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

  begun again.

  "Aragor," he said. "Aragor, are you there?"

  The long silence was unfriendly. Had the same tragedy

  happened to Qul as to Shukar? He began to look from

  screen to screen.

  "Aragor, sir," the comm system rasped. "The... sun

  has moved several millions of miles... recoalesced

  because of its size once gravity and mass returned... It

  is no longer actually a sun, but a hot cloud of gas

  beginning to act again as nature intended The

  planets

  are gone....

  Random

  observations, coming as Aragor thought of them.

  He was deeply shaken.

  "Everything

  has stopped," the science officer continued

  before Kellen has a chance to encourage him on. "The

  velocity must have been reduced to its previous levels

  somehow as the mass returned .... It must have something

  to do with natural conservation of energy.

  .. Energy has to come from somewhere... it cannot

  just appear .... As long as we maintained the slightest mass, we remained... intact..."

  He was searching for words. Saying what they were all

  thinkingwthat these things cannot happen, but they just

  had. Where had the energy come from that had caused

  this?

  "What stopped the effect, Aragor?" Kellen prodded.

  More silence came back at him. He glanced at Karn,

  who stared at him, waiting for Aragor to bear the weight.

  16

  FIRST STRIKE

  "Nature stopped it."

  Another stretch of silence

  Kellen could sense Aragor thinking and thinking. "Mass... energy. and velocity are all related.

  When mass was taken away, nature balanced with more

  velocity, all the way to light speed When the mass

  suddenly returned, velocity of the matter substantially

  decreased."

  "But velocity is only measured relative to other

  things," Kellen broke in. "It decreased relative to what?"

  They were all staring at him now. He felt the tense

  stares of men on the other ships too. They were all

  waiting for him and his science officer to find the answer.

  "I do not know. "Aragor sounded whipped. He hadn't

  wanted to say that. 'I could be completely wrong. I see

  it, I can describe it... but I cannot explain it."

  "Sir!" Ruhl gasped, moving on shaky legs back toward

  his own command chair to where Kellen stood near the

  helm. "Could it have been a weapon?"

  "If it was theirs," Kellen said, "they have destroyed

  themselves with it. If it was someone else's, then we have

  a new war on our hands."

  Ruhl came to hunch beside him over the shuddering

  helm. "Starfleet?"

  Kellen did not respond There were some things even a

  Klingon preferred not to guess.

  Starfleet. Their old enemy His oldest. Certainly those

  people were capable of developing a mass-blanking

  weapon, but he wondered if Starfleet would use such a

  thing. Yes, but not without provocation, and there had

  been none lately.

  Kellen knew that, because he had asked to do some

  provoking and been turned down.

  The solar system remained in chaos. As the sun

  broiled fiercely during its reintegration, alone in space

  now.

  Nothing left to conquer. Had the predator been

  starved by the prey's self-immolation?

  17

  Diane Carey

  If not a weapon, then what?

  He turned to Ruhl, and found himself about to speak

  to a shag of reddish hair, and it threw him off for a

  moment. He shook his own combed locks as if in

  example.

  "RUM, at least get your hair out of your face when I

  speak to you."

  Pawing his hair out of his face, RuM caught part of his

  long mustache on a fingernail and ended up with one

  hand caught near his ear. He shook it loose, embarrassed,

  wondering if he had just been given an order or

  only a suggestion, and muttered, "Yes... yes, sir."

  Rather than appease him with acknowledgment,

  Kellen said "Assess damage in the fleet and make a full

  sensor scan of the area."

  Ruhl's small eyes grew wide. "What shall we scan

  for?"

  "Whatever you find."

  "Yes, Commander .... "

  "Karn," Kellen began, and turned to face the startled

  science officer of this ship, so Karn would not look bad

  in the eyes of his own crewmates. "Was the suspension

  limited to this solar system? How far did it reach?"

  Karn struggled to avoid thanking the general for his

  attention, and poured himself into the readouts. "Long-range

  sensors suggest it reached at least sixteen light-days."

  "Dispatch immediate reports of all this to the Empire."

  "Yes, General."

  "General," Ruhl interrupted, "we should tell them the

  Uri Taug star system is now devoid of life. Otherwise

  they'll wonder why we failed to conquer."

  Kellen held a hand toward the godlike ruin on the

  screens. "We'll tell them we did conquer. After all, the

  system is ours now. What's left of it."

  "Sir!"

  Both Kellen and Ruhl turned toward Karn. "Yes?"

