“Focus your mind,” Spock said. “Pain is an illusion. Acknowledge it, then put it aside.”
Burnham turned her thoughts back to her childhood, her formative years spent on Vulcan. She imagined herself back in the concave pods of the Vulcan Learning Center in ShiKahr, her proctors stalking the pathways between the students. As Spock repeated the exhortation to move past pain, she heard the voices of her first instructors echoing in her memory.
The lesson was simple. Putting it into practice was not. Stabbing pains flared in her gut and chest, and with each gasp of pain she let slip, she felt her blood losing precious oxygen.
Spock’s calm baritone soothed Burnham’s rising panic. “Master your pain.”
“I’m trying,” she snarled through her clenched jaw. With effort she pulled in a greedy breath, only to feel her lungs burn in response. The core of her being felt as if it were being devoured by fire. No time for this, she told herself. Get up, before it’s too late.
Her body refused to obey. Then she remembered the mantra that so long ago had enabled her to master the Vulcan technique of pain suppression. It was a single line from the poem “Self-Pity” by D. H. Lawrence: I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
With the words came strength. Be a wild thing. Get up and fight!
The pain was still there, but now so was Burnham’s hard-won mental discipline, and she honed the edge of her will until it cut through the pain. Trembling but resolute, she stood and faced Spock. “I’m ready. How do we proceed?”
He tested an adjacent shape on the deck with the toe of his boot. Another flash of electricity compelled him to pull his foot back. “Very carefully,” he said.
The tricorder on Burnham’s hip beeped softly as it counted down the seconds until the poison in their blood asphyxiated them. “We have to move, but to where? What defines a safe step? The shape of a space? The number of sides?”
Spock looked down. “We are both standing in circles,” he noted. “There are no other circles on the deck. If a circle represents ‘one,’ then perhaps two—”
“Would be a teardrop,” Burnham cut in, anticipating his idea. “Something two sided.” She searched the spread of the deck within stepping distance. “I don’t see any.”
“Nor do I. Which seems to rule out defining a simple path.” Spock grimaced, but he fought to regain his composure, then exhaled slowly. “I am all right,” he assured her. He studied the deck with his intense stare. “What was the first thing you observed about this vessel?”
“Symmetry,” Burnham said. With that in mind, she surveyed the room again, starting from the point opposite their own, in front of the far portalway that held the antitoxin mist. “Two circles,” she said as she saw the shapes on the deck. Then she saw that the room’s chaotic design masked a hidden order. “It’s a mirror image! On both the x and y axes.”
“Perhaps there is no single correct path,” Spock said. “So long as we mirror each other’s movements across the deck.”
“Only one way to find out.” Burnham lifted her foot. “On the count of three, put your right foot into the irregular pentagon on your right, and I’ll put my left foot into the one on my left. One. Two. Three!” She and Spock each braved a single step out of their respective circles. In tandem they set their feet into the assigned shapes—and no jolt punished them. “So far, so good. I’ll call out shapes, you match my stride.”
“I will do my best,” Spock said.
Seconds bled away as they navigated their way across the room. Burnham struggled to find the least ambiguous shape for each next step, to avoid confusion regarding into which space she intended for Spock to advance. But each step magnified the pain snaking through her body. The toxin was a dark rider in her blood, delivering its message of agony from one extremity to the next, and threatening with each beat of her heart to break down her mental barriers.
They had almost reached the far circles when she heard a crackling bolt to her right. She halted and looked for Spock. He teetered inside his current space, smoke rising from his left foot. “A minor misstep,” he called out. Tremors in his voice betrayed his worsening condition as he added, “Call the next step.”
“On your left. Irregular hexagon bending toward the center. Left foot first. On two. One. Two!” She stepped forward with her right foot into her mirror-image of the space to which she had sent Spock. Her foot landed a fraction of a second ahead of his, and a searing fork of blue energy lashed out and skewered her from her left clavicle to her right knee. She stumbled as she entered the hexagon and started to drop to one knee.
No! If our movements don’t match—!
On the other side of the room, Spock looked back at Burnham as she lost her balance—and he matched her lurch and accidental genuflection with perfect synchronicity. They were close enough for him to ask in a normal speaking voice, “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Burnham lied. “I’m going to put my left hand on the deck and use it to push myself back to standing.” She didn’t need to direct him to mirror her effort; he did it almost as if it had become instinct to them, as if they had been each other’s reflections all their lives.
