by Diane Carey
Klingons?
Real Klingons? Live Klingons? Alive? Not simulations not holos not pretend oh I’d rather have lunch with a Tellarite get me off this lift—
Hissss
“Status?”
“Captain, the Klingons are concentrating their firepower on Star Empire. Only one has broken off to engage us. Shields are raised.”
That heavy voice. A vision floated toward us on the lower deck, near the command chair. Spock. He and the Captain shared a deep eye contact, ignoring the action of the forward viewscreen. With deliberation Spock said, “Everything is ready for you, Captain.”
Something passed, shifted, between them, but it wasn’t any kind of handing over. I could tell from the reactions of more experienced officers on the bridge that Enterprise hadn’t really changed possession at all. If anything had, it was infinitely more precious.
“Thank you, Mr. Spock. Power up for evasive action. Bring main phaser batteries to bear on targets. Uhura, get Sulu to the bridge.”
“He’s on his way, Captain.”
The bridge continued to bleed the red alert.
“Spock, analysis of situation?”
“The Klingons were surprised by our appearance, allowing us to disrupt part of their attack on the dreadnought, and although we still hold the advantage they are regrouping. As for Star Empire, you can see for yourself—”
Only then did I allow myself to absorb the sight on the forward viewscreen. A vast starship hung at a horrible angle in the distance—true, there was no “up” in space, but that ship looked … off kilter. As though no one had control, it pivoted drunkenly on the tip of one warp nacelle while threads of phaser fire joined it to three Klingon fighters in a macabre dance. A bird of prey looped over the dreadnought, firing, and sheared a nacelle completely off, leaving a sparkle of ion gas and ripples of iridescent melting metal. I could smell the death.
“No …” I backed up until the bulkhead stopped me. I stared. My eyes watered. Death. Real death. If they could cut up a supership….
The dreadnought hinged around, pushed by the recoil of losing one of its three nacelles, and my throat clutched shut. The entire saucer of the primary hull was charred black, crackling with blue-hot veins of escaping energy. Destroyed. Destroyed …
“Bird of prey rounding on our port, Captain—” a female voice I didn’t know called, shooting me with panic. A stern young woman hunched intently over the helm controls.
Kirk reacted. “Evasive! Fire!”
The Enterprise leaped beneath us so sharply that we felt it and had to hang on. We felt the tremors go through the ship as phaser fire etched across our port shields. Across the viewscreen slashed our own phasers, scoring the Klingon’s green hull with damage as the enemy peeled by us so near I ducked out of reflex.
“Come about point-zero-six. Keep our forward shields to them,” the pastel portrait said. Our phasers followed the Klingon into the star field. “Fire at will, Ensign Meyers.” Meyers made Enterprise chase our enemy, relentlessly firing until the Klingon was obviously on the run. “Got him shaken, sir,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it when Kirk ordered, “Cease fire. Veer off. Let’s free up Star Empire.”
Why wasn’t he finishing off the Klingon we already had on the run? Why leave them to come back on us later? This was a silly time for mercy, I thought.
Free up Star Empire? Why? So we could rescue a handful of half-dissolved corpses?
“Arm photon torpedoes. Set approach trajectory at point-seven-three-seven. Make it a tight arc.”
Beside me the turbolift door hissed open and Mr. Sulu shot out, scurrying immediately for the helm. Ensign Meyers moved to the navigations console, and the less experienced officer who had been there moved back to his own station on the upper walkway.
“Welcome back, Sulu,” the Captain said.
“Sorry, sir. I got held up at damage control locking down a split in the outer hull.”
“Commendable, but next time don’t spare the time.”
“Photon torps armed and ready.”
I pressed my spine against the ship’s frame as we accelerated toward Star Empire and the three Klingon hawks that were still cutting red graffiti into it. My throat was dry, my hands shaking and sweating. All those hundreds of training drills and simulations—in the face of the real thing I couldn’t even remember my name. I had to get out of here.
I tried to sound steady. “Sir … permission to report to my assigned post in Environmental—”
“Denied. We’ll need you here to clear that biocode. Fire!”
Under Sulu’s delicately aggressive touch, we looped between two Klingon ships, lancing phaser needles first at one, then the other, scoring hits that bloomed into blue fingers of lightning against their greenish hulls.
“Sir,” Spock said, “shields are vacillating on aft engineering hull, port side. I shall attempt to override the damage. Mr. Scott is preparing to link power through from auxiliary.”
“Ensign Meyers, help Spock. Lieutenant, take her place at navigations.”
The Klingons spiraled and continued firing on Star Empire’s unshielded flank, shredding the alabaster hull into glowing white, red, and black filaments.
“Piper!” The Captain’s voice sliced through me. “Take navigations.”
I tore my gaze from the horror on the screen to his intense eyes. My legs dissolved to bubble memory. “What—? Oh … sir … you don’t understand—I can’t—I’ve never—”
“Shake it out, Lieutenant. Take that post.” His tone shook it out of me.
Pure reflex pushed me down to the naviconsole, leading with my hands and muttering, “Okay, but if I screw up I’m sending you the bill …”
I clutched my despair and held onto it like an anchor as the three remaining Klingons vectored away from Star Empire’s mangled form. They turned on us.
“Keep awake, Lieutenant,” Kirk’s death-soft voice rested on my shoulders. My hands trembled on the console before me. “Plot negative eight-two-two,” he said. He was sitting in the command chair now, his voice, his experience flowing over my left shoulder. I tried to react correctly, tried to follow orders as I’d been drilled to do, but the sight of three Klingon ships rearing before us like Triskelion’s giant cobra-hawks froze my blood. My fingers wouldn’t move.
“Piper,” he snapped.
“But … that’ll put us right in their crossfire….”
“Plot the course, Lieutenant, now.”
“We’ll be pulverized … I can’t just—”
Hands grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me from the chair. The hard deck grated under my thigh. Above me, Ensign Meyers’s heavy eyelashes batted at the forward screen. She plotted the suicide course and fed it through to Sulu’s helm. Still sitting, my legs sprawled on either side of the navigation chair, I propped myself up on my hands and craned to see the screen. There wasn’t even time to stand up.
We were flanked by Klingons, descending into their nest from “above.” Red glows of gathering phasers swelled on their gun ports. No ship, not even Enterprise, could take full phasers at point-blank range from three directions. If I could’ve closed my eyes, I would’ve. But I was fated to watch death coming.
“Sulu, fire point-zero-zero-five and execute T-mi-nus-four thousand meters. Ringgold’s Pirouette. Now.”
“Executing.” The crisp voice was followed by a queer lifting sensation in my stomach. The viewscreen started to rotate. No—we were rotating. The ship whined, straining against its own artificial gravity, creating a gyro effect that pinned us to our places. I couldn’t have stood up with a winch.
Enterprise maneuvered cleanly between the three confused Klingons, almost scraping them as we turned on our thin edge in space and spooled like a giant cartwheel. Firing point-blank, we slipped through.
Their retaliation was immediate. Thin lines of red light came from three directions. But we were already gone.
“Aft scanners,” Captain Kirk ordered.
The viewscreen melted, then reformed, to show the Klingons sizzling in each other’s phaser slashes!
A whoop of victory filled the bridge from the junior officers. Ringgold’s Pirouette. Hmm.
“A brilliant choice of battle strategies, Captain.” Mr. Spock towered over me, a stunning wedged statue, never once glancing down. “Unfortunately they are heavily shielded ships and we stand minimal chance with three against one.”
“Yes,” Kirk murmured, contemplating the havoc onscreen. “The question is how to tip the scales. Have you scanned the fourth ship?”
“She must have been too severely damaged to continue. She has concealed herself in that cluster of asteroids and has not reappeared.”
Kirk looked at him. “You do have it on scanners …”
“Impossible. Those asteroids read abnormally high concentrations of Hovinga iridium. Our sensors cannot penetrate them.”
“I see.” He leaned forward, as Sulu hugged the ship around in a tight radius. “Lieutenant Piper, I want you to get up off the deck,” he said with humiliating slowness, “take Ensign Meyers’s post at the equidistance scanner, and marry it until you see that Klingon ship come out of the asteroids. You may get up now.”
I crawled to the steps and got up. “Yes … yessir.”
I knew about Hovinga iridium. It didn’t block sensor energy; it absorbed it. The whole asteroid field looked like a spotty pink blur in my dynoscanner, the spots being the asteroid boulders themselves. The belt wasn’t long or spread out over much space—only eight or ten large rocks with a trail of debris a few thousand kilometers long. I could only hope to detect movement among them, and only on the outskirts of the belt. The rest was fizz-fuzz.
“Captain, they’re arming photon torpedoes,” Sulu’s deep voice announced. Calm. They were all so calm. Tea, anyone?
“Uhura, try to establish contact with Star Empire,” Kirk said. “See if there are any survivors. I don’t want to do this if there’s nothing to save. Try to maneuver us within sensor range of the dreadnought, Sulu, but stay out of phaser range of those cruisers. Spock—”
“I shall prepare to scan for life forms.”
“Thank you. On your toes, everyone. This could be tricky.”
The turbolift hissed again. “Doing your I-lead-you-lead waltz again, I see?” Dr. McCoy commented drily. “Christ, look at that wreck!”
“Editorials at dinnertime, Bones, not now. Are you here to report something?”
“Only that casualties are minimal right now in spite of your knocking us around in our skivvies, and Scotty’s been trying to reach you. He finally called Sickbay. His com system’s down above C-deck. He can receive, but he can’t hail you.”
“Uhura?”
“Right away, Captain. Rerouting intraship hailing.”
McCoy gazed at the shredded Star Empire and grimaced. “So much for the giant firecracker.” In the midst of what sounded like habitual sarcasm I heard a definite pain. I turned, and saw his eyes fill with empathy for the suffocating thieves. Star Empire, crewed by a clutch of desperate rebels, never had a chance against a Klingon argosy. If the Klingons knew anything, it was how to gang up. The doctor’s hands caressed the stability of the bridge rail as he filled his heart with distant agony, knowing his power to heal could never reach so far. “Good God, Jim, why are we heading toward it?” Then he figured it out, I don’t know how, and jabbed a finger at the screen while glaring at Captain Kirk. “You don’t actually expect survivors in that mess of twisted—”
Uhura’s announcement cut through. “Mr. Scott on audio.”
Captain Kirk punched the controls on his command chair console. “Scotty, talk to me.”
“I was about to write a letter, sir. That port blast we took stressed the durasteel skeleton in the nacelle strut. Another maneuver like that could take it over tolerance. The whole rib could sever.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Mr. Scott. Lock the damage down as soon as you can. We’re not out of this yet. Better get out your bag of Scottish spells.”
“Take ‘em t’lunch on me, sir.”
“Your treat, Scotty. Hold us together.” He put one foot up on the step, and for an instant his apple green uniform shirt took on the deep sheen of the flickering computer lights from the engineering console. His link with Mr. Scott reflected on his face, in his eyes. “Prepare for assault on both flanks.”
“Shields are at full available strength,” Spock acknowledged from my right, at his impressive library computer. That computer gave Enterprise one of its edges over other Fleet starships, having been built upon and added to, index upon index, crossfeed upon sensor track, fine-tuned to better speeds and deeper search capabilities than any other had attained. Its capabilities had compounded as his had. They had learned from each other until both were legendary. He had been the first Vulcan computer expert in Star Fleet. He had put his Vulcan mind on line with a Federation computer, and together they soared. And here I was within touching distance of them both. I felt very small. I buried myself in the dynoscanner, hoping never to be seen again. The black fabric of my jumpsuit felt cold as it clung to my body, engulfing me in my own failure, and at my ankles indignity crawled. Why didn’t the Klingons come? Why couldn’t they come right now?
“Dr. McCoy, Sickbay is calling,” Uhura said urgently. “There’s been a coolant leak in the battery, with casualties. Dr. AndrusTaurus needs you to authorize treatment with bacteria paper.”
McCoy’s face turned hard, his glare hitting the Captain precisely as Kirk turned to meet it. “Finish it soon, Captain,” the surgeon admonished, carefully accusative. Then he wheeled and vanished into the turbolift cavity muttering something about going over Niagara Falls in a paper cup.
I turned back to my dynoscanner. Because I had turned away in the first place it took a few seconds to reorient myself to what I saw on the small screen.
I squinted at it, half hearing the disorganized harmony of those voices—Uhura’s phonic enunciations calling someone to the bridge; Spock’s sonorous-toned analyses; Captain Kirk’s subdued response; the husky distinction of Sulu answering when Meyers asked him something. Those voices almost had a cadence when they all resounded against the bridge noises. Even in this chaos there was stability in the way these people worked together. All but one. One stranger here, one voice out of place. I cleared my throat and hoped not to have reason to speak.
Just then Sarda came out of the turbolift. He locked eyes with me fora hateful half-second, though he must have heard me paged to the bridge and couldn’t be surprised to see me here. He had his uniform on now, the tenne-gold color almost matching his hair, and once again I felt silly being dressed as I was. His sleeve braids matched Sulu’s, designating technical specialists, and I suddenly realized it was he Uhura had paged to the bridge. He broke contact with me and went quickly to the weapons control station.
“Sir,” Sulu called. “Bird of prey firing midrange torpedoes!”
“Hold on!”
The first torpedo hit our primary hull disk on the forward starboard edge, jarring to the floor anyone who was standing, including me, Sarda, and even Spock. The Captain managed to stay afoot by holding fast to the helm. By the time I rolled over and winced through my bruises, the Klingons were firing again. The second burst shook Enterprise to her bones.
“Evasive, Ensign Meyers. Sulu, try to detonate those torpedoes before they reach us.”
“That’s a hypothetical technique, but I’ll try. Lieutenant, calculate for intercept.”
My heart pounded before I realized he was talking not to me, but to Sarda. Sarda’s bronze head bent over the weapons console and he said, “Computing. Interjectional firing lines between ships coming to you now, sir.”
“Receiving.”
The Klingons broke off from the decimated Star Empire and came after us with vengeance. Bright red spinning balls of energy chased us as Enterprise dipped away. Sulu returned fire with his “hypothetical technique” and actually managed to hit one of the torpedo s
alvos, lighting up the space around us. Another salvo hit us and rocked the ship while a third missed and drifted harmlessly into the black vacuum. We recovered and returned fire, hammering at one of the enemy ships until it moved out of our way.
Kirk punched the intercom. “Scotty, still with us?”
“Captain, they’ve hit our impulse drive a glancing blow. It’s repairable, but I’ve got t’have time.”
“How much time?”
“Seventeen to twenty minutes to patch up and reactivate.”
“Do your best.” He turned to Spock. “Suggestions?”
“Our aft shields are weakened. We still have starboard impulse power. I can suggest only that we go with our strengths.”
Kirk almost grinned at him. “Agreed. Mr. Sulu, bring the ship about.”
“To attack position?”
“Exactly.”
“Coming about.” It was almost a sigh. There were a lot of almosts on this bridge right now.
Enterprise turned agonizingly slowly to face the three cruel-looking Klingon ships. The bird on our right fired. The photon bulb spun toward us. Sulu fired. Space filled with sparkles. But the Klingons fired again, too soon to compensate.
The salvo hit us. Enterprise rocked and groaned. Warning lights and sirens went crazy as smoke poured out of several structural joints on the bridge. Energy freed of its circuits crackled across our consoles. The smoke stung our eyes. I blinked through it, needing to see the Captain, needing his strength.
“All power to forward shields.” His voice dulcified the panic. “Fire photon torpedo.”
Instantly a red sparkler broke from Enterprise to hit point-blank on the nearest enemy ship, severing its birdlike neck from the rest of its body; in the recoil of detonation, the Klingon ship writhed, swelled, and exploded into countless billions of metallic jewels.