“Do you feel that, Spock?” he asked.
“It would be impossible not to,” the Vulcan replied. “Whatever we may think of our captors’ attitudes, we should not underestimate their technology or ingenuity.”
“The Truth has brought us peace and prosperity,” Vlisora explained, “and now it has given us the means to rescue your own worlds from oblivion.”
“So I keep hearing,” Kirk said. “But I’m not convinced.”
He waited tensely for the guards to search him and find the concealed phaser, but so far that hadn’t happened. It seemed the Crusaders were confident that their “brothers” on the other side of the portal had already seen to disarming their prisoners. Still, that didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be more stringent precautions once they arrived at the temple of the God-King. Kirk would be surprised if they weren’t searched again before being admitted into the presence of a living deity. He needed to take advantage of his phaser before then.
But when?
An electronic chime heralded the end of their descent.
“Ah,” Vlisora said. “We are almost there.”
Kirk expected the sinking platform to come to a stop in front of a silver door, but, to his surprise, the platform exited the base of the pyramid and descended another ten meters before halting in midair, at least three hundred meters above a large circular reflecting pool below. The immense base of the pyramid hovered above them in a rather unnerving fashion. Kirk was grateful for the shade, but it was hard to ignore the massive edifice hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.
The floating ring went from elevator to loading dock. A waiting flyer pulled up to the edge of the platform. About a third of the size of a standard shuttlecraft, its lacquered silver body was sleek and streamlined for atmospheric travel. A tinted canopy offered a glimpse of the cockpit and controls. An embossed design, worked into the side of the ship, captured the profile of a fierce-looking winged serpent. An actual animal, Kirk wondered, or a mythical creature? Scanning the skies, he failed to spot any actually flying snakes.
I can live with that, he thought.
A side door slid open, offering a further glimpse of the vehicle’s compact interior, and a ramp extended from the doorway. A moment later, the pilot emerged and stood by the door.
“Greetings, High Priestess,” he addressed Vlisora. Like the other aliens, he eyed Kirk and Spock with naked curiosity. “It is my honor to transport you to the royal temple. Please board at will.”
“Many thanks,” she replied, approaching the ramp. “And my deepest apologies.”
Confusion showed on his face. “Priestess?”
Vlisora rotated the rings on her pendant, like the dials on an antique combination lock, and Kirk heard a low whine. The innermost circle flashed green. Moving quickly, and with no warning aside from her cryptic apology, she lunged forward and shoved the pilot off the platform. Gravity seized him and he plummeted from sight. A frantic screech trailed away as he fell, but could still be heard even as Vlisora called out urgently to Kirk and Spock.
“Now! Defend yourselves!”
Caught off guard by her unexpected betrayal, the three remaining guards reached for their batons. Kirk was startled, too, and shocked by the pilot’s abrupt disappearance, but he saw the opportunity he had been waiting for. Rescuing his phaser from hiding, he stunned the first guard, who dropped onto the platform. The second guard retaliated by waving his baton at Kirk, who fully expected to be laid low by another gravity beam.
But nothing happened.
“What in the God-King’s name?” The puzzled guard stared at his weapon. Kirk realized that Vlisora must have deactivated the batons somehow.
I can work with that, he thought.
Switching gears, the Crusader raised the baton and charged at Kirk, no doubt hoping to use the weapon as a simple truncheon instead, but Kirk didn’t give him a chance. A well-aimed phaser beam took out the second guard as well, leaving only one more to go.
Or so Kirk thought.
He swung his phaser in search of the third Crusader, only to find that Spock had already taken matters in hand by pinching the last guard’s neck. The Crusader joined his stunned brothers on the floor of the ring.
“I see you didn’t need a phaser,” Kirk said.
“Not immediately, but I am pleasantly surprised to find that you have one in your possession.” Spock observed the weapon quizzically. “May I inquire how you happened to obtain it?”
