Mayweather swiveled his head to glance over his shoulder. “Sir?”
“We’re not going to Vulcan,” Archer announced, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the rest of the bridge crew. “Set a course for the Delphic Expanse.”
In the periphery of his vision, he could see both Reed and Hoshi react with surprise to the news—but he paid them no heed. His gaze met T’Pol’s, and for the first time, he saw a very recognizable, very human emotion reflected in her eyes: gratitude.
Chapter 8
Captain’s Starlog, supplemental. We’ve been traveling at warp five for seven weeks…The crew is anxious to begin our mission.
Along with the rest of his crew, Archer stared at the bridge viewscreen. The edge of the infamous Delphic Expanse was now visible, as an incalculably vast column of roiling, umber-colored clouds.
It’ll be like sailing into the middle of a Category-Five hurricane, Archer realized. How could anything withstand that kind of turbulence?
He forced himself to cancel the thought; he’d been warned. He had never expected it to be easy—only necessary.
“Distance?” he asked Mayweather.
“Nearly a million kilometers,” the helmsman replied.
Trip let go a whistle of awe. “Looks a helluva lot closer than that…”
T’Pol looked up from her viewer, where she had been studying the phenomenon. “A common mistake when viewing an object of this size.”
Archer tried to grasp the immensity of what he saw, and failed completely. He turned to Hoshi, at the communications console. “Magnify.”
She obeyed; the image on the viewscreen faded into a new one: even more massive murky gray-brown clouds, swirling and colliding with each other in a disturbing, impressive display of turbulence. It remained impossible to see what lay beyond.
“Not very helpful,” Trip commented dryly.
Mayweather’s tone held a note of concern—with good cause, since he was the one who would have to navigate his way through this mess. “It’s not that dense all the way through, is it?”
“The Vulcans said the Expanse is surrounded by thick layers of thermobaric clouds,” Archer replied, with a calm he did not feel. “When their last ship went in, it took them almost six hours to get through it.”
Mayweather nodded, his expression doubtful.
The Captain addressed T’Pol. “Anything on long-range scanners?”
“Nothing beyond the perimeter.”
Archer eyed the viewscreen a long moment. There was no way to know what lay beyond, nothing to do save draw in a deep breath and trust Silik’s time-traveling master, who had already proven himself capable of deceit. Yet Archer’s instincts told him he had no other choice. “Point-two impulse, Travis. Let’s head in.”
Hours passed. Once it was clear that Enterprise could hold her own inside the treacherous-looking clouds, Archer retreated to his ready room and busied himself with the more mundane tasks required of the captaincy. He was impressed at how solid and steady the ship seemed, despite the apparent turbulence outside her.
Problem was, there weren’t enough things to occupy his attention. Systems were operating smoothly; Travis had nothing new to report. After a long personal log entry, Archer found himself restless, a victim of what his dad used to refer to as the “hurry up and wait” syndrome.
He finally checked his chronometer: Time to be past the clouds, but a glance at the window revealed nothing but claustrophia-inducing, muddy opacity.
Archer rose and stepped out onto the bridge, where T’Pol was bent with elegant, infinite stoicism over her viewer.
“Anything?” the Captain asked her.
She turned toward him slightly, just enough to reveal the high angle of her cheekbone. “Not yet.”
Hoshi spoke, her tone faintly irritable, anxious. “We’ve been in here more than six hours.”
“Let’s be patient,” Archer said. It occurred to him that perhaps the Vulcans were capable of greater warp speed than they were letting on, which is why the Vaankara had made it through in six hours. It might take Enterprise longer; at any rate, there was no point in getting rattled about it. He suspected they’d have enough things to worry about once they made it into the Expanse itself.
He glanced up as Trip entered the bridge from the turbolift.
“We launched the communications buoy, sir,” the engineer reported, his manner one of businesslike satisfaction. Trip’s dark mood seemed to have lifted, now that they were finally getting somewhere. “We got a test signal through to Starfleet.”
Archer nodded, pleased, and addressed Hoshi. “Keep them apprised of our position.”
