Star Trek

  At the same time, and in lieu of wasting precious moments hunting for the appropriate Romulan command to cease and desist, Spock let loose with the ship’s weapons. They opened an exit just as effectively as any hangar command, though with considerably more noise and accompanying destruction. The unfortunate members of the patrolling contingent followed the phaser-shattered airlock doors out into open space.

  Blown apart, large sections of the hangar doors were flung outward. They were followed closely by the now fully activated Vulcan craft. Growing more and more familiar with the ship’s instrumentation with every passing moment, Spock swooped in and out among the Narada’s superstructure, firing at close range from within the protective diameter of her defensive shields.

  A human would have rocked the fore cabin with jubilant shouts while inflicting such devastation on an enemy. Spock went about the business of disabling the Romulan vessel with surgical silence and precision.

  On the Narada’s bridge, chaos and confusion had without warning taken the place of the previous air of satisfaction. As the ship shook around him, the flustered helmsman reported one constituent failure after another.

  “Primary core damage! Warp engines are off-line! Multiple decks report loss of life support. Automatic shutdowns continue to multiply and engage!”

  Nero had bolted erect in the command chair to gape at his officers.

  “How!?”

  A response came from tactical. “Someone has detonated weapons in the main hangar! And”—the disbelief was plain in his voice—“we appear to be under attack!”

  “How can we be under attack?” Furious and confused, Nero felt suddenly disoriented. “Our shields are up and there are no Federation starships within parsecs!”

  The tactical officer stared at his readouts, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  “Apparently we are being fired on by a small craft that has somehow materialized inside our shields. Yet no such vessel was detected approaching. It just…appeared.” He looked blankly at his captain.

  “Nothing just ‘appears’!” Nero roared. “Identify the attacker and prepare to engage.” He shifted his attention to engineering and science. “Restore full power! Engage auxiliary systems!”

  Impossible, he told himself as the Narada continued to tremble and quake. They were under attack from the impossible.

  Which iteration rendered the damage that was being inflicted on his ship no less real for the unlikelihood with which he was investing it.

  Leaving the Romulan ship damaged and its crew occupied and reeling, Spock drove the remarkably responsive one-man starship toward the surface of the planet below. A single carefully directed burst from the Vulcan craft’s compact but powerful weapons sliced through the complex of cables supporting and powering the plasma drill. The energy vortex shut down, a few remaining lines snapped, and the drill platform, together with the complex of dangling cables above it, plunged downward, falling, falling…

  On the grounds of Starfleet Academy and elsewhere on the fringes of San Francisco Bay, onlookers scrambled for cover as the heavy drill platform slammed into the cold green water and sent out a wave that drenched the surrounding shorelines.

  Fully occupied with trying to track the enigmatic attacking vessel that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, the Narada’s overwhelmed tactical officer now looked fearfully in his captain’s direction.

  “The plasma drill has been severed and the platform has crashed into the surface!” This news was followed by an even more startling report.

  “Ambassador Spock’s ship has been stolen and is heading outsystem!”

  Nero was beside himself. “Who stole it? I want identification—now! Which traitor…?”

  The first officer paused, studying his readouts. “A crew member managed to transmit a portion of a visual at the last moment before severe hangar damage was incurred.” He looked up in disbelief. “It is impossible to resolve fine details without further processing, but I believe the pilot to be Ambassador Spock.”

  Shock rippled through the bridge. Somehow, Nero kept control of himself as he settled back down in the command chair and hissed, rather than spoke, a single command.

  “Follow.”

  Both ships were well on their way outsystem when he finally spoke again to his communications officer. “Open a hailing channel.”

  The officer complied swiftly. “Channel open.” A brief pause, then, “We are receiving a response.”

  An image appeared on the forward viewscreen. It was of a very young Vulcan officer, remarkably composed given the circumstances. Ignoring for the moment the inexplicable difference in age from the hated Spock he knew, Nero stared at the all-too-familiar visage, his voice cold.

  “Spock. It is you. I should have killed you when I had the chance. I wanted you to see Vulcan destroyed as you let Romulus be destroyed. But I should have killed you.”

  The subject of the threat stared directly back into his ship’s pickup. A human would have reacted differently, perhaps with a counterthreat, possibly with a challenge of his own, maybe with a word-string full of hatred and accusation and foul language. Spock responded purely as Spock.

  “Under authority granted me by the Europa Convention of Sentient Species, I’m confiscating this illegally obtained ship and order you to surrender your vessel. No terms. No discussion. No deals.”

  Nero could only gaze at the screen in wonder. The sheer audacity of the Vulcan. The absolute absurdity of it. “You can’t cheat me again, Spock. I know you better than you know yourself. I know what has to happen, what is preordained by the time stream, and you can’t stop it!”

  The level gaze never flinched, the icy determination did not waver. “Last warning: unconditional surrender or you will be destroyed.”

  The game had gone on long enough. In Nero’s mind, fury overcame reason. Whatever happened from this moment on, ensuring the Vulcan’s death had become paramount in his mind. Even if it was necessary to destroy the captured ship and its irreplaceable contents, the Narada would remain invincible, by far the most powerful warship in this corner of the cosmos. As for the Red Matter device, the science team on his ship had garnered a good deal of information about it. Returning to Romulus and explaining the necessity of building another one would also assure his world’s salvation. Then, led by himself and his crew, Romulan rule would still spread across the galaxy.

  A galaxy devoid of treacherous Vulcans, and of one Vulcan in particular.

  He turned toward tactical. “Fire at will.”

  His second-in-command was reluctant. “Sir, if a direct hit should occur, either phaser energy or photon torpedoes contain enough explosive force to momentarily duplicate the heat and pressure present in the core of a planet. A strike could cause a portion of the Red Matter aboard the Vulcan’s ship to implode and ignite, thereby…”

  Nero glared at him, his voice rising. “Don’t talk back to me! That’s a direct order! This isn’t a time for arcane scientific speculations—I want Spock dead!”

  Leaving the command chair, he roughly pushed his tactical officer out of the way and began readying the Narada’s weaponry himself. He was looking forward to the opportunity to kill someone without an intermediary, for a change.

  As a brace of advanced torpedoes launched from the Narada, Kirk continued to work his way through the vast and largely deserted reaches of the Romulan warship. Occasionally he would pause to check the information that had been downloaded to his tricorder. Once he had to back up and retrace his steps, another time he took a wrong turn and was forced to correct his course.

  Eventually he confronted a closed doorway with specific and unpleasant markings in Romulan. A quick pass with his tricorder identified it as the chamber he had been seeking. It yielded without hesitation to his request for entry, there being no reason to secure it from anyone on board.

  The room was dark and damp even for a Romulan interrogation chamber.

  He saw Pike still fastened to the slightly tilted pl
atform. The faint moan that reached Kirk as he hurried toward it was more uplifting than a whole stadium full of cadets cheering on their Academy team. The captain was still alive.

  There was nothing elaborate about the straps that held him down. As traditional and straightforward as they were effective, they yielded rapidly to his determined hands. As he worked, Pike’s head lolled limply in his direction. The captain’s eyes struggled to focus.

  “…Kirk?”

  “Came back, sir. Just like you ordered. Hold still—I’ll have you out of this in a minute.”

  Pike managed a nod to show that he understood. “How—how did you…?” He swallowed, coughed. “Where are we?”

  “Still on board the Narada, sir. A lot has happened since you were taken prisoner. Some of it I’m still not sure I believe myself. But believable or not, we have to deal with it.” He pulled hard at the main strap, yanking it free. “One thing you can believe: I’m not leaving here without you.”

  As more straps were released, Pike fought to move his arms and legs and reassert some control over his stiff muscles and unused nervous system. “I believe your presence here constitutes violation of at least a dozen ordinances, Mister Kirk.”

