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  Then the Enterprise took another bone-jarring blow from the Orions, and Kirk was reminded that loss of antimatter containment wasn’t their only worry.

  “Shields down to 59 percent,” Kelso said.

  “We need those engines back, Mister Scott!”

  “Working on it, sir.”

  Pike jumped from his chair and moved toward the science station. “What about the nebula?” he asked, gripping the steel-gray rail separating the command well from the outer stations. “Can we use it for cover?”

  Mulhall shook her head. “Sir, there could be a dozen more Orion ships in there, for all we know.”

  Then it was the captain’s turn to shake his head. “Pirates this far out means rogue operators. Is there any danger from the nebula itself?”

  “Like I said before, sir,” Mulhall said as she turned away from Pike and pressed her forehead to the hooded viewer, “we don’t have much data to go on. But since the Orions seem no worse for wear, I’d say limited expos—”

  Mulhall was interrupted by another Orion blast, this one coming from behind them, targeted at the top of the saucer section. The beam struck, overwhelming the shield generators. A surge of unbridled energies ripped through the rear bridge stations, shattering the tough polymer panels like glass and exploding in a hailstorm of shrapnel, sparks, and flame. Phil Alden screamed in pain, rolling on the deck beneath his communications console. Mulhall was thrown backward, cracking her head on the rail before dropping lifelessly to the deck.

  Pike froze for just a split second at the sight of the flames. Then he vaulted over the rail, knelt at Mulhall’s side. Shards of the viewer hood and display assembly had flown into her eyes, turning the sockets into pools of blood-red pulp. Another splinter of the station had embedded itself in her neck, severing the carotid artery and feeding the growing pool of crimson underneath her head.

  Seeing there was nothing left to be done for her, Pike moved to check Alden. He too was bloodied and burned, but alive. “Someone get this man to sickbay!” Stiles, the relief navigator, moved to pull Alden’s uninjured arm over his shoulder and guide him to the turbolift, while al-Khaled, the lieutenant manning the bridge engineering station, fired a small chemical extinguisher at the smoldering consoles.

  Pike stepped back down into the well of the bridge. “We need to buy ourselves some time,” he said. “Number One, take us into the nebula.”

  Kirk got off one more torpedo shot before altering course and fulfilling his orders. Pike saw it detonate against the lead Orion’s shields, and could tell they were definitely weakening. Just not as much as the Enterprise’s had.

  He swallowed a curse as the Robinson Nebula filled the forward viewscreen. The destruction of the science station meant that the higher resolution readouts were gone and that, to all appearances, they were flying into a perfectly black, perfectly empty void. Mulhall’s warning that there could be other ships there lying in wait repeated in the captain’s mind. He clenched his teeth, and hoped that they weren’t flying blindly into some sort of—

  “Incoming!” Kelso shouted, as from out of the shadows of dark matter, another ship appeared directly ahead, heading straight for them. This one, though, wasn’t an Orion ship, but of a different design Christopher Pike recognized all too well.

  Vulcan.

  The characteristic wedge-shaped main hull and ringed warp field generators of the Soval-class cruiser quickly filled the forward viewscreen. The trilingual identification markings on its bow were fully legible, though no one left on the bridge could read Vulcan, Andorian, or Tellarite script.

  As suddenly as it had appeared, the Coalition ship hurtled past the Enterprise. Pike’s attention switched from the viewer to the circular tactical display between the helmsman’s and navigator’s seats. A small red triangle joined the two green ones representing the Orions. “They’re firing on the Orions,” Kelso observed as bright blue lines lanced out from the red symbol and connected with the other two. “Direct hits on both.”

  “Number One, bring us about,” Pike said, “and ready all weapons. I’ll be damned if we’ll sit here and play the helpless damsel to the Coalition’s white knight.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Kirk answered, and pulled the Enterprise into another hard 180-degree turn. The three other ships reappeared on the screen. The Orions had clearly been caught by surprise by the appearance of the Coalition, but were now going back into an offensive stance, attempting to flank the new ship. Either they had forgotten the Earth vessel or no longer considered it a threat.

