fluidity of Spock, but the
machines happily purred in response.
"Confirmed," he said, "and laid in."
"Clear us with the dockmaster," the captain said.
"Prepare to leave the Starbase area. It's very
crowded around here today, Mr. Sulu, so be aware
of all-points incursion into our drift sphere.
Uhura, broadcast intent on merchant
channels and make sure none of those other ships
are moored in the departure lanes. I don't
want to clip some amateur's tail section as
we pull out."
Sulu barely nodded. "Aye-aye, sir."
Uhura echoed him so closely that the sounds
blended and almost camouflaged the breath of the
turbolift doors as they opened and closed at the
back of the bridge.
The captain turned to Spock and leaned a leg
on the bridge rail.
"Now, Mr. Spock," he said, "why don't
you tell me what happened twelve years ago that
started all this?"
McCoy stood beside the captain and glared at
Spock, hoping the Vulcan would feel on the
spot, but the first officer didn't respond. He
simply gazed between them at the turbolift
vestibule.
Together the captain and the doctor turned, and they
too stared at the back of the bridge at three
beings, not quite human.
"Oh, Captain," one being said, "can't we
tell you?"

Three shadows of humanity's past, gentle
biped ghosts of humanoid ancestry. Clothing of
different styles, complexions and haircuts all
different, but the expressions all alike.
Adulation, anticipation. Joy.
Their most striking characteristic was their eyes--v
large, with almost no whites showing, like the
light-catching eyes of a horse or a deer.
His medical background gurgling with delight,
McCoy noted right away that the bridge lights
didn't seem to bother these newcomers. Of
course, the bridge wasn't all that bright. Still,
he was instantly curious about the evolution
conditions that produced these people.
The one who had spoken had shaggy wheat-blond
hair that licked at his shoulders and made his dark
brown eyes very obvious. His squarish face was
bright and changed expression almost by the second.
Delight bubbled his cheeks and his lips trembled
around a nervous smile. He was moving toward
Kirk as though he thought the bridge would crack
under him.
"Captain," he gasped. "I'm so honored
to be here!"
He put his right hand out easily--ei he'd
been practicing or handshakes had been adopted
on Gullrey along with other Earth habits.
Kirk took the hand. "Welcome aboard,
Mister--"
"I'm Tom. Please call me Tom ...
do you like it? I tried to choose a friendly name."
Feeling as though he'd suddenly opened a
nursery, Kirk stabbed a glance at Spock,
then said, "Yes, I like it very much. It's
what we call an old-fashioned name."
Tom turned rosy with pride and asked,
"What's your name?"
After another pause, Kirk said, "Jim. And
this is my first officer, Commander Spock, and our
ship's surgeon, Leonard McCoy."
Tom didn't grab for Spock's hand, but he
did manage to get ahold of McCoy's.
Only now did McCoy notice that the
Gullrey people were all fairly tall and somewhat
gangly. That and their delight seemed their only
common trait. Tom was the fairest one, while the
other ones had black and chocolate brown hair
respectively, and their clothes were all different.
The two lagging back were wearing some kind of long
shirt--not exactly tunics--andthe black-haired
one had a baggy knitted vest with pockets.
Tom's clothes could have come off the rack at
any wilderness outfitter back on Earth--a
red-and-black buffalo plaid shirt, blue
jeans with suspenders, and moccasins.
He saw McCoy looking at his clothes, and
grinned. "Catalog service. Mountain man
clothes. Did I get it right?"
McCoy laughed and suddenly relaxed. "You
got it right for any mountain I've ever been on,
that's for sure."
"These are my associates," Tom said, and
motioned the other two forward. He gestured first to the
one with black hair and the vest. "This is
Royenne, and that is Osso. We're proud to be
guests on a starship. To be able to ride on a
ship like the one that ended our loneliness--"
"You said you'd like to tell me about that," Kirk
prodded. "Why don't you start now. We'll all
listen."
Tom looked at his two friends, who silently
encouraged him to move forward, start talking. Tom
swallowed a few times, as though the story was too
wonderful and he didn't deserve to be telling
it. Only when he realized the eyes of all were
on him--at least for the moment while departure
arrangements were being cleared--he nodded and forced
himself to speak.
His English was flawless, yet he treated it like
a golden charm discovered in the dark.
"We live far out in space," he said, "in
a lonely sector of the galactic arm, well
past your farthest starbase. We have a very
unimaginative sun, and only lifeless
rocks orbit it. We crawled up through
evolution, then through many halting civilizations to an
age where our science matched our visions of hope,
and we looked into the sky. We reached to the nearest
planets in our system but found they were rocks.
We sent robotic probes into deep space
to see if anyone else was out there and to beg for a
response."
Osso prodded, "Tell them about the stories,
Tom."
"Yes, we wrote stories," Tom said.
"Thousands of tales about space travel and
meeting alien life and what it would be like the first
time. It was the most popular mode of literature
for almost a century. Since first our long-range
telescopes peered into the unthinkable reaches, our
children went to bed with toy spacemen."
If Tom was unsure of himself, he wasn't
unsure of his tale and its quality. His smooth
m aple-sugar face took on a flush of
excitement.
Definitely red blood ...
McCoy found himself smiling at the visitor's
unquenched enthusiasm, and saw the captain smiling
beside him.
And everyone else was smiling too. Even
Spock had a subdued smile on his face and a
glimmer in his eyes as he brought his arms around to the
front and folded them across his chest.
Tom saw the motion and might have been
intimidated, because he paused for a breath before going
on.
"It was all through our culture--in our minds,
in our hopes, our hearts--e day it was with us.
We were so sure there was someone to hear our call that
we spent our work time preparing and our spare time
making fantasy visits in our books and
papers, so we would be ready to participate in
interstellar culture! For decades we reached and
probed and called," he finished on one breath,
"but in nearly two centuries of hope, we saw
... not one sign of life."
The three aliens' big soggy eyes blinked
sadly. The smiles around them faltered.
Tom shook his head. "We had lost many
adventurous crews in the attempt to fly
to nearby stars, but they found ... nothing. After
lifetimes of spinning fabulous tales of space
travel and alien meetings, of straining to unify
our nations in order to be ready, our dream
began to starve."
Now glad to be standing a little behind the captain,
McCoy instinctively battled down a shiver of
empathy and thought he saw Uhura do the same.
Just empathy--j Tom's ability to spin a
story. Beside him, he saw the captain go tense,
and he sensed they were all taking this too hard.
"We mourned heroes lost in the attempt
to reach out," Tom said, "for they had apparently
died for nothing. The sacrifice lost its
nobility and became too much for us to bear.
Literature of space travel died away.
Enrollment in space science fell off. Funding
of ou-system exploration dissolved. Planetwide
disappointment settled over us."
"The story must get better," McCoy
interrupted, desperate to make the cold feeling
go away. "After all, we're here."
Tom's large eyes swept to him. "Yes!
You are here. You came to us and you answered us ...
one day, in the last decade of our interest in
space, when there was only one little outpost left
listening. The last outpost ... they heard an
answer and thought they were imagining what they heard."
He spread his lanky arms and said, "It was a
call from a race calling themselves the Hood."
Decorum folded and laughter broke out on the
bridge.
"The "Hood"'ffwas Sulu repeated.
"I like that!" Ensign Chekov burst from beside him
at navigation.
The three aliens smiled as though they were about
to boil over, and seemed overwhelmed by the welcome
they'd received here.
And the feeling of cold loneliness melted
into sudden community warmth.
"Does that make us the "Enterprise"'?"
Sulu said. "What would you call us?"
Tom fell silent for an instant, then stepped
down to the command deck. With three of his long fingers
he touched the point of the helmsman's shoulder.
"You," he began, "who were devoted to seek out
distant and lonely cultures like ours. You, who
appeared before us in a brilliant white ship ...
who were bold enough, who were confident enough in yourselves
to answer our tiny fading call ... you, who are
generous enough to make the Rey part of yourselves ... what
should we call you?"
Sulu gazed at him uneasily, not moving a
muscle.
Tom's eyes glowed, then creased with smile
lines.
"We call you saviors," he said.

Chapter Three

Approaching the Starting Line
at Starbase 16

"allyellow alert. Yellow alert. All
hands to battle stations. Prepare for emergency
action. All hands to battle stations."
James Kirk skidded around a corner and down
the corridor of his own ship, gratified in this
moment of emergency to see his crew leap to action.
There were times when running was a good idea, if
only to bring the crew to the right mental level for
what they might have to do.
He plunged into the turbolift and the doors
closed behind him. He grasped the control handle and
turned it.
"Bridge," he said.
The lift surged through the veins of the starship, a
ship within a ship, carrying the lifeblood of
decision to the place where he would decide. But for
these few moments, he was the least active person
in his crew of nearly five hundred.
Least active except for his mind. In his mind
he was preparing for the wildest, the most horrid, the
most draining of possibilities, for any of those
might be awaiting him on the bridge. This
turbolift ride would be his last peace, until
events came to an end under his phasers, under his
fists, or by strength of will.
Yellow alert from a Starbase this far out could
mean any of a dozen problems. Structural
breach, terrorist activity--andwitha fleet of
racing vessels pushing for position, last minute
supplies, anything might happen. Collision,
power loss, dispute. Whatever did happen, a
starship in the vicinity had authority over starbase
administration.
That means me. Me and the other Starfleet
masters, if anyone else is here yet.
And a call for battle stations was mystifying, as
much as the mustering of all hands on deck.
Those could only come from Spock.
He could buzz the bridge and get details,
but he stayed his hand from the comm panel and let his
adrenaline build, his senses sharpen, the
tension rise. Whatever was happening, he would never
assume it was nothing, maybe just a mistake,
somebody's bad judgment. Starbases were run
almost as efficiently as starships, but still there was that
added danger--accessibility. Starbases could be
visited with little more than a request. Starships were
private terrain. The captain's terrain.
Anticipation boiled in his chest until his
uniform shirt felt tight around his ribs. When the
turbolift slowed and the doors blew open, he
felt as though he were being shot out of a cannon.
He dropped to the center deck and put his hand
on his command chair. "Status, Mr. Spock?"
"Approaching Starbase 16 at warp factor
four, Captain," the Vulcan said from where he
bent like a vulture over his readouts. "ETA,
twenty-eight minutes current speed. They
report an enemy presence."
"Enemy?" Kirk turned. "We're not at
war, Mr. Spock."
Spock straightened and faced him.
"Apparently there is a vessel of hostile
configuration approaching the starbase at high warp.
Contestant ships and others are scattering. I
requested specification. No response as
yet."
"Go to warp five."
"Warp five, sir," Sulu echoed.
"Revised ETA, thirteen minutes, ten
seconds."
Kirk settled into his chair and gestured over
his shoulder to Uhura. "Broadcast general alert
of our approach and recognition codes,
Lieutenant. Warn off any trouble."
"Aye, sir," she said. A moment later, her
melodic instructions to the starbase provided an
undercurrent to all other sounds on the bridge.
"Scanning the area," Spock said. "Picking
up movement from several vessels."
"Broadcast a regional all-stop. See
if they comply. Give me a visual on the
hostile as soon as you can."
"Yes, sir."
"Identify exhaust emissions of every ship you can
pinpoint. Get me a list of power ratios. I
want to know who's there. Winnow out any
non-Federation presence in the sector."
Spock nodded, this time to Ensign Chekov, who
had been looking at him, knowing at least half of
those orders would be his to fulfill. A
moment later, both of them were hovering over the
science stations on the bridge's starboard side,
struggling to make use of the ship's diminished
sensor capabilities.
Frustrating. Kirk watched them, empathizing.
Still, starship personnel were trained to deal with
whatever they had, even if it was a twenty percent
power down.
He felt the struggle in the ship itself as she
gathered as much power as she could find and funneled it
into the warp-five order. Not quite full speed, and
she was already sweating.
He knew she was ... because he was.
Eying his science specialists, seeing their
frowns and glowers, their shoulders go tense over
instruments that should've had the answers within the first ten
seconds, he tried to think up more for them to do.
Something that would give him a clue about what was going
on in such a way that he wouldn't have to hail the
starbase for answers.
He wanted to know the answers already when he
hailed them. It was one of his tricks. Know the
answer before you're supposed to.
He wanted that answer.
Repressing an urge to get up and go stand behind
them as they worked, Kirk grilled them with a silent
glare--and they felt it, he could see that. The
sounds of the bridge had slightly intensified. The
Rey guests wouldn't have noticed if they'd been
here, but the captain did, and he knew the bridge
crew did, too. That information was being yanked into the
starship's system through reluctant power grids
and a damning distance.
Chekov stepped over to Spock andfora moment their
heads were together over a monitor, then Spock
straightened and snapped an order. Chekov
dropped from the upper deck to stand beside the captain's
chair and brave the expression Kirk could feel
on his own face.
"Sir," the young Russian began,
"twenty-three vessels identified by intermix
exhaust, including twelve capable of thrust above
warp four. No Starfleet vessel identified
as yet," he went on, struggling past his halting
accent, "so Mr. Spock concludes we will be the
only starship present at the moment."
"I'll assume that. Go on."
Chekov looked at Spock.
The Vulcan stepped to the ra il and gazed down.
"Subspace intermix formula readings
suggest several definitions of thrust engineering, and
I have isolated ships that I deem unfamiliar
to Federation emission control. Those would be the
Melkot vessel, the Andorian vessel, the
New Malurians, and two others that I can
pinpoint but not identify. Of vessels now moving
both away from and toward the Starbase, I'm
picking up one level of emission residue that the
computer correlates with an intermix formula
currently being used by the Klingons."
Kirk glowered at him, then at the forward
screen. "Klingons?" In his mind he saw
Starbase 16 dangling out there in the invisible
distance. It made a lovely picture except
for the crane-in-flight ship speeding in from another
place, its wings angled back, its long neck
and the bubble on the front somehow threatening just
by pointing toward the starbase. It angled in without
invitation, to a place where it didn't belong, at
a time when it wasn't wanted. He couldn't see
it yet, but it was out there. He knew, because Spock
told him it was. That was enough to start him stewing.
Spock's steady face bore an untrusting
scowl as he, too, gazed at the forward screen.
Kirk knew they were looking at the same
picture in their two minds.
"Klingon design, Captain," Spock
agreed, "but the emission ratio is eight percent
richer."
James Kirk pushed himself out of his command
chair, and his teeth clenched tight.
"Romulans."

The other side of trouble. As aliens went,
Klingons were temperamental, surface-thinking,
hot-blooded and gruff, and could be outthought and
outfought by someone who kept his cool. Romulans
were stiff, mean, quick on the trigger, but cunning.
They would outlast someone trying to outlast them.
Cool judgment made them formidable.
Suddenly Kirk felt betrayed, his peace and
everyone else's blowtorched. The Great Starship
Race had been robbed of its luster before it even
had a chance to begin.
He glared at the forward screen, pacing back
and forth behind the navigation and helm consoles. He
knew Sulu and Chekov were deliberately not
turning, not looking at him, because the atmosphere
here had become so suddenly tense.
"Red alert," he said. "Maintain
general quarters. Plot an intercept course."
The lights on the bridge changed. Everything
went rosy and more active. Alert panels on the
bulkheads went from amber to red and flashed faster.
Uhura's voice pounded through the vessel.
"Red alert ... all hands maintain
battle stations ... this is not a drill."
Like his ride in the turbolift, the next few
minutes were grilling frustration. Kirk wanted
to be there already, to know what was happening, to stand over
a dangerous situation and demand that it hold itself
together.
"Approaching the vicinity of Starbase 16,
sir," Sulu reported. "Contacting several
vessels vacating the area."
"Enhance magnification, Mr. Sulu."
"Aye, sir. Full magnification."
Race vessels, spectator ships, touring
yachts, cruise ships--vessels of every
purpose and design suddenly shot toward them like
some kind of interstellar boat show. No--z though
somebody had set off a bomb at a boat show.
Kirk read panic in the trajectories of these
ships, heading out toward nothing in particular, just
away from the starbase, shooting past the
Enterprise without even the simplest of
ship-to-ship signals. There should've been an
industrial grandeur here, but in fact, for James
Kirk there was only a sense of overcrowding and a knowledge
that whatever he did, success or mistake, would
involve all these ships.
A situation that could be instantly ugly, dozens
of ships beating for the rear, seeing the starship racing
past them to brace the storm ... a hobbled starship
...
A minute later there were fewer ships, and the
starship was briefly alone.
"Starbase 16 on visual, Captain,"
Sulu said, and adjusted the magnification to show the
beautiful light-dotted spool of the starbase
floating in the middle of nothing.
"Spock, anything?"
"Incoming vessel is unshielded, Captain,
weapons systems off-line. They are broadcasting
interstellar truce. It is your choice, of
course, whether to believe them."
"Confirm shields up."
Sulu glanced down to see what he already knew
was there. "Shields are up, sir."
"Arm phasers."
"Phasers armed, sir."
"Continue intercept course. Lieutenant,"
Kirk said, relying on tone and innate
familiarity with his crew to tell them all which
lieutenant he was talking to. "Demand that they
full-stop immediately, or reverse course. If
they encroach Federation territory any further,
we will open fire."
"Aye, sir," Uhura said. She made the
broadcast with interstellar codes, but they all
knew she was simultaneously sending the same
message in computer translation in the Romulan
language as well as Federation linguists had been
able to piece it together.
"Contact, Captainffwas Sulu said suddenly.
"They're reducing speed ... coming to full-stop,
sir ... there they are."
A Romulan battlecruiser, caught just
close enough to the starbase that both it and the starbase
showed at opposite ends of the big screen. Not the
little bird-of-prey fighter type, but the big,
long-necked design the Romulans had stolen from
the Klingons and redesigned for stealth and bursts of
power.
"Ship to ship, sir?" Uhura asked.
"Not yet."
Kirk prowled his command deck. His eyes never
left the pale green ship hovering on his screen.
He familiarized himself with every line, every running
light wink, every shadow.
He would have felt better if the ship hadn't
been aimed right into the heart of the starbase, as though
it meant to fire up thrusters and ram its way
through.
"Close the distance. Put us between them and the
starbase. Stand them down."
"Closing distance, sir."
The Romulan ship grew larger and centered itself
on the viewscreen like a piece of art in a
frame.
"Come nose to nose with them, Mr. Sulu."
"Aye, sir."
The great sallow green ship angled toward them,
head-on against the black of space. Kirk gazed
at it, considering the present, unlikely
circumstances. Under normal conditions, the
Enterprise could have sent them begging, but powered
down twenty percent, the other ship had any
mechanical advantage it wanted to have.
That meant relying on other
advantages.
"Ship to ship."
Around him he felt the crew putting on their
resolute faces, hiding whatever they might have
been feeling, determined that the Romulans not see
a shudder, a blink, a flinch.
"The Imperial Subcommander, Captain,"
Uhura said, and swiveled to look at the screen
just as it began to waver.
The Klingon-style vessel dissolved, and the
picture formed into a severe face with all the
expected elements, and a few unexpected ones--
drawn angular brows shading carefully governed
eyes, hair blown back and even a little shaggy,
cheeks somewhat pale today.
"I am Subcommander Romar," he said.
"ally have questions for me."
"I'm James t. Kirk, commanding the
U.S.So. Enterprise. What is your
purpose here?"
"We come under the order of my commander, who
wishes to greet you in person, on your starbase.
We have deactivated our weapons, as requested
by your starbase personnel."
"We have no treaty with you," Kirk said
bluntly. "You don't want one. When you do,
then you can start making requests to approach, and not
before. Do you have an emergency?"
"There is no emergency," the Romulan
admitted. "May we approach the starbase and
speak with you personally?"
"Why won't your commander speak with me here and
now?"
The subcommander shrugged. "He has an
arbitrary habit of wanting to look into the eyes of
others. He doesn't like viewers. It's a
habit I must deal with. After all, he is my
commander. Please let us approach, Captain."
Kirk sensed more than tension on the other side.
The subcommander's voice was relaxed, his
posture rounded, a certain yearning in his gaze.
Kirk followed his instinct and said, "Keep your
shields down, your weapons off-line, and your
engines powered down to point five sublight.
Follow us in, and we'll arrange for a mooring.
Our weapons are armed and we won't be taking a
mooring. We'll be ready to act on the
half-second if there are any aggressive or
destructive moves. I want your commander ready
to talk to me within five minutes of my
direct order."
"I will tell him," the Romulan said without
pause. "He will explain our presence."
"That's right. He will. Enterprise out."
The screen faded back to the view of the
Romulan ship, but somehow Kirk had the lingering
sensation that he was still being watched.
"Clear with the dockmaster, Mr. Spock. But
specify that we won't be taking a mooring.
We're at red alert. Lieutenant, hail the
starbase, code five."
"Aye, sir," Uhura responded, but
drumming up such an uncommon code took her
a few seconds longer than usual. The extra
seconds proved she understood what he meant and
would mask the communication with double and triple
guards. If anybody was listening, they wouldn't
hear much more than electrical whistles and coughs.
So listen if you want to, Kirk thought as
he stared at that ship.
"Captain," Uhura said, "Helen
Fogelstein, starbase magistrate, and Mr.
Orland from the Race Committee."
"Visual."
"On visual, sir."
The screen changed so smoothly this time, moving
between compatible systems instead of struggling with two
separate technologies, that for an instant it
looked as though John Orland had a Romulan
ship growing out of his ear. Then it was just Orland and a
very approachable-looking woman i n her fifties with
short black hair and a single worry line across
her brow.
"Captain Kirk," she said, "welcome
to Starbase 16. I wish I could offer you peace
and quiet."
"We'll have peace and quiet, ma'am, if I
have to get it at phaserpoint. What's going on?
Why did you let that ship past your border
outposts?"
"They came in broadcasting interstellar
truce, and since they complied with all weapons
deactivation regulations for approach, I had
to let them come in."
"No, you didn't," Kirk told her
casually. "The Federation isn't a candy store,
Ms. Fogelstein. You have an entire starbase and
three security outposts at your administration.
You might consider reviewing the regulations
manual regarding approach of
non-treaty contacts. You shouldn't have to feel
intimidated by anybody."
"But I didn't have any reason to turn them
down. Part of our purpose for being out here is--"
"Part of the advantage of being out here," Kirk
interrupted, "is the ability to act at your
personal impulse regarding friction in
non-self-governing regions. You've got the
power, Ms. Fogelstein, and you should use it."
The woman blushed, swallowed a couple of
times, sighed, and nodded. "I wish I'd told
them that."
Kirk took a step forward and asked, "Mr.
Orland, what do they want to talk to you about?"
Orland wasn't any more at ease than the
magistrate. He shifted back and forth so
nervously that the screen seemed to be swinging.
"They seem to want to join the race, Captain
Kirk."
"Join the race?" That was their story? A
Romulan heavy cruiser moves across the
neutral zone, and that was the best they could do?
He studied John Orland's face to see
whether or not he bought that story. How offended would
the Race Committee be if he laughed in their
faces?
"Do you want them in the race?"
"ationo, not really."
"Why didn't you say so?" He let them
squirm a few seconds, realizing his bridge
crew was squirming too, with empathy. "Why
didn't anybody speak up before the situation
reached this point? You people shouldn't be waiting for a
Starfleet presence before you drum up the resolve
to act on the power you do possess." Too often
that only leaves Starfleet with a disaster to clean
up, he added silently. Clean-up wasn't the
purpose of a starship as far as he was concerned, and
he didn't like doing it.
The two people on the viewer suddenly dropped their
helpless expressions for one of shame.
"I know that," Orland said. "ally're right,
Captain. But they came in and now we're stuck
with them. I know I'm the big shot from the Race
Committee, but I'm a chemist by trade. What
do I know about these kinds of people? I could give them
a ruling and they'd blast my face off for not offering
them the right interstellar nose-picking ritual or
something. The only reason I'm on the Race
Committee at all is that I run a
youth rally on Rigel 12, and my
brother-in-law is a UFP diplomat, and he
wanted to get me back for not arranging for his kid
to win. I mean, this is his idea of a good-natured
joke, you know? Nobody ever said I'd have to deal
with Romulans. Will you come over here and deal with
them, please?"
"I'm going to have to," Kirk said flatly.
"Tell their commander to meet me in Ms.
Fogelstein's office in ten minutes."
Ms. Fogelstein dropped some of the reddish
terror out of her face, but still looked nervous about
telling the Romulans they'd have to leave their ship
and do the bidding of Starfleet, but she didn't
argue or ask for a different arrangement.
"Thank you!" she gasped. "I'll tell
them!"
The screen dissolved to the view of the Starbase
and the Romulan vessel, and Jim Kirk got a
mental vision of what the Enterprise must look
like to the Romulans. Big, white, armed,
angry, and coming in at high warp--maybe they were
having second thoughts too. Maybe he could
play on that.
Eying the screen, he leaned back toward
Spock and lowered his voice.
"They're not here to run a race," he droned.
"I know that, you know that, and they know it."
Spock only nodded, and also watched the big
intruder hovering there among all those race
contestants.
"Do Romulans have kamikaze missions?"
Sulu speculated from his helm. "All they'd have
to do is open fire, and they'd cut up a dozen
ships and a starbase before we could even blink."
Kirk glanced at him. "I assume that means
you've plotted your firing pattern, Mr.
Sulu."
"Oh--" Sulu blinked and grabbed at his
controls. "Pattern plotted, sir. I'm
sorry, sir."
"Rule number one, Mr. Sulu," Kirk
said. "Never be too fascinated with the enemy."
"Yes, sir. It won't happen again."
Kirk watched for a few moments while the
Romulan ship approached the starbase and was
accepted by the mooring detail in what appeared
to be a series of deceptively ordinary
movements.
"Spock," he began tentatively,
moving to the ship's rail and lowering his voice.
The Vulcan turned in his chair, and Kirk
realized this was the first time today that Spock had sat
down at his controls. Maybe this underlying twinge that
things had been going a little too right and had to snap
wasn't just in Kirk's command imagination.
Maybe Spock felt it too.
"Speculate," Kirk said. "What would
Romulans want in all this open space? I
understand that Starfleet pre-exploration charting
reported almost nothing here worth having, and
certainly not much worth fighting over. These
Gullrey people, and that's about it, correct? No
other notable star systems?"
"Few," Spock confirmed. "If Gullrey
is accepted into the Federation, then the UFP gains
access to an area of open space equal
to eighteen percent of current Federation holdings.
A very large acquisition, even if it is empty
space with very little mining or strategic use. Even
as colonization possibilities, the vastness of the
area between Starbase 16 and Gullrey is
substantial. The Romulans may not covet the
area, but may simply be suspect of Federation
purposes. That alone would be enough to make them wary.
They may simply take our interest in the area as
a reason to covet."
"They don't buy the idea of the Gullreys
wanting to join us for their own betterment and
protection."
"The Rey, sir," Spock corrected
dryly. "And that is true."
Kirk leaned his back on the rail and pressed
it with both hands, again glaring at the forward screen.
He tried to talk himself into what he had just heard
and what he had just said.
"I don't like this. This is piecrust
diplomacy. It's pretty, but it crumbles. The
Romulans aren't that stupid. There's something
else going on. I don't like the fact that they
happen to show up when the Starfleet vessels are
hobbled. We'll be easy pickings if trouble
erupts. Maybe they're looking for a reason
to erupt."
Spock nodded. "This could be an opportunity
for them to get into that sector without going to war with the
Federation over it."
"Which leads me to ask," Kirk said slowly,
"what the Romulans know about this sector that we
don't." He grasped the arm of his command
chair and nailed the comm panel. "Sickbay."
"Sickbay, Nurse Chapel."
"Get me Dr. McCoy."
"allyes, sir, one moment."
That one moment lasted thirty years. By the time it
was over, Kirk was grinding his teeth.
"McCoy here."
"What took you so long?"
"A compound fracture, Captain,"
McCoy responded, sounding irritated at
having to explain himself.
"Interns should be setting broken legs,
Doctor, not you," Kirk barked. "I want an
analysis of our Rey visitors from you.
Physiology, anthropology, history, and
any attraction they might have for Romulans."
"Romulans? What've they got to do with
this?"
"They showed up at Starbase 16."
"Could it have something to do with the race? All those
vessels gathered in one place?"
"I don't know. A race is supposed to be
entertainment. Sportsmanship. Competition. It
just became something else."
"Maybe they just want to be in the race. Use
it as an excuse to have a look at us. Since we
don't have anything to hide, then what's the harm?"
"I don't know," the captain repeated, his
fists sweating at his sides. "But once the
neighborhood bully shows up, you know the game
isn't going to be fun anymore."

He knew the Romulans were here for some other
purpose than curiosity about some competition or
other, and there wasn't any clue yet. Clues
had to be dug for, coaxed, weeded out, sometimes from
between the nerve endings of people who should never have gotten so
close to each other.
The Romulan ship could cut the Enterprise
in half with the present power ratios, and he
assumed they knew that. A spy, a cousin, a
coaxed barmaid--information couldn't be held down,
and no one had made any particular efforts
to keep quiet the fact that the Starfleet ships were
being handicapped for the race.
"Captain?"
"Yes, Mr. Spock?"
Well, he'd been expecting this.
"I do not mean to question your judgment," Spock
began.
"Yes, you do, but go ahead anyway."
"Is it wise to offer them mooring? And I
presume, since you did not decline, that you intend
to meet their request of personal contact with their
commander."
"I'm curious," Kirk admitted.
"And is it possible," the Vulcan added, "that
you are curtailing their arc of movement by bringing them
in?"
Kirk glanced at him, and a smile pulled at
his mouth.
"That's right. Spock, contact our Rey
guests down below and ask Tom if he or his
planet has ever been approached or even
scanned by Imperial ships to the best of his knowledge, and
then I want to know how he thinks his planet will
feel about hostile participation i n the race."
Spock pulled himself away from the view on the
screen with obvious effort.
"I assume you mean participation of
hostiles," he said.
"You know what I mean."
"Yes, sir."
The computer's remote earpiece went in, and the
Vulcan turned to his console. His deep
voice murmured behind the bridge noises, short
questions, terse and complete, efficient. Kirk
watched and read his first officer's posture, as he
had learned to during their years of service, and
noted that Spock wasn't any more satisfied with the
situation than Kirk was.
After not very long at all, the Vulcan
swiveled in his chair and said, "The Rey guests
have absolutely no awareness of any Romulan
interests in their planet, economic,
scientific, sociological, or hostile.
No approaches whatsoever. In fact, Tom
insists he has never heard of Romulans.
However, he does mention that if the Romulans
wish to join the race, the Rey have no compunction
about their planet's open-armed welcome, but will
defer to your judgment."
"Oh, wonderful," Kirk drawled.
"Let's all try to handle the Romulans with
valentine cards. See how well we do."
Spock raised a brow, frowned, and nodded.
"I understand," he said.
Somehow that was comforting. Annoying, but comforting.
Spock felt the same way, or at least knew
what Kirk was feeling.
Just a race. Just an event for fun. For showing
off and making dares. Just a race. That's all.
Now it was suddenly a breakable situation.
He turned to the viewscreen, which showed him the
enormous Romulan ship, with several race
contenders now warily returning to the area.
"I didn't come here as an umpire," he
grumbled, "but I'll hold the scales if I have
to. The Rey have bad judgment. It's unwise
to reject basic caution. Spock, don't you have
any hypothesis about this ... presence?"
"I can only extrapolate on your own
suspicions," he said quietly. "The Rey
are somehow the key. Their advancement into space
travel was suspiciously sudden, given the
slowness of their cultural developments."
Kirk felt his brow tighten. "You mean ...
the Romulans might have tampered with the Rey
already?"
Shifting fluidly from one foot to the other,
Spock drew a long breath.
"Everyone tampers. Many cultures have joined
the Federation and, by doing so, made a leap ahead that
would otherwise have taken generations. Billions of
lives have been saved which would otherwise have been
sacrificed to the normal development of medicine
and science."
Kirk grasped the rail and pivoted himself up
onto the quarterdeck to Spock's side.
"But that's us, Mr. Spock. We're like that.
That's our ... way. We found out a long time
ago that we all profit from it. If I didn't
believe in it, I wouldn't be out here. But the
Romulans--t's not their way. So why are they
here?"
"Is it possible they have something hidden in this
sector that they wish left undiscovered?"
Spock offered.
Kirk grew suddenly speculative and
quiet.
"Anything is possible, Mr. Spock," he
answered finally. "Especially where the Romulans
are concerned."

Tribal masks, pub signs, and whiskey
mirrors decorated Starbase 16's
transporter room walls. Beaming in was like
waking up from a nice neat dream into a travel
brochure.
his--irk, I'm Helen
Fogelstein."
She had her hand out toward him and was speaking even
before the transporter process had cleared enough
to let him hear her start talking.
Kirk stepped off the pad and scanned the
room. "Looks as if somebody's been
exploring."
"My husband and his brother," she said. She
waved her hands as she talked. "They go all
over. My office is right down the hallway.
Mr. Orland is meeting the Romulan captain
and taking him to a waiting room until you can get
to my office. We're going to make him come to you,
instead of the other way around. We thought that was kind of
... would give you a psychological
advantage."
"Good thinking. Did he come alone, or does
he have guards with him?"
"Oh, no, we told him he'd have to come
by himself."
"I wish you'd summoned that kind of resolve
two hours ago."
"Oh, so do I, so do i. They didn't like it
either, his coming by himself. But now that you're here it just
seems easier to set conditions."
Her office was a muddle of decor, a pub
sign here, a decorative egg there, a
terra-cotta pig by the door. She offered him a
seat, but he shook his head and she immediately
understood. She waved her hand over a tea set
whose pot was in the shape of a 1900's iron
stove, but again he declined, determined
to communicate that he was here for only one purpose
and wanted to get it over with.
Finally Ms. Fogelstein shrugged and blinked,
then shrugged again, couldn't think of anything social
to say, and tapped the communication unit on her
desk. "Toby, have Mr. Orland bring the
Imperial Commander in, please."
There wasn't any response, but Ms.
Fogelstein didn't seem to think that was odd.
She rubbed her hands together in a nervous manner,
then held them out and shrugged again.
"I'm sorry about this," she said.
Ordinarily, Kirk would smile and let her
off the hook, but he resisted. Anyone running a
base this far out of the mainstream needed to learn how
to handle the dangerously unexpected. He'd seen
the remains of outposts who were unprepared in
attitude or arms to deal with the
antagonisms in sectors of space that could
seem perfectly established, but become disputed
at a stranger's whim. Apparently, Starbase
16 had been lucky until now.
As the hope fled in his mind that luck would not
slack today, another door opened and John
Orland appeared, markedly less lighthearted
than the last time Kirk had seen him.
In that instant Kirk's reflexes got the
better of him and he straightened his shoulders,
flexed his arms, and inhaled. He knew the
reaction was like a little boy defending a street
corner, but it came out of him anyway. He
wanted to appear as capable of subterfuge as
honor. He wanted the Romulan to see him not
as the ribboned commander, but as a swindler, a
tactician, a manipulator, a human
gauntlet. As whatever he had to be to get a
rise out of him.
The Romulan leader was bearded like a medieval
knight, neatly deported and dressed in
unfamiliar gear, maybe an older style
uniform, a simple blue jacket with amber
trim and a sash over one shoulder. Or maybe it
was just their version of off-duty clothes.
The two civilians stepped apart and the two
commanders came together, gazing firmly, plumbing for
vulnerabilities, finding damned few.
Jim Kirk stared at the face of his
Romulan counterpart and endured a thunderclap of
distrust--and other things he couldn't quite define.
"Captain Kirk," the commander said fluidly.
A mellow voice for his kind. "I've heard of
you. A remarkable record for one so young."
"I'm backed by remarkable support,
Commander," Kirk said. "What's your purpose
here?"
The Romulan's eyes didn't falter--
something the captain always looked for. "We heard
of a great race. We demand the chance
to participate."
"You demand?"
"Forgive me--poor choice of ^ws. I
stumble over your language from lack of
practice. My people tend to learn harsh ^ws first.
May I request that we be allowed to participate
in your race?"
Kirk turned his head a little, to allow for a
sidelong glare. He parted his lips and slowly
asked, "Why?"
The commander licked his lips and allowed--Was it
shy candor?--ffshow through in the form of a smile.
"I see you aren't easily maneuvered,
Captain. Would it help if I admit to you that
my presence here is unsanctioned by the Empire?"
Kirk's gaze bore into the Romulan. "You
breached Federation space on your own authority?
Risked a death sentence from your own government just
to run a race?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Kirk saw Orland
and Ms. Fogelstein huddled together, backing away
an inch at a time. The farther the better, as he
closed the inches between himself and the commander.
"I'm going to ask you one more time," he said.
"Why?"
The Romulan smiled in a reserved way, not
really a smile so much as a tightening of the lips,
an accenting of the cheekbones.
"There is no challenge left for me and those like
me," the visitor said. "There are no questions, no
conquests, no unknown territory in Empire
space. All we have to do is to go around and around,
Captain. As you see, I am no longer a young
soldier, hot for adventure as I once was.
But I crave a challenge, one chance to go up
against ... legends." He made a consciously
passive gesture toward Kirk. "I only
want to run the race. Perhaps to push the boundaries
of Federation thought about my kind ... to know I have
altered the galaxy just a little. I cherish the last
challenge of my career and want it to be something
other than ... one more circle."
Caught for a moment between suspicion and his oath
to break down barriers between cultures, Kirk
felt thorns of denial pricking at him. He
knew what had just become his obligation.
Provide an example--be bigger than his
reflexes, even bigger than his instincts. Be
gallant. Be polite. Give the answer time
to show itself.
"I don't believe your story," he said.
"But for now, it'll do. If you and your ship
qualify according to Race Committee
specifications, and your ship is handicapped to the
level of Starfleet ships, then I won't
order you out of the sector."
"Order us? Captain, the race is being run
in free space. You have no jurisdiction here."
Kirk handed him back one of those n-q-smiles
and added to it a half-swagger. "Want'a
bet?"
The Romulan chuckled openly and said , "No,
I would prefer not to make a bet with you."
"Believe me, Commander," Kirk stomped over
the chuckle, "if I don't want you in that free
space, you won't have time to run a race."
There were subtler changes logged away in his
file of expressions to watch out for, but this
Romulan was different a second later. A
difference like the color of clouds deciding whether
or not to rain.
"Understood," he said. "Accept my apology
again."
Too fast.
Fast and personable, way too much. Starfleet
would just have to make a new set of rules about dealing
with smiles and quiet ^ws that couldn't possibly
be true.
"Report to the starbase maintenance dock for
handicapping. Keep all your personnel aboard.
You stay here and sign up with the Race Committee.
I want to know your ship's specifications, fuel
and weapon capacity, and its name in the English
equivalent."
"Yes," the commander said. "I will provide you with
that information. My ship is called Red
Talon. It happens to translate
directly."
Kirk choked back a snide remark about the
vicious nature of the ship's name,--a remark of the
kind that no ship's master deserved, no matter
how ragged a past between civilizations.
"And your name?" he asked.
"Oh, of course," the Romulan said. "My
name is Valdus."

Chapter Four

Imperial Cruiser Red Talon

"Answer their questions. Be direct. Be very
short, but be polite. Humans read politeness
as a clue. I'll join you in a few minutes."
"Yes, Commander."
Valdus stood alone before the viewscreen as his
ship's centurion went off to handle the committee
regulations, to tell the humans what they needed
to know and not one syllable more.
Until his eyes ached, he gazed at the
gleaming white Federation ship, with its
powerful warp drive nacelles and its glowing
forward section hovering above the starbase and above
him.
His purpose had seemed simple until this
moment. Perhaps it was still simple, and this churning within
his innards was not a complication but a clinging memory
of that other captain's glare. That glare--boring and
prying into him like some kind of drill.
That man, that piece of fire. James
Kirk. He had not been merely handling an
annoyance, or even handling a potential threat.
He had been thinking hard, trying to think like the
enemy alien before him, to dig into them and know what their
minds held.
Valdus knew humans were not soft-hearted as
rumor preferred. He knew they could summon
steel willfulness; that had been the only way
they'd beaten the Empire behind a neutral strip
and held it there these generations.
And that young man over there was the kind who had done
it, that James Kirk and his sort.
"Dangerous," Valdus uttered.
"Commander?" a voice came up from behind him.
The sound of his subcommander's voice was at
once comfort and challenge.
Valdus, realizing he had been slumping,
straightened. "Yes, Romar, yes."
He turned now and the two of them sank into a
shadow together.
"You have something to tell me?" the subcommander
asked.
"Yes," Valdus said. "I'm hungry."
"You're always hungry when you're tense."
"Oh, you misread me."
"I'm the one who must order your meals to the
bridge, remember."
"No, I don't recall that."
"I shall point it out next time. This is not a
sanctioned encroachment of Federation territory,"
Romar said, speaking very softly, but in a casual
tone for the sake of others, as though discussing a menu
for the officers' table. "It makes me uneasy,
Commander. We have no orders to do this."
"Nor orders not to," Valdus pointed out.
Romar shook his head. "Please don't
smile," he sighed. "You know I falter when you
find me amusing."
"There are age-old reasons for my actions,"
Valdus told him quietly. "Older than you.
And you're not that amusing."
"Let me bring weapons up."
"Oh, yes. Let's fly into unfamiliar
territory burgeoning with Federation vessels,
including at least one Starfleet battleship, and
let's power up our weapons so their sensors can
read the surge. I wish I'd thought of it."
"What have you thought of?" Romar persisted, still
keeping his voice down. "You haven't confided in
me yet."
"Perhaps I never will."
"Yes, you will. You don't like keeping
secrets. You never make me guess like this."
Romar stepped closer to him and eyed him
squarely. "You're uncertain of what you're doing
here, aren't you? You're here to discover something, not to do
something. Yes?"
"I will do something," Valdus assured him.
"I have clear actions to take, once I make
up my mind. This is their idea, Romar, not
mine. I use the other man's methods whenever
possible. This competition is the best way I can
get an entire battle cruiser near that
planet."
Romar paused and thought for a moment. "The host
planet? Why should you want to be near it?"
A chill rammed down Valdus's spine at
those ^ws. To be near such a place, with such people
... to put himself and his ship and crew near such
creatures--
I was wounded. I was confused. Can a mind be
stripped of sense from outside forces? How can I
be sure my memory hasn't fogged over the
years? Many humanoid species look alike
in the galaxy. What was I seeing? Do I know
how to answer his questions? Will I know any better in
a few hours?
All around them, officers and bridge
personnel engaged in pointless work just to keep from
standing still and staring into the screen at that starship, but also
to keep from glancing too often at their commander and his
second, over here in the corner, muttering about the
secrets of this mission.
Valdus felt their tensions and the pounding of all
their hearts. It took his best inner control
to resist them.
They would sense what he sensed when he looked
at news pictures from the Federation and saw the
Rey people. Most of what he sensed, at any
rate. For how could they know that his one great animus
had been discovered in the wilderness? Was it
really the same group of people who sent that one small
ship out all those years ago--cd it be?
Could it not be? He would never forget those eyes
of theirs, wide and round and dark--how those eyes
changed from friendship to fear, and poisoned him and his
crewmates.
He had searched space for the source of that ship,
and never found it.
Now, the Federation had found it. But the Race
Committee had denied him a host guest aboard his
ship, so he couldn't be sure.
Sure ... he must become sure.
"Do memories ever lie, Romar?" he
murmured. He focused again on the Federation ship
before them. "Do fears fester?"
The low bridge lights passed in patches
across Romar's reddish brown hair and light
brown eyes.
"Such questions," he said, frowning now with concern.
"What are you asking yourself?"
"I may be looking at a demonic image
through a haze of a young crewman's fear,"
Valdus admitted. "The years may have left
me only a cloud of suspicion. I may be
entirely wrong, but I am driven to find out. I
must know," he added, "if these are the people who
destroyed my ship and murdered my crewmates
... so many years ago."
Romar studied his commander's face, the echo of
youth that still lingered in those gray eyes that had seen so
many campaigns, the graceful way Valdus had
aged, suggested only by threads of silver in his
dark hair, an old scar across his left
temple, and a certain touch of fatigue in his
voice from time to time.
But this other thing that was in his voice--th was something
Romar hadn't heard before.
"You had better tell me this story," he said,
"because if you're making arbitrary decisions for your
own sake instead of the Empire's, then ..."
Valdus gave him a sidelong leer.
"Then?"
In his own usual manner, somewhat less
severe than most of their order, Romar offered an
almost imperceptible shrug. "I will have to stop you."
"And I will have to kill you when you try."
The ^ws were crushing, but neither of them was
surprised.
Romar nodded and pressed his shoulder to the
bulkhead. "Then we shall have an interesting
few days."
His leader barely reacted. But there was something in
Valdus's tone when he spoke.
Something precarious.
"Oh, yes," he said. "If we live."

