Crisis of Consciousness (3 page)

“I saw the yellow alert, and we were informed we were already within the bounds of our system,” the ambassador was telling the officer.

At the captain’s nod, the security man holstered his phaser and stepped back.

Kirk knew how important the treaty was, but his gut reaction was to have Pippenge forcibly removed from his bridge—perhaps confinine him to quarters. Thankfully, diplomacy overrode that urge. The captain said in his most level tone, “Mister Ambassador, I didn’t call you to the bridge.”

Nervously, Pippenge pursed his lips. “Yes, Captain, I’m very sorry. I was simply worried. Please forgive me.” At least the man knew he shouldn’t be there.

Kirk needed to focus on the situation—not the ambassador. He gently pulled Pippenge toward the command chair as the lift doors opened again. Scotty stepped out and hurriedly moved toward his station.

“I saw the alert, sir.”

The captain nodded and descended to the command well as Spock moved to his science station.

“Report.”

“Alert status confirmed, sir, all decks.”

Lieutenant Sulu and Ensign Chekov were at the helm and navigation consoles respectively, quietly awaiting their orders.

“The vessel?” Kirk asked as he lowered himself into the center seat.

“Unfamiliar configuration,” Spock said, already bent over his sensor cowl. “No answer to our hails. Intercept in three minutes.”

“Spock, what do you make of her?”

The Vulcan flipped switches for a moment, then spun a dial on the side of the viewer. “Conventional warp drive assembly, highly energized plasma weapons, and I believe four forward and four aft torpedo tubes.”

A small knot formed between the captain’s shoulder blades. “Well armed.”

“Also,” Spock continued, “class-one shielding and significant armor plating.”

“Life-forms?” Kirk asked.

Spock was ready with the answer. “Reading one-hundred seventeen individuals; however, parts of the ship are resistant to scan.”

Not a Romulan vessel
. Thoughtfully stroking his lip with a finger, Kirk wondered what new race this could be. Being heavily armed didn’t necessarily mean they were a threat. The
Enterprise
was armed to defend herself, but such weapons could be seen as offensive by strangers.

Turning toward the sound of the lift opening again, Kirk noticed that Lieutenant Uhura had changed into her regulation uniform. With a nod to the relief officer, she slid smoothly into her chair.

“Visual, Mister Chekov.”

“Aye, sir.” The ensign tapped quickly at his console.

On the main viewscreen, the image changed from a relatively empty starscape to one where a small dot grew larger, noticeable only because an indicator on the screen pointed out that it was the vessel in question.

“Magnify,” Kirk ordered.

A larger, more impressive view of the approaching ship centered itself on the viewscreen.

The data on Sulu’s tactical display stated it was only slightly larger in length and width than
Enterprise
. Its mass was seven times greater. Where Kirk’s ship had a certain grace, with lines that suggested a design of intended beauty, the unknown vessel was a chunk of a craft, not quite cylindrical. It had no curves—just coarse edges and multi-level ledges that shaped its form. If there were standard warp nacelles, they were hidden within the bulk of the hull. It was either painted dark or naturally so, and its gray form almost disappeared against the black starscape.
It looks,
Kirk thought
, like a crumbling brick. An imposing one.

The captain nodded toward the alien ship. “Can we predict their weapons range?”

Spock, still suspended over his sensors, replied cautiously. “Not with any accuracy, but if forced to estimate, I would suggest approximately the same as our own.”

“How good are your planetary defenses?” Kirk turned slightly toward Pippenge and met his gaze.

His hands tightly gripping the railing, the Maabas ambassador was clearly shaken by the question. His homeworld—or rather, his people’s chosen world—was off the usual interstellar routes and therefore rarely got unannounced visitors. “Well,” he said slowly, “we’d like to think quite good. But they’ve not been tested in actuality.”

“Captain.” Uhura turned toward Kirk, and he twisted to listen to her. “I’m receiving an answer to our hail.” She had one hand still on her console and the other touching her earpiece. “Audio only, sir.”

“Let’s hear it.”

The speakers crackled to life, and as the voice was interpreted, presumably accurately, Kirk felt his throat tighten.