  18

  FIRST STRIKE

  "Sir... sir!"

  Kellen swatted the young man's arm. "We are both

  here. Say something!"

  "A... a... change!"

  The baffled science officer stepped aside with forgivable

  gratitude as Kellen pressed toward the science station

  and Ruhl pushed in after him.

  In the middle distance, reading only a light-year away,

  a core of turbulence had opened up on their screens. On

  each screen it looked different, for each screen picked up

  different elements--spectra, energy, spatial disruption.

  Not a swirl, but not a crack, yet still it moved. Like a

  piece of woman's fabric strung in space and waved by a

  giant hand, it taunted them.

  Squinting, Kellen wondered aloud, "What is that?"

  "Some kind of... storm?" Ruhl sounded compelled

  to invent an answer.

  "A storm with good timing? I doubt that."

  "Then what do you think?"

  "I think we're seeing the cause of what he have just

  felt." Kellen straightened and reacted briefly to a sharp

  pain in his left shoulder from their experience. "I should

  be on my own flagship for whatever is coming. Continue

  to monitor that phenomenon. Remain at battle configuration."

  "Yes, sir," Ruhl said.

  "Aragor, are you still standing by?"

  "Yes, General.t"

  "Are you reading this phenomenon?"

  'I.... see it, sir."

  That was Aragor's way of admitting to Kellen that he

  hadn't a clue what the waving veil was.

  Using the confusion of the moment to shade the fact

  that he didn't feel like walking all the way to the

  transporter room, Kellen plucked his handheld communicator

  from its holster and snapped it open.

  "Pick up my coordinates and beam me back directly

  to the bridge immediately. We will find out what did

  19

 
; Diane Carey this. If it is an accident, we will explain it. If it is a

  weapon, we will own it. Activate transporter beams

  now."

  "Transporter officer, energize beams. Bring the general

  directly to the bridge."

  Aboard the Border Fleet flagship Qul, Science Officer

  Aragor drew a long breath of relief that soon General

  Kellen would be back aboard and would take command

  during this strange time. Though he tried to appear

  supremely Klingon in front of the bridge crew, Aragor

  was frightened. The impossible had just happened before

  his eyes, and his whole body was still quaking. Had

  the mass drop continued a few more seconds, they would

  have become part of an uncontrolled whirl of hyperlight.

  A drop in mass! Unthinkable! It couldn't possibly

  happen naturally.

  The general would figure it out. He would find the

  answers. The two of them would piece together the data,

  and Kellen would decide what happened. Kellen was the

  smartest warrior in the universe.

  The whine of transporter energy chewed at Aragor's

  ears, and he turned toward the open area of the bridge to

  which Kellen was being beamed. Seconds now.

  A pillar of expanding lights appeared, many bands,

  bringing the disassembled atoms of their commander

  across the emptiness of space, to be reconstructed here.

  The pillar coalesced into shoulders draped with fabric, a

  broad torso clad in stiff metallic fiber. For a moment

  there was a short clean-cut beard and bronze hair

  trimmed above the shoulder. A thin mustache, as if

  stenciled on.

  Then, the wide pillar of light began to fade. The whine

  rose to a scream. The lights thinned out.

  "What is this!" Aragor struck the communications

  pad. "Transporter officer! What are you doing?"

  There was no response. Before him, General Kellen's

  partially formed face frowned as if sensing the transpor

  20 FIRST STRIKE

  tation going wrong. His right hand turned slightly outward

  from his robe, toward Aragor, and the fingers

  opened in beckoning.

  "Transporter!" Aragor called. "Bring him in!"

  "Trying," the comm buzzed. "There is interference,

  sir!"

  "Fight for him!" Aragor waved the other bridge personnel

  back, away from the pillar of sparkling light, so no

  one etse's physical presence would attract any of the

  particles trying so desperately to reassemble.

  What was happening? The transporter should easily

  be able to do this. Ship-to-ship transportation at this

  distance was nothing. Nothing!

  The pillar of lights surged once as if succeeding, but

  then suddenly sizzled completely away. The dim bridge

  lighting seemed somehow much dimmer now.

  Aragor swung around to glare at the main screen,

  which showed a picture of the fleet ships. "Ruhl! Do you

  have him?"

  "Not here," the other captain's voice came back, high

  with tension. "We do not have him!"

  "Where is he? Where is he?" With the heel of his hand

  Aragor struck the intraship unit. "Transporter! Where is

  he!"

