Chapter Twelve

“No!” KIRK SCREAMED, reaching out toward Scotty just as the phaser blew. The entire power pack discharged through the weapon at once with a detonation that shook the ground and tumbled Kirk backward over the android.

He struggled to his feet again, pain and anger burning through every fiber of his body, but when he saw the foot-deep, five-foot-wide crater in the ground where Scotty had been, that heat turned to the icy, ultra-calm rage of a man pushed beyond his limit of endurance. He had watched Chekov, then Sulu, and now Scotty die within the space of a few minutes. And for what? To prevent this mechanical monstrosity—this…this caricature of a human being—from stopping the war that had killed them. He should have let her do it. Hell, he should have helped her do it. He should have done it himself from orbit, raining hellfire and destruction down on these insane creatures until they understood what war was.

He should have…what? Where in the long chain of regrets that led to this moment did he really have a choice? Like every great failure in history, each of his actions had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now he had only one last person to save: himself. It hardly seemed worth the effort, but Scotty had given his own life to protect Kirk’s; if nothing else, Kirk owed it to him to make sure he didn’t die for nothing.

“All right,” Kirk said to no one in particular. “Let’s try this one more time.”

His voice seemed flat, and he realized that he could hardly hear the crowd around him now. Everything not conducted through bone to his inner ear had to compete with the ringing from the blast.

He looked up to judge what he was up against, and realized that he had an audience. The explosion had drawn the attention of Prastorians and Distrellians alike, and for a moment, anyway, they had paused from their killing spree to see what he would do next.

What could he do next? He had a few seconds at most before they started shooting at one another again…unless he could keep them distracted somehow without antagonizing them. But how could he do that? He had exactly two things to work with: a phaser and an android woman in the electronic equivalent of shock. He didn’t even have his communicator anymore; that had been torn from his grasp in the explosion and was nowhere to be seen.

Drawing the phaser would be suicide; Sulu had already proved that. That left the android. But how could he use her to get out of here?

He had no idea, but he had to do something and he had to do it now. So he cleared his throat and spoke loudly to the Nevisian people around him: “Now that I’ve got your attention, there’s something I think you should know.”

What? What could he tell them that would make any difference? Kirk had never thought so fast in his life. To buy some time, he bent down and helped the Stella android to her feet. She stood beside him, blinking and turning her head from side to side. Her clothing was ripped, her nearly indestructible “skin” was smudged and scraped, and half of her red hair had pulled free of its bun and had fallen into her eyes. She looked as bad as Kirk felt, but she actually seemed more responsive than before.

Her disheveled appearance gave him an idea, though. He said to the crowd, “You fight for honor, but there’s no honor in hitting a lady.” The idea of calling Stella Mudd a lady nearly made him laugh. It would never have occurred to him if she hadn’t called herself that when he’d first grabbed her. If the real Stella was anything like the replica that Harry had made then she was anything but, and right now the android looked more like a homeless waif than a genteel woman, but that was exactly the image Kirk needed.

The Nevisians didn’t seem to care much about the difference between men and women, at least not in battle, so Kirk said, “There’s no honor in attacking anyone who isn’t part of your fight.” Punctuating his sentences with short pauses to let his words sink in, he said, “This woman came here, unarmed, to help you, and how do you repay her? With confusion and mayhem. And when she tried to leave, you callously—and completely without honor—prevented her from going. You killed her bodyguards and you nearly killed her as well. Is this what passes for honor around here?”

He didn’t wait for response. “If it is, then I spit on your honor.” That caused a stir. Kirk wondered if he had gone too far, but he knew he couldn’t back down. To apologize to a crowd was to invite attack. It would be better to challenge them than to appear weak—especially if what Mudd had said about apologies around here was true.

And with that thought, Kirk realized he had his weapon. He had had it all along. Puffing out his chest to look as belligerent as possible, he said, “I spit on your honor and I demand an apology. You have offended—worse, you have insulted—an innocent bystander with your petty conflict, and as her protector I demand an apology from each and every one of you.”

Silence filled the street for a heartbeat, two heartbeats; then one of the Prastorians holstered his disruptor and began to clap. For a few seconds only he applauded, but he kept it up and pretty soon his neighbors holstered their weapons and joined him. The applause spread outward like ripples on a pond until everyone was doing it, and the street that only a minute earlier had echoed with the clash of battle now roared with their approval.