Kirk was about to explain about Maxah’s sleight of hand back on Ephrata, but Vlisora had more urgent concerns.
“Into the flyer . . . quickly!” She scurried up the ramp. “Follow me if you value your ability to think freely!”
She made a convincing case. Kirk had no idea what her own agenda was, but he was not inclined to look a gift horse—and potential ally—in the mouth. If he was going to confront this dimension’s God-King, Kirk preferred to do so on his own terms, and after he had a better sense of what dynamics were at play on this planet. Matters were obviously more complicated than they first appeared.
“After you,” he said.
Wasting no time, they hurried into the waiting aircraft and Vlisora sat down at the controls. Kirk rode shotgun while Spock seated himself behind Vlisora, within easy reach of her neck. The door whisked shut behind them and the flyer banked away from the floating platform. A low drone emanated from the aircraft’s engines.
“Strap yourselves in,” she advised.
A burst of acceleration pressed Kirk back into his seat. Locating a seat belt and safety harness, he clicked them into place. The flyer zoomed out of the shadow of the looming pyramid.
“We have only moments before an alarm is sounded,” she explained. “We must make our escape, and discard this flyer, before the Crusaders catch up with us.”
“But what’s this all about?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“Later,” she promised. “All your questions will be answered.”
A troubling memory, of the screeching pilot plummeting to his doom, would not wait. “Was it necessary to kill the pilot?”
“He did not die,” she assured him. “There are safety measures in place to keep him from achieving terminal velocity. I merely needed to remove him from the equation.”
“Some manner of zero-gravity safety net?” Spock surmised.
“Precisely,” she replied. “In the event of accidental falls or crashes.”
Kirk was glad to hear it, assuming she was telling the truth. It dawned on him that he had never heard the pilot hit bottom, and that the Ialatl certainly seemed to possess the technology to create such a safety net. He decided to give Vlisora the benefit of the doubt and assume that she was not quite as ruthless as she had appeared.
Unlike the Crusaders.
Their flight offered a bird’s-eye view of the city. Polished stone facings, resembling basalt, jade, slate, and granite, adorned the shining skyscrapers, ziggurats, coliseums, and monuments. Flyers of various sizes and configurations weaved among the towers and elevated causeways, seemingly disdaining the lower levels of the city, which appeared less heavily populated. Vlisora stayed clear of the heavier air traffic, preferring aerial paths less taken. It was a shame, Kirk reflected, that Sulu had missed out on this flight. The helmsman was an avid pilot as well, with a special interest in historic aircraft. He would have enjoyed checking out Vlisora’s flyer.
Kirk couldn’t contain his curiosity. “Where are we going?”
“Better I not say just yet,” she began, “in case we are—”
An electronic alarm buzzed from the dashboard, followed by a stern Ialatl voice:
“Attention, miscreants! Your unfathomable rebellion has been found out. Direct your flyer immediately to the coordinates decreed.” A sequence of numerical symbols flashed across a lighted display panel on the dashboard. “And surrender to the God-King’s justice!”
Vlisora blurted a string of obscenities that struck Kirk as rather unsuit
able for a priestess. He didn’t recognize all the anatomical parts involved, but he got the gist of it. Her finger stabbed a control on the dashboard, muting the transmission.
“Brace yourselves,” she said. “We have become the hunted.”
High-pitched sirens, screeching like the falling guard, penetrated the cockpit from outside. Five intimidating-looking cruisers swooped down from the sky in pursuit of the flyer. Gleaming black fuselages with jade and silver trim allied them with the Crusade. Their sleek contours caused them to resemble passenger-sized photon torpedoes.
Not the most comforting of comparisons . . .
The dashboard squawked as the Crusaders overrode the speakers’ mute function:
“You cannot escape your guilt. Put down or feel the weight of the Truth!”
Vlisora snorted in derision. “Fools.”
“I’m hoping you planned for this,” Kirk said.
