by David Mack
No, he told himself. I am not a slave to my biology. I am not prey unless I choose to be.
Every fiber in his Kelpien body told him to abandon ship and hide somewhere distant and dark until the threat had passed.
All that stood between him and an act of shameless flight were four years of Starfleet Academy training and the love he had come to feel for this ship, its captain, and its crew. He locked his hands around the edges of his console, and repeated his captain’s words to himself until he believed them: Come blood, come fire, come hell itself—we draw the line here.
When his breathing slowed, and he no longer feared he would run, he knew that what the captain had said next was now also his truth: This is why I am here.
Then came the next round of detonations against the Shenzhou’s shields, and all Saru could do was hang on and pray that his courage lasted longer than the battle.
* * *
There was no time left for subtlety, so Burnham resorted to direct confrontation. “Judge,” she said to the disembodied voice of thunder that spoke for the Juggernaut, “the Dynasty you represent no longer exists. It collapsed nearly nine million years ago. It is extinct.”
“YOU MUST CHOOSE.”
Burnham felt her shoulders slump, an involuntary admission of defeat. She looked to Spock for encouragement, but found only his preternatural calm and neutrality. “This has to be the worst-programmed artificial intelligence in history,” she said.
“Its intransigence might be deliberate,” Spock said. “Past candidates might have resorted to any number of rhetorical strategies to outwit its intended function. What we find to be a confounding simplicity its makers might have considered an operational imperative.”
Fleeting images projected on the central sphere of the core depicted the Shenzhou and the Enterprise enduring increasingly severe attacks by the Juggernaut. Burnham winced at each flash of energy that struck the shields of either vessel, because she knew all too well what they meant for the people inside.
“We have to do something,” she said. “And soon, before this thing pulverizes our ships.”
“All we can do is give it one of the two answers it has declared acceptable.” Spock regarded the scenes of battle without apparent emotion. “If we refuse, it is likely to mark us as enemies of its Dynasty. But if we accept its invitation . . .”
She completed his thought process out loud: “It might see us as allies, or at least as its own subjects. Which would negate its need to continue its attack.”
Spock nodded. “Perhaps. At the very least, it seems worth trying.”
Burnham raised her voice. “Hear us, Judge! We accept the invitation of the Turanian Dynasty. On behalf of our people, we consent to be your subjects.”
Her declaration was answered by a change in the colors that surrounded her and Spock. The banks of fine metal and crystal shone a brilliant green, as did the decks, the bulkheads, and the overheads. Around the core, other portals spiraled open, and the few holographic images that had depicted the capital of New Astana and other settlements of the Sirsa III colony shifted to represent new vantages of the Shenzhou and the Enterprise.
“YOUR WORLD IS NOW, AND EVERMORE SHALL BE, UNDER THE BANNER OF THE TURANIAN DYNASTY. AS A SUBJECT WORLD, YOU WILL BE KEPT INFORMED OF YOUR EXPECTED TITHES TO THE DYNASTY. IN RETURN, YOU WILL ENJOY OUR PROTECTION—AS WE WILL NOW DEMONSTRATE BY DESTROYING THE TWO THREAT VESSELS CURRENTLY IN ORBIT.”
“Those aren’t threat vessels,” Burnham said, “they—”
“THE VESSELS ARE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, AND HAVE DEMONSTRATED HOSTILE INTENTIONS. FOR THE GOOD OF THIS WORLD AND ITS PEOPLE, THE HOSTILE VESSELS WILL BE DESTROYED.”
Aggravated and enervated, Burnham sighed and rubbed her eyes. “So much for de-escalation through surrender.” When she looked at Spock, he remained maddeningly serene. “It’s hopeless,” she said. “There’s no reasoning with this thing.”
“On the contrary,” Spock said. “If we have accomplished nothing else, we have persuaded the Juggernaut that the colonists are not its enemy. Since protecting them was the core objective of our shared mission, one could argue that we have succeeded.”
“Except for the fact that the Juggernaut is about to destroy both our ships.”
Spock acknowledged her criticism with a small nod. “Yes. Most unfortunate.”
