by Greg Cox
“What the—!” Scotty reached for his weapon, only to find himself unarmed. He gaped at Hague. “Have ye lost your senses?”
“Hardly.” Hague aimed his phaser at Scotty’s head. “I see we both had the same idea about using the cargo transporters, although I suspect we had different destinations in mind. My own plan was to escape via the Navaar should events turn against us. I fear a full investigation of this incident might turn up certain communications that would be difficult to explain down the road.”
“Communications?” Scotty realized that Hague had been working against them all this time, conspiring with the enemy at every turn. “Is that what you’ve done? Kept the Orions posted on our plans? Told them when and where we were goin’ to be, like at Gamma Trianguli VI?” As the aide of a high-ranking Federation commissioner, and apparently an accomplished spy in his right, it would have been easy enough for Hague to hide coded messages in what appeared to be routine diplomatic transmissions—and to cover his tracks afterward. “Instructed them how to jam our communicators? Informed on us for a bunch of murderous thugs?” Scotty found it hard to believe that any Federation official could be capable of such perfidy. “How could ye do it, man?”
“Just doing my job . . . as an Orion, that is.” He savored Scotty’s shocked expression. “Don’t be fooled by this pallid pink disguise. I’m pure Orion green where it counts.” He patted his chest with his free hand. “Right here.”
Scotty found himself in a nasty fix. A furtive glance at the exit revealed that the emergency blast doors had been locked from the inside. He was trapped in the cargo transporter complex with an armed traitor who was clearly up to no good.
So much for my luck taking a turn for the better!
“This is quite fortuitous, running into you like this,” Hague gloated. “My people are having trouble locating Seven, although there are scattered reports of a woman matching her description at large in the ship. Where is Kirk hiding her? On the bridge? Somewhere else?” He kept his phaser aimed at Scotty. “Give me a reason not to slice you apart, piece by piece.”
It dawned on Scotty that Hague didn’t realize that Seven was still hiding in the Jefferies tube directly above them, and she was doubtless eavesdropping on this entire exchange. Scotty realized that he had to keep Hague distracted so that Seven could remain undetected.
“What about Santiago?” he challenged Hague. “How can you betray his trust like this?”
“The commissioner is a fool,” Hague said, snickering at his boss’s gullibility, “and all the more so since he let his kin’s death unman him. I’ve been practically running his office since his sow of a sister and her brats were massacred; killing Santiago’s family turned out to be a goddess-send for the syndicate.” He chuckled cruelly. “I just wish I could say we did it on purpose.”
Scotty couldn’t contain his disgust. “You cold-hearted, two-faced—”
“Spare me the righteous indignation,” Hague said, cutting him off. “Just tell me where Seven is . . . before things get messy.”
“Do your worst,” Scotty said. “A good engineer doesn’t mind a little mess.”
Hague eyed him suspiciously. “You’re hiding something.” A question occurred to him. “What did you want with these transporters, anyway? I can’t imagine a good Starfleet officer like you would be trying to save himself over his ship. What’s this all about?”
Scotty shrugged. “That would be telling, lad.”
“Typical Starfleet. Arrogant to the last.”
Scotty braced himself for a red-hot phaser beam even as bagpipes played a mournful dirge at the back of his mind. He hoped Captain Kirk and the others would drink a toast to his memory.
“Don’t try my patience, Mister Scott.”
“Why? Are ye going somewhere?”
Hague sneered. “You certainly aren’t.”
Scotty thought his number was up, but then Hague shifted his aim. A crimson beam shot past Scotty to strike the transporter control station instead. Sparks and smoke erupted from the console. The acrid odor of burning circuitry polluted the air. Blinking display panels went dark.
“There,” Hague said smugly, perversely proud of his vandalism. “No one is beaming anywhere now. Whatever you were up to is not going to happen, and we have time for a nice long chat.”
For a moment, his phaser was not pointed at Scotty. The engineer considered tackling Hague and maybe wrestling the weapon away from him, but Seven took even more efficient use of the opportunity. She dropped from the open hatchway overhead, landing nimbly behind Hague. A burst from her phaser stunned the traitor, who crumpled to the floor of the control room. Limp fingers released his weapon.
