by L. A. Graf
"Good lord!" Interference screeched from the small communicator, and McCoy winced away from that as much as from Spock's news. "You mean we're going to get banged around like that once every day?"
"I'm afraid so, Doctor." His voice sounded like overheard whispers from a distant room, although smothered in static and auroral wails. " not certain the cause of secondary fluctuations ship's sensors indicate extremely unusual fashion still analyzing "
McCoy waited until the white noise nearly gave him a headache, then snapped his communicator shut with a curse. Just like Spock to leave before getting to the good parts.
A groan from the prostrate man swung McCoy around and brought him striding back to the bed. He bent down, one hand firm in the center of Nuie's chest, holding him in place. "Take it easy, Nuie. It's McCoy. You're in sickbay."
Weirdly colored eyes opened and stared up at him in confusion. "Dr. McCoy?"
"It's all right, Nuie. You're fine. At least, I think you're fine. How do you feel?"
The Kitka paused, as though taking internal inventory. For all McCoy knew, he might be. "I feel okay. A little dizzy, maybe. What happened?"
"You had a little bump on the head." McCoy helped the first mate to slowly sit up. "I'd like to take more time to examine you, but"
"Dr. McCoy?"
"Yes, Nuie?"
"Why are we wet?"
The question shot an abrupt, unhappy bark of laughter out of McCoy. "We're wet because the bridge began to flood." Quickly as he could, he recounted what occurred.
Nuie clutched his hand. "Dr. McCoy, do you remember hearing anything?"
"Hearing? No. I" His eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute. There was something." He remembered when, too, but didn't feel he needed to get into a discussion about Muhanti trying to carve him up for Thanksgiving dinner. "A groaning kind of sound. I thought it was a kraken again."
Nuie shook his head. "It was the ice. Oh, this is bad." The first mate looked at McCoy worriedly. "I have to get up to the bridge. They've probably cleared it by now, and I need to know what's happened. I need to find out how bad off we are, and get in touch with the company. If Captain Mandeville is lost " Nuie shrugged and hopped off the bed. His eyes widened with surprise when his feet splashed down into several inches of water.
McCoy stared at their feet. His had been wet and chilled since the deluge on the bridge. He'd never noticed the gathering flood.
A quick glance around showed the leak where several rivets had been strained by the accident. Water poured in a steady tide, unnoticed until now.
McCoy grabbed Nuie's arm and pulled him toward the door. "We have to get out of here! Is there a way to seal this room off so we don't flood the ship?"
"The door itself should do it, but we'll need to compensate for the intake, or the drag will keep us under."
McCoy didn't want to think about that. It was only one more worry in a string of worries he didn't have time to consider. He reached the door and stopped, staring at it. The door had been chocked open when he arrived with Nuie. He'd left it that way, in case anyone called, needing him. Now the door was shut, flush with the ugly wall around it.
Suddenly afraid, McCoy reached for the wheel in the center of the door and gave it a tug. The door didn't budge. He tried to turn the wheel first one way, then the other, but it clunked to a halt barely a quarter of the way around. He turned and looked at Nuie. "I don't think I want to know what this means."
The Kitka nodded, eyes hooded. "You already know, Doctor. It means we're locked in."
Teetering on the edge of the deep ice crevasse, Chekov's first thought was that they couldn't afford to lose their gravsled andwith ittheir only sources of food and shelter. He clapped both hands to the gravsled's tow bar as it lumbered away and down, hauling back with all his strength and praying the sled's straining servos wouldn't insist on equalizing with the crevasse floor a hundred meters below them.
Howard shouted in alarm, and Chekov had no time to order him away before the ensign had flung both arms around his chief's middle and added his own weight to the pull. Relenting, the gravsled bobbed over the lip of the crevasse and glided back toward Publicker and Uhura as if that had always been its goal. Howard and Chekov tumbled into the snow still locked together, scrambling back from the dropoff's edge even as they fell.
Not pretty, Chekov allowed, disentangling himself from Howard and getting to his feet, but effective. "Thank you, Mr. Howard."