His penchant for understatement appalled her. “Unfortunate?”
The deck pitched and heaved as the Juggernaut accelerated through the planet’s atmosphere. Around the core chamber’s middle level, holographic images of flight telemetry and tactical information appeared, all of them updating with terrifying speed.
Burnham concentrated and hoped that some remnant of her telepathic link to Spock was still active, because she didn’t want the Juggernaut to hear what she needed to say.
Spock . . . can you still hear my thoughts? Please answer me if you can.
«Our contact persists, but not for much longer.»
We need to stop the Juggernaut before it destroys our ships. Even if what we do means we die with the Juggernaut, we have a duty not to just stand by and let it kill our shipmates.
«I agree. Our first objective should be to commandeer control using the interfaces around us. If that fails, our next imperative should be sabotage, by any means.»
Then let’s get to it. I’ll take consoles to the left. You take the ones to the right.
Burnham and Spock split up. They moved down the rows of holographic displays until they each arrived at one that seemed tactical in purpose. She reached up to see which, if any, of its settings she could adjust—and a painful electrical shock made her pull back her hand.
Undeterred, Spock tried to access the nearest interface to him. He, too, received a jolt of electricity for his trouble.
The pair regrouped and let their foreheads touch.
Maybe we can use my tricorder to disrupt the force fields.
«Perhaps, though it is unlikely to be able to generate sufficient energy to negate even a small area of the force field for more than a second. However, it might enable us to identify some other vulnerability in the systems around the core.»
Burnham lifted her tricorder and started scanning the force fields being generated inside the Juggernaut’s core. She was dismayed to see that, just as Spock had predicted, they were far too powerful to be negated, even for a moment, by the output of a single tricorder. Even worse, the image it compiled of overlapping defense fields inside the core chamber presented no clear weakness for them to exploit. She returned the tricorder to its passive sensing mode and shook her head at Spock. No weak spots, no chance of breaking through with a tricorder.
«Could we shoot through with our phasers?»
I’d doubt it. Maybe if we both hit the same point at full power with an extended burst. But what do we target? Frag the wrong bit, and we’ll waste our last option.
Spock moved to the ring’s inner railing and looked down. «Under ideal circumstances, I would propose we target that.»
Burnham joined him at the railing and followed his gaze. Below the spinning sphere was an aperture glowing with white light. A power source, she realized. That’ll do nicely. And it’ll have the bonus of giving us quick and relatively painless deaths. But there are at least six layers of energy shielding between us and that. Our phasers will run cold before we hit it.
«As I feared. Then we are faced with yet another test by the Juggernaut: salve our feelings of guilt by taking futile action . . . or do nothing and bear mute witness to the deaths of our crewmates.»
The pointless choice filled Burnham with frustration and sorrow. “This is what you Academy-trained officers call a Kobayashi Maru, isn’t it?”
Spock answered with slow nod. “That scenario and ours share distinct similarities.”
26
* * *
A hacking cough left Georgiou nearly doubled over. The bridge of the Shenzhou was thick with smoke, and the Juggernaut’s assault drowned out the steady strea
m of damage reports flooding Fan’s and Oliveira’s consoles. Fighting for breath, Georgiou raised her hoarse voice above the din. “Helm, go to full impulse! Roll to starboard!”
Detmer did her best to push their decades-old Walker-class starship through the brutal maneuver, but halfway through the rolling turn funereal groans from the spaceframe swallowed the whining of the impulse engines and the Juggernaut’s relentless blasts.
“Aft shields failing!” Gant shouted over the battle noise. “I can shift their power to other sections, but we can’t take any more hits on the aft quarter!”
“Do it,” Georgiou said, adjusting her tactics on the fly. “Detmer, come about and cut across the Juggernaut’s field of fire. Whatever you do, keep them in front of us! Weeton, help Gant angle the rest of our shields for maximum forward defense!”
“On it,” Weeton said, his hands a blur of action across his wraparound console.
Georgiou was about to order a kamikaze run at the Juggernaut, when Saru announced, “Phasers back online! All banks charging!”
