by David Mack
“Traffic clearing—I’m taking the shot,” Chekov declared. He unleashed another phaser salvo at the Velibor, which dodged to starboard, then dived, skirting beneath and away from the phaser blasts in a fraction of a second. Then the bird-of-prey vanished inside another sea of clouds lingering over the coastline. In the scant seconds it took Sulu to switch from visual scanning to check his instruments for a sensor reading on the enemy ship’s position, it had come hard about, speeding straight toward the Enterprise, disruptors blazing.
“Evasive!” Kirk shouted, even as Sulu steered them clear of the incoming barrage. Violent shakes launched Sulu and the rest of his shipmates from their posts. They all landed on the deck as the lights blinked off and deafening rumbles reverberated through the hull.
Sulu and Chekov were only halfway back into their chairs as Kirk demanded, “Sulu, get back on their tail! Spock, damage reports!”
“Structural damage to the starboard nacelle pylon,” Spock said. “I suggest we head back to orbit as soon as possible.”
“Not while the Velibor’s harassing the surface at point-blank range,” Kirk said.
“Captain, may I remind you that our nacelle pylons are not designed to endure any degree of wind shear. In its compromised state, it—”
“Your concern is noted, Mister Spock, but we’re staying in the hunt. Helm, do we have a fix on the Velibor?”
Chekov responded first. “Tracking her now, Captain. She is still moving too fast for a manual phaser lock, and fire-control systems are sluggish.”
“Setting a new pursuit course,” Sulu said. “Thirty seconds to intercept.”
Visualizing the encounter to come, Sulu realized a direct assault on or pursuit of the Romulan ship would continue to prove futile. The smaller ship was just too nimble, both in vacuum and in atmosphere, for the Enterprise to match its hard turns and sudden changes of speed and direction. Going head to head is a losing battle for us. Time to change the game.
He leaned toward Chekov. “I have an idea. Target their port nacelle and fire.”
“Targeting.” Chekov thumbed the trigger. “Firing!”
Under his breath, Sulu said, “Yaw to starboard, roll to port and climb—” Half a second later, the Velibor executed that exact series of maneuvers as it dodged Chekov’s latest barrage.
The Russian gazed wide-eyed at Sulu. “How did you know?”
“I think I have their pilot figured out.” He swiveled his chair to look back at the captain. “Sir, we’ll never catch them following their trail. We have to get ahead of them—by figuring out where they’re going to go, then getting there first.”
“You feel up to that, Lieutenant?”
“I think so, sir. But I’ll have to act on instinct.”
Kirk nodded. “Understood. Maneuver at your own discretion.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Sulu reached over to Chekov’s side of the helm console and plugged coordinates into the firing panel. “Your first shots will be a feint, to force them into evasion mode. If I’m right, her next escape will be a starboard roll followed by an inverted dive—and this time, we’ll have phasers locked on her exit trajectory.”
Chekov cracked his knuckles, grinned, and set his hands into ready positions above the tactical controls. “Sounds good to me.”
Sulu patched in the last reserves of auxiliary and battery power to drive the impulse engines toward their best possible speed. On his console, the range to the Velibor shrank.
“Here we go,” Sulu said. “Pavel, on my mark, fire the warning shot off her port side.” The range ticked downward toward optimal firing range. He programmed his anticipated response maneuver to keep the Velibor in Chekov’s sights during its imminent escape attempt. “Three. Two. One. Fire!”
Two phaser beams, close together, ripped past the Velibor, an apparent near miss.
Then the bird-of-prey’s helm officer did exactly what Sulu had predicted: a starboard roll into an inverted dive—and directly into Chekov’s next two phaser blasts, which slashed a pair of black, smoking scars across the Velibor’s dorsal hull.
“Direct hit,” Spock declared. “The Velibor’s shields have collapsed, and her power levels are dropping.”
Sulu added, “She’s losing speed, Captain, and her maneuvers are turning sluggish.”
In the command chair, Kirk permitted himself a restrained fist pump of satisfaction. “Well done, gentlemen! One more hit like that and we’ve got them.” An overhead panel collapsed to Kirk’s left, mangling the empty chair in front of the engineering console and showering the deck with radiant phosphors. The captain grimaced at the mounting damage on his bridge. “As long as they don’t hit us first.”
* * *
What I wouldn’t give for a tricorder right now. Enveloped in smoke and surrounded by people overcome by panic, Joanna fought to keep Amanda Grayson from slipping into shock or, worse, a coma. The middle-aged human woman had a number of obvious external injuries from shrapnel or flames, but as Joanna palpated the woman’s midriff and listened for pained reactions, her greatest fear was that her patient had suffered internal injuries, the kind Joanna was neither trained nor equipped to treat.
It didn’t help her confidence that her every move was being observed by Sarek, who kneeled a couple of meters behind her. His distance was clearly meant as a gesture of respect, an effort to give her space to work. Unfortunately, even with her back turned she felt the weight of his gaze as she struggled to tend his wounded spouse. If his wife were giving birth, I could send him to fetch hot water and towels. Instead, I’m stuck with an audience.
After several minutes of frantic work, she had stanched the bleeding of Amanda’s myriad small punctures and lacerations. By touch alone she had pinpointed one broken rib, and she suspected Amanda’s left radius and ulna might also be fractured, though she was at a loss to identify any actual break in the bones. She turned away to paw through her partial medkit.
Amanda’s voice was a dry scratch of fear and pain. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking for this,” Joanna said, holding up a simple pen light. “I need to check for a concussion.” She switched on the light and pointed its narrow beam into Amanda’s eyes. “Normal response, no sign of ocular bleeding. That’s good.” She turned off the light and held up her fingers in a V shape. “How many fingers?”
“Two.”
“You’re doing great. Any headache, dizziness?”
A weak, small shake of her head. “Not yet. But I’m thirsty.”
“Don’t worry, that’s normal,” Joanna lied. She didn’t want to alarm Amanda by raising the possibility that her thirst was the result of internal bleeding. Especially when she had no way of knowing for certain whether that was—
Running footsteps, close by, somewhere beyond the curtains of smoke that surrounded Joanna and her two VIP patients. She called out, “Hey! Who’s there? We need help!” To her relief, the sprinter halted, then changed direction toward her.
From the gray veil emerged a familiar face. The young Bolian man was one of the hospital’s second-year medical students. “Um—” It took Joanna a few seconds to dredge up his name from her memory. “Nett, right?” He nodded, so she continued. “I need a full medkit. Dammit, even a working hypospray and some painkillers.”
He hurried to her and kneeled on the other side of Amanda. “I don’t have much, just a few basics. I’m doing my psychiatric residency right now.”
“What about a tricorder? You still carry one on psych rotation?”
“Sure.” Nett retrieved his medical tricorder from under his white lab coat and handed it to Joanna. As she took it from him, her pale fingertips brushed the back of his blue hand, and for the blink of an eye, the hue of his cheeks deepened from azure to indigo—confirming what Joanna had suspected for the past month: I knew it! He has a crush on me!
She switched on the tricorder and
made a fast scan of Amanda’s torso. The first pass revealed nothing unusual, but Joanna wanted to be certain. She reset the device for a deep-tissue scan and started over. It took several seconds for the tricorder to assess Amanda’s vital organs, nervous system, and blood chemistry. When the analysis appeared on the device’s compact display, Joanna was relieved to see healthy results. “Good news,” she told Amanda with a smile. “No sign of internal damage. You’re going to be just fine.”
Amanda set her hand on Joanna’s forearm with a feather-light grip. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned to share the good news with Sarek. “She’s all right, Mister Ambassador.”
The Vulcan looked weary beyond words. He nodded once. “Good,” he said, as if with his last breath. Then his eyelids closed, and he slumped sideways, deadweight surrendering to gravity. He landed in a heap on the trampled grass before Nett and Joanna could catch him.
In a flash they both were at Sarek’s side, hands and voices trembling. Nett stared at the unconscious diplomat with the terror of a man who expected to be blamed for a tragedy based on nothing more than his proximity to it. “What happened? He was fine a second ago!”
“Vulcans are very good at hiding their symptoms.” Joanna focused the tricorder on Sarek. “He had me fooled too.” Data packed the display. “Dammit! Internal bleeding!”
“Where?” Nett plundered his medkit for tools.
Joanna refined the analysis. “Inferior vena cava.”
“All right, pull down his collar.” The medical student loaded a hypospray, then pressed it to Sarek’s throat, which Joanna had obligingly exposed. A sharp hiss announced the injection. “That’ll slow the bleeding and keep his blood oxygenated until we get him into surgery.”
“And how do we do that? Got a stretcher hiding in that bag?”
Before Nett could answer Joanna’s sarcastic jab, Amanda interrupted, “What’s wrong with my husband? Is it his heart again?”
“No, ma’am,” Nett said. “Shrapnel pierced his abdomen and hit a major vein. He’s bleeding internally and needs surgery.” He stood and handed his medkit to Joanna. “I’ll round up a stretcher and someone to help us carry him. Watch his vitals on the tricorder. If his bleed rate increases, give him another dose from the hypo. It’s loaded and ready to go.”
“Got it.” She added quickly, “Hurry.”
“Count on it.” He ran toward the hospital; within seconds the drifting smoke on the quad had swallowed him up, leaving Joanna alone between Sarek, whose wounds she couldn’t heal, and Amanda, whose fears she couldn’t calm.
And for the first time in years, Joanna wished her father was at her side.
* * *
The only thing failing faster than the Velibor itself was the morale of its crew. Sadira smelled the fear in the air of the command deck: all around her, the Romulan officers were abandoning their faith in the mission, losing their nerve to soldier on. All she could do was try to be an example for the others to follow. “Continue evasive maneuvers! Get us back over the campus!”
At the helm, Toporok did his best to obey, but across the main console her orders were met by Centurion Mirat’s furious stare. “Damn you, Major! Can’t you see we’re finished?”
“Not until the mission is accomplished.”
Kurat was back at the tactical console, his old post, having taken over for the slain Lieutenant Pilus. “Major! We’re losing power to the weapons! Disruptors at one-quarter power.”
“Focus both banks on the same target, and choose your shots with care.”
The acting second-in-command struggled against his console. “It might not be enough. Parts of the surface shield are back online, and the Klingons have moved into underground shelters.” His dismay deepened. “And they’ve scattered, sir.”
He relayed the sensor readings to the command console. Sadira felt the centurion’s ire as he observed the same discouraging facts she did. “They’ve split up, Major, and they’re moving farther apart by the minute. We can’t target them all.”
Crushing blasts from the Enterprise’s phasers battered the Velibor. Failing consoles filled the command deck with weltering light as the droning of the impulse engines cycled into longer, sadder frequencies. Toporok looked up from the flight console. “We’re losing speed!”
“Dive into the attack,” Sadira said. “Let the planet’s gravity work for us.”
“Belay that,” Mirat said. “Break off and head for orbit.”
“Ignore the centurion,” Sadira snapped. “Hold your course!”
The centurion growled through clenched teeth, “This is a suicide mission!”
“We all knew we might be asked to die for Romulus.”
“For the Empire, yes. Not for you and your mad ambition.” He opened an internal comm channel. “Ranimir, decouple the Transfer Key from—”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Sadira cut in, closing the channel as she spoke.
Mirat pointed at the tactical display. “Our gunner can’t target all the Klingons before the Enterprise takes us down, and we can’t outrun her with that infernal contraption of yours eating all our power! We need to shut it down before it’s too late.”
“For what? Surrender?” She had come too far to back down. “I just need one more shot.”
“What difference will one more shot make?”
“That depends on its target, doesn’t it?”
He circled the main console to confront her, nose to nose. “You’re insane! Your weapon can’t target more than one person at a time, or a small area, and any shot you take will be a death sentence for this ship! Let go of your delusions, Major! This is over.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Centurion, that decision isn’t yours to make.” She took a deep breath and savored the acrid bite of burnt wiring and the sting of hot smoke; it hurt to take it in, yet she had never felt more alive than she did in that moment, facing death’s morbid grin. “Helm, start our next attack run, best possible speed. Tactical, target—”
Kurat stood back from his post. “Centurion, I am relieving the major of command. Collect her sidearm and take her into custody.”
Before Mirat could reach for Sadira’s disruptor, she had it aimed at his face. “One more step and I’ll kill you and both the men behind you. Now . . . hand me your weapon.” As she extended her open hand to Mirat, she kept one eye on Kurat. “I see you tensing, Kurat. Reach for your weapon and I promise you and the centurion will be dead before you pull that trigger.”
Mirat handed over his sidearm. Everyone on the bridge froze, and Sadira knew that was a disaster waiting to happen. “Nevira, take over for Kurat. Toporok, continue the attack run.” She aimed her newly acquired disruptor at Kurat. “Draw your weapon with two fingers, set it on the deck, and kick it over to me.” The young officer’s movements were exaggerated in their sloth. “Hurry up.” He put his disruptor on the deck and hit it with the side of his boot. It skittered across the deck to Sadira, who trapped it under her left foot. “Good. Now go get Commander Creelok and bring him here, on the double. Move!”
Kurat was more than happy to flee the command deck. As he left, Sadira pivoted atop the captured sidearm to keep the entire command crew in her sights. “Back to stations, all of you.”
The centurion backed away from her, then sidestepped to his place on the other side of the main console. “What do you think you’re doing, Major?”
“Whatever is necessary—just as I swore I would.”
Nevira fumbled to make sense of the tactical controls. “Trying to lock in Klingon targets,” she said. “Signals are weak. Too much interference. I can’t—”
Then came the deathblow—a brutal direct hit by the Enterprise’s formidable phaser banks. Knowing it had been inevitable made it no less dispiriting for Sadira as the Velibor’s key systems all went dark around her. Next came the violent lurch
of inertial damper failure, followed by the sickening free fall that signaled the bird-of-prey was in an uncontrolled spin through the atmosphere. At last, another jarring jerk as its tumbles were halted—and the hull of the Velibor creaked and whimpered under a strain it hadn’t been made to withstand.
Despite being a hostage in all but name, Mirat continued to wield the authority of command. “Damage reports! What hit us? All stations, check in!”
“Two phaser hits to our primary reactor,” Nevira said. “Main power is gone. Shields are down. Weapons are offline.”
Toporok gave up trying to coax or coerce the helm back into action. “We’re in a tractor beam,” he said. “We’re being towed out of the atmosphere.”
“Don’t fight it,” Mirat said. “You’ll just shred us if you do.”
For once Sadira concurred with Mirat’s counsel, but not for the same reason. She found a working internal comm channel to engineering. “Ranimir, respond!”
An unfamiliar voice replied, “Ranimir’s dead. This is Lieutenant Canok.”
“Canok, this is Major Sadira. I need all remaining power, every reserve, every battery, patched into the Transfer Key immediately. That’s an order!” She saw Mirat inhale as a prelude to voicing an objection—which she silenced by raising her disruptor as a warning.
After a delay filled with noises concussive and sibilant, Canok responded, “Understood. We’ll have all reserves patched into the Key in sixty seconds. Engineering out.”
Diagonal slashes of static on the viewscreen resolved into a shaky image of the ventral aft quarter of the Enterprise, as seen through the silvery blue radiance of its tractor beam.
If only we still had weapons, this would be an ideal angle from which to target their antimatter containment pods, Sadira reflected.
Her musing was cut short by the return of Kurat and Creelok. The commander looked around his smoking, shattered bridge in horror. “What have you done to my ship?”