"Remote control, is it?" Scotty had said when we put my idea to him. "Aye, I can do that. It wouldn't work over longer distances because of transmission lag, but at this range that wouldn't be a problem."
Which is how I came to find myself standing between Uhura and Spock's stations on the bridge, the remote control console Scotty had cobbled together for me balanced on the rail. In the time we'd spent pulling our plan together the zombies had beamed landing parties down to several other Halkan cities and beamed up more groups of Halkans. Before too much longer, the planet would be beyond saving.
The control console was much like those they had back in the days of primitive computer games, only larger and with a built in tricorder screen giving me telemetry from the shuttlecraft and a live feed from its front-facing video camera. Not that I needed the latter at the moment since the same video camera was supplying the image currently filling the Enterprise's viewscreen.
"Steady as she goes, Ms Lawson," said Kirk encouragingly, his back to me of course.
I had guided the shuttlecraft out of the shuttle bay and down under the ship, hugging the hull. We needed to conceal what we were doing until the last possible moment to reduce the amount of time the zombies had to launch any kind of counter-measures. Eventually, the shuttlecraft had traversed the length of the Enterprise and was tucked away under our own deflector dish.
"Shuttlecraft in position," I announced.
"Mr Sulu, switch viewscreen to regular view," said Kirk.
Sulu did so.
"Ready when you are, Ms Lawson."
Palms sweating, I pushed forward my levers and watched on the viewscreen as the shuttlecraft shot from concealment, heading straight for their deflector dish. As it did so, another shuttlecraft appeared from under their deflector dish, heading for our shuttlecraft. It happened too swiftly for me to react. The two met head on at the interface, the collision resulting in an explosion that destroyed them both.
"Bozhe moi!" said Chekov as the shockwave from the explosion reached the Enterprise, rocking us slightly.
The image on the viewscreen was suddenly pushed to the left by another until it occupied only half of the screen. The new image came from the bridge of the other Enterprise. Zombie Kirk was holding a remote control console identical to my own.
"Really, Captain," he said, "we're the same person. Did you truly think you could come up with a way of disrupting the deflector beams without me coming up with the exact same method. There's no move you can make that I won't anticipate."
I hadn't considered that. Of course we were going to arrive at the same solutions.
"Even our chief engineers think the same way," said zombie Kirk, "that's why the remote control consoles we're holding are identical."
Wait, what?
Kirk stood up. In his hands he was holding a console identical to my own. So Scotty had made two. But why...?
"I'll bet you didn't anticipate this," he said, moving the control levers forward.
A second shuttlecraft shot out from under our Enterprise, heading directly for their deflector dish. It had to have left the shuttle bay directly behind mine to have already been in position. On their side of our viewscreen the zombies all got to their feet and stared at us, expressions blank. It was deeply unnerving.
The shuttlecraft slammed into the area of the deflector dish Scotty had told us to aim for, the front crumpling, before bouncing back from it and drifting lifelessly. At first, it looked as if we had accomplished nothing. Then their deflector beam started to flicker before melting away entirely, followed by the portal collapsing and their onscreen image winking out.
They were gone. We had broken free of the zombie Enterprise.
But our own beam was still on, shooting energy into space.
"We're still vulnerable as long we can't turn our deflector beam off," I said. "What if the zombies get their deflector repaired in time to hook us again?"
"They won't," replied Kirk. "I had Scotty pack the second shuttle with explosives and rig up a five second self-destruct. Just before the portal closed I sent the signal to start the timer. The explosion won't be large enough to destroy their Enterprise, but it will cripple them and wreck their deflector dish beyond hope of repair. They'll have to spend months in spacedock undergoing repairs before they're a threat to anyone again."
Now I was really impressed, but also puzzled. Zombie Kirk and I had had the same idea because we were versions of the same person, but that should also have been true of Captain Kirk. Yet he had come up with a back-up ploy that neither of us had foreseen.
How was that possible?