Battlestations!, page 12
Good thing, too, because in seconds I was almost beside the rustling. With a howl I hoped was ferocious, I plunged from the protection of the rough cycads, aimed at the noise, and fired.
Instantly, a dye dart buzzed toward me and I plunged to one side. The ground came up to meet me, but the dye dart missed, splattering instead over the twisted roots and vines behind me. Blue paint flecked the shoulder of my uniform—blue? Blue!
“Sarda!” I burst out of the cycads again.
He was wide-eyed and waist-deep in some kind of brown and yellow cane growth, his mock phaser aimed squarely at me.
“What about the others?” I gasped.
“I thought—evidently I was mistaken,” he said, brows drawn.
“They’ve got to be here somewhere! Get behind me!”
We joined forces and hunted. We found our prey, all right, and they found us. Dye darts flew, but none scored hits before one of us ran afoul of a trip wire strung across an open space, and down came a string of giant leaves brimming with stagnant water.
“Yuuuuuuuuck!” blurted one of our enemies. Gasping and sputtering, we split off in different directions, drenched in the most ghastly rank stuff a jungle could offer.
Sarda and I staggered back up our escarpment and rolled onto the moss, choking and definitely reeking.
“What the—what the—what is this stuff?” I gasped.
“A trap, obviously,” he murmured, shaking droplets of stagnancy from his sleeves.
“Oh, gaaack,” I choked, my nose shriveling. “This is … underhanded!”
“And obviously not set by that team.”
“Somebody’s playing practical jokes!”
As the echo of my words looped down through the ravine, Sarda cautiously advised, “Keep control of yourself, Lieutenant.”
“But this isn’t the time or place for practical jokes! The Outlast just isn’t the time for jokes!”
Sarda grasped my arm to calm me down, only to let go when the sleeve squished and let loose a new waft of stink.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists tight, glaring off down the escarpment with an acid scowl. “Vesco! That slug. It could only be him. He used to do the same things to his dormmates at the Academy!”
Sarda sighed and looked at his drenched uniform. “I believe he has turned that particular epithet back upon us,” he commented.
“Come on. We’re going to take him out.”
I struck off down the ravine.
“Piper! Wait!” Sarda chased me down the incline, catching desperately at my uniform parka. “Piper, stop before you give our position away.”
Somewhere down very deep, I realized that I was losing control, letting anger get the better of me. Vesco and his tricks had prevented me from conquering the other team, and for no apparent reason. Why would he rig such a booby trap? Only when I started wondering how he’d known where we were clustered did I remember that his teammate was a Skorr and could fly. All this time, Vesco had had aerial reconnaissance at his disposal and we’d forgotten all about it. Anger hit me again. In my rage, I plowed right down the clearest areas of the jungle, just ahead of Sarda as he tried to force me to stop. Only when my feet sank into an unseen hole and I stumbled forward was he able to catch me.
I clawed at the ferns and pulled myself up. Honey.
My boots were dripping with honey. I looked around, down. Yes, there it was … a neatly dug hole brimming with raw honey, covered with dead bugs. Now the honey, and the bugs, were all over my legs.
“That’s it,” I growled. “He’s mine.” The contaminated honey sucked at my boots as I pushed myself up and turned once again down the incline, but Sarda caught me and, this time, held fast.
He yanked me around. “Lieutenant,” he began firmly, his pale eyes boring deep, “you must control yourself!”
“Vesco’s not playing fair,” I insisted, then accused, “You’re not human. You don’t understand.”
Sarda grasped my shoulders and forced me to face him. “And if he were playing fair, you wouldn’t be walking into his trap. We can beat him as you desire, but not if you let him conquer you even before there is a confrontation. If I can try to think like a human for a few hours,” he said with quiet punctuation, “I ask you to think like a Vulcan.”
Until he saw the fury fade from my face, he refused to let go of my arms. Determination narrowed his eyes. And in those moments of fire and ice, the trial that forged our relationship found its power of creation.
