Fire On High (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

by Peter David

  He looked at her as if she'd grown a second head. "Pardon?"

  "I said I think it's very sweet."

  Slowly he walked toward her with a bit of a side-to-side motion. "You know, Eppy, somehow of all the things I expected you to say, that wasn't among them."

  "Look, I know you've got your heart in the right place. You see that Lefler is suffering, you feel a degree of moral outrage at the woman who's causing it, and you feel you are obliged to do something about it."

  "That's mostly it," he admitted. "Oh, sure, part of it comes from the fact that she annoyed the hell out of me. That I can deal with, though. But you saw what she did to Lefler. Lieutenant Lefler is one of my people, and I won't see any one of them being abused if I can help it."

  "Within the context of the ship and her mission, Robin Lefler is one of your people, no question, Mac." She took a step closer toward him, looking sympathetic. "But when it comes to dirt done to her ten years ago, and how she chooses to deal with it now, Robin is her own person. You can't make it better for her simply because you're refusing to let her mother run away again."

  "The ability of each and every crewmember to function at full capacity most certainly is my business," Calhoun pointed out. "If this business with her mother diminishes Robin Lefler's ability to function, then that makes it my concern. And I will attend to the mental welfare of my officers as I see fit."

  "That's a reach, Mac, and you know it. If a couple of former lovers were aboard the same ship and were sick of each other, and one of them wanted a transfer off, would you refuse to do so because you wanted them to—"

  He stared at his ex-fiancee incredulously.

  "Okay, bad example," she admitted.

  "I should say so."

  "The point is, Mac, you can't force people to get along. You have this King Arthur complex. You want to come riding on your brave white horse and right all wrongs, save damsels in distress, and make the world safe for chivalry."

  "You used to compare me to a cowboy. Now you say I'm a knight."

  "Whatever fits the moment. Mac, Morgan is right. You can't keep her here against her will on a tecnicality just because it seems like a good idea to you. She hasn't done anything. Hasn't broken any laws."

  "She broke Thallonian law by coming to Sector Two twenty-one-G. Lord Si Cwan is furious over the transgression, and has demanded that justice be done. He has requested that she be held until trial."

  "Oh, he has," Shelby said skeptically. "Considering that he is a deposed lord and his empire fallen, his jurisdiction in this matter seems questionable. And when was this burst of indignation, may I ask?"

  "Five minutes from now, after I tell him about it."

  "This isn't a joke, Mac. Your motives are pure…"

  "As befits the ruler of Camelot."

  She nodded in acknowledgment and then continued, "But you don't have the right to do this. You're trying to twist the legitimate concerns a captain may possess about a crew's well being into a shape that will allow you to do anything you want. You can't just run roughshod over regulations whenever you feel like it. The rules exist for a reason."

  "I know that, Commander. And I know that you're right. I should be making more of an effort to live within them. Often I consider rules and regulations to be unworkable and, to be perfectly blunt, if I can find a way around them in order to do what's right and proper, then I'll do so."

  "Right and proper by your definition."

  "Yes. Because I'm the one who's out here, Eppy. Not the paper pushers and nameless bureaucrats who made the rules that I'm supposed to follow. Something is going on with Morgan Primus, Commander. Something that, in my opinion, goes beyond her abandonment of her daughter and husband ten years ago. I don't know if it presents a threat to Federation security, to this ship, or to the whole of Thallonian space, but until I do know to my satisfaction, then here is where she is going to stay. I'm sorry if that upsets you, Eppy."

  "No, it doesn't upset me particularly. Saddens me a bit, but doesn't upset me. You could be a great officer, Mac. One of the best there ever was, if you could only learn to live within the rules that other officers do. Mac, do you think I enjoy constantly having to be your conscience? To be the voice of reason? I knew signing on that I'd be serving that function to some degree, but I didn't quite expect it would be this much. Sometimes I think you never listen to me."

  "I always listen to you, Eppy. Not necessarily doing what you say is not the same as not listening to you. Look, when it comes down to it, and if I have to choose, I'll settle for being the best man I can be rather than the best officer, and let everything else sort itself out."

  "You can have that attitude now, Mac. But sooner or later, there's going to be fallout over it. You're flaunting regulations and someday you're going to flaunt the wrong one. And when that happens—"

  "When that happnens, then what? Tell me, Eppy, if they call you to testify, whose side are you going to be on? Would you sit there and tell a board of inquiry that you support me or that you're against me?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'll have Captain Binky come and testify in my stead."

  "I'm serious, Commander."

  "So am I, Captain."

  She turned to go, and he smiled wanly as he called after her, "Besides, Eppy, you shouldn't be upset. It's appropriate, really."

  "Appropriate? You lost me, Mac. How so?"

  "You said I had a King Arthur complex. Well, what better ship to have me than the Excalibur?"

  She shook her head as she walked out, and as she went she said, "Mac, I just hope to hell you know what you're doing."

  He waited until she was gone, and then he said to himself, "So do I, Eppy. So do I."

  IX

  SOLETA ANDBURGOYNE STUDIED the readouts from the matter-antimatter reactor assembly as the Excalibur moved through space at warp three. "You see?" Burgoyne said, noting the energy spikes. "There it is again. Some sort of rhythmic pulse."

  "And you seriously believe it could be a biologic?" Soleta asked. "That seems rather far-fetched, Chief."

  "More far-fetched than a gigantic flaming bird smashing apart a planet?"

  "No. I will grant you that. And the theory," she said, looking over the case history of the problem, "is that somehow it's becoming energized whenever we use the warp engines."

  "That is essentially correct."

  Soleta stepped away from the consoles and looked at the massive matter-antimatter reactor assembly. The M-ARA stood ten decks tall, with the matter reactant injector at the top and the antimatter reactant injector at the bottom. The core of the reactor was a series of doughnut-shaped pressure vessel toroids, surrounded by phase adjustment coils and coming together in the dilithium housing and reaction chamber in the middle. The crackling energy of ionized gas, hotter than the sun, pulsed within.

  "Something existing in that?" Soleta said in wonderment. "Something feeding off it?" She weighed the situation for a moment, and then said, "Well, there is one way I can think of to test it."

  "That being… ?"

  "Well, when an infant is feeding at its mother's bosom, if you remove the food source, you get a reaction. The child demands to know where its food source is."

  "You're not suggesting shutting down the engines cold."

  "It shouldn't be necessary. We can scale the engines down and very likely generate the same reaction."

  "Yessss," Burgoyne said slowly, stroking hir chin and studying the reactor core thoughtfully. "Yes, we could. And I'll have my people running scans all over the M-ARA to see if they can localize some sort of anomaly. It might very well stand out against the lessening energy and, at the very least, make its presence known. While we're at it, we can run a PPT—a pressure port test—at either end of the assembly. I'm worried that damage might have been done to the port seals during all these energy spikes. Besides, with the ports open, we'll have an easier time running scans to see what, if anything is in there, and we can only run PPTs when we're operating the engines at
a fraction of normal capacity."

  "Won't you have to remove the magnetic fields in order to do that?" Soleta said, sounding a bit concerned. "We could flood the entire engine room with radiation."

  "No danger of that. We'll put a temporary containment patch on it. That'll be more than enough to hold everything in place. Only problem is," s/he said thoughtfully, "we won't be able to run at warp speed. Impulse will have to do."

  "Do you think it wise to delay?"

  Burgoyne shook hir head. "Something is going on in my engines. The sooner we know what, the better off we'll be."

  "All right," Soleta said in a no-nonsense tone. "I'll get the necessary clearances from the captain. We'll be a bit late for our rendezvous with the Seidman, but that's hardly a matter of extreme concern. You get your team assembled and we'll start the procedure at… thirteen hundred hours?"

  "Done," said Burgoyne.

