Previously on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging…
Aboard the Enterprise, the Genesis torpedo began to glow. A fine mist issued from it as it pulsed with internal energy. On the bridge, Xon announced, “Captain Kirk, I am detecting an unusual energy pattern. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“From Reliant?” Kirk asked.
“Negative. From us, sir. Deck seven.”
The intercom beeped. “Bridge? This is Chief Kyle. Something weird is happening with the device Admiral Pike had beamed aboard.”
David Marcus had joined them on the bridge as Pike was leaving. He looked at Xon’s console. “That’s the Genesis wave,” he said. “It’s on a build-up to detonation.”
“How soon?” Kirk asked.
“We encoded four minutes.”
“How do we stop it?”
“You can’t.”
“Can we beam it into space? Blow it up?”
David shook his head. “Transporters won’t be able to get a lock now that it’s active. If you damage the casing, it will just release the wave immediately.”
“Transporter room,” Kirk shouted, “Get that thing to the nearest airlock. Engineering, I need warp power in three minutes or we’re all dead.” He pointed to Uhura. “Raise the admiral.”
“Channel open, sir.”
“Chris, Khan activated Genesis. We have less than four minutes.”
Kirk was surprised when a voice he didn’t recognize responded. “This is Una,” she said. “We have a medical emergency. Get us out of here.”
Seconds later, Una and La’an materialized in Enterprise’s main transporter room.
“Number one?” Kyle said, surprised.
“I’ll explain later,” Una said, carrying La’an from the pad. “Where’s Chris?”
“I only have partial power,” Kyle said. “It will take me a second to get a lock.”
M’Benga appeared at the door. “Una?” he said. “You’re hurt.”
“Later!” she repeated, shifting La’an into his arms. She turned and noticed the Genesis torpedo, now glowing brightly. Two cadets were struggling to lift it.
“You need to get that thing off the ship, now,” Una said. “Here.” She pushed the cadets aside and hoisted the heavy device onto her shoulders. The strain of carrying it made her head wound start bleeding again. She couldn’t manage a full sprint with such a heavy load, but she carried it as fast as she could to the emergency hatch. She dropped it, retreated past the next emergency bulkhead, and slammed her hand into the controls. Heavy doors sealed on either side of the section of corridor in front of the hatch before it blew off into space, the Genesis device carried with it out of the ship.
She pushed the intercom button. “Bridge,” she said, “Genesis is off the ship. Get us out of here.”
Una didn’t recognize the voice of Jim Kirk when he responded, “We still don’t have warp power.” Una pressed her hand behind her ear to check if she’d stopped bleeding and looked down the corridor in the direction of the turbolift.
Khan’s strength was flagging. His augmented body had limits, and he had blown far past them. Pike got in a lucky punch that spun him. He fell onto the helm console. Pike took the moment’s respite to draw his communicator. “Enterprise, security to the transporter room. Lock on my signal. Two to beam up.”
“Just a few more seconds, Admiral,” came Chief Kyle’s voice.
Pike prepared to grab onto Khan. If they managed to survive this, outrun the Genesis wave, he was determined to make him stand trial for Salius and Regula.
“Which way shall I fly, infinite wrath and infinite despair,” Khan rasped. “Which way I fly is Hell, myself am hell.”
Then Pike saw the display. “Main power nominal.” Khan smacked his hand into the controls clumsily. They both fell to the deck as Reliant threatened to shake itself apart when its remaining nacelle lit, just barely formed an unstable warp field, and flung the ship superluminal.
“I just lost transporter lock,” Kyle’s voice rattled.
“They will not be able to maintain warp for long,” Xon observed. “I estimate the ship will suffer catastrophic hull failure within six minutes.”
“That’s two minutes longer than we have,” Kirk said. “Sulu, back us away, best speed possible. Engineering, where the hell’s that power?”
Below, Una didn’t have time for a radiation suit, but she took the gloves from an incapacitated cadet. Doctor McCoy grabbed her shoulder as she approached the radiation door before the warp core.
“You out of your mind?” he protested. “No human can tolerate the radiation that’s in there.”
Una gave him a withering look. “Starfleet has been very clear that I am not human,” she said.
“You’re not going in there,” McCoy maintained.
She looked at the chief, slumped in a chair. “Maybe not,” she said. “This is the chief? Can you bring him ’round?”
McCoy turned away to look at him. “Well I don’t think that he-”
She sucker-punched him as he turned back, then caught him as he fell. She gently lowered him to the deck, then returned to the radiation door. The chief revived just as the door sealed behind her. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted through the transparent partition. “Get out of there!”
It was hot as hell in the central compartment of the engine, and the radiation burned. Una heard the engineer’s muffled pleas and obscenities through the partition as she heaved the cover off the focusing chamber. A column of bright white light shot from the open core, and Una felt hotter still as her body desperately tried to repair the damage she was doing to it.
She stared into the column of incandescent gasses. The last thing she saw, before she saw nothing at all, was the dilithium matrix. The problem was straightforward enough. The heat had deformed the tritanium mounts that held the crystals in alignment. She’d helped Khan compromise the cooling system; she was responsible for the damage. The normal fix would be to shut down the engine, vent the radiation, let the entire system cool down, remove the mountings and replace them or machine them back into their original shape. It would take hours, if not days. They had about ninety seconds. She had to take her gloves off. She reached blindly into the column of gasses, found the dilithium crystals by feel. Her hands were starting to go numb. She pushed hard, visualizing the angle of the crystals as she bent the metal. Blind, and rapidly losing her sense of touch as well, she had to rely on dead reckoning to line the crystals up. When she found the spot, the plasma stream reignited, pushing her backward.
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