The moment drew itself out. How much real time passed, I’ve no idea. We read each other, communicated more deeply than words can manage, and made not a move until we both knew I had completely absorbed and accepted his pact. Think like a human; think like a Vulcan. The ultimate empathy—trade minds.
I nodded.
“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right.”
Sarda took a deep breath. Relief layered the determination in his eyes. For a few uncomfortable seconds he struggled to regain the stiff composure of his race. “I would estimate that Vesco has littered this area with such traps.”
“I should’ve remembered. Vesco’s specialties are reactology and reflexology,” I told him. “He’s out to rattle us.”
“And very nearly succeeding,” he said, his scowl putting me in my place.
I held my foot up so the insect-laden honey could drip off, then moved aside as carnivorous plants slinked out to lick at the vibrations of drops they hoped were blood. “Yeah … sorry. Well, Vesco’s a psychologist. I should have expected he’d use it. Let’s start using our own specialties.”
Immediately, Sarda unrolled the kit and began proving that he hadn’t been entirely unaffected by my earlier insults either. Evidently he had found his way through my bitterness to that faint ring of truth at its core. He’d opened his mind as I’d dared him to and discovered that he could readjust the receiving mechanisms on the mediscanners to read old-style carrier waves. A couple of hours work and pop, communication. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but we did manage to arrange a rough kind of transceiver.
“It’s called a radio,” Sarda explained. “Very low gain vibrations, not very efficient.’
“Efficient enough,” I said, fondling the mangled Feinberger, now removed from its shell and hooked up with about a dozen spidery additions from pieces of uniform, parts of the electric match, and anything else we could jury-rig to our purpose. It wouldn’t work very well, but it would work.
We put it to use almost immediately. Sarda took a place in a tree high on the escarpment, and I made my way down into the ravine, hoping against hope that the three other teams still remained for me to beat. If there was only one team left, I had already forfeited the Outlast.
From his high vantage point, Sarda was able to pinpoint the positions of the two-man team we’d just missed, and with his superior ability to judge distance he helped me zero in on them. In minutes, their uniforms were stained a satisfying bright blue. Defeat rose in their faces—I empathized, believe me—but they weren’t allowed to utter a sound. They were “dead.” According to the rules, they sat down right where they were and the leader engaged his locator beam. I watched, probably out of paranoia, as they were unceremoniously beamed up to the monitor ship.
Now … the Norwegian. And Vesco.
I had to wait, straining my patience, not to mention my courage, while Sarda tried to locate the two most dangerous teams. While on the bottom of the ravine, I ran into two more of Vesco’s unfriendly little traps—one involving a sizable spider and the other layering my right arm with needleplants—but my promise to Sarda held true. I buried my anger and remembered: Think Vulcan.
“Piper!” the faint crackle of the receiver buzzed in my ear.
I twisted the two metallic fibers that would engage my transmitter. “Here.”
“Piper, do you copy?”
I twisted the fibers tighter and brought the mangled unit to my lips. “Affirmative. I copy. Where are they?”
“I have spotted Gruegen and his teammate. Take a course bearing point-five degrees south. They are roughly 200 yards from you. Be on guard.”
“Moving.”
He kept me apprised of their shifts in position as I made my way through thorny, steamy jungle toward my prey. Finally, in spite of torn clothing and leftover needleplant spines, I spied the two blond heads, gathered my legs under me on a small moss mound, and drew my mock phaser.
In my ear came the faint sizzle of warning. “Piper, they’re turning toward you.”
I nodded to myself, not taking time to engage the transmitter. The fronds in front of me started rustling. They were coming.
I raised my weapon.
“Piper! Vesco and his Skorr are behind you!”
My skin prickled. Behind me! Damn.
“They’re closing on you from both directions,” Sarda warned, his concern coming through strained circuits. “You must retreat—quickly! Piper—”
I could feel them now. That unmistakable, indefinable sensation of warning ran up my arms as I tucked the mock phaser to my chest and hunkered down on the moss hill, glancing behind me at the bobbing heads of Vesco and the Skorr. Close enough to see. Not good.
