Death Count

by L. A. Graf

  “Chekov—”

  Not that Uhura’s huge, frightened eyes were any easier to face. “No,” she said thinly.

  Chekov took her hand and gently looped it around the suit to make her hold it. “You haven’t any choice.”

  “Sure we do.” Sulu pushed between them, hugging his empty suit like a shield as he confronted Chekov. “We can argue about which of us gets to stay.”

  “And waste time we don’t have.” Chekov tugged at his sling to remind Sulu of its reality. “I can’t move my arm,” he said plaintively, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “It will take me forever to suit up, and I won’t be able to work the controls EV—”

  Sulu threw his partial suit to the ground. “Bull. It doesn’t take physical strength to move around once you’re outside.” The anger in his voice and stance bled so rapidly into concern that Chekov almost felt his friend’s fear as a physical pain. “I could help you suit up,” Sulu pleaded. “I know it couldn’t—”

  “Sulu, don’t.” Chekov reached up to clamp a hand over Sulu’s mouth, and aborted it to grasp his friend’s shoulder at the last minute. “Someone has to stay,” he said carefully, “and there’s no good or fair way to decide who. Please—” He tightened his grip, both in warning and entreaty. “Don’t make me knock you unconscious to put you in that suit.”

  “Well—” Haslev danced forward to drag on Sulu’s arm with one hand, pulling Uhura to her feet with his other. “You heard the man—he’s volunteering. Let’s go!”

  Sulu jerked himself out of the Andorian’s grasp. “You’re not welded into that suit,” he snarled. “We could still take you out of it.”

  Haslev pressed his antennae down into his hair, but fell silent. Leaving him to Sulu, Chekov turned to drag suit trousers over to Uhura. “Get dressed,” he said gently.

  Her face was smooth and calm despite the tears tracking down her cheeks. “We’ll send somebody back for you.”

  “I’m counting on it.” He wiped her face with his fingers, heart nearly caving in with despair. “I don’t want to die,” he admitted in a whisper.

  She echoed his gesture by reaching up to take his own face in both small hands. “And I don’t want to leave you.”

  “I could have hours before the containment field decays.” It was both the truth and a lie—the truth because probability allowed for it; a lie because he didn’t believe it for a moment. He brought her hands down to fold them in his own. “If nothing else, I’ll patch one of these suits and follow you as soon as I can. I promise.”

  Sulu stooped grudgingly to collect sleeves for his suit. “I just want you to know,” he said, frowning, “I hate this plan.”

  Chekov managed a small, almost heartfelt smile. “I’m not in love with it myself.”

  He helped them suit up as best he could with only one hand. Uhura only nodded miserably at his reassurances, and the bleak silence with which Sulu stepped into his own gear told Chekov how out of control the helmsman must feel with the situation. If he could have thought of some way to defuse the fear crowding among them, he would have. Instead, he did what he always did; he fell back on the practical things that needed doing no matter how uncertain the future. Retrieving his phaser from the helm console at the front of the shuttle, he held it out to Sulu butt first. “Take it with you,” he said. Then, nodding at Haslev. “And don’t trust him. He’s not worth it.”

  Inside his helmet, Sulu’s face looked gray and grim behind ghost reflections of his surroundings. He reached for the phaser without lifting his eyes, closing his hand instead around Chekov’s wrist, and pulling the lieutenant into a quick, fierce hug.

  Chekov closed his eyes, fear crowding his chest and making his voice uncharacteristically gruff. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised.

  “You’d better.”

  Then, there was nothing more to say. They pushed apart by silent consensus, and Sulu turned without hesitating, herding Uhura and Haslev into the airlock. Chekov watched, hand pressed to the portal, as the atmosphere hissed out of the small chamber and the outer door rolled silently aside. It looked cold outside. And dark. And empty. He managed to stay brave long enough for the outer door to seal and hide him from their sight. Then he sank to his knees and leaned his head against the airlock, wondering what in hell he was going to do.

