The oldest of the Boundless stepped forward. “I think I would try,” Barson said.
“What?” Quadeo blurted.
“I am old, child. The Thirty-Twos are the oldest of the surviving waves—yet they were the last stop for me. I entered service a hundred years before.” He looked to one of Eudah’s colleagues—a member of the Vis-kal species, like him. “I do not expect eternal life. But I would live among my people for the last days of it.”
“We are your people,” Quadeo shouted.
“Quiet. Let me think.” Kormagan looked long at Eudah—and then at her allies. She could read their faces; several were hypnotized by the cityscape. “I don’t think Barson will be alone in thinking that,” she said, “and I can see others of our people following along, once they know.”
“And you?” Eudah asked.
Kormagan shook her head. “I won’t stay here. I can’t be Boundless and accept a prison, no matter how wonderful it appears. But I will put the choice to the rest. If they come here, and you make your case, I will not interfere.”
Eudah nodded. “That is all we could ever ask.”
“A monster, a traitor, and an old fool,” Quadeo said. She got in Kormagan’s face. “Your command is ended. I’m going to find a way to go back and return with all the waves. And purge this misbegotten planet!”
“The Rengru will stop you,” Pike said. “With or without our help.”
“Then you will die too!”
Kormagan reached out and grabbed Quadeo’s metal collar, yanking her near. She growled as she shook her fellow wavemaster. “You will do as I say, little recruit. Or I will end your insults once and for all!”
Quadeo locked eyes with Kormagan—and appearing to see reality, nodded. Kormagan released her, and she staggered away—
—only to speak into her battlesuit’s collar. “Cargo pod twelve, deploy!” The armor’s caddy ejected a coconut-sized sphere, which escaped Quadeo’s hands and bounced on the rocky ground. She dove for it. Before anyone caught her, she reached it and twisted its halves.
“Freeze!” Pike commanded, activating a control as he did. Immobilized, Quadeo pitched forward, bruising her face in the dirt. “What have you got there?”
Una reached for the black item, fallen from Quadeo’s grasp. Kormagan hurried to her side—and confirmed what she had already surmised. “It’s a bomb!”
71
* * *
K’davu
“A bomb!” Pike didn’t wait before making the call. “Enterprise! I have something to beam into space!”
“Stand by,” he heard through his suit.
“I can’t stand by!”
“It was what we were bringing for Enterprise,” Kormagan said, “had we needed to scuttle it ourselves.”
Bleeding and bruised, Quadeo laughed. “I’ll settle for all of you. I’ve given my life to fighting Rengru. I’ll do it now if it means making sure this plague doesn’t spread!”
“No good, Captain,” Pitcairn said. “We’re still offline—and when we restore power, we’ll only be able to receive, not send.”
That settled that: Pike couldn’t beam a bomb to his ship. He looked to the others. “Is it armed?”
Kormagan nodded. “The second she activated it.” She glanced at Pike. “You wouldn’t have caught it when you disarmed us. The Slammer-Nine’s reactants are held in stasis, and wouldn’t have scanned as dangerous until mixed.”
“That’s refreshing. How long?”
“Five minutes. Maybe.”
“How big?”
“We cleaned the sites at Susquatane with these.”
Damn it, I was afraid you were going to say that. “Pitcairn, I want you beaming people up as soon as you can,” Pike shouted.
“Aye, Captain!”
He looked to Eudah. “You’d better warn your population.”
“Doing it now,” she replied, looking fearful. The Rengru down in the valley were moving frantically. “It takes much longer to shield the cities than to uncover them.”
Then five minutes won’t do. Pike looked up and around. No ships, no anything—and the natives’ flying platforms weren’t fast at all. “What have we got?”
Connolly called out. “Look here.” He knelt beside the geocorder he’d brought to study the planet. “Those tunnels atop the escarpment—they’re mines.”
Eudah nodded. “From the days when we plundered K’davu for resources.”
Connolly pointed to the display. “There are shafts going down. Pretty deep.”
