by L. A. Graf
Lemieux nodded curtly, brows still knit in confusion, and cupped her hands to her mouth to bellow, “You heard the lieutenant! Everybody out of the bay! Move it!” Then she trotted away with the engineer in tow, hurrying along anyone who hesitated for even an instant.
I hope I get the chance to commend her, Chekov thought as he keyed open the next shuttle’s door. The interior smelled perplexingly of sweat, engine coolant, and burned polycarbons. Chekov realized the stench came from him when a touch of his environmental suit glove on the helm console left a smear of Orion blood behind. He paused long enough to wrestle off the glove and pitch it into the compartment behind him.
“Bridge to shuttle Brahe.” Kirk’s voice demanded attention across a radio panel of blinking lights. “What’s going on down there?”
Chekov woke up the Brahe’s small engines, then reached across the console to punch a stud in reply. “Bridge, this is Brahe.”
“Chekov?” The honest surprise in Kirk’s voice almost made the lieutenant smile. “How in God’s name did you get back on board?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” He bent double over the helm to try to ease the torture on his ribs while the engines warmed. “Sir, we don’t have much time. There’s a field breach on one of the interstellar shuttles—I have to get it outside before it explodes.” When this was over, he was going to crawl down to sickbay on hands and knees and beg Dr. McCoy to take him in.
“We can dump the bay atmosphere and open the doors,” Kirk said. Chekov could almost picture the captain signaling the engineering station. “Unless you fly it out the door, though, I don’t know how you’re going to get it outside.”
The helm signaled ready, and Chekov sat upright to take hold of the controls. “If you can get those doors open, sir, I can get the shuttle outside.”
“For all our sakes, I hope so.” The air in front of Brahe’s viewscreen rippled and thinned as the bridge initiated bay launch procedures. “Good luck.”
Luck’s about all that can save us. Chekov thought it best not to voice that out loud, though. After all, if the shuttle exploded while still confined within the Enterprise’s deflector screens, the great ship’s warp nacelles might still be forfeit. That could prove just as disastrous as suffering the explosion in here. He lifted Brahe neatly off the deck and started her into a lumbering turn. Best not to think about variables he couldn’t affect. First order of business was to get this time bomb outside; they could worry about how to either detonate or defuse it later.
The shuttle that came into Chekov’s view looked placid and undamaged despite the core spikes washing across Chekov’s sensor display. Elegant red script spelled Clarke across its blunt nose, and Chekov noticed for the first time that it was one of the lighter interstellar shuttles, one of only a few dozen tons. Perhaps not as impossible to push outside as he’d first feared. He idled Brahe around the rear of Clarke by agonizing inches, all the while flicking glances up at the closed shell doors, willing them to trundle open.
Brahe shuddered dully when her nose bumped Clarke’s rear bulkhead. Chekov felt his shuttle’s frame tremble, felt its impulse engines growl with strain as he eased the throttle gently upward. When the moment of inertia broke, stress clanged throughout Brahe’s structure as the two shuttles leapt forward, and Chekov was jolted back in his seat with an involuntary bark of pain. Clarke stuttered and scraped across the deck, the silent vibrations of its resistance translating through Brahe’s hull into a deafening wall of thunder. Shivering like heat ripples outside the shuttles’ trembles, the bay doors reared high and imposing. And stayed closed.
“Open, damn you,” Chekov groaned. He didn’t dare take his hands from the controls, or he would have pounded the helm in frustration. “Open!”
A black rift sliced up the center of the big doors. The band widened steadily, and Chekov realized it was his wished-for exit just as Clarke danced sideways and skipped off the end of Brahe’s nose.
“Govno!”
He fought the impulse drive into reverse, slewing Brahe around in a desperate attempt to keep from skating past Clarke and into open space.
“Chekov?” Kirk cut sharply across his attention, sounding tense and distracted. “Chekov, report.”
Chekov ignored the captain’s intrusion, and realigned the attitude controls as quickly as he could right-handed.
“Is the shuttle clear?”
“No!” Brahe caught itself with a fluid bump, drifting to half-face Clarke. “No, sir,” Chekov said again, more evenly. “I’m working on it.”
