STAR TREK - TOS (15 page)

Koloth was not so sure. He knew, better than most of his more obstreperous brethren, that a keen intellect and unemotional demeanor did not preclude skill in warfare. Indeed, in many ways, a cold-blooded enemy could be the most dangerous of all.

Ultimately, there was only one way to find out if the Vulcan was bluffing.

“Lock cannons on
Enterprise
,”he said, manually cutting off the communications link between the two ships. Spock’s alien countenance disappeared from the viewer, and Koloth fixed a predatory gaze upon the Starfleet warship.

“Fire!”

* * *

[125]Bursts of brilliant green disruptor fire exploded against the
Enterprise’s
raised deflector screens.

On the bridge, the concussion rattled the floor, jarring Spock where he sat.

He calmly took firmer hold of the arms of the chair, unperturbed by the attack. It was only logical; placing themselves between the Klingons and their prey necessarily made the
Enterprise
a target. Now the task at hand was simply to survive the conflict without sacrificing the planet below.

“Return fire,” he instructed, before the glare of the Klingon’s first salvo had fully faded from the viewscreen. At the navigation station, to the right of the helm, Yeoman Martha Landon triggered the already-energized phasers. Beams of sapphire energy shot forth from the underside of the
Enterprise’s
saucer section, converging on the enemy battle cruiser. Spock watched with interest as the phaser energy crackled along the edges of the Klingon ship’s deflectors.

The targeting scanner telescoped out from the helm station, permitting Sulu to fully gauge the effects of the phaser strike upon their adversary. “A direct hit on their shields,” the Asian crewman reported. “No obvious damage to the cruiser itself.”

“Yet,” Yeoman Landon added, with a touch more martial zeal than Spock deemed seemly He made a mental note to recommend her transfer to Security, should they all survive the present conflict.

The Klingons responded by launching another volley of high-intensity disruptor fire. Blazing emerald energy spewed from the cannons mounted on the[126]battle cruiser’s wings. The resulting shock wave, stemming from the violent intersection of disrupters and deflectors, rocked the bridge and caused the overhead lights to flicker momentarily. Spock judged the impact perceptibly more damaging than the previous blast.

“Shields down to ninety-two percent,” Chekov reported.

Ninety-two-point-eight-five,Spock estimated. “Fire at will, Yeoman Landon,” he ordered. A glance at the astrogator revealed that the force of the disrupters had pushed the
Enterprise
a few degrees off mark.

“Maintain intercept position, Mr. Sulu,” he urged. “We do not wish to provide the Klingons with an angle from which to attack the colony.”

“Yes, sir!” the helmsman said, a trace of mordant humor in his voice. “I’ll keep us right in the line of fire.”

Phasers clashed with disrupters just beyond the boundaries of the planet’s atmosphere, barraging the viewscreen with flashes of scintillating blue and green energy. Spock felt the steel-and-plastiform construction of the bridge vibrate beneath the strain of the cataclysmic forces battering the ship’s deteriorating shields, each fresh disrupter blast sending a bone-rattling jolt through his entire skeleton. An unexpectedly potent strike caused his jaw to snap shut on his lower lip. He tasted copper on his tongue.

Ignoring any physical distractions, Spock coolly assessed the tactical situation. The warring ships were evenly matched, but the
Enterprise
was handicapped by having to defend the colony as well as itself, thus severely limiting its maneuverability. With evasive[127]action out of the question, the
Enterprise
clearly required some manner of competitive edge. Spock’s computerlike mind quickly considered and discarded dozens of possible strategies, both time-tested and untried. It was while reviewing the successful battle tactics of Earth’s preunified past that a promising idea occurred to him.

“Yeoman Landon,” he requested, rising from the captain’s chair, “please step aside.” There was no time to explain the intricacies of his stratagem to the young crewmember; it would be faster and more effective to man the weapons controls himself.

Landon promptly surrendered the navigation station, and Spock took her place to the right of the helm.

He rapidly reprogrammed the phaser controls to vary the intensity and protonic frequency of the phaser bursts at a significantly accelerated rate, roughly 118.731 times a second. The rapid shifts would, inevitably, lessen the offensive strength of the phasers, but, according to his calculations, might well serve to provide the Klingons with an unwelcome surprise.

