Captain's Glory

10

JUPITER

STARDATE 58562.5

It took twenty-three minutes for the Enterprise to arrive in orbit of Jupiter. In that same time, thousands died.

Even those ships that remained intact offered little in the way of protection for their crew and passengers. As close to Jupiter as the major research platforms were, the planet’s radiation field was lethal within minutes of exposure. When the ships lost their warp cores, they invariably lost their shields until auxiliary generators or batteries could come online. That delay was fatal.

The Enterprise swept her sensors over ship after ship tumbling in erratic orbits. While many had survived-their warp cores safely ejected before disaster struck-their shields had clearly faltered. Even now, though shields had recovered and were once again working perfectly, on dozens of vessels they protected only corpses.

Other ships were prowling the primary orbital planes-impulse-powered transports for the most part, spared from whatever phenomenon wreaked such havoc on warp technology.

One hour after the wave of core detonations had devastated the Jupiter installations, the Enterprise was the de facto command focus of the rescue efforts. Lieutenant Leybenzon and a relief crew coordinated the efforts of more than eighty smaller vessels from the Enterprise’s battle bridge-in Picard’s estimation, a much worthier use of that particular backup facility than the one for which it was intended.

But on the main bridge, it was Picard who spearheaded the most critical phase of the recovery operations-saving Jupiter Station itself.

The vast orbital platform had taken damage when docked ships had been destroyed. Though its shields were holding, the station’s thrusters were inoperative, and almost at once it had begun its slow fall to the bottomless clouds of the system’s largest planet.

There were too many crew and workers and visitors on board the falling station to be beamed off or evacuated by shuttle or escape pod. The only way to save the lives of almost ten thousand was to save the station, though not even the Enterprise’s tractor beams could move such a mass.

But that didn’t stop Picard from trying.

He had La Forge operate the tractor beams from engineering, using technical readouts of the station’s superstructure to find those points that could take the strain of a beam’s contact. With no time to describe the problem to the ship’s computers, La Forge worked mostly by intuition, applying a beam here, a beam there, grabbing hold at an anchor point just long enough for some of the station’s momentum to bleed back over the beam to be absorbed and compensated for by the Enterprise.

Picard could hear his ship creak, feel it tremble as its structural-integrity field was taxed to its limit. But gradually, over the course of another hour, Jupiter Station did cease its slow roll and errant tumble. It was still falling toward Jupiter in a decaying orbit, but it was stable again.

For what Picard planned to do next, that stability was essential.

It was a maneuver only a student of history could conceive of-something that stretched back to the dawn of the space age, when nations applied all their resources and humans risked their lives just to reach low Earth orbit.

Picard himself took the conn for what had to be done now. He could not, would not, shift the burden of the risky attempt to any of his crew.

Gracefully, Picard’s ship banked above the clouds of Jupiter, to settle into an orbit only tens of meters lower than the station. Then, at a velocity of no more than a few meters per minute, the Enterprise rose, coming up beneath the station until the ship’s main hull was directly beneath the station’s center of mass.

Worf handled the shield settings for the maneuver, aware that they had to be tuned to provide full protection from radiation and any fast-moving orbital debris, yet still allow low-velocity objects to pass and make contact with the ship’s hull.

Low-velocity objects such as Jupiter Station.

“Five meters… four point five…” The Klingon’s deep voice was calm and steady, reflecting the trust he had in his captain.

Picard eased his hands along the navigation and propulsion controls. Impulse engines were on standby; he was flying his ship strictly by its docking thrusters.

“Two meters…” Worf said.

Picard kept his attention on the conn readouts. He didn’t risk more than a quick glance at the viewscreen where the ventral surface of the station’s key node took the entire field of view. Engineering codes and safety labels were clearly legible.

“One meter…”

“All hands, brace for impact,” Picard said quietly.

Then a low-pitched metallic clang reverberated through the bridge as the Enterprise swayed, almost as if the starship were a sailing vessel on a becalmed sea.

“Contact,” Worf announced.

Picard knew that it would have been an easier maneuver had he chosen to bring the Enterprise to one of the station’s docking ports; then the computers could have handled it on automatic. But in order to take his ship into what was essentially a collision course, he had had to override the computers.

“Are we stable?” Picard asked.

Beside him, his ops officer checked her readings. “No drift,” Kadohata confirmed. “We’re in solid contact.”

“Then here we go,” Picard said, and once again he adjusted the thruster controls to apply gentle pressure, slowly forcing the Enterprise up against the station.

It had to be gradual, otherwise the ship might punch through the key node, snapping off the station’s six arms, turning them into unpowered and doomed spacecraft of their own.

Metallic scrapes and clangs, stuttering vibrations from the structural-integrity field in constant reset mode, the pulse of the artificial-gravity generators as they fruitlessly tried to propagate their pseudo-inertial field through the immense volume of the station above… to Picard, all these sensations brought his ship to life for him, like horseback riding: a magnificent steed so in synch, so responsive, that there was no distinction between horse and rider.

Bonded even as he was with his ship, Picard still endured twenty minutes of uncertainty before Commander Kadohata called out what he’d hoped to hear.

“Captain, our orbit is changing.”

Picard felt the rush of relief. Just as primitive chemical-powered spacecraft had once been used to raise the orbits of Earth’s first pioneering space stations, the Enterprise now carried Jupiter Station on her hull, lifting it from certain destruction. With momentum begun, he switched to impulse propulsion.

The station rose like a phoenix, untouched by what would have been its fiery fate, leaving the planetwide storms of Jupiter’s endless clouds below.

After four hours of slow but constant acceleration, La Forge reported that the main impulse manifolds were in danger of overheating. But in this new orbit, he also confirmed that the station would be safe for months, ample time for new thrusters to be installed and repairs undertaken.

Picard throttled back the impulse engines, and so gently that he did not feel the change, Jupiter Station moved up from the Enterprise, safe in its own orbit.

Only then did Picard take his hands from the controls, and almost at once he realized that his shoulders and back were knotted painfully. He had been hunched over, unmoving, for hours.

He stood up carefully, arched his back. “Ensign Choyce… take the conn.”

As Picard stepped away from the station, Choyce slipped into his place.

“We’ll need to take all the survivors we’ve brought on board to medical facilities,” Picard said. “The Denobulan Center on the moon might be best.”

Instead of complying though, or announcing that he was laying in a course, the ensign simply looked up at Picard with a nervous expression, then moved his eyes meaningfully aft.

Perplexed, Picard followed the ensign’s gaze, and saw that his ship had a visitor.

“Admiral Janeway,” Picard said, startled. “A welcome surprise.”

The admiral sat in Picard’s command chair, one finger lightly tapping the arm. There was no telling how long she had been there, but Picard appreciated that his crew had chosen not to disturb him.

“We’ll see how long you think that,” Janeway said. “We’re going to Mercury. At impulse.”

Picard looked to Worf and to Troi, but saw no sign of comprehension from either of them.

“Clearly, there’s more going on here than I know,” Picard said carefully.

Janeway sighed, but made no move to get out of his chair. Picard noticed her eyes were shadowed, skin pale. She was an admiral who hadn’t slept for days-never a good sign.

“Jean-Luc, for the past year, an enemy has made preparations to invade the Federation. In all likelihood, they’ve been at it even longer than what we’ve been able to uncover.”

Picard forgot about his aching muscles. “I assure you we are ready to meet any invader.”

Janeway shook her head. “It’s too late for that. The invasion’s already taken place, and we still don’t know who we’re fighting.”