Five down, one to go. It had been a long day on the bridge of the Enterprise, one of the longest Kirk had spent in some time, and it wasn’t over yet. Exhausted but too keyed up to stay seated, he paced behind Benson and Waltke at the forward console, his attention fixed upon the tactical diagram superimposed over the image of Kolasi III on the main viewscreen.
His voice was sharper than he intended as he asked Scott, “Are they in position yet?”
“Not yet, sir.” Scott did a better job of masking his fatigue than Kirk had, but it was clear that after nearly two full back-to-back duty shifts, the entire bridge crew was tired and on edge. Monitoring the cat-and-mouse game being played in orbit by the Sagittarius against the Klingon battle cruiser had been a case study in prolonged anxiety. Against all odds, the little scout ship had evaded detection for several hours, timing its deployment runs based on when Kang’s ship seemed to be in one of its extended slow-cruise modes.
Kirk had expected to wait several minutes or even an hour between the launch and placement of each munition. He had not anticipated the degree to which Kang would commit to his tactic of random orbital velocity and position. Four times already the SuvwI’ had nearly caught the Sagittarius in mid-deployment. Since then Nassir had become cautious nearly to the point of paralysis, a reaction that annoyed Kirk even though he understood it.
Coming that close to getting killed could spook anybody. Bad enough Nassir and his people are on such a tiny ship, but the need to do these runs without shields? It’s like asking them to take six consecutive turns in a game of Russian roulette.
Benson muted an alert on the helm. “The SuvwI’ has slowed to one-tenth impulse.”
Hopeful, Kirk asked, “What’s her position?”
“Far side of the planet, sir. They’re also increasing their orbital distance and maneuvering to come around above the rings on their next pass.”
That was the break Kirk needed. “Uhura, tell Sagittarius to go now!”
As she relayed his order via her improvised squelch channel, Kirk left the command well to stand behind Scott. “Now for the hard part. If they’re lucky, they’ll have that mine deployed in ninety seconds. Then the question becomes: Do we tell them to lie low for who-knows-how-many-more passes of the SuvwI’? Or do we tell them to make a run for it and hope we can regroup under cover before the Klingons spot us?”
“I’m running the numbers now,” Scott said, keying in figures and formulas at the auxiliary science station. “Factoring in their best sublight speed… the increased distance between the deployment zone and our cover since we started this… and assuming the SuvwI’ holds her current speed…” He frowned and looked up at Kirk. “It’ll be one hell of a close shave, sir.”
“I don’t care, I want them out of there.”
“Unless they lock down that mine in the next fifteen seconds, they won’t—”
Uhura cut in, “Sagittarius reports the last mine is in place.”
“Tell them to make a run for it, now!”
Uhura swiveled her chair back toward her console as Nanjiani called out from the science station, “Captain! Sensors read a surge of ionized gas particles on the far side of the planet! I think the Klingons are accelerating to full impulse!”
“Uhura! Belay my last! Tell Nassir to take cover!” Kirk stared at the main viewscreen, his heart pounding, sweat beading on his forehead. Damn you, Kang.
On the viewscreen, a tiny spark emerged from beyond the curve of the planet’s northern hemisphere. It was so fast that it was almost a streak on the screen rather than a moving point. Kirk’s pulse quickened, and he closed his hands into fists.
Kang is playing games with me. He knows we’re here. Or at least, he suspects it. Either way, he knows we’d need to use the moon for cover, so he’s timing his maneuvers based on what parts of the planet’s orbit we’re unable to see with our sensors at any given time. Clever bastard.
Kirk looked at Nanjiani, who continued to peer into the hooded sensor readout as if it held the secrets of life and death. Which at this moment, Kirk realized, it very well might.
“Mister Nanjiani, do you have a fix on the Sagittarius?”
The young Pakistani man pretended to fine-tune his station’s controls, as if Kirk wouldn’t recognize the telltale signs of a young officer procrastinating while searching for something they thought the commanding officer wanted to hear. “Um… negative, sir. They appear to have gone dark somewhere inside the rings.”
“Inside the rings?” That was not what Kirk had expected to hear. He had assumed Nassir would make a run for the planet’s southern pole, to make use of its magnetic field and the intervening sensor obstruction of the rings themselves.
As if he had heard Kirk’s puzzled thoughts, Scott interjected, “It makes sense, sir. They wouldn’t have reached the polar magnetic field in time.”
