Star Trek: The Original Series - 116 - The Janus Gate 3 - Past Prologue by L. A. GRAF

Author:L. A. GRAF [Graf, L. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Adventure, Space Opera
ISBN: 9780743445979
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2002-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

KIRK LOOKED FROM the black glass pyramid to the nearly incomprehensible tricorder readout in his father’s hands, then back again. This is not someplace I ever went to. Not that such details mattered anymore. They had already strayed so far from events as Kirk remembered them that he was skeptical about whether things could still be set right again.

On the quadrangle below, Vragax moved back and forth between their scattered little camps like sightseers at a bazaar, greeting fellow militants with much laughing and shouting and tossing about of weaponry. Firelight glinted off their tight copper braids, and Kirk thought he could smell the astringent bite of phak leaves, which he remembered the natives chewed as a sort of natural amphetamine. He [131] wondered how much of the violence tonight had actually been inspired by a fervent hatred of the Kozhu and how much by the promise of copious amounts of phak for all the Vragax left standing afterward.

Tipping the tricorder screen back toward his father, Kirk waited for one of the chattering bands of Vragax to pass out of earshot before whispering, “Are you sure the readings originate inside that structure?” There were a half dozen other buildings surrounding the quadrangle, most of them much less inconveniently situated. Even if the Kozhu prisoners hadn’t been tethered just outside the pyramid’s main entrance, the whole building was set too far into the quadrangle to make a covert approach from the rear possible.

George swung the tricorder in as wide an arc as he could manage beneath their brushy cover, then pursed his lips around an unhappy frown. “It’s got to be.” He quietly closed the cover and tucked the tricorder behind him. “And the readings are a lot stronger now. There’s three in there for sure, maybe four.”

“Three?” For some reason, that bit of information made Kirk’s heart thump with alarm. “I thought your son was alone.”

“That’s what I’ve been assuming.” George pushed off with his elbows to wriggle backward out of the bushes, and Kirk ducked his own head out of the tangle of dead foliage to follow. The dry snap and crackle of their retreat seemed dangerously loud to his adrenaline-raw nerves. He held his breath until [132] he’d disentangled himself from the edge of the quadrangle, as though stilling his breathing would somehow make their presence less obvious.

“Jimmy must have hooked up with someone else who couldn’t make it back to the embassy in time.” Kirk heard his father climb to his feet once the older man had cleared the landscaping, then felt George reach down and grab hold of his foot to guide him out of the last of it as well. “At least he’s not out in this all by himself.”

Standing, Kirk dragged George away from the garden and the gradually filling quadrangle beyond it. “Who could Jimmy possibly be with?” he hissed, unable to shake his unease. The doorway he snugged them both into was one of the few around them still intact, its sculpted overhang plunging the little alcove into heavy shadow.

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