Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike

by Diane Carey

  "I think I have a formula, sir," Chekov called as the

  ship bucked and whined again.

  He cursed himself for his trust, his hope. Zennor had

  lashed out with no sign of regret or hesitation, and with a

  greater punch than Kirk would've bet on. He'd hoped to

  maneuver out of the trap, and now he had to fight his

  way out. He hunched his shoulders and glared at the

  screen.

  "Magnification point five," he called over the whistle

  of the fans.

  Ventilators had cleared the bridge of about sixty

  percent of the smoke, and he could see the action on the

  forward screen as it backed off its zoom view. He saw the

  tractor beams still holding Kellen's crippled ship, and he

  saw most of Zennor's huge Rath.

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  FIRST STRIKE

  He also saw the Klingon fleet moving in again.

  "Ship to ship, General Kellen," he said. But no one

  was at the communications console. He looked around

  and found McCoy hovering at the starboard steps.

  "Bones, get back up there and stay there."

  ".Oh--sorry." The doctor tucked his injured arm

  against his side and pulled himself back up the tilted

  deck to the communications station. "Ship to ship..."

  he muttered as he poked at the controls. "I think this is

  it. Try it."

  "General," Kirk spoke up, "call off your ships."

  "Fire! Fire, you coward! My weapons are down! Fire

  at them!"

  "I'm telling you, the disruptor fire is providing power

  to Zennor and he's hitting us with it. Tell your ships to

  back off and save their energy. I need time to tow you out

  of here."

  "Thank you for the tow. Now mind your own business."

  "All right, but at least shut down your thrusters so we

  can get out of here. Your ship is providing resistance."

  There was no response at all this time.

  "General! Damn it." He motioned for McCoy to cut

  off the communication. Like the patrollers, he was

  knocking his head against the same kind of brick wall.

  "Captain!" Byers called.

  Kirk looked at the forward screen again in time to see

  four scorched patrollers soar past the Enterprise and

  viciously strafe the Rath, looking completely ridiculous

  in their total ineffectiveness. The energy they deployed

  simply washed down the cone-shaped hull and disappeared

  inside somehow. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  Zennor's ship glowed in retaliation, and Kirk braced

  to take another hit, but this one shot out in bright rings

  right where the patrollers were passing and selectively hit

  them. So the weapons were directional as well as area-wide--either

  that, or Zennor and his crew were learning

  as they fought.

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  Diane Carey

  "Shouldn't we return fire, Jim?" McCoy asked, sensing

  the starship would be next. "Isn't there some way?"

  "It's a waste of effort. There has to be a weakness."

  "I hope you find it."

  "I hope so too."

  He stepped to the bridge rail, and only now realized he

  was limping--his hip was hurting. He must've struck it

  on an edge when he fell. He reached up for McCoy to

  take his forearm and hoist him out of the center of the

  command deck, giving the repair crew more room to

  maneuver as they climbed about inside the ceiling like

  squirrels in an attic.

  Byers ducked out of the way as much as he could, but

  somehow managed to do it without taking his hands off

  the helm, shuffling around in front of the console while

  repair work was done above him.

  The repair crew went about their business with a zeal

  that suggested they were enjoying the terror, for it gave

  them something to do. Within a couple of minutes, the

  loud wheezing was reduced to a sorry whistle, then

  finally to nothing, and the hull breach was sealed.

  The ship sighed with relief. Everything suddenly became

  quiet, as -if to feign that nothing was happening.

  Between Spock and McCoy, Kirk watched the Klingon

  patrollers being basted by the Rath's selective hits. The

  patrollers shuddered and veered off, but one of them

  veered in the wrong direction.

  "It's gonna hit!" Byers gulped, only an instant before

  impact.

  The patroller decimated itself into the pleats of the Rath. The body of the ship exploded first, leaving for a

  terrible moment only the wings flying through space,

  unattached, before they too were caught by the points of

  the scales and the plasma inside them blew up.

  "That's it!" Kirk said, and the sound was much softer

  than the thought. Only McCoy and Spock heard him.

  Spock looked at him, but didn't have to ask.

  "Look at the hull plates," Kirk said, pointing.

  "They're bent."

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  FIRST STRIKE

  Seemingly impregnable moments ago, the fifty-foot

  plates of Zennor's ship were scored and misshapen

  where the patrollers had stricken them, but most important,

  they were peeled back several feet--several meters

  even.

  And under there, he could see the faintest shimmer of

  bare hull.

  Bare unshielded hull.

  "That's it, that's our target... there it

  He started to step down to the command arena again,

  when, overhead, one of the repair crew fell out and

  landed on his back across the command chair, then

  rolled off, stunned.

  Kirk picked him up roughly, then looked up. "Come

  down from 'there! Is that secure?"

