Dreadnought! Read online

  We shared a bare gaze, but I refused to apologize. In another minute he had keyed the destruct code into our communicators, giving me something to bargain with once we reached Star Empire. The situation wasn’t trustworthy enough to go into empty-handed.

  “All we have to do now is sit back and get to that ship. Increase speed to three-quarters sublight.”

  “Increasing. Warp point-seven-five in thirty seconds.”

  The sled moved gracefully faster, engines humming behind us as we increased speed, an enjoyable, orgasmic sensation even in the unresisting vacuum of open space.

  Suddenly we were both hit with a stunning instant of pain. Pressure filled my head and I jolted forward against my restraining harness. Only the straps kept me from slamming into the control panel. Sarda was speaking but I couldn’t hear until the buzz in my head cleared, leaving only the whine of struggling engines where moments ago there had been a satisfied thrum. I jolted back into my seat.

  “What is it? I didn’t hear—”

  “A tractor beam.” Sarda struggled with the controls.

  “From aft? Enterprise?”

  “Negative … from port. A ship coming out of warp.” He intensified his scan capacity and drew in the magnification. “A Saladin Class MT-one Federation Destroyer … NCC-four-two-four …”

  “Pompeii. Have they got us?”

  “They have us,” he stiffly said, turning his gaze into the space outside, “utterly.”

  I leaned forward and peered out. A blocky hull hung just over our port side. Though immense, the destroyer wasn’t as massive as a starship, nor as streamlined; Pompeii was a chunky gathering of weapons, burst-speed, and cramped quarters. Its size drove home the true giganticism of Enterprise. I felt like I was piloting the tiniest moving vehicle in the quadrant.

  And Pompeii had us.

  “Do you wish me to hail them?” Sarda asked.

  We were being sucked into Pompeii’s docking bay, crawling along the destroyer’s endless grey-white hull and the Federation registry codes as tall as I was.

  “No.” I finally answered. “I don’t want to talk to them before I can look them in the eyes and see what I’m dealing with.”

  He didn’t understand and I made no attempt to give him a crash course in human instinct. Soon the tractor from Pompeii began to strain our engines so badly we had to shut down and submit, rather contritely, to their control.

  Indignation filled my mind. They had no business yanking another vessel out of space without a single formality. Power without authority drew us into its bowels, raping the integrity of my ship. Just a little, insignificant attack sled, okay. But Wooden Shoe was mine. More than that, even. My ship was me. Maybe I had stolen her, but at this moment Wooden Shoe comprised my whole universe, since I had given up any chance of being welcome back on Enterprise and had no guesses yet about Star Empire.

  “I don’t intend to stay here,” I told Sarda as we settled onto the deck and waited for the bay to pressurize around us. “Don’t take off your parka. And hang on to your communicator at all costs. Give them your phaser if you have to distract them. No—I have a better idea. Give me your communicator.”

  “For what purpose?” But he did hand it to me.

  “A decoy.”

  “We have no reason to suspect the Vice-Admiral might confiscate our implements.” There was a definite unspoken “do we?” attached to his statement.

  “If he’s been talking to Captain Kirk, he’s going to consider us escaped conspirators with the terrorists, if that’s what they are.” I watched three security people, two men and a woman, walking toward us, phasers drawn. “Oh, yeah … they think we’re trouble. We’re going to have to break out of this ship, Sarda.” I turned to him. “I could do it alone …”

  “Not necessary. I have committed myself. Star Empire’s extended use as a military device is partially my responsiblity.”

  “And if I phasered you to death, would we blame the designers of the hand phaser?”

  His response was sucked away as the sled hatches whined open and we were invited to debark.

  “Your weapons, please,” a long-bodied security ensign ordered. We gave him our phasers, which he immediately shifted to a blond woman, who deactivated them. “Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse wishes you to join him in the briefing room. Come with us, please.” The invitation was pleasant enough, but they still surrounded Sarda and me while escorting us through the destroyer’s narrow corridors. My whole metabolism tingled in unexplainable warning, not to mention exasperation, at this sidetracking. I had to get to Brian and wring out some straight answers. I was the only person they trusted to tell the truth—why else would they have specifically asked for me? Brian had to be at the bottom of that. Hardly anybody else even knew of my sudden transfer to Enterprise.

