U.S.S. Enterprise
Orbiting Susquatane
For those aboard a starship, the turn of the new year was a strange thing. Alongside stardates, the calendar year had continued to be used as a marker for many things having nothing to do with the length of the planet Earth’s revolutions around its sun. Academic periods. Tours of duty. The occasional birthday. But divorced from seasons, there was little to differentiate one time of year aboard a starship from another.
Wherever he had lived, Pike had nonetheless seen New Year’s Day as a psychological marker worth celebrating. The official date passing during his science team’s deployment, he had postponed the ship’s party until everyone’s return. The party had never happened. Instead, he belatedly rang in 2257 with funeral bells. It was one of several services he had officiated, ceremonies delayed while his crew attended to more urgent matters.
Making certain, first of all, that the thirty indeed had fallen. Of that, there had been little doubt. Susquatane was a vast planet, already healing itself—but the blast sites at the former camps would stand as memorials for years to come.
The second matter, answering how the camps had been targeted in the first place, took longer to resolve. Most of the science team had been annihilated, leaving Ensign Dietrich the senior officer of a near-empty department. Pike had appointed Number One to step in and try to reconstitute the unit with whatever skilled hands she could find. Together, they had pored over gigaquads of sensor data, not just from Enterprise’s sojourn at Susquatane, but also its earlier survey visit, and everything before and after. Someone had known they were at the planet, and had seen the camps.
It had taken a week before a shadow was spotted on a few milliseconds of imagery—material recorded not by Enterprise, but by the explorers at the equatorial region. An early attempt to telescopically record the habits of a nocturnal avian on a far ridge had picked up the overflight of a probe identical to the one Dietrich had seen before the third bomb fell on the dayside. Pike suspected that was both how the attackers knew what to strike, and where.
Just not why—and he still had no idea who they were. It was glaringly obvious that the five attacking starships were not alone in their actions; nonetheless, for operational purposes Enterprise’s crew had named the assailant group the Susquatane Five, “Essfive” for short. Finding Essfive was the third mission before them, and he could not imagine it would end well. Enterprise’s probes had been able to transmit clearly only until the attackers they were following reached the nebular clouds surrounding Susquatane. Enterprise then received partial signals for a day, and nothing thereafter. In the Pergamum, there was no way of knowing whether the probes had lost their targets, been destroyed, or were simply wandering around aimlessly.
That had left Nhan with the barest of clues regarding where to start looking—quite a contrast to the wealth of data Enterprise had recorded about the bogeys. The shields and hulls of the Essfive starships were quite strong, hardly unexpected for vessels that navigated the nebula; as a result, sensors had not been able to peer through to take life-signs readings. But enough physical features on the vessels had been examined that Nhan was almost ready to say that the hostiles were not Klingons. The technological differences observed in the ships were just too great.
What she could not say, of course, was whether Essfive was in alliance with or in the employ of the Empire. That would be another matter.
Whatever the answer was, Pike knew the Federation would definitely need to know about the attack—and the attackers. That made his course clear.
They would leave Susquatane today, following Vector One into the soup for as far as that long-cold trail would last. Then, in the very likely case that they found nothing, they would exit the nebula, informing Starfleet.
And Pike would inform them of something else: his resignation.
He could see no other path for himself—not when so many had been lost. Rigel VII had devastated him. It was barely a scratch. Three had died there. This was thirty. He had been fooling himself to think that he had the talent for the job—and he certainly didn’t have the stomach for failing at it. He wouldn’t tell anyone. Not Boyce, not Una. No one would change his mind, this time.
But right now, he still had his duty.
“We are assembled here today to pay respects to an officer who served with distinction. I first met Lieutenant Spock of Vulcan . . .”
The walls in Galadjian’s quarters were a shrine to science. On the wall hung diplomas and commendations from the Zefram Cochrane Institute for Advanced Theoretical Physics, the Alpha Centauri Academy of Science and Technology, and a variety of other places of the highest learning. One was entirely written in Vulcan. The professor had further accentuated the sitting room with a bookcase filled with the works of the great engineering masters. And in place of family pictures, Pike saw images of Galadjian shaking hands with three different former presidents of the Federation.
He’s living in his résumé.
Galadjian emerged from his bedroom wearing the dark gray civilian suit Pike had seen him in when he first reported for duty. “Thank you for waiting, Captain. I wanted to change after the funeral.”
“I appreciate your attending. I know you have been on personal leave.”
That was what they were calling it.
“I could hardly have done otherwise,” Galadjian said. “Spock’s was a fine mind. It is a tremendous loss.” He gestured to the chairs by the bookcase. “Please sit.”
Pike did so. He knew attending the funeral could not have been easy for Galadjian—and what he had to say next wasn’t going to be any easier. “Doctor, we have to talk. The Susquatane incident—”
“I take full responsibility for it, Captain. And I assure you I am doing everything in my power to make things right.”
How, exactly? Pike wondered. Galadjian had been holed up here since the disaster. “Since the action, I’ve heard from a number of staffers. Your division—some others. That moment on the bridge—that wasn’t the first time, was it?”
“Of course, I have not been in action before. That is a unique experience—”
“I don’t mean that. I mean the not-knowing-how-things-work.”
“I do know how things work.” Galadjian gestured to the books. “Captain, the principles on which your shields operate were based on papers I wrote twenty years ago.”
“I applaud that, Doctor.” Pike frowned. He was going to have to get at this another way. “Place your right hand in the air.”
“Excuse me?”
“Indulge me.” Pike lifted his right hand into midair, palm out. “Like you were activating the shields at station.”
Galadjian smiled. “Ah. Like this?”
“That’s right. Now increase the intensity of the deflector beam.” He spoke abruptly. “Quick, where’s your hand?”
Galadjian, tentative, drew his hand back. “I cannot see the console, sir.”
“You have to commit it to memory. The greenest ensigns on my bridge can see the interface in their sleep. Nhan could probably do it with her feet.”
“Oh.” Galadjian nodded, understanding.
“There will be times when there will be no power. No gravity. No lights. Failing life-support. And your crewmembers’ lives will depend on your knowledge not just of how things work, but of how to make them work.”
“We knew this would be the case. It is my first starship, after all.”
“I hear things as captain. You’re right—I haven’t gotten down to main engineering enough. I’ve failed you in that. But engineers have come to other officers, who have come to me. They all respect your accomplishments—” Pike stopped, not wanting to continue.
“Please be frank, Captain.”
Pike winced. “They don’t call you Good News. They call you Doctor Oh.”
“Ah, because of my ‘Doctor O’ example.” Galadjian managed a weak grin. “Yes, I have used that before with others.”
“It is the example—but they don’t mean O the variable. They mean ‘Oh’ as in . . .” He stopped.
Galadjian blanched. “Oh. As in ‘Oh, the old professor doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.’ ”
Pike spoke quickly. “Doctor—Avedis—I want to apologize on their behalf and say that this is not normal for Starfleet. Our officers are expected to be people of the highest moral standards, who are trained to treat everyone with respect. Especially superiors. This isn’t the ancient military—we don’t do pejoratives.”
“But your organization’s normal function is also to promote from within, based on merit awarded while on active duty. I have bypassed that.”
Pike couldn’t deny that. “I didn’t object to Starfleet because so much of the current refit came from your work—and none of us expected there would be anything we couldn’t handle. I figured things would improve. But we’re more than halfway through the mission.” He clasped his hands together in advance of the most difficult part. “I took the impression from evaluations that your staff has been covering for you, as much as collaborating with you.”
Galadjian looked lost. “I thought we were working as a team.”
“But you have to come out of the ivory tower and use an actual spanner a time or two. Or, at least, they think you do.”
“Is this what would make me effective? To crawl around in a Joshua’s tube?”
“Jefferies.” Seeing Galadjian’s face fall further, Pike leaned forward. “Look, the service isn’t always fair about these things—and the paths forward aren’t always linear. I started as a test pilot years ago. That’s as solitary as it gets. I didn’t want others dependent on me for their survival—not directly. Not until later, when they flew vessels I’d found to be safe. I wasn’t planning on being responsible for two other people, much less two hundred—and I’m still not sure I’m ready for it.”
Galadjian took a deep breath, as if taking it all in. He straightened. “I am a rational man, Captain; my life is equations. I am no Vulcan or Illyrian, but I admire their discipline, and try to emulate it. When I am shown a problem, I can work it out.” He locked eyes with Pike. “What must I do?”
Pike stood. “Keep my ship running long enough to help me find whoever did this—and then get us out of this hellpit. By yourself or with help, I don’t care which. When we’re out of the nebula, I’ll breathe again.”
Galadjian watched him, before nodding with somber recognition. “And also at that point, I will no longer be your problem.”
“Kind of.”
“Very well. It will be done.”
Pike thanked the doctor. He had told the truth: Galadjian wouldn’t be his problem. None of it would—one way or another.
He saw himself out.