  Pike meant to make them reconsider.

  “Mister Scott,” he barked into his comm, “give me every drop of power you can for the weapons.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Targets reacquired,” Kirk reported as the phaser power gauge climbed back upward.

  Pike leaned into the back of Kirk’s chair, sharp blue eyes glued to the enemies on the screen ahead. “Fire!”

  Again, the Orions appeared stunned by the unexpected turn of the battle. After Kirk had landed six or seven good phaser shots, the pirates apparently decided they no longer cared for the odds, and both ships suddenly banked and headed back into the nebula.

  There was a small break in the tension on the bridge. But nobody was ready to relax just yet. “Captain, we’re being hailed,” Kelso reported, looking at the signal light rerouted to his console from the inoperative communications station.

  Pike sighed and nodded in acknowledgment. “Number One, stand down from Red Alert…keep us at Yellow. Mister Kelso, on-screen.”

  Pike was surprised to realize that the bridge crew of the Vulcan-designed Coalition ship did not in fact include any Vulcans. Seated at the center of bridge was a portly, white-haired Tellarite, who considered the Enterprise crew with tiny black eyes. At his side stood an Andorian female—or a zhen, if Pike remembered his xenobiology lessons correctly—with her arms folded across her chest. The two antennae on top of her head looked like cobras ready to strike right through the viewer. Pike couldn’t even identify the species of many of the other crew members: there was a two-meter-tall golden bird…a short green lizard with a thin red comb atop its head…an orange-skinned creature with an elongated skull and…was that a third arm sprouting from its chest?

  The Tellarite stood, made a snorting, phlegm-rattling sound, and said, “This is Captain Glal blasch Cheg, of the Interstellar Coalition Vessel V’Lar. Are you in need of any further assistance?”

  The captain lifted his chin and answered, “This is Christopher Pike, commanding the United Earth Starship Enterprise, and no, we’re just fine, thank you.”

  Cheg squinted at them from the screen, making his beady eyes disappear entirely. “You’re a long way from Earth, Captain. May I ask what you are doing so far from home?”

  “We were investigating a distress call from another Earth ship. We believe it came from inside Coalition space.”

  “Indeed?” Cheg paused a moment, staring silently at Pike, almost as if he thought the hesitation would get the human to reveal something more. Then he turned toward the port side of his bridge. “Lieutenant, are you detecting any such signals emanating from anywhere in local space?”

  The communications officer, a catlike creature with a wireless amplifier in its pointed, upturned ear, replied, “No, sir. Nothing.”

  “It’s a specially coded transmission,” Pike said. “I can give you the specifications for your transceiver assembly settings.”

  Again, the Tellarite studied Pike wordlessly. The Andorian moved to his side and whispered something in his ear, but the captain did nothing to acknowledge her. Finally, he said, “Very well, Enterprise.”

  Pike leaned over Kirk’s shoulder and quickly pulled the promised information up from the ship’s computer databank. The first officer turned and looked back at him, silently expressing concern over the sharing of any Earth encryption codes, even ones that had been obsolete for decades. Pike ignored the look and transmitted the data packet. A second later, the felino
id on the other ship murmured softly, “Data received.” And just a few seconds after that, the V’Lar bridge exploded in bedlam as its sirens began to blare and the image on their linked viewscreens began wavering just as the Enterprise’s had earlier.

  “A human trick!” shouted the three-armed creature.

  “Uh-oh,” Kelso muttered. If the crew of the V’Lar believed the alarms had signaled an actual attack, they were in a perfect position to wreak severe retaliatory action.

  Fortunately, the sirens stopped as quickly as they had started. “There is a signal,” announced the alien communications officer, keeping her tone at the level of a gentle purr. “It’s what triggered the alerts. Very cleverly done, too.” She pressed a series of buttons on her console and stared at the screen before her. “It originates from…TNC-89422.”

