Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself Page 18

  “Not Saladin Johar or Britch Weeton, no,” she agreed. “Next time, Number One, remind me not to send our two best engineers off on any landing parties at the same time.” She paused, thinking. “What about our warp drive? Are they done building that replacement axis control?”

  Ch’Theloh’s grim expression hardened. “There’s been an issue with the fabricator. The first replacement didn’t meet spec. . . . It’s a very delicate piece of equipment. It has to be flawless.”

  “We have warp engines in our shuttlecraft, they use axis control units,” said Burnham, breaking her silence. “Can’t we pull the same component from the Fei or the Liu, modify it somehow?”

  “That was the first thing we tried,” he told her. “They burned out immediately. Something about comparative mass versus size of the warp shell. We’d need a unit from a vessel with a larger tonnage to have any chance of making it work.”

  Burnham’s eyebrow rose. “How much larger, sir?”

  “I know that look,” said Georgiou.

  “If you have a suggestion, Lieutenant, let’s hear it.” Ch’Theloh folded his arms. “At this point, we’re open to all counsel.”

  She raised her hand and pointed out of the window, toward the escort drone.

  • • •

  With the situation on the command deck stable, the red-bands crowded around Saru and Weeton, and under Madoh’s orders they were again led down through the lower decks, this time into a section of the ship they had not visited before.

  Here, the transport’s artificial gravity was set to replicate a zero-g environment, and the hatchway opened to allow access to a spherical chamber crisscrossed by metal bars studded with handholds. The Gorlans, with their additional limbs, moved through the space with speed and ease, pushing themselves off the walls and slipping from grip to grip. The Kelpien and the Terran were forced to take things slower, floating in toward the construct in the middle of the space.

  “Computer core?” suggested Weeton, taking in the thick trunks of data cables that emerged from the walls to converge with the tetrahedral unit.

  Saru nodded, watching the to-and-fro pulses of white light moving along the lines. The compartment had the same shabby, hard-working air as the rest of the vessel, but it was a functional space. “Why have you brought us here?” he asked, searching for Madoh.

  “This ship is still fighting us,” said the Gorlan. “The control software in its systems must be completely purged. Then, and only then, will we be sure that the Peliars can no longer affect it.”

  “And you’ll release them? And us?” Saru pressed.

  “When this is done,” Madoh continued, “we will do as you said. Bring our people up from where they were abandoned. Kijoh says the additional cargo modules can be docked to this ship’s exterior.” He made a coming together motion with his hands, then looked back at them. “Can you delete the programs working against us, or not?”

  “It is possible,” admitted Saru. “But the Peliars would be better equipped to do it.”

  “They won’t help us anymore.” Madoh dismissed the suggestion. “But you, Saru. You’ll help me again. Won’t you?”

  “Again?” Weeton shot him a questioning look. “Lieutenant, what is he talking about?”

  Saru’s threat ganglia squirmed and the skin across the Kelpien’s face tightened into a grimace as he fought the reaction. “I will help you recover those people on the surface, if that is what it takes to save lives.”

  “It will,” said Madoh. “Starting with those of your people and the Peliars.”

  The weight of the endless, circular argument came pressing down on Saru once again. “You do not need to threaten me,” he said.

  “That is untrue,” Madoh shot back. “We need to prove our resolve. The Tholians and the Peliars taught us a lesson. If all you do is run, then you are nothing more than prey.” He showed a mouthful of teeth. “I see something in you, Saru. I think you know better than anyone on this ship what it is to be that. On some level, you understand.”

  And the terrible truth was, he did. Saru had lived a life under threat from predators, and a part of him would always resent those creatures. There is no prey that does not dream of becoming the hunter. He could feel Madoh’s powerful aura-field, the invisible crackle of the Gorlan’s barely chained anger and his rebellious will.

  “Do not . . . keep pushing,” Saru managed, finding an iota of defiance. “The Federation offers the hand of peace but do not think that we are weak. It would be a grave mistake for you to make an enemy of Starfleet.”

  “You’re trying to intimidate me? Now?” Madoh shared a callous chuckle with his red-bands. “Too late for that.”

  “He’s not making a threat,” Weeton blurted. “He’s stating a fact! You heard him before, we can help your people! Find you a world to colonize, a better one than some half-dead ball of rock! Why wouldn’t you want that?” He gave Saru that questioning look again. “Why can’t he trust us?”

  “The answer is simple,” said Madoh. “The Gorlans have no more of that commodity to spare to outworlders. From now on, things will be on our terms.” Hand by hand, he pulled himself along a support pillar until he was floating in front of Saru and the ensign. “We will take back our people. And when the Shenzhou comes, we will take that as well.”

  The statement was so unexpected that Saru took a second to be sure of what he had heard. Impossible!

  “With your ship and this one, we will be free to go wherever we want, and the Federation, the Peliars, the Tholians . . . the Creator can damn them all.” Madoh’s cold rage had crystallized into an iron-hard certainty.

  “That’s not going to happen,” retorted Weeton. “Captain Georgiou will never let you have her ship!”

  “You will show us how to take it,” said Madoh, staring at the Kelpien.

  “No,” said Saru. His voice sounded small and weak.

  “If you do not do as I say, I will kill the prisoners. I will start with the Peliar captain and your wounded engineer. Or perhaps this one.” He pointed in Weeton’s direction. “Do you see, Saru? Your only value is what you can do for me. Aid us and you live, you have worth. Or do not, and become worthless. This is the reality we inhabit now.” He drew back and began making his way toward the hatch. “But one step at a time. Purge the computer. Begin the recovery process.”

  The other red-bands drifted toward them, some drawing their weapons. Weeton pulled close to Saru and his eyes were wide. “Sir, we can’t do this—”

  “You can,” Madoh called from the hatch. “Tell him, Saru. You did it before. Once the line is crossed . . . once you have bowed the first time, it becomes easier to do it again.” He left them behind in the silence that followed.

  “What did he mean, before?” The question in Weeton’s expression shaded toward confusion and then anger. “Lieutenant! Is he talking about our ship? When they attacked them? Did you—?”

  “I am giving you a direct order, Ensign,” Saru said in a toneless, dead voice. “Full responsibility for whatever follows is mine and mine alone. Purge the control software from the Peliar computer core.”

  The shock on Weeton’s face was raw and bitter. “I won’t collaborate with them,” he began, but Saru didn’t let him finish.

  “Do it!” he barked.

  There was a long pause, and Saru was afraid that Weeton would defy him again and that would cost the ensign his life; but then the junior officer’s face became a stony mask. “Lieutenant Burnham would never have done this.”

  “I know,” Saru sighed. “Carry out my orders.”

  • • •

  The interlaced communications between the two escort drones flashed back and forth between them at speeds most organic brains would have been unable to follow. Second by second, the automated craft shared data on the most optimal targeting solutions to maintain on the Federation starship they were flanking, their phase cannon turrets constantly adjusting and readjusting to account for drift and course corrections. So far, the att
ack criteria they had been programmed with had not arisen. The target ship was following the determined course, its weapons were inactive, its deflector shields down.

  Constant sensor sweeps pulsing in tandem kept the Shenzhou firmly in their crosshairs. The synthetic combat intelligences running each craft were ready to open fire if their target deviated from the predetermined behavior pattern.

  But the automated ships were only as good as their programmers could make them. Even with the advanced heuristic learning algorithms that Peliar Zel gave their autonomous machines, they lacked the ability of an organic being to anticipate, to become suspicious, or to make an intuitive leap based on partial data.

  Thus, when both drone brains detected the activation of the Shenzhou’s matter transporter system, there was a pause as the craft collaborated over the problem of what to do about it. Their masters hadn’t provided a specific retaliation program for such an occurrence. It would be up to the drones to decide how best to proceed.