Chapter Five

Bridge of the Enterprise

Romulan. An Earth ^w. Earth legend.
The ^w might as well have been chiseled across the
screen as Jim Kirk prowled the view of that
other ship. How had an Earth ^w become so
alien?
Somehow he was outraged at the theft, even though
it was just a ^w.
He crossed back to the science station.
"Spock," he said.
The slim blue-and-black clad form pivoted
toward him, the black eyes severe, yet
tolerant of things Vulcans weren't supposed
to understand. The style of the man himself overcame those
stereotypes. Spock and his kind were often
described as stiff.
There was nothing stiff about him.
"No record of encounter with anyone named
Valdus," Spock said, "other than a Federation
agricultural intermediary from Daran Very who
died six years ago. If this Valdus has
gained any particular renown beyond the Romulan
Empire, it has escaped Federation notice."
"Meaning he's either extremely bad at what
he does," Kirk said, "or extremely good.
Did you notice what he said? That running this
race was his own idea?"
"Plausible deniability," Spock agreed.
"Yes. He admits he's doing this on his
own, and the Empire can deny everything if trouble
arises. That proves to me that trouble's about
to break. Get ahold of McCoy. I want that
report on our guests. Are they in their
quarters?"
"I've been monitorin g their movements since
this problem developed, sir," Spock told
him, "and apparently they sleep very little. They've
been touring the ship constantly since their arrival,
though slowly andwith somewhat irksome appreciation."
"Irksome?"
"I only report the crew's
reaction, sir."
"Yes, I understand," the captain allowed.
"There certainly is such a thing as too much
adoration."
Spock nodded and resisted reacting, but part of a
grin surfaced anyway.
"They have been adoring us copiously," he said.
"Restrict their movements. Keep them away
from the propulsion systems and any computer
accesses over level four. I'm not ready
to trust them yet. Not with this new development."
"I would hesitate to characterize them as spies,
Captain," Spock said. "The Rey have gone out
of their way to learn English planetwide and have
even made it their second international
language. This is documented by the Federation and
fairly accepted as genuine brotherhood. It's
difficult to convince an entire planet to perform
espionage. The purpose of their interest in
Federation membership seems genuinely to be
education and advancing their culture's
capabilities and contributions."
"Somebody else might have to teach them."
The blunt statement set Spock to silence for a
moment. He stood and stepped down to Kirk's
side.
"Captain, I wish I could offer you more
reassurance regarding the Rey. Or the
Romulans. Or this sector of space.
Regarding the first two ..." the Vulcan shrugged.
"As far as the third is concerned, unfortunately,
this race was organized before the sector could be
secured. As such, the event will prove to be as much
exploration as sport. This, of course,
provides the added possibility of vessel
damage and accidents, without the safety of marked
space lanes."
Kirk shook his head. "I'm not worried about
the contestants. Those people don't need
baby-sitters. I just hope one of those
spectator ships doesn't get caught in a
vortex. Those are the ones I'm worried about."
He glowered at the screen again. "They also carry
hundreds of potential hostages."
"Captain," Spock began.
Then he was suddenly quiet, and Kirk had
to turn and look at him to get the rest of that
sentence.
"Yes, Spock?"
"I've received a list of additional
entrants to the race as provided by the Race
Committee. A vessel representing Harrell
Hullworks, from Catula, Theta Pictoris,
two from the First Federation, one from Ardana
Exports--"
"All right, all right," Kirk cut him off.
"Have the list available in my quarters. I'll
look at it later."
"Yes, sir."
But Spock didn't turn away.
"Captain, I would like to remind you of something,"
he said.
"Well," Kirk prodded, "go on."
"While we are here, you should not forget to ...
enjoy the race."
Kirk felt his shoulders and the muscles of his
stomach relax a little.
"Why, thank you, Spock," he said. And
suddenly, Kirk found himself breathing a little
easier. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe this
really was just the curiosity of one Romulan
commander. Whatever it was, the only advantage the
Romulans would have was that secret. The starbase
engineers would bring their ship down to the power level
of the starships. That in itself was a gamble. Starbase people
were used to peace that was provided for them by the starships
and other vessels of the Fleet, who took the
brunt of trouble, like the army that went into the
frontier before the pioneers.
"Well, we'll see," he murmured.
Spock blinked. "Sir?"
"Nothing, Spock, nothing. I was just wondering
if it's ... I guess the ^w is healthy,"
he said, "to run some races."
From behind them a welcome voice interrupted.
"This from a man to whom a salad is green
peppers in a taco."
They both turned in time to see McCoy step
down to stand behind the command chair between them.
"Doctor," the captain greeted. He felt
a grin tug at his lips and realized suddenly that
Spock's effect on him was holding. "You have a
report for me regarding the Rey?"
"More or less," McCoy said. "I talked
to them, I looked at them, I invited them to have a
look at sickbay and got them to "ride"' the
diagnostic beds--"
"Which gave you a medical checkout," the
captain hurried. "What did you get?"
"I got a lot of thank-yous.
They keep repeating how happy they are at having
outside contact. Apparently they wanted it very
desperately. They're highly social and the
idea of being the only intelligent life in the
galaxy sent a cold shudder down their
collective spine."
"I can understand that," Kirk commented.
Spock nodded. "Earth went through the same
apprehensions in the early 2000's."
"You have a conclusion on those observations?" the
captain prodded.
"I would say they're not predators, not built
for hunting at all," McCoy replied.
"They're runners, generally slender, high
metabolic rates, herbivorous--they keep
asking about our galley and that's where I sent them.
They like to cook. Blunt teeth, good hearing, good
eyesight, strong sense of smell, tend to be
clever, quick, good at hiding--"
"Can you get to the point?"
McCoy shrugged, and plowed ahead.
"I'd say they're antelopes," he said.
Kirk and Spock eyed each other, and the
captain took solace in the fact that Spock
didn't seem to understand that either.
"Elaborate," Kirk picked.
McCoy spread his hands as though the whole thing
should be clear by now.
"They're deer, Jim. That's their place on
the evolutionary scale. They were never
hunterstattackers on the food chain. They were
always gatherers and scavengers. They come from a
planet where all the predators were brutes and the
intelligence developed in the secondary levels
of evolution--the large prey. Eventually they
gained control of the planet and got control of the
predators with science and medical means of
containment. But they're pretty twitchy. They
don't sleep much. They wander around the ship all
the time, afraid they'll miss something. These people's
advancement has been very slow according to Earth standards.
It took them centuries to get up to warp
drive, and they never made it beyond warp one point
five. Then they just ... gave it up. They're very
shy on the scale of advancement, and they tend
to give up easily when things get uncomfortable."
"Comfort doesn't make strong souls,
Doctor," Kirk commented. "If they were never
predatory, they never had to be strong. That's why
humanity went to space. Because it's hard
and uncomfortable and it builds character."
"The strong survive? Maybe," McCoy
said disapprovingly. "I'd have to say these people are more
interested in the character of others than themselves. When they
received a response to their last couple of calls,
and Captain Dodge flew in with the Hood, and the
Rey discovered that not only was life out there but
humanoid life that almost looks like them--why,
hell, they almost broke down and had a
planetwide sob. The galaxy suddenly opened
up to them and they're desperate not to miss anything.
To find life like themselves that acted strong and powerful,
decisive, willing to share--they've been wrapped
up in humanity like some kind of big hobby ever
since. They think we're ... nifty."
Kirk shook his head and that grin finally broke
out as he looked up at his chief surgeon's
cocky, friendly face under the cap of brown hair,
and absorbed the touch of Atlanta in his old
friend's voice.
"Yes, we're nifty. Not one of your more
helpful reports, Bones."
"Well, Jim, look at it this way. It's
a chance to put on your Napoleon suit and start
giving orders, because this time you'll have an audience.
These people are quailing and kind of spooky, but
they're thrilled to be here."
"Spooky is a nondescriptive term,
doctor," Spock pointed out.
"Not if you have Halloween on your planet,
Bub," McCoy tossed back.
"Captain," Uhura spoke up from behind him.
"Race Chairman Orland is hailing us from the
starbase."
"Not a moment's peace," Kirk said. "Put
him on audio, Lieutenant."
"On audio, sir."
"Captain Kirk? Are you there?"
"Affirmative, Mr. Orland, you're
audio."
"Thank you for that--it seems to be all worked
out with ... them."
"I'm glad, Mr. Orland. As long as
"they"' don't provoke any incidents."
"Well, they've agreed to run the route
without any race committeemen or host visitors
on board. We just plain told them we didn't
want anyone but their own people on their ship."
"I was going to suggest that," Kirk said. "I'm
glad you thought of it yourselves."
"So am i. And they've let us harness up
their ship and bring it into the maintenance bay. We'll
have those power reductions done in about six hours.
By then the other contestants should be here and we can all
go outside the solar system and take places on
the starting line. Everybody's anxious to get the
race started, so we're going to fire the starting
cannon at nine o'clock base-standard time. Okay
with you?"
"I'm just here as a contestant, Mr. Orland,"
Kirk told him. "You don't have to check with
me."
"Well, I just figured ... you know."
"I understand. Let's hope my job is done
regarding ... you know."
"I sure hope so too. Thanks very much
again, Captain. We'll start polishing the
cannon!"
"Fine with us. Kirk out."
He motioned a cut-off to Uhura, and in the
corner of his eye noted that she had smoothly
terminated the communication. To his right, he felt
Spock's silent gaze again.
"Fine with us," he grumbled, so that only
Spock could hear. "Let's hope we don't have
to start polishing the phasers."

The starting line was a sight to see . Dozens of
beautiful ships, new ones, old ones, plain and
painted, a half dozen ugly ones, all standing
at broadsides to each other, waiting for the sound
of the cannon to come over their sensors.
And there, studding the line-up, were the Starfleet
entrants. Two more starships and a frigate. The
Hood, the Intrepid, and the Great
Lakes--big, beautiful, white ships gleaming
along the line of merchant vessels and
representative ships.
All the ships were "dressed," lit up, all
running lights and exterior spotlights on,
all hull decor sparkling, flags and pennants
strung wherever possible. It was a glittering
display.
It would have been especially invigorating,
except for the dominating presence of the Romulan
battle cruiser, hovering a third of the way down
the line, dwarfing most of the ships around it.
Except for the four Starfleet vessels, the
Red Talon would've been the largest ship
participating.
Suddenly Jim Kirk was glad Starfleet
had accepted the invitation to the Great Starship
Race.
"Ship to ship," he ordered, "Starfleet
frequency code three, Lieutenant. Shield
the communications as well as you can. Starfleet
vessels only."
"Code three, sir," Uhura complied, but it
took her a few moments to do what he wanted.
"Captain, I have Captains T'ationoy,
Tahl, and Dodge."
"Put them on visual."
"Aye, sir. Visual, screens seven,
eight, and nine."
Kirk stood up, and by the time he turned to the
small upper deck scanners between the science station
and the communication station, three faces were gazing at
him with bridges of other ships in the small
backgrounds.
"Captains," he greeted as he stepped up
there and Spock came to his side.
"Hi, Jim," Ken Dodge cheerily said
first.
"Captain Kirk," the relaxed-looking
Vulcan woman offered with a glint in her eye.
Behind her, her Vulcan bridge crew watched the
screen with practiced dispassion.
And Hans Tahl only smiled and nodded because
he heard the others beat him to saying hello. He
was a very blond, very friendly man who always looked as
if he was about to sneeze.
Dodge, on the other hand, was a dark-haired
former field soldier who had come up through the
ranks very fast and without any Academy boost and
was very tough to surprise.
"Jim, you sure you want to bother running the
race now that we're here?" he asked.
"I was going to ask you the same thing," Kirk
said.
"Come on. When have you ever beaten me at
anything?"
"Do I have to remind you about summer, oh, about
eight years ago?"
"Oh, you got lucky!"
"But I won."
"But it was plain, dumb dog luck!"
"But I did win."
Dodge grinned widely and paused to let his
bridge crew laugh at him. "Good point."
Kirk could tell they were working at their
high spirits more than should have been necessary under the
circumstances--circumstances which had been changed
by the intrusion of a certain ship and crew.
"I'll have the coffee ready for all three of
you when you get to the finish line," Tahl said from the
low-lying, heavily armed Starfleet frigate.
Kirk smiled. "Who says you're going to get
there first, riding in that warmongering bucket?"
"Hey, this is a frigate, boys! No
tender labs or science crew to weight me down,
and all our power's tight. You should've commanded one
of mine, Jim. What a frigateer you'd have
made!"
A foxy smile lit Kirk's flushed
apricot face. "Then what would you do for a
living?"
"Lounge in a starship, what else?"
Kirk heard something to his left and realized it
was Scott moving on the upper deck. The engineer
had come to stand against the rail, and together they gazed at
the tightly built power-packed Starfleet
vessel off their bow.
"Lord, I love a frigate," Scott
admitted. Then he blinked and added, "But don't
tell him that."
"Too late," Tahl said. "I heard
it. You're mine now, Scotty."
Scott smiled, and Kirk chuckled outright.
Spock's brow rose at them, but he didn't
say anything.
"ally're sunk, Kirk. The race is
mine," Tahl crowed. "After all, ladies'
men never win. They're too easily
distracted."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"ally might as well," Dodge laughed.
"ally can't win. There's no way to just get
lucky."
"Oh, fine," Kirk drawled. "Dignity
between captains. I'm glad this is a private
line."
"ally mean you're lucky it is. I'm
glad you're here, given the ... changes of the last
half day."
"Yes. After the cannon fires," Kirk
said, "use of these Fleet frequencies will be
grounds for disqualification. However, I wanted
to have a ^w with all of you about those "changes."'"
"Understandable," T'ationoy said.
Tahl nodded, and Dodge rolled his
eyes.
"I guess," Dodge sighed, "x
shouldn't be a surprise that somebody would take
advantage of a public event like this in an open
sector."
"I'm surprised," Tahl flipped.
"Aren't you surprised?"
With a serious snap, Kirk told them,
"Let's just hope the other contestants are
sufficiently distracted by the details of the race.
That way, we can probably maintain the peace of
this event. But if trouble does erupt, we'll be
the ones expected to deal with it. I suggest we
keep our eyes open and our Starfleet channels
on standby."
"Agreed," Dodge said.
Tahl folded his arms saucily. "We'll
muscle the peace if we have to. Hell, I
got a frigate."
Dodge's first officer leaned into the picture and
popped off, "A friggin' what?"
Jim Kirk chuckled and scratched his ear, and
he and Dodge exchanged a glance across the
viewscreens.
Tahl was about to respond when the Vulcan
woman on the far screen interrupted.
"We should also be on guard for tensions from
otherwise friendly vessels," T'ationoy
suggested. "These crews and commanders are not
trained in dealing with hostiles. They may misread
movements or approaches and react
prematurely. Obviously all are aware of the
Romulan ship, and some apprehensions have been
voiced."
"I've authorized a communiqu@e to everybody
this morning," Kirk told her. "I explained the
situation and that we're on top of it.
Hopefully, that'll head off any provocations."
"Very good," she said, and seemed to be
satisfied.
"I just got the memo," Tahl confirmed.
"It'll probably keep the other contestants
from taking any action unless they're acted upon. Very
well ^wed, Jim."
"It should be." Kirk nodded back over his
shoulder. "Spock composed it."
"Mr. Spock," Tahl greeted,
"x's good to see you again."
"Welcome, Captain," Spock said with
simple grace.
"ally're a comforting fixture standing next to that
guy there. At least we know there's somebody on that
ship with some self-control."
Spock nodded, but only once, unwilling
to take a compliment that cost his captain a point.
"Perhaps we can get together when this is all
over," Tahl added.
"Our pleasure, sir," Spock said. "We
shall have the coffee ready."

0900 Hours,
Starbase Standard Time

"Attention contestants. This is John
Orland from the Race Committee. Prepare to receive
the frequency for the first homing beacon on the
racecourse. When you get to that beacon--t is if
you get there--y'll receive the next frequency, and
so on. The spectator ships will already be there at
Gullrey when you come between the committee markers at
the finish line. I'll be there, too. Good luck
to everybody. Stand by for starbase navigational
specifications."
"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk said, as he
settled into his chair, "receive that on the main
viewer, please."
"Ready, sir."
"Mr. Spock--"
The turbolift interrupted him with its breathy
whisper, and he turned to see Tom and Royenne
come onto the bridge, their enormous brown eyes
wide and shifting. They stepped onto the upper
deck as though the bridge would fall away under them
if they moved too fast or stepped too hard.
Tom blinked around with those big foallike
eyes and finally fixed them on Kirk.
"Captain!" he said, as though he hadn't
expected Kirk to be here. "May we watch?
Do you mind if we watch from here?"
"No, I suppose not," Kirk said. He
managed a sigh that took some of the tension out of his
shoulders. "Where's your other friend?"
"He wanted to watch from the VIP lounge,"
Royenne said. "He was enjoying the food. He's
a cook by trade, and your ship's cook was sharing
techniques about feeding a whole starship crew."
"All right ... well, you make yourselves
reasonably comfortable and--"
"And stay out of the way." Tom smiled
broadly, and his eyes picked up about
six lights. "We understand."
Even though he didn't really want it,
Kirk felt a sense of excitement brush over
him. Suddenly he was a little more eager, a degree
prouder than he had been a moment ago. "Mr.
Spock, adjust the bridge viewers and
viewscreens all over the ship."
Spock tapped one button--only one--and
suddenly the bridge staff, and on the lower decks
anyone else who looked up, saw a surrounding
scape of the race vessels hovering before, behind, and
to the sides of the starship, near and far, all itching
for the race to begin. It was as if the whole bridge
had become surrounded by windows.
Whatever Spock had done, he'd done it right,
and all for people who hadn't suspected him capable of
such poetic stage direction. The screens
compensated for each other, making the regatta look
as though it was right "outside"--even to leaving
slices out of the scene where there was bulkhead between the
screens. Warming engines on dozens of ships
preparing for light speed caused a fluorescent
glow along the starting line.
Lieutenant Uhura started a round of
applause, a nd after that first instant of thinking they
might be breaking a rule by clapping in church, the
rest of the bridge crew joined her and smiled at
Spock. The two Rey hammered their palms
together better than children at a circus.
"Oh, very nice," the captain murmured as he
looked from side to side and forward at the tails
of the private vessel Gavelan Star, and the
Starship Hood, and the scattered others who had
drawn line-up positions forward of them.
"Thank you," Spock said.
He nodded for the applause to taper off, then
allowed himself a few moments appreciation of the
beauty of the ships, the tableau of dozens of
vessels that wouldn't otherwise be gathered in one
place at one time.
"Captain, receiveg subspace," Uhura said.
"Transferring visual to the screen."
"Relay the subspace to Mr. Spock."
"Aye, sir."
Spock bent over his small viewer, and the soft
blue mask of light played across his eyes.
On the forward screen appeared a picture of a
small brass cannon about the size of a water
carafe, backdropped by a simple drape of red
velvet.
A voice came over the audio system.
"Ready ..."
"Receiveg directional, Captain," Spock
said.
"Set ... tune to frequency one point
nine six ..."
A human hand approached the little brass
cannon on the screen and touched it off.
Firing a plume of black smoke, the tiny
cannon made a deep-throated blast a lot
louder than anyone expected.
It echoed, and it hurt Kirk's ears.
"Go!"

Chapter Six

"Warp factor two, Mr. Sulu. Let's
race."
"Aye, sir, warp two!"
For solar miles around, vessels of every
description streaked from their places and glittered
into a formless dance against the backdrop of space-like
lanterns lit from within.
Some ships bolted away at warp three or
four, betting that their fix was a clear one, willing
to risk the chance that they were chasing a distortion into the
depths of night. Others lagged behind at warp one
or two, betting they could "hear" the beacon
better at low speed and risked being left behind.
Jim Kirk took both bets and both
risks. Maneuvering speed, sensor
flexibility. Of course, that also meant he could
end up lost and behind.
In the next instant, Gavelan Star
flashed into high warp. Then the Starship Hood,
and the Starfleet Frigate Great Lakes.
"Looks like Ben Shamirian thinks he found
something," Kirk commented. "Dodge and Tahl are
tailing him. That's what we like to see ...
starships dogging private yachts. Don't make
me look."
"Several spectator liners are beginning
to pull away from the starbase, sir," Spock
reported.
The captain nodded. "They'll be there for the
honors and jubilees when the race is over."
He moved quietly to the upper deck. He and
his first officer stood with their elbows almost touching and
into the science station sensor access, but they weren't
just looking for the race lane beacon. Not
yet.
"Are they tracking the committee beacon?"
Kirk asked, keeping his voice low. "Following
the race course?"
"It seems they are," Spock answered, but
he sounded uncertain. He grasped the viewer with
both hands, squinting into the blue light as it
played across his eyes. "The beacon is confounding
any attempt to triangulate. I believe it
is sending an intermittent signal. When we are
nearer, we may have to slow down even more in order
to read it with any hope of accuracy."
Kirk pressured him for a glimpse into the
monitor. "Looks like there's interference of some
kind. The Race Committee downplayed the
trickiness of this area."
"How long is the race expected to take,
Captain?" Chekov asked.
Kirk straightened so quickly that a muscle in his
neck cramped. He ignored the knot and said,
"As long as it takes, Ensign. Races are like
that. Someone will go over the finish line first,
second, third, then the body of the contestants,
then the stragglers or the lost entrants will be
scooped up from wherever they are, and the Race
Committee will declare a finish."
He barely heard his own voice. Why was he
so nervous? Nothing was wrong.
Nothing was wrong, nothing was wrong ...
On the port screen across the bridge, aft
of the middle of the bridge, just over the engineering station
--where Mr. Scott would be standing if he weren't
in the main engineering section complaining that races were
a waste of time for starships with serious business to do
--was a sensor image of the entrants
Irimlo Si, Ransom Castle, and
Blackjacket.
And beyond them, barely more than a sliver of lime
in the night, was the only ship he really had any
interest in other than his own.
Turning away from the Rey gentlemen, away from
the crew, Kirk leaned toward Spock, but
didn't look at him.
"They're using the race for cover," he
uttered. "Why else would they come into the sector
when almost everybody else is here for a public
event?"
Spock remained deceptively still. "We are
not on patrol, sir."
Kirk probed his own deepest thoughts,
his needs and instincts that told him to dog that ship and
not let it just fly off, their jurisdiction or not.
"No," he said finally. He gazed at
Spock in a way that they both understood. "Get
the best fix you can on the beacon and let's run the
race. But keep that ship under surveillance."
"Yes, sir."
Kirk stepped to the lower deck and slipped
into his command chair. It felt particularly
comfortable, the seat and back cool through his clothes,
impressions in the cushion recognizing the shape
of his thighs and his back.
The Romulan wasn't doing anything untoward,
the race had started smoothly, the seat felt good
... he resisted the needling doubt at the back of
his mind, though he knew it was a signal.
He was about to say something just to break the silence
when he was interrupted from behind.
"Excuse me ..."
Tom was looking at the forward screen. His
fair hair touched the collar of that incongruous
lumberjack shirt, andforthe first time Kirk noticed
that the other one, Royenne, had been given a
Starfleet casual uniform to wear. The olive
green shirt was wrapped somewhat loosely around his
lean rib cage, and the sleeves hung a little
short on his gangly arms, but he looked very
happy.
They both looked completely out of place and
absolutely delighted.
"Yes?" Kirk prodded.
"Oh!" Tom shook himself from watching the
panorama of ships either matching their speed, rushing
past them, or dropping away at their sides.
He glanced at Royenne and pointed forward, but
didn't say anything.
Royenne poked him. "Ask."
Tom nodded. "Why can't you just tell your
computer to pick out the beacon?"
Spock straightened, flexed his shoulders
slightly, and said, "Ninety-nine point nine
nine nine percent of radiating objects in the
galaxy are natural. The computer can't discern
between natural and fabricated radiations."
"That's our job," Kirk added proudly.
"It's one of the reasons robot ships have limited
use."
Sulu smirked and muttered, "If we told
the computer to find those beacons, it'd start
drooling."
Royenne drew in a breath and laughed along
with the crew. "I love these answers you give!"
Kirk grinned, and asked, "Are you having a
good time exploring the ship?"
Tom almost gagged in his rush to answer first.
"Oh, yes! It's so strong!"
"It's so orderly," Royenne punctuated.
Everybody was smiling. Well, not Spock, but
he was almost smiling. His eyes were smiling.
Kirk was about to make a joke about that when
Spock eyed his console and spoke up. "We're
being passed by the private vessel Haunted
Forest, sir. Captain Ames is winking an
acknowledgment at us with his hazard lights."
"Wink back at him. Then increase speed
to warp three." The growl in Kirk's voice
gave away his playful exhilaration. And he
didn't mind a little immoderate showing off, either.
Everyone paused in a moment of silence as the
Enterprise launched herself with incorruptible
purpose into a higher level of hyperlight.
There was a beautiful sound, a beautiful
feeling, and sense of being surrounded by power--which, of
course, they were.
Just before the sensation faded, Kirk capped it off
by saying, "Chekov, get a net on that beacon."
"Trying, sir."
"State of Maryland vessel New Pride
of Baltimore coming up on our starboard,"
Spock said, "immediately flanked to port by the
Blaine Aerospace entrant Cynthia
Blaine. Hospital ship Brother's
Keeper is falling slightly behind us, as are the
Andorian entry and the museum ship Thomas
Jefferson. Romulan vessel is running
abeam of us to port at some distance."
"They're not making any unexpected moves?"
"None at all--sir, sudden increase in
speed, several vessels--"
"Captain!" Chekov yelped. "Contact with
alternating fixed and flashing marker! Relative
bearings broad on the starboard beam, z-minus
four degrees."
Kirk leaned forward. "Take a running fix
on it, Mr. Chekov, then log the contact.
Hold onto that beacon!"
"Aye, sir. Computer, note running fix."
When the computer spoke up with its metallic
voice, Tom and Royenne almost hit the ceiling.
"ationoting running fix, alternating
F-and-F marker, Stardate 3223.1, zero
nine thirty-eight hours. Contact logged."
"Mr. Sulu, increase to warp three point
five toward that marker."
"Warp three point five, sir!"
"Keep alert for other ships. We'll all be
converging on that point. Sensors on maximum.
Full alert."
"Full alert, sir," Sulu said, and an
instant after Chekov echoed it.
"What does all that mean?" Royenne asked.
As the ship hummed with effort to comply, Kirk
pivoted his chair so he could ans wer before anybody
else did. He was starting to enjoy all this showing
off. He'd have to be a stone pillar to not like these people.
"It means we found the first beacon. We have
to come within a hundred thousand kilometers of it in
order to get the clues to the second beacon. With a
field of other ships trying to get the same
signal, it'll be like threading a needle. A
hundred thousand kilometers is a very small
area in spatial terms."
"But what is all that ... fixed and flashing?"
"Oh, I see," Kirk chuckled. "On
Earth--where a lot of our terminology originated
--fixed and flashing meant an alternating light of
one color varied at regular intervals with a
flash of a different color. Out here, of course,
it's flashing a subspace signal."
"And your navigator can see it?"
"With the ship's sensors, yes. We're taking
a running fix, which is a fix taken at two or
more different times as we pass the marker."
Tom interrupted, "Is that how you know your
heading?"
Royenne pushed forward. "And what's--"
"Ah!" Tom erupted. "You stepped on my
foot!"
"Oh--pardon me."
"I shouldn't have been in the way."
"No, no, I'm sorry. We're sorry,
Captain ... what's a bearing?"
"Gentlemen," Kirk chuckled, "don't try
to swallow too much at once. The heading is the
direction the ship is going. What you mean is the
course. That's the direction to be steered.
Relative bearing is the direction where something is
in relation to the ship." He leveled his right arm out
at the one-thirty angle from the bow of the ship.
"That's broad on the starboard, and down
one, two, three, four degrees is the
z-minus. So the fixed and flashing marker is down
this way, relative to where you're standing. Now
we're turning toward it and working to hold the
signal."
With infectious enthusiasm Royenne pursued,
"Why can't you hold the signal?"
"But what's a fix?" Tom insisted at the
same time. "I'd really love to know! Should I
take a class in space navigation?"
"Does Starfleet have a class?" Royenne
asked.
"I'm not sure," Kirk said. "We'll
check for you. A fix is a position taken without
any reference to a former position. We take the
time and our location of contact with an object, even
a natural object in space, and log it. If
another ship has logged it, we may be able to find
it on a chart. If we're the first, then we could
use it to find our way back."
"Same as dropping breadcrumbs," Sulu
commented, still grinning.
"And we're having trouble holding the
breadcrumbs," Kirk said, "because the Race
Committee made the racecourse difficult.
There are sensor blind spots and interference everywhere
in this sector, and the committee beacons are
designed to be tricky on purpose. That's the
sport of it."
Tom drew a long appreciative breath.
"Beautiful!"
Suddenly, Chekov shouted, "Look out!
Ships coming in!"
He pointed at the board between himself and Sulu,
and the helmsman twisted his lean body against the
controls. The ship surged to starboard and whined with
effort.
"Hang on, everyone," Kirk warned, mostly
for the two in back.
Before them on the screen, and to the sides on the
auxiliary monitors, space was suddenly
crowded with hulls of every configuration. Streaking out
of the darkness to haggle for the eye of the needle, they
dove viciously for one spot in space, the
hundred thousand kilometers around that flashing
marker.
Within sixty seconds almost the entire field
of contestants were plunging for that spot, converging like
bees.
"Continue at warp three point
five," Kirk snapped. "Do not reduce
speed, do you understand?"
"Aye, sir," Sulu responded through
gritted teeth, his body still canted to one side as
though he were pushing the ship himself.
"I'll play chicken with all of them to be the
first one to the first marker," Kirk said. "That's it,
Sulu, don't give an inch."
"Not inching, sir," the knotted helmsman
grunted.
A gleaming sable ship with a broad sulfur
yellow stripe from nose to fantail and fake
gunports painted onto her hull dropped out of
nowhere in front of them. It consumed the forward
screen so sharply that Uhura gasped and Chekov
pushed back in his chair. On the aft deck,
Royenne almost fell down, and Tom shouted
something, but Kirk instantly forgot what it was.
He was busy.
"Get in there, Sulu! Get under him!"
"Trying, sir!"
"Not good enough! Push! Make him move
aside!"
The ship screamed around them, dragging up every
ounce of power she'd been left and insisting she should
have more, like an amputee refusing to believe her
limb was really gone.
"Who is it?" Tom gulped.
"ationew Pride of Baltimore,"
Spock supplied. "Unlikely to give way."
"We'll see," Kirk cracked.
"Other ships approaching, Captain,"
Chekov said breathlessly, but he needn't have
bothered.
There would be no efficient way of describing the
shocking thunder of vessels converging on this spot, and
even Chekov forgot his caution of senior officers
and quit looking at his monitors. He just stared,
as all around them on the screens a swarm of ships
dipped toward the same spot.
"Don't sideswipe anybody," Kirk
warned. "Remember, we're one of the biggest
ships."
Sulu didn't respond. His concentration was
full-up.
"Collision!" Chekov came halfway out of
his seat and pointed at a starboard screen behind
Spock.
On the screen, sparks were spitting between
Irimlo Si and 554-2.
"Ask if they need assistance, Miss
Uhura," Kirk said. Cleanly he added,
"Mr. Sulu, do not give an inch yet."
The two officers each muttered a separate
response that made the bridge sound very
efficient, but no matter what anyone might have
tried to claim, this just wasn't business as
usual, or even emergency as usual.
This was something very new and different for the
Enterprise crew, and no one knew how it would
spin out. Excitement for kicks--
"Increase speed, Sulu," he insisted.
"Get under the Pride. Turn on your ear if
you have to, but squeeze past him."
"Captain Turner isn't easy to squeeze
past, sir," Sulu commented, but it was only a
comment. He proved that by pressing the Enterprise
forward, galling the speed out of her that was dangerous
for these quarters, and turning up on a nacelle,
somehow managing to skirt past New Pride.
Chekov gawked at his console and choked,
"Less than five hundred meters to spare!"
"Sir, receiveg a frequency for beacon number
two!" Uhura said. "Frequency eight six
six."
"Log it!" Kirk barked. "Sulu, veer
off!"
The starship howled furiously around them, and
turned herself inside out to change direction
violently.
On the main screen and the screens all around the
bridge, the panorama of vessels suddenly
changed. Several other ships changed course
too, adjusting to their own readings of the second
beacon.
How true was the signal? [ the readings coming in
to Enterprise clear at warp three point
five?
"Irimlo Si reports minor damage
only, sir," Uhura said. "And 554-2
claims no intent to drop out of the race. Both
are jockeying for position. And Captain Glover
is hailing from the New Pride of
Baltimore. He wants me to inform you that he
had right of way."
"Well," Kirk tossed off, "tell him to go
on back to the starting line and look up the rules,
then let me know."
Uhura smiled, and had to wait a beat before she
could respond without laughing. "I'll
tell him, sir."
On the starboard upper deck, even Spock's
practiced impassion was suffering. Kirk saw it
as he glanced up there, for some reason impelled
to keep an eye on his first officer.
Spock's voice had an unexpected lilt
when he glanced up at the main screen.
"Sir, the Melkotian entry is bearing off
slightly, but reducing speed. Starship
Intrepid is moving away firmly on a new
course. Six other ships--correction, seven--
are following her, apparently assuming Captain
T'ationoy has discovered a clearer trace of the
signal. Ransom Carnvale Mining Company
entrant Ransom Castle is taking a
course on the z-minus port beam. The field
is beginning to draw apart and widen--"
"Romulan vessel just increased speed,
sir," Chekov interrupted, and he said it so
quickly that Kirk heard Spock draw a breath
to say the same thing and just get beaten to it by his
junior officer.
"Correct," Spock allowed. "He is
pulling away, sir. Moving on a descent
plane."
Kirk eyed the port screens. He wanted
to tell Spock to keep a finger on the Romulan
ship, but he also didn't want to appear to be
hawking another entrant for no good reason, and the
Rey, so far, apparently didn't perceive all the
good reasons.
"Red Talon is blending with the lead
vessels," Spock said, reading Kirk's
posture, obviously. "Difficult to discern which
vessels those are any longer, however. Interference
is thickening ... I believe I read the
Blackjacket, possibly Ransom
Castle ... at least a half dozen others are
blurred readings, some pulling forward, others
falling back."
Hesitation battled in his face, in his voice.
He didn't like what he saw on his monitors.
But Kirk noticed something else. Never mind
that Spock didn't like what was happening, there was
another struggle going on. Spock's brows would
tighten, then he would raise them and try to relax,
try to keep in mind that this was all supposed to be
for fun.
"They're taking the frequency for the second
beacon and moving off toward it. Let's
do the same. Mr. Spock, feed that frequency
through to the navigational computer ..." He leaned
forward and allowed a naughty grin to break on his
face. "Mr. Sulu," he said firmly,
"helm alee."
The quick-fingered Oriental officer who could steer
a ship through a curly pasta noodle--and just had--
suddenly looked lost. He peered back over his
shoulder.
"Sir?"
Spock turned an amused attention on the
helmsman, raised both of those upswept black
brows, and said, "Mark eight, Mr. Sulu."
Sulu's face lit up and he got the idea
that all this machinery, all this fabulous science was
still being run by the same kind of folks who invented
it in the first place.
A mischievous delight took him over.
"Aye-aye, sir. Helm's alee!"
The Federation's first heavy cruiser began to hum
as power and directions were fed through the systems, through
the engineering section and up into the great nacelles
where the brittle and brilliant warp science
boiled to do its job, and the ship changed course,
veering off toward the flickering second beacon on
the corkscrew racecourse.
The captain pressed forward like a man facing
into the wind.
"I always wanted to say that."

Red Talon

"What they have done is clever."
"I beg your pardon, Commander?"
Subcommander Romar approached Valdus from
behind, but stayed an arm's length back.
"These beacons," Valdus said, gazing at the
field of racing ships shifting and fading in and out.
"Somehow the race people have devised tricks with which they
disguise these beacons. A maze, Romar. They
will make us climb the walls and look out.
Signals read false and more false on certain
speeds, and leave the truth of their locations for us
to devise. We cannot rely on our navigational
equipment. We have to be cunning. We have
to guess. If, of course, we wanted to win."
He inhaled abruptly. "What is the condition
of the vessel now that we are under power?"
"All systems have been impressed with
powerbacks by the starbase mechanics.
There are bottlenecks on our thrust
systems--"
"Begin work to take them off."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Start taking off the bottlenecks now."
"It will take hours, sir!"
"Let it take hours."
"We'll be disqualified."
"I don't care about their race," Valdus
said through his teeth. "Get my power ... up."
Studying the unconciliatory determination that
suddenly flared on his commander's face, Romar
held still and quiet for a moment until control
returned.
He knew Valdus as well as anyone and had
watched over many cruises as the commander had driven
his crew on the singular key of cowardice.
Subdued, introspective, but ruthless,
Valdus was willing to accept shorter odds than
most, was merciless with underlings who showed any sign
of putting their own lives before their Imperial
duty, and had no particular interests outside of
his own command. He had tolerated whole
civilizations he completely despised because it was
in the Empire's interest. It was said he had
grown his beard to disguise himself from himself. He
didn't even have any particular interest in the
United Federation of Planets. Rather than seeking
renown, Valdus simply did a job with
somber and sometimes ghastly deliberation.
Until today.
So Romar was treading carefully, with all his
senses on alert. He didn't want to do the
wrong thing and end up scrubbing photon shells below
decks. Too well he remembered the low point
in their relationship when he had tried to prevent
Valdus's destroying the career of a centurion
who had balked in the face of danger. It had
taken months for Romar to regain Valdus's
trust.
Red Talon was known as the worst ship
to serve in the Imperial Fleet because its quiet
commander could become suddenly merciless with weakness in
others. Promotions and demotions went up and down
like a bouncing ball. No one envied Romar his
nearness to this one unreadable commander.
But Romar stayed. Part of his perseverance was
due to curiosity. Valdus was a mystery, and
Romar couldn't resist a mystery.
He knew Valdus's career had
been somewhat lackluster in its early years
until he was the only survivor of an attack
and boarding by an unknown enemy. Valdus had
managed to escape and, when all was lost, had
destroyed the ship rather than let these hostile
superior beings take it. The story had been
vague, Valdus in medically documented mental
confusion, and speculations had run rampant while
investigations thrashed without evidence.
Patrols had been sent in and worked the area for
years, but nothing had ever turned up. For years the
Empire searched for this powerful enemy that could come out
of nowhere and end up consuming a ship of an
Imperial Swarm. But wherever the boarding party had
come from, they had disappeared. Ultimately, the
Empire lost interest and decided that such a
violent civilization must have destroyed itself somehow.
By then, Valdus was considered a hero. Time had
done that too.
Only Valdus's shunning of accolade
continued to let Romar believe the story, or some
part of it, was true. Valdus had been offered
command after command, but had accepted only the ones that
left him haunting the same unremarkable sector
where he lost a ship long ago.
Perhaps that, too, is part of my loyalty,
Romar thought as he looked at Valdus from behind.
I know he is merciless with himself too. He
carries the demeanor of a man who has looked
too close at the face of death, who has been
purged of pointless ambition, and who is somehow
hungering to look at that face again to see if he can
make it blink.
Pushing his thoughts back for the moment, Romar
determined to get at least part of an answer about this
odd event, which normally Valdus would avoid,
even laugh at.
He stepped closer.
"May I ask you," he began, "how long do
you intend to participate in this activity of theirs?"
Valdus cleared his throat and shook away his
stare at the screen.
"Until I decide which ship to track."
"Which ship," Romar echoed, to see if it made
any more sense coming out of his own throat. It
didn't. "Very well ... which ship do you think you
may target? What type of ship?"
"I refrain from telling you because you would then be
obliged to dispense a recorder marker to the
Empire regarding our movements."
"Yes," Romar admitted tentatively.
"And I would do so, of course, being an officer who
knows the course of operations ..."
"If we weren't running under silence now,
yes?"
The subcommander laughed but kept the sound
private between them.
"Yes. Thank you for looking after ... me.
Your order of silence keeps me from such a
troubling choice. Which ship are you targeting?"
"Romar, I will tell you when I am ready."
"Why do you want to corral another ship,
Commander?" Romar persisted, in a tone that said he
would get at least part of the answer before leaving his
leader alone again.
Valdus very well knew that tone. Now that he
heard it, he felt somewhat relieved. There was a
certain complex security in knowing he was being
watched, as he always had been, as was the way of their
kind.
"Because the suspicious Starfleet field
leaders would not allow me to have a host guest on
board this ship. And I want one of those people."
"The leaders?"
"No--not the leaders," Valdus snapped.
"Those ... people."
"The Rey?" Romar's brow drew tight.
"But why? They are--weaklings. No one considers
them a threat. They're just another whimper in the
night the Federation will have to protect. Why do you
want one?"
Valdus let his facade of nonchalance slip
from his expression. He watched the starlight peel
away before them on the dominant main screen and
found himself wishing for the days when there were no such
screens at all in these ships.
"Because," he said, "I know they are the most
dangerous people in the galaxy."