“In truth, I had expected that we would get farther before my transgressions became known, but the Crusade is reacting faster than I anticipated.” She shrugged. “How was I to know they would be so wretchedly efficient?”
The cruisers descended on the flyer in a triangular formation. The nose of the lead cruiser began to spin, while emitting an ominously familiar green glow.
“I believe we are about to come under attack,” Spock deduced.
“Indeed,” she replied. “For all the good it will do them.”
An emerald beam sprayed from the nose of the lead cruiser, targeting the fugitive flyer. Kirk expected a sudden increase in gravity to send the flyer crashing to the ground, but, to his surprise and relief, the beam bounced harmlessly off the flyer’s reflective silver skin. The deflected beam struck a floating marble fountain instead, which abruptly sank from view.
“That beam didn’t affect us,” Kirk observed. “Why?”
“Those idiot Crusaders forgot that this is a royal flyer, in service to the God-King. It is shielded against gravity attacks in order to protect the Divinity and his household from rebel attacks . . . in the unlikely event that the dissidents obtained gravity weapons, that is.”
“Rebels?” Kirk echoed. “Dissidents?”
Before she could elaborate, explosions went off throughout the city, both above and below them. A floating basalt monument, consisting of a mammoth bust of some regal Ialatl luminary, blew apart in the sky above a spacious courtyard, which was also levitating high above ground level. Pulverized stone and ash swirled weightlessly in the space formerly occupied by the monument. A water tower toppled over, flooding an elevated causeway below it. Kirk even spotted flames and smoke erupting around the perimeter of the majestic ziggurat Vlisora had identified as the royal temple of the God-King.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Dissidents.” She banked away from the turbulent remains of the giant stone bust. The shock wave from another explosion, blowing out the windows of what Kirk hoped was an empty tower, rattled the flyer. “Who are even now attempting to give our pursuers something rather more urgent to attend to.”
“Diversions,” Spock said. “Intended to aid our escape.”
She nodded. “That is the plan. Whether it is sufficient remains to be seen.”
The strategy appeared to be working, at least partially. Three of the five cruisers broke formation, veering off from the pursuit. Kirk assumed that they had been called away to deal with the havoc being wreaked by . . . rebel forces?
“It would appear, Captain,” Spock said, “that we are caught in the middle of an internal conflict among the Ialatl.”
Kirk was reaching the same conclusion, which was both encouraging and disturbing. While there were advantages to making common cause with the rebels against the Crusade, he was troubled by the prospect of getting more deeply involved in the civil strife of an alien culture he knew next to nothing about. The Prime Directive argued against him taking sides here.
But that was a dilemma to wrangle with down the road. At the moment, they still had two Crusader aircraft on their tail. A furious voice railed at them over the speakers:
“Apostate! Infidels! The Crusade will not allow these treacherous attacks on the Truth to go unpunished! Surrender now . . . and beg for the forgiveness of the God-King!”
The remaining Cruisers were gaining on them.
“Can you lose them?” Kirk asked.
“I can try,” she said.
Up ahead, an artificial waterfall, at least ten stories high, had been engineered between two identical skyscrapers. This architectural feat became even more impressive when Kirk saw that the frothing white water was actually cascading up before falling down on the opposite side to create a perpetual liquid loop. Vlisora powered the flyer straight through the surging water in hopes of shaking their pursuers. Sheets of water washed over the cockpit, making navigation impossible. Inverted currents buffeted the flyer, rocking its passengers, until the flyer burst from the looping falls into the open air—only to find itself zooming toward a towering granite obelisk.
“Watch out!” Kirk shouted.
“I see it!”
Hastily working the controls, she sent the flyer climbing steeply. The obelisk filled the view from the passenger’s seat; they were so close to the solid gray edifice that Kirk could make out the arcane alien pictographs inscribed on the polished stone. He hoped they weren’t warnings to stay away.
