STAR TREK - TOS - 14 - The Trellisane Confrontation

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DAVID DVORKIN

POCKET BOOKS

New York London Toronto Sydney

Tokyo This book is a work of

fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are

either the

product of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any

resemblance to actual events or locales or

persons, living or dead, is

entirely coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET

BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon and

Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of

the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Corporation. All Rights

Reserved.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of

Paramount Pictures

Corporation.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a

division of Simon and Schuster

Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount

Pictures Corporation.

to reproduce this book or

portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information

address

Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the

Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN 0-671-70095-2

First Pocket Books printing February

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

POCKET and colophon are trademarks of

Simon and Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.s.a.

Captain's Log Stardate 7521.6

Standard orbit has been established around the

outpost colony on

Trefolg. Due to the sensitive nature of this

mission, I had planned to

beam up the prisoners and return directly

to Star Fleet Headquarters.

However, the governor of the colony, Lerak

Kepac, has issued a formal

invitation to me to pay a courtesy call. This is

a request I have of

course agreed to honor.

Kirk thumbed the log recorder off and took a

moment to look around

the bridge in satisfaction. His crewmen and

officers sat at their

stations working with calm efficiency or walked

briskly with firmness

and purpose. No wonder these outpost colonies

along the perimeter of

the Romulan Neutral Zone felt safer,

reassured, when one of the great

starships stopped by. Especially, he thought with a

touch of

smugness, this starship. The elevator doors

swished open and the

ship's doctor ambled in, wearing his dress

uniform, and strolled over

to the command chair. "Well, Jim,"

Doctor McCoy drawled. "How do I

look? Good enough to impress a

colonial governor?" Kirk smiled and looked

his friend up and down.

No matter what uniform McCoy wore, he

managed to make it look somehow

crumpled, as if he had just finished a long evening

of card playing

while wearing it. Kirk shook his head. "It'll

do. At least you're

wearing your dress uniform. More important,

you're wearing your old

country doctor persona. That's just right." "Thought

it would be

for a colony. Mind telling me what's up?"

Kirk stood up and

stretched. "Come to my quarters. I'll have

to change quickly before

we beam down." He didn't speak again until

they were in his spartan

cabin with the door closed. "Sorry,

Bones. I didn't want to discuss

it any further on the bridge." As he spoke,

he stripped his uniform

off quickly and chucked it into a small vent in the

wall. It

disappeared with a faint swooshing sound. He drew a

fresh dress

uniform with the insignia of a Star Fleet captain

from its packaging

and pulled it on, checking his appearance

perfunctorily in a mirror.

"I'm sure you know, since everyone else on the

ship already seems to,

that we're here to pick up some prisoners. This

courtesy call on the

governor I told you to dress up for is an

extra. Partly it's to

reassure the colonists that, even though the

Neutral Zone is right

ahead of them, the Federation and Star Fleet Command

are behind

them." "Nice turn of phrase you have." Kirk

grinned at him. "In

addition," he said, walking to the door,

"Governor Kepac said he had

a message he had to give me in person, something

he preferred not to

broadcast to the ship." As they walked down the

corridor toward the

transporter room a few minutes later,

McCoy remarked, "You know, Jim,

it sure is nice to see you looking relaxed for a

change. As if you're

enjoying your job." "Relaxed, yes." Kirk

pondered for a moment.

"There's little to wear on you on this type of mission,

no real

tension, in spite of the kind of prisoners we're

picking up. And yet,"

he shrugged, "I can't really say I enjoy it that

much. It's--well-it's

just too routine!" McCoy laughed. "Okay,

then. Worry about it being

too routine." Four Security guards were

waiting in the transporter

room, ordered by Kirk to meet them there. Sometimes

he wondered how

Star Fleet Security managed to keep finding

new recruits; the job was

probably the most dangerous on any starship.

Looking at the four, all

tall, heavily muscled, and self-confident, he

wondered how Security

managed to find so many recruits whose faces all

looked alike. It was the expressionlessness that did

it, along with that air of power, readiness, and competence.