The taller man brushed a dusting of snow off his insulation suit, still breathing raggedly. "Jeeze, Chief, you scared me."
Turning to edge back toward the crevasse, Chekov kept his hands carefully behind him, as if that would somehow prevent his accidental dislodgement. The rift went deeper than he could see, its bottommost reaches obscured by slabs of dancing light, blown snow, and awkward knobs and ledges of broken ice. Everything was so clearlike a mountainside carved in glassthat light glared brilliant aqua through a crusting of pockmarked snow. Only the faintest smudge of darkness a few hundred meters to his left hinted that something must span the crevasse to cast that brittle shadow. Chekov peered down the length of the crevasse, and was soon rewarded with a dim glimpse of something long and ragged jutting out across that abyss.
He caught Uhura's wrist and started off in that direction. "Publicker! Bring the gravsledfind the repelling cable."
Uhura trotted beside him, her attention still half behind them as the Kitka whistles grew closer and more dense. "What are you going to do?"
Chekov's heart soared as the narrow ice bridge solidified with nearness. Taking the cable Howard ran up to him, he pulled Uhura to a stop and turned her to face away from him so he could loop the cable snugly around her trim waist. "We're going over that bridge."
"Oh " Uhura stood very still, eyeing the bridge. One hand played nervously with the blank Kitka mask still hanging around her neck. "Oh, Pavel, I don't know "
"We haven't any choice." Cinching her tight, Chekov estimated the length of the bridge and played out a length of rope to hold between himself and Uhura before passing the remainder back to Howard. "Tie me, then Publicker, then yourself." Taking Uhura's shoulders so he could rotate her to face him, Chekov went on to explain, "We can't run very much longer. This way, we can knock out the bridge behind us so Alion and his people can't follow."
"If the bridge doesn't knock us out first." Publicker squirmed unhappily, twisting the excess rope between his black-gloved hands while staring at the slim tongue of ice. "That earthquake must have cracked it all to pieces, sir."
It wasn't as though Chekov hadn't already considered that. "That will just make knocking it down easier. Come on." He led them toward the foot of the bridge at an anxious trot. The only certainty he knew right now was that Alion's men would kill them if they caught them. God only knew why. If Chekov could start his people across the bridgesmallest to largestthe ice just might hold long enough to get three of them across. Then, when it collapsed, Chekov, Uhura, and Publicker would have a better than even chance of hanging onto Howard's line when he fell. If the ice bridge didn't hold
Then they were all dead, just like they would be if they didn't try, so dwelling on that thought wasn't worth it.
At the foot of the bridge, Chekov twisted around to wave the gravsled forward. Howard shoved it up to Publicker, who jumped a little with surprise at being distracted from his singular study of the ice bridge. Reaching back to guide it around Publicker, Chekov passed it forward to Uhura and pressed the tow bar into her hand. "Take this with you. It won't add any weight to the bridge, and we need to make sure it gets across." And you're the only one I'm certain can make it.
She nodded, small hands tense on the bar. Turning, she squared her shoulders with a sigh and tried to laugh. "Hold tight, you guys."
Chekov nervously wrapped one hand in the cable. "Always."
She set her feet gingerly on the irregular expanse, toe first, heel to follow. The shrieking auroral static drowned his ability to hear individual footsteps, making it
seem as though she picked her way across the crevasse in miraculous silence. To Chekov that silence only made her feel even farther awaythat much more unreachable and unsalvageable should anything go wrong. Puffs of snow whitened the ankles of her black suit, roiling in a milky cloud beneath the slow gravsled; glitters of ice rained from the belly of the bridge down into the crevasse below. When Uhura leapt the last meter to stumble onto glacier sheet at the other side, Chekov released a pent breath so explosive he almost didn't hear Uhura's voice squeak over the communicator, "I'm across! It's all rightI'm over!"
He raised both hands, thumbs up, and smiled when she returned the salute. The gravsled drifted lazily behind her, seeking some level point on the rippling reach of ice.
Tapping his suit comm to a private channel, Chekov glanced back at Publicker and Howard. "Are you ready?"
They nodded.
"Be careful." He hated to have to say it. "If I fall, she's not going to be able to hold me."
"We've got you, sir," Howard assured him. Publicker only nodded again, stiffly, and said, "Don't fall, please."
"I'll try not to." Then, insides twisting and knotting with vertigo, he eased up to the bridge and stepped out onto the expanse.
He felt the crunch beneath his feet more than heard it, felt the fractional layer of frozen snow shatter beneath each step and sink down into the hard ice beneath. He'd never considered himself afraid of heights, but something like this was entirely differentnot fear, but deadly mistrust of his own beleaguered senses. Wind and sound and light tried to fool him into illusions of pendulumlike motion. Peripheral vision showed him nothing but down, down, and more down for as far as he could see to either side, but looking at his feet made his whole body feel impossibly tall and disconnected. Water, as black as obsidian with foamy flecks of waves chopping across the surface, wound a sluggish ribbon through the bottom of the crevasse. Chekov forced his eyes ahead, concentrating instead on Uhura's stark black figure at the foot of the bridge. So long as she stayed before him, he was all rightso long as she drew closer, he was all right. He was almost nose to nose with her when his footing finally slid from bridge ice to glacier ice and stumbled him into Uhura on his way to more solid ground.
"Not a lot of fun, is it?" she commented quietly, her tone of voice amused.
Chekov laughed a little, but otherwise opted not to answer. Opening his comm channel, he stepped aside to wave the next man over. "All right, Publicker, come on."
Hands still worrying with the knot tied at his waist, the figure poised at the bridge's lip shook his head with slow resolve. "No " Publicker's voice sounded young and shaken over the crackling channel. "I I don't think I want to do this, sir."
Chekov's stomach clenched with dread. "We all have to do things we don't want to, Mr. Publicker." It hadn't occurred to him that Publicker's reticence was anything more profound than his own. "I don't intend to come back over there," he went on, trying to sound stern, "so you'd better start moving."
Howard's lean figure moved up close behind Publicker's shoulder. "It's okay, Mark, we've got you."
Chekov lifted his eyes to scan the icescape behind the two for signs of the approaching Kitka. "There's no turning back, Mr. Publicker. You've got to come on." And hurry!
Whether Publicker took the first shaky steps on his own or Howard nudged him forward, Chekov couldn't tell. Either way, Publicker inched onto the spar of ice with his elbows tucked close to his sides, his knees nearly riveted together with terror. Chekov caught himself digging his feet into the ice, afraid Publicker even had his eyes closed as he shuffled across, but restraining himself from calling out for fear of startling him into a panic.
At not quite halfway across the younger man suddenly froze, his chin jerking as though he'd heard a frightening noise.
Howard fidgeted at the foot of the bridge. "Mark ?"
"It moved!" Publicker gasped, and Chekov felt his heart leap into his throat.
"Keep moving!" he shouted, running backward to extend the cable between them and keep himself as far as he could from the crevasse's edge.
"It moved, sir!" Publicker staggered back the way he'd just come, hands gripping his arms. "I felt the ice move under me!"
"Publicker, come here!"
A thundercrack of sound underscored Chekov's order, and Publicker spun to face the tumult just as the bridge behind him shattered and tore loose a segment of glacier wall. Howard, arms flailing, did his best to backpedal while the ground crumbled beneath his feet. He toppled headlong into the crevasse, grabbing instinctively for the cable that bound him only to Publicker andthrough himto Chekov and Uhura on the other side of the rift.
Chekov knew what was coming only moments before the cable snapped taut and yanked Publicker backwards off the disintegrating trestle. He spread his legs wide, jamming his heels into the brittle snow, bracing himself for the dual weight of his plummeting guards and praying that Uhura had the sense to cut him loose if he couldn't save her from being hauled into the abyss.
When both men slammed against the end of their belay, Chekov had only long enough to see the cable slice a deep wedge into the remnants of the bridge before the force of their combined weight jerked him off his feet and dragged him, and Uhura, toward the lip of the crevasse.
Chapter Ten
MCCOY LEVELED A FINGER under the stocky Kitka's nose. "Now, wait just a damned minute!" He worked hard to keep his voice at a normal level when panic wanted to send it shrieking, and him along with it. "That door was wide open when I brought you in. I didn't close it, I know for damned sure you didn't, and there's no vagrant breeze to help it along! So how"
"Only two doors lock from the outside aboard the Soroyathe door to Captain Mandeville's quarters and the door to the wardroom. Even then, you can't lock somebody in, as they're easily opened from the other side." Nuie reached out and ran a callused hand ruminatively around the door's center wheel. His fingers tightened briefly, checking the spin in either direction. The wheel barely budged. "This has been jammed from the outside."
"But that means" McCoy stopped, realized his finger was still thrust oratorically into the air. He swore and jammed it into a pocket. Staring at the heavy door, he worried the inside of his lip. He didn't like what this meant any more than he liked the chill sweat coating his body under the wet Starfleet uniform. "Who would lock us in?" he asked quietly, his voice almost calmly speculative while his mind gibbered and capered around the inside of his skull.
"How should I know?" Nuie replied with an honesty that made McCoy want to knock his head against the wall. "I was unconscious."
McCoy hazarded a look over his shoulder at the leak. Was it his imagination, or had it grown in strength during the few moments he'd taken his eyes away? "Do you think whoever locked us in knew about that?" He thrust a chin toward the spill of water.
"If you're asking me do I think someone locked us in here to kill us, I'd say there's a good chance."
Ire momentarily put fear to bay and the Starfleet officer glared sourly. "Don't Kitka ever lie?"
Nuie blinked impassive silver eyes. "This Kitka doesn't."
The man's frank honesty elicited a short laugh from McCoy, when he felt about as far from happy as he'd ever been. There was a flutter in his chest, as of a million frantic birds beating their wings against his ribs. "Well, I don't know about the Kitka, Nuie, but the McCoys never go down without a fight. Just ask the Hatfields."
"The who?"
"Never mind." Hands on his hips, McCoy turned to watch the steady fall of water. "Can we plug that, or at least slow it down?"
Nuie gave the wall brief, careful consideration before answering. "Maybe if we were outside. Look closely, Doctor. The break isn't just there. That's just an opening. The seams have been strained here, but somewhere else, too." He reached out and let the water cascade gently over his fingers. "All of the equipment is up in the turret, anyway."
"Forget I asked." McCoy crossed the room and began randomly but quickly opening doors and drawers.
<
br /> "What are you doing?" Nuie splashed over to stand at the doctor's elbow and watch.
McCoy tried not to think about how much the water had risen while they talked; tried not to recall what it felt like to drown. He knew once he let the fear get hold of him, he was lost, and Nuie with him. "I'm looking for something to whale the tar out of that door." When that only made the first mate look confused, McCoy sighed and rolled his eyes. "I mean something to hit it with, Nuie. To see if we can break through." He lifted free a contraption made of weirdly jointed metal parts. "Something like this." The crude instrument hadn't been used in modern hospitals since before McCoy was an intern. For the first time, he was glad to find Muhanti's sickbay behind the times.
He grabbed another piece of equipment and thrust it into Nuie's hands. "Here. Let's give it a try." He led the way back to the door. The water was above his ankles and his feet were numb with cold. Salty brine odor tainted the air like iodine or the taste of copper.
He hefted the implement back over one shoulder and swung. It made a satisfying racket against the wall. Nuie immediately joined in, powerful shoulder muscles rippling the damp material of his shirt. Their blows swung and fell together, developing a kind of cadence. After several moments McCoy held up a hand. "Is it any looser?" he puffed, winded. He promised himself that if he got out of this alive, he'd start taking Kirk up on his offers of working out together in the gym.
Wet hair straggled across Nuie's eyes as he bent and shoved a hand against the door. It didn't budge. "No."
"Then we do it again."
And again. And again. By that time the water had risen to calf height. The bottoms of McCoy's uniform pants fluttered like underwater weeds. His feet felt like unwieldy blocks of wood tied to his ankles. He stamped when he walked, trying to restore a sense of circulation because he couldn't feel his individual toes.