by L. A. Graf
“Captain.” Spock’s voice broke into their communicator channel without ceremony. “Commander Uhura and I have managed to partially restore intercom circuits on Deck Six.”
A little kernel of relief bloomed in Kirk, a sense of gaining control again after all this chaos. “That was fast. Patch me into whatever’s working.”
There was a short pause, then Uhura’s quiet voice replaced Spock’s. “Captain, right now I can only link to Deck Six via shipboard circuits. Can you reach the panel in your turbolift?”
Kirk struggled to half-turn, bracing himself against Sulu’s shoulder as he reached for the intercom. “Barely,” he said. The helmsman reached up to help him hit the button. “Am I on line now?”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain raised his voice to cut through the background hum of the turbolift. “Kirk to Chekov. Repeat, this is Captain Kirk calling Lieutenant Chekov. Can you hear me?”
What answered him through the communicator wasn’t silence—it was the slow, bitter cracking of metal as it cooled to absolute zero. Kirk lifted his hand from the panel abruptly, feeling as though the sound of his crippled ship had burned it.
“No reply, sir.” Beneath her professional tone, Kirk heard the deep sadness in Uhura’s voice.
He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. Grief was a luxury they couldn’t afford right now. “Continue to monitor Deck Six intercoms from the bridge,” he said instead. “Let me know if you pick up anything. Spock, I want you on our suit channel once we’re in the breach. You may notice something we miss.”
“A logical precaution, Captain,” the Vulcan agreed. “With your permission, I shall monitor your tricorder output as well.”
“Do that.” The turbolift hushed to a halt on Deck Six and promptly began chirping in alarm, its doors locking down against the vacuum it sensed on the other side. Kirk found himself suddenly chilled by the prospect of searching that darkness for unlucky crew. “Open us up, Scotty,” he said, very quietly.
“Aye, sir.” It was the chief engineer’s turn to try to reach past the row of air canisters and tap a command into the lift’s control console to override its safety mechanism. The blurred reflections of nine helmet lights steadied against the doors, and crew members braced themselves for the illusory buffet of wind that came with decompression.
The line of shadow between the doors widened into devouring blackness as the lift doors slid apart. Kirk watched the tattered shreds of their atmosphere rush beyond the reach of his helmet light, a spray of winking ice and frozen gases. Viewed through a vacuum, the corridor ahead looked two-dimensional and hyper-sharp: abnormally bright where their shifting beams of light hit it, and utterly dark elsewhere. Kirk missed the warm diffraction of atmosphere, missed the myriad small sounds that normally go with walking. All he could hear as he stepped out of the lift was the even hush-shush of his own breathing and the creak of his suit joints.
He stepped to one side so the others could file out, scanning the hallway with one quick sweep of his helmet light. “Security team, circle the outer corridor first.” He pointed down an adjacent hall as the engineers dragged their equipment out of the lift. “Check all turbolift exits and access shafts for signs of tracked blood, or other traces of our saboteur. He had to get off this deck somehow.”
“Aye, sir.” Kirk recognized Lemieux’s soft French-Canadian accent and determined face as the black-suited guard emerged from the lift. “Final assembly point, sir?”
Kirk glanced across at Sulu, brows raised inquiringly behind his face shield. “The bomb was placed in sector thirty-nine,” the helmsman replied. “Cabin eight.”
Kirk nodded. “We’ll meet you there, Ensign.”
“Aye, sir.” Lemieux turned, waving one of her three subordinates into the curving forward corridor and another into the aft, while she and the third headed down the central hall bisecting the deck. Their black environmental suits blended so well with the lightless deck that Kirk lost sight of them almost immediately.
“Sulu, grab that tricorder.” Kirk glanced over his shoulder at the engineering crew as they began to set up their equipment. “Scotty, can you assess the amount of damage on Deck Six from here?”
“I’m getting the first glimmers of it, Captain.” The chief engineer watched his scrolling monitor with a frown. Behind him, the other engineers wrestled portable airlocks into place around the turbolift doors, preparing to reflood the car with air before they sent it back for a second repair team. “The entire crew quarters on this deck have gone to vacuum, that’s for sure. Judging by the voltage drops I’m getting across the sensor network, it looks like we’ve lost about three cabins’ worth of hull. It must have been a pretty big blast.”
