by Diane Duane
Ael followed him out of the room, shaking her head in unaccustomed perplexity. She had said something wrong again. Or was it as it seemed, that this man kept his pride on the outside, waiting for someone to tear it? Why did he do that? There was no understanding him….
Curses on the man!
Two hours later she stood on the bridge of the Enterprise again, feeling even stranger about it than she had; for there was Levaeri V ahead of them—within sensor range, though they had not yet hailed her. “I’ll wait a bit,” she said to the man who stood with his two hundred gathered crewpeople, down in the recreation room. “It would not be like me to hurry in this situation, Captain. I would let them have a long, long look and be amazed.”
“Anything so long as we catch them by surprise,” Jim said.
“Yes. Aidoann reports that control is now completely transferred to the auxiliary bridge, and your other people left aboard ship are under ‘guard’ with various of my folk from Bloodwing, so that we will pass an inspection if necessary.”
“Is Scotty all right down there?”
“He reports all systems operational, and the next two subspace jamming buoys dropped. Meanwhile, there are no Enterprise people up here at all now, and I tell you it looks strange.”
“I bet,” said the cheerful voice. “Is Subcommander Tafv with you?”
“Here, Captain,” Tafv said, from the communications console.
“Take care of my ship, Subcommander,” the voice said.
“Sir, I shall. Commander, Levaeri is hailing us. We are nearing the shield boundary—and sensors are showing a starship tethered inside the shields. No ID running—but the sensor readings match its shape to that of Intrepid.”
“Well,” Jim said, “it’s showtime.” He sounded annoyed, and pleased, and terrified, all at once. “Commander, will you join us?”
“As soon as the screens are down. Don’t wait for me, Jim. Get your people down to the cargo transporters. I have your coordinates, and my grays are in the lift.”
“Ael—good luck.”
“And the Elements with us,” she said, “for we’ll need Them. Out.”
She turned to Tafv, seeing on his face the same mixed excitement and dread she felt. “Open a frequency for the station, son. They’ve looked long enough.”
“Madam,” he said, demonstrating that same lovely and unnecessary courtesy he had shown her on coming back aboard Bloodwing. Ael sat straight in the center seat, finding her control, stripping the fear out of her heart.
“Levaeri station to Bloodwing,” said a female voice.
“This is Commander-General Ael t’Rllaillieu,” said Ael, very calm, very proud, “presently aboard the captured vessel U.S.S. Enterprise. To whom am I speaking?”
“Centurion Ndeian tr’Jeiai, Commander.”
O, by my Element, no—not Ndeian——“Ndeian,” she said, merry-voiced, “what in the Names of Fire and Air are you doing all the way out here? I thought you were on ch’Havran by now, raising fvai!”
“Reenlistment,” Ndeian said. “They’re desperate, Ael; they offered to make me rich. The funny thing is that I believed them—”
“You always were credulous.” Ael’s heart cried out inside her. “Ndeian, are you commanding?”
“No, Gwiu t’Laheiin is; but we’ve heard of your coming, we have orders—”
—her stomach twisted itself into a knot in a single second—
“—to give you anything you ask for if you stop. Forgive me, Ael, but I don’t think they want you to stay. Our orders were to ‘expedite your arrival and departure.’”
“We won’t be here long, Ndeian. I need some provisions for Bloodwing, and some of my people are in need of better medical help than we have here on the ship; we had a difficult time getting hold of this bright prize. You don’t seem to be doing too badly in that department yourself, though.”
“No,” Ndeian said, “Battlequeen brought that one in. Ael, just settle into standard orbit and we’ll drop screens for you and your technical people and the doctor.”
“Assuming standard orbit, Nedian. See you in a bit. T’Rllaillieu out.”
She waved at Tafv, heartsick. He closed down the channel, then looked at his instruments and said, “Screens are down, Commander. We’re in orbit under them.”
“Well done.” She got up, hurried out of the bridge, looking around at the place—bizarrely open, bright, lovely for an instrument of destruction. Ndeian’s destruction, and a thousand others’—“Keep her well, Tafv,” she said; and it was all she could manage. The lift doors opened for her. She picked up her white coverall, that lay neatly folded on the floor, and began struggling into it—sparing a hand from the business to hit the communicator button on the lift wall. “Recreation!”
“We heard,” the Captain’s voice came back. “We’re on our way. Out.”
The lift stopped, opened its doors. Ael ran down the hall, into one of the cargo transporter rooms, pulled out her phaser and leapt up onto the platform, with a great group of her own people and Jim’s. The young man behind the transporter console set the delay, headed for the platform himself, and they all dissolved in shimmer together.
It must have been something different about the Federation transporters, something unsettling in their engineering—or maybe just Ael’s own suppressed fear, crying out in her mind—that made her think she heard, as she dematerialized, the sound of phaserwhine outside the transporter room, and a scream….
Chapter Fourteen
Montgomery Scott paced the auxiliary bridge like a caged creature. “This will be the last batch going,” he said to the universe in general, and to Uhura and Chekov and Sulu, who were in there with him, along with Khiy and Nniol and Haehwe. “And I don’t like it, indeed I don’t.”
Sulu and Chekov exchanged glances, which Scotty noticed and filed away; they didn’t like it either. “It’s a fool’s errand, that’s what it is,” Scotty said, looking over Chekov’s shoulder at a trim control and reaching down to uselessly check its calibration.
“You should have said something in the briefing, Mr. Scott,” Uhura said softly from her station.
“Aye,” Scotty said, letting out a long breath. “But what good would it ha’ done, lass? You know how the captain is when his mind’s made up. After that, it’s the universe that’d best bend, for it won’t be himself that’s doing it.”
He paced around the little room one more time. That was the problem with it, he decided. It was little; too much power crammed into too small a space for the people who had to handle it. Like Bloodwing’s poor little scrap of a bridge, if you could even dignify it with the name. A black hole, it was. And this was too. Squeezed in between the armory and the downstairs food processors, a ridiculous spot—“Are they ready?” Scotty said.
“They report ready,” Uhura said. “—There they go.”
“Good luck to them,” Sulu said, staring down at the uncomfortable view on the little screen. Levaeri V station hung there right beneath them, an ugly great sheet of metal stuck all over with pipes and stanchions and antennae and whatnot else. It offended Scotty’s sense of design, and confirmed a lot of his private thoughts about Romulan engineering. “Prefab space stations,” he muttered. “Where’s the sense in that? Probably fall apart if you looked at it.”
“They do,” said Khiy quietly from the engineering station. “They’re shabby, sir.”
“Aye lad, I daresay.” Scotty gave one last disgusted look at the thing, then turned to Uhura. “Are they transported safe?”
“Yes, sir, they report arrival—”
“Well enough. I just wish I were down there with the Captain—”
Someone shrieked. Someone did it again, and again, and Scotty recovered from the involuntary attempted leap of his heart from his chest at the sound of his ship screaming. It was the intruder alert siren, a sound like no other. “Screens,” he cried at Sulu, “screens, man!”—and leapt for the board himself. Sulu had already hit the control, and the banshee w
ailing of the ship cut sharply off; but Uhura had turned to the rest of them with a look of terrible alarm on her face, one hand to the transdator in her ear, the other flicking switch after switch on her station’s panel. “Mr. Scott, intruders on decks four, eight, nine, twelve—”
“Where from?”
“Already transported, Mr. Scott. Not traceable—”
“Bloodwing,” Scotty said bitterly, and swung on Khiy.
“No!” Khiy cried. “Mr. Scott, the commander would never—”
“Not the commander, lad,” Scotty said, feeling himself turning red. “But I’ll bet I know who. Why didna the captain see it? Khiy, seal us off from the rest of the deck—bring down all the bulkheads south of thirty. Never mind—” and he headed over to the engineering station and did it himself; poor Khiy was out of his depth, no shame to him. “Uhura, find out what’s goin’ on out there.”
“Confused, Mr. Scott. Fighting on six and eight. Other parts of the ship calling in and asking what the problem is—”
“Tell them. No, wait. Chekov, help Khiy. I want every door in this ship locked. Cut power reversibly if you have to, we’ll worry about the details later.”