“Yeah, but they’re staggered,” Pike said, regarding the readings. “We can’t just pitch it in. If the bomb lands on a ledge, the whole ridge blows out onto the valley!”
“No, sir. Look—tunnels that hook.” He traced the outlines with his finger. “They used J-tunnels to contain the old underground nuclear tests on Earth.”
Contain. That was all Pike needed to hear. He reached for the bomb.
His move startled Una. “Captain, wait! Maybe the natives could help.”
Eudah gestured to her flying platform. “Solar-powered. They would fail before they got far.” She looked to the valley nervously. Many citizens were still out and about.
Connolly started to stand. “Sir, I’ve used the jetpack before—”
“And you ran half dry getting to Enterprise. Galadjian topped me off.” He buttoned up his armor and pointed to Connolly. “Give me maps if you can.”
The “Aye, sir!” was nearly lost in the rumble of Pike’s engine—and he himself nearly bought it against the escarpment wall before he righted his course. The Boundless battlesuits, Spock had told him, were designed for the novice—and at flying, he definitely was. But Connolly knew how the machines worked, and seconds after a chime announced the arrival of underground maps, the lieutenant was online telling him how to feed the legs of his journey into the autopilot.
Pike arced high—and soared into an open pit, evidently an air shaft. Darkness enveloped him as he careened near one wall, and then another—only to flip head-over-heels and decelerate.
“First base,” Connolly said as Pike hovered over a surface that would have been invisible if not for his battlesuit’s interface. “Go left!”
A slight jog to the left and Pike was descending again. The Boundless were skilled at communicating locally through some of the worst mediums around; Pike was thankful for that fact as his position was reported back to Connolly.
“Second. Left again!”
Another jog, another plunge. “Connolly, use what fuel you’ve got and beam out. Put the Boundless on Eudah’s platforms, if they’ll go—”
The shaft ended before he could finish. “You’re on the level,” Connolly said. “Two lefts and you’re home!”
“I said go! That’s an order!”
Pike’s impulse was to run through the horizontal section, but the ceiling was too low for the immense battlesuit—and his time too short. The jetpack wasn’t designed for lateral travel on a world with gravity, he soon saw—slamming against walls and ceilings as he went.
The far end arrived before his systems sensed it. He struck hard, protecting the orb with his arms as he fell. Dazed, his system alarms screaming from the impact and low fuel, he paused to catch his breath, and question his sanity—
—but only for a second. Yes, he was in a mine again, but he wasn’t going to stay this time either. Hell, no. He clambered to his feet and rounded the turn, ducking all the way.
Finally, his battlesuit’s laser sights detected the end up ahead. He bowled the beastly marble and turned to make his way out.
Pike was strangely thankful the bomb had come with no timer attached; he didn’t need the motivation, especially not when the jet-fuel warning was impetus aplenty. He took the route back to the vertical shafts on foot, allowing—at the cost of his complaining back—the battlesuit to curl him into a crouched run.
By the end of the first of the two vertical shafts back to the surface, he was nearly dry. “I don’t think I can do th
is,” he called out. No one answered. He felt only acceleration, saw only darkness, heard only—
Chris, I’m with you.
Pike blinked. Vina’s voice.
He saw a pinprick of light, still so far ahead. A tiny star at the center of a nebula of hardship. The jetpack sputtered, and he continued to rise—even as he saw an alarm appear. A sensor had reported back by subspace a fact heading for him in milliseconds: a detonation.
“Shields activate!”
Pike went up—and part of the mountain did, too, seeming to heave and churn. A jolt struck his personal shields, knocking him sideways—then upside down, and every way possible. The force quickly exceeded the shields’ capacity. He felt weightless for an instant, prone and powerless, riding the back of the shockwave.
And then, just as he began to fall, he felt something else. Something clamped about his midsection. Above, through the miasma of light and churning dust, he saw divers heading for him. No, not divers—it only looked like he was drowning. They were people in battlesuits, as he was, riding what little fuel they had in a quickly forming chain of arms and legs to gently guide him clear of the blast.
