“Get me a new course,” Sulu said, but an instant later, it appeared on his panel. He worked his controls to bring Courageous onto its new heading. When he looked back at the viewer, he saw the alien vessel. “Hold your fire,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot toward the ground.” From their height and the angle at which they approached the surface, a photon torpedo miss would likely not hit the city, but Sulu could not take that chance. Instead, he drove Courageous faster.
A huge bang resounded in the auxiliary control room. “What was that?” asked the science officer, but Sulu already knew.
“We just lost structural integrity,” Ramsey said.
In his mind, Sulu saw pieces of the hull peeling away from Courageous as it flung itself toward the planet. On the viewer, he saw the gap with the alien vessel closing. “Be ready,” he told Jackson. “As soon as we overtake it.” Out in space, the alien vessels had utilized their impressive maneuverability to evade weapons strikes. Sulu didn’t think that would work inside an atmosphere.
He increased speed. On the viewscreen, he saw Courageous pull even with the alien vessel. “Now,” he cried, and a volley of photon torpedoes lashed out into its hull. “Keep firing,” Sulu said. “Every last photon we have.”
But one of the torpedoes Jackson had fired had been the last one they would need. The alien vessel exploded.
• • •
“Captain, the Courageous has destroyed the alien vessel,” Spock said.
“Now we just need to complete our business up here,” Kirk said, buoyed by Captain Caulder’s success. If more alien vessels don’t suddenly show up.
“Our aft shields just collapsed,” Spock said.
“Noted,” Rahda said. With only one adversary, protecting one side of the ship would be far easier than with two. But if the starboard shields also collapsed—
• • •
Sulu righted Courageous relative to the planet’s gravity and slowed the ship’s downward velocity. To Ramsey, he said, “Get me a flat piece of ground to set down on and give me a trajectory. Ten kilometers from the city.” With the failure of the structural integrity field and the ship sliced open, Courageous could not safely return to space.
“Yes, sir,” said the navigator.
While Sulu waited, he looked around at the young officers who had worked with him. “Good job, everybody,” he said. They all thanked him. They all looked exhausted.
Once Ramsey had provided a place to land and a course by which to reach it, Sulu worked the helm to bring Courageous onto the new heading. Once he had, he pulled the communicator from the back of his waist. He knew that the alien vessels had jammed transmissions out in space, but he hoped that wouldn’t be true down on the planet.
Flipping the communicator open, he said, “Courageous to Governor Velura.”
• • •
The bridge continued to rumble beneath the alien attacks. The deck quaked. The battle in space had raged for nearly two hours, with Enterprise and the alien vessel trading blows like weary heavyweights in the final round of a bout.
Except that we’re not landing nearly as many punches, Kirk thought, beset by his own fatigue. The incredible agility of the alien vessel had allowed it to avoid many of Enterprise’s weapons strikes. At the same time, the aliens’ missiles lacked the destructive power of phasers and photon torpedoes, allowing Enterprise to withstand massive numbers of direct hits. But like drops of water eroding solid rock, so many missiles landing on its shields had taken their toll. Enterprise’s aft shields had failed, as had the starboard shields, forcing Rahda to conduct her continued assault with one hand tied behind her back, as best she could keeping the ship’s port side facing their attacker. They had tried every feint, every maneuver, everything they knew to administer a killing blow—or, short of that, a crippling one—but nothing had worked.
And then suddenly, the bridge stilled. The sound of the ship’s phasers firing continued, but the crash of missile strikes and the trembling of the deck ceased. Kirk stared at the viewscreen, where the alien ship had gone still. The climax of a book he had once read, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, occurred to him: after invading Earth and conquering humanity, an alien race falls victim to terrestrial bacteria. Wells wrote of the stillness that descended when the Martians fell. The present circumstances reminded Kirk of that, though the captain knew that the aliens the Enterprise crew battled had not suddenly perished.
“Spock?” he said.
“Our sensors cannot penetrate their hull,” Spock told the captain, “but I believe they have exhausted their supply of missiles.”
