Vanguard,BookOne

by David Mack

  The old surgeon couldn’t help but laugh. Shaking his head at M’Benga, he clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You haven’t met our first officer, have you?”

  Kirk sat alone in his quarters and read the top news story on FNS. Every sentence and each new paragraph further stoked his primal desire to track down reporter Tim Pennington and pummel him, bare-handed, straight into a new career.

  Pennington’s feature story was by now distributed across all of known space, available to billions of people, and all but certain to cause Kirk no end of trouble. It wasn’t the errors in the story that concerned him; those were few and relatively inconsequential. In every truly important sense, the story was factual and accurate. To Kirk’s chagrin, he also had to admit that it was basically fair.

  Anonymous eyewitness statements corroborated one another’s accounts of the bizarre powers Mitchell had displayed during the ship’s transit to Delta Vega. The unattributed statements of these alleged witnesses also had exposed several small but inexplicable discrepancies between Kirk’s own official logs, the death certificate filed by Dr. Piper in the Vanguard operations center, and the account of helm officer Lee Kelso’s death on Delta Vega.

  Smack-dab in the middle was Kirk’s glib verbal evasion: “My answer is in my report.” Opposite the rest of Pennington’s story, those six words looked more damning than Kirk could ever have suspected when he’d said them.

  The bottom-line conclusion of Pennington’s story was simple and to the point: The inconsistencies all pointed to a cover-up. Specifically, Pennington had made a very convincing argument that Kirk had, in fact, personally killed Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. The question that Pennington had left unanswered was whether Kirk’s action was justified.

  I suppose I should be grateful he cast himself only as my judge and not as my jury and executioner to boot, Kirk brooded. He clicked off the monitor screen, rose from his desk, and collapsed onto his bed. It irked him that members of his crew had spoken without permission to Pennington. Torn between his respect for the freedom of the press and the desire to maintain discipline aboard his ship, he reminded himself that freedoms such as this were what the Federation stood for. He remembered one of the teachings of Captain Friedl Segfrunsdóttir, a professor of Federation Law at the Academy: It’s not enough to stand up for rights and freedoms only when they’re convenient. To defend them in principle, defend them in practice, always.

  Kirk had considered those good words to live by then, and he still did now. He resolved not to issue any prohibitions to his crew regarding Pennington, or any other reporter. The story might yet blow over, or it might mushroom into a court-martial. Damn the consequences, he decided. I know what I did, and why I did it. And if I have to answer for that…so be it.

  He was about to lower the lights and settle in for a much-needed night of rest when his door signal buzzed. “Come.”

  The door swished open. Scotty barreled in, a portable data display clutched in his hand. The look on his face was a mix of horror and righteous rage, and his anger thickened his brogue. “Captain!” He waved the data device at Kirk. “Have ye read this? That daft bugger Pennington’s slandered us! Slandered you!”

  “Scotty, calm down. It’s—”

  “—a travesty! That’s what it is! I swear to ye, Captain, if I find him, he’s goin’ head-first into an impulse vent!”

  “Mr. Scott, that’s not—”

  “Of all the bloody nerve! Who does he think he is? And who the bloody hell was he talkin’ to? Not my people, I’ll tell you that fer nothin’…”

  As Scotty’s tirade continued, Kirk settled into a chair and waited for the chief engineer to pause for breath. Suspecting it might take a while, he made himself comfortable.

  9

  “Helm, move us into a standard orbit,” Captain Gannon said. “Lieutenant Nave, hail the outpost.”

  Gannon watched the planet’s curving line of night slip off of the main viewer as the Bombay circuited the upper hemisphere of Ravanar IV. They had made good time, reaching the outpost in less than seventy-eight hours.

  Her alpha-shift team was on the bridge. Milonakis drifted from station to station, ever vigilant for potential problems and eager to keep everyone in synch. Lieutenant Oriana D’Amato was at the helm; beside her, navigator Ensign Berry was already hard at work plotting the ship’s fastest route to its next urgent task. Lieutenant ch’Shonnas quietly monitored his science display, the cerulean glow from under the sensor hood barely noticeable on his blue Andorian skin.

