Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours

by David Mack

  “I think you’d best do as the governor’s man tells you, Lieutenant.”

  All around the landing parties there was movement. Shapes emerged from patches of shadow, from around corners, over the edges of rooftops—all of them armed. Gant could see at a glance that he and his Starfleet colleagues were outnumbered at least thirty to one on the ground.

  He put away his communicator and turned back toward the man in the shadows atop the steps. “This doesn’t have to go sideways, for any of us. Just tell us what you want.”

  “We want you to go back to your ships,” said Gravel Voice, “stop that alien Juggernaut from wiping out our planet . . . and then we want you to go.”

  His demand incensed Donnelly. “Are you kidding? First you threaten us, then you want us to save your asses. And once we do, you want us to just walk away and forget about all the crimes that led us here in the first place?”

  “Our capital is still burning from the last attack!” Gravel shouted. “We see the news! The Juggernaut’s moving closer by the hour. It’s heading right for us, and you people are doing nothing! Instead of stopping that thing, you’re harassing us! Where the hell are your priorities?”

  Out of the gathering twilight came a shimmering blur—a bottle that smashed at the feet of an Enterprise security guard, who quick-stepped backward and pointed his phaser back the way the bottle had come. His finger tensed in front of his weapon’s trigger—

  “Hold your fire, Mister Gupta,” Donnelly said, clearly just as committed to avoiding a riot as Gant was. To the mysterious figure atop the stairs, she continued, “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can to stop the Juggernaut, but you—”

  A blaster shot tore through her left shoulder. The hit spun her about-face as it knocked her to the ground. As she fell, a storm of charged plasma rained down on the landing parties.

  Incoming fire of a potentially lethal nature meant the rules of engagement had just changed. Around Gant, his men and Donnelly’s laid down overlapping fields of wide-angle suppressing phaser fire, forcing their attackers back under cover. He grabbed Donnelly, threw her over his shoulder, then added his own phaser blasts to those blanketing the top of the stairs. “Go forward!” he hollered over the shrieking of weapons fire. “Get to the columns!”

  He had no idea how many hostiles awaited them at the top of the stairs, but that was a problem he’d face when he got there. For now, he needed to get his team out of the crossfire.

  By the time they reached the top step, they found only a handful of armed civilians lying stunned—but the entrance to the complex, as well as all its windows, had been barricaded with blast shields. To either side of him, his and Donnelly’s teams divided into pairs and took up positions behind the architectural columns. Most of their phasers’ emitter crystals were on the verge of overheating from having sustained so lengthy a barrage, so they were forced to duck and weather the latest incoming barrage of blaster pulses without responding in kind.

  Gant set down Donnelly, who was conscious and clearly in great pain. “Hang on,” he told her, flipping open his communicator. “Time to call in the big guns.” He tuned the communicator to its ship-to-shore channel. “Gant to Shenzhou! Do you read me?”

  Captain Georgiou answered. “This is Shenzhou. Go ahead, Gant.”

  “Captain,” Gant said, “this op is one-hundred percent FUBAR.”

  * * *

  A magnified optical sensor view of the battle in New Astana was not the best vantage point, in Pike’s opinion. It could be difficult to know what was really going on based on an almost straight-down perspective, but the image of the street fight that currently filled the Enterprise bridge’s main viewscreen was clear and detailed enough that he saw the shot that felled Lieutenant Donnelly, and the intercepted comm signals that Garison was routing through the overhead speakers enabled Pike to hear most of the pandemonium as it erupted.

  As soon as Donnelly hit the ground, Pike’s thumb was on his armrest’s intraship comm. “Bridge to security! Get riot teams to transporter rooms one and two, on the double!”

  His navigator and acting first officer, Lieutenant Yoshi Ohara, swiveled away from his post at the forward console to face Pike. “Captain, are you sure you want to risk escalating the situation? Captain Georgiou said—”

  “She isn’t responsible for the lives of my landing party, Lieutenant. I am.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ohara said, returning to his duties without pressing the point.

