by L. A. Graf
helmets. Behind them, the Hawking had receded to an equally small patch
of darkness in the sky. He did a crude mental triangulation off Deneb,
Beta Centauri, and Achemar, comparing their positions to the final
glimpse he remembered of them through the shuttle's -viewscreen.
"It looks like the shuttle made it about a tenth of the way back to the
Enterprise before we evacuated," he guessed. "Even with the hull
breach, the Enterprise can probably move at triple our impulse speed.
They should be in transporter range in about--" Sulu glanced back at the
Hawking, willing its magnetic shielding to stay intact that long. "--an
hour."
"I hope we have locator beacons built into these suits." The sudden
intrusion of Haslev's voice startled Sulu. The Artdorian had been
silent for so long, Sulu had almost managed to forget he was there.
"Otherwise, how will your ship find us with their transporter beam?"
"We have beacons," Sulu said shortly. He hit his wrist jets again and
let the slow momentum of his turn carry him around to his original
position. It was too hard to watch the distant shuttle, knowing that at
any moment it could explode into an inferno of surging antimatter.
"Well, how do you turn them on?" HasIcy persisted. "I can't find the
switch for mine."
Sulu didn't reply, staring at a small bluish star midway between the
unmistakable bright fires of Spica and Procyon. It had been invisible
until now, perhaps hidden under the dark red dust of his reference
nebula. Unlike all the stars around it, it seemed to be growing in
intensity.
After another moment of silence, Uhura answered for Sulu. "The locator
beacon is activated automatically, Mr. Haslev, whenever the ventilation
system in the suit comes on." Her voice altered, as if she'd read
something in the helmsman's body stance. "Sulu, is something wrong?"
"Maybe." As Sulu watched, the small star slowly brightened until it
rivaled Spica's glare. "We've got a ship coming in from one
eighty-three mark seven."
"The Enterprise?" Hope and disbelief mingled oddly in Uhura's voice.
Sulu shook his head, then remembered she wouldn't be able to see it.
"Not from that quadrant, and not that fast. Someone else must have
heard our distress call--someone closer than the Enterprise."
He turned his head to meet her troubled gaze through the space that
separated them. "We won't be able to tell who they are until they come
out of warp speed. By then, they'll be close enough to catch our suit
beacons."
"So what?" Hasler sniffed. "Whoever they are, they're coming to rescue
us, aren't they?"
"Maybe." Minutes crawled by, slow as their creeping progress away from
the shuttle. Sulu never took his eyes off the blue fleck of fire, now
brighter than anything else in the sky. It braked out of warp speed in
a last nova-bright burst, then resolved into the battered contours of a
hauling ship, blunt-nosed and moving faster than any cargo ship had a
right to. He groaned. "That's what I was afraid of. It's the
Umyfyrnu."
Chapter Fifteen
"Tm OmON D.STRO that stopped us before?" Uhura bumped into him when he
maneuvered his suit around to watch the military ship. "What do you
think they'll do?"
"I don't know." The Orion destroyer hovered just behind the Hawking, and
Sulu guessed it was probing at the shuttle with invisible sensor beams.
He absently put out a hand to stop Uhura from bouncing away, firing one
wrist jet to keep them on their original course/"If they're scanning
Federation frequencies, they'll know we're' here. I don't know what
they'll do about it."
"Why, pick us up, of course." The surprise in Haslev's voice seemed
genuine. "The Orions want me."
Sulu glanced over Uhura's shoulder, frowning at the Andorgan as he
drifted closer. "I thought you said they wanted you dead."
"Well, yes," Haslev admitted. "But that was before I--er--absconded
with the results of my work. Now, they just want me back working for
them again." He shrugged with his antennae inside the helmet.
"Otherwise, they'll be out all the money they spent."
"And Orions aren't known for being generous," Sulu watched the Umyfymu
shear suddenly away from the shuttle, and winced. "I think they just
discovered the problem in the warp core."
"Do you think they beamed Chekov out?" Uhura asked.
"They might have, if they thought he was Hasler." Even as he said that,
the dull ache in Sulu's gut told him he didn't believe it. The Orion
ship circled the shuttle, its running lights blinking as haphazardly as
any tramp freighter but the smooth curve of its trajectory a dead
giveaway of powerful thrusters under its rusty shell. "I just hope they
don't decide to blow the shuttle up before it explodes."
"But that would make it explode anyway!" Uhura protested.
"Hey, no one ever said Orions were smart." Sulu's fingers tightened
uselessly around his phaser, his palm damp with sweat inside his glove.
He watched the Urnyfymu come closer, breath rasping in his throat.
