by David Mack
Burnham feared she knew where Spock was going with his line of inquiry, but she had to be certain. “What do you think such a ‘perpetual assignment’ would look like, Spock?”
“I lack sufficient evidence to form a testable hypothesis. But if the Juggernaut was designed to test peoples rather than worlds . . . who is to say its test of our people would end with the destruction of the colony? If the presence of our respective ships in orbit has made the Juggernaut aware of our culture’s interstellar nature, who is to say it will not seek out other colonies and homeworlds and test them by fire, as it is doing to Sirsa III?”
“So you agree with Starfleet—you think we need to sacrifice Sirsa III in order to save other Federation worlds from the Juggernaut?”
A fleeting grimace. “I made no such conclusion. I merely raised the question.”
“The question alone is being treated by some at Starfleet Command as sufficient cause to order the annihilation of an entire planetary ecosystem.”
If Spock perceived her statement as a challenge, he didn’t act that way. “There will always be those who draw conclusions from questions when none are implied. That does not absolve us of the responsibility to ask, or to seek impartial answers.”
She took his gentle rebuke in stride. “You’re right. It would be irresponsible to ignore the possibility that we’ve exposed others to the danger of the Juggernaut merely by having made our own existence known to it. Logic demands not only that we collect objective information, but also that we be truthful with ourselves and others about the possible consequences of our actions. Something I promise we will do, in earnest.” Walking beside him toward the Juggernaut’s ever-heavier core, she snuck a sidelong look and caught his eye. “But first, let’s render those queries purely academic by finding some way to sink this thing.”
* * *
“Ohara,” Pike said on the move, pivoting into his command chair and bracing himself for the worst, “what are we looking at?” On the Enterprise bridge’s main viewscreen, six radiant objects streaked upward through the atmosphere, in two clusters of three. Pike leaned forward, his focus keen upon this new threat. “Garison, hail the Shenzhou. Make sure they’re seeing this.”
Ohara looked back at Pike from the right side of the bridge’s two-seat forward console. “New drones from the Juggernaut, sir.” Ohara returned his focus to his console readouts. “Faster than the last round that hit the Shenzhou. I’m having trouble getting a weapons lock—they’ve improved their scramblers.” Another anxious look over his shoulder at Pike. “Three headed for us, three for the Shenzhou, and one about to strafe the colony’s capital.”
“Shields up,” Pike ordered. “Charge all weapons. Helm, take us to higher orbit. I want room to move without hitting atmosphere.”
“Aye, sir,” Tyler said from the left side of the forward console. “Moving to higher orbit.”
Commander Una looked up from the hooded sensor display at her station. “Fifteen seconds to firing range. They’re splitting up and locking weapons.”
“Increase to half impulse,” Pike said. “Ohara, coordinate with the Shenzhou. Overlap our firing solutions, create a kill zone between us, and force the drones into it.”
“Aye, sir,” Ohara said. A nod from him to Garison was all it took to cue the comms officer to set up a dedicated channel between Ohara and his counterpart on the Shenzhou.
Blinding streaks whipped across the main viewscreen. Knowing what was coming, Pike gripped the armrests of his command chair and drew a deep breath—and then the Enterprise juddered on the receiving end of a brutal volley of energy blasts. Lights dimmed and consoles flickered. The barrage continued, disrupting the ship’s inertial dampers and artificial gravity, leaving Pike feeling momentarily like a feather before trying to launch him from his chair.
He was still recovering his equilibrium as Una demanded, “Damage reports! All decks!” Switching intraship channels with a single touch on her console, she added, “Bridge to sickbay! We need running casualty reports!”
Overlapping replies from several decks and divisions poured from the speakers at Garison’s communications console. The chief petty officer scrambled to mute the chaos and route the general-channel traffic onto dedicated circuits for Una’s and Pike’s convenience.
“Ohara,” Pike said, “tactical analysis.”
The young navigator seemed to be in a struggle against his own console. “The drones aren’t going into the trap. We’re trying to corral them, but they’re too quick”—he looked back at Pike—“and too smart. I think they knew our play before we did.”
