Free Chain of Attack by Gene DeWeese Page A

with people in positions of power, both military and nonmilitary, and they virtually never tell the public—or their subordinates—the whole truth."
    Pausing, he gave her a self-deprecating smile. "And I include myself in that category, Miss Davis. I have to admit that I have not always been one-hundred percent open. Truthfully, no one in power—no one, for that matter, in the public eye at all—can afford to be totally open. Now, I'm not saying I ever did anything that I didn't honestly believe was in the best interests of the Federation in the long run, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Captain Kirk would ever do anything he didn't firmly believe was in the best interests of his ship and crew. There have been starship captains who might put their own interests above that of their people, but Captain Kirk, I'm sure, is not one of them. His reputation for integrity and competence is among the best in Starfleet, as I'm sure you're aware. No, all I'm saying is that, probably for what he sees as the best of motives, he's not letting us know everything that is happening, either with the alien craft or with the anomalies themselves. The problem is that, since he is probably not as knowledgeable as he could be concerning the anomalies, he just might be keeping to himself the one piece of information that, in the hands of someone more knowledgeable, could be the key to our return to the Federation."
    As he spoke, he continued to watch the play of emotions across her guileless face, and it came to him once again that, unless he fumbled badly, Ensign Davis was firmly in his camp. And with that recurring thought, he realized that, sometime in the last few minutes, some of the bleakness of his imprisonment had begun to lift. He still could see little hope of ever returning to the Federation; the gate had in all probability simply vanished, never to return, or perhaps it only operated in the one direction.
    But now he was not totally alone. In Ensign Davis he had an ally, a useful ally in what he had in that moment begun to think of as a campaign. His Enterprise campaign. For a moment, nostalgic memories of those long-ago campaigns that had launched him on his public career filled his thoughts. Then strategies began to leap into his mind, almost unbidden, and he wondered suddenly why he had been so slow to take that final mental step.
    But at last he had taken it. With the realization that he had established a firm toehold in the enemy ranks, he had taken it. And now, using the kind of maneuvering he knew best, he could build on that toehold. His life, he realized with an inner smile, once more had a purpose.

 
Chapter Six

    ALMOST PRECISELY THIRTY-SIX standard hours after the first contact with the alien ship, Kirk was snatched from a dreamless sleep by the excited voice of Lieutenant Jameson, the third-watch science officer.
    "Captain Kirk, to the bridge," Jameson's staccato voice crackled over the intercom. "Five more alien craft detected, apparently rendezvousing with the first."
    Within minutes, Kirk, brushing his still-rumpled hair back from his forehead with a quick motion of his fingers, emerged onto the bridge only to find Mr. Spock already at the science station, absorbed in the readouts and looking as if he had been there throughout the watch. Lieutenant Jameson, standing back out of the way of his superior, turned briefly toward the turbolift as Kirk entered. Despite a firmly neutral expression on Jameson's face, Kirk could see in the young officer's quick glance and in the fractional stiffness of his motions that he was not pleased to have been displaced, even by Spock. This, however, was neither the time nor the place to call him on an attitude problem.
    "Situation, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, sliding into the command chair vacated seconds before by Lieutenant Tanaka, who moved smoothly to a point beyond the circular handrail, never taking his eyes from the forward screen.
    "As Mr. Jameson first stated,