Star Trek - TOS - Death Count

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Star Trek - TOS - Death Count Page 14

by L. A. Graf


  there are a number of specialized tools--"

  Kirk didn't wait for him to finish. "What you're saying is that the

  saboteur could have obtained his' weapon from almost any engineering

  section of the

  Enterprise."

  "Yes, Captain, the Vulcan agreed. "Or brought it on board himselL Our

  entry scanners are not designed to recognize power packs as possible

  weapons."

  Kirk grunted. "Maybe they should be." He turned as four black-suited

  guards approached from the far side of the shattered cabin wall, helmet

  lights weaving a luminous tapestry across the destruction. "Well,

  gentlemen? Any luck?"

  "No, sir." Lemieux sounded as if she took the failure personally. Sulu

  glanced up at her tight face, then at those of her fellow guards, seeing

  the same grim expression on each of them. He realized that he wasn't

  the only one mourning Chekov's loss. "We did locate the break in the

  main power circuit, sir. Mr. Scott says we should have power back

  shortly."

  "Good." Kirk stepped back, drawing Sulu with him into the corridor. "I

  want all of you to examine this area closely before the engineers rip it

  apart. We're looking for evidence of two murders as. well as sabotage,

  so report anything suspicious."

  "Aye, sir." The guards scattered across the auditors' quarters, although

  Sulu noted that all of them skirted the open area in the hull as

  carefully as he had. His gaze lifted to the star-spattered dark beyond

  the frayed edges of the ship. Given a choice of fates, eternal drift

  through that limitless black gulf did not

  seem like such an awful one to him. Unfortunately, Sulu was fairly sure

  Chekov wouldn't have agreed.

  "Sulu." Uhura's quiet voice touched his ear, as close as if she were a

  guardian spirit sitting on his shoulder. "I'm getting a strange

  interference pattern in one of the communicator panels in sector

  thirty--six. Could you go down and check on it for me?"

  "Captain?" Sulu glanced at Kirk inquiringly. The captain nodded

  permission without taking his own intent gaze away from the breach in

  his ship. The bleakness on Kirk's face did not surprise Sulu--the

  helmsman knew it stemmed from the ship's injury, as well as from the

  loss of crew.

  Settling the tricorder at his waist, Sulu turned his back on the

  blasted-area, tracing his steps back down the central ship's corridor to

  sector thirty-six. Halfway down the hall, he caught sight of his own

  door and suppressed a mental image of the huddled plants inside,

  blackened and torn by the cruel frost of vacuum. At least, the water

  chameleons hadn't been there. Unbidden, the memory of Chekov's voice

  floated up inside his head, protesting, "I just thought someone should

  keep an eye on them, that's all."

  Sulu's throat tightened. Here in the stark emptiness of the hull

  breach, it was getting harder and harder to resist the knowledge that he

  might never see his friend again. There was enough time for him to get

  out, his mind insisted, but the ache in his chest didn't believe it. The

  security officer would have reported to the bridge by now if he'd been

  able to. Sulu thought about the water chameleons, filling Chekov's

  silent cabin with their feathery chirping, and felt the back of his

  throat burn with grief.

  "Uhura, which--" His voice caught unexpectedly

  on the ache in his chest, and Sulu had to take a deep breath to clear

  it. "Which communicator panel are you having trouble with?" he asked

  Uhura through the suit channel.

  "It's not trouble, precisely." The communications officer's soft voice

  was almost hesitant, as if she weren't sure how much to say. "I'd just

  like to know where the interference is coming from. I'm reading it in

  several locations, but it seems strongest just down the hall from

  turbolift nine."

  "All right." Sulu found the panel and eyed it carefully. There were no

  signs of damage from the blast. "Nothing looks out of order to me. What

  seems to be the problem?"

  "It's not exactly a problem." Uhura hesitated again. "Sulu, put your

  hand up on the panel, and tell me if you can feel some kind of

  vibration."

  He obeyed her without asking questions, knowing she must have a good

  reason for the request. "I can't feel much through these suit gloves,"

  he warned as he touched the panel. A faint shiver touched his skin,

  then vanished. "There was--something. I'm not sure what it was."

  "Does it feel stronger if you move farther down the hall?" Uhura asked

  urgently.

  "Um--yes, I think so." The vibration came and went irregularly as Sulu

  trailed a hand down the corridor wall, its intensity increasing with

  each faint thrum. There seemed to be a pattern to it, but he couldn't

  quite catch what it was. He concentrated on it so hard that the end of

  the wall caught him unaware.

  Sulu stopped abruptly, peering into the dark central junction. "I've

  run out of wall," he told Uhura. "Where do you want me to go now?"

  "To the right," she said at once. "That's where the turbolift is."

  "The turbolift--" Sulu cursed and spun around the corner to slap both

  hands flat on the turbolift doors. Vibrations shook the double layer of

  plate metal, the soundless echo of some impact from inside. "Uhura,

  it's coming from inside the lift chamber! There's someone in there!"

  "I thought so." The communications officer's muted voice could not hide

  her excitement. "Put your helmet against the door, Sulu, so I can hear

  the pattern. I think it's Starfleet code."

  He leaned up against the metal obediently, letting the vibration rattle

  his face plate. Once inside his suit's small shell of air, it

  translated to a faint but distinct tapping sound. Sulu listened to the

  pattern of intervals between thumps--short, short, long, very long--and

  built up a message letter by letter. "K, O," he muttered, hearing Uhura

  echo him softly from the bridge. "V, C, H, E,--Uhura, it's Chekov.t"

  Her wordless cry of delight confirmed his guess. Sulu raised a fist to

  signal back at his friend, but before he could even begin, a glaring

  cascade of light staggered him back from the lift. By the time his

  dark-adjusted eyes realized it was only the wall lights, coming back on

  as the ship's power was restored, it was too late. His outstretched

  hands met only the familiar long humming of a turbolift moving away.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE TURBOLIFT LIGHTS bloomed warmly into being, and Chekov jerked a look

  up at the ceiling panels before it occurred to him that he'd be blinded.

  Squinting, hand over his eyes, he swayed against the closed lift doors

  when the anti-gravs hummed into life and dropped the car straight

  downward.

  "Now no one's going to know I'm in here." His voice rebounded hollowly

  from the curved lift walls. He shivered from more than the

  vacuum-induced cold, thinking about how close he'd come to never getting

  out of this turbolift alive. Maybe he should be grateful to be leaving

  the breached area by any means at all. "Security," he told the

  computer, chafing
his arms to rub away the cold. "Deck Seven."

  After spraying the last layer of plasfoam over the bomb in the auditors'

  quarters, Chekov honestly hadn't thought he'd make it out of the blast

  area in time. He'd run for the turbolift opposite the one Sulu

  would have taken, not trusting a lift car from Sulu's turboshaft to be

  in range when he needed it. The doors of his lift had swished shut just

  ahead of the explosion--a short, flat, percussive bang that tore away

  the strength of its own sound as it tore away the ship's atmosphere.

  Chekov had felt the lift buck alarmingly, then the lights had pitched

  into blackness, and he'd begun pacing his vacuum-sealed coffin, doomed

  to passively wait. At the time, pounding his name out, over and over,

  on the closed lift doors had been the only action he could think to take

  toward his own rescue. He suspected even now that it wouldn't have been

  enough.

  The lift he rode slewed gently sideways, then bumped to a stop. He

  stepped closer to the doors, ready for them to open and release him. He

  needed to trace who had left him that message--he wanted to see lab

  results on anything the search parties found at the bomb scene. He

  wanted to call Sulu and the captain, and tell them that he was alive.

  When the doors slid open to the security corridor on Deck Seven, though,

  they revealed only a blackness as deep and broad as the vacuum above.

  Chekov caught the door with one hand, holding it open while he poised

  nervously in the doorway. He hoped Davidson and Tate had called

  engineering about the blackout; he didn't much look forward to

  navigating his own

  department in the dark.

  "Ensign Davidson?"

  He listened into the darkness with all his might, but heard only ship

  sounds and distant thrummings. He had power to the turbo shaft,

  damreit, and the hull breach was on the starboard side of the hull. What

  had happened to security?

  "Tate?"

  Nothing.

  As the duty officers, Davidson and Tare wouldn't have left their posts,

  he knew that. Not against his orders, and not while Kelly was still in

  the brig as a prisoner. Chekov's skin tingled with premonitions of

  disaster, and he slipped into the open corridor The air smelled clear

  and warm. No breach then. Circuitry damage, maybe. But all over this

  area? He started around the corner toward security, sliding his feet

  along the deck in small, uncertain steps as he fought for equilibrium in

  the darkness.

  A spark of yellow-white light blinked at the fringe of his vision, and

  instinct recognized the flash before thinking did. Chekov threw himself

  to the deck just as a crackling bolt of phaser fire ricocheted off the

  corner to spatter against the opposite wall.

  In the silence that followed, Chekov held his breath to keep from being

  heard above the tick of cooling metal behind him. That had been a

  phaser set to high heat burn, not stun. Raising gingerly up on his

  elbows, he strained his eyes for some bit of light, but total darkness

  reduced the security corridor to a hard, impenetrable black expanse. He

  tried to remember exactly how long it had been since he'd been told

  about the bomb and its explosion. God, this saboteur got around. But

  what could he want in security? And what had he done to the ensigns on

  duty?

