by L. A. Graf
Relief surged through Chekov with such startling strength that the
security chief nearly sank to the floor in exhaustion. "He's not going
anywhere." He raised his rifle to prod the bulky shimmer of reflected
heat above him. "All right, you--climb down. Slowly."
The prisoner hesitated only a moment before awkwardly disentangling
himself from the ladder and shuffling out into the hall. Chekov knew
without asking that this wasn't his saboteur--the heat reading wasn't
nearly high enough, even taking the environmental suit into account. The
only strong primary heat sources were the suit's power packs and a
bright square of brilliance at the top of his helmet. Chekov realized
this must be the helmet lamp when Sulu came
down to meet him and the same bright white spot swept across the visor's
spectrum.
"What are you doing down here?" Chekov asked, lowering the rifle so he
could lean the muzzle on the floor.
"I caught this guy breaking into my quarters!" Sulu gestured sharply at
the suited figure between them. The joints of his suit creaked with the
sudden movement. "I was trying to stop him when he went down this access
ladder." Apparently seeing something on Chekov's face, he asked, "Why?
What's the matter?"
"I was chasing the saboteur."
Sulu's outline pulled sharply upright with surprise, helmet light
rebounding off the opposite wall. "You saw him?"
"I shot him." Chekov waved his rifle toward the tracked-up blood on the
floor, wondering if they'd be able to clean all this up before the first
shift crew came on duty. All he knew now was that his socks were wet,
and the sleeve of his tunic was starting to feel clammy as the blood in
the fabric cooled. "He must have used the same access ladder before you
voided the atmosphere. Damn--the vacuum will have boiled the blood away
and ruined the trail." He flexed his hand again; the fingers moved
stiffly, coldly. "I can tell you one thing, though--whoever he is, he
isn't human."
The prisoner's bark of surprise sounded more like a squeak over the
helmet communicator. Stumbling back from Sulu in the doorway, the
stranger tried to turn and lumber away, his helmet light vanishing from
Chekov's sight as soon as his suit was turned. Chekov passed the rifle
to his right hand again, and in two long steps caught the storage hook
on the back of the suit and jerked the fugitive off his feet. Pain
seared across his back and shoulders with the effort, and he was
swaying on the edge of gray when he jammed the rifle under the
environmental suit's breastplate so the occupant could feel the muzzle.
"Don't even try it." He tried to keep his voice from sounding thick and
muzzy, but he didn't think he succeeded too well. "Who is this guy?" he
asked Sulu, blinking the helmsman into 'focus.
Sulu lifted his hands to shoulder height, the only way to shrug inside
an environmental suit, and came a few steps closer. "I just chased him
here. Your guess is as good as mine."
Chekov scowled down at the man below him. "I hate having to guess."
"Please--" The voice inside the suit was paper thin, but hardly weak.
"Gentlemen, surely we can reach some sort of compromise?"
"The security chief's on my side," Sulu pointed out. "I don't have to
compromise." He clumped over to Chekov's side, tugging off his
environmental suit gloves. "What were you doing in my room?"
"I-I was lost." The stranger squirmed a little under the rifle, but
Chekov didn't let up the pressure, not sure he could bring the man down
a second time. "I was looking for something. I lost my bearings in the
hull breach--I didn't mean to cause any problems."
Somehow, Chekov wasn't convinced of their prisoner's veracity. "What's
your name and rank?"
A little hiss of sound that might have been a laugh whisked past the
suit's outer speaker. The prisoner's helmet thumped against the ground
when he shifted position. "I'm afraid that's a little harder to
explain-"
The lights came up with almost dizzying suddenness. New layers of heat
and reflected long-wave light crumbled the visor's clean images. Chekov
stepped
away from their prisoner long enough to trap the rifle under his left
elbow so he could reach up and pull off the visor without having to move
his wounded arm. Even that small movement slammed a jolt of pain across
his shoulders and made his vision dim.
He'd grown so used to interpreting the infrared signals through the
visor that the dusty blue face staring up at him didn't even seem
unusual until Sulu gasped with shock. Then the flaxen hair and pale
antennae had their impact. "You're an Andorian!" Sulu pushed in front
of him to throw an arm across his chest and catch him from staggering,
and Chekov had to lean far to one side to keep the Andorian in view.
"Who the hell are you?"
"My God, what happened?" The helmsman's voice came suddenly clear as he
popped the seas on his environmental suit helmet and threw it to the
floor. "You're bleeding all over your gun!"
Chekov tried irritably to elbow the helmsman aside, swaying only
slightly against the crash of nausea that rose up to greet him. Sulu
was rightethe rifle's muzzle had channeled a thin drizzle of blood to
-the breast of the Andorian's environmental suit. "I'm..." He fingered
the cold, wet fabric of his tunic sleeve, frowning. "... I'll be fine
...."
