Chain of Attack (6 page)

They continued to wait and listen, but the approaching ship remained totally silent. At two million kilometers, Kirk ordered Uhura to resume transmitting. Still there was no response.

At just over five hundred thousand kilometers, the alien emitted a single concentrated burst of nondirectional subspace radio energy. A split second later, it changed course abruptly and began accelerating.

"Collision course, Captain," Spock said. "At present acceleration, impact in seven-point-three seconds. Lasers preparing to fire."

"Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu."

Almost instantly, the
Enterprise
leaped ahead on impulse power, but not before the alien craft's lasers fired at what, in space, was the equivalent of point-blank range. A moment later, the alien's drive proved itself far closer to being truly inertialess than any comparable early Federation starship's had ever been. In a matter of seconds, the craft came to a virtual halt, reversed its course almost as quickly as the
Enterprise
itself could have done, and put itself once again on a collision course. Sulu and the navigation computer responded, and the alien ship shot by a hundred kilometers below, its lasers still drenching the
Enterprise
's shields and surrounding space in concentrated radiation.

"They apparently do not like us, Captain," Chekov commented.

"Apparently," Kirk agreed. "If this is the way everyone in this neighborhood reacts to strangers, it's no wonder all these worlds were destroyed."

"They are persistent, too, sir. The ship is returning again."

Again the alien craft was on a collision course, and again it was firing its lasers steadily, putting out prodigious amounts of energy. Though they were no more advanced than early Federation weapons, they far surpassed them in sheer brute force.

Again the
Enterprise
, under Sulu's sure hand, avoided the alien, and the
Enterprise
's deflector screens absorbed the coruscating laser energy without damage.

"How long can they keep this up, Spock?" Kirk asked as the alien executed yet another U-turn and began yet another blazing run at the
Enterprise
.

"Not more than another five-point-four minutes, I would estimate, Captain. No laser device can continue to produce that level of power for long without beginning to seriously malfunction. In addition, the repeated rapid course changes appear to be straining not only the craft's primary power source but the structure of the craft itself."

"Very well. When their weapons become inoperative, perhaps we'll be able to talk."

As Kirk spoke, Sulu once again took the
Enterprise
safely out of the path of the charging alien craft. This time, however, the alien did not immediately turn and resume its attack. Instead, it paused and emitted another concentrated burst of subspace radio energy.

"Anything intelligible this time, Lieutenant Uhura?"

"Nothing, Captain. But these last two transmissions were much more complex than the first. They were obviously nothing as simple as an identification code or a challenge. The computer indicates that both transmissions contained massive amounts of information, compressed into periods of less than forty-three milliseconds."

"They're telling their friends about us?" Kirk wondered aloud.

"It is a distinct possibility, Captain," Spock said.

"Perhaps
they
will be less belligerent."

"They well
have
to be, sir," Chekov said, shaking his head in annoyed disbelief as he watched his instruments. "This one is coming back
again
!"

"But this will be its last run, Captain," Spock said. "It appears to be purposely inducing an overload in its primary power source. Unless something is done, all its matter and antimatter fuel will be simultaneously converted to energy in eighteen-point-three seconds, which time will coincide with its closest approach to the
Enterprise
. If that approach is as close as previous approaches, our deflector shields will not be able to withstand the energy release."

 

"WARP SPEED, MR. SULU,
now!
" Kirk snapped, even before Spock had finished speaking.

Acknowledging the command only by his actions, Sulu stabbed at the controls, and the
Enterprise
surged ahead, warp drive engaged within seconds.

In another second, the relativistic starbow in the viewscreen was replaced by the computer-generated star field and the now slightly off-center alien craft.

"Destruction of alien craft no longer imminent, Captain," Spock said. "The overload sequence has apparently been aborted!"

"A bluff?" Kirk wondered aloud, relieved but not yet relaxing. "Or perhaps they were only simulating an overload. Possible, Mr. Spock?"

"Possible but unlikely, Captain. The power drain was real and of massive proportions. Obviously, however, it was under their control at all times, and they were able to cut it off within seconds of the
Enterprise
's departure."

"So, the danger of an explosion was real, but the alien's actions could still have been a bluff."

"Again, possible but unlikely. For the alien to undertake such an action, it would have to assume that we were continually monitoring the craft's internal workings and were aware of the impending explosion. The technological level of their own equipment would not allow such monitoring."

"Therefore," Kirk finished when Spock paused, "they weren't bluffing. They intended to commit suicide in hopes of taking us with them."

"Almost certainly, Captain."

"And yet, when the
Enterprise
warped out of range, they were able to remove the overload and stabilize their engines in a matter of seconds."

"In three-point-four seconds, Captain."

"Such proficiency would seem to indicate that they have done that sort of thing before."