“We haven’t got much time, Mr. Chekov.”
“I know, sir.” His shoulder burned with fatigue if he so much as flexed his fingers, and pain ate into his breathing in deep, steady stabs whenever he moved. If he’d had to do more than bumble a shuttle around the hangar bay on impulse, he’d never have been able to control the craft, and he wasn’t all that confident he’d accomplish what he needed to anyway. Not for the first time, he wished Sulu were with him—to pilot, and to just be there, so Chekov wouldn’t feel quite so alone.
He wondered forlornly if Sulu and Uhura were safe, outside the Hawking’s blast range and close enough to rescue. It seemed an eternity ago that he’d watched them leave the airlock.
No—no time for other worries now. Easing Brahe back into the main bay, he readdressed Clarke’s listing form, framing it on his viewscreen between the open hangar doors. Clarke presented its side to the starry outside, having turned a full one hundred eighty degrees in Chekov’s first attempt to push it out the doors. He crept Brahe up to it again, this time aiming for the center point of Clarke’s squat profile. The first bump of shuttle against shuttle skidded Clarke awkwardly sideways; Chekov pulled back immediately, adjusting Brahe barely a meter to starboard before driving forward again. This time, the two crafts met with a deep, mating clang, and Clarke shuddered as though struck to the core while Brahe powered it the last long distance across the hangar bay and out into lightless vacuum.
Chekov felt the thunder of friction release them the instant Clarke dipped past the Enterprise’s gravity field and into free fall. He pushed up the acceleration without looking down at the helm. He didn’t want to rely on readouts—he needed to see Clarke rush toward the stars ahead of him, needed to count the seconds in his own mind. It had been years now, but he’d been a ship’s navigator once; he could feel where the screens sat like he could feel his own skin, having honed that sense over countless hours of commanding their distance, configuration, intensity, and use. Driving Clarke ahead of him, he increased velocity to as far from the bay as he dared, then slammed Brahe into reverse and left Clarke to continue its sublight tumble away from the Enterprise. If the starship’s screens were still in action, Chekov wanted to be as far from Clarke as possible when the little shuttle impacted the deflectors and exploded.
He dragged Brahe straight back along their original escape course, aiming for the still-open hangar. Readouts flashed across the helm panel, and Chekov trusted their guidance as much as he dared. Twice, he switched the viewscreen aft to verify that the ship still hung behind him, but he didn’t dare look away from Clarke for long. Not that he could have done anything more to save himself, or the Enterprise. He just wanted to face whatever was coming, whenever it happened; he couldn’t stand not to know.
Still, the bloom of brilliant white that flashed across his screen when Clarke exploded caught him by surprise. He ducked his head without wanting to, and the first wave of raw energy knocked him out of his seat and bucked Brahe nose upward, rocketing them back into the bay.
Oh, God, Chekov thought, his mind crowded with fearful images of Brahe plowing through the bay’s rear bulkhead. He struggled to his knees and slapped at the helm controls, trying to equalize engine output and kill the shuttle’s momentum. The first telltales of deceleration sprang to life on the control board just as they crashed into something huge and unyielding out of sight behind the shuttle. Chekov had time for one only dismal thought—I hope the captain got the
screens down in time—before Brahe careened over onto her side, and everything around him slammed down into darkness.
Chapter Twenty
“SULU?” Hands patted gently at his cheek, as though afraid he’d break under too much force. “Sulu, can you hear me?”
Sulu groaned and dragged his eyes open to the twilight blue of low-power lighting. Moving figures blurred around him, but he focused on the only one he recognized. “Uhura?”
“Don’t move.” Smoke misted around Uhura’s concerned face as she leaned over him, and Sulu’s stomach knotted in alarm. He struggled up onto his elbows despite her effort to stop him.
“What happened to the ship?” he asked, searching the dim reaches of the Andorian bridge for the cascading whiteness of a ruptured nitrogen line or the smolder of burning electronics.
“The electromagnetic surge from the shuttle explosion blew out our control systems.” More mist appeared when Uhura spoke, and Sulu realized it was only her frosted breath, dissipating into the cold ship air. “We’ve lost helm control, shields, and communications. Ventilation is running off emergency power, but we don’t have heat or lights.”
