I couldn't hear clearly, and Mr. Scott's voice came
back up at him through the corn system. I looked
toward the engineering panel, confirming to my jarred
senses that he wasn't there anymore.
"Nominal but coming back slowly," Kirk was say-
ing. "Good work, Scotty, keep it up." Fighting from
inside a cage, he adjusted the navigational controls and
Enterprise pivoted against the Klingon tractor beams
until we had a clear view of a Romulan ship veering
toward us, with one of the cuneiformed Tholians close
behind. Instantly Kirk struck a firing launch. Space
filled with bright red-orange lancets. Phasers! They'd
gotten phasers working! And the captain was using
them to keep the enemies busy out there, protect our
weakened deflectors, and complicate the Klingons'
effort to protect their prizemusmwhile they also tried
to beat off attackers who were determined that if they
themselves couldn't have us, nobody could. Including
the Klingon Empire.
The pastel Tholian vessel swerved to miss our pri-
mary hull, one of her wedges blazing with melted hull
material. The Romulans cut upward on short notice
and fired their particle beam at us, but the Klingons
fired and detonated the particle beam before it reached
our screens. Enterprise rocked and whined in the
dispersing waves. I caught myself on the bridge rail
and managed to stay upright.
From one side, Spock's voice overlapped the snap-
ping of tangled voltage as Enterprise trembled back to
life. "Port side Klingon cruiser is keeping in contact
with the other cruiser, Captain," he was saying, his
hand to the com receiver in his ear. "Distorted . . .
they are attempting to contact their Empire or other
Empire ships... I believe to request help that... may
be on stand-by already, if I decipher these transmis-
sions correctly."
"Cut off their broadcast. Make sure those transmis-
257
sions get scrambled. They can tow us," the captain
said to the screen, "but they'll have to do it alone.
Scotty, ready secondary phaser banks."
"Secondary banks are dry, Captain. I'm trying to
funnel in some power. It's only a matter' a time before
the hull in D-section ruptures and that'll be the end of
our reserve. We've taken too many hits there, sir."
Scott's voice held the timber of a man possessed.
But I was staring at Spock. Just last year I'd finished
a top-of-the-line course in computer cryptography and
I blasted well knew that with the new wave-maze
technology the Klingon Empire had developed, we
couldn't possibly tie in to their transmissions. Profes-
sor Eufinger had made that indelibly clear. But there
was Spock, blithely doing the impossible.
Well, Eufinger had always been a cretin anyway.
The captain's voice shook me awake. "What's the
status on the transwarp appliance?"
I had to clear my throat. "It's tied in, but... a little
shaky. We have to correlate from here to the engine
room and over to the sensory. Perren's standing by,
and Sarda should be in the sensory any minute."
Kirk left his station and approached me swiftly on
the lower deck, shooting me full of the moment's
urgency. Even though I was standing over him, the
sense of eminence he radiated was staggering. I felt
drawn to his presence, even comforted, in spite of the
battle blazing on the screen behind me. "Do you know-
what to do?" he asked.
"It's been explained to me, sir," I said, obviously
avoiding the real answer.
He seemed to like that response even better than if
I'd told him I knew all about it and understood it
perfectly and could pull it off without a hitch.
"Go," he said. We crossed by each other as he went
to join Spock.
The engineering subsystems monitor was sluggish
under my hands. The functions override and critical
258
regime indicators took too long to respond. Oh, well
... I didn't know for certain what they meant anyway,
so let them take their time. I tapped the com through to
engineering. "Bridge to Perren." "This is Perren."
"I'm at station. Hold while I tie us to Sarda."
"Acknowledged."
A few seconds passed. I was about to call again
when the breathless response came. "Sensory. Sarda
here." He'd been running.
"I'm feeding the coordinates through to both of you.
Keying weapons cross feed now."
"Acknowledged. Drawing power to transwarp."
"Broadcast ratios are confirmed, Piper. Standing
by, J'
My eyes drifted closed. I inhaled and turned. "Cap-
tain? We're ready when you are."
Kirk's expression pasted me to my controls. "Target
the Klingons who have us under tow. I'm going to
move us up into their tractor to tighten the range. We'll
go for a short incursion first." He skipped the steps
altogether, going from Spock's side back down to the
helm, and introduced the controls to their heading.
Beneath us, Enterprise whined against the strain of
impulse power fighting the tractor beams to push
forward into them. Not as impossible as trying to pull
away, but not easy.
"Aye, sir. Targeting." I had to force my fingers to
move. Green lights on the board blinked, confirming
that Sarda was receiving the coordinates.
