Spectre

by William Shatner

  "I thought I was the pilot," Kirk said

  "Nothin' human could have reacted fast enough to find the hole in a quantum explosion," Scott said, "but she's all yours now."

  Kirk began piloting as he had practiced.

  On his forward sensor screen, he saw the rapid course of the Coprates as she sped away from the Sovereign, came about, and went to warp speed. As soon as he was certain the decoy runabout was dear, Kirk shut down his own runabout's warp core and impulse drive, then activated full maneuvering thrusters. Even as the Coprates sped away at warp four, with luck Kirk would be only able to manage a few meters per second in the St. Lawrence.

  But if his plan was going to work, that was all the velocity he would need.

  Flying strictly by eye, Kirk brought the St. Lawrence around so the runabout's prow matched the orientation of the Sovereign. Next, he slipped the small craft backward and down along the Sovereign's dorsal spine, no more than two meters above her gleaming duranium-composite hull, until he had reached a point approximately two deck levels below the main shuttlebay's exterior flight deck—a blind spot that, Spock had precisely calculated, put the runabout safely out of visual observation range of any of the starship's viewports.

  Then Kirk programmed the autopilot to hold this exact, relative position, and trusted in Starfleet technology to do the rest.

  He didn't have to wait long.

  With a gentle lag of the inertial dampers, he felt the St. Lawrence bank to port, matching each movement of the starship only two meters below.

  A second later, Kirk's runabout lurched slightly as the Sovereign went to warp and began to accelerate within the faster-than-light realm.

  No runabout could match the Sovereign's speed, of course, but the St. Lawrence was safely contained with the starship's warp bubble, as if she were still parked in the shuttlebay. Wherever the Sovereign went, the St. Lawrence would go, and at whatever speed as well.

  If Kirk had attempted this maneuver with any craft other than one which had come from the starship, the carefully calibrated engineering systems of the Sovereign would have at once detected the extra mass of Kirk's ship. But the beauty of this plan was that since the St. Lawrence was already included in the Sovereign's cargo manifest, the fact that her mass was also being carried into warp by the ship wouldn't register as an anomaly.

  Kirk looked back at his passengers. "So far, so good. Mr. Scott, what's the estimated time until the Sovereign comes within weapons range of the Coprates?''

  "A little over two minutes, sir, depending on rate of acceleration."

  Kirk waited patiently. The time frame was close to what he had anticipated.

  When he had begun to develop his plan for getting off the Sovereign, he had known from the start that there was no possible way he could outrace the starship to the Goldin Discontinuity. Thus, he had concluded that the only way to reach that sensor-disabling region of space was by inducing the starship to take him there herself. Thus far, the plan was working perfectly.

  "When will they be able to tell there's no one on board the Coprates?" Kirk asked.

  "Hard to say," Scott admitted. "I've rigged seven tricorders to transmit life signs consistent to all of us, one each. The autopilot is set for evasive maneuvers, and she'll even launch two quantum torpedoes of her own—which should be a fair surprise for whoever's in the center chair of this scow. But once they lock tractor beams on to her, the jig'll be up. And then, no doubt, someone will start wondering what happened to the St. Lawrence."

  Kirk checked the time readout on his controls. Another minute to reach the Coprates. Perhaps another two minutes* delay bought by the torpedoes. Then another minute to lock tractor beams and discover the ruse. And after all that, four minutes from now, the St. Lawrence would still be three minutes away from the protective cover of the Goldin Discontinuity.

  If it took the Sovereign two minutes to catch her, that was a minute too long.

  "We're not going to make it," Kirk said aloud. But by the very act of stating that dilemma aloud, his mind went to work on the solution.

  Kirk pictured the small craft he was in, perched on the back of the mighty, 700-meter-long starship like a remora on a shark. Even at this point-blank range, the runabout's phasers weren't powerful enough to disrupt the ship's warp engines. The single quantum torpedo still remaining on the runabout, however Scotty had managed it, would definitely penetrate the hull of the Sovereign and slow her down, but any rupture of the outer hull would also cost the lives of innocent crew.