Chapter Seven

"Very good work, all of you. Be assured that was the
easiest we'll get."
James Kirk flushed with pride as he beamed
at his crew, and on top of all this, they had
witnesses to their wonderfulness.
He glanced back at Tom and Royenne.
When he was a child, his mother had told him that winning
didn't matter, it was the game that counted, the
fun, the exercise, the teamsmanship.
Like hell. He wanted to win.
He'd nodded at her like a good little boy--even
though he really wasn't a particularly good little
boy--because he had known not very deep inside ...
winning was more fun.
"Readings on beacon number two are already
becoming sketchy," Spock said. He came to the
rail and looked down at Kirk. "Our twenty
percent power down is costing us sensor distance and
accuracy. While the vast majority of this space
is empty, this one particular region is dotted
with anomalies of various types nebulae,
spinning stars, pockets of electrical action,
communication dead zones, and so on. Long-range
sensor readings are already distorting and diminishing.
Soon it will become awkward not only to trace the
beacons but other ships."
Kirk gazed up at him, then glanced back
at the two Rey men again, and lowered his voice.
"No wonder nobody found these people until
twelve years ago."
Spock nodded, but didn't say anything.
"John Orland downplayed the trickiness of this
area," Kirk went on. "They probably took
all that into consideration when they decided how far
to power down our ships, adjusting sensor capacity
to make sure this area remained a challenge for
us." He lowered his voice. "Just keep track
of the Romulan for me."
Not making any obvious acknowledgment, Spock
held his captain's gaze a few seconds--j
long enough--and turned back to his monitors.
On the small screens to port and starboard, the
field of ships still in this area was beginning to widen,
to stretch away as each ship's crew sought its own
science and instincts, followed its captain's
whim, experience, or passion, as the case might
be. A portion of the field was invisible already,
having rushed from the first beacon at higher warp than
others, but there was no way to tell if they were still
ahead, or if they were off on a wild-goose
chase in the wrong direction, chasing sensor
shadows.
When Tom and Royenne began muttering to each
other and pointing at the forward port monitor at
a glimpse of the Canadian entry Bluenose
IV, Kirk took their distraction as an
opportunity.
"Where is he, Mr. Spock?" he asked
quietly.
Preoccupied with the surging and broadening of the
race, Spock didn't look up from his
monitor. "So far, abeam of us at flank
speed ... distance increasing. Ambassador
Shamirian's ship Gavelan Star just pulled
out of sensor range."
Kirk rubbed at a cramped finger on his right
hand and said, "Doesn't mean he's not lost."
"Also losing contact with Blackjacket and the
Haunted Forest. We are outdistancing
several other entrants. I will specify them if
you wish."
"I don't."
Chekov's face was almost buried in the cuff
of the science station auxiliary monitor, so close
that his voice sounded muffled. "Captain ..."
"What is it, Ensign?"
"Host entry Ozcice is passing us ... but
they're going in the wrong direction. They are
heading ... in that direction, sir." He stood
straight and pointed to port aft, over the heads of
Tom and Royenne, who suddenly thought they were doing
something wrong. They ducked and glanced at the
ceiling.
"The contestants are scattering," Spock said.
"Ozcice could be following a bounced sensor
reading, or they could be seeking the third beacon."
"The third beacon?" Kirk shot back,
suddenly relishing the challenge. "They're already a
beacon ahead?"
Chekov looked at him. "But, sir ... I
thought I saw the Tholian ship going under
Ozcice, heading directly back toward the
starting line. How can it be?"
"That's how it's going to be from now on,
Ensign," Kirk added. "And it'll get
worse. It's like a road rally. Clues
everywhere, being interpreted and misinterpreted.
Beacons can fold back on each other. As long
as we don't try to follow anybody, at least
our mistakes will be our own. Any sign of the
second beacon?"
Chekov plunged for his monitor, knowing that was
supposed to be his job.
"General reading, sir," he said, "not settled
down yet. I will try to make it settle."
Kirk tried not to smirk. He was feeling a
lot better than he had expected to feel.
Flank speed ... he hungered to increase his own
speed and nose the Romulan out.
Actually run a race with him, beat him. On the
other hand, would it be a nobler show of
sportsmanship to let the visitor slip ahead?
He had an unprecedented chance to be
cosmopolitan if he wanted to avail himself of
it. Take Valdus at his ^w, think back on
that face and look for affirmation, sift faith out
of the skepticism he'd trained himself to rely upon,
read Valdus as an independent person rather than
tagging him collectively--he wanted to do all
that. The Federation expected him to be able to do that.
To let the visitor win, possibly move the
plate tectonics of separate civilizations a
little closer.
If he could believe Valdus.
The trained Federation representative wanted
to take the galaxy at its ^w, but the kid inside
--the one who wanted to win--didn't.
"Bring us back up to warp three, Mr.
Sulu. Pull ahead. Take your course from
Mr. Chekov."
"Warp three, sir."
"Sir," Chekov called, apparently feeling
pressured now. "I have interference on the beacon
frequency."
Kirk swiveled slightly. "Spock?"
Spock left his monitor, sat down, and
tapped into another monitor that a moment ago had
only been showing part of the racecourse. Now
figures and a window graph appeared.
"Beacon two is being scrambled by what
appears to be a spinning neutron star. Pattern
of the static tells me that the beacon is behind the
interference."
"Behind it?"
"Yes, sir."
Chekov looked distressed. "Then how can we
track it?"
Kirk shrugged. "Find the ripples, and you'll
find the fish."
"Sir?"
"Rather than looking for the beacon, look for the
source of the interference. You're the navigation
specialist, Ensign. Reach out there and get me
a course."
Chekov's round young face went blank for a
moment, then he blinked, muttered a vague,
"Yes, sir," and turned back to hunt for that
spinning neutron star.
"Captain?" Tom asked
tentatively.
Kirk turned. "Yes?"
"How long is the racecourse?"
"It's about three thousand linear light-years,
if you stretch it out along a string. As they've
designed it, it's bunched up into a corkscrew
that bends out into deep space, then bends back
to your planet, if you can visualize that.
Didn't they fill you in when you were accepted as a
guest on a contestant vessel?"
"We received a packet of information," Royenne
said, "but ... I haven't read mine yet."
Tom smiled sheepishly and added, "We were so
busy looking at all the ships and meeting everyone
..."
"There were people everywhere," Royenne muttered.
Embarrassment raged across both their faces.
"That's all right," Kirk said. "I haven't
read mine either." He smiled, and had a sudden
thought.
Relief drenched the two visitors as they
saw that they hadn't insulted him, or the race
organizers, or Starfleet or the Federation or
any unmentioned deity.
Again everybody was grinning.
Kirk smiled, and had a sudden thought. "Would the
two of you like to sit down?" he asked, realizing that
they were the only people on the bridge without chairs.
Off their eager nods, he continued.
"Lieutenant, notify the quartermaster and have
two chairs brought up here."
Uhura's smile disappeared and surprise
struck her flawless face. She uttered an
acknowledgment and turned to get some chairs onto the
bridge, but she still looked surprised.
Kirk knew why. He'd never done this before.
Guests had always been allowed to take a look
at the bridge, then politely invited to go to the
observation lounge for snacks and beverages and
generally to stay out of the way.
But what the hell. This was time for entertainment,
right? He had a chance here to show off and push the
envelope of interstellar perception.
Right?
* * *
"Searching for beacon number five,
Captain," Spock said. "Reading seems clear
at the moment. The signal is occulting, however
... appears to be overlapping shadows. I seem
to be reading two beacons."
Kirk could tell the Vulcan was dissatisfied
with his own answer. "We haven't got all day,
Spock."
Seeming almost affronted, Spock straightened
and looked down at his captain. Spock said,
"They are identical, sir."
"Can you differentiate between the signals?"
"Captain, I believe we are looking at a
gravitational lensing effect. A beacon and its
identical echo."
"Mm," Kirk murmured, "good trick. Which
one do we follow? Can you detect what's
splitting it?"
"Not yet," Spock admitted. "This sector
of space is devoid of life-sustaining
bodies, but also cluttered with adverse
naturalia which, as you pointed out, have been
responsible for turning back many early
explorations before ships were capable of dealing with them.
With our sensor power reduced, these natural
distractions tend to drag our signals off
course. I'm attempting to map them and compensate
for them, in case any of the beacons turns us
back on a course. Mr. Chekov is tracking
the competition."
Kirk nodded, then pivoted as casually as he
could. "And where's our friend?"
"He is at the extreme of sensor range,
having increased to flank speed again."
"That's the fifth time he's fallen back then
come up on us again. Am I haunting him, or is
it the other way around?"
"I would say there is a mutual haunt in
progress, sir."
"But I don't have a reason, Mr. Spock,
other than the race. He does."
Spock stepped down to the command arena and stood
at Kirk's side, but said nothing to scratch the
mood.
They stood together, gazing at the main screen and
its image of a few racing ships moving in and out of
visual range, some matching time with them, wondering
which ship would next flash off into a higher warp
speed or drop to a lower one.
Spock's voice was deep and melodic, almost
as though he was reading poetry. "Immediately behind us
are Haunted Forest, Unpardonable,
Hood, and River of w. Slightly ahead
of us are Blackjacket, New Pride of
Baltimore, and Alexandria, sir.
Flanking us are--"
"Alexandria," Kirk said as his eyes fixed
on a bulky working trader humming two points
off the starship's starboard bow. He propped an
arm on the back of his command chair and said, "My
father used to talk about her. He served on her as a
deckhand when he was a teenager. Tough old ship.
Some parts of her interior are made of the wood from
the original Alexandria, a Baltic trader
schooner. The pieces sat in a Chesapeake
Bay museum for almost two hundred years
until somebody bought them and built them into that ship
out there. Lots of stories in her bones."
Spock shifted near him. "In her bones,
sir?"
As nostalgic mist came over his eyes, the
captain said, "That's right."
Spock let a few seconds tick by, then
droned, "Captain Hall would do well to have them
scraped out."
A laugh boiled up in Kirk's chest, and he
tried to stuff it down but couldn't.
"You're a pirate, Spock," he chuckled.
"Sir," Uhura said, "Captain Dodge
hailing from the Starship Hood."
"Put him on."
"Kirk, this is Dodge. Do you read?"
Raising his voice to compensate for the crackle of
interference in the communication system, Kirk said,
"Poorly, but you're on audio. Can you boost the
gain?"
"Already on maximum. The whole area's
full of this garbling and clicking. Where are you?
Kirk's eyes glittered as he glanced at
Spock and lied his tail off. "We're looking
for beacon six."
"Six! How the hell did you find four! We
can't find it anywhere!"
"We shut it off as we went by."
"Kirk, you son of a dirty, lying,
sidewinding--somebody cut me off before I say
something I'll have to apologize to him for."
Uhura smiled and said, "Captain Dodge
has terminated the communication, sir."
"Well, now that I've told him we're
looking for six, we'd better hurry up and find
five." Kirk leered at the screen, and prowled
toward the starboard rail. "Chasing shadows ...
is there any way we can pick out the real beacon
with any certainty?"
"No," Spock flatly told him. "We
may take the fifty percent chance, if you like."
"Something's going on," Kirk said, still glaring
at the screen, which refused to give him facts.
"I can smell it."
Spock's elegant head tilted a bit.
"Intuition?"
"Damn right."
A year ago Spock would've frowned with
teeming arrogance. Disbelief, disrespect,
probably both. Today that intolerance was nowhere
nearby. He only nodded with what could've been
approval, but was, at the very least, understanding.
"Mr. Sulu," Kirk said. "Take a fix
on one of those two signals, and increase speed
toward it by one half. Swing past Alexandria and
take the lead. Give her a wide berth, or
she'll try to cut us off."
Sulu looked doubtful. "They'll try to cut
off a starship?"
"They might," Kirk said. "That's a strong
ship. She's taken a lot of punches in her time
and shook them off. Pete Hall's a tug
captain by trade."
Sulu shrugged acceptance. "Can't beat that
combination."
Kirk ticked off the right number of seconds,
then stepped forward and stood next to his
helmsman. A hot glitter showed in his eyes.
"Sure as hell gonna try, though," he
said.

Red Talon

A race. Vessels rushing this way, that way,
chasing blips and echoes. Small-minded
business, the living abnegation of worth.
Romar paced across the back of the bridge,
turned, and paced to where he had begun. This he had
done before and would again before he summoned the courage
to step to the command level and confront Valdus.
His shoulders tensed within the padding of his uniform.
Strong shoulders, his father's shoulders. Shoulders that
could break a door. Legs that never ached, no
matter the strain, though he might climb a
pyramid.
Muscles turned against his ribs, his fists
coiled, his feet--it felt as if there were
splinters of glass in his boots. He was a
subcommander of the Imperial Fleet and
he knew his duty. Take over if the commander is
insane.
There was no menace to men of their kind like the
menace of the mind. When a trained mind began
to stray, seek its own purposes above the
primary causes of the Empire ...
He looked down in the command ring.
Down there was no pyramid, only Valdus.
A quiet commander as that kind went, a man of
surpassing contemplation and scant hardness in his
face. He sat with his own shoulders rounded even in
the padding of his uniform and his hands folded between his
knees. His posture said he wouldn't fight.
What good was this? If any other ship hailed
them and they went to visual, others--Federation
people--wd see the Imperial commander sitting there with his
shoulders down and his hands folded, forlorn as a
lost thing, and that would be the new view of the
Empire. For decades people would tell their children and
grandchildren of the time they saw a commander in his ship,
slumped and sorry looking, and how the rumors
weren't true. How there was nothing to fear across the
neutral zone, and all was empty legend.
Could he let that happen? The Empire turned
on the fear of others. Did he dare stand by in
case the stone wall should crumble?
Romar had paced since the starting gun while
they went from one beacon to the next, as politely
as anyone could please, mustering the nerve to go down
there and ask questions. He had to do it. He had to find
out if there was madness.
He counted to three and demanded of himself that he go
down and not have to shame himself by counting again. One,
two--
"Three," he murmured. His feet were numb
from the glass.
Trying to look casual, he sat on the deck
riser next to the commander's chair. He looked at
Valdus, but the commander didn't turn his eyes from
the main screen, from the field of ships moving in the
nearness and in the distance.
Romar swallowed twice, cleared his throat
once, then swallowed again. Folded his hands,
unfolded them, and finally became angry enough with himself
that he would either speak up or not look in his
mirror for many, many days.
"If you die in your sleep," he began, "it
would do well that I should know ... what your plan
is."
"To run the race," Valdus said
bluntly.
"Until?"
"Until they believe I'm only running the
race."
Almost with an audible moan, Romar sighed,
"Commander ..."
Valdus smiled suddenly and looked sidelong
at him. "If I happen to die in my
sleep?"
Romar felt heat rise in his face and almost
got up and left, but the commander's smile held
him down.
Looking tired and careworn, like a man waiting
to see if his crops would grow or if he would
starve this year, Valdus changed position
to stretch the muscles in his back and looked again
at the forward screen.
"I have never thought about dying in bed," he uttered
casually. "I've been prepared in my life
to die in every situation, but never in my sleep. I
have been ready to die for most of my career. That's
what happens when you skim past death at close
quarters and you feel its breath upon your neck
..."
Confused even more now, Romar fretted beside him.
"Commander, won't you talk to me?"
"I am talking to you," Valdus said. "I
can't tell you the plan yet. I'm revising it."
"Why are you revising it? What has changed?"
"The simplicity has gone out. Things are
different. You should have come with me when I went
to meet the captain of the Enterprise."
"I would have been honored to go, but they told you
to come alone and you complied. You said there was nothing
to fear on their starbase."
"I should have defied them. That is how a firm will
is displayed, but I failed to think of it in time.
You see, I had no fear of going alone, and that
cost me a show of strength. Remember, Romar,
fear can do you service in the right circumstances."
"I'll try to remember. Why would you wish me
to meet him?"
"To look at his eyes."
Romar's spine started to ache. He wished he
could take his boots off. Curiosity chewed at
him, but he would gladly ignore it if the commander
would agree to turn back, abandon this unexplained
movement into claimless space, and simply be part
of an unfinished story in a Federation history
book.
Brittle and acute, he tried to be
cold-blooded. "Eyes are eyes, Commander."
Vigilance kept Valdus very still as he gazed
at the screen. Moments crawled by in silence,
with the commander's face creased by things he had seen,
perceptions he had distilled since leaving the
starbase.
Quietly he said, "Oh ... no."
And he said nothing more.
The bridge made haunting noises around them.
Other crewmen did not look at them. They all
realized how bizarre this movement was, and they were
all worried.
Romar knew he was being unimaginative, and that
somehow he had failed to inspire trust. Suddenly
he felt twice his own weight.
"What do you want me to do about this race," he
sighed, "while you decide upon your action?"
Enchanted with the view of space and its
activities, Valdus didn't respond
immediately. Romar's suspicion that the commander might
not be sure of their purpose was strengthened when
Valdus didn't resent the structure of that
question. Others might have called this behavior weak,
but Romar noted a valiance in how hard Valdus
was to embarrass.
He would remember that, too.
"Try to win," Valdus said. "At least,
appear to try. Run their race as best you can.
When the opportunity arises that fits my
purposes, I will act upon it. The moment will have
to offer us privacy, solitude, even separation,
because we must put off confrontation as long as
possible."
He stood up, impassive, perhaps withdrawn,
but he continued to gaze at the screen, and back in
time a few hours, to the eyes that had changed his
plans.
"I do not want to have to deal with that man."

Chapter Eight

Ransom Carnvale Mining Co.
Vessel Ransom Castle

"Here you go. Bonafide one hundred percent
gen-u-wine down-home Confederate breakfast.
Eggs over medium, Smoky Mountain sawmill
gravy, sourdough bread, Ozark grits, and
chilled apple cider, unstrained.
Ship's specialty. We try not to leave out
any Southern mountain range. Now, here's how you
eat it. Take your grits and spoon 'em on
top your eggs. That's right. Now, take and chop it
all up with the side of your fork. Ataway. Go
ahead, be mean to it. Now hoist yourself up a
shovelful of it, and you'll have a dilly of a
breakfast recipe to take home to Golleray and
teach all your pals."
As First Mate Mike Frarey directed the
breakfast like a musical jamboree, he got
what he wanted from the sweet little lady perched on
the bench at the mess table with the off-watch crew--
he got a whopping big smile.
He straightened and asked, "Did I say
some thing wrong? Ain't that how you pronounce it?
Golleree?"
"Yes, that's how," the girl said.
He knew she was lying, but it was one of those
kindhearted lies, the sort meant to make
somebody else feel good.
And being the somebody else, he did. Feel
good, that is.
"I'm not mispronouncing your name or nothing,
am I?" he asked.
"Oh, no," she said.
"Say it again for me, just once, so I'm
sure."
Pushing aside a lock of her platinum
hair, she plunged her fork into the mountain meal.
"It's Turrice Belliard Roon. But I like
the way you call me Turry. You won't stop,
will you?"
"Oh, no!" Mike boomed. "Sure
won't."
"Where is your captain?" she asked. "I
haven't met her yet."
Mike jabbed at a fellow crewmate and
jolted the man to one side so he could squeeze in
beside Turry. He got a couple of nasty,
teasing looks about it, but nobody made any
cracks. Good thing too. He'd have cracked 'em
back.
"Well, I dunno," he said. "Nancy's
kinda particular about having strangers on the
bridge. Not that you're strange or nothin'--in
fact, gotta say it's kinda pleasant having
you around here. Can't quite explain it, but you're dang
pleasant to have around."
Mike smiled and felt his face go
red as Turry pursed her lips and tried not
to laugh. As first mate, he was informally assigned
to taking care of their host guest. He was a big
guy, rough-hewn, self-conscious about his size,
and embarrassed about the gap between his front teeth,
but he'd been told by more than just his mother that his eyes
had an animated crinkle about them when he
smiled. So he figured that canceled out the gap.
The crewmates sat around the table, dressed in
rough jersey shirts and faded trousers. Their ship
was immaculate and strong, built to haul virgin
ore to processing plants, and he hoped it could
impress her. A truck in space. Later they
would show her the barge section, where the raw ore was
loaded and unloaded, and how they moved it in and out,
and he would spend time telling her about the interstellar
mining industry.
Yup, they'd have lots of hours together, and he'd
enjoy every minute.
The mood in the galley mess area changed,
if subtly, when Nancy Ransom herself shuffled
in and scowled at the steaming breakfast buffet laid
out over there by the wall. She had her jacket on,
the one that made her look short and stocky, and her
brown hair was pulled back so tight that she
looked like a seal sunning on a rock.
It was a nice breakfast--Louise had outdone
herself back there over the hot stove--but Nancy still
wasn't mustering so much as an approving nod.
Mike went a little cold, worried that Nancy
might make fools of them all in front of
Turry.
"Should I say hello to her?" Turry asked,
almost whispering.
Mike shrugged. "Maybe later."
"She's a little touchy," one of the load
operators said.
"Mind your meal, Stevens," Mike ordered.
"Okay, okay."
Turry kept her voice low. "Is something
wrong? Is it me?"
"Naw, naw, nothing to do with you. Couldn't be you,
hon."
"Marry her, Mike," the engineer popped from
down the galley's old trestle table where they and
four others were gathered. "She's pretty."
"Like them big eyes," deckhand Harry
Stevens commented.
"We'll talk about it when you aren't around,"
Mike said, but he blushed in the cheeks
a little.
And even more when young stockman Sam Oats
roared back, flapped his elbows, and crowed like a
barnyard redcrest.
The laughter of his shipmates was a blend of
humiliation and sustaining joy for Mike Frarey.
He smiled, inched his big form a little closer to the
best thing that had happened to him in ten years, and
offered her some more coffee.
Reaching for another couple of slices of
sourdough, Mike was doing what he always did when
there was a visitor or an ore company rep on
board. Entertain them as best he could and keep a
buffer zone between them and Nancy.
And there was sure no trouble entertaining this sweet
thing from the host planet. He couldn't remember
when he'd been so puffed up with good old-fashioned
billy goat, turkey cock, tomcat feelings
sitting next to a lady. And he liked it.
He liked her.
Not that Nancy Ransom wouldn't be civil
to Turry, but that was the best she'd be. For someone
who came from a long spacefaring heritage, right out
of one of those small spaceports where shuttling
cargo or space taxiing were just about the only ways
to make a living, Nancy never had much confidence
in herself. She always thought she had confidence, so she
always blamed somebody else when she faltered.
She was naturally suspicious and refractory and
would instantly resist whatever was pushed her way.
There was something pioneer about her, though, that made
others continue to sign on her ship and work for her in
spite of the odds they'd be blamed for something.
And she was the hardest worker Mike had ever known.
She managed to keep her parents' marginal ore
shipping business in the black. Barely, but always.
Her draft-horse work ethic was the most
infectious trait about her. Add that she was one of
their own kind, flew the Stars and Bars on her
ship, and wasn't quite convinced the Confederacy lost the
American Civil War, that was enough to keep
down-homers like Mike signing on season after
season.
"You know anything about the Old South?" he
asked spontaneously.
"Oh, yes I do," Turry said. "Earth
studies are their own experience. I took as many
as I could at our university. I'd like to live
there someday."
"Like to do that myself, all of a sudden,"
Mike muttered.
He expected a crack from his shipmates, but
nobody said anything. There was nothing but the clinking
of forks on plates and the slurp of coffee. That
meant they could tell he was serious and wasn't just
teasing. He could barely pull his eyes off
Turry as he shoveled the gray-white gravy
onto his bread.
"If you want to get to know Nance," he went
on, "best you can do is ask her about her family
history. She's got this rebel way about her.
Comes from one of those families who can name the
company, brigade, regiment, and major
battles of all their ancestors who fought in the
war. Fact is, we'all a little like that."
Turry worked to swallow a forgiving mouthful of
eggs and grits. "Are you all from the same
colony?"
"Yeah, we're all from Port Apt. Most
of us, anyway."
"Where's that?"
"Near Alpha Centauri. Ask me how it
got its name."
"All right ... what kind of name is Port
Apt?"
"Colonized by an Arkansas family."
"The United States."
"That's right as rain. We'all second and
third and ninth and tenth cousins and like."
Andy O'Boyle choked down a spoonful of
grits in time to belch, "Couldn't tell that."
Turry grinned and everybody else chortled.
Encouraged as the mood got better and better
in spite of Nancy Ransom's presence down
the table, Mike went on.
"Most of us had relatives in the group of
original settlers. They come from Jonesboro,
Harrisburg--t side of Arkansas. Over there
was a road sign with some houses around it, and on this
road sign was the name of the place--Apt. It was
named that back in the 1920's, because folks said there
was "apt"' to be a town there someday."
Turry covered her mouth and was trying to smile
and chew at the same time, but Mike picked up the
satisfying delight in her great big brown
eyes. Just like a doe's eyes ...
"Anyway," he continued, "our great-grands,
they named their colony Port Apt 'cause they
figured it was an optimistic name for a place where
there was apt to be a big mining port some
day. Now Port Apt is about two hundred
times the size of the place it was named after. Done
real well. Lots of good free industry and
entrepreneurship. Never lost our heritage.
Kept the Confederacy's idea of small
government. They keep the roads clean and the
space lanes clear, and the people do the rest. Love
to show it to you."
Turry gazed at his big round face, and
Mike felt that he was nothing but a canvas of
lines and scratches and scars, but her voice was like
a song when she said to him, "I would love to see
it, Mike. What about Arkansas?"
He blinked. "Pardon?"
"Is there a town at the road sign yet?"
Sam interrupted, "Not yet."
Mike pitched half a piece of sourdough at
him, got him square in the face, then turned
back to the lady. "Things move kinda slow down
in those parts. You can't force a city to grow. Never
quite developed the way some folks said it would.
Prosperity pretty much followed the railroads
in those days. There's no city there yet."
From down the table, the voice of their captain
surprised them with a glint of humor as Nancy
Ransom insisted, "Apt to be, though."
A pause--then the mess hall broke out in
laughter.
Mike Frarey almost rolled backward off the
bench, almost choking as he laughed. Must be something
about Turry that just lightened their load some. Even
Nancy was loosening up.
He hadn't expected that to happen, given that
she wasn't too pumped up about running this
race. She just couldn't stand to let it go on without
her. Had a little problem that way.
Only when he realized he was laughing with his
mouth open and a half-chewed display of food showing
itself to the ceiling did he clamp down and grab
hold of the edge of the big table. Down at the end,
Nancy was eating, but she was eyeing them
mischievously and her lips were drawn long in a
grin.
"How we doin', Nance?" Joe Sibley asked
from Mike's left.
"Marilyn's got the watch," their captain
said, her concentration again on her breakfast. She
ate with both elbows on the table, her sho ulders
up, and her head hunkered down. "We running behind
Blackjacket, don' know how far, but
we're gaining. Thought we saw Alexandria go
by, but the sensor shadows were awfully big for a
trader."
"Was it Alexandria or wasn't it?"
Sam Oats asked.
"Just told you, we're not sure. All we know
is something big circled around in front of us. You
want to come up to the bridge and try to identify
ships by silhouette, thrust, and size? Sure as
hell let you have a try. We're coming up on a
marker for a gravity well of some sort, so
Marilyn's got us slowed down and on visuals.
We got ahold of two beacons, but I think
it's got to be some kind of lensing effect."
"Which one you gonna follow?" Mike asked.
"Haven't decided."
So Mike shrugged at Turry, who was watching
the captain hopefully, and gave her a
reassuring wink.
"After I get done eating," Nancy said,
"I'm going up there and speed us up again. If
it's a gravity hook, I can spin around it with enough
speed."
"Or get caught in it," Louise Clark
called from the galley cooking area, where she was
shoveling hotcakes onto a communal serving
dish.
"Don't drive, woman," Nancy called
back. "Just cook."
Everybody laughed again, including Louise, and
even Nancy this time.
Mike looked past Turry and Sam, and said,
"Hey, Nancy, maybe you can catch up with
Blackjacket and run him down. You know,
impress Ian enough to bring you on board and make you
the only woman ever in Blackjacket's
crew."
Without looking up, Nancy snapped, "Who
wants to be? That slippery carrot-top can have his
all-male paradise if he wants. His loss.
Bess," she said, leaning forward to leer at Mike,
"if I was in his crew, I wouldn't have my own
ship."
A stadium howl of approval jumbled through the
crew as they shook their fists and pounded the table for
her. And something unexpected happened--nancy's
cheeks rounded up with pride, and she must have felt
real good because she reached past Sam and offered a hand
to Turry.
"Hey," she said. "How are you?"
Turry caught the hand and responded, "I'm
so completely delighted to be on Ransom
Castle, Captain. You should be proud of all that
you have."
"I'm proud," Nancy said. "Welcome
aboard."
Mike and the others worked hard to avoid falling
dead silent with shock. They forced themselves to keep
chuckling, keep eating, and keep up the small
talk, even if it was just "pass the coffee, will you"
or "here, have a hotcake." A sense of
conviviality skittered through the galley mess
area.
Maybe this wouldn't be bad at all! Maybe
they'd all have a fine ole time. Maybe at the
end of the race they could get out their pickin' gear and
make some music.
And maybe there was something tickling the wind for
himself, Mike realized as he put his enormous
hand between Turry's shoulder blades and gave her
a little congratulatory pat. Felt just right--
Until the ship suddenly whined and cranked
three quarters onto its side.
As the hull pounded around them, they clung to the
table and to each other as the lights crackled and
thunderbolted, and their Ozark breakfasts and all the
fixins came slamming into their laps. Mike
managed to catch Turry on his left and two
others on his right, but it didn't last.
Alarms blasted through the erupting darkness. The
artificial gravity surged, twisted, sent them
all careening against the port bulkhead, and tales
of the new South died in their minds.
















YELLOW ALERT

Chapter Nine

Ransom Castle

"We're out of warp, down to one-eighth
impulse."
"Get the backup lights on. What hit
us?"
"Something we hit. Looks like some kind of dark
residual cloud. We didn't see it."
"Damage?"
"Well ... I'm not sure about that yet."
"Get sure!"
"Okay, okay, don't yell--"
"I'm yelling at you, and I'm gonna yell
at you because you're in charge of the bridge, and you're
supposed to know what's in front of you,
Marilynffwas
"You back off me, Nancy."
"I'm not backing off you, even if it's only
a race. What if we had a shipment on
board?"
"Then we'd have a plotted course and we
wouldn't be running into clouds nobody can see,
all right?"
"Uh, Nancy? 'Scuse me." Mike
Frarey moved between the two women as half a
dozen others scrambled around them. Behind him,
Second Mate Marilyn Betts escaped
around the pilot station and moved out of the line of
fire. "Looks like a puff of ionized gases
and spinning dust left over from something that exploded
maybe a million years ago. There's still
reaction going on in there. It's off our sensors,
so it's damn big."
Nancy fell silent for a count, squinting into the
forward screen at a swimming smoke gray
gauze that was almost invisible against the blackness of
space. Even bumping up against it, they could
barely see it. The only clue to its existence were
faint bluish crackles of electrical
activity and the fact that they couldn't see anything
through it.
She scratched the side of her face
distractedly and asked, "Where are the other ships?"
"The ones we can see are turning to go around it.
We sent out a warning, so everybody knows about it
now. I don't know for sure how this thing will affect
our maneuvering ability."
"Who's in the area?"
"We saw the Tholian ship ahead of us, and
New Pride of Baltimore right behind them,
a couple others I can't tell who they are,
Blackjacket, maybe, and we caught a
glimpse of a Starfleet ship, but we couldn't
tell what direction it was going."
"Starfleet ship? Which one?"
When Nancy's face turned gray with the
reference, Mike realized he'd made a
mistake. He should've just told her he didn't
know what those ships were. Could've been
anybody. Impossible to tell.
"Well ..."
"It's Jim Kirk, isn't it?" She
turned from gray to red even in the dimness. "Damn
him, I can't get away from him even out in the
middle of nothin'. Okay, let me think. And
where the hell are my backup lights!"
Around, below, and above, they could hear the ship pound
with wild activity, people doing their jobs and their best
not to panic and not to have to bother Nancy. Like a
gaggle of snake handlers, they'd learned that.
Stay off the bridge unless there was really something
to say. Then stay off anyway.
Everyone hung on with one hand and worked with the other
as the ship was sledgehammered with blow after blow of
force from the ancient furnace they'd stumbled into.
"Reverse the loading tractors," Nancy
decided. "Give me some room to turn around."
"Got nothing to push against," Mike said.
"If they whine, we'll stop."
Mike twisted around as best his bulk could
manage with the ship shuddering under him, and called down
the engineering crawlway. "Tractors on full
reverse, Sam."
"No--" Nancy grabbed his arm. "Wait a
minute ..."
Watching Nancy's small eyes get even
smaller as she looked at the screen, then the
readouts, then back at the screen, Frarey got
one of those funny feelings down his spine. He
waited what he thought was long enough, then prodded,
"What're you thinking?"
"If everybody else is bothering to go around it
..."
"Yeah?"
"Then we'll gain five hundred light-years
on him if we cut right through it."
Mike kept his voice low. "On
him, huh?"
"Yeah, on him!" Nancy erupted.
"Shielding's full-up, isn't it?"
"Aw, Nancy ... we're up in the front
end of the field ... we could put ourselves back
God knows how far--"
"Or we could jump all the way ahead.
Let's do what we do best and beat a bastard at
the same time."
"Aw, boy ..."
"Get the crew to put up the lead sheets on
the interior bulkheads. Wake up the off-duty
watch. Extend the stabilizers to maximum.
Get the old pulse jets out in case we need
them. We're gonna cut right through this thing."
"Nancy, I don't know ..."
"All right, maggots, hang on and listen
here!"

Red Talon

"The cloud is the remnant of an explosion
when a neutron star collided with a class-C
red giant. The result is highly ionized
particles, hard radiation, dust, debris, and an
above normal content of residual antimatter.
There is also a great deal of momentum in the
interior of the cloud, where the spinning has not yet
completely dissipated."
"How old is this soup?"
"I would appraise ... five to eight
million years."
"Then we can expect it to spin one more day?"
The ship's science specialist turned his
face up from the monitor to respond to his
leader's peculiar question--or to see if a
response was a mistake. "Yes, Commander ...
of course."
Valdus nearly smiled, but such a slip could
in the long run prove damaging to any commander.
He did, though, enjoy the look on the
specialist's face when he asked his question.
Apparently, he'd succeeded in convincing the poor
fellow that he actually wanted an answer.
Perhaps he hadn't lost his touch yet.
The bridge crew wasn't used to dealing with him
directly. Usually he told Romar what was
to be done, and Romar dealt with them. They were
confused why a simple race would not only draw
his interest but his direct attention.
He enjoyed their confusion. He hoped also that he
could commit his purpose without cost of their lives,
but he wouldn't admit that to them either. A commander was
better off all around letting his crew guess and
suspect and being less sure of any conclusion they
may make independently of their leader.
"Romar, where are you?"
"Here, Commander."
Of course. Never more than two steps out of
sight, especially when he was measuring Valdus
against every passing moment.
"Your orders, Commander?" Romar asked. "You
wish to avoid the cloud, certainly."
"What are the other vessels doing?"
"All are piloting to avoid it."
"Not correct, Subcommander," the helmsman
said. He spoke to Romar, but couldn't help
glancing every other ^w or so at Valdus. "One
vessel is nosing into the cloud. I believe they
are playing to gain space by going through it."
"If this race was my only care," Valdus
said, "I would do so also."
Romar moved a step closer and, judging from his
drawn brows, didn't like having to probe the
next steps. "Standard elliptical course around
the cloud?"
"Yes."
Ah, the gift of a simple answer. Valdus
enjoyed giving one today. Romar obviously found
succor in it. One clear thing to understand and
execute.
So much more the fracture when Valdus clutched
Romar's wrist and held him back from approaching
the helm. "A moment," he said. "The construction
of this vessel going into the cloud?"
Romar stared at him, suddenly crisp again.
He pushed the science specialist aside, waved
him away, then hunched over the monitors and
manipulated the controls until there was focus.
"Industrial merchant loader-transporter
... cruising speed, hyperlight three ...
capable of five in short bursts. Heavy dragging
engines, propulsional unit length overall--"
"That's enough."
Almost choking as he tried to keep the numbers from
slipping through his lips, Romar made a tight
sound in his throat, and drew himself straight again.
He looked exhausted. The effort his patience was
costing him was clear.
Patience.
Valdus silently offered his sympathy, but
provided no explanations. He was thinking about that
ship and watching as it pressed into the gas cloud.
"And in a cloud of that type," he began, "a
ship could pull abeam of another ... and never be
noticed. Yes?"

Enterprise

"A caustic brew. Very dangerous."
Spock cupped his readout monitor with both
hands and peered in as the black cloud's facts
piled up on the screen before him.
"Sweeping electrical activity," he went
on, "turbulence in the high nineties ...
gravitational congestion toward the center, caused
by residual spinning from the original collision
... no plottable pattern to the spin."
Beside him, Jim Kirk glowered at the same
power figures and chemical breakdown numbers and
didn't like a single one of them. "What can happen
to the Castle if she keeps going in?"
Spock came up from the screen andfora moment
gazed at nothing as the numbers turned
into pictures in his mind. "Ionization of her warp
core, greatly compromising motive power,
possibly stopping it alt ... sensor blindness
... shield collapse, causing the crew
to retreat to the interior of the ship, cutting off
access to the engines and compromising their control over
life support and hull integrity. They may not
be able to extricate themselves."
His arms stiff, Kirk turned and looked at
the forward screen. In the distance, on maximum
magnification, a purple-black cloud with shaggy
blue hairs of electricity was eating the
Ransom Castle, and the Castle wasn't
pulling out, and he knew why.
"Ship to ship, Lieutenant," he said.
"Audio."
Behind him, Uhura's panel chirped in
compliance.
"The Ransom Castle, sir," Uhura
said steadily. "First Mate Mike Frarey on
audio."
"Mr. Frarey, this is Jim Kirk. Put
me through to Captain Ransom."
"She's here," the mate's voice crackled
over the comm system, already affected by the cloud
sucking on the Castle's power. "Go
right ahead."
"Nancy," Kirk said, fighting not to sound
patronizing, "don't go in there."
"Thanks for the advice."
Nancy's voice was composed--a scary sound from
Nancy.
Kirk shifted a little and wondered about the sound of
his own voice. Did he sound arrogant?
"Captain," Chekov interrupted.
"Go ahead, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said,
trying not to communicate that he might as well
talk to anybody other than Nancy Ransom,
especially since he hadn't thought of anything
to say to her yet.
Chekov was at his navigation station, but he was
looking up at the science station on the starboard
side, forward of Spock, as though to confirm what
he had just seen.
"Sir ... the beacon just faded!"
Kirk shifted and said, "Spock, confirm that.
Did we guess wrong?"
Spock took the seconds he needed as
everyone on the bridge watched him, and even
Nancy Ransom had to listen to the silence on the
open communication net as the Enterprise found out
whether or not it had made a big blunder.
"No sign of the beacon, Captain," he said.
"Evidently we have been following the sensor echo
from the lensing effect instead of the actual beacon."
"ally're lost," Nancy's voice concluded
for them. "After I'm inside the cloud, you'll have
to follow somebody else, won't you?"
"It's just a race, Captain," Kirk told
her. "It's not worth risking your ship."
When she didn't respond, he got
worried.
How could he talk to a woman who held him as
her personal evil spirit? Would it be better to just
tell her to go on in, try to cut across the course
by swimming the quicksand, and hope she would do the
opposite of anything he said?
Even Nancy Ransom wasn't that much of a
child. Nobody could run a mining company
transport and be a child for very long.
He wondered if she knew that he understood that,
and that he'd learned things over the past ten years,
whether she had or not.
"My science officer suggests that going into that thing
isn't a good idea," he tried again. "We read
red-lined turbulence in there."
"allyeah, and I don't have a fancy
Vulcan to run my fancy computer. So if I
dig my way through there and cut a couple hundred
light-years off the course and blow you away, then
I guess I'll just have seat-of-the-pants flying
to blame. It's a trick I learned while I
was still in Starfleet."
"Look," Kirk said, "you can insult me all
you want, but don't degrade yourself by insulting my
staff. I've given you my recommendation.
You're welcome to take it, along with my
assurance that no one else will hear about it. If you
don't care about your crew, think about mine. I
don't want to have to go in there after you."
Even as the ^ws bolted out, he knew they were the
wrong ones. She wouldn't let go of the past, and now
he'd as much as laid a challenge at her feet.
"Then I won't call for you. Castle
out."
The click of the channel closing was like a crack
over the head.
"Not the reaction I was fishing for," Kirk said.
"I made a mistake. I should've contacted
Ken Dodge or somebody else to warn her off.
Anyone's voice but mine should've been coming over
the channels at Nancy Ransom, and I'm the
one who should know that first."
"Is the Ransom Castle going in there?"
Royenne asked from behind the action.
"Seems so." Kirk fought not to sigh. He'd
forgotten they were there. He had a certain appearance
to uphold here--usually not the case on his own
bridge.
Then again, they were here as observers, so they might
as well observe the captain admitting he
wasn't perfect.
"Captain Kirk," Tom added, "are you going
to let them go into that thing?"
Kirk shrugged and gave them the awful truth.
"There's nothing I can do if she doesn't want
help."
"But isn't there an interstellar law you can
quote or something?"
"A ship in space is an autonomous
entity, Mister ... Tom. That is interstellar
law. Mr. Spock, Mr. Sulu, let's
get back to the race."
As the crew frowned and tried to concentrate on
a race that suddenly lost a bit of its
imperative in lieu of something more
precious, Kirk stepped back toward Spock.
"She's got guts," he said, "but I doubt
she'll come out more than six or seven minutes
ahead, and it might even slow her down. If she
comes out at all--it's my fault if she
doesn't come out," he murmured, still looking at
the screen, at the dot of Ransom Castle
against the monstrous crackling cloud. "Will the
transporters work inside that mess if a
rescue unit has to be sent in after them?"
"Unlikely," Spock said, "though I can't
be sure."
"I should never have hailed her, Spock. I
pushed her over the edge."
"I disagree, sir." Spock's tone was almost
gentle as he turned to face him. "Captain
Ransom displays an admirable willingness
to take risks, but not the ability to weigh risk
against gain. That ... is what makes a commander of
note."
This was his first officer's way of telling Kirk
to go easy on himself.
"I guess you're right," the captain sighed.
"That imbalance is what kept her out of
Starfleet."
"Captain?"
Kirk turned to the aft deck. "Yes,
Tom?"
The Rey man actually left the sanctuary
of the turbolift apron and moved across the bridge
toward them.
"Are you leaving that ship behind?" he asked.
They all watched the forward screen as it
battled to magnify the great distance between the starship
and the Ransom Castle. In those seconds, the
last hint of the merchant ship--one glint of a tail
fin--was consumed by the mindless mass of garbage
left over from a cataclysm millions of years
ago. Now, by any definition, the Castle was on
its own.
Kirk didn't like the sound of his own voice or
the idea of leaving a ship behind in potential
danger in the name of sportsmanship.
Tom didn't seem like the type to face the
bulls, but he wasn't going to let go until he
got the honesty they were all holding away from him
at arm's length.
He stepped between Kirk and Spock--something
even the crew knew better than to try, and he
pointed at the gaudy mass on the forward
screen, and his voice carried a crack of
insistence .
"But what if they don't come out again?"

