by Ilsa J. Bick
“I heard that,” came Stern, who was still on speaker. “Captain, I’m just a doctor, but even I know that if there’s any miscalculation, we either burn up or come apart at the seams.”
Trust Stern to put a damper on things. A slingshot around a sun—now that would be a piece of cake compared to this.
“We’ll still need the speed,” said Garrett, thinking furiously. “And to do that, we’d need to make Glemoor’s plan work. I don’t see how we can do that without turning the immediate area into a fireball.”
“Captain.” It was Bat-Levi. “There is a way. Instead of the protostar, we go for the black hole. Like you said, Captain, it’s the shape. The gravity well of the black hole’s event horizon is spherical. Using it to our advantage will be riskier in a lot of ways. Its gravitational field will be much stronger than that of a protostar. But the pull will give us the speed we can’t build up now by ourselves, and without burning us all to a cinder.”
“Unless we trip over the event horizon,” said Stern. “Then we just get turned to vermicelli.”
“Well, look at it this way, Jo, we won’t burn up,” said Garrett. “But our angle’s shallow enough, we skip right off.”
There was a moment’s silence, broken by Stern: “Why do I think we’re going to try this crazy stunt?”
Garrett spun into action. “Mr. Castillo, lay in a course for that black hole. Ninety plus sixty. Keep us shallow. Kodell, divert auxiliary power to the shields. And what about my tractor beams?”
“Working.”
“Beg, borrow, and steal, Kodell.” Garrett watched as the nebulae swam on the viewscreen with their course change. She felt the ship lurch with a sudden acceleration as they stopped fighting gravity. It was as if the black hole had reached out and grabbed them.
“Picking up speed, Captain,” said Castillo, unnecessarily. “One-half impulse!”
“Sucking us in,” said Garrett. Suddenly, the ship shook, and Garrett felt her body momentarily pressed back into her chair as if a giant hand had planted itself square in her chest. Then, just as quickly, the pressure slackened, and Garrett jerked forward, almost slamming to the deck. Behind her, she heard Bat-Levi gasp, and then the stubborn squeal of her first officer’s servos as they fought to hold her upright.
“Mr. Castillo!” shouted Garrett. She staggered from her chair then clutched at an arm as the ship twitched and shuddered.
“I’m sorry, Captain!” Castillo’s fingers were moving desperately over his console. Another jolt nearly sent him face-first into his instruments, and he had to brace himself with his left hand as he worked with his right. “Electromagnetic turbulence is getting stronger the closer we get to the black hole. I can’t hold her steady!”
Glemoor looked over from his console toward the helm and then to Garrett. “Captain, we’re too steep! We won’t be able to break away!”
As if to confirm his words, Garrett felt her stomach drop in free-fall as the ship took a sudden plunge, slammed from above by what felt like a solid belt of hypercharged particles and compressed gases.
“It’s the gravity, Captain!” Bat-Levi shouted. The ship rocked, and the artificial gravity hiccupped enough to send her backpedaling on her heels, off-balance, and slamming into the guardrail. She wheeled around, clutching for support. “Captain, the gravity, it’s sucking all the matter in this region toward the black hole! Like a column of air in a wind tunnel, only it’s denser because the particles are being squeezed together.”
Garrett didn’t need her to spell out the rest. With the increased compression and electromagnetic winds, the ship would be slow to respond, like trying to turn on a dime in a pool of molasses.
Garrett whirled on her heel. “My ship, Mr. Castillo!”
My ship: an age-old command, one used by pilots of planes not starships, but Castillo needed no translation. He jumped to one side as Garrett leapt to the helm and activated first the starboard, then port thrusters.
“Forty degrees.” Glemoor threw a quick glance at his captain then back at his instruments. “Forty-five. Hull stress increasing, Captain. Approaching tolerance limits. The closer we get ...”
“The higher the concentration and pressure of gas and particles,” said Garrett, her eyes on her controls. “I know, Mr. Glemoor.”
“Captain, we’re close,” said Bat-Levi, and “if we pass too close to the gravity well ...”
“Fifty!” shouted Glemoor, the Naxeran’s calm breaking at last. “Impulse power at three-quarters! Hull stress at tolerance! Captain!”
At almost the same instant, the main computer shrieked an alarm.
“We’re not going to make it,” muttered Castillo, in an undertone. He stood just behind Garrett’s right shoulder, and she felt a slight jolt as his hands clutched the back of the chair. “We’re not going to make it.”
For just the briefest of instants, Garrett wanted to spin around and shake the young ensign until his eyeballs jittered. Later, she thought grimly. We live through this, then I’ll give him an earful, and he’ll be damned glad to hear it because it will mean we’re alive.
She grappled with the helm, trying to keep them on a steady course, feeling the ship going mushy and unresponsive and knowing that the space outside the ship was so thick with particles it was like trying to maneuver through sludge. Like the old fighter pilots. Get her nose up, get it up! She nudged the thrusters again and again, in short bursts. Only instead of a throttle and flaps, a shaker stick and a yoke, she had thrusters and gravity and a boiling hailstorm of superheated ionized gas and ... heat. Garrett gasped. Hawks, gliding, and ... heat.
“Glemoor!” Garrett barked. “Arm photon torpedoes two and seven!”
“Captain?”
“Do it! Numbers two and seven! Ten-second delay!” She fired a five-second blast from the thrusters along the ship’s belly and saw the positioning gyros record the shift in the Enterprise’s attitude as the ship angled up, exposing more of the flat of its belly to the gravitational front of the black hole.
“Aye!” Glemoor’s black skin was dripping sweat. His frills were stiff, and the yellow of his eyes had deepened to a hot gold. “Torpedoes armed! Fifty-five degrees, Captain! Fifty-six!”
Almost there. Garrett blinked sweat from her eyes and winced at the sting. Almost there. Come on, girl, come on, don’t let me down, don’t quit on me now.
But she had to protect the other ship. Her plan wouldn’t do much good to them if she ended up incinerating them. “Engineering! Kodell, reinforce aft shields! Steal from us if you have to, but give that other ship every gram of protection you can!”
Suddenly, the ship dipped precipitously. To her horror, Garrett saw that they’d lost five degrees, now ten. ...
“Kodell!” Gritting her teeth, Garrett brought the side of her fist down on her maneuvering thrusters and was rewarded with nothing. “Kodell, where’s my power, where’s my control?”
Kodell, on speaker: “Power drain, Captain, when I reinforced shields! Trying to stabilize now!”
“Kodell, I need control.” Garrett watched as the ship swung inexorably lower, being pulled into a perpendicular toward the gravity well. We’re heading nose down, no, no! “I need it now!”
“Can’t do it, Captain! That last surge knocked out the power couplings to the thrusters. They’re offline and I can’t reroute fast enough. Auxiliary power is tied up with the shields, I can’t rob ...”
Garrett didn’t wait to hear the rest. Their angle was getting too steep and they were out of time. “Glemoor, launch photon torpedoes! Now!”
“Aye!” Glemoor stabbed at fire control. “Torpedoes away!”
“On main viewer!” The viewscreen swam as the angle changed, and then Garrett saw the tiny red-orange sparklers that were the torpedoes streaking away from her ship, and she imagined she could hear them sizzling across space. “Time to detonation!”
“Eight seconds!” Glemoor cried. “Seven, six!”
“Captain!” shouted Kodell. “Maneuvering thrusters no
minal!”
“Four, three!”
“Thrusters!” Garret brought her fists crashing into the helm and felt the shuddering of the thrusters firing. My ship—she jerked her head back up to the viewscreen and saw the torpedoes fading, the violet and pink space swinging by in a dizzying arc and if it had been any other time or place, she would have marveled at how much beauty could exist in the heart of death—my ship!
“One!” Glemoor cried.
The viewscreen flooded with white light, and then gravity must have failed because Garrett felt her body rise out of her chair and hurtle backward to slam against the deck.
The viewscreen went black.
Chapter 27
“Just hold still.”
“I am.” Garrett’s fingers plucked at the thin green fabric of the patient’s tunic she wore. Stern and her nurse had stripped her out of her uniform when she’d been brought to sickbay—only Garrett had no memory of that, having been unconscious for a half hour after the torpedoes blew. In fact, she was a little foggy for the five minutes or so before the torpedoes went off; retro- and antegrade amnesia went with the territory when you had a concussion, Stern said. Garrett remembered giving the order to arm the torpedoes but not the order to fire.
She sighed. Her scalp itched, and her uniform was a mess from all the blood. Her eyes crawled to the soiled clothing still lying in a heap on the floor next to the biobed. Her nostrils twitched with the faint, sickly metallic aroma of wet rust.
“I’m fine,” she said, not believing it but hating having to lie there and do nothing. All doctors are overprotective. “When can I get out of here?”
“When I’m done,” came Stern’s voice. Garrett could hear the frown. Garrett was on her back and facing left so Stern could work, and she couldn’t see the doctor’s face.
“But I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. Sure, it’s every day you get knocked senseless and need stitches. Honestly, Mac was right. All captains are the galaxy’s worst patients. I’m almost done.”
Garrett sighed again, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going anywhere until Stern decided she was good and ready. She heard the steady hum of Stern’s autosuture as Stern repaired the wound on her scalp and, outside the small treatment alcove she picked out the buzz of voices, the shuffle of feet, the blip of monitors above biobeds. “What about the survivors?”
“Ten cases of radiation poisoning, two serious. All of them members of the crew, not the passengers.”
“Who got it the worst?”
“The ship’s engineer, and the captain. The engineer got a double whammy when she took their mains offline. Radiation flooded the compartment, though not enough to kill her straight off. But she knew she’d been exposed and so she volunteered to stay on the bridge, keep their shields up as long as she could. At least that’s how the rest of the survivors tell it. Engineer hasn’t regained consciousness yet. Hell of a brave woman.”
“And the captain?”
“Stayed with his engineer. Moved the rest of his crew from exterior portions of the ship but not to engineering; engineering could only accommodate the colonists, and so the captain decided the colonists took priority. Damn shame, you ask me. All those people wanted was a fresh start on a colony world, only they get it all blasted to hell by a bunch of pirates who chase them into the nebula and then leave them for dead.”
Stern straightened, clicking off the autosuture. “I’ve done all I can for the time being. The engineer and captain are on life support. Now we wait, let nature take its course. That ought to do it, by the way. You’re done.”
Stern brushed Garrett’s auburn hair back over the wound that ran from the tip of Garrett’s right eyebrow and along Garrett’s scalp, ending just behind her right ear. Stepping back, Stern cocked her head to one side, seemingly admiring her handiwork.
“Not bad,” she said, finally. “You’re going to have a lump the size of an egg on your forehead there for awhile, nothing I can do about that. But you’re lucky. The old days, you know, I would’ve had to shave off all that hair.”
“Lucky me.” Garrett blew out in exasperation. She was tired of lying flat on her back. And she hated the way they never gave out sheets or blankets in sickbay but had you lie there in your uniform or a patient tunic, and freeze your butt off.
Garrett pushed up on her elbows. “Someone bringing ... ?” She’d been about to ask if someone was bringing her a fresh uniform when a wave of nausea made her moan and roll back onto the biobed.
“That’ll teach you,” said Stern, the trace of a smirk on her lips. “I didn’t tell you to get up yet. Just sit tight, and I’ll have someone bring you a fresh change of clothes.”
“Thanks.” Garrett blinked, swallowed. Closed her eyes until the urge to vomit passed. She waited quietly until Stern came back. Then she asked, “Why do I feel sick?”
“Because you have a concussion, that’s why. Here.” Stern turned aside, replacing her instruments on their tray and then plucking up the gray tube of a hypospray. Jabbed the business end of the spray into the angle of Garrett’s neck and right shoulder, and depressed the jet with her thumb. There was an audible hiss as the jet dispensed its contents into Garrett’s bloodstream. “That ought to help with the nausea. You’re going to have a whopper of a headache for a little while, though, and you’re bound to be stiff tomorrow. Next time, pick something softer to land on than the deck of a starship. Actually, you were lucky,” Stern amended, popping the empty vial of analgesic from the hypospray, “Castillo breaking your fall like that. Scared him out of a year’s growth, though. Scalp wounds bleed like stink. The way he sounded when the bridge hailed, I think he thought you were dead.”
Head still throbbing, Garrett eased off the biobed. The floor was icy against her bare feet. She straightened millimeter by millimeter. Her ribs complained, and she was certain she’d be black and blue for days. “How he’s doing now?”
“Castillo? Other than a knot the size of a grapefruit on the back of his head, he’s fine.” Stern eyed Garrett. “I just want to ask you one question. What the hell made you fire off those torpedoes?”
Garrett almost shook her head then, remembering her vertigo, thought better of it. “Just a hunch. Piloting the ship reminded me of flying in an atmosphere, and then I remembered how birds, hawks and condors, they’ll ride thermals for hours. So I thought: heat. Not a thermal exactly, but I thought if I could just get us shallow enough then detonate a couple of torpedoes, part of the shock wave would be absorbed by the black hole itself and the rest ought to blast us clear. We rode an energy wave.”
“Took a hell of a risk.”
Garrett was about to point out that there hadn’t been a lot of alternatives, but Bat-Levi hailed from the bridge. “Glad to hear you’re up and around, Captain.”
“Thank you, Commander.” But I’m freezing my butt off. “As soon as I get some clothes, I’ll be up. Status?”
“We’ve cleared the nebulae cluster. We took some minor structural damage aft. Repairs are under way. Other than that, we were lucky.”
“Seems to be the word of the day. Have you been able to reach Starfleet?”
“Actually, there’s a message coming in now. Commander Batanides, Starfleet Intelligence.”
Likely reporting that Burke and Sivek were back at Starfleet Headquarters, with Halak in tow. With everything that had gone on, thoughts of Halak had been far from her mind. But now Garrett felt a mantle of depression drape itself over her shoulders. “Pipe it down here.”
Garrett heard Bat-Levi giving orders. Then: “You’re on, Captain.”
Garrett straightened, even though she was on audio. She just wished she had some clothes. It was so cold in Sickbay her skin prickled with gooseflesh. Garrett chafed her bare forearms with her hands. “Garrett here.”
“Captain.” Batanides’s voice was tense. “We’ve been trying to reach you for days. What’s going on there?”
Briefly, Garrett went over the events of the past few days, concludi
ng with their rescue of the Atawhean ship. “We’ve just gotten clear of interference from the nebula ...”
“That’s just it,” Batanides broke in, clearly agitated. “Why were you there to begin with?”
That brought Garrett up short. She and Stern exchanged glances; Stern hiked her shoulders. “Those were our orders,” Garrett said.
“From whom?”
“Why,” said Garrett, confused, “from you. Don’t you remember? We spoke. When Commander Halak was remanded to Lieutenant Burke’s custody. I lodged a formal protest and ...”
“Captain, I assure you,” said Batanides, her voice saturated with urgency, “after our first contact about Lieutenant Burke coming aboard, you and I never spoke. And I know for a fact that Commander Halak couldn’t have been remanded to Burke.”
“Whaaat?” Stern drawled. “What the hell kind of game ... ?”
Garrett cut her off with a wave of her hand. “What are you talking about, Marta?”
“I’m saying that you never received orders to proceed to the Draavids. Commander Halak never made it to Starfleet Headquarters. And I know now that Lieutenant Burke was in no position to be aboard your ship, taking custody of anyone.”
“And why not?”
“Because, Captain Garrett,” said Batanides, “Lieutenant Laura Burke is dead.”
“All right, here’s the situation,” said Garrett, an hour later. After signing off from Batanides, she’d taken a hasty sonic shower and thrown on a clean uniform. But she still felt like hell. Ignoring the ache in her head, she leaned her forearms on the table in the briefing room next door to her ready room and eyed each of her senior officers in turn: Stern and Bat-Levi to her right, Glemoor, Bulast, and Kodell ranged along her left. And, finally, Tyvan: Garrett had debated then decided that, for better or worse, part of Tyvan’s job was to take the pulse of the crew ... and its captain. And doing a damn good job of that.
“Commander Batanides indicated that debris from the shuttle piloted by Lieutenant Burke—the real Burke—was discovered several parsecs away from Starbase 12, in an isolated section of space lousy with asteroid fields. A navigator’s nightmare, which probably explains why it took so long for anyone to connect up the wreckage with Burke, or find it, for that matter.”
