RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

BY

PETER MORWOOD

POCKET BOOKS New York London

Toronto . Sydney bkjo Singapore This book

is a work of fiction. Names,

characters, places and incidents are either the product

of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

events or locales or persons, living or dead,

is entirely coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET

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Copyright Q 1990 Paramount

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POCKET and colophon are registered

trademarks of Simon and Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.s.a. This book is

dedicated to The Miami Cruisers and "The

Toronto Celebrants and to walk-on players

everywhere Historian's Note

This adventure takes place sometime between the

events chronicled in Star Trek The Motion

Picture and those related in Star Trek it The

Wrath of Khan. Readers may wish

to consult those two movies, as well as the televi-

sion episode "Errand of Mercy," as referents.

Chapter One

To Morrow, Randolph H., Admiral,

Chief of Staff (opera tions), Starfleet

Command. From James T. Kirk, Captain,

NCC-1701 U.s.s. Enterprise, inbound

Star Base 12. Sub ject Border zone

3-39, with special attention to Organian

influence, it any. Body Sir, I am pleased

to report at the end of this present tour of duty that

the Enterprise has com pleted a full

exploratory patrol of the above sector without

incident I can advise Starfleet that although we were

scanned by Klingon vessels on three (3)

occasions [3/72 5.3, com5.83, com5.91

refer], at no time was any overt or covert

hostile maneuver or activity directed at this

ship and that as a consequence of this atypical Klingon

reluctance to under take offensive action, this sector

may presently be regarded as one of the Organian

Treaty Zones, with all policing and protection

appertaining thereto. With regard to the Informa tion

received by Fleet Command (ref dispatch SFC/PST

2624301 dated SID 2107.16) it is

my opinion that the Organian Peace Treaty is

being honorably maintained. End.

Captain's personal log, stardate 2213.5

It appears that, whether through Organian or some other

influence, such as Klingon Imperial policy, this

particular area of the frontier corridor is at

peace. The Enterprise is on a heading away from

sector 3-39 and on course for Star 1 RULES

OF ENGAGEMENT Base 12, where her crew will be

able to clear some of their accumulated shore leave and

enjoy the period of RandR to which they are entitled.

This may involve pulling rank, but in this instance I

regard such an act as being in a good cause. This

last mission has turned out to be both

nerve-wracking and boring. However, there are more

relaxing places to be bored than the Klingon

Neutral Zone. Unfortunately, there is no

way to tell how actively the Organians will

enforce their treaty without an actual outbreak of

hostilities. No comment needed about that. End entry.

THE WORDING of both dispatch and log entry seemed

fine, but James T. Kirk looked carefully at

both for one final time before committing one to a

transmission chip and the other to secure storage. This

mission had initially been a simple one

involving astrography charting and stellar analysis.

However, proximity to the Neutral Zone had given

the mission a flavor of espionage, which made

Kirk distinctly uncomfortable. He had felt the

same way and for the same reason on several occasions

in the past; the longago mission into Romulan space

to "acquire" a cloaking device was one instance that

kept coming back to mind. It had been necessary and even

vital to restore the balance of power, but espionage

and intelligence missions invariably left a bad

taste in his mouth afterward, and that one's flavor had been

particularly nasty. A bit like the past three

months along the patrol corridor of debated

space that separated the Federation from the Klingon

Empire. Astrography, maybe; but the

Klingons. never took kindly to exploration in what

they regarded as their own backyard. They called it

spying and reacted accordingly. And since there were no

recorded ineastances of Organian enforcement of their

treaty restrictions in this sector, there was always that

nigeagling suspicion that maybe they didn't

enforce, at 2

least not here, and when the Klingons found out about it

... Well, apparently the Organians did

enforce the treaty. Or the Klingons hadn't

found out that they didn't, which wasn't quite the same thing.

At least nobody had tried to blow anyone else

to plasma. One more mission successfully concluded.

Home, James, and don't spare the horses.

Kirk smiled thinly at the notion. Home, in this

instance, would be Star Base 12, and the horses were

crystalline dilithium. At least James

remained more or less the same. He stood up,

pulled on his tunic, and then, as the desk-mount

communicator chirped, made a sound that might have

been a little grunt and sat down again. "Screen

on," he said. "Allfinished, Jim?" Dr.

McCoy grinned at him and Jim repeated the little

grunt, knowing what was coming next. "One grunt for

yes and two grunts for no. was The chief medical

officer was evidently in a fine mood, no different

from any other member of the crew, now that the Klingons

and the boredom and the possibility of unpleasantness were

being left farther behind with every second that passed. One

bit of unpleasantness, however, remained to be dealt

with.

"Yes, Bones, I'm all through. Just the rest of the

paperwork to deal with, and then-was

"Then, Captain, I'll expect you in

sickbay in ten minutes for that full

checkup you've been avoiding. You're already two

weeks overdue, and you're holding up our schedule

down here. his

James T. Kirk rolled his eyes, but with

McCoy watching from the screen with that knowing little smile

on his face, it was beneath Kirk's dignity

to rummage for any more excuses. "Make it

fifteen minutes?" 3

"Fifteen. McCoy out. his

The screen went blank, and Kirk let out the

groan he had been repressing. Flag rank,

years in the center seat, multiple decorations,

commendations, and mentions in dispatches and he still hated

medical examinations with the passion that others reserved for

toothaches and taxes. Jim grinned a tight little

grin that any dentist would have recognized, never mind

Fleet medics with specializations in psychiatry,

and looked at the desktop with its controlled clutter

of pad screens and report-data chips. Just this

once he wished there was some real paperwork-on

actual paper that could be scrunched up and flung

vigorously into a real metal wastebasket with a

real and very satisfying thunk. He hadn't been able

to spare the time to do anything but captain the ship and

oversee the crew members who were collating

the mass of data that always accumulated when a

Federation vessel ventured anywhere near hostile

space, and his inactivity showed. Especially around his

waist. McCoy would have words with him about that. Kirk

moved a few things, straightened edges, shifted

items from one place to another-but he didn't clear

the desk. He had come to regard that as unlucky.

An omen, perhaps, of an extended shore leave-like the

last one, two and a half years behind a desk console

as chief of Starfleet Operations-or a reminder of

Fleet Admiral Nogura's ruthlessly clear

desktop. His last serious visit to Nogura's

office had lasted no longer than the three minutes

he had anticipated. . That had been long enough for him

get his ship back. Keeping it, and staying fit enough

to keep it, was his business now.

"Heart, respiration, blood pressure,

reflexesthey're all fine, Jim. Of course,

you're a little overbled

weight, but you don't need me to tell you that.

Too much time sitting in the captain's chair and not enough

watching out for the captain's health." McCoy glanced

a final time at the readouts, then switched off the

analysis unit. "You're off duty, I

presume?"

"Since an hour ago. I'm working on my own

time."

"Me, too. Bringing my schedule up to date."

Bones grinned and opened the drinks cabinet that-with his

own brand of sympathy or sarcasm, as

required-was as much a tool of his profession as

any number of anabolic protoplasers.

"'Take a little wine, for your stomach's sake and your

other infirmities." Not so often, in your case, but

when they arrive they're beauties and you hate them."

"I don't like to be sick."

"Quite so. Romulan ale?"

"Kill or cure, eh? I thought you mentioned

wine, not illegal substances." I "I merely

quoted an authority for my prescription. And this

is purely medicinal. Here you are."

Jim sat down at McCoy's desk and eyed the

glass warily as he took it. Its contents were the

same rich, clear blue as a gem-quality

sapphire and looked beguilingly innocent. He

knew about Romulan ale and how deceptive that

innocent look could be. There were any number of

drinks that seemed as harmless as distilled water ...

though none of them, he reflected wryly as the blue

ruin scorched its way down his throat, were quite

as murderous. "Feeling better?"

""Bettee is not how I'd put it, but yes.

I think." Jim got to his feet, put the glass

down very gently, as if it might explode, and

picked up his uniform tunic. "I'll be in Rec

One. I want to see how the crew's doin g, now that

we don't have Klingons breathing down our necks."

"Sensible idea. I could make a good

diagnostic psychiatrist out of you, Jim."

"I've already got a job, Bones. Don't

bother." He pulled on his tunic and glanced back

at McCoy as he walked out the door. "I'm a

starship captain, rememberTt

Rec Deck One was in its usual state-noisy

and full of off-duty crew members enjoying their first

truly tension-free time off since mission's end.

Kirk paused just inside the doorway, unnoticed

as yet, and cast a near-patemal eye over his

crew. It was a feeling that came over him now and

again, more and more often as he grew older and the new crew

members became younger with every fresh posting from the

Academy. There were those, of course, who were unable

to provoke the captain's fatherly interest simply

by their fresh-faced youth. It was difficult, for

instance, to look at a Sulamid ensign or

an Eyren or Lieutenant Naraht and say which

particular section qualified as the "face," much

less whether its complexion might be called fresh.

Craggy, perhaps, in Naraht's case. Now, there was

one crew member who could manage a stony poker

face with no effort at all. Of course there was a

game of poker going on. Three, in fact. And

four games of chess, including one of the interestingly

explosive 4Do variety that was reaching a

flashily apocalyptic endgame even as he

watched. The cheerful computer-generated phutflash of

pieces annihilating one another didn't

completely drown out someone's voice saying

"Check" comanother popping flash of light as

punctuation-"and mate," with the sort of enormous

satisfaction that usually accompanied credits

changing hands. Heedless of such nominally

intellectual pursuits, the usual mixed bag of

people had gathered in the largest

conversation pit and were indulging in a noisy

sing-along that included all of the keys of Z and

several contrapuntal a cappella variations. They

were always at least a semitone off pitch as they chased

their theme up and down what had to be a sliding

scale. The lyrics-which, given the

circumstances, were not surprisingly something

scurrilous about Klingons-were of a piece with the

melodyonly worse.

That sort of reaction was almost a standard response

to the end of a duty tour near any of the Neutral

Zones, with the butt of the humor shifting from Romulan

to Klingon as occasion demanded. The same response

was manifested in the games played in both the main

and the repeater holo tanks. Before and during the

mission, Jim had seen games based on the

historic dramas of a dozen cultures; computer

generated artwork ranging from Terran

Post-Impressionist to Vercingetorig

architectural design, which also had a certain

Post-Impressionist look to it; and some of the more

humorous games held in the Enterprise

datastorage facilities. But now that the mission was

over ...

He didn't need to move from where he was lounging

quietly by the door to know what was being played this time.

The sounds of cheering, jeering, explosions, and music

told him all he needed to know. This particular game

had started life as a sober, serious and very

businesslike Andorian-designed sim ulator

program for helm training on their little

atmosphere-capable customs cutters. Its

cartographi cally correct land- and starscape

subsystems had formed a pleasant evening's

relaxation for anyone aboard the Enterprise who

wanted to be in full control of a small ship every

once in a while. And then somebody-Kirk

suspected the Sulu-Chekov team

had put a word in Harb Tanzer's ear and come up

another optional subsystem that had nothing to do with

landscapes. Instead of In-Flight Training,

Tri-D Simulation 22715.33-its earlier

dryly descriptive title-the game had become

as screechily noisy as any of the old-style

video arcade games and was now known only as

Space Cadet. It was as realistic as careful

programming could make it, even though the design

criteria for every ship it featured had been stretched

to, and once or twice beyond, all the presently

accepted limits. Sulu had done the same thing

once before, with his notorious and never beaten 3.0

version of Simulated Sublight Maneuvers for

DeepExploration Starships. But recently he had

crosslinked the two games and started to tweak all

of the Klingon and Romulan ship

capabilities toward optimum for each vessel's

class, and as a result, Space Cadet was fast

becoming known as the Most Evil Game in the Known

Universe.

There were five Klingon ships in the tank right now;

they were engaged in confused, confusing, and

spectacularly messy combat against a Federation

fleet of twelve. All seventeen vessels were

performing exactly as their full-size counterparts would

have done. For the sake of fairness the enemy ships

wore only the plain gray-blue of the Klingon

Navy rather than the jazzy yellow and black warp

nacelles sported by Sulu's enhanced designs.

Beyond that, realism took a holiday, for instead of

shipboard quiet or the absolute silence of

space, the holo cube providedat players"

discretion, naturally-thrilling music, gunfire, and

an abundance of main-drive sound effects.

"Yes, Captain, they're at it again.

Coffee?" Harb Tanzer had a cup in each hand.

He held one out to Jim without taking his eyes off the

performance of the twelve crewmembers who "flew"

against far from the 8

worst that the master games computer could throw at

them. "Thanks, Mr. Tanzer." Jim

took the coffee gratefully; with luck, its

caffeine would do something to offset the effects of

Romulan ale on an empty stomach. "Looks

as if you're being kept busy down here." The chief

of recreation wiggled the flat of his free hand in a

yes-no-maybe gesture. "The Rec facilities

are busy, but I've had an easy time of it. Most

of them know exactly how they want to spend their time

without needing me to tell them how. Like that, for instance."

Lieutenant Athende from Maintenance executed a

neat firing pass, producing the first big jump in the

game's score tally. The maneuver was greeted with

cheers and a quick and dirty rendition of a fanfare.

Coiling four of its tentacles in a gesture of

pleased excitement, the Sulamid twiddled its

console pad with three of the remaining tentacles and

sent its ship into a flashy victory roll. One

of the Klingon vessels responded like a shark in

bloodied water; it whipped around in a turn tight

enough to set off inertiacompensation warnings aboard any

ship flown, then fired a bracketing salvo of

disrupter bolts from its forward batteries. Athende

forgot all about being pleased with itself and began

concentrating again on staying un-blown-up.

The Klingon's brother-ships reacted

to Athende's first strike by following their consort into a

rightechelon formation that brought all of their forward

weapons to bear on the Sulamid's ship.

"Uh-oh," said Jim under his breath as the Klingons

locked into firing position, then laughed aloud as

Athende directed its ship into a simultaneous

pitch and yaw that not only took it out of the direct

line of fire but left the rightmost Klingon vessel

on a collision course with one of its own consorts.

As the entire Klingon 9

formation broke every which way, the halo tank's voder

cried "Hurrah!" in a tone that could only be

described as sarcastic, then produced another of

those brassy fanfares that sounded like a jazz

trumpet full of molasses. "The music was your

idea, I presume?" said Jim as the horrid

echoes died away.

Harb smiled. "The simulator was fine, but I

thought the game version lacked something"

"Like razzing the players when they score a

point?" "Captain, just wait till someone loses.

Oh, it can produce more subtle music if that's

what they want. This bunch doesn't."

Right then there was a small but impressive

explosion from the games tank, where two of the

other Federation pilots had plainly not been watching

where they were going and had rammed first each other and then the

second Klingon cruiser at a game speed of

.73c. This time the voder played the first ten notes

of Haydn's Funeral March at four times proper

speed and finished with a flatulent chuckle.

Jim cleared his throat and looked at Harb, whose

face was carefully devoid of expression except

where the laugh lines around his eyes made their

telltale crinkles. "Lieutenant Tanzer,"

said the captain, sounding like a man who was choosing his

words with care, "you are, without a doubt, sick."

"Why, thank you, sir. I'll keep up the good

work." He might have said more, but right then there was another

fairly rude noise, this time not from the games

tank. It came from the ambient-sound system of the

holography stage. "Good," said Harb, sounding

relieved. "He's got it working at last." "Uh,

Lieutenant, is this something I should be warned about?"

"No, sir, it's just more of Mr. Freeman's

imageprocessing work. You remember the archived

two10

D material that he started rechanneling a while

back?" "He's still at it? I was under the impression

it was up and running. What's the problem?"

"Well. . ." Harb took a reviving swallow

of his coffee. "Jerry told me the image-enhancement

and data-reprocessing chips have had a little trouble at

the base scan level. They refuse t6 read

anything but standard-format tapes."

"So? Everybody in the Federation uses standard

tapes nowadays." "Everybody in the Federation,

aye," said Harb enigmatically. He didn't

explain further, but Jim suspected that he was about

to get all the answers he wanted.

The holo stage made another noise,

remarkably like that of a man clearing his throat. Or,

more accurately, like Lieutenant Jerry Freeman

clearing his throat. He was standing in front of the

holo's main control console holding its all-call

mike in one hand and a tape cartridge in the other.

Almost everyone on the rec deck w as looking in his

direction, and even the Space Cadet game had

been set on pause. Jim couldn't help noticing

that the crew members who had noticed his presence were

dividing their attention more or less equally between Mr.

Freeman and the captain-as if they were expecting

something interesting to happen in both directions.

"Friends, gentlebeings, and audience," said Jerry,

smiling like man satisfied with a job well

done, "you've been very patient. You've waited, and

now here it is mayDuj BortaSo!"

Even though he had been expecting a surprise

of some sort, Jim knew that his face probably

twitched most satisfyingly at the news that a

Klingon space opera was about to have its Federation

premier on his rec deck-and at the sound of

high-phase

Tlhinganaase being spoken on board the

Enterprise again. It had always meant trouble in the

past, or at the very least an unwanted ripple in

shipboard routine. He smiled, the humor of the

expression perhaps a bit thinner than Lieutenant

Freeman's efforts deserved; but right then Jim

wasn't thinking about Freeman or about rescanned

sterry tapesi We were in Star Base 12's area

the last time, too, he thought, before most of this crew

had even entered the Academy. Certainly before any

of them knew of Klingons as anything but "the enemy

"comcardboard cutouts marked "villain. was It was a

long time ago, but now it seems like yesterday. I

wonder how many of these children read The Final

Reflection before they joined Starfleet?

Certainly a great many of them had read it since and

then, not content with fiction, had raided the

ship's library for anything else that they could find on

the subject of the Klingons and their empire. According

to library records, a lot of the reading had taken

place while the Enterprise was in the Klingon

patrol corridor. Jim had noticed the increased

turnover in data and hard copy printouts and had

been sufficiently concerned to pay a visit both

to Rec One and to sickbay. Recreation was a

subdepartment of Medicine, and Harb Tanzer

reported directly to Dr. McCoy on anything

concerning the crew's leisure activities that might

in his opinion indicate something amiss about their

physical or mental health. There were attitudes

and states of mind concerning, and held by, the nominally

fictional characters-both Klingon and Terran-in The

Final Reflection that could have had an unfavorable

effect on morale. If that had happened, Jim

wanted to find out sooner rather than later. The two

conversations-one could scarcely refer to anything so

informal as a staff meeting-had laid his 12

apprehensions to rest, and with the peaceful conclusion of the

mission he had thought no more about them. Until now.

"Battle Cruiser Vengeance? Coincidence, do

you think?" he said very softly, for Harb's ears

only.

"Half and half. I'd say that the patrol

mission had something to do with it, but those old tapes have

been available as xenosociological material for

years. Ever since the Federation ambassador to the

Empire brought them back from the Klingon homeworld

when he was recalled. Nobody ever bothered to look

at them until Mr. Freeman decided to run them

through his conversion program." Harb's amused

expression changed, growing just a bit more serious.

"Captain, I don't know of any restrictions

covering nonclassified material from nonaligned

sources."

"Such as Klingon space operas?"

"Especially Klingon space operas. Have you

any objections to it being run? I mean, would you like

an advance viewing to check it for. . ."

"Propaganda? Threats to morale? Improper

conduct? I don't think I need to worry." Harb

looked relieved, probably more for Jerry

Freeman's sake than for any other reason.

Jim had seen the lieutenant's face when he

realized that the captain was attending his premiere, a

mixture of pleasure at the compliment and

apprehension that it wasn't a compliment at all but a

prelude to his being hauled over the coals.

That nervous little pause was enough to make Jim raise his

voice a bit, just enough to be overheard. "Mr.

Tanzer, I doubt that a space opera-even a

Klingon space opera-is likely to harm the

physical or mental welfare of this crew." Then,

much louder, "Well, let's see it,

Lieutenant. Have you arranged for popcorn?" It was

a poor attempt at a joke-Jim had just finished

a long day-and the laughter that greeted it 13

was out of all proportion. Relief of tension, he

thought. Good grief, did he scare the new

recruits that much?

"You're a genuine galactic hero as well as a

captain, sir. What you think matters," Harb

said.

Jim looked around sharply and blinked at the rec

chief. "Harb, you've been taking mind-reading

lessons again."

"Just putting two and two together, sir. And if you

really want it, two of the smaller processors have

already been programmed to provide popcorn."

Harsh metallic music blared from the ambientsound

system, making people jump. Jim-who had started only

very slightly-listened with his head cocked to one side,

fascinated by this new experience. There had

been all those encounters in the past, when he had met

Klingons, spoken to them, fought with them; but this was the first

time he had ever heard their music. Presumably this

was the main title introduction, because he had only just

become used to the alien scale and tuning when a

chorus of fierce voices burst into song. Somehow

Jim had never imagined Klingons singing, but if he

had, this was without a doubt how they would have sounded.

"HI-CHMEY tuj, Som chuStaH. . . was ft was

about hot guns and a noisy hull. The song crashed

to a conclusion in a brazen atonal scream of

trumpets and a rattle of percussion. There was a

silence-nothing from the holo stage, nothing from the

audience, neither applause nor comment nor even the

sound of breathing. Everybody in Rec One seemed

shocked speechless. Then a single voice spoke up

from the back of the huge room. "Hey, Jerry! You

didn't say this was a kids" show! I wanna see

the toys!" Even Jim laughed; it had been a long

time since Earth's children's-entertainment channels had

pre-

RULES Of ENGAGEMENT

sented programming whose first and often only

purpose was to sell a line of toy products.

Spin-offs, they were cAlled. But through his

laughter Jim felt a touch of unease as he

watched a Klingon warship going into action on the

holo stage. Enterprise had been on the receiving end

of firepower from that sinister crankwinged vessel too

many times for her commander to regard such a battle

cruiser with anything like equapimity, and the prospect

of his crew of largely untried youngsters seeing that

same ship as no more than part of an entertainment

disturbed him. Especially when it was cutting up one

of the old Constitution-class starships, as it was now

doing on the holo stage. Enterprise had been a

Constitution class vessel before her refit.

Despite the reassurances from Bones that the morale

of the crew was unaffected, the laughter struck him as

just a touch unhealthy. And then he heard that same

laughter again and shifted his concentration back to the

translated dialogue. It had never occurred to him

that Klingons, might have had a gift for comedy, and

indeed there was no indication that there was anything intentionally

humorous in what the crew was watching. It was just that the

whole thing was so deadly serious that after a while it

became impossible to take seriously. Klingon

officers snarled Battle Language at their

subordinates, line members conspired against their

enemies and one another, commanders moved

fleet elements as they might move pieces on a

klin zha board, and ships blew up other ships in

what might have passed for combat maneuvers in an

effects studio-but fell a bit short of reality

on the Rec Deck of a Federation starship. And all

was done without a smile, without a laugh, without a

single joke to lighten the oppressive mood of

determined glory-seeking. They aren't like this, thought

Kirk. Kor wasn't, at least not much, and

Koloth certainly wasn't. So what's 15

the matter with this show? Doesn't the Empire dare

to show that its military might have a sense ofhumor?

Or do they regard humor as subversive? He

shrugged, not understanding.

Spock might, indeed probably would, have given

a logical, rational and lengthy explanation of it

all, but Spock was in his quarters, either fast

asleep or in a recuperative trance after far too

long on duty. During the last three days on

patrol, a sensory-scan ghost had suggested that

Enterprise was being shadowed by something with higher

power-output readings than the average chunk of

space debris. Debris didn't usually run

at matching warp speeds, either. Of course nothing had

come of it, and Spock had finally isolated the

problem as a repeater echo in one of the longrange

scanner chips. That discovery had taken Kirk's

first officer sixty-seven hours without a break

by shipboard chrono, because-logically, of coursethe

long-range units couldn't be taken off line in

potentially hostile space and Spock had therefore

run diagnostics on each separate chip

by one-at-a-time backup substitution. It was the

sort of thing that Spock liked to do. No, not

liked-considered the only thing to do, after a process of

thought as ruthlessly diagnostic as the mechanicals

he had brought to bear on the recalcitrant chips.

A Klingon of the Imperial race stood on the

shattered bridge of a Romulan Warbird,

flanked by his personal guards, and gazed at the

members of the Rom vessel's crew as they knelt

on one knee to acknowledge his victory and their

defeat. "SoH70" one of the Romulans asked.

"Who are you?" The Klingon captain put his hands

on his hips and glanced about him at sparking consoles

and smoke-blackened bulkheads. He smiled that

toothy Klingon smile that has nothing to do with

humor.

"HoDo Qot1h j IH, was he said.

comQot1h BortaS. je 16

Dujvam tevwIj maj. was Harsh music

swelled triumphantly as the image froze. Then

both sound and picture faded slowly away. "This

ship is my prize, was eh? thought Kirk. He'd

never been in a situation like that, where he could claim a

ship as plunder- Starfleet just didn't do things like that.

All the same, it did have a certain ring to it. "I

am Captain Kirk. Kirk of the Enterprise. And

this ship is. . ." No. It didn't work. Jim

showed his teeth in a smile that was unconsciously very

Klingon. Maybe in that grim Mirror universe,

but not in this one. Thank God. "Are there many more of

those tapes, Mr. Freeman?" he asked as the

lieutenant leaned over to twiddle furiously at the

holo console. Freeman straightened up with a jerk,

not having noticed Jim's quiet approach across the

busy Rec Room. A tape cartridge started

to slither, and he stopped it with a flat slap of one

hand.

"Uh, about ten, sir. They're all in Xeno."

"Mr. Tanzer told me. That's an

impressive bit of work, if Xeno base tapes

are of the same quality as the batch I saw last

year. Rigellian, they were."

"Thank you, sir." Freeman cleared his

throat, a little uncomfortable with the compliment in front

of so many of the crew, and took refuge behind the tape

he had saved from, failing. "Sir, about the rest of

these ... Now that you've seen one, do you have any

objections to my recoding the others for ship's

channels?"

Jim shook his head. "None at all, Mr.

Freeman. I'll have it so noted when I log in

tomorrow morning. In the meantime, good night, all."

"Thank you, sir. And good night."

There were the usual murmured salutations as Jim

made his way back toward the turbolift entrance,

thinking pleasant thoughts about being horizontal in

the warm dark of his own quarters with his eyes shut,

and responding to the ripple of "good night,

Captain's" almost automatically. Harb's coffee

had balanced McCoy's Romulan ale just

nicely enough for his own overworked system to announce how

tired it was and how very much it would like him to go to bed

soon, please. He was almost into the lift and on his

way to E deck when the annunciator beside the door

spoke his name in Uhura's voice "Bridge

to Captain Kirk. his

For the barest instant Jim closed his eyes tight,

knowing from comexperience and the tone of his communication

chief's voice that it was going to be the only chance he

would have for quite a while.

6'Kirk here," he said. "Rec One."

"Captain, I'm sorry to break into your

off-duty period, but Repeater Station Three has

a Captain's Personal signal on closed-line

scramble holding for clearance by your command ciphers. was

66 Captain's Personal?" echoed Jim, all

sleepiness gone. It wasn't quite the highest level

of Starfleet coding, but it was high enough . 6'Give

me the code groups, please." His voice was quite

steady. Jim had always wondered what his reaction would

be to a CP dispatch, and he was pleased to notice that

it was at least creditable.

"Cadesfollow. was Uhura read off a series

of numbers 111-69-201956-31. P tilde

iority one emergency. Oh, great. Them wasn't a

war in the offing, but there had to be something very unpleasant

lurking in the body of the message to justify that I

I I group.

"I'll take it in my quarters, Uhura. Have

Commanders Spock and Scott and Dr. McCoy

join me there. Kirk out."

None of the other crew on the rec deck had

noticed 18

the brief exchange or the change in their

captain's demeanor, and if they had noticed, they

were all Starfleet Academy graduates,

officers and gentle- beings who would have regarded the

whole thingquite rightly-as none of their business.

Jim's mind touched on, and flinched from, a dozen

possibilities in the second and a half before the

turbolift car arrived. V'ger had involved a I

I I-group coding, but even it hadn't rated a

Captain's Personal dispatch-at least not when the

alert had begun. And there had been a I I I for

that horrible business when the Romulans

field-tested their plasma projector and cloaking

device. But then-and Kirk was actually smiling by the

time the lift car's doors hissed openthe tribble

alert had been group I I I as well. Jim was

actually smiling by the time the lift car's doors

hissed open. Be preparedfor the worst, he thought, but

always hope for the best, because whatever you ask for, you may

get.

The lift doors shut, and he was on his way.

"GooDo EVEMNG, CAPTA-IATION," said

Spock as Jim came around the curve of the

corridor and found the Vulcan waiting at the door

to his quarters. 6'First as always, Mr.

Spock," said Jim. Not merely first, but wide

awake, wearing immaculate full uniform, and in

full possession of his breath. Of course, Jim

wouldn't have expected anything else. All senior

officers had their quarters on the same deck, but those

of the first officer were in an area of the primary-hull

saucer that was diametrically opposite those of the

captain; the distant placement was designed

to prevent accident or attack from taking out the first

two levels of Enterprise's command structure.

In addition to being some distance away, the first officer had

been asleep or in meditation when Uhura's call

came through. But neither of those mitigating factors

meant anything to Spock. He managed to be the first

to arrive despite them.

"I am early only because I was conveniently

situated to respond to your summons, sir, since

the radial corridors of this deck-was "Quite so. And of

course running along the said corridors never entered

your head."

"Running, sir? No, sir. Such an

expenditure of energy appeared superfluous in the

present circumstance."

However tired Spock had been when he logged off

the bridge, he had plainly taken

advantage of his rest time. His carefully pedantic

conversation and vocabulary were a sure indication that he

was feeling thoroughly full of beans. It was just as

well that somebody was, thought Jim as he went

inside and through to the work area at the back of the inner

office. Until he got some sleep Spock would

be thinking for both of them. "We have a problem," he

said, gesturing Spock to a chair. "A code-group

I I I problem." Jim hated the

melodramatic sound of that, and he could feel

Spock's eyebrow going up long before he turned from

the desk screen and saw it.

"More tribbles? Or merely a Klingon declaration

of war?" "No further data yet. I won't

clear the ciphers until"-the door opened-

"everyone's here. Mr. Scott, Dr. McCoy,

good evening."

"So much for your evening in Rec One, Captain,"

said Bones. "I take it this is business rather than

recreation."

"You presume right. Scotty, is main drive

behaving itseIP" "Aye, sir, that it is."

Commander Scott's mustache moved as he permitted

himself a thin smile. "It wouldna dare be otherwise.

I've been down in Engineering, supervising

things."

"One hundred and ten percent efficiency, then?"

"Och, no. A hundred suits me fine."

"Good. We may need it." Jim swiveled his

chair and fed cipher clearance into the screened terminal

on his desk. "Communications, this is the captain.

Implement transfer at your discretion. Kirk out."

"Transferring. Transfer completed. Bridge

out."

The light of an optical scan flickered

briefly, checkling Kirk's retina to make

certain that he was who he claimed to be. It was

unusual and rather unsettling; most incoming dispatches

considered his personal codes sufficient authority

to clear. "Kirk, James T., Admiral," said

the terminal's voder tonelessly. "Identity

confirmed. Verification complete." Jim took a

deep breath. Here it comes. "Run transmission,"

he said, and was aware of his officers leaning just a little

closer. For their benefit he added, "With audio."

"To.- Kirk, James T., was came the

transmission, "Admiral, Cmdr NCC-1

701 Enterprise."

That use of his full rank was significant.

Jim didn't like it. "Effective immediately

Shore leave clearance is rescinded for duration of

present operation. You are ordered to proceed with all

due haste to coordinates 00315122970 mark

816.83, there to rendezvous with support ships

enumerated below. Under your command all vessels will

make best speed to planet 4725 Cancri

IV, a.k.a. Dekkanar. Enterprise will

provide escort for SPE subsequent

to breakdown of diplomatic relations with planetary

government. Be advised that this is not an exercise.

Signed Nhoma, OX, Commodore, SFC

225 Iraz VYH-ODEL CC Farey, N.,

Cpt, Cmdr NCC2360 Vanguard; North,

G., Cpt, Cmdr, NCC-2382 Sir

Richard; Johnson, T., Col, Cmdr 22

Diplomatic Protection Group, Morrow,

R.h., Admd. CoSo (ops) SFC Earth

(sol I1117erra). Additional data follow.

"Stop," said Kirk, and touched A panel that

polarized the screen. "Audio off." He turned

from the terminal to survey the three thoughtful faces

gazing at him. One in particular drew his eyes.

"Bones? You look as if you have something to say."

"Never mind the recreation," said McCoy as he

stared at the screen, "wave good-bye to shore

leave as well. And just when I was really starting

to look forward to getting back on terra firma."

"Doctor," Spock said quietly, "Star

Base Twelve is a deep-space facility.

Even allowing for the loosest possible interpretation of the

term "terra firma," you would be some

twelve-point-two-seven-five light-years from

anything firm enough to stand on, and it would be a form of

frozen methane rather than the "solid earth" of your

statement."

"Spock, I don't know how I'd survive

without you."

"Gentlemen." Jim caught Scotty stroking his

mustache in an effort to hide the expression lurking

behind it; he rapped the desk to restore some decorum

to the proceedings. "This is hardly the time. I'm already

presuming that all departments are running at a

reasonable degree of efficiency," said Jim. "I

know that at the end of a patrol things tend to slide a

bit. But is this ship capable of returning to active

status within the somewhat limited parameters of this

signal?"

"All science departments are already at optimum

stand-down capability, Captain. Commanders Uhura

and Chekov reported like status for

Communications and Defense respectively as of

yesterday."

"I wasna makin'jokes about Engineering,

Captain. She'll give ye right to warp ten if and

when ye need it."

"Dr. M'benp's working on the crew's medical

roster right now," McCoy said. "There's not a thing

wrong with any of the whole four hundred ninety, and the

report summary'll be ready for your inspection in a

few hours. But speaking as your doctor, if you're

planning to stay awake and read them-was "No,

Bones, I'm planning to get some sleep. But not

until we've reached some sort of conclusion about this

damned signal. I'll take it as read that we can

answer 23

Commodore Nhoma's signal with a confirmation of

immediate response. So let's see what we're

letting ourselves in for. Audio on. Hardcopy

printout to science station. Resume."

Jim's suspicions were more than justified. The

mission looked like trouble. After a bloodless coup on

4725 Cancri IV, the new Dekkan

government had served deportation orders on the

Federation personnel, their families, and the various

independent neutrals presently

planetside. On the face of it, the mission was no

more than the provision of top cover for the peacekeeping

unit running a standard SPE'-A

services-protected evacuation of the sort so beloved

by Training Command. Except, of course, that comth was for

real.

"Captain," said Scotty, "if they havena

yet laid claim to the Federation facilities on the

surface and in the orbital chain, then all of this is

more a matter for the diplomats and the politicals than

a starship. The expulsion orders would have shown more

forceful wording if it wasna in their plans

to renegotiate the terms of Federation occupancy.

Doubtless when the dust settles it's just more wealth

they'll be after." ,Spock laid the sheets of data

neatly on the desk in front of him and squared their

edges, then steepled his index fingers and tapped them

against his lips before saying anything, almost as if he was

editing his words before letting them be heard. "Certainly

there appears to be a diplomatic element involved

in this," he said. "But unfortunately whatever

financial adjustments the government may have planned

are being overtaken by events. I'm sure that all

present will agree that the Phalange for Dekkan

Independence-the PDI, as they are more

popularly known-is an organization worthy of

notice."

"You're dam right I agree! It doesn't

matter what highfalutin names they give themselves,

they're just the same sort of terrorists who always

crawl out of the woodwork when something like this happens!"

McCoy flicked a hand irritably at the screen

in front of Jim. "And you know what they're trying

to do with all this throwing their weight about? They weren't

able to make a name for themselves during the coup, so now they

have to prove how tough they are so that they'll get some

attention when the time for making demands comes around."

"The employment of violence toward political,

or nominally political, ends has been

regrettably common throughout history," said

Spock. His face was somber. "Even on

Vulcan. An adequate demonstration of force will

invariably gain notice, and from notice comes

influence and power."

Jim sat quietly and watched the discussion pass

to and fro among his officers, gleaning more understanding from the

workings of multiple minds than he ever could from

sitting alone, hunched before a securityscreened

terminal. "I suspect, Mr. Spock, that's why

Starfleet's sending us. Specially trained

personnel to carry out the evacuation, the Enterprise

in a highcover orbit-seems to me intended

to attract notice. But nothing else."

He tapped a series of controls on the terminal

console, and more data appeared on the screen.

"Gentlemen, I am advised that the actions of all

Starfleet vessels and personnel are restricted

by the full provisions of General Order Twelve,

subsection seven-point-one, governing rules of

engagement. The most we're allowed to show is the

flag. No shields, no screens, and most

certainly no weapons. There are also indications that

General Order One may be invoked if anybody

gets too heavy-handed, and the 25

Prime Directive in this instance will mean "get

out and stay out." Which brings me to the Klingons."

"Never rains but it pours," said Bones softly.

Jim glanced at him and smiled crookedly. "Too

true. The Klingons-and the Orions. Both of these,

ah, nonaligned spheres of influence extend too

conveniently close to 4725 Cancri for Starfleet

to want to give either unfrly power the opportunity

to expand by virtue of our errors." "Which either or both

may already be contemplating." Spock riffled through his

printouts, gazed at one sheet with as close

to a scowl as he ever allowed himself to show, then neatened

them again, his eyes hooded and unreadable. "Perhaps

following an invitation . . ."

"From one o' their own intelligence sources,

maybe." Scotty looked up unhappily from the

latest screen of data. "Captain, I hadna

thought the Firechain ran that' here."

"The Fire-what?" McCoy leaned over

Scotty's shoulder, frowned at the screen, then

threw up his hands in exasperation. "Dammit,

Jim, I'm a doc- tor, not a soldier! Will

somebody-anybody-cut all the military jargon and

tell me what all this is about?"

Jim stretched a bit, easing a crick in his

spine. A pain in the neck, he thought. Isn't that

always what these signals are about? He felt tired.

"It's about the usual trouble. Computer, desk

terminal, off, main holo screen on. Show all

systems in the sectors bounded by these coordinates."

He fed in the figures and sector boundaries from the

dispatch, then watched as the big projection screen

fitted to the rear wall of his office came alive

with the stars and data of a standard chart display. "Show

destination." Immediately 4725 Cancri IV glowed

blue as it orbited its sun, the

holographic

image passing unconcernedly through Jim's hand as

he reached deep into the display and tracked it with his

fingertip. "Access authority as before command level,

classification one three-A three. Reveal and

flag Federation long-range surveillance and

early-warning installations in the same area

designation Firechain.

Forty-odd red fireflies joined the 3-D

swirling of simulated orbits drone

satellites fitted with an adaptation of the

Romulan cloaking device, like the one that had been

monitoring the ill-fated trio of Klingon

cruisers at the beginning of the V'ger incident;

false asteroids, and real ones hollowed out to no more

than a concealing shell; and one planet that glowed like a

jewel on Jim's finger, blue and red by turns.

Dr. McCoy stared for what seemed the longest time

at the slowly turning display, then raised his eyes

to glance from side to side with an odd mixture of

amusement and resignation. "Ali," he said.

"Dekkanar is right in the middle of it and so are

we."

Jim said nothing, Scotty cleared his throat

slightly, and both of them looked at

Spock. The Vulcan met and held their eyes for

perhaps a second, lifted that one eyebrow

fractionally, and compressed his lips in an expression

that, on anyone else, would have concealed a rueful

smile. "Explanations," he said. "Very well.

Captain, if I might use your terminal to access

the computer ... That'

4413e my guest."

"Computer, this is Commander Spock, science

officer. Access authorities remain in force.

Classification now two one-B three."

"Identity confirmed. Verification complete."

Jim had noticed a peculiarity before and he

heard it again now. It might have been his imagination, but

he could have sworn that whenever the voder- 27

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

reproduced voice addressed Spock it sounded

less toneless and ... well, friendlier. But of

course, that was impossible. As Spock worked, more

charts and data flagging overlaid the first display

until it was cluttered with colors and information

flashes. Finally he glanced once from the desk

repeater to the main screen and back, nodded, and

pressed a single tab that returned the basic star

map. "The Dekkanar installations remain

mostly what they originally were," he said, "a part

of the industrial development and self-help

program first instituted thirty-seven standard years

ago. However, by virtue of Klingon Imperial

expansion in the years between the start of the project and the

Peace of Organia, it was, and I quote,

"necessary that, by virtue of its position in Federation

space so close to the Klingon sphere of influence,

a manned facility for detecting potentially

threatening incursions be installed in the 4725

Cancri system." At the time of construction, no

fully automated systems were considered for the task.

There is a footnote." To Jim's surprise,

Spock glanced back at the small screen; his first

officer didn't normally use, or need,

prompts. "It concerns misinterpreted DEW-LINE

data by ILLIAC-FOUR for NORAD and SAC in

Stone Mountain-on late twentieth-century

Earth," the Vulcan elaborated, plainly

disapproving of the plethora of acronyms confusing a

perfectly adequate language. Spock lifted

both eyebrows, plainly inviting an explanation before

he got one from the computer.

"DEW was the original distant early warning

system," said Jim. He smiled wearily.

"In the late twentieth century Earth's discovery

of nuclear fission was still less than fifty years

old, Spock." It must have 28

been a ticklish time. Either fifty years or

indefinitethat was the life span Vulcans had

calculated for a hominid culture that discovered

atomics. "Thank you, C aptain. And the rest?"

Jim winced inwardly, sensing the same reaction from

Scotty and Bones. It was not a piece of Earth's

history that any of them could be proud of. "There were

occasions," he said, picking his words with care, 66

when the warning system and the computers linked to it ...

made mistakes. The mistakes were passed down

line to commanders who didn't want to believe they were

mistakes; the errors then were sent to missile and

strategic bomber bases. Most of the errors

occurred when the warning system picked up offcourse

civilian aircraft ... though there was a persistent

rumor that war was almost started by a flock of migrating

geese."

He leaned back in his chair and looked across the

office at nothing in particular. "We came so

close so many times. Every so often the recall didn't

come through until the bombers were in the air. Even now,

a few hundred years later, it's

unpleasant to think about."

"But not unfamiliar," said Spock. "I

comprehend the need for personnel in the Dekkanar

facility."

"Dekkani personnel," snapped McCoy.

"Of course, Doctor." Spock's face was

expressionless. "It is their planet, but they

appreciate the Federation support."

"You mean they did.

"Quite," said Spock flatly. "Informing the

Dekkani would be informing them. This planet's

proximity to the Klingon-Empire is a two-edged

sword." "Look at the chart, man! One link in

a chain of fifty-odd isn't any great loss!"

"Ah," said Scotty, "look at the size o'

the place. 29

Ye're talkin' about the damned main station. It

controls all the analysis from the others."

Montgomery Scott was getting agitated his

Edinburgh-educated accent was giving way to the harsher

sounds of old Glasgow and the shipyards of the Clyde

where he had learned the fundamentals of his trade.

"Ye'll no' be gettin' that much gear on any o'

those wee orbital drones or screenin' the energy

output from detection even if ye could. The

laddies from Klingon Intelligence would love that'

get their hands on the whole kit an' caboodle, so

else we keep everythin' quiet and let the

politicals get this all back that' normal-or

somebody gets that' beam the whole installation up

piecemeal; there's no other way that' deal 14il

x91 "And how would this new Dekkan government-or

the PDI'-REACT if we tried that, without asking

permission? Which, of course, they, would refuse,"

Jim demanded, locking eyes with McCoy. It was

all very well for the chief medical officer to appoint

himself the conscience of the Enterprise, but trying to do the

same thing for the whole of Starfleet Command-that was way

out of his depth.

All the tension went out of McCoy's body and

he settled back in his chair with an audible

release of breath. "Yeah. They're not up for

listening to reason right now, are they? And they'd be

likely to invoke the Prime Directive and then

invite the Klingons in just out of spite." He

grinned and managed to put a bit of humor into it.

"So it's a secret. And it stays a secret."

Jim nodded, managed a little grin of his own.

Losing the planetary base would be bad enough; losing

the surveillance facilities to the Klingons

would be far, far worse.

The Empire's diplomatic arm would try to use

it as political leverage both through the Organians

and in other, nastier ways-and, invited or not, they'd

be all over Dekkanar within a day of the Federation's

withdrawal. To say nothing of the Romulans, who always

regarded Federation difficulties as an

opportunity.... Much more of this and Jim knew he

would start to twitch. "Let's get the ball rolling,

shall we?" he said. "Apologies in advance to everyone

just coming off duty, but I'm bringing the ship back up

to active status. Thanks, everyone. Dismissed."

He tapped the desk communicator. "Attention

all hands, this is the captain. Now hear this shore

leave has been postponed. Enterprise is

returning to active duty for an estimated ten

days. All stations and departments will go to alert status

immediately. Kirk out.,,

"That was abrupt," said McCoy from the doorway.

Spock and Scotty were already out and away.

"Probably," said Jim, knowing there was nothing

probable about it. "It's the way I feel. I was

looking forward to a little R-and-R as well, you

know."

"I do know. It's a tacky way to wind

up the tour, Jim-cleaning up an intelligence

mess."

"Somebody has to do it, and we're handy. You

hold the dustpan and I'll use the brush, eh?"

"After you get some sleep."

"I need to-was

"Sleep."

"Once I've answered my mail and pointed the

ship in the right direction. All right?"

"All right. But I'll stay here for a while, just

to make sure. Jim sighed heavily. "There are

times, Bones, when you sound like my mother."

"Oh, I'm far worse than that, Captain. is

McCoy smiled again, took a seat on the edge of

Kirk's bunk. "I'm your doctor!"

"And what about a ship of your own, Pavel?"

"Wen, what about it? I don't even know yet if

my transfer is to Nelson or Reliant, and

already you talk about a command! I don't know anything

at all!" Pavel Andreievich Chekov, acting

science officer, threw up his arms in mock

despair. "And if I had a choice, would I not

serve on something with a good Russian name, like

Sakharov or Ivan Groznyy?" "What about

Potemkin?" said Sulu. "Or Minsk?"

"If I wanted to stay with this class of starship,

dorogoy moy, I would not move from this very one. S."

They had been talking shore leave before the

message came in for Captain Kirk; now shore

leave and anything connected with it was a prohibited

subject, just in case too much assuming of things

brought disappointment. Their conversation was all about

promotions and transfers and whether the next patrol

would be more interesting than the last, because it was certain that

it couldn't possibly be duller. There were only the

three slightly raised voices on the bridge,

those of the old hands; other stations were secured by ensigns

and a solitary lieutenant, all of whom were keeping

quiet and clear of even friendly arguments between these

commanders with the legendary names.

And then the annunciator uttered its two-tone

three-note whistle and even the legends went

quiet. "Attention all hands, this is the captain.

Now hear this. shore leave has been postponed. .

. -- was Sulu released a long breath that lacked

only sound 32

to be a groan of disappointment. "That's ten I

owe you," he whispered to Chekov after the rest of the

message was done. "And a drink. Better make it

off duty rather than off ship-otherwise you

might have to wait awhile." "Just so long as the drink

isn't sake. Wodka, ifyou please." He

glanced across at Ensign Penney, who was once again

keeping Weapons and Defense ticking over, as she

had been doing on and off throughout a mission that had seen

no need for them at all. "Maintenance checks,

Ensign," he said. "And run a preheat on the

phaser banks before checking the warp drive power

bleed. Make sure any imbalance will cut in the

torpedoes. And if it doesn't, scream. Because I

will."

Chekov had never liked the way the redesign had

interlinked phasers to main drive; damage to one would

rob Enterprise of the other. And the photon

torpedoes, while an admirable backup, were not

what he considered an adequate defense all

by themselves.

"Klingons, do you think?" he asked nobody in

particular. Heads went up for an instant all around

the bridge before turning back to their allotted

tasks.

"Not this far into Federation space." Sulu sounded

confident, almost like a man who was considering how he

might win his ten credits back. "Station

K-Seven was farther in," said Chekov

softly. "So was Organia." Uhura flapped one

hand at them in a shushing gesture and pressed her

transdator tighter into her ear with the other. "Watch

your screens," she hissed, head turned well

away from the comm pickup. "Further info coming up."

Kirk's voice rang out on the bridge

"Make the 33

following signal to Commodore Nhoma "Ref

your dispatch sitrep noted, logged, Enterprise

acting.'Usual codes and salutations. Flag it as

a Priority One response, and send the message

and reply to all department heads. Any queries or

comments may be directed to Mr. Spock. was

Uhura touched controls, paused while the

verification lights came up, and nodded.

"Executed, sir."

"Thank you, Commander. was There was a soft small

noise in her transdator that took Uhura a

second to recognize as an inadequately stifled

yawn. "Patch all coordinatesfrom Commodore

Nhoma's signal through to Heim and Navigation, and

have a course laid in directly for those

coordinates at warp eight-pointfive.

V-another yawn, more audible than the last one-

"think that's all for now. Good night. Kirk

out. "Aye, Captain. Good night, sir."

Uhura wiggled the transdator from her ear and set

it down on the co m console right beside the screen.

She read the words burning on that screen, words that the

captain's authority had put there, and said several

words of Amaationdebele kwaZulu under her breath.

Now and

again occasions arose for which KiSwahili was inade

quate it was too good-natured a language in which

to s I wear in effectively. Here we go again, she

thought, and hit the key that put Nhoma's signal

on line. "Your station, Mr. Mahase."

The deck underfoot was vibrating with that familiar

soft subharmonic moan of acceleration when Uhura

finished tidying up and rose to return to the center

seat where she nominally held the con. Sulu had

laid in the course coordinates almost as fast as they

appeared on his board, and Enterprise was already

curving away from Star Base 12 and back out into the

uninhabited darkness near the Neutral Zone.

As she settled back into the captain's chair,

Uhura touched controls to bring a star chart up on the

main screen. She looked at it for a moment, t hen

shook her head. The star called 4725 Cancri was

all alone out there. Oh, there were its seven

planets, but the only one of interest was their

destination, Dekkanar. The rest ... either too

close or too far out; cinders or snowballs. It

was an untidy system; literally so, with an orbiting

belt of asteroids and bits of space debris from

what had probably been an eighth planet sometime

long ago, most of them massive enough to overwhelm the

long-range navigational pressors that were, after

all, meant only to shunt micrometeors from

Enterprise's path. At least the Enterprise

navigators were too sharp to let the ship get

anywhere near the asteroids. Larger obstacles of this

sort were normally flung aside by the outermost

deflector screens after a sensor detection. At

present, however, the use of screens and shields was

forbidden under General Order 12, and once the ship

moved deeper into the star system, its sensors wouldn't

work. Because 4725 Cancri had yet another trick

up its metaphorical sleeve. It was a

"dirty" star, a testy, marginally unstable type

F2 that threw out vast quantities of ionized

radiation at all times, and right now it was at the peak

of a sunspot cycle. The star's ionization was as

effective as deliberate high-frequency jamming

and served quite adequately to scramble

shipboard helm sensors. The only way around the

problem was either to run those sensors at maximum

output or to activate the more powerful systems that were

expressly designed to bum through jamming whether it was

natural or deliberate. That, of course, was

impossible for the same reason that everything else was out

of the question right now-General Order 12.

High-emission sensors, any of which might

be perceived as military hardware, were expressly

forbidden by Order 12; under the present rules of

engagement, they were considered provocative. This

system had better be well charted, thought Uhura.

Otherwise it's going to be interesting... She cut in

an orbital simulation program, set present

parameters and restrictions, and watched while it ran

a hands-off approach down through the display. The

program achieved a geosynchronous orbital

insertion comj-and Uhura winced feelingly. Almost any

approach from deep space was interesting, all right.

Too damned interesting.

"Looks wonderful." Chekov had been watching

the simulation in between setting the science station to rights, not

much liking what he saw. "And with Vanguard and Sir

Richard keeping us company right down to orbit. Right

into the radio pause. Boga radi-was

"One good thing about all this is that we won't be

staying long." Sulu, having finished upgrading

checks on Helm and Navigation, keyed his department

head acknowledgment into the reader and cleared its

message to memory. "I've been on SPE

exercises before. The security people beam down

to protect the civilians and diplomats until

they can be brought out. All we have to do is give cover

from up top."

47hat easy, huh?" Uhura shook her

head. "So why am I not convinced?" "Because the

exercise controllers like to throw in the occasional

curve. Like the time limitation, of course, and the other

civilians. On one exercise we had

sociologists, naturalists, and two families

off bird-watching somewhere in the fenland-on a planet

that was all fenland! We found them, directed squads

to pick them up, moved them all to the evacuation

points, and beamed them out, but it wasn't what I'd

call fun. This, though"-Sulu tapped the reader

screen-"will have to be neater. If that signal means

what I think, then we go in, pick up the folks,

and try to get out again within a couple- of days. What

I read is 'Don't ruffle any feathers, it'll

mess up the talks."" "The Dekkani

act like spoiled children who want us to give them more candy

before they let us play in their yard," said Chekov,

sounding annoyed. "When I was very small, that kind of

behavior did not earn me candy. It got me

smacked." He smiled at a wry and probably

painful memory. "Few children tried it twice. A

pity that approach never works in politics. It would

save a lot of time and trouble."

"Gunboat diplomacy, Pavel?" Sulu

shrugged, dismissing the idea. "I think the Klingons

use those methods on their subject worlds. I

don't recommend it."

"I wasn't suggesting gunboats."

Uhura looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

"If what you meant was some sort of orbital

smackprogrammable launcher," she said, "you're more

in need of a rest than I thought."

TwENTY DRYD-OM surrounded the orbital

shipyard, and nineteen of them buzzed with activity.

The twentieth was in darkness. All but its running

lights and safety beacons had been shut down, so

that the ship hanging within its lattice was no more than a

huge shadow. Its gray thermoglaze showed no

reflections, but rather seemed to attract and absorb

even the meager illumination so as to reveal some

semblance of its shape. A solitary engineering pod

moved out from the main yard complex and drifted

unhurriedly toward Drydock 20. As the pod

drew closer, its protective shrouding retracted

so that its upper surface became a clear-view

bubble, through which those aboard could inspect what little they

could see of the ship. The pod's single passenger

glanced without speaking at its pilot, who nodded

acknowledgment of the look and tripped a toggle on his

command board.

All the lights of Drydock 20 and of the ship

inside it came on at once. The pod passed

along one side of the support pylons and out beyond the

dock, then rotated slowly to face its entrance. The

ship was no longer a gray shadow,

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

but glittered like something carved from obsidian and

crystal. Even the most uninformed observer would have

known this ship had not been out of drydock. Its shape

was subtly different from that of others of its class,

and the patina of its thermocoat was still untarnished

by light-years of travel; it had not yet felt the

touch of phaser bolt or stellar dust or anything

harsher than the hands and implements of those who had

rebuilt it almost from the keel. As the pod

began a flyby approach, its passenger rose from

his seat and stood to attention, offering without speech or

other movement a salute to the ship that had once been

his and was now his again. Everything about it had been

remade; it was as pristine now as it had been when the

keel had first been flown years and parsecs long

past. The pigmentation of insignia and graphics had

been refreshed with newer, brighter colors, picked out

by selective spotlights buried in the hull. There

were even small areas of brilliance around the primary

weapon conduits where someone had taken the time and trouble

to polish the bare metal of their efflux nozzles and

blast tubes-and polish them with hand tools, for there was

no other way to achieve such a mirror finish. As

it approached the ship, the pod reduced its speed

until finally it was moving past the red-lit bridge

and out toward the warp nacelles at little more than

walking speed. Passing over one of them, it curved

around and then down to pass beneath the ventral surface

of the hull, initially so close that from horizon

to horizon of the pod's 180-degree view, there was

nothing to be seen but an infinity of plated belly.

The pod's passenger watched the massive hull, the

hull of his ship, flowing leisurely past, and the

fingers of one hand gripped the polarization

console of the viewport hard enough to make indentations in

its padding. The other hand, by contrast, tapped a slow,

controlled rhythm on the console's metal

frame. When the pilot noticed it, he smiled,

then concealed the expression behind a busy tapping of his

own on controls that illuminated an autodock

display above the command board. Once clear of the farther

side of the hull, a few seconds more maneuvering

with the reaction thrusters brought the pod into line with its

docking port. There was a soft, solid noise as the

multiple latches engaged, a brief hiss as

air and pressure equalized in the outer lock, and

then silence.

As the protective shrouds slid back

into place, the passenger watched them as if he had

never seen such a thing before, then walked to the rear of the

pod and opened its access hatch. He paused with one

hand still on the controls, facing the red-lit corridor

of the ship beyond, then turned to look at the pilot, who

was busy with shutdown routine. Finally, and after

evident consideration, he spoke into the silence.

"Thank

y91

The pilot was on his feet immediately. "This

need not be said." "I say it. Thank you for the tour of

inspection." Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh

of the Klingon Imperial race smiled thinly,

deciding to let at least some of his amusement show.

"And for the music. Especially for the music. Tales

of the Privateers, indeed."

"This one considered the circumstances appropnate

for music." He touched a control and the flight

console ejected a tape. "And all of the themes from

Battle Cruiser Vengeance are overused."

"Appropriate, zan Askel?" said Kasak

tonelessly, wondering if the ears of Security were

listening. "And what of propriety? Privateers

are not something mentioned to the one when he assumes command

of a new ship." "The reputation of

sutai-Khornezh is such that no 40

impropriety could be implied or suspected,"

said Askel formally. Kasak narrowed his eyes,

wondering if his science specialist was daring to hint

at something else entirely. Perhaps he was with

Imperial Intelligence, Kasak thought. Nothing

else could have made him so bold. That one word

"reputation" never failed to make Kasak's liver

move in his chest while he reviewed the other words that

had been uttered with it, searching for the hidden

slight. It had been his reaction for so long that it was

almost a reflex now, pointless in most cases and

certainly where Askel was concerned. Imperial

Intelligence or not-and the matter had never been more

than idle speculation-the specialist was as close

to being a friend as Kasak had ever allowed anyone

to become. He dismissed the thought as not of immediate concern,

not with a shiny new ship to be inspected. The ship was

Hakkarl-"Vanguard." He was named for a piece in

the game known as Win zha. His registry number was

KL- 10 17, and he had started life in these

same orbital yards at Taamar five years

ago, as the first of the K'Vinga class battle

cruisers. Kasak had commanded the ship's proving

flight, as he commanded the first flights of all new

vessels, and had found himself a fine ship, strong,

responsive, and swift, And then, as always, the

vessel had been taken away and given to someone

else, someone who was considered more politically sound.

As politically sound as the fools who had lost

three of Hakkarl's brother ships to the energy

field that the Federation had called V'ger, no

doubt. And now he was back, refitted, uprated,

and a little more besides-and he was Kasak's to command again. For a

while. Kasak showed his teeth and stalked

aboard his ship.

It had all gone wrong years ago during

Kasak7's cadet cruise, even though the

voyage had been commanded by no less a captain than

Koloth vestai- Lasshar himself.

The incident at Space Station K-7 had

turned a relatively simple mission into a

fiasco, and a flurry of negative security

notations had dogged all members of that ship's crew

throughout their careers. Only the cadets had emerged

relatively unscathed, and then only those not

sufficiently capable to have drawn attention to themselves.

Midshipman Vasak, as he had then been known, was

not one of that fortunate mundane majority. His name

had come up too many times for Imperial

Intelligence not to take notice when they were looking

for scapegoats to carry the blame for the loss of

Sherman's Planet, the capture of one of their

deep-cover agents, and the infestation of an entire

battle cruiser with the furry vermin yiHmey...

All the corridors were shadowy, lit only with the

deep red glow that Kasak associated with combat,

emergency, and imminent violence. Now that was

appropriate. What was not appropriate, or

even comfortable, was the atmosphere. It was too

cool, and painfully dry. Kasak found that he

needed to breathe shallowly through his nose to keep the lining

of his throat from being dehydrated. He had expected

something of the sort, given what had been done to the

ship, and equally, he hadn't expected to like it.

Askel caught up with him near one of the

turbolifts. "Pod's secure," he said.

"Good." Kasak stopped, pressed for a lift

car, and when it arrived lifted his eyebrows at the

heaterhumidifier and airlock flush clamped to its

ceiling just inside the door. "You'll like this," said

Askel, following Kasak's gaze to the overhead

installations. They began to operate as soon as the car

was sealed and on

its way, filling it with warmth and moisture at

least for the duration of transit.

"Bridge," Kasak said. He found himself wishing

that the ride from amidships out to the command pod was not quite so

fast, and gave serious consideration to putting the car on

hold for a few minutes while their desiccated

nostrils got back to something approaching normal.

Then he decided not to bother. The others would be

waiting on the bridge, and while as captain he could

do much as he pleased without reproof, the longer he

took getting to the preflight briefing, the

longer it would take to wind it up and get back to air

that everyone could breathe. At least it was just a briefing,

nothing more; there would be no need to waste time' in

impressing the officers of this crew....

In the time after his cadet flight, Vasak had

often wondered what had saved him from the fate of the

others, be it legal termination on trumped-up

charges, suicide by command, or simple disappearance.

It was true that he was of the Imperial race; but it was

equally true that being such was no real protection.

Indeed, on Koloth's ship, crewed largely

by human fusions, membership in the Imperial race

had served only to point out those of pure blood for

special punishment, on the assumption that regardless

of how low their rank might have been, they at least should

have known better. It might have been his line, whose

members were not without influence and had certainly acted

in his support and defense-just as soon as it was safe

to do so and in exchange for his incurring heavy debts

both of cash and obligations.

And his survival might just as easily have been

due to the fact that he was too useful to dispose of

simply for the completeness of things. Certainly it had

been his usefulness ever since that order came through; an

43

order not for termination but for promotion to ensign and the

change of name it required, and an immediate posting

to active duty in the hot spots along the

Romulan frontier.

Ensigns had little enough time to call their own, and still

less when under a more stringent level of security

surveillance than everyone else, but Kasak had

managed to scrape together the few minutes he

required before they shipped him out to the waiting

frigate. It was there, on Orbital Facility

3, that he had stood at a viewport and looked out

at the naked stars that surrounded all who sought glory

among them, seen or unseen. It was there that he had

chosen to play the Perpetual Game. And there,

filled with pride and thinking himself the first of all

Klingons to do so, he had vowed to write his own

rules for himself. He had learned very quickly that in

komerex zha there were no other kinds of rules.

Kasak had exercised the usual privilege

granted to first-flight commanders, of putting forward a

list of names for consideration as department heads, based

on his evaluations during previous cruises. This

flight was a little different he had recommended an

entire crew. All eight of them. They came

to attention as he stepped out onto the

bridge, all the familiar faces, familiar

names. They had changed only in age and rank and in

the appearance of scars here and there. They looked

pleased enough to see him and to have been singled out for this

honorable if not necessarily glorious duty.

Some looked as quizzical as it was proper to appear

before the captain gave his briefing-and all of them were as

unhappy with the ship's atmosphere as Kasak was.

"Captain," said Weapons Specialist

Katta, when the formal greetings were completed, "what

is this?"

Kasak looked at her mildly. He knew

exactly what 44

she meant, having perceived all the facets of the

question, all the layers of the answer. Not just why they were the

only crew on the entire ship, or why the

atmosphere was so unpleasant, but why the bridge

had neither control boards nor any seating other than

the small and uncomfortable inspection pads on which they

were now perched.

Katta saw the look, remembered him of old,

knew what his first reply was likely to be, and said

quickly, "Besides a battle cruiser, that is."

"Kai, was Kasak said, mocking softly. He

gestured to Askel. "This is a matter for

Science to explain. The sooner it's done, the

sooner we can move from this bridge to the proper one."

That drew curious looks, as he had intended it

should. "Specialist Askel?"

Askel nodded. "You will all have noticed the low

temperature and humidity levels aboard this

ship." There was no reply, since his words were not a

question but a statement of fact. "Some or all of you

may have guessed the reason. Let me confirm.

Hakkarl is crewed by computer."

Eyes widened and pupils went narrow. Captain

Kasak's chosen crew members were all

sufficiently senior to know about the occasion when

Starfleet had launched a fully computerized

ship-and what the consequences had been. Askel

waited a few seconds, then smiled thinly. "But

before you all ask for a transfer to somewhere safe-perhaps

unarmed interdiction of the Rom zones-it isn't like the

Federation's khestn M-5. We know better than

that, and so do they. At least, they know it now." His

audience laughed; they would have heard the same sort of

joke many times before, but never so aptly timed.

"These"-he slapped his hand against one of the dark

metal casings that shrouded every work station on the

bridge-"are beam-linked repeater arrays

boosted through a Z-eight primary core. Neither

the repeaters nor the core act for themselves you will

control them, just as you would if you sat here. However, you

will not. You and the captain will be here. was The main

screen, virtually the only piece of equipment on

this cold, dry bridge that had remained unchanged,

lit up with a view back from the com- mand pod toward

Hakkarl's main hull, and this time, despite the

crew's discipline, Askel heard gasps of

astonishment. There was a Bird of Prey scout

hanging there, maneuvering thrusters at station-keeping,

far too close for in-dock traffic separation.

"Tazhat," said Askel. "Registry number

KL, 10 18. He will be Flier to our

Vanguard." Tight smiles too full of teeth

greeted the joke. "Now attend, and learn.

Life-support and artificial gravity functions

are sited in Tazhat, and in him only."

Askel surveyed the watching faces and smiled

thinly but with much satisfaction. "Good. Then I need

explain that much less to you. Our captain told me

that you were swift." He gave the last word the klin

zha intonation, but there was no response of humor.

Not now; his audience was too intent on all

the strata of meaning in their science specialist's

words to pay much heed to further jests that might, or

might not, leaven his briefing. Askel noted this, and

was content. They would remember more for their concentration.

"Without crew, and the needs of crew, Hakkarl n o

longer has the need to hold back, as it were, when in

combat. This cruiser, similar though he may be

to all others of the K't'inga class, can tolerate

accelerations and maneuvers far beyond that of his fellows.

Of course, an observer will not know this until it is

far, far too late.... Also, the main drive has

no drain other than thrust and shields and weapons.

This is far 46

removed from earlier designs in which perhaps a third

of all energy output went to light, heat, gravity,

and life support."

Kasak's people glanced at one another, filling in

the blanks in what the science specialist had said and

thinking what that difference could mean in a battle.

Too often, skirmishes with Federation or Romulan

vessels had to be broken off because the parties were too

evenly matched. This ship, and perhaps-if their cruise

was a success-this class of ship would make all the

difference and maybe break that balance.

"Physical connection is by regenerable

monoweb filament," Askel continued. His fingers

played across a diagnostic keyboard, filling the

main screen with diagrams and graphs and figures.

Engineer Aktaz stared at them for the drawing of a

breath, then laughed softly underneath that same breath and

said nothing that the laugh had not made plain already.

Among the others there was greater or lesser comprehension

dependent upon training and specialization, but all of the

small and intimately acquainted crew were plainly

aware that this ship was unlike all others they had

flown. It was the next generation-if it worked.

"All connections to the cruiser's weapons

systems are nonphysical and powered from the scout.

Also, and note this well, the two vessels have

separate cloaking devices. Both ships can lie

in wait together, and the scout, when cast off, can remain

concealed from an enemy as effectively as the fathership,

can-was

Askel broke off, hearing as he had expected

to hear at this point the outrage of honorable

Klingons who had just been told that they were expected

to hide from the foe instead of striking at him and thus

gaining glory. He let the birthing argument die

stillborn, then surveyed them with all the coldness of

one who had heard such outcries in the past and

had paid 47

them no heed then, either. "Have you said enough?" he

began in that low voice that was feared even more than his

rage by two generations of ensigns. Then he fell

silent as Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh

took a long step forward.

"My children," Kazak said. All of them, even

Askel, were hushed by the honor done them through this form of

address. "I understand your anger, your concern, your

fear for loss of glory to your lines. Know this if

Hakkarl responds only one-half as well as the

specialists who built him claim he will, there will

be glory overflowing for all of you and, yes, for

generations yet unborn. The naked stars themselves will

watch you, as will the Emperor himself, and all will say,

"Truly, these are Klingons!" Know this, my children,

as you know me and all my past endeavors for the

Empire when we are done with Hakkarl, our names

will be spoken as is that of the Emperor Kahless of

ancient times. We will be Unforgettable." In

another commander the shift in language and tone might

have been unconscious, but Askel knew Kasak

too well to assume anything he did was

accidental. So the shift from high-phase oratory

to Battle Language was most certainly

premeditated. Askel listened to the cheering and the

cries of "kai kassad" and kept what he was

thinking in the private place behind his own cold

eyes.

He wondered what this enthusiastic crew would say

if they became aware of the truth behind their captain's

intentions for this fine new ship. What they would

say-and, more important, what they would do. That was why

he was here-not as science specialist, no matter

what Kasak sutai-Khornezh might think, but as

an operations master of Imperial Intelligence.

Askel's "collusion" with I.i. had been a

running joke between the two officers since their days in

the Houses, lifetimes ago. Askel had always

been the quiet one-too thoughtful for his own good was the

usual interpretation. A Klingon who thought too much

wasn't considered an especially healthy phe-

nomenon, particularly in a navy career where

unthinking obedience to superiors was as much a

requirement as arms and legs. The I.i. connection

had started out as an insult, but time had worn it

down. Only the cream of the jest remained, and that was

something Askel was not about to share. Intelligence had

become aware that there was likely to be more to the

first voyage of KL- 10 17 than just the usual

shakedown cruise. The source of the information had

confirmed a great many suspicions and provided

answers to several of those niggling questions without which no

intelligence executive would be complete.

The amount of time and money spent by a certain

passed;-over captain to make sure he would

acquire this ship, for one thing. That sort of

activity in a politically unreliable officer was

invariably well worth watching, particularly when his

reputation was that of Kasak sutai-Khornezh.

He had achieved his present status only through a

diligent accumulation of glory along the Rom

frontier and had used that status as a lever to further

himself politically, cultivating powerful supporters

both in his own line and among his superior officers

by ensuring that his successes reflected well on them.

Askel had been impressed by the subtlety the

captain had displayed in this undertaking. It had proven

so effective that Kasak's surveillance file

contained records of regret expressed by high

officials that the Empire could not, because of the black

mark in his past, reward so worthy an officer in the

manner he deserved. Askel had read that twice and

then sat for several seconds staring at the name

of the epetai-a Thought Admiral no less-who had

spoken those words. Stared, and shaken his head in

disbelief. The most that could be done had been done.

Kasak had been honored by being entrusted with

first-flight command of every new class of ship to leave the

yards. It was a backhanded compliment at best, for it

implied that if anything went wrong during a test

flight, he would be a lesser loss to the Empire

than an officer who was considered fully reliable.

There was no-and there never had been-taint of treason

about Kasak. Only the understandable discontent following

the business with the tribbles had blighted his career. Of

course there was always a first time for everything. I

Particularly when his expensively cultivated chain

of contacts was discovered. There was nothing treasonous

about that either; Askel had checked, was personally

certain, and that sufficed. The certainties of I.i.

operations masters were not questioned by lesser forms of life.

The data had crossed his desk at irregular

intervals for two years now, and at the very most it

seemed that Kasak was making moves to feather his own

nest through a little privateering on the side.

And that was where the most important questions were asked.

If this particular captain never had a

vessel of his own except for the initial proving

voyages of each ship class, then how, and with what,

was he intending to become a privateer at all?

And then suddenly the yards refitted a

full-size battle cruiser to run with a maximum

crew of eight, and it became all too likely where

his ship was coming from.

There was another matter, stranger still, and it was the

only reason Operations Master Askel had not

simply handed the file over to Imperial Security

with a termination order attached. It involved

Kasak's con50

nection with a planet in Federation space, a

planet presently in the throes of some internal

dispute.

The Federation called it Dekkanar.

The next briefing was finished in much less time

than those among the crew who knew him would normally

have expected. Although zan Khitar specialized in

communications and was skilled at making tight-beam

tachyon packets do things their manufacturers

hadn't intended, when it came to the preflight

lectures that were customary in the navy, his

specialization went out of the nearest lock. Khitar

had brought the word "boring" to an art form.

Askel watched the others shift on their inspection

pads with every indication of pleased relief, and wondered

which of them was doubling for Security. Khitar,

maybe Communications was a good position from which

to transmit reports. Or maybe it was too good,

too obvious. Or maybe that was what he was meant

to think, and Security was running another double

bluff. Askel smiled his meaningless smile again.

I.i. knew most things, but the learning of some of them

was more difficult than the learning of others. It would be

typical if he went off on this questionable cruise not

knowing who his allies were. There was no love lost

between Security and Intelligence, and it was not

uncommon for the two bureaus to act against each other

through sheer professional spite. There was, thought

Askel, probably a better way to run things.

Security was too quick with its disruptors, and not quick

enough with its questions. It was very difficult to inteffogate a

corpse.

He glanced back at Captain Kasak, who was

listening to something Marag was telling him. Maragacting

security officer, for no other reason than that a

Klingon ship, even the tiniest deep-space

shuttle, always had a security officer.

Marag was another longtime friend of the

captain's. They were all friends insofar as the title

could be applied to subordinates of a commander known

to hold himself at a distance from the junior grades.

At least they were acquaintances, officers who had

served with Kasak in the past and had gained by it.

During his many successful commands he had gained the

respect of his subor dinates as well as that of his

equals and superiors, through his reputation for success

and, more important, because of his unselfish sharing of

glory. There were doubtless some who saw this as weakness,

but Askel was not one of them. He saw instead a

cunningly woven web of strengths, each individually

of small account, but when drawn together into the right

place at the right time, a most imposing instrument of

persuasion that could draw as tight around an

unsuspecting throat as a garrote.

Although there was as yet no name to match the eyes,

Kasak sutai-Khornezh was quite well aware that

he was being watched. There had not been a first flight

yet without at least two covert operatives from

Imperial Security, and he saw no reason why

this one should be any different. There might even be

someone from I.i. along for the ride, to keep an eye

on what Security was doing. He refused to be

concerned. What he was doing was no act of

treason.

His contacts were a source of confidential information,

the sort of information that seldom came lower down the

line than an admiral's private

correspondence. Most of it was useless Kasak

had no interest in House politicking, at least not

yet. But sooner or later something of real use was

bound to reach his ears. It had; it did; it was a gift

of glory from the naked stars themselves. He knew of more

than just the internal squabbling on Dekkanar and the

expulsion orders served on the Federation

diplomatic staff. He knew

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

why. A large part of his private fortune had paid

for the situation to arise in the first place, and his present

position as first-flight commander would let him take

best advantage of it. That the present ship,

Hakkarl, required so small a crew that he could

virtually guarantee himself support was just one more

gift from whatever spirit guarded honest captains. The

coup, when it succeeded-for there was never any doubt in

Kasak's mind but that it would succeed comwas his chance

to restore to his name and to his fine all the honors

that had been withheld for so long. There would be a

promotion to squadron leader, maybe even

to admiral, and perhaps the right to start a House and line

of his own. All this, and as much more as he dared to dream,

would be his through a simple act of provocation. There

would be ships of the Federation Starfleet in orbit around

Dekkanar. That was standard practice. When some world

or other threw its diplomats offplanet, the

Federation always sent ships to protect them. They were a

liverless lot, thought Kasak contemptuously, and a

far remove from Klingon diplomats, who were well

able to take care of themselves, and who indeed were selected

as representatives of the Empire only after they

had already proved themselves as warriors. And where there were

ships there were weapons and the chance of forcing their use. Just

one burst of overreaction, one phaser blast or a

solitary photon torpedo directed at a

vessel of the Klingon Navy, and the Organians would

come interfering. In their usual fashion the gdayt

glowbugs would condemn the aggressor-and cede the questioned

planet to the Empire.

The Klingon Empire, of course, would be

ignorant of what had happened, and official hands

would be thrown up in official horror that any

captain should place a new and untried ship in

jeopardy from the 53

warmongers of Starfleet. Neither the

emperor nor any of his Thought Admirals could dare

to authorize such an undertaking, for fear of the whole

plan blowing up in their faces should the Organians

probe too deep. And so Kasak had determined

to act independently. If he failed-not that the

possibility entered his mind, so awash was it with

schemes and plotting-then there would be no possible

allocation of blame against the Empire or against

Kasak's line, while if he succeeded ... when

he succeeded, it would not merely be a great stroke

to bring him all that he desired; it would be an

admirable and cunning move in the game of komerex

zha, the greatest of all games, giving Kasak

sutai-Khornezh good repute and, more than that,

casting perpetual doubt on the abilities of those

who down the years had judged him unworthy. There was

just one single hurdle left to clear the theft or,

at the very least, the unauthorized borrowing, of the ship

that he was here to test.

All the briefings were completed. Kasak glanced

quickly around the bridge and noted that all of his crew

were doing as their captain had been doing these five

minutes past-breathing shallowly and not through the nose.

Kasak said, "Enough of this meat freezer. I

transfer my flag to Tazhat, and I do it

now."

That was a questionable remark at any time, since he was

no admiral and had no flag to transfer anywhere,

but his crew stood to attention for an instant to salute

him. While none smiled outwardly, since that would have

been unseemly, Kasak could sense that this present

duty had the full support of his crew. He

nodded, the only acknowledgment that was required, and

said, "Stations."

As was the custom, the crew went together in the first

lift car so that they could make the scout ship's

bridge ready for Kasak's arrival. The captain

and his 54

first officer rode together in the second car. As the

door of their car closed, Kasak and Askel said

nothing for a moment, only grinned like children with the pleasure

of having warm, moist air to breathe again. "Who'd be

a computer?" said Askel finally.

Kasak smiled thinly and tugged mock points on

his ears. "I could never get used to the shape," he

said. He laughed, then cut the laugh abruptly

to silence. "What's your opinion of the ship?"

"Impressive," Askel said, "but I'll

trust it when I see it work, and not before. Designers

can say what they please, but they don't go out

in the khest'n things."

"Good."

"Your opinion?"

"Mine exactly." Kasak leaned forward to boost

the controls on the heater-humidifier and inhaled the

resulting vapor luxuriously. "That's why I

insisted on a crew I could rely on."

"Honored, Captain," said Askel.

"No compliment, "Kel. Just fact. If I

can't trust the ship, I'll have to trust the crew."

Kasak stared hard at his exec before he spoke again.

"I can trust them, can't IT"

"There'll be the usual complement of security

watchers," said Askel. "And given the ship's

capabilities set against the small number of

crew aboard, there's probably at least one

I.i. agent among them." He paused. "But then

you know about me already, don't you?"

Kasak roared with laughter. It was an amusing

concept, and that was why Kasak had laughed. It

didn't in the least suggest that he was not suspicious

of his first officer, and indeed the ploy was so obvious that

its use had already increased his watchfulness. I.i.

was not so much his concern, however, as Security.

Intelligence officers were, by their very title

and despite the usual contradiction that it carried,

reason55

ably smart. Certainly they were more than commonly

capable of seeing future developments based on

current actions. They concerned themselves with the why and the

wherefore, rather than just the what observed by Security.

Put another way a security operative

discovering the planned theft of a ship wouldn't even

give Kasak time to explain. An I.i. agent

wouldn't need the explanation anyway.

Neither officer was interested in further sight-seeing

around the battle cruiser's hull. Instead, as

soon as they boarded the travel pod, Askel

took the little vehicle up and over Hakkarl's

back in a single smooth parabola that brought them

into precise alignment with the main docking port on

Tazhat's spine. Kasak watched without comment.

After his display of good humor in the turbolift, he

had decided that it was time he became "moody," that

being another facet of his reputation and one the crew

might be expecting to see during departure from

drydock. Leaving port in a new ship was never the

most comfortable time for either captain or crew. More than

one captain had been relieved of a command before it had

gotten properly under way because some clumsy

helmsman had dented either the ship or the dock

facilities on the way out. That the accidents might

have been a result of faulty systems did little

to remove negative notations from their files. There

was probably not even much satisfaction in executing

the helmsman on the spot. Kasak's moodiness was

only half a performance for the benefit of others. The

rest of it was genuine concern.

When he stalked onto the scout ship's bridge,

everyone was already heads-down and busy. Birds of

Prey were built around a nominal crew capacity

of twelve, but that had been before the remotes and 56

repeater arrays at every station. Even then, the

clutter and the atmosphere within the scout ship-thick,

foggy, and warmer even than normal, thanks to the

surplus power already being bled off the battle

cruiser beneath them-was far preferable to the spaciousness

and the dry, grinding chill of the computerized bridge they

had just left.

Kasak sat down in the command station and laid both

hands flat against the arms of the chair. No one, not

even Askel, met the slow glance with which he raked the

bridge, for a head raised meant a station

unattended, and the crew knew what that might lead

to. "Screen," he said. The images

came up at once, a multiple overlay of

computer-enhanced windows that showed exterior visuals

from several points together from Tazhat, from remotes

on the structure of Drydock 20, from Hakkarl.

It was the next best thing to omnipresence.

"Status."

"All systems fully active, Dock

Control Clearance confirmed. Interlinks live,"

said Krynn at the helm. "At your command."

"Action."

"Acting. tilde

Kasak felt a brief thrumming of

subharmonic vibration underfoot as Krynn brought the

scout ship down through that last few meters of

separation, handling its thirty thousand tonnes of mass

with the delicacy of a dancer. Again the thrumming, and at

last, long after he expected it, a deep soft

boom that seemed to make the very air shudder in his ears

as Tazhat settled on Haldcarl's back. There

was no sensation of impact, but Krynn sat back from

her close-maneuvers board, which was now all blue

lights, and said, "Secured."

"Then take us out. Maneuvering thrusters forward,

impulse power one-third at your discretion."

"Affirm."

"Course, Captain?" said Navigator

Khalen.

Kasak analyzed the question for an instant. Of

course the navigator needed to know which way to point the

ship, but there was bound to be someone aboard, maybe

even Khalen himself, who awaited the reply with rather more

than professional interest. "Present heading?" he

snapped. "Two-seven-zero, green, standard."

"Then why ask?" Khalen stuck his head down

again, suitably chastened. It was a response that

gave away no secrets other than that the captain

was for some reason out of temper and requiring the

bridge crew to read his mind. That in itself would leave

them with enough to think about besides extracurricular

duties. Kasak waited for a few minutes while

they stewed and then said, "Departure angle on

viewer."

The Taamar facility filled the screen, receding

only slowly as Hakkarl's reaction thrust

overcame the inertia of two hundred thousand

tonnes. "Distance from Dock Twenty now eight

hundred forty meters, climbing, acceleration factor

zero by five, climbing," said Krynn. "The ship

is sluggish. He dislikes the extra weight."

The main display had already told Kasak

that much, and the repeater displays to either side of his chair

augmented with further information. It had taken Hakkarl

this long to cover just over three times his own length;

though both ships of the combination had been uprated from

standard, it appeared that someone, somewhere, had failed or

forgotten to boost the cruiser's maneuvering drive

to take into account the additional mass of a scoutship

riding piggyback. Kasak touched keys on the command

chair and noted that fact, then recorded the pertinent

figures for his first-flight report. No matter just

now about his future intentions for this ship, the

conscientious execution of

duty was a habit not easily broken-and besides, it

would look strange even to those members of the crew not

on the lookout for strangeness if he was not compiling

such a report.

"Increase thrust."

The lattice of drydock webbing began to shrink a

little faster, but still not fast enough. What if this vessel

or one like him were in a situation where impulse and warp

were both impossible but swift acceleration was vital

to the survival of ship, crew, and mission? Kasak

wondered. He leaned back in the chair and began

composing a scathing comment intended to make it plain that

while only the navy's officers and men went

out in carelessly constructed ships, there was an increasing

chance that the more careless constructors would start to go out-b

without any ship at all. And then the alarms went

off.

"We are being scanned!" Askel looked up from

his science station and punched data through to the captain's

repeaters. Kasak glanced at the information as it

came up, then at the screen. The drydock continued

to shrink in their wake, even more swiftly and yet still not

swiftly enough. There were no other images moving

there. Nothing had changed-yet. He was not about

to wait. "Degh . . . was Krynn did not raise

her eyes from helm control, but her right hand

anticipated the coming command and moved to rest lightly

on the main thruster controls. "StO qWill!"

Now Kasak knew he was being watched the shift

into Battle Language was not something any

selfrespecting spy could ignore. It was of no

account. He looked once more at the unchanging

screen, then made his decision. "chuyDah

HoSla!"

"vangff"!- Krynn pushed for thrust, boosting

maximum in a single sweep of the levers. The

ships vibrated slightly as their combined

weight fought for a moment against the pressure of

acceleration, then gave up the struggle. On screen,

Taamar and its dock facilities became a bright,

fuzzy blot as they seemed to jump into the distance-and

then spawned a flurry of smaller specks that

came glittering in Hakkarl's wake.

"Show mag six," he said, and watched as the

screen image expanded, cluttered now with small

ships against a distorted drydock background.

"Identify."

"Gunboats," said Khalen. "Dock security

contingent, twenty-plus." "Sir," said Khitar,

"I have a communication from head of security, Taamar

facility. He orders this ship back to Dock

Twenty at once."

Security Officer Marag laughed. "They

haven't told him about the test," he said. "Too

much for his brain to comprehend."

"More realistic this way," said Kasak to nobody

in particular, even though his words carried all over the

bridge. "Shall we see what Hakkarl can do?" There

was no reply, not even a cheer. If they were starting a

test exercise early, and without the knowledge of the station

security chief, then the testing was likely to be more

stringent and the exercise more realistic than any

of them had anticipated. Assu ing that it was an

exercise, and not any one of several other

possibilities. But they were ready, whatever it

was.

"Battle alert," said Kasak. "Secure for

combat maneuvers. Zan Katta, weapons

free." That did bring him a stare, which still did nothing

to reveal potential spies and traitors, because no

matter for how briefly, the stare came from everyone

on the bridge.

Captain Kasak sat back in the command chair and

stroked the palm of one hand over his forehead crest,

silently inviting someone-anyone-to make a

com60

ment. No one did, certainly not while the

fingertips of his other hand were doing a little dance along the

grip of his holstered sidearm. Then he grinned

wickedly and let the tension break. "Disrupters

only. Set for heavy stun."

The release of breath was a soft sighing that was not

really audible through the other sounds of the scout ship's

bridge, but Kasak fancied that he heard it

anyway. For just one minute there his loyal crew had

truly begin to wonder what sort of mission this was,

and then just as suddenly had been completely

reassured. He silently thanked Marag for his

comment, an observation which, coming from the ship's security

officer, carried more weight than if it had been

uttered by anyone else on board. Certainly a

combathardened soldier's opinion was worth more than that

of a desk-bound paper-pusher like the Thamar head of

security, and he could plainly detect the amusement

in Khitar's voice as the communications specialist

relayed yet another message.

"More from Station Security, Captain. He

demands that Hakkarl be returned immediately or he will

personally take steps."

"Not without an environment suit, I trust?" said

Kasak mildly. The laugh was better than the

joke deserved, and it was not just crew members

responding dutifully to their commander's wit. They

meant it. "Ignore all further communications from that

source. Weapons?" "Preheat cycle completed,

sir, running hot. Prelocks engaged on-was

Katta hesitated, looking again at her board as

if seeing it for the first time. "We have prelocks

confirmed on all targets, Captain. All

twenty-three of them."

"Screen tactical."

He had never seen a tactical display

so crowded with information. Velocity, trajectory,

vector, status

comall of that and more for each of the station interceptors,

and each one of them overlaid by the green triangle

of a target lock. Once he gave the order

to lock on and those triangles changed to blue, they

would designate a certain hit. At least, so the

designers claimed. "Helm, stand by on impulse

power. Engage cloaking device on my command. Have

the gunboats raised their shields?"

Askel consulted a readout. "Not yet, sir."

"Good. Raise ours."

"Acting!"

"Helm . . ." Kasak watched the complex

tactical display, waiting for the first change in

status aboard the pursuing gunboats, the first

indication from his sensors that they might do more than

follow. As they detected the raised shields,

weapons data went from standby to active on five of

them, and he had seen enough. "Helm, impulse

power, evasive corkscrew down starboard, go!

Engage cloaking device!"

With one hand Krynn hit maneuvering controls that

sent Hakkarl-Tazhat into an accelerating twist out

of the line of fire, and with the other she cut in the

cloak, so that neither Kasak nor anyone else on

the bridge were quite sure what produced the kick in

their livers that was like the effects of a very bad

Saurian brandy. All that concerned Kasak was the

way in which the gunboat formation broke apart as

HakkarlTazhat vanished from screens and sensors

and visual all at once and all together. Light

flared from four of the gunboats as they fired wild at

Hakkarl's last known position, and Askel leaned

over his console. "Incoming fire," he said, "at

five-two, five-nine, six-six, six-seven.

All clean misses." "Zan Katta, you may

return the favor."

Risking her captain's wrath, Katta stared at

him, 62

knowing that what he had ordered was impossible. Her

thoughts were shared by everyone. They were still cloaked, and no

ship yet built could fire from cloak.

To even attempt it was to create a power drain

massive enough to shut down the main drive, the

gravity, the environmental ... And the life

support.

Kasak slammed his clenched fist against the arm of the

command chair and snarled at her. "I command! Obey!

baHwI, baHave!" Katta blinked,

swallowed-and hit all the firing controls at once.

On the screen, coronae of blue incandescence

bloomed among the gunboats as dis- rupter

batteries stabbed lances of energy from target

to target. By the time a certain startled Klingon

gunnery officer could draw breath twice, the entire

formation of twenty-three small ships was tumbling

all over the screen and the sky it displayed, crews

stunned and controls useless. Hakkarl's

power-consumption gauges had barely flickered.

Kasak watched for a moment in absolute

satisfaction, then said, "Stand down from battle

alert, secure from combat and evasive maneuvering-but

remain cloaked. After this, every Imperial vessel in

the quadrant will try to gain a sort of glory

by making us look as foolish."

He stood up and stretched as if he had been

slightly bored by the whole business. It was another

mannerism, one for which he was well known, having

once visibly yawned at the sight of a fleet of

Romulan ships that outnumbered his command by seven

to one, and the end of an engagement would not have seemed the

same without it. "Cruise stations," he said to the

bridge in general. "Forward angle on the screen.

Once we are clear of the Thamar primary,

come to warp 63

four. Maintain speed and course until I

instruct otherwise."

Kasak turned to leave the bridge, then stopped

and swung back toward his crew. Praise was not

expected, nor was the giving of it a requirement of

good command, but ... Kasak eyed them all slowly, the

gaze seeming to see more than perhaps it ever could, making

the innocent writhe as much as the guilty. Finally he

relented and permitted them the honor of a salute.

"A good first combat," he said. "The others will be

better." Praise, promise of glory, and

veiled threat all in one. Klingon was an

economical language. The crew returned his

salute as he walked to the waiting turbolift car

that would take him to his quarters and to the other, less

dramatic work that awaited all captains. A

voice that might have been Krynn's or Katta's,

but never Askel's, said quietly behind him,

Vapid', joHwl. -- Kasak entered the lift and

turned so that they could see his face, and its total

lack of any expression. "Success, my lord""

the voice had said. He would have both, the one giving

promotion to the other. And perhaps a consort besides. The

lift door closed just in time to hide his

smile.

THE U.s.s. ENT-MPIUSEvery slid down out

of warp and into normal space in a coruscation of

hard radiation that sleeted off her skinfield.

Normally there was nobody to see the flaring Cherenkov

corona that formed her bow wave, but this time she had an

audience.

Vanguard and Sir Richard hung in the shadow

of a planetoid, dark and silent to both the visual

and the electronic senses of any who might be

traversing a sector of Federation space where none but

Federation vessels had a right to be. Still, their

presence here was sufficiently unusual to raise

eyebrows from the fringes of the Romulan Star

Empire to the Imperial Palace on the Klingon

homeworld and all points between, if they were spotted.

Which was why both ships were quiet, and their

respective commanders probably flinched just a bit

at the relative commotion made by the arrival of the

starship. Frontiers and Neutral Zones and

official protests had not stopped Klingon spy

ships before and were unlikely to do so now. And the presence

of the Enterprise herself would, if observed, likely

cause comment. At the very least.

Jim Kirk sat back in the center

seat and felt himself relax just a little bit. There was

always just the smallest chance that something unexpected

might be waiting for a starship dropping out of warp, and

until the lack of surprises was confirmed he

preferred to stay at yellow alert. "Lower

shields," he said finally.

"Hailing frequencies are open, sir,"

Uhura said, "and I'm receiving transmissions from

both Vanguard and Sir Richard. was "On

screen, Commander."

"Jim, are you well? You sure look well!

They can't be working you hard enough!" Captain

Farey's faceor, more accurately, Nicholas

Farey's bearded grincame up in one section of the

screen. Uhura had considerately windowed it so that

both Captain Farey and Captain North were

visible. "Hi, Jim. Welcome to the back end of

nowhere." Gytha North looked as lean and dangerous

as she had the last time Jim encountered her. She had

taken to wearing her silver-shot hair loose around

her highcheekboned face, but it would still be regulation

and if necessary she would be able to quote him each and every

pertinent paragraph. Captain North had always

made a point of understanding Starfleet regulations.

It made them easier to bend. "Admire the

scenery. There. Didn't take long, did it?"

"Yes, Nic, I'm well, and, no, Gytha, it

didn't," Jim said, and smiled thinly. "So much

for the small talk. How much information did you two

get?" "That's Jim, straight to business." Farey

shrugged. His expression turned suddenly grim.

"Well, if you got Nhoma's signal, you know as

much as we do."

"Understood," said Jim, getting to his feet.

"Well. This may be a secure transmission-but

we should have these talks in person. I'll meet you

both in our transporter room."

"Er, Jim, there'll be three of us."

"Three ... T" Jim was momentarily at a

loss before his memory dropped a name into place.

"Oh, yes, Colonel Johnson." He paused

to check how his next question would sound when it came out.

"Why wasn't he on one bridge or the other?"

"Bridges for Starfleet captains and shuttle

bays for constabulary colonels. That's what he

told me." Nic Farey smiled a bit, not

looking much upset. "In fact the man has had a

lot more to do than stand in the comer like an aspidistra.

Nobody bothered giving us an exact time of

rendezvous, and "best speed" as per

signal can vary just a bit, so we-was "Nic,

Jim's waiting for us."

"Right. Sorry, Jim. We'll be with you in,

uh, five91

Farey was as good as his word. Five minutes

later, three whining spindles of light expanded out and

became Starfleet officers standing on Enterprise's

transporter pads-actually, two Starfleet

officers and one in khaki one-piece work

fatigues. The name seemed all too

appropriate, for Jim privately thought that the

man wearing them looked tired. Too tired for what

the mission had in store for him-even though there was nothing

tired about the precision of his salute.

"Colonel Todd Johnson, Diplomatic

Protection Group. Permission to come aboard?"

He was a big man, middling tall, solidly

built, with dark, closely cropped hair. He

seemed young to be a full colonel. To Kirk's

eye Johnson looked like someone who had spent time

as a duty sergeant before climbing the commissioned

ladder. His rank tabs would probably have been new

and shiny had they not been of the same material as his

fatigues, a few shades darker for the sake of

contrast but not enough to

be an obvious target. DPG personnel were

supposed to get in the way of unpleasantness before it

reached anyone more important, but that didn't mean

they had to dress to attract it.

"Permission granted, Colonel Johnson,"

said Jim. "Welcome aboard the Enterprise. his

"Thank you, sir. Excuse my appearance."

He gestured at the coveralls, ignoring the fact

that they were perfectly clean and had creases sharp enough

to shave with. "I wasn't expecting a briefing as

soon as you arrived. I didn't have time to change."

"The colonel was running an equipment maintenance

exercise on board the Richard, and he won't

order his people to do anything he hasn't already done

himself," said Captain North. There was no inflection

in her voice, but Jim thought he could hear

disapproval in there somewhere. "He pushes hard.

Sometimes too hard. You're not indispensable if

you're there all the time."

"Sorry, Captain." Johnson was smiling;

plainly he'd heard this more than once already. "But you

can only trust equipment if you've checked through it

yourself."

Nic Farey said, "And then you're quite sure whom

to blame?" "If you're still alive and

unhurt, why blame anybody?" They were walking

along G deck from the transporter room to the main

briefing room, and that was where McCoy and Spock

caught up with them. The doctor was grousing as

usual, but in a more understated way than usual and not,

for once, trying to include Spock in his

grumbling-for which the Vul- can looked as relieved as

he was willing to let show. McCoy seemed to be

suffering from some sort of depression, but Jim

didn't ask about it; he already 68

knew the reason, having given the order himself, and

equally, knew that he would hear all the details just

as soon as Bones had polished up his choice of

phrases and was ready to hand them out.

For the first part of the briefing, the computer merely

reiterated what all present knew already the

"request" by the Dekkan Planetary Council that

all Federation personnel be off world within a certain

time span, and the evident enthusiasm shown by the PDI

terrorist organization to be responsible for those

kinds of acts for which the council had stated bluntly

they could not be held responsible.

Spock put the library computer back to standby and

stared at its controls for a few seconds. "It would

appear, from study of the available data, that

even if the Planetary Council members

reconsider their position-and that cannot be guaranteed-the

PDI terrorists will put up an armed resistance

to any such weakening of purpose, and given the

historical context of similar situations, will give

in only when it suits their purpose to be

"defeated by overwhelmingly superior numbers and

firepower" oe'-he looked around the table-"or when

they are wiped

out.

Spock's somber pronouncement fell with leaden

finality into the middle of the discussion. Todd

Johnson glanced briefly at the Vulcan and then

nodded as if satisfied with what he had read there.

"Mr. Spock is quite correct," he said. "He

also knows, as do you all, that employing "overwhel ming

firepowee is something that we must not do-and indeed, are

not equipped to do."

"The terrorists know it, too," said Jim. "They

know it because they're dealing with the Federation and not with the

Klingon Empire." 69

"Impasse," muttered Nic Farey. "They can

do what they like, because we can't do anything of the sort.

Wonderful."

"So what can we do?" Gytha's voice, and her

impatience or incipient frustration, brought the words

out as an irritable snap, unusual enough during a

high-level briefing to turn heads.

It was Spock who gave her an answer, and they

could all see how inadequate he felt that answer

to be. "Initially, Captain, we can do nothing at

all. I have been reading through the finer print of

General Order Twelve. Computer correlate

subsection 7. 1, rules of engagement, with

function of the present assignment."

"Working," said the computer's calm, synthesized

voice. It took maybe three minutes to relay

what Spock had requested, and when it was done they

all sat in silence and digested what they had been

told. "This," said Johnson finally, "might as

well have been written by the other side."

The Starfleet officers knew already about the

dangerously tight restrictions on shipboard

navigational and defensive systems, but what with one

thing and another involved in bringing the ship back from

near-leave to fully operational status, none of those

aboard Enterprise had been able to find the time

to wade through reams of impenetrable officialese and

learn what else was involved in General

Order 12. The fine print that Spock had mentioned

made for unpleasant reading, written as it was by some

bureaucrat light-years from any of the risks he was

so casually dismissing. Most of its instructions

referred to ground units, in this case the five

hundred men and women of Johnson's

Diplomatic Protection Group. Among all the

other "whereas" and "notwithstanding" jargon was 70

the nasty requirement that, in order to indicate the

peaceful nature of their mission, helmets and body

armor were strictly forbidden "unless proven necessary

by subsequent events."

"Which means," said the colonel, "that we aren't

allowed any protective gear at all until

someone gets shot at, maybe killed. Because until

that happens, we don't have any need of

protection."

"No weapons either. Not even hand phasers."

Gytha North smiled crookedly. "You all heard

that, I'm sure 'Under no circumstances may any

weapon be carried by Federation personnel unless and

until conditions outlined in paras. seven through

twelve are met or exceeded. In such situation

issue of phasers may..." etcetera,

etcetera, blah, blah, blah. But

"this restriction is and remains absolute when

taken in reference to hand phasers to avoid the

potential of provocation that is concomitant with the

carrying and/or wearing of any and all concealed

weaponry."" She finished the quotation with a sort of

bitter relish in her voice, then glanced along the

table at the other Starfleet officers. "Dear

God. Now, how many times have you gentlemen beamed

down into known hazard without one of those little lifesavers

at the back of your belt, eh?" "There will be no

beaming down here," said Spock. "Commanders Uhura

and Sulu have advised me that the system's primary

planet is at a peak of sunspot activity.

Bearing in mind the prohibitions on sensorrelated

operations, navigational systems will be disrupted to a

greater or lesser extent, but communication both to and from

the planet and intership remains relatively

immune. My analysis has also revealed a most

unpleasant energy fluctuation. Its pattern is a

natural equivalent of the electronic coun-

termeasures employed against transporter beams.

In effect, any attempt at particle

transmission and coher71

ent matter reassembly within the 4725 Cancri

system would be ... scrambled." Jim's

mouth tightened at an ugly and still-painful memory.

He had seen what Spock so dryly described,

most recently-too recently-on board the Enter-

prise just before the V'ger incident. He had lost

two good friends on that occasion, and he preferred not

to think about a similar accident involving the eight

twenty-person transporters aboard each of the

support ships. Bones had evidently thought about it

already, but had more on his mind than that. "It seems

to be your day for making cheerful observations," he said.

"Anything further to add?"

"Only to observe that unless this situation

improves drastically during the next thirty

hours, all landings and evacuations from Dekkanar must

be undertaken by shuttlecraft," said Spock, "and

to admit a certain surprise at your reaction,

Doctor. With your wellknown dislike of the

matter-transporter system, I would have expected

you to be pleased at the announcement rather than

otherwise."

"Normally you'd be right, dammit. But not this time.

Have you seen what's being done to my sickbay?"

"I have not seen," said Spock, pedantic to the

last, "having been at the science station on the

bridge during all of my most recent

duty shifts." The Vulcan paused, and then

continued more gently, "But I do know, and why it troubles

you."

Jim glanced at McCoy. His guess about what

had been bugging Bones was right. To put a starship's

sickbay on full emergency readiness was a

drastic step, but he had taken it earlier that day.

The order had come through McCoy, of course, but even

though they both knew what it entailed, the actuality

was never pleasant to see.

The sickbay was designed to handle day-to-day

health care for the four hundred-odd individuals of

various species who made up Enterprise's

crew and who were working in an environment that was as safe

as the ship's designers could make it. Minor

illnesses and injuries and now and then the equivalent

of an industrial accident were all that McCoy and his

staff expected to encounter in the normal course of

events. To all intents and purposes, it was a

small-town hospital. That it should suddenly be

stripped of all nonessentials and converted to the

dressing station for a major disaster, clea red for a

500 percent increase in patients, and equipped for

emergency trauma surgery on a massive scale

was enough to unsettle even the phlegmatic

chief medical officer.

That same step had been taken aboard Vanguard

and Sir Richard; not only did the three ships have

a combined crew complement of over a thousand souls, but

there were Johnson's people to consider and most of all the

civilians trapped on a planet whose government

no longer wanted or protected them-and whose

lunatic fringe seemed more and more likely to take some

advantage of that lack of protection. That the standard

evacuation of these civilians and the medevac of

anyone injured during the operation was now restricted

to shuttlecraft came as something of a shock to those who

had been seeing matters in terms of mass

beam-ups.

"And because of all this concern about provoking the

Dekkani," said Captain Farey to the briefing in

general, "we're here with a pair of support

vessels and a starship designed primarily for

deep-space exploration-but none of those vessels

are capable of making planetfall! Jim, no

insult to Enterprise, but Starfleet Command must have

known what was needed for this operation-something that could go down

there, fill up with people, and then leave.

Something big enough to do the job in only one trip-at

the very least a couple of bulk transports

to make this all a whole lot simpler," Nic

finished irritably, breathing hard.

Jim looked at Vanguard's captain and

remembered when he, too, had been full of sound and

spit. Maybe getting older and more sensible wasn't

so bad after all. "It would be simpler still if we were

serving in the Klingon Empire, Nic," he said.

"You know how they respond to rebellions on their

subject worlds. But I don't see anyone in this

room wanting a transfer. . . . was McCoy

stared at him, then looked once more at the tangle of

red tape whose words comed the main screen and muttered

something under his breath. "I missed that, Bones. Again,

please?"

"What I said was, we're the good guys."

"That's the theory."

"And the good guys never shoot first, right?"

"Right."

McCoy sighed heavily. "That's what I was

afraid of. 91

The Enterprise and her consorts came out of warp

three days later, a respectable distance from the

tangle of ionization and debris surrounding 4725

Cancri and its inner planets. Time-sensitive

though the mission was, Jim and the other

captains had agreed that there was no sense barging

into such a mess any faster than safety

permitted-and besides, a high-speed ap- proach was

prohibited as being too provocative.

Provocative or not, any approach was

dangerous, and at any speed. They held station just

clear of the system-and of the Dekkan long-range

scannerswhile Enterprise once again played host

to the other captains and the DPG colonel during the

last bit of peace and quiet any of them could

expect to enjoy for the next several days. All

three ships had been running 74

on alert status for close on a week now, and

Jim decided to take advantage of this short

pause for breath before the heavy work began. He was

senior officer here, and until Johnson was on the

planet's surface and command of the mission passed

to him, he was responsible for any decisions that might

affect the other ships in his little fleet. After a quick

consultation, Jim cheerfully gave clearance that all

three vessels should maintain a listening watch but

otherwise stand down from alert until they began their

tippy-toe nonaggressive no-bumping-into-things

approach. Feeling rather pleased with himself, he took the

turbolift from the bridge and went down

to join his guests in the officers' wardroom on C

deck.

They were sitting quietly in the lounge area,

watching Uhura 's disturbing simulation of the approach

to orbital insertion around 4725 Cancri IV on

one of the big wall screens and, judging by the

expressions on their faces, were not enjoying the view.

Jim looked briefly at the screen and made a

sound of faint but emphatic disapproval. "I've

already seen this one," he said. "It doesn't get

any better. Nothing on another station?" There were a

few halfhearted grins at that. "I just hope your

entertainment channels are as good as they're supposed

to be," said Nic, lifting the screen's voder

remote and tabbing it to active with his thumb. "Show

entertainment channel One, please."

"Hechu'ffjIS-AHBE'!- barked the speakers

an instant later. "chuyDaHave!" Nic eased the

volume down to a tolerable level and tried

to pretend he hadn't almost jumped out of his skin.

"What interesting programs you people watch, to be

sure," he said carefully, and stared as a Klingon

warship powered its way across the screen on the

thrusters its commander had just called for.

Captain North and Colonel

Johnson looked at the screen, then at each

other, then at Jim, and realized rather sheepishly that

they had both reacted in exactly the same way.

Very slowly they removed their right hands from the place

on their belts where a phaser would have been. Gytha

then sat up very straight, narrowed her eyes, and

watched the Klingon cruiser for a few seconds more.

"Since when has Battle Cruiser Vengeance

been available from the entertainment library?" Then she

grinned. "And where can I get a first-generation

COPYTI

Jim laughed and saw Dr. McCoy laughing with

him, though almost certainly for reasons of his own.

Jim hadn't forgotten that crack about making a

diagnostic psychologist out of him, and he smiled

to himself at the thought that Bones wasn't so far from the

truth after all. As usual. "Have a word with our

Mr. Freeman. He'll be happy to oblige."

Jim sauntered up to the bar, got himself a drink,

sipped it, and felt even more pleased at his inspiration

to give everyone some time offeven though McCoy had

been there before him and the only beverage readily

available without resort to the processor was a jug

of pungent mint julep. He could see a bright,

irregularly shaped speck through the

viewports at the rear of the lounge. Seen

naked-eye at five kilometers' distance, it was

clearly one of the two support ships, but at such a

distance impossible to identify as either Vanguard or

Sir Richard.

Jim swirled his drink around its glass and

watched for a moment. The three Starfleet vessels

formed the points of an equilateral triangle, and the

empty space between them was currently busy with a

scurry of shuttlecraft that flitted from one ship

to another and back again as pilot-qualified DPG

personnel accus-

tomed themselves to rapid transit without benefit of

transporter beams. Every now and again Jim would catch

a glint of light as one of the little wedge-shaped craft

went into the tumbling maneuver that had become standard as

the quickest method of presenting docking ring to docking

port, but for the rest of the time they might as well not have

been there at all. Earlier in the ship's day,

Colonel Johnson and two of his junior commanders

had spent several hours out there in an

engineering-section travel pod, watching the exercise

for real rather than on screen and instrument monitor.

Those same men were now standing by the viewports, close

enough to feel the soft breath of chill that flowed

eternally from the clearsteel no matter what level of

field insulation might be installed to prevent from

seeping in. And yet they weren't noticing. Indeed,

they weren't noticing anything except what they

watched through binoculars. Professionalism could be

taken to extremes, thought Jim, and took care

to keep the thought away from his face. He had been

accused on more than one occasion-(usually

by McCoy)-of being too professional in his

approach to command, but he had never been so

single-minded as these young officers. They saw nothing

of the strange, magnificent grandeur beyond those

viewports, none of the worlds, the life, the

civilizations, that had drawn him into Starfleet and out

among the stars. They saw only what they had been

trained to see-the movement of men and of ships. Maybe

if the risk of imminent dissolution had been absent,

they would have been acting differently, but somehow Jim

doubted it.

Their colonel was rather more approachable, he thought,

sampling the julep with appreciation. McCoy had

outdone himself, as he always did when Enter- prise was

playing host to visitors.

Johnson had already been through the coldly pro-

77

fessional stage of his career, and with that acting as a

buffer against misplaced opinions, he had shown himself

able to relax just a little more. But not enough, not yet.

Jim always felt uneasy going into a hazardous

situation in company he wasn't sure of. Maybe

Johnson would eventually forget their difference in

rank and unwind enough to talk to Jim as he talked to the

other two ship captains instead of giving the

impression of standing perpetually at attention even when

he was sitting down. Then they might be able to get on

a little better than they were doing now. Jim smiled;

maybe he really should get some training in

diagnostic psychology. Or maybe someone-such as

Bonescd explain to the colonel that Admiral

James T. Kirk resented his promotion just as much

as the colonel probably treasured his, and then

...

His gaze strayed to the ports and the view beyond, and

all thoughts froze. Two of the shuttlecraft were no

longer just blinks of reflected light. Now they were

identifiable vessels, framed between the warp

nacelles and growing larger as they closed with

Enterprise for yet another of the interminable touch-and-go

docking runs. Except that this time they were both on

approach for the same docking port, just one

deck overhead ... giass hit the Afterward it seemed

to Jim that his floor and exploded into fragments a

measurable time before he came down from his own

vault-over the back of a row of chairs-with his hand

already slapping the emergency override on the nearest

communicator.

"Break right! Break!"

He was yelling and didn't care who heard him,

didn't care "about the dignity of rank, didn't

care about anything except the twenty tons of metal

on a collision course with his ship. All over the

sky 78

shuttlecraft flinched sideways at the sound of the

one order no one ever paused even to think about. They

simply slid to a dead stop until the emergency was

resolved.

Except the two closest to Enterprise. They

entered the break properly enough, but one was already far

too close to the other for the arc of its turn to do

anything but intersect with that of the other vessel. At

first there was only a glittering puff of chipped-off

thermoglaze as nose and tail came violently

inffcontact; but an instant later one of the

shuttlecraft began tumbling end over end as two

of its maneuvering thrusters jammed at

full power. And this time it was headed straight for the main

viewports.

There was no running about, no screaming, no

panic-not, as McCoy speculated later, because

Starfleet personnel were any braver than ordinary

mortals, but simply because there was no time to start before

the incident was over. It ended as suddenly as it had

begun when the shuttlecraft jolted to a standstill as

abruptly as if it had run into an invisible wall,

only spinning on its own axis now until the

pilot thought to cut all power. "What in blazes

... T" said Jim aloud in a voice that sounded

ridiculously calm.

"Gotcha, ya haunless wee bugger," said

Scotty's voice over an open channel. "Git

away from ma engines." The Glaswegian accent that

surfaced only under stress was thick enough now to defy

understanding by most of the crew aboard the Enterprise, and

even some of the other native Scots were probably

having trouble. There was a moment's silence as the

carrier hissed on empty air, and then the speakers

crackled briefly with the unmistakable sound of someone

clearing his throat. "Ahum. Engineering to Captain

Kirk. his

"Kirk here. Uh, thank you for that,

Mr. Scott. Tractors, I presume?"

"Aye. was Again Scotty paused, this time not so much

to get his rogue accent under control as to consider how

to say something that might be interpreted the wrong way.

"I, er, I wasna intendin'any insult to the

colonel's pilots, Captain, but wi' all those

little ships runnin' about this confined space I thought it

best that' keep an eye on them. And that' keep all

the tractor installations manned ... fist in case

somethin'shd happen. was Jim was finally able to let his

grin of relief shine through. "It did happen,

Scotty, even though the worst part of it didn't.

Just stay on those tractors."

"I think, Admiral," said Johnson, very

stiff and proper, at attention in his dress uniform,

"I should check on the health of my men." "And I

think, Colonel, that you should first join me in a

drink"-Jim looked the colonel up and down and

thought he recognized the symptoms-"to celebrate

that both pilots are still alive for you to tear their

stripes off. Agreed?" He glanced out of the

viewport at where the last act of the brief drama

was taking place. The tractor

virtuoso-probably Montgomery Scott himself,

though the chief engineer had been too modest

to say so-had one of the damaged shuttlecraft in tow

and was drawing it down toward the hangar bay at the

stem of Enterprise's secondary hull. The other

was being escorted toward the same destination by two

engineering work bees. "I . . ." Todd

Johnson retained that ramrodstraight posture for a

few seconds longer, then relaxed into a more comfortable

stance. "Agreed." "Good," said Jim. "I can

particularly recommend the mint julep." He

smiled at Bones, who after al l his fussy performance

over making up the drink was 80

starting to look smug, and then eyed the floor where his

own julep had landed. "At least this time it didn't

melt the carpet."

"Captain on the bridge."

Chekov touched control keys on the center seat and

waited the brief moment for confirmation before coming to his

feet. "Keptin, you have the conn." "Thank you,

Mr. Chekov." Jim settled back and cast a

quick glance down the latest pad screen before initialing

it. "Status?" "All stations and departments report

green, Keptin, although we are already encountering a

degree of interference from the primary. Systems

requiring shutdown under General Order Twelve

are holding on standby response."

"Communications remain unaffected, Captain," said

Uhura. "You can advise the Dekkan Planetary

Council of our approach at any time."

"Best do it now, before they pick us up and start

getting agitated. Standard friendship messages, then

tell them who we are and why we're here."

"Just that, Captain?"

"For the time being, yes. I think they'll understand that

an exchange of pleasantries would be somewhat out of

place at this stage of the proceedings. If they have

anything to say, however. . ."

"Noted." Uhura smiled to herself as she turned

back to the comm. board. It was well known that when the

captain was officially annoyed with someone or something,

the first thing he did was to take refuge behind the

punctilious good manners that were as close as any

Starfleet officer could come to insultand right now, he was

very much annoyed with the Dekkani. That annoyance had a

lot to do with the approach 81

parameters worked out by Navigation. Sulu had worked

well beyond the end of his shift to provide them, and

by all reports had barely missed a beat even when

it seemed likely he was going to be sharing the bridge

with half a shuttlecraft. Initial speed was going

to be no more than .425c, tapering right

down as they entered the garbage-rich zone farther into the

4725 Cancri system. Given the present

attitude of the Dekkani toward the Federation in

general, and most likely Starfleet in particular,

Jim liked the notion of a slow and cautious

approach to Dekkanar almost as little as he liked what

was at the end of it an unshielded, defenses-down

close orbit of a potentially hostile planet.

Bad enough with only the Enterprise to worry about, it was

far more than three times worse with a pair of

equaUy defenseless ships tagging along.

Uhura took the transdator out of her ear and

looked at the inoffensive piece of equipment as if

it had bitten her. "Well!" she said, and then,

louder, "message ... acknowledged, Captain."

"One of those acknowledgments, Commander?"

"Yes, sir, one of those. Essentially "Come,

go, good riddance."" She put the transdator

back in place and touched a key to log the message

and response, then shook her head in mock

regret. "I hadn't realized until now just how

well the comm translation circuits can handle

idiom. What they used to call "earthy and

colorfid.""

Jim glanced at her sympathetically.

"Contact Vanguard and Sir Richard. Let them

know we've received approach clearances. And,

Uhura, get a hard copy of all communications from

this point on."

"It's already being done, sir. Even including the

exact text of the Dekkani acknowledgment."

"Good. There's no sense in waiting any longer.

Mr. Sulu, one-half impulse power."

"One-half it is, Captain."

"Take us in. . . ."

Sulu's approach was, as usual, a balance

between precision and inspiration. Because they were already

traveling well below light speed, all three

vessels had to be flown. It was less exciting

than Uhura's simulator approach, but more wearing

on the nerves because of the extra time it took. And at

a point just outside the orbit of 4725 Cancri

IV. "Keptin! We're being scanned!"

"Very good, Mr. Chekov, noted and logged. No

active response at this time." Jim looked

quickly at the data and didn't like what he saw. The

sensors currently sweeping over his ship were the

search and target-acquisition systems that usually

preceded a phaser or a photon torpedo target

lock. Damn.

"Go to yellow alert, shields to standby. Do not

adopt any defensive posture, and do not power up

weapons without my express order." "Understood,

Keptin."

"I know. Just making sure. Uhura, shipwide

intercom, please." The communicator beeped

obediently. "Attention all hands, this is the

captain. Enterprise is being scanned

by weapons-level sensors. Ignore the scan. This

is not-I repeat, not-an act of hostility. Just

bad manners. We're going to get a lot of

behavior like this from the Dekkani before we're through, because

right now they don't like us much. Don't give them

reason to like us less because someone overreacted.

We're not supposed to provoke them-don't let

them provoke us. Kirk out."

They really don't want to make this easyfor us,

he thought gloomily, then shrugged the gloom aside.

It could have been a lot worse he could have ended up

sitting behind a desk in Starfleet somewhere reading

about all this. "Mr. Sulu, at your discretion,

take us into orbit."

Orbital insertion was trouble-free. Vanguard

followed suit thirty minutes later and

Sir Richard twenty minutes after that. And there they

sat, the representatives of the United Federation of

Planets, doing nothing but the starship equivalent of

twiddling their thumbs until such time as the Dekkan

government chose to acknowledge their existence and

implement the transfer of Federation personnel. For a

government so keen to be rid ofunwanted guests,

thought Jim after the first hour had gone by in silence,

they're in no great hurry to start shifting our

diplomats out. In accordance with General Order

12, Enterprise and her consorts had shut down

all of their active sensors, which might have shown up

on other screens and been perceived as an unfrly

gesture. It didn't, as Captain North had

pointed out, prevent the Starfleet vessels from

maintaining a watch on Dekkanar-just to avoid any

unpleasant surprises. All the surveillance

equipment they were using worked on the same principle

passive systems quietly registered the presence

of movement, heat, or radiation. The two support

ships showed up as bright on-screen blips,

reassuringly tagged with each vessel's name,

registry, and ID code. A constantly changing

pattern of communications and weather satellites

tracked to and fro, emitting radio waves

from their big transceiver dishes and infrared heat

traces from their power packs- comThen all of

Enterprise's alarms went off at once. "Three

vessels leaving the planet's atmosphere,

Captain." Spock peered over the science console.

"Make that eight-all heading directly toward us."

All around the bridge people scrambled to their stations-and

stopped there, poised and ready for action.

Jim sat with forced calm in his center seat and

waited for more information as he watched the eight

computer-enhanced signals, bright with infrared from what

could only have been old-style rocket exhausts.

"Analysis, Mr. Spock?"

"Sensors indicate rocket propulsion of a

fairly primitive type." "But propelling

what? Guided missiles? Are we being fired

on?" "Difficult to say, Captain. The

rockets are producing so much raw IR that a more

detailed-was

"Best guess, and fast. What are they?"

"Keptin, range is now fourteen hundred

kilometers and closing!" Jim swiveled in his

chair. "Spock?"

"Circumstances dictate caution,

sir. If they are guided missiles-was "Battle

stations. Shields up, lock phasers; on." Jim

took one last look at the screen, blinked, then

barked, "Belay that last order!" The rockets were

shutting down. Within a matter of seconds all

eight rocket flares had winked out, and without that

inadvertent jamming the sensor-linked computer started

to

some hard data at long last. There was one more

moment of on-screen confusion when the contacts

multiplied, but then it became clear that this was not some

form of deception but merely a dumping of strap-on

fuel tanks before the original targets came

coasting on toward orbit. They were

shuttles-clumsy wide-winged orbiters that reminded

Jim sharply of the old Enterprise pictured on

one wall of the rec deck. He let out a 85 1

long-held breath between his teeth. "Will somebody

please shut off that noise," he said, and somebody

did, the red-alert siren expiring in mid-whoop as

the bridge lights came back to normal.

"Sensors indicate life signs aboard all

of the recently launched orbital vessels,"

Spock said.

The Dekkan shuttles continued on their

way around the planet, each one shifting gradually

under the impetus of its reaction jets so that by the time

they went sliding around the curve of Dekkanar's

horizon and out of sight they were moving in a loose

arrowhead formation like a gaggle of geese.

"That's strange." Sulu touched controls on his

helm console, and the cloud-whorled image on the

screen became overlaid by a computer schematic.

More controls created a projected flight pattern

for the shuttles-a pattern which plainly indicated that

if they had wanted to rendezvous with the Federation ships

they could have done so as soon as they left orbit.

"They'll be back in this location in ...

seventeen-point-two minutes," he said, almost

to himself, "and then we'll see."

"What are we expecting to see, Mr. Sulu?"

said Spock. "Sir, I'm not sure." Another

overlay joined those already on screen-more flight

predictions based on trajectory, orbital

velocity, and as many variables as Sulu could think

to run into the computer. "But I don't like the look of

it. Because I don't think they're carrying

evacuees." "And you think we'll find out in

seventeen minutes?" "Yes, Captain, I do."

"It is now sixteen-point-four-five

minutes," said Spock. Jim swu ng the center

seat around just enough to give his science officer a

sidelong look. It was 86

returned with the bland lack of expression that he

knew so well. "Approximately," said

Spock. "And counting."

"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Spock. Carry

on." Jim took care to hide any suggestion of a

smile. He couldn't think of any mission that had

gone so far wrong as to stifle Spock's occasional

exercise of the sense of humor he claimed not

to possess.

Uhura's comm station beeped. She listened

briefly, then turned toward Jim. "Captain,

incoming communication from Vanguard. Captain Farey

wants to know if you"-she touched the transdator again

and smiled briefly-"if you saw the veterans'

flypast or if you arranged it yourself."

"On screen, please, Uhura." Sulu's

navigational plot broke up in shimmer and became

Nic Farey's grin. It was more strained than Jim

had last seen, and the reason was plain enough to see

Vanguard's bridge was just coming down from a red

alert. "So they got you, too?" "Oh, yes, they

got us all right. Silly sods don't

know just how lucky they were that I don't have a jumpy

crew." Nic glanced pointedly over his shoulder.

"At least I didn't until now."

"Why, what happened? I mean, they caught us

on the bounce when they came up without warning, but-was

1,9

"So they didn't buzz you? Lucky man.

"Buzz? Nic, what's been going on.

"They- 11

"Apologies, Captain Farey," said

Uhura, interrupting. "Captain North for

Captain Kirk. Priority One."

Nic Farey's image shrank into one-half of the

screen, but where Gytha North's face should have come

up on the remaining half, there was only static.

"Uhura? Jamming, or. . ." Kirk didn't

want to say the immediate alternative, because saying such

things in the past had so often seemed to make them

true.

"dis . . hear us, Enterprise? This is

NCC-2382 Sir Richard calling

NCC-1701 Enterprise. Respond please.

Do you copy?"

The voice came swimming up through interference like

something that had lain drowned at the bottom

of a pond. Then with a crackle harsh and sudden enough

to make everyone on the bridge jump, sound and

picture both came through loud and clear.

Captain North's eyes were dark and wide with

something Jim failed to recognize for the first second.

Not fright-that didn't go with the Gytha North he

knew. And then he placed it rage. It was leashed

in as only command conditioning could do, so that there was no

trace of it in her voice, but it had drawn the skin

and muscles of her face down tight against the underlying

bones until it became a still, expressionless mask.

Only the eyes burned behind the mask like coals, and

he thought how fortunate it was for good relations that the

Dekkani could monitor only sound. Or maybe

it wasn't so fortunate after all.

"We have had five red alerts in as many minutes,

Jim," said Gytha. She was speaking slowly,

probably as aware of the planetside listeners as

anyone else, and picking her words with care. "We have

come within the flexing of a finger of blowing each and every one of

those flying freight trucks back to where they came

from. And they have come within meters-not tens of meters, but

meters-of ramming my damned ship! I tell you,

if they're looking for trouble they're certainly going

about finding it the right way."

"Captain North, that's enough." Jim sat

back and looked thoughtful to conceal the fact that he was

slowly counting to ten. Gytha wasn't about to do it,

and somebody had to before somebody else got

severely hurt or severely dead. He had reached

eight when Enterprise's red-alert alarms all

went off in wailing chorus once again.

"Chekov!" Jim barked, counting forgotten, and was

just quick enough to freeze his weapons officer's hand in

midair as it came slapping down on the

shieldactivation toggle. "Not without my express

order, Mister, and the word hasn't been given yet."

"But look at this!" Chekov's other hand moved,

fingers splaying over touch pads, and the faces of the

other captains were banished to window inserts in the

viewscreen as a tactical display filled it almost

from frame to frame. "A classic attack

profile, Keptin. In a classic attack

formation. A Klingon attack formation."

Jim glared at the computer-animated blips.

Pavel was right. The Dekkani shuttlecraft were

swinging back around the curve of the planet, but they were

no longer an untidy gaggle of metal geese but

as neat a formation as any he had ever seen.

"Spock, scan for weapons. Because I

don't think they have any."

"Scanning, although Captain, the passive

systems-was "Spock?"

"I can detect no weapons, Jim. This

guarantees nothing."

"It guarantees we won't shoot first. Stand

down from red alert." Jim got to his feet and

walked around the bridge so that he could look over

Chekov's shoulder at the weapons console. "And

turn the alarms off, please." Almost before their last

echoes had died away, the sirens were back in full

cry again as one of the passing shuttles illuminated the

Enterprise with some archaic form of targeting sensor.

The sensor didn't achieve a 89

lock, wasn't even trying for a lock, and had

been activated only for the instant needed to set off

every automatic warning on the ship. The fifth

shuttle did exactly the same thing, but spiced its

electronic harassment with a flyby so close that it

passed up between the warp nacelles and all but

scraped the top of the primary hull. "Sirens,

some- one," said Jim for the fourth time as he returned

to the center seat. There was a weary resignation in his

voice and his face and his very posture, that of a man

faced with the prospect that his next duty

shift-and the rest of the mission-looked set to be one very

long day....

HAK-XBLEDEAu hung dead in space.

All his systems were shut down, even to the running

lights, and the only suggestion of movement around that

whole huge dark bulk was the firefly glimmer of a

work pod's lights as Askel and Chief Engineer

Aktaz, aboard the pod, made a final exterior

inspection before proceeding to the next stage of this

first-flight checkup. For three hours now the engineer

had been virtually a part of his diagnostics board,

looking up from it only for long enough to make sure that

Askel was directing the remote sensor probe

correctly. The science specialist found the look

more than slightly insulting, but not so much that he

troubled to take issue with it. At least, not yet.

"Structural analysis, main drive

nacelles, external casings," mumbled Aktaz,

more to himself than to the diagnostics recorder. Askel

listened for a few seconds as the engineer went off

into a long monotonous checklist that was no more

interesting now than it had been when they were inspecting the

other end of the hull. It was at times like this, and there had

been a few before now, that Commander Askel really

understood the sheer size and complexity of a

battle cruiser. And how incredi- 91

bly boring it all was. Askel's interest lay

more in the complexities of the mind, in the multifarious

ways of plotting, and in the equally varied ways of

suppressing those plots-or turning them to a different

use. There had to be a plot involved here. The

smell of intrigue was one his nostrils had grown

accustomed to recognizing, and they had recognized it

aboard Hakkarl almost at once. That Captain

Kasak was working so determinedly to suggest that there was

no such thing made Askel all the more suspicious.

Every Klingon officer was involved in something or

other, be it only jockeying for power and promotion within

his own line families. For Kasak to expect his

first officer to believe that of all captains in the

Imperial Navy he, the famous

sutai-Khomezh, was without some complex subterfuge

to better both career and position was tantamount

to calling him a fool to his face and before witnesses.

But until he learned the details of Kasak's

scheming, he could not be certain just how deeply he had

been insulted. For the present it was enough to know that once

that information had been obtained, Imperial

Intelligence had agonizer booths enough and to spare for the

captain and all who had assisted him.

Unless, of course, there was more profit in

supporting Kasak than in handing him over to the

appropriate authorities. That was the one great

problem about working for I.i. The bureau valued any

ability to see both sides of a problem; it meant that

agents could better understand its complexities and more

easily work against it from the inside. But it also meant

that the advantages of a given stratagem were as plain

to an I.i. operative as basic, blatant

treachery usually was to a member of Imperial

Security. And the intelligence for which the organization

was named was also a faculty that enabled its members

occasionally to see that their 92

loyalties need not always lie with the more obvious

side. Nal komerex, khesterex, the saying went.

"That which will not grow will die." Askel always thought of it

inverted, being thus more appropriate to his present

station nal khesterex, komerex. As did his

captain of the moment and, curiously, a Thought Master

among the DoytSo line of humans long ago whose

use of the saying, once it had been translated

into Federation Standard, which Askel understood, made the

most sense of all. That which does not kill us,

makes us stronger.

"dis . . dreaming, Commander?" Aktaz's

irascible voice cut through his thoughts. "I said, the

analysis has been completed. We can proceed."

Why were engineers and surgeon specialists always so

easily irritated? thought Askel as he absently

shifted the travel pod's flight controls. Was it

because the machines they worked on constantly broke down

and needed their services? Shrugging the thought aside,

he opened a channel to the cruiser.

"Askel to bridge."

"Bridge. was It was Krynn who responded.

Krynn, one of the two females in the crew. One

of the captain's two favorites. One of the two who

most bore watching comfor reasons other than the

obvious. "Engineering reports completion of

external checks. Restore power to all systems.

We will observe. Ou19

"Affirm. Acting. Bridge out.

Yes indeed, most efficient. Perhaps Krynn was

too efficient, if there could ever be such an officer

on a Klingon ship. It was a matter of small

account to Askel, unless Captain Kasak's plan

involved some privateering on his own account before

returning Hakkarl to the Taamar drydock, and

unless Kasak's security and intelligence officers

agreed with his mis93

use of imperial resources. Of course, if the

profits were high and the ship was indeed to be brought back

intact, they might be persuaded to agree. If that was

the case, then so far as Askel was concerned nobody

was too good at his job. Or hers.

He watched with interest as the battle cruiser

came back to life, like some vast monster from the old

legends aroused from sleep. First came the glimmer

of the skinfield, not so much an illumination as a haze

like that of heat, spreading out over the main hull and then

up the boom to the command pod, running along the

generator grids that covered Hakkarl like a

protective net. Running lights were next,

jeweling his ghostgray armor-proper adornment for so

mighty a vessel. Last of all, and brightest, were the

anticollision warnings, the safety beacons, and the

insignia spots that made Hakkarl's imperial

trefoils glow against the darkness of space under the

gaze of myriad naked stars.

Askel watched and felt his liver shift in his

chest at the promised glory of it all.

"Captain," said Krynn, "mains are back on

line. Blue lights on all systems. Power

to max at your discretion."

Kasak checked the readouts before he

nodded. "Good. Then have the pod brought back on

board and we- No. Signal to zan Askel.

Hold station. Tazhat will exercise separation

sequence from Hakkarl. Observe and report." He

waited until the signal had been acknowledged, then

studied the data once again. "Maneuvering thrusters

forward, one-half power." "Affirm." Krynn

pushed for thrust, and Tazhat vibrated slightly,

a rumbling that was felt in the bones as power graphs

flickered and screens began to register more than

drift. The entire console swiveled on its plinth

until Krynn was aligned with another and quite 94

separate bank of controls, these shrouded with

security covers that retracted into slots as she

keyed in an unlock code. At their own stations on

the bridge, other officers did likewise.

"Zan Khitar, interlink status?"

"Interlinks live, full communications

confirmed."

"Good," Kasak said again. "Helm, on my

command, execute a full combat breakaway

to cloak. Make one-quarter impulse on both.

Affirm action." He glanced once around the

bridge and smiled. The members of his crew were

nervous, as might be expected, but they were as

eager as their captain to see how this ship fulfilled

its expectations. They would see soon enough.

Kasak sat straight-backed in the command chair and

stared straight ahead out of the viewscreen and toward the

naked stars. "Degh, was he said, and his helm officer

tensed. "yIchuHa' " his

"Acting," said Krynn, and tabbed all the

release toggles together.

Neither Askel nor Aktaz was exactly sure

what to expect or what to look for. Certainly the

first suggestion of movement as the thrusters powered up was

imperceptible except on instruments. Despite

their respective specializations, and despite the

numerous computer simulations they had watched in the

past, they had yet to watch the actuality of a

separation. They saw it now.

When the monoweb filaments connecting Hakkarl and

Tazhat were degenerated, the smaller vessel was

supposed to push clear of the battle cruiser with

pressors. Nothing dramatic-no flash of

explosive bolts such as occurred when a ship's

boom broke away from its main hull. So at least

went the description and the simulations. Reality,

especially under the command of the sutai-Khornezh, was

somewhat different.

Instead of the leisurely parting that they had seen 95

on computer screens, Tazhat seemed almost

to leap away from the father ship. The impulse drive

conduits on both ships glowed red, and a brutal

kick of acceleration sent them surging out on divergent

courses. They moved so fast that before Askel's

brain could comprehend the full implications of what

he saw, they had diminished to the apparent size of a

child's toys. Toys whose outlines were already hazy,

evaporating as the cloak took effect. Tazhat

and then Hakkarl shimmered and were gone.

"Kai Imperial Engineering!" Aktaz laughed

aloud and pounded his fist against the diagnostics board,

not noticing or not caring that Science Specialist

Askel was failing to share in his delight. What

Askel had seen was not a matter deserving

applause, but one deserving curses-at Kasak for

such a consummate move and at himself for having failed

to foresee the possibility of such a development from the

first instant he had been assigned to fly the

inspection pod. The captain's latest tactic was

masterful indeed. Even if Askel survived long

enough to be picked up by whatever Klingon vessel next

passed through this quadrant, he would not last very long

afterward. A cool specialized area of his

mind was already calculating how long the power and air in

the inspection pod would last, assuming Aktaz ...

died and only he remained to use it. Imperial

Intelligence took a dim view of operations

masters who allowed their surveillance subjects

to give them the slip in so inglorious a fashion.

Askel looked at the chief engineer's back and

wondered when he should kill him-before or after a

distress call had been sent. Certainly sooner

instead of later, no reason to wait until the air

turned bad. In fact, no reason to wait at

all. His eyes fixed on a certain spot at the

nape of the engineer's neck, and he flattened one of

his hands into a chopping blade....

And the sky outside the viewport was abruptly

ftffl of ships. The angular masses of metal

swallowed up the stars as they condensed out of cloak

less than two hundred meters distant. Tazhat

was once more in his accustomed place above the battle

cruiser's main hull, hanging there for several

seconds while the monoweb connections regenerated

before settling onto Hakkarl's back.

"Opinion?" The voice from the communicator was

Kasak's own, and sounded as pleased with events as the

sutai-Khornezh ever permitted.

"Impressive." Askel might have wanted to say

a great deal more than that, and not about the ships, wanted

indeed to roar like a stormwalker and let someone feel

the teeth of his anger, but to do so would be to confess what

he was and why he had feared such an act of desertion

by this ship and this captain. "All operations were

flawless."

"And recorded?"

"Affirm. Is the one gratified by the performance of

this new ship?" "I am content. Return. There is

much to do.

Askel looked at the ships, and at Aktaz the

engineer who would never know how close he had come

to service in the Black Fleet. There was indeed much

to do, and a deal of that involved revision of his own

ideas. Either the captain was genuinely innocent of the

plot that I.i. suspected he had hidden somewhere,

or he was infinitely more subtle than any of them

suspected. For either reason, Askel's place was

by his captain's side. He stared at the pod's

command console as if he had never seen it before; then he

engaged the thrusters that would take him home.

The eight Dekkani shuttles passed all

three Federation vessels ten times before changing their

orbit. In

those ten flypasts, they had set off the alarms on

twenty-two occasions, not all of those occasions

sequential. They were in a low polar orbit now, as

far from the Starfleet geosynchronous positions as it

was possible to get. It was not much of a respite.

Jim had heard more bad language on the

bridge in the past hour than ever before. His crew

seldom swore, they were usually too busy with doing

to trouble much with saying, but orders and circumstance

meant that right now they could do nothing at all, except

exercise a vocabulary of invective that should have

gone on tape for xenosocioanalysis. Mr.

Freeman would have welcomed a chance to take the more

complex usages to pieces; there was probably a

doctorate waiting in there for somebody. It was

impossible to say if there was any sign of fraying

nerves among all the fraying tempers, but Jim had

already put a call through to Bones, summoning him to the

bridge to lend a professional ear. McCoy would

be the first one to notice whether everything was running

smoothly or not. "What the billy-be-damned

blue blazes is going on out there?" said the voice

from the turbolift behind him even before its doors were

fully opened. Jim didn't even blink.

Apparently Bones had decided for himself

already that things weren't running smoothly at all.

"They're trying to annoy us," he said.

"They're doing a damned good job of it." The

chief medical officer stalked out of the lift

angrily, and its doors shut behind him with what might

well have been a mechanical sigh of relief.

"Can't you do something?" "Bones, you were at the

briefings; you know

damned well I can't." The cursing was

infectious, dammit, thought Jim, mentally damning

his own

damning before realizing ruefully that he was chasing

his own tail. "None of what they're doing is

offensive-was "Oh isn't it!"

"You know exactly what I mean. Under the rules

of engagement. They're just acting like a bunch of

kids, ringing doorbells and then running away."

"Don't you know what to do with kids like that, Jim? You

catch them at it one more time, and you tan their litt le

hides."

"A photon torpedo isn't a slipper,

Bones, and we can't detune the phasers enough to just

deliver spankings.1

Chekov exchanged a significant

glance with Sulu and Uhura. Muffled laughter

escaped from all three of them.

"Mr. Chekov?" sd'Jim. "If you can make

the phasers do it . . ." he persisted. Sulu and

Uhura suddenly became terribly interested in their

control consoles, while Chekov made a small

snorting noise and went red in the face.

And then everyone went red in the face as the bridge

lights shifted and the alarms went off again.

The noise and the scarlet lighting lasted only a

matter of seconds before Spock shut them both off.

"Another nonspecific targeting scan,

Captain. Di- rected by one of the orbiters as it

passed apogee."

"Not so far out of range as we thought, Mr.

Spock."

"It would appear not."

"Good psychology, property applied,"

muttered Bones. He caught the quirky glance

directed at him and shrugged slightly. "I'm not

giving their actions any sort of approval, Jim,

so you needn't get that look in your eye. But they know

what they're doing."

"By not poking at us all the time? Obviously. You

jump harder from rest than from halfway through

the last jump. And that's not psychology, Doctor,

it's good tactical sense."

"Different words, same meaning."

"That is not in fact the case, Doctor," said

Spock. McCoy rolled his eyes in mock

anguish and didn't care who saw him. "There is

indeed a sound tactical reasoning behind the Dekkan

action," Spock continued. "Although our passive

sensory systems are a pale shadow of the

active-scan units, if they received a signal of

sufficient duration I could analyze the unique

features of the Dekkani targeting controls and by a

subprogramming input override response to all

but a full prelock contact."

"Tune them out, you mean? Then why didn't you

say so?" "But I did, Doctor, adding

sufficient detail only to make the procedure

coherent."

"'Coherent" is not the word that I'd have used,

Spock. Not by a long shot." Spock said nothing.

He merely raised one eyebrow the merest fraction

and held it there until he had turned back to his

viewer. For all that McCoy had the last word,

Jim couldn't help thinking that Spock had won the

point. At least his ship's surgeon had

stopped grousing about the alarms going off.

Until the next time.

Hakkarl was running at an easy warp 6.2,

well within capabilities for those uprated engines that

had no other demands on their energies right now than

to drive the ship and power his enhanced sensor suite.

Captain Kasak had insisted on the sensors being

fully activated, holding that the prestige gained

during their departure from Taamar would all be lost if

they were caught unaware by another ship of the many that were

doubtless searching for them at this moment.

Any who want tofind this ship will have to look long

and hard, thought Askel as he took his place in the

small inspirational theater aboard the scout ship

Tazhat. Not only the sensors but also the

cloaking devices were up and running, with no

diminution that the science station could reveal in the power

curves of the battle cruiser's warp engines. It

was becoming increasingly clear that for once Design

Engineering had told the unglazed truth about its

latest product. That was sufficiently unusual

for the captain to have made special note of it in his

report. "All's well?" said Marag from the

door.

"Blue lights," Askel said.

"What's this about?" "Inspirational theater." Marag

took a seat. "We're to be inspired." "To do

something Security can monitor before you die of

boredom?" Marag showed just the points of his side

teeth in an expression that only loosely could have

been called a smile, but said nothing. It was true

enough that on this ship, with so small a crew and a minimum

rank among its members of lieutenant commander, a

security officer had little to do. Other members of that

crew, those not on duty monitoring sensor input,

trickled into the theater, nodded or waved casual

salutes according to their mood, and settled down to be

advised, instructed, inspired, or whatever else it

was that the captain had in mind. They could all just as

easily have gathered on the bridge, but with the computer

relays and general lack of space in which to move, the

meeting would have been, at the very least, intimate.

The screen hummed, glowed, and flicked into life

with a picture of the bridge. Captain Kasak was in

his command chair. Behind him Surgeon Specialist

Arthag sat in Askel's place at the science

station. Arthag appeared to be on the crew roster

only because a ship was required to have a surgeon. So

far he had treated two small electrical bums

and a finger nipped by the unsecured lid of a

diagnostics board, and he seemed relieved to be

doing something that would

take him out of the empty quiet of sickbay. With

so many other things on his mind, Askel was more than

willing to let him do it. "Theflight goes well, was

said Kasak. "This ship can do all that has been

claimedfor him. A lesser captain and a lesser

crewflying a lesser ship would be content with this alone.

I am not. I have said I was content. It is not S.

Askel sat up very straight and began to listen

hard. "This, was the captain said, "is my intention.

To give Hakkarl a first flight worthy of his

capabilities-and worthy of the crew I chose

to fly him. The Roms have done what I now plan,

testing their cloak and their plasma torpedo, but since

the interference of the g'daya busybody Organians,

no ship of the Empire has done so. Until now.

In ten standard minutes we leave neutral space

and enter that claimed by the Federation. was And suddenly

Askel knew. All the pieces fell into place

the planet in Federation space, torn by dissension that

had led its people to order their Federation guests off-world and

so leave themselves in need of a protector; their own

lack of authorization and their departure from

Taamar's Drydock 20. That had been no

exercise but a theft, so that no Organian could

blame the Empire's policyrnakers for the doings of

an independent privateer, no matter how much the

Empire stood to gain through those same doings. All

of this and so much more made sense at last, as the

captain continued to address a theater-and a ship-gone

totally silent with shock or disbelief or

admiration. Askel had one source at least for all

of those emotions himself The disbelief did not last

long, for I.i. had required him to believe things

far more unlikely than this, and to gather evidence about

them. This dramatic play was not merely possible, it

was capable of such vast success that all concerned

could wallow in glory and everything that glory brought.

Marag stirred. The security officer had been

sitting still as a statue while Kasak was speaking, but

now he came to his feet. Askel tensed, watching

and waiting for his reaction so that he could match it. There

was a small pellet pistol in its customary

place within his tunic, and if Security's

response was such as to spoil his chance-all their

chances-for advancement beyond that of a lifetime's service

to I.i., then Askel was ready to use the pistol and

justify its use afterward to whoever needed

explanations.

It was not required. "Kai the captain!" roared

Marag. "Kai kassai, Klingon!" All the

others in the theater followed his example, stamping and

saluting. Askel relaxed; it was going to be all

right. It would be even more right once he had learned which

of these enthusiasts were the khestn covert Imperial

Security operatives and what their true feelings

might be. And had acted accordingly. But not right now.

Askel stood up slowly and walked across the theater

through a steadily increasing atmosphere of suspicion

about why he among all of them should not be cheering his friend

the captain. Askel ignored the stares and the leaden

silence until he reached the communicator panel

near the wall and switched it on, then turned to face

the captain's accusing eyes and fixed them with his

own-yellow, hot, unblinking.

"Bridge, was said Kasak's voice from the comm

grid and from the screen. "They are cheering the one down

here," said Askel, his voice quite neutral. "And

you?"

"This one wished to speak instead of cheer."

"Then speak. his

Askel smiled, at the screen and at the other

membleajc

bers of the crew who had watched him with such doubt,

a smile with all his teeth on show. He raised his

right hand, empty of weapons, and when he closed it in

salute the renewed shouts of approval all but

drowned his words.

"Success, my lord."

"Captain, I have a transmission from Colonel

Johnson. The shuttles are ready to go."

James Kirk scribbled his initials on yet

another duty pad and glanced up at the main

viewer. It showed the same scene as before, a

planetscape overlaid with tactical traces as

Chekov kept an eye on the doings of the Dekkani

orbiters. Other than that, nothing. Certainly none

of the communications that he wanted to see. "Uhura,

are the Federation diplomats ready to leave the

planet?"

"Still no contact, sir, due to a combination of

deliberate signal interference and all this sunspot

activity."

"All right, Uhura, understood. But keep

trying."

"If I could just run enough power into the system, those

upgrades to the duotronic circuitry should be able

to bum a decohesive tight-beam squirt

clean through without annoying anybody."

"Except the Dekkani, because right now they're in

the business of being annoyed at anything we doand

Starfleet Command, once they found out, which they would, from

the Dekkani. I've been thinking about it, too.

I've even considered dropping messages in

bottles."

"They would think we were bombarding them from orbit,

Keptin," said Chekov unhelpfully. "Or trying

to bribe them with the promise of full bottles next

time around."

Jim pulled a face at that and returned his

attention to the screen. At least the Federation people on

Dekkanar would know where to assemble for the evacuation.

It was standard procedure in these operations that

planetside personnel would be landed- either

by transporter or by shuttlecraft comonly at

designated sites within areas of diplomatic

immunity, and evacuees would have made their way to those

same sites for pickup.

At least the PDI terrorists hadn't tried

to interfere. So far. If they were there at all. Jim

blinked, shook his head slightly, and put that

hopeful, potentially dangerous notion right

out of his mind. Don't assume, he told himself

severely. Assumptions led inevitably

to carelessness and to surprises of the most unpleasant

sort. Worst of all, they could result in

casualties.

"All right, Uhura," he said wearily, knowing

perfectly well that things were moving out of his direct

control. "Open a general channel." "On line,

sir, and standing by."

There was a trace of perspiration on his hands and an

uncomfortable tickle of impending moisture on his

upper lip. "This is Captain Kirk of the

Enterprise. Commence rescue operation." Jim

pressed his palms lightly together as the green

confirmation lights came up on his armrest console.

"Go quickly, go carefully, and may your gods go with

you. Kirk out." "It's not like you to be so worried,"

said Bones very quietly from behind him.

Jim twitched, caught off-guard. He

didn't, couldn't, deny the little start. He hadn't

even heard the turbolift doors open and shut.

"It's not like me to be this angry, either."

"No." McCoy took a quick look around the

bridge. Everybody was on station; everything was in

place and running smoothly. "A word with you

in private, Captain."

"I can't leave the-was Jim started to say, then

shrugged. He could indeed leave the bridge, at least

for a short time, and Bones wasn't about to take no

for an answer anyway. "Mr. Spock, you have the

conn."

The lift door closed and Bones said,

"Sickbay." Nothing else. Jim turned, stared

at him, and raised his eyebrows to invite another

comment.

"It's not just the anger, Jim; you're pushing again."

"Until Johnson establishes a ground

control, I'm in charge of this." "When did your

duty shift end, Jim?"

"Never mind that. Bones, I have to get back to the

bridge. If we ever establish communications with

whoever's in charge down there-was "comUhura will find you.

I think this is nothing more than a reaction to that last

mission, trailing up and down the Neutral Zone,

waiting for something to happen that never did. Now you've

got some action and you're going to make the most of it."

Dr. McCoy shook his head. "But that's not

everything, is it?"

"No, dammit! It's the fact that if

Dekkanar and the Federation's diplomatic corps had

been willing to listen instead of just talk, we wouldn't

be sitting here in the first place!"

"The fault's on both sides, then. Is that

what you really think, or are you working with advanced

hindsight?"

"Stop trying to psychoanalyze me, Bones."

Jim spoke without heat, but there was something final about

his tone of voice that made McCoy hold back

on whatever else he might have said. "Of course the

fault's with both. You must realize that an

organization as large as the United Federation of

Planets can afford to be magnanimous in a

confrontation with one small world that isn't even a

member. Bend a little. I don't think anyone even

thought to make the effort to be generous; otherwise

Colonel Johnson and his men wouldn't be walking

into a mine field right now. What 106

was it you called the Federation? The good guys?

Well, maybe. We try; we all try. But

we're not there yet."

They stood in silence as the lift car came to a

standstill and its doors opened. Bones stepped out

into the corridor, hesitated, then swung around and

jabbed a finger at Jim's chest. "Well?

Sickbay's this Is

way.

"I was going back to the bridge."

"Yes, you were. Until I changed my mind.

I was going to tell you to go back up to the bridge,

supervise the shuttle departures, finish whatever

extra duty you've awarded yourself, and then come down

to sickbay for a routine checkup. And then I thought

to myself, ('Leonard McCoy, you've waited

fifteen days over schedule for this officer's last

medical. Don't let him get away again. So come

along."

"Bones . . ."

"Jim, do you want me to invoke all those

fitness-ofcommand regulations? Because I will if I have

to."

"Doctor, I'm up to here with regulations, and now

you're the one who's pushing." Jim raised his hands in

mock surrender-and then slapped one of them against his

forehead. "And you're right, I must be getting tired.

Or old, or slow." Intrigued, Bones watched

as Jim made for the nearest communicator wall mount

with what had to be the beginning of a silly grin spreading

over his face.

"I should have thought of this hours ago," he

said over his shoulder. "Engineering, this is Kirk."

"Engineering aye, was said the voice of

Montgomery Scott. "Scotty, are things

running smoothly down there?" "Aye, sir, all's

well. Ifye couldjust keep the alarms ftom goin'

off so much, we'd be delighted. his

"If you can, er, pull the same people you had on

duty during the shuttlecraft drill, I think

something could be arranged." There was perhaps a second's

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

silence at the other end of the connection, and then the

speaker crackled as Scotty's laughter

overloaded it.

,eaationow, there is a happy man," said Jim

to Bones as the sound of orders being issued came

drifting out of the comm grille. "The

tractor-pressor teams are already on their way

to station, Captain, was said Scotty, still chuckling.

"An' then we'll see how those damn hotshots

want t'playrough or smooth. Engineering out. was

"Tractor-pressor units aren't classed as

weapons under the current rules of engagement,"

Jim said, "and they don't even register on most

low-grade sensors. All we need now

is for Spock to be able to detune the automatic

alert systems, and those Dekkani shuttles can go

fly a kite." "Unless they want to get serious,"

said Bones. "Enterprise can handle getting

serious." The door into sickbay hissed open and

Jim stepped insidethen stopped and looked slowly from

side to side at what had been the chief

surgeon's lab and office. He remembered

Bones's complaints at the initial briefing about

what emergency standby had done to his

sickbay-remembered them with more clarity than he

might have expected-but he hadn't had a chance to see

it for himself. Until now. The place was stark, and there

were no longer any concessions to comfort at all. Even

the holoprints had been removed from the walls.

Silvery emergency blankets and folding standby

beds were now stacked where the few chairs had been,

sealed readydispensers of medical

supplies-mostly sedative painkillers and

trauma dressings-were set in any remaining

floor space, and the elaborate microdiagnostic

equipment had been replaced by heavyduty

anabolic protoplasers and medical tricorders

locked off at their coarsest setting.

Jim stared at it all, and only slowly became

aware that one corner of his mouth had quirked back in

an instinctive expression of disgust, not at how the

place now looked but at what that look implied.

"I don't care who can handle getting serious,"

said McCoy bitterly. "Just that it's always my

staff people who have to clean up afterward." "It won't come

to this, Bones." Admiral James T. Kirk was

standing almost at attention now, his face somber, his

voice quiet and serious. "If it's in my power

to avoid it, you won't need to use the place like this."

"Jim," said Bones, "I hope to God you're

riandt11

Every alarm the designers had ever fitted went off

at once, a solid wall of noise slapping through

Tazhat's overcrowded bridge and reverberating

back from every console until it was enough to rattle the

teeth. Kasak sutai-Khornezh sat bolt

upright in his command chair and glowered at every single

member of his crew, not assigning specific blame

but more than willing to hand it out on a more general basis

if he had to. "Shut off that khestn noise," he

snarled in a voice so soft that the klaxons should have

drowned it out, "before I shut off the one

responsible."

The silence on Tazhat's bridge was so sudden

and complete that it echoed. "Better," said Kasak.

"But not much. Explain."

Askel stood up, saluted, and presuming on his

friendship immediately assumed an easy posture, then

caught the expression in Kasak's yellow eyes and

snapped right back to attention. "One of the purposes

of the first flight is to establish the development of

faults in a new design," he said. "This is

already known." The captain leaned for- 109

ward, looking as predatory as any Klingon of the

Imperial race might do whose liver had just been

jolted in his chest. "Enhance."

"Sir, one of these faults has just become

apparent." He touched a control on the science

console and the bridge viewscreen went blank.

"If the one will permit?"

"All right, zan Askel." Kasak leaned

back and dropped that dangerous rank-linked

formality. He could see relief spreading across the

bridge like ripples in a pond, although no member

of the crew was so presumptuous as to relax until

instructed. "Carry on91

"Acting," said Askel. "Engineer Aktaz,

put the interlink schematics on the

screen. Also the monoweb connectors."

He spoke for the next several minutes,

indicating the operation of stress points between the two

ships, both while joined and when separate. The

combat breakaway had altered pickup alignments

between the beam-linked repeater arrays, and the pickups

had been shifted still further out of sync by vibration

since the ships reco nnected. "This is why no

alarms were sounded when Tazhat and Hakkarl first

rejoined," Askel explained. "Signal

cross-transmissions were sufficiently strong at that

time so that this did not register as a fault. Whereas

now . . ."

"And how is it to be repaired, Science Master

Askel?" "The receptor and transmitter

installations on this ship must be released from their locked

calibrations and coded for signal homing on source

to and from Hakkarl. 11

Kasak looked thoughtfully at his science officer.

Askel was Imperial Klingon, but the captain

wondered idly if there might not have been a Vulcan

fusion somewhere in the ancestry of his line. "What

must be done to achieve this?"

"A full systems shutdown to prevent

overload. Otherwise once one pickup is

unlocked and recoded it will become the sole

transceptor channel for all data passing between

both vessels-and if that happens, we'll be

resetting circuit breakers for a week."

"Indeed." Kasak allowed a smile to cross his

face. "Then this is an eventuality to avoid.

Zan Khalen, present heading and location?" The

navigator flipped a schematic onto the

screen. "Heading is standard, location is as

indicated. We are on course. Without power, we

cannot maintain warp speeds, and to avoid

relativistic and temporal distortions we should not

drift at a high sublight velocity. Therefore time

to target will be seven-pointsix hours at

point-forty-five can. was "Work time is estimated at

six-point-two hours, Captain," said Engineer

Aktaz.

"Then our speed will not decay significantly,"

said Khalen. "We will enter the outer planetary

system during the period of shutdown, above the

ecliptic plane to avoid most potential

obstructions, but power will have been restored long before

there is need for orbital maneuvering." "Good." A

shutdown approach was a tactical bonus

Kasak had not anticipated. "All is well."

The captain studied his crew, all of them standing by for

his word of command. He nodded, once. "Action."

Jim leaned back and watched another quartet of

Starfleet shuttles start their run from Sir

Richard's hangar bay down to the planet's

surface. His mind ran over the problem in simple

arithmetic for what he hoped was the final time. There

were four shuttles on each ship, with room on board

each shuttle for seven ill

of Johnson's people and one Starfleet crewman

to bring it back. And there were five hundred

Diplomatic Protection Group personnel

to shift. That meant something like eleven flights for each

shuttle-five round trips and one final descent

before starting it all over again with the Federation refugees.

He grimaced and rubbed his eyes; even on this

small scale, the niggling time-and-motion puzzle of

logistics had the ability to take over all his thought

processes and leave no room for anything else.

Better leave it to Spock and the computers.

Every flight was a potential target, but so far the

Dekkani and the PDI had kept quiet. Even the

orbiters had ceased their intermittent harassment of the

Starfleet vessels, recognizing perhaps that

there was too much potential here for matters to get out

of control. They had played their part, indicating to the

all-powerful Federation that their ships, tied as they were

by red tape, were not quite so powerful after all. If

Scotty's guess about the purpose of all the

posturing was correct, this forthcoming round of

negotiations would probably begin on a basis of

restrained aggres- sion and progress through disposal

of the more outrageous demands and arguments to something that at

least resembled a sensible dialogue. Just so long as

nobody with a gun tried to interfere. It was right then that

the alarms went off again. Jim muttered something under his

breath and glared at Chekov. "What is it this time-more

Klingon attack formations?"

"No, Keptin." Chekov sounded so uneasy that

all at once the hackles on the back of Jim's

neck began to rise. The viewscreen flickered and the

image changed from Sir Richard's shuttles to a

crank-winged shape that was equally familiar but far more

ominous. "This time it's Klingons!" Jim stared at

the screen. The other Federation ships 112

were not yet aware of the new threat, shielded from it as

they were by their geosynchronous positions on the farther

side of the planet. As usual, it was all up to the

Enterprise-and it was that which put a sort of

smile back on Kirk's face, because General

Order 12 had just taken on a whole new meaning.

"Uhura?"

"I've been trying, Captain. The usual

greetings on a standard hailing frequency. They

haven't responded."

"Nothing at all?"

"Not even a standard ID, Captain. Just

static."

"Good. In that case I shall quote one of the other

provisions of General Order Twelve." Quick

grins were suppressed all over the bridge as the

crew's recent familiarity with that damned order

allowed them to pick up immediately on what Kirk was

about to say.

""On the approach of any vessel when

communications have not been established, Starfleet

safety-ofpersonnel requirements indicate that said

vessel should be treated as potentially hostile

until proven otherwise, and in consequence a standard

defensive posture should be adopted."" "Changes

of situation and shipboard status duly noted and

logged, Captain," said Spock. There was a cool

satisfaction in the way he said it, though the

Vulcan would never have admitted any such

thing. "Thank you, Mr. Spock. You may restore

all sensors to active status. Raise shields

and bring weapons to operational readiness." There was no

leaping for positions on the bridge this time. Everyone

was there already. "Uhura, transmit on all

frequencies "Captain Kirk, commanding

U.s.s. Enterprise, to all Federation vessels

and personnel. We have detected a ship entering this

system. Ship has refused to answer hails or

transmit IFF/ID. Visual indicates

ship to be a

Klingon KT-INGA class battle cruiser.

Enterprise will intercept. Continue evacuation

procedure. All ships are cleared for battle

stations. I repeat battle stations. Kirk out."

And, Uhura, keep an ear open for what the

Dekkani have to say."

He glanced at the battle cruiser's sinister

outline on the long-range display. For all the

menace that it represented, the Klingon warship was more

easily dealt with than all this sitting around. "Mr.

Chekov, lay in an intercept course. Mr.

Sulu, full impulse power. Take us out."

ENTERMUSE WAS NO MORE than a few

seconds clear of orbit when the yelling

began from planetside. The approaching Klingon

ship was still millions of kilometers beyond the range

of Dekkan Central Control. What they saw, and

what they now reacted to, was the trio of

so-recently defenseless Starfleet vessels going

into a maneuver that could either be defensive-or a

preparation for attack.

"The entire Dekkan Planetary Council's

screaming down there, Captain," said Uhura. She

pulled the transdator from her ear and reset its

systems for reduced transmission volume before

reluctantly puVting it back. "And some of their

language is getting beyond "earthy and

colorful."" "Anything of importance, or just

opinions of Starfleet in general?" "Opinions

of the fleet commander in particular," she returned

dryly, "and imaginatively worded ones at that. They

are not pleased."

"Mmf." Jim looked again at the K't'inga

class battle cruiser on the screen. "Give

them something else to think about. Patch that Klingon ship

through to the planet on visual for a few

minutes-enhanced im- 115

agery, so they're in no doubt about whom it belongs

to-and then give me an open line to anyone

who wants to listen."

Uhura nodded and began working with the visualimage

coders, building her picture around that on the main

screen but thoughtfully adding declassified

schematics and silhouette data until the shape,

provenance, and destructive capabilities of the

Klingon ship were made plain even to the most

uneducated layman. "Transmitting now,

Captain," she said, "and opening your general

transmission in seven minutes. Until that time,

you're not available to Dekkan callers?"

"Seven minutes, unless it's more important

than what they've had to say so far." Jim had had

enough of the council, the Dekkani, the planet they

lived on, and the whole damned mission. "Advise

Captains North and Farey to make no independent

reply to planetside queries. All information must

be channeled through Enterprise. was He swiveled the

center seat a little. "Time to interception, Mr.

Sulu?"

"Six-point-three hours at point-forty-five

c, sir. Much faster and we'd start running

into timerelativistic distortion."

"And miss the whole party? Not a chance. Hold

her steady at point-four-five."

"We may need the extra time to sort out whatever

has happened here," said Spock, sitting back from

his viewer and looking puzzled. "I think,

Captain, that you should see this." Even without that

unprecedented request for a second opinion, his

expression and tone of voice were already sufficiently

unusual to have Jim out of his seat and up to the science

station. Spock touched controls, and schematics

scrolled across the monitors, but none of the output

made sense. Jim looked at one particular power

con

sumption readout and then back at the main

viewscreen, frowning. "I have restored full power

to all of the science sensors," Spock said, "and

correlated with the information available in the main ship's

computer concerning this class of Klingon vessel, but

there are more anomalies than matching data. This is

most unusual. And more unusual still, despite the

Klingon vessel's nominal crew complement of

five hundred thirty, I can pick up life

signs for only eight."

McCoy had emerged from the turbolift as

Spock was speaking, and now he peered over the

Vulcan's shoulder at the display whose readings

mirrored those of a m edical tricorder.

He tapped its screen, an irritable tapping he

regarded as the last remedy for recalcitrant

electronics when all else has failed. "Have you

tried reading for non-Klingon life-forms?" he said.

"Yes, Doctor, I have. To no effect. The

possibility of rebellion or theft by a servitor

race has already occurred to me."

"And what about disease?"

"This unit has detected the life signs of

eight Klingons, all in perfect health. Unless

they are the fully recovered survivors of some

strange plague, I see no reason to assume

illness aboard this ship"-Spock evidently saw

McCoy's next question coming-"or any accident

involving biological or chemical weapons."

Bones humphed and shrugged his shoulders. "It's

damned strange, whatever's behind it."

"Stranger even than that," said Uhura.

6'Strange in what way, Uhura?" Jim

asked.

"Captain, as you requested, I ran image

enhancement on the Klingon ship before putting it through to the

Dekkani Council. Most of that was just 117

additional detail work, but I've been

processing the residual signal and ...

well, it's done something very peculiar to the Klingon's

outline. On the main screen now."

Even with full magnification and the

resolutionboosting circuitry already built into the

Enterprise's main viewer, a battle cruiser

at a distance of some twelve light-hours was still an

infinitesimal speck from which the viewer could only

infer details. It had done the best it could,

assembling the usual twenty points of similarity

against whichever silhouette in its memory banks was

a closest match and then generating a

computer-corrected image based on that assumption.

It was only when Uhura had cross-checked that she

discovered there was more to this particular Klingon battle

cruiser than the viewscreen's cursory first glance

suggested. Much more ... "What the ... ?" Jim

stared at the scout ship riding piggyback on the

battle cruiser and tried with no success at all

to work out what function it might serve by being there. He

turned back to his science officer, who was studying

the screen with an expression of mild interest that

usually concealed intense curiosity. "Any

opinions, Spock?" "At present, Captain,

my opinions are uninformed and consequently of little

use. However, interrogation of the library

computer should presently alleviate the situation, if

only by providing data for enhanced guesswork."

"At least it starts to explain the limited life

signs," Bones said. "Except that there are no

known Klingon scoutclass vessels with a crew of

less than twelve," Jim put in. "This one's

still running light on personnel, and it doesn't

explain the cruiser underneath."

"Captain, the computer now indicates several

explanatory possibilities," said Spock.

He brought the 118

data up on his department monitor and raised one

eyebrow at what he saw there. "Fascinating."

"How so?"

"I ran only a very fast and shallow inquiry

scan in search of similarly attached vessels,

Captain, and yet five of the examples the computer

provides are of Earth origin; they cover a

period from the third to the seventh decades of the

twentieth century, and ... one of them involves a

ship known as Enterprise. his

"Captain, I'm getting a transmission in

clear from the Planetary Council. Will you reply?"

Uhura's voice cut through the amused confusion in

Jim's head; part of his mind was insisting that

Spock had just made a joke, while the rest was

refusing to believe any such thing. At least this news

was sensible.

"What message?" He looked toward Uhura.

"And what sort of language9" The comin chief

laughed softly. "Very polite language, for a

change. They want to speak to Admiral

I "irk."

"Do they indeed?" Jim wasn't sure how

to take this being referred to by his full rank had

invariably meant trouble in the past, and if some

Federation bureaucrat had gotten involved with the

Dekkan councillors and was starting to throw his weight

around, he would find that weight swung both ways.

"Put them on the screen."

The Klingon battle cruiser disappeared in

shimmer and became ... ... A Klingon face.

Jim had already returned to the center seat and

composed himself to receive whatever message secessionists

transmitted to admirals. McCoy had not.

Instead he stared at the image on the screen and sat

down hard on the nearest thing convenient.

"Doctor," Spock said very calmly, "that is

probably 119

not the best method of input through a

keyboard. Move, please." It had been one of

those oversights in a busy operations schedule what

with getting down to orbit, organizing the landings,

arranging when and how to evacuate DPG and Federation

personnel without either offending the Dekkani or

risking injury to anyone involved, Jim realized

nobody had gotten around to advising the chief

medical officer of just exactly what the

inhabitants of Dekkanar were.

Kirk took a longer breath than was

absolutely necessary to begin a conversation, and let it out

again slowly before he felt entirely capable of

speaking to the face on the screen. It belonged to a

ferociously white-whiskered old Dekkan male

whose forehead, while lacking the lobster-back ridge

of a pure Imperial race Klingon, was still

sufficiently knobbed and furrowed for the family

likeness to be unsettlingly plain. "You are the

Kirk Admiral, the fleet commander, said the old

Dekkan. "I am Admiral James T.

Kirk, yes. But when I command a ship my title

is Captain."

"S. was Hot yellow-irised eyes stared from the

screen for a moment, then turned away as their owner

relayed the information to someone else beyond

range of the video pickup.

Jim could distinguish at least three additional

voices and wondered when he would see the three

faces, assuming one of the voices wasn't

originating on the incoming Klingon warship.... He

muted the mike on his own pickup and glanced quickly

over one shoulder at Uhura. "What about the

battle cruiser? Transmissions, energy

surges, anything?"

Uhura checked the comms console and shook her

head. "Communication silence, sir." She looked

at the viewer, where the white-haired Dekkan was still

in discussion with his off-screen companions, and 120

tapped controls on her board at top speed.

"Voice analysis and the ambient sound of this

transmission indicate that all four voices

originate from the same point source."

"Well done, Uhura!" Jim's mouth stretched

into a brief, tight grin. "I am Varn Chief

Councillor, -- said the old Dekkan, coming back

on line and making Jim freeze the last remnant

of grin from his face, "and I am Varn Political

Leader. You will address the council and the party through

me. -

Jim stared at him for several seconds,

expressionless and saying nothing, while he sifted his

own immediate and irritable response out of the more

diplomatic statement that the situation required.

"Councillor Varn, I need say no more than was

said when our ships first entered orbit. Our purpose

is to escort the Federation personnel expelled from

Dekkanar to safe haven aboard our ships and then

to leave."

"Your ships are military. You came with

soldiers. "Our ships are armed, yes, but they are

not military. They are exploration vessels that are

often required to explore dangerous and unknown

territory. Their weapons are defensive."

"And the soldiers?" Vam's old voice grew

sharp. "Will you say that soldiers are not military?"

"I do say it. They are not soldiers. Their job

is to defend our people against those of your people who would use

violence. Or do you deny the existence of the group

calling themselves the Phalange for Dekkan

Independence?"

"PDI is a gang of bandits. Their title is

grandiose, their intention no more than theft. They do not

represent the council or the party. -- "But the

council and the party have said they cannot protect Federation

personnel against these ... 121

bandits. Therefore the Federation must act to protect

its own." "With soldiers?"

"With whatever is necessary. At present, with nothing more

than men and women in uniform. Our present

regulations forbid these uniformed crew members

to carry weapons until weapons are needed."

"Soldiers without weapons? This isfoolish.

"Less foolish than causing hurt or death

by accident, Chief Councillor Varn." Jim

shifted in his seat, the movement of a man bored with

pointless talk and intending to bring it to an end. "If

there is no more to be said than this, which has all been

said before, then I and my ship have work to do."

"Wait!"

Aha. Jim lifted his hand clear of the cutoff

switch and looked back at the screen with an

expression of studied disinterest. "Kirk

Admiral, what of this new ship reported to be

entering our system?" "That is a part of our work,

Councillor. It is a warship of the Klingon

Empire, and it has no business in this galactic

sector, much less this system."

"Kiingons. . . ?" The councillor's voice

was a case study in innocence. "Why would Klingons

come here at this time?"

"Perhaps they heard of Dekkanar's falling-out with the

Federation and wish to offer protection to a nonaligned

world against potential invaders," said Jim with a

saccharine smile. "Perhaps the form of that protection will

be an offer to join the Klingon Empire. Perhaps they

were invited." Councillor Varn stared at him, and the

heat went from the Dekkani's eyes until they

looked like chips of muddy topaz. They looked,

thought Jim, like the eyes of someone realizing he just

might have made a 122

mistake. Like someone who might want to speak quite

soon to one of the diplomats at present leaving his

planet. Well, let him ask for the meeting-but not

right now. "We will doubtless speak of this again,

Councillor. For the present, good day." He

turned away from the screen and only then said

clearly, "Kirk out.

"Uhura, standing order for Communications all

transmissions originating from the surface of

Dekkanar will be monitored as usual, but no

trans- mission from the Planetary Council will be

acknowledged or replied to until further notice."

"Noted and logged, sir. And if they or the

Klingons attempt to open communication with each other

... T"

"Jam the frequency and let me know at once."

"Sir." She worked a moment at the main console,

then tabbed an activation toggle. "Jamming

circuitry is enabled." Uhura smiled wearily.

"Of course, that does mean there'll be another alarm

going off."

"One more won't make much difference on this ship,"

said Jim. "And I think we could go back to standard

illumination." The bridge lights flicked back

to normal. "Better. The ship will remain at

condition one, but there'll be time enough for a full red alert

when we reach intercept range. Until then I

prefer to see what I'm doing. And now, Mr.

Spock"-he returned to the science station-"let's

see what you've got. I@. Spock touched

controls on the library computer, bringing its memory

buffer back on line. "The parameters I set,

Captain, were most basic known historical

examples of a similar arrangement between two ships.

Once fed into the computer, these parameters were of

necessity expanded to include atmosphere craft.

It was at this point that the search began to prove

successful."

"You said there were five examples from Old Earth,

Spock. I'm curious." "Most are

military," said Spock, "which is hardly

surprising. During the twentieth century the

military had first demand on governmental funds."

"As usual," said Bones, standing off to one side and

speaking almost to himself Jim glanced quickly sideways,

but his science officer let the comment pass as one not

needing a reply.

"The first example and the last, however, are

civilian, and are, I believe, of as much

significance as all the others combined. Especially

the final example."

Spock pressed a control and fell silent,

allowing the dry, synthesized voice of the library

computer to speak for him. "Nineteen thirty-eight,"

it said. "Operator, Imperial Airways,

London, England. Short Stwenty-three

Empire class flying boat Mercury carrying

floatplane Maia. Purpose extended-range

mail delivery. First nonstop transatlantic

mail flight. "Nineteen forty-four. Operator,

Deutsches Luftwaffe, Germany. Unmanned

Junkers Ju-Eighty-eight bomber carrying

Messerschmitt Bf-One-oh-nine or

Focke-Wulf Fw-One-ninety fighter. Name

Mistel Two combination. Purpose

crude guided missile, forward fuselage converted

to carry three-point-eight-tonne shaped-charge

demolition warhead."

"Stop," said Jim. He turned to Spock.

