Chain of Attack (4 page)

"Extreme power buildup, Captain," Spock announced.

"Deflector screens up, Mr. Sulu," Kirk ordered.

"Deflector screens up, sir."

A moment later a concentrated beam of light lanced out of one of the openings on the end of the cylinder.

"Laser discharge, Captain," Spock said calmly. "It appears to be attacking us."

"So I noticed. Analysis, Mr. Spock."

"Primitive laser weapon, Captain, similar to early Federation equipment, but more powerful and longer range than anything the Federation ever produced. It is much less effective, of course, than phasers of the same power. Also, unless the object can stabilize itself further, the discharge will not touch the
Enterprise
."

"Any other weapons indicated?"

"None operational, Captain, though there appear to be a number of fusion devices in addition to the malfunctioning power source. They could be weapons, but if so, their propulsion systems are inoperative."

"Can the laser be disabled without destroying the object?"

"Since the object has no deflector screens, Captain, I would estimate that a phaser burst of approximately three-point-eight milliseconds would accomplish that objective."

"Mr. Sulu, lock phasers on target."

"Locked on, sir."

Frowning, Kirk hesitated. On the screen, the object suddenly lost what little stability it had displayed and began tumbling end over end, the laser beam flailing even more wildly through space than before.

"Indication of further malfunction, Captain," Spock said, speaking rapidly. "The output of the power source is increasing exponentially. Overload and consequent instantaneous conversion to energy of all antimatter will occur—"

Spock's voice cut off as the forward viewscreen erupted in a flash of light. The
Enterprise
, though safe behind its deflector screens, shuddered before the massive release of raw energy.

"—occurred five-point-nine seconds ago," Spock concluded when the deck had steadied once again.

"Damage report," Kirk snapped. "Engineering."

"Momentary overload to deflector screen circuits, sir, but no apparent permanent damage," came the voice of MacPherson, Scott's chief assistant.

"Tell him I'm on m'way, Captain," the chief engineer called over his shoulder as the turbolift doors hissed open and he stepped in. "Just ta be on the safe side."

Kirk complied as he listened to the other sections report in, slowly relaxing as it became apparent that, aside from a brief shakeup, the explosion had produced no lasting consequences anywhere on the
Enterprise
.

 

IN HIS STATEROOM, Dr. Jason Crandall still sat in the chair where Kirk and McCoy had left him minutes before, but now, instead of slumping in despair, he sat bolt upright, his fingers white-knuckled as he gripped the edge of the desk and waited for the next tremor to rumble through the ship.

What now? his mind screamed in silent fury and terror. What in God's name are they doing to me now? He started to rise to his feet, but the trembling in his knees stopped him, and he dropped back into the chair, letting despair grip him once again. Whatever was happening, it didn't really matter
what
he did. He was beyond help.

Several lifetimes, that brainless captain had said!

Several lifetimes at maximum warp factor to get back to the Federation and earth! And even that was possible only if, by some miracle, they managed to find out where earth
was!
The only bright spot, he thought bitterly, was that, with any luck, he wouldn't last out the decade.

As far as his friends and family—for once in his life, he was glad that he had not married—he was as good as dead right this minute. Dead and buried in a four-hundred-man, warp-drive coffin several lifetimes away from everyone and everything he knew. Everything and everyone that meant anything to him. Not that he had had many intimate friends, but at least he had
known
people, hundreds of them. They had been familiar, often friendly faces, not like these four hundred hostile strangers.

More importantly, he had had a career that was, finally, getting back on track. He had been in charge of Technipower Labs for over a year, and don't think he hadn't had to scramble and bluff and grovel to get that post. After the Tajarhi fiasco, even though it had been entirely the fault of those grasping, never-give-an-inch negotiators on
both
sides, he had begun to fear he would never get another responsible post anywhere in the Federation. But finally, with a slight assist from a skeleton-filled closet or two, he had gotten a halfway decent post. He would have been on his way back up the ladder if it had paid off the way it should have.

If it had paid off…

Crandall pulled in a deep breath and shook his head. If he hadn't been so worried that this might be his last chance, if he hadn't been so greedy for one more boost up the ladder, he would still be back on earth, only now beginning to wonder what might have happened to the ship that had been fitted with Technipower's new gravity turbulence sensors. The loss, which his enemies would doubtless blame on the inadequacy of those sensors, would have been bad, but at least he would have had a chance to recover. More work on the sensors, possibly another mission with another ship—a ship with a more capable, more cautious crew—and he might have been on his way up again. Maybe not all the way to the Council, not at sixty-plus, but on his way up nonetheless.

