Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [12]
“I have—” Seven Deers began to speak, but she was cut off by the chirp of their communicators.
They all reached for the devices, but Kirk had his out first, flipping its antenna grid up. “Kirk here.”
“Captain, there’s somethi—” Yüksel’s voice rang out, but something cut off the end of the transmission. All Giotto could discern was rising panic.
“Yüksel!” Kirk barked into the device. “Where are you? What’s happening?”
“—eneath the surfa—”
They waited expectantly for the signal to kick back in, but after a couple seconds, there was nothing but hissing static. Kirk looked to Giotto.
“He was with Ensign Chekov,” Giotto said, “in the northwest quadrant, sir.”
“Let’s go,” Kirk said, and immediately began moving at a quick jog, taking point. “Commander, keep trying to contact him.”
Giotto had already taken the rear and drawn his phaser; he flipped open his communicator. “Yüksel, do you read me?” he called. “Yüksel!” There was only static.
Kirk was continuing to give orders. “Get a fix on that signal, Ensign!” he called to Seven Deers, who was between the two men. “I want to know exactly where he is.” He held his communicator up again. “Kirk to Chekov.”
A moment passed while Giotto considered what could have happened to the exobotanist. On this planet for only four hours and already—
“Chekov here, sir.”
“Ensign, where’s your teammate?”
“He was off looking at some plant life, sir.”
“You split up?” Kirk sounded incredulous.
Giotto’s anger was rising. What had they been thinking? You could expect a bit of airheadedness from a scientist like Yüksel, but not from an officer like Chekov. He continued to call for the specialist into his communicator.
“Did you get that transmission?” Kirk was asking. “He was obviously hit by something.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a small pause. “We thought it made sense to cover a greater area. We were exploring a launching complex of some kind. I will meet you where we split up, sir.”
“You do that, Mister Chekov,” Kirk said, snapping his communicator shut. He fell back to draw even with Giotto. “Commander, contact Rawlins and Tra. Make sure they’re safe.”
Giotto switched channels. “Aye, sir.” Kirk sped up to exchange some words with Seven Deers about tracking Yüksel’s signal as Giotto made contact. “Giotto to Tra.”
There were a few moments of silence. “Tra here.” The security guard sounded fine.
“Crewman, did you receive Yüksel’s signal?”
“Yes, Commander. Rawlins and I are fine; we’re looking at what we think is graffiti.”
“What’s your location?”
“We’re in the southeast quadrant of the city. There are a lot of small buildings.”
“We’re converging in the northwest area to look for him. I’ll send you the coordinates. Keep your eyes open.” They didn’t need more people to go missing.
“Always do, sir. Tra out.”
Giotto slipped the communicator back onto his belt. Tra would keep Rawlins safe.
“How are they, Commander?” Kirk yelled over his shoulder, having taken point again.
“They’re fine, sir.”
“Good.”
In his early days on the Enterprise, Giotto had had great difficulty getting used to Kirk’s command style. It was nothing like how things had been done on the Lantree. Captain Gees had always brought his security chief with him on landing parties, and when there had been fighting to do, Giotto or Commander Mauracher, the executive officer, had handled it.
It was difficult to say exactly why Kirk was so different. It could simply be that Gees was an older man, but there was more to it. The captain felt he couldn’t ask his men to place themselves in danger unless he did the same himself. Sometimes, Giotto thought there must be some underlying issue, but he had to admit that Kirk’s style got results. The captain always got the