The Antares Maelstrom

by Greg Cox

He clicked off the intercom.

  “Seal off the bridge and all other essential areas, and close all portholes in the passenger compartments. Restrict turbolifts to authorized personnel only.” He paused to consider his options. “And pipe soothing music into the passenger areas as well.”

  Sulu doubted that would be enough to calm the restive passengers. Chances were some of them had already caught a glimpse of a glider or two.

  “They’re not buying it, Captain,” Helena said. “They’re scared and angry.”

  A dangerous combination, Sulu thought, as if we didn’t have enough problems.

  Matters escalated quickly. Within moments, fists and bodies pounded against the sealed entrance, adding to the clamor generated by the Maelstrom and the attacking gliders. Muffled voices could be heard demanding entrance and answers. Sulu could readily imagine the upset civilians on the other side of the sturdy duranium door.

  “I was afraid of this.” Dajo sounded as though he’d possibly dealt with irate customers before. “Fass, initiate antihijacking protocol B-2. Public areas only.”

  “You got it, Skipper.”

  Sulu looked away from the sensor controls, uncertain what Dajo was attempting.

  Antihijacking protocol?

  Puzzled, he heard the pounding and shouting outside die down, replaced by what sounded like bodies slumping onto the floor. Ominous possibilities flashed through Sulu’s brain, some more appalling than others.

  “Excuse me! What just happened?”

  “Nothing too dire,” Dajo assured him. “We merely flooded the passenger areas with anesthizine gas. A sensible precaution against pirates and other unwanted visitors, but it works for unruly customers too.”

  “Did the trick.” Helena took out her earpiece to give her ear a break. “The lines have gone silent, and none too soon.”

  Sulu wasn’t sure what he thought of this. Certainly, the Enterprise had similar security measures in place, but that was for dealing with the likes of Khan and equally serious threats. Then again, he had to admit that gassing the rioting passengers gave the crew one less challenge to deal with. Better perhaps to let the tranquilized passengers sleep through the emergency and hope there would still be a ship for them to wake up to? Sulu had no idea how many escape pods the Lucky Strike was equipped with, but until the ship was clear of the Maelstrom, abandoning ship was just another death sentence.

  “Incoming!” Fass shouted. “They’re swarming us!”

  Despite the ship’s high-velocity attempts to evade the gliders, the Lucky Strike came under attack again. Sulu’s sensors registered at least nine gliders laying siege to the ship, resulting in a nonstop barrage of high-energy shocks. Based on his scans, he theorized that the gliders were converting subatomic portions of their own mass into energy to power their attacks. And, unluckily for the Lucky Strike, Einstein’s famous equation worked in the gliders’ favor. They could get plenty of firepower from very little mass.

  “Oh, hellfire!” Perez exclaimed as sparks erupted from the back of the helm console. Unbuckling his seat belt, he scurried around to address the issue. Removing a rear panel, he hastily inspected the damage while muttering unhappily. “No, no, no. Don’t give up on me, princess.”

  “How bad is it?” Dajo asked.

  “Give me a moment!” Perez yanked back his hand after getting a mild shock. He blew on his fingers before diving back into the console’s innards. He squinted in concentration. “I think I can bypass the toasted circuits . . . there!”

  A triumphant expression lit up his face as he replaced the panel and sprang to his feet, just as a massive plasma swell spun the ship on its axis, hurling him into the ceiling and then dropping him back onto the floor, where he lay groaning.

  “Carlos!” Helena shouted.

  Automatic gyros righted the ship, but the helm was still vacant. Unbuckling his seat belt, Sulu scrambled across the shuddering bridge to take the controls. To his relief, he found that Perez’s improvised repairs had been effective; the helm controls were responsive, even if the Maelstrom was still fighting the ship every kilometer of the way.

  “Somebody get that man a medic!” he ordered, unconcerned with preempting Dajo. Did the Lucky Strike even have a doctor aboard?

