But the ship shuddered from a powerful impact against its shields. “The Mutes are firing on all ships!” Kimura cried. “Rivgor is still firing—now Vinakthen is firing on the Mutes!”
“Commodore, what are you doing?” T’Pol asked.
“We have to defend ourselves!”
“Yes, but against whom? You are doing exactly what Garos wants. He is the enemy here.”
“T’Pol’s right, Commodore!” Archer’s voice declared. “If both sides’ reinforcements arrive in the middle of a firefight, they’ll react the same way you are, and then Garos will have his war! You need to show the Mutes that Garos is acting alone. Take out Rivgor’s weapons, board them, and find those prisoners!”
The commodore stumbled as a barrage of blows rocked his ship. “We’d be leaving ourselves exposed!”
“That is always the risk,” T’Pol told him, “when making peace.”
“Do it!” Shran ordered. “Since when were you afraid of a little turbulence?”
Th’Menchal grunted in amusement. “Very well. I just hope you all know what you’re doing.”
Rivgor
The distant pounding of fire from two enemies reverberated through the deck. Garos didn’t let it throw him off his stride. “Sir,” called his weapons officer, Monar, “one of our forward batteries is down.”
“So? We have nine more.”
Another shudder. “Hull breach in section twenty-three.”
“I’m still not worried.” One of the lesser-advertised defense tricks of this class of vessel was that most of its volume was typically empty, except when carrying large quantities of cargo or slaves. So the odds of an enemy hitting anything vital were low even if they penetrated the vessel’s shields and armor. The ship could even use vacuum itself as a defense: Rivgor’s unoccupied sections were currently depressurized. Take away the air that propagated heat and shock, and explosions became far tamer. Rivgor faced little risk of being blown apart from the inside.
But suddenly the deck jerked beneath his feet—and then again. “The Starfleet ships—their targeting is growing more precise,” Monar warned. “They’ve had too much opportunity to study our design.”
“Just like that damn Andorian commodore to plan how to attack us even while we were allies. And they call us treacherous. Evasive maneuvers!”
But as soon as they veered, another ship hove into their path—Endeavour, of course. That damned Vulcan female’s ship. With Archer no doubt calling the shots from Rigel. That’s three times they’ve gotten in my way, he thought. It’s enough to make a man feel persecuted. I’m starting to take this personally.
He reminded himself, though, that such emotional investment was the kind of trap he tried to lead others into, not fall into himself. After all, he fought for his planet, his people, not his personal interest . . . even if most of his people didn’t yet see it that way. “Continue evasive. Keep targeting the Mute ship with Sato aboard.” As long as the freakish linguist continued to live, the chance of averting war was still significant.
But Endeavour kept itself between Rivgor and its target, taking the fire meant for its pet freak. Garos was almost starting to think he’d have the personal satisfaction of seeing T’Pol killed after all.
But then Monar cried, “Sir! The rest of the task force is dropping out of warp! They’re closing on us!”
Garos muttered a curse under his breath but quickly regained his aplomb. “Are the Mutes still firing on them?”
“Yes, as well as us.”
He sighed. “Then we may have succeeded in starting our war after all. Let’s get out of here—but first let’s leave a little distraction to cover our withdrawal.”
U.S.S. Endeavour
“Captain!” called Kimura. “Rivgor has just beamed its alien prisoners into space!”
“All ships, hold fire!” th’Menchal called.
T’Pol reacted swiftly. “Ortega, move to intercept the aliens. Kimura, bring them into shuttlebay two.” She doubted Garos had let them don their force-field carapaces before dumping them. She could only hope their species’ ability to withstand the comparatively low pressure of Endeavour’s corridor extended to survival in vacuum as well, at least for the duration of the rescue.
Ortega piloted the ship deftly, bringing it swiftly into range of the aliens and then slowing to nearly zero relative velocity, and T’Pol watched the feed from the external shuttlebay monitor as the outer doors opened to let the three weakly flailing entities drift inside. Kimura had wisely left the inner doors closed, not having time to depressurize the bay. Once the outer doors had sealed, he released the inner doors a crack, allowing the air from within the bay to rush into the gap, giving the aliens at least a small amount of the oxygen they needed. “Get a medical team to bay two immediately,” T’Pol ordered. “Status on the aliens?”
