“Nothing doing,” Kirk said. “There’s a fleet of Klingon battle cruisers heading this way, and I’d just as soon not be here when they arrive.”
Her eyes widened at the mention of the Klingons, whose approach was clearly news to her, but Una remained fixated on her quest. “How long before the cruisers get here?”
“Approximately one hour, ten minutes,” Spock supplied.
“Then we still have time,” she insisted. “Please, Kirk. I’m asking you, captain to captain, for a chance to rescue nine Starfleet officers who have been trapped in another universe longer than they should have ever had to endure.” Raw emotion energized her voice. “I left them behind eighteen years ago. The Enterprise left them behind. But now we have the opportunity to finally bring them home . . . and we may never have another chance, not if the Klingons cement their hold on this region.”
Her words, and the passion behind them, gave Kirk pause. He knew too well the pain and regret of losing comrades and crew in the line of duty. Part of the burden of command was carrying the weight of the lives lost under your watch. What wouldn’t he give for a second chance to save some of them, like those two hundred men and women back on the Farragut.
Or Gary Mitchell.
“Do you really think you can do this?” he asked.
“I do,” Una said confidently. “If we can get to the master control room and plug the Key back into the transfer-field generator, I believe I can reverse the effect and bring those people back to our universe.”
“But what guarantee do you have that they are still alive to be rescued?” Spock asked, logically enough. “It has been several years, after all.”
“I’m quite aware of that, Mister Spock,” Una said, perhaps a tad defensively. “But they’re listed as ‘missing,’ not deceased, for a reason. And these are trained Starfleet officers we’re talking about. If anyone could survive in an alien universe all this time, it’s Lieutenant Martinez and the others. If there’s even a chance we can rescue them, how can we let it slip by?”
She knows their names, Kirk observed. Of course she would.
Those lost officers weren’t abstractions to her, listings on some old casualty reports from two Enterprise captains ago. These were people she had served beside on the very same starship that was now orbiting the planet: flesh-and-blood individuals with names and faces and people who cared about them. They served before Kirk’s time, but they had once called Enterprise home, and he was the captain of the Enterprise now.
Which meant he had a duty here too.
“All right.” Kirk put away his communicator. “You’ll have your chance, as long as time allows. We have one hour to try to rescue those people. But if that time runs out, we’re beaming back to the Enterprise and getting out of here, with or without those missing officers.”
“Understood, Kirk,” she said. “And thank you.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
The hot equatorial sun beat down on them as they hiked down a long ramp to the spoke leading to the central hub. An outdoor walkway, complete with guardrails, ran along the top of the spoke. Kirk noted the inconvenient lack of any open plazas or spaces large enough to land the Shimizu in or on. No wonder Una had been forced to park her ship some distance away and make her way through the forest to get to the citadel.
“I don’t suppose you’ve already found a way into the hub?” she asked.
Kirk shook his head. “To be honest, I was kind of hoping that you had some plans along those lines.”
“I did,” she admitted, “but let’s just say they went awry.”
Apparently so, Kirk thought.
When he and Spock had first arrived at the citadel, there had been some concern that Una was already inside the hub and about her work. Beaming directly into the opaque structure without precise landing coordinates would have been suicidal; they could have easily ended up occupying the same space as a wall or piece of furniture. Transporting onto the outer walkway, which could be viewed from space if you increased the magnification enough, had been the smarter move, even if it had meant they’d had to cool their heels waiting to intercept Una on her way in or out of the citadel.
Not that she’d kept them waiting long.
The walkway led them to a sealed doorway blocking the way into the central tower. A circular porthole, installed in the door, offered a view of some sort of vestibule beyond, with an inner door on the opposite side of the chamber. Kirk didn’t see any obvious knobs or latches they could use to open the door. He tried to pry the door open with his fingertips, but the seam was too smooth, giving him nothing to grab onto. He stepped back from the door, conceding defeat.
“Well, Spock,” he asked. “Any suggestions?”
“Negative, Captain.” He scanned the uncooperative door with his tricorder. “As noted, the alien material composing these walls is opaque to our sensors, making it difficult to locate the locking mechanism, let alone access it.” He lowered the tricorder. “Ironic. It seems we possess the Key, but not a key.”
Una inspected the porthole, which was perhaps fifty centimeters in diameter. “I believe I can squeeze through this if we can remove this transparent pane.” She tapped the clear material with her knuckles, then held out her hand. “A phaser, if you please.”
“I don’t think so.” Kirk was only willing to trust the other captain so far. He adjusted the setting on his own phaser. “I’ll handle this if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” Una stepped back to let Kirk work. If she was offended by his lack of trust, she gave no sign of it. “I regret having to damage the citadel, but I can’t imagine that opening a single porthole will harm any essential systems.”
Kirk judged that a safe bet. The intermittent rumbling coming from within the Jatohr’s former sanctuary clearly indicated that some mechanisms were still in operation even after all these years, but a window was still just a window. It was not as though they were planning to blast blindly through the walls and hope that they didn’t hit anything crucial.
