by Diane Carey
A few things changed on the bridge—lights here and there, buzzing and humming that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and that Jimmy hadn’t noticed until now.
“Hey!” Munkwhite shouted again. “Look!”
They all turned.
On the main screen, well beyond the possibility of screen illusion, the Starfleet cutter appeared to be flying into their very faces.
“It’s not the magnification!” Munkwhite spat out. “I tried to tell you it wasn’t! They’re getting closer! They’re trying to dock with us!”
“Speed up!” Rex blasted. “Get us into the Blue! If they get aboard this ship, we’ll have a goddamned civil war on our hands!”
“Everybody secure? Suits? Helmets? All secure? Carlos, you got Ensign Hall?”
“Affirmative, sir! Ready when you are.”
George yanked his own helmet over his head and secured it, then waited the longest four seconds of his life while the suit pressurized and became independent of the ship they were about to abandon.
“Robert! Distance?”
“Twenty-eight meters and closing! We’re almost on them, George!”
“Get ready!”
“I don’t believe they let us get this close,” Carlos muttered as he pulled Veronica tight against him and made sure her helmet and suit were properly pressurized on top of trying to keep her alive medically. That suit had a lot to do.
George flashed him a glance from inside the helmet’s shield. “I don’t believe we found a way to use our hand lasers in a fight out in space. Okay, Robert, you give the word at ten meters. I’m going to pop the hatch. You stay at least fifteen feet behind me.”
“Affirmative . . . twenty . . . eighteen . . . fifteen . . . ten . . . eight—six, five, four—”
“Here goes!”
They were hit by a tornado of spinning crates and monitors and general trash from their troubles as George dropped the hatch where once his son had been imprisoned in a removable airlock, and let the pressure out into open space.
They huddled until the hold equalized—equal to the vacuum of space—then George climbed up.
But now there was no airlock. There was nothing but the shattered, open area that a few hours ago had been the pilot cabin, now torn to the point of the unrecognizable. Even the observation pod was entirely gone, along with most of the upper half, and in its place, looming bigger and nearer than George ever hoped to see it, was the spider ship that had pounced on them out of the impossible.
And there was a tractor beam—wide as a tree trunk, gory, ugly, a gigantic klieg light of contracted phosphine yellow, the beam spilled like arsenic over the cutter’s magnetic center, making the hulk shimmer and tremble—and right there was the port where it emitted from.
The only place on the spider ship that wasn’t covered by impenetrable shielding.
Without pausing to be scared or impressed, George crawled out of the ripped hull, grabbing for sparse and unforgiving handholds in the zero-g, and trying to keep himself from floating in the wrong direction. He made his way toward that beam, carrying with him an industrial extender claw and a neat little grenade cannibalized from the four on-board hand lasers. What people couldn’t do when they got desperate enough . . .
He edged closer. The beam would happily, hungrily, crush a living body, or anything without enough tonnage or the right alloys in its construction to fight back. Too close . . . hard to move . . . even through his pressure suit he felt the tractor beam licking at him, sucking for him, tasting him. He edged closer as the last few inches closed and the two ships physically bumped.
A shower of electrical reaction rained over him as the cutter rubbed against the enemy ship’s special shields. Suddenly it was like fighting with a prisoner and bumping up against the brig shielding.
The cutter waved off a few inches, but kept brushing those shields, kept throwing electrical spray over him every few seconds.
He moved sideways against the ravaged hull of his own ship, or what was left of it, trying not to touch the shields of the other ship. Who knew what would happen to an environmental suit if it rubbed up against those shields?
It took him an eternity to reach the tractor beam source, but he did reach it.
Then he stretched toward the emitter port and pushed his industrial claw outward, with the makeshift grenade in its teeth. For a horrid few seconds he could barely hold on—and he had to. He had to make sure the grenade went deep into the tractor beam, not just caught in the edge.