“My apologies for the delay,” Seven said, “but I was reluctant to intervene while you were in harm’s way.”
“I’m not complaining.” Scotty sighed in relief. “For a few moments there, I thought I was as good as vaporized.” He confiscated Hague’s phaser, then gazed down on the unconscious aide, shaking his head. “Can ye believe it? Who would’ve thought there’d be a traitor in our midst?”
“Individuals have been known to switch loyalties,” Seven said soberly. Something about her tone suggested that she spoke from bitter experience. She examined the door to confirm that it was securely barred, then she inspected the damaged control station. Tendrils of white smoke rose from the blasted console. “But his motives are irrelevant at the present moment. What matters is that our task has become significantly more difficult.”
Scotty saw her point. Leaving Hague sprawled upon the platform, not far from the fallen metal hatch, he joined Seven at the control station and whistled at the damage. The phaser blast had done more than just knock the system off-line; the control panel was a charred ruin. “I see what ye mean. That two-faced villain made a real mess of things.”
“Can you fix it?” she asked.
Scotty stepped back and considered the challenge. “I don’t suppose your handy finger-tube thingies can help us out again?”
She shook her head. “Not if I wish to beam myself to the shuttle as planned. I cannot interface with the console and occupy the pad at the same time.”
“Aye, that’s a problem.” He stroked his chin as he hit upon another possible solution. “Let me have that tricorder, if ye don’t mind. In theory, I might be able to reroute the command signals through the tricorder. We lucked out that Hague chose to shoot the controls and not the transporter pads themselves. Thank heaven for small favors. If he’d thought to trash the actual platform, we’d be bollixed but good!”
“His tactics were flawed,” she agreed. “I suspect he was acting on impulse.” She handed over the tricorder as requested. “Do you require any assistance?”
“No. Ye’ve done enough already.” Scotty figured he knew more about twenty-third-century transporter technology than anybody else in the quadrant; the day he needed help fixing a busted console was the day he’d book a rocking chair at the home for washed-up old relics. “But I’d welcome your assistance calculating the precise coordinates for beaming into the shuttlebay. That’s going to be a tricky operation, and I’m not too proud to admit it.”
Seven nodded. “I will comply.”
He got to work. Ignoring the charred control panel, he pried open the insulated casing of the column beneath it, exposing the central processing unit. He nodded in satisfaction at the sight of the station’s innards; despite their dire situation, it felt good to be doing some hands-on engineering again, as opposed to rock climbing or scuba diving.
This is more like it, he thought.
From the looks of things, the phaser blast had overloaded the subprocessors, shutting them down, but it took only a few tweaks to get the core systems up and humming again. He directed the tricorder at the naked CPU. It took a wee bit of fine-tuning, but he soon established a remote link to what was left of the transporter controls. So far, so good; now he just needed to clone the interface software onto the tricorder.
Seven accidentally st
umbled against him.
Scotty looked up from his work. “Are ye all right, lass?”
“A moment of fatigue,” she confessed. “It will pass.” She straightened her posture, doing her best to disguise any weakness or infirmity. She shook her head to clear away any cobwebs. “The transporter?”
Scotty got the impression she was going on pure willpower and cussedness alone. He wondered how much longer she could keep running on fumes—and whether she still had strength enough to do what needed to be done.
“Almost ready,” he said. “The autosequencing program was corrupted by the energy surge, but not fatally. I just need to patch up the code some. It won’t take but a moment or two.”
Stampeding boots, coming from the corridor outside, interrupted his report. An angry fist pounded against the door. “Lormus ardeo!” a guttural voice demanded. Scotty couldn’t speak a word of Orion, but he knew when he was being threatened. “Eypholmir hojot skyopu!”
Seven faced the clamor with her phaser drawn. “I suggest you hasten the repairs, Mister Scott.”
“Aye.” Scotty got back to work. Lines of broken code scrolled across the tricorder’s display screen, demanding his attention. He started keying in the missing links. “Probably a good idea.”
Disruptor blasts slammed into the sturdy steel doors protecting them from the intruders. The bellicose Orions seemed more than willing to tear the entire ship apart to find Seven and claim her knowledge of tomorrow. Scotty saw now why the captain had worked so hard to hide her true origins. Seven’s secrets were just too tempting a target should word spread of her existence.
“I have completed the necessary calculations,” she informed him. “Now we require only a working transporter.”
“Just another moment.”
Scotty tried to focus on slaving the transporter controls to the tricorder. It was hard to concentrate with the Orions blasting away at the door, but the damaged code wasn’t going to patch itself. Despite the distracting gunfire, the tricorder’s miniature display screen soon resembled the transporter’s standard control panel.
“Done!” he announced. A hasty diagnostic confirmed that everything checked out, although he would have preferred a few trial runs. “It’s fast and dirty, but it should do the trick . . . assuming you’ve got the right coordinates.”
“My calculations are correct.” She borrowed the tricorder long enough to load the coordinates into a cloned copy of the targeting controls. He couldn’t help noticing that her hands were shaking as though palsied. “Certain adjustments will be purged from the tricorder’s memory upon completion of the transport, to avoid temporal contamination, but you may rely on these coordinates.”
“Ye sure about that?” he asked. “It’s not as though ye are beamin’ from one transporter room to another, which would be tricky enough. A wrong calculation, and ye could end up somewhere you don’t want to be. Like inside the warp core, maybe, or out in the vacuum of space.”
“In which case,” she observed, “I will indeed be beyond the Orions’ reach.” She took her place upon the starboard transporter platform. “But I believe those coordinates will suffice.”
Her obvious confidence in her own abilities eased Scotty’s worries almost as effectively as a restorative shot of whiskey. Still, he felt obliged to make certain she understood the risk she was taking. “I’m serious, lass,” he insisted. “Ye could be beamin’ to your death.”
“A calculated risk,” she acknowledged. “Proceed.”
“Very well.” He aimed the reconfigured tricorder at the transporter. He hit the command key. “Godspeed.”
A transporter beam flared to life. Seven dissolved into a dazzling cascade of energy.
Scotty sighed wearily. He had done his part. The rest was up to Seven.
And the Orions.
Twenty-seven
“Keptin!” Chekov called out. “A shuttle has left the Enterprise!”
About time, Kirk thought. He wondered what had taken Scotty and Seven so long. Must have run into some trouble on the way to the shuttlebay.
The main viewer picked up the shuttlecraft. Registry numbers emblazed on its hull identified it as the Galileo II. With the Enterprise’s shields down, nothing prevented the shuttle from exiting the starship. It pulled away from the ship as its ion engine engaged.
“I am receiving a transmission from the shuttle,” Uhura reported. “It’s Doctor Seven.”
Kirk had figured as much, but it was good to have that confirmed. He signaled Uhura to turn the translator back on. Habroz would surely be monitoring their communications. Kirk wanted the pirate captain to hear this. “Put her through.”
Seven’s elegant visage appeared upon the viewscreen. The cramped cockpit of an F-Class shuttlecraft served as a backdrop. Kirk was glad to see that Seven appeared none the worse for her protracted trek through the besieged ship, although she was showing obvious signs of fatigue. Scenes of heated conflict between Starfleet forces and invading Orions continued to fill multiple windows upon the viewer. Closer at hand, an Orion boarding party was still trying to blast their way onto the bridge. The persistent racket scraped on everyone’s nerves, adding to the tense atmosphere. Security and engineering teams worked overtime to reinforce the blast doors. Plasma torches welded fresh crossbeams across potential entrances. Portable deflector units, aimed at the doors, bolstered their defenses.
“Greetings, Captain,” Seven addressed him. “My apologies for my sudden departure, but, in my estimation, the Enterprise is no longer a secure location.” On the primary screen, the shuttle pulled away from the starship and sped back toward the Federation’s side of the Neutral Zone. “I would appreciate it if you would guard my retreat.”
Kirk feigned outrage. “Damnit, Seven, get back here! You’ll never make it!”
“That remains to be seen, Captain,” she replied, unfazed by his outburst. “And a slim chance is better than none at all.”
Even as the shuttle accelerated toward the border, however, the Navaar went into pursuit. Turning away from the Enterprise, the marauder set off after Seven. Just as expected.
