Chapter Twelve
“Risk is our business.”
—Return to Tomorrow
THE BRIDGE WAS organized chaos. Captain Kirk was leaning over the helm, his medieval costume incongru-ent with the geometric surroundings, doing the jobs of ten. The scarlet lights of Alert status were distorted by blasts of color energy from enemy ships as they swung by, lashing out at each other, and catching us in the crossfire. Iridescent damage on the nearby Klingon cruisers lit up our faces. To my right, Mr. Spock was bending over his readout hood, its blue light on his face clashing with the scintillas from the main viewer. He had to hold on to the edge of the console to keep on his feet as enemy fire cut at our battered deflectors. He and the captain were alone on the bridge.
As I came out of the turbolift, a strange thought flushed over me. Getting to the bridge hadn’t been easy, and I’d been thrown down at least twice as the ship was rocked by battle turbulence. I’d had to ignore the groggy, nauseous crewpeople just coming around after having had their lives risked for them. When the turbolift doors opened, ;,t occurred to me that precious few of those people were authorized to come to the bridge. Yet here I was, privileged to be at the hub of decision, alone with Captain Kirk and Commander Spock.
Kirk spoke into the intercom, correlating something
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I couldn’t hear clearly, and Mr. Scott’s voice came back up at him through the corn system. I looked toward the engineering panel, confirming to my jarred senses that he wasn’t there anymore.
“Nominal but coming back slowly,” Kirk was say-ing. “Good work, Scotty, keep it up.” Fighting from inside a cage, he adjusted the navigational controls and Enterprise pivoted against the Klingon tractor beams until we had a clear view of a Romulan ship veering toward us, with one of the cuneiformed Tholians close behind. Instantly Kirk struck a firing launch. Space filled with bright red-orange lancets. Phasers! They’d gotten phasers working! And the captain was using them to keep the enemies busy out there, protect our weakened deflectors, and complicate the Klingons’ effort to protect their prizemusmwhile they also tried to beat off attackers who were determined that if they themselves couldn’t have us, nobody could. Including the Klingon Empire.
The pastel Tholian vessel swerved to miss our primary hull, one of her wedges blazing with melted hull material. The Romulans cut upward on short notice and fired their particle beam at us, but the Klingons fired and detonated the particle beam before it reached our screens. Enterprise rocked and whined in the dispersing waves. I caught myself on the bridge rail and managed to stay upright.
From one side, Spock’s voice overlapped the snapping of tangled voltage as Enterprise trembled back to life. “Port side Klingon cruiser is keeping in contact with the other cruiser, Captain,” he was saying, his hand to the com receiver in his ear. “Distorted … they are attempting to contact their Empire or other Empire ships… I believe to request help that… may be on stand-by already, if I decipher these transmissions correctly.” “Cut off their broadcast. Make sure those transmis-257
sions get scrambled. They can tow us,” the captain said to the screen, “but they’ll have to do it alone. Scotty, ready secondary phaser banks.”
“Secondary banks are dry, Captain. I’m trying to funnel in some power. It’s only a matter’ a time before the hull in D-section ruptures and that’ll be the end of our reserve. We’ve taken too many hits there, sir.” Scott’s voice held the timber of a man possessed.
But I was staring at Spock. Just last year I’d finished a top-of-the-line course in computer cryptography and I blasted well knew that with the new wave-maze technology the Klingon Empire had developed, we couldn’t possibly tie in to their transmissions. Professor Eufinger had made that indelibly clear. But there was Spock, blithely doing the impossible.
Well, Eufinger had always been a cretin anyway.
The captain’s voice shook me awake. “What’s the status on the transwarp appliance?”
I had to clear my throat. “It’s tied in, but… a little shaky. We have to correlate from here to the engine room and over to the sensory. Perren’s standing by, and Sarda should be in the sensory any minute.”