YELLOW ALERT

Chapter Nine
(continued)

Ransom Castle

"It's all right! Don't panic! It's just a
little shakin' here and there!"
Ship's cook Louise Clark put her hand out
on the shuddering metal sink, glared into the mirror
she had mounted five years ago, and absorbed the
shock on her own face. There was a tightness around
her eyes and little lines that looked like the ones on
her mother's eyes. Her face was flushed, hot.
"You been through this a hundred times," she told
that face. "What are you doing shaking like a
chicken?"
She pulled at her collar. Sweat drained
down her neck.
"God, what's the matter with you?" she
murmured at the face shriveling with fear before her.
She turned away from it and swore not to look
again.
"It's all right--I been through all this before--
we've got pounded before, plenty--"
Over the serving shelf of her galley she
looked into the mess area, along the endless wooden
trestle table, at another face. She grasped
the edge of the serving shelf.
"Don't fret," she said. "No need
to panic ..."
The ship slammed sideways a few inches, enough
to throw her down onto the slanted deck. She
rolled against the bulkhead, then out the doorway and
into the mess hall. A long-forgotten reflex
let her catch the point of the table and keep herself from
sliding underneath--a meetingplace that was already
occupied by the ship's guest.
The alien girl--what was her name?--had fallen
underneath and was clinging to a table leg.
Louise concentrated on trying to remember the
girl's name, just to give her brain something to do besides
give in to the frantic feelings that seemed to be
taking over. Why was she feeling this way? She
hadn't lied to her own face in the mirror--most
of those worry lines had come from sitting down in the
galley and trying to prepare the next
meal while the ship took some kind of pounding.
Making food was her therapy. She had ignored
orders to make fast and had peeled carrots and
stirred hot chili in the middle of awful storms
and even a couple of hostile pirate attacks.
What was wrong with her today?
It wasn't even all that bad yet.
"Coming down with something," she muttered. "Got a
crick in my neck. Just coming down with a bug, is
all. How are you doing over there, hon? Scared as
I look?"
Under the table, the alien girl's huge brown
eyes were sallow with fear, but she was clinging as much
to a vestige of common sense as to the table's leg.
That showed in her face. With those milky bangs
hanging over her face, the girl looked like a
sheepdog who had been smacked with a glove and
found a place to hide.
Louise summoned everything she possessed
to overcome the fear strapping her chest. There was
nothing she could do about her trembling hands--she could
barely control her fingers. Only by using her
fingernails could she get a grip on the tabletop
and pull herself to her feet as the ship pounded and
slipped.
"What's the matter with me?" she asked the
air as her feet squared under her own weight.
"I gotta think, gotta think, think, gotta
think--"
But she couldn't. A blinding screen as wide as
a shower curtain hung between her and rationality. She
was furious at herself and frustrated at not being able
to think. The air was shimmering, flashing, and turning
hot.
Louise cast an arm over her eyes and
staggered. Felt like the ovens were all turned on.
Heat ...
"Can't think in the heat--a cook that can't think
in the heat--"
She laughed at this new disability, her lips
quivering. Fear quickly swallowed any humor she
managed to drum up. Only bigger was her need
to get ahold of herself.
Reaching upward, she grasped one wrist with the
other hand and pulled her arm away from her eyes, and
she blinked until her eyes began to clear.
There was someone else in the galley. Not the
girl. Someone different. Two of them. Not
Castle crew, no one she knew--
Two men, soldiers of some kind, in
tough uniforms that had metal fibers knitted into the
fabric. With helmets! Helmets that looked like
bird heads.
Why would anyone be wearing helmets?
"It's only a race!" Louise said out loud,
choking on her own bile.
And this wasn't the transporter area.
Wasn't the loading dock, wasn't the fantail
where guests were brought on board?
"You're in the wrong place," she told the
two stern-looking men. "You got in the galley
somehow. This is the galley!"
The soldiers ignored what she was saying. One
of them approached her with some kind of data-reading
device. The other hunted down the Rey girl and
went under the table to sniff her out with that thing.
A couple seconds, and the soldier under the table
pulled out what looked like a phaser, but longer and
bigger.
Louise stumbled back. A surge of raw
terror filled her mind, and she suddenly couldn't
hold a thought, not even a ^w, not an idea. The
motions around turned to fuzzy streaks. Her eyes
watered until she could barely see.
A strident whine erupted under the table. The
heavy table itself jolted just enough to notice, and the
soldier under there drew back and straightened. At
his feet, the Rey girl collapsed into imposed
sleep.
Louise felt her debilitating terror
suddenly drop off and good backwoods anger
blast up inside her. She was drenched in sweat,
but that didn't matter anymore. Her lungs
pumped so hard she thought she was having a heart
attack--but it was her galley, and she was part of the
Castle's working crew, and all of a sudden she
knew what to do.
An instant later, the soldier coming at her had
the pointy end of a can opener buried in his thigh.
As he choked in shock and pain, Louise
shouted. "Don't you poker-faced nightcrawlers
speak English? You are in the wrong place!"
Iron made good punctuation, and two
skillets slammed into the two men's chests as they
closed in on her, quick as bats.
The two devils didn't say anything, in
fact even communicated through glances and motions as
though cautious that their voices might be heard.
They let the skillets clatter to the
grease-soaked old deck and closed
in. One on each arm, they dragged her into the
cooking area and pressed her against the refrigeration
units and the freezer.
"What do you want?" she croaked, struggling.
"What do you want! There's nothing here!"
One of them held her down while the other
reset his weapon--down or up, she couldn't
tell--and aimed it at the sides of her
secondary oven, the one mounted on the wall above
the stove top.
"Are you stealing my oven?" Louise gasped.
"That's crazy--y don't even have the same
electrical systems on your ship ... but take
it if that's what you want ..."
They ignored her. One held her back, one
worked on the oven until the heavy unit shivered in
its place, then nodded at his cohort.
Louise wiggled her shoulders and balled her
fists, shook them and jabbed at the wide
metallic chest before her, tried to kick and
failed, but kept struggling.
"Your mothers ought to be ashamed!" she squawked as
they bent her backward over the stove top. Her
spine grated against the edge of the stove.
The smell of a thousand stews, chili pots,
sloppy joes, egg dumplings, hush puppies,
corn chowder, chicken puffso--all clinging somehow
to the air of her galley--reminded her suddenly
of a thousand meals, one at a time. A thousand,
maybe two thousand, maybe ten. Most served in
the midst of boredom. Her meals, one after the
other, day after day, watch after watch, had been the
only respite from drudgery for the crew, so she'd
made 'em good.
She focused on the bottom of her old
blackened oven as it shuddered above her head. A
grim laugh jumped up in her throat and
vibrated against her teeth, and suddenly she felt
almost giddy. Something was wrong, but what?
How could they do her harm with her own oven? They
didn't even figure that her oven wouldn't hurt
her.
Almost a generation of cramming overstuffed
turkeys into that oven, of casseroles tilted up
on one end so they'd fit, of crews sparse and
crowded, bulky with layered clothes and steaming with
sweat, surviving off the fare of that long-suffering
oven. Seasoned crewmen expected heavy chow
to see them through a cold, long watch; young and
confused deckhands wondered if this was what
they wanted to do with their lives--how many of those young
ones had she warmed with a hot home-cooked meal
to help those confusions sizzle away?
Plenty.
On its inside walls, cooked hard beyond any
hope of scrubbing, was evidence of those ten thousand
meals. Her knuckles were brown with old burns,
each toting a memory.
The oven shivered on its housing and came loose
on one side. Louise saw a knot of
cooked-on white gravy somehow splattered on the
underside of the unit. She wondered if she took
a knife to it could she maybe just chisel it off,
maybe get one more inch of the galley put away
right--
She was thinking about getting out her scrub
bucket and borrowing a common iron from the engineers
when the oven suddenly caterwauled like a pig,
tore off its broken housing and fell, and drove
one pointed corner through Louise's left eye and
into her brain.



Chapter Ten

"Time for a calculated risk."
Good bait.
Everybody--Spock, Sulu, Uhura,
Chekov, the bridge duty engineers, Tom,
Royenne--turned to look at him. He was sure
that down on the engineering level, Chief Engineer
Scott was looking at the ceiling.
It was that now-we're-in-trouble look.
Now that he had their attention, he fixed his
g aze on the forward screen and made sure his
voice was just loud enough to make it to all points on
the bridge.
"The best way to keep ahead of them," he said,
"is to keep ahead of them."
He knew Spock was staring at him, understanding that
he was talking about the Romulans. If the others
understood that--fine. If not, then they thought he was just
talking about the other race contestants and no harm
done.
His own crew knew what he meant, but Tom
and Royenne--how would they react, as
representatives of Gullrey, to see that a
Starfleet captain was preoccupied by what to them was
just another contestant? Would he lose the
edge that the Federation might someday need in this
sector?
"Who cares," he muttered. "Mr. Chekov,
plot a course z-plus ninety degrees to the
galactic plane. Let me hear the course when
you get it."
Silence fell, except for the sound of
Chekov's sweating.
By the time he spoke again, his dark hair was
plastered to his forehead like a line of belaying pins
against a painted gunwale.
"Bearing, one five, mark zero ... range,
twelve parsecs," Chekov offered. He turned
to Kirk, his terse accent clipping the ^ws. "Will
that be sufficient, sir?"
"If not, we'll go out farther. Mr. Sulu,
implement at warp factor three."
Sulu didn't make any comment, but his voice
was a rasp as he said, "Z-plus one five to the
galactic plane, sir ... warp factor
three."
On the forward viewer, the growling dark cloud of
residue from a millions-year-old explosion
suddenly fell away to the bottom of the screen as
the ship turned upward and vaulted for the galaxy's
sky.
Kirk counted off the seconds, hoping that--
"Captain?"
Somebody would give him a chance to explain it out
loud.
"Yes, Tom? Something I can do for you?"
"Would you mind ... should I ask Mr.
Spock?"
"No, no. I'd be happy to tell you. You
see, most of the interference is in line with the
racecourse, moving with the galaxy's natural
spiral flow. We're going to rise above all
that, go at a z-plus angle away from the
course, "up"' in the common idea of up and down
from where you're standing. By going above the sweep of the
distortions thrown off by that cloud, we might be able
to find a frequency window."
For what seemed like a shy and enthusiastic breed
of people, the Rey would stomp right over their shyness for a
thimbleful of new information.
Kirk figured that out when Tom appeared at his
side, right next to the command chair, as if he'd
been invited down there and had been there before.
Nobody did that.
Well, nobody but McCoy, but that
was different.
And Spock, but that was really different.
"How far "abv"' will we go?" Tom asked.
"You're watching, but you're not paying attention,"
Kirk told him gently. "Do you remember the
range when Chekov stated the course?"
"He said ... twelve."
"Twelve parsecs. That's twelve parsecs
up from the standard zero--reference, an imaginary
plane going through the center of the galaxy like an
arrow. It's a navigational reference."
"What can go wrong?" Tom pressed. "You're
not saying it, but I see in your face that you're
worried about something."
With tempered irritation and even a touch of
amusement, Kirk glanced at him then pushed out of
his chair to put some distance between him and the persistent
Peter Pan. Something funny about getting too
close.
"You'll see when we get there," he said.
He moved toward the helm and stood behind
Chekov.
Tom put both hands on the command chair and
took a step back. "You mean I'll see when
something goes wrong."
Couldn't fool him.
Maybe Tom was nervous. Or maybe he just
saw through the knight-in-armor appearance Kirk
tried to keep up for company, and realized that the
wild maneuver could also make them fall
irrevocably behind in the race. With every light-year
they pierced as the minutes went by, they could be
losing ground.
Correction--they .were losing ground. There was no
doubt of that.
But they were doing it on the chance of gaining sight.
"Chekov," he said, and poked his thumb toward
the starboard science console, "up there. Start
looking. Ensign Antonoff, take navigation."
"Aye, sir," Chekov said, and Antonoff
dropped from the engineering station, echoing the "aye,
sir," to the tone, and skidded into the vacant seat as
Chekov jumped to the upper deck to look for a
clear view below.
Down there other ships were having the same
problem. The cloud was throwing the beacons all over
the place. The field was scattered. They were
risen above the course now. If they could go far
enough, fast enough ...
The forward screen gave them a vision
of the galaxy below, the sweeping, thick spray of
white dust most people still called the Milky Way.
"Are we above the galaxy?" Tom asked.
"We aren't really above the galactic arm so
much as we're on the upper swell of it," Kirk
told him.
He tried to sound calm, but he was tense, awed
by what he saw, and nagged by the sensation that they were
falling behind with every second that slogged by.
"I'm betting we can beat the Ransom
Castle to the other side of that cloud," he
uttered. He was speaking to himself. If anyone
else wanted to listen, fine.
He knew Tom did, that was for sure. He
could feel those big brown golf-ball eyes right
now.
Spock stepped down to stand beside him, and let his
hands fall behind his back and clasp in that casual
manner of his, a signal that the seas were green,
the sky was blue, the desert was dusty, the race was
being run, and all was well with the world, whichever world that
might be.
Too well.
Kirk lowered his voice--ag. Not used to doing
that on his own bridge. Why didn't he just
buckle down and send those two below?
Nah ... let 'em stay.
He leaned toward Spock. "What's the
matter with you?"
Spock looked at him. "The matter with me,
sir?"
"Even you should be a little on edge with a Romulan
in the sector. What's wrong?"
"Nothing at all," Spock said, and he sounded
perplexed, as though he felt obligated
to provide something wrong to serve the captain's
intuition.
"You're too calm, Spock," Kirk
insisted. "We all are. I can't put my finger
on it ... and it's not exactly calm.
Complacent might be more accurate. I can feel
myself fighting it."
As his nominal obligation turned to concern,
Spock faced him. His voice became quiet and
his gaze was anything but cold. "I do not understand."
"You don't believe in luck, do you Mr.
Spock?"
"No, sir."
Kirk shook his head. "Well, the only
problem with not believing in luck is that you
don't believe in bad luck either."
"Got it!" Chekov gasped. "Sir! A
frequency window!" He twisted around, his face
shining. "You were right! I have the beacon!"
"Plot it," Kirk told him quickly.
"Ignore any further signals. This is the
only one we'll follow. As soon as we start
to move, it'll distort."
"Aye, sir, plotting."
While Chekov worked, Spock gestured up
to his upper console monitor. He must have set
it on automatic, because it was pouring out a
graphic picture of the now distant cloud and the
racecourse.
"Now that we can see the beacon," he said, "we
can also see sketchy readings of several vessels
within five hundred light-years of the cloud, moving
in several directions at various levels. Your
trick worked. There may be a few ships ahead of
us, but we have quite a jump on the main body."
"But look at the configuration of that cloud,
Spock, now that we can see the whole thing,"
Kirk pointed out. "Nancy's instincts were right."
"Yes," Spock agreed. "She'll come out
right on top of the beacon."
"If she comes out. Chekov, get that fix.
Let's not hover up here forever."
"I have it, sir."
"Locate ships in the immediate vicinity so that we
can plot a safe course, Ensign."
"Aye, sir ... two merchant transports
... the museum ship, I think ... the
hospital ship ... another merchant ... the
Starfleet Frigate Great Lakes on the
perimeter ... and one smaller emission,
probably a private ship."
Suddenly the feeling of calm satisfaction was
driven down. Kirk bolted past Spock so
hard that the Vulcan was bumped back. "No one
else?" he cracked.
"No one else, Captain," Chekov said.
"Confirm that, Ensign."
Chekov looked down at him and frowned.
"Sir?"
"Spock, get up there!"
Too close to call whether Kirk's ^ws or
Spock's heel hit the upper deck first.
Spock's sallow complexion was sapphired
by the sensor hood's light, his expression harsh and
dissatisfied.
"Confirmed," he said. "There are no other
vessels of cruiser thrust capacity within five
hundred twenty light-years in any direction."
Together they turned to the big forward screen.
Kirk felt his throat go dry.
"Where's the Romulan?"

Red Talon

"This? This is your fear? This? For this we risk
our ship, our lives, intrusion into another ship?
For this, all the lies, all the trickery? Standing
off a Starfleet captain? Valdus! Turn
to me and say something! I want to know why I
die!"
Romar held out both hands in a furious
encompassment of the form lying crumpled on their
deck.
"A girl?" he gasped.
His tone collected all the implications of
girlness and girlhood and everything an innocent could
be, including the silky complexion turned
to paste by a disruptor stun.
"What are you thinking!"
Nothing he did succeeded in raising a
response from his commander. Not his tone, not his
expression, not even the threatening points and flashing
hands meant as near slaps.
"You won't die," Valdus said, his voice
calm but chapped. He stood as a man in the
sun. Eyes squinted, face kinked, lips
pursed. "You must trust me. If she is what
I think she is, then she and her kind are
dangerous to us."
"Dangerous! Again you toss these ^ws over me!
How are they dangerous? Tell me what they have!"
Romar tried to ignore his own fury and read his
commander's eyes. Valdus looked different
somehow. His normal air of complaisance was gone.
Romar put his fingertips to his temples. His
head hurt, and his eyes throbbed. He wanted
to understand, but had no idea where to begin. He threw
his hands to his sides, and spat out with as much venom
as he could muster.
"Valdus!"




Chapter Eleven

Enterprise

"Emergency alert, all hands. Sensors
full capacity. Helm, come about."
"Coming about, sir. Course, minus nine five
on the descent plane. Sensors eighty-one
percent. Best we can do on the sensors, sir."
"Get us between the beacon and that cloud. Skirt
the turbulence as tightly as possible. Scan for
other vessels."
"Mr. Scott reports ready for z-minus
dive, sir. Helm is answering."
"Implement."
Jim Kirk turned to the back of the bridge as
he felt the artificial gravity fight to keep
his feet on the floor, and he looked at the two
Rey guests.
As the guests sat side by side in chairs that
weren't supposed to be there, skin tightened around
their huge eyes, lips parted to draw in the breath
of the moment. Tom sat forward on his chair,
incongruous in his plaid and denim logging duds,
his long fingers spread out over his knees.
Royenne was hunched back and down, gripping the
edges of his seat in a manner that didn't serve the
Starfleet uniform. Both manners of attention were
flattering for the crew around them.
"Might get dangerous, gentlemen," Kirk
said to them. "You may want to consider leaving the
bridge."
They looked at him as though he'd slapped
them.
Royenne nearly whispered, "Are we in the
way?"
All the captain's training and experience and
instinct and all that stuff embroidered into his
personality told him to take the opportunity
to boot them below. Clear the deck. Give them a
nice teacherly yes and that would be that. They'd be
gone, below decks, nice and safe, relatively
speaking.
"No, not really in the way," he found himself
saying. Social convention or something had him by the
throat. Was he enjoying showing off that much?
"Then we wish to stay," Tom said. "It's our
race, sir."
"Your race, but if the situation develops
into a crisis, you might not like what you see."
Tom cleared his throat. "We want
to be part of this. You have come here for us and our people ...
we want to really .be in the Federation. All your
benefits will be ours, and we want to share your
dangers. We trust you, and we're not afraid."
"Well, you ought to be," the captain said. He
didn't feel like absorbing any compliments, or
mollycoddling misplaced bravery, but something
kept him from ordering them to join their friend on the
observation deck.
Just when he had almost worked himself up to ordering them
below, Tom smiled and said, "I have never learned so
much in my whole life. Do you think I can steer a
ship someday?"
"Probably," Kirk said, "but not this ship."
Well, at least he'd dug up enough
authenticity to say that. Tom seemed to take it as
a compliment.
Good enough. Kirk turned back to the screen,
now providing them a bird's-eye view of the
galactic arm and the spread puff of residual
cloud, and instantly forgot the Rey guests.
Something else took him over.
No trail of engine exhaust, no warning
signals from anybody else ... what was it
he'd heard about silence being deafening?
"Get us back down there, Mr. Sulu," he
said. "I don't like not knowing where he is."

Red Talon

"The cloaking operation is a strain in the
midst of this discharge, Commander. Shall we veer out and
relax the cloak?"
"No, Centurion. Maintain cloaked
status."
"Very well, Commander. Maintaining status."
Simple answers, simple orders, this was
Valdus. The crew was used to him, but they were
burdened today. Was this a suicide mission or not?
If not, why couldn't he tell them his plans?
If so, why couldn't they be allowed to take part
in the glory by knowing that they were to die in action?
Why wouldn't he tell them?
He himself did not know that answer.
Even here, secluded in the transporter
chamber, speaking through the ship's crackling internal
communications system distorted by the storm outside,
Valdus could sense the burden of his crew.
Alone now in the chamber--at least, the only
one awake--he turned from the communication
panel, pressed a shoulder against the wall for
balance, and looked at the unconscious Rey
girl.
She had such a simple appearance. Narrow
features, long limbs, a quiet face troubled
from within. Large closed eyes branched with brown and
red lashes.
As the turbulent cloud shook Red Talon
around him, Valdus wrapped the ship's cloak
around himself, around his purpose, and forced himself to be
nefarious, though it wasn't his nature. He had
always been an officer of open cause, who obeyed
orders to the extreme, whose personal skills had
never shown themselves above those of his fellows. From the
beginning he had been an obedient, governable
tool of the Empire, never questioning, never straying from
the noted course, long ago yanked off the course
set for his life by one incident and the deaths of all
in a crew but himself, and somehow made a hero. His
own tractability all those years ago had put
him in command of this ship now, a destiny never set for
him by nature, and had placed this moment at his
feet.
If he did only one truly independent
action in his life, this would be that one.
"Commander!"
He jumped with surprise as the panel
blurted beside him.
Sharply he answered, "Yes, what is it,
Centurion?"
"The Federation starship! It returns,
sir!"
"Are you sure?" Valdus demanded. "It's not
a distortion you're reading?"
"Absolutely not."
Rage filled his chest as Valdus glared into the
immediate future and kept having his vision blocked
by that ship and that captain.
His hand was being forced. There was nothing he could do
about this but act as proscribed.
"Then we act," he said. "Bring tractor
systems to bear. Prepare to turn them on,
effect a hard pull, then turn them off quickly.
Stealth is the key, Centurion. Let us move
on that starship as animals move on each other."




Enterprise

"Arm phasers."
"Phasers armed ... ready, sir. Leveling
to angle with the racecourse. Approaching the
cloud."
Sulu was keeping his voice a lot steadier
than anybody felt. He was the best liar on the
bridge.
The skin prickled on the outsides of
Kirk's arms. His muscles pulled inward all
over, every sinew experiencing his emotions full-out,
and he couldn't stop it.
He didn't care if anybody saw.
"Skirt the cloud, Mr. Sulu. Mr.
Spock, Mr. Chekov, scan for Ransom
Castle. I want to know if they've gotten
themselves out of that thing."
"No sign as yet, sir," Spock said.
"I don't like this."
"Agreed."
"Captain," Tom asked, "by arming your
weapons, aren't you inviting battle?"
Kirk glanced back at him, but his attention
never really left the forward screen.
"Just being ready for battle never causes it,"
he said. "Sometimes, that's the very force that deflects
it. Complacency is what sucks the unready
into war."
If Gullrey was coming into the Federation, putting
two of their representatives on the bridge of a
Starfleet ship, advertising themselves to all the
civilizations around, peaceful and hostile, better
they know the galaxy as it really was, and know what
they were getting into.
One hard lesson Kirk had learned early in
his career in space--the innocent were rarely treated
innocently.
"Skirting the cloud, Captain," Spock
said. "Picking up some readings inside that might be
engine exhaust."
"Can you confirm?"
"Endeavoring to do so. Bursts of discharge are
refracting our sensors as before."
"I'd go on running the race," Kirk said,
"but I don't like leaving until I know what
happened to the Castle, and what happened to--"
The deck pushed up under him and drove him
to his knees. The starship bolted forward and down
several degrees on her descent plane, and
suddenly they were tumbling down what might
as well have been a spaceport grain-loading
ramp.
Kirk ended up on one knee, hanging onto
his command chair with one hand and the bridge rail with the
other. Bodies spilled by all around him. He
caught a glimpse of Tom rolling along the
upper deck when, in a sickening motion, the deck
surged until he couldn't see Tom or
anybody else anymore.
His senses winked out, and the next few seconds
were a provoked fight to get them back.

Red Talon

"Take cover quickly! Duck back into the
cloud. Condition of maneuver?"
"It worked, Commander! The Federation ship is
inside the cloud's perimeter ... being drawn
deeper toward the magnetic center. Shall I
continue tractor maneuvers?"
"Can they see us?"
Valdus put his lips close to the communication
panel, breathing against his vessel's wall as he
might the warm shoulder of a woman. The surprise
had drained him and he took the wall's support
for what it was.
A starship--probably the Enterprise, the
ship that had been haunting them since the beginning of the
race--dropping at them out of the great vacuum,
vectoring back toward the cloud and standing guard in
their line of escape.
Not a good time to attempt taking over another
vessel.
And now the Red Talon and its secrets were
dipping back into the depths of the residual cloud,
letting their prize slip farther away.
Deprived. Because of that man.
Reduced to lashing out like some kind of snake
trying to protect its meter of ground, Valdus
had struck. Now he would have to recoil or be
detected.
"We are maintaining our cloak, sir,"
came the tentative answer from his bridge.
"I do not believe we have been seen."
His command bridge. He saw it in his mind.
He should be there. Not down here, guarding his crew from
an unconscious alien girl.
Only a girl, Romar had told him.
Only a girl.
The imperilment of his ship ... even his
civilization ... was it from outside or from within?
What would it be today? Was it his choice?
"Has Subcommander Romar reported to the
bridge yet?" he asked abruptly.
"ation yet, Commander." The centurion's
voice was laced with frustration about all the things he
had not been told.
Valdus almost smiled. He'd heard the same
tone from Romar only minutes ago. The tell
me tone.
"Release the Federation ship from our tractor
beams at one point of drag per second.
Make it gradual, uneven. Then retreat
slowly. Take care not to stir up the cloud or
make any alerting of our presence here. Let the
internal turbulence draw the starship in now."
"Shall I continue conquest maneuvers upon the
merchant ship?"
"Not yet. Another chance will come. Retreat, and
we will leave the cloud at another angle. Make
all maneuvers subtle ones, Centurion ...
let us not be seen."


Enterprise

"Free drift! No steering capacity at
all!"
The sheer power it takes to slam a Starfleet
heavy cruiser forty feet sideways in open
space is enough to break legs and spines and get
anyone's attention, including the ship's computer.
Yellow alert, yellow alert ... all
hands, brace for turbulence ... brace for
tur--"
And even Uhura's silky voice was choked
away as she was thrown from her chair when the ship
pitched forward and to port.
Lights popped before the captain's eyes.
White ones, yellow ones, the occasional little red
or blue one. All he saw was Uhura and a
few moving forms, then only the lights.
"Don't try to get up, sir--"
Whose voice was that?
There were hands holding him down. He fought
to climb back up through the corridor of lights
by counting how many hands were holding him down. One on
his right shoulder, one on his elbow, one on the other
elbow ... who on the bridge had three hands?
His head pounded, drowning out all other
noises, hammering down a retching nausea. He
clawed feebly at the arms extending from those hands.
Fabric--
"Medical emergency! Dr. McCoy to the
bridge. The captain is down!"
"Graphic visual, Mr. Chekov."
Spock's voice. "Engineering, report!"
"Scott here. There's a pocket of
gravitons caught in the flow of that cloud, sir.
It's taking every pellet of IPS to hold our
position and not be drawn deeper inside.
Reaction exhaust is pushing tolerance, thermal
stresses are above critical per unit, and
field polarity is unstable. I'll have numbers
for you in two minutes."
"Valve off a portion of our reactants if
you can't stabilize them."
"It'll cost us thrust, Mr. Spock."
"We'll have to manage."
"Right away, sir. Scott out."
"Shields up, fifty percent."
"Shields, fifty percent, sir."
That was Chekov, and Spock was running things.
Kirk could see the lean blue and black form above
him, floating against the lights. Spock's voice
sounded shaky.
No, not shaky. Tentative ... forced. There
was a difference. As though Spock was fighting for
stability. Was he hurt too?
"No, I'm not down," Kirk choked. His
chest curved as he tried to force himself to a sitting
position using just his diaphragm muscles.
Slamming aside the hands that held him down,
he rolled to his knees, fighting against the
centrifugal forces pulling him toward the port
deck. He fixed his eyes on Chekov, clinging
to the science subsystems monitor, hammering
controls to bring automatic compensators back
on line, which at the moment weren't operating
automatically enough, and Uhura was crawling
to help him. All around, others struggled back
to their posts. The yellow alert Klaxon howled in
his ears and told him they were stabilizing, or the
ship would've automatically gone to red alert.
Well, it wasn't much, but it was something. With his
mind he clung to that flashing yellow gash on the
wall and used it to drag himself to his feet.
"But the doctor's coming, sir--"
Kirk shoved Sulu off. "It's just my head,
Lieutenant."
"But sir!"
"I'll think with my ears if necessary. Get your
hands off me."
"Aye, so--"
"Condition, Mr. Spock. What hit us?"
Spock stepped across the lower deck, reached for
him, and helped him get to his feet.
"A gravity well," the Vulcan said.
Kirk frowned. "Which is?"
"We produce gravity without mass
by artificial high speed spinning of
gravitons," Spock told him. "However, such
conditions can be created in nature if enough
free-floating gravitons are caught in a
spinning phenomenon. This residual cloud is still
spinning with momentum from its original collision and
has collected a large number of gravitons
over the millions of years. They spool down
into a drain, are rejected at the bottom, and
pulled back in. Gravitons, combined with the
energy of the spin, are creating a gravity well.
Like the energy of warm water creating a typhoon,
this well is self-perpetuating as long as it has
the energy to spin."
"Are you telling me we're caught in the
remains of a collision that happened six million
years ago?"
"Yes. Residual momentum." Spock
pointed to the small visual readout on Sulu's
console. It showed a serrated blue tornado of
corrugated space--the computer's enhanced idea
of what it was reading out there. "The current is
funnel-shaped and rifled, creating a washboard
effect, which is responsible for the turbulence
we're experiencing. We're caught in the
spooling action, near the top."
Kirk squinted at the picture until his
eyes hurt. "If the gravitons are being
drawn down and spat out the bottom, can we go
down and get spat out too?"
Spock glanced at him. "Not without being
crushed. The power down there is enormous."
"How big is it, Spock?"
Spock pushed the captain to his command chair so
he could lean on it, then crossed to Sulu's
console and tapped into the science readouts. He
fell suddenly silent.
Kirk clamped his lips. He knew what
Spock was doing--he'd have to give him the time to do
it. By measuring areas of stress on the
ship's primary hull, the computer could project
upon that and come up with a figure. That figure would
show them the size of the trap they were caught in.
It could be a light-year across and ten thick in a
cloud this size. Like a tree, growth depended upon
a thousand conditions in the galactic garden.
Briefly subjugated by his pounding head,
Kirk resisted the urge to go over there and pound an
answer out of the computer. Spock would do that. It was
afraid of him.
Suddenly the ship heaved and the deck dropped out
from under them again. Kirk ended up bent in two over
the helm, with Spock and Sulu clinging to the console
at his sides.
He let his chest take his weight, reached down
with both hands, floundered until he found cloth,
clawed on, and started to haul.
At his sides, Sulu fumbled for his chair, and
Spock levered to his feet and at the same time
kept the captain from slipping to his knees again.
Sulu gulped, "Thank you, sir,"
probably just to get Kirk to let go of him.
So he did, and pushed himself off the helm and
back toward his chair, pulling Spock up with
him.
The turbolift hissed open and McCoy
appeared, white as frost and staggering. His eyes were
wide as he made his way down the tilted deck
between the stunned Rey guests to the rail.
"Jim, sit down!"
"I can't right now," Kirk snapped.
"Lieutenant, patch me through to engineering."
"Aye, sir--Mr. Scott, sir."
Kirk slid sideways into his seat and held
on. "Scotty, can't we get control over this?"
"This is the control, sir." Scott's
voice sounded strained and annoyed, but not worried.
A good sign.
"Suggestions?"
"It's a storm, sir. We've got to put
our nose to it and plow against the wind until we're
clear."
"Not sideways under these conditions?"
"ation recommended."
"Noted. Keep on top of it. We'll do it
your way."
"Aye, sir. Engine room out."
The intercom clicked almost imperceptibly
against the howls and bleeping of other emergency
systems. Kirk straightened, pressing
a shoulder against the back cushion of his chair, and
raised an arm to intercept McCoy's hand as the
doctor tried to bring a medical scanner toward
his head.
"I said not now, Doctor. Mr. Sulu, one
quarter impulse. Any sign of the Ransom
Castle? It could be caught in this thing too."
"Why can't we move sideways against this thing,
Jim?" McCoy asked.
"The ship's designed to move forward
primarily and aft secondarily," Kirk told
him, seeing the maneuvers in his aching head.
"Moving abeam is the highest level of stress
on both hull and engines."
"Captain," Uhura called, calmly but
abruptly, "receiveg a signal ..." She
paused to adjust her instruments and listen. A
second ago she had been sure of something, and now
she wasn't.
Kirk turned to her and did the thing he hated
most. He waited. Giving orders instantly
relegated him to an observer when he really
wanted to do something with his hands. He should take up
knitting. He could give orders and knit.
Finally impatience got the best of him.
"Lieutenant, do you have a report?" he urged.
"Is it the Castle?"
"One moment, please, sir."
Kirk made an ugly sound in the bottom of
his throat and twisted around to McCoy, who was
hanging on to the back of the command chair and forcing it
against its tendency to swivel with the turbulence.
"All right, Doctor, hurry it up."
"You should report to sickbay, but I know I'm
barking up a tree with that one."
"Have you got a prognosis or not?"
"Yes. You hit your head on the rail.
Hold still for three seconds."
"You've got two."
"Jim," McCoy began, then he paused.
He glanced behind them at Tom and Royenne, but the
Rey guests were busy trying to stay on their
feet. As he pressed a medicated pad to the
bruise on the back of the captain's head, he
leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. "There's
something about these Rey people that I can't put my finger
on. They read out as essentially humanoid,
along the same lines of sensible evolution as you
or I, or any mammal. Most things the same,
a few things different, eyes, noses,
mouths--my instruments don't tell me anything,
but all my medical instincts tell me there's
something."
Kirk jerked forward and snarled, "There's something
on that pad is where there's something. What is that?"
"It's medicated."
"It hurts. Back it off."
McCoy scowled with grim disapproval.
"You're a bad boy, Captain."
"Sir," Uhura called, "receiveg contact with the
Light-ship Hiawatha, sir. Apparently she
was placed here to mark this well of turbulence."
"Little late."
"Aye, sir."
"Mark the contact, Lieutenant." Kirk
eyed the swarming blue mess on the forward screen
and wanted to rub his eyes and wave a magic wand
so he could see through it. The churning blue-black
garble made him feel like a drunk on wood
alcohol.
As he felt McCoy's hand on his arm,
steadying him in the chair and keeping him down, he
focused his vigilance at the screen and the
undissipated energy that held the starship in
check. And he knew that thing out there wasn't his
real menace.
"It was him," he said.
The doctor leaned forward to see if there was
anything he could do.
Jim Kirk stared relentlessly at the screen.
"He's out there, Bones ... I can hear his
heart beating."

















