Federation

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  At the smaller command console in the cramped control center, Sulu and Chekov ran one final simulation. They reported a twelve-percent casualty rate.

  “Not acceptable,” Kirk told them. But he knew there was no more time to rehearse. Whatever help the Klingon commander was obviously expecting could arrive at any moment. The Planitia was a soft target. There was no guarantee that what was coming to rendezvous with the liner would be as simple to overcome.

  Kirk checked the readouts on the command console, scanning Mr. Scott’s data from the engine room. The warp-eight-point-three chase had cracked one of the dilithium crystals in the matter-antimatter converters and engine efficiency had dropped dramatically. The chief engineer couldn’t promise speed, but he did promise that all the power the captain’s plan needed would be available on demand.

  McCoy was standing by in the main transporter room. Ten other emergency medical teams were at their positions throughout the ship. Everything had been arranged by runners. Kirk had not permitted any of the detailed planning stages to be transmitted over the ship’s intercom system. He presumed the Klingon’s crew would be attempting to monitor the Enterprise’s internal communications. He didn’t know if the liner had the capability for that, but they were close enough to each other that he didn’t wish to take the chance.

  Kirk checked behind him. The Companion sat quietly, focusing all of her attention on her heart’s desire, less than a kilometer away through the void. “We’ll get him back,” he promised her. Then at Kirk’s signal, Spock and the transporter chiefs confirmed their readiness by code.

  Kirk took a breath, preparing himself. He knew he’d feel better if Spock had been able to verify that anything like this had been tried before. But the procedure books had nothing like it. As McCoy had dryly noted, it wasn’t as if trying something new was unusual for this ship.

  Kirk touched a communications control so he could listen in to the admiral’s conversation with the Klingon.

  “… escort back to the Empire,” she said, “but the City of Utopia Planitia is private property and must be returned to us at the border.”

  “Alas,” the Klingon replied, “that cuts to the core of any possibility of friendship between our two peoples. By transporting known Orion pirates, this liner has been used in crimes against the Empire, and we must have it for justice to be served.”

  Kirk rolled his eyes. It was all nonsense and obfuscation. The Klingon was claiming some cover story about the Planitia having been used to smuggle Orion criminals convicted in the Klingon Empire to safety in the Federation. At least Kabreigny was playing along, and the Klingon did seem to be delighted to be negotiating with a fleet admiral. Kirk decided the Klingon thought he’d be able to kidnap her as well. He frowned and turned down the volume of the negotiations, reducing them to a background whisper.

  “One minute, gentlemen,” Kirk announced. The command chair in this facility was smaller and less comfortable than the one on the bridge, but it filled him with the same power.

  “Science officer?” he asked. It was an innocuous request that would mean nothing to any unwanted listener.

  “Spock here,” Spock replied over the intercom. The simple announcement meant all transporter circuits were on-line—every single one of them.

  “Engineer?”

  “Scott here.” The ship’s power plant was ready for what would be demanded of it.

  “Medical?”

  “McCoy here. But I still say—”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Kirk said, quickly cutting off McCoy’s objections.

  “Mr. Sulu,” Kirk asked his navigator, “are you ready with the tractor beams?”

  Sulu didn’t take his eyes off the board. “Target sites located, Captain.”

  “Mr. Chekov?”

  His hands were poised over his controls, ready for action. “Torpedoes armed. Phasers ready for cold start.”

  Kirk leaned forward to better see the image of the Planitia on the reduced-size viewscreen in front of the command console. The instant he put this in motion, the lives of everyone on board the liner Planitia would rest with the skill of the Enterprise crew. In fifty seconds, the operation would be successful, or more than one hundred innocent people would be dead. But Kirk would not accept that possibility, and neither would his crew. “Let’s make this one for the history books,” he said. “Mr. Spock, you may begin.”

  “Energizing,” Spock replied from the transporter room. There was no longer any need for communications security. One way or another, the Klingon would know what was happening within seconds.

