Death Count

by L. A. Graf

  “I can’t tell!” Mullen sounded desperate. “My panel’s showing no contact with ship’s defenses.”

  “Shields and other automatic systems should not have been affected by the radiation surge,” Spock offered. “However, with starboard phaser banks no longer under our control, the depolarizing defense will degenerate into random phaser bursts in one minute fifty-three seconds.”

  Well, Kirk thought grimly, at least we’ll die with precision. “Mr. Goldstein, how about communications? Can we send a tight-beam signal on manual control to the last known location of the Shras?”

  Goldstein picked up his earpiece and turned to his panel. “I can try, sir.”

  Kirk forced himself to move calmly back to his command chair, not looking up at the hissing viewscreen until after he was seated, his hands clenched on the arms. Static still painted the screen an electric white, and Kirk frowned at the shrouded image for what felt like a very long time before asking, “Does that interference mean we can’t transmit?”

  Goldstein was silent for a moment, fighting with his board. “I think it’s only affecting our reception, sir,” he said at last. “But I really can’t tell. My panel shows no response on any frequency.”

  “I suspect our own equipment is at fault, Captain.” No longer drowned out by alarms, Spock spoke more calmly from his science console, emergency lights sliding long crimson shadows across his face. “As it did before, the subspace radiation pulse has superimposed its interference patterns onto our viewscreen. Based on our current levels of power consumption, however, I believe the signal transmitter is still operational.”

  Kirk nodded and turned to face the screen again, staring at it fiercely in the hope he could pierce the interference by sheer force of will. “Shras, this is the Enterprise calling. A subspace radiation pulse has damaged our helm and shield control, and has left us at the mercy of the Orion destroyer Umyfymu. We need immediate diversionary action on your part. Last recorded location of the Orions—” Kirk shot a quick glance at the helm panel, “—was heading two sixty-five mark seven, distance seven thousand kilometers and closing—”

  A brilliant burst of torpedo fire shook the ship, staggering several crewmen from their stations. Kirk clung grimly to the helm, eyes narrowed against the scorching light. “Repeat, we need immediate diversionary action! I’m counting on you, Sulu—Kirk out.”

  Sulu didn’t wait for Kirk’s image to fade—he was already punching a new course into the helm computer. “Engines, warp three.” He sent a blistering look at the hesitant Andorian engineer when he felt no response from the ship. “Now! Or I’ll have Uhura shoot you for disobeying Starfleet orders.”

  The Shras jerked abruptly out of her hovering circle, darting off toward the brilliant firefight in the distance. Sulu watched the navigation screen intently, gauging their distance from the approaching battle zone. He sensed that Uhura had come to stand behind him.

  “Sulu, this bothers me,” she said quietly. “How could the Enterprise get hit with another subspace radiation pulse? The last one was at Sigma One, and we’re light-years away from there by now. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  “Very odd.”

  Uhura paused. “Do you think it’s some kind of new weapon the Orions have?”

  The sharp metallic squeak of environmental suit joints brought Sulu’s head around. Muav Haslev was wriggling in his seat, a distinctly guilty expression on his pale blue face. Several disjointed slivers of information suddenly locked together in Sulu’s mind, and the picture they formed seared him with anger. Swinging around from the helm console, he leaned forward to glare at the physicist. “It’s not a weapon,” Sulu accused. “It’s Haslev’s trans-shield anode!”

  The Andorian’s wince confirmed his guess, and Sulu snorted in disgust, turning away to meet Uhura’s puzzled frown.

  “A burst of subspace radiation must be created as a side effect of someone beaming over to the trans-shield anode,” Sulu explained. “The first pulse at Sigma One came from Haslev, beaming on board the Enterprise. This one—” He glared up at the embattled ships still dwarfed by distance on the screen. “This one came from us, beaming Chekov over to the ship.”

  Uhura spun to stare at Haslev. “Is that true?”

  “Well, basically—” The physicist rubbed sheepishly at one antenna. “There are still a few flaws in the anode system, I admit. But the radiation effects are merely transient—”

  “In the middle of a battle, even a transient instrument failure can be fatal!” Uhura’s normally soft voice was stiff with outrage. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

  “Because you were the ones who insisted I use the thing!”

