Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins

by Margaret Clark (Editor)

  “It is difficult to truly sense his emotions from so far away,” she answered. “But his anxiety strikes me as sincere.” Her dark Betazoid eyes took in the Pakled’s expression and body language. “I believe they are truly in danger.”

  Worf disagreed. He rejoined La Forge at the tactical station. “They have deceived us before,” he snarled. “They are without honor.”

  “Perhaps,” Picard conceded. “But even scoundrels can sometimes be in genuine need of assistance.” He came to a decision. “By all means, we should stay on our guard, but I do not believe that we can turn our back on these individuals simply because of our unfortunate history with others of their species.”

  He held up a hand to ward off any further objections from Worf. “Mister Data, estimated time to Sector 004-B?”

  The android officer swiftly performed the calculations in his head. “At maximum warp, we should be able to reach Rorpot’s coordinates in approximately six-point-two-four-eight hours. If there are indeed quantum filaments in the vicinity, however, we may be forced to navigate the sector at a slower speed to avoid a disaster of our own. This could significantly delay our arrival.”

  “Good point,” Riker said. “We don’t want to collide with the same filaments that damaged the Pakled vessel. If they even exist.”

  “Are there any other Federation ships in the region?” Picard inquired. “Who might be able to reach Rorpot more quickly?”

  Data consulted his ops terminal. “No, sir. The nearest other vessel is the Lorentz, currently patrolling Sector 2001-G. We are indeed the closest ship available.”

  “Very well, then,” Picard said. “Warp speed seven. Proceed with caution.” He hailed Aadnalurg once more. “We are prepared to offer you whatever assistance we can provide, Captain, but I fear it will be some time before we can arrive at your coordinates. Can you hold out until then?”

  “Umm . . . maybe. I don’t know.” Aadnalurg tugged another Pakled into the frame. He looked like the same crewman who had whispered to the captain before. Aadnalurg prodded his subordinate. “Talk to them!”

  The second Pakled waved clumsily. His cropped brown hair had not receded as far. His facial creases were less pronounced. A split lip looked painful. His torn uniform had seen better days. “Uh. Hello.”

  “And you are?” Picard asked.

  “I am Snollicoob. I am the number one engineer.”

  The chief engineer? Geordi contemplated his Pakled counterpart.

  He wasn’t impressed.

  “What is your status?” Picard inquired.

  “You must hurry!” Snollicoob exclaimed. “Life support is breaking down. Our air is going bad. We have no escape pods. The warp engine is too hot.” He wrung his hands. “The force field bubble is going to pop!”

  Bubble? It took La Forge a moment to realize that Snollicoob was referring to the magnetic containment field. The full implications of the report sank in. “Captain, I think he’s talking about a possible warp core breach!”

  Despite his doubts regarding the Pakled’s honesty, he felt a chill run down his spine. What in the world were the Pakleds doing with warp technology? Just the idea of them messing with matter/antimatter reactions made him nervous. They could barely manage impulse engines!

  “Yes!” Snollicoob confirmed. “Warp core breach! We will blow up!”

  Picard’s frown deepened. The situation appeared to be growing more dire by the moment. “Can you shut it down?”

  “I am trying!” Snollicoob insisted. “But it will not work.” La Forge got the definite impression that the Pakled engineer was in over his head, dealing with borrowed alien technology that he didn’t fully understand. Snollicoob lowered his head in shame. “I don’t know how.”

  “How much time do you have?” Picard asked.

  Snollicoob shrugged. “Not a lot.”

  His answer lacked precision, but got the idea across. Riker turned to the captain. He lowered his voice. “If they can’t shut down that runaway warp core, there could be nobody to rescue by the time we get there.”

  “His fear seems authentic as well,” Deanna reported. “We should assume he’s telling the truth. If not, the results could be truly tragic.”

  Picard nodded. “Captain Aadnalurg. How many crewmen are aboard your vessel?”

  The Pakled captain needed to think about it for a minute. “Eighty-five. Maybe.” He massaged his wounded brow. “Many of us are hurt.”

  “I understand.” Picard considered his options. “Mister La Forge, can you talk the Pakled engineer through the procedure?”

  “I can try,” he said dubiously. He remembered coaching the clueless Pakleds on the workings of their own freighter years ago. “They’re not exactly easy to explain things to.”

  “Please make every effort, Mister La Forge.” Picard made it clear that failure was not an option.

  “Yes, sir.” Geordi turned the communications panel over to Worf. He figured it might be easier to converse with Snollicoob away from the commotion of the bridge. It was also possible that the Pakled engineer might speak more freely away from the presence of his own captain. Geordi headed for the turbolift. “Patch him through to engineering,” he instructed Worf. “I’ll talk to him there.”

  “Good luck, Mister La Forge,” Picard called out to him.

  Thanks, he thought. I’m probably going to need it.

