Sondra Marshak - The Price of the Phoenix

Spock felt the other’s refusal, the effort to mask it, not to argue. There was the sound of a blow ringing on flesh, and the impact registered in James’s flesh, and came through to Spock. Was it imagination? No. Some singular land of—resonance? Some species of link to the too-similar body, too well-matched mind? James had been feeling more and more as if he were with Kirk’s body from the first contact of the fight. Now James’s eyes snapped open to see Kirk reeling from the blow, and James came close to reeling, too. He fought for balance, fought the agony, finally fought his eyes closed again to block the sight.

That is another reason why you must not try to move,’ Spock flashed sternly. ‘You must help me to tune down the link so that I can.’

Once again James gave obedience—to that last order at least. He threw himself into the effort, not fully knowing how, but helping. He fought for emotional control, the Human’s own kind. It was hard, very hard for him. He fought for withdrawal. That was even harder. But he was trying. Making it. Making it perhaps better than his Vulcan. Slowly James was screening out the terror of the flesh as he had screened out the sight of the eyes.

Spock focused on the need to move, denying the need to feel, to see, to know, to be—with. He was narrowing everything down to the central vision of a tunnel opening before him. Narrowing, with the effort of his life. Now, when it counted to be a Vulcan.

At the edge of the narrowing, Spock felt hands shaking his shoulders—whose shoulders? Kirk’s? Which Kirk? James? A slim hand slapped a face, and it registered on Spock’s face, but he knew then that the Commander had slapped James.

‘“Captain!”’ The woman’s voice, as from a distance. “The door, Captain. Now. James T. Kirk! Jim! My—Kirk—”’ She slapped him harder.

Spock pulled out as James Kirk opened his eyes and caught the Commander’s wrist. Spock must leave-James—to her now. There was no time—

Spock found his eyes looking at a blank wall inches from his face. His mind was—yes—clear. Only a slender cable of a link remained.

Then he felt a heavy hand impacting against his jaw, crushing flesh against bone, this time one fraction of force from snapping the neck. No, not Spock’s own neck—Kirk’s. Jim Kirk’s. Spock felt the shocking vulnerability of the Human—the power of the black giant against that more delicate flesh.

And then Spock knew that he was going to feel it all, as James would—as—Jim—would. James could screen the sight out of the link, but not the singular resonance, growing stronger now with Kirk’s agony. It was beyond tuning out.

A slap rocked Spock’s head again, but he set Vulcan muscles against it, stopping the movement down to a convulsive jerk. Yes, he would feel it, but he was a Vulcan. It was beyond his capacity to want to tune it out.

But he could see now and he could move.

He moved.

The Commander took her Kirk’s face in her hands as if she could soothe his cheeks, which bore white imprints of hands. Had her hands done that? She had thought she had been gentle enough even for a Human. This Human.

Where had he been?

He was here now. Trembling, but here.

The door,” she repeated, turning his face to it, away from the screen, averting her own eyes. There was work to do. “Jim—?” she said tentatively.

“Call me—James,” he said distantly. And then brought his eyes into focus on her face. “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

She started to release him, but the cheeks tightened convulsively under her hands to the sound of a heavy blow. Every muscle in his body—She held him against it.

She felt her eyes widening. She had seen him in glimpses while she worked on the door, seen his helpless rage turn to trancelike absorption, seen the faint movements of body language backing the other’s fight

But he was feeling it in truth, in his own body.

“Are you—able?” she said, shocked.

He set himself with monumental effort, as if drawing on some strength he did not own. There was another slap and he reeled, but caught himself. “I’ll move. Let’s move!”

“Behind me,” she said, leveling the nearly exhausted sidearm and impacting the heel of her boot solidly against the last of the lock to snap it.

She followed the motion of the kick through into the candled room, prepared to fire but finding the candles guttering out in emptiness.

So, the doubled or tripled guard would be out in the corridor. Count on Omne for that. He knew they would try to come.

The last remnants of the weapon’s charge which she had saved might or might not get them through the first contingent—might get them no more than a dozen yards.

She saw no chance, in fact, of reaching Kirk.

But she could not tell this one that he could not try.

“Crawling with guards,” the Human said quietly.

She nodded.

This door, she had noted, did not lock. It opened out, in fact, in the antique fashion which Omne maintained throughout much of the place.

She turned the knob silently and burst out, feeling the door slam into hard flesh.

She mowed the guards down without word or hesitation. The sidearm’s stun effect accounted for four before she cut it off, jammed it in the holster, and went for the two shaken ones behind the door with her feet and the edges of her hands.

It was over before the man behind her could get past her and into the action. She bent and collected two of the ancient guns, jammed them in her belt, indicating one for him. “Useless until we reach him,” she said. “They make too much noise.”

She saw him looking a little stunned, but she turned toward the turbo-lift.

He caught her shoulder. “No turbo-lifts.”

She raised an eyebrow. How would he know?

“Spock,” he said. She nodded and turned him toward the emergency slide-poles and ladder tubes Omne had cheerfully pointed out to her on his guided tour. He had been proud of his miserable maze, confident that it could block any effort to break it. Letting her know that. And now—

A dozen levels down and an unknown horizontal distance through unknown turnings. U-27-E-14.

She kept her hand on the Human’s arm, feeling him fighting against turning his attention inward-winning, but losing at certain moments when he could not suppress the reaction of his body.

She locked her hand into the stretchy velvet tunic and the wide hip-band as she stepped off before him to catch the slide-pole.

For an instant his startled eyes said damn it, he could look out for himself. Then he countered the argument himself and caught the pole a little above her, letting his legs circle her thighs around the pole, and locking one arm around the pole, one around her, until she felt that she had a more secure hold than the thin material—but did not let it go. Was there another Human male in the galaxy who would not have delayed, defending his pride? She kicked her foot out of the stop-stirrup and let them slide.

And in fact he even let her Romulan muscles take the greater share of the strain of braking against gravity in the long slide—a slide designed for Romulan muscles and not for his, though he might have managed it on a normal day. At need, he would have managed it today, if it killed him. But it might have.

She counted the levels mostly by feel and caught the stop-stirrup with her foot, wondering whether it would have broken his ankle. Possibly. The heavier gravity here was more like Romulan or Vulcan, too, not meant for his fragile strength.

But he was quick and active in swinging off onto the level and he caught her hand and pulled her up and after him.

She let him set the direction. It was as good as any other. The tour had showed her that the doors appeared to be numbered normally, but in fact were numbered by no system known to man—or mathematics. Forty-seven unblushingly followed eighty-three and led to 16-C. As far as she could tell, only the level numbers counted and made sense.