by Greg Cox
Galileo touched down on the road several meters ahead, far enough away from the exhausted marmots so as not to excite them. Vankov exited its main door and sprinted toward the wagon. Spock glimpsed Jord at the helm within the shuttle.
“Mister Spock, Ensign Chekov! Are you all right?”
“We are unharmed.” Spock climbed out of the wagon and onto the ground. “And in considerably better circumstances than we were mere minutes ago, thanks to your prompt intervention.”
“But, Mister Spock,” Chekov said, “those Yurnians saw the shuttlecraft. Is that not precisely what we sought to avoid? What about the Prime Directive?”
“That they beheld Galileo is regrettable,” Spock said, “but vastly preferable to taking us into their custody. Instead of having an actual alien in their possession, they have only an isolated, inexplicable incident occurring on a lonely road late at night.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Vankov agreed. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if many of those revenue agents opted to keep quiet lest they be judged insane. At worst, this will become a tall tale few will believe.”
“Supported by no physical evidence other than a dozen broken glass bottles,” Spock said, perhaps as much to himself as to Chekov, “and scattered puddles of an effervescent liquid that will soon evaporate.”
“Jord and I can try to clean up the glass,” Vankov volunteered. “If this encounter is remembered at all, it will be as an obscure, unsolved mystery buried in the back pages of history.”
Chekov nodded in understanding. “Yurnos’s first UFO sighting.”
“And hopefully its last for some time,” Spock said, “provided we can terminate the smuggling operation once and for all. Only one more piece of the puzzle still needs to be put into its correct place, but to confirm my theory we must take off in Galileo at once. Time is of the essence.”
He started toward the shuttlecraft. Chekov hurried after him.
“Why is that, Mister Spock? Where are we going?”
“I will explain on the way, Ensign. Suffice it to say that, like Mars and Venus, we have an appointment to the north . . . and a window we cannot afford to miss.”
Twenty-Eight
Beyond Deep Space Station S-8
“Hailing Lucky Strike, please respond. I repeat: please respond!”
Sulu feared he was wasting his breath. He had been hailing the errant ship for what felt like forever, ever since it had first veered toward the Antares Maelstrom, but to no avail. He had to assume that Captain Dajo was receiving his transmissions—Helena would never set off into deep space without making certain the ship’s communications array was in tip-top shape—so Dajo had to be deliberately ignoring Sulu’s urgent attempts to contact him.
“Blast it, Dajo,” he muttered under his breath. “Answer me.”
Sulu was at the helm of Fleetness, a high-speed Zephryte shuttle he had commandeered back at the station. In hot pursuit of the Lucky Strike, he was flying solo, having left Knox and the rest of his officers behind at the space station in order to take on as many people as possible if, in a worst-case scenario, he needed to evacuate Dajo’s ship. In addition, he was reluctant to risk any of his crew if he had to dive into the Maelstrom after Helena and the others.
Helena . . .
“Sulu to Lucky Strike. Resume your original course immediately. Do not attempt to cross the Maelstrom. If you survive, you will face prosecution for reckless endangerment upon your arrival at Baldur III.”
Sulu told himself that this suicidal stunt had to be Dajo’s idea and that Helena was just following orders. She had always played fast and loose with the rules, which was why she had chosen the private sector over Starfleet, but he couldn’t imagine that she thought this was a good idea.
Listen to me, he thought, even if you can’t or won’t respond.
The Lucky Strike was nearing the outer fringes of the Maelstrom. Sulu hoped that his words were reaching Dajo or Helena or someone, because, in all honesty, he wasn’t sure what he could do besides sternly issue orders and warnings. The borrowed shuttle was no match for the Lucky Strike if it came to phasers or tractor beams; all Sulu truly had going for him was his authority as a Starfleet officer, which appeared to carry little weight with Dajo and his crew. Even if he caught up with the Lucky Strike before it entered the Maelstrom, Sulu could hardly pull the other vessel over and issue Dajo a ticket. His best and pretty much only bet was to somehow persuade the other ship to turn back before it was too late.
And if the Lucky Strike did plunge heedlessly into the Maelstrom . . . ?
Sulu hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
* * *
“Hailing Lucky Strike. Think of the safety of your passengers. Do not enter the Maelstrom. That’s an order.”
Dajo rolled his eyes. “Persistent fellow, isn’t he?”
“You have no idea,” Helena said.
The bridge of the Lucky Strike was maybe a third of the size of, say, the bridge on a Constitution-class starship, but the basic layout aped Starfleet’s. A mere handful of crew members manned the bridge controls, with a few more stationed in the engine room at the rear of the ship. Helena occupied her usual post at the communications station, while Dajo stood off to the side, listening to Sulu’s messages along with her. At her captain’s request, she kept the volume low enough that only she and Dajo could easily hear Sulu’s warnings and admonitions. The ship’s passengers, who were stowed away in the passenger compartments, couldn’t hear a thing.
Probably just as well, she thought. “He’s not going to give up, Mirsa.”
“Just keep giving him the cold shoulder.” Dajo smiled slyly. “We can always claim afterward that we didn’t receive his hails. ‘Technical difficulties’ and such.”
“If there’s an afterward,” she said in a low voice, “after the Maelstrom.”
“Now is no time for faintheartedness, First Officer. The die is cast and the Passage awaits us. We know the way through the storm.”
In theory, she thought, although she kept her doubts to herself. This was all her fault, in a way, since she was the one who had alerted Dajo to the opportunity. Having picked up a weak distress signal from the Ali Baba, she had been covertly monitoring the urgent communications coming to and from the space station, which was how she’d found out that the Allegra had been diverted to deal with the emergency, leaving a path to the Maelstrom open. Perhaps I should have thought twice before informing Dajo of that development.
“He’s gaining on us, Captain,” Buzuz called out from the sensor station. The insectoid Kaferian employed a shoulder-mounted vocoder unit to address his more mammalian shipmates.
Dajo returned to the captain’s chair. He stroked his thin mustache thoughtfully.
“How long until he intercepts us?”
The navigator ran the calculations. “Approximately five minutes.”
“And how long before we reach the Maelstrom?”
“One minute.”
“Well, there you have it.” Dajo relaxed into his chair, draping one leg over an armrest. “He’ll turn back once we enter the Maelstrom.”
Helena doubted it. “You don’t know Sulu.”
Nevertheless, she hoped Dajo was right—for Sulu’s sake. She fought the temptation to respond to his hails so she could try to talk him out of pursuing them.
Don’t do it, Hikaru. Don’t risk yourself.
* * *
“Listen to me. It’s not too late to turn back. Don’t throw your lives away just for a shortcut!”
The Maelstrom loomed ahead, dominating the horizon, as Sulu came within visual range of the Lucky Strike. The gold-plated passenger ship was dwarfed by the Maelstrom, the sight of which would give any sane captain or pilot pause. As a helmsman, Sulu had flown through ion storms, asteroid barrages, minefields, and even time itself; nevertheless, the Maelstrom sent a chill down his spine. The sheer size and turbulence of it reminded him somewhat of the galactic barrier enclosing the Milky Way—and not in a good way.
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br /> You don’t fly into something like that unless you have a very good reason.
Sulu’s heart sank as, undaunted, the Lucky Strike accelerated toward the Maelstrom without hesitation. Eyeballing the distance between him and the other vessel, Sulu didn’t need a navigator at his side to realize that he wasn’t going to be able to catch up with the Lucky Strike before it entered the Maelstrom, let alone get between it and the border. Not for the first time, he wished he was at the helm of the Enterprise instead. He would have a lot more options in that case.
“Sulu to Lucky Strike. This is your last chance. Think about what you’re doing!”
The Maelstrom’s border was not clearly defined, being thinner at its outer fringes then deeper within its churning depths. For a short time, Sulu was still able to make out the Lucky Strike before it vanished into the Maelstrom as though disappearing into a dense, colossal fog bank. The shuttle’s sensors could still track the other ship, despite the volatile energies surging within the Maelstrom, but for how much longer?
