Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity (5 page)

There were two of them, both humanoid, standing just over a meter and a half tall,
wearing gray armor-plated uniforms and carrying what looked
like phaser rifles. Both wore helmets of the same dull gray material, with translucent
visors covering their faces. Through the face plates, they appeared to be reptilian,
or perhaps amphibian, with greenish complexions and large, outward-bulging eyes.

They stopped as they entered the clearing and immediately took notice of the dead
campfire. “See? They were here,” the first of the pair said.

“This fire has been dead for three
dohs
,” the second one said as she—both aliens had higher-pitched voices that made Kirk
automatically identify them as female—lowered herself onto her haunches and sifted
her gloved hand through the cold ashes. “It was probably just some animal you heard;
the Taarpi are long gone.”

“It was no animal. It was voices.”

Kirk held himself perfectly still as he watched and waited to see what these two would
do next. They didn’t seem to be carrying tricorders or any similar scanning devices,
which gave him some hope that they still might be able to escape notice and avoid
any sort of confrontation. Whoever these “Taarpi” were, the captain was sure he did
not want his landing party mistaken for them.

The alien soldier who had been studying the dead fire now stood and began to pace
in a slow circle around the clearing. Even through the visor, Kirk got the distinct
impression that not much was escaping the notice of those large eyes. “Oh,
pyurb
,”
she said, as something on the ground caught her attention and she squatted down again.

“What?” her partner said, moving to look over her shoulder.

“This,” she answered, pointing to something Kirk could not see.

“That’s no animal track.”

“No, it sure isn’t.” The soldier stood again and peered out into the woods beyond
the clearing. Kirk saw that she was looking in the direction of the red-shirted security
officer who had drawn his attention earlier, and he had to resist the urge to pivot
his head and look that way also. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the soldier, who
tilted her head as she studied whatever it was that had caught her eye. Hopefully,
with any luck, she would decide she was looking at a brightly colored flowering plant
or something equally innocuous.

That hope was proved futile when she raised her rifle in a smooth fluid motion and
sighted down its barrel. Kirk had no choice now. He raised himself on the balls of
his feet, just enough to swing his arm over the top of the log, and fired a shot at
the alien. Her weapon discharged into the dirt as she pitched forward and crashed
to the ground, stunned.

The second soldier reacted immediately, bringing her weapon to bear at the same instant
Kirk revealed himself. Her free hand went to the side of her helmet, touching a button
there, which emitted
a clear electronic chime. “Code 1-2! Co—” she barked, before she was felled by a shot
from the far left side of the clearing. A second later, D’Abruzzo came leaping across
the clearing, making a beeline for Kirk. “Captain, we have to—”

“—get out of here, yes,” Kirk finished in unison with him. Whoever was listening on
the other side of the soldier’s comm link surely wouldn’t waste any time once they
realized both their advance scouts had gone silent. The rest of the landing party
members had broken cover and were moving in together again. “This way,” he said to
them, just as the first shots began firing in the distance. “Spock, keep trying to
raise the ship.”

The landing party started winding their way through the thick forest growth while
behind them the clomp of heavy boots joined the sounds of energy weapons fire. Kirk
led them up a gentle slope away from the stream to slightly higher ground. He hoped
that a fight against these aliens was not inevitable, but if it was, he needed to
put his people in the most defensible position possible.

“No response from the
Enterprise
,” Spock said, running up parallel with the captain and keeping pace with him. He
hadn’t even broken a sweat yet, damn his Vulcan stamina.

“I was afraid of that,” Kirk said, ducking under a low-hanging branch as he ran. “We
may be forced
to hold out here on our own until the cavalry arrives.”
If it arrives
, he thought.

“In that case, I suggest changing our course,” Spock said, pointing in a direction
nearly perpendicular to the way they were moving. “There is a relatively large stone
outcropping this way which should offer a better degree of protection.”