Back on her feet, Burnham felt her head swim. She could barely breathe, and her vision softened. Only a few seconds until we’re toast, she realized. They needed to reach the far circles as quickly as possible, but the safest path was going to take too long.
Then logic demands I take the fastest path, not the safest one, Burnham decided.
“Three hops,” she said, barely able to make herself heard without breath. “Start on your left leg.” She needed to tell him the path, but she was afraid she would lose consciousness first. It took all her strength to draw one more fighting breath. “Five. Three. Six.”
“I understand,” Spock said, his own voice a gasp. “Ready.”
She tensed to spring and looked him in the eye. “Go.”
As one they leaped from their matching positions to the nearest pentagons, then to an isosceles triangle. The last step before the final circles was a symmetrical hexagon—
Burnham landed off-balance and had no time to recover. She either had to jump for the exit or splay herself across the floor. Faltering and exhausted, she threw herself at the circle.
She landed short. Spock landed beside her, his footing sure.
Gravity tugged Burnham backward. She windmilled her arms, fighting to force her center of balance forward, but it was of no use. Her left foot shifted backward—and the lightning slammed into her chest, ripping away the last of her breath in a hideous scream.
Then she was in Spock’s arms, both of them cocooned in lightning as he pulled her out of the circles and into the antidote mist. Only as they passed through the vaporous threshold did the lightning release them. Spock let go of Burnham, and they tumbled onto the deck. They both lay there for half a minute, letting the healing mist cascade over them.
The sickness and agony within Burnham faded quickly, and she was able to breathe again without pain. She sat up and checked on Spock, who was in the same sorry state she was. “Thank you,” Burnham said. “If you hadn’t pulled me back—”
“We likely both would have died,” Spock said. “After all, the test was built for two.”
“Well, thank you anyway.”
As the two of them stood, the vessel’s holographic orb reappeared in front of them, its surface bristling with intense energies, and the air pulsating from its acoustic emanations.
Burnham frowned at the lure. “Well, look at this. If it isn’t our own holographic Virgil, come to lead us down to the next circle of Hell.”
“I thought we had dubbed this entity Thumper,” Spock said.
Following the bobbing orb down the next stretch of oval corridor, Burnham replied, “That was when I thought it was our guide.”
“If it is not that, then what is it?”
“Unless we’re careful? A willing accomplice to our murders.”
A special brand of quiet tension reigned on the Shenzhou’s bridge. More than ten minutes had passed since Georgiou had retired to her ready room to continue her heated discussion with Captain Pike in private. She had set the ready room’s door to its privacy mode, and though the compartment was soundproofed, Saru imagined he could feel her anger through the reinforced bulkheads.
As the ranking officer on the bridge, he had chosen to busy himself at his usual station rather than sit idle in the command chair. His motives were, he knew, partly selfish. He had brought back such a wealth of tricorder data from his excursion into the caves that he was unable to resist digging into it, in the hope of unlocking more of Sirsa III’s ancient mysteries.
Even immersed in his work, however, he sensed the anxiety on the bridge. Everyone was keenly aware of the Enterprise looming outside the center viewport, its state-of-the-art shields and weapons likely more than a match for the decades-old technology of the Shenzhou. If Georgiou and Pike failed to reach an accommodation soon—
“Something bad is happening in there,” Oliveira said, looking back from her post at the ops station toward the ready room. “This isn’t going to end well.”
Ensign Detmer, well known for being jumpy under stress, tried to conceal her worry. She snuck a look aft, then asked Oliveira, “What makes you say that?”
Oliveira frowned. “Let’s just say I’m getting a bad vibe off this whole situation.”
Her pronouncement worsened the already failing morale on the bridge, because her hunches had a knack for proving to be correct. In the face of that, what could Saru say that wouldn’t come off as trite?
“Let’s have faith in the captain to sort this out,” he said, hoping to stifle further grim speculations. “Until then, keep your minds on your duties and remain calm.”
His attempt at a pep talk garnered suspicious looks from around the bridge. A far cry from rousing leadership, he brooded, but at least they’ve ceased gossiping.