Kirk left his station and approached me swiftly on the lower deck, shooting me full of the moment’s urgency. Even though I was standing over him, the sense of eminence he radiated was staggering. I felt drawn to his presence, even comforted, in spite of the battle blazing on the screen behind me. “Do you know-what to do?” he asked.
“It’s been explained to me, sir,” I said, obviously avoiding the real answer.
He seemed to like that response even better than if I’d told him I knew all about it and understood it perfectly and could pull it off without a hitch.
“Go,” he said. We crossed by each other as he went to join Spock.
The engineering subsystems monitor was sluggish under my hands. The functions override and critical
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regime indicators took too long to respond. Oh, well … I didn’t know for certain what they meant anyway, so let them take their time. I tapped the com through to engineering. “Bridge to Perren.” “This is Perren.”
“I’m at station. Hold while I tie us to Sarda.”
“Acknowledged.” Another tap. “Bridge to sensor broadcast.”
A few seconds passed. I was about to call again when the breathless response came. “Sensory. Sarda here.” He’d been running.
“I’m feeding the coordinates through to both of you. Keying weapons cross feed now.”
“Acknowledged. Drawing power to transwarp.”
“Broadcast ratios are confirmed, Piper. Standing by, J’ My eyes drifted closed. I inhaled and turned. “Captain? We’re ready when you are.”
Kirk’s expression pasted me to my controls. “Target the Klingons who have us under tow. I’m going to move us up into their tractor to tighten the range. We’ll go for a short incursion first.” He skipped the steps altogether, going from Spock’s side back down to the helm, and introduced the controls to their heading. Beneath us, Enterprise whined against the strain of impulse power fighting the tractor beams to push forward into them. Not as impossible as trying to pull away, but not easy.
“Aye, sir. Targeting.” I had to force my fingers to move. Green lights on the board blinked, confirming that Sarda was receiving the coordinates.
“Romulan ships moving in for another rush on the Empire cruisers,” Spock reported.
“Just as well,” the captain muttered. “All right, Piper. Ready transwarp flux…”
“Range is uncertain,” Sarda warned. “There may be an echo effect. Brace yourselves.” I held my breath, waiting for the captain’s next
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word, as the two Romulans vessels wheeled into near space. Echo effect? Did he mean- “Execute !”
I leaned on the emissions toggle. The controls went wild.
Enterprise’s electrical noises drooped out to long howls. My arms became elastic. I felt my knees fold in the wrong direction.
The edge of flux—we still felt it, even though the waves were deflected outward at the attacking ships. The flushback twisted reality around us. I heard Kirk’s voice as he shouted something to Spock, but the words made no sense. Still, I clung to the sound.
While Sarda’s safety systems directed the actual flux at our enemies, the dimensional distortion couldn’t be controlled. It fed back on Enterprise, engulfing us in the same peripheral effect we’d felt aboard Rex. If this was the fallout, what was it like out there, in the main stream?
The ship lurched and bolted to starboard, then righted.
My arms came back. The queer feeling subsided abruptly, leaving us all breathless.
“Status, Spock!” Kirk demanded.
The answer took too long. “Tractor beams have released us.” Spock’s report carried a ring of triumph. “We are free to maneuver.” He turned to the main viewer. We all did.
The scan of immediate space was horrifying. Partially dissolved ships floated by us, dismembered, or spliced together wrong, completely rearranged—when a Tholian ship drifted past with a Romulan wing pro-truding from the side of its hull, I had to look away.
Spock, still staring at the screen, stepped down to the captain’s side. Together, with expressions frighteningly alike, they watched what we had done. The area looked like an interstellar junk yard. The only vessels
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left maneuverable in immediate space were one Rumaiym ship, the unidentified ship, and… Enterprise.
Far off at the edge of the viewer, there was movement. The remaining Tholians, their hatred of disorder apparently stronger than their desire for transwarp, cashed in their chips and retreated at high speed. So did the ships Spock had identified as Wijngan.