  On the viewscreen, a swarm of bodies pressed in upon the Executive Complex. Blaster pulses crisscrossed with phaser beams, and missed shots and ricochets quickly clouded the area with smoke. Impatience drove Pike to clench his fists as he watched the battle inch toward becoming a slaughter. He thumbed open another intraship channel. “Transporter room, have you beamed down re inforcements yet?”

  “Negative,” said Chief Pitcairn. “The locals have activated a scattering field. We can’t get a clear lock within two kilometers of the center of the capital.”

  “Which means we can’t beam our people up, either.”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Beam down our reinforcements outside the scattering field. They should still be able to reach the combat area in less than six minutes.”

  “Aye, sir. Setting new coordinates. Commencing transport in thirty seconds.”

  Pike closed the channel with a jab of his thumb, then muttered, “What a damned mess.”

  Garison swiveled his chair away from the communications console. “Sir, I’m intercepting chatter between the Shenzhou and her landing party.”

  “On speakers,” Pike said. He leaned forward and listened with intense focus.

  The voice over the comm was one of Georgiou’s officers, a man. “Repeat, we’re surrounded and taking heavy fire. Request fire support and medical assistance.”

  “Acknowledged,” Georgiou said. “Sit tight and stand by for protocol Theta.”

  Pike faced Garison. “Hail the Shenzhou.” It took just a switch-flip, and Garison nodded in confirmation, cuing Pike to speak. “Captain Georgiou, this is the Enterprise. Be advised, I am sending in reinforcements. They’re beaming down beyond the scattering field, but—”

  “Belay that order if you can, Captain,” Georgiou said. “Or tell your backup teams to stand down and wait for my signal to move in.”

  Georgiou’s warning made him sit up—she was about to do something unorthodox. “Why?” he asked. “What are you going to do?”

  Her voice was as cold as death. “I’m going to handle this.”

  He opened the channel to the transporter room. “Chief, hold that transport!”

  “Caught me in the nick of time, sir,” Pitcairn said. “Holding transport, aye.”

  The image on the viewscreen flared with an electric-blue glow. It bathed every street, rooftop, and exposed surface within two kilometers of the center of the colony’s capital. Though the pulse lasted for less than two seconds, when it faded everyone in view lay sprawled and unmoving. Pike turned his chair toward the sensor console, which was being monitored by Ensign Navah Wolfe of the sciences department. “Wolfe! What just happened down there?”

  The petite dark-haired woman checked her data readouts. “The Shenzhou fired a five-percent-power, wide-dispersal phaser pulse into the colony’s capital. Just enough to stun everyone in the area—and to neutralize the scattering field.”

  Georgiou’s voice filtered down from the overhead speakers. “Enterprise, this is Shenzhou. The crisis in the capital has been contained, and you are clear to beam down reinforcements. Also, please send in additional medical personnel, if you can spare them.”

  “Understood, Shenzhou,” Pike said. “And might I add, Captain, that’s one hell of an effective crowd-control tactic you’ve got there.”

  “It might not be pretty,” Georgiou said, “but it gets the job done.”

  “Copy that. Enterprise out.” He reopened his internal channel. “Transporter room, the scattering field is down.
Revert to original coordinates, beam down reinforcements, then stand by to beam up wounded before dispatching medical teams to the surface.”

  “Understood, bridge,” Pitcairn said.

  On many levels, Pike still felt he didn’t understand Captain Georgiou, but now he was sure he knew at least one thing about her: she was both pragmatic and restrained. Those were admirable qualities in a person to whom had been entrusted the power to mete out life and death. Knowing she possessed such virtues would make it all the more difficult for him to overrule her when Burnham’s mission to the Juggernaut failed, and the time came to carry out Starfleet’s order to blast Sirsa III into an orb of radioactive molten glass for the good of the galaxy.

  Difficult, but not impossible.

  Georgiou had her principles . . . but Pike had his orders.