New analysis reports appeared on his console. Deep scans of the cave art had been processed by the ship’s computer using filters too intensive to run on a tricorder. Saru found himself confronted with a far greater number of etched illustrations than he had dared to think might be down there, and the newly revealed segments were rich with details—especially the ones that surrounded the drawing of the Juggernaut.
Lieutenant Troke, the Shenzhou’s deputy chief of the sciences division under Saru, got up from his console and climbed the steps from his sunken duty station to stand beside Saru’s post. Rows of circular metal cybernetic enhancements set into the Tulian’s teal-blue face reflected light from Saru’s console. “Sir, I’ve been monitoring your analysis of the cave art. I think you’ve made a remarkable find.”
“That much is obvious, Mister Troke.” Saru did his best to be nonchalant when faced with Troke’s augmentations. The Tulians, a cousin species to Bolians, had long ago embraced cybernetic technology with a zeal most Federation cultures had yet to emulate, and their casual fusion of organic tissue and high technology still made Saru uneasy at times.
He pointed a long, bony finger at the complex designs that surrounded the image of the Juggernaut. “What do you make of these elements?”
Troke squinted at the enhanced images, then fiddled absentmindedly with the neural coupling that protruded from his left occiptal lobe. “The beams emerging from the vessel appear to form an ordered pattern at their points of intersection, and again at their points of terminus. Can we isolate those points for analysis, sir?”
“Just a moment.” Saru keyed in the necessary commands. When only the points and their connecting lines remained, he was struck by an odd notion. “These look familiar somehow.”
“I agree,” Troke said. “Could it be a form of writing?”
“Doubtful,” Saru said. “All available evidence suggests the indigenous people relied upon a form of sequential art to express narrative. We found no evidence that they had developed a phonetic or symbolic written language.” He rotated the image and tinkered with manipulating the relationships between the points in three dimensions rather than limiting them to a flat plane. “Could it be a formula?”
Troke shook his head. “There doesn’t seem to be enough data for that.” His expression brightened. “Maybe it’s a molecular structure! Or a map of a single atom.”
Saru felt what he could only describe as a flash of insight. “A map!” He restored the original image of the Juggernaut. “What if these lines indicate that the information was being projected by the vessel for the natives to see and record? If that’s the case, maybe it was trying to show them where it had come from, in a format they would understand.”
Now young Troke nodded. “A constellation map.”
“Exactly.” Saru straightened with pride and towered over Troke. “Of course, there are numerous variables to consider before we can make effective use of this clue. We need to construct a virtual model of the galaxy as it existed approximately nine million years ago. We’ll need to account for stars that have gone supernova in the past nine million years, and rule out those that have formed after that period. We’ll also have to correct for the movement of this star system as it orbited the galactic center and chart its drift away from the galactic plane. Then, using its position as a center point, we’ll have to search for constellation patterns that would have been visible to the naked eye from this world at that time, and then compare any likely matches against known entities in the Federation Galactic Catalog.”
If that list of action items intimidated Troke, he didn’t let it show. Instead he smiled and said, “I’ll have it ready for you in ten minutes, sir.”
“Thank you, Mister Troke.”
As the science officer hurried back to his station, Saru’s console flashed with an alert of an incoming message on a secondary channel from the Enterprise, coded for his personal review. He accepted the signal and was pleased to hear Commander Una’s voice through his panel. “Saru,” she said, “I might have good news. I’ve analyzed the cave art and found new details surrounding the Juggernaut.”
“A possible star chart,” Saru said, “provided one can compensate for nine million years of galactic rotation, stellar movement, star formation, and supernovae.”
Her excitement abated, but she remained upbeat. “You already knew?”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Great minds think alike.”
Too many bodies stood in a paranoid huddle around the subspace transceiver. Kolova felt the weight of the crowd behind and around her as she loomed over the shoulder of Kiva Cross, the ex-Starfleet officer whom Tassin had cajoled into helping their ad hoc insurgency.
Cross, for her part, seemed oblivious of the pressure in the room. The vaguely Polynesian-looking young woman had put all her focus on the hodgepodge of gadgets she had insisted be hauled down into the bunker to facilitate her efforts.
Watching Cross work without understanding what she was doing made Kolova more anxious. She leaned closer and asked, “Is it working?”
Cross answered in a condescending deadpan, “If you mean, ‘Is it recording comm traffic to, from, and between the ships in orbit?’ then yes, it’s working.”
“So what are they saying?”
“No idea.” Cross looked up with a bored roll of her eyes. “We’re recording encrypted signals. Once we have a few more transmissions in hand, I’ll analyze them for cipher patterns.”
Her blasé attitude seemed to grate upon Ishii, who asked in his rasp of a voice, “How long will that take?”
A shrug conveyed Cross’s disinterest. “Minutes? Hours? Depends how chatty they are.”
Bowen leaned in on the other side of Cross and tapped his wrist chrono. “In case it wasn’t obvious, we’re under a bit of time pressure. So if there’s any way you could speed this up—”
“Keep your pants on,” Cross said. “This is just foreplay. Once I get a few kiloquads of data, the real fun begins.” She tapped a readout on the front of her portable comm console. “At the rate they’re flapping their gums, I’ll be ready to start cracking any minute now. So chill.”
Chandra the engineer poked his head past Bowen to get a better look at Cross’s setup. “Nice gear. Is that a Van Muren transceiver with a Ko-Mog subspace amplifier?”
His question earned a look of quiet respect from Cross. “Good eye.”
“What’s your decryption matrix?”
This time she side-eyed him. “Proprietary.” The curtness of her reply deflated what remained of Chandra’s curiosity, and he fell back into the anonymous ranks of the crowd.
Kolova, however, remained unsatisfied. “Are you sure you can break their codes?”
“Pretty sure. The Shenzhou is sending and receiving real-time holovids. Total data-hogs. Hard as hell to crack. And the Enterprise has some newer comm tech. That’ll take time.”
“None of that sounds encouraging,” Kolova said.
“Ain’t supposed to be easy.” Cross tweaked some settings on her equipment. “One thing working in our favor: Starfleet’s like any other big organization—slow to change. All I need is one legacy cipher in the mix and we’ll have an in.” She pointed at some indicators as they flipped from red to amber. “There we go. A possible vulnerability.” She started keying in new commands. “Give me another ten minutes, and we’ll know what they said in the comms we’ve intercepted, and then we’ll be able to monitor them in real time.”
Kolova clasped her hands on Cross’s shoulders. “Well done.”
Cross squirmed free of Kolova’s grip, clearly resistant to uninvited physical contact. “Just remember that when it comes time to hand out pardons”—she looked up at the governor with dark, accusatory eyes—“or to forget the names of your conspirators.”
Was there any more exquisite agony than being forced to wait to deliver good news? Saru stood outside the privacy-frosted doors of Captain Georgiou’s ready room, awaiting its reversion to clarity so he could deliver his latest report. His lanky frame felt energized with excitement.
The off-white opacity clouding the doors’ window panels melted away, giving Saru a look at the holographically projected forms of Captain Pike and Admiral Anderson, two human men who seemed very much to have been cast from the same mold. Saru pressed the visitor signal next to the doors and waited. After a momentary pause, Georgiou’s voice spilled from a speaker above the visitor button: “Come.”
The doors parted with a soft swish, and as Saru entered the ready room the hologram of Admiral Anderson faded like a lost memory. Saru stopped in the middle of the room beside Pike’s holographic avatar. Georgiou sat behind her desk, her countenance sullen, her left hand wrapped around her right fist. Saru could not remember the last time he had seen his captain in so dark a mood; his Kelpien senses felt her anger as she said, “Report, Lieutenant.”
Her tone inspired Saru to stand almost at attention, further accentuating the height differential between himself and Captain Pike, to say nothing of his advantage over Captain Georgiou. “Lieutenant Troke and I have made a major discovery, based on our analysis of the cave art I documented with Commander Una of the Enterprise.” He gestured toward the conference table on the opposite side of the ready room from Georgiou’s desk. “If I might be permitted to make use of the—”
“Go ahead,” Georgiou said. She got up and walked out from behind her desk. “Just make it quick, Saru.”
“Of course.” He led Georgiou and the Pike hologram to the conference table and switched on its holographic presentation system, which projected images above the table. Then, from the main computer, he accessed the file he and Troke had prepared. A spectral image of a star and planets appeared above the table and ever so slowly began to rotate. “Mister Troke and I believe we have identified the origin point of the Juggernaut, based on evidence already gathered by Mister Johar and his team, cross-referenced with clues the Juggernaut itself provided to this planet’s native inhabitants nine million years ago, and which they faithfully recorded.”