The captain simply nodded, and Spock moved ahead of him, zigzagging over the uneven
sloped ground with the ease of a mountain goat, or whatever the analogous animal native
to Vulcan’s mountainous regions. Kirk stopped and turned back to make sure the rest
of the party were still together, and directed them to move ahead of him, following
after Spock. D’Abruzzo was bringing up the rear, and after all the others had passed
ahead of him, he stopped short. “You first, Captain,” the security officer said when
Kirk tried to gesture him on.

“Lieutenant, we don’t have the time for—”

Kirk’s reprimand was cut off when a phased energy beam streaked up at them from the
bottom of the slope and struck D’Abruzzo in the arm. The lieutenant yelped and staggered
in pain, but maintained enough presence of mind to raise his other hand and fire back
at his assailant. Kirk started firing his phaser as well, while at the same time,
he wrapped his other arm around D’Abruzzo’s waist and pulled him in the direction
of the outcropping.

Somehow the captain got himself and D’Abruzzo
to the relative safety of a large line of limestone-like rock jutting up from the
hillside, where the other members of the landing party were giving them covering fire.
D’Abruzzo all but crumpled to the ground once they stopped running, and Kirk motioned
to O’Reilly to come to his side and administer what emergency first aid she could.
The captain then moved up to where Spock was pressed against the outcropping, phaser
in hand. “I’d say this is yet another sign of higher life-forms on this world, wouldn’t
you, Spock?”

“I will assume you don’t actually require an answer to that, Captain,” Spock replied.
“Is the lieutenant seriously injured?”

“Seriously enough,” Kirk said. “If we don’t get him to sickbay quickly . . .”
Of all the times to decide to leave McCoy on the ship . . .

*   *   *

Every system on the bridge threatened to fail at once, with the exception of the emergency
alert klaxons, which sounded their steady warnings. “Report!” Sulu had to shout to
be heard above the noise.

Chekov studied his console with anger and confusion. “I’m not sure,” he answered.
“I think we were just struck by a nystromite asteroid.”

“What?” Sulu moved up behind him and looked at the sensor readouts over Chekov’s shoulder.
“Something bigger than particulate matter, you mean?”

“It sure didn’t feel like particulate matter,” Chekov quipped.

“Ensign,” Sulu said, reminding him with that single word that he couldn’t address
the temporary commander of the ship in the same way he did his colleague at the astrogation
console.

“Yes, sir, a larger-sized asteroid,” Chekov said, at the same time checking the sensor
readouts before him, trying to spot the nystromite mass in the mess of indistinct
and nearly incoherent readings.

“Damage reports coming in from Decks Six and Seven,” reported Lieutenant Rogers at
the science station. “Whatever hit us had to be close to the size of a shuttlecraft.”

“How did we not see something the size of a shuttlecraft coming at us?” Sulu asked
in a tone of disbelief.

Chekov wished he had an answer for him. The refinements Spock had programmed into
the sensor computers should have allowed them to pick up something as large as that,
even if they hadn’t been looking for it this far into the system. But even now, as
he was actively searching, Chekov wasn’t seeing anything coming up on their scans.
He redirected the external sensor arrays and intensified his scan of the area near
the point of impact, and saw nothing.

From behind him, Chekov heard Uhura say,
“Lieutenant, there’s something interfering with our communications that may be interfering
with sensors, as well.”

“Intentionally?” Sulu asked Uhura, just as the ship was rocked again. He didn’t wait
for the communications officer’s answer, and instead addressed the relief helmsman.
“Mister Stevenson, evasive pattern alpha!”

“Impact on the engineering hull, starboard,” Rogers informed the bridge as Stevenson
complied with Sulu’s order. Meanwhile, Chekov switched the focus of his scans in response
to Rogers’s report, and this time discovered something he hadn’t expected to see.

“Mister Sulu!” he shouted, and without prompting, put what he had found up on the
main viewscreen. “Look!”

The entire bridge crew turned forward and looked at the view from the external visual
pickup, located in the rear of the saucer section just below the impulse engines.
From its vantage point at the top of the
Enterprise
’s saucer section the engineering section extended away, with the two nacelle pylons
branching outward from the center of the hull in a V. Space beyond was black and starless,
due to the field surrounding the system. There was still no indication of any asteroids,
nystromite or otherwise. But there was, just off to the starboard side of the ship,
a very small, very dim flare flashing briefly
before disappearing. “What was that?” Sulu asked, moving forward again to stand to
Chekov’s side at the end of the console.

