Immediately, Spock sensed the increase of pressure on his mind. It was as if he had stood in front of a heavy door, behind which loud music was playing, and then he suddenly found himself in the room, bombarded with sound.
Interlacing his fingers, he closed his eyes and focused on his mental defenses. Spock’s mind had suffered incredible agonies throughout his almost one hundred and forty years of service for Starfleet and the Federation, including death and resurrection. He had overcome each challenge, and they had all combined to make him grow stronger.
But it was still not sufficient.
Who are you? he asked into the entity’s deafening mental roar.
Pain, hunger, and madness tore at him.
Spock raised his hands, pressing his fingers against his temples. A feverish wrath washed over him, briefly eliminating all rational thought. A cry formed in his throat, and it erupted with a feral howl. Leaping out of his seat, he staggered against the bulkhead.
“Ambassador Spock?” somebody’s voice asked from the intercom. “Are you all right? Ambassador Spock?”
Doubling over, Spock groaned and kept his eyes shut tight, trying to keep out the screaming inferno that was engulfing his mind.
“We’re going to beam you out of there, Ambassador!”
“No!” Spock shouted, still trying to fend off the Son’s presence, while struggling with the vortex of chaotic emotions. It wasn’t actually a response to the voice from the Prometheus. “No!” he repeated, agonized. “Must not fail! Must not…”
He opened his eyes wide and stared through the cockpit’s front window. The multicolored flashes and the iridescence of the permanently changing energies swirling around Iad burned into his retina.
“Who are you?” he gasped, struggling against the assault of the ancient, enormous presence. “What drives you?”
Once again he closed his eyes, believing that he had detected some kind of fluctuating, pulsating center in all this chaos, directing his mind that way.
“Talk to me!” he cried hoarsely. With his agonized but by no means beaten mind, he probed into the alien being’s conscience.
Then the Son of the Ancient Reds finally noticed him.
U.S.S. Prometheus
“Bridge to transporter room,” said Adams. “Beam him out, right now!”
“Aye, sir,” Chief Wilorin replied. “Waiting for shields to be lowered.”
An inarticulate scream came from the intercom, a scream like no other the captain had ever heard from any Vulcan. The elderly ambassador seemed to be unable to withstand the onslaught from Iad’s surface any longer.
“Shields are down,” Commander Sarita Carson at ops said.
“Retrieving the Charles Coryell,” said Ensign Naxxa. The pilot sat at the environment control station near the bulkhead to the right of Adams, which had been temporarily modified to a remote control console for the shuttlecraft.
“Captain,” Wilorin’s voice came through the intercom, “I can’t lock on the ambassador. The radiation interference is too strong.”
Adams felt an uncontrollable wrath well up inside of him. This useless Tiburonian was simply incapable of doing his job properly. “I don’t want excuses, Chief! We need to save Spock from this monster on the planet surface.”
“I don’t know how!”
“Then find someone to relieve you from duty if you’re incompetent!” Adams yelled. “If Ambassador Spock is harmed because of you, I’ll have you in front of a firing squad!”
“Captain!” Roaas, sitting at tactical, glanced at him, warningly.
Adams met his gaze—and understood. Keep calm, he chided himself. Pull yourself together. That anger isn’t yours.
Barai’s voice sounded over the speakers. “Sickbay to bridge.”
“Go ahead, Doctor,” Adams said.
“I can sense an enormous increase in the aggression levels on board.”
“We had to take the shields down briefly.”
Naxxa at the shuttle controls cursed in her native tongue.
“Problems, Ensign?” Adams asked.
“These idiots from gamma shift closed the bulkhead to the shuttle bay. I’m unable to dock.”
Adams immediately opened a channel to the current watch officer in the upper secondary hull’s battle bridge. “Bridge to th’Talias. Lieutenant, what’s going on over there?”
“They want to enter the ship, Captain.” The Andorian sounded haunted. “We mustn’t let them in.”
“No one is entering the ship, Lieutenant. Now open the hangar bulkhead. We need to land Ambassador Spock’s shuttle.”
