Star Trek Into Darkness Page 0,44

you the truth was exactly the opposite.”

It made no sense. Uhura was more unsettled by his response than she would have cared to admit. No sense at all—unless, of course, you were a Vulcan. Seeing it from his perspective . . . How often had she tried to see things from his perspective? Where the first officer’s thoughts were concerned, she was an outsider trying desperately to look in. Would it always be so? Could she surmount such a logical gulf? Or would it be possible, somehow, some way, for the two of them to meet in the emotive middle?

She was in the process of formulating a reply when an intense flash streaked across their bow, rocking them violently while briefly blinding everyone inside.

“What the hell was that?” Kirk blinked furiously, fighting to regain his vision.

There was equal confusion on the bridge of the Enterprise as contact with the K’normian trader was lost.

Sulu turned sharply toward Communications. “What happened? Where’s the signal?”

“I don’t know,” responded the tech on station. “It cut out—I’m working to get them back.”

Spock recovered his full vision faster than his companions. Elemental as they were, the trader’s instruments were sufficient to identify the source of the warning blast. A rearward-facing scanner provided unwelcome visual confirmation: The craft that had fallen in behind them was winged, compact, and wholly lethal in appearance.

“A D4-class Klingon vessel, Captain.”

Kirk muttered a curse, adding, “I thought this section of the planet was abandoned and unvisited!”

“It must be a random patrol,” an anxious Uhura suggested. “Medical policing, maybe, to ensure nobody spends time in the plague region, where they could accidently pick up a latent virus and transport it back to a populated area.”

“Hold on!” Wrenching on the manual controls, Kirk sent the K’normian craft sideways and deeper into the clouds that masked the abandoned city below.

Farther back in the ship behind Uhura, a worried Hendorff leaned forward in his harness. “Can we get back to the Enterprise?”

“And lead them right to it?” she shot back. “Thus far the Klingons don’t know there’s a Federation ship in their immediate spatial vicinity. We can’t even head in its general direction without committing to a revelatory vector.”

Kirk didn’t hear Uhura, but he didn’t have to. The last thing they could do was try to return to the Enterprise. Aside from possibly igniting a war, it would mean the end of their mission to capture or kill John Harrison. With the image of a dying Christopher Pike still fresh in his mind, he had no intention of turning to run.

Beside him, Spock continued to monitor the instrumentation as Kirk took the K’Normian vessel through every basic evasive maneuver he could remember from his studies. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the pursuing Klingon patrol craft—in addition to being at least as maneuverable as the trading vessel, the Klingon crew had the advantage of operating in familiar territory.

Spock did not look up from the readouts in front of him. “May I remind you, Captain, that this ship has no offensive capabilities.”

“Not necessary to remind me, Mr. Spock. I’m all too aware of it. We’re simple merchants, that’s all—though right now, I wish it wasn’t that simple. Give me full power; everything down to emergency backup, all this ship’s fuel cells.”

Spock did not hesitate. “Aye, Captain.”

The compact trading vessel banked abruptly. Intended for basic shuttling between ground and orbit, it was not designed for high-speed atmospheric maneuvers, a fact Kirk seemed to overlook as he wrenched it over and sometimes through the towers of the abandoned cityscape. Repeated blasts from the pursuing ship just missed the fleeing trading craft. That was about the sum total of good luck they could expect, Kirk knew. The next shot would take out their engines or, if they were unlucky and the Klingon gunners especially accurate, the rear half of the evading vessel.

As she leaned forward, Uhura’s attention was drawn to the main readout. “They’re closing fast, bearing two eight five!”

“Dammit!” A glance through the dim daylight showed what Kirk presumed to be the center of the empty metropolis. The vast expanse of ruined towers, tangled metal, and demolished support structures were tightly packed against one another: some by design, others because they had collapsed. Such a concentration would have allowed pedestrians and small vehicles to travel easily between buildings. For a fleeing spacecraft, there was no such access. Unless . . .

Heart pumping wildly, Kirk nodded at the landscape ahead. “There! We can lose them there!”

The pursuing craft