of explosions.
Airtight barriers slid shut as a hole was ripped in the side of the Enterprise. Under the relentless pull of escaping air, desperate screaming crewmembers clung to beams, instruments . . . anything that remained fastened to a wall or the floor. One by one, they were sucked down corridors that were now exposed to remorseless space, perishing quickly in the unforgiving void.
In Engineering, overstressed elements let out inorganic shrieks of their own as, pushed beyond all reasonable design boundaries, they began to fail despite the best efforts of frantic techs to keep the intricate mechanisms functioning. Entire sections went dark. Illumination returned only because of luciferin-based lighting that was chemically integrated into the coatings that covered walls, ceilings, and deck.
Under such a sustained attack, not even Chekov and his dedicated team of technicians could keep the warp drive functioning. With a shudder and an electric crackling that sounded like sheet metal being torn, the core slipped out of alignment. Yelling instructions, Chekov saw to it that it was shut down and its containment compartment sealed off before it could further damage the ship.
Conditions were not much better on the bridge. Emergency lighting only served to illuminate the extent of the damage. As crewmembers stumbled about suppressing incipient fires and shutting down instrumentation that was likely to ignite in the closed atmosphere, Kirk steadied himself in the command chair. Like his ship, he was shaken but still functional.
“Sulu, damage report!” Mentally calculating the time they had spent in warp space gave him only a general idea of their possible position. An unprogrammed drop out of warp could have deposited them anywhere. Chronologically if not spatially, they should be close to home, but . . . “Where are we?”
“Shields are dropping, all weapons systems are offline!” Sulu reported promptly, ignoring the gash on his head. “We’re twenty thousand kilometers from Luna.”
“Almost home,” Kirk muttered disconsolately. “So close.”
“Captain,” Spock announced, “Marcus’s ship clearly has advanced warp and weapons capabilities proportionate to her size.”
Another blast rocked the artificial gravity on the bridge. If they lost that, Kirk knew, they would be almost helpless. “Evasive maneuvers! Get us to Earth now! Full impulse! Once we cross the halfway point between home and the moon, we can—”
“Shields are gone, Captain,” Sulu broke in. “Impulse power failing! We’re losing the last of our powered forward momentum.”
Having been thrown hard to the deck by an earlier concussion, Carol Marcus finally managed to pull herself up and totter over to where Kirk was standing. Protocol forgotten, she stepped so close in front of Kirk that he could not avoid her.
“Please, we are going to die, all of us, if I don’t talk to him!”
Aware he was nearly out of options, Kirk now found himself contemplating a most unlikely one. “He won’t listen to me. Not now. What makes you think he’ll listen to you or anyone else?”
Her fingers tightened against him. “What have you got to lose by letting me try?!”
Kirk considered the badly damaged bridge, the fact that they were virtually defenseless against the warship’s advanced weaponry, and the potentially mortal wounds to the rest of the Enterprise. As a captain from an earlier time would have said, they were essentially dead in the water. Inclining his head in the general direction of Communications, he nodded reluctantly.
“Lieutenant Uhura—hail them.”
It required two workarounds on her part just to generate a functional link. “Channel’s open—go.”
Shifting to one side, Kirk nudged a single control and then nodded at the anxious young woman standing beside him. Leaning forward, she addressed herself to the command chair pickup.
“Sir—it’s me, it’s Carol. I’m here. I’m on the Enterprise.”
No response, no reply. Two ships drifting in space: one crippled, the other looming nearby like some brooding vulture in armor. And no words passing between them.
On the silent bridge, Uhura checked her instrumentation and assured Kirk that as near as she could tell, a ship-to-ship link was open and operating. Carol tried once more. “Sir—can you hear me?”
The viewscreen forward activated, the image at first flickering and unstable. While reception remained sporadic, the likeness of Alexander Marcus was unmistakable. He acted concerned, looked pissed, and sounded confused.
“What are you doing on that ship?”
Father or no father, it was plain to see that she was scared of the man on the other end of the communication. She would have one opportunity to convince him.
“I heard what you said—Father. That you made a mistake and now you’re doing everything you can to fix it. But, Dad—I don’t