by Dave Stern
“I know where engineering is,” Cooney snapped.
“Then let’s go,” Trip said, biting back a sharp retort of his own, realizing that whatever it was that had always set him and his universe’s Cooney at odds, this man apparently had it as well.
“Trip,” Malcolm said, stepping past him. “Please. You stay back, all right? Let me—”
Malcolm never finished his sentence.
Four Denari—two in uniform—turned into the corridor, directly in front of them.
Reed fired. One of the men in uniform went down. The other tried to backtrack, but Travis took him out. The other two Denari froze. Phaser blasts struck them as well, and both toppled.
The door to the engine room was straight ahead. Malcolm ran toward it. Trip and the others followed.
Malcolm paused at the engine room door.
“I’m going in first. I’ll take out any Denari I see on the main level. Travis, you come in behind me, target the upper level. Hoshi, you do the same. Commander, you and the professor stay behind me, watch for stragglers. You”—he pointed with his weapon at Cooney—“secure this door.”
“My people are in there too,” Cooney said. “Make sure you don’t hit them by mistake.”
“I know who they are,” Travis said.
“Okay.” Malcolm nodded. “Let’s go, then.”
He flung the door open, and charged.
Eighteen
TAKING CONTROL of the engine room was, well, not easy, but easier than Trip had thought it would be. They’d had a big advantage from the start: when the six of them burst in, they immediately shifted the ratio of human to Denari in their favor.
Part of that was because a big chunk of the Denari engineering staff had been on the bridge, as he learned afterwards, waiting for the “remote sensor” they’d put in the manifold to report back.
It was also because Ryan and Yee had gone on duty early, so the two of them were working right alongside Lieutenant Hess on the lower level when Reed opened the door and charged.
And this Colonel Peranda Travis and Cooney had been going on about—“smarter—a lot smarter than he seems at first”—had only posted half a dozen guards in the room—three on the upper level, three below.
Malcolm and Hoshi took out one each when they entered. Ryan smacked one with a spanner from behind as he was about to fire on the newcomers. One started down the gantry, firing as he went. He managed to clip Cooney in the shoulder, sending him skidding across the deck to land in a heap against the wall, out cold. Hess caught the soldier’s ankles from behind and the man flipped head over heels down the gangway, smacking himself unconscious on the way down.
Trip got the fifth soldier himself, peeking out from behind the intermix chamber, and then there was only one left. Reed played a game of hide-and-seek with him for a minute, while Travis sneaked around the chamber and came up behind him. The man raised his hands in surrender, but Reed stunned him anyway. No time to deal with captives.
Trip jogged to the nearest control station and sealed the doors. He lowered the emergency bulkheads behind them.
Nothing short of a phase torpedo was going to get them out of here now.
All that was left was the easy part—at least, as they’d laid it out, during those hours they’d waited in the cell-ship. Having Hess here, and Yee and Ryan—that was a bonus he hadn’t counted on then. He gave them the tasks he’d originally assigned to Malcolm, Hoshi, and the professor: Ryan at the auxiliary control panel with him, Hess and Yee at the life-support station.
“Reroute everything right here,” he told the two junior engineers. “This panel. You two go from the armory on up, I’ll do the bridge on down.”
Behind him, he heard Hess and Yee hard at work as well.
The com began sounding a minute into their task.
“Engineering, this is Doctor En’hakar in the sickbay. We are experiencing difficulty with our diagnostics. Please advise.”
“Engineering, Lieutenant Hava in the armory. I do not have control of ship’s weapons. Please respond.”
“This is Westerberg on the helm. Autopilot has engaged, and I can’t reroute to manual control. Guys, what’s going on down there?”
Westerberg. Trip smiled.
Brodesser, whom Trip had seen out of the corner of his eye, walking around the chamber, stepped up next to him and smiled as well.
“I told you he’d be here, didn’t I?”
“Like old home week,” Trip said, punching in a new series of control instructions to the helm—the last of the bridge stations he had to reconfigure. He saw Ryan and Yee were seconds away from being done as well.
He turned to the life-support station.
“Lieutenant?”
“Just a second,” Hess said. “We’re rerouting the last of the override circuits.”
“Commander?” Travis was standing by the main entrance. “I can hear them out there.”
Trip frowned. That was quick. Not that they could do anything out there, with the door and the bulkheads to get through, but still…
“All done here,” Hess said.
Trip turned back to the auxiliary console.
“Ryan? We’re waiting on you.”
“Not any more, sir.” He stepped back as well.
Trip looked around the room. Hoshi was with Cooney, who seemed to be coming around. Travis was on the main door, Malcolm on the upper level, the rest of them right alongside him, ready to go to work.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s tell this Peranda of yours who’s in charge of the ship now.” He reached for a com panel.
“Commander?”
That was Reed, standing at the top of the stairs.
“I don’t think we should contact him,” Reed said. “I think we cut life support right now.”
Trip frowned. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“We didn’t know there were a hundred soldiers aboard when we made the plan,” Malcolm said. “We start talking, we give him time to react. Who knows what he’ll do? Sabotage the ship?”
“Your lieutenant’s right.” Cooney had drawn himself up to a sitting position. “Peranda’s a snake. Believe me. Even if he agreed to surrender, I wouldn’t trust him for a second.”
“Gotta second that, sir,” Travis put in. “The colonel strikes me as the kind of man who would stoop to anything. Booby traps. Sabotage. You name it.”
Trip nodded. “All right.”
It was hardly sporting of them, he felt like pointing out, to just cut the atmosphere off completely without warning. And there was Westerberg to consider. But the others had a point. Peranda had an overwhelming numerical advantage. Best give him no time at all to use it.
“Sir?” That was Yee. “One of the launch bay doors is opening.”
“Close it.”
“Already done.”
Well. Peranda wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for them to make a move.
“Airlocks on F– and G-decks opening.”
“Shut them too. All right, Lieutenant,” he said to Hess. “Let’s do it. Cut life support.”
Hess nodded and punched in the command.
Not more than five seconds later, the com sounded.
“Colonel Peranda to engineering. Cooney, Mayweather, whatever sort of stunt you have in mind—”
Trip punched into the transmission.
“This is Commander Charles Tucker, Colonel. Chief Engineer of Enterprise. This isn’t a stunt. This is us kicking you off our ship. Don’t worry, though—we don’t intend for anyone to die. We just want you a little more…tractable.”
There was a pause. “Tucker. I see I should have trusted my instincts more. Not let Cooney and Mayweather go off together. Well, what’s done is done. Let’s deal with the present situation.”
“No deals,” Trip interrupted. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in control of the ship now.”
“Here is my deal,” Peranda said. “You have five seconds to turn life support back on, o
r your Westerberg is dead. Starting now. Five