  As we came out of the docking bay into the corridor I found myself face to face with a large non-Fleet, non-Federation emblem on the wall across from me. It looked like a stylized Greek letter, but I wasn’t sure.

  “What’s that?”

  The security lieutenant said, “It’s Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse’s personal command emblem.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “How many vice-admirals have you served with?”

  “Hmm … must be nice.” I sighed at the privilege of high command and followed him on down the corridor.

  The briefing room doors slid open before us, and the security man stepped to one side, funneling Sarda and me through first.

  Before us, at the head of the conference table, sat a massive snowy-haired man with a grandfatherly face and small, flickering green eyes. Behind him stood a dignified black man in civilian clothes.

  “You must be Piper,” the older man said.

  “Yes, Vice-Admiral,” I answered.

  “Ah, you know me. Good. Sit down, please. This is Dr. Boma, my astrophysicist and civilian liaison.” Other than that he made no explanations about Boma’s presence, nor did he even glance at Sarda. I didn’t introduce my Vulcan companion because I assumed they knew each other—bitterly well. But the more I watched Rittenhouse’s face as he talked to us, the less he seemed to remember Sarda at all. Had credit for the image projector shifted without their ever even meeting? “I’m sorry we had to snatch you up so unceremoniously,” Rittenhouse said. “It’s critical that no unauthorized contact be made with the insurgents until I find out what their game is. Captain Kirk received strict orders against any contact—”

  “Captain Kirk didn’t authorize our actions, sir,” I said. “I acted on my own judgement. In fact, Lieutenant Sarda isn’t responsible for his presence. I ordered him to come with me and told him Captain Kirk had assigned me to go to Star Empire. I’m responsible entirely.”

  Sarda opened his mouth to tell the truth and claim his right to self-incrimination, but I found his arm under the table and squeezed a firm shut-up. Sharing blame in a situation like this wouldn’t lessen the severity.

  “Sarda?” Rittenhouse looked at him. “Don’t I know that name? Oh, yes, the young scientist who helped with the projector device. At any rate,” he looked back at me, “Kirk tells me you are the person whose biocode cleared communications with the terrorists who stole my dreadnought.”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Do you have any idea why? The obvious assumption is that you’re in league with them in some way.”

  I started to speak only to be cut off by Sarda. “Such a conclusion is not obvious at all to anyone who knows Lieutenant Piper personally.”

  Rittenhouse grinned softly, as though remembering some pleasant encounter years past. “Your loyalty to your friend is commendable, Mr. Sarda. And I’m inclined to believe you. This is an unusual situation, without precedent to call upon. We’re all playing it by ear, which allows me to give you the benefit of the doubt. The Star Empire is in the hands of dangerous people. Volatile insurrectionists. Paul Burch was my personal adjutant on the dreadnought project and I didn’t want to admit it when h
e started to … change.”

  I tried not to lean forward like a fish catching at bait. “Change, sir?”

  The Vice-Admiral’s eyes shifted slightly down, a helpless sadness filling them. “Paul had been with me since his Academy days. Started as my official translator on assignment to Gamma Hydra. He was completely loyal, the most accommodating assistant I ever had. Supported me at every turn, came up the ranks at my side … I taught him everything I knew. Then we started the dreadnought special project. In retrospect, I suppose he expected me to promote him again and make him overseer of the project, but I took that option upon myself. Evidently Paul never got over it. He became increasingly neurotic about his duties and paranoid about me. His bitterness has escalated to this unforeseen tragedy. He’s … unstable. I have to suspect he’s become sociopathic.”

  The chair back pressed into my shoulder blades. “Then how do you … how could he have convinced the others to help him steal the dreadnought?”

