by Diane Carey
“A diversion?” was Scanner’s idea.
Merete said, “I might be able to drug them somehow.”
“There’s a more subtle way.” I stood up and stretched my legs. “We can walk down the hall and slug ‘em.”
“Na-nee na-nee na-na … nah nah nah … na-nee na-nee na-na … hop! hop! hop! … na-nee na-nee na-na … nah nah nah … na-nee na-nee na-na … hop! hop! hop!”
The hard part wasn’t thinking of it, or deciding who would indispose which guard, or keeping in character in spite of the security guards’ expressions when they saw four fully commissioned Star Fleet officers doing the bunny hop down the corridor toward them. The hard part was teaching a Vulcan how to do a dance step. Sarda understood music. But not dancing. And not singing.
“Na-nee na-nee na-na … hop! hop! hop!”
Okay, maybe Scanner, Merete, and me squawking the syllables didn’t qualify as much of a vocal lesson, but in a matter of seconds the three security guards outside Rittenhouse’s quarters were a tangle of long legs and helmets at our feet.
“Not too bad for four pikers with nuthin’ but a communicator between us,” Scanner observed, watching Merete put the hypo back in her medikit.
“Get their phasers,” I instructed, handing Sarda the phaser from the man he’d taken down with his Vulcan nerve pinch, keeping for myself the weapon from the guard Scanner and I had vanquished, not quite as smoothly. “I don’t know why you two couldn’t have brought phasers with you when you beamed over.”
“You haven’t been on a starship long enough,” Merete said, a wry smile forming. “Phasers can’t be signed out on a duty vessel without proper authorization.”
“Which we don’t have,” Scanner tossed in.
I pressed my lips together. “I don’t know what’ll make me feel stupider; pretending I didn’t know that or admitting I forgot it. Okay … let’s get that door open. Can you do it, Sarda?”
He fussed gingerly at the panel. “It has been triplelocked. Not difficult from the outside.”
“Get ready. Phasers up.”
Sarda waited until we were in raid position, then cross-connected the panel. The door slid open.
We lunged in, phasers first, blooming into a perfect triangle, just as we’d been taught. Damn, it felt good to do something right for a change!
“Hands up everybody against the wall I’m not kidding! Move!”
Quick headcount—Kirk, check; Spock, yeah; McCoy, okay; Scott, uh-huh; two more security men, check….
Tied up, gagged, and sitting on the floor?
And we were holding our phasers on the people we’d come here to rescue. And they were holding their former guards’ phasers on us.
What had I said about doing something right?
“Captain …” I began, but could think of nothing to say.
“Ah, Lieutenant Piper.” Kirk straightened from checking the guards’ bonds. “Welcome to the glories of command. You may put your phasers down now.”
Unable to keep from stammering, I said, “But … we came to break you out … we figured you needed help.”
Spock, holding his phaser casually, informed, “In fact, Lieutenant, we were on our way to liberate you.”
I lowered my phaser. The weapon must have been faulty; it was shaking. “Well … we could always go back to our cell …”
You idiot! What are you saying? You’re joking with Mr. Spock!
“That won’t be necessary,” the Captain said, trying to keep from either laughing or sneering at me. Probably both. He waved Spock out of the quarters, into the corridor where Sarda stood with our three victims, who were groaning back to consciousness. “Scotty, help Spock. Bring those three in here and truss them up.”
“Gladly, sir.” Mr. Scott gave me a little nod as he stepped by, appropriating Merete’s phaser before going out. To me he muttered, “Wha’ took you so long, lass?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. I dismissed a fleeting image of myself rushing out after and trying to explain to him why we were late for class.
The Captain moved to me, communicating thickly with his eyes. “Bones, take these two with you and check the corridors.”
Why was he calling me ‘Bones’
Then Dr. McCoy moved in my line of vision and I remembered. “We’d better get cracking, Jim,” he suggested, “or Star Empire’s crew is going to find themselves up against three starships, and Boma or not, that’s too much for one ship to handle. Come on, Lebowitz,” he said, gesturing behind me.