  Working above the supine senior officer, Kirk had to smile. Pike was going to make it, all right. “Guilty as charged, sir. You can decide my punishment as soon as we’re back on the Enterprise.”

  With his back to the entrance, he failed to notice the arrival of several heavily armed guards. Kirk’s presence hadn’t been detected by ship security; the guards were simply carrying out a time-scheduled check on the prisoner. Eyes widening in surprise, the Romulans perceived what was taking place and started to raise their weapons.

  In a tribute to a lifetime of hard work, and demonstrating to the utmost the efficacy of Starfleet training, Pike pulled Kirk’s own sidearm and shot them in perfect sequence before a single one of them could trigger their weapons. They went down as Kirk whirled. Exhausted, Pike let the phaser fall from his fingers. Kirk caught first it and then his superior officer.

  “Thanks, Captain. Don’t worry—I’ve got you. Can you stand?”

  Gritting his teeth, and with Kirk’s help, Pike was on his feet a moment later. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to fall, he nodded to his rescuer.

  “Not only can I stand: if circumstances require it I think I can run.” He gestured past the dead guard in the direction of the only exit. “The question is, where do we run to? I don’t know how you got on this ship, but from what I’ve seen, there’s no way off it.”

  Draping one of Pike’s arms over his shoulders, Kirk helped the older man stumble toward the portal. “I don’t suppose, Captain, that you’ve by any chance heard of a disgraced Starfleet engineer named Montgomery Scott?”

  Having unleashed the first volley of torpedoes at the fleeing smaller ship, Nero had subsequently returned tactical to the officer in charge. He could not direct the Narada’s firepower if he also wanted to bathe fully in the moment of destruction.

  The Vulcan’s evasive maneuvers were carried out with exceptional skill and his small but advanced ship was proving difficult to hit, but the number of weapons the much larger Romulan warship could bring to bear could not be avoided forever. Detonated by a proximate program, one torpedo finally ripped into the hull of the Vulcan craft. Though it self-sealed, Spock’s vessel had unmistakably suffered some permanent damage. The Narada’s tactical sensors confirmed the partial hit.

  Observing the ongoing pursuit via the forward viewscreen, Nero whispered to himself with satisfaction.

  “You should have entered warp when you had the chance, Spock. You should have fled.” Looking toward tactical, he raised his voice. “Sight target for final destruction and fire.”

  Spock’s ship was far more advanced than any vessel he had ever served upon, seen, or studied, but it was not from a thousand years in the future and it was not immune to equally sophisticated and no less deadly weapons. Particularly when those weapons were fired on it in multiples. One of the first lessons students in warfare were taught was that club plus force plus trajectory achieves the same totality of death as a properly aimed phaser burst.

  “Warning,” the ship announced in deceptively calm tones, “all shields off-line.”

  This was it, then, he knew. The end. But not the end just for him. He steeled himself. At such moments logic and reason offered a great comfort that was unknown to all but a few humans who found themselves trapped in similar circumstances.

  “Computer, prepare to execute General Order Thirteen.”

  “General Order Thirteen,” it repeated. “Self-destruct sequence confirmed.”

  Strange, he mused, how the computer and he sounded so much alike.

  “Execute,” he finished with hesitation as he redirected the ship’s course.

  Straight back toward the pursuing Narada.

  Their quarry’s abrupt reversal of direction did not go unnoticed on board the Romulan warship. There was pandemonium as tactical, science, and the helm fought to react appropriately. Somehow, the Vulcan ship managed to avoid every weapon that was flung in its direction. Nero’s second-in-command wasn’t worried about the damage a collision might cause. The Narada was large enough to overcome such an impact.