  The stars burned in silence, their fires cold and distant across the engulfing blackness of interstellar space. Sulu stepped out toward them, gritting his teeth against the sudden lurch of weightlessness when he left the Hawking’s airlock. He let the momentum of his final step carry him slowly away from the shuttle, keeping his gaze nailed to the steady shimmer of a nearby nebula until his stomach adjusted to the sense of perpetual falling.

  “Sulu.” Uhura’s quiet voice emerged from the suit’s helmet communicator, close as a whisper in his ear. “Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you.” The helmsman let his arms and legs float up to the position they normally found in space—elbows flexed, knees bent as if for sitting. He began to reach up to his chest panel with his right hand, then remembered he still held the phaser in it and lifted his left hand instead to activate his jets. Compressed gases exploded silently from valves in the hardened back of his suit, kicking him toward the nebula he’d chosen as a reference.

  “Set your thrusters to maximum velocity,” he told the others. “They should last long enough to get us outside the blast radius.”

  “What if they don’t?” Haslev asked apprehensively.

  Sulu took a deep breath, anger at the Andorian bursting through his fierce control for a moment. “Then we’ll kick you back toward the shuttle and use the momentum to go the rest of the way!”

  “Sulu.” There was no reproof in Uhura’s voice, only concern and warning. Personal feelings had no place in a deep-space evacuation—their lives were balanced too precariously to allow any emotional reactions to cloud their judgment.

  “I know.” Sulu didn’t glance back at her, keeping his face turned toward the shimmering starscape around them. He forced himself to identify as many systems in it as he could, so he wouldn’t have to think about the darkened shuttle disappearing behind them. He found Deneb, first and brightest, with blue-white Spica trailing quietly behind it. Further overhead, Antares gleamed an unmistakable ruby red, with Beta Centauri and Achernar flanking it—

  “Sulu!” This time it was Uhura’s voice that crackled with emotion, disbelief mingled with elation. “I think—I think I hear the Enterprise!”

  The helmsman gasped and ducked his chin, pressing his communicator up to maximum reception. A hiss of ominous static overlay the subspace radio, so close it had to be coming from the damaged warp core of the shuttle. Beyond it, he could just hear the rising whistle of a familiar hailing frequency. A jumbled mutter followed it.

  Sulu groaned. “I can’t make out what they’re saying!”

  “Something about losing contact with us.” Uhura paused and Sulu held his breath, afraid even so slight a noise across their communicator channel would interfere with her reception. “And something about proceeding on impulse power—” The distant voice faded, drowned out by an increasing roar of static from the Hawking. Sulu heard Uhura’s teeth snap in frustration. “That’s all I could manage to get.”

  “Proceeding under impulse power.” The helmsman tried to subdue a leap of desperate hope. “I wonder if they meant us or them?”

  He heard Uhura pull in a startled breath. “Could they move the Enterprise with the hull breached?”

  “If they went slowly enough, they could.” Somehow, the stars no longer looked so impossibly distant and cold to Sulu. “And if Captain Kirk guessed we had a problem with the shuttle, I’m betting that’s exactly what he’d do.”

  “Yes. Yes, he would.” Uhura paused. “But can he get here soon enough?”

  Sulu frowned and used his small wrist jets to swing himself around. Uhura and Haslev were only odd-shaped shadows against the surrounding stars, their faces barely illuminated by th
e interior lights of their helmets. Behind them, the Hawking had receded to an equally small patch of darkness in the sky. He did a crude mental triangulation off Deneb, Beta Centauri, and Achernar, comparing their positions to the final glimpse he remembered of them through the shuttle’s viewscreen.

  “It looks like the shuttle made it about a tenth of the way back to the Enterprise before we evacuated,” he guessed. “Even with the hull breach, the Enterprise can probably move at triple our impulse speed. They should be in transporter range in about—” Sulu glanced back at the Hawking, willing its magnetic shielding to stay intact that long. “—an hour.”

  “I hope we have locator beacons built into these suits.” The sudden intrusion of Haslev’s voice startled Sulu. The Andorian had been silent for so long, Sulu had almost managed to forget he was there. “Otherwise, how will your ship find us with their transporter beam?”

