T’Viss frowned. “Captain, until we have more data to base an analysis on—”
“It’s best not to take any chances,” he finished for her.
“Scans are halted, sir,” Uuvu’it said, “but the energy is still surging!”
Radiation warning lights were blinking now. “Force fields and deflectors up!” Sulu commanded, a reflex he hadn’t realized he’d picked up yet. He’d had nine months to get used to the new dual shield system, but he hadn’t thought he was used to being the one who’d give the order.
The spectrum displays were lighting up more and more, filled across their entire bands, and Sulu spun to see the main viewer going white. On the bridge ceiling, the horizon disk in the attitude dome was spinning wildly, even though his last glimpse of the planetoid in the viewer had shown no change in the ship’s relative orientation. But then Sulu felt as though his own internal gyros had lost alignment. The bridge spun around him, the deck rising up to meet him, and the blinding light gave way to black.
Sulu awoke to see Doctor Christine Chapel kneeling over him, scanning him with a medical probe. The side of his neck stung, telling him he’d been injected there with a spray hypo. “Christine, what . . .?”
She helped him sit up. “Most of us passed out. Some form of interphase sickness. We’ve been reviving the crew with the theragen derivative Doctor McCoy whipped up that time we tangled with the Tholians.” Sulu looked around to see Ron Liftig, a dark-haired lieutenant from the nursing staff, assisting in the revival of the rest of the bridge crew, including . . .
“Cella!” Chief Marcella DiFalco sat on the deck beside her navigator’s station, a hand against her bloodied forehead. Sulu rushed to her side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling weakly up at him. “It’s just a scrape.”
He clasped her shoulder. “Still, we should—”
“Mister Sulu!” Kirk’s voice rapped from behind him. “Damage report.”
Sulu shook himself, reminding himself of his priorities. He and Marcella had grown close in the months since V’Ger, sitting side-by-side every day at the forward console. But they had kept their romance relaxed and noncommittal, particularly once he’d become the acting first officer. They both understood that his duty had to come first. But he found it was harder than he’d expected.
Still, he had a responsibility to his captain, the one person he least wanted to disappoint. After giving DiFalco a tight smile, he stepped over to check the readouts at the damage control station, whose regular operator lay on the deck under Liftig’s care. “Shields and propulsion are off line,” he reported after studying the screens, “but no reports of serious damage. That surge burned out some of the sensors.”
DiFalco had resumed her station after Chapel had sprayed plastiskin on her scalp wound. “Attempting positional fix, sir,” she said in her faintly Italian lilt. Sulu trusted her to work around the damaged sensors while he coordinated with the repair teams below.
After a few moments, she had her report. “We’re still in orbit of the Vedala planetoid, Captain, but . . . we’re sectors away from where we were. Sir, we’re less than a parsec from Epsilon Eridani, practically in the Earth-Vulcan space lane.”
Kirk turned to communications, directly across the bridge from where Sulu worked. “Uhura?”
The elegant communications officer shook her mahogany-skinned head. “I’m not picking up any Federation transmissions, sir.”
“No navigational beacons, sir,” DiFalco confirmed.
Kirk tensed in his chair. “Chronometer readings?”
DiFalco glanced at the time readout alongside the astrogation dome. “Stardate 7583.6,” she said. “Same as before.”
T’Viss stepped down to the lower deck, acting as if she’d never been affected by the blackout, though she bore a livid green bruise on her sharp chin where it had struck the deck. “Verify against pulsar referents.”
Kirk nodded. “Do it.”
The chief ran the check. “Verified, sir.”
“So we’re still in our own time,” Sulu said to Kirk. “That’s something.”
“But not in the same place,” the captain replied, rising from the center seat. “And if there are no Federation signals . . .”
“Yes,” T’Viss said. “The most logical explanation is that the Vedala planetoid’s drives have generated another confluence event. We have been transposed into another macrorealm. Another timeline, you would say.”
“The same one the Onlies’ Earth came from?” Kirk asked.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps a different one altogether.”