“It looked like the output of a fusion rocket,” Chekov said. “And it looks like it’s
mounted to a shuttle-sized mass of nystromite.”

“So the nystromite can be used as a weapon,” Sulu said, just as the ship was struck
again.

And then again.

*   *   *

Kirk threw his arm across the top of the stone formation, fired two quick phaser blasts,
and then ducked back behind the barrier as the aliens returned fire. Large chunks
of stone were blasted free, raining down on Kirk’s back. He could not help but wince
as they cut through his shirt and bit into his skin.

The captain paused and listened to the whine of energy beams flying overhead. Spock
crawled over to where he was crouched. “Our situation is becoming untenable, Captain.”

Kirk shook his head, even though he knew his unerringly logical friend was correct.
They were outnumbered, and the stone formation behind which they had taken refuge
was being steadily chipped away by superior firepower. Unless the
Enterprise
came to their rescue soon—and with each passing second, the hope they would do so
became
dimmer and dimmer—he’d have to give the team the order to break cover and retreat.
Where they might hope to retreat to was a question there wasn’t any good answer to.

Another hailstorm of stone shrapnel rained down on him and Spock. When Kirk felt it
safe to open his eyes again, he found himself looking in the direction of Joe D’Abruzzo,
lying unconscious just a few meters back. They’d been forced to tie a tourniquet around
his wounded arm—the most primitive and brutal form of medical treatment Kirk could
think of—but he had already lost a tremendous amount of blood before that. If he was
lucky, he’d only lose his arm. If he wasn’t lucky . . .

Kirk turned to Spock again, and after exchanging a look with him, came to a decision.
“Hold your fire!” he called out, primarily to his own team, but loud enough to be
heard by the alien squadron. “Hold your fire!”

The other members of the landing party dropped behind the outcropping and stayed down
below its top edge. The firing from below continued, but its intensity had fallen
off perceptibly. Then . . .

“Cease fire.” The alien voice spoke in a tone of complete authority, and he was instantly
obeyed. “Are you surrendering yourselves, Taarpi?” the voice called out again.

“Yes,” Kirk said, not bothering to correct his misidentification.

“Show yourself, then.”

Kirk handed his phaser to Spock, and then raised both his empty hands, palms out,
over the edge of the stone barricade. When the alien weapons remained silent, he slowly
raised his head, and his upper body, into view of the aliens on the other side. Looking
down toward the bottom of the slope, he counted nine or so soldiers, all in identical
armored uniforms, and all armed. All aimed at him from tactical vantage points behind
trees and other pieces of cover, with the exception of one, apparently their leader,
who stood out in the open. The reflections on their helmet visors obscured their faces,
but once Kirk had fully revealed himself, their body language betrayed surprise. Whatever
a Taarpi was, Kirk clearly didn’t bear a very close resemblance to one. “Who and what
are you?” the alien leader demanded.

“My name is James T. Kirk. I am the captain of the
Starship Enterprise
, representing the United Federation of Planets. We apologize for trespassing on this
world. We are explorers; we meant you no harm.”

“United Federation of Planets?” the leader repeated.

Kirk nodded. “Yes. We are a union of over a hundred worlds, located about one hundred
light-years away.”

“Really?” Though Kirk still could not make out
the alien’s facial expression, his voice conveyed what sounded like absolute shock,
bordering on fascination.

Kirk decided to press this advantage. “One of my men is seriously injured, and in
dire need of medical attention. Can you help him?”

“I’m a physician!” One of the other alien soldiers abandoned his cover and moved forward.

The leader quickly moved to intercept him. “Deeshal!” he admonished, as he put out
an arm to hold him back.

“You’ve already accepted their surrender,” the one named Deeshal argued. “We’re obligated
to offer care to them now, Commander.”