“Piper!” Sarda hissed, his desperation breaking through that fragile Vulcan shell.
I tore the receiver from my ear and stuffed it into a pocket, then lay the mock phaser down on the moss beside me. Folding my legs, I sat down and arranged my hands in the most unthreatening position possible—hanging over my knees.
Vesco and his teammate broke through the ferns first. They stopped short when they saw me, frozen in astonishment for an instant. I made good use of that instant; I shrugged despondently at them, then put one elbow on my knee and rested my chin in my hand.
Vesco’s brow knitted. He glanced at the bird face of his companion, then grinned in a sort of deflected victory. As I hoped, he didn’t bother to check me for dye-dart stains.
The jungle rustled like stiff taffeta. Vesco dropped his grin and stared. He drew his weapon. The Skorr took his cue and sank into a shadow, careful of huge golden wings.
Dark green jungle patterns gave birth to the muscleman shape of Gruegen, soon followed by his shapely scientist. The Norwegian spied Vesco and drew his weapon with a shout just as a dye dart flashed between him and the woman. Everyone ducked for cover, except me. I sat quietly on my moss hill, head in hand, as dye darts whined in from four directions. It took every ounce of control I had in me to keep from reacting. I sat still, tense as drawn string, ignoring the whistles of darts ringing around me and splattering on the foliage and rocks. In my pocket, the muffled buzz of Sarda’s frantic calls vibrated faintly.
A howl from my left accompanied the thud of a dye dart against a human form. Gruegen rose from the ferns, his shoulder and the right side of his face bathed in purple dye. His teammate came out from her own hiding place, staring at him. In a silent chorus, their expressions sank.
Misery crumpling his face, Gruegen wordlessly drew his locator and signaled to be beamed up. Vesco emerged from the bushes near me, followed soon by his scientist, and beamed his unabashed victory as Gruegen and the woman dissolved into bands of light and disappeared.
In his rush of triumph, Vesco never bothered to wonder why I too hadn’t been beamed up yet. His shoulders straightened and he puffed up, believing himself the ultimate winner of the Outlast. He rubbed his hands around his mock phaser, rather lovingly, I thought, and grinned at his teammate. Striding fully into the clearing, he looked at me and opened his mouth to say something.
That’s how he got ultramarine dye all over his teeth.
He blinked, and his eyes widened. Then widened some more. Arms spread, he dropped his gaze to the splotch of blue on his uniform. He stared at it. The Skorr stared at it. They both stared at my mock phaser, now firmly back in my hand.
I continued to sit rather sheepishly on my moss hill, my lips pressed tight. All’s fair in the Outlast, after all.
Vesco started to shake. Pure rage rumbled up through his body. His fists balled up tight. Only the stern rules of the Outlast kept him from tearing into me.
Great golden wings drooped in despair as the Skorr scientist drew its locator and went to stand beside the rosy and rabid Vesco. Their last sight of the Outlast as they were beamed up was little old me sitting on my moss lump, quietly being the commander of the champion team.
I don’t know. Three words a Vulcan hates. And I hated them too when they referred to Sarda’s life. That friendship had been won on the Outlast, lost when I found out about Sarda’s talent for weaponry and unknowingly humiliated him by making it known to Star Fleet, then finally won back when we had stood together against Admiral Rittenhouse’s power-seeking campaign. I fought to absorb the idea that our relationship might have been cut off before its chance to grow. I fought not to be jealous of Spock as I stood near him on Rex’s bridge. Spock had had years with Kirk to cultivate their unique mutual understanding. It seemed unfair that Sarda and I might be denied the same chance.
For all the pain it brought me when I recalled the Outlast, the privileges and honors and parties and advantages it gave Sarda and me at Star Fleet Academy, the vividness of that episode brought with it a glimmer of hope, a faint star of chance to brighten Rex’s dim bridge and sweeten my determination. If Sarda was dead, I would make sure he hadn’t died for nothing.
If he was alive, I now knew how we could find him.
