by L. A. Graf
"Are we still on course?" he asked Publicker.
Bent over a tricorder, his goggles granting him a false expression of manic, iridescent attention, Publicker nodded. "Yessir. There's a lot of interference, though."
That didn't surprise Chekovhe'd noticed the returning static on their suit communicators. "We'll see how far we can get before we lose it."
"Yessir."
Uhura stayed beside him when they started walking again. "Are you planning to leave Steno to freeze when we find him? Or merely walk him to death?" Her breath billowed and steamed in rapid rhythm beyond her filter, laying a furry rim of frost along the top of the Kitka mask hanging around her neck. Chekov eased his pace again, feeling guilty.
"No." He scanned the broken ice horizon, saw nothing of use or interest. "We'll render whatever assistance Mr. Steno requires, collect what survivors we can find, and escort them all back to Curie."
Uhura nodded, making the bone mask bob. "Uhhuh. Just checking."
Chekov frowned down at her, unsure whether or not she was joking. He sometimes couldn't tell, and it bothered him that she might think him capable of something so unprofessional as throwing Steno out an open airlockmuch as he might want to.
"This isn't personal, Uhura, it's professional. I don't care that Steno seems to trust Alion more than his own people do. I don't even care how certain Steno was that Alion's people had actually located the shuttle crash site. Steno jeopardized the safety of any survivors he might find by sneaking away without informing anyone else."
"He left Jimenez with the communication equipment," Uhura pointed out. "Jimenez would have told ushe did tell us."
"Whether or not Steno left someone isn't the point!" He brought his hands up in front of him, frustrated at having nothing nearby to fidget with. "You don't try to outperform your reinforcements on a rescue mission. We're here to do a job togetherdammit, we're the only chance those people have to survive! If anyone suffers because of Steno's arrogance " No appropriate English idiom suggested itself, and Chekov still wasn't sure he liked what Uhura's translator had done to his Russian before, so he left the sentence hanging.
"You'll pin his ears back?" the communications officer suggested.
Chekov glanced down at her, decided she was smiling from the tilt of her head, and snorted. "I'll pin something back," he grumbled, "that's for certain."
"Lieutenant!" Publicker's voice interrupted them, dragging everyone to a stop again. He shook his head when Chekov turned. "I've lost the signal."
It was Howard who swore this time.
"What was your last reading?" Chekov asked, coming back to stand with him.
Publicker handed over the tricorder with a shrug. "Faint and barely recognizable as human, but only about a half kilometer from here." He pointed over Chekov's right shoulder. "North, and a couple degrees west of our position."
"All right." Chekov turned to take Uhura's arm and pull her closer into their huddle. "Contact Jimenez," he told her. "See if the Kitka have set up in their new village yet. If Steno really has found our shuttle survivors, we'll be sending up a flare soon for an escort." He wasn't sure he liked the idea of letting Alion's men try to lead them back, even on the off chance the shaman knew to what new location the Kitka had gone. The thought of being alone and unprotected on the ice sheets with Alion set his teeth on edge. "Howardset the gravsled for automatic follow. Ill want everyone's hands free in case"
"Chekov!" The cry, thin with pain and terror, drifted to them across the tumbled ice sheet, jerking everyone around to search for the source of the call. "Lieutenant Chekov! Oh, thank God!"
Uhura spotted him and pointed with a silent gasp.
Steno's ice-green insulation suit nearly hid him from view as he clambered toward them over a sweep of broken ice. He was too far away to make out any details, but Chekov guessed from the roils of steam obscuring Steno's face that his plastic mask was either broken or gone. There was no mistaking his long, bony frame, though, or the frantic impatience of his gestures. "He's gone mad! It's a trap for all of us! We've got to"
An eruption of snow and glittering crystal drowned out the rest of Steno's cry. Two menshort and square like natives, and bedecked with white feathers and rattling bonesburst over the tilted ice pack and swarmed over Steno like frost on glass. One flashed a bone knife across the station manager's midsection, and a curtain of blood splashed over the snowfield to instantly burn its way below the crust and out of sight. Steno went down without a scream.
