Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  “Uhura,” Sulu heard the captain say from the command chair, and a second later, the red-alert klaxon quieted. Then Kirk said, “Hail the lead Klingon vessel.”

  “Sensors identify the lead ship as the I.K.S. Vintahg,” Spock announced at the sciences station. “The trailing ships are the Gr’oth and the Goren.”

  “The Gr’oth?” Kirk said, and then he echoed Sulu’s own thought: “That’s Koloth’s vessel.”

  “Intelligence reports that Koloth is now fleet commander, and that Korax commands the Gr’oth,” Spock said. “All three Klingon ships show significant damage and evidence of attack by phasers and photon torpedoes. The Clemson is heading away from the planet, outrunning them for the moment, but it too has taken major damage.”

  “There’s no response from the Vintahg,” Uhura said.

  “Try the Clemson,” Kirk said.

  With the clangor of the red alert silenced, Sulu could hear the snap of buttons as Uhura worked her panel. “Nothing, sir,” she said. “The Klingons may be jamming transmissions locally.”

  “Can you raise the station?” the captain asked. Sulu had been present on the bridge when the Enterprise had received the distress signal broadcast by the Einstein facility.

  A beat, and then Uhura said, “Negative, but it’s not the Klingons. There’s too much interference from the drifting Starfleet vessel.”

  “Sulu,” Kirk said, “let’s see that ship. Full magnification.”

  “Aye, sir,” Sulu said. He referred to his readout, then quickly targeted visual sensors. He looked up as the picture on the main viewer shifted, a gray-white shape appearing in the center of the starscape, a sliver of the iron-red planet cutting across the lower right corner of the screen. The image of the vessel grew in size as the Enterprise drew nearer, but even at this distance, Sulu could see the devastation.

  Built for speed and maneuverability, primarily for defensive duty, the Paladin-class destroyers each had a single crew hull, long and elliptical, with two of the new, sleek warp nacelles situated aft, one above, one below. At maximum magnification, Sulu could see that one of the nacelles had been torn from the ship, the strut upon which it had been mounted now twisted and blackened from battle. Worse, at least a third of the hull had been sliced away, from forward port to aft starboard, the ship opened to space on every deck. In front of the bridge superstructure, amid the scarring of what must have been caused by Klingon disruptor blasts, Sulu could read what remained of the vessel’s designation—S. Miner—and he filled in the rest from his own knowledge of the fleet: U.S.S. Minerva.

  “Life signs?” the captain asked. Tension gripped Sulu in a stranglehold as he awaited the verdict, fearing the worst, but hoping against hope that at least some of the Minerva’s crew—

  “Negative,” Spock reported. Sulu glanced over at the sciences station and saw the first officer peering into his monitor. “Sensor contact is sporadic, but…scans do not show any escape pods in the vicinity. However, I do read several dozen life signs aboard the wounded Klingon vessel, though they are weak. The ship’s drive systems are unstable and are venting hard radiation at a high level.” Spock raised his head and looked toward the main viewer. “Putting it on screen,” he said.

  Sulu followed Spock’s gaze and saw the image of the Minerva replaced with that of a badly damaged top-of-the-line Klingon warship. A bulbous control section projected from the end of a slender neck, which itself emerged from an angular structure that spread like the wings of a bird, its lowered talons a pair of S-2 graf units, equivalent in function to the Enterprise’s warp nacelles. Clearly undirected, the ship pinwheeled through space, its steely gray surface pitted with seared wounds obviously inflicted by Starfleet weaponry. As one wing swept into the direct light of the system’s star, Sulu translated the alien characters on its base that spelled out the name of the vessel: Rikkon.

  “Sulu, how long until we’re in transporter range?” Kirk asked.

  Sulu checked their course, velocity and distance from the planet and the field of battle above it. “Just under two minutes,” he said.

  “Bridge to transporter room,” the captain said.

  “Transporter room.” Sulu recognized the British-accented voice of Lieutenant Kyle. “Go ahead, Captain.”