“I parked the Charles Coryell right alongside the ship’s hull,” Naxxa said.
Carson reacted instantly. “Raising shields again.”
“The Bortas!” Roaas cried. “She’s firing photon torpedoes.”
Horrified, Adams asked, “At us?”
“No, at the planet surface. Four torpedoes, wide yield.”
“On screen.”
The image changed to show the glistening red of the projectiles that the Klingon battle cruiser had just fired. The torpedoes blended into the flashes of exotic radiation that surrounded Iad. Powerful explosions—recognizable from orbit only as sudden clouds of dust and soil—tore the landscape around the ruins open. They all assumed that the alien being was located somewhere in that area.
“Any effect?” Adams glanced at Lieutenant Commander Mendon at the science station. He noticed that the rage clutching his mind was abating. He took a deep breath, trying to push it aside completely.
The Benzite checked the displays on his monitors. “Negative, Captain. The radiation levels remain unchanged.”
“Ensign Winter, get me Kromm on screen.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Transporter room to bridge,” said Wilorin.
“Go ahead, Chief,” Adams said.
“I was finally able to beam Ambassador Spock aboard. He’s in pretty bad shape. Doctor Barai has taken him straight to sickbay.”
“Understood. Thanks, Chief. Oh, and… Chief?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Please excuse my earlier outburst.”
“Already forgotten, sir,” the Tiburonian replied. “I’m glad I managed to prevent myself from saying what was on the tip of my tongue at that moment.”
“I’ve got Captain Kromm now, sir,” Winter said.
The captain focused on the image on the bridge’s main screen. It was split in two—one half showed the smoldering ruins on the planet, while the Bortas bridge appeared on the other half. Both were illuminated by red light, the former from the radiation, the latter from standard Klingon Defense Force lighting during an alert. Kromm sat in his command chair with ferociously sparkling eyes and his flowing shoulder-length hair, and greeted Adams: “What do you want?”
“You’re firing at the being on the planet surface,” observed Adams.
“It’s attacking us,” Kromm replied. “It’s trying to take over our minds. We will not allow that!” He gave an order in Klingon. Again, gleaming projectiles sped towards the planet surface from the embedded torpedo ramps in the Vor’cha-class cruiser.
“You’re wasting torpedoes,” said Adams. “You won’t achieve anything with your mindless bombardment.”
Kromm snarled. “You should help us instead of blathering. The ambassador failed. Now the warriors must take matters into their own hands.”
The captain glanced at his science officer again. “Mr. Mendon?”
The Benzite shook his head regretfully. “No noticeable effect, sir. But I wouldn’t want to rule out the possibility that the Prometheus’s quantum torpedoes might yield better results than the Klingons’ photon torpedoes.”
The turbolift door hissed open. To Adams’s surprise, Spock entered the bridge, with Doctor Barai at his heels. The ambassador’s expression was disconcertingly haunted for a man who was generally calm and imperturbable.
“Ambassador Spock, shouldn’t you be in sickbay?”
�
��That he should be,” Barai said testily. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to convince him of that.”
Spock did not respond to the doctor’s complaint but instead addressed Adams, speaking with a very uncharacteristic sense of urgency. “Captain, we must act immediately. The danger is more grave than we had assumed. The being on the surface is out of control.”
“What do you mean?”
“I managed to glimpse into its conscious mind. The entity is…” He seemed to be grasping for words. “It is insane. Its mind is a chaotic morass of hunger and pain.”
Roaas asked, “Didn’t you say that you sensed some kind of purpose in the presence when we reached the system?”
Spock nodded. “Yes. There is a purpose to its greed. But I’m afraid I misinterpreted the cause. This being is driven not by malice, but by desperation.”
“That almost sounds as if it’s addicted to all the hatred and violence it causes,” Lenissa zh’Thiin said, her antennae swaying back and forth.
“That assessment could indeed be correct,” Spock said to the security chief. “The entity is addicted—and still very weak.”
Adams couldn’t believe his ears. “Weak? The Son is throwing an entire cluster into turmoil with his mental manipulations.”
“Captain, if the Son does belong to the same species as the Beta XII-A entity—and I am increasingly convinced that this is the case—he has barely begun to explore his potential. Thus far, he has only driven several million Renao to voluntarily meet their death, or to satisfy their own hatred. As yet, there have been no transformations of matter, nor has the being tried to leave Iad in an attempt to approach the inhabited planets of the cluster. According to Renao legend, the Son has been asleep almost nine thousand years after having been imprisoned by the White Guardian. To use an Earth metaphor, he has hardly rubbed his eyes and yawned within the last one hundred and twenty years.”
“So you think we’re dealing with an opponent who is completely exhausted on the one hand, and on the other he’s waiting for his next fix of violence?”
“That is my best hypothesis given my exposure to its mind,” Spock said. “However, that exposure was rather brief, and my own mind was under extreme duress at the time. I could, perhaps, be mistaken.”
Adams’s lip curled slightly, the closest to a smile he was capable of achieving these days. “But that’s not very likely.”
“No.”
“Is that enough discussion for now?” Kromm asked, ill-tempered.
Adams straightened his uniform jacket. “It is indeed. Evidently, we don’t have any other choice but to eliminate this being.” He tried to convince himself—not very successfully—that they were basically finishing off a dog with rabies. “ Prometheus out.” Adams motioned for Winter to cut the link to the Klingon ship. He turned to face his tactical officer. “Commander Roaas, load quantum torpedoes and ready them. Full array.”
“Aye, sir. Loading quantum torpedoes.” The Caitian faced his console, entering several commands. “Torpedoes loaded and ready to fire.”
“Mr. Winter, relay the same order to the upper and lower hull sections.”
“Right away, sir.” Winter turned around, speaking quietly into a communicator. “Commander Senok and Lieutenant th’Talias are ready, sir.”
The captain turned toward the bridge screen again. His expression hardened. “Fire.”
Moments later, six gleaming blue quantum torpedoes streaked toward their target area.
The explosions tore the ground of the ruined city open and destroyed everything the Klingon photon torpedoes hadn’t already devastated. The huge blast snapped trees, hurling rocks and soil hundreds of meters into the air.
“No effect, sir,” said Mendon. “If anything, the radiation intensity seems to have increased marginally.”
“Do you want me to fire phasers?” asked Roaas.
Adams shook his head. “Negative. It seems to be feeding off the energy of the torpedoes—phasers won’t be any different.”
Jassat ak Namur looked up from his console. The young Renao’s golden yellow eyes glowed brightly. “Captain, I have an idea.”
“I’m all ears, Lieutenant.”
“We studied the Dominion War at Starfleet Academy, and I recall a mention of an energy dissipator utilized by the Breen.”
Adams had read reports of that weapon, though he had never encountered it in person, as his former ship, the U.S.S. Geronimo, had been destroyed at Chin’toka, and he had spent the rest of the war assigned to planetary and starbase duty. But the dissipator had caused the Federation and its allies quite a lot of problems after the Breen Confederacy entered the war in 2375. The weapon drained all energy from ships it targeted, rendering them adrift in space. It very nearly was a turning point in the war inexorably in favor of the Dominion, until Starfleet had been able to capture one of the weapons and develop a countermeasure.
“It’s a nice idea,” said Roaas, “but Prometheus doesn’t have such a weapon at her disposal. Starfleet never issued one.”
“And we can hardly ask the Breen for help,” Sarita Carson dryly interjected. “Mind you… they might swap an energy dissipator for one of our slipstream drives.”
Adams knew that Carson was being facetious. The Typhon Pact in general, and the Breen in particular, had been trying for years to acquire slipstream technology from the Federation, as they perceived it as a dangerous disparity in the balance of power.
Ak Namur shook his head. “I know that we don’t have access to an energy dissipator. But couldn’t we reconfigure the main deflector dish to emit an energy blast similar to the characteristics of the energy-dampening weapon?”
“Interesting thought,” Roaas said.
Adams rose from his command chair, turning to the engineering station. “Lieutenant Chell, your thoughts on that?”
“Give me a moment.” The sturdy Bolian started to work his console.
Gently, Barai put his hand on Spock’s shoulder. “Come, Ambassador. There’s nothing we can do here right now, and you really need to rest.”
To Adams’s surprise, the elderly diplomat didn’t protest. “Very well.”
Apparently, even Barai hadn’t expected that answer. “No backtalk? I’m surprised.”
Spock’s expression remained unchanged but there was a certain glint in his eye. “I have learned throughout the years that disputes with doctors should be limited to absolutely necessary circumstances.”
The doctor gave Adams a knowing look. “Perhaps you should remember this wise insight, Captain.”
“Right now, I really have other things on my mind,” Adams snapped. It was meant to sound like an amicable rebuff, but the words came out sharper than intended.
Barai briefly stiffened before nodding tersely. “Aye, sir.” He turned around, disappearing with Spock into the turbolift.
Adams stared after him with a certain sense of guilt. But he was tired of apologizing for every sentence, and remained silent. Besides, Barai knew better than anyone that everyone on Prometheus was acting irrationally.
“Good news, Captain,” Chell said. “I believe Mr. ak Namur’s plan might actually work. However, we will lose a part of our shielding as we would have to disconnect the main deflector dish from the array.”
“Does that mean the radiation will pose a danger to us?” the captain asked.
“Difficult to say.” With a hint of uncertainty in his expression, Chell looked questioningly at Mendon.
“We will lose one of the adaptive polarization filters that are required to stabilize the shield bubble we’re in,” said the Benzite. “So the shields will be a little more strained, that’s true. But we will be able to compensate for that temporarily. Of course, we will also lose some of our sensor resolution. But again, I consider that limitation acceptable, considering we’re much closer to our target now than we were when we first entered the radiation zone.”
Adams nodded slowly. Mendon had been the one to suggest separating the Prometheus, linking thei
r three deflector systems with that of the Bortas. This enabled them to eliminate most of the destructive effects around Iad with the help of incoming data from passive sensors and a subroutine that he had written.
“Do it, Mr. Chell.”
“Aye, Captain.” The engineer turned back to his console. “Disconnecting main deflector from array and modifying it.”
“Mr. Winter, establish a link to the upper hull section.”
“Done, sir.”
Adams addressed the commander of the other ship section. “Adams to Lieutenant th’Talias.”
“Th’Talias here, Captain.”
“We’re reconfiguring the main deflector to emit an energy burst similar to the Breen energy-dampening weapon. Lieutenant Chell will send you the specifications. Be prepared to set off the deflector on my mark.”
“Understood, sir. Ensign Quandil awaits your order.”
“I’m done,” Chell said. “Our temporary energy-dampening device has one major drawback, though: we can only emit an extremely short burst—otherwise, we’ll be destroying the deflector dish. And even then, I’m afraid we will have to restart the deflector system. So we would need a few minutes for a follow-up burst.”
“Well, one shot will have to suffice then,” Adams said.
The engineer shrugged. “We’ll see once we try it, Captain. In battle, the Breen only ever needed one burst in order to incapacitate our ships. Our energy burst should have ten times the intensity.”
The captain nodded. What other choice did they have? “Understood. Carry on.”
Chell turned back to his console. “Transferring configuration data to the upper secondary hull.”
Soon after, Adams received the all-clear from th’Talias. The Andorian sounded very eager to overwhelm their enemy.
“Activate main deflector,” he said.
A glistening blue streak appeared on the main screen, stabbing at the planet for approximately one second. It hit the multicolored shimmer which hovered in the midst of the crater-strewn ruined landscape, penetrated it, and struck right in between the debris. Blue energy fingers branched in all directions, dancing between stones and piles of dirt, and licking up into the incorporeal fog the Son was comprised of.
Star Trek Prometheus - in the Heart of Chaos Page 3