XVI
Scott grabbed for a handhold as his feet momentarily left the floor and he started to slide up the near wall. The ship’s gravity precessers were beginning to struggle against the competing pull of the Earth’s own gravity.
“There’s not gonna be an evacuation if there’s no power to stabilize the damn ship! ” he shouted at the captain. “We lose power to the precessers and artificial gravity will be all over the place. People will be literally climbin’ the walls trying to get to their evac shuttles.”
Kirk pressed him for a solution. “Can we restore it? Get back enough power to stabilize ship’s gravity along with life support, at least until everyone is safely off?”
“Maybe, Captain. But only from Engineering—not from the bridge.”
It only got worse as they raced for Engineering itself. Occasionally they found themselves running along walls. Once, the precessers flipped completely and they had to make their way carefully along the ceiling. It was the same for everyone else on board. As the situation grew more critically unstable it became increasingly difficult for personnel to make their way to the evacuation shuttle bays. Objects as well as personnel tended to cling one moment to the floor and the next slide up a wall. Hands hunted for something solid and unmoving to grip. Queasiness became the norm. Throughout the confusion, it was all the ship’s compromised computer system could do to keep the artificial gravity on the wounded Enterprise from slewing crazily from one degree to another and slamming its crew around like ball bearings in a barrel.
There was apprehension but no panic on the Enterprise as anxious crewmembers scrambled to find and board their assigned evac vehicles. This close to Earth, the shuttles would require very little programming. There was no reason everyone could not get off and down to ground safely—provided they could reach their assigned stations. The difficulty arose from the conflict between Earth’s intensifying pull and the increasingly erratic operation of the ship’s artificial gravity system. While the crew was prepared to deal with an emergency that saw them walking on floors one minute and ceilings the next, the constant gravitational flux forced everyone to go very slowly to avoid injury. As a result, the majority of the crew had yet to make it halfway to their designated shuttles.
If conditions did not improve, they might not have enough time to make it at all before the Enterprise disintegrated on entry.
Well aware of the increasing danger, Kirk and Scott made their way toward Engineering as fast as circumstances permitted. They were almost there when the ship’s gravity gave a sudden lurch. Scott compared it to floating in a giant bathtub that had just been given an abrupt shove. The unexpected gravitational switch saw him tossed over a railing toward a deck below. Only Kirk’s rapid reaction in getting a hand on the engineer’s forearm saved Scott from being smashed against the unyielding metal below.
The captain’s grip was firm, but he could do nothing about the shifting forces beneath his feet. As they changed direction once again, he felt himself starting to follow Scott over the rail. Straining hard, he tried to wrap his other arm around the railing to stabilize the two of them, at which point their continuing survival became a matter of muscle. Charged with supporting the chief’s weight, he felt his own strength ebbing. Even if he lost his grasp and went over, he told himself, he wouldn’t let go of Scott.
At the last possible instant, hands grabbed his arms and gripped tight. “I’ve got you, Keptin!”
Strung out over the railing, the three of them stayed like that a moment longer. At the same time as Chekov began to pull Kirk back, and Kirk to pull Scott, the gravity shifted again, and Kirk’s feet found firmer footing. Soon the three of them were standing on what, for the moment at least, was a solid deck.
Scott was grateful, but there was no time to waste on extended expressions of gratitude. Instead, he glared at the ensign.
“What’d you do to me core?”
“Nothing,” Chekov stammered as the ship rocked around them. “You can have it back!”
Scott nodded vigorously. “I intend to. And once we get a minimum of power back up, you’re gonna manually redirect it to impulse control so we can avoid smashing into Earth. Much as I’d like to see home again, I dinna want to do it by turnin’ any o’ the Highlands into lowlands. There’s a separate, backup relay—”
“Behind the deflector shielding.” Chekov was completely in tune with the chief engineer’s plan.
“Exactly.” Scott said no more, impressed with and now confident in the ensign’s surprising knowledge of a department that was not his own.
“Then I had better get going,” Chekov told him. “The relay’s going to need some supplementary programming.”
“Mr. Sulu,” Spock exclaimed, “divert all remaining power to stabilizers!”
“Doing what I can, sir,” the helmsman replied as he desperately fought to comply. “Doing what I can.”
