Star Trek: That Which Divides (35 page)

“They have to know our location, as well,” Sirad offered. “If we divide our resources, we may be able to overpower them before they’re able to consolidate their numbers.”

Nodding at the suggestion, Vathrael said, “Agreed, though I cannot believe the human captain won’t be anticipating our strategy. We must move quickly.”

If she was going to gamble on capturing one or more of the Starfleet contingent in a bid to exploit their knowledge of this facility and the secrets it contained, she needed to do so now. How much time remained before the presence of her ship and crew on this world was revealed? Vathrael had no way to know. For now, and until circumstances changed, her most viable course of action would seem to be carrying out her original mission and obtaining as much information about this installation as possible before making a stealthy escape. Whether she might be able to transmit
her findings to her superiors in the empire was an issue to be resolved later, assuming she and her crew survived to address it.

As always
, she reminded herself,
the best course is that of duty
.

Kirk and the Romulan saw each other at the same time.

Despite the look of surprise on the centurion’s face, he wasted no time bringing his disruptor to bear. Kirk was faster, his phaser up and firing even as the Romulan was taking aim. The beam caught the enemy soldier in the upper chest and he fell backward, collapsing against the corridor’s stone wall.

“Captain!” yelled Ensign Minecci as the security officer lunged forward, raising his own phaser and aiming it toward a second Romulan who was lurking beyond the intersection at the passage’s far end. The soldier ducked out of sight to avoid the strike, and the phaser beam instead hit the wall behind where he had been standing.

“I guess your trick worked,” said Dana Sortino from where she crouched along the wall on the tunnel’s opposite side. She was holding only one phaser, having tucked her second weapon into her waistband at the small of her back.

Kirk nodded. “Looks that way.” He had instructed Minecci to duplicate the tactic the Romulans had employed against them earlier, by setting his tricorder to emit an active broad-based scanning beam at the device’s maximum output. The Kalandan outpost was still doing its best to disrupt internal scans, but Kirk hoped that the tricorder, upon getting closer to the Romulans, would interfere with whatever scanning devices they were carrying. At best, Kirk
figured they might get a slight edge on being able to determine the Romulans’ location once they were close enough, but he would be happy with neither side being able to track the other.

Keeping his attention focused on the intersection, Kirk said, “Minecci, any idea how many there are?”

The security officer looked down to study his tricorder, then grimaced. “No luck, sir. They’re still jamming us, too.”

A stray thought as to whether the Romulans might have retreated was answered when a shadowy figured darted from right to left across the junction, too fast for Minecci to follow with his phaser.

What the hell are they doing?

The centurion disappeared from view, avoiding Minecci’s shots. Another Romulan appeared on the right side of the intersection, and Kirk fired at him. His shot also missed, and only then did Kirk think to look for some sign of a turret hub or any other facet of the complex’s internal defense system.

Sortino was thinking along similar lines. “I don’t see any of those weapon ports.”

“I didn’t see any of them before, either,” Kirk countered, tightening his grip on his phaser as he fired at the spot where the Romulan had crossed. “I think they’re going to try to catch us in a crossfire. We can’t stay here.”

Her eyes focused on the junction, Sortino said, “What have you got in mind?”

Adjusting the power setting on his phaser, Kirk took aim at the lighting fixture illuminating the intersection. “This,” he said, before pressing the phaser’s firing stud and releasing a short burst. The weapon’s beam drilled into the roof of the corridor, sending large chunks of rock
plummeting to the floor. A cloud of dust began to fill the corridor as Kirk ran forward.

“What the hell are you doing?” he heard Sortino shout, but ignored her as he plunged ahead, searching for movement. Rewarded with a dark figure emerging from the dust, he fired at it, his phaser whining as its beam found the target and sent the Romulan tumbling to the ground.

To your right!