Chekov jumped out of his seat and hurried over to Khiy. “No good, Mr. Scott. Several Jeffries tubes have been disabled, some major system junctions are out—”
“Bloody. Excuse me, Uhura. Pavel, disable the transporters, the whole lot o’ them. The captain will be usin’ the Levaeri transporters to come back anyway, and I’ll not have that devil Tafv usin’ mine for intraship beaming. If he wants the Enterprise, he can fight for every inch. Also—” Scotty took a deep breath. “Override the emergency protocols and seal off the engineering hull. Those creatures’ll not get at my engines.”
Chekov worked bent over at the board, pointing out controls to Khiy, explaining things under his breath. Several moments later there was another horrific screaming through the ship as she announced her own traumatic amputation—the sealing off of the lower, cylindrical engineering hull and nacelles from the upper disc. The two were able to function separately, though it had been done so infrequently and in such disastrous situations that Scotty hated to think of the results. Nevertheless, all it would take now would be an explosive-bolt sequence, and the two parts would separate, leaving the lower hull and nacelles, with the warp engines, free of Romulans and still able to escape with the captain and his party and the rescued Vulcans. If they managed to escape…
Till then it was his business to hold that avenue of escape open for them; and Scotty vowed that should the landing party come to grief, Levaeri V would go up in one of the biggest bangs since the big one. He still had the self-destruct option, after all, and that option exercised in this particular spot would take the station and Intrepid and Bloodwing with it. The thought was not comforting, but he put it aside in case he should need it later. Meanwhile there was other business. “How’re you doing, lad?” he said to Chekov.
“Executing, sir. The engineering hull’s secure.”
“Forty people trapped down there, Mr. Scott,” Uhura said. “They’re all right, though. A mixed group, our people and the commander’s.”
“Aye….” That was the whole problem. These Romulans, that went around behind one another’s backs so easily…no telling what they were thinking—But Scotty caught himself. That was hardly fair—look at poor Khiy here, keeping the faith, and doing the best he could for them. “All right. What about the transporters?”
“Out now, Mr. Scott,” Chekov said.
“Aye,” Scotty said. “We may be trapped here, but so are they, with the shields up…and we can have good hope that some of them were transportin’ when the shields reestablished. A few o’ them’ll have hit the shields and gone splash, at any rate. Uhura, call about and find out who’s where. What’s our strength without the landing party?”
“Two hundred eight, Mr. Scott. We could call the captain—”
“And he would do what, lass? Our people and Ael’s doubtless have their hands full enough just now, else we’d have heard more from them than just the news that they’d arrived in the station. No, we’ve got to handle this ourselves…no use in botherin’ him. Two hundred and eight…” Scotty made a disgusted noise. “And scattered all over the ship…. No matter. Call around, Uhura.” He paced around the room again, scowling. “Now if I were that black-hearted traitor of a Tafv…where would I be heading?”
“Here, sir.”
“Aye, Mr. Sulu. And here we sit all alone on this deck, and sealed away from help. He’ll have to fight his way here, burn his way through bulkheads and through our people—but he’ll do it, and not count the cost.”
“But, Mr. Scott, what about intruder control?”
“Ah, Khiy, lad, you didn’t look at that board too closely, did you? He’s a clever creature, that Tafv: he took it out with those Jeffries tubes, may he roast somewhere warm. Woe’s the day we ever let him near the computers….”
Scotty paced. “So…He may have taken out the most vital systems he could learn quickly. But we still know the ship better than he does. And possibly…” he stopped in mid-stride. “Mr. Sulu,” he said, “call up a schematic of the crawlways between here and the main bridge. While he’s at it, Uhura—get into the library computer and transfer it to voiceprint operation. I don’t want it working for anyone but Enterprise personnel. And if you can rig a program so that individual terminals’ll blow their boards if a nonauthorized person uses them, so much the better….”
“You don’t ask much, do you, Mr. Scott?” Uhura said drily. But she bent over her board and got busy.
