Star Trek: The Final Nexus by Gene DeWeese

Author:Gene DeWeese
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671741488
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1988-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

THIS TIME the pain was, if anything, more intense, but it was also much more brief. To Kirk, it felt like little more than a second before it vanished.

Almost simultaneously, the bridge reappeared around him. Once more, the Enterprise was hurtling out of the gate, directly toward the cluster of ships it had so narrowly avoided the first time.

But this time, perhaps because they had suffered through the experience before, perhaps because of the briefer duration, recovery was quicker.

Sulu, after only a single shuddering gasp, reversed impulse power and brought the Enterprise to a halt well before the ships ahead of them presented any danger.

Three more times, they reentered the gate. Once, they maneuvered around it and approached from the opposite direction. The final time, they entered it under full computer control at near warp speed.

The results were virtually identical each time: a moment of nothingness followed by a moment of intense pain followed by forced ejection into the lightless heart of the same intergalactic graveyard.

Following the fourth attempt, Spock leaned more closely over his instruments.

"Captain," he said as the bridge returned to normal around him. "During our last approach, the sensors detected a phenomenon I had not noted during our lower-velocity approaches. The Enterprise appears to be enclosed in—in something."

"'Something,' Mr. Spock?" Kirk asked, frowning. "That's a bit imprecise. What is it, a force field of some kind?"

"Negative, Captain. This is something I have never encountered before. It appears to be totally immaterial, totally without energy, and yet it reflects a minuscule percentage of the sensor beams' energy. The phenomenon was much more pronounced during our last, more rapid approach to the gate, but it is still detectable." He looked up at Kirk. "It surrounds us at a distance of approximately eight hundred seventy-three point one kilometers—the same distance at which the sensors apparently cease to function."

"Spock, could this 'something' be what's limiting the range of our sensors?"

"It would appear likely, Captain."

"But you say the sensors don't tell us anything about whatever it is that surrounds us?"

"No, sir. They indicate its existence and its distance, but that is all."

"And it moves with us? Keeps us as its center?"

"As far as I have been able to determine, Captain."

Kirk grimaced, looking again at the screen and the ghostly hulks that floated there. "Whatever it is, it has to have a source. One of these ships? One that isn't as dead as the others? One that doesn't want us to find it?"

"That is, of course, a possibility, Captain," Spock said as Lieutenant Woida, still at the navigator's station, unsuccessfully tried to suppress a shiver.

"A possibility that we can at least check out," Kirk said briskly. "Mr. Sulu, take us on a tour, impulse power. Take us within sensor range—which is apparently now approximately eight hundred seventy kilometers—of every ship out there, one at a time if necessary. And keep the deflectors up."

Sulu acknowledged, and a moment later the Enterprise surged ahead, the first cluster of ships beginning instantly to grow larger.

"Mr.

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