Which would probably be the Klingons’ approach, he thought.
Narrowing the phaser’s output to a thin, high-intensity beam, Kirk cut around the edge of the circular porthole like an old-fashioned burglar or jewel thief. It occurred to him that this was basically the same technique Una had used to steal the Key from his quarters in the first place. Another irony to add to Spock’s list.
To his relief, the beam successfully cut through the clear alien material, which felt more akin to amber than glass or transparent aluminum. Steam rose from the crack carved out by the phaser beam. The liberated disk fell inward, clattering onto the floor of the vestibule beyond. Kirk instinctively flinched at the noise before remembering that, in theory, the citadel had been deserted for years. No Jatohr remained to hear them breaking and entering.
Thank providence for small favors, he thought.
Kirk stepped aside to let Una approach the newly created opening. “Ladies first.”
“You trust me to go through without you?” Una eyed him quizzically. “How do you know I won’t try to leave you behind?”
“I think we can trust you that far, as long as we hang on to a certain item.” He patted the Key in his belt.
“Very logical, Captain.” A rare smile lifted her lips. “Perhaps Spock is rubbing off on you.”
Kirk shrugged. “I like to think it’s the other way around, at least sometimes.”
“I respectfully disagree,” Spock said. “I am, and will always be, impeccably Vulcan in my logic . . . despite the best efforts of Doctor McCoy.”
“I’m sure he’d regard that description as a badge of honor, but now is not the time to invoke him in absentia.” Kirk bent down and cupped his hands together. “Can I give you a leg up, Captain?”
“Thank you, Captain.”
With the men’s help, Una squeezed through th
e porthole and dropped onto the floor of the vestibule. Despite his statement to the contrary, Kirk experienced a moment of trepidation at letting Una get a head start on him again. He repressed a sigh of relief as, moments later, he heard a lock disengage, and the door dilated open to reveal Una waiting for them on the other side. She greeted them calmly, more like a colleague than a fugitive.
“There was a manual override on this side,” she explained. “Let us be grateful that the Jatohr had practical emergency measures in place.”
They followed her into the vestibule, where Spock took a moment to survey their surroundings.
“Curious,” he observed. “This appears to be a functional airlock, which raises the question of why they would need airlocks on a planetary outpost whose atmosphere they were reportedly capable of breathing.”
“Oh, they could definitely breathe outside,” Una confirmed, “although I’ve reason to believe that they were in the process of ‘improving’ the atmosphere in ways beneficial to their species, if not to the Usildar.” A touch of bitterness colored her voice. “As for the airlock, perhaps they were unsure what kind of atmosphere they would encounter when they transferred this entire citadel from their universe to Usilde. Or maybe they thought this section might end up beneath the waterline as some of the lower levels are.”
“Both plausible theories,” Kirk said, “but academic at the moment. We need to get to that control room.” He glanced at Spock. “I assume I can count on you to keep track of the time?”
“We have approximately fifty minutes to complete Captain Una’s mission, plus or minus a second or two.”
“I won’t need those extra seconds,” Una declared. “Wait and see.”
There was no manual override on the outside of the inner doors, so they had to repeat the maneuver with the phaser and a porthole to make their way out of the vestibule. The effort cost them valuable time that they could ill afford to lose. Despite Una’s confidence, Kirk had his doubts on whether they would be able to pull this operation off in time to get the Enterprise out of harm’s way.
He hoped he’d made the right call.
“There’s something else you ought to know,” Una said, taking advantage of the delay to brief Kirk and Spock on her recent adventures, including the disturbing discovery that the Jatohr’s terraforming efforts had created an escalating environmental crisis on the planet. “Something needs to be done, if not today, then someday, before it’s too late for the Usildar and the other indigenous life-forms on the planet.”
“We’ll see to it Starfleet is informed,” Kirk promised. “What the Klingons might have to say about the matter is a question for another day.”
Beyond the airlock, they found themselves in what appeared to be a hermetically sealed ghost town, empty and untouched for nearly two decades. Their footsteps echoed through long, curving corridors that were otherwise devoid of any life-forms, let alone a race of sentient gastropods from another reality. The persistent, vaguely mechanical rumbling in the background reminded Kirk of a classic science-fiction story from the twentieth century about an automated house that kept on running long after its inhabitants had been vaporized by an atomic blast. The deserted citadel seemed to be stuck in the same sort of melancholy half-life.
Leading the way, using her own tricorder to guide them, Una kept her gaze fixed strictly ahead, aside from brief glances down at her readouts, as though determined to ignore their mausoleum-like surroundings. Kirk had to wonder what she was feeling, returning to this place after so many years. Probably much the way he would feel if he returned to Tarsus IV, where he’d once been among the sole survivors of a genocidal massacre, or if he set foot once more on Tycho IV, where so many of his fellow crew members had died unnecessarily.
“This must be strange for you,” he said to her, “and hard as well.”
