Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity (23 page)

“Bones,” Kirk warned.

“You know I thought that Scotty would need constant supervision once ‘his bairns’
were surrendered to another’s control. I know that you—”

“Doctor McCoy, you are overstepping—”

“No, Jim, I’m not and you know it. Damn, I thought that Vulcan was a hard-headed mule.
You’ve had to surrender control of your command to another man. The
Enterprise
is out of your control.”

“Damn it, Bones!” Kirk slammed his hand down on his desk. “I don’t need you shrinking
me!
Enterprise
was disabled, so far out that it could have been months—hell, years—before we could
get help. I made the best bargain that I could. I did what I could to save my crew,
my ship—”

“And now you’re wondering if you’ve made a bargain with the devil.”

“I believe Laspas’s intentions are good.

“Because you like him?” McCoy offered softly. “Hell, Jim, I know how lonely command
is, and to share that burden with someone who truly understands what you are going
through. . . . Jim, he’s not you.”

“What would you have me do, Doctor?”

“Admit how you feel, understand that you are not alone.” McCoy took his cup and headed
out of the cabin. “Eat,” he ordered, “and trust your first officer.”

Spock placed his thumbprint on the identity recorder the Rokean sentry at the
814
’s entry point held out to him. He started to pass, but the guard put up one large
hand and pressed it against Spock’s solar plexus. “Wait here, Starfleet,” he growled.

Spock betrayed no surprise, nor any of the discomfort that came with the unwelcome
physical contact. “To what purpose?” he asked.

“Code 6-59,” the soldier answered. “All NCC-1701 personnel are to be accompanied by
an escort while aboard this starvessel.”

“Indeed.” Spock took a half-step backward, showing that he was being compliant with
the new regulation, and also breaking the low-level psionic link the Domain soldier
had initiated. Even without the limited touch-telepathic connection, the distrust
and antagonism the Rokean projected would be obvious to any non-Vulcan.

After only a few seconds’ wait, another guard appeared from down the corridor and
stepped right up beside Spock. The Goeg soldier stood at least
twenty centimeters taller than Spock, and looked down with a silent, contemptuous
glower. After several seconds of this ineffectual attempt at intimidation, the guard
jerked his chin, and Spock took that as a cue to proceed about his business.

With his minder following on his heels, close enough at times to feel his breath at
the back of his neck, Spock made his way to the auxiliary engineering section. As
he’d determined earlier, Chief N’Mi was there, along with two of her junior engineers,
and the
Enterprise
’s Lieutenant Nakahara, keeping a close eye on the cross-ship warp plasma interchanges.
All four turned at their arrival, N’Mi treating both Spock and his guard with a look
of trepidation. “Mister Spock.”

“Chief,” Spock answered. “May I speak with you?”

“You are speaking with me,” she said curtly.

Spock inclined his head to acknowledge that literal truth, then said, “Then might
we perhaps speak someplace more private?”

“Mister Spock, I realize that things are run differently on your Starfleet vessel,”
she said, her small black eyes darting to the large Goeg behind him, “but in the Domain
Defense Corps, one does not walk away from her duty post for a private conversation
anytime she’s asked.”

Unmoved, Spock asked, “Would there be a more opportune time?”

N’Mi shot a look at the guard again, and then told Spock, “Very well. My rest break
is in thirty-four minutes. If you can wait, meet me at my cabin then.”

Spock nodded his agreement to her, and then turned back down the corridor, the guard
keeping pace behind him. When he reached the gangway that led back up to the airlock
and security check, though, he started down instead.

“Where are you going?” the guard demanded. “You’ll wait on NCC-1701.”

Spock turned and gave the guard an arch glare. “Per the agreement Commander Laspas
made with my captain, I am permitted, in my capacity as first officer, to observe
and review all areas on this vessel which directly impact operations aboard the
Enterprise
. This would be a more efficient use of the intervening thirty-two and a half minutes,
would you not agree?”

