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. "Payel, 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 efiough 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 familywith bossy older
siblings. "Sometimes, you give us a lot to worry about." She pulled on
his sleeve again. "What's wrong?"
The puyr 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."
"It Wasn't nothing."
Chekov turned at Sulu's tone of gentle surprise. "What did they gain?"
he demanded. "They didn't
even get the damned nacelles blown free! Now, their ship might be
irreparable, over one hundred of their crew are dead--my God! Core heat
burned them out of existence before they even got dose enough to see the
lock! Tell me what you think they gained!"
Uhura dropped a hand to Sulu's arm when the helmsman opened his mouth to
protest. The worried crease between her brows struck Chekov with a
guilt almost strong enough to override his anger. "Would you rather
they never tried?" she asked him, head cocked. "Believing there might
still be people in there, would you rather they had taken the safe route
and waited to prepare a shuttle?"
"I would rather they hadn't died at all." Even as he said it, he knew it
was-stupid.
Neither of the others laughed, though. Sulu only ducked his head in
quiet sympathy, and Uhura asked, "What if they'd jettisoned the nacelles
and saved those people? Your friend still would have died, wouldn't
he?"
Being that close to an engine in flux? Undoubtedly. Chekov nodded.
"And would that have made a difference? Would you feel any better
knowing he'd managed to accomplish something by what he did?"
Chekov stared at her, all sorts of conflicting answers roiling about
inside him. It was the pointlessness, yes; the fearful suddenness, too.
Underneath all that, though, he was tortured with a fear of dying badly,
of staying on in a career where his own life might end just as cheaply.
He opened his mouth, not sure what answer he was willing to give, just
as darkness gripped the little room, and the song of the shuttle's warp
engines died.
"Oh, what now?" Sulu groaned.
As if in answer, a clap of brittle thunder pealed through the rear of
the shuttle, kicking the little ship to its heart and slamming them all
to the floor.
"Isn't there anything I could do to help?"
"No, Mr. Kelly." Kirk glanced at the auditor, waiting patiently near
the rear of the turbolift. "I appreciate your offer, but you'd really
do best to keep out of the way." You also shouldn't follow me up to the
bridge, he didn't add. But I don't know where else to send you.
Kirk had spent the morning filling in for Chekov as security chief,
unwilling to leave a crew of ensigns in charge of catching the saboteur
while their lieutenant had his shoulder reconstructed. It was a job the
captain had hoped would be well over by now. Instead, one frustrating
blind alley had followed another, and he'd finally had to leave Deck
Seven for the bridge. At least there, he could make things happen, get
things .done.
"I just know I have a lot to be grateful for," Kelly volunteered as the
turbolift began its vertical climb for the command center. "If
Lieutenant Chekov hadn't shown up when he did, that saboteur would have
killed me--he nearly killed the lieutenant. I just want you to know I
appreciate that."
Frustration eased a little of its iron grip. Apparently, being a
Federation auditor didn't mean you'd had all of your humanity beaten out
of you, after all. "Thank you, Mr. Kelly." Kirk nodded somewhat
graciously, but still couldn't bring himself to smile. "Why don't you
see if the relocation teams need help on Deck Three? We've got a lot of
crew needing new
cabin assignments." And it seemed the sort of thing an auditor just
might be able to streamline and still stay out of trouble.
against the rear bulkhead as the turbolift doors flashed open. "I'll do
that."
Kirk hoped someone would be on Deck Three 'o appreciate Kelly's help.
"Mr. Bhutto," he called, stepping clear of the turbolift and trotting
down the steps. "Any sign of our Orion friends?"
Bhutto glanced up from her navigation panel, shaking her head. "No,
sir. No ships detected within sensor range."
Kirk pursed his lips. "Then they're slower than I thought." He paused
b3..the command chair, studying the empty viewscreen as though his eyes
might detect enemy approach before sensors could. "Spook, have we had
any luck using the ship's internal systems to find our saboteur?'
"Negative, Cptain." Spock straightened from his science station,
rotating his chair to meet Kirk halfway when the captain turned to face
him. "I suspect the saboteur has taken refuge in an area of enhanced
heat flow on the ship, to conceal his own physiological temperature from
our instruments."
Kirk started to lower himself into the command chair, then paused and
cocked a look at Scott. "Does that mean he's hiding near the warp
engines?"
The engineer rocked back in his seat, arms crossed and chin high.
"Captain, we've searched every nook and cranny in engineering--for bombs
and for saboteurs." He shook his head firmly. "I can guarantee you,
he's not in my engine room."
"The amount of heat flow needed to obscure the ten-degree difference
between human and Orion body
temperatures need not be large, Captain." Spook lifted one eyebrow in
his universal expression of thought. "Any unit of shipboard equipment
that consumes a significant amount of power--for example, one of my
sensor arraysmwould produce enough Joule energy to accomplish the
objective."
