U.S.S. Enterprise
Saucer Section
Defoe
“I’d like to say it feels good to be back in the captain’s chair,” Pike said. “Or, rather, somewhat adjacent to it. But this is pretty strange.”
It was a scene no Starfleet training exercise had ever prepared him for. The three officers in the command well dangled, suspended, meters in the air near their upside-down seats and controls. Workers had fastened bungee harnesses to the deck over their heads, and at multiple points to the frame of the dome below. Bobbing, even in low gravity, over a big transparent opening to the sea was unnerving, at best.
“Carabiners holding,” Amin said at the helm.
Suspended near the other seat, Nhan asked, “Why am I doing this again?”
“Carlotti’s orders,” Pike said. “She doesn’t want Raden on any thrill rides, so Jamila’s covering for him. And I’m not lighting engines without someone at navigation.”
“And, oh, yes. I volunteered,” Nhan said. “That’ll teach me.”
Only one other person was on the bridge—or rather, on the bulkhead. Galadjian was netted sideways to the wall, just beneath his engineering station. Looking up, he could monitor it. “I’m not sure what the awards committee would think if they could see me now,” he said.
His was the low-tech solution they’d chosen for many of the ninety-nine aboard; officers were slung, snugly wrapped, in sleeping bags or other fabric envelopes affixed to the bulkheads. All the efforts were to prevent another round of injuries from up becoming down suddenly. Pike didn’t want the weak gravity to lull them into a false sense of security; sudden acceleration and a rough stop were expected.
“All decks sound off,” Pike said. He listened for and received the desired responses—and then made one direct call. “Carlotti, are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Further along in her pregnancy, she was strapped into the most elaborate mechanism they’d fashioned, a gyro chair affixed to a column in sickbay.
“Let’s roll, Jamila.”
“Aye, Captain.” Amin touched a control—and for the first time in months, engines on the saucer section activated for more than a second-long test.
“Thruster engine warm-up complete,” Galadjian said, looking up at his interface. “Readings nominal.”
“Configure boosters,” Pike said. According to Spock and Raden’s plan, they needed to activate specific ones, oriented upward and downward, in order to flip the ship. “Ten percent power, Lieutenant.”
“Ten percent power, aye.”
The saucer rumbled around them.
“Still stuck,” Amin said.
“Twenty,” Pike said.
“Twenty, aye.”
Pike made the mistake of looking down; below, the frigid methane heaved and churned. It was what he was afraid of: breaking the surface tension would require more oomph than might be healthy for his passengers, considering that he intended to instantly crash-land again.
“Ventral thrusters thirty percent, dorsals twenty. Alternate every second. Let’s shake this thing free.”
Amin did as ordered—and the saucer section groaned and rocked. “I think it’s working,” she shouted over the din.
Pike’s body pitched sideways along with Enterprise as a wretched creaking sound assaulted his eardrums. “Fifty percent to both—and hang on!”
The saucer continued to tip—momentarily bobbing on its side, a movement that jerked Pike away from his chair and its controls. Methane streamed down the exterior of the skylight, which allowed in light for the first time in months. Amin, barely clinging to her control station, shouted something inaudible and punched a key.
A sudden lurch—and Enterprise slammed back into the sea, right side up. Bouncing in his personal suspension system, Pike called out, “Cut thrusters!”
The engines juddered and died. Quiet came more quickly than Pike had imagined possible. He hadn’t been conscious for the saucer section’s stone-skipping landing on Defoe months earlier; it had been violent, from what Nhan had said. This time, the woman looked a little green—but otherwise okay.
“That was amazing, and we did it,” Nhan said, pulling at her harness. “And as soon as I get out of this thing, I would like to be excused.”
Cheers wafted up from down the open turbolift shaft. “All decks report,” Pike said. As the responses came in, he couldn’t help but smile. A small thing, in the larger scheme: flipping over a bug that had been on its back, flailing. But now, they again had the chance to go somewhere.
