by Diane Carey
Knees … where were mine? I crawled forward through green fog and hot stench, careful to avoid bare electrical burnouts after almost putting my hand down on open circuits. The bridge sizzled. The fans clicked on and the smoke looped toward the vents. I pulled myself onto tingling feet and blinked my stinging eyes clear.
On the upper walkway, Brian Silayna and Ensign Li Wang bent over another form.
My heart thudded in my throat. Burch.
We needed him. We needed his rank on our side. We needed his familiarity with Rittenhouse. We needed a command authority, even a semicompetent one, to hold onto.
And there he lay.
I moved through a kaleidoscope toward them. Bile rose in my throat.
His entire left side was a matt of scorched fabric, fused with skin. Blood and flesh, a black and red panorama of gore, bubbled up through melted threads. The smell turned my stomach.
“Dead?” I hoped.
Brian shook his head. “Not yet.” He punched a com botton. “We need somebody from Sickbay on the bridge right away with a burn unit and an anti-grav.”
A trembling male voice answered, “Coming. How many injuries?”
“Just one.”
The most important one.
Mercifully Burch remained unconscious. We lived his agony for him.
We were alone.
Chapter Ten
THE BRIDGE OF Star Fleet’s ultimate war machine was a barren place as Brian, Terry Broxon, the ensigns, and I watched helplessly as two midshipmen carried our salvation to the turbolift. Burch was the only person on board who knew anything about the Star Empire, and even he hadn’t known all that much. The ship was in the hands of ignorance.
“We’re as good as dead,” Ensign Novelwry said, and nearly choked on his words. Behind us on the viewscreen, two more of Rittenhouse’s henchmen-run starships powered around us ominously, glowing like the bands of violet light of a faraway sun: Captain Leedson on Hornet, Captain Tutakai on Potempkin. Cronies bringing their twisted dreams with them, bought with the very starships they commanded, promised admiralties in the “new” Fleet, with the Klingon Empire dismantled and its planets in Federation conservatorship. A soiled vision at best.
How deeply into Star Fleet Command did this corruption run?
“What do you think we should do?” I whispered to Brian.
The faces around me were solemn, afraid, seeking strength in each other that hadn’t fermented yet. It wasn’t there to be tapped.
“Brian …”
He glanced around. Surrender clutched him; I could see it happening, see his mind give over to the crutch of his abilities, taking refuge in the numerological sense of engineering. He withdrew from decision-making before my very eyes, collected his equipment, paused, and stared at me. “Take it, Piper.”
Panic seized me. “The hell I will, damn it! A ship like this? Are you crazy?”
“It’s your place. Look. They can’t.”
“I can’t. Sorry.” I dropped into the helm seat. If he was pushed hard enough, Brian could command. But the hand I played was a bad one, I realized as I heard the lift doors open and swallow my only ace, taking most of me with him. The ensigns looked blankly around, waiting for someone to take charge. Behind me there was a faint clicking.
“Enterprise, this is Star Empire.” Terry Broxon’s voice. “Commander Burch has become a casualty. We have no command-level officers above the rank of lieutenant, and no one at all trained for this dreadnought. Can you supply us with an alternate commander?” Her voice shivered. The fear was surfacing. In the hands of children, the dreadnought was powerless and foundering.
Through the terror a firm, warm voice cut, it’s timbre alone assuaging the horrible isolation. “Kirk here, Star Empire. Damage report.”
Terry cleared her throat. “Main shields seven and twelve down completely, port flank shields sixteen through twenty severely weakened. Parts of the bridge are destroyed, but we’re still operational. Engineering reports impulse power damaged but under repair, estimating twenty standard minutes to eighty percent power. Auxiliary control and—”
“Enough. Ship’s status?”
“Running on a skeleton crew. Burch never expected battle. Most of us have never been on a starship. The ship seems stable at the moment … but … God, I don’t want to die in space….”
“Belay that, mister. Man your post. You’re at red alert.” Kirk’s voice was a buoy. A moment later, as if providentially, the viewscreen cleared and we got a roomful of the face we very much needed to draw upon.
I flinched. Behind the Captain, Mr. Spock was batting smoke from a shattered computer console, and Engineer Scott had taken the helm. What had happened to Sulu? Where was Uhura? Were things that bad on Enterprise too?
Terry had recovered herself. Kirk must have known training would prevail if, like a computer, it received the right code. And he knew the code.
“Star Empire,” he began carefully, “we can’t beam anyone aboard your vessel with shields up.” It sounded like lesson number one in tactics at Academy. I wondered why he couldn’t direct transporter beams to the places on our ship where the shields were down; then I remembered those places were in the warp nacelles, where it wouldn’t do any good to beam a living organism. Fried matter couldn’t pilot a starship. I gripped the console in front of me, sinking into the sturdy face, beaded with sweat—Enterprise’s bridge looked hot—and wondered how he could remain so unfazed. We were under attack by three starships and a destroyer, and he looked like a housecat in a window. “Give me a rundown of bridge personnel.”
Terry nodded, though Kirk couldn’t see her. “Ensign Li Wang at navigations, Ensign Novelwry at weapons control, Ensigns Carr and Hopton standing by at engineering, Lieutenant J. G. Broxon at communications, Lieutenant Piper at helm.”
“Put Piper on.”
Damn, I knew it, I knew it! “Pi—” My throat closed up.
“Star Empire, do you read?”
“P-Piper here.”
“Can you handle that helm?”
“Hell if I know, sir.”
“I can command you from h—”
The ship shuddered and lurched to starboard, pushed by a photon blast on the underside of the primary hull. I clung desperately to my position, hoping against hope the ship’s shields were still up on our impulse drive. Ensign Carr was knocked insensible on the upper walkway, and for too long Hopton stood there and stared at her. Before us, the viewscreen smoked and crackled, distorting the Captain’s comforting face until it wasn’t comforting anymore. There was a maroon flash as his shoulder seemed to swing toward me and he turned to issue orders on Enterprise, but we heard only the mockery of his voice translated into static.
“Captain!” I shouted. “Sensors … We’ve been hit in the sensory.” Mashing my intercom, I called, “Sensory, anybody down there? Scanner, you down there?”
“(Cough) bet we are … took a salvo in our frickin’ angular light retrieval unit. Whatchall doin’ up there, Piper, playin’ poker?”
“Can you put that thing back together? We’ve got to keep contact with Enterprise. Kirk’s commanding us from there.”
“You tellin’ me communications went with us? How do I get a transfer off this shuttle?”
“Come on, Scanner, quit screwing around! We’re going to die here and I’m not done with myself yet!”
“Yeah, yeah, ‘knowledged, workin’ on it.”
“Terry, is that channel open?”
Broxon turned to me, her pale features curled in effort. “It’s open. But I’m getting intraship distortion.”
“Clear it.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do!”
“Okay … okay … okay….” My hands spread out across the helm as though I could hold it all together if it just knew I was here. I glared into the bubbling form of Captain Kirk, who was talking to me, doing everything I could to acquire by osmosis some talent at Vulcan mind melding. “Getting any of that, Terry?”
“Mark … six…. Course … two-zero … one…. Mark six…. Course two-zero … eight … one …”
“Mark six. Got it. Plot that, Li.”
“P-p-lotted.”
“Take it easy. We’re still here.”
I touched the helm controls. A simulation … a game. Not real. Mistakes wouldn’t hurt.
The ship swayed into motion, pivoting on its primary hull. The movement was innately graceful, not like the crawl of the injured dinosaur we were. It was a brilliant maneuver, putting Enterprise and us at each other’s oblique backs, presenting full shields to the attacking fleet. “Captain, you’re something.” I hit the intercom again. “Sarda, where are you?”
Buzz, crackle, fizz …
“I am presently in auxiliary control.”
“We need you on the bridge.”
“Acknowledged. On my way.”
Well, that felt better.
We took another phaser shot from Lincoln that crippled our port flank shield, and as the blue lightning skittered across space near enough to rattle our teeth, Enterprise returned fire at one-half-power phasers. Kirk evidently wasn’t ready to strike with full force. Surprisingly the strike was just enough and well enough aimed to force Lincoln to veer off us. “Nerve,” I muttered, “and integrity.”
Everyone on the bridge jumped at the sudden parting of the lift doors. Sarda appeared behind me.
I rose slowly from my chair, our gazes matched in mutual tension. Vulcan training bisqued his fear, but it was certainly there.
Gripping the rail, I looked up. “You have to assume command.”
His hands tightened at his sides. The amber eyes flooded with thoughts. “I am …” he began, “unqualified to command.”
“You’re a Vulcan. That alone qualifies you. Look at these ensigns. They can’t do it alone. Your abilities—this ship is nothing but a giant weapon. That’s your speciality.”
“Then I will assume weapons control.”
“There’s nobody commanding, Sarda! Nobody to tell you when to fire, or where or how much, or what potency. You’ve got to do it!”
His lips pressed together. Clouds gathered in his eyes, heavying them, but they were glittering with something intensely new. He stepped down to my level. We were very alone in the universe.
Sarda spoke quietly, firmly. “You will command,” he said. It was a mystically soft urging, one that knew me. “It is your Kolinahr.”
Tame the craggy agonies of toil’s time.
Memory and memoring comes late,
comes shattery, scattery.
When all is done, it is not
to die—
It is to die well.
Memory …
Something unconventional.
Sarda’s eyes, his taciturn expression pushing to me a ripe emotion—confidence—crystallized into sharp focus before me. I swayed slightly, and recovered.
“Lieutenant Broxon,” I called, “take the helm!”
Sarda moved to the weapons control position. The command chair exhaled under my thigh.
“Raise secondary shields,” I said.
Terry turned to me, as did Li Wang. “Secondary? What’s that?”
“This ship has triple shielding. Find them and put them up. We’re taking this hammering for nothing. We should be protecting Enterprise, not the other way around.”
“Us? We’re a bunch of midshipmen in diapers!” Her voice was chattering with incredulity.
I waved my hand suicidally. “Ah, what’ve they got that we haven’t got? A few years and some laurels to sit on. Sarda, can you pinpoint optimum humanitarian targets on those starships?”
“Will attempt to do so. Sensors are failing.”
“Scanner, what’s the buzz?”
“We’re all having a nice quilting bee down here. ‘Fore long we’ll have y’all a fine blanket.”
“I need forward scanning.”
“I can give you forward port.”
“I’ll take it. Terry, lean us starboard, point-three-three. Put our sensors between us and them.” I leaned forward, feeling my eyes snug up until I was manufacturing a prime squint, and tired to make sense of the misting shapes on the viewscreen. “Hopton …”
“Yeah. Huh?”
“See if you can plug into the library computer’s gateway node.”
“This stupid bull doesn’t have a library computer,” he spat.
“It has a ship’s mainframe system, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then plug me in, mister!”
He stared for a moment. Then: “Aye-aye.”
Shields didn’t keep the ship from rocking under Rittenhouse’s battery. No doubt, he was out to kill us. Surely he knew by now his career was dust. He had nothing to lose. No creature could be more dangerous.
“Where are those secondary shields?” I demanded.
“I’m looking for them,” Broxton reported, playing monitor against console in a relay of jump codes and indices.
“Good enough,” I murmured. She didn’t hear me, and I was glad that she didn’t because it certainly wasn’t good enough. I slouched back into the command chair as though it was a lump of gorsy moss on my home planet, with one calf pulled up onto the other knee. I must have looked absurd. Realizing that, though not mending it, I forgave the ensigns for not handing their fealty over to me at the outset. They didn’t know me, after all; I was only a lieutenant, and I wasn’t even in uniform.
My eyes narrowed. I started thinking. What was it Spock had said about this ship? Big … massive … like a chubby Enterprise, streamlined, with extra limbs and invisible teeth. Transwarp drive in experimental stages … if it worked, they were going to mount it on a new design of heavy cruiser sometime in the military future.
“See, moose,” I muttered. “Brand-new, and already you’re obsolete.” I sighed. Warp or transwarp, it didn’t matter here and now. We had to stay sublight to hash this out. And damned if I was going to take this ship into warp.
A slight breeze, very soft, whiffed my hair at the side of my face. “May I ask what you’re thinking?” His voice almost made me faint. What was it about Vulcans? Where did they learn that controlled baritone warble?
For a long moment I just gazed at Sarda, as though trying to inflict an emotion on him. My hand moved away from my mouth. “I’m thinking about the phaser banks. What good is it to have five phaser banks if you can’t use them all at once?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Logical.”
I sneered. Didn’t he realize I was asking him? Since I got approval for my “logic,” I forged on. “Can two or more banks fire at once with any accuracy?”
If a Vulcan could shrug, he did. “Unknown. I presume you mean at different targets.”
“Of course.”
“Perhaps … with the assistance of the computer system—”
I vaulted out of my slouch. “Hopton, link the mainframe to weapons control and free it over to Sarda.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He quivered over the console. “Connectivity established.”
“Systemwide?”
“I … think so. It should be.”
“Go for it, Sarda.”
“I cannot guarantee that such a procedure will work, or even that I am capable of engineering it.”
“I don’t give a flying—I don’t care what the guarantees are. Just do it. Terry, can you make this moose move?”
“Moving the moose, ma’am. Where to?” Were those good spirits I heard?
“Pivot on our latitudinal axis seven-point-two-five degrees. No! I mean thirty-seven-point-two-five. Sorry.”
“Thirty-seven-twenty-five, aye. Executing.”
“Full impulse power.”
“Seventy-four percent impulse available, Piper,” Brian filtered up to me from somewhere deep in the engineering decks. “That’s all.”
“It’ll do. Best speed sublight, Terry.”
We left Enterprise behind, and I sent a silent thought to Captain Kirk. I hoped he wo
uld understand.
“To die well.”
My maneuver, with a little adjusting for clumsiness and lack of visibility, lowered Star Empire into the core of the gauntlet. Starships all around were shifting, or so our nominal sensors said, vying with me for position. Apparently I surprised them by moving at all, much less taking an initiative. I intended to use that surprise.
“Christmastime,” Scanner’s voice blurted from below decks.
“Oh! Great!” I stood up, looking into an almost-clear star field with ships resolving into form. The screen flickered twice, then stabilized. “Scanner, I love you forever.”
“I’ll take a full lieutenancy instead.” He sounded satisfied. I could imagine his impish smile, and I smiled too.
“Sarda?” I prodded.
“There has been some memory erosion….”
“From the damage?”
“Negative…. I believe it is from tampering by inexperienced personnel. It seems they were attempting to set up a domino contagion or a logic bomb, perhaps to prevent override by prefix code.”
“Hmmm … preventative medicine.”
“Essentially.”
“Not a bad idea. Can you finish what they started?”
He straightened and half turned. “I am not Mr. Spock,” he said with un-Vulcan emphasis.
“That’s all right,” I soothed, holding my hand out to him. “That’s … fine. Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing it.”
“I will,” he said. Uncharacteristically this followed: “And thank you, Piper.”
I smiled, though he couldn’t. “Anytime. Terry, don’t stop our movement. Use all the innerspace you’ve got. Li, plot a full arc that swings us around and continually presents our bow to the fleet.”
“Okay … trying. Lieutenant! Enterprise is matching our move, except in mirror form. She’s coming about!”
My feet actually left the deck. “That’s my Captain! Get me circular scanners. I want circumference of the ship on these monitors so I can see what’s going on.”
“Scanners operational.”
Just then, the destroyer Pompeii fell into our forward viewscreen and an equally clear picture of Rittenhouse jammed into my brain. How smug he was. How self-righteous. How did he dare profess policy for the entire galaxy? His evangelizing had been an irritant in my mind since I left Pompeii, injecting me with a desire to smack him down and read him the UFP Articles of Federation, presupposing universal respect for intelligent life-form rights and fundamental freedoms, the right to self-determination, even for the Klingons.