  Lieutenant Susan Nave pivoted away from her communications console. “Captain, we have audio contact with the outpost.”

  “Patch it through.” Gannon turned her eyes upward to help herself focus on the message, tuning out the gentle bleeps and whistles of the bridge’s computers at work.

  The teasing voice of Commander Dean Singer came through loud and clear. “Well, well, if it isn’t the hardest-working ship in Starfleet.” She could hear his teammates in the background, laughing and making other sounds of relieved jubilation. “You have our new coffee machine, yes?”

  Coffee machine? Gannon grinned. His code phrases aren’t subtle, but at least they make me laugh. “Yeah, Dean, we’ve got your new coffeemaker. You fellas must be pretty surly after a week without your daily java.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “It comes with a free pound of whole beans. Do you want the Colombian, the Denevan Mountain Roast, or the—”

  “Captain,” ch’Shonnas interrupted. “Picking up six signals closing fast.” Milonakis dashed toward an auxiliary sensor station. The androgynously beautiful Andorian officer continued, “Traveling in pairs, and converging on our coordinates at high impulse.”

  “Confirmed,” Milonakis said from the opposite side of the bridge. “Boosting power to the sensors.”

  “Batten down the hatches, Dean,” Gannon said. “We’ve got company. Bombay out.” With a slashing motion, she signaled Nave to close the channel. “Milonakis, can we identify those ships?”

  “Heavy trace elements in their impulse exhaust…” He and ch’Shonnas volleyed reports past Gannon, like verbal badminton.

  “Local subspace dimpling indicates rapid deceleration from relativistic velocity,” ch’Shonnas said.

  “Reading unusual energy surges on all six ships…”

  “Comparing against the databank…”

  Milonakis looked up, alarmed. “They’re Tholian.”

  Lifting his eyes from his sensors, ch’Shonnas turned toward Gannon. “Confirmed, Captain. Six vessels, Tholian design, on intercept trajectories, and charging weapons.”

  “Yellow alert, raise shields.” She swiveled toward Nave as the warning lights on the walls began to flash. “Hail them.” Gannon pondered why a Tholian patrol would be this far from home and why it would act so aggressively. This wasn’t Tholian space, and they had never before gone out of their way to pick a fight.

  Nave entered the commands and nodded back to Gannon. “Hailing frequencies open.”

  “Attention, unidentified Tholian vessels. This is Captain Hallie Gannon of the Federation starship Bombay. We are here on a peaceful mission of exploration. Please respond.”

  Anxiety leached the moisture from Gannon’s mouth as several seconds dragged on without reply from the Tholians. Once again hunched over his sensor display, ch’Shonnas said, “Captain, the Tholian vessels are slowing to half-impulse, raising shields, and deploying into an attack formation.”

  “Helm, break orbit, start evasive maneuvers. Get us out of here.” The Tholian cruisers took shape on the main viewer. Gannon thumbed the intercom switch on the arm of her chair. “All hands, this is the captain. Red alert! Battle stations!”

  My God, Kevin Judge thought. Has she gone mad?

  Main engineering on the Bombay was a madhouse on the best of days. Now the red-alert klaxon was wailing, crimson lights were flashing from every corner and flat surface, and his engineers were scurrying every w
hich way in a frantic race to escape the cold hard fact that they were in the part of the ship that any smart foe would target first and hit the hardest.

  He waved down the attention of a team of engineers as they jogged past, each clutching a breathing mask in one hand and a toolkit in the other. “Dump anything noncritical,” Judge told them over the din. “Power down secondary systems, route everything to shields, sensors, and tactical!” Working at his master console, he pieced together new circuit paths, desperate to distribute the stress loads that combat-power demands would place on the already sorely overtaxed starship. He felt the impulse engines rumble overhead as the ship broke orbit and accelerated into battle.

  The first round of enemy fire slammed into the shields. Warning lights flashed orange, signaling imminent burn-outs in the shield generators. “Damage control teams to shield generators one, four, and nine!” Another jarring blow to the shields left Judge clenching his jaw and wincing. Alerts multiplied across his panel.