Garison pressed his hand to his in-ear transceiver, then adjusted his console’s settings. “Distress signals from the planet’s surface, sir. The drone buzzing the capital is knocking down entire blocks. At this rate, it could set the whole city on fire in less than twenty minutes.”
“Dammit,” Pike muttered. “Can we get a torpedo lock?”
Ohara shook his head. “Not at these speeds, sir. And if we fire blind and let the torpedoes seek their own targets, there’s a good chance we’ll hit the Shenzhou.”
Hull-rattling explosions resounded through the Enterprise’s spaceframe. The overhead lights fluttered to half brightness, then recovered. Then came a crushing blast that sounded to Pike as if it had erupted just above the dome of the bridge—and a storm of sparks from a ruptured plasma relay rained down on his head.
Pike and his officers swatted burning-hot motes of plasma from their shoulders and heads, racing to prevent the ignition of hair or fabric. Seconds later a gray smoke perfumed with the bitter stench of burnt hair and scorched synthetic fibers filled the air.
“Dorsal shields buckling,” Una said. “Starboard shields losing power.”
Adrenaline coursed through Pike’s veins and impelled him out of his chair. “Helm, roll us over, show the drones our belly. Number One, divert all shield power to the ventral emitters. Tyler, put us above the Shenzhou, let her obstruct the drone’s access to our topside.” He stalked forward to hover behind Ohara’s left shoulder. “Set phaser banks one and two for zone coverage, scissor pattern. Fire at—”
Invisible fists of disrupted gravity and momentum hit Pike. Hurled toward the port side of the bridge, Pike was a rag doll, a leaf in a gale—right up until the moment he struck the bulkhead beside the turbolift doors. Every part of him hurt as he picked himself up off the deck, a jumble of aching bones stuck in a bag of bruised meat. “Fire at will! And for the love of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, hit something!”
“Firing,” Ohara said. The lieutenant pounded his fists on his console. “Dammit!”
Tyler turned a hangdog look toward Pike. “That was my fault, sir. I just don’t have room to maneuver this close to the Shenzhou. I—”
“No apologies,” Pike said. “Just solutions. Solve the problem first, tell me how you did it later. Vaporize those drones!”
Una arrived at Pike’s side and steadied him as his balance faltered. “Captain, Tyler is right. By using the Shenzhou as cover, we’re impeding our ability to maneuver, and theirs.”
He understood the criticism implied by her analysis: he wasn’t just putting his own ship at risk with a questionable tactic, he was endangering another captain’s vessel as well. It was never pleasant to admit an error in the heat of battle, but it would be criminal not to correct it. “What do you suggest, Number One?”
“Break orbit,” Una said. “If the drones follow us into open space, we can use full-impulse combat maneuvers, and maybe open up enough distance to use torpedoes.”
“If we break orbit, we’ll be leaving the colony undefended.”
“We already are.” Una held Pike upright as another barrage from the drones rocked the Enterprise and showered the bridge in sparks. “As long as we’re on the defensive, we’re of no use to the colony or the Shenzhou. We need to break away and take this fight to where we hold the advantage.” Another explosion shook the Enterprise. “Unless we go on the offensive now, we might
not last long enough to help the colony. Sir.”
Retreating, even temporarily to gain a superior position, rubbed Pike the wrong way. But he had spent enough time at the Academy learning the philosophies of war and the logic of tactics to know that Una was right. His crew would have a better chance against the drones if they could wage this battle in the environment best suited to the Enterprise.
“Mister Tyler,” Pike said, “break orbit, heading twoone-five mark nine. Once we’re clear of the planet’s gravity, override the safeties and take us to flank impulse. Mister Ohara, keep hitting those drones. I want them mad as hell and on our tail, every step of the way.”
* * *
It figures, Georgiou lamented. No sooner do the engineers put my ship back together than the drones start breaking it again.
