Part I: History Never Forgets
2333 - The Leronti Nebula
The inertial compensators had finally given out by the time the Enterprise-B had reached the nebula. As the ship veered to port Captain Lury was almost thrown from the command chair.
'That’s it, no further,' he said. The smell of acrid smoke from a smouldering console behind him caught the back of his throat. He coughed out the words, 'helm, all stop.'
'Helm not responding sir,' replied Ronson after a few seconds. The helmsman was also desperately trying to stay in his seat as the Enterprise rolled around an axis that was drifting further and further away from the ship's centreline.
'Number one, give the order to abandon ship,' Lury rasped to his first officer.
Lury watched Egan clamber over the piles of computer components and bundles of optical cables that were slithering around on the deck. Most of the access panels on the bridge had been ripped off to give access to the many systems that were malfunctioning, but trying to trace the cause of all the faults was becoming impossible. Egan almost fell as the ship shuddered to a halt.
The reaction control thrusters had started working temporarily, but were no longer responding to Ronson's inputs in a predictable way. Lury could now feel the vast inertia of his vessel the same way that spacefarers of old had; through the seat of his pants. As the forward thrusters fired the aft section of the ship kept going, sending the Enterprise into a cartwheel that made Lury want to throw up.
Egan gave the order to abandon ship to what remained of the crew, then opened the starboard hatch to the Jefferies tube.
'Sir, without stabilising the ship it's going to make it almost impossible to launch a shuttle,' he warned.
'Don’t worry,' said Lury, 'we’ve got the best helmsman in the fleet haven't we?' He looked at Ronson, who was attempting to stand up, and managed a slight smile. The usual good humour of the crew had been the last thing to go. There hadn't just been one catastrophe in the past few hours but a whole series of them. Most of engineering had been taken out by an explosion and whole sections of the ship had been exposed to space when the airlocks had decided to open themselves.
Ronson pulled himself into the tube feet first, then Egan moved towards the Captain. Lury grabbed the railing behind the captain’s chair.
'Computer, initiate auto-destruct sequence. Authorisation Lury-Alpha-One-One-Alpha-Zero.' There was a string of garbled nonsense from the computer, punctuated by a burst of ear-splitting pops and bleeps. 'Secondary?' Lury asked Egan.
'We don't even have enough anti-matter on board to rig an explosion. We lost that when we dumped the warp core.'
'Are you sure our final message was transmitted?' Lury sighed. Egan nodded. 'Well, it’s a big nebula. Let’s just hope she's found by the right people.'
Two Years Later...
Rachel Garrett stared at the portrait of her predecessor hanging on the wall of the conference room. There were oil paintings of all her previous incumbents. Archer, April, Pike, Kirk and on, all the way around to the opposite wall where Harriman and Sulu hung. The last portrait was of Lury. All the others were just names from history, but Garrett knew Merdin Lury. He’d taught her at the academy and he'd visited her a couple of times when she’d been stationed on Qo’nos and he'd brought the Enterprise-B to show the flag. Lury and his ship had been missing for two years now, and Garrett had pulled every favour she had to find out what mission he'd been on when he disappeared, but she always came up against the same brick wall.
The door behind her slid open and the heavy footsteps of her first officer thudded towards the end of the conference table. Commander Peter McLeran had only been in the job for a month, but she was already beginning to like him.
'Bad news,' he said as he sat down. McLeran's Scottish accent was barely noticeable through the smooth and confident tone that he’d cultivated over the years. Garrett found the way he spoke almost hypnotic. She liked to think that his real accent came back to him on those few rare visits that he made to Glasgow, back on Earth. 'Your chief medical officer is off the list,' McLeran said. He slid one of the PADDs he was carrying across the table's smooth surface.
Garrett collected the tablet and read the list of names that McLeran had highlighted. Her eyes darted past the names, some highlighted in green, others in light blue, until she saw the name of her chief medical officer lit up in bright yellow. 'The good news is, I have a replacement,' McLeran drawled. 'I'll transmit the request as soon as we're out of radio silence. With your permission of course, Captain.' McLeran was over a decade older than she was and he was well past the point in his career when he had to refuse offers to take the command chair. If not for Garrett he would have retired, but she'd offered him a position that that nobody else had been able to fill.
'Friend of yours?' Garrett asked. She tapped open the profile of the new candidate.
'As a matter of fact, she is.' The slight slurring of his 's' was a running joke with the rest of the crew. The communications officer had already perfected his impersonation of McLeran. Garrett caught herself smiling, and McLeran grinned back at her. 'Was there something else, Captain?' She put her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
'Maybe I’m the problem?' She asked. McLeran squirmed in his seat a little.