He pressed the firing controls, initiating the sequence. On the viewscreen, the incandescent phasers flashed at high speed along an entire spectrum of colors, producing a prismatic strobe effect that left Ensign Chekov blinking in confusion. “What in the name of Mother Russia ... ?” He scratched his head, a baffled look on his face. “Mr. Spock, are the phasers supposed to be doing that?”

“Affirmative, Ensign,” Spock stated, simultaneously adjusting the phaser controls to enhance the strobing. “With their deflectors on full, the Klingons’[128]sensor arrays can only scan along a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We lack the sheer phaser power to overwhelm their shields, but I theorized that it might be possible to use the phasers to disorient their remaining sensors.”

Standing off to one side, Landon watched the light show on the screen with wide, wondering eyes. “Is it working?” she whispered.

One minute, the main viewer had the
Enterprise
directly in its sights. The next, a flashing, kaleidoscopic display of lights and colors usurped the screen, offering Koloth nothing but visual static, with no view at all of the ongoing battle. “Qu’vatlh!” he swore, rising up from his command chair in surprise. “What is happening?”

At the chief tactical station, over Koloth’s left shoulder, Lt. Macck frantically worked the sensor controls, trying to restore the image on the screen. “It’s not working!” he growled. Frustrated, he hammered the control panel with his fist. “The processors can’t make sense of the EM readings!”

“Targeting sensors inoperative,” the gunman, Krevorr, reported from the weapons station. “We’ve lost our lock on
Enterprise!”

“Navigational sensors, too!” Kinya called out. “We’re flying blind!”

Koloth suddenly felt as though he were being nibbled to death by tribbles. His fists clenched angrily as he glared with icy fury at the malfunctioning main viewer. The flashing pyrotechnics, devoid of usable data, made his head hurt. “Compensate!” he ordered his crew. How could he fight a battle when he couldn’t even see his enemy? “Compensate, for Kahless’s sake!”

* * *

Still seated at the navigation station, Spock opened a line to Engineering. “My apologies, Mr. Scott, but there was no time to inform you of my intentions.” He observed the strobing phasers on the viewscreen, while signaling Sulu to reposition the
Enterprise
with regards to the Klingon vessel. “Although unorthodox, I believe my present use of the main phaser arrays will not exceed their operational capacities, provided our encounter with the Klingons is not too protracted.”

“If you say so, Mr. Spock.”The canny engineer sounded skeptical.
“Just don’t be making a habit of
this, mind you. Phaser settings were never meant to go spinning like pinwheels!”

“Your point is well taken, Mr. Scott.” Spock’s gaze never left the viewscreen, where fierce green disruptor blasts could be seen blazing across empty space, missing the
Enterprise
entirely; it certainly seemed as though the enemy battle cruiser was now firing blind. “Spock out.”

“It’s working!” Yeoman Landon exclaimed, looking over Spock’s shoulder at the viewscreen before them. “You’ve knocked out their sensors.”

“In fact,” he corrected her, “their sensors are not so much knocked out as overstimulated.”

“A brilliant move, Mr. Spock!” Chekov enthused. The emotive young Russian looked up from the RVS

scanner to congratulate his commander. “Wherever did you get the idea?”

[130]Spock took little note of the ensign’s fulsome praise. “From one of Earth’s own global conflicts,”

he divulged. “Your second World War, to be exact.” He targeted the Klingon ship with a reverse tractor beam, giving the bedeviled battle cruiser a solid push so that, in theory, the Klingons would not even be certain of their own position. “Allied forces defending the Suez Canal from German Luftwaffe bombers fit ordinary searchlights with tin reflectors, then engineered the lights so that they would spin rapidly, projecting ‘cartwheels of light’ into the night sky that effectively dazzled the German pilots, rendering them unable to keep the canal in their bombsights. The ploy was successful, and the canal kept safe.”

Much as Sycorax is now,
he observed. “I merely adapted the same technique to modern technology.”

“I see,” Chekov said, grinning. “World War Two, you say? Sounds like a Russian’s idea to me.”

Spock arched an eyebrow, bemused by the ensign’s atavistic nationalism. “In fact, the strategy is credited to one Jasper Maskelyne, a British stage magician.”