“Estimated time for repairs?”
This time Scott did look up, the furrow between his eyes deepening. “Not less than several hours, sir. Possibly a full day, depending on structural involvement. But we should have power up and running fairly soon, and most of the deck will be back to atmosphere as soon as we isolate the breach.”
“Good.” Kirk swung away from the turbolift and moved carefully into the central corridor, unused to walking in a world with only two dimensions. Sulu followed less confidently, trailing his hand along the corridor wall to keep his balance.
Cabin doors crept eerily into their slanting helmet lights, only to whisper away into darkness again. They passed the larger darkness of the central corridor junction, seeing the distant firefly gleams of security guards down each intersecting arm. Kirk resisted an urge to signal open each cabin they passed, search each interior for some sign of his security chief. He didn’t know what he wanted more—to delay finding out what had happened to Chekov, or to find his body immediately and get on with the pain.
Switching his suit communicator to a private channel, he said quietly, “Spock—anything from Chekov?”
“No, Captain.”
“We haven’t found anything here, either.”
The Vulcan paused—judging Kirk’s mood by his tone, perhaps, or maybe just dealing with some other fragment of emergency business. “It is unlikely that Lieutenant Chekov is still on Deck Six,” Spock finally pointed out carefully.
And if he were, Kirk knew his first officer was thinking, it was even more unlikely he’d be able to answer. But everywhere else on the ship had working intercoms. “I don’t think we’re going to find him,” Kirk admitted. It wasn’t as hard to say as he had thought it would be.
Spock’s answer was surprisingly gentle. “That is unfortunate. He was an exemplary officer.”
“Yes—yes, he was.”
A subliminal warning tingled across Kirk’s skin, distracting him from his mourning. Still, it took him several more steps before he registered that the sparks of light ahead of him were actually stars and not just the scattered reflections of his and Sulu’s helmet lights. He slowed to a stop at the lip of the breach, overwhelmed by a blast-torn expanse taller and deeper and wider than he had ever feared to see. “Oh, my God—”
The vertigo alone made him feel as though he stood at the very edge of the world.
Sulu braced a hand against the last edge of corridor wall, feeling disappointed when no adequate sensation made it through his heavily gloved palm. The blast had taken out not only the ship’s hull, but also the partition separating the auditors’ cabins from the curving outer passageway. A fractured latticework of metal was all that remained of either wall.
“Steady, Commander,” Kirk warned him through the suit communicator. “Start taking tricorder readings. Spock, we’re at the breach.”
“Acknowledged, Captain.” The Vulcan’s calm voice seemed oddly out of place amid the twisted and charred ruins of the deck. He paused while Sulu scanned the breached area with his tricorder. “Initial analysis indicates that the damage was produced by a large thermochemical explosion. The pattern of destruction is consistent with that produced by an overloaded power pack, possibly one belonging to a phaser or other phase-shifted optic d
evice.”
“You mean a device like a metal cutter?” Kirk paced across the auditors’ quarters, not seeming to notice the yawning gulf of space just beyond his left shoulder. He stopped near a blackened expanse on the floor, then looked up and beckoned Sulu to join him. The helmsman took a deep breath, stepping gingerly over the shock-crumpled decking to take a close-up tricorder reading of the blast zone.
“The power pack from a metal cutter could produce such an explosion,” Spock conceded. “As could that of a welder or resin-caster. In fact, there are a number of specialized tools—”
Kirk didn’t wait for him to finish. “What you’re saying is that the saboteur could have obtained his weapon from almost any engineering section of the Enterprise.”
“Yes, Captain,” the Vulcan agreed. “Or brought it on board himself. Our entry scanners are not designed to recognize power packs as possible weapons.”
Kirk grunted. “Maybe they should be.” He turned as four black-suited guards approached from the far side of the shattered cabin wall, helmet lights weaving a luminous tapestry across the destruction. “Well, gentlemen? Any luck?”
