“Unfortunately,” Spock said, “the torpedo’s warp drive would be destroyed at the instant of detonation, causing time dilation to return.”
Cochrane frowned. Spock was right. But then Kirk raised a finger.
“Put the torpedo in something, Spock! A shuttlecraft!”
Spock raised both eyebrows. “Of course. If a shuttlecraft containing the torpedo pierced the event horizon, the torpedo could be detonated inside the shuttlecraft’s warp field. The explosion would proceed in real time for the few nanoseconds before the shuttlecraft was destroyed.”
“Provided the warp field is still within contact of the event horizon!” Cochrane added excitedly. Then his elation left him. “But how do you get something the size of a shuttlecraft through an event horizon?”
“Theoretically, that is not difficult,” Spock said. “It has artificial gravity and inertial dampening systems in place, as well as a structural integrity field. Since it can withstand the stress of moving from sublight to warp speed, it can assuredly survive the transition through the event horizon. In terms of overall acceleration, this would be several orders of magnitude less stressful.” Spock hesitated for a moment. “Once inside the event horizon, though, the shuttlecraft’s power plant would only be able to power the necessary systems for an hour at most.”
Kirk looked pleased. “But we’ll only need a few seconds, Spock. Have the hangar-deck crew load photon torpedoes with timers onto the remaining shuttlecraft.”
“Coming up on TNC 65813,” Sulu said.
Onscreen, the black disk flared and sparked with flashes of energy as dust particles collided at relativistic speeds above it.
“Close orbit, Mr. Sulu. Five thousand kilometers to start.”
“Dropping to impulse,” Sulu said.
Cochrane could hear the ship’s engines strain. He understood that without the Enterprise’s artificial gravity, inertial dampening systems, and structural integrity field, the ship would already be breaking up under the black hole’s tidal forces the way the gravity of planets like Saturn created the dust and debris of its rings by breaking up larger bodies that passed within the Roche limit—the critical distance any object could remain without being torn apart.
Cochrane went back to the Companion. “Don’t be frightened,” he said.
“When we are with you, we fear nothing,” she said.
“I wish the captain had someone like you to draw strength from,” Cochrane said.
The Companion watched Kirk take his chair, saw the way his hands found their way to the arm controls. “He does,” she said. Cochrane wasn’t sure he understood what she meant.
The screen was awash in streaks and flares of energy as the Enterprise’s navigational deflectors pushed the high-speed dust and debris orbiting the black disk out of the way.
“How much longer till those cruisers arrive?” Kirk asked.
“Cruiser one in six minutes. Cruiser two in twenty,” Chekov answered.
“Does that give us enough time to test one of the torpedoes in a shuttlecraft?” Kirk asked Spock.
“I would recommend against it, Captain. If the technique works, we will need each of our remaining shuttlecraft to deliver torpedoes to the black hole. If it does not, testing will not matter.”
“Very well. Have the hangar crew stand ready for launching shuttlecraft on automatic pilot. Mr. Sulu, change orbits as soon as we’re out of line of sight of the cruisers, then scan for regions of high sensor distortion. We’ve got six minutes to find a hiding place.”
The ship began to buck, just a gentle rhythm, but noticeable nonetheless. Cochrane looked at Spock.
“That is the expected operation of the inertial dampeners,” Spock said in response to Cochrane’s unasked question.
“What would happen if it wasn’t the expected operation?” Cochrane asked.
“At this distance from the singularity,” Spock replied calmly, “we would be little more than thin layers of organic paste, smeared on opposite sides of the Enterprise’s ruptured hulls.”
“She’s quite a ship, isn’t she, Mr. Spock?”
“Indeed she is,” Spock said; then he turned his attention back to his computer.
On the screen, Cochrane had difficulty orienting himself. There were only flashes against utter blackness, but no indication of the curve or size of the object they orbited.
“Out of line of sight,” Sulu announced. “Changing orbital planes. Picking up sensor distortion nodes directly ahead.”