Chekov frowned, eyeing Spock dubiously. “Are you quite sure it wasn’t Maskelynovich?”

An explosion buffeted the
Gr’oth,
causing the bridge to tremble like a frightened targ. Sparks flared from the tactical console, singeing Macck, who angrily snuffed out the flames with his bare hands. Only a few strides away, Koloth’s heart sank; a veteran of numerous battles, he knew the impact of a photon torpedo when he felt one.

“Shields down to eighty-six percent!” K’rad reported from the auxiliary station. Warning lights[131]

flashed on his control panel, and he pounded on the recalcitrant instruments as though they were drums.

His swarthy face a veritable portrait of unchecked rage, Korax grabbed his captain by the shoulder.

“We are under attack!” he growled, displaying an impressive grasp of the obvious. Spittle flew from his lips as he shouted into the captain’s face. “We must retaliate!”

Koloth struck Korax hard across the face with the back of his hand, reasserting his authority. “No!” he decreed forcefully. “I am not about to waste any more of our firepower by shooting blindly in the dark.”

He sneered at Korax in disdain. “Only a fool throws spears at shadows.”

The intemperate first officer wisely withdrew his hand from Koloth’s person. Crimson droplets fell from Korax’s freshly bloodied nose and lips. Inwardly, Koloth felt relieved that Korax had backed off so readily; the last thing he needed right now was a challenge from his second-in-command. He had other problems to deal with, like a mission rapidly going to Gre’thor.

The useless visual clutter on the main viewer taunted him, and Koloth paced back and forth across the bridge, exasperated and irate. “Will someone fix that cursed viewer!” he cried out bitterly. “Am I surrounded by incompetents?” He felt his icy demeanor and self-control melting away. Was it just the fire in his blood, or was the bridge getting uncomfortably warm?

“Captain!” K’rad shouted. “I have it!”

Sparing his captain the tiresome technical details, K’rad stabbed at the backup sensor controls. Koloth’s hopes surged as the headache-inducing flashes gave way to a clearer, sharper view ... of churning yellow clouds!

[132]“No!” Koloth gasped as the truth hit home with the force of a disruptor blast. No wonder the bridge felt so oppressively hot; they were plunging into the planet’s acidic atmosphere. “Reverse course!”

he yelled hoarsely, as Sycorax’s gravity seized his ship, causing the floor of the bridge to slope downward precipitously. Koloth grabbed on to the nearest support beam to keep from falling face-forward. Reacting less quickly, Korax tumbled head over heels into the base of the main viewer.

“Climb!” Koloth hollered. He could feel the sweltering heat of their descent all the way through their tattered shields. He heard the wrenching sound of inertial dampers being pushed beyond their limits.

Black, acrid smoke erupted from half a dozen consoles as warning alarms blared throughout the bridge.

“Climb!”

“Mr. Spock,” Chekov called out. “The Klingon vessel is escaping the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Understood,” Spock said, acknowledging the report. “Their status?”

Chekov peered into the scanner, even as, on the viewscreen, the globular prow of the battle cruiser emerged from the murky depths of Sycorax’s turbulent atmosphere, followed by its extended neck and once-menacing aft wings. The outer hull of the vessel was visibly scorched, while plasma leaked from its ravaged impulse engines and disruptor cannons.

“Their shields are shredded!” Chekov announced jubilantly. “Less than forty-three percent operative, with holes you could fly a shuttlecraft through!”

“That should not be necessary, Ensign.” Spock gave the navigator’s post back to Landon and returned to[133]the captain’s chair. The injured battle cruiser lurched awkwardly across the screen. Spock was gratified to note extensive damage along the entire length of the ship. Its running lights flickered uncertainly while phosphorescent vapor jetted from the emergency vents, as well as from the reactor cooling system below its engineering hull. Even the bolognium shielding on the warp nacelles was scarred and dented.

“Shall I take offensive action, Mr. Spock?” Landon asked, her fingers poised over the weapons controls.

“Phasers at maximum,” he instructed, unwilling to give Koloth and his crew a chance to recover from their recent reversals in fortune. “Target their sensor arrays and shield emitters, taking care not to hit their warp engines.” His fingers were steepled pensively beneath his chin as he contemplated the besieged battle cruiser. “We want to give the Klingons the opportunity to escape.”