Chain of Attack Read online

  "Guard ships about to fire on probes, Captain."

  "Go, Mr. Sulu, now!"

  Chapter Twelve

  IN THE FOLLOWING moments, Ensign McPhee set a new record for transporter lock-on. Even so, the first blast from the Destroyer ship caught the deflector screens before they had a chance to build back up to full power, and a brief, bone-rattling moment of overload shuddered through the entire ship. Within seconds, however, Scott had the situation under control, and the deflectors were fully in place when the second blast came. By the time the guard ships turned their attention from the obliterated probes and joined in the attack, the Enterprise was out of range.

  Moments later, the central Destroyer ship emitted another concentrated subspace pulse, and Kirk wondered briefly if it were going to destroy itself. Instead, the three guard ships closed more tightly than ever about it, then dropped to sublight and clustered together the way they had when they had first rendezvoused with the other Destroyer ship.

  "Probably trying to decide what happened to whoever it was we snatched out from under their noses," Kirk said with a faint smile as he turned toward the image of the transporter room currently on the auxiliary screen above the science station. "Now let's see what a Destroyer looks like. Mr. McPhee, bring him in."

  Lieutenant Tomson and her two subordinates—the only people in the transporter room except for Ensign McPhee—triggered their phasers even before the shimmering materialization was complete. The Destroyer, as tall and thin as the Hoshan were short and muscular, fell to the deck the moment the transporter field released him.

  Taken instantly to an isolation ward in the medical section, the Destroyer was found to have a suicide device similar to that of the Hoshan but more automated. Luckily, the primary triggering mechanism was an external signal, probably generated by a transmitter in the Destroyer ship. A secondary trigger was located in a ring worn on one of the Destroyer's long, slender fingers. The device itself, containing a powerful explosive rather than the laserlike device in the Hoshan implants, was worn as a collar rather than implanted within the body. Even so, it took virtually every analytical device the medical and science departments possessed to remove it without exploding it.

  The Destroyer himself, taller than Spock, appeared to have sprung from avian stock, his hair looking very much like thousands upon thousands of tiny feathers. His bones, though not hollow like those of flighted birds, were comparatively light, and the entire impression he presented was one of delicacy. Even the "uniform" he had worn and which had been replaced on his body after removal of the collar was light in both weight and color, pale blue, and loosely fitting with no pockets, only a single pouchlike container attached at the waist.

  The Hoshan were allowed a brief look from behind a transparent barrier before the Destroyer regained consciousness. Only Tarasek spoke. "Now you will see what they are like," he said, deliberately turning his back on the unconscious Destroyer.

  Unlike the Hoshan, the Destroyer was allowed to awaken alone in a stateroom with a vision screen as well as a direct link to the computer's translation circuits. Also unlike the Hoshan, the Destroyer opened his eyes the moment the monitoring devices indicated he had regained consciousness.

  Immediately, he sat up, his eyes taking in everything in the room in a single, almost owl-like turn of his head. His heartbeat, according to the monitor, spurted drastically at first but then dropped back to what appeared to be normal and stayed there. His fingers, long and slender with narrow, diamond-shaped nails that could, generations ago, have been claws, went to his throat, feeling for the missing collar.

  And he began to talk, rapid-fire and nonstop, his voice a startlingly clear, trilling sound, at least as birdlike as his appearance.

  "At least he's being more cooperative than the Hoshan," Kirk remarked.

  "If what he's doing is really talking," McCoy snapped. "He could be just chirping to himself, like a big canary."

  "No, Doctor," Spock said, cocking his head sideways, a gesture itself almost birdlike, as he listened to the computer's voice through his earpiece, "It is definitely a language, a very complex language. And at this rate, the computer will be able to begin rudimentary translations very shortly."

  And it did. Within minutes, the computer began to overlay the Destroyer's trills with words, at first sporadically, then more steadily. The first complete sentence was, "If I have offended in any way, I ask that I be forgiven."