Una looked up from her tricorder while setting a brisk pace.
“I confess to a certain degree of déjà vu. The last time I was here, I was a cocky young lieutenant . . . and a prisoner.” She sighed heavily. “Although I suppose I’m technically your prisoner at the moment and can expect more of the same in the future. I can’t imagine that Starfleet is going to look kindly on this unauthorized escapade.”
“That’s up to the brass,” Kirk said. “For now, let’s just bring our people home, if we can, and get out.”
“I quite agree,” she said.
Her flawless memory, abetted by her original tricorder readings, guided them down a steep ramp that ended before a sealed doorway that had seen better days. Several deep dents in the door’s surface suggested that somebody had tried to force their way in at some point. Inert crystal globes littered the floor like discarded cannonballs.
“This is the entrance to the control room,” Una explained. “Professor Eljor sealed it off to keep the other Jatohr from interfering with hir plan. They were trying to batter the door down when they were . . . removed.”
Kirk found himself wishing that those vanished Jatohr had done a slightly better job of busting through the door before they’d been sent back to where they belonged. “How do we get past this last barrier? I don’t see any portholes.”
“An excellent question, Captain.” Una ran her hand over the door. “I’m reluctant to blast our way in this close to the core of the generator, for fear of damaging any vital systems.”
Spock indicated the abused doorway. “That did not seem to concern the Jatohr who laid siege to the entrance.”
“They were not using energy weapons,” she pointed out, “and they were in a state of panic. Not to mention being much more familiar with the technology and engineering here than we are.”
Kirk saw her point. Scotty would know how to break into main engineering without wrecking anything important, and had done so on occasion, albeit very cautiously, but they were intruders here, very much out of their element. Using their phasers to carve a way in might well be riskier than they knew. They had no real understanding of this alien technology, so anything was possible. In a worst-case scenario, a weapons discharge near the generator’s core might even set off some kind of explosion or chain reaction.
“No phasers, then,” he agreed. “Any other suggestions?”
“I have one,” Una said, “but you might not like it.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Kirk said. “What are you thinking?”
“The Enterprise’s transporters. I’ve been on the other side of this doorway and remember the exact layout of the control room. What’s more, I’ve retained the precise coordinates from when the Enterprise beamed April and me out of the control room eighteen years ago. In theory, your ship’s transporters should be able to beam us back inside.”
Kirk frowned. “But we’d be beaming in blind. That was years ago, as you said. What if something has shifted or collapsed in that time? You hear that rumbling going on? Things are not entirely in stasis here. Automated systems are still in operation, possibly undergoing maintenance or repairs.”
“Professor Eljor did mention something about ongoing structural renovations,” she conceded. “Those might still be under way, running on automatic pilot, but I doubt that they would have refitted the master control room in any way. It should be exactly as we left it, which means that I know exactly what coordinates to provide the Enterprise with, compensating for upgrades in the transporter targeting protocols, of course.”
“But can you be sure you have the coordinates right?” Kirk asked. “After all these years?”
She looked mildly offended by the question. “My memory is completely reliable, Captain, as is my ability to factor in any necessary adjustments. Just ask Mister Spock.”
“I can vouch for the exceptional precision of her mind,” Spock said. “If Captain Una says that we can safely beam into the control room using the adjusted coordinates from her previous visit, I am inclined to believe her.”
; “Thank you, Spock,” she said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“No thanks are necessary. I am merely reporting my own empirical observations regarding your abilities, which are also a matter of public record.”
“You have my gratitude anyway.” She turned toward Kirk. “Your thoughts, Captain?”
Ordinarily, Kirk would have thought the tactic too much of a gamble, even for him, but who was he to question two of the Enterprise’s finest first officers?
“If Spock is on board with this, that’s good enough for me.” He flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise. Put me through to the transporter room.”
As Scotty was currently commanding the bridge, Lieutenant John Kyle responded at once:
“Kyle here, Captain. Did that emergency ladder come in handy?”
“It was a lifesaver, Lieutenant, but I need a site-to-site transport to a location a few meters from where we’re standing.”
“A few meters, sir?”
“You heard me, Mister Kyle. There is a barrier obstructing us and we need to get past it. Captain Una is with us. Can you lock onto her communicator as well?”
“Just a moment, Captain,” Una interrupted. She retrieved her own communicator and switched it back on. “Are you reading me, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Captain,” Kyle replied. “Loud and clear.”
“Good.” She keyed the data into her communicator. “I’m transmitting the coordinates to you now. Stand by.”
“Affirmative.” A moment passed as Kyle received the data. “Captain Kirk, I’m afraid we have a problem here. We can’t do a preliminary scan of that location. You’d be beaming in blind.”
“We’re aware of that, Mister Kyle,” Kirk said, “but are confident that the coordinates will land us in a safe place.”
A hint of worry infiltrated Kyle’s pronounced English accent. “If you say so, sir.”
“Perhaps I should go first,” Una suggested, “simply to prove it’s safe.”