So far, so good, Kirk thought.
The team touched down in the cemetery, cooling their rockets. Kirk did a quick head count to ensure that they hadn’t lost anyone. McCoy looked happy to be back on solid ground again. “You still with us, Bones?”
“You bet I am,” McCoy groused, “no thanks to these infernal boots. If homo sapiens was meant to fly, he would have been born a Betelgeusian.”
Kirk grinned. Clearly, his friend’s cantankerous attitude had come through the flight intact. “Come on, Bones. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Adventure?” McCoy said, exasperated. He stared at Kirk accusingly. “I should have known. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
Kirk didn’t deny it. “You’re the one who used to say that I didn’t belong behind a desk.”
“I didn’t mean that you should go jumping out of a speeding shuttle!”
The banter was good for morale, but they needed to hustle if they wanted to rescue the hostages before daybreak. They shed their levitation boots in the interests of stealth and stowed them amid the weeds just in case they found their way back here again. Night-vision led them to a crumbling limestone mausoleum that appeared more structurally sound than its demolished companions. A heavy stone door refused to budge, so Kirk vaporized it with a blast from his phaser. The glow from the beam briefly illuminated the gloomy interior of the crypt before darkness claimed it once more. A gaping maw opened before them.
“This keeps getting better and better,” McCoy grumbled. “Why am I having flashbacks to Pyris Seven?”
“You surprise me, Bones,” Kirk said. “I never took you for the superstitious type.”
“Who said anything about ghosts? It’s the rats and spiders I’m not looking forward to.”
Kirk shrugged. “Maybe they don’t have those lifeforms on this planet?”
“Yeah, we should be so lucky,” McCoy said.
Kirk led the way into the murky crypt, which held two matching stone sarcophagi. Despite his optimism, some manner of cobwebs hung from the ceiling while furtive vermin scurried away from the invaders. Desiccated skeletons and mummies, some more intact than others, occupied niches in the walls, while fallen bones littered the floor. A thick layer of dust and soot coated every surface. Kirk assumed the ash had blown in from the fires of war and terrorism. Ignoring the twin tombs, Kirk scanned the floor with a tricorder. The sensors detected a hidden stairway beneath a paving stone at the rear of the crypt. A steel ring was attached to the stone to make it easier to lift.
“Here we are,” he declared.
He was tempted to disintegrate the stone as he had the door, but was reluctant to desecrate the forgotten crypt more than they already had. Instead two sturdy security officers, Quinn and Assik, used their old-fashioned muscle power to heft the stone out of the way, exposing dusty steps leading down beneath the cemetery. A musty smell emanated from the stygian depths. Something skittered away from the noise. Dry bones rattled.
Kirk was not surprised to find the steps. According to Lenore, an extensive network of underground catacombs, tunnels, and sewers ran beneath the city, dating back long before the war and the arrival of the early Pavakian traders. Lenore had read about the catacombs while prepping for her volunteer work on Oyolo; for better or for worse, mass graves and other melancholy topics held a certain fascination for her, no doubt because so much of her past and family history was steeped in violent death. She was sometimes drawn, she had confessed, to reminders of mortality.
Her morbid streak had served to their advantage when planning the rescue mission. With luck, the subterranean tunnels would provide a covert route into the city and perhaps even the lower levels of the occupied amphitheater. Even homeless Oyolu supposedly shunned the dismal catacombs, which were widely believed to be haunted as well as dank, unsanitary, and infested with vermin. Gazing down into the unwelcoming shadows, Kirk could see why the Oyolu would prefer to leave such places to the dead.
“I don’t know about you,” McCoy said, giving the dusty stairs a dubious look, “but I’m starting to wish I had traded places with Chekov.”
Kirk feared Chekov and Banks would not feel the same way. Wasting no time, he headed down into the catacombs, counting on his tricorder—and the viridium patches in their fellow officers’ attire—to guide their way. His goggles revealed crumbling tunnels lined with funeral niches stretching off into the distance. Cobwebs hung like curtains, shrouding the way ahead. Something crunched beneath his boots. He hoped it was a bone and not a largish insect.