Then Chekov felt the deck spin out from under him, and he reached to
grab at Sulu's arm to steady himself. He didn't even realize he was
falling until his shoulder slammed against the helmsman, and he knocked
them both to the floor.
"Oh, God, Pavel, don't be dead." Sulu squirmed out from under Chekov's
limp body, trying not to roll him onto his back. The stench of charred
clothes and
skin clung to the corridor, a thin haze of smoke now vanishing int the
ventilators. The floor beneath them was slippery with puddled blood,
and Sulu briefly tried to tug Chekov out of it before he realized that
it was still oozing out of the security officer's ruined shoulder.
Despite the appalling pallor of his face, Chekov's chest rose and fell
with steady breathing. Sulu's gaze slid aside from the sickening glimpse
of 'scorched bone below the bloody flesh, and fell on the white-suited
Andorian, trying to scuttle away.
"Hey!" The helmsman's pounce carried all the weight of his anguish and
frustration, slamming the alien against the far wall with one arm
twisted up behind his back. With his free hand, Sulu grabbed Chekov's
blood-slicked phaser rifle and jammed it into the back of the Andorian's
neck. "Don't move!"
The alien froze, only turning his head to regard Sulu with an ambiguous
pinkish gaze. "Shouldn't you be doing something for your friend instead
of assaulting me?" he asked in a not-quite-innocent voice.
"Assaulting you is what he'd want me to do." Sulu prodded him with the
rifle. "Let's go. There's a communications panel down the hall. You're
going to call sickbay for me, and then you'
re going to call the
captain."
The Andorian's antennae cringed beneath his transparent helmet. "Oh no,
I don't think so--"
The double clatter of footsteps interrupted him. Sulu turned his head
and sagged with relief when he saw a familiar, wiry figure striding
around the corrid or junction. "Dr. McCoy, over here!"
The doctor sprinted down the hall toward them. "Good God, what's going
on here?" He dropped to his knees beside Chekov and reached into his
medical
kit. Aaron Kelly trailed behind him, an appalled look on his
coffee-dark face. "Who the hell shot Chekov?"
"The guy who bombed the ship." Sulu swung around, bringing the Andorian
with him by the simple expedient of not removing the phaser rifle from
his neck. The alien groaned theatrically but didn't try-to resist. "Is
Chekov going to be all right?"
"He'll live." McCoy flipped the lid from a bandage canister, and a pale
sheen of anesthetic foam hissed out over Chekov's seared shoulder. "But
I can tell you right now, he's not going to be real happy about it."
The turbolift doors down the hall slapped open before Sulu could
respond. A slim form in a red environmental suit vaulted out, followed
by a defensive wedge of black-clad security guards. "What happened?"
Kirk strode down the corridor toward them, his eyes jerking from
Chekov's prone form to the white-suited Andorian. The alien visibly
flinched beneath the captain'S fierce scrutiny. "Is this the saboteur?"
Sulu shook his head. "No, sir. This is the guy I chased out of my room
and down the maintenance ladder." He jerked his chin back at the
security orridor, the acrid bite of scorched plastic and mtal catching
in his throat as he did so. Sulu tasted the underlying bitterness of
burnt flesh and clenched his teeth against a lurch of sickness. "The
guy who set the bomb was down here, shooting Chekov."
"And two other guards," added Aaron Kelly in a small, shocked voice. "He
would have shot me, too, if Lieutenant Chekov hadn't stopped him."
Kirk snapped the bolts on his helmet and lifted it off sweat-dampened
hairThe frown in his eyes told Sulu he was tallying all the information
he'd been given.
"Did you see who did the shooting?" he asked the auditor.
Kelly shook his head numbly. "The lights went out before I heard the
first shots." Sulu saw his dark throat tighten with a swallow. "As soon
as the force barrier on my cell dropped, I ran. I just--ran and hid."
"Probably the most efficient thing you could do, Mr. Kelly," Kirk
commented dryly.
McCoy finished spraying synthetic skin across Chekov's back, then looked
up at the captain. "Jim, if you're done questioning this boy, I'd like
to send him back to sickbay to get a transport sled for Chekov."
"He's free to go." Kirk handed his helmet to the nearest guard, then
went down on one knee to examine the double trail of blood splattered
down the corridor. "Bones, does all this blood look human to you?"
The doctor glanced down at the muddle of bloodstains on the floor. "That
orange stuff sure doesn't." He pulled a scanner out of his medikit and
passed it over the nearest dabble of orange.
Sulu blinked, unpleasant memories of past bar fights running through his
head. "It looks like Orion blood to me, Captain."