The first ship left to move on us was the Daqawlu vessel, a streamlined yellow and black ship made mostly of curves. It gathered speed gradually, then faster, and fired full disruptors.
Enterprise rocked under us. I felt myself hitting the floor, my hip smashing the edge of the engineering console as I went down. In the corner of my eye I saw Kirk dive for the helm control. Impulse power hummed up from the lower decks, and the starship tipped away from the Rumaiym beams.
“Shields four and seven down completely, Captain,” Spock shouted over the combined din of disruptor fire and impulse rumble.
Kirk struck an intercom button. “Kirk to Engineering. Scotty, divert all available power to photon torpedoes.”
“They’re too weak, sir,” Scott’s voice filtered up from distant decks. “I’ll need four minutes to re-charge. Buy me that time and I’ll give you disruption potential.” He sounded better than he had when he’d been on the bridge. Typical, for Scott, health was directly related to proximity to the engines.
The arcuate Daqawlu ship had vectored out into deep space and was diving on us again at attack speed.
“All right,” Kirk growled. “We’ll do it the hard way. Piper, enable the flux. Execute on my mark.”
The yellow and black ship swooped toward us. Her phaser port glowed faintly with gathering energy.
“Now, Piper.” Had someone said something?
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“Piper!”
I flinched, drawn abruptly back to my role in this awful drama. “Oh… aye, sir… enabled.”
“Execute!”
I bit my lip, and fed the impulses through as Scanner had instructed.
This time the dimensional flux wasn’t as distorting. Had it lost its power? Were we drained already? A wash of nausea, loss of vision, dizziness… and it was over. I blinked, and worked to focus on the viewscreen.
Before us, the Daqawlu ship shimmered briefly as reality short-circuited. They fell out of attack pattern, turned belly-up, and swept to one side of us. The ship left our viewscreen, then veered back in and came to a stop at a respectable distance. There seemed to be no other effect.
Kirk moved around the helm module, his eyes fixed on the drifting enemy vessel. “Spock? No effect on the ship?”
I’d never seen Spock hesitate. This time, though, he did. When he moved to his scanners, it was with a distinct force of will. Slowly, he said, “Confirmed… the ship is intact.” He straightened then, his saturnine features limned with empathy, gaze rooted to the Daqawlu ship. “But there are no life forms aboard.”
The captain turned sharply. “You mean…”
“Whatever happened during that flux,” Spock confirmed, “it took them all with it.”
Astonishment filled the captain’s face. He stared at the screen. My nausea returned, and I was surer than I’d ever been that he and I were nursing the same thought. It was easier to kill an enemy than condemn him to eternity between dimensions.
Involuntarily, we moved toward the viewer. Only a step or two. Enough to seal the horror. Water on a sand castle. We were shaken from our stupor by the Red Alert
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klaxon as it whooped to life again. My heart hit my boots. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
The captain looked at Spock. Feeling it, his first officer lifted his head from the scanner hood and somberly confirmed, “More ships, Jim.” His nitaglase eyes shined in the Alert’s red glow as he uttered words more awful than plain information could be. “Battle cruisers of the Empire.”
Go through it all again? We couldn’t. I couldn’t.
Kirk struck the comlink. “Scott, weapons?”
“Best I can offer is 70 percent range on photons, sir,” the engineer reported stiffly.
From another side of the engineering deck, Perren’s voice interrupted through my monitor’s intercom.
“We do have remaining power for another transwarp flush. Shall I enable?”
Damn him. That meant I had to report to the captain. I hated myself. “Captain… transwarp is standing by.”
“Man your post,” Kirk snapped. “Ready photon torpedoes.”
With a burst of energy, I smacked the comlink and said, “Stand by, Perren. Do not enable. Repeat, do not enable.” I swung around the chair to the weapons station and went after the photon controls, steeped in resurging faith for the man on the lower deck. My fingers tingled on the triggers, stiff with both relief and anticipation. We were back on familiar territory—my kind of ground, and his.