  Was Kirk willing to pay that price, even for Teilani?

  Afraid of what his answer would be, Kirk refused to consider that question.

  At least, not yet.

  There had to be another way to buy that minute. A way that did not involve weapons and death and—

  "Scotty—what would happen if I took the runabout to warp while we were still inside the Sovereign's warp bubble?"

  Scott frowned. "Before or after we both were torn t' pieces by the stress of the collapsing field?"

  Kirk sat back in the pilot's chair, stretching his back, that question answered. He checked the time readout. They would be coming up on the Coprates any second.

  But Spock leaned forward. "I believe the captain has hit upon a worthwhile strategy."

  "Blowin' both ships out of space?" Scott asked.

  "No. Disabling the Sovereign's warp drive by inducing a harmonic overload."

  Scott's scowl indicated he was unimpressed. The runabout began to sway back and forth, duplicating the maneuvers of the Sovereign as she matched the Coprates's automated evasive course changes. Three minutes, Kirk thought, and then I'll have to choose—Teilani's life or those of a dozen . . . or a hundred Starfleet crew I've never met, never known.

  "Admiral Spock," Scott said, "the Sovereign is a robust ship. Any harmonic overload this wee runabout could induce wouldna interfere with her warp capabilities for more than a minute."

  "Which is precisely the length of time we need," Spock said. Gratified, Kirk knew Spock's observation meant that his friend had worked out the math of the chase and had arrived at the same conclusion.

  The runabout rocked forward along with the starship. A quantum torpedo must have hit her shields. That bought a few more seconds' delay.

  "What about it, Scotty?"

  Now the chief engineer looked worried. "Captain, the timing would have to be so exact, it'd be almost impossible."

  "I can live with 'almost.'"

  "And it won't get ye as much time as ye need. I mean, for this t' work, you're going to have to do it before the Sovereign drops from warp. And that'll happen as soon as they lock their tractors on to the Coprates."

  Kirk put his hands on the control surfaces. "Then let's not waste any more time. Tell me what to do, Scotty."

  The engineer shook his head in dismay, but punched in a set of coordinates. "On my mark, rise to this exact point midway between the Sovereign's nacelles, then go to warp, bearing two seven zero, mark zero."

  "Straight up," Kirk confirmed.

  The runabout lurched and Kirk looked out to the side, past the starship's white expanse, to see the movement of the stars begin to diminish, indicating the Sovereign's drop in velocity. Then another shudder shook the craft as the second and last of the Coprates's automatic quantum torpedoes detonated. For a fleeting moment, Kirk saw the vast curve of the Sovereign's shields light up as she absorbed the impact.

  "We're almost out of warp, Captain," Scott said. "Get ready, on my mark. . . ."

  But Kirk knew that even after he broke away from the ship, they would still need more time. Another few seconds at the very least.

  "Scotty, wait!" Kirk spoke his thoughts aloud, rapidly. "Can we leave a quantum torpedo here, holding position the way we've been doing?"

  "The torpedoes have maneuvering thrusters, but why on Earth would ye want to do that?"

  "To set it off on a delayed fuse, after we take off."

  "Ye'd be killing a lot of innocent crew
."

  "No! I don't need it to penetrate the hull, just . . . explode. Can we have it hold position far enough away it won't cause damage?"

  "Aye. But again, what's the point?"

  To Kirk, it was the perfect solution. "No matter how fast we go, the Sovereign is faster. But what if just as she's closing on us, she takes a quantum torpedo hit from the aft? From a torpedo that didn't even show a trace on her sensors?"

  Scott looked over at him, nodding agreement. "Aye, whoever's in command would have no choice but to think he'd been attacked by a cloaked vessel, coming to our rescue."

  "And you can bet he'll think twice about any action he takes next."

  Scotty sighed. "That's worth a few seconds, at least. Releasing torpedo."

  There was a clunk as the magnetic clamps unfastened their deadly cargo beneath the runabout's deck. Then Scott entered the command codes that would set it for delayed detonation and shouted, "Mark!"

