The Enterprise War

by John Jackson Miller

  “Among other texts,” Spock said, clambering over an ice barrier. “I found irony in that the title character was leading an expedition to capture slaves when he was shipwrecked.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Served him right.”

  “It is also curious that his rescue of the native he calls Friday was not benevolent, but premeditated, as part of a plan to make another his slave. He sees no shame in the enslavement, because it is a means to an end.”

  “And that’s how the Boundless looked at you and our crew.”

  “Precisely.” Spock paused on a ledge. “Only, there is a curious thing. Crusoe is deeply conflicted over shedding blood to capture his slave—but he feels he has been forced to it by circumstance. The Boundless wavemaster I dealt with, Kormagan, likewise seemed to harbor some regret. Perhaps it was weariness that I detected; they are many years distant from whatever started their war. But there may be some faint acknowledgment what they are doing is wrong.”

  “You’re stranded on a deserted ice world, and you’re trying to reform whole civilizations.” Pike laughed. “Whatever keeps you busy, Spock.”

  “I suspect you intend to jest, rather than patronize—but you may encounter the Boundless again after you escape, Captain. You may draw upon my analysis.”

  “Of course. Noted.”

  Pike left the topic of literature and began talking about possibilities for Enterprise to escape, now that the saucer section was righted. Galadjian and the others faced a new, different set of problems, which Pike described in detail, along with some of their working theories. Spock listened politely, but was far more interested in the mountain farthest to the east. It might be an ice volcano, he suspected; being present on the surface for its eruption would be a rare moment of scientific significance snatched from a year—indeed, a career—that had gone off track.

  And there was something else about that place, something he hadn’t mentioned, and wouldn’t.

  “The window’s closing. Keep us apprised on your battlesuit’s status,” Pike said, sounding confident. “We’ll get to you before time runs out. I know it now.”

  Spock thanked the captain and signed off. In fact, his consumables in a couple of categories had already run out, given the battlesuit system’s inability to find any useful resources in the air or on the surface of Skon’s World. He expected the other levels to drop to zero before long. But as long as his existence served to motivate Pike and crew, he would say nothing.

  Enterprise reaching space again was not the means to an end. It was the end. As for Spock’s end, that would come soon enough. He had just one last question to answer first.

  52

  * * *

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Stardrive Section

  Cloud Complex Zedra

  “I never expected to hear myself say these words,” Philip Boyce said. “As acting captain, I hereby call this senior staff meeting to order.”

  He looked around the little table in the engineers’ briefing room. In another time or place, Boyce might have expected a chuckle or two at that, or at least a smile. Nothing. Not after all that the stardrive section had gone through—and not after what had happened to its commander.

  Weeks after the Rengru’s assault, Una was still in the brig—only on the other side of the reactivated force field with the prisoner. She had lain comatose since that horrible day; the Rengru, having impaled the back of her neck with something, had locked its limbs around her like a second set of ribs. It, too, seemed dead, or at least dormant—yet Una somehow remained alive, sustained, at least in part, by her connection with the creature. He was at a loss to explain the mechanism. All he knew for sure was that there was no separating the two without killing the first officer. He didn’t have the equipment or facilities, much less the knowledge.

  So she had stayed there, perversely cocooned with her attacker ever since—with the force field in place in case the Rengru rose to maraud the ship. Guards remained posted, and Boyce had gone inside the cell to check on her six times a day.

  It had been twelve times a day, but there now seemed less and less reason to go. And he had other worries.

  “As chief medical officer, I’m ranked as a commander, but not in the regular chain of command,” Boyce said. “But that entire chain is now either off this ship, or incapacitated. The yeoman reminds me that I had line officer’s training many moons ago, though not the full command course—and with Jallow and the rest of our fine engineers having their hands full keeping the ship running, I get to catch the falling scalpel.”

  “I wouldn’t object if I could,” an exhausted Jallow said. “Between the Rengru, the nebula, and the running, we’re held together with duct tape.”

  “Always a place for tape in my line of work,” Boyce said.

  He let out a deep breath and looked around the table. They’d not had formal meetings because there hadn’t been time, and there were so few to attend. Mann, Pitcairn, and Jallow, all covering for multiple departments—with Colt running between, handling everything else. Boyce usually saw them enough daily to cover everything. This time, however, he had graver topics to discuss—beginning with Colt’s report on her latest shuttle action.

  It wasn’t a good one. “Herschel took some bad hits this last go-around,” Colt said. “They’ve adapted to our shuttles-as-defenders tactic.”

  “Do the Rengru know we have one of their kind aboard?” Mann asked. “Would they respond?”

  “We don’t even know how to tell them.”

  Boyce nodded. “There’s been no change whatsoever in the condition of the commander or the Rengru prisoner. Whatever she hoped to learn about communicating stopped right there, weeks ago.”

  “Are you still reading brainwave activity?” Colt asked.

  “It spikes and goes away. It usually vanishes when we move her for the daily intravenous feeding—almost as if the movement disturbs her concentration, if that makes any sense.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t to me. If I had the full sickbay—”

  He stopped. It wounded him that he hadn’t been able to do anything for Una. He and Number One hadn’t always seen eye to eye—Boyce the devil on Pike’s shoulder, her the angel—but he missed her voice and her steady presence.

