Starfleet Year One

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Stifling a curse, he said, “Agreed. Gibraltar out.”

  And with a stab of his finger, he severed the link.

  He was about to give Urbina instructions to come about when Darigghi saved him the trouble. As the captain looked on, doing his best to contain his bitterness, he saw the stars swing around on their viewscreen.

  One thought kept going through his mind, over and over again: Shumar had damned well better know what he’s talking about.

  Hiro Matsura could feel a bead of perspiration trace a stinging path down the side of his face.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Stiles, who was studying the amber-colored shell fragment that Matsura had just handed him. “You dug this out of a mound of dirt and decided to call us back from an imminent confrontation with the enemy?”

  He didn’t sound impressed. But then, Matsura reflected, Stiles hadn’t heard Shumar’s theory yet. Neither had Hagedorn, Dane, or Cobaryn, who looked a little befuddled themselves as they stood by a gutted mound in the blazing light of Oreias.

  “It wasn’t just what we found,” Shumar responded patiently. “It’s what it all represents.”

  “And what does it represent?” asked Hagedorn, who seemed inclined to exercise patience as well.

  Matsura picked up another of the orange-yellow fragments that he and Shumar had laid on the ground beside the ruined hill. This piece was more rounded than some of the others, more obviously designed to fit the anatomy of a living creature.

  “We asked ourselves the same question at first,” he told Hagedorn. “What was it about these shells that compelled someone to bury them? And who did the burying? Then Captain Shumar came up with an explanation.”

  Shumar picked up on his cue. “There’s a scientific theory that alien species exhibit remarkably similar behavior, even when they’re separated by many lightyears.”

  “I believe I’ve heard of it,” said Hagedorn. “Underwood’s Theory of Parallel Development, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly right,” Shumar confirmed. “And with Underwood’s thinking in mind. I asked myself why I would have buried these shells—why I would have buried anything, for that matter.”

  “To honor the dead,” Cobaryn blurted. He looked around at his fellow captains. “I am quite familar with human customs,” he explained.

  “Captain Cobaryn is right,” said Shumar, smiling at his colleague’s enthusiasm. “We demonstrate our respect for our deceased friends and relatives by burying them.”

  Dane looked perplexed. “But I don’t see any bodies lying here. Just a bunch of shells.”

  “True,” Matsura conceded. “But maybe that’s where the resemblance to human customs ends. Maybe this species sheds its shells, like certain insects on Earth—and feels it has to bury them, because their shells were once a living part of their anatomy.”

  “And if it’s true,” said Shumar, “that these shells have some spiritual value to this species, is it any wonder that it would object to offworlders intruding on its burial grounds?”

  “In other words,” Cobaryn added, following his friend’s logic, “the aliens who attacked Oreias Five and Oreias Seven...did so because we encroached on their sacred property?”

  “It looks that way,” said Shumar.

  The captains exchanged glances as they mulled what Shumar and Matsura had told them. No one was outwardly incredulous.

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” said Dane, speaking for everyone.

  “But we’re not certain this is the answer,” Hagedorn reminded them. “We have no conclusive proof.”

  “Scientists seldom do,” Shumar pointed out. “Often, they have to go with what their instincts tell them. And right now, my instincts are telling me we’ve hit the mark.”

  The sun beat down on the six of them as they absorbed Shumar’s comment. Matsura, of course, had already accepted his colleague’s explanation. He was thinking about the next step.

  “So,” he said, “what do we do now?”

  Matsura had barely gotten the words out when his communicator started beeping. In fact, all their communicators started beeping.

  He took his own device out, flipped it open, and spoke into it. “Matsura here,” he replied.

  “Captain,” said Jezzelis, his voice taut with apprehension, “there is an alien armada approaching Oreias Eight.”

  Matsura’s mouth went dry. “Exactly what constitutes an armada?”

  “I count fourteen ships, sir. And according to our scanner readings, their weapons have already been brought to full power.”

  Matsura looked at the others, all of whom seemed to have received the same kind of news. Their expressions were grim, to say the least. And it wasn’t difficult to figure out why.

  With the Yellowjacket all but useless, they were outnumbered almost three to one. Not promising, Matsura thought.

  Not promising at all.

  CHAPTER

  22

  AS SOON AS HIRO MATSURA REACHED THE YELLOWJACKET’S bridge, he took stock of its viewscreen.

  He could see what his first officer had described to him via communicator minutes earlier—a formation of fourteen alien ships, each one a deadly dark triangle. And without a doubt, they were bearing down on the colony world from which Matsura’s pod had just returned.

  The last time he had seen the aggressors, they had all but crippled his ship—a setback from which the crew of the Yellowjacket was still trying desperately to recover. The ship’s shields, lasers, and atomic weapon launchers had yet to be brought back online, and her impulse engines were too sluggish to be effective.

  In short, the Yellowjacket wasn’t fit to engage the enemy. If she entered the field of battle, she would be nothing more than a target—and therefore a liability to her sister ships.

  The odds against Matsura’s comrades were considerable. It galled the captain to have to hang back at a safe distance and watch the aliens tear chunks out of their Christophers.

  But it didn’t seem like he had much of a choice.

  Aaron Stiles glared at his viewscreen, which showed him so many tightly packed enemy ships that they seemed to blot out the stars.

  It would have been a daunting sight even if three of his fellow captains weren’t butterfly catchers. As it was, only he and Hagedorn could point to any real combat experience—a deficit which prevented the five of them from executing maneuvers as a group.

  Stiles would have much preferred to fly alongside his old wingmates—veteran space fighters like Andre Beschta and Amanda McTigue and his brother Jake. Then they would have had something.

  Of course, Shumar, Dane, and Cobaryn had plenty of former Earth Command officers on their bridges. If they paid them some mind, they might have a chance to come through this.

  Yeah, right, Stiles thought. And I’m the King of Tennessee. If he and Hagedorn couldn’t beat four of the triangle ships, how was their little fleet supposed to beat fourteen?

  He scowled and began barking out orders. “Raise shields. Power to all batteries. Mr. Weeks, target atomics.”

  “Atomics targeted,” came Weeks’s reply. And a moment later, he added, “Range, sir.”

  “Fire!” bellowed Stiles.

  A black-and-gold missile erupted from the Gibraltar and shot through the void in the enemy’s direction. For a fraction of a second, it was on its own. Then four other missiles came hurtling after it.

  Apparently, the captain’s colleagues were all thinking along the same lines he was. It was more than he had expected.

  As his missile found a target, it vanished in a burst of blinding white light. The other missiles struck the enemy in quick succession, each one swallowed up in a light show of its own.

  But when the alien armada became visible again, it wasn’t clear if the atomics had done any damage. The enemy vessels looked every bit as dangerous as they had before.

  A voice came through the comm grate in Stiles’s armrest. “Stay outside them,” Hagedorn advised the group. “The longer they remain bunched that
way, the better our chances.”

  The man was right, of course. Stiles regarded his weapons officer. “Fire again!” he snapped.

  The Gibraltar sent a second black-and-gold missile hurtling toward the alien formation. Over the next couple of heartbeats, the other captains followed Stiles’s example.

  Unfortunately, their second barrage wasn’t any more productive than the first. It lit up the void for a moment, but the enemy shook off its impact and kept coming.

  And by then it was too late to launch a third barrage anyway. They were too close to the aliens to risk atomics.

  “Target lasers!” Stiles roared.

  As if the enemy had read his mind, the triangle ships abandoned their formation and went twisting off in pairs. Suddenly, they weren’t such easy targets anymore.

  “Fire at will!” the captain told Weeks.

  The weapons officer unleashed the fury of their laser batteries on the nearest pair of enemy vessels. At the last possible moment, the triangles peeled off and eluded the beams.

