Enterprise: Broken Bow

by Diane Carey

  He drew his pistol and turned sharply when a reverberation rang through the chamber—the door was opening. Beyond it, the dark vestibule appeared empty. The door closed and sealed again, as if a ghost had entered … or left.

  Archer backed away, silent, listening. His senses chimed with intuition.

  “You’re wasting your time. Klaang knows nothing.”

  A voice! Real words. What a relief—more or less.

  The sound of footsteps in the preecho chamber rumbled with strange sounds and repeats. Archer tried to track the sound with his pistol, ready to shoot.The voice preechoed, too. He heard two, three, four of each word.

  “It would be unwise to discharge that weapon in this room,” the voice said.

  “What is this room?” Archer asked. “What goes on here?”

  “You’re very curious, Jonathan. May I call you Jonathan?”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed that you know my name?” he asked reasonably.

  “I’ve learned a great deal about you. Even more than you know.”

  “Well, I guess you have me at a disadvantage,” Archer said, leading this person on. He knew by now that whoever was talking desperately wanted to tell him many things, or he/it wouldn’t be talking at all. “So why don’t you drop the invisible man routine and let me see who I’m talking to?”

  Because you know you’re going to show me eventually.

  “You wouldn’t have come looking for Klaang,” the voice said, “if Sarin had told you what she knew. That means you’re no threat to me, Jonathan. But I do need you to leave this room.”

  The time-door hissed again, and opened invitingly.

  “Now, please.”

  The footsteps echoed again, but this time Archer saw something, a slight distortion against the far wall.

  Instead of leaving, he fired his phase pistol. A blurred preshot flowed in before the blast itself, and the sound had no attachment to what he saw. The beam struck the far wall. A jagged wave of energy blew from the point of impact and swept the room. Archer was blown back, slamming his head against a wall. Pain drummed in his skull—he held his head and waited for the wave to pass. It passed four times.

  “I warned you not to fire the weapon,” the voice said.

  Again the distortion moved across the room.

  Archer gasped, tried to steady his breathing, then spoke. “This chameleon thing … pretty fancy. Was it payment for pitting the Klingons against each other? A trophy from your temporal cold war?”

  An embittered action blew across the room, ultrafast, and slammed Archer again against the wall. But this was different from the weapon shot.This one had pure anger in it. He’d made the intruder angry.

  His pistol! His hand was empty! He grabbed around, but the weapon was gone.

  Before him was a Suliban, now normalized against the background, its dappled face and skull still looking vaguely unreal. It held his pistol on him. As he stood with his eyes locked on those alien eyes, he recognized this as the leader of the attackers back at the spaceport on Rigel Ten. Not exactly a big surprise, and in a way, its own kind of win. Now he knew who he was up against, if not why.

  “I was going to let you go,” the Suliban said.

  “Really?” Archer backed away slowly, trying to remember the timing of those echoes. “Then you obviously don’t know as much about me as you thought you did.”

  “On the contrary,” the Suliban said, “I could’ve told you the day you were going to die. But I suppose that’s about to change.”

  The Suliban opened fire on him with his own phase pistol.

  The preecho struck Archer in the chest and drove him back. He brought up every muscle he could control and darted sideways before the actual bolt could strike him. Instead, it missed by an inch and burrowed into the wall. Archer spun behind a bank of alien consoles as the shock wave swept the room, knocking the Suliban down completely.

  Archer was ready for that shock and braced against it. “What’s the matter?” he chided. “No genetic tricks to keep you from getting knocked on your butt?”

  “What you call tricks, we call progress!” the Suliban declared. “Are you aware that your genome is almost identical to that of an ape? The Suliban don’t share humanity’s patience with natural selection!”

  “So, to speed things up a little, you struck a deal with the devil.”

  Archer was careful to hide. Assault might work against him. The Suliban’s confusion in this echo chamber could be a weapon in itself, for, as advanced as the Suliban thought he was, Archer was able to adjust to this place. He was getting used to it. As he spoke, he positioned himself between the Suliban leader and the open time-lock. Moving behind the consoles, he slowly removed the communicator from his belt. Carefully, he calculated the next trajectory of the temporal wave, then threw the communicator against a monitor on the far wall.

  The monitor sparked. The preecho effect made a dozen communicators sail through the air, drawing the Suliban’s attention. The Suliban, disoriented, aimed clumsily and fired at the sparking monitor.

  The shock wave thundered outward from the strike zone. The Suliban tried to brace himself against it this time, and managed to stay on his feet. But Archer had situated himself in the perfect spot to be thrown into the open time-lock vestibule.

  He tumbled like a snowball through the door. The door began to close.

  At the last moment, the intelligent and obviously strong-willed Suliban plunged toward the door and slipped through. The temporal compression began as the door locked and sealed itself.

  Archer was locked in this small place, a place where time was in convulsions, with a Suliban whose plans he had wrecked. Each of them battled to be the first to gain control of his body.

  The Suliban was raising the weapon again… .

  Summoning every ounce of muscle control and sheer will, Archer shoved himself off the wall behind him and smashed into the Suliban in this eerie slow-motion chamber. The pistol jarred against his shoulder, dislodged from the Suliban’s hand, and tumbled toward the floor. It struck the deck just as time returned to something like normal, and the fight was on.

  Archer realized quickly he was no match for combat with an enhanced alien. He had to get the pistol!

  Twisting viciously, he managed to pin the Suliban to the floor and lean on his opponent’s wrists. It seemed to work, until the Suliban dislocated his own shoulder and wrist in a grotesque rotation and found a way to reach for the pistol, and got it. Archer certainly couldn’t use human moves against something like this—so he punched the Suliban in the nose. That had to work all over the galaxy.

  It did. The Suliban writhed and went momentarily limp. Archer shoved off him and bolted to the door.

  The Suliban had the weapon.

  Archer ran for his life. He hadn’t intended for ass-n-elbows to be his plan, or the great final moments he ever had in mind for himself, but there was method in his madness—if he could keep the stubborn Suliban chasing him, then the Enterprisewould have a chance to get away. A few minutes here, a few there… if Trip Tucker or Reed were in command, this would never work. He had left T’Pol in charge.

  A Vulcan—the bane of his life—was going to make sure his plan was fulfilled. T’Pol would stick to her line of demarcation and do the logical thing. She would know there was no way for him to be found in this maze, no way for them to infiltrate, to risk a half dozen lives on a rescue mission into the guts of this aggregate, which was breaking up. She would make all the right arguments, shout Trip down, over-British Reed, deal with Hoshi’s shrieks of protest, and she would finally seize the command Archer himself had confirmed. She would take the ship out of this mess, and Klaang, and she would succeed.

  Not a bad legacy, Dad, for you or for me.

  So he ran harder, taking the ache in his leg as validation of his personal honor. Behind him, the Suliban was coming out of the time-lock, aiming, firing—

  CHAPTER 16

  “OUR MISSION IS TO RETURN THE KLINGON TO HIS
HOME-world. Another rescue attempt could jeopardize that mission—”

  “The captain specifically told us to come back for him!”

  “As commanding officer, it’s my job to interpret the captain’s orders.”

  Trip Tucker’s anger flushed right up into his face and out the top of his head. “I just told you his orders! What’s there to ‘interpret’!”

  Everyone on the bridge watched tensely as Tucker confronted T’Pol with his report and watched it pulled apart, brick by brick, and the captain with it.

  T’Pol contained herself with damnable reserve. “Captain Archer may very well have told you to return for him later because he knew how stubborn you can be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You might’ve risked Klaang’s life in a foolish attempt to swing back and rescue the captain.”

  Tucker grimaced. “I can’t believe this!”

  A jolt from outside rocked the ship and punctuated his fury as the tension rose for them all. Reed was standing behind him, but said nothing. Hoshi looked positively destroyed at T’Pol’s refusal. Mayweather’s hands on the helm were stiff and flushed.

  “The situation must be analyzed logically,” T’Pol said, but this time it sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as them.

  “I don’t remember the captain analyzing anything when he went back for you on that roof!” Tucker roared.

  “That’s a specious analogy.”

  “Is it?”

  “We have work to do. We must stabilize our flight condition before we can move out of the atmosphere. Take your posts, please. That was not a request.”

  Well, she might not be Starfleet, but she had the style down. Everyone responded, though with a bitter silence. Tucker ground his teeth and went to the engineering master control station. What could he do? Was there a way to neutralize her command status?

  “Hull plating’s been repolarized,” Reed reported. His voice was hardly more than a rasp. Behind it was the question in everyone’s mind. Leave the captain? Would he leave us?

  “Stand by the impulse engines. Mr. Tucker, status?”

  Tucker felt a vicious tone rise from his throat. He thought about lying, stalling. But, ultimately, he couldn’t do it. “The autosequencer’s on-line, but annular confinement’s still off by two microns.”

  “That should suffice,” T’Pol said.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “If the Suliban have reestablished their defense, we’ll have no other option.”

  The ship roared through the gas giant’s atmosphere directly below the roiling blue layer. Several cell ships appeared on the scanners and began an attack pattern, strafing the underside of the huge dove-gray vessel. Reed, still under his fire-at-will order, took out his frustration with T’Pol on the incoming assault vessels.

  “We have four more coming up off starboard!” he called.

  T’Pol paused. “Can we dock, Ensign?”

  Mayweather blinked. “These aren’t ideal conditions—”

  “Mr. Tucker, we’re going to plan B.”

  Tucker swung around. What had changed her mind? Why would a person who claimed to be ruled by logic suddenly whip around to a completely crazy plan of action?

  Who cared!

  “I’m on my way!” he declared, and rushed off the bridge.

  It was crazy, and he embraced it with everything he had. In less than two minutes he was in the newly installed transport-materializing chamber, summoning power from deep in the bowels of the ship’s impulse drive system. Yes, crazy—he might find himself standing over the shredded, gurgling remains—

  No, don’t think that way.The control station fell under his trembling hands. Just work the controls … make the numbers line up … focus the beams …

  “I’ll do it,” he murmured. “I’ll do it, I can do it—”

  He only had seconds. He felt the presence of T’Pol and Reed and all the others, even though they were decks away from him.This was it.T’Pol would never give him another chance. There was no plan C.

  The chamber began to whine a god-awful noise. He focused and focused, adjusted and hoped. If only Porthos were here, he could cross his paws.

  A column of light appeared inside the chamber, between the two pie plates on floor and ceiling that would act as a receiver. Human readings … he was sure those were human readings. There was only one human on that big Suliban knot out there!

  A humanoid shape appeared, forming between the lights. But the Suliban were humanoid. Tucker held his breath.

  There was nothing more he could do with the controls. They would either do what they were designed to do, or there would be a disaster here.

  The captain’s build—the captain’s hair and hands—a crouched position. Running?

  Long seconds finally pulled Jonathan Archer together out of a puzzle of lights and whines. He stumbled forward on sheer momentum, then skidded and stopped himself, and looked around in shock at his new surroundings. He wavered, disoriented, then patted himself to see if he was all there.

  “Bridge!” Trip called. “We’ve got him!” He rushed to the pad platform and reached for Archer. “Sorry, Captain! We had no other choice!”

  Well, that was a silly thing to say, because there were always other choices, but at least it sounded better than anything else he could think of.

  Archer stumbled down with Tucker’s help.

  “Are you hurt? Are you all here?”

  “Well, I think so, most of me, anyway.” Archer offered him a tremulous smile and a grip on the arm to prove to them both that they were together again.

  “T’Pol wanted to leave you behind!”