  * * *

  Morgan Primus sat in the Team Room at twelve-fifty-five hours, trying to figure out just what in the world she was going to do next. She had a large pitcher of synthehol on the table in front of her, and she was lifting it carefully as if judging its heft.

  "May I join you?" came a voice from nearby. She glanced up and saw Si Cwan standing next to her, looking politely interested in her.

  "Be my guest," she replied, gesturing to the empty seat opposite her. Si Cwan took it and she couldn't help but notice how upright he sat. Ramrod straight. "I feel so loved."

  "Indeed. And why is that?"

  "See him?" she said, angling her head toward one side of the Team Room. A security guard was there, with a hand on a drink and an eye on her. "Followed me in here. And before he followed me, another guard was following me. I counted about eight switch-offs."

  "Why would they be doing that?"

  "Because that's what I would do. Security watch, level two, in all likelihood. Nicely effective way of keeping an eye on somebody if you don't want to look like you're keeping an eye on somebody."

  Si Cwan fixed his gaze on the security guard. He looked up after a moment, noticed that Si Cwan was watching him, and quickly endeavored to look anywhere else.

  "He's not particularly good at it, this one in particular. But he probably hasn't had a lot of practice." She swirled the drink she had in the glass and said regretfully, "Synthehol. Never developed much of a taste for it myself. Romulan ale is my drink of choice."

  "I believe that is illegal, is it not?"

  She put a finger to her lips and said "Shhhh" in a conspiratorial manner. Then she put her glass down and asked with grim amusement, "Are you here to plead my daughter's case?"

  "I am here because you have a difficulty, and I wish to simplify it for you."

  She leaned forward, her interest piqued. "Can you get me off the ship?"

  "No. But you can get you off the ship."

  "Oh. This again." She looked out the main window, and then frowned. "We're slowing down. I wonder why."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Believe me, I know. We've come out of warp and now we're reducing speed even further. I wonder why they cut the warp engines. It's not as if we're near anything."

  "I don't know. I'm sure they have their reasons."

  "Really." She turned to look at him. "Tell me, then: If you are so certain that the people in Engineering have their reasons for what they do, why can't you make the leap that I have reasons for what I do?"

  "Because I know them and have confidence in them," Si Cwan said reasonably. "You are asking for that same degree of trust and have done nothing to earn it."

  "You're saying I should go spill my guts to my daughter."

  "I am saying you have a problem that is not going to be solved simply by sitting in the Team Room and complaining about the quality of the beverages served here. Talk to your daughter. Talk to the captain. Explain yourself."

  Her dark eyebrows knit. "And how often did you have to explain yourself in your lifetime, Si Cwan, hmm? How often did you have to explain the orders you gave, to cite chapter and verse as to why your instructions should be obeyed. Not very often, I should think. In fact, all during your reign I would venture to guess that you never had to. You simply voiced a wish and it was obeyed."

  "For one thing, you are not royalty."

  She waggled a scolding finger. "Never assume."

  "And for another," he continued, ignoring the reprimand, "I indeed had to explain myself any number of times to my peers. To those who were capable of judging what I had to say; people whose support I depended upon in order to get things done."

  "Ahhh," said Morgan, "then that's where the problem is stemming from. You see, I have no peers on this ship."

  "Oh, is that a fact?"

  "Yes. More of a fact than you could possibly believe. Even if I explained it to you, it is most unlikely that you would believe me."

  "I don't know about that," retorted Si Cwan. "I have seen and done quite a few things of amazing variety. You would be surprised as to what I would believe."

  "Not this. You'll never believe this."

  "And what precisely is the nature of this thing I won't believe?"

  She seemed to be sizing him up once more, as if she were considering being completely honest with him. "I wish I could trust you. I wish I could trust someone. I can't even trust my own daughter," she said, looking rather depressed over the entire matter. "You'd think I could, wouldn't you?"

  "I can be trusted, and so can Robin."

  She shook her head. "She hates me. She hates me, and I can't blame her. She feels I ran out on her, and she doesn't understand. She just doesn't. How could she?"

  "How could she understand what?"