  All of this transpired in a matter of heartbeats, and given the martial nature of their standing orders, it was no surprise that the drones decided in unison to default to their most basic command. If in doubt, attack.

  But the delay in processing that conclusion was a fraction longer than the Shenzhou’s transporter cycle.

  Both drones registered two sets of rematerialization events in very close proximity to them, and the immediate activation of electromagnetic clamps on their outer hulls.

  The unit following the Shenzhou from behind reacted by spinning its turret around, so that the visual sensors mounted beneath its gun cluster could see what was now attached to the outside of its fuselage.

  The sensors fixed on two figures, each one clad in a protective EVA suit. The closer of the pair—a dark-skinned humanoid female, whose face was visible through the transparent shell of a helmet—held a phaser rifle in her hands. The weapon was aimed directly at the turret.

  “Surprise,” said Burnham, and she squeezed the trigger.

  • • •

  The pulse bursts blasted through the swivel ring at the base of the phase cannon turret, and the whole upper section of the weapon array was blown free. Trailing bright orange sparks, the neutered guns drifted away into the Shenzhou’s impulse wake.

  Burnham was aware of another phaser blast going off at the periphery of her vision, back where the second drone was ahead of the starship’s bow, but she had no time to dwell on it.

  “Shanahan, go!” she called out to the engineer standing behind her, similarly affixed to the drone’s hull via magnetic boots. The chief petty officer had a cutting torch ready to go, and she quickly set to burning through a panel in order to gain access to the vessel’s interior.

  Puffs of ion thrust shot from ports on the side of the drone and it started to move. Burnham looked for and found clusters of sensor antennae on the craft’s bow and shot them off, blinding it.

  “We’re in!” said the engineer. She let the cutter drift free on the end of the lanyard securing it to her arm and crouched over the hole she had cut in the hull. “Okay. Let me see . . .”

  “No time!” Burnham retorted. “We can’t allow this thing to self-destruct.”

  “I got it, Lieutenant. Forget the finesse.” Shanahan’s face screwed up with effort as she plunged both hands into the spaces where the drone’s central processor was located, and ripped out whatever she could grab hold of. Glowing cables came free in her hands and a shudder ran down the length of the craft.

  The ion thrusters went dead and Burnham felt the drone starting to drift. “I think that may have done it.”

  “Let’s not wait around to find out,” said the engineer, grabbing the cutter once again. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll have the axis control chopped out of there.”

  Burnham let out the breath she had been holding in. “Team two, this is team one.” She turned to look out toward the other drone. It was in a slow tumble, and she could make out two suited forms still attached to its hull. “Ensign Harewood, report!”

  “Target neutralized,” came the reply. One of the figures threw a wave in her direction. “We got it, Lieutenant! Chief Guymer’s doing the extraction right now.”

  “All right.” She allowed herself a smile of relief. “Shenzhou, did you copy that?”

  “We did,” said Captain Georgiou. “Good call, Michael. You’ve just solved both of our problems at once.”

  She started back toward the aft of the drone, her mag boots thudding as she walked. Ahead of her, Shanahan was slowly pulling a large, cube-shaped module from the escort’s warp nacelle. “The Peliars won’t agree.” Burnham didn’t want to think that what she had set in motion could technically be considered an act of piracy.

  “We don’t answer to them,” said Georgiou. “And if Starfleet Command has a problem with this . . . well, I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.” She became brisk and businesslike. “All EVA teams, get what we need and beam back. We have a lot of lost time to make up.”

  10

  * * *

  “Warp one,” said Detmer as she slowly eased the Shenzhou’s throttle control forward, increment by increment. “Two. Three.”

  A worrying vibration rang through the length of the decking and a low alarm chimed at the engineering station. Burnham looked toward Belin Oliveira, who stood at temporary duty before Britch Weeton’s usual post. The dark-haired junior lieutenant didn’t look up, her attention buried in the display screen in front of her. She raised a hand and signaled with a half-hearted thumbs-up.