“For you, perhaps,” the Goeg grumbled, and then remained silent as, for the next half
hour, Spock walked a circuit of all the
814
’s primary and auxiliary engineering areas, with a brief stop at the command center.
Second Commander Satrav gave Spock only the barest acknowledgment. Lieutenant Sulu
watched him from his observational vantage spot in the rear, with his own Goeg guard
close by his side. Per the new restrictions implemented by the Domain commander, only
one Starfleet
liaison officer was allowed in the command center at a time, and then solitude of
the duty was apparently wearing on the helmsman. Spock offered a small nod of his
head, calculating that it would be interpreted as a nonverbal message of support and
encouragement. The smile Sulu returned indicated it was construed as intended.

At the end of the agreed-upon interval, Spock headed down to the
814
’s crew quarters deck, located N’Mi’s cabin, and pressed the signaling button embedded
in the doorframe. Seconds later, the door opened to reveal the engineering chief no
longer in her uniform, but instead wrapped loosely in a brightly colored and highly
translucent silken garment. “Hello, Mister Spock,” she greeted him.

“Chief,” Spock replied simply, choosing to assume that the obvious questions raised
by the scenario presented to him here would be duly answered.

N’Mi stepped aside to allow Spock entry, and then looked to his escort. “Crewhand,
I understand that 6-59 is in effect, but I hope you weren’t planning to join us in
here.”

“No, Chief,” the soldier said with a tone of distaste that Spock would have considered
insubordinate from Starfleet personnel. He gave Spock one last disdainful glare before
turning his back to him and taking up a defensive stance just outside the door.

The door slid closed, and the instant it did,
N’Mi’s countenance turned from coquettish to furious. “What do you want?” she snarled
at him, while grabbing a heavy robe from her bunk and covering herself. “Do you have
any idea how much trouble you could be making for me by being here?”

“It was you who invited me,” Spock answered.

“I mean aboard this vessel,” she said. “If that guard knew the real reason I had invited
you in here was to
talk . . .”
She trailed off, leaving the possible consequences of their surreptitious meeting
unstated.

“Why did you agree to speak to me, then?” Spock asked.

The Liruq’s anger dissipated. “Because I find you fascinating, Mister Spock. The fact
that you have achieved what you have, in spite of your minority status and mixed parentage,
but also the fact that while living among humans, you embrace your Vulcan nature.”

“I assume that such is uncommon in Goeg society,” Spock said. “I know you are the
highest ranking Liruq in the Defense Corps; what is the highest rank achieved by any
non-Goeg?”

“Why would you ask me something like that?” N’Mi asked, turning suspicious.

“Does the question bother you?” Spock asked.

The chief answered Spock’s question indirectly by responding with one of her own.
“Are you trying to get me to say something against the government
I am sworn to serve and protect?” N’Mi’s cabin was quite small, as so much of the
814
’s interior was. Regardless, N’Mi had put as much distance between her and Spock as
possible.

“I am trying to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the Goeg and
the rest of the races within their Domain,” Spock said, taking a cautious step closer.
“I’ve learned recently that the Taarpi take their name from an animal native to the
planet Lir, noted for being extremely fierce in the defense of its territory and its
offspring. The name was initially used by a Liruq resistance group during the war
against the Goeg thirty-four and a half years ago.” Spock elected not to say what
the source of that information was, and the Vulcan had resolved not to share the more
inflammatory claims Ghalif had made to the captain.

“I see,” N’Mi said flatly, arms crossed as she gave Spock a hard glare. “And because
the Taarpi originated on my homeworld, you assume I must feel some kind of kinship
with them.”

“Not at all,” Spock said, noting the growing impatience she was exhibiting toward
him. “But as a native of that world, I imagine you are familiar with the sociopolitical
conditions that led to the group’s rise.”

“I’m an engineer, not a sociologist.”

“Chief,” Spock said, “the
Enterprise
has been drawn inexorably into a conflict we do not fully
understand, but need to. Your superiors have painted the Taarpi as mindless terrorists
who hate irrationally and kill without motive. Such a simplistic characterization
is at best unlikely.”

“So you think, because I’m Liruq, I have this special insight you’re looking for,
is that it?” N’Mi asked, her dark eyes flashing. “Well, I am sorry to disappoint you,
Mister Spock. I spent the early part of my life doing everything in my power to get
away from Lir, and after that, to prove what I could do in spite of being born a Liruq.”
She stepped around Spock, moving to the cabin door as she told him, “I don’t understand
the Taarpi any better than you do, and what’s more, I don’t care to. Now, if there
was nothing else you wanted . . .” She reached for the door control to excuse him.

“One more thing.” When she gestured for him to go ahead, Spock said, “You expressed
the opinion that, like me, you had accomplished all you have in spite of your race.
I do not feel that is accurate.”

N’Mi gave him a quizzical look, and Spock explained, “Rather, I would say that those
accomplishments were in spite of others, who may have prejudicial attitudes toward
you because of your race.” Spock then reached out and put his hand on top of N’Mi’s,
pressing the control under her fingers and opening the door. “Thank you for inviting
me in,” he then told her, before turning back to the
guard and, while ignoring his expression of disdain, led him back to the airlock.

*   *   *

When Chekov had first set foot in the
814
’s command center, he had been convinced that the purpose of the Defense Corps’s coding
system was to keep outsiders from knowing what they were doing. During those first
few days, the ensign felt like he had no idea what was going on around him. He’d become
used to the Domain crew considering him as some kind of slow-witted child for needing
to think in complete sentences. But after two weeks of immersive learning, Chekov
was surprised by how much he had absorbed. He had even begun to understand the logic
behind the numbering system, and could hazard a pretty good guess at the meaning if
a new one came up.

When he first heard the order for code 8-59, though, he was confused. Codes beginning
with the prefix 8, he’d figured out, were related to communications—8-1 was “Scan
subspace frequencies,” code 8-2 was “Open hailing frequencies,” and so on. Code 8-59
was unfamiliar, and as he scrolled down the list on his slate, he was surprised to
learn that code 8-59 was “Communication silence.”

Odd
, Chekov thought, wondering what had prompted that order. He looked from his slate
over to the Liruq officer at the communications station, on the far side of the command
center. As he lifted
his head, he saw a number of other crew members looking at him, or pretending not
to be looking at him. Chekov froze, realizing that they were all expecting something
to happen very shortly.

To him.

“Mister Chekov!” His head whipped around toward Commander Laspas, standing at the
front of the room, the warp-streaked stars on the main screen seeming to radiate out
from behind his head. “Code 10,” the Goeg leader said, cueing a pair of guards to
move from their posts and advance on him.

Chekov reached for his communicator, even as it now dawned on him why code 8-59 had
been issued. Still, as he tried vainly to elude the soldiers, he flipped the grille
open and shouted, “Chekov to
Enterprise
!” Unsurprisingly, the only response he got, before his wrist was grabbed and twisted
back behind him, was static. “What is this about?” he demanded as both guards took
hold of him and directed him roughly toward the command center exit. “You can’t do
this!”

Laspas turned his back and pointedly ignored Chekov. He was escorted out into the
corridor and toward the gangway that led to the airlock. However, instead of heading
up to the
Enterprise
, they started down, into the
814
’s lower levels.

Until now, Chekov had not been cooperative with his escorts, but he hadn’t resisted
his unexplained expulsion, either. Now, realizing that going along
quietly could end badly for him, he let his step falter, trying to bring the soldiers
off balance. As they reacted to the way his weight had shifted in their arms, he pulled
with his shoulder, and broke the hold of the guard on his left-hand side. He twisted
then, driving his right shoulder into his other captor’s chest, while at the same
time bringing his left leg up and driving his heel into the first soldier’s knee.

Unfortunately, given the cramped confines of the Domain starvessel, the two-against-one
odds, and the considerable size disparity between himself and his opponents, Chekov
quickly found himself on the losing side of the fight. “So you want to play, do you,
human?” the larger of the two said as he grabbed Chekov by the hair and threw him
down the gangway, face-first into a bulkhead. Explosions of pain lit up the insides
of his closed eyelids, and he tasted the blood that was flowing freely from both nostrils.