"Well, at least they're not blowing the shuttle up." Uhura's gloved hand
tightened tensely around Sulu's wrist. "They'll be in beaming distance
in another minute or two, won't they?"
"Yes." The grip on his arm gave Sulu an idea. He tugg ed Uhura around to
his other side, then reached out for Hasler. The Andorian didn't try to
evade him, merely gave him a puzzled look as they drifted closer. "What
are you doing?"
"Making sure we all get beamed over together."
Sulu wrapped a gloved hand around Haslev's upper arm, then lifted the
phaser pistol and carefully aimed it at the alien's head. "And making
sure we have something to bargain with once we get there."
"Hey!" Haslev squirmed inside his grip, but the Andorian's greater
strength gave him no advantage in space without gravity for leverage.
"You can't do that--"
A brilliant blast of light interrupted him, stabbing through the
darkness toward them. For one horrible moment, Sulu thought it was the
shuttle finally exploding. Then he saw his suit's polarizing filters
slam down across his face plate and realized he was seeing the deadly
radiance of a phaser blast. It skated overhead, missing them by only a
few kilometers.
Sulu tightened his grip on Haslev's arm, fingers digging fiercely into
the insulated fabric of the Andorian's suit. "I thought you said the
Orions wanted you alive!" he shouted across the sudden crackle of
subspace static as the Umyfymu's shields shimmered into place.
"They do! They have to!" Haslev's face was hidden behind his own
polarizers, but his voice was numb with shock. "I stole everything from
them when I left--my notes, my computer models, the prototype devicere"
Another Orion phaser blast cracked the interstellar night, all the more
terrifying for its silence. Sulu closed his eyes and tensed himself for
annihilation, then opened them again a moment later, surprised to find
himself still alive.
"That wasn't anywhere near as close
as the first shot," Uhura observed
in a voice that sounded unnaturally calm.
"It wasn't?" Sulu scowled as the Orion ship swerved
away from them in an almost evasive maneuver. "What the hell--"
The answer came to him an instant before he saw the returning flare of
light, exploding out from somewhere behind them. Sulu cursed and pulsed
his wrist jets to swing them in that direction. The familiar silvery
gleam of the ship looming behind them made his throat tighten. Despite
the ugly gash across her disk, there was no mistaking that silhouette.
"It's the Enterprise!" He heard astonishment and relief melt through the
frozen surface of Uhura's voice. "How did she get here so fast?"
"By taking a little damage." Sulu lifted the hand she clung to and
pointed at the blackened craters near the hull breach, where the ship's
incomplete shields had let micrometeorites through. The iridescent
shimmer of the starship's defenses weakened noticeably across that
stretch. 'God, I hope the Orions don't notice that. If they
concenlrate their phasers on
"I don't think Captain Kirk is going to give them time to notice
anything." Uhura ducked her head reflexively as another blinding phaser
blast knifed past them. "I just hope he knows we're out here."
"It doesn't matter if he does." The grim realization sank into Sulu as
he spoke. "He can't beam us on board with the ship's shields up, and he
won't endanger the whole ship just for three people. He'll fight this
battle just as he would if we were still on board--"
"But one of the three people is me!" Haslev wailed. "Your captain
can't leave me out here to die!"
"I don't see why not." His sense of humor came to Sulu's rescue at that
last, releasing the tense knot lodged in his throat. "You have to
admit, it would solve a lot of problems."
The Andorian swung around to glare at him, but
even as he opened his mouth to speak, he paused, glittered briefly-
--and materialized inside an unfamiliar transporter room, with Sulu and
Uhura beside him.
Kirk braced himself again'st the bridge railing, folding double as the
Enterprise lurched and bucked under another rake of Orion phasers.
Stressed hull supports groaned in tandem with the higher wail of
internal ship alarms. "Damage report!" Kirk shouted, not even waiting
for the deck to settle beneath him.
The lieutenant at the engineering console scrambled to his knees beside
his chair. "We've lost partial screens across the lower decks, sir. Mr.
Scott has a crew working to restore them now."
"Orion shields are showing phaser damage, too, Captain," Mullen reported
from the weapons station. "Particularly in the forward hulls. Should we
concentrate our assault there?"
"No!" Kirk pushed upright, still gripping the rail with one hand as he
glared at the viewScreen to track the Umyfymu's looping flight. "That
forward radiation shielding is just for disguise--they're sacrificing it
to draw our fire. Keep hammering at her central hull." He half-turned
to Goldstein at communications. "See if you can raise the Orion
commander. I want to know what the hell he thinks he's doing firing
on a Federation vessel."
"Aye, sir!"
