The Antares Maelstrom
Entering the Maelstrom was not like crossing a line in the sand. The turbulence was fairly mild for the first one hundred kilometers, but increased dramatically the farther Fleetness flew into the roiling plasma currents, which tossed the shuttle back and forth as Sulu struggled to keep it on course despite the violent forces buffeting the vessel and threatening to carry it every which way. Seated at the helm, Sulu was grateful for the safety harness holding him in place during the increasingly rocky ride even as he eyed the status reports with growing concern. The engine and thrusters were already straining; the shields were being battered by contact with the supercharged plasma, working overtime to protect the ship (and Sulu) from lethal amounts of heat and radiation, not to mention random energy discharges. The temperature was already rising within the cockpit, as if he wasn’t already working up a sweat just trying to stay on the Lucky Strike’s trail. An obnoxious crackling noise penetrated the shields and hull, abrading Sulu’s nerves.
No wonder no ship has ever crossed the Maelstrom, Sulu thought. Calling it hazardous is an understatement.
And this particular vessel didn’t help his odds any. True to its name, Fleetness was built for speed, not endurance, typical of the Zephrytes, who, as a culture, were notorious for their impatience. The shuttle was fast, enabling him to catch up with Lucky Strike, more or less, but flimsy by Starfleet standards; certainly, it was not designed to stand up to these extreme conditions. As a sudden swell of plasma jolted Fleetness, accompanied by a blinding electromagnetic flash, Sulu resolved to never again take for granted the Enterprise’s sturdy construction, multiply redundant backup systems, and top-of-the-line engineers.
Where is Scotty, now that I need him?
The view beyond the shuttle’s front ports was a seething, prismatic vortex that was psychedelic enough to give a Medusan a headache. Sulu dialed up the filters to protect his eyes from the glare. Unable to establish visual contact with the Lucky Strike, he could make out only a vague silhouette on the sensor display and try to maintain a fix on the other ship’s warp signature. There was no point in attempting to track its ion trail, as any residual particles would be immediately swept away by the fast-moving currents; it would be like trying to follow a trail of bread crumbs in a hurricane—while trying to survive the hurricane at the same time.
Warning lights flashed on the shuttle’s board, signifying that the shields were already on the verge of collapse. The Maelstrom was too much for Fleetness, which was succumbing to the tempest even faster than Sulu had anticipated. Once the shields went down, other systems were bound to fail as well, leaving nothing but the shuttle’s hull between Sulu and oblivion. The only question was what would kill him first: a hull breach or a life-support failure?
Exiting the Maelstrom was not an option. At the rate the shields were crumbling, he wasn’t going to make it back to regular space before Fleetness was torn to shreds. Forget saving Helena and the other people aboard the Lucky Strike. The rescuer was now in need of rescue, with only one chance remaining to him.
“Sulu to Lucky Strike. Mayday!”
“Sulu?”
The SOS was faint and difficult to decipher, given all the interference from the Maelstrom. Helena had to turn up the volume and adjust the settings on her customized earpiece to make out what Sulu was saying, but once she fully grasped the danger he was in, she immediately broke subspace radio silence to reply.
“Hikaru, this is Helena. Stand by for rescue.”
“Come again?” Dajo called out from the captain’s chair, which pivoted toward Helena. Seat belts kept them both from being tossed by the turbulence. “I told you not to respond!”
“Sorry, Captain, but this is an emergency!” She tersely informed him of Sulu’s desperate circumstances. “That shuttle’s not long for this universe. It can’t stand up to the Maelstrom.”
Not that the Lucky Strike was having an easy time of it. Bigger and more solidly built than whatever secondhand shuttle Sulu had scrounged up, the Lucky Strike was faring better than Sulu’s ride, at least so far, but Helena wasn’t going to breathe easy until they were safely through the Maelstrom, especially since the fabled Passage was proving more elusive than expected, considering the absolutely “authentic” and “reliable” charts Dajo had discreetly acquired back at the station. Helena had her doubts about those charts, and the Passage in general, but she would have to worry about that later, after Sulu was safe. Rescuing him took priority, at least as far as she was concerned.
