Home Is the Hunter Read online

  "Namely us," said Garrovick.

  "Namely us," agreed Kirk. "Eyes all around, gentlemen. I'd prefer that we all get back in one piece. I have a standing bet with Admiral Nogura that leading landing parties is going to get me killed someday, and I'd hate to have to pay him off."

  The Enterprise crew stepped gingerly over the deadly trip wire and proceeded. Some minutes later, and without further incident, they were in view of the castle.

  Garrovick knocked on the main door after Chekov indicated that he should take the point. The door opened a fraction and a massive guard filled it. The men of the Enterprise immediately noticed that several of his weapons were Klingon issue. It did not look promising.

  "We wish to see your leader," said Kirk. "We are from far away, and we understand that he resides here."

  "We do not have a leader," replied the soldier. "We have a god."

  "A god," said Kirk slowly.

  Scotty closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. Lord, please let it not be a supercomputer.

  "Yes," the soldier reaffirmed. "The immortal Weyland."

  "I see. And is the immortal Weyland, uhm … available?"

  Slowly the guard nodded. "He had been absent for a time … shortly before the coming of the T'lingons."

  Kirk tensed at the word. Though the pronunciation was rough, the meaning was clear.

  The guard continued, "But he has returned of late, and is in great rage regarding the advent of the T'lingons …"

  "As well he should be," said Kirk briskly.

  "… as well as the coming of the Federation."

  Kirk paused a moment, and the other members of the landing party looked at him. "We … just got here. How did immortal Weyland know of our presence?"

  "Immortal Weyland knows everything," replied the guard.

  "I … see."

  "You do not believe."

  "I'm willing to be convinced," said Kirk smoothly.

  "You will be." He stepped back and the door opened wide.

  The Federation party was led in through a cobblestone courtyard. There were people everywhere, in doorways, behind wagons, crowded behind each other, eyeing the strangers from a safe distance. Chekov smiled at a little girl, who was peeking around her mother's apron, her chubby little fists digging tightly onto the woman's stiffly embroidered skirts. The hard glare of a man with a grizzled beard and a large smithy's hammer melted Chekov's attempt at good humor.

  Sulu fell into the easy cadence of the guard. He eyed the men with unsuppressed envy. Those were real warriors! Like the samurai of his ancient heritage. And not growling, vicious animals like the Klingons, but just proud men who served their people bravely. He squared his shoulders a fraction and straightened his back a bit as he strode into the unknown.

  They were led into a fair-sized building, a dingy keep with algae-glistening walls. Dim, weak shafts of light filtered down from the high narrow windows. Torches were stuck in holes in the masonry, their smoke-blackened trails snaking up the walls toward the drafty window slits. Scott noted the simple engineering solution, although he was less than impressed by what he had seen so far.

  They were led outdoors again, this time to an inner courtyard. The sound of metal ringing on metal ceased as they marched out into the square. A small group of young soldiers armed with heavy, short wooden swords and round wooden shields rimmed with iron bands had stopped their practice to gawk at the strangers. An old toothless soldier with one eye gave the newcomers a practiced once-over and then shouted at his charges to resume the drill.

  In the center of the inner court was the round tower of the inner keep. The doors were a full ten feet tall, and made of bronze. The surface of the great bronze doors was covered with intricate scenes of warfare and pageantry. It took four men to swing them open.

  Kirk blinked a few times to accustom his eyes to the dim interior light. He could hardly hold his usual poker face as the room came into view. It was primitive, all right, but as beautiful as a great ancient cathedral. The audience chamber, which comprised the entire ground floor of the central keep, was huge, topped with a high-beamed ceiling. And what beams! Wood from some huge native tree, not rough-hewn, but polished and carved in an intricate interlace of dream beasts which were painted in wildly garish colors.

  A ring of men armed with spears parted, revealing a man whose flowing white beard seemed out of place on his almost youthful face. His massive jeweled crown had the soft glow of pure gold. Kirk's gaze was not riveted on the artistry or display, but by the king's piercing blue eyes. He squinted to break the bond of that blinding stare.

