Star Trek: TOS: Allegiance in Exile

by David R. George III

  “Uhura,” he said from where he stood beside Spock, and the communications officer looked over at him, an expression of complete dismay on her face. “Hail the Courageous.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said, though Kirk could barely hear her. She reached up to work her console.

  Kirk turned to his first officer. “Spock?” he asked quietly, though the Vulcan had already bent to peer into his hooded viewer.

  “Scanning,” Spock said, and even he seemed affected by the awful spectacle, his voice lowered to a somber level. “I’m reading more than a hundred fifty life signs, most of them strong.”

  Kirk knew that the complement of a Miranda-class vessel ranged as high as two hundred twenty, so the toll could have been much worse, though that provided cold comfort. He gazed back at the viewscreen and saw that the momentum of the alien vessel had caused it to pinwheel across the hull of Courageous and float off into space. “Ship’s status?”

  “Collating,” Spock said. “Structural integrity fields are struggling to contain the sections of the ship opened to space, but life support is operating. Engines appear unaffected, while starboard-side weapons systems and shields are down.”

  “What about the alien vessel?” Kirk asked, but then the Enterprise bridge brightened. On the viewer, the captain saw the source of that light fading where the alien vessel had been.

  “Captain,” Uhura said, “I’m having trouble raising anybody on the Courageous.”

  “Keep trying, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. “They’ll answer when they can.” Then to Spock, he said, “With their starboard shields down, we can beam medical and repair teams to the Courageous, and their survivors over here. I’ll contact McCoy and Scotty—”

  “Captain,” called Lieutenant Rahda. “Sensors are detecting two more vessels heading this way.”

  Kirk looked at Spock, then headed back down to the inner section of the bridge. “More of the alien vessels?” he asked Rahda.

  “No, sir,” she said, peering into her scanner. “There is a physical resemblance, but these are much larger, roughly the same size as the Enterprise.”

  As Kirk hoisted himself back into the command chair, he started to call for a red alert, but saw that the signal for general quarters still flashed on and off. One battle barely ended before the next begins, he thought, and then realized that the first wave of smaller ships had been a ruse, meant to soften the defense of Pillagra provided by Enterprise and Courageous.

  And it worked, Kirk thought.

  “Uhura, hailing frequencies,” the captain said, but he held out little hope that the aliens would suddenly want to talk.

  • • •

  Sulu regained consciousness in complete darkness. He had no idea how long he’d been out, and at first, he couldn’t even be sure of his location. He pushed himself up and recognized the feel of the deck beneath him. An odd sort of silence surrounded him, one he’d rarely if ever heard aboard a starship. Through his hands, though, he felt a vibration, and he knew that at least some function had not been lost.

  Slowly reaching about him, Sulu found the bottom portion of the nearest console, confirming his place at the periphery of the bridge. He rolled up onto his hands and knees and began to crawl, following the line of stations. Somewhere, he thought he heard movement, and he called out into the darkness, his voice sounding lifeless to his own ears.

  When no one responded, Sulu moved his hand forward and pushed up against a body. He quickly fumbled to find an arm, then worked his way down to the wrist. He felt a pulse and, satisfied, he set the arm down and continued crawling forward.

  When he reached the alcove that led to the turbo-lift, he noted that the doors did not part. He felt around the lower section of the bulkhead beside them. He found the recessed latch there, inserted his fingers, and pulled it open. A small light within activated. Sulu had to look away for a few moments until his eyes adjusted from having dilated in the pitch blackness.

  When he could finally tolerate the light, Sulu peered into the emergency cache. He picked out a communicator and then a handheld beacon, which he activated and snapped onto his wrist. He shined the beacon across the bridge. He saw bodies everywhere.

  Opening the communicator, he said, “Bridge to sickbay.” He waited only a moment before trying again. On his third attempt, a voice finally responded.

  “Sickbay, this is Tejada,” said the ship’s chief medical officer.

  “This is Lieutenant Sulu,” he said. “We need an emergency medical team on the bridge immediately.”

