by David Mack
Cockney and his pals backed out of the lift, then ushered out the prisoners. Nambue did his best to linger near the back of the group, to buy himself time to observe their surroundings. All he saw were endless jungles of pipes large and small, and metal catwalks beneath which lay abyssal plunges into blackness.
The prisoners were marched at a quick pace down a few more flights of steep stairs, until they were herded into a storage area lit by a single light rod on its ceiling, and whose entrance was guarded by more armed men. Through the open door, Nambue heard people talking outside. At least one of them he recognized from the colony’s news feeds as the voice of the governor, Gretchen Kolova. The others he didn’t know.
“You destroyed their communicators?” Kolova asked.
Another woman replied, “Yes, all except this one. We need it to make our demands.”
“Yes, of course. And the transporter scramblers—?”
“All in place,” a man answered. “No one’s beaming in or out of here, Governor. And we have all the choke points covered. If they send down security teams, we’ll be ready.”
Another trio of armed guards arrived with a fresh batch of prisoners. Among them was Doctor Boyce, who sported a bloody nose and a split lip, as well as a number of abrasions on his knuckles. The Enterprise’s chief surgeon hadn’t been taken without a fight. He nodded at Nambue, who replied in kind. Then they turned toward their makeshift cell’s entrance as Governor Gretchen Kolova stepped into its frame, holding a Starfleet communicator in her hand.
She flipped open its grille with a flick of her wrist.
“Attention, Enterprise and Shenzhou. This is Governor Gretchen Kolova. My people and I have been monitoring your communications. We know about your General Order Twenty-four, and that you’ve been told to consider my planet and my people expendable in your fight against the Juggernaut. Well . . . I just want you to know that my people and I are holding your medical teams hostage until this crisis is resolved. In other words, Captains, if you decide to treat us as collateral damage, we’ll be taking at least a few of your people down with us.”
20
* * *
Just what this situation needed, Georgiou fumed behind her failing mask of calm. Another complication. She did her best to sound unruffled. “Governor, you and your people are in enough trouble already. Adding kidnapping to the charges against you isn’t going to help matters.”
“I don’t see how it can make things worse,” Kolova replied over the audio-only channel. “You’re already planning on blasting us all into charcoal in a few minutes. I just want to make sure you get to share some of the pain you’re about to inflict.”
One by one, the Shenzhou’s bridge officers tried to steal looks at Georgiou to see how their captain would react to this latest crisis. The only one of her officers who kept his focus on his own work was Saru, and the only officer whose opinion Georgiou would actually have cared to know was still trapped inside the Juggernaut. Hoping not to inflame matters further, she told Kolova, “I don’t know what you think you heard, Governor, but just because something is an option, that doesn’t make it a foregone conclusion. And I assure you, we’re doing—”
“—all you can,” Kolova interrupted. “So you keep telling me. It’s getting old, Captain.”
“Believe me or don’t,” Georgiou said, her patience expended. “But this conversation will have to wait until after my crew and I deal with the Juggernaut. Shenzhou out.” She signaled Ensign Fan with a slashing motion in front of her throat, and Fan closed the comm channel. Freed from Kolova’s merry-go-round of empty posturing, Georgiou stood from her command chair to reassert her presence in the center of the bridge. “Mister Gant. On the off chance that we succeed in stopping the Juggernaut and saving the planet, we’ll need a tactical response to rescue those hostages.”
“How do you want to play it, Captain? Slow and steady, or shock and awe?”
Too many times Georgiou had seen the costs of carelessness. “Let’s game out slow and steady,” she said. “Maximal rescue with minimal violence.”
“Best-case scenario,” Gant said, “is we bring down the Juggernaut, and then we talk down Kolova and negotiate a peaceful release of the prisoners.”
Georgiou appreciated his willingness to start his speculations from a place of optimism. But she had to consider all possibilities. “And if they decide not to stand down?”