  On the screen, a hundred meters out from the forward tip of the Planitia, Kirk saw a tiny, twinkling dot of transporter energy just ahead of the liner’s invisible shield boundary. A second later, the image disappeared in a flare of orange light as the transported photon torpedo detonated. Four seconds had passed.

  With the liner’s shields at full force, Kirk knew the explosion would not harm it, but those shields—intended to prevent impact with space debris—would be disrupted and thrown into timing disarray, which was all that Kirk required.

  “Energizing,” Spock said again. A moment later, a second transported torpedo detonated at the liner’s stern. Kirk saw flickering arcs of energy ripple across the vessel’s normally invisible shields as they tried to compensate for the power overload the torpedoes caused at opposite ends of the protective field. Eight seconds.

  “Reading multiple airlock openings,” Sulu announced tensely.

  Kirk felt his fingernails dig into his palms. The Klingon was repeating himself, exactly as Kirk had gambled. If he had decided to shoot hostages at the first sign of Kirk’s treachery, rather than eject them into space, the plan wouldn’t have worked, even this far.

  Kirk could hear the Klingon’s harsh voice on the open channel. Kabreigny was silent, obviously as surprised as the Klingon was.

  “Here they come,” Sulu said. Ten seconds.

  Kirk saw them—dark figures twisting in the vacuum. More hostages tossed out to their deaths. But Kirk would not allow that.

  “Mr. Chekov—now!” Kirk ordered.

  At precisely twelve seconds, a broad beam of cool blue phaser energy spread over the liner, completely encompassing this side of its shields, making the usually invisible forcefields glow in kind. Spread out to its widest beam width, the energy per square meter from the prolonged phaser burst would not be enough to harm anyone caught in it, but by hitting the liner’s shields equally over half their area at once, after the disruption caused by the torpedoes exploding at opposite ends—

  The blue glow winked out like a light being shut off.

  “Shields down!” Chekov exclaimed. “Total failure!”

  Fifteen seconds.

  Kirk allowed himself half a second to breathe. If the shields hadn’t failed, the hostages would have been lost. But they had failed, exactly as he had anticipated and Spock had confirmed. Now, according to the computer’s analysis of the liner’s backup systems, Kirk’s team had fifteen seconds before the shields could be brought back on-line.

  “Next phase,” Kirk said. Then he did what was hardest for any commander—he waited.

  At exactly seventeen seconds into the operation, multiple dots of transporter energy sparkled around the liner’s airlocks as the hostages cast adrift were retrieved only ten seconds after being exposed to the vacuum of space. The Enterprise had four main operational transporter rooms, each capable of transporting six people at a time, two cycles per minute. In addition, there were five emergency personnel transporters, each capable of moving twenty-two people at a time, one cycle per minute in their safest, most redundant signal mode.

  As long as sensors could find targets—and at a distance of only a few hundred meters that was assured—the Enterprise could beam aboard every living being on the liner within thirty seconds, well within the safety limits of vacuum exposure. According to sensor scans, those living things included eighty-three humans, four Klingons, six Orions, one Andorian
, two dogs, five cats, and twelve small avians, which appeared to be part of a display in the liner’s bar. The Klingons, Orions, and Andorian would be beamed to a single emergency transporter ringed by security officers with drawn phasers. Kirk wished he could be there to see their faces, especially the Klingon commander’s. But he still had one important task before him.

  After disabling the shields in order to start the process, success for the daring operation lay in making certain that the shields could not be reestablished, while at the same time insuring that the captors would not begin indiscriminately shooting their hostages when they realized the ones in space had been rescued.

  So Kirk had come up with the ultimate distraction.

  Now, at twenty-one seconds into the operation, he deployed it. As the transporter flares vanished around the liner, nine seconds before the liner’s shields could come back on-line, narrow phaser beams shot out from the Enterprise under Chekov’s expert aim. The beams were directed not at the shield generators, where hostages had been gathered to prevent such a direct attack, but at key superstructure support beams. In six seconds, the pattern the beams scorched into the hull took on the pattern of an orange being sectioned. But none of the beams penetrated the hull. They only weakened it so that no passenger would be harmed. Frightened, certainly, by the roar of coruscating energy blazing across the hull metal around them. But not harmed.