RED ALERT

Chapter Twelve

Red Talon

Hands could be eyes. Romar knew.
Through half his childhood he had been blind.
When science gave him back the eyes nature
had taken, he had vowed never to abandon the credit
of having once been blind. He kept his senses
sharp, paid attention to other than the obvious,
remembered to listen. The breathing of another person
could reveal that person's thoughts. One who was once
blind, if he didn't forget, could move in
places where others would only stumble.
Such places were many on a converted Klingon star
cruiser. Many hidden and dark places.
Here, in the thorny electrical bowels of a
captured alien vessel from the wars of another
lifetime, Romar closed his eyes and followed his
hands and his ears. His finely tuned hearing could
perceive tiny crackles, faults in the power
flows. Harmless faults, but as good as a map for
such as he, the crackles led him through the innards of
Red Talon.
When he got to an appropriate place, a
cross section of electronics, he moved his
legs up underneath him and sat down in the cramped
space with his head hunched down and the back of his
neck scraping the top of the crawlway. It
wasn't even meant to be a crawlway--t's how
small it was.
Power flow valves. Very simple, basic,
no secret technology. All over the ship.
He felt them under his palms. Blood in a
body. Like any blood, it could be made to clot.
The clot would cause backups, until the body
cried out in agony and exploded.
If Valdus was going against the Empire, there
would have to be that explosion. A fairly simple
idea, not particularly clever.
But it was all Romar could think to do.
The first thing he could do would be to kill Valdus,
and he would do that if Valdus had somehow lost his
mind, but Romar knew such an act wouldn't be
easy and probably couldn't be done honorably.
He would rather blow up the ship.
He sat in the cramped huddle until his
legs were numb and his feet tingling.
When he was finished, he was ready
to incinerate the Red Talon. He felt a
twinge of sorrow, but none of regret. He was the
ship's subcommander. If the commander was mad, it
befell the subcommander to destroy him or destroy
the ship, or both, in order to protect the
Empire.
With a muttered explanation to the walls, he
began his long crawl back through the blackness,
listening to the unremitting crackles fade behind
him.
If we live, he thought, I shall have
someone open the bulkhead and effect repairs on
the crackles. If Valdus fails to tell me
the truth ...
A different ending to the venture.
He broke through the slice he'd taken out of the
wall and into the lighted corridor and held a hand
over his eyes until they became adjusted. Still
sensitive, all these years later. These
corridors always hurt a little. Had he gotten
himself promoted time after time in order to serve on the
dim and quiet bridge? Perh.
No one would notice the gash in the wall.
Red Talon had many gashes in her old
hull, inside and out. When the smoke from the cutting
torch was drawn out by the ventilation system and the
wall cooled, this would be just another gash.
He dusted his jacket free of lingering dirt from
inside the walls, ignored a passing crewman
who took care to glance only shortly at him,
then strode down the corridor.
The ship was large and imposing, yes, but from the
inside there seemed to be too much space. Romar
preferred the tight quarters of smaller, quicker
vessels. Larger ships made larger targets.
Usually larger problems.
He went directly to the transporter area,
through the door opening without breaking stride--
luckily the door panel slid open just right for
him to make such an entrance--and ended up standing between
the two guards who had been posted inside the
door.
On the edge of the transporter platform,
Valdus sat with his knees up and his shoulders
slumped, staring in mute contemplation at the Rey
girl they had captured. She lay now on the
deck between the control console and the platform, still
insensible from disruptor sting.
Romar chewed on his lip. He had hoped things
would have improved, changed.
He accepted that, reviewed in his mind his own
movements in the veins of the ship, and went to sit
down on the edge of the platform beside his commander.
The two of them sat there for a pitifully long
time.
Silence ate at them.
Valdus never looked at anything but the girl.
"Send the guards out," he said finally.
Blinking, Romar glanced at him, then turned
to the guards and called, "Wait in the
corridor."
"Yes, Subcommander," the senior of them said,
and they both went outside.
Now there was silence and loneliness, too. Romar
looked absurdly at the starch white door
panel and suddenly missed even the company of low
level guards.
"Where were you?" Valdus asked him. "I needed
you on the bridge."
"I was occupied."
"We had an action while you were occupied. I
ordered an assault upon the merchant vessel, but
as we moved, a Starfleet ship appeared
suddenly. I was forced to abandon the merchant conquest
and throw tractor beams on the starship to yank them
off course and into the cloud. Now we linger in the
periphery of the storm."
"They didn't see us?"
"No," Valdus said, "but he feels us."
Wariness nearly approaching superstition showed in his
face. "Let nature have them. We will slip out
of the cloud at another point, pretend to continue the
race, and pursue my target."
Romar squeezed his eyes shut. They ached
now. "Commander, why do you want that ship? You have this
... person ... you have looked at her, and now you
want the ship she was on?"
"I wanted to look at a Rey," Valdus
said, "to hear my memory speak more loudly, to see
if it lied. But it doesn't lie. Now that I
see her, I remember everything."
Nauseated, Romar hunched forward until his
chin almost touched his knees, and moaned, "And now you
tell me we must conquer a merchant ship ..."
"You know, Romar," Valdus said quietly,
gazing at the girl on the deck, "expansionism
is part of our evolution. Not only socially, but
physically, too ... it keeps us strong. If
someone were to conquer us, we'd consider it perfectly
normal. We know that eventually one
race will dominate the galaxy. It's our duty
to be sure it is our race that dominates.
There's nothing wrong with conquest. It's been
normal for eons ... until the Federation came
along to act as a stopgap against us. They've
taken away our ability to expand. Therefore, they
prevent us from evolving. They protect weak
races who would otherwise be absorbed by a larger
power."
He paused and changed the position of his legs,
taking the time to think. Without blinking he looked at
the unconscious Rey girl.
"By protecting weaker races," he mused, "the
Federation is diluting their own strength and
guaranteeing that they themselves will eventually be conquered.
To put more and more people on the cart, with fewer and fewer
drawing the cart ... a civilization puts the
blade to its own throat this way."
He kept staring at the girl, at her silvery
hair and large closed eyes, at her simple
shirt and wrap skirt.
Romar stared at the girl, too.
"I've put a bomb on the ship," he said.
Valdus looked for a moment as though he'd been
struck in the chest, then actually smiled and looked
disapprovingly at his subcommander.
"You have no faith in me," he said.
"I have tremendous faith in you," Romar
admitted. "But presently I am confused. When
I'm confused, I pick one thing to do and I do
it."
They sat together in a longer silence, not looking
at each other, but only surveying their captive.
"I would hate you for this," Valdus said finally,
"if I did not understand."
Pricked by the idea of having to ask another
question, Romar gritted his teeth to do it. "What do
you understand?"
"That she is doing something to us."
Romar wiped his brow and felt suddenly hot.
"She," he said, "is unconscious, Commander."
"But she is doing something. Can't you feel it?"
"I don't feel anything from her, Commander."
"You're hot, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am warm, but I've been working."
"Planting your bomb."
"Yes."
With a subdued nod, Valdus drew a long
breath, as though searching for the right ^ws.
"You see the movement in her legs and
arms. Her body knows it has been stunned.
She's doing something to us. Making us warm and
uneasy."
"Commander ..."
"Look at her. Look, Romar." He
clasped Romar's elbow and squeezed it until
the other man winced and did as he said. "Her
body moves. Her face is disturbed. That
tension is coming to us. Through the air, to us!"
Romar shook the hand away and stood up.
"Yes, I am fatigued, of course, and this is
what I feel."
"Because you have been stunned," Valdus insisted.
Romar pointed at the Rey girl as she lay
twitching on the deck and irritably said, "She
has been stunned!"
"And she is giving it to you. If you strike
me--" Valdus held up a warning finger even as
Romar pulled back to smash his own knuckles
into Valdus's face. "I will have to restrain you.
Or kill you. So lower that hand."
Breathing heavily for some reason, Romar
willed himself to stop, his hand still drawn back,
ready to strike. Knotting his fingers, he glared
down at his commander and held still to hear what
Valdus would say at such a moment.
"And I have spent my life practicing for this
moment," Valdus said. "To resist this moment. I
will stay sane one minute longer than you will, my
friend, and the last gesture will be mine. So sit
down."
"I can't sit down," Romar choked. He
clutched one wrist with the other hand as though to hold his
limbs in place. "I'm distressed."
"The ghastliness of what I know," Valdus
told him, "distresses me too."
Romar paced away.
Being near to his commander was confusing. His
purpose had seemed so clear earlier. Now, as
he looked at Valdus, at those eyes he had
read so often, the steadiness he had served for years,
he couldn't think.
"I can trigger the explosion from any console on
the ship," he said.
Valdus looked up at him. "Why didn't
you arrange a hand remote? That's what I
would've done."
Romar sank on a shoulder against the bulkhead.
He stared at his commander until his eyes ached.
"After all," Valdus commented, "I
could knock you down." He leaned back a little,
shifted his feet again in their heavy boots, and added
casually, "I'll help you do one. Then I'll
have to be very sure of myself. Is it a chain reaction
trigger?"
"Stop! Stop talking."
Romar paced the transporter area twice,
three times, four, trying to come up with an
explanation. Something about the Rey girl. Something
about the Rey people. Something from the deep past in
Valdus's life, something Valdus was very sure
about, enough that he didn't even raise his voice when
he talked about this fundamental, irreversible
threat.
Whatever it was.
Valdus just let him pace.
Suddenly Romar made his decision and turned,
pointing at the Rey girl on the floor.
"Wake her up."
Valdus came alive and rose to his feet.
"No! I'm not--ready!"
"Ready for what? What happens when she
awakens?" Letting his question ring, Romar moved to the
transporter control panel and fingered the
communications grid. "Medical section!"
"No!"
Valdus snatched him by the arm, but Romar was
young and could stand the pressure of his Commander's
grip. He let his arm ache and shouted
into Valdus's face.
"Why not! Awaken her and face her! Are you a
coward?"
Pushing away with both hands, Valdus suddenly
went stiff as a log and backed off the length of the
girl on the deck.
His brows lowered and drew tight. His eyes were
heavy--laden with undefined torment. His chest
contracted as his respiration grew shallow and he
battled his own apprehension.
He stared at Romar, his lower lip pressed
upward and breath coming in shots.
Romar forced himself to be silent as his commander
struggled with past and present and some undcld
ugliness that could mysteriously endanger the
Empire.
An otherwise calm leader turned before
Romar's eyes into a gargoyle, an image of
disfigurement and gracelessness. Valdus's
battle with himself was a sight to behold. After a
few seconds, Romar didn't have any
more trouble remaining quiet for he himself had said
something to cause this volcano to shudder. And he
wasn't even sure what that something had been.
When Romar thought his back would break from the
tension, Valdus suddenly drew a single sharp
breath.
"All right," he choked. "Awaken her."

Chapter Thirteen

Enterprise

"Go to red alert. Emergency status, all
decks. Excessive turbulence."
James Kirk's voice was all steel and
firm resolve as it echoed through his ship. It
sounded a lot steadier than his stomach.
Luckily, his stomach was private and he
didn't have to tell anybody about it if he
didn't want to. He'd rather face a dozen
Romulan ships than that raw force of nature
swirling on the viewscreen. Enemies could be
outsmarted, outgunned.
Everyone would be awake and working now, most of the
positions double-manned, crew teaming up.
On the bridge, the Klaxon was turned off so
the bridge officers could work without shouting. Kirk
was sure he heard the red alert horns throbbing
below him, even though the designers insisted the
starship's bulkheads were soundproof.
The ship bucked and dropped again. Half his
mind went to Spock, the other half to Scott in
the engineering section.
He resisted an urge to smack the comm unit.
Calling down there wouldn't do any good. Scott
would be distracted from his work, and all he'd be able
to report was that he was doing his best.
The ship slipped sideways and threw
everybody to port. Kirk lost his grip on his
command chair and ended up bent forward over the rail.
Like a treadle the bridge heaved and dropped
several times before he could even look up. Knowing the
crew would be watching him, glancing at him to see
how hurt they should be, he pressed both palms
against the rail and shoved himself up against the
pressure and back into his chair.
Pressing an aching shoulder against the chair for
balance as the deck dropped another ten degrees
on one side, Kirk barked, "Forward thrust
one-third sublight."
Standing--not sitting--at the helm with his feet
spread apart and his body hunched over his console,
Sulu nodded. "Forward thrust, sir. One-third
sublight."
"Keep fighting it, gentlemen," Kirk
encouraged them. "Give engineering a chance to get
its bearings."
He eyed Spock, who was working hard at the
computer controls, getting hyperaccurate
measurements of the well and its pulse spikes
to see if they couldn't find a pattern to push
against.
Working was an added complication to just hanging on.
One hand for yourself and one for the ship. Old adages
came back to life at these times, and screamed for
attention.
The artificial gravity system whined as the
ship pivoted against it, a gyroscope forced
to turn its axis in another direction. If
space had an "up", the ship was turning upward,
and twisting to one side, being dragged down into the
churning mouth of the gravity well. The crew was being
heaved like bugs on a boomerang.
"One step at a time, gentlemen," he warned,
keeping his voice a link between his mind and his
bridge crew. "Handle each stress as it
presents itself. Spock--"
"Vector force at right angles, sir," the
first officer anticipated. "Attempting
to compensate."
"Ship's power? Can we crank out of it?"
"Possibly."
"Lieutenant Uhura, try to release a
recorder marker. If it has high enough thrust, it
may shoot free of the well and make way into the
race lanes. Specify location of this anomaly
and that any markers stationed here have drifted and are no
longer viable for safety."
"Aye, sir, recording--"
Kirk wanted to put his hands on something, steer
something, do something--
Then Uhura's voice broke into his thoughts.
"Contact, Captain--.Ransom Castle."
"Put her on."
"This is Nancy. What are you doing inside
there? Did you follow us through?"
Her voice was crackling, distorted.
Kirk straightened in his chair. Too late
he realized he had just failed to read her tone,
her inflections, measure the ^ws she had
chosen to use--^the measurements were trained into him,
but he hadn't done it. Maybe McCoy was right
and he needed treatment.
"No, we didn't follow you. We were sucked
in. Some kind of gravitational spin force. You
must have just missed it. Are you clear of the cloud?"
"I told you I'd get through, didn't
I?"
"Have you seen the Romulan vessel? We've
lost contact with them and believe they might be in the
cloud."
"allyeah, they were going to pirate my ship and
take my hold full of nothing. Or maybe
it's my ship they want, the whole forty-year-old
patched-up bundle of her."
Kirk glanced at McCoy, just to make sure
he wasn't crazy and she really was galled at
having to talk to him.
The doctor could offer only a one-shouldered
shrug as he clung to the command chair.
"I'll take that as a no," Kirk said.
Though he too was hanging on to the chair to keep
from slipping down the bucking deck, he almost
smiled. Damned if she hadn't gotten her ship
in and out of that cloud after all. She'd been right about
her crew and her vessel.
Jim Kirk had heard all the superlatives
applied to himself, wonderful ^ws he had inherited
from the Enterprise captains who came before him,
whom he didn't dare let down. And his own
reputation--the most rash, the bravest, the most
confident, the most brazen, the one who had gone
farther than anyone else and somehow come back.
While those ^ws were compliments and epithets all
rolled into a package any wild dog would be
proud of, he found himself bolstered by finding out that he
wasn't the only one of a breed--even if he
found that out from Nancy Ransom.
Nobody with any sense really wanted to be the
only one.
"Do you want help getting out?"
"Negative," Kirk quickly told her.
"Under no circumstances approach us. Continue
on the racecourse and notify one of the other
Starfleet entrants to remain alert on the
Starfleet channel. If we need assistance,
we'll broadcast an SOS. Enterprise
out."
"Uh ... wait a minute."
His body aching, Kirk shifted in his
seat, felt the weight of McCoy leaning against the
chair back to keep from falling, and watched his
crew try to keep the bucking ship from twisting apart
inside the cloud. The gravitational currents had
a grip on the primary hull, the secondary
hull, and both nacelles and their struts, all
at different tolerances. This was the kind of thing that
could rip a ship apart like a piece of paper.
They had to use the ship's deflectors and
internal artificial gravity to keep those
tolerances near equal, or they were scrap
metal.
All he needed was more of Nancy Ransom.
"Go ahead," he said, and forced himself not to slap
a hurry up on the bottom of that.
It was five seconds before Nancy
responded.
"We had kind of a rough ride."
Kirk leaned forward. "You need assistance?"
"ationo ... I'm just constrained by Federation
Interstellar Maritime Collision Regulations,
according to Rule 38, paragraph 2, to report the
following to the nearest Starfleet vessel of
Scout Class or above. We've had one death
aboard, apparently accidental. Okay, I've
done it. Ransom out."
"Wait a minute!" McCoy shouted.
"Ransom!" Kirk pushed out of his chair.
"State the nature of your casualty."
"It was an accident. Turbulence, I
guess. I've reported it. That's all I have
to d."
"Read the rest of the order, Captain," Kirk
insisted. "I have requirements here too. I'm
obligated to conduct a Level Three
investigation."
"I don't want you here."
"I'll go," McCoy interrupted.
"Maybe you don't," Kirk said. "But at
least let me send a team to investigate."
Behind him, McCoy said, "I should go."
"Keep your details to yourself, Kirk. I
don't need any Starfleet interference on board
my ship, least of all be beholdin' to y."
The doctor pulled himself along the arm of the command
chair. "I want to go."
Kirk stepped forward between Sulu and the ensign
at navigation.
"Nancy, listen to me. It doesn't matter
what you think of me. I admit you were
right. There was something to be gained by going through the
cloud. And you knew your ship, your crew, and you
made it through. That's the sign of a good captain.
A little faith, a little knowledge, a little risk. But there's
more for a good captain to do." He paused, and wished
he could do the listening for her. "You owe this to the
crewman you lost."
McCoy sidled up beside him. "I think I
ought to go."
Not five seconds went by before the unexpected,
unlikely, and certainly unpredictable answer
bunched through the channel, so sharply that it sounded like
just another electrical crackle.
"All right."
* * *
"Stand by, Castle."
The situation went ticklish as Uhura tapped
off the vocal connections and held the channel
open. Kirk didn't look around. He knew
she'd done it.
"What just happened?" he murmured. He
gazed into the forward screen's vision of the
purple-blue cloud, with its electrical
charges cricketing everywhere, and at the grave,
ghostly figure of Ransom Castle turning
on the screen's sensor periphery. If not for the
form of running lights outlining the ship, he would
never have even noticed that she was out there.
"Did Nancy Ransom just agree
to Starfleet intervention? Without an argument?"
"There's been a death on her ship," McCoy
simply said. "I know how you would be feeling."
Kirk turned to him. "And when's the last time
I heard you begging to have your atoms scrambled?"
"Now, don't hold that over my head."
"Then explain it."
McCoy paused, realizing his joke had
fizzled under the stress of the moment and the captain
wasn't in a mood for quips.
"Merchant ships don't carry medical
officers, and I don't want those people setting
broken legs with soup spoons."
But Kirk didn't turn away. "What
else?"
The doctor fidgeted, his ice blue eyes
moving with self-consciousness. "Well ... you have a
feeling there's more going on than a race," he
said, "and I trust your impulses."
Kirk gazed at him a moment. "Mr.
Spock, stability of transporter under
these conditions?"
Spock turned from what he was doing to another
secondary console and tapped in.
"Transporter conduits read stable ... matter
stream transmission on line, buffer operating
... however, target scanners are fluctuating
nominally due to ionization within the cloud."
"Thank you. It'll have to wait, Bones."
"Jim--"
Kirk shook his hand off, and a jolt nearly
threw McCoy to the deck. "You're dismissed,
doctor. This isn't the time."
"Jim, how many times have you and Spock insisted
on beaming into dangerous situations to come to somebody
else's aid? Why would you deny me the chance to do that
when I'm the one who swore the oath to do it?"
"It isn't safe. You could materialize two
feet outside the Castle's hull."
Spock heard them and as he leaned on the
console, he twisted around enough to say,
"Unlikely, Captain, if we use the
Castle's transporter instead of ours, using
our transporter pads as homing points."
"That's right!" McCoy said. "Receiveg is a
lot easier for those popcorn machines than
sending. Scotty told me that."
Kirk glowered. "I'll have a ^w with him
later."
McCoy pushed off the command chair's back and
made his way past Tom and Royenne to the upper
deck. "I'll get my pack and be waiting in the
transporter room. As soon as that thing can be
aimed and fired, beam me over there so I can do my
job."

Red Talon

The mania seized him like poison advancing
through his system.
Romar's eyes hurt and his arms and legs
twitched. How had he lived so long among
dcvrs?
Insane mutineers--how had he survived here?
Every voice was threatening, every sound shrill, jarring.
He smelled the noxious stench of his own terror,
felt his brain shattering--the nightmare sensation of a
brittle body, as though a movement would crack
him in half, but failing to move would melt him.
He wanted to look away, but he could only
stare at the Rey girl, and she stared
back at him.
She was pressed against the wall of the
transporter chamber, a cave into which there was no more
retreat. She could only stare in her horror at
them.
Romar's hand trembled, tightened around the
hypodermic that had brought the girl back from her
stirring unconsciousness. He was standing alone in
front of her where a moment ago there had been two
interns from the medical team, but they had fled.
Madness ... they were all consumed by a mania and
he was the only one on the ship who hadn't been
caught in the web of treason. They were patently
psychotic! The entire crew, all this time! How
could he have been ignorant to it?
A clapper was ringing in his mind, maddening him, but
he fought it. How were they doing this?
Hadn't he planted a bomb? He should go
to it! He should ignite it--
A movement in his periphery snatched his
attention from the Rey girl--she was nothing, just a
blemish--and what he saw was his commander's jacket
flashing by, and he lunged.
Romar caught the hem of Valdus's sleeve
as Valdus dodged for the entranceway, but tripped.
As their bodies fell in a staggering heap at the
door, the panel slid open, and out in the
corridor crewmen were running frantically and at
least two others were coiled in a personal
battle on the corridor deck.
Escaping!
Romar vowed not to let them go.
"No! Cowardffwas He clawed at the leg of the
man whose orders he once cherished and defended.
"Animal!"
Valdus didn't say anything, but fought him with
impunity, boxing his face until Romar was
beaten back.
Dizzy, his face bruised, his head spinning,
Romar found himself on his knees, staring at the
floor. A puddle of lime blood spread there
--his nose was bleeding.
He pressed a sleeve to it, snorted so
violently that he almost passed out, and staggered
to his feet.
With a passing glance at the Rey girl, hiding
in the transporter chamber racked with terror, he
stumbled toward the transporter console.
He could do it from here. He could incinerate the
ship and its poison with it. If he could
just find the key pattern ... foolish console!
Built an age ago, never brought up to date!
Traitors had been at work here--t was it!
"Treason, treason," he hissed, teeth
grinding as though he had a traitor by the jugular
between them.
The Rey girl whimpered, her brow drawn
tight, her cheeks pasty, legs throttling and
failing to keep up her meager weight. Her arms
were spread out at her sides against the back wall
of the transporter chamber. No where to run.
Romar almost had it. He knew the orders
to tap into the computer, how to make it go through the
ship's walls and find his trick and set it
afire. Almost there. Almost there--
--when the door panel flushed open and the buzz
of a disruptor filled the air.
A chrome orange beam shot into the room, and
it made a hungry sound.





Chapter Fourteen

Red Talon

The hands before him were clay white. He stared
down at the creased knuckles, the bleached
fingernails, the swollen veins like winter ivy.
Eyes were burning ...
Against every impulse he had been following, he
raised one of those hands and pressed the back of it
to his eyes.
He staggered back until the bulkhead stopped
him. His head began to clear slowly. Madness
peeled back in thin strips, one at a time.
In the haze of immediate memory, a buzzing flash
... the sizzling shape of the Rey girl, caught
in an instant of horror, a glowing mass that
expanded, then dissipated. Her expression somehow
lasted much longer than her death.
Perhaps it only seemed so ...
Romar sagged against the wall, one knee bent
almost to the floor. Waves of his own paranoia
flooded through him, each less than the one before, and the
pounding of his heart in his throat started to lessen enough
for him to notice.
He flattened a hand against the wall
to steady himself, and drew breath after breath.
Movement in the room ... he wasn't alone.
Valdus hovered nearby.
Too near--Romar wanted to strike out,
drive him away, pierce him through the eyes,
kill him.
But ... why?
Strike his commander? The idea retreated,
became more foreign, with every breath Romar drew.
Valdus approached slowly from the entranceway,
still holding his disruptor pistol upward as though
somehow the Rey witch would return and weave her
intangible web around them again, to strangle them again.
He reached out and took Romar's arm, and in the
residue of madness, Romar yanked away from
him.
The air was still crackling. They still felt on their
skin the remnants of disruptor fire. Romar
stared at Valdus, battling within himself to decide
whether he should submit or strike out. For an
instant longer he truly didn't know what to do
or who was enemy and who friend.
Then Valdus sighed and lowered his weapon, but
made no more attempts to touch Romar or help
in any way. He seemed willing to wait.
"You resisted well," he said, "considering."
Feeling burned and short-winded, hollow-eyed
as he stared across the short space at Valdus,
Romar rolled against the wall until both
shoulders were pressed back against it and he could
straighten his legs.
When he found his breath--or some of it, he
gasped, "Why did you ... keep this secret
to yourself!"
Valdus let the echo fade, then quietly
answered, "Would you believe me had you not felt it
for yourself?"
Simple truth.
Romar's shudders of rage left him weak.
He didn't argue. He watched as his commander
looked away.
"Even I wasn't sure," Valdus
murmured, gazing at the empty transporter
cubicle. "I had to convince myself as much as you.
Memory is a trick, Romar. I couldn't
trust it. When I felt it again, the unsureness
of the years peeled away. All the doubts I have
harbored for decades suddenly cracked. I
wasn't imagining or remembering incorrectly."
He left Romar to his recovery and
paced toward the empty chamber where minutes ago
the great threat of his life had shriveled before his
weapon.
"I knew they could do something," he said.
"Emit a smell, cause a thought, put something
into our atmosphere ... something that made us go
mad. But I didn't know who they were or where they
were from. There was no planet nearby ... I thought
perhaps I was mistaken. Until the Federation found
them for us. As the galaxy unfolded and the Empire
was held in tighter and tighter check, I realized
what a weapon this could be against us if the Federation were
to discover it."
Stumbling, Romar caught himself on the
transporter control unit and pulled himself around
to the front of it. "I almost ... I almost ..."
"Yes," Valdus said. "You almost did ...
what I did."
They stood together side by side, both nearly
exhausted from this bizarre experience, each trying
to piece together the past and finding it most
unsatisfying.
"The attack upon the Scorah?" Romar
rasped. "All the legends--"
"Are half true." Holding a palm up at
the transporter chamber, Valdus said, "That
... was the attack. They came aboard, as
subtle as that girl. As their fear spread among
us, we saw each other as enemies and were killing
each other. Except for me. I turned and
ran."
Romar looked at him. How could a statement like
that be made so easily? He knew if he tried
to say such a thing, his tongue would freeze in his
mouth. Had Valdus lived with this so long?
"It has haunted me my whole life. I
spent my life trying to prove my worth
to myself," Valdus went on, "but in my soul I
was deathly afraid. I only survived ..."
This time his strength gave way. Shame flushed
his face and he lowered his eyes. His shoulders
sagged. He turned from the chamber and from Romar.
"I only survived because I was more afraid
than angry."
The room seemed unduly cold.
They were both shivering, but for different reasons.
Valdus sat down on the edge of the platform and
sighed.
"I couldn't return with the truth ... that we
all went insane and I destroyed the
ship and murdered my crewmates, my commanders.
Even if I had said it, who would have believed? So
I invented a tale. An attack of which I was the
only survivor. I shunned celebration. I
despised myself for not having the will to think my way
through what happened. Weakness ... I don't know,
Romar. This time, I killed the Rey instead of
my own crew. Experience, most likely. I have
taught myself to focus on the enemy ... determined
such a mistake would never come at my hand again."
"How can the humans deal with them?" Romar
coughed.
"I've pondered that. Two possibilities.
Either the humans have simply never been in a threat
situation with these fear-projectors yet or ..."
"Or this only affects those of our descent!
Commander--" Romar almost gagged on his own ^ws, but
forced them out. "A weapon against us!"
"Yes." Valdus said, staring at the floor
between his boots. "This event, this race will bring
commerce and colonization to these creatures. They will
never be contained again. They are just another weak
culture the Federation will have to protect, but also they
are a ruthless weapon against the Empire. This is
more dangerous to us than losing a war. These people's very
existence strips away control and turns our
civilization into a weapon against ourselves. Losing a
war only means occupation for a few generations
until the yoke of failure can be thrown off. But
this--^the people can turn back our evolution a
million years. Turn us into elemental
survival instincts with arms and legs. We must not
have that, Romar ... we can't have it."
Horrified, his face still white with realization,
Romar also sank to the platform and stared.
Seconds ticked by. Truths compounded until
the two officers felt the weight of all their kind
upon their shoulders.
Finally, when Romar thought his throat had opened
and perhaps he could find a breath, could speak without a
creak in his voice, he parted his lips and pushed out
a question.
"What is your plan?" he asked.

Ransom Castle

"A dozen injuries of various severity, the
worst being a dislocated knee and two concussions,
and I've made a preliminary postmortem on
your cook, Captain Ransom."
"Keep your voice down, will you? And don't
call me Captain Ransom. My crew acts
like farty schoolboys if they hear that too often."
"Oh--sorry. The incident seems to be as you
reported. A tragic accident when the old
auxiliary oven came off its anchors. Fatal
cranial implosion. You might be comforted to know
... it was quick."
Leonard McCoy was used to Jim Kirk's
face, a passionate verdict of anything that was
happening at a given moment, good, bad, or
otherwise. Nancy Ransom was stoic as a
Vulcan, but in a constantly off-putting manner.
It made him want to check her blood
pressure just to see if it could possibly be as
low as Spock's.
"I'm still confused by the cook's body position
when the oven came down," he finished. "Judging
by the injuries, it seems she must have been leaning
backward over the top of the stove. Is there any
reason she would be in a position like that?"
"Probably fixing something."
"Under the auxiliary oven?"
"Look, she could'a been tripped and been
knocked under there by the turbulence. You can't
figure that out?"
"It's my job to ask, Captain," McCoy
said saucily, forcing himself to keep the peace, even
if that meant getting technical. "There's one
other thing I can't account for, however," he plowed
on. "I've checked your personnel rosters and
everybody is accounted for, except one person.
Your guest from the planet of Gullrey.
Turrice Roon. She's nowhere to be found."
From the bottom of the access wiring trunks, a
big man with a mustache popped up- -the first mate,
if memory served--his wide face suddenly
mottled with concern, distorted by trails of
electrical smoke from the damaged underworks. The
whole bridge smelled like burned wiring and
plastic.
"You mean Turry?" he asked.
McCoy spun around. "Do you know where she
is?"
The big man's eyes narrowed. "I left her
in the galley. You telling me you can't find her?"
"The galley," McCoy said, and turned
back to Nancy Ransom. "The site of the only
fatality on board. In my book that's cause
for suspicion, Captain."
Nancy shook her head and winced.
"Suspicion of just what?"
Feeling his skin prickle, McCoy leaned
forward. "There are Romulans in the sector. As
chief surgeon aboard the nearest Starfleet
vessel, I have an official duty to suspect
foul play. It's in the rules, and it's in my
nerves right now, and I'm not going to ignore either of
those things."
"What do you take me for?" she said bluntly.
"You're just scared of answering to that captain of
yours, and you know what he'll do to you if you don't
bring him back some fancy-pants report of
trouble on my ship. Jim Kirk watched me
get drummed out of Starfleet ten years ago, but
he can't instruct me what to do on my own ship,
and neither can any of his stooges. My crew
expects to run a race. That's what we're
going to do, Romulans or no Romulans. I
don't care about those stick-eared bastards."
"But they may have kidnapped a member of your
ship!"
"Kidnapped?" Nancy blurted. "Hell!
That henhearted insect's just holed up under a
mattress or something. You're making up stories
in your head."
McCoy felt a rasp of frustration in his
throat as he raised his voice, widened his
eyes, and tapped a forefinger on the pilot station.
"The Romulan ship was last seen in this immediate
area, and now it's gone and so is a member of this
ship's complement. I'm not doing a very good job if
I don't suspect a connection. I'm going
to conduct a full investigation down there. I want
one officer to help me."
"I'll do it!" the mate said, pushing to his
feet.
"You stay where you are, Frareyffwas Nancy
snapped. Her shoulders came up so tightly that
they almost covered her ears. "Doctor, don't
make me sorrier than I already am that I let
you come over here."
Straightening his shoulders under the flashing
damage-control lights, McCoy hammered his
^ws at her, matching her ill humor with his own.
"Captain, I don't know what your story
is, but apparently you had to blame somebody other
than yourself for it. One innocent person is dead and
another is unaccounted for. I'm beginning to see why
Starfleet didn't want you, and in my
estimation it didn't have a damned thing to do with
James Kirk. Now, do the right thing and declare that
galley off-limits. Y--let's go. I'm
worried our "accident"' just turned into a
murder."

McCoy envied these small private ships,
like the Ransom with their non-processed food that
didn't come out of a replicator. Sometimes, on
the Enterprise, he felt like he was eating
diodes instead of fried chicken.
The galley on a ship like this held true
magic. The poets might think it was the masts or
the sails, the engines or the shape of a hull, but
the crew knew differently.
The galley was the place where they could walk
in, get warm, and catch a whiff of home.
And "home" could be plenty of places in these
times. Maybe there was only chicken stew cooking,
but it might be stewed with potatoes grown on a
planet from the Aldebaran system, or laced with
illegally traded spices washed through the black
market from Orion. Those illegal chickens ...
they tasted best somehow.
Didn't matter. Once the cook cooked it,
it was legal.
McCoy only cared about allergic reactions.
As long as most of the Enterprise's crew was
human, there weren't too many problems.
Eventually there'd be more and more aliens threaded through
Starfleet. Then he'd have his hands full.
On the Castle, the crew was all human.
Nancy Ransom was too much of a stuck pig to have
it any other way.
That made McCoy's job easier today.
This time, as Mike Frarey locked the galley
hatch after them, McCoy wasn't doing a
medical inspection or looking for injuries. He
was looking for clues. He had locked everybody
else out, all the people they'd met in the narrow
corridors on the way down here, all nervous and
sag-eyed with grief. No matter how they'd
plied him with questions, he couldn't tell them their
surrogate mother was anything but dead. And they had
their own job to do--searching the ship for the Rey girl
named Turrice, who, so far, hadn't been
accounted for.
"That captain of yours is a brat," he said as
he glanced around the mess area with a different
purpose than when he'd been here before.
"Nancy?" Frarey said. "Everybody's got
a style, is all. That's hers."
"Why do you people stay with her?"
Frarey faced him, mantled by the dark-painted
door. "Steady job, Doc. Nancy's the
dues. She's tough, but she'll get every order and
there's never been a lean season for any of us. And
all of us came here 'cuz we know what lean is
like."
McCoy swaggered and said, "Son, you haven't
seen lean since your mama fed you bacon."
The big man allowed himself a chuckle. "Got
that right." Then he sadly commented, "We're
pretty sure it was an accident, Doc, what
happened to Louise."
McCoy screwed a glare at him. "What
makes you sure?"
His brow furrowed, Frarey shrugged, opened his
mouth, closed it, then shrugged again.
"That's what I thought," McCoy said.
"Don't touch anything unless I tell you.
Don't walk unless I tell you. Try not
to breathe."
"I'll do that, sir."
Then the doctor started asking himself questions. He
moved into the cooking area, using as few steps as
possible.
"I find it much too coincidental," he said,
"that the woman ended up wrenched over on her back
on top of a stove at the same instant the
auxiliary stove came dancing down from its
hooks." He leaned downward and peered up at the
blackened oven housing, then straightened, bent
sideways, and peered between the oven housing and the
wall.
"Scraped," he barked. "Not broken.
Somebody put weight on this. A lot of it. You
can see the raw metal where the soot couldn't get
to ... and here the metal anchors are twisted, not
just broken. The oven's weight alone couldn't do
that. Somebody came in here and brought this oven down
on that lady while somebody else held her over
the stove top."
In the mess area, Mike Frarey's wide
face crumpled. "Jesus, poor Louise
..."
McCoy came to the doorway. "Pretty
gruesome. And damn heartless."
Frarey nodded, sniffed, tried to get over it,
then said, "You sound like you belong on this
ship instead of that fancy job. I can barely hear
it."
"What you barely hear," McCoy said, "is
Atlanta, Georgia."
"Thought so."
"Let's see what's in here, now that I know
what to look for."
Frarey got a confused expression on his
face and asked, "Now that you know what to look for?
I don't know what you mean."
"You don't have to. Where's my medical
pack?"
"Right here you go."
"Thanks. Let's set the tricorder for
atmospheric analysis."
"Atmosphere? The air's the same all over
the ship."
"Let's see if it is."
The tricorder worked silently in his hand, no
vibrations, no hints of the great auxiliary computer
power in its small casing, and he watched the tiny
screen.
"Mmm," he grunted. "Not much there. Not
conclusive, anyway. Could be some traces of
unlikely gases, but I can't hand traces that
small to the captain. My captain, I mean.
All right, we'll try something else. You go over
to that bulkhead and break open the vent. Pull out the
filter and bring it to me."
"Well ... okay, sir."
With Frarey occupied, McCoy put his own
creaky knees on the floor and his nose almost that
low. He lay the tricorder down and used his hands
as brooms to gather up a tiny pile of dust.
There wasn't much. He hoped the floor hadn't
been swept since the incident happened. Sometimes
cleanliness could be an annoyance.
This from a surgeon? He scolded himself and
muttered under his breath, then stopped because he was
huff+ his little dust pile away.
He scooped a square centimeter of it into the
top of his hand-size mass analyzer and was
suddenly glad he'd brought it along. The little
machine blipped anxiously, and he decided it was
confused because he'd given it something other than a
bone fragment, but after a few moments it fed him
back a readout of the DNA.
"Got it!" he snapped.
"Pardon?"
Taking only two steps as he was
told, Frarey appeared beside him with the
drumhead-size air filter.
"Hair particles," McCoy said as he
allowed Frarey to hoist him back to his feet.
"No wonder mankind evolved into a biped. We
weren't meant for knee work."
"I got your filter here."
"Put it on the table."
They both leaned over the circle of meshed
dust, hair, and lord-knew-what else, and
McCoy turned his tricorder on it. He had
to readjust twice before it understood what he
wanted it to do.
"There it is," he uttered. "Right here. Look
at the screen. Hair particles, epidermal
flakes ... airborne aerosol of fatty
acids. Here's the DNA analysis, and here
... is the separation of DNA. Human ... and
Vulcanoid."
"Huh?" Frarey straightened up so sharply that
his spine cracked.
"Romulans, my lumberjack friend,"
McCoy said knottily. "That's "huh."'"
"There's never been a Romulan in here, not
ever!"
"There've been Romulans in here within the past
ten hours."
"Aw, Doc, that's nuts! How can you know that?
From some d ust and crud?"
"No, son, from what's caught in the dust and
crud, and what makes up the dust and crud.
Skin flakes, fatty acids in moisture,"
he finished, tapping his tricorder, "that is
nonhuman."
"Are you saying they came in here for some reason
and scratched themselves?"
"I'm saying they left some sweat behind.
Sweat, hair, skin, all living things do it just
by walking through the air. Air isn't a vacuum.
We're not walking through nothing. There's friction,
however diaphanous."
"But I thought those buggers didn't sweat."
"Everybody sweats. Just at different
levels. I'd call this conclusive. Somebody
beamed into this section, killed that poor woman, and
either killed the Rey visitor with a phaser or they
took her with them. One of the two women was the
target, and the other was the witness. I'm betting the
cook was the witness and got killed for it. The other
girl ... they wanted to have one of her
kind to look at for some reason." He ran a
finger along his lip and squinted at the table.
"Some reason."
"They won't keep her ... alive for long,
will they?"
"I doubt it."
Sore emotion twisted Mike Frarey's big
friendly face. He lowered his eyes and turned
away, still careful not to take a step.
Pausing, McCoy watched him and read the set
of the wide shoulders.
"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't
realize."
Frarey's throat knotted and he blinked.
He stuck his thumbs in his belt and tried to look
casual. "So'okay."
"No, it's not," McCoy said firmly.
"It's not okay at all. We've got to get a
message back to the Enterprise somehow. The
Romulans have turned this race into a blood
sport."



Chapter Fifteen

The Castle

"We have to send a message to the
Enterprise."
"I doubt you can."
Nancy Ransom sat on the cooler and
peeled a banana with more care than McCoy had
ever witnessed. She gazed at it, not at him, not
at their small main screen, but at her banana,
peeling and peeling, very slowly.
McCoy almost stopped to watch. A banana
could only last so long.
"Why can't you?" he asked. "Is there a
legitimate reason or is it just you?"
She made him wait until she was almost through
peeling.
"Since you're convinced it's just me, there's not
much I can say, is there?"
The doctor glanced to his side at Mike
Frarey, who thumbed his belt and fought a shrug.
"Captain," McCoy attempted, "I may
owe you an apology. That doesn't change the
fact that in my opinion a murder has been
committed and the perpetrators are still in the
race. If they've got what they wanted, why
are they staying here?"
"If they're staying in the race, what makes
you think your theory's not all wet?"
"I only have the facts I've gathered. I
admit there's margin for error, but we can't afford
to assume error. If the Romulans are
responsible for your missing guest, then they still think
they have something to do here."
"When we find 'em, you can dinghy over and ask
'em."
McCoy felt his eyes start to crawl out of his
head. He decided he'd better go ahead and
raise his voice before somebody called a team with a
butterfly net.
"I am answerable to the Enterprise," he
said, "and I'm compelled to relate this information.
I've already reported to you. It's now incumbent
upon you to make sure I fulfill the next
stratum of my duty. Don't make me quote
the paragraph, will you?"
Nancy broke off the top of her banana and
said, "Communication panel's right over there. Have
yourself a roundup."
As she savored the first piece of her treat,
McCoy stepped past Frarey, ignored the two
other people manning their posts, and bent over the
panels.
"Enterprise from Ransom Castle ...
Enterprise, this is McCoy. Come in."
He opened the reception grid more and more, and
kept trying.
"Enterprise, Enterprise, McCoy here
..."
Two minutes later, he glanced at Mike
Frarey, then turned to Nancy.
"It's broken."
She shook her head. "Nothing wrong with my
subspace. Some hotshot swamped the subspace
nets. Probably full-blasted their emitters.
Somebody's idea of a race trick."
"That shouldn't be allowed! It's dangerous!"
"Anything that gets you ahead is allowed. You were
sitting next to Mr. Epaulets at the
Captains' Meeting, weren't you? Just wish I'd
thought of it."
"Who would do that?"
She raised and lowered one billiard-ball
shoulder. "Helmut Appenfeller might do it,
maybe Ian Blackington. Could be
Pete Hall. He's around here someplace.
We'll come out of it in an hour or two."
"Then you'll have to turn around and go back to the
Enterprise."
She shot him a black-browed glare. "Like
hell! Even your captain told me to move on,
and I'm moving on."
"Can you contact any of the other Starfleet
vessels in the race? Great Lakes or
Hood or the other one?"
"Intrepid, and no I can't contact them any
better than I can send a message back. You
just tried to get through, didn't you?"
"Captain Ransom, aren't you affected at
all by the murder of your cook?"
From behind McCoy, Mike Frarey caught the
doctor's shoulder and drew him back from saying
anything else, but it was too late.
Nancy didn't look up anymore, but her
posture showed what must have been in her eyes. She
shifted away, then farther away, brought her
knees tight to her body, and stared at the deck.
McCoy slumped mentally, and even a little bit
physically.
"All right, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm
just afraid of what can happen if we don't act
right away. Whatever we think of each other, I
don't think either one of us wants the death count to go
up."
"Louise wouldn't want it, Nance," Frarey
said, almost too softly to be heard.
But Nancy did hear.
She drew a long breath, picked a piece of
banana fiber from her teeth, wiped her hand on
her shirt, and rubbed the back of her neck.
"If you can conjure a way to send a message
back to Captain Hog Wild and his Vulcan
sidekick," she said, "we'll transmit it."

Red Talon

"Our vessel is secure, Commander."
The bridge was too spacious for comfort. Romar
found himself still beating down shivers, still wishing for
privacy, wishing for a time of cloistered safety in
a defensible place.
Valdus met him near the weapons station.
"Report."
"Skirmishes were less violent as distance from the
transporter room increased. There must
be some range limit on this sorcery. Six
injuries, five minor. One guard is dead.
We were most fortunate."
"Fortunate that no one did what I once
did," Valdus elaborated for him.
Romar averted his gaze. "Yes. You foresaw
what would happen and destroyed the witch before she could
overwhelm us. You saved us, Commander."
"Don't stress yourself, Romar," Valdus
grumbled. "Damage?"
"Several blades in several walls, some
circuitry cut, currently being mended. The
crew is confused, somewhat shame-faced, but I have
neglected to explain to them."
"Better they remain confused. Their duty is
only to man their posts."
"In their inner minds," Romar said, "they
understand why we must do this. They are asking no questions.
They only look at each other. No one
speaks."
"All the better. You have isolated the target
vessel again?"
"Yes, they moved out of the cloud while we were
involved with the starship. We lost a prime
opportunity. Now we must follow them in the open
and hope for another chance."
"You see?" Valdus told him solemnly.
"It is that man."
Romar paused. "Their captain? But he
didn't see us."
"Yet his senses brought him to us. He forced me
to take action without even realizing what he was
doing. I have witnessed such instincts before ... but
never used so forcefully."
Valdus moved to the bulkhead, and he touched the
wall. His finger ran from the wall at his waist to the
wall at his cheek.
"You know, Romar," he went on, "I had this
ship refitted before we came here--"
"Yes," Romar said. "I know."
"These bulkhead frames, these wall forms ...
are specially ordered. You see the graininess of
them? They were created by my own scientists and
laborers. I had them built, and I replaced
the walls in six major sections with them."
A few hours ago, Romar would have taken this as
the signal of insanity in his commander. Walls?
What matter could walls possibly be?
But he had felt the effect of the Rey and he
no longer trusted anything, including his
own arbitrary judgment. After all, Valdus had
been right.
He remained silent. He didn't even ask
the obvious question. When Valdus was ready, he would
tell him the significance of the wall material.
He studied Valdus's face. So little age
showed, despite the decades of service. There were
some lines, if he looked closely as Valdus
blinked, swallowed, breathed, and there were circles
under the experienced eyes today. Perhaps they had always
been there, but Romar had never looked.
Fatigue? Regret? Commitment? Yes,
all this knitted into the years. Valdus wasn't
having any second thoughts. This was a man who had
slaughtered everyone around him once before and knew the
taste of mass murder for a purpose.
Romar moved to him, his own sense of purpose
boiling in his chest.
"Your order, Commander," he prodded.
"I want you to arm a boarding party," Valdus
said. "Provision them for siege. Bring all
weapons to bear. Angle gradually toward the
target vessel."
The commander's face released its surly edge.
Unlikely peace came into his eyes, as though
speaking orders that released his burden finally ...
finally.
"Overtake it," he said. "We will turn that
planet to glass."