  "It's time we met face to face," Kirk said abruptly, moving toward the hall that led to the Destroyer's stateroom as he spoke. "Lieutenant Tomson, stay in the background, but have your phaser ready, on light stun. Mr. Spock, is the computer's new show-and-tell ready to go?"

  "Ready whenever you give the word, Captain."

  The instant the door to the stateroom opened, the Destroyer fell silent. His eyes, yellow and vertically slitted like a cat's, darted from one to the other of the four men as they entered. On Spock's tricorder, the Destroyer's pulse rate shot up sharply, and he emitted a complex series of trilling sounds.

  "What are you?" the computer translated, almost instantaneously, through the universal translator clipped to Kirk's belt. "Are you to be my punishment?"

  "We mean you no harm," Kirk said. "We—"

  "Are you, then, to be my reward?"

  Kirk frowned at the translator. "Spock, are you sure—"

  A snort of laughter from McCoy cut him off. "Don't you get it, Jim? He thinks he's dead! He just wants to know if this is heaven or hell."

  "Of course I am dead," the Destroyer said, his trilling sounds growing more shrill, even though the computer's translation remained neutral. "The ship I was on was attacked and destroyed."

  "No," Kirk said, "you aren't dead. And your ship was neither attacked nor destroyed. Mr. Spock, let's have those pictures."

  "Sequence one," Spock said quietly, and the stateroom viewscreen came to instant life.

  "Watch," Kirk said. "This is what happened. You are simply aboard a different ship."

  "Then you—"

  Abruptly, the Destroyer's slender fingers darted once more to his neck, grasping futilely for the missing collar.

  "There is nothing to be afraid of," Kirk said. "We mean you no harm. Just watch the screen. We will show you what happened."

  For another several seconds, the Destroyer's fingers fluttered helplessly about his neck while his eyes went from face to face. On Spock's tricorder, his heart rate was higher than it had been even during the initial spurt after awakening.

  But then, as abruptly as the agitation had begun, it stopped. The birdlike alien was suddenly still, his fingers motionless at his neck. As if by an effort of sheer will, the pulse rate slowed.

  "I will look," he said, the trills of his words now lower-pitched, slower. "I will see what you have to show me."

  For the next two minutes, then, the computer presented a simulation similar to a small part of what it had earlier shown the Hoshan, this one showing the Enterprise as it swooped in close to the Destroyer ship and snatched their guest from its crew compartment.

  When it was over, there was only silence. The Destroyer's yellow eyes looked from the screen to the four men several times. Finally he spoke.

  "Then you are not our enemy? You are not the World Killers?"

  "We are not," Kirk said.

  "Then who?"

  As simply as possible, omitting all mention of the Hoshan, Kirk explained what he could. Then, before the alien could ask more, he nodded to Spock and pointed to the screen, where an image of a Hoshan ship appeared. "Is this the enemy you speak of?"

  "Yes!" Another brief spurt of the alien's pulse rate testified to the truth of the answer.

  "These are the ones you call World Killers?"

  The alien hesitated, as if trying to bring his emotions back under control. "That is what I have been told. Are you now telling me differently?"

  "Why do you call them World Killers?" Kirk asked, ignoring the alien's question.

  "Look at any
world in this sector of space, and you will know!"

  Nodding to Spock, Kirk once more gestured at the screen. "Worlds such as these?" he asked as the first of a dozen images appeared.

  After the first, the alien closed his eyes, refusing to look at more. "If I am truly still alive, who are you?" he trilled, the pitch so high it was almost inaudible. "What do you want?"

  "It would be nice," McCoy put in, "if all you people would stop shooting at us on sight!"

  "Show him, Spock," Kirk said.

  A moment later, an image of the stars of the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way galaxy appeared on the screen, and Kirk talked the alien through an abbreviated version of what the Hoshan had been shown. When he finished, the screen returned to its real-time display of the local star field and the dots that were the four Destroyer ships.