This is it, Sulu realized, the moment of truth.
He was not required to follow the other ship into the Maelstrom. He could simply cross his fingers and pray that Dajo knew what he was doing. Having done his best to dissuade the foolhardy travelers, Sulu could return to the station where he was still sorely needed.
“Who am I kidding?” he muttered.
Throttling up, he plunged into the Maelstrom.
Twenty-Nine
Yurnos
The planet’s polar aurora was quite striking.
Seen from orbit, it appeared as a shimmering ring of light, hundreds of kilometers across, circling Yurnos’s northern pole. Green shades predominated at the highest altitudes, reminding Spock somewhat of the Antarian glow water he had splashed over the landscape many thousands of kilometers to the south. Shifting ribbons of pink, green, and orange added to the luminous display, which was caused by solar winds exciting ionized particles in the planet’s upper atmosphere, where they had been channeled by Yurnos’s powerful magnetic field. The charged particles expelled the excess energy in the form of photons, producing the aurora, with color dependent on the elements and atoms affected. Periodic fluctuations in the magnetosphere caused the brilliance of the colors to wax and wane per a predictable cycle.
He observed the phenomenon through Galileo’s forward ports as they sped toward the arctic region at the top of the planet. Sensor displays monitored the intensity of the aurora, which generated powerful electromagnetic currents in the atmosphere.
“Are we in time, Mister Spock?”
Chekov manned the helm beside Spock. Like Spock, he was still clad in his borrowed Yurnian garments, there having been neither time nor opportunity to change back into their uniforms. They’d traded Eefa’s wagon for Galileo, leaving the wagon and its team with Jord and Vankov, in order to fly north toward the planet’s higher latitudes in hopes of confirming Spock’s theory regarding the smugglers’ secret route on and off Yurnos.
“I believe so, Ensign.” Spock carefully studied the sensor data while performing the necessary calculations in his head. “In theory, the auroral activity should reach peak intensity in approximately five point three-seven seconds.” He peered out the window directly in front of him as he counted down. “Four, three, two, one . . .”
No obvious sign of the smugglers presented itself. Spock frowned. Was it possible that his conjectures were mistaken? Had he misinterpreted the imprudent remarks he had overheard on the beach, regarding the smugglers’ plans to head north for a light show? He had been certain that he deduced the nature of the “window” they had vaguely alluded to, but what if he was mistaken?
“Mister Spock! Look!” Chekov gestured excitedly at the view through his viewport. “Rising up through the atmosphere, at two o’clock!”
The young human’s keen eyes were not mistaken. Spock suppressed a flicker of excitement as he spied a spacecraft launching into space from the arctic sea hundreds of kilometers below. He increased the magnification on a globular visual monitor positioned at eye level above the instrument panel; the augmented image confirmed that the departing vessel was indeed the submersible shuttlecraft employed by Mars, Venus, and Mercury.
“It appears my calculations were slightly off,” he observed.
“Or perhaps not everyone is as precise as you, Mister Spock.” Chekov’s smirk landed on the right side of not being irritating. “Few people are.”
Spock conceded the point.
His broader theory had certainly been validated. As he’d suspected, the smugglers had been using the planet’s intense polar auroras to mask their comings and goings from conventional sensors. Spock suspected that they scheduled their arrivals and departures in conjunction with predictable cycles of sunspot activity, the planet’s position relative to the standard main-sequence star it orbited, as well as periodic fluctuations in Yurnos’s magnetic field to ensure that the auroras were sufficiently strong enough to interfere with conventional sensor scans. It was, he had to admit, a rather ingenious stratagem. Small wonder they had managed to elude detection for so long.
“Do you think they have spotted us, Mister Spock?”
“I doubt it, Ensign. The aurora will likely mask our presence from their sensors, and they have little reason to be on the lookout for Galileo.”
Chekov chuckled. “What’s good for the goose, eh, Mister Spock?”
“Precisely.”
