Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

The Merrimack tore a swath of warped space across the Pegasi sector with a growing vibration already reminiscent of an earthquake-torn island. Stars flashed past on the main viewscreen so fast that to an unaccustomed eye, they might appear to streak past like laser beams. The cruiser's nacelles strained in their mounts to keep the ship moving at speed: and still it couldn't possibly fly fast enough.

Already the emergency call from the Leonis was an hour old, and yet to Matt Decker it felt as if he'd been hunched forward in the captain's chair for half a day. The savage ache in his back seemed to lessen every time he changed his posture, only to worsen again after a few minutes. The chronometer mounted between the helm and navigation board ticked the seconds by with agonizing slowness. It could be a trick of the high warp speed, or it could be that the Leonis was in dire straits and the Merrimack was the only ship close enough to render aid.

"Time to intercept," Decker said tersely.

"Less than four minutes now, sir." Peter Brent looked over his shoulder from the helm, but his face showed the same tension that strained between every living creature on the Merrimack's bridge. "We're still about six parsecs out from Dimidium."

"Mr. Skappas, plot a standard orbit," Decker nodded to the navigator. "Mr. Kirk, weapons status?"

James Kirk turned halfway from his station on the starboard side of the bridge with a snappy response. "Main phasers manned and ready, Captain. Photon torpedoes locked and loaded."

"Very well. Lieutenant L'Rema, anything further from the Leonis?"

The black-furred Caitian woman seated at the communications console had more of a growl than a purr to her voice as she responded. "Negative, Captain. No word since they reported the artillery strike on the planet's capitol district."

"And the Yorktown?"

"ETA ninety-three minutes."

"Estimate we'll reach standard orbit in two minutes, sir," Skappas called over his shoulder.

"Very well," Decker nodded. "Hold your course. Phasers stand by!" He punched the middle button on the right arm of the command chair and leant over the speaker, rubbing his chin. "Captain's log, Stardate One-one-five-seven point four. We have received a distress call from the U.S.S. Leonis, which has been in the Pegasi system attempting to broker a peace agreement between the recently contacted planets of Dimidium and Delta Pavonis. Although the Pavoni have petitioned for Federation membership, the Dimidians have proved much more reclusive and paranoid, and a particularly violent faction has threatened a hostile takeover of its government and an interplanetary missile launch against the Pavoni unless they withdraw their petition for membership in the Federation. The Leonis has reported an artillery strike in the vicinity of the Dimidian Sacrificial Spire and lost contact with its landing party. We are en route to render assistance."

Decker shut off the log recorder, arose from his chair and stepped up to the upper level of the bridge, leaning on the circular console beside Kirk. "You'd think a cultural observer would have reported interplanetary missile capability before we made first contact," he muttered.

"The thought occurred to me," Kirk nodded. "Of course, who's to say they didn't develop the capability after the fact."

Decker gave him a piqued stare. "What are you getting at?"

"Let's face it, Matt, not all of us are inclined to obey the Prime Directive as zealously as others," Kirk replied evenly. "It wouldn't come as a shock if the Pavoni had a little outside help in developing advanced weapons systems and the Dimidians got wind of it somehow, and opted to arm themselves."

"Hmm." Decker rubbed his chin and looked around the bridge, feeling the tension of his senior officers as palpably as he could see it. He had been looking around that same bridge for three years and feeling, seeing that same tension every time they went rushing in where angels feared to tread.

And yet, a glance around the bridge never missed the plaque affixed to the bulkhead beside the turbolift, never missed the name inscribed on the plaque and never failed to remind Decker of his ship's heritage. It had inherited the name of a ship that, inefficient and ineffective as it was by all accounts, had taken part in a revolution of naval warfare and technology. Itself built on the hull of a burnt wooden sailing ship, it had been transformed into a casemate ironclad renamed for the state of its rebirth, but still known throughout the annals of history by its original name - Merrimack.

In its menacing new and nearly invincible form, that clumsy, deep-drafted ironclad had written itself into the history books the day it destroyed two of its most powerful wooden adversaries. And yet the next day, it was itself checked by a diminutive enemy, another iron ship that further revolutionized sea power just as it revolved its own gun turret. Neither the Merrimack nor the Monitorhad managed to inflict serious damage on each other in that legendary engagement, but the Monitor had bequeathed its name to every ship to follow in its design. And although the Merrimack was scuttled a mere two months after their confrontation, it, too, had eventually passed on its name to vessels that carried history on their decks and the future in their hulls.

The U.S.S. Merrimack, Naval Construction Contract No. 1344, was the second starship to bear the name. Spawned of the Archer class, with a standard saucer-shaped primary hull, its semicylindrical engineering section protruded from the rear of that hull and tapered into a shuttle hangar with a single vertical-track door. Built into the upper superstructure where the engineering section joined the primary hull, two angled pylons supported the monstrously vibrating warp nacelles, projecting thirty meters above the saucer where the shield emitter could easily cover them.

Right now they strained in their mountings, fighting harder by the minute to hold the ship at its maximum speed of Warp 6.

Following the Federation and Klingon War several years earlier, the Merrimack had been tasked with peacekeeping patrols at the edges of Federation space, should another belligerent try to take advantage of the Federation's recovery efforts. And few newly contacted races had shown quite as much belligerency as the Dimidians. For the thousandth time, Decker wondered whose bright idea it was to send the Leonis to Dimidium alone. Rhys Sheffield was a good man, an effective commander, and most importantly, a fire eater - but even he couldn't devour the flames the Dimidians threatened to ignite. Decker had never taken the Merrimack into a major battle, but if this action should buck for a place in the history databanks, he swore his ship would not live down to the reputation of its unwieldy, underpowered namesake.

He eyed the main viewscreen. A yellowish-white star had become visible in the upper left corner, growing closer at an alarming rate, seemingly dead in the Merrimack's path as it rushed onward. He folded his arms and glanced at Kirk again. "Refresh my memory, willya? Recent history of this sector."

"Well, Fifty-one Pegasi was first observed by one of the old-style deep-space telescopes late in the twentieth century," Kirk related. "As exploration vessels passed near the system over the past hundred years or so, they picked up a great deal of radio traffic which led them to believe Dimidium was a political carnosaur, threatening force and violence against nearby planets. The nearest thing to a motive that our cultural observers picked up was expansionism - a desire to use force to dominate the entire sector."

Decker nodded slowly. "Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, the Russian Federation, the Trump Supremacists, and now Dimidium. That message from the Leonis said the Gesikan faction had occupied an interplanetary missile base capable of launching two dozen Manticores at Delta Pavonis. What does that say to you?"

"Reports are vague, but the best estimation we have is that the Manticore warheads are armed with hydromonium phosphate cells. I don't think any Starfleet observer has ever seen the amount of damage they can do up close."

"So they have weapons of mass destruction and they're not afraid to use them. They want to rattle sabers, they could do with a little lesson from our own history." Decker pushed away from the console and returned to the captain's chair just as Skappas turned halfway in his seat.

"Less than a minute to Dimidium orbit now, Captain," he reported.

"Very well." Decker was on the verge of seating himself when he saw L'Rema arch her back, her tail twitching sharply from side to side - she only had such involuntary reactions when the news was singularly bad.

"I have a new message from the Leonis, sir!" she announced. "They report the Gesikan faction on Dimidium has launched another strike with high-yield rockets and destroyed the entire Sacrificial Oval. Captain Sheffield, First Officer Gavras and landing party...." L'Rema caught her breath, her pupils slitted and her tail tossing back and forth like a bullwhip. "All lost in the strike! The Gesikans are preparing to launch a Manticore at Delta Pavonis, they've already commenced a thirty-second countdown!"

"Damn them!" Decker snapped. He pounded one hand on the arm of his chair and leaned back into it, peering at the chronometer. "Thirty seconds!"

"Still forty until we reach orbit, sir," Skappas said grimly.

"Stand by the torpedoes! Jim, what's their missile capability, how far can it possibly get before we assume orbit?"

"Dimidium's gravity is only eighty percent of Earth's," Kirk answered. "By the time we reach orbit, we'll need all ten of those spare seconds to lock on before it breaks out of the atmosphere."

