It was so small that, like a Starfleet shuttle, it had no airlock. But Kirk had not asked himself why it was parked in the open, deadly atmosphere.
The question and the answer collided in his mind as he saw the small transport slowly begin to descend into the crater floor.
The shuttle was parked on an elevator pad, one that would drop down to an airlock chamber. If he couldn’t reach the craft before the chamber roof closed over it, he and McCoy would lose their best—perhaps only—chance for escape.
Telling McCoy to keep moving as quickly as he could, Kirk broke into a sprint and forged ahead, challenged for breath himself by the twin burdens of Reman gravity and the bulky environmental suit.
By the time he reached the edge of the crater floor, the landing pad had dropped two meters.
Kirk knew he had no choice, and so he leapt without hesitation, fully aware that the extra mass of the suit would be no friend to him. Plummeting with unnatural speed, bending his knees and hitting the pad as if he were coming down on a fast orbital parachute descent, Kirk rolled onto his side to spread the energy of impact over the largest surface area he could.
Despite his best efforts, the landing was hard. So hard Kirk’s chest went into spasm and he couldn’t breathe.
But neither could he wait until breath returned to him. McCoy could never make that jump. And if the shuttle reached the airlock chamber below…Kirk knew he’d never be able to climb back up to the crater floor to try for another craft.
It was this shuttle, or nothing.
Black stars flickering at the edge of his vision, Kirk forced himself to his feet, scrambling for the shuttle’s hatch.
He pulled the release switch. The hatch wasn’t locked. It swung open in a cloud of normal atmosphere venting from within.
Kirk pulled himself inside, checked quickly to be certain there was no one in the passenger cabin, then forced himself into the pilot’s chair and at last gulped down air, able to breathe again.
The shuttle was powered up, the controls familiar. He had flown Romulan craft before and the basics remained the basics.
Kirk dispensed with any type of preflight check. Either this would work, or it would not.
He looked out through the main viewport. He could see the airlock chamber roof was at eye level, already beginning to close. He estimated he had twenty seconds. After that, the shuttle would have descended far enough that the roof could close over it.
Twenty seconds, Kirk thought rapidly. The plasma thrusters weren’t charged. The impulse engine was cold. There was no way he could get off the ground in time.
But there had to be a way.
The roof sections were above his eye level now, moving closer, coming together like a night-blossoming flower closing at dawn.
Kirk’s hands felt heavy moving over the controls. He had looked forward to adjusting gravity in this shuttle, so that—
The idea came to him at once, fully formed, and he didn’t stop to consider if it was even possible.
Kirk threw on the primary shields, and because they were designed to respond instantly to navigational hazards, there was no delay. The overlapping forcefields sprang to life around the shuttle, violently disconnecting the suddenly severed umbilicals, and forcing the shuttle to suddenly pop up a meter into the air. The shields were treating the landing pad as a navigational hazard to be avoided.
Kirk grinned as he threw more power to the dorsal shields, setting them at maximum deflection. The dorsal shields forced the shuttle straight up from the immovable deck, making it bob like a child’s toy on a string, twenty meters above the crater floor.
Then Kirk fired the RCS thrusters to make the shuttle spin around.
McCoy, at the edge of the open pit, stared up and waved at him. The Remans were seconds from reaching him.
Kirk swiftly adjusted the shields again, forcing the shuttle to roll toward McCoy, pass over him, and flip as if about to crash directly on the Remans charging for him.
The Remans scattered.
Kirk checked his controls again. The thrusters were charged.
He put his hands on the flight controls, and the shuttle was his.
Kirk eased the craft down beside McCoy. The hatch was still open and McCoy fell through it, wheezing with exhaustion.
“I have no idea how you did that,” he gasped, “but I’m glad you did.”
“Strap in,” Kirk told him. “Now it’s going to get rough.”
“Now?” McCoy said. But he dragged himself to a passenger chair behind Kirk’s, pulled the restraint web over his chest. “Strapped in.”
Kirk had already picked out his target.
He brought the shuttle around, flying on plasma maneuvering jets instead of the now available impulse drive, merely to spray exhaust and cause general confusion.
He flew over as many exposed spacecraft as he could, scorching their hullplates, and scrambling their ground crew, who ran for cover.
But the fun was almost over. Kirk saw other shuttles lifting off. At least two, he recognized, were military craft, likely outfitted with disruptor cannons.
Kirk assessed his resources. The small VIP transport shuttle had no weaponry. But it did have a warp drive, complete with a miniature warp core, perhaps less than half a meter in length. And warp cores could go critical at the touch of the proper button.
He sped for the inside wall of the crater, picking up speed, drawing the other shuttles after him.
A disruptor blast flashed over the small craft’s viewports, which meant the shields had held. Kirk gave thanks to the VIP who flew in this craft. The shields were probably several levels of power higher than usual for a standard transport this size.
A collision alarm began to sound as they neared the crater wall.
“Switching to internal gravity,” Kirk warned McCoy. He tapped the control that activated the shuttle’s artificial gravity, keeping it set for Remus normal so the change would not be abrupt.
Then, with gravity established and inertial dampeners online, Kirk engaged the impulse drive—in full reverse.
The plasma jets were no match for the impulse engine and the shuttle instantly shot backward, its gravity and dampeners keeping Kirk and McCoy from being thrown from their seats and through the hull with the violence of the maneuver.
But the pursuing shuttles were at a disadvantage. They didn’t have pilots with Kirk’s skill.
One pulled up so abruptly that it fishtailed out of control, rising in a spiraling motion, then stalling and plunging for the crater floor. Kirk guessed its operator had not taken the time to switch on dampeners, gravity, or impulse engines. The unfortunate result was what would happen in a primitive twentieth-century fighter jet. No hope of making a ninety-degree turn.
Another shuttle didn’t pull up in time, and slammed into the crater wall, as if the pilot had hoped to duplicate Kirk’s maneuver, but wasn’t fast enough to activate the necessary systems.
Two other shuttles avoided collision and loss of control, and Kirk knew they’d be back on his tail in less than a minute. He was also certain that by now the Reman warbirds had been dispatched from their orbital patrols to deal with the hijacked shuttle.
“Not to be a backseat pilot,” McCoy said, “but wouldn’t this be a good time to think about getting out of here?”
“One last pass, Bones.” Kirk brought the shuttle around on its final approach. “We’re going to give them a little something to keep them too busy to come after us.”
Kirk activated the warp core.
Purposely, he set the fuel mix to maximum imbalance, and ignored the sudden flash of a green warning light and wail of a siren.
“What kind of alarm is that?” McCoy asked.