“Step lively,” he told the others. “We’ve got a date at the theater.”
• • •
Looks like the jig is up, Sulu thought.
He watched with concern from the cockpit of the Copernicus as the angry mob outside seized Chekov and Banks. It appeared that the Oyolu had seen through Banks’s disguise even faster than anticipated. This was worrisome, but not entirely unexpected. Nobody had ever thought that the proposed exchange would take place without a snag. That was what the rescue mission was all about.
Cries of rage penetrated the shuttlecraft’s hull. Outraged by the deception, the surrounding mob charged the shuttle from all directions, intent on capturing the Copernicus. Energy beams, rocks, and even frenzied bodies bounced off the shuttle’s force field, producing bursts of bright blue Cherenkov radiation whenever a threat collided against the shields. Given time, the assault might actually wear down the shuttle’s defenses, but Sulu wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
Time to go, he realized.
He activated the thrusters on both sides of the shuttle. The landing gear lifted off from the mud as he executed a vertical takeoff in order to avoid slamming into anyone. Determined Oyolu threw themselves at the Copernicus, frantic to keep it from taking off, only to be repelled by the deflectors. They splashed down into the mud beneath the escaping shuttle. Within minutes, the craft was high above the ruined parklands, out of reach of the rioters.
Which didn’t do Chekov or Banks any good.
Sulu watched from above as the Oyolu dragged his captured crewmates toward the occupied amphitheater. For the moment at least, the protesters had two more hostages.
“Damn.”
Sulu hated leaving his friends behind. The Copernicus had its own phaser banks, with enough firepower to possibly stun the entire mob into submission, but Sulu held his fire. As Captain Kirk had stressed before, their mission was not to wage war on the protesters. Sulu had no choice but to let the mob have Chekov and Banks for the present. He had his orders.
But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
The Copernicus took off over Oyolo, circling above the area below at a high altitude. He took cover among the clouds, cruising through the enveloping mists while navigating primarily by sensors. It was actually a beautiful night to be flying through the atmosphere. He could have enjoyed the flight, if not for the dire circumstances and the knowledge that his shipmates were at risk.
Now for the hard part, he thought. Waiting.
A chime alerted him that the Copernicus was being hailed. Sulu wondered what had taken them so long. He pressed a control to respond.
“This is the Copernicus,” he said, “responding to your signal.”
“Oyolu Air Command to Starfleet shuttlecraft,” a voice replied. “Your presence in our sovereign airspace is not authorized. You are ordered to land at the nearest military airbase. The coordinates are being transmitted to you on this signal.”
“Uh-huh,” Sulu muttered quietly to himself. “Not going to happen.”
Even if the Oyolu authorities could be trusted, which was dicey at best, he couldn’t afford to be tied up dealing with bureaucratic hassles, not when the captain and the others were depending on him to extract them when the time came.
“What’s that, Air Command?” he said, feigning communication difficulties. “I can’
t read you.” He scrambled the frequencies to interfere with the transmission. “I’m experiencing technical issues.”
Bursts of static fragmented the incoming transmission.
“Zzzt—unauthorized—zzzzt—repeat—zzzzt—surrender—”
“I’m sorry,” Sulu said. “You’re breaking up. . . .”
He cut off the hail altogether, preferring his own thoughts to orders it was better to pretend he hadn’t heard. He doubted that the Oyolu authorities had bought his “technical issues” story, but at least he had provided Ambassador Riley with a fig leaf to hide behind if and when the diplomats had their say on the matter. At the moment, Sulu was more concerned with just how far the Oyolu would go to defend their airspace—and how the rescue team was faring on the ground. Back on the Enterprise, Uhura was monitoring communications on Oyolo. If Captain Kirk and his team were captured along with Chekov and Banks, she was to alert Sulu immediately.
No news is good news, he thought. I hope.
Twenty
“Are we there yet?” McCoy asked. “Not that this hasn’t been a delightful stroll, but . . .”
A brisk march had taken them from the moldering catacombs to a labyrinthine tangle of dilapidated sewers and utility tunnels beneath the devastated city. A foul stench permeated the unlit tunnels as they made their way through fallen rubble and pools of stagnant water. Slime coated the grimy stone walls. Water dripped from the ceiling. Along the way, they had encountered insects, reptiles, and some “interesting” combinations thereof, but no lurking Oyolu, which was good enough for Kirk. As scenic hikes went, however, he preferred Yosemite.
“Almost,” he promised. “I think.”
He consulted his tricorder again. It would be easy enough to get lost in this subterranean maze, especially since they’d occasionally had to detour around collapsed tunnels and gaping pits, but the tricorder’s navigational programs had kept them on track. Filmy cobwebs clung to his field uniform as he approached a moldy brick wall at the dead end of a side tunnel. His boots splashed through a greasy, scum-slick puddle. In theory, their objective was on the opposite side of the wall.
“This should be it,” the captain announced. He used the tricorder to scan beyond the wall. He was not as adept as translating the readings as Spock would have been, but he didn’t pick up any humanoid life-forms directly ahead. “Doesn’t seem like there’s anybody on the other side.”
“Thank heaven for small favors,” McCoy said. “Maybe the fates are actually on our side?”
Knock on wood, Kirk thought. His phaser was set on disrupt so he pulled the trigger. A brilliant blue glow briefly lit up the tunnel as Kirk carved an opening through the brick wall, dissolving its constituent parts into atoms. Concerned with the wall’s structural integrity, he made the doorway as narrow as possible while trying to avoid anything that looked too load-bearing; the last thing they needed was the din of a collapsing wall attracting unwanted attention. Kirk held his breath as the glow faded to expose the chamber beyond. He caught a glimpse of a darkened sub-basement cluttered with random crates and storage containers, sparse racks of threadbare costumes, and theatrical props.
Bingo, Kirk thought.
As anticipated, the tunnels abutted the hidden dressing rooms and storage areas beneath the occupied amphitheater. Lenore had mapped the sub-levels back on the Enterprise and Kirk had committed the map to his own memory as well as the tricorder’s. Scouting out the basement, it appeared that they were about three levels below the outdoor stage where the hostages were being held. Kirk listened closely, but he couldn’t hear any voices filtering down from above them. He imagined that the lower levels were probably soundproofed to some degree in order to prevent any activity downstairs from disturbing the performances onstage. He tugged on the collar of his white turtleneck undershirt; it was uncomfortably hot and stuffy in the confined spaces, not to mention musty, which he hoped would discourage any of the protesters from seeking shelter down here. He was already sweating through his sturdy green sweater. Perspiration threatened to make his yellow makeup run.
Let’s hope those horns stay in place, just a little while longer.
Kirk switched his phaser to stun. Weapons in hand, the rescue team crept into the apparently deserted basement. Their night-vision goggles allowed them to scope out the area as they advanced cautiously through a warren of dark storerooms and cramped, narrow hallways. Kirk noted that the assorted costumes and props were fairly worn and cheaply constructed; he guessed that anything remotely practical had been looted long before. Prospero’s wizardly cloak hung forgotten upon a hook; it was hard to believe that only days had passed since he had been startled to find Lenore on Oyolo. Now her future, innocence, and sanity were all very much in doubt.
We’re depending heavily on intel provided by someone who may or may not still be a ruthless killer.
Kirk pushed the troubling thought out of his mind. He couldn’t afford to worry about Lenore’s true nature right now. He needed to keep his wits about him and concentrate on the task at hand: liberating the hostages without initiating a bloodbath. A “grove” of lightweight prop palm trees, left over from The Tempest, packed the next compartment. A full-sized replica of a sailing ship’s wheel was propped up against one wall. Kirk winded his way through the theatrical clutter in search of the stairs to the next level.
They found company instead.