"Romulan ships moving in for another rush on the
Empire cruisers," Spock reported.
"Just as well," the captain muttered. "All right,
Piper. Ready transwarp flux..."
"Range is uncertain," Sarda warned. "There may
be an echo effect. Brace yourselves."
I held my breath, waiting for the captain's next
259
word, as the two Romulans vessels wheeled into near
space. Echo effect? Did he mean- "Execute !"
I leaned on the emissions toggle. The controls went
wild.
Enterprise's electrical noises drooped out to long
howls. My arms became elastic. I felt my knees fold in
the wrong direction.
The edge of flux--we still felt it, even though the
waves were deflected outward at the attacking ships.
The flushback twisted reality around us. I heard Kirk's
voice as he shouted something to Spock, but the words
made no sense. Still, I clung to the sound.
While Sarda's safety systems directed the actual
flux at our enemies, the dimensional distortion
couldn't be controlled. It fed back on Enterprise,
engulfing us in the same peripheral effect we'd felt
aboard Rex. If this was the fallout, what was it like out
there, in the main stream?
The ship lurched and bolted to starboard, then
righted.
My arms came back. The queer feeling subsided
abruptly, leaving us all breathless.
"Status, Spock!" Kirk demanded.
The ans
wer took too long. "Tractor beams have
released us." Spock's report carried a ring of triumph.
"We are free to maneuver."
He turned to the main viewer. We all did.
The scan of immediate space was horrifying. Parti-
ally dissolved ships floated by us, dismembered, or
spliced together wrong, completely rearranged--when
a Tholian ship drifted past with a Romulan wing pro-
truding from the side of its hull, I had to look away.
Spock, still staring at the screen, stepped down to
the captain's side. Together, with expressions frighten-
ingly alike, they watched what we had done. The area
looked like an interstellar junk yard. The only vessels
260
left maneuverable in immediate space were one Rum-
aiym ship, the unidentified ship, and... Enterprise.
Far off at the edge of the viewer, there was move-
ment. The remaining Tholians, their hatred of disorder
apparently stronger than their desire for transwarp,
cashed in their chips and retreated at high speed. So
did the ships Spock had identified as Wijngan.
The first ship left to move on us was the Daqawlu
vessel, a streamlined yellow and black ship made
mostly of curves. It gathered speed gradually, then
faster, and fired full disruptors.
Enterprise rocked under us. I felt myself hitting the
floor, my hip smashing the edge of the engineering
console as I went down. In the corner of my eye I saw
Kirk dive for the helm control. Impulse power
hummed up from the lower decks, and the starship
tipped away from the Rumaiym beams.
"Shields four and seven down completely, Cap-
tain," Spock shouted over the combined din of disrup-
tor fire and impulse rumble.
Kirk struck an intercom button. "Kirk to Engineer-
ing. Scotty, divert all available power to photon torpe-
does."
"They're too weak, sir," Scott's voice filtered up
from distant decks. "I'll need four minutes to re-
charge. Buy me that time and I'll give you disruption
potential." He sounded better than he had when he'd
been on the bridge. Typical, for Scott, health was
directly related to proximity to the engines.
The arcuate Daqawlu ship had vectored out into
deep space and was diving on us again at attack speed.
"All right," Kirk growled. "We'll do it the hard
way. Piper, enable the flux. Execute on my mark."
The yellow and black ship swooped toward us. Her
phaser port glowed faintly with gathering energy.
"Now, Piper."
Had someone said something?
261
"Piper!"
I flinched, drawn abruptly back to my role in this
awful drama. "Oh... aye, sir... enabled."
"Execute!"
I bit my lip, and fed the impulses through as Scanner
had instructed.
This time the dimensional flux wasn't as distorting.
Had it lost its power? Were we drained already? A
wash of nausea, loss of vision, dizziness... and it was
over. I blinked, and worked to focus on the
viewscreen.
Before us, the Daqawlu ship shimmered briefly as
reality short-circuited. They fell out of attack pattern,
turned belly-up, and swept to one side of us. The ship
left our viewscreen, then veered back in and came to a
stop at a respectable distance. There seemed to be no
other effect.
Kirk moved around the helm module, his eyes fixed
on the drifting enemy vessel. "Spock? No effect on the
ship?"
I'd never seen Spock hesitate. This time, though, he
did. When he moved to his scanners, it was with a
distinct force of will. Slowly, he said, "Confirmed...
the ship is intact." He straightened then, his saturnine
features limned with empathy, gaze rooted to the
Daqawlu ship. "But there are no life forms aboard."
The captain turned sharply. "You mean..."