  Behind them, Captain Kanin cleared his throat. “If the radiation effects are transient, can’t we just wait for the Enterprise to get its defenses back?” he suggested uneasily.

  “No.” Sulu went back to calculating vectors on the helm console, preparing for battle as the explosions in the sky drew nearer. “Last time this happened, we lost helm control for almost three minutes right after the subspace pulse faded. If that happens to weapons control this time, the Enterprise will be annihilated. We have to go help them.”

  “But this is idiocy!” Captain Kanin protested, his voice thick with disbelief. “How can we rescue a Constitution-class starship from anything? We’re only a passenger transport—we don’t even have any weapons!”

  “No, but the Mecufi does.” Somewhere behind them, Sulu knew, the second Orion ship would have noted their sudden appearance on sensors and flung themselves into pursuit. “If we time this right, we can get them to provide Captain Kirk with just the diversion he needs.”

  Chekov scrabbled to brace his feet against the wall behind him, trying to lift himself high enough in his environmental suit to keep from choking on the collar.

  “Tell me!” Purviance roared. His bloody fist rebounded against the suit’s breastplate, and Chekov felt the panel snap with frightening ease. “I know you have some extra component. I want the trans-shield anode—give it to me now, or I’ll tear it from your steaming organs!”

  Chekov’s feet slipped on the wall yet again, and his shoulder wrenched with agony against the joint of his suit. “Give you what?” he gasped, teeth clenched and eyes closed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Purviance tightened his grip on the suit’s front handle and banged Chekov against the wall in warning. “How did you get back on board?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Liar!”

  “How did you get here?” Chekov shot back. One foot caught on some irregularity in the wall behind him, and he brought his left hand down to his side on the pretext of balancing himself. “They found your genetic material in that transporter accident—you couldn’t have survived.”

  A growl of laughter roiled out of Purviance, and he brought both hands up to Chekov’s suit. “They found Lindsey Purviance’s genetic material in the transporter remains,” the Orion pointed out. “One human hand was enough to guarantee that. You couldn’t have told two bodies from three in that mess, so three sets of DNA let you make your own assumptions. When Gendron sent that transporter tech away, I thought I was going to have to kill myself. It’s a good thing your guards are so willing to do what their senior officers tell them to, or I might never have gotten Sweeney into the transporter room.”

  It was all Chekov could do not to swear at the Orion. “I’m afraid I don’t cooperate so well.”

  “We’ll see.” All-too-human-seeming eyes narrowed to brutal slits, and Purviance leaned close to breathe white steam against the face plate. “I want to leave this rat hole with my prize, Lieutenant Chekov, but my people’s transporter can’t reach past your screens. If you come in but I can’t go out, then you must have some secret I need.” He reached down to grip Chekov’s thigh in one beefy hand. “How many bones is this secret worth?”

  None, so far as Chekov was concerned. Never taking his eyes off Purviance’s face, he braced himself against the wa
ll and swung at that face as hard as he could. His fist collided with Orion muscle knotted as hard as human bone, and he knew in that very instant that striking out had been a mistake. Purviance smashed the visor on his helmet in a single-fisted blow, and Chekov was suddenly pinned to the rear of his helmet with a huge Orion hand clamped across his lower face.

  “For that,” Purviance purred in a deadly whisper, “I break your jaw.”

  Chekov twisted away from the suddenly fierce grip, letting his suit take his weight as he kicked out at anything he could hit. He felt one foot contact soundly on living body, and this time the Orion crumpled with a roar of pain and rage. The grip on Chekov’s suit abruptly vanished, and Chekov toppled to the deck beside Purviance, tumbling as far from the Orion as he could in the crowded shuttle compartment.

  Blood, dried to a thick burnt-orange, matted the saboteur’s uniform from elbow to knee. He hadn’t had the benefit of McCoy’s skilled treatment after last night’s firefight, and Chekov knew that was all to his advantage. Rolling to his knees, he seized the edge of Sulu’s lily pond and twisted his whole body into the swing. A stray environmental suit battery spun away from the basin, and the pond smashed into the Orion just as he rose to all fours. He went down again with a grunt of surprise, and Chekov lurched to his feet to hit Purviance a second time, and a third. On the fourth blow, the cast marble burst apart with a dull, fractured boom, and a glitter of silver scattered to the floor among the pieces. Electronic components. This trans-shield anode thing? Molded into the body of the lily pond? But why?