  When the scorch pattern was complete, Kirk issued the last order. “Final phase, Mr. Sulu.” They were twenty-seven seconds into the operation, two seconds from the liner’s shields being raised. This was the point at which Spock had said the odds grew worse. Two seconds was not enough of a safety margin.

  But it was a margin, Kirk had said.

  Instantly, the phasers were replaced by tractor beams. Kirk imagined he could almost hear the Planitia creak and groan as the tractor beams took hold, applying carefully calculated stress to key areas. Suddenly, just as the liner’s shields should have come on again, all running lights winked out at once. Interior lights followed and every window went dark. Only thirty seconds had passed since the first torpedo had detonated and Kirk was certain that even the most battle-hardened Klingon warriors on that ship would have better things to do than shoot hostages as the gravity shut off and the ship came apart around them.

  The Klingon commander’s futile background ranting cut out as communications failed. Spock’s voice was clear and calm over the speakers. “Cargo transporters have locked on to the liner’s antimatter supply. Wide-beam dispersion astern.” Thirty-three seconds.

  Kirk tapped his fist against his hand. So far, everything was working perfectly. There wouldn’t even be an antimatter explosion from the failure of the liner’s magnetic bottles.

  The City of Utopia Planitia came apart like an eggshell. A sudden cloud of air and crystallizing moisture formed around her, swirling like fog. Sparks and flickerings from small explosions of internal gas mixtures and storage batteries lit up her inner decks as if a thunderstorm raged within her. She was like a computer graphic being torn apart, each deck exposed. Loose furniture, bedcoverings, luggage, cargo modules, constellations of glassware and gambling chips, all spun madly, glittering in the blue tractor beams.

  “Spock here, Captain—transporter teams confirm positive lock on all personnel. We have retrieved everyone.” Thirty-seven seconds exactly.

  Kirk wanted to cheer for his crew but the mission wasn’t a success yet. “Medical condition?”

  McCoy’s answer was harried. Kirk could picture him leaning over patients in the transporter room, treating them expertly as he frantically coordinated the other medical teams by the other transporters.

  “No casualties so far. Some youngsters in bad shape. We’ve got a woman in premature labor … no, hold that clamp there, dammit!”

  Kirk stood up. He looked at the Companion. “Is he here?” he asked. “Is the man here?”

  A tear welled up in the Companion’s uncovered eye. “He is with us,” she said with joy. “Oh, Captain, the man is with us.”

  Kirk could breathe again. He hit the ship’s public-address control. On the screen, the liner was no more than eight slowly rotating sections in a cloud of debris, torn apart gently without a single major explosion, without a single destructive use of phasers or torpedoes. And no casualties. He’d beaten the odds again. The Enterprise had beaten the odds again. Together, they’d won.

  “This is the captain to all passengers of the Planitia. Will Mr. Cochrane please make himself known to security personnel.”

  Lieutenant Kyle reported a moment later from emergency transporter three. “Captain Kirk, sir. I have a gentleman here identifying himself as Mr. Cochrane. He looks like he could use medical attention.”

  “Escort him to sickbay, Mr. Kyle. Tell him … the Companion will meet him there.”

  Sulu called for the captain’s attention from the command console. “Sir, Admiral Kabreigny is demanding to know what just happened.”

  “Ask the admiral to meet me in sickbay,” Kirk said.

  “Captain Kirk?” The voice on the intercom was unsteady, but recognizable, and for the first time Kirk allowed himself the luxury of believing that the plan had worked perfectly.

  He pressed the Send button on the arm of his chair even as the Companion rushed to Kirk’s side. “Welcome aboard the Enterprise, Mr. Cochrane,” Kirk said.