"How old is the K'Vinga class of battle

cruiser? Old enough to warrant using one like that?

To carry a warhead?"

"Doubtful, Captain. Latest intelligence

reports indicate that, like Starfleet, the Klingons

have a policy of constant upgrade and

refit-except of course when ships are sold to the

Romulan Empire, and stripping out appears more the

order of the day. It is not beyond speculation that there is

a Klingon engineer with talent equal to that of Mr.

Scott, since the effective result to many of their

vessels is similar to what has 124

been done to the old Constitution class

Enterprise-a new ship built on the structure

of the old. I find it unlikely that any situation

could arise where this ship would be used as a disposable

weapon. Almost certainly the same applies

to Klingon vessels."

"Point taken," said Jim.

"Nineteen-fifties," the library computer

continued. "Operator, USAF

Strategic Air Command, America. Convair

B-Thirty-six carrying Grumman FF-One

Goblin hook-recoverable parasite fighter within

aft bomb bay. Purpose point defense during

mission. Also Convair B-Thirty-six carrying

Republic FE-IGHTY-FOUR-F

trapeze-launched fighter semi-scabbed onto

bomb bay. Purpose extended-range recon

missions.

"Nineteen seventy-seven. Operator, National

Aeronautics and Space Administration. Boeing

Sevenforty-seven Shuttle Carrier Aircraft

carrying Orbiter Enterprise-One-oh-one.

Purpose ferry flights, airworthiness tests,

and manned free-flight tests during initial

phase of space shuttle program."

But the Klingons saw no need for orbiters or for

research programs and no need for any of the rules

and regulations that bound the Federation. "What about our

intruder? What category does he fall into?"

"That thing's military, Jim," said Bones.

"Otherwise it wouldn't be here. It wouldn't dare be

here!"

"The K'Vinga class has never been anything but

military, Doctor," Spock said.

"However, some of its later variants have converted their

troop-carrying capability into research space.

Although I can do nothing more than surmise from the information

presently available," he said, evidently picking

his words with care, "I suspect it is possible that the

Klingon fleet has been experimenting with fully

com125

puterized onboard systems and that we are on

course to meet one of their prototypes."

"You mean an M-Five clone?" Jim and

Bones said much the same thing at once, both men

simultaneously imagining the devastating consequences

should another central command computer-this one programmed

by Klingons-decide to run amok.

Spock looked at the schematics readout and

shook his head. "More probably a ZD-EIGHT

modification. The most reliable information available

at present indicates the Klingons' continuing

refusal to adopt centralized artificially

intelligent units."

"They don't trust smart machines,"

translated McCoy. "I always thought there was something

good about the Klingons, if you only looked hard

enough."

"I suspect that the smaller craft

contains the control systems," Spock continued, "and the

battle cruisees remote-command structure is

designed around them. Although the Klingons are

scarcely safety-conscious and are therefore

notoriously profligate with lives during the testing

of new equipment, it seems most likely that the

scout detaches itself before passing maneuvering

instructions to the cruiser."

Bones gestured toward the viewscreen. "if that

thing's new, Spock, then it's been kept

secret. You know the Klingons well enough they

might not have much concern for safety, but when it comes

to security they're red hot. So what in hell is

that ship doing here?" Jim was staring at the screen as

if hoping to read some hidden answer from it; he

didn't need to hear Spock's reply. He had

pulled enough science station duty in his younger days to know his

way around the monitors, and those energy readings had

niggled at him. In a ship of the battle cruiser's

size the curve had indicated no more than shutdown

decay, and even when the crewed scout had been added

to the equa-

tion its energy readings were borderline

residual. Even the vessel's motion was no more

than an unpowered freefall into the gravity

well of 4725 Cancri, and it was a bad system

to enter at the best of times, never mind blind and unable

to maneuver.

Something most unpleasant had happened to that

ship-those ships, he corrected absently-and as had

so often been the case, Enterprise just happened to be

right on the spot. Except that right now the spot was

six-plus hours away.

Jim stifled a yawn, and realized with pleasant

surprise that he actually had some time to call his own

before they reached the interception point. Six-plus

hours of leisure. Enough time to catch up on at least

some of the sleep he'd missed.

"Uhura, if you could log me off shift,

please?" he said, and headed determinedly for the

turbolift. "And fend off Councillor Vam if

he gets importunate. I'll speak-to him

later ... this morning, isn't it?" "Later tonight,

Jim," growled Bones. "You're two shifts out.

Leave it. Go, go." He restrained himself from

actually making shooing motions, but not by much.

"Throwing the captain off his bridge is mutiny,

Doctor," said Jim, but the effect was spoiled

by another huge yawn. "Spock, you have the conn

again. Good morn-ah, g'night, everyone."

"Good night, sir," said Spock and the rest, but

until Jim was in the lift and for once on the way

to bed without any interruptions, he didn't really

believe them.

The bridge was dark, and almost silent. Kasak

could hear only the sound of his own breathing and, as if in

the far distance, unless he adjusted the gain on his

helm headset's receptors, the voices of

Askel and Aktaz as they worked on the remote

transmitters. He 127

and the rest of the crew had donned environmental

suits at Askel's suggestion and without argument.

Kasak loathed the all-over constriction and the strange

smells that always lurked in the suits no matter how

new or how clean they were, but the alternative

meant being unprotected if the central

life-support system decided to shut down. He

and his crew had all served long enough to have seen the

aftermath of an environmental accident, and it had never

seemed a sufficiently pleasant way to die for

any of them to find running such a risk appealing.

For all that, Kasak tried not to breathe through his

nose more often than necessary.

It was only after he had suited up that he began

to realize just how long six hours of

shutdown was likely to seem. Complaining would be of no

use; the work had to be done or Hakkarl would

rapidly become just one more piece ofjunk that had

left the imperial yards with such high hopes and never

come back. He did not much relish the prospect of

returning to Thamar without the major portion of his

command. Still less did he like the idea of continuing with his

scheme for the planet Dekkanar in only a scout

ship, lacking the battle cruiser's destructive

potential. He did not intend to use his weapons,

of course; the whole point of the plan was to entice

Federation ships into firing first, thus outraging t he

Organians. But no captain in the Klingon

Imperial Navy felt anything except unease

without considerable-and preferably overwhelming

comfirepower at his disposal. Kasak glared at the

blank monitors, the useless sensors, the dead

screen, and curled his lips back from the points of his

teeth. This enforced blindness, not knowing who or what was out

there, was unsettling in view of what navigational

intelligence had said about traverse of the Dekkan

system. Before systems shutdown, Navigator

Khalen had triple-checked their pro128

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

jected route for debris and had

pronounced it clear. Khalen had been most

cautious before making his announcement, and with good

reason Kasak had informed him, in front of the rest

of the crew, that even a minor collision would prove

fatal-for him, even if for nobody else. That had

been two hours ago. The navigator was still

alive, and the ships were undamaged except for whatever

Askel and the engineer had been doing down among

Tazhat's electronic entrails. Kasak

snorted softly, regretting it a moment later as

one of those in-suit aromas reminded him of its

presence. He began punching up the codes to access

the first-flight Captain's Log on his pad

screen, then augmented his previous observations about

whoever in Design Engineering had been responsible

for the intership data link. He had no idea when he

would deliver his final report, but when he did-he,

Kasak, the captain whose stratagem had acquired

an entire planet for the Empire-that data-link

designer would be finished. And not merely so far as his

career was concerned. He would be terminated. Kasak

had done it before. On one occasion he had been so

enraged that he had simply drawn his duty sidearm

and disintegrated the offending designer where he stood

gaping across the bridge. After that incident

had been passed around, design engineers had grown

very skilled at devising reasons not to accompany

Kasak sutai-Khornezh on the proving flights

of their own ships. He closed the file, closed his

eyes for just a moment, and then locked off the pad

screen. "Zan Askel, progress report,"

he said to the microphone array within his helm.

"Blue lights, Captain, was came Askel's

voice. "Progress continues. We are testing

each transceptor for individual homing as we

unlock and recalibrate. From Aktaz. completion

estimate is now reduced by point129

three hours. We will advise when the systems can

be set for warm-up cycle. Askel out. his

Kasak made a mental note to add positive

notations to each officer's file. Possibly even

a commendation. But that, and indeed anything else stored in

his own memory, would stay there until all of this was

over. Mental notes were easier to change than hard

copy, and awards one day could so easily become

demerits, or worse, the next. It made the

life of a captain so much simpler if the

justification of changed reports didn't need to be

done in public....

Wearing heavy-duty work coveralls and a

clear-view visor, Science Specialist

Askel took care to keep his facial muscles

well under control even when Aktaz wasn't

actually looking in his direction. Inside, however,

he was laughing. Because both of them were full commanders and

neither was in the mood to argue seniority based on

date of graduation, they had di- vided the labor

equally. It meant in essence that Aktaz performed the

engineering tasks of freeing the transceptor heads

and installing the new signal-seeker hardware. After

that, the more ticklish operation of recalibrating and

cross-checking fell to Askel. It was hardly such

heavy work as lugging the electronic power units in

and out of their location slots-an awkward and often

dangerous business in zero-G, when their mass was

far less controllable than just their simple weight-but

it was boring, repetitive, and, given the captain's

reaction to less than perfect work, just as dangerous.

That, at least, was what Askel had said. For an

Imperial Intelligence operations master it was also the

perfect opportunity to set things up in preparation

for whatever the future might hold.

Askel had already decided that his most immediate

advantage lay in Kasak's scheme for personal

and 130

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

political advancement. Perhaps the captain meant

to capture Dekkanar by double-bluffing both the

Federation and the Organians-a plan so elegant that

Askel was almost eager to see it succeed. Or perhaps

Kasak simply intended to turn privateer and gain

wealth and glory by becoming a thorn in Starfleet's

flank.

Still, the Thought Admirals of the Advanced

Strategies Board might object to any or all

of Kasak's plan. That was why the sternmost data

transceptor had been programmed not just with the

ability to home on its mate in Hakkarl's hull

but also with an override that enabled it to transmit

messages from Askel's science board on

Tazhat without any tiresome need to go out through

Communications. The installation would operate quite

normally until he cut in his override, and that would

act only for the nanosecond required by a

tightbeam tachyon squirt. Since the aberration would

show as nothing more than a brief signal fluctuation,

nobody else would know. Aktaz certainly wouldn't

mention it, least of all to this captain whose view of

shoddy workmanship was already notorious, and Askel

himself didn't intend to breathe a word. Not that

the thing was any more than theoretical until the mains

were back on line and he had a chance to test it.

But at least it was there.

The chimes at midnight pulled Jim out of a

sound sleep and back to the realization that he had dozed

off facedown with his uniform and boots still on. And his

mouth open. Yech. It felt as if someone had been

storing used dilithium crystals in it. He sat

up and swatted groggily at the wake-up's off

switch. There was no doubt at all in Jim's mind

that another six hours' sleep would have been just what the

doctor ordered-indeed, just what Bones had been

ordering.

At least he was awake enough to suppress two-way

vision on the communicator before opening a channel

to the bridge. Spock was on the other end, looking as

usual annoyingly crisp and well rested. "Good

morning, Mr. Spock," said Jim, hoping his

voice sounded more the way his first officer appeared than

the way its owner felt. "Current situation

report, please."

"Good morning, Captain, was said Spock formally.

"I have continued sensor scans of variable intensity,

but the intrud tilde r ship still reads as

virtually dead on all scopes. Enterprise is

continuing to close, with a present estimated intercept

time offorty-seven minutes. was He paused an

instant to recheck something, then stood up and moved to the

science station. "Reduction in range has enabled me

to confirm that this is indeed an augmented modification

of the Ktinga class cruiser. Withinforty-five

minutes, therefore, Enterprise will be entering the two

hundred twenty thousand kilometer extreme firing

perimeter of their main disrupter batteries. Do you

wish to hold off out of range? Given the intruder's

present course and heading, it would be simple to run

parallel with him for"-Spock glanced sideways at

another monitor- "at least three hours before

further action became necessary. was A ndfor you to get some

more of the sleep you need. The Vulcan had said nothing

of the sort and would never have dreamed of doing so, but his

suggestion was clear enough. Jim thought about it for a

moment, then dismissed Spock's offer. Even though

he still felt in need of a shower, a shave, and a fresh

uniform, his brain had kicked itself back up to full

running speed and there seemed small purpose in

letting it relax back into the warm dark for any

shorter time than the six-hour absolute minimum

he needed to fully recover.

"Thanks, Spock, but no. There's no point in

letting the Klingons get farther into the system than

neces132

sary," he said, more briskly. That briskness

helped put another thought into his head, one that had

been wandering around as he fell asleep and had

evidently been biding its time ever since. "Is there

any reason to believe that this ship is a derelict?"

"Thirty-two-point-four-four percent

probability, said Spock, "based on scanning

observations that suggest the existing crew are

presently incapable of operating the vessel by themselves.

The ship is following an uncontrolled course

into a populated system and toward an inhabited

planet whose present traffic patterns are in

excess of those laid down as safety- minimal.

Under the current laws ofspace salvage, all of

thesefacts constitute sufficient reason to consider and

treat the offending vessel not merely as salvable but as

an actual and continuing hazard. Of course,

acquisition by salvage of a military vessel that

is the property of a known sovereign power is

somewhatfrowned upon. Even if we can somehow persuade

the entire crew to request political asylum in

the Federation, we will be obliged by law to hand

the ships back to the Klingon Empire. was Spock

paused. "Eventually. -

"Spock, did you ever consider a legal career?"

"No, Jim, I did not. -- There was a smile in

the voice if not on the face. "Vulcan law,

while precise and elegant, has always been less

aesthetically challenging than my present career, and

as far as Earth's legal practices are

concerned"-Spock shrugged, a very small,

massively dismissive rise and fall of one

shoulder- "A system where parties hire

professional exponents of argument, and where those who

can afford to hire the best, most skillful or indeed

most persuasive arguers are most likely to win

any given case regardless of its actual merit,

strikes me as singularly lacking in logic. -

And I always thought he just didn't like court133

martials, thought Jim. Well, there go several

thousand miles of b ooks. "Thank you, Spock.

No further questions. I'll be there in fifteen

minutes."

"Captain on the bridge," announced the duty

comm officer as James T. Kirk-looking and

feeling much more like a starship captain-stepped out of the

turbolift.

"Magnification up three points, pan right

to left along the command pod and boom," Spock was

saying.

"Thank you, Mr. Mahase," Jim said to the

communieations officer. "Log me in, please."

He looked at the Klingon warship on the

viewscreen, its hull crosshatched with the amber

rectangles of camera angles, and then at his

science officer. "Are you directing or producing this

one, Mr. Spock?" The Vulcan vacated the

center seat. "Neither, Captain. Otherwise I would

have called on Mr. Freeman's talents. These

are visual records for Starfleet."

Jim glanced at the ominous shape filling the

screen as he sat down, scribbling on the duty

pad Spock handed him. "Ah. Of course."

Another glance at the battle cruiser. "Yes, that

thing most certainly has the potential for hostility.

Any further contact with its crew?" "Mr.

Mahase?" said Spock.

"Nothing whatsoever, Mr. Spock, Captain,"

said the Eseriat. "When Commander Uhura went off

shift she left a comprehensive list of suggested

approaches and analyses that she had already tried and

which needed to be repeated. I regret

to admit that I experienced as little success as she.

I think they're either deaf or dead," he finished

irritably, "or doing a good impression of it."

"Not dead at least." Spock flashed up the

life-sign sensor on the main screen. "Still

eight, still healthy,

although deafness is not beyond the bounds of possibility,

as a side effect of explosive decompression."

Jim studied the Klingon ship, or more

accurately, ships, since a slight alteration in

approach vectors was giving a clearer view of the

scout riding on the cruiseesprimaryhull.

"Magnification up seven," he said. "Let's

see what we can see."

Whatever else the high-mag scan revealed, it

showed no trace of the structural damage normally

associated with a hull blowout no ruptured

plates, no fans of frozen air around the point of

venting. And yet ... And yet there was that lack of

energy readings, and the life sips that suggested too

small a crew even for the scout ship alone.

Theories jostled for prominence in Jim's mind, as

they had doubtless jostled in Spock's-with as little

apparent success. More and more he kept coming back to the

library computer's examples, trying

to force their historical realities into some shape that

would fit modem uncertainty. Might this vessel have

been designed as a long-range ferry similar to the

sleds employed by Vulcans, something more capable of

self-defense than a warp shuttle and perhaps intended

for high-ranking imperial officials? Hardly.

If a Starfleet admiral needed to travel any

great distance within the Federation, he used an existing

vessel, and if his mission was delicate or the

territory dangerous, he used something like the

Enter-" prise, rather than a specialized ship that

shouted its function and its occupant to even the most

casual observers. There was no reason to believe that

a Klingon Thought Admiral would act any

differently comalth the speculation had a convoluted

entertainment value of its own. If the scout ship

wasn't a double-range courier, which in any case was

unnecessary with warp technology; and if it wasn't

riding a flying bomb, which was improbable; and if it

wasn't some means of giving the 135

cruiser additional protection, which the K't'inga

needed like a cat needs pajamas-then what in

blazes was it?

It's something controlled by computer, and the smaller

ship has come along as an ohserver.

That thought came back up out of the tangle of

discarded notions and seemed to bounce off the front of

his brain with a flat solidity that Jim felt sure

was almost audible. It wasn't the only

possibility, but it was certainly less unreasonable

than most of the others, in practical terms at

least.

It was unreasonable in a great many other ways,

however, especially when the one considering it had suffered

more than his fair share of problems with

megalomaniacal computers. Daystrom's M-5

had been only one of them, and far from the worst. There

had been too many others. V'ger, that unpleasant

echo of NOMAD, was the most recent. To be coming

into firing range of something with the same potential, but

programmed with a Klingon military mind-set, was more

than disturbing; it was downright scary. James Kirk

had never been ashamed to admit to fear-for his friends, for

his crew, for his ship, and sometimes for himself, at least

privately. He was afraid now, for all of those

things and more. If this robot battle cruiser somehow

reactivated and was subjected to the same

provocations around Dekkanar as had been flung at

the rescue ships of Operation Backtrack, Jim

could imagine how it would respond. And the

requirements of General Order 12 wouldn't mean

a damned thing.

Granted, Spock had talked about the Klingon

distrust of artificial intelligence and machines with the

capacity to make their own decisions, but facts

obtained by espionage could be incorrect, out of

date, or the result of disinformation. The Vulcan

had also 136

suggested that the scout ship might be some kind of

master controller. If it was then it would be better for

all concerned-perhaps even the Klingons, considering that their

new baby had apparently thrown some sort of

tantrum already-if Enterprise took the whole thing

into tow. The only problem seemed to be in letting those

eight Klingons know just what was going on. The

situation around 4725 Cancri was quite troublesome enough

without starting some sort of panicky small war out here

on the rim. Jim then considered towing first, boarding

second, and communicating last of all-once it had

been established that communication was possible. Jim

began wondering what sort of strain the

Enterprise's tractor beams could take, then

decided his chief engineer should be up here; no need

to set up the briefing room for what looked like one

of the quicker tactical discussions.

"Engineering, this is the captain." It wasn't

Scotty who answered, but Roz Liddle, one of the

new draft of lieutenants. "My compliments

to Commander Scott, Lieutenant," said Jim, "and

I'd be grateful if he could drop whatever

miracle he's working on and get up to the bridge.

Kirk out."

The turbolift doors hissed open behind him and

McCoy strode out. "Since you won't come to the

doctor, I guess the doctor will just have to come to you,"

he said with mock severity. "Yeah. You look

better. But I've got you rescheduled for that

checkup later today."

"Later today is fine, Bones, just so long as it's

not right now. Chief of security to the bridge,

please."

"Dammit, Jim, what did I do wrong this

time?"

"Security's not coming for you. I'm assembling a

boarding party," Jim said over his shoulder, then

swiveled the center seat around to face McCoy.

"Bones, get someone from Medical with knowledge of

Klingon physiology. Have him rig a suitable

medical pouch and then get him to the

transporter room." "Let me get this straight

you're sending a boarding party over there?" "Only

eight crew aboard, and they evidently can't control

it. Damn thing's a hazard to system traffic."

Bones took a deep breath and grimaced

ruefully. "I took the time to read up on what those

battle cruisers can do, Captain, and believe

me, that ship is a hazard to a damn-sight more than

traffic!"

"Recalibration complete, Captain," said

Askel, stalking onto Tazhat's bridge as

though it were his ship and not Kasak's. "Blue lights

all across the board91

The captain let that small impudence pass, at

least for the present-although his mind noted it down against the

commendation he had been considering for his science

specialist. Time would tell which one would be erased and

which set down for Command to see. Certainly Askel

seemed confident enough in the quality of his work, for he

had taken his visor off and tucked it beneath one arm.

Kasak noted that as well; it was a flamboyant

gesture worth remembering, even though by rights

Askel should have spoken privately with the captain so

that such a gesture might first have been his own.

Perhaps he is ambitious after all, thought

Kasak, and endeavoring to enhance his reputation among the

crew. No matter. At least, not yet. And not on

this ship.

"Power has not yet been restored," Kasak said

aloud, mildly critical after a meaningful glance

at the still-dark chair repeater screens. "If the

one's statement is correct, then why not? Explain

this to me, zan Askel." Kasak

sutai-Khomezh was never so dangerous as

when he sounded patient and understanding. Too many

subordinates had fallen into the error of assuming that

because, against all reason and expectation, their captain

appeared calm, a mistake or breach of

regulations had been overlooked. No Klingon

captain ever overlooked anything of the sort. "It is

for the one to order restoration of power," said Askel,

"and for others to obey that order."

"S." Kasak nodded in sage agreement, but

inside he was showing his teeth in a smile that was more

than half a snarl. Askel had not shown such

careful respect for the privileges of rank after the

external check. Then he had addressed Krynn

even though he had known the captain was also present

on the bridge, and without needing or requesting further

clearance she had begun the battle

cruiser's power-up sequence. Askel could as

easily have spoken to her now, or to Kasak, by way

of the comm array all wore within their suit helms or

their visors; and he could just as easily have advised the

captain that his ship was not in fact evacuated to hard

vacuum, instead of which he had chosen to make a

dramatic persona l entrance. It had been a good

attempt on the first officer's part, to impress and,

an instant later, to cover his mistake. Neither had

worked, both knew it, and honor was satisfied.

For the moment.

Kasak unsealed his own helm, removed its

headset, and then opened a shipwide channel on his

chair communicator. "All stations, commence

all-system warm-up. On my command, action,

affirm action."

"Acting," said a chorus of voices, and data

displays all over the ship came glowing back

to active status.

"And beam a security team in here. was Jim

indicated the command pod of the Bird of Prey on a

three-view projection.

Security Chief Tomson studied the

diagram, then operated controls to run through its

deck plan. "I'd suggest another here,

in the engineering section," she said. "Just in case

somebody has second thoughts about being taken in tow."

She smiled the icy smile that had become her

trademark, a smile that had all the humor leached

out of it. "Warp drives can be useful to a

saboteur."

"Two teams of twelve, then, and a medic with each

one. Do you approve, Bones?"

"As much as I've ever approved dealing with the

Klingons, yes." Bones didn't look at all

happy with the arrangement, but he was putting his best

face on it.

",Captain, we're now on a parallel

course and starting convergence to transporter range."

Sulu followed the information with a tactical

schematic. Behind the overlay, the Klingon battle

cruiser and its scout grew steadily larger on the

screen.

"Yon's a big bugger, Captain," observed

Scotty. He had all the politely leashed

enthusiasm of a hungry man staring at a roast of

beef and knowing he was going to have first hack at it.

"Can the engines and the tractors handle it?"

"Handle that wee thing?" Funny how sizes

change depending on what's being called

into question, thought Jim, and hid a smile. "Och aye,

no problem. It's well under the critical handlin'

mass."

"All right, then, people, let's move it. Ingrit,

you and your people use the emergency transporters on

Q deck; that way we'll put all of you over at

once. If memory serves, Mr. Scott's people

used to be quite good at slipping things unnoticed onto

Klingon ships." He returned the smiles,

noticing that even Tomson's had a touch of

amusement in it this time, and then went back to being

serious. "Set phasers on 140

heavy stun-and remember, this is a rescue, not a

raid."

"Aye, sir, noted and logged. I should-was

A siren began to yelp, and Jim turned quickly,

looking toward Uhura in case it was the jammer she

had installed. Her shake of the head was only half

completed before the bridge lights snapped back to red

and all the other alarms came whooping in. Jim

looked at the screen, at the suddenly climbing

energy output that could only mean a main drive

powering up, and immediately he knew

The Klingon ships were coming back to life.

There were no dramatic open-handed slaps

at the controls in the arm of the center seat; the time for that

was past. Instead, Kirk's index finger came down

very lightly, opening the one internal channel that meant

something right now. "This is the captain," he said, his

voice unnaturally calm and sounding huge over the

intercom. "Red alert, red alert, all hands

to battle stations. Secure for combat maneuvers.

This is not a drill."

Kasak had always thought that to emerge from any form of

blindness was a pleasant thing. He had learned that he was

wrong. When the first thing one saw was a Federation

starship at almost point-blank range, the ignorance

of unsight was to be preferred.

"wIy cha!" he barked over the screeching

klaxons, and glared at the tactical display as at

the naked throat of his worst enemy. The Federation

vessel was already too close, running almost in formation

with Hakkarl and sidling nearer with every second. The

display was running wild as all the sensors on both

his ships came close to overloading it with data-and a

that data had to do with the Starfleet vessel's readiness

for combat. 141

Kasak showed all his teeth. He saw that his own

crew was just as ready, weapons showing lock and

preheat, shields at attack standard.

"baHwI-cha yIghuSo!" He saw Katta's

hand poise over the torpedo controls, fingers spread

wide for volley fire, and the Federation starship pinned

by the triangle of a target lock. They would all go

to the Black Fleet together. And then, as he looked

at death and glory in the maw of the enemy's phasers,

his head cleared and his blood began to cool. "We

want them to shoot at us," he said so that all his

crew could hear. "But in a time and place of our own

choosing, where it will do us the least and them most harm. That

time and place is other than here. Communications

specialist?"

Khitar stiffened at the honor of hearing his title

used in ftill, but remained immobile at his station.

"Standing by," he said. "Open a standard hailing link

to the Starfleet captain99 Khitar was not the only

one to turn and stare, but he was the first to compose himself and

get back to work. "Affirm," he said, his voice

far from steady.

"Yes," said Kasak sutai-Khornezh, and

stretched luxuriously in the command chair. "Before the

Organians decide to interfere, let's have a

cozy little chat.""

"THEY'VE DONE wHATT" snapped

Captain Kirk. Of all the surprises

that had come sneaking up behind him with a sockful of sand

since the mission began, this was one of the most

improbable.

"Opened a hailing frequency, Captain," said

Mahase. Just to be sure, he rechecked the comm

board for a third time. He had made the first two

checks because he hadn't believed his ears, or the

transdator stuck in one of them. "It's a

Federation frequency, too, prefaced with the level

three friendship message and greeting."

"Is that so?" Jim stared at the screen, and the

battle cruiser that filled it. For just the merest

instant he hadn't a notion what to do about the

situation; then command conditioning, years of experience, and

his own wit came back on line. "Reply to them,

Mister; reply, and use level four." He rubbed

his chin thoughtfully. "I'll be damned if I'll

let any Klingon commander out-polite me."

"Yes, sir!"

"If that's the situation, do we stand down from

battle stations, Captain?" "We will do nothing of the

sort!" Jim swiveled his 143

seat around so that he could stare at whoever had

spoken. "Ah yes, Lieutenant Stewart. Bear

in mind, Lieutenant, that the Enterprise

was designed principally for research and exploration.

She can defend herself against attack-but that ship out there

was designed first and foremost to make such attacks.

So why would we want to give up our small

advantage of readiness by standing down?"

"Demonstration of good faith, sir. Indicating

peaceful intent." Larry Stewart looked faintly

uncomfortable to have brought himself to such exalted notice

with what had evidently been the wrong thing to say.

He tried to set matters right. "As per General

Order Twelve, now that communications have been

established-was

"Lieutenant his, Spock said severely, sounding

like what he was, a teacher whose prize pupil was

getting uppity, "it is the captain's place

to interpret regulations, not yours."

"Spock, please." Jim held up one hand in

a gesture for silence that looked more like some sort of

benediction. "We're talking here about doing things by the

book. The lieutenant hasn't seen enough service

to know that books provide guidelines, not rigid

fences."

"If the flexibility of rules is to be a part

of his education, Captain," said Spock, "might I

suggest a tour with Captain North?"

"Noted, Spock." To unfamiliar ears the

Vulcan sounded angry; only Kirk and the small

core of Enterprise veterans knew that Mr.

Spock had deigned to make a joke in public.

"Reply acknowledged, C aptain," said Mr.

Mahase. "The enem- Sorry, sir, the Klingon

commander wishes to speak with you."

"Does he indeed? Then put him on the

screen."

It was the first time that most of the younger crew members

had seen a Klingon of the Imperial race 144

except for those depicted in Mr. Freeman's

sterries of Battle Cruiser Vengeance, and an

entertainment tape, even one that had originated in the

Klingon Empire, had none of the impact of the real

thing. For those accustomed only to holos of the

ordinary-looking fusions, the face that now glowered from

the viewer was A disturbing one. To Jim's more

experienced eye, it had all the characteristics of a line

long kept pure. There was the naked dome of skull

with its high, bony crest, rising above a

swan-back sweep of thick black hair that from in

front had the appearance of horns; the heavy brows

above yellow-irised eyes that burned within their deep

sockets like something lethal hiding under a

shelf of rock; and the coarse beard and whiskers

surrounding a mouth that looked as though it could wear a

smile only if one was surgically inserted. And then

the mouth did smile, in a slow and careful sequence

of muscular contractions, its owner evidently quite

aware that what passed for smiling among humans was very

different from that acceptable to his own people. "Kai

kassai, was the Klingon said in that guttural voice

Jim knew rather too well for comfort. "HoDo

QaSaq jIH. HaQarl QaSaq.

gavanneSo lolaHave gholwIj. HI-JA'NESo

nuqneHave?"

Jim muted his voice-pickup before glancing

toward Spock. "What's wrong with the translator

circuit?" he muttered, trying not to move his mouth;

lip-reading was not unknown in the Federation and among its

opponents. "Hold transmission and repeat on

request," said Spock to the still-open channel. Then

he shut off his own mike. "I took the liberty of

putting comms on a ten-second-plus variable

delay. The Klingon instruments will read it as a

slight signal breakup, requiring no more than a

repetition. If they regi ster it at all. 1

wanted to hear the Klingon commander's introduction for

myself before switching to simultaneous

translation."

As Jim listened to Spock with one ear, he could

hear with the other that the Klingon had also swung

sideways in his command chair and was snapping orders

at someone offscreen. With the translators out, his

words made no sense, but almost certainly he was

tearing several stripes off his own communications

officer.

"And?" Jim asked when a pause in the lecture

seemed to require it. "His manners are

exquisite," Spock said. "Too much so. He

has already employed two honorifics where-excuse

me, Captain-none were appropriate or

required. This approaches the level of insult,

though of the most delicate kind; one that is doubtless

appreciated by his crew, but otherwise unnoticed

because of translator limitations. Therein of course

lies the humor. I caution you not to match him like for

like."

"Match what, Spock? What did he say?"

"He is Captain Kasak," said the Vulcan.

"Kasak of the Hakkarl. was "That's not an unusual

opening; I've picked up similar ones on

Freeman's tapes. Where was the insult?"

"He then said "I am honored

to salute my worthy adversary. Do me the honor

of telling me what you want.""

"Oh. I see. was Jim stared at Spock very

hard. "And he really thinks that he can get away with

that?" He could sense and almost hear the bridge crew

around him; the older hands fizzing with indignation and the

inexperienced wondering what all the fuss was about.

They would learn, in time, that Klingons were seldom this

polite even to one another, except when address-

ing a very highly ranked superior. Using any

form of address so exalted that it became absurd was

always an insult a captain would customarily

promote a slacking ensign to admiral or, far

worse, general, somewhere in the course of a

dressing-down. To do the same to a Federation officer in

the near-certain knowledge that he could not react-because he was

unlikely to speak even basic Tlhinganaase, and

his translator would filter out the subtle nuances that

gave the words their weight-would be a rich jest indeed.

"DaHave choQoylaHla?" said the Klingon

captain, not waiting for anybody's clearance

to resume transmission. "YIS-OV!

qaboQtaHave DI-VFH-OI vIjatIhtaH.

was This time, every translator on the bridge

was active, even though the main comm system was still

switched off. They heard nothing overtly

impolite. "Can you hear me now?" Captain

Kasak said, and then, "I know! To assist you I will

speak the Federation language. was Only those who

knew Klingons of old were able to pick up the

patronizing undertone to his choice of words. James

Kirk kept the way he felt under a perfect,

near-Vulcan control, as Spock stepped forward like

a good first officer and handed him a pad screen. Jim

glanced down at it, and more than ever had to fight

to keep all expression from his face. There were words

on it, but not just the usual data-for-signature.

These words were Klingonese.

"Thank you for that consideration, Captain Kasak,"

said Jim in English. He hesitated for a moment,

just long enough to see the sidelong smirk of

satisfaction start to cross the Klingon's face,

then sprang Spock's trap. "badh JiHave,

lach VITWI was he continued, and though his larynx

immediately sent a note of protest to the pain centers of

his brain, he gave every syllable its full value.

"pup t1hinganII-JQU'HOI naitilde

. wIyqjIW. was 147

Jim cleared his throat daintily and

gave Kasak an amiable smile. There was no

indication on the Klingon's harsh features that what

had been said had registered at all, but his impending

smirk had collapsed into a thin straight line that

left his mouth like the slot of a data-solid reader.

That was proof enough.

"I am honored, but it is not necessary," Jim had

told him. "We understand your Klingon language

perfectly here." It might have been the carefully

placed emphasis or the discovery that his secret

joke was not so secret after all-or it might just have

been that Kasak had pledged himself to speak in the

enemy's tongue and had learned too late that such a

step was now unnecessary and consequently a humiliation.

"Enough of these courtesies," Jim said before the

Klingon could brood long enough to do something they might

all regret. "We're both captains of our

respective ships shouldn't we begin to speak as

such?" Kasak stared at him as though considering something

much more violent than words; then settled back

into his high-backed chair and nodded. "Very well.

We shall indeed speak as captains. But first, one

further ... courtesy. The only one remaining.

Your name and your ship?" "Of course." He would have

thought that Enterprise was already close enough to the

Klingon battle cruiser so that its occupants could

read name and registry from her primary hull.

Evidently not. "My oversight. This is the

Federation Starship U.s.s. Enterprise, and I

am Captain James T. Kirk." The Klingon

jerked upright from his posture of studied indolence as

though someone had run an electrical current through

his chair, and stared from the screen with unsettling

intensity. There was a heat 148

in his eyes that would have been more appropriate had

he been squinting down a gunsight rather than along a

communication link that spanned fifteen kilometers of

empty space.

Jim had never become truly accustomed to the

reactions his name or his ship were prone to create in the

most unlikely circumstances. In their long career

together, he and the Enterprise had left a lot of friends

behind them in a great many different places. They had

left enemies as well, dangerous enemies with long

memories, in places and on planets that he had

no intention of ever visiting again.

And then the moment was past, and Kasak was relaxing

back into his command chair again. To be arrested and

taken in charge for illegal entry by one of the most

notorious ships in Starfleet was

probably enough to give most Klingons a turn for the

worse, reflected Jim. And even without involving

the Organians, it couldn't look good on their

reports. "Captain Kasak, you are doubtless

aware that the star system we call 4725 Cancri

is in a Federationlisted sector," Jim began.

"So why do I find a warship," he paused, then very

deliberately corrected himself, "or rather, two

warships of the Klingon Empire in an area of

space prohibited to them by treaty, by accord, and

by accepted practice?" Kasak stared at him and then

past him, with eyes like yellow flints. "Ask your

Vulcan about the condition of both my ships until

bare minutes ago. was "Kasak," said Spock, and

saluted with spread fingers, refusing to be nettled

by the Klingon's insult. "I am no one's

Vulcan. I hold captain's rank in UFP

Starfleet, and I am science officer of the

Enterprise. was "Two captains. . . was Kasak

muttered something offscreen that the pickup relayed as

"They must be running out of ships. was "I agree with

your contention that your ships were 149

without power when they entered the system perimeter,"

Spock said. "But I state that without power a ship will

continue in the same direction as its last

course set under power. Therefore I reflect my

captain's curiosity as to why a course had been

set toward this system at all."

"Would you accept that this vessel combination suffered a

systems failure during first-flight shakedown?"

From the way he said it, Kasak didn't seem

to care about acceptance or denial, but then both Kirk

and Spock knew how much face-saving was involved in

holding command of a Klingon ship, and accepted the

aggressiveness for no more than what it probably

was posturing to impress subordinates.

"In the case of a new or refitted ship,

Captain," said Jim, "I would accept that almost

anything is possible. But regardless of your shakedown

problems, Captain Kasak," he said, stubbornly

probing for something he felt sure the Klingon was

avoiding, "it still begs the question of why you were heading

toward this system in the first place. For the record,

I should like to hear your explanation of that. his

"Certainly, Captain Kirk." Kasak

looked sideways through the warm and comfortably humid

mists of the bridge, and received immediate nods of readiness

from Askel and from Khitar on Communications.

"Prepare your comm board for a transfer of the distress

signal we received." He watched the

moments of fussing on the Federation ship and heard the

muttered speculations. They have no patience,

Kasak thought. A few seconds more and they will know,

but still they have to debate and wonder what it is I send

them.

"Ready to transmit," said Khitar.

was We are ready to receive your transfer, was said the

gray humanoid who sat behind Kirk and off to the

left in 150

the big, bright circular bridge. Kasak

looked quickly toward him and suppressed yet another

smile. Ready to receive it, yes but to accept it? That

must yet be seen.

"Transmit," he said.

It took less time to do than to say. Almost

immediately after the word of command, Khitar sat back from his

console and announced, "Transmission com-

pleted." Askel leaned over the comm board, did

something to the controls that made lights chase each other

across the readouts, then straightened up and walked over

to his accustomed place just behind the command chair. "Now

it's completed," Askel said, drawing an

inquisitive look from the captain and another from the

communications specialist. "I fed a scramble

signal into it from one of the intership

transceptors and sent a random squirt in the other

direction at the same time. Let the Feds try

to analyze it, if they have five years to spare." With

malevolence in both his face and his voice he added,

"Unless zan Khitar would prefer that I make

cracking our codes a little easier for them?" Khita r

said nothing. Nothing at all.

"Captain Kirk, have you received my

transmission?" said Kasak, taking care not

to smile at the wrong time no matter how he felt

inside. There was a long silence from the bridge of the

Federation ship, but nobody had thought to cut the

visual connection when they shut off the sound, so

Kasak was able to enjoy the spectacle of his

message cassette being passed from hand to hand as

gingerly as if it were coated in one of the more interesting

contact poisons.

Finally Kirk reopened the voice channel. For

many seconds he sat in his chair and stared

alternately at the cassette, at its printed

copy, and at Kasak's face on his own

viewscreen. Meanwhile, the sound link spat and

whistled through the interference of two sets of 151

shields, transmitting nothing of more interest than

the fact that the Federation captain was breathing

hard.

"This, was Kirk said at last, "is a forgery. his

"Then I am scandalized, Captain Kirk, that

I should have come so close to precipitating an

incident because of an untruth."

The Starship captain looked straight at the

viewscreen, and straight out of it, as if he stood

nose to nose with Kasak rather than on his own

bridge. Kasak presumed that this was what was called

a "dirty look." He was not impressed; any

Klingon cadet proctor could do better, and make

it feel worse with the live end of his shock wand.

"Do you really expect me to believe this?" said

Kirk again, after another swift and silent discussion

with his two officers. Kasak still dismissed the

Vulcan as unimportant-why else would he serve

on a ship commanded and crewed by non-Vuleans? The

other, Makhoy-if he was a surgeon

specialist, why had he the name of a soldier?-was

more interesting. He had the fire, the passion, the klin;

and sometimes, for no reason at all, his body moved

like that of a Rom. That fascinated Kasak, because he

had seen Romulans move, both in the cube and in

the Year Games, and while he might have expected

it of the Vulcan, to find a human with the

same kinesics as a Romulan was to find a human

who deserved much closer examination. There was a story

behind Makhoy, more probably several, and given

adequate facilities and sufficient time, Force

Leader Marag could extract them all. "No, I

don't expect you to believe it," said Kasak.

"Then why send it?"

"Because you should have evidence of the false signal that

led us astray." The Federation captain stared toward his

viewer and toward Kasak. He was a worthy

adversary indeed. Kasak had called him so in

jest, but it was true. He was quick, wise, and

difficult 152

to deceive. That would make his final defeat so much the

sweeter. For he would be defeated. Kasak had

sworn it before the naked stars in the instant when the name

of the man and the name of the ship had shown him just what a

gift had fallen into his hands. Kirk would eat

deck scrapings and dust from the soles of Kasak's

boots for every one of the vermin tribbles he had

transported onto Captain Koloth's

cruiser-and even that would not begin to make him suffer as

Kasak sutai-Khornezh had suffered. At the

last he would be denied even the Black Fleet, and

his spirit would wander through cold darkness between the

living and the dead, bewailing its fate for all the years

to come....

Captain Kasak dragged himself out of the dream and

waved one hand idly in the air, as humans did when

they dismissed a matter of small account. "We

picked up a distress call," he said calmly,

daring Kirk to call him a liar to his face. "This

was during the initial exercises for Hakkarl. We

had a ship beneath us that was new and fine, one that would

strike fear into all wrongdoers."

Surgeon Specialist Makhoy made a

snorting sound and hid part of his face behind one hand.

"And even in the Klingon Empire, the one does

not receive warnings of the imminent invasion of an

unprotected planet every day."

"Not unless you listen to your local station, was he

heard Makhoy mumble amid chuckles from behind his

hand.

Kasak chose to let that pass; but the remark and the

ill-timed laughter joined all the other notes in the

locked file at the back of his mind. It would be a

useful lever later, when it came time to learn what

stories Makhoy had to tell. "This planet was in

the Federation sector; but Hakkarl's long-range

scans could

detect no Federation vessel coming to assist.

Therefore we came instead." "Captain, was said

Kirk, "you will excuse me, please. Has it not

been true in the past that the Klingon Empire enters

Federation space only when it sees a chance for

profit or expansion, and preferably both?"

"Thanks to the gdayt glowbugs- Excuse me.

Thanks to the wise and farseeing policies of the

Organian people, the Empire is not at war with the

Federation." Kasak spelled it out as though to a

small and backward child. "Is it not, therefore, the

duty of all to further friendly relations between our two

races by offering whatever assistance is at our

disposal- whenever and wherever it may be required?"

Kirk cleared his throat again, not as he had done

after speaking Klingonese, but in that significant

way Kasak had heard humans use before. He

supposed it might be the eroded remnant of a shout

for attention by the leader of any given group, but now it

merely sounded as if one was announcing to the other that he

felt unwell. "Sofar as offering assistance is

concerned, Captain Kasak, a KT-INGA class

battle cruiser seems like an overenthusiastic

response to me. was He looked again at the

cassette whose message Askel and

Khitar had labored over for almost a day, until it

sounded just right. "And I still don't believe this. Neither

what it says nor where you say it came from."