“So what are they doing? Just drifting, dead and cold?”
Scott looked as surprised as Kirk felt. “That’d be my guess.”
From the navigator’s post, Waltke looked over at Scott and Kirk. “Sirs? Even powered down, the Sagittarius is still a big hunk of duranium floating in a field of rock and water ice. Is it really possible the Klingons won’t notice them?”
What could Kirk say without harming morale? “Anything’s possible, Ensign.”
“Aye,” Scott said under his breath, “but is it likely?”
A mounting dread left Kirk feeling hollow and nauseated as he pondered the myriad ways this situation could take turns for the worse. “Ask me again in an hour, Scotty.”
Somewhere in the dark that filled the Starship Sagittarius, a sharp crack like the breaking of a fragile bone was followed by a swiftly brightening green luminance: an emergency chemical glow stick came to life as its binary fuel components mixed inside its now bent shell, throwing sickly light onto everything in Commander Clark Terrell’s immediate vicinity.
Other members of the bridge crew ignited their own glow sticks by giving them a quick bend in the middle, producing the satisfying snap of cylinders fracturing inside the transparent flexible sheath. Most of the sticks were the same ugly hue of chartreuse as Terrell’s, but a few had clean white light, which he knew would prove invaluable during repairs.
Maintenance would have to wait. For now, they needed to leave the ship as it was: dark and cold. On the advice of recent transfer Ensign Jamal, Captain Nassir had taken a huge risk. Knowing there was no way to get back behind the planet’s moon or to its previous safe havens inside the planet’s rings before being detected by the Klingon ship’s sensors, he had ordered zh’Firro to dive the ship into the rings and make an emergency all-stop.
At which point he had ordered DeSalle to kill the power. All of it. Warp, impulse, batteries, the whole kaboodle. And he’d done it in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t looking for a debate.
Now the Sagittarius was adrift in the rings of Kolasi III, a slave to its momentum, the planet’s gravity, and whatever random hunks of ice or stone slammed into them. They had no propulsion. No comms or sensors. No life-support. Not even lights or artificial gravity.
Around Terrell the bridge crew floated in the dim radiance of their glow sticks. Everyone was trying to stay in the vicinity of their station, even though all the consoles were dark. At the starboard stations, Dastin and Sorak seemed to be handling the situation well. On the other side of the bridge, Ensign Jamal was doing her best to help stanch the bleeding of a head injury sustained by Ensign Taryl. In the center of the bridge, Captain Nassir hovered above his command chair, while zh’Firro, who had pressed her face into her palms, remained rooted in front of the helm by virtue of having wrapped her legs around the pedestal base of her chair.
I’d better check on her first.
Terrell pushed off a bulkhead, and then off the overhead, to set himself on a course to zh’Firro’s side. He caught the edge of the helm console and halted himself beside the young Andorian zhen. “Sayna? You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said from behind her hands. “I just hate being blind and unable to move.”
“I presume you’re talking about the ship.”
“When I’m flying, I am the ship. You know that.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Sayna. I promise. Hang in there.” He gave her a friendly pat on her shoulder, and then he moved portside, to check on Dastin and Sorak.
When he was closer to them, Terrell realized that Dastin was hyperventilating and that Sorak was holding the young Trill man by one arm while he gently pressed a few fingers of his right hand to the man’s left temple. Terrell dropped his voice to a hush as he asked, “Sorak? What’re you doing?” He wasn’t surprised when Sorak ignored him.
Seconds later, Dastin’s breathing slowed to a normal rhythm, and Sorak removed his hands from the tactical officer. When Dastin opened his eyes, Sorak asked him, “Better?”
The Trill gave the elderly Vulcan a smile. “Much. Thank you.” To their perplexed first officer Dastin explained, “I had a panic attack when the gravity went out. Sorak shared some of his Kolinahr discipline with me, just until I calmed down. I’m okay now, sir. I promise.”
“All right, then. Carry on.” A firm believer in not trying to fix what wasn’t broken, Terrell took his officers at their word and headed for the other side of the bridge.
He was halfway there when someone forced open the door to the bridge: it was medical technician Tan Bao and their temporary CMO, Doctor M’Benga. The physician asked, “Does anyone here need medical help?”
Jamal raised her hand, pointed at Taryl, and replied, “Over here, sir.”