“If we’d gone there,” Sulu asked, stepping closer to them, “wouldn’t we have swapped places with Earth again? Found ourselves in an empty orbit between Venus and Mars?”
“Not necessarily,” said T’Viss. “The transposition appears to be independent of spatial coordinates. And since this confluence was most likely triggered by our sensor scans, the state of the mechanism that generated it may have been altered. We would need more data to narrow the possibilities.” She sniffed. “This is the difficulty with experimental research. Too many messy variables.”
Suddenly the proximity alert sounded, and the interception alarm lights began flashing on consoles around the bridge. “Multiple ships approaching!” Lieutenant Chekov called from the weapons and defense station, his Russian accent combined with his post-interphase wooziness to make him harder to understand than usual. “We are being scanned.”
“Can you identify them?” Kirk asked.
“I . . . I’m not sure, sir.”
Sulu crossed the bridge to look over his shoulder at the tactical display. “Those are familiar,” he said after a moment. “They look like . . . Vulcan ringships from a century ago.”
“Yes . . . you’re right, sir,” Chekov said, always remembering proper chain of command even though they were best friends off duty. “But their power curves . . . those are not the readings for antique ships. Reading highly sophisticated weapons and shields.”
“What’s our shield status?” Kirk asked.
“Half power on deflectors,” Sulu told him. “Force field still off line.”
“Then let’s try to avoid a fight,” Kirk said. “Uhura, hailing frequencies.”
“We’re already being hailed, sir.” She gave him a look. “In Vulcan.”
“Open a channel.”
“Just a moment, sir,” Uhura said, her slender fingers fine-tuning the translator controls. “It’s an unusual dialect, not in our database. The computer’s extrapolating.”
Kirk frowned and glanced at Sulu. Before he could say anything, though, the viewscreen lit up with the image of a stern, gray-haired Vulcan male in a martial-looking uniform. “I am Commander Sekel of the security vessel Ahn-Woon. On behalf of the High Command of the Vulcan Protectorate, I require you to identify yourself.”
Kirk stepped forward. “I am Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.” He paused, then added, “Representing the United Federation of Planets.”
“No such government is known to exist.” Sekel peered closer. “What is your species? Halkan? Eminian? Zeon?”
The captain blinked. “Human. From a planet called Earth. You’re . . . unfamiliar with our species?”
But Sekel was looking over his shoulder now, noticing T’Viss. “You have a Vulcan among you! Is she a member of the Muroc’s crew?” He noted the bruise on her chin. “If you have harmed her in any way, you will face grave consequences.”
“Doctor T’Viss is a scientific consultant here of her own free will. I’m unfamiliar with this Muroc.”
“Your proximity to this Vedala planetoid argues otherwise. The Muroc was surveying an identical planetoid until shortly before that body disappeared. Now it has reappeared and the Muroc has vanished. And you are here with an injured Vulcan aboard your ship. And you expect me to believe you know nothing of this?”
“I assure you, Commander, we’re here by accident. I can . . . try
to give you a partial explanation, though we’re still trying to piece it together ourselves. You see, we come from—well, we were surveying this planetoid because, until recently, its orbit was occupied by an exact duplicate of our home planet, and . . .” On the screen, Sekel was rapidly losing patience. “I know that sounds a little strange, but you see, what we think happened is—”
“Enough! Allow me to demonstrate the seriousness of this matter!” He gestured to someone offscreen.
“Incoming fire!” Chekov called. “Raising shields!”
But it was too little, too late. The ship rocked under the impact. “That will be your only warning,” Sekel said. “Return the Muroc to us at once or face destruction!” He cut the channel, and the image of three red-brown ships like spindles inside hoops took his place on the screen.
“Chekov,” Sulu asked, “can we handle their fire?”
“Not for long in our current condition, sir.”
“There’s another concern, sir,” Uuvu’it piped up from sciences. “If the Vedala confluence devices were triggered by our scans, what might weapons fire do? We need to move the fight to more secure ground.”
