STAR TREK: TOS - Final Frontier

by Diane Carey

  April nodded. “Which is the one with low shielding?”

  “Future Fire. Upper left of your screen.”

  “And the tenacious one?”

  “Just beneath, tipped with red. War Thorn. You must take care not to let Zayn Z’ir come around to your aft. You’ll never shake her.”

  “I don’t mean to shake her.” The captain’s voice was gentle as he mused, “Have you ever played a good game of chicken?”

  Perplexed, t’Cael said, “I understood chicken was a fish.”

  “Bird,” April corrected. “But today it’s a game. Carlos, plot a course tangent to that sun. We’re going in as close as we can stand.”

  George came to stand by his captain’s shoulder and said, “Oh, that’s good ... let’s see what their shields can take.”

  Across the command arena, t’Cael’s eyes glowed with excitement. “Yes! They won’t be able to tell where you’re firing from. Their sensors will be blinded by so much solar interference.” He touched his fingertips together and leaned toward April with a nasty smile on his lips. “That’s a military secret. Please don’t mention it to anyone.”

  “Safe with me,” April returned, grinning too.

  “That kind of slicing won’t be easy,” George pointed out.

  “Have the computer assist you, George. That’s what it’s for.”

  “Can it do that?”

  “You’ll be surprised how well.”

  “For all the good it’ll do inside a giant french fry, Robert. There’ll be some shield leakage—it’s unavoidable. How’ll the ship’s outer skin take the stress?”

  “We’ll have to see.”

  “This isn’t the time to be glib.”

  “I’m not being glib, George. No one’s ever done anything like this before, you know that. I can’t answer your questions.”

  Of course, that was the grim truth. They were setting precedents with this incomplete, understocked, experimental, untested supership, and there were no answers yet.

  “Okay,” George sighed stiffly. “Let’s see how well they take the heat in our kitchen.”

  “Carlos, concentrate our shields forward port,” he said, “then for heaven’s sake make sure you pass the sun on that side.”

  Florida double-checked the course he’d just fed into the navicomp. “Right.”

  [261] “No, left,” Drake said.

  “Shut up!” chorused George, Florida, Hart, and Sanawey, stapling Drake to the environmental engineering monitor.

  The starship swerved over in a tight arc and headed for the nearby sun, a sulfurous ball of burning pink gases.

  “Keep the shields concentrated,” April said, squinting into the sudden brilliance.

  “It’s leaving our lateral deflector grid down, sir,” Florida said, looking past a raised arm at the screen. “Our aft’s unprotected.”

  “Yes ... a tempting target, don’t you think? They shouldn’t be able to resist it.”

  From his side, t’Cael approvingly said, “You have a touch of the fox in you, Captain.”

  April wanted to say something modest and witty, but his eyes began to water in the brightness of the alien sun, “Thank you—” he muttered.

  “Outer hull temperature rising, Captain,” Hart announced, shielding her eyes so she could make out the readings on her screen. As though in agreement with her, the protective systems within the starship started whining.

  “They’re pursuing, sir,” Florida confirmed.

  Even as he spoke, lancets of green light broke from two of the Romulan ships and cut into the bare aft section, rocking the starship and scoring her perfect hull with angry red lines that snapped and burned until the cold of space settled them to black scars.

  “Emergency backup insulation and stress systems coming on,” Hart called over the whine. “Auto-cooling systems at optimum—”

  “Soar and Raze are dropping off, Captain,” Florida said. “They can’t take it.”

  “Hull temp reaching tolerance—”

  “There goes Future Fire. War Thorn refuses to break off, though.”

  “I’m not sure about this—”

  Hart’s words were punctuated by the crackling of circuits and the wheeze of compensatory systems fighting the heat of the sun and its dragging gravity. Untested, unstressed internal supports and exterior deflectors ached under the strain, and the strain refused to go away.

  “Just a few more seconds,” April said, trying to sound encouraging. Sweat broke out on his face. He realized the ship’s cooling systems were abandoning the interior areas and rushing to protect the hot outer shell, and the bridge became suddenly tropical.