"I have the Leonis on sensors now, sir!" Brent called out. "He's headed away across the terminator. Range one point one AUs, closing fast!"

"Slow to warp two!" Decker ordered. "We don't need a collision at maximum speed. Forrester, get a set of eyes on the ground. When that missile fires off, I want to know about it before it makes smoke!"

"Yes, sir!" The young officer at the science panel shoved himself out of his chair and bent over the sensor viewer, trying to ignore the awl-like stare Kirk shot at him.

"L'Rema, open a hailing frequency," Decker said. He waited for an interminable second and reached out blindly for a pair of computer disks stacked on the arm of his chair, scuffing them between his fingers, trying to expend as much nervous energy as he could afford before L'Rema reported the hailing frequency open.

"Merrimack calling Leonis," Decker said. "This is Captain Decker speaking. What's your status?"

"This is - this is Lieutenant Odell, chief navigation officer." The voice sounded absurdly young, and on the edge of total panic. "The Dimidians have given us an ultimatum of one minute to break orbit and haul off. Captain, don't come any closer. These people are armed and dangerous!"

"Damn right they are, Lieutenant," Decker replied. "That's why we're here - to make sure the danger doesn't get off that planet. Stay your course, you understand? We're only a few seconds out!" Quickly he shut off the speaker and leaned forward in his chair. "Jim, time to missile launch?"

"Ten seconds left!" Kirk answered. "And still twenty until we're in orbit!"

"God, we'll never make it in time," Brent muttered under his breath.

Unfortunately for him, the mutter didn't escape Decker's ears. "None of that, Pete!" he said sharply. "Just hold your course and cut in impulse power on my mark - "

"Leonis calling Merrimack! Leonis calling Merrimack!" Odell's voice in the speaker was high, excited and permeated with fear. "Mayday! We've taken an ion blast to our number one warp nacelle! Our warp drive is down and our phaser capacity is reduced to thirty-eight percent!"

"Stay calm, Mr. Odell," Decker said firmly. "We're almost in range!"

"Captain, I'm sorry, sir, but we've got to break orbit," Odell interrupted. "They've already destroyed our landing party and they'll kill us all if we stay!"

"I said, stay calm, and do not break orbit, Lieutenant!" Decker shouted. "Do not show weakness on behalf of this man's Starfleet!"

He spun halfway round as Forrester straightened up from the sensor viewer. "Sir, the Manticore is airborne!" he announced. "Less than a minute before it breaks into open space, coordinates....one four zero, zero nine zero, zero seven two!"

"Is the Leonis along its trajectory?" Kirk demanded.

"No, sir! It just passed clear."

Kirk jumped out of his chair and leaned on the handrail encircling the lower level of the bridge. "Captain, I respectfully request permission to beam aboard the Leonis and take command," he said forcefully.

Decker stared at him in surprise. "Jim, God forbid that missile has any special targeting programming - "

"Sir, listen to that man!" Kirk insisted. "He's scared absolutely witless! If we don't show our teeth to the Dimidians now, they'll hit us even harder next time! Two ships against one missile, sir, it's the only chance we have!"

Decker held his breath, but immediately shook himself for doing so. They had no time to argue the point - and even less after Forrester took another look into the sensor viewer.

"The missile's in the stratosphere, sir," he exhorted. "It'll miss us by less than a hundred meters."

"Slow to impulse!" Decker ordered. "Lock phasers! We'll blast it as it goes by!"

"Captain...." The fire burned in Kirk's eyes, the total lack of fear, the determination. As the Merrimack fell into high orbit, Decker jerked one thumb over his shoulder.

"Go," he said. "LaSalle and Mitchell will beam over with you. Don't leave the ship without them!" he shouted after Kirk as his first officer dashed for the turbolift. "L'Rema, get both those men to the transporter room on the double!"

He sat in the chair and eyed the main viewer. Dimidium now occupied most of the lower half of the screen, the Leonis barely visible just from the glow of its impulse thrusters: but the most eye-catching thing on the screen right now was the yellowish-white plume of gas spewing from the bottom of the Manticore as it shot toward outer space.

