Star Trek - TOS - Battlestations

by Diane Carey

  brood. As a result, along with anger, out are ambition,

  growth, technology, a free-market mentality of any

  kind, and just about everything else that allow a soci-

  ety to depend upon itself. They are nice people, but

  they are helpless. They bring administrators in from

  other planets because they can't administer them-

  selves, trade their location and benevolent hospitality

  for foodstuffs, medical services, in fact most neces-

  sary goods and services of any kind. They are a

  professional shore leave planet. It's all they do well.

  The culture itself has its colors. The buildings are of

  90

  natural stone and wood, clothing reminiscent of

  Earth's Middle East during the classical period. Veils,

  slippers, turbans, belly dancing, mosaics, simple musi-

  cal instruments, and so on. Several Federation anthro-

  pological studies had been made on the hypothesis that

  the Argelians are one of a handful of human-origin

  races scattered around the galaxy by a superior culture

  who'd sought to preserve them. The biggest fly in that

  ointment was a faint but definite telepathic ability that

  appeared hereditary in some of the women. But none

  of that was my problem. Even though Argelius has

  only three major population clusters that could be

  called cities, the clusters are disorganized and very

  old. Some streets--many, in fact--had never been

  named even in the hundreds upon hundreds of Arge-

  lien years they'd been in use. There are no class

  structures; everybody is poor. As such, there is no

  quartering of Yelgor City, no way to guess which end

  of town might attract a group of fugitive scientists.

  So, here we were. Orbiting. We were waiting for Mr.

  Spock to devise a plan for finding the scientists. I

  suppose each of us assumed Spock would be the only

  one of us who would be able to solve the problem, a

  problem without many clues. As we watched him scan

  bits of new and old data about the scientists, trying to

  pick out some little propensity that would give a hint of

  where they might be hiding, we slowly digested the

  idea that even Spock, unfortunately, wasn't made of

  magic.

  He knew that too. It showed in the taut lines of his

  jaw as he calmly, even hypnotically, pored over screen

  after screen of drab information about Mornay and

  Perten. When that store was exhausted, he unceremo-

  niously began the whole process again with reams of

  data about Yelgor City and the huddled villages that

  surrounded it like a litter. Dr. McCoy and Merete

  confiscated Spock's information about the scientists

  and went to another terminal to go over it again, to

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  apply their knowledge of human psychology. Maybe

  they could find something Spock missed. Meanwhile,

  Spock and I slowly analyzed the city itself. We looked

  for architectural styles that might be conducive to a

  band of renegade scientists, places that had multiple

  escape routes, natural shielding, seclusion within a

  populated area, that kind of thing. But it wasn't easy to

  try to think like a renegade scientist, mostly because I

  wasn't a scientist and Spock wasn't a renegade.

  Scanner, meanwhile, bided his time watching the

  readouts of the planet while we quietly orbited. Nor-

  mal fluxes of magnetic and heat energy that heave and

  sigh as a planet turns were enough to keep him satis-

  fied. Come to think of it (which until then I hadn't) I'd

  never known Scanner to ask for more to do. So he had

  a hobby, and thus took his place as the least of my

  worries.

  Only when Scanner suddenly stopped humming one

  of his obscure collection of folk songs and leaned

  forward did I realize how long we'd gone without

  uttering a word. His abrupt motion drew both Spock's

  attention and mine. Scanner's nose was almost touch-

  ing his readout monitor. "What the blue peepin' hell is

  that?"

  Spock turned in his chair. "Mr. Sandage?"

  Scanner blinked, shook his head, grimaced, then

  shrugged. "Sir... I've never seen a wave like this

  before."

  Spock keyed in his own viewscreen, giving us both a

  split-second glance at the computer's simulation of

  jagged waves streaking upward from a small portion of

  the planet's surface. The glance lasted only an instant

  thanks to Spock. He vaulted sideways, diving for

  Scanner's navigational controls, long fingers dancing

  over the board. His shoulder struck the chair, sending

  Scanner tumbling onto the deck. Just before Scanner

  would have struck the port bulkhead, the ship around

  92

  us tilted violently away from the planet, yanking free

  of our orbit.

  The engines groaned and wheezed. The artificial

  gravity lost its center of balance, giving our individual

  weights to the centrifugal force that sent us crashing

  into the starboard bulkheads. Scanner was thrown the

  whole width of the cabin space, and the side of his

  head hit the emergency door handle as he slammed

  hard into the bulkhead between McCoy and Merete.

  I clawed at one of the passenger chairs, but couldn't

  hold on. I felt myself being sucked starboard. My

  shoulder hit the rim of the viewing portal and my own

  weight crushed me against Merete, who was trapped

  between my legs and the bulkhead. Dr. McCoy strug-

  gled against the crushing pressure to slip his hand

  under Scanner's bleeding head, but that was the best

  he could do.

  Banana Republic's engines sounded like one of

  those old freight-train locomotives trying to drag an

  overload. Spock was still somehow holding himself to

  the control board, his cape flying across his shoulders,

  flapping toward the starboard side. Pure determination

  kept him clinging there as the ship wrenched herself

  and the attached shuttle out of orbit in a whine of

  strain.

  My eyes watered. I forced them to stay open, trying

  to understand why Spock had inflicted such danger

  upon us. Just as the pressure began to slacken and the

  ship's gravity to regain control, a shock wave hit us.

  It came from outside, down there. I felt its alienness

  with an almost psychic intensity and knew that it

  hadn't come from my ship. Nausea fluttered through

  me as wave upon wave rocked us--but these weren't

  just waves of energy. With them came distortion.

  Detachment from reality. Before my eyes the walls of

  the ship stretched and yawned, even faded to show

  stars of the wrong colors and placement. My arms

  93

  changed length, shape... then reality settled again,

  for an instant. Then another wave.

  A hull seam somewhere on Rex's outer skin sud-

  denly ruptured. Loud hissing filled the cabin as the air

  spat out into space, then a sucking sound replaced it as

  the automatic sealants went to work. The ship, at
/>
  least, was trying to take care of itself. But for us, the

  fabric of consciousness was fraying.

  Between each wave was a moment of unsettling

  reality, as though the reality was the dream between

  waking times. Power waves, maybe. Dimensional tam-

  pering. Whatever it was, I hated it.

  My nervous system buzzed. Everything in my body

  felt out of sync---heartbeat, breathing, everything--I

  lost count of the energy waves wracking us as we

  drifted just out of orbital distance. Even this far out,

  the waves shuddered through us, horridly potent.

  Through my sluggish mind came the realization that

  Spock had just saved our lives by getting us out of

  direct contact with the power waves.

  Finally the last wave grumbled through Rex's shell,

  passed through our vibrating bodies, and passed out

  into space. We held our breaths, waiting for another

  wave, but no more came. I pushed myself off the

  bulkhead to Spock's side.

  "What happened? What did they do?"

  Spock straightened, then immediately bent over the

  readout screen. He was ominously silent.

  , McCoy knelt beside Scanner, helping him to sit up.

  "What did who do?"

  "Mornay and the others," I said. "Nobody else on

  Argelius could create that kind of power emanation."

  "Quite right," Spock confirmed. In a move particu-

  larly human, he looked over the computer readout

  screen and gazed through the big main portal at the

  serene planet, almost as though he only partially

  trusted the computer. He tapped the controls to test

  them, then asked, "Commander, I suggest we veer

  back into orbit."

  I paused. "Sir, you're senior officer on board."

  "Yes," he said, "but you misunderstand the nature

  of the conditions under which this ship was commis-

  sioned for you. Captain Kirk arranged a special prior-

  ity command for this transport. No one, regardless of

  rank, can supersede your authority on this vessel."

  My expression carried an unmistakable "you're kid-

  ding," but I forced myself not to say it. After a

  moment, I collected myself and asked, "What if I was

  killed?"

  He tilted his head. "Obviously, the senior officer

  would have no choice but to take over. That officer

  would be authorized to command the ship, but not the

  mission. The ship itself is considered expendable.

  Your presence on this mission, however, is not. Shall I

  attain orbit?"

  Dulled by his words and by his sense of courtesy, I

  simply nodded. I was about to ask again what had

  happened to us, when Scanner moaned and drew my

  attention. McCoy was probing the head wound while

  Merete ran a Feinberger over Scanner for vital signs.

  I crossed the deck and knelt beside them. "Got

  bonked, huh?" I uttered sympathetically.

  Scanner leaned his head back against the bulkhead

  as McCoy tended the swollen spot on his temple and

  dabbed at the blood. Though pale and disoriented,

  Scanner gave me a best-effort shrug. "I guess I'!1 just

  sit on the floor from now on. I keep endin' up down

  here anyhow. What kinda high-intensity flush was

  that? I never saw nothin' like that."

  "It disrupted our autonomic nervous systems," Mc-

  Coy said. "And if I'm not mistaken, attacked the brain

  thalamus too."

  "It didn't seem real," Merete commented, still

  tensely running the Feinberger over Scanner. "No

  94 95

  concussion," she said to McCoy. "Dural contusion,

  and very slight subdural bleeding."

  "I hope all that means 'headache,'" Scanner

  grumbled.

  "Orbital status," Spock reported. He continued

  contemplating the planet below us, one hand still

  resting on the controls.

  "Mr. Spock?"

  "Commander?"

  "Was it... unreality?"

  "Perhaps," he said. "A crude description, but appli-

  cable." He leaned forward, puzzling over the readouts

  as they flashed before him. The ship's new computers

  were still waffling on what to tell him. Tensely then,

  Spock straightened. "It was the transwarp antimatter

  flux," he said.

  Evidently that announcement, coupled with the dis-

  tortions we'd felt during the attack, meant more to

  McCoy than to the rest of us. Or maybe he simply read

  something in Spock's tone that we hadn't yet learned

  to hear. "You mean they're down there tampering with

  the fabric of reality?" he said.

  Scanner moved his legs gingerly and commented.

  "Reality's gonna have stretch marks."

  Spock nodded thoughtfully. "I know comparatively

  little about the transwarp flux pattern," he said.

  "However, I do know that the energy requires sophis-

  ticated housing in order to be safe. I believe we have

  just experienced the result of an accident."

  Stiff and cold, I murmured. "They must be trying to

  build it!"

  Spock looked at me. The eyebrow went up in stern

  punctuation. "Undoubtedly."

  "But they can't possibly have the right facilities on

  Argelius," McCoy said. "Not for something like

  that?'

  "Why would they want to actually build a transwarp

  device?" Merete asked.

  96

  I clenched my fists and answered, "To raise their

  advantage. Now they not only have the technology,

  but they have the threat." I turned to Spock. "Unless

  the accident..."

  Spock returned my stare, only to finally break it

  with a deep sigh. "Such contained antimatter power,

  engaged in a flux of that magnitude, could theoretically

  have obliterated the entire planet had it not somehow

  been focused out into space."

  "Including whatever Mornay is using as a labora-

  tory," I said. I didn't mean to sound accusative, as

  though I might be blaming him in my rush of irrational

  human concerns, but I couldn't help it. "It could've

  taken the whole lab with it, couldn't it? They could all

  be dead. Couldn't they?"

  He saw the intensity of that thought tighten my face

  and knew what it meant to me that Sarda might already

  be dead, that all hopes to rescue him from a tangled

  situation might be nothing more than useless risks.

  Declining to give me the silly Vulcan statement that,

  yes, they could be, he pressed his lips together and

  lowered his eyes, assessing his long experience with

  humans and the honesty it had shown him how to use.

  He gave me the answer no other Vulcan might even

  have had the courage to

  "I don't know."

  It was a long time ago. Maybe it wasn't really so

  long ago, when the shadows of memory start to fold

  with time. Like warp drive--a thought, and you're

  there.

  The planetoid was hairy with jungle and brush.

  Inside that foliage lurked unspeakable danger. Ene-

  mies. Enemies who knew us, knew what we had and

  what we were capable of. We neede
d an advantage.

  Something they didn't know about.

  I felt Sarda beside me, looking over my shoulder

  through a hole in the heavy ferns. We watched as a

  97

  pair of our enemies passed through the ravine below,

  too far away for our weapons to be of any use. These

  mock phasers were only good at a distance of ten

  meters. We needed that extra advantage if we were

  going to survive.

  "Any ideas?" I asked, crouching low.

  Sarda crouched also, keeping his head down. His

  light, brassy hair stood out too clearly amid the green-

  ery, and he was careful not to let it give away our

  position. "We are all equally armed and provisioned.

  If you and I are to gain some advantage, it will not be

  through our possessions. We must find some way to

  pool our knowledge. Our particular talents are the

  only things we have that they do not also have." I sighed. "All right. What have we got?"

  His amber eyes lost their focus for a moment as he

  analyzed us. Sarda and I had known each other all the

  way through Academy, but not particularly well. A

  greeting-in-the-corridor sort of association, along with

  a couple of terms as lab partners. And now we had

  been chosen as a team, pitted against the best of Star

  Fleet Academy. Even knowing each other better

  would have been an advantage, but we didn't have it to

  call upon. We had no idea then that the future would

  weld us together with a bond of ordeals.

  And this would be the first. Contrary to belief, truly

  enduring friendships are founded not on time, but on

  trial. Lasting relationships have to be forged, not

  simply discovered. We had no idea that this would be

  our first trial, this random pairing off for the Senior

  Field Endurance Maneuvers.

  It was an exclusive privilege to be recommended for

  these maneuvers. With only reserved amusement and

  even a little contempt, upperclassmen referred to

  these as "Outlast" games, and intimately as "the

  Outlast." That was the purpose, after all, to outlast the

  other teams. Not easy. These opponents of ours were

  the cream of Star Fieet's crop. Each participant had to

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  be not only recommended, but actually sponsored by a

  ranking member of the Academy faculty. We not only