  Shrill whoops and screeches heralded the firing of the Bombay’s main phaser banks. Reverberating percussions from the magnetic launchers in the torpedo bay counterpointed the shriek of the secondary phasers kicking in. Power shunts were overheating systemwide as the fire-control center unleashed another volley of torpedoes and followed it with more shots from the main phasers. Judge heard coolant manifolds rupturing two decks above him, but the sudden spike in phaser generator temperatures was all he needed to see. Pointing in the direction of the damage, he shouted to his assistant chief, “McCarthy, get up there and seal that leak!”

  From somewhere to his left, someone shouted, “Starboard shields collapsing!” Before he could reconfigure an aft emitter to cover the gap, another voice cried out, “Incoming!”

  Judge reached for a breathing mask. “Brace for impact!”

  The strike threw everyone portside, like chess pieces swatted from their board by a vengeful god. A deafening explosion compressed the air, which hit with the force of a thunderclap.

  Judge peeled his face from the deck to see smoke and fire spreading swiftly across the upper level of main engineering. Firefighters, stunned by the blast, staggered groggily toward the blazes. Events played out in silence before the chief engineer, whose eardrums ached terribly.

  Loak, the Tellarite engineer, stood in front of Judge, shouting something. Judge couldn’t hear a word the man said. All he could do was shake his head numbly, dazed and deaf. The Tellarite hefted Judge over his shoulder and carried him out of main engineering, following several other engineers as they dashed through narrow channels in the walls of orange fire.

  In the corridor, damage-control officers were distributing pressure suits and firefighting equipment. Surrounded by activity, Loak looked like he was talking to a wall. It took Judge a few seconds to realize the junior officer was likely receiving orders from the bridge.

  A security officer kneeled down and pressed a breathing mask firmly over Judge’s nose and mouth. He pulled greedily at the clean air. Sharp stabs of pain knifed through his ears as they popped, and a muddy facsimile of his old hearing returned. He pulled the mask off his face and pushed himself back onto his feet. From the wall panel, he heard the captain’s voice.

  “…whatever you have to, just get those shields back.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Loak said. “Engineering out.”

  Judge cornered the younger officer. “Report.”

  Loak was focused. “Direct hit, main engineering aft. Hull breach, partial pressure loss. Fires on this deck and the two above. Starboard shields down, fire’s cutting us off from the damaged generators. We’re clearing a path.”

  “Good work,” Judge said, snagging a pressure suit from one of the damage-control personnel. “Suit up and lead us in.”

  With a proud nod, Loak said, “Aye, sir.”

  Another round of impacts trembled the ship as Judge shimmied into his insulated pressure suit. “Bloody worthless things,” he grumbled.

  A cock of his head expressed Loak’s confusion. “Sir?”

  “Shield generators. They never last more than one hit.”

  Loak sealed his pressure suit, muffling his reply. “Let’s make a better one.”

  “Ambitious thinking, mate,” Judge said. He sealed his suit, picked up his gear, and slapped Loak on the back before pointing to the nearest ladder that would take them to the damaged shield generator. “But one thing at a time, eh?”

  Sickbay was empty of patients, and that worried Dr. Lee. She imagined her shipmates wounded or dying in dark, smoke-filled corridors, unable to reach help. Hit after hit pounded the ship, but instead of her triage area filling with wounded personnel, the room remained dark and all but abandoned. One critical system after another shut down as the engineers stole power from throughout the ship to feed its energy-hungry phaser banks. Wouldn’t want to waste power on something frivolous like an operating room, Lee fumed, saving her darkest sarcasm for later.

  It was the isolation of being in sickbay that most troubled her, just as it always had. While other departments remained keenly involved in the struggle to save the ship, the medical staff frequently found itself ignored, taken for granted, left to guess at the cause and meaning of each nerve-racking blast that echoed through the corridors.

  Relax, she advised herself. The battle’s less than two minutes old. Maybe it sounds worse than it is.

  Then came the impact that flung her across the room. Meters away, nurses Guerin and Imelio fell together in a heap, and Lee’s gray-haired assistant CMO, Dr. Stewart Greisman, sprawled on the floor between a pair of biobeds.

  An unfamiliar male voice crackled over the intercom. “Engineering to sickbay! We’ve got wounded down here!”

