Chain of Attack (16 page)

"And I am Belzhrokaz," the Hoshan said. "All Hoshan in the Zone of Destruction are my responsibility."

"I am pleased that you both have contacted us," Kirk said. "I am also pleased that our gifts have enabled you to speak with each other."

"Your devices are most helpful," the Zeator, Endrakon, said, raising his translator a fraction. "Had they existed a hundred years ago, many lives might have been saved."

"Many lives can still be saved," Kirk said, "if you will continue the contact you have begun."

"Yes," Endrakon said, "that is our hope. And that is why we have contacted you, Commander Kirk. We have need of your great ship."

Kirk hesitated a fraction, darting a glance at Spock and Scott, who volunteered nothing. "As we told your people when they were on board the
Enterprise
," he said, "we will do whatever we can to help. What is it you wish?"

"As I am sure you can understand, Commander Kirk," Belzhrokaz said, "a hundred years of all-out war cannot be ended in a day, nor can trust be built in a similar period. Both will take time, and both will require more direct contact between Hoshan and Zeator than can be accomplished through subspace links such as these. We must meet, face to face, if peace is ever to come."

"Understood," Kirk said. "Do you wish to meet, then, on neutral ground? On board the
Enterprise
?"

"Neutral ground, yes," Endrakon said, picking up where Belzhrokaz had left off as smoothly as if it had been rehearsed. "It is a concept neither of us has considered in hundreds of years, but that is what we wish. However, there is more."

"Again," Kirk said, "anything we can do to help, we will."

"The rest of what we need is more onerous, Commander Kirk," the Zeator continued, "and more dangerous. We need—we both need your great ship to guarantee the safety of our own ships when we meet."

"Could you not simply agree to disarm your ships?" Kirk asked slowly.

"Impossible!" the Zeator said and was echoed by the Hoshan.

"You could keep your ships separated, then," Kirk said, "as they are now. The
Enterprise
could collect representatives from both ships and—"

"No," Belzhrokaz interrupted. "We must face each other, not only individually on your
Enterprise
but with our ships. There is no other way if our efforts are to succeed."

"He is right," Endrakon said. "We must meet. Our forces must meet, peacefully. We must learn, after centuries of war, to trust each other, but during those first steps, we both must have your protection."

"From each other?" Kirk asked, frowning. "How can we protect you against each other?"

"We believe your presence alone will be enough," Belzhrokaz said. "We have both seen what your weapons can do, how they can penetrate our shields as if they did not exist. If either of us attacks the other, you must be prepared to destroy whatever ship fires the first shot."

"I wasn't aware," Kirk said slowly, "that either of you trusted
us
all that much."

"We do not trust you completely," the Hoshan continued, "but we trust you more than we trust each other at this point. And we have little choice. If we are to have even the slightest hope of ending these centuries of war, we have
no
choice."

"On that," the Zeator said, "we agree. Our worlds have lived in fear for centuries. We must take this chance to end that fear. Your presence and your gifts that allow us to communicate have given us that chance, and we must take it. With your great ship to ensure a peaceful first meeting, perhaps we will succeed."

Slowly, Kirk looked from the image of the Zeator to that of the Hoshan, trying to penetrate the barrier of their expressionless faces, as he had tried with the Hoshan earlier. But this time there was nothing, not even the tiniest clue in their features to guide him.

"Very well," he said finally, "it will be as you wish."

"Thank you, Commander Kirk," Endrakon said, echoed by Belzhrokaz. "If you will continue your subspace transmissions, we will both follow them to your ship."

A moment later, the images faded.

"Both ships are still transmitting, Captain," Uhura said, "but only a carrier. Shall I do as they said?"

Kirk nodded. "Continue to transmit," he said, "but do as they do. Only a carrier, no modulation."

"I dinna like it, Captain," Scott said, shaking his head. "I wouldna put it past either o' them to rig their own ships to blow and then try to blame it on the other."