"I thought so, too." Kirk rose to his feet and swung to face the
security guards without waiting for McCoy's confirming nod. "Begin a
shipwide search for an injured Orion, probably armed and dangerous.
Include all maintenance ladders and access shafts, starting with this
one. We know he went somewhere on it."
"Aye, sir." Ensign Lemieux lifted off her helmet and turned to face the
rest of the guards. "Hrdina and Samuelsson, you take the access
ladders. The rest of
you, fan out on this deck." She paused, glancing at the silent Andorian
while the guards scattered. "Should I put the prisoner in the brig
before I leave, sir?"
"No." Kirk waved her away, his voice turning cold. "I have some
questions I want to ask him."
The Andorian's head swung up abruptly. "I didn't ,. have anything to do
with it, I swear!"
"Anything to do with what? Kirk stepped forward, giving the
blue-skinned humanoid a flinty look. The alien skittered back, stopping
only when Sulu nudged the rifle even more firmly into his neck.
"With bombing your ship." The helmet communicator flattened the
Andorian's nasal accent into a whine. "I didn't do it, Captain. In
fact, I'm the one who told your security chief where to find it!"
"I believe you didn't do it." Kirk took another step toward the quailing
alien, then reached out to pop the bolts on the Andorian's helmet and
lift it clear of his antennae. "But I don't'believe you didn't have
anything to do with it... Muav Hasler."
The Andorian jerked back so fiercely that the hell met tore out of
Kirk's hands and went crashing to the floor. Sulu found himself
wedged up against the wall,
phaser rifle squeezed tight between his chest and the alien's back. He
grunted and pushed the Andorian forward again, afraid he'd pull the
trigger by mistake. The v, inegar-sharp smell of alien sweat drifted
over him.
"How did you know who I am?" Hasler demanded, his voice deeper but no
less defensive now that he was speaking out loud instead of through the
suit. Pale antennae quivered nervously above his damp flaxen hair.
Kirk snorted. "When two Orion ships conspire to
slow us down and board us, and then an Orion stowaway sabotages our ship
so we can't get away, I begin to get the feeling I've got something on
board the Orions want." He leaned forward to thump a gloved fist on the
allen's breastplate. "Right now, Mr. Haslev, you have the distinction
of being the one thing in the universe the Orions want the most. One
missing Artdorian weapons scientist, recently employed on a top-secret
military research project."
"I wasn't employed there," Haslev corrected him indignantly. "I was in
charge! They couldn't have done any of that work without me."
McCoy scrambled to his feet, eyebrows lifting in surprise. "If you're
Muav Haslev, what in hell are you doing on board the Enterprise? I
thought the Orions had kidnapped you!"
"Kidnapped? Is that what they're saying now?" Haslev sniffed with
undisguised disdain. "I left of my own accord, thank you very much. The
Andorian government undervalued my contributions to their research, so I
went out and found someone who would pay me what I was worth."
Kirk reached out with both hands, and Sulu skipped prudently out of the
way before the captain shoved the Andorian back against the corridor
wall. "You sold Federation-level military technology to the Orions?" .
"Why not?" HasIcy squirmed for a moment, stopping only when Sulu poked
him warningly in the ribs with the phaser rifle. His voice was
aggrieved. "Their money spends just like everybody else's."
It was all Sulu could do not to take up the rifle and beat him with it.
He restrained himself, watching Kirk step back wi
th a grimace of
disgust. "Selling any
military technology to a neutral star system is a direct violation of
Federation policy, Mr. Haslev," the cal-tain said coldly. "We're going
to have to arrest you."
"But it wasn't like anyone in the Federation wanted it!" Haslev's
quartz-pink eyes widened in alarm. "No one even thought it would
work--they said if we wasted any more research on it, they'd cut our
funding! I had to go to the Orions. They were the only ones who
believed in me."
McCoy snorted, stepping back as Aaron Kelly guided a medical transport
sled down the hallway toward them. "If the Orions were so all-fired
wonderful, what are you doing hiding away on a Federation ship?"
"We had a disagreement. over an item in my contract," the Andorian
admitted, the fine lines of his cheeks darkening to a brilliant indigo.
"They wanted to kill me; I didn't want to die."
That seemed reasonable enough, whichever side of it Sulu
considered.Kirk's mouth twitched slightly, as if he thought so, too.
"Orions can be like that," he said smoothly. "What technology did you
sell to them, Mr. Haslev?"
"I don't think I should tell you," the scientist said after a thoughtful
pause. "Unless, of course, you promise not to arrest me."
Sulu saw Kirk's gloves clench into fists at his sides. "The0nly thing I
can promise to do, Mr. Hasler," the captain said between his teeth, "is