M’Benga and Tan Bao pushed off from the door’s jamb and soared across the bridge, one at a time, to the injured Orion woman’s side. Satisfied that they had matters on the bridge well in hand, Terrell caught the back of Nassir’s chair and looked up at his commanding officer. “Sir, I’d like to head aft to check on engineering.”
Nassir gave him a nod. “Go.”
Another push and Terrell was out the door, into the oval corridor of the main deck. He had never been fond of zero-gravity training exercises as a cadet, but he had been grateful for them more than once during his years in Starfleet. He caromed gently off the bulkheads as he proceeded aft to the ladderway, which led up to the engineering deck or down to the cargo deck. On his way he passed the open doorway to the ship’s science lab, where Lieutenant Vanessa Theriault was working to make sure the lab’s equipment and samples were all secure.
Terrell caught the ladder, halted himself, and with one strong pull sent himself up through the open hatchway to the engineering deck. He caught a safety handle at the top of the ladder and awkwardly swung himself around the corner to join Lieutenant DeSalle at the ship’s master systems display. “Lieutenant, status report.”
DeSalle sleeved some sweat and grime from his brow. “That emergency shutdown fried a few control rods in the impulse reactor, and the warp core’s gonna be a bear to restart. As for the rest? I won’t know how much damage we did to the relays or the rest of the grid until we power back up and see what blows out.”
“Injuries?”
The acting chief engineer picked up a palm light and swung it around the long engineering compartment, halting briefly upon each of the engineers: Threx, Torvin, and Cahow. “Negative, sir. All present and accounted for.”
“Are you sure about that, Lieutenant?”
The question confused DeSalle. To help him out, Terrell dipped his chin to direct the man’s attention downward. When DeSalle turned the palm light upon himself, it illuminated a pen-like metallic rod—a spare part left over from a modified torpedo—wedged into his flank, and a large bloodstain swiftly spreading away from it and down his trouser leg.
Perhaps because he was in shock, DeSalle didn’t seem at all alarmed. “That’s just a flesh wound, sir. Throw a little dermagen on there and I’ll be good as new.”
“Lieutenant, you’re surrounded by a floating bubble of your own blood. About two pints’ worth, I’d say. You’re relieved of duty. Report to sickbay immediately.”
“All right, sir. If you say…” DeSalle’s eyes fluttered closed as he lost consciousness.
Terrell caught the man. “Mister Threx! You have the deck. Crewman Torvin, take the lieutenant to sickbay!”
Torvin pushed off the cold warp reactor with his feet and shot himself like a missile down the length of the deck. He wrapped his arms around DeSalle, pulled him from Terrell’s grasp, and nimbly maneuvered around Terrell toward the ladderway while carrying the man.
“It’s okay, sir, I’ve got him.” The slender young Tiburonian man sent himself and DeSalle down the ladderway together, and in a blur they were gone.
Threx and Cahow floated over to Terrell’s side at the master systems display. Threx wiped some of DeSalle’s blood off the MSD with his sleeve. “Y’know, sir, he’d have been fine for another half hour if you hadn’t said anything.”
“Sure, Threx. At which point he’d have been dead instead of unconscious. Do you and Cahow need an extra set of hands up here ’til Torvin gets back?”
Threx shook his head. “No, sir. We’re good.” The Denobulan flashed a broad smile behind his ragged beard. “Not much we can do ’til skipper says turn the power back on.”
“I suppose that’s—”
A deafening boom rang the ship’s hull like a hammer on a bell. Terrell and the engineers caromed off every hard surface like dice shaken inside a cup. He caught Cahow in midair and held on to her, hoping to use himself as a shield to protect her from further impacts.
As their bodies ran out of momentum, the resonance of the collision was joined by the groans of wrenching hull plates both above and below. Terrell noticed Cahow’s hair smelled like reactor coolant as she trembled in his arms while looking around in terror at their shaken vessel.
Her voice was a stressed whisper: “Holy hell that was loud.”
“It’s okay, Cahow. Sound doesn’t carry in space.”
She scowled at him. “Then why are you whispering too?”
“Touché.” He let go of Cahow and looked around for any obvious signs of serious damage. “As long as the hull wasn’t breached, we should be—” He froze as he looked up through a viewport in the engineering deck’s bulkhead and saw the I.K.S. SuvwI’ cruising above them in all its predatory majesty. “Oh, no. Please, no…. Damn it.”
Cahow and Threx both looked up. She asked, “What’s wrong, sir?”