Ensign Fan looked up from the communications panel, her face bright with hope. “Enterprise confirms its phasers are ready to fire! They’re locking on to the Juggernaut now!”
“Helm, break to port!” Georgiou snapped. “Watch for crossfire!”
There was a fierce glee in Gant’s eyes as he declared, “Target locked!”
“Fire at will,” Georgiou said. “And keep firing until that thing goes down.”
“Copy that!” Gant pressed his index finger to his panel’s firing control. Outside the center viewport, a fierce storm of energy pulses erupted from the Shenzhou’s numerous phaser batteries. The barrage tore holes in the Juggernaut’s shields, which crackled into view like a tattered bubble of sickly green light. Then a pair of steady blue beams from the Enterprise pierced the green cocoon, sliced into the goliath, and flensed off large pieces of its hull.
The fearsome power of the Constitution-class starship’s state-of-the-art weaponry drew a gasp from Oliveira. “My God,” she said. “The new type-ten phaser banks can do that?”
“And a lot more,” Georgiou said, succumbing to a small twinge of envy.
Flashes of red lit up Narwani’s auxiliary tactical station. She swiveled toward Gant, who listened to her report and then swung into action as he reported, “The Juggernaut’s accelerating into a new attack run. Its weapons are increasing power and locking on—”
Horrific roars of detonation and collision shook the bridge crew and left half of them sprawled on the deck. Darkness swallowed them for half a second. Emergency lights snapped on, their weak orange glow casting pitch-black shadows and emphasizing the pall of smoke lingering over the bridge. Georgiou clawed her way back into her command chair. “Gant, reacquire target and continue firing. Helm, protect our six. Go head-to-head with that thing if you have to.”
Through the viewport, Georgiou saw a salvo from the Juggernaut strafe the Enterprise’s port warp nacelle and its pylon—until the Enterprise retaliated with a shot from its aft phaser bank and cut a long, brutal gash through the alien vessel’s dorsal hull, releasing a spew of gases, ignited plasma, and debris.
Georgiou sprang from her chair and pointed at the blazing wound in the Juggernaut’s back. “Target that and fire!” She spun toward Gant. “Break its back!”
“Aye, sir,” Gant said, training all of the Shenzhou’s phasers on the vulnerability.
Hope rekindled itself in Georgiou’s heart. She turned back toward the viewport. “Saru! Can our sensors see inside that thing yet?”
“Only limited areas,” Saru said. “But as we strip off more of the hull—”
“Keep scanning,” Georgiou said. “Look for any sign of Burnham or Spock. If we can get a comm signal, or a transporter lock, do it!”
“That will be extremely—” He abandoned his protest when Georgiou shot a sharp look his way. Chastened, he nodded. “I will continue scanning.”
Another fusillade from the Juggernaut hammered the Shenzhou, and Georgiou saw the alien dreadnought punch a burning hole through the Enterprise’s saucer. This beast was never going to surrender. The only way this bare-knuckle brawl could end would be with a knockout.
If only Michael and Spock weren’t on board, one torpedo could—
The Enterprise’s forward phaser banks scissored across the tail section of the Juggernaut. A blinding flash forced Georgiou to shield her eyes. When it faded, she saw the Enterprise had severed a piece of the Juggernaut’s tail several dozen meters long.
Oliveira announced, “The Juggernaut’s shields are down!”
Georgiou seized the moment: “Target its stardrive and fire!”
Gant unleashed the Shenzhou’s phasers as Detmer swooped under and around the Juggernaut’s belly. From above, the Enterprise skewered the monstrous vessel with three phaser beams. Georgiou was about to crow with excitement—then came a wild storm of green energy blasts from the Juggernaut, a mad flurry that engulfed the Shenzhou and the Enterprise.
Consoles went black and spat sparks. The impulse engines’ high whines of strain became falling groans, and the Shenzhou listed to port, its inertial dampers and artificial gravity both in flux, hurling personnel in all directions.
Georgiou clung to an arm of her command chair as the artificial gravity failed. Around her the duty stations of the bridge went dark. Outside the center viewport she saw a dizzying slow spin-and-tumble of stars: the Shenzhou was adrift and in a chaotic roll.