  His transporter officer's voice was thready, shocked.

  "Sir, the beams... they went into that twisting form

  out there. I do not understand how it could happenmhe

  was drawn in, as if magnetized!"

  Aragor jumped to his science station, where he was

  met by the tactical officer, and together they stared into

  the science readout screen.

  More of the impossible--the transporter beams,

  presented in an image of chittering energy, looped like

  the tail of a running animal, then were swallowed by the

  phenomenon out there.

  As they stood together and watched the screen, a form

  began to take shape, emerge from the gash in open space.

  A solid form. A vessel... a ship...

  21

  Diane Carey

  "Taken," the tactical officer murmured. "Absorbed!"

  With both hands Aragor gripped the rubber rim of the monitor. "I want him back, Vagh "

  He

  plunged to the helm, hammered the controls until the

  main viewer switched to a sheet of black space incised

  by the waving valence of new energy.

  He

  stared into the vision. His wall rattled the bones of his

  crewmates.

  "I

  want my general back!"

  Chapter

  Two

  22 VOLCANIC

  WIND... perfumed, reeking atmosphere... and

  a sound of engines.

  Kellen materialized

  gagging.

  As soon

  as the transporter beams released him, he stumbled back

  against a hard surface, and choked. The air here

  was heavy, vaporous; the surface against which he leaned

  was mossy. He huddled against it until his eyes adjusted to

  the dimness.

  The ceiling

  was only an arm's length over his head. Higher in

  some places. A tunnel of some sort? A cave?

  Hard ground

  beneath his feet. Skin itching. Plant life--sedge, burrs

  and creepers, algae, spotted cabbage, puffballs,

  adder's tongue... He recognized some of them;

  others were familiar but had the wrong color, the

  wrong shape, or the wrong smell. He was no botanist.

  Pungent

  odors...

  If he could only get a whole breath. Then he

  could think.

  Think, think.

  Cling to self-control.

  He had

  been transporting from Ruhl's ship to his own. Now he

  was on some planet, in a cave.

  23

  Diane Carey

  "But there were no planets left," he rasped. The sound

  of his own voice anchored him. "Especially none with

  life ...."

  He pressed his hand to the wall. Parasites jumped

  from the moss onto his hand and skitt ered in confusion.

  Life.

  Small life, but company was company.

  At least he could eat.

  He pushed off the cave wall. He took one step, then

  stopped as he thought of something else. Kneeling, he

  peered at the ground. There was growth here too, but

  vetchy, flattened growth. Flattened by other footsteps?

  Where he could walk, so could others.

  Others...

  He brushed the ground with the side of his hand, to

  tidy it a little, then stood up. That soundmhe remembered

  it now, and in remembering heard it again. After

  so many years in spaceships he had come to ignore the necessary thrum of power generation.

  "Engines," he validated.

  His experienced ears knew the sound of a power

  source, but he could see none, nor discover any specific

  direction from which the dim thrumming came. He

  must be near a factory of some kind. A power generator.

  If there was power, he could use it to get back to his

  fleet, or at least to send a signal.

  So the mass drop must have been some kind of

  weapon or distraction, and now he, the fleet leader, was

  kidnapped.

  Speculating made him unea
sy. He would deal only

  with the facts. Footmarks and power, on a planet with

  aves.

  And light? Where was the light coming from? Another

  power source? The sun they had watched blow up and

  shrink back?

  He paused to see whether the light changed at all. It

  remained hazy, but steady. No way to judge whether it

  was natural or not. No draft, no wind, yet the air was

  tolerable now that he was breathing more slowly.

  24 FIRST STRIKE

  Where was he? A planet with atmosphere.

  A momentary panic struck him that he could be on a

  distant outer planet, waiting for the second wave of

  gravity gap to wash outward from the sun for a second

  apocalypse, yet he had seen those planets shatter, and

  even if they were balled up again there could be no life,

  no moss or insects left.

  No. We reached zero mass. There is no planet left here.

  Dismissing the possibility that he could still be in that

  mutilated solar system, he selected a branch of the cave

  at random and moved through it. The tunnel was

  narrow, but roomy above his head. Within twenty steps

  he found himself in another open area. Here the sound

  of the power source was stronger and he became more

  sure that he recognized the tenor of it. In fact, he noted

  the pitch was higher than normal... normal for what?

  There was nothing here but another tunnel. He went

  through it into a darkness that nearly turned him back.

  As the blackness closed in, he paused to let his eyes