Chapter Sixteen

"C aptain, I'm picking up a recorder
marker signal. Extreme range ... closing
slowly at warp one. I think I can pull the
message in through the cloud's interference."
"Do it, Lieutenant. It's somebody trying
to communicate through the washed-out subspace nets."
"One moment, sir ... message relaying.
It's Dr. McCoy, sir. I'll draw the
message in."
Jim Kirk, his bridge crew, and the two
Rey guests clinging to the back of the bridge had
to wait another ten seconds before Uhura could
pull the crackling, choked message through the
ionization they were caught in.
"Dr. McCoy on audio, recorded,
sir," she said finally.
They all hung on to the tilted deck and
listened.
"Enterprise from McCoy. In my
estimation, there has been a murder and a likely
kidnapping committed on Ransom Castle.
My complete report, along with tricorder
readings, follows this message. Spock can
confirm the tracings from the galley on his library
computer. I believe the ship's cook was killed
to prevent her from reporting the kidnapping of the
Rey host, whose name is Turrice Roon."
No one reacted overtly, but attention stirred
toward Tom and Royenne.
Kirk knew what it was like to lose one of his
crew, even a finger off the hand of one of his crew.
He saw that digging shock in the faces of the two
Rey men as the doctor's message went on.
"My evidence is circumstantial, of
course--it could be that somebody just rubbed up against a
Romulan before coming aboard this ship, except that this
woman was alive and accounted for only three hours
ago. I can only speculate that the Romulans
are conducting some sort of experimentation or
analysis on the Rey and are using this poor
girl as a guinea pig. It's crucial that you
handle those people before they head back to their home
space, or we may never know what happened
to her. I don't think she'll be kept alive for
very long. McCoy, medical pro-tem,
Ransom Castle, out."
Silence fell under the hideous whine of the ship's
impulse engines grinding in their effort to hold
position.
Kirk yanked himself around and looked aft. There
were two completely innocent people whose culture had
done nothing to provoke anybody and, according to all
reports, couldn't if they wanted to. The two
large-eyed visitors were horrified. Grief
ruddied their faces, and if he'd ever seen
innocence ruined, there it was.
Tom looked shattered beyond thought, and could barely
keep his legs under him. He seemed to be withering
before the captain's eyes.
Grief plied Kirk too as he watched them.
He felt his own body grow tighter around his
bones, and he thought of the two women who were
sacrificed, one dead, the other likely so.
Hopefully so. Experimentation by the Romulans
was a mind-choking possibility.
Suddenly he could only think of those two
women.
In an era when women served equally with
men and wanted it that way, for James Kirk there
was still something about the death of a woman. Women were still
special and somehow instinctively precious to him,
no matter that they often chided him for thinking that
way. He couldn't help it. In spite of the
pressures of expanding society, he was a 19th
Century man in those ways, and to him every woman
looked like a work of art. He wanted to protect
them all. Women were the charm of the open galaxy, and
their needless death shredded his heart.
He forced himself to look away from Tom and
Royenne, forced his feelings down before he became
too angry. What would the Romulans want with a
Rey captive?
"We've got to get out of here," he said,
suddenly breathless. "It just became a matter of
life and death. Spock--hypotheses?"
There was no answer.
Kirk pulled himself to the rail, battling the
deck as it pitched another degree in the wrong
direction.
"Spock?"
On the upper deck Spock caught the back
of his chair and barely kept himself on his feet.
He kinked forward as though he'd been punched in the
chest. For anyone else, it might've only been
a cough, but for Spock, whose reactions were so
subtle, so reserved--
The captain collected his strength and was there in
four steps.
Spock didn't look at him. "I'm
sorry, Captain--"
Kirk caught his arm and kept him from slipping
sideways onto his computer panel. "You all
right?"
With a pale hand clutching the neck of his
monitor hood, Spock battled for control
over a creeping misery. "One moment," he
rasped. "Fighting it."
"Fighting what?"
"I don't know."
If anyone else felt nauseated at what
they were going through and what they'd just heard from
McCoy, Kirk wouldn't have been surprised.
He saw it in all their faces and felt it pull
at his own features like weights attached to his
muscles and bones.
The burden in Spock's eyes was suddenly
contagious--Kirk could feel it.
They'd shared empathy before, but this kind?
As though they could reach down and pick it up?
"Never known you to be space sick before," the
captain said quietly.
"I never have been ..."
"Are you dizzy?"
"Not ... yes, somewhat."
The mid-answer change was tantamount to a cry
for help from anyone else.
"Sit down." Kirk drew him to his chair
and he didn't resist.
He didn't resist.
And now, as Kirk saw the effort there ...
"Fine time for McCoy to be off board," he
muttered. "Can you hang on?"
Spock turned the chair and pulled himself back
to his feet. A knotted shudder wracked his
arms. He held his breath, stiffened, and fought for
control. When he looked up, his black eyes were
resolute through a glaze.
"Yes, Captain," he said. "A few
moments to process McCoy's forensics ..."
He was asking to be left alone. Kirk
balled his fists and forced himself to walk away, all
the way to port, to draw attention away from
Spock.
"Uhura, call Mr. Scott to the
bridge."
"Yes, sir," she said. There was strain in her
voice too, as though a plague were sweeping the
bridge.
Clinging to his panel, Spock turned.
"I'm all right, Captain."
"Precaution, Mr. Spock," Kirk
insisted, in a tone that wouldn't take backtalk.
For a second time, Spock didn't resist.
His face was crumpled with stress. Weakness
dragged at his elbows. He forced himself back
to his work, obviously disturbed that he might need
relief just when the ship was in trouble.
Scott was on the bridge two minutes
later, scowling and shaking his head, and without waiting
to be asked he said, "Intermix levels still
jumping, sir. Very bad exertion. She's huffin'
and puffin', but we're holding her down from red-line
and managing to keep from slipping deeper into this
hole."
"Understood," Kirk said. "Stand by,
Scotty."
"Better I get back to my engine room,
sir--"
"I need you here."
Scott dropped to his side on the lower
deck. Tied into the engine's heart, soul, and
sinew though Montgomery Scott might have been,
there was enough of the pub bartender in him that he was hard
to fool and quick to pick up on what he saw in the
captain's gaze as Kirk watched the upper
starboard deck.
Scott leaned in and asked, "Something wrong,
sir?"
Allowing himself a custodial glance to starboard,
Kirk muttered, "Well, he's not tearing his
hair ..."
"Think he's ill?"
"Give him a minute."
Scouring his mind for crazy ideas, the last
refuge of the desperate, he wiped his face with a
hot palm and paced around the helm--if he could
only think.
"Captain," Spock said, fighting for every
breath, "molecular examination of the data Dr.
McCoy's tricorder picked up in the galley
... no longer any doubt--there were Romulans
on board Ransom Castle within the past
twenty hours. In my opinion, this shores up the
doctor's hypothesis ... I must agree that the
Rey girl was kidnapped by Romulan
intruders."
Kirk stepped toward him, prepared to ask the
ugliest question, but Tom arose from his silence, moved
to where Uhura sat clinging to her console, and beat
them all to the awful question.
"Mr. Spock?" he began. He was clearly
forcing himself just to get the ^ws out. "Would they keep
her alive?"
"She is a witness to her own victimization,
sir." Spock lowered his voice, but everybody
heard him, and there was heavy sympathy in his
inflection. "It is unlikely she would be kept
alive."
Tom's face crumpled as grief gathered with
shock. He pressed a palm to the back of
Uhura's chair, and he slipped to his knees.
He held himself there, in misery, though he made
no noise, andwiththe other hand he covered his face.
Kirk started toward him--only now pierced by the
common sense that should've hit him hours ago. He
should get these people off the bridge. All this was too
much for them. Tom was folding. Royenne wasn't
much better, over there huddled against the
wall in the turbolift vestibule, watching
Tom's breakdown.
As his feet thumped up the short steps to the
upper deck and he found himself standing over Tom,
about to reach down, Kirk got a truncated,
dreamlike view of Tom here, gutted by grief,
and Spock over there--the same.
Suddenly Spock could barely stand, leaning almost
his entire weight on the heels of his hands,
pressed to the control panel, no longer even
pretending to try to work. His vandalized senses were
battling in his face.
Vandalized ...
From between the shreds of thought in a mind that had gone
blank, something clicked.
He reached down, put his palm on Tom's
shoulder, dug his fingers into the red-and-black
flannel shirt, caught a strand of Tom's
fair hair between his fingers, and pulled the Rey
man halfway around.
And way over there, Spock flinched--and
turned.
"So that's it," Kirk breathed.
Instinc t boiled up and he moved
protectively between Spock and Tom, backed
off a step, and looked down at the young Rey
man. Royenne stumbled toward them, and the two
guests stared at him like stranded calves.
"It's you, isn't it?" Kirk said bluntly.
"Somehow it's you."
They didn't say anything. They didn't
really have to. Unlike Vulcans, those faces
didn't hide much.
"Where's Osso?" the captain demanded.
"In our quarters," Royenne said. "He
didn't want to ..."
"Overwhelm us?"
Royenne lowered his sorrow-laden eyes.
Sadly he admitted, "Yes."
The bridge crew watched. Kirk felt their
attention like needles in his skin.
"Tom," he said, "you got anything to say?"
Still on his knees, his face glossed with sweat,
Tom struggled to gain control over his own emotions
--and obviously just tried to keep them to himself. His
voice was a braid of grief and effort.
"Turrice was my sister," he said.

"It's not Tom's fault!"
Royenne suddenly towered over the
captain, protecting his companion. Probably
the first time any Rey had felt inclined to defend
his own against anyone from another world.
And it had to be on the bridge of Jim
Kirk's Enterprise.
"Before the Federation came to our planet, we
didn't think it would affect anyone else,"
Royenne said anxiously. "We never thought about
it!"
Suddenly his shoulders slumped. His hands moved
back and forth a few times as though someone was working
him on strings, but after a moment he frowned and
huddled near Tom.
Kirk knew without looking that Spock had come
close behind him. The captain felt like a bulwark
when Spock deliberately stayed back there.
Kirk let himself be a barrier. Everyone, even
Spock, was entitled to a twinge of childhood from
time to time.
"Is it possible?" Kirk asked. "Can all
this be because of them, Spock?"
"Vulcans are somewhat telepathic,"
Spock said, forcing past the strain. "Romulans
may be also, instinctively, though they do not seem
to have developed it as a discipline." He paused,
his curiosity overcoming the Rey effect upon him,
though he still stayed behind Kirk's shoulders. "There
is no ruler by which to measure telepathy,
Captain. I can't scientifically prove I
am feeling what is on me now."
"That's why fake psychics have thrived through the
age of science," Kirk agreed. "It can't be
proven not to exist."
Spock's eyes were tight as he nodded. "I
suspect this trait is of no more concern to the Rey
than perspiration or hair color is
to humans."
"And we don't suspect our own hair
color to be driving somebody else mad." He
looked at Tom and Royenne, felt his own inner
empathies at work, and couldn't help but feel
mellow toward a people who hadn't wanted to hurt
anyone, but only wanted to talk to the outside
galaxy, and not be left alone in the dark. "I can
feel it, but I can push it down. Why?"
"Vulcan and Romulan instincts are much
stronger than humans," Spock said, fighting
to stay clinical. "And humans handle emotion
daily. You ... do it better."
Kirk avoided tossing him a
thank-y. "We handle a hundred ups and downs
every day. Their happiness was contagious, but the more
violent emotions don't do much more than make us
edgy. But to a Vulcan--"
"Or a Romulan ..."
Kirk swung around and jabbed a finger at
Tom, then at Royenne. "You knew about this,
didn't you?"
Royenne's expression was layered with shame and
apology. He looked past Kirk to talk
to Spock.
"At first we never considered it. When we found
out it affected others, we were afraid you wouldn't
talk to us anymore."
"We thought you might turn away from us!" Tom
blurted. "That you wouldn't want us in the Federation.
We never thought it bothered anything but ... but--"
"Lower life forms," Royenne finished.
They both seemed to think they were insulting
Spock, and cutting off their chances for a future
at the same time.
"Likely evolved as a way to cause
predators to be frightened," Spock said.
"Vulcanoids are susceptible because at one time
we were of high emotion. We developed our
controls because our violent base emotions were
destroying us. We did not slay the dragon,"
he added, "but we drove it back to its cave."
"And something about these people brings it back out,"
Kirk concluded. "And the Romulans stumbled on
it. They must be afraid the Federation might use the
Rey against them!"
He sucked a breath, cleared his head, and
managed to throw off the creeping grief radiated
from the two gentle, unusual beings with their faces
grilled by the situation. He stalked the deck,
past Spock, toward the bow, then back again, and his
eyes took on a devilish gleam.
"Not a bad idea," he added.
"Captain!" Chekov gasped. He glared with
unhappy horror.
Scott watched too, but his dark eyes carried
a blunt comprehension that junior officers hadn't
had beaten into them yet.
"What they don't understand is Federation
ethics," Kirk allowed. "We wouldn't
sacrifice any Rey by putting him--or her--
in proximity with Romulans just to get the upper
hand. They're not bait," he said, waving his hand
at Tom and Royenne. "They're people."
"And this "talent"' isn't voluntary,"
Spock offered. "The Rey would have to be in a
deadly situation to illicit this response, and that
negates their value as weapons."
"I don't care if it does or doesn't.
We wouldn't use them that way. But the Romulans
think we would." The captain turned and glared with
bare accusation at the forward screen. "So where is
Valdus? He's got the girl ... has he
rushed out of the area? Or is he still here, pretending
to run the race? What's his plan? Why would he
want to involve himself in an event that culminates
at a planet full of the people he must fear?"
Tom bolted to his feet and grabbed for the
rail, his face worried as a rotten peach.
"They can't hurt my planet, can they? They
couldn't do that, could they?"
"It'd take days to cut up a planet,"
Scott said, "even if they had enough firepower."
"Firing on the planet gets them nothing but
dead," Kirk interrupted. "Valdus is
experienced enough to know that. He's not the suicide
type. If he were, they'd have been at
Gullrey long ago. And they wouldn't wait for a
public event with four Starfleet vessels and a
fleet of rugged independent merchants and excited
weekend adventurers--"
Suddenly he stopped.
"Captain!" Sulu gasped.
Chekov blurted, "Another ship!"
"Sacrifice another vessel!" Sulu said.
"Hyperlight engines--"
"Atmospheric corruption," Scott
decided. "There's nothin' to it, sir!"
Kirk twisted toward Spock. "Andwith all these
ships going to that planet, nobody would suspect
anything was wrong. Spock, what would they need
to corrupt an atmosphere?"
"A ship with ..." Spock tried to think, but
paused, still struggling. One hand was pressed on the
buffer board along the communications panel. The
other hovered in midair with nothing to lean on. His
shoulder muscles worked for control. "A ship with
irreversible warp field chain reaction
capacity."
"Like a starship." Kirk used his own voice as
a bridge. He stepped toward Spock.
"They might covet a starship, sir,"
Scott swaggered from the lower deck, "but woe's
them if they tangle with a Starfleet
crew. A smart tiger stalks the weak zebra
first."
"Yes, he does. And Valdus struck me
as a smart tiger, Mr. Scott. Assuming
he's found out whatever he wanted to know from Tom's
sister, he's moving to the second leg of his
plan. He needs a ship that could corrupt a
planet. That means ships the size of Haunted
Forest, Blackjacket, New Pride of
Baltimore--"
"Ransom Castle would serve, sir," the
engineer added.
"Think so?"
Scott chuckled grimly. "Oh, aye."
The pieces clicked into place, and Kirk
squinted sharply. He dropped to the lower deck and
circled his chair along a well-worn path.
"That's it! He's focused in on Ransom
Castle. That's how he made his choice of which
Rey guest to kidnap."
"But why kidnap anybody at all?" Sulu
asked. "I don't understand, sir."
"I know why," Kirk said. "I saw it in his
face."
"Why?" Tom begged. "Why would he take my
sister?"
Kirk couldn't bear to look at him. "He
wanted to be sure he was on the right track. That
he wasn't about to attack a planet of the wrong
people."
"A Romulan?" Chekov barked. "Why would
a Romulan care?"
"Because he's a decent man, Mr. Chekov,"
Kirk said. "And Romulan or not, there's nothing
more dangerous than a decent man who's convinced
he's doing the right thing."

Chapter Seventeen

Red Talon

"This is the Subcommander. Is the engine power
up to full standard yet?"
"In a quarter hour, Subcommander."
"If it is one moment longer, you will be
executed!"
The crew glanced up, but no one said anything.
In fact, they began to work a degree faster, a
degree harder.
"Romar ... such flames,"
Valdus commented from his command center.
With his face flushed amber, his body a
bundle of agitation, Romar pointed viciously
at the communication unit. "I will kill him!"
"Oh, I understand," Valdus said, "but take
care. Your enthusiasm may disarm you."
"Nothing will disarm me."
Valdus didn't argue. His command chair
felt uncomfortable to him today. Behind him, Romar
continued to pace. Valdus knew how he felt--
the experience fresh in his system, the inability
to accept the plundering of his mind. Poor Romar
... not seventy years, but only seventy
minutes to get used to what had happened to him.
Valdus forced himself to be tolerant, and allowed
the younger man to rumble back and forth across the
bridge, his rank sash swaying so hard it
wrapped across his torso. The bridge crew
kept their eyes averted. They knew something was
wrong--had felt the intrusion into their own minds--and
now looked to their leaders to deal with the threat.
"Where are the other vessels in the race
field?" Valdus asked. He twisted to look
over a shoulder at the centurion.
The centurion flinched as though stricken, then
went to a different monitor than the one he'd
been hunched over. "Scattered, Commander," he
said. "Many unaccounted for. I assume they have gone
ahead while we were detained in the cloud. The
race may be nearly won by now."
"Then we shall have an audience when we arrive at
the finish line," Valdus commented. "We will use
the Ransom Castle for what the humans call
a Trojan horse. While the Federation ships
attend Red Talon with their suspicions, we
can approach that planet with our disguised conquest."
He glanced back at Romar and lowered his
voice. "Its contaminated warp core will do the
rest--"
"And our agents will hunt down every last Rey
who escapes the eradication--crush any chance that
we could be surprised a hundred years from now!"
He wasn't trembling but heaving with each
breath. There was less anger in his ^ws than oath.
"Commander!" the centurion interrupted. "Aft
sensors show the Federation starship is powering toward
the opening of the gravity well. Attempting
to extricate themselves."
As Romar suddenly stopped pacing and stood
hideously still, Valdus pushed to his
feet and crowded the monitor. "They are
escaping? With their power reduced twenty percent?
Unthinkableffwas
The centurion moved aside. "You see for
yourself."
"Confirm this immediately!"
"Yes, Commanderffwas
Valdus went to Romar's side and spoke
quietly. "If they extricate themselves from the
cloud, they can head us off."
"They must not!" Romar boiled. He closed his
mouth, swept a hand across it, and fought to keep himself
in check, but didn't do a very good job.
"Commander," the centurion said, "readings show the
starship holding position, power levels slowly
increasing. I must conclude they are building for a
single surge out of the well."
"We should have killed them!" Romar roared. He
threw his arms into the air and spun around
pointlessly.
Valdus sighed. "My fault," he
murmured. "I had the chance to sweep the field,
and I failed to do it."
Romar fumed at him with a ferocious loyalty.
"Commander--y lie to yourself! I will have no witnesses
to such feelings you have about yourself! Centurion, turn
the ship around. We will go back to the cloud and
obliterate those we should have obliterated before!"
The centurion, and all who heard, suddenly
stopped working and stared at their leaders. The order was
violent, yes, but unexpected and unplanned, and
Romar had made the order without waiting for
Valdus to make it first. What should they do?
The bird-head helmets of the crewmen flashed
with lights from the struggling of the ship as the engineers were
bringing Red Talon back up to full power, and
in their eyes Valdus read a certain confusion--but
also anxious anticipation. They approved.
And then he looked at Romar. It was the look
on his face that convinced him.
"Very well," Valdus said. "Turn the ship
around. Bring weapons to bear. We will make our
subcommander a satisfied man."

"Captain!"
Chekov swung around so hard he almost threw
himself out of his chair, but he succeeded in getting the
captain's attention.
"Contact, sir," he gasped. "The
Romulan vessel!"
Everyone turned to the forward screen, squinting
through the snapping cloudy electrical mess at the
one shape they never in a thousand years expected
to see here.
"Are they coming back to help us?" Chekov
wondered, staring.
Kirk pulled himself forward to the helm. "I
think we can rule that out, Mr. Chekov. All
hands, red alert. Shields up."
"Shields are already at maximum under these
conditions, Captain," Spock said, his voice still
thready.
"Enhance screen to maximum, Mr. Sulu.
I want to see that ship's movements."
"Aye, sir ... maximum enhancement." The
helmsman tampered with his panels, but the view
on the screen remained foggy and glitterbound.
"That's as clear as it'll get, sir--sir!
They're powering up weapons!"
"Hail him!"
Uhura hesitated an instant, held
briefly by the glow of the photon ports shining through
the cloud from that Romulan ship's great extended
neck.
"He's receiveg us, sir."
Kirk held the helm with both hands as the ship
grabbed for a place to hang on in the residual
spin, and didn't even try to keep the anxiety
out of his voice. "Put him on visual if you
can. Hurry, Lieutenant."
"Aye, sir, attempting visual."
He tried not to be distracted from what was coming, but
he was suddenly aware of their guests--the subtle
cause of all this--sitting on the starboard steps
between the upper deck and the command deck.
Tom sat huddled, his arms crossed at the
wrists in his lap, his hands limp, and he stared at
the screen. His large eyes were glazed with tears,
but he was fighting to keep his emotions in control.
On the upper deck Spock was fighting, too,
but his attention to the ship and the moment had a tighter
grip on him than Tom did.
Uhura tapped and tapped on her console,
pulling in every pixel, every sliver of visual
science available to the struggling, incompatible
systems, and when she got the picture, she
didn't even announce it.
She just put it on.
Jim Kirk straightened his shoulders as much as
he could and glared at the forward screen,
at the calm face of the Romulan Commander.
Valdus. The decent man.
"Captain," the Romulan said,
"apparently you are clawing your way out."
"You don't have to do this," Kirk said to him.
Valdus showed no surprise, no attempt
to appear vague. He seemed to know that Kirk had
figured it all out.
"I do," Valdus said. "I thought about
killing you, Captain, a few times. I searched
for a utilitarian hatred, but found it unworthy.
Having met you in person, and having seen the light
in your eyes ... I resisted being the one who put
out that light."
Surprised by the intimacy, Kirk held
silent a moment. He only watched, sought
weakness, looked for lies.
He didn't see any.
Moving slowly forward around the helm, he kept
both feet under him as much as possible.
"I have the same sensibilities about you," he
admitted. "Fortunately, my phaser banks
don't feel that way. I'll fight if you force
me to."
Valdus nodded. "ally don't understand what
I am attempting?"
Kirk held out a hand, felt his blood rush
hot in his fingers. He let his instincts draw the
conclusions. "How can anyone think of killing an
entire civilization?"
"The stripping of the mind, Captain
Kirk," Valdus said, suddenly harsh,
serious. "There is nothing like it. If someone could
control your mind, drive you to madness you couldn't
even see coming, wouldn't you want to contain that
person? Even if you had to kill him? If a
predator gets in your house--"
"They're not predators!" Kirk lashed out
to his side, got a fistful of flannel, and
hauled Tom to the center of the bridge, presenting
the baffled Rey man fiercely to those who feared
him the most. "Look at him! These are innocent
people! Possibly the most innocent the galaxy
has! You know that!" He threw Tom to one side
so hard that Tom ended up on one knee beside the
steps. "I understand your fear, your concern, but there
are other methods."
"Methods we would have to consult the Federation
about, now that the witch planet is joining you,"
Valdus said. "Because of what is done
today, the temptation will never arrive years from now, a
century from now, for you to use those people against us. I do
not hate them, Captain, but if I don't kill
them, they will eventually kill my people."
"You're letting your fears rule you," Kirk
insisted. "You should try something different."
Valdus's brow creased. "This is not fear.
You know us. We have no fear. We have fought you before
and will fight again, in any contest, with anyone. But
this--th is fundamental! This can destroy our minds
--our minds!"
"We haven't attacked you--we never will,"
Kirk roared. "You don't have any reason to act
in self-defense!"
On the screen, a younger Romulan officer
pushed into the screen so sharply that his face appeared
twice the size of Valdus's, and the screen
blurred as it tried to compensate for the distortion.
"You're right--th is not self-defense!" the
young officer bolted at them. "This is
survival!"
Valdus drove forward, grasped the officer
by the shoulders, and pulled him back, but made no
attempt to quiet him.
Kirk raised his voice. "If your empire
would join us in a common purpose, you wouldn't have
to worry about survival."
"If we join you," Valdus said, "we
become weak like you. Then someone else comes along
and conquers us. If the weak survive, Captain
Kirk, eventually all are weakened."
"How weak are we?" Kirk shot back,
boiling mad and striking his ^ws like matches. Down
at his right, he caught a glimpse of Tom
turning to watch him instead of the screen, but he
didn't turn from his glare at the two
Romulans. "Decades ago we beat you
back. The Klingons haven't gained an inch either.
Open your mind, man! Freedom is more potent
than force!"
A portentous silence fell. The bridge of the
Enterprise throbbed around him.
"ally cannot turn me, Captain," Valdus
said, and his voice confirmed his ^ws. "Be
comforted. I know you would be willing to die to save a
crewman. Instead, you will die to save a
civili zation. Your disappearance and the destruction of the
Rey world will prevent war between our intergalactic
peoples. There may be a chilling between us, but no
war. All with the sacrifice of one ship
and one world. I will forever speak of you with honor."
The screen crackled, and the picture dissolved.
Before them, the Romulan ship hovered in her
veil of static. Two fluorescent blue
glows swelled upon her hull and spat two white
hot lancets directly toward the engineering hull
of the starship.
"Incoming!" Sulu shouted.

Chapter Eighteen

Enterprise

The photon torpedoes blazed a couple of
paths through the ionization and hard radiation of the
cloud, and the cloud argued. The telltale white
lancets turned to bright sizzles, streaked under the
viewscreen, and into the engineering hull.
The Enterprise cannonballed downward,
impulse engines moaning as their strength drained
away. The deck dropped out from under them as the
crew grabbed for their controls and tried to hold her
together. The red alert Klaxon sounded again as the
ship plunged deep into the gravity well, caught
in the inside of the natural tornado.
"Valdus!" Kirk shouted. "Get him
back, Lieutenantffwas
"Too late, sir," Uhura called back
over the whine.
"Slipping into the well, Captainffwas Spock
rasped over the noise of the ship twisting under them.
His voice was rough and taxed, his stone-cut
features blanched. "Losing thrust against the
current! Mark plus five! Plus seven!
Plus nine!"
"They kicked us down into it." Kirk swung
around, pulled himself across the bridge--the longest
distance in the universe, sometimes, especially at
times like this, when he wished he didn't have to be the
one in command, but couldn't have tolerated watching
anyone else do it. His heart hammered against his
breastbone. "Chekov, assist with helm control,"
he called. "Damage report!"
One of the junior engineers turned, clinging
to his panel, his voice passionate with effort.
"Impedance in the electropneumatics, sir.
Voltage indicators falling out of sequence.
I don't know which inputs to accept!"
They watched the starship begin to come apart around
them. Warning bells peeled. The shriek
of effort buzzed up through the internal structure as
though the ship were caught in a drill press.
"Slipping, Captainffwas Spock shouted.
"We cannot push up against the flow pattern at this
depth."
"They shoved us down--now we're stuck,"
Kirk grumbled, his teeth gritted. "Scott,
we need power!"
The quickly sculpted confidence in his voice
didn't fool Scott, whose ruddy complexion
was almost as red as his division shirt. His
piledriver accent put an extra sting on every
syllable and a brutal immediacy to the next few
seconds. "Those starbase stumblebums removed
parts instead of just shutting them down, sir. We're
manufacturing facsimiles. Trying to get power
up to the nineties."
"How long?" Kirk demanded.
His engineer shrugged. "I can't say, sir."
He paused, "Not soon enough, though."
"All right, if we can't get out the top,
we're going to have to go out the bottom."
Spock turned again. "Impossible,
Captain. We cannot break the laws of physics.
The deeper we fall into the well, the greater the
pressure."
Kirk slammed a hand down on the rail. "I
don't want to break them, Spock. Just bend them
for a minute. Come on--how can we do it? How can
we introduce chaos into the system?"
Spock's face crumpled with the effort of
thinking. "Magnetic field disruption ...
rupture of the current--"
"Breaking the flow pattern?"
"Very little chance--"
"But our only one. Sulu, arm photon
torpedoes!"
Sulu looked baffled, but poked the weapons
panel. "Armed ... ready, sir."
"Prepare to fire down into the well. When the
torpedo detonates, it might disrupt the well
long enough for us to get out."
Sulu hesitated, worked his controls again, then
croaked, "Ready, sir--"
"Captain," Spock called again, and somehow
maneuvered toward him with the dark prediction it was his
duty to provide. "Our hull will be crushed."
"Not if we break this thing open first," the
captain said, his lips tight with determination.
"Sulu, plot a course to follow the
photon torpedo down into the well as close as
possible. Try to find a path for the torpedoes that
won't cough them right back up at us. Chekov,
rig the photons for remote detonation, five
hundred kilometers."
"Sir!" Scott thumped down from the engineering
station, his face pasty, tension apparent in his
voice. "A blast at that proximity could take
our warp nacelles with it."
"You got an alternative, Mr. Scott?
Now's the time."
"Uh ... no, sir, I don't have one of
those."
"Then prepare to stabilize all systems as
they break down."
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"And Tom, get off the bridge."
"No! Noffwas Tom pulled to his feet and
held onto the rail. "No--y're fighting for
your lives and the lives of my people--I don't
want to know for the rest of my life that I crawled
away just when I should stay. Captain Kirk,
I've learned so much from you--y wouldn't let them
frighten you. I have to keep control and teach my people,"
he said, and stabbed a finger toward the forward screen,
"or his fears will come true."
Kirk found five seconds to gaze at the
cause of the trouble and saw in Tom's face the
hope of a young civilization moving out of its own
adolescence with every step toward Federation
membership. Tom, andwith him his culture, would have
to learn the responsibility of being good
neighbors.
Tom wanted to learn it, no matter how much it
hurt.
Kirk looked past the gentle fair-haired
man to his very antithesis, pleat-perfect
Spock, there on the upper deck, his face
drawn with tension. Even the colors they were wearing
were opposites.
Spock gazed down, and he nodded at the
captain. Not even for his own sake would he ask the
Rey man to leave the bridge and remain a child.
"Captain!" Scott interrupted. "Red-line
plus twenty on the external shields!
Breakdown at any minute!"
"All right, Tom," Kirk said, "get ready
to learn. And hold on." He slid partly onto
the seat of his chair and hung on to the edge with one
thigh. "Ready remote detonation."
"Ready, sir!" Chekov squawked, his
throat sandpaper.
"Prepare to fire the salvo on my mark.
Three ... two ... one ... fire!"

The photon torpedo spun down into the well,
and after it came the starship.
Starships were tough, but they weren't spandex. A
ship that seemed impenetrable could suddenly tear itself
inside out. What had been pliant safeties and
springboards built into the beautiful systems were
being pushed into brittleness and a good third of them were
snapping as pressure increased.
James Kirk held onto his command chair and
willed his ship to stay in one piece. His head
started to ache, reacting to the change in pressure.
Behind him, Uhura made an almost inaudible
squeak, and before him Sulu and Chekov hunched their
shoulders in pain.
The ship started sizzling around him. Hissing,
snapping--
His stomach rattled like a sack of rocks.
He resented the call echoing in his head and he
resented himself for hearing it.
What the hell am I doing here?
One day nature would get him. Maybe that was
why he wasn't afraid of enemies who could
think.
As long as he didn't crack, as long as he
didn't give the order too soon to do any good
--the fight would go on until they won or broke
in half.
On the forward screen, the glow of the photon
torpedo's track blazed a path before them down
into the gravity well.
"Pressure nine thousand PSI and increasing!"
Scott reported.
"Captain!" Sulu called. "We're losing
helm control!"
"Stay with her, Mr. Suluffwas Kirk's
eyes were squinted and his face felt heavy.
"Follow it down!"
His fingers dug hard into the arm of his chair, his
starship.
"You're coming back," he gritted to her.
Sweat drained down his face. He thought his
skull was imploding. His voice hummed inside
it.
He caught Sulu's pained glance and clamped
his lips shut. The helmsman had heard
something over the whine. The captain's voice? An
order to detonate?
Not yet.
"Twelve thousand PSIFFWAS
Scott's voice was a distorted boom over the
scream of the ship.
Kirk tried to turn his head. The pressure
pounded at him. Beyond Tom, who was huddled there on
the deck, he could barely see Spock--j in the
corner of his eye ...
Spock looked at him, brow puckered, eyes
tight. Another few seconds ...
Kirk found one last breath in his collapsing
chest. "Detonate!"
No one responded.
Chekov and Sulu both moved a little, but he
had no idea which one of them detonated the
torpedo.
The forward screen exploded into a nearly
solid white flash that overtook its frame and
seemed to fill the bridge, so bright that no one could
see for several seconds.
If Sulu could keep control over the helm,
he didn't need his eyes to pilot the ship
clear--
The pressure fell off abruptly, fast enough
to cause pain even in the relief. Kirk grabbed
for his scattered senses. He tried to turn
to Spock, moving one shoulder in that direction, but
the deck fell away and he hurtled starboard, as
though falling off a steeplechaser, and landed on
top of Tom. Chekov landed on top of them,
Spock beside them. Through the deck Kirk felt
quakes as the other bridge crew hit bottom.
The ship convulsed--might as well have been
Kirk's own body. He wanted to take hits
for her, but he couldn't. Some things she had to take
for herself. She was in a crash dive out of the well's
axle. He tried to see it in his mind, but all
he could do was cram his eyes shut and hold his
breath.
Forward force held him to the deck. If he could
only think--
He willed his eyes to open. Past Chekov's
shoulder he saw Spock pressed to the upper
deck, and the bridge rail over them all. One
hand ... just one hand ...
He reached upward with his right hand, fingers spread
toward the struts of that rail.
I just have to feel it in my hand ...
His fingers bumped the strut, then clamped around
it. Suddenly he felt like an acrobat with one
hand on a trapeze, and he wasn't about to let
go. Pain bit into his fingers.
He shoved Chekov an inch to one side and
pulled against his own weight. The muscles in his
shoulder and arm trembled for relief, but he kept
pulling. He had to get up. He had to be on
his feet! If nature was going to beat him, it was
going to beat him standing up.
He was about halfway there when the ship roared
suddenly and the pressure lifted. His head buzzed
and turned light, andfor an instant he couldn't see
anything more than the upper deck and Spock's
legs nightmarishly elongated in front of him,
or hear past the ringing in his ears and the clacking of his
sinuses.
"All stop!" he shouted. "Stabilize!"
Had they heard him? He couldn't hear his own
voice. Was there an echo? Or was it--
"All stop, aye!"
That was Sulu. Good.
Kirk reached over the rail and grasped
Spock's arm and pulled him to his feet. Then
he looked around, checking on the bridge crew.
Uhura was at her station, wobbling but working. Sulu
was crawling back into his chair, though somehow in
spite of the kicking, he hadn't let his hand be
pulled from the controls. Magic, probably.
Scott was working with one arm--the other was numb at
his side, but he was on his feet.
"Scotty, report!" Kirk demanded.
"Clear of the well, sir," the engineer gasped.
"Not as bad as I expected."
"It wasn't?"
Only now realizing he'd bumped his head on
something, Kirk made the mistake of shaking it.
"Secure from red alert. Go to yellow alert
..." He paused as the blur in front of his
eyes recoagulated into a bridge. "Maintain
general quarters. Damage control parties
report to--ffMr. Scott."
"Aye, sir."
"Sickbay," Kirk said.
"Sickbay here. Dr. Rothbaum."
"Report, doctor."
"ationo deaths, sir. Sixty-two
injuries, mostly in the propulsion and
magnatomics areas. Twenty of those are down for the
count. I can have the others back on duty
within ten minutes."
"Acknowledged, Doctor, bridge out.
Lieutenant Uhura, reposition standby crew
to those twenty stations."
"Redistributing assignments, Captain.
Having some trouble staff+ the reactor loop."
"Put earth science staff up there if necessary.
Those positions have to be manned."
"Yes, sir."
Still holding the rail as his legs rattled under
him, Kirk turned to Spock. "Condition of the
vessel?"
"Intact," Spock said, then paused for
breath. "Some ... exterior structural
damage ..."
Though Spock was trying not to breathe as heavily
as he needed to, his hands were twitching.
"Are you hurt?" Kirk asked him.
"I don't believe so," Spock answered.
"Are you?"
"My head feels as if it's been
sledgehammered. We've got to get McCoy
back on board so he can tell us we're all
imagining it."
Spock only nodded, but seemed relieved.
"Captain," Uhura said, her voice weak and
fighting upward, "Process Control Chief
Edwards insists those positions in the loop can't be
manned by anyone other than systems interns or
supervisors."
Scott snapped up and thundered, "Strangle
him and step over the body! Get those panels
green-lighted. And put one of 'em on
spectroanalysis and the feedbacks."
"Yes, Mr. Scott."
Kirk offered him an approving nod, but
Scott hadn't waited for it. He was already back
at his station, tending to the ship.
The captain reached down to the deck and caught
Tom's elbow, bringing him to a standing position.
Tom pressed back the hair that had fallen
into his eyes. Kirk saw him beat down the fear
he'd been trying to control--for everyone's sake.
"Thank you," he said. And he pulled his arm
away. "I can stand alone."
"Keep to one side. This isn't over,"
Kirk said. "We've got to catch up to the
Romulans and deal with them while they're still out in
deep space. All hands ... this is the
captain. Report to battle stations.
Screens at full magnification. All
departments bring your systems back up
to Starfleet regulation level as quickly as
possible. Arm all weapons batteries.
Shields up."
"Full magnification, sir."
"All phaser and photon systems ready and
functioning, sir."
"Nine-three percent shields up, sir.
All stations report battle ready."
"Very well. Brace yourselves. We've got a
real race to run now. Mr. Sulu, full
ahead, warp factor five."
"Warp five, aye!"










