Crucible: Kirk (8 page)

Then he realized that he knew somebody within the nexus who could.

2255/(2255/2271)

The plasma blast seared the air beside the left ear of Lieutenant James T. Kirk. Though he didn't see the pulse as it rocketed past him, he did feel its heat, did hear the low, menacing hum it generated. He flinched and dived down to his right, throwing himself to the outpost floor behind a dense tangle of wrecked equipment. On the far side of the room, the plasma shot exploded against the wall, sending up a thunderous report and leaving behind a scorched, smoking scar in whatever type of metal had been utilized to construct the Pelfrey Complex here on Beta Regenis II.

Next to Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Leslie DeGuerrin sat with her back against a broken console that had crashed onto its side. Tall and strongly built, she calmly studied the gauge on her laser pistol. “Almost drained,” she told Kirk. It didn't surprise him. They'd been engaged in this firefight for more than an hour, and for the last half of that time, they'd abandoned the stun settings—and the correspondingly lower power requirements—of their weapons. When it had become apparent that the landing party faced a force at least three times their number, DeGuerrin had made it clear that the odds of their getting out of the complex alive would increase dramatically if they could permanently eliminate enemy fighters, rather than just rendering them unconscious for a short time; Tholians typically recovered quickly from the stun effect of Starfleet lasers.

Kirk raised his own pistol and examined the power indicator. “Mine's down to nineteen percent,” he said. “What do we do now?” DeGuerrin had led their four-member team here from the
Farragut.
While the starship completed a badly needed delivery of medicine and medical personnel to the New Mozambique colony, Captain Garrovick had sent the shuttlecraft
Dahlgren
to Beta Regenis II. There, in the domed Pelfrey Complex that had been constructed on the inhospitable surface of the class-K planet, Dr. Mowry—the ship's assistant chief medical officer—would administer the annual physical examinations to the outpost scientists, as required by Starfleet regulations. At the same time, DeGuerrin, Kirk, and Ensign Ketchum would collect research materials and reports that needed to be conveyed to Starfleet.

DeGuerrin looked up from her laser pistol. “I'm not sure what we
can
do,” she said. “How many of them did you count?”

“There have to be at least fourteen,” Kirk said, basing the figure on what he had seen and heard of the Tholians since the
Dahlgren
crew had come under attack. Because the nonhumanoid aliens wore environmental suits, it had been particularly difficult to tell one from another, but Kirk felt confident that he'd identified as least that many distinct individuals.

“I thought at least eighteen,” DeGuerrin said, “including the two we killed. That leaves no less than sixteen.” Kirk didn't dispute DeGuerrin's assessment, trusting her expertise in security matters. He also understood what she hadn't said: that, given the circumstances, the quartet of
Farragut
crewmembers had virtually no chance of defeating a Tholian contingent of that size. “We're going to have to make a run for the
Dahlgren,”
DeGuerrin said, clearly choosing retreat over continuing the battle.

But while Kirk would've gladly considered escape a victory at this juncture, he also knew two facts that made such a course problematic. To begin with, this facility had been erected for the purpose of allowing a scientific team to investigate both the planet's atmosphere and its volatile crust; the former inhibited the use of transporters, sensors, deflector shields, and communicators, while the latter contained unusual compounds that might provide useful in power generation and the manufacture of weapons. Kirk didn't know what the researchers and scientists had learned so far, but he did know that any knowledge they had gleaned needed to be kept out of the hands of the belligerent Tholian Assembly.

He also knew that if the
Farragut
crewmembers attempted to reach the
Dahlgren
in the complex's hangar, they would find a group of Tholians waiting for them. He said as much to DeGuerrin. “Even if we managed to get to the shuttlecraft and were able to launch,” he added, “they must have a ship somewhere nearby.” Since the Tholians could not have beamed through the atmosphere, they must have landed at the complex at some point, but when Kirk had set the
Dahlgren
down in the hangar—he'd piloted the shuttle here from the
Farragut
—he had seen no craft there other than the scientists' two workpods.

In fact, the first indication of there being something wrong at the facility had come when DeGuerrin's team entered and found it silent. Within the small pressure dome, the Pelfrey Complex consisted of a series of concentric, interlocking rings. The hangar and life support machinery occupied the perimeter and encircled a loop of hydroponically grown crops. Next came living quarters and common areas for the dozen scientists and support personnel stationed on Beta Regenis II. At the center of the complex, a series of laboratories had been set up. It had been there, in one of the labs, that the
Farragut
crew had found the twelve bodies. DeGuerrin had ordered the team back to the shuttlecraft at once, but too late; the Tholians had already cut off their escape.

“Our only other choice is to try to find a way of destroying the complex,” DeGuerrin said. Suddenly, two more plasma weapons fired, one pulse striking the far wall and the other slamming into the heap of ruined equipment behind which Kirk and DeGuerrin had taken cover. He automatically recoiled, but the security officer only reacted by climbing to her knees and firing her laser pistol from behind the pile of equipment.

When she finished, Kirk said, “This place is encased in a pressure dome. It shouldn't take too much effort to make it fail.”

“No,” DeGuerrin agreed, but then she shook her head. “The Tholians are wearing environmental suits, though. They could potentially survive a catastrophic failure of the dome.”

“They could,” Kirk said. “The scientists here also kept their own environmental suits back in the hangar, but we could never reach them.” He shrugged. “I wasn't thinking about saving us or killing the Tholians, though. I was only thinking about protecting the research that's been done here. Even if the data or the samples or whatever work has been accomplished isn't wiped out, the collapse of the dome atop the complex would make retrieving any of it more than a simple operation.”

“That would give Captain Garrovick enough time to realize that we're overdue and bring the
Farragut
here,” DeGuerrin said.

