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else to say.
'I regret... it has to be you," Zennor added then. 'I
did not expect to like the conqueror."
The station-sized ship began to hum and glow again in
a now-recognizable process of building to open fire.
Kirk nodded as if Zennor could actually see him. "I'm
sorry too."
He motioned for McCoy to close channels.
"Kirk to Kellen. Brace yourselves and prepare to open
fire."
"Ready."
"Mr. Donnier, tractor beams. Mr. Byers, full power to
thrust. Let's pull that ship apart. General, open fire."
The starship whined and dug in its heels, pit-bulling
the hull plates of the Rath up two by two. The Klingon
ship blasted photon salvos with accuracy down into the
grooves left exposed as each plate was squalled backward.
The blue balls of energy plowed straight down
inside, to detonate deep in the grooves, pounding the
inner hull of the Rath to bits and sending destructive
explosions ricocheting around in there.
Kirk crimped his eyes in empathy. He knew what was
happening to the interior of the Rath. But there was also
a naughty I-told-you-so swelling in his chest, and that
was the feeling he grabbed on to for stability.
Zennor's ship glowed and vaulted another heavy attack
at the Enterprise and Kellen's ship.
The bridge lights flashed, then went out completely for
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a moment, leaving only the bright glow of the main
screen and the scene on it. A moment later, small
emergency lights came on along the deck and about
halfway around the ceiling area, just enough to work by.
Around him the crew's faces were sculpted to the bones
by hellish red lights from below and creamy yellow lights
from above, the hollows of their eyes made deep by
shadows and their noses and chins turned to sickles.
"Captain, shields just fell!" the relief engineer called.
"We've got no protection anymore."
"Spock, confirm that."
"Confirmed, sir. No shield power left at all."
"Perfect. If they hit us again, it's all over."
"Sir," the engineer called again, "Mr. Scott says we've
lost the conduits to the warp drive. The engines are good,
but we can't engage them. We'll need twenty minutes to
reestablish."
"We've still got impulse, correct?"
"Yes, sir, we've got that."
"Understood. General Kellen, maintain fire. Attention,
Klingon fleet. All available ships begin strafing
maneuvers now. Come in at full impulse speed. Target
specified areas of weakness between the abutting ends of
the plates."
Zennor's ships built to fire again and tried to pick off
the Klingon ships as they rushed in like streaks of light,
but at high speed they were better able to avoid the
washing yellow-purple energy blasts, or at least to take
only glancing blows. Two Klingon cruisers were
slammed out of the way in the first attack, but others
made it through and hammered the exposed inner skin
of the Rath with blunt photons.
The Fury ship started to move, to fall away, trying to
gain some room, but the Enterprise stayed with it, and
Kellen's ship continued to fire down into the fissures
caused as the starship pulled up petal after petal.
The bridge crackled and fumed with new damage, but
the starship kept working. Kirk imagined the flurry
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below decks to keep the systems on-line long enough to
succeed. Engineers would be tripping over damage-control
parties, who would be stepping between clean-up
crews. Everybody was hustling today.
"Sir, they're starting to pitch," Byers called out over
the whistle of a leak on the port side.
Before them Zennor's huge vessel began to tip downward
and to roll sideways, bucking and twisting like an
elk trying to throw off a clinging bobcat, but Kirk
wouldn't call off. Zennor didn't have tractor beams and
his technology hadn't anticipated them. That was why
this could work.
"Look!" Donnier choked, and pointed.
"Flux emanations are off the scale, sir!" Chekov sang
out, and also looked at the main screen.
Zennor's ship, the whole vast length and breadth of it,
was beginning to glow, but not like before. This glow
came from inside, shining out of the edges of all the
petals in the wide midsection, bright neon yellowish
white, and it was expanding through the ship, spilling
forward under the plates. Several of the plates were
blown completely off as the violence traveled.
"Building up to overload," Spock concluded as he
looked at his sensor screen. Sharply he looked up.
"Detonation any moment now."
Nobody had to tell Kirk that. Halfway across the
galaxy or not, he knew a main power core meltdown
when he saw one.
"Mr. Byers, full about! Ship to ship--General, we're
evacuating. Notify your fleet to clear the area at high
warp. Broadcast long-range warnings--"
"We have no thruster power. You go, Captain Kirk,
and we will continue firing until we all are a ball of fire.