Another weapons discharge struck the hull, more forceful this time. “I don’t want there to be a fight, Mister,” Kirk said. “Not over a petty misunderstanding.” Uuvu’it’s eating mouth grimaced; Betelgeusians hated to pass up a challenge. But he said nothing further.
On the screen, the ships were moving toward a tetrahedral englobement with the planetoid as the fourth vertex. “Ledoux, break for the opening before they close it. DiFalco, give her evasive options.”
“Chekov,” Sulu said, “concentrate deflector power to block their fire vectors.”
The security chief complied, but still, the next few bolts rocked the ship hard. Ledoux threw Sulu a look. “No stable field,” she said.
Sulu instantly understood. The weapons fire was disrupting the warp field before it could fully form. They needed a lull in the firing long enough to make their break. “Captain, we have to return fire. Break their formation.”
Kirk’s reluctance was clear, but he didn’t hesitate. “Chekov, target their weapons.”
“Aye, sir.” Seconds later, phaser fire lashed out from the aft emitters. “No effect, sir.”
“Ledoux,” Sulu said, “pattern Sulu-Gamma.”
Ledoux acknowledged, veering the ship to port and keelward. Chekov threw a grateful glance at Sulu, for as well as evading fire, the maneuver served to bring the ventral saucer and keel phaser banks to bear on the pursuers. One limitation of the new Enterprise design was that phaser coverage to aft was a little weak, just two single emitters over the hangar deck—plus a limited arc from the rearmost saucer emitters, but you had to be careful not to shoot your own nacelles. Some people said that wasn’t a problem because Starfleet didn’t run from fights; but of course the practical reality was that retreat was sometimes a preferable tactic even during a fight. So once Sulu and Chekov had identified the design flaw, they’d cooperated to devise a series of combat maneuvers to work around it.
With a larger number of phaser banks brought to bear, Chekov was able to break the pursuers’ firing pattern long enough for Ledoux to launch the Enterprise into warp. “They’re pursuing, sir,” Uuvu’it said.
“Continue evasive,” Kirk ordered.
Sulu moved to stand beside him. “Not very logical, are they? Pretty clear we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Yes . . . and that means we can’t count on any help. We’re on our own, and that means we have to shake those ships.”
Right, Sulu thought. First things first. He was sure that Kirk was already plotting three or four moves ahead, but for now, he was keeping his crew focused on the immediate problem.
And a problem it was. The ringships were powerful, able to match the Enterprise’s speed in its weakened condition and keep pace with its evasive maneuvers. And now that the Enterprise had returned fire, the Vulcans escalated. “Sir,” Chekov called, “they’re firing what looks like Romulan plasma torpedoes!”
Sulu did a double take. He remembered the damage those had inflicted on the old Enterprise eight years before, in its first encounter with a cloaked Romulan ship. They were devastating weapons, but with limitations. They moved at high warp speeds, essentially compact soliton warp bubbles filled with superheated plasma, but they couldn’t maneuver, so Chekov was able to pick them off with phasers, detonating them before impact.
Still, the pursuers kept on the Enterprise’s tail, and if this kept up much longer, the odds increased that the Vulcans would get a lucky shot in. But something was nagging at the back of Sulu’s mind, and finally it came to him. “Captain, I have an idea.”
Kirk met his gaze for a moment and nodded. “Take the helm, Mister Sulu.”
Ledoux smoothly vacated the chair when Sulu tapped her shoulder, and he slid into it just as easily. It felt like coming home. Here, he had all the answers and the decisions were easy. And so was the maneuver, for he simply put the ship on a straight vector and held it there, easing the manual throttle forward.
After a few moments, DiFalco leaned over and hissed, “This is your plan? Just keep going straight?”
“All that zigzagging was slowing us down.” He switched the main viewscreen to a tactical plot. “Chekov, for God’s sake, keep picking off those torpedoes!”
“But we can’t top warp seven in our condition!” DiFalco went on. “They’re still closing in!”
“We just have to get fast enough,” he told her.
“For what? Sir?”