She winced as a series of punishing blasts from the drones hammered the Shenzhou and left numerous duty stations on her bridge belching black smoke and red-hot phosphors. The acrid stink of burnt circuits was thick in the air, which grew hotter by the minute. Life-support must be failing, Georgiou realized. “Gant,” she snapped over the chatter of panic streaming from the communications panel, “pick one of the three drones and concentrate all your fire upon it until it’s gone. Oliveira, steal every last drop of power you can find for the shields.”
Her tactical and operations officers both nodded their understanding as they continued to struggle against the automated onslaught. Outside the three broad viewports at the front of the bridge, streaks of light whipped past, then vanished into the glare of sunlight off the ocean that covered nearly all of the planet’s eastern hemisphere.
Three sharp cracks of detonation made the Shenzhou lurch and forced Georgiou to white-knuckle her chair’s armrests to stop from being hurled halfway across her own bridge.
I wish Michael was here. Only now, in the thick of a fire-fight and bereft of her first officer’s aid, did Georgiou realize just how much she had come to rely upon Burnham’s skill at handling the details of combat. Here’s hoping Gant can fill her shoes.
Jarring shocks batted the Shenzhou in one direction after another. Gant frowned as he fought to get ahead of the ship’s attackers. “The drones are faster than before,” he noted, as if Georgiou hadn’t seen the battle’s telemetry projected on the port screen. “And they’re packing more of a punch. If we don’t—” He raised his brow at something on his panel. “Sir, the Enterprise is above us. I think they’re using us for cover.”
If Gant’s read of the Enterprise’s tactic was correct—and Georgiou suspected it was—then she expected her own ship was about to face a concentrated attack from the opposite side. “Shift power to ventral shields,” she said. “Gant, redirect weapons power to our ventral phasers. Set up zone defense and fire at will.”
Saru looked up from the XO’s post, which he was monitoring during Burnham’s absence. “Captain, casualties are mounting in sickbay, but the medical division is running a skeleton crew because of relief efforts on the planet’s surface. What should we tell the wounded?”
Georgiou wondered whether Saru knew he had committed a heinous bit of wordplay, then she reasoned the Kelpien was likely not even aware that referring to a medical unit as a “skeleton crew” constituted a poor show of wit. “Do we have any personnel with medical training in other divisions who can be retasked?”
“Searching,” Saru said. “Negative. Doctor Nambue took nearly all of the ship’s senior medical personnel to the surface. Sickbay is presently being supervised by two paramedics and a dental hygienist.”
“Tell them to do their best and to grab something heavy,” Georgiou said. “Helm, can we get some distance from—” She halted in midorder as she saw Enterprise’s position change on the bridge’s main tactical holo. “Gant, what’s the Big E doing now?”
“Breaking away from us.” Gant checked his data and struggled to hide his mounting alarm. “And heading out of the planet’s gravity well.” He tilted his head back, as if he were in the throes of an epiphany. “Makes sense, Captain. In open space they’ll have the room to make complex maneuvers at full speed. . . . And so would we.”
“Follow them,” Georgiou told Detmer. To Gant she added, “Link our firing solutions.” To the rest of the bridge she declared, “Heads down, eyes open. Time to go to work.”
“I’ve interlinked our targeting computer with the one on the Enterprise,” said junior tactical officer Ensign Jira Narwani. She adjusted her holographic targeting helmet. “Now get ready to see some serious shit.” Her hands seemed to dance in midair as she used the virtual-reality environment created by her helmet to choose targets at the speed of thought and make them the loci of the combined firepower of the Enterprise and the Shenzhou.
Lancing beams and bolts of energy sliced through one of the drones, which erupted in a greenish fireball and peppered the Shenzhou’s forward shields with burning shrapnel.
“One down, two of ours to go,” Georgiou noted under her breath. “Helm, as soon as we’re free of the planet’s gravity, increase to maximum impulse.”
Detmer pushed the ship to its full speed, provoking creaks and groans from the battered old spaceframe as she put the ship through turns that would shatter most ships’ keels. “We’re clear and free to maneuver, Captain.”
