U.S.S. Enterprise
Saucer Section
Little Hope
“Botany Bay?” Raden asked. “Sounds like it ought to be a storage unit off the terrarium.”
“I think he’s feeling better,” Pike said, grinning down at the Ktarian. “What’s the reference, Nurse?”
Surrounded by a dozen injured crewmembers spread out on mats on the ceiling-turned-floor of sickbay, a dark-haired woman looked up from the data slate she was holding. “Since our usual entertainments are nonfunctional, I’ve been reading to the patients,” Gabriella Carlotti said. “For some reason, we keep coming back to shipwreck stories.”
“I get it,” Pike said, surveying the portable lamps on the deck. “Sure feels like we’re camping.”
“We’re onto the Flying Dutchman,” she said. “I was mentioning that one of the early descriptions of it was in A Voyage to Botany Bay from 1795. It was a ghost ship.”
“Condemned to sail with its lost souls forever, never reaching port,” Pike said with a dramatic flourish. He gestured to her slate. “Let me know if you get to one about a ship on a flammable sea under a poison sky.”
Ten days after the forced landing, Raden seemed a little better, though his road back remained long. Among the many injuries sustained from the episode, his had been among the worst, and like others, he had not been able to draw upon the full medical resources of the starship. Galadjian had quickly gotten life-support working again, but not much else, meaning that much of the sickbay’s diagnostic and curative equipment had no power. Carlotti and Boyce’s other assistant, Yan, had been limited to handheld self-powered implements and hyposprays.
They had many of those, though the trick was reaching them, locked away in their cabinets, suspended above. With all the tremendous technology at their disposal, the most popular implement on every deck had been a stepladder. As easy as jumping was, Pike had found too strong a leap often resulted in a knock on the head.
The past week and a half had also been difficult for those in sickbay, forced to sit on the sidelines as Pike and the able-bodied fought to restore the basics. Raden appealed to Pike. “I never thought much about sea travel where I grew up, but these stories have me wanting to get back on the job. I’d love to pilot something on that ocean.”
“You’d be disappointed,” Pike said. “We’re barely moving. The wave action is measured in centimeters.”
“I never would have thought Enterprise could float,” Carlotti said.
“You’d be surprised. There are many places where she would. Here, it’s no problem—liquid methane is many times denser than water. But we’ll have to restore more power before we can even consider leaving.” Pike looked around at the other patients, listening intently. “So if you need something to do, think of ways of getting off this teardrop. It should be a fun little puzzle.”
“Aye, aye,” Raden said.
Pike rose and made his way past the patients into the hallway, pausing to step over the upper jamb of the propped-open doorway. Every automatic door aboard had needed to be pried and jammed open.
He saw Carlotti step out after him. “Thank you, Captain. You don’t need to come by every day—I know you’re busy, and it’s an effort to get anywhere.”
“Believe me, it’s something I’m happy to do.” You have no idea. “You don’t have to read to everyone either.”
“Well, the doctoring is done, and there’s not much for them to do. The working data slates are tied up with the repair crew.”
“Just tell me when you get to Swiss Family Robinson. I always liked that one.” He turned to go, but paused to take a last look back at sickbay. “Anything else I need to know about?”
“Not since my last report. One hundred people still functioning, at various levels.”
Pike stopped in his tracks. “You mean ninety-nine.”
“No, I mean a hundred. There’s the pregnancy.”
The what? He turned to face her. “Did I know about this?”
“It would have appeared in Doctor Boyce’s report to you at the appropriate time. Don’t you read them?”
Pike shook his head. “He normally just tells me what I need to know.”
“And brings the martinis. You know he wouldn’t talk outside the report. Patient privacy. Besides,” she said, brown eyes beaming, “I wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet.”
Pike did his second double take of the minute. “You? Wow. I had no—” He put up his hands and smiled. “I’ll stow the curiosity. Congratulations.”
“Appreciated.”
“When?”
“Five months from now.”
He took that in. “Okay.”
“Yan knows,” she said, referring to the other medical aide. “I’m fully checked out. No complications during the crash. But there could be other considerations.”
“I’ll say.” Pike looked back at the sickbay with trepidation. “We’re not exactly set up here for a baby, even under normal circumstances.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be here. The mission was supposed to end last week.” She crossed her arms. “If Starfleet had kept us around here longer I’d have asked for a shuttle home.”
He nodded. “We’d all like a shuttle home.” He took a breath. “What are the other considerations?”