“Very good, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said. “Let’s try to sneak into one.”
As Cochrane watched, the orientation of the screen image changed so that he saw a large black ellipse at the bottom, against glowing auroras of scintillating gas and dust. Directly ahead, a twisting knot of glowing yellow light, dropping streamers of red, slowly grew larger. Cochrane decided it was the sensor distortion node, rendered into something the human eye could make sense of by the Enterprise’s computers. He could believe a starship could hide in one. Once again, Kirk had come up with a worthy strategy.
But he wasn’t the only one.
As the image grew larger on the screen, collision alarms sounded and a dot of orange light flew out from the node. Cochrane just had time to see the flash of blue phaser fire erupt from the closing light, and then the universe exploded around him.
EIGHT
U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 CLOSE ORBIT TNC 65813
Stardate 3855.9
Earth Standard: ≈ November 2267
The instant the Orion ship hurtled out of the distortion node, Kirk realized his mistake.
Because there’d been no sign that the high-speed transport had been pursuing the Enterprise, Kirk had assumed he’d crippled it in his attack on the Klingon cruiser it had docked with. But obviously, Thorsen, or whoever was now commanding the attacking force, had anticipated the Enterprise’s destination and had sent the Orion ship on ahead in a circuitous route.
The strategy was obvious, but Kirk’s recognition of it was too late.
The screen flared white as the collision alarms sounded and for a moment Kirk feared the Enterprise had been rammed. She could withstand considerable mechanical stress under normal operating conditions, but her structural integrity systems were already strained to the limit by being so close to the singularity.
But the Enterprise held. Kirk gripped the arms of his chair as the bridge twisted beneath him. He smelled smoke and fire and the chemical spray of the fire-suppressor systems. But the Enterprise held.
“Track it, Chekov!” he called out over the alarms.
“Coming back at us!”
“Photon torpedoes—two, four, six! Make him break off.”
Kirk clenched his teeth as he waited. He heard only two torpedoes fire and knew there must be damage in fire control.
“Hit, sir!”
“Onscreen!”
The viewscreen jumped to a port-side angle. Kirk saw the Orion transport engulfed in a nimbus of glowing plasma, streaming off to the dark curve of the event horizon below.
“It’s venting antimatter, Keptin. We must have hit its engineering section.”
Kirk was surprised. Where were the transport’s shields? Unless its configuration required too much energy to be transferred to its own structural integrity field …
“Power failing, Keptin. It’s—”
Chekov stopped as the orange glow of the Orion ship winked out, leaving only the angular silhouette of its hull. An instant later, that silhouette stretched out like taffy, one point shooting downward toward the event horizon, the other arcing away until the strand of distant metal broke apart into glittering fragments, all at different trajectories, but all falling.
Kirk took a deep breath. What happened to the transport was exactly what would happen to the Enterprise if her power failed. He wondered if Thorsen had been on board.
Kirk called for a damage report. At the same time he heard Spock call for a medical team to the bridge. As the damage reports came in, Kirk tu
rned to see Cochrane cradled in the Companion’s arms. The sleeve of his technician’s jumpsuit was charred. Transtator current feedback from the environmental controls, Kirk guessed. But Cochrane was obviously alert. His hand could be healed.
Whether the Enterprise could be was a different matter.
Only two photon-torpedo launch tubes remained functional, and the forward phaser banks had been completely shut down. The Orion transport had aimed its weapons well, and left the Enterprise almost defenseless.
But at least Kirk knew the distortion nodes did manage to fool sensors. They still had a chance.
Then Scott called the bridge.
“Captain—we’ve lost another crystal, sir. We canna keep up with the power demands for more than another hour.”
That wasn’t what Kirk wanted to hear. “Scotty, we have to hold out for thirteen hours.”
“Captain, when the last crystals go, our matter-antimatter reactor shuts down and there’s nothing t’ be done about it. We’ll be on batteries only, and under these conditions, they’ll only hold us together for a few minutes at best, without the chance to go to warp.”
