STAR TREK: TOS - The Janus Gate, Book Three - Past Prologue

by L. A. Graf

“I’m already headed for the general area, sir. It should only take a minute or two to re-establish our station.” The pilot checked his screen, then frowned across at his navigator. “Do we really need to be that close to the thermosphere?”

  “It’s an oblique shot,” Riley and Kyle said in unison.

  Lieutenant Alden nodded, and Uhura felt the Enterprise shudder a little as it cut across Tlaoli’s gravity well at a less than ideal vector. A moment later, another series of bumps shook through the bridge as they encountered a gravitational anomaly. That was a good sign, Uhura reminded herself as she clenched her fingers tighter around the armrests of the captain’s chair. It meant they were approaching the area where the ancient planet’s mysterious deviations in gravity hadn’t been damped out by the Shechenag defensive shield.

  [213] “Estimated time of arrival now, Mr. Alden?” Uhura hoped her voice didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. The shadowy gap in the satellite-generated force field was getting smaller even as they approached.

  “One point five minutes, sir.”

  A warning alarm went off somewhere on the back of the bridge, and Uhura heard Watkins swing around at his auxiliary station. “We’re scraping the planet’s thermosphere, Lieutenant,” the engineer warned. “The screens are holding so far, but if we stay here too long, the thermal gradient may cause them to fail.”

  “Be ready to shoot that transporter beam as soon as we’ve hit the correct location, Mr. Kyle,” Uhura ordered. “Mr. Alden, get us on station now.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A minute was such a long time when you were balanced on the perilous edge of success and failure. Time for far too many quick, tense breaths, far too many thoughts of all the things that could go wrong ...

  “We’re on station,” Alden said.

  “Coordinates of Shechenag ship updated and checked,” Riley added in the same instant.

  “Transporter beam locked and engaged,” Kyle said, his voice overlapping the other two. “Beaming now.”

  There was another breathless pause, one in which Uhura forced herself not to spin around to watch the transporter technician at work. Instead, she stared at the dark, crawling shadow that was the Shechenag spaceship just below them. Nothing appeared to happen to its unlit hull, but nothing happened on the [214] opalescent curve of the planet, either. Uhura waited as long as she could, then said, “Status report, Mr. Kyle?”

  “That transporter beam went somewhere, sir,” he said. “I got just a hint of return on the carrier wave, then it was gone, like we’d never sent it.”

  “Any power fluctuations?”

  “None that I noticed.”

  “Sir!” Lieutenant Karen Tracey swung away from her science station. “I think something’s happening to the Shechenag ship.”

  Uhura glanced up, but saw nothing obvious on the viewscreen. “What have you got?”

  “My long-range scanners are picking up a lot of ionic discharge around their hull, but it’s not contained or directed like an engine discharge would be. It’s consistent with the signature of an unshielded ship falling into the planet’s thermosphere.”

  “Or with them hitting their own defensive array?”

  Tracey glanced down at her readings, then back up at Uhura with a little smile. “Yes, sir. It’s consistent with that, too.”

  Uhura took a long, deep breath. It felt like her first in quite a while, and she heard it echoed in a soft chorus of relief around the bridge. “Congratulations, gentlemen,” she said to her crew. “I think we’ve managed to stop the Shechenag from installing any more defensive satellites. All we have to do now is keep an eye on them in case they need a friendly lift to get out of their own force field.” She looked back up at the [215] silent white planet on the viewscreen, and felt a little of her triumph seep away. Tlaoli’s day side had nearly vanished from view, reminding Uhura that even if they kept an escape route open for their landing team, there were only a few hours left for them to use it. “And pray our shuttle returns while we still have time.”

  The explosion of light inside the Janus Gate took everyone by surprise. It didn’t occur to Sulu until much later that he could easily have become part of that blast rather than merely part of its audience.

  Ever since Sanner had returned from his marathon run and Spock had come out of his trance, the five remaining members of the landing party had been trying in vain to recharge the alien time transporter. A phaser blast from the ship had been their obvious first choice, but although the emergency communicator had been magnetically shielded to preserve its power, all it spat out at them when they tried to use it was a fierce crackle of static. Either the Janus Gate had just enough power left to disrupt any subspace transmissions that came near it, or, as Spock surmised, the Shechenag defensive shield around the planet was blocking all communicator frequencies.

