Swift but precise: that was Spock’s mantra as he and Sulu completed the preflight check of all key systems on the shuttlecraft Kepler. Sulu had focused on verifying the flight controls and navigational system, while Spock had concentrated on performing safety reviews of the fuel system, impulse core, landing gear, and life-support module. By his best estimate, Spock knew they would be finished with some time to spare, so long as they weren’t interrupted.
Behind them, their five passengers, who all wore the same jungle-camouflage jumpsuits and ponchos as Spock and Sulu, spent the last few seconds before launch testing the fidelity of their seats’ five-point restraint harnesses.
Captain Kirk’s voice belted from the overhead comm: “Spock! ETA to launch?”
“Ninety seconds, Captain. Completing final flight check now.”
“That’s cutting it close, Spock. The Klingons are almost here. If you don’t get that shuttle beneath the cloud cover before they make orbit—”
“I am aware of the need for urgency, Captain. Spock out.” It was technically a breach of protocol for Spock to close the channel without the captain’s consent, but he had served with James Kirk long enough to know that the man was not one to insist upon formalities.
So much for avoiding interruptions.
From outside the ship came the dull thump of a cargo panel being closed, and then the heavy thud of the portside hatch being sealed. A different voice, a woman’s this time, said via the comm, “Kepler, this is Enterprise flight ops. Your gear’s been stowed, hatch secured. Deck crew is clearing the shuttlebay. You’ll be clear to launch in fifteen seconds.”
“Acknowledged, flight ops. Kepler standing by to launch.” Spock closed the channel. “Mister Sulu, for our own safety, we will need to keep the blast shutters raised once we enter the planet’s atmosphere. Do you wish to raise the shutters now? Or would you prefer to wait until after we launch?”
“We can raise them now.” Sulu made a few adjustments on his console. “I can fly on instruments alone. Might as well spare ourselves the distraction of closing them in-flight.”
“Logical.” With one touch on the control console, Spock activated the duranium blast shutters that covered the shuttlecraft’s three forward viewports. It took a few seconds for the trio of panels to slide up and lock into position. “Blast shutters secured.”
“Kepler, Enterprise flight ops. Shuttlebay is depressurized, outer doors are open. All systems green, you are go for launch. Acknowledge.”
This time Sulu answered the comm. “Flight ops, Kepler. Copy that. Lifting off in three… two… one.” With a pass of his hand over the controls, Sulu gradually powered up the shuttle’s underside thrusters, lifting the craft gently from the deck. The Kepler’s hull resonated with the low purr of well-tuned engines. Another fleeting touch of his fingertips nudged the shuttlecraft forward, giving Spock a mild but not unpleasant sensation of being pushed backward into his chair. It was one of the most graceful lift-offs Spock had experienced during his time in Starfleet, a testament to Sulu’s exceptional skill as a pilot.
Sulu kept his eyes on his instrument panel. “Clearing shuttlebay doors in three… two… one. Clear.” Another half g of force told Spock that Sulu had accelerated slightly. “Coming about, bearing one-four-four mark nine. Current speed, three thousand meters per second.”
“Take us into the atmosphere, Mister Sulu. Accelerate at your discretion.”
“Yes, sir.” The purr of the engines rose in pitch and frequency to a steady humming as Sulu increased the Kepler’s speed and banked into a shallow dive toward Kolasi III.
From the passenger area behind Spock and Sulu came a pitiable groaning.
Despite the restraint of his five-point safety harness, Spock swiveled his chair and turned his head far enough to see that the source of the sickly noises was Doctor Lisa Babitz. Seated just behind the portside hatch, the lanky blonde physician looked distraught. She pressed her right hand to her abdomen, and used her left hand to cover her mouth as she convulsed in what appeared to be a bout of dry heaves.
“Doctor Babitz, do you need assistance?”
Babitz winced, swallowed hard, and grimaced. “I’m fine. I just never liked riding in shuttles, not even in the best of conditions.” A sudden lurch rocked the Kepler, to Babitz’s apparent dismay. “Which these most certainly aren’t.”
Chekov, who was seated on the starboard side across from Babitz, tried to extend the doctor a comforting hand. “It will be okay, Doctor. Just try to relax.”
His advice seemed only to vex her. “How the hell am I supposed to relax in this situation?”
“Well, for a start, you could put your arms down.”
She looked at Chekov as if she thought him insane. “Put them down? Where?”
“Your chair does have armrests, Doctor.”
She rolled her eyes. “These filthy things? Yeah, right. I’m not touching anything in here.”
Spock grew concerned about the Sagittarius’s chief medical officer’s state of mind. “Doctor, what is the root of your concern about the interior of this spacecraft?”