“The first step would be to isolate them.” Gant thought for a second. “Box them in. The tighter the space, the better. We have to assume they’d be able to weather at least a short siege. Beneath the city they’ll have access to water conduits, maybe even emergency food lockers.”
Saru looked up to join the conversation. “Could we not use the transporter to beam in anesthetic gas? If the targets are inside a contained area, such a tactic could be quite effective.”
“Maybe,” Gant said. “But they’re using transporter scramblers. If we want to hit them with tranq gas, we’d have to send in a security team to make a direct assault. Which is possible, but if the colonists shoot to kill, we could lose a lot of people real fast.”
That notion seemed to diminish Saru’s enthusiasm for his own proposal. “Oh. No, that won’t do. Not at all.” He folded his long bony fingers together in a pensive gesture. “What if we devised an automated delivery system, such as a drone, to deliver the gas?”
“If it’s remote controlled,” Gant said, “the command system would be crippled by the same scrambling field that’s blocking our transporters. And as I’m sure you recall, autonomous robotic attack systems—”
“Are prohibited by Federation law,” Saru said, finishing the citation. “A most nettlesome restriction, if you ask me.”
Ensign Fan turned away from the communications console. “That’s what the people of Earth used to think, right up until World War III. Every time I think about those killer ’bots in the streets of Paris, I get a shiver down my spine.”
“It’s clear this might take a bit more thought,” Georgiou said. “Mister Gant, keep looking for new angles on this. In the meantime, let’s focus on the Juggernaut. How do we neutralize it without killing the planet?”
Ensign Weeton’s nervous voice piped up from the back of the bridge. “Commander Johar just sent up some sensor data. It’s from his forensic work on the drones. He says if we can map the fluctuations in the quantum resonance frequency of the Juggernaut’s hull material, we might be able to retune our phasers to punch holes in it.”
That sounded as if it might almost be helpful. “Give him my thanks,” Georgiou said to Weeton, “right after you send that data to Gant, Troke, and Saru.” To the science specialists and tactical officer she added, “You three start crunching those numbers. Fan, send Johar’s data to the Enterprise. Let them work the problem with us.”
Three nods of affirmation. Placated by the promise of a new tactic, Georgiou returned to her chair and confronted the image of Sirsa III outside the center viewport. I know we can solve this . . . Her hand closed into a fist, channeling her frustration. If only we have the time.
As if in mockery of her silent hopes, alerts shrilled on the ops console. Oliveira muted them, then looked over her shoulder at Georgiou, her eyes wide with alarm. “Captain, there’s something happening on the surface, and it doesn’t look good.”
“Specifics, Lieutenant.”
“The Juggernaut, Captain.” Oliveira projected a magnified holographic image of the vessel over the main viewport. “It’s powering up on a level we haven’t seen before—weapons, shields, more drones in ready positions, and a major heat bloom from what I’m pretty sure is a stardrive.” She updated her readouts, then added, “No idea how soon it’ll be ready for lift-off, but at this rate I don’t think it’ll be more than a matter of minutes.”
Georgiou felt the blood drain from her face, replaced by a cold wash of dread. Despite the company of her crew, she suddenly felt very alone.
“Leviathan has awoken,” she said under her b
reath. “Heaven help us all.”
* * *
“We’re out of time,” Pike said to his bridge crew. “Number One, sound red alert, battle stations. Mister Tyler, raise shields, charge phaser banks, load all torpedo tubes. Chief Garison, hail Captain Georgiou, right now.” Around him, his bridge officers remained cool and professional as the whoop of the red alert siren resounded through the Enterprise.
“Power levels inside the Juggernaut are escalating rapidly,” Una said, peering into the cerulean glow of her hooded sensor display. “At its current rate of increase, the Juggernaut’s energy output will be double the combined power of the Shenzhou and the Enterprise in less than twenty minutes. Potential maximum output is currently impossible to calculate.”