Sometimes, sorting through Spock's explanations was almost as
challenging as the problem at hand. "So," Kirk paraphrased, settling
into his chair, "he could be hiding anywhere on the ship." At Spock's
nod, the captain dropped his chin into his hand, considering. "But
wherever he is, he's near some power source?"
"That is what I would surmise."
That was something, then. Kirk rapped the inter-corn button with the
side of his hand. "Kirk to security."
"Security. Lemieux here."
"Ensign Lemieux, focus your search teams on all ship sectors whose power
consumption exceedsre" He glanced at Spock, throwing his hands wide for
suggestions.
"Fifteen kilojoules," the Vulcan supplied. "mfifteen kilojoules," Kirk
went on, nodding his thanks to the science officer. "Contact
engineering for specific equipment locations."
"Aye-aye, sir. Lemieux out."
"Captain!" The communications officer's voice jerked Kirk around in his
seat. "I've lost our tight-beam contact with the Hawking."
Kirk's hands tightened on the arms of his chair. "Is the signal being
jammed by an Orion ship?" he asked.
The young lieutenant flicked anxious eyes across his boards, calling up
readings with quick touches of his hands. "No, sir. The cause appears
to be equipment
failure on their end." He lifted worried eyes to Kirk. "It could just be
a malfunction, sir."
"It could be, Ensign." Kirk pushed to his feet, suddenly unable to stay
passively seated. "Butonsid-ering how resourceful our saboteur is, I
wouldn't bet the farm on it. Scotty--" He roamed the edge of the
railing until he could lean across to his engineer. "Can we engage warp
drive yet?"
"No, sir." The engineer was emphatic. "We haven't even got closure on
the hull breach yet, much less reinforced it for warp stress."
"Well, how about impulse drive? How fast can we travel?"
his captain's intentions as clearly as if Kirk had shouted them. "With
incomplete shielding around the breach," Scott said, "we're limited to
about 0.1 light speed. Any faster than that, and she'll take damage
from micrometeorite impacts, maybe even ruin what we've got of the
repair."
Oh point one. Kirk drummed his hands against the railing, calculating
Scott's projected velocity against how long the Hawking had been gone.
"Eighty-seven minutes before we could rendezvous," he said aloud. He
pushed off from the rail just to turn and lean back against it. "Dammit,
that's too long. If the Orions haven't gotten here by now, something
must have distracted them." He glared at the empty viewscreen, stomach
roiling. "And I have a very bad feeling I know what that something is."
Chapter Fourteen
"WttnT WAS that?" Uhura's voice crept out of the darkness, quiet with
dismay. Beyond the sound of her voice, Sulu could hear the distant hiss
of gas exploding out of a ruptured line.
"It sounded like an explosion." The helmsman kicked himself out of the
cramped space between his chair and the instrument panel, already
feeling the bone-deep shiver that meant they had fallen back into normal
space. A quick glance at the warp-field monitor showed him the strobing
red glare of failure lights. "Oh, God, not the magnetic containment
housing--"
"Are we going to lose control of the core?" Chekov asked.
"I don't know." Sulu found the emergency light switch and slammed a hand
down on it with a lot more force than it needed. The dim glow of
self-powered spotlights showed Uhura already leaning
over the communications panel while Chekov doggedly tried to free his
loosened jacket from an instrument panel it had tangled with. 'TII have
to go back and look at it."
"I'll go." The security officer tore the cloth loose with a sudden
fierce jerk and rolled to his feet.
"No, you won't." Sulu grabbed Chekov's good arm to stop him. "You need
two arms to get down the access tubere"
"I can manage--"
"We've lost subspace radio capability." Uhura broke into their argument
without ceremony, looking up from her board with a frown. 'Tve
activated the emergency distress beacon, but even at light. speed, the
Enterprise won't receive ou
r signal for another hour."
Sulu cursed and thrust Chekov into the pilot's seat. "Our impulse
engines should still be functional. Reverse our course--get us back to
the Enterprise at maximum impul velocity."
For once, Chekov didn't argue, merely punching commands into the helm
computer with single-handed determination. Sulu spun past Uhura and ran
for the back end of the shuttle.
Ice-cold mist met him when he ducked out of the cockpit, rising from
crystal rivulets of liquid nitrogen spreading across the shuttle's
floor. Sulu felt his boots stiffen as he sprinted through the
superchilled fluid, occasional droplets splashing up to burn through the
clothof his trousers. Space is about two hundred degrees colder than
that, his mind reminded him bleakly. He gritted his teeth and tried not
to think about it.
The nitrogen fog cleared away at the back of the passenger bay, burned
off by darker curls of smoke snaking through the opened emergency locker
in the
rear bulkhead. Sulu skidded to a stop, staring at Muav Haslev. The
Andorian had somehow worked himself free of his wrist restraints and was
already sliding into one of the shuttle's orange-and-gray environmental
suits.
"About time you got here," Haslev complained, then yelped in alarm when
Sulu shoved him aside and yanked open the door to the engine
compartment. More nitrogen fog billowed out, carrying the smell of