The Enterprise War

by John Jackson Miller

  “They’re inside effective phaser range,” Mann said, sitting back and shrugging. This was routine now; there was nothing more she could do. “Seems like this is a gap in the defenses, once shields are out—or if you don’t have any to begin with.”

  “More for the after-action report to Starfleet. They’re always designing something.” Seeing the Rengru closing with the ship, she touched the comm key again. “We’re going to have guests for lunch, Jallow. How’s it going?”

  The Tellarite robotics expert rushed in behind her. “I’m here, I’m here!” he said, breathless. “DOT-Sixes are ready to deploy.”

  “Excellent.” She rose from her chair. “Put them out as needed. We don’t have a lot to spare.”

  Looking up, she waited to hear the first thumps of Rengru landing on the hull. All things considered, Una felt it was better that she was the one that was here. Pike had always hated the little control room with its confinement and limited view outside the ship, likening it to what he called “submarine warfare.” It didn’t bother Una as much. It forced her to imagine the locations of her opponents, a chess match for her orderly mind to play out.

  “There they go,” Mann said, hearing the thunk-thunk of arriving Rengru. The next steps were always the same. Like cats clawing cardboard, their pincers would tear at the hull, trying to cause damage once they had purchase. They weren’t eating the ship, though that had been the easy reference to draw upon. “The giant space termites are back at it,” Mann added.

  “Three are after nonessential areas,” Jallow said. “One on the nacelles. Six near the dorsal phaser banks.” His screen switched to a sensor view looking aft from the underside of the deflector dish mount. A small cluster of Rengru fighters clung to the hull with some limbs, tearing at it with others.

  “I could fire and try to hit some—or shake them off,” Mann said.

  “No, they’ve positioned just nearby,” Una said. “They’re wising up, looking for ways to disable the banks.” This might be preparatory to another attack, she thought. “DOT-Sixes to the phaser banks. Just a few.”

  “Aye.”

  The DOT-6 drones had been placed aboard Enterprise for “light housecleaning”: damage from impacts made by nebular material that made it past the shields needed to be repaired without exposing anyone to radiation. The drones had survived the Tsakat Incident, but their external release ports had been another casualty of the catastrophic systems failure.

  Since repaired, the ports secreted several small drones onto the hull. The little crawlers approached the areas just damaged by the larger Rengru and went to work, repairing the ship’s flesh. The Rengru stopped what they were doing. Two fired their onboard disruptors at the newcomers; the others charged, tearing Enterprise’s robotic elves to metallic shreds.

  “Our bugs against their bugs never works,” Mann said. “When they design the DOT-Sevens, maybe they should give them a phaser or two.”

  Jallow’s enormous nose crinkled. “You really want more things crawling around and shooting?”

  “We’re just delaying them,” Una said. With Jallow at her control station, she resorted to her communicator. “How are we doing, Copernicus?”

  “Take a look,” Colt responded. Una watched the feed from the ship’s external sensors. A shadow crossed low over the hull—and then a shuttlecraft swept across, its angled nose chopping the Rengru from the surface like so many weeds.

  Una nodded with satisfaction. “Galadjian has his machete, we have ours.” The Rengru, amputated from the hull, tumbled wildly in space, trying to regain their bearings. “When she’s clear, Lieutenant, fire away.”

  Mann did so—one short burst that annihilated everything. “Looks like we got them in time.”

  “Patching it up,” Jallow said, dispatching more DOT-6s to the location.

  “Enterprise looks headless,” Colt reported, bringing Copernicus around. “It’s kind of scary.”

  “Hopefully it’ll frighten off the Rengru,” Una replied.

  “I don’t know,” Mann said. “Those uglies out there might prefer it this way. They certainly can’t leave it alone.”

  More precision flying from Colt and Copernicus shaved off three more Rengru. These her team took care of, using the phaser in the weapons pod that Una’s engineers had improvised to give the shuttle a limited offensive capability.