An amorous Oyolu couple had sought privacy below the theater. Pressed up against a wall by her preoccupied male companion, the woman gasped out loud as Kirk and the strike force inadvertently walked in on them. It was debatable who was the most startled.
“Wait!” she shouted, shoving her lover away. “Behind you!”
Furious at the interruption, the male wheeled about and charged at the intruders. In the dim lighting, it was possible that he had been deceived by their Oyolu disguises and not yet grasped their true nature. Nevertheless, Kirk realized instantly that he needed to nip this awkward encounter in the bud before either the man or the woman could raise an alarm.
“Sorry,” he said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Phaser beams stunned first the man, then the woman, who dropped to the dusty floor of the sub-basement. Kirk felt a surge of relief.
That could have been a lot—
A turquoise beam shot from the shadows, dropping Del Gaizo, who hit the floor hard. Kirk spun around to see a third Oyolu standing at the bottom of a ladder up ahead. His eyes were wide with mixed shock and anger and a small disruptor was gripped in his hand. Had he come looking for the missing couple or had he been hoping to join the festivities? Kirk didn’t know or care. Only one thing mattered now.
“Take cover!” Kirk ordered, ducking behind the sturdy ship’s wheel. “But don’t let him get away!”
Realizing he was outnumbered, the Oyolu turned back toward the ladder, but a blast from Kirk’s phaser disintegrated the lower rungs, cutting off his escape. Desperate, the man dived into the grove of artificial trees, seeking cover as well. He fired out from behind one of the tree trunks. A turquoise beam shot above Kirk’s head.
Damn! Kirk thought. They didn’t have time for an extended firefight, but he didn’t want to seriously injure the trapped Oyolu by blasting straight through the prop trees with a phaser beam at full power. Thinking fast, Kirk decided to rely on gravity instead.
Darting out from behind the wheel, while McCoy and the others provided a degree of cover, he slammed his shoulder into the nearest prop tree, causing it to topple over into the others. The ersatz palms fell like dominoes, burying the unfortunate Oyolu and knocking him to the floor. In time, no doubt, the man could have shoved the lightweight props aside, but Kirk and the others didn’t give him a chance. Multiple stun-beams converged on the trapped Oyolu, rendering him senseless.
Kirk wiped his brow, sweating from the exertion.
“Del Gaizo?” he asked.
McCoy was already checking on the fallen crewman. “Just stunned,” the doctor reported. “But I assume we can’t just let him sleep it off?”
“Negative,” Kirk said. Lugging the unconscious security officer around on a covert mission was not an option any more than leaving him behind was. “Do what you have to to rouse him.”
McCoy nodded. “I’m going to have to risk a heavy dose of stimulant.” He loaded a hypospray. “Just a smidgen of cordrazine should get him back on his feet, although he’s going to have a doozy of a headache later on.”
Beats becoming another hostage, Kirk thought. He looked on as McCoy applied the hypospray to Del Gaizo’s neck. The man’s eyes snapped open and he sat upright with a jolt. “Hey! What the—?”
“Easy, Lieutenant,” McCoy said. “You’re going to be okay.”
For now. Kirk grimly contemplated the trio of stunned Oyolu. That had been too close. They couldn’t risk another chance encounter. We need to pick up the pace if we’re going to maintain the element of surprise.
Relying on Lenore’s map, they ascended a spiral staircase to the staging area directly below the stage, which was thankfully unoccupied. Kirk located the wall-mounted control panel governing the stage effects. The touch-sensitive controls appeared fairly user-friendly, complete with pictorial icons indicating the function of various controls: lighting, sound, and so on.
Just like Lenore described, Kirk thought. Perhaps we can trust her . . . this far at least.
He used the tricorder to scan for the viridium patches worn by Chekov and Banks. According to the readout, the courageous officers were directly above them, possibly with the rest of the hostages. Sensor readings, along with echoing footsteps, also indicated the presence of several other humanoids one level up. Those were presumably the armed protesters holding the hostages captive. With any luck, they weren’t expecting what Kirk had in mind.