Spock seemed to have some misgivings as well. “I believe I would like to hear more about that safety net you mentioned.”
“We’re flying, not crashing,” she insisted.
“That seems a fine distinction in this instance.”
She shrugged. “Trust me.”
We already are, Kirk thought. More than I like.
The flyer weaved between gleaming towers and floating sculptures, taking tighter turns than Kirk would have preferred. The floor of the city rushed up to meet them. A bus-size tram appeared in their path, and the flyer banked sharply to avoid it. They darted toward an oncoming stream of traffic, playing chicken with dozens of civilian vehicles, which peeled off in all directions, yielding the right-of-way to the apparently suicidal flyer and its daredevil pilot. The pursuing cruisers had to take evasive action to avoid being hit by the fleeing aircraft. Sirens screeched while emergency signals beeped and blared.
“You do that on purpose?” Kirk asked.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but that wasn’t the truly risky part. The greater gamble is almost upon us.”
Kirk was almost afraid to ask what she meant. “Which is?”
“Wait and see,” she said. “But get ready for—What in perdition?”
The steady drone of the flyer’s engine went silent. The control panel flashed briefly, then went black. Vlisora swore again and fiddled with her pendant to no avail. She smacked the dashboard with her fist, but the display panels stayed black. Clearly, this was not part of her plan.
“Misbegotten, ancestor-less scum!”
“What is it?” Kirk asked, although he feared he already knew the answer.
“They’ve killed the grav lifter remotely!” She glared angrily at the dashboard as though trying to will it back to life. “We’re going to have to engage the glider wings manually!”
Beats falling like a rock again, Kirk thought. “How?”
“There’s a lever to your right! Find it—but don’t pull it yet!”
Kirk didn’t need to be told twice. He located the lever, which had a lacquered turquoise sheen. “Got it!”
“We need to deploy them in unison or we’ll go into a spin,” she explained hastily. “On my count. Three, two, one . . . pull!”
Kirk yanked hard on the lever. It was sticky and required a bit of exertion, but functioned as intended. A scalloped wing, boasting embossed silver scales, swung out to starboard, but not on Vlisora’s side. The flyer rolled over and starting spinning along its axis. Kirk’s safety restraints stopped him from hitting the ceiling.
“Your wing!” he shouted at Vlisora. “What’s wrong with your wing?”
“It’s jammed! It won’t budge!”
She tugged on the lever as the flyer went into a death spiral. Kirk wondered just what the limits of the city’s zero-g safety net was—and how exactly this was going to reduce their odds of making a clean escape. Even if they survived the crash, would they be left waiting for the authorities to come scoop them up?
“Allow me,” Spock said. Reaching from the back seat, he grabbed the lever and added his Vulcan strength to hers. The stubborn lever yielded to their combined efforts, and the portside wing extended.
“Blessed be your mighty ancestors!” Vlisora exclaimed. Working the manual controls, she halted their barrel roll and brought the flyer back under control, even as it continued to dive toward the floor of the city, which was getting ever closer.
So were the cruisers, which were rapidly eating up the gap between themselves and the flyer. The additional cruisers significantly increased their odds of snaring the flyer, Kirk realized; with four vehicles at their disposal, they could trap the flyer in a fully three-dimensional squeeze play, cutting off every avenue of escape. Vlisora wasn’t going to be able to go into reverse or drop away next time.
“These skies are getting pretty unfriendly,” he said. “What happens if they catch us?”
“Let us not find out!”
Kirk scoured the streets and alleys below for anything resembling a landing strip. A low steel overpass, connected to two adjacent skyscrapers, loomed directly ahead. Empty tracks disappeared into a lightless black tunnel entrance underneath the bridge. A derelict bullet train, overrun with vines and creepers, rested on an adjacent track. Some sort of underground rail system?
Vlisora aimed the flyer straight at the forbidding black cavity, which looked to be about half the size of the hangar deck’s space doors back on the Enterprise. Kirk hurriedly tried to estimate the width of the tunnel entrance as compared to the wingspan of the flyer.
