Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike Read online

  "I feel it happening. And when one of my girth

  becomes lighter, one notices."

  Karn nodded, breathing as if he'd just come up

  through water. "If it reaches zero... if it reaches zero .. Once the mass of all those planets and the sun hits

  zero--if there is only energy and no mass--everything

  will go to light speed! Every particle!"

  "Like photons," Kellen considered. "Are you sure this

  will happen?"

  Seeming frustrated that his general was content to

  discuss this theory--which was quickly manifesting

  itself as much more than theory -- the sad scientist

  continued to lose color from his bronze fate. "I am sure

  of nothing! This has never happened before! But I think it will happen?

  FIRST STRIKE

  "Nothing in nature can go to light speed," the helmsman

  argued. "It makes no sense."

  Karn cranked around. "Neither does the mass dropping!"

  "So the planets explode," the helmsman said. "So

  what?"

  "Idiot!" Karn slashed a hand toward him. "Don't you

  understand? We are all part of the existing universe!" He

  pointed frantically at the internal readouts. "Our mass is

  going away too. The moment it hits zero, every one of

  our molecules will move away from each other at the

  speed of light! The energy has to go somewhere!"

  Ruhl squinted at him. "We explode too?"

  Karn nodded so hard that his hair bounced up and

  down at the back of his neck. "At the speed of light!"

  After a lifetime in space, Kellen understood immediately

  and paused as comprehension dawned on each of

  the others, blanching their faces one by one.

  "Read out the mass falloff," he requested quietly.

  Karns gnarled face was chalky with fear as he stared

  into his instruments, but he took his general's example

  and tried to rein in his panic. "Forty percent now and

  still dropping, sir."

  Ruhl glared at him. "Is it a weapon?"

  Pressing a lock of neatly clipped hair away from the

  side of his face, Kellen ignored the question and snapped

  instead, "Go to battle mode. Deflectors up."

  Ruhl pulled himself to the helm, rather than bothering to shift the responsibility to anyone else, and with one

  finger punched in the shields-up.

  All at once a hand of nausea swept down upon them

  all, and they were released from their own weight. The

  deck slid away from their boots.

  Loss of mass--loss of gravity!

  As he grabbed clumsily for a handhold, Kellen called

  out over the noise, "Compensate. Compensate, you

  clumsy amateurs!"

  "Trying, sir!"

  "Trying, sir!"

  Diane Carey

  "Compensating, sir!"

  They were trying, he could see that. The helmsman

  fought with his controls while holding himself to his seat

  with his knotted legs. The ship raced through open space

  on a nonsensical course around the solar system, leading

  the other five ships in the fleet as they all struggled for

  control.

  Planets blew to bits, no longer possessing mass

  enough, therefore gravity enough, to hold themselves

  together. Moons dislodged from their orbits, then also

  expanded as if inflated from inside. Asteroids bloated to

  dust, and the dust scattered.

  Now only thick clouds of ejecta rushing far faster than

  ever nature intended, the freewheeling satellites continued

  to distend, continents shattering, oceans spraying

  out into space to become ice clouds. Like the pulsebeat

  of a superbeing, the sun dilated more and more, sending

  its incendiary kiss out to the rubble of planets it had

  moments ago nurtured. No longer bonded to each other,

  the sun's burning particles ballooned outward. The gassy

  inflation consumed the rubble of the first planet. Life on

  the planets was already destroyed. Millions of years to

  evolve, seconds to suffocate.

  A sunwa huge thermonuclear fusion bomb held together

  by the natural magic of gravity. When the gravity

  goes, the bomb starts to explode.

  From where he hovered over the helm, Kellen stared

  at the viewscreen and monitors, one after the other,

  slightly less familiar than those on his flagship, and he

  imagined what those life-forms must have feR just now.

  Terrible things. This nausea, the loss of weight. The

  ground falling from beneath their feet, the air gushing

  out of their lungs as the atmosphere flew outward as if

  torn away in a great sheet. The land around them

  crumbling, trees launching toward space, no longer

  rooted, for there was no more soil.

  How advanced had they been? There hadn't been time

  to investigate. Had intelligence come to them yet? Did

  10 FIRST STRIKE

  they have the sense to be afraid? To understand the last

  glimpses of each other as they vaulted toward open

  space, into a sky no longer blue?

  Instruments on the bridge chattered and screamed for

  attention, reading out the disaster on molecular levels

  and striving to compensate for the changes pouring in

  through the sensors.