I moved a few steps forward, to where Mr. Spock was tensely scanning the energy readouts of the fast-fading transwarp flux. “Sir,” I began.
He turned his head. “Commander?”
“About locating Mornay and the others …” Sensing something even I, in my numbness, didn’t feel yet, Spock stood up and faced me. When he spoke, I knew he understood.
“You have a plan?”
Chapter Seven
“How fallible of me.”
—The Squire of Gothos
“RADIO? You MEAN like … radio?”
“That’s right, Scanner. Old carrier waves. Go ahead. Do it.”
He gawked at me a moment longer, waiting for the punch line no doubt, then faced his sensor equipment, altogether dubious. He touched the console plaintively, and gave up before even beginning. Twisting around, he accused, “You say ’do it’ as though all it takes is spittin’ on a twig. I’m not even sure this kind of equipment can be tuned down that far. You’re talking about a frequency that’s lower than a hog in a waller, you know that?”
I pointed at the console’s transmitting panel and said, “Try to aim them in the general vicinity of the transwarp flux, and when we beam down, we can continue to track them with tricorders.”
“But I’m try in’ to tell yawl—”
“Lieutenant Sandage,” Spock interrupted fluidly, “if you set your frequency balance at submedian, then gradually adjust the energy level according to the correct bands, you may find carrier waves accessible.”
“It’ll all have to be manual, sir.” Scanner sounded apologetic. “Otherwise the computer’ II tell us it can’t be done.”
“That’s all right,” I told him. “Just don’t listen to it. It’s like flying an atmosphere craft and keeping altitude with throttle instead of wing angle.”
Spock nodded. “Correct. If those frequencies are accessible with these sensors, it will be through energy power rather than actual adjustment of the wave bands.”
Scanner threw up his hands. “Okay, okay. S’worth a shot.” He settled down to the tricky adjustments, which had to be recalibrated every few seconds. “Do I have any idea what I’m waiting for?”
“Response,” I told him. “If Sarda’s alive and in a laboratory of some kind and picks up those waves, he’ll know who’s sending them.”
“That’s a lotta if’s.” Scanner sighed and wiggled his fingers before hunching over the sensor console and searching for the delicate balance of energy and wave output. So low they were affected even by our movements in the ship’s orbit, those waves had to be chased by hand and eye. A starship’s sophisticated computer sensors could have kept up with them, but Rex’s ragtag system could not do anything so refined. Scanner sat there for an exhausting two hours, painstakingly sending low-gain waves toward the location of the transwarp flux. As the time passed, I grew more respectful of Scanner’s talents with the sensor equipment as he made adjustments with his fingers that were even too tiny to show up on the screen. I soon gave up trying to follow what he was doing and simply sat back in amazement.
Below us turned the outskirts of Yelgor City. I was dying to get there, to get things going, to find Sarda and rescue him, or, if he was dead, to begin dealing with his death. Kirk would be along soon, ready to deal with Dr. Mornay, yet Spock and I hadn’t even been able to begin our mission of separating her from Perren and Sarda. Time began to sit on me, smothering and prickly with responsibility. I’d expected the appearance of Spock to siphon the weight of that responsibility, but it hadn’t. Less and less was I able to shift away the pacts I made with myself when I accepted the stone of command.
Frustration of this caliber, this feeling of sitting at the core of a storm yet being completely impotent to take action, drove me to confront Spock when otherwise I never would have. He was still trying to pinpoint the transwarp flux origin, even though the waves had long since dissipated, leaving only the faintest traces of disruption in the fabric of space. Speaking in a low voice so as not to bother Scanner, I began, “Mr. Spock?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Where is Captain Kirk, sir? Is he on his way? Do we have any clues?”
Spock’s honesty, both of word and expression, was easy to appreciate. “He may be,” he said, swiveling to face me. “Even he was unsure of his moment-to-moment plans. I know he was reticent to bring Enterprise to Argelius at the outset. He did obviously intend to join us at some point, but he himself didn’t know the point. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
I nodded, staring at the floor, contemplating.