  The angled display screen atop Geordi’s desk in engineering was smaller than the main viewer on the bridge, but Snollicoob looked just as distressed. Fearful brown eyes gazed up at Geordi, who had cleared his office of extraneous personnel in order to give Snollicoob his full attention. A reinforced window of transparent aluminum offered a view of the Enterprise’s own matter/antimatter reaction assembly. The familiar thrum of the engine room penetrated the walls of the office. After so many years in charge of the engines, Geordi could sometimes detect subtle irregularities in the intermix just by ear. He wondered what the Pakled’s engine sounded like now.

  “Are you smart?” Snollicoob asked him. “Can you help me?”

  La Forge rolled his eyes behind his VISOR. It would be easier talking to little Molly O’Brien, and she was just two years old!

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, he thought. Probably just a scam anyway.

  “Why don’t you start by sending me your data,” he suggested.

  “Uh-huh,” Snollicoob agreed. Like La Forge, the Pakled had relocated to the engineering section of his own vessel. Geordi heard much hubbub and commotion in the background. Tools banged against metal pipes and valves. Welding lasers hissed and sizzled. Nerve-jangling buzzers and alarms sounded with aggravating frequency. Worried Pakleds stomped back and forth, seemingly engaged in frantic repair operations. If it was all an act, they were putting on quite a show. Snollicoob, who apparently did not have an office of his own, hunched over a blocky tabletop console that looked like a cruder version of Geordi’s own master systems display. He fiddled with some knobs. “I am sending it now.”

  To La Forge’s slight surprise, the requested data appeared promptly on the screen alongside Snollicoob’s image. By now, Geordi had the Enterprise’s computers working overtime to compensate for the subspace interference. He swiftly inspected the readings.

  Damn!

  It was even worse than he had imagined. As nearly as he could tell, a quantum resonance had caused a polarity shift in the antimatter containment field, while the reaction chamber itself was building toward a full-scale meltdown. It was only a matter of time before the increasing temperature overwhelmed the weakened shields, at which point Rorpot would be reduced to atoms. Assuming that the data hadn’t been cooked up to fool him.

  “Okay, we’ve got to lower the temperature right away,” Geordi said, getting down to business. “Flood the assembly with coolant.”

  Snollicoob shook his head. “I cannot do that. The tank broke open when we hit the filament. It leaked into space.”

  “Really?” La Forge found that hard to believe. Redundant b
affles should have prevented a leak of that magnitude, as they would have on the Enterprise. “All right. Can you activate the backup cooling systems?”

  Snollicoob cocked his head. “What are backups?”

  Is he serious? La Forge felt a headache coming on. “You know, backups. Secondary systems that duplicate the functions of the primary apparatus.”

  “I do not understand,” Snollicoob said. “Why build two systems when all you need is one?”

  He really doesn’t get it, La Forge thought. This was going to be harder than he thought. “So you have it if the first one breaks.”

  A lightbulb flickered dimly above Snollicoob’s head. His eyes lit up. “That is a good idea!” Then reality sunk in and his shoulders slumped. “We have no backups,” he said sheepishly. “I am sorry.”

  Despite his growing frustration, La Forge was starting to feel sorry for the hapless engineer. It wasn’t his fault his people relied on technology they barely understood. “Never mind,” Geordi said. “We’ll try something else.” He searched his brain for an effective stopgap measure; unfortunately, five years had left his memory of the Pakleds’ layout pretty fuzzy. He could use Data’s computerized recall right now. “How about you send me a schematic of your engine?”

  “Uh-huh!” Snollicoob hurried to oblige. Within seconds, a detailed diagram of Rorpot’s engineering section appeared on La Forge’s screen. He was impressed by the level of the detail, which actually approached Federation standards.

  That’s more like it, he thought. Maybe the Pakleds were better with blueprints and numbers than with words. They aren’t stupid, he reminded himself, or they would never have made it out into the galaxy in the first place. They just have undeveloped language skills.

  Fine. He didn’t need Snollicoob to write a sonnet, just to get his overheating engine under control.

  “You get the pictures?” the Pakled asked.

  “Yes,” La Forge said. “Thanks. They’re just what I needed.”

  Snollicoob grinned, pleased to be of service. “You are welcome.”

  A rapid analysis revealed that Rorpot’s single warp engine was of basic Cardassian design, albeit a few generations out of date. La Forge wondered briefly how the Pakleds had gotten their hands on the technology; he couldn’t imagine the Cardassians falling for the same “samaritan snare” the Enterprise had been suckered into years ago. The Cardassians were not exactly known for their benevolent nature, as Ro Laren had always been quick to remind people. They’d be more likely to seize a stalled freighter than render assistance.

  There’s got to be a story there.

  At the moment, however, it didn’t matter how the Pakleds had attained warp capacity. He just had to keep it from incinerating them. If that was even possible.

  “Mister La Forge!” Snollicoob blurted. The Pakled stared at his own monitors in alarm. “The bubble is halfway gone!”

  “I can see that.” According to the readouts, the containment field was down to forty-nine percent and falling. The Enterprise’s own safety margin was fifteen percent; anything below that, and a warp core explosion was inevitable. La Forge had to assume that Rorpot’s primitive engine was even more unstable. “Stay calm. We can handle this.”

  Maybe they could dampen the matter/antimatter reaction to buy some time? “Increase the flow of deuterium to the reaction chamber,” he suggested. If they smothered the antihydrogen with an excess of gaseous matter, severely skewing the annihilation ratio, they might be able to slow the chain reaction long enough for the Enterprise to arrive in time to evacuate the freighter. Conscious of the Pakled’s limitations, he attempted to explain his plan as simply as possible. “Give the engine too much of one fuel, so that it chokes.”

  “Good idea!” Snollicoob beamed. “You are smart!”

  “So they tell me.”

  La Forge crossed his fingers as the other engineer went to work. He wasn’t going to relax until he knew this desperate improvisation was going to work. His spirits sank as Snollicoob’s hopeful expression collapsed only slightly faster than the containment field itself. This doesn’t look good.

  “It is not working. The valves are stuck.” Snollicoob twisted his controls so hard one of the knobs broke off. He gaped at the broken component in chagrin. “I cannot make the flow go faster!”

  Great, La Forge thought sarcastically. He guessed that the injector nozzles were fused or pinched. The Enterprise was equipped with redundant cross-fed injectors, but at this point, he knew better than to expect that the Pakleds had built in the same precautions. This is why we have the Prime Directive, he thought irritably, biting down on his tongue to keep from saying something rude. Some species just aren’t ready for warp drives. . . .

  He found himself wishing he was on board Rorpot in person, so he could deal directly with the malfunctions, then caught himself. What am I thinking? He went back to advising Snollicoob long-distance. “You’re going to have to open those valves manually. With a wrench if you have to!”

  “We are trying!” Snollicoob insisted. A ladder crashed loudly in the background. Banging noises almost drowned out the engineer’s words. A bright flash briefly bleached out the Pakled’s features. “They will not open! They are stuck!”

  A sudden jolt tossed him to one side. The screen blanked out abruptly.

  “Snollicoob!” La Forge’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to restore communications with Rorpot, only to discover that the transmission had been cut off at the other end. Grisly scenarios flashed through his brain. What had happened to Rorpot? Had the warp core exploded prematurely?

  C’mon, Snollicoob. Don’t do this to me.

  A burst of static heralded the resumption of the signal. La Forge let out a sigh of relief as he answered the hail. Snollicoob’s mournful face reappeared on the screen. The Pakled’s hair was badly mussed. Fresh black soot smudged his features. His eyebrows were singed. Shouts and alarms sounded all around him.

  “Hello, Mister La Forge. I am sorry for the interruption.”

  “Forget it.” Geordi was surprised at just how relieved he was to see that his Pakled counterpart was still among the living. He thought he had lost him for good. “What happened to you?”

  “We bumped into another filament,” he explained. “It shook us up.”

  “I can tell,” La Forge said. At least Rorpot was not traveling at warp speed anymore. The only good thing about the freighter’s being stalled in deep space was that it could no longer collide into the quantum filaments at high velocity. “How are you doing?”

  “It is bad,” Snollicoob reported. “The hull is buckling. There are fires everywhere. The galley is gone.” He shook his head dourly. “I do not like quantum filaments.”

  “You and me both.” La Forge sympathized with what the Pakleds were going through. He and Beverly Crusher had been trapped in a burning cargo hold after the Enterprise’s own runin with the deadly interstellar hazard. They were both lucky to have survived the conflagration. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  “You have?” Snollicoob was surprised to hear it. “But you are still alive?”

  “You bet,” La Forge encouraged him. “And you’re going to get through this, too.”

  The Pakled looked unconvinced. “I don’t know. It is bad here.”

  A quick glance at the reactor readings lent some validity to Snollicoob’s gloomy prognosis. Containment field integrity was down to thirty-four percent. Geordi wasn’t sure how far they were from a total collapse, but he figured they were running out of time. There was only one sensible course of action.

  “You need to eject the warp core.”

  Expelling the overheating reaction assembly might spare Rorpot from the catastrophic explosion. Granted, there was still a danger that the core might detonate too near the freighter, but that was a chance they would have to take. Better that the core explode right outside the ship than inside its hull.

  Snollicoob hesitated. “But we will lose our engine. The captain will not like that.”<
br />
  “You don’t have any choice,” La Forge informed him. “It’s extreme, I know, but you have to do it. Now.”

  “Uh-huh.” Snollicoob gulped. “You are smart. I trust you.”

  The nervous Pakled took a deep breath, then keyed the emergency codes into his console. La Forge hoped Snollicoob wouldn’t get into too much trouble for doing this without his captain’s say-so, but they didn’t have time to conduct a lengthy debate on the pros and cons of the procedure. At least, if this worked, the captain and the crew would still be alive.

  Snollicoob flipped a switch.

  Nothing happened.

  “Uh-oh,” the engineer said.

  “What is it?” La Forge asked, afraid he already knew the answer. Let me guess. It’s not working.