“They’re holding fire,” Kimura answered. “Rivgor is gone, though.”
“That is a problem for another day,” T’Pol told him.
“Do you suppose they understood what we did?” asked Thanien.
“I doubt they understand fully. The messages we have sent them today have been rather mixed.” She considered her options, then led Thanien aside to speak privately. “As soon as Phlox clears his patients to travel, we’ll turn them over.”
“Very well,” the first officer replied. “I’ll have the other shuttlepod prepped for remote guidance.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll be piloting it.”
Thanien was stunned. “Captain—they already have Commander Sato. You’d turn yourself over as well?”
“Under the circumstances, I think we need to make a gesture of atonement if we wish to salvage the peace process.”
Thanien tried to understand. “And . . . you think turning over a leader will carry more weight with them?”
“I do not know if they have a sufficient sense of hierarchy for that. But there is another consideration: If Commander Sato’s communication gear is no longer in play, my telepathy may be the only way to establish a dialogue.” The captain reflected that she should never have let Sato convince her it was logical to remain behind the first time. Archer would have insisted on taking the risk himself.
She turned to Thanien. “Surak was willing to surrender himself to his enemies in order to bring them the word of logic and peace. How can I allow myself to do less?”
Thanien studied her for a long moment, then bowed his head. “Captain. I don’t think I had ever quite appreciated . . . how brave Surak truly was.”
U.S.S. Pioneer
Once the ship began to impinge on the super-Jovian’s atmosphere, the radiation began to subside, absorbed by the growing mass of hydrogen and helium above it. Thus, in the final minutes of Pioneer’s descent, the crew left the nacelle catwalk to return to their posts . . . and do whatever they could in the time remaining.
So it was that Malcolm Reed was able to sit in his own command chair to issue what might be his final orders. “Grev, status?”
“We’re transmitting at full power, Captain!” the young Tellarite yelled, something Reed had never known him to do. “But I can’t be sure if what we’re sending is a distress call or a recipe for grain pudding!”
“Cheer up, Grev!” Rey Sangupta called from the science station, a cocky, carefree grin on his face. “For all we know, these guys love grain pudding!”
The deck was beginning to tremble beneath Reed’s feet. “Turbulence is building,” Tallarico said, not managing to stay as cheerful as the science officer. “Doing what I can to compensate, but I don’t have much to work with.”
“Try to tilt our nose up!” Rey called. “Maybe we can skim off the atmosphere!”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do, sir? It’s only a stopgap at best!”
“Right now, Ensign,” Reed told her, “that’s our battle cry.”
Tallarico dared a glance back at him—and was smiling a bit. “Yes, sir!” She turned back and clung to the control yoke with renewed determination.
“Sir!” Williams called from his right. “Something’s approaching! Something damn big!”
“On screen!”
At first, all he could make out were the clouds racing by. But then he realized some of the darker lenticular swells were not moving like clouds. They were cutting through the mist around them, moving with a will. They drew closer . . . and they were enormous. Reed could hardly process what he was looking at, and it wasn’t due to the shaky picture alone.
“Wow!” Sangupta cried. “Was this worth the trip or what? Look at the size of those guys!”
“Look at the size of their mouths!” Williams shouted back, and Reed realized those dark shapes on their fronts were in fact openings, with some sort of wispy structures within resembling baleen filters. “Great job, Rey!” the armory officer cried as one of the creatures drew in closer. “Now we’ll just get eaten instead of crushed in the atmosphere!”
“Maybe—but what a way to go!”
“Sir!” Tallarico called after a moment. “It’s moving under us!” Reed stared at the screen. It had been hard to tell given the sheer scale of the things, but she was right: The creature was moving underneath Pioneer, matching velocities. How did something so huge move so fast?
“What’s it doing?” Williams asked. “Is it—”
“It is!” Sangupta cried, laughing out loud. “It’s catching us!”
