STAR TREK - SCE - 13 - No Surrender

VIP免费

2024-11-23 0 0 99.77KB 23 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Other eBooks in the Star Trek Starfleet Corps of Engineers series from Pocket Books

1 The Belly of the Beast by Dean Wesley Smith

2 Fatal Error by Keith R.A. DeCandido

3 Hard Crash by Christie Golden

4 Interphase Book 1 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

5 Interphase Book 2 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

6 Cold Fusion by Keith R.A. DeCandido

7 Invincible Book 1 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

8 Invincible Book 2 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

9 The Riddled Post by Aaron Rosenberg

10 Gateways Epilogue Here There Be Monsters by Keith R.A. DeCandido

11 Ambush by Dave Galanter & Greg Brodeur

12 Some Assembly Required by Scott Ciencin & Dan Jolley

13 No Surrender by Jeff Mariotte

coming soon

14 Caveat Emptor by Ian Edgington & Mike Collins

15 Past Life by Robert Greenberger

Star Trek S.C.E. 13

No Surrender

by Jeff Mariotte

approx. 14,600 words

Jeff Mariotte

ILT Creative Services.

3515 Brookshire Street

San Diego, CA 92111

858-278-8229

jmariotte@aol.com

Chapter One

Deborah Bradford clutched Bens small hand tightly as they boarded the shuttle on Kursican Primus. The

boy had just turned three; big enough to walk on his own, but small enough that she was concerned

about him getting trampled underfoot. She was especially concernd about some of the less-humanoid

races also boarding the ship-that Benzite, for example, whose bearing made him appear aloof, even

haughty, might not have deigned to look down to notice someone whose head barely reached past his

knees. Once they had taken their seats, though, she relaxed, as much as she could. The flight to the

Plat-the Kursican Orbital Incarceration Platform-would take nine hours, the shuttle having been built

more for load capacity than speed.

The Kursicans had apparently put little thought or effort into the passenger compartment of the shuttle. It

held about a hundred and twenty seats, Deborah estimated, in four rows of three seats each, separated

by narrow aisles. The bulkheads were undecorated metal, and there were no ports to show the view

outside or anything else to distract the eye. Passengers willing to pay a premium could ride in a private

cabin, but there were fewer than a dozen available, and Deborah hadnt wanted to spend that much

anyway. She just hoped Ben would be able to sleep in his seat. She wanted him rested and in a cheerful

mood when he met his grandfather.

Over the course of the nine-hour trip, he met more of their fellow passengers than she did-not surprising,

since he was a rambunctious toddler, and she was, as the single mother of a three-year-old, near

exhaustion most of the time. Ben, though, managed to make the acquaintance of Uree, a Deltan diplomat

on his way to the Plat on Federation business; the Benzite, who turned out to have a soft spot for

children; and three of the guards who kept wary eyes on the group. In the aisle seat of their row sat a

medical technician named Isitov, a human from ValJon, which shared this planetary system with Kursican

and Szylith. Isitov seemed glad of the distraction Ben offered-Deborah had the impression that he was

nervous about this posting. But then, he was very young, and she was sure that even a more experienced

sort might be a bit on edge about taking a job on a space station that held a thousand criminals-well,

criminals and political prisoners, she corrected mentally-with a staff of only about a hundred.

She was most impressed that Ben had managed to converse with Uree. The Deltan was part of a mission

to consider the three sister planets for membership in the Federation. As a show of good faith, the

Federation wanted prisoners from Federation-member planets to be released from the Plat and sent to

Federation-approved facilities, or perhaps freed if an examination of the facts proved them not guilty of

the crimes for which theyd been imprisoned. Kursican had a reputation as somewhat over-zealous when

it came to law enforcement, and the Plat had a worse reputation as a harsh and terrible punishment under

any circumstances.

Deborah knew that seeing her father there would break her heart. But not seeing him would have been

worse yet. Besides, she owed it to Augustus Bradford to introduced him to his first grandson, Benjamin.

After the shuttle docked in the Plats shuttle bay, Deborah gathered her things and Bens and prepared to

disembark. Isitov, the young medical technician, stepped aside to let them pass, and managed to back

into another passenger, dropping his own bag in the process. He scooped it up quickly with muttered

apologies to the passenger behind him, and to Deborah. She noticed a sheen of sweat glossing his upper

lip as she stepped past him and toward the exit. Poor guy really is nervous, she thought. She held Bens

hand and led him off the shuttle, still thinking about Isitov because it was easier than thinking about her

father, incarcerated for life because of his political beliefs. She hoped the trip wouldnt prove overly

traumatic on any of them.