BLOOD SPORT

Chapter Nineteen

Below Decks, Ransom Castle

"Take cover!"
The hungry whine of phased light. The slash
of knives. Wretched unforgiving violation of
living bodies torn atom from atom.
Primitive weapons given work in the modern
age side by side with the hand tools of space
conquest. Blood-spattered passageways.
No warnings. No questions. No prisoners.
Only the efficiency of predators, unforgotten
from eons past. Unforgotten ... and refined.
An Imperial visitation.
Violence boiled through the ramshackle,
weather-scarred tramp packet, bringing a
crescendo of losses. A scorched, hacked, and
pitilessly savaged crew of innocent men and
women slammed through narrow companionways and
hatches in many directions, moving on blind
impulse, trusting to reflex, and losing.
Leonard McCoy had no idea how many he
had been forced to leave behind in the
disruptor-smashed corridors as he was shoved
headfst into Ransom Castle's forward
lazaret. Three people piled in after him, and all he
heard for five seconds were screams and the ping of
fire returned from a captured disruptor.
"Kill the crawlway lights!"
"Get in! All the way in!"
"Here they come!"
"Gimme room--back! Back! Okay,
I'm in!"
"Shut it!"
The lazaret portcullis, two separate
slabs of metal sandwiched between the bulkheads,
rolled out and clanked shut--lesslam ...
clack.
"Oh ... God."
McCoy knew the sound of injury when he
heard it, and in the dimness he grabbed for it.
"Set her down. Can we get any light in
here?"
"Yeah." Mike Frarey's big bulk moved
in the haze of disruptor smoke. "Marilyn,
let me get past you. There's a utility
worklight right ... here someplace. There."
Three tiny pinkish lights popped on in a
row along the far end of the ceiling, and McCoy
forced his eyes to adjust.
He found both his hands on Nancy
Ransom's bloody upper arm, and the irascible
young captain pressed up against the portcullis,
both knees bent, her face crushed with pain.
"Where's Mike?" she gasped.
"I'm right here," Frarey wheezed. "Big as
life."
Nancy squinted at him. "I saw you go
down."
"Yeah, well, I went down for a minute.
My head's swimming some."
"Let the doctor look at you."
"Nah, forget about me."
"I'm busy looking at you right now, Captain
Ransom," McCoy said.
"Mike! Quick, tell 'em what's going on.
No surrender!" Nancy tossed something to Mike
--a remote of some kind--and he plugged it into a
little glowing access in the wall.
"Attention!" he rasped. "We're boarded!
Take cover and fight. It's Romulans! Our
people are being killed. Take cover and double-lock
yourselves in. Fight if you can!"
"Okay, okay," Nancy said, stopping before his
warning started to sound like panic. "If they haven't
got that, it's too late."
"You, come over here," McCoy said. He
gestured to a goggle-eyed crewman about twenty
years old. "What's your name, son?"
"I'm ... Sam Oats."
"Come over here and see if you can't stop this
bleeding. Just hold this chamois over it. Now,
don't pretend to be an intern and make it too
tight."
He left Oats to deal with Nancy's upper
arm, and went after the pasty faces and shivers first.
Burns, cuts, gashes, even stab wounds could
wait. That cold sweaty shock had to be handled
first.
Didn't seem to be any fractures. No
one was collapsing. No spurting punctures.
No breakdown. They were all drenched in sweat,
beaten to shadows because they had protected him by pushing
him out of harm's way and taken the brunt of the
Romulan attack for him. He knew the signs
of decency when he saw them.
"Are we safe in here?"
"I don't hear anybody trying to get in,"
Nancy muttered.
"Everybody stop moving around. There's a lot
of blood and I can't tell where it's coming from.
Calm down so you can feel where your pain is.
Breathe and conserve strength."
He had his work cut out for him. There were four of
them crammed into a six-by-six refuge,
squeezed between winches, brackets, chain hoists,
devil's claws, bumpers, fenders,
double-fluked antiroll hooks, all equipment
for maneuvering large cargo in space. There were also
boxes of chamois cloths and dirty rags.
At the moment, the dangling ordnance looked a
lot more alive than the poor wretches gasping
between them. Their faces were pasty or flushed, some
looked queasy or faint, others sharply suffering.
They looked like a club of longshoremen in their
olive drab turtlenecks or black
jerseys, less uniforms than just a shipment of
factory seconds they'd stumbled onto.
"What the hell do they want?" Frarey
choked. "Are they looking for cargo?"
"We aren't carrying anything," Nancy said
heavily. "We had to leave it all at the
starba se."
"Romulans aren't pirates, generally
speaking." McCoy dabbed at Frarey's bleeding
black eye. "Does the air circulate in
here? Will we be able to breathe, trapped like this?"
"It circulates everywhere on board,"
Frarey said. "We don't take chances with each
other."
Nancy forced herself to one knee. "Who'd we
lose?"
"I saw Eric go down," Sam Oats said,
his voice a pathetic shatter. "And Luke and
Clancy. Dead or out, I don't know which."
"Marilyn and Mitch and a couple of others are
trapped in the stacks, Nancy," Frarey said.
"I saw the hatch close."
"How many raiders have--we got--" A wave
of vertigo hit their struggling captain, and she
thunked sideways against the portcullis.
McCoy caught her good arm. "Simmer down,
will you? Panic won't serve us any."
"I'm not panicking," she insisted, flaring with
insult.
"Don't get defensive. What's this ship
built like? I might need to know."
Sam Oats and Mike Frarey blinked at
him as though they'd never heard of such a thing, then
Frarey shrugged. "Forward, the commons, where we
eat and sleep, and the larder. In a square from there
back to the engine room, there's a causeway we
call the quadrangle. It's just a walkway
along the ship's gunwales."
"I got it. Go on."
"Well ... in the midship is the dry
stores, then the lazaret, where we are now, the ore
bunker, the wet stores--t's where we put
barrels, casks, and tanks. Then the bunkers
and the coops and stores are all divided up with
reinforced airtight removable wall sections.
Then there's the engine room, and that's about it."
"Solarium," Sam Oats gasped, licking
a swollen lip.
"Oh, yeah, there's a solarium on top of the
dry stores, where we can, you'know, get away from
each other once in a while."
McCoy crawled a few inches deeper into the
vault and went after Oats's bloody leg.
"I don't know what they want with my ship,"
Nancy growled, speaking out of her corner. "But
I've got weapons on board and I'm going
to start using them."
"Wait!" McCoy grabbed for her sleeve.
"How many of these people do we have to kill?"
"All of 'em, Doc," she said.
"But why? There are ways to fight them without
slaughter. They hear too well--we can bombard
them with high-frequency sound. Or we can drop the
temperature on the ship because we can maneuver in
cold better than they can. They're used to breathing
thinner air than we are. We can use that! Or
we can make them itch, or any number of
alternatives!"
"I don't want alternatives. I want
dead."
"But the Enterprise will be coming! All we have
to do is hold out until she gets here."
"Oh, get off it," Nancy spat. "You
telling me you think the Romulans let that starship
haul itself up out of that well without a fight? I'm
not going to believe it."
"Believe what you want, Captain,"
McCoy told her sharply. "I've seen Jim
Kirk throw off some mighty big chains in his
time."
"He's dead. Give it up."
McCoy glared at her, anger swelling
to sadness. He hadn't thought of it that way. Jim
Kirk dead ... the ship gone ...
The death of one, the death of a hundred--he
couldn't swallow it bluntly like that.
Nancy eyed him in the dim ugly light. "You
some kind of pacifist?"
"I just don't like to kill when there's another
way," he said. His voice gave away his
emotions.
"Well, great," the quaking woman said. "You
go out and pacify them. Maybe you keep some
high-frequency noise in your pocket, I
don't know. But I can't let 'em take my
ship." She looked at him closely. "Have you
ever had to fight for your life?"
The question was almost light, for Nancy. It told
McCoy that they were in trouble. Sympathy growled
in his conscience. How long had he grumbled about
space travel, yet continued on, deeper and
deeper into space, comforted by the fact that he had the
bulldog James Kirk doing his talking and his
fighting and his bloodsweating for him. How willing
would he have been to do his part without Jim Kirk
to lie down on the daggers first?
All I've done is shadowbox,
he thought. Maybe it's all we've all
done, except for the few captains who dare put
their necks on the line. All us crew people who just
expect the answers to be there in that chair up on
the bridge. I never saw so many captains in one
place, and I never thought they might all be a little
bit Jim Kirk ... and it looks like I'm not
giving Nancy her due. Seems to me she's
willing to hold up her end against the galaxy's
evil princes.
Nancy suddenly sighed. "You really think that
starship and Mr. Highpockets are going to get
here?"
Her question was tinged with hope.
He could have given her an arrogant answer, a
starship answer, but something told him not to.
"I think there's a good chance, Captain," he
said.
"Okay," she said. "Then we'll assume that.
Mike! Tie me into the sensors. I want the
whole system crashed."
"Crash the sensors? On purpose?"
"The whole thing. If he's right and that starship can
get here, then I don't want the Romulans
on board here to see them coming. Come on, boys,
let's hold up our end of the deal."

Red Talon

"The conquest is secure, Commander. We have their
ship."
Romar's face was flecked with shaved metal
dust from the fighting aboard the target ship, and there
was a small gash on his right jaw, but otherwise
he was in control of himself. His breath came with an
effort. The metallic fibers in his uniform
tunic were pulled in several places.
Allowing himself a moment to look carefully at his
subcommander, Valdus viewed the results of
hand-to-hand combat which so seldom presented itself to a
spacebound crew.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Romar halted suddenly, hesitating on one
foot. "Am I?"
"Yes," Valdus said, and even allowed himself
a moderate smile. "y."
Pressing a hand to his chest, Romar looked
down at his tunic and his legs as though he might
be doing something wrong or have forgotten something.
"It's a simple question,
Subcommander," Valdus said. "Don't you know
now it fits the mission?"
"I ..."
"From infancy we have it drummed into our heads that
we are tools of the Empire first and always. Too
often we sacrifice our own personal value
to this and we forget that we have any."
Taken more off guard than if he'd been
struck from behind by stealth, Romar stammered, "Thank
you ..."
"You're welcome. Report."
"The ... the vessel is under our influence.
Its crew is locked away in various
locations."
"Not taken prisoner?"
"Some, but most have locked themselves away. Shall I
order they be drilled out and taken?"
After a pause for thought, a calculation of the time
available to them, Valdus said, "Since they are
contained, leave them where they are. There is little
sense in expending energy to capture and hold them
when they are holding themselves. You made a show of
taking the vessel?"
"Yes, they all know they have been conquered. We
were quite noisy."
"Then let them sit in their confinement. We must
concentrate on our own crew's efforts."
"If I were in confinement," Romar said, "I
would be trying to break out and sabotage the boarding
party, Commander."
"If they show themselves," Valdus said, "kill
them as they appear."
"Yes, Commander."
"Romar ..."
"Yes, Commander?"
"Stop ending every response with "Commander."'
You're beginning to sound like a security beeper."
"Yes."
"Show me the graphic you developed."
"Oh, I had almost forgotten." Romar laughed
nervously and led the way to one of the small computer
access screens on the glossy, dark panels.
He tapped at the controls. "A simulation.
Fairly simple. The ship will be impregnated
with the adulterant you so smoothly smuggled into this
space ... and it will slam at warp speed into the
planet's surface."
On the screen a pretend ship bolted toward
a green planet with a thread of mountain ranges and
hammered into the planet's mantle,
instantly blistering the surface.
"Because of the high velocity, the explosion
actually occurs miles inside the planet. A
huge fusion explosion ensues ... the mantle
cracks ... there are massive earthquakes
..."
The screen rippled with color as Romar's
narration was given a disturbing illustration. The
green planet swelled, cracked, was laced now
with volcanic blight, then--v suddenly--
swallowed by heat from its own core, first in a
surge of red, then a gaudy purple. The
color of plague.
"A supersonic fireball engulfs the
planet along with a dense cloud of highly
radioactive cobalt vapor. Everyone who is
not a hundred meters below the surface is dead from
the cobalt vapor. Anyone below is dead from
earthquakes. It is very simple, Commander."
Valdus reached forward and turned off the
screen. A whole planet. On his ^w alone.
"I value your work," he said.
They faced the forward screen, neither looking at
each other. Instead they fixed their eyes on the
main viewer's picture of the merchant workship they
now possessed.
"Romar, I will transport aboard that ship and
take responsibility. When I do, I want
you to move off. We must have deniability. I
don't want war with the Federation. I never did.
Go back to Imperial space and forget me."
Distress creased Romar's dust-coated
features.
"Commander ... I assumed you would rig that
vessel for high speed on automatic navigation
and ... that you would beam back."
"I never said such a thing."
"Please say it now."
Valdus started to respond but noted that Romar
didn't want to follow his order to move off,
didn't want to save his own skin and the Red
Talon's until he could be sur e that Valdus
wasn't sacrificing his life for nothing.
"Call a legion to the bridge," Valdus
said.
"On their way--" Romar responded, and it was
obvious that he had to choke down a "Commander."
Valdus glanced now at his second and tried
to remember what it was like to be second in command.
Since he was considered somehow special
for surviving an attack and preventing the
attackers from advancing, he hadn't been
second for very long. The Praetor had personally
ordered him a ship of his own.
He tried to remember those days, but all he
could see in his mind was Scorah.
His eyes lowered. "I know you are ...
uneasy."
Wrenching suddenly to face him, Romar gulped,
"But I am not unsure! I know we are doing the
right thing. I know it. I have felt it for myself!"
"Then you have the advantage." Valdus inhaled
deeply and sighed. "I have never been very sure of
myself, Romar, not even in my most glorious
moments. Even as I stood before the Praetor and
received awards for my successes, I would think
back and wonder if those successes were genuine,
or if I had spun onto them through the misfortune
of others or simply my own happenstance. I've
never been completely convinced of my own worth."
Quaking, teetering on the edge of disillusionment
--perh with everything but the person before him--Romar
choked out a raw whisper.
"I believe in you," he vowed. "You told me
the need of our Empire, then you showed me that you were
right. What more could I ask? When has the galaxy
been simpler for me?" He put his hands out, one,
then the other. "I know what I must do."
Valdus rubbed his hot palms on his thighs and
watched Romar for a few moments, only watched
him. Leaders learned early in the Imperial
fleet not to expect too much loyalty or
stretch it too much.
And yet here it was, bending before him.
He wanted to pay Romar a compliment, and
tried to do it with his expression, but to come out and say
such a thing at this instant of conquest and question--he
couldn't.
Always there had been awkwardness at such times for
him. Not because he couldn't find it in himself to be
benevolent, but because he had found too much of that in
himself and had never polished the timing. Awkward,
always awkward.
"I've never believed in myself as much as others
have believed in me," he said. "You are
fortunate."
Frustration colored Romar's face a
mottled olive and even made the wound on his jaw
bleed again.
"Commander--"
"Yes, I know," Valdus said, and smiled.
Nervous strain pulled at the corners of
Romar's mouth. The bridge was empty, for they
had sacrificed the bulk of their crew to board the
other ship and man the transporters, but he
spoke as though a crowd pressed at his shoulders.
"Shall we ... turn back, sir?"
Dismay crossed both their faces in a single
crawling shadow. They were sons of a culture whose
millenarian demands made a cynical chime and
allowed no quarter. Chances were few and
irrecoverable. Would changing their minds be less
vulgar than making a single savage attack
without authorization?
"If we turn back now," Valdus said,
"the Empire will have to answer for our actions. If
we push forward, you and the ship are merely tools
of a commander gone mad. No, we shall push forward with
my insanity. And what happens will be our
responsibility. Save yourself the distress I
see in your eyes, Romar. The galaxy boils
with crude reason."
As poor Romar stood in knee-high torment
and stared at him, brow troughed and mouth open without
any noise coming out of it, the aft doors opened and
eight armored legionnaires thundered onto the
bridge. The senior among them stomped toward his
two senior officers and asked a question with his eyes.
Valdus held up a staying hand.
"One moment, Subcenturion," he said.
He offered Romar a grip on the shoulder that
failed to comfort either of them.
"I treasure your confidence. I won't fail
it. Once our plan is in motion, and before I
board the acquisition, you and I must pause and
talk. We have a pact to make."
While apprehension plagued Romar's face,
he seemed willing nonetheless to tweeze his body
hairs out one at a time if that was what was needed
to push this ghastly situation from the doorstep of their
homeworlds.
Valdus smiled a graveyard smile, shook
his head, and gave up for now. He offered the
impatient subcenturion a nod.
"You may begin."
The subcenturion spun and gave a single
motion to his squad. The others pulled tools from
their belts, then broke into couples and dispersed
around the bridge.
And they began to dismantle the walls.

Enterprise

"Contact, Captain."
At Uhura's announcement, James Kirk
pushed out of his chair and flexed his hands, coiled with
impatience and a frantic flush to grab for the
controls himself. His voice was gravelly and
chopped through the bridge clicks and blips.
"Sulu, identify it."
"Contact is ... I believe it's the
Alexandria, sir."
"Speed?"
"Warp three point five, sir."
"Scan for Romulan presence aboard."
It took a few damning minutes. Kirk
damned every tick. Even then, he didn't get
what he really wanted.
"Their shields are not up," Spock
reported. He looked at the captain.
"Scanning is erratic. I wouldn't trust it."
"All right. We'll do it the hard way.
Reduce speed to match."
"Aye, sir," Sulu said, his voice tight.
"Reducing speed ... warp five ... four ...
three point seven ... point five, sir."
Kirk hammered his direct contact panel.
"Bridge to security."
A few grueling seconds prickled his skin
before an answer came up.
"Security here. Chief Hanashiro."
His blood boiling and his mind reeling with
pictures of the dozens of possibilities, what
could happen and what might not, which of his guesses
would be wrong and which people would pay--Kirk forced himself
to concentrate on one gram of information at a time.
"Prepare an armed boarding party. Heavy
gear, combat conditions. All weapons on heavy
stun setting. You're going to take over a
vessel."
There was a distended pause on the other end, then
Hanashiro's voice came back, a fifth
higher. "Yes, sir! What's the mission?"
"Unannounced beam-in to the vessel
Alexandria, assuming the ship has been
overtaken by hostiles. Assume innocent crew
are being held aboard and that Romulan
antagonists are in charge of the vessel." Kirk
leaned forward and started to talk through his teeth. "Go
over there, and take it back."
"allyes, sir. I will! Any preliminary
contact?"
"Negative. Contacts can be faked."
"Orders when we have possession?"
"If there aren't any Romulans on board,
confiscate the ship under Starfleet authority.
Establish a Section Three security
blockade. Stop and check every vessel that
passes you. If all's well, send them on their
way with orders to be cautious for possible
takeover."
"Aye-aye, Captain. Boarding detail
will be in the transporter room in three
minutes."
"I'll hold you to that. Kirk out."
He glanced at Spock, needing--and getting--
that stable glance that was longer, calmer, more reassuring
than any other he might have found.
Was he doing the right thing? Was he jumping to the right
conclusions? Was fear, or maybe anger, clouding
his experience?
Could he be as cold as he needed to be? Was he
cold enough right now?
He'd been frightened before in his career, frightened for
his own existence and those of others, prepossessed
with the safety and sanctity of his starship, within whose
walls ran his own blood, pumped from his own
heart, but there were many kinds of fear and anyone who
said anything else was lying. Fear for himself or his
ship was one kind. Fear for another ship ...
A panic at heart level, a kind in andof
itself.
Especially when that ship had one of his two
closest friends on board.
"Sir?" Engineer Scott tipped
cautiously into the captain's periphery.
"Yes, Mr. Scott?"
"I thought we decided our course of action,
sir."
Kirk kept his voice stable. "I've got the
armed parties. I'm going to use them to secure this
sector if I have to go down to the last man on this
ship and drive her myself."
Scott's face took on a quirkish
admiration and he rocked on a heel. "Very good,
sir."
"Thank you, Mr. Scott," he said
solemnly. "Authorize transporting of the
assault team onto Alexandria. Then take
us back to warp five."
Scott nodded, and there was almost a wink.
"Aye, sir, will do."
The captain dropped his gaze, tightened his
shoulders, then released them, and half expected his
neck to snap. He heard Scott move away,
back toward the engineering station to carry out the
orders. In his bones he felt the transporter
humming, and in his mind saw the beams carry his armed
detail to another ship, there to draw arms and take
over.
Half his blood curdled at the idea. The
other half was still boiling. He scanned the
flickering viewscreen as though searching for a
beacon, though he knew helpless others were watching
the night, waiting for him to be their beacon.
A second later, Commander Scott motioned
to Sulu. The starship vibrated with summoned
power. Warp four ... Warp five ...

Ransom Castle

The two Romulans never saw what hit them.
That was because Mike Frarey hit them. Frarey
was a big man, but he was quiet and fast. So he
managed to knock the tails out from under the two
invaders before they even realized the bulkhead had
opened behind them.
"Get their weapon! Mike, pull them into the
closet. Lock them in there."
Nancy kicked at the unconscious invaders
as Mike got them both by th e metallic collars
and hauled them into the utility closet. Sam
Oats slammed the hatch and locked it, then
Nancy pulled out a lipstick dispenser and marked
the wall with a Z.
"What's that supposed to mean?" McCoy
asked, careful to keep his voice down in case
there were more Romulans coming along the quadrangle.
"Zorro. What else?" Nancy popped
off. "So we'll know where they are, and nobody'll
just open the door without being ready to fight. My
crew's trained, too, you know. Now, what's that
thing?"
She limped down the passage, to a
coffin-size piece of metal hanging from two
antigravs. It kept hovering and waited to be
pushed along.
"Why were they moving a hunk of metal through my
ship?"
"It looks like a folded section of
wall material," Frarey said. "See the bolt
holes here? And down there--"
"That don't make no sense." Oats went
to look. "Why would they invade us, then bring a
piece of a wall?"
"Pardon the expression," McCoy
interrupted, "but why don't you ask the logical
questions? Ask yourself where they were heading with it. What's
down that way?"
"Nothing, just the engine room," Oats
supplied.
"The engine room's not nothing, boy," Nancy
grimly told him. "It's a hell of a lot of
power."
"But they got their own engine room!"
"Shut up. I'm trying to think."
McCoy stepped between them to the wall section.
"Let's let the tricorder do our thinking.
Hold that section up, Frarey."
Frarey lifted part of the folded wall section.
One side was white crystalline, the other side
silver. McCoy ran the tricorder along both
sides.
"The white side is lithium hydride ...
hydrogen gas bonded to lithium. Why would they do
that?"
"So the gas could be molded, that's why,"
Nancy said. She was suddenly pale.
"And this silvery material ... is cobalt."
McCoy swiveled from face to face. "What's
the significance of that?"
"I'll tell you what. They're taking this
stuff down to our engine room in order to fuse it
to our warp core, that's what. It means they've
been planning this since they left their own space.
It's not an arbitrary hit."
"What's that mean?" McCoy badgered. "Do
I have to keep asking?"
Bending in a pool of regret and grief,
Nancy looked as though she was ready to throw up.
"It means we're part of a long-range plan of
some kind. The only thing they can do with lithium
hydride and cobalt is turn this ship into a real
big, real filthy bomb."





Chapter Twenty

Bridge of Ransom Castle

Transporting had always seemed to Valdus a
necessary evil of modern technology.
He thought of this all the way through the conscious
moments of the process, and through its stomach-turning
aftermath, until he could move and speak again.
The instant he could see again, he remained
unsure if the transportation process had
truly finished. All he saw around him was a
distortion of shadows and flat areas, indistinguishable
as a ship's bridge or any other organized
work area. Only as he focused in the dimness
did he realize the bridge was made this way on
purpose, painted with blacks and flat dull
colors to confuse the eye, without consideration
to beginnings or endings of panels and consoles,
corners or intrusions.
His analysis was confirmed when one of his own
soldiers came toward him, lips parted to make a
report, and instantly tripped on a set of
steps which were painted the opposite of how anyone in
their right mind would paint steps. The ups appeared
as downs. The poor lighting here perfectly
complemented the illusion.
Valdus caught the poor stumbling sod's arm
and hauled him to his knees.
"Forgive me, Commanderffwas the soldier begged as
he staggered up.
"Keep your eyes open, Legionnaire. This
is a ship patterned with unwelcoming.
Report."
"The ship is ours, sir. Its crew is
imprisoned or locked away. Transportation
of the wall sections has commenced from Red
Talon, and we are moving them one by one through the
ship to the engine room."
"Moving them? You couldn't beam them directly
to the engine room?"
"No, Commander," the legionnaire said. "This
vessel has some kind of antidissolution
shielding in its after third. We attempted
to transport directly, but the best we could do was
to transport the plates into a freight--"
Valdus slapped his hands against his legs and
snapped, "Why did I fail to think! I should have
chosen one of those pleasure vessels when I had
a chance to do so!" He stalked the confusing bridge,
and the only thing he did right was observe the
deck and not trip in front of his minion. Finally
he stopped his stormy circle and thumped the back
of his hand on the helm. "Fool."
"Commander! The sensors! They're shutting
down!"
The soldier plunged for the nearest panels as
half the indicator lights suddenly flickered and
died out.
Valdus swung to his side. "Damage?"
"No damage--power is cut! The power is
cut! How can they cut the power! We have locked
them all away!"
"They must have a remote access of some sort,"
Valdus grimly told him. "Likely they are
familiar with being boarded and have prepared for this.
Quickly--check communications."
They both grabbed for the afterdeck, where the
ship-to-ship communications hid under a black
hood, but after a moment's frantic attempts
to tap into the system, Valdus felt his brow
pucker and he turned to look at the whole
bridge, to take in the appearance of the control
systems as a unit--and realized what had
happened.
"The computer system!" he said. "They've shut
the entire ship down!"

Enterprise

"Contact, Captain--extreme distance. Two
vessels."
"Identify them, Spock."
"Not possible at this distance, sir."
Jim Kirk drew in an uncomforting breath.
"Moving? Are they race contestants?"
Spock squinted into his screens and sounded
unsure when he reported. "Very little movement
registering, sir."
"Two vessels, no movement ... I have
to assume it's them." He paced back and forth behind
the helm. He saw the rigidity in Sulu's and
Chekov's shoulders. Both men had their eyes
fixed on the forward screen, but there was nothing to see
but empty space, and it looked suspiciously
innocent out there.
"Is long-range communication available yet,
Lieutenant?"
Uhura obviously heard the compacted rage in
his voice and lowered her own voice to compensate.
"Long-range subspace is still
flooded, sir. No chance of calling ahead."
Kirk ground his teeth at the high-reaching
effects of somebody's racing trick and pounded the
comm panel on the arm of the command chair. "Mr.
Scott."
"Engineering. Scott here."
"Power situation?"
"She's up to ninety percent sensor
capacity, eighty-three percent thrust and
weapons, eighty percent maneuverability,
seventy-nine percent shielding--"
"Make weapons and shields the priorities.
We'll need them within ten minutes."
"Aye, sir, working."
"I want warp six as soon as you can get it,
and full warp capacity immediately thereafter. Kirk
out. All hands, red alert. Go to battle stations.
Arm all weapons."
Uhura didn't acknowledge, but her voice
instantly flowed through vessel's internal
communications systems.
"Red alert. Battle stations ... all hands
to battle stations. This is not a drill. All
hands report to battle stations ..."
Realizing he'd just ordered Scott to wave a
magic wand over the weapons, and no excuses
allowed, Kirk paused to listen to Uhura's
voice and think of what his four hundred plus
crewmen were doing below decks--rushing to their stations,
snapping all systems on line, double-manning
critical positions, and he felt as though he'd
been given a stimulant.
That made him think of McCoy.
"Mr. Spock," he said, but then he paused.
He leaned in a tense manner on his command chair,
but couldn't bring himself to sit down just when everyone
else on board was up and operating. He was glad
they'd put Tom updeck in the engineer's chair
Scott had abandoned. He couldn't see Tom's
face. He didn't want to look at that gentle
expression of hope in the midst of all this and
remember that an entire culture was sitting on
his shoulders.
Spock had his hands on his controls, but he was
watching Kirk. He'd been alerted, and now he
was waiting for orders.
That means I have to come up with something, the
captain thought. Something Valdus won't
expect. He thinks we're dead--we have
to behave like a ghost.
"We're going to do something we've never done
before," he said. "Attention all decks ... rig
for silent running."
Everyone hesitated for just a moment, to absorb
the ^ws. They'd all heard about it, all been
trained for it, but this procedure was one of those things
that appears in an Academy class for two or
three days, shows up on a test, and is almost
immediately forgotten. Silent while the ship is shut
down, waiting out a situation--t was one thing.
Silent at high speed and closing on an enemy
... that was something else.
"Turn off all running lights," Kirk
said. "Shut down all systems but thrust,
weapons, and life-support, including all
automatic reaction controls and deflector
shields. Mr. Chekov, plot our course to the
two ships we detected, then shut down the
long-range navigational guidance systems."
Chekov glanced at him. "Navigate without the
computer, sir?"
"Navigate with charts and your own hands and
eyes, Ensign. Navigate with a stick if you have
to, but don't let them see you coming. You've been
trained to do it--now's your chance."
Now Sulu twisted around to him, too. "Are
we going into a battle situation without shields
up, sir?"
"De flection energy can be detected," Kirk
said. "The Romulans will be looking for an
active ship. We're going to try to become part
of the background, like a dead rock in space.
That's enough, gentlemen. I don't intend
to explain myself any further."
The two of them snapped forward, chimed a
muddled, "Yes, sir," and didn't glance
anymore.
The bridge of the Enterprise was normally a
fairly loud place. Bleeps and hums,
whirrs and clicks, machines and people working,
correlating information, logging new things, revising
old things. Suddenly the lights started to shut
down. The bleeps began to fall silent.
Harmony and countermelody began to fall off,
drop away. The breath went out from the starship like a
body going to sleep.
The greatest fear of space travelers is that the
kindly shell of precious air and heat should cease
to protect them, and that was what this looked like.
As the lights on the panels shut
down section by section, and finally even the overhead
lights went dim, everyone paused instinctively
to watch, to see how far into blackness the bridge
would retreat. In minutes there were only a few
amber lights left on the panels--no green
ones--andthe milky glow of Chekov's navigation
astrogator.
The Enterprise crept forward, shrouded in
silence.
"Mr. Spock ..."
"Sir?"
"Bring all personnel inward from the ship's
outer areas, secure those areas, then turn off the
heat. Bring the ship's outer shell down to four
degrees Kelvin. Do your best to make sure
there's no leaking heat, and disguise any exhaust
to the extreme aft portion of the ship."
"Yes, sir."
Working under the lingering strains of the Rey presence
on the ship, and in his own way engaged in a
battle of will, Spock forced himself to concentrate as
he fed the orders throughout the ship. There was strain in
his face, tension in his arms.
And enough was enough.
Kirk turned to the port side. "Tom," he
said. "It's time for you to go below."
Tom looked more afraid to leave than to stay.
"Oh, please, Captain, I'm trying to be
calm--"
"No arguments. You're affecting my crew."
Kirk raised a sharp finger. "Off."
The Rey man stood up, unsteady,
disappointed, blinked those big eyes, and went
shame-faced to the turbolift.
As he turned back to the forward screen,
Kirk heard the hiss of the lift doors and thought
better of watching Tom actually leave.
Spock gazed at him briefly, and remained
silent.
"Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "secure the
ship, then shut off all sensor emissions."
Surprised, Spock drew his hands from his
panel and straightened. Uhura spun around. The
two engineers on the port deck popped up from
their controls. Even Chekov turned. Sulu was
the only person who didn't overtly react, and
Kirk could see him fighting not to.
Spock stepped down to the command deck and came
to the captain's side. "We will be flying blind,"
he said. "We may not be seen, but we will
not be able to see."
"I know that. I'm going to assume Valdus
put his power back up to one hundred percent almost
immediately after leaving Starbase 16. I was running
the race, and didn't. Now we're ten to eighteen
percent below power, and if we don't get in the first
kick, we're finished. I want you to shut the
ship down completely except for the warp engines.
All hands keep movement to a minimum. Stay
calm. No unnec activity. Clear the
corridors. Prevent any electronic
leakage. I don't want anything but speed,
Mr. Spock, speed and readiness. Hold the
impulse drive in abeyance. As little active
power as possible. Once silent running is in
effect, I want you to emit a subspace
signal of one watt."
Spock's dark eyes went narrow and he
hesitated. "One watt, sir?"
"Yes, one watt. Only one."
"A very ... small signal, sir."
"That's the idea. I want the Romulan
to squint into the darkness because he thinks he's seeing
something. We'll look like anything but a starship.
I want all his sensors fixed on that one little
watt as we approach. When we get up
close, we broadcast everything we've got in
one singular blast--blow out their sensors
completely. He'll be squinting into the dark, and
we'll shine a spotlight in his eyes. Get
ready to do it."
He slid into his command chair, his thighs aching.
Unable to send or receive, without so much as a light
on her hull, the starship didn't even hum around
him today, but only streaked through the darkness of
space, now dark herself and no more than a slice
of the night.
"We're flying blind and we could pile into a star,
but if that's the chance we have to take in order to save
a planet of strangers, then that's what we'll
do. They've killed people and they've ruined an event
that was intended to generate nothing but goodwill.
They've made me lose the race, and I've had
enough. It's time for them to lose."

Red Talon

"Subcommander ... a signal. Very faint."
"Where?"
"From the direction we came."
Romar crowded the subcenturion at the science
panel and looked at the readouts. "Another
racing vessel?"
"Not enough signal to be a vessel, sir," the
subcenturion said. "Reads only point zero
zero zero one."
"Moving?"
"I can't tell with something so small."
Frustration gnawing at him, Romar pushed in
closer. "Can you tell if it is natural?"
"What else can it be?" The subcenturion
leaned back and held a hand to the screen in a
gesture of disgust. "Nothing can be so minuscule
while representing manufactured power."
Still, Romar could not trust what he saw on the
screen. "Heat readings? Energy emissions?
Thrust trail? Nothing? Are you looking at your
controls?"
"I read nothing, Subcommander. You see it for
yourself."
"What can it be, then?"
"A probe perhaps? That drifted into the area on
the currents of the race exhausts. So many ships
in one area--"
"Space is vast, Subcenturion," Romar
snapped. "Too vast to be stirred up. Turn
all available sensors on that blip, high
intensity. Pull in every emission it may put out.
And put me in contact with Commander Valdus."
"Communications on the other ship have been
debilitated--"
"Then use his hand-held communicator! Are you
waiting for a night's rest?" Romar leaned past the
subcenturion and struck the necessary pads.
"Commander, this is Romar. Do you receive?"
Several seconds plodded past. The hand-held
communicator took more power, and more time, to draw in
the signal and notify the landing party of the hailing.
"This is Valdus."
"We have contacted a signal, Commander, but it
is much too faint to be a ship."
"An emission? Is there power involved?
Movement?"
"Impossible to tell at this distance. We're
focusing all sensors at full intensity upon it,
attempting to identify it. It may be a probe,
or one of the Race Committee markers ... but it
seems too faint even for those."
"Romar ... raise your shields."
Romar leaned closer--absurd, because
the officers on the bridge could have heard a
whisper, and he had no intent to whisper.
"My shields?"
"allyes."
"But we have taken and secured our target. No
ship can possibly approach us without alerting our
sensors and having the shields come on
automatically. ... I resist using the shields
without reason. They could be detected from far off.
Our plan could be foiled for our caution. And if
our shields are up, we won't be able to contact
you through the hand-held system."
Silence blended briefly with the tension that always
came with a mission of conquest. If only those who
were conquered could realize that fewer deaths would come with
simple submission.
"I suppose you're right."
"Don't fear, Commander," Romar said. "I will
keep sensors focused on the signal. If it
increases or grows near, the shields will go up."
"Very well. Soon we will be finished altering
this ship's warp core, and we shall send her on her
way to the planet of witches. Nothing will stop it
then--no one will think to stop it."
"Do you want more personnel there? Is the
ship's crew still fighting back?"
"There is some sparse resistance. We can
deal with them. No matter, Romar, for in a few
minutes the entire crew of this ship will be fused
to the planet of Gullrey, and Gullrey will be
melting before the eyes of the Federation."

Kirk could have picked up the tension on a
knife and used it to butter bread.
"Approaching the Romulan ship's last known
position, sir."
Chekov's voice cracked.
"All hands, stand by ... sensor emitters
on alert ... prepare for amplification of all
systems, maximum broadcast. All
frequencies open ... all lights on standby
... heat emission control, prepare to flood the
outer sections. Phasers, stand by to fire, tight
beam, short range. Avoid hitting the
Castle with heat wash."
"All systems on standby, sir. Ready
to flood all emissions power grids."
"Position, Mr. Chekovffwas
"Coming up to five-tenths light-years distant from
last noted position--three-tenths ...
two ... one ... ten light-days ..."
"Helm, reduce speed! Now, Mr.
Spock--blow them away! All systems on!
Phasers--fireffwas

"Overload! Overloadffwas
The bridge of Red Talon erupted in
sparks and smoke as their own power was fed back at
them in a violent gush.
"Full shields! Return fire! All
systems to battle condition!"
"It's the starship, Subcommanderffwas the weapons
officer gasped. "How can they be here? We killed
them!"
"Obviously we failed to kill them enough!"
Romar snapped, and backhanded the shocked man
across the cheek. "Fire at them! Fireffwas
He thrashed across the bridge, pushing injured
crewmen out of the way and shoving blinded and confused
others into positions where they might be able to operate
something. The putrid stink of burned circuits
flushed up at them so thickly that they could barely
breathe.
"We can't aim!" the subcenturion shouted
across the flashing consoles.
Nearby, the centurion batted at a fire and
gasped, "Contact the Commander! Warn him!"
"No! We need the shields!" Romar shouted
back. "Return their fire!"
"I can't aim at them!" the weapons officer
choked. "The targeting computer is backwashed!
They're everywhere!"
"Then shoot at everything!" Romar brayed.
"Shoot!"
The officer grabbed for his console with burned
hands, and took potshots into the darkness.
Romar clung to the helm as the ship was struck
from above and plunged on the descent, then almost
immediately was struck from the side, and twisted
backward, and was struck again as it turned.
A dozen times they aimed and missed until their
weapons board was flashing with lights warning of
depleted power. A dozen times the starship whipped
at them out of patches of sensor blackness caused
by the sudden sensor blinding. By the time Romar
realized how deeply crippled his own ship was,
there were six men lying dead on the bridge and warning
buzzers driving him to madness, and there was only one
more course.
"Veer off!"
The centurion spun around and staggered toward
him. "We're abandoning the commander!"
"Then abandon him!" Romar grabbed the man by the
collar and drew him close, then pitched him
viciously across the deck. "It is his own order!
Veer off! Veer toward Imperial space!
High warp!"
"Yes, Subcommander ..."
"Corus! Get someone up here to plot a
path! Corusffwas
"Corus is dead, Subcommander."
"Then get someone else!"
Romar faced the forward screen, its image of the
starship looping toward them again with her phaser
ports glowing, and the glowering image of the Ransom
Castle in the background--
And in an instant that image was suddenly
launched into the distance, falling farther and farther behind.
He fixed his glare on the two ships. Even
in the thunderhead of battle, he found himself searching
in his own soul for what he had seen in Valdus's
eyes, to catch that fading memory from a generation
ago, to wonder if he was making the right decision.
He understood the latent content in those eyes ...
a man who thought he should have died years ago
aboard an ill-starred ship.
Ghosts of Scorah were in Valdus's eyes.
The commander was summoning the crypt of his fellows,
that he too might crawl in.
Romar bit down on thoughts of turning back,
to beg a change in what was happening. The course
was set and would snap to bits if he tried
to change it. The starship was there, and nothing could be
done to drive it away.
He wiped a bleeding cut on his face with the
back of his hand, and fought to get a whole breath of the
contaminated air in his lungs. He felt his
innards tighten. Waves of grief thrashed over
him.
"I am your son now," he murmured, "and I
will fulfill your purpose."

Chapter Twenty-one

Below Decks, Ransom Castle

A nauseating shimmer and whine dispersed, and in its
place were the bracketing walls of this ship's
port quadrangle passageway.
James Kirk shook off the effects
and gripped tightly the phaser in his hand. He
glanced to one side, then the other, at his five
security men.
"Disperse," he said.
Two men went forward, two aft, and one stayed
with him.
"Let's go," he snapped to the man who would be
his personal backup, and led the way laterally through
the dark passages of Ransom Castle.
Only now did he remember what an
industrial ship looked like on the inside.
Color-baffled shadows, unseen ledges, dark
doorways, bolted hatches. The ship was built
like a medieval castle, with double locks and iron
hasps, back-to-back freight holds, cold
crawlways, and spiral steps between decks.
As he moved, he whipped his communicator up
in a single motion that opened the grid without having
to use more than one hand.
"Kirk to Enterprise."
"Spock here."
"Are the close-range sensors back on
line yet?"
"There is some frequency confusion after having
the systems shut down, but we are clearing it.
Mr. Chekov is endeavoring to pinpoint the
Romulan anatomical readings aboard
Ransom Castle. So far we have only three
readings, all of those in the after sections near the
engineering deck. Security Officer Brennan
is on his way there with his squad. He already forced
open two holds and found several members of the
crew, injured but alive."
"Any sign of McCoy?"
The silence was suddenly heavy before Spock
answered.
"Still searching, sir," the Vulcan finally
said. And another silence followed. "Sir, are
you using the transporter aboard that ship?"
"Me? No, of course not. Why?"
"We're picking up unauthorized
transporter use and cannot isolate the source."
"Could it be a malfunction in your alert
system?"
"Very likely, given the shutdown. I will
pursue it."
"What about the Romulan ship?"
"Their course was directly back toward the
Romulan Empire at substantial warp.
They do not appear to have come about."
"We gave them a good hammering," Kirk said.
"They deserved it--"
"Captain!" The security man grabbed him
by the shoulder and the two of them hit the floor of the
narrow passage just as a disruptor bolt sizzled
over their heads.
Without asking for permission, the security man
returned fire, leaning with an elbow between
Kirk's shoulder blades.
Kirk tried to get up, wriggled backward,
but the guard wasn't about to let him up when there was
a chance to protect him.
"Back off, Ensign--"
"DeCamp, sir," the man said, and fired
two more times before he dared let the captain up.
The two of them skirted under an open hatch in
the ceiling, and ducked around a corner.
"Romulan disruptor, sir," DeCamp
said. "I'd know that sound anywhere."
Kirk clipped, "How would you?"
"Heard it in my head a hundred times. Been
waiting for this my whole life."
Kirk looked at the young man, andfor all the
enthusiasm, it was a sorry sight.
"Let's hope you have to keep waiting," he
said, and pushed the guard back another step.
"Sir, let me go first. I'm expendable."
For a nice down-home polite kind of kid who
probably used that "sir" on his father as well as
his commanding officer, DeCamp had a hell of a
grip.
"Nobody's expendable in my crew,
Ensign," Kirk said. "But thanks. I'll go
low, you go high."
"Yes, sir, I'm ready." The boy
grasped his phaser with both hands and pushed closer
to the corner.
Kirk dropped to one knee, and the two of them
came around the corner firing.
In the flash of their weapons two helmeted
Romulans went down, and two more found an
instant to dive for cover, shielded by their comrades'
flailing bodies.
Kirk rolled to the other side of the passage,
giving DeCamp a clear shot--but before they could
aim again, the two remaining Romulans were
dropped by shots from behind them--f the other end of the
passage, around another corner.
The deck was littered with fallen Romulans
now, and the passage fell ghostly
silent.
Kirk stayed down, his phaser aimed.
DeCamp had his long arms straight out,
holding his own phaser braced in his hands. He
looked at Kirk, and the captain nodded.
"Attention!" DeCamp called. "This is
Starfleet! Drop your weapons and come out of there
right now!"
Nicely said. Not an expletive to be
heard. A polite takeover.
I'd have had an expletive for them,
Kirk thought.
The shadows moved at the end of the passageway.
He braced his legs.
"This is Dr. McCoy! Are you from the
Enterprise?"
Kirk stood up. "Bones, it's me. Are you
secure?"
McCoy's flushed face popped out at the end
of the passage, and an instant later came
Nancy Ransom with her first mate and another
crewman who was limping.
"Stand guard here," Kirk said to DeCamp, and
jogged out to meet them. When McCoy got to him
first, he asked, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Jim. Boy, am I ever glad
to see you!"
Nancy Ransom stepped over a tangle of
two Romulans and said, "Yeah, I'm even a
little bit glad to see you."
"All this ship's sensors and computers are
down, Jim," McCoy said, "which gave us the
chance to sneak up on them, section by section. It was
Nancy's idea."
Kirk looked at her.
Nancy blushed and palmed back some of her
scruffyou brown hair and said, "A trick I
learned at the Academy. You can kick the girl
out of the Fleet--"
"But they sure didn't get the Fleet out of the
girl," Kirk said mildly, and found a grin for
her. "Congratulations. Your engine room is
secure too. Have you got a report for me?"
"Yes," Nancy gasped, sucked breath.
"The Romulans beamed over here and brought
sections of wall plate with them and started moving
them down to my engine room. We analyzed the
plate and found out it's a lithium hydride and
cobalt compound. There's only one thing they can use
that for."
Kirk's heart hit his feet. "Fusion
incendiary."
"And I think I know why," McCoy
interrupted. "It's those Rey people. They--"
"They leak emotion, right?"
Astonished, the doctor glared at him. "How
did you find out about it?"
"Spock's a sponge."
"Oh--t makes sense. Well, what do you
know? Wish I'd been there ... after talking
to Mike here, and Nancy, and a couple others, I
concluded that the Rey's emotional levels are
contagious somehow."
"Yes," Kirk said. "They have a little control,
but not much. After all, you can't will yourself to sweat.
Or to stop sweating, for th at matter. The
Romulans are susceptible, and because of that,
they're scared." He paced down the
passageway, looking at broken railings and
shattered remains of disruptor fire. "I'd be
scared too, Bones."
"But what about the lithium hydride and
cobalt?" Nancy persisted. "They bound it around
my warp core."
The picture got uglier and uglier in his mind
as Kirk sifted back through his education--the
unspoken part of his education, the part with subtle
killing and assault training, and how to make
bombs out of toothpicks and saltine crackers.
"I see ..." he murmured.
Mike Frarey shook his head. "What do you
see? What were they going to do with our ship?"
He lowered his voice. "Early hydrogen
bombs were actually fission bombs surrounded
by fusion bombs. The fission bomb was the
detonator. This time, the Romulans planned
to use your warp engines as the detonator, so they
surrounded your warp core with the fusion material.
As the engines exploded, the heat would set off a
fusion chain reaction in the hydrogen, and there would be
an incredibly massive explosion."
Frarey stepped forward, his face reddened. "But
what's the point of the cobalt?"
"After the ship punched a hole in the Rey's
planet atmosphere," Kirk told him, "and
drove through the mantle and ignited, the cobalt's
purpose would be to salt the bomb. It would
vaporize and release a cloud of intensely
radioactive cobalt vapor into the jet stream.
The Romulans would have eradicated what
they must perceive as a potent weapon against them."
"Gives me the drains," Nancy said.
"I'da killed 'em all if I'd known."
Kirk gestured down the passage at the lump
of unconscious enemy bodies. "You'd have
killed 'em all anyway, Nancy.
DeCampffwas
"Sir!"
"Secure those Romulans."
"Aye, sir!"
Nancy snapped her fingers at her first mate
and crewman. "You two, help him tie up those
suckers." She waved her confiscated Romulan
disruptor and said, "I'm going down to take charge
of my engine room. You got any problems with
that?"
"None at all," Kirk said. "Bones, you go
with her and render medical assistance. Authorize
to our boarding party that she has command. They're
to assist in freeing any of her crew and securing
any other hostiles on board."
"Right!"
As they flooded down the passage, Kirk
snapped his communicator up again. "Kirk
to Enterprise."
"Spock here, Captain."
"This ship is nearly secure, Mr.
Spock. What are your sensor readings now?"
"I was about to notify you, sir. We have
hazy readings of several low-level Romulan
presences--"
"Probably the unconscious ones."
"allyes. And one additional reading that is
relatively strong. Slightly agitated but
regular lifesigns, and moving about."
"Moving where, Mr. Spock."
"The bridge, Captain."
"Take over the boarding operation. I'll
notify you in a few minutes."
"Captain ... you're not going alone."
"Yes, I am, Mr. Spock, I am.
I'm going up there and box the ears of the
individual who ruined our good time. Beam me
directly from here to the bridge of this ship."
"Ready when you are, sir."
Kirk glanced at his phaser. Heavy stun.
He squeezed the hand grip.
"Energize."

"Commander, stop where you are."
Valdus turned sharply. Why hadn't he
heard the whine of transportation? Concentrating
too hard? Too much excess noise from the
crackling systems broken and burned when his
boarding party took this ship?
No matter now. There stood the captain of the
Enterprise, alone and armed. He hadn't come
through the open hatchways, but beamed directly here,
for he stood beside the viewscreen's vision of open
space as a sentinel stands a post.
"Captain," Valdus said.
James Kirk pursed his lips in annoyance
because now he had to be polite, even for a minute.
"Stop what you're doing."
Quiet, subdued, Valdus said, "Some things
cannot be stopped."
Valdus didn't move or make any
attempt to defend himself, reading that a Starfleet
captain would talk to him before taking more primitive
action.
Simply watching the Enterprise's captain
was an education, and he allowed himself that. A compact
and muscular young man, James Kirk had an
old man's eyes. Pouched with gamesmanship,
strict, shaded, sparked from internal
electricity, those eyes were angry magnets.
Unable to look away, Valdus wasn't
sure he wanted to. He knew he had put
those lines of anger there today, and somehow he was
proud.
He leaned forward. "This is the warp core
detonator. I'm sure you know all about that
by now. The thoroughness of Starfleet boarding parties
has a reputation."
"I know about it. Move away or I'll stun
you."
"Look at the way I'm standing. If you stun
me, I will fall forward onto the detonator."
Kirk glared. "Better that," he said, "than
let you take this ship and poison a whole
planet. I'm as ready to die as you are, as long
as it's out here, in the middle of nowhere."
Valdus offered him a judicious nod. "You
look furious, Captain Kirk."
Kirk's eyes flicked to the open hatches,
then back to Valdus. Caution dominated every
muscle in Kirk's body.
"It's fun to be furious," he said.
"Until you push that thing down, you're under arrest.
Charges range from barratry--fraud,
smuggling, plundering and violation of treaty--
to conspiracy to commit mass murder."
"A very big charge," Valdus said. He
kept his palm on the detonator but remained
motionless.
Kirk tried to despise him, but it wasn't
easy. Soft-spoken, contemplative, not harsh,
not cold, Valdus wasn't like other
Romulans.
As if I've met that many ...
Maybe it was only the reputation, or the
rumors, that he was remembering. He felt the
withering of an old habit--a human's peculiar
tendency to think about Romulans as just Vulcans
gone sour.
That wasn't what he was seeing right now.
What prodigal creatures they are. I
wish we could get them to join the Federation.
With one eye on Valdus, Kirk scanned the
helm with the other. Wouldn't do any good to stand here
talking while some timer ticked away that he
didn't know about.
"You can stop me, Captain," Valdus said.
"I understand. But there are things that cannot be stopped.
The flame is going out of Starfleet's
adventure. Some day there will be no flame left.
You will go from day to day and preen your feathers with nothing
else really to do."
Kirk scowled at him.
"Not in my lifetime," he said.
Valdus paused, searching the captain's
glare, and understood. James Kirk wasn't
going to let the flame die, not as long as he was
alive to pester questions out of the galaxy, then hammer
the answers into place. What a unique young man
... with such genuine electricity in his eyes.
Valdus had expected arrogance. After all,
Kirk had stopped him. With the wide switch
cupped under his palm, Valdus could blow this ship
to slivers and accomplish nothing.
But the Starfleet leader wasn't satisfied
yet. He was still concerned about the other people in the lower
decks. Anger was building in that face and in those
eyes, fury was still rising.
Valdus felt a wash of confidence. The
Empire would ultimately prevail because this
captain was still concerned about a gaggle of the conquered.
"I can forgive your reasons, but not your
actions," Kirk said. "It's not my job
to decide what to do with you." He wagged his
phaser toward one of the two large step-through
passageways. "Either push the button now or
I'm going to turn you over to my security squad
and turn this ship back to its captain and crew."
He angled toward the step-through that led to the lower
decks.
Valdus blinked at him. Nothing else. His
lips were parted but there was no sound. The muscles of
his throat shifted and pulsed. Breath was caught
deep in his throat.
Kirk stepped toward him. "I said move."
There was a flash of movement behind Valdus.
"Tom, no!"
But the Rey had already moved.
Valdus collapsed forward, over the helm.
His hand skidded across the three-inch diameter
detonator switch, then his elbow, then his chest.
Kirk plunged forward, but the button was down.
An instant later they were nothing but a giant
ball of ignited incendiary glittering in some
distant planet's midnight sky.
So why were they still looking at each other?
Kirk shoved Valdus off the button, then
caught Valdus by both arms as the Romulan's
legs buckled and he went down on his knees on
the deck.
Unauthorized transporter use ...
Tom stood on the ladder of the deck hatch,
halfway up into the bridge, his hands still raised,
still clutching his weapon by its neck.
An old glass whiskey bottle, the
bottom smashed away to a jagged glass shard, was
embedded deep under Valdus's right shoulder
blade. The fabric of his command jacket puckered
around the bottle's body, and there wasn't even
any blood yet.
The Romulan canted forward over Kirk's
arm, unable to take a whole breath because of the jagged
glass buried in one lung. Against his arm Kirk
felt the palsy of agony and astonishment. Enmity
dissolved under Valdus's begging grip, so clear
that Kirk put down his phaser and devoted
attention where it was needed.
"Tom! Get your hands off him!"
He slapped Tom's hands away from the
bottle, then suddenly didn't know what to do
next. The incongruous formed glass shape
protruded at a horrid angle from Valdus's
back, brutally efficient in its unlikely
purpose, and Kirk actually felt the
pain spread deeper.
The Rey man turned loose of the bottle and
recoiled. Valdus fell forward, rolled against
Kirk's grip, and landed on a thigh on the
deck.
Kirk held him up and stared a t the big
orange detonator button.
"A dummy!" he spat. "You were distracting
me. Why?"
He shook Valdus.
The commander coughed, but it came out as a wheeze.
Kirk took a step to keep his balance, tripped
twice on the clunky deck structure, and
somehow kept the Romulan from falling backward
onto the thing protruding from his back. Underneath
all his cautions and the strung-up tension of just
getting here, there was a plain human being who
couldn't help but react when he saw that look in
somebody else's eyes--t helplessness, caught
in the unkind grip of pain.
"Tom!" Kirk scathed. "Is this the way
to stop anything they're doing? What's the matter with
you!"
Blinking those big brown eyes from a shadow,
Tom looked like a sad child. He wasn't proud
of himself, even though there weren't any regrets in
his face.
"We aren't very strong, Captain Kirk," he
said, "but we're not idiots."
That seemed to be his whole story.
After saying it, the Rey man looked away,
down.
"What about your sister?" Kirk demanded. "You
haven't given us a chance to try to get her
back."
Without looking up, Tom said, "I don't
tease myself that my sister is still alive."
Exasperated, Kirk nodded toward the
Romulan. "If you were here, why didn't he
feel it?"
Tom glanced at the victim of his bottle and
his determination and simply said, "I wasn't
afraid anymore."
Kirk grabbed Valdus by the collar with one hand
and used the other to snap his communicator up.
"Kirk to Enterprise. Medical emergency.
Three to beam over, immediately."
With Tom hovering on the other side of the hatch,
Kirk only had Valdus to worry about. He
did all he could to hold the gasping
Romulan up, leaned against a deck box, and
waited.
Nothing happened.
He brought the communicator to his lips again.
"Kirk to Enterprise! What's going on
over there?"
"Contact, Captain," Scott broke
through. "Vessel passing at high speed!
Identification--the Romulan ship!"
"Evasive action," Kirk blurted. "Do
whatever you have to."
"They're not closing on us, sir!
Vectoring around us to a new course ... powering for
high warp speed. Bearing ... right for the finish
line!"
"Captain, that's it!" Tom gasped. He
crawled toward them on his hands and knees,
faultily pointing at the screen. "He was
stalling for time so they could get past you! A few
seconds at hyperlight speed--y'll never
catch up!"
As the three of them stared at the streak on the
forward screen, Valdus hung over Kirk's
arm and felt his bones shake, found the strength
to raise his head and seek the viewscreen.
Yes, there it was ... his ship, his Red
Talon, blazing past them at hyperlight
speed. He pushed forward against the captain's arm,
and the thing in his back bit him again.
He gagged on his own bile, but kept his eyes
on the forward screen, on the rushing hope of his
Empire.
"The beauty of light speed," he rasped.
"You'll never catch him now ... you can't stop a
fully shielded battleship barreling in at high
warp ... Expand or die, Captain ... my
civilization must be the one to survive."
Kirk leaned him against the deck box and knelt
to look at the Romulan at eye level.
"Why can't we all survive?"
Valdus choked as he tried to laugh. His
vision was closing in on both sides, the curtain
of his life closing on the image of his ship as it
disappeared into its destiny.
As the curtain darkened, he managed to turn
to Kirk.
"Because it never happens that way," he said.
Kirk looked at the forward screen, where
seconds ago the Romulan ship had shot
into high warp speed.
"If you want fair," he murmured,
"don't enter races."
He brought the communicator up.
"Enterprise, beam us aboard!" he shouted.
With his thumb he recalibrated his signal.
"Spock, come in, quick."
"Spock here, Captain."
"Transport back to the ship right now. This
race isn't over!"















THE REAL STARSHIP RACE

Chapter Twenty-two

Enterprise

"Full about, starboard!"
"Full about, aye!"
"Mr. Scott, emergency warp speed!"
"Helm! Phasers, three points abaft
starboard--fire!"
"Three points abaft starboard, aye ...
phasers firing! A miss, Captain. They're
beyond range for--"
"Uhura, hail that ship. Warn them off their
course."
"Trying, sir, but they've drenched the channels
in high-frequency noise--"
"Go to Flags and Pennants Code.
Semaphore ation-F to all other vessels.
Coming into danger. Try to flash X ray through to the
Romulans. Stop intentions. If they don't
understand that by now, they haven't been flying in the
same galaxy we have."
"Trying, sir ... sir, they don't accept
X ray. I doubt the signal's
flashing through the impedance they've put up."
"Keep trying. Scotty, I want more
speed."
"Warp four, sir. Powering up for warp five.
Maximum safe speed in ... three minutes,
sir."
"Uhura, try long-.tance communications.
Hail Intrepid and Hood at the Gullrey
solar system. Warn them what's coming and not to let
the Romulan ship through."
"Inhibitors still hampering the systems from the
Starbase mechanics. I'm trying to clear it, but
there's nothing I can do about the Romulans'
high-frequency noise. Doubt I'll be able
to pierce it."
"Try anyway. Send the warning. Somebody
might pick it up and relay it."
"Aye, sir."
"Warp five, Captain," Scott said as the
humming of the ship went from an easy harmony to a
notable strain.
Kirk snapped, "Go to warp six."
Everybody tightened a little. They didn't
look at him, but he felt the change.
He didn't need the glory. He would be
thrilled, relieved to let Ken Dodge or
T'ationoy take the medals for destroying the big
threat.
If only he could make that happen, he'd pin
the medals on them himself.
If he could just make it happen. Wish it.
Beg it. Whip it. Order it ... his hands were
shaking.
And his crew was sweating over their controls,
snapping at their own departments, pounding on their
equipment, but a starship against a warbird with plain
raw speed--
There were a lot of people here. The bridge seemed
crowded. Almost every station was manned. Scott had
an assistant with him at Engineering, Chekov had
a young lieutenant manning the upper deck
Navigation station, and another ensign was at the
Defense and Weapons subsystems monitor.
Everyone was at battle stations.
Where was the battle?
He wanted one. He always preached against
battle, but right now it was all he wanted. A
chance to stop and square off and use cleverness and
quickness, plunge this way and that, use his ship's
defensives and offensives the way he was
trained to and the way his experience had taught him, but
he wasn't being given that chance. The Romulan was
refusing to face off with him and let the best man,
ship, crew, win.
This was just raw running, wide open, into a wire
at throat level.
A big wire with a lot of innocent people standing on
it.
"Captain," Spock said, as he leaned over
his screen, "Romulan is at warp factor
six."
Kirk snapped a glare at him, then at the
forward screen.
"Go to warp seven."
Sulu turned and looked at him. They all
did.
Then Sulu said, "Warp factor seven ...
aye."
The ship hummed and protested, but speed whacked
into another dimension of warp. On the upper port
side, Engineer Scott started sweating. Then
everybody else started.
The indicator lights all over the bridge
flickered for attention.
Kirk prowled again. If they could just get
close enough for a phaser shot into the Romulan's
propulsion system ... one bolt without loss of
speed ... just enough to slow them down, overtake them
...
Speed. It was all he could think about. Speed.
"Captain," Sulu said, his voice gargling,
"he's pulling away from us ... now at warp ...
eight."
Some of the crew looked at Kirk. Mostly the
younger people. Then they looked at their immediate
superiors.
Some of the superiors were looking at Kirk now,
too. Scott, Chekov, Spock. Sulu
wasn't looking at anything but the screen, his
narrow shoulders hunched and his hands spread and
poised over the controls, shaking a little. But he was
listening.
Kirk swallowed once. Then again.
"Go to warp eight," he grated.
"Warp," Sulu began, then had to clear his
throat. "Warp eight, sir."
From the bowels of the ship beneath them, a low whistle
came up. A painful sound of effort. A
guttural buzz coming through the deck as system after
system was sacrificed to the speed. The
ship was going into automatic shutdown, conserving
everything but life-support, and even some of that.
They were all sheeted in sweat now, as
air-conditioning systems were reduced to the bare
minimum. Comfort was a privilege the ship couldn't
afford right now. She'd keep them alive, but that was
all.
He damned himself for letting the ship be hobbled
for any reason. They'd be on that Romulan already
if he hadn't agreed to run this race. He would
never again ask his ship to be less than she could
be. Now she was ripping herself apart because he asked
her to. He turned to pace the command deck again,
but this time, he stopped.
He found himself looking up at the science station.
At Spock. Yet it was the face of Valdus
haunting his thoughts. Honest, determined Valdus.
And he wondered how the Romulan Empire could
be made less afraid. He'd failed to convince
Valdus that the Empire had nothing to fear from the
Federation.
He'd failed, and he wanted somehow
to unfail. He wanted to fly into Imperial
space waving a big white starship and go stand before
the High Supreme whate ver and convince them.
If only he could do it in the next half
hour.
Spock came to the rail.
"What do you think?" Kirk asked.
"He is on a suicide mission," the
Vulcan said. "Burning his ship with excessive
speed has no effect on him. I doubt he'll
allow us to outrun him."
"What's his ultimate purpose? To just slam
a fifty-thousand-ton projectile into that planet
at high warp?"
"Possibly. Such an impact could
conceivably do much damage. The ship would
instantly disintegrate." Spock shifted his
weight from one foot to the other as though discussing
cabbage at a fruit stand. "However, I would
suspect this is a more clearly calculated
backup plan. They probably didn't
off-load all of their lithiumstcobalt compound, and
have sufficient supplies left on Red
Talon to--"
"To poison that planet, I know," Kirk
snapped. "What are the chances that Intrepid and
Hood could see him coming?"
"Under normal circumstances, fair,
given that they were posted outside the solar system."
"But?"
"But at last report the two starships were
intending to stand guard at the planet itself. Mr.
Chekov's analysis of his trajectory
implies the Romulan is screening himself with
Gullrey's sun. At such high warp, there will be
only instants between the sun and the planet. The
vessels standing guard at the planet--"
"Won't even see him," Kirk interrupted
again. "In fact, they'll become just part of the
fireball. We're finding out what Allied
ships found out during Earth's World War Two,
Mr. Spock. It's almost impossible to stop a
kamikaze. If we don't get him ...
nobody will."
Spock nodded. "Yes."
Kirk turned and raised his voice. It
rasped anyway. "Scotty."
Looking up, brow drenched in sweat, Scott
blinked. "Captain?"
On the command deck, James Kirk drew a
breath.
"Go to warp factor nine."

The ship was tearing itself apart around them. Kirk
could feel the shudder coming up through his soles. A
grinding that wasn't supposed to be there. And it was
getting worse by the second. He felt
slightly nauseated and knew the inertial damping
fields were being compromised.
Below decks, four hundred plus crewmen were
sweating and dashing, lashing and bandaging, trying to keep
the vessel in one piece.
"MIE shut down!"
"Leave it down."
"Structural integrity field's being
compromised!"
"Then compromise it."
The upper deck might as well have been a
ledge on a skyscraper. Passing the navigation
main station, Kirk was walking the ledge and trying
to decide whether or not to jump.
From across the bridge, Scott tried again with a
shout. "Captain, severe risk of meltdown!"
"It'll have to melt," the captain spat, and
turned his back on his engineer. "Lieutenant
Boles, how long for the Romulan to get
to Gullrey?"
At the upper deck navigation station,
Boles didn't answer, but only bent forward and
picked at the controls.
Ten seconds later, he was still picking.
Cranked up tight, Kirk asked, "What's
your report, Lieutenant?"
The kid glanced up at him and made the
mistake of explaining, "Just a little nervous,
sir."
"You're relieved," Kirk said. He
gestured to the ensign manning defense
subsystems. "Ensign Michaelson, take
over this position."
At the nav station, the lieutenant's face
dropped all its color. Some of that might've
been relief, but most of it was shock.
At least he had the sense not to argue as the
captain walked away.
Kirk didn't glance back. Somebody else
could do the coddling. That lieutenant would either never be
nervous again or would never admit it. Either one was
fine.
"Mr. Sulu," he said, "attempt
long-range phaser fire. Try to knock him
off course. Shave his speed down. Anything."
"Aye, sir," Sulu said, with a lot more
stability in his voice than anyone felt.
The phasers fired, a sense of electrical
power bolting through the ship and out into open space.
On the forward screen, thick lances of energy went
forward into infinity.
They were all thrown forward suddenly, as if
somebody had hit the brakes just for an instant,
then the speed fought to come back. Several people rolled
onto the deck.
Kirk ignored them.
"Do it again, Sulu."
"Aye, sir, phasers firing."
Again the energy coughed from the ship, and again the ship
balked under them.
"Loss of closing distance," Sulu reported,
glaring into his screen. "Attempting to close,
sir."
"Sir, every time we fire," Scott said, "we
fall off our pace by a hundred thousand
kilometers."
"I know," Kirk muttered, "I know. Cease
firing."
The science didn't add up. A strong
phaser bolt at superhyperlight speed gulped
too much power from the engines, caused a
speed fall-off that they couldn't afford. What could
they afford? The ship was falling apart. The
Romulan was falling apart too, but a kamikaze
doesn't care if the dive rips his wings off.
Bitter fury scorched him until he felt
his lips burn and his heart shrivel with the worst thing
of all--impotence.
"We can't break his shields at this distance,"
he ground out. "Can't get in front of him, can't
warn ahead ... we're racing behind him so we can
record the death of a civilization."
Impotence. Worse than dying, worse than
killing, the utter helplessness to do anything. He
hated it. The Enterprise was all that could
possibly stop Red Talon now, and they
couldn't do it.
"Spock," he barked, "give me an idea!
Any idea. Any of you--I'll take
anything!"
He dropped to the command deck and took the back
of his chair in his hand and shook it, just as he had
shaken Valdus by the shoulders and tried to make him
understand.
"Give me a way to stop him!"
The silence was damning.
The cleverest, the brightest, the most daring, and
nobody knew what to do. Nobody had a way.
Nobody had a suggestion that would let him drill
forward through the next few minutes and change the
future.
"Drill," he murmured.
Spock looked up. He was the only one who
noticed.
"Captain?"
Kirk's eyes cut into the forward screen.
"What's the extended range on a pinpoint
phaser? The same energy ratio, but roll it
all down to a stream a couple millimeters
across?" He looked sharply at Spock. "Could
it be done?"
Spock's expression turned suddenly
vague, then sharp again. "Concentrate the energy?"
"A diamond-tipped drill, Spock! Can
it be done? Would it punch through those shields at this
distance?"
Sulu tilted his head toward them without taking his
eyes off the screen. At this speed, he couldn't
afford to.
"Their hull structure's all self-sealing.
S's the warp core. It wouldn't do any
more than poking a finger through."
On the upper deck to their left, Scott
stomped to the rail.
"Even if it got through the shields," he said,
"it wouldn't bore through the warp core containment. But
with lithium hydride packed around it--he's
carrying the dynamite. All we have to do is light
the fuse."
"If that's what they've done," Sulu added.
"If not, sir," Scott said, "we'll have
lost too much speed to catch up. A maintained
phaser shot like that--"
But Spock interrupted, and a lilt of hope
sparked his voice. "It could work."
"I'll take the bet," Kirk bolted.
"Mr. Scott, you work on keeping our speed up
while we fire. I don't care where you get the
power. Just get it. Mr. Spock, adjust that
phaser down to a pinpoint. We're going to get
them with a needle instead of a club."

"Fire the phaser, Mr. Sulu."
"Firing phaser, sir."
The ship was rattling. Warning bells rang.
The overhead lights were so dim that the monitor
screens put out more glare. Conduits snapped,
sizzled, sparked, but other than jumping to keep
their hands from being burned, the crew was under orders
to ignore almost everything but the needs of warp nine.
Jim Kirk battled down a need to wrinkle
his nose at the smell of burning circuits.
He didn't want anyone to see him do that.
On the forward screen, a long red streak fed out
from the ship, thin as a fishing line, and reached into the
impossible distance until it disappeared somewhere in the
blackness.
"Phaser's causing an energy competition in the
reaction chamber," Scott sighed from up there.
"More speed, Mr. Scott," Kirk asked.
"Push harder."
"Already at warp nine point three, sir." The
chief engineer sounded like a whipped slave. "Could
blow up at any time."
No technical reports, no heat ratios,
no reactant injection numbers, no
catastrophic shutdown details.
Just "blow up." Dead men had no reason to be
specific.
None of the crew was warning him anymore. They
weren't telling him it couldn't work or
what was breaking down. They knew he wasn't
stopping.
Kirk found himself wishing to just get it over with.
Any instant now, boom. If they couldn't stop
the Romulan, better they just blow up. If they
lived, and the Romulan made it to Gullrey, then
there would be war. The Enterprise would be here
to testify.
He didn't want to testify. To start a war.
He would rather blow up.
Strange. If Valdus's original plan
had worked, there probably wouldn't be a war.
Nobody would quite understand what had happened. The
Federation and the Romulan Empire might have
fallen into another hundred years of distrust, but that
would have been all.
Now there would be war. A planet dies, a
starship lives to tell why.
He almost wished the ship would hurry up and
explode.
But she didn't. She held together. They pushed
and pushed, and she held.
Warp nine point three ... nine point four
... nine point five ...
The narrow red line kept on glowing out, forward
from the ship into the infin ity of space.
Under the science station the wiring trunk blew
open, sending sparks and bits of material against
Spock's shins, then on the other side at
engineering subsystems another one went. The crew
flinched and jumped out of the way. They glanced at
Kirk, but he didn't budge. Didn't even
look.
His heart kettledrummed in his ears. He
knew it was the same for all of them.
"Phasers overheating, sir," the ensign at
weapons reported.
"Maintain fire," he said. "Scotty,
take every safety off everything."
"She'll blow up, sir."
"Then let her blow."
Minutes. Long ones. To just stare at the
screen with nothing to do but think.
Spock and Sulu were pulling the phaser tighter
and tighter, even narrower than a fishing line.
Micromillimeters. Nobody had ever done that
before. Could it reach far enough? Would it even stand up
to particles in space?
The phaser only had to drill through for an
instant. Just an instant. All that energy
concentrated on one tiny point ... through the
shields, through the outer hull, the inner hull, through
the containments ... all it had to do was strike that
lithium hydride packed around the warp core.
A match on gasoline. Fusion was ready to start.
All he had to do was start it.
Even a partial detonation--enough to start a chain
reaction. Two or three grams beginning to fuse
... it would all be over in a microsecond ...
"Approaching the Gullrey solar system,
Captain," Chekov said. "We'll be there in
... three minutes. He will beat us by one
minute, twenty-six seconds."
The starship screamed in their ears. Bolts
exploded around the bridge as pressure tried
to release itself by breaking the least important parts
first.
Two ships, state of the art in two
cultures, blasted through open space at killing
speed, sutured by a fine red line.




Spectator Ship Gamma Star

"Look at that!"
"Wow!"
It was a good thing everybody happened to be
looking at the finish line just then. Anybody gone
for a hot dog or to the bathroom missed a hell
of a show.
A giant tangerine-colored blast of ball
lightning with a white cloud inside spread in a
sudden thorn tree of energy. Huge and blinding but
for the distance, still sparking bits of metal
illuminant and radioactive gas blew
outward, hot in spite of space, the ten
billion decimal candles of spitting
phosphorus shards couldn't decide whether they
wanted to burn up or freeze to death.
Moving at immeasurable speed, the savage
light show fumed out a cometlike white tail for a
few seconds--long enough to paint space and make
quite an impression.
And as if that wasn't enough, the crowd gasped
when a Federation starship suddenly bolted through the
giant plasma cloud, plunging out at high
speed, spitting red-hot sparks and leaving a
donut of atomic heat expanding behind it.
Everyone rjcd. She was beautiful! Every line of
her white wineglass body was as vivid as an
architect's pencil drawing, seductive and
broken-in, flying the best she knew how. The
viewscreens flickered and buzzed, trying to keep
up with her.
In their minds they all heard it--.Swoooosh.
As she slammed past them, they cheered and laughed and
ducked tiny yellow-hot bits of spark that showered
their ceiling-high viewscreens.
Jubilation pealed through the spectator ship.
What a race this had been!
As the sparks died in the cold of space, a
skinny great-grandmother asked, "Was that in the
program?"
Nobody answered her. Nobody really cared.
The outrageous pyrotechnics were still fresh in their
minds, and they couldn't wait to see it all again on
the stadium screen at the closing ceremonies.
The white starship suddenly veered--v sharply--
to avoid the planet of Gullrey, then seized out
of speed and appeared to be shivering as it dropped
to sublight faster than anybody thought was
possible.
A vacationing shuttle pilot shook his head.
"I didn't know any ship could stand that!"
The man beside him shoveled popcorn into his
mouth and nodded, "Those starships are tough."
"Was that an emergency shutdown?" a
twelve-year-old kid asked his teacher.
"Naw," the teacher said. "They're okay. Just
showing off."
"I dunno," the kid muttered. But he
didn't want to argue his way out of a good grade.
The applause settled down to ear-to-ear
grins as the crowd watched the starship drift along
on momentum, not even applying thrust, until she
simply drifted gracefully across the finish
line, with her wings high.
Applause erupted again as the spectators
watched the starship drift between the two committee
ships, officially finishing the race.
The performance was extravagant and madcap,
something people of all kinds appreciated, especially
when they'd come hundreds of parsecs to see it.
As one father herded his children through the crowd, away from
the enormous viewscreens, he glanced back at
his wife.
"Starfleet sure knows how to put on a great
show, don't they?"
























EPILOGUE

Chapter Twenty-three

Closing Ceremonies, Monn
Oren City, Gullrey

"And it's with the greatest of joy, and in the name of
our broadening interstellar community, that I
present the First Place Platinum Plaque and
possession of the El Sol Doubloon
to Captain Miles Glover and the crew of
New Pride of Baltimore!"
The newly reelected president of the Federation
wasn't the dynamic type, but there was something
accommodating about him that the throng of spectators
appreciated. He was thin and economical of
movement, his hair a tumble of gray curls, his
faded blue eyes much slower than the brain behind
them, failing somehow to reveal a p-wise
intelligence that had won him a reputation for being
able to read minds.
Everyone knew that just by being here he was honoring
them, the starship race, and the Rey, because he very
rarely left Starbase One. And here he was,
about as far from there as he could get in friendly
space.
Behind him, a thirty-meter viewscreen had just
shown the parade of ships that happened yesterday, and
before that the balefire explosion not explained by the
newscasts until this morning. Now everybody
knew.
They knew about the sacrifice of at least two
innocent lives, maybe more, and the destruction of the
Romulan ship, though nobody had a clear
idea of what exactly had happened. The
reasons, apparently, had died with the Romulans.
At least, that was the public line.
Jim Kirk sat with his officers in the first ten
rows of seats, mantled by thousands of others in the
huge stadium. All over the Federation, the
ceremonies were being broadcast on screens.
He watched with perfectly settled emotions as
the energetic Miles Glover jaunted up to the
podium to accept the El Sol Doubloon on
behalf of his cheering crew, and bowed to the applause
of millions.
Suddenly Kirk was glad he didn't have to be
up there. All he wanted to do was sit here with
Spock on one side and McCoy on the other,
and let his shoulders relax, and nurse the
knuckle burns he'd gotten from touching the wrong
things on Nancy Ransom's ship. Around for
rows and rows of the competitors' section, were the
captains and crews of all the racing vessels.
He liked the feeling. He glanced past
McCoy and his own officers to where Nancy
Ransom sat with Mike Frarey and the officers of
Ransom Castle. They were cleaned up, but
somehow no amount of cleaning would take the rough edge
off them, especially with Nancy wearing a
telltale neck brace.
Oh, well ... they were alive and they were here.
Two points for the good guys.
Beyond them, Hans Tahl and his crew from Great
Lakes, T'ationoy and hers from the Intrepid,
and not far down there were Ken Dodge and the officers
of the Hood wearing sashes of honor--everybody
looked good enough to get married.
"The trophy for second place," the
president continued, "goes to Captain Kmmta
and the crew of 552-4."
After another round of cheers, the president handed
the trophy to an Andorian woman who approached
the podium, then explained what he was doing.
"Due to the life
support-requirements of the captain and crew of
552-4," the president explained, "they are
watching from their ship, and the trophy is being accepted
by Ambassador Yeshmal, Federation
representative to the Tholian Assembly."
The Andorian woman took the trophy, bowed
somewhat extravagantly, and went back to her
seat without glancing at the thousands of faces
watching her.
"Third place award," the president said,
"goes to Captain Sucice Miller and the crew
of the Ozcice, the host entry!"
The crowd went wild. The idea that the host
planet had managed to show in the first Great
Starship Race was especially invigorating for
everybody. Of course, there were jokes about the
race having been rigged, but nobody really
believed it, and beyond that, nobody cared.
Everybody had a good time, right?
Kirk sighed. His crew had earned a good time.
He hoped they were having one now.
"Part of decent competition," the president
went on, "is the trick of deciding whether to stop
when another ship has distress, or to take
advantage of that distress and gain ground. In
all fairness, most competitions consider it fair
to leap over a fallen entrant, and let
authorities handle the injuries. One vessel
in particular went above and beyond the call of
competition, even beyond the call of duty, by risking
their own lives on behalf of a fellow entrant.
Despite the fact that some might say this is their
job, certainly it is no mere job to place your
own vessel in danger on behalf of other s.
Nor is it the simple call of duty to stretch
all capabilities beyond limits ... for the sake
of a planet of strangers. A special award,
my friends, newly created just last night by the
Race Committee at the request of Captain
Nancy Ransom and the crew of Ransom
Castle."
His voice boomed in the audio equipment,
resounding across the stadium, across the planet, across
the Federation.
He looked down, to his right, into the
competitor's seats, and he held out a hand.
"To Captain James Kirk and the crew of the
U.S.So. Enterprise, we would like to present
the Spacemanship and Sportsmanship Award."
Before Kirk could even think of getting
up to acknowledge the completely unexpected
honor, Nancy Ransom pushed out of her chair
and went to the podium. She took the award from the
president and walked it down the aisle to where the
Enterprise officers were sitting.
And she handed the big platinum medal to Kirk
without a ^w.
Entire sections of the competitors' seating areas
rumbled to their feet, and the rumble was drowned out by the
roar of cheering. Somewhere in the vast audience,
somebody waved a handkerchief, and almost immediately the
trick rippled across thousands of spectators.
In a few seconds everything from handkerchiefs
to gloves, tissues to children's sweaters was being
waved in honor of those who had lent a hand.
In spite of the cool Gullrey spring,
everybody was a lot warmer when the crews sat
back down and the president was able to speak again.
"We who merely watched the race and were so
joyously entertained by it must from this day forward
remember the true definition of sportsmanship.
Therefore we must remember ... Enterprise."

After Kirk and his officers had taken their
reluctant bows and the raging applause finally
faded into the Gullrey skies, the president
spoke again into the booming mike, "We the living
citizens of the Federation happily welcome the
planet of Gullrey, whose people have so
enthusiastically embraced our people and our many ways.
You must, as we all must, accept the unsavory
events of this race and take those as a
pre-notification that there is a price to liberty.
It has been said that the price of liberty is
eternal vigilance. That is true. You have lived
at the edge of a sector that Federation people have defended
with their lives. Now we will extend our boundaries
to defend you also, and you are no longer strangers.
We expect you to give up your secluded
innocence and to share the responsibility, the pain,
and the great rewards ... of freedom."
As he paused, four Federation dignitaries
left their seats. They'd already been introduced--
Doctors Beneon and Vorry, the two
scientists who had been the first Rey to see life
from any other world, whose perseverance in watching the
sky had earned them that reward, and Captain Ken
Dodge and his first officer, who had followed their
instincts and answered a faded blip that most
spacefarers would log and ignore.
The four stepped to the front of the podium.
Together they raised a five-meter banner of
silver stars and a star chart on a navy blue
background--the shimmering seal of the UFP.
The president moved his thin body to the banner,
careful not to trip on the stage steps, reached over
the top hem, and attached a bright golden star to one
quadrant of the banner's star chart grid.
Then he stepped back to the microphone.
"Gullrey, welcome to the United Federation
of Planets," he said. "Welcome to the
future."

The balefire torch erupted across space,
one giant convulsion of gas, fire, and crystals
made a wild white tail of brilliant
radiation and seemed in complete control of its own
blast until the starship blew through it and changed the
ball into a ring.
On the taped picture there was also applause
and cheering, recorded on one of the spectator
ships as the unexpected final show occurred.
Then the screen winked out. The computer
politely regurgitated the cartridge, then
went silent.
Jim Kirk took the small recorder
cookie out of its slot, and backed off a pace.
"I thought you should see what happened. If it were
my ship," he said, "I'd want to be sure."
On the bed in the Rey hospital room,
plainly aware of the two Starfleet guards on this
side of the door and the four on the other side,
Valdus let his head lean back on the raised
pillows.
"Thank you," he managed.
Kirk gazed down at him and couldn't keep
empathy from chewing at him.
His own ship was undergoing repair. Would be for a
long time. There hadn't been enough power left on
board even to keep the Romulan in the brig or
under guard in sickbay. So they'd brought their
prisoner here, to a hospital on the host
planet, the first bit of interstellar crime to stain
the shores of Gullrey.
But he wasn't worried about this planet, or
even his own scorched and bruised crew. He was
worried about Valdus.
This was the worst thing that could happen to a ship's
master. To be left alive after his crew is dead
and his ship destroyed. The worst of all.
To go on living.
He looked at Valdus's tired eyes and the
sallow skin behind the beard that was meant to be
fierce, and somehow this person didn't look like either
a bastard Vulcan or a venomous Romulan.
This man was a culture all by himself.
Completely separate. Maybe something new.
"What will happen to me?" Valdus asked,
without looking at him.
"You'll be transferred to the Starship
Intrepid, sent back to Starfleet Command,
probably tried, probably incarcerated.
Someday you might be sent back or traded in a
diplomatic maneuver."
"I hope not. I'll go back disgraced."
"Or a hero." Kirk found himself offering a
charitable grin. "You never know how these things play
out. The long run can be very long, Commander."
They paused together without any more parrying, and any
trace of animosity that might have remained between them
just didn't seem to be there anymore. There also
wasn't anything to say. Kirk knew he
certainly wouldn't have accepted comfort if he had
to live beyond the lives of his crew, and there was no
point foisting comfort on Valdus just to make himself
feel better. Where this incident was concerned, neither
one of them would ever feel any better than this.
He tapped the computer cookie on his palm and
moved toward the door. The two guards stepped
aside, but at the last second, he stopped.
"Commander," he began, "there's one thing I
want you to believe."
Valdus turned his head to look at him.
Kirk ticked off a couple of seconds
until he could warm the Romulan's expression
with his sincerity.
"We have no intention of conquering the Romulan
Empire," he promised.
The commander raised a single brow--a gesture
Kirk found familiar.
"Then you've lost," he said. "Because we have every
intention of conquering you."
Maybe the lights were dimming. Or the sun was
going behind a cloud. A threat? Portents and
predictions? Vultures in the trees?
Serpents under the bed?
Maybe.
Jim Kirk grinned his snake-eating grin.
"But not today."

Chapter Twenty-four

Enterprise

"Feeling better after a night's rest, Mr.
Spock?"
"Very well, thank you, Captain."
"Your report?"
"At least two months' round-the-clock
repair at a starbase. Starfleet is arranging
for a hyperlight tug, and we are scheduled for dry
dock at Starbase 16 in ten days. The warp
nine strain, plus the hot metal bombardment and
electron shower as we came through the remains of
Red Talon, necessitate major
repair."
"Yes, of course. Convey my apologies
to Mr. Scott."
"I already did, sir."
"Oh ... thank you. Send a message ahead
to Starbase 16. I want Scotty
to supervise the repair himself and I don't care
how much the base engineers squawk about it.
Authorize leave for the crew for the duration of
repair."
"Very well, sir."
"And I don't want anything replaced that
isn't in pieces."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The Enterprise just showed us how tough she is.
Her spine, frame assembly and exostructure
turned out to be a lot stronger than we thought.
Even stronger than her designers thought. I
don't want any of that strength repaired out of
her. I don't care if they have to glue her together
like a jigsaw puzzle. Make sure she's the
same ship when they're done."
"That is ... most discriminating, sir. I'll
oversee the step-by-step repair plans myself."
"Thank you, Spock."
"You're quite welcome. Also, there was a
private communiqu@e this morning to all
participating Starfleet officers, from the
president. On behalf of the Federation's many
independent systems, worlds, countries,
companies, and individuals ... he thanks you for
not winning the first Great Starship Race."