The answer, he

knew, lay in their training, a training as long and

rigorous, in its own

way, as his had been; they were well equipped

to handle trouble, and Kirk

was confident that these four would be more than enough to handle the

nine

manacled prisoners waiting for him on the

surface of Trefolg.

Kirk, McCoy, and the four Security guards

stepped onto the transporter

platform and arranged themselves on the six available

positions. On the

return trip, Kirk planned to use one of the

cargo transporters, so that the entire group, which would

then number fifteen, could beam up together. He

wanted to avoid the complications of sending the

prisoners up in two or

more groups, splitting the group of Security

guards up, and having to have

more Security men sent to the transporter room

to cover the prisoners as

they arrived. The ship was operating smoothly and

easily, with no problems; the crew calm and as

relaxed as he was himself. He didn't want to take

any

chance of upsetting that.

Kirk spoke briefly to Chief Engineer

Scott, who had come to the transporter room himself

to operate the controls. He preferred to be in charge

person when

the captain or any of the other chief officers, such

as the ship's doctor,

were beaming up or down. "Scotty, it shouldn't

take more than three hours to satisfy Governor

Kepac's social requirements. Have the

transporter in Cargo

Bay Number Two kept ready and cleared and

beam up all fifteen of us there

when I contact you."

was his

Aye.

"Whenever you're ready."

Engineer Scott moved the levers on his control

panel forward, listening as

he did so to the whining hum that grew in the

transporter platform

mechanism; he was not even consciously aware that

he always did this,

listening, with the instinct born of so many years"

intimacy with the

machinery, for any flaw in the sound, any indication

that the transporter

was functioning less than perfectly. The six men

on the platform wavered,

changed into six vague, manlike outlines

composed of winking, twinkling

lights, then vanished. Moments later, the

Transmission Confirmed light

blinked on on his panel, signifying that they had

appeared on the surface

of the planet below. Scott sighed and relaxed,

shaking off the tension that invariably gripped him when

Captain James Kirk was among those being

transported.

As Scotty's square face faded away and the

functional buildings of the

colonial administration center on Trefolg

replaced the control room, James

Kirk felt his own tension rising again. Sometimes,

as during the last few

days, he could relax while onboard the

Enterprise, but he felt somewhat

unprotected and on guard when he left the

ship's protective walls and

beamed down to a planetary surface.

Governor Kepac came hurrying out of the

building in front of them in person to greet the party

from the Enterprise. He was accompanied by an aide.

Kirk remembered having met Kepac some years

earlier, before he had assumed the

governorship of the Trefolg

colony, and he remembered him as having been

short, chubby, carefree, and

constantly cheerful. Now Kepac was almost thin, his

clothes hanging on him

indicating that he had lost a great deal of weight

quite recently. His

carefreeness was gone, and his once-smooth face was

creased with permanent

worry lines. Nonetheless, he smiled broadly

as he came up to Kirk.

"Captain Kirk! I'm delighted to see you

again."

Kirk nodded and shook the outstretched hand.

"Governor. This is Doctor

Leonard McCoy, my chief medical officer.

I thought you might like to have

him look over your medical facilities and

supplies. We might be able to

provide some things from ship's stores."

"By all means. We'd be delighted. Mr.

Johnson," he nodded toward the man

who had accompanied him, "will show your guards where

the prisoners are

being kept and we can meet them there later."

There was a refreshing lack of ceremony and large

groups of subordinates on these frontier

colonies. After they had dropped McCoy off at

the colony's

main hospital-a small and primitive affair

compared to the medical

facilities on the Enterprise-Kirk and

Governor Kepac were alone. "Well,

Lerak, you said you had a message for me?"

They had reached a large open field beyond the

buildings. Shapes, trash of

some kind, were scattered all over the field. There

was something familiar

about the shapes that Kirk could not pin down.

"Yes," Kepac said. "I do. After Star

Fleet had dispatched your ship here to pick up our

prisoners, we received a coded subspace

message from

Trellisane. Very weak. It's only because our

receivers are so powerful out

here that we picked it up at all."