“Attention to all who stand in our way of Kenis Prime. Surrender our planet back to us, or be destroyed
.
”

TWO

The aliens hadn’t waited for a reply. They’d sped toward
Enterprise
, and the nearer they came, the more the viewscreen crackled with static.

Kirk spun toward Spock. “What’s causing that?”

The Vulcan smoothly but quickly consulted his console. “They’re attempting to overload our scanners.”

“Aye,” Scott said from the engineering station. “And it’s working. We’ve got to shut down the sensor grid.”

“The whole grid? How is that possible?” Kirk asked. Their systems were well shielded, had built-in redundancies. He looked at his chief engineer and saw a grave expression on the man’s face.

Scott quickly nodded once. “Right now, sir.”

“Do it,” Kirk ordered, then twisted toward the helm. “Switch to passive sensors for maneuvering and targeting.”

“Aye, sir,” Sulu and Chekov said almost simultaneously, their hands punching at their controls.

From his console, Scott directed an ensign at the auxiliary engineering station to key in the shutdown. The chief engineer then nodded toward Spock, who took the next steps.

The change that took place couldn’t be heard or felt. On a personnel level, it meant hundreds of crew rushing to positions to double and triple check their stations. Kirk sensed a difference, not physically, but emotionally. His ship was hampered—his sight blurred.

The captain thumbed a button on the arm of his chair. “Red alert.”

On the viewscreen, the image changed from a starscape view to a tactical display fed by extrapolated computer data. Instead of reaching out,
Enterprise
now waited for information to come to it, and the computer had to estimate what was beyond visual sight.

Kirk’s eyes narrowed on the dot on the viewer that was labeled “HO1.” Hostile 1.

“Who are they?” he asked Pippenge.

“I—I don’t know, Captain. Truly I don’t.”

Looking for some hint to a possible deception by the ambassador, Kirk saw none. The man’s expression edged toward shock, perhaps even embarrassment, but not mendacity. Still, there were lies people told others and those they told themselves. The latter were more difficult to divine.

Uhura pulled the captain’s attention from Pippenge. “They’re hailing, sir. Audio only.”

Turning his gaze back to the ambassador, Kirk said, “On speaker.”

“
Attention, battle cruiser. We have surveyed your ship and assessed your capabilities. We order you to remove yourself from this star system. At once
.” The voice, interpreted through the universal translator, sounded vaguely female but had an odd resonance familiar to Kirk which he couldn’t quite place.

Glancing to Spock, the captain found the Vulcan raising a curious brow.

The captain motioned to Uhura. “Patch me in.” She touched a button, nodded at Kirk, and he began, “This is Captain James T. Kirk of
—”

Clearly dismissive, the alien woman cut him off. “
We are of Kenis Prime.
You are not.
All intruders will vacate our home.
”

“Intruders?” Kirk’s brow knitted, and he swiveled to Pippenge for an explanation as he made a slashing motion across his throat to Uhura, ordering communications privacy.

“I don’t understand.” The ambassador puckered his lips slightly, which Kirk understood to be the same as a human shaking his head. “We are not born to this world, but I assure you the planet was long uninhabited when we found it.”

“But there
are
ruins of a previous civilization,” Spock offered.

“Of course,” Pippenge agreed. “Ancient. Abandoned for millennia.”

“Could
these
people have abandoned them?” Kirk asked. “You’ve studied the ruins.”

The ambassador pursed his lips. “Yes. For years.”

Hands behind his back, Spock stepped to the rail that separated the upper bridge from the command well. “What do you know of those who built them?”

“Myself?” Pippenge’s eyes widened—a shrug. “Little. I am neither an archaeologist nor scientist.”

“You call this planet Maaba S’Ja,” Spock said calmly. “If memory serves, that means ‘new world’ in your language. Is it possible another race called it Kenis Prime?”

Thoughtfully, Pippenge paused to consider it. “I don’t know. Perhaps. It does sound familiar,” he said eventually. “But by an extinct society. Dead, long before we arrived.”

“Not so dead.” Kirk motioned to the viewscreen, indicating not only the representative dot of the hostile ship, but the actual vessel beyond the bulkhead.