  "Now," Kirk said, "tell us who you are. Tell us how this war with the ones you call World Killers started."

  For a long time there was silence. Briefly the alien's fingers again fluttered to his neck and then dropped to his side. "It started," he said finally, "when we were attacked."

  Slowly and haltingly, then, the story came out, and it was remarkably similar to the one told by the Hoshan, except that for these people, who called themselves the Zeator, it had started nearly four hundred years ago, not one hundred. Like the Hoshan, they had been peacefully expanding into space, but when they found the first of the Slaughtered Worlds, as they called them, they became cautious, adding weapons to what had previously been purely exploratory ships and taking precautions to keep the coordinates of their home world safe from discovery. The weapons, however, apparently proved ineffective, for ships began to disappear.

  Like the Hoshan, the Zeator retreated from space long enough to build up their weapons technology and establish a defense around their home world. After nearly fifty years, in ships similar to the ones they still used, they began to move cautiously back into space, toward the Slaughtered Worlds. Once again, their ships were attacked, but now they were able to fight back. At one point, they were certain they had located their enemy's home world and destroyed it, but after nearly a century of uneasy watchfulness, the attacks had begun again.

  "Now we have only one hope," the Zeator finished, "to find and destroy their true home world before they can find and destroy ours. In these last few weeks, as I have been shown the Slaughtered Worlds first-hand, there have been times when I would have welcomed either conclusion to our centuries of fear. And when two of our escort vessels were destroyed, I only wished that I could have taken their place."

  "Who are you that they were protecting you?"

  Once again there was silence, and the Zeator seemed to shrink in stature. Even the featherlike hair on his head and hands seemed to flatten against his skin.

  "I am called Atragon," he said at last, "and I fear that I am a fool. Until I boarded the ship that you took me from, I had never been off the surface of our home world. Prior to that, I had known only what I had seen in our history books. For years I had taught others from those books, but I did not believe what they said, not truly, not completely. I had not seen the destruction for myself, any more than any of the planetbound had seen it, so I did not truly believe it. The words were just words, not facts, not living people. Naively, I could not believe that any race of beings intelligent enough to travel through space could be as savage as those books told us our enemies were. I could not believe that even if the World Killers had done everything we were told they had done, they had not had a reason. I even thought that the war might only be a hoax, something used by the military to bleed the planetbound of their money and resources.

  "Unfortunately, other members of my family had much influence, and I used that influence to make others see things as I did. I was even elected to an influential office, and it was then that the authorities—the military authorities—decided that the only way I could be convinced of the truth was to be shown it first-hand. As I said, I was a fool, and I gladly accepted their offer, certain I would prove them wrong. That is why I was on that ship, being shown the Slaughtered Worlds first-hand. And because I was on that ship, it did not enter the battle when it should have. To protect me, those ships were lost."

  "And the collar you were wearing? The collar filled with explosives?"

  "Even I could not be allowed to endanger the home world. Everyone else on the ships, everyone in the military, has similar devices surgically implanted, but mine was to have been removed when—if I returned safely home."

  "And now? With the collar gone?"

  "With or without the collar, I will never be able to return."

  "We could return you."

  "To the ship you took me from? You would deposit me there as you took me?"

  "Possibly."

  "If you were immune to our weapons, perhaps, but if I have understood your story properly, you are not. And my people will not be as easily fooled as they were before. And even if you were to succeed, I doubt that I would long survive."

  "Why? Certainly your own people wouldn't kill you."

  "I do not know, but I suspect they would. No one has ever been taken from a ship in the manner you took me, so no rules exist for my treatment if I am returned. However, I cannot believe that I could ever be allowed to return to our home world. Nor would I wish to, no matter how strongly you profess to be our friends. You have shown me too much to allow me to trust you."

  "Too much? I don't understand."

  "You have shown me how you are able to track our ships without your own being detected. You could follow whatever ship I was on. You could find our home world, and that is unthinkable."