  It doesn't matter what he wants, Chekov caught himself thinking. If

  he's going to get out of there, he has to come through me. He couldn't

  count on help from Davidson and Tate--he could only concentrate' on what

  it would take to drive this intruder back behind the force barrier in

  the brig, where Chekov had some hope of containing him until help could

  arrive. He was already counting in his head the number of

  steps from here to the security isolation door, from there to the

  equipment locker in the back of his office, as he eased his legs beneath

  him and slowly regained his feet.

  He froze that way for a moment, listening. Nothing came to him through

  the darkness except the rubbing of his uniform against his body as he

  breathed and the high, white-noise hissing of his blood in his ears.

  Deprived of every useful sense but hearing and touch, his focus zeroed

  down to a point so fine it made him dizzy. He put a hand against the

  wall to steady himself, and the ridged metal felt cold and intricately

  contoured.

  He resisted trailing a hand along the wall when he started to walk. The

  faint sound of his skin against the metal seemed obscenely loud in the

  darkness. Vertigo bled into the void once he was moving, and the layout

  of his department blossomed in his mind's eye like graphics from the

  simulator games on Sigma Onem oversimplified but accurate, with

  important doors and goals highlighted to supernatural clarity in his

  thinking. Stepping away from the wall, he kept to the center of the

  corridor and crept down the darkness toward his office door. There were

  phasers in the equipment locker behind his desk, and they'd be easier to

  reach than the ones kept locked in the squad room. If he could just get

  a weapon and stun whoever was down here, he'd be fine.

  His eyes kept fooling him, warning him of movements and flashes of light

  that he knew he couldn't truly see. Ignoring them was hardmhe caught

  his hands twitching with a want to do something every time a phantom

  shadow twinged his nerves. He finally balled his hands into fists just

  to keep them steady. No sounds of breathing, though. No click of

  hard-soled

  shoes on decking, no whisk of fabric brushing fabric from somebody

  else's movements. He stopped twice to feel the wall for the edges of a

  door and to listen. Once, he thought he felt the heat of someone's body

  very close beside him. Then the feeling passed, and he shivered from

  the image. He hoped that hadn't meant the intruder had somehow crept

  by.

  The office door came up on him sooner than he had envisioned. He

  stretched out one arm to feel the wall beside him, and didn't realize

  he'd reached too far until his balance betrayed him and toppled him

  through the opening, into the room beyond. A crash sounded as he

  tumbled to the floor. He rolled, trying to scramble away from the

  sound, suddenly blind and lost all over again. The clash and clangor of

  falling equipment and slamming locker doors filled the dark sector with

  shards of broken sound. Something in him registered that the noise came

  from deeper in the department, near the squad room.

  A man's voice cried out in alarm, answered by the waspish song of a

  phaser. Davidson? Tate? Not calling out to them was agony. Chekov

  found the door to his inner office on all fours, sensing its nearness

  only an instant before actually colliding with the surface. It slid

  aside when he stood, and seven fairly confident steps took him around to

  where he knew his desk must be and placed him close enough to the

  equipment locker to find it with both hands. This is going to get me

  killed, he thought as he poised his thumb above the trigger for the

  lock. But he couldn't think of any other way to stand ag
ainst this

  intruder, and he couldn't let a saboteur leave the area.

  His thumb depressed the trigger, and the lock panel exploded to life

  with a blast of green light and an

  ear-shattering chime. The computer's voice, tuned to a conversational

  volume; rebounded off the green-lit office walls like the sound of

  mortars "Prepare for retina scan."

  It was all Chekov could do to keep his eyes open when everything in him

  wanted to wince away from the damning intrusion of noise. He dug out

  the key while the scan temporarily blinded him again, fitted it against

  the lock while the computer requested, "Voice identification required."

  He set himself to jerk the doors open as soon as it cleared him.

  "Chekov," he whispered, "Lieutenant Pavel A."

  "Please speak in a normal tone."

  God, God, when he got out of here he was going to memo every security

  division in Starfleet about redesigning this damned system. "Chekov,

  Lieutenant Pavel--"

  A shriek of phaser fire arced white light all over the room, and a force

  like a light-speed missile slammed into his shoulder, throwing him

  against the locker. Seared flesh and burnt blood filled the room with a

  choking stench, and Chekov felt the horrible, deep heat in his shoulder

  blade that meant damage worse than being shot by a phaser set on stun.

  The locker doors popped open as he fell, a random collection of phasers

  and gear clattering out onto the floor around him. Footsteps clicked

  near the outside door, and he jammed his right hand in his mouth to

  muffle his anguished breathing as he pawed about him for a phaser, for a

  rifle.

 

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