Star Trek - TOS - 79 - Invasion 1 - First Strike Page 2
"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!"
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"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.
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"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
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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!"
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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,
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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