by Tony Healey
The hangar had become a full-blown war zone, the like of which Eisenhower hadn’t seen for a long, long time. Not since he was a much younger man …
Eisenhower looked toward the other hole the Naxor had bored through the hull. They were pouring through it, an infestation of fierce, two-legged cockroaches. Some of the Defiant’s crew grappled hand-to-hand against Naxor soldiers. Eisenhower pushed through them. He removed the grenade from his belt and flipped the trigger mechanism. It whirred to life in his hand. Hummed with energy.
“Fire in the hole!” Eisenhower shouted, and tossed it through the hole. It clattered along the ground on the other side. “Move! Move!”
Eisenhower moved as fast as possible, grabbing a couple of officers with him. The grenade went off, a gigantic sonic boom that shook the world apart.
It threw the Master At Arms to the deck, filled the whole hangar with smoke. He pushed himself up on his knees and fought for a deep breath; the blast had knocked the wind out of him. It seemed to have blown everyone over, like a house of cards destroyed by a strong gust of wind. Eisenhower looked back at the hole. Dark smoke wafted up from it, the Naxor from that ship seemingly eliminated.
He smiled with satisfaction.
“Get up all of yuh!” Hawk commanded them. He stood over them, kataan in hand, face splattered with dried blood. His own opponent got back to its feet. He swung his blade, cutting it from the shoulder to the waist. The giant insectoid fell apart at the seams. “Defend this ship!”
Everybody got back to their feet and resumed the fight to keep the Defiant from falling into enemy hands.
9.
“Main power is offline. We are on emergency power only,” Jackson reported. “We have helm and weapons. That’s it.”
Chang gripped the safety bar overhead. “As long as we can shoot, nothing else matters. Are you ready?”
Jackson nodded.
Lieutenant Rogers piloted them up and over the Naxor ship. It fired at their underside as they slid over it, turning cumbersomely along its axis as it did so, as if the Defiant were some huge whale. The enemy’s fire glanced off the edge of the turning hull.
“Fire!” Chang ordered.
Jackson turned every single battery gun to face the rear of the Naxor vessel. They fired streams of artillery directly into the Naxor’s engine manifolds.
Rogers switched to aft view.
“All tubes. Fire!”
Balls of light dissipated around the Defiant, then came to bear on their target. They detonated in the blinding heat of the enemy ship’s engines, and the resultant series of explosions cracked the vessel in two. It tore apart at the seams, grew bright then blew. Ensign Beaumont knocked his earpiece out as the wild scream of raw energy burst from it. He rubbed his ear.
The Defiant shook as if she herself were about to break apart, and Chang swung from the overhead safety bar, her knuckles white.
“Blimey!” Rogers yelled as he fought to stabilize the ship.
On the aft viewer, the explosion faded enough to show the Naxor vessel in pieces.
Just more debris, Chang thought.
“Midships Lieutenant Rogers,” she said. “Jackson, what about the ships clamped to our sides?”
The Lieutenant checked his readouts. “Still there. Fight still ongoing down in the hangar bay. Apparently they’ve managed to neutralise one of the ships though.”
Which means it’s stuck there for the foreseeable, Chang thought grimly.
She jammed a finger against a comm. panel.
“Doctor Clayton? This is Chang.”
“Clayton here,” after a beat.
“How are the Captain and Commander Greene?” Chang asked.
“The Commander is coming around. I’ve done what I can for his burns. His body will have to do its thing, I’m afraid. I’m a doctor, not a plastic surgeon. It’ll have to heal,” Clayton said gruffly. “Until then, he’s gonna look like crisp-n-dry I’m afraid.”
She heard his muffled laughter, and thought it was more of a nervous laugh than genuine humour.
“And the Captain?”
Clayton fell silent.
“Doctor?”
“I’m afraid it’s not so good. I don’t want to say too much over this line, Lieutenant. But it’s gonna be touch and go …” Clayton told her.
Lisa Chang swallowed. She cleared her throat. “Understood.”
She closed the channel, looked at the others. They watched her, awaiting instructions for their next move.
“Ensign Beaumont, get in touch with our Krinuan friends. Offer assistance if they need it. Tell them they have people over here, helping us out,” Chang said.
“Aye,” Beaumont said and set to work. He picked the earpiece back up.
“Jackson and Rogers … let’s get this tub back together.”
10.
Commander Greene opened his eyes to the blinding white lights of the sickbay.
His face felt stiff, as if it had something plastered all over it. Added to that his skin felt hot and sore.
Del closed his eyes and tried to get his bearings.
… the ship bucked beneath his feet. Greene sprang through the airlock and set the lady Krinuan on the deck. He turned back. Boi still struggled along the corridor with Salnow’s arm draped over his shoulder, his feet dragging on the decking.
“Come on!” the Commander yelled at them. “Quickly!”
“Wait here,” Banks said and pushed past him. He ran down the corridor toward the two struggling crewmen. He took up the other side of Salnow.