  “Oh, his mental unbalancing wasn’t overt to anyone who didn’t know him well. He didn’t let it show, almost as though he perceived himself changing. I suppose it was a mistake, some effort to return all the years of loyalty, but I didn’t log any of the bursts of temper, the neurotic periods of silence, the little attempts at sabotage … protecting him was almost instinctive. I regret my delays now, of course,” he admitted quietly. “If I’d done my duty instead of acting parental toward Paul … maybe we could’ve helped him. Saved his commission. I’m afraid there’s no hope for that anymore. All we can hope is to stop them before they turn a supreme peacekeeping force into tragedy.”

  “Sir, why are you telling us this?”

  He sat back, realizing he didn’t need to explain his motivations to junior officers. Nerves, I guessed. It was difficult to straddle between the details that could turn a mistake into a galactic incident. Then he bothered to explain his explanation. “I’m hoping to save you, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir?”

  “If you’re a victim of circumstance, then you need to know the facts if you’re to help us resolve this unfortunate circumstance. If you’re indeed one of the terrorists, then you’ve been inveigled by Paul’s charms and you don’t realize the sad mental problems that motivated him to steal Star Empire. He’s a most persuasive man, Lieutenant Piper. He’s already botched his own career. I can’t allow him to take a crew of impressionable young men and women down with him. We must regain control of Star Empire before he uses it in some diabolical, destructive way. If he tries,” he said with pained force, “we’ll have no choice but to destroy it.”

  Plainly he saw the shock fall across my face at such an idea. Cut Star Empire out of the sky? Words failed me entirely as I gawked at the prospect, and Sarda’s stunned silence filled a cold space beside me. Rittenhouse stood up, leaning forward on the table and saying, “I’m counting on you to help us avoid that situation.”

  Responsibility and empathy for Rittenhouse clutched my heart, reminding me again how very human I was. He seemed so helpless, so hurt by Paul Burch’s strange turning, yet he was trying his best to salvage his friend, or at least those Burch had convinced to follow him.

  Brian, why you? What did he say, what words exist in the universe that could charm you, of all people, into throwing away your career?

  I shivered, knowing Brian. Burch must be a compelling person to turn Brian Silayna off his prescribed path. Was Brian trying to recruit me? He must have known I’d never follow a ringleader. And why had they asked for a Vulcan? A long gaze at Sarda didn’t provide any answers. Only another question: why wasn’t Star Empire moving off? If they wanted the dreadnought, its power, its value as a bargaining chip, then why were they just hanging out there at the edge of our sensor sphere? They had what they wanted, didn’t they?

  The questions started to make me dizzy. I closed my eyes for a moment, torn between wanting to help Rittenhouse bear this awesome burden and a mad wish to file for transfer to the nearest ore freighter.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “What? Oh. Yes, sir?”

  “What do you know that made the terrorists ask specifically for you?”

  Swallowing a lump of embarrassment, I shrugged, “I haven’t found out yet. I planned to have them tell me when I docked with them. Although … I don’t think it’s very important.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, the person who sent the message is, or was … very close to me before my transfer to Enterprise. He may just want to recruit me.”

  White eyebrow puffs lifted in sage understanding of exactly my meaning of “very close.” “We’ll see,” he murmured.

  “Bridge to Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse,” the intercom said.

  “Rittenhouse here.”

  “Captain Kirk hailing from Enterprise, sir.”

  “Pipe it through, Ensign Booth.”

  “Captain Kirk, on discreet.”

  “Kirk here.”

  “Captain, I have your two young emissaries here with me now. Would you like to have them beamed back? No, on second thought I may need them here to ensure communication with the terrorists.”

  “May I ask what you’re planning to do, Vice-Admiral?” Kirk’s voice felt like an anchor to me.

  “I’m going to try talking some sense into Paul Burch. I may be able to convince him of the futility he’s taken on.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then we’ll do whatever we have to do,” Rittenhouse said. “War is an investment in peace, Captain Kirk, a necessary sacrifice for the good of all.”

  “Are you implying we may have to destroy the dreadnought?”