  “We need emergency medical teams everywhere,” Tejada said. Sulu believed her. She sounded harried.

  “Doctor, the captain and first officer are down,” Sulu told her. “I think the turbolift to the bridge may be off line, so you’ll need to either transport in or climb up the turboshaft.”

  “Are the transporters working?” Tejada asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sulu said. “I’m blind up here. You’ll have to find out.”

  “I will,” the doctor said, and she seemed to calm down as her medical responsibilities asserted themselves. “I’ll get somebody up there to do triage, and if we can, we’ll transport the wounded to sickbay.”

  “Good. Sulu out.” He flipped the communicator closed, affixed it to the back of his belt, then used the beacon to light his way over to the captain, who lay in a heap halfway across the bridge from the command chair. Again, Sulu felt for a pulse. He didn’t find one.

  Looking around, he finally spotted the first officer. Costley’s body had folded over and wedged beneath the navigator’s station. Sulu went to him and checked once more for signs of life. Costley’s heart beat, though weakly.

  Sulu glanced around. He wanted to check on the rest of the crew and do more for all of them than simply check for their pulses, but Courageous had been in a firefight. If Sulu didn’t find out what was going on out in space around the ship, they could all be blasted out of existence at any moment.

  Standing, Sulu reached again for the communicator. “Bridge to transporter room.”

  “Berenson here,” answered the transporter chief, the swiftness of the reply a surprise.

  “Ensign, this is Lieutenant Sulu. Are the transporters on line?”

  “They are, sir, yes,” he said.

  Sulu removed the beacon from his wrist and set it down atop the navigation console. Though emergency teams would doubtless bring their own lighting, he wanted to leave the bridge partially illuminated in case any of the officers regained consciousness before help arrived. Once he’d done that, he said, “Beam me there at once.” He knew that auxiliary control stood next to the ship’s main transporter room. With the bridge out of commission, Sulu could find out the situation and run the ship from there.

  “Energizing,” Berenson said.

  When Sulu materialized on the transporter platform, he saw Doctor Tejada and two of her nurses rushing in from the corridor. He jumped down to the deck and started past them, toward the door, when the doctor stopped and reached up toward his head.

  “Are you all right, Lieutenant?” Tejada asked.

  Sulu raised a hand to his forehead. His fingertips came away tacky with his own blood. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, knowing that, at that moment, he needed to take command of the ship. “Worry about the captain and the rest of the bridge crew.”

  Without waiting for a response, Sulu raced out of the transporter room.

  • • •

  By the time he activated the small viewscreen in auxiliary control, Sulu had received relatively positive reports from engineering, particularly for a ship that had just experienced a collision in space. Though starboard shields and weapons no longer functioned, both the impulse drive and the warp engines remained operational. The ship’s chief engineer, Mieke Wass, had rerouted power from the damaged systems to life support, making the internal environment of Courageous sustainable, at least in the short term.

  Once he’d learned the ship’s status from Lieutenant Commander Wass,
Sulu had quickly run down a list of ship’s officers, trying to contact each. He stopped when he’d found a navigator, an engineer, and a science officer to join him in auxiliary control. He redirected all command functions, then activated the small viewscreen while he awaited his new bridge crew.

  The monitor winked to life, showing an empty starfield. Sulu quickly touched a control to focus the visual display on the objects nearest in space to Courageous. The screen flickered, then showed an image of Enterprise.

  The ship was not alone.

  Sulu spied two vessels of a configuration he had never before seen, but they shared enough characteristics in common with the other alien ships that he did not doubt their origin. Black, they comprised two bladelike hulls, connected lengthwise along the center of each, so that they possessed a plus-shaped cross section. They appeared roughly the size of Enterprise itself.

  As Sulu looked on, phaser blasts, photon torpedoes, and missiles raced through the space between the Starfleet vessel and enemy ships.

  Behind Sulu, the doors parted, and two of the three officers he’d called to auxiliary control entered on the run. “Come on,” he yelled. “We need to get Courageous moving.”

  • • •

  “Aft shields down to thirty-five percent,” Spock reported.

  From the command chair, Kirk said, “Rahda, drop our stern. Protect the aft shielding.”

  The bridge continued to rattle under the relentless onslaught of the two alien vessels. Although they had shown no weaponry more advanced than their smaller counterparts, they evidently carried a great deal more ammunition, and the ability to fire it in salvos. One missile by itself did not tax Enterprise’s shields, but both vessels fired five or more at once, and they kept coming. The alien vessels also targeted individual shields, obviously working to overload them. Kirk knew that once the first shield collapsed, the rest would fall like dominoes.

  But the aliens won’t need to wait for all the dominoes to fall, Kirk thought. With even one of the shields down, the right weapons strike could destroy the entire ship.

  “Captain, the alien vessels are moving farther apart and beginning to circle,” Rahda said.

  Like sharks, Kirk thought, and he suddenly had a clear vision of the deadly Earth creatures swimming through the corridors of the alien vessels, relentless, cold-blooded predators expanding their killing fields.

  “Keep the stern out of the line of fire,” Kirk said again, but he knew that Rahda could only do so much. Alone against two vessels, with them maneuvering about Enterprise, it would only be a matter of time before one of their missiles brought down the aft shields.

  And we can’t fall back, Kirk thought, because that would leave the Bajoran city vulnerable.

  “Captain,” Spock said, “the Courageous is moving . . . heading toward us.”

  “Yes,” Kirk said. “Spock, which of the two alien vessels is most vulnerable? We need to knock out their ability to launch their missiles.”

  “The one presently located off our starboard side,” Spock said.

  “Rahda, concentrate all phasers and photon torpedoes on that ship, targeting their missile tubes,” Kirk ordered.

  “Aye,” Rahda said as she worked her controls.

  Kirk turned toward the communications station. “Uhura, can you raise the Courageous?”

  “Still trying, sir,” Uhura said. “The alien ships may be jamming transmissions.”

  Of course, Kirk thought. When the Enterprise had faced the aliens in the R-836 system, they’d done the same thing. He hoped he wouldn’t need to communicate with Captain Caulder, though; if the Courageous captain saw Enterprise concentrating its weapons on one target and ignoring the other, Kirk trusted that he would understand, and join in that effort.

  The captain peered at the viewscreen, which showed only one of the alien vessels. Lines of missiles ran out toward Enterprise, shaking the ship and further weakening the shields. Phasers and photon torpedoes rushed in the other direction, some landing, some not; despite their greater dimensions, the alien vessels possessed a maneuverability similar to their smaller counterparts.

  In the distance, beyond the alien vessel, Kirk saw Courageous pass the field of battle. What’s he doing? Kirk thought, but then he remembered that the starboard shields on Courageous had failed. Caulder needed to protect that side of his ship.

  Phasers suddenly shot from the port side of Courageous and slammed into the same vessel that Enterprise was attacking. But then the second alien vessel appeared on the screen, headed for Courageous. Kirk tried to will Captain Caulder not to break off his attack, but just as he thought that, the second vessel fired. A barrage of missiles assaulted Courageous. Some found its starboard side, and Kirk saw more pieces of the ship’s hull blasted away into space. Courageous ceased fire and veered away.

  On the screen, the second alien vessel disappeared from view as it attempted to flank Enterprise. Kirk debated whether to break off their attack on the first ship in order to protect the aft shields, or to continue in the hope of victory. Just then, the multitude of missiles launching from the first ship ceased.

  “Captain, I believe we have crippled their launching system,” Spock said. “But our starboard shields have now fallen below twenty-five percent and are on the verge of collapse.”

  “Rahda, now, target the second ship, come at him on our port side,” Kirk said. “Spock, keep an eye on the first. Make sure it doesn’t try to ram us.”

  Kirk watched the viewer as the image swung around to the second alien vessel, its missiles continuing to fly at Enterprise. Once more, Lieutenant Rahda sent rails of phaser fire and runs of photon torpedoes back in response.

  “Captain,” Spock said, “the first ship is moving off.”