Pike squinted at the image. “That doesn’t look familiar. What are we looking at?”
“The Giunta system,” Saru said. “A Class-K main-sequence star with eleven planets that range from rocky to gas giants. It’s located in an outer sector of the Alpha Quadrant, on the spinward edge of the Perseus Arm.”
“That’s pretty far out there,” Georgiou said. “Farther than anyone’s explored.”
“True,” Saru said. “But Starfleet has dispatched a large number of automated deep-space probes over the past few decades, mostly for the sake of creating rudimentary star charts. A handful of those probes were also designed for long-range cultural observation. That’s how Troke and I came to cross-reference our discovery of the Giunta system with intercepted alien comm traffic which identified that system as the former home of the Turanian Dynasty.”
Pike held up a hand. “Former home?”
“Yes, sir. All recent scans suggest the system is uninhabited. However, nine million years ago, it was the seat of a major interstellar hegemony, one whose sole remaining legacy is its reputation for tyranny.” Saru switched the image above the table to show illustrations of the alien vessel that had triggered their present crisis. “Representations of the vessel we know as the Juggernaut appear to be prevalent in the mythology and history of numerous civilizations located in that sector of the galaxy, according to transmissions intercepted by Starfleet and analyzed by teams at the Daystrom Institute and the Vulcan Science Academy.”
Georgiou folded her hands behind her back as she examined the images up close. “How often did these Turanians dispatch Juggernauts to other worlds?”
“Whenever they detected one worth colonizing,” Saru said. “The Turanians inducted worlds into their hegemony by sending each planet a Judge—or as we call it, a Juggernaut. If the planet had no intelligent native species, the planet was immediately claimed in the name of the dynasty. But if the planet was inhabited by sapient life-forms . . .”
The next part of his report was difficult for him to deliver without succumbing to emotion; its parallels of the horrors that had shaped his homeworld of Kelpia struck close to his heart. Mustering his resolve, he continued. “They were put to ‘the Test,’ regardless of their civilization’s level of development. It would seem the Turanians did not restrain their labors of empire with anything resembling our Prime Directive.”
He updated the image to show panels from the cave art he and Una had documented. “The Test was a series of trials designed to test the intellect and adaptability of potential new subject races. According to the legends, the Judges customized the Test for each new race it encountered. Those that failed the Test were deemed unworthy, and their cultures were exterminated”—he presented the image from the caves, of the Juggernaut laying waste to a broad landscape—“without delay, and without mercy.”
A somber nod from Pike preceded his next question. “And those that passed?”
“Were offered the chance to submit to the Turanian Dynasty and swear their allegiance—along with seventy-five percent of their culture’s output in energy, natural resources, and refined goods, with regular increases expected in each category, in perpetuity. Those who accepted the terms were declared subjects of the dynasty and placed under its control.”
Georgiou frowned. “And those who refused? Let me guess.” She nodded toward the cave-painting of planetary annihilation. All Saru could do was nod in confirmation.
“Well, that’s just great,” Pike said. “Even if Spock and your XO survive whatever that thing has in store for them, what are they supposed to do when it asks them to hand over one of our colonies to some alien empire that doesn’t even exist anymore?”
“It’s a question with no right answer,” Georgiou said. “Unless the Juggernaut, or Judge, or whatever the hell that thing is, is willing to listen to reason.”
“It hasn’t seemed to be in a talking mood so far.”
“No,” Georgiou said, “it hasn’t.” She sighed. “I just hope that whatever terms the Juggernaut offers Burnham, she doesn’t wind up making a choice on behalf of the Federation based on nothing more than her stubborn pride.”
“I was just thinking the same thing about Spock.”
Saru could not muzzle his disgruntled opinion. “This might not have been the right mission to assign to a pair of Vulcans.”
Georgiou scrunched her face in confusion. “Saru . . . Burnham is human.”
He shut down the holographic display. “With all due respect, Captain, I remain unconvinced of that assertion.”
As Thumper vanished yet again, and the next obstacle became visible, Burnham tensed. Not so much from fear, but from what felt like annoyance. “How many of these tests do we have to pass to reach the core?”