Spock tried his best to see that the Enterprise’s vanishing energy resources were parceled out meticulously among the ship’s most critical active systems. While life support drew the most attention, he and Sulu attempted to steady the starship’s wildly skewing and rapidly failing artificial gravity. If he couldn’t stabilize it any better, there was a good chance a large percentage of the ship’s crew would never be able to make it to their assigned evacuation stations. Yet if he shunted power from life support to the precessers, there was a chance atmospheric pressure would fall too low and kill everyone on board.
They kept at it, doing their best, each man and woman calculating and recalculating in their mind as they strove to create an equilibrium out of uncooperative difficulties.
It took Chekov longer than he’d hoped but less than he feared to reach the auxiliary engineering station. Heaving aside the protective cover to expose the controls beneath, he was confronted by switches that were as archaic as they were functional. Levers and switches might be old-fashioned, but there were times when something made of metal and composites could operate efficiently while pure electronics were down.
The double connector was dark red and labeled “Main Router.” Closing it required Chekov to employ both hands and all of his strength. Straining, he threw it forward until it snapped into place—and hoped it would work.
The great warship tumbled, burning internally, weaponless, without shields—but not entirely without control. Dragging himself to the forward console, a wounded but still functional Khan fought to make his orders heard above the crackle and thunder of instruments exploding and structural elements failing all around him.
“New destination!” he roared. “Starfleet headquarters!”
“Engines compromised,” announced the voice of the ship’s computer. “Cannot guarantee we will reach intended destination. Specified destination off-limits. Do you confirm order?”
Khan’s one-word response emerged as a snarl. “Confirmed.”
Scott cried out when he and Kirk finally reached Engineering. He couldn’t help himself. His beloved section was a mess. Devoid of staff, stressed by the abrupt shifts in gravity, and reflecting the serious damage that had been done during the violent encounter with the warship, to his engineer’s eyes it did not look capable of generating enough energy to power a handcart, much less a starship.
“Oh, no,” he cried as he studied the active readouts, “nonononooooo . . . !”
“What?” Standing behind the chief and resting his hands on his knees, an exhausted Kirk’s cry was a challenge, an expression of sympathy, and a desperate query all wrapped up in a single exclamation.
The longer he studied the available readouts, the deeper Scott’s anguish grew. “This isn’t going to work, Captain. Even if we can restore enough power to drive the ship on impulse power, we kinna redirect it. The main core power thread is decoupled, out of alignment. We could maybe get power back up, but we kinna send it where we want it. Och, with the decoupling the way it is now, we kinna send it anywhere! The ship’s dead, sir. She’s gone.”
While Kirk had been listening to Scott’s technological lamentation, he had also been studying the main readout. Though lacking in complete familiarity with some of the technical terms on display, and even more so with the majority of numerical summations, he was able make sense of the schematics that methodically changed as relevant information was automatically updated. With his eyes he traced the central lambent outline.
“No, she’s not.” Turning to his left, he sprinted in the direction of the central core.
Scott followed. “Jim, wait! This isn’t some child’s puzzle game. We kinna actually manually realign it. It would take a whole tech team working with specialized equipment to do that, and never while the core’s still active. Even if we had a team, we could not shut the core down, because in its present condition, we might not be able to get it restarted again. Not in time, anyway. Jim, will ya listen to me?!”
Kirk did not comment. Halting outside the core containment area, he reached for the door control panel, tapped out code on still-functioning keys, and then placed his open palm over the appropriate bioscanner.
“Captain, what are you doing?” Scott began, only to have an unwavering Kirk cut him off.
“I’m going in.”
Verging on the apoplectic, the chief gestured at the transparent barrier. “As you well know, that door is there, Captain, to prevent us from getting fatally irradiated! We’d be dead before we ever finished the climb to the damaged area.”
“You’re not making the climb.”
Kirk having made his intentions inescapably clear, Scott moved to block his friend’s path. “No. Captain . . . I kinna let you. . . .”
“I understand, Scotty. I appreciate your concern, and you’re probably right.” Dropping his head, he half turned as if to lead back the way they had come—but it was only to allow him to put more force behind the punch he threw. It was possible Scott saw it coming. Realization did not allow him to dodge the blow, however, and he fell back, unconscious.
“On the other hand,” Kirk murmured as he carefully sat the stunned chief safely down nearby and started for the entrance to the core cavity, “you might be wrong. I’m counting on it.” Returning to the bioscanner, he repeated the hand press that would identify him. It promptly released the door handle. Pulling and turning on it caused the portal to slide obediently aside.