“Aye, sir.” She seemed grateful to have something to do.
T’Pol’s console beeped; she frowned slightly into her viewer. Archer stepped up and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her, concerned.
“Got something?” he asked. He had not forgotten the fact that Duras was probably still in pursuit.
“Yes.” She remained bent over her scanner, clearly trying to determine precisely what it was she was looking at.
“Probably the buoy,” Trip offered.
“Not unless you launched three of them,” T’Pol replied. She straightened and gave Archer a sharp look.
Even before it came, the captain tensed for the first blast; when it arrived, the deck rocked beneath his feet. He stumbled forward, caught hold of the nearest console, while beside him, T’Pol held fast to her viewer.
The instant he regained his balance, he scrambled to his chair over the sound of the Tactical Alert klaxon.
On the viewscreen, three Klingon birds-of-prey sailed out of the thermobaric clouds; Archer watched as their dazzling weapons fire illuminated the murkiness with an eerie glow.
Aboard the Klingon vessel, Duras watched as two of three disruptor blasts missed the Enterprise.
Patience, he told himself, patience…
But the word had a hollow ring. Duras was past waiting, past caring whether he followed the chancellor’s orders. He wanted only one thing: the taste of Archer’s blood in his mouth, now.
A peculiar madness had overtaken him: he had given up eating, sleeping, given up all pursuits except the thought of Archer. He’d heard of warriors developing such obsessions; there were tales in his culture’s oral history of the misfortunes that had befallen soldiers whose lust for the kill burned too hotly, leading to carelessness. But Duras could no longer help himself. The human haunted his waking dreams; there were times, on the bridge—for Duras would no longer leave it, even to rest the prescribed number of hours—when he thought he sensed Archer standing just behind him, felt the warmth of the human’s breath upon his neck.
He would propel himself from his chair and whirl about, ready to strike, to let loose a crippling blow, a battle cry…only to see empty air. Then he would feel his crewmen’s gaze upon him, and turn back to see them eyeing him with candid expressions of doubt.
They were eyeing him now, as he rose from his chair to stand no more than an arm’s breadth from the screen, wishing he could reach through the vacuum of space with his bare fist and seize the Enterprise, crush it to powder.
He was mad, Duras knew; Archer possessed his mind and soul like an ancestral ghost. But he did not care.
At the realization that two-thirds of the disruptor fire had missed its target, he gave his tactical officer a wildly vicious glance.
The stare prompted an immediate explanation from the frustrated crewman. “The targeting scanners won’t lock on!”
“Then get closer,” Duras said so that his first officer would hear and comply.
If he had to ram the Earth ship from the sky using his own vessel, he would. He had come too far, and nothing would stop him now….
Enterprise shook continuously as the Klingon vessels coordinated their attack. Archer did his best to hang on. Three against one: it wasn’t looking good, even with fancy torpedoes and new hull plating, but the Captain wasn’t about to give up.
If the ti
me traveler had been telling the truth, then Enterprise had a good chance of making it safely into the Expanse—which meant that there had to be a way to lose the Klingons.
Archer just had to think of one.
Besides, he’d be damned before he’d let Duras win.
His voice vibrating, Trip yelled, “I thought you said Klingons wouldn’t go into the Expanse!”
“We’re not in the Expanse yet!” Archer yelled back. He leaned forward and called to Mayweather, “Hold your course, go to full impulse!”
Trip’s voice was filled with concern for his engines. “I wouldn’t recommend that, Captain! The intake manifolds are having a tough enough time as it is!”
Archer registered the complaint and mentally filed it away, but did not reply. The condition of the intake manifolds were not a top priority: remaining alive was. His tone steady, he told the helmsman, “You heard me, Travis.”
A tense silence ensued—interminably long seconds passed, and then Mayweather reported, “They’re keeping up with us, sir.”
A fresh blast boomed in Archer’s ears; his brain scarcely had the chance to interpret the signal before a second blast followed.
“We’re being hailed,” Hoshi called.