Sulu groaned again, rubbing the sore spot where his jaw had met some unyielding object. “What happened to the antimatter flare from the Hawking?”
“It washed out about fifty kilometers short of us.” Uhura’s eyes glimmered with the beginnings of a smile. “You were too busy cracking your chin on the helm console to notice.”
“Too bad.” Sulu managed to sit all the way up, then waited for his head to stop buzzing before he craned it toward the main viewscreen. The unpowered panel was frustratingly blank. “What happened to the Mecufi?”
Uhura shook her head, her fine-boned face turning grave. “It was almost a thousand kilometers closer to the shuttle than we were. Our sensors showed an antimatter flare eating a hole right through its hull. The ship broke apart after that.” She raised a thin eyebrow at him. “Your Russian roulette maneuver worked.”
“I’ll have to remember to thank Chekov when I see him.” Sulu used Uhura’s offered hand to haul himself to his feet, then noticed the subtle thrum of the deck under his feet. “Hey, we’re moving!”
Uhura nodded and scrambled up beside him. “The Enterprise has us in a tractor beam. Mr. Scott says they’re going to pull us into the shuttle bay for repairs.”
“Mr. Scott says?” Sulu blinked at her, wondering if his groggy brain had misconstrued the words. “I thought you told me we lost communications?”
“We lost ship communications.” Uhura bent with her usual grace, scooping a bowl-shaped plastic and metal object off the floor. Sulu frowned, then recognized it as her environmental suit helmet when she turned it right side up and tapped the communicator panel inside the chin. “The crystal chips in our suits survived the surge just fine. With our shields down, I didn’t have any trouble using them to contact the Enterprise.”
“I would never have thought of that.” Despite the ache in his jaw, Sulu’s mouth twitched into an appreciative grin. “Have I told you lately that you’re awfully good at your job?”
The communications officer’s dark eyes warmed to rich mahogany with her smile. “Well, so are you. Most pilots would have gotten us killed if they tried playing hide-and-seek with an Orion destroyer.”
“That’s true,” Sulu agreed immodestly. Uhura snorted and tugged at his elbow.
“Come on,” she said. “We should be in visual range of the ship by now. There’s a viewport on the next deck down.” She slanted another concerned look at him. “Can you climb down the ladderway in that heavy suit?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to take it off.” Sulu grinned again at the puzzled look she gave him. “After all the sweating I’ve done since we left the Hawking, even I don’t want to know what I smell like.”
The Enterprise swam through the darkness toward them, phaser burns dark as bruises across her long platinum sides. Sulu’s lips tightened into a soundless whistle as he scanned the damage. The worst destruction was concentrated near the unshielded area around the breach in the primary hull, but a long rippled impact scar also ran the length of the secondary hull, level with the shuttle bay. Even from here, Sulu could see suited crews of engineers crawling out to reinforce the stressed sections of metal.
“They’re lucky that didn’t cause another hull breach,” Uhura said, watching quietly at his shoulder. The words made Sulu wince, bringing back the memory of his vacuum-shattered belongings and ransacked room. He’d been vaguely planning to collapse in the plant-scented warmth of his cabin after Kirk finished debriefing them. Now, all he had to look forward to was the cold comfort of emergency quarters.
The thought made him recall something else he’d forgotten, and he scanned the impact scar more closely. “That doesn’t look like photon torpedo damage,” he pointed out to Uhura. “I wonder if the Orion saboteur did it?”
“Well, he must have hidden in the shuttle bay at some point, to rig his phaser-bomb inside the Hawking.” Uhura’s dark eyes widened as the tractor beam pulled the Shras around to face the massive landing bay doors, now splitting open to admit them. The back half of the shuttle bay lay shielded behind a vacuum barrier, but the transparent aluminum wall couldn’t hide the torn and crumpled shuttles piled up along the rear bulkhead. “Oh, my God. Maybe the saboteur did rig all the shuttles.”
“It looks more like he just wrecked them.” Sulu counted the empty spaces along the walls while the tractor beam deposited them gently inside the landing bay. “Brahe, Clarke, Kahoutek—dammit, he took out all our good interstellar shuttles! If they haven’t already caught him, I’ll hunt him down and strangle him myself!”