The hellmouth opened. Boi glanced behind him at the sound of a massive explosion. The Krinuan ship shook. A wall of flame surged up the corridor, sucking the air out. Salnow cried out in pain. They were still so far away. Banks looked up. He had time to fix his eyes on Commander Greene, then the flames consumed them. “NO!”
Now it came back to him.
… the hot blast threw Commander Greene against the other side of the shuttle. He struck the bulkhead then landed in a heap on the floor …
The Commander opened his eyes again and tried to sit up. A hand pressed gently against his chest, and a soothing voice told him to lay back down and rest. He couldn’t see a face, only an outline of a person against the lights.
“What’s happened?” he asked groggily.
“You’re okay, Commander. You’re in sickbay.”
He recognised the voice as that of Nurse Shook.
“What about the others?” he asked her.
He watched as the shadow of Nurse Shook checked something to his right. Then he felt a straw against his lips.
“Drink this.”
He did. When he’d had enough, Nurse Shook took the straw away.
“I want to talk to Dr. Clayton,” Commander Greene told her.
“Wait a moment and I’ll get him,” Shook told him and walked off.
Greene turned his head away from the light, and he found that his vision cleared somewhat. He was able to see the rest of the sickbay, albeit blurry. He couldn’t mistake the limp form of Captain King a few beds over. She had tubes in her nose, her mouth, into the veins of her wrists …
“Captain!” Greene called out to her. She didn’t stir at the sound of his voice. He heard footsteps approaching from the end of the bed, and turned back in time to see a hazy Dr. Clayton approach.
“Don’t shout in here, Commander,” Clayton said.
“What’s happened to the Captain?”
Clayton drew a big breath. “Slipping into a coma. There was a hull breach and the bridge was lost. The Captain managed to pull Lieutenant Chang to safety, but in the process she got exposed to the vacuum. Now she’s in a state of shock.”
The Commander didn’t say anything.
“I’m trying everything I can to bring her around, but so far there’s no change in her condition,” Clayton explained. “As for you, that strange sensation on your face you’re no doubt experiencing would be the burns you received from the explosion.”
&n
bsp; Banks looked up. He had time to fix his eyes on Commander Greene, then the flames consumed them.
Commander Greene pushed it away.
“You too were out cold, but unlike the Captain’s yours came direct from a blow to the head,” Clayton said.
“Will she make it?” Greene asked him.
He wondered who commanded the ship, now that the Captain and he were incapacitated. Perhaps Hawk had stepped up to the plate …
Dr. Clayton’s eyes were big and sad. He looked over at the Captain’s bed, and Greene could see the man was tired and weary.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s all up to her. She’s strong. I’m hopeful that she’ll pull through.”
Greene tried to sit up again. This time it was Clayton who pushed him back down.
“And what do you think you’re doing? Be still.”
“I have to get to the bridge,” Greene said. “She’d want me to do that.”
“What she’d want doesn’t matter. You’re in no fit state to do anything right now. Just lay back and let your treatment take hold, otherwise you’ll end up scarred for life. Besides, I don’t think you’d make it past the end of the hall,” Clayton said dismissively.
The Commander wanted to argue the toss with him, but he couldn’t; he knew the man to be correct.
He did as he was told. He relaxed. Closed his eyes again. But he didn’t sleep.
He couldn’t. Not with Jessica balancing on the very edge of death the way she was.
11.
Darkness.
A swirling maelstrom of planetary debris and other cosmic flotsam surrounding a pitch black heart. The Koenig-Prime singularity. A black hole.
I would give my life over and over again to save you all.
In the very centre floated a pyramid of pure black material. She reached for it, went closer to the eye of the storm. She felt it pull at her, tugging her in by the lapels.
… up ahead there was a huge flash of light. They all looked up in time to see a small planetoid tumbling over the rim at the black hole’s centre. It seemed to happen in slow motion, though King was aware it was happening quickly. The atmosphere and surface matter was stripped away first as the planetoid fell. Then it broke apart like a ball of dry dirt, down into the nothingness. There was an explosion from the crushing of its core, but it lasted a mere second before the energy of that, too, was swallowed by the singularity …
Jessica flailed uselessly as she fell into the darkness, the pyramid just beyond reach.
She would have screamed, but she had no mouth. No voice. She was nothing and everything all at once.
The dark took her … and her memories …
* * *
“Doctor! She’s slipping!” Nurse Munoz called.
Clayton ran to the Captain’s bedside and looked up at the overhead monitor of her life functions. They were dipping, rapidly.
“Use the cardio vent to stimulate her heart,” he told Munoz. The male nurse did as he was told. Jessica’s heart rate picked up before it continued its slow decline.
A waltz of death, Clayton thought absently.
“No response.”
“Administer adrenaline,” Clayton told him.
Nurse Shook arrived at his side. Her worried face looked up at the Doctor, then she took one of Jessica’s hands in her own.
“Fight it,” she told the unconscious Captain. “Fight it.”
Dr. Clayton watched as Munoz administered the adrenaline. On the monitor her heart rate started to pick up.
But it can drop again any minute, Clayton told himself. I may just be holding off the inevitable.
* * *
A voice from her childhood. A teacher reciting a poem. It came to her in a whisper as she fell through the inky black.