  “We have beacons,” Sulu said shortly. He hit his wrist jets again and let the slow momentum of his turn carry him around to his original position. It was too hard to watch the distant shuttle, knowing that at any moment it could explode into an inferno of surging antimatter.

  “Well, how do you turn them on?” Haslev persisted. “I can’t find the switch for mine.”

  Sulu didn’t reply, staring at a small bluish star midway between the unmistakable bright fires of Spica and Procyon. It had been invisible until now, perhaps hidden under the dark red dust of his reference nebula. Unlike all the stars around it, it seemed to be growing in intensity.

  After another moment of silence, Uhura answered for Sulu. “The locator beacon is activated automatically, Mr. Haslev, whenever the ventilation system in the suit comes on.” Her voice altered, as if she’d read something in the helmsman’s body stance. “Sulu, is something wrong?”

  “Maybe.” As Sulu watched, the small star slowly brightened until it rivaled Spica’s glare. “We’ve got a ship coming in from one eighty-three mark seven.”

  “The Enterprise?” Hope and disbelief mingled oddly in Uhura’s voice.

  Sulu shook his head, then remembered she wouldn’t be able to see it. “Not from that quadrant, and not that fast. Someone else must have heard our distress call—someone closer than the Enterprise.” He turned his head to meet her troubled gaze through the space that separated them. “We won’t be able to tell who they are until they come out of warp speed. By then, they’ll be close enough to catch our suit beacons.”

  “So what?” Haslev sniffed. “Whoever they are, they’re coming to rescue us, aren’t they?”

  “Maybe.” Minutes crawled by, slow as their creeping progress away from the shuttle. Sulu never took his eyes off the blue fleck of fire, now brighter than anything else in the sky. It braked out of warp speed in a last nova-bright burst, then resolved into the battered contours of a hauling ship, blunt-nosed and moving faster than any cargo ship had a right to. He groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of. It’s the Umyfymu.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “THE ORION DESTROYER that stopped us before?” Uhura bumped into him when he maneuvered his suit around to watch the military ship. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “I don’t know.” The Orion destroyer hovered just behind the Hawking, and Sulu guessed it was probing at the shuttle with invisible sensor beams. He absently put out a hand to stop Uhura from bouncing away, firing one wrist jet to keep them on their original course. “If they’re scanning Federation frequencies, they’ll know we’re here. I don’t know what they’ll do about it.”

  “Why, pick us up, of course.” The surprise in Haslev’s voice seemed genuine. “The Orions want me.”

  Sulu glanced over Uhura’s shoulder, frowning at the Andorian as he drifted closer. “I thought you said they wanted you dead.”

  “Well, yes,” Haslev admitted. “But that was before I—er—absconded with the results of my work. Now, they just want me back working for them again.” He shrugged with his antennae inside the helmet. “Otherwise, they’ll be out all the money they spent.”

  “And Orions aren’t known for being generous.” Sulu watched the Umyfymu shear suddenly away from the shuttle, and winced. “I think they just discovered the problem in the warp core.”

  “Do you think they beamed Chekov out?” Uhura asked.

  “They might have, if they thought he was Haslev.” Even as he said that, the dull ache in Sulu’s gut told him he didn’t believe it. The Orion ship circled the shuttle, its running lights blinking as haphazardly as any tramp freighter but the smooth curve of its trajectory a dead giveaway of powerful thrusters under its rusty shell. “I just hope they don’t decide to blow the shuttle up before it explodes.”

  “But that would make it explode anyway!” Uhura protested.

  “Hey, no one ever said Orions were smart.” Sulu’s fingers tightened uselessly around his phaser, his palm damp with sweat inside his glove. He watched the Umyfymu come closer, breath rasping in his throat.

  “Well, at least they’re not blowing the shuttle up.” Uhura’s gloved hand tightened tensely around Sulu’s wrist. “They’ll be in beaming distance in another minute or two, won’t they?”

  “Yes.” The grip on his arm gave Sulu an idea. He tugged Uhura around to his other side, then reached out for Haslev. The Andorian didn’t try to evade him, merely gave him a puzzled look as they drifted closer.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure we all get beamed over together.” Sulu wrapped a gloved hand around Haslev’s upper arm, then lifted the phaser pistol and carefully aimed it at the alien’s head. “And making sure we have something to bargain with once we get there.”