  [262] Florida pulled himself forward. There was frightened victory in his voice as he gasped, “War Thorn is starting to veer off, sir.”

  Just then George bolted forward. “Tractor beams!”

  Hart whirled around. “What?”

  “Aft tractors, now! Don’t let them veer off!”

  April pushed himself out of his chair. “George—”

  “We may never get a better chance!” George snapped.

  “All right, damn you ... aft traction.” April nodded at Hart.

  Hart started to argue. “Our systems are too taxed—”

  April grasped the hand rail and ordered, “Do what he says!”

  The whine of the ship’s efforts was drowned out then by a high-pitched electrical scream as the tractors reached out and caught War Thorn, dragging the bull terrier of the Swarm into the sun behind them. The fighter bucked against the tractors, but couldn’t break free. Three seconds more ... four ... five ...

  “Their hull is carbonizing,” Hart called, leaning so close to her readout screen that her nose was almost touching it. “They’re breaking up—their ship is melting—” The starship bucked then, suddenly freed of weight, and Hart stood up in spite of the blinding brightness. “They’re gone. Cremated,” she said, her lips pressed tight.

  “Cut tractors,” April ordered. “Vector, immediately!”

  Florida leaned into his controls again and the empress turned on her starboard edge, veering away from the sun.

  Everyone was drenched in sweat. The starship cut laterally across the sun’s light and then took a radial course away from it, heading straight back toward the remaining Romulan ships, coming out of the sun like a renegade bomber.

  “Shields are weakened, Captain,” Hart reported.

  “Holding?” April asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get ready to fire before their sensors come back on,” George ordered, forcing his eyes to readjust.

  Before them stood Future Fire. Two steps behind it in open space, Soar waited, and Raze another stretch beyond.

  George pressed his hands on the navigational console and glared into the viewer. “Pull up close. Let’s not waste shots. They can’t see us yet ... steady ... fire!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Fire!”

  Florida stared at his board. “I did—sir, weapons failure!”

  [263] George stepped to his side and compulsively hit the gunnery toggle. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know ... we’re not getting power on any—they’ve locked onto us with those mortars again! They’re going to shoot!”

  A memory from their test flight popped into George’s mind. Suicidal—but their only chance. He hammered the right buttons, and the starship heeled hard over.

  “Shields full front!” he shouted, and hoped Hart had the time to comply.

  April saw what he was doing and blurted, “Brace yourselves!”

  Future Fire loomed up until it filled the screen at a speed that seemed impossibly fast for sublight, then came even closer. Then closer.

  The alien lettering on the hull swooped in, huge. They could see the scoring their own lasers had made, and even the bolts that held the black hull plates together.

  Impact.

  The starship smashed through, Future Fire’s deflectors and obliterated them, then crushed the
black hull and buckled the fighter over like an old banana. Folded over the starship’s shielding, Future Fire sparkled and crackled with energy ruptures and leaks, wheezing internal atmosphere from jagged cracks, and spewing fuel all over space. The starship carried it through space until finally it scraped along the primary hull disk and slipped away, a mass of dead wreckage.

  T’Cael stared in disbelief. That any vessel could survive enough impact to crush the heavy-duty structure of a preybird ... he gaped at the screen’s image of Future Fire as the fighter’s hulk spun away.

  But there were still Soar and Raze swooping around, scrambling to maintain a semblance of attack formation. T’Cael looked to his side, at the fiery young man who leaned over the helm. Kirk seemed to realize the danger that remained.

  “If we don’t get weapons up, we’re dead,” George was muttering into Florida’s ear as the two of them tried to cajole the computer into telling them what was wrong.

  But the computer couldn’t say. The giant was sleeping again.

  Chapter Twenty

  GEORGE DOVE FOR the nearest intercom.

  “Saffire! Engage the weapons!”

  “Sir, I’m trying. It’s not getting enough juice to fire. I’m going to try to relay power through the impulse converters, but if the harmonizers aren’t on line, it’ll drain the deflector shields. I just need a few minutes.”

  “We’ll be dead in a few minutes!” Boiling with frustration, George stood straight and glared at the Swarm ships cutting across their spacepath. “He damned well knows that ...”

  At the engineering station, Hart frowned. “That doesn’t sound right.” She touched her controls as though restraining a child. George heard her, but was too preoccupied to pay attention.

  “Take it easy, George,” Drake said soothingly. “Saffire’s doing his best. Sounds fancy to me, and not bad at all for a man who eats his food in sections.”

  T’Cael suddenly straightened and turned to Drake.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Drake blinked, trying to remember what he had just said. He hesitated, then found himself explaining something that seemed entirely out of place in this moment of crisis. “He eats food one-thing-at-a-time ... you know, in sections.” Drake shrugged, suddenly helpless. “Just a joke, I thought ...”

  [265] T’Cael swung around to George. “You have a Romulan on board your ship.”

  The captain whirled around as though unsure of what he’d heard.

  George squinted at t’Cael. “Impossible,” he said. “I had everybody checked for physiological match. Every person on this ship is human.”

  T’Cael was unrelenting. “Perhaps,” he said, “but the man he referred to was raised Romulan.”

  The bridge seemed to ice over. George felt his eyes grow narrow until t’Cael was a tall blur.

  Hart spun around. “Mr. Kirk! Gunnery control is the source of the drain!”

  In a choked whisper George gasped, “Jesus—Drake, Sanawey, come on!”

  “Hurry, George!” April urged.

  The bridge deck rumbled beneath their feet, and they were in the turbo-lift and on their way down before George fully realized that t’Cael had come with them.

  Far below the hub of command, deep within the decks of the massive starship, the four men burst from the lift and streaked toward gunnery control. George never flagged, hoping that Saffire had forgotten to set the lock. It was a good bet. The door slid open.

  “Saffire!” George blurted and was met with a bolt from a stun pistol. Saffire had been waiting for him—probably monitoring the bridge. The bolt knocked George hard into the leeward bulkhead.

  But the second it had taken Saffire to fire on George gave Drake time to move in. His fist met Saffire’s jaw. The pistol flew across the deck, and Claw Sanawey moved in. Grasping one of Saffire’s arms, Sanawey held him long enough for Drake to get a grip on the other arm. Saffire continued to kick and wrench, and might indeed have jerked himself free had t’Cael not stepped forward to sharply bark, “Khoi’ha! Hwiiy’lou g’tu hwiiy.”

  Saffire froze. In that instant, he realized he had given himself away. He stopped squirming, and slumped in disgust and surrender, no longer straining against Drake and Sanawey. Sullenly, he muttered, “Ssuaj’rekk.”

  George forced his numb legs to carry him to t’Cael’s side, and glared at Saffire. “Get him out of here,” he growled.

  Drake yanked Saffire’s arm, heading toward the door. “How ’bout breaking in a spanking new brig, fellow?” Together, he and Sanawey steered the saboteur out of the chamber.

  [266] When they were gone, George rubbed his tingling left thigh and scanned the weapons control board, trying to see where the tampering was. As he touched the controls, he asked, “How did you know?”

  “I wasn’t entirely sure,” t’Cael said, “until he answered me.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  T’Cael smiled enigmatically. “As little as possible. I told him to stop, and ... actually, the translation is ‘You are who you are, and we know it.’ ”

  As he began tediously readjusting the weapons malfunctions Saffire had set into the controls, George was glad he had something to do with his hands, that he had an excuse for not facing t’Cael right now.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Even if he’d been surgically altered, it would’ve shown up on Drake’s scan.”

  “Likely there is nothing to show up.”

  “I’m listening.”

  T’Cael held his breath for a moment, then went on. “It isn’t generally known among my people simply because of our high consciousness of ethnic purity, but there is a small group of humans living among us. Our officials believe their ancestors were part of a pioneer crew lost in our space before the Federation Wars, who didn’t care if they were returned. Some have been surgically altered to appear Riha—Romulan. Eventually, their children came to see themselves as Romulan. Our government was quick to take advantage. These people are trained to serve the Empire in covert ways on the other side of the treaty zone. He addressed me as his superior, thus I assume he works for our military intelligence network. This shames me before you. I must apologize.”