  “Speaking of feeding, what are our stocks down to, Lieutenant Mann?”

  “Running low,” she replied. “We never expected to have to feed and water so many for so long, even with the machinery able to assist. We’ve been rationing for months—and looking for ways to go into generation-ship mode, recycling everything.” She eyed Boyce. “I don’t think that’s really an option.”

  “And that’s the main reason I called you all here today. I’ve spoken with many aboard, and sounded a lot of people out. It doesn’t look like our situation is tenable to remain in the nebula. We’ve never seen those Boundless ships again, so our science crew is gone—and as much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think we’re going to be able to help Captain Pike, if he’s out there.” Boyce’s chest tensed up after saying the last phrase. Before that moment, he hadn’t allowed that Pike’s survival wasn’t guaranteed.

  “We’re leaving,” Colt said, morose.

  “If the damn Rengru will let us,” Pitcairn said.

  Mann punched her fist. “We’ve never taken it to them—gone for one of the mother ships. They’ve never been made to hurt.”

  “That’s because they’ve usually got things crawling all over the hull for us to deal with,” Jallow said. “We’re flat out of DOT-Sixes.”

  “And that’s why we’re talking,” Boyce said.

  “Unless we’re talking counterattack,” Mann said, “we’re just wasting more time. Forget the DOT-Sixes. We should just go at them!”

  Colt shook her head. “Commander Una didn’t want us to go after the mother ships, Trina—not when we didn’t know why they wanted us in the first place.”

  “Does it matter now?” Mann asked. “Look what trying to talk to them got her!”

  Colt s
houted at Mann in response—and Boyce slapped the table. “Hey, hey. Let’s stop this, before I sedate everyone here.” Myself included, he thought.

  The speakers calmed down. Pitcairn looked to Boyce. “Is any help from Starfleet possible? We’re overdue.”

  Boyce shook his head. “We last heard from Starfleet months ago. It’s only a partial, but it says the Klingon War is still on and that our mission has been extended.” He frowned. “You know what I think of that. As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to do what Chris Pike did nearly a year ago this time—I’m going to assume those orders are outdated and void.”

  Colt appealed to him. “But the Rengru—”

  “—are going to attack us whatever we do. I think we have to pick the shortest direction with the least nebular garbage in the way, and run like hell. If the Rengru want to fight it out—then, Lieutenant Mann, you’ll get your way. One last foofaraw.”

  The table went silent.

  “Of course, ‘foofaraw’ is one of those terms we learn in medical school,” he said. But there was no lightening the mood, not now.

  “I’ll—uh, get the crew ready,” Pitcairn said, rising. “I think you’ll want to distribute new self-destruct codes.”

  Boyce coughed. He hadn’t thought of that. “Yes, once I figure out where they are.”

  Colt didn’t look up. “I can help with that.”

  “I suppose they’ll go to Mann and yourself, Mister Jallow. And, er, me.”

  Colt shook her head. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we? It’s going to end like this?”

  No one answered. Boyce started to stand. “I guess let’s—”

  Colt’s communicator chirped.

  Snapped out of her funk, she opened it. “Yeoman Colt.”

  There was no response.

  “Yeoman Colt. Who is this?”

  That question was met with a strange sound, almost a gurgling. Mann leaned over. “Where’s the call from?”

  Colt looked at the display—and almost dropped the communicator. “It’s Number One’s device!”

  Boyce grew enraged. “That’s a sick joke! Some damn guard down there—”

  “Hello,” drawled a voice that sounded vaguely like Una’s, only flinty and slowed down.

  Colt’s eyes widened. “Commander, is that you?”

  “No,” came the response. “I mean—I don’t know what that means.”

  53

  * * *

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Saucer Section

  Defoe

  Not every night for Pike ended with a talk with Spock. Sometimes, given the relative positions of Skon’s World and Defoe, days would pass with no possibility for contact. At other times, the window to talk was during what passed for Pike’s sleep cycle. He had made those calls anyway, yielding them to other crewmembers only after weeks had passed.

  Rare were the days that both began and ended with a chance to converse with Spock. Alone on a bridge that still saw activity only infrequently, Pike would sit at the comm station, going over the scheduled repair plans in the morning—and then evaluating their success with Spock when the day was done.

  But whether he discussed shipboard matters or classic literature, Pike’s intent was always the same: to draw the science officer out, to keep him engaged. To give him a reason to go on, to remain connected while exiled in a frozen wasteland.

  Increasingly, Pike wasn’t having much luck.

  “Galadjian’s really getting into the game,” Pike said, well into describing the morning’s plans. “We’ve had a lot of chief engineers, all with one thing in common: they knew how to tear a starship apart and put it back together again. This guy barely knew anything—and he’s old enough to be my father, to boot. Yet he’s made a choice. He can be dunsel, or he can act like a cadet. He’s hustling around everywhere. I already saw him this morning with the team working on the transporters.”

  “The situation . . . is motivating.”

  “And the low gravity doesn’t hurt. Remind me to retire to a small planet. With better restaurants.”