  "I am Weyland, and I rule here."

  Kirk did not doubt it. Scotty bowed formally, using the kind reserved for the ceremonial king who still sat a British throne on Earth. Sulu bowed also, just a little short of how he imagined one would honor the similarly democratic Emperor of Japan. Even Chekov dropped his head in courtesy. Kirk and Garrovick remained as they were.

  "Sir," Kirk began, "we are here to offer you the aid of the United Federation of Planets."

  "I do not want you here. Why do you invade my home?"

  "Sir, we did not invade," Kirk protested. "The Klingons, the other strangers, are very dangerous people. They have enslaved many people like yours, and we are here to offer you aid in protecting yourself …"

  "I do not require your help."

  "Please, sir, if I could merely explain the magnitude of the danger," Kirk said.

  "I do not require your help," the "god" repeated. "You may leave."

  "But, sir, you dunna understand—" Scott protested.

  Weyland waved him to silence, an amused smile on his lips. "I imagine that all of this is my fault." Weyland actually seemed regretful. "My presence was required elsewhere, and so I had to leave my people for a time. It was an ill fortune that brought you and the Klingons to my planet during my absence. But make no mistake …"

  "Captain Kirk," Kirk quickly prompted.

  "Yes, Captain Kirk. Make no mistake that this planet is mine. The people are mine. And now that you are here—you, too, are mine."

  Kirk raised a bemused eyebrow at that. "Really."

  "Yes. You see differences between yourselves and your opponents. I, however, do not. However," and he sat back expansively, "I am a reasonable god. The Klingons will doubtless be showing up shortly. They can have their futile effort to convince me or threaten me, and you may join them. Then, Captain, you will be cordially invited once more to depart, where you may blast each other to hell and back for all that it matters to me. But I will tolerate no further interference with my people … and be warned—if any hardship or injury should be inflicted on any of my subjects, from the greatest of them to the most humble, then you shall pay dearly for it." He settled back in his throne. "You shall all pay dearly."

  "You have my word of honor that we'll protect your people, sir," said Kirk.

  "Right there, Bones," said Kirk, staring down at the Romulan ale in his glass. "When Weyland said that to me, I should have sensed that Weyland was more than he appeared to be. But I was confident in my precious superiority, and now my men have paid the price for it."

  "There was no way you could have known, Jim." McCoy tried to sound soothing.

  "I could have remembered from past mistakes. I was fooled by the Organians. Scotty has a favorite saying: 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.' Shame on me, Bones. Shame on me for sitting here, trying to figure out what I should have done, instead of what I should be doing."

  "There's nothing we can do right now, Jim. We've explored all our options."

  "Then we'll explore some new ones." He punched the intercom. "Kirk to bridge."

  "Bridge, Spock here."

  "Mr. Spock, conference room. We're going to try and figure a way out of this mess."

  "Yes sir," said Spock briskly.

  Kirk looked up at McCoy. "Fool me twice," he said softly. "Bones … you think Scotty is all right? Scotty, and Sulu, and Chekov?"

 
"I think, Jim, as insane as it may sound—that's already been decided, don't you think?"

  Kirk nodded slowly. "Good point, Doctor. Good point."

  Chapter Five

  Somewhen in Russia …

  WHEN CHEKOV AWOKE, it was to the sound of someone speaking in angry German. Then he heard someone else reply in German … except there was a faint tinge of a Russian accent.

  He rolled over onto his back to see a charcoal-gray sky. There was dirt beneath him, rather than the solidity of the Enterprise.

  Chekov sat up slowly as the angry voices from nearby became louder. He was only partially paying attention to them. His main mental exercise, at the moment, was trying to pull together his fractured memory.