  Chekov decided to consider the mystery later. All that mattered now was that if Purviance wanted this anode badly enough to have stolen the pond from Sulu’s room, Chekov couldn’t afford to let him have it. Ducking around Purviance’s groaning form, he scooped up the largest piece of the device and scrambled with it for the door.

  The main shuttle compartment was empty, the hatch to the outside closed. Their shuttle was still in the Enterprise’s hangar bay, though—Chekov could see bulkheads, other shuttles through the forward viewscreen. That meant a certain safety waited for him if he could get outside this craft. He skidded to a stop in front of the door to the outside, only to be plowed to the deck by a massive force from behind him before he could even open the hatch.

  When visible light flashed across the Enterprise’s viewscreen—tearing apart to reveal a static-charged starfield and the Umyfymu arrowing straight down the Enterprise’s throat—Kirk nearly jumped to his feet in alarm and surprise. “Phasers?” he demanded.

  “Negative, sir,” Mullen shouted back even as the hull rang with a photon torpedo launch many decks below. “I’ve launched torpedoes to compensate, but the Orions are evading most of them.”

  “Unlike us.” He saw the deceptively warm glow of another phaser shot just before the Enterprise rocked from the hit. “Dammit, Sulu, where are you?”

  “Captain,” Spock said, “I am having no success at reprogramming weapons control through the main computer. I suggest phasers be manually activated by their respective crews. Their aim may be less accurate, but even misguided phasers—”

  “—are better than none at all,” Kirk finished for him. “Do it, Mullen.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Kirk felt his heart flutter with anxiety as the Umyfymu skimmed just beyond the Enterprise’s screens, her phasers swinging wide when the Enterprise rolled to compensate. “That still leaves us with the problem of our unshielded hull.”

  “Indeed.” Spock sounded unconcerned, but thoughtful. “Manual control cannot align the phasers precisely enough to depolarize incoming fire.”

  Kirk nodded, his mind already rushing ahead of Spock’s words. “Then we’ll just have to get the Orions to fire somewhere else. Ensign Mullen—” He turned to lock eyes with the young security officer. “Load another photon torpedo in the port tube—then order it to detonate just outside the Enterprise’s shields.”

  Mullen hesitated, his hand poised above his board. “Just outside our shields, Captain?”

  “That’s right. I want it to look like one of the Orions’ torpedoes blew a hole in our port side.”

  Mullen grinned and nodded excitedly. “That way they’ll transfer their attack to our strong port shields, away from our weaker starboard ones!” One hand flashed across his panel while the other cradled the torpedo launch controls. Kirk swung his chair to face the viewscreen just as the deck shivered and Mullen announced, “Torpedo away!”

  The detonation was almost instantaneous. Plasma fingers roiled across the edges of their screens, shimmering blue and red and amber, then faded to a flickering corona that lingered just long enough to draw a bloom of Orion phaser fire. Mullen yelped, “It worked!” and Kirk nodded with dark satisfaction.

  “The Orions may be tricky,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean they can’t be tricked.” Damage reports still chattered over the communications panel, though, and warnings and telltales lit half the boards on the bridge. “Let’s just hope that buys us enough time for the Shras to get here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  MUAV HASLEV GROANED, watching as the viewscreen of the Andorian bridge filled with the light of distant battle. The sector of space between the Enterprise and the Umyfymu now resembled a tiny nebula, bright with debris and the streaky afterglow of photon explosions. “Commander Sulu, if you take us in there, you’re going to get us killed!”

  “No, I’m not.” Sulu began feeding a complex series of instructions into the helm buffer, preparing for the light-swift maneuvers to come. “That is, not unless you distract me with annoying comments in the middle of piloting. Uhura, I’m going to need you on navigation.”

