Gemini (20 page)

For a long moment, McCoy and Spock locked eyes.

“Acknowledged,” said Spock, swinging his legs over and rising.

“Be careful,” said McCoy.

“I always am, Doctor,” said Spock.

“I was talking to Jim!” Behind his back, Kirk winked at McCoy, who managed to look very pleased with himself.

* * *

“What do you think happened to you?” asked Kirk, as they ran to the turbolift.

“Unknown, sir. But I recall the symptoms that occurred at its onset, and I shall report any such reoccurrence immediately.”

“All right, Spock, but don't worry about it.”

“Captain, I am incapable of worry. I simply point out—”

“Of course you are, Spock. My apologies.” The lift doors hissed open and they entered the bridge. Sulu left the conn and returned to his position.

“Normal lighting,” said Kirk, crisply. “Status?”

“The ship is under assault, Captain,” said Spock, peering into the viewer at his station, “but with no discernible pattern behind it. We are being subjected to bursts of energy which seem dispensed at random, but frequent intervals.”

“Maintain shields, Mr. Sulu. Uhura, did you kill the transmission to the planet?”

“Yes, sir, but the technicians weren't very happy about it.”

“They'd be a lot less happy to see their rulers under attack on planetwide video. Screen on, Sulu, let's get a look at what's gnawing at us.”

“Aye, sir.” The viewscreen sprang to life, and they stared into the heart of the storm.

Literally, it seemed. Before them was a roiling mass, which seemed composed of random tendrils of pure color, swirling all about themselves, first in one pattern, then suddenly in another, with no interval. When Kirk looked right at the phenomenon, it tended to vanish. He found that he could view it best by looking not directly at it, but from the periphery of his vision.

“Analysis, Spock?”

“Little useful information to be determined by my equipment, Captain. The phenomenon varies in size from less than half a kilometer to more than five, with no pattern to its fluctuations. It seems composed of pure energy, though I can detect no power source, and cannot yet determine the composition of its energy.”

“Is there any sign of how it's generated? Where it's coming from?”

“No, sir. It seems self-perpetuating, but conditions in this solar system are not currently conducive to the generation of such energy manifestations.”

“Look out!” said Kirk, urgently. A portion of the roiling mass seemed to thicken, to become more opaque, then to almost lazily flick a tendril of energy at the
Enterprise.
The ship tilted from side to side as its internal stabilizers fought to keep her steady. “Damage report!”

“Deck five hit, Captain, the cargo hold,” came Uhura's voice, from behind Kirk.

“Damage?” asked Kirk, quickly.

“No appreciable damage.”

“Not this time,” Kirk said grimly. “Uhura, give the order to evacuate the hold.”
Damm it,
he thought, most of the anger directed at himself,
how do they know where the princes are? A spy, or
—He tore himself back to the more immediate matters.

“Shields down to eighty-five percent, Captain.”

“All available power to shields, Sulu. Phasers on random spread and fire.” From below the plain of the viewscreen, two rays of destructive force lanced out at the phenomenon.

“No damage, sir,” said Spock.

“Has it withdrawn?”

“Negative.”

“It's firing again, Captain.”

“Fire photon torpedoes!” Two silver smears of light were briefly visible before being lost in the eerie luminescence that hovered before them. From inside the beautiful menace they could see the torpedoes briefly flare, then fade to useless darkness. A portion of the mass seemed to draw in upon itself before disgorging another bolt.

“No major damage, sir,” said Uhura, “but we're getting plenty of calls from the cargo hold, and a few inquiries from the planet, as well.”

“From the planet? I thought you cut off the telecast.”

“Various sites on Nador are also under assault from the same phenomenon, Captain,” cut in Spock.

“On the planet?” said Kirk, almost to himself. “Why—?”

“Unknown at this point, Captain. I have been unable to compile a list of targeted sites, and therefore unable to ascertain a pattern, if any, in their selection.”

“Worry about the matter at hand. Uhura, tell them … we're doing everything we can.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Sir, it's firing again, starboard.”