  "Yes, sir!" another repairman called as he and another

  one scurried down and folded the ladder.

  "Then get out of here."

  "Aye, sir!"

  He stepped up to his chair, littered now with insulation

  crumbs and sharp bits of ceiling material that

  hadn't been cleaned off yet. Eventually somebody would

  come up here and vacuum it up. For now, he would sit

  on chips and fuzz.

  "Sir, General Kellen's ship is no longer under thrust,"

  Spock reported. "We are free to tow."

  "I don't want to tow him anymore. Bring him out

  behind us and drop him."

  "Sir?"

  "And bring the tractor beams to bear on the forward

  points of those hull plates. Pick up as many as you can

  without reducing tractor capacity. Then I want to heel

  back and peel those plates up on whatever they have for

  hinges."

  Spock thought about this for a moment, then said,

  "May I ask your intentions?"

  "Yes, you can. We're going to fire straight down into

  the cracks."

  The bridge crew blinked at him for a moment.

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  Diane Carey

  He glanced at each of them, waved his hands, and

  snapped, "Do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir!" Byers said, and licked a bleeding lip.

  "Aye aye, sir!" Donnier nodded furiously.

  Complying, Spock responded. He brushed crumbs

  of hull material off his console, then looked again at Kirk

  and waited for the order.

&nbs
p; "Concentrate three-quarters from the aft end of the

  ship. I want to target the area of Zennor's original ship.

  That's where I think the command center still is."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  "I'm ready, sir."

  "Ready also, sir."

  Kirk settled into his chair, on top of the chips and the

  fuzz and the grit. "Haul away, Mr. Spock. Mr. Donnier

  .. prepare to open fire."

  "I'm ready, s-sir."

  "Fire."

  As the tractor beams strained and the impulse engines

  thrust furiously to pull back the scales of the Rath, one at

  a time, the ship's volleys of phaser fire opened up the

  bared hull between the sheared-back plates.

  Cutting like a surgeon's lasers into the underskin of

  the Rath, the phasers immediately gave Kirk gratification.

  Sparks, hull matter, and atmospheric gases spewed

  past the starship and out into space.

  "Shields are fluctuating, sir," Chekov reported. "The

  tractor beam is compromising deflector power consumption."

  "We don't have any options, Mr. Chekov. Maintain."

  Zennor's ship let loose another whip of glowing power,

  thudding the Enterprise viciously, but this wasn't the

  time to do anything but lie close and take the heat.

  The tractor beams howled now, drawing power and

  arguing with the shields.

  "Shut down aft shields," Kirk instructed. "Forward

  shields only. Keep pulling.. full traction.. good.

  maintain fire."

  Would the inner hull on Zennor's ship give first, or

  27O

  FIRST STRIKE

  would the starship's shields go? There was no way to

  judge that. It was a night at the gambling tables.

  Plate after plate, the Enterprise chewed her way across

  the Rath's acres-wide hull, phaser fire burrowing between

  them and causing plumes of matter to erupt from

  in there. The big dark ship slid away and fell off its

  position, and he sensed that he knew where the havoc

  was right now. A dreadnought designed for invasion,

  vastly powerful, but untested in real battle, and a crew

  who had heard their whole lives about their destiny to

  invade but had never done any such thing, today were

  both finding out that plans and hopes alone do not serve.

  They had strength, delivered by the resources of a whole

  civilization, but they had no strategy, for they had never

  before needed one.

  As the ruptures between the peeled-back scales began

  some serious billowing and gushing, Zennor's ship

  opened up again with another engulfing salvo of the

  burning power, and the Enterprise rocked hard to her

  starboard side, throwing everyone down hard. Not one

  of the bridge personnel was able to stay off the deck.

  Kirk saw the bridge whirl around him, then blinked

  and found himself crushed into the crease between the

  upper and lower decks, under the rail on the starboard

  side. More smoke and sparks and putrid fluids and gases

  spewed all around him.

  He reached up, caught the rail, hauled himself up, and

  instantly looked for Spock.

  The Vulcan was on his hands and knees on the deck,

  slowly raising one hand and searching for the edge of his

  console.

  "Spock, wait," Kirk said, and forced himself up there.

  "Slowly."

  He got a good grip on Spock and took much of the

  Vulcan's weight as they both found their balance on a

  deck now tilted nearly forty degrees.

  "Thank you, Captain," Spock wheezed, choked with

  pain again.

  "Sit down and stay down. Don't get up again."

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  Diane Carey

  "Thank you." The first officer gladly settled into his

  now-dusty chair and closed his eyes for a moment, not

  caring that he had repeated himself.

  "Stop thanking me," Kirk muttered.