“A question neither of us can answer with certainty,” Spock said. “Though my estimation of our position comports with your expectation: we should be very close to the ship’s center.”
They reached the bottom of a curved slope in the oval passageway and gained their first clear look at the next impediment to their mission. A meter-deep barrier occupied the center of the passage, its core space alive with arcs of fire and flashing blades moving in a variety of directions—some slicing in wide curves, others stabbing into the middle from either side, and large circular blades with fearsome teeth rising up from the deck like deadly half-moons that never broke free of their horizon. Between the blades arced flashes of light in a multitude of colors. The overall effect was at once hypnotic and intimidating.
Burnham stopped a few meters from the deadly dance of blades. “Whoever concocted this has got to be out of their minds.” She lifted her tricorder and scanned the barrier. “Blades of tritanium. Energized plasma in magnetically controlled arcs. Pulses of high-energy laser light. All in overlapping patterns of coverage.” She set the tricorder back to passive mode and returned it to her side. “I was hoping it might be a holographic illusion.”
“Such mercy would seem inconsistent with the tests we have endured so far.”
“True.” She rested her hand on her phaser. “Normally, I’d shoot through this thing. But even with both our phasers at full power, we’d never be able to melt tritanium blades.”
Spock nodded. “Yes, most unfortunate. But perhaps not unexpected. Once again, the Juggernaut seems to know not only our strengths, but also our limitations.” He scrutinized the bulkheads around them. “However, each challenge has been solvable.”
Burnham watched him as he studied the overhead, and then the deck. “What are you looking for? You don’t really think they’d give us an on-off switch, do you?”
“Nothing so simple,” he said. He took a few steps back the way they had come, and then he squatted to run his fingertips along the edges of a deck plate. “But I refuse to think the makers of this vessel would have brought us this far only to leave us without options.”
She eyed the blades and flames with mounting dread. “What if the option is death? What if they mean for one of us to sacrifice ourselves to the trap so the other can pass?”
“That is a possibility,” Spock said, “but it would seem inconsistent with their penchant for symmetry. Note that the obstacles we have overcome so far all seem to have been created for two subjects. I suspect this one will prove to—” His fingers found purchase along the edge of the deck plate. “I have something.”
Spock pried the plate loose, lifted it off the deck, and set it aside against the bulkhead. Beneath where the plate had rested was an alcove approximately one meter wide, two meters long, and three meters deep. On its forward wall was a ladder; on its side walls were numerous levers, sliders, and large dials, all festooned with alien markings.
Looking over Spock’s shoulder, Burnham asked, “A control booth?”
“So it would seem.”
Burnham looked around the sunken booth, then back at the barrier of blades, and at once she realized the cruelty of the test’s design. “There’s only enough room for one person to work in the pit at a time, and whoever’s down there won’t be able to see the portal.”
“A most ingenious trial,” Spock said. “One of us will need to act as the observer and report to the other as adjustments are made to the controls.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re amused.” She swung her leg over the edge and found the ladder. As she climbed down into the pit, she said to Spock, “You’re the spotter.”
“As you wish.” After she reached the bottom, he said, “Begin when ready.”
She picked a large lever and began reversing its position. It resisted her efforts, and when she had moved it as far as it would go, she had to hold it in place. “Any change?”
“One of the blades on the right has ceased to emerge. But the rate at which the far circular blade rises and falls has increased.”
“All right,” Burnham said. “Let’s see what else we can tweak.” Straining as if she were trying to shift the weight of the world, she flipped one toggle. “Now?”
Spock replied, “The plasma arcs have retreated to the edges of the portal, but the vertical slashing blade has increased in frequency. Also, the right-side blade you suppressed before is beginning to resume its pattern.”
His observation made Burnham look back at the first lever. It was gradually reverting to its previous position. “Well, this is fun. The controls are geared to reset themselves.” She flinched as the toggle she had just flipped snapped violently back to its previous position. “Some faster than others.” She adjusted her tricorder to an active sensor mode. “I’m going to record my actions and how long it takes the controls to reset. I need you to interplex your tricorder with mine so we can coordinate our analyses of causes and effects.”
“Updating interplex circuit now,” Spock said. “Scanning the barrier.”