“All power to starboard shields,” said Kirk. Despite the situation, he shook his head ruefully. “The Nadorians are going to think I'm one hell of a host.”

* * *

“Strengthen gravity under the cargo loads to one hundred twenty-five percent Earth normal,” said Giotto.

“Yes, sir,” said the cargo-hold technician. “I think that'll keep the cargo bays from buckling.”

“If only that were the worst of our worries,” said Giotto, fervently. He tapped an intercom. “Giotto to Sinclair.”

“Here, Chief,”
crackled Sinclair's voice. Through the bay window of the cargo-hold command center, Giotto could see her on the floor below, trying, like the rest of his detail, to keep their invited guests from panicking. Two-person teams attempted to prevent the guests from stampeding through the cargo hold to the only available hatches—with varying degrees of success—and Giotto's broadcast announcement that the hold was one of the most secure parts of the ship didn't seem to be getting much traction.

“I can increase gravity in the entire hold, Chief,” said the technician. “That would keep them in their places.”

“And it might panic them further,” said Giotto. “Not to mention what that might do to the princes. Leave things as they are. The captain's orders were to get them out of here.” Before he could hear the reply, he was out and into the hold, fighting his way through the crowd to the front of the room.

“Securitrix Llora!” he called, to the woman standing by Their Royal Highnesses. She and her forces had formed a cordon around the princes, and the other Nadorian dignitaries, preventing the panicking crowd from hurting them, thus far, but also preventing them from evacuating the hold.

“You must let us depart this hold!” shouted Llora, over the din of the mob.

“We're trying,” replied Giotto, fervently.

* * *

Elsewhere on the floor of the hold, Sinclair could have given Chief Giotto a heartfelt debate as to the wisdom of that statement. It was all she could do to bust up clusters of panicked celebrators who were dashing from one side of the hold to the other, before they picked up too much momentum or too many members to be stopped, not unlike the bovine stampedes she had read about in the days of old Earth. Occasionally her hand gripped her phaser longingly, but to use that method of crowd control would not only be contrary to the intended goal of evacuating the hold, but would only place more unconscious people in harm's way; not an option. It might be possible to release the anesthetic gas the captain had used to seize the ship back from Khan's control via the intruder-control circuit, but it might not work quickly enough to prevent the same danger of innocent parties getting trampled. And again, that would get them no further to a full evacuation.

Then, over the thundering cacophony of the crowd, came a voice—no, two voices, almost exactly alike.

“Our loyal subjects,” came the voice of Prince Delor, through one of the miniature microphones supplied to them for their planetary address, “we do implore you to stop this mindless action.”

“Is this how you wish our new friends of the Federation to think of you?” said Prince Abon, similarly amplified. “As a people so primitive they cannot be replied upon in times of crisis?”

It took a few seconds, but slowly the words of their monarchs seemed to sink into the minds of the citizenry. They slowed, took a look around themselves, as if waking from a sleep, then stopped.

“Excellent,” said one of the princes—Sinclair could no longer tell which was which. “Make an orderly line before the holds and prepare to exit—”

A fresh tremor shook the hold. A collective scream rose from the crowd, and with an instinctive jerk of reflex fear, but they remained largely calm—

—save for a small knot of attendants on the far side of the hold who either didn't seem to have heard the announcement of Their Serene Highnesses, or didn't care. They continued to jolt across the hold, borne no longer by fear, or even the basic urge for survival, but by the sheer need to move.

Sinclair saw, with horror, a figure topple directly in the path of that surging wall of flesh: the Lady Pataal! To use her phaser would still only halt the outer perimeter of rioters, and leave them open to being trampled themselves. Sinclair vaulted a table and leaped before Pataal, covering the girl with her own body, in an attempt to stop the crowd.

She couldn't bear to watch the crowd advance, but she could feel the vibrations of them nearing through the hold floor; it wasn't going to work. She had begun to resign herself to this when there was a sudden sort of screeching noise, followed by the sudden cease of the crowd's advance.