"Believe it or not, Captain Kirk, we

came here in good faith, and when this new ship

developed faults in the propulsion and

life-support systems, we almost lost our

lives. Allow me and my crew to believe we

came so close to the Black Fleet in the service

of something useful."

"Captain Kasak," suddenly Kirk sounded very

tired, "you could almost be in politics. Ifyour ship

is back to full and proper operation-and my ship's

sensors tell me it is-then I should be grateful

if you 154

and it would make best speed back within the boundaries

of the Klingon Empire. his

"Not quite, Captain Kirk." Kasak noted with

great satisfaction that Kirk rolled his eyes and

concealed a groan, almost as if he knew what was about

to happen. "Since it was a respect for the terms of the

Organian Peace Treaty that brought us here and

placed our lives and our vessel in jeopardy-was

"So you say," muttered Makhoy from behind his

captain. "comthen under the terms of that same

treaty, 1, my crew, and my ship may rest and

resupply at the M-class planet known as

Dekkanar."

"Captain, was said Kirk, 'for some strange

reason I have been expecting that statement from the moment

you opened hailing frequencies. was "Then,

Captain"-Kasak allowed himself a broad smile

that showed the points of his teeth to best advantage-

"since you have had so much time for preparation, I see

no reason why either of us should linger here a moment

longer."

Askel could not believe his own boldness. He had

not only made his first use of the transceptor

override, but he had done so through Communications in

full view of its department head and of the captain.

He had even risked testing Khitar's resolve with

that stupid excuse about the double-random signal, and

he had been proved right. For all his ability-and the very

fact of Kasak's selecting him as crew said

everything that needed saying about that-the communications officer

was lacking in any form of courage. Even though he

had certainly noticed something irregular about the

readback following Askel's signal, he hadn't

dared say anything about it. Either the captain would

respond as he always did when equipment

misbehaved, or Askel would deal with him 155

personally. Having weighed the relative

prospects, Khitar had chosen silence as the

safest course.

That was just as well. Those for whom Askel's

signal was intended were not the ones with whom Captain

Kasak would have wanted to make contact. Not yet,

at least. But it was essential that Imperial

Intelligence be made fully aware of what was

happening here. The message Askel had just

transmitted outlined Captain Kasak's first

intentions, as the captain had relayed them in the

theater to become the protecting power for this planet

once they had thrown the Federation off it, and to so

obtain the planet for the Empire by provoking an

Organian intervention if such became required-but

until then displaying no loyalty to any other than

himself. Now things had changed, and Askel suspected

that the change was not one for the better. Meeting

Starfleet ships had always been a part of Kasak's

plan, that much was beyond question, but meeting this particular

ship and this particular captain had put a different

complexion on the matter. The science specialist

had seen Kasak's reaction to the names of Kirk and the

Enterprise, and though the captain had

covered it instantly and well-well enough at least

to fool those who didn't know him-that reaction had been

enough to make Askel's liver shift in his chest.

Kasak had wanted to kill.

This new attitude had nothing to do with the plan, and

Askel had decided there and then that another message

would have to follow the first if everything was not to fall apart.

Perhaps Kasak would restrain himself, and be satisfied

with the ignominy that would fall on Kirk for the loss of

an entire planet; that revenge would be sweeter

than a simple killing, re- flecting as it did

what had happened to Kasak all those years ago.

But Askel could not bring himself to believe 156

in it. I -- t was approaching the time when his own

plan would need to be set in motion if he was

to salvage anything from all of this. Even his life.

"Of course it's a forgery, Captain; but it's a

particularly good one." Commander Uhura had come

back to the bridge, and for the past half-hour she and

Mr. Mahase had been shredding down the supposed

distress signal and subjecting even the least

crackle of subspace static to a battery of

cryptology tests. "It's so good that I'd raise

the question of whether it originated aboard the Klingon

ship at all."

"So maybe someone on Dekkanar did invite

them after all."

"It's entirely possible." Uhura waved

several sheets of hard copy and then slapped them

down on her working console. "Even though nothing was ever

detected, we've taken the thing apart, and the carrier

wave, the signal corruption, all of it points

to a planetside source of transmission. Although

whether the planet was Dekkanar or the Klingon

homeworld remains to be determined."

"Wonderful." Jim scrubbed the heels of both

hands into his eye sockets in a weary gesture that

had as much to do with how fed up he had become with the

Dekkani as with how little sleep he'd been getting

lately. "The Klingons have always been capable of this

sort of deception, so I guess I really shouldn't

have put it past them." Jim glanced up at the

viewscreen. The Klingons, for their part, seemed

unconcerned that they were the focus of attention for four

hundredplus pairs of eyes or species-variable

alternatives, or that every available sensor,

camera, and recording device was being run over their

vessel. Instead, they seemed more concerned with their own

punctilious observation of Starfleet's mandatory

traffic limits. 157

Tazhat's crew held their linked ships

exactly at the boundary of minimum separation, five

kilometers bang on the nose.

Just how exactly came out an hour later during

an engineering grid-laser scan to cross-check the

Klingon battle cruiser's dimensions against

official intelligence figures. One of the many

additional figures that came out of it was that the

Klingon ship was holding formation at a distance

correct to the millimeter and eight decimal

places. "Very impressive, I'm sure," said

Jim, not sounding impressed at all. "But how

does the ship perform under combat stresses?" "If

you're asking for opinions," said Bones from his usual

place behind the center seat, "then mine is that I'd rather

not find out."

"I doubt the Klingons know themselves." Scotty was

on the bridge as well, having brought the stationkeeping

data up in person. Jim knew that his chief

engineer would sooner turn teetotaler than admit

to anything like interest in the Klingon ship, but now that he

had lost the opportunity to take it apart, he was

gazing at the battle cruiser with a wi/l expres-

sion on his face.

"Well, Mr. Scott, what do you

think of him?" Jim took care to use the correct

pronoun for the Klingon ship, and was amused when

Scotty snorted something that might not have been

Gaelic but was certainly rude. "A bucket

o" bolts, sir. Oh, aye, it'll be the

usual." Jim raised his eyebrows. "Cheap an'

nasty rubbish, all but the guns. And automated

forby. I wouldna like to run a ship on automatics

an' then take it into any sort of combat. Not even

this one." He patted one of the bridge railings

affectionately. "No, I dinna think the

Enterprise would have much trouble wi' that thing."

"Um." Jim leaned forward a bit and looked more

closely at the steadily increasing raft of data

that various departments were accumulating about the Klingon

cruiser. A lot of it was as opinionated as

Scotty, and a lot more was inspired guesswork, but the

general view seemed to bear out what had just been said.

He sat back again and stared at the battle

cruiser's hulking outline on the screen. "Still, I

echo Bones on this one. I hope we never have

cause to learn what it can do." Jim put his thoughts

of the Klingons aside for a moment. "Estimated time

to orbital reinsertion, Mr. Sulu?"

64 Three-point-seven hours at present speed

and heading, Captain." "Good. In that case,

Uhura, patch me through to Captains North and

Farey. It's been too long since I had an

update."

"He is an admiral?"

Askel heard the edge in Kasak's voice and

scowled inwardly. He would have preferred that his

captain not find out any more about Kirk's career than

he already knew, and had said as much, but Kasak was now

standing behind him and speed-scanning the data as it

appeared on the library computer monitor in the

captain's private office, so there was no way

to prevent him from extracting the information.

Intelligence had been working hard where James T.

Kirk was concerned. The human's name had a

considerable entry against it, and Kasak had demanded

to see the lot. Seeing it had not improved his

temper. As he grew calm again, he was grateful

that some errant need for secrecy had brought him behind a

closed door, because it was never good for a crew to see

their commander lose his temper and his control so

completely. He had only bared his teeth at first,

but later 159

he had raged, and twice now he had

flung the collated hard copy across the room. This

latest piece of outrageous information was as much as he

could bear.

Kasak took a deep breath of the warm, moist

air, and then another, but it was only with a third that the

burning began to fade from his chest and from behind his eyes.

"That Kirk should be an admiral by now is a thing that

I can understand," he said slowly. "But that by all

accounts he should resent the promotion is an

insult!" Askel stood by the computer console and said

nothing, his face devoid of any expression that

might be misconstrued. "An insult to the rank,

to the institution of rewarding merit, to the others like him

who have lived long enough to earn such rewards, and

to ambition itself."

"If it pleases the one to say so, then it is so."

"And what do you say, Thought Master Askel?

What is behind the careful phrases that will not give me

offense? Speak."

"He is an admiral who would prefer to be a

captain. You are a captain who would prefer

to be"-Askel hesitated for an instant, debating

the wisdom of his words, before he went on-"to be the

captain of your own ship, one that is not taken from you

after every flight. To be your own master instead

of their servant99

"Be careful," said Kasak in a voice that had

gone flat and dead. "Be very careful indeed."

"Killing the speaker will not kill the truth," said

Askel. The boldness of his words took Kasak

by surprise, disarming whatever threat or action his

statements might have provoked.

fifiso99

"And killing Admiral Kirk will be a poor

satisfaction'i Kasak stared for several

seconds at his science officer, then turned a

chair out from the desk and sat

down. "How are these issues connected?" he

demanded, curious. "In this fashion your rage would

have you kill him by some means not offensive to the

Organian wewwI'vethpu', and once he is

gone, what then?" "He will be my servitor in the

Black ('Fleet," growled Kasak, "and I will

slay him again a thousand times, laughing."

"This will be in any case. But would it not be a more

elegant revenge to make him you, and you him?"

"Explain," Kasak said, using Battle

Unguage to indicate his impatience. "Kirk

resents his promotion to admiral," said Askel,

"because it takes him from the bridge and the

direct command of his ship, and from any further chance of

gaining glory."

"And?"

"Death in action is an eventuality he must have

faced before, many times. He will be prepared to face it

again, and to accept it if need be. Therefore the killing

of Kirk will be a lesser punishment than to let him

live."

"Why?" Kasak continued to use Battle

1eaanguage, for though his irritation with Askel was

fading, his idea was of sufficient interest to require

minimal prompts. It had occurred to him that

Askel would have continued even if his captain said

nothing at all, but Kasak had decided that his

science, first, and executive officer needed to be

reminded who was in command on this ship. It would teach him

humility and a sense of place; and if it pushed him

into losing his temper, then Kasak already had several

punishment details in mind that would do the job just as

effectively. Askel probably suspected

something of the sort, because Kasak could actually see the

other officer pulling himself back under full control.

That was 161

sufficient superiority had been reestablished,

so the captain could become magnanimous

once more. "Relax, "Kel," he said, gesturing

to the computer console's chair. "Relax, sit down,

and continue at your own pace." Askel remained where

he was for a moment, standing quite still, and inwardly Kasak

went tense. If he had pushed too hard, as he

had done to other junior officers in the past, then this

was the moment to be most wary. There was something about being

criticized and then patronized immediately afterward that

touched a raw nerve in the Klingon psyche. Then the

science specialist nodded-a short, sharp jerk of his

head-and sat down, and the moment was past, until the

next time. "Captain Kasak," he said, "all

know that the Federation is weak and lacking in the true

komerex klin, that strength of purpose which gives

Klingons their superiority. It is unable to punish

even its own criminals as they deserve. Sentence of

execution has been erased from its books of law

except as penalty for a few most particular

crimes. Incompetence is not one of them. Therefore--

he leaned forward and began counting points off on his

fingertips- "one can safely assume that even after you

disgrace Kirk by causing the Organians to hand over

this planet's development to us, he will not be

terminated by his own superiors-was

"And this," interrupted Kasak, amused

and confused in equal mea sure, "is intended to be more

stimulating than cutting out his liver?" "Yes,

sir, it is. Because after that, do you believe Starfleet

will ever give him command of his own ship again? They will

enforce his rank and the duties of that rank, and leave

him to rot behind a landbound desk. Oh, they'll call

on his experience, and allow him out once in a while

to inspect vessels in close orbit, but 162

if ever he travels out among the naked stars again,

it will be as a passenger on some other captain's

ship, where he will be of no more account than a piece of

baggage." Askel grinned savagely and closed his

fist. "And always he will know and helplessly remember

how he was brought so low, and he will speak your name with

curses. As you have spoken his for far too long!"

Kasak gazed at him through eyes half-hooded

by their heavy lids, and said nothing at all.

was * . . initial upheaval downstairs after the

ships went to battle stations, but things have calmed down

more or less. his

"Noted, Gytha," said Jim, more relieved than

he was willing to admit. He and the Enterprise had

been away from the action for almost twelve hours, and

he kept thinking of a line from one of Freeman's more

peculiar tapes "Anything can happen in

the next half-hour." He remembered vaguely that

the line had been delivered as someone called battle

stations. Well, at least most of the possible shocks

hadn't happened. But the PDI had made its

presence known. "Anything further on the fight

planetside?" "Negative on that, Jim.

Somebody started shooting at Johnson's people as

soon as they landed. Three hit, including the

colonel. Nothing serious, but after that the DPG had

clearance for self-defense. -- Captain North

smiled dryly. "It all got very peaceful very fast.

Evacuation is proceeding, and Nic has some good

news for Y. his

It was indeed good news, unmitigated by buts or

maybes. Vanguard's geosynchronous position was

such that she was now on the dayside of Dekkanar and able

to run a direct astroscan on the system

primary. Her science officer, Lieutenant

Commander T'rell, had observed, logged and later

confirmed that the 163

sunspot activity had passed its peak and was

tapering off rapidly. "If it continues into recess

at its present rate, Captain, was she told

Kirk, "the last phases of the personnel evacuation

may be safely undertaken by transporter

beam. I shall of course continue to monitor. was

"Thank you, Commander," said Jim. "Kirk out."

He closed the channel and smiled. Things were finally

starting to look up. Now if he could only work out

what to do about the Klingons.

Uhura's comm board beeped, and Jim thought,

No.... She touched the transdator in her ear,

frowned slightly, and said, "It's Hakkarl, sir.

Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh wishes

to discuss a matter of importance."

Jim turned enough to lift an eyebrow at her; that

use of full title and line, rare between Klingon and

human, suggested that this might be more than just a

social call.

"Recorders and voiceprint analysis up and

running, Captain," said Spock softly.

"Let's hear what he has to say."

The Klingon was no more beautiful now than he had

been at first sight. Age and experience had left

their mark on his face, and it was probably one even

a Klingon mother would find hard to love, but Jim was

getting used to it. "Captain Kasak," said Jim,

and nothing more. "Captain Kirk. was Kasak was still

speaking Federation Anglish, and this time he was showing no

sign that doing so annoyed him. As far as

anyone on Enterprise could tell, the Klingon had

more on his mind than that. "Within this system and holding

separation distanceftom a Federation starship, may it be

said that I am within Federation space?" He already

knew as much; he had known it before 164

he came here, and Jim had taken him to task about

it since. So what was going on? "Captain, this

sector is officially nonaligned, but the planet

4725 Cancri TV is under Federation

territorial protection. So, put simply,

yes, this is Federation space."

"And you in your rank as admiral are the most

senior Federation officer?" Jim hesitated,

wondering how in hell he knew that, then remembering

that his Klingon intelligence file was probably

hefty. Even so, he didn't have to act as if he

liked it. "Yes."

The Klingon's yellow eyes had gone cold and

wary, though Jim had the feeling they weren't watching

him, but someone-several someones-on Kasak's own

bridge. "Then, Admiral Kirk"'tilde comdid

he really come down harder on that "Admiral" than

he needed to?-"V and my crew require and

request that at this time you grant us your protection and

political asylum within the borders of the

Federation-

And all hell seemed to break loose.

"STATIONS!" BARKED KASAK as he cut the

transmission link. The whip-crack imperative of

Battle Language had a more immediate effect even

than the heavy disrupter pistol he had drawn the

instant he spoke his final words to Kirk. Six of

his crew dropped back into their proper places.

Surgeon Specialist Arthag and Security

Officer Marag stood right where they were, watching the

pistol and remaining very still. Neither had a duty station

on the bridge and they were there only because the captain

had ordered them present to witness his discussion with the

Federation commander. They were not alone in their surprise

at what they had just heard. Or in their desire

to extract the traitor's lungs and make him eat

them. Kasak knew it. That was why he had brought the

pistol. It wasn't meant for use-unless that was

absolutely necessary-but to buy him the moments he would

need for talking. After that, either he would no longer need

the pistol or he would need it as he needed breath

to live. "Better," he said, and having framed out

what he would say an hour and more ago, went on, "and

it

pleases me that all of you are loyal."

One or two were surprised by that; the others heard

only sarcasm and responded according to their custom, with

glares of silent hatred or snarled curses.

Kasak nodded slowly, having expected nothing

else. "Otherwise I would not have dared to act in this

fashion. Or in this." And he returned the weapon

to its holster. It was not an act of such daring and trust

as he intended it to appear, for he did not reseal the

strap that looped across the pistol's grip to hold it

secure, and he was comfortably at ease with the speed of

his own gun hand. If anybody made a hostile

move, Kasak knew well enough that he could have the

weapon clear of its holster again fast enough. But it was

the gesture that mattered, the gesture that was meant

to impress, and it succeeded. There was some muttering, but

all made acceptably relaxing movements as they

settled back to listen.

For his part, Kasak did not relax until

Arthag was seated at Damage Control and Marag

had perched himself at the position normally occupied

by Environ- mental Engineering. Both systems were

now on automatic, their overrides run

respectively through Engineering Central and

Medical Sciences, but the chairs were still in place.

Most important, Force Leader Marag

was now almost a full radius of the bridge away from

his supposedly treacherous captain, and given

Marag's well-established reputation, that was still

barely far enough.

"Now that you are willing to listen," said Kasak,

"hear what I have to say and study it well." He

leaned back in his command chair, and swept a long,

slow stare across the faces of his chosen crew. This was

the moment for which they had been

selected, handpicked both for their abilities

and-far more importantly-for the frequency with which

they had served under Kasak in the past. Loyalty

aboard a Klingon ship was a difficult thing

to ensure at the best of times; there was too much

jockeying for future position, for arranging the

downfall of a superior if that downfall would bring with

it more benefits than would continued support.

He had always taken care to judiciously spread

his own personal glory among his subordinates,

even when their accomplishments were of a lesser magni-

tude than his. In that fashion they were continually

reminded of the source of their most immediate advantage,

and furthermore they were continually presented with

indications of their captain's esteem. At

no time would such a policy, even in its most

blatant form, be considered an attempt to buy the

loyalty of a crew member or an entire crew.

The usual interpretation was that a given captain was

recognizing the part played by his crew,

individually or collectively, in his latest

success. Just as, if they were responsible for his

failure, he would kill them. Their faces showed

Kasak that they knew this. There was not a single

Klingon on Hakkarl's bridge who had failed

to benefit in some way from service with this captain. For

all that he could be cruel, his cruelty had never

been pointless it was widely known that the

sutai-Khomezh regarded energy wasted to no

purpose as wasted energy and nothing else. But if

there was some advantage to be gained ... There were

stories about that, too. Stories to scare cadets

with.

It was this same attitude that controlled his

granting of benefits; he did not hand them out

purely as a bribe in the hope of future

support, as some captains were known to do, but as

payment for hard striving in the duties Kasak set.

And when they were so earned, he gave them immediately,

publicly and with much praise.

"An attempted mutiny is not in itself a

mutiny," said Kasak. "But an attempt to act

without thinking first is always thoughtless. And unwise. There

are other captains who would have left you dead. All

of you. Or you might have left me dead, and then none

of you would know the reason why I spoke as I did

to the Federation Captain Kirk."

"And maintain shields at full power," Jim

said . "That ought to buy us time to think of something else."

Mr. Scott said something skeptical that Jim almost

lost in the whooping of the red-alert siren, but he could

guess the content. "We won't be firing first, no,"

he went on. "And not because of the rules of engagement.

At least not ours." He looked up at the blinking

alert lights, decided that by now everyone had gotten

the message, and ordered the alarm shut off for the nth

time today. "I'm more concerned now about the Organians

sticking their noses into this mess."

"Phasers locked on target, Keptin," said

Chekov from the defense station. "But it looks as if

those Cossacks are just sitting there."

"Easy does it, Mr. Chekov. Hold

fire. They'll sit there until they've sorted

matters out between the captain's faction and the rest. And

then the winners will make their move. Whatever

that's likely to be." In the instant after Captain

Kasak's astonishing request for asylum, as the

comlink image broke up on a scene of imminent

chaos and death on Hakkarl's bridge, Jim had

sounded yet another red alert and called for immediate

defensive and evasive action. The shields had

never been fully down since interception, but they had

been reduced to standby intensity as one of those token

gestures of good faith Lieutenant Stewart had

been talking about-and they had come 169

right back up to maximum in the first of the seven

seconds at full impulse power that had flung

Enterprise far away from the Klingon cruiser. The

Klingons had an unfortunate

propensitydemonstrated for the first time at Donatu

V and all too frequently thereafter-of resorting

to an unre- stricted level of violence when

settling in-ship disputes. Since the ultimate

demonstration of this tended to be the detonation of their own

warp drive system (and consequently all other

parties in the area), high-speed retirement to a

safe distance had become the standard response for

anyone caught in the vicinity of a Klingon crew

reconciling their differences about internal politics.

Jim eyed the main screen's readouts and

felt somewhat more at ease to see that Sulu had already

enabled an override circuit linking Enterprise's

own warp engines to a tight-focused sensor scan

locked on the battle cruiser some hundred thousand

kilometers distant. In this particular situation, at

the first hint of matter-antimatter overload, the

override would cut in and wrench them from their present

station-keeping position to warp factor four in less

than a second. Even that savage and stress-laden

acceleration was cutting matters far too fine, since

by their very nature certain parts of the energy pulse were

themselves warp-capable. This time there were more sweaty hands

on the U.s.s. Enterprise than just those of her

captain, as they and he watched and waited.

And then waited some more....

Although he was hearing it with his own ears, Askel still

found it hard to believe that any Klingon officer of

Kasak's fame should lay himself so open

to ridicule. Had he or any of the others spoken

of the captain's history in his hearing, as Kasak was

speaking of it 170

now, he could and would have burned them on the spot and

been applauded for it. What the rest of the crew thought

of his tale of tribbles being deliberately

introduced to infest a ship he couldn't

tell, apart from the usual and instinctive reaction of

disgust. Askel loathed the useless fluffy little

horrors as much as any of them, even though he had

gained a few seconds of amusement when he

discovered that his people's word for them, yIH, exactly

matched a human noise of distaste. However, it was

plain that while they found the rest of Kasak's tale

of ability passed over something to be regretted, they

were unable to understand why the captain was subjecting them and

himself to this embarrassing and humiliating ordeal.

Until he named the Federation starship and the Federation

captain who had been responsible.

And then Askel understood. Mentally he lashed

himself for his obtuseness, for missing the links that an

Imperial Intelligence operations master should have

spotted even before Kasak began to speak. And then

he calmed somewhat, knowing that he was blameless, since

he had lacked essential data. He had not known,

for instance, that Kasak put revenge on Kirk and the

Enterprise above his own reputation.

That he was convinced, however, did not mean that any

covert Imperial Security operative had also

taken the unusual step of believing what he or she

was told. Captain Kasak was still in considerable

danger from ... whom? Without seeming too

obvious about it, Askel began to watch the other

faces. "I hear you wondering among yourselves,"

Kasak said, "if the one has taken leave of his

senses." Now, that was exaggeration, for whether through shock

or because they didn't want to miss a word of what he

said, nobody had spoken since he began. "You

wonder then if what you heard him say to the Feds was

something spoken only in your imagination. I tell

you it was not. I said it. But I spoke those words not

to betray the trust placed in me by the Empire, or

the honor given me by those I command on this first

flight. I used them as I would use any other

weapon against my enemy."

Laughter bubbled up under Askel's immobile

face, threatening to disrupt his composure with an

unseemly outburst. Of course! Once the clues

were assembled, the science specialist found himself

having to fight down an impulse to leap cheering to his

feet. It was so simple and yet so brilliant that

it deserved to-no, it had to succeed.

"Kirk is torn now between his suspicion of my

true motives and his hope that what I said to him is

true," Kasak continued. "The longer we can

maintain the illusion that we would meekly

deliver Hakkarl and Tazhat and all their

secrets to him in exchange for what passes for

life somewhere in the Federation, the more blinded with anger

he will be when he learns that the only truth is his own

fear of our superior race! When we power up and

begin to move away, oh, so slowly, he will see his

great prize and all its glory snatched from his

grasp. And how will he try to close his grip, zan

Katta?"

Katta twitched from immobility as if waking from

a doze during some dull lecture at the

Academy, and her answer was the hasty rattle of

words Askel had heard from his own students in just that

situation. Except that Katta's answer was

correct. "The one will act like any wise commander

free fire at impulse engines to disable the prize;

precision fire to sever warp nacelles, thus

preventing destruct option; finally tractor towing."

"Exactly, except for the Organians. Kirk

may call down fire on us, but I doubt if it will

leave his phaser 172

tubes. While we, who have been visiting a

planet permitted to us under the light. bulbs" own

peace treaty, will be the innocent victims of

Starfleet aggression. Now what would an

Organian make of that? Krynn?" Askel

covered his smile with one hand, admiring Kasak's

technique. He had begun this so much on the

defensive that he had needed a disrupter as backup,

and now if it went on much longer he would be setting

off-duty work assignments and written examinations.

Krynn answered in much the same manner Katta

had, as student to teacher. "Terms of Organian

Treaty regarding development of planets located

in Treaty Zone. Respective signatory

parties to send envoys. Purpose demonstration of

respective abilities to develop planet in

peaceful useful manner. Rights granted to party showing

best ability or most acceptable to native

population. Failure to abide by terms of

agreement physical interdiction of offending party from

planet, which is then ceded to nonoffending party."

"And what do we learn from this, bearing in mind that our

distant line-cousins the Dekkani have already ordered the

Federation from their planet? Marag, what does it

tell you?"

"That Kasak sutai-Khornezh still has a mind

sharp enough to cut throats," rumbled the force leader from

somewhere deep in his chest. "Since we will be there when the

Feds leave, these Dekkan cousins might

be persuaded to accept us as their new protectors.

And if a Fed starship goes so far as to fire on

us, or even to attempt it, the planet and its

surrounding spatial zone will become part of the

Imperial zone of influenceand the one will have exacted his

revenge, gained much glory, and won the Empire a

foothold in Federation space."

Marag rose from his seat and came to a full

salute. "The one is no traitor," he said.

"All of Security is with him."

Whether that was Marag making a somewhat cumbersome

joke about the fact that he alone was overt security

on this mission, or a barely veiled warning to the

coverts who acted as one or other department head on

this ship where all of the crew were heads of department,

Askel didn't really know.

"Captain, Hakkarl has just reopened the comm.

channel," said Uhura. "Message is "Still

on course to Federation planet 4725 Can IV, still

awaiting your reply.'That's all." Uhura

took the transdator from her ear. "And that is, in

fact, all. It's the only signal that has left

the Klingon double-ship combination since we broke

contact, and they haven't received anything19

"That includes the subspace

transmission detected by Lieutenant Mahase

during the Klingon transfer of their spurious

distress call, Captain," said Spock. "It is

a closed-satchel code of the type favored by my

father the ambassador, but in this instance neither

Communications nor Cryptography-was "Nor even

Mr. Spock himself," Uhura chimed in generously.

"comhas been able to make sense out of the signal

content," Spock continued without missing a beat.

"My own opinion is that it constitutes a decoy

in- tended to make us believe there is more of

significance going on aboard the Hakkarl than ther e

actually is."

"You're saying the transmission is just gibberish."

"Yes, sir. Although there is a chance that the

signal does in fact contain information, and is

directed toward whichever imperial orbital

facility built this particular cruiser. If that is

so, then I speculate the signal content to be

congruent with those of the 174

automatically deployed drones carried

by experimental Starfleet designs for such a

purpose. Essentially the Klingon ship has

reported its own imminent destruction."

"To cover their defection," Kirk said.

"Presumably. I should not be surprised if we

receive a request for clearance to point-detonate

several photon torpedoes so as to leave an

appropriate heat and radiation footprint. The

number of torpedoes requested should provide a

reasonable indication of what sort of accident was

reported."

In fact, the request to time-set twenty photon

torpedoes came in from Hakkarl less than two

minutes later.

Jim turned to look very hard at Spock,

raising both his eyebrows. Spock responded as

he usually did, with the raising of only one. Twenty

photon torpedoes going off at once would make

an estimable flare. It would not look much like an

accident where the warp drives of both cruiser and

scout had run totally beyond control. That would

require more torpedoes than the Klingons and all the

Federation vessels put together had on board.

Instead, it would resemble a situation in which shutdown

had begun but failed to take effect. Even that was an

impressive bang, and Jim was relieved that he

wouldn't have to stay and watch it. "Chura." Jim

swung his chair around and grinned a bit at his comm

chief "I'm sure you've already made the

appropriate signal.to Sir Richard and

Vanguard concerning what's about to happen."

"Yes, Captain. And to the Dekkan

Planetary Council. I did that in the sequencing

squirt to Colonel Johnson."

"Right." He shook his head slowly and ruefully;

there wasn't really much else he could do in the

circumstances. "Very good, Uhura. Thank you.

Ad175

vise the Klingon captain that he may begin

deployment of his own torpedoes. Advise him

further that we have locked our torpedoes on his command

pod. And if that isn't an accurate statement,

Mr. Chekov, please make it so." "Change of

lock confirmed, Keptin."

"Messages acknowledged, sir. Captain

Kasak advises you that he intends a low-velocity

launch and will complete the deployment process using

tractors."

"Sensible of him." Jim touched the call key on

his chair communicator, Scotty having hurried

back to Engineering when it first looked as though sudden

demands might be put on his beloved engines. "Mr.

Scott, have you been monitoring this?"

"Aye, that I have. This lad's got it

all worked out. "Then it's practical enough from an

engineering point of view?" Vch aye, he's done his

homework right enough, though he's overdoin'the

torpedoesfist a wee bit ... or not, maybe. was

Jim knew quite well the sound of Scotty having

second thoughts. He waited. There was a sudden

scraping noise over the pickup as Scott

consulted one of the heavy-duty engineering-section pad

screens. "We've been runnin'a few computer

simula- tions, Captain, based on what we

scanned in the last close pass. If the engines

on that Klingon tub are boosted, an" the

waste-heat readin's are suggestin' as much as

thirty-five percent, then he's calculatin'the

big bangfist right. his

Boosted engines had not come up for discussion before, and

Jim didn't like having the news sprung on him in

such a backhanded fashion. The way things had been

jumping today, it wasn't anybody's fault, but

Spock's various opinions about the cruiser

Hakkarl had already been enough to make Jim wary of

what other little surprises the ship might have in

store. 176

"Mr. Spock," he said, was when you have a moment,

I'd like a program initiated to collate

what we've learned so far about the Klingon vessel.

At present the information is all over the place, so

that I've only now been told that Mr. Scott

thinks it has a boosted warp drive. If somebody

somewhere on this ship has any more theories that might

give the Klingons an advantage, I want to know

about them."

Jim knew he was drifting along the outermost

edges of irritability. At present that didn't

matter, but once the diplomatic part of this mission

got back under way, he would have to be careful. The

six hours of missed sleep were taking their revenge.

"Torpedo deployment completed, Keptin."

Chekov tapped controls on the weapons console.

"Tactical on the viewer."

The swarm of red-glowing fireflies that were the

Klingon torpedoes looked as ominous to James

Kirk as they always did, regardless of the fact that this

time they were tracking away from Enterprise rather than

toward her. His next order wasn't so much the

issuing of a command as the utterance of a private

desire.

"Right. Mr. Sulu, let's get out of here."

There was no need for course or speed instructions

they were continuing on their original course

back to Dekkanar, and since Sulu had no more

love for Klingon ordnance than his captain, they would

be moving just as fast as they were able. Since Hakkarl

had already been advised of Jim's intention, it was the

Klingon helm officer's responsibility to keep

up. Enterprise was not staying in the vicinity of four

teratons' worth of explosive power, not for the sake

of a dozen newly surrendered battle cruisers.

Sulu pushed her sublight velocity to the limit

and held it there for almost five minutes, watching as the

countdown numerator spindled down to zero. The 177

Klingons were thirty thousand kilometers off

to starboard and the same distance astern, a whisker over

half a second behind them. Their helmsman's

reflexes were evidently of the sort that made steel

traps hide their teeth in shame, and Jim made

various mental warning notes to himself on just that

subject.

"Aft angle on the viewer," he said.

"Shields four, five, and six to maximum power and

deflection angle, all hands brace for possible

flux turbulence." And as if on cue, the

torpedoes went off. There was a sudden blink on the

screen, a pinpoint of intolerable brilliance that

expanded violently into a flare of unleashed

energy. Enterprise seemed to quiver in the same

instant that the glare of the detonation reached her

viewscreen, and a low rumble like that of her warp drive

shivered through the starship's hull and decks as a

warp-speed disturbance passed through her systems.

Artificial gravity flickered maybe half a

G to either side of normal. Uhura's

transdator, lying on the communications board,

emitted a multiple-harmonic squeal that could be

heard across the bridge and would certainly have deafened

her. One of sickbay's diagnostic beds claimed

that the three tricorders resting on its mattress

pad were suffering from high blood pressure.

And then it was over.

Jim took a quick look around the bridge and

noted that everything seemed to be where he had last seen

it, then glanced at Ensign Penney. "Damage

report, Yvonne," he said. "Then defense station

weapons status readout. Uhura, signal for a

similar condition report from the Klingons, please.

And thank you, Mr. Sulu; that was nicely

judged."

The reports came in on all three ships, and

every one of them showed the reassuring "no damage"

flash Jim had expected to see. But there

was one additional item in the report from the Klingon

ship that he 178

definitely had not been expecting, and it took

him just a little bit off-guard.

Kasak wanted to come calling.

And Askel wanted to know why.

"It will deepen Kirk's trust in my good faith,

that I will cross to the vessel of an enemy and meet

with him face to face," Kasak said. "And he will be

all the angrier, and easier to provoke into rashness and

stupidity, when his trust is so humiliatingly

betrayed." The speech sounded easy, not naturally so

but with the ease that came with careful rehearsal.

Askel guessed that the captain had known his latest

decision would not go by without someone asking about it, and he

had prepared his answer accordingly.

It might have worked with the rest of the crewexcept of

course for the security operatives, whom Askel,

to his chagrin, had not yet uncovered-but surely

Kasak did not expect his science specialist

to swallow the same bait. Except that as they

continued to discuss the matter in the mess room, it

became increasingly plain that, yes, the captain was

expecting just that.

Unless of course, Askel reflected

to himself while Kasak punched up food and drink for

them both, the captain is expecting nothing of the sort

and is provoking me for another test reaction. He

determined, in that moment while Kasak's back was

turned, that he would provide no such thing. He would

be more serene than a sleeping Vulcan, more

difficult to read than an unwritten book, and he

would use that position of strength to do some subtle

testing of his own.

He had already sent another intelligence

communication, during the flurry of activity that

accompanied the shepherding of twenty live time-set

photon torpedoes. His message had been primed

in the same 179

instant that Krynn sent Hakkarl in pursuit

of the Federation starship, and he had transmitted it under

cover of the Magnificent explosion. Even if it

had chanced to be overheard by some snooper either on the

Enterprise or on his own ship, it would have sounded just

like any other flux-distorted random squawk.

And now, thanks to Kasak's sudden desire

to pay deceitful social visits, it had all

to be done again.

He looked at the tray of fruit nectars and

plain pastries, selected one of each,

ate, drank, and tasted neither. "When and how many?"

he asked finally, all business.

Kasak sipped at his glass of sweet fruit

nectar before he replied. "At once and alo ne."

Askel was immediately wary of the real motive behind

Kasak's sudden decision, and his mind began

to race. "This may not be," he said, taking great

care over the inflection of his speech. It would hardly

help if he put the wrong weight on the wrong word

and Kasak turned stubborn, because the last thing

Askel wanted was for his captain to go alone to meet

James T. Kirk. For various reasons. "It

would be wrong if the one went unaccompanied. It would

lack propriety. A captain of such repute should

have an honor guard. . . ." His voice trailed

off when he noticed the way Kasak was looking at

him, a strangely speculative look that turned

Askel's liver to lead within his chest. He knows about

LL, he thought. He knows about LL and he knows

about me!

None of that could be seen on Askel's face, of

course. Nobody attained the rank of operations

master by letting people read what they were thinking, and several

operations masters in the past had gone so far as to wear

dermally implanted prostheses of

cosmetic plastic to permanently mask their

features. Askel was not one of these, although with further

advancement 180

he might become one. At present he hid his

thoughts by not allowing them to show, ever-except

deliberately, for effect. In this instance it was just as

well, for his fears were banished by Kasak's next

words. "Then the one will accompany his captain onto

the Enterprise, together with others yet to be named," said

Kasak. "And we shall wait until we achieve

orbit, so that the stripping of the ship of all but a

watchkeeping crew will not seem strange."

"Honored, Captain," he said. "And the others?"

"Yet to be named, I said. But Marag certainly.

It is always good to have security in a hostile

environment."

"Agreed." Though he ran that one several times

through his mind and sifted all the layers of meaning out of

it, Askel still wasn't sure whether it was a

simple statement or some kind of very subtle joke

at someone else's expense. And not necessarily that

of the security chief. Marag had, however, already

stated that he approved of Kasak's plan. Though

he might question this latest development, his inclusion in

the boarding party would put most of those doubts

to rest. "Do we beam across? "No. We will use a

shuttle. Though its intensity is slackening, the

present level of sunspot activity prevents

our use of the particle transporter." Askel

shook his head and drew breath to say something, but was

silenced with an upraised hand and a grin so that he

knew at once and mirrored it with one of his own.

"At least, so they will believe aboard Enterprise.

You know and I know that with Hakkarl's extra power at

his disposal, Tazhat's transporters can easily

bum through naturally occurring interference. But the Feds

don't know it yet, and they will only find out as a very

unpleasant surprise. S." He finished his own

pastry, drained the last mouthful of nectar from his

glass, and stood up. "Hangar bay, ten minutes

after orbital 181

insertion. Duty uniform and sidearm, but dress

sash with all decorations and commendation clasps.

Let's go talk to the Federation."

"Oh, God," said James Kirk very softly,

and meant it. "Six of them? How could terrorists

get their hands on six armed orbiters?" "Because my

people couldn't get to the landing fi6ld, except on

foot," said Todd Johnson from the main viewer.

He was cradling the bandaged mess that something

low-velocity and heavy-caliber had made of his

left elbow. He and his men had been observing

Starfleet's self-assigned rules of engagement

right down the line from the first moment of setdown, so they

hadn't been wearing any defensive armor when they

put their own bodies between the Federation civilians and

whatever the PDI chose to throw at them. The middle

of a terrorist attack had never really been the

place for medics, and for all the availability of

modem medical care aboard the orbiting starships,

Johnson had been patched up with field dressings

and tom strips of fabric as if he were a soldier

in one of the ugly wars back on Earth a few

centuries ago.

"Noted and logged, Colonel. We'll take

all appropriate precautions. "If we'd been

able to beam-jump across ftom the embassy grounds

Johnson didn't bother to finish the sentence.

Jim sympathized he knew exactly how the

DPG commander must be feeling, including the slug through

his arm, and even that wasn't as painful as knowing for

certain that he could have done something to change the situation

had circumstances been different. Having a force of

nature working against you-in this case the lethal

sunspot interference in the transporter

beam-was infinitely worse than twenty-twenty

hindsight. 182

The background noise of the channel was suddenly

brutally dominated by the rapid-fire hammer of some

sort of automatic weapon, and immediately afterward by the

screech of multiple phasers. They had the

unmistakable top-frequency whine of a stun

setting, and Jim's mouth quirked in a harsh

smile. Despite all the malicious

provocations, supported or at least connived at

by Varn and the rest of the Dekkan Planetary

Council, despite the brutal stupidity of the

PDI, even despite being perforated by a chunk of

metal that had made a jigsaw puzzle of his elbow

joint, Johnson was holding a full two steps

down from the intensity of response that the rules of

engagement now permitted. Jim began to understand how the

colonel had acquired his tabs so young.

"According to my science officer, we'll be

transporter capable in just over four hours."

"Good. Once all this is over, your Dr.

McCoy and my elbow will have to get together. In the

machine shop. There's not much for him to heal any more. his

So that's what a stiff upper lip sounds like, thought

Jim, wincing inwardly at the thought of what

Johnson had dismissed so dryly. I've often

wondered. "Affirmative on that, Colonel," he

said aloud. "Keep your head down till then.

Kirk out." The screen blanked out, then once more

filled itself with the image of the Klingon battle

cruiser.

"Looks like fun down there," said Bones. "A

whole barrel of laughs." His voice had the hard

edge that always crept into it when he was confronted by the more

avoidable human stupidities.

"Our people are doing their damnedest not to get pulled

into the spiral, Bones."

"I know, I know. Jim, we may well be the

good guys, and we may be shooting only to stun, but that

still doesn't make it any more acceptable. It

doesn't make us right. If the Federation hadn't

sited their Firechain 183

installation on Dekkanar, we'd have one reason

less to drop those young people into that shooting gallery down

there."

"You are an idealist, Dr. McCoy."

Spock meant it gently, perhaps even as a compliment,

but Bones was in no mood to hear any such thing. He

didn't interrupt as the Vulcan continued to speak,

but he simmered in a restless silence and

wasted a whole clip of furious glares on the

armor of Spock's passive exterior. "In your

own words," Spock went on, "the evacuation site

has become a shooting gallery. To extend the

analogy, therefore are the targets in such a gallery

guilty of aggressive behavior? If a third

party defends the targets from harm by standing in front of

them and advises the marksmen that this passive defense

will become active if the shooting continues, who then

carries the burden of responsibility? I put it

to you that a moment spent looking at the viewscreen will

indicate that the situa- tion has changed very little.

The Firechain system has prevented such scenes

on an infinitely greater scale."

"Are you sure you never cherished any secret

desire to practice law, Spock?" said Jim

quickly, before Bones could dominate what was left of the

discussion. The doctor, he had noticed, was

displaying all the indications of someone prepared

to defend a wrong opinion to the death. Something came

through on Uhura's console and she acknowledged. Her

slow sideways look toward the screen revealed the

transmission's source before she said anything.

"It's time, Captain. Klingon shuttle is

departing scout ship Tazhat as of now.

ETA seven minutes."

"Thank you, Uhura," said Jim, and turned

back to the screen. For a moment there was no change, and

then a tiny bright speck drifted free and curved

away 184

from the cruiser. "Mr. Tomson, Mr.

Matlock, designated honor guard, please

make your way to the landing bay reception area." He

turned to Spock and McCoy. "And now,

gentlemen, if you'll agree not to continue your

difference of opinion in the turbolift, don't you

think we'd better get down there and say hello?"

By the time they reached the shuttle observation

gallery, Montgomery Scott was there already.

Supervising, he said, except that he was dressed in

a standard uniform instead of the radsuit that was his

normal duty wear. It was far more likely that he was

making sure the Klingons didn't dent anything

important with their ship during the landing cycle. There

was no insult intended, at least no more than usual,

and certainly not a Klingon-specific one; when it

came to unfamiliar shuttlecraft pilots,

Scotty was like this with all of them.

"Doctor, Mr. Spock," Scotty greeted

them absently in the manner of a man with things

on his mind, and then turned to Jim. "Captain, how

long are these Klingons goin' to be aboard?"

"Captain Kasak has requested political

asylum," said Jim. "That could well mean they'll

be with us until we transfer them to a courier ship

off Star Base Twelve."

"Ach, isn't that jist great."

"Objections, Scotty?"

"No more than usual, sir. I jist don't like

the idea of those creatures messin' about wi' the

Enterprise, that's all."

"Not to worry," he said, trying to sound

reassuring. "I don't intend to let them have the run

of the place, just in case one of them ch anges his mind

about the benefits of life as a Federation citizen."

"So long as they dinna come near Engineering." His

voice had that tone of finality Scots engineers

had been refining over four centuries when warning

lesser mortals out of the private property of the

engine room. The refining process had probably

begun when the first of them helped build some maritime

steam engine somewhere along the Clyde near Glasgow,

then got shipped out with it so that the ship's captain would

have someone aboard who knew what to do when the

ruddy pressure cooker acted up. That had been

back in the nineteenth century of Old Earth. By the

twenty-third the breed of men who went by the title of

chief engineer had evolved. It no longer mattered

whether they were men or women or Scots or even

human; they were all of a piece, a race of

callused-handed, tech-minded, hard-drinking miracle

workers who could persuade a dying warp drive not

only to work again but to do so at peak efficiency. One

did not cross a chief engineer lightly, and the wise

did not cross them at all. "Scotty, if they

get past the dorsal K deck, you can do as you think

fit, because none of the rest of us will be in a fit state

to care." "Aye. You're right. I-

"Attention, attention," the annunciator

interrupted. "Incoming shuttle is now entering final

approach phase. All nonessential personnel

please evacuate the area. Landing bay systems

please stand by. was "Here they come," said Bones.

He twiddled with the memory selector and the scan

parameters of his tricorder, then locked off and

snapped the memory head shut. "As of now, don't

get sick, any of you. Not unless you're

Klingons."

"Thank you for the warning, Doctor,"

Spock said. "Falling ill had not been among my

present intentions. As any humanoid life-form

whatsoever." Scotty was paying no heed to the

cross-chat behind him. He had swung a control

console out from its 186

recess in the insulated rollover of the observation

gallery clearport, and it was already alive with a

crawling glow of vector and velocity indic "

ators. "Landin" bay control room, this is

Chief Engineer Scott. I'd like to bring this one in

myself his

"Control room here, Mr. Scott. Your

request is noted, logged, and approved. I'm

transferring control to your station. his

"Thank you, lassie. Advise shuttle

disengage all manuals at this time, bring drive and

maneuverin' thrusters to station-keepin'."

"Manual controls off line. Three, two,

one, mark Incoming shuttle now secure and holding

station. You have control. was Scotty rubbed his hands

together, interlinked his fingers and flexed them until the

knuckles cracked, then twiddled them in the air like

a concert pianist about to play. "Right," he said,

"let's show them what a proper landin' looks like."

"Scotty, behave. No power

fluctuations, if you please. I don't want our

guests rattled around the inside of their shuttle like

ice in your whisky glass."

"Och, Captain, I'd never dream"-a

deliberate pause and a slow, wicked smile-"of

puttin'ice into a dram o' good Scotch whisky.

Or of that other wee matter either." He turned

back to the console and began touching controls on the

main panel. "The atmosphere containment field is

up an' runnin'; bay doors are comin'open as of

now."

Below them, the great clamshell doors began

to retract, opening to reveal at first no more than a

slice of darkness, but expanding steadily until at

last that slice became a blunted, starshot wedge

of the ancient night lying beyond the man-made

fragility of Enterprise's glowing interior. Those

stars seemed to dance and shimmer as their glitter passed

through the containment field that kept the airless cold at

bay, but one 187

of them blinked with a steadier rhythm and the harsh

blue-white light of a visual location beacon. The

shuttle hung immobile in the grip of the landing-bay

tractor for the few seconds that it took Scotty

to run his final sequence of checks, and then

began to move smoothly closer. For all his chief

engineer's tacit mock threats, Jim had never

seen a better landing. The shuttle, a squat

chisel-nosed vessel, settled onto the floor

of the bay with a lightness that would have put most feathers

to shame. Its grim gray thermoglaze and imperial

trefoils looked distinctly out of place aboard a

Federation Starship. The beacon that had been no more

than a particularly bright blink at two

kilometers was now a strobing lightning flash within the

confines of the hangar deck, leaving purple

afterimages on the retinas of those who chanced

to look straight at it. Jim was not the only one who

felt heartily relieved when some Klingon hand

reached out to switch the damned thing off.

Either the Klingons inside the shuttle didn't know

about the atmosphere containment field or they knew but

didn't trust it. Whatever the reason, the hatch

didn't open until the fantail doors had been

shut and proof of breathable atmosphere provided by the

appearance of Commanders Tornson and Matlock and

their honor guard of security personnel. At

Colin Matlock's suggestion, none of the security

people wore their standard helmets or armor, but Ingrit

had insisted on the Type IV phasers that

all of them wore in plain view at their uniform

belts. No matter how friendly these Klingons; had

become, they were still Klingons, and it would be all too

easy for a well-intentioned gesture of going unarmed

to be mis- interpreted as that most dangerous thing

to suggest where Klingons were concerned, a sign of

weakness. 188

The shuttle's hatch swung out and up, its

boarding ramp out and down, and one by one, six more of that

small and select band of Klingons who had managed

to set foot aboard the U.s.s. Enterprise

stepped out onto her deck. "Honors, hut!" said

Ingrit, and stepped smartly to one side as the file

of security guards formed a double rank. One of them

raised the boatswain's pipe that hung from its

lanyard around her neck, and piped the visitors

aboard.

Jim and the others could hear the pipe's shrill

squeal even up in the observation gallery, and they could

see momentary confusion on all the Klingon faces in

the instant before the foremost of them realized that he was being

paid a courtesy. That officer relayed this information to the

others, provoking very human-seeming sidelong

glances before all six re- sponded with a salute.

"Well, that's over," said Jim,

becoming uncomfortably aware that his nails had been

digging into the palms of his hands from the instant that

Scotty touched the shuttle down. He reached forward

to the console communicator panel. "Kirk to honor

guard."

"Security chief here. his

"I think Rec One will be an appropriately

neutral ground for whatever Captain Kasak

wants to discuss with me."

"Affirmative, Captain. Rec Deck One.

ETA four minutes. Tomson out. was "Four

minutes. That gives us about two, gentlemen. Shall

we?" -. "Why not the officers lounge, Jim?" said

McCoy as they headed for the turbolift. "One of the

privacy areas."

James T. Kirk shook his head decisively

and gave Bones a crooked smile. "Because that's

exactly what they'll be expecting, somewhere small

and pri- vate. The rec room's as far from that as

we've got on 189

this ship. It'll keep them confused and off balance,

give us something of an edge, and it'll give Kasak

a surprise to make up for the ones he's been

springing on me.l tilde

"Ye dinna think he's serious about this

political asylum business, Captain?" said

Scotty.

"No. I won't believe that until there's a

crew of my choosing aboard his ship and it's safely

on the way to spacedock-was "I will feel more at

ease," said Spock as he stepped into the

turbolift car, "when the data we requested from

Starfleet Intelligence on Captain Kasak

gets here. The name Kasak has an uncomfortable

ring of familiarity about it, and yet not so familiar that

I am able to place the context." "And you're almost

ready to concede defeat and admit it annoys you,

Spock?" "No, Doctor, in fact I am not.

It is an inconvenienoe, but by no means an

insoluble problem. Current transmission time

to Starfleet Headquarters is some

three-point-seven-three hours, so the information may

well arrive while we are entertaining its

subject."

"Now that I want to see."

"Just be prepared to duck, Bones," said Jim.

"If Kasak has run across the Enterprise before,

I doubt he'll remember the occasion kindly.

Few Klingons would."

"Och, now, that Captain Kang was all

right, once we got things sorted out." "Funny

thing, Scotty, but I seem to remember you trying

to cut his head off with a claymore."

"That wasna a claymore, Captain; it was a

Scottish regimental basket-hilted

broadsword an' well you know it."

"But I notice you're not correcting me on the

way you wanted to use it." "Aye, well . . ."

"Just watch him, that's all. I don't know

what's at the bottom of all this. If it's nothing

more than a bunch of dissatisfied Klingon officers

defecting to put their opponents in a bad light,

I'll be pleasantly surprised." The lift

slowed to a standstill. "And very, very grateful . . ."

They stepped out of the lift car and into Rec One. And

into yet another demonstration of the nearproverbial

speed with which starship gossip traveled.

It had been something like ninety seconds since

Jim had given his instructions to Security Chief

Tomson, and already the rec deck had more crew

members in it than was usual at any one time. It

seemed to Jim that all the off-shift personnel who

weren't there already were strolling with elaborate

high-speed nonchalance in from the corridor or out of the

number two turbolift. He found himself

wondering what Kasak's people would make of

Enterprise's multispecies crew, because he had

noticed that all of the Klingons were of the Imperial

race. That suggested at t he very least a certain

elitism, and at worst racial intolerance and

xenophobia. It also suggested that the more eyes there were

watching them, the safer it would be for all concerned-.

"Attention, everyone," he said, projecting hard

to cut through the murmur of many speculating voices.

The background noise faded away as quickly and as

smoothly as though someone had rotated a gain

control. "You all know more or less what's going on

here. I haven't got time for a pep talk, much

less a briefing. Just be careful. These Klingons

are all Imperials and are probably unfamiliar

with the way a mixed crew works. Show them. And

remember, your Starfleet commissions state that you're

all officers and gentlebeings. So act that way.

Even the ensigns . . ."

The laughter had barely died before both

turbolifts hissed open and there were Klingons on the

rec deck. 191

"Captain Kirk," said Ingrit Tomson,

doing the honors in a neutral voice that came from

an expressionless face, "may I

introduce Captain Kasak sutaiKhornezh,

commander of the Imperial Klingon Vessel Hakkarl,

and officers of his crew."

"Captain, greetings," Jim said carefully.

"Kirk," said Kasak, giving the consonants their

full Tlhinganaase value, though whether as

compliment or veiled insult was unclear.

"Greetings. As it is our intention to speak with one

another as equals, it would please me to be called

by my own name."

Now, that was definitely not an insult, even though

Jim wasn't certain of the reasoning behind the request.

"Honored, Kasak. Welcome aboard the

U.s.s. Enterprise. You and your-officers."

He had almost said "men," but saw the Mingon female

just in time.

He gestured to a small group of seats.

"Captain, make yourself comfortable. Your people may sit

with us or, if they wish, mingle freely with my

crew. We have much to talk about. All of us."

ScmationcEvery SpEciAusThat AsKu sat

quietly on the sidelines of what at present was

nothing more than an exchange of insincere and

inconsequential pleasantries. He had hoped that

an argument might develop between the two

captains-nothing violent, since that would have been

counterproductive, but what the humans liked

to call a "frank exchange of opinions." In

other words, the sort of mutual criticism that

sometimes became brisk enough for either or both parties

to let slip things that might best have been left

unsaid. To his mild annoyance, however, Kirk and

Kasak were both too experienced to indulge in any

petty name-calling.

He sipped at his glass of juice, finding it

sharp and thin even after two additional pushes of the

processor console's sweetness selector. The

machine proved stubbornly incapable of synthesizing

rich fruit nectars in the Klingon style. Most

of the others had settled for double-sweetened juices of

one kind or another. Some had not Dr. Makhoy,

the Enterprise surgeon specialist, had been

most persuasive, and now Force Leader Marag was

holding a tall glass in a silver holder and

looking at it with all the suspicion he usually

reserved

only for security matters. The glass was full

of crushed ice and sprigs of a green herb whose

astringent scent Askel could smell from where he sat.

The outside of the glass was so cold that it was

frosted with condensation. That made the holder more sensible

than elegant; there were few creatures more touchy

than a Klingon trying to retain his good manners

while his fingers froze.

It was a peculiarity of the humans that they seemed

to enjoy their recreational drinks either dangerously

hot or ridiculously cold. Even those

drinkingjuice put ice in it; Askel had seen them

punching the appropriate button on the

selector. He wondered about that for a few

seconds, and what relationship it might have with the way

that humans were known to behave. Then he shrugged,

dismissed the matter, and paid more attention to his

surroundings and to those who shared them.

Apart from the humans of the security detachment sent

to fetch them here from the shuttle bay, he recognized

only Kirk's companions. Makhoy and the

Vulcan Spock he knew already, from Tazhat's

viewscreen, and Engineering Master Scott from the

brief introduction when Kasak's party first came

into the recreation hall. Askel knew perfectly

well that the official name was "rec deck," but the

abbreviation seemed inappropriate for such an

enormous two-level vaulted room. He had

seen inspirational theaters on planetary

installations, never mind spacegoing vessels, that were

not so large. And as for the crew members who filled

it, they were ... diverse. From where he sat he needed

only to turn his head to see representatives of a

dozen different races in as many shapes and colors.

The ubiquitous humans alone had several different

skin colors, and the varying shapes that went with each

somatotype. Khitar from Communications had struck

up a conver. 194

sation of sorts with one of them, a female as dark

as any Klingon who was easily keeping pace with his

convoluted specialist vocabulary-despite the

speed of its delivery after being lubricated

by frequent drafts of black Saurian brandy from

the glass in his left hand. Askel made a mental

note to discipline him later, not so much for drinking

to excess as for having a loose mouth under its

influence. Among the humans, talking, laughing,

drinking with them, were several other species, all

behaving like equals on this human ship instead of like the

kuve they undoubtedly were-not having insisted on

serving aboard ships crewed by their own race. And they

were just the biped crew.

As one trained in the sciences-Askel knew about

the Sulamids and the four races of the

Denebian worlds, and even the Janusian living

rocks, one of which was shuffling across the floor right now.

But that didn't mean he had to like them, or the idea

of a crew made up of people from twenty different

races. Let the Vulcans propound their IDIC

theory as much as they pleased. Then show him the extent

of their empire and the terror and respect in which it was

held. Strength lay in unity, not diversity. The

unity of his common purpose with Kasak

sutai-Khornezh was a case in point. If he

and I.i. had not supported the captain's scheme,

no display of strength would have brought them to where they now

sat, in a vessel of the Federation Starfleet,

busily engaged in deceiving its most senior officers.

It might, thought Askel with a sardonic inner

smile, have enabled them to cruise to and fro among its

drifting ashes, but the effect would not have been the

same.

Kasak's strength had been evident from the first,

when he had defied the suspicions of everyone from

Thought Admirals and chiefs of security on down

to the crew he had chosen himself. At each stage of his

gradually revealed scheme he might have, been

arrested, or just gunned down by one of the

interested parties who were following orders or who

stood to gain comby doing so. Marag, acting for

Security, perhaps; or whichever clandestine agent was

aboard, also acting for Security; or Askel

himself, acting for Imperial Intelligence; or a

quiet member of the crew who might act only out of

loyalty to the Empire. That Kasak was well on

his way to success and glory said something about his luck.

"Setting sunspots to one side, Kirk,"

Keaasak was saying when Askel tuned the content of

his speech back in, "it is the belief of my race

that the one has only so much luck this side of the

Black Fleet. Especially with transporters.

Hence the shuttle."

Kai, Kasak, thought Askel. That would reinforce

the notion in Kirk's mind, and in the minds of his

security people, that to keep hold of these Klingons and

thus of their ship, all they had to do was to stay between the

visitors and the shuttle bay. It would not matter that

sensors surely indicated another three crew

members left behind on Tazhat and Hakkarl. Those

three could maintain the life-support and

environmental systems and monitor the cruiser's

standard orbit, but they were capable of little else. The

Federation officers could not know about the boosted

transport hypercarrier wave that could beam safely

through even deliberate jamming, nor did they

realize that in an emergency the captain could control

both ships from his command chair long enough for the scout

to escape. Kahlesste kaase-Kahless's Hand

indeed, except that now a captain had no need

to tie his hand to the chair with his sash in order that none

might say he fled before his crew.

He listened briefly to Kasak, and his hidden

smile grew wider. The captain's deception was

perfect. It was almost possible to believe that he

really did intend 196

to hand himself, his crew, and his secret new ship

over to the Federation. Almost, but not quite. There were enough

clues visible to the quick mind and the sharp eye. It was just

as well that none of the Starfleet officers knew what

to look for....

James T. Kirk knew there was something wrong

about this whole business, and yet try as he might,

he couldn't place it. The Klingons were all being just

as nice as pie. Some of them, like the comm officer, had

become far too friendly with the hospitality bar and were

becoming deadly boring and repetitive as a

result. Jim was watching that one almost as closely

as the other five put together. He knew that

drinking alcohol was as much a part of Klingon

culture as it was of human social life, but from

past experience on and around Space Station K-7

he also knew what happened when you mixed Klingons,

Enterprise crew members, and an open bar in the

same cubic parsec of space-trouble. At least this

time there were no tribbles getting underfoot and trying

to eat the buffet. That would have been the last straw, and

not just for the Klingons.

Still, all that Kasak had told him so far had

been the truth. Starfleet Intelligence could vouch for

it. But Jim couldn't shake the sensation that he was being

made use of-mocked, teased, toyed with, all those

things he hated and had to put up with as a

representative of the United Federation of

Planets. Except that the mockery of a Klingon was

something to be wary of rather than simply to endure. He

wished more than anything else right now that the information about

Captain Kasak would get here. The annunciator

whistled right then and said "Bridge to Captain

Kirk" so pat on cue that Jim almost jumped.

Can't be, he told himself as he made some sort

excuse to the Klingon captain and tried. to hurry

from his seat without moving obviously fast.

"Kirk here."

"Lieutenant Knight, sir, acting

communications Officer. A signal's coming in for you.

Shall I transfer it direct or wait until

instructed?" Comms department code words for "How much

privacy do you need for this, sir?" I don't

believe it! thought Jim, even though he wanted

to believe it very much indeed. "From Starfleet?"

"Sorry, Captain, not yet. We're still

waitingfor that one.* was A jolt of hurt annoyance

that was the mental equivalent of a thumb in the solar

plexus ran through Jim, and he glared at the comm

grille. Knowing that this wasn't Kim Knight's

fault didn't help at all. He wanted

to thump the annunciator panel with his fist and say

all of the things that had come boiling up inside

him-anything to relieve his frustration. But with Kasak

and several of his crew carefully not staring in his

direction, he absolutely couldn't vent his

feelings here.

"All right, Kim," he said at last in a

voice that surprised him with its control. "What is

it?"

"From Colonel Johnson on the surface,

sir. He requested especially that he

talk to you. It sounded urgent. his

Jim stared at the annunciator in silence for

six seconds that felt like six hours. The choice

was to put Johnson's message through and risk having

him say something out of place, or leave the rec

deck and make it plain that he didn't want the

Klingons to hear this transmission. Not that doing so was

unmannerly, as Kasak would probably admit-the

sensor suites on board Hakkarl were probably

eavesdropping anyway comb it might give the

Klingons the idea that things 198

on Dekkanar were worse than their Intelligence

reports suggested. Worse for the Federation, at

least; Kasak could make the inverse of that equation

all by himself, and perhaps conclude that there was more

advantage in staying loyal to the Empire than in

accepting asylum. Kasak could simply sit in

orbit while the Federation personnel were evacuated

and the ships carrying them moved out. Without a request from

Councillor Varn or the others to stay and

renegotiate their tenure, Kirk would be obliged

to conclude the mission as briefed, with a complete

withdrawal from the 4725 Cancri system.

Hakkarl, as well as any other Klingon ship

claiming access under the Organian

Treaty, was so far under no such stricture, and Jim

doubted very much that any such would be obeyed, or even

issued, if no Starfleet vessels were present

to enforce it. With no source of protection other than

the weapons of the Klingon battle cruiser hanging in

an ominously close orbit right above their heads, the

Dekkani would waste no time in asking the Empire

to help them sort out their internal differences. And for the

Klingons, sorting out something they had probably

started-or at least organized by the usual method of

cultivating and arming a group like the PDI'-WOULD be

simplicity itself

"Put him through," said Jim, wondering if he

looked and sounded as weary as he suddenly felt.

"On the main screen. I'll handle it from here."

With the rec room's big viewing screen in operation,

Johnson would be able to see immediately that there weren't just

Starfleet ears listening to him, and he could edit his

words accordingly. That, at least, was the theory. He

thumbed the channel open.

Little had changed since he had last spoken

Colonel Johnson. The buildings in the

background of the screen image looked a little the

worse for wear, and there were dirty smears of

smoke around several windows. The colonel and the few

men and women who moved in and out of frame behind him were

also looking smoke-stained and rather frayed at the edges.

Jim was thankful to see that there were no more

injuries-at least, none that he could see.

Johnson started to say something, then cut his words

short and leaned a little closer to the vision

transceiver of his field-comm pack, apparently

not convinced that he was getting an accurate picture

from the Enterprise. "Good God, was he said softly.

"No, just Klingons," said Jim. "Captain and

part of the crew of IKV Hakkarl. They're

requesting political asylum."

"Good God, was said Todd Johnson again, and

shook his head. "I knew that Klingon captains

turned privateer, but I've never heard of one

defecting until now. his

Jim winced inwardly at Johnson's use of the

word "defect." It was the wince of a diplomat who

knew that he'd been getting somewhere in a delicate

negotiation, only to see the whole fraif house of

cards sent tumbling by a single instant's carelessness.

And it was the wince, doubled, of someone who knew that after

all the nice phrases had been stripped away, it

was the right word to use.

"Colonel Johnson, my communications officer

told me this was urgent. What's the problem?"

"The PDI have started playing for keeps. Seven

of my people have been killed by disrupter fire, Captain

Kirk. Ask your ... your visitors where those

weapons came from. Id be very interested to hear the

answer. was Johnson shook his head to clear away

the mists of whatever pain suppressant his field

medics had filled him with, then grinned crookedly.

It was the sort of grin that the Klingons probably

understood as well as 200

anyone on board the Enterprise all teeth,

no humor. "But we've got the last of the

civilians together and away. No losses there at

all. Their shuttle's lifting about now, and-was

There was a shattering explosion from somewhere outside and

above the building in which Johnson had set up his

command headquarters. The viewer wailed and flared

white for an instant as light and noise overloaded

its pickups, then returned slowly to normal through

a blizzard of static. By then there were long plumes

of dust trailing down from the ceiling, and the image itself

had toppled seventy degrees to one side. It

came upright again with a jolt as somebody pulled the comm

pack clear of the thermoplast rubble that had

fallen on it, but for several more of those hour-long

seconds there was no sign of Colonel

Johnson. Just as the silent audience on the rec

deck started to become seriously concerned, a shadow

fell across the screen and Johnson came back

into frame. He was limping, and his shoulders were

gray-white with dust. "The PDI'S stolen

orbiters have atmospheric capability, was he said,

and his mouth was tight with a pain that had no connection with his

arm or with his limp. "We didn't know. None of the

Dekkani bothered to tell us. Well, we know now.

They took out that last shuttlejust after it left the

ground, and. . . was He shrugged; there was nothing else

to say that could possibly have any meaning. "If the

Federation ever opens up this embassy again, it's going

to need another secretarial section. Because there's

nobody left from this one. his

Jim stared at the screen and said nothing. He had

heard and seen the same thing far too many times, and every

one of those times, mere words had been inadequate.

"Beam-up will be possible in four hours, you said?"

Johnson asked. 201

"Nearer three now."

"Then we'll wait. There are- was Johnson

stopped, and his eyes shifted from Jim's

face to stare instead over his shoulder at the Klingon

officers sitting behind him. Jim was quietly glad

that the colonel would be returning to Sir Richard or

to Vanguard rather than to Enterprise. Right now he

didn't look like the right man for further

diplomatic duty. "Captain, there are things

to clean up here. We'll deal with them and then

advisefor pickup. Johnson out."

The stillness on Rec Deck One was a shocking

contrast to its earlier cheerful hubbub. Someone at the

back of the huge room was failing in an effort not

to cry, and even the Klingons had contrived to look

concerned. Jim doubted very much if there was any more to their

concern than worry about their own status. Right now,

at any rate, the last thing that he wanted was for any

one of them to speak.

His unspoken wish went unheard, for Captain

Kasak stood up slowly, put his glass of

fruit juice to one side and said, "If the one may

prove of some assistance?" He sounded sincere, and for

just one second James Kirk hated him for it.

Then the hatred went away abruptly, for a

disrupter screeched and its actinic blue bolt went

past Jim's ear like the finger of the angel of death.

Kasak's discarded glass exploded

into sweet steam and flying splinters. "Straav'!

Tokhe straavThat' There was a voice somewhere,

screaming, almost as loud as the disrupter's discharge

"Willing slave!" the foulest insult in all the

dialects of the Klingon language and one that only

death could cancel out.

Whose death? Jim dropped to the floor and rolled

for cover, his mind whirling with confusion, cursing himself for

not having carried a phaser and for not having insisted that the

Klingons check their duty 202

sidearms with Security. Who was shooting? At

whom? Almost everyone, armed or not, had hit the deck

at the same moment-everyone except Ingrit

Tomson and two of Kasak's officers.

No, three. One of them was the comms specialist

who had been boring Uhura and drinking too much.

Another burst of energy crackled from the pistol in his

wavering grip, and Jim wondered if the alcohol that

had somehow provo ked the shooting had also affected his

aim just enough to save someone's life. His life,

maybe, or ... whose?

For all that the human-built chair was awkward for

Klingon anatomy, Askel was out of it in the blinking

of an eye, and his own disrupter was out of its holster

before he was well clear of the seat. Now we

know, he thought. But to move here and now! Khest'n

Imperial Security.... The brandy had done its

work after all, but not by creating drunken

aggressiveness. This was both more and less

straightforward. Khitar had consumed just enough to make him

miss out on Captain Kasak's more subtle

kinesic indications of deception. He had assumed

that what he saw and heard was real. When Kasak

made his masterfully convincing offer of assistance,

Khitar had geen not an elegant move in klin

zha, but mutiny and treason. Imperial Security

had never been renowned for intelligence. The tall

female-Tomson, Kirk's own chief of

security-seemed strangely reluctant to open

fire, and for an instant Askel wondered if

Starfleet Security had a worse vice than

single-minded stupidity. Compassion had no place

behind a security badge or a security pistol.

Then he saw her reset her phaser down to stun, and

he remembered the Organians. No matter what

he had done or would do yet, Khitar was an

officer of the Klingon Empire, and the glowbugs would

surely come interfering if he was shot- A flash of

blue-white light carved shadows sharp as

glass all across the rec deck, and Askel heard

the unmistakable shrilling of a disrupter at its

highest setting. Khitar was engulfed in white fire

and his screamed insults became a simple scream.

It faded swiftly as his body glowed, incandesced,

and vanished. Helm Officer Krynn straightened from

her aiming crouch, her pistol holstered again before the

last echoes of that horrid noise had fully died

away, and looked at the scorched place where

Khitar's silhouette could still be faintly seen against

the wall. con"HaDIMH, was she said softly, and

then to Kasak, comuteam His, joHwI. his

"jIyaj. was The captain saluted her.

"majQa

Captain Kirk and the rest of his crew picked

themselves up from the floor. There was some dusting of

knees, some adjusting of uniforms, and then Kirk

glared at Kasak. "Necessary or not, well done or

not," he snapped, "what the hell is going on?"

"Apologies, Captain," said Askel,

cutting in smoothly, doing his best to sound calm even

though his mind was racing to shape the excuse it had just

formed into something that would pass for truth. "That officer

is-was-of a line we had all thought dead.

Extinct. That line has been at feud

with the captain's line, Khornezh, for Keth's

years. It would seem that one of them survived and

determined to resume what was considered done withand at

rest. This one and all of us regret it happened

here."

"You regret!" Surgeon Specialist

Makhoy was blazing with anger, so filled with rage that

mere words were inadequate to express it and he was

forced to unwilling silence until he had regained his

selfcontrol. Askel was careless of mere anger,

no matter

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

how intensely felt; all that concerned him was that his

words not be questioned. While the Feds were busy being

shocked at this demonstration of Klingon frightfulness,

they would not take the time to wonder about what really lay

behind its flaring up just now. But it was starting to occur

to him that telling the truth, or at least most of it,

about Khitar and Imperial Security might well

have been the wiser course. "Captain Kasak," said

Kirk with all the formal outrage he could muster,

"I want a full explanation of this incident, and

I want it now." "Kirk," said Kasak, "my

executive officer has told you- "That's

Admiral Kirk, mister, and your exec

has told me nothing." Askel considered comassuming

an affronted expression, then discarded the idea as

wasted effort. Kirk lacked Makhoy's hot, blind

fury, and was in just the mood to take exception to any

misplaced word or gesture. "I think that-was Kirk

was interrupted once again by the wall communicator and

broke off whatever pointless thought had been in his

mind, but before he turned to answer it, he gestured

to Tomson and to the armored and helmeted security

guards who had come rushing in from the corridor at the

sound of shots. Askel looked at the leveled

phasers, knowing without being told that they were all set

only to stun. And after the stunning, imprisonment. The

Federation was weak, it seldom executed prisoners.

But it kept them caged until their time of detention was

done or until it pleased someone to release them or

until the end of life. That thought made him shiver more

than any threat of death. And then he shivered again,

because Surgeon Specialist Arthag was nowhere to be

seen. So there were two of them! he thought. One loud,

one quiet. Then kai Security after all...

"Bridge, this is the captain," he heard Kirk

say, 205

and the rasp of leashed anger behind the human's voice

was plainly audible. "What is it now?"

"Captain, we've picked up a transmission.

Definitely Klingon, but a nonstandard frequency.

Commander Uhura's autojammer didn't

recognize or block it, so ... What did you

say? Confirm that! Excuse me, Captain, one

moment please. was During that moment, the dark woman

with whom Khitar had spoken clenched both her fists

and swore. The only other sound was the faint hissing

of an open channel from the communicator. Then the

voice at the other end came back, sounding

agitated. "We've gotten a confirmed lock on

the source of the transmission. Captain, it's

comingfrom Rec Deck One!"

Jim felt his stomach jolt inside him harder

even than when the disrupter bolt had almost taken off

his head. "Confirm that, Kim? Rec One?" "Rec

One confirm, rear portside. his

All eyes turned to stare at the only place

on the Rec Deck where even a Klingon could be

assured of privacy from prying or unfrly eyes.

The male rest room. People began to back away as

if the place contained a primed bomb, and Jim was

not the only one to realize that it might well do just that.

"Captain Kasak," he said, "call your Dr.

Arthag and order him to come out peacefully.

But before he comes out"-he glanced pointedly at the

burn mark where Khitar had been-"you and your crew will

immediately surrender all weapons to Commander Tomson.

I want him alive and capable of answering questions."

Kasak glowered at him, still managing to convey

irritated innocence. "Imperial Security-was the

Klingon began to say. "So they were both security

men, eh? I thought this was more than just a feud. Tell

your medical security 206

man that he has nothing to fear from any of us. Any

of us, Captain Kasak-Starfleet or Klingon."

The Klingon captain hesitated a moment meathen

gave a very human shrug. "If Arthag is truly

of Imperial Security, Kirk, I make no

promises that he will heed me."

"I've had just about enough of this," said Jim under his

breath. Without taking his eyes from Kasak, he held

out his right hand, open and palm up. Someone slapped a

Type II-B phaser into it, and Jim leveled

the weapon's emitter cone at the Klingon's face.

"Give it a try, Captain," he suggested, "or

we'll get him out our own way.9

"Arthag!" shouted Kasak. "Specialist

Arthag, this is the sutai-Khomezh." Arthag

leaned suddenly around the comer of the rest room

partition and fired twice at his captain before ducking

back out of sight in a splatter of stun-level

energy flashes from Tomson's security people. Both

of Arthag's shots missed their intended target one

of them shattered a screen in the information alcove below

the main viewer, and the other slammed a security

ensign flat on his back and gouged a smoking

crater out of the breastplate of his armor. The man was

unhurt and still in sufficient possession of his wits

to grab a drink and quench the hot woven ceramic before

his chest was seriously blistered.

Of Surgeon Specialist Arthag there was no

sign. Jim flexed his fingers on the grip of his own

phaser and checked the weapon's setting.

Satisfied, he looked at the group of security

personnel. "Ingrit, set your phaser

to narrow-beam heavy stun. Mr. Matlock, Mr.

Fleming, set to wide-beam. Cover that entrance.

First sight you have of anything, hit x9"

As the first three settled into aiming position, he

turned to the others, deliberately ignoring the

remaining Klingons; until he was ready

to acknowledge their 207

existence. "Mr. Gamble and daza Rrra'sku,

supervise a quick, quiet clearance of

Rec One. And Mr. Nakashima, if you're

feeling all right ... his Good. Then relieve these people

of their weapons."

He was quietly grateful to see that Kasak's

people neither objected nor resisted being disarmed. Not that it

would have done them much good. Jim was too busy thinking

about how he could extricate Arthag without any

further casualties-and before the Klingon decided

to set his disruptees power pack to overload.

Spock and McCoy appeared at his elbow,

easing out of the throng of crew members, all of whom

knew they were suddenly no more than targets. Bones

was cursing his lack of a medical pouch-not that he had

needed one so far-but Spock looked silently at

Kirk and seemed, as usual, to know what he was

thinking. "I am uncertain of the energy output

yielded by this type of sidearm, Jim," he said,

hefting one just acquired from Askel, his Klingon

counterpart. "However, I presume it is of similar

capability to the more recent variants of phaser."

If the information was meant to be comforting, Jim

didn't think much of it, and said so. He was

uneasily aware that a Starfleet phaser in the

same confinedblast situation might blow this section of

Enterprise's primary disc clean off the

ship. Certainly it would explosively

decompress the rec deck and everybody in it .

"Given that presumption," Spock continued, "I

feel that we have a method of neutralizing our

troublesome visitor close at hand."

"Ah . . ." Jim nodded. "Lieutenant

Naraht, could you come here, please?" The Horta,

though basically a horizontal entity, had been

hunched up against a table, acting as a makeshift

shield for the people making their escape by turbolift

two. He slithered down and shuffled rapidly over

Kirk with that unmistakable sound of granite

slabs rubbing together. "Yes, Captain?" his voder

said, earnest as ever. For all that Mr. Naraht was still

a relative juvenile of his race, he was also the

veteran of an intelligence mission that included a

covert free-fall descent from orbit onto the

surface of the Romulan homeworld-and he was

demonstrably resistant to both phaser and disrupter

fire. Jim felt no real qualms over what he

had in mind. "Mr. Naraht, you're the only

member of the crew who can capture and disarm the

Klingon officer in that rest room without inflicting or

suffering any harm; at least, you're the

only one right now." Despite the gravity of the

situation Jim felt a weak grin prickling at the

comers of his mouth. Rooting armed enemy agents out of

toilets was not one of the strange, new, and interesting

parts of the day's work that were mentioned in Starfleet's

cadet orientation material. "He has a weapon

identical to the one Mr. Spock is holding. And

this is just a request, not an order."" Jim was

aware that the other Klingons were staring at him with a

mixture of distaste and contempt for a captain who would

ask one of his crew-and a member of an "inferior"

race at that-to do something. That, thought Jim, was their

problem.

Naraht shuffled his fringe and made the bizarre

crackling sound that was analogous to laughter. "Thank

you for that courtesy, sir," he said. Various

glittery crystals on his carapace surveyed the

Klingon disrupter in a gesture that might not have had

true visual connotations but at least looked as if

he was giving it a once-over. "If that's all

he's got, I won't feel a thing. And neither will

he. At least, he won't remember feeling it."

"Dr. McCoy," said Spock as Naraht rumbled

off about his mission, "I think that young officer is

picking up your patterns of speech."

dis"...The boy's got style," said Bones, and

wouldn't be drawn further. The annunciator

called Jim's name again, and he muttered something under

his breath. He was rapidly becoming as tired of the

annunciator's three-note whistle as he was of the

red-alert sirens, but this time Lieutenant Knight

didn't even wait for him to respond. "Captain,

that earlier transmission has just been acknowledged-from

out of system. Same ftequency, same code

groups, but Signal strength and repeater fluctuation

indicate three-plus heavy cruisem 11

Damn! "Any indication of speed or headingThat'

"Yes, sir, I'm afraidso. The way their

signal broke up matched interference from an

acceleration to warp speed, and before we lost them they were

heading straight for- his

The rest of what Knight had to say was lost in the

sound of a disrupter firing within an enclosed space.

Naraht was still well clear of the rest room, comalth

he was hurrying toward it now with the startling speed a

Horta could produce when pressed, but the brevity

of the pistol's discharge suggested to Jim and to everyone

else that there was no longer any need to rush.

Naraht came out a moment later, moving much more

slowly, and all suspicions were confirmed

even before he spoke. "The Klingon shot himself,

Captain," Naraht confirmed grimly. "He's quite

dead."

"Are you certain?" said McCoy, starting forward.

"Quite certain." Naraht sounded annoyed. He

probably felt that he hadn't moved fast enough

to prevent what had happened. "He was obliging enough

to set his disrupter low enough to leave most of a body, but

the setting was sufficiently high to leave my

diagnosis in no doubt."

"Captain Kasak," Jim said, swinging around on

Klingon commander, "what do you know about this?"

"Imperial Security would scarcely approve of

what I have attempted," said Kasak evenly. "The

one tried to stop me and failed. It seems that he was

less alone than either of us thought. These new ships

are moving to prevent the theft of imperial military

property; they have probably been following

Hakkarl at a discreet distance since he left

drydock."

If Science Specialist Askel had an

opinion about that, he said nothing. Jim looked up and

down the line of Klingons and couldn't decide what

angered him more-what they had done or how little

they seemed troubled by the consequences. "It would

appear, Captain Kasak, that whether accidentally

or through deliberate malice, you have engineered a way

in which several Klingon ships can legally"-Jim spat

the word as if it tasted bad-"enter a restricted and

already sensitive sector of Federation-protected

space. You must realize, of course, that your

request for asylum is null and void, but you will

remain on Enterprise under close arrest."

Kasak smiled venomously. "jol yIchu, was

he said to the empty air, and the LED telltale on

his communicator that indicated a transporter lock

began glowing red.

Jim remembered then what he had forgotten during

the years behind a desk that Klingon communicators

could and did run in a standby mode, without lights or

beacons to betray the fact. But a transporter, with

4725 Cancri still three hours away from being

safe? He didn't waste time thinking about it, but

stepped sharply out of the way and snapped "Fire!""

The security phasers flared uselessly almost a

meter from their targets as, in total silence, golden

light enveloped the four remaining Klingons.

"Arrest, Captain Kirk?" said Kasak's

mocking voice. "I think not. 211

Katta, ghojol. was The light flickered,

faded, and they were gone. Jim stared for half a

second at the empty area of deck while thoughts and

words and actions roiled and fought for precedence inside

his head. He turned away from the embarrassing

emptiness, walked to the wall communicator, and with an

ironic little smile punched in the command code that

gave him all-call "Enterprise, this is the

captain." He paused, took a deep breath, and

thought, Here we go. Again. "Go to condition one. This is

a red alert. I say again, red alert. All

departments to battle stations. Kirk out."

Then he squared his shoulders, unhooked the

wraparound of his tunic, brushed a trace of lint from

the rank pin on his sleeve, and headed for the bridge.

"IT IS MY BELIEF," Spock said as the

turbolift got under way, "that they were employing some

form of enhanced or boosted carrier wave. It is

essentially the same kind of signal repeater as that

which creates noise in the Starfleet standard

transporter. However, being Klingons-was "They've

gone for the military application rather than the safety

aspect," said McCoy with an edge of disapproval

in his voice. "It's nice to know they're following

form, at least."

"Quite so, Doctor. I doubt that you would like

Klingon transporters. Everything that you believe about

the equipment aboard Enterprise is true of theirs.

So much so that high-ranking officers have personal

transport controllers responsible for their

safety.""

"Huh," said Bones noncommittally. It was

impossible to tell whether he thought the idea good,

bad, or distypically Klingon in that there was someone

to take the rap for a mistake.

Jim hadn't become involved in the discussion; he

spent the short trip leaning against the back wall of the

turbolift car with his arms folded, waiting until

he 213

reached the bridge, where he would find out what else

the universe had up its sleeve to throw at him.

One element of Spock's theory disturbed him,

though. "What about the power consumption?" he said.

"It's got to be ridiculously large."

"The sensor scans give every indication that this

particular Klingon cruiser has a power-production

curve well able to match the most extravagant

demands," said Spock. Jim didn't like the sound of

what Spock was saying, and liked the sound of what he

didn't say still less Anything they

want, it can dowith power to spare.

The turbolift slid to a halt and opened onto

the bridge. Jim walked into a scene of controlled

scurrying as department heads took over from their

deputies. He realized that he had become more

accustomed to seeing the place in red-alert lighting

than in standard white. The superimposed tactical

plot on the main screen was one of the least encouraging

pieces of graphic design that he had seen for a very

long time; there were altogether too many contacts whose only

ID symbology was an assigned DK registry

and the words Unknown/hostile.

Six new blips-the armed vessels stolen by the

PDI terrorists were rising steadily toward orbit.

There were none of the massive infrared traces that had

characterized the previous booster-assisted launches. That

meant there was no chance they might be a flight of

missiles, but it also indicated that these orbiters were

of a more advanced type than the old space shuttles

the Dekkani had used for their earlier harassment. The

effectiveness of their armament had already been

conclusively demonstrated. Nearest of all, the

image not quite hidden beneath the tactical overlay, was

KL 10 17 Hakkarl. The battle cruiser was

winding up from orbital shutdown to active

status, and the data readouts beside the crank214

winged silhouette that was the standard tactical

symbol for a Klingon vessel were changing too quickly

for the eye to follow. "What a wonderful view

we're having today," said Bones. Spock lifted

an eyebrow at him. "Stimulating, certainly,"

he said. "And full of useful information."

"Bridge to Engineering," said Jim, not taking his

eyes from the screen as he thumbed the seat

communicator. "How are we doing down there?" "Ye

can have power for shields or weapons or

maneuverin", but not for all of them jist yet, was said

Mr. Scott. "The intermix is readin'green, but

since we've had the mains off line we'll not be up

an' runnin'for another twenty seconds. his

Jim clenched a fist and swore softly under his

breath. Scotty hadn't sounded accusing, bless him,

but Enterprise had still been shut down on the order of

her captain and nobody else. That'll teach you

to assume things about Klingons, thought Jim. It

didn't help that Vanguard and Sir Richard were in

the same situation and for the same reason; spreading a

mistake around didn't help change wrong toright.

"Divert all available power to the shields, and

Scotty . . .

"Aye, sir?"

"Quick as you can."

"Aye, sir!"

Hakkarl's data began to flash green on the

viewscreen as the battle cruiser achieved

nominal power output, but the figures continued

to change. "They're raising shields, Captain,"

said Spock. "Raise ours shields two and

three full power, full deflection; one and four,

maintenance only-but watch out for any change in firing

arc." "Shield setting confirmed, aye," said

Chekov. "Shall I set up a precautionary

weapons lock, Keptin?"

Jim hesitated for a moment. He didn't want

to start an escalating spiral of threat and

counterthreat, but bending the rules didn't seem to work

where Captain Kasak was concerned. The safest

refuge was in doing things exactly by the book.

"Yes, Mr. Chekov. Do it-but nothing else without

my direct command. We don't have any power

to spare."

"You do now, Captain," said Spock, swinging

around from his monitors. "The mains are back on

line; we have full power."

"Good timing, Scotty," Jim said to the

bridge in general. "Mr. Chekov, boost the other

shields up to defense standard. Mr. Sulu, stand

by to put some distance between us and the Klingons. One-third

impulse power, on my mark... ."