  Pike caught the slight hesitation in the cat-woman’s voice as she read off the Vulcan star catalog designation, and briefly wondered what exactly it meant. Captain Cheg, however, simply consulted a screen of his own, and then returned his attention to the Enterprise crew. “Hmph. Very well, Captain Pike. We will bring this to the attention of Space Command, and report back to UESPA via official channels.”

  “What?” Pike stepped around the astronavigation console and addressed the Tellarite from directly in front of the screen. “Now, see here, we’re talking about human beings who have been lost—”

  “—for over twenty years,” Cheg interrupted. “Nearly thirty, in Earth years. Time is not particularly of the essence, is it, Captain?”

  “That’s beside the point,” Pike shot back. “Those people are human beings. That makes them my responsibility. And I will determine their fates for myself.”

  Pike thought he saw surprise flicker across the Tellarite’s face. Then, the gray-haired alien puffed out his chest and pulled his shoulders back. He seemed to grow ten centimeters before their eyes, and a low rumbling growl started to build from the base of his throat. “I’d been led to believe that humans did not practice the trading of insults during diplomatic encounters. I see now this is incorrect, since you insult my intelligence and my honor as a fellow starship commander.” Cheg thrust a hooflike hand forward, pointing toward the starboard side of the bridge. “Tell me, Pike, are you not responsible for that human as well?”

  He turned in the direction the Tellarite was pointing. In all that had happened, no one had yet removed Ann Mulhall’s lifeless body from the bridge, or even so much as covered her. Pike kept his face turned away from the screen long enough to regain a composed expression, then turned back. “Yes, I am. I’m fully responsible for all four hundred and thirty crew members aboard.”

  “And yet you sit here blustering,” Cheg sneered, “while your decks are strewn with corpses, your warp generators are operating at less than half capacity, and your shields are all but gone. Your first responsibility is to your surviving crew. Take your ship back to Earth, before you fall prey to other unfriendly forces.”

  “Tell me, Captain Cheg,” Pike shouted before they could terminate the signal, “exactly how long were you sitting there in that nebula, watching the Orions have at us, before you decided to come to our rescue?”

  “We were under no obligation to come to your defense at all, Pike,” Cheg grunted. “Keep that in mind, should you decide to risk your crew further.” With that, the Tellarite waved a cloven hand, and the transmission ended.

  Pike’s shoulders slumped as he considered the V’Lar hovering in space between the Enterprise and the Coalition border. After a long moment during which both ships seemed to be at a standoff, Cheg’s ship finally pivoted and disappeared into subspace.

  “What now, Captain?” Number One asked, looking at him expectantly.

  Pike didn’t answer directly, but walked back to his chair and toggled the comm open once again. “Bridge to engineering.”

  “Scott here, sir.”

  “Have we got warp power back, Mister Scott?”

  “I can give you warp two, sir. Three, if you’re really needing it. But I wouldn’t push the poor battered beastie any harder until we can put in to a proper repair facility.”

  As Pike listened, his gaze was pulled past the silver unit at his right hand and to poor Ann Mulhall’s body. “Thank you, Mister Scott. Bridge out.” He toggled the channel closed, and without turning, ordered, “Mister Kirk…let’s get the hell out of here.”

  2

  T’Pol could not immediately recall the last time she had used the transporter to travel anywhere, but she did not remember the experience being so unpleasant before.

  An involuntary shiver went up her spine as the desert heat of home was suddenly replaced by the comparatively frigid temperature of this climate-controlled municipal transit station. Also, her ears became suddenly plugged—an effect of instantaneously traveling from Death Valley, eighty-six meters below sea level, to this mountainside municipality in northern California. She also could not dismiss the fact that she was no longer the vibrant, youthful woman of sixty-three she had been when she’d regularly beam on and off Enterprise. All these factors combined to send her swooning once she materialized on the platform.

