“Then there’s a chance we can eject the antimatter pods, sir,” came a Scottish brogue over the device’s speaker. “But it’s a huge gamble. We still can’t be sure the Vedala drive itself won’t blow.”
“It’s all we’ve got, Scotty. Stand by.”
Dulmur gestured to Lucsly to follow him down the ladder. It was hard for their phase discriminators to keep them solid long enough to descend safely, but they were still sufficiently in phase to be heard, and the isolation suits’ sound dampeners weren’t meant for such close quarters.
Once they were out of Kirk’s earshot, Dulmur said, “Kirk can still work the controls. His people are still in phase with the ship. Must be since they’re from the same time.”
Lucsly stared in horror. “You can’t be saying . . .”
“Lucsly, it’s our only chance.”
“It’s Kirk. Giving him knowledge of future technology is like giving a flamethrower to a pyromaniac!”
“Are you sure?” Dulmur urged. “Or is our image of Kirk as big a myth as our image of Director Grey? Think about what we read in those records. If anything, the James Kirk in those logs and transcripts understood the dangers of tampering with time as well as anyone in his era could have.”
“Seventeen violations, Dulmur! No, eighteen! Maybe more!”
“That doesn’t mean he was reckless. It means he was experienced enough with time travel, thanks to the accidents that got him involved with it in the first place, that he became Starfleet’s first choice for dealing with it.” Dulmur laughed, a bit hysterically. “Hell, who are we to judge him at a time like this? We’ve spent our whole careers trying to avoid time travel! We’re out of our comfort zone! But this is old news for Kirk! He’s the expert here! I say we trust him!”
But Lucsly still resisted. “Lucsly to Everett, have you been monitoring?”
“. . . here, Lucs . . . barely rea . . .”
“Please advise. Can you suggest any other options?”
But the Everett’s signal dissolved into static—a type of static Dulmur thought he recognized. “Lucsly, doesn’t that sound like—”
“Lucsly to Everett, come in, please!”
A new voice barked at them—in Klingon. It must have been an unusual dialect, for it took a moment for their translators to catch up. “—authorized to be on . . . channel! Let alone speaking . . . outlawed language! Identify yourself, human slave!”
The agents exchanged a look. “Another Compact ship?” Dulmur asked, knowing the answer.
“No,” Lucsly said, checking his tricorder. “It’s from our side of the confluence. Our own era. And I’m not reading our ships there.”
“Can Kirk’s people hear it?”
“I think it’s mostly out of their phase, like us.” He worked the tricorder. “I’m jamming the signal. Nobody with twenty-third-century tech should be able to hear it.”
“Attention! Your signal has been traced and vessels . . . route to apprehend you! Explain . . . you come into possession of a Federation relic and perhaps we . . . not annihilate you along with it!”
“Our timeline’s been overwritten,” Dulmur realized. “The Compact, they must’ve gone through into the past, given modern technology to the Klingons of that time and let them conquer the Federation!” The ship trembled again, still under fire from the Compact ship, but that didn’t matter. They might be subjectively experiencing a point in time before the Compact ships broke through the confluence into 2275, but the occurrence of that event would be in the past of the 2383 side. The agents were protected within the confluence zone, just as Kirk had been within the Guardian’s influence . . . but everything they knew was gone.
“But the quantum interference is still there in the signal,” Lucsly said. “That means the timeline’s still in flux, the merger hasn’t resolved yet. The original quantum information of our timeline is still present, just suppressed. As long as we have the opportunity to prevent the change in this timeframe, our own timeline state is still retrievable.”
Dulmur prayed his partner’s grasp of temporal theory was as sound as ever. “But you know what that means, partner.” He glanced up the ladder. “The only person who can help us now is—”
“All right. Don’t rub it in.” Lucsly sighed. “Only one of us should make the contact. Minimize the variables.”
Dulmur could practically hear him grinding his teeth. “You want me to do it?”
Lucsly set his jaw and began to remove his isolation suit. “No. I’m not going to hide from this. Besides, I want to keep a very close eye on him—just in case.”
“Okay,” Dulmur said, hoping this was the right choice. Who knew? Maybe it would do Lucsly good to face his personal demon.
But he was glad Lucsly was unarmed.
Kirk stared in dismay as his fingers passed through the manual controls as if through water. A moment later they were solid to his touch again, but he knew they might not stay that way. He still had nightmares about being trapped in the interspace void, helpless to defend his crew against the Tholians. “Scotty, the ship’s going into interphase.”
“Aye. We’ve got to work fast, sir. The longer we wait, the shorter the time we’ll be able to touch the controls. Pretty soon we’ll have to evacuate no matter what.”
Another burst of disruptor fire punctuated Scott’s sentence. “If we even last that long,” Kirk muttered. Normally he had every confidence in Spock, Scotty, and the rest of his crew. But this Vedala technology was so far ahead of them. He had to face the fact that there might be nothing they could do to prevent a rift from forming. If it did, maybe there was a chance they could defend it. He began to catalog the resources available on his side: the Enterprise, Delgado’s station, the neutron star itself. Maybe there was a way—
He whirled, reacting to movement in his peripheral vision. A man stood there, a tall, narrow-faced man with wavy gray hair, gray eyes, and a dark gray civilian suit in an unfamiliar style. “Who are you?” Kirk demanded, knowing all the timeship’s personnel had been accounted for. “Where did you come from?”
“I can’t tell you that,” the man said. The look in his heavy-lidded eyes was oddly reluctant, reminding Kirk of the look in his brother Sam’s eyes when their father had ordered him to muck out the stables. “All I can tell you . . . is that there is a way to return this ship to your own timeframe.”
Kirk furrowed his brows, seizing on that. “My own timeframe? Are you saying you’re from the future?”
The gray man winced. “That’s not important, Captain. Time is of the essence. I can show you the procedure, but you must act before you lose phase synchronization with the timeship.”
“Can’t you do it yourself?” Kirk probed.
“No,” the gray man said. “For many reasons. Please . . . I need you to trust me. Just as I need to trust you not to reveal any of this.”
Kirk studied the man’s eyes, gauging him. He was reluctant to hold Kirk’s gaze, but not from dishonesty; it seemed more like anger, even fear. The man desperately did not want to be here, and it seemed that Kirk himself was a large part of the reason why. But nonetheless he needed to be here, needed to make this contact, even though it was the last thing he desired. Whoever he was, there was as much at stake for him as for Kirk.
“All right,” the captain said. “Tell me what to do.”
Reluctantly, the gray man showed Kirk a device in his hand. It looked like a type of tricorder, but smaller, more advanced than Starfleet issue. “The instructions are here. I’ll talk you through them.”
Kirk moved in to study the small screen, forcing himself to focus on the instructions rather than the questions he was dying to ask. Under the guidance of the gray man, he operated the controls as best he could, though the moments in which the console lost tangibility were growing longer. He began to grasp that the plan was to use the old Enterprise engines to create a field that would anchor them to the neutron star—an elegant solution. Scott’s voice came over his communicator. “Captain, what
are you doin’ to the controls?”
“No time to explain, Scotty. Just follow my lead.”
“Aye,” Scott breathed a moment later. “I see what you’re tryin’ to do. If it works, it could draw us back right enough. But how—”
“Questions later, Scotty, that’s an order.”
While Kirk adjusted the engine output with the manual controls, Scott, Chekov, and Gabler worked below to transfer power, adjust the intermix balance, and do whatever else was necessary to keep the new configuration stable. The gray man’s tricorder beeped encouragingly. “We’ve got field coherence,” he said to Kirk. But after a moment he frowned. “But it’s not enough. The resonance with the neutron star is too weak. Damn it, it’s not going to work!”
The ship rocked, sending Kirk staggering into the forward wall. The gray man fell forward, his flailing arm passing clear through the console, confirming Kirk’s suspicions about why he couldn’t make the adjustments himself.
“Enterprise to Captain Kirk,” came Spock’s voice over his communicator. “Force-field power is down to thirty percent. And the instability of the confluence zone is worsening. Recommend we beam you aboard and retreat.”
“No, Spock, we’re close to a solution. Stand by.” The gray man was clambering to his feet. “Sorry I can’t help you up,” Kirk said after shutting off the outgoing channel. “Is there still a chance? Any way we can intensify the field?”
“The problem isn’t on this end,” the mystery man told him. “There isn’t a strong enough anchor on the other side.”
A thought occurred to Kirk. “Is there any chance you could generate a field like this on your end? Pull the ship into your timeframe after my people evacuate?”
The gray man fell very still. “There’s no help coming from that quarter, Captain.” He slumped. “We’ve failed.”
Kirk grinned. “I don’t give up that easily, mister.” He worked his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”
“Spock here, sir.”
“Spock, are you scanning the gravitomagnetic field this ship is generating?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Is it possible to create a field of the same phase and opposite polarity with the Enterprise’s current warp engines?”
The gray man stared. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“The only thing I can,” Kirk murmured back.
“Difficult, sir,” Spock said after a moment. “As you know, the parameters that enabled our former engines to generate such a field were unique.”
“Spock, it was your theoretical restart formula that turned them into a time machine in the first place. If anyone can do it again, it’s you and Scotty.”
Now Scott’s voice came over the open channel. “We can sure as hell try, sir! Mister Spock, the others can handle things here. Beam me back aboard!”
“Do it, Spock.”
“Acknowledged.” Kirk glanced out the grille and saw Scott dematerialize. Since both ships were inside the Enterprise’s force-field bubble, there was no need to lower it first.
The gray man was staring at Kirk, aghast. “Do you realize what the consequences will be if they succeed in duplicating these engines’ unique properties?”
“I do, sir. And that’s something I’ll have to deal with when the time comes. But I have a suspicion that you realize, better than I do, what the consequences will be if they don’t.”
The gray man tugged uneasily at his gray collar.
U.S.S. Enterprise
It was most inconvenient, Spock thought, to be forced to contend with the effects of enemy fire while attempting to formulate and apply new principles of physics.
The problem before him was most fascinating, its ramifications far-reaching. The new warp configuration that Captain Kirk had somehow known to program into the timeship’s drive system, which Commander Scott had relayed to Spock on his return, offered new insight into the frustratingly incomplete models of chroniton generation that the DTI and Admiral Delgado’s scientists had managed to formulate over the past eight years. The specific way in which the timeship’s engines had been modified to produce the desired alterations in their gravitomagnetic field suggested underlying equations that, assuming they were correct, pinpointed which properties of those engines’ plasma stream interacted with which properties of the warp coils to induce chroniton emissions. And with such a mathematical model, it became possible to extrapolate how to generate a chroniton field with a different set of warp engines.
That was what he and Commander Scott were attempting to do now. While Scott and his engineers worked on the main engineering level to adjust the injector timing, chamber pressure, and magnetic field configuration to create resonance pulses within the intermix chamber that should result in the appropriate plasma stream modification, Spock was a level above in the engineering computer bay, attempting to tune the flux constriction, coil synchronization, and temperature within the warp nacelles to emulate the coil configuration of the timeship’s nacelles.
Unfortunately, it was difficult to make such delicate adjustments when the controls beneath his hands and the deck beneath his feet repeatedly shuddered as disruptor impacts on the force-field bubble induced feedback pulses in its generator coils, and as the ship’s power surged and shifted unpredictably in response to the ever-increasing power demands of the shields and weapons. Given the imminent threat, Spock had authorized the firing of torpedoes against the Thorn of Justice, on the principle that the energy release from a torpedo would be localized at a greater distance from the timeship than a phaser discharge and thus do less to destabilize the confluence field. But the maximum safe yield for the torpedoes was low, and though Ensign Nizhoni’s reputation as a sharpshooter was well-earned, the hostile vessel’s weapon ports were abundant and quite effectively shielded, and she had only managed to disable a fraction of them.
A new shock to the vessel caused Spock to lose his balance. Staggering back, he spun and caught himself on the rail surrounding the scintillating intermix shaft. He raised an eyebrow, realizing the sound and sensation was that of a beam impact against the ship’s conventional, skintight deflector shields. “Force field is beginning to fail!” Lieutenant Cleary called from the foyer console, confirming Spock’s analysis. “Partial penetration of enemy fire!”
“Concentrate power to forward deflectors!” Sulu ordered from the bridge. Spock winced at the loud bark of the torpedo tubes directly over his head launching their projectiles toward the hostile vessel.
“Mister Spock!” Scott called up from the warp drive control console adjacent to the intermix shaft. “Even if we can keep up the force field long enough to complete the adjustments, you realize we’ll have to leave the confluence zone to give the timeship the anchor it needs!” Another hull impact came close to pitching Spock forward over the rail. He braced himself more carefully. Another torpedo discharge assailed his sensitive hearing. “They’ll be defenseless!”
“Scotty,” Kirk’s voice came over the exterior channel, “we’re doing what we can to regain shield control over here. Gabler’s trying to shunt impulse power to the deflector grid, but this damned chimera of a ship wasn’t put together with that in mind.”
“Spock, we’ve got to fire everything we’ve got at that futuristic behemoth!” Scott cried. “It’s not like it can make things any worse at this point!”
“It would leave us with insufficient power to ensure the success of the engine modifications, Mister Scott,” Spock replied. “There are still many uncertain variables in play. We need as large a cushion of available power as possible.”
“Aye, there is that,” Scott conceded. “But what can we do to protect the timesh—”
The next impact struck even harder, and a power surge blew out a deflector coupling on the level below Scott. An engineer screamed and fell to the deck, his hands and face burned, and Chief Ross called for a medical team while Crewman Chezrava moved in with a fire extinguisher. The lights in the engineering section flickered. “Force
field down to eleven percent!” Cleary called, and Spock considered that a more fundamental question was, What can we do to protect our own ship?
As Spock might have expected, Kirk had an answer to that. “Uhura, patch me through to the Thorn.” A moment later: “Attention, Thorn of Justice. This is Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. In a few moments we will begin to collapse the interspatial confluence our ships now occupy. If you remain within this zone when that occurs, your ship will most likely be disintegrated. At best, you will be trapped in a place and time not your own.” A bluff, since they could not engage the process until after the Thorn stopped its attack—but Captain sh’Aqabaa did not know that.
“We will take our chances!” the proud Andorian commander declared. “There is nothing left for us there in any case, unless we take your ships!”
More impacts rocked the ship. White-hot droplets of molten metal rained down the shaft from above; the status screens on the walls of the computer chamber showed that the impulse deflection crystal at the top of the shaft had sustained damage. Now they would be unable to move except on thrusters—insufficient to evade the Thorn even if they could abandon Timeship Two.
But then Sulu called from the bridge. “Mister Spock! Another ship is incoming from beyond the confluence! It’s not KAC . . . sir, it’s firing on the Thorn!”
Spock stepped onto the lift platform and rode it down to the main level. “Transfer it here, Mister Sulu.” Cleary made way for Spock as the main viewer feed appeared on the circular monitor of the foyer console. The incoming vessel firing on the Thorn of Justice was merely an indistinct blob of light at first, but its effect on the other vessel was evident. Bright flares erupted on the Thorn and its disruptor fire first transferred to the new ship and then died out altogether. “Nice!” called Ensign Nizhoni. “Sir, it’s precision fire. Taking out their weapons and propulsion . . . minimal damage otherwise. I’d like to meet their gunner.”
Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History Page 26