  “Can you … can you tell me what’s going on?” Cochrane asked. Over the speakers, Kirk could hear the confusion of Mr. Kyle’s transporter room. Children were crying. Medical technicians were shouting at each other. To Kirk, the noise sounded like victory. They were all alive and safe.

  “Well, sir,” Kirk answered, “I was hoping you could tell me. It seems—”

  The Enterprise shuddered as a barrage of explosions echoed through her. Kirk was driven back against his chair. Gouts of flame shot out of the equipment lining the walls. Chekov cried out. Alarms wailed.

  Kirk looked up at the flickering viewscreen.

  The help the Klingon commander had been expecting had finally arrived.

  Three Klingon battle cruisers hung in space beyond the spinning wreckage of the Planitia.

  And as Kirk watched helplessly, the lead ship fired again.

  THREE

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D ENGAGED WITH THE ENEMY

  Stardate 43921.8

  Earth Standard: ≈ May 2366

  “Maximum shields!” Picard ordered.

  The bridge shook as the first bolts of Romulan phaser fire splashed against the Enterprise’s saucer section. Then the third Warbird shot past the forward sensors and disappeared astern.

  Sirens blared. Damage reports flooded the bridge.

  “It must have decloaked directly behind the 62nd Rule so we could not detect it,” Data said.

  But Picard had no time for the fine points of Romulan tactics. He had two shuttlecraft in transit. “Picard to La Forge—where are those shuttlecraft?!”

  “One minute to docking, sir!” the engineer replied from the shuttlebay. “What the hell was that anyway?”

  “Another Warbird,” Picard said.

  “The Warbird is returning, Captain,” Data announced.

  Picard turned to the tactical station. “Mr. Worf, extend shields around the Gould and the Cochrane. Transporter control, once the shields are established, beam in the pilots. Commander Riker?”

  Riker answered from the shuttlebay.

  “You are responsible for bringing the artifact in. Use cargo tractor beams directly on it and abandon the two shuttlecraft if you must, but get it aboard.”

  Worf acknowledged that the shields had been thrown around the Gould and the Cochrane. Transporter control acknowledged the pilots were safely aboard.

  The third Warbird flashed by the main viewscreen again. But this time it did not fire.

  “We are being hailed by the attacking vessel,” Worf said.

  “Onscreen,” Picard snapped. He was furious. He glared at the new Romulan commander
who appeared on the viewer, elegant fingers steepled before him as if the wholesale murder of a shipful of Ferengi were only an idle diversion.

  “Commander of the Federation vessel,” the Romulan said, “you will withdraw or be destroyed.”

  “You are in Federation space!” Picard shouted, ignoring the commander’s order. “You have fired upon a neutral vessel! You will lower your shields and prepare for boarding.”

  The commander appeared bored with Picard’s bluster. “We have destroyed a stolen Romulan vessel in order to prevent military secrets from falling into our enemy’s hands. We have no quarrel with you. Withdraw so we may deal with our own affairs in our own way.”

  “Cargo aboard,” Riker announced from the shuttlebay. “We have recovered both shuttlecraft as well.”

  Picard was surprised by that news. He had expected the Warbird to destroy the shuttlecraft on its return run. Perhaps the commander hadn’t wanted to risk destroying the artifact.

  “The Enterprise will not withdraw from any location in Federation space,” Picard retorted indignantly. “The Romulan vessel here with us is under our protection. And we will use force to defend it.” Picard glanced around as he heard the turbolift doors open. Counselor Troi rushed onto the bridge.

  The Romulan commander moved his hands apart in feigned resignation. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise.”

  The Romulan’s eyelids flickered slightly as he looked to the side, as if that had been the last name he had wanted to hear. “Captain Picard,” he said, adopting a more conversational tone. “I repeat: I have no desire to fight you. But the ship you are misguidedly trying to protect is Romulan property. The commander you are defending is a traitor to the Empire. This is strictly an internal affair. And I know the Federation prides itself on noninterference. In this matter, I am sure you will wish to withdraw before this turns into an incident neither of us desires.”