"The thought had crossed my mind, Scotty. But we can monitor them for that sort of thing easily enough. And before they arrive, we'll
tell
them we can. We'll make it abundantly clear that we can tell the difference between another suicide and an attack." Kirk paused, frowning at the blank screens. "I only hope it's something that simple that they're up to."

 

ALWAYS IN THE past, once Dr. Jason Crandall's spirits hit rock bottom, once he came to fully accept the situation as it existed and began to make plans based on that newly accepted version of reality, his spirits would begin to lift. From despair would come the seeds of anticipation. It had happened in the wake of the Tajarhi disaster, when he had finally accepted the fact that, even though the accident had not been his fault, he would be the one to shoulder the blame. Once he had accepted that basic fact, no matter how unfair it might have been, and had begun to plan accordingly, he was on his way back up. He had, of course, had to leave Tajarhi and start fresh on another world parsecs away, but he had, eventually, regained much of what he had lost.

And it had happened here, on the
Enterprise
, when he had realized that, no matter what he did, he would never return to the Federation. He had once again started fresh, filled with optimism and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, his subsequent decisions and actions had been disastrous, largely because that very optimism had allowed him to see opportunities that did not, in reality, exist. His total misreading of McCoy's feelings, his willful obliviousness to the mindless nature and strength of the bonds that held this insular little group together, and finally his foolish attempt at mutiny had combined to make his situation even more hopeless than it had been before.

But he had been able, finally, to accept even that. He had at last admitted to himself that he had no hope whatsoever of achieving any kind of tolerable life here on the
Enterprise
. He had realized that his only hope for
any
kind of victory over Kirk and the four-hundred-odd sycophants that made up this interstellar fraternity lay in the method of his own death.

For several days, however, he had done nothing about it, laid no plans. This time, because of the utter finality of his situation, his despair had not immediately begun its metamorphosis into anticipation, and for days he had simply indulged in pointless imaginings, fantasizing about what he could do if the
Enterprise
had self-destruct systems like the alien vessels. When he should have been out probing for an Achilles heel, when he should have been out among the crew, asking questions and talking and observing, no matter how much he was secretly ridiculed by them, he had been hiding in his stateroom virtually twenty-four hours a day, pointlessly dreaming of things that didn't exist.

But then, abruptly, when Kirk announced the return of the Hoshan and the Zeator, everything changed. In an instant, Crandall was jarred out of his fantasy world, and an instant later he realized that the
Enterprise
did indeed, under certain conditions, have the kind of self-destruct system he had been pointlessly fantasizing about for days.

A self-destruct system that, to his shame, he had already failed to use.

Twice.

Literally, he leaped to his feet in sudden exultation when the realization hit him, and in that instant he vowed that, no matter what, he would not fail the next time the opportunity arose.

He would finally have his victory.

"Never mind what the blasted machine says, Jim. Do
you
believe him?" McCoy, at his desk in the medical section, watched Kirk pace the length of the room.

"Bones," Kirk said, "there are times when you can evade medical questions almost as well as Spock can evade emotional ones. I'm the one who came down here to ask
you
if I
should
trust him. Could he have tricked the machine?"

"And that isn't a medical question, Jim. Medically speaking, Dr. Crandall appears to have recovered from the depression he went into after he tried to give me the
Enterprise
and found out I didn't want it. Also medically speaking, he appears to be healthy as a horse. As for whether or not he did—or could—get away with a lie while his hand is stuck in that computerized lie detector you call a Verifier…" McCoy's voice trailed off as his eyes widened in mock innocence. "Don't tell me you're losing faith in technology, Captain."

Kirk shook his head. "Hardly, Bones. However, after all the malfunctions I've seen, I don't trust it blindly, either. And out here, who knows how many millions or billions of parsecs from home, possibly in another universe altogether, with
everyone
—but particularly Crandall—in the middle of his or her own psychological crisis, nothing that depends on purely physiological reactions to determine truth or falsity can be one-hundred-percent reliable."