“Whatever Spock and his new friend are doing down there,” said navigator Ohara, “it looks like they’ve really pissed it off.”
Garison swiveled toward Pike. “I have Captain Georgiou on channel one.”
“On-screen,” Pike said. Georgiou’s stern features filled the main viewscreen. Pike mirrored her grave expression. “We’re out of time, Captain.”
“No, not yet. The Juggernaut is powering up, but it’s not yet mobile.”
“We don’t know that,” Pike said, growing more emphatic. “It could lift off, or launch more drones, or both, at any second. We might never have a better chance to destroy it.”
“If we strike now,” Georgiou said, “even if we succeed, everyone on the surface will be killed, including Mister Spock and my first officer.”
“I don’t see that we have any alternative. That thing will be able to overpower us both in a matter of minutes. If we delay our response until after it’s mobile, that might be too late.”
Someone off-screen relayed a report to Georgiou, who nodded once, then returned her attention to Pike. “My second officer informs me the Juggernaut’s stardrive will not have sufficient power to achieve launch for another fifteen minutes.”
“And in twenty minutes the Juggernaut will be turning our ships into scrap.” Pike sprang from his chair, overcome by the need to be in motion, to take action, to do something. “You heard the same orders from Admiral Anderson that I did. Our priority is to neutralize the Juggernaut, by any means necessary—even if that means sacrificing the planet or ourselves.”
Georgiou remained stoic in the face of his challenge. “I heard the admiral’s orders quite clearly. Including the part where he vested me with operational command of this mission. This is my call to make, Captain, and I’ve made it. We have fifteen minutes before the Juggernaut’s capabilities escalate this conflict to the point of no alternative. I intend to give Burnham and Spock every one of those minutes to accomplish their objective.”
Pike was livid. Decorum demanded he conceal it; duty required him to move past it. But the anger at being forced into inaction burned like a hot coal festering in his belly. “What are we supposed to do in the interim? Stand down?”
“Of course not,” Georgiou said. “We keep looking for a way to penetrate the Juggernaut’s hull with our phasers. If the situation on the surface changes, or the Juggernaut lifts off ahead of schedule . . . then we do what we have to, no matter the cost.”
He wanted to believe her, but he found it hard to trust her judgment. “And if we come to the end of this fifteen-minute grace period, and the Juggernaut remains a threat . . . will you keep telling me to give Spock and Burnham more time?”
His question seemed at last to pierce Georgiou’s unshakable façade.
“Have your crew set a synchronized fifteen-minute countdown with mine,” she said. “If the Juggernaut remains a threat and we haven’t heard from Burnham or Spock by the time it expires . . . we’ll glass the planet.”
At a nod from Pike, Ohara set up the countdown, which appeared in the lower right corner of the main view-screen. It was the concession Pike had wanted, but now that he had it, he felt nothing but regret.
“I hope you’re right about this, Captain.”
“Believe me,” Georgiou said, her eyes betraying a shimmer of fear, “so do I.”
21
* * *
Tremors of vitality hummed beneath the deck; vibrant colors pulsed behind suddenly translucent bulkheads. It was apparent to Burnham that the Juggernaut had been roused from its eons of slumber. Like a dormant volcano stirred to life, the alien behemoth was alive and gravid with the promise of death and destruction. Ashamed to show emotion in front of Spock, she banished all semblance of fear from her face and voice. “I suspect we are nearly out of time.”
He coolly appraised the new aura of menace that infused their surroundings. “Indeed.”
Ahead of them bobbed Thumper, its swirls of ribbonlike energy casting off sparks like motes from a bonfire, its steady beat louder and deeper than before. Whatever was invigorating the Juggernaut was increasing the brightness and volume of the holographic lure. It led them down another slope in the passageway, then it paused at a fork where the corridor split into two parallel passages, one on each side of the ship.
“This is new,” Burnham said. “Up until now, we’ve only had one path to follow.”