“Put it up,” Archer said.
After a heartbeat, an image coalesced on the viewscreen: that of Duras, looking unkempt and haggard, eyes wild, his face looming so large that Archer could see chips and cracks on the points of his sharpened teeth.
“Surrender,” Duras said, in a voice that combined a hiss with a growl, “or be destroyed!”
Archer looked at him with unalloyed hatred; he thought of Kolos, the wise old advocate who had defended him from Duras’s lies—and for his efforts, was sent to the hostile environs of the Rura Penthe penal colony. Because of Duras, Kolos—one of the most honorable men Archer had ever known, Klingon or not—might well be dead. At best, he was suffering incredible torment each waking hour.
“Go to Hell,” he told Duras, with deep satisfaction; he’d been longing to express the sentiment to his pursuer’s face for some time.
The Klingon literally snarled. “You’re outgunned, Archer. Come about and prepare to be boarded. If you don’t obey my orders, I’ll—”
Archer made a chopping motion with his hand; Hoshi immediately pressed a control, and the viewscreen darkened, then changed to the image of the deadly birds-of-prey nestled in the clouds. The Captain was in no mood to listen to Duras’s threats; he had a ship to save…otherwise, Earth was doomed.
“The perimeter clouds are dissipating.” T’Pol pressed a series of controls at her console, then brought her gaze back to her viewer. “I’m detecting clear space ahead…”
“That’s why Duras wants us to come about,” Archer murmured to himself. “He’s afraid of the Expanse.” More loudly, he told Mayweather, “Increase speed, Travis.”
* * *
Aboard the bird-of-prey, the Klingon first officer turned to face his commander; on his face was a look of concern—not so much for the situation, but for the effect his words would have on Duras. “The other ships are signaling…. They’re going to turn back.”
It was clear from his tone that the first officer was suggesting they turn back, too—a notion that so enraged Duras, he would have struck the officer dead, had he not been working with a skeleton crew.
“Cowards!” he screamed at the viewscreen, where the image of the other two Klingon ships hovered. Spittle flew from his lips. He no longer cared whether his ship survived to report Archer’s death; Duras was prepared to fight to the death, even though he had strict orders to bring himself and his prisoner back to the Klingon homeworld alive.
He became aware once again of his two crewman staring at him; clearly, they awaited an order to follow the other ships, to break off and return home.
Home, to defeat and utter shame, not just upon him, but upon his entire House.
Duras looked on them both with contempt. “We’ll do it ourselves,” he muttered darkly.
The tactical officer blinked in disbelief, his face a mask of cowardice. “We’re too close to the Expanse…”
Before he could utter another word, Duras bolted to his feet and threw the crewman from his chair. He took the helm himself, hatred burning in him like an unquenchable flame.
* * *
Archer watched as the bridge viewscreen revealed one of the birds-of-prey veering away from the others, back into the thick column of thermobaric clouds. A second ship soon followed….
The Captain held his breath, waiting. But the third ship—he knew instinctively it had to be Duras’s—held its course.
“Only one left, sir,” Reed reported from tactical, the same relief Archer felt in his tone.
He scarcely uttered the words when the bridge shuddered violently again beneath a volley of blasts from the remaining vessel.
“Keep firing,” he ordered Reed.
T’Pol reported from her station, her tone curt, clipped.
“The Expanse is less than five minutes away.”
“Maybe he’ll turn around, like his friends,” Trip volunteered hopefully.
Archer’s tone was grim; he knew Duras too well. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
A fresh series of booms echoed in Archer’s ears; the Enterprise reeled under the shock. Archer leaned forward and said swiftly to Reed, “Your new torpedoes aren’t having the same effect as last time.”
Reed’s hands flew over his controls; he glanced down at a readout, then answered just as quickly, “Duras transferred his aft shields forward. Our weapons can’t penetrate them.”
The ship convulsed again—this time, harder than before. Archer instinctively sensed damage, even before Trip turned to him from his station. The engineer’s tone was high-pitched with tension. “We just lost three antimatter injectors, Captain! Any more, and we’re in big trouble!”