  A uniformed transit attendant appeared suddenly, before she had fallen too far, catching her and helping her straighten back upright. “Careful, ma’am,” he said, keeping a steadying hold on her shoulders as she recovered her balance. “It’s all right; this happens a lot with first-time transportees,” he said with a friendly smile.

  “Thank you,” T’Pol said, a bit hoarsely. The stranger’s physical contact discomfited her, and she gently disengaged by lifting both hands to the scarf she wore tied over her head—and her ears. He released her, but stayed close, waiting until he was convinced she was walking steadily away before turning his attention to newer arrivals. T’Pol wondered, as she moved down a wide corridor into the main area of the transit station, how friendly he would have been toward her had her head covering fallen free.

  The corridor opened up into a wide atrium, and T’Pol faced an overwhelming sea of humanity. She shivered again, though it had nothing to do with the unpleasant temperature. They milled all around her—individual travelers and businesspeople; young men and women with the word BERKELEY stitched onto the front of their shirts; couples and families—all talking, laughing, carrying on hundreds of conversations all at once. T’Pol had never liked crowds, not for as long as she could remember, and certainly not since that terrible, hellishly cold night almost half a lifetime ago…

  “Aw, stop now. It ain’t logical t’ be afraid of these people, is it?”

  Before T’Pol could argue with that thought, a stranger tapped her on the left shoulder. T’Pol spun, startled, and was relieved to find a familiar face beside her. “Lady T’Pol,” the human woman said, smiling broadly. She was what humans would refer to as “middle-aged,” of Caucasian lineage, with sharp blue-gray eyes and long salt-and-pepper hair which she wore piled high atop her head. “I hope you haven’t been waiting here long,” she said. “It’s an honor to finally meet you face-to-face.”

  T’Pol nodded and replied, “Likewise, Doctor Grayson.”

  “Please, call me Amanda,” she insisted, as she had repeatedly during their three-year long-distance acquaintance. Grayson was the chairperson of Berkeley’s history department, and had petitioned T’Pol relentlessly over that time to visit her university and share her unique view of twenty-second-century history. “I have one of the university’s private aircars waiting for us just outside.” She indicated the way toward one of several exits, and T’Pol fell in step beside her.

  Once they stepped out of the station, T’Pol relaxed. The late afternoon sun, though nowhere near as hot as it was in the desert, still offered a welcome warmth, and T’Pol lifted her face to its light. A gentle breeze blew from over the nearby bay, ruffling her clothing and filling her nostrils with the distinctive scent of salty seawater. For a moment, she was transported back to the old Vulcan Consulate in Sausalito, a young woman newly arrived on
this strange, water-rich planet, ready to start a new phase of her life, with so many new experiences ahead of her…

  They reached a blue-and-gold–painted aircar, and its gull-wing doors opened on either side for them. Grayson set the car’s destination and it lifted off the ground, floating almost noiselessly up the hill toward the university campus.

  “Lady T’Pol, I want to tell you again how excited I am about your being here to do this lecture tonight,” Grayson said, breaking the silence within the car. “I know how much you value your privacy and solitude, and I want you to know how honored I and the entire university are to be the hosts of this rare visit. I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the mid-twenty-second century…and by you, in particular.”

  “Indeed?” T’Pol said, lifting one eyebrow as she considered the human woman. “The period was certainly eventful and historically significant. But why would you single me out for special interest?”

  “Why? A lone woman living and working among aliens, giving up her own world to live in theirs? Finding a lifemate among them, and having to deal with the consequences of that? Who wouldn’t find a life story like that fascinating?”

  T’Pol stiffened at Grayson’s effusive attempt at flattery. “I did not come here to talk about myself or the personal aspects of my life,” she said in a tone that made clear she did not appreciate the professor’s impertinent line of inquiry.

  “I…I’m sorry,” Grayson stammered, a mortified look on her face. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Lady T’Pol…”

  “Taking offense would be an emotional reaction,” T’Pol said, while not claiming that she hadn’t, in fact, been offended.