"Hold it!" Chekov didn't know what he hoped to accomplish, standing on an open ice sheet in solid black insulation suits that wouldn't do a thing to stop those native blades. Instinct demanded he try something, though, even when his hand reaching for a phaser brushed only empty hip instead.
The second native pointed up that loss by raising one of the stolen weapons and opening fire. Phaser light cut a bubbling line of water into the ice barely a meter in front of them. Chekov knew what that setting would do to human flesh.
"Come on!" Grabbing Uhura by one arm, he shoved Publicker into a run ahead of him. Howard needed no such urging; he'd already broken into a run, the gravsled purring along obediently at his heels.
"They'll just come after us!" Publicker objected even as he followed Chekov's lead.
"Then run faster," Chekov growled, keeping one hand on Uhura. "We already know what they'll do when they catch us." Kitka wails rent the air behind them, and Chekov sprinted forward to shove his underling again. "Go!"
The sound of unseen phaser fire had never seemed so shrill and deadly.
Chapter Nine
"I THINK we're gaining ground."
Uhura glanced up from the windblown swirl of snow across her feet, trying to decide which of the black-suited figures near her had said that. Cascading wails of interference on the communicator channel made it hard for her to identify voices. Nordstral's auroras had grown so strong that they were visible even in daylight, iridescent streaks across the ice-white sky.
"Are you sure, Mr. Howard?" There was no doubt whose voice that was: the tense snap in the words would have identified it even without the Russian accent. Uhura wondered how Chekov could still be so keyed up. In the hours since they started running, she'd lost track of everything but cold and exhaustion. Her right side had gone numb from the constant battering of wind, and her left side felt like someone had stapled it to her ribs. The Kitka mask around her neck occasionally jerked in the wind like a top-heavy kite.
"Not really, Chief." Uhura turned her head and saw the tall security guard standing off to one side, leaning into the wind as he scanned their smudge of trail. "But there's no one back there firing at us anymore."
"Maybe they used upall their charge." Publicker sounded as breathless as Uhura felt. For the past half hour he'd been fighting to keep the gravsled from skating past them as they descended a long, irregular slope on the ice sheet.
"Either that, or the magnetic field's gotten bad enough to take out the phasers." As if to emphasize Chekov's point, a particularly vicious howl of static erupted on their communicator channel. Uhura winced and dialed the volume down.
"Whatever." Publicker sounded plaintive as he yanked at the sled, battling a sudden gust of snow-laden wind. "Do you think we could take a minute to rest?"
"That depends." Chekov glanced around at the blowing curtains of snow. The afternoon sun was slowly dimming behind their frost-white veil. "Uhura, do you remember what time those boreal winds hit us yesterday?"
"I think" Uhura's side stitched with pain and she doubled over, gasping. Chekov moved to stand beside her, one hand cupped under her elbow to support her until she could catch her breath and straighten again. "I think they hit about 1400 hours, planet time. Do you think they're coming back again?"
"It sounds like it." The air around them glittered with snow as the wind rose to a howl. "Is there any chance you can make contact with Jimenez in this mess?"
"I can try." Uhura tilted her head, listening past the wind's shrie
k to the fading wails of auroral static. "The interference seems to be dying down a little."
"All right." Chekov caught the gravsled's tow bar as it floated past and angled it down into the snow, to keep the sled anchored against the pull of the slope. He turned the servomotors off to conserve their charge. "Then let's give Publicker his rest break."
"Not a moment too soon." Publicker collapsed beside the silent sled, his breath puffing out through his filter. "Boy, if there's one thing I hate, it's sweating inside an insulation suit."
Judging from the sound of his snort, Uhura guessed that Chekov didn't find that funny. "It's better than getting caught by Kitka, Mr. Publicker."
"Or trying to dry off in this tropical breeze." Howard shouldered through the snow toward them. He reached out to yank Publicker to his feet despite the other man's reluctant groan. "You want a perimeter guard, Chief?"
