Death Count

by L. A. Graf

  “How convenient,” commented Haslev. He saw Kirk’s glare and added hurriedly, “For me, of course. I wondered why no one had been looking for me.”

  “Where have you been hiding?” Kirk asked.

  The Andorian blinked pink eyes at him. “I’m not sure I should tell you that, either.”

  Sulu gave Kirk a meaningful glance across Haslev’s shoulder. “We can always leave him out as bait for the Orion saboteur,” the helmsman suggested.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Kirk agreed. Haslev jerked upright, his short antennae fluttering with outrage.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” He glanced from Kirk’s grim face to Sulu’s impassive stare. “Oh, all right. If you must know, I’ve been hiding in your turbolift shafts.”

  “Is that what’s been causing all these damn lift delays?” McCoy grunted with annoyance. “How’d you manage to keep from being crushed?”

  A smirk curled Haslev’s pale lips upward. “I’ve found all the computer codes on board this ship ridiculously easy to manipulate. You really should consider hiring someone like me to update them.”

  McCoy snorted. “I don’t know about you, Jim, but I’ve heard just about enough from this guy. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take your security chief off to sickbay.”

  Kirk removed one glove and rubbed a tired hand across his face, deliberately turning a shoulder to Haslev. “How is he, Bones?”

  “Lucky,” the doctor replied promptly. “Fortunately for him, it takes a phaser more than a few seconds to burn through a human shoulder blade. He’s going to need some skin regeneration, probably a bone graft, and a ligament reattachment as well.”

  “Get on it,” Kirk said. “I want to talk to him as soon as he’s awake.”

  “I am—awake, sir.” The wavering voice was almost unrecognizable except for the accent. Sulu cast a worried glance at the medical sled, seeing nothing beyond the back of a tousled dark head. Kirk hurried around the other side of the transport, crouching beside the wounded security officer. “Sir, the saboteur—”

  “—is Orion, we know.” Kirk rested a hand on Chekov’s good shoulder. “Did he say anything while he was down here?”

  “No, sir.” The Russian took a steadying breath. “He’s armed—with at least one phaser, set on high heat, to avoid setting off the weapons detectors—that’s how he got Davidson and Tate—” His head lifted slightly. “He escaped—down the access ladder—”

  “We’ve already started a shipwide search. Don’t worry, we’ll catch him.” The certainty in the captain’s voice seemed to reassure Chekov as much as the words. The security officer relaxed back onto the medical transport with a sigh, and McCoy towed him down the corridor. Sulu watched them go, his eyes widening in surprise when a familiar tall figure stepped out of the turbolift and skirted carefully around the sled.

  “Spock.” Kirk’s head lifted alertly. “What’s the problem?”

  “There is no problem, Captain. I merely have some information that I did not wish to transmit to you over ship channels.” The Vulcan stopped a few paces away from Haslev and regarded him calmly. “Muav Haslev, I presume?”

  The Andorian’s antennae quivered in vexation. “Does everyone in the universe know who I am now?” he demanded querulously.

  “The wages of treachery, Mr. Haslev.” Kirk lifted an eyebrow at Spock. “Can you give me this information in front of our—er—guest?”

  “I believe so, Captain.” As usual, Spock’s lean face betrayed no emotions, but Sulu got the distinct impression of urgency. “I have been calculating the probable arrival times of the Orion ships Umyfymu and Mecufi. Based upon our last contact, I estimate they will overtake our current position in approximately three hours thirteen minutes.”

  Kirk thoughtfully rubbed a thumb across his mouth. “And how long does Mr. Scott think our hull repairs will take?”

  “No less than five hours, Captain, even with all available engineers assigned to the task.”

  “Hmm.” Kirk swung back toward Muav Haslev, whose blue face had faded to ashy violet. “Well, that settles it, Mr. Haslev. We’re throwing you off the ship.”

  “What?” Haslev’s antennae flexed in shock. “You can’t do that!”