Odell barely restrained himself from crying out as the Leonis heaved under another impact. Both of the hits it had taken had come from astern: the number two nacelle, projecting alongside the secondary hull on a wide strut, had been knocked completely powerless. The second blast shook the ship just as violently, though not with as much whiplashing action as the first blast had. The lights flickered, an instrument panel on the port side of the bridge went dark, and another panel on the starboard side burst altogether, spraying sparks and spewing smoke. The unnerving buzz of electrical shorts accompanied a strobelike flashing of arcs from the access panel underneath the console.

"Another hit on number two nacelle!" the science officer shouted from behind him.

"Mr. Odell, severe casualties reported on decks seven and eight!"

"We're losing attitude control, sir!"

"Sir, that missile is breaking out of atmosphere! It may not even pass us before it alters its trajectory!"

As report after dire report piled on his shoulders, each one grimmer than the last, Odell bent his head, fist clenched on top of the helm. He had had temporary command of the Leonis before when Captain Sheffield and Commander Gavras were away on a ground mission, but he had always counted on them to come back. Sheffield had instilled in him a false sense of security by assuring him that the peace negotiations would be smooth, and he hadn't for one nanosecond anticipated that both captain and first officer would never come back alive. The thought of commanding the Leonis in a legitimate crisis had occurred to him, but he had never seriously considered it - until a minute ago, when the full, crushing, inescapable weight of command smacked him full in the face.

"I'm shifting to low orbit," he finally spoke to the navigator. "Captain Decker said not to break orbit, but he - "

All of a sudden the turbolift doors swished apart.

"Report, Mr. Odell!" Kirk bellowed as he strode out of the lift. "What's your situation?"

"My - " Odell spun around, searching desperately for words as Kirk, Gary Mitchell, and Hank LaSalle overran the bridge. "I - our - we're badly damaged, sir, and sustaining serious casualties!"

"Very well, I'm taking command," Kirk asserted. "Have you got enough power for a tractor beam?"

"Only enough, Commander," the science officer broke in. "But our phasers won't - "

"To hell with the phasers! Where's that missile?"

"About to pass dead astern! It'll cross our vector in less than three seconds!"

"Mr. Odell, tractor beam on that missile, now!" Kirk barked. "Communications, have I got a channel open to the Merrimack?"

"Yes, sir, channel's been open!"

Kirk's fist fell like a sledgehammer on the comm button on the command chair. "Captain Decker, this is Kirk. I'm throwing a tractor on the missile to pull it off course. It should give you an opening to lock your torpedoes before it's out of range."

"Nice move, Jim," Decker responded. "Don't let that thing swing around and bite you in the ass. Lock and load your own torpedoes. When I give you the word, come hard about and prepare to fire a spread."

"Aye, sir!" Leaning forward in the chair, Kirk nodded to Odell. "You heard him, Lieutenant. Full impulse power! Pull that missile around and stand by photon torpedoes!"

"Yes, sir!" Odell's heavy exhalation came more of relief than of exertion as he flung every ounce of power remaining in the Leonis's straining impulse engines to drag the missile out of its lane. Relieved though he was that his crisis of command had lasted no more than a few minutes, he felt a deep premonition that he would be faced with a different kind of relief much too soon.

"They've got a grip on it, Captain!" Brent crowed. "The Manticore is deviating, passing three two four mark nine!"

"Very well." Decker leant forward in his chair and peered over Brent's shoulder at the navigational display. "Lock phasers on the tail end. Maybe we can knock out its engines."

"Shouldn't we try and hit the warhead, sir?" Skappas inquired.

"And be incinerated in a hydromonium phosphate blast at this range? Christ, no!" Decker spat. He punched the intercom button on the arm of the chair. "Jim, you still there?"

"Still open, sir!" Kirk responded.

"All right, stand by to whip her around. We'll try and get it in a crossfire!"

"Phasers locked on the missile's behind, sir!" Brent's report drowned out Kirk's response.

"Fire!" Decker shouted, pounding his fist on the arm of the chair.