The frosty ways like iron
The branches plumed with snow
Alas! in Winter, dead, and dark,
Where can poor Robin go?
Jessica laughed but there was no laughter. Just the absent breath of the vacuum itself, the wind of the void.
Winter, dead, and dark …
The air of nothingness.
Singh reached up, stroked the side of her face. “Now it is your turn to do as much as you can with the time you have …”
He smiled again, then his eyes seemed focus on something far away. The light in them faded. Singh’s hand fell away from hers and the sound of his last breath issued slowly from between his lips.
The black pyramid. It fell before her. Wherever you go, I will go, she thought.
“Doc, what is it?” she asked.
“Jessica, some months ago I had a visit from Captain Singh. He was concerned by a sudden numbness in his legs. He asked me to check it out,” Clayton said.
King urged him on.
“We ran some tests …” Clayton said. His eyes met with hers. “The tests revealed the early stages of Multiple Sclerosis. MS.”
Again Jessica reached out for it with outstretched fingers.
“We ran some tests …”
If only she could touch it, she knew she’d be safe. The pyramid would take her home. It would be her ruby slippers.
… falling from it like confetti …
The jet black pyramid continued to turn over and over, just beyond reach. Jessica strained to reach it. If only …
But it was a pyramid no longer. The shape had bent itself into the figure of a man.
“I miss you.”
It was Captain Singh. Her Father. Singh fell through the nothingness, and it was all that Jessica could to do but fall with him.
* * *
Jessica’s heart rate plummeted. The systems monitoring her life signs went berserk.
Commander Greene had gotten out of bed and staggered over.
Nurse Shook tried steering him back toward his own bed, but the Commander had none of it. “No.”
“Come on, you need to be back in bed, there’s nothing you can do,” Shook told him.
“The Captain!” Greene cried out, then held his head in his hands.
Dr. Clayton whirled about, fury burning behind his eyes.
“You idiot, get back to your bed NOW!”
Greene scowled at him. “I am the second in command of this vessel, and that woman is the Captain. I want -“
“Right now you’re the second in command of nothing. And she may be the Captain of this boat, but I am the Captain down here. This is my sickbay. You’ll do as you’re told. Now get back to your goddamned bed and let me try to save this woman!”
Greene stopped resisting and allowed Nurse Shook to take him back, his shoulders slumped.
“Flat lining,” Munoz announced.
“To hell with all this,” Clayton said. He climbed up on the bed, and to Munoz’s shocked surprise, mounted the Captain’s midsection. He placed both hands on her chest and started working her. “Frank, go grab a defrib. Move it.”
“Yes Doctor.”
Clayton massaged her heart, up and down, as if he were kneading bread. He performed chest compressions to an inaudible rhythm drummed into him when he was but a trainee. Even with every instrument and piece of modern equipment available, a doctor never forgot that simple rhythm.
“Don’t do this …” Clayton huffed.
12.
They watched as the Krinuan ships went toe-to-toe with the Naxors and chased them from the battlefield.
However, instead of turning back to resume a defensive position near the Defiant, Praror’s ships continued to pursue.
“Captain Praror says that he will not allow them to leave,” Ensign Beaumont reported.
“That’s his call,” Chang said. She felt exhausted. They’d done enough fighting for one day.
This ship has never been through so much … she thought. Or this crew.
“Contact engineering,” she told Beaumont.
13.
Chief Gunn’s team waited out in the hall for the engineering section to fill back up with breathable air. The Chief paced, waiting f
or the little red light above the door to change to green.
The moment it did, she pushed the doors apart, not waiting for them to open for her. The others filed in after her and rushed to their stations.
“Right! You lot know the drill. We do it by the book. But first thing’s first. We’ve gotta deal with this coolant problem,” she said.
Belcher worked alongside her.
Gunn looked up as if in prayer to the Patron Saint of Engineers.
Let’s give this old girl her heartbeat back, she thought, then set to work.
14.
In the sickbay, Dr. Clayton continued to try and kickstart Jessica’s heart.
“Doctor, perhaps …” Munoz offered.
Clayton ignored him and kept going. Up and down. Up and down.
Come on Jessica, come back to us, he thought.
* * *
Captain Singh looked down into his own coffin.
“Dad?”
He looked up. “Jessica …”
She enveloped him, held him tight. However the recently-deceased Singh remained exactly that. They parted.
“How … ?”
He shook his head. “No questions. I am gone. But I am also here.”
He shrugged.
The stepped away from the coffin and turned toward the darkness.
“There’s nothing there,” Jessica said.
“It always seems that way, doesn’t it?” Singh asked her. “A great wall of nothing. And yet we journey into it, seeking answers.”
“You said this to me once, a long time ago,” she told him.
“Oh, I probably did. Things have gotten muddled,” Singh said.
Jessica swallowed. “Am I dead?”
He shook his head. “No, Jessica. Not just yet. But you’re on the precipice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re at the point of dying. That’s what I mean.”
“Oh.”
They regarded the darkness for a moment.
“You see that?” he asked her.