  And when death’s hour came round at last, that would be all that mattered.

  13

  * * *

  Burnham stole forward through the wide oval passage inside the Juggernaut, prowling like a thief through a deserted mansion and expecting to be apprehended at any moment. Spock walked beside her, his posture straighter, his manner betraying not a hint of anxiety at their surroundings.

  The interior of the Juggernaut exhibited the same propensity for symmetry that she and Spock had noted on its outer hull. Its bulkheads gave her the impression of something grown rather than manufactured and assembled. They were marked by a fine vertical ribbing, and at regular intervals the passage was encroached upon by thicker ribs whose purpose appeared to be structural. Eeriest of all was the bioluminescence that suffused the Juggernaut’s interior. It had come to life seconds after the exterior hatchway had sealed itself behind them. Now everything glowed with teal radiance, including the decks and overheads. The absence of directional light and shadow felt surreal to Burnham.

  Spock lifted his tricorder and adjusted its settings. Its semimusical oscillations resounded down the long passageway ahead of them. “Now that we are inside, I am able to make a more detailed assessment of the Juggernaut’s internal functions,” he said. “If I am not mistaken, this vessel is biomechanoid in nature.” He lowered his tricorder and regarded the ship around them with a newfound admiration. “A living machine. Fascinating.”

  “It is,” Burnham said, while trying to conceal the genuine excitement coursing through her as she contemplated what eons-old mysteries lay ahead for her and Spock to uncover. She pulled her communicator from her hip and flipped it open. “Burnham to Shenzhou.” After a few seconds without a reply, she tried again. “Burnham to Shenzhou: Do you read me?”

  “It is likely,” Spock said, “that the same compounds that occluded our ability to scan the Juggernaut’s inner workings from the outside now impede our ability to transmit a signal.”

  “So it would seem.” She flipped shut the grille of her communicator and tucked it away. “We have this marvel of antiquity all to ourselves, Mister Spock.”

  He paused, so she stopped and faced him. He regarded her with wary curiosity. “You speak as if our present status is the result of fortune or favor. Might I suggest an alternative interpretation of our circumstances?”

  She tried not to take his proposal as a rebuke. “By all means.”

  “Unless we locate and identify a means of escape from this vessel, it will very likely become our shared tomb. In just over two hours, our captains will be bound by a Starfleet directive to destroy this ship, regardless of whether we are still on board.”

  She gestured aft. “We can always go back the way we came.”

  He shook his head. “There was no interface inside the first hatchway. At least, none of a similar nature to the one we used to gain access. I would posit that the hatch we exploited was always meant to permit passage in only one direction.”

  “You’re saying you think we’re trapped.”

  “I have considered the possibility,” Spock said. He seemed about to continue when a low groaning reverberated through the deck and bulkheads. As the deep moaning rose and fell in both volume and pitch, the ship’s interior bioluminescence shifted from teal to tangerine, and then back to a deeper blue-green, verging on turquoise. Spock recovered his composure. “At the very least, I think we should prepare for the likelihood that the feat which facilitated our entry will not in any way earn us our freedom.”

  “Why do you say that?” Aware of the dwindling time remaining, and eager to press onward, Burnham resumed walking. “And why did you refer to what we did as a ‘feat’?”

  He answered as he walked beside her. “The very nature of the test at the hatchway concerns me. As a means of securing a ship against intrusion, it leaves much to be desired. But if it is just a simple test of mathematical knowledge and pattern interpretation, it would be a logical first obstacle for those whom the Juggernaut, or its makers, wish to test.”

  “That would track with my hypothesis that the Juggernaut’s subsonic pulses were intended as a form of invitation,” Burnham said, thinking aloud.

  “Agreed,” Spock said. “But that raises the question: An invitation to what? Abduction? Experimentation? Genocide?”

  Burnham had no idea what answer would satisfy Spock. “I don’t know. But I’m relatively certain the only way we’ll find out is to push on and see where this leads.”