“Any good news, Scotty?”
“Aye. When the structural integrity fails, we’ll be flattened so fast we won’t even know it.”
“Do what you can.” Kirk went to break the connection, but Scott kept talking.
“Just so ye know, Captain. I’m fresh out of miracles down here. The Enterprise is a fine ship but she was never meant for this kind of strain. If ye want her t’ hold together for another thirteen hours, then you’ll have t’ get her well past that bloody singularity’s Roche limit. And if we stick to impulse—which I recommend—that means we’ll have to break orbit a good thirty minutes before the last crystals fail to be sure we have enough power to get there. You understand what I’m saying, Captain?”
“The Enterprise leaves orbit in the next thirty minutes, or she doesn’t leave at all.”
“Just so ye know, Captain. I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Scotty. Do what you can. I’ll get right back to you.” And then there was nothing more to say.
“Entering the distortion node,” Sulu said.
“Hold her steady,” Kirk ordered. He went to Spock. “You heard Mr. Scott?”
“Yes,” Spock said. “His report adjusts the odds of our survival. Dramatically. Downward.”
“Why don’t you carry more dilithium?” The question came from Cochrane. He was back in his chair at the environmental station, looking dazed. The Companion had dressed his hand with a first-aid kit.
Kirk shrugged. “I ask that question myself, Mr. Cochrane. And Starfleet tells me the operational life of a set of starship-grade dilithium crystals is twenty years and that I should take better care of them because there’s not enough to go around.”
“Any way to go back to an ordinary lithium converter, the way it used to be in my day?”
Spock shook his head. “Ordinary lithium crystals cannot operate at the efficiencies required for modern starship operation.”
“So,” Kirk said, facing what he thought he would never have to face—the inevitable. “We have thirty minutes to come up with a way to get past Thorsen’s cruisers. Other than relying on a lucky shot.”
“There is no way,” Spock said. “We do not have the weaponry available to fight. We do not have the warp capability to flee. We do not have the energy capacity to remain hidden. Therefore, we have only one option.”
Kirk knew what that option was, but he rejected it. “The Enterprise will not surrender.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Cochrane said. He stood up, still groggy, steadied by the Companion at his side. “If he wasn’t in that ship that was destroyed, Thorsen wants me. So turn me over. I volunteer.”
The Companion spoke for them all. “No. You cannot.”
“It’s the only way,” Cochrane said. “The only reason Thorsen even came after the Enterprise is because I’m on her. I …” Cochrane stopped as he saw Kirk and Spock look at each other. “What is it?”
“Can he leave the ship?” Kirk asked. “In a shuttlecraft with a torpedo aboard?”
“A suicide mission?” Cochrane asked. Was this finally how he would end?
But Kirk said, “No. When you’re close enough to Thorsen’s ship, we’d beam you back, then detonate the torpedo.”
“Even if a single torpedo detonation were enough to overload the structural integrity field of Thorsen’s ship, that would still leave the second cruiser,” Spock said.
“It would double our chances,” Kirk said.
“Twice zero is still zero,” Spock replied.
“Captain,” the Companion suddenly said. “If the man were not here, would you be safe?”
Kirk looked at the Companion intently. She had said so little since he had rescued her from her planetoid that he had begun to think of her only as a silent extension to Cochrane. But he reminded himself that within her, no matter what the origin of her alien half, there were still the mind and skills and talents of a Federation commissioner. “There is a chance that Thorsen or his followers would leave us alone. Slim to none, but still a chance. Why?”
“Then let us hide, away from you, as we hid with the man so long ago.”
Kirk didn’t understand. He looked at Cochrane for enlightenment, but he seemed no more certain than Kirk.
An intercom hail sounded and McCoy’s voice asked, “What’s the situation on the bridge? You still need medical up there?”
Cochrane held up his bandaged hand. The glittering fabric was stained with blood.
“Affirmative,” Spock said.
“Emergency?”