  Before Kirk could order preparations for the Klingon survivors to be beamed aboard—Sulu assumed that had been his intention—the bridge brightened considerably. Sulu squinted at the main viewer in time to see the vestiges of an explosion fade into the darkness of space. Chunks of wreckage intermittently caught the light of the sun as they whirled away through the void.

  “Their drive overloaded,” Spock said.

  “Mister Kyle, stand by,” the captain said. “Sulu, show us the research station.”

  Once more, the helmsman worked his controls, until the Einstein facility appeared on the viewscreen. To Sulu, it looked like a great crystal ornament hanging in orbit above the planet. Tapering spires reached out into space from both poles of its main body, an oblate spheroid. With a shimmering blue surface, it seemed glasslike and incredibly fragile.

  “Sensor readings are becoming more discontinuous, but I read no indications that the station has come under direct attack yet,” Spock said.

  “Let’s try to keep it that way,” Kirk said. “Chekov, target the Vintahg. Sulu, I want a cross-path attack run.” Both men acknowledged their orders. While Chekov worked his controls, Sulu retargeted the visual scanners, then plotted the Enterprise’s offensive, bringing the ship onto a new heading. On his sensor monitor, he saw the three Klingon ships arrayed in a V formation, the lead ship closing in on the Clemson.

  How could this have happened? Sulu wondered, still half a minute away from engaging the Klingons. This star, this barren planetary system, should not have drawn the Empire’s notice. They didn’t explore, they conquered, and without directly investigating the planet up ahead, they shouldn’t have had any reason to come here. Sulu couldn’t believe that anybody in Starfleet with knowledge of the classified Einstein installation and its top-secret purpose would have informed the Klingons.

  Maybe, Sulu speculated, the object of the Einstein team’s research had made itself known over a larger area. Three years ago, as the Enterprise crew had explored and mapped this system, sensors had detected the anomaly from millions of kilometers away. Sulu had never visited the source of the unusual readings, but Captain Kirk had briefed his senior officers about the object, now long since classified by Starfleet Command. The helmsman could only imagine how disastrous it would be if the Klingon Empire commandeered the Guardian of Forever.

  He checked the Enterprise’s distance from the Vintahg. “Ten seconds,” he said.

  “Captain,” Spock said, “the rear ships are breaking off their pursuit of the Clemson and are veering in our direction.”

  “Ignore them, Helm,” Kirk said, rising out of his chair and stepping forward. Sulu could feel his presence at his side. “Make your attack run. Chekov, target the Vintahg’s weapons systems, hit them with everything we’ve got, phasers and photon torpedoes, all banks, all tubes.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Chekov said.

  “We need to protect the research station,” Kirk explained, “and in order to do that, we need to make this an even fight.” For his part, Sulu couldn’t have agreed more. Starfleet Command had assigned two destroyers, the Minerva and the Clemson, to safeguard Station Einstein, but they obviously hadn’t anticipated an incursion by four Klingon D7 battle cruisers.

  “Here they come,” Chekov said. On the viewscreen, the two Klingon ships—the Gr’oth and the Goren, Spock had said—roared toward the Enterprise, one to port, one to starboard. Past them, the Vintahg still pursued the Clemson.

  “The Klingons are charging weapons,” Spock said, an instant before bright green disruptor bolts fired in unison from the tips of their wings.

  “Steady, Sulu,” Kirk said quietly, and the helmsman felt the captain’s hand grip the back of his chair.

  Sulu fel
t the urge to send the Enterprise into evasive maneuvers, but understood the captain’s plan. He held the ship on course as the Klingon weapons landed. The bridge shook hard once, then not as badly a second time. Sparks and smoke—but no fire—erupted from an unmanned panel beside the main viewscreen.

  “Three hits,” Spock said. “Forward shields down to seventy-eight percent, starboard shields down to eighty-nine.”

  On the viewer, the Gr’oth and the Goren had disappeared, having flown past, and now the Vintahg grew larger, its battered profile an inviting target. Sulu worked his controls, bringing the Enterprise in above the stern section of the Klingon ship. The approach would allow the clearest path to their disruptor generators, which sat topside aft, Sulu knew.