  Helena broke from her post, producing a medkit from a storage compartment beneath a nearby station. She rushed to Perez’s side, managing the turbulence as best she could, and checked him out with a handheld medical scanner.

  “A couple broken ribs, a possible concussion.” She prepared a hypospray. “To help with the pain.”

  The hypospray hissed as she administered the dose.

  “Chen, Yoder!” Dajo said. “Help Perez to his bunk, then hurry back here.” He glanced at an indicator on his armrest. “Don’t worry. The knockout gas has been vented.”

  “That’s not necessary, sir,” Perez protested. “I can manage—”

  He tried to sit up, then winced despite the analgesic in his bloodstream. He clutched his side, gasping, as Helena eased him back onto the floor.

  “Your spirit does you proud, lad,” Dajo said, “but you’ve done your part. Fate’s taken you out of the game for now. Retire to your berth. That’s an order.” He shifted his gaze to Sulu. “Seems you’ve got the helm after all, Lieutenant. Let’s see how good you are.”

  I’ll be better once we get out of the Maelstrom, Sulu thought. He resumed evasive maneuvers, throwing in a few well-honed tricks of his own, but knew too well that he could only buy the Lucky Strike some extra time at best; if the gliders didn’t destroy the ship, the Maelstrom would—eventually. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s somewhat less than reassuring.” Dajo surveyed the battered bridge. Scorch marks defaced various surfaces, while a whiff of ozone hung in the air. “I just replaced that helm console a month ago,” he lamented. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the sealed passenger compartments. “You don’t suppose we can tack on an additional charge for wear and tear?”

  “Just hope they don’t sue you to the highest court in the quadrant.” Helena packed up the medkit and made her way back to her usual post, while a couple of her fellow crew members removed Perez from the bridge. She watched him go with obvious concern. “Assuming we ever make it out of this maelstrom.”

  That’s a big assumption, Sulu thought. Unfortunately.

  “Shields down to forty-nine percent,” Fass said. “We’re stretched thin.”

  “Divert more power to the deflectors, from wherever you can find it.” Dajo ran a hand through his mane. “Any and all nonessential systems.”

  “I suppose I can tap into the phaser batteries,” she replied. “Not doing us much good anyway.”

  Sulu knew that was only a stopgap measure. Between the gliders and the Maelstrom, the Lucky Strike wasn’t going to make it on its own.

  “We need to send a distress signal to the Enterprise,” he said.

  “From inside the Maelstrom?” Helen balked at the notion. “Are you serious?”

  “If anybody can do it,” he said, encouraging her. “You’re the second-best communications specialist I know.”

  “Only the second-best? Is that a challenge?”

  He shrugged. “If you want to take it that way.”

  “And I don’t suppose you have any suggestions as to how exactly to go about it?”

  “Not exactly, but—” A possibility popped into his brain as he thought of Uhura. “Come to think of it, back on the Enterprise a few years ago, our communications officer managed to get a signal through what seemed like an impenetrable barrier, using a subspace bypass circuit.”

  He left out the part about the Greek god Apollo so that she wouldn’t think he was feeding her a fairy tale.

  “A subspace bypass circuit, you say?” Sulu could practically see the wheels turning inside her head as she sparked to the idea. “That just might work, if we can divert enough juice to the comms to boost the signal sufficiently.”

  “Just a minute there!” Dajo said. “We n
eed every bit of available power for the shields. We can’t waste it on some wild experiment!”

  “You have a better idea?” Sulu said. “Shoring up the shields for as long as possible is not a long-term solution, and you know it. Sending out a distress signal may be a slim hope, but it’s better than none at all.”

  Dajo couldn’t argue with that. He spun his chair toward Helena. “Do you really think you can do this, Helena?”

  “No guarantees,” she said. “The ionization from the Maelstrom is going to seriously mess with the harmonics, but Sulu is right. It could be our best shot.”

  Dajo gripped the armrests of his chair as the bridge rocked beneath him. He stared glumly at the viewscreen where more gliders could be seen joining the swarm. A sapphire pulse forced him to avert his eyes.