“That’s not our fault,” Dajo protested. “Nobody asked him to follow us into the Maelstrom!”
“It’s not about assigning blame,” Helena said. “A man’s life is in danger. That’s all that matters now.”
“But what are we supposed to do about it? We don’t have a shuttlebay.”
“Which is why we have to beam him aboard before it’s too late.”
Dajo reacted in alarm. “But that would mean dropping out of warp and lowering our own shields . . . in the middle of the Maelstrom!”
“Just for a few seconds.” Helena couldn’t believe they were wasting time debating this. “For Athena’s sake, are you seriously proposing that we just fly on and let Sulu die?”
“I’m simply thinking of the safety of this ship and our passengers,” Dajo insisted, a trifle defensively. “Look at where we are. We’re already taking our lumps from that murderous tempest outside. Even dropping the shields for a moment is going to take a bite out of the ship and its systems, when we might need everything we’ve got later on.”
“That’s a risk we have to take.” Her temper flared. “I defended you to Sulu, Captain. I told him you couldn’t be a saboteur, that you weren’t the kind of man who would deliberately harm people. Was I wrong about that, Mirsa? Are you going to prove me a liar?”
They glared at each other across the bridge, while the rest of the five-person bridge crew looked on uncomfortably. She wondered whose side they’d take if she had to stage a full-on mutiny for Sulu’s sake. Was she the only one willing to stand up to Dajo over this?
Don’t make me do it, Mirsa. Prove to me that you’re just a scoundrel, not a sociopath.
“Fine,” he caved. “But you owe me one, Helena.”
“Put it on my tab.” She sighed in relief as she got straight to work. “First Officer to Transporter Chief. Prepare for emergency transport, pronto!”
The shuttle’s deflectors were holding on by a thread, while vital circuits were burning out at a rapidly accelerating rate. Noxious fumes polluted the atmosphere inside the cockpit, forcing Sulu to resort to a breathing mask again. The artificial gravity wobbled erratically, making his stomach do flip-flops. Thrusters fought against the plasma currents to keep the shuttle from being swept away from the Lucky Strike. Sparks exploded from an overheated sensor panel; Sulu threw up an arm to shield his face. White-hot sparks scorched his sleeve. Groaning metal confirmed that the hull’s structural integrity was failing.
“Sulu to Lucky Strike,” he said. “Sooner better than later, if you don’t mind.”
“We’re on it,” Helena responded. He could hear the worry in her voice despite the static. “Not going to lie to you, Hikaru. This is going to be dicey. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to lock onto you through all the interference between us, let alone beam you through the soup.”
“Understood.” Sulu winced at the thought of his atoms being strewn across the Maelstrom. “Not much choice about it.”
“Nope,” she agreed. “Grabbing your shuttle now. Hold tight.”
The ship shuddered as a tractor beam from the Lucky Strike seized hold of Fleetness in order to keep the shuttle in a fixed position relative to the larger ship. The bump was difficult to distinguish from the general turbulence, but Sulu thought he felt the difference. That the beam’s grasp put more strain on the shuttle’s much-abused hull was something he chose not to think about. The abused metal was more screaming than groaning now. An unnerving vibration passed from the floor to his own frame, rattling his bones.
“Got you.” Helena spoke quickly as though worried about losing contact with Sulu. “We’re going to need you to boost the transponder signal from your personal communicator as high as it will go, while we do the same with our transporter’s confinement beam.”
He flipped open his communicator and set the signal for maximum. “Done.”
“Good. I’m already patched into our transporter chief. Schultz, are you ready?”
“Just waiting on your order,” a masculine voice answered.
“Ready to drop shields?” she called out to somebody else aboard her ship. “We need to do this in synch. Split-second timing!”
Her signal was breaking up, but Sulu made out a hasty assent in the background. A quick glance at a cracked status display revealed that the shuttle’s shields were at 0.46 percent and falling fast; they were dropping whether Sulu was ready or not. Bulkheads buckled noisily. Microfractures in the hull started to suck the smoky atmosphere into space. He gripped the communicator tightly, holding on to to it for dear life. He shouted over the whistling wind and shrieking metal.
“Helena! Now or never!”
Without waiting for her prompt, he reached out and shut down the shields.
What was left of them, that was.
Sulu staggered onto the bridge of the Lucky Strike, escorted by a guide from the ship’s transporter room. Despite Helena’s fears, he had arrived with all his atoms in place, as far as he could tell, but the turbulence shaking the ship made it difficult to keep one’s balance, so he occasionally had to brace himself against a wall or doorway to stay upright. His legs felt a little rubbery as well.
Could be worse, he thought. A few more moments and—
“Hikaru!” Helena greeted him from her post. “Thank Olympus we got you in time.”
“I was just thinking the same.” He made his way across the lurching bridge, grabbing onto rails and consoles to keep from stumbling. “The shuttle?”
“In pieces,” she reported. “Carried away by the currents.”
Sulu felt a twinge of guilt regarding Fleetness’s destruction. Starfleet would surely compensate the Zephrytes for the loss of their shuttle, but he’d hoped to return it to them in one piece. He couldn’t help feeling that he’d abused their trust to a degree, even if lives had been at stake.
“All here.” He patted himself down, realizing as he did so that he was hardly looking his best. He was sweaty and disheveled; his uniform reeked of soot and smoke. “Not that I’ve been fully checked out by a medic, mind you, but I appear to be fully operational, if a bit worse for wear. Thanks for that.”
“Welcome aboard,” she said warmly. “Sorry I can’t give you the grand tour, but this is not exactly a good time.”
“So I can see.”
He took a moment to survey the bridge. It was hard to miss that the Lucky Strike was taking a pounding. Sulu wondered how much more it could take before going the way of Fleetness. Was his narrow escape merely a temporary reprieve?
“Another rain check, then?” she said.
“Story of our lives,” he replied. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
She smiled wryly. “The lengths some guys will go just to have a drink with a gal.”
“At least you returned my call, lucky for me.”
“You’re welcome,” Dajo said sourly, breaking into their banter. “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant, but if you’re through distracting my first officer, we’ve got a Maelstrom to cross. Find yourself a seat and stay out of the way.”
Sulu bristled at his tone, but let it pass. The Lucky Strike had just saved his life after all. That earned its captain some leeway.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Helena said. “Sulu is a decorated Starfleet officer and one of their very best helmsmen. We’d be fools not to take advantage of that, under the circumstances.”
“We already have a helmsman,” Dajo groused. “And your friend the lieutenant has already complicated matters enough.”
Sulu appreciated Helena’s endorsement, but didn’t want to make waves on an already stormy sea. He also decided that there would be time enough to confront Dajo about recklessly venturing into the Maelstrom if and when they reached Baldur III. He took an unoccupied post at an auxiliary sensor station near Helena and fastened his seat belt.
“I’m ready to pitch in as needed.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Dajo said before turning his chair toward his own helmsman, a young male human, around Chekov’s age, wearing civilian attire like the rest of Dajo’s crew. Sulu noted that the helm and navigation stations had been combined into a single unit so that they could be operated by just one crew member. Dajo tapped his boot impatiently against the floor. “Talk to me, Perez. Where’s the Passage?”
“I don’t know, Captain Dajo, sir.” Perez wiped sweat from his brow. His taut voice and body language betrayed the pressure he was under. “I’m following the course you provided, but I’m not finding anything resembling a safe passage.” He gestured at the seething kaleidoscope of colors on the viewscreen. “Just kilometer after kilometer of . . . that.”
“That can’t be right,” Dajo insisted. “Recalibrate your instrumentation to make sure we’re at the proper coordinates. Maybe a swell nudged us off course without you realizing.”
“I’ve already tried that, Captain. Trust me, we’re precisely where we’re supposed to be. It’s the Passage that’s a no-show.”
“That’s impossible!” Dajo pounded his fist on an armrest. “He gave me a money-back guarantee that those charts were the real deal!”