Phaser fire slashed across the viewscreen, and another impact rocked the
bridge. Kirk almost expected the flooring to buckle from the blast.
"They're focusing their shots on the hull breach, sir," the engineering
lieutenant reported grimly. "We're losing shield integrity there."
"Bhutto!" Kirk leapt forward to slap the back of the navigator's chair.
"Swing the ship around! Keep that area out of the Orions' line of fire.
Spook--" The science officer was already bent over his sensors. "Any
sign of that second Orion ship?"
The Vulcan's eyes were the only thing that moved while he studied his
screens. "Sensors detect a very distant warp trace in sector four
fifty-nine, Captain." He glanced aside to Kirk. "Either the Mecujor the
unidentified sensor ghost we noted earlier. In either case, the reading
shows no signs of approaching us."
"Keep an eye on it." Kirk's hands clenched rhythmically at his sides.
"They could be waiting in reserve, hoping to join the battle when we
don't expect them." He couldn't help shooting a keen glance back at the
viewscreen, asking Goldstein, "Any luck with that contact, Ensign?"
"Coming through now, sir. I'll inset it on the main screen." .
A small block of light and color exploded in the lower right-hand corner
of the starfield. Kirk recognized the thick jade features and woven
beard of Umyfymu's commander, his image glaringly backlit by a host of
electrical fires. The Orion's bejeweled teeth looked almost purple in
the harsh lighting. "I presume you called to surrender, f'deraxt'la."
Kirk tightened his grip on the back of his command chair. "I called
to remind you that firing on a Starfleet vessel is an act of war. The
Federation will not tolerate Orion aggression against a defenseless
starship--"
"Defenseless!" The Orion's grunt of laughter made his teeth work flash.
"Not exactly defenseless," he snarled, slamming a smoking panel with one
hand. "Besides, little mammal, this is not an act of war--this is an act
of punishment."
Kirk drew back, disgusted. "Punishment for what?"
"You received stolen military technology from an agent of the Orion
government! In Orion penal codes, such possession is classed as
piracy." The commander twisted his mouth into a grimace and leaned
closer to the screen. "What does your government do to pirate ships,
fleraxt'la?"
Kirk scowled. "Mostly, we chase them back across the Orion border."
"Really?" The Orion sounded genuinely surprised. "Well, we blow them
up." He jerked his attention aside, ears pulling back in what could only
be Orion pleasure when a-growl of excitement swelled from somewhere
off-screen. "I understand your screens are failing across the spot of
damaged hull," he remarked, his smile growing as he turned back to Kirk.
"Are you sure you don't want to surrender?"
Kirk bit off the first thing he thought to say, and made a chopping
gesture behind his back at Goldstein. "Get him off my screen."
The Orion's image shattered and dispersed to blend with the stars again.
Spinning his empty command chair to face him, Kirk vented some of his
frustration by slapping a
hand on the intercom button. "Scotty."
"Engineering, Scott here."
"Isn't there anything we can do to shore up the screens across that
breach?" On the screen, the Urnyfyrnu swept around to begin another
approach.
As if he could see what faced Kirk so clearly, Scott said, "Not with the
Orions pounding away at it,
Captain."
Damn.
"I've tried to keep the breach turned away, sir." Bhutto kept her
attention tight on her panel, plotting
against the Orions' position on the astrogator even as she spoke. "They
move a lot faster than we do right
now. ' '
Kirk nodded, angry at himself for taking his frustrati
ons out on his
crew. "I know." He dropped into the command chair and let momentum turn
it to face the front of the bridge. "Ensign Mullen--how much power can
we shunt to starboard phasers?"
The ensign flicked a glance at his boards, lifting his eyebrows with a
shrug. "As much as you want, sir. We've taken no damage in any of our
phaser banks."
Kirk actually let himself smile. "Good." He thumbed the intercom switch
again. "Scotty, I want all the power you can spare directed to the
starboard phasers."
"Whatever you say, sir."
"Ensign Mullen, cancel all commands to the starboard banks from your
console--return fire with port phasers only.""
Mullen nodded shortly, a thin frown of incomprehension between his eyes,
but he did as he was told. "Starboard banks locked out, sir. Portside
ready to
Kirk swung to face behind him. Spock was already waiting, hands in lap,
for his commands. "Mr. Spoek, please program our starboard phasers for
continuous wide-beam emission. Phase-shift their frequency to
depolarize the Orion phaser strikes, and make sure you cover the area
above the starboard phaser banks as well as the hull breach."
Spock offered his captain a look of dry reproach. "This is standard
procedure when using phasers as a depolarizing defense system, Captain."