“Uh, Sandage, sir,” I heard Scanner correct timidly as he and Merete followed McCoy.
Kirk took the time for a deep breath, still absorbing me in that faceted regard. “It seems you’re capable of some creative resourcefulness, Lieutenant.”
Heat rose in my cheeks, bringing a deep red flush with it. Suddenly I found less confidence in my assumption that he’d wanted me to escape from Enterprise and wondered if, instead of playing into his intentions, I’d embarrassed him. After a hard swallow I choked out, “I took a shot, sir. Hope I didn’t wing anybody …”
“On the contrary, you hit the mark square on the—”
“On your feet, y’grouse.” Mr. Scott’s firm order preceded a dizzy guard into the quarters, soon followed by two others, then Spock and Sarda. Spock held a phaser on the guards while Scott and Sarda began tying them.
“Captain,” Spock said, “it is imperative that you return to the Enterprise as soon as possible. Without you on board, the Enterprise carries little psychological or military weight against the Vice-Admiral’s influence. Commodore Nash seems committed, but Tutakai and Leedson may still be persuaded away.”
“My conclusions exactly, Spock. But I can’t afford to leave you here either. We’re all going back, but not before we arrange an advantage. Opinion, Piper?”
“Oh, I like it, sir.” Anything—I liked anything about handing over the rock of responsibility to him, where it belonged.
“Have you got any ideas?” He clearly didn’t enjoy having to ask twice.
“Something better than the bunny hop, sir?” I didn’t think I could do any better than that all in the same month. “Maybe sabotage Pompeii’s weapons capability?”
“Say it again, without the question mark.”
“We shouldn’t leave before sabotaging Pompeii’s weapons.”
“Why, that’s a striking idea, Lieutenant. Congratulations. Scotty—”
“Sir?”
“Do you know enough about destroyer-class vessels to find the auxiliary weapons control on the lower decks?”
“Captain,” Scott drawled with a charming gleam in his eyes, “ye’re asking an old pig breeder if he knows his way around a sow.”
“Take Piper and Sarda with you and throw some wrenches into their ability to fire phasers. Meet the rest of us in the aft transporter room and don’t take your time.”
“I’ll be able to cripple ‘em partially,” Scott said, “but I doubt permanently. They’ll be able to override from the bridge on a ship with this design, once they pinpoint the damage we do.”
“Doesn’t matter, Scotty. Just buy us the element of surprise.”
“I always did like surprise parties, Captain.”
Kirk took Spock’s phaser, and Spock stepped over to finish tying up the security guard Scott had started. One more guard, still dazed from the drug Merete had pumped into him, wavered in the line of Kirk’s phaser.
“Come on, Piper,” Mr. Scott snapped from the corridor.
I turned to follow, but didn’t complete my step, my eyes riveted to a man who in some previous life had been my private Aristotle.
“You knew,” I murmured.
Kirk blinked, brows lifting in artistic innocence. “How’s that?”
“You knew what Rittenhouse planned to do. You had it all figured out.” The words ruffled, nearly a whisper, from lips numb with awe. I spoke to myself, not to him.
He suddenly appeared impossibly modest and shrugged, “The signals were there. After all,” h
e added, “you saw them, didn’t you?”
I resisted answering, not sure it was a question.
His confidence, both in himself and in me, flowed between us, pumping my limbs, my whole being, full of the strength I needed to go on. I could do it now, continue the fight with Captain James Kirk waving his battle axe at the vanguard. I could go on as long as I didn’t have to lead anymore, carry his standard and charge at his flank. My shoulders ached from relief as the rock rolled off, and my feet stumbled beneath the lighter weight.
“Piper!” Mr. Scott called again.
Still looking at Kirk, I found I wasn’t ready for petty aggravations when I wheeled around and ran into the third guard’s plastishield breastplate. My shoulder rammed the obstruction aside and with new power I growled, “Out of my way, Cyclops.”