  Kirk activated the sequence he had programmed and the Sovereign appeared to drop away from the runabout. Her saucer hull, no longer a true circle as in the early days of starship design, seemed to grow longer as Kirk's viewing angle changed. Then the glowing red emitters of the Bussard collectors on the forward ends of the ship's enormous nacelles moved into view at either side. Just by themselves, the Sovereign's nacelles were longer than Kirk's own Enterprise, the whole ship, more than twice the length.

  But Kirk ignored the view and watched his board, counting off each meter until the runabout was just in the exact middle of the overlap coordinates of the twin warp fields, each generated by one of the nacelles.

  At the proper coordinates, Kirk touched the activate control, and the stars streaked downward as the Sovereign disappeared below.

  "Clear!" Scott shouted and Kirk immediately put the St. Lawrence into a corkscrew maneuver that brought her into a straight-line course for the Goldin Discontinuity.

  As the stars spiraied in the main viewports, and the multicolored mass of writhing plasma grew before them, Scott brought up on the console viewscreen an aft sensor image.

  The Sovereign was tumbling like a toy boat on a windswept sea, overbalanced by the sudden disruption and collapse of her warp drive, tipping over her center of gravity as her inertial dampers fought to restore dynamic equilibrium.

  But those systems were not fast enough and Kirk saw the immense ship's prow bear down on the decoy runabout.

  The Coprates blossomed into a blue fireball of plasma as the Sovereign's shields smashed against her, crushing the smaller craft's hull and triggering a warp-core breach in her miniaturized generator.

  "Did they know we weren't on board?" Kirk asked no one in particular. He didn't expect an answer. How could anyone know? But if the commander of the Sovereign thought Kirk and his companions were dead, it might give the St. Lawrence an even longer head start.

  "Och, she's going to warp," Scott said in disgust. "Comin' straight for us."

  Kirk read the forward scanners: two minutes and thirty seconds to the Goldin Discontinuity. Once inside, the only way they could be detected would be by visual observation. The runabout was too small to even provide a shadowy sensor return.

  But to wrap themselves in that impenetrable cloak of safety, they had to reach the plasma storms before the Sovereign reached them.

  "In range in forty seconds," Scott said.

  One minute, fifty seconds, Kirk thought. That was the difference between success and failure. In all this vast immensity of space and time, Teilani's existence had come to one minute fifty seconds.

  "Evasive maneuvers?" Spock asked.

  But Kirk knew they would be useless. Any deviation from the course he had plotted would simply delay their arrival within the protective interference of the discontinuity.

  "Let me know when their tractors power up," Kirk said. He'd try evading the starship then, but not an instant before.

  Suddenly, the runabout rocked violently.

  "Phasers!" Scott shouted. "Direct hit. Shields at seventy percent!"

  Almost simultaneously, Kirk increased the matterantimatter mix to five percent higher than the runabout's maximum rated power.

  "Warning," the computer said. "Magnetic containment field failure in sixty seconds."

  "Captain," Scott said. "Ye cannae be serious."

  But Kirk had never been more serious in his life. "I will not be captured."

  The runabout shook again. Sparks flew from an overhead ODN bus.

  "Shields at fifty-two percent. She cannae take much more o' this!"

  "When's that torpedo set to go off, Mr. Scott?"

  "I didn't think they'd be catching up to us so quickly."

  "When?"

  Scott checked his controls. "Three . . . two . . . they're powering up their phasers and . . . now."

  On the console viewscreen, Kirk saw the Sovereign's shields appear in a scintillating ovoid of blue fire. The quantum torpedo he had left behind had just detonated over her engineering hull.

  "Ye did it!" Scotty shouted as the Sovereign suddenly banked and swung about to face in the opposite direction.

  Strands of blue fire streaked away from her, heading back in the direction she had come.

  "Ten quantum torpedoes away," Scott said. "They think they were hit from behind!"

  "Fifty seconds," Kirk whispered as he willed the timer to move faster.