“I wouldn’t have any concerns if your people had let me disinfect it before they strapped me into this chair like some kind of mental patient.”
Her complaint perplexed Security Officer Singh. “Disinfect? Doctor, this entire vessel was just stripped to spaceframe and reassembled from the deck up over the past several hours.”
“Yeah, I know—but was it cleaned? Did anybody think to wash this flying bacteria can?”
Master Chief Ilucci, who was seated to starboard directly behind Spock, leaned forward as far as his seat’s harness would allow. “Sorry, guys, I guess we should’ve mentioned this earlier. The doc’s a bit of a germophobe.”
Chekov’s normally cheerful disposition melted into weary disgust. “Now they tell us.”
The hull of the Kepler started to shake—infrequently and mildly at first, and then with greater vigor and more steadily. The overhead lights flickered and the forward control panels stuttered on and off as a steady rumbling of turbulence assailed the tiny craft.
Sulu remained strangely calm as he declared for all to hear, “Well, Doc, if you’ve enjoyed the first part of our ride, you’re gonna love what comes next.”
Hurricane gales howled like banshees as the shuttlecraft went dark and dropped like a stone for nearly a second. As the lights hiccuped back on, along with main power, everyone except Spock and Sulu wore matching expressions of existential terror.
Despite the groaning of the engines and the shrieking wind, Spock’s sensitive Vulcan ears heard Doctor Babitz mumble in fear and despair, “Please, for the love of all that’s holy… kill me now.”
Kirk counted the seconds while he stared at the bridge’s main viewscreen. The image of the shuttlecraft Kepler shrank rapidly as the tiny craft sped toward the atmosphere of Kolasi III. At the same time, he was keenly aware of the moving icon on the forward console’s tactical scanner: the one that represented Kang’s swiftly approaching battle cruiser.
He knew the prudent thing to do would be to move the Enterprise and the Sagittarius to cover now, ahead of the SuvwI’s arrival—but if the Kepler met with any kind of delay that led to it being spotted by the Klingons, Kang might well order his gunners to open fire and destroy the shuttlecraft. It was up to Kirk to make sure that didn’t happen. Until he was certain the Kepler would enter the storm and evade the Klingons’ sensors, he had a duty to keep his ship here, ready to intervene, no matter the cost.
Kang won’t hesitate to fire on a defenseless Starfleet shuttle, but he’ll think twice before squaring off with the Enterprise. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
Ensign Waltke turned to look at Kirk. “Captain, the SuvwI’ is forty-five seconds from visual contact. Should we raise shields?”
“No. They don’t have line of sight yet, but they’d read the residual energy from our shields instantly.” Kirk looked to starboard, hoping for better news. “Mister Nanjiani. How long until the Kepler enters the storm?”
“Twenty-five seconds, Captain.”
Helm Officer Benson was unable to hide the dismay in her voice. “Which means if we’re lucky, we’ll have twenty seconds to make it to cover.”
And I chided Spock for cutting it close!
He looked toward Scott, who sat at the engineering station. “Scotty, we’ll need to push the impulse engines from dead stop to emergency overdrive. Will they be able to take that?”
“Aye, sir. You have my word.”
“All I ever needed. Lieutenant Benson, as soon as Mister Nanjiani confirms the Kepler is safe, set course for the planet’s moon, maximum impulse, and get us under its southern pole.”
“Aye, sir,” Benson said, already programming the helm for the emergency run to cover.
Kirk turned his chair to look aft. “Lieutenant Uhura, hail the Sagittarius on a secure data channel. Tell Captain Nassir to take his ship behind the moon now. We’ll follow directly.”
“Transmitting now.” Kirk was turning his chair for another look at the tactical display when Uhura added, “Captain, Sagittarius replies, ‘We leave when you do.’ ”
Kirk frowned, but the truth was he didn’t blame Nassir for not taking the safe way out. Nassir’s people were on the Kepler, same as Kirk’s.
“Ten seconds,” Nanjiani announced, shifting his weight nervously, like a young child with an overly full bladder.
“Steady,” Kirk said. “Benson, when I say go, push the impulse engines to maximum. Bypass the safeties, put them into overdrive. Keep us at full thrust until we’re inside the moon’s gravitational field, and then let it slingshot us to cover on the far side.”
Benson nodded her understanding as Nanjiani started his final countdown.
“Five… four… three… two… one! Kepler is out of sensor contact.”
Kirk almost launched himself from his chair as he snapped, “Go!”
