Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War

John Jackson Miller

• Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781982113315
• eBook ISBN: 9781982113322
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Science Fiction
• Index: Literature

An all-new novel based upon the explosive Star Trek TV series!

A shattered ship, a divided crew—trapped in the infernal nightmare of conflict!

Hearing of the outbreak of hostilities between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, Captain Christopher Pike attempts to bring the USS Enterprise home to join in the fight. But in the hellish nebula known as the Pergamum, the stalwart commander instead finds an epic battle of his own, pitting ancient enemies against one another—with not just the Enterprise, but her crew as the spoils of war.

Lost and out of contact with Earth for an entire year, Pike and his trusted first officer, Number One, struggle to find and reunite the ship’s crew—all while Science Officer Spock confronts a mystery that puts even his exceptional skills to the test…with more than their own survival possibly riding on the outcome…

CAPITULATION

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May 2257

39

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U.S.S. Enterprise

Saucer Section

Little Hope

I’m dead.

No, I’m not. I just don’t want to move.

Christopher Pike awoke to those thoughts—and to pain. He coughed. The air was stale, reminding him of another experience in utter darkness that he’d tried long and hard to forget. His thoughts grasped for something, anything else to light upon.

Freena. No, that was back then too.

Vina? Seeing her face in his mind’s eye was nice, but also wrong.

He needed memories, not dreams—and his last recollection was of flying. No, not flying, but hurtling upward, toward the transparent aluminum port that sat in the bridge’s overhead dome. Sailing up and out, like an angel—or someone with a jetpack.

Only he was not an angel, and had no jetpack. It made no sense. But he knew it made no sense, and that helped to clear his mind. As reason returned, he realized he had not broken through the dome at all. Rather, he was sprawled across it, suspended over inky blackness beyond.

Enterprise was upside down.

But it can’t be upside down, he thought. Can it?

He lifted his head from the port and drew his fingers through his hair. It was matted with dried blood from where he’d struck it. And the not-very-heavy mass atop his legs wasn’t crushed rock—but the stirring form of another person, similarly incapacitated. Sitting up, Pike squinted until he recognized who it was.

“Amin, are you all right? Wake up!”

His navigator rolled off Pike’s ankles and moaned. “What hit me?”

“I think you hit me—and we hit the overhead. Only it’s no longer overhead.” Pike ran his hand across the port. It hadn’t given way beneath their weight, but it didn’t seem like a place to stay either. Indeed, the ship seemed to be undulating—gently, almost imperceptibly. “Any light around here?”

“Here, Captain.” To his left he saw Nhan, her face illuminated by a handheld device. She crawled toward them.

“Over there,” he said as she reached the edge of the dome.

She complied—and the rays illuminated a third body. “It’s Raden!” The helmsman had struck the outer frame of the dome and was still out. Pike saw blood from Raden’s left forehead lobe. “He must have hit hard.”

“Careful getting to him,” Pike said as Amin moved toward the Ktarian. “Either the artificial gravity’s really confused, or we’ve landed—and I’m not at all sure we’re on something solid.”

Working together, they moved Raden off the edge of the dome. “He’s light,” Pike said. “So are we.” They were clearly in a weak gravity well of some kind. Nhan lifted Raden onto the metallic composite surface and checked his condition.

“He’s breathing,” she said. “I think he’s coming around.”

Raden’s eyes opened a fraction. Woozy, he spied Pike and mumbled, “Did . . . I leave . . . a mark?”

“Your head will be fine,” Pike said. “We’ll get you help.”

“I mean . . . did I leave one . . . on the bulkhead?” Raden closed his eyes again.

I think he’ll be all right, Pike thought. “How long have you been awake?” he asked Nhan.

“Never passed out. Believe me, I wish I had.” She coughed.

“Oxygen, gravity, lights—they ought to be on battery.” Nothing seemed to be working. “Where the hell are we?”

“No idea. I stopped paying attention when I threw up the second time.” She shone the light off to the side. “Watch your step.”

It was starting to come back to him. “I remember the inertial dampers going out,” he said. “We got tossed like a salad.”

“I’m begging you, Captain. Don’t mention food.”

“Let’s get a head count.”

With a light source of his own, Pike found the rest of the bridge crew—Dietrich, Nicola, and Galadjian—slumped but rousing against the bulkheads at various points of the bridge’s circumference.

He checked on the older man. “You all right, Doctor?”

“Captain,” Galadjian said, rubbing his head, “I should like to retire.”

“I’m afraid the turbolifts are out.”

“I did not mean to my room.”

Pike shone his light above to what had once been the floor. Chairs descended like stalactites. “They stayed put. We didn’t.”

He decided to take advantage of his lighter weight. Reversing in his mind where things were located, he found his way to the environmental station. The light gripped in his teeth, he leapt for the top of the chair, hanging over his head. Grabbing it, he heaved himself up and reached for the station’s console. An awkward minute in the dark later, he was lying atop the undersides of the control panels, his head and shoulders dangling underneath as he tried to work their controls.

“Everything’s dead,” he said. “Environmental systems’ battery is offline at the source. Same for gravity.”

“More victims of the shield feedback,” Galadjian said.

Pike heard Amin speak. “How is that possible? Some of the battery systems aren’t connected to anything.”

