Her eyes darted between those unnerving displays of orbital debris and her tricorder. Dax’s bond, as indicated by the divergent brainwave patterns, continued to weaken, although there remained little Chapel could do. In contrast, her pulse was elevated, her breathing just a little too fast. Working under this kind of constant stress was not conducive to doing the job at hand. The more nervous she got as she monitored the constant pelting of the shields, the more likely she was to miss something, to be caught off guard when an alarm suddenly squealed for attention, to hesitate when immediate action was required.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Although she could hear an oddly melodious clanking from beneath the deck as Spock worked, she could no longer see him. He was too far into the crawlspace, which reminded her of his first near deadly repair attempt. Chapel’s unease intensified as the clanking stopped. She sat up a little straighter. Although she told herself he had probably just finished one task and was now turning to another, Chapel couldn’t help but consider other, darker possibilities. Nevertheless, she refocused on her assigned task, turning back to the display on the pilot’s console. In that second or two she had looked aft, three large asteroids, all in red, had appeared.
Her eyes widened as she leaned closer, trying to sort through the complicated graphics of orbital mechanics. When observed from within an artificial gravity field, the movements of objects in a micro-g environment seemed particularly counterintuitive. Two of the tumbling asteroids, each bigger than the Copernicus, looked like they would collide with each other close to their nearest approach to the shuttle’s course. Automated sensor scans were bringing up geological details of the asteroids on a separate display, analyzing whether they would break apart or just ricochet off each other. The closer the asteroids approached, the more accurately the exact point of impact could be predicted, and the angles of the surfaces that would touch, increasing the accuracy of predicting the degree to which the asteroids might shatter and the resulting courses of the pieces.
There was a sudden proliferation of red and green lines as the navigational computer plotted all this information, and then the display started flashing various lines to underscore their uncertainty. The computer was essentially shrugging its shoulders and giving up. A sharp beeping was accompanied on-screen with the flashing words PILOT INTERVENTION REQUIRED. The moment she’d been hoping to avoid had arrived.
Chapel looked up from the display. The view through the port was overwhelming. While focusing on the major problems, she hadn’t noticed the corresponding increase in minor impacts. The forward deflector screen was lighting up like a fireworks display. Too distracting. She put her head back down, looking only at the tactical display. PILOT INTERVENTION REQUIRED flashed with increasing frequency as the moment of collision neared. She had to do this. There was no time to get Spock up here. She tried imagining the tumbling asteroids as billiard balls, envisioning them caroming around as they rebounded from each other, but the two-dimensional nature of the billiard metaphor didn’t quite fit. Then she thought of performing remote surgery, manipulating medical instruments within the three dimensions of a patient. Somehow she combined that concept in her mind with billiards, as if operating on an organ while ducking around tumors moving freely within the abdominal cavity. It was a ridiculous notion, but she seized upon this way of applying her own experience to what she had to do.
Chapel laid her hands on the controls and began making adjustments. At first it seemed like they were still moving toward certain impact, especially as the two larger asteroids collided and each burst into several smaller threats, but then—after what seemed like hours but could only have been seconds—she watched as more and more objects and course projections turned from red to green. Before the full weight of what she was attempting to do had settled on her shoulders, she had threaded the needle, and the Copernicus was past the threat.
As she slumped back in her seat and tried to catch her breath, her hands began shaking. She looked back through the open door in the aft cabin but still couldn’t see Spock. There was nothing but silence from below the deck. The exhilaration of her accomplishment mixed with a sinking feeling in her gut.
“Doctor?” Spock’s sudden call, unbearably loud in the silent cockpit, seemed to emanate from nowhere. Chapel leaped to her feet in surprise, barely restraining a startled yelp, spinning around as if she expected to find him hiding under the copilot’s seat.
“Dammit, Spock, you scared the hell out of me!”
His calm voice crackled back over the intercom. “I apologize. But I noticed what felt like some fairly complicated course adjustments and wanted to check in.”
Chapel flopped back down into the pilot’s seat, one hand on her chest as she once again tried to get her breathing under control. Gasping became giggling, and she let the release of nervous energy continue for a few moments until she could practically hear the confusion within Spock’s silence. “Don’t worry, I haven’t gone space happy.”
“I will be there shortly.”
“No, I’m fine, really. Just a minor adrenaline overdose.”
“You misunderstand. The repair work is completed.”
Chapel heard the last sentence over the intercom and directly, as Spock’s head poked up out of the crawlspace, his wrist communicator still held to his mouth. She couldn’t stop smiling as he deactivated the communicator and climbed onto the deck. Getting to her feet, she took a moment to steady herself as her body finally relaxed, then she went to help him replace the access panel. As Spock returned to the cockpit to resume his pilot duties, the door sliding shut behind him, Chapel returned to her patient’s side.
She’d kept as close a watch as possible on Dax’s vital signs, so there were no surprises as she reviewed the brainwave scans more closely. The bond was weak, almost as bad as it had been before Chapel had intervened as a human shunt for their neural energy. Luckily, with the repairs completed, they should be leaving the magnetosphere soon and getting back on course to the rendezvous. She tapped in some new parameters for automated alerts and returned to the cockpit, tricorder in hand.
Spock glanced up as she took the copilot’s seat. “Would you prefer to sit here?”
I swear I just saw a twinkle in his eye. And that was the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. “Thanks, but no thanks. That’s all the piloting I hope to ever have to do.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that Lieutenant Sulu would say that you are a natural.”
And the best compliment just got better. “Thanks. But I think I’ll stick with medicine.”
“That is a logical application of your existing training, of course.” He had turned back to his controls, working assuredly as he continued speaking. “I am plotting a slingshot maneuver away from Rose’s Folly. Not leaving an impulse trail will make it harder to track our new course, and I altered the intermix formula as much as possible to change our warp frequency, further obscuring our trail.”
Chapel gave him a worried look without saying anything. She knew he would understand her reaction: An accidental slingshot effect had once sent them back in time to Earth in the 1960s. In her experience aboard the Enterprise, time travel was always skating on thin ice. He noticed her expression and responded.
“Rest assured, this will be a simple sublight gravitational maneuver with no temporal side effects. Tempting though it may be to gain some time for Commissioner Dax by jumping ahead to our rendezvous, the risks outweigh the benefits in most circumstances.”
Relieved, Chapel belted in and adjusted her restraints. Even at sublight speeds, it could be a bumpy ride. Spock explained he was adjusting their angle of approach to as clear an orbital path as possible, and he would shift all available power to the forward shields. The Vulcan looked at her, eyebrows raised, and she simply nodded. He nodded back and plunged the Copernicus toward RF III on a tight arc. The forward screen lit up with small impacts as they were accelerated by the planet
’s immense gravitational pull. Chapel closed her eyes as RF III filled the forward port. Then the proximity alert went off, indicating a warp signal approaching Rose’s Folly.
Chapter 8
Chapel knew Spock had his hands full with the slingshot maneuver. She snapped her eyes open, ignoring RF III still looming over them, and called up the data on the alert. The warp frequency matched the ship that had previously flown past Rose’s Folly.
“It’s the same ship, and it’s getting close to where we dropped out of warp.”
“Acknowledged.” Spock’s focused gaze shifted between the foreword port and his instruments.
“Their warp field’s shutting down. They’ll see us when they go sublight.” Even if she recalled how to run more detailed scans, she knew it would be unwise, because the enemy ship could trace active scans back to the Copernicus.
“Perhaps. But I plotted our course to take us out of the system on the opposite side of RF III from our inbound approach. If they follow our course in, we should warp out in their blind spot. Hold on.”
Chapel looked out the port as RF III shot past to starboard. She felt herself pressed back in her seat as the shuttle was slung out of the system.
“I am sending narrow-beam message bursts toward the Troyval’s most likely position along its course to the rendezvous.”
Chapel’s head still felt glued to her seat, but she turned toward Spock. When she could see him, he was frowning. “Did they jam us?”
“No, the system went off-line after only three bursts.” He examined his displays. “The g-forces of the maneuver must have compromised my repairs, which were already at the limits of my abilities and our resources. No matter, it is time to go to warp, which would have likely caused the same problems.” He tapped his controls, and the stars stretched into lines as the Copernicus jumped to light speed.
Once again Spock leaned over to study the information on the copilot’s console in front of Chapel. He nodded a few times, an eyebrow raised. He sat back in his seat and was silent.
Chapel watched him think as long as she could stand it. “Well? Report.”
He lowered the eyebrow. “Sorry, I was contemplating the scant information we received from passive scans.” Turning back toward her, he pointed at various elements of the sensor readings on her display. “They did drop from warp near where we did. It is difficult to discern if I successfully kept RF III between us at all times as we left Rose’s Folly, but there are no indications that they ran any broad scans that might have caught a glimpse of us, nor that my narrow-beam transmissions were noticed. It is not unreasonable to infer that they were indeed following the course indicated to them by our previous warp trail, and that they are now investigating the traces we left behind in the system. If they have a competent crew, they will eventually see through my various attempts to minimize our warp signature and continue their pursuit.”
“So we’re warping to a rendezvous with no way of confirming the other ship is headed for the same place, no more repairs or tricks are readily available to us, and an enemy ship will soon be on our trail.”
“That is a grim assessment, but accurate.”
“Then this is a simple race. We should run as fast and as long as we can.”
“I agree. I will push my repairs to the limit. The closer we are to the Troyval when our engines give out—or our pursuers catch us—the better.”
As Spock manipulated his controls with a certain Vulcan gusto, and the thrumming of the warp engines increased, Chapel went back to Dax. She was relieved to see that the Trill’s brainwaves were slowly strengthening since leaving the violently energetic magnetosphere of RF III. Chapel briefly laid her hand on Dax’s abdomen and was soon rewarded with the odd tingling sensation of the symbiont’s neural energies upon the nerves of her palm. She quickly withdrew her hand. As long as the bond was intensifying naturally, she thought it best not to impose herself between Audrid and Dax. The option still remained available to her if they relapsed and their brainwaves became asynchronous.