McCoy smiled faintly. "You know how I feel about the infallibility of machines, Jim, even under the best of circumstances, but it sounds to me as if you've already made up your mind. Now you're just trying to come up with a 'real' reason."

"You may be right, but I'd still like an evaluation from ship's chief medical officer."

"Without full-scale psychological tests, conducted under conditions a lot less stressful than the ones we're all living under now, there's no way of medically removing that last smidgin of doubt. Or confirming it, either."

"All right, then, what do your 'old country doctor' instincts tell you?"

"They don't apply to this sort of thing, Jim. How would you like it if I asked you what your 'captain's instincts' told you when Crandall first suggested he might be able to help in the talks between the Hoshan and the Zeator?"

"I'd say that, logically, his suggestion made perfect sense. After all, he
is
a politician. According to the computer, before he let things get out of hand on Tajarhi, he'd been a middleman in several negotiations. None on this scale, but big enough. He'd successfully mediated half a dozen disputes on Tajarhi itself."

"That's Spock's logic, not your so-called instinct. What does
it
say?"

Kirk shook his head with a rueful smile. "My 'captain's instincts' tell me to be suspicious, even though I haven't been able to come up with a single reason other than his own previously erratic behavior. He's obviously not going to try another mutiny, not now that he understands the situation and knows he can't succeed. And he couldn't possibly think he could take over the
Enterprise
at phaser point and run it by himself. No one, not even Spock, could run it alone, and Crandall knows that. Logic—and the computer—tells me that, this time, he's finally come to his senses and is simply trying to make up for his earlier blunders by trying to be as helpful as he can."

"You're back to logic again. It and your machines tell you one thing, but your instinct tells you another?"

"Exactly, which is why I wanted your professional evaluation in the first place, Bones."

"And you've gotten it. My professional evaluation is that he's healthy. Probably healthier than you, if you don't stick to the diet and the exercise program I laid out for you. Personally and nonmedically speaking, I wouldn't trust him any farther than you could throw one of Lieutenant Woida's barbells, and I wouldn't let him anywhere near the bridge without a full security detail around him, one that's more alert than the one he got the drop on the first time."

Kirk smiled faintly. "Thank you for your candor, Doctor. I'll take it and my own prejudices into account. Now what about the rest of the crew?" he went on, his face sobering. "How are they holding up?"

McCoy settled back in his chair behind the desk. "As well as you could expect, considering the situation. A few more cases of psychosomatic illnesses than usual, but nothing spectacular yet. A few nightmares, a few people who have trouble sleeping. A halfdozen brawls for no reason but the tension everyone's under. But nothing we can't handle. Or rather, nothing the crew can't handle themselves, so far."

"But later, when—
if
it becomes clear that we have no chance of finding our way back to the Federation, ever?"

McCoy shook his head somberly. "I don't know, Jim, I just don't know. I guess we'll find out if what you said before, about the
Enterprise
being a sort of extended family, is really true. And if it is, if that's enough to make up for the real families and friends and homes they left behind."

Kirk was silent for a long moment. Then, pulling in a breath, he turned to the door. "It may have to be, Bones," he said as the door hissed open. "It may have to be."

When the Hoshan ships first came into sensor range, Crandall, ever under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Tomson, had been listening attentively to the subspace exchanges between Kirk and the Hoshan and the Zeator for more than an hour. Kirk had been explaining, among other things, why neither the Hoshan nor the Zeator could successfully fake being attacked by the other. So far, Crandall's only contribution had been a comment to the effect that he did not think that the Hoshan had believed Kirk's claim that the
Enterprise
's sensors could detect the power buildup that preceded the firing of their lasers.

"You have demonstrated you can monitor their antimatter generators," Crandall had said when the communication link was broken, "but there was something in Belzhrokaz's face when he was listening to you that indicated, to me at least, that he was still skeptical."