"Very likely, Captain."

"Which would indicate any number of possibilities.

For example, just because their own technology doesn't allow them to monitor the internal workings of other spacecraft doesn't mean that they aren't accustomed to meeting ships like ours that
can
monitor such things. Meeting and attacking." Kirk grimaced. "Any progress in analyzing those subspace bursts, Lieutenant Uhura?"

"The computer has been working on it," she said, studying one of the small screens in front of her. "Most of it is still unintelligible, but part of it appears to be a crude image of the
Enterprise
. There are several accompanying symbols that might specify a scale for the image. Perhaps Mr. Spock can make more sense out of them."

"So they
were
telling their friends about us." Kirk looked back at the image on the screen, once again vanishingly small among the stars. "Are we out of range of their sensors, Mr. Spock?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

"All stop, Mr. Sulu. Let's watch and see what happens." He paused, glancing around the bridge. "Unless someone has a better idea. Now that we appear to have a breather, I'm open to suggestions, gentlemen."

"The course you suggest seems eminently logical, Captain," Spock said when no one else volunteered anything. Then, his full attention back on his instruments, he announced, "The alien craft is in motion, accelerating away from us. It will—it has just achieved warp speed and is continuing to accelerate."

"Don't lose them," Kirk snapped. "Mr. Sulu, keep us within sensor range—our sensor range, not theirs."

"Aye-aye, sir."

"They are at warp two-point-five and holding, Captain. That appears to be their maximum speed."

"Antimatter drive, but without dilithium crystals to focus the power?"

"Apparently, Captain."

"And their heading—I don't suppose they're aiming for any particular star?"

"None within a dozen parsecs. Nor does their present course bear any discernible relationship to the course they were initially following."

Frowning, Kirk settled back in the command chair.

Where
were
the aliens going? Did they think the
Enterprise
had simply run away, or did they suspect they were being followed? And if they did suspect it, were they, like a bird defending its nest, trying to lure the intruder away from their home world? Was that why its course was not aimed at any of the thousands of relatively nearby stars but at the empty space that separated them?

Or, he wondered, could they be hoping to lead the
Enterprise
into a trap? Now that it was clear they could not destroy the Federation ship on their own, not even with their kamikaze maneuver, did they hope that whoever had been on the receiving end of those subspace radio bursts
could
do the job?

Dr. Jason Crandall lay fully dressed on his bed, futilely trying to decide which was worse—the terrifying nightmare from which he had just awakened or the bleak reality that had replaced it.

The nightmare, he thought grimly, had at least come to an end, just as the dozen before it had done. Its repeated scenes of his own grisly death on one outlandishly alien world after another had left him bathed in icy perspiration, but they
had
ended. What passed for reality, on the other hand, showed no signs of ending. He was imprisoned on a ship of hostile strangers a lifetime away from everything and everyone he was familiar with, and that very real imprisonment, he was now convinced, could have no end but his own equally real death.

He had come to accept that fact more than a dozen standard days ago, shortly after the
Enterprise
had finally and briefly returned to its starting point in this alien sector of space. Instead of staying and using the remaining supply of probes in an attempt to locate the gate that had brought them here, Kirk had almost immediately ordered a resumption of his pointless search for the remnants of some civilization which, if it had ever existed at all, had almost certainly been destroyed thousands if not millions of years ago.

Until then, Crandall had often fostered the forlorn hope that the gate was not truly missing, that its disappearance had all been a fiction generated by Kirk to give him an excuse to play the explorer for a few days or weeks more. Even though that hope had faded further with each new scene of devastation that appeared on the viewscreens, he had managed to keep it alive throughout those first days.

But then, with one mindless order, Kirk had shattered that hope. After sending the
Enterprise
on a halfdozen uneventful runs through the spot where the gate had once been, he had ordered the search resumed, this time not limiting it to the nearby stars but moving straight out through the cluster at a warp factor that he doubted the ship could safely maintain for any length of time. At that point there had no longer been any doubt in Crandall's mind that his predicament was real. Unless the mad captain's pipe dream of finding the so-called gate civilization came true, the whole lot of them would be destroyed out here in this interstellar no-man's land.

And then, less than five standard hours ago, Kirk had taken yet another giant step toward that destruction. The
Enterprise
had made its first contact with a spacefaring race in this sector. Not with another of those decaying relics of past destruction they called booby traps but with an actual ship, under the control of living, sentient beings.

Predictably, the encounter had been a disaster, even based on the drastically censored version Crandall and the crew had been given. And, to make matters worse, Kirk was now intent on playing some insane game of interstellar cat and mouse. Despite all common sense, he was trailing the retreating alien, sublimely overconfident that the
Enterprise
could handle whatever he was blindly leading it into.