“I currently weigh a seventh of what I do on Earth. That might feel delightful for me in a few months, but it won’t really be. I’ll be losing muscle mass when I need it most. It’s more complicated for the fetus. Our systems are evolved for Earth gravity. Here, there could be changes to circulatory, bone, and muscle-tissue development.”
“Children were born in space before artificial gravity.”
“Usually in conditions optimized for it.” She gestured around. “These, as you say, are not.”
“Understood,” he said. For Pike, it was one more thing for him to deal with on top of many others, but for Carlotti—who already had a busy job—it obviously had more important implications. He wanted to sound as supportive as possible. “Tell me what I can do, beyond getting us out of here.”
She had an answer ready. “Gravity boots. Find me a working pair.”
“They’re magnetic. Not really gravity.”
“No, but for now, fighting to walk will keep me in better shape. If we stay here much longer, I’ll need to try something else. Maybe we can build something involving an environment suit. I don’t know how all that works.”
“Someone will.” He didn’t add that he wished he had his engineers.
“But the best thing would be to restore gravity to even part of a deck.”
“Which means we’ve got to get off the ceilings, first.” Pike nodded. “Check, check, and check. I’m on it.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Stay well. Both of you.”
He departed up the hallway, moving in and out of darkness as he went. The crew had broken out portable lights, stationing them at intervals. All of the smaller self-powered devices could run indefinitely, or at least longer than Pike hoped would be necessary.
And how long was that? Carlotti wasn’t alone. Everyone who talked to him always wanted to know the same thing. Pike had thought it best in those cases to give vague assurances in confident tones, and then to move quickly along, acting like he was on the way to do the one thing that would solve all their problems. They’d let him get away with that—at least so far. Carlotti, however, needed specific help, on a deadline. It was motivation he could use.
While in space, Pike had always held isolation and claustrophobia at bay with simple facts. He had controlled his direction, his destination—and he had always been in contact with those back home. Those things did not apply anymore. He knew nothing of Una and his engineers, nor of his kidnapped scientists. Had he really seen a Vulcan salute during the battle? It seemed so hazy now. And he knew even less about Starfleet. All he knew of the Klingon War was that it had broken out a year ago to the day. Nothing more.
He had to keep moving, keep thinking about other things. Helping Carlotti; helping everyone. It was the only way forward in a place where there was nowhere to go.
Lithely scaling a ladder for the umpteenth time that day, Pike heard banging off to one side. He stepped into a corridor onto another deck. No one was to be seen. Slow down, Chris. This isn’t a ghost ship yet.
More clanging, closer by, reassured him of his sanity. He relocated one of the portable lights. The rapping was coming from a panel high in one of the bulkheads. Taking advantage of his lesser weight, Pike easily leapt upward, grabbed the panel frame, and turned a latch.
The panel door fell open, and Galadjian’s sweat-soaked head appeared. “Eureka,” he panted.
“What is it?”
“I have just . . . figured out . . . how to get out of a Jefferies tube.”
“A week and a half. That’s progress.” Pike reached up to help the older man as he shimmied out. Having someone climb down his shoulders was barely a test here.
He allowed Galadjian time to catch his breath. “Do . . . other chief engineers do this sort of thing?”
“Some live for it.” Pike gestured to the opening. “What did you find, Doctor?”
“It is as we thought,” Galadjian said. “We were not able to raise our companions on the communicators in the beginning because of interference coming off the auxiliary power source for the emergency thrusters. They shut down when we landed, of course, but the tsakat event seems to have impacted the tokamak, which continued to generate magnetic—” He stopped and took a breath, clearly too winded to continue. “We should now be able to communicate within ship,” he finally said.
Pike eagerly brought out his communicator, which he’d carried for days purely out of hope. “Pike to listening post.”
Seconds later, a puzzled Nicola responded. “Listening post. Glad to hear from—well, anyone!”
“Small victories.” He’d earlier moved Nicola and some equipment up to the ventral observation room near what was now Enterprise’s apex, in the hopes of hearing anything. “Is that portable receiver we put up there running? The off-the-grid one?”
Nicola was ahead of him. “Yes, sir. Looks like it’s just downloaded a message from Starfleet.”
Galadjian did not appear surprised. “The tokamak’s interference would’ve blocked the extremely low-frequency subspace channel we occasionally get. Perhaps where we are in the Hellmouth is favorable for receipt from faraway sources.”
“How lucky can we get? Nicola, read it.”
“It’s eyes only for you, sir.”
“I don’t give a damn. Give me the gist.”
“It appears to be a few days old.” He paused. “Starfleet has extended our tour in the Pergamum, Captain.”
Pike closed the communicator and looked at Galadjian. “They’re diabolical.”