We will personally take that demon ship to its own
prophecy!!"
"They don't need an escort. Donnier, shift tractor
beams to the general's ship."
"Shifting beams, sir."
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"We'll tow you out of the immediate impact range, General. With full shields you should be able to survive
the blast."
"Use your warp speed to get away, Kirk. All warriors
die."
"Yes," Kirk said. "But it's my turn today, not yours.
Our shields are down and we've lost warp maneuvering
power. We can't get far enough away from here to survive
without shields."
The crew tried to keep their faces still, but their
postures were revealing. Kirk was careful not to turn his
head, so none would feel lessened in his captain's eyes,
even as he spoke of their impending deaths.
The best crew in Starfleet. Didn't mean they were
icicles. He regretted not coming up with a word or two of
shallow comfort. They needed to hear that in his voice,
but he had none. The only gift he could give them was that they would die while saving others.
"We can tow you to safe range and your shields will
protect you." He glanced around at the sweaty faces of
his crew and noted how young they all were. "Everybody
has to die sometime. At least we're dying for a good
reason."
"Idiot." Kellen's insult was almost warm. "Do you
think you're dying today? Shields on extension mode."
As the two ships drew away from the Rath at painfully
slow speed, the Fury ship glowed brighter and rolled in
space furiously now. More and more hull plates blew off
as explosions tore through the inner core. A moment
later, the point of the horn-shaped bow blew off, leaving
a
shorn stump through which plasma and radiation
boiled freely into space.
"Captain," Spock began, "General Kellen's ship has
extended their shields around us."
"That stretches him too thin," Kirk commented, but
didn't bother to call Kellen.
As he looked from Spock to the main screen again, the Rath reached its critical mass. The hull plates blew off all
over it.
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Then, an explosion the size of a continent erupted
across open space, devouring the purple structure until
nothing could be seen but tumbling plates, spraying
matter and energy, and bright incendiary destruction.
Shock waves rocked the starship and the battle cruiser,
shoving them bodily backward through space. Kirk
clung to his chair as pressure hit him hard and artificial
gravity on the ship crushed him toward the deck as it
tried to compensate.
The Enterprise went up on a side, almost ninety
degrees. The crew tumbled, but they knew what to grab
for and managed to pull themselves into place as the
deck began to right.
The Klingon shields crackled and sparked around
both ships, but held. Wave upon wave of energy plied
space across them in a vast sphere.
Kirk waved at the electrical smoke and blinked as it
burned his eyes. On the screen, the Fury ship was gone.
Hell had gone to hell.
279
What is death but parting breath?
-"MacPherson's Rant,"
a folk song
Epilogue
"SECURE FROM RED ALERT. Establish contact with the shuttlecraft and have them report on any rescues and
return to the ship as soon as possible. We need a damage-control
party on the bridge."
The bridge gasped and spat around them, but there
was a sense of control again. Pausing to cough out the
acrid smoke that was tickling his lungs, James Kirk
prowled his bridge and checked on his people one by
one. In their sweat-streaked faces he saw the charity they
offered him for the decision he had been forced to make,
their willingness to do it all again if necessary, and a
respect he found somehow saddening.
One by one they assured him they were all right and
would now begin the slow process of piecing together the
damaged systems that had brought them through all this
alive.
There wasn't one of them who would jump ship at the
next dock after all this. These were the kind of people
who discovered themselves better for having fielded
mortal danger. No matter the fright, they hadn't
crouched scared or shrunk from the face of it or let it
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petrify them out of doing their jobs. Not even Donnier
and Byers, who had found themselves in the wrong place
at the wrong time, doing things they'd never imagined
they would have to do. But if the ship had been wrecked
under them, they'd have died with their hands on the
halyards. That was something to write home about.
One by one he congratulated them, and finally made it
around to Spock.
"Mr. Spock."
"Captain."
"Final analysis?"
"Zennor's ship has been completely decimated. Their
dreadnought attachment was apparently a massive power
factory, and once unshielded and ignited..."
Spock paused and shook his head, communicating
silently the ferocity of such a chain reaction.
"I am certain it was very quick," he added.
Gratefully, Kirk made a small, inadequate nod.
"Thank you. But Zennor made his own choice. I'm sorry
it had to happen, but I won't blame myself."