  He was … what? He had been on the planet Cragon. That much he remembered. With Kirk and Sulu and Scotty and Garrovick. And there had been—he rubbed his forehead—some sort of problem. Images flashed through his mind. Klingons and a blast of heat and light, and some sort of being seated on a throne. Then they'd returned to the Enterprise …

  Dead. Someone was dead. Two someones were dead. Was he one of them? he wondered. He didn't think so …

  Something had confronted them, and he—

  "Pathetic!"

  It was the pure German voice that was saying it.

  Chekov looked down at himself.

  His crisp Starfleet uniform was gone. Small loss. He'd hated the gray anyway.

  But it had been replaced by …

  He stared at his body as if it belonged to someone else. It was some sort of stiff uniform. It was …

  "German?" said Chekov to himself in utter mystification. "I'm a German?" But even as he spoke, his voice was still in the unmistakable Russian accent that had led to such easily-jibed words as "Keptin."

  He was a Russian. In a German uniform—the type worn during World War II.

  "Impossible," he muttered.

  Slowly he staggered to his feet, and realized that he was cradling a helmet in his hands. Reflexively he put it on his head. Across his lap was a rifle of some sort. He examined it as if staring at an alien artifact.

  He heard a whinnying sound nearby and looked off to his right. His eyes widened. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen so much as a single horse, yet now here was a large number of them inside of some sort of pen—what was it called—a corral.

  He glanced down at his arm. There was a swastika on it.

  "You! Soldier!"

  He felt himself going ashen as he turned slowly.

  Not too far away from him there were three more men dressed in the same uniform he wore … but two of them were being held at gunpoint by the third. The one holding the gun said again, "Come here, soldier!" in the pure-sounding German that identified him as the more belligerent of the speakers Chekov had heard before.

  Nazis. He was within spitting distance—appropriately—of Nazis.

  And there, on the horizon line, was a war-torn city that Chekov had seen in much happier days. It was Stalingrad. He was in World War II Stalingrad.

  "Are you deaf?" demanded the German soldier, his gaze never wavering from the two men who were apparently now prisoners, though they both wore German uniforms as well.

  Chekov's feet were moving even though he was sure he had forgotten to tell them to do so. He trotted over to the soldier and nodded briskly.

  "Go to the commander," the soldier said sharply. "Inform him that I have captured two Russians in a pathetic attempt to sneak onto the base by passing themselves off as Germans."

  Chekov's mouth moved but nothing came out.

  He knew it wasn't a dream, because he knew for a fact he dreamt in black and white. Back in his academy days—forward in his academy days?—he'd participated in a dream research project and had actually seen his own dream images. He'd done it to be near this gorgeous young technician on the research team. She'd had a figure that was—

  "Are you daydreaming now?!" said the soldier, apparently on the verge of apoplexy.

  Well, yes, he was. His mind was wandering because it was still having trouble coping with his situation, and somehow anything seemed better than dwelling on the inherent insanity of where and when he was.

  As if addressing an idiot, the German said, "Get … the … commander."

  Chekov looked into the eyes of the two Russians, whose hands were now in back of their heads, fingers interlaced. They were staring at him with smoldering intensity and a look of hopelessness that shook Chekov from his confusion. He still didn't understand, but that wasn't going to stop him from taking appropriate action.

  The German soldier was now eyeing him with suspicion. Chekov saw that, ever so subtly, the soldier was ready to swing his rifle around at the slightest odd move on his part. Chekov dug into his memory to come up with the appropriate gesture, and he snapped his heels together and brought his hand up at an angle, palm down.

  He turned briskly and walked in the direction of the corral.

  "The commander's office is the other way!" came the angry shout, and then there was a rifle crack as a bullet winged just over Chekov's left shoulder.

  Chekov leaped forward and yanked open the door of the corral, discharging his rifle just over the horses' heads.

  The panicked animals whinnied and brayed, then charged forward.

  Chekov rolled on his back to get out of the way as the horses pounded past him.

  The thought suddenly flashed through his mind that this might not be one of his most brilliant ideas. Though he could not, of course, have simply shot the German. First, there were Prime Directive considerations. Secondly, he was not a cold-blooded killer. So he had chosen, instead, to do something that seemed—at the time—more neutral; namely, letting the horses out and having the chips fall where they may.