“Look sharp,” Georgiou said. She pointed at a target pictured over the center viewport. “Gant, tractor beam on this one! Push it into that one!” As the tactical officer carried out her order, Georgiou pressed onward. “Helm, hard to starboard, twelve degrees yaw! Crush that drone between our shields and Enterprise’s! Ops, angle deflectors for maximum crush!”
In seconds, her orders paid off. Barrages from the Enterprise and the Shenzhou tore apart one drone, while the tractor beam forced two more into a collision. A fourth drone disintegrated as it was trapped between the invisible energy screens of the two starships, which crackled as they brushed against one another during the high-speed flyby.
“One left,” Gant declared. He dedicated himself to the drone’s destruction with an intensity Georgiou had never seen from him before. “Just a little closer,” he muttered as he fought to get a weapons lock on their last attacker. “That’s it, just break left—”
The drone darted right—and was obliterated by a phaser shot from the Enterprise.
Gant suppressed an obvious urge to swear, then forced himself back into a semblance of dignity as he reported, “All clear, Captain.”
“Helm, put us back in orbit, on the double,” Georgiou said. “Gant, neutralize the drone attacking the capital. No extra points for neatness.”
“Understood,” Gant said.
Oliveira looked back from ops. “Captain, the Enterprise is following us back to orbit. They’re also scanning for a weapons lock on the last drone.”
“This isn’t a contest,” Georgiou reminded her bridge officers. “I don’t care which of our ships eliminates that drone, as long as—”
“Got it!” Gant shouted with a pump of his fist.
So much for the “no I in team” speech, Georgiou decided. “Secure from red alert,” she said, “maintain yellow alert. Mister Saru, collect damage and casualty reports from all decks, then get me new repair estimates from engineering.”
The Kelpien responded with a birdlike stiff nod. “Aye, Captain.”
Ensign Fan swiveled away from her panel. “Captain, the Enterprise is hailing us.”
“Patch them in, but keep my forward view clear.”
A holographic projection of Captain Pike manifested in front of the Shenzhou’s starboard viewport. He looked very much the worse for wear after this latest scuffle with the drones. “The Juggernaut launched its drones a lot sooner than we’d expected, Captain. And my XO tells me its energy readings are already climbing again, faster than before. Whatever that thing has up its sleeve for its next trick, I don’t think we ought to wait to see what it is. The time to frag that monstrosity is right now.”
His insistence on immediate assault shocked Geor
giou. “Captain, need I remind you that Lieutenants Spock and Burnham are still inside the Juggernaut?”
“I’m well aware of the sacrifice we’ll be making,” Pike said. “And I have no doubt that Mister Spock would approve of the logic behind my decision.”
His tone made Georgiou bristle. “We promised them we would give them three hours to find a solution to this crisis. We still owe them another thirty minutes.”
“When we made that promise, we thought we had three hours to spare. Now we know otherwise. If we let the Juggernaut become fully active, we might not be able to stop it—and that’s a chance I can’t—that I won’t—take. I’m going to end this, Captain, before it’s too late.”
Georgiou stood from her chair to strike her most imperial pose. “I can’t let you do that, Captain. Not while there remains even a chance to resolve this without bloodshed.”
“That ship has sailed,” Pike said. “Now it’s my turn to remind you: I have valid orders in hand from Admiral Anderson, and they supersede your authority as the senior commander. So you can either help me destroy that alien wrecking machine—or I can obliterate you and your ship along with it.”
With a haughty arch of her brow, she asked, “That’s how it’s going to be, then?”
“Sorry, Captain. But that’s the way it has to be.”
She lowered her chin, ready to charge headlong into the brewing storm.
“Then I’m afraid we’re going to have a problem.”
* * *
The passageway inside the Juggernaut had reversed directions and sloped downward twice since Burnham and Spock had first entered it. She estimated they had traversed most of the vessel’s length with each leg of the journey. Given the angles of their descent at each switchback turn, they were now almost at the core of the alien ship.