“And stop the Tholians,” Kirk concluded.

DeGuerrin peered around the lab. “Do you think they would have put dome monitors and controls in here?” she asked.

“My guess is that if they did, the panels are through there,” Kirk said, pointing to a pair of closed doors to their left, perhaps ten strides away. “That's the hub of the complex. Besides having controls out by the life support equipment, I think the support personnel would want to be able to check and operate those systems from a secondary, centrally located area.”

“Makes sense,” DeGuerrin said. Kirk also knew that it didn't much matter whether it did or not. The Tholians had allowed the four of them to reach the heart of the complex before closing ranks around them. Completely contained now, the
Farragut
crewmembers could realistically only attempt to hold their ground or move farther inward.

DeGuerrin looked directly ahead, and Kirk followed her gaze to an open doorway. The two had left Dr. Mowry and Ensign Ketchum in the adjoining lab, giving them a respite while Kirk and DeGuerrin had returned here to reengage the Tholians. “Can you get back to them?” asked the lieutenant commander. “Tell them what I'm going to attempt?”

Kirk nodded. He did not relish the idea of informing two of his crewmates that they would shortly die, but he understood that he had to tell them. About to make the sacrifice they knew might be required of them when they had joined Starfleet, they deserved to be treated with honesty and respect. “I'll make it,” Kirk said. “I'll tell them.”

“All right,” DeGuerrin said. She rose up onto her haunches, obviously preparing to break for the inner labs to their left. “Cover me,” she said. “And wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Kirk said as he set himself at the edge of the smashed equipment behind which he and DeGuerrin hid. He raised his laser pistol and asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Then here I go,” Kirk said. Low to the floor, he looked out toward the positions from which the Tholians had been firing—two open entryways into the room—and saw the shimmer of their green environmental suits from just beyond. He opened fire. He saw one of the Tholians duck away, but another returned a spate of plasma bolts in Kirk's direction. The heap of wrecked equipment shook as the shots rocked it.

Kirk continued to fire, but glanced over toward DeGuerrin. He saw her sprinting across the room toward the doors, which opened at her approach, but then a plasma bolt slammed into her shoulder. Kirk heard her cry out briefly. Her momentum carried her forward as her body spun around from the force of the shot. DeGuerrin made it into the next room, but just past the threshold, she collapsed. The doors slid shut behind her.

Kirk stopped firing and took cover once more. He looked to his left again and saw two more blasts from the Tholian weapons, these hammering into the doors. He didn't know what he should do. Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin had been hit, he'd seen that, he'd seen her go down, but if she'd only been wounded, she still might be able to carry out the actions she'd intended.

But she might not be,
Kirk told himself, and the thought made his decision easy. He quickly made his way to the other side of the shattered equipment, then prepared to follow DeGuerrin. As he did so, he spotted her laser pistol lying on the floor two-thirds of the way to the doors. She must've dropped it when she'd been hit. Kirk thought that the lost weapon might just allow him to safely navigate his way to the hub of the lab complex.

Reaching out quickly, Kirk fired blindly toward the Tholians, then raced out from his cover and toward the doors. After three steps, he stopped abruptly, waited for an instant, then resumed running again. He heard, felt, and saw plasma bolts all about him. Five strides along, Kirk lunged forward, bringing his right shoulder down toward the floor. He saw DeGuerrin's laser at close range as he flew over it, but he did not reach for it. As his shoulder struck the floor and he rolled, he saw a blast of plasma surge into the weapon and send it flying.

Amid the salvo of the Tholian weapons, a small squeak reached Kirk's ears: the doors to the inner labs opening. He soared past the jamb and came to rest on his back. As the doors glided closed behind him, he quickly pushed himself up. Beside him lay Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin, her eyes closed, smoke rising from a charred wound in her shoulder, the stench of her seared flesh sickeningly strong. Kirk reached two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. He found one, weak but present.

Knowing that he didn't have long, that the Tholians would close in soon enough, Kirk rose, touched a control beside the doors to lock them, then examined his new environs. He stood in a large room shaped like one quarter of a circle, having entered it through the outer, arcing wall. Consoles lined the periphery of the room, and several large machines he did not recognize filled the interior of the space. Dashing from one panel to the next, he searched for anything that resembled environmental controls for the dome.

He found nothing.

Weapons fire pounded into the doors, and Kirk looked back in that direction, over at DeGuerrin. If the Tholians penetrated this lab, he knew that they would immediately kill her, and so he felt the temptation to return to her and move her to a safer place. The thought made no sense, though, for if Kirk succeeded in bringing down the pressure dome, they would all die anyway. Saving Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin now would be a foolish waste of time.

Another pulse struck the door, the percussive sound pushing Kirk back into motion. He rushed across the room and through a single door, this in one of the two straight walls. He found himself in a lab shaped identically to the last one, but oriented and equipped differently. Various stations lined the walls, but two very large machines sat in the middle of the room, their purposes a mystery to Kirk. Bordering one of them, a low platform contained an enormous slab of metallic rock, at least five meters long, five meters wide, and two deep. It had obviously been carved out of the planet's surface and brought here for study.

As he had in the previous lab, Kirk locked the doors, then hied from panel to panel, hunting for the controls of the pressure dome. He'd only checked two consoles, though, before he stopped and turned back to regard the mass of native stone. Then he peered at all three entrances into the room, a single door in each of the two straight walls and a set of double doors in the curved wall. The great rock would have fit through none of them, he realized; it must have been
beamed
here.

Kirk returned his attention to the panels, but now he began looking for transporter controls. He knew that the planet's atmosphere inhibited transport
through
it, but within the Pelfrey Complex itself, within the pressure dome, it must have been possible. The scientists must have employed a workpod to drag the mammoth stone into the hangar, and then from there beamed it into the lab.