Burnham faced the left wall of controls. “Continuing adjustments. Call out changes as you see them.” She forced a large dial through a full counterclockwise turn.
“The forward circular blade has retracted,” Spock said. “Laser pulses have increased in frequency and intensity.”
“Dammit.” Burnham shook her head. “Every function we suppress enhances another.”
“That is an accurate assessment,” Spock said. “I suggest you continue, as we are running out of time to complete our mission.”
“You don’t say.” She reversed the positions of a row of sliders on the right wall.
After a few seconds, Spock reported, “The center circular blade has retracted, and the plasma arcs have multiplied and overlapped.”
One by one, Burnham tested all the controls in the pit, recording the effects and duration of each change. When there were no more levers to move, toggles to flip, or sliders to push, she programmed her tricorder and Spock’s to jointly compute the most advantageous configuration, and the most efficient order in which to set it. She reviewed the result with dismay.
Spock looked down over the edge of the pit. “Tell me.”
“The optimal configuration to create a gap large enough for us to somersault through the barrier will take me nearly a minute to arrange, following a very specific sequence, and adjusting various controls to partial settings. Once the last control is set, the path will be open . . . but only for about four seconds. Just enough time for you to get through.”
“And you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t climb out of this pit, sprint to the barrier, and jump through before it closes. I’m in good shape, but not that good.”
“Is there an alternative setting that would enable—?”
“No, I checked. Any adjustment intended to buy me more time disrupts the equilibrium and causes one of the systems to trigger early, which would prevent you from getting across.”
Spock absorbed that, looked at the barrier, then faced Burnham. “I suggest we exchange roles. I might be able to escape from the pit and pass the barrier before it closes.”
“No, Spock. I’ve already memorized the sequence. And as the senior officer, I’m responsible for your life. You’re going first, on my mark. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get ready. Because I’m starting the sequence.” She set herself to work executing the complex series of adjustments to the controls in the pit, aware that the moment she let go of each one it began its march back toward doom. One after another, she forced the levers, sliders, dials, and toggles into the configuration the tricorder had told her was their only safe choice.
She moved the last slider into place, three centimeters from its top position. “Go, Spock!”
Burnham sprang toward the pit’s ladder. From the corridor above she heard Spock’s running steps as he sprinted toward the paused barrier. As she pulled herself over the edge and out of the pit, she saw the soles of Spock’s boots as he dived through the empty space between stuttering blades and impeded plasma arcs.
Scrambling for purchase, Burnham fought to get traction, to get off her knees and run. By her second step the blades in the portal were shivering as if with anticipation of taking her life. The plasma was quavering, threatening to slip its magnetic bonds, as she took her third running step. In her head, the precious seconds counted down, and she knew she wasn’t going to make it.
But she was committed now; there was nowhere to go but forward.
Her foot landed and she tensed to make her leap forward.
Inside the barrier, the center blade began to rise—
—until Spock reached into the trap and jammed his tri-corder into its gears.
Burnham was airborne and passing through the barrier when she heard the grinding of metal and polymer beneath her, the hideous crunch and crackle of a tricorder being chewed into scrap, spitting sparks and shrapnel every which way, peppering her as she passed over.
An arc of plasma lashed out and cut a burn across her left thigh. The barrier’s rear blade nicked the tip of her boot and barely missed severing one of her toes.
Then she crashed to the deck, smoldering and bruised, scuffed and sliced, but alive. She looked back at the barrier, once more in full flower, a mesmerizing sculpture of fire and metal locked in a lethal dance.
Then she looked up at Spock. “Risky move, mister. You might’ve lost an arm.”
“It seemed the logical choice.” He offered her his hand. Burnham accepted his help, and he pulled her to her feet.
She dusted herself off. “Like father, like son.”
Her comment perplexed Spock. “Pardon?”
Only too late did she realize she had broached a subject better left unspoken. She looked away, unable to meet his searching gaze. “Forget I said anything.” Eager to abandon her faux pas, she resumed walking toward the Juggernaut’s core. “Let’s just get this done and go home.”
Spock said nothing as he followed Burnham on what she hoped was the final leg of their shared journey, but she imagined she could feel his justifiable curiosity hounding her every step.
Sarek was right, Burnham lamented. I really need to learn the value of silence.