His crew.
Completely spent from the experience, Pike barely felt it when the group landed, fuel exhausted, on one of the lower terraces farther out from the escarpment. He rolled on his side to see the ridge venting columns of smoke from several high apertures, but otherwise most of its shape remained.
Una reached him first.
He tried to focus on her. “I told . . . you all . . . to get out.”
“I’m afraid we all work for someone who has very stern rules about this sort of thing.” She smiled gently. “Leave no one behind.”
72
* * *
Combat Module Carrier 539-Urdoh
The Nest
Kormagan gazed out upon the Rengru spaceyards with awe. Weeks earlier, the scene before her eyes would have been military intelligence of the highest value. Countless probes and scouting missions had been sacrificed over the generations, none getting more than a glimpse.
All had changed. Her target, for so long, had become—what ? Not her friend, but perhaps just a simple fact of nature. The Rengru were the sea that had kept her from K’davu, the storm that had claimed so many of her ships. But they were the water without which all life on her homeworld would have perished. She could not like them—but neither could she resent them for acting in her people’s interest. The fact that they had been unable to communicate their intentions owed entirely to the prowess with which those like Kormagan had executed their duties. She could hardly blame them for that.
Since meeting Greatmother Eudah, she had seen the woman a couple more times. Already a mythic figure for many members of the Boundless, Eudah had made it her mission to welcome all who chose to visit K’davu, whether they did so to find out about their origins, or to look into joining with the Rengru of their free will. The prospect still frightened many, and repulsed more; Quadeo, humbled, had crawled off, filling her carrier with those who wanted nothing more to do with the idea of K’davu. The others, meanwhile, at least had an example of the result. Barson had risen from his coma after what she had been told was an unusually short assimilation period.
“The creatures,” Eudah had said, “have learned from their connection with Commander Una. The change will not be so harsh in the future.” Indeed, Barson was immediately active, and had seemed no different to Kormagan afterward. He was, of course. Kormagan had no more chance of relating to him than she had with Eudah. Members of the native species who had once united as the Boundless had become, together with the Rengru, something else: the K’davites.
Kormagan had spent the intervening time spreading the word and ferrying back visitors—and taking care of another project, one that had just come to fruition. She spied Captain Pike entering the bridge—he in yellow and black, accompanied by Connolly in blue and black. How odd their uniforms look, she thought. It was amazing the Federation held any territory at all the way its warriors were outfitted.
“Connolly tells me you’ve got some news for me,” Pike said.
“I have kept my word,” Kormagan replied, stowing her headgear. Armored life had remained second nature. “Captain Baladon has collected on this vessel the last of the remaining recruits—” Seeing Pike’s reaction, she stopped. “The last of those we took from Susquatane,” she finished.
Pike gave a guarded response. “How many casualties?”
“None.”
Pike’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“None. The other wavemasters moved your scientists to rearward positions quickly after we realized their merit,” Kormagan said. “Of them, only Spock and Connolly saw combat for extended periods.”
The captain smirked at Connolly. “How’d you get so lucky?”
“I guess they just thought I was a man of action,” Connolly said.
Pike’s eyes narrowed. “There were security officers on Susquatane too.”
“All alive, all here,” Kormagan said. “They ran the gauntlet, Captain. They had been well trained before we ever met them.”
“I guess that’s a compliment.” Pike looked out at the shipyards of the Nest, where space-fitted Rengru worked with Pike’s crewmembers to reconnect the two halves of the ship. He remarked on it. “That’s not supposed to be doable outside of spacedock. I guess we’re learning things on this trip after all.”
The connection would not make Enterprise whole, Kormagan knew. She’d come to understand the ravages it had suffered—some at her own hands—while in the nebula. It was a miracle it still flew at all. She’d been right all along: Starfleet’s technology was superior, its engineers greatly talented.
