“That’s correct,” said the communications officer. “It can generate a number of different frequencies by resonating elements of its internal structure. The power to do so comes from vast biochemical battery glands as big as inland seas.”
McCoy’s tone grew stronger as he warmed to his subject. “If this creature has some form of intelligence, it isn’t collected inside a chunk of gray matter as it is for carbon-based life like us.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “It’s got to be distributed. There are complex lattices of mineral crystal inside the leviathan, similar to the duotronic circuits in a computer. And I’m willing to bet that the energy moving around in there is the same as the electrochemical impulses that make us bags of bone and meat walk and talk.”
Kirk considered his friend’s words. “You mean its body is also its brain? No wonder it reacted so harshly against any perceived threat.” He paused, thinking it through. “Say your theory is right, Bones. How does that help us?”
“We’re talking about erratic brainwave patterns driving violent behavior here, Jim, no different from the kind of thing Federation medicine treats at the Tantalus colony and Elba II. Only the scale is different.”
“We believe it might be possible to create a counter-wave pattern that could reverse the effects of the leviathan’s madness.” A weary smile crossed Uhura’s face. “Call it music to soothe the savage beast.”
“Your hypothesis fails at this stage,” said Ret’Sed. “The outer mantle of the creature is too dense for the transmission of such a spatial frequency. It would never be able to penetrate the interior.”
“You’re not thinking like a doctor, sir,” replied McCoy. “We don’t heal from without, we heal from within.”
Kirk released a breath, his eyes narrowing. “You’re actually proposing we send a ship inside the leviathan? And you do understand that the amount of power that would be required would need a matter-antimatter core to supply it?”
“I know, Jim. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Uhura ran the numbers. We’d have to use the Enterprise.”
“No.” Ret’Sed twitched as it replied. “One craft would not be enough. To be certain of a full propagation of a counter-wave, more are required. Two, four more, to be assured of success.”
“We could launch shuttles under remote control,” said Uhura.
Kirk shook his head. “Not enough power. It has to be a starship.”
McCoy gestured at Kaleo and Ret’Sed. “You people have a few of those with you, right? I mean, we’ve been saying all along this is a team effort.”
“It could be done,” said the Breg’Hel, after a moment. “Risk is high. But there are large fissures on the surface of the creature’s dermal layer that give access to voids within its core. We venture into them to gather the raw matter to build our starcraft, but never too deeply.”
Kaleo had hardly spoken since they arrived in sickbay, and now Kirk turned to study her. The conflict he had seen in her eyes before was there again. “You have something to add?”
The Syhaari folded her long arms around herself. “Your officers’ plan tenders a kind of hope,” she began.
“I’m sensing a but coming up,” said Uhura.
“It is not without grave danger,” Kaleo went on. “And I must tell you that Gatag has been in communication with the Assembly on Syhaar Prime. There has been talk of concentrating on a terminal option.”
Ret’Sed shrugged. “My people also speak of such an act. Suggested implementation, several vessels with drive cores set to achieve overload criticality sent into the mantle of the creature. Detonations of a high order may wound it gravely enough to cause death-cessation.”
“May?” snarled McCoy. “And what if you don’t kill it? A wild animal is bad enough, but one that is crazed and wounded?” He shook his head, sickened by the idea.
Kirk didn’t answer the doctor’s words, but there was nothing in Ret’Sed’s declaration that he too had not already considered. The situation had become so grave that even the unthinkable had to be entertained.
“Lieutenant, Doctor, draw up a plan of action,” he ordered after a moment. “I’m going to make an attempt to end this crisis with no further bloodshed.”
* * *
Ranged against the curtain of distant gas and dust, the planet Syhaar Prime eclipsed its parent star as it became distinct ahead of the ragged survivor fleet. The Syhaari homeworld was a black orb, featureless and silent, haloed by flickers of sunshine. Rising before the planet, moving closer with each passing second, the leviathan was its dark, hellish twin.
Wreathed in the same deep shadows, the rogue glowed with a malevolent inner light that spilled from the fissures across its surface. A faint, narrow comet tail of dispersed energy coiled away from the living planetoid, shimmering and ephemeral—the byproduct of the peculiar natural warping effect that allowed the creature to skip across the surface of normal space at light velocity.
Beyond it, the distance between them shrinking, the Enterprise led the flotilla of damaged ships and desperate crews. Luck and time had been on their side. They would intercept the leviathan before it reached orbit of Syhaar Prime, but now their strategy was heavy with risk. Succeed or fail, divert or destroy, it would all be decided within the next few hours.
* * *
Scott looked up from the display on the bridge engineering station and found Captain Kirk. “Sir, engines are now beyond the red line, power at one hundred and ten percent. We can hold there for the next few minutes, but after that I’ll have to dial them back. Otherwise, we risk a catastrophic blowout.”
“Noted,” said Kirk. He glanced at the Syhaari commander Kaleo, who stood at his side, then to his chief engineer. “Use your discretion, Scotty, but don’t let that thing get away from us. We’ll only get one shot at this.”
He nodded. “Aye, sir, that we will.” On first hearing of the scheme hatched by Doctor McCoy and Lieutenant Uhura, Scott’s reaction had been—predictably—one of shock. The Enterprise was no stranger to extreme and unusual environments, from the depths of a gas giant’s atmosphere to the event horizon of a black hole, but as far as the engineer could recall, this was the first time someone had ever attempted to fly a starship inside a planet.
But every argument he had against the idea, no matter how logical, no matter how factually accurate, paled against the reality that billions of living beings would perish unless the leviathan could be stopped in its tracks. And so, Montgomery Scott did what he always did whenever he was presented with a nigh-impossible engineering challenge. He put aside his gut reaction and concentrated on the contest of the thing, as if he were squaring up to the laws of physics to answer the dare they had put in front of him. The rules say this can’t be done, he thought to himself, so let’s find a way to do it.
Scott set to work programming the complex vectors that would be required by the Enterprise’s structural integrity field generators to compensate for the shifting gravity fields as they first approached, then ventured into, the leviathan’s inner structure. As he did so, from the corner of his eye, he saw the captain straighten in his chair and call out to Lieutenant M’Ress. “It’s time. Put them on the screen.”
The main viewscreen switched to a partitioned display of four separate images. Each one was being relayed from the bridge of another starship—two of them Breg’Hel vessels, the others the least-damaged pair of Syhaari rangers.
“Enterprise, Rumen reporting,” said the gravel-voiced simianoid. “The Moon’s Rise is ready to proceed.” Scott had heard that the former pilot had insisted on taking command of one of the craft for this operation, refusing point blank to remain with Gatag and the rest of the elders on one of the other ships trailing behind them.
“Zond here,” called the Syhaari aboard the sister vessel. “The Day Ahead signals ready.”
“You make us proud,” said Kaleo, making a ritual gesture
to her second in command and her former teacher. “Have you modified your deflector arrays according to Commander Spock’s specifications?”
“Confirmed,” said Zond. “We’ll deploy once we reach optimal position to relay the counter-wave.” For his part, Rumen simply bobbed his head.
Kirk addressed the other two beings on the screen; the spindly, scaled Breg’Hel both seemed twitchy and nervous. “Ead’Aea, Ret’Sed, what is your status?”
“Ready,” they chorused. “Retro-reflectors have been configured to the correct signal potentiality,” Ead’Aea went on. “I will say this now: I do not share my partner-mate’s conviction that this will work. But blood bonds and love-trust supersede logic in this desperate hour. We will follow you, Enterprise. Lead the way.”
Kirk gave a nod. “Last chance to stay behind,” the captain told Kaleo. “Gatag and the others don’t believe we can do this either. If they’re right, they’ll need someone to look to in the aftermath.”
“Gatag is afraid, and he has every right to be,” Kaleo replied evenly. “But we are committed to this course of action.” She turned toward the science station, where Spock and Uhura were still working on refining the counter-wave profile. “We are in this together.”
The captain didn’t reply. Instead, he leaned forward in the command chair and called out to Sulu and Arex at their stations. “Gentlemen, Scotty has given us the means, so let’s not waste a second more. Set a heading for the heart of the leviathan, and take us in.”
“On our way,” confirmed Sulu. The image on the screen returned to the dark shadow play of an eclipsed world and the great cosmozoan.
Scott felt his gut tighten, but he buried the sensation before it could take hold. It went against every fiber of his being as a spacer to see a planetary surface rising to fill the viewscreen, yet the engineer didn’t look away.
Spock plucked a data card from his terminal and stepped down from his station. “Captain, with your permission, the lieutenant and I will head down to the deflector control room.”
“We’ll be able to directly modulate the counter-wave from there,” noted Uhura. “The difference in reaction time could prove critical.”
“Go,” said Kirk. “Give the word when you’re ready to broadcast the signal through the main deflector dish. We’ll channel full power to you on the mark.”
“I just hope it’ll be enough,” said Uhura.
“It will work,” Spock told her, as matter-of-fact as ever. “Your insight may well prove to be the solution that has eluded us.”
“Just make sure your lullaby is a good one,” Kirk told them, turning back. “Steady as she goes, Mister Sulu—”
In the next second, the Enterprise passed through a region of gravimetric shear, and suddenly the hull groaned as metal distorted and flexed.
* * *
McCoy felt the tremor come up through his boots, and he braced for it with the experience born of hundreds of similar moments. But Envoy Xuur wasn’t quite as nimble as she looked, and the Rhaandarite ambassador almost lost her balance before the doctor’s arm shot out to grab her elbow. “Easy up, now,” he told her as the lights in the corridor flickered. “It sounds like Jim has put us on our path.”
“It would seem so,” she said, covering with a flash of annoyance. “A warning might have been appreciated.” Xuur continued swiftly on toward the brig, and the doctor strode to keep up with her.
“You chose to stay on board this ship,” McCoy said, making the words a mild admonishment. “Why didn’t you go with ch’Sellor?”
“I ordered my aide off the Enterprise,” she corrected. “In point of fact, he was quite upset about it. He’s very protective of me.” Before McCoy could pick up on what that might have meant, Xuur went on. “If we all die in there, someone needs to be able to contact the Federation and tell them what took place.”
“Put us all in for posthumous commendations, you mean?”
Her lips thinned. “Despite what you may think of me personally, Doctor McCoy, I didn’t join the diplomatic corps for the accolades. But if I am going to earn them, I’d like it not to be because I perished in the line of duty.”
“Guess I can’t argue with that.”
They walked toward the brig, and a second tremor echoed through the deck, once again dimming the lights as power levels fluctuated to compensate. Xuur was ready for it this time and didn’t lose a step. “You don’t have a lot of time for people like me, do you?” She eyed him.
“Normally I’d deflect that,” McCoy admitted, “but as we’re going into harm’s way, heck, I’ll be honest with you. No. I don’t have time for people who think one thing and say another, and do it as their calling.”
“I lie for a living, is that what you think?”
“I call it like I see it,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t think of a single time the FDC has put someone on board this ship that it hasn’t become a problem. Right now is no exception.”
“Has it occurred to you that maybe the Enterprise crew is the problem, not the other way around? Your captain’s ability to play fast and loose with the Prime Directive is the stuff of legend where I come from. And not in a good way.”
McCoy scowled and fiddled with the tricorder hanging at his hip. “I’ll tell you this. What you think is a set of absolute rules that can be written down and adhered to in every single circumstance is nothing of the sort. General Order One is a guideline. It’s up to the people at the sharp end of the spear to interpret it according to the situation they’re in. Second-guessing someone from the comfort of a nice office half a galaxy away never works.”
“But I’m not half a galaxy away, Doctor,” she replied. “I’m right here, with all of you, in harm’s way.”
“Good,” he told her, “maybe you’ll learn something.”
Xuur’s eyes narrowed, but she let the barbed comment pass. They reached the brig, and the security guard on duty stood aside to allow them access to the single occupant of the cells.
Tormid sat on a narrow bunk behind the invisible energy barrier that barred any attempt at escape. His long arms were folded over his shoulders, and his dark, deep-set eyes burned with a steady fury.
“He say anything, Ensign Lopez?” McCoy asked.
Lopez grimaced. “Nothing I’d want to repeat, sir.”
When Tormid saw the envoy, he cocked his head and curled his lip in disgust. “You have no right to hold me in this place,” he spat at her. “I am a citizen of the Syhaari Gathering, and your Federation has no jurisdiction over my liberty!”
“Not so. Your government has agreed to your temporary confinement,” Xuur told him.
“You’re considered a threat to the safety of this vessel and the instigator of an interstellar war,” McCoy said flatly. “You’re not exactly on firm ground when it comes to throwing your weight around.”
The Syhaari shot to his feet and snarled something venomous in his own language. “Hairless simpletons, all of you. You set one of your freakish alien kind on me, attacked me!”
“Because you drew a sword!” McCoy snapped back.
“That was a ceremonial blade,” Tormid snorted, dismissing his rejoinder as if it were meaningless. “I would not expect you to understand. If I am to be accused of crimes, I will hear it only from my own species! I refuse to listen to your words.”
“We’re not giving you a choice,” said McCoy. “In fact, if I were you, I’d start telling the truth about what you did on the Searcher. Before you dig yourself in any deeper.”
Tormid turned a glare on him that was hot enough to sear the paint off the bulkhead. “What do you know of truth? Everything I have done was for the good of my species, offworlder. I made them stronger. I gave them focus.”
“You brought war and destruction down on their heads,” McCoy countered. “Good job.”
Xuur straightened, intervening before the argument
could build. “Mister Tormid, the doctor is here to take a tricorder scan of you for our official records.” McCoy plucked a handheld sensor from a compartment on the device and set it to read the Syhaari through the force field. “For matters of legality and full transparency,” the envoy continued. “Rest assured, you shall face criminal charges from the Gathering and the Breg’Hel. As the ranking civilian representative of the United Federation of Planets, who have offered their help in mediating this issue, I’m here to extend you a formal offer of legal counsel.”
Tormid barked with bitter laughter. “Imbeciles! I won’t live long enough to see the inside of a trial-hall, and neither will you!” He pointed at Lopez. “I heard this one speaking to another. Is it true that your idiot of a captain is actually trying to penetrate the interior of that monstrosity out there?”
“We’re going to undo the damage you’ve done,” McCoy told him.
“I did not drive a colossus into a killing rage,” he retorted. “I did not set that thing on a blind rampage across the stars; that deed lies at the feet of those scale-faced creatures you mean to make peace with!”
Xuur ignored his reply. “The leviathan must be calmed. We are all working together toward that end.”
Tormid spat on the deck. “Absurd!”
“I have every confidence in Captain Kirk,” said Xuur, so smoothly that McCoy almost believed her.
“Then we are all dead,” Tormid snarled, and he came up to the threshold, setting the force field buzzing. “And Kirk has murdered us!”
* * *
Enterprise fell toward the surface of the leviathan like a diving hawk, integrity fields and deflectors humming from the friction as the ship plunged into the planetoid’s turbulent gravity well. Flanking it, the four Breg’Hel and Syhaari ships fought their own battles against the crackling mass of corposant, amber jags of lightning flickering through the clouds that surrounded the massive creature.
The Latter Fire Page 23