  “On our way!” Lee scrambled back to her feet and reached for a portable medical kit. She looked at her staff. “Come on!” The others hurried to gather surgical tools and medicine while Lee checked her Feinberger to make certain it was in proper working order. Emitting a rapidly oscillating tone, it glowed in the dimming half-light of the suddenly all but powerless sickbay.

  More explosions quaked the deck beneath the short, round-faced Korean woman’s feet as Greisman led Guerin and Imelio toward her. All three were heavily laden with medical equipment and satchels. “Ready to go, Doctor,” Greisman said.

  Lee turned toward the door. It swooshed open. She stepped through, her three compatriots right behind her. “Focus on the ones you can heal quickly,” Lee said. “The engineers will need every pair of hands they can get.” Greisman and the nurses nodded their understanding. It was the kind of instruction that Lee hated to give; it was essentially an inversion of normal triage priority, whereby the patients who were most gravely injured would be passed over, because they would consume time and resources that could restore several other less seriously wounded personnel to duty. Basically, the more a patient needed their help, the less likely he was to get it.

  Of all the types of medicine Lee found herself called upon to provide during her Starfleet service, combat medicine was the only kind that she thought deserved to be called evil.

  Kevin Judge staggered out of the fire-filled corridor into main engineering. He pulled off the helmet of his burn-marked pressure suit. It fell to the floor with a hollow thud. Gasping for air, he found it heavy with smoke. Fumes from scorched polymers and vaporized chemicals stung his eyes. He coughed.

  “Engineering to bridge,” he said.

  “Bridge here,” Captain Gannon said.

  “Starboard shields at half-power, Captain. Best we can do until we put the fires out.” Two horrendously loud blasts from the bottom of the ship sent painful vibrations radiating up from the deck, through Judge’s body, and into his jaw and inner ear.

  “I need more power to tactical, Kevin. Get it from life-support. From the computer. Anything that isn’t shields or propulsion, just get it.”

  “Aye, Captain,” he said. “Engineering out.” He closed the channel and gulped down another half-poisonous breath. Looking aroun
d, he noticed that Ford and Robertson had just extinguished the fire in the back of the main engineering compartment. “Good work, you two,” he said. “Grab some tools and follow me.”

  The two women put aside their firefighting gear and scrambled to gather together a pair of complete toolkits. Judge, meanwhile, twisted his helmet back into place. Robertson and Ford were standing in front of him when he turned around. “Sir,” Robertson said, “where are we going?”

  “The central Jefferies tube,” he said, hefting his own ponderous toolbox. Realizing he would likely dislocate his shoulder before he made it more than a few steps out of the room, he put it back down and rooted around inside for the two items he knew he would need. “We’re shunting power mains one and three into the tactical grid.”

  Ford shot him a worried glance. “One and three, sir?”

  “ ’Sright,” he said, plucking a dynospanner from the box.

  Anderson piped up, “But that’ll shut off life-support.”

  “Very good, Ensign,” Judge said. Digging to the bottom of the cluttered case, he found his plasma cutter.

  “Sir, without life-support we’ll have less than ten hours of breathable air, and—” The deck lurched as a rough hit battered the ship. The trio landed hard on the floor.

  Judge glared at the young enlisted woman. “Ten hours? Try ten minutes. Think short-term, Ford, or you won’t have a long term. Grab your tools and let’s go.”

  Orders and reports and the chaos of discharged phasers raged around Oriana D’Amato, who was grateful that all she had to do was fly the ship. Captain Gannon was behind her, issuing commands from the center seat. Beside her, Berry was serving as tactical officer, struggling to keep up with overlapping instructions from Gannon and Commander Milonakis.

  Gannon’s voice snapped, “Evasive, starboard!”

  D’Amato accelerated into a looping corkscrew maneuver that almost overwhelmed the inertial dampeners. No matter which way she went, one of the six Tholian cruisers appeared in her path, or another volley of Tholian ordnance cut her off. She had been mostly successful at evading the enemy’s attacks, but the hits they had scored had proved to be substantial. “I need covering fire,” she said to anyone who was listening.