“Thank you,” I said slowly then. “That leaves me free to move.”
Instantly, a dye dart buzzed toward me and I plunged to one side. The ground came up to meet me, but the dye dart missed, splattering instead over the twisted roots and vines behind me. Blue paint flecked the shoulder of my uniform—blue? Blue!
“Sarda!” I burst out of the cycads again.
He was wide-eyed and waist-deep in some kind of brown and yellow cane growth, his mock phaser aimed squarely at me.
“What about the others?” I gasped.
“I thought—evidently I was mistaken,” he said, brows drawn.
“They’ve got to be here somewhere! Get behind me!”
We joined forces and hunted. We found our prey, all right, and they found us. Dye darts flew, but none scored hits before one of us ran afoul of a trip wire strung across an open space, and down came a string of giant leaves brimming with stagnant water.
“Yuuuuuuuuck!” blurted one of our enemies. Gasping and sputtering, we split off in different directions, drenched in the most ghastly rank stuff a jungle could offer.
Sarda and I staggered back up our escarpment and rolled onto the moss, choking and definitely reeking.
“What the—what the—what is this stuff?” I gasped.
“A trap, obviously,” he murmured, shaking droplets of stagnancy from his sleeves.
“Oh, gaaack,” I choked, my nose shriveling. “This is … underhanded!”
“And obviously not set by that team.”
“Somebody’s playing practical jokes!”
As the echo of my words looped down through the ravine, Sarda cautiously advised, “Keep control of yourself, Lieutenant.”
“But this isn’t the time or place for practical jokes! The Outlast just isn’t the time for jokes!”
Sarda grasped my arm to calm me down, only to let go when the sleeve squished and let loose a new waft of stink.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists tight, glaring off down the escarpment with an acid scowl. “Vesco! That slug. It could only be him. He used to do the same things to his dormmates at the Academy!”
Sarda sighed and looked at his drenched uniform. “I believe he has turned that particular epithet back upon us,” he commented.
“Come on. We’re going to take him out.”
I struck off down the ravine.
“Piper! Wait!” Sarda chased me down the incline, catching desperately at my uniform parka. “Piper, stop before you give our position away.”
Somewhere down very deep, I realized that I was losing control, letting anger get the better of me. Vesco and his tricks had prevented me from conquering the other team, and for no apparent reason. Why would he rig such a booby trap? Only when I started wondering how he’d known where we were clustered did I remember that his teammate was a Skorr and could fly. All this time, Vesco had had aerial reconnaissance at his disposal and we’d forgotten all about it. Anger hit me again. In my rage, I plowed right down the clearest areas of the jungle, just ahead of Sarda as he tried to force me to stop. Only when my feet sank into an unseen hole and I stumbled forward was he able to catch me.
I clawed at the ferns and pulled myself up. Honey.
My boots were dripping with honey. I looked around, down. Yes, there it was … a neatly dug hole brimming with raw honey, covered with dead bugs. Now the honey, and the bugs, were all over my legs.
“That’s it,” I growled. “He’s mine.” The contaminated honey sucked at my boots as I pushed myself up and turned once again down the incline, but Sarda caught me and, this time, held fast.
He yanked me around. “Lieutenant,” he began firmly, his pale eyes boring deep, “you must control yourself!”
“Vesco’s not playing fair,” I insisted, then accused, “You’re not human. You don’t understand.”
Sarda grasped my shoulders and forced me to face him. “And if he were playing fair, you wouldn’t be walking into his trap. We can beat him as you desire, but not if you let him conquer you even before there is a confrontation. If I can try to think like a human for a few hours,” he said with quiet punctuation, “I ask you to think like a Vulcan.”
Until he saw the fury fade from my face, he refused to let go of my arms. Determination narrowed his eyes. And in those moments of fire and ice, the trial that forged our relationship found its power of creation.
The moment drew itself out. How much real time passed, I’ve no idea. We read each other, communicated more deeply than words can manage, and made not a move until we both knew I had completely absorbed and accepted his pact. Think like a human; think like a Vulcan. The ultimate empathy—trade minds.
