But one system beyond that was sure to be needed—and had posed its own problems. The transporter rooms in the saucer section were powered by the fusion reactor and could function without access to the rest of the ship, but their capabilities weren’t robust. That was by design: since a separated saucer’s needs related to evacuation, most of the emergency transporters focused on sending signals, not beaming people aboard. The units that could transport both ways had been hampered by a shortage of functional datacores and working sensors.
“Lieutenant Dietrich is helping to work the panels,” the relocated Galadjian called up. “Sensors are having a hard time finding life signs.”
“They could never pierce the battlesuits before,” Pike said. Spock had told him that was one of his armor’s features. “The suit itself ought to be easy to find. It’s big enough.”
“Understood. Stand by.”
White and clouded, Skon’s World grew in the main viewer. Pike had trouble containing his glee. “I’ve been waiting months to make this call. Nicola, hail Spock.”
“Channel open.”
Pike smiled. “Spock, I hope you can stand some good news. We’ll be overhead shortly.”
Nicola listened to his earpiece—and frowned. “No response, Captain.”
“What is it, Vic? Don’t tell me our equipment’s gone wrong again.”
Nicola shook his head. “We’re getting the receive signal from the battlesuit five by five. He’s just not answering.”
Pike looked to Nhan, who shrugged. “Even Spock sleeps sometimes.”
“Then he’ll wake up here from a bad dream.”
Pike took a deep breath. Escaping from Defoe had been a victory; regaining Spock would be a second. He’d put off thinking about after that.
Would Spock be the first step toward rescuing the rest of his crew—or the only one he would save? It would depend on how fast it took the crippled saucer to make it home. Just over half his crew was still out there somewhere. He’d come back in a spacetug to pick up their trail if he had to.
More of Skon’s World emerged from night. “Doctor, do we have that damn lock yet?”
“No, Captain. You know what shape our sensors were in.”
“The whole planet’s an ice sheet. Can’t we eyeball it to start the fix?”
“You can see what we can. Some kind of eruptive event is going on. Hundreds of square kilometers are clouded by vapor and crystals.”
Pike peered at the globe ahead. “Well, what do you know? Spock’s volcano is going off.” He chuckled. “Well, that’s better than sending up a flare. Doctor, that’s where he is.”
“Not too close, I hope,” Raden said.
A few moments later, Galadjian reported back. “We’ve found it. Stand by.”
Pike looked expectantly at the icy moon—
—and saw a wave of Rengru fighters emerge from behind it, racing his way.
Four members of the bridge crew swore at once. Pike called for a red alert and ran back to his chair. “We’ve picked up right where we left off,” he said. “What is it with these guys?” He touched the control on his armrest. “Doctor, get him out of there, now!”
Nhan looked back at him. “More contacts!”
Pike had already seen them. Rengru mother ships: two following the fighters—and more, climbing over the southern and western horizons, disgorging fighters of their own.
And Enterprise’s saucer section had no shields.
“Evasive maneuvers?” Raden asked, rattled.
“Not until we have Spock.” The moral quandary—save one or save all—hit him only after he’d answered. “Weapons!”
“Phasers we have,” Nhan said. “But I can’t speak for targeting.”
“Do your best. Fire at will.”
Ergs of the saucer section’s precious energy lanced out at the careening Rengru, striking a fighter here and there. It wasn’t nearly enough.
“We’re surrounded,” Nhan said, enemy ships large on-screen. She turned back from her station to face him. “Sound boarding alarm?”
Several thumps on the hull indicated that was the right decision. Pike called out again. “Doctor, I need an answer! Is the transport complete?”
“We have the battlesuit,” Galadjian said. He sounded baffled. “Just the armor.”
“You beamed it and not him?”
“He was not inside. He seems to have climbed out of it. We’re still looking.”
No, Pike thought. He sank back in his chair. Skon’s World was barely visible on the main viewer, so numerous were the Rengru outside. Nhan was already up, holding her phaser. He waved for her to wait. “Nicola, give me the hull view.”
Where they had once seen Boundless boarders—one of whom Pike now knew to have been Spock—the bridge crew now saw Rengru at the airlock. Pike reached for his phaser. “Another last stand,” he said.
Something made Nhan turn. “That’s weird,” she said. “The airlock just opened. That portal was secured.”
“They’ve got a slew of limbs. Maybe one’s a lockpick.”
“No,” Nhan said, checking her monitor. “They used an access code to get in. A Starfleet access code.”
Pike gawked at her—and then heard a skittering noise from behind. He turned to see the first boarder, crawling up out of the turbolift shaft from the deck below, where the airlock was located.
The Rengru looked different from the ones that Pike had seen attacking Enterprise in the battle, months earlier. It seemed smaller, missing the shell with the thruster and phaser. But while it had no weapon, it did bring a demand. “You will come with us, Christopher Pike.”
That the Rengru knew his name was not the most surprising thing, nor the fact that it spoke in crisp, clear Standard.
It was whose voice it was. He stared at the creature. “Una?”
57
* * *
Skon’s World
Spock meditated.
It was the first time he had done so outside his battlesuit since the beginning of the year. Every breath nearly choked him. His eyes watered; just as quickly, the tears froze. He blinked repeatedly and brushed away the frost from his face, only partially protected by a fabric mask.
Stubby pillars stood all about, making the snow fields surrounding the volcano seem a temple to its might. Logic told him they were ventifacts, pitted structures abraded by high-velocity ice crystals; similar ones shaped by sand were found on Vulcan and Earth. But he had no desire to catalog them, and he took no solace from their beauty.
He thought about the words of the Vulcan philosophers and wondered what death would feel like. His katra would remain here, with his mortal form, vanished into nothingness. Perhaps it was not worth saving. Perishing so young, he had accomplished little of what he had intended to.
Everything, all his promise, had come to nothing. Whatever had pushed him to join Starfleet, to come to this nebula, had driven him to his death. Whatever had possessed him to flee the Boundless had been a mistake. Whatever had led him to Skon’s World had been a phantasm, the product of hypoxia. Nothing more.
His eyes beginning to crust over, he thought of a warmer place: his home, and of his mother, and father. And—
It glowed. Crimson, and magnificent, hovering above.
No. Not here. Not now!
He did not want to see it—and yet, he had sought it, crossing a whole world on foot. It had been Spock’s way, ever since that terrible night so long ago when the hovering phantasm had appeared. He would shut it from his mind—until his inquisitive brain demanded that he think on it again, and research.
What was it?
Why had no one ever seen it?
And why had it appeared to him and, evidently, no one else?
It was one of those times when his curiosity had gotten the better of him that he had found a similarly shaped fantastic being in the cultural texts of Earth, putting a name to the thing that both frightened and fascinated him.
The Red Angel.
Three wo
rds, describing something that could not, should not, exist. The being that had pointed the way toward young Michael Burnham, whose life was in danger—only never to appear again, except in his nightmares.
It had shown him something important then.
If so, logic said it must have some purpose now. A purpose he could not ignore.
He forced his eyes open and raised his tricorder to the air. Around him, time slowed, the colossal volcanic eruption fading into nothingness. It was no apparition; his tricorder was reacting to something. True, it was reacting by spewing nonsensical data—but that was a reaction. He lowered the tricorder—
—and in the same moment, the Red Angel descended toward him. It took his hand. Spock felt warmth as his fingers touched the rounded surface of the being’s head. A helmet? He did not know.
But he knew what to say.
“Your mind to my mind.”
The Red Angel spoke. “Your thoughts to my thoughts.”
Then it was no longer an angel that Spock saw—just red. Fantastic, powerful signals, blazing rubies in deep space. One after another in the Milky Way.
Seven!
A supernova. Spock in the supernova, or was it the Angel? And then—
—nothing.
No, not nothing. But it felt like nothing. A deathly cold—more bitter than anything he had just experienced. And he saw before him landscapes. Hellscapes, one after another.
Earth, desolate and destroyed.
A world he knew but had not visited: Qo’noS, of the Klingons.
Vulcan, its glories snuffed out.
Andoria, returned to nothing.
World after world. Every native dead. Murdered—by what?
He could not think on it—for he was not Spock. Or not the same Spock. He was a child again, cowering in his bed. There it was again, the Red Angel, hovering above. Planting—forcing—into his mind a cacophony of information. Letters, numbers, images, equations. Like the dead worlds, one after another, until his mind, or something else, exploded—
—and Spock fell to his knees in the snow.
Alone.
He was dying—and so, too, would the universe.
After the year he had endured, that, alone, made sense.
OBLIGATION
* * *
October 2257
INCOMING TRANSMISSION
TO: CAPTAIN C. PIKE • U.S.S. ENTERPRISE • NCC-1701
FROM: VICE ADMIRAL K. CORNWELL, STARFLEET COMMAND
EARTH IN DANGER. DEFENSES BREACHED. STARBASE ONE POPULATION ANNIHILATED. KLINGON INVASION IMMINENT.
NO CHANGE IN ENTERPRISE ORDERS. DO NOT RETURN. REPEAT: DO NOT RETURN.
IF THIS GOES BADLY, CHRIS, MAKE SURE PEOPLE KNOW WE WERE HERE.
END TRANSMISSION
58
* * *
U.S.S. Enterprise
Saucer Section
Orbiting Skon’s World
Since entering the Pergamum Nebula at the beginning of his original mission, Christopher Pike had received a total of five messages from Starfleet over the extremely low-frequency subspace band. He had never gotten one while he was on the bridge—until now. Naturally, given the way things had been going, it was horrid news.
And it couldn’t have been of less use to him, given that the bridge was under occupation when he heard it.
“. . . do not return.” He looked up from Nicola’s screen. “Somehow, I don’t think we’ll have any problem with that one.”
The Rengru on the bridge had multiplied, wandering about, poking and prodding inanimate objects with their appendages. Two had run Raden and Amin completely out of the helm area. They weren’t being violent. Just . . . creepy. Getting into everyone’s personal space. Tapping at computer interfaces not entirely randomly, but without much effect.
And answering questions in incredibly frustrating ways, but with the most pleasant voices.
“That’s the helm,” Raden said. “Don’t mess with that!”
“Follow the directives,” the Rengru said, two of its limbs raised and again sounding just like Una.
“You’re already aboard,” Nhan said. “Why do more of you keep landing on the ship?”
“Follow the directives.”
“What directives?”
“Follow the directives.”
Nicola’s brow furrowed. “Do you mean we are to follow your directives—or that following directives is what you’re doing now?”
“Follow the directives.”
Standing amid the milling Rengru, Pike gawked at the scene. It was like someone had let loose a herd of alien sheep onto his bridge. He had intended to direct his questions to the first one that had entered, but they’d gotten mixed up.
“Listen, why do you all sound like Una?” he asked.
“You will come with us, Christopher Pike.”
“We’ve covered that. Accompany you where?”
“Follow the directives.”
“Great.” He looked to Nhan. “How many of these things are on the hull?”
She edged past the Rengru studying her terminal and tapped some keys. It did not respond when the interface changed. “Five hundred or so. Give or take a million.”
“And they’re not ripping into the ship.”
“Just grabbing hold.”
Pike shrugged. “I’m not even going to ask how many are inside.”
“Hell, I’m just glad they know how to close an airlock door.” Nhan still held her phaser; ordered to do nothing with it, she found her seat and collapsed in it. She propped her feet on her workstation, jostling the Rengru. “Spock said these guys were incredibly dangerous, right?”
Pike nodded. “He said they never talked to him. He didn’t think they could talk—or hear.”
“I’m not sure about that.” Dietrich had her tricorder out. “The sounds are coming from some of their limbs—the ones they put in the air when they talk. The tiny little pods are vibrating at audible frequencies. I think some of their hands may be functioning as ears too.”
“Good work.” Pike was glad he hadn’t sent all his exobiologists to Susquatane. He looked to Nicola. “Try Galadjian again.” The captain had given a general order that the Rengru were not to be resisted once their numbers became apparent. Since that time he had heard from other decks that they were dealing with visitors too. But nothing from Galadjian and Dietrich over the intercom.
Pike remembered his communicator. He reached for it and flipped it open, only to startle half a dozen Rengru who coiled in his direction, appendages chittering. “Follow the directives, Christopher Pike.”
“That’s a new formulation, at least.” He showed the communicator around, as Dietrich had done with her tricorder. “Not a weapon.”
He had no way of telling if they were satisfied with that answer or not—only that they had made no move to tear into him. So he toggled the unit and spoke. “Doctor, where are you?”
“Greetings, Captain.” Galadjian sounded like a man who’d entered the wrong theater door and wound up on stage during an opera. “I apologize for the lapse in communication, but things are decidedly strange here.”
Tell me about it. “Spock, Doctor. Did you get Spock?”
“Oh, yes! He materialized just seconds before our other guests arrived.”
Pike’s eyes bugged. “Were you going to tell us about it?”
“We were busy. He is quite ill.”
“Did you beam him into sickbay?” It was on the same deck as the main transporter room, but no short walk with a patient.
“We are in sickbay now. But we did not transport him. The Rengru carried him.”
Pike looked at the others, baffled. “They carried him?”
“Once they understood we were trying to move him, yes. In fact, they carried Lieutenant Dietrich and myself as well. These beings are very nimble and quite strong.” He paused. “I did say things were strange.”
“How is Spock? What’s his condition? Have they done anything to him?”
“Follow
the directives,” said another voice across Galadjian’s mic.
“That was not me, Captain,” Galadjian said. “It is not Commander Una, either, though you may be forgiven if you—”
“That’s enough,” Pike said, closing his communicator. “I’m going down there!”
He moved toward the turbolift shaft—only to find his way blocked by two Rengru, their vocalizing limbs lifted and pointed his way. “You will come with us, Christopher Pike,” they said in unison.
Pike gestured toward the turbolift. “If you guys know anything at all about Una, you know she’d want to help me. And Spock.” He took another step toward them. “Now are you just going to talk like her, or act like her?”
The Rengru faced one another for a moment—and then, abruptly, snaked toward the captain. “Hey, wait!” Spun sideways by the Rengru, Pike saw Nhan bolt upright, phaser in hand—and several other creatures rising in response. A second later, the two Rengru stretched upward, catching Pike under his arms with several of their limbs and lifting him from the deck like living crutches.
Nhan gawked. “Captain, should I—”
“It’s all right. Looks like I’m going for a ride too.” The pair skittered toward the turbolift shaft, toting Pike in midair. “Mind the store, everyone. Giddyup.”
* * *
“He was in hypothermic shock when these—uh—things brought him in,” Carlotti said. “We’ve been working to stabilize him.”
Pike looked past Carlotti to the diagnostic table where Yan, her aide, ministered to Spock’s supine form with a medical device. The scraggly-bearded Vulcan’s garb had been stripped and dumped in a corner. To the left, a Rengru plodded about, looking at the walls.
Spock moaned.
“He’s conscious?”
“He’s been in and out,” Carlotti said. She nodded, allowing Pike to come near.
“I’m here, Spock. It’s Captain Pike. You’re home.”
Spock seemed to be whispering. Pike didn’t want to interfere with the nurses’ work, but he wanted to hear.
The Enterprise War Page 28