Sinclair and Pataal looked up, timidly. Between them and the crowd, which had now fully halted and seemed to be weaving back and forth like a thick liquid in a bowl, were Princes Abon and Delor, the color only beginning to return to their deathly pale faces, their chests heaving, their mouths split in capacious mutual grins.

“Is this an adventure?” asked Delor.

“I think so,” replied Abon, panting with excitement.

* * *

“We're hit again, Captain!” said Kyle from the bridge engineering post.

“Fire!” said Kirk, and saw phasers pass through the gossamer mass of the thing like light through air. “Maneuver the ship between that thing and the cargo hold!”

“Trying, sir,” replied Sulu, after a few seconds, “but those energy blasts seem to be able to curve—almost like tendrils of a plant or—”

“Kirk to engineering!” he shouted, into his chair console. “Scotty, how's our power?”

“Sinkin' by dribs and drabs, Captain! It wouldn't be bad if we could get a good punch off at that thing, but as it is, it's the death of a thousand cuts. Same with the hull damage. None of 'em are bad enough to hurt us much, but in total—”

“Understood,” said Kirk, unceremoniously terminating the conversation. The ship rocked again, from, Kirk thought dryly, another “cut.”

“Spock,” Kirk said, “this thing appeared just after your seizure. Is it psionic in nature? Are you able to sense any kind of intelligence in it?”

Spock stared at the viewscreen intently for a few seconds then turned to Kirk, shaking his head. “Unsuccessful, Captain. I must usually make physical contact with an entity for a determination of that nature. However, given its conduct thus far, if forced to conjecture—”

“Consider than an order.”

“Given that the manifestation has not modified its conduct, nor increased its attack, despite our inability to repel it, I would say it has thus far exhibited not true intelligence, only a facility for the imitation of intelligence, in the same manner that a pet performs a trick without understanding its true meaning, or a bird may mimic speech.” The latter part of this was cut off by another thunderous crash, but Kirk caught his meaning.

Kirk shook his head. They couldn't take much more of this. But he had noticed something, if it was what he thought … “Mr. Sulu,” he said, enunciating clearly, “drop shields.”

“Sir?” From the unspoken reaction of the bridge crew, it seemed Sulu was not alone in his response.

“All power to sensors, focused entirely on that—whatever it is.”

“Done, sir,” replied Sulu. “What exactly is it that we're looking for?”

“Just before that thing fires, part of it grows darker, seems to coalesce, for some reason.”

“Yes,” said Spock. “Perhaps a manifestation of its energy discharge.”

“Watch it, Sulu … . Ready photon torpedoes and phasers to fire on my—there!” He half-rose from his chair, clenched fist proffered toward the viewscreen. “In its lower starboard quadrant! Power to weapons!
Fire!”

The
Enterprise
flung both types of energy weapons at the hovering spatial phenomena in the same moment. For an instant the weaponry seemed to simply pass through the darkening portion of the manifestation's cloudlike nature, unharmed.

Then the wavering ball of force seemed at first to grow thicker, more opaque, before it finally dissolved into wisps of drifting energy that soon dissolved into the surrounding void.

“Maintain sensors,” said Kirk. “We want as much information on this thing as we can get.”

“Whatever we had will have to suffice, Captain,” said Spock, after a few seconds. “The manifestation has dissolved.”

“Begin working on what you have, Spock. I want answers.” He swiveled and spoke to Uhura. “Damage report?”

“No appreciable damage, sir,” said Uhura, after monitoring incoming reports for a few seconds. “Some minor hull damage, no fatalities.”

“That's something,” said Kirk, taking a deep breath. “Spock, what about the storms across Nador?”

“They dissolved approximately the same time as the storm which attacked us, Captain. I read minimal damage to property and no loss of life.”

Kirk nodded, tapping a button on his chair's console. “Scotty, are you still in one piece down there?”

“We're fine, sir, now,”
came the voice of the engineer.
“It's not that we were bein' so badly hammered, but it was like bein' continually pummeled while you had yer hands tied behind yer back.”