I nodded.
“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right.”
Sarda took a deep breath. Relief layered the determination in his eyes. For a few uncomfortable seconds he struggled to regain the stiff composure of his race. “I would estimate that Vesco has littered this area with such traps.”
“I should’ve remembered. Vesco’s specialties are reactology and reflexology,” I told him. “He’s out to rattle us.”
“And very nearly succeeding,” he said, his scowl putting me in my place.
I held my foot up so the insect-laden honey could drip off, then moved aside as carnivorous plants slinked out to lick at the vibrations of drops they hoped were blood. “Yeah … sorry. Well, Vesco’s a psychologist. I should have expected he’d use it. Let’s start using our own specialties.”
Immediately, Sarda unrolled the kit and began proving that he hadn’t been entirely unaffected by my earlier insults either. Evidently he had found his way through my bitterness to that faint ring of truth at its core. He’d opened his mind as I’d dared him to and discovered that he could readjust the receiving mechanisms on the mediscanners to read old-style carrier waves. A couple of hours work and pop, communication. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but we did manage to arrange a rough kind of transceiver.
“It’s called a radio,” Sarda explained. “Very low gain vibrations, not very efficient.’
“Efficient enough,” I said, fondling the mangled Feinberger, now removed from its shell and hooked up with about a dozen spidery additions from pieces of uniform, parts of the electric match, and anything else we could jury-rig to our purpose. It wouldn’t work very well, but it would work.
We put it to use almost immediately. Sarda took a place in a tree high on the escarpment, and I made my way down into the ravine, hoping against hope that the three other teams still remained for me to beat. If there was only one team left, I had already forfeited the Outlast.
From his high vantage point, Sarda was able to pinpoint the positions of the two-man team we’d just missed, and with his superior ability to judge distance he helped me zero in on them. In minutes, their uniforms were stained a satisfying bright blue. Defeat rose in their faces—I empathized, believe me—but they weren’t allowed to utter a sound. They were “dead.” According to the rules, they sat down right where they were and the leader engaged his locator beam. I watched, probably out of paranoia, as they were unceremoniously beamed up to the monitor ship.
Now … the Norwegian. And Vesco.
I had to wait, straining my patience, not to mention my courage, while Sarda tried to locate the two most dangerous teams. While on the bottom of the ravine, I ran into two more of Vesco’s unfriendly little traps—one involving a sizable spider and the other layering my right arm with needleplants—but my promise to Sarda held true. I buried my anger and remembered: Think Vulcan.
“Piper!” the faint crackle of the receiver buzzed in my ear.
I twisted the two metallic fibers that would engage my transmitter. “Here.”
“Piper, do you copy?”
I twisted the fibers tighter and brought the mangled unit to my lips. “Affirmative. I copy. Where are they?”
“I have spotted Gruegen and his teammate. Take a course bearing point-five degrees south. They are roughly 200 yards from you. Be on guard.”
“Moving.”
He kept me apprised of their shifts in position as I made my way through thorny, steamy jungle toward my prey. Finally, in spite of torn clothing and leftover needleplant spines, I spied the two blond heads, gathered my legs under me on a small moss mound, and drew my mock phaser.
In my ear came the faint sizzle of warning. “Piper, they’re turning toward you.”
I nodded to myself, not taking time to engage the transmitter. The fronds in front of me started rustling. They were coming.
I raised my weapon.
“Piper! Vesco and his Skorr are behind you!”
My skin prickled. Behind me! Damn.
“They’re closing on you from both directions,” Sarda warned, his concern coming through strained circuits. “You must retreat—quickly! Piper—”
I could feel them now. That unmistakable, indefinable sensation of warning ran up my arms as I tucked the mock phaser to my chest and hunkered down on the moss hill, glancing behind me at the bobbing heads of Vesco and the Skorr. Close enough to see. Not good.
“Piper!” Sarda hissed, his desperation breaking through that fragile Vulcan shell.