The Vulcan ships were closing in now. They’d be close enough to synch warp fields and allow firing phasers within half a minute, and the plasma torpedoes were getting closer to the ship before Chekov was able to detonate them. He just had to hope the Vulcans hadn’t made any radical theoretical breakthroughs in warp propulsion in the past hundred years. “See, the reason the Federation abandoned coleopteric warp drives—ringships—is that they resist course changes at high warp factors,” he said, tapping in a course change on the console and hovering his finger over the execute switch. “Almost like a gyroscope. So all we have to do is get them going fast enough . . . and then . . .”
He waited until the last possible second, then hit the control, veering the Enterprise into the sharpest warp turn it could handle. The deep rumble of the engines rose to a high-pitched whine and stress alarms began to go off at the engineering console. The deck seemed to tilt beneath him as the shifting, asymmetrical warp field imparted an unbalanced gravitational vector on the ship within it, feeling uncannily like the g-forces imparted by a more conventional turn at sublight.
But after a few moments, the deck leveled out and the whine diminished. Sulu checked the tactical plot: the Vulcan ships were still heading in the opposite direction, decelerating and breaking formation as they tried to adapt to his maneuver. Sulu laughed. “There. We’ll be a parsec away before they can reverse course!”
DiFalco smiled at him in admiration. “Which should be far enough to get out of their sensor range and lose them. Brilliant.”
He grinned back, feeling more relaxed than he’d been in months. Like coming home.
Once the ship had successfully eluded pursuit for several hours, Kirk ordered Sulu to lay to in a small, nondescript brown dwarf system, using its compact belt of cometary debris for concealment. Then he assembled Sulu, McCoy, Uhura, Chekov, and T’Viss with him in the main briefing room to sort out their situation while Scotty oversaw repairs. “There’s no question,” he began, “that we’re in an alternate timeline. And since these Vulcans have never heard of the human race, it’s a good bet that we’re in the same timeline where the Onlies’ Earth originated.”
“A timeline where Earth’s civilization fell over three hundred years ago,” Sulu replied, seeing his point.
“So no Zefram Cochrane,” Chekov added, “no warp drive, and no Federation.”
“And no Jonathan Archer,” Uhura said. “He was the Earth c
aptain who helped the Vulcans recover the Kir’Shara, the lost writings of Surak.”
“That’s right,” Kirk said, gesturing with a finger as he dredged up his old history lessons. He’d never paid as much attention to non-Terran history as he should have; embarrassingly, he’d once been introduced to an alien simulacrum of Surak, the founder of Vulcan logic and one of the most famous historical figures in the known galaxy, and had momentarily forgotten the significance of the man’s name. In the wake of that, he’d tried to brush up. “Before then, the Vulcan High Command was practically a military government. Their fleet maintained order, policed this region of space, kept the Klingons at bay—but they also engaged in espionage, quashed dissident movements, and came close to war with the Andorians on more than one occasion.”
“Indeed,” said T’Viss. “The infamous Administrator V’Las escalated the militarization of the High Command and attempted to instigate a war with Andoria on false pretenses. T’Pau’s recovery of the Kir’Shara . . . with some assistance from Archer . . . proved instrumental in the disgrace of V’Las and the dissolution of the High Command.”
“As well as the social reforms that brought Vulcan civilization more fully in line with Surak’s original teachings,” Uhura said.
“Commander Sekel mentioned the High Command,” Chekov said slowly. “So here, it never fell. T’Pau’s reformation never happened. V’Las won. And so we get a universe where the Vulcans are just as warlike as he wanted.”
“‘Warlike’ is a strong word,” Uhura replied. “Even if V’Las wanted war, most Vulcans in his time still believed they were doing what was logically needed to keep peace and order. The Vulcans here may feel the same way. They do call themselves a protectorate, after all.”
“Sekel didn’t seem to have much use for logic,” Kirk told her. “Consider how much Vulcan society changed in a century under guidance from Surak and T’Pau. These Vulcans could’ve changed just as much in the other direction. By now they could be little different from the Romulans.”
Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History Page 16