Spock seemed relieved by that. "Both the shuttlecraft Columbia and Galileo are on final approach, and both
report having picked up survivors from several Klingon
lifepods. Galileo reports she's towing what may be a
lifepod from Zennor's ship, but there are no life signs
aboard."
"I want to have a look at that. Tell them not to open it
until I get there."
"Yes, sir."
"Captain," McCoy interrupted, using his good hand
to hold the communications earpiece to his ear. "General
Kellen's requesting permission to come aboard."
Kirk glanced at him. "Fine. But tell him to come
unarmed this time and expect to be under armed escort
at all times."
McCoy paled at having to tell that to a Klingon
general, but turned back to the board.
"Captain," Spock went on, "I have also picked up
telemetry broadcast by Zennor just prior to the final
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explosion, but it has not been sorted out yet. The signals
were scrambled and quite complex."
"Telemetry? Meant for us?"
"No, sir. I believe he meant it for broadcast back to his
own people."
"Do you think the message got through?"
Spock canted his head to the side, then winced and
straightened it again. "No way to tell. I know it was
successfully broadcast, but there was no evidence that
the fissure opened to receive it. Still, their technology is
largely an unknown."
"See if you can make any sense of it. I'll be on the
flight deck. Have the general brought there when he
comes aboard. McCoy, with me. And, Spock... thank
you again."
Spock clasped his hands behind his back, a casual
motion considering his condition. "My pleasure to
serve, Captain. As always."
The flight deck was organized chaos. Well, havoc, to
keep in the spirit of the occasion. The two newly
returned shuttlecraft lay in the open rather than in their .
docking stalls, having just come in with their various
acquired rescues and tows. Several Klingon lifepods
littered the deck, in various conditions from pristine to
burned and dented, unable even to sit on the deck
without tilting.
Wounded Klingon soldiers, also in various conditions,
sat or lay against every bulkhead. At first glance as he
and McCoy entered, Kirk guessed there were over three
hundred of them.
McCoy broke off immediately to collect reports from
the dashing interns, nurses, and medics. Orderlies and
ensigns moved about everywhere, passing out drinks and
something to eat that made most of the Klingons sneer,
but they were all eating whatever it was and trying to be
polite.
Those who were conscious looked up at him suspiciously
as he surveyed them and received reports from
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fears, relying on rumors of the savagery inflicted by
Starfleet on any prisoners of war. They didn't seem to
have quite absorbed the fact that they were in fact allies
for the moment and were in the care of their commodore.
"Lieutenant," Kirk greeted as the commander of the Galileo approached him with a manifest.
"Staaltenburg, sir."
"Yes, I remember. Er
ic."
"That's correct, sir."
"You're the one who reported picking up a pod from
the big ship?"
"Yes, sir." Staaltenburg brushed his blond hair out of
his eyes and led the way around to the other side of
Galileo, where there lay a solid black pod without so
much as a running light upon it. In the blackness of
space, it would've been completely invisible if they
hadn't been scanning for things about that size.
"We practically slammed into it, sir, before we realized
it was there and wasn't an asteroid. I never heard of
a lifepod that didn't want to be found. No life signs at all
in there, by the way, sir. We've scanned it... no harmful
rays or leaks, and there is an atmosphere in there, so
it's properly pressurized. We can open it anytime you
like."
"Do so."
Staaltenburg waved up two men who had been standing
by, anticipating the order, who came in with phaser
torches and went to work on the locking mechanism of
the pod.
"Captain," Staaltenburg said then, and nodded to
ward the port side entryway.
Kirk turned.
General Kellen trundled toward him, flanked by two
Starfleet Security guards.
"General," Kirk greeted, not particularly warmed up.
"Commodore. My men are being taken care of, I see,"
the wide Klingon said, glancing about at the rows of
286 FIRST STRIKE
rescued soldiers. "I shall expect them to be completely
cooperative."
"So far, so good," Kirk said.
Kellen faced him and looked over the tops of his
glasses. "I congratulate you. You saved what is left of my
fleet. You are the Kirk."
Unable to muster any mirth, the captain--commodore--bobbed
his brows in response. He got a
little jolt of satisfaction at being reinstailed as the
resident buzzard of Starfleet.
"Thank you. You still have charges to face regarding