Or not. “I wouldn’t count on the thrusters for much more,” Amin said. “Not until we get back to spacedock.”
“But they fired, didn’t they?”
“Not exactly their standard operating environment.”
“It may not be necessary,” Galadjian said, struggling with the wrapping he was suspended in. “Now that we have righted the saucer, we can finish the repairs on the fusion reactor that powers the impulse drive.”
“What good does the impulse drive do?” Amin asked. “It’s not multidirectional—it just points aft. We need to go up, not forward—and the thrusters alone may not be able to hack it.”
“Enough,” Pike said, detaching himself. “We’ll move on that next. For now, let’s take the win.” Then he placed his feet on the deck—and sat in his chair.
It felt marvelous.
Skon’s World
“You wouldn’t believe the difference,” Pike said over Spock’s comm system. The captain was ebullient over the righting of the saucer section, and excited to be broadcasting from his bridge, now the uppermost portion of the vessel. “I don’t know what it is,” Pike said, “but I’ll take weightlessness in a heartbeat over living in a ship where down is up.”
Spock might have made some comment about the phenomenon, but he was marveling at a discovery of his own. Skon’s World’s tallest mountains, a kilometer high, loomed ahead of him across a glacier flow field rich in nitrogen ices. It had been his destination for months, but finding a route had been difficult given the changeable and sometimes treacherous landscape. Nothing posed a danger to his battlesuit, but he had been forced to rethink his path many times.
Summer was coming for Skon’s World, and the moon’s close approach to the gas giant had brought subtle but detectable changes. The glaciers were shifting—and his sensors detected ever more quakes. Earlier, he had thought it ironic that he was using Boundless technology to take the same kind of seismic readings that he had been taking before his capture. He didn’t have as many thoughts about the Boundless anymore, although Pike often found subjects that were tangential.
“Hey, did you finish Crusoe?” Pike asked.
“Among other texts,” Spock said, clambering over an ice barrier. “I found irony in that the title character was leading an expedition to capture slaves when he was shipwrecked.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Served him right.”
“It is also curious that his rescue of the native he calls Friday was not benevolent, but premeditated, as part of a plan to make another his slave. He sees no shame in the enslavement, because it is a means to an end.”
“And that’s how the Boundless looked at you and our crew.”
“Precisely.” Spock paused on a ledge. “Only, there is a curious thing. Crusoe is deeply conflicted over shedding blood to capture his slave—but he feels he has been forced to it by circumstance. The Boundless wavemaster I dealt with, Kormagan, likewise seemed to harbor some regret. Perhaps it was weariness that I detected; they are many years distant from whatever started their war. But there may be some faint acknowledgment what they are doing is wrong.”
“You’re stranded on a deserted ice world, and you’re trying to reform whole civilizations.” Pike laughed. “Whatever keeps you busy, Spock.”
“I suspect you intend to jest, rather than patronize—but you may encounter the Boundless again after you escape, Captain. You may draw upon my analysis.”
“Of course. Noted.”
Pike left the topic of literature and began talking about possibilities for Enterprise to escape, now that the saucer section was righted. Galadjian and the others faced a new, different set of problems, which Pike described in detail, along with some of their working theories. Spock listened politely, but was far more interested in the mountain farthest to the east. It might be an ice volcano, he suspected; being present on the surface for its eruption would be a rare moment of scientific significance snatched from a year—indeed, a career—that had gone off track.
And there was something else about that place, something he hadn’t mentioned, and wouldn’t.
“The window’s closing. Keep us apprised on your battlesuit’s status,” Pike said, sounding confident. “We’ll get to you before time runs out. I know it now.”
Spock thanked the captain and signed off. In fact, his consumables in a couple of categories had already run out, given the battlesuit system’s inability to find any useful resources in the air or on the surface of Skon’s World. He expected the other levels to drop to zero before long. But as long as his existence served to motivate Pike and crew, he would say nothing.
Enterprise reaching space again was not the means to an end. It was the end. As for Spock’s end, that would come soon enough. He had just one last question to answer first.