Blue-white beams of solid energy burst from the emitters on the Merrimack's underside, lighting up the entire viewscreen as they hurtled toward the tail end of the soaring Manticore. The entire tail end of the missile disintegrated, a blinding burst of flame vanishing into nothingness with no air or fuel to sustain it. The fragments flew in all directions and the Manticore wrenched off course harder yet under the pull from the Leonis - but not all of the fragments broke loose from the tail end.

Little had Decker or his crew realized that the tail end of the Manticore had been designed to burst apart in the first place once the missile had gained sufficient altitude. Four separate panels broke open, one on each quadrant of the missile, allowing liquid-fueled rockets to undulate outward on double-jointed extenders. With a slight loss of acceleration but not self-propulsion, the Manticore barreled onward.

"They think of every goddamned thing, don't they?" Decker growled. "Jim! Status report!"

"We pulled it off course, but it's breaking free!" Kirk answered. "Sir, what are your orders?"

"Hard about, on my mark!" Decker arose from the chair and leant over the helm console between Brent and Skappas. "Lock photon torpedoes on target! Stand by to fire a spread!"

"Torpedoes standing by, sir," Brent said as he snapped three switches in quick succession.

"All right, Jim, hard over! Bring her around! Lock torpedoes and fire as you bear!"

"Aye, sir!" Kirk stood up and leant over the helm behind Odell, braced half on the back of the helmsman's chair and half on the control console. "Cut impulse power, Mr. Odell! Let it pull us around! Torpedoes stand by!"

The Leonis heaved and yawed violently to port as Odell cut off impulse thrust, allowing the Manticore, still in the grasp of the tractor beam, to jolt it into a hard turn. The ship swerved in a much tighter circle than it possibly could have under ordinary maneuvering thrust, in fact nearly spinning on its vertical axis, bringing hundreds of stars dashing across the main viewscreen in a dizzying blur until Dimidium burst into view. In moments the planet filled the entire screen, the Merrimack became visible for only a moment and then just as quickly vanished behind the huge, lumbering, thrusting shaft of the Manticore as it loomed impossibly close to the whirling Leonis.

"FIRE!" Decker bellowed.

He watched with grim satisfaction as a blood-red quartet of torpedo exhaust trails streaked into view on the screen, bearing down on the Manticore without mercy.

He refocused on the Leonis and held his breath.

"Fire torpedoes!" Kirk shouted.

The four-torpedo spread from the Leonis might have arrived a second too late behind the Merrimack's barrage, were it not for the Manticore's drastic deviation from course. From both sides of the missile, eight alternating torpedoes scored eight alternating hits. The burst of flame appeared on the side facing the Merrimack first. Its second torpedo struck home almost simultaneously with the Leonis's first, the Manticore shook, and buckled, its course skewing into a negative pitch perpendicular to the planet's orbit. The Leonis shook in unison, suddenly free from the whipping motion of the tractor beam as the two middle sections of the missile disintegrated. All at once the tractor beam had nothing left to grab, just a short-lived fireball quickly giving way to empty, airless space.

The flames vanished as quickly as they had from the missile's tail - but still the Manticore powered onward, leaving the debris of its outer shell behind. That shell and its enclosed rockets had also enclosed a solid, gleaming shaft with the missile's bulbous warhead at one end and an ion engine at the other. The pale yellow gas of attitude thrusters could be seen, firing one and two at a time, altering the missile's heading back toward its original course: and now Decker, standing stock-still in the middle of the bridge with his fists clenching and loosening, could see the warhead in all its gigantic size. He glowered at the bulbous abhorrence: no need to ask what kind of damage it would do. The most basic principle of weapons of mass destruction had been to destroy entire cities and kill tens of thousands. Hydromonium phosphate or worse, it could unthinkingly erase the entire state of Alaska from the map of Earth.

"God almighty, won't anything stop that missile?" he snapped, pounding the arm of the chair with the heel of his hand.

"Beats hell out of me, sir!" Skappas was evidently under such stress as to abandon proper decorum on the bridge.

"I"m reading a fission reaction in its midsection, sir," Forrester said, as if offering an answer. "But it's uncontrolled! The missile will reach Delta Pavonis just in time to blow an entire continent off the surface!"