A sudden suspicion crossed Sulu’s mind.
“Excuse me, Captain. Who exactly sold you those charts?”
“Naylis, if you must know.” Vexed, Dajo apparently saw no reason to protect the current object of his ire. “I paid a hefty price for them too. That greedy Troyian drives a hard bargain.”
I should have known, Sulu thought. “I hate to break it to you, Captain, but Naylis played you, along with the rest of us. He had his own agenda that didn’t involve you or anyone else getting to Baldur III anytime soon.”
He quickly briefed both Dajo and Helena on what Naylis had been up to, leaving out only the part where Naylis had subjected him to the neural neutralizer; there was nothing to be gained by calling his own loyalties or capacities into question. And, come to think of it, the Voice did seem to be finally fading away at last. It was still there, whispering at the back of his mind, but it was getting fainter and easier to ignore.
Everything is fine. There is nothing to worry about . . .
Circumstances begged to differ. Nothing like coming within seconds of being destroyed along with your spacecraft, Sulu surmised, to focus the mind on the here and now. He almost had to admire, however, the way Naylis had shamelessly worked every angle: getting overeager skippers like Dajo to pay to put their ships in danger while simultaneously getting paid by their rivals to keep them from reaching Baldur III soon or ever. Harry Mudd would be proud.
“That perfidious green reprobate!” Dajo raged. “Is there no honor left in this benighted galaxy? No integrity?”
Sulu refrained from commenting, choosing to familiarize himself with the short-range sensor controls instead. That struck him as a better use of his time.
“Nobody deals false with me.” Dajo slammed a fist into his palm. “When I get my hands on him—!”
“You may have to take a number,” Sulu said. “But the point is, I wouldn’t trust any information provided by Naylis, of all people. The Passage is a pipe dream that’s just going to get us all killed.”
A tremor shook the bridge, punctuating his assessment.
“He’s right, Mirsa,” Helena said. “Now that we know the truth, that we got swindled, it’s crazy to keep looking for a passage that may not even exist. We need to cut our losses and get out of the Maelstrom while we still can.”
Dajo hesitated, obviously reluctant to give up on his daring ploy. “But I promised our passengers that I would get them to Baldur III as quickly as possible.”
“I’m guessing you also promised to get them there alive,” Sulu said. “We all know that’s not going to happen if you persist in trying to cross the Maelstrom. You took a gamble, Dajo, but it didn’t pay off. Don’t double down on a bad bet.”
“Listen to him, Mirsa,” Helena urged. “We need to be smart about this.”
“I know, I know,” he said with a sigh. “I just hate to let common sense spoil a properly audacious plan. Playing it safe goes against my grain, not to mention being bad for my image.”
Sulu could sympathize to a degree. He also liked to see himself as something of a swashbuckler, within reason. “But—?”
“Take us out of here, Perez,” the captain ordered. “We gave it our best shot, but the Maelstrom got the better of us. Hightail it back to normal space.”
“Not going to be that easy, Captain,” the young helmsman said. “That last big bump knocked us off course and the astrogator is getting screwy on me, so I can’t get any proper bearings. And the Maelstrom makes it impossible to navigate by any known celestial landmarks. We’re surrounded by constantly shifting rivers of plasma in every direction: ahead, behind, above, below, you name it. To be honest, sir, I can’t even retrace our route, Captain.”
Dajo frowned. “What exactly are you saying, Perez?”
“We’re lost, Captain. Plain and simple.”
A hush fell over the bridge as the full implications of the helmsman’s announcement sunk in. Sulu experienced an unpleasant flash of déjà vu; this was like being stuck on Fleetness all over again. The Lucky Strike couldn’t survive the Maelstrom indefinitely.
“Shield status?” Dajo asked.
A Trill woman at a tactical station responded. Like Perez, she was dressed more casually than a Starfleet crew member. A tank top, sweat pants, and headband made her look off duty by Enterprise standards. A bare midriff exposed her bilateral spotting, at least in part. “Fifty-eight percent, sir, for now.”
