by Ilsa J. Bick
“Aye, Captain. I’ll extrapolate back from the distress beacon ... course plotted and laid in.”
“Go.” Garrett’s hands clutched the arms of her command chair. “Mr. Bulast, continuous hails.”
“You’ve got them, Captain.”
And now we wait. Garrett tried to think of anything she’d forgotten, and decided that she’d done everything she could. Whatever happened next depended upon time and luck. Mainly luck.
At his station, alongside Castillo, Glemoor drew in a sharp breath of surprise.
Garrett was instantly alert. “Glemoor?”
“I think I’ve got them, Captain.” The Naxeran’s normally calm voice was tight with tension.
Garrett was out of her chair and by Glemoor’s side in an instant. “A ship?”
“Yes. She’s in a jet all right. The problem is all that ionized plasma makes sensor readings unreliable. Boosting power to the sensors.”
Garrett held her breath while Glemoor worked. She felt the muscles along her spine jump with anxiety. She didn’t want to prod, then did. “Well?”
Glemoor’s voice had reclaimed its calm, even tone. “In a moment, Captain. Yes, here. From the size and configuration, I would say that this is a small transport vessel, large enough to accommodate forty, or perhaps fifty crew. I detect no activity consistent with engine function, though there is evidence of warp coolant.”
“A coolant leak?”
“Most likely. Assuming that they were unable to stop the leak in time, then they would have had no choice but to jettison the core. Whatever the mechanism, she’s dead in space now, Captain, falling away from us and accelerating. Her captain had the right idea, but without even impulse power to help that ship along, the energy in the jet just isn’t enough to counteract the gravitational pull from that protostar.”
“How far away is she?”
Glemoor checked his sensors again. “Approximately ninety million kilometers from the outer heliosphere of the protostar.”
“A little more than Mercury’s distance from the Sun,” Garrett mused. “Pretty warm.”
“And likely to get much more so. At their current rate of acceleration, the ship will impact in slightly less than six hours.”
Garrett waved the statistic away. “They’ll burn up long before then, if they’re not already dead from radiation. What about shields?”
“None, Captain. If she had them, she doesn’t have them now. In fact, I read minimal energy outputs all across the board.”
“Does she have life support?”
She saw the hesitation in Glemoor’s eyes. Finally, he shook his head in apology. “I can’t tell. The energy outputs I read should be enough for minimal life support, but that’s all. Since we have no idea even of the species we’re dealing with—humanoid or not—I have no ability to forecast their survival capabilities under these conditions.”
“Captain.” It was Bat-Levi. “Captain, no matter who they are, without shields, the amount of time before fatal exposure to gamma radiation ...”
“Isn’t long. And we have no idea how long they’ve been out here. I know, Commander,” said Garrett. Well, if she was going to risk her ship on a rescue, there sure as hell better be someone worth risking them for. “Glemoor, can you at least tell me if there are life signs?”
Glemoor’s ebony features screwed into a grimace of concentration before he shook his head. “I can’t tell. What I can say for sure is that this vessel is much too small to have lifeboats.”
“So anyone who was on her when she jettisoned her core is still there—dead or alive.” Garrett scrubbed her lips with her left palm in thought. She paced behind Castillo and then around the helm, staring at the angry, billowing gases and interstellar dust swirling all around them. Had they come all this way in for nothing? She refused to believe it. Come on, come on, Garrett, think, think! The people on the other ship couldn’t leave. If they were alive, they were still on board. If they were alive ... leaning back against the helm, she put her hands on her hips, studying the viewscreen. The ship wasn’t visible, of course; it was much too far away. But she projected her mind into the nebulae, stabbing through the jets of ionized plasma and photo-ionized gases, searching. What would she do? Clearly, the captain of that vessel had the right idea. He or she tried to use the plasma jets for propulsion to get her ship clear, hoping against hope to build up enough momentum to carry her ship out of the nebula. Once out of the nebula, she could signal for help because she would know by then that her distress beacon hadn’t made it out. ...
