Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins

by Margaret Clark (Editor)

  “I cannot eject the core,” Snollicoob confirmed. “The hull doors will not open.”

  La Forge wanted to hit something. “Doesn’t anything work right on that ship of yours?”

  “I do not know,” Snollicoob confessed. He wrung his hands. Greasy tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “We are broken.”

  “All right. Let’s keep our cool.” La Forge didn’t have to be an empath to see that Snollicoob was on the verge of panic. He emulated Counselor Troi’s comforting tone. “We just have to get those doors apart. Can you force them open from inside?”

  Snollicoob pulled himself together. He wiped the tears from his eyes. “I do not think so.” He consulted his gauges. “The ejection chute is too hot. It is not safe. We would burn up.”

  La Forge saw what he meant. A leak in the EPS conduits had flooded the interior of the ejection chute with superenergized gases. The blazing plasma would fry any Pakled technicians before they had a chance to pry open the exterior hull plates.

  “Okay then,” he concluded. “You’re going to have to do it from outside.”

  “Outside the ship?” Snollicoob’s eyes widened in fear. “That will be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous is better than dead,” La Forge said bluntly.

  Snollicoob looked like he wasn’t quite sure that was so.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Space was cold. And dark. And scary.

  Snollicoob squeezed through an airlock as he exited the ship. The sliding doors had not opened all the way, forcing him to turn sideways to slip through the gap. He held his breath, hoping that his modified Tellarite spacesuit would not catch or tear on anything. The ill-fitting suit, which was one size too small for him, hampered his movements. He had looked for a better fit, but this suit had been in the best condition. In the end, he had chosen safety over comfort. In space, leaks were bad.

  He stepped nervously out onto the hull. A tinted visor hid his face. A searchlight built into the top of his helmet cut through the darkness before him. A fully charged phaser was affixed to his tool belt. His heart pounded loudly. He was afraid.

  The vast openness of empty space was profoundly intimidating, especially after weeks aboard the cozy confines of the freighter. Despite the protective spacesuit, he felt uncomfortably naked and exposed, like a newborn cub shoved out of the den into the threatening world outside. Vertigo sent his head spinning, and he realized that he had forgotten to exhale. He gulped down air until the light-headedness passed. The sound of his own breathing echoed inside the helmet.

  “Mister La Forge, are you there?”

  “Call me Geordi,” the human engineer answered via the headset in Snollicoob’s helmet. His voice was scratchy and faint, but reassuring nonetheless. Snollicoob did not want to do this alone. An optical connection linked Geordi’s VISOR to a camera in the helmet, so he could see what Snollicoob saw. “I’m not going anywhere. We engineers have to stick together, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” Snollicoob answered uncertainly. He looked longingly back at the airlock entrance, tempted to turn back. “I do not like this, Geordi.”

  “You ever spacewalked before?”

  “No,” he admitted. He could not remember the last time the hull had been inspected from the outside. If only he could change places with Geordi . . . !

  “You can do it,” the human said. “Just put one foot in front of the other.” Geordi sounded tense. “But you had better get going. I don’t want to rush you, but that containment field is not looking good.”

  Snollicoob understood. Bolstering his courage, he set out across the hull. The magnetized soles of his boots clung to the weathered metal surface; he had to strain against the attraction to lift his feet. The helmet light illuminated his patch. He flinched at the scarred appearance of the outer plating. The rust-colored tritanium was scorched and dented, as though it had been lashed by a Ferengi plasma whip. Countless score marks and fissures cried out to be patched. Vapor jetted through a pin-sized puncture below the ventral impeller. He paused briefly to plug the hole with a wad of thermoconcrete, all too aware that there were probably many more punctures elsewhere. Rorpot was going to need serious repairs—if it didn’t blow up.

  Maybe it would be easier to let it explode?

  “Are we almost there yet?” Geordi asked anxiously. “You need to hurry.”

  “Uh-huh.” Snollicoob quickened his pace. Unfortunately, the nearest working airlock had been on Rorpot’s starboard flank, a long hike from the ejection chute doors, which were located on the underbelly of the freighter. He had to make his way along the ravaged hull, detouring around mangled fins and twisted metal clamps, to get to where he needed to go. An enormous barrel of slush deuterium, hitched to the freighter’s side, blocked his path, forcing him to take the long way around. A jagged wound in the side of the metal drum had already released its contents to the void. Rorpot’s losses were mounting, but Snollicoob was too worn out to care. Walking in the magnetized boots was exhausting. His legs were already tired by the time he reached the bottom of the ship. He wasn’t used to moving this fast, let alone in sticky boots and a clumsy suit. Breathing hard, he forced himself to keep on going.

  He was going to need a vacation after this, if he survived.

  Walking upside-down beneath Rorpot was disorienting. Empty space stretched endlessly above him—or was it below? Worried eyes searched the vast expanse. He couldn’t see the quantum filaments, but he knew they were still there, all around him.

  What if the ship bumps into one while I am out here?

  He shuddered at the thought.

  “How are you doing?” Geordi nagged him. “Can you go any faster?”

  The human’s obvious impatience worried Snollicoob. He wondered how close the warp core was to exploding. His helmet could not provide him updates on the ship’s status; he was cut off from his gauges. “How weak is the bubble?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Geordi’s reticence was not reassuring. “Just get a move on.”

  “I am almost there.” By his reckoning the chute doors were only seven meters away. He shone his searchlight in the right direction. His jaw dropped. “Uh-oh.”

  An immense hull breach gaped between him and his destination. From the looks of things, the magnesite in the cargo hold had ignited, blowing open the hull. Only what remained of Rorpot’s structural integrity field was holding the ship together. Over four meters across, the breach was like a mountain ravine, directly in his path.

  “Geordi, there is a problem.”

  “I see,” Geordi sighed. “Is there any way around it?”

  Snollicoob swept the searchlight along the length of the fissure. It appeared to stretch quite a ways across the width of the ship, for many meters in both directions. There was no way to bridge the gap; the flickering SIF would not support his weight.

  “I do not think so, Geordi.” He peered down into the chasm. The blackened interior of the vault was large enough to hold many kilotons of solid ore. “Maybe I can climb down into the hold and back up again?”

  “There’s no time for that,” the human declared. “You’re going to have to jump.”

  Snollicoob’s mouth went as dry as . . . a very dry thing. He hoped he hadn’t heard Geordi right.

  “Jump?”

  “If you get a running start,” Geordi said, as though the idea were not the craziest thing Snollicoob had ever heard, “then demagnetize your boots at the last minute, your momentum should carry you across the gap. Then you just need to grab onto something on the other side before you go too far.”

  Snollicoob spotted a docking strut jutting out from the hull just beyond the crevasse. The metal rail protruded ten centimeters from the underside of the ship; it was bent at an angle, but looked like it was still riveted in place. Geordi’s plan could work, but . . .

  “I am afraid. What if I miss?”

  “You can’t think about that now.” Geordi was obviously not going to take no for an answer. “You can do it, Snolli
coob. I believe in you.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely.” Geordi sounded oddly bemused by his own declaration. “You can fly if you have to. You just need to move!”

  Snollicoob decided to take his word for it. Geordi was smart. If he thinks I can do this, maybe I can.

  He backed up as far as he could. As with their technology, the Pakleds had appropriated most of their religious beliefs from other species, so he offered up a silent prayer to the Prophets, Kahless, the Overseer, the Blessed Exchequer, and the Q Continuum before sprinting toward the gap faster than any Pakled had probably ever run before. His soles pounded against the warped tritanium plating. Adrenaline rushed through his veins.

  It was an unusual feeling.

  The yawning abyss looked bigger and bigger the nearer he got to it. He was tempted to close his eyes and let Geordi look instead, but instead he kept his gaze fixed on the life-saving strut on the other side of the gap. Before he knew it, he was only paces away from the brink of the crevasse.

  “Demagnetize your boots!” Geordi reminded him. “Now!”

  Oh right, he thought. I almost forgot.

  A trigger in the palm of his spacesuit shut off the magnets. He threw himself over the edge, his arms outstretched before him. Just as Geordi had predicted, he soared weightlessly over the chasm. A broad grin broke out across his face.

  “I am doing it! It is working!”

  He crossed the gap in a heartbeat. The docking strut seemed to come racing toward him. He reached out to snag it . . . and missed!

  “Uh-oh!”

  Snollicoob went flying past the hull doors into the void. Gloved fingers groped for something—anything!—to hold on to, but grasped only vacuum. Floating free and untethered, he tumbled helplessly away from the ship. He frantically switched his boot magnets back on, but it was already too late. The attraction was too weak; he had to be in contact with the hull for the magnets to work.

  “Help me, Geordi! I am lost in space!”

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you!” Geordi’s voice was barely audible. He sounded like he was shouting from very far away. “You’re breaking up—”

  The transmission faded into silence. Snollicoob guessed that he had drifted too far away from Rorpot’s main antenna array. He tapped the side of the helmet, but Geordi’s voice did not return. Snollicoob swallowed hard. He was on his own now.

  What can I do?

  He was in big trouble. His spacesuit’s air supply would run out in hours, long before he died of thirst and hunger or cold. He did not know if that was a good thing or not. He looked longingly at Rorpot as it receded into the distance. What if he hit a filament first? How much would that hurt?

  “Do not give up,” he told himself. “Geordi would not.”

  He fumbled with the tools on his belt. There had to be something he could use to save himself. He conducted a quick inventory of his equipment: a phaser, a tricorder, an all-purpose wrench, a portable bipolar torch, a pouch of small-gauge self-sealing stem bolts . . .

  If only he had some kind of thruster!

  Wait! His fingers went back to the phaser. An idea occurred to him. It was risky, but, like Geordi had said, dangerous was better than dead. More important, he didn’t have any better ideas. What can I lose?

  Unhitching the phaser from his belt, he set the angle of the beam for maximum dispersion, then fired back over his shoulder at the seemingly empty void behind him. He swept the vacuum with the crimson beam, which penetrated the icy blackness at the speed of light. Snollicoob braced himself.

  At first, nothing happened. The phaser beam was not solid enough to propel him through space. He sighed in defeat. His desperate plan had not worked after all.

  Maybe it was just as well. . . .

  Just when he was going to give up, however, a blinding flash lit up the void. There was no sound, but, nanoseconds later, a shock wave slammed into Snollicoob from behind. He yelped loudly, in both fear and exhilaration.

  I did it, he realized. I hit a filament!

  The energy discharge hurled him back toward Rorpot. The underside of the freighter seemed to surge toward him like a tidal wave. He threw out his hands and feet to cushion the impact, even as he crashed into the bottom of the ship with bone-jarring force. His face rebounded painfully against the inside of his helmet, squashing his nose. The phaser was almost knocked from his grip, but he held on to to it tightly. Magnetic soles locked onto the metal plating.

  He was back!

  “—icoob? Snollicoob!” Geordi’s voice greeted him. “Can you read me?”

  “Yes, Geordi!” He wobbled atop his boots, dazed by his collision with the ship. He shook his head to clear it and blinked the tears from his eyes. His nose felt broken. Blood dripped from his nostrils. He reached to wipe it, only to find the helmet’s visor in the way. He sniffled loudly. His swollen lip had split open again. “I was lost, but not anymore.”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it later,” Geordi said. “Can you get to the hull doors now?”

  Snollicoob groaned. He really wanted to rest for a minute, after his harrowing ordeal, but the inconsiderate warp core was not going to wait for him to catch his breath. His spotlight surveyed the ship’s exterior as he tried to figure out exactly where he was. Do not let me be back on the wrong side of the gap. He knew he did not have the nerve to jump over it again.

  To his relief, he spied the hull doors only a few meters away. Hope gave him a second wind and he limped across the hull to the balky steel plates. The glow of the searchlight quickly revealed that the double doors had been fused shut by the energized lashings of a quantum filament. He could tell at glance that it would take a long time, and a lot of work, to pry them open again.

  So he lifted the phaser and disintegrated them instead.

  A brilliant red glow suffused the solid tritanium doors before they dissolved into atoms, exposing an open shaft that ascended to the blazing heart of the ship. An incandescent cobalt radiance emanated from the top of the chute. Snollicoob backed away from the shaft entrance. He put plenty of distance between himself and the seething warp core.

  “It is done,” he reported. “The doors are gone.”

  “Good job!” Geordi said. “And just in time. I’ve established remote control of your emergency safety system. I’m going to jettison the core now.”

  “No!” Snollicoob froze, terrified by the human’s announcement. He had planned to be safely inside Rorpot again before the core was ejected. “Wait! I am too close!”

  “Sorry,” Geordi said. “Shield strength is twenty-one percent and plummeting. The temperature inside the reaction chamber is off the charts. It’s going to blow any minute now. We’re out of time!”

  Snollicoob believed him. “But what can I do?”

  “Get out of there!”

  He did not need to be told twice. Huffing and puffing, he dashed for the nearest available shelter: the hull breach above the cargo hold. An intense vibration shook the plating beneath his feet as the warp core came loose inside the chute. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the entire reactor assembly rocket out of the open chute, followed almost immediately by the antimatter containment pods. The warp core was glowing as brightly as a supernova; it was impossible to look at directly, even through the tinted visor. Geordi was right; the core was about to explode. Averting his eyes, Snollicoob dived headfirst into the chasm, his mass and momentum easily penetrating the feeble integrity field covering the opening. He shot down into the murky cargo hold.

  It is not fair, he thought. I saved the ship!

  Nothing but charred ashes now filled the empty vault, all the magnesite having been consumed during the earlier explosion. Floating embers reminded him that they had never bothered to install artificial gravity in the hold, to make stowing the cargo easier. The beam from his helmet fell upon the handle of a reinforced metal door at the far end of the vault. He kicked off from a floating piece of debris and ricocheted toward the door. He crossed the
length of the cargo hold in an instant. His fingers closed around the handle. He seized it with both hands.

  Made it!

  The warp core exploded soundlessly outside the ship. The pristine flash of an uncontrolled matter/antimatter reaction flooded the unlit hold, briefly turning Snollicoob’s entire world white. He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face toward the door to keep from being blinded. He could feel the scorching heat even through the force field and his spacesuit. Sweat drenched the inner layers of the suit. He whimpered in fear.

  How far away had the core gotten before it exploded? Was it far enough?

  “Hold on!” Geordi said. “Here it comes!”

  A shock wave, several times more powerful than the one that had propelled Snollicoob back to Rorpot, buffeted the freighter. He clung to the door handle as the ship tilted on its axis, rolling over onto its side. The charred remnants of the magnesite were flung across the vault. Bits of ash pelted his spacesuit. He flapped like a flag in an interstellar gale.