“I see,” Dajo said. He didn’t have to spell out what that meant; that the shields were already down nearly forty percent was not a good thing. The clock was ticking and they had no idea which way safety lay. To his credit, Dajo tried to put up a brave front. “More than half strength? That’s better than I expected. Don’t lose heart, ladies and gentlemen, et cetera, things could be worse.”
Then they came under attack.
A dazzling sapphire pulse lit up the viewscreen even as a powerful jolt caused the lights in the bridge to flicker and the screen to blink out. Sulu glanced down at the scanner display at the station he had appropriated. His eyes widened at what he saw on the screen.
“What in Hades was that?” Helena said. “That didn’t feel like turbulence.”
“Because it wasn’t,” Sulu said. “Heads up. We’ve got company!”
Rebooting, the forward viewscreen confirmed his pronouncement. An unfamiliar life-form glided past the screen, only meters away from the prow of the ship. Sulu caught a glimpse of a delta-shaped creature that looked like a cross between a manta ray and, ironically enough, the Starfleet insignia. It was roughly the size of a photon torpedo and its smooth iridescent hide glowed sporadically in places, with the radiant areas shifting constantly along the entity’s surface.
Some sort of natural bioluminescence?
“Reverse that image and freeze it,” Dajo ordered, leaning forward in his chair. “Give it thirty percent of the screen.”
“Got it,” a random crew member said informally. “Here you go.”
A freeze-frame of the creature took over roughly a third of the screen, leaving a real-time view of what lay directly ahead on the bulk of the viewer. Sulu and the others gaped at the unfamiliar life-form.
“Anybody have a clue what exactly that is?” Dajo asked, possibly rhetorically.
“One of the mysterious life-forms rumored to inhabit the Maelstrom,” Sulu assumed. His knowledge of extraterrestrial flora and fauna was not quite as encyclopedic as Mister Spock’s, but Sulu felt confident that the entity on the screen was largely unknown to Federation science. At best it was the stuff of xenocryptozoology—until now. “Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Watch out!” Helena said. “It’s coming around again!”
Looping about, the entity swooped out of the churning plasma to smack against the ship’s shields again. Another sapphire pulse jolted the vessel, causing the lights and circuity to sputter. Sulu moved quickly to power down his sensor controls to keep them from burning out during the surge.
“Shields down to fifty-six percent,” the spotted crew member reported. “Those pulses pack a punch.”
And that was on top of the pummeling the ship was already getting from the Maelstrom, Sulu realized. Their situation had suddenly become even more precarious, unless they could repel the creature.
“Just what we don’t need,” Dajo said. “Energize phasers, Fass. Let’s give that beast a taste of its own medicine.”
“Way ahead of you, Skipper,” the spotted woman said. “Phaser batteries ramping up.”
Sulu frowned at the prospect of immediately firing upon a hitherto undiscovered life-form, but he couldn’t really fault Dajo for taking action to protect his ship and everyone aboard. With any luck, the phasers would only discourage the creature, not damage it.
“Acquiring target,” Fass said. “Opening fire.”
A bright yellow beam sliced through the Maelstrom to strike the underside of the creature as it banked away from the ship, possibly gearing up for another run at the Lucky Strike. The beam hit the life-form head-on, but only seemed to jar it. Its luminous segments flared brightly before dimming back to their original intensity. Sulu squinted at the flier, half relieved, half concerned, that the phaser burst hadn’t impacted the creature more. If anything, the entity appeared to be slightly . . . larger?
What exactly were they dealing with here?
“Don’t look now!” Helena pointed at the upper left-hand corner of the screen, which was partially obscured by the inset image of the life-form’s first appearance. “Our new friend’s not alone!”
Two more of the gliders emerged from the Maelstrom, swooping aggressively toward the ship. Taking initiative, Fass fired the phasers at the new arrivals, who appeared to shrug off the blasts as easily as the first creature. They slammed into the Lucky Strike, delivering jolt after jolt, or maybe sting after sting?
“Increase power to the phasers!” Dajo ordered. “Show them we’re not playing around!”
“I’m trying, Skipper!” Fass said. “They’re not getting the message!”
“Hit them harder, then!”
“Not so fast!” Sulu said. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why is that?” Dajo asked. “And who asked you anyway?”
“I’m running a scan on them,” Sulu said. “As nearly as I can tell, they’re composed of both matter and energy, in ever-shifting proportions. That’s what those glowing patterns are, flowing all over their bodies; every part of the gliders can transition from matter to energy and back again.”
“To what end?” Helena asked.
“Possibly to help them steer through the Maelstrom?” Sulu speculated. “By redistributing or altering their mass as necessary, like an old-fashioned submarine adjusting its buoyancy. In theory, they can make themselves heavier on one side than the other, tilt forward or backward, pitch and yaw, while gliding through the plasma currents.”
It was just a theory, but it made sense to the helmsman in him.
Dajo snorted. “And that means we shouldn’t defend ourselves because . . . ?”
“Don’t you get it?” Sulu asked. “Those creatures can apparently convert energy into body mass at will or by instinct. Blasting them with energy beams isn’t going to hurt them. If anything, it’s only going to fuel them or heal them or even enlarge them!”
“And you got that from a quick, short-range scan?” Dajo challenged him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re just a pilot on the Enterprise, not a science officer.”
“I started out in the astrosciences division, with a sideline in botany,” Sulu said. “I know my physics and biology, and, in my estimation, those gliders are not going to be stopped by phasers, no matter how high powered.”
“Gliders?” Helena echoed. “Is that what we’re calling them?”
Sulu shrugged. “Less of a mouthful than Maelstromites.”
“Works for me,” she said.
Triple shocks rocked the bridge, while further chipping away at the shields.
“Captain?” Fass inquired. “Should I keep firing back?”
Dajo glared at Sulu before shaking his head. “Belay that, Liddia. Let’s try to outrun them instead.” He nodded at the helmsman. “Hit the gas, Perez.”
“Which way, sir?”
“Anywhere but here,” Dajo barked, “and away from those things!”
“Yes, sir!”
The Lucky Strike picked up speed, accelerating into the Maelstrom, which made for an even choppier flight. Sulu tracked the gliders, hoping to see them fall out of range of the sensors as the ship left them behind, but saw the opposite instead.
“Are we losing them?” Dajo asked.
“Negative,” Sulu answered. “They’re hot on our trail, at warp speed, no less, and that’s not all. There’s more converging on us . . . from all directions.”
“Evasive action!” Dajo commanded. “See if you can shake them!”
Easier said than done, Sulu thought. They were in shark-infested waters, so to speak; they were bound to encounter gliders whichever way they fled for as long as they remained lost in the Maelstrom. We’re in their domain.
“Why are they attacking us?” Helena said. “Are we on the menu, or what?”
“I doubt they’re predators,” Sulu answered, although he couldn’t say so for certain. “Hard to imagine that they evolved to feed on the infrequent flesh-and-blood space traveler. Where are their natural prey? I’m not picking up any other organic life-forms on the sensors.”
He wondered if the gliders fed on the Maelstrom itself, or perhaps sustained themselves on some specific kind of particles or radiation found within the coursing plasma streams. Spock would surely have figured that out by now, but Sulu had more urgent matters on his mind.
“So what’s their beef ?” Helena asked. “Why won’t they leave us alone?”
“Aggression, territoriality, fear of the unknown?” Sulu could think of plenty of possible motives. “Who knows?”
“I don’t care why they’re after us,” Dajo said crossly. “I just want to save my ship . . . and our passengers, of course.”
“Speaking of which,” Helena said, “those passengers are getting agitated, understandably.” She fingered her earpiece while manipulating the communications controls, which were lighting up like a swarm of Denebian glowflies. “I’m getting flooded with anxious queries over the intercoms. Want to try calming them down?”
“If I must,” Dajo said grudgingly. “Patch me in shipwide.”
She flicked a switch and gave him a go sign. “You’re on.”
He cleared his throat before hitting the speaker button on his chair. His voice dropped an octave to sound more authoritative.
“Attention, passengers. This is your captain speaking. As you may have noticed, we are experiencing a high degree of turbulence, but there is no cause for alarm,” he lied. “Please keep your seat belts fastened until notified otherwise. Thank you for your cooperation.”
He clicked off the intercom.
“Seal off the bridge and all other essential areas, and close all portholes in the passenger compartments. Restrict turbolifts to authorized personnel only.” He paused to consider his options. “And pipe soothing music into the passenger areas as well.”
Sulu doubted that would be enough to calm the restive passengers. Chances were some of them had already caught a glimpse of a glider or two.
“They’re not buying it, Captain,” Helena said. “They’re scared and angry.”
A dangerous combination, Sulu thought, as if we didn’t have enough problems.
Matters escalated quickly. Within moments, fists and bodies pounded against the sealed entrance, adding to the clamor generated by the Maelstrom and the attacking gliders. Muffled voices could be heard demanding entrance and answers. Sulu could readily imagine the upset civilians on the other side of the sturdy duranium door.
“I was afraid of this.” Dajo sounded as though he’d possibly dealt with irate customers before. “Fass, initiate antihijacking protocol B-2. Public areas only.”
“You got it, Skipper.”
Sulu looked away from the sensor controls, uncertain what Dajo was attempting.
Antihijacking protocol?
Puzzled, he heard the pounding and shouting outside die down, replaced by what sounded like bodies slumping onto the floor. Ominous possibilities flashed through Sulu’s brain, some more appalling than others.
“Excuse me! What just happened?”
“Nothing too dire,” Dajo assured him. “We merely flooded the passenger areas with anesthizine gas. A sensible precaution against pirates and other unwanted visitors, but it works for unruly customers too.”
“Did the trick.” Helena took out her earpiece to give her ear a break. “The lines have gone silent, and none too soon.”
Sulu wasn’t sure what he thought of this. Certainly, the Enterprise had similar security measures in place, but that was for dealing with the likes of Khan and equally serious threats. Then again, he had to admit that gassing the rioting passengers gave the crew one less challenge to deal with. Better perhaps to let the tranquilized passengers sleep through the emergency and hope there would still be a ship for them to wake up to? Sulu had no idea how many escape pods the Lucky Strike was equipped with, but until the ship was clear of the Maelstrom, abandoning ship was just another death sentence.
“Incoming!” Fass shouted. “They’re swarming us!”
Despite the ship’s high-velocity attempts to evade the gliders, the Lucky Strike came under attack again. Sulu’s sensors registered at least nine gliders laying siege to the ship, resulting in a nonstop barrage of high-energy shocks. Based on his scans, he theorized that the gliders were converting subatomic portions of their own mass into energy to power their attacks. And, unluckily for the Lucky Strike, Einstein’s famous equation worked in the gliders’ favor. They could get plenty of firepower from very little mass.
“Oh, hellfire!” Perez exclaimed as sparks erupted from the back of the helm console. Unbuckling his seat belt, he scurried around to address the issue. Removing a rear panel, he hastily inspected the damage while muttering unhappily. “No, no, no. Don’t give up on me, princess.”
“How bad is it?” Dajo asked.
“Give me a moment!” Perez yanked back his hand after getting a mild shock. He blew on his fingers before diving back into the console’s innards. He squinted in concentration. “I think I can bypass the toasted circuits . . . there!”
A triumphant expression lit up his face as he replaced the panel and sprang to his feet, just as a massive plasma swell spun the ship on its axis, hurling him into the ceiling and then dropping him back onto the floor, where he lay groaning.
“Carlos!” Helena shouted.
Automatic gyros righted the ship, but the helm was still vacant. Unbuckling his seat belt, Sulu scrambled across the shuddering bridge to take the controls. To his relief, he found that Perez’s improvised repairs had been effective; the helm controls were responsive, even if the Maelstrom was still fighting the ship every kilometer of the way.
“Somebody get that man a medic!” he ordered, unconcerned with preempting Dajo. Did the Lucky Strike even have a doctor aboard?
Helena broke from her post, producing a medkit from a storage compartment beneath a nearby station. She rushed to Perez’s side, managing the turbulence as best she could, and checked him out with a handheld medical scanner.
“A couple broken ribs, a possible concussion.” She prepared a hypospray. “To help with the pain.”
The hypospray hissed as she administered the dose.
“Chen, Yoder!” Dajo said. “Help Perez to his bunk, then hurry back here.” He glanced at an indicator on his armrest. “Don’t worry. The knockout gas has been vented.”
“That’s not necessary, sir,” Perez protested. “I can manage—”
He tried to sit up, then winced despite the analgesic in his bloodstream. He clutched his side, gasping, as Helena eased him back onto the floor.
“Your spirit does you proud, lad,” Dajo said, “but you’ve done your part. Fate’s taken you out of the game for now. Retire to your berth. That’s an order.” He shifted his gaze to Sulu. “Seems you’ve got the helm after all, Lieutenant. Let’s see how good you are.”
I’ll be better once we get out of the Maelstrom, Sulu thought. He resumed evasive maneuvers, throwing in a few well-honed tricks of his own, but knew too well that he could only buy the Lucky Strike some extra time at best; if the gliders didn’t destroy the ship, the Maelstrom would—eventually. “I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s somewhat less than reassuring.” Dajo surveyed the battered bridge. Scorch marks defaced various surfaces, while a whiff of ozone hung in the air. “I just replaced that helm console a month ago,” he lamented. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the sealed passenger compartments. “You don’t suppose we can tack on an additional charge for wear and tear?”
“Just hope they don’t sue you to the highest court in the quadrant.” Helena packed up the medkit and made her way back to her usual post, while a couple of her fellow crew members removed Perez from the bridge. She watched him go with obvious concern. “Assuming we ever make it out of this maelstrom.”
That’s a big assumption, Sulu thought. Unfortunately.
“Shields down to forty-nine percent,” Fass said. “We’re stretched thin.”
“Divert more power to the deflectors, from wherever you can find it.” Dajo ran a hand through his mane. “Any and all nonessential systems.”
“I suppose I can tap into the phaser batteries,” she replied. “Not doing us much good anyway.”
Sulu knew that was only a stopgap measure. Between the gliders and the Maelstrom, the Lucky Strike wasn’t going to make it on its own.
“We need to send a distress signal to the Enterprise,” he said.
“From inside the Maelstrom?” Helen balked at the notion. “Are you serious?”
“If anybody can do it,” he said, encouraging her. “You’re the second-best communications specialist I know.”
“Only the second-best? Is that a challenge?”
He shrugged. “If you want to take it that way.”
“And I don’t suppose you have any suggestions as to how exactly to go about it?”
“Not exactly, but—” A possibility popped into his brain as he thought of Uhura. “Come to think of it, back on the Enterprise a few years ago, our communications officer managed to get a signal through what seemed like an impenetrable barrier, using a subspace bypass circuit.”
He left out the part about the Greek god Apollo so that she wouldn’t think he was feeding her a fairy tale.
“A subspace bypass circuit, you say?” Sulu could practically see the wheels turning inside her head as she sparked to the idea. “That just might work, if we can divert enough juice to the comms to boost the signal sufficiently.”
“Just a minute there!” Dajo said. “We need every bit of available power for the shields. We can’t waste it on some wild experiment!”
“You have a better idea?” Sulu said. “Shoring up the shields for as long as possible is not a long-term solution, and you know it. Sending out a distress signal may be a slim hope, but it’s better than none at all.”
Dajo couldn’t argue with that. He spun his chair toward Helena. “Do you really think you can do this, Helena?”
“No guarantees,” she said. “The ionization from the Maelstrom is going to seriously mess with the harmonics, but Sulu is right. It could be our best shot.”
Dajo gripped the armrests of his chair as the bridge rocked beneath him. He stared glumly at the viewscreen where more gliders could be seen joining the swarm. A sapphire pulse forced him to avert his eyes.
“Go for it,” he said. “And make it snappy.”