Jim never gave that order, for the screen had

developed some sort of a glitch and strange things

were happening. The data display for Hakkarl had

started to flicker between a single and a double image, both

readouts showed different instead of duplicated

information, and both were flashing green. Spock moved

controls on the sensor suite and the displays

stabilized. It wasn't a glitch after all, but the

informa tion from two separate ships-even though they

weren't separate just yet.jim. 611t

"Reset that phaser lock, Chekov," said

looks as if things are going to get busy around here."

The tactical projection broke up just then, and when

it reformed with updated information just a moment later,

Jim realized that he hadn't guessed the half of

it.

The six PDI shuttles had achieved orbit a

few seconds previously, and now they were assuming

a standard small-ship attack formation. It was all

too likely that they intended to do more than simply

fly dangerously close. As if that

wasn't enough, the eight original orbiters that had

been such a bloody nuisance at the start of the mission

had broken out of 216

their polar holding orbits, and were now sliding up

toward where the Federation ships were held immobile by the

requirements of a geosynch parking position.

And that wasn't enough either.

"Visual," said Spock abruptly, clearing the

screen of its tangle of plots and vectors.

"All recording systems are enabled and set

to automatic." "Ship separation, Mr. Spock?"

"Imminent, if I read these power curves

correctly. A violently evasive maneuver

seems most probable in the . . ." Spock's

voice trailed to silence, and he shifted his attention

to the main viewer with a little intake of breath that Bones

and Jim recognized as annoyance. "Or perhaps not,"

he finished.

Spock was not the only person on the bridge who

had expected a dramatic full-power breakaway.

What actually happened came as something of an

anticlimax. The Bird of Prey Tazhat

lifted clear of its parent vessel as slowly and as

cautiously as a newly qualified pilot taking

up a hover-flier for the first time.

Tazhat's upward motion ceased, and it hung

bare tens of meters over the dorsal surface of

Hakkarl's main hull. With equal slowness, both

ships rotated until they were facing in opposite

directions, presenting starboard and port elevations

to Enterprise-like the ID profiles in the library

computer. It was almost as if Captain Kasak was

deliberately flaunting the size and power of his command

to the man who had hoped to seize it. Indeed, he

seemed to be daring Kirk to fire point-blank at

this target, render it immobile, and claim it as his

prize.

"Captain," said Spock urgently, cutting off

that dangerous line of thought before it grew any more

attractive, "long-range scans are picking up

multi- ple contacts dropping out of warp. All of

them are Klingon." 217

The scout and the cruiser went transparent,

shimmered, faded, and were gone.

"Hell and damnation!" The words were relatively

mild, but they were spoken in a voice so loaded with

vicious sincerity that heads turned all over the

bridge to where Captain James Kirk cleared his

throat and went slightly pink. Only Mr.

Spock pretended not to have noticed anything.

"Feel better now?" said Bones, leaning over the

back of the center seat. Jim nodded, and smiled

crookedly at his chief medical officer.

"Somewhat. But I should have suspected a cloaking

device."

"Suspect away. It wouldn't have helped even

if Kasak had told you about it himself. What could you

have done about it-opened fire?" "And blown all their

engines into scrap, yes. I was so tempted,

Bones. They were just sitting there, begging for it."

"I suspect the Klingon captain hoped you'd do

just that, Jim," said Spock. "Hoped he could

provoke you into acting rashly and thus placing yourself

and the Federation in violation of the Organian Treaty.

If the behavior of those covert Imperial

security agents means what I believe, Kasak

and his ships are here without official orders and without the

knowledge of his government and his superiors. If necessary the

Empire can repudiate his actions and refuse to be

responsible for the actions of a mutinous

privateerunless of course the Empire stands to gain

something. If so, the Klingons will claim that Kasak

was acting under orders all the time." "Spock," said

Bones, "it's been a long day and I'm probably

getting a bit slow, but-what can the Klingon

Empire hope to gain from this?" "This planet," said

Spock simply. "Ceded to the 218

Klingon Empire under the terms of the Organian

Treaty."

"I worked that one out for myself down in Rec One,"

said Jim. "But the way I saw it, all Kasak

has to do is wait until we've gone and then

"persuade" the Dekkan Council to request

Imperial protection. Why drag the Organians

into it?"

"As for that, Captain, I must confess to ignorance

based on a lack of information. When Starfleet

Intelligence answers your questions about Kasak

sutaiKhornezh, his reasoning may become a little

clearer. In the meantime there is a Klingon battle

group of nine more K't'inga class cruisers entering

this system, and their squadron leader wants to speak

with you on a matter of some urgency."

"Does he indeed?" said Jim, and swung his

chair around to face the main viewer. "Then let's

find out just how urgent it can be."

"I am Korzhan epetai-Kenek, was the

Klingon said, his speech heavily formal. "You are

Admiral Kirk of the Federation Starfleet. You have

possession Of a stolen thing that is not yours.

I want it back. was Although his title for this duty

was squadron leader, the rank insignia at his

collar was that of an admiral. It indicated several

things about the importance of this mission, and about the

importance of the ship that Captain Kasak had

stolen.

Since the battle cruiser Hakkarl was nowhere in

sight, and since the Dekkan shuttles were the only

other ships in the area besides the Klingon and Starfleet

vessels, Jim wondered how Korzhan had reached

his conclusion. He realized, moments later, that the

Klingon admiral thought the other ships had been put

into cloak by a prize crew from' the Enterprise.

Korzhan was in no mood for explanations. "This

one has recorded information concerning the mutineer

Kasak sutai-Khornezh, was he said. "Information

that was transmitted from your own ship. It is proof of

treason against the Qomerex Tlhingan, and proof of

your collusion. was Jim listened to the Klingon, but

most of his attention was focused on the tracking

display that had been keeping an electronic eye

on all the Dekkan shuttles. It was only when

they had moved out of the immediate vicinity that he gave his

full attention to Korzhan.

"Squadron Leader," he said, "neither I nor

the other captains of this force had anything to do with the

matter you refer to. Captain Kasak, on the

other hand-was

"Requested political asylum so as to evade

punishment. He secured your cooperation by offering you the

secrets of his ship!" "Your information is not

accurate," Kirk said. "His request for

asylum was part of whatever game Kasak is

playing. I know neither the rules of that game nor its

ultimate goal." Unlike you, Korzhan. You

know all about it. Jim shifted in his seat and realized

that the Klingon might even know why Kasak was trying

to draw fire down on himself. If only the

Intelligence data had arrived before Korzhan's

squadron, or before Kasak's escape or ...

The communications console beeped. Uhura tapped

switches, looked at her repeater screen, and

smiled. "Captain, here's that information you re-

quested," she said.

Jim released the breath he hadn't known that he was

holding. Better late than too late, he thought.

"Leave it on your screen please, Uhura. And

run a hard copy." He turned back

to Squadron Leader Korzhan on the

main viewscreen, inclined his head in

the sort o f curt nod that would never grow up to be

a bow, and got to his feet. "You will excuse me,

of course," he said. "Starfleet business." A

few minutes later, everything had become a great

deal easier to understand.

"Squadron Leader," said Jim, "I may have

the answer to our mutual dilemma." Korzhan

looked puzzled and said nothing. "Is there an access

to personnel files from your flagship's main

library computer?" "What bearing has this?"

"More than you might think. Have your science

specialist pull Captain Kasak's file and

cross-check with"-Jim read through the data on the

screen again, knowing that mistakes and consequent

delays were something he didn't need-"Captain

Koloth vestai-Lasshar; Space Station

K-Seven; the reams of information you must have on me and

on the U.s.s. Enterprise; and, uh,

tribbles."

Korzhan looked at him as if uncertain whether

this Federation captain was insulting him or had simply

taken leave of his senses. Then he shrugged, turned

away from the screen, and started giving orders. Bones

looked again at the Kasak file. "Now,

that makes a whole lot of things a whole lot,

clearer. The crafty, sneaky little son of a bitch."

"It is probably as well that the

sutai-Khornezh preferred subtlety over a more

direct approach," Spock told McCoy.

"He had ample opportunity while he was aboard

the Enterprise to leave Jim in a state not even you

could put back together.".

McCoy straightened up and looked at the

Vulcan in surprise. dis"...Why, Spock, did

I just hear a compliment?"

"If a compliment is the recognition of

abilities it would be illogical to ignore,

Doctor, then, yes, you did."

"Gentlemen," said Jim, "the admiral is

back."

Korzhan looked confused. "Kirk, was he said,

"how much of this is true?" "All of it,

Squadron Leader, what you have read was

presumably drawn from your own intelligence

reports. If you question them, then I can't help you."

"And where is Hakkarl?"

"Cloaked, but I believe still somewhere in this

system."

"Message from Vanguard, Captain,"

Uhura interrupted, sounding angry. "The

PDI'-HELD shuttles have opened fire on them.

No damage done, but Captain Farey

recommends caution."

"Damn them! Why now?" muttered Jim.

"Engineering."

"Scott here, Captain. We're shovelin' as

fast as we can. 11 "Scotty, get some of your

stokers up to the tractor installations. I think

we're about to have company."

"You mean apart from Klingons? Captain, I

canna thank ye enough. was "Don't try. Just get

those tractors manned."

"Tractors, Kirk?" scoffed Squadron

Leader Korzhan. "Can the Federation no longer

afford to fit phasers to its ships?"

"The Federation doesn't use phasers on people it

is protecting." "Those same people have ordered the

Federation off their planet and out of their star system.

What reason remains for protection?" The answers

to that one were various, but since most were insulting

to Korzhan, his race, and his presence here, Jim

didn't bother to answer. "Here they come," said

Sulu, saving Jim from further questions. With the ship

already at condition one, there were no raucous

sirens when the sensors picked up the approaching

shuttles. Instead they were 222

announced by a decorous chime and a tactical

plot superimposed in three colors on

Squadron Leader Korzhan's face,

Jim, for one, found it an improvement, but was

too tactful to say so, "The epetai-Kenek will

pardon me," he said, "but this one has a matter of

imminent importance requiring all his attention.

Kirk out."

The Klingon face broke up in sparkle and

became a double-V formation of spacecraft rising

above the curve of Dekkanar's horizon. They

looked more rakish-and more dangerous-than the cumbersome

orbiters that the Dekkani had first sent up, and they

moved with a good deal more purpose. "Weapons,

Spock?"

"Scanning." The Vulcan stared down his hooded

viewer for several minutes, then punched its

download controls and sat back. "No energy

weapons," he said with more relief than he allowed

to show on his face. "They have a crude radar-based

targetacquisition system, and they are armed with

active- homing solid fuel missiles."

"Primitive," said Jim. "But are

they dangerous? Are the missiles

nuclear-tipped?"

"I doubt it, Captain. The one they used'to

shoot down Sir Richard's shuttlecraft was a

conventional warhead"

"Bridge to Engineerinand,"

"Aye, Captain?"

"Scotty, are the tractors ready on standby?"

"They are that. Jis say the word. his

"The word is 'careful." I'm authorizing free

fire at operator's discretion. Just don't pull

the shuttles into each other, or us, or anything

else-and that includes the Klingon ships."

I "Och, Captain. was The sigh of resignation

was heartfelt, and Jim still didn't know how much of

Scotty's 223

attitude was a put-on. "Aye, well, all

right, sir. Then I reckon it does. was "You

reckon right. Kirk out." Jim stared at the incoming

orbiters and wondered which one of them had shot down that

last shuttlecraft as it lifted from the Federation

consulate. Did the person who had done it care that

he had killed eight people, or would there be an

impassioned freedom fighters' argument to explain

why such things had to happen, to benefit the

Movement? He didn't really want to know, in

case the temptation to forget about the tractors and

instead issue that free-fire order to Chekov and his

phaser banks became too strong.

One of Defense's threat receptors beeped as

a target-acquisition sensor swept over them, then

warbled an alert as it locked on. The orbiters

carried their missiles inboard on a rotary

ventral tray. The first of them was plainly visible as

it streaked from its launching rail in a flare of light

and heat toward Enterprise.

"What do you think they're trying to prove?" said

Jim. "Pigheadedness or suicidal tendencies?"

"They'd call it stubborn courage in the face of

odds," said Bones, "and what does Scott think that

he's doing, waiting all this-was The missile jerked

violently sideways in a ninetydegree change

of course that didn't merely break the homing lock

but broke the missile too. The massive stress

was too much for its structural integrity, and though the

long, slim body tried to flex, it snapped in

half like a stick of celery. Propellant and

warhead went up together in a vivid puff of flame;

but by that time Scotty's people were attending to the next one.

They dealt with the shuttles, too, flipping

them one by one and two by two around the Enterprise in

parabolic curves so wild and whirling that neither the

pilots nor their electronics had a chance to lock

on long enough to do the starship any harm.

Jim's chair-arm communicator whistled, and when

he switched it on, Admiral Korzhan was

laughing at him. Spock half turned to look

toward the sound, then raised his eyebrow to an angle

that spoke volumes. "I have noticed this before," he

said. "Repeated encounters tend to confirm the theory that

Klingons are easily amused."

"Kirk," said Korzhan, recovering his

self-control with elaborate difficulty, "I now

believe your claim of innocence in the theft of

Hakkarl. Nobody who lacks the nerve to defend

his own ship, as a ship should be defended, would have enough

blood in his liver to try to steal ftom the Klingon

Empire. his

"I'm glad that you find all of this so humorous,

Squadron Leader," Jim said dryly. "At

least something's managed to convince you."

The Klingon-accented chuckling stopped abruptly;

there was no point in a joke if the butt of it

refused to recognize the humor. "You are innocent

by default, Kirk, was rasped

Korzhan. His voice had gone cold and angry,

and Jim fancied he didn't like being so thoroughly

shot down in front of his own bridge crew. "But

it is my intention to remain here until I discover

where guilt is to be found his

"Only if you're asked to stay, Korzhan.

Remember the treaty terms. If the Dekkani

don't want you in their sky, you can't stay."

"And who will make me leave? You and your three

ships, Kirk? They will be tong gone once this

evacuation is concluded. And asfor these gadfly

shuttles, they would never dare make any move against

my squadron. 11 The angle of view on

Enterprise's screen was changing, tracking around

to follow the PDI shuttles as they regained a

semblance of formation after their mauling by the tractors.

Jim looked at it, then looked again, harder.

"Mr. Sulu, magnification level five,

please."

What the lower setting had only suggested was.

revealed now to be completely true the terrorists

were starting an attack run on Korzhan's

squadron. Bones stared, not believing that any

sentient being could be so crazy. "Jim, you were right when

you mentioned suicidal tendencies. They'll

be cut to pieces." He watched silently for a few

more seconds, then said, "Wam the squadron leader.

Ask him not to return fire."

For a moment, Jim saw not the screen and his chief

medical officer, but a Starfleet shuttlecraft

exploding as finally as that missile had done,

spilling out dead people instead of electronic guidance

chips. Let the terrorists get what's coming to them,

he thought. We can't do it-we're the good guys-but the

Klingons will oblige. He shivered at letting such

a thought inside his head, then reopened his link to the

Klingon flagship and to Korzhan.

It was very quiet on Tazhat's bridge. The

killings, the confusion, and the narrow escape had served

to' sober all of them. "Report status," said

Kasak. His first rage at the intruding squadron

had died down by now, but it was only the difference between

an oilsoaked blaze and a raked, banked,

slow-burning fire of coals.

"We are cloaked," said Askel. "Hakkarl

is cloaked also. His power output is constant

full. All weapons are charged." He touched

controls, put a tactical display on the screen.

"Relative positions giv e free crossfire in

five directions, as I now show. And we

may escape-was "Escape?" There was threat in the

way Kasak said it.,

"Execute withdrawal," Askel corrected,

"through this quadrant. Shown." He operated the

controls 226

again and cleared the screen of all but its visual

image. "Awaiting orders." "Viewer track

right, show mag four, hold."

They watched as the orbiters attempted to press

home an attack on Enterprise, and laughed

quietly as the starship employed tractors to fling

the little ships aside. Kirk showed a fine contempt

for kuve opponents, worthy of a Klingon; it would

make bringing dishonor to his name that much the sweeter.

But then they saw how the orbiters regrouped and

continued their assault on the next ships in their

path, regardless of the fact that those were the nine

K't'inga cruisers of Korzhan's squadron.

"Are they brave or stupid?" said Force Leader

Marag in wonderment. Weapons Specialist

Katta leaned over her console for a moment, comparing

her readouts with those scanned from the squadron.

"Both. Then dead." Invisible to eyes and sensors

alike, they settled back in comfort to watch the

sport until Captain Kasak said

"Stations" in the deadly tone of one who had not yet

given any order to relax. He studied them well

from where he sat in the command chair, then glanced at the

foot repeaters and said, "Weapons, precision

fire.gg@.

"Targeting which shuttle, sir?" said Katta,

tracking prelock triangles from one to the other

until ordered where to stop and fire. "No shuttle.

Target the battle cruiser nearest to them."

If the bridge had been quiet before, it was

stunned now into utter silence. No head turned or

lifted from monitor or station, but eyes slid

sideways to meet other eyes and to wonder what the

captain was planning now. There was no outcry of

protest as there might have been before the

sutai-Khornezh had re227

quested too many strange things on this first flight,

things that had later proved to be wise, or cunning,

and always the proper thing to do. Kasak took note of

it and struck his hands together. "Good!" he said. "You have

learned at last. Now target starboard engine,

disabling only, affirm action."

"Acting."

"Lock on."

"Affirm."

"Fire!"

It was the viewing angle, nothing more deliberate,

that put the Klingon battle cruiser Tarkan

square in the middle of the viewscreen at the moment

when his starboard engine and part of the supporting wing were

chopped away. Because of that accident of position,

only the bridge crew of the Enterprise and that

ship's visual flight recorder log saw that the

explosion had not been caused by any sort of

missile. The actinic blue track of a shipboard

disrupter had been brief, but all too plain. And the

most appalling part was that the firing ship hadn't needed

to decloak.... Admiral Korzhan's

response was typically Klingon his flagship

locked every disrupter battery that could be brought to bear

onto the approaching targets and, without issuing

further warnings, opened fire. The leading Dekkan

orbiter instantly became an expanding cloud of

debris-and Jim's hailing frequency broke up,

swamped by the raw energy of the weapon discharge.

Whatever he might have said to Korzhan was lost in a

screech of static.

The main viewscreen's tactical overlay showed

the other eight shuttles already within easy range, and the

Klingons weren't likely to waste time

scanning them when achieving a disrupter lock was just as

easy. Another orbiter flared up, then collapsed

into a spitting globe of irradiated scrap, and

made the Klingons' 228

intentions for every other potentially hostile target

only too clear. Terrorists or not, the people on those

orbiters were under Federation protection. Until

Uhura managed to fifter the channel back down

to something that could be used for communication, there were only

two things Jim could do to prevent a massacre

move Ente"...prise between the Dekkani shuttles and the

massed firepower of Korzhan's squadron ...

Or order Chekov to open fire.

His stomach cramped into a knot as he thought of the

consequences of either decision. Federation starships were

well shielded, but not well enough to survive the

punishment that nine K't'inga class battle

cruisers could hand out if the Organians weren't

around to stop them. He could get himself and his entire

crew killed, and his ship destroyed, to protect a

bunch of terrorists who probably couldn't care

less about them. And the other alternative was worse.

If the Organians regarded this sector as part

of the Treaty Zone, and didn't regard Jim's

action as correct and necessary, they would

immobilize Enterprise's phasers, so that the

Dekkani would be butchered anyway. The

Organians would also be completely within their rights

to hand Dekkanar over to the Klingon Empire as a

penalty for the violation of firing unprovoked on a

cosignatory. Just as Captain Kasak had

intended all along. A third armed orbiter

exploded, and Jim realized that, comright or wrong,

he had to do something before any more of these stupid,

malicious-and plainly helpless-civilian

terrorists were killed. Those who had committed murder

were probably already dead, and as for the remainder, their

only crime was to have made bloody nuisances of

themselves. It wasn't enough to die for. "Sulu,

one-half impulse power. Get Enterprise

into 229

the line of fire before Korzhan's entire

squadron opens up." He was aware of shocked

stares from all over the bridge, and equally aware that

his own voice was far steadier than it had any reason

to be as he fitted a sort of weak grin onto his

face. "Maybe they'll be so surprised they'll

hold their fire."

And then the hailing frequency came back on

line. The bridge crew of the Enterprise

had probably never been so happy to see a

Klingon's ugly face as they were to see Admiral

Korzhan now. Jim Kirk talked fast, as fast

as he had ever done in such a situation-and to such effect

that the Klingon admiral glowered doubtfully for no more

than a second before calling a general cease-fire.

On the tactical display that overlaid

Korzhan's face, Jim watched as the surviving

orbiters and their unarmed companions fled over the

horizon and out of the line of fire before making a very

fast unscheduled reentry and descent down to the

planet's surface. Only when they were safely

gone did he breathe a bit more easily. Jim

delicately wiped the perspiration from his palms and

brow and upper lip, drew another easy breath, and

began explaining facts and theories to Korzhan

epetai-Kenek. At a speed rather more appropriate

to comfort and to the dignity of their rank.

"So that was Kasak's intention," said Korzhan

grimly. "To provoke you by provoking me. He

knew that the Organian glowbugs would not be troubled

by an internal quarrel among Klingons. Such

disagreements are.. . not uncommon. It was a good

planunless it worked against the Empire, as it might have

done hadyou persisted in this madness

ofmakingyour starship a shieldfor those Dekkan

fools. his

He had watched the relevant part of the flight

recorder data, had heard statements from Sulu,

Chekov, and several others, and had been convinced

comeventually. Jim was surprised by that;

pragmatism was not a trait he had encountered much in

Klingons. This squadron leader had evidently

been selected for good sense and restraint rather than

aggressiveness, in an attempt to put a stop

to all those instances along the borders of the Organian

Treaty Zones where overhasty Klingon captains

had burned their fingers and the Empire's. It was a

fortunate choice for all concerned; the present

situation had enough of a hair trigger already. The

admiral smiled, no more than a stretching of lips

back from teeth. "Kasak might have caused us

to forfeit an imperial world instead of gaining one. This

will not be forgotten. I will speak with you again, Kirk, was

said Korzhan, and broke off the connection.

"Captain," said Uhura, "Chief

Councillor Varn is requesting you speak with him.

He's somewhat agitated and got more so when I told

him whom you were talking to. Shall I put him

up on the screen?" "Yes, Uhura. Thank you."

Talking to the wily Varn would be a holiday after

Korzhan epetaicomKenek, and Jim was no longer

disposed, or required, to put up with any of the old

man's bluster. The chief councillor would use

language appropriate to a diplomatic

exchange or Jim wouldn't listen to what he had

to say."

In the event, Varn spoke like someone calling the

police to come and prevent his house from being burgled.

That was appropriate enough, thought Jim, if a little

late. Planetside, it seemed things had gone a

little crazy. The realization that an entire Klingon

battle squadron had somehow been invited

into orbit, and that as a result the Federation ships

present were heavily outnumbered, had thrown what

presently passed for the Dekkan government into a

panic.

They had ordered the Federation representatives

off-planet, but failed to negotiate any

military or diplomatic protection to fill the

gap. The instant the 231

Klingon squadron arrived, the Dekkani

realized that their world and their culture were wide open,

not for development but for exploitation. And

they knew that so far as the Empire was concerned, the

PD1 terrorists in their little ships were likely

to start something that only the Klingons would finish.

It all came out in a tumble of words that little time for

breath and none whatsoever for the haughtiness Jim had

heard before. "Councillor Varn," he said during his

first chance to get a word in, "this is not a matter for

me to decide. There are Federation diplomats on the

other two ships of this force. As you should well know.

Address your problems to them. And, Councillor?"

"What is it, Kirk Admiral?"

"Remember the alternative. Kirk out."

Klingons were hunting Klingons. Korzhan's

squadron was moving against the renegade Kasak,

outraged that this passed-over failure had succeeded in

making them all look like fools. All on board the

Enterprise were aware of their new allies by now, and the

general feeling was one of relief tinged with grimly

ironic amusement.

James Kirk was not quite so relieved. The

Klingons' assistance was welcome in tracking down

Hakkarl and Tazhat, but it made the change in

situation all too clear. If Kasak's cloaked

ship was still in the sector and if Kasak had been

monitoring the frequencies as a sensible

defector should, he would know he could no longer

claim association with the Empire-but he would also know

that the political restraints on his actions were gone

now, and for the same reason.

Spock, hands clasped behind his back, stood

quietly beside the center seat. "Kasak is now a

criminal, Captain. And any attack he might

make on the

Enterprise or on you would be in the nature of

personal rather than political aggression. Even

assuming that the Organians would intervene in this

system, there is a considerable doubt that they would do so

in such a circumstance. It would be outside the

restrictions laid down in the treaty."

"What you're saying, Spock," said Bones,

"is that Kasak's still got a state-of-the-art ship that

we can't even see, and once he works all this out for

himself, he'll try using it?"

"Laudably succinct, Doctor. It seerns-was

And then Enterprise jolted, vibrating like a

tuning fork as raw energy splattered against her

shields and leaked through to the gravity and guidance

systems. The main viewscreen went black.

Bones grabbed the bridge handrail, but

even then almost fell as a sine wave of grav

fluctuations rippled through the ship. Her durasteel

hull members groaned with the intolerable anguish of the

stresses surging through them before shuddering back down

to stillness again. But not silence; for the sirens were whooping

again.

"It seems you were right, Mr. Spock," finished

Jim, his voice deadly calm. "Have we got

visual back yet?"

"Yes, sir." The screen came back to life

with an astonishing image nine Klingon battle

cruisers were concentrating their fire on a single

point, the source of that last shot, so that they formed the

base of a distorted pyramid whose sides were a mesh

of blue fire. Its apex flared intolerably

bright all that energy was splashing back from shields so

powerful that they were radiating out into the ultraviolet.

Suddenly the firing ceased, and Hakkarl was back in

view. Jim didn't know whether its cloaking

device was damaged, overloaded, or merely

bleeding off too much power now that it was involved in

full-scale combat rather than the hit-and-run raids

for which it was designed. All that mattered was that it could

seen and destroyed, and he waited for the

other Klingon warships to close in for the kill.

Nothing happened. Instead of pressing home their

attack until Hakkarl was no more than a swirl

of irradiated particles, the ships of Korzhan's

squadron fell back, withholding their final

salvo. Then Communications chirped the presence of

an incoming signal. At a nod from Jim,

Uhura transferred it to the screen.

Squadron Leader Admiral Korzhan

epetai-Kenek gazed levelly at Admiral

James T. Kirk. He said nothing for several

moments, merely looked long and hard, as if

impressing Jim's face onto his mind. "There is

your enemy, Kirk, "he said at last. "Andyour

battle, if he has power enough remaining to make a

fight of it. Not mine. his

The screen went dead.

"They have given him to me," said Kasak softly.

He had replayed the monitored transmission

back three times before he spoke a single word.

"Kirk and his ship are mine to destroy."

"This was not why we supported you," said Krynn.

"Where is all the glory that the one promised in the

winning of a planet for the Empire?" "That is past,"

said Kasak. He was growing impatient with

this pedantic insistence on less important

matters while the Enterprise and Kirk were waiting

to be killed. "Stations."

They did not move. Kasak stared at them,

unbelieving for an instant, then grabbed for his

pistol. Marag's huge hand came down on top of

his and forced the disrupter back into its holster. "This is

mutiny!" snarled Kasak, his teeth bared to the

gums.

"No, Captain, it is wisdom. Hakkarl's

cloak is destroyed, and you do not yet know what other

damage has been done." Askel leaned forward,

pulled the pistol's charge slide out and tucked the

weapon 234

behind his belt. "Imperial Intelligence was

willing to defend even the wildest schemes of the

sutai-be Khornezh who was full of skill and

brilliance." He was fully aware of the shocked way

in which the others were all looking at him, and ignored

it. "But not the one who is bortaSo straav. ?"'

"What did you say?" Kasak's voice had

dropped to no more than an exhalation of air; none

present had ever heard him made so angry.

"Only the truth. A captain may not lead his ship

and serve the Empire and yet be a slave

to revenge. Something must lose. P-he looked from

side to side and nodded at the agreement he saw

there- "we do not like to lose." "Then go. Get off my

ship."

"It is not your ship but the Empire's." Askel

looked as though he might have said more, but the words

remained unspoken. "But we will leave it, just the

same. And leave it for you to hold as best you can."

Kasak stared at him for several seconds, then showed

his teeth. "Better than you think, mutineer. Say

what you will, this ship is mine, and Hakkarl is

mine." He swung back the padding on one arm of the

command chair and unlocked the security lid that covered

a key pad beneath it. "Mine to command," he said, touching

keys in a coded sequence that brought different

readouts to the data screens around the chair's base.

Kasak entered a last command series, closed cover

and padding, and pressed the switch that normally opened the

intercom circuit. This time it caused changes in the

very structure of the chair as panels slid back and

additional equipment swung up, locking in place

with small, solid sounds thrust levers, a

sidestick controller, a sensors board, a

weapons status display-all devices more

appropriate to a single-seat fighter.

Kasak looked at them, then at his crew. "Mine

control," he said, and dismissed them by turning his

back. Askel shook his head at this stubbornness and

made to follow the others from the bridge to the

transporter room and thence to the flagship of

Admiral Korzhan. But he paused at the door

of the turbolift and glanced over one shoulder at this

captain who had been his friend. "Success,

sutai-Khomezh," he said. "Whatever has

passed, you will be remembered with honor."

Askel entered the lift car and did not look

back again. Its door closed, and he was gone.

"Full sensor scan completed, Captain."

Spock studied the data for a few seconds.

"Energy readings are residual, decaying fast, and

more a result of irradiation during the bombardment

than of activity on board the cruiser. I would

say that Hakkarl is dead in space, except-was

"Except that it looked the same way last time,"

growled Bones. "Precisely, Doctor."

"It sounds to me as if you don't trust your own

instruments, Spock," said Jim, swinging his seat

halfway around to study this phenomenon. "The

instruments are accurate. But I do not

trust that Klingon ship. That machine. Without a living

crew, it has no need for any power stages

except on and off. That makes every deactivation a

potential ambush." They looked more closely at

the battle cruiser, now hanging nose-down,

slanted across the screen in an attitude that made

it look totally derelict. Admiral Korzhan

had given this enemy to them. It was unlikely he

meant it as a gift or that his un-Klingon tolerance

would outlast any effort to capture it. He had

presented it as a target, whether in battle or as

a hulk on a 236

live-firing range. And there was no one on board

anyway.... Jim reached his decision. "Mr.

Stewart, man the weapons console, arm photon

torpedoes. Mr. Chekov, lock phasers on

target; stand by on phasers and photon torpedoes.

On my-was

"Captain! Power surge! Shields are tilde

his

"Fire!"

The photon torpedoes spat from both tubes in

a left-right-left-right ripple that for all its speed

was not quite fast enough. In the bare seconds between the

torpedoes" launch and their impact, the

Klingon cruiser had raised full forward shields

and at the same instant had begun the first phase of

an impulsepowered evasion sequence. It vanished

for a moment behind four blooms of white fire, an

incandescent daisy chain of destruction two hundred

kilometers long as the torpedoes altered course

to track their suddenly moving target, and for that moment the

watchers on the Enterprise shared a sickening feeling

that it had gone back into cloak. Spock was the only

person on the bridge who did not release an

audible sigh of relief when the battle cruiser

came back into view, and that only because his sensors

had told him an instant before everyone else. The

relief was shortlived, for Hakkarl was lined up on

an attack course. "Sulu, evasive," said

Jim, and saw the Klingon ship heel wildly across

the screen as Enterprise hit a savage combination

break of yaw and roll and pitch all at the same

time. He gulped as his stomach tried to keep pace

with what his eyes said he should be feeling, despite

insistence from his inner ear and the gravity field beneath him

that nothing was wrong. Sulu wasn't using the

automaneuvering protocols, that much was,

obvious anybody trying to program that sort of

behavior into a starship's guidance systems

would be certified.

But it worked. Hakkarl's incoming fire seared under

them and through where they had been with satisfying impotence,

ionization and hard radiation sleeting off in its wake

as the massive energy yield dissipated in

atmosphere.

But any satisfaction generated by that evasion was

squashed by the way the Klingon snapped around in

pursuit. It was a maneuver that would have drawn

shrieks of protest from Scotty and the pylon-stress

monitors if Sulu had tried it with Enterprise;

more than that, if the inertial compensators so much as

flickered during such a wrenching turn, pulling

fortyplus G at rock-bottom minimum, the

entire crew would be smeared into paste. But Hakkarl

of course had no crew, and no energy drained off

to maintain their good health, for that matter. Jim

understood the thinking behind that very clearly now, because that

spare power, and there seemed to be plenty for every demand,

be it thrusters or weapons or shields, was now being

channeled through the disrupters-and threatening Enterprise

shields five and six with an imminent overload,

warpboosting or not. It kept happening with a frightening

inevitability whatever impossible maneuver

Sulu attempted, Hakkarl matched and

exceeded, a little tighter, a little faster, much less

concerned about structural violations. Spock looked

up from a monitor, his expression grave.

"Captain," he said, "sensors indicate an

overall reduction of shield efficiency

to fifty-three percent of standard. Critical

overload and total failure will occur in

fifty-seven seconds unless we are given some

respite from this constant battering."

In other words, do something or we're dead.

But what? Against a computer-crewed ship that could

outmaneuver and outgun them a dozen times

over, what could be done? Jim suspected that.

Hakkarl, unlike M5 or Nomad, would not be

talked into its own destruction, nor could they simply

pull the plug on it....

Or could they?

Jim smiled tightly-a smile that, a few

seconds. later, the rest of the bridge crew was

sharing, Mr. Spockea"of course, being the sole

exception. Now if it would work ...

"We're in your hands, Mr. Sulu," said Jim

softly. "Do your best." "Sir," said the

helmsman, his acknowledgment coming as if from very far

away. Sulu leaned over the helm

console, checking readouts and tapping controls, then

straightened up, his hands poised. "Chekov, set

prelocks dead ahead and stand by; I'll only be

able to get away with this the first time, but you ought to have a

target in three, two, one-was Both hands came

down, fingers spread, on the. reaction-thruster

controls. It was as if the rearmost shield had given

way and let something through to the hull. Enterprise

shook, then rattled, as she simultaneously

dumped velocity and was shoved sideways out of her

line of flight. Taken unaware, Hakkarl went

streaking paststraight into the prelock zone. Two

photon torpedoes and the output from all of the forward

phasers hit square and punched through to the primary

hull, detonating on that section of plating where the

scout ship Tazhat was carried, and where remote

command transmissions were received....

The battle cruiser reeled more violently than

seemed justified even by four clean hits. It

wobbled in space for what seemed like several

minutes. Then all-, at once it regained its

equilibrium and swung toward them again. And kept

on turning as Hakkarl swung by them 239

and toward an area of space between Korzhan's

squadron and the other Federation ships. It was

an area where there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen,

even with full sensor assistance; and that was, of

course, the intended effect of a cloaking device.

Hakkarl, brain-damaged and blind, as Jim had

intended, and lethal, was homing on the source of its

own command signals-a circumstance he had not

foreseen.

"Weapons are locking on, Captain," said

Spock. On the viewer there was still nothing for them

to lock onto. "Firing." Or to fire at.

"Firing again."

Tazhat shivered out of cloak, pitching up and

back on its plane axis like an animal

acknowledging defeat by displaying an unprotected

throat and belly. According to the screen readouts, the

display had no effect on Hakkarl

"Cruiser is firing for a third time." Spock

glanced at a scrolling schematic and then returned

his attention to the main viewer. "The Bird of

Prey's shields are failing. Have failed. It is

defenseless." "Why has Hakkarl ceased firing?"

wondered Chekov. "It was programmed

by Klingons," said Jim. "They take prizes for

profit. Someone must have included

surrender-recognition parameters, like

dropping shields."

"Maybe they've stopped talking to each other,"

said Bones. The statement was less facetious than

it sounded Tazhat's transmissions would have been

combat maneuvers or weapon-firing instructions, and

by the look of its behavior, continuing to follow such

orders even when they became inappropriate,

Hakkarl had an unfortunately large resident

memory buffer. And then the message from Tazhat

came through. 240

Captain Kasak sutai-Khomezh sat as

Jim had first seen him, on his bridge in his command

chair, but this time it was smoke rather than

atmosphere-moisture clouding the scene. Kasak

wore no respirator mask, but was breathing the

unfiltered fumes; he was already dying, from that as much as

from the wound that had mangled his body. Fire stained the

murk a dirty orange, and it was shot through with the

sparks that spat from shattered consoles.

"Kirk ... I see you have survived again."

Kasak could have seen nothing of the sort. Splinters of

screen from an exploding monitor had made certain

of that. "Be assured, this cannot last. You have made

too many enemies during your years, and luck is a

finite commodity. Somewhere out among the stars

there will be another enemy waiting for you, one more

fortunate than I. One day you will know the bitter

flavor of the coldest dish, and in the Black

Fleet I will know, and laugh. his

He laughed now, painfully, and blood shone on

his teeth. "So Hakkarl, too, is taken from me,

was Kasak said. "There will be no more. Tazhat I

keep. was Moving slowly, he stripped off his

officer's sash and used it to tie his free hand to the

command chair. "Kasakte kaase," he said.

"Witness it, Kirk. It would be good if you did not

forget. was He touched a control, then sat back and

made himself comfortable.

"Hakkarl has resumed its attack run," said

Spock. Jim did not reply. He was staring across

a gulf that was more than simply empty space,

looking at what might have been himself, and wondering how

and when that gulf could be bridged so that a Klingon could

stand aboard the Enterprise without suspicions of some

ulterior motive. He was still wondering, still watching

that figure, all alone in the chair and tied there

by tradition far stronger than the mere fabric of a

sash, when Spock said, very softly, "Firing." The

image on the screen flared white, then

black, and broke up in static. The battle

cruiser's firing pass lasted no more than a

second, and when it was over Jim sat in silence,

looking at the crackling interference on the viewer that

nobody right now would switch off without orders.

Finally he got to his feet. "Screen to exterior

visual," he said. Hakkarl hung there, truly

dead in space now, as dead as anything that had blown

out its own brains. Nothing but scrap. "Destroy

that," Jim said. "Completely."

He didn't stay to watch his orders carried out,

but turned his back on the bridge and went to his

quarters and was alone with his thoughts and the darkness.

"The Klingon battle group is leaving orbit,

Captain," said Uhura, "and their admiral wants

to speak to you. I told him you were taking your first rest

period after a long time on duty, and shouldn't be

disturbed, but he was very, er, persuasive."

"Leaving orbit?" Jim was suddenly very much

awake. "Put him on, Uhura-and thanks for being

persuaded."

Korzhan epetai-Kenek gazed at him from the

screen, and though Jim didn't know much about Klingon

facial expressions, it struck him that this particular

Klingon was at ease with his world. He was

soon to learn the reason why.

"So you have seen our Great Experiment, Kirk,

Korzhan said. "As have we all. No one

askedfor or agreed with my opinion of it, but all have

witnessed my vindication. was The image on the viewer

drew itself up much straighter, and it gave Jim a

small shock to suddenly realize just how very old, and

therefore highly placed, the squadron leader had to be

to get this particularly satisfying command. Vindication

in242 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

deed, and satisfaction by the personal and

political bushel. "Know this, as they will know when I

return Klingons need no machines to do their

fighting for them. Stand your force down from its battle

stations, Kirk. There will be no morefighting done

today, either by machines or hyflesh and blood. Maybe

we will meet again when both of us have different orders and

no interfering Organian light bulbs to prevent a

warrior ftom seeking glory. Until then, or

until the Black Fleet, I salute you. Kai

kassai, Enterprise. Kai kassai, Kirk. was

The picture changed from an elderly Imperial

race Klingon in a Navy uniform to nine bright

specks accelerating out of the 4725 Cancri

system, and James Kirk lay back on

his bed and breathed easily for the first time in days. The

Klingon withdrawal had been the only item missing

from a small catalog of good things that had quietly

accumulated over the past four hours. Bones had

repaired Todd Johnson's elbow, replacing the

smashed original joint with a pattern-linked

implant that was quite literally as good as new. The

colonel was back with his people on the surface again,

heading a peacekeeping police force that needed no

weapons, no armor, and indeed had very little to do

except sit in the sun-until the new, and by the sound

of th em, very easy negotiations for Federation tenancy

began. Vanguard and Sir Richard had already

returned to normal duties. And Enterprise had

been cleared to leave Dekkan space and head for

Star Base 12. The news of that was probably

all over the ship by now, and Jim decided he might

as well put sleeping back on hold until he

had gone back to the bridge and made it all

official. As soon as he checked on readiness with the

department heads, they could actually get out of here.

He began to close his eyes for just five more 243

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT lazy minutes-and then

opened them again, very wide, when the ceiling somehow grew

a ... glowbug. Jim sat up very

straight and very fast, and stared as the globe of pure

energy drifted down to eye level.

"Ayelborne?" he hazarded, pulling the name up

through a dozen years of memory. Claymare,

corrected the voice in his head, without rancor for the

mistake. Organians, thought Jim, were

probably a sufficiently advanced race to know that

their energy forms were difficult to tell apart. Pity

about their sense of timing, though. There was no need, said

Claymore, making Jim glad he hadn't thought

anything more insulting. We merely observed. It is

pleasing that our intervention was not required All the

questions about that decision shot through Jim's brain, and he

hoped the Organian was not so advanced that it couldn't

recognize outrage when it heard some. However,

since all the answers to those questions inevitably

accompanied them, Claymare was saved the trouble of

accounting for each one. The conflicts ofpersonal

enemies, while regrettable, are not a part of the

treaty, it said, and do not warrant intervention

regardless of which party an individual might claim

to represent. The late Captain Kasak acted

throughout on a most erroneous assumption of our

response. Jim considered all of the ways that he

might have resolved the situation, ways he

had discarded as being provocative but which evidently

hadn't been anything of the kind, and slapped one hand

against his forehead. He groaned softly; for some

emotions, words were notoriously inadequate.

Kasak aside, said the Organian soothingly, the

reactions of both sides were most laudable. We are

extremely pleased by this, and await further

develop- 244 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT ments

with interest. Claymare's glowing light shrank and

began to fade. Captain James Kirk, we

salute you.... Jim gazed across the empty room

and blinked a couple of times to remove the purple

afterimages from his vision. He reached for the

communicator panel, then hesitated and decided that

since no intruder alert had been sounded, he would

save news of the Organian's visit for a more

appropriate moment. Jim made a brief

official note of the incident in his personal log.

That would do for now. Then he pulled on his boots,

shrugged into his tunic and made for the bridge.

From the looks he got as he stepped from the lift,

Jim knew that his crew knew what had ended his

off-shift so early. Shipboard gossip strikes

again, he thought, and wondered what the grapevine would

make of the visitor-once he got round

to officially transferring the log entry. Right now there

were more urgent matters needing attention. Such as shore

leave. "Shore leave?" he heard Chekov mutter

in a tone of studied incredulity. "But my calendar

says that this was shore leave!" "Oh, no, Mr.

Chekov," said Jim, grinning. "This was just

practice. Now you get to survive the real thing.

Lay in a course for Star Base Twelve, if you

please. Mr. Sulu, take us out of orbit.

One-half impulse power till we're at the

perimeter, then warp factor six." They turned from

the planet and returned to the stars.