  There was, however, the not-insignificant matter of a certain quantity of the galaxy’s most volatile known substance being held in stasis on board the Vulcan vessel. And the two ships were too close for evasive action to be taken, so that…

  It was a great relief when, an instant later, one of the numerous torpedoes the Romulan warship had unleashed struck home and the Vulcan craft was blown to bits.

  XVIII

  Pressure. Heat. The machinery on board the smaller vessel that sustained the stasis shell collapsed under the force of both. Driven inward by the intensity of the torpedo explosion, within nanoseconds they compacted the contents of the inner containment bubble, forcing it in upon itself.

  Igniting that which lay within.

  A tiny anomaly appeared in space. It was pure luck that when it was created it was on a trajectory that would take it out of the solar system on a course nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. It would not pass by any of the eight planets—which meant that said planets would remain intact.

  Anything caught in its immediate vicinity, however…

  “Full reverse course!” Nero was screaming as an expanding darkness blacker than space itself appeared on the viewscreen. “Get us away—now, now! Prepare to engage warp drive!”

  “Warp drive activating, Captain,” the helm reported. “Warp one in four—three…”

  The Narada shuddered violently. Crew members found themselves thrown from their chairs. Throughout the great ship longitudinal rips lacerated her hull as phaser bursts tore through the superstructure. Crew members barely had time to wail in despair as they were sucked out into space. One blast after another tore at her components, her weapons systems, her engines. As her wild-eyed commander struggled to retain his seat, the cause of the devastating and unexpected disruptions was revealed on another screen.

  Fully occupied in the pursuit of Spock’s vessel as it reached the vicinity of Saturn, its crew and tactical arm had failed to notice the appearance of another ship behind it as it had risen from within the distorting depths of Titan’s atmosphere.

  It was possible there was someone on board the Enterprise who was not at that moment fully engaged in one critical task or another, but only among the wounded in sickbay. Every other member of the crew was on station, their entire being devoted to a particular task at hand. Tactical was engaged in pouring as much debilitating fire into the Romulan warship as possible while the helm controllers undertook a ferocious combination of evasive and assaulting actions.

  Nowhere was activity as frenetic as in the main transporter room, where a focused Montgomery Scott was directing two equally perilous and life-threatening actions at the same time. It was not an impossible feat to pull off, but it was d
ifficult enough to make everyone involved sweat profusely despite the presence of fully functional climate control.

  A figure began to materialize on one of the transporter pads. As it started to flicker dangerously, Scott’s attention darted from platform to instrumentation to those assisting him.

  “Hold it, hold it,” he muttered tensely. “Full power—now!” At the same time as the first shape began to solidify, two more started to appear. Fingers raced over controls as telltales on the main console flashed warningly. The second pair of silhouettes began to steady. Off to one side Uhura looked on apprehensively while McCoy and a full medical team stood by in case their skills were needed. Despite the new chief engineer’s evident expertise, the doctor was not optimistic. But then, whenever a transporter was in use, he never was.

  The three shapes tightened, opaqued, and began to take on the appearance of something more substantial than refulgent hopes. Spock was the first to be recognized. From Uhura’s throat there emerged a small sound that McCoy would forever keep private. Then the other two figures steadied and he was able to identify both—Kirk and Pike.

  Rapidly regaining full control of his neuromuscular system, Kirk was the first to step off the platform and congratulate the engineer.

  “Nice timing.” He looked to his left. “I’m beginning to think you could beam anything from any place to anywhere, Mister Scott, if only someone gave you the right coordinates.”

  The engineer stood a little taller. “Never beamed two targets from two places onto the same pad before. And both targets in motion, at that. Have to try it one day with something smaller and more stable over a greater distance. A bottle o’ fine malt whiskey, for example.”

  Kirk grinned. “I hope you get the opportunity—Scotty.” He turned. “Captain?”

  As the seriously weakened Pike finally gave in to exhaustion, Kirk caught him as he slumped forward. The medical team took over immediately. Playing a scanner over the captain’s barely conscious form, McCoy barked orders to a senior medtech.