“Yes,” Galadjian said, sounding tired, “but the entire ship was part of the circuit. Results would be unpredictable.”

Dietrich had crawled near the edge of the skylight. “Captain, I think we’re floating.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Amin said. “I mean it sort of does—like we’re in gelatin.”

“I said no food,” Nhan growled. “And I definitely feel it. We’re moving. Just barely.”

Nicola had been trying his communicator. “I’m not getting anyone on the rest of the ship.”

Down to just seven? Pike refused to accept the situation. He dropped to the deck—or, rather, to the overhead—as if he were hopping off his bed.

“Okay. One, we need to get life-support going again. Doctor, Dietrich, that’s you. Two, we need to find everyone else—and get medical help for Raden and whoever needs it. Nicola, you’re on it. Amin, let’s go have a look where we are.”

“What about me?” Nhan asked, no enthusiasm in her voice.

“Stay with Raden. And try not to move much.”

She fell to her knees. “You’re a saint, sir.”

---

“I think we’re going to be climbing a lot of ladders.”

“The wrong way,” Pike said as Amin ascended into the darkness ahead of him. At least the gravity made it a much easier ascent, though he could hardly feel a spring in his step given the circumstances.

He hoped that wherever she was, Una had survived. Better yet, that she was nearby, with a repaired stardrive section and ready to beam them all up. That seemed impossible, given the condition of the engineering hull and considering the masses of Rengru he’d seen assaulting it.

They passed another deck. “I keep having to think of everything in reverse,” Amin said.

“Just count levels,” Pike said. “It’s easier.”

Climbing ahead of them on the turbolift ladder, Galadjian and Dietrich disappeared into the primary hull circuit room, in normal circumstances the next-to-lowest deck of the section. Pike’s destination was an earlier stop: the viewing lounge whose ports were designed to look down and out.

This time, the viewports were skylights—and something was lightly pelting against them. Pike glanced at the navigator. “Sounds like rain.”

Amin handed Pike the tricorder she’d found. “It’s working,” she said. “You ought to at least be able to do spectral analysis through the viewport.”

“Right.” Pike dragged over a table and scaled it. He pressed his hands to the sloped port and stared out.

Oh, that’s not good. He activated the tricorder and pointed it outside. No, not good at all.

“What is it?” Amin asked.

“You remember at the Academy,” Pike said, “when they took you on that field trip to Saturn?”

“Yeah?”

“And the moon, Titan. Really cold, with the hydrocarbon oceans?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s nicer than this.” He handed the tricorder to her. “Look at our rain.”

Amin focused on the results—and did a double take. “It’s raining cyanide.”

“I think the ocean we’re on is methane or ethane. No land at all.” He climbed down—and sighed. “This doesn’t get any easier.”

Amin nodded. She looked again at the tricorder. “Hey, I’ve got a working chronometer on this.”

“That’s something. How long have we been here?”

Amin looked—and laughed.

“What gives?” Pike asked. “Nothing could be funny about this.”

“No, it’s just—while we were knocked out, our one-year mission ended.”

Pike shook his head. “Still not funny, Lieutenant.”

40

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U.S.S. Enterprise

Stardrive Section

Little Hope Boundary Region

“Captain on the bridge!”

“Inaccurate on both counts,” Una said as she stepped gingerly into the crowded control room.

Ensign Yamata looked at her apologetically from one of the two stations. “I thought I had that right. I don’t really work the bridge. You are acting captain.”

From the other chair, Colt rolled her eyes. “She’s saying that Christopher Pike is still our captain, Sam. And that this isn’t much of a bridge.”

“I’m sorry.” Yamata stood and offered his seat to Una. “I’ll get back to work on the transporters, Commander.”

“Thank you, Sam.” Una sat—and tried to focus on breathing. It had been twenty-four hours since she last slept. That was just as well, considering there were many times more people on board than there were living quarters. She had spent most of that time trying to stabilize the warp drive.

Her efforts had succeeded—helped, ironically, by the saucer separation. Main engineering had been on battery power since the crisis began; halving the ship had allowed the team to allocate more power to the antimatter injectors. The reaction had stabilized.

As soon as propulsion had been partially restored, she had directed the stardrive section out of the rift and into a thick nebular cloud bank for safety. She hadn’t been able to learn what had happened to the saucer section; the last she had seen, a blast from one of the larger ships that had attacked the stardrive section had sent it tumbling. Attempts to hail Pike from within the cloud had been met with silence. Una suspected that he might be in hiding too.

Colt stared at a screen that showed little. “I wish we could see outside.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“You’re right. I didn’t care for the look of those things at all. The second bunch. What were they called?”

“Rengru.” Una had looked up the word in the primer from Courier 5. Once the Boundless’s shipboarding attempts had failed, the beings had lost interest in the stardrive section—and departed to chase their true enemies.

“What a mess we’ve wandered into.” Colt shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on here.”

Una had been working on it herself. “The Boundless attacked us. The Rengru attacked us—but they seemed to dislike the Boundless more.”

“The Hellmouth food chain in action,” Boyce said as he entered. Then he paused to gawk at the size of the command center. “Groucho Marx would ask room service to send up a larger...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Historian’s Note
• Prologue
• Detonation
• Infiltration
• Separation
• Capitulation
• Obligation
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright