Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes

by Michael Schuster

  “Your curiosity is admirable, Mister Scott—” began Spock.

  Scott cut him off. “’Tisna curiosity, Mister Spock. A device that can shoot one beam of particles can shoot another.”

  “And a phaser beam is made up of charged particles.” Emalra’ehn’s face lit up.

  “Exactly.” Scotty looked over at the inert satellite sitting in back of the shuttle. “If we can figure out how that thing works, we’ve got ourselves another weapon.”

  Kirk held on to the nearest cryopod as tightly as he could as the transport ship surged upward. It had been a long time since he’d flown aboard an old-style ship. As every ounce of his body was pulled downward, Kirk decided that he much preferred inertial damping, to hell with the romance of early space flight.

  Horr was even more agitated. Its shouts had degenerated into squeaks the universal translator couldn’t decipher.

  “Calm down,” Kirk shouted, “it’s almost over!” In actuality, he had no idea, but Horr quieted. Kirk continued to hold on to the pod just in case. The captain felt himself become lighter, his feet coming off the deck.

  Horr was screaming again. “Assistance requirement! Assistance requirement!”

  Moments later, Kirk’s feet dropped back to the deck. So Farrezzi technology had progressed enough to have artificial gravity. Impressive. “We’re in space now,” he said, knowing that Horr required an explanation, “probably on our way to the Orion market where the New Planets Cousins are going to sell you and your people. My people are on the surface. Horr, I need your help, and the help of your people, to stop these slavers.”

  Horr quivered, but it stood upright, its eyestalks straight. “Request: orders. Demand: liberation!”

  Kirk smiled. Perhaps with an army of liberated Farrezzi, he could rescue Giotto and Chekov, find Yüksel, and put an end to the slave trade.

  The odd pair worked their way down the line of two dozen pods, pressing their “purge” buttons. Kirk doubted that this random collection of citizens would be combat-trained. If the New Planets Cousins were smart, they would have avoided stealing military personnel and justice officers. Kirk figured he probably had an army of expense accountants and kindergarten teachers.

  “Horr, my friend,” he said, “I think you should explain.”

  “Affirmation!” said Horr, turning to address its people. “Greeting of joy and sorrow! Fear and surprise! Status: perpetrator location purpose. Betrayal by New Planets Cousins, spaceship slavery-commerce.”

  The sleepers began to squeal, all at once, too much for Kirk’s universal translator to keep up with. But Horr kept talking, trying to calm them down.

  Eventually, after a few minutes of agitated squealing and gesticulating, the noise level decreased significantly. Horr shuffled back over to Kirk. “James-Kirk-Enterprise. Partial belief/disbelief. Requirement: superior proof.”

  How could he convince a group of Farrezzi that they were en route to an alien slave market? A thought occurred to him, and he grabbed Rawlins’s tricorder, tabbing through it until he found what he was looking for: DATASOURCE REPLAY. He selected it, and the device began playing back the UT’s first encounter with the Farrezzi language, from the slavers in the underground chamber. It seemed like ages now. “Play them this,” he said, handing the tricorder to Horr.

  The Farrezzi took the tricorder back to the group of Farrezzi. “Horr!” Kirk called after him. “How did you calm them all down so quickly?”

  Horr wriggled one of his tentacles. “Experience calm-induction agitation surplus. Specialty: crowds.”

  “What did you do before you went to sleep?” Kirk asked.

  “Occupation: educator. Specialization: youngchild age-group.”

  Apparently Kirk had underestimated the uses of a kindergarten teacher.

  “There.” McCoy switched off the dermal regenerator and handed it to Nurse Chapel. “All done.” They had finally finished their treatment of the compound fracture cases.

  “Which is good,” Santos said, the most recent addition to his chorus of distracting voices. “Because you’re not getting anywhere finding us a cure.”

  McCoy turned to snap at her, but stopped when he remembered Chapel was right there.

  “Is something the matter, Doctor?”

  McCoy looked back at Chapel, the others forgotten. “Nothing, Nurse. Why?”

  “You seem distracted.”

  The compound fractures hadn’t been difficult to treat, but Chapel had had to bring his attention back to the patients on more than one occasion. “Just tired, I suppose,” he said. “It’s been a long day and a long night.” It was after 0500. It had been twenty-one hours since he’d reported to sickbay.

  “It’s more than that,” Chapel insisted. “I’ve seen you tired, but this—”

  The door of the examination room hissed open, and they both turned to see who was coming in now.

  It was Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Padmanabhan with an antigrav cart, on top of which sat a pile of portable computer consoles. They pushed the cart right past him and Chapel.

  Uhura stepped over to him. “Doctor, a moment, please.” McCoy followed Uhura through his office into his lab, which was unused at the moment. Padmanabhan began setting up the consoles on the central table, while Uhura started switching them on. “What is this?” McCoy asked.

  “This,” said Padmanabhan, pointing, “is a mobile sensor…”

  “Ensign,” Uhura snapped.

  “Why are you here?” McCoy asked.

  “We’re setting up a tertiary control room,” said Uhura, checking the status of each computer.

  “What happened to auxiliary control?”

  “When the portside computer banks exploded, we were lucky—” Uhura paused.

  “Lucky?” McCoy offered.

  “The waveform from the explosion bounced back from the other universe.”

  “And—” McCoy prompted.

  “The backlash established a permanent rupture between the universes,” Padmanabhan said quickly. “The other reality is slowly leaking into ours. The readings I’m getting—I’ve never seen anything like them before! They are simply amazing.”

  “Homi…” Uhura took a deep breath. “We got the real-space bubble back up. Our equipment isn’t working around the edges of the ship. These distortions keep on getting stronger even though we’ve shut down any power they can feed on.” Uhura’s voice grew grave. “There must be some force pushing the distortions into our universe. We thought it was our engines, but it’s something else.”

  “We’ve shut everything down that’s close to the hull,” Padmanabhan said as he programmed the computer in front of him. “I’m ready here, Lieutenant.”

  “Connect all systems,” Uhura ordered.

  “Sickbay is the most shielded part of the ship,” McCoy said. “The safest place on the ship.” That was the idea behind its location, at the center of the saucer section. Never before had there been a need to set up the control systems here.

  “Anything else, Doctor?” Uhura asked.

  “No, no.” McCoy headed back to his office.

  Uhura was certainly qualified to command the ship, but she was running on stimulants. Maybe it was time to release Sulu for duty.

  “Sulu isn’t going to fix anything,” said Joanna. “Admit it: you know this is it.”

  “Shut up,” he said, not very loudly in case somebody overheard him.

  “What’s going on?” Chapel asked. “What…”

  “They’ve turned my lab into a command center.”

  “I didn’t know things had gotten that bad,” Chapel said.

  “It looks like it, Christine. Can you give me a hand? They could use some chairs over in the lab,” McCoy said.

  “Yes, Doctor,” she said and followed him, each of them with a chair.

  When they arrived in the lab, Padmanabhan chirped his thanks. They quickly returned to his office. Now chairless, McCoy sat on the desk.

  “You should get some rest,” Chapel said. “I
had my sleep, and you seem like you need it now.”

  McCoy shook his head. “What I need is to get back to work on the espers.”

  “I am perfectly capable of doing my job!” Chapel shouted. “Now leave me alone!”

  What? He hadn’t said—

  With rising dread, McCoy realized that Christine hadn’t been looking at him when she’d said that.

  She’d been looking off to the side, past him.

  “Christine…” he began, uncertain of how to phrase it. She looked anxious, but he plunged forward. “I just want to say… is there something going on?”

  Her eyes locked onto his in apprehension. “What makes you say that?” Careful, just like he’d be if somebody had asked him the same thing.

  “We need to be honest with each other,” McCoy said, aware that he was forcing her to make the first move, to admit her mind was playing tricks on her, to make herself vulnerable in front of him. “Christine, who do you see?”

  “Oh, Doctor,” she said, relief washing over her features. “It’s him. I see Roger.” McCoy was aware of only one Roger, her long-dead fiancé.

  As Chapel began to sniffle, he pulled her into a hug, all the while shouting out for joy inside himself.

  “I thought I was going crazy,” Chapel said with a sob.

  “So did I, Christine. So did I.”

  THIRTEEN

  Stardate 4758.2 (0540 hours)

  The damnedest part of it all was that Scotty couldn’t do any of the work himself, stuck on his back. Mister Spock continued to dodge weapons fire from the Farrezzi fighters, while trying to protect the Columbus. Scotty was reduced to being a manual, cross-referencing scans of the recovered satellite and the working one while directing Cron Emalra’ehn and Jabilo M’Benga.

  “Yellow wire to green wire,” he directed.

  “Which yellow wire?” asked M’Benga. “There are three.”

  Scotty looked again at the screen of his tricorder. “The medium-sized one.” M’Benga moved to connect the two wires, but Scotty caught him just in time. “Not that one—the medium one.”

  “Damn,” M’Benga murmured, reaching into the guts of the machine. He grasped the correct wire easily; he might not have an engineer’s eye, but he had the sure hands of a surgeon.

  “Easy, Doctor,” said Scott, turning his attention to Emalra’ehn. The security guard was using a hyperspanner to reactivate the defunct fusion microreactor. It needed an initial charge, and the preternaturally calm Deltan could hold his hands steady long enough to do it. “You’re almost there, lad.”

  Emalra’ehn nodded. “This is trickier than that time on Argelius…”

  “Concentrate,” interrupted Scotty wearily.

  The Hofstadter rumbled as it took another hit. Spock had used some of the weather sats for cover, but the fighters had blasted straight through them. Two well-placed shots by Spock had hit the engine of one of the fighters. The effect was minimal—the shuttles were still being chased.

  “Got it.” M’Benga looked relieved.

  Scotty checked his tricorder. The particulate energy had increased a hundredfold. “Thank you, Doc.”

  M’Benga nodded. “All things considered, I’d rather stick to medicine.”

  “Are you ready, Mister Scott?” Spock called from the front of the shuttle. “Our time is limited.”

  “Almost, Commander.” Scott checked the charge of the microreactor. “We’re good enough.”

  The worst part of the plan was that there was no way to remotely control the satellite. Someone would have to go out there with it. Emalra’ehn had volunteered.

  “Ready, lad?” asked Scotty.

  M’Benga was helping Emalra’ehn check the seals on his EVA suit. “Ready,” said the young man.

  Spock flipped on the comm. “Columbus, are you ready?”

  “Aye, sir,” answered Kologwe.

  “Accelerate to full impulse,” ordered Spock. “Linear course.”

  Scotty felt the overtaxed engines of the Hofstadter surge.

  Once Emalra’ehn was outside the shuttle, they needed to have him set up just right.

  “Open hatch now,” commanded Spock. M’Benga tapped the hatch control, and it swung open.

  Emalra’ehn climbed up onto the recovered sat, putting his feet on one of its projecting emitters. “Ready.”

  “Maximum impulse,” reported Spock.

  “Matching speed,” said Kologwe.

  “Stand by,” said Spock.

  Scotty caught the eye of Emalra’ehn, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Go.”

  All the Farrezzi had been awoken. They had been horrified, but once they saw the playback, they believed Kirk. None were trained in combat. Horr had suggested that the New Planets Cousins had deliberately gathered laborers, hoping to obtain passive slaves.

  Kirk raised a hand to get the Farrezzi’s attention, but their reaction was difficult to gauge, since no heads turned. “Attention requirement!” he shouted. “If this ship goes to warp, it will be impossible to keep you from being sold. You know what the New Planets Cousins plan to do. We have to stop them.”

  He walked over to the unconscious slaver and picked up its gun. Holding it up, he turned to the crowd. “Who knows how to use this? We need to arm ourselves.”

  A dozen Farrezzi were each waving two limbs in the air and saying something. Kirk could only make out the closest one.

  “Statement: I possession ability of weapon use. I hunter training completion.”

  The others squeaked in affirmation. Maybe they’d be successful after all.

  Cron Emalra’ehn gripped the satellite as tightly as he could while M’Benga and Rawlins picked it up from either side. Cron saw Rawlins wince as the weight pulled at his shoulder. The doctor counted off, and they shoved it—and him—out the hatch. The force field crackled around him.