“No, sir.” Lemieux sounded as if she took the failure personally. Sulu glanced up at her tight face, then at those of her fellow guards, seeing the same grim expression on each of them. He realized that he wasn’t the only one mourning Chekov’s loss. “We did locate the break in the main power circuit, sir. Mr. Scott says we should have power back shortly.”
“Good.” Kirk stepped back, drawing Sulu with him into the corridor. “I want all of you to examine this area closely before the engineers rip it apart. We’re looking for evidence of two murders as well as sabotage, so report anything suspicious.”
“Aye, sir.” The guards scattered across the auditors’ quarters, although Sulu noted that all of them skirted the open area in the hull as carefully as he had. His gaze lifted to the star-spattered dark beyond the frayed edges of the ship. Given a choice of fates, eternal drift through that limitless black gulf did not seem like such an awful one to him. Unfortunately, Sulu was fairly sure Chekov wouldn’t have agreed.
“Sulu.” Uhura’s quiet voice touched his ear, as close as if she were a guardian spirit sitting on his shoulder. “I’m getting a strange interference pattern in one of the communicator panels in sector thirty-six. Could you go down and check on it for me?”
“Captain?” Sulu glanced at Kirk inquiringly. The captain nodded permission without taking his own intent gaze away from the breach in his ship. The bleakness on Kirk’s face did not surprise Sulu—the helmsman knew it stemmed from the ship’s injury, as well as from the loss of crew.
Settling the tricorder at his waist, Sulu turned his back on the blasted area, tracing his steps back down the central ship’s corridor to sector thirty-six. Halfway down the hall, he caught sight of his own door and suppressed a mental image of the huddled plants inside, blackened and torn by the cruel frost of vacuum. At least, the water chameleons hadn’t been there. Unbidden, the memory of Chekov’s voice floated up inside his head, protesting, “I just thought someone should keep an eye on them, that’s all.”
Sulu’s throat tightened. Here in the stark emptiness of the hull breach, it was getting harder and harder to resist the knowledge that he might never see his friend again. There was enough time for him to get out, his mind insisted, but the ache in his chest didn’t believe it. The security officer would have reported to the bridge by now if he’d been able to. Sulu thought about the water chameleons, filling Chekov’s silent cabin with their feathery chirping, and felt the back of his throat burn with grief.
“Uhura, which—” His voice caught unexpectedly on the ache in his chest, and Sulu had to take a deep breath to clear it. “Which communicator panel are you having trouble with?” he asked Uhura through the suit channel.
“It’s not trouble, precisely.” The communications officer’s soft voice was almost hesitant, as if she weren’t sure how much to say. “I’d just like to know where the interference is coming from. I’m reading it in several locations, but it seems strongest just down the hall from turbolift nine.”
“All right.” Sulu found the panel and eyed it carefully. There were no signs of damage from the blast. “Nothing looks out of order to me. What seems to be the problem?”
“It’s not exactly a problem.” Uhura hesitated again. “Sulu, put your hand up on the panel, and tell me if you can feel some kind of vibration.”
He obeyed her without asking questions, knowing she must have a good reason for the request. “I can’t feel much through these suit gloves,” he warned as he touched the panel. A faint shiver touched his skin, then vanished. “There was—something. I’m not sure what it was.”
“Does it feel stronger if you move farther down the hall?” Uhura asked urgently.
“Um—yes, I think so.” The vibration came and went irregularly as Sulu trailed a hand down the corridor wall, its intensity increasing with each faint thrum. There seemed to be a pattern to it, but he couldn’t quite catch what it was. He concentrated on it so hard that the end of the wall caught him unaware.
Sulu stopped abruptly, peering into the dark central junction. “I’ve run out of wall,” he told Uhura. “Where do you want me to go now?”
“To the right,” she said at once. “That’s where the turbolift is.”
“The turbolift—” Sulu cursed and spun around the corner to slap both hands flat on the turbolift doors. Vibrations shook the double layer of plate metal, the soundless echo of some impact from inside. “Uhura, it’s coming from inside the lift chamber! There’s someone in there!”
“I thought so.” The communications officer’s muted voice could not hide her excitement “Put your helmet against the door, Sulu, so I can hear the pattern. I think it’s Starfleet code.”
