Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes

by Michael Schuster

  “Correct,” said Spock. “The Farrezzi did not anticipate more advanced technologies. The power the Enterprise can generate would be enough to create distortions not only in subspace, but in normal space as well. Possibly even projecting into other realities. Fascinating.”

  “What about the overload? We need to stop this!” Tra was frantic.

  “Correct, Crewman.” Spock consulted his tricorder. “Additional ships have activated their warp drives, overtaxing the system—the two ships we detected in orbit. This system will overload in four minutes. We must stop it or the Community of the Children of Farrezz will no longer have a world.”

  The lights flickered back on, but dimmer than before, making it hard to see. Kirk pushed himself up off the deck—and suddenly felt no resistance. The artificial gravity was out.

  Kirk needed to remember to push gently to propel himself. He spun slowly toward what his brain was telling him was up, but now was just a surface like any other.

  “Everybody okay?” he shouted.

  “Aye, sir,” came the somewhat strained reply from Giotto.

  Kirk called out, “Chekov?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the ensign, sounding as though he was halfway across the command center.

  The Farrezzi had fared better, their many limbs proving to be an advantage, but they were scared. Horr-Sav-Frerin had pulled itself into a ball, eyestalks retracted, two thin appendages wrapped around a pole to keep itself from floating away.

  The captain instinctively hooked his foot on the ring that connected the computer display to the support poles. He pulled himself “down” along the pole, so he could take in the HUD. He needed to find out what had hit them. It turned out to be a swarm of Farrezzi satellites, floating outside. “Mister Chekov, you hit the wrong ship!”

  “With only some of them,” replied the ensign matter-of-factly. “Look, Captain!” He pointed at the heads-up display.

  The viewer showed the slaver transport, bombarded by a swarm of satellites. Its warp nacelles were pitted with holes from the satellites’ impact.

  “Good work, Ensign,” Kirk said. “Even if we did take a few hits ourselves.”

  “My apologies, Captain. It appears my targeting parameters were not quite specific enough.”

  “Are they dead in space?” Kirk asked.

  Giotto answered, having floated back to the sensor controls. “Yes, sir. Unfortunately, so are we.”

  Ensign Saloniemi was studying the holographic projection above the control cube, which now displayed several rows of Farrezzi text.

  “Status report, Ensign,” said Spock.

  “Well, sir,” Saloniemi began, “I’ve managed to translate all the text.”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”

  “It’s very confusing. This is an incredibly complex system.” He shook his head. “I’m matching it against what we know about Farrezzi technology from the matter/antimatter reactor we found, and information in the database, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “Will you figure it out in three minutes?” asked Spock.

  “No, sir.” He slumped to the ground, but continued to pore over his tricorder nevertheless.

  Seven Deers was working her way through the system. “I’m making small changes to the settings,” she said. “With trial and error, we should be able to trace all the circuits.” She sighed. “But it’ll take too long.”

  “Continue working,” Spock ordered.

  The crackling energy was growing louder and louder, its pitch varying wildly as the system tried in vain to stabilize itself. Spock opened his communicator. “Mister Scott, have you been following everything?”

  “Aye, Mister Spock.”

  “Mister Scott, the projector must transmit its distortions via subspace. If we can deprive it of access to subspace, we may be able to shut it down.”

  “Aye.”

  “Is it possible to configure the Hofstadter’s warp drive to generate a bubble of normal space?”

  “Well—”

  “Mister Scott—”

  “—it is, but it would take hours to put into practice. And I’m not rounding up, sir.”

  “Lower the millicochranes into the negative,” Scotty ordered. “That should do it.”

  “You told Spock it would take too long,” M’Benga called back.

  “Worth a shot,” said Scotty. He was going to do something, broken legs or not. “What’s it doing?”

  M’Benga tapped away at the controls. “I’m getting an error message.”

  “Hit ‘ignore.’”

  Scotty checked the tricorder. They had sixty seconds.

  “There’s no ‘ignore’ button!”

  “Let me see that!” What was the doctor talking about? Of course there was an “ignore” button. “We dinna have time for this.” Scotty couldn’t remember ever feeling this helpless. “All of us will be dead—”

  “Fine.”

  Suddenly Scotty felt himself being wrenched upward, M’Benga’s arms around him. “This is going to hurt,” he said. It did. Moments later he was lowered into the pilot’s chair—gently, but he winced nonetheless.

  There was the sodding error message. M’Benga was right, there was no “ignore” button.

  How was he supposed—

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  Scotty could figure out a way around it, but he needed time.

  The Farrezzi scientists’ miscalculations had doomed their planet. If only they had been logical—Spock stopped himself: what if they had been logical? The scientist had pleaded for visitors to the planet to leave. To impede the departure of visitors from the world would be illogical.

  Spock scanned the “playback” button. It was connected to two circuits: the holographic device and an adjacent button whose connection had burnt out, a victim of the power surges running through the device. Sending an energy pulse from his tricorder, Spock activated the circuit. A single word appeared on the button: “DEACTIVATE.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Logical. His hand pressed it.

  A loud crack rang through the interior of the tower.

  Seven Deers said something, but not even Spock’s Vulcan hearing could make it out. The crackling sound of the energy projector had become overwhelming. He glanced down at his tricorder. The projector was fluctuating wildly, climbing and then plunging.

  Zero.

  The crackling stopped. Everything shut down. They were standing in darkness.

  Tra activated a flashlight, flicking it from person to person. All were present and accounted for.

  Spock flipped his communicator open. “Mister Scott, we are still here. Were we successful?”

  “Just a second, Mister Spock,” came the voice of M’Benga. “I’m afraid Mister Scott… One moment.”

  While Spock waited, he consulted his tricorder. The tower was blocking exterior scanning.

  “Scott here, Commander. The whole thing is shut down.” The engineer’s exuberance was impossible to miss over the comm channel. “The projector is deactivating. All the sensor and shield interference is gone, and so are the distortions in this system.”

  “That is welcome news,” Spock said, suppressing the relief he realized he was feeling.

  “There is one strange thing, though.”

  “Please elaborate.”

  “The satellites in the northern hemisphere are gone. I canna find any trace of them. It’s as though they’ve been scooped up by some powerful force.”

  Spock was about to reply when his communicator indicated an incoming transmission. “Stand by, Mister Scott.” He switched frequencies, calculating the odds that it was Captain Kirk. “Spock here.”

  “Spock! Music to my ears.” It was the captain, and he sounded almost as animated as Scott, which Spock took to be a good sign. “Status.”

  “We have successfully eliminated a subspace distortion projector.”

  “Succinct. I look forward to your detailed report.” There was a pause. “D’you think that you could
come and pick us up? Giotto, Chekov, and I are on a Farrezzi transport ship we captured, and there are some slavers we need help with.”

  “The shuttles are damaged, but spaceworthy. We will leave as soon as possible,” Spock said.

  “Try contacting the Enterprise again. With the field down, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting through to Sulu. Tell him we need them here.”

  “Aye, sir. We will contact you when we are in position to board the Farrezzi ship.”

  “Good work, Mister Spock. Kirk out.”

  Four Hours Later

  Stardate 4758.5 (1302 hours)

  “You took your time, Mister Spock,” Kirk said as he stepped onto the Hofstadter. The shuttle looked a little the worse for wear.

  Spock looked up briefly from the shuttlecraft’s controls and raised an eyebrow. The Hofstadter was sitting in the loading bay of the captive transport ship. The shuttle had dropped Giotto, Kologwe, and Tra on the other transport to round up the slavers and wake the sleepers. Neither ship was in any condition to land now, but Scotty and Seven Deers were confident that they could fix the vessels.

  “Captain,” Doctor M’Benga called from the stern of the shuttle. Kirk saw he was standing in front of a cryopod.

  Yüksel. The exobotanist was floating in water, wires and tubes running from the rim of the large pod into his skin. His expression was frozen in agony as he bobbed up and down gently—a disconcerting sight.

  Kirk turned M’Benga. “Doctor?”

  M’Benga wore a somber expression. “The cryopod is designed to sustain a Farrezzi. It’s slowly killing him.”

  “Can we get him out of there?” Kirk asked.

  “I don’t want to risk it without the facilities of the Enterprise’s sickbay.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Kirk said. Would the ship arrive in time? “Mister Spock?”

  “I have the Enterprise on standby, Captain,” Spock reported. “The spatial distortions are closing now that the projector has been disabled.”

  “Good work, Mister Spock.” Kirk crossed to the navigator’s seat and sat down. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Enterprise here. Captain, this is Lieutenant Kelowitz.”

  “Lieutenant Kelowitz,” said Kirk, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice, “what are you doing in command?” Rogelio Kelowitz was in tactical.

  Kelowitz sounded haggard. “Sir, I’m relieving Mister Sulu. The bridge is damaged.”

  Spock had estimated that the distortions were sizable, but—“Will you make it to Mu Arigulon?” Kirk asked.

  “Aye, sir,” Kelowitz said, “Probably another three hours of repair work, and then we’ll be two days out. Is it safe to proceed?”

  “The spatial distortions have cleared almost entirely, Lieutenant,” Spock replied. “Passage will be completely normal.”

  Kirk contented himself with, “We’ll see you then, Mister Kelowitz.”

  “Aye, sir. We’ll keep you updated on our progress. Enterprise out.”

  “Doctor M’Benga,” Kirk called back. “Two days okay?”

  “I can adjust the nutritional feed, sir—he’ll be safe.”

  Kirk spun his chair to face Spock, who was still working diligently at his controls. “Well, Mister Spock,” he said, “it looks like we’re on our own for a while.”

  Spock only raised an eyebrow again. He really must be tired.

  “Have you determined why the Farrezzi didn’t wake up even though the atmosphere of their planet had been restored?”

  “The information Neff-Bironomaktio-Frerish gleaned from the captured members of the New Planets Cousins indicates that they reconfigured the master purge mechanisms to release them first. They made an error and reactivated only when the Enterprise’s arrival triggered the distortion projector and an emergency reawakening protocol.”

  “The shuttles didn’t do it?” asked Kirk.

  “Negative,” said Spock. “The power of the shuttles was below the threshold. Only the arrival of a starship could trigger the system.”

  “So if we’d never come here,” said Kirk, “the Farrezzi would be sleeping still, unaware their planet was waiting for them to reclaim it.”

  “Correct, Captain.”

  “Lucky for them we came along,” Kirk said, bringing up an image of Farrezz on the central console.

  The first sight of a new world always offered him a thrill, but seeing a planet he and his crew had rescued was even better. “Let’s get to work, Mister Spock. We’ve got a planet to wake up.”

  EPILOGUE

  CAPTAIN’S LOG, STARDATE 4759.8

  Waking the Farrezzi sleepers continues. The slavers on both ships have been detained, as have the ones on the surface. The actions of the New Planets Cousins have introduced complications into an unstable situation. The Federation has promised help. Supply ships and a team of special envoys will arrive in the next few weeks.

  The thirteen of us who survived the ordeal are looking forward to the arrival of the Enterprise. Lieutenant Commander Scott and Petty Officer Yüksel are in need of medical attention in the ship’s sickbay.

  The entire landing party is due commendations for their exceptional actions during this crisis, but I would like to single out Petty Officer Cron Emalra’ehn, whose heroic action saved his shipmates at the cost of his own life.

  Stardate 4760.7 (1738 hours)

  McCoy stood next to Sulu in the transporter room, trying not to fidget. He’d brought a stretcher with him for Scotty. Over at the transporter console, Lieutenant Kyle was setting the controls. The two-day journey to Mu Arigulon V—sorry, Farrezz—had felt longer.

  Sulu was looking good, McCoy reflected. You’d never know that the helm console had exploded in his face. McCoy still hadn’t come to terms with the loss of Bouchard. Being killed by the mere fact that the ship had gotten too close to another universe? That just wasn’t fair.

  “Ready to energize, sir,” Kyle said.