“Captain,” Scott hailed. “I canna guarantee that photon capacity. Energy was drained severely by those flux beams. I’m rerouting power through impulse reserve.”
“Speed it up, mister,” Kirk demanded, suddenly fierce as he dragged his senior officers together and made them stand in the fire with him. “We’re at battlestations. I want fighting capacity.”
The intercom crackled. “Aye, aye, sir.”
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“Piper, man the exterior scanners,” the captain ordered, sending me dashing around the bridge to the dynoscanners at the opposite side. While I was mov-ing, Kirk spoke into the intercom. “Mr. Sarda, report to the bridge immediately.”
I almost passed out when I heard that. We were going to be together—right when we needed to be. I was glad for that—and for the fact that Captain Kirk refused to use the transwarp flux again.
“Piper, report the range of those ships.”
The scanner light flickered with numbers. I squinted into it. “Point six-zero light years and closing.”
A few moments of silence gave us no comfort. During that time, the captain took the helm himseft. “Spock, divert more power to impulse drive for the best speed out of the area.”
“Very well,” Spock said. He crossed to engineering and played with the controls as fluidly as if he’d accepted a challenge to play chess. Yet this time, I knew he was deliberately hiding a deeper concern. It showed, if subtly, in the way he moved.
I peered into the space scanners. The three Empire cruisers moved in on one monitor. Hope sank as I watched them grow nearer, the schematics of their configuration flashing on two other monitors. And on the scanner at my right a distant flicker showed me we were finished. More ships on the way.
I watched the monitor, hypnotized. Four equidistant points of starlight bloomed against black space. Only my training kept me from sinking into a chair and waiting for the end.
“Captain,” I murmured, “four more.” Our eyes connected.
Anything he would have said to me was drowned in the hiss of the turbolift. Sarda glanced at me, a fulfill-ing glance, ff fleeting, and took in the conditions we faced.
“Sarda, take weapons control,” the captain ordered.
Sarda nodded, but said nothing as he hurried to his station.
Though the captain surely knew there was nothing left to try against the odds coming at us through open space, we both knew we would try anything to keep surviving. Beyond our own survival was the scientific integrity of the Federation. We would destroy ourselves to preserve that.
I watched the scanner. Behind the K!ingon battle cruisers, four new points of light became ivory pearls, closing at warp speed.
“Scotty, I want those photons, now!” Kirk made no attempt to hide the urgency.
“Working, sir. I can give you 78 percent range, and two-thirds power.” “It’ll have to do. Sarda, target those new vessels.” “Targeting.”
“Range,” I rasped. “Two-hundred-eighty-thousand kilometers and closing.” Damn it, did we have to keep doing this? “Stay sharp.” Kirk’s voice was bracing.
In my scanner the four ivory jewels separated like exploding fireworks, preparing to surround us. They were closing fast, all teeth bared. As they peeled away from one another in classic formation, their shapes flattened into graceful disks and grew limbs. Sound caught in my throat. I choked it out. “Captain, hold your fire! Starships!” All eyes struck the viewer. “Spock, confirm!” Kirk snapped.
Spock hung a receiver in his ear and fingered his controls. He met the captain’s disbelieving gaze. “Confirmed, sir. Commodore of the Fleet Lyle Craig aboard U.S.S. Hood—” The captain burst to his feet.
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Spock went on, his voice strong now. “Captain Jarboe on the U.S.S. Yorktown… Captain Andreoni on board Exeter, and Captain Long with the destroyer Majestic. Commodore Craig suggests we sit back and ú.. watch the nickelodeon.” His brow rose over the unfamiliar word.
But it wasn’t unfamiliar to the captain. His face was alight with triumph as we watched the starships move in around us, and saw the sudden action of the surprised Klingon cruisers. Kirk slapped the command console with both hands and roared, “Advise they are welcome, Mr. Spock!”