  He cocked one eyebrow in disdain. “With all respect, I think your reasoning on this matter verges upon the fatalistic.” He shot an accusatory sidelong look her way. “Are you always so willing to let yourself be manipulated by the will of others?”

  “Well, Lieutenant junior-grade Spock, for what it’s worth, I’m happy to resist your efforts at manipulating my command decisions. To be honest, I blame myself for them.” She skewered him with a look. “On account of my failure to impress upon you that you’re addressing a superior officer.”

  “An ‘appeal to authority’ is a form of logical fallacy,” he said dryly.

  “The invocation of superior rank is not an ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy.”

  “Normally, no. Given our present situation, however, an exception might be in order.”

  Burnham felt her patience bleed away and her most toxic emotions stir. This was the sort of verbal flensing she had been forced to suffer for years as a child and adolescent enrolled in the Vulcan Learning Center of ShiKahr. She was in no mood to relive those days.

  “Do me a favor, Mister Spock. Keep your idle observations to—”

  A crackling ball of lightning popped into existence in front of them. It lingered at eye level, bobbing by only the slightest measure as it hovered in place. As Burnham stepped toward it, Spock checked his tricorder. “A hologram.” He checked his readings. “Its photonic matrix is fused with a number of shaped force fields to give it a tangible presence.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Burnham cut in. “It’s fascinating.” Spock said nothing in response, but he could not help but appear mildly put out.

  Tendrils of energy danced around the sphere, then leaped toward Burnham and Spock. Before either of them could retreat, the orb seemed to probe their communicators and tricorders with its sparking slender tentacles. The devices it touched gave off bursts of static and atonal noises, and the displays on the tricorders went haywire as all their indicator lights flashed in what appeared to be random sequences.

  Then the tendrils vanished, and once more the orb hovered. As it pulsed, deep percussive thumps shook the deck under her feet, in time with the orb’s changes.

  Burnham’s communicator beeped twice, the alert for an incoming signal. She lifted it and flipped it open. “Burnham here.”

  A masculine voice emanated from her communicator’s speaker, and the orb’s intensity and coloration varied in synchronicity with the words. “Follow me.”

  Without waiting for an agreement or even an acknowledgment, the lightning orb floated away, as if to guide them ahead toward the front of the vessel. Every few seconds the orb pulsed, and another thump registered through the bulkheads and deck.


  Spock faced her. “Orders, sir?”

  “You heard our pal Thumper,” she said, setting off in pursuit. “Follow it.”

  * * *

  “We can’t stay here,” Bowen told the governor and her advisers. “No matter how secure you think this bunker of yours is, Starfleet will find a way in. If you’re still here when they do, you’ll be trapped.” He turned all his focus to Ishii, the governor’s chief of staff. “You know I’m right. The best shot any of us have is to kick on the sensor blinds and keep moving.”

  Ishii frowned, exacerbating the worry lines on his forehead. “It’s a problem of optics, Mister Bowen. If we run, it will only make us look guilty.”

  “You are guilty,” Chandra said from his seat on Bowen’s left, breaking a long silence. “We all are. Which is why we need to bolt, while we still can.”

  Omalu, who sat to Bowen’s right, nodded vigorously. “Yes. This. Time to run.”

  Governor Kolova remained resolute. “Run to where?” she asked. “We don’t have enough transport ships to evac more than a few hundred of the colonists.” She aimed a withering stare at Ishii. “And don’t you even think of telling me to flee the planet and leave these people behind.”

  “The alternative,” said her science adviser, “is to stay and die with them.”

  “If that’s the case,” Kolova said, “then goddammit, Medina, that’s what we’re going to do.” She palmed sweat from her forehead and wiped her hand dry on her shirt. “We need to get those Starfleet clowns to stop wasting their time on us, and get them to focus on the Juggernaut.”

  Around the bunker, a dozen faces went slack as they realized the group’s collective argument had come full circle without any of its points of contention having been resolved.