Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (3 page)

The Klingon ducked, saw the tricorder coming at
his head, and shifted in the opposite direction.

Keski brought the instrument down on the table-
top. It smashed into shards, one piercing Keski’s own
arm. He screamed, and turned just as T’Saen was in
position to nerve-pinch him. He backhanded her, but
she managed to land on her feet as she fell off the
chair.

Stolos tackled Keski around the ankles and was
kicked off like an offending dog.

Keski brought both hands together, readying for a
blow that would smash T’Saen’s head.

Korsal kicked at the back of his knees, and Keski
toppled, falling on top of the Klingon and transferring
his fury once more.

Korsal bounced to his feet and blocked the
Lemnorian’s first clumsy blow with his arm, feeling the jolt numb it. With a speed unnatural to his giant race, Keski swung at Korsal with his left
fist.

His back to the table, Korsal couldn’t duck. Instinc
tively, he tried to roll back onto the table to kick at Keski, but the Lemnorian anticipated him, falling
forward against his legs, pinning him as he pulled the
punch and instead tried to choke Korsal.

Korsal grasped Keski’s wrists, managing to hold him long enough that, at last, T’Saen connected, and the unconscious Lemnorian slumped forward on top
of the Klingon.

The others pulled him off. Treadwell, the only
physician on the council, already had his medscanner
out. He ran it over Esposito, saying, “No serious
damage, but I want you in the hospital for observa
tion. Someone call for an ambulance—let’s get Keski
into the hospital before he comes to. Korsal—” He turned, recalibrating his instrument, and ran it over
the Klingon’s body.

“No injury except for that hand,” he said, “but…”

The “but” rang in the council chamber as everyone
stopped breathing to realize the implications.

Korsal raised his hand and stared at the palm. In the struggle, the blister caused by the hot coffee had burst, and he was bleeding. His hand was also
smeared with Keski’s orangeish blood. There was no
scrubbing down and hoping for the best: he was well
and thoroughly exposed to the same strain of the plague that had turned the usually gentle Lemnorian
into a raging beast.

But the held breaths were not for Korsal.

“Keski
had
the disease once!” said Stolos. “This
means—”

“—the mutation has developed so far from its
original form that immunity to previous strains has
no force,” concluded Dr. Treadwell, his face now a
pasty white. “We must all go to the hospital immedi
ately, to the isolation unit, and wait out the incubation period.”

“I will call for more ambulances,” said Therian.

Korsal got up, thinking of his family, knowing
everyone in the room was doing the same.

Almost everyone.

They drew apart, each deep in his own thoughts.
Korsal went to the window again.

Borth followed him.

“Go away,” said Korsal. “You also have a wife and
children to think about.”

The Orion nodded. “Yes—and they will be well cared for for life if what I suspect is true. Every
member of this council has caught the plague but you,
Korsal—for we are all public servants who could not
quarantine ourselves in our homes. Your wife had the disease in its earliest form, but you did not contract it,
and—living in the same house—neither of your sons has been ill. Now,” he said, touching Korsal’s injured
hand with one blunt finger, “we will know without
question whether Klingons are immune.”

“That won’t do
you
much good, since Orions are not.”

“It will as long as I survive—and I am a survivor,
Korsal. I don’t know what you are. A traitor, per
haps?”

“What do you mean?” Korsal stared at the offend
ing Orion, lips pulled back to expose the points of his teeth.

Borth did not cringe. “If Klingons are immune, you
will not inform the empire of
this
disease.”

“Killing off a planet’s population with disease is not
the way Klingons gain territory. We fight, let them defend their homes.”

“Against immensely superior numbers and weaponry,” Borth said with an oily smile. “And you, Korsal, do not approve—I can see it in your eyes.
You’re no Klingon—you’re a weakling like the Hu
mans. But I am Orion, and it behooves me to think
what certain factions within the Klingon Empire will
pay for this virus—if Klingons are immune.”

“For the sake of argument, say we prove immune
now,” said Korsal. “The way this disease mutates,
what is to prevent it from developing a strain fatal to
my people?”

Borth shrugged. “So long as I am well paid, I will take that risk. I am willing to gamble that this bug would take a long time to figure out how to bite
Klingons. By that time, I will be far from the Klingon
Empire.”

Korsal glared at him. “You make me
ill
without any
virus, Borth. You are no scientist, to base your theory
on a single case. But if I do become ill, I won’t die. Someone has to be around who knows you for what
you really are!”

Chapter Two

Captain James T Kirk sat in the command chair on
the bridge of the USS
Enterprise,
feeling rested and
alert at a single Earth-normal gravity. During the past
month on Vulcan, he had become accustomed to a
constant nagging fatigue. By his last days there he no
longer took notice of it. Now, though, it was a relief to have it gone.

On the other hand, he had acclimated somewhat to
Vulcan’s summer heat and now felt slightly chilly at the starship’s temperature intended for Human comfort. Perhaps he should wear an undershirt, as Spock
did, for a few days.

Sitting still didn’t help. He decided to tour his ship,
glad for an excuse to wander the corridors he had missed while he was away from her. If the activity didn’t warm him up, he’d—

“Captain!” the intercom blurted, a female voice he
didn’t recognize.

“Kirk here.”

“Walenski here, sir. Our Vulcan ‘guests’ are making
trouble. There’s two of ‘em squaring off for a fight, with deadly weapons!” He heard the tension in her
voice, and remembered that part of her duty included
assigning the use of the ship’s physical facilities. She was clerical personnel, not security or combat.

“Where are they?”

“Deck five, gymnasium A.”

“On my way!” Kirk told Walenski. “Mr. Spock, you
have the con. Call security to the gym.”

Damn Sendet and his crowd, anyway! They were
not truly guests aboard the
Enterprise,
but political
prisoners being transported to an uninhabited Vulcan
colony planet, where they would be left to work out
their own way of life as they saw fit.

With the exception of Sendet, however, the Follow
ers of T’Vet, as they called themselves, had commit
ted no crimes—because they had been caught before
they could put into effect their plans to overthrow the
government of Vulcan. The Vulcan High Council had
given them a choice of mental reprogramming or
transportation off-planet. Under such circumstances,
Kirk certainly knew which
he
would choose!

When Starfleet ordered the
Enterprise
to transport
the rebels, Kirk had decided there was no reason they
should not travel comfortably in guest quarters, as
that meant less work for his crew.

As he understood it, while the Followers of T’Vet
espoused a belief in racial purity that Kirk found hard
to stomach, their philosophy was otherwise a kind of
commonsense belief in survival of the fittest, comple
mentary with many of his own beliefs. He hadn’t expected trouble—certainly not less than two days
out from Vulcan!

Gymnasium A was the large one, with bleachers for
an audience to watch the many athletic contests that
came up among a young and fit starship crew. It was
not intended as an arena for blood games.

When Kirk arrived, two muscular young Vulcan
males were circling one another on the mat. Had they
been unarmed, Kirk would have simply joined the
spectators, but the two held
lirpas,
a Vulcan weapon
with one end weighted stone, for bashing, and the
other end a razor-sharp curved blade, for slashing.
Either end could kill.

“Captain!”

That must be Walenski—a small woman in red
services uniform, seated on the bleachers, surrounded
by Vulcan women. “Quiet, Human!” one of them said
to her. “The combat is not to be interrupted.”

“It most certainly
is!
” Kirk exclaimed, striding
between the fighters.
“Kroykah!”
he shouted, hoping that even to the Followers of T’Vet that word used in
ceremonies dating back to Vulcan’s “Time of the
Beginning” would mean “Stop!”

It did. Without protest, the two fighters stopped
their circling, backed a few paces from one another, and rested their weapons with the weighted ends on
the floor.

“How
dare
you profane Vulcan custom!”

A man rose from among the assembled Vulcans—a
man as tall and imposing as Spock’s father Sarek, of the same generation, and with the same air of being
accustomed to obedience. Unlike the other Vulcans,
who were dressed in what Kirk recognized from his recent stay on their planet as everyday clothing, this
man wore robes of a heavy brown material with
panels of green fabric running down the front, bearing designs in gold and jewels.

As the Vulcan spokesman stepped forward, Kirk
saw Sendet among the other young men, watching
him with the slightest hint of a superior smile. But
Kirk kept his attention on the man approaching
him.

The Vulcan was nearly a head taller than Kirk and
moved close to him to force the Human to look up.
But Kirk had never let that trick intimidate him, from
Vulcans, Humans, or anybody else. He stood his
ground and replied, “You are not on Vulcan now. You
are on my ship, and here my word is law. There will be
no combat with deadly weapons aboard ship. You are
welcome to use our facilities for unarmed combat, to
practice marksmanship in the—”