“With a capital ‘well,’” I whispered. We made it work, Scanner. Rest easy.
The United Federation of Planets dumped politics on the floor and moved in as ff to a trumpet carillon.
Three Klingon battleships wheeled to meet four Federation starships, and we could nearly taste the surprise. From our Alert-darkened bridge, we watched as the starships took on the battle cruisers and the destroyer Majestic peeled off after the unidentified ship that was still haunting us. Two of the Klingon vessels suddenly moved in on Enterprise. They were going to use us as a backdrop—a safety net.
Kirk saw it. His sharp words cut through my fascination with the screen. “Piper, take the helm! Plot a course astern, z-minus thirty degrees. Lock and execute. Give them a clear field to open fire. Sarda, arm photon torpedoes. Wide dispersal. Fire!”
I should have known he wouldn’t just sit back and watch the nickelodeon, whatever that was. Jim Kirk would fire a bologna sandwich out the photon tubes if he had to, but he’d do something.
Photons burst through inner space, blasting a Klingon ship out of our way as Enterprise descended gracefully out of the center of battle. The Klingon ship pivoted away, its hull dazzling with crackles of energy, and nearly collided with the nameless forked ship as
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the latter reared away from our fire. We could nearly taste their rage.
Cut free from us and roaring like teased animals, the Klingon ship recovered and whirled around on an imaginary axis, bringing its full disruptor banks to bear on us. A bright glow opened on their firing ports, and the bolt streaked toward our bare port hull. Instinc-tively, we braced for an impact that would tear the skin right off the ship.
But the cavalry was still here. From the top of our viewer came a gleaming ivory disk, immense and instantly blanking out the whole screen. Massive call letters flashed by, black against the creamy plated hull, and we heard the thunder of disruptor fire striking full shields. Hood!
The other starship flooded past our viewer and was gone almost as suddenly as she had appeared. She’d taken the bolt on her own shields, leaving us intact to move downward and out of the way. Now she was turning on the Klingon who had attacked us, slicing hard into the damage we’d done, redoubling it.
We descended into a clear spaceway. Hood and Yorktown moved in over us, taking our place among the clutter of ships. They opened fire. The Empire cruisers cut away suddenly, swinging after each other in retreat, and disappeared into light speed.
Exeter was chewing Romulan bones. By now, there was nothing left of the Praetor’s ships to return to his distant Neutral Zone. Even the dangerous forked ship, after firing three final shots on Yorktown and learning what it was like to have a starship turn on it, turned on a pointed hullfoil and streaked into open space. Majestic wheeled after them, nipping at their heels.
“They did it!” I shouted. At least one foot left the deck. From opposite sides of the bridge, Sarda and I shared a penetrating gaze. His relief was plain. He slumped back on the weapons control console, surveyed the screen, and looked at me again. Against my
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flight suit, I raised a thumb in silent tribute. Perhaps it was the space between us, or the red dimness of the bridge, but I thought he almost smiled.
Kirk rested a hand on his command chair, but said nothing. That was all right; he didn’t need to say anything.
Spock was standing near communications, receiving a message. “Sir, Hood is hailing us.” His voice was soft now with that charismatic smoothness that said the danger was over and we had survived in high style. “Commodore Craig reports this sector is clear. He and Ambassador Shamirian are awaiting your reply.”
Kirk’s cheeks grew round with a repressed grin. He pounced on the intercom. “Ben! You old sea gypsy. You’re late.”
“Now, Jim, you know as well as I do what it takes to round up four starships. Pardon my saying so, but Enterprise looks a little ill around the mainmast.”
“Don’t worry about my ship,” Jim Kirk countered, pleased with himself. “We’re still in one piece.” “I never worry about you, Jim.”
Another voice interrupted now. “Jim, this is Craig. Don’t ask me how you stayed in that one piece in the middle of a scramble. I’m impressed right down to my birthday suit.”