Mr. Scott was halfway to engineering by the time I caught up with him and Sarda a deck below, at the access door to the chief engineer’s direct turbolift. Nothing could stand between us and engineering now. No one else except this ship’s own engineer could authorize the engineer’s direct lift into use. On Enterprise, even the Captain needed Mr. Scott’s clearance to use that lift. Assuming it was the same here, I scooted in after them and felt safely cocooned as Mr. Scott keyed in the exclusive access code and rushed us below. He hadn’t lied. We hardly stepped off the lift before Mr. Scott was crawling into a circuitry portal in a dismal corner deep in engineering’s intestinal tract. He lay on his side in the floor-level hole, working circuit tabs and heads above him. “Eh,” he grunted with both effort and chagrin, “thought so.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked after a glance at Sarda.
“It’s the old design. I can’t keep it from firing altogether. I can only force it to overload after one or two initial shots. They’ll not be able to repair it as quickly, but they do get those first couple of blasts free and clear.”
Caught in his disgruntlement, I said, “Who would design a system like that?”
Electricity snapped, making Scott’s whole body jump slightly. He swore at whatever he was doing, then shifted position. “Well,” he finally explained, “the royalties kept me in scotch and scones for a decade and a half.”
I leaned over to Sarda and whispered, “Do me a favor, will you? Just reach down my throat and rip out my vocal chords?”
He would’ve come back with some stoic witticism if Mr. Scott hadn’t asked him about the programming in the computer banks that tied in to this kind of system. Had I paid any attention I probably could’ve understood what they were doing, but my mind was clouded over with pure relief.
A wizened hand appeared under my eyes, showing me that I’d been drooping my head slightly. I focused on a handful of circuit heads.
“There you are, lass,” he said. “We pipers have to stick together.”
“Sir?”
“I’m a piper too. Or I was, when I was a lad. Gave it up for engineering, though.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and found myself reluctant to be of no help except to hold a phaser and ask stupid questions, but since he was baiting me I wouldn’t disappoint him. “You’re a piper?” The inflections told him of my ignorance.
“Bagpipes.” Luckily he sensed the next automatic stupid question before I had to ask how he smoked a bagpipe. “A musical instrument,” he grunted, wrestling with a stubborn piece of machinery. Sarda climbed in to help, but I could only watch. There wasn’t room for three pairs of hands.
“I like music,” fell from my lips.
He chuckled, “There are those who’d debate whether pipes qualify as music. Sometimes I doubt it myself. ‘Course, t’me, music is a well-engineered piece of machinery. I played pipes when I was a boy in Aberdeen to please my grandmother, but I never really took to it. My grandfather played, and I took the lessons from him. Never could make my fingers move just right. Guess it wasn’t in m’blood. I inherited the grandfather’s pipes—a fine set … staghorn ferrels and silver mounts, a Hardie chanter … probably a good three hundred years old. More’s the pity I could never commit myself to the art.”
“What planet is Aberdeen on, sir?”
He gave me a look that said I’d just asked him where the sun was. “What planet? Aberdeen, Scotland. On Earth.”
“Oh—Scotland! Everybody in Scotland has your accent?”
“Or various versions of it.”
“Is piping hard to do, Mr. Scott?”
“Was for me. Ah, but my head was in the circuits and conduits that led me to engineering college.” He spoke with a slight regret, not for himself, I sensed, but for his grandparents, whose heritage he’d failed to carry on as they dreamed he would, a heritage not his by nature. “I shake ‘em out and blow ‘em twice a year on the grans’ birthdays, but …” He shrugged and gave it up.
“You were right to follow your own best talents, Mr. Scott,” I said, aiming my meaning beyond him, to Sarda, perhaps even to myself. “We all have the right to our own aspirations, and to create legacies of our own.”
He chuckled again, this time with satisfaction’s touch. “Wise girl,” he said. Had he set out to teach me something? “That does it. We’ve done all we can without alerting the bridge. Move out, Mr. Sarda.”
I had to shake myself back into a cautious mode for our sojourn through the ship to the transporter room, where the others were waiting for us. They arrived just as we did, making no explanation of where they had been. Of course, Sarda, Scott, and I had only been gone a matter of minutes—perhaps ten. I was losing any natural sense of time; the pressures had squeezed it out of me. Minutes dragged into long, haunting hours, aging me with every endless breath.