  “Go for it,” he said. “And make it snappy.”

  Thirty-One

  Baldur III

  Thunderbird exploded in the vacuum of space.

  “Target destroyed,” Ensign Vance said. The navigator had fired the photon torpedo that had obliterated the derelict vessel now that Scotty and his associates had been beamed off it. Kirk watched as the spectacular explosion briefly lit up the void, sending sparks and ashes flying in all directions before dissipating completely.

  “Never thought I’d be sorry to see that old deathtrap go,” Scott said, “but she did us proud in the end.”

  The engineer stood beside Kirk’s chair, still wearing the hazard suit he’d donned during the crisis, minus the hood and gloves. Kirk had suggested that Scott get checked out by sickbay before reporting to the bridge, but Scott wouldn’t hear of it. In the meantime, his companions from the Thunderbird had joined the many other refugees flooding the ship both before and after the power plant’s devastating lift-off from the planet.

  “Had to be done, Scotty,” Kirk observed.

  The decrepit, irradiated vessel had barely survived the shock wave from the ejected warp core. Irreparably damaged, it had posed a significant hazard to navigation, given the amount of traffic headed toward Baldur III. Kirk had judged it best to consign Thunderbird to history, particularly since they had any number of more pressing issues to cope with.

  “Oh, I know, sir,” Scott said. “And don’t think I’m not glad to be back where I belong.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Kirk assured him. “The Enterprise hasn’t been the same without you.”

  Unfortunately, there was no time to toast Scott’s return. As feared, Thunderbird’s volcanic departure had not left Jackpot City unscathed. There were major fires to be put out, both figuratively and literally.

  “Mayor Poho for you, Captain,” Palmer said.

  Kirk had been expecting her call. “Onscreen, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mayor Poho appeared on the viewscreen, looking understandably stressed. Kirk didn’t recognize the furnishings in the background; as he understood it, the mayor and her staff had abandoned Town Hall for a more secure location outside the city. He glimpsed tense faces and bodies going back and forth behind her. The susurrus of many terse conversations accompanied the image.

  “Hello, Kirk,” the mayor said. “Have the brave souls aboard Thunderbird been recovered?”

  “Mister Scott is standing beside me as we speak and his associates are safe as well,” Kirk answered. “What’s the word from where you’re sitting?”

  The mayor sighed. “The good news is that Jackpot City is still there, thanks to Mister Scott’s inspired idea to return Thunderbird to the stars. The bad news is that the launch left some serious collateral damage behind. Take a look at this.”

  She reached for an off-screen switch or button and her image was promptly replaced by an aerial view of the disaster. An enormous crater belching fire and smoke occupied the site of the former power plant. The flames had spread to engulf the surrounding park, consuming acres of trees and foliage, then leapt across tree-lined streets to attack buildings of wood and brick and glass and steel; the timber constructions ignited first, but the tremendous heat was also causing bricks and mortar to crack and crumble. No lights shone in the endangered buildings, since Thunderbird’s sudden absence had triggered a citywide blackout. Billowing fumes obscured the video, which caused Scott to flinch noticeably. The roar and crackle of the blaze threw a hush across the bridge until Poho returned to the screen, replacing the distressing sounds and images.

  “As you can see, Captain, we have a full-scale inferno on our hands, in the heart of the city,” she said. “Making matters worse, our ability to combat the fire has been severely compromised by the blackout. Automated pumps and sensors and fire-suppression fields are down, along with many other crucial systems. We’re also getting reports of broken pipes and electrical fires, but these are difficult to confirm or locate without certain monitors up and running. And as for manpower . . . most of what was left of our volunteer fire company evacuated with their families, so we’re even more shorthanded than before.”

  Kirk grasped the extent of the challenge. He almost regretted evacuating so much of the city’s population in anticipation of an even larger catastrophe, but if the warp core had breached on the surface, instead of in space, they’d be looking at colossal loss of life now.

  “Fatalities?” he asked grimly.

  “None that we know of so far,” Poho said. “Thank goodness.”