“That’s one I owe you, Lyle.”
“Deduct it from the three I owe you. What else can we do for you while we arrange to tow you to starbase?”
“We have a medical emergency here,” Kirk told him. “We need as many medical personnel as you can spare, a damage control team, and a skeleton crew while my crew recuperates.”
“You’ve got it. Patch me through to Leonard. I can tie in my ship’s surgeon and let them share details. No sense in us captains horning in.” “Thanks again, Lyle.”
“Glad to help, Jim. Craig out.”
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The captain settled into his command chair and surveyed the bridge before turning to Spock. “Mr. Spock,” he said, a definite lilt in his voice, “secure from Red Alert. Patch our sickbay through to Hood.” “My pleasure, Captain.” Another lilt, clear as bells. The bridge lights came back on.
Within an hour we were under tow, this time toward home territory. Yorktown and Hood were towing Enterprise, and behind us, Majestic was towing Rex. Exeter had stayed behind in the Ciatella Star System to make sure the area was secure. Starbase Four had been alerted and was preparing its space dock to accommodate a heavy cruiser. Breathing time.
And that’s just about all I was doing: breathing. And gazing in disbelief at the beautiful starships ahead of us as we rolled through open space. When Captain Kirk appeared in my periphery, I hardly noticed.
“Everything all right, Commander?”
“Hm? Oh … yes, sir, of course. Everything’s fine,” I said, trying to convince myself. I wasn’t used to this. I kept waiting for things to start going wrong again. “Captain.. 2’ His eyes narrowed. “I thought so. What is it?” “Sir… what’s going to happen to Perren? I mean, what do we do with a Vulcan? Lock him up and throw away all that brilliance? He did help us…”
“Yes, and I’m sure the Judicial Committee at Star Fleet Command will take that into consideration. I’m going to submit a recommendation that he be re-manded to the custody of his home planet. We’ll let the Vulcans decide. That’s equitable, I think. Don’t you?”
This time I couldn’t stop the nonregulation sigh of relief. “Yes, sir, I sure do.”
He stayed by me for a few minutes. Together we watched the elegant starships as they towed us along. Finally, he urged, “What else?”
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I looked at him. He was watching me carefully, his head at a slight angle. How did he always know?
But he did know. I made no more attempts to hide it. I looked once again out into space. “That unidentified ship…”
The captain nodded, and clasped his hands behind his back. He thought about it for a moment before answering. “A blemish on the art of war, Piper,” he told me. “You don’t always get the comfort of knowing.”
At least he understood. It made me feel better. The sniggering doubt would always remain, but at least it was a shared doubt. Now only one question remained.
“Sir, how did you get out of trouble at Starfleet Command?”
He resisted a grin and tipped his hat. “Trouble is only a minor annoyance when you’ve engineered it yourself. And don’t worry. The assault charges against you were dropped due to extenuating circumstances.”
“Before I ever laid a hand on those security people, I’ll bet.”
Now he did smile. Then he said, “You’d win.”
I shook my head and sighed. The captain watched me passively.
“We’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do,” he said. “Go to your quarters and get some rest.”
“My quarters, sir? But I thought—”
“You’re still officially assigned to my command.” He paused then. “Banana Republic or not, Enterprise is still your home ship.”
Swelling in the compliment, I hardly knew what to say anymore. I let my hips rest against the bridge rail and, finally, I relaxed in his company. “I seem to be thanking you a lot lately, sir.”
A little shrug softened the soldier in him. “And we don’t thank you enough. It evens out. Go on. Get some rest.” I flexed my shoulders. “Aye, sir. I will.”
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“Oh, and Piper—” “Sir?”
“The Annual Atlantic Wind Ships Race is coming up. I need crew. Interested?”
The deck of Enterprise felt as if it was surging on a wave. “Just try setting sail without me,” I said. “Wouldn’t think of it. Good night, Commander.” “Fair weather, Captain.”
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