  The console viewer shimmered with blue light as the quantum torpedoes, now hundreds of thousands of kilometers distant, exploded in a deadly spread.

  Deadly, that is, if there had been any ship there to be caught by their destructive force.

  "She's coming about again," Scott said.

  "Forty seconds to the discontinuity," Kirk announced.

  "Fifty seconds to contact," Scott read out. "They're too far behind. We're going to make it."

  But the computer had another opinion. "Warning, ten seconds to magnetic containment field failure. Nine . . . eight . . ."

  Kirk held his fist above the console—

  ". . . six . . . five . . . four . . ."

  —and hit the intermix control to bring it back within nominal range.

  No longer overpowered, the runabout dropped in speed by five percent.

  Scotty pushed back in his chair as if giving up. "They're going to have us in range the moment we reach the plasma storms." He looked at Kirk. "It's no good, sir, they've got us."

  "Never," Kirk said. "Hold on."

  He could feel Scott and McCoy staring at him, neither willing to break his concentration by asking what he was thinking—but neither able to conceive of a way out.

  But Kirk knew what to do.

  This had been a race to reach the discontinuity.

  Despite every effort, he was going to lose.

  Which meant that once again, it was time to change the rules.

  TWENTY

  The St. Lawrence was so close to safety that the flashing colors of the Goldin Discontinuity filled the viewports. Already the subspace compression waves emanating from the twisted region of space made the runabout quake. But they were still not close enough.

  "Ten seconds to contact," Scott said. "Maybe if they miss, we'll have a chance."

  "They're not going to miss," Kirk said, filled with whitehot conviction. "They're not even going to have a chance to fire."

  He ignored the puzzled look from Scott, braced himself against the console.

  "They've locked phasers," the engineer said. "Five seconds till they fire ... shields at forty-eight percent . . . WHOOF!"

  Scott's cry came just as Kirk drove his hands onto the console and shut down the warp drive. In less than half a second the St. Lawrence hung at relative rest in normal space, so abruptly that the dampers had strained to keep everyone from flying forward from their seats.

  But without the relatively sluggish dampers, Kirk knew, everyone in the runabout would now be a one-molecule-thick layer of protein on the forward viewport, and the runabout would have torn itself into a billion s
pinning shards of debris. Even so, power couplings overloaded, the gravity generators whined under the strain, and all the lights and control consoles flickered, cut out, and only slowly regained their brightness.

  But, even before the runabout's systems could fully recover, the Sovereign streaked past as a radiant, color-smeared starbow traveling at speeds human senses could not react to except through sophisticated computer systems as it disappeared deep into the boundary of the Goldin Discontinuity. Even if her commander took all of two seconds to react to Kirk's sudden maneuver, at warp six, those two seconds would carry the Sovereign almost a quarter-billion kilometers away.

  Kirk swiftly reestablished the runabout's warp drive, and by the time he had accelerated to warp factor one, the St. Lawrence, at last, was safe, protected like an ancient merchant-marine freighter crossing the Atlantic, by an impenetrable shroud of thick fog.

  Within that obscuring blanket of plasma storms, the St. Lawrence would be able to detect the Sovereign's approaching mass long before the starship could detect the minuscule runabout. To all intents and purposes, Kirk and his team had vanished.

  Seconds from defeat, they were safe.

  Kirk could not deny the rush of excitement that still reverberated in him. As if he had enjoyed the chase. As if he had relished the victory over death.

  As if he had not spent a year on Chal, focusing all his efforts and all his life on one simple field, searching for peace. Searching for his place within the universe.

  But Kirk thrust those personal thoughts aside. He spun around in his pilot's chair, ignoring the openmouthed stare Scott directed his way. "Is everyone all right?"

  Janeway had removed a small medical-waste container from the compartment under her seat and was in the process of recycling her last meal.

  T'Val had her arm around the mirror Spock, her father, who appeared ashen in color. McCoy was busy checking his patient's vital signs. Even her Vulcan discipline did little to hide T'Val's outrage. "You are insane!" she said hoarsely. McCoy touched his temple in a small salute of agreement.