Crucible: Kirk by David R. George III Page B

could easily alter the timeline.
    No, Kirk thought. I can’t do this.
    Then he realized that he knew somebody within the nexus who could.

FIVE
    2255/(2255/2271)
    The plasma blast seared the air beside the left ear of Lieutenant James T. Kirk. Though he didn’t see the pulse as it rocketed past him, he did feel its heat, did hear the low, menacing hum it generated. He flinched and dived down to his right, throwing himself to the outpost floor behind a dense tangle of wrecked equipment. On the far side of the room, the plasma shot exploded against the wall, sending up a thunderous report and leaving behind a scorched, smoking scar in whatever type of metal had been utilized to construct the Pelfrey Complex here on Beta Regenis II.
    Next to Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Leslie DeGuerrin sat with her back against a broken console that had crashed onto its side. Tall and strongly built, she calmly studied the gauge on her laser pistol. “Almost drained,” she told Kirk. It didn’t surprise him. They’d been engaged in this firefight for more than an hour, and for the last half of that time, they’d abandoned the stun settings—and the correspondingly lower power requirements—of their weapons. When it had become apparent that the landing party faced a force at least three times their number, DeGuerrin had made it clear that the odds of their getting out of the complex alive would increase dramatically if they could permanently eliminate enemy fighters, rather than just rendering them unconscious for a short time; Tholians typically recovered quickly from the stun effect of Starfleet lasers.
    Kirk raised his own pistol and examined the power indicator. “Mine’s down to nineteen percent,” he said. “What do we do now?” DeGuerrin had led their four-member team here from the Farragut. While the starship completed a badly needed delivery of medicine and medical personnel to the New Mozambique colony, Captain Garrovick had sent the shuttlecraft Dahlgren to Beta Regenis II. There, in the domed Pelfrey Complex that had been constructed on the inhospitable surface of the class-K planet, Dr. Mowry—the ship’s assistant chief medical officer—would administer the annual physical examinations to the outpost scientists, as required by Starfleet regulations. At the same time, DeGuerrin, Kirk, and Ensign Ketchum would collect research materials and reports that needed to be conveyed to Starfleet.
    DeGuerrin looked up from her laser pistol. “I’m not sure what we can do,” she said. “How many of them did you count?”
    â€œThere have to be at least fourteen,” Kirk said, basing the figure on what he had seen and heard of the Tholians since the Dahlgren crew had come under attack. Because the nonhumanoid aliens wore environmental suits, it had been particularly difficult to tell one from another, but Kirk felt confident that he’d identified as least that many distinct individuals.
    â€œI thought at least eighteen,” DeGuerrin said, “including the two we killed. That leaves no less than sixteen.” Kirk didn’t dispute DeGuerrin’s assessment, trusting her expertise in security matters. He also understood what she hadn’t said: that, given the circumstances, the quartet of Farragut crewmembers had virtually no chance of defeating a Tholian contingent of that size. “We’re going to have to make a run for the Dahlgren,” DeGuerrin said, clearly choosing retreat over continuing the battle.
    But while Kirk would’ve gladly considered escape a victory at this juncture, he also knew two facts that made such a course problematic. To begin with, this facility had been erected for the purpose of allowing a scientific team to investigate both the planet’s atmosphere and its volatile crust; the former inhibited the use of transporters, sensors, deflector shields, and communicators, while the latter contained