  “On board the Enterprise, I can do anything I want to.” Kirk glanced over at Sulu, one corner of his mouth lifting with amusement. “Mr. Sulu, I want you to get an interstellar shuttle ready for the trip back to Sigma One. Plot a course that will take you wide of the Orions.” The captain gave Haslev one last ironic look. “We’re going to send our golden goose away before the foxes get here to fight over it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I KNOW JUST THE THING you need to give you extra help on your job. Do you have any idea what a Mark IV Defense Com goes for on the open market? I can get it for you at cost.”

  Chekov tried to align his jacket shoulders so they didn’t feel so awkward over McCoy’s restrictive sling. He wondered if Haslev appreciated how lucky he was that Chekov didn’t have a free hand to clamp over his mouth all the way down to the shuttle bay.

  “Come on—uncuff my hands.”

  Probably not.

  “Shut up,” Chekov said, not turning to look at his prisoner, “or I’ll shoot you.”

  “Pavel—” The rebuke in Uhura’s tone was obvious despite the long whistle of their turbolift plummeting down to the secondary hull. In a slightly-too-big new uniform, without her usual elegant touch of gold at ears and throat, she looked smaller and more fragile than usual. “Maybe you ought to let somebody else escort Mr. Haslev to Sigma One with us.”

  “There isn’t anybody else.” Chekov lifted his left arm to let her step around in front of him, recognizing by the way she tugged at his jacket that she’d finally tired of watching him fumble to dress himself. “The captain needs all the able-bodied guards to track down the saboteur, and Dr. McCoy won’t let me do anything even if I stay on board. I might as well sit on a shuttle and hold a phaser on him—” He jerked his chin in Haslev’s direction. “—for the next four days so all the healthy people can stay at home.”

  Uhura twisted her mouth into a wry grimace while she slipped his belt off and rolled it up between her hands. “Does that mean if I call Dr. McCoy, he’ll tell me you were released from sickbay and returned to active duty?”

  No. It meant McCoy would tell her Chekov had been released and sent home to sit around and do nothing for the next five days. Chekov suspected she knew that already. “He released me,” he sighed, feeling boyish as she half-fastened the collar of his jacket and left the rest to hang open. “If I really wanted to ignore doctor’s orders, I’d stay on board and run around after Orions. As it is, sitting on a shuttle is no different than sitting in my cabin. Please—” He pulled at his jacket again, resigned to being uncomfortable until the sling came off. “Just let me do this.”

  The turbolift doors coasted open on the vast pod of the landing bay, and Haslev asked meekly, “Would it help if I said I was sure I could take care of myself for the trip?”

  Chekov ushered Uhura out the door. “No.”

  Two rows of shuttles tracked like gleaming metal peas down the long open space. Chekov glanced around, then located the Hawking among the large interstellar shuttles near the landing bay doors. Uhura angled for the craft without pausing, her footsteps echoing through the bay ahead of Chekov’s. “If I were being a good officer,” she complained, “I’d tell Captain Kirk you assigned yourself to this security detail and make sure he didn’t let you come.”

  Then thank God she could be convinced to just be a good friend. “Thank you.”

  They rounded the Hawking’s blunt nose to find the sleek side door already open. A supply sled bobbed there under the weight of two technicians, loading food and water into the hold for the four-day trip to Sigma One. Chekov steered Haslev toward the boarding ramp when the Andorian tried to wander the other way, urging him to march up it with a hand at the small of his back.

  “You’re just not into basic compa
ssion, are you?”

  Chekov pushed him into a seat. “Sit down.”

  “Hey!” Sulu poked his head out of the open cockpit, his own uniform looking too pressed and new-made to have ever been worn before. It occurred to Chekov that his friends must have abandoned nearly everything they owned to the hull breach. “Chekov, what’re you doing here? Who’s taking care of my lizards?”

  The lieutenant didn’t look up from fastening Haslev’s wrist restraints to the bolts on the arms of his chair. Just thinking about the breach made his heart labor. “Nobody.”

  “That’s not funny.” Sulu made a tragic face. “I paid a lot of money for those guys.”

  And somebody had no doubt paid a lot of money for that Orion saboteur. “If the ship blows up before we get home, Sulu, it won’t matter who was or wasn’t watching them.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.” Sulu feigned whispering to Uhura as she settled into her own chair. “What’s put him in such a good mood?”