  “Proceed,” ordered Commander ch’Theloh. He stood at parade-ground attention behind the helm-ops console, looking out over Detmer’s head at the coruscating colors of the distorted stars flashing past them.

  “Warp factor four.” Detmer pushed the throttle up one more detent, but the vibration didn’t ease out. “Warp five—”

  The alarm at the engineering panel went up a pitch, and the shuddering in the deck matched it. “Captain, I am getting a lot of red flags here,” said Oliveira. “We’re outside acceptable parameters. We can’t maintain this speed for more than a few minutes.”

  Ch’Theloh made a soft growling noise and turned back to the center seat. “We knew this might happen. Peliar technology is close to Federation standard, but not close enough. If the Shenzhou were a newer ship, we might be able to better synchronize the axis controls, but—”

  “We’ll make do,” Georgiou broke in. “We may not have the clean lines of those new Constitution-class boats, but we’re built tough.”

  The Andorian shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t really like that new-minimalist look.”

  “Ensign Detmer,” continued the captain, “ease us back to three point five and hold there. We’re at warp and that’s better than where we were an hour ago.”

  Burnham glanced at data readouts on her screen at the science station, a telemetry feed from the warp core where one of the “recovered” Peliar axis-control units struggled to do the job of its Starfleet equivalent. It was a jury-rigged repair, what Chief Petty Officer Shanahan had called “a bloody lash-up,” but it was working.

  Hang on, Saru, she said silently. We’re on the way. But that thought was immediately followed by the shadow of a doubt. Will we catch up to that ship before something worse happens? Burnham brought up a different display, this one a navigation plot from Troy Januzzi’s station. It showed Shenzhou following the decaying ion wake of the star-freighter and the fresher trail left behind by Tauh’s carrier ship, twin arcs of faint color that curved around nearby nebulae and back toward what the Peliar admiral had called “the sanctuary,” a nondescript star system designated in the galactic catalog as DRL-559-G.

  “At best speed, just under two days,” said a quiet voice behind her. Captain Georgiou looked over Burnham’s shoulder at the star map. “Not good enough.”

  “Forty-seven hours, seventeen minutes,” Burnham said automatically, the calculation coming to her by reflex. “Avoiding that nebula formation vir
tually doubles our point-to-point transit time.”

  “It’s laced with reactive metreon gas pockets, so we can’t warp through it. We take that route and we’re back to impulse power, no shields again,” Georgiou said with a nod. “I’ve had enough of that for one day.”

  Burnham turned as the first officer crossed over to her console. His antennae arched forward in the way they always did when he was frustrated over something. “There’s another option,” he said, in a low voice. “I am loath to even voice it, but I am this ship’s executive officer, and it is my duty to point out alternatives.”

  Burnham suspected she knew what ch’Theloh was going to say, and she stepped back to allow him to use her console. He manipulated the star map, zooming out to show a larger slice of the local region. DRL-559-G, the nebula, and the Peliar Zel and Dimorus systems appeared on the visual, along with a patch of space that was marked out in a stark crimson. The color designated a Starfleet-mandated danger zone: stellar hazards or enemy territory.

  Beware the Jabberwock, she thought, the line from the old poem coming to mind unbidden.

  “There is a course that will get us there a lot faster,” ch’Theloh said as he plotted a new path. “And in my opinion it is an extremely bad idea.”

  The adjusted course projection took a different heading, away from the route around the nebula and directly over the red line, cutting across the corner of the danger zone. Into space formally annexed and controlled by the forces of the Tholian Assembly.

  “We’d be inside the Tholian borders for around ten hours,” he went on.

  “Nine hours, thirty-one minutes,” said Burnham.

  “As I said, an extremely bad idea.”

  “That could stir up the hornets’ nest,” admitted Georgiou. “It’s fairly certain they’ve been keeping tabs on us. We know for sure they blasted our monitor buoy. If we cross into their space . . .”

  “We’re giving them what they want,” finished Burnham. “But if we don’t, and we arrive too late for Saru and the others . . .” She trailed off.