  After that, they tried powering the gate with whatever tools they had at hand. Yuki Smith discharged all of her phaser power cells by shooting her weapon directly into the device. The blue flame at its heart [216] barely flickered in response. Sulu then suggested throwing their single photon grenade into it. Spock had vetoed that idea at first, but after they’d drained the power from all their other magnetically shielded instruments—including his own tricorder—with no apparent change in the Janus Gate, the Vulcan science officer reluctantly agreed to reconsider.

  “We have no other energy reserves left, aside from the shuttle’s warp core,” Spock said thoughtfully. Although he moved a little more rigidly than usual, his voice had returned to its normal dispassionate tone. “We could allow the shuttle to crash on the surface above this chamber, but I am not certain that would allow for an efficient transfer of power into the Janus Gate. When the device’s field strength is this low, its power-draining effects do not seem to extend far beyond this chamber.”

  Smith looked up from repacking her drained power cells and useless phaser rifle. They would have to resort to hand-to-hand combat if a Shechenag squadron attacked them now, Sulu thought. Of course, it might be worth it if they could toss the robotic aliens’ power supplies into the gate when the fight was over.

  “Is that why we could tromp around the cave for so long when we first came down here, sir, without noticing any problems in our instruments?” the security guard asked.

  “Precisely the data point upon which I based my hypothesis, crewman,” Spock said, and left Smith [217] looking as if she wasn’t quite sure what the answer to her question had been.

  “Maybe that was why the ancient Tlaoli built their time transporter on a planet with gravitational anomalies,” Zap Sanner speculated. “Once the planet made those ancient starships crash, then the Janus Gate could suck out their power.”

  Spock lifted one eyebrow at the cave geologist, but his comment wasn’t the skeptical one Sulu expected. “You are assuming that the gravitational anomalies here are natural, Mr. Sanner. I am inclined to believe that the ancient Tlaoli may have actually created the instabilities themselves, perhaps by releasing a small singularity into the planet’s metallic core—”

  “Sir, the photon grenade,” Chekov reminded him, although even as he spoke he looked a little alarmed by his own temerity in cutting through the scientists’ discussion. “Do you think we should throw it into the gate?”

  Spock paused, then gave the ensign a grave and reluctant nod. “Yes, I do. Endeavor to strike the center of the device, Mr. Chekov. We do not wish to damage the Janus Gate by hitting one of its outer arms—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Sulu intercepted Chekov before he could reach into Smith’s pack of weaponry, extending himself with the same smooth lunge he used in fencing. “This was my idea. If the explosion gets thrown back from the gate, or makes one of those blue subspace rifts appear outside it, I’m going to be the one standing there, not you.”

  [218] Chekov’s dark eyes met his steadily. “But sir, I’m just—”

  “—a member of this crew, like everybody else here,” Sulu finished, cutting off w
hatever the younger man had meant to say. I’m just an ensign? I’m just a new crewman, and more expendable than you? Or maybe, I’m just going to grow up to be someone bitter and hateful and I’d rather not do that? In any case, it seemed even more important than usual to take the initiative on this particular plan. “Hand over that grenade to me, Mr. Smith.”

  The security guard paused for a moment, then carefully leaned around Chekov to give the small but powerful weapon to Sulu. “He gave me an order,” she explained to the Russian. “And it was his idea.”

  Chekov looked frustrated and just a little rebellious. “At least let me come partway with you as backup,” he said to Sulu stubbornly. The helmsman opened his mouth to say no, but saw the younger man’s desperate need to be part of this rescue. It was almost as if he still blamed himself for that initial walk across the Janus chamber, when he’d inadvertently guided both Captain Kirk and himself into the time transporter’s grasp.