'Well, actually that wasn't what I said.' The Captain walked to the opposite end of the long table.
'Oh no, that's exactly what you said.' Garrett tried to sound angrier than she really was.
'What I said was, "have you considered the possibility that you are the problem?"' Garrett liked the fact that McLeran delivered the question just as forcefully the second time. She went over to the replicator and ordered a black coffee.
'The answer to your question is, yes, I have,' said Garrett. A steaming hot mug rippled into existence and Garrett gestured towards the machine. McLeran waved his hand to decline her offer. 'I requested you for this assignment because of what you were able to do with the crew of the Hathaway, and your work on starbase fourteen. You have a talent for group dynamics.'
McLeran realised that he had come to the meeting totally unprepared to defend himself against compliments.
'And if you are the problem?' McLeran asked. Garrett looked again at the portraits on the wall.
'I didn't ask for the Enterprise,' said Garrett. 'There were plenty of people who told me not to take it.'
'Anyone who can earn the respect of the Klingons deserves their reputation,' McLeran replied. Garrett shook her head.
'Politics.' A beep from the intercom lit up the console set into the end of the conference table. It was the navigator.
'Captain, we're approaching the designated co-ordinates.'
The code forty-seven transmission had come in three hours ago. An encrypted communication intended for her eyes only. The message contained instructions for a comms blackout and a set of temporal coordinates; giving both a precise location and time for their arrival. Garrett didn't know what this was all about, but based on nature of message she was sure she wasn't going to like it.
Garrett took her place on the bridge in silence. McLeran followed behind and tried to get more information on the sector they were in, but there wasn't any. This part of the galaxy was about as empty as you could get, not close to any star systems, shipping lanes or patrol routes. The perfect place for an ambush, or worse; the prelude to a clandestine operation by Starfleet Intelligence. The message and this meeting place had their sticky fingerprints all over it. Garrett had previous experience of that malign institution that had grown along with the Federation as it had entered its expansionist phase.
When the Enterprise dropped out of warp Garrett ordered,
'helm, all stop. Station keeping.' A few seconds later Ensign junior grade Castillo reported,
'Answering all stop, Captain.' Then the tactical officer said,
'Picking up a ship, sir. It's approaching our position at warp nine."
"It's the USS Ambassador," said McLeran, who was looking over Lieutenant Commander Daker's right shoulder.
'Have the transporter room standing by,' Garrett ordered, before a blue-white flash lit up the viewscreen.
The elongated outline of a ship smeared itself across the screen, then the USS Ambassador made a hard turn to starboard. She briefly sideslipped towards the Enterprise and then presented its aft section to them. It fired all of its thrusters to null its rate and then spat out a tiny shuttlecraft.
'Maintain transporter lock and open the main shuttlebay,' said Garrett. 'Clear all personnel,' She looked around for her lowest-ranking officer and her eyes settled again on Castillo. 'Go down and bring the craft in,' she told him.
'Sir,' Castillo replied smartly, and walked over to the turbolift.
When Garrett looked back at the viewscreen the Ambassador was already engaging its warp engines, in fact it hadn't fully shut them down. The tiny shuttlecraft was making good headway, but was barely clear of the warp field when the Ambassador lurched forward and stretched to infinity. She could see the shuttle struggling to maintain its course as the wake of the warp field dispersed over it, but whoever the pilot was they had good reflexes.
'Someone's putting on quite a show for us,' said McLeran.
'If this is who I think it is, then the show hasn't even begun,' said Garrett.
* * *
For Richard Castillo the trip down to the shuttlebay was a welcome break from the dull routine of the bridge; even if it did mean minding his manners with some ambassador or admiral. Castillo had hoped that life aboard the Enterprise would be as exciting as the name had promised, but the last year or so had been fairly uneventful. The seemingly endless crew changes had been getting more frequent recently and each time a new batch of officers was replaced he'd anxiously expected his name to be on the list with them. Since joining the ship out of the academy he'd served under three different first officers, and the ship had only been in service for two years. Captain Garrett seemed friendly towards him, and being one of the longest serving officers he'd tried to establish some kind of relationship with her, but she was difficult to get to know. She always seemed distant somehow; distracted by something that she didn't want to talk about. Making friends with the other officers had been equally fruitless, what with most of them having left.
The crew who had been manning the shuttlebay were all standing out in the corridor when Castillo arrived. Most of them were enlisted crew, but there were two officers, both more senior than him. Castillo squared up to the lieutenant in charge.
'The Captain sent me down to meet our guests,' he informed her. She said nothing, and simply keyed in the code to open the door. Beyond was the wide expanse of the hangar deck. Castillo stepped inside then turned around to the lieutenant.
'You're all dismissed.'