“Higher!” He couldn’t resist playing backseat driver. “We’re not going to make it!”
“Yes, we are!” she insisted. “Possibly.”
Climbing at top speed, the flyer didn’t quite clear the tip of the obelisk. Its stony point scraped the underside of the aircraft, sending a bump up Kirk’s spine. He flinched at the impact, as well as the horrendous noise coming from below. The scraping died away as the flyer leveled out several meters above the obelisk.
“You see!” their pilot said triumphantly. “Do not lose faith. Our destiny cannot be denied!”
Spoken like a priestess, Kirk thought. What destiny?
The trip through the water-rise had carried them up to an even higher altitude. Kirk glanced back behind them, hoping that the tumultuous ride had left the enemy cruisers behind. For a second, he entertained the notion that they were free and clear, but then the Crusader aircraft shot through the decorative torrent after them, watery spray trailing in their wake. Their sirens screeched ever louder.
“Bad news,” Kirk reported. “We’ve still got company.”
“Obviously,” she snapped.
The flyer accelerated, zipping recklessly through the endless urban canyons faster than local regulations surely advised, but the relentless cruisers matched their speed and more. They closed in on the flyer from above and below, squeezing the fugitive aircraft in an attempt to herd it toward an elevated landing pad ahead. Glancing up through the tinted windshield, Kirk could see the underside of a cruiser less than a meter above them. This struck him as far too close for comfort. One wrong move, and a midair collision would bring the chase to a disastrous conclusion.
“Attention, renegades! This is your final warning. Land your vehicle or we will force you down!”
“Not while this scrilatyl can still fly!” she said defiantly. “Or halt at my command!”
She slammed on the brakes and the flyer came to an abrupt stop, throwing Kirk forward in his seat. Only the safety harness kept him from smashing headfirst into the windshield.
He would have appreciated a little warning.
And what in the world was a scrilatyl?
The flyer’s sudden halt surprised the cruisers, who sped ahead, leaving the stationary flyer behind, even as the stalled aircraft suddenly dropped like a stone toward the city below.
Kirk gasped in alarm.
Spock had no audible reaction.
“Do not fear!” Vlisora exclaimed. “Hold on to your faith!”
Less than a minute of freefall felt like forever before she gunned the engines and the flyer shot backward in reverse, halting its uncontrolled plunge. She narr
owly missed the top of another building, then switched into forward gear once more. The flyer rocketed away to the west.
Kirk’s heart was pounding in his chest. He’d taken slingshot maneuvers around the sun that were more relaxing than Vlisora’s barnstorming acrobatics. He needed a moment to catch his breath.
“Pretty fancy flying,” he said, impressed.
“I was a pilot before I was a priestess,” she volunteered.
Kirk could believe it.
“An intriguing change of career,” Spock observed.
“I felt a calling,” she explained, “before—”
“Here they come again!” Kirk interrupted.
Twigging to the fact that they had lost their prey, the cruisers looped back to resume the pursuit. Kirk briefly lost them in the blinding glare of the sun, but then they came up behind the flyer again. Even more alarmingly, reinforcements arrived in the form of two more cruisers that swooped in to join the hunt. Apparently, the rebels’ diversionary tactics weren’t keeping enough of the Crusaders engaged—or maybe somebody had simply decided that capturing the High Priestess and her alien passengers took priority.
Lucky us, Kirk thought. We’re in demand.
“Any more tricks up your sleeve?” he asked Vlisora.
Her black eyes scanned the city streets below.
“Hang on,” she said. “This is going to be close.”
The nose of the flyer dipped precipitously as she dived toward the lower levels of the city at an alarming angle and rate of descent. Kirk’s stomach lurched, and he grabbed onto the dashboard to brace himself. His knuckles whitened, and he found himself longing for a decent set of inertial dampers. He hoped the word kamikaze was not in her vocabulary.
“You sure you know what you’re doing here?” he asked.