At least that’s what Kirk assumed it was. He noticed that no apology had been offered yet, but if they kept clapping long enough for him and the android to cross the street and get out from under the energy shield he really didn’t care.

“Come on,” he said. He took Stella’s arm and led her into the press of people. They parted for him, then closed up behind, still applauding.

Two more Distrellians shimmered into existence just as Kirk and Stella reached the far side of the street. They appeared with weapons drawn and ready to fire, but the applause stayed their hands. They both leaned close to another Distrellian who had already been there, no doubt asking what was going on, and when she told them they nodded and joined in as well.

Kirk breathed a sigh of relief as he and Stella neared the site where the Distrellians had arrived. This had to be the edge of the shield. The Enterprise would beam them up any moment now, and they would be out of this insane mess. Without Chekov, Sulu, or Scotty, but it was too late to do anything for them.

Kirk turned around after he had passed through the entire crowd. He nodded sternly at the people in front, accepting their gesture without approving of it, expecting at any moment to find himself back on board the ship.

But without his communicator to lock on to, the Enterprise must have been having difficulty zeroing in on him, because he and the android remained on the street long enough for the applause to die down and an embarrassed silence to descend.

“Thank you,” Kirk said, thinking that might trigger another round of applause, but it didn’t.

One of the Distrellians in the front of the crowd shouted loudly, “Let’s send him to Arnhall!”

“Yes, Arnhall!” a Prastorian answered, and then more voices took up the cry. “Arnhall, Arnhall!”

And everyone drew their disruptors.

Kirk didn’t like the looks of that. “Hurry up, Spock,” he muttered.

But he didn’t beam out. He watched, horrified, as everyone in the crowd—at least all those with a clear shot—leveled their disruptors at him…and fired.

Spock, in the transporter room now, worked furiously to lock on to the captain, but with hundreds of others in the Prastorian street below, singling out one man was nearly impossible. It would have been simple if he still carried his communicator, but Spock had wasted precious moments zeroing in on its signal only to discover that no one nearby matched the captain’s transporter trace. Now he had set the computer to scan through the entire crowd, but it was having difficulty keeping track of everyone. Individual traces moved back and forth, and others beamed in or away, complicating the scene almost beyond even the computer’s ability to sort through it.

At least the disruptor fire had stopped. The energy fluctuations from the battle had made scanning unreliable at best. Spock assumed that the captain had had something to do with its halt, but he would have to wait until the captain was on board to learn what he had done.

Whatever it was, it was a short-lived phenomenon. Just as the computer announced in its quiet female voice, “Matching signal discovered outside shield perimeter—initiating transporter sequence,” a concentrated burst of disruptor fire swept through the target area and the computer said, “Signal lost.”

Spock felt a brief surge of telepathic anguish. He turned toward Ensign Vagle, the transporter operator, and said, “Do not despair, Ensign. We found him once; we will find him again.”

“Yes, sir,” Vagle said. He seemed surprised at Spock’s statement. Spock wondered if he had misjudged the man’s emotional state, and would have asked him if that was the case if the moment were not filled with other pressing business.

“Computer, scan the captain’s last known position.”

“Scanning,” the computer replied. “No matching trace found.”

Either the disruptor fire was still interfering, or the captain had moved. “Search for the android,” Spock said. To Vagle he added, “The android is a much more unique target, and therefore theoretically easier to locate. And the probability is high that if we find the android, the captain will not be far away.”

The computer immediately said, “Matching signal discovered. Initiating transporter sequence.”

Spock considered ordering it to wait until they found the captain, but he realized there was no reason for that. In fact, it was better this way. They knew where the android had been, and if it was still functional they could simply ask it where Kirk was.

The black-clad, red-haired form of Stella Mudd shimmered into existence on the forward transporter plate. She staggered sideways when the confinement beam released her, and Spock immediately rushed to assist her down from the platform.

“Where is Captain Kirk?” he asked her.

She looked at him with a face devoid of expression, blank as only an android could manage. Her voice was equally toneless as she said, “Dead. Dead… dead…dead.”