The ship jolted as it made contact with the upper hide of the creature. The soft body bowed around it, Pioneer sinking into a crater of its own making, until the sensor vantage was obscured by porous blue-gray flesh. But soon the jostling mostly subsided. “Sir,” Tallarico said, “we’ve stopped descending. It’s . . . it’s holding us at this altitude.”
“They are,” Sangupta appended. “A couple of other creatures are holding it up on the sides. We must be pretty heavy for living blimps like these.” He shook his head, grinning in wonder. “But they’re doing it, Captain! They’re buoying us up like a whale with her calf!”
Reed rose and stepped over to the science station. “Good job, Mister Sangupta. All of you, an extraordinary job.” He turned back to the science officer. “Now . . . can you and Mister Grev figure out their word for ‘thank you’?”
16
April 7, 2163
U.S.S. Pioneer
THE CREW WORKED QUICKLY to restore thruster control in order to ease the burden on the noble, vast creatures who had rescued them. This was as much a matter of self-preservation as kindness, since if the creatures’ strength gave out, that would be it for Pioneer. Apparently the hugh but lightweight creatures—which Rey Sangupta was calling “cloud whales”—had a form of jet propulsion that the science team was eagerly studying, surprised to see it developed to such efficiency in an organic life-form.
Within hours, and after the two cloud whales buoying up the central one had each been spelled by fresh ones, Pioneer was able to lift into the sky under its own power again, though it stayed deep enough in the atmosphere to be shielded from the radiation belts. While the rest of the crew shifted to repairing the subspace radio and warp drive, Sangupta and Grev continued their efforts to establish rudimentary communication with the cloud whales, insofar as the creatures’ limited intelligence would allow. But the vast beings were self-aware and social regardless, and they clearly possessed an innate compassion that made them better beings in Reed’s book than many geniuses he’d met.
Speaking of geniuses, Tobin Dax and his team proved to be a godsend. Once they were able to get out of the catwalk and really devote themselves to the repairs with the rest of the crew under their direction, they were able to devise some exceedingly clever tricks for bypassing burned-out subspace field coils and jury-rigging substitutes. “We should be able to send a distress call in about sixteen hours, sir,” Dax told Reed when the captain arrived in engineering for a progress report.
He followed the diminutive Trill to the chief engineer’s desk in the forward corner of the room. “How long until we can get warp drive?”
Dax blinked. “Well, another day and a half, I’d say, if we had to. But once we can call for help—”
“Doctor, if it’s all the same to you . . . I’d like to see Pioneer leave this system under her own power. It’ll likely take days for a rescue ship to reach us, and if we can meet them partway, then we can get Mister Sheehan to a planetary medical facility that much sooner.”
The Trill nodded. “In that case . . . I could reassign a couple of people from the transceiver to the engines and we can be under way within thirty hours.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Doctor Dax,” Reed said. “You see, I’ve been thinking. While Mister Sheehan’s prognosis is good with proper care, Doctor Liao says he’ll need months to recuperate, and there’s no telling when or if he’d be fit for duty again. So I’m going to need a new chief engineer.”
With a thoughtful nod, Dax said, “Hm, I see. I suppose I could make some recommendations. . . .”
“Doctor—I’m offering you the job.”
That evoked a wide-eyed stare. “Me? No, sir, I can’t . . . I mean, I’m a civilian.”
“So is Doctor Phlox, and he’s served with distinction as chief medical officer on Enterprise and now Endeavour. Even T’Pol served as Enterprise’s first officer as a civilian during the Xindi mission. Starfleet regulations can be flexible about such things, particularly where interspecies exchange is concerned.”
“Still . . . I’m not exactly . . . comfortable with dangerous situations.”
“You’ve comported yourself well during this one. Think it over. At least consider staying on a temporary basis, until we see whether Mister Sheehan will be returning.”
Dax stood and paced, not wasting any time thinking it over as the captain had asked. “Hm. Hmm . . . I suppose I would like to keep an eye on the upgraded systems. It would be interesting to see my equations in action for a change. And . . . your crew has been very welcoming, for the most part. I feel . . . somewhat comfortable here.”