I tore the receiver from my ear and stuffed it into a pocket, then lay the mock phaser down on the moss beside me. Folding my legs, I sat down and arranged my hands in the most unthreatening position possible—hanging over my knees.
Vesco and his teammate broke through the ferns first. They stopped short when they saw me, frozen in astonishment for an instant. I made good use of that instant; I shrugged despondently at them, then put one elbow on my knee and rested my chin in my hand.
Vesco’s brow knitted. He glanced at the bird face of his companion, then grinned in a sort of deflected victory. As I hoped, he didn’t bother to check me for dye-dart stains.
The jungle rustled like stiff taffeta. Vesco dropped his grin and stared. He drew his weapon. The Skorr took his cue and sank into a shadow, careful of huge golden wings.
Dark green jungle patterns gave birth to the muscleman shape of Gruegen, soon followed by his shapely scientist. The Norwegian spied Vesco and drew his weapon with a shout just as a dye dart flashed between him and the woman. Everyone ducked for cover, except me. I sat quietly on my moss hill, head in hand, as dye darts whined in from four directions. It took every ounce of control I had in me to keep from reacting. I sat still, tense as drawn string, ignoring the whistles of darts ringing around me and splattering on the foliage and rocks. In my pocket, the muffled buzz of Sarda’s frantic calls vibrated faintly.
A howl from my left accompanied the thud of a dye dart against a human form. Gruegen rose from the ferns, his shoulder and the right side of his face bathed in purple dye. His teammate came out from her own hiding place, staring at him. In a silent chorus, their expressions sank.
Misery crumpling his face, Gruegen wordlessly drew his locator and signaled to be beamed up. Vesco emerged from the bushes near me, followed soon by his scientist, and beamed his unabashed victory as Gruegen and the woman dissolved into bands of light and disappeared.
In his rush of triumph, Vesco never bothered to wonder why I too hadn’t been beamed up yet. His shoulders straightened and he puffed up, believing himself the ultimate winner of the Outlast. He rubbed his hands around his mock phaser, rather lovingly, I thought, and grinned at his teammate. Striding fully into the clearing, he looked at me and opened his mouth to say something.
That’s how he got ultramarine dye all over his teeth.
He blinked, and his eyes widened. Then widened some more. Arms spread, he dropped his gaze to the splotch of blue on his uniform. He stared at it. The Skorr stared at it. They both stared at my mock phaser, now firmly back in my hand.
I continued to sit rather sheepishly on my moss hill, my lips pressed tight. All’s fair in the Outlast, after all.
Vesco started to shake. Pure rage rumbled up through his body. His fists balled up tight. Only the stern rules of the Outlast kept him from tearing into me.
Great golden wings drooped in despair as the Skorr scientist drew its locator and went to stand beside the rosy and rabid Vesco. Their last sight of the Outlast as they were beamed up was little old me sitting on my moss lump, quietly being the commander of the champion team.
I don’t know. Three words a Vulcan hates. And I hated them too when they referred to Sarda’s life. That friendship had been won on the Outlast, lost when I found out about Sarda’s talent for weaponry and unknowingly humiliated him by making it known to Star Fleet, then finally won back when we had stood together against Admiral Rittenhouse’s power-seeking campaign. I fought to absorb the idea that our relationship might have been cut off before its chance to grow. I fought not to be jealous of Spock as I stood near him on Rex’s bridge. Spock had had years with Kirk to cultivate their unique mutual understanding. It seemed unfair that Sarda and I might be denied the same chance.
For all the pain it brought me when I recalled the Outlast, the privileges and honors and parties and advantages it gave Sarda and me at Star Fleet Academy, the vividness of that episode brought with it a glimmer of hope, a faint star of chance to brighten Rex’s dim bridge and sweeten my determination. If Sarda was dead, I would make sure he hadn’t died for nothing.
If he was alive, I now knew how we could find him.
I moved a few steps forward, to where Mr. Spock was tensely scanning the energy readouts of the fast-fading transwarp flux. “Sir,” I began.