Unsurprisingly, Spock got there first.
“With all due respect,” he told Vlisora, “I do not believe we have sufficient clearance for what you appear to be attempting.”
“Not in the least.” She did not veer from her approach to the tunnel. “If you ever pray to your own deities, ancestors, or ineffable cosmic forces, now would be a good time to do so.”
The tunnel entrance, swelling before them like the event horizon of a voracious black star, was only meters away. The flyer’s speed and momentum carried them straight toward it. They could not turn away now if they wanted to.
“Ducking is also advisable,” she added.
The flyer threaded the tunnel entrance, more or less. The wings were torn off on both sides, the gleaming ceramics screeching in anguish. Sparks flew from beneath the crippled flyer as it touched down roughly on the track and slid down a sharp incline at approximately a forty-five-degree angle. The Stygian depths of the tunnel swallowed them, and Kirk was bounced violently in his seat before the flyer finally skidded to a stop deep beneath the city. The only faint glimmers of daylight came from the tunnel entrance behind and above them.
Talk about a bumpy landing, Kirk thought.
He took a second to catch his breath—and smelled smoke. Glancing around him, he saw that the sides and bottom of the flyer were on fire. Sparks spurted from exposed circuitry. Orange flames licked at the sides of the now-wingless aircraft.
“Everybody out!” he shouted.
He checked on Vlisora, ready to assist her or even carry her if necessary, but she was already moving of her own accord. To his relief, Spock was both conscious and mobile as well.
“We seem to have survived another hostile encounter with gravity,” the Vulcan observed wryly, “albeit of a more conventional variety.” He sniffed the air. “Combustion, however, remains an issue.”
Vlisora popped the canopy, and all three passengers scrambled out of the cockpit. They stumbled away from the smoldering flyer.
“Any chance it could explode?” Kirk asked.
“I don’t believe so,” Vlisora said, somewhat less than confidently. “But I was a pilot, not a mechanic.”
Kirk kept a close eye on the flyer, just in case they needed to dive for cover. Borrowing Vlisora’s cloak, he used it beat out the sputtering flames before checking himself for injuries. Aside from a few new bumps and bruises, he was still in working condition. “Everybody in one piece?”
“Yes, Captain,” Spock said. “Quite unlike our aircraft.”
“I am intact as well,” Vlisora said. She did not ask for her scorched cloak back. Her satiny black tunic was rumpled and torn in places. “It seems my divine ancestors were watching out for us all.”
Kirk was inclined to give more credit to her own expert, if somewhat reckless, piloting.
“I understand that you’re a priestess of some sort, but you may be trusting a little too heavily on your ancestors’ good graces, not to mention the power of prayer. On my world, we call that tempting fate.”
She shrugged. “And yet we are all still alive, are we not? How miraculous is that?”
Kirk didn’t have a ready answer for that, nor did he waste too much time searching for one. They had more immediate concerns.
“Where now?” he asked.
“Follow me,” she began, then reeled, clutching her head. She threw out her other hand to brace herself against a sooty tunnel w
all. “No,” she murmured weakly. “Not so soon. . . .”
Was she suffering from a concussion? Kirk rushed forward and grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The God-King,” she answered. “He knows of my betrayal . . . and your escape. He is calling for our capture. His command goes forth to all Ialatl. . . .”
Kirk couldn’t hear anything and, judging from his curious expression, neither could Spock. Yet Vlisora seemed to be receiving some kind of telepathic alert.
“You can hear him?” Kirk asked. “In your head?”
“We can all hear him. Every Ialatl.” She took a deep breath and seemed to regain her balance. “The God-King can speak to us all if he chooses.”
“Fascinating,” Spock observed.
“Are you all right?” Kirk asked, still holding her shoulders. She seemed steadier now, but he wanted to be sure. “He can’t control you, can he?”