“I—I cannot imagine,” Pippenge said quietly, almost to himself.

“They want their planet back.” It was as if Fate were laughing at him for thinking this would be a quick diplomatic run—
Enterprise
as taxi service. With the treaty signed, the Federation was now pledged to protect the Maabas, and a hostile vessel from a people posing as the original inhabitants of the protectorate planet qualified as a threat to be handled.

An audible, figurative poke in Kirk’s eye, the Kenisian vessel signaled again. “
Intruder battle cruiser. We grow impatient. The planet will be vacated, or all will pay the price.”

His jaw tight, Kirk replied. “Kenisian vessel, we believe in settling our differences through discussion, not force, if at all possible.” He didn’t like the Kenisian’s tone or threats, but now wasn’t the time to mirror them.

After a long pause, Uhura sighed in frustration. “They’ve closed the channel, sir.”

Spock was already studying his scanner when Kirk turned toward him.

“They’re charging weapons.”

“Shields.” Kirk pounded the arm of his command chair. “All hands, battle stations.”

“Battle stations,” Uhura repeated over the intercom. “All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill. All hands, report to battle stations.”

The captain tensed instinctively, as he had when he was a young, green ensign and first heard the call to battle. He told himself that this would change. It hadn’t. He could still feel himself coiling up. He had gotten better at hiding it, but the feeling always remained.

To his side, Pippenge gripped the rail so hard it looked like he was trying to snap it in half. For him, a triumphant return home, planned for months in advance, had been tainted by the improbable.

“Evasive action, Mister Sulu.” Kirk studied the tactical display, which he knew would be inadequate. “Mister Scott, we need those sensors.”

“Aye, sir.” Scott sped toward the turbolift. “I’ll move the lads along.”

The bridge shook as the lift doors closed. Salvos struck against the shields. Without sensors they could not see them coming.

“Damage report.”

Spock hesitated a moment before replying. He checked something off one console, then verified it before looking up at the captain. “No damage. But there is something.”

Kirk rose toward the science station but gave a half turn to the helm before stepping to the upper bridge. “Maintain evasive, Mister Sulu.”

Pointing to an external schematic of the
Enterprise
, Spock indicated three points. “Inert material spaced equidistantly between the secondary and primary hulls.”

“What are they?” Kirk shook his head at his own thought. “Not explosives.”

“Unknown.” Spock flipped two switches on his console but little changed on the graphic above them. The mass reading suggested they were heavy, but that told them little. The power-output said null, but without active sensors, it was all a guess.

Leaning down, Kirk hit the nearest intercom button. “Kirk to engineering. Mister Scott, I want those sensors back now.” He looked to Spock. “We may have to risk an overload to see what we’re dealing with.”

Silence, no reply from Scott. Kirk repeated himself. “Kirk to engineering. Respond.”

Just as the captain glanced toward Uhura, she was already checking. “Sir, I’m not getting a response on
any
channel. Internal or external.”

Spock immediately bent over his viewer while Kirk checked the auxiliary science station. Internal sensors were either as hampered as the external grid, or . . . “A dampening field,” Kirk said. “From the . . .
barnacles
we just picked up?”

His first officer had a flicker of recognition at what he probably thought was a quaint—if not fully apt—term for the material placed on their hull. “I see no evidence the field emanates from them, but I believe they’re amplifying one.”

“We could remove them manually.” The captain stared at the blips on the schematic. Foreign objects on
his
ship.

“Doing so in space suits would likely take two point three hours.”

Time they didn’t have. Was this a prelude to being boarded? To being destroyed?

“What about phasers?” Kirk spun toward navigation. “We’ll carve them off.” Maybe the act would take some hull plating with it, but force fields could be put in place in those locations once the dampening field was gone.

Chekov checked his controls at Kirk’s request. “Phasers inactive, Captain.” He shook his head and turned toward Kirk. “But torpedoes are available, sir.”

“Thank you, Mister Chekov. We won’t be torpedoing the
Enterprise
today.” The ensign was probably only giving full information and not really suggesting they should fire torpedoes on their hull, but Kirk wasn’t going to even entertain the idea. “Mister Spock, what about beaming them off?”

The Vulcan nodded carefully. “Possibly.” He smoothly worked his console and began a computer simulation. After a few moments, he looked toward the captain. “Assuming Mister Scott gets our sensors online. It will take the majority of our battery reserves, channeled directly through the cargo transporters.”

“Leaving us how much?” Kirk asked.

Without checking his computations, Spock answered. “Twenty-two point four percent of capacity.”

“Risky.” Kirk massaged his lower lip with his right thumb. If they wasted most of their battery power on this attempt, they’d be as good as helpless. But if it worked . . . well, that was the risk part, wasn’t it?

He looked for the briefest moment at Ambassador Pippenge, who seemed as anxious as the crew probably felt. They were more accustomed to masking it. As the Maabas were alien to Kirk, what he saw may not have been anxiety. Still, there were some universals of body language and manner among humanoids, and the captain thought he knew nervous tension when he saw it.

“Captain, I have Mister Scott.” Uhura pulled Kirk’s attention back to the moment, and he moved toward her station to confer with his chief engineer, whom he quickly updated.

“Well
,
”
Scott said,
“that explains it. Most systems are down, and I surely won’t be able to get external sensors working while those devils’re there
.
”

“We’ll need internal sensors. Then we need to reroute battery power to the cargo transporters,” Kirk said. “Mister Spock will provide the details.” He motioned to Spock, who moved to Uhura’s station with a data card, while Kirk returned to the command chair.

“I am so sorry for all this, Captain,” Pippenge said. His tone, even through the universal translator, was marbled with regret.

“Did you have any idea that
this
could happen, Ambassador?” Kirk looked at Pippenge sidelong, a hard stare which was meant to elicit the truth.

“My word, I did
not
.”

He was believable, the captain decided for the third time. But having been fooled by others in the past, he kept searching Pippenge’s manner and determining that the Maabas ambassador was forthright.

“Captain?” Spock called from Uhura’s station. “Mister Scott will be ready to proceed momentarily.”

“Aye, but one question, sir
.
”

Kirk thumbed the intercom on the arm of his chair. “Go ahead, Mister Scott.”

“Where do you want them beamed? Out into space with wide dispersion or into fatal orbit around the star?”

The captain had already pondered that question and knew exactly where he wanted the Kenisian amplifiers. “Neither,” he said. “Hold them in the buffers.”

Silence. Kirk imagined Scott’s eyes had widened a bit. After a moment, the engineer confirmed the order.
“In the buffers, sir. That’
ll take some doing if we don’t want ’em to degrade in the process
.
”

“They can degrade—after we study them.” Kirk glanced toward Spock to confirm his science officer would be able to glean the information from the transporter circuits.

The Vulcan nodded once.

“Aye, sir. Stand by
.
”
In the background, Kirk could hear Scott ordering someone to bypass a troublesome circuit. There was a brief silence, then the soft clicking of controls and a slight dimming of the power of bridge lights and consoles alike.
“We’re ready, Captain
.
”

Kirk pulled in a long breath and let it out with one word. “Energize.”

Over the intercom, Kirk could hear the hum of the cargo transporter. It was a slightly different sound than the personnel system. Designed for items of larger bulk and not confined to a small circular pad, the cargo transporter used more power. Some people who’d traveled by it said it was on the harsh side—not painful, exactly, but clearly not usually meant for living matter. Kirk had experienced it himself but hadn’t noticed a difference. Perhaps it was just one of those old salts’ tales.

As the hum diminished, Scott’s voice rang out more clearly than before.
“Transport complete, sir. We have them in the buffer
.
”

Already there was an apparent change. The lights had come back to full strength, and the ship sounded herself again.

“All sensors are back on line,” Spock reported as the main viewscreen returned to a starscape view.

“Mister Chekov, target the source of that dampening field.”

“Torpedoes, locked.”

“Fire,” Kirk ordered without hesitation.

Enterprise
spat forth two orange orbs of power that slammed into the bottom of the Kenisian ship and sizzled along its shields.