But he had insisted on going along, accompanying the sensors. "Observing." He had called in a few favors, rattled a couple more skeletons, and he had gotten on board the
Enterprise
, knowing that if the mission were a success the publicity would open new doors to him, perhaps even boost him over the heads of those same functionaries he had had to beg favors of in order to get on the
Enterprise
in the first place.

He had insisted on going along, and now it was all over. His whole life was over, to all intents and purposes.

And to make matters worse, these people—this Kirk and the rest—they
enjoyed
what was happening! He had seen it in their faces, heard it in their voices as the orders and responses darted around the bridge. There had been no fear there, only eagerness and anticipation. To them it was nothing more than a game! Another "adventure!" What did
they
care if they never got back to the Federation? Their lives were here, wherever this blasted ship took them, and the farther it took them, the better they liked it! It had been plain from the moment he had stepped on board that they had little liking or sympathy for Jason Crandall or anyone else outside their own insular ranks. Their looks and their tones, alternately hostile and condescending, had demonstrated that beyond any doubt.

And that obvious dislike had fed upon itself. Crandall's own impatience and anger had grown ever stronger as it became ever more clear that the mission itself was a failure. From the very start, the data had obviously been worthless, but when he had finally pointed it out and tried to get them to cut the mission short, he had been ignored. The military mind was simply not flexible enough to appreciate the situation. They had been ordered to investigate fifteen anomalies, and they would by God investigate fifteen anomalies even though it was obvious after only a few days that it was pointless to continue.

But even that blind obedience was preferable to what was happening now, now that they had their freedom from those orders, freedom from Starfleet Command and the Council. They were like children being let out of school. They were ready to play their dangerous games, heedless of the consequences. The fact that they were playing, in effect, on a totally unknown playing field, where no one knew the rules of the game or even the nature of the other players, didn't seem to phase them. They could all be killed—
he
could be killed—in an instant, and it didn't concern them in the slightest!

Crandall shuddered, remembering the barely suppressed glee he had sensed beneath the chief engineer's seemingly matter-of-fact tone as he had explained their situation over the intercom.

And suddenly he wondered—could the disappearance of the gate be a sham? Could it still be there? Could it be that they—Kirk and the rest of his wildeyed adventurers on the bridge—simply didn't want to return to the Federation yet? Could they have cooked up this terrifying story to justify themselves in his eyes? And in the eyes of the crew, at least some of whom must have more sense?

Or could the gate itself be a hoax? All he had seen for himself was the viewscreen with its mass of stars, and that could certainly have been faked by anyone on the bridge, particularly that treacherous Vulcan. Beyond that, he had only Kirk's word for what had happened. The fact that the officers backed up their captain meant nothing.

For a moment, hope surged through Crandall, but it faded almost as quickly as it had come. He could not bring himself to believe that even
they
could be so totally irresponsible.

Pulling in a deep breath, he slowly pushed himself to his feet. His legs were again steady, he found, at least steady enough to get him around without falling. He moved deliberately to the door, wondering if he would be allowed back on the bridge yet.

And wondering what good it would do him if he were.

Once it was confirmed that the
Enterprise
had indeed suffered no damage as a result of the cylinder's destruction, detailed observations of the sector of space in which the
Enterprise
found itself quickly got underway. First, the visual impression of the extreme density of the stellar population was confirmed. With stars generally separated by less than one light-year, the entire Federation would have fit into less than fifty cubic parsecs. There was also a certain uniformity that had not been encountered in any previously known sector of space. There were virtually no extremely old or extremely young stars. The majority were also class G, not vastly different from Sol, and all were prime candidates, statistically speaking, for having families of planets.

There were no solidly based theories about how such a cluster, which appeared to extend several hundred parsecs in all directions, could have come about. What generated the most discussion during those first hours, however, was Ensign Chekov's suggestion that there might be a link between the cluster and the gates, or at least between the cluster and the gravitational turbulence associated with many of the gates. Assuming even a moderately dense mass of primordial nebular material, the gravitational turbulence of the gates would be more than enough to trigger the formation of far more stars than would come into existence otherwise.

Chekov's idea, however, raised more questions than it answered. For one thing, the gates would have to have been in existence billions of years ago, when these stars were formed, which meant that if they were indeed artificial as Spock had suggested, their creators were almost certainly long gone and hence would be of little help to the
Enterprise
. For another thing, despite the fact that the
Enterprise
had been deposited here by a gate, there was no evidence now either of that gate or of any of the lesser, "malfunctioning" gates. All of those apparently were back in the Milky Way galaxy, in a sector where star population was, if anything, sparser than average. There was also the rather obvious paradox that if the gravitational turbulence had indeed triggered the formation of the stars, the stars would have formed around the gates, which, if still functioning, would have bled off the infalling matter, thereby
preventing
the formation of the stars the turbulence had triggered in the first place.

Still, the idea was intriguing, and, because of the discussions it generated, it kept a lot of minds occupied that might otherwise have tended to brood about their seemingly hopeless situation. The only person it affected badly was Dr. Crandall, who saw it only as making his situation all the worse. But, then, from the moment Crandall had returned to the bridge, it had been apparent that anything unexpected or unfamiliar affected Crandall badly—and that included virtually everything in this unknown sector of space.

Despite everyone's best efforts to be understanding and sympathetic and even optimistic about finding a way back to Federation space, Crandall's despair and anger only seemed to grow greater. And when he learned that the
Enterprise
was not going to continue to hold its position near where the gate had originally existed but was going to "go exploring," he exploded.

"My God, Kirk!" he shouted, his face paling. "If that gate is going to reappear, it's going to reappear here, not fifty parsecs away! Can't you at least wait a few more days before taking off on this wild goose chase?"

"In the first place," Kirk pointed out with deliberate calm, "there is no evidence suggesting that the gate is going to reappear here as opposed to anywhere else. For all we know, it hasn't disappeared at all. It may have simply moved, or possibly it's flickering on and off, the way some of the ones we were originally investigating apparently did. In the second place, none of the systems we will be visiting in this first foray is more than a standard day away at even moderate warp speeds. And if we don't find anything on this first leg of our 'wild goose chase,' we'll return here to check. As we will continue to do if future legs become necessary. With the density of stars in this sector, we could visit a new system every day for months and still not be more than a standard week away."

But Crandall would not be pacified. "And what happens when you run into another of those—those booby traps?" he almost screamed. "One that's a little more advanced? We could all be vaporized and never even know what hit us!"

And so it had gone. In the end, Crandall had stormed off the bridge, red-faced and trembling. McCoy had followed, offering Crandall first a sedative and then some of the well-aged Scotch he had been saving since his last birthday, but Crandall stiffly and angrily refused everything. He was still in his stateroom the next day when the
Enterprise
dropped to sublight velocity twenty A.U. out from the first star on the list.

It was virtually a twin to Sol, its diameter a few thousand kilometers greater, its surface temperature a few hundred degrees higher. It even had a scattering of sunspots, a phenomenon that had turned out to be relatively rare among suns with habitable planets, though no one had yet advanced an acceptable theory to account for that rarity.

One planet, roughly earth-sized, was well within the zone in which terrestrial life could exist. It was one of seven planets, including the almost inevitable gas giants and a tiny ball of frozen methane at eighteen A.U.

Their first discovery, as they held their position on the fringe of the system, was the hulk of what had once been an observation satellite thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, still orbiting the outermost planet. That, however, was the only indication of life they found. As far as they could tell from that distance, there were no other artificial satellites anywhere in the system, no ships of any kind, and no detectable communications activity in either the electromagnetic or subspace spectra. It appeared to be, despite the remains of the observation satellite, a dead system, and as Kirk ordered the
Enterprise
forward, the feeling began to take hold that they were slowly easing their way across the threshold of a mausoleum. Chief Engineer Scott seemed the most affected despite his protests that he was "no' a superstitious mon," but there was no one on the bridge who didn't share the feeling to some small degree. Even Spock admitted that he expected the worst, though he insisted his expectation was only a logical deduction based on the observations they had already made.

Finally, after a four-hour sublight approach, the
Enterprise
was in standard orbit about the earthlike planet. As expected—or feared—the sensors still showed no evidence of life.

There was, however, ample evidence of death.

What remained of an atmosphere was a veritable sea of radioactivity, and the surface was like the surface of earth's moon or Mercury, pitted by thousands of craters. But these craters were not caused by meteorites or volcanos but by an almost inconceivable bombardment of fusion bombs. Even the oceans had been sterilized of life, boiled away by the heat of destruction and turned into a radioactive soup as they recondensed and settled into the old seabeds and the countless craters.