  “Hey!” Haslev squirmed inside his grip, but the Andorian’s greater strength gave him no advantage in space without gravity for leverage. “You can’t do that—”

  A brilliant blast of light interrupted him, stabbing through the darkness toward them. For one horrible moment, Sulu thought it was the shuttle finally exploding. Then he saw his suit’s polarizing filters slam down across his face plate and realized he was seeing the deadly radiance of a phaser blast. It skated overhead, missing them by only a few kilometers.

  Sulu tightened his grip on Haslev’s arm, fingers digging fiercely into the insulated fabric of the Andorian’s suit. “I thought you said the Orions wanted you alive!” he shouted across the sudden crackle of subspace static as the Umyfymu’s shields shimmered into place.

  “They do! They have to!” Haslev’s face was hidden behind his own polarizers, but his voice was numb with shock. “I stole everything from them when I left—my notes, my computer models, the prototype device—”

  Another Orion phaser blast cracked the interstellar night, all the more terrifying for its silence. Sulu closed his eyes and tensed himself for annihilation, then opened them again a moment later, surprised to find himself still alive.

  “That wasn’t anywhere near as close as the first shot,” Uhura observed in a voice that sounded unnaturally calm.

  “It wasn’t?” Sulu scowled as the Orion ship swerved away from them in an almost evasive maneuver. “What the hell—”

  The answer came to him an instant before he saw the returning flare of light, exploding out from somewhere behind them. Sulu cursed and pulsed his wrist jets to swing them in that direction. The familiar silvery gleam of the ship looming behind them made his throat tighten. Despite the ugly gash across her disk, there was no mistaking that silhouette.

  “It’s the Enterprise!” He heard astonishment and relief melt through the frozen surface of Uhura’s voice. “How did she get here so fast?”

  “By taking a little damage.” Sulu lifted the hand she clung to and pointed at the blackened craters near the hull breach, where the ship’s incomplete shields had let micrometeorites through. The iridescent shimmer of the starship’s defenses weakened noticeably across that stretch. “God, I hope the Orions don’t notice that. If they concentrate their phasers on it—”

  “I don’t think Captain Kirk
is going to give them time to notice anything.” Uhura ducked her head reflexively as another blinding phaser blast knifed past them. “I just hope he knows we’re out here.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he does.” The grim realization sank into Sulu as he spoke. “He can’t beam us on board with the ship’s shields up, and he won’t endanger the whole ship just for three people. He’ll fight this battle just as he would if we were still on board—”

  “But one of the three people is me!” Haslev wailed. “Your captain can’t leave me out here to die!”

  “I don’t see why not.” His sense of humor came to Sulu’s rescue at that last, releasing the tense knot lodged in his throat. “You have to admit, it would solve a lot of problems.”

  The Andorian swung around to glare at him, but even as he opened his mouth to speak, he paused, glittered briefly—

  —and materialized inside an unfamiliar transporter room, with Sulu and Uhura beside him.

  Kirk braced himself against the bridge railing, folding double as the Enterprise lurched and bucked under another rake of Orion phasers. Stressed hull supports groaned in tandem with the higher wail of internal ship alarms. “Damage report!” Kirk shouted, not even waiting for the deck to settle beneath him.

  The lieutenant at the engineering console scrambled to his knees beside his chair. “We’ve lost partial screens across the lower decks, sir. Mr. Scott has a crew working to restore them now.”

  “Orion shields are showing phaser damage, too, Captain,” Mullen reported from the weapons station. “Particularly in the forward hulls. Should we concentrate our assault there?”

  “No!” Kirk pushed upright, still gripping the rail with one hand as he glared at the viewscreen to track the Umyfymu’s looping flight. “That forward radiation shielding is just for disguise—they’re sacrificing it to draw our fire. Keep hammering at her central hull.” He half-turned to Goldstein at communications. “See if you can raise the Orion commander. I want to know what the hell he thinks he’s doing firing on a Federation vessel.”