  “The whole point of moving Haslev,” Uhura explained, answering Chekov instead of Sulu, “is so the saboteur won’t have to try to cripple the Enterprise anymore.”

  Haslev crumpled his antennae against his skull with a groan. “Does that mean he’ll be coming after us instead?”

  “Probably.” Nodding an okay to the technicians ready to dog the outer hatch, Chekov slid into a seat at the front of the row. “But if we blow up before we get home, the lizards still won’t matter.”

  Sulu blew a low whistle and backed into the cockpit to get ready for takeoff. “I just love it when you’re being Russian.” He ignored Chekov’s scowl to toss a look at Uhura. “Does this mean he gets to ride up front with me?”

  “Please—take him.” Haslev only cringed a little when Chekov turned to glare at him across the empty shuttle. “For my sake, at least—I’m afraid of what will happen if you leave him back here.”

  The Enterprise’s huge hangar doors peeled open in stately silence. Chekov sat beside Sulu in the navigator’s chair, absently rubbing his thumb over a dark indicator light while their shuttle drifted forward to be enveloped by blackness and distant stars. It felt strange not to have a real job on this mission; Sulu had downloaded whatever navigational data he needed from the Enterprise’s main computer, and Haslev could hardly be considered much of a threat. In fact, sitting there with his shoulder aching and his sling chafing at the back of his collar, Chekov felt more like excess baggage than an officer. He sighed and pulled the phaser from his belt to toss it up onto the panel in front of him.

  Sulu glanced aside from his piloting with a smile. “You’re the one who said you wanted to come.”

  Chekov snorted. “I just wish I could have come with both arms.”

  “No, you don’t.” Delicate engine gantries swept across the viewscreen as Sulu lifted them clear of the Enterprise and started their turn. “If you had both arms, you’d just be grumping about how you’d rather be back on the ship helping track down the saboteur. I know you.”

  Yes, he did. It was galling sometimes. “Don’t mind me,” Chekov grumbled, shifting in his seat to watch the ship pass by beneath them. “I’m just feeling useless, that’s all.”

  Sulu didn’t contradict that observation, which didn’t do much for the lieutenant’s temperament. Chekov kept his back half-turned to the helm, calculating their speed without really meaning to by mentally clicking off the seconds between one exterior weld and the next. Then the edge of the primary hull etched a shattered arc through the darkness below them, and Chekov’s hand formed a fist inside his sling. “I thought they’d be further along with the breach repair.”

  “So did Mr. Scott. They’re still tearing out the sections with concussion damage, though. He says she’ll be warp ready by the time we get back.”

  Engineers and equipment crawled along the edges of the breach like slow mites, trailing clean, new metal behind them wherever they repaired. Chekov counted the number of dark portals on either side of the breach, and guessed that three living sectors were still without power. He wondered where Kirk would manage to bunk all those crew.

  “Speaking of getting back—” Sulu made some small adjustment to the readings on his panel. “You didn’t really leave my lizards all alone, did you?”

  “No.” Actually, he had. But he’d left them with a soap dish full of fish food from the bio lab, a bathtub full of clean water, and a sponge to play with. They’d probably be more comfortable than Chekov would for the next four days.

  “Thanks,” Sulu said with a quick, automatic smile. He piloted a little longer, then asked, “How long has McCoy got you in that sling?”

  Chekov glanced back at Sulu, found the helmsman intent on his piloting, and turned back to the viewscreen. By then, the wounded Enterprise had passed behind them, out of sight. “Two weeks.”

  “Did he have to do a lot of work on you?”

  “Apparently.” Bone and muscle grafts at least, and something more complicated involving nerves that Chekov hadn’t really wanted to hear the details of.

  “Will you ever be able to play piano again?”

  He slid Sulu a sidelong scowl, and the helmsman returned his glare with a look of counterfeit surprise. “Well?” Sulu challenged, laughing a little. “You’ve got to help me out here—It’s kind of hard to have a conversation when all you’re contributing is the impression that I’m interfering with your sulk.”

  Chekov clenched his teeth against an unfairly sharp response when he heard Uhura come into the cockpit behind them. “Who’s sulking?” she asked, with the innocent interest of someone not completely aware of what she’d walked into.