Accelerating from a dead stop to overdrive full impulse in the blink of an eye was more than the ship’s inertial dampers had been built to handle. The drastic burst of speed slammed Kirk back into his command chair almost hard enough to give him whiplash, and it held him there for a few seconds until the ship’s delta-v dropped to a level the inertial dampers could match. Kolasi III’s airless, reddish moon swelled to fill the viewscreen.
“Ten seconds until the Klingons have line of sight,” Nanjiani called out.
“Cut engines!”
Benson shut down the impulse drive, and as Kirk had hoped, the Enterprise soared under the moon’s southern pole and then, snared by its gravity, followed its upward curve. Meanwhile, the faster and far more agile Sagittarius shot past the Enterprise in a pale blue-gray blur that quickly vanished beyond the moon’s horizon.
Eyes fixed upon the hooded sensor display, Nanjiani declared, “Five… four… three—and we’re clear.” He sucked in a deep breath, and then purged his anxiety with a long exhalation.
“Well done, everybody. Lieutenant Benson, slow us down, and then bring us to a stop when we’re at our most hidden. Mister Scott, take the ship into low-power mode. Minimize our heat and energy signatures as best you can.”
“Rig for silent running. Aye, sir.”
Kirk sat back and let his people do their jobs. On the viewscreen, the dark side of Kolasi III’s moon was barely visible. That was just as well, he decided. If this side of the moon was in shadow, then so were the Enterprise and the Sagittarius.
What now would follow, Kirk knew, was going to be the hardest part of any mission for a commanding officer: the waiting. He and his colleagues had done all they could up to this point. The landing party had prepared to the best of the crew’s ability, and they had done their part, maneuvering on a fast-approach trajectory into some of the most violent atmospheric conditions Kirk had ever seen. He and the rest of the Enterprise and Sagittarius crews had stayed in position, defending the shuttlecraft’s descent into danger, until the very last moment.
What happened next was, for the most part, out of Kirk’s control.
Would the shuttlecraft survive its journey to the planet’s surface? What would the landing party encounter after they arrived? Would they all make it back? Or would Kirk soon be writing another heartfelt letter of condolence to a grieving spouse, parent, or child? One that would be delivered in person by a pair of Starfleet officers attired in dress uniforms—the last thing any relative of a member of Starfleet ever wanted to see arrive unannounced on their doorstep.
I’ve written too many of those damn letters. And I still owe one to Matt Decker’s wife, and his son, Will…. But what do I tell them? Do I lie about his suicide? Call him a hero?
It likely would be at least several hours before the Enterprise would receive any word from the landing party. Kirk hoped that by then he and Mister Scott would think of a plan for bringing the Kepler safely back aboard without instigating a new round of armed conflict between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
Kirk stood and headed for the turbolift. “Mister Scott, you have the conn. If there’s any change in the situation, alert me immediately.”
“Aye, sir.” Scott took Kirk’s place in the command chair.
The turbolift doors opened. Kirk stepped inside alone and took hold of the throttle as the doors slid closed. “Deck three.” With a pleasing hum the lift car started its descent.
Though Kirk would never leave the bridge of his ship during a crisis, he knew that the Enterprise and the Sagittarius both were safe for the moment, the fate of the landing party was out of his hands… and there was a long-overdue letter it was time for him to write.
Flying by instruments through a maelstrom was a lot like simulator training, only more chaotic and with a very real possibility of actually dying. Sulu had learned to pilot all sorts of machines—aircraft, spacecraft, even a few submersibles. What he had always enjoyed about flying was the experience of seeing his environment shift around him as he raced through it. Piloting by gauges alone, with the blast shutters up, felt unnatural to him. He struggled to monitor all the readouts at once and then transform that information into a real-time understanding of where his vessel was, where it was going, and how fast it was getting there.
He couldn’t admit that to Spock. The first officer had no patience for the doubts or insecurities of others. Sulu was sure that if he had confessed his misgivings about piloting the Kepler into the planet’s insane tropical storm on instruments alone, Spock would have replaced him with someone else—or possibly even insisted on piloting the shuttlecraft himself.
A sound like a bomb going off rocked the Kepler and nearly sent it into a barrel roll before Sulu recovered control. Even as he forced the shuttle back into a shallow descent, his hands trembled from adrenaline overload.
Keep it together. Stay focused. Check your gauges. Watch your scanner—
His last glimpse of the sensor readout before it went dark showed the blue circular icons representing the Enterprise and the Sagittarius vanishing from the scope, and a triangular red icon denoting the Klingon battle cruiser swinging through a wide arcing turn into orbit above. In the space of a few seconds the landing party’s only friends for several light-years disappeared, and their worst enemies took up station over their heads.
Now this feels real. The tactical screen went dark. Sulu forced himself not to worry about it. That’s fine. One less gauge to watch.