Aboard the Leonis, Kirk braced himself in the command chair as the ship's pitching and rocking settled out. The exploding torpedoes had disrupted the tractor beam, and the Manticore had seemingly gone rogue, passing down the Leonis's port side. He ignored Odell's murmur of despair and strode behind him, leaning on the bridge rail behind the science station.

"Sir, the missile's veering back to its original course," Odell groaned loudly.

"Gary, sensors!" Kirk barked. "Is that missile being controlled from some point on the surface?"

"Let me double-check it...." Mitchell jumped out of his chair and hastily snapped several function switches on the console as he pushed his eyes to the viewer. "That's an affirmative, Jim! I'm picking up a one-way carrier wave from the eastern continent, broad wave, signal strength of six hundred megawatts!"

"That means they could control it as far as...." Odell broke off after one cursory glance at his navigation screen. "Straight at us! It's turning straight for us, Commander!"

"Evasive action!" Kirk bounded to the isle in the midst of the bridge. "Captain Decker, did you read?"

"I got it, Jim!" Decker answered. "We'll worry about the missile, you take care of the control point! But for God's sake don't get yourselves blown out of orbit first!"

"But - " For a moment Odell seemed to lose his capacity to speak. When he regained it, he could manage only a blurt: "How - how do they know our position?"

"Never mind about that." Kirk clapped the back of Odell's chair with one hand and guided himself back into the command chair with the other. "Bring us hard over, course one three four mark seven. Stand by on - "

"Kirk!" The speaker crackled with the volume of Decker's urgent shout. "Kirk, get the hell out of there! You've got surface-to-space rockets incoming!"

Kirk's adrenaline surged and he stood up ramrod-straight again, not even having touched the seat of the chair. The Manticore approaching them bow on and -

"Two of 'em airborne!" Mitchell called out. "Same trajectory as the radio signal, heading straight for our secondary hull!"

"Odell, we have got to turn faster!" Kirk urged.

"I'm trying, sir!" Panic edged Odell's voice once again, he slapped the back of his hand on the console with an open gesture of helplessness. "But with only one-half impulse power available, this is all she's got for us!"

"The Kobayashi Maru was never like this," Kirk grated. "Increase yaw to - "

All at once, he pitched forward again, propelled by an unknown force to a hard landing on the astrocompass in front of him. With a tremendous crash the Leonis rocked violently to port, as if the planet had broken orbit and deliberately hurled itself against the ship's secondary hull. Odell was hurled completely out of his seat, wind knocked clean out of him as he crashed to the deck against the upper level of the bridge. For a moment the lights blinked out completely, leaving the flashing red-alert light and the warning beacon on the helm as the only illumination.

In that dim red flash Kirk could no longer see Odell sitting at the helm. He groped about on the console in search of the main viewer switch, but all of a sudden a wash of light - dimmer than before, but incandescent illumination nevertheless - glared upon the bridge again. Kirk pushed upright and spun around, just in time to see LaSalle's hands retreating from the emergency lighting switches at the engineering station.

"LaSalle, I need that viewing screen!" Kirk hollered.

"That was another ion blast, Jim," Mitchell panted as he bent over the sensor viewer. "Damn near sheared off the number one nacelle."

"We've got maneuvering thrusters, but that's all," LaSalle added. "Think I've got - " He punched a bypass and the viewing screen shimmered, the jumbled static fading, and the menacing image of the Manticore still closing with the Leonis head-on, occupying the exact center.

"Range!" Kirk snapped.

"Only three thousand kilometers now, sir," Odell said. "But with only half speed, we'll never get a hold of it!"

"Tell me what we can do, Mr. Odell, not what we can't!" The blind but violent gesture of Kirk's hand came close enough to striking Odell's cheekbone that the helmsman flinched. Kirk took one long step toward the captain's chair, then spun round again: he caught a brief peripheral glimpse of the Merrimack sailing across the lower right corner of the screen before it disappeared from view.

The Manticore, however, grew larger by the second, now filling over half the field of vision.

"Commander...." Odell's voice was muted. "I think I know what we can do."