Good, Kirk thought. He took the bait.
The shuttle’s impulse engine was no match for the Navaar, which swiftly caught up with the fleeing craft. An aquamarine tractor beam latched onto the Galileo II, halting its progress. The shuttle’s boosters fought to break free from the beam’s relentless pull, but to no avail. Like the prehensile tongue of some space-faring alien predator, the marauder began to reel the shuttle in. Kirk saw Seven being shaken violently by the titanic stresses exerted on the shuttle. Only a safety strap kept her from being hurled from her seat. It was obvious that the shuttle would soon be sucked into the bowels of the Navaar, terminating her seemingly desperate flight for freedom. Habroz was about to claim his prize.
Kirk knew what he had to do next.
“Mister Chekov, open fire on the shuttle.”
Shocked gasps greeted the captain’s order. Commissioner Santiago stared at him in disbelief. “Kirk!” he blurted. “You can’t! Seven will be killed. There must be another way!”
“I wish there was, Commissioner.” Kirk’s tone was grave. “But as you’ve often reminded me, this is a matter of Federation security. Habroz cannot be allowed to turn Seven over to the Klingons . . . or anyone else.” He faced her without apology, his face as hard as solid duranium. “I’m sure Seven understands.”
“Indeed.” She maintained a stoic expression, although her teeth rattled as she spoke. “The Temporal Prime Directive must be maintained. The needs of the future outweigh the needs of the present.”
“Or the past,” Kirk agreed. He glared at the navigation station, where Chekov appeared reluctant to carry out his orders. The young Russian looked like he was hoping that the captain would change his mind. “You heard me, Ensign. Open fire!”
Every moment they delayed, Seven and the shuttle came closer to vanishing into the Navaar. Overworked boosters, unable to withstand the marauder’s tractor
beam, burnt out one by one, leaving the shuttle without propulsion. The Galileo II wasn’t going anywhere but backward.
“Aye, Keptin.” His face pale, Chekov hit the firing controls. “Phasers on full.”
Brilliant red beams shot from the underside of the Enterprise’s saucer. They sliced through space at the speed of light but missed the shuttle by less than a meter. The off-kilter shots flew off into the vacuum. A subsequent blast barely grazed the shuttle’s deflectors, resulting in nothing more than a harmless flash of blue radiation, before passing through the Navaar’s tractor beam.
Kirk scowled. “Something wrong with your aim, Ensign?”
“I’m sorry, Keptin.” Chekov blushed with embarrassment. “The targeting sensors appear to have been knocked out of alignment during the earlier attack.” He fiddled anxiously with the controls. “I’m attempting to compensate. . . .”
“Make it fast,” Kirk barked. “The future depends on it.”
• • •
Habroz’s black heart missed a beat as the Enterprise’s phasers flew toward the shuttle. For a split-second, he feared that his much-sought-after prize was about to be blown to atoms before his eyes. He cursed himself for not anticipating this tactic and blasting the Enterprise’s phaser banks when he’d had the chance; Kirk was obviously more ruthless than the typical Starfleet weakling. Habroz could respect that, but not when it looked to cost him a fortune.
Damn you, Kirk! If you’ve stolen Seven from me . . . !
His silent threat went unfinished as, miraculously, the crimson phaser bolts missed their target, sparing Seven’s life for at least a few more moments. Cheers and mockery from the crew greeted the humans’ poor marksmanship.
“Hah!” one of the pirates jeered. Daol manned the helm at the front of the bridge. A silver ring dangled from his nose. Close-cropped blond hair met in a widow’s peak above his brow. “A blind mud louse could shoot better than that! They couldn’t hit a gas giant from inside its atmosphere!”
Habroz perched on the edge of his throne, which rested on a pedestal overlooking the marauder’s delta-shaped bridge, which Habroz had customized to his own specifications, so that it resembled a small auditorium facing an oval viewscreen. The throne had the upper, rearmost tier to itself, allowing him to look down on the descending rows of control stations beneath him. The throne was flush against the rear wall; a smart commander never turned his back on his own men. On the screen, Seven survived another minute. Habroz let out a relieved breath.