“Children were born in space before artificial gravity.”
“Usually in conditions optimized for it.” She gestured around. “These, as you say, are not.”
“Understood,” he said. For Pike, it was one more thing for him to deal with on top of many others, but for Carlotti—who already had a busy job—it obviously had more important implications. He wanted to sound as supportive as possible. “Tell me what I can do, beyond getting us out of here.”
She had an answer ready. “Gravity boots. Find me a working pair.”
“They’re magnetic. Not really gravity.”
“No, but for now, fighting to walk will keep me in better shape. If we stay here much longer, I’ll need to try something else. Maybe we can build something involving an environment suit. I don’t know how all that works.”
“Someone will.” He didn’t add that he wished he had his engineers.
“But the best thing would be to restore gravity to even part of a deck.”
“Which means we’ve got to get off the ceilings, first.” Pike nodded. “Check, check, and check. I’m on it.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Stay well. Both of you.”
He departed up the hallway, moving in and out of darkness as he went. The crew had broken out portable lights, stationing them at intervals. All of the smaller self-powered devices could run indefinitely, or at least longer than Pike hoped would be necessary.
And how long was that? Carlotti wasn’t alone. Everyone who talked to him always wanted to know the same thing. Pike had thought it best in those cases to give vague assurances in confident tones, and then to move quickly along, acting like he was on the way to do the one thing that would solve all their problems. They’d let him get away with that—at least so far. Carlotti, however, needed specific help, on a deadline. It was motivation he could use.
While in space, Pike had always held isolation and claustrophobia at bay with simple facts. He had controlled his direction, his destination—and he had always been in contact with those back home. Those things did not apply anymore. He knew nothing of Una and his engineers, nor of his kidnapped scientists. Had he really seen a Vulcan salute during the battle? It seemed so hazy now. And he knew even less about Starfleet. All he knew of the Klingon War was that it had broken out a year ago to the day. Nothing more.
He had to keep moving, keep thinking about other things. Helping Carlotti; helping everyone. It was the only way forward in a place where there was nowhere to go.
Lithely scaling a ladder for the umpteenth time that day, Pike heard banging off to one side. He stepped into a corridor onto another deck. No one was to be seen. Slow down, Chris. This isn’t a ghost ship yet.
More clanging, closer by, reassured him of his sanity. He relocated one of the portable lights. The rapping was coming from a panel high in one of the bulkheads. Taking advantage of his lesser weight, Pike easily leapt upward, grabbed the panel frame, and turned a latch.
The panel door fell open, and Galadjian’s sweat-soaked head appeared. “Eureka,” he panted.
“What is it?”
“I have just . . . figured out . . . how to get out of a Jefferies tube.”
“A week and a half. That’s progress.” Pike reached up to help the older man as he shimmied out. Having someone climb down his shoulders was barely a test here.
He allowed Galadjian time to catch his breath. “Do . . . other chief engineers do this sort of thing?”
“Some live for it.” Pike gestured to the opening. “What did you find, Doctor?”
“It is as we thought,” Galadjian said. “We were not able to raise our companions on the communicators in the beginning because of interference coming off the auxiliary power source for the emergency thrusters. They shut down when we landed, of course, but the tsakat event seems to have impacted the tokamak, which continued to generate magnetic—” He stopped and took a breath, clearly too winded to continue. “We should now be able to communicate within ship,” he finally said.
Pike eagerly brought out his communicator, which he’d carried for days purely out of hope. “Pike to listening post.”
Seconds later, a puzzled Nicola responded. “Listening post. Glad to hear from—well, anyone!”
“Small victories.” He’d earlier moved Nicola and some equipment up to the ventral observation room near what was now Enterprise’s apex, in the hopes of hearing anything. “Is that portable receiver we put up there running? The off-the-grid one?”
Nicola was ahead of him. “Yes, sir. Looks like it’s just downloaded a message from Starfleet.”
Galadjian did not appear surprised. “The tokamak’s interference would’ve blocked the extremely low-frequency subspace channel we occasionally get. Perhaps where we are in the Hellmouth is favorable for receipt from faraway sources.”
“How lucky can we get? Nicola, read it.”
“It’s eyes only for you, sir.”
“I don’t give a damn. Give me the gist.”
“It appears to be a few days old.” He paused. “Starfleet has extended our tour in the Pergamum, Captain.”
Pike closed the communicator and looked at Galadjian. “They’re diabolical.”
42
* * *
Varadah III
“Don’t you love it?” Baladon asked, firing his disruptor rifle at the corpses again and again.
“I do,” Kormagan said. “Yes, I do.”
The humid air was thick with the smell she loved: incinerated Rengru. It was one of the few things she would stow her headgear for; others in her force had the same idea. She envied the troopers with more developed olfactory senses. Activating hers required disintegrating hundreds of Rengru carcasses—which is what they resembled, even alive.
The latest battle at Varadah III had supplied that much fuel, and more. The Varadah Gap was a narrow corridor, nearly a tunnel between expanses of nebular cloud so hostile and thick that neither the Boundless nor the Rengru could pass through. It had been named for the sole star system that lay astride it—a collection of a dozen worlds, most significant in size and laden with resources. Given the important places it led to, it was almost impossible that there would not be permanent war surrounding it. Kormagan had seen her first service in the campaign known as Fourth Varadah; they were on the eleventh now, and seven years in, it was far from over.
The Rengru would probably hold Varadah III again next week—but she had it now. The monsters had known they were outmatched, and had fought like there was no tomorrow. Rengru didn’t retreat: why would they, when they multiplied so easily? She had seen it happen even in battle. Rengru got longer as they got older, adding limbs to their anterior sections; when danger struck, they could will themselves to split into two shorter—and somehow more energetic—beings. The bastion at Varadah III was entirely staffed by Rengru youngsters, suggesting they’d already been pushed to the edge. Kormagan and the Thirty-Niners had given them a final shove.
It was another make-good for the other waves, which blamed her gambit at Little Hope weeks earlier for their losing Varadah III in the first place. The engagement had ended with worse results for those who had joined her. Hemmick’s carrier, crippled by Enterprise, had been destroyed by the Rengru as he tried to escape; his Forty-Fours had been forced to dissolve, his surviving warriors and ships melting into other groups. Quadeo’s numbers had been halved. She had argued before the other wavemasters that Kormagan should lose her charter.
But that was before today’s victory. “I guess we won’t be merged with the Fifty-Twos now,” Baladon said, continuing to fire.
“It was never going to happen.” Not while Kormagan lived, anyway. The Boundless had no central authority binding her to their decisions; legitimacy sprang from the leader, and victories. As long as she had enough people and matériel to bounce back, she could keep her outfit alive.
Tragically, not everyone in her wave still was. Hemmick had not been the only casualty during the retreat. Kormagan h
ad kept her forces in the game against Enterprise and the Rengru longer than anyone—even after the offensive had turned to a defense, and then a recovery operation. Her beloved friend Sperrin had stayed in until the end, directing the other troop modules to rescue would-be boarders while the situation deteriorated. It had been a fatal choice, as Aloga-One had been the final casualty.
The Boundless did not venerate the names of the fallen. Only the living, and what they did, mattered. But Sperrin had been an example to everyone who had survived that day.
Another was Baladon. Ejected from Enterprise’s wayward saucer, his flailing form had been the very last pickup by any of the surviving troop modules—and he had reached it almost entirely by chance. She did not believe in good luck charms, but the would-be Lurian warlord was turning into one.
If she didn’t count one small matter, of course.
“This almost makes up for losing Enterprise,” Baladon said as he kicked a corpse.
“Not even close.”
“Nothing you can do about it now. That splitting-in-two business—I’ve never even heard of Starfleet vessels doing that. I’m guessing the saucer spun into a rock. Or maybe a sun. That would have been entertaining to watch.”
Guessing was all they could do. Little Hope was solidly Rengru territory now, a dreadful result considering how close she had come to a coup. Kormagan had only realized exactly how close when she reviewed the recordings of Baladon’s actions on the saucer section. Spock’s betrayal had disappointed her; she’d judged him more honest than that, but she also understood loyalty. In the end, his actions had not been pivotal; Baladon boarding a doomed Enterprise would have simply lost her a quality warrior.
The change in her appraisal of the Lurian amused her. The Boundless had unseated a few petty despots that had passed through; they had seldom amounted to much as soldiers. Baladon may have favored brute force more than was sensible, but he was smart, and solidly with the program.
“I admire the extent to which you’ve adopted our ways,” she said as they walked between the pyres. “You’ve come a long way from—what was it? Deathstrike?”
“Deathstruck,” Baladon said. “You might as well call it what it was.”
“You don’t miss being in charge of your own kind?”
“I see other Lurians now and again,” he said. “It is enough. I detest foolishness. I despise incompetence.” He spat at the fire. “The Boundless are more my kind than my species ever was.”
To Kormagan, Baladon was the system working as it was supposed to. Rounding a path, the two beheld an opposing example. His head bare and face frozen in an agonized wince, an armored Connolly dragged a dead Rengru by its tail across the graveled ground. Robotically, he threw the mass onto the fire.
His eyes watering, he saw Kormagan. “Please let me button up. I can’t stand the stench.”
“This is the best smell in the universe,” Baladon said, sneering. “Say, does anyone know if Rengru are good eating?”
“You’d die,” Kormagan said. She looked at Connolly. “Back to work, Orange-Five.”
“Why say it?” he responded as he turned to leave. “You’re making me do it anyway.”
Connolly had not been permitted freedom of motion since his attempted desertion atop Enterprise. The Boundless had no need for prisons when their battlesuits could serve as such, getting some valuable labor even as they punished. He had been made to fight at Varadah III, and somehow survived; the cleanup work was solely his.
Kormagan watched him work. “Where did we go wrong with him?”
“You have to understand what Starfleet is,” Baladon said. “Back where I come from, the Federation—that’s their bunch—is a collection of arrogant know-it-alls. It’s a protection scheme: if you join, they’ll frighten off your enemies with ships like Enterprise.”
“They have more?”
“What, more Enterprises? So I’ve heard. And they have plenty of other ships, though they may not be quite as good.” He chuckled. “Though I don’t know how good Enterprise really was, considering!”
“Don’t fool yourself. It was worth having.” It was a bad habit of her fellow wavemasters to denigrate the value of territories they had lost, as if that minimized their failures. It was also an insult to those who had died. “An alliance with such people doesn’t sound like a bad arrangement.”
“You haven’t heard the price,” Baladon said. “Would you like to enslave your neighboring planet? You can’t. Perhaps annihilate some ugly things passing through? You can’t, not if they disapprove. The Boundless wouldn’t be able to operate at all as part of the Federation. They would rather judge you than ally with you.”
“They’ll think again, if the Rengru escape the nebula.”
“Maybe you should send Connolly back as your ambassador for common sense.” He looked at the human, who had returned with another corpse. “How about that idea?”
Connolly looked at him wearily. “What?”
“Never mind,” Kormagan said, motioning for Connolly’s battlesuit to stop moving. “Are you ready to go back on the line?”
“I was already on the line today!”
“And you nearly died. You know our systems operate more effectively when the wearer takes command.”
The human looked frazzled. “I don’t want to be here either way!”
Kormagan shook her head. “I made a bargain with Spock in which I agreed to remove his people from combat. I don’t consider myself bound by that now—and I won’t honor it in your regard.”
In truth, she had kept those former science officers she had control of in place behind the lines; their skills were too valuable to lose. But Connolly didn’t need to know that.
Baladon walked up and slapped the human’s face genially. “You might as well give in, my friend. Enterprise is destroyed.”
Kormagan saw Connolly’s eyes narrow at that, but she did not know what that expressed. She came quickly to her point. “You don’t want to fight another battle here? Fine. This wave needs reinforcing again if it’s to continue. Our probes have reported a convoy of prospecting ships not far from here. I intend to take it. I’ve just appointed Baladon here as opmaster of Krall-Three. He has the experience. Will you join him?”
Connolly listened—and barely moved his head from left to right. “I don’t want to help you capture anyone else.”
“Then you’ll remain here—even after I leave.” She pointed to the blazing countryside. “I’ll trade you to the Forty-Sixes for some small piece of equipment—or perhaps I’ll simply give you to the Fifty-Twos, whom I think I will owe until my dying day. They will keep you here at Varadah III, and other planets, where you can fight all the time. You can be active or passive during it; it’s up to them.”
Baladon grinned. “Ah, there’s no fun in being a puppet, Connolly. Fight for yourself—by fighting for us.”
“What do you intend to do?” Kormagan said. She received an empty stare. “Suit yourself.” Peremptorily, she turned. “Back to work.”
Connolly’s servos went into motion again, their noise nearly obscuring two words from him: “I’ll go.”
Kormagan spun. “What’s that?”
“I’ll help you,” he said, sinking into his armor’s shell. “Not much else I can do.”
“An intelligent life form!” Baladon slapped Connolly’s chest plate. “Stealing ships isn’t a bad life. And have no fear. We’ll still get to fight now and again.”
Connolly groaned. “But what’s the point?”
“Why, that is the point!” Baladon gushed.
It was not, but Kormagan did not choose to tell them otherwise.
43
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Saucer Section
Little Hope
Robinson Crusoe had made two lists.
Pike had never read the novel named for the character, and neither had most of his crew. As days dragged into weeks, however, the 1719 text—part of the complement of multiplan
et cultural data preloaded into data slates aboard Enterprise—had seen a twenty-third-century revival. Pike had been too busy to catch even five words of Carlotti’s first reading to the sickbay, but he had listened to the part of the encore where the literary castaway, having dealt with the immediate emergencies, had finally found time to sit down and really think about his situation.
Crusoe had prepared two lists about his predicament: one marked “evil,” the other, “good.” The order was both intentional and important, because the marooned mariner had used the second list to rebut every downbeat item in the first. To the “evil” point that he was without any defense against man or beast, Crusoe noted in the “good” that no enemies were around to be seen—and so on, all in an argument prodding him away from gloom and toward industry.
Pike thought about that as he returned to the room that had initially been dubbed the “listening post.” That name still applied, given that it offered the best chance at an offworld signal reception—but the late popularity of naval stories had many calling it the “crow’s nest,” due to its location and ports looking out on the world of their exile. Whatever the name, Pike had found it was the only place where he felt comfortable dwelling on his fate. Anywhere else, he’d be brooding; being near the receiver gave him the feeling he was doing something. And it had ports, even if they didn’t look out on much. He had come here before sleep every night, mentally adding to his own ever-growing lists of evils and goods:
We have systems that have suffered catastrophic damage.
But the saucer section is intact, and all crewmembers are alive.
We are on a world we cannot draw upon for any sustenance whatsoever.
But we have fresh air aboard, and stores for a crew twice our size.
We are upside down. Were we weightless, the ship’s orientation wouldn’t be an issue at all.
The Enterprise War Page 21