Built for the rigors of space, the Enterprise’s hull moaned as it was stressed in ways it was not designed to experience. Tension pulled at the roots of the engine pylons, at the neck of the vessel, and at the leading edges of the primary hull, where the saucer bit into the chaotic shroud of storms. One small error of judgment at the helm, or a navigation plot a degree off true, and the starship would dash itself against the rocky mantle of the living planetoid in a blaze of a warp explosion. But the ship was beneath the steady hands of two of Starfleet’s finest, and even with the maelstrom raging around the vessel, Sulu and Arex threaded the needle.
* * *
The captain felt his breath catch in his throat. His hands gripped the arms of his command chair, and by sheer force of will, he pushed forward his belief, his certainty, that his crew would make it through. Outwardly, he maintained an air of calm focus, but to say that James T. Kirk was without fear in that moment would have been a lie. Only a fool could have looked the leviathan in the eye and not felt afraid; he knew that his bridge crew all shared the same emotions. They were determined, they were ready, and most of all, they were courageous.
Bravery in the face of danger, at the edge of the unknown—this was not the absence of fear but the control and mastery of it. Kirk allowed himself a wry smile, reflecting on how Spock would have considered such a statement to be eminently logical. He glanced around the bridge and saw that courage everywhere he looked.
“I have the rift on my scope,” Sulu said tightly. “Eight degrees off the port quarter.”
“Compensating,” said Arex, all three of his hands flying back and forth over the switches on his panel. “Twenty-one seconds to closure.”
“The other ships are still with us,” said Kaleo, who held tight to the bridge rail at Kirk’s shoulder. “Not far now.”
He gave a curt nod and spoke into the intercom at his side. “All decks, this is the captain. Red alert. Be ready for anything.”
* * *
The leviathan reacted to the intrusion. Yellow fire spun and danced around the invader ships. The sky twitched, as the flesh of a humanoid might reflexively respond to the presence of an insect crawling across it. The deadly lightning sought out the irritants, questing blindly for something to strike.
Enterprise burst through the lower strata of the cloud mass, and before it lay a vast, serrated plain, the stone “skin” of the moon-sized life-form, lit by charged particles leaking from veins of raw dilithium. Massive fissures in the surface bled towers of gas and volcanic smoke, glowing with radiation through thin, toxic air laced with rains of ash-fall.
The largest of the rifts, a yawning chasm ringed with a dense forest of poisonous crystalline growths, grew larger as the starships spiraled in toward it. They had passed beyond the point of no return now, and to attempt to reverse their heading would be suicidal. Sensor sweeps were probing ahead into the hellish fires, and the Enterprise plunged in, meeting a web of shimmering discharges thrown up into its path. Unable to alter course, the Starfleet vessel took the full force of the electroplasma surge, and the threads of brilliant energy washed back over the hull from bow to stern.
Then it entered the churning inferno, vanishing within the leviathan and lost to those outside, who watched in silent terror.
* * *
The violent aftershock of the energy strike sent tendrils of power through the points where the Enterprise’s ephemeral deflector shields were at their weakest. Streamers of current sought points of least resistance, burning through vent grids or sensor vanes on the outer hull, then raced down along lines of conduit, blasting packets of duotronic components into melted slag. Localized power outages occurred all across the ship as systems overloaded and breakers tripped. Up on the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Scott threw himself into a frantic race to reroute power before some blackout claimed a vital system and sent the whole ship into oblivion.
It was impossible to predict that one of the minor circuits ripped apart by the energy surge was a power regulator matrix in a Jefferies tube directly above the Enterprise’s brig.
With a sound like a mechanized saw slicing through the trunk of a tree, the regulator blew apart with enough force to tear open a section of the overhead. Xuur cried out in shock as a heavy panel crashed down on Ensign Lopez, flattening the luckless security guard before he could react. All power in the corridor faded in the same instant—lights momentarily dimmed to nothing, and the force field keeping Tormid a prisoner was suddenly absent.
McCoy rushed to the injured security officer, his boot clipping Lopez’s phaser where it had fallen from the man’s nerveless fingers. As emergency batteries kicked in, flooding the compartment with a pale light, the doctor stopped short. He didn’t need a tricorder to tell him that the ensign was already gone. The horrible twist in Lopez’s neck and the glassy stare in his eyes were more than enough evidence.
Then in the next second, something fast slammed into McCoy and knocked him to the deck. A muscular form, all legs and arms and flashes of fur, had burst from the cell the moment the power faded, shoving Xuur aside as it went.
Tormid gave an angry howl and struck the doctor again as he tried to get up. Then, as McCoy reeled, the Syhaari scientist scooped up the fallen phaser with one long-fingered hand and turned it on him. There was a flash of radiance that lit up the darkened corridor, a shriek of beam fire, and McCoy was struck point-blank in the chest. The doctor sagged back against the wall and crumpled into a heap. This time, he did not rise.
The escaped prisoner came around to aim the weapon at Xuur. “Well,” he began, panting with exertion. “Opportunity presents itself. But then, I’ve always had a talent for exploiting chance events. It is a function of a superior intellect.”
“There was no need to shoot McCoy!” cried the envoy as another deep bass rumble shuddered through the deck. “He was no threat to you!”
Tormid shrugged. “A disagreeable sort.” He nudged the unconscious doctor with his bare foot, his prehensile toes poking at McCoy’s body. “Still alive. Not what I wanted.” He examined the phaser more closely, running his fingers over the weapon’s controls.
“Is this what you did when you met the Breg’Hel for the first time?” Xuur demanded. “They came to offer your ship assistance, and for their kindness you killed them!”
“You understand nothing, offworlder.” Tormid aimed the gun at Xuur, baring his teeth as she shrank back.
“If you shoot—”
“That will only happen if you disobey,” he told her. “You are going to help me.”
“No.”
Tormid studied the weapon’s force-setting dial. “I do not understand the symbols on this firearm, but I imagine I could find the most lethal potentiality with some trial and error.” He let the phaser drop to aim at McCoy. “I will end his life. And then yours, if you defy me.” He paused, letting the threat hang in the air. “Do you think I am incapable of that?”
Xuur remembered the images she had seen projected on the wall of Rumen’s cell back on the Breg’Hel command ship, the recordings of Tormid cold-bloodedly dispatching the crew of the alien scout vessel. Had she still been wearing her headband, the device could have told her what the Syhaari’s biometric readings said about his frame of mind, but she didn’t need that to be sure. “No,” she repeated. “I know exactly what kind of being you are.”
“Good. That will make things simple.” He gestured with the weapon as the Enterprise trembled again. “Tell me how Kirk’s crew intend to stop the creature. Tell me how and where it will be done, and at the end of this I may still let you go home to your precious Federation.”
Fourteen
The Enterprise and its flotilla emerged into what the philosophers and poets of old Earth would have considered a hellscape.
A cavernous void large enough to engulf a city extended away around them. Jagged peaks rose and fell on all sides, mountain ranges of stalacti
tes and stalagmites retreating into the gloom. Sickly crimson-hued illumination spilled out of pits packed with magma-like slurry, and stark flashes of the now-familiar amber lightning coursed down veins of glistening crystal threaded through the scene. A haze of chemical mist swirled, and large, seemingly random torrents of energy darted back and forth across the open chasm, each one leaving an aftershock of charged particles radiating out to buffet the five intruder vessels.
Sparks flared off the shields as the ships pressed on, hazarding deeper into the very bones of the leviathan. For every craft and crew, this was a place so alien that none had dared venture there before.
All around them, the gigantic cosmozoan stirred, sensing the intrusion.
* * *
Kaleo whispered something under her breath, and Kirk tore his stare from the dramatic sight on the main viewscreen. “Are you all right?”
She held tightly to the back of his chair. “By all the light of Sya, no. That . . .” Kaleo swallowed hard. “It is incredible. And terrifying in equal measure.” The alien captain gathered herself and met his gaze. “You think that too, I see it in your eyes. Strange how that heartens me.”
“It surprises you that I’m awed by that out there?” Kirk frowned. “Why?”
“I wondered, in all your explorations, if the unknown had become ordinary to you. I see now that is not so, and I am pleased. It makes me want to live through this all the more, so that I might see what you have seen.” She looked away. “I am distracting myself with foolish thoughts.”
He shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the moment you think the universe has shown you all the strange, wondrous, humbling sights it hides, it proves you wrong with something more.” Kirk gestured at the screen. “Case in point.”
“Captain?” Ensign Haines called out from the science station. “We’re getting good sensor returns from our photic sonar array. I’m feeding that data directly to the Syhaari and Breg’Hel ships. But I’m also registering coherent peaks of delta radiation in the rock structure, similar to what we saw before when we first encountered the object.”
“It knows we’re here,” said Sulu. “It’s reacting.”
“Sir, I’ve lost visual communications,” M’Ress broke in. “But still maintaining contact with the other craft. They’re reporting a gradual intensification of background radiation around them.”
Scotty looked up from his console. “Aye, we’re getting that too. But our shields are tougher, so the needle isn’t moving just yet.”
“We need to work fast,” said Kirk. “M’Ress, Haines—make sure the other commanders know where to go and tell them to get under way.” He leaned forward in his chair and tapped the intercom button. “Bridge to deflector control.”
“Spock here.”
“It’s time, Commander. Start the counter-wave broadcast.”
“Acknowledged,” replied the Vulcan. “Activation in five seconds from my mark.”
The intercom clicked off and Kirk sat back, trying without success to dispel the tension in his muscles. “Now we wait.”
“If it does not work?” Kaleo asked the question without looking at him.
Kirk caught Lieutenant Arex’s eye, and the navigator gave his captain a solemn nod. A single key on Arex’s fire control panel had been preset to launch a full salvo of photon torpedoes, each armed with a maximum-yield antimatter warhead. If this endeavor went awry, then the brute force approach would be the only solution open to them.
We’ll have to slay the kraken, Kirk thought to himself, or die trying.
* * *
Set above and behind the large copper-colored dish on the Enterprise’s secondary hull, the ship’s deflector control room was a tall, narrow compartment that extended up and down through several decks. At the lowest level, a hex-grid barrier formed a partition over a live energy conduit running directly off the ship’s mains, casting a warm glow off the bulkheads. The conduit connected to the complex dual mechanisms that made the dish function not only as the starship’s main sensor array, but also as the primary projector matrix for its shields. In normal circumstances, deflector control was usually unmanned, with operational command slaved directly to consoles on the bridge—but for this mission, every last nanosecond was critical, therefore Spock and Uhura had taken direct control to ensure no errors could creep into the process. At the highest level of the compartment, the two officers stood at twinned consoles, each watching the moment-by-moment data stream coming from the dish.
“Ready,” said the Vulcan, the clock in his mind reaching zero. “Activate.”
Uhura tapped out a sequence of commands. “Counter-wave profile is loaded. Deflector dish warm-up complete. Broadcast initiating . . . now.”
Immediately, a peculiar atonal sound rushed from hidden speakers in the panel. It was a strange amalgam, part of it like the susurrus of water along a riverbed, part a fragment reminiscent of choral plainsong, another similar to the endless ambient moan of background radiation in deep space.
“No reaction,” noted Spock.
“The Breg’Hel ships are not at their intercept points yet,” said Uhura. “We’re not getting an even signal distribution.”
Spock nodded. “It seems Ret’Sed was correct. This will require a united effort to achieve a positive result—” He broke off, raising an eyebrow and glancing away.
“Sir? Is something wrong?”
The Vulcan returned to his work. “Nothing of consequence.” He adjusted a dial. “Narrow the gain, Lieutenant. We will need to compensate as the Breg’Hel ships bring their relay antennae on line.”
* * *
On the midlevel maintenance walkway immediately beneath the control area, Tormid pressed the emitter head of the phaser into Xuur’s ribs and glowered at her. They had managed to enter the deflector control room and escape the notice of the Starfleet officers, but the envoy’s constant fidgeting had caused a deck plate to creak, and for a long moment Tormid believed that the Vulcan had become aware of their presence.
But now, as the atonal song grew loud enough to mask any sounds of movement, he gave Xuur a shove and pointed the weapon at an interdeck ladder, aiming upward. He had already made his intentions clear to the offworlder female. If she attempted to interfere with his plans, she would pay the price.
Tormid had forced the whole scheme out of her, piece by piece, as they made their way from the brig to deflector control. At the height of alert status, the corridors of the starship were almost empty of crew, each of them at their assigned battle stations—and so hostage and captor were able to move swiftly and with little hindrance.
Xuur’s explanation turned wheels in Tormid’s mind, and his sharp but supremely self-serving intellect quickly constructed a way to turn the Starfleet plan to his advantage. First, he would need to remove all impediments to his success.
“Ret’Sed’s ship is signaling it is in place and is deploying the relay.” He heard the dark-skinned human female give the report, pitching her voice to be heard over the sound of the broadcast.
“Acknowledged,” said the other alien, without looking up.
Tormid gave Xuur a shove to remind her of his orders, and reluctantly the envoy mounted the ladder, climbing quickly to the upper level.
Too quickly. All at once, Tormid realized he had underestimated the female’s persona. After she surrendered to him outside the brig, her body language had been that of a defeated foe, her face downcast, eyes unwilling to meet his. In his arrogance, he had assumed her will to be cowed, but now he saw that had never been true. Xuur had been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to turn on him. She spun on the ladder and planted a savage downward kick in his face that almost knocked him off his footing. Then she threw herself up on to the control deck and cried out a warning.
“Commander Spock, look out! Tormid has—”
The offworlder had underestima
ted him, however. Like all Syhaari, long of limb and nimble by their nature, the scientist did not need the restriction of the ladder to move up from deck to deck. Instead, he rocked from one support to another, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second, swinging wide and high on one arm. At the end of the other, he gripped the phaser, and he used it to shoot Xuur in the back. She went down two steps from the ladder, all potency abruptly gone from her form.
Tormid completed a swing that deposited him squarely on the deck, directly between the two offworlders. “You will join her if you move without my permission.”
“How did you escape the brig?” said the Vulcan, his face infuriatingly devoid of any emotional cues.
“I exploited an opportunity,” he replied.
“That power drain, when we passed through the mantle?” wondered the female. Then her expression hardened. Unlike the male, her anger at Tormid was very easy to see. “I’m going to help her,” she said, nodding toward the envoy’s fallen form.
“Was I unclear?” Tormid aimed the weapon at the lieutenant. “Move and I shoot. Envoy Xuur did not seem to understand that simple command. And see what happened to her.”
“What do you hope to accomplish here?” Spock maintained a steady gaze upon him. “If you interfere with this operation, it will mean our destruction and ultimately that of your world.”
Tormid showed his teeth in a wide, feral smile. “A question for you, alien. Scientist to scientist.” He waved at the consoles and the streams of data from the growing counter-wave. “Have you considered the outcome of adjusting the potentiality of your soporific broadcast upward, into the more volatile frequency ranges? If one were to, say, remove all safety interlocks regulating the power of the signal?”
“Such an action would be unproductive,” Spock replied.
The Latter Fire Page 24