She shook her head. “I cannot avoid hearing him, but I am not compelled to obey his words.” She politely disengaged herself from Kirk’s grip. “Would that more of my kin exercised that same freedom.”
Kirk wanted to know more, but was interrupted by a blaring siren coming from the city above. He heard shouting and pounding footsteps.
“It appears our crash landing did not go unnoticed.” Spock looked pointedly at the tunnel entrance. “I believe we can expect company.”
“Your weapon!” Vlisora said urgently. The threat of imminent capture seemed to distract her from the demanding voice in her head. “You must use it to seal the tunnel behind us. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Kirk confirmed. He didn’t like the idea of burying himself alive—he’d had enough of that on Ardana last year—but they seemed to be running low on options. He had to assume that those cruisers, and the persistent Crusaders inside them, were still hot on their trail.
“Then do so at once!” she said. “There is no time to lose!”
Screeching sirens, and the keening of multiple antigrav engines, could be heard just outside the tunnel. Kirk guessed that the cruisers were touching down up above. Angry shouts and footsteps added to the unmistakable sounds of pursuit.
“Find the infidels!” a furious voice bellowed. “Do not let them elude us!”
Kirk drew his phaser and set it on disrupt. A crimson beam lit up the murky tunnel before striking the roof of the tunnel entrance, which came apart in a rumble of falling steel and masonry. Clouds of dust billowed down the tunnel, adding to the smoky haze left behind by the fire. Kirk backed up instinctively as falling rubble blocked the entrance. Loose scree tumbled down the rails. The sounds of the pursuing Ialatl were drowned out by the cave-in, then lost behind the heaped wall of debris. Echoes resounded through the underground tunnel.
For a second, as the rubble cut them off from the harsh sunlight above, Kirk and the others were cast into utter darkness. Not a sliver of light penetrated the improvised barricade. Kirk completely lost sight of Spock and Vlisora, until the priestess produced a small palm-sized light not unlike the ones Starfleet landing parties used to explore caves, derelict spaceships, night-shrouded planets, and other environments that tested the ocular faculties of most humanoid species. Kirk was grateful for both the light and Vlisora’s foresight.
“Will that hold them?” he asked.
“Long enough.” She turned her back on the collapsed entrance and began marching farther into the tunnel. “Come with me.”
Spock held back for a moment.
“Can we trust her, Captain?”
Kirk understood his first officer’s caution. They were getting in deeper and deeper, both literally and figuratively. And they still didn’t know who all the players were.
“I’m not sure we have any choice,” he said, holstering his phaser. “Unless we want to be left alone in the dark.”
Spock sighed. “That would not be an advantageous situation.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kirk said.
They took off after her.
SIX
“Mister Scott, I’m receiving an emergency signal from Mister Sulu’s communicator!”
Scotty swung around in the captain’s chair. “What is it? What does he say?”
“Nothing verbal,” she said. “Just an emergency SOS, complete with transporter coordinates.”
In an emergency, Starfleet communicators could be used to send a distress signal even when the crew member was too busy or unable to speak. This usually meant that they needed to be beamed out of hot water, pronto.
“He must be in trouble,” Chekov exclaimed, stating the obvious.
“Aye,” Scotty agreed. “Lower the shields, Mister Chekov.” He activated the intercom on the chair’s armrest. “Scott to transporter room. Lock onto Mister Sulu’s signal and beam him aboard.”
“Aye, sir,” Kyle replied.
Scotty cut off the transmission. “What about the rest of the landing party?” he asked Uhura. “Captain Kirk and the others?”
Uhura shook her head. “Nothing from them. Only Sulu.”
To be honest, she wasn’t even sure how the emergency signal had managed to get through the interference down on the planet. Sulu must have figured out a way to boost the signal; it certainly wasn’t her doing.
Scotty frowned. Uhura knew he would have preferred to get word of their other missing crewmates as well. “Let’s hope Sulu can tell us what the devil is going on,” he grumbled.
