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One

Captain’s Log, Stardate 8715.3.

The Enterprise is transporting a shipload of Federation diplomats to an important conference on Musgrave IV. Although many pressing issues and negotiations await the diplomats, I do not anticipate any serious difficulties or complications en route to the meeting. Then again, if nearly four decades in Starfleet have taught me anything, it’s that you never know what might be just beyond the next star.

“Captain on the bridge!”

A yeoman announced James T. Kirk’s arrival as the captain strode onto the bridge, still decked out in his best red dress uniform. He had been hosting a luncheon with the ship’s distinguished guests when he’d been alerted that his presence was requested on the bridge. To be honest, he’d been grateful for the excuse to make an early exit; one could listen to only so much veiled bickering about interstellar tariffs and arcane jurisdictional disputes before a full-scale Klingon invasion would seem a welcome distraction.

“Report, Mister Spock?” he asked crisply.

The Vulcan surrendered the captain’s chair to Kirk. “My apologies for interrupting you, Captain, but—”

“No apologies needed,” Kirk said, cutting him off. “Trust me.”

Spock nodded in understanding. “Be that as it may, Commander Uhura has picked up what appears to be an alien signal originating from a nearby star system.”

“What kind of signal?” Kirk asked, turning toward Uhura.

“Uncertain, Captain,” she reported from her communications station. “I’m detecting a good deal of interference from the source of the transmission, making it difficult to translate. It’s not in any language known to the Federation, but the repetitive nature of the signal, which keeps cycling over and over again, suggests that it’s both artificial and automated.” She fiddled with her earpiece. “I’m trying to clean up the signal so the Universal Translator will have more to work with, but it’s going to take some time.”

“Understood,” Kirk said. “Keep at it.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.

Kirk had no doubt that Uhura would be able to decipher the transmission eventually; she was the best and most experienced communications officer in the fleet. But in the meantime his curiosity was piqued. An unknown language implied a possible first-contact scenario, a prospect that still got his juices flowing even after all these years. Encountering new life and civilizations was Starfleet’s first and foremost mission.

“So what could we be dealing with here?” he said, thinking aloud. “A distress signal? A greeting? An invitation?”

“A no-trespassing sign?” Chekov added from the nav station in front of Kirk. “Or a lure?”

“Always possibilities,” Kirk conceded. As Chekov was both navigator and security chief these days, Kirk could not fault the Russian for raising the possibility that the signal’s message might not be a friendly one. Kirk glanced over at Spock, who had returned to his customary post at the main science station. “What’s your take on this, Spock?”

“Impossible to formulate without sufficient data.” The Vulcan consulted a display at his terminal. “The signal appears to be emanating from the second planet in the Varba system, approximately 6.74 light-years from our present location.”

“I’m not familiar with that system,” Kirk admitted.

“There is little reason you should be.” Spock looked up. “An unmanned probe, several decades ago, detected no evidence of sentient life in the system, which remains largely unexplored.”

Kirk could believe it. The galaxy was a big place, and this quadrant alone still held vast stretches of uncharted space. Even a lifetime spent traversing the cosmos was not enough to see all the worlds and wonders out here on the final frontier.

Not that he didn’t intend to give it his best shot.

“How long to the Varba system?” he asked.

Spock had already performed the calculations. “Approximately 7.92 hours at warp 6.”

“May I remind you, Captain,” Saavik said from the helm, “that the Enterprise is expected at Musgrave IV?”

The young Vulcan lieutenant had recently rejoined the crew, replacing Sulu as helmsman after the latter’s promotion to captain of the Excelsior. Kirk missed Sulu, but he was glad to have Saavik back aboard and as ready to speak her mind as ever. He appreciated her direct, forthright manner.

“Duly noted, Lieutenant,” he replied. “But, with all due respect to the diplomatic branch of the service, I’m reluctant to let a routine mission ferrying bureaucrats from Point A to Point B get in the way of investigating a signal from an unknown alien species.”

“I am inclined to agree, Captain,” Spock said. “The impending conference on Musgrave IV is significant, but it is not of paramount importance. Wars will not ensue if our arrival is somewhat delayed, depending on what we may, or may not, discover in the Varba system.”

“We might even be able to make up some of the lost time, sir,” Saavik volunteered, “if we increase our current speed and are willing to push the ship’s engines to a degree.”

“Don’t let Mister Scott hear you say that, Lieutenant,” Kirk advised her, grateful that Scotty was presently minding the store in engineering. “But you have a point. We have a new and improved Enterprise on our hands and our engines are in tip-top shape, or so Scotty keeps telling me. We can probably lead-foot it if we have to.”

Saavik gave him a quizzical look. “Lead-foot?”

“An archaic human idiom,” Spock explained, “referring to primitive land vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.” A hint of a smile lifted his lips. “I can testify from bumpy experience that the captain does indeed have a lead foot on occasion.”

Kirk caught the joking allusion to their adventure on Iotia decades before and Kirk’s own initially clumsy attempts to master driving an old-fashioned automobile. I got the hang of it eventually, he thought defensively. More or less.

“I see,” Saavik said, raising an eyebrow.

Kirk smiled. Saavik took after her Vulcan mentor in many ways. The captain felt certain that she would be thoroughly versed on the topic the next time it came up.

“Any indication as to how old that signal is?” he asked, getting back to the matter at hand. “Or how long it’s been cycling?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” Uhura said. “At least not yet.”

“In other words, it could be an urgent distress signal . . . or it could wait until later?”

“An accurate assessment,” Spock said. “We also have no idea of how long the signal will continue to be transmitted.” He looked over to the captain, a pensive expression on his face. “It would be a great loss if the unknown beings responsible for the signal perished or simply relocated before we had an opportunity to investigate.”

“A loss indeed,” Kirk said, making up his mind. For all they knew, the signal demanded a prompt response. “Mister Chekov, plot a detour to the Varba system.”

“Aye, sir,” Chekov said.

Kirk rose from his seat and headed for the starboard turbolift. “Mister Spock, the bridge is yours. I need to inform our passengers that there will be a slight delay in their travel plans.” He winced in anticipation. “Wish me luck.”

“Vulcans do not believe in luck,” Spock said wryly, “although our own exploits are often compelling evidence to the contrary.”

Kirk paused before the open lift door, in no hurry to face a shipload of unhappy diplomats. He expected the Troyian ambassador to be particularly difficult. “Are you implying that we’ve been getting by on dumb luck all these years?”

“Not at all,” Spock replied. “Merely that you have demonstrated a notable talent for beating the odds.”

Kirk liked the sound of that. “Well, let’s hope that talent holds out when we get to Varba II and find out exactly what this mystery signal is all about.”

Kirk contemplated the bridge’s main viewscreen, where distant stars beckoned from across vast expanses of deep space. He knew that the unknown was always potentially dangerous, especially where first contact was concerned. This excursion was not without risk, as Chekov had done well to remind them. They were heading the ship into uncharted waters to answer a call whose nature and meaning remained an enigma. It was even possible that they were taking the bait and heading straight into a trap.

Here’s hoping this detour is worth the effort, he thought. And the danger.

Two

“Approaching Varba II,” Spock announced. “One minute to entering upper atmosphere.”

Galileo descended toward the planet, whose northern hemisphere filled the shuttlecraft’s forward port. Dense, swirling, mustard-colored clouds concealed whatever seas and continents graced the planet’s surface. The impenetrable mist, which possessed a strange, subtle luminosity, blanketed Varba II and was apparently the source of the peculiar electromagnetic interference garbling the signal from the planet. It also posed a significant challenge to the Enterprise’s sensors and transporters. Hence the decision to employ the shuttlecraft rather than beam blindly down to the planet.

“And I thought Argelius was foggy.” Doctor Leonard McCoy eyed the glimmering vapors warily. “We sure there’s solid ground down there somewhere?”

McCoy occupied a passenger seat in the cockpit, next to Spock, who had chosen to pilot the shuttle himself, the better to trace the signal to its exact point of origin. A Starfleet medkit rested at the doctor’s feet, in the event that they were indeed responding to some manner of distress signal, as well as in anticipation of any possible injuries the landing party might incur. Spock hoped the precaution would prove unnecessary, but he was well aware that exploring an unknown planet often entailed hazards to life and limb. He had taken part in more Starfleet funerals than he cared to remember, including his own. Inadequate data only increased the number of variables.

“We can be certain of nothing,” Spock stated. “The planet’s unusual atmosphere makes detailed sensor readings problematic, but there are indications of a marginally Class-M environment beneath the heavy cloud cover.” The science officer examined an illuminated display on the control panel before him. “I am attempting to zero in on the source of the transmission, which I have already narrowed down to a radius of five hundred kilometers.”

“Five hundred, you say?” McCoy replied, scoffing. “You’re slipping, Spock. I expect something a bit more precise from you, out to a couple of decimal places at the very least.”

“I assure you, Doctor, that my faculties are quite undiminished. As we draw nearer to the point of origin, I have every expectation that we will be able to shrink the search area substantially.”

“I should hope so,” McCoy said. “Keep in mind that we’re not as spry as we used to be. I don’t mind a little healthy exercise, but I’d just as soon not hike all over the planet in search of this blasted signal.” He stretched uncomfortably in his seat, bones and muscles creaking. “We don’t all age as slowly as you Vulcans do.”

“My condolences, Doctor. That must be most inconvenient.”

“Don’t rub it in,” McCoy grumbled, before changing the subject. “It has to be killing Jim that he had to skip this expedition.”

“It was a logical decision,” Spock said. “The captain could hardly abandon the dignitaries in his charge to lead a potentially hazardous landing mission. He had little choice but to remain behind on the Enterprise.”

“Oh, I understand why he couldn’t join us,” McCoy said. “Somebody has to unruffle those VIPs’ feathers after all. But you and I both know that Jim would rather be flying down into that soup with us.”

Spock had to agree with that assessment. “You are undoubtedly correct, Doctor.”

Along with McCoy and himself, the landing party consisted of Chekov and a three-person team of security officers. Saavik had volunteered to join the party, but her particular skills were not required for this specific mission. Moreover, as her mentor, Spock was obliged to avoid even the appearance of favoritism by granting her request without good reason. She was disappointed, no doubt, but disappointment was an emotion and, therefore, something any Vulcan could readily overcome.

Or so he assumed.

Varba II grew ever larger before them. A proximity alert flashed on the control panel.

“Entering planetary atmosphere,” Spock said, raising his voice so that those seated in the shuttle’s passenger compartment could hear him. “We may encounter some turbulence. Brace yourselves.”

“Oh, boy.” McCoy checked to make sure he was securely belted into his seat. “I knew I shouldn’t have eaten breakfast this morning.”

Spock’s warning proved well founded. Although the shuttle entered the shimmering yellow clouds at a gentle angle and velocity—in order to minimize the stress on Galileo’s hull—the planet’s upper atmosphere turned out to be far stormier than the placid vacuum of space. The Galileo’s sleek design was more aerodynamic than the older, boxier shuttlecrafts that had been standard in Spock’s younger days, but the weather conditions were challenging regardless. Violent winds, registering at hundreds of kilometers per hour, buffeted the shuttlecraft, rocking it back and forth. It required all of Spock’s concentration and piloting skills to keep Galileo under control and on course. Loose articles tumbled noisily about the rear compartment. Chekov swore in Russian.

“I never thought I’d say this,” McCoy said, the turbulence rattling his voice, “but I think I’d prefer the transporter.”

Spock found himself in agreement with McCoy once again, but he refrained from saying so, preferring to remain focused on the increasingly difficult task of piloting the shuttlecraft. A cyclonic gust struck Galileo’s port side with the force of a phaser barrage, sending it into a roll. McCoy yelped out loud, and Spock was grateful for both the straps binding them to their seats and the shuttle’s own artificial gravity, which helped to mitigate the dizzying effect of the roll. He coolly but hastily worked the controls to stabilize their flight, despite the riotous winds pummeling Galileo from every direction. The fierce keening of the gale could be heard even through the shuttlecraft’s insulated hull. The sound reminded Spock of the baying of a pack of hungry Le-matyas back on his native Vulcan.

“Raising shields,” he said above the shrieking din. “Deflectors engaged.”

He had hoped that the shields would provide additional protection from the storm, but instead a blinding white flash ignited right outside Galileo, causing Spock’s inner eyelids to snap into place. A thunderous explosion jolted the shuttle. Sparks erupted from the helm controls as vital systems abruptly shorted out. Dust and debris rained down from overhead, and cracks spread alarmingly across the forward port, further obscuring his view. The shuttlecraft’s interior lighting flickered, creating a strobe effect inside the vessel. Bulkheads buckled inward, the straining metal crying out in protest. The smell of smoke and burning circuitry contaminated the shuttle’s pressurized atmosphere. Spock’s ears rang from the noise of the blast. He glimpsed fragments of the hull’s exterior plating flying off outside.

“What the devil!” McCoy exclaimed. “Spock—”

“Later, Doctor.” Spock was already formulating a theory to account for the unexpected blast, but more urgent matters demanded the bulk of his attention. The explosion had thrown Galileo off course and into another spin. Propulsion had been knocked off-line, causing the shuttlecraft to dive through the storm at a precipitous rate and angle, zooming like a meteor toward the unseen surface thousands of meters below. Spock calculated that he had only moments to avert an inevitably fatal crash. Height times acceleration equaled catastrophe.

Unless I alter the equation, he thought.

Vulcan training and discipline precluded panic. Working swiftly and efficiently, he bypassed burned-out circuits via the auxiliary systems in order to bring the control panel back on-line. An instant survey of the working display screens informed him that Galileo had been severely wounded by the explosion. Its shields had collapsed (which was possibly just as well, he suspected), while insistent red lights and gauges reported damage and malfunctions across the board, affecting critical systems. Artificial gravity and inertial dampers were both down, leaving Galileo at the mercy of Varba II’s own unyielding gravity, which was roughly comparable to that of Earth or Vulcan. Structural integrity had also been compromised, raising the unwelcome prospect of an imminent hull breach, even as the crippled shuttlecraft plummeted toward certain destruction.

First things first, Spock thought.

The primary impulse drive units were disabled, having apparently sustained major damage, so he attempted to engage the landing thrusters. To his relief, the thrusters activated, allowing him some control of Galileo’s headlong dive toward the planet. The helm was sluggish and balky, but at least the ferocious winds seemed to abate as the shuttle descended rapidly and the omnipresent fog began to thin to a degree, offering a modicum of visibility. Struggling with the controls, Spock managed to arrest Galileo’s spin and orient the shuttle right side up with respect to the planet’s surface, which was coming into view all too quickly.

A nocturnal swamp, partially shrouded by a thick canopy of leafy trees and vines, could be glimpsed through the phosphorescent yellow mist. The marsh appeared to be rushing up at them like a Klingon battle cruiser on a collision course. Straining thrusters could only slow the shuttlecraft’s downward acceleration, not reverse it.

“Spock?” McCoy asked anxiously.

“I see it, Doctor. Hold tight. A soft landing is no longer possible.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Thrusters sputtered erratically. Frantic red lights on the control panel warned of a total system failure. Spock briefly regretted that Sulu was not on hand to lend his superlative piloting skills to this crisis. Much depended on how the shuttlecraft handled in the next few moments.

“Brace for impact!” he shouted.

He retained the presence of mind to transmit an emergency distress signal to the Enterprise. The first officer was uncertain whether the signal would be able to get through the pervasive atmospheric interference, but he judged it worth the attempt. Captain Kirk needed to know that the landing party required assistance.

Assuming they survived the landing . . .