  Now George looked up sharply. “It isn’t your fault.”

  T’Cael’s expression softened. “We bear the actions of our own.”

  George shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah ... well, if we don’t get these weapons working, we’re going to be bearing some action ourselves. Besides,” he added, averting his eyes again, “we’d probably do the same to you if we had the chance.”

  Though embarrassed to say it, he found it all too easy to say in front of t’Cael. When had he become that comfortable with this alien, this enemy? This Romulan?

  And he wasn’t the only one who had slipped beyond the straps of prejudice.

  “Your ship,” t’Cael began, “astounds me. I had no idea of the [267] power here ...” He opted to look squarely at George then. “No single vessel has ever destroyed a Swarm before.”

  George tried to suppress the sudden rush of pride—he didn’t want to hurt t’Cael, though he’d dreamed of such a chance once upon a time. Standing here, though, in a product of Federation ingenuity, an unfinished product, in fact, he couldn’t help but be a little smug. “We haven’t even started.”

  As he furiously worked to undo the tangle of blockages Saffire had put into the firing codes, George noticed the shots from outside had ceased. He glanced at t’Cael and said, “No more potshots. Maybe they gave up.”

  T’Cael was not so optimistic, knowing the Swarm and its commanders as well as he did. One thing was sure: conditions had drastically changed. Whether for better or worse, he couldn’t yet tell.

  His thoughts outracing his fingers, George almost forgot to stop working at the firing controls when the automatic setting popped on with its green light again to tell him he’d succeeded, that Saffire hadn’t had time to do anything permanent. At least the firing controls weren’t too new a science for George to fi
gure out. They weren’t much different from the flight controls on the shuttlecraft, and everything was clearly marked. So when the light turned from yellow to green and quit flashing, he was startled. He stood back for a moment, afraid to believe he’d circumvented Saffire’s tampering, then shook himself out of his doubts and grabbed t’Cael’s sleeve.

  “That’s it. Let’s go.” George failed to interpret t’Cael’s momentary hesitation, and not until they were in the turbo-lift and almost back to the bridge did George realize he should’ve notified Robert from gunnery control that they could fire again.

  He burst onto the bridge and immediately announced, “Weapons are back on line, Captain—”

  Even before t’Cael came to his side on the upper walkway, George saw the pall that had settled over the bridge. No one was moving. They were all just staring at the two wedge-shaped vessels on the viewscreen. Bernice Hart wasn’t at the engineering subsystems monitor anymore; she was across the bridge at communications, manning Sanawey’s position. What had changed that would make communications more important to watch than engineering?

  Sullenly, Robert April said, “Bernice, play the message back for Mr. Kirk, please.”

  [268] Hart nodded, not looking at George, and touched the board. The computer translation had a sour ring.

  “This is Imperial Swarmbird Soar. We have ruptured your shielding and implanted two cutaneous detonation devices on your hull. If you make any further move to resist us, they will be ignited and your hull will be crushed between them. You are rendered immobile. Turn off your outer protection grid and your weapons. I give you a quarter hour to effect surrender.”

  George stepped toward her as though it was Hart’s fault, then swung around and addressed the captain. “Have you scanned the bombs?”

  “Yes,” April said, and signaled Hart again.

  She tapped the controls, and her auxiliary viewscreen wobbled, then refocused, and magnified twice until it provided a good view of a severe-looking device, devilishly simple and unadorned, attached to one of the pearly hull plates by three clawlike manacles. “It’s plasma-intrivium,” Hart said, “in some kind of fragmentation casing. Tri-megaton salvos. They’re clamped to the hull with some kind of magnetic coupler. One of them is up here, aft of the bridge, and the second is below, near the port sensor outlet and the laser coupling. The underside of each of them is arranged for explosion, while the exterior is made to implode and send the impact right through our hull. If they both go off, they’ll puncture the top and bottom of the primary section and probably take out the whole main computer core.”