Uhura gave him an amused upward glance as the bay doors slid closed behind them. “Sulu, I’m sure Starfleet will give us new shuttles when we dock for refitting.”
“That’s not the point!” Sulu trailed her back toward the ladderway. He could already hear Haslev complaining about something on the deck below them as the Andorians gathered by the hatch. Outside, compressed air roared around them, rattling the ship’s hull as it flooded back into the landing bay. “I liked the shuttles we had! I knew which ones handled best in microgravity, and which ones were good on atmospheric reentry—”
The rumble of the hatch door opening interrupted him, and Sulu dropped down the last few feet of ladderway with a thud. He followed Uhura out past the hesitant Andorians, as eager as she was to be back in the familiar air of the Enterprise.
“Sulu, Uhura.” Captain Kirk emerged from the turbolift exit across the bay and strode to meet them, Spock just behind him. Despite the bruise darkening his forehead, the captain moved with his usual restless energy. “You’re both all right?”
“We’re fine, Captain.” Sulu swung around to survey the destruction in the shuttle bay, more clearly visible now that they were out of the ship. “Did the saboteur rig more of the shuttles for explosion, sir?”
“No. Apparently, he only had time to sabotage one other besides the Hawking.” One corner of Kirk’s mouth turned up in rueful amusement as he glanced back at the mess. “Chekov did the rest of this, trying to stop the saboteur.”
“Chekov did?” Uhura and Sulu exclaimed together. They exchanged puzzled looks. “I guess we must have beamed him into the shuttle bay,” Uhura said blankly. Her eyes darkened with concern as she glanced at the wrecked shuttles. “Is he all right, sir?”
The captain nodded. “A little battered, but that’s usually what happens when you get into a fist fight with an Orion. Dr. McCoy’s standing by to take him to sickbay as soon as the engineers cut him free.”
Uhura looked dismayed. “You mean he’s trapped inside one of those shuttles?”
“Yes.” Kirk smiled at her, a quick, understanding smile that lit his eyes to gold. “I’m sure he’d be glad to have your company while he’s waiting, Commander.”
She threw him a grateful look and turned toward the turbolift. “Thank you, sir. You’ll have my full report i
n the morning.”
“Good.” The captain swung to face the clatter of feet coming off the Shras. “Captain Kanin.” Kirk stepped forward and gave the Andorian officer the polite bow his race favored. “We’re grateful for your assistance with the Orions. Your ship’s courageous performance in this battle will be duly noted in my report to Starfleet.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kanin returned the bow, antennae flushing pale lavender with pleasure. “Most of the credit must go to your pilot, however. He did an excellent job evading the Orions.”
“Yes.” Kirk rubbed at the bruise on his forehead, casting an amused look back at Spock. “We could have used him aboard the Enterprise.” His amusement faded to a steely smile when his glance fell on Muav Haslev, now handcuffed to a stocky Andorian security guard. “Ah, Mr. Haslev—the cause of all this havoc. We have a visitor who would like to speak with you.” He nodded at Spock, and the Vulcan crossed to speak into the nearest intercom.
“I’ll have you know that none of this was my fault,” Haslev protested. “If you hadn’t decided to send me back to Sigma One—”
“—the Hawking would have exploded right here, and we would all be dead now,” Sulu finished sharply. The Andorian physicist glared at him. “Listen, you’re the one who started all this—”
“Little weasel!” The distinctive roar of an Orion voice crashed over the argument like a storm wave. Sulu swung around to see the bulky form of the Orion military commander emerge from the turbolift and stalk toward them, flanked by a brace of security guards. The white swath of bandage taped across his bearded face didn’t make him look any less dangerous. “You lied to us!”
Haslev tried to sidle back, his antennae curving defensively downward. “Um—when, Commander Ondarken?”
“You told us your trans-shield anode would make any transporter beam go through a shield.” The Orion shoved through the group around Haslev, Andorians scattering before him with yelps of alarm. “But when we tried to beam our agent out with it from this ship, nothing happened.” He came to a halt, looming over the gray-faced physicist. “Why?”