"Three corners watch." Chekov took his place at the head of the gravsled, face turned outward toward the snow-shrouded horizon. "This weather didn't take long to clear last time it hit. Let's hope that's the standard pattern."
Uhura adjusted her communicator for a narrow-beam scan, then programmed the output to rotate in a slow, searching circle. "Uhura calling Jimenez. Repeat, Uhura calling Jimenez."
"He's probably asleep." Publicker was rubbing his gloved hands up and down his arms, although there was no way the frictional heat could have penetrated his insulation suit. "Or passed out from that broken ankle of his."
"We left him extra medical supplies," Howard reminded him. "And he knows we need him on the console, to relay our location to the Enterprise."
"Uhura calling Jimenez," Uhura said, biting her words off as crisply as she could to keep them from fading into the background hiss of static. The falling wails of interference had vanished for the moment. "Uhura calling Jimenez, do you read me? Uhura calling Jimenez"
" read you " The words barely crackled past the communicator's internal hum. " tune "
Uhura hurriedly focused on that scrap of response, patching Chekov's communicator into her stronger output signal as she did so. "Uhura calling Jimenez. Can you read me now?"
"Much better, sir." Despite the static, the young man's voice sounded steadier than it had that morning. "Have you found the shuttle crew?"
"Not yet," Chekov said grimly. "Jimenez, are you alone?"
"Yessir." The urgency in Chekov's voice brought a reply as crisp as a Starfleet cadet's. "The Chinit brought me to one of their private alcoves. They're out hunting now."
"Good," said Chekov. "This is a Starfleet Priority command. Get in touch with the Enterprise. Tell them that a group of Kitka headed by the shaman Alion have been observed slaughtering Nordstral personnel and are now pursuing us across the ice. We need transport immediately."
"Yessir." Uhura could almost hear Jimenez swallow down his shock. A distant howl of interference shivered through his signal. "When do you want me to contact you with their reply, sir?"
Chekov glanced over his shoulder at Uhura and she shook her head. "We'll contact you, Jimenez, when we can," she told the wailing communicator. "You'll have to keep alert for times of low auroral interference."
" sir." The transmission began to fade again, as the howls grew louder. " luck "
"We've lost him." Uhura closed her eyes, her head aching from the combined shriek of wind and static. She dialed the volume on her communicator all the way down to give herself a moment of relative silence, then jerked upright with fear clawing at her throat. Even with the communicator off, she could still hear howling.
"Chekov!" she gasped, then cursed and spun the volume back up on her suit channel when he didn't reply. "Chekov, listen to your outside mike! This noise isn't just coming from the aurorasthere are Kitka near us!"
"Damn!" The security chief swung around and yanked her to her feet. "Howard, give me tricorder readings. Number of aliens, estimated direction and distance from us. Publicker, get that sled turned on."
The tricorder whirred and spat its readings out as the gravsled hummed to life. "At least five Kitka, sir, but the magnetic flux won't let it calculate distance or directions," Howard reported.
"All right." Chekov kicked the tow bar out of the snow and shoved it into Publicker's hands. "I want you to head downhill."
"Downhill?" The guard sounded baffled.
"We've been traveling downhill all morning. It's the only direction we can be sure the Kitka aren't coming from. We need you to show us the way."
Publicker still didn't move. "But, sirhow am I supposed to know which way is downhill?"
Chekov said something short and pungent in Russian. "Give me that sled!" He yanked the tow bar out of the other man's hands, then deliberately let it go. The gravsled skated past them, gathering speed as it headed down the slope of the ice. Chekov strode after it, pulling Uhura with him at a near run. Around them the snow had whirled itself into a solid white wall that blocked out sight and muffled sound. Uhura turned up the volume on her outside mike and winced as the wind's scream became a roar. Beyond it, the Kitka howling sounded closer. Her side tried to knot itself as she ran.
The boreal winds fell suddenly into silence, dropping their veil of snow to reveal a landscape of cracked and shattered ice. Uhura shouted a warning as she saw what lay directly ahead of them: the dark blue emptiness of a crevasse, slashed canyon-deep across the ice sheet.