Nose down, Galileo crashed through the verdant canopy into the swamp. Splintered branches and tree trunks scraped loudly against the shuttle’s hull. The thrusters labored to soften the impact but were outmatched by the vicious alliance of gravity and sheer momentum that had the plunging shuttlecraft in its grasp. Murky black waters of unknowable depth surged into view, and, banking sharply, Spock steered Galileo into the water, barely missing the nearby shore.

Now if only the water was deep enough . . .

Galileo slammed into the swamp. Even landing in water, the impact was considerable. Only their safety straps kept Spock and McCoy from being flung from their seats. Water splashed against the prow of the shuttlecraft. The cracked port shattered, spraying Spock with jagged shards. He threw up an arm to protect his face. In the general tumult of the crash, he barely registered a sharp pain in his right shoulder. Survival—and duty—took priority.

The shuttle came to an abrupt halt.

Momentarily stunned, Spock lost precious heartbeats before reacting to the crisis. Blinking, he shook his head to clear it as he hastened to take stock of the situation and the personnel under his command, starting with the slumped figure to his right.

“Doctor?”

“Still in one piece,” McCoy said, stirring beside him. He groaned and grimaced in discomfort. “I think.”

“Commander Chekov?” Spock called out, looking back over his shoulder at the rear compartment, which was rapidly filling with smoke from various small electrical fires. His eyes struggled to penetrate the noxious fumes, which assaulted his nose and throat. “Report!”

“No fatalities, sir!” Chekov said, coughing. “Not yet, that is.”

There was no time for further inquiries. Brackish water gushed through the shattered port, flooding the cockpit, as Galileo sank nose first into what appeared to be a substantial lagoon. The weight of the incoming water caused the shuttlecraft to tilt forward even faster, raising the rear of the vessel, where Chekov and the security officers could be heard scrambling from their seats. Coughs and exclamations punctuated the commotion.

“Move it!” Chekov urged his companions hoarsely. “Time to stretch your legs!”

The water was already knee-deep in the cockpit and getting deeper. Between the flood and the smoke, Spock swiftly assessed the situation and issued the only logical command:

“Abandon ship!”

Unbuckling himself, he secured his tricorder and turned to McCoy, who was already shrugging out of the safety straps. The doctor winced as though the rapid movements pained him. Spock knew the feeling. The crash had hardly left him unscathed either.

“Can you walk, Doctor?” Spock asked.

“Just watch me.” McCoy rose from his seat and began to exit the cockpit, only to turn back as though he had forgotten something. “Wait! The medkit!”

The crash had cracked the kit open, spilling its contents into the flooding cockpit. McCoy frantically tried to recover as much of the equipment as he could, tossing hyposprays and medicinal vials back into the kit, but time was not on his side. Within minutes the front of the shuttlecraft would be completely submerged. The water was unpleasantly cool but not freezing. Spock estimated the temperature to be approximately forty degrees Celsius.

“We must go, Doctor,” Spock urged. “There is no time.”

“But my supplies—”

“Are not worth drowning for.” Spock took hold of McCoy and half guided, half shoved the other man out of the cockpit toward the rear of the shuttlecraft. By now, the port hatchway was partially underwater as well, so, splashing through the surging liquid, they made their way up a steep incline, their boots slipping and sliding on the tilting floor. Through the acrid haze, Spock spotted Chekov and the others at the aft hatchway up ahead. Smoke billowed from an overhead storage compartment, while scattered supplies were being washed away by the flood. A fallen mess kit sank beneath the rising tide, which at least helped to extinguish any potential blazes. A loose playing card drifted past Spock’s shin. It was a queen of spades.

“Stand by!” Chekov manually activated the emergency release lever, and the hatchway blew open explosively, letting out some of the choking smoke. He beckoned urgently. “Up and out, everybody!”

Holding on to the edge of the hatchway to keep from slipping backward into the flood, Chekov hustled the other three security officers—Fisher, Yost, and Darwa—out of the shuttlecraft while waiting for Spock and McCoy to catch up with him. Damp air and yellow mist invaded the compartment, mingling with the departing smoke. Leaning toward them, Chekov held out his free hand to help pull McCoy the rest of the way up.

“This way up, Doctor. Swiftly, please.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” McCoy grumbled, but he did not refuse the hand up. He clutched the battered medkit under one arm. “I know enough to leave a sinking ship.”

He stumbled out of the shuttlecraft into the waiting lagoon. Spock heard him splash down into the water, accompanied by a fountain of salty spray.

The Vulcan accepted Chekov’s assistance as well. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that the water was rising to fill the passenger compartment, the weight of it dragging the shuttle down so that Galileo was practically at a ninety-degree angle to the upset surface of the lagoon. Turning his gaze forward once more, he peered out the hatchway.

“After you, Mister Chekov.” He held up a hand to fend off any heroic protests. “That’s an order, Commander.”

Chekov nodded and jumped from the hatchway into the water. Spock took a moment to ensure that his tricorder was still securely strapped to his shoulder before quitting the shuttle as well, just as Galileo slipped entirely beneath the roiling water, vanishing from sight. For Spock, it was less a matter of jumping into the lagoon than merely letting Galileo drop away without him. The undertow of the departing shuttlecraft tugged at him, but Spock had no desire to follow it to the bottom of the lagoon. His responsibilities lay elsewhere.

Alien waters enveloped him. Paddling to stay afloat, he surveyed their surroundings. Through the dimly glowing mist, he spied a muddy bank several meters away, beyond which lay a forbidding expanse of exotic trees, bushes, vines, moss, and fungi. The vegetation was unique to the planet, naturally, but seemed comparable to the mangroves, ferns, and other plant life frequently found in terrestrial wetlands. Fog and shadows filled the gaps between the overgrown foliage, along with worrying flickers of movement. That some of the shadows seemed to shift did not bode well. Probes had reported no sentient life in the system, but that did not preclude fauna as well as flora. Inexplicable squawks and screeches came from somewhere deeper in the overgrown swampland, accompanied by the buzz and drone of insects. Who knew what varieties of wildlife might inhabit this biome?

Hardly the most inviting of settings, Spock thought, but, as Captain Kirk might say, any port in a storm. “Swim for the shore,” he ordered, perhaps unnecessarily.

“Now there’s a heck of an idea,” McCoy said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I’m sure you would have, Doctor. Eventually.”

The members of the landing party kicked and splashed and eventually waded toward land. Just for a moment, Spock was reminded of an equally watery evacuation not too long before, when he and various others had been forced to abandon a captured Klingon bird of prey as it sank beneath San Francisco Bay, immediately after their voyage home from the twentieth century. But that had been a joyous, even jubilant, occasion marked by the success of their mission to save Earth from an enigmatic alien probe.

This plunge into chill waters was far from a cause for celebration.

Pulling himself up onto the shore, he looked back at the lagoon, whose dark surface was once more flat and untroubled. No trace of Galileo remained.

And beaming back to the Enterprise was not an option.

We are stranded, Spock deduced. And cut off from the ship.

Survival was now the order of the day.

“Sit still and let me treat you, Spock. You’re wounded, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Soaking wet and none too happy about it, McCoy tried to get Spock’s attention as the stranded landing party regrouped on what barely qualified as dry land. A muddy hummock, rising above scattered pools, puddles, and shallow streams, was only a slight improvement over the lagoon that had swallowed Galileo. The air was damp and thin and reeked of mold, rotting vegetation, and a few other odors McCoy was in no hurry to identify. Tiny, gnatlike insects buzzed incessantly. An overcast sky, scarcely visible through the overhanging greenery, made it difficult to distinguish day from night. What feeble light there was mostly came from the shimmering fog, which drifted through the fetid swamp like so many will-o’-the-wisps, or else hung low over the ground, swirling around the doctor’s ankles. His boots sloshed as he hurried after Spock.

“I’m serious, Spock. You need to let me look at that.”

A jagged piece of transparent aluminum, nearly three centimeters in width, was lodged in Spock’s right shoulder. What looked to be dark green blood—it was difficult to tell in the faint lighting—streamed from the wound, indicating that the shard had hit a vein, not an artery; Vulcan arterial blood was generally a brighter shade of green and would have been spurting, not streaming. McCoy thanked their lucky stars that the fragment had not struck Spock another half centimeter to the left. The Vulcan glanced down at the injury, as though indeed noticing it for the first time.

“Never mind me,” he said brusquely. “Please attend to the others first.”

“Not a chance.” McCoy couldn’t blame Spock for having other things on his mind, but that wound demanded immediate attention. “We can’t have you losing any more of that coppery green stuff you call blood. It’s not as though we have a ready donor on hand to transfuse you.”

Spock grudgingly conceded the point. “For once, your logic is irrefutable, Doctor.” He sat, with obvious reluctance, on a fallen log that was practically upholstered in moist moss and fungi. The soggy timber sagged beneath his weight. Disturbed creepy-crawlies scurried away. “You may proceed.”

“’Bout time you saw it my way.” McCoy wrapped some soaked dressings around his own hand to protect it from sharp edges, then took hold of the shard jutting from Spock’s shoulder while bracing his other hand against his patient’s left shoulder. “This is going to hurt,” he warned. “Ordinarily, I’d give you something for the pain first, but most of my analgesics went down with the ship.”

“Do not trouble yourself, Doctor. Any physical discomfort is the least of my concerns at present.”

McCoy could believe it. Even as he yanked the shard from Spock’s shoulder, eliciting nothing more than a grimace from his patient, the doctor remained all too conscious of the larger crisis unfolding around him. Chekov’s security team was busy staking out a perimeter, phasers at the ready, while Chekov had his communicator out and was trying again to make contact with the Enterprise; unfortunately, it seemed the damn fog was getting in the way.

“Chekov to Enterprise,” the Russian said, sounding understandably frustrated. Like McCoy, he had shed his waterlogged field jacket, but the clothing underneath was just as soaked and streaked with mud. He held the communicator up to his lips. “Repeat: Chekov to Enterprise. Please respond.”

McCoy tossed the bloody shard aside and helped Spock out of his own soaked jacket so that he could get at the actual injury. He guided Spock’s other hand to the hurt shoulder. “Keep pressure on the wound while I see if I can scrounge up some sort of antibiotic to stave off infection.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Spock said, complying. He nodded at Chekov and the others. “A medical report on the party, please.”

“Battered and bruised but still in working order,” McCoy said, having already done triage on the entire landing party. A hypospray hissed as he injected Spock with an all-purpose sterilizing serum that had somehow survived the crash; McCoy didn’t want to think about what sort of alien germs might have been swimming around in that lagoon. “Some sore ribs, a touch of whiplash, minor lacerations and pulled muscles, and I’m moving a little stiffly, thanks for asking. Nothing life-threatening, however, although I wish I hadn’t lost half my supplies in the crash.” He shuddered at the memory of their so-called landing. “That could have been a lot worse. We’re lucky to be alive.”

“Vulcans do not believe in luck,” Spock said.

“So I’ve been told.” McCoy recalled the explosion that had brought the shuttlecraft down in the first place. His ears were still ringing from the blast. “What in Sam Hill happened up there anyway? Were we struck by lightning, or what?”

Spock shook his head. “Nothing so prosaic, Doctor. Ordinary lightning would not have collapsed our shields or ignited an explosion of that magnitude. Starfleet shuttlecrafts are, as a rule, built to withstand most atmospheric disturbances.”

“I would certainly hope so.” McCoy was no engineer, so he took Spock’s word for it. Certainly they’d flown through some rough skies before without ending up in the drink. He remembered a particularly nerve-racking flight above a chain of erupting fusion volcanoes on Kaskadia IV, which had nonetheless ended with Galileo touching down safely at the Federation science station that was studying the planet’s unique geology. “Then what was that? It felt like a photon torpedo going off all around us.”

“The data is inconclusive, but I believe that some volatile compound or energy in the planet’s atmosphere reacted explosively to our shields, triggering the disaster.”

McCoy blinked in surprise. “You mean our own shields set off the blast? Is that even possible?”

“I would not have thought so, yet here we are.” Spock expounded on his theory, perhaps to distract himself from McCoy’s efforts to clean out the wound before bandaging it. “Further testing and analysis, under more controlled conditions, is needed to confirm the hypothesis, but, upon reflection, such scenarios are not without precedent. It is well documented that certain gases and minerals are incompatible with transporter beams, while dilithium crystals can be affected adversely by specific frequencies of electromagnetic radiation—”

“If you say so.” McCoy was not particularly interested in the technical details. Lacking a protoplaser to seal Spock’s wound or even a spray-on dermal patch, he resorted to bandaging it with a strip of (relatively) clean fabric sliced from the inner lining of his discarded jacket. “I suppose it’s not unlike mixing medications as well as applying them to different humanoid species, each with their own peculiar metabolisms and body chemistries. Sometimes a bad reaction can blow up in your face.”

“An apt analogy, Doctor.” Spock inspected McCoy’s handiwork and moved his shoulder experimentally. “Clearly, this planet’s ubiquitous mist bears closer examination.” Wincing slightly, he retrieved his weatherproof tricorder and began to scan a drifting patch of fog. He peered intently at its readings. “Intriguing. I’m detecting an unusual form of quantified plasma that defies ready classification. The atmosphere appears to contain large quantities of discrete, free-floating, plasmoid structures with an improbably skewed energy-to-matter ratio. It’s possible that this proliferation of airborne plasmoids is generated by the intersection of the planet’s magnetic fields with certain wavelengths of solar radiation, catalyzed by the presence of unique compounds in the atmosphere; the combination is not dissimilar to the forces that were found to generate ball lightning on Earth and sand-fire storms on Vulcan, but on a much more severe scale.” Pure scientific curiosity was evident in his voice. “A pity that we cannot study the phenomena under less dire conditions.”

McCoy barely understood half of that. He cared less about the fog’s composition than how the heck they were going to get out of it. He glanced up at the overhanging branches as though attempting to spot the Enterprise high in orbit above the planet. The ship—and sickbay—seemed very far away.

“Jim’s bound to launch a rescue mission anytime,” he said hopefully, “even if we can’t make contact with the ship.”

“In time, Doctor, but perhaps not immediately. We anticipated that the landing party might be out of touch with the Enterprise for the duration of the mission. I transmitted a distress signal moments before the crash, but I cannot guarantee that the captain received it.”

McCoy clung to the idea that help would be on the way eventually. “Still, when we don’t return in a decent amount of time, Jim will realize that something went awry and—”

A horrifying possibility struck him with the force of a disruptor blast. “Spock, what if the rescue mission makes the same mistake we did and raises their shields up there in the clouds?”

“That would be unfortunate,” Spock said gravely, looking up from his tricorder readings. “By all indications, the vapors are extremely volatile.”

A few meters away, Chekov had gathered a pile of damp kindling in an apparent attempt to start a fire. Raising his phaser, he took aim at the accumulated sticks, moss, and leaves. The phantasmal mist glided about the area, wafting between him and his target. He rubbed the back of his neck, which he had strained in the crash.

Spock’s eyes widened in alarm. He sprang to his feet.

“Chekov! Wait!”

His warning came too late. A ruby-red beam shot from the phaser, passing through a drifting patch of mist—which detonated on contact. A fiery white blast knocked Chekov backward into a stagnant puddle, while everyone else scrambled for cover. McCoy felt the heat upon his face even from several paces away. For an instant, he feared that the entire swamp would go up in flames, but the fireball burned itself out just as quickly as it had burst into being, leaving behind a charred stand of marshland, along with a dazed and startled landing party.

Chekov sat up unsteadily, looking understandably shaky. “Bozhe moi,” he murmured.

McCoy rushed to his side. “Chekov, are you all right?”

At first glance, the Russian appeared in decent shape. His face was reddened, as though by a sudden solar flare, and his eyebrows were singed, but McCoy didn’t spot any serious burns or obvious fractures. Good thing he wasn’t standing any closer to that blast, McCoy thought, while wishing for at least one handheld medical scanner.