The giant clamshell doors at the rear of the Enterprise were fully open and he could just about make out the small craft approaching. He climbed up the ladder to the control room and made a quick safety check to make sure all of the tractor beams and emitters were online and the autodocking system was tracking the shuttle. That was when he noticed that the shuttle wasn't sending out a transponder signal. He checked the reciever was working, then looked again, but by now the craft had already entered the control zone, and she was coming in hot.
The lock-on beam continued to look for the signal as the shuttle flew through the forcefield and into the bay. For one awful instant he thought that it had suffered a control loss and he was about to hit the crash alarm when it banked around one side of the hangar and bled off all of its forward momentum with a quick-stop manoeuvre. He caught a glimpse of the girl behind the controls as the nose of the craft pitched up; her expression one of total concentration. The shuttlecraft touched down below him in one fluid movement as he set the hangar doors to close and slid down ladder.
The clamshell doors still hadn't completely sealed off the compartment by the time he'd reached the shuttle. Castillo saw the stars stretching out as the Enterprise went to warp. The passengers of the Turing were already climbing out of the door at the side of the shuttle. It was a heavily modified type five shuttle and wasn't assigned to the Ambassador. In fact it had no registry at all, which accounted for the fact that there had been no transponder signal to pick up. The young woman stepping out of it was a Lieutenant Commander and wore a dark green undershirt of the intelligence and security division. She had dark hair that was tied up on top of her head and a bright smile. The other occupant of the craft was a Vulcan male wearing the rank of Commodore. Castillo stood to attention.
'Lieutenant Commander Marta Batanides reporting,' the girl announced. 'Permission to come aboard.' Castillo wondered what they'd do if he said no, but the idea quickly vanished when he looked up at the Vulcan.
'Of course, permission granted,' said Castillo, rather absently. He didn't know what protocol he was supposed to follow, but since the Commodore hadn't yet introduced himself he continued speak to Batanides. 'Captain Garrett has instructed me to escort you both to the bridge.'
The task seemed entirely unnecessary since they'd just come from the sister ship of the Enterprise, so Castillo assumed they'd be able to find the bridge on their own. There was a lot of tradition and etiquette surrounding the hosting of dignitaries and flag officers, most of which Castillo had never paid too much attention to. The Commodore hadn't complained so far; in fact he hadn't said a word since he'd come aboard.
'I didn't catch your name, Ensign,' said Batanides as they stood in the turbolift.
'Richard Castillo,' he said. 'Helmsman.' Batanides simply smiled at him. 'Nice flying by the way."
'Thanks,' Batanides smirked
* * *
When the turbolift doors opened behind him McLeran looked around and announced,
'Commodore on the bridge.' Garrett seemed to tense up, her mouth drawn straight in an attempt to hide her true feelings for the man. There was histroy between them, that was clear, but McLeran didn't know what.
'Shall we get straight to the mission briefing, Commodore,' said Garrett. Commodore Varen nodded and the pair walked together through the door to the conference room. Castillo resumed his seat at the helm, leaving Batanides standing alone. McLeran walked across to her.
'I'll have quarters assigned to you and the Commodore, Commander.' Batanides smiled and nodded, then headed for the tactical station.
McLeran watched as Lieutenant Commander Carolina Daker briefed Batanides on the current status of the ship's sensors, shields and weapons systems. Batanides listened, but made no comment. When Daker had finished Batanides stayed at tactical and kept looking at the door to the conference room, as though she was waiting for something to happen. She didn't have to wait long. The Captain walked through the door with a look of grim determination on her face. The Commodore followed and his expression was as inscrutable as ever.
'Computer, initiate protocol Varen-Sigma. Authorisation Varen-one-six-five-sigma,' said Varen. At first nothing seemed to happen, then several bridge stations blanked out or shut down. A number of officers found themselves sitting or standing in front of inoperative consoles. 'Those of you with disabled stations will now leave,' Varen said. Several bridge officers looked towards McLeran, who looked at Captain Garrett, but if she had an explanation she didn't offer it to him.
McLeran counted off nine crewmembers as they filed into the two turbolifts that served the bridge. That left five officers, including himself.
'Would anybody like to tell me what's going on?' said McLeran.
'This is my first officer, Commander McLeran,' Garrett said to Varen. 'Right about now he's probably wondering how he's supposed to run a ship with three people.'
'Myself and Commander Batanides will run the mission, you and your crew will be assigned to run the ship,' Varen explained.
'So you're not relieving me of command?' Garrett asked.
'No, Captain.' Batanides strolled from tactical to the navigation console and sat down next to Castillo. She entered a set of co-ordinates and looked across to the Ensign to make sure he'd received the new course and heading.
To Be Continued...