  Archer steadied himself with a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “She wanted to. Notice she didn’t act on what she wanted. She acted on what she could do.” He drew a breath of life and actually laughed. “Trip, old man, I believe I can work with that!”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Planet Qo’noS

  THE GNARLED TOWERS OF THE KLINGON HIGH COUNCIL chamber rose above a smoggy yellow haze in the capital city. Inside the chambers, an ancient room of stone and wooden beams was hung with ceremonial banners and echoes of conquests stemming back through the pages of alien time. Guards stood everywhere, more for show than function, dressed in regalia and armed with archaic weapons. The Council members, seated at a serpentine table, pounded and shouted in their idea of debate.

  There was great strife here today.

  Jonathan Archer presented a calm demeanor, hoping his colleagues would take his cue in this shockingly alien environment. Alien, yes, but there was something hauntingly medieval about this place and these people, not really so far out of the human realm of imagination. Perhaps that was the disturbing part—the fact that they could empathize with being Klingon.

  In a noble queue, Archer, T’Pol, and Hoshi moved into the enormous chamber, led by Klaang, who was so calm now as to be arguably majestic. Klaang was clearly working at both strength and dignity, despite what he had suffered physically.

  He stopped before the Chancellor. “Wo’migh Qagh! Q’apla!”

  Hoshi leaned toward Archer and whispered,“Something about disgracing the Empire … he says he’s ready to die.”

  Archer murmured, “That’s all we get out of this?”

  The Chancellor was on his feet now, glaring in open curiosity at the humans. The wide-shouldered leader walked down the great stone steps, and as he did this, he drew a jagged dagger from its sheath.

  Klaang tensed but never flinched as the Chancellor stopped in front of him.

  Archer tensed also. If this thing were carried out, he would be helpless to stop it. At least he would show them that humans weren’t squeamish and would stand up beside Klaang to the last. They hadn’t brought him here just to be arbitrarily killed. The Chancellor would be forced to think about what he was doing, rather than just act by rote.

  The Chancellor snatched Klaang’s wrist and drew the blade across the palm, d
rawing blood. Archer winced and put his hand out slightly to his side to keep Hoshi steady. T’Pol remained unfazed.

  “Poq!” the Chancellor called.

  An aide approached with a vial, held it up, and caught several drops of Klaang’s blood, while Klaang stood there, completely dumbfounded by all this.

  The aide hurried to a large apparatus that remained undefined until he opened it and inserted the vial into a sensor padd. A large screen came to life suddenly, displaying a highly magnified cluster of lavender blood cells.

  The Council members grumbled with sounds that might have been approval.

  The image continued to enlarge, and became spirals of DNA. The spirals became larger and larger, until a distinctive pattern showed itself even to the untrained eye. The aide kept working the controls until individual molecules rose before the audience.

  Hoshi drew a breath to speak, but Archer motioned her silent.

  The molecular pattern began to rotate, revealing … what were those? Maps!

  Maps, and text! Alien script written on a molecular level!

  “Phlox should see this,” Archer murmured. “He’d have a kitten.”

  Text, schedules, coordinates …

  The entire chamber erupted in a rumble of approval. Then the Chancellor, purple-faced with excitement, stalked over to Archer.

  He lifted the dagger to Archer’s throat. Archer remained steady, but it took some doing.

  “ChugDah hegh … volcha vay.”

  Just like that, the Chancellor lowered the weapon and stalked away.

  Archer let himself breathe again. “I’ll take that as a thank you… .”

  Beside him, Hoshi offered, “I don’t think they have a word for thank you.”

  “Then what’d he say?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  The Klingon chamber began to shuffle with activity as the meeting broke up and the Council adored its DNA treasure. Now they could move on with whatever internal conflicts they had with their neighbors, the Suliban, or they could use the contraband information to get the Suliban to leave them alone. At least they knew now that their internal structure was being tampered with. They wouldn’t turn against each other now. At least, not for a while.