  Then they came after the Gibraltar.

  Stiles glowered at them. “Evade!” he urged his helm officer.

  Urbina did her best to slip the aliens’ knot, but it tightened altogether too quickly. The Gibraltar was wracked by one fiery assault after another, each barrage like a giant fist punishing the vessel to the limits of her endurance.

  A console exploded directly behind the captain, singeing the hairs on the back of his neck. As sparks hissed and smoke billowed darkly, his deck lurched one way and then the other like a skiff on a stormy sea.

  But Stiles held on. They all did.

  By the time the enemy shot past them, the Gibraltar was in a bad way. The captain knew that even before he was told that their shields were down eighty-five percent, or that they had lost power to the starboard nacelle.

  “They’re coming about for another shot at us!” Rosten called out abruptly, her voice hoarse and thin with smoke.

  Stiles swore beneath his breath. “Shake them!” he told Urbina.

  The helm officer sent them twisting through space, even without any help from their damaged nacelle. And somehow, she did what the captain had demanded of her. She shook the triangles from their tail.

  It looked as if they were safe, at least for a moment. Then Stiles saw the two alien vessels sliding into view from another quarter, setting their sights on the poorly shielded Gibraltar.

  “Enemy to port!” Rosten called out.

  The captain felt his throat constrict. This must have been how his brother Jake felt before the Romulans blew him to pieces.

  “Target and fire!” he thundered.

  If they were going to go down, it wouldn’t be without a fight. Stiles promised himself that.

  But before the aliens could get a barrage off, a metallic-shadow swept between the Gibraltar and her antagonists. It took Stiles a second to realize that it was one of the other Christophers, trying to shield him and his crew from the enemy.

  He couldn’t see the triangles’ weapons ports as they fired, but he saw the ruddy flare of light beyond the curve of the other Christopher’s hull and the way the Starfleet vessel shuddered under the impact.

  The captain didn’t know for certain which of his colleagues was risking his life to save the Gibraltar. However, he guessed that it was Hagedorn. It was the kind of chance only a soldier would take.

  The aliens pounded the interceding ship a second time and a third, but Stiles wouldn’t let his comrade protect him any longer. Glancing at Urbina, he said, “Get us a clear shot, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir,” came the reply.

  “Ready lasers,” the captain told Weeks.

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Fire as soon as you’ve got a target,” Stiles told him.

  As Urbina dropped them below the level of the other Christopher, Bagdasarian didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He unleashed a couple of devastating blue laser volleys that struck the enemy vessels from below, forcing them to give ground—at least for the time being.

  Stiles turned to Rosten, taking advantage of the respite. “Raise Captain Hagedorn,” he said. “See how badly he’s damaged.”

  But when the navigator bent to her task, she seemed to find something that surprised her. “It’s not the Horatio,” she reported crisply. “It’s the Maverick, sir.”

  Stiles looked at her. Dane?

  A moment later, the Cochrane jockey’s voice came crackling over the Gibraltar’ s comm system. He sounded as if he were talking about a barroom brawl instead of a dogfight.

  “Looks like I bit off more than I could chew,” said Dane. “Everything’s down . . . shields, weapons, you name it. I’m not going to be much help from here on in.”

  “I’ll do what I can to protect you,” Stiles assured him.

  There was a pause, as Dane seemed to realize whom he was talking to. “You just want to make sure nothing happens to that pistol I won.”

  “Damned right,” said Stiles.

  But, of course, the pistol was the farthest thing from his mind. He was trying to figure out how he was going to repay Dane’s favor without getting his ship carved up in the process.

  Hiro Matsura had never felt so helpless in his life.

  The other captains were fighting valiantly, dodging energy volley after energy volley, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. With one of their ships disabled—perhaps as badly as the Yellowjacket—the tide of battle was slowly but inexorably turning against them. In time, the aliens would blow them out of space.

  But Matsura couldn’t do anything about it—not with his ship in its current state of disrepair. With his weapons down and his shield generators mangled, he would only be offering himself up as cannon fodder.

  He wished he could speak to the aliens. Then he would let them know that he understood the reason for their hostility. He would make them see that it was all a misunderstanding.

  But he couldn’t speak to them—not without programming their language into his ship’s computer. And if he knew their language, he wouldn’t have required the computer’s help in the first place.

  As Matsura looked on, Hagedorn’s ship absorbed another blinding, bludgeoning barrage. Then the same thing happened to Shumar’s ship, and Cobaryn’s. Their deflector grids had to be failing. Pretty soon, they would all be as helpless as the Yellowjacket.

  The captain’s fists clenched. Dammit, he thought bitterly, there’s got to be something I can do.

  His excavation of the mound on Oreias Eight had put the key to the problem in his hands. He just had to figure out what to unlock with it.

  Unlock...? he repeated inwardly.

  And then it came to him.

  There might be a way to help the other ships after all. It was a long shot, but he had taken long shots before.

  Swinging himself out of his center seat, Matsura said, “Jezzelis, you’re with me.” Then he grabbed the Vobilite’s arm and pulled him in the direction of the lift.

  “Sir?” said Jezzelis, doing his best to keep up.

  The captain punched the bulkhead pad, summoning the lift. “I need help with something,” he told his exec.

  “With what?” asked Jezzelis.

  Just then, the lift doors hissed open. Moving inside, Matsura tapped in their destination. By the time he was finished, his first officer had entered the compartment, too.

  “Captain,” said Jezzelis, “I would—”

  Matsura held up a hand for silence. Then he pressed the stud that activated the ship’s intercom. “Spencer, Naulty, Brosius, Jimenez . . .this is the captain. Meet me on Deck Six.”

  A string of affirmative responses followed his command. All four of the security officers would be there, Matsura assured himself.

  His exec looked at him askance, no doubt trying to figure out what could be so pressing about Deck Six. After all, there was nothing there except cargo space and supply rooms.

  “Mr. McDonald,” the captain went on, “report to the t
ransporter room and stand by.”

  “The transporter...?” Jezzelis wondered out loud.

  Then they reached Deck Six and the doors opened. Spencer, Naulty, Brosius, and Jimenez were just arriving.

  “Follow me,” said Matsura, swinging out of the lift compartment and darting down the corridor.

  He could hear the others pelting along after him, matching him stride for stride. No doubt, the four security officers were every bit as curious as Jezzelis. Unfortunately, there was no time for an explanation.

  If his plan was going to stand a chance, he had to move quickly.

  The captain negotiated a couple of turns in the passage. Then he came to a door and pounded on the bulkhead controls beside it. A moment later, the titanium panel slid aside, revealing two facing rows of gold lockers in a long, narrow cabin.

  And one of the locker doors was defiantly hanging open, though he had been convinced his chief engineer had repaired it.

  Matsura knew exactly what each locker contained—a fully charged palm-sized flashlight, a small black packet of barely edible rations, and an Earth Command emergency containment suit.

  There were two dozen of the gold-and-black suits in all, each one boasting a hood with an airtight visor. As bulky as they were, a normal man wouldn’t be able to carry more than four of them at once—which was why Matsura had brought help along.

  As Jezzelis and the others caught up with him, the captain tapped a three-digit security code into a pad on the nearest locker. When the door swung open, he grabbed the suit inside the locker and gestured for his assistants to do the same.

  “Take them to the transporter room,” he barked.

  Invading one locker after the other, including the uncooperative one, Matsura dragged out three more suits. They weighed his arms down as if they were full of lead. Satisfied that he couldn’t carry any more, he made his way back to the lift.

  Jezzelis was right behind him. With his powerful Vobilite musculature, the first officer didn’t seem half as encumbered as his captain did. As Matsura struck the bulkhead panel and got the doors to open for them, Jezzelis helped the human with his ungainly burden.