She was clearly damaged. But was she talking about Harry Mudd or Captain Kirk? And could Spock trust her assessment in any case?

“Where was he standing in relation to you?” he asked.

She blinked, then jerked her head to the right in a motion too fast and too extreme for a human to survive. “He…was…here,” she said, raising her right arm to indicate the space just beside her.

“Ensign, scan that region.”

“Scanning,” Vagle replied. “No one there. Sir, that spot was the focus of the disruptor burst we just saw.”

Spock didn’t like the sound of that. He asked the android, “Was the captain shot? Is he injured?”

“Dead,” the android replied again. Then she seemed to recognize Spock for the first time and her face took on some animation. “Spock,” she said, her voice lowering at least an octave and taking on a male timbre. In fact, it was the captain’s voice. Mimicking it almost perfectly, the android said, “Tell Spock…he has the helm. Godspeed.”

It was eerie to hear the captain’s voice issue from a woman’s throat. Even Spock felt a shiver run down his spine at the sound of it, and the content of the message didn’t help, either. That sounded like the last words of a dying man.

“Ignore life signs and search for a body,” Spock ordered the ensign. They might still be able to revive him if they could get him to sickbay soon enough. Dr. McCoy was standing by to treat anyone who was injured.

“I can’t find anything there,” Vagle answered.

Spock left the android to stand on her own and rushed back to the control console to try the search himself, but he was no more successful than Vagle.

“He…vanished,” said the android. “They shot him…he fell… he said, ‘Spock. Tell Spock…he has the helm. Godspeed.’ Then he vanished.” Again, her eerie mimicry left no doubt that she was talking about Kirk.

And the telepathic burst that Spock had felt—that must have been Kirk’s death cry.

Spock felt a surge of remorse wash through him. The human part of him was reacting to the situation in its usual emotional fashion, but he also felt a different kind of remorse, a more sinister kind, that came from his Vulcan heritage. He clamped down on both of them and concentrated on the business at hand.

“What about the others?” he asked. He already knew Chekov’s and Sulu’s fate, and he could guess Mr. Scott’s as well, but he needed confirmation before he abandoned the search for their bodies.

“Dead. All of them…dead. Even my…beloved Harry. What am I… to do?”

“I do not know,” Spock said. What indeed? He faced a similar question himself. Even though Starfleet procedures were quite explicit in such cases—the first officer was to assume command of the Enterprise, report the situation to Starfleet Command, and await further orders—Spock felt that more was required of him. But he couldn’t recover the bodies if they had all been vaporized, and nothing he could say to the Nevisians would change anything either.

Ensign Vagle’s stunned expression reminded him that the crew would need time to grieve. Humans required a long period of adjustment before they could accept tragic news. And they often needed someone to blame for it. Even a scapegoat would do, if the actual guilty party was not available. He suspected that in this case he would fill that need for them, and unpleasant as he found the prospect, he vowed to perform the duty to the best of his ability.

And Stella? Perhaps she could serve in that same capacity. As an android she would excel at it, for even more than a Vulcan, she had no feelings of her own to interfere with the process.

There was no need for her to remain damaged no matter what function she served. Spock went to the intercom and said, “Security to transporter room one.”

“What are…you doing?” she asked as she took a hesitant step forward.

He held out his hand to help stabilize her. “Calling you an escort to engineering,” he said. “They will repair your damage, and then we will see what you are best suited for now that your guardian duties are over.”

“Over,” Stella echoed. “Dead.”

When the two security officers arrived, she let them lead her away without protest. Spock looked at Vagle and said, “There seems little point in continuing to scan for survivors, but you may do so if you wish.”

“Yes, sir,” Vagle said, and from the tone in his voice Spock knew that he would be at it for hours. He made a mental note to order the man to cease and go to bed if he was still there by ship’s midnight.

He left the transporter room, but was immediately faced with a choice. Should he take the turbolift back to the bridge and announce the captain’s and the others’ deaths to the entire crew, or should he take the few steps across the hallway into sickbay and deal with Dr. McCoy’s inevitable wrath?

Do the toughest job first, he decided, turning toward sickbay. And besides, as illogical as it seemed, he discovered that he needed the doctor’s presence in his own hour of grief.