“Where would I go?” Garrett said, out loud. She stared at the nebula she could see, the crippled ship she couldn’t. “If I knew my life support was failing and I’d lost shields and had no way out, where would I go to stay alive longest?”
It was Bat-Levi who answered, her voice ramping up with excitement. “The engine room, Captain! That’s where you’d go. The engine room would be the most heavily shielded area of the ship. Assuming the warp core’s gone, you could evacuate residual coolant and hole up there. And hope.”
Garrett nodded her agreement. “As long as there’s life, there’s hope. Glemoor, if we get closer, can you tell me if there are life signs?”
Glemoor regarded her carefully. “Captain, to get us that close, we would have to enter into the plasma jet ourselves.”
“Then here’s something for you to add to your collection of idioms, Mr. Glemoor,” said Garrett, though she wasn’t smiling. “Out of the frying pan into the fire. Given our current situation, that’s apt, and it’s the only way. Can you do it?”
“Captain, I have to remind you that long-range sensors aren’t functioning well enough to resolve into individual life-forms. I don’t know if I can tell you how many there are, one or a hundred.”
“One or a hundred, Glemoor. I don’t care. We find even one survivor, we have to go after him.”
“Yes, Captain. I’ll try.”
“Do better than that,” said Garrett. She nodded toward Castillo. “Bring us in closer. One-half impulse power. Bring us in into the plasma jet on a perpendicular and then aft thrusters down, course zero mark zero so we’re heading into it face first. That way we present the least amount of surface area to the plasma jet, make our shields last that much longer. Then I want you to keep us on that heading until Mr. Glemoor picks up something, or I tell you to stop. Understood?”
Castillo’s tongue flipped along his upper lip. “Aye, Captain.”
“Bat-Levi, raise engineering. Have them increase power to the forward shields.”
“Aye.”
Their inertial dampers were working perfectly, and so was their artificial gravity, yet when the ship crossed the boundary of the plasma jet, Garrett felt the shudder that rippled through the floors and bulkheads as concentrated streamers of hot ionized gas and radiation pounded the hull. The bridge lights dimmed momentarily then flared back to full brilliance, and Castillo nudged the aft thrusters in short bursts until the ship was cleaving the jet head-on, like an arrow shot from a bow, slicing the jet in two.
“How are our shields, Bat-Levi?”
“Ninety percent, Captain. The energy from that jet’s like getting pounded with phasers at quarter.”
“Just as long as they don’t buckle. How about radiation outside the hull?”
“Not good, Captain. Radiation levels jumped as soon as we hit the column and they’re increasing.”
“How long can we maintain shields at our current rate of energy consumption?”
“Estimate one hour, twenty minutes, Captain.”
“Plenty of time,” Garrett said, wondering if she believed that herself. “Stay on course, Mr. Castillo.”
To Castillo’s left, Garrett saw Glemoor hunched over his sensor displays. His back was to her, but she could read the intense concentration in the set of his shoulders. “Let me know the minute you’ve got anything, Mr. Glemoor.”
Glemoor may have been tense, but his tone was as genial as if they were discussing some
thing of no greater gravity than the weather. “That was my intention, Captain.”
Garrett grinned at the mild jibe, and she felt her stomach unclench a smidgeon. But a few moments later, Stern hailed from sickbay, and Garrett knew it wasn’t a social call. “You want the good news, or the bad news?” said Stern.
“How much better is the good news?”
“Not very. Listen, Captain, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. In this radiation-dense environment, we’ll last fifty minutes if those shields fail, and not more than two hours if they drop anywhere close to forty, fifty percent. We could probably buy some time by moving vulnerable crew from stations along the hull and concentrate them in engineering or sickbay, but not much.”
“Understood. Jo, I plan to have us out of here before then.”
“Mmm. Well, I converted cargo bay three into a triage and staging area. Assuming there are survivors, they’re going to need to stay somewhere, and that’s as good a place as any. We’ve got full decon standing by for anyone who got a good dose of radiation. I had a couple patients in sickbay. Nothing serious and they’re pretty stable, so they got moved to the mess hall.”
