A malicious smile lifted the High Brother’s lips. Sulu got the distinct impression that Sokis had not yet forgiven him for taking him hostage in the observatory and stealing his original lance.
“I think not,” Sokis said. “The Crusade may have a better use for you.”
THIRTEEN
“Lieutenant Uhura,” Palmer said. “It’s Sokis again. He’s hailing you.”
Uhura frowned. This couldn’t be good. Despite the rising gravity levels aboard the ship and the threat to the people now directly under her command, she had not forgotten Sokis’s veiled threats against the landing party. She glanced at Maxah, who was leaning against the safety rail for support. Nothing about his doleful expression encouraged her.
“Put him through,” she ordered, with an aside to Maxah. “Don’t go anywhere.”
She wanted his input on this.
“I can scarcely lift my feet,” he said wryly. “You may trust me to remain at your side.”
Palmer forwarded the transmission from the planet. “On-screen.”
Sokis reappeared on the main viewer. His spines flared as he spotted Maxah upon the bridge.
“Apostate! Traitor! How dare you show your duplicitous visage in the company of the infidels!”
To his credit, Maxah did not flinch from his leader’s rebuke. He defied gravity by lifting his chin boldly.
“It is you—and your barbaric Crusade—who have betrayed millennia of progress and civilization by enforcing dogma at the expense of liberty . . . and exporting our self-inflicted madness on this blameless universe.”
“Blameless?” Sokis scoffed. “Ignorant, you mean. We are here to deliver this confused and deluded realm from falsehood. Would you rather it be consigned to oblivion when Creation begins anew?”
Uhura observed the heated exchanged with interest. She had half expected Maxah to apologize or try to justify his actions to his commander, but instead he seemed eager to express his true feelings now that his cover had finally been blown. He must have wanted to tell Sokis off for who knows how long.
More evidence that they could trust the defector?
“That’s enough,” she interrupted. Unfortunately, Uhura didn’t have time to indulge Maxah in this respect. “I believe your business is with me, High Brother Sokis.”
The irate warrior-priest was not quite ready to change the subject.
“Is it not woeful enough that you willfully resist the Truth, even in the face of its overwhelming weight? Must you harbor this despicable apostate as well?”
“Brother Maxah is currently in our custody,” Uhura stated. “And last time I checked, the Federation was not party to any transdimensional extradition treaties. We will take any requests for asylum under review.” She tried not to let her gravity fatigue show. “What else do you want?”
“Your vessel, of course, to spread the Truth throughout alien stars.”
She gave him points for consistency.
“We’ve already discussed that. Our answer hasn’t changed, despite your unwarranted interference with our internal gravity systems.”
“Which shall only grow more severe the longer you resist,” Sokis promised. “But that is not the only means of inducement at my disposal.”
Uhura braced herself. Here it comes.
The view on the screen pulled back to reveal Sulu in captivity, surrounded by unsmiling Crusaders. The helmsman, who had inexplicably exchanged his uniform for gray civvies, appeared in one piece, but was obviously in enemy hands. His face held a stoic expression, betraying no sign of fear or surrender, as he maintained his dignity despite his precarious situation.
“Sulu!” Chekov exclaimed, unable to hold in his feelings. “They’ve got Sulu!”
Uhura kept her cool. “I see that, Ensign.”
Intent on Sulu, it took her a moment to note that Sulu’s captors included a masked woman in a red Starfleet uniform. Uhura’s head tilted back in surprise.
Ensign Yaseen?
“As you see,” Sokis declared, “we have two of your kin among us. Sister Fawzia has accepted the Truth, but this one”—he indicated Sulu—“has committed wanton acts of sabotage against the Crusade and even assaulted my own person.”
“Good for you, tovarich,” Chekov muttered darkly. “I hope you made them pay dearly.”
If Sokis heard the young Russian’s caustic remark, he paid it no heed. He continued addressing Uhura: “By all rights, his crimes against the Truth cry out for the most severe punishment. . . .”
Uhura knew where this was going. “But?”
“His fate is in your hands,” Sokis said. “If you relinquish your vessel, as well as the traitor in your ‘custody,’ Hikaru will be permitted to embrace the Truth as Sister Fawzia has. But if you continue your self-destructive rebellion, I shall have him publicly executed as an example of what befalls those who defy the Crusade. The choice is yours.”
“No!” Sulu shouted. “Don’t listen to him! You can’t surrender the ship, not for my sake!”
Sokis’s spines darkened. “Silence the heretic!”
To Uhura’s horror, it was Yaseen who carried out the High Brother’s order. The masked security officer clasped her fists together and swung them against the back of Sulu’s neck, knocking him to his knees. She stuffed a gag into his mouth.
Uhura gaped in dismay, unable to fathom the young officer’s actions.
What in the world have they done to her?
“Well done, Sister Fawzia.” Sokis turned away from Sulu to face Uhura. His stern expression held no hope of compromise. “Well, what is his fate?”
Uhura forced herself to look at Sulu. The gag muffled his voice, but his desperate eyes appealed to her. She didn’t need an open frequency to receive his message loud and clear:
Save yourself. Save the ship.
The hell of it was, she knew he was right. Her heart felt like it was being ripped in two. Sulu was more than just a longtime crewmate; he was one of her best friends. Poignant memories, of good times in the rec room and shared dangers on dozens of worlds, flashed through her anguished brain. She knew she would never forgive herself if she let him die.
But that didn’t matter. She was in command now. Her first responsibility was to the ship and the rest of the crew. There could be only one possible choice.
“No,” she said irrevocably. “You can’t have the Enterprise, no matter what ultimatums you issue.” Her voice took on an even steelier tone. “But don’t think for a minute that Starfleet is going to take this lightly. We believe in peace, but we have teeth, too. If I were you, I’d think long and hard before you push us too far.”
She glanced briefly at Chekov. General Order 24 was still on the table.
“It is you who need to think hard on this,” Sokis retorted. Confident in the righteousness of his cause, he appeared unconcerned about Starfleet reprisals. “Unless you rethink your foolishness, the heretic will die at sunset, only one hour from now. You have that long to reconsider and save Hikaru . . . or you will watch the Truth crush the life from him!”
Uhura knew he wasn’t bluffing.
FOURTEEN
The pyramid hovered above a huge circular reflecting pool, which was dozens of meters below. Floating disks ascended like stepping-stones to a circular platform above the pool. Tranquil water reflected the subdued glow radiating from the base of the pyramid. A light rain continued to fall, clearing the manicured park surrounding the pool. Along with the lateness of the hour, the damp weather appeared to have driven Ialat’s teeming population indoors.
Lucky for us, Kirk thought. We’re overdue for a break.
Their stolen flyer descended toward the park. Vlisora landed it in an open field a short distance from the pool.
“This is as close as we can approach by air,” she explained. “We dare not land any nearer to our objective.”
Kirk recalled the no-fly zone she had mentioned before. The last thing they wanted was to attract unwanted attention by violating the pyramid’s controlle
d airspace.
“Understood.” He unbuckled his seat belt. “Let’s take out that portal.”
Exiting the cramped flyer, whose battered hull bore the scars of their violent encounter with the slum-dwelling mob, they sprinted across the park and up the levitating stepping-stones until they reached the top disk, which bore a distinct resemblance to the elevator they had ridden down from the pyramid before. The immense temple hung high above them, shielding them from the rain. Kirk and Spock kept their hoods on anyway. They didn’t want to get pegged as infidels again.
Once was enough, Kirk thought.
He craned back his head to view the base of the pyramid. As he understood it, Vlisora’s nameless operative inside the temple was going to discreetly lower the antigrav disk to this platform, where they could hitch a ride back up into the bowels of the pyramid. Once inside, they would tackle the harder task: sabotaging the portal itself, while trying to make it home at the same time.
“You sure your person knows what to do?” Kirk asked.
Vlisora nodded. “I sent him a coded message from the flyer. He is awaiting our signal.”
“All right.” Kirk hoped the rebels’ encryption protocols were up to snuff. He glanced around, feeling uncomfortably exposed atop the open disk. “Ring the doorbell.”
“Very well.” She rescued her pendant from beneath her collar, where she had hidden it earlier, and spun its concentric rings like dials. The pendant flashed and whined for a moment. “It is done.”
Kirk wondered if the nested rings symbolized successive cycles of creation, emanating outward from some prime origin. Or were they merely decorative? No doubt a qualified xenoanthropologist would have a field day trying to explore and interpret every nuance of the Ialatl’s culture and religion. At the moment, however, he had a more urgent mission.
I need to cut the Crusade off from my universe, at any cost.
Spock gripped his borrowed staff as he peered up at the pyramid. “How soon might we expect a response?”
“As soon as it is deemed safe,” she said. “But it should not be—”
The base of the temple suddenly lit up like a searchlight, exposing the fugitives to a harsh white glare. Sirens screeched like enraged scrilatyl. Hatchways opened across the base, and a cadre of Crusaders descended feetfirst, clutching glowing green batons and lances. Luminous gravity fields controlled their descent. An electronically amplified voice boomed from above:
“Surrender, infidels! You cannot escape!”
“By the ancestors,” Vlisora gasped. “We are betrayed!”
But by whom? Kirk wondered.
The rebel priestess resorted to her royal pendant once more. Spinning its control rings, she deactivated the Crusaders’ gravity weapons. Radiant batons and lances went dark, and the startled soldiers plummeted toward the shallow pool and hovering disks. Kirk braced himself for the ugly spectacle of men crashing to their deaths, but Ialat’s vaunted safety net proved as effective as advertised, slowing the men’s fall so that they merely splashed harmlessly into the water. A few Crusaders bounced off the floating stepping-stones first, taking some hard knocks, but none were killed or seriously injured.
That’s good, Kirk thought, I guess.
The problem with the safety net was that it left the fallen Crusaders able to regroup. The sodden warriors scrambled out of the water and fanned out around the pool, surrounding Kirk and the others. A lance-wielding officer directed his men.
“Take the infidels . . . and the heretic priestess as well! By force of arms if necessary!”
Crusaders charged up the stepping-stones toward the uppermost disk, where the fugitives found themselves under attack from three separate pathways. Kirk stunned man after man with his phaser, sending them plunging back into the pool, while Spock took a more physical approach, expertly wielding the fossilized staff to parry the soldiers’ inert batons and lances. Both ends of the staff were employed as weapons, striking Crusaders with enough force to knock them off the hovering disks, even as reinforcements raced up the disks to avenge their humiliated comrades. The pathways were laid out in such a way that the Crusaders could only charge the top disk a few at a time, but Kirk knew that his group’s strategic position was untenable in the long run, even if his phaser didn’t run out of power eventually. The Crusaders would keep on coming until he and the others were overwhelmed . . . or additional troops arrived.
“Where the hell is that elevator?” he demanded.
“That campaign is lost,” Vlisora said, throwing herself into the fray. She kicked an oncoming Crusader in the jaw. Her spines flared along her scalp like an archaic Mohawk haircut. She smiled grimly. “It seems you have no choice, God-Slayer. You must wage war against the Crusade before the eyes of the world!”
Something about her tone, and a crafty glint in her eyes, fired Kirk’s suspicions. A brutal possibility struck with the force of a Klingon disruptor.
“This was a setup. You wanted this fight!” He glared at her while picking off charging Crusaders with pinpoint accuracy. “Did you even have a man inside the pyramid?”
“Does it matter?” Her black mesh glove flared green, and a gravity beam sent a Crusader crashing down into the pool. She reached out with her other hand and tugged on Kirk’s hood, exposing his very human profile. “The battle is upon us, Kirk. Strike for freedom of thought! Show my people that the God-King’s will is not absolute!”
Spock’s keen ears picked up the exchange. “It seems we have been manipulated, Captain.”
“I’m getting that impression,” Kirk agreed.
Vlisora was unapologetic. “Saving your universe is not good enough. Your Prime Directive be damned; you will either free us, as you have so many others, or you will become a martyr to freedom, inspiring others to oppose the Crusade.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Kirk was tempted to turn his phaser on her. “You used us!”
“Forgive me,” she said, “but there is nothing I would not do to lift the onerous weight of the Crusade from my people!”
Clearly, she could no longer be trusted. Looking past her, Kirk saw Spock’s right hand let go of his whirling staff. Fighting with one hand, Spock backed up toward Vlisora. His free hand reached out to administer a nerve pinch. . . .
“I’m sorry, Mister Spock. I cannot allow that.”
Spotting his reflection in the shimmering waters below, she spun toward him and extended a glowing emerald finger. A gravity beam struck Spock squarely in the chest, propelling him upward at an angle. Kirk watched in horror as his friend rose into the sky, barely missing the base of the pyramid, before disappearing into the clouds.
“Damn you!” He wheeled angrily toward Vlisora. “What did you just do?”
“Sent him into orbit, where he cannot obstruct your destiny.” Her silver face hardened. “Just as he feared, he was of limited use after all.”
Kirk found it hard to accept that Spock was gone, just like that. He turned his phaser on Vlisora, briefly ignoring the next wave of Crusaders advancing up the steps.
“Bring him back down!” Kirk ordered. “Before he suffocates in the upper atmosphere!”
She shook her head. “It is too late for him.”
“Bring him back, damn it!”
A Crusader came at him from the side, swinging a baton. Kirk ducked beneath the blow, then elbowed the soldier in the gut. The inconvenient distraction gave Vlisora a chance to adjust the settings on her pendant. Her black mesh glove keened again.
An irresistible pull latched onto Kirk’s phaser like a tractor beam. He tried to hold on to the weapon, but it was yanked from his grip, flying across the platform into Vlisora’s waiting hand.
She obligingly stunned a wave of Crusaders.
“I am not your true enemy,” she insisted. “But the God-Slayer must face the God-King.”
By now, a crowd of spectators had begun streaming into the park, drawn by the commotion, the God-King’s telepathic commands, or both. Additional Crusade
rs descended on ropes from the pyramid above. Wailing vehicles raced toward the park. The growing throng began shouting in unison:
“Seize the infidel! Seize the infidel!”
Kirk guessed that Jaenab himself was speaking through the mob. He found himself surrounded and unarmed. He stared at Vlisora.
“Why?”
“Ialat is watching,” she said. “You cannot be seen to flee the Crusade. You must stand and fight.” A flicker of guilt crossed her face. “Farewell.”
Deftly shifting the phaser to her other hand, she dived off the disk and swam for the edge of the pool. Clambering up onto land, she used both the stolen phaser and her gravity-glove to clear a path through the Crusaders and civilians to her waiting flyer. Determined Ialatl attempted to capture her, but green and sapphire rays shot forth from her mismatched weapons, stunning and/or dropping any would-be pursuers. Kirk watched her hijacked flyer take off into the sky without him.
But he had only a moment to do so.
More Crusaders charged onto the top disk, tackling Kirk and knocking him off his feet. Unarmed, he fought back with his fists, boots, and elbows, all the while wondering how long it would be before the Crusaders would be able to reactivate their weapons now that Vlisora was gone. How far did the override effect of her royal pendant extend?
As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Angry and humiliated, the sodden soldiers were perfectly happy to subdue Kirk the hard way. The captain fought back as vigorously as he could, fueled by his fury over Spock’s death and Vlisora’s treachery, but in the end, it was not artificial gravity that defeated him but sheer weight of numbers. A host of Crusaders pounded him with their batons until he couldn’t have stood if he wanted to. Darkness encroached on his vision.
“Enough!” an officer shouted, calling the men off. He strode over to where Kirk lay, bruised and bleeding on the floor of the platform. A bearded silver face sneered down at Kirk. “See to it that he lives.” He nudged Kirk with the toe of his boot, eliciting a gasp of pain.
“This one has an appointment with the God-King.”