  He heard the sound of his men's panic throbbing in his

  head, calling for him--Kellen! Kellen! Kellen!--but he

  couldn't respond or turn from the hypnotic destruction

  on the screens. Certainly what he heard was only his

  sanity calling to him in the midst of madness. For the

  first time in his life he honestly did not know what to do.

  He wasn't even on his own ship, with his own science

  officer.

  "Hail the Oul," he said steadily. "I want to speak to

  my own science officer."

  "Yes, General!" the shuddering helm officer choked.

  Abruptly he looked at Ruhl, frightened that he might

  have overstepped his post by not waiting for the ship's

  commander to relay the order, but Ruhl nodded and the

  contact was made. "Go ahead, sir."

  Kellen drew himself closer to the communications link. "This is Kellen. I wish to speak to Aragor."

  "We can't find him, sir."

  "You can't find him?"

  "Not... presently."

  "Find him anyway."

  "Yes, Commander. Stand by."

  "Give me a view of the fleet," Kellen ordered as he

  waited.

  The tactical officer jumped to the necessary monitor.

  The screen flickered, but came on, showing all five other

  ships, greenish white hulls drenched in solar flush. Their

  bottle-shaped forms jerked unevenly through space on

  Qul's beam, and clearly they too were having problems

  keeping their speed from increasing out of control. None

  of them knew how to fight against this.

  Diane Carey

  "General Kellen, this is Aragor! Are you there?"

  Kellen twisted back toward the comm unit, and almost

  made another full twist around--he was losing his

  grip on the deck. Losing mass. "Of course I am here.

  What's happening to us?"

  "Our instruments are reading a reduction in mass! It

  seems to be continuing--I cannot explain it. Artificial

  g
ravity is--!"

  "I want a way to protect ourselves from it. Think of

  something."

  "We must keep our mass!" Karn shouted from behind

  him. "Some part of it--a fraction of it! We mus t not go

  to zero!"

  "He is right, General. We might be able to shield

  ourselves from the effect." Aragor's voice bubbled through the communications system, stressed and gaspy.

  "With what?" Kellen asked.

  "With... shields. If we divert all possible power, we

  might be able to stall the effect--"

  "Do it. All fleet science stations and helms tie in with Karn and Aragor. Match what they do. Aragor, do it."

  "Yes, General."

  Karn flinched, then said, "Yes, General."

  The tactical officer panted, "Mass at twenty percent

  and dropping!"

  "Triple shields." Aragor's voice funneled through the

  communications system, no longer directed at Kellen,

  but at the science stations on all six ships. "Sending the

  deflector formula through now. All systems accept and

  confirm."

  Karn and the tactical officer worked frantically at the

  controls while bracing themselves in place against seat

  backs and other crewmen.

  "Ten percent and dropping..."

  "Outside mass reading is separating from inner reading

  ." Karns voice shuddered with a ring of success.

  "All stations report inner mass reading ...."

  Solar matter continued to fly outward through the

  system, cooking the planetary refuse, bombarding the

  12 FIRST STRIKE

  fleet's shields and tormenting the crews with the garish

  noises of primitive assault.

  Kellen hadn't been weightless since his first training

  missions, yet the sensation was familiar, one of those

  things the physical body never quite forgets. He recognized

  the bizarre release of his internal organs from their

  own weight, the light-headedness, the loss of equilibrium,

  and fought to ignore those distractions. No control

  over gravitymwithout it they dared not go to warp

  speed. That meant they were trapped fighting to stay at

  sublight against an effect that would ultimately drive

  them to light speed, in the midst of a slaughtered solar

  system about to go nova down to the last particle.

  "Outer reading, five percent... inner reading, five

  point one percent..."

  As he listened to Karns voice, Kellen paused to think.

  Decrease in mass causing increase in velocity... mass

  shrinking, but with the same amount of propellant

  energy. As they fell apart the outer planets were moving

  faster and faster, whipping around their expanding sun.

  Such a sight! If he died seeing this, certainly there were

  worse deaths.

  "Outer reading, two percent... inner reading, two

  point zero four... zero three... zero two..."

  Rubble from the decimated planets and space debris

  rattled against the hull of the ship and caused an awful

  percussion from bulkhead to bulkhead. The bridge crew

  clamped their hands over their ears, and so let go of their

  handholds and free-floated, bumping into each other in

  midair.

  Soon they were all tumbling.

  "Outer mass at one percent!"

  "Inner, one point zero five!"

  "Divert impulse power to the shields!"

  "Outer at one point zero one percent--"

  The drone of numbers began to buzz in Kellen's mind.

  How long had it been? The effect of gravity suspension

  couldn't travel faster than light... that would affect

  things. The pull of the sun had been suspended long

  13

  Diane Carey

  enough to release the inner planets from their orbits, but

  it would take four or five light-hours for that effect to

  reach the decimated outer planets. For now they were

  just clogs of shattered ejecta crashing along in their

  regular orbits. When the suspension of the sun's gravitational pull reached them, they would free-fall out of

  orbit as the inner planets had. If the effect lasted more

  than a few minutes--if the mass reached zero--the sun

  would never recover. The system would be gone forever,

  just dust particles racing through space in all directions.

  If it did stop, the velocity would drop and there would

  be a primordial system again, as there was five billion

  years ago. The whole configuration of this part of space

  would be forever changed.

  "Inner mass at one-sixtieth of one percent!" Karn was

  hovering near the port auxiliary monitors and tipped

  entirely onto his head in order to read the mass change.

  "Mass outside of our shields is zero, sir! Zero!"

  Between the "zz" and the "o" of his last word, the

  planets of this solar system, now hardly more than

  loosely grouped areas of rocky debris, seemed to vaporize

  before them, molecules flashing in a million directions

  . All but the sun was decimated. The sun itself, too

  big to move far, expanded to unthinkable size now at the

  speed of light, well off their scales and engulfing all their

  screens. The shapes of the other five ships on the

  auxiliary monitors were only glazed silhouettesin

  And suddenly there were only four other ships.

  "The Shukar!" Ruhl shouted. "General!"

  Kellen stared at the brightening screens until his eyes

  watered. The Shukar, blown into warp in a billion bits.

  An explosion so fast as to be virtual vaporization.

  Molecules suddenly radiating away from each other at

  the speed of light. They had failed to hold mass.

  "Inner mass, one one-hundredth of one percent!"

  Karn whimpered, shielding his eyes with both hands as

  he hovered upside down.

  "One one-hundred

  twentieth--we can't hold it!"

  14

  FIRST STRIKE

  "Feed all weapons power to the shields."

  Aragor was fighting to keep control, but Kellen knew

  him and heard the tremors in his voice. They barely had

  any mass at all, in practical terms it was nothing, but in

  physics the difference between something and nothing was a universe of difference. They were managing to

  remain intact while everything exploded around them,

  but the power drain was fabulous. Seconds were slipping

  away.

  The planets were gone. The sun was still expanding. In

  a few more minutes--

  Suddenly a great hand swatted Kellen toward the

  deck. His arms and legs flew upward, and he hit the deck

  on his considerable stomach. Ruhl landed on top of him,

  stunning them both. Confused by the sensation of their

  own weight, the bridge crewmen rolled about momentarily,

  searching for equilibrium. Was down once again

  down?

  Kellen put his palms on the deck and heaved upward,

  pressing with his shoulder blades. For a moment he felt

  like a bird-of-prey in battle poise, wings down, shoulders

  tensed, knuckles in.

  Ruhl rolled off and was dumped to the deck at Kellen's

  heels. Kellen pressed down his need to vomit and clawed

  toward the helm. "Status of gravitational fo
rces system-wide!"

  The crew shuffled dizzily to the shelf of readouts on

  the starboard side. Ruhl's reddish hair had come loose

  and was hanging in his face like a ragged mop. He was

  still trying to do too much himself. Promoted too

  quickly, it seemed. Not used to delegating responsibility.

  Sometimes promotions happened that way when a family

  was too well connected. He would learn.

  "All readings returning to normal, sir!" Karn called.

  He swung around to look at the forward monitor.

  Kellen did the same, as did everyone. The sun would

  tell.

  Before their eyes the swollen, overextended mass of

  solar matter was drawing inward toward its core again,

  15

  Diane Carey

  shrinking with a terrible violence to its normal size--but

  some of the solar matter flung off during the loss of mass

  was too far away to be pulled back and spun outward in

  all directions.

  Now shorn of any life or growth, with the bits of living

  bodies crushed amid the rubble, the planetary material

  was bashed to primordial rubbish, thrown away at light

  speed, and all bets were off. The sun would have to

  gather itself, then slowly begin once again nipping at

  deep space to draw bodies to orbit it. The eons had