“I believe so, Doctor.” He blinked and shook his head while gingerly testing his limbs. His pupils appeared normal. He recovered his phaser, which he had dropped after the blast. “Just got the wind knocked out of me by . . . whatever that was.”

“An unfortunate combination of an energy beam and a highly combustible vapor,” Spock stated, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I strongly advise that we refrain from using our phasers while immersed in this mist. We cannot risk setting off an even larger explosion.”

McCoy looked away from Chekov to contemplate the omnipresent fog. They were in the thick of it, all right—in more ways than one.

“You said ‘combustible,’ Mister Spock,” one of the security officers said. Ensign Fisher was a wiry redheaded young man with a pronounced British accent. Constellations of freckles made his boyish face resemble a star map. He’d picked up a split lip in the crash. “Does that mean no torches or campfires at all?”

“I regret so,” Spock said. “This atmosphere is too volatile. A lit flame could also ignite the mists, with possibly catastrophic results.”

“Terrific,” McCoy said with a dour expression. “So much for drying out.”

“I suspect, Doctor, that damp attire is—”

Spock halted abruptly, turning his head toward a shadowy corner of the swamp as though his keen hearing had detected something amiss. McCoy followed his gaze but saw only dense fog and underbrush. His merely human ears heard only a breeze rustling through the fronds and branches. Was there something else out there, within the endless greenery?

“Fisher!” Spock shouted. “Watch out!”

Something came charging out of the mist, brush, and darkness, bursting into view: a large, six-legged life-form, roughly the size of a lion or tiger, which resembled a nightmarish cross between a giant eel and a ferocious jungle predator. Instead of snarling jaws, the creature had a circular mouth lined with concentric rows of vicious, saw-like teeth. Scaly plates, armoring its segmented body, looked slimy to the touch, while its mottled greenish-yellow coloration was perfectly adapted to blending in with its surroundings. At least six pairs of opaque black eyes budded in rows along the top of its head. Thickly muscled limbs, two in the front and four in the back, propelled the beast toward the landing party with terrifying speed. A high-pitched screech, keening like an overloading phaser, assailed McCoy’s eardrums and sent an icy chill down his spine.

Before any of them could react, before Fisher could even turn around, the monster attacked him from behind. Its voracious maw clamped on to the man’s back, tearing audibly through his jacket and uniform to reach the tender meat underneath. Shock and pain contorted Fisher’s face and a strangled scream briefly escaped his lips before his entire body stiffened in paralysis. The creature lifted Fisher off his feet and shook him like a dog with a bone. McCoy heard a horrible grinding sound.

“Fisher!” Chekov drew his phaser, as did Darwa and Yost, but he hesitated to fire, unwilling to blow Fisher up in order to save him. The fog was everywhere, rendering their phasers useless. “Mister Spock. What should—”

Before Spock could answer, the creature sprang into the overhanging branches, taking Fisher (or his body) with it. The predator and its human prey vanished from sight. Leaves and vines rustled noisily overhead before quieting. Only the fog remained.

A hush fell over the survivors, broken only by the ceaseless drone of the tiny insects. It had all happened so fast that McCoy needed a moment to process the fact that Fisher was gone. He hadn’t known the ensign well, aside from giving him the occasional physical, but Fisher had struck him as a promising young officer with a bright future ahead of him. Hadn’t he mentioned a sister once, who was a colonist on New Lancaster or somewhere like that?

If so, she had just lost her brother.

Startled gasps and exclamations betrayed the others’ reactions to the sudden loss of one of their own—and the realization that they all faced a similar fate. Chekov and his team turned their phasers toward the now-menacing canopy above them, even though firing the weapons was probably as dangerous to them as whatever lurked in the trees. Apprehensive eyes searched the mist and shadows, on guard against another attack. Only Spock maintained a stoic expression, although the worry lines in his somber countenance deepened almost imperceptibly. McCoy could see the regret and concern in the Vulcan’s face, even if most people couldn’t. He knew Spock that well.

“It took him, just like that,” Chekov said, aghast. “I wanted to save him, but I didn’t know how. There wasn’t time.”

“Do not blame yourself, Commander,” Spock said gently. “The beast struck swiftly. There was nothing you could have done.”

“He’s right,” McCoy added. “That creature caught us all by surprise.”

Chekov didn’t look like he believed it. He stared angrily at his useless phaser. “If only I could have defended him . . . fired on that monster . . .”

“But you could not,” Spock stated. “Blame the circumstances, not yourself.”

“Easier said than done, Mister Spock,” the Russian said bitterly.

Spock nodded. “I know, Mister Chekov. I know.”

“Should we go after them?” Lieutenant Darwa asked. She was a fit young woman who had previously served with Chekov aboard the Reliant. A slight accent betrayed her Mumbai roots. Lustrous black hair was cut short so that it couldn’t easily be grabbed in a fight. She had the beginnings of a nasty bruise on her forehead, left over from the crash. “Do you think Fisher could still be alive?”

“Unlikely,” Spock said. “I do not say so callously but only realistically. From what we witnessed, we must assume that Fisher has already fallen prey to the creature.”

McCoy remembered that awful grinding sound—and the razor-sharp teeth lining the monster’s circular maw. Chances were Fisher was already dead or dying even before the creature carried him off into the treetops. McCoy didn’t want to think about what happened next. For all they knew, the monster was busy feeding on Fisher’s remains at that very moment. To be honest, he hoped to heavens that the unlucky ensign had died quickly.

“What was that thing?” Lieutenant Yost asked, getting right to the point. A stocky, fair-skinned specimen with cropped blond hair and a beefy physique, he looked every inch the career security officer he was. He was third-generation Starfleet, his grandmother having served under legendary Starfleet captain Jonathan Archer, and had moonlighted as a bouncer back in his Academy days. Putting away his phaser, he picked up a stick to use as a spear or club. “I only caught a glimpse of it, but . . . ” His usually stolid face twisted in disgust.

“A predator, obviously,” Spock said. “Fast and agile and well adapted to this environment. Its head and mouth parts resembled those of a Terran leech or lamprey, while its limbs were more akin to those found on a great cat or sehlat.”

McCoy scowled. “In other words, we’re talking a giant leech that moves like a tiger?”

“So it seems.” Spock peered out into the foggy marsh. “We must be on guard as we make our way across the planet.”

“Make our way?” McCoy gave Spock a puzzled look. He didn’t have a clue what Spock was talking about. “To where?”

“To our original destination: the source of the signal.” He consulted his tricorder and pointed ahead, more or less in the direction that the leech had taken. “By my estimation, it is approximately one hundred and sixty kilometers in that direction.”

McCoy’s temper flared. “For God’s sake, man, you’re not still thinking about the mission? Don’t you think we’ve got bigger issues on our plate right now?”

“Undoubtedly,” Spock agreed. “But that is where Captain Kirk will first think to look for us.”

“Oh,” McCoy said, slightly embarrassed by his outburst. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

It said something about the severity of their situation, McCoy realized, that Spock refrained from needling him about that admission. Instead he offered McCoy an apologetic shrug. “We crashed some distance off course. I’m afraid, Doctor, that we will be hiking a good ways after all.”

“Through a godforsaken swamp that’s home to giant, man-eating leeches?”

“A less than ideal prospect,” Spock admitted. “But the only logical course of action.”

McCoy wished he had a better idea.

“How many of those things do you think there are?” Darwa asked.

Spock gazed at the spot where Fisher had stood only minutes before.

“That, Lieutenant, remains to be seen.”

Three

“Kirk, I must once again object in the strongest possible terms to this increasingly unconscionable delay.” The Troyian ambassador confronted Kirk upon the bridge of the Enterprise, invading the command well to take her objections directly to the captain. Anger flushed her face a deeper shade of turquoise. She wore her coiffed white hair like a crown. “The Musgrave conference has been months in the planning, and many vital issues await our attention. You had no right to divert us from our course to pursue some wild-fowl chase.”

“So you and the other delegates have made abundantly clear,” Kirk replied, doing his best to maintain a diplomatic tone. He was definitely starting to wish that he had left on Galileo after all. Being a starship captain had its perks, but dealing with self-important politicians and diplomats wasn’t one of them. “And you are free to file a formal protest with Starfleet if you’re so inclined. But my decision stands. I have people down on that planet, including my first officer and ship’s surgeon, and the Enterprise is not going anywhere until they’re back aboard.”

His answer did little to mollify the ambassador. “And if your people do discover something of value, which requires further investigation . . .”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Kirk said firmly. He was not about to commit himself to anything before he heard from the landing party. Depending on what Spock and the others found, the Enterprise might well be able to continue on to Musgrave IV, postponing further efforts on Varba II to later; or, alternatively, other arrangements might have to be made if any discoveries on the planet required a longer stay. It was impossible to say at this point. “In the meantime, Ambassador, I suggest that you and your distinguished colleagues avail yourselves of the ship’s hospitality. Have you visited the botanical gardens on the lower decks yet? I hear the Arcturian lunar tulips are blooming.”

The ambassador knew when she was being dismissed. She raised her chin haughtily and adopted an even more withering tone. “This is no joke, Captain. You may expect to hear from me again.”

“Of that I have no doubt, Ambassador.” Kirk remained in his chair. “Rest assured that I will keep you and your fellow delegates informed as the situation develops.”

“I should hope so, Captain!”

Silken garments rustled as, with a great show of righteous indignation, she stormed off the bridge. Kirk waited until her turbolift had departed before emitting a sigh of relief. He considered banning visitors from the bridge for the duration.

“Finally!” Uhura said, voicing her own exasperation. “I was starting to think she’d never leave.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Just who does she think she is?”

“A high-ranking official of a friendly government.” Kirk wondered if he still had any friends at the Troyian court. He had been very close to their empress . . . once. I might need to call in some old favors when this is over.

Damage control could wait. “Any word from the landing party?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Uhura replied. “As we feared, the planet’s atmosphere is blocking transmissions, both to and from the Enterprise.”

“Understood.” Kirk rested his chin on his knuckles as he considered the cloudy yellow globe spinning slowly upon the viewscreen, its shifting veil of vapors guarding its secrets as effectively as a Romulan cloaking device. More than five hours had passed since Galileo had left for Varba II, but it felt like it had been much longer. They had anticipated communications problems, but how long could it take to locate the source of the signal, make a preliminary assessment of the situation, and return to the Enterprise to report on their findings? Unless the landing party had run into some kind of unforeseen complications or difficulties . . .

I knew there was a risk of danger.

Once again, Kirk found himself wishing that he could have led the mission personally instead of staying behind to babysit a pack of demanding dignitaries. Maybe some captains preferred to delegate from the bridge, but that had never been his command style. Given a choice, he’d always wanted to lead from the front, not from his chair, which was probably why he was no longer an admiral. He leaned forward, willing Galileo to rise up from the misty depths of Varba II.

Come on, Spock. Let me know what’s happening.

Chekov’s concerns that the enigmatic signal could be a trap or warning remained fresh in Kirk’s mind. Certainly he’d run into both scenarios over the course of his career, sometimes with dire results. That the content of the signal remained a mystery did not make waiting any easier.

“Uhura, any progress translating that transmission?”

“Some, Captain,” she reported. “The interference from the planet’s atmosphere hasn’t left me a lot to work with, but I’m running some advanced linguistic algorithms that may be able to fill in some of the blanks once all the static is cleared away.” She checked a display panel on her console, keying in some adjustments to the program. “I’m hoping to have at least partial results for you shortly. I apologize for the delay.”

“No apologies necessary, Commander,” Kirk said. “I’m sure you’re doing all you can.” He squinted at the viewscreen. “I just wish I had some clue what was going on down there.”

“As do I,” Saavik said.

The helmsman was also gazing at the screen intently, while keeping the Enterprise in a tight orbit around the planet. Kirk suspected that, despite her Vulcan reserve, she was just as worried about the landing party as he was. She and Spock were close, he knew, and not just because they both hailed from the same planet. They had all been through a lot together, including Spock’s short-lived death five years before. Saavik had even shed a tear at Spock’s funeral, Vulcan dignity be damned, and she had been there when David died as well, on another scientific expedition.

Kirk couldn’t blame her for being worried about the continuing silence from the landing party.

He certainly was.

Four

They found Fisher’s body lying facedown in a puddle not far from the lagoon. A circular wound in his back, which made it look like he’d been attacked by a mechanical boring machine, left little doubt as to the cause of death, but McCoy felt obliged to perform a quick postmortem examination anyway. He knelt to inspect the body, noting immediately the conspicuous absence of blood pooling around the remains. If anything, the body appeared withered and shrunken, like an empty husk. McCoy was grateful that he didn’t have to view the man’s face, at least not right away. The look of utter terror and anguish on Fisher’s freckled features right before the creature carried him off was burned into his memory.

“From the looks of it, most of his blood and soft tissues have been sucked out through that ugly hole in his back.” The doctor tried to bend a stiff, withered arm that stubbornly resisted his efforts, even though not enough time had elapsed for rigor mortis to occur. “There are also indications that he was injected with a powerful paralytic.”

“No doubt intended to immobilize the creature’s prey, swiftly and efficiently.” Spock stood to one side, observing the procedure. He braced himself against a mossy tree trunk with one hand, as though even his Vulcan stamina was being tested by his recent injury and blood loss. “We have yet to observe any other sizable animal life-forms, but we must assume such beasts also inhabit this environment. Humanoids are unlikely to be their natural prey.”

“But apparently we’re just as tasty,” McCoy said, scowling. “Lucky us.”

The surviving members of the landing party were gathered around the body, surrounded by the same fog and foliage they had been coping with ever since they had crawled ashore after the crash. They had been hiking through the swamp for only several minutes, but McCoy was already feeling winded, not to mention sore and thirsty. The thin air reminded him of Vulcan’s, albeit considerably damper. Spock was probably having an easier time breathing, despite his injury, but McCoy’s lungs would have liked more oxygen and less fog, and he had to imagine that his fellow humans felt the same. If only he had some tri-ox compounds to administer to Chekov and the others.

“We’re not going to leave him here, are we?” Darwa asked. Averting her gaze from the corpse, she kept a wary eye on the surrounding brush while gripping a crude spear that she had fashioned from a broken tree branch. A jagged shard from the shattered viewport was affixed to the tip of the spear with tightly wrapped vines. “Just lying here like this?”

McCoy expected Spock to stress the need to keep moving, which would be the logical thing to do, but Spock surprised him by reassuring Darwa.

“We cannot realistically transport his remains with us, but we can allow time to bury him properly.” He nudged the moist, mucky soil with the toe of his boot, confirming that it was not hard packed. “If we are prompt about it.”

“Leave it to me,” Yost volunteered. He began to dig into the damp soil with the blunt end of his own spear, while Chekov kept watch with Darwa. It was a crude tool, but Yost strenuously made do with it. He shrugged off his soiled red jacket. “The rest of you, just watch my back.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Spock said. “I am certain Fisher would appreciate your efforts.”

McCoy watched as Yost briskly dug a shallow grave, working up a sweat in the process. It was more of a muddy ditch, to be honest, but it would have to do. The explosive vapors ruled out the possibility of cremation by phaser. McCoy was tempted to assist in the digging, but he figured he needed to conserve his strength. Instead he quietly sidled up to Spock.

“You know,” he said in a low tone, “there was a time when you would have considered this a waste of time, as well as an unnecessary concession to foolish human sentimentality.”

Spock did not dispute the point. “You are thinking perhaps of the ill-fated Taurus II incident of decades past.”

“Hard not to,” McCoy said. This was far from the first time he and Spock had been stranded on a desolate planet, beset by hostile life-forms. On that particular occasion twenty-some years before, Spock’s cold-blooded Vulcan logic had led to friction with the more emotional human crew under his command. Matters had nearly come to blows before they’d finally made their escape from the planet.

