The Operative (A Star Trek novel)

Chapter Three

Flynn, in the cockpit of his little ship, watches as it is pulled in by Enterprise's tractor beams. The other ship just keeps getting larger and larger, until it fills the entire viewport. His perspective changes. Now, instead of approaching another ship, he is orbiting some oddly-shaped minor planet. Gravity or no gravity, down is most definitely toward the starship.

He approached from the port side. Now the tractor beams haul Shelley past the huge saucer-shaped primary hull, diagonally down the strut connecting the vaguely-cylindrical secondary hull to the port warp nacelle, and finally along the length of the secondary hull. Then the beams swing Shelley out and aft, turn it around, and pull it in, like a sea anemone's tentacles placing food in its mouth. Flynn finds the simile a little disquieting, especially when the gigantic clamshell doors sweep majestically open to reveal the maw of a cavernous shuttle bay.

He has been this close to Constitution–class ships before. Now, as always, he feels like a savage confronted with some massive technological undertaking hopelessly beyond his ken, like he is seeing the product of magic. The first true spaceship he ever saw was a colony ship, one of the early ones, and it was gigantic. Peeping out from the cargo bay of the shuttle where he'd stowed away, that ship filled his visor, filled his view no matter which way he turned—shiny, modern, huge.

That ship, if it still existed, would rattle around in Enterprise's secondary hull.

He sighs.

Humans just aren't wired for longevity, he thinks.

It shows up at times like these, when you are faced with the indisputable fact that technology's inexorable march has left the time in which you were born in the dust.

"Shelley," he says aloud, "secure for docking. Landing. Whatever. We'll be aboard for a while, so if there's maintenance that needs to be done, do it. But we may have to leave in a hurry."

"Aye, Flynn, understood."

The ship's voice is melodious, masculine. Most computer voices are kept carefully non-human to reduce the human tendency to attribute more intelligence to them than is warranted. Shelley is different; its voice could be that of a news announcer.

"I'll keep her warmed up for you."

❖

From inside the shuttle bay, the operative's ship is at first not visible through the parting doors. All that the widening gap reveals is the blackness of space, interrupted only by pinprick stars that twinkle prettily as random fluctuations sweep through the field keeping the air in. Then, suddenly, bathed in a faint blue glow from the tractor beams, a thin, winged dart drops over the top rim of the open doorway. It is barely twice as large as a shuttlecraft.

The force field bends viscously around the little craft, then stretches, finally sweeping back cleanly along the ship's flanks to snap once again into place. The tractor beams set the ship gently on a turntable in the center of the shuttle bay. The clamshell doors ponderously close.

"Shuttle bay secure," the computer's mechanically-feminine voice informs the three people waiting as the doors clang shut. "Air pressure at one atmosphere and steady. Gravity normal."

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have been waiting impatiently on the other side of a hatch into the shuttle bay. At least, Kirk and McCoy have been; Spock has been looking like a Vulcan statute or a Zen master. Now they enter and walk briskly toward the newcomer's ship.

On its bow is hand-painted the name "Shelley" in flowing cursive script. Behind the name is a pretty good rendition of a spooky moonlit castle.

Kirk looks at the name, looks at Spock, who lifts an eyebrow in reply.