Archer understood Trip’s concern—without the warp engines, their mission would fail before it had even begun—but could spare no time to acknowledge it; Reed’s last statement had prompted an idea. Moving unsteadily because of the repeated jolts courtesy of Duras, the Captain stepped over to T’Pol.
“If he’s transferred his shielding forward,” Archer asked the Vulcan, “what’s protecting his stern?”
Another ear-splitting explosion; Trip heard the Captain’s question, and out of frustration shouted, “Does it matter? He’s chasing us!”
Archer steadfastly ignored the engineer, and repeated, more intensely, to T’Pol, “What’s protecting his stern?”
“Minimal shielding,” she replied.
Archer forced himself to think, despite the constant barrage of deafening booms. At last, he turned to Mayweather.
“You think you can pull off an L-4 at this speed?”
It was a risky maneuver for a ship the Enterprise’s size, even if she was trickling slower than syrup in winter. The Captain wasn’t even sure that Mayweather would have heard of the “death-defying loop,” as it was also called, as if it were a circus act.
It may as well have been: It was as dangerous as a high-wire act, without the net. But if Archer trusted anyone to pull it off, it was Travis Mayweather. And at this particular moment, he didn’t have much choice: it was the L-4, or death at the hands of a crazed Klingon.
The helmsman’s expression actually brightened at the challenge. “I can try, sir.”
“Then look for the densest cloud formation you can find,” Archer instructed. Too bad the idea hadn’t come to him earlier; now, the clouds were beginning to peter out.
The Captain stepped over to a companel and activated the shipwide intercom. “Captain Archer to all hands…” He paused, searching for precisely the right words, and finally settled for a passionate “Hang on!”
He glanced up at the viewscreen. Although they were currently sailing through an area of thinner vapor, a thick, ominously dark cluster of clouds lay dead ahead.
“That one looks good to me,” he told Mayweather, as h
e took his seat.
The helmsman seized the manual controls—the computer certainly wouldn’t have permitted such a risky maneuver—and navigated Enterprise straight into the clouds.
Inside the ship there was only a minimal sense of disorientation; life support and gravity systems kept the ride tolerable, even as the Captain was pushed back in his chair by the g-forces. But Archer could tell from the viewscreen that his vessel was beginning to head upward in an arc more extreme than any amusement-park roller coaster.
* * *
At the helm of the bird-of-prey, Duras stared at the viewscreen through eyes wide with mania. He had thrown his tactical officer aside with such fury that the crewman had struck his head forcefully against a bulkhead, and now lay sprawled on the deck.
His first officer remained at his post—clearly reluctant to obey his wild-eyed commander, but at the same time, apparently unwilling to be killed for disobeying an order.
And Duras was well beyond the point of being willing to kill one of his own crewman for disobeying him.
Archer directed his ship into a dark thicket of clouds, perhaps thinking this would discourage pursuit; no matter. Duras followed. He would continue to follow into the Expanse, and beyond, if need be, despite the fact that the High Council forbade all Klingon ships from entering the area because of its infamous dangers.
Through the clouds the bird-of-prey sailed; Enterprise was lost visually, swallowed up by the murky opacity. No matter. Soon, the Klingon ship emerged in an area of clearer space.
Confident in his madness, Duras glanced back up at the viewscreen—and immediately did a double take. In the distance were more scattered columns of clouds…but no Enterprise.
“Where are they?” he demanded, aghast; his first officer did not reply, having lapsed into sullen silence some time earlier.
Impossible, Duras told himself. Insane or not, he still knew that ships did not simply disappear.
* * *
Archer clutched the arms of his command chair as Mayweather guided the Enterprise into a gigantic loop that, at one point, had her belly pointed in the direction the crew considered “up”; at that point, the ship was completely inverted, but Travis finished scribing the arc and brought her down so that she gracefully righted herself and came soaring out of the clouds—directly behind the bird-of-prey.
The Expanse Page 8