He leaned up against the metal obediently, letting the vibration rattle his face plate. Once inside his suit’s small shell of air, it translated to a faint but distinct tapping sound. Sulu listened to the pattern of intervals between thumps—short, short, long, very long—and built up a message letter by letter. “K, O,” he muttered, hearing Uhura echo him softly from the bridge. “V, C, H, E,—Uhura, it’s Chekov!”
Her wordless cry of delight confirmed his guess. Sulu raised a fist to signal back at his friend, but before he could even begin, a glaring cascade of light staggered him back from the lift. By the time his dark-adjusted eyes realized it was only the wall lights, coming back on as the ship’s power was restored, it was too late. His outstretched hands met only the familiar long humming of a turbolift moving away.
Chapter Eleven
THE TURBOLIFT LIGHTS bloomed warmly into being, and Chekov jerked a look up at the ceiling panels before it occurred to him that he’d be blinded. Squinting, hand over his eyes, he swayed against the closed lift doors when the anti-gravs hummed into life and dropped the car straight downward.
“Now no one’s going to know I’m in here.” His voice rebounded hollowly from the curved lift walls. He shivered from more than the vacuum-induced cold, thinking about how close he’d come to never getting out of this turbolift alive. Maybe he should be grateful to be leaving the breached area by any means at all. “Security,” he told the computer, chafing his arms to rub away the cold. “Deck Seven.”
After spraying the last layer of plasfoam over the bomb in the auditors’ quarters, Chekov honestly hadn’t thought he’d make it out of the blast area in time. He’d run for the turbolift opposite the one Sulu would have taken, not trusting a lift car from Sulu’s turboshaft to be in range when he needed it. The doors of his lift had swished shut just ahead of the explosion—a short, flat, percussive bang that tore away the strength of its own sound as it tore away the ship’s atmosphere. Chekov had felt the lift buck alarmingly, then the lights had pitched into blackness, and he’d begun pacing his vacuum-sealed coffin, doomed to passively wait. At the time, pounding his name out, over and over, on the closed lift doors had been the only action he
could think to take toward his own rescue. He suspected even now that it wouldn’t have been enough.
The lift he rode slewed gently sideways, then bumped to a stop. He stepped closer to the doors, ready for them to open and release him. He needed to trace who had left him that message—he wanted to see lab results on anything the search parties found at the bomb scene. He wanted to call Sulu and the captain, and tell them that he was alive. When the doors slid open to the security corridor on Deck Seven, though, they revealed only a blackness as deep and broad as the vacuum above. Chekov caught the door with one hand, holding it open while he poised nervously in the doorway. He hoped Davidson and Tate had called engineering about the blackout; he didn’t much look forward to navigating his own department in the dark.
“Ensign Davidson?”
He listened into the darkness with all his might, but heard only ship sounds and distant thrummings. He had power to the turbo shaft, dammit, and the hull breach was on the starboard side of the hull. What had happened to security?
“Tate?”
Nothing.
As the duty officers, Davidson and Tate wouldn’t have left their posts, he knew that. Not against his orders, and not while Kelly was still in the brig as a prisoner. Chekov’s skin tingled with premonitions of disaster, and he slipped into the open corridor. The air smelled clear and warm. No breach then. Circuitry damage, maybe. But all over this area? He started around the corner toward security, sliding his feet along the deck in small, uncertain steps as he fought for equilibrium in the darkness.
A spark of yellow-white light blinked at the fringe of his vision, and instinct recognized the flash before thinking did. Chekov threw himself to the deck just as a crackling bolt of phaser fire ricocheted off the corner to spatter against the opposite wall.
In the silence that followed, Chekov held his breath to keep from being heard above the tick of cooling metal behind him. That had been a phaser set to high heat burn, not stun. Raising gingerly up on his elbows, he strained his eyes for some bit of light, but total darkness reduced the security corridor to a hard, impenetrable black expanse. He tried to remember exactly how long it had been since he’d been told about the bomb and its explosion. God, this saboteur got around. But what could he want in security? And what had he done to the ensigns on duty?