Outside U.S.S. Enterprise
Little Hope
Connolly had gone through so many emotions in the last hour he could barely process them. Commanded to board Enterprise as part of Baladon’s squad, he’d been filled with anger and expectation. Outrage at being ordered to take his own ship; happiness at the thought of seeing it again. Before he could object, Enterprise had struck at the Boundless ships. He’d wanted to cheer then, and had not objected to the mission in the expectation that it was safer to be standing outside Enterprise than to spend another day inside a Boundless battlesuit.
Seeing the wretched defense Enterprise was mounting had given him pause, however—and finally, he had been standing on the lip of the saucer section when the Rengru had attacked.
There hadn’t been time to breathe since.
“This is insane! We’ve got to get out of here!”
With a newly traded-for disruptor cannon in his gloved hands, Baladon laughed. “They don’t frighten me,” he said over his battlesuit comm, unleashing hell on every Rengru that flew past. “I could barely get within torpedo range of this ship before. Now, I’m standing on the hull. I am not going anywhere!”
It wasn’t as if there was anywhere to go—not with Enterprise lurching to and fro and fire coming in from the Rengru warships. The blasts seemed to be targeting the stardrive section; that was the only reason Blue Squad hadn’t been vaporized. As it was, only Baladon, Connolly, and one other trooper remained—
—and that number immediately went down by one as Blue-5 was ripped from the surface by a Rengru fighter. “Help!”
“Becko!” Connolly called out. He hadn’t known his newest teammate long at all—but reflexively he prepared to deactivate his magnetic boots and ignite his jetpack.
Before he could, however, Baladon adjusted his weapon and fired at the struggling pair in the sky, annihilating both the soldier and his abductor.
Connolly shoved at Baladon. “You killed Becko! What did you do that for?”
“That’s what we’re supposed to do!” Baladon shouted, turning to fire in a different direction. “Like we always do!”
“We didn’t hear a breach warning. He still had a chance!”
“Rengies don’t breach armor in a vacuum. They wait until they get you home.”
At the word home, Connolly boiled over. “I’m done!”
“They’re hearing your chatter,” Baladon said. “Stick to the program. Get down there and sabotage the impulse engine.”
“No!” Connolly pointed at the airlock behind the bridge. Several Boundless had arrived there earlier—and were waging a defensive war against the swooping Rengru. “Baladon, forget this! Come with me. Enterprise—she’ll save us, take you wherever you want to go. Home, or—”
“The Boundless are taking me where I wanted to go! My home was nothing. I led an army of fools. Now I’m part of something!”
“Forget it.” Connolly released the charge he’d been ordered to set, allowing it to float away. He started a mad dash across the rear of the saucer section, heading for the bridge airlock.
“Little ingrate. They’re watching you! Get back here before—”
Connolly didn’t hear the rest of Baladon’s sentence, because the audio in his armor cut out, along with everything else on his interface. Blind in the dark, he felt his magnetic boots disengage from Enterprise’s hull—and his jetpack activate.
“No, no, no!” He wanted to flail in anger as he rocketed away. Away, surely, to the troop module that had launched him, where he would be disciplined for his attempt at desertion. But his battlesuit would not let him move. His part of the battle was over.
Combat Module Carrier 539-Aloga
“We’ve got runners,” Dreston said. “We’re bringing them back.”
Kormagan didn’t care a whit about deserters, not now. She was trying to save her wave—three waves—from destruction. She had never before known the Rengru to hit so hard over a spoil of war.
“We’re going to recall everyone and get out of here,” Quadeo transmitted. “I’ve just lost a carrier!”
Kormagan knew. 552-Urdoh had been caught in crossfire between the Hiveships. Three hundred hands would have been lost, minus whatever warriors were out in the modules or in space. “Don’t go yet,” she implored, “or this will all have been for nothing.”
“It already is for nothing! Don’t you see it?”
The wavemaster was momentarily confused, thinking Quadeo was speaking generally. But Dreston piped in to explain.
“Something’s happened to Enterprise,” he shouted. “It’s split in two!”
The image appeared before her. The saucer front of Enterprise had separated from the rear section, even as both portions were still under attack by Rengru. Several of her troops were still aboard the dish.
“Should we order our people back?” Dreston asked.
She hesitated. It really did look like the end of her prize. The starship had come apart at the seams—but there still was a chance that somebody could get aboard for a minute and find something of use. She’d come too far to walk away with nothing.
And with the damage done to three waves, that might be all that remained of her career tomorrow.
“Hemmick, Quadeo—back your carriers out to the cloud line and recall your modules. The Thirty-Niners are going to see this through!”
Outside U.S.S. Enterprise
The chaos surrounding Spock had not abated since the Rengru arrived. What he needed to do involved concentration, a feat nearly impossible given the running battles on the surface of the ship and between ships. Seconds after watching a Boundless member astern from his position rocket away, he had felt one jolt after another shaking the starship under his boots. Powerful explosive bolts fired, propelling Enterprise’s saucer away from the stardrive section.
Things are worse than I surmised, Spock thought. He could wait no longer for the perfect chance. He had to act.
The only shadow he still had to contend with, the Gold Squad subaltern, was engaged in a firefight while covering him at the airlock. That was satisfactory. Spock disliked taking advantage of someone defending him, but he had no choice. Facing the airlock, he activated his laser torch—
—and turned it on himself. Or, rather, the governor module jutting from his back. He had studied it since learning of it in Jayko’s lab; it was supposedly impervious to sabotage, by the battlesuit wearer or a companion. Except in one case: a precision burn by a laser torch, an item not usually in the Boundless warriors’ complement of tools.
It was a dangerous act: like doing laser surgery on himself. The burn had to be in precisely the right place and of the right intensity and duration. He could cut himself, breach the huge reservoir of jetpack fuel he was carrying, or touch off one of his munitions with the tiniest miscalculation. In a bit of irony, his battlesuit’s AI helped him keep his hand steady.
An alarm sounded briefly in Spock’s ears, but nothing in his interfaces changed. He wondered if he’d done something wrong.
“Hey!” Goldsub spun around. “What are you doing there?”
“Apologizing,” Spock said. He fired his disruptor at the hull near his squad leader’s one planted boot. Only partially affixed to Enterprise, it gave way—allowing Spock to fire again. The impact on Goldsub’s personal energy shielding propelled him away from the saucer.
As Goldsub swore, Spock stepped forward, thinking he might need to fire again. But the saucer section was in motion now, heading forward and away from the engineering hull. That made sense; if such a measure were necessary, the crew would be using the saucer to escape a catastrophic blast.
He stowed his weapon, reset his comm channel to one previously prohibited by the governor, and spoke quickly. “Captain Pike, this is Lieutenant Spock. I am on the hull of Enterprise, requesting transport!”
There was no response. He could well imagine no one listening at such a juncture; the transporters might be inoperative as well. He turned back to the airlock—and saw a warrior standing before the closed accessway.
“Well, if it isn’t Spock.” Baladon’s name appeared in Spock’s interface. “Don’t tell me you’re homesick too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Connolly just tried to run. Being at the doorstep seems to have an effect on you people.” He gestured to Spock’s governor unit, still sparking. “Obviously Connolly didn’t have your smarts. It’s a neat trick. I can’t override your battlesuit.”
Spock regarded Baladon. The warrior seemed heedless of the fighting and destruction around him. “What do you intend?”
Baladon pointed to the stardrive section, still being battered by Rengru. “Enterprise is no prize now—for the Boundless, or for me. But I’m sure they’d like a word with you after all this. I’ll settle for bringing you to them instead!”