She shifted uncomfortably, and Lieutenant Dawe—holding the flashlight for her since his operation systems monitor stubbornly continued to insist that absolutely nothing was wrong anywhere on the ship—tried to give her a little more room in which to work.
"Not much." Her voice sounded both muffled and distracted, and she wriggled again, trying to ease the awkward positioning of her arms as she worked from cable to cable of the impenetrable maze beneath the console with a single-pin pickup in quest of any clue to tell them what was happening elsewhere on the ship.
Even the emergency lighting had gone from the bridge. By the low glow of individual station lamps, the big, circular chamber had the appearance of some prehistoric cave dwelling, looming with eerie shadows thrown by illumination barely brighter than that of tallow-soaked reeds.
Against that heavy darkness, the starfields on the viewscreens blazed with heart-shaking clarity. Standing in the dark beside the turbolift door, Sulu reflected that he'd nearly forgotten the utter beauty of that cold, endless night, and had the danger been less, he thought he could have sat for hours in the darkened bridge, gazing into infinities of nothing and light.
Speed had been cut to slow cruise instants before the lights had gone—the moment, in fact, that Sulu had realized that someone had managed to cut through the double and treble defenses on the computer. Chekov, bent over the navigation console, was compensating and correcting the course still further, hoping to hell that what the computer was telling him was correct, that what he was telling the computer was getting through, and that some other disaster wasn't about to befall.
"But he's not in the Deck Eleven lounge," added Uhura around the stylus clamped in her teeth. "They've got the wires crossed somewhere."
"Can you do anything about the communicator static?" asked Chekov. "If we could just get in touch with somebody…"
"Got it!" Sulu felt the cover plate give under his fingers. He shoved the degaussing pencil back into his belt, ripped the plate itself away from the manual crank for the turbolift door, twisted the geared handle within. Unwillingly the laminated silver panels of the doors parted, to reveal a narrow rectangle as black as blindness, in which the dim reflections of the makeshift lights on the bridge picked out the amber line of the safety cable like a single stroke of gilding on velvet.
"Hmm," said Sulu. From the bridge, there was nowhere to go but down.
"Master…"
Raksha put her hand on Arios's shoulder. He covered the comm pad with his palm, glanced up at her, green eyes weirdly luminous in the glow of the flashlight taped to the game console before him. Thad was still happily playing slippy-slide on the newly waxed floor of the bowling lane. Adajia, Yeoman Wein's phaser in hand, sat close to the outer door at the far end of the long room, nearly invisible in the darkness; the air was filled with the smell of the bowl of popcorn at her side, which she was devouring, licking her fingers like a greedy child.
"If this is the Enterprise," said the Klingon softly, "your best bet would be to kill the life-support. You know that."
Arios's mouth flinched. A mouth too sensitive, Raksha thought dispassionately, in a face whose thinness rendered it almost fragile-looking, like a skeletal moth. Among her own people such a man would not survive.
"I know that."
Their eyes held for a long time.
She asked, "You know who is here." It was not a question. "I don't know his name, but you do."
He nodded, once. "I do."
"Then make him part of your terms. Ask for him as hostage and lose him out an airlock. Shoot him trying to escape. Say Adajia or I went berserk on you and cut him into little bitty pieces. I'd even do it."
The green eyes shut; he averted his face. "I can't." He drew a deep breath, as if against some terrible weight, and his voice became cheerful and light. "You'd better get going if we don't want Kirk to guess…"
Her brown hand caught him under the chin, forced his head back around so that his eyes had to meet hers.
"Whoever it is," she said evenly, "he's responsible for what they did to you."
Arios said nothing.
"He's responsible for Sharnas having a central nervous system like the main lode of a Denebian silver mine; he's responsible every time you have to strap Phil down and short out his implants; he's responsible every time you wake up screaming from nightmares…"
"Not every time," Arios said quietly.
Her mouth hardened, a bronze line like a bitter poem, and her fingers shifted where they still gripped the pointed chin. "Kill him. Whoever he is."
"I can't."
"Then tell me who it is and I'll kill him."
A bowling ball rumbled down the alley. Thad, who had flung it, made a running start after it, then slid in a neat intercepting arc, a child playing a game. Raksha's eyes followed the little man, and for the first time a glister of tears brightened them.
"He's responsible for Thad."
Arios wrenched away from her grip, looked down at the maze of keyboards and makeshift screens before him. His hands trembled a little, and he caught them quickly together so she wouldn't see. "I can't. It's not possible." He did not meet her eyes. "You'd better go."
She turned away. "Thad," she called out. "Thaddy, get over here, we're putting you on guard duty."
"With a phaser and everything?" His face illuminated with delight; then he stopped in his tracks, anxiety blotting all his momentary pleasure at their trust.
"Phaser and everything," said Raksha. "I have to take Adajia with me. You keep an eye on that door and listen, listen to everything. Any weird noise, any strange feeling you get that something may be coming out of the darkness . . . you've got to take care of it."
His dark eyes widened, scared. She pressed the second phaser, the one they'd gotten out of Wein's desk, into his hand, and nodded back at Arios, who had returned to speaking into the comm link. "You've got to protect him," she said.
And she added, in Klingon, as Adajia fell into step behind her and they moved once more toward the blind black eye of the open vent hatch, "Spirits of the lightning, protect him, too."
"I understand Tau Lyra Three's under the protection of the Prime Directive," went on Arios's light, scratchy voice. "Nevertheless we have business there. We mean no harm to the planet, nor, for that matter, to you or your crew. We're really not space pirates or anything, Captain. But we need to be taken to Tau Lyra as soon as possible, and we'll need repairs on our ship."
Kirk's mind was racing, as more and more frightful possibilities presented themselves. What the hell was happening on the bridge? Had engine and warp-drive controls been cut? The comm link was near the door of Spock's office, and through it—for the soundproofing on the starship was never a hundred percent—he could hear a mutter of voices, the occasional dim pounding as someone tried to get out of the shut library next door.
"One of my crew will take Mr. Spock over to the Nautilus," went on Arios. "I hope he understands that the internal monitoring devices implanted in some of my crew members give me complete awareness of what's happening to them. As I said, I don't want to start shutting down life-support systems, but I'll do it. And I can do it, from where we are. I hope you believe that."
"Can he?" Kirk put his hand over the link.
Spock's voice came from another part of the darkness than it had before. From the location, Kirk guessed that the Vulcan was trying to get enough purchase under the edge of the wall hatch that covered the emergency kit, which would contain, among other things, a degausser. Had the panel not fit flush, Spock's hands were probably strong enough to bend the metal aside, but without a handle to grip, his strength was useless. Five years on the voyage, thought Kirk irritably, and nobody's ever thought to ask what would happen if something went wrong with the magnetic catches.
"He appears to have tapped through to the main computer from a lab-quality terminal," replied the science officer's austere voice. "Although the core programs which control life-support—and the minutiae of ship oper
ations—are theoretically shielded from tampering at this level, we are quite clearly dealing with technical knowledge far greater than our own."
"I take it that's a yes?"
"I have no precise knowledge of Captain Arios's capabilities, Captain." Despite Spock's claim of freedom from all human emotion, there was a slightly aggrieved note in his voice. "I would venture, however, to postulate a high order of probability in that direction."
Kirk swore. "Then I suppose the real question is, Would he?"
But to that, Mr. Spock had no answer at all.
"Will you be okay, Zhiming?" Lieutenant Organa took the damp moisture filter that was passed down to them from the open ceiling vent, handed it on to others waiting on the floor. A dozen bowls of vegetable oil ringed the stacked tables like a ritual altar, glimmering with the burning yarn of makeshift wicks. There were, Lao knew, three boxes of candles in one of the rec-room cupboards, but it, like everything else on the ship, had magnetic catches. The vegetable oil had been Ensign Giacomo's idea, and fortunately the group in the rec room had included Yeoman Brunowski, who programmed the food synthesizers.
At the moment Giacomo, Jefferson, and Emiko Adams were unraveling all the crochet yarn, embroidery floss, crewel-stitch, and macramé cord from every needlework project still in train when the lights had gone out, and fortunately needlework was a form of recreation much in vogue among the Enterprise crew. If they'd had access to everything cached behind the magnetic hatches around the walls, of course, they could have run guide threads through every ventilator duct and power conduit on the ship six times over, let alone down into Engineering, but reviewing the schematic of the vents in his mind, Lao thought there would be enough as it was.
"I'll be fine as long as there isn't something living in the vent shafts," he joked, and there was an uneasy laugh. Yagghorths weren't the only recurring nightmare starfaring crews had about picking up alien life-forms. Only a month ago a derelict free trader had been discovered by the Kreiger close to the Beta Lyrae system, the space between inner and outer hulls packed tight with the desiccated bodies of Udarian blood maggots, every chamber and hold of the ship drifted knee-deep with them, even the engines clogged. The salvagers from the Kreiger had to use chemical sensors to find the bones of the crew.
"You mean besides the mice?" joked Brunowski.
Lao walked over to the visicom, where Miller was still trying to work his way through the bizarre schematic of the guards on the slicer program. "I can't understand how they got through the safeguards," said the engineer, rubbing a hand over his head until his brown hair stood up like the crest of a startled cockatoo. "I put them on myself last year—not just a blanket program, but a system-by-system tailoring."
"It almost looks like they found a way to bifurcate each bit, and slip past the guard on a bit-by-bit basis." Lao folded his arms and studied the screen by the flickering glow of the smoky, smelly lamps.
"Is that possible?"
Lao shrugged. "No," he said cheerfully, and returned to the pile of tables. Organa handed him the only flashlight in the room—Miller had had one in his coverall pocket—and the end of a long, and rather kinked, swatch of yarn. Lao tied the yarn around one ankle, mounted the tables, and from there scrambled into the narrow square of the vent. Lao's memory was good, and he had studied the ship's schematics thoroughly in the five months he had been on board. While Giacomo was unraveling yarn for wicks and Brunowski and Miller were fiddling with the programming on the food slots, trying to convince them that what they really wanted was bowl after bowl of grease, Lao had sketched what he recalled of the vent system from memory, counting turns and branchings, hoping he wasn't leaving anything out.
"What if they're in Engineering?" Giacomo asked worriedly, coming to stand beneath the vent.
Lao adjusted the flashlight in his left hand. The vent shaft was only about fourteen inches square, cramping his arms and shoulders. Not the place, he reflected wryly, where one would care to meet a yagghorth—or even a mouse, for that matter.
"I guess I'll figure that out when I get there," he said, and set off, pushing himself carefully by elbows and toes through the dark.
"All right," said Kirk. "You win this round. I take it the lights are out all over the ship?"
It certainly sounded like Deck Seven was dark in the immediate area of Mr. Spock's quarters. It was one of the quietest areas of the ship, situated between the room of visicom cubicles and the ship's library, but even so, there was the rustling suggestion of activity vaguely sensed through both walls. Kirk wondered how McCoy was faring in sickbay. Wondered again, almost sick with anxiety, what was taking place on the bridge.
Minutes stretched without a reply. Kirk heard the almost soundless murmur of Mr. Spock's clothing as the Vulcan moved about, like a big cat in the darkened room, the steady whisper of his breathing, not even deepened with anger or frustration. With access to the specialized—and allegedly double-guarded—directories, Arios could have blanked out the lighting and door panels in selected areas of the ship, but at a guess he'd done it everywhere. At least, thought Kirk, that's what he himself would have done, to cut the crew off from each other and from any possibility of a general search.
"Listen," he tried again. "Clear the comm long enough for me to tell my crew to stay where they are. I accept your assurances that all you want is your ship repaired, and transport to Tau Lyra Three. I can't permit you to land on a protected planet, but I will help you repair your ship. What you do from there is your business." He hoped that sounded sufficiently casual, sufficiently thoughtless.
"But let me talk to my crew. Somebody's going to try to find you, and I want to minimize injuries in the dark. And if they do find you, I want to tell them that I've made a bargain with you, that neither you nor any of your crew is to be injured."
"They won't find me, Captain," came Arios's voice. "And I've already told them we're not to be touched. It's not that I don't trust your word. You had…have…a reputation for keeping it. But I know also you'd never let a bunch of problematical space pirates make a landing on a protected planet. I'm sorry about this, but I really can't take any chances. And I mean any chances."
"But you already have."
Kirk startled and looked—illogically—over his shoulder at where Spock's voice had sounded suddenly close. He felt the warmth of the Vulcan's body brush his arm.
"From what I overheard of your conversation with Rakshanes…" He used the polite Klingon honorific. "…you have already refused to wipe out the crew of the Enterprise, against her advice, although by doing so you believe you would destroy a crew member who has…wronged you. Injured you and your crew. This would indicate that a compromise is possible."
There was long silence. Kirk wondered what it was that Mr. Spock had overheard, for his own ears had brought him only the dullest of muffled mumblings over the comm. Faintly he heard a light male voice—Thad, he thought, that curiously childlike young man—say anxiously, "But how could he hear?"
"Spock's a Vulcan, of course he could hear even though I had my hand over the comm link. We knew they were in Spock's cabin. . . . I'm sorry, Captain." Arios's voice came back clearly again. "And Mr. Spock. I've taken enough chances. I can't afford to take any more. Some of us have our own Prime Directives. You'll need to…"
There was a sudden, scratching grate outside the office door, the sharp click of a cover plate being put back, then the grind of a manual release. A slit of yellow light, brilliant after the long minutes of darkness, gashed Kirk's sight, broadening into the doorway. Behind the light could be seen two forms, women, the dark-faced Raksha, her doublet winking with metal and leather, and the graceful houri Adajia.
Adajia had a phaser, and a horrific-looking weapon made of razors. Raksha held a metal pry bar in one hand like a club, and over the other shoulder hung a large tool kit stamped with the Starfleet emblem and the serial number of the Enterprise. Most such kits had the department they came from written on the side—ENGINEERING or GEO or whatever.
Someone—probably Raksha—had put a couple of strips of engine tape over this one.
Adajia's phaser, Kirk noted, was Starfleet issue. That meant they'd taken out one security officer, probably whoever had been on guard in the brig.
"Captain," said Raksha, keeping a wary distance from the door, "we're going to need you along as a hostage for a short time as well. Now, you can let me tape up your wrists…" She held up a roll of silver engine tape. "… or I can have Adajia hit you with a very mild stun charge and then I'll tape up your wrists, which will waste time and give you a headache for the rest of the day. If necessary, Adajia can take out both of you, but then I'd have to go find somebody else to help me fix the Nautilus's engines and computer. Okay?"
"I've already offered to cooperate," said Kirk, holding out his hands, wrists together.
"Mr. Spock…far corner, please. Away from the desk."
Spock retreated. Adajia remained in the doorway, keeping an eye on both him and the darkness of the corridor outside. Raksha turned Kirk roughly around, taped his wrists behind him instead of in front.
"Do you have all the repair equipment you require from Engineering?" inquired Spock politely. Beyond Adajia, the corridor was black and utterly silent—Kirk had had the impression of voices out there during the earlier minutes of the darkness. He could still hear, if he listened, occasional muttering from the library next door. Soundproofing, an expensive luxury aboard any spacegoing vessel, had been proven critical on starships with their long mission times and weeks—sometimes months—of isolation, but it was far from perfect.
"Most of what we'll need is on the Nautilus already," said Raksha, speaking past Kirk to the Vulcan. "We're going to need engine/computer interfacing work, which is why you got elected and not Mr. Scott—aside from the fact that we haven't been able to locate Mr. Scott. Now you, Captain, out the door. I think we're going to use the starboard transporter room instead of the one right next to Security. This way."
Her soft boots made barely a sound on the metal laminate of the deck. The glow of Adajia's flashlight beam passed briefly across the bodies of those unfortunate enough to be in that corridor when the lights went out. Kirk saw Gilden from Historical—who had his quarters just around the corner—move a little and moan as they went by, and breathed easier. It was clear the two women had fired heavy stun charges into every human being they'd met, and looking at Raksha's face, beautiful and utterly cold, Kirk was only glad it had been no worse.
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