After running several other scans and closely monitoring Dax for about half an hour, Chapel made her way back to the cockpit. She slumped into the copilot’s seat and suddenly felt weary.
“I could easily fall asleep sitting right here.”
“It has been a tiring mission.” Spock rotated toward her. “I must admit to feeling less than optimal myself.”
“Less than optimal? That bad?”
“Indeed. I would estimate that I am functioning at only ninety-two percent of my abilities.”
“Really? Practically useless.” Chapel let her eyes close but then forced them open before she really did fall asleep. Glancing over at Spock, she saw him fine-tuning the engines, doing all he could to keep the Copernicus going as fast as possible.
Chapel shook her head. “Remember what I said about looking for structure?” She waited until he nodded slightly before continuing. “It’s strange. Starfleet certainly has plenty of structure, with the chain of command and the Prime Directive . . . but this, this right now?” She waved an arm around. “This is not structure, this is flying by the seat of our pants. We get into these situations all the time. And no matter how much Leonard pisses and moans about it, I’m convinced, deep down, that he thrives on this stuff. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I don’t. Not a bit.”
Spock frowned. “But you perform admirably under these conditions. Your piloting of the shuttlecraft—”
“It’s not about doubting my abilities. I know I’m a good doctor, and in an emergency I can stretch myself beyond that. Big picture . . . even the best swimmer wants to get out of the pool now and then, you know what I mean?”
“I see your point.”
“I have to ask myself if the Enterprise is still the best place for me—for my personal and professional growth—in the long term. Coming back to her after the refit seemed right at the time . . . but maybe it was only the comfortable decision.”
Spock nodded. “I have had similar thoughts myself. For a long time, serving on the Enterprise, under both Captains Pike and Kirk, seemed like the nearest thing I had to a family because of my estrangement from my father. I still struggled with my emotions at the end of the five-year mission, especially after the captain’s promotion, so leaving to pursue Kolinahr seemed eminently logical. After V’ger, however, I wondered if staying aboard the Enterprise was simply the easiest course of action, a return to the familiar. The revelations I received from V’ger should drive me to embrace the unfamiliar.” He paused. “In the end, I decided that simply being aboard the Enterprise thrusts me into the unfamiliar.”
Chapel nestled further into her seat. “That makes sense. For you, that is. For me . . .” She trailed off, both because she wasn’t yet sure of her answer and because she was slipping into sleep.
Chapel was shaken awake by the shuttle violently lurching to starboard. In the dim emergency lighting, Spock looked particularly grim.
“They are back,” he said. “A glancing blow from their weapons knocked us out of warp. Our shields held, but our sensors are out. Initiating evasive maneuvers.”
This time it was Chapel’s stomach that lurched as Spock threw the damaged Copernicus into a hairpin turn. A beam flashed past the forward port.
Spock lifted an eyebrow. “That was not at full power.”
Chapel gripped her console. “They still want to take us alive.”
“Logical. They realize we are in a fragile condition. I may be able to use this to our advantage.”
Before Spock could elucidate, a soft cry of “Doctor!” emanated from the aft cabin.
Chapel headed back, staggering left and right as the Vulcan corkscrewed the shuttle away from their attacker. She paused at the door. “Spock?”
He glanced back over his shoulder expectantly.
“Get us out of here. Whatever it takes.”
; After he gave her a quick nod, the doctor entered the aft cabin. As she did, the lights flickered. She couldn’t see any smoke, but there was a distinct smell of overloaded circuitry in the air. Dax watched her from the bed.
“Sorry about the ride,” Chapel said. “I think it’s about to get worse.”
Dax frowned. “Who are they?”
“We don’t know.”
“What happened to me? I felt so much better for a while . . .”
Chapel briefed Dax on the circumstances surrounding their time in Rose’s Folly. “You’ve been improving ever since we left, but it was a shock to your already weakened bond.”
“I understand. And now these whoever-they-are won’t let us get to the Troyval?”
Chapel nodded sadly and grabbed the bed as the Copernicus spun around. Then its course evened out, followed by the engines thrumming up to full power.
“Doctor, please take a seat and brace yourself.” Spock’s voice over the intercom was insistent, but Chapel wanted to know what was happening.
She opened the door to the cockpit and froze on the threshold. The hostile ship filled the forward port. Copernicus was bearing down on it as if Spock were going to ram it. Even as it seemed they were on top of the other ship, Spock continued accelerating.
“What are you—” She didn’t get to finish her question before the enemy got out of the way at the last second, and Spock took them to warp at full power. She was in the air for a second before landing hard on her glutes and taking a backward somersault along the deck. Landing facedown, she scrambled to her hands and knees and back to her feet as she rushed into the cockpit.
Star Trek: The Original Series: The More Things Change Page 7