  “All right,” Sulu said. “But you’ve got to stay at least a meter behind me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sulu took a deep breath of air so warm and misty that it almost felt like he was back on Basaraba. Then he swung around and headed out into the Janus [219] chamber with Chekov treading carefully one meter behind. Sulu glanced over at the curving metal arms of the device, and decided that the best place from which to toss the photon grenade would also be the safest place to stand: directly in front of the control station where Spock had stood to use the machine. That way, even if the grenade powered up the gate enough to create those drifting curtains of blue energy around it, Sulu—and Chekov behind him—would be standing inside the channel of protection the device made for its operator.

  Sulu angled his carbide light down toward the ground, hoping to use the trace of Vulcan blood he’d seen before to lead him to the correct spot, but too much ice had melted since then. He had to rely on his memory instead, pausing once or twice to check his orientation against the Janus Gate, until he finally caught sight of the control panel Spock had used, and lined himself up with it. By then, Sulu could barely see the trio of glows that marked Spock, Sanner, and Smith watching them from across the cavern.

  “I’m going to arm the grenade for time, not impact,” he said over his shoulder to Chekov. “Just in case I miss getting it into the field generator.”

  “Good idea, sir. If it bounces back toward us, we’ll have a chance to scoop it up and disarm it before it goes off.”

  Sulu snorted. “No, Mr. Chekov, we’ll have a chance to run like hell. Are you ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  [220] Another deep breath of foggy air, and Sulu dug his fingers into the carefully recessed switch that activated the photon grenade’s one minute timer. Then, with the same smooth movement he used to slide a riposte back under a fencing opponent’s parry, he tossed the grenade up toward the Janus Gate. It sailed in a lazy arc directly toward the heart of flickering blue fire, erupting into a brilliant flash as soon as it hit the alien force field. Sulu hadn’t expected the explosion to come before the timer triggered it—he jerked an arm up to shield his eyes, but it was too late to preserve the night sight he’d built up over hours of peering through the underground dimness. He kept his arm raised, waiting tensely for the shock wave that should have followed that explosion of powerful light, but not even a breath of wind hit his frost-burned face. The Janus Gate must have absorbed the grenade’s charge before it could convert its light to thermal and kinetic energy.

  “Did it recharge?” Sulu lowered his arm and blinked at the alien device. It looked shadowy and blurred, but, then, so did everything else in his light-dazzled vision. He swung around to squint at the equally murky figure in the darkness behind him. “Mr. Chekov, can you tell if the grenade recharged the gate?”

  Instead of answering, the younger man’s silhouette took a step closer to Sulu. “Sir, are you all right?”

  “I’m just light-blinded. Did the gate recharge?”

  The pale blur that was Chekov’s face shifted from an oval to a crescent as he glanced from Sulu to the [221] alien device behind him. “I don’t think—” he began, then sucked in a startled breath. Before Sulu could ask what was wrong, or turn his puzzled squint back toward the Janus Gate, a pair of gloved hands clamped onto his shoulders and yanked him forward with one desperate and violent pull. Chekov threw himself in the same direction, boots scrabbling against the wet cavern floor with such ferocity that even in his blinded state Sulu knew he should keep on going. He hit the cavern wall before he saw it, then staggered back a step and gasped for air. Chekov caught at his shoulder again and shoved him onward along the wall, toward the cave threshold where reaching arms caught him and reeled him into the narrow mouth of the conduit passage.

  “What—?” Sulu’s question was cut off by the tidal wave of light that crashed over all of them from behind. Unlike the brief, blinding flash of the photon grenade, this light was the blue of hot flame, and it didn’t die away. Instead it grew and grew, until the whole passage glowed with arc-discharge intensity. Sulu covered even his already blinded eyes, feeling tears of pain roll out from beneath his tightly closed eyelids as the light burned against them. He could feel the wave of intense cold that came after it, and hear the sudden fierce crackle as meltwater turned abruptly back to ice inside the chamber. The temperature-sensitive fibers of his caving suit swelled so fast he could feel the cloth ripple against his skin.

  [222] “Did I do that?” he asked when the fiercest part of the light-storm had passed. The other members of the cave team were all blinking and squinting as badly as he was in the blue radiance that bathed them, but Spock managed to get an eyebrow up in spite of that.