  “Beam them up, Mister Kyle,” Sulu ordered, turning to face the transporter dais. The shimmering of the transporter effect, and then six figures materialized in front of them: Kirk, Spock, M’Benga, Scotty, Giotto, and Chekov. Scotty looked the worst, held up by Giotto and M’Benga.

  “Welcome back, Captain,” said Sulu, a wide smile on his face. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “It’s good to be back, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said, stepping down off the dais. “What have you been doing to my ship?” His voice was light, but McCoy knew there was a bit of concern behind the question.

  Scotty spoke up, clearly agitated. “I’ll thank you for getting me to sickbay now, Doctor. I shudder to think what my wee bairns have been through these past few days. I need to be up on my feet so I can see what DeSalle has been doing to them.”

  McCoy pushed the stretcher over to the transporter dais, and with the help of M’Benga and Giotto, he transferred Scotty onto it. “Did you enjoy landing party duty, Jabilo?”

  M’Benga smiled. “You can have every landing party from here to the end of the five-year mission, for all I care.”

  M’Benga wheeled Scotty out of the room, and McCoy went to join Kirk and Spock, who were talking to Sulu.

  “—estimates it will take two weeks at Station C-15 to repair all the damage,” Sulu was saying.

  “So much for maintaining our schedule of exploration in this sector,” Kirk said. He turned to face McCoy. “Well, Doctor, I hear you saved my ship.”

  McCoy grinned, pleased with himself despite all that had happened. “Well, Lieutenant Sulu did the heavy lifting, but yes. How’s that for an irrational, emotional ship’s surgeon, Mister Spock?”

  Spock’s eyebrow went up. “Quite exemplary, I must admit, Doctor.”

  “Well, there you go, Mister Spock. Sometimes I—”

  Spock cut him off. “Only once you abandoned emotional thinking and performed a dispassionate, logical analysis did you devise a solution to the crisis. I had no idea that you had progressed so far under my tutelage.”

  “Yo
ur—your tutelage?” McCoy sputtered.

  Spock’s face was as impassive as ever. “I have been maneuvering your thought processes towards a more enlightened, and logical, worldview. It seems that I have exceeded beyond my expectations.”

  McCoy looked to Jim for support, but the captain was smiling. “I think he’s got you, Bones.”

  Of all the—! “You green-blooded computer! I save this ship, and you still can’t let me have the last word?”

  “Doctor, I offer you my congratulations.” If McCoy hadn’t known better, he’d have called Spock’s expression downright smug.

  Kirk laughed, slapping McCoy on the back. “Gentlemen, let’s get to auxiliary control. We’ve got a ship to run.” He walked out of the room, and they hurried after him. McCoy fell in behind Kirk to the right, Spock to the left.

  For a moment, McCoy felt that he was being followed. Turning around quickly, he saw only an empty corridor. There was nothing there. He breathed out in relief.

  “Something the matter, Bones?” Kirk asked.

  “No,” he said, “I’m just getting older.”

  Spock raised an eyebrow at McCoy as they followed the captain.

  “You’re not thinking of retiring, are you?” asked Kirk in mock surprise.

  McCoy restrained a smile. “And leave all four hundred of you with no one to look at your tonsils? Jim, you couldn’t get me off this ship if my life depended on it.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When Steve was in high school, he coerced six of his friends into joining him in a Star Trek e-mail RPG affectionately known as “the sim,” which lasted a few years before sputtering out—fellow participants are listed in the novel’s dedication. But he would be remiss if he did not note that that RPG eventually spawned a series of amateur audio drama adaptations, one of which contained the seeds of this very story. Those audio dramas would have not gotten very far without the patience and assistance of a great many people, whom he would like to thank here: Josh Donaman, Nicholas Frey, Geoffrey Hamell, Adam Johnson, Lori Kinney, Bradley Knipper, Todd Kogutt, Timothy Moeller, Catherine Mollmann, Grady Owens, David Poon, Stephen Poon, Georg Rudorff, Harrison Sand, James Sand, Benjamin Stevens, Christopher Tracy, and Laura Waiss, not to mention Steve’s parents, who put up with a dozen teenagers stomping into the house to use the microphone time and again.