by Diane Carey
Queasy and bloodless, Archer fought to keep steady himself. “They sure didn’t build these things for comfort.”
“Wait till we get the Klingon in here with us. If I’m reading this right, we should be about twenty kilometers from Enterprise.”
“Drop the pitch thirty degrees.”
“Look! The Enterprise!”
For just an instant, the visibility cleared, just enough to show a portion of the starship above them taking a hard whack from a luminous weapon stream.
“They’re taking a lot of bad fire,” Archer mentioned. “I should’ve given her permission for evasive maneuvers. If they change position, the Suliban’ll have to look for them all over again.”
“If they move, we might never find them again,” Tucker reminded. “She’ll probably just ride it out.”
Archer gazed at the vision of the ship just as it disappeared again in a curtain of blue muck. He saw T’Pol’s face, determined to hold position and give them their best shot, and he silently apologized to her for his snotty remarks. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
Tucker shouldered into a maneuver, his lips tight and his eyes squinting. “You’ve changed your tune about her… .”
“I think it’s changing some,” Archer agreed. “After a whole lifetime of watching Vulcans generalize about humans, seems I was doing the same thing about them. I just took it out on her.” He found a sheepish little grin and bounced it off Tucker. “I think I’ll stop now.”
Tucker’s expression was dubious, but accepting of the redesigned attitude. Even hopeful?
“Look at this,” he said then, pointing at the adjusting screens. “I think we’re there.”
“Bring the docking interface on-line.”
Tucker went for a button—then stopped. He chose a completely different button. The interface hummed to life. The cell ship rattled around them.
“Coaxial ports,” Archer ordered.
Another control twanged. A quick, hissing sound blew some kind of ballast or docking mechanisms somewhere on the skin of the cell ship. Tucker embraced the steering mechanism and began to ease the ship downward. Through the ports, they could see blue phosphorous clouds begin to thin out. A moment later, they broke into clear space.
“Where is it?” Tucker gulped. “It was right there!”
Squinting through a sheet of sweat, Archer studied the graphic. “Bank starboard ninety degrees.”
Tucker heaved the controller over. The ship banked sharply, taking their stomachs with it.
A dizzying view of the Suliban complex rose directly below them.
“There you are!” Tucker howled.
“That’s the upper support radius,” Archer said, proud that he could recognize anything in that mass. “Drop down right below it. Start a counterclockwise sweep.”
The cell ship descended further, down past numerous levels of the aggregate. Other cell ships, most larger, engaged and disengaged from the huge structure for reasons of their own. Tucker slowed their descent just in time. He was getting the hang of maneuvering this contraption. Archer didn’t make any distracting comments, but did help judge distances.
“A little more … little more … almost there …”
Scrrrape.
Again they were thrown against each other. Archer shot him a look as they both got a touch of nostalgia about their inspection tour—how many days ago now?
“Right here,” Archer said. “All stop.”
The cell bonked to a halt. Through the port, they could see a circular airlock protruding from the Suliban complex. Tucker looked at him. Archer nodded. Why not?
They both began manipulating the controls. The ship began moving horizontally now, through the airlock.
Chhhh-UNK.
Contact. The cell jolted slightly. A series of whirring mechanical sounds signaled that the docking ports were locking into place. They knew those sounds. Everybody who flew knew those sounds.
Abruptly, the hatch opened—on its own!
Archer flinched and put his hand on Tucker’s arm. Before them was a long, dimly lit corridor, completely unoccupied. Their own private entrance.
Tucker looked at him. “Well?”
Archer pulled out his phase pistol. “Why not?”
With their weapons drawn, they moved quickly through the corridor. Tucker carried the silver case with the magnetic disruption device inside. Archer kept eyeing the sensor scanner he held in his other hand. They rounded a corner, and came face to face with a—a face!
Caught by surprise, the Suliban soldier clutched for his own side arm, but Archer fired first.
The soldier dropped like a bag of sand.
For a moment, Archer and Tucker stood over him and looked at the weapon in Archer’s hand. Nice little unit.
“Stun seems to work …” he commented.
And they kept moving.
Enterprise
“Anything?”
T’Pol’s question provided mostly irritation to the crew around her.
Lieutenant Reed had nothing to report, but simply gripped his console as they rode out the nasty bit of weather and artillery fire. Beside him, Hoshi Sato had her earpiece tightly wedged in.
“The phosphorous is distorting all the EM bands,” she said dubiously—then she yanked her earpiece out and called, “Grab onto something!”
Two rapid booms throbbed through the skin of the ship, followed immediately by two sharp jolts powerful enough to send the whole ship on a dive. Reed flinched as the console before him blew out, lathering his face with sparks. Streams of gas and showers of debris doused the bridge.
Reed pulled himself back to the console as the sparking reduced itself automatically. Was anyone hurt? He glanced around—no, Mayweather seemed all right. So did Hoshi, though shaken. T’Pol still held the command chair, and gave no orders to break off their course or altitude.
“This is ridiculous!” Reed complained. “If we don’t move the ship, Captain Archer won’t have anything to look for when he gets back!”
T’Pol had a stubborn streak, but she wasn’t foolish. After a moment of consideration, she turned to Hoshi. “We’re going to need that ear of yours.”
Hoshi pulled herself back to her position and pressed the listening device to her ear again.
“Mr. Mayweather,” T’Pol addressed, “move us away, five kilometers.”
“In what direction?”
“Any direction.”
The ship trembled with effort, and began to rise. Malcolm Reed held his breath, knew this was his suggestion, and although he also knew everyone else was thinking the same thing, he began now a whole new worry.
Though they would now survive to be found, how would the captain and Tucker find them?
Klingon life-signs. A whole new quiver for an Earth sensor system.
However, being a machine, the sensor didn’t care one way or the other and led them dutifully to the source.
Archer went through the door first, with Tucker right behind him, weapons drawn. And there was their big buddy, restrained in an elaborate chair-like thing, with tubes and devices attached to his body. He was alive, but semiconscious. Through a window, steel-blue light flowed from the phosphorous layer, lending a weird cast to the Klingon’s skin, and Archer’s and Tucker’s, too.
Archer gestured. Tucker immediately went to the Klingon and started unstrapping him. The Klingon stared, but didn’t fight or make any noise.
“This is gonna be easier than I thought,” Tucker said winningly. “It’s okay,” he added to Klaang. “We’re getting you off this thing.”
The third and final restraint slapped to the floor. Klaang, now free, suddenly erupted. He raised his arm, clubbed Tucker in the chest, and very easily blew the engineer across the room. Tucker landed in a heap, shocked. Klaang stood to his full height and ripped the tubes and wires from his limbs.
Locking his stance, Archer raised his weapon—the interstellar common language.
“I really don’t want to have
to carry you out of here,” he warned.
Klaang grew much more passive in the face of the unfriendly weapon. He wisely hesitated.
“I think he gets the idea,” Archer said. “Give him a hand.”
Tucker hesitated, too, not wanting to get close to the enormity again, but he steeled himself and gave Klaang a supporting hand as they followed Archer out the door.
Bearing the weight of the huge Klingon, Tucker rapidly became a gasping lump following Archer through the corridor.
“Qu’taw boh!” the Klingon roared, half dazed.
“Be quiet,” Archer snapped.
“Muh tok!”
A blast tore a chunk out of the wall. Suliban soldiers!
Archer dove to the left,Tucker and Klaang to the right, for cover.
“Dajvo Tagh! Borat!”
“You tell him, big guy.” Tucker hid behind the Klingon—or was he pinned back there?
“Give me the box,” Archer called.
Trip slid the silver case’s strap off his shoulder and handed it to him. Just then, a Suliban attacker rushed into view from an adjoining corridor and caught them by surprise. As the Suliban took aim at Archer and Tucker, the Klingon suddenly rose like a grizzly bear.
The Suliban was caught under its chin and went flying into a bulkhead. Klaang followed him, caught him, and joyously pounded him unconscious.
A moment later he simply turned and came back to Archer and Tucker, rumbling with satisfaction.
“Thanks,” Tucker said—more of that interstellar language.
But their moment of unity was ruined by another Suliban, and another after him, and more weapons blasting at them.
“Get to the ship!” Archer ordered. “I’ll be right behind you!”
Tucker shot him a horrified look, but he had agreed not to argue. Getting the Klingon off was the important thing. Tucker grabbed the mountainous stranger and hauled him down the corridor.
Archer crouched, alone now, with the silver case. He removed the rectangular device and attached it with its own magnetics to the nearest wall, then activated it with the encoded authorization.
Then he dropped to his knees and covered his head, and hoped to live.
CHAPTER 15
A LOW-PITCHED WHINE DEAFENED ARCHER AS HE HUDDLED too near the magnetic damper. Only two seconds passed before the device emitted a blinding pulse of energy that radiated in all directions.
Archer was blown over onto his side. As the light receded, he struggled to his feet and found all his arms and legs still with him. The corridor was trembling, shuddering! Thousands of magnetic docking ports unlocking—
The floor began to separate under his feet—the entire corridor was splitting in two! Force fields flashed on as the interlocking elements making up this section of the aggregate lost their cohesion. He was cut off.
He had no choice but to turn and run in the other direction, and hope Tucker and Klaang got through.
The entire upper section of the Suliban aggregate was dismantling over Archer’s head. He imagined the huge sections, comprised of dozens of cell ships, disengaging from the central mass, tumbling away into the blue atmosphere, powerless and pilotless.
“Captain? Captain!” Tucker’s voice called at him under the boom and clack of disengagement.
Archer found a corner to duck behind and clawed for his communicator. “It worked,” he said without formality.
“Where are you?”
“I’m still in the central core. Get Klaang back to Enterprise.”
“What about you, sir?”
“Get him back to the ship! You can come back for me.”
Lies, all lies.
“It’s going to be hard to isolate your biosigns,” Tucker protested. “So stay as far away from the Suliban as you can.”
Archer breathed a gush of relief that Tucker intended to follow the very hard order to leave someone behind. Nobody liked that one. Nobody ever wanted to do it the first time out.
“Believe me,” he vowed, “I’ll try.”
Inside the Suliban cell ship, Trip Tucker gritted his teeth against leaving John Archer on that floating junkheap. Beside him, crammed in like a sausage in its skin, the Klingon spat and coughed protests about the accommodations.
“RaQpo jadICH!”
“I don’t particularly like the way you smell, either,” Tucker opined.
“MajQa!”
Tucker ignored the comment and kept sweeping for the Enterprise.
“I don’t get it … this is right where they’re supposed to be.”
He adjusted his scanners, hoping the alien contraption was just plain wrong.
It wasn’t. There was no one out there. Nothing.
“The charges are getting closer again.”
Malcolm Reed tugged at the collar of his uniform tunic as the fifth low-frequency boom in as many seconds rolled over the starship.
“Another five kilometers, Ensign,” T’Pol ordered.
Mayweather worked the controls on the helm. “At this rate, the captain’ll never find us.”
“Wait a minute!” Hoshi interrupted. “I think I’ve got something!”
“Amplify it!” T’Pol ordered with endearing passion.
Hoshi tapped her controls. A cacophony of noises, radio signals, background noise, and distortion blasted through the bridge.
“It’s Commander Tucker!”
How had she deciphered that from these crackles?
“All I hear is noise,” Reed pointed out.
“Sshhh! Listen…it’s just a narrow notch in the midrange … he says he’s about to ignite his thruster exhaust!”
T’Pol moved quickly to her viewing hood and peered inside. “Coordinates—one fifty-eight mark … one three.”
“Laid in!” Mayweather confirmed.
“Ahead, fifty kph.” She turned to Hoshi, and for the first time regarded the other woman with respect. “Shaya tonat.”
Hoshi offered a small smile. “You’re welcome.”
They all watched the sensors, though they could see very little on any screen that wasn’t the shifting of atmospheric chaos.
“Two kilometers, dead ahead,” Mayweather said, carefully maneuvering the ship to avoid a deadly collision— deadly for the Suliban pod that held their shipmates.
“Initiate docking procedures.” T’Pol authorized.
Hoshi turned to them, her face gray. “I’m only picking up two biosigns … one Klingon … one human.”
Somehow, a hunted animal knows, senses, that it’s being hunted. Jonathan Archer felt like a rabbit in a fox’s den. He clung to the help of his little scanning device, which showed two Suliban moving away from a central indicator. They’d lost him.
But he was far from out of trouble. He squatted behind a metal beam more than eight feet off the deck. When he was sure he could jump down safely, without being heard, he did.
His leg, which until now had pretended to be completely healed, nearly buckled. He fell against the wall and steadied himself for a few seconds, and used those seconds to tap the scanner and give himself a wider view of the vicinity. Other blips showed still more Suliban, but there was a large area to one side with no life-signs at all.
Sanctuary. If he could get there, he might be able to hide for … long enough.
He made sure he wasn’t going to collapse on that leg and hurried down the corridor.
When he found the pass to the empty area, the narrow passage looked completely different from anything he’d seen here before. It ended at a single door. Archer hesitated. Was he being herded? Funneled? He got that feeling. This area was too empty. Had he been lured here with a sense of safety?
Suddenly he felt vulnerable and somewhat foolish. On the other hand, he had nowhere else to go. Maybe there were still answers to be found here. He owed himself those answers, and he was beginning to realize that he owed them to T’Pol, to Admiral Forrest, and even to Soval and the Vulcans. He owed them a good, solid representation that humans and Vulcans could wor
k together—yes, they could.
We can.
His vulnerability went away. If there was someone here who knew what was going on, Archer very much wanted a confrontation. As he closed in on the single door, his fears for himself dissolved. Escape went away as his primary objective.
The scanner’s information was now heavily distorted. Why would it be?
As he approached the door, it opened for him. That alone confirmed his suspicion that someone was inviting him here.
He cautiously stepped through, expecting for a moment to be assaulted, but that didn’t make sense. He could easily have been a sitting duck in the closed corridor.
Inside was some kind of vestibule—a passage without an exit.
He raised his arm—it stayed up after he put it down… . Lights distorted his vision … time began to slow … to slow …
Was he underwater? His movements slowed further. Time effect!
This was some kind of temporal alteration chamber. And Archer had walked right into it. His arms and legs blurred as he moved. Gradually, deliberately, he learned to make forward progress, to ignore the echoes he saw, movement echoes that unnerved him and confused his eyes. He moved his arms, and a second set made the same movement seconds later—or seconds before?
He looked down. The sound of his footsteps preceded the actual steps. He stopped walking. Soon he had only two feet again. When he had a little control—although his heartbeat had other ideas—he clapped his hands.
The sound came before his hands met.
Now what?
Definitely time distortion, contained somehow. Could he trust his own thoughts?
Moving with great deliberation, he began to explore the room, the alien architecture, the technology on undecipherable panels. After all, someone wanted him to see all this. He would oblige them.
A podium rose before him. As it did, as he was able to focus on it, the temporal distortions began to fade. Had someone been giving him a taste of what they could do, and now they were finished showing off? Had it been a test? A mistake?
There was the podium, clear now before him, and a large weird-looking archway—metallic, huge, obviously purposeful in design and whatever its function was. Certainly not just interior decor.