by L. A. Graf
Sulu’s breath eased with relief. Someone on the bridge had closed the vacuum barriers across this section of the repair shafts, closing off the supply of air. He wiped the dusty film of ice from his face plate, then lifted his head to see where the white-suited intruder had gone and promptly thumped his helmet on something hard. He looked up to find a gleaming metal bulkhead directly overhead, and realized how close he’d come to being decapitated.
He pulled in one last, sweat-tainted breath and scrambled down the dimly lit passage, his vacuum-booted feet clumsy on the wall rungs. The narrow shaft curved away steeply below him as it angled down toward Deck Seven. Sulu couldn’t see anything beyond the bulky control panel on his chest, couldn’t hear anything except the trapped rasp of his own breath. Somewhere below him, he knew, another bulkhead would have sealed the access shaft below Deck Seven. The intruder could be anywhere in between.
When the blow came from below, Sulu’s adrenaline-pumped muscles responded before he could think, kicking down viciously at his attacker’s upward shove. It wasn’t until his third complete miss that he realized he was kicking at air. A fierce rush of wind blasted up the shaft past him, pouring in from an opened access panel somewhere below.
Sounds bloomed in the returning atmosphere, faint at first but growing louder as the air pressure stabilized. Beyond the thud of frantic footsteps and the metallic scrape of environmental suits, the only sound Sulu could identify was the unmistakable whirring click of a phaser rifle being armed.
The helmsman froze on his wall rungs, guessing from the abrupt lack of footsteps that his quarry had done the same. In the looming silence, Chekov’s voice sounded oddly fierce.
“Stop right there, whoever you are,” the security officer growled. “Because even if my first shot misses, the ricochet inside this shaft won’t.”
Chapter Twelve
CHEKOV?” SULU’s VOICE echoed down the narrow ladderway as though from an intercom, filtered and tinny. “Don’t let him get past you!”
Relief surged through Chekov with such startling strength that the security chief nearly sank to the floor in exhaustion. “He’s not going anywhere.” He raised his rifle to prod the bulky shimmer of reflected heat above him. “All right, you—climb down. Slowly.”
The prisoner hesitated only a moment before awkwardly disentangling himself from the ladder and shuffling out into the hall. Chekov knew without asking that this wasn’t his saboteur—the heat reading wasn’t nearly high enough, even taking the environmental suit into account. The only strong primary heat sources were the suit’s power packs and a bright square of brilliance at the top of his helmet. Chekov realized this must be the helmet lamp when Sulu came down to meet him and the same bright white spot swept across the visor’s spectrum.
“What are you doing down here?” Chekov asked, lowering the rifle so he could lean the muzzle on the floor.
“I caught this guy breaking into my quarters!” Sulu gestured sharply at the suited figure between them. The joints of his suit creaked with the sudden movement. “I was trying to stop him when he went down this access ladder.” Apparently seeing something on Chekov’s face, he asked, “Why? What’s the matter?”
“I was chasing the saboteur.”
Sulu’s outline pulled sharply upright with surprise, helmet light rebounding off the opposite wall. “You saw him?”
“I shot him.” Chekov waved his rifle toward the tracked-up blood on the floor, wondering if they’d be able to clean all this up before the first shift crew came on duty. All he knew now was that his socks were wet, and the sleeve of his tunic was starting to feel clammy as the blood in the fabric cooled. “He must have used the same access ladder before you voided the atmosphere. Damn—the vacuum will have boiled the blood away and ruined the trail.” He flexed his hand again; the fingers moved stiffly, coldly. “I can tell you one thing, though—whoever he is, he isn’t human.”
The prisoner’s bark of surprise sounded more like a squeak over the helmet communicator. Stumbling back from Sulu in the doorway, the stranger tried to turn and lumber away, his helmet light vanishing from Chekov’s sight as soon as his suit was turned. Chekov passed the rifle to his right hand again, and in two long steps caught the storage hook on the back of the suit and jerked the fugitive off his feet. Pain seared across his back and shoulders with the effort, and he was swaying on the edge of gray when he jammed the rifle under the environmental suit’s breastplate so the occupant could feel the muzzle. “Don’t even try it.” He tried to keep his voice from sounding thick and muzzy, but he didn’t think he succeeded too well. “Who is this guy?” he asked Sulu, blinking the helmsman into focus.
Sulu lifted his hands to shoulder height, the only way to shrug inside an environmental suit, and came a few steps closer. “I just chased him here. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Chekov scowled down at the man below him. “I hate having to guess.”
“Please—” The voice inside the suit was paper-thin, but hardly weak. “Gentlemen, surely we can reach some sort of compromise?”
“The security chief’s on my side,” Sulu pointed out. “I don’t have to compromise.” He clumped over to Chekov’s side, tugging off his environmental suit gloves. “What were you doing in my room?”
“I-I was lost.” The stranger squirmed a little under the rifle, but Chekov didn’t let up the pressure, not sure he could bring the man down a second time. “I was looking for something. I lost my bearings in the hull breach—I didn’t mean to cause any problems.”
Somehow, Chekov wasn’t convinced of their prisoner’s veracity. “What’s your name and rank?”
A little hiss of sound that might have been a laugh whisked past the suit’s outer speaker. The prisoner’s helmet thumped against the ground when he shifted position. “I’m afraid that’s a little harder to explain—”
The lights came up with almost dizzying suddenness. New layers of heat and reflected long-wave light crumbled the visor’s clean images. Chekov stepped away from their prisoner long enough to trap the rifle under his left elbow so he could reach up and pull off the visor without having to move his wounded arm. Even that small movement slammed a jolt of pain across his shoulders and made his vision dim.
He’d grown so used to interpreting the infrared signals through the visor that the dusty blue face staring up at him didn’t even seem unusual until Sulu gasped with shock. Then the flaxen hair and pale antennae had their impact. “You’re an Andorian!” Sulu pushed in front of him to throw an arm across his chest and catch him from staggering, and Chekov had to lean far to one side to keep the Andorian in view. “Who the hell are you?”
“My God, what happened?” The helmsman’s voice came suddenly clear as he popped the seals on his environmental suit helmet and threw it to the floor. “You’re bleeding all over your gun!”
Chekov tried irritably to elbow the helmsman aside, swaying only slightly against the crash of nausea that rose up to greet him. Sulu was right—the rifle’s muzzle had channeled a thin drizzle of blood to the breast of the Andorian’s environmental suit. “I’m …” He fingered the cold, wet fabric of his tunic sleeve, frowning. “… I’ll be fine….”
Then Chekov felt the deck spin out from under him, and he reached to grab at Sulu’s arm to steady himself. He didn’t even realize he was falling until his shoulder slammed against the helmsman, and he knocked them both to the floor.
“Oh, God, Pavel, don’t be dead.” Sulu squirmed out from under Chekov’s limp body, trying not to roll him onto his back. The stench of charred clothes and skin clung to the corridor, a thin haze of smoke now vanishing into the ventilators. The floor beneath them was slippery with puddled blood, and Sulu briefly tried to tug Chekov out of it before he realized that it was still oozing out of the security officer’s ruined shoulder. Despite the appalling pallor of his face, Chekov’s chest rose and fell with steady breathing. Sulu’s gaze slid aside from the sickening glimpse of scorched bone below the bloody flesh, and fell on
the white-suited Andorian, trying to scuttle away.
“Hey!” The helmsman’s pounce carried all the weight of his anguish and frustration, slamming the alien against the far wall with one arm twisted up behind his back. With his free hand, Sulu grabbed Chekov’s blood-slicked phaser rifle and jammed it into the back of the Andorian’s neck. “Don’t move!”
The alien froze, only turning his head to regard Sulu with an ambiguous pinkish gaze. “Shouldn’t you be doing something for your friend instead of assaulting me?” he asked in a not-quite-innocent voice.
“Assaulting you is what he’d want me to do.” Sulu prodded him with the rifle. “Let’s go. There’s a communications panel down the hall. You’re going to call sickbay for me, and then you’re going to call the captain.”
The Andorian’s antennae cringed beneath his transparent helmet. “Oh, no, I don’t think so—”
The double clatter of footsteps interrupted him. Sulu turned his head and sagged with relief when he saw a familiar, wiry figure striding around the corridor junction. “Dr. McCoy, over here!”
The doctor sprinted down the hall toward them. “Good God, what’s going on here?” He dropped to his knees beside Chekov and reached into his medical kit. Aaron Kelly trailed behind him, an appalled look on his coffee-dark face. “Who the hell shot Chekov?”
“The guy who bombed the ship.” Sulu swung around, bringing the Andorian with him by the simple expedient of not removing the phaser rifle from his neck. The alien groaned theatrically but didn’t try to resist. “Is Chekov going to be all right?”
“He’ll live.” McCoy flipped the lid from a bandage canister, and a pale sheen of anesthetic foam hissed out over Chekov’s seared shoulder. “But I can tell you right now, he’s not going to be real happy about it.”
The turbolift doors down the hall slapped open before Sulu could respond. A slim form in a red environmental suit vaulted out, followed by a defensive wedge of black-clad security guards. “What happened?” Kirk strode down the corridor toward them, his eyes jerking from Chekov’s prone form to the white-suited Andorian. The alien visibly flinched beneath the captain’s fierce scrutiny. “Is this the saboteur?”
Sulu shook his head. “No, sir. This is the guy I chased out of my room and down the maintenance ladder.” He jerked his chin back at the security corridor, the acrid bite of scorched plastic and metal catching in his throat as he did so. Sulu tasted the underlying bitterness of burnt flesh and clenched his teeth against a lurch of sickness. “The guy who set the bomb was down here, shooting Chekov.”
“And two other guards,” added Aaron Kelly in a small, shocked voice. “He would have shot me, too, if Lieutenant Chekov hadn’t stopped him.”
Kirk snapped the bolts on his helmet and lifted it off sweat-dampened hair. The frown in his eyes told Sulu he was tallying all the information he’d been given. “Did you see who did the shooting?” he asked the auditor.
Kelly shook his head numbly. “The lights went out before I heard the first shots.” Sulu saw his dark throat tighten with a swallow. “As soon as the force barrier on my cell dropped, I ran. I just—ran and hid.”
“Probably the most efficient thing you could do, Mr. Kelly,” Kirk commented dryly.
McCoy finished spraying synthetic skin across Chekov’s back, then looked up at the captain. “Jim, if you’re done questioning this boy, I’d like to send him back to sickbay to get a transport sled for Chekov.”
“He’s free to go.” Kirk handed his helmet to the nearest guard, then went down on one knee to examine the double trail of blood splattered down the corridor. “Bones, does all this blood look human to you?”
The doctor glanced down at the muddle of bloodstains on the floor. “That orange stuff sure doesn’t.” He pulled a scanner out of his medikit and passed it over the nearest dabble of orange.
Sulu blinked, unpleasant memories of past bar fights running through his head. “It looks like Orion blood to me, Captain.”
“I thought so, too.” Kirk rose to his feet and swung to face the security guards without waiting for McCoy’s confirming nod. “Begin a shipwide search for an injured Orion, probably armed and dangerous. Include all maintenance ladders and access shafts, starting with this one. We know he went somewhere on it.”
“Aye, sir.” Ensign Lemieux lifted off her helmet and turned to face the rest of the guards. “Hrdina and Samuelsson, you take the access ladders. The rest of you, fan out on this deck.” She paused, glancing at the silent Andorian while the guards scattered. “Should I put the prisoner in the brig before I leave, sir?”
“No.” Kirk waved her away, his voice turning cold. “I have some questions I want to ask him.”
The Andorian’s head swung up abruptly. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear!”
“Anything to do with what?” Kirk stepped forward, giving the blue-skinned humanoid a flinty look. The alien skittered back, stopping only when Sulu nudged the rifle even more firmly into his neck.
“With bombing your ship.” The helmet communicator flattened the Andorian’s nasal accent into a whine. “I didn’t do it, Captain. In fact, I’m the one who told your security chief where to find it!”
“I believe you didn’t do it.” Kirk took another step toward the quailing alien, then reached out to pop the bolts on the Andorian’s helmet and lift it clear of his antennae. “But I don’t believe you didn’t have anything to do with it … Muav Haslev.”
The Andorian jerked back so fiercely that the helmet tore out of Kirk’s hands and went crashing to the floor. Sulu found himself wedged up against the wall, phaser rifle squeezed tight between his chest and the alien’s back. He grunted and pushed the Andorian forward again, afraid he’d pull the trigger by mistake. The vinegar-sharp smell of alien sweat drifted over him.
“How did you know who I am?” Haslev demanded, his voice deeper but no less defensive now that he was speaking out loud instead of through the suit. Pale antennae quivered nervously above his damp flaxen hair.
Kirk snorted. “When two Orion ships conspire to slow us down and board us, and then an Orion stowaway sabotages our ship so we can’t get away, I begin to get the feeling I’ve got something on board the Orions want.” He leaned forward to thump a gloved fist on the alien’s breastplate. “Right now, Mr. Haslev, you have the distinction of being the one thing in the universe the Orions want the most. One missing Andorian weapons scientist, recently employed on a top-secret military research project.”
“I wasn’t employed there,” Haslev corrected him indignantly. “I was in charge! They couldn’t have done any of that work without me.”
McCoy scrambled to his feet, eyebrows lifting in surprise. “If you’re Muav Haslev, what in hell are you doing on board the Enterprise? I thought the Orions had kidnapped you!”
“Kidnapped? Is that what they’re saying now?” Haslev sniffed with undisguised disdain. “I left of my own accord, thank you very much. The Andorian government undervalued my contributions to their research, so I went out and found someone who would pay me what I was worth.”
Kirk reached out with both hands, and Sulu skipped prudently out of the way before the captain shoved the Andorian back against the corridor wall. “You sold Federation-level military technology to the Orions?”
“Why not?” Haslev squirmed for a moment, stopping only when Sulu poked him warningly in the ribs with the phaser rifle. His voice was aggrieved. “Their money spends just like everybody else’s.”
It was all Sulu could do not to take up the rifle and beat him with it. He restrained himself, watching Kirk step back with a grimace of disgust. “Selling any military technology to a neutral star system is a direct violation of Federation policy, Mr. Haslev,” the captain said coldly. “We’re going to have to arrest you.”
“But it wasn’t like anyone in the Federation wanted it!” Haslev’s quartz-pink eyes widened in alarm. “No one even thought it would work—they said if we wasted any more research on it, they’d cut ou
r funding! I had to go to the Orions. They were the only ones who believed in me.”
McCoy snorted, stepping back as Aaron Kelly guided a medical transport sled down the hallway toward them. “If the Orions were so all-fired wonderful, what are you doing hiding away on a Federation ship?”
“We had a disagreement over an item in my contract,” the Andorian admitted, the fine lines of his cheeks darkening to a brilliant indigo. “They wanted to kill me; I didn’t want to die.”
That seemed reasonable enough, whichever side of it Sulu considered. Kirk’s mouth twitched slightly, as if he thought so, too. “Orions can be like that,” he said smoothly. “What technology did you sell to them, Mr. Haslev?”
“I don’t think I should tell you,” the scientist said after a thoughtful pause. “Unless, of course, you promise not to arrest me.”
Sulu saw Kirk’s gloves clench into fists at his sides. “The only thing I can promise to do, Mr. Haslev,” the captain said between his teeth, “is ship you back to the Andorians as soon as possible.”
Haslev sighed. “You Starfleet people are all so short-sighted,” he complained. “You just don’t recognize true genius. I knew it would be like this when I came on board.”
“How did you come on board?” McCoy glanced up from sliding Chekov onto the transport platform. “I don’t remember any intruder alerts going off.”
“No, there was one,” Sulu said suddenly. Memories of chaotic alarms and red alert sirens swept through his head, but it took him a moment to pin down the time and place. “It was right after we left Sigma One, during that radiation burst.”
“But Chekov said one of the auditors set off that alarm.” Kirk turned to glance at Aaron Kelly, hovering behind McCoy like a dark, worried shadow. “Was that you?”
Kelly nodded sheepishly. “I don’t really know what kind of alarm I tripped, sir—I just banged on the nearest security panel until something went off.”