U.S.S. Enterprise
Saucer Section
Little Hope
“I have the tally,” Nicola announced. Since nobody outside Enterprise had seemed interested in talking, the comm officer had switched to the more urgent task of contacting other decks on the saucer section. It was another place where the ship’s computer wasn’t being its usually helpful self. “We have ninety-nine aboard.”
“Which means we have seventy-four aboard the stardrive section,” Pike said. Since Susquatane, it had become the unbearable arithmetic of his life. “Status?”
“Still not moving,” Nhan said. “Some of the Boundless ships are leaving—and a lot of Rengru are following. Maybe they all think we’re worth less, broken in two.”
Or maybe they’re afraid the engineering hull will explode, Pike thought. He dismissed the idea as quickly as he could. He already knew there was nothing to be done for Una and the others. “Look for escape pods.”
Nhan called out. “Captain, we still have boarders on the hull, both sides.”
“Both the Rengru and the Boundless, or both sides of the saucer?”
“Sorry. Both both. The Rengru are just tearing into the hull. Some of the Boundless are at the airlocks.”
“Show me.” With security already stationed inside some of the airlocks, he had delayed checking the feeds from the hull to deal with more pressing matters.
The main viewscreen lit up with the display from the airlock just behind and beneath the bridge. Pike had expected to see armored warriors there, laying siege to his ship. Instead, he was surprised to see the two Boundless warriors outside were battering not the airlock, but one another.
“They’re fighting!” Amin said. “What the hell?”
Nhan squinted at the scene. “Is everyone doing that?”
“I don’t care,” Pike said. “They’re not in yet. Raden, the thrusters are still nominal?”
“Aye.”
“Angle the dorsal exhaust ports perpendicular to the center, as far as the gimbals will allow. Ventrals the opposite direction.”
Raden smiled with recognition. “I think I get you.”
“They want to ride along so bad? Take them for a spin!”
“Baladon, this is unnecessary,” Spock said.
“Really? I am quite enjoying it!”
With hell breaking loose in the space all around, the two armored warriors, made titans by their battlesuits, pounded at one another as they rode the hurtling saucer. With their feet magnetically planted on the hull, there was little either could do to dislodge the other.
Unfortunately for Spock, that fact—plus the bulk of his gear—made it difficult to bring his Suus Mahna training into play. Every step off the surface was a danger, a chance for one of the combatants to knock the other off the starship.
Now there was a new element: the saucer section had started to spin.
As the rotation accelerated, Spock saw Rengru and Boundless warriors alike losing hold and tumbling off the saucer into space. Baladon saw it, too, and laughed. “Wonderful! Hilarious!”
“Some of those are your own people,” Spock said.
“You fret about everything, Vulcan. I’m having the time of my life!” Baladon brought both fists down on Spock’s headgear again and again, jolts that his battlesuit barely cushioned. “You need to smile more!”
Spock hunkered down beneath the rain of blows. He could not defeat a brawler without footwork—and as Enterprise spun ever faster, centripetal force came into play. All the boarders closer to the edge of the saucer were already gone, flung into the dust; only he and Baladon, near the center, remained.
Soon Baladon was all he could see—as the surrounding war and debris vanished into a whirl. Baladon flailed against him, broad blows beginning to miss more than connect—but each strike from the more massive warrior nearly sent Spock to the hull.
The hull! As Baladon wound up for another haymaker, Spock realized what he had to do.
Spock ducked the blow, as he had before—only this time, he did not rise back up to a fighting posture. Instead, he went down to a crouch and slapped his hands on the hull. “Magnetize!”
Baladon laughed—and grabbed Spock in a wrestling hold. “It’s time to go, Vulcan,” he said, and his jetpack activated. It was all physics—Spock’s four points of adherence fighting against Baladon’s upward thrust, even as both struggled against the force generated by the saucer’s now-frenzied rotation. Alarms went off in Spock’s interface. Too much stress on his armor, stress on his body.
Baladon spoke again. “Hey! Don’t—”
An orange flash filled the visual receptors of Spock’s battlesuit. Baladon released him. Spock lost hold of the hull and tumbled outward and forward, barely catching on with his hands. He looked up to see Baladon hurtling end over end into the morass, his jetpack blazing away.
His feet no longer affixed, Spock tried to mash every molecule of his gloves to the hull. Under the ripping force of the saucer’s rotation, his torso and legs floated from the surface, pulling against his grip on the ship.
A phaser blast struck nearby, causing his right hand to reflexively move—an act translated by his battlesuit as an order to let loose. Clinging and dizzy, he looked up—and saw in the open airlock what had happened to Baladon. A spacesuited Christopher Pike stood braced inside the aperture, pointing a phaser at the people he thought were trying to board his ship.
“Captain, it is Spock!” he called out.
Whatever channel he was on, it wasn’t the right one. He did finally think of a way to send a signal—but a second after he did, his left hand came loose too.
Enterprise vanished—along with everything else.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Nhan said as Pike clambered back up the ladder and out of the turbolift shaft.
“Mark the inertial dampers as ‘also barely working,’ ” Amin said.
“I figure that got rid of the boarders,” Pike said, removing his helmet and staggering toward his chair. “Please tell me that’s everybody.”
“We were down to two,” Nhan said. “I saw you shoot the one.”
“The other fell off,” Pike said, collapsing in his chair. His helmet tumbled to the floor and rolled, curving away. “But it was strange. Before he let go, I could have sworn he made a Vulcan salute.”
The mystery moment had little time to sink in, for before Pike could order a stop to the spinning, a final colossal blast ended the conversation altogether.