“I was much younger then,” Spock said. “I like to think that, over time, I have gained a better understanding of the importance of maintaining morale in difficult situations, as well as the need to take into account the feelings of one’s crew, provided they are not, in fact, Vulcans.” He regarded McCoy quizzically. “Does that surprise you, Doctor?”

“I guess not,” McCoy said, now that he thought about it. In recent years, Spock had indeed mellowed somewhat, having apparently made peace with his human side at last. He had become warmer and less severe, at least compared to his younger self. Almost avuncular at times, in his own reserved Vulcan fashion. “Just don’t expect me to start spouting logic at you all the time.”

“Do not sell yourself short, Doctor,” Spock said dryly. “If I can evolve over time, perhaps you can too . . . someday.”

McCoy snorted. “Who says I need to—”

“Beware, Doctor!” Spock shoved McCoy away from him, sending the doctor stumbling across the soggy wetlands, and spun about to face the thick brush and bracken behind him. A hungry leech came barreling out of the misty gloom, its serrated tongue flicking from its gaping maw. The monster headed straight for Spock, who snatched up a spear in self-defense, but then it veered away from the Vulcan at the last minute. Moving as fast as a cheetah or a Denevan hunting lizard, it sprang across the open grave at Yost instead. The startled security officer stabbed at the leech with his own spear, jabbing ineffectually at its scaly hide, but the hideous creature kept on coming, slamming its open mouth into Yost’s chest and propelling the man backward into the swamp without the leech even slowing down or breaking its stride. Before McCoy could even catch his breath, Yost was gone.

“My God!” McCoy murmured.

Chekov hurled his spear at the fog that had swallowed yet another member of the landing party, but it was too little, too late. No cries, alien or otherwise, came from deep within the misty bogs. Chekov stared in shock at the empty space Yost had occupied, looking just as stunned and horrified as McCoy felt. Darwa glanced around uncertainly, clutching her own spear. There was no way to tell from which direction the next attack might come. For all they knew, there were leeches all around them, only meters away.

“Was that the same creature as before,” Chekov asked aloud, “or another one?”

“I’m not sure it matters,” McCoy said. “Not to Yost.”

Yost had been a friend of Chekov’s, the doctor recalled. He realized, with a twinge of guilt, that he couldn’t remember the man’s first name; everyone just called him Yost. McCoy resolved to look up Yost’s file, if and when they made it back to the Enterprise.

Darwa looked to Spock. She skirted around the open grave. “Now what do we do, Mister Spock?”

“Finish burying Fisher,” he said. His face was frozen in an impassive mask; if he was shaken by his own close brush with the creature, he did not show it. “And keep on moving.”

McCoy wondered who would dig the next grave.

Five

“Captain,” Uhura said. “I think I’ve managed to translate some of the signal.”

She did not sound happy about it. Kirk could tell from her tone that she had grim tidings to report. He braced for the worst.

“Tell me,” he said. “What does it say?”

“It’s a warning, sir, to stay away from the planet if we value our lives.”

The announcement darkened the mood across the bridge. None of the stationed crew gasped or said anything—they were all too well trained for that—but Kirk could feel the tension heighten all around him. Anxious glances were exchanged and the usual bustle of the bridge fell ominously silent. Saavik’s face tightened.

“A warning as in ‘no trespassing’?” he asked. “Like a border marking or territorial claim?”

“No, sir,” Uhura answered. “More like a hazard beacon, warning of danger. The details are sketchy, as the Translator is still attempting to pin down the precise meaning of some specific words and phrases, but there appear to be references to extremely hostile conditions and wildlife.” She paused to let that sink in, before elaborating. “As nearly as I can tell, the signal comes from a crashed alien spacecraft somewhere on the planet, belonging to an earlier crew of explorers who discovered the inherent dangers of the world too late. The beacon is intended to prevent others from making the same fatal mistake. ‘Do not suffer the same doom that has befallen us,’ ” she recited, “or words to that effect.”

“I get the idea.” Kirk’s expression darkened. His grip tightened on a coffee cup. “Somebody meant well, but we didn’t figure out their message soon enough.”

The bitter irony was not lost on him: The very signal intended to warn them away from Varba II had instead lured Spock and the others into danger. Kirk glanced at the ship’s chronometer, which was located on the conn, directly in front of the astrogator. The landing party had not been heard from for several hours, and their long silence had just become a lot more troubling. The true nature of the signal brought vague, shapeless fears into sharp relief, like a transporter stream coalescing into something real and tangible.

“Captain”—Saavik turned toward Kirk—“request permission to lead an immediate search-and-rescue mission to the planet’s surface.”

“Get in line, Lieutenant.” Kirk hit the comm button on his right armrest. “Mister Scott, report to the bridge. Hangar deck, prepare Copernicus for immediate departure.”

“Captain,” Uhura said, “what about the delegates?”

“To hell with the delegates.” Kirk was not about to stay anchored to his chair now that he had a solid reason to believe that the landing party was in trouble. He rose from his seat and headed for a turbolift. “I’m certain Mister Scott can hold down the fort until I get back.”

If I get back, he thought.

Saavik sprang from her seat. “Captain, I remind you that you may encounter the same unknown hazards that may have waylaid the first landing party. It would be more prudent—”

“I’m leading this mission, Lieutenant,” he said decisively, cutting off any further debate. He knew all the logical arguments by heart and he didn’t care. Nothing he might face on Varba II could be worse than waiting uselessly on the bridge when his crew was in jeopardy. “No arguments.”

“Understood, sir,” she said, demonstrating that she knew better than to press the issue. Apparently she had served under him long enough to tell when his mind was made up. “In that case, Captain, may I amend my request and simply ask to accompany you on this mission?”

Kirk looked her over, seeing again the genuine concern hidden behind her cool Vulcan demeanor. She had to be just as anxious to do something as he was . . . and she was a damned fine officer to boot.

“All right,” he said, nodding. “You’re with me, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Turning the helm over to a qualified Saurian crew member who was standing by at the auxiliary systems monitor, she joined him at the starboard turbolift entrance. The door whisked open to admit them.

“Good luck, Captain,” Uhura called out. “Bring our people home.”

“Count on it,” Kirk said.

Six

They didn’t find Yost’s body.

Probably just as well, McCoy thought. While this meant that Yost wouldn’t get a hasty burial like Fisher had, McCoy decided he could live without stumbling onto another grisly reminder of the fate that likely awaited them all. He was having enough trouble keeping Fisher’s bloodless, ravaged remains out of his thoughts. That doesn’t make me selfish, just human.

The landing party, now sadly diminished by two, fought their way through the seemingly endless swamp and fog, shoving past tangled vines and ferns and curtains of hanging moss while slogging wearily through the mire. Sodden clothing hung upon their exhausted frames, weighing them down like malfunctioning gravity plates. Branches and thorns scratched their faces and hands and tore at their clothing. Hanging vines snagged them, slowing them down, while protruding roots, hidden beneath the fog, waited to trip them. McCoy could barely remember what it was like to be dry; he had given up trying to dump the water out of his boots every so often, and they sloshed with each step. His lips were parched and he would have killed for a drink of fresh water or something edible. Unfortunately, all their emergency rations had gone down with Galileo and the native water was too brackish to drink, not to mention probably swimming with alien bugs and parasites. Breathing hard, he silently cursed the planet’s thin, dank atmosphere. The persistent haze and gloom made it all but impossible to tell how much time had passed; McCoy felt like they had been trudging forward all day or all night or whatever this perpetual misty twilight was supposed to be. The unchanging scenery and lack of visibility made it seem like they were just walking in circles. He couldn’t even tell if they were heading in a straight line.

I hope Spock knows where he’s going.

The Vulcan marched at the head of the ragged procession, using his tricorder to guide them toward the elusive source of the mysterious signal, while Chekov and Darwa took up the rear. Electronic beeps and chirps issued from the tricorder. Glancing around at his companions, McCoy could tell that the arduous trek was taking its toll on all of them—even Spock, who was using his spear more like a walking stick than a weapon. Like McCoy, they had all discarded their sodden red jackets, stripping down to their turtleneck shirts, trousers, and boots. The whole party was drooping and badly in need of rest. And the constant apprehension, as they stayed on the lookout for the monster leeches, starting at every stray rustle or flicker of movement in the fog, wasn’t doing their nerves any favors either.

Nothing like expecting to be attacked at any minute, McCoy thought, to make trudging through a swamp all the more enjoyable. As hiking expeditions go, I think I preferred Yosemite.

Something splashed loudly up ahead, beyond a rising slope covered with thick vegetation. A low-pitched barking echoed through the trees and tributaries, followed by yet more splashing noises. Exchanging anxious glances among themselves, the landing party halted their procession. Chekov and Darwa hurried to the front of the line, gripping their spears.

“Now what?” McCoy asked, keeping his voice low. “You hear that?”

“I could hardly miss it, Doctor.” Spock turned his head sideways and cocked a pointed ear toward the ruckus. “Fascinating.”

“It doesn’t sound like those leeches,” Chekov observed. “Perhaps another variety of life-form?”

“That would be my supposition.” Spock consulted his tricorder, which was beeping far too loudly for McCoy’s peace of mind. “The fog makes reliable scans problematic, but there are indications of multiple life-forms directly ahead, perhaps no more than a hundred meters away.”

“But are they dangerous, Mister Spock?” Chekov asked. “That’s what I want to know.”

“As do I,” Spock concurred, “but we presently lack the data to make that determination. Visual reconnaissance is required.”

“Leave that to me,” Darwa volunteered. Spear in hand, she began to scramble up the overgrown slope as stealthily as she could, given the conditions. Despite her efforts, twigs snapped and bushes rustled as she made her way up the hill. She grabbed on to a gnarled root to use as a handhold as she pulled herself higher.

“Careful, Lieutenant.” Chekov kept watch behind her. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

“That’s what I aim to find out, sir.”

Reaching the peak of the slope, she lay down atop the brush and lifted her head above the rise. McCoy watched from below, hoping that nothing nasty would spot her, but after a few moments she signaled the rest of the party to join her. “You need to see this,” she said quietly.

The short climb was still a tiring one. McCoy was the last one to reach the top, only a few paces behind Spock, and he was panting by the time he had lain down beside the others to check out the scene below. His eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured. “Will you look at that?”

The hill overlooked the muddy banks of another sizable lagoon, where a small herd of alien creatures were frolicking in the muck, while feeding in a reassuringly vegetarian manner. Amphibians of some sort, the size of walruses, they had rusty brown hides and massive flippers instead of legs. Fluttery scarlet gills ruffled at their throats, but they seemed to be able to breathe easily out of the water, suggesting that they had rudimentary lungs as well. Emerging from the lagoon, they wallowed in the mud and feasted on the lush ferns and reeds growing at the water’s edge. They barked intermittently, when not lowing in a deep bass tone. McCoy counted at least half a dozen of them, possibly more. The way they were milling together, both in and out of the water, made it tricky to keep them straight. They had wide flat heads with only two eyes each, and drooling jaws that didn’t seem to contain anything in the way of fangs, thank goodness.

“What are they, Mister Spock?” Chekov asked.

“Some species of mega-amphibian, possibly akin to a terrestrial salamander,” Spock said. “I suspect they live primarily beneath the surface of the water but occasionally emerge to feed or mate.”

“That might explain why we haven’t seen them yet,” Darwa said. “Or maybe we just wandered into their territory?” She peered down at the creatures. “Do you think that perhaps they’re what the leeches ordinarily feed on? Instead of us, I mean?”

“A likely candidate,” Spock agreed, “although I am reluctant to jump to any conclusions without further evidence or study. We have only just begun to scratch the surface of this planet’s biology.”

“Well, I like them better than the leeches already,” McCoy said. “At least they don’t—”

The amphibians’ harmless revels were disturbed by an attacking leech, which had apparently been hiding among the tall, leafy fronds. Screeching like a banshee, the predator pounced on a large adult salamander, bringing it down, while throwing the rest of the herd into a panic. Barking hysterically, the other salamanders abandoned the leech’s victim to scamper back into the lagoon as fast as their flippers could carry them. The ravenous leech ignored them, concentrating on its captured prey instead. Paralyzed, the downed amphibian put up no resistance as the leech’s circular maw latched on to its hide. McCoy heard a familiar grinding noise.

He looked away.

“I guess that answers that question,” Chekov said.

The party retreated down the slope, ducking out of sight of the leech beyond. McCoy suspected none of them really wanted to watch the creature feed. Not after what had happened to Fisher and Yost.

“What do we do now?” Darwa asked as they huddled at the base of the slope. She brushed stray bits of leaf litter from her disheveled hair and uniform. A scraped knee showed through a tear in her trousers. “Wait for that monster to finish and move on?”

Spock shook his head. “If that is indeed one of the leeches’ preferred hunting grounds, I would not advise attempting to traverse it. Moreover, the presence of the lagoon poses an obstacle in its own right.” He looked to their left. “I fear we are going to have to detour around the lagoon in order to stay on course for our destination . . . and avoid the leeches prowling the banks ahead.”

McCoy didn’t like the sound of that, and neither did his weary legs.

“How long a detour are were talking here?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much beat. We’ve been hiking through this blasted bog for hours already, without any food or water.”

Darwa groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“As long as necessary, Doctor,” Spock said. “No more, no less. I assure you that I am no more eager to prolong this expedition than you are, but much depends on the terrain and whatever other obstacles we may encounter. Beyond that, I cannot say.”

Chekov rubbed his sore neck. Dirt obscured his lightly toasted face. Unlike Darwa, he didn’t even try to brush off his soaked, defiled uniform. He gazed morosely in the direction Spock had indicated and irritably swatted away a swarm of tiny insects. “Join Starfleet, they said. It will be good for you, they said.”

McCoy took Spock aside for a moment.

“You sure this death march is worth it?” he asked quietly, not wanting to undermine Spock’s authority. Guess I have evolved, too, come to think of it. “Maybe we’d be better off digging in somewhere and trying to rig up some kind of shelter?”

“And how then would the Enterprise manage to find us in this environment?” Spock set off to the right, leading the way once more. “A planet is not easy to search without sensors. Even if they commence with the right hemisphere and continent, the conditions are hardly conducive to us being spotted from above. Our best hope remains getting as near as we can to our original destination, in the expectation that that is where a rescue mission will begin their search for us.” He raised his voice so that it would carry through the thin air. “In addition, should we succeed in reaching the signal’s point of origin, we may be able to employ whatever technology we find there to transmit a message to the Enterprise.”

McCoy guessed that Spock was throwing out that encouraging possibility to provide hope and bolster morale. Not something the old Spock would have concerned himself with, McCoy noted again, but maybe we have all gotten a bit older and wiser.

“Works for me,” he said. “Especially if it means we can warn Jim not to fire up his shields in those touchy clouds up there.”

“That thought had indeed crossed my mind,” Spock said, leaning heavily on his spear. Fatigue was beginning to crack his stoic veneer. “As has the pressing question of why the predator diverted from its path to attack Yost rather than myself.”

McCoy recalled how the charging leech had veered away from Spock to go after Yost instead, despite the fact that Spock had been nearer to the creature at first.

“Maybe that Vulcan blood of yours just wasn’t as tempting.”

“Perhaps so,” Spock replied. “You jest, Doctor, but for once your habitual gibes at my Vulcan physiology may hold some wisdom.” He contemplated his injured shoulder, where a greenish stain soaked through his rumpled white shirt, proclaiming that all this strenuous activity had caused his wound to start bleeding again. A judicious application of the right anticoagulant might have helped, had not those medication ampules been lost with Galileo. “As you have often noted, my copper-based blood chemistry is quite different from yours . . . and from Yost’s and Fisher’s.”