  "Captain, the weapons!" Donnier called, without a

  slammer. "We've lost weapons power! We can't shoot!"

  "Confirm that, engineering." Whirling in the other

  direction, Kirk dropped again to the middle deck.

  "Confirmed, sir!" Davis called over the surging howl

  of ruptured system.

  "Not now... continue traction. Keep peeling those

  plates back. Bones, hail Kellen again."

  "Kellen ... yes, sir." McCoy swung around and almost

  lost his footing on the tipping deck, but waved away

  the smoke and found the same buttons he'd found

  before. "Ship to ship, Captain."

  "General, do you have weapons power?"

  "You were shooting. Keep shooting."

  "I can't. My weapons are off-line. How are yours?"

  "Mine are on, but I have no engine thrust."

  "You don't need thrust for what I have in mind."

  "You want me to do what you say? You want Klingon

  commanders to do your bidding?"

  Kirk glared at the main screen as if at Kellen's face

  and imagined the general standing before him and

  expecting something spectacular.

  All right. Fine.

  "Yes, I want you all to do my bidding. I will take care

  of this problem for you, but I want senior authority,

  clearance to act on my own judgment, and absolution

  from any breakage of treaty until the Enterprise is safely

  on the other side of the Federation Neutral Zone, or I

  veer off right now and leave you to the Havoc. It's your

  turn to cooperate, General. I want you to make me

  Commodore of the Klingon Fleet."

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  Chapter Twenty-one

  HE reFusEd to ask again. He let Kellen hang out there,

  without engine power, staring at the monolithic threat of

  the invasion dreadnought, and he bided his time.

  "I concur."

  Kirk gave,,liis command chair a victorious pounding

  on the arm. accept. Inform your commanders."

  "They know."

  "Good. My first order to them is that they cease

  random fire and prepare for coordinated strafing with

  specific targets, on my orders only. I want you to divert

  all your power to weapons and stand by while I attempt

  one last time to talk to Zennor."

  "Talk Yt '

  ou re gotng to talk again?"

  "Yes, I'm going to talk," KIrk grolled indignantly, 'I'm

  going to talk and you're not going to question me

  anymore. You have your orders. McCoy, hail Zennor

  and hail him good."

  McCoy didn't respond, but jabbed at the communications board in what seemed childlike confusion, then

  looked up and shrugged with his eyes. "Channel's open,

  Captain."

  The

  Invasion

  Continues

  ,BOOK TWO

  The Soldiers of Fear

  Diane Carey

  He didn't add the implied I think.

  Gnashing his teeth, Kirk felt his brows go down as he

  glowered at the Rat& the early fortress.

  "Zennor, this is Commodore Kirk of the combined

  forces of the United Federation of Planets and the

  Klingon Imperial Fleet. I know you can hear me. We've

  discovered a weakness in your armaments and I'm about

  to launch an assault against it. I give y
ou one more

  chance to stand down and let me try to explain to you

  exactly what it is that you're acting upon. Legends and

  folklore over five thousand years old, stories told to

  children to frighten them into behavior... the stuff that

  ignorant people allow themselves to believe because they

  haven't learned any better. We've learned better... and

  now we have a chance to mend the wrong done to your

  civilization by people who are strangers to all of us."

  His words rang, and tension set in. The Rath hung out

  there, several of its hull petals torn backward, bent up

  out of place, rupturing the floral symmetry of the huge

  conical hull.

  "I'm offering you one last chance to build instead of

  wreck. Isn't that what you've wanted all along?"

  Over the OPen channel came only the faint clicking

  and crackle of distant damage, of voices barely more

  than echoes calling out to each other in frantic desperation.

  So it was only bare hull in there after all and he had

  been right. There was a chink in the armor of the

  damned.

  Changing the timber of his voice to something he

  reserved for other captains, he simply requested, "State

  your intentions."

  Then all would know, and all duties would be clear.

  He waited.

  Under his skin he sensed Zennor's eyes, watching the Enterprise just as now he watched the Rath, peering at

  each other over the short gap of space, the long gap of

  time, wondering if the weaknesses they saw in each other

  were real, and if the time to crow was over.

  "We will build."

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  FIRST STRIKE

  Hope flared and Kirk leaned forward. Zennor's voice

  was underlaid by the groan of damage over there, the

  whoop of alarms, and the frantic voices of the alien crew.

  "Upon the ruined cities of the conquerors' children, we

  will build our rightful place. There is no giving up. History

  renews itself and breathes life into the doomed. This is the

  Battle of Garamanus. This is our place and we will defend

  it. First we will smash the Klingon civilization, and then

  we will come for yours."

  The flare guttered and sank away. Kirk sighed, shook

  his head, pressed his lips flat, but there wasn't anything