Kirk stood up, astonished that such a simple thing could end the battle. Enterprise had used the last of its photon torpedoes an hour earlier. “Rahda,” Kirk said. “Cease fire.”
An unnatural quiet seemed to fall over the bridge like a veil. “Let’s see if they’ll talk to us now,” Kirk said. “Uhura, open hailing frequencies.”
“Hailing frequencies open, sir.”
“Alien vessel, this is Captain James Kirk of the U.S.S.—” On the main screen, the alien ship streaked away, racing quickly from view.
“Spock?”
“They are headed to the planet,” Spock said. “Toward the city.”
• • •
Enterprise rushed down through the atmosphere, just as Courageous had done. But the second alien vessel flew vertically, headed for the city from directly above it. As a consequence, Kirk could not employ Enterprise’s phasers to attempt to destroy the attacker, for fear that a miss would strike the city. And while the alien ship had avoided destruction out in space by evading many of Enterprise’s weapons, Kirk wondered if it could do so within the atmosphere. He had one more punch to throw.
“Rahda, deploy the tractor beam,” Kirk said.
On the viewer, a white beam lanced from Enterprise and struck the alien vessel. “Slow us down, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. The labored sounds of the overburdened hull groaned through the bridge as Enterprise tried to restrain the alien vessel.
“They are attempting to shear away,” Spock said.
Kirk hit the intercom button. “Bridge to engineering.”
“Scott here, Captain,” came the reply.
“I need all available power to the tractor beam,” Kirk said.
“Aye, sir,” Scotty said.
“Kirk out.”
The sounds of strain increased.
“They are pushing their engines to the limit,” Spock said.
“Then push ours,” Kirk said.
“Uhura, can you get through to the Bajorans?” Kirk asked.
“Trying, sir,” Uhura said, and then, “Negative. The aliens are continuing to jam transmissions.”
“Spock, if we can contact the Bajorans, have them evacuate the city . . .”
“I am not sure how long we can maintain this position,” Spock said.
“However long it is, Spock, the Bajorans might be able to move at least some of their people out of danger,” Kirk said. The captain activated the intercom once more. “Bridge to Hadley,” he said, contacting one of the ship’s helmsmen.
“Hadley here, sir,” he replied.
“Lieutenant, report to the hangar deck.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes after Hadley had departed Enterprise in a shuttlecraft, a heavy whine rose, interrupted by the sound of the boatswain’s whistle.
“Scott to bridge.”
Kirk activated the intercom. “Kirk here,” he said. “Go ahead, Scotty.”
“Captain, the engines canna take much more of this,” said the chief engineer. “If we burn them out, then either that ship or gravity is gonna drag us down.”
“Scotty, stand by,” Kirk said, then to Spock, “Do you see any movement down there?”
Spock examined his sensors. “No, sir.”
By that point, the captain had hoped to see the Bajoran support ships moving in to begin evacuating the city.
“Spock, how many people in the city right
now?”
“Scanning,” Spock said, leaning over his hooded viewer. When the first officer stood back up, Kirk saw something he’d only rarely seen on the Vulcan’s face: a look of surprise. “Captain, the city is empty.”
“What? How can that be?” Kirk asked, incredulous himself. “Are the aliens interfering with your sensors?”
Spock bent over his viewer once more. “Negative,” he said. “Scanning the area, I am reading clusters of people . . . all at a considerable distance from the city.”
“They already evacuated,” Kirk said, and then realized that the inhabitants must have begun doing so after Courageous prevented the first ship from crashing into the city.
“Lieutenant Rahda,” Kirk said. “Release the tractor beam.” On the viewer, the shimmering white rays connecting Enterprise to its attacker vanished. The alien ship immediately hurtled forward and was quickly lost to sight.
Seconds later, a massive explosion erupted in Pillagra.
Eighteen
“Captain, I have it on sensors,” Spock reported from the science station.
“Well done,” Kirk said. “Transfer the coordinates to navigation.”
Spock worked his controls, and then Chekov said, “I’ve got them, sir. Laying in a course.”
“Ensign Walking Bear, take us there,” Kirk told the relief helmsman. “Full impulse.” After the tremendous effort Lieutenant Rahda had put in during the battle with the alien vessels, the captain had sent her to her quarters for a well-deserved rest.
“Full impulse, yes, sir,” Walking Bear said. The drone of the impulse engines rose.
The stars on the viewscreen veered to one side as Enterprise started on its new course. It took only ten minutes to find their quarry. The small alien vessel that Enterprise had damaged during the battle floated uncontrolled in space.
“Are you still unable to penetrate their ship with sensors?” Kirk asked.
“Affirmative,” Spock said.
“Ensign Walking Bear, prepare to deploy the tractor beam,” Kirk said. The captain remained determined to find out who had perpetrated such violence against the Bajorans, as well as against the crews of Enterprise and Courageous, and he wanted to know why. Since his crew could not scan the aliens aboard the vessel, they could not transport them from their ship. Though he knew he would have to exercise caution, Kirk intended to haul the vessel back to the planet, then physically take its crew into custody.
“Before we take them in tow,” Kirk said, “let’s try this one more time. Uhura, open hailing frequencies.”
“Hailing frequencies, aye,” Uhura said.
“This is James Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise,” the captain said for what felt like the hundredth time in his attempts to speak with the aliens. “Please respond.”
“Nothing, Captain,” Uhura said.
“No, of course not,” Kirk said. “Alien vessel, we intend to take your ship with us in tow. You will be remanded to Starfleet security and Federation custody, where you will no doubt be charged with crimes—”
Unexpectedly, the main screen blinked, the view of the alien vessel tumbling through space replaced by the visage of an unfamiliar being. It wore what seemed to be a formfitting silver shell that looked like metallic armor, though the covering possessed a fluid-like appearance. The color of the being’s face closely matched that of its armor. It had large, golden eyes, fluted around the edges. When it spoke, several seconds passed before the ship’s translator succeeded in deciphering the alien language, and in the interim, Kirk heard a high, melodic voice. The translator picked up the being’s words in midsentence.
“—permit you to do so. We do not know if you falsely worship the True, the Unnamable, but you have picked over the bones of those who do, and then protected them.” Kirk did not recognize the references to the True or to the Unnamable, but he understood that the alien spoke of the Enterprise crew visiting the dead Bajoran cities, and then protecting them at Pillagra. “You have raised weapons against the Ascendants. You will pay for your transgressions.”
“I do not know who you speak of as the True,” Kirk said, “but our beliefs need not intrude on your—”
“Your beliefs are immaterial. You would not have drawn the wrath of the Ascendants if you did not abide and abet those who worship falsely.”
“We meant no disrespect,” Kirk said, attempting a different approach. “We would seek peace and understanding with your people. If we can accept—“
“You are fortunate that the Ascendants are not here.”
“I thought you said that you were an Ascendant,” Kirk said, confused.
“I am an Ascendant, lost through a burning Eye, perhaps a view onto the Fortress itself. We would have returned to our people if we could have but found the burning Eye again. But while we have not, we have carried on the Quest, even so far removed from where we started. But here, in this space, we are the last.”
Kirk did not understand the meaning behind all the words, and he wondered if something had been lost in translation. He didn’t know, but he would leave that to the experts. “As I said, we are going to tow your vessel—”
“No, you are not,” the Ascendant said, and it reached forward, out of view on the screen. A loud noise erupted before the transmission ceased. The image on the screen disappeared, replaced by a view of space directly ahead of Enterprise, where a brilliant, white flash briefly lighted the night. Then the explosion that had consumed the alien vessel—the Ascendants’ vessel—faded away, leaving nothing behind.
Kirk stared at the viewscreen for several moments. Had all of this—the destruction of two Bajoran cities, the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, and the attempted murder of tens of thousands more—had all of this been done in the name of some religious orthodoxy? Kirk reeled at the possibility. As tired as he already felt, the thought drained him even more.
“All right,” Kirk told his bridge crew. “Let’s return to Pillagra, retrieve the crew of the Courageous, and make our farewells to the Bajorans. Ensign Walking Bear, take us back to the planet.”
Nineteen
Kirk sat at the desk in his quarters, his hand holding a stylus poised over a data slate. He gazed at the screen of the device, which as yet held only a salutation, a formal greeting to the parents of an Enterprise crewman who had been killed during the Ascendants’ attack at Pillagra. The captain closed his eyes as he waited for the words to come, a process that seemed to take more and more time with each year that passed and each letter he wrote. Although he had learned to work past the deaths of those in his charge, he had never become inured to those losses, or to the pain he knew it caused the loved ones left behind.
With his eyelids still shut, Kirk allowed the thrum of Enterprise’s warp engines to wash over him. As the crew headed back toward Federation space—to deliver the complement of Courageous survivors to the nearest starbase, to allow Enterprise to undergo needed repairs, and finally to conduct the last few months of the five-year mission—the days aboard ship had settled into a lull. Kirk had returned to his quarters an hour earlier, after manning his post on the bridge through a mercifully uneventful alpha shift.
Once off duty and back in his cabin, the captain had stripped off his uniform and headed into the ’fresher, where he’d eschewed a modern shower for the old-fashioned kind. While he appreciated sonic cleansing technology and understood its hygienic benefits, it never quite reinvigorated him the way a powerful spray of hot water did. Afterward, he grabbed a towel and dabbed his body dry, then donned a new uniform. Even with his day’s shift on the bridge complete, he still had duties to perform.
At his desk, he struggled with what to write to the families of Enterprise crew members who had fallen on his watch. He abhorred contacting survivors, but even though regulations did not require that he do so—Starfleet maintained a dedicated Casualty Notification Department—he felt a tremendous responsibility to follow up with loved ones impacted by his command decisions. But the words never came easily, an
d sometimes they threatened not to come at all.
The door buzzer sounded. Kirk opened his eyes and checked the chronometer on his desktop monitor; it surprised him that another half hour had passed, bringing him to the time that a Starfleet officer had asked to see him. The captain switched off his data slate and pushed it to the side of this desk, setting the stylus down atop it.
Kirk stood up and said, “Come.” The door panel glided open, revealing Hikaru Sulu standing beyond it. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Please come in.”
Sulu stepped inside, and the door whisked shut behind him. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Captain,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
“After your performance at Pillagra?” Kirk said, his tone light but his words earnest. “I’m ready to pin a medal on your chest.”
Sulu smiled, though the expression did not seem to reach his eyes. Kirk motioned to the chair on the other side of his desk and invited the lieutenant to sit. When he’d done so, the captain took a seat as well.
“I’m serious, Sulu,” Kirk said. “You showed great foresight in compelling Governor Velura to evacuate the city when you did. You saved tens of thousands of lives.”
“I didn’t, not really,” Sulu said. “It was the governor and her people, using all of their ships to carry their citizens out of the city and into the countryside. They managed to do it efficiently and without instigating a panic. There were a few injuries during the evacuation, but nothing serious.”
“I understand that you contributed the Courageous’ shuttlecraft to the evacuation effort,” Kirk said, “along with the ship’s transporters.”
Sulu nodded mutely. Kirk could see that something troubled the lieutenant, but he didn’t know what. “Sulu, if you’re upset about our last meeting—”
“I am,” Sulu said. “I am upset about that meeting . . . about what I said to you . . . about what I thought and felt at the time.” He stood up, as though if he sat still, his emotions would overwhelm him. He paced the short distance across the cabin, and when finally he turned back toward the captain, he peered down toward the deck, as though unable to face what he had come to Kirk’s quarters to say. Still looking down, and with his voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, he at last said, “People died on the Courageous.”
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