McCoy realized that Spock was serious. “You think your blood repelled the creature?”

“Quite possibly,” he said. “These predators are some variety of leech, after all. They may well be attracted to the iron in your blood . . . and discouraged by the copper in my own.” A pensive look came over his face as he pondered the implications of his theory. “Which suggests that we may have a means at hand to defend the party from these creatures.”

McCoy balked at the idea. “You can’t be suggesting . . .”

Spock nodded gravely.

“My blood, Doctor. We need to weaponize my blood.”

Seven

“Copernicus, you are cleared for departure.”

The space doors at the rear of the Enterprise’s cavernous landing bay were wide open, revealing the vacuum of space beyond. Instrumentation aboard the shuttlecraft confirmed that the ship’s shields were not in place. An airless black void beckoned.

“Roger that, Enterprise,” Kirk said from the helm of the shuttlecraft, replying to the launch control room overlooking the flight deck. “Firing thrusters now.”

Steaming white jets sprayed from the underside of Copernicus as the shuttlecraft lifted off from the flight deck and exited the Enterprise. Kirk waited until he was safely clear of his ship before engaging the shuttle’s impulse engine and setting a course for Varba II.

“Now to find our friends,” he said.

“Which would be substantially simpler,” Saavik observed, “if we knew where to look.”

She rode shotgun beside him in the copilot’s seat. She had volunteered to pilot the shuttlecraft, but Kirk had decided that her keen Vulcan intellect could be put to better use tracking the garbled signal from the planet and monitoring the scanners for any sign of the lost landing party. A pair of security officers, Cassano and Borkowski, occupied the passenger compartment. Kirk had been reluctant to take too many crew members down into the same amorphous peril that had apparently waylaid the crew of Galileo, but he’d decided that they might need additional manpower down on the planet, so he’d split the difference and gone with a leaner security detail. Plus they were going to need room in the shuttlecraft if they found the landing party.

No, he corrected himself. Not “if.” “When.”

The captain glanced at Saavik. “I don’t suppose you’re picking up any distress signals from Galileo or the landing party?”

“Negative, Captain. Only the original warning beacon in its distorted state. The planet’s atmosphere continues to be a significant source of interference.” She monitored the sensor displays. “It might be best to conduct our initial survey above the atmosphere, to minimize the interference.”

Kirk considered it. “But wouldn’t we have a better chance of picking something up if we went in closer?”

“Possibly,” she conceded. “I believe the human expression is ‘six of one, half a dozen of another.’ It is uncertain whether descending into the atmosphere would help or hinder our chances of detecting a signal from the landing party.”

“Understood,” Kirk said as the shuttlecraft cruised toward the planet. Patience was not his strong point, but there was something to be said for being cautious and methodical as well. “Let’s do it your way, going in slowly, and gradually lower our altitude if we don’t get any results.”

“That strikes me as a very logical approach, Captain.” She diligently worked the sensors, searching every frequency along the spectrum. “I regret that I cannot offer you a more concrete solution at this time.”

Kirk thought he caught an edge of frustration in her voice. Not that he blamed her. The planet’s infernal clouds had them flying blind, with their hands tied behind their backs. No sensors, no transporters, no communicators. Varba II might as well have been a black hole when it came to obtaining vital information.

“We’ll find them, Saavik, or die trying.”

She arched an eyebrow. “A curiously morbid expression, Captain. Almost Klingon-like in its fatalism, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Kirk didn’t like being compared to a Klingon, but he could see where Saavik might take the phrase the wrong way. “Believe it or not, Lieutenant, it was meant to be encouraging.”

“Indeed? How curious.” She lifted her eyes from the control panel to peer at the approaching planet. Its opaque yellow atmosphere withheld any glimpse of the world awaiting them. “I wish I shared your optimism, sir. An entire world lies before us, and there is little telling where the Galileo might have touched down once they encountered difficulties. The landing party could conceivably be anywhere on the planet, assuming they are still alive.”

“But we know where they were heading, more or less,” Kirk pointed out. “They were trying to locate the source of the warning signal, and, knowing Spock, he’d attempt to complete the mission if it was at all possible. So let’s track down that signal.” He shrugged. “If nothing else, it gives us a place to start.”

Eight

“This is insane, Spock,” McCoy protested. “You’ve lost enough blood as it is.”

“I am open to alternatives, Doctor. Unless you care to trust our fates to sticks and stones . . .”

Spock handed back to McCoy a hypospray with which he had been fiddling. “I have modified this instrument to dispense an aerosolized quantity of my blood. Now all that remains is for you to load it.” He held out his arm. “Promptly, if you will.”

McCoy inspected the empty device, noting that Spock had adjusted the nozzle to emit a fine spray. The applicator mechanism held an empty vial, waiting to be filled. The vial had previously held the last of McCoy’s anti-infection treatments.

“I don’t know, Spock. This goes against everything I’ve ever—”

“We cannot waste time debating the matter, Doctor. The predator—or predators—could attack again at any moment.”

The party had paused on a small wooded island circled by shallow, winding waterways. The detour around the amphibians’ lagoon had taken even longer than McCoy had feared, so they all needed to take a breather. McCoy felt dead on his feet, and he doubted if Chekov and Darwa were much better, despite their relative youth. No food, no sleep, no water, and constant vigilance had worn them all down, and the oppressive fog kept them from ever truly relaxing. If anything, the eerie mist had gotten even thicker and more ubiquitous, slowing their progress and adding to the perpetual sense of dread. McCoy wanted to think that the fog was helping to hide them from the leeches, but he suspected that it was the other way around.

“Look, Spock,” McCoy continued to argue, “maybe, if you hadn’t already been wounded, this might be doable, but, as it is, you’re already paler than you ought to be. More white around the gills than green, if you know what I mean. And I can’t even administer fluids to counteract the additional blood loss.”

“The situation is less than ideal,” Spock agreed. “But desperate times, as they say, require desperate measures. And our present circumstances are undeniably desperate, by any definition of the word. You should know, as a doctor, that you must sometimes risk killing a patient to save them from certain doom.”

McCoy scowled, but he couldn’t dispute that comparison.

“If you say so,” he grumbled. “But I’m doing this under protest.”

“Duly noted, Doctor. Proceed.”

He pressed the device against Spock’s left shoulder. It hissed as it extracted a small quantity of blood through his skin and shirt. At approximately thirty cubic centimeters, McCoy judged he’d taken enough and began to withdraw the hypospray, but Spock clamped his hand around McCoy’s wrist, holding it in place. The Vulcan’s grip was cold and clammy but surprisingly strong, considering his debilitated state.

“All the way, Doctor, to maximum capacity.”

“All right, damn you.” He filled the hypospray until it couldn’t hold anymore, taking a full seventy ccs of Spock’s dwindling supply of blood. “There. Satisfied now?”

“That depends, Doctor, on how many other hyposprays survived the crash.”

McCoy was afraid to look. An earlier inspection had found only a handful of instruments, some of them possibly damaged beyond repair. His handheld vital-signs reader, for instance, was pretty much dead, while most of the “surviving” medication vials had cracked and leaked their contents over the inside of the kit. There were no functional protoplasers to speak of, even if he’d dared activate them in the fog. “Look, Spock, let’s not get carried away here—”

“Red alert!” Chekov shouted from nearby. He pointed up at the canopy of clotted branches and vines overhead. “I saw something move!”

McCoy was surprised that Chekov could make out anything in the fog, but he tensed in fear. The doctor’s parched mouth went dryer still and his heart skipped a beat. Goose bumps sprouted beneath his soggy sleeves.

No, he thought. Not again!

Any hope that Chekov’s eyes had tricked him, or that it had just been the wind or some harmless arboreal life-form, was dashed when, with a fearsome screech, a hungry leech pounced from above, barely missing Chekov, who dived out of the way just in time. The creature keened in disappointment as Chekov rolled away through the mud and ferns, putting more distance between himself and the monster. Its hideous head swung back and forth, as though torn between attacking Chekov and Darwa, who was standing on the opposite side of the leech. The latter ran forward, stabbing at the creature’s scaly hide with her spear, jabbing its point between the armored plates, but the crude weapon did not appear to strike any vital organs. Only a thin red ichor leaked from the wound.

Angered, the leech whipped around, yanking the spear from Darwa’s grip. She backed away, looking around frantically for another weapon, even as Chekov scrambled to his feet across from her. Immersed as the endangered pair were in the fog, their phasers might as well have been sticks and rocks too.

“Doctor!” Spock shouted. “The hypospray!”

“Right!”

Adrenaline spurring him to action, McCoy drew back his arm and lobbed the device at the unarmed lieutenant.

“Darwa! Catch!”

To his relief, she deftly snatched the flying hypo out of the air. Thinking fast, she aimed it at the charging leech and triggered the emitter. A chartreuse mist sprayed from the hypo, infusing the rank air with a distinctly coppery aroma. Despite the danger to Darwa and the rest of them, McCoy couldn’t help wincing at the sight of Spock’s precious lifeblood being dispensed so profusely.

But the effect was immediate—and unmistakable. The leech recoiled from the spray, wheeling about to go after Chekov instead. “Commander!” Darwa shouted, and she hurled the hypo over the monster to Chekov, who defended himself with a second burst of vaporized Vulcan blood. The leech shrieked in protest again, shaking its head violently in reaction, before its revulsion apparently overcame its appetite. Four powerful hind legs propelled it back up into the overhanging branches, abandoning its intended prey for once. Leaves rustled as the creature disappeared into fog and foliage.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” McCoy whispered. “It worked.”

He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that. The blood-based repellent had clearly saved Chekov or Darwa from becoming the leeches’ next victim, that was for certain; but this was hardly a viable long-term solution. Spock only had so much blood to spare.

He glanced over at his patient, who suddenly sat up straight and called out urgently: “Chekov! Behind you!”

A second leech (or maybe it was the same one?) bounded from the fog, coming at Chekov from the ground rather than the treetops this time, only to get a face full of green spray, thanks to Chekov’s quick reflexes. Spitting and hissing, the monster skidded to a halt before retreating back into the fog. Angry wails echoed through the surrounding brush, seemingly coming from all around the besieged landing party. McCoy wanted to think that it only sounded like multiple beasts, but he knew they couldn’t be so lucky. Those weren’t just echoes he was hearing.

“Yes,” Chekov said dourly. He kept the hypo raised and ready. “There is definitely more than one of them.”

“So it would seem.” Spock began to rise, only to totter unsteadily on his feet. He braced himself against his spear, using it to prop himself up. He looked faint, and there was an uncharacteristic quaver in his voice. “Let us hope that they do not routinely hunt in packs.”

“Easy there, Spock.” McCoy reached out to steady his friend. “You’re not exactly looking your best.”

“Neither are any of us, Doctor, but we all are still alive, despite the best efforts of the predators.” He rallied slightly, possibly out of sheer Vulcan stubbornness. “Our odds of survival have just increased significantly.”

McCoy had his doubts. “For Pete’s sake, man, you can barely stand up, let alone keep on trekking through this wet, hazy hellhole.”

“Merely a moment’s dizziness,” Spock insisted. “Do not concern yourself. Kindly refill Mister Chekov’s weapon . . . and procure as many other hyposprays as you can. As well as any empty ampules that can be used for refills.”

The order, and its dire implications, appalled McCoy. “But—”

“Do it, Doctor, while we still have a chance.”

Nine

A groan escaped Saavik’s lips. Her head sagged, dipping forward, and she clutched the control panel before her to steady herself. She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip to keep from making another sound. Her uncharacteristic distress caught Kirk’s attention.

“Saavik?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

Copernicus was descending toward Varba II in a measured fashion, orbiting the planet at lower and lower altitudes as it gradually approached the upper atmosphere. So far their orbital sweeps had failed to yield any positive results. At best, they could pick up only a compromised version of the original warning beacon. Nothing from Galileo or the landing party.

“I am fine, Captain.” She lifted her head and sat up straighter. “Just a momentary weakness. I suddenly found myself feeling light-headed.”

Kirk eyed her with concern. “Are you ill? Do we need to turn back?”

He was reluctant to abandon the search when it had barely begun, but if Saavik needed to report to sickbay, he might not have any other choice. Funny, he thought, she seemed fine before.

“No, Captain. I am quite—” Her face paled and her head reeled atop her neck, as though she was suddenly stricken again. Her breathing grew ragged. White knuckles gripped the control panel.

That clinches it, Kirk thought. He had no idea what was wrong with Saavik, but it was obvious something was. He hit the comm button on the helm controls. “Kirk to Enterprise, we have a medical situation—”

“No!” Saavik reached over and cut off the transmission before Kirk could finish. She no longer seemed confused or disoriented. Her eyes were alight with clarity. “Wait! It’s not me. It’s Spock.”

Kirk didn’t understand. “Spock?”

She took a deep breath to regain her composure. Her face was still pale, but it was also filling with a new intensity and sense of purpose. She looked him squarely in the eyes.

“My apologies for interrupting, Captain, but I believe I understand now. The distress I was experiencing was not mine, but Spock’s.” Her voice was somber. “He is not well, sir. In fact, I fear he may be dying.”

Kirk tried to grasp what he was hearing. “You can sense that, Vulcan to Vulcan?” A memory came back to him of that time, decades before, when Spock had telepathically sensed the sudden deaths of an entire crew of Vulcans on the U.S.S. Intrepid. “All the way from orbit?”

She lowered her eyes, avoiding his gaze. She hesitated before speaking. “Spock and I share . . . a special bond . . . ever since our experiences on the Genesis Planet.”

Kirk felt a pang at the mention of that unnatural world, where his son had died, but he pushed away his private pain to focus on Saavik. He recalled that Saavik and Spock had been stranded alone on the Genesis Planet for a time, not long after Spock’s miraculous resurrection. It was Saavik who had cared for the reborn Spock during that tumultuous time, before Spock regained his memories.

But what kind of bond was Saavik talking about?

“A mind-meld?” he asked. He didn’t remember anything about that in Saavik’s report on the Genesis affair, but Vulcans tended to be very private about such matters, and with good reason. A mind-meld was, by its very nature, a deeply personal matter.

A hint of a blush added green to her cheeks. “Of a sort,” she said quietly, still avoiding his eyes.

The proverbial lightbulb clicked on above Kirk’s head.

Pon farr, he guessed, although he kept his supposition to himself to spare Saavik any further embarrassment. No wonder that particular detail hadn’t made it into the official accounts.

It made sense, though. He was no expert on the topic, but he gathered that pon farr was as much a joining of the mind and spirit as of the body. It was an intimacy much deeper than even an ordinary mind-meld, binding two souls on a profound level. If Saavik and Spock had indeed shared such a union only a few years before, wasn’t it possible that she could tell when he was suffering greatly, perhaps even at risk of dying?

I can believe it, Kirk thought. He’d seen stranger things in his voyages, and he had learned never to underestimate the power of the human—or Vulcan—mind. “And you think this . . . psychic connection,” he said delicately, “is allowing you to sense what Spock is going through down on the planet?”

“Only because he is in great extremity,” Saavik explained, meeting his eyes once more. “That I can feel his weakness acutely, Captain, is not encouraging. It means that he is most likely on the edge of death.”

“But it also means that he’s still alive,” Kirk said, choosing to look on the positive side. The dire implications of what Saavik was saying were not lost on him, but that only increased his determination to rescue Spock and the others before it was too late. “Which means that maybe the rest of the landing party has survived as well.”

“A logical extrapolation,” she said. “So how does this affect our strategy, Captain?”

Good question, Kirk thought, wondering if there was some way to turn this unexpected development to their advantage. “Can you communicate with Spock through your bond? Send him a message?”

She shook her head. “It is not a matter of simple telepathy, sir. I cannot speak to him mind to mind across distances. I can only feel his life-force slipping away.”

Although she spoke calmly and analytically, her dismay at the possibility of losing Spock again came through loud and clear. Kirk didn’t need a mind-meld to know how she felt—or share her fear that time was running out for their friend.

“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy,” he said as another possibility occurred to him. “Forget talking to him, then. Can you sense his location? Can you use this telepathic bond of yours to guide us to him and the others?”

Saavik pondered the notion.

“Perhaps,” she said uncertainly. “If we can get close enough to the correct vicinity, and if I can achieve the proper meditative state . . .”

Kirk seized on the strategy. Maybe he was grasping at straws, but they had to try something. If what Saavik sensed about Spock’s condition was true, every minute counted. And in the absence of sensor data, they needed any edge they could get—even if that meant relying on something as imprecise and unquantifiable as a psychic bond between two souls. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the first time that the singular mysteries of the Vulcan mind had saved the day. Indeed, Spock owed his second life, at least in part, to the strange mental abilities of his people.

“I’ll get us closer,” he promised. “You do what you need to do.”

She nodded. “I will do my best, Captain.”

Kirk didn’t doubt it. He suspected that he was asking far more of her than he could truly comprehend, but if she was willing to reach out to Spock in this way—and possibly lead them to the lost landing party—he wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by.

“Find them, Lieutenant. However you can.”

Ten

“You want another dose?” Chekov said defiantly. “Be my guest!”

The landing party was under siege, beset by leeches. Chekov swept his hypospray before him, holding off a pair of creatures (which had been attacking in tandem) with a fresh green burst of repellent. Her back to him, Darwa released a tight, controlled burst from her own hypo at yet another leech, which had just lunged from the fog. Spitting furiously, the creature turned tail and fled back into the swamp . . . at least for the moment. A coppery aroma hung in the air before dissipating into the pervasive mist.

“Hey!” McCoy protested. “Go easy on that stuff! It’s coming straight from Spock’s veins, you know!”

While the security team fought a losing battle against the relentless predators, McCoy tended to Spock, who was stretched out on the ground, his head and shoulders resting against a hollow, fungi-encrusted log. The landing party was making what felt like its last stand in an open clearing atop a boggy spit of land about the size of the transporter room back on the Enterprise. The animal attacks were coming ever faster and more frequently, as though every leech in the vicinity had been drawn by the lure of the exotic new prey. All hope of making further progress through the swamp—and reaching the source of the distress signal—had been abandoned as a lost cause. It was all about survival now, and probably for not much longer.

“Don’t tell me, Doctor,” Chekov replied. “Tell our persistent new friends.”

Darwa checked her own weapon, which was the only other hypospray they had managed to scrounge up, leaving Spock and McCoy essentially unarmed. She frowned as she squinted at the device. “I’m almost out.”

“Again?” McCoy exclaimed. “Already?”

She shot him a pained expression. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m trying to conserve it, but . . . ”

“I know, I know.” McCoy didn’t want to take out his frustration on Darwa and Chekov, who were doing their best to keep the party alive against ridiculous odds. It wasn’t their fault that they were all stuck in this hellish fix, with Spock’s blood being the only thing keeping them from going the way of Fisher and Yost, but he had already refilled the hypos more times than he cared to count, and a couple of extra vials to boot. “It’s just that . . . we’re killing him, damn it!”

Spock was in bad shape. McCoy didn’t need a medical scanner or tricorder to know that his patient badly needed a transfusion, as opposed to donating even more of his blood to the cause. Spock’s gaunt face was ashen and his pulse was disturbingly thready, especially for a Vulcan. Severely weakened by his ordeal, he kept sliding in and out of consciousness. Ordinarily, McCoy recalled, injured Vulcans could use a unique form of self-hypnosis to increase blood flow to their most vital organs in order to stave off death and promote healing, but that did little good when McCoy kept stealing that very same blood for a radically different use. Apparently there were limits to even Spock’s superhuman stamina. McCoy could have lived without discovering that.

“Do your duty, Doctor,” Spock whispered hoarsely, rousing himself for the moment. None of them had eaten or drank anything for who knew how long, adding to the stress on Spock’s body—which had to be severely dehydrated by this point. His eyes were bloodshot, streaked with green. His voice was as raspy as an iron file. He tried to sit up. “The needs of the one—”

“Save your breath.” McCoy pressed his hand against Spock’s chest to keep him lying down. “I’ve heard it all before and I sure as heck don’t need to hear it again. You listen to me, Spock. You are not playing martyr again, not on my watch. And don’t expect me to carry your blasted katra this time around, you got that? No more heroic death scenes for you.”

“It is not a matter of heroism, Doctor. Merely logic.”

“Logic alone is not going to keep any of us alive, Spock. Not this time.”

Spock grimaced. “You may be correct, Doctor, as much as I am loath to admit it, and yet . . .”

His voice trailed off as his eyelids drooped. His head sagged forward onto his chest. For a heart-stopping moment, McCoy feared that they had lost him, but closer observation revealed that he was still breathing shallowly, his chest slowly rising and falling. McCoy placed his fingers against Spock’s carotid artery, checking his pulse the old-fashioned way. To his dismay, it was down to 112 beats per minute: high for a human but dangerously low for a Vulcan. And his blood pressure, which was practically nonexistent at the best of times, had to be sinking as well. The smell of copper offended McCoy’s nostrils. A wet green stain, seeping through the shoulder of Spock’s filthy tunic, was an unpleasant reminder that Spock’s wound was still bleeding intermittently, making his periodic blood donations even more insane.

We’re draining him alive, McCoy thought, just to buy us a few more hours at most.

He glanced up at the sky—or what he could see of it. The open glade meant that at least there were no worrisome branches overhead, offering camouflage and extra avenues of attack to the leeches, but the unearthly fog offered little to no visibility. For all he could see, the fog extended entirely up into the explosive storm clouds that had brought Galileo down in the first place. The phantasmal mist covered the landing party like a shroud, only slightly prematurely. We’re dead, unless Jim comes through for us in time.

As if anyone could find us in this infernal morass.

Eleven

The cockpit of a shuttlecraft in flight was hardly conducive to meditation. Electronic chirps and the constant background thrum of the impulse engine intruded on Saavik’s awareness—as did the presence of Captain Kirk, who was seated less than a meter away at the helm of Copernicus. Still, she attempted to tune out her surroundings as she sought to achieve a greater degree of communion with Spock, despite the unknown gulf between them. Strapped into the copilot’s seat, her hands resting stiffly in her lap, she began with some basic breathing exercises and mental routines to prepare her mind. Varba II loomed before her, its obstructive atmosphere clearly visible through the viewport, but Saavik chose to ignore the approaching planet, looking inward instead.

Spock, she thought. Where are you, Spock?

Achieving a proper meditative state was difficult, despite—or possibly because of—the desperate need to locate the missing landing party as expediently as possible. An unwelcome degree of trepidation troubled her thoughts; by nurturing her present connection to Spock, she ran the risk of sharing his final moments, experiencing his death. That intimidating prospect filled her with an inescapable sense of dread that was unworthy of her Vulcan heritage and training, but it existed nonetheless. Denying it would be both illogical and counterproductive.

Accept the fear, she told herself. Acknowledge it, recognize it for what it is, and move past it. Do not fight it. Just let it be.

Her search proceeded. The dread was still there, lingering at the back of her mind like an unattractive view or overcast sky, but she would not let it control her or dissuade her from her course. Fear was just an emotion, and emotions could always be overcome by discipline and logic.

Although sometimes that was more difficult than usual.

In truth, the possibility of sharing Spock’s demise was not the only thing she found daunting. To deepen her link to Spock, she would have to lower her own stringent mental barriers and tap into her powerful, occasionally unruly emotions where Spock was concerned, as well as call upon her memories of the Genesis Planet and all they had shared there. She could not wall off her feelings and keep them securely contained. There could be no privacy, no secrets, no safe place to hide.

I will be exposed . . . to myself.

Any Vulcan would consider such a vulnerable state disturbing, but Saavik knew she had more reason than most to be wary of her own suppressed emotions. Like Spock, she was only half-Vulcan, having spent her early years leading a near-feral existence on the failed Romulan colony known as Hellguard, deprived of the advanced mental training that Vulcan children received from infancy. She had come late to the teachings of Surak, and, though she would never admit it, the Vulcan way did not always come easily to her.

Or at least not as readily as it came to others.

It was a peculiar thing, she reflected, and not for the first time. Humans and other non-Vulcan races tended to believe that all Vulcans were equally devoid of emotion, ignoring the wide range of temperaments and personalities found in virtually every other humanoid species known to the Federation. This was an erroneous assumption. In reality, even Vulcan personalities ranged along a spectrum, with some better able to control their primal instincts than others. Only the revered masters of Kolinahr could be said to have completely conquered their emotions; every other Vulcan achieved their own level of emotional control, to varying degrees.

Granted, by human standards, all Vulcans no doubt seemed universally cool and detached. To Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew, she surely appeared properly Vulcan. But in fact Saavik knew herself to be slightly more emotive than the average Vulcan, which was but one reason that she had chosen to follow Spock into Starfleet, where her occasional lapses might go less noticed than they would on Vulcan. Like Spock, she was more comfortable out in the galaxy, among other peoples, than she was among her own kind.

Like Spock . . .

Saavik realized that she was stalling, thinking about what needed to be done rather than doing it. Her personal issues and struggles did not matter now, not when the landing party was in mortal danger. Pushing past her apprehensions, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and reached deep inside herself, beyond her reservations and barriers, for the ineffable bond that stretched between her and Spock.

My mind to yours, she thought. Your mind to mine.

She felt only weakness at first. Weakness of the body, pushed beyond endurance. As before, Spock’s physical anguish washed over her like a wave of sickness. Her head swam, so that the cockpit seemed to spin around her, its inertial dampers and artificial gravity malfunctioning. Her mouth felt as dry and parched as Vulcan’s Forge, as though she had not quenched her thirst in far too long. Her stomach cried out for sustenance. Her limbs felt heavy as neutronium, weighing her down so that she could barely move. A dull ache throbbed in her right shoulder. She felt cold and wet and exhausted, pushed nearly to her limits. Her heartbeat slowed. She couldn’t go on much longer.

No! This is not my pain! Let me go!

Her first instinct was to withdraw from the contact, spare herself this suffering. Self-preservation warred with duty as she fought the urge to break off their communion. Ironically, it was the very severity of Spock’s symptoms that gave her the strength to keep going. It was all too obvious that Spock needed her help, and grievously so. She could not abandon him.

She would not abandon him.

She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, willing herself to go ever deeper, past the superficial traumas of the flesh to the elusive mind and spirit beyond. Spock’s suffering was hers as well, but there was far more to their bond than mere physical empathy, if she dared to open up her heart and soul to a perilous degree. She raised her right hand, holding up two joined fingers before her, as though to touch his fingers as she had on the Genesis Planet, when she had first asked him to trust her and had initiated their joining. It was a gesture—a touch—whose profound significance only another Vulcan could truly appreciate.

My heart to your heart. Parted from me and never parted, never and always touching and touched.

The last barriers crumbled. A tidal wave of raw emotions threatened to swamp her: fear, worry, respect, admiration, affection, and more. Potent memories, laden with feeling, crashed against her consciousness, surging up from the depths:

Spock, rescuing her from Hellguard when she was just a child. Taking her into his family’s home, introducing her to a new way of life, giving her hope and a future . . .

Spock, welcoming her to Starfleet Academy after sponsoring her application, mentoring her and encouraging her progress, taking obvious pride in her accomplishments . . .

Spock, sealed away in a flag-draped torpedo tube at his funeral, as Mister Scott played an oddly affecting Terran air on his bagpipes. A solitary tear betraying her sorrow as Spock’s remains were expelled into the void . . .

Spock, reborn upon the Genesis Planet, growing at an accelerated rate from infant to maturity, lacking his memories and intellect but still undeniably Spock, returned to her against all odds, as she guided him through the pitiless throes of pon farr, forging a link that could never truly be broken, save by death . . .

The memories were all but overwhelming, but Saavik did not retreat from them. Instead she let their shared history and the strength of her feelings amplify her connection to Spock, so that it almost seemed like she could reach out and touch him. Her eyes snapped open and she gazed on the forbidding planet ahead. Spock was there, waiting for her, drawing her to him.

“I feel you, Spock,” she murmured. “I am coming for you.”

But would they reach him in time?

Twelve

“Saavik-kam,” Spock murmured in Vulcan, much to McCoy’s confusion. Although fading fast, Spock managed to raise his arm and shakily hold up two joined fingers before him. McCoy recognized the greeting from past encounters with Vulcans; it was the way Spock’s parents had discreetly shown affection in public. He wondered what the devil was going through Spock’s mind, even as the dying Vulcan whispered deliriously. “Kashkau—wuhkuh eh teretuhr . . . .”

McCoy had no idea what Spock was babbling about. Where’s our Universal Translator now that I need it?

He was crouched beside Spock, helplessly monitoring his friend’s rapid decline. It felt like a deathbed vigil, just wetter and muddier and surrounded by giant, bloodthirsty leeches, which seemed bound and determined to make a midnight snack out of the remainder of the landing party, despite the tireless efforts of Chekov and Darwa to ward them off. The latter dropped down beside him and held out her empty hypospray.

“I’m sorry, Doctor.” She cast a worried glance at Spock. “I wouldn’t ask again, but . . .”

“Hurry!” Chekov called out frantically. “There’s more of them!”

He tried to compensate for Darwa’s brief retreat from the fray by spraying a tight circle of repellent around the party, waving his own hypospray through the air to leave a trail of floating green mist behind it like the tail of a comet. The tactic momentarily discouraged the growing pack of leeches lurking in the fog, but the spray was already thinning, dissipating into the swirling yellow fog. Chekov tried to patch up the barrier, but his hypospray was starting to sputter as it ran low as well.

“Doctor,” Darwa pressed him.

McCoy looked at his failing patient. He knew what Spock would want him to do.

Damn it.

“All right. Give me that thing.” McCoy snatched the empty hypo from Darwa’s hand and pressed it against Spock’s good shoulder again. It hissed like a viper. “Forgive me, Spock.”

He felt like a goddamn vampire as he handed the reloaded instrument, now bearing another seventy ccs of Spock’s blood, back to Darwa, who hurried to assist Chekov, who emptied the last of his “ammo” into the gaping maw of an impatient leech, which screeched angrily before withdrawing back into the fog. Breathing hard, Chekov spared a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. Both security officers were showing signs of exhaustion; adrenaline could carry them only so far without any rest or food or water. Darwa was the youngest of the crash survivors, but even she was looking like she’d just run the Martian Marathon. She fired back at the leeches in a two-handed stance, using one tired arm to support the other. The bruise on her forehead had turned an ugly shade of purple by now. Another burst of atomized blood polluted the air.

McCoy winced on Spock’s behalf. “Make it last!” he shouted.

“I’m trying, Doctor,” she replied. “Believe me!”

Chekov joined McCoy at Spock’s side. He peered anxiously at Spock. “How is he doing, Doctor?”

“Not good,” McCoy said bluntly. “Just look at him. I’ve seen corpses with more blood in them.”

Spock was slumped against the moldy log, his head lolling limply to one side. His ashen complexion was as gray as an old-fashioned steel bulkhead. Half-lidded eyes gazed blearily past the two other men, seeing only his own delirious imaginings, even as he continued to hold up two joined fingers in greeting. His voice was by now little more than a raspy whisper.

“Saavik-kam,” he said, almost too faintly to make out. “Kashkau—wuhkuh eh teretuhr.”

Chekov’s brow furrowed. “What is he saying, Doctor?”

“Hell if I know.” McCoy leaned in closer, straining his ears, not that this did him much good. His knowledge of Vulcan grammar and vocabulary was only barely greater than his Klingon, and apparently Chekov wasn’t any more fluent in the language than he was. Too bad Spock’s not speaking Russian.

“Saavik?” Chekov echoed. “You think he believes he’s talking to Saavik?”

“Possibly.” McCoy regarded Spock’s upraised fingers. He wondered what parting words Spock was trying to convey to his protégé. Something only another Vulcan could understand?

A shame she can’t hear him.

Thirteen

Kirk piloted Copernicus into Varba II’s seething atmosphere. They couldn’t waste time cruising above the planet anymore, not after Saavik had sensed Spock dying. Kirk’s plan was still to home in on the source of the warning beacon and hope that the landing party had managed to make it to their original destination before running into problems. From there, he could expand the search area in ever-widening circles until, with any luck, he detected some sign of Galileo or its passengers. The thick fog and lack of sensors made spotting the lost party something of a long shot, but it was one Kirk was willing to take.

Spock said I make a habit of beating the odds, Kirk thought. Let’s hope he was right.

Saavik stirred to his left, murmuring something in Vulcan. He glanced at her and was surprised to see a single tear trickling down her cheek, just like at Spock’s funeral a few years back. He wanted to think that was a good sign, that it demonstrated that her link to Spock was getting stronger, but the tear came with ominous associations, too. He had no desire to eulogize his friend again.

The planet’s roiling, mustard-hued atmosphere was even stormier than anticipated. Serious crosswinds rocked Copernicus, eliciting startled responses from the security team seated behind Kirk in the shuttlecraft’s passenger compartment. The bumpy ride disturbed Saavik, too, breaking her trance. Her eyes opened, although they still seemed a little unfocused. She glanced around uncertainly, as though not entirely sure of her surroundings. Kirk hoped she hadn’t lost the link completely.

“Captain?” she said.

“Sorry, we’re running into some heavy turbulence.” He tried to level out their flight, but the cyclonic winds resisted him. A powerful gust tipped Copernicus sharply to port, tossing its passengers to one side, before Kirk managed to stabilize the shuttlecraft. He felt like he was trying to fly a starship through an ion storm. “I’d better fire up the shields.”

He reached for the deflector controls, only to be halted by Saavik, who abruptly took hold of his wrist. Her grip was cold and sweaty, but firm enough to restrain him. He could feel her Vulcan strength; it was easy to forget that, lacking a half-portion of humanity, she was probably even stronger than Spock.

“Don’t,” she said emphatically.

Kirk was puzzled. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed, loosening her grip somewhat. “But I . . . feel . . . that it would not be wise.”

Kirk eyed her curiously. It wasn’t often that a Vulcan acted on behalf of a mere hunch, so he was inclined to pay attention when one did. “Is this something you’re picking up from Spock?”

“Possibly,” she said. “Probably.”

“Then that’s good enough for me.” He didn’t like the idea of flying through the storm without any shields, but they would just have to rely on the shuttlecraft’s sturdy hull and solid construction—not to mention his own slightly rusty piloting skills. He reminded himself of the multiple layers of protection built into the shuttle’s hull and outer plating. “Do you still sense him? Do you know where he is?”

“I believe so.” She let go of his wrist and turned to face the viewport. All that could be seen at the moment were the churning yellow storm clouds, but the color returned to her face and her eyes came back into focus. Resolution entered her voice, and she wiped the stray tear from her cheek. “Kindly turn the navigational controls over to me.”

Kirk did so, even as the storm continued to toss them about. He bounced in his chair and felt sorry for the crewmen seated in the back. Fortunately, he had never been prone to airsickness. His bigger concern was that the violent weather conditions would complicate their rescue mission.

“You certain about this?”

“This is about feelings, not logic. There is nothing certain about feelings, Captain.” A wry smile lifted her lips. “Why else do you think wiser Vulcans shun them?”

“Wisdom be damned,” Kirk said. “Let’s go find our friends.”

They dived deeper into the fog.

Fourteen

The leech came at McCoy, bounding across the foggy glade. The creature had gotten past Chekov and Darwa and was charging at the unarmed doctor, who found himself staring straight down the maw of the monster. Rings of saw-like teeth threatened to burrow into McCoy’s flesh and bone. A serrated tongue flicked hungrily, waiting for a taste of fresh blood and viscera. Saliva dripped from its mouth, betraying its intentions. Its breath reeked of blood.

“Doctor!” Chekov hollered from a few meters away, where he was driving back another leech with a spray of repellent. Similarly occupied, Darwa stood guard at the other end of the clearing. Chekov risked looking away from his own defensive efforts long enough to spare an anxious glance at McCoy. “It’s coming for you!”

No kidding, McCoy thought, unable to look away from the oncoming predator. Time warped, subjectively, so that every terrifying second felt like a nightmare playing out in slow motion. Heart pounding, McCoy groped frantically for a convenient rock or stick, but he found nothing that could realistically stop the monster for more than an instant. He clutched a broken heartbeat reader like a baton, knowing that it might as well be a tribble when it came to serving as a weapon. Spock stirred beside him, only semiconscious and looking worse than ever. McCoy took some comfort from the fact that Spock at least was safe from the leech’s sanguinary appetite, thanks to his ridiculous Vulcan blood.

Wait a second, he thought. What if . . .

Moving fast, McCoy grabbed the supine Vulcan and pulled Spock over on top of him, using the dying man as a human shield. The coppery smell from Spock’s wounded shoulder invaded the doctor’s nose and throat, even as he prayed that the odor would be even more repulsive to the charging leech—and that the monster would not simply tear through Spock to get its actual human target.

“Doctor?” Spock whispered. He blinked and shook his head groggily. “What is—”

“Not now, Spock! Just sit tight and cross your fingers!”

McCoy braced himself for the worst, but the leech slowed to a halt less than an arm’s length before the two men. Peering over Spock’s bleeding shoulder, McCoy watched tensely as the creature swung its grotesque head from side to side, its extended tongue tasting the air, as though puzzled by the mixed stimuli it was detecting. The leech crept forward warily, emitting a confused whine. Six pairs of bulging black eyes examined its prospective prey. Impatient paws scratched at the muddy soil. The creature’s primitive, non-mammalian features offered no hint as to its next actions. McCoy remembered reading somewhere that leeches had multiple brains, spread along their entire length. Who knew what they were thinking now?

Go away, you ugly bloodsucker, McCoy railed silently. I’m a doctor, not an entrée.

Spock raised his hand before his bleary eyes, seemingly oblivious to the ferocious predator right in front of them. “Are my fingers crossed, Doctor? I am having some difficulty focusing.”

The leech came closer. Its tongue reached out, grazing McCoy’s forehead. It felt sticky and scratchy against his skin. McCoy swallowed hard. His dry mouth got even dryer. The leech stopped whining. It leaned back on its hind legs, poised to strike.

So much for this brilliant idea, McCoy thought.

A hypospray hissed, only centimeters away, and an effusion of green spray misted between McCoy and the leech. The aerosolized repellent was so close that McCoy sputtered and turned his face away, his gorge rising at the thought of what the spray really was. The leech screeched furiously as it reared up on its hind legs and pawed at the contaminated fog in disgust. Its tongue retracted into its mouth.

“Get away from them!” Chekov yelled, brandishing his hypospray like a phaser pistol. He practically jammed the improvised weapon down the monster’s gullet before spraying the creature again. “You heard me! Get lost! Vamoose!”

Choking and gagging, the leech tumbled backward onto its segmented spine, then righted itself and scurried away from its intended victims, rejoining the pack of other leeches prowling through the fog. McCoy gasped in relief. His heart raced as though dosed with cordrazine.

That had been a close one.

“My apologies, Doctor,” Chekov said, checking on McCoy and Spock. He helped ease Spock into a more comfortable position, propped up with his back against the log. “The creature got past me. There are just too many of them.”

“You think?” McCoy let Chekov help him to his feet. The smell of Spock’s blood hung in the air and clung to McCoy’s filthy garments, which were nearly unrecognizable at this point. They were more mud than fabric by now, and spackled with bits of leaves and vegetation, so that it looked like he’d been marooned on the planet for weeks, not merely several hours. The doctor’s heart rate was still elevated but not quite as severely as before. He sucked in the thin, dank air. “Thanks for the timely rescue, by the way. I’d like to hang on to my own blood, at least for a little longer.”

Chekov kept his guard up, searching the fog for the next attacker. “Any time, Doctor. Just doing my job.”

Above and beyond, McCoy thought. The seasoned security chief had come a long way since joining the first Enterprise as a green young ensign. McCoy appreciated Chekov’s heroic efforts but feared that they had gained merely a brief respite. The landing party was nothing but leech bait at this point, and badly outnumbered to boot. The swamp echoed with the menacing squawks and screeches of the monsters, drowning out the steady drone of the flying insects, while more and more shadowy figures could be glimpsed through the fog, circling the landing party. The only question was which would run out first: Spock’s blood or the humans relying on it.

“You know, a Fabrini fortune-teller on Deep Space 4 once told me that I’d live to a ripe old age and even make admiral someday,” McCoy said. “Suddenly, I have my doubts.” He shook his head ruefully. “Of all the ugly, uncomfortable, and just plain miserable places to finally cash in my chips . . .”

Darwa fell back to join them, and the three humans formed a tight cluster around Spock. McCoy looked for a way out but saw only fog, muck, and the vague outlines of too many leeches. Resigned to his own demise, he felt sorry for the others, including Spock. Even if the monsters left Spock alone, the dying Vulcan was too debilitated to last long on his own. Blood loss and exposure would kill him just as surely and mercilessly as any leech.

“Well, it was nice knowing you,” Chekov said, clearing thinking along the same lines. He gave Darwa a quick thumbs-up. “Excellent work, Lieutenant. Consider yourself commended.”

She kept up a brave front. “Thank you, Commander. I suppose this is the wrong time to ask you for a little extra shore leave next month, to attend my cousin’s wedding on Tilton VI?”

“We get through this,” Chekov promised her, “and I will personally make your travel arrangements.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, Commander.”

A leech tried to come at them from the side, but Darwa still had her Starfleet reflexes and training. She slipped past McCoy to intercept the creature, spraying it in the face before it got too close. She did so automatically, almost numbly, as though it had already become second nature to her.

“I think you’re getting the hang of this, Lieutenant,” McCoy said.

“Yeah.” She reached into her pants pocket for a spare vial of blood, reloading the hypo while remaining on high alert. Sweat ran down her face. “Lucky me.”

“Doctor?” The commotion seemed to bring Spock out of his stupor. Sagging eyelids lifted, as did his head. He sounded a bit more lucid than before. Bloodshot eyes surveyed the ominous scene, taking in the details as he attempted to bring himself up to speed. He struggled to sit upright. “The creatures?”

“Converging for a banquet,” McCoy said, not mincing words. “And we’re the main course.”

McCoy knew better than to be encouraged by Spock’s apparent turn for the better. In his experience, the dying often rallied shortly before the end. He couldn’t explain it, but he had seen it more than once. It was a human thing, and Spock was half-human after all.

“Do not lose hope, Doctor.” Spock lifted his eyes to the murky heavens. “Help is on its way.”

McCoy was skeptical. “And what makes you say that?”

Spock shrugged, then winced as the gesture aggravated his injury. “Call it . . . a feeling.”

“A feeling?” McCoy snorted in disbelief. “Well, now I really have heard everything. Guess I can call it a day.”

“Sarcasm, Doctor, is hardly conducive to morale. I advise you to work on your bedside manner.”

Chekov interrupted their banter. “Look sharp! Here they come again!”

Sure enough, at least three leeches broke from the fog, making another pass at them. One for each human, McCoy thought. He was starting to get the impression that the predators did not ordinarily hunt in packs, but were making an exception in this case.

And they were learning fast.

The embattled castaways relied on teamwork as well. “I’ve got the one on the left!” Chekov shouted. “You take the right!”

“And the middle one?” Darwa asked.

“Whoever gets it first!”

McCoy wished for a hypospray of his own, even if part of him still hated the very idea of using a medical instrument as a weapon. He tugged on Spock’s arm. “Quick! Crawl inside the log. It might buy you time . . . if help really is on the way!”

A fourth leech lunged from the back of the clearing, taking advantage of the fact that the security team was otherwise engaged. It keened triumphantly, a sound McCoy was heartily sick of. It would almost be worth being taken down by one of the beasts if it meant not hearing that ear-grating caterwauling ever again.

“I have a better idea, Doctor. Keep back.”

Spock startled McCoy by rising to his feet. McCoy would not have thought the moribund Vulcan capable of standing, let alone walking under his own power, but apparently he had underestimated Spock’s constitution and/or cussedness. Stepping over the log, Spock staggered forward to block the craftier leech. He tore the blood-soaked dressings from his shoulder, causing the wound to bleed afresh. He threw out his arms and faced down the creature. Splattered in mud, pale as death, he looked more like an apparition than a Starfleet officer. Perhaps some gaunt, forbidding specter out of Vulcan mythology.

“No,” he croaked, every word an effort. “You will not have them.”

McCoy had no idea what was keeping Spock going, except maybe that inexplicable hope he’d mentioned before. The doctor stared in horror at the nerve-racking tableau before him. “For Pete’s sake, Spock, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Whatever is necessary, Doctor.”

Wailing unhappily, the blocked leech backed away from Spock, but it did not retreat entirely into the fog. It looked from left to right, searching for the best route past the bleeding Vulcan, who stood stiffly like a scarecrow between it and McCoy. Spock’s legs quaked visibly, threatening to buckle before long. His labored breathing made McCoy’s own chest hurt.

Hyposprays hissed and sputtered behind McCoy, who heard Chekov and Darwa shouting to each other as they waged their own life-or-death battles. Unable to tear his gaze away from the momentary standoff between Spock and the leech, he could only listen in on them.

“Commander!” Darwa yelled over the screeching of the monsters. “There’s no stopping them! It’s no use!”

“Keep fighting, Lieutenant!” he urged her. “The captain would not give up, so we can’t either!”

McCoy admired their spirit, but a good doctor knew when there was no saving a patient. The landing party’s prognosis was a terminal one, and the duration of their lives was clearly measured in minutes, not hours. They had fought the good fight, but this was the end. He hoped Kirk wouldn’t risk any more brave men and women in a fruitless attempt to rescue them.

At least Jim and the rest are safe back on the Enterprise. That’s something, I suppose.

A blinding white light suddenly shone from above, piercing the fog and turning the perpetually misty twilight into day. After untold hours tromping through the gloom, the incandescent glare came as a shock to McCoy’s eyes. Shielding them with his palm, he squinted upward, half expecting to see a heavenly staircase leading up to eternity. He had always heard about people going “into the light” but had thought that was just a quaint, archaic expression.

Then Copernicus came into view, its forward searchlights blazing before it. The force of its thrusters rustled nearby leaves and branches and caused the taller trees to sway. Kirk’s amplified voice boomed from the shuttlecraft.

“Ahoy, landing party! Stand by for rescue.”

The sudden appearance of the shuttle, with its bright headlights and blaring noise, panicked the attacking leeches, which turned tail and scattered in all directions, abandoning their prey. The sheltering fog absorbed the creatures as though they were never there.

If only, McCoy thought.

“It’s Copernicus!” Chekov shouted jubilantly. “They found us!”

Hurling away an empty hypospray, he hugged Darwa, who was grinning from ear to ear as well. It wasn’t entirely professional, but McCoy doubted that anyone would object under the circumstances. He’d be jumping for joy himself if he wasn’t so damn exhausted.

“Well, I’ll be a Mugato’s uncle,” he said. “How in blazes did they find us?”

Spock turned slowly, painfully, toward McCoy. “I believe, Doctor, the appropriate human response is, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“I think I liked it better when you were delirious.”

“That hardly seems in keeping with your Hippocratic—” Spock began, before his legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground. An anguished moan escaped him.

McCoy raced to his side.

“Spock!”

Fifteen

The mucky swamp offered no ready landing spot, so Copernicus hovered approximately three meters above the clearing, which was now mercifully free of leeches. The shuttlecraft’s rear hatchway opened, disgorging a pair of security officers who dropped nimbly onto the planet’s surface. McCoy spotted the phasers in the officers’ grips and had a moment of panic. Despite the bright glare of the searchlights, the explosive fog was as thick as ever.

“No phasers!” he shouted. “Trust me on this!”

Chekov hurried forward to brief the new arrivals, while McCoy tended to Spock, who had slipped back into unconsciousnes—or worse. That last, life-saving exertion had taken its toll. His pulse was down to fifty, low even for a human. McCoy needed to stabilize Spock if he was going to make it to sickbay alive.

“Somebody get me a medkit! Pronto!”

His demand was answered with commendable speed. McCoy sighed in relief as he opened the fresh kit and saw all the familiar tools at his disposal. For the first time in far too many hours, he didn’t feel like he was trying to make bricks without straw.

“Hold on, you stubborn, green-blooded son of a bitch,” he said, applying a dermal seal to Spock’s wounded shoulder, getting the bleeding under control at last. An infusion of concentrated nutrients and vitamins would hopefully help Spock’s body find the strength to keep fighting for its life, while an emergency saline treatment and stimulants were needed to elevate Spock’s blood pressure and keep him from going into shock. McCoy scanned the patient with a brand-new tricorder. “Don’t you even think of dying on me after all this. You’re reporting to sickbay, mister, if I have to carry you there myself.”

Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary. A collapsible ladder had been lowered from the rear of Copernicus, but Spock was in no shape to climb it, so a portable antigrav lifter was drafted into service as a makeshift stretcher. Despite his own fatigue, McCoy insisted on supervising as Lieutenants Cassano and Borkowski loaded Spock on the lifter and strapped him in securely. McCoy hadn’t seen Kirk yet; he assumed that Jim was still at the helm of the hovering shuttle.

“You’re next, Doctor,” Cassano said, indicating the hanging ladder. Chekov and Darwa had already clambered aboard Copernicus, with only a little help from the new arrivals, who had insisted on relieving the exhausted survivors. “After you.”

“Forget it,” McCoy said. “I’m not going anywhere until I see my patient safely stowed away.”

The burly, dark-haired security officer shrugged. “If you say so, Doc.” He shouted to the shuttle: “Sending up Mister Spock!”

McCoy spied Saavik peering down through the open hatchway, observing the operation intently. “Acknowledged,” she replied. “Apply all due caution transporting him, gentlemen.”

McCoy thought he spotted more than simply Vulcan concentration in the tense rigidity of her expression. He remembered Spock calling out to her in his delirium.

Saavik-kam . . . Saavik-kam . . .

Could it be that she had actually answered him?

The last human standing on Varba II, McCoy waited until the stretcher had been successfully loaded into the rear of the shuttlecraft before starting up the ladder himself. About time, he thought. If I never see this reeking swamp again, it will be too soon.

A bloodcurdling screech nearly gave him a heart attack. Looking back over his shoulder in alarm, he saw a huge leech barreling toward him. Overcoming its fear of the shuttlecraft, the leech was intent on bringing down its prey before it got away. McCoy recalled just how high the creatures could leap.

“Take her up!” he hollered. “Now!”

Not waiting for him to finish climbing the ladder, Copernicus took off at a steep angle, dangling McCoy and the ladder behind it. The determined leech sprang after McCoy. Its extendable tongue snared his ankle, but a sturdy boot protected him from the tongue’s jagged serrations. The weight of the monster tugged on McCoy, and he hung on to a metal rung for dear life. For a second, he was sure he was going to be yanked from the ladder and back down into the swamp, but gravity came to his rescue. The leech’s slimy tongue snapped in two, one half going limp around McCoy’s ankle, and the rest of the leech went tumbling down into the fog, keening in pain and fury. It splashed loudly out of sight.

“Ugh.” McCoy hastily shook the leftover piece of tongue from his boot. He almost felt sorry for the mutilated animal—until he remembered Fisher and Yost. Serves it right for getting greedy.

Copernicus ascended steeply, clearing the treetops. The ladder retracted mechanically, dragging McCoy aboard. Strong hands grabbed hold of his shoulders, making sure they had a good grip on him despite his muddy clothing, as the aft hatchway closed behind him. It locked into place.

McCoy remembered to breathe.

The clean, oxygen-rich air was intoxicating. McCoy inhaled deeply, grateful for a pressurized atmosphere that he couldn’t actually see and smell. Somebody thrust a canteen into his hand and he took a long, sweet drink before stopping to orient himself. The water tasted even better than black-market Romulan ale, which was saying something.

The passenger compartment was packed. It was a tight fit, but McCoy wasn’t complaining. Spock remained secured to the stretcher, which was laid on the deck between the rows of seats. McCoy took a seat beside him, the better to monitor his life-signs. He looked up to see Kirk emerge from the cockpit, where Saavik had taken the helm. He grinned at McCoy.

“Welcome aboard, Bones.” He inspected the drenched and disheveled physician. “I have to say, you’ve looked better.”

“You try wading through a leech-infested bog the whole damn day or night and see if you’re fit for a diplomatic reception.” McCoy glanced around the compartment: One could tell the castaways from the rescuers by how torn, wet, and filthy their uniforms were. A somber thought lowered his spirits. “You heard about Fisher and Yost?”

Kirk’s grin evaporated. “Yes,” he said, nodding grimly. “But I’m glad we didn’t lose all of you.”

“Me, too,” McCoy admitted, although he still intended to find out Yost’s first name. And write a letter to Fisher’s sister. The dead men had shared their final hours with him. He wanted to get better acquainted with them, if only posthumously.

Kirk drew nearer to Spock. He looked anxiously at McCoy. “How is he, Bones?”

“I’ve done my best to stabilize him, but he needs to be in sickbay, as quickly as we can manage.”

Kirk turned back toward the cockpit. “You hear that, Lieutenant?”

“My hearing is excellent, sir.” Saavik adjusted the flight controls. “I advise everyone to buckle up . . . and hold on tight.”

A dramatic burst of acceleration sent Copernicus rocketing upward into the turbulent clouds. McCoy experienced a moment of panic.

“The shields!” he blurted. “Whatever you do, don’t activate the shields!”

Kirk took his outburst in stride.

“So I gather,” he said.

Sixteen

A bosun’s whistle signaled an incoming message. Kirk activated the comm unit on Doctor McCoy’s desk in sickbay. “Kirk here.”

“Sorry to interrupt you, Captain,” Uhura’s voice said, “but I’ve finally managed to translate the warning signal in its entirety. Do you want to hear it?” She paused at the other end of the line. “Or is it a bad time?”

Kirk and Saavik were keeping vigil in McCoy’s office while the doctor and his staff treated Spock in the intensive-care ward. Chekov and Darwa had already been checked out and discharged, after being treated for minor cuts and bruises and dehydration; they were currently recovering in their respective quarters, but Kirk had no intention of budging from sickbay until he knew if Spock was going to be okay. Saavik had asked to be permitted to wait with him, and Kirk had readily assented. She’d earned that privilege and then some.

“Go ahead, Uhura,” he instructed. “Patch it through to the main terminal on Doctor McCoy’s desk.”

“Aye, sir. Coming through now.”

Kirk sat down at the desk in front of the monitor, while Saavik scooted her own chair closer. She had remained comfortably seated through their vigil. Vulcans apparently did not pace.

The screen came alive with a cascade of visual snow that was oddly reminiscent of the shimmering yellow fog on Varba II. An androgynous voice, possessing an odd, lilting accent that Kirk was pretty sure he’d never heard before, emanated from the static:

“Attention and beware. This is High Mariner Johhuj of the long-range interstellar explorer Quantum Valence, addressing all future travelers to this baneful system. By the time you receive this, I and my surviving crew will be long gone, undone by the many hidden perils that render the second planet in this system a deathtrap to be avoided at all costs. If you value your lives and safety, attempt no landing here. Our own ship, damaged irreparably upon entering the planet’s treacherous atmosphere, will never see the stark serenity of space again. My valiant crew, despite their courage and fortitude, is outnumbered by the relentless predators that have already woefully depleted our numbers. There is no hope for us, but you still have the opportunity to avoid our dire fate. Heed my words, tomorrow’s travelers, and turn away from this malignant and unforgiving world. Do not suffer the same doom that has befallen us. Take care, and journey on.”

The voice fell silent, trailing off into silence. Kirk paged Uhura. “Is that all of it?”

“Aye, Captain.” Her face appeared on the monitor. “As nearly as I can tell, the message is more than three hundred Earth-years old.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it, sir?”

“Very much so,” Kirk agreed, “but their determination to warn others speaks well of their people and their character. I would have liked to have met that captain and crew.”

It was strange to realize that Johhuj and his fellow explorers had met their end three centuries earlier, long before the birth of the Federation. Humanity would have still been making its first tentative steps into a new frontier back then.

“In theory, the remains of their vessel might still be found at the signal’s point of origin,” Saavik pointed out. “Perhaps further investigation is indicated—with the proper precautions, naturally.”

“Another day, maybe,” Kirk said, “but not today.” He was more than ready to heed Johhuj’s warning and leave Varba II behind, but perhaps there was still one more task to complete before they could truly take their leave of the deadly planet. “Uhura, place a warning beacon of our own in orbit above Varba II, transmitting in all major galactic languages known to us. Facing certain death, High Mariner Johhuj went out of his way to try to make certain that no future explorers suffered his tragic fate. The least we can do is further that selfless gesture.”

Especially since the Enterprise had lost two of its own to Varba II as well. This struck Kirk as a fitting way to honor Fisher’s and Yost’s sacrifice and to ensure that the two officers had not died in vain.

“Absolutely, sir,” Uhura responded. “I’ll see to it at once.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Kirk said. “In the meantime, tell Mister Scott to set a course for Musgrave IV, maximum warp. Seems to me that we’ve got some impatient diplomats to deliver.”

“They’re a little less impatient since Scotty broke out his private stock of spirits, Captain, but I’ll see that he gets the message.” Uhura paused before signing off. “Captain, if you don’t mind my asking, how is Mister Spock?”

Kirk sympathized with her concern. “The doctor is still with him. I’ll keep you posted. Kirk out.”

He rose from his seat at the desk and strode restlessly around the office. Unlike Vulcans, humans did pace when anxious. He was completing his fifth circuit of the room when the door whisked open and McCoy appeared in the doorway.

“All right,” he said. “You can come see him now.”

The doctor had showered and changed into a set of fresh scrubs, but he was still distinctly the worse for wear after his own ordeal on the planet. Dark pouches hung under his eyes, and minor cuts and scratches added extra character to his weathered features. He clutched a mug of black coffee as though his life depended on it. Kirk guessed that McCoy, who had scarcely rested since returning to the Enterprise, was himself in need of a hearty meal and a good, long sleep.

But, to be honest, Kirk was more worried about Spock at the moment.

“How is he, Bones?”

McCoy shrugged, the casual gesture boding well. The doctor did not have the mournful air of a concerned physician preparing to deliver bad news. “See for yourself.”

He led them into the recovery ward, where they found Spock sitting up in bed. He looked wan and weary, but much better than he had on Copernicus before. The life-signs monitor above his head gave no immediate cause for alarm. He lifted his gaze from his bed’s built-in library access terminal, which he had been employing when they walked in. Various nurses and medics quietly went about their business nearby.

“Captain,” Spock greeted his guests, “Lieutenant.”

Kirk felt Saavik relax, all but imperceptibly, beside him. Perhaps she had been pacing inside.

“Spock,” he replied. “You’re looking more like your old self. How are you feeling?”

There was a time when Spock would have objected to the word “feeling,” but not anymore. He answered the question without any caveats. “Inconveniently weak, and experiencing a certain bodily discomfort, but the good doctor assures me that I can expect to make a full recovery.”

“If you don’t overexert yourself and follow your doctor’s directions.” McCoy approached the bed to take a closer look at the life-signs display. “It was touch-and-go there for a while. Spock had lost an absurd amount of blood, and, as you know, he has a rather exotic blood type, even by Vulcan standards.”

“T-negative,” Saavik said. “I regret that I was not a suitable donor.”

“It is not our blood type that we share, Saavik-kam. I believe I owe my life to a deeper connection between us.”

Their gazes met, momentarily excluding the two humans, and Kirk wondered if he would ever truly comprehend what had passed between them when their minds had reached out and found each other just in time to save Spock. Probably not, he guessed. It’s a Vulcan thing.

“I am pleased to find you well,” Saavik said finally, “and that I was able to render what assistance I could.”

Spock nodded in acknowledgment, saying no more.

“In any event,” McCoy said, breaking a suddenly awkward silence, “in the absence of another green-blooded donor, I resorted to pharmaceutical means to accelerate Spock’s own blood production in order to replenish his supply, using a modern variation of the same drug I gave him on our way to the Babel Conference way back when.”

Kirk recalled the occasion. Spock’s father had required major surgery while aboard the Enterprise and Spock had needed to provide a dangerous quantity of blood for transfusion purposes. They had nearly lost both men at the time.

“Of course, the drug’s not nearly as experimental as it was twenty years ago,” McCoy added, “which spoiled some of the suspense.”

Spock regarded the doctor with amusement. “My apologies if my medical emergency was not sufficiently stimulating for you, Doctor.”

“I’ll let it go this time,” McCoy said. “Heck, after what went on down on that fog planet, I may never complain about your freakish green blood again.”

“Somehow I doubt that, Doctor.”

McCoy thought it over.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my editors, Ed Schlesinger and Margaret Clark, for inviting me to write my first Star Trek ebook. It’s going to be strange not having a physical copy of this book to show off on my brag shelf, but I guess I’ve finally joined the twenty-first century—by way of the twenty-third.

Oddly, this is the first time I’ve ever written the character of Saavik, whom I’ve enjoyed as a fan ever since her debut in The Wrath of Khan more than twenty years ago, so I want to take the occasion to thank both Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis for bringing her to life on the screen. Feel free to visualize whichever actress you prefer when reading this book; I admit my mind’s eye swung back and forth between the two while writing it.

Funny story: I first came up with this plot at least fifteen years ago, when I was brainstorming possible pitches for Star Trek: Voyager. The original version involved Tuvok and Chakotay, but I like to think Spock and McCoy work just as well. I’m grateful for the chance to finally tell this tale.

I also want to thank my agent, Russ Galen, for handling the contractual details; as always, my girlfriend, Karen, who made an emergency coffee run just when I needed it; and our two four-legged kids, Sophie and Lyla, who got locked out of my office a few times when I needed to focus on giant killer leeches. Sorry about that.

About the Author

Greg Cox is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous Star Trek novels and stories, including Child of Two Worlds, Foul Deeds Will Rise, No Time like the Past, The Weight of Worlds, The Rings of Time, To Reign in Hell, The Eugenics Wars (volumes one and two), The Q Continuum, Assignment: Eternity, and The Black Shore. He has also written the official movie novelizations of Godzilla, Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Death Defying Acts, and the first three Underworld movies, as well as books and stories based on such popular series as Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Farscape, The 4400, Leverage, Riese: Kingdom Falling, Roswell, Terminator, Warehouse 13, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

He has received three Scribe Awards from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers and lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

Visit him at: www.gregcox-author.com.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Greg-Cox

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Cover art by Tobias Richter

ISBN 978-1-5011-2531-7

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Acknowledgments

About the Author