Chapter Two

Captain David Gold sat down behind his desk and ran a hand through his hair, thinking, This is why its so

white. He had nothing but respect for his crew, and he loved his ship. But the da Vinci bounced all over

space like a pinball, it seemed. Anyplace there was a problem, he got the call. Didnt every ship have an

engineer or two on board? he wondered. Does S.C.E. have to handle every little thing?

He knew that being indispensable was preferable to the alternative. But no sooner had they picked up

Carol Abramowitz and Bart Faulwell from their sojourn on Keorga than Captain Montgomery Scott was

sending them out on yet another emergency call. Gold had stepped off the bridge and into his ready

room, because Scotty had specifically asked to speak with Gold in private. And, though he didnt yet

know why, Gold knew that the only reason for that would be because there would be something

singularly unpleasant about this assignment.

Screen on, he said when he felt ready to hear the news.

His viewscreen blinked on. In a moment, Scottys face was before him. But the usually garrulous S.C.E.

liaison wasnt wearing his typical smile. Good, he said, youre sittin down.

Yes, Gold replied. Why does that matter?

Cause Im sendin you on a mission, even though the da Vinci is the last ship in the fleet Id send if I had

any choice, Scott said.

Where?

The Kursican system. More specifically, the Kursican Orbiting Incarceration Platform.

Gold narrowed his eyes. Thats a prison station, no?

Thats correct, Scotty confirmed. Theyre havin a wee problem.

Why would you not want to send us? Not that Im looking for a reason to go, but were relatively close

right now-and I stress relatively, considering theyre practically in the Delta Quadrant.

Thats why I am sendin you-time is definitely of the essence, and youre the closest S.C.E. crew Ive got.

As for why I would rather not-theres a personal reason.

Gold didnt like the sound of that. But he knew the decision had been made. He paused long enough to

tell Ensign Wong to have the da Vinci change course for Kursica, warp nine. Then he turned back to

Scotty's image on the viewscreen. Whats the nature of the wee problem? he asked.

The prison-they call it the Plat-has gone completely haywire, Scotty explained. Its slipped its moorings.

Theres been no communicatin with it, so they dont know whats happened. Its stabilizers are shot. Its

spinnin and bouncin like a tennis ball in a tornado, the way I hear it, and its orbit is degrading rapidly.

Somethin isnt done soon, its likely to enter Kursican atmosphere and slam into something. And there are

a lot of folks on that planet-its be hard to drop a platform that big and not land on someones head.

And the Kursicans are doing what? Gold asked. They cant bring it under control remotely?

Theyve tried. Between you and me, I dont think theyve tried that hard. They seem not to care much

about what happens to the folks on board the platform-far as theyre concerned, its the dregs of Kursican

and her sister planets. But when the thing comes down on them, they might sing a different tune.

Still, Gold said. It seems like they ought to make some effort on their own behalf. For that matter, theyre

not even a Federation planet. Were involved why, exactly?

Youre right, theyre not. But theyre under consideration, and we happen to have an ambassador-names

Uree, a Deltan-whos out there now. In fact, hes on the Plat. Thats our justification. Weve asked the

Kursicans if they mind us steppin in, and theyve given their blessings. If nothing else, weve got to see if

we can get him off alive.

Good, Gold said. Im starting to see the picture. One thing, though. Why not the da Vinci? Whats this

personal reason you spoke of?

Because, David, Scotty said, his voice somber, one of the prisoners on the Plat is a gentleman named

Augustus Bradford. I believe you know him.

Know him? Gold thought. Now theres an understatement. He hadnt heard the name in years, but hed

never forget it

David Gold and Gus Bradford had entered Starfleet Academy the same year. They became close

friends. After the Academy, theyd both served on the Gettysburg, under Captain Mark Jameson. Gus in

particular had idolized Jameson, and Gold had to admit that back then, the captain had seemed like the

real thing. He was courageous, he was smart, he was not afraid of making hard decisions, and more often

than not, he made the right ones. He was already justifiably famous in Starfleet for his negotiating skills,

with his success on Mordan IV being the feather in his cap. When Gus heard they were being assigned to

Jamesons ship, he had literally danced for joy.

But Jameson hadnt been quite the negotiator that he had claimed. Decades later, the truth about what ha

ppened on Mordan IV had come out. Both Gold and Bradford had moved on by then, though when the

story spread Gold had contacted Bradford and theyd spoken about it, and about the disgrace that had

come to Jameson late in life.

He had been dispatched to Mordan IV because Karnas, the son of an assassinated tribal leader there,

had captured a starship and threatened to kill its passengers and crew unless Starfleet gave him the

weapons he felt he needed to avenge his fathers death. Jameson got the ship back intact, saving the lives

of 63 people, and he was hailed as a hero for his efforts. But what Starfleet didnt know-until years had

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

STAR TREK - SCE - 13 - No Surrender.pdf

共23页,预览3页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

STAR TREK - SCE - 13 - No Surrender

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: