STAR WARS-to-STAR TREK
"THE IMPOSSIBLE POWER"
By: Dan Bivens
Chapter Four
"Spock!"
Captain James T. Kirk's loud exclamation at the sudden psionic assault on Commander Spock, who howled in swift, sudden suffering while clutching at his head mere moments before dropping to the deck next to his upper tier Science station, bore more emotion than normal for the celebrated starship commander. But, then again, Spock was much more than his Science Officer/First Officer. Much more than even the other long-term bridge crewmembers, such as Lt.-Commander Hikaru Sulu, Lt.-Commander Nyota Uhura, and Lt. Pavel Chekov.
Spock was Kirk's dearest friend…second only to another he was, even then, ordering Uhura to contact some five decks further down…
"Get Dr. McCoy up here! Quickly!"
"Aye, Captain," Uhura rapidly replied while tap-touching a couple of blue-illuminated controls of her console station. "Bridge to sickbay. Emergency. Dr. McCoy to the bridge."
While, writhing at Kirk's booty-clothed feet after bounding up onto the upper deck, Mr. Spock continued to clutch his head with pallid facial features, tinged with barely a little green!, screwed into a contorted mask of actual agony…
…Kirk glared directly at the ever-growing viewscreen image of the slowly, at sublight, closing capital ship from far, far away with considerable rage swelling within even as his hands tightened into tense fists held stiffly at his sides.
"Damn you," he said in a sighed hush suffused with his sudden hate, "straight back to the Hell you came from!"
While all on the bridge of the USS ENTERPRISE, especially its commander, were concerned with Spock's psionically stricken condition…
"Ha, hahahahaha!" loudly laughed the vile and evil Darth Nihilus while stalking about his bridge via its center walkway while literally and utterly alone on the vastness of the RAVAGER. "Fools! Their caring for this Vulcan component of their Human-manned bridge shall be their unavoidable downfall! I could, even now, strike with my ship's weapons combined with my omnipotent power and totally destroy them from without and within! But such would be too easy. And, since I am to spend an eternity establishing my Dark Side rule over all the civilized worlds within this half of the galaxy…and, eventually, the entire galaxy…I shall extend the inevitable via my abilities. Haaa, hahahahahaha, ha, ha, haaaaa!"
"Well, Bones?" anxiously asked Captain Kirk while hovering over his other best friend, Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, who was still kneeling next to Mr. Spock while utilizing one of the new tricorders to run a very detailed scan of the sedated-by-hypospray half-Human/half-Vulcan. Someone that, secretly, or so McCoy came to believe, he also considered a close personal friend.
"We need to get him down to sickbay, Jim," McCoy managed while slowly standing, a little stiffer and just a little more pained than in the past, while white uniformed medics placed Spock on an antigrav stretcher for safe transport via turbolift down to Deck Five. "I can't do much more on the bridge with just a tricorder and a hypospray. No matter how much better they've been made since my previous stint as starship CMO."
But Kirk couldn't simply leave it at that. Especially seeing his friend and top officer taken into one of two bridge level turbolifts, and so, gently grabbing Dr. McCoy by his upper arm…
"Bones?" he asked in a hushed aside no one else could readily detect. Of course, Kirk's facial expression essentially shouted such deep-seated passions. Especially to the three other officers from an older, pre-refit ENTERPRISE.
With hooded eyes and guarded grimace, McCoy lowly replied, "I can't tell you anything yet, Jim. I'll do all I can. You know that. Sorry."
Slowly allowing his pleading grip of the upper arm of McCoy, now wearing his white two-piece booty uniform with centuries-old green-colored Caduceus symbol in the self-same area of the chest as, with his slate-colored uniform, the arrowhead-over-very light green circle…
"Do what you can for him, Bones." Nodding, McCoy had already joined the two medics manipulating the antigrav stretcher whereupon lay a sedated Mr. Spock, who was still, clearly, struggling with an inner agony unlike anything the half-Human/half-Vulcan had come across in more than a quarter-century of Starfleet service.
Turning away, while the hiss of the swiftly closing turbolift doors seemed more readily audible than normal, Kirk resumed his role as Captain of the ENTERPRISE. Standing taller. Stiffer. Stronger. Shoulders held rounder. Seemingly suffused with complete confidence in direct relation to a strange situation that had, already, claimed its first possible casualty.
"Ship to ship, Uhura. All channels. Universal translator tie-in," Captain Kirk ordered a little angrier than ordinary for the man swiftly stepping back down onto the lower tier to stand stiffly defiant before his newest center seat.
His tone of voice told Lt.-Commander Uhura that any negative answer was not at all acceptable. So all the beauteous ebony officer of Communications could do was say, "Aye, aye, Captain", and utilize all her many years of active starship service to forge, forcefully, if necessary!, such a ship-to-ship.
No matter how impossible such seemed.
Whether through her determined attempts and expertise, so as not to disappoint James T. Kirk, or because their current enemy, until then unseen and unheard, had deemed it time to permit such to transpire…
"Captain, I have ship-to-ship."
"On screen, Uhura."
"Aye, sir," she said as, in the space of a second or two, her expert manipulation of Comm controls caused such to quickly occur.
While the viewscreen's display of space and an ever-closing capital ship from a long, long dead Galactic Republic shimmered, slightly, into a crystal clear look at its single, solitary impossibly powerful occupant…
Kirk planted tightly balled fists on his hips in order to create a heroic stance seen by this bridge crew, including Chief DeFalco, many, many times.
"This is Captain James T. Kirk of the USS ENTERPRISE. You have fired upon a Starfleet vessel with no previous provocation. And you have, apparently, 'attacked' my Science Officer. State your reasons before offering your surrender under Federation regulations regarding…"
"Come, come, Captain Kirk," rudely interrupted the dark-robed/white-and-red masked Master of the Dark Side as he stood taller than ever via the viewscreen's current up close-and-personal visual display from the capital ship's broad red-lit bridge. "I have weaponry that is more than a match for your own. I am Darth Nihilus and I have mastered my manipulation of The Force in ways no one on your craft…including your Commander Spock…could comprehend! Save for, I see in your innermost mental musings from so many years in your particular past, Captain Kirk, a former friend and top officer by the name of…Gary Mitchell."
The mention of a man-turned-demigod that Kirk had to kill during that first of five years, originally, as commanding officer of the starship ENTERPRISE long before its recent refit, combined with the mentally delivered assault on Mr. Spock mere minutes earlier…
"I don't know what 'The Force' is and I don't give a damn!" Kirk was quick to state through tightly clenched teeth while quickly stepping slightly forward as if he believed he could actually accost the viewscreen display of this menace from some distant galactic plane. "Even if the ENTERPRISE can't stop you here…now…I can assure you that the starships answering our subspace call will…Darth Nihilus!"
"We shall soon see, won't we, dear Captain?" mused Nihilus with a slight laugh of malevolence. "We shall soon see."
END OF CHAPTER 4