by Diane Carey
returned to his voice. Somehow he had gotten it back.
Even emptied of its human elements, the bridge
came alive. The computer systems fought the damage
and sucked energy into themselves to do their jobs.
Diagnostic readouts of the ship in tiny skeletal duplica-
tion, all done in computer blues, greens, and reds,
were constantly shifting across the upper display
boards, giving visual reality to the damage I'd done.
And on at least two dynoscanners loomed the configu-
ration, distance, and approach data on a pair of
Klingon warships. Bigger than birds of prey, these
were of the older, sturdier design, engineered for
firepower and engine thrust. My throat closed as I
watched the actual ships growing nearer in the main
viewer. Because of me, Enterprise was helpless.
I wiped a trickle of sweat from my chin and pecked
at the helm control board, trying to think my way
through unfamiliarity with these controls. "Only half-
screens available, sir," I told him.
"They certainly didn't waste any time finding us,"
Kirk said to no one in particular. That was me, that no
one.
In a fit of self-deprecation, I grumbled, "Klingons
are stupid, but they're not that stupid."
Still dressed in cape and tunic, Mr. Spock shot out
of the turbolift, cast one glance at the main viewer, and
rounded on his library computer station. It started
spewing data at him the instant he touched it, like a
child jumping up and down to tell a parent about its
troubles. "Captain, we're being scanned," he said
immediately.
"Jam their frequencies," Kirk ordered. His scowl
told how much he resented the invasion. "Let them
guess."
Able to tie into many divisions of the bridge from his
board, Spock fed the order through and prevented the
Klingons from knowing the details of our damage.
Anything more complicated would have to be done
from the home consoles in each division. "Their weap-
ons are armed, Captain, but they're not coming within
firing range. They are separating... coming about to
flank us on either side."
As he spoke, the scenario took place on our viewer.
The two ships peeled away from each other and disap-
peared out opposite corners of the screen. The captain
circled his command chair, his eyes narrowed like a
fox in a hunt. Prey or predator? Which role would he
take, and why?
"Do we have phasers, Spock?"
"Nonoperational, sir." Spock was quiet and termi-
nal about it. He knew perfectly well what he was
saying and, Vulcan or not, made no attempt to hide the
heaviness he felt. A basic hopelessness was evidenced
230 231
by his lack of explanation. Phasers weren't working,
and they weren't going to be working any time soon.
Not soon enough.
Was there anything on this starship that we hadn't
destroyed?
The captain prowled the bridge. He was trying to
think like the Klingons, and I was trying to think like
him. I caressed the helm's edge, feeling very, very
small. This was my fault. If I hadn't jumped to conclu-
sions, assumed Kirk couldn't handle Mornay--if I
hadn't crippled the ship-
Spock turned to us, a communications hook in his
ear. "Sir, the Klingon commander is hailing us."
Kirk acknowledged it with a wry look. I felt a snide
comment coming, but he repressed it and said, "Vis-
ual, Mr. Spock."
Velvet space dissolved, replaced by craggy Klingon
features. It wasn't Gelt, I noted with some relief,
though there was little doubt about how Klingon Cen-
tral had found out about us. Once again I cursed
myself for my common altruism. I'd left Gelt and his
crew alive when I had the chance to put them out of
my misery. As I watched, aching inside, the Klingon
captain spoke. "Commander, Enterprise, this is your
captor. Your ship is disabled. We will take her in tow
and return to the Klingon annex on the opposite side
of the Federation Neutral Zone. As soon as we touch
Klingon space, you will be classified as salvage."
Kirk grew rock still. "Captain, you draw this ship
into Empire territory and it'll be the last thing you do.
I'll detonate her the second we leave Federation
space, and you with her."
His words chilled me to the marrow. I believed
those words, that tone. He would. And I would help
him. I no longer felt death lurking at my door. I'd kick
the door open and go in style, along with the finest ship
in the universe and her captain.
The screen wobbled and turned to space again. Kirk
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looked over his shoulder; Spock frowned and shook
his head. "They've cut us off," he said.
Kirk bent over his command console. "Kirk to
sickbay."
"McCoy here."
"Bones, what condition is Scotty in?"
McCoy took his time answering. "Still unconscious.
But his metabolic rate is increasing and he's respon-
sive. Why? Are we the only ship in the quadrant
again?"
Captain Kirk sliced through what sounded like a
private joke. "I've got to have him on the job. You've
got to bring him around."
McCoy's tone changed. "Jim, I don't know if that's
possible," he insisted. "A direct dose of this stuff
could kill him."
"Can't you try--"
A crunch of energy shuddered through the ship.
Spock squinted into his graphic readout. "Tractors,
Captain, from both sides."
"Can you feed back their energy?"
"Not without overloading our impulse field flux. In
our present condition, the firing chambers would over-
flow into the magnatomic tubes." "Heading?"
Spock straightened so abruptly that it hurt my back
to see him do it. "The Neutral Zone. They're taking us
home." His statement rang of the cryptic.
Behind Spock, framing his caped form, the string of
graphic schematics and bar charts across the rim of the
bridge was nothing less than beautiful, in spite of their
data. The Red Alert glow made them shine brightly
against crisp geometrical insets. Who ever had the
chance to contemplate the beauty of a ship's bridge
while in Alert condition? The klaxon had stopped,
having done its job of waking the dead, leaving only
the red glow and wildly flashing CONDITION AL-
ERT signs. I suddenly wondered about Sarda. Had
233
Mornay snatched the opportunity of the call to battle-
stations and somehow overtaken him? Taken him by
surprise? Sarda knew humans better than Perren did,
but Mornay was clever and abrupt in her methods. l
pushed my thoughts through the deck platings and
deep into the ship. Don't trust her.
"Spock," the captain asked, "how long till they can
take us into warp?"
The first officer tilted his head, p
iercing me once
again with a contagious confidence. "It will take them
approximately seven minutes to adjust their tractors,
compensate for our bulk, and balance their combined
engines for warp speed."
Behind me, the captain sp oke urgently. "Bones,
I've got to have Scotty on the job. I don't care how
you do it."
McCoy sounded strung out. "Jim, what do you want
me to say? It'd take me half a day to calculate the
right dosage of this antisomnial for a man Scotty's
age, weight, and physical makeup. Now, I'd love to
put him on the bridge, but it's not going to happen
because nothing, nothing is going to make me pump
this explosive into his system."
"I'll be right there. Kirk out. Spock, take the con.
Keep me posted on those ships." He said all this on
the fly to the turbolift, and I got the distinct impression
that nothing was bloody well going to get in his way.
Not all crucial starship decisions, it seemed, are made
from the bridge.
"Mode of resistance, Captain?" Spock asked at the
last minute.
"None till I get back. Get on those repairs. I want
full shields and photon torpedoes." The lift panel whispered shut.
Spook turned to me. "Switch to forward visual."
I punched buttons. The screen melted and solidified
again to show us the fantails of both Klingon cruisers,
coordinating their energy to tow us along. Spock nod-
234
ded thoughtfully, but said nothing about it. Instead he
moved around the gangway toward the weapons con-
sole.
"Commander, if you will assist me, please," he said.
He swung onto his back under the defense subsystems
monitor and peeled off the panel.
To get to him I had to step past Perten. The young
Vulcan's face was sallow as he stared at those Klingon
ships. He wasn't even aware of me as I passed him. As
much as Enterprise was disabled because of me, those
Klingons were out there because of him. Come to
think of it, everything was because of him. He knew it,
too. It shone in his eyes and the set of his lips. Not
exactly regret, though. Perren wasn't the kind to re-
gret too much. Had his plans gone as he intended,
transwarp would not have been at such risk. The
Klingons knew we had it, no doubt. Gelt would have
told them. And even if he hadn't, information like that
spreads faster than Troyan bullet-bacteria. NOW
wasn't the time to be searching for blame.
Take your own advice, girl, my inner guardian
warned.
"As I feed these synchrotron pulsors through the
system," Spock was saying, "confirm connectivity
with the graphics on the scanner above."
"Aye, sir. Go ahead." One by one, we fed and
confirmed each patch in, trying to cram a week's
repairs into a few minutes. The end result would be
power for just a few photon shots, but those were
better than nothing. Small talk kept trying to squeeze
out of me, and I kept mashing it down. All I needed
now was to be asking Spock a gaggle of stupid ques-
tions. My nerves were whining like the Keeler's rig-
ging. My hands were cold, and I had to use the head
oh no! Not now. Please, not now. Heroes never go to
the bathroom! Horatio Hornblower didn't, Superman
didn't, Cyrus Centauri didn't--but I did. Which
proved who was a hero and who wasn't. As Spock
235
worked under the console, I finally asked, "Uh, sir?
Permission to step updeck?"
He paused, then resumed working. "Certainly."
I dashed into the bridge head, and by the time I
dashed out again, the Romulans had arrived.
Yep, there they were. I knew I should never have
gone to the head.
Red Alert was whooping again, signaling intrusion
into our immediate space, and Spock was clawing for
the intercom. "Spock to Captain." "Kirk here."
"Romulans in the area, Captain, three ships. Light
fighters 2'
"Maintain Alert status.. Enable the Engineering
control board. We've got partial staff back in engi-
neering, Mr. Spock. Put them to work impulse-drive
integrity. I'm on my way."
He would never know how much his last four words
meant to us, or at least to me. Spock rose to his full
height, eyeing the viewscreen with Vulcan fierceness.
We watched, unable to take action, as three Romulan
ships looped in front of the Kiingon cruisers and fired
on them. Lancets of red energy cut hard into the
Klingon screens. Without a pause the Klingons re-
turned fire, cross-secting space with blue beams. Sev-
eral of those missed entirely, but a few hit the Romu-
lan birds and scored damage. Smaller ships had
smaller shields, and the Romulans were vulnerable
that way, in spite of superior maneuverability at sub-
light. They veered off and circled for another attack.
"Why are they firing on each other?" I wondered.
"They're allied, aren't they?"
Spook raised a brow. "Transwarp is bigger than
their alliance," he said.
Like animals protecting their kill, the Klingon ships
turned in space to keep between the Romulans and us.
Even as they did, I caught a glimpse of color in the
236
high left side of the viewscreen and pointed ridicu-
lously at it. "Mr. Spock, look!"
He stared for an extra moment, then moved to his
scanner and shook his head. "Unidentifiable. We have
no cataloguing of that configuration." He straightened
and watched the new ship reel in to fire on the Romu-
lans, then attempt to cut the Klingons off from us. "I
daresay," Spock murmured, "we are in scramble."
Cosmic scramble. An intragalactic, military feeding
frenzy. The phrase had come a long way since, in
Rex's quiet cockpit, I'd first heard it glide out on
Spock's resonant voice. Once, it had meant little to
me. Now it spelled gruesome danger. This kind of
battle would be far from neat, far from a simple two-
sided dispute. And we were sitting in the middle of it,
stark helpless. We were the nested egg about to be
fought over by every form of alligator.
The feeling was devastating--to be put on hold like
this, to be an ignored piece of torn meat, while others
fought around us. Shots of light energy in bright colors
splintered around us. Enterprise rocked in the ebb of
energy bolts that passed too near us. The Klingon
ships continued to tug us along, distracted now by the
other ships, bolts of enemy fire keeping them from
launching into warp speed. For the moment, at least. It
bought us time.
The unidentified ship cut across our bow, giving us a
sharp, shocking view of its forked hull and fierce
colors. We hardly had time to blink before two Romu-
lan birds sliced by us so close that I stumbled back into
the command module, and Perren swayed backward
>
into the bridge rail.
"Take your helm, Commander," Spock said, his
tone rising and lowering as though he was reading a
fairly interesting caf6 menu. His eyes strayed reso-
lutely on the screen action.
237
I maneuvered in that general direction, letting my
hands lead me along the command module, unable to
pull my stare from the battle. I winced as the Romu-
lans sliced through the screens of one Klingon vessel
and disabled it, only to dodge into green plasma blasts
from the unidentified ship. The Klingons then took
their own revenge, firing hard on the nearest Romulan
wing.
The turbolift opened behind me, stealing my atten-
tion. The captain appeared, then Sarda, on either side
of a gray-faced apparition of Mr. Scott. I held my
breath in empathy. Scott looked iH and in pain, proba-
bly the effect of whatever the doctors had to do to
wake him up and get him on his feet. The captain and
Sarda supported him heavily, brought him across the
bridge, and eased him into the chair at Engineering.
Mr. Scott pressed his hands hard on the console. I
could almost feel the effort going into his concentra-
tion as he assessed the ship's available energy.
Sarda moved across the upper deck until we were
side by side, but on different levels. A brief glance told
me he was all right. It felt good to have him here. Until
now, I hadn't let the emptiness take hold.
Kirk pressed ScoWs shoulder in mute reassurance
and looked at tl.te viewscreen. "Situation, Mr.
Spock?"
"Unchanged. Three Romulans, two Klingon cruis-
ers, and one unidentified vessel, all counterattacking.
One Klingon cruiser is damaged but functional. They
have not as yet fired on us."
Kirk nodded. "Piper, have you got an opinion?"
I blinked. Piper who?
His asking constrained me to find an opinion even if
I didn't have one. So I invented one. "I'd say . . .
concentrate on the Romulans and the unknown ship."
"Based on what?"
"Based... on Klingon tendencies."
"Explain."
238
Deep breathe, let out slowly, start talking.
"Klingons are like grizzly bears. They attack straight
on, with sheer brute force. Even though they're a