Kirk had only nodded at the words, since he had reached essentially the same conclusion independently. The incident, however, had strengthened Kirk's logical conviction that Crandall was, in effect, trying to redeem himself and could indeed prove helpful when the two alien groups came together on the
Enterprise
. It had done nothing, however, to eliminate the instinctual distrust he had discussed with McCoy.

"Twenty-seven Hoshan ships, Captain," Spock said, moments after he had announced the arrival of the first ship within sensor range. "All appear to be essentially identical to those Hoshan vessels we encountered earlier."

Frowning, Kirk swung the command chair to face his first officer. "Twenty-seven?"

"Twenty-seven, Captain."

"Belzhrokaz didn't say anything about bringing an armada with him."

"Nor did he specifically state otherwise, Captain. Perhaps, like humans, the Hoshan believe that massive displays of force are the proper prelude to talks of peace."

Kirk scowled at the viewscreen, where the Hoshan ships were beginning to appear as faint dots. "And how many of their ships did you say our deflectors could withstand? Eleven?"

"For an extended period, that is correct. For brief periods, the number is higher."

"How much higher?"

"It depends on the definition of brief, Captain. Could you be more specific?"

"Let's say the period of time it would take the
Enterprise
to get out of range of their lasers, taking into account the power that you have to divert from the shields to the warp drive."

"The situation you postulate is even more complex, Captain. There are too many variables to allow any specific number to be considered reliable."

"Some generalities, then. Anything to give me a feel for the situation."

"Very well, Captain. As I am sure you know, the more power that is diverted to the warp engines, the more the shields are weakened and the quicker they will fail. On the other hand, increased power to the warp engines will take us out of range of the lasers more quickly, thereby reducing the time the shields are required to hold. If the situation arises, a calculation of the optimum distribution of power for the specific circumstances that prevail will be a necessity. If the twenty-seven Hoshan ships just detected began simultaneous firing from one hundred kilometers, for example, full power to the shields would protect the
Enterprise
for approximately fifty-eight seconds."

Spock paused, leaning over his readouts. "If accomplished at the first moment of firing, optimum distribution of power between warp engines and deflectors would reduce that time to thirty-seven seconds but would take the
Enterprise
out of range within fifteen seconds. We would, however, be able to detect any potential laser firings at least ten seconds prior to the actual firing, which would give us an additional margin of safety."

"You're saying, then, that if we're on our toes, we don't have anything to worry about from the Hoshan ships, Mr. Spock?"

"I would not express it in those terms, precisely, Captain, but what you say is essentially true."

"And if the Zeator have just as many ships?"

Spock studied his readouts again. "If similar numbers of both Hoshan and Zeator fired simultaneously from a similar distance, we would still have sufficient time, but only if we initiated acceleration toward warp speed within one second of the attack."

"And the upper limit of the number of ships we could escape from in this way?"

"Theoretically, Captain, as long as we do not allow ourselves to be encircled, there would be no limit. If all power were diverted from the shields to the warp engines within two seconds of the moment preparations to fire were detected—eight seconds before actual firing—we would be out of their effective range before their lasers could fire."

"Then we had better not let ourselves be encircled, gentlemen. And Mr. Spock, I assume you will have all the necessary calculations ready for immediate implementation by the helm."

"Of course, Captain."

The Zeator, coming within sensor range an hour later, had thirty-one ships.

When Kirk had finally, reluctantly, allowed Dr. Jason Crandall onto the bridge, Crandall had been elated, albeit a bit surprised. On his good days, he had always had a fifty-fifty chance of faking out any lie detector that relied on physiological reactions, whether it was computerized or not, but even after he had apparently succeeded with the so-called Verifier, Kirk had still held back. Obviously, like everyone on board except perhaps Dr. McCoy, Kirk had a rigid faith in the capabilities of his ship and its gadgets, but even so, he had delayed for more than a day before accepting Crandall's offer to help in the upcoming negotiations, by which time Crandall had almost given up all hope of ever getting onto the bridge again.