  Una nodded with satisfaction. She’d seen enough of the hull-top warfare with the Boundless that she didn’t want to put any personnel outside toting phasers. The fact that the shuttles, too, had suffered maladies from the collapse of the tsakat had underscored that the pulse had impacted everything. But she had a ship full of engineers to bring to bear, and all but one of the shuttles now functioned. Twice before, Una had used them to repel the Rengru—and so far, none of the creatures had survived to report back that the ship’s shuttles existed.

  If they reported back at all, Una thought. How did the things communicate? Did they?

  She needed to take a chance, try something different. She’d known that for a long time, but the need was becoming more urgent. Every attack had driven them farther and farther away from the region where Enterprise had split up. The Rengru never responded to hails; she’d stopped trying. She understood nothing of her enemy.

  An idea struck her. She raised the communicator. “Yeoman, have you sighted the lone Rengru on the starboard nacelle?”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of pawing, trying to get purchase. We’re discussing what to do. We don’t want to do the ice-scraper trick there.”

  “I have Copernicus’s sensor view,” Mann said.

  Una leaned over and studied it. “Can you target just the toughest part of the Rengru, the hump on its back? Extremely low power, so as not to impact the nacelle.”

  “Give us a second.”

  It took ten. A blast from Copernicus struck the final Rengru squarely as Una had directed. The creature let go of Enterprise—and seemed to come apart. The structure housing the creature’s rocket and disruptor emplacement snapped off, tumbling away. The writhing Rengru that remained seemed naked, a turtle out of its shell.

  “Nice and surgical. Doctor Boyce would be proud.”

  “Coming around to finish the job.”

  “Negative,” Una said. She pointed to Jallow. “A life-sign status check, please.”

  The engineer complied. “Same as usual—maybe dropping a little. We already knew they could survive the void.”

  Mann looked fraught. “Are we really going to leave it out there?”

  “No,” Una replied. “I’m going to take a page out of the Boundless’s book.”

  “What page would that be? It looked to me like they lost that dustup back at the Hellmouth.”

  “Not that page. A different one.” She spoke into her communicator. “Una to Lieutenant Pitcairn.”

  “Pitcairn.” He’d been keeping station in the cargo transporter room, Una knew.

  “I want to initiate a site-to-site transport.”

  She thought she heard him chortle. “Excuse me, Commander. Did you say a site-to-site transport?”

  “I did.” The technique, relatively new to the Starfleet menu, was extremely resource intensive, requiring a transporter to bring in a pattern and hold it in stasis while it prepared to send it somewhere else. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not in theory, but we haven’t used the transporter at all yet. Has something happened to Copernicus?”

  “No. I want this transport to go to the brig.” She thought for a moment. “And let’s have security officers waiting when it gets there.”

  46

  * * *

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Saucer Section

  Defoe

  “This is a lot sooner than I expected to feel this weight,” Carlotti said, a hand to her abdomen as she sat.

  “These are the inconveniences involved in becoming part of a physics equation,” Galadjian said.

  Pike saw both of them smile—an expression seldom seen before
word of Spock’s survival spread. His science officer’s suggestion had worked out perfectly. A square of gravity plating two meters across had been placed on the surface of the nurses’ station; it was wide enough to hold a cot or a chair and desk, whichever she needed to use. “You ought to be able to get at least half the day in Earth gravity,” Pike said.

  “And I felt cooped up before,” Carlotti said. “Maybe I’d better ease into it.”

  Galadjian passed her a remote control. “This may be used to adjust the intensity of the gravity field for comfort.”

  She tried it. “Oh, that helps. I’ll ease my way up to normal gradually. Thank you, Doctor.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “And thank you, Captain.”

  Pike nodded and stepped out, followed by Galadjian. It was the end of a long workday for both of them, but Pike felt revived. They weren’t far down the corridor when the engineer said the very thing the captain had on his mind. “In all this, it is satisfying to help one person.”

  “Yeah, no doubt.” He looked at the older man. “I was a little afraid the fact the idea came from Spock would have—I don’t know, put you back a little.” Even the instructions Galadjian had used had been of Spock’s design.

  But Galadjian seemed unruffled. “The ideas cannot all flow from me, Captain. That was my mistake. Collaboration in the institute always meant that I directed, while the assistants tested. The discoveries were mine, but not always the difficult work.”

  “I’m sure you’d already paid those dues in your field.”

  “Yes, certainly.” He looked to the tool kit in his hands. “But I have grown complacent. Between putting variables on a screen, and observing the result, many steps exist—stages I have often missed. To be present at every moment from concept to completion is refreshing.”

  Pike spied an upside-down door. “You want to stop here a moment?”

  Galadjian squinted at the upside-down name beside the chocked-open door. “Doctor Boyce’s office?”

  “Yeah, I do some of my best thinking here.” Pike stepped inside and reached up to a cabinet. Opening it, he gently removed a large medical kit.

  “You are ailing?”

  “Not as much as I would be if these broke,” Pike said, opening the bag on the floor. He drew out a bottle and glasses. “Looks like Phil was in a cognac mood before he left.”

  “Then we will drink in his name.”

  Seated against the walls in a corner, they poured and toasted Boyce, and the missing. For the refill, the toast was to success. “First of a series,” Pike said.

  As they drank, they fell silent for several moments. Then Galadjian looked past his glass at Pike. “Do you know why I asked to join Starfleet, Captain?”

  “I was thinking it had been on—well, a lark.”

  Galadjian’s infectious smile returned. “This would be the worst whim of all time, would it not? To end in such a place?”

  Pike laughed.

  “I am an old man, Christopher. But when I was young, I grew up in Armenia. Under all the governments it ever had, the national symbol was a mountain. Ararat.”

  Pike knew of it. “Where Noah parked his boat.”

  “Ah, you know the story. I sometimes feel we are in an ark now.”

  “And you’re the only engineer who made it up the gangplank.”

  Galadjian looked down, self-effacing. “Two would have been of more help.” He shook his head. “No, the importance of this is all the time Ararat was on Armenia’s coat of arms, the mountain was in another country. It’s a dynastic memory, from a time when the map of the world was different. It was aspirational,” he added. “A dream.”

  “They wanted it back. Or to go back.”

  “Consider it. For hundreds of years, encoded in their symbols was an ancient desire to be elsewhere.” Galadjian looked at the far wall. “I think that is what happened to me. All those thousands of equations, all those math problems were my own personal seal—and yet they symbolized real activity happening in another place. Nobody needs a secondary field projection for a warp coil, except somebody going somewhere. I think, perhaps, I really did want to be in the experiment after all.”

  “To Doctor O,” Pike said, gesturing with his glass.

  “I just should not have been in charge,” Galadjian added. “I see that.”

  “Don’t be so sure. There are many different kinds of vessels in Starfleet. On some research ships, you’d fit the bill perfectly.”

  Galadjian raised his glass. “Ah, but I wanted the best. Enterprise is the crown jewel.”

  “Halved and sitting upside-down in a poison sandwich.” Pike downed his drink and mused for a few moments. “You know, your story made me think about what Spock told me about the Boundless.”

  “The force that captured him.”

  “Yeah. Thing is, they’re not boundless. They’re tied to something, longing for it. Spock didn’t know what it was—but why would they still be here?”

  “They, too, have an Ararat,” Galadjian said. “Find it. The answer is there.”

  Pike didn’t have any idea when or if he would have the chance to find out. Feeling the drink, he considered heading back to his quarters. Instead, a communicator beep told him what his next project would be. “Nhan to Captain Pike.”

  “Yeah, Nhan.”

  “We haven’t been able to find you.”

  Pike studied his glass. “I am in an important meeting with the chief engineer. We are discussing the history of the Caucasus as it relates to interstellar menaces.”

  “Huh.” A pause. “Well, we’re looking for him too. I was just talking with Spock. Lieutenant Raden has figured out a way to right the ship.”

  Pike set the cup down. “You did say you wanted ideas from the crew, Avedis.”

  “By all means, let’s hear them. I am tired of looking up at the toilets.”

  * * *

  Pike sat in the crow’s nest an hour later, fully sobered by what he’d heard. “You really think it will work?”

  “I lack the computational resources in this battlesuit to mount any more than a thought experiment,” Spock replied from Skon’s World. “But the principle is sound.”

  “That’s what Raden said you’d say.”

  “We know the impulse drive remains down. We know thrusters are insufficient for the saucer to leave Defoe. We question whether firing the dorsal thrusters, currently under the liquid surface, can alone break the surface tension.”

  “Right. It hasn’t been worth shaking everyone up again.” Pike squinted at his notes from the meeting. “You’re saying we fire only the dorsal thrusters on the front half of the saucer—”

  “While firing only the ventral thrusters on the rear half of the saucer, forcing the disc down into the ocean.”

  “You want to flip it like a bar of soap.” Pike still blanched at the thought of firing the jets currently facing the sky to force any part of the saucer farther under the surface. “You’re sure we’ll come back up again?”

  “The density of methane relative to Enterprise is a known variable,” Spock said. “The danger would be to those inside, who would, even under less gravity, be moved violently.”

  “We already have scaffolds all over the place to work with the terminals that are operational. I guess we can invent some ways to keep people from being thrown about.” He shook his head. “We just got Nurse Carlotti’s office set up. We’ll want to stow the setup we’ve made for her and bring it out again after—presuming—we succeed.”

  “My understanding is that the thrusters are not fully operational.”

  “I’ve delayed getting people out on EVA to inspect the units on top until we had a need. This is it. Good idea, Spock.”

  “Praise belongs to the sickbay patient whose idea Commander Nhan conveyed to me. I merely consulted. Mister Raden is strongly motivated.”

  “He’d love to salvage even one part of the ship. But I’m also certain he’s anxious to get away from here. Everyone is. The fact th
e war still seems to be going on back home only makes it worse,” Pike said. “I know you’d thought it better that we remain to do science—but this isn’t what you had in mind.”

  “Clearly not,” Spock said. “Opinions must evolve with the facts. What is the logic in staying away if there is nothing to come back to?”

  Pike looked at the chronometer. The conversation window was about to close again—this time for longer, as Defoe and Skon’s World did their dance. “How are you faring?”

  “I walked a glacial cirque today. The movement of nitrogen and water ices on this world suggests significant internal heat, either generated by radioactive decay or interactions with bodies such as yours.”

  “Enjoy yourself, I guess.” Pike snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah—a couple of things. We checked out that term you said the Boundless were using.”

  “K’davu.”

  “Right. It’s not a Klingon word—and it doesn’t turn up in any other language. But I guess it could be a personal name. You’re sure of the spelling?”

  “I am. It includes each of the first five characters of the Boundless alphabet, anagrammed. That is highly improbable, and suggests either that it predates the language, or that it is a later and purposeful neologism.”

  “The giant space army likes wordplay?”

  “I cannot say, but thinking about it inspired my similar tactic with the probe.”

  “Then it was worth it,” Pike said. “I almost forgot. Speaking of words, I’m sending something up on the data feed before we’re out. Robinson Crusoe.”

  “Appropriate. I do have the time.”

  “You know, I had never read it,” Pike said. “Now, there was a guy who couldn’t take a hint. He’s nearly wrecked just getting from one part of England to another right at the start, and is shipwrecked again and enslaved long before he ever becomes a castaway.”

  “If our lives are any indication, Captain, travel has become no safer.”

  47