At least there was enough localized auxiliary power for the doorway to function, Kirk thought as it opened before him. As he stepped through, he lingered briefly in the portal to look back. Montgomery Scott, the best chief of engineering in Starfleet, remained unconscious and with eyes closed. It was not the memory of his chief that he would have preferred to carry with him into the core, but it would have to do. The door closed automatically behind him.
Once on the other side, he immediately felt the excess heat. It permeated his surroundings. Undirected, unchanneled, even the very limited amount of energy that was being produced by the damaged core was hard to tolerate. While he could not keep from feeling it, he could try not to think about it. Training and determination were all that kept him moving as he made his way deeper into the engine area and began to ascend the main generator complex.
With every step, Kirk knew the radiation swirling around him was poisoning his system. Already he was weakening, his muscles refusing to respond to the commands sent from his brain. Even if he were to turn back now, there was no way he would be able to make it back to the safety barrier. Fortunately that was of no concern, since he never did have any intention of retracing his increasingly irregular footsteps.
Emerging from the access tube inside the top of the generator complex, he looked upward. There. The critical core component that had been isolated on the engineering console schematic was plainly out of alignment, its lower half listed drunkenly to one side, its multiple focusing beams dark and unaligned with their matching counterparts looming above. Standing there, he knew he was losing strength by the second.
He started up.
The climb was grueling. He could feel himself growing weaker with every push of his legs, every strain on his arms. The unrestricted radiation burned into him. It was taking forever to get to the core center. The higher he climbed, the farther away it seemed to become, as if it was retreating not only from his increasingly flickering vision but from his failing body itself. More than once, he nearly fell.
Then there were no more conduits to surmount, no more cables to avoid.
He paused at the top, fighting for breath. Directly in front of him, the misaligned lower unit lay askew at an angle for which it had never been designed.
Reaching up, he gripped a section of the unit overhead and swung his body forward, slamming both feet into the lower projecting unit.
Seemingly frozen in place, the heavy device didn’t budge.
He repeated the gesture, striking down and forward again and again, each time trying to project all his weight and strength through his feet as he kicked out. His quads trembled as his feet slammed into the immobile component. The shock of each contact ran upward through his legs, threatening to reduce his rapidly weakening muscles to jelly. Still he kept pounding away at the misaligned device.
It began to shift. A little.
He continued swinging and kicking, wondering whether his heart and lungs would give out before his legs. Soon his vision began to blur, and not just from the perspiration that was streaming down his face and into his eyes. He could barely see well enough now to focus on his target. It was still shifting, but not nearly enough, nor fast enough. Swing, kick, gather strength; swing, kick, hope for strength; swing, kick . . .
Giving way suddenly to one side, the projection component slid away from him—and cleanly into place. Its arrival there was greeted by a rapid succession of clicks, a rising whirr, and a flash of blinding white light as the proximate coupling beam reengaged. The force of it broke his overhead grip, sending him flying backward and down, to land heavily on the first access walkway below.
Engineering consoles and instrumentation that had long since gone quiescent snapped back to life.
On the bridge, a disbelieving Sulu found himself gaping at a string of messages as welcome as they were unexpected.
“Full power back online!”
“Maximum thrusters, Mr. Sulu,” Spock ordered immediately.
“Stand by, stand by!” the helmsman shouted.
As the ship plunged through the first thick layer of cumulus clouds, the sudden and unexpected restoration of full sound and light took everyone on the bridge by surprise. Their Academy instructors would have been proud to see how quickly and professionally their former students reacted.
“Hold on!” Sulu ordered. With everyone cocooned in their emergency harnesses, it was a superfluous command, but fingers instinctively tightened on armrests nonetheless. Manually manipulating the helm controls like a pianist essaying Busoni, Sulu not only adjusted the ship’s internal gravity while compensating for that of the ever-nearer planetary surface, he also managed while only employing impulse power to bring the shocked Enterprise back from the brink of what had become a toxic trajectory.
Unseen and unappreciated by anyone save its exhausted crew, the Enterprise began to rise slowly, bursting upward like some dragon of legend through the white clouds through which it had helplessly fallen only moments before.
Sweat pouring off him even as life support came fully back online, Sulu noted the attitude adjustment with satisfaction.
“Shields restored,” declared one officer from his station.
“Commander, power online,” added the ensign seated next to him, glancing back in the direction of the command chair.
“Gaining altitude en route to establishing stable orbit,” Sulu announced. “Once we’ve done that, I’ll try easing us farther out. Then we can see about limping to the nearest dock for repairs. Altitude is stabilizing.”
“It’s a miracle,” insisted the officer at the next station over.
“There are no such things,” Spock felt compelled to declare.
As everyone sat contemplating their near demise, each lost in his or her own thoughts, Scott’s voice sounded over the fully restored intercom system. “Engineering to bridge. Mr. Spock?”
“I am here, Mr. Scott. Since it would appear that congratulations are in order all around, I am pleased to—”
The chief didn’t wait for him to finish. “Never mind that now, Mr. Spock. You’d better get down here.”
Everyone heard. Not just the words, but what was implied in the tone of the chief engineer’s voice. All but ripping himself out of his emergency harness, Spock rose and raced for the lift. Everyone watched him go. Everyone, Uhura included, had the sense not to say anything.
Elsewhere, another ship, much larger and in far worse shape, trailing fresh flames as it struck atmosphere, plunged toward the surface below as huge chunks of torn and twisted metal, fiery internal components, and disintegrating pieces of its interior formed a wild trail of destruction. It fell rather than flew, almost completely out of control.
Almost . . .
It is one thing to expect the worst; quite another to have it confirmed. Rushing into Engineering and reaching the outer core maintenance area, Spock slowed as he saw Scott standing by the nearest operations console. It took the science officer a moment longer before his gaze picked out Kirk—on the other side of the transparent sealed emergency barrier. Having fallen from the upper level where his reckless effort had succeeded in restoring power to the ship, he had since crawled to where he now lay, just beyond the sealed doors.
He was not moving.
Eyeing the barrier, Spock didn’t hesitate. “Open it.” When Scott failed to comply, the science officer moved to enter the necessary coding himself. Reluctantly but firmly, Scott addressed the overanxious Vulcan.
“The decontamination process is not complete. We’d flood the whole compartment with radiation, Mr. Spock. You know that. We’d risk losing control of what we’ve regained.” He nodded toward the barrier. “Of everything the captain regained for us.” As Spock stepped back, Scott indicated another set of instrumentation. “I’m bringin’ the radiation levels in there down as fast as is possible. It’s not like moppin’ up a water spill.” There was not a hint of sarcasm in his explanation.
Turning back to the barrier, Spock moved closer and dropped into a crouch. Responding to the science officer’s appearance, Kirk somehow forced his gravely weakened body to respond. Internal pickups relayed his barely perceptible words to those on the other side of the transparency.
“How’s our ship . . . ?”
Spock swallowed hard. For the first time in his life he wished fervently to deny the evidence of his eyes.
This could not be happening.
“Out of danger,” he heard himself saying. “You saved the Enterprise. You saved the crew.”
Kirk managed a smile. Feeble, but recognizable. Weakened, yet indomitable. “And you . . . used what he wanted . . . against him, Spock. Nice move.”
There was an unfamiliar taste in Spock’s mouth. “It is what you would have done.”
A sigh emerged from the other man’s lips. “And when Scotty indicated to me that if I came in here I was a dead man—I did what you would’ve done.”
If not for the hum of recently revived machines, it would have been completely silent in the area. Uhura arrived, slowing to a stop beside Scott, and likewise said nothing.
“Any . . . advice?” Kirk finally managed to eke out.
Another difficult swallow. “Captain?”
Exerting a supreme effort, Kirk raised his head so that their eyes met. “I’m . . . scared, Spock. Strange sensation. Not . . . used to it. Help me . . . not be. How do you choose . . . not to feel?”
Staring through the glass at his commanding officer—at his friend—Spock replied as straightforwardly as he could.
“Vulcans cannot lie. I do not know.” His voice cracked. “Right now I am failing. Because you are my friend.”
Reaching up and forward, Kirk just did manage to put his open palm against the inside of the barrier. Spock did the same on the opposite side. It was as close as one man could get to the other.
“Take care of our ship, Spock.”
A tear slipped from the science officer’s left eye.
Kirk’s hand held its position against the transparency for a moment longer. Then it slid downward, down, as the captain’s eyes turned away from those of his first officer, to gaze upward. They stopped moving.
On the captain’s side of the emergency barrier, there was no more movement at all. Spock studied the still form opposite him for a long moment as Scott and Uhura struggled to comfort each other.
Then the Vulcan’s lips parted and a single sound, more of a roar than a word, erupted from the bottom of his throat as he howled at the top of his lungs.
A name.
“KHHAAAAANNNNNNNNN!”