by Diane Carey
“Auxiliary? But if somebody opens the door—oh, I get it.”
The turbo-lift wheezed to a stop and the doors parted. George snapped his communicator shut and bolted down the corridor, not even sure where Auxiliary Environmental Control was—but it was here somewhere, and so was Graff.
[303] He turned several corners, barely slowing down to avoid hitting bulkheads. Suddenly he came around a corner and found himself half a corridor down from his quarry.
“Graff!” George skidded to a stop, holding his laser downward in a nonthreatening manner.
Graff had a laser in one hand and in the other he held a length of service cord tightened around April’s throat. With the laser hand he was trying to release the lock to a door that said AUXILIARY CONTROL CENTER: ENVIRONMENTAL SUPPORT. He stopped and yanked on the service cord, forcing April further off balance.
“I’ll choke him,” he warned.
“Don’t,” George said, also warning. “If he dies, you die worse.”
“I don’t doubt that, sir. That’s why he’s coming in with me. Put down your laser.”
“No,” George said.
“I’ll kill him, sir.”
Taking a few calculated steps toward them, George flipped his unblinking eyes from Graff to April. “Robert, you all right?”
In spite of the cord squeezing against his gullet, April actually managed a thin smile. “Not very.”
“Hold on. Graff, what are you doing here? You said you were going to the hangar bay,” George said, sneaking an extra step forward.
Graff didn’t answer, but continued to punch in the lock release code, struggling to point the laser with the hand that was doing the button pushing and also keeping an eye on George.
Knowing a little something about the psychology of a standoff, George kept staring with bottled ferocity at Graff, rarely blinking, matching the determination he saw in Graff’s eyes. All he had to do was stall until that door opened.
“What do you want?” he asked. “Is it the ship?”
“What do you think?” Graff returned, rather casually for a man in this position.
“You were working with Saffire.”
Again Graff didn’t answer, didn’t look directly at George anymore, as he tried to override the door’s individual lock code. Any moment now ... any moment.
Graff made one last poke, and the door slid open—suddenly it was as though a gigantic balloon popped. A loud bfooom assaulted the corridor. Graff and April were blasted across to the opposite wall, then [304] pummeled with everything in that room that hadn’t been nailed down—papers, spacesuits, tapes, a whirlwind of crates spilling insulation, chunks of conduit, unfinished panel faces, chairs—a blinding vortex of material that filled the corridor as the pressure differential fought to equalize.
George was thrown backward too and struck a field equipment locker, but he had been prepared and shook out of it quickly. As though fighting his way through a snowstorm, George battled through it for the few seconds it lasted, until he found April and dragged him back around the corner to wait out the equalization. He found himself aching from the hammerblow of pressure from the control room.
Eternal seconds passed, the swoosh abated, and all those flying things began dropping to the floor. Finally only loose papers remained to slowly flutter to the corridor deck.
George unfolded himself. April was crumpled in a ball under him and also started to test his limbs, very gingerly.
“Are you hurt?” George asked as he helped April unroll.
“We’re not having a very good day, are we, George?” the captain observed as he used the wall for support on one side and George on the other. “I think I’m bruised.”
“Will you be all right if I go after that son of a bitch?”
“Yes, yes, fine. George, be careful. He’s a big man.”
“Not so big that I won’t rip off his left leg and beat him to death with it.”
April looked sharply at him, suddenly chilled by the rage in George’s face.
George hesitated another moment to be sure April could stand on his own, then looked around the corner, laser up and ready to fire.
But there was nothing but settling papers and assorted clutter.
“He’s gone!”
April appeared at his side, one palm pressed supportively against the bulkhead, the other against a bruised rib. “We’ve got to find him, George. There’s no telling the damage an engineer on the rampage could do. Are they tracking him?”
Snapping up his communicator, George worked to control his voice. “Sanawey, are you still tracking?”
“Aye, sir, but there’s only one of them.”