An ear-splitting screech like the cry of a giant steel eagle made Sulu wince. He felt the temperature inside the Kepler rise a few degrees and realized they had been struck by lightning.
Tell me the insulation is holding.
So far the gauges seemed to still read true. The interior sensors had picked up an elevated level of ozone in the passenger compartment, but it wasn’t high enough to pose a threat. The exterior sensors showed little more than static and garbled readings.
If we lose those, I won’t be able to land by instruments. And who knows what’ll happen if we lower the blast shutters?
Sulu fought with the sluggish, heavy controls to slow the shuttlecraft’s descent. “Mister Spock? We have an exterior sensor malfunction. Can you verify?”
Spock, who looked as placid as if this were a simulation, checked his console. “Confirmed. Main circuit damaged by overload. Automatic uplink to secondary circuit has failed. I will attempt to engage it manually.” The first officer flipped some switches and remotely rewired the Kepler’s sensor system—a feat Sulu didn’t follow but most certainly appreciated as the readouts came back into focus, confirming there was solid ground several dozen kilometers below their position.
Now we just need to get there alive.
They would also need to find a way to get off the planet alive, in spite of the malevolent welcoming committee Kang and his ship were certain to provide—but that was a dilemma for later. Right now, Sulu had to contend with winds blowing at more than five hundred kilometers per hour, peals of thunder that could shake the bulkheads off the Kepler’s spaceframe, and lightning bolts that could cut the shuttle clean in half. And he had to do it all blind, with nothing to guide him but numbers on a panel.
It was for the best, he knew that. He had learned the hard way as a youth that in a storm, or a fog bank, or especially the deceptively clear environs of deep space, a human pilot simply could not trust their eyes and ears. It was too easy for human senses to become confused, especially in the air or in the weightlessness of space. A pilot flying by eye would swear they were upright and climbing while pushing their craft into an inverted dive. Their first clue that they had made a mistake would be the moment they hit the ground.
In situations like this, Sulu knew his physical senses could not be trusted. His shuttle’s flight instruments, as long as they remained insulated from corrupting damage, would be far more reliable than his own eyes. The gauges knew whether he was flying level or keeping true to his heading, even when he didn’t.
Learning to trust the instruments was something many novice pilots found hard to do. Sulu had been one of them. He had grown up thinking of himself as an instinctive pilot. As a child he had flown hang gliders. In his early teens he had graduated to wingsuits. Before he finished high school and applied to the Academy, he had already begun training to fly antique rotary-wing aircraft, or “helicopters,” as they had been called.
But his early successes had made him cocky. Overconfident. Only a close brush with calamity during his fly-by-instruments training, and a last-second rescue by his instructor, had taught Sulu to approach his passion with a modicum of humility. To remember that being able to pilot a machine through space and sky did not make him a god, just a very lucky person.
A wave of disorienting energy swept over the shuttle, dimming the lights and scrambling the readouts. Sulu heard the impulse engine cut out, and his stomach leapt into his throat as the Kepler plummeted. “Ionic disruption wave! Engaging thrusters!”
The hydrox-fueled thrusters took a second or two to kick in. Before they did the shuttle began whirling in a flat spin, a victim of gravity and hurricane-force winds.
A low roar of ignition shook the shuttlecraft. Sulu kept his eyes on his gauges as he fired the thrusters to halt the Kepler’s spin and then steered into the strongest headwind. The sudden reversals and competing forces of momentum and acceleration tossed Spock and the rest of the landing party around like rag dolls. Only their seats’ harnesses kept them from bouncing around inside the shuttle like dice on a craps table.
Good thing we added harnesses.
He had just brought the shuttle’s attitude back to level when the impulse engine kicked back on, greatly reducing the effects of turbulence on the hull. He disengaged the emergency thrusters to save hydrox fuel, and then he spared a moment to look back at his shaken passengers. “Everybody okay?”
Ilucci looked nauseated but gave him a thumbs-up. “Five by five, sir.”
Apparently in shock, Chekov said, “Define okay.”
Sulu made a special effort to look over his shoulder at Doctor Babitz, who was sitting directly behind him. The slender woman was hanging on to her harness’s straps for dear life as tears rolled from her squeezed-shut eyes. Worried, Sulu called out, “Doc? You okay?”
Babitz shook her head no and kept her jaw clenched.
Sulu poured on the speed and sent the Kepler screaming through a stormhead like a duranium bullet. “Hang on, Doc, we’re almost there. You’re gonna make it, I promise.”
She reacted with a cross between a sob and a hysterical laugh of despair. “Don’t say that. The hope of dying is the only thing keeping me alive.”