Kirk turned as something moved in his peripheral vision, cringing at the sound of another weapon’s discharge. A phaser beam crossed from behind him toward another Romulan emerging from around the tunnel’s corner, and he gasped in shock as the strike knocked the centurion back against the wall. Kirk glanced over his shoulder to see Sortino advancing, her phaser clasped in both hands as she moved toward the junction and fired again. A burst of disruptor energy tore through the dissipating dust and screamed past Kirk before he heard a muffled groan behind him. It could only be Minecci, but there was no time to check as Kirk loosed several shots from the direction of the disruptor. Sortino followed suit, both of them saturating the tunnel with phaser fire. His ears ringing from the various salvos, Kirk moved forward to see three more bodies splayed on the ground. One of the Romulans had tried to seek cover around a bend in the passage before a phaser beam caught him in the back. The fallen centurion’s disruptor lay next to his hand where he had dropped it, and Kirk moved to kick it out of reach.

As he came abreast of the turn in the corridor, he sensed movement behind him and to his left, but when he turned to aim his phaser in that direction something large and fast was moving. Sortino shouted a warning before
Kirk saw the Romulan slam into her, driving her against the nearby rock wall. Rather than the cold helmet of a centurion he instead saw black hair laced with gray, and a blue sash over one shoulder as the Romulan grabbed Sortino’s weapon hand at the wrist and twisted it up over her head, forcing her to drop her phaser.

“Dana!”

The Romulan was holding Sortino so that she blocked any shot Kirk might take. As he started to move closer, the ambassador jerked her body to the left and lashed out with her free hand, punching the side of the Romulan’s head. While not sufficient to free her from her attacker’s grip, it was still enough to give her some maneuvering room and she struck again, this time aiming for the centurion’s face. The edge of her hand found his nose, evoking an angered, pain-racked cry. This time the Romulan hit back, but Sortino blocked the blow before driving her knee into the soldier’s groin. The hold on her wrist loosened and she wrenched her arm free, using it to push back from the Romulan before throwing one more punch to her opponent’s jaw. When the centurion dropped to one knee, Kirk moved in, taking aim with his phaser.

“Don’t!” he barked, holding up his hand as he saw Sortino pick up the closest weapon in reach, the Romulan’s own disruptor, and aim its muzzle at the centurion’s head. “I want one of them conscious. Oh, and just in case I forget to say this later, you’re crazy. Do you know that?”

Moving to retrieve the phaser she had dropped, the ambassador said, “Me? All I did was defend myself. You’re the one who charged into the fray.
That’s
crazy.”

“I prefer to think of it as unorthodox,” Kirk said, leveling his gaze on the Romulan before him. Studying
the soldier’s uniform insignia and accessories, he realized this was not a rank-and-file centurion, but instead a subcommander—a member of a ship’s officer corps. “You’re a first or second officer, aren’t you?” To his total lack of surprise, the Romulan remained silent, leaving Kirk with nothing except the chalky taste of dust in his mouth.

Handing the disruptor to him, Sortino said, “Minecci’s dead, Jim.”

Anger and grief pushed at Kirk’s consciousness. The ensign, so far as he knew, was the first casualty of this mission. Would there be more? How many had preceded him just during the time Kirk had commanded the
Enterprise
? Too many, he knew. One was too many, regardless of what admirals or instructors and simulations at Starfleet Academy told him about death being a harsh reality of duty. He had never subscribed to that mind-set; every life was precious, and none more so than those he commanded. There would never be a time when he viewed the death of any member of his crew as an acceptable loss.

For the briefest of moments, Kirk glanced at the power level on the disruptor Sortino had given him. Though he was unfamiliar with the precise characteristics of Romulan sidearms, the weapon was set to what he believed to be a nonlethal force. It would take little effort to increase the power setting before shooting his prisoner.

What was that you just told yourself about every life being precious?
The rebuke was enough to make him relax his grip on the disruptor, and he stepped back from the subcommander, taking a moment to draw a breath and regain his bearing.

“Your soldier’s death was an accident,” the Romulan said. “My centurions were given orders to subdue, not kill.”

Confused, Kirk frowned. “You were trying to capture us? Why?”

Sortino moved to stand next to him. “Hostages? That’s usually not in the Romulan playbook.”

“It is if whoever you want to capture has information you need,” Kirk said, “like how to access the systems in this place.” Gesturing with his phaser to the Romulan, he asked, “Isn’t that right?”