“Mr. Scott,” Chekov said, “what about the Romulans on the main bridge, our friends?”
“Aye, what about them?” He turned to look over his shoulder. “Uhura?”
“Aidoann and Khiy and Nniol all filed voiceprints with me,” Uhura said, not looking up, but smiling slightly.
“And Tafv?”
Uhura looked up in mild surprise. “Scotty, I never got one from him. He was always off on Bloodwing….”
“Aye, indeed,” Scotty said, sounding bitter. “I hate to say it, but it looks as if some of Ael’s crew haven’t as much of that mneh-whatever as she thought. ’Twill break the lass’s heart.”
“Mnhei’sahe,” Khiy said unhappily. “Mr. Scott…some of our crew-members are newer than others. There are some who were talking about…about the opportunity…”
“…of taking Enterprise for real, aye lad?” Scotty’s eyes grew hard.
“Even the thought was disgraceful. Some of us told some of the others so. They stopped talking about it…but it seems they didn’t stop thinking. And when the commander chose the people who would be working on the Enterprise—”
“How did she choose them?”
“Only volunteers were considered. Some of those she left behind—not many. But it was odd that none of the ones who had talked about taking Enterprise actually came here….”
“Our friend Tafv, it seems, had his own ideas about what to do with this situation,” Scotty said. “Well, we’ll spoil a few of his guesses if we can. Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov, let the board be for now. You two are going for a walk.”
“Sir,” Sulu said, slowly getting that particular feral grin of his on his face, “the armory is next door….”
“Aye, we’re thinking in the same direction, Mr. Sulu. But this isn’t going to be easy.”
“What do you have in mind, sir?” Chekov said.
“Well, if Tafv and his people are going to be making their way here, it’s to gain full control of the ship, aye?” They nodded at him. “Well, then, lads, can’t you just see his face when he gets here and finds this room either sealed or destroyed—and control transferred back up to the main bridge where it belongs?”
Chekov started to smile too. “It’s a very long way to the bridge, sir,” he said.
“Aye, lad. So you two had best slip next door to the armory and pick up anything you think you might need for the trip. Take ple
nty; should you feel the urge to leave a few boobytraps in the corridors for the unwary to trip over, I think I’d be inclined to condone the extravagance. And bring all the rest of it in here too. No use letting Tafv have it, and Uhura and Khiy and I may need it for one thing or another.”
“Mr. Scott,” Uhura said softly as Sulu and Chekov hurried out. “Sickbay wants to talk to you. Dr. Chapel.”
“Aye, put her on.”
“Scotty, what the hell is happening!”
“Treachery and mayhem, Christine,” Scotty said merrily. “Not much else. Some of Ael’s people have turned coats on her, it seems, and they’re thinking it would be nice to have the Enterprise for their own uses.”
“Oh my God.”
“So if I were you I’d lock the sickbay doors and not open them to anyone you don’t know. Area bulkheads have been sealed, but there were Romulans beamin’ down all over the ship for a while there, and there’s no tellin’ which of them are ‘theirs’ and which of them are ‘ours,’ or even where ‘ours’ are—”
“Scotty, don’t be silly,” Chapel said sharply, and the reply was so unlike her usual tone that it brought Scotty up short. “Of course we can tell them apart.”
“Well, for pity’s sake how?”
“Scotty,” Chapel said with rather exaggerated patience, “you were standing right there the other day, watching me stick intradermal translators into people, and complaining about the terrible annoyance it was, having to manufacture so many cesium-rubidium crystals for them in bulk—”
“Selective tricorder scan,” Scotty said softly. “Any Romulan with an armful of cesium-rubidium is one of ours…”
“—and you can do what you like with the others,” Christine said. “Scotty, what I want to know is, are there any casualties? If there are, M’Benga and I have to get out there and do something. We can’t just sit here and play doctor.”
“Check with Uhura,” he said, for Sulu and Chekov were just coming into the room with their first load of munitions from the armory, and Scotty’s eye had just fallen on a sonic grenade; the sight had triggered a wonderful memory of how to rig one with a time delay and—“Uhura, handle it. Chekov, lad, let me show you something….”