  Sulu jerked a terse nod at Chekov. “Who else?”

  There was nothing like being ganged up on by your friends. Twisting as far as he could in his seat, Chekov tried to distract the conversation by leaning around Uhura and glaring back toward the passenger compartment. “Should we really leave Haslev alone?”

  She glanced reflexively behind her, but obviously wasn’t concerned. “Why not?” A brilliant smile flashed across her dark features. “Maybe the saboteur will sneak in and kill him while nobody’s looking.”

  Fear and annoyance flashed through him in equal measure, and Chekov sank back in his chair to look spaceward.

  Uhura rapped her knuckles on the back of his chair. “Don’t do that.”

  He tipped his head back to scowl at her. “Do what?”

  “Don’t lock us out like this every time something goes wrong.” The sudden intensity of her gaze made him feel like squirming and turning away. “Pavel, what’s the matter with you?”

  He looked at Sulu to find the helmsman watching them from the corner of his eye, and tried to summon enough anger to deflect their intentions. “I’ve lost three guards in as many days,” he said, sounding more stressed and weary than he intended. “I feel like I’m deserting my post by leaving the ship while there’s a saboteur on board, but there’s not a damned thing I could do to help if I stayed. Considering that the Auditor General already thinks I’m a sorry excuse for a commanding officer, I guess all of this has just put me in a bad mood.” He fumbled to straighten the sling around his neck, deciding that was an obvious enough problem not to need mentioning.

  Sulu finished bringing the shuttle up to warp speed, then swiveled away from his panel. “That’s not what she means.”

  “You’ve been acting strange since before anything went wrong on board,” Uhura said, moving to lean against the console between them. “In fact, you haven’t been yourself since we got back from Sigma One.” She reached out to tug at Chekov’s empty jacket sleeve. “Did something happen in that jail you didn’t tell us about?”

  If only it were that simple. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you two got anything better to do than sit around and worry about me?”

  Uhura smiled, the quiet, gentle smile that always made Chekov wonder if this was what it was like to grow up in a family with bossy older siblings. “Sometimes, you give us a lot to worry
about.” She pulled on his sleeve again. “What’s wrong?”

  The purr of the warp engines seemed louder than normal in the attenuated silence that followed. Chekov caught himself studying the rivets in the decking, but couldn’t make himself raise his eyes. Not if he was going to talk about this. “Did you hear about the Kongo?”

  Sulu shifted a little in his seat. “They had a containment field failure,” he said finally. “The dispatch said they clipped a cosmic string near Perseus.” The quality of his silence hinted that he knew more, but wasn’t sure how much to say.

  “They lost the whole aft quarter of the ship,” Chekov said for him, still not looking up. Grief-edged memories crowded his vision, and he tried to keep his words at arm’s length so he could explain all this without being harmed. “They had thirteen engineers trapped in the Jefferies tubes when the field collapsed, another thirty on duty in the main room below. The string tore the gantries, and when the bridge tried to free the nacelles—” His voice tangled suddenly in his throat; he cut off the words until he could wrestle them back under control.

  Uhura surprised him by reaching across to brush his cheek. “You knew someone on board,” she said softly. “Didn’t you?”

  He nodded, and this time it was hard to keep the anger out of his words. “The science officer. He was my friend at the Academy.” He dragged a hand across his eyes, frowned with embarrassed irritation when it came away wet. “He and another officer went EV to manually jettison the nacelles. They knew the radiation exposure would kill them, but they didn’t think they had time to take a shielded shuttle—they wanted to free the engines before the drive pulsed and killed everyone in the tubes.”

  Sulu nodded slowly, and Uhura rubbed at her arms as if the shuttle had grown unaccountably cold. “That was incredibly brave of them,” she said.

  “It was also incredibly pointless!” Chekov surged out of his seat, wanting to pace away from them, away from the ugly things he’d been feeling these last two days, but only made two strides before the closed cockpit door stopped him. “An antimatter wave from the warp core killed the engine room staff and destroyed their major equipment. The bridge couldn’t know what was going on with the drive, but—” He leaned his head against the door and closed his eyes. “The engines had pulsed when they first hit the string. There was no one to go for, no one to save. They went outside and died for nothing.”