He turned his head. “Commander?”
“About locating Mornay and the others …” Sensing something even I, in my numbness, didn’t feel yet, Spock stood up and faced me. When he spoke, I knew he understood.
“You have a plan?”
Chapter Seven
“How fallible of me.”
—The Squire of Gothos
“RADIO? You MEAN like … radio?”
“That’s right, Scanner. Old carrier waves. Go ahead. Do it.”
He gawked at me a moment longer, waiting for the punch line no doubt, then faced his sensor equipment, altogether dubious. He touched the console plaintively, and gave up before even beginning. Twisting around, he accused, “You say ’do it’ as though all it takes is spittin’ on a twig. I’m not even sure this kind of equipment can be tuned down that far. You’re talking about a frequency that’s lower than a hog in a waller, you know that?”
I pointed at the console’s transmitting panel and said, “Try to aim them in the general vicinity of the transwarp flux, and when we beam down, we can continue to track them with tricorders.”
“But I’m try in’ to tell yawl—”
“Lieutenant Sandage,” Spock interrupted fluidly, “if you set your frequency balance at submedian, then gradually adjust the energy level according to the correct bands, you may find carrier waves accessible.”
“It’ll all have to be manual, sir.” Scanner sounded apologetic. “Otherwise the computer’ II tell us it can’t be done.”
“That’s all right,” I told him. “Just don’t listen to it. It’s like flying an atmosphere craft and keeping altitude with throttle instead of wing angle.”
Spock nodded. “Correct. If those frequencies are accessible with these sensors, it will be through energy power rather than actual adjustment of the wave bands.”
Scanner threw up his hands. “Okay, okay. S’worth a shot.” He settled down to the tricky adjustments, which had to be recalibrated every few seconds. “Do I have any idea what I’m waiting for?”
“Response,” I told him. “If Sarda’s alive and in a laboratory of some kind and picks up those waves, he’ll know who’s sending them.”
“That’s a lotta if’s.” Scanner sighed and wiggled his fingers before hunching over the sensor console and searching for the delicate balance of energy and wave output. So low they were affected even by our movements in the ship’s orbit, those waves had to be chased by hand and eye. A starship’s sophisticated computer sensors could have kept up with them, but Rex’s ragtag system could not do anything so refined. Scanner sat there for an exhausting two hours, painstakingly sending low-gain waves toward the location of the transwarp flux. As the time passed, I grew more respectful of Scanner’s talents with the sensor equipment as he made adjustments with his fingers that were even too tiny to show up on the screen. I soon gave up trying to follow what he was doing and simply sat back in amazement.
Below us turned the outskirts of Yelgor City. I was dying to get there, to get things going, to find Sarda and rescue him, or, if he was dead, to begin dealing with his death. Kirk would be along soon, ready to deal with Dr. Mornay, yet Spock and I hadn’t even been able to begin our mission of separating her from Perren and Sarda. Time began to sit on me, smothering and prickly with responsibility. I’d expected the appearance of Spock to siphon the weight of that responsibility, but it hadn’t. Less and less was I able to shift away the pacts I made with myself when I accepted the stone of command.
Frustration of this caliber, this feeling of sitting at the core of a storm yet being completely impotent to take action, drove me to confront Spock when otherwise I never would have. He was still trying to pinpoint the transwarp flux origin, even though the waves had long since dissipated, leaving only the faintest traces of disruption in the fabric of space. Speaking in a low voice so as not to bother Scanner, I began, “Mr. Spock?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Where is Captain Kirk, sir? Is he on his way? Do we have any clues?”
Spock’s honesty, both of word and expression, was easy to appreciate. “He may be,” he said, swiveling to face me. “Even he was unsure of his moment-to-moment plans. I know he was reticent to bring Enterprise to Argelius at the outset. He did obviously intend to join us at some point, but he himself didn’t know the point. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
I nodded, staring at the floor, contemplating.
“Thank you,” I said slowly then. “That leaves me free to move.”