“All the way,” he grunted, teeth clamped, “all the way in—”
His arms were almost yanked out of their sockets as the tractor got a good grip on the banded laser weapons, and suddenly reality turned a bitter yellow. George let go not at the last second, but during it. The claw went too, and almost took him with it, striking his rib cage as it flipped and was yanked into the emitter core.
An instant later the laser grenade ignited, ruptured by the tractor beam and the impact of being sucked in there.
The explosion blew outward like a giant’s last gush. What had been an orderly, if fuming, yellow tractor beam now became a savage red hell. George felt his body lifted and slammed to the opposite side of the cutter’s remains, then sucked back again into the core as energies conflicted.
In a flash of irrationality he tried to signal to Robert to follow him into the two-meter rupture with the others before the deflectors closed over the hole, but he was thrown forward hard into a wall of smoke and shattered inner core.
There was a tremor of activity around him—the others? He couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anymore. He groped his way forward before automatic shutdowns in the tractor mechanism took over and trapped them all outside.
Like a fireman moving through the visionless void of a burning building, feeling and groping and hoping his way, George stumbled forward until the tug of outer space left his body and he thought he might be in a pressurized area. How could that be? In a vacuum one moment, inside the ship in another—
Was that what Jimmy had gone through? Thrust by violence into more violence?
A great shudder rocked through the skin of the vessel around him, and his instincts started ringing. The Blue Zone!
It had them! They were in, they were committed. The cutter was a crushed pancake, just a few feet back there. That was the crunch he’d felt through the deck—
Robert! Had the others made it in? They were just a few feet behind him—but a few feet in a situation like this . . .
Had they gotten Veronica in?
All at once a force grabbed him and pulled him down.
Gravity!
It drove him to his knees. Frustrated at not being able to see, he tore off his helmet and collapsed, waving weakly at gushes of smoke.
He waved and crawled, or at least he thought he was crawling. He felt pressure down there on his knees. Where was the ceiling? Which way was up?
“George! George!”
Robert’s voice . . . Robert’s hands . . .
“George, you all right?”
“Are we in?” he choked. “Are we inside?”
“Yes, we got in! We got in a few seconds behind you, just as you calculated. The shields closed right behind us. Look at me—are you all right?”
With both arms coiled around his plundered rib cage, George sucked at air he couldn’t get enough of and shoved himself up on one elbow. He was lying on his side, his eyes focusing on a sheet of black deck insulation.
“Robert, quit—asking me that—will you? I’m a wreck—that’s how I am. This whole—situation’s . . . a wreck. What happened? Why is there air in here?”
Robert knelt beside him and held on to him. “I told you. Because the shields closed as soon as our ship was destroyed by the Blue Zone, and this ship repressurized. It was a remarkable lesson in timing, old boy! Just remarkable.”
“Great—let’s get moving.”
“No, don’t move! George, you’re hurt. You can’t ignore it.”
“Wan
na bet? Don’t make me feel fragile right now! I wanna feel mean.”
Taking that as hopeful, Robert hoisted him to his knees, then to his feet, and managed to keep him up by leaning him against a scorched wall. Unable to stand without the wall, George blinked and tried to get his burning eyes to operate again.
Robert’s helmet was off too. How long had those few seconds been?
Out of the brownish-green billows Carlos Florida stumbled at them, yanking off his own helmet, and grabbed George by an arm and gasped, “George, you all right, sir?”
“Oh, for cripes’ sake!” George pushed off from between them and staggered away.
Gaping helplessly at him and then at Robert, Carlos babbled, “Wha—what’d I say wrong?”
“Nothing at all we can help, my boy,” Robert soothed, stepping close to look him over too. “How about yourself? Hurt anywhere?”
Ignoring what was going on behind him, George winced his way out of his survival suit.
“Damn, I hate these constricting things,” he groused as he stomped the suit to a shimmering lump under him. “Is Hall in here?” he called. “Is she safe?”
Carlos turned. “Over there. Still alive, sir.”
“Where are we?”
“Inside, someplace. And we better move out. If they figure out what we did, all they have to do is turn off their deflectors and all our air is gone.”