“I’m sure that’s made the chef’s day. Good work, Jo. Let’s hope we don’t have to test your team’s readiness.”
“Amen to that. But those shields go, and I’m going to have more down here than I can handle.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Garrett punched off at the same moment that Glemoor looked up.
“Got it,” he said.
Garrett was aware that all activity had ceased around the bridge; all eyes were on Glemoor. “And?”
“Life signs,” Glemoor said. He broke into a huge grin, and Garrett thought he looked just exactly like the Cheshire Cat. “A lot of them. Humanoid. I estimate forty, perhaps sixty individuals. And they are just where Lieutenant Commander Bat-Levi said they would be: engineering.”
Garrett clenched her fist in savage triumph. “Yes! Mr. Bulast, can you hail them?”
“Trying, Captain. Once we went into the plasma jet, things went downhill in a hurry. I can tell that this is an old ship, though. Their subspace bands are all concentrated on the low end of the spectrum. I’m amazed I can hear anything. Right now, all I’m getting is the automatic beacon from the ship itself. But I do have a place of origin. They identify themselves as Atawhean and ...” Bulast tilted his head to one side, trying to filter meaning out of a wash of static. Then his dark eyes went wide. “It’s a colony ship, Captain.”
“Aw, hell,” muttered Castillo.
“Children, Captain,” said Bat-Levi. “Families.”
Garrett punched at her companel. “Transporter room, can you get me a lock?”
“Negative,” said the voice—a woman’s—that issued from the speaker. “There’s too much ionization effect from all that radiation. Even if I could grab a piece of them, the pattern enhancers can’t compensate. I’d end up killing them for sure.”
The whistle of a hail pierced the air, and Garrett jabbed her companel. “Bridge, Garrett.”
“Kodell, Captain. Shields are seventy-two percent. I’ve robbed power from every available place on this ship without touching environmental. The next step is to evacuate crew from nonessential areas and shut down life support to those decks.”
“How much power will that buy us?”
“We’ll maintain status quo, Captain.”
“What about if we engage tractor beams?”
There was a very long pause. Then Kodell said, “If that’s what you order, Captain, I’ll do the best I can.”
“As I just said to Glemoor, do better. I want two tractor beams on that vessel, and get our shields around her. And keep those impulse engines on line. We’ve got to keep this ship moving, even if you have to go out and push.”
“Well, I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that, Captain,” said Kodell, though Garrett didn’t detect a whiff of sarcasm. “Tractor beams on. Extending shields.”
“We’ve got them, Captain,” said Glemoor. “Barely.”
“Bat-Levi, go to red alert.” As the klaxons sounded and the bridge lights shaded to crimson, Garrett turned to the helm. “Castillo, get us out of the jet and then plot us a course out of here, best possible speed. Straight line, don’t waste any time.”
Castillo glanced back once, nodded, and then executed the command.
Now with the extra power drain, Garrett felt the ship working hard. The engines didn’t grind and groan as they’d done in starships from years past, but she could tell from the vibrations coming up through the floor and into her chair that she was pushing the ship to its limit. Ironically, it was at times like this—when there was nothing to do but give orders that her crew executed and her ship strained to make good—that she felt the most superfluous, with nothing to do but wait and pray.
Come on, girl, just hold together. Just hold together long enough for us to get out of here in one piece, and then we can all take a vacation.
Her ship couldn’t answer her, not in words. But she felt Enterprise straining to do her bidding, and for not the first time, she found herself urging her ship on, gripping the arms of her command chair as if she could infuse the very force of her will. For the briefest of instants, she believed that she and her ship were one, and she imagined it was the same way that ship captains throughout time had felt, or fighter pilots before a battle, rocketing in their planes across an azure sky. The difference, of course, was there was no sea for her and her ship to fight here, no real air in which to bank and sideslip, to roll and spiral, and no enemy dogging her tail—nothing but a howling maelstrom of supercharged particles ready to destroy them.
Come on, girl, come on. Garrett felt a thin line of sweat trickle down her right temple. Go, go.
As if in defiance of her prayers, the ship lurched. The lights on the bridge stuttered. She heard a circuit blow somewhere behind and to her right. “What was that?”
“Gravity wave, Captain,” said Bat-Levi. Her black hair had come loose of its braid and brushed her shoulders. With an impatient gesture, she used her right hand—the good one—to push a shock out of her face. “When we weren’t pulling the other ship, we didn’t feel them as much. But there are gravity wavefronts emanating from those protostars.”
Alarmed, Garrett snapped her attention to Castillo. “How’s our speed?”
“Dropping. Down to one quarter impulse.”
“That won’t be enough, Captain,” said Bat-Levi, “not to get us out. It’s the additional mass. We need more speed.”
“No can do, Captain,” said Castillo, before Garrett could ask. “That’s all I can get out of her.”
A hail: Kodell again. “I know you don’t have good news,” said Garrett.
“No. Shields at sixty-seven percent. Our impulse engines are starting to overheat, and starboard tractor beam is down to seventy percent. It’s the extra load, Captain. I can’t steal enough power to keep our shields up and extended and tractors at full and engines.” A pause. “Believe me, Captain, if it would help for me to go out and push, I would. But it won’t.”
“Starboard tractor beam now sixty-eight percent,” reported Bat-Levi. “Port tractor beam eighty-five percent. Rate of power drop is accelerating.”
“Captain, we’re starting to lose ground. It’s one or the other,” said Kodell.
Garrett’s jaw firmed. “Unacceptable. Now we’ve got them, we’re not letting that ship go. You keep two tractor beams on that ship. Shut down life support on Decks 12 to 22, if you have to, but keep those tractor beams going.”
“I can do that. But I can’t manufacture more speed. Simple physics, Captain. We don’t have the power. So, if we don’t let that other ship go, we’ll fall back into the star together.”
“Captain.” It was Glemoor. “Why not jet our way out?”
Garrett’s brows met in a frown. “You mean, go back into the plasma jet?”
“No, create our own. There’s all this gas and ionized plasma,” Glemoor wa
ved a hand toward the viewscreen, “plenty of fuel all around us. All we have to do is to detonate strategically placed charges behind the Enterprise and then ride the jets we create. The pressure waves will push us out.”
“A good idea, Glemoor, but we can’t contain the explosion. There’s no way to direct the charges so we don’t take out the entire region. Even if we could, our shields wouldn’t hold for that other ship, and not compensate for the sheer from our tractor beams. Either they or we—or maybe both—would rip apart.”
“Starboard tractor beam fifty-five percent,” Bat-Levi reported. “Shields at forty-five percent. Project shield failure in twenty-point-seven minutes.”
“Kodell?”
“I see it, Captain. Permission to shut down life support, Decks 12 to 22.”
“Go. Bat-Levi, get me more power to that starboard tractor beam.” Garrett stabbed at her intercom. “Jo, our shields ...”
“Way ahead of you. Evacuating from the more exposed areas of the ship now. But, like I said, fifty minutes, maybe an hour, Captain. Then it won’t matter if we get pulled into a protostar, or drift over to that black hole and trip over that event horizon out there, we probably won’t ...”
Tripping. Stern was still talking, but Garrett tuned her out. Event horizon’s just about as solid a thing as you can find in space and it’ll be more like jumping headfirst off a cliff ... Dammit, the thing’s got a shape!
“That’s it!” she blurted, and she saw Castillo jump as though he’d been shot. “Gravity! We’ve been banging our heads trying to figure out how to beat it. But why not use it to our advantage?”
“My God,” said Bat-Levi, giving a little laugh of astonishment. “Of course, the gravity well around the protostar ...”
“It’s like any other,” said Castillo, his voice ramping up with excitement. “It’s strong, but it’s got an outer limit, an edge just like that black hole out there.”
“We accelerate toward the well at a shallow enough angle, then we ought to ricochet off the gravitational field,” said Garrett. “We’ll rebound, like a stone skipping over a pond.”