“No.”
“All right. I’m finishing up in phaser fire control. Tell the captain, no fatal casualties. I’ll be up soon. McCoy out.”
Cochrane used his good hand to hold one of the Companion’s. “There is no place where the captain can take us to hide,” he said quietly to her.
The Companion looked troubled. Her brow creased in concentration. “Part of us understands. But part of us … remembers what it was like to fly among the stars.”
Spock leaned forward. “Companion, when you were in your energy state, before you merged with Commissioner Hedford, you were able to move at warp velocity. Can you do so now?”
But the Companion shook her head with a gentle smile. “No. We have become human. We no longer fly among the stars, but we know love. It is a fair bargain.”
“What are you trying to tell us?” Cochrane asked her. “Do you know of a place to hide?”
The Companion pointed with her free hand. All eyes followed in the direction she indicated. The viewscreen. The dark ellipse.
“There,” she said. “Where light stops.”
“If you go there,” Kirk explained, “you can never come out. That doesn’t make it a good place to hide.”
“But we can come out,” the Companion insisted. “Part of us knows that place. Part of us understands what you said to the man about fields and torpedoes and shuttlecraft. Between our two halves, we know it can be done.” She pulled herself close to Cochrane. “Zefram, please, in a shuttlecraft, we can go in to the place where light stops, and we can come out again. We know this to be true.” Her face twisted, as if in pain, as if struggling with some inner fight. “Zefram, I know this to be true.”
Cochrane looked surprised. He turned to Kirk. “She hasn’t said ‘I’ for months, Captain.”
Kirk had neither Spock’s logic nor McCoy’s passion to guide him now. His ship was in danger. Only minutes remained before Thorsen’s cruisers would arrive and the Enterprise would have to leave the protection of the distortion node, putting herself at their mercy. If ever there was a time to change the rules, this was it.
Kirk looked at Cochrane. Somehow, he felt he saw himself, in a different era perhaps, fewer rules, fewer choices, but a kindred spirit just the same. “Do you trust her, Mr. Cochrane? With your life?”
Cochrane didn’t hesitate. “Wi
th all my heart, Captain Kirk.”
Kirk made his decision. He did the unthinkable.
He put the fate of the Enterprise in the hands of the Companion.
NINE
U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D DEEP SPACE
Stardate 43922.1
Earth Standard: ≈ May 2366
Even as the stars called out for him, Picard felt a hand with the strength of molybdenum-cobalt alloy close on the back of his collar, restraining him against the gale that rushed from the shuttlebay to empty space. Debris blew all around him—cleaning cloths, tricorders, the smaller wire and mesh segments of the Borg-like artifact no longer contained by their security field. But Picard was held in place and he knew why.
Data.
Picard twisted to see the android behind him, unaffected by brief exposures to vacuum, standing immovably on the deck. Data’s other hand held Wesley Crusher firmly by the collar, the youth’s face wide-eyed with fear but impressively without panic. La Forge had wrapped his own arms around one of Data’s to grimly hold himself in place.
The wind vanished, the air completely gone, and though artificial gravity still held them to the deck, only seconds remained to Picard, La Forge, and Wesley before lack of oxygen claimed them all.
Already Picard felt his lungs demanding that he breathe. Wesley’s mouth gaped open, trailing tendrils of sublimated vapor. Picard could see him beginning to struggle like a drowning swimmer. Starfleet trained its members to remain conscious for a minimum of ninety seconds after explosive decompression events, but Wesley hadn’t had that training yet. Picard realized with chagrin that for himself, it had been too long since his last refresher course.
In the eerie total silence of the vacuum, Data started forward, pulling his captain forward across the deck. The android still kept hold of Wesley under one arm, legs dragging. La Forge stumbled alongside him, still clutching Data’s arm. Picard could not hear the Enterprise’s engines or the clatter of their boots, but he felt the vibrations of his ship through the deck and they seemed to match the flickering of the black dots at the side of his vision.
Federation Page 36