“They can’t,” Robert said. “We’re inside the Blue Zone. The deflectors have to stay up from now on. It buys us a few moments, at least.”
“If this ship’s designed anything like a Federation ship,” Carlos said, “the tractor emitter core would be on the lower decks, forward of impulse, but topside of warp drive.”
After clearing his throat, George said, “I’m not making any assumptions. Look around. Find out for sure where we are in relation to . . . anything we can use.”
“Aye, sir, I will.”
George pointed a warning finger at him. “You be careful.”
Smiling hesitantly, Carlos muttered, “Thanks . . . I’ll do that too.”
Limping back to where Robert was just peeling off his own scorched pressure suit and confiscating its reserve packs for Veronica, George breathed heavily and winced out his words.
“Well, that took care of our hand weapons. We’re down to thumbnails and spit.”
Robert nodded and straightened up to eye him. “You sure you’re all right, George? You don’t look good.”
“I don’t feel good, okay? I might be horn-mad and jaundiced, but at least I’m consistent. We’re on level ground with these ax murderers now, and I intend to make use of that.”
“Let’s think calmly, shall we? See if we can’t get ourselves disentangled from this after all. Perhaps we should find a place to hide and rest for a few moments.”
“I’m not waiting a few moments. They’ve got my son. And nobody . . . takes my son.”
“That’s your father?” Jimmy asked, leering at his captor.
Roy Moss gritted his teeth. “Let’s just say I came out of a woman he used to know.”
Now, with his hands tied, Jimmy had only his best cold-teenager particularization to aim at Roy Moss as they climbed down to the lower decks. “What kind of a woman would get close to that?”
“Shut up!” Roy roared. “I might have to drag you around, but I don’t have to listen to you.”
“What’re you going to do? Stick a shock collar on me?”
“I might,” Roy grated. “Just shut up. I’m busy.”
“Busy keeping those deflectors up, right?” Jimmy nagged. “We hurt you, didn’t we? We smashed you up. Now you’ve got to tamper all the time to keep the shields up. Glad I’m here to come along and watch. Maybe I’ll learn something.”
Below decks, through the dimness and the smoke, Jimmy allowed himself to be shoved through the scavenger ship, all the while memorizing the layout and counting whatever pirates were still walking around. When his father and Captain April needed information, Jimmy was determined to have it. Those oxygen-deprivation dreams had reminded him of things bitterness and selfishness had caused him to forget—that adults had a life to live too. That his father hadn’t come home and spent his leaves sitting around, relaxing. He’d come home armed with outdoor gear or a ticket to an adventure park or a new museum. Always doing things with his boys, that was George Kirk . . . until his oldest boy grew up and his youngest boy decided to count only the hours apart.
Guilt burned under his skin.
But now he knew the key. The memories were helping him. He understood Roy Moss as though looking at a horror story that flashed his own future. Roy was provokable, and Jimmy set out to heckle the skin off him.
“You’ll learn something,” Roy grumbled. “Your shipmates might be on this ship someplace.”
“They’re aboard and you know it,” Jimmy crowed, hope rising in his heart. He pushed it down and kept his tone belligerent. “And you’re all dead.”
“Maybe they are! Fine! I’ve still got you! I don’t intend to run into them and have nothing to bribe them off me with. You’re my personal little shield. So shut up and shield!”
“Why should I shut up?” Jimmy kept pestering. “Why do anything you say? You’re just their hatchet man. I can go back to Starfleet with my father. At least he’s a commander and supposed to tell people what to do.”
“Mine’s a captain!” Roy shot back.
Through a grinding pause, Jimmy actually smiled. The right kind of smile, the dissecting kind that everybody told him he would outgrow.
“A captain?” he snorted. “Your father’s no captain.”
Teeth on edge, Roy bristled. “He’s . . . in charge . . . of this ship.”
