by Dayton Ward
Releasing an audible sigh, Rideout replied, “That might’ve made things a lot easier, at least so far as cleanup goes.”
“Perhaps,” Kyle countered, his voice low, “but then you and I wouldn’t be standing here.” When she turned to regard him, he added, “I know what you’re thinking, Chief, and what happened here wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could to save your ship, but the cards were just stacked too high against you.”
The chief engineer reached up to rub the corner of her right eye, and Kyle noted the tear before she would wipe it away. “I keep going over it in my head—every decision, every button I pushed. That’s all I’ve done for two days, lying there in that damned bed.” She eyed him. “Do you know the Dolysians have some of the most god-awful beds you’ll ever sleep in? I’ve slept in holes in the ground that were more comfortable.”
Chuckling at the unexpected observation, Kyle felt a momentary pang of guilt as he considered his surroundings. Laughter seemed so inappropriate here. Still, the brief diversion seemed to be somewhat therapeutic for Rideout, so he said nothing until she wiped her eyes a second time and cleared her throat.
“I wasn’t in any shape to do any sort of checks after we crashed,” she said after a moment, “but I knew about the radiation and other leakage. Administrator Shin told me that they found some isolated breaches, but it seems as though the safety systems worked, at least for the most part.”
“That’s right,” Kyle said, “but it’s all taken care of now.” He gestured with one hand back over his shoulder to where the Ballard, the shuttlecraft he had been given as part of his assignment to lead the salvage operation, sat parked several dozen meters from the site. “We ran a quick scan when we were on final approach, and didn’t pick up any further contamination.” His initial survey of the crash site had revealed varying levels of particle radiation emanating from containment systems breached in the crash. Though the indications were that the leaks were minor, Kyle had ordered the use of environmental suits for the first team to inspect the site. His past experience on similar operations, including an exploratory mission, just before his assignment to the Enterprise, at the crash site of a Klingon cargo vessel on Archanis IV, was enough for him to throw no caution to the wind. Once the sources of the Huang Zhong’s breaches were located, decontamination and neutralization of the hazardous materials was a straightforward process. This was a blessing, he knew, as it meant that, at least so far as the preliminary inspection was concerned, the Huang Zhong’s crash did not appear to have inflicted any serious environmental damage to the area. A more thorough scan would confirm that, of course, once the majority of the salvage effort itself was completed, ensuring that the incident, as tragic as it was, had brought no lasting harm to Gralafi or the people who called the planetoid home.
To achieve that objective, every piece of debris from the wrecked ship would have to be reclaimed or destroyed. While many of the vessel’s critical or sensitive systems—computer core, sensors, weapons, and other key components—would be extracted and returned to the Enterprise, the bulk of the ship itself would likely be eradicated in place. In addition to securing equipment and preparing the remaining wreckage for demolition, Kyle had also been given another assignment by Captain Kirk to retrieve as much of the crew’s personal effects as was possible in the allotted time. It was one more thing on a list of tasks that was already too long, but Kyle understood the reason for the captain’s request. The recovery of such items would serve as a gesture to the families of those lost in the crash. He would do his best to carry out the commission with the same conviction he would bring to any other assigned task. It helped that the compact size of the Huang Zhong, designed as it was for short-duration missions, meant that the crew would not have had much space for personal belongings. Kyle hoped that most items of that nature would be confined to the habitation spaces, and it was his intention to retrieve anything that looked like a storage locker or duffel bag, or which otherwise did not appear to be Starfleet issue. With luck, he would be able to accomplish that along with everything else on his to-do list before they were forced to leave the planetoid.
Here’s hoping.
“Your people aren’t wasting any time, are they?” Rideout asked.
Kyle shook his head. “Not much time to waste.” Less than eighty hours remained until the rift in the energy field surrounding Gralafi closed, not to open again for more than two years. Well aware of their rigid timetable, Kyle watched with approval as members of his team worked with the proper urgency. Near the rear of the wrecked ship, two engineers were using a pair of antigravs to maneuver an unwieldy piece of hull plating to a flatbed work vehicle supplied by the Dolysians. Closer to the vessel’s midsection, another Enterprise crew member was employing a cutting torch to remove the remnants of an external sensor array.
“I guess I’ve done enough sightseeing for one day,” Rideout said, a note of bitter somberness lacing her words as she reached up to rub her left shoulder.
“How’s that feeling?” Kyle asked, pointing to her arm.
Rideout nodded. “Better. It’s still a bit tender, but otherwise, I’m fine.” Until just a few hours ago, most of the ligaments in it had been torn, but they had proven to be no match for Doctor McCoy’s medical prowess. Giving her shoulder one final squeeze, she said, “Time to get back to work. I’m going inside. You coming?”
“Certainly,” Kyle replied as Rideout set off across the plateau on her way toward what remained of the Huang Zhong’s primary hull. He jogged to catch up with her, using his right hand to hold his satchel against his hip. Though the chief engineer seemed to have refocused her attention on the matter at hand, he could not help studying the wreck as they moved closer. It was disquieting to see the vessel in such condition, knowing that it would never again take flight. The best he and his team—and Rideout, of course—could hope to accomplish was to collect the ship’s most important and sensitive equipment. While some of those components, most notably the computer core, would be transported to a Starfleet research facility for study, some of the other pieces, if reparable, would be refurbished and installed in other vessels. Kyle could not shake the feeling that this unpleasant assignment was not at all unlike harvesting organs from a deceased person in the hope that transplanting them to someone else might benefit other lives. It was a laudable goal, made no less maudlin by the process required to accomplish it.
It’s just a ship, he reminded himself, following the thought with a mental rebuke at what Montgomery Scott might say if he ever heard such a sentiment spoken aloud. Walking a few steps behind her, Kyle followed Rideout around to where a collapsible ladder had been installed to allow access to the ship via the docking hatch on the primary hull’s port side. A small generator sat next to the ladder, lengths of cabling running from it toward other areas of the ship, including one string that extended upward alongside the ladder and through the open hatch. Rideout ascended the ladder with what Kyle figured was practiced ease, given the lack of turbolifts aboard the scout ship and the use of ladders and Jefferies tubes to navigate the vessel’s interior.
“It’s going to be tricky walking around in here,” Rideout cautioned as she reached the top of the ladder and extended her arm to grip the side of the access hatch’s threshold. “So, watch your step.” She hoisted herself up and over the threshold, leveraging her way through the entryway, and Kyle heard her hiss in momentary pain as she pulled herself up with her recently repaired left arm. He followed, pushing himself through the hatch. He brushed dirt from his uniform trousers, letting his eyes adjust to the reduced illumination inside the ship. A string of emergency lights, powered by the generator at the foot of the ladder, helped to chase away the darkness, but they could do nothing to alter Kyle’s sensation that he had entered a dead ship.
The listing of the ship to starboard caused the deck to slope downward ahead of him, and Kyle recalled the Archer-class scout interior schematics he had studied as part of preparing for this mission. The ju
nction for the passageway at the center of this, the ship’s main deck, was directly in front of them. Sickbay was to the right, and crew quarters would be to the left. The forward sections, including the bridge, were in that direction, as well. Engineering occupied the rear areas of this deck as well as the smaller deck above them, with cargo spaces one deck down.
Seeing the look of apprehension on Rideout’s face, Kyle asked, “Are you okay?”
The engineer nodded, reaching up to wipe her eyes. “Yeah. Sorry. I was just . . . thinking for a second, that’s all.”
“I understand,” Kyle said, sympathetic to the emotions she must be feeling, returning to where her friends and shipmates had perished. “I can do this, if you want to go outside and take a break.”
Her expression softening, Rideout drew a deep breath, then forced a small, humorless smile. “I’ll be okay, I promise. It’s just . . . harder than I thought it would be.” Clearing her throat, she asked in a stronger voice, “Where to first?”
Kyle replied, “The bridge. Since the consoles in the computer section are wrecked, that’s the best place to access the main memory banks. We’ve managed to rig up auxiliary power, and initial reports from my team tell me we still have access to some systems. Maybe we can get some information out of the computer or the sensor logs that can help Mister Spock.” Another of his tasks was to obtain and transmit to the Enterprise’s science officer any data that might prove useful in determining the cause of the crash, or offer any insight into whatever technology had been utilized to bring down the Huang Zhong.
“Sounds like a plan,” Rideout said. “Follow me.”
Negotiating the slanted deck was easier once they made the turn and began moving forward, walking with their left feet on the deck itself while they placed their right feet on the bulkhead where it met the floor. Debris littered the passageway, requiring them to step over sections of floor plating, access panels, and other detritus that had come loose during the crash. Kyle passed a dark stain along the bulkhead near his foot, the low lighting making it seem almost black against the wall’s gray paint. Was that blood? He forced himself not to ponder the question.
They arrived at the door leading to the bridge. Like the rest of the ship’s interior hatches, this one had been forced open by the first crew to inspect the wreck, allowing Kyle an unhindered look into the compact control center. The lighting here was better, owing to the hole that had been cut through the hull in order to allow cabling to be passed into the ship from outside.
Instead of following Kyle into the bridge, Rideout turned her attention to the open hatchway on the corridor’s opposite side. “The computer core is in here,” she said. “I’m going to check the power settings and make sure we don’t get a surge or something that might hurt the core. I’ll be right back.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Kyle said. As with the corridor they had just traversed, the bridge’s loose contents—station chairs, data slates, and other small pieces of equipment, along with debris from shattered consoles and even sections of deck plating—had been thrown into a heap at its low end. The captain’s chair as well as the helm console had been torn from their deck mountings and now rested against the perimeter stations along the starboard bulkhead. He noted a sharp odor, which he guessed to be some kind of disinfectant, and recalled what McCoy had told him about the recovery of the dead Huang Zhong crew members. The Dolysians who had taken on that unenviable duty had taken the extra step of cleaning up the worst evidence of the crew’s untimely demise.
Thanks for that, mates.
Only one console, the science station, showed any signs of life, thanks to another emergency generator positioned outside the ship and supplying power not only to the bridge but also to the compromised computer system. With luck, Kyle would be able to access the memory banks from here, rather than being forced to wait until the computer core was extracted and connected to a diagnostic setup he had brought with him aboard the Ballard.
Don’t jinx it, he mused as he navigated the slanted deck across the bridge to the console. The chair that normally would have been positioned here would be useless given the deck’s angle, so Kyle braced his legs against the station’s mounting as he eyed its instrument panel. Reaching into his satchel, he retrieved his tricorder and activated it, directing its sensor at the console. With the exception of a few burned-out connections, the data relays between the workstation and the main computer system were still intact and active, boosting Kyle’s hopes that he would be able to access and retrieve the information he sought.
He swapped his tricorder for a trident scanner from his satchel, using it to track down the connections that required repair. That accomplished, he adjusted the flow of power being supplied by the emergency generator to the console, once again monitoring the status of the connection with his tricorder. Within just a few moments, he nodded in satisfaction.
“Now we’re in business,” he said to no one as he returned the tricorder to his satchel and set to work keying instructions to the console’s rows of colored controls. As he worked, he heard footsteps behind him, entering the bridge from the main passageway.
“How goes it?” Rideout asked.
Kyle did not look up from the console as he replied, “So far, everything’s checking out.” He frowned as one of his diagnostic instructions returned a less than ideal status message. “Some sectors of the main memory banks are corrupted, but we had to expect some of that, right?” He had no idea if the damaged areas of the computer core could be repaired, or whether the data stored in those sections was beyond any hope of recovery. Making that determination would require more time than he was willing to spend on the endeavor at this point. “Did you find anything?”
Shaking her head, Rideout said, “The workstations in there are wrecked, but the core itself looks okay. I guess the protective force fields held during the crash, before we lost main power.”
Small favors, Kyle mused as he continued to work. Entering the commands that would grant him access to the library computer and the sensor logs, he was pleased to see that the most recent information recorded in the memory banks appeared to be accessible.
“According to this,” he said, “the last time stamp recorded is about twelve minutes after the log buoy was launched. I think we’re in luck, here.” Once more he reached into his satchel, this time extracting a standard data storage card, which he inserted into the console’s reader slot. “I’m going to make a copy of the data before I try transmitting it to Spock, just in case this thing decides to give up the ghost while we’re working.”
As the computer processed his request, he set up another information stream, which allowed him to review data extracts from the sensor logs. He scrolled past the columns of numbers and figures representing velocity, trajectory, power readings, warning and alert messages from various subsystems at the time the Huang Zhong was making its harried descent to Gralafi’s surface. Such information would be of interest to the engineers who soon would be tasked with determining the ultimate effects of the mysterious weapon that had crippled the scout ship beyond all hope of avoiding disaster. More important to him, however, was the information preceding and following the ship’s encounter with the enigmatic tractor beam. Being able to read that data was key to determining the beam’s source, which in turn might be the first step toward determining the as yet unknown masters of that technology.
Then, Kyle’s stomach lurched as the deck beneath his feet and everything around him heaved upward.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, lunging forward and grabbing onto the science station as the ship tilted to his left. The entire tortured structure of the ship seemed to groan in protest as it shifted, settling to port and reclaiming at least some of the list. In the corner of his eye he saw Rideout struggling to keep her balance and instead stumbling to her left and falling against the wall station on that side of the bridge. Kyle wondered if the bridge bulkheads or ceiling might just collapse inward from the additional stresses being plac
ed upon them. He was trying to dig his nails into the workstation when the movement ceased, and the surrounding hull seemed to sigh in relief as it once more came to rest.
Leaning against the workstation that had prevented her from tumbling to the deck, Rideout looked across the bridge to Kyle. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, pushing himself off the science console, which he noticed, was still active. He felt a twinge in his back, perhaps from overextending himself while grabbing onto the console for support. Grimacing at the mild discomfort, he reached for his communicator, bringing up the device and flipping open its antenna grille. “Kyle to Hadley.”
A moment later, the voice of Lieutenant William Hadley replied through the communicator’s speaker, “Hadley here. John, are you okay in there?”
“We’re fine, mate,” Kyle answered. “Just a little shaken, is all. What happened?”
Hadley said, “The soil beneath the surface all around the crash site looks to be fairly soft, and I figure the weight of the ship must’ve finally gotten that boulder beneath it to shift a bit. The good news is that you’re mostly level now.”
“Is there bad news?” Rideout asked.
“Not yet, but the day’s young. You two need anything in there?”
Kyle shook his head. “Not right now, Bill, but we’ll let you know. Kyle out.” He sighed as he closed the communicator, holding it in his left hand as he used his right to tap a string of controls on the science station. After a moment, he said, “I think we’re still okay, at least for now.” His communicator beeped again, and he opened it with a flick of his wrist. “Kyle here.”
“This is Mister Spock,” replied the voice of the Enterprise’s first officer. “Do you have a status update, Lieutenant?” There was some mild static, owing to the effects of the energy field surrounding the planetoid, but signal boosting equipment carried aboard each of the shuttlecraft assigned to travel through the rift was working to mitigate the worst of the interference.