The destroyer’s transporter would only take four people at a time, so Kirk herded Scott, Spock, and McCoy in there first, washing me with the sudden revulsion of going with them. An irrational need filled me. I had to be the last one here. If I went first and something happened to my friends after I left, the guilt would never leave me. Suddenly, because somehow I had started all this, a terrible unacceptability came over the idea of his keeping me from tying the last knot. I had to be the last to leave.
Kirk scanned us, taking only the briefest instant to decide who should be fourth into the chamber, and parted his lips to speak.
I shot forward, ending up at the controls, “I’ll operate it, sir.”
Whether he heard the silent plea, I couldn’t tell, but he understood something in my eyes and nodded ever so slightly. “Very well, Lieutenant. Follow us back to the Enterprise, and we’ll deliberate on how to get through to Star Empire before this annoyance turns into a slaughter. You’re in charge. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
For the first time in a half century, I smiled. Even so, I was still surprised when he himself stepped onto the fourth transporter disc. Somehow such a move seemed unlikely. He wanted to be last too. But he gave it to me.
“I’ll watch the corridor,” Merete offered, and stepped out the door after Kirk gave her an approving nod. He looked at me then. “Energize.”
The Enterprise Salvation Committee dissolved in pillars of banded light, then disappeared to the hum of energy. They were gone. Their strength remained.
“Reset,” I told Sarda. The transporter clicked and beeped like a trained bird, pulling back on itself as it prepared to send the four of us to Enterprise. Beaming would occur automatically once we’d set the controls.
“Ready,” Sarda said.
I punched the intercom to the hallway. “Merete, get in here. And you two get on the pads. Where is she? Merete, get—”
She strode in and I motioned her into the chamber.
“Okay, let’s get off this ship.” I keyed in the preselected coordinates and engaged the automatic signal, giving myself eight seconds to join the others. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of dissolution as my body buzzed like bees into a billion separate particles of transferable energy, taking my consciousness with it at the last second. Captain Kirk’s face, his sober façade gentled by tha
t glimmering blend of calm and lightheartedness, formed first as my mind coagulated and my body, slightly nauseated, formed around me.
But no Captain Kirk waited for us. We transported into an empty room. “Where are they?” Scanner wondered. Then he noticed, as I did, as we all did, that the chamber we had formed into had only four transport pads, not eight as a starship would.
“We’re still on Pompeii!” Urgency added excitement to Sarda’s words in spite of him.
“Stay here!” I leaped straight to the deck and rounded on the control panel. It didn’t hold any secrets. “Deactivated!”
“They musta cut us off from the bridge,” Scanner said, joining me.
Sarda appeared right behind him. “We must leave this area immediately. They will surely be on their way to us. Doubtless security is already alerted.”
They headed for the door, but I got there first and wheeled to face them. “All right, listen to me! If we get separated, meet in the hangar deck. It’s our only chance now, damn it all.”
“The Arco sled will hold only three at most,” Sarda reminded. In that instant I hated him and his Vulcanness for assuming the negative.
“We can’t possibly fly out of here—” Merete began.
I shouted her down. “No arguments! We’re getting out! Let me worry about how. Phasers on heavy stun.”
The door slid open and we were in the corridor, an ominous, empty intestine pulsing with danger, because they were coming and we knew it. But from which direction? And how many? Would Rittenhouse come himself or just send guards? Though guards were more formidable, I found myself having to deal with a surging fear of Rittenhouse. I understood him and because of that I presented the worst kind of threat to his plans. As every moment passed my freedom boxed him deeper into a corner from which he knew he had to break out, no matter the cost. He would give me no more chances. My death would be logged as an unfortunate accident or a strategical necessity. He hadn’t missed a beat; I wouldn’t be the first. The best I might do would be to force a stand-off—blow his Admiral Santa Claus cover and force Star Fleet to deal with the creeping corruption in its guts. To do that, I had to stay free. Arbitrarily I tossed a mental coin and bolted left, down the corridor toward the center of the ship. At least we wouldn’t run into any dead ends.