  “We can’t leave it in the hands of a vindictive maniac. Paul Burch is mentally unstable and he’s stolen a device capable of destroying life on a systemwide scale. Better to cut them short here and now. I don’t like the idea of taking life any better than you do, Kirk, but sometimes we have to sacrifice our minor principles for a greater ideal.”

  In my mind I could see Kirk pacing across the bridge, his brow knitting slightly, maybe frowning a little at the same uncertain coldness that also shivered down my arms. Sacrifice whose principles for whose ideals?

  I squinted thoughtfully, imagining Kirk locking eyes with Spock in silent conversation. I imagined Spock’s head tilting, the eyebrow lifting. When Kirk spoke again, his tone was full of that communication. “I hesitate to fire on another Federation vessel until we know what’s going on.”

  Rittenhouse’s mouth flattened into a line. “We do know what’s going on. All we have to do is our duty. Star Empire’s crew must be stopped. Here and now. Before they go on a bloody rampage. This is a direct order: pinpoint your phasers on the primary life support systems of their two major hulls and be ready to fire on my signal. Kirk, of course I hope we don’t have to do this. But if we’re forced, we must at least try to salvage the Federation’s investment in the ship itself.”

  In my mind Kirk looked at Spock again, with that same perplexed underlying suspicion. Logical, Spock said, I’d have bet, but the way he said it was dubious, doubting something in Rittenhouse’s decision, some sniggering problem in the motivation. Kirk and his Vulcan counterpart were sensing—or was it just me? Just my imagination? Save the ship, kill the crew. Logical. But would logic be enough in a situation like this? Rittenhouse seemed like an innately concerned, kind, experienced man, but I wondered if he had been away from actual space duty too long.

  “I assume,” Kirk began again, “that we’ll exhaust all other alternatives before we resort to that, ViceAdmiral.”

  It wasn’t exactly a question; in fact, it wasn’t a question at all. Kirk was diplomatically refusing to fire on Star Empire without overwhelming reasons. Rittenhouse picked up on it.

  “If you find yourself reluctant, Captain,” he said, “you may return to headquarters and consider yourself relieved of this situation. There really was no reason for Command to order your pursuit of the stolen ship at all. I have several starships on their way here which are under my d
irect command per the Special Powers Decision, Star Fleet Regulations, Section forty-one-B. Thank you for your help in restraining the thieves.”

  Sarda tensed beside me. I nodded. Never had either of us heard of anything like this. Dismiss a starship in a hairline situation? I found myself silently begging Captain Kirk not to go, to stay here even if it meant defying orders directly. He had to stay. If he left, I’d be—

  “We’re not leaving, Vice-Admiral.”

  I almost passed out with relief.

  “Are you defying me, Kirk?” Rittenhouse’s gentle green eyes hardened.

  “No, sir. But Enterprise is in this whether we like it or not. For some reason the people aboard the dreadnought asked for us specifically. If we leave, they may be provoked into just the actions you’re trying to avoid.”

  The little Kirk in my head turned to the little Spock and the little McCoy behind him. Touché, the little doctor congratulated. One helluva chess player, Jim.

  I started breathing again.

  Rittenhouse realized he was in a corner, and inhaled slowly while he made a decision. He looked briefly at Dr. Boma, then punched the intercom button again. “Very well. But remember this is my project. I’m in charge … Agreed?”

  Could he be referring to Kirk’s renowned propensity for taking over in times of difficulty?

  “You’re in charge, Vice-Admiral. Kirk out.”

  Rittenhouse flopped back and sighed, but not in relief. “He doesn’t understand.”

  “Sir?” I prodded.

  He shook his head slowly. “Kirk doesn’t comprehend the value of the dreadnought itself. The Federation needs that very unique power, especially the way things have been going in the galaxy. The Klingon negotiations are snagging, the Orions pushing their neutrality to a point of doing more harm than good … the galaxy is an inefficient puzzle of fragments. Star Empire could change all that.”

  That cold feeling came back to me, redoubled. “I don’t understand.”