She flailed her arms and skidded to a stop a bare meter from the edge, dimly aware of the gravsled sliding past her. In the flurry of startled yells and triumphant howling from behind, it took Uhura a long moment to realize that Chekov hadn't stopped when she did. Instead, dragged by his stubborn grip on the gravsled, he was slowly toppling over the dark rim of the ice.
McCoy eased Nuie off his shoulders and onto one of the beds in sickbay. What he wouldn't give for one of his good old diagnostic beds from the Enterprise! He needed something with a readout screen showing simultaneous vitals and other necessary information, not this star scout's cot! Oh, well. He didn't call himself an old-fashioned country doctor for nothing. Be that as it may, he wasn't going to examine Nuie until he'd taken care of his hand. It was bad medical practice to bleed on your patients.
He still didn't have his familiar medikit, but didn't want to take any further time by retrieving it from his and Kirk's makeshift quarters. He'd spent enough time cleaning Muhanti's lab to have a good idea where everything was that he'd need. And what he didn't know where to find, he'd look for.
Muhanti. Thought of his attacker made him pause. The last he'd seen of the ship's doctor, Muhanti had disappeared behind a curtain of greenish seawater. Was he dead, too?
"What do you mean, 'too'?" McCoy growled to himself. "Jim's not dead. It takes more than a slug of cold water to kill Kirk." Anyway, he hoped that was the case, and would try not to dwell on possibilities. If he did that, he couldn't uphold his end of the job, and Kirk would never forgive him for that.
He found the necessary materials to clean, suture, and bind his hand. Then he brought a portable sphygmomanometer, a stethoscope, and a tiny penlight from one cabinet. Nuie's heart beat strongly and his eyes reacted to the light. McCoy noted his blood pressure and hoped it was within normal limits for a Kitka. He stepped away from the bed, considering, and the communicator on his belt beeped for attention.
Hope swelling inside him, McCoy snatched the small device into one hand and flipped it open. "Jim? Jim, is that you?"
The deep, impassive voice that answered did not belong to Jim Kirk. "Dr. McCoy, can you hear me?"
"Yes." Even Spock's voice was a welcome familiarity right now. "And much as I hate to admit it, you've never sounded so good."
"Indeed." He could almost imagine the Vulcan lifting one saturnine eyebrow. "The planet is currently experiencing a period of magnetic calm, no doubt accounting for the clarity of your reception."
The doctor rubbed his eyes, almost laughing. "That's not what I meant."
"Dr. McCoy," Spock cut in, "we have little time
. Nordstral has just experienced a pole reversal."
"Pole reversal?" He searched his memory for some clue to what this entailed, but came up with nothing that made any sense. "Are you telling me this goddammed planet turned itself upside down?"
"No, Doctor." For a Vulcan, Spock's tone was almost a sigh. "The planet's magnetic field has reversed its polarity such that the north pole has now become the south pole."
"Is that what made our ship crash into the ice?"
Spock paused. "The Soroya has crashed?"
McCoy opted not to mention Kirk's absence or his own worries about their captain's safety. "Some kind of icequake, they said. Knocked us around a little."
"Tectonic disturbances are often linked to magnetic reversals," Spock admitted. "As are volcanic eruptions."
McCoy snorted. "Volcanic eruptionsoh, that's just what we need. What's the prognosis, Spock? Is Nordstral all done having its magnetic fit?"
"Standard theory states that dipole magnetic fields generated in a planet's liquid core suffer reversal only once every few million years. However"
"Dammit, Spock, I hate your howevers."
"My apologies, Doctor, but scientific reality cannot be altered to suit your preferences." A flash of static cut across Spock's voice, then dashed away just as quickly. " computer analysis of Nordstral's magnetic field indicates that it is far more complex than a simple dipole. There appear to be other magnetic components controlling the field from closer to the planet's surface. Increasing fluctuation of these secondary components gradually destablized the main " Another burst of static drowned him out again, for longer this time. " predict that the poles will continue to reverse on an extremely short time scale, possibly as often as every thirty hours."