  Kirk was glad to hear it, but he was not about to let that lull him into a sense of false security. With the fire still spreading, it was far too early to congratulate themselves on saving the city.

  “I don’t need to tell you that the Enterprise is using every resource we have to cope with this crisis. People, equipment, supplies, and shuttles are already being deployed, with more on the way.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Remorse bled through Poho’s somber expression. “I owe you and Mister Scott an apology. I should have listened to you when you told me to shut down that reactor.”

  “You did what you thought was best for your community.” Kirk wasn’t interested in assigning blame. He preferred to deal with the problem at hand. “Now it’s up to all of us to fix things before they get any worse.”

  “Amen to that,” Scott said.

  Kirk recalled the aerial coverage Poho had just shared with them. He had no intention of saving Jackpot City just to let it burn to the ground.

  * * *

  “Oh, wow,” Flossi said. “We’re really on the Enterprise?”

  “The one and only,” Uhura said.

  The teenager gaped at the transporter room, having been in the Pergium Palace only heartbeats before. Levity and a few others from the club shared the transporter platform with her and Uhura. The Palace was still intact, as of moments ago, but the flames had been getting closer so Uhura had made the executive decision to pull out of the ad hoc command center and transport her new friends and allies to the Enterprise. Not all of the club’s regulars were present, however; the last she had heard, Thackery and Rixon were ferrying one last load of evacuees to his property outside the city limits. She hoped they and their passengers were safely clear of the conflagration.

  “Please exit the transporter platform quickly,” Lieutenant Kyle instructed the group. “We have many more parties to beam up.”

  Uhura could believe it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the Enterprise’s main transporter room so busy. Kyle had at least two other technicians assisting him with operations, while additional crew members were on hand to escort new arrivals to where they needed to be. Uhura hustled her own party out of the transporter room into the corridor beyond, which was possibly even more hectic, with a slew of on-duty Starfleet personnel rushing about their business. She did her best to keep Flossi and the rest out of the way. Ensign Henri Camus appeared to take custody of the visitors.

  “This officer will take care of you,” Uhura promised. “Just stick close to him and he’ll make sure you’re looked after.”

  “Wait,” Flossi said. “I don’t
need a babysitter. I can still help you with whatever comes next.”

  “You’ve already done your share and more,” Uhura said sincerely, while trying to pass her off to Camus without hurting her feelings. Flossi meant well, but Uhura needed to get to the bridge, and the captain didn’t need any helpful teenagers tagging along with her at a time like this. “I’d appreciate the help and the company, really, but the bridge is likely to be off-limits to civilians for the duration. Nothing personal.”

  The girl looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”

  “Captain Kirk runs a tight ship, I’m afraid.” Uhura flashed an encouraging smile. “The best thing you can do for me now is keep an eye on your friends, listen to Ensign Camus here, and let the crew do their jobs. Can you do that for me?”

  Flossi nodded. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” Uhura said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Meanwhile, Levity had her own concerns. “I’m looking for my great-grandmother, Fenella Dandridge. She was supposed to be beamed up here a while ago. I need to find her.”

  Camus consulted a data slate. “We’re processing a lot of people, ma’am, but let me see what I can do. What’s your name again?”

  Uhura left them in the ensign’s capable hands. A data slate of her own was tucked under her arm as she hurried toward a turbolift while simultaneously registering the buzz of activity in the corridors. Concerned crew members escorted patients in wheelchairs and zero-g stretchers, presumably beamed up from evacuated medical facilities on the planet. Snatches of urgent conversations reached her ears:

  “Sickbay is full up with folks from the city hospital. Put all but the most critical cases in the temporary wards in the rec rooms for now. More beds are being set up on deck nine, or so I’m told . . .”

  “We need to get those portable generators down to the fire stations immediately. No, use the cargo transporters instead. The primary transporters are for receiving evacuees only . . .”

  “That’s right. We need blankets, fresh water, emergency rations, whatever you can spare. We can always replace them later . . .”