"Trellisane," Kirk murmured thoughtfully.

He knew something of that world

because of its unique and sensitive positio n. Could

this be the trouble

that the Federation had feared for so long?

As if reading his mind, Kepac said, "I don't

think the worst has happened.

But they did request that Star Fleet send a

ship. I doubt if their

transmission even reached Star Fleet

Headquarters in any coherent form, so

I thought I'd let you know and leave it to you." He

hesitated. "I didn't

want to broadcast any of thus, either up to your

ship or to Star Fleet,

because I was afraid I'd start some sort of

panic here. This colony always

skates along the thin edge of panic. We're

next-door neighbors to the

Neutral Zone, and if the Romulans decide

to start a war, we'd be the first

to go."

"Of course, Lerak. I understand." Kirk thought

he understood, too, why

Kepac had changed so greatly over the last few

years. "I hope the

Enterprise's presence will at least reassure

your colonists that they

haven't been forgotten. Now, tell me what this

place is." He pointed toward the field.

"I thought you might find this interesting. Shows the

length to which

fanatics will go. As I told Star Fleet

Command, the prisoners you're here

to pick up are members of the United Expansion

Party. They were about to

enter the Romulan Neutral Zone, hoping

to provoke a war between the

Romulans and the Federation, when one of our ships

intercepted them."

Kirk shook his head. "In spite of what the

United Expansion Party may

think, the Romulans have grown more tolerant. They

wouldn't go to war over

an incursion by a group of fanatics in a

civilian ship."

Kepac grunted. "It was more serious than that.

They had bought an old cargo ship, but they added an

enormous amount of metal superstructure and

plating to it so that from the outside, visually at least,

it resembled a Star

Fleet scout ship. They knew enough to make it

look to the Romulans like a

military provocation."

"But the Romulans would have known better as soon

as they boarded her."

"They wouldn't have gotten the chance. The prison-

ers have been telling us all this quite freely, by the

way. They're proud of it."

"Because they see themselves as the true patriots and you

as the traitors

for stopping them, I suppose," Kirk remarked.

"Exactly. They planned to put up the

appearance of a fight-enough anyway to make the

Romulans destroy them. Then the

Romulans would have no way of

knowing what they really were, and they would be convinced the

Federation

was planning to take over the Neutral Zone, in

violation of the treaty."

"They would have died when the Romulans destroyed

their ship!"

"Of course. No price too great to pay.

All of this in front of us," he

swept his hand in a broad arc, encompassing the

piles of jumbled metal all

over the field, "was their ship. I ordered it

dismantled so no one else

with the same ideas could use it, and also so that we could

use the parts.

We can always do with more metal, especially when it's

already been refined and alloyed for us."

Kirk looked over the piles of scrap metal,

and he had a sudden vision of

the Enterprise itself ending up the same way some

day, piles of anonymous

junk from an old and decommissioned vessel, that

left him shaken. Quickly,

he said, "The message from Trellisane-did

they say what their problem was?" Kepac's

face turned grim. "Not really. However, they did

refer to the

Klingons. That's another reason I wanted

to tell it to you in private. The

message was weak and garbled and that's virtually all

we could understand.

Let's get back to my office and I'll have a

recording of it played for

you."

The prisoners were three Earthmen, two very

humanoid women from Nactern, and a four-sex

marital grouping, physically bonded for life, from

Onctihis.

Since the latter creature was amorphous in

shape, an almost featureless ball about a meter in

diameter, only the Earthmen and the Nactern women were

manacled. Had Kirk never heard of the

surprising strength and agility of the innocuous-looking

Onctiliian group creature, he might have made

the mistake

of taking the least care with that prisoner. As it

was, he knew better, and

he didn't need Lerak Kepac's warning

to order the Enterprise Security men to take

special care with it. "They move without

warning," the governor told

Kirk. "And fast. One of our colonists was

crushed by the thing before we

learned to keep weapons trained on them at all

times."