At least one scheduled check-in had come and gone without word from the planet. Scott had been reluctant to risk another team before they had any sort of clue as to what had happened to the captain and the others, let alone the people at the Institute. Sending more people down blindly could just make the situation worse.
Uhura couldn’t blame Scotty for being cautious. We still don’t even know what that original distress signal was about.
She waited anxiously for an update from the transporter room.
• • •
Lieutenant John Kyle locked onto Sulu’s signal. He did not hesitate; this was a standard procedure, which he had executed many times before. Standing behind the transporter controls, he watched as a sparkling column of energy materialized above one of the transporter pads, then rapidly coalesced into a humanoid form.
It wasn’t Sulu.
A tall silver alien appeared before Kyle’s eyes. He hopped quickly off the transporter pad before the startled lieutenant had a chance to beam him back where he came from. The alien glanced around the transporter room, taking in his new surroundings. He clutched a communicator in one hand. Kyle recognized the model. It was Starfleet standard-issue.
Bloody hell, he thought. We’ve been tricked.
Reacting promptly, Kyle hit the intruder alert button. Flashing annunciator lights and blaring klaxons sounded the alarm. He reached beneath his console to retrieve a phaser from the emergency compartment. He had been ambushed in the transporter room before. He wasn’t about to let that happen again.
“Stay right where you are!” he ordered the alien. A crisp British accent colored his command. He hit the speaker button on his intercom. “Kyle to Bridge. It’s not Sulu! It’s someone else.”
Glossy black eyes turned toward him.
“Do not obstruct me,” the alien warned. “My purpose is urgent beyond your understanding.”
“That’s not for me to decide,” Kyle said. He belatedly noticed the polished black baton in the alien’s other hand. “And drop that weapon, mister.”
“No,” the alien refused. “I cannot allow you to detain me.”
The baton glowed green and, all at once, the phaser in Kyle’s hand was too heavy to hold. It yanked his arm down, hitting the transporter controls hard enough to dent the sturdy metal casing. He felt the jarring impact all the way up his arm.
“What the—?” He tried to lift the phaser, but it wouldn’t budge. “Blast it!”
“Tell your commanding officer to expect me,” the alien said. “It is vital that we speak
without delay.”
He turned toward the door, which whooshed open to admit a pair of racing security officers armed with type-2 phaser pistols. Kyle was impressed by the speed with which they had responded to his alert.
Not that it did any good. With a wave of his glowing baton, which left a dark green blur behind it, the alien somehow caused the two men to collapse onto the floor, where they squirmed helplessly, barely able to move. Like Kyle, they couldn’t even lift their weapons.
The alien stepped around them on his way to the door. He exited the transporter room, marching briskly as though he knew exactly where he was going.
“Kyle to the bridge,” he notified the others. “We couldn’t stop him. He’s heading toward you!”
• • •
The bridge was on full alert.
“Raise shields!” Scotty ordered, perched tensely at the edge of his seat. “We don’t want any more of those rascals beaming aboard!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Chekov said.
Uhura tuned out the blaring klaxons and flashing red annunciator lights in order to make sense of the multiple reports pouring in from all over the ship.
“Mister Scott,” she called out. “The intruder is making his way toward the bridge!”
“Put it on the screen, Lieutenant!”
“Aye, sir.”
She directed the feed from the ship’s internal monitors to the main viewer. A computer algorithm, of Mister Spock’s design, helped filter out any irrelevant images and select the views they needed. She turned her own gaze toward the viewer—and gasped at the sight.
On-screen, an exotic-looking alien of unknown origin was advancing through the Enterprise’s busy corridors. Security officers, of varied races and gender, attempted to halt his progress, but met with failure after failure. Phaser beams fell short of their target, striking the floor instead. Burly crew members hit the floor, somehow immobilized by a luminous baton wielded by the intruder. Phosphorescent green auras briefly enveloped their bodies before dissipating into the ether.
“Who the devil?” Scotty exclaimed. He winced every time a deflected phaser beam scorched one of his precious bulkheads.