The smugglers’ craft deployed its retractable nacelles and sped away from Yurnos, heading out of the system. They were wasting no time or fuel in making a clean escape from this region of space. Spock saw its image recede in the monitor.
“Stay after them, Mister Chekov. We do not wish to lose them.”
“Aye, sir.”
Chekov opened up the throttle and Galileo pursued the smugglers’ unnamed spacecraft. The shuttle’s ion drive propelled them out of Yurnos’s orbit and across the solar system, quickly leaving the planet’s sole moon behind as well. Galileo proved a match for the shuttle, whose streamlined, aerodynamic contours provided little advantage in the vacuum of space. Spock watched with satisfaction as they gained on the smugglers, finding this pursuit rather more pleasing than the one they had so recently escaped. Given a choice, he preferred chasing to being chased.
As was only logical . . .
The shuttle exceeded light speed as it exited the system, proceeding into the dark between the stars. Galileo accelerated to keep pace.
“They are heading in the general direction of Baldur III,” Chekov said, consulting the shuttlecraft’s astrogator. “No surprise.”
“Bring us closer, Ensign.”
It was unclear if the other craft was aware that they were being followed. Spock took advantage of their proximity to conduct a thorough scan of the shuttle, recording its surface details, configuration, and energy signatures. The invasive scan yielded valuable data, but also provoked a hostile response.
“Weapons batteries charging,” Spock said sharply. “Raise shields. Raise blast shutters.”
“Aye, sir!”
Chekov flipped a switch, and sturdy duranium shields slid into place above Galileo’s ports. The shutters blocked their view, but Spock and Chekov could still see out of the shuttle via the display globes, which relayed visual data from Galileo’s external sensors. Between the shields and the shutters, the men were armored against most attacks short of a high-grade photon torpedo, which Spock judged unlikely to be found in the arsenal of common smugglers.
A crimson flash of disruptor fire lit up the rear of the other vessel, an instant before the blast slammed into Galileo’s shields, rocking both the vessel and its passengers; fortunately, the shuttlecraft held up against the disruptor beam better than Eefa’s unfortunate henchman had back on Yurnos. A digital display on the instrument panel reported that Galileo’s shields were down precisely 17.862 percent after the assault.
“That packed a punch, Mister Spock.” Chekov kept Galileo on course
despite the impact. “I don’t think they like us following them.”
“Prepare to return fire, Ensign.”
Chekov grinned wolfishly. “Music to my ears, sir.”
Spock activated the shuttle’s communication circuits. He hailed the smugglers via the same frequency Eefa’s simple communicator had been tuned to.
“Attention: individuals calling themselves Mars, Venus, and Mercury. This is Commander Spock, representing Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. Your actions on Yurnos are in violation of the Prime Directive. You are directed to terminate all such operations immediately and turn yourself over to face criminal charges.”
Spock was a realist. He had little expectation that the smugglers would readily surrender to justice, but propriety demanded that he give them the opportunity. If nothing else, he hoped to make it clear that their days of flying below Starfleet’s radar were over.
“Right,” Venus responded to his hail. “Like that’s going to happen. Go jump in a singularity.”
“Mister Chekov, please demonstrate how seriously we take this matter.”
“Aye, sir.”
Galileo fired on the smugglers. Twin phaser beams converged on the aft section of the ship, producing bright cobalt bursts of Cherenkov radiation where they intersected with the other vessel’s deflector shields. The intent was not to actually destroy the other ship or endanger the smugglers’ lives, but merely to bruise their shields enough to demonstrate that Galileo could and would defend itself if necessary.
The smugglers retaliated with another disruptor blast that rattled the shuttle. The fiery red flare briefly filled the globe displays, blinding Galileo, before dissipating into the ether. Spock observed that the shuttle’s shields were now down another 20.008 percent, suggesting that the smugglers had upped the force of their disruptors. They clearly had no intention of surrendering without a fight.
“That you, Vulcan?” Venus asked. “Should have known Eefa wouldn’t have the guts to dispose of you properly. What did you do with her anyway?”