  “I’m there.” The communications officer tugged the gray-faced Andorian navigator out of his chair and slid in beside Sulu. Her coffee-dark eyes scanned the screen, her face smooth with the expression of taut calm that emergencies always brought out in her. “Orion police cruiser Mecufi now in firing range.” Sulu threw the ship into a twisting roll as a phaser shot seared past them. “Distance three thousand kilometers and closing.”

  “Exactly where we want them.” Sulu scanned the complex parabolic equations spiraling across his screen, verifying his calculations one last time, then spared a swift glance for the engineering station. “What’s the maximum speed you can give me?”

  The Andorian’s antennae flattened tensely. “Warp four if you need it, but only for a few minutes.”

  “All right. Wait for my mark.” Sulu stared up at the viewscreen, watching the individual shapes of the Enterprise and the Umyfymu slowly resolve out of the glare. The path he planned to follow between the two ships wove through multiple coronas of torpedo explosions, lit from within by the occasional opalescent fire of phaser blasts. The helmsman kept his gaze fixed on the deceptively awkward shape of the Orion destroyer, his fingers hovering over his board.

  “Orion police cruiser Mecufi now two thousand kilometers and closing,” Uhura said tensely.

  “Warp four—now!” Sulu kicked in his first preprogrammed maneuvers, and the Shras leapt into the battle zone. The viewscreen flared with static as they burst through a photon corona, then cleared again to show them the nearly invisible shimmer of the Umyfymu’s warp trail just ahead of them. Faster than human reflexes could have sent it, the little Andorian transport shot into a looping spiral around the larger ship, close enough to set off all the Orions’ proximity alarms.

  “That should give the Umyfymu something else to shoot at besides the Enterprise.” Sulu clenched his teeth when the Shras rose with a bone-jarring swoop to avoid the destroyer’s sudden barrage of phaser fire. “Now, let’s see if we can get the Mecufi to shoot back at them for us.” He fought the pull of transient gravity fields long enough to slam the helm computer into its second preprogrammed maneuver. This time, the little ship slewed sideways and darted swiftly in between the two Orion ships. It hung there for a long breathless moment, recklessly inviting enemy fire.

  Uhura looked up from the navig
ation monitor, dark eyes wide and solemn. “Mecufi one thousand kilometers and closing.”

  “Sensors show they’ve fired photon torpedoes,” one of the Andorians added. Sulu heard Muav Haslev groan again. “Torpedoes approaching vector ninety-five mark six—”

  “Phaser fire coming in from the Umyfymu!” warned a second Andorian. The ship sensors began to scream with damage alarms. “Port shields are hit—”

  “Do something, helmsman!” roared Captain Kanin. “The Orions are going to destroy us!”

  “Oh, no, they’re not.” Sulu took a deep breath, then set his last course into the helm. The Shras shuddered in protest when its warp drive spun it around, slinging it back toward the Umyfymu. At the last possible moment, the Andorian ship sheared off to skim just below the destroyer’s fake cargo holds, where her phasers couldn’t follow them. They hurtled out the other side, viewscreen sensors automatically swiveling to stay fixed on the ships behind them. Sulu grinned when he saw the iridescent flash of a photon torpedo, far back on their warp trail.

  “What are you so happy about?” Haslev demanded waspishly. “The Mecufi just fired photon torpedoes at us!”

  “But they fired them before we ducked under the Umyfymu.” Sulu watched the screen, keeping his attention on the Mecufi. The police cruiser banked abruptly, veering away from the corona of torpedo debris bursting out from the Umyfymu’s flanks. “The wonderful thing about photon torpedoes,” he told Haslev, “is that they can’t tell one ship from another.”

  “It’s a good trick,” Uhura agreed. “But you know you can’t pull any trick twice on an Orion. So what fancy maneuver are we going to use on the Mecufi?”

  Sulu frowned, watching the Mecufi’s shark-sleek silhouette round the crippled hulk of its sister ship and arrow after the Shras through the darkness. “One that Chekov once told me about,” he said, reaching out to toggle the main viewscreen back to a front-angle shot. Deep in the funneling stars around them, he knew, there still waited the ominous patch of darkness that was the Hawking. “It’s called Russian roulette.”