  “Unlikely,” the Vulcan said. “There was too much elapsed time between your grenade explosion and the Janus Gate’s response.” He eyed the blue glow, which had subsided now to the same kind of rippling lightwaves they’d seen before. “This much power can only have come from the Enterprise. She either speculated correctly that we were in need of assistance—or she found it necessary to punch another hole in the Shechenag defensive array.”

  “Does that mean the Shechenag might have closed up our first exit hole?” Sanner asked. Sulu’s vision was returning, and he could see the way Smith’s and Chekov’s faces both tightened at that suggestion. If Sanner was right, and they didn’t get Captain Kirk back soon, they might find themselves trapped forever on this small, dead planet.

  “You said you had another way to retrieve the captain,” Sulu said to Spock. “Let’s do it, now, before anything else happens to interfere.”

  “Very well,” Spock said, and reached for him.

  Kirk heard the horrible smack! of a high-speed projectile slamming into a human body as he threw himself to the floor, followed almost immediately by [223] George’s startled shout of alarm and the muffled thud of someone falling as a dead weight.

  Not the boy! Please, God, don’t let them hit the boy!

  But he could hear the boy reassuring someone who’d called to him, in a startlingly calm voice for all that the pitch betrayed his fear. Kirk wedged himself into the corner made by the barricade and the corridor wall, his phaser close across his chest, and took stock of who’d been hit and how badly even as another fusillade of shots pummeled the front of the barricade.

  Sulu crouched across the corridor from Kirk, carefully fitting the muzzle of his rifle between the edge of one crate and the wall so he could return fire. Back toward the bay door, George Kirk had his son pinned flat to the floor, shielding the boy with his own body while Chekov scrabbled to overturn the grav-sled between them and the attackers outside. The Russian’s right hand left a splayed, bloody print wherever it touched, but whatever injury he’d taken didn’t seem to slow him and Kirk couldn’t worry about anyone who was still in a position to take care of himself. It was Giotto who had spilled the majority of the blood in the corridor. The security chief lay spread-eagled in the largest puddle, eyes fixed blindly up at the ceiling, not mo
ving.

  “Commander Kirk!” Kirk scrambled forward on hands and knees to grab Giotto’s belt and drag him to a more protected location. “Keep working on that door! It’s our only way out now.”

  [224] Keeping his son close to his side, George edged back toward the big door a few feet at a time, hauling the grav-sled along behind them as a kind of portable shield. “I’ll need his phaser,” he called, to no one in particular, and Chekov darted to scoop up Giotto’s abandoned weapon and underhand it to George’s son on his way to Sulu’s side of their beleaguered wall of crates.

  The shooting outside paused, and Kirk wondered if their attackers actually had to stop and reload, or if they’d gone in search of more powerful weapons. He hauled Giotto mostly upright by the front of his cave jumper, ignoring the chief’s shuddering gasp of pain as he propped him up against the corridor wall. Kirk had heard something once about keeping victims of chest wounds upright to prevent them from drowning in their own blood. He had no idea if this was true, but didn’t know what else he could do for the man.

  “How is he?”

  Kirk spared Chekov only a glance, just long enough to see the look of bleak concern on his face as he submitted to Sulu’s businesslike inspection of his own bleeding arm, and that he was in no immediate danger of dying. Still, the raw desperation in his eyes bothered Kirk more than he cared to admit. Kirk turned back to Giotto with a grim shake of his head. “Not good.” He was still breathing, but even that sounded tenuous and fluid.

  “Believe it or not, Captain, that might actually be a good thing.” Sulu finished his examination and wiped [225] both hands on the front of his jumper to clear them of blood. “It passed straight through,” he told Chekov, picking up his own rifle again.

  Chekov scowled with unconcealed anger. “I know it went through. How do you think Giotto got hit?”

  Watching him snap the control on his rifle over to its multishot function, Kirk realized that Chekov was more angry at himself than at their attackers, as though he’d failed in some important duty by not stopping the projectile himself. He’d be a hard subordinate to keep alive for any length of time. Kirk wondered if this was a problem he was bound to face with the young man he’d left back on board the Enterprise, too, or if there was something about their un-mentioned alternate future to blame.