“It’s Graff. I’ve got the captain. Drake, are you on this band?”
As if summoned, Drake rounded the opposite corner and slid to a stop just short of the sea of clutter. “Creeping Jesus! Look at the mess [305] you made!” He recovered and picked through it with three careful bounds. “Oh Captain, are you all right, sir?”
April started to answer, but before the words were out, George had Drake by the collar and was yanking him back down the corridor. “Come on! Sanawey, give me his location.”
“He’s moving aft again, sir. I think he might really be heading for the hangar deck this time.”
“Which level?”
“Eighteen.”
“I’m on it. Come on, Drake, footwork.” He grabbed Drake’s collar again.
Drake stumbled after him, and gagged, “I want a raise—”
Only now, in the saddle of a bucking crisis, did George even begin to really comprehend the size of the starship. Length after length of corridor unfolded itself beneath him. The proportions humbled him as he and Drake ran the length of the secondary hull and climbed down access stairwells toward Level 18. Amazing that mankind could conceive and build so huge a vessel—build it, launch it, run it—the tonnage alone was mindboggling.
And they were almost alone inside this bright fibercoil cavern. Only a few dozen people here—not enough to populate such dimensions. They saw no one else as they ran through the ship. No one at all.
Except that Graff was there and they knew it. And with every meter of deck that fell away beneath his feet, George redoubled the promise he’d made to himself when he’d realized why Graff had hailed him on the bridge. A wordless promise born of pure insult, it drove him through the humility brought on by the size of the starship, and fed his anger with every tread of his soles on the deck.
“Sir?”
George snapped the communicator up. “Kirk here.”
“You’ve got him panicking.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s making wrong turns and having to correct himself. He’s stopping here and there, and from the schematics on my screen, I think he’s having to unlock every section as he goes into it. He’s down in the unmanned area, the sections that haven’t even been support-stressed yet, so they’re all individually locked. Go down corridor S-197-A and turn left at the Cargo Bay 3.”
“Got it. Can you cut him off from up there? Seal the locks?”
“I’m trying, sir, but only about half of the section locks are tied in to the [306] bridge controls so far. And he’s better at bypassing the locks manually than I am at jamming them.”
“Keep trying. Kirk out. Drake, split up. I’ll go starboard, you go port.”
“Righto.”
Drake took the first corridor portside and George broke into a run again, bearing into the starboard veins of the starship. The corridors seemed endless, the mountain of anger he climbed insurmountable. And with every turn into a new length of corridor, every dash through every door to some unfinished room or bay or deck, the mountain gained a new summit. Somehow George felt that Graff had a sense of that anger, was afraid of it.
His communicator bleeped. In an instant it was at his lips.
“What?” he barked.
“You’re closing in—I don’t understand these readings. He just bypassed the masterlock
control for the cargo bays on that deck, and then he was running toward Cargo Bay 9 and he went in, and I lost him. It must be a glitch. It’s at the end of your corridor, then left.”
He leaned into a run again, suddenly glad he was in combat shape and could keep this up the length of the starship. Though his legs felt thready and he was breathing hard, he increased his pace. Bay 7 ... Bay 8 ... Bay 9—there it was, at the end of the corridor. And he heard footsteps down the other end of the corridor—Graff?
A flicker of disappointment struck when he spied Drake’s familiar dusky face round the corner, but George was already concentrating once again on the big blue doors of Bay 9. Sanawey had said Graff killed the masterlock. The doors would open. And he was almost to them.
In counterbeat to his own footsteps, Drake’s came hammering down the deck. George didn’t pay attention until Drake suddenly shouted, “No, George!”
But it was too late to stop—the blue doors sensed his presence and began to part. A blast of frigid air struck him just as he reached the threshold, but Drake slammed into him with a linebacker’s tackle, breaking his stride and catapulting him sideways down the corridor. His right side struck the deck, and Drake landed on top of him. They skidded down the corridor, followed and soon blanketed by the coldest air this side of open space and the sound of the bay doors automatically sliding shut again.
George felt his body shrink from cold, as though he’d opened a [307] window and stuck his head out into an Iowa January. No—colder even than that. Lots colder. The heater systems along the ceiling came on, whirring frantically. Frost formed on the walls. Breathing became instantly difficult. George found his legs stiff when he tried to move, and his shoulders tucked in as he rolled from under Drake and tried to stand up.
“D-damn!” He shivered, his breath coming out in a steamy puff. “What happened?”
Drake stood up beside him, arms coiled around himself, and said, “I was talking to the engineers before, you know, and some of these areas are still frozen. That’s why they were locked off, see. You wouldn’t have lasted half a second. It’s about minus-two-hundred-something in there. Let me see if I can’t turn on the heaters inside.” He stepped to the wall electrical access and fiddled with some toggles.
“Then what happened to Graff?” George asked, testing his feet.
They approached the cargo-bay doors slowly, testing the air as they went, and peeked into the wide windows. The compensatory heating system whined furiously, spewing warm air into the corridor and the bay area. Even so, they didn’t dare step into the bay yet. If the heating hadn’t been turned on, other safety systems might not be working either. But the door didn’t budge; with the systems on line and trying to compensate, the automatic opening sequence was temporarily overridden. When the temperature was equal inside and out, the doors would part. Until then, there were only windows to offer them any kind of explanation.
The bay sprawled out before them, a garage-sized room with collapsible dividers between it and the adjacent bays. It was empty. Its white floor and blue walls were unmarked.
“Where is he?” George asked, drawing his elbows tight against his ribs in the raw air.
Drake was silent beside him.
After a moment, the silence drew George’s attention.
His face reflected in the transparent aluminum window, Drake was staring up at the ceiling, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide with horror.
George looked up.
“Oh ... God.”
Hovering like a parade balloon just under the ceiling was Graff, his arms and legs frozen in a run, his hair marbled by rime, eyelashes and [308] brows hoar-coated, his face a white glaze, his eyes ghastly, that last second’s horror permanently fixed there. He drifted randomly in zero-G, slowly bumping from wall to wall.
George clenched his teeth against the corridor’s arctic cold, battling down a sudden nausea, and sucked in a little breath of empathy.
Beside him, Drake muttered, “Perdition, that’s ugly ... no point taking him to sickbay, is there?”
They watched together for a long helpless moment, sickened and chilled, while Graff floated past the doorway.
The heating system wheezed relief as the temperature equalized, and the bay doors slid open, giving them a full view of Graff.
With a steadying sigh, Drake offered, “I’ll get the gravity.”
He stepped back toward the electrical housing on the corridor wall that held the manual controls for the localized artificial gravity and the bay’s life support.
For a moment George couldn’t draw his eyes from the disgusting sight of Graff floating up there. Only the sound of the universal gravity code sequence clicking at his side roused him. The words sank in and he grabbed for Drake’s sleeve, gasping, “No, don’t—”
Too late. There was a click in the wall, and the cargo bay’s gravitational systems buzzed to life.
George dodged toward Drake just as a blocky form dropped past him. With the shrill crash of shattering crystal, the mass hit the floor. Splinters of frozen flesh struck them like a hail of needles, followed by bigger chunks, and the loud splash gave way to a faint tinkle, as though ornaments were jingling on a Christmas tree.
Feeling his lips peel back in disgust, George forced himself to turn away from Drake and look into the bay. “Ugh ... oh, that’s awful ...” And he had to look away again.
Drake peeked around the doorframe. “Not quite thawed, was he? By Judas, we’d better sweep him up before he gets really messy.”
Bile rising in his throat, George fought against the wave of nausea and brought the communicator up. “Bridge, this is Kirk.”
“April here, George.”
“How are you?”
“I’m on the mend. Where’s Graff?”
“He’s ... never mind.”
“George? You don’t sound well.”
[309] George deliberately walked away from the bay entrance, trying not to look. “Listen, Robert ... I’ve got an idea.”
“Thank God somebody has. What is it?”
“You know, this probably won’t work.”
“We can’t be in any worse a position, George,” April said from one side.
On the other, Drake offered his own analysis. “You’re on a roll, Geordie. Now’s the time to stack the deck and load the cue and all that fluff, man.”
The three of them bent over the communications board, punching in a series of facts and space-location coordinates. A few steps away, t’Cael stood watching, dubious but fascinated by the enthusiasm these people put into a moment of utter desperation.
“We’ve got to get the timing exactly right,” George grumbled, trying to choreograph the plan in his mind. A bluff. Deadlier than reality ... he hoped. Which was more frightening—the cobra’s bite or just its spread hood?
Sanawey interrupted, “Captain, I’m picking up two blips at extreme sensor range. Probably warp drive fluxes.”
T’Cael turned. “Those would be the two motherships that remained to guard the Homeworlds. They’ve lost touch with the mothership you destroyed, and doubtless prior to that they received reports of your presence. They’ll spare nothing to get here.”
George shot him a look. “Good. Perfect.”
Carlos Florida twisted around in his chair. “Good?”
“It’s perfect,” George repeated. “Let’s hope our luck holds.”
April straightened at his side and drawled, “You mean the luck we’ve had so far? Really, George.” He studied the readouts and monitors, checking and rechecking the information they’d fed in so far and wondering if they could stay in sync with the massive computer brain that waited beneath their fingertips. Only one more thing to feed in. He cleared his throat and turned, rather stiffly because his body was still a mass of aches, to t’Cael. “Can you tell us which Starfleet codes your people have broken in the past few years?”
T’Cael’s eyes widened and a faint reseda blush rose in his cheeks, yet along with the touch of embarrassment
came a small grin of pride. He hesitated, then forced himself to say, “We’ve ... broken them all.”
George stood straight. “All?”
[310] The grin widened, “Yes ... while your shipwrights might teach us a few things, our cryptographers could return the favor.”
Kirk’s glare turned ironic. “Great. When this is over, we’ll start a student exchange program.” And even under the moment’s pressure, his lips too slanted into a kind of grin. Though their lives might end here and now, they had shared the experience of a lifetime, of an era. “Okay,” he said, sighing over the blinking lights of the com board, “Sanawey, it’s up to you. Send a message long-range. Make sure they can’t miss overhearing it. Request status of the Federation fleet at the Neutral Zone.”
Sanawey’s wide brow puckered. “We don’t have any fleet at the Neutral Zone ... oh. Oh, that’s good, sir. That’s good.”
“Go ahead.”
Sanawey pressed his lips tight and fed the message into the broadcast source, carefully adjusting his instruments to be sure the incoming Romulan ships would tap his frequency. “That’s it. It’s off.”
“Can you send a message and make it seem like it’s coming in from somewhere else?” George asked him.
Sanawey frowned. “Yeah ... I think it’s possible ... if I bounce it off a planet or something—make it ricochet back to us. It’ll be garbled, though. I’ll have to send a tight beam. It’ll bounce back and scatter. You know, that might even be better. It’ll sound static-y.”
“Good job, Claw.” April clapped the big man’s shoulder. “Complicated, I know. What we need is for you to arrange a message that seems to come back to us from the Neutral Zone, describing the Romulan fleet that’s amassing there. Which ships, which sectors, which escorts, and so on. Pepper it with the details Mr. Cael gave you. Things we couldn’t possibly know if their fleet wasn’t surrounded by undetected Federation ships.”
Drake folded his arms and said, “It would drive me buzzy if I was them.”
“How an entire fleet could remain undetected will confound the commanders,” t’Cael confirmed in his subdued manner.