  “Firing all weapons,” Chekov said as the Vintahg vanished from view. The bridge filled with the distinctive sounds of phaser banks discharging and photon torpedoes launching. Sulu visualized the lethal blue beams surging from the bottom of the Enterprise’s saucer section and the stern of the secondary hull, saw in his mind the brilliant orbs of light leaping from the torpedo shafts and toward their enemy.

  The Enterprise shook again, but not nearly as violently as before.

  “A glancing strike on the starboard side of our primary hull,” Spock said. “Direct hit on the Vintahg with one set of phasers and two photon torpedoes.”

  “Good shooting, Chekov,” the captain said. “Status of the Vintahg?”

  “Upper dorsal shields down, aft shields buckling,” Spock said. “Weapons systems…still functioning.”

  “Where are the other ships?” Kirk asked.

  “The Vintahg and the Gr’oth are both coming about,” Spock said, “as is the Clemson.”

  “What about the third Klingon?” Kirk wanted to know.

  “Trying to locate it,” Spock said, and then, “The Goren is heading for the research station.”

  Sulu peered into his sensor monitor, waiting for the captain’s orders. His hands rested lightly on his panel, ready to take the ship in whatever direction needed. “Sulu, bring us around for another run on the Vintahg,” Kirk said after a few seconds. “Take evasive action as you need to this time, but give Chekov another shot at their disruptor generators. Then follow the Goren.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Sulu said. He worked the helm, and the Enterprise hove to port, circling back around toward their intended target. On the main screen, the lean Paladin destroyer and two of the Klingon vessels came back into view.

  “The Clemson is firing on the Vintahg,” Spock said, even as Sulu saw four deadly shafts of blue light stream from the underside of the Starfleet vessel. The Clemson’s crew had obviously monitored the Enterprise’s attack, because they now emulated it. Two of the beams found their marks, pounding into the warship’s upper aft section. “The Vintahg’s aft shields are now down,” declared Spock.

  Obviously wounded, the Vintahg fired its disruptors, but the bolts soared wide of their objective. The Gr’oth followed with an attack of its own, though, sending its powerful bolts hammering into the Clemson.

  Sulu checked his scanners again as Spock detailed the serious but not critical damage to the Clemson, and the helmsman saw a reduction in the Vintahg’s velocity. He adjusted the Enterprise’s course accordingly, but then saw the Gr’oth streaking toward them. He held down a button as he swept his other hand across his console, altering the ship’s heading again. Then he released the restriction control, and the Enterprise lurched into a downward roll to starboard. Sulu swayed in his seat as the inertial dampeners took a miniscule fraction of a second to compensate. He braced himself for the impact of Klingon weapons, but on the main viewer, he saw the phased energy of the disruptor bolts scream silently past.

  “Clean miss by the Gr’oth,” Spock said.

  Quickly, Sulu pulled the Enterprise into an arc, sweeping back toward the Vintahg from below. “We’ll pass behind it,” he told Chekov.

  “Aye,” the ensign said, his gaze locked on his station.

  Sulu watched the helm sensors as he moved his hands over his controls, tuning the ship’s course as it neared its goal. He anticipated an attempt by the Vintahg to elude the Enterprise, but it never came. The phaser and photon torpedo salvos, combined with the previous attacks obviously made by the Clemson and the Minerva, must have taken their toll on the Klingon vessel.

  As the Enterprise shot past the Vintahg, Chekov punched the controls on his panel, one after another in rapid succession. Again, the rush of the ship’s weaponry lashing out saturated the bridge.

  “Two phaser strikes, two torpedo strikes,” Spock said. “The Vintahg’s shields have completely collapsed and its weapons systems are down. I’m also reading an explosion in their engineering section.”

  “Well done,” Kirk said.

  As Sulu aimed the Enterprise toward the Goren and the research station, Uhura said, “Captain, channels are clearing. We’re being hailed by the Clemson.”

  Kirk sat back down and said, “Put it on screen.”