A knock on the door of the living quarters section of Crandall's stateroom snapped him upright on the bed, his booted feet hitting the carpeted floor with a thud. Pulling in a deep breath, he sat quietly for a long moment, composing himself. Now that he had come to accept the depressing fact that the
Enterprise
was going to be his home for the rest of his life, he had no intention of letting his emotions once again get out of hand, as they had in his earlier, uncontrolled outbursts. Those had done quite enough damage to his image, making him seem not only impatiently autocratic but, worse, childishly fearful, even weak. From now on, his personal feelings would remain just that—personal. Whatever emotions he displayed would be, as they had been throughout his career in public life, limited to those that would further his own ends, no more and no less.

Standing up, he smoothed his green tunic and hurriedly wiped the remaining beads of perspiration from his forehead as he strode past the room divider between his sleeping quarters and his equally sparsely finished living quarters.

"Enter," he said, and a moment later the door hissed open.

A young ensign, blond with uneasy gray eyes, stepped hesitantly into the stateroom, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder as the door closed behind her.

Crandall suppressed a frown as he searched his memory for the ensign's name. Normally, among civilians and their varied dress and hair styles, he would have no trouble making the mental associations that would allow him to put a name to any one of hundreds of people he was introduced to, but here on the
Enterprise
, where uniforms and regulations cut individuality to the bone, he felt lucky to keep the officers and their duties separate in his mind, let alone the names and functions of the hundreds of others who swarmed the ship's corridors. He could only remember that this particular ensign had been one of a group of a dozen or so who had been pointed out to him as being fresh out of Starfleet Academy, the
Enterprise
their first spacegoing assignment.

"Yes, Ensign, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Dr. Crandall," she said, obviously having trouble forcing the words out, "but I felt that I had to speak to you."

Crandall softened his own expression a fraction, suddenly sensing that in this young woman he might have found his first ally. She was obviously upset, but equally obviously she was not upset with him but with something about the
Enterprise
.

"That's perfectly all right, Ensign. Won't you have a seat?" Motioning her to the lounge chair in the corner of the stateroom, he sat casually on the edge of the trapezoidal desk in one corner of the room. "For a start, how about telling me your name?"

"I'm sorry," she said, blushing as she sat down. "My name is Davis, sir."

"No need for the 'sir,' Miss Davis. I'm just a civilian, not an officer."

"I know, sir, but as a representative of the Council—"

"Only unofficially, as I'm sure you are aware, Ensign," he said, letting just a trace of his annoyance with that state of affairs color his voice.

"But tell me, Miss Davis, what is it you wish to speak to me about?" he continued, arranging his features into a rueful smile. "Much as I'd like to, I'm afraid getting you—or myself—shore leave is a bit beyond my current capabilities."

A nervous, answering smile flickered across her softly rounded features. "I realize that, of course, sir. And I don't want you to think that I'm being disloyal to the captain in any way by coming to speak to you."

"Of course not!" he said, giving her a reassuring smile. "In any case," he added in a confidential tone, "one's ultimate loyalty is to the Federation itself, not to any one individual. So please, feel free to be completely open and honest with me. Whatever you say will be just between us—unless you specifically tell me otherwise."

For just a moment, as he had spoken of loyalty to the Federation as opposed to loyalty to Kirk, a new kind of tension had flickered across her expressive features, and he wondered if he had overplayed his hand and lost her.

"Please, go ahead," he said softly. "Why not begin by telling me about yourself? How is it that you're on the
Enterprise
, for instance? I seem to recall being told that this is your first assignment out of Starfleet Academy."

With those questions, he could see her visibly relax, and he allowed himself a mental sigh of relief. Then she was pulling in a deep breath and raising her eyes to meet his.

"That's right, sir. I graduated just three months ago.

And I don't know how I happened to be assigned to the
Enterprise
. The luck of the draw, I imagine. Even so, it was quite an honor."

"I'm sure it was. The
Enterprise
is, after all, a rather highly regarded vessel."

She nodded, a shy smile flickering around her lips and eyes as memories drove some of her current tensions away. "All my classmates were green with envy. There wasn't one who didn't want the chance of serving with Captain Kirk."

Suppressing his impulse to laugh derisively, Crandall nodded his encouragement instead. "But you weren't counting on anything like this," he suggested.

For a moment, she was totally silent, the faint smile vanishing as she was reminded of the reasons that had brought her to Crandall. "No, I wasn't," she said, and suddenly her voice was tight with emotion. "This was supposed to be strictly a scientific mission! We were supposed to be back on earth in only a few weeks! My fiancé graduated last year, and he's on the
Krieger
, and we were both scheduled for duty on the
Republic
next year. His family knows Captain Halston, and—"