Even worse, for a moment the Enterprise passed into view—and it, too, was rolling and yawing on more than one axis. Its running lights were off, and just like the Shenzhou it was on a trajectory that would, within minutes, send it screaming through Sirsa III’s upper atmosphere.
One more shot is all it would take to finish either of us, Georgiou realized. Which means if we don’t restore main power before that thing fires again . . . we’re all as good as dead.
* * *
It was a waking nightmare. Burnham felt trapped as she and Spock watched holographic images of the Shenzhou and the Enterprise being battered in their fight against the Juggernaut, while the two of them stood in the alien vessel’s nerve center, powerless to do anything to help their ships. Even worse, she found it hard to root for the Starfleet vessels to win; every hit they struck against the Juggernaut threatened to kill her and Spock.
Spock, for his part, calmly adjusted the frequency and gain of his communicator, whose signal he was boosting with the subspace transceiver built into Burnham’s tri-corder. “Still no response to my automated distress beacon,” he said, seemingly oblivious of the battle transpiring around them. “It would appear the Juggernaut’s hull and shields, though compromised, are still sufficient to obstruct a clear comm signal.”
“I don’t know whether to feel protected or trapped right now,” Burnham said.
“I fail to see the value in ascribing a subjective—”
He lost the thread of his pedantic rebuttal as the Shenzhou and the Enterprise drilled through the Juggernaut’s shields and hull in a stunning counterattack. Then the Enterprise carved off a section of the Juggernaut’s tail, and the ring-shaped deck beneath them trembled as the alien vessel shook from numerous secondary explosions that set all the holovids in the sphere chamber to flickering. Even after the images stabilized, Burnham saw they had lost some of their resolution. Finally! About time our side landed a solid—
Her elation ceased as she witnessed the Juggernaut’s crushing retaliation: a mad barrage that knocked both Federation starships off their headings and left them dark and tumbling.
“They’re adrift,” Spock said. “One more hit—”
Burnham’s tricorder chirped at her. She lifted it to glance at its display—and her eyes widened at the news it offered. Its passive sensors had detected a vital change in the chamber around them. “Mister Spock,” she said, lowering the tricorder back to her hip, “the force fields inside this compartment . . . are offline.”
In uni
son, they both looked over the railing, toward the shining power source below. Then they regarded each other. Burnham drew her phaser, and Spock did the same.
“Set for overload,” she said, sabotaging its power cell, “twenty seconds to critical.”
Spock disengaged the safety components of his own weapon. “Set.”
“And drop,” Burnham said.
Spock lobbed his weapon over the railing. She threw hers into the delicate—and now undefended—machinery surrounding the core. All that remained was the obvious last step.
“Run!” Burnham shouted, already on the move.
Whether out of hesitation, deference to seniority, or some notion of chivalry, Spock let her lead the way out of the core chamber. They sprinted back the way they had come, past empty alcoves where just minutes earlier they had braved deadly riddles and puzzles—
Then came the detonation.
Louder than anything Burnham had ever heard, she felt it in her gut, in her bones. The sonic force of it threw her and Spock forward and dropped them facedown on the deck, which quaked with the aftershocks of the critical blow they had just struck to the Juggernaut’s brain.
All the colors faded from the bulkheads in the oval passageway, and then the last embers of weak, sallow light faded entirely, leaving Burnham and Spock in the dark, with the glow from her tricorder display their only illumination.
“Is that it?” Burnham wondered aloud. “Did we kill it? Is this mess finally over?”
Before Spock could venture an opinion, the passageway sealed itself on either side of them with what appeared to be emergency bulkheads. The gargantuan vessel groaned like a dying beast. Next the artificial gravity cut out, leaving Spock and Burnham afloat in zero g—and then a terrible roar resounded through the ship as gravity reasserted itself and slammed the pair against one of the emergency bulkheads.
“I could be wrong,” Spock said through gritted teeth, “but I don’t think this is over.”
Pinned by the growing force of acceleration, Burnham knew she might be about to speak her last words. She chose them without sentiment or regret.