  Sulu saw the viewer flicker, and then the sight of a bridge in chaos came into focus. A conduit hung down from the overhead behind the captain, and a haze of smoke filled the scene. Voices and alert sounds clotted the air. In the foreground, nobody sat at the navigation console, the front half of which had gone, its now-visible inner components charred and partially covered by flecks of white powder that must have been fire retardant. An orange-skinned Edoan woman sat at the communications station, her three hands deftly operating her controls, and a Tiburonian man worked the helm.

  A human woman stood from the command chair. “Captain,” she said without introducing herself. She had short blonde hair and, to Sulu’s surprise, wore gold-rimmed glasses. A comma of blood stood out on her pale cheek. She appeared to be in her middle thirties, but Captain Chelsea’s reputation preceded her, and Sulu knew her age to be fifty. “The Klingons believe that Starfleet has established a presence in this system to develop a new weapon for use against them.”

  A familiar complaint, Sulu thought. It seemed like one Klingon official or another constantly protested Starfleet’s imaginary efforts to obliterate the Empire, essentially ascribing their own motives to the Federation.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kirk replied, though his tone indicated to Sulu that he understood precisely why the Klingons would think what they did in this particular case. Clearly they had detected temporal emissions from the Guardian.

  “We tried to tell them as much when they arrived here,” the captain of the Clemson said, “but they came with four D7s; they weren’t interested in listening.”

  From somewhere offscreen, a male voice called, “The Gr’oth is coming around again.”

  “Do you require assistance?” Kirk asked.

  “Negative,” Chelsea said. “We’re pretty banged up, but with the Vintahg’s weapons down, we can handle the Gr’oth.”

  “Acknowledged,” Kirk said. “We’ve got the Goren.”

  She nodded once. “Chelsea out.” The Clemson bridge faded from the viewer, and in its place, the planet appeared. The research station floated in orbit above, and the Goren headed directly for it. To one side, the carcass of the Minerva continued adrift.

  “Spock, how many aboard the station?” Kirk asked. Sulu recalled from the Enterprise’s second and only other visit here, which had taken place about a year ago, that the Einstein facility supported only a small population of researchers and security personnel.

  “Radiation from the Minerva is still interfering with sensors,” Spock said, “but according to Starfleet records, there are seventeen personnel aboard at the present time.”

  Flashes lighted up the viewscreen. “Spock?” the captain said, rising out of his chair again.

  “The Goren is firing continuously on the station,” the first officer said. “Because of the emissions of the Minerva, I cannot ascertain the status of the station’s shields.”

  “They have multiple deflector generators,” the captain said, but he surely knew w
hat Sulu did: that no matter how much shielding they had, they would not be able to bear up for long against an unchecked assault.

  Sulu’s helm scanners showed that the Goren had come to a stop before the research station, but as with Spock’s sensors, interference made complete readings problematic. “Coming up on the Goren,” Sulu said. “It’s stopped dead while it’s firing.”

  “Same tactic, Mister Sulu, Mister Chekov,” Kirk said. “Hit them in the aft section, disable their weap—”

  An instant before explosions rocked the Enterprise, Sulu saw the cluster of torpedoes that had been mined across their path. The ship must have struck several of them. Sulu flew from his chair and across the top of the helm console. He got his hands down just in time to protect his head, and he crashed to the deck in darkness. His elbow hit something hard, and then his arm went numb.

  Feeling the urgency of the situation, Sulu pushed himself up and looked around. The lighting, the main viewer, and the overhead displays that ringed the bridge had failed, he saw, but fortunately the illuminated buttons indicated that the control stations had not lost power. As he thought that, the lights came back on.

  “Kirk to engineering,” he heard the captain say from somewhere in the vicinity of the helm. “Scotty, status report.” Sulu climbed to his feet and headed back to his station. Around the bridge, he saw others doing the same.

  “Power’s out all over the ship,” Scotty replied. “The engine’s are still online, but just barely. Shields and weapons are down. We’re checking the other systems right now.”

  “Get those shields back up,” the captain said. “Kirk out.” He had his eyes to the helm scanner as Sulu came back around the console. “We’re drifting,” Kirk said to him, looking up, “but we still have power to the helm.” Sulu nodded and took his station as the captain backed away to give him room.