  Spock did not respond.

  Under normal circumstances, nonresponse by Spock to levity was, itself, a response—a statement of who he was, and where he came from. This wasn’t that.

  Pike tried another tack: asking Spock to recall his interactions with other Enterprise crewmembers while with the Boundless. That usually forced Spock to speak in greater detail, given that it might be useful knowledge if the saucer section ever took to space again. But Spock had already described every encounter he had remembered, and had nothing further to say about the Boundless and their tactics.

  Still, Pike pressed.

  “Captain, I am incapable of helping in this matter.”

  Captain was a normal word for Spock. Incapable was not. The officer Pike knew would always find something to contribute, reflecting, even obsessing, over tiny details. The Spock he knew compared and contrasted the morals of interstellar army generals with eighteenth-century fictional characters. He wasn’t incapable.

  Pike heard activity down the turbolift shaft and checked the chron. “We’re starting to run real duty shifts up here again. I guess I should get going,” he said. “What do you have planned today?”

  “Walking.”

  “Any place of interest? That volcano you told me about?”

  “It is distant.”

  “Far from a volcano is a good place to be—even an ice one. Stay safe.”

  Pike waited to hear a response. None came. He signed off.

  * * *

  “I wish you could hear him, Gabrielle,” Pike said, pacing around sickbay. “Maybe you make the call one night.”

  “Until you get the turbolifts and transporters working or can pipe it down here, I’m not going anywhere,” Carlotti said. Seated at her desk atop the section of gravity plating, she patted her growing middle. “Ladders are a delight I will know again—after.”

  “Look, I’m no counselor. All I know of Vulcan psychology comes from serving with him. I can’t even see him—he’s just a voice. But I really think something’s wrong. He’s drifting on me.” Pike looked over at the medical bays, finally empty of patients. “I wish he’d give us a real report on his health. But he hasn’t been willing to send his diagnostics to us in weeks.”

  Carlotti didn’t seem surprised. “Folks in my line have faced patient rebellions as long as there’s been spaceflight. During the Apollo 13 disaster, the ship’s commander removed his sensors. The reasons he gave we still contend with today: discomfort, power consumption worries, and jealousy over personal privacy.”

  “If Spock’s been in one of those suits most of the year, I doubt anything will make him more comfortable—and power hasn’t seemed to be a problem for him.” Pike thought for a moment. “But privacy? Yeah. I could see Spock not wanting us judging his condition by analyzing his vitals.”

  “That was the big one for Jim Lovell, according to his book.”

  “I missed that week. I wore out early on the shipwreck stories.”

  “Understandable.”

  Pike looked back at her. “He’s been on that iceball longer than he was with the Boundless, and in that armor for all of it combined,” he said. “I don’t care how well designed he says that outfit is. He’s just surviving, not living.”

  She shook her head. “There are plenty of people whose functioning and mobility depends on technology—”

  “And they live productive lives. I know. It’s just—”

  “He’s disengaging. And that is not Spock.”

  “Right.”

  “He’s suffering isolation, deprivation, and probably post-traumatic stress from the Boundless,” she said, reaching inside a compartment of her desk. “I think we’d all be hunkered down and hiding after that.” Carlotti passed him a slate. “There are a number of batteries that gauge mental health—even for Vulcans. Take a look, maybe ask some questions.”

  He studied the information. “This will help. I’ll
also try to get the call linked down here one of these days.”

  “Just fix the damn turbolifts,” she said.

  “On the list,” he said, making for the door. “Thanks.”

  “Oh,” she called out, “and if all else fails, ask about family. That usually gets most people talking.”

  * * *

  Pike yawned as he finished relating to Spock the events of the day. “So we’re at dinner—nice to eat on the table, rather than under it—and the raging debate is whether saucer sections were ever intended to launch again. Raden, who’s finally out of sickbay, is certain they never were, because the impulse engine only points out the side, and it seems to have taken everything out of the boosters just flipping the ship. And, of course, there’s no warp drive.”

  Pike waited to be scolded for saying something Spock already knew. When nothing came, he continued. “Suddenly, Galadjian slaps the table and cries ‘Eureka,’ like he does, and begins talking about surfing and methane and volatization.”

  “Volatilization,” Spock corrected.

  “Yeah, that was it.” He tried to draw him out. “What is that again?”

  Spock did not answer.

  “Anyway, Galadjian rushes off to work on formulas, drafting not just Raden, but Nhan.”

  “The commander.”

  “Of security. That’s right. No idea what they’ll come up with.”

  Pike looked sadly at the data slate Carlotti had provided. He had asked questions from the batteries earlier; Spock had kept to one-word answers for most of the conversation. The captain had felt guilty while quizzing him, and wondered if Spock had sussed out his intentions.

  He decided to go for whatever reaction he could get.

  “We’ve been scanning for any more messages from Starfleet, but we’ve had nothing for months. I sure hope they’ve found Discovery—and Michael Burnham.” He paused. “Do I remember that correctly, that you two grew up together?”

  “Adopted by Sarek,” Spock said. “He said . . . he expected us to be . . . friends.”