When the group had all been beamed up to the

Enterprise, Kirk personally

saw the nine prisoners safely installed in

detention cells in the Security

section before he returned to the bridge. McCoy

had preceded him and, on

Kirk's orders, was telling Spock what he

had seen of the prisoners. Kirk

sat in the raised commanding officer's chair in the

center of the bridge

and allowed himself a full five seconds of

blank-minded

relaxation. Then he said, "Navigator, I

want a course for Trellisane.

Helmsman, take us out of orbit as soon as the

course is available. Warp 3

all the way."

Behind him, Spock and McCoy exchanged a

look of surprise. McCoy made as if

to speak from the raised platform where he had

been talking to Spock, but

the Vulcan first officer raised his hand in a

peremptory gesture, left the

platform, and walked casually over to a position

behind the captain's

chair, and only then spoke to Kirk, quietly,

in a voice no one else on the

bridge could hear. "Captain, I must remind you

of the high priority Star

Fleet Command has placed on our putting these

prisoners under its control

as soon as possible. This incident has great

political ramifications."

Without turning around, and suppressing a smile,

Kirk said, "I'm well aware of the political

aspect, Mister Spock. However, the prisoners

will have to

keep for a while. I'll want you, Scotty, and

McCoy in the conference room

in an hour, and I'll tell you why we're going

to Trellisane. Tell them."

Kirk got up and walked over to the communication

officer's console.

"Lieutenant Uhura," he said quietly,

"send the following message to Star

Fleet Command, scrambled. "The following

message was received at Trefolg

from Trellisane. I am proceeding

to Trellisane immediately to investigate.

James T. Kirk, commanding, U.s.s.

Enterprise." Then follow with this." He

handed over a small disk, a copy of the

recorded message he had heard on

Trefolg. He waited until the message had

been sent and acknowledged from

the other end, then retrieved the disk from Uhura

and turned to leave the

bridge.

"Captain," Uhura said in surprise, "aren't

you expecting a reply?"

When Spock had referred to the incident's

political ramifications, he had

been as accurate as always. Kirk chuckled at the

thought of the command

echelon at Star Fleet Headquarters trying

to balance the two 13

explosive issues, the prisoners and the mention

of a Klingon threat.

"Eventually, Lieutenant." He left the

bridge, thinking that by the time a

reply arrived, he would have reached Trellisane

and would possibly be too

involved to be ordered to leave until the problem was

solved.

The first officer, the chief medical officer, and the

chief engineer were

gathered in the conference room, waiting for the captain,

who had not yet

arrived. Star Fleet law, Star Fleet

custom, and the particular interplay of personalities

aboard the Enterprise had given these men a triple

role to

play with which they were not always comfortable. Each had

charge of major

functions involved in running the ship. Together, they

formed something of

a council of advisers to the captain. And each,

in a different way, was

James Kirk's personal friend. Against these

duties, they had to balance

their duty to Star Fleet, the Federation, and, most

immediately, the

hundreds of men and women on the Enterprise whose

well-being depended upon

them. If they agreed that the captain's

behavior was due to mental illness, or that his command

abilities had been impaired significantly

by physical

illness, or even that he was simply behaving

contrary to the best interests of Star Fleet, the

Federation, and the personnel of the ship-for example,

for reasons of personal gain or advancement-then it

was their duty to

remove him from command and to place one of their number

in command.

Personal friendship and admiration inevitably

clouded such judgments, and

every one of them would give James Kirk every

benefit of the doubt before

suggesting such a drastic step. Still, Kirk knew

he would make their lives

easier if he briefed them immediately on his

reasons for ignoring his

orders and heading for Trellisane. His reasons,

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BYDAVIDDVORKINPOCKETBOOKSNewYorkLondonTorontoSydneyTokyoThisbookisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,placesandincidentsareeithertheproductoftheauthor'simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualeventsorlocalesorpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.AnOriginalPublicationofPOCKETBOOKSPO...

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