  “We’ll let them go for now,” Kirk said, “until we can defang the second vessel.”

  The bridge continued to shudder with every missile strike.

  “Captain,” Spock said, “the first ship is headed for the planet.”

  “What about their missiles?” Kirk asked. “Did they decoy us?”

  “Negative,” Spock said. “Their launchers remain down.”

  “Then what—?” But then Kirk understood. If the aliens could not fire on the city, then they would use the only weapon remaining to them, the one they had used against Courageous. They intended to ram their starship into the Bajoran colony.

  • • •

  On the small viewscreen in the auxiliary control room, Sulu saw the orb of the planet loom into view as Courageous tracked the alien vessel. Because its weapons had been incapacitated, the lieutenant and acting captain knew what the aliens intended. Sulu didn’t think twice about what to do.

  “Ramsey,” he said, addressing the relief navigator who sat at the console beside his. “Plot a pursuit course.”

  “Into the atmosphere?” Ramsey asked. “But we’ve lost our starboard shields, and the structural integrity field is barely holding. We can’t—”

  Sulu turned to the young man. “Ensign, we can, and we will.”

  “Lieutenant,” Ramsey said, “traveling at speed within an atmosphere will probably collapse the integrity field.” Sulu looked the young officer in the eyes and saw no fear; he did see an abundance of caution, and a desire to save the remainder of a crew who had already been hit hard.

  “Ensign, if we don’t try,” Sulu said, “the thirty-seven thousand people who live in the city on that planet are going to die. Now, am I going to have to repeat any more orders, because I can get another navigator in here.”

  Ramsey worked his controls. “Laying in a pursuit course,” he said.

  “Plot an intercept,” Sulu said. “We need to destroy that ship before it gets anywhere near the city.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ramsey said.

  Sulu waited for the course to come up on his panel, then pushed Courageous forward. On the viewer, the planet quickly grew to fill the screen as the ship hurtled toward it. Sulu searched for the alien vessel ahead of them, but couldn’t s
ee it. The helm console in auxiliary control did not control weapons, and so had no targeting scanner. “Science officer,” he called back over his shoulder, not remembering the name of the woman who had reported to auxiliary control. “I need sensors. Where’s our target?”

  “Scanning,” the science officer called back.

  Sulu boosted Courageous to higher speed. He felt the ship shimmy as it entered the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Turning to his left, he pointed over at the engineer, who had rerouted weapons to auxiliary control. “Jackson, when we have him on sensors, lock photon torpedoes, all available tubes. We need to vaporize him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jackson called back. Sulu saw him studying his panel, doubtless waiting for the results of the science officer’s sensor sweep.

  Moments passed, and Sulu worried not only that they had lost the alien vessel, but that by the time they located it, it would be too late. He saw that the cloud cover still lay well below them, and so he hoped that there might still be time.

  “Sir,” Ramsey said, his voice low, “structural integrity field is fluctuating.”

  “Let it fluctuate,” Sulu boomed back at him.

  “Lieutenant, I have the alien vessel,” the science officer called. “Transferring coordinates to navigation and weapons control.” Both Ramsey and Jackson called out that they’d received the data.

  “Get me a new course,” Sulu said, but an instant later, it appeared on his panel. He worked his controls to bring Courageous onto its new heading. When he looked back at the viewer, he saw the alien vessel. “Hold your fire,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot toward the ground.” From their height and the angle at which they approached the surface, a photon torpedo miss would likely not hit the city, but Sulu could not take that chance. Instead, he drove Courageous faster.

  A huge bang resounded in the auxiliary control room. “What was that?” asked the science officer, but Sulu already knew.

  “We just lost structural integrity,” Ramsey said.

  In his mind, Sulu saw pieces of the hull peeling away from Courageous as it flung itself toward the planet. On the viewer, he saw the gap with the alien vessel closing. “Be ready,” he told Jackson. “As soon as we overtake it.” Out in space, the alien vessels had utilized their impressive maneuverability to evade weapons strikes. Sulu didn’t think that would work inside an atmosphere.