by Rick Barba
Chekov looked at the phone with disbelief. He took a deep breath, then said: “Is there a master power switch for the entire room?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Well, neither do I.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” said the phone voice. “We’ll have to send a tech.”
“How quickly can one get here?” asked Chekov.
“Probably tomorrow, or Friday.”
“But I’m locked in my room!”
“Mmmm,” said the voice. After a long pause it said: “I’ll red-tag the request.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Thanks for your call.”
“Wait! How do I get out?”
“The tech will know what to do,” said the voice.
Chekov cursed in Russian. Then the line went dead. He stared at his phone.
Now the Robo-Maid reversed its suction engine, spewing a gray cloud of days-old dust across the room.
“Ay … stupid maid!” yelled Chekov.
Coughing, he rushed around the room, trying to manually disconnect devices from power sources. Most were wireless and had no discernible on/off switch. Clearly, somebody had tampered with his settings. But how? His workdesk link was Starfleet-issued and the Academy’s internal network was highly secure. Plus, Chekov, a wizard-level hacker in his spare time, had created his own supplemental firewall.
Yet this cyber-infection had slipped through all that in just seconds.
Chekov pushed his chair underneath the screaming smoke-detection module and angrily ripped it from the ceiling. It kept wailing in his hand. He hurled it hard into the wall. The ear-splitting shriek finally died.
He could hear his communicator buzzing now.
Chekov checked the incoming caller: Alex Leigh, his neighbor and a fellow navigator trainee.
“You okay in there, Pavel?” she said when he answered.
“Aye,” called Chekov.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” said Chekov. “The worst is over, I think.”
As he said this, the automated fire suppression system activated. Water gushed from the sprinkler heads. Dripping wet in seconds, Chekov smiled and stared up into the downpour.
“This is almost comical,” he said.
“We’re outside your door, kid,” said Cadet Leigh. “Open up.”
“The door lock is stuck!” said Chekov. “The whole room is haywire. Nothing works.”
“Come on, there must be a manual override on the door,” said Alex. “Did you try—?”
“Residential Services, yes,” said Chekov. “They’re idiots.”
“I’ll call the fire department,” said Alex. “Hang tight!”
“Will do!” said Chekov.
Unfortunately, his room was very small: It literally was a closet, a former storage space refitted as a single room because of the Academy housing crunch. Within seconds, water was inches deep on the floor. Chekov sloshed back to the workdesk, and he tried again to access the room controls, but no luck. The screen was frozen.
“I hate you,” said Chekov.
Then a voice crackled through the speakers.
As Chekov stared, the display flickered alive and a figure appeared on-screen. The image was murky, but it was clearly a male in a cadet uniform. The figure leaned toward the camera.
He said: “Cold water is a bad way to die.”
Audio effects distorted the voice. Chekov felt a small wave of panic.
He looked down. The water level was rising steadily.
“I’m a quarry rat,” said the figure. He seemed to be slurring his words, but the audio distortion made it difficult to tell. “Quarry water goes down deep, forever, and it gets colder and colder. It’s dark. Black. It’s like death. I felt it. My brother felt it.”
And with that, the display went black. Then Chekov’s room lights began to dim.
“Oh no,” said Chekov. He felt his chest and throat constrict as panic set in.
With a new sense of urgency, he dragged his desk chair underneath one of the sprinkler heads and then climbed up to examine it. As the lights grew dimmer and dimmer, Chekov tried to twist the head.
“Turn off!” he cried. “Off!”
The sprinkler head broke off in his hand. Now water shot from the pipe in a high-pressure stream. Chekov could still see in the darkness but only barely. Below him the water level in his tiny wedge of a room was rising more rapidly now, amounting to two feet deep.
He whipped open his communicator again and then called Alex Leigh.
“Where are the firemen?” he sputtered with a gasp when she answered.
“They’ll be here,” said Alex. “A cadet stuck in a room isn’t exactly high priority, I guess.”
Chekov almost lost it. “My room is filling up with water!” he cried.
There was a pause. Then: “You’re kidding, right?”
“No!” said Chekov. “Can’t you see it leaking?”
“I see nothing,” said Alex. “Come on, Pavel. Don’t mess with us.”
The door must be watertight, thought Chekov. Don’t panic, don’t panic.
He tried to speak calmly. “The fire sprinklers are on,” he said. “They’re gushing, Alex. With tremendous force. The line pressure must be very high. The door is locked. The room has no window.”
After another pause, Cadet Leigh said: “Oh my god.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Chekov.
“Call Residential Services again,” said Alex. “We’ll get back to the fire department.” She barked an order to somebody else, then added, “Don’t worry, Pavel. We’ll get you out.” Then she added, “This is ridiculous.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You can’t drown in your own room,” she said with incredulity.
“No, you wouldn’t think so.”
“We’ll get you out,” she repeated.
“Thank you,” said Chekov.
He hung up, then dialed Residential Services. He looked down at the rising water. As he did so, the lights suddenly extinguished completely.
The room was now pitch-black.
Chekov felt icy cold water lapping at his feet. He put the communicator on speaker mode and then held it out. It gave enough light to see the water level rising over the seat of the chair where he stood.
“Residential Services,” answered the voice. “Can I help you?”
“I certainly hope so,” said Chekov. “First, let me just say that no matter what happens, I want my full room deposit back!”
CH.7.13
Room Service
The sound of wailing sirens sliced into Kirk’s skull.
Above, two fire department hovertrucks flashed their emergency LED strobes, descending from the sky. Kirk had to cover his ears as he approached Yi Sun-Sin Hall, his dorm. A laser-bright landing circle beamed onto the ground in front of Nimitz Hall, the dorm directly across the quad plaza.
Kirk looked around for signs of smoke.
Behind him, a voice called out: “Hey, Kirk.”
Kirk turned. “Beeker,” he said. “What’s going on over there?”
A towering Betelgeusian cadet emerged like a great unfolding stork from the Yi Sun-Sin entrance, gazing upward. His name was Bekkkr’esh Huuun’ivit, but most people just called him Beeker.
The bipedal avian Humanoid shrugged. “No idea,” he said.
“Looks like something’s going on over in Nimitz.”
“Alcohol poisoning, maybe,” replied Beeker. As he spoke, his separate eating mouth snapped sharply.
Kirk winced. “Dude, that’s really loud, that thing you do with your tongues.”
“Yeah, I know,” said the Betelgeusian. “It’s involuntary.”
“Please clear the landing zone!” blared an amplified voice in the sky.
“Good … god,” said Kirk, covering his ears.
The slow, aching walk home from the Medical College had been blissfully quiet. Kirk’s head was still tender. His skin, too, had
not returned to normal and it felt sensitized to the breeze and even to sounds, if that was possible. The whine of the descending fire trucks seemed to hurt everywhere.
“You don’t look good, Kirk,” said Beeker with a whistle, eyeing him sideways.
“I’m not good,” said Kirk. He squinted in pain at the noise.
Beeker said, “Go rest awhile.”
“Yeah, I’m going.”
As Kirk shuffled down the hall to his room, other cadets rushed past him to check out the commotion across the quad. He waved his keycard over the door’s scanner lock. When the door whooshed open, he staggered to his bed, falling on it with a relieved groan.
Thirty seconds later, there was a knock.
Kirk rolled over, determined to ignore whoever was at his door. The knock was louder the second time.
“Go away!” called Kirk.
The knocking continued.
Kirk sat up, holding his head. Then he went to the door. On the way he grabbed a hard carbon-fiber wrist brace left over from a touch football injury. Whoever was disturbing him was going to be sorry. He activated the door and raised the brace, planning to whack the unfortunate and persistent fool upside the head.
The door opened to reveal T’Laya. She was holding a bag in one hand and raising her arms up in mock surrender.
“If you hit me with that, I’ll cry,” she said.
Kirk lowered the brace. A slow smile spread across his face.
“Somehow, I doubt that,” he said.
T’Laya held up the sack.
“Do you like Chinese?” she asked.
Kirk could smell the food. He hadn’t eaten much in the past twenty-four hours. Suddenly, he was starving.
“I love Chinese,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Because when I’m done eating, there might be leftovers.”
Then she handed the bag of food to Kirk and strolled past him, into his room. Kirk grinned. He reached for the wallet in his pocket.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked.
T’Laya sat on his bed and said, “You’re deep in debt, pal.” And then she patted the spot next to her on the bed.
Earlier that summer, when Chekov bought goggles and a snorkel in a Monterey Bay diving shop, he did it with plans to explore tidal lagoons around Santa Cruz. The last place he expected to use them was in his dorm room.
“I’m going down, Alex,” he said, looking at his neighbor on his communicator’s vid display. He pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” she replied. “I hear the sirens outside.”
“Not sure the fire department can do much,” said Chekov. “I’ve been told Nimitz interior walls are built to withstand the initial shock wave and static overpressure up to six pounds–force per square inch in a standard airburst nuclear detonation.”
Alex didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “You are such a geek, Pavel.”
Chekov nodded. “This I admit,” he said.
“I got the hall maintenance director on another line,” said Alex. “He’s got his people closing the water main to the entire quad. Those sprinkler lines will shut down any second.”
Chekov nodded again. “Affirmative,” he said. “Thanks, Alex.”
Alex smiled and then said firmly, “See you in a minute, kid.”
The room was still pitch-black, and the water was almost chest-high now. Fortunately, Federation-issue communicators were waterproof—or supposed to be, anyway. Chekov would soon find out. After switching his phone display to its highest brightness setting, he hung it around his neck with a strap, facing out.
Next he pulled a vintage Red Army knife from a uniform pocket. He extracted its blade.
Finally he slid the snorkel into his mouth, waded to the door, and sat down.
The water was frigid, and the phone light wasn’t very good. But now he knew exactly what to look for. Earlier, after twenty minutes of dead-end conversations with various so-called “tech” personnel at Residence Services, someone finally transferred him to the mobile link of an actual field repairman. In seconds the guy gave Chekov the precise location of the door’s manual override mechanism. Naturally, it was at the very bottom of the door frame.
Breathing steadily through the snorkel, Chekov found the compartment, mostly by feel. It took just seconds to pry off its panel with his knife. But as he tried to dig under the latch that connected the door to the pneumatic air mechanism, the water level rose over the top of his snorkel.
He quickly stood, blowing hard to clear the tube. Then he ripped off the snorkel, held his breath, and was about to dive back down when his communicator beeped.
It was Alex. She wasn’t smiling.
“News,” she said. “Whatever malicious bug ate your local network also took out the building’s network. They have to do a manual shutdown of the water system.”
Chekov asked the obvious question left hanging in the air: “How long?”
“Nobody knows,” said Alex. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“Ay!” cried Chekov.
“Kid, I—”
Chekov cut her off. “Gotta go,” he said.
He inhaled and then sat. Just as the field tech had said, the latch was held in place by a single tungsten spring. He slid the blade under it and then pulled the knife handle, using it as a lever to lift the latch. It automatically released the door mechanism.
Gasping, Chekov popped out of the water.
“Yes!” he cried with an air punch.
He grabbed the door’s recessed inner handle, trying to slide it open. He could feel slight movement, but there was too much friction in the door track. The water pressure was too great on the door.
He flipped open his communicator.
“Alex!” he called.
“Yes, Pavel,” she said. “I’m here.”
“Time to push!”
“Push what?”
“I’ve got the door on manual,” he said. “But the water pressure won’t let it slide.”
“Ah, gotcha!” she said. “We’ll push from this side for counterpressure while you yank it sideways.”
“Exactly!” cried Chekov. “This is why I like you so much, Alexandra Leigh!”
She grinned, then turned from the screen. “Let’s go, guys!” she yelled. “We’re pushing against a thousand pounds of water, so dig in.” Her command was so natural that, at that moment, Chekov was sure she’d be a starship captain some day.
He yanked at the recessed handle again.
At first the door still wouldn’t budge. The almost neck-high water was lifting him. Afloat, he was losing floor traction. So he braced his back against the doorjamb and started to push instead. He felt movement.
“Great … mother of Russia!” he howled through gritted teeth.
Slowly, the door slid open, just a crack. When it did, female fingers poked through the gap above the water line. Then he heard Alex.
“Pull on three!” she called.
And on three, the door shot open.
Hooting in triumph, Chekov rode the escaping wall of water down the corridor. It knocked down Alex and a couple other cadets too. They slid to a stop in front of the elevator doors.
The doors opened. A trio of SFFD firemen stepped out into inches-deep water flowing down the hall. Alex grinned up at them.
“Hi, guys,” she said. “Wow, just in time.”
One of the firemen helped her up. “Glad we could help,” he said with an ironic smile. He watched water pour into the open elevator.
Chekov looked up, then asked, “Can you turn off my room?”
Suddenly Alex’s roommate, Salla zh’Tran, burst from their room, then ran into Chekov’s. The sprinklers were still spouting water. Salla, an Andorian zhen—the closest to a human female of the four Andorian genders—immediately went to Chekov’s workdesk. She wiped off water with a sweep of her blue hand.
“Give me a spoon, Pavel,” she ordered.
Chekov an
d Alex stepped inside. “What?”
“A spoon! Or any utensil, please.” Salla tossed her head. A spray of water flew in a ring from her snow-white hair.
Chekov handed her his Red Army knife. Salla quickly pried up the desk’s wrist bar. Then she pushed a small red button underneath.
The sprinkler system shut down. The screen went black. All was quiet.
Chekov was dumbfounded.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Salla unleashed her blue smile on him. “Local network kill switch,” she said.
“We have kill switches?” said Chekov. “They never told me that.”
“No, Pavel, they did not,” said Salla. “I had to find it myself, in my own desk. Just now.”
Chekov stared at her. All at once he found her eerily, painfully beautiful. She was soaking wet. Her Academy uniform clung like a second skin. Even her cranial antennae looked sexy. And she was brilliant.
It was almost too much.
Alex Leigh squeezed water from her dark ponytail, then threw her arm around Salla’s neck. “You rock, roomie.” She smiled at Chekov.
“Got any towels, kid?” she asked.
Meanwhile, Kirk kept spilling things.
He dropped black bean sauce on his lap. A garlic shrimp flipped out of his chopsticks, then bounced across the workdesk. When he reached for a napkin, he knocked over the fried rice.
“You should put food in your mouth,” suggested T’Laya in a teasing voice. “Really, it tastes better that way.”
Kirk looked up at the ceiling.
“Apparently, this infection has destroyed my fine motor skills,” he said.
T’Laya closed up a food carton. “What do you need those for?”
Kirk gave her a look. He was still trying to figure out when she was kidding and when she was serious. She had a hell of a sense of humor.
“Racquetball,” he said.
T’Laya brightened. “You play racquetball?”
“No,” said Kirk.
The two cadets had been eating and swapping stories. Back at Medical, he’d learned from McCoy how T’Laya and Uhura had broken up their fight with the upperclassmen. Now she frankly admitted to being fascinated by Kirk’s growing legend in their class.
Kirk was disbelieving. “Come on,” he said.