“So you’ll stay?”
He folded his hands over his midriff, thinking. “I do have certain . . . needs that would have to be addressed. But I’ve already discussed that with Doctor Liao.”
“I see. Anything I’d need to be in the loop on?”
The Trill studied him, holding his eyes for longer than he ever had before. “I’m thinking about it. Maybe. For now, though . . . yes, I guess I can stay, at least for a little while.”
“Excellent.” Reed shook his hand. “Glad to have you aboard, Doctor Dax.”
“Thank you,” Dax said, blushing. But then he gave a nervous smile and headed back toward the warp reactor. “Now if you’ll excuse me . . . I think I’ve thought of a way I can get warp drive up and running within a day. . . .”
April 7 to 13, 2163
“Mute” homeworld
T’Pol and Sato were kept in confinement for the duration of the ship’s journey back to the aliens’ home-world, though the individual that T’Pol had grown able to recognize as her melding partner periodically brought in others of the ship’s crew to observe and examine them. They allowed Sato limited access to her communication tools, and several of them sought to meld with T’Pol—in order to confirm the first one’s insistence that she was a truly sentient being capable of emotion and empathy, the irony of which was not lost on her. Perhaps, she reflected, it was fortunate in this instance that her emotions were closer to the surface than those of most Vulcans.
After approximately two days’ travel, the two EV-suited women were escorted from their confinement chamber and out of the ship. T’Pol got a brief, tantalizing glimpse of the beings’ native environment—as Phlox had surmised, a dark planet whose distant sun was visible only as a small, faint bright patch in the overcast. The vegetation surrounding the spaceport was solid black, in order to absorb as much light energy as possible; though T’Pol thought it probable that their photosynthesis relied mainly on infrared radiation.
The authorities t
o whom the women were handed over—or perhaps the researchers, for their loose but tidy off-white garments resembled the lab coats that many species’ scientists employed—treated them more harshly than had the vessel’s crew, though some of the latter appeared to raise a protest. Sato’s equipment was removed again, and the women were forcibly restrained and dragged at high speed into a clean, orderly facility resembling a research institution. T’Pol caught glimpses of cells in which other humanoids of various shapes were confined, though it was hard to get a clear look in such darkness. Still, it was enough to reassure her that many of the other captured starship crews were still alive.
Once placed in a cell of their own with a suitable atmospheric composition and pressure, T’Pol and Sato were forcibly stripped nude, subjected to thorough and uncomfortable physical examination at the aliens’ gloved hands, then left alone, locked inside the austere cell with only minimal floor padding, a water tap, and crude facilities for attending bodily functions. Sato struggled to remain calm and suppress her humiliation, relying on the meditation techniques T’Pol had taught her over the years; but there were a few moments when the captain simply needed to allow Hoshi to weep on her shoulder. The aliens—or, rather, the natives, in this context—watched them curiously through an airtight wall that was cloudily translucent to the women’s eyes but presumably transparent to infrared and magnetic signals.
For over a day, T’Pol and Sato had only one another for company, but eventually her melding partner and its shipmates began escorting other natives in to meld with her. These natives were not dressed in the gray and brown jumpsuits of the ship crews but in more varied attire, presumably civilian garb, in drab colors and patterns that often clashed to T’Pol’s eyes but were presumably quite aesthetic in infrared. The argument that Vulcans, at least, had full personhood was beginning to earn a broader hearing, though it was difficult to persuade them the same was true of nontelepathic species such as humans; apparently the ship’s crew had not been fully convinced by Sato’s technological mimicry. T’Pol did her best to share her experiences with other races through the meld, but it was difficult to convey the kind of emotional link that would reach them. She shared her thoughts of the non-Vulcans she had bonded with on a personal level over the years: Sato for one, as well as Phlox and Jonathan Archer. She kept her experiences with Trip Tucker in reserve, concerned that they would be too complicated and ambivalent to convey the simple message needed here—and simply wishing to keep them private.
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