Terrell’s heart sank. “They’re slowing down. Right above us.”
Repetition had leeched the vitality from Kang’s body and stolen the edge from his focus. Too many hours spent staring at the same stars, the same dusty rings, the same blank sensor screens. He had learned young that hunting often required patience. The ability to wait out one’s prey. But at this point the mission no longer felt like a hunt. Now he was just… waiting.
Anticipation was among the cruelest of states. It was expectation married to hope, but all too often repaid with disappointment. His keen eyes had searched the emptiness of space and the impenetrable belt of storm clouds that ringed Kolasi III in search of a rival that refused to appear.
Damn you, Kirk. I’d hunt you properly if only my superiors would allow it.
The inaction his circumstances had imposed upon him was its own punishment. His heart yearned to race, his hands wanted to swing a bat’leth, his senses craved the scent of blood and the cries of his vanquished foes. Every part of him that was Klingon had to be denied, all so he could… just sit here in his command chair.
Maintaining a stoic façade taxed his patience when his blood burned to take action, any action, just to feel as if he were doing something more than watching time slip through his hands.
He wanted to tell Qovlar to hail the strike team for an update, despite the near impossibility of getting a signal through the storm, but he knew that would do more harm than good. If there was something the strike team needed to know, it might merit the effort. But just to ask them for an update?
If there was anything worth knowing, D’Gol would have contacted the ship, and Qovlar would have alerted me. Pestering them can only make me look anxious. Fearful. Weak.
The stillness that surrounded Kang was maddening. He wanted to leave the command chair, stalk from one station to the next, and check each one for himself. Every ship’s crew harbored at least one incompetent and likely more. Who was to say his ship’s dull blades weren’t on the bridge, missing the clues that would lead them to glorious victory?
But that was a fool’s errand. Every gunner, every sensor officer, every warrior on his bridge knew what he wanted, and they all knew that rich rewards awaited the one who brought it to him. If any of them had even suspected they had found something of note, they would have fallen over one another in a rush to be the first to bring it to Kang’s attention.
Hectoring them would only distract them and waste everyone’s time. That would be the error of a novice, not the action of a seasoned starship commander.
And so Kang suffered the long seconds, the endless minutes, the interminable hours that stretched out behind and ahead of him, leaving him islanded in a sea of boredom.
At least the rings blur past more smoothly now.
Just for the sake of variety, Kang had ordered Larzal to widen the SuvwI’s orbit to allow for an increase in orbital velocity to twenty qams per second, nearly three times faster than the standard. In hours past, he had been able to discern individual rocks and hunks of ice in the planet’s rings. Now it all bled together into a prismatic blur on the viewscreen.
What did I think this would yield? Did I really think a sudden leap in speed would flush out Kirk and his precious Enterprise? That I’d catch them in orbit by surprise?
The only satisfaction the maneuver had given Kang had been a momentary thrill of hard acceleration as the ship’s inertial dampers lagged a fraction of a second behind the sudden kick of the impulse engines. A small and fleeting pleasure, to be sure, but he had reached the point of being grateful for such moments to break up the monotony of—
A ping of sensor contact sounded from a gunner’s console to Kang’s right.
He turned his chair and fixed the junior officer with a fierce stare. “Report!”
Gunner’s Mate Joghur tensed like a prey animal hearing the growl of a targ. He double-checked his readout, and then his shoulders sagged in disappointment. “False alarm, Captain. Just a collision of ice and metallic rock inside the rings ahead of us. Nothing there.”
“All stop!” Kang stood from his chair, energized. “Charge all weapons! Raise shields! Gunner’s Mate, send your sensor data to tactical. Boqor, get me a visual on-screen, full magnification!” Kang’s pulse pounded in his ears. This was the first hint of action he and his crew had seen in days. False alarm or not, he wasn’t going to waste an opportunity for training.
The image on the viewscreen shifted to an enlarged area of the planet’s rings. They scintillated in the daylight like a sea of jewels. Kang searched the rings’ brilliant beauty for any sign of his enemy, but all he found were boulders and icebergs tumbling against one another in their orbit of Kolasi III. “Tactical. Any power readings?”
Boqor reviewed her console’s readouts with care. “None, Captain. All cold.”
Kang’s instincts told him there was something there, but all of his ship’s sensors told him there wasn’t. Doubts darkened his thoughts and dimmed his confidence. Am I trying to find a battle where none exists? Perhaps I should get some sleep.