  And it was at that moment that the lights suddenly went out.

  Immediately everyone was on their feet, looking around in confusion. The lights came back on again, but then dimmed, and there were noises of bewilderment, everyone asking everyone else questions.

  Suddenly the ship shook violently, staggering everyone in the Team Room. Alarms began to klaxon all over the station.

  And Morgan was already on the move.

  The pitcher in her hand, she was charging for the door of the Team Room the moment the lights had gone out the first time. Si Cwan, looking elsewhere and distracted, didn't see her go. But the security guard had her firmly in his sights and, already certain that she had spotted him, tossed aside caution and moved to intercept her.

  She got within two feet of him and suddenly she was swinging her arm around full speed. The guard didn't have any time to react as the pitcher of synthehol smashed against the side of his head. The pitcher was relatively unbreakable, but the guard's head was not. He went down, the world swirling around him and spinning away into blackness as blood poured from a large wound on his head. Morgan, for her part, didn't care. She tossed aside the pitcher and was out the door within seconds.

  The plan was already running through her head even as she heard the alarms began to wail. She looked left and right and saw dozens of crewmen running to the positions assigned to them at times of shipboard emergency, which this most certainly was, whatever was causing it. There was not going to be any time for anyone to pay attention to one little passenger.

  She noticed a medtech heading quickly down a corridor. The medtech had equipment attached to a belt looped around her waist, and Morgan saw possibilities. The techie was doubtlessly heading for sickbay. That was the same general direction that Morgan was going, and so she wouldn't need to go far out of her way at all to obtain potentially useful items.

  Smoothly and unhurriedly, as if she had all the time in the world, Morgan Primus blended in with the running crewmen of the Excalibur, moving quickly after the medtech and hopefully, after that, toward her destination…and freedom,

  * * *

  On the walkways above the matter reactant injector, Ensign Ronni Beth was heading in one direction, energy survey instruments in hand, and looked up in annoyance to see that Ensign Christiano was coming toward her in t
he other direction. For a moment, just a moment, her heart fluttered at the sight of him—the tall, lanky body, the flowing brown hair, and the ready grin—and the memory of what she'd once had with him, but then she remembered the hurt that he had given her and her heart hardened against him.

  Christiano didn't appear to notice her at first, because he was looking over his own instrumentation readings. But then he looked up, saw her and said cheerfully, "Beth, hi!"

  She stopped a few feet away from him. About six feet below them, the top of the matter reactant injector pulsed slower and slower as the engine capacity was reduced. The core itself seemed, from the angle they were at, to stretch downward into infinity, the ionized gas within swirling around like a captured nova. " 'Beth, hi'? That's what I get? After the hell you put me through?"

  "Look," said Christiano, "it's not what you think…"

  "No, it's never what I think," she shot back at him.

  "You and I, we were never what I thought."

  "Ron, don't be like that."

  "I can't help the way I am!" she said, thumping the railing in annoyance. "And what the hell are you doing up here, anyway? I'm supposed to be running the scans on the MRI."

  "No, that's what Burgy told me to do."

  In annoyance, Beth tapped her commbadge. "Beth to Burgoyne."

  "Burgoyne here. We've got the engine down to five percent of capacity, and the temporary containment patch is in place. You should be able to start running the pressure port tests."

  "Will do, Chief. But I've got Christiano up here as well."

  "What's he doing up there?" Burgoyne sounded confused and annoyed.

  "That's what I was wondering. Did you intend to have us both up here?"

  "No! Christiano, can you hear me?"

  Making out Burgoyne's voice wasn't easy over the thrumming of the engine below, but Christiano was just able to manage it. "I hear you, Chief."

  "You're supposed to be running the port test at the antimatter reactant injector. Not the MRI, the AMRI. You're at the wrong end of the M-ARA."

  Christiano looked rather chagrined. It was bad enough being in the wrong place, but having made the screw up with Beth present and knowing about it…well, that was more than he would have liked. "Sorry, Chief. I'll get right on it."