  The problem was, Chekov knew, he was still playing with fire. Sure, shooting the soldier could screw up history—presuming he was really in the past and not suffering from some sort of induced hallucination. But having the soldier get trampled to death because of his actions was not a much better solution.

  Fortunately, he saw that the German soldier had leaped out of the way and was now running like mad, shouting in his native tongue for help. The two Russians-as-Germans were on the other side of the pounding river of horse flesh that had sprung up, Moseslike, to separate them from their attacker.

  Chekov ran toward the Russian soldiers, swinging his rifle around to get it out of the way.

  One of them turned, saw him coming, and brought his rifle up. Before Chekov could react, the man fired.

  The shot glanced off Chekov's helmet and he went down, his head ringing.

  There was something definitely inappropriate about this welcome, he thought, facedown in the dirt. His mind was scrambled and he heard shouting and anger all around him. His thought process became muddled. Still only barely coping with where he was, he stopped coping altogether and decided that he was on vacation in Stalingrad, and this whole thing was some sort of a living reenactment of a time from long ago in his country's past.

  He was hauled to his feet, and found himself looking into the smoldering eyes of the German soldier.

  Chekov smiled lopsidedly. "The costumes are wery nice," he said in bedraggled English.

  The German slugged him in the face, and Chekov, mercifully, slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Six

  COMMANDER KRAL SAT UP immediately when he heard the knock at his door. His fingers moved reflexively toward a weapon and then slowed, reasoning that an assassin would not take the time to announce himself.

  "What do you want?"

  The door hissed open and in it stood Vladra, from down in the science lab. She was regarding Kral with careful assessment, and he realized that she herself was wondering whether he had drawn on her. For one fleeting moment Kral was pleased that he had not. And then he wondered why he was pleased.

  Vladra was a quite striking Klingon woman, actually a hair taller than Kral. He found her intriguing. There seemed to be a sm
oldering interest in her eyes that she was virtually daring him to ignite.

  She appeared to consider her words carefully. "Commander. I want you to know that …"

  Her voice trailed off. Such hesitations were inappropriate for a Klingon, and he was about to chide her for that but something stopped him. "What is it?" His voice was actually surprisingly soft this time.

  She cleared her throat. "How does one determine," she asked, "upon which side one should be if there would seem to be a potential … change in command?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Is this a warning, Vladra?" he said slowly.

  Kral was all too aware of how necessary proper phrasing was. It was considered a serious breach of etiquette to warn one's commander if an overthrow were in the works. Klingon commanders were supposed to be able to watch their own backs, else they deserved a knife in it. For committing such an act, Vladra was risking her own life. Kral would have been perfectly in line for disciplining her—fatally—for the implied insult that he could not take care of himself.

  But …

  Kral's eyes narrowed. "You should make such choices based on your own desires and goals, I would think. Do you not agree?"

  She nodded slowly, her eyes flashing.

  "You pose, of course, a hypothetical situation," he said carefully.

  "Of course," was the neutral reply.

  There was silence for a moment, and then Vladra, in a carefully controlled voice, said, "If I learn specifics … so that I can make a more … interesting hypothetical decision … then I shall be certain to inform you, sir. Just so that it will stimulate our … hypothetical discussion."

  "Yes, of course. I always consider such theoretical discussions most intriguing."

  She inclined her head briefly, turned on her heel and left.

  Kral stalked his cabin like a caged tiger. He had left the bridge because he had not wanted his frustration at his helplessness to boil over in front of his men, as it indeed already once had.

  He kicked over a chair. "Damn it, I earned the promotion!" he screamed at himself. "The rank and the honorific, I earned it all!" He had distinguished himself in glorious combat, combat that had entitled him to name the ship that was now sitting helplessly above Cragon V. The glorious Talon's Blood, his ship. His ship, his frustration.