  "We can follow your ships whether you are on them or not."

  "Of course. But none now will ever return to our home world. Only rarely do ships return under any circumstances, but now that your ship, obviously superior to ours, has been observed, none will return, ever. None in this sector of space dares risk it, and I suspect that none anywhere will risk it, at least not for many years."

  "If we are able to convince you we are not your enemy, you could direct us to your home world and we could take you there directly. We could talk to your leaders."

  "There is no way I can be sufficiently convinced, not when the fate of my world hangs on my decision to trust you. But my decision is of no importance. I could tell you nothing of our home world's location, no matter what my decision. For I do not know its location. I am a planetbound, and I was told nothing of such matters."

  The alien paused, his narrow shoulders moving in what could have been a shrug, or perhaps a shudder. "The rest of my life, I fear, must be spent elsewhere than with my own people. Whoever you are, once you took me from them, I became as dead to them as if the collar had done what it was intended to do. As dead as all those on our ships are to our home world."

  Which was, Kirk thought grimly, not all that different from what the Hoshan had said. Communication might be possible with the Zeator, but they would listen no more than would the Hoshan.

  Unless something could be done.

  "I think," he said, glancing at Spock and McCoy, "it's time for the Destroyer to meet the World Killers."

  Chapter Thirteen

  TO NO ONE'S surprise, the meeting between the Hoshan and the Zeator accomplished little.

  "He lies, of course!" Tarasek said.

  "Atragon?" Kirk said, turning to the Zeator on the opposite side of the conference table. "Do the Hoshan lie as well?"

  For a long moment there was only silence. "I do not know," he said finally, his trilling voice dull, virtually lifeless. "It is possible that he tells the truth. If so, we deserve the fate we have been given."

  Of the Hoshan, only Bolduc openly admitted there might be some truth to Atragon's words. "When for generations you have known only enemies and when the life of your entire race is at stake," he said, "you do not take chances. Mistakes will be made under such conditions."

  "Shoot first and ask questions later," McCoy said,
his voice oddly flat. "The only trouble is, when the shooters are as efficient as you two, there's never anyone left to answer the questions. Or even to ask them."

  At McCoy's words, a thoughtful frown creased Kirk's forehead. "Bones," he said, standing up abruptly, "thank you. I think your collection of archaic sayings may have saved the day. At least it's given me an idea how to start."

  "I dinna like it, Captain." Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott's eyes had a look of betrayal in them as he stood protectively in front of the line of main control panels on the engineering deck.

  "I don't blame you, Scotty. I'm not very happy with it myself, but I don't have any other ideas at the moment."

  "Could ye no' just talk to them?"

  "We'll try, of course, but you've seen how they react to us—to anyone besides themselves. Even now that we have their languages in the computer, all we can do is talk at them. And all they're going to do is shoot at us from the moment they see us."

  "And ye want to let them!"

  "According to Mr. Spock, the deflectors will take anything either the Hoshan or the Zeator can dish out. If you have any doubts, Scotty—"

  "I dinna have doubts, Captain!" Scott said, an offended note entering his voice as he waved his hand in a gesture that included not only the control panels behind him but the antimatter engines and everything else that was under his care. "I ha' no doubts about these bairns! They can take care of themselves, but to allow—"

  "If there were another way, I'd take it, Scotty."

  Scott fell silent, pulling in a breath. "Aye, Captain," he said finally, "I know ye would. We'll be ready."

  "Thank you, Mr. Scott," Kirk said, his hand briefly and uncustomarily gripping the chief engineer's shoulder. "I never doubted it for a second."

  For several minutes, Kirk and the entire first-watch bridge crew had been watching the approaching Hoshan ship. Both the Hoshan and the Zeator were watching on monitor screens in their guarded staterooms, as was Dr. Crandall. Only the aliens' rooms, however, were hooked up so they could talk directly to the bridge and could be channeled, by the touch of a button, into Lieutenant Uhura's broadcasts.