But were we under normal gravity, working would be a nightmare. This world has just enough to make it a mixed bag—as much help as nuisance.
We are without our engineering team, guided only by a man who could not pass a basic Starfleet examination.
But he is one of the most gifted minds of the age, and he is trying to learn.
We are far beyond known space, under skies that might be held by either the Boundless or the Rengru.
But we have seen no indication that anyone knows we are here, so perhaps they have moved on.
I have lost Number One.
He stopped there. He knew the correct answer—that he didn’t know the stardrive section was destroyed, just as earlier in the year he didn’t know that his science team might be alive. It was just that, as the weeks went on, the odds that it survived continued to decline.
Una had been his rock. His serene oracle and Mother Confessor, more aware of his faults than he was—and who often cared more about his future than he did. He needed her now. And not just her. He had the greater number aboard the saucer section, but no one he was close with. He had no Boyce, the father figure and drinking buddy. Even he and Yeoman Colt had shared deep conversations once in a while, though the gap in age and station sometimes left a gulf.
And Spock—well, the connection there had always been different, limited to whatever the science officer wanted it to be. But their conversations had always been rewarding.
Nhan was brash, operating at a higher level of intensity than he did; he couldn’t feel relaxed around her. The same partially went for Raden, although he attributed that more to the Ktarian’s nervous energy. The other new additions—Amin, Nicola—he didn’t know much about at all. And of course, there was Galadjian, who had transformed from a famous celebrity to a vocational renovation project. Around all of them, Pike feared showing any doubts whatsoever. He had to be the captain for them every minute—even when he had no idea what to do.
Vina. Now there was someone a person could talk to. But that wasn’t going to happen either. He was in the real world, in a real place.
A real, awful place.
More vile rain trickled across the port above. By popular acclimation, the crew had named their world of exile Defoe, after Crusoe’s author; that had been arrived at only after it was demonstrated the island in the book had no name. Nhan had suggested “The Foe” was a better pronunciation—and it certainly would have been apt. Stepping outside into the thin atmosphere without an environment suit would be fatal; apart from the chemistry, the temperature could freeze flesh in seconds. And while the methane sea below wasn’t about to ignite with no oxygen present, neither was there anything of use about it.
Above, through the crow’s-nest port, hung a dull gas giant; before it fizzled, it had been Defoe’s sun. The now-moon Defoe hadn’t yet tidally locked to the now-planet, further suggesting the two worlds’ relationship was relatively recent. The pair appeared to orbit a common point with a brown dwarf. Amin had confirmed that it was the same system they’d fled toward in the battle, before the spinning started. Little else in the sky was of interest.
Pike shook his head. They were making so little progress. Power to the interior lights and food slots—that had been the last month’s total accomplishment. Galadjian and an impromptu engineering group were still struggling with the thrusters, although it wasn’t clear what good that would do. As weak as Defoe’s gravity was, it was enough to keep them there. It wasn’t clear thrusters would even break the considerable surface tension of Defoe’s dense ocean.
All that left was the transceiver Nicola had brought up. Pike couldn’t call Starfleet in the way it messaged him; that method was strictly one way, employing powerful arrays. The nebula had allowed for limited local subspace transmissions—but anyone still in the Hellmouth would likely be hostile. He’d tried a weekly transmission to Una on an encrypted Starfleet channel to no avail. Pike doubted his signal left the system.
“I’m sorry,” he said to no one. He looked back down the nearby ladder well leading to the rest of the starship. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do this anymore.” He was going to have to take a chance—one he wasn’t going to consult anyone about.
He adjusted the transceiver. The Boundless used a variety of subspace and electromagnetic-spectrum wavelengths for their probes, likely chosen for their performance in spite of the region’s conditions. Nothing had been detected on any of these channels since the crash landing; he gambled that meant that the Boundless had left. If Number One lived, maybe she’d be monitoring them, waiting for her chance to return. Perhaps she was already in the Hellmouth, searching, just needing a faint signal to draw her near. He called up the Boundless channel he figured would be least likely used—a basic radio band—and thought of what to say.
His hand hovered over the controls. His attempt would put at risk one of the certain items on his “good” list: a lack of harassment by the Boundless and Rengru. The transceiver was weak, but what if the Boundless picked up the signal? And what of the Rengru? If they warred with the Boundless, wouldn’t they monitor their frequencies too? Did they even do that?
The hell with it. Nobody can hear this thing anyway.
“Enterprise to Enterprise,” Pike said, almost whispering like a criminal. “Come in, Commander Una.”
For a minute, static.
“This is Pike, Number One. Do you read?”
Another minute. Nothing.
This is crazy. What had he just risked? He decided to cut off the unit and pray nobody had heard.
His fingers had barely reached the panel when he heard the words. “I read you, Captain. This is Lieutenant Spock.”
44
* * *
Skon’s World
To a child raised on Vulcan, snow was theoretical. And a bit aspirational.
It was a broiling night when the young Spock had first asked about a small white planet in the sky. The orb’s high albedo, his adopted sister had told him, was explained by water trapped in the frozen state. Some existed as ice, a material familiar to him from his student visits to laboratories—but some as crystals that descended from the air itself, each frozen unit structured in its own unique configuration. After falling, large amounts tended to collect on the surface, sometimes presenting as powder, other times clumping into coherent masses easily shapable by the hand. For one growing up on a planet that had sandfire storms, the whole concept sounded like something out of a fantasy.
When Spock finally visited Vulcan’s neighbor, he had already lost a good deal of the wonder that snow had instilled in him at that younger age. He had visited many frozen locales since—including, of course, the polar region of Susquatane. At every such turn, other pressing duties left little time to appreciate the aesthetics. Frozen water was frozen water, whatever its structure.
That had changed. Many weeks into his exile on a tiny ice world, Spock had yet to lose interest in snow. It had a way of altering terrain overnight—not the underlying topography, but the routes he had to take to explore the world. There weren’t many other surprises; his armor systems had already mapped much of the surface during his long descent from space, finding little of interest beyond an ever-shifting landscape. Nothing existed above the ground except a thin, breathable layer of air that he could survive in for maybe a few hours before succumbing to hypoxia and death.
That left the snow, in all its various forms. His bodily needs tended to by his battlesuit, his mind was free to contemplate these simplest of surroundings—while occasionally thinking about the hallucination that had caused him to select this world over others. Surely, on a world of white, something so red would stand out—if it existed at all.
There had been one more activity open to him: checking his receiver for messages. It had always been a futile exercise. He had no intention of calling out to the Boundless for help, and certainly not the Rengru—but from the start, it appeared that neither of them had remained in the immediate region. He do
ubted his reception stretched much beyond the gas giant his world was orbiting.
So hearing Christopher Pike’s voice had been both unexpected and welcome—more than enough to call him away from his late interest in snow hydrology.
“I still can’t believe it,” Pike said. “Neither can anybody down here.” He laughed. “Well, I guess we’re ‘up there’ from your vantage point.”
“Not necessarily, Captain.” Spock, always walking, looked up to the sky, always clear. “As we both orbit the same body, you are nearer its gravitational center than I am. So in that sense, I am the one above.”
“It’s definitely you, all right!”
That had apparently been in doubt early in their conversations. Pike had later spoken of worries that there might be some sort of Boundless trap at work. That Spock was a hostage, or that his voice was being simulated in order to learn the saucer section’s location. But their mutual encounter on the hull of Enterprise during the battle, now clarified, was evidence enough for Pike that Spock was free.
“I’m sorry for shooting at you. You got flung off like a raindrop from a flying disc.”
“No further apologies, Captain. You made no mistake.”
Pike had already apologized for Susquatane, and much more. In an earlier conversation, Spock had explained some of his experiences with the Boundless, and what he knew of the disposition of the other science officers. He had less information about the Rengru, but shared what he knew. Every additional fact had prompted more expressions of regret from the captain. Spock thought recriminations were pointless—and worse, a waste of time that could be spent on other things. His ability to communicate with Pike depended on the facing and proximity of their two moons; there was a limited window available to them.
“You’re sure you can’t get back to orbit again?”
“Correct. I exhausted my fuel traveling to this world and decelerating to its surface.”
“At least you’ve got a surface over there.”
“There were nearer options available.” He paused. “I cannot say why I chose this place.” Rather, he did not want to say. “I have some months’ reserves here before my battlesuit’s resources give out. Boundless armor is designed in the expectation of prolonged military operations, but there are limits.”
“And I thought we were deprived here. You’re not even on solid food. I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”
Spock forestalled another stream of apologies with a regret of his own. “I attempted to warn you not to enter this area when the wavemaster—my superior—asked me to come up with a name for the region that would be enticing. I suppose I failed in that.”
“No, it worked. It was ingenious. We just didn’t do what you wanted. So that’s on us again!” Pike laughed. “And I caught that the year next to the name was also a Talos reference.”
“That was coincidental, but it did give me the idea for the name.”
“We decided to call the place the Hellmouth instead.”
“Little Hope is the true Boundless term.”
“Boy, that fits. I can see them wanting to change that. We’ll go with that from now on, just to spite them.”
“A common terminology is always superior.”
“We call our little moon Defoe.” Pike started to spell it.
“I am familiar with the name and the author’s work. I see the association.”
“What should we call your place? Crusoe? Friday?”
“I had already named it, Captain—coincidentally, in honor of an author: Skon, my forefather.”
“That’s what you call a grandfather, right?”
“Father of Sarek.”
“Skon it is.”
“I have chosen the construction ‘Skon’s World’ to differentiate it from the much different planet in the Beta Quadrant. There are already two Delta Vegas, as you know.”
“That’s you, always thinking ahead.”
Spock had been thinking quite a lot since their first contact. Pike had given him plenty of information about the saucer section’s dilemma to contemplate during his walks, and he’d found one solution already.
“I have a way to address Nurse Carlotti’s needs. Connolly’s stowed research gear included a portable gravity-field generator for use aboard ship.” Spock named the exact saucer-section storage chamber it was in. “While it was intended only to test the reactions of small samples to gravity, it is of sufficient power to activate a single panel of gravity deck plating. Replacement plating, likewise, should be in storage.”
“We’ll rip some off the ceiling, if we have to.” Pike seemed delighted with the idea. “We had no idea Connolly had that aboard. Some of the manifests are just on the main computer, and that still isn’t up.”
Spock had been disappointed but not surprised to learn of Enterprise’s predicament. He understood what had happened. “I concur with Doctor Galadjian’s theories. The ship’s emergence from warp, shields running, into a torpedo detonation produced an inversion back to the projecting source. His tsakat approach may have amplified the effect, but I expect catastrophic results to Enterprise’s electrical and magnetic systems would have occurred regardless.”
“No idea whether it’ll help him to hear that, but it’s good to know.”
“The resultant damage to your circuitry can only be repaired by hand. With a full engineering crew and proper parts, your stay would still be many weeks. Without . . .” He did not finish the statement.
“The ship’s a Frankenstein’s monster, Spock. Galadjian and the others are pulling modules and cabling from the nonessential systems that work and plugging them into essential ones that don’t. Doctor Good News is finding out a lot about elbow grease.”
Spock figured that was some kind of Earthly idiom.
After a pause, Pike asked, “About Galadjian. Did you know about his work performance issues last year?”
Spock had not thought of the ship’s engineer in months. “Please clarify.”
“I don’t think he’d ever held a hand tool before that didn’t have a cube root function.”
“I was . . . aware of some deficiencies. We served in different departments, so it was not my place to comment.”
“You and Una covered for him. It would have helped to know.”
“It was not an attempt to deceive. I did not wish to see the ship’s performance suffer.” Spock went silent for a few moments before adding, “And I was reluctant to dishonor one whose mind was so accomplished.”
“Should he have been here in the first place?” Pike asked. When Spock hesitated, the captain added, “This conversation is private. I’d like your opinion—I’ve missed having it.”
“The dichotomization of science into pure and applied strains happens in every culture—and while conflict between them is unnecessary, it often occurs. Starfleet made Enterprise to be the greatest field laboratory of all. Certainly we must find a way to make a place for a mind as great as his.”
“You’re saying we may simply need to add more remedial training to the induction process.”
“With the Boundless, I encountered many situations that my battlesuit was perfectly capable of responding to—if only I had fully understood how to work it. There may be a need in war to act without preparation. The ideal for science should be otherwise.”
“Hopefully we can get back to being a scientific organization again,” Pike said. “Well, Galadjian’s getting a workout now—but I don’t think this was what he had in mind.”
Spock looked to the sky. “Defoe is about to set.”
“Until next time then. I want to talk more about the Boundless.”
“I will have the time,” Spock said. “I have isolated and cataloged more than eight hundred different types of snow. Perhaps someone can make use of this data.”
“You can publish it yourself. We’re going to get this ship fixed, Spock—and then we’re coming to get you. I swear.”
Spock had heard Pike say that almost as much as he had heard him apo
logize. “I will await your next hail. Spock out.”
45
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Stardrive Section
Cloud Complex Zedra
“Shields up!”
Mann looked over at the first officer. “Say again?”
“Reflex,” Una said, eyes focused on the small screens before her and the wave of Rengru fighters approaching. “Prepare to engage.”
In the weeks since Enterprise’s separation, the engineers of the stardrive section had made progress on nearly every system but one—the shields, where all the problems had begun. That fact had required Una to look for “cool zones,” where the nebular radiation was less intense. She’d found several patches in a massive cloud complex the Boundless probes called Zedra. The Rengru had caught on to her moves. The appearance of a single scout in their scopes invariably led to the arrival, hours later, of a wave of fighters, occasionally supported by one of the larger Rengru mother ships.
That didn’t constitute a crisis, so long as the stardrive section could get underway quickly—but enough systems were still under repair that Una occasionally had to fight it out. While she would have preferred not to engage at all, the shield problem meant that her crew had an easier time on offense than defense. The phaser banks mounted above the hangar deck and flanking the underside ran on power from rechargeable batteries, and had suffered the least damage. Photon torpedoes were a limited resource, but had been useful at keeping the mother ships far away.
And Una had other tricks up her sleeve—but she guarded them jealously. The Rengru seemed to learn from every encounter.
“It’s like encounter six,” Mann said. Nhan’s second, her skills as a tactician had been constantly needed. “We have twelve—no, eighteen fighters inbound. No mother ship.”
“Mixed blessings. Save the torpedoes. Fire phasers at will.” She toggled her comm system. “Colt team, go.”
“On our way, Commander.”
Flashes from the stardrive section’s weapons lanced ahead on Una’s screen, annihilating one Rengru fighter after another. But the remainder continued, undaunted.
The Enterprise War Page 22