"Whatever happened during that flux," Spock co n-
firmed, "it took them all with it."
Astonishment filled the captain's face. He stared at
the screen. My nausea returned, and I was surer than
I'd ever been that he and I were nursing the same
thought. It was easier to kill an enemy than condemn
him to eternity between dimensions.
Involuntarily, we moved toward the viewer. Only a
step or two. Enough to seal the horror. Water on a sand castle.
We were shaken from our stupor by the Red Alert
262
klaxon as it whooped to life again. My heart hit my
boots. It couldn't be. It couldn't.
The captain looked at Spock. Feeling it, his first
officer lifted his head from the scanner hood and
somberly confirmed, "More ships, Jim." His nitaglase
eyes shined in the Alert's red glow as he uttered words
more awful than plain information could be. "Battle
cruisers of the Empire."
Go through it all again? We couldn't. I couldn't.
Kirk struck the comlink. "Scott, weapons?"
"Best I can offer is 70 percent range on photons,
sir," the engineer reported stiffly.
From another side of the engineering deck, Perren's
voice interrupted through my monitor's intercom.
"We do have remaining power for another transwarp
flush. Shall I enable?"
Damn him. That meant I had to report to the cap-
tain. I hated myself. "Captain... transwarp is stand-
ing by."
"Man your post," Kirk snapped. "Ready photon
torpedoes."
With a burst of energy, I smacked the comlink and
said, "Stand by, Perren. Do not enable. Repeat, do not
enable." I swung around the chair to the weapons
station and went after the photon controls, steeped in
resurging faith for the man on the lower deck. My
fingers tingled on the triggers, stiff with both relief and
anticipation. We were back on familiar territory--my
kind of ground, and his.
"Captain," Scott hailed. "I canna guarantee that
photon capacity. Energy was drained severely by
those flux beams. I'm rerouting power through im-
pulse reserve."
"Speed it up, mister," Kirk demanded, suddenly
fierce as he dragged his senior officers together and
made them stand in the fire with him. "We're at
battlestations. I want fighting capacity."
The intercom crackled. "Aye, aye, sir."
263
"Piper, man the exterior scanners," the captain
ordered, sending me dashing around the bridge to the
dynoscanners at the opposite side. While I was mov-
ing, Kirk spoke into the intercom. "Mr. Sarda, report
to the bridge immediately."
I almost passed out when I heard that. We were
going to be together--right when we needed to be. I
was glad for that--and for the fact that Captain Kirk
refused to use the transwarp flux again.
"Piper, report the range of those ships."
The scanner light flickered with numbers. I squinted
into it. "Point six-zero light years and closing."
A few moments of
silence gave us no comfort.
During that time, the captain took the helm himseft.
"Spock, divert more power to impulse drive for the
best speed out of the area."
"Very well," Spock said. He crossed to engineering
and played with the controls as fluidly as if he'd
accepted a challenge to play chess. Yet this time, I
knew he was deliberately hiding a deeper concern. It
showed, if subtly, in the way he moved.
I peered into the space scanners. The three Empire
cruisers moved in on one monitor. Hope sank as I
watched them grow nearer, the schematics of their
configuration flashing on two other monitors. And on
the scanner at my right a distant flicker showed me we
were finished. More ships on the way.
I watched the monitor, hypnotized. Four equidistant
points of starlight bloomed against black space. Only
my training kept me from sinking into a chair and
waiting for the end.
"Captain," I murmured, "four more."
Our eyes connected.
Anything he would have said to me was drowned in
the hiss of the turbolift. Sarda glanced at me, a fulfill-
ing glance, ff fleeting, and took in the conditions we
faced.
"Sarda, take weapons control," the captain or-
dered.
Sarda nodded, but said nothing as he hurried to his
station.
Though the captain surely knew there was nothing
left to try against the odds coming at us through open
space, we both knew we would try anything to keep
surviving. Beyond our own survival was the scientific
integrity of the Federation. We would destroy our-
selves to preserve that.
I watched the scanner. Behind the K!ingon battle
cruisers, four new points of light became ivory pearls,
closing at warp speed.
"Scotty, I want those photons, now!" Kirk made no
attempt to hide the urgency.
"Working, sir. I can give you 78 percent range, and
two-thirds power."
"It'll have to do. Sarda, target those new vessels."
"Targeting."
"Range," I rasped. "Two-hundred-eighty-thousand
kilometers and closing." Damn it, did we have to keep
doing this?
"Stay sharp." Kirk's voice was bracing.
In my scanner the four ivory jewels separated like
exploding fireworks, preparing to surround us. They
were closing fast, all teeth bared. As they peeled away