“I used to be in charge of a gang too. Didn’t make me a captain,” Jimmy said, “and it didn’t make them a crew. I found out what a real captain and crew are when you insects swarmed us. You people have the ethics of swamp lice.” Fulfilling his role as Roy’s personal fault-finder, he ticked off a couple of seconds, then added, “Guess I should thank you for that.”
They went down the next corridor to the engine with Jimmy heel-nipping all the way and Roy snapping more than once, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone, I said.”
Finally he shoved Jimmy aside in an engineering subroom, aside, where he could keep an eye on him, then knelt under a console and tried to work.
“Captain April called you trap-door spiders,” Jimmy badgered. “He was right. That’s all you are. A shipload of dirty dealers.”
“April?” Roy blurted. He suddenly stood to his full height and stiffened. “Robert April? Founder of the starship program?” He thrust himself closer to Jimmy, armed with a rude glower. “Are you off a starship? Are you off the Enterprise?”
Realizing he’d said too much, Jimmy kept red-flagging the bull in a different direction. “Aww, what’s the matter? Miss your chance for cushy duty like that? Talk to your father, why don’t you? At least my father came out here to make things better for other people. Yours came out here to make things worse.”
“At least mine kept me with him. Yours was just another Starfleet widow maker. I know the type.”
Jimmy bristled at Roy’s intuitive pinning of the truth. “We were all right and he knew it,” he said. “He went out where he was really needed. He didn’t have to provide a perfect life for me. He was out here trying to build something better for everybody. Me . . . you . . . we’re the same kind. We’re the cause of our own problems.”
“Don’t try to distract me! I know that’s what you’re doing.” Roy stumbled past him and hit a wall comm unit with his fist. “Bridge! Bridge! Does anybody hear me up there?”
“What d’you want?”
“I think there’s a starship after us!”
TWENTY-SEVEN
USS Enterprise 1701-A
James Kirk got up and paced around his command chair. Damn, if only he had more to do than just stare into that screen.
He opened and closed his fist. Nothin
g to do with them.
That was Command’s biggest problem—no job to do. No hand on the wheel. No hand on anything, really. On a ship with a crew bigger than ten, the captain really didn’t touch anything. Been like that for centuries . . . so why wasn’t he used to it?
“Captain?”
He spun around, toward Spock. “Yes?”
The arrowlike eyes were reassuring. Spock didn’t come down. “I’ve analyzed this entire file, and reviewed all encyclopedic files related, and found I had to trace it through fundamental Starfleet Engineering archives. This is a basic anchor in exploration, and aggressive and defensive engineering science for starships. It is the main reason starships can broach areas impenetrable for other types of craft, and endure situations of violence intolerable to lesser mounted vessels. It is a structural member in Federation expansion.”
“I realize that,” Kirk said. “Do you understand the science itself? The deflector technology and everything else that came out of those incidents involving Faramond?”
Spock nodded. “To the molecular level,” he assured Kirk.
Kirk sighed with relief. Having Spock know made a big difference. It would continue to do so when things got dicey.
“Captain.” Pavel Chekov spoke up in a tone that said he could tell he was interrupting private thoughts.
Kirk nodded to Spock, then turned to Chekov. “Report.”
“Reading the planetary system of Faramond on the long-range sensors, sir. No reading of the Bill of Rights yet.”
“Secure from warp speed in five minutes,” Kirk said. “Ahead standard sublight.”
“Secure from warp speed in five minutes, aye,” the new helmsman said. “Ahead, point eight sublight . . . arrival at Faramond Colony is approximately twenty minutes to orbit, sir.”
“Keep the crew at stations at least until we come within hail of her,” Kirk said, “assuming we find her.”
“Aye, sir,” Uhura responded from behind him. “Maintaining full alert and emergency stations,” she echoed.
Then the disturbing quiet fell again, and the high-speed waiting resumed.
Kirk wished there were more to be said. Getting used to the few words required for efficient command of a ship had been one of the hardest lessons Starfleet had taught him. What was he about to find in that solar system? Was he about to discover that he had failed to be there when Roth needed help? He still saw Alma Roth as an ensign . . . and he still felt parental.
