of enraged, vengeful clansmen.
Kirk rose shakily to his feet, glanced down at the unconscious body of McCoy, and then staggered over to help close the gate. He picked up a heavy bludgeon someone had dropped and lurched into the fray.
As a hill sword slashed toward him, he swung an awkward, but powerful, left-handed blow. There was a scream, and the audible crunch of shattering bones. The weapon clanged to the stones.
Outnumbered though they were, the Enterprise crew slowly pushed the attackers out through the gateway. The wind whipped harder, flinging dust and bits of gravel along the street, stinging the faces and blinding the eyes of the unhooded combatants. Thunder rumbled and slammed through the aurora-painted sky with greater and greater frequency. Jagged, actinic flashes of lightning illuminated the desperate struggle, flash-freezing the shouting mass of weirdly dressed, sword-wielding fighters into stroboscopic scenes out of Dante’s Inferno.
As the disciplined Enterprise forces pushed the last of the attackers into the narrow street, one of the double gates was forced shut. The other was closed to the point where only a narrow gap remained. One by one, the defenders slipped into the safety of the courtyard while those still in the street closed their ranks into an ever- tightening defensive semicircle.
Kirk ducked as a thrown dirk flashed toward his head, to bury its needle-like blade in the hard wood of the gate. Desperately calling on failing strength, he smashed right and left with his heavy club in such a berserk rage that the foremost of his attackers flinched back.
“Inside!” he shouted, and as the last of the defending party backed through the three-foot gap into the courtyard, he hurled his club into the face of one attacker. Another, wearing a tiger-striped hood, dove forward in a low tackle to bring him to the ground. Kirk reached back over his shoulder, grabbed the dirk stuck in the gate, tore it loose, and knocked the clansman senseless with the hilt.
As the hillman slumped at Kirk’s feet, he skipped backward to safety and stood, shoulders slumped and gasping for breath, as the second gate was forced shut and a stout cross-bar slammed home.
Still half-dazed, Kirk glanced around the courtyard. Many Enterprise wounded lay groaning on the ground and others were slumped against the courtyard wall.
“Get those people inside,” Kirk ordered. “Those gates won’t hold if they decide to ram. Where’s Commander Scott?”
“Here, Captain,” Scott called, stepping up to Kirk’s side.
“How long until the next beam-up?”
“No idea, sir. My lads and I hae lost all track of time.”
At that moment McCoy tottered over, a bloody rag tied around his head. “Let me check you over, Jim,” he said. “You look as if a herd of elephants ran over you.”
“I’m all right, Bones,” the captain replied, massaging his bruised arm gingerly. “At least my right arm is back in order. Take care of the others. Some look pretty bad.”
He winced as Lieutenant Dawson was carried past, the hilt of a highly decorated hill knife protruding from between his ribs.
“I’ll do what I can,” McCoy said. “But without a medikit, I don’t know…”
Slowly the courtyard was cleared of the injured. The last to be helped through the narrow door at the rear of the compound was a slight, scantily dressed female who had both hands pressing a blood-soaked cloth to her middle.
“Sara…” Kirk said, “what were you doing in that mess?”
Her wan face wrinkled in pain as she answered. “I came back here to alert Scotty as soon as the riot began. I tried… to help out at the gate… I should have practiced swordsmanship longer with Chekov.” In a tone of grim satisfaction, she added, “At least… I got three of them before… they got me.”
Her eyelids fluttered and she passed out. Kirk caught her, waved over two officers with a makeshift stretcher, and ordered them into the building. A sudden, resounding boom from the gate spun Kirk around. The doors jounced again as the hillmen rammed them with long heavy poles.
Kirk ran his gaze along the top of the six-meter-high wall, but saw no sign of scaling ladders… yet.
As the last of the landing party passed him, he entered a short, narrow corridor and closed the courtyard entrance behind him. Gloomily, he surveyed the flimsy panels and the single, small latch which held the door shut. Another boom sounded outside.
He turned decisively, walked down the corridor, and pushed his way into the crowded room that had been his office. His engineering officer stood beside the water clock watching it with an anxious expression.
“… much longer?” McCoy was asking Scott.
“I canna tell from this contraption, Doctor. You’d better get the worst of the wounded into the terminal room so they can be beamed up when they do energize.”
“Well, it better be soon or some will…” He cut off as Kirk approached.
“Status report,” Kirk ordered to McCoy.
“Only a few are really serious—Sara, Dawson, two or three others. I’m afraid to remove that dirk Dawson has in him without a represser field; he’d hemorrhage to death in a few minutes. Sara’s in shock from loss of blood and I don’t have any plasma.” He shook his head admiringly. “You know, Jim, she may have gotten us into this mess, but when you were in trouble and went down out there, she charged in like a wildcat. Three of those uglies were ready to make mincemeat out of you, but Sara took care of them all. The last one got under her guard, though, and ripped her open.”
Kirk clenched his fists as self-recrimination washed through him, and he mentally reviewed the shambles that had been made of a perfect plan.
“If I’d given Spock another shot… just to make sure,” he murmured. “If we could only use a communicator… it’s… ifs.”
McCoy made a soft sound. “Take it easy, Jim. We tried…”
A sudden shout went up from those standing near the transporter terminal. “First group is up!”
“Bones, get Sara and the others in there quick,” Kirk snapped. “You, too. Get up to the ship and get to work.”
As McCoy hurried off, Kirk turned to Scott. “Scotty, get some men, take that desk, and barricade the outer door. It might buy us some time.”
Scott and a few men maneuvered the desk through the crowd of weary defenders and, when they moved aside to let it pass, Kirk caught sight of a small, plump figure huddled in one corner slurping from a wine bottle. Two empty jugs lay beside him.
“Kaseme! Get in there with the rest,” Kirk said, pointing to the terminal room.
“What does it matter where I die?” the little man murmured in a slurred voice. “A sword will hurt as much in there as it will here.”
A sudden shouting came from the corridor, and Scott and his men burst back into the room. “They’ve broken through the gates! They’ll be here in seconds!”
Scott hurried to Kirk. “We didn’t have time to brace the desk right. They’ll be through that door in no time at all.”
Barely had Scott spoken when a crash resounded in the corridor, and the passage was filled with the wild ululation of hill war cries.
“Everybody in there!” Kirk shouted above the bellowing curses of the clansmen. The Enterprise personnel moved quickly into the terminal. Kirk slammed the door leading into the hall, turned, pulled Kaseme to his feet and shoved him into the other room. Kaseme slumped in a corner and drained the rest of his flask.
Kirk pulled the terminal room’s door shut seconds before the clansmen burst into the outer room. They began to hammer at the last door between them and their prey.
The door began to splinter as a deep hum filled the room. The top quarter of the door flew inward, narrowly missing Kirk’s face, and the crackling, glittering carrier wave of the transporter beam surrounded the party.
“At last,” Kirk muttered. The room faded, wavered, then reappeared.
“That damn radiation front is still screwing up the planet’s magnetic field,” Scott growled.
Kirk jumped to one side as the enraged, hate-twisted face of one of the Messiah’s town followers appeared in the gap of the door. The Kyrosian’s sword lunged for Kirk’s chest. Kirk grabbed a sword from a nearby officer and chopped downward. The townman screamed in agony as his severed hand, still gripping his sword, dropped to the floor. He fell backward, causing a pause in the hillmen’s activity.