“Captain?” Boqor left the tactical console to stand in front of Kang’s elevated chair. “Do you want to initiate a search-and-destroy pattern?”
It was not an unreasonable suggestion, but putting it into action would be tedious, at best. Executing a search-and-destroy operation would mean scouring the same patch of the rings for hours, bombarding it with targeted spreads of torpedoes, sweeping it with disruptor beams… and for what?
Kang peered at the rings. They were fairly dense, but nowhere near enough to conceal a Constitution-class starship. It was more likely the gunner’s mate had detected a chunk of rock with trace amounts of heavy elements as it struck a ball of ice. If the Enterprise were anywhere inside the rings, it would be easily visible even without sensors, and that volume of duranium would be impossible to conceal at such short range.
Fek’lhr’s beard, I’m chasing a nIyma.
He settled back into the command chair. “Screen to forward view. Drop shields, weapons to standby. Resume standard orbit. Continue to scan for any sign of the Enterprise.”
Boqor returned to the tactical station without further comment, leaving Kang to reflect in peace. You have me chasing shadows, Kirk. But I’m not done seeking your trail. Not yet.
He imagined what his nemesis might be doing at that moment and had a flash of inspiration—one he intended to investigate during the SuvwI’s next orbit.
You think you’ve outsmarted me, Kirk? Prepare to be proved wrong.
Silence freighted with dread reigned on the Enterprise’s bridge. All eyes were on the main viewscreen, which displayed a magnified image of the Klingon battle cruiser SuvwI’. Without apparent cause it had slowed its orbit and then halted almost directly above the last known coordinates of the Sagittarius.
Watching from the command chair, all Kirk could do was stew in his own anxiety. Sweat built up inside his clenched fists and waves of nausea folded over one another in his gut. If the Klingons had found the Sagittarius, the next move would be Kang’s. The SuvwI’ could vaporize the tiny Archer-class scout ship in an instant with one shot from its forward disruptor cannons or a single torpedo, long before the Enterprise could possibly intervene.
Or, Kirk realized, Kang could beam up its crew and take the ship in tow.
That was a scenario Kirk knew he could not allow. The Sagittarius was one of the newest ships in Starfleet, a state-of-the-art long-range reconnaissance vessel, made for speed and stealth. Kirk and his crew would be required by Starfleet regulations to destroy the Sagittarius rather than permit the Klingons to capture it for reverse engineering.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
Scott approached Kirk’s chair and kept his voice at a discreet volume. “The Klingons are running routine sensor sweeps—so far. But if they switch to an intensive search pattern—”
“We’ll need to intervene. Yes, Mister Scott, I’m well aware.”
There were so many steps Kirk wanted to take in preparation, but he knew most of them would intensify his ship’s thermal and electromagnetic signatures and increase the risk of the Enterprise being detected by the Klingons. Tactically, the smart choice was to keep a low profile.
All he wanted to do was face off with Kang, consequences be damned.
He took a deep breath. What I want isn’t important. What matters is the mission, my crew, my ship, and everyone aboard the Sagittarius. I’m here to serve the Federation, not my ego.
Nanjiani piped up, sounding optimistic for a change. “Captain, the Klingon ship is resuming standard orbital velocity. They’ve powered down their weapons and dropped shields.”
Kirk exhaled in relief, and he heard others do the same around him. All the same, he kept his fists closed until the SuvwI’ disappeared beyond the curve of the planet, and then he opened his hands and wiped them dry on his trouser legs. That was too close.
He turned toward Uhura. “Lieutenant, can you raise the Sagittarius?”
“Negative, sir. They lost comms when they shut down their power.”
That posed a new wrinkle. “Mister Scott, how do we give Sagittarius the all clear if they have no comms? For that matter, how do we warn them if the SuvwI’ makes another fast run?”
Scott looked at the main viewscreen with an intense expression. Apparently, he hadn’t considered that question until this moment. “Aye, that’s a problem.”
Inspiration brightened Uhura’s expression. “If we destroy the Klingons’ jamming buoy, we’re close enough to hail the Sagittarius crew via their communicators.”
“Aye, lass, but we’d also be announcing our presence to the Klingons.”
Kirk resigned himself to the obvious. “I think that cat’s out of the bag, Scotty.” He swiveled his chair toward the viewscreen. “Benson, adjust our position to give us a clean shot. Waltke, target the buoy with phasers and fire at will. Uhura, as soon as the buoy’s gone, send a coded, tight-beam emergency signal to the Sagittarius crew’s communicators. Tell them to power up and get the hell out of there.”
His crew snapped into action, their efforts coordinated like clockwork. In a matter of seconds Benson maneuvered the Enterprise just far enough from the moon for Waltke to lock phasers onto the buoy, which he destroyed with a single full-power burst. Uhura sent the prerecorded signal to the Sagittarius—and then all Kirk could do was track the SuvwI’ on a tactical readout while waiting to see if the Sagittarius was still operational.
Come on, Nassir. Get your people out of there…
Just when Kirk thought he would need to tell Uhura to belay his last order to Sagittarius, the tiny ship surged back to life. Rolling and yawing, it freed itself from its shallow grave in the planet’s rings, pointed its nose toward the Enterprise, and jumped to maximum impulse. Even knowing full well what the ship could do, Kirk still felt a swell of admiration tinged with envy as the scout ship shot toward his, quite possibly setting a Starfleet speed record as it did so.
Damn, that little ship really moves.
Nanjiani crowed, “Sagittarius is back behind cover!”
“Helm, put us back in the moon’s magnetic shadow.”
“Already halfway there, sir,” Benson replied.
The tactical display, which now had telemetry from the Enterprise’s previously deployed sensor buoy, showed the SuvwI’ coming back around the planet for another pass.
As Kirk expected, the Klingon battle cruiser immediately slowed its orbit. “It would appear Captain Kang and his crew have just figured out we destroyed their jamming buoy.”
Concern put a touch of vibrato in Ensign Waltke’s voice. “Do you think they’ll break orbit and come after us?”
Hoping to allay the navigator’s understandable fear, Kirk said, “I wouldn’t if I were him. Right now he has the advantage of controlling the orbital space, and we’ve betrayed our presence, so we’ve lost the element of surprise—not that I really think we ever had it.” Kirk looked back at Uhura. “Any signal activity on their channel, Lieutenant?”
She put her hand to the transceiver in her ear, listened, and then shook her head. “None, Captain. All quiet on the Klingons’ main frequencies.”
“All right. Hail the Sagittarius via the semaphore system. Offer them help with damage control and have engineering get them what they need. Mister Scott, we’ve all had a long day. I think it’s time we all get whatever rest we can before our landing party tries to come home.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll bring in the B-team.”
Kirk took a moment to rub his itching eyes and massage his throbbing temples while Scott summoned the third-shift bridge crew to relieve the weary first-shift crew who had pulled double duty. He doubted he would get much rest while knowing Spock and the landing party were still in danger, but he owed it to them to try to be at his best when they needed him.
Less than a minute after Scott had put out the call, the turbolift doors opened, and six officers poured out, all of them rested, fresh, and ready. Kirk waited until all the other officers had been relieved before he stood and faced his relief, a short man with deep brown skin and close-cut black hair wearing a gold command tunic—and froze. “Lieutenant Elliot, isn’t it?”
“Aye, sir,” Elliot replied in a rich baritone.
“You were part of the damage-control team on the Constellation.”
“Yes, sir. I helped Mister Scott cross-circuit the warp and impulse controls.”
Kirk nodded and clasped Elliot’s upper arm. “I remember. You did good work that day. I’m glad you were with us.”
“Thank you, sir.”
From the turbolift, Scott cleared his throat to remind Kirk that they were holding the lift car for him. Abashed, Kirk got his mind off the planet-killer and back on his duty. “The Sagittarius is done deploying munitions into the planet’s rings. We’ve had no contact with our landing party, and a lack of traffic on Klingon frequencies suggests they’ve had no contact with theirs. We’ve destroyed their comms-jamming buoy, but the Klingons might deploy another at any time, so maintain alternative communication channels. No other vessels have been detected in the system, all decks are secure, yellow alert is in effect.”
“Understood, Captain. I relieve you.”
“I stand relieved. Mister Elliot, you have the conn.”
Kirk left the command chair to Elliot and joined the rest of the first-shift team inside the turbolift. As soon as he stepped in, Scott told the computer, “Deck three,” and gave the throttle a turn, sending the lift car into a smooth, quiet descent. Within moments it arrived on deck three, and the doors slid open. Stepping out, Kirk paused to give his officers an encouraging smile.
“Sleep fast, everyone. Tomorrow’s coming a lot sooner than we’d like.”