  The Farrezzi fighters were coming up fast. Behind the Hofstadter, the Columbus flew cover, interposing itself between Emalra’ehn and the approaching fighters.

  He reached inside an open panel on the satellite, twisting a dial. His tricorder told him that the satellite was locking on to a target. Using his tricorder, Emalra’ehn could adjust the direction.

  “You okay, lad?” Scotty asked.

  “Calibrating sights.” Emalra’ehn was stunned by how calm he sounded. He hoped he had understood Scotty’s instructions.

  “Ninety seconds,” reported Jaeger. Time was running out.

  “Power looks good,” said Scotty.

  Emalra’ehn’s visor lit up—the Columbus was taking fire.

  “I’m lined up. Let’s do this.”

  “Affirmative,” Spock said. The Hofstadter dipped down slightly, then disappeared as Spock threw its engines into reverse.

  This was it—Petty Officer Cron Emalra’ehn alone in the cosmos, with two enemy fighters.

  “Now.”

  “Copy that,” said Kologwe.

  Seven Deers took one of the back seats in the Columbus to monitor the shield systems. They were taking quite a pounding, but they were needed if this was to work. Glancing forward, she could just make out a purple-and-silver dot ahead—Emalra’ehn hanging onto a Farrezzi satellite.

  The Columbus slipped to one side. A moment later, a beam stabbed out from the satellite, hitting the closest fighter.

  “Hofstadter is also firing,” reported Tra from the navigator’s seat. It had come up from behind.

  An alarm chimed on Tra’s controls. “Other fighter is firing!”

  The Columbus lurched to one side, intercepting the Farrezzi fire before it could reach Emalra’ehn. The shuttle’s deck rumbled as it took the direct hit. Seven Deers shivered at the thought of what those things could do.

  Seven Deers didn’t envy Emalra’ehn out there one bit.

  McCoy called the rest of the medical staff in to compare notes. Now that he knew he wasn’t the only one hallucinating, he wanted to find out who else had been affected.

  Initially reluctant to say anyt
hing, Cliff Brent admitted that he was hearing people, too: Ensign Laverne, who’d died while he was treating her wounds, and his aunt Marys, who’d always blamed him for anything that had gone wrong. Nurse Odhiambo’s only voice was her brother Vijay. Ensign Messier reported only a niggling doubt—nothing that she’d classify as a hallucination. However, Abrams and Thomas weren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary. Only McCoy and Chapel were seeing people.

  “We’ve all been idiots. I thought the stress was getting to me,” McCoy confessed.

  The progression had been similar for everyone who was suffering from hallucinations. First a feeling of doubt, then a voice that became specific, and finally the images of people. McCoy had heard the voice the earliest, and he’d started seeing things first, too. Chapel hadn’t seen anything until a couple hours ago.

  “This gives me four times the data,” McCoy said, “if not more.” He sent Chapel to ask Uhura and Padmanabhan if they had been seeing things. Meanwhile, McCoy took readings of Brent, Odhiambo, and Messier.

  “What do you think is causing it?” Brent asked, concern etched into his face. “Is it the same as what’s affecting the coma patients?”

  “I think it is,” said McCoy. “Four of us experience hallucinations at the exact same time five people drop unconscious? If these cases aren’t related, I’ll turn in my license.”

  Chapel returned, reporting that Uhura and Padmanabhan had not been affected. Uhura had been concerned when Chapel explained what was going on, but Chapel had assured the lieutenant that everything was under control.

  “It will be,” said McCoy. He asked the medical computer to check for correlations with the espers. McCoy studied the results with satisfaction. “Exactly what I suspected—there is a connection. Our brainwaves spike just after theirs do.” He pulled up the espers’ readings. “They’re deteriorating faster than before.”

  “Are they influencing us?” asked Chapel. “Or are we looking at two effects with the same cause?”

  “What are your esper ratings?”

  “Zero-four-nine,” she said.

  Brent thought for a moment. “Somewhere in the high thirties, I think.”

  “Zero-three-four for me,” Odhiambo said.