The Romulan continued to scowl at him. “Find your own answers, human.” Despite his bravado, his eyes betrayed him, and Kirk nodded in grim satisfaction.

“Yes, that’s it.” With mounting irritation beginning to gnaw at him, he glared at the Romulan. “Do you know this entire complex is set to self-destruct in less than two hours? Everything in here will be gone, and maybe a good chunk of the planet itself along with it. You’ve got a ship somewhere, on the surface or in orbit. They might be in danger, to say nothing of the Dolysians at the mining colony.”

When the Romulan refused to answer him this time, Kirk shook his head in annoyance. “Fine. Have it your way.” He fired his phaser. The Romulan’s face went slack as the beam enveloped him, and he fell unconscious to the ground.

“Now what?” Sortino asked.

Indicating the other Romulans, he said, “Grab their weapons. We need to go, and we’re running out of time.” His eyes lingered on the lifeless body of Nick Minecci, his thoughts turning to the message he knew he would soon have to compose and send to the fallen man’s family.

Later
, he chastised himself. There would be an appropriate time and place to honor the ensign for his sacrifice, but for now, Kirk knew there still was a job to do. He
considered the disruptor he held. It had been some time since he had last held such a weapon and it felt odd in his hand, being heavier and somewhat more unwieldy than a phaser. Still, he decided that it might have its uses.

Sortino collected the remaining disruptors from where they lay scattered on the tunnel floor, “You think they’re going after Spock and the others?”

Kirk nodded. “It’s what I’d do.”

Why is it so damned hot in here?

Sulu stood in front of the captain’s chair and just behind the helm console on the
Enterprise
bridge, holding his hands at his sides and resisting the overwhelming urge to wipe them on his trouser legs. The collar of his uniform tunic felt like a rope around his neck, and dampness encroached beneath his arms and between his shoulder blades. Was it his imagination, or could he feel rivulets of sweat threatening to drip from his fingers to the deck?

Ignoring the unspoken question, he forced himself to stand without moving the slightest muscle, displaying his best poker face as he eyed the Romulan officer on the main viewscreen. The image, rather than offering the normal high-resolution clarity to which Sulu was accustomed, instead was being inundated with static and the occasional loss of focus, evidence of the damage the communications system had sustained during the failed attempt to contact Captain Kirk. “I’m Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, temporarily in command of the
U.S.S. Enterprise
. It’s my duty to advise you that your vessels have violated the Neutral Zone separating Romulan and Federation space, and that you are currently in violation of the peace treaty between our two governments. Do you require assistance?”

The Romulan, his image shifting and even blurring for
a moment before snapping into something approaching normal focus, said nothing at first, opting instead to tap the fingers of his right hand atop the desk or table at which he sat. Behind him was nothing but a flat gray wall, making Sulu wonder if the commander was addressing him from his private quarters or a broom closet, or perhaps just from a station on his ship’s bridge that was oriented so as not to provide clear sight lines to any sensitive equipment. He looked older than many of the Romulans Sulu had encountered, with deep lines creasing his face and a shock of pure white hair. Despite his age he appeared to be in prime physical condition, with his uniform—the familiar ensemble of a ranking officer—stretching across a broad, muscled chest.

“
I am Commander Grathus,
” the Romulan said. “
You seem to be experiencing some form of technical difficulty, Lieutenant
.” As the last words left his mouth, the viewscreen’s image chose that moment to coalesce into perfect resolution. The annoying static and other bothersome interference were gone, leaving only Grathus to stare at him with an unreadable expression.

Sulu shrugged. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about. Everything’s fine on our end.” The comment was enough to make the Romulan’s eyes narrow, and he pressed his lips together as though biting back a retort.

Instead, Grathus said, “
It is my understanding that this system occupies nonaligned space, not that I am interested in discussing this matter with you. Where is your captain?
”

Forcing himself not to take the obvious bait, Sulu replied, “The indigenous population of this solar system has entered into an alliance with the Federation. In the interests of maintaining civil discourse, I recommend we chalk this up to a simple misunderstanding, Commander.”