Maybe we should have recruited them instead, she mused. But that was a thought that belonged to another time. New circumstances were at hand, requiring her to make an offer.
“I made a bargain with Opmaster— I mean, with Lieutenant Connolly here, before. He got me aboard Enterprise, as promised, and while it didn’t work out as I expected, we reached K’davu and the war’s end.” She looked behind her and saw that the pallet she’d requested had been delivered. “Have a look.”
The humans stepped toward it. “New armor,” Connolly said, running his fingers over the gear. “It’s nice.”
“I can’t depart the nebula until my people have made their choices to either settle here, or leave,” Kormagan said. “So my forces will not be able to join your war against the Klingons immediately. But you may take that unit and the forging instructions and place your own battlesuits in mass production. We will join you when we can.”
Pike stared at the gear, puzzled, and then looked at Connolly. “You made this deal?”
The younger human nodded. “I thought we could use the help.”
Pike faced Kormagan. “Thanks, but no, thanks.”
“What?” Connolly said, startled.
Kormagan asked the same thing. “We’re still a powerful force.”
“Yeah,” Pike said, crossing his arms. “I’ve got no doubt there. What I do doubt is how you got that way. I’d never be sure which of your warriors was there because they got pressed into it—or whether that armor was made by someone who got ripped from his family.”
“You do know that we’ve been arranging the departures of others we’ve captured, correct? Even Baladon’s Lurians.”
“And that’s well done. It’s also overdue. You cost nearly a year out of my crewmembers’ lives, and the rest almost died trying to get them back.” He shook his head. “Maybe one day we’ll meet again—Connolly tells me you’re thinking of going exploring, now that you can. But for now, we’re good.”
Kormagan only partially understood. “I thought you were in great need.”
“Not that great. It’s like I told my admiral—it matters how we fight, and with what.”
“Very well. The choice is yours.”
Pike’s communicator chirped. “Pike.”
“Captain,
” Nicola said, “Doctor Galadjian reports we are ready to get underway.”
“Not until I hear from the other doctor about Una.”
“You are now,” said another human voice. “Boyce here. Once she was done coordinating the work with the Rengru, Una simply asked it to disengage from her—and it did.”
The news startled Kormagan and Pike both. “Is she all right?” Pike asked.
“She warned me she’d be in a coma again for a while, and she is. But she’s able to live on her own—she wasn’t connected as long as those people on K’davu.”
“That’s good news. Pike out.” He looked at Kormagan. “Will your people be more likely to embrace the Rengru if they think it’s reversible?”
“It depends,” Kormagan said, looking outside, “where people decide their home is.”
“And where’s yours?” Connolly asked.
“I’m not sure. But I think I may be wearing it.” She deployed her headgear and departed the bridge.
73
* * *
Warship Deathstrike
Acheron Formation
“This is a cruel, cruel joke,” Baladon said, kicking at garbage. “I can’t believe you brought us back to Deathstruck!”
Connolly smiled at him. “I thought it was Deathstrike.”
“Have a look around. You tell me!” Baladon stalked about, avoiding debris. “Most of the bridge stations are torn out, we’ve got half a dozen airlocks where they shouldn’t be, and we don’t have a single torpedo!”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Connolly said. “Hey, you still have a chair.”
Baladon collapsed in it. “This is not even remotely fair. The Rengru helped you people get back underway. You agreed to lead us out of the nebula—and brought us to this. You never told me Pike was a sadist!”
“You don’t have to take it. We just thought those troop modules you were in were pretty cramped—and we were headed this way anyway.”
“I feel all my old nightmares returning. I am cursed.”
Once it had become apparent that the Boundless were no longer in the piracy business, Baladon had gathered up as many of the Lurians as he could find. Their casualty rate had been significantly higher than that for the Enterprise abductees, but then, his people had seen more combat, and also had the handicap of imbecility. One of his cousins posted with another wave had taken out a troop module while juggling grenades.
The Enterprise War Page 34