“Intriguing.” Spock halted and inspected the protruding thresholds of the diverging paths. He pointed at markings engraved into their outer edges. “We have seen these symbols before. At the first threshold after we entered.”
Burnham remembered. “The one that closed behind us. Not an encouraging sign.”
“The design of this intersection seems to imply we are meant to part ways. Perhaps if we stay together, we can avoid triggering the mechanism that closes the portal.”
“Maybe,” Burnham said. “Or perhaps they’ll close anyway, and then we’ll be unable to finish the last challenge, because we’ll both be stuck in the same passage.”
Spock considered that. “May I borrow your tricorder?” She handed the device to him. He studied its display, then furrowed his brow. “The hull’s signal-blocking compounds are quite concentrated here. If we become sequestered in separate passages, we will be unable to maintain contact with our communicators.”
“So we have no way of knowing what’s at the end of each corridor,” Burnham said. “And no idea what kind of challenges we’ll face when we get there.” She took back her tricorder and reviewed the automatic map it had compiled of their movements inside the Juggernaut. “If this is correct, then there’s a good chance these two passages both lead to the same place.” She pondered their predicament. “If the makers of these tests want us to split up, wouldn’t it be more logical for the portals to remain open until after we part ways?”
Her question was met by a one-shoulder shrug. “Perhaps. Without knowing the motives and design imperatives of the builders, all I can do is speculate. If you wish to test the paths together, that is your prerogative as the officer in charge.”
“Well, I prefer action to inaction, so let’s proceed down the starboard passage. We’ll step together over the portal’s threshold on the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
Burnham and Spock synchronized their movements and stepped over the threshold. When they both were on the other side, and the portal remained open behind them, Burnham breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “So far, so good. Let’s see where this leads.”
With each step they took, the glow infusing the bulkheads changed colors and grew more intense, and a deep thudding noise gave Burnham the uneasy sensation that they were deep in the heart of a living thing, one not pleased to welcome them as invaders. The passage curved outward and then back in, so that as they neared its far end its entrance was no longer visible. At its terminus was a single oval panel recessed into the inner bulkhead.
“End of the line,” Burnham said. She put her hand on the oval slab. It was cool and smooth like polished obsidian. After several seconds without a response, she removed her hand. “Nothing.” A look around uncovered no other clues. “No markings. No other interface.” A weary nod at the oval panel. “Just this.”
“
And,” Spock said, “most likely a mirrored twin at the end of the other passage.”
“Let’s go see.” Burnham led Spock back the way they had come, and then they ventured down the portside passage way. At its end, just as they both had expected, was another oval interface set into the inner bulkhead, to the right of the closed portal. Burnham shook her head. “No line of sight between the interfaces. And with the portals closed, we won’t be able to hear each other or send signals.” She grimaced at the oval slab. “If this test is like the others, it’ll require us to do something in synchronicity, some kind of coordinated action.”
“Without the ability to share information, that will be difficult,” Spock said, exhibiting his Vulcan knack for understatement. “Setting arbitrary parameters for timing or response will most likely be futile without knowing the nature of the test in advance.”
“This is ridiculous,” Burnham said. She plodded back toward the intersection. Spock followed her. Several seconds later they were back at the fork in the main corridor. “We can’t go back, and if we go forward, we’ll be cut off in locked passageways with no way to cooperate.”
Above them the ship rumbled with the sounds of great machines going to work. Spock noted it all with what seemed to be perfect detachment, but each new quaking of the vessel reminded Burnham that once it was mobile, their shipmates on the Shenzhou and the Enterprise would have no choice but to destroy it by any means possible. The only scenario she could think of that didn’t end with her and Spock’s deaths required them to get past this final obstacle.
But how? After testing them in tandem so many times, why split them apart now?
Dejected, Burnham pressed her palm to her forehead and fought to maintain her last vestiges of emotional control. “This is it,” she confessed to Spock. “We’re finished.”
“We cannot know that for certain. Not until we face the last challenge.”
