Final Frontier

by Carey, Diane

His thoughts outracing his fingers, George almost forgot to stop working at the firing controls when the automatic setting popped on with its green light again to tell him he’d succeeded, that Saffire hadn’t had time to do anything permanent. At least the firing controls weren’t too new a science for George to figure out. They weren’t much different from the flight controls on the shuttlecraft, and everything was clearly marked. So when the light turned from yellow to green and quit flashing, he was startled. He stood back for a moment, afraid to believe he’d circumvented Saffire’s tampering, then shook himself out of his doubts and grabbed t’Cael’s sleeve.

  “That’s it. Let’s go.” George failed to interpret t’Cael’s momentary hesitation, and not until they were in the turbo-lift and almost back to the bridge did George realize he should’ve notified Robert from gunnery control that they could fire again.

  He burst onto the bridge and immediately announced, “Weapons are back on line, Captain—”

  Even before t’Cael came to his side on the upper walkway, George saw the pall that had settled over the bridge. No one was moving. They were all just staring at the two wedge-shaped vessels on the viewscreen. Bernice Hart wasn’t at the engineering subsystems monitor anymore; she was across the bridge at communications, manning Sanawey’s position. What had changed that would make communications more important to watch than engineering?

  Sullenly, Robert April said, “Bernice, play the message back for Mr. Kirk, please.”

  Hart nodded, not looking at George, and touched the board. The computer translation had a sour ring.

  “This is Imperial Swarmbird Soar. We have ruptured your shielding and implanted two cutaneous detonation devices on your hull. If you make any further move to resist us, they will be ignited and your hull will be crushed between them. You are rendered immobile. Turn off your outer protection grid and your weapons. I give you a quarter hour to effect surrender.”

  George stepped toward her as though it was Hart’s fault, then swung around and addressed the captain. “Have you scanned the bombs?”

  “Yes,” April said, and signaled Hart again.

  She tapped the controls, and her auxiliary viewscreen wobbled, then refocused, and magnified twice until it provided a good view of a severe-looking device, devilishly simple and unadorned, attached to one of the pearly hull plates by three clawlike manacles. “It’s plasma-intrivium,” Hart said, “in some kind of fragmentation casing. Tri-megaton salvos. They’re clamped to the hull with some kind of magnetic coupler. One of them is up here, aft of the bridge, and the second is below, near the port sensor outlet and the laser coupling. The underside of each of them is arranged for explosion, while the exterior is made to implode and send the impact right through our hull. If they both go off, they’ll puncture the top and bottom of the primary section and probably take out the whole main computer core.”

  “Saffire knew what he was doing,” April said, his arms folded and one hand resting against his lips. “With our weapons down, they had the chance to sweep in and do this to us.” He pressed his mouth into a line and glanced at t’Cael. “Your people are extremely efficient.”

  George spun to face t’Cael now. “No bluff?”

  T’Cael seemed startled, then his brows shot up. “No. Normally they would plant several more mortars on your hull, but you’ve destroyed four ships that carry them. Take care, though—two will be enough.”

  “What if we surrender?” April asked him. “What would become of my crew?”

  “They would be interned, questioned, bribed—”

  “Tortured?”

  “Possibly, but at this stage that’s unlikely. After all, the ship will provide its own answers. Our scientists are often tied up in political webbing, but they’re capable of very swift analyzing.”

  George dropped onto the command deck without even touching the steps. “Robert, you’re not considering—”

  “I have to examine all possibilities, George. If surrender will save all our lives—”

  “Captain,” t’Cael interrupted, stepping down also, “you must not be captured. You must escape.”

  Robert April gave the exotic alien a long, silent look, during which they communicated in that transcendental way that captains have—a mutuality of destinies, if not futures.

  “Why?” he asked gently.

  “I have told you why!” t’Cael said angrily. “I have told you of the Praetor, the cancer that spreads through my people—”

  “You have,” April nodded soothingly, “and I believe you. But I also believe there is something you are not telling me.”

  T’Cael’s glare wavered.

  “I see our alternatives here as surrender—or self-destruction,” April said firmly. At his side, George started to speak, but the captain waved him silent. “Do you see any others, Mr. Cael?”

  “Escape,” the Romulan said softly.

  April leaned forward, prodding, “Why?”

  T’Cael folded his arms—not in a relaxed manner, but painfully—and regarded the deck for a moment as he wrestled with his thoughts. He had vowed to tell the humans only what they needed to know to survive. But now . . .

  He thought of remaining silent, of keeping vows sworn to a government he now abhorred. He thought of lying—but he couldn’t repay April’s faith with deception. He thought of his principles—and he thought of Idrys. He steeled himself, and spoke.

  “Haven’t you wondered why there are so few ships here? And why there was a mutiny that deposed me?” He spoke carefully. “It’s an extreme dishonor to be relegated to hinterspace duty while the Empire is embarking on a new venture.”

  “What venture?”

  T’Cael wished he could be spared his next words, that he of all Rihannsu didn’t have to be the one to declare the onset of the Praetor’s feeding. Yet he was here, and he would be the one. Folded tight against his ribs, his fists clenched.

  “The Imperial invasion fleet is amassing in the Outmarches,” he said, “on the boundary of the Neutral Zone.”

  “Invasion?” Robert April breathed.

  George reached out and grasped t’Cael’s arm. They stared at each other, one in question, one in answer. As he saw the regret behind those strong round eyes, George found himself wishing t’Cael had chosen this moment to start lying. He had always wanted something worthwhile to tell his sons, to say, “I was part of this.” But to have been there when galactic war began wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

  “But why?” April whispered.

  T’Cael pulled away from George, folded his arms tight about his body again, and faced the captain. “They believe, truly believe because they have been told, that the Federation is involved in military buildup with the goal of conquest.”

  April shook his head, appalled. “You can’t believe such a thing.”

  “No, I don’t believe it. I know the nature of humans, at least your collective nature. But my people are a fiery kind, Captain, and easily convinced that others are also. They’re easily made suspicious, and that breeds action before one is acted upon. I confess when I first saw this mighty vessel of yours, so deep within our space—”

  “Goddamn you!” George blustered, pushing his way between them. “You can’t blame this on us! If your people can’t handle their own fear and greed, it’s not our fault!”

  With great effort, April squeezed in and muscled him back. “George,” he whispered, “please.”

  The tension was bone-breaking as the crew watched their first officer and the Romulan square off in the center of the bridge. April watched George too, still maintaining a grip on him, silently imploring him to realize that none of this was t’Cael’s fault either, that he was even more the victim than they, and that he might be their only chance to survive and warn the Federation of what was gathering on its borders.

  He preferred not to have to say those things out loud.

  He saw t’Cael was unimpressed by the Earther’s pyrotechnics—and it made George even angrier.

&
nbsp; George shot out his finger in accusation at t’Cael. “You owe us a way out of this.”

  The captain wedged his way deeper between them. He could feel George’s body strung up like a piano chord and clearly saw the smoke in his eyes and fury’s fever burning on his cheeks, but for all that April was most affected by the cold stare from t’Cael. While the Romulan seemed far too staid to participate in a brawl, his arms had fallen away from their folded position and were poised at his sides like a gunfighter’s arms—ready for whatever came—and April got mental images of George slam-dunked neatly into a food processor bin.

  “All right, down in front,” April soothed, patting George’s arm—at the moment rather like patting a rock. “I need you both, but I need you clear-headed.”

  “Not that easy,” George growled.

  April gave him a rough shove. “You especially. Now, collect yourself. We haven’t the time for this jaw gnashing.” Swallowing his own frustration, he turned to t’Cael.

  The ice hadn’t gone out of the black eyes, but the Romulan evidently wasn’t going to be driven from his commitments by a hothead. He rubbed his palms loosely together as though to press out the tension—until the next time.

  “How good an actor are you, Captain?” he asked. “Can you feign giving up until the mortars can be disarmed?”

  “They can be, then?”

  “There is a code-sequence flat on the outer shell. Enter the wrong sequence, and it ignites.”

  “Can you tell us the right sequences?”

  “Yes, but the devices are also equipped with a physiological sensor. It’s designed to detonate if anyone but a Romulan attempts to decode it, and only Romulan commanders have the code. The devices should be impossible for you to disarm because you shouldn’t have any Romulans on board.”

  “Are you volunteering, Mr. Cael?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you can only disarm one at a time, and if they pick up on the fact that you’re out there—”

  “Not likely. Our—their sensors aren’t that accurate at the distance they’ve put between us. At least, I hope not.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Captain, you know as well as I do that the ability of any mechanism is at the mercy of he who operates it. I don’t know who is monitoring the sensory stations on the fighters at the moment or their particular talents. We all take risks.”

  April sighed. “Risk it is.”

  “You have the necessary outerwear, I assume.”

  “I’ll go with you,” George blurted. He streaked for the turbo-lift, relieved to hear the faint bump on the upper deck as t’Cael followed him.

  “Good luck, gentlemen,” the captain called as the lift door hissed shut, “to us all.”

  • • •

  “The photonic code selector works on light wavelengths from nearby stars. Unless it picks up certain reflectable emissions, it can’t be manually decoded.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So you’re standing in my light.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  The cold of space pressed against the outer skins of their environmental suits. Their voices were given an electrical buzz by the communications relays between the suits, with a click of mechanical delay before they spoke and after they finished, but this was reassuring in its way. The Romulan salvo, one of them at least, was hooked onto the starship’s primary hull not far starboard-aft of the bridge dome. As such, this was the more dangerous of the two. It held on with three clawlike devices that had punctured the ship’s hard hull material, then contracted to hold the conical housing on tightly. More than anything it resembled a large metal barnacle and sat there stubbornly immobile as they picked at it. While t’Cael tampered cautiously with the delicate priming mechanism, George put his muscles behind a pry bar on the claws. Neatness didn’t count.

  “Kirk, this is an explosive device, you understand.”

  “Right.”

  “And needs careful handling.”

  “Right.”

  “And could go off. If you don’t stop wrenching at it that way.”

  “You do your job, I’ll”—wrench—“do”—twist—“mine.”

  “Such traction is liable to rupture the casing. Any leakage will cause the device to detonate.”

  “I want it off the hull.”

  “That makes no sense. Once I deactivate it—”

  “I want it off the hull.”

  “Fine.” T’Cael flattened his mouth and gave in to the human’s exasperating lack of pragmatism. If the aesthetic value of having the ship’s hull unblemished was so important that Kirk would risk death, so be it. Somewhere beneath his exasperation, t’Cael did understand the insult of having an enemy device attached to one’s vessel—a violation so personal that the mere presence of the thing was an injury. So he tolerated Kirk’s imprudence and concentrated on tapping in a correct, complex arrangement of numbers and simultaneous pressures across the bomb’s colorful signal encoder/input grid. Other than wincing in anticipation every time Kirk put muscle against the holding claws, he worked undisturbed until the bridge hailed them.

  “George? George, this is Robert Are you out there?”

  George rearranged the pry bar in his grip and thumbed the speaker/receiver on his suit’s mantle. “Where else would I be?”

  “George? Do you copy?”

  “Hell . . . where is it?” He tucked the pry bar under his arm and made sure both magnetic overboots were planted firmly on the ship’s white armor, pressed his chin as far down inside the helmet as it would go, and still could barely see the communicator patch on his chest. He moved his thumb, pushed, and tried again. “Yes, I copy.”

  “What’s your status out there?”

  “We’re working as fast as we can.” He paused as t’Cael signaled to him and nodded inside the wide helmet. “Cael’s almost finished disarming it. I’m trying to break it loose. It’s stuck to the hull with some kind of claw arrangement. I’m trying to break the underpinnings.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “Don’t you start too. I’ve got two of them already and there’s just one more.”

  “All right, but don’t dawdle.”

  “Keep me posted on those two ships. If they start moving around, I don’t want to be caught out here.”

  “Affirmative. We’ve shut down most systems, playing dead . . . so far they haven’t done anything overt. We’re monitoring them, but our hands are tied until you’re finished. Time’s running out, George. Don’t waste it.”

  “Kirk out.” That seemed the best way to say he wasn’t going to be wasting any more time than he could manage. He made a race with himself—to finish breaking the salvo cone loose by the time t’Cael finished the code process that would disarm the bomb. He made it, but only by a few seconds.

  “I got it.” He stuffed the pry bar into his utility belt like a sword, holding on to the detonator casing as it started to float away, and managed to hang on to it until t’Cael also got a grip on the shell and gave him leverage.

  “Are you certain,” t’Cael began, “that you want to keep this device? Perhaps it would be wiser to let it drift away.”

  “Are you sure it’s deactivated?”

  “I could say anything to you, you realize, and be lying.”

  George flashed him a glare and dryly admitted, “Then I guess we’re all dead anyway, aren’t we? Yes, I want the thing. Give me a hand.”

  Together they pulled the mechanism toward the nearest parts chute. It barely fit inside the little airlock. George straightened up and found t’Cael’s face inside the slightly distorting atmospheric containment shield on the helmet. “All right,” he said, “let’s get the other one.”

  He took one step—possibly less—

  The helmet microphone blared in his ear. “George!”

  “Kirk here.”

  “We’re detecting an outgoing transmission aboard the empress—”

  “Here? Are you sure?”

  “Get
back inside, immediately! Claw, jam that signal! Triangulate on—”

  George snapped his communicator off and grabbed t’Cael, steering him roughly toward the manpower airlock. “Move. Somebody’s signaling your friends out there.”

  “But you captured the saboteur,” t’Cael offered as he forced the heavy boots to move along the ship’s exosurface.

  “Evidently we didn’t capture him enough.”

  “They’ll detonate the other—”

  Too late.

  Dawn lit up across the horizon of the primary hull, a corona of lights—every color—shooting outward, upward. The whole ship quivered beneath them from an eruption on the hull’s underside. The ship lurched in space. George’s legs gave out under him. His knees were brutally rammed up against the hullplate. The pry bar in his belt jarred into his ribcage. Then he was spinning through space, watching the starship fall away.

  His arms flew outward, his legs fanning wide as he fought for control, but there was nothing to grab on to, no point of reference for his body to use as guide.

  “Kirk—”

  His headgear buzzed with the familiar voice. He felt something—a grip on his arm. T’Cael—

  Yes, t’Cael was still with him. The concussion had thrown them off together. A momentary hope flared, then died. So they didn’t die alone. So what?

  He tried to twist around and managed to lever against t’Cael until they could both see each other’s faces. The only real vision, though, was that of the starship, a vision quite like what George had seen and felt when he caught that first glimpse of the empress hanging there in spacedock.

  But here, she was even more shocking, more magnificent—here, in space, with nothing around her but diamonds and black velvet.

  And who said there was no sound in space? He heard her breathing. A soft hiss. And someone was whistling at her long white limbs—

  “My suit!” he choked, forcing himself to think through the creeping numbness. “It’s—”

  He bent over, trying to see his own body, and his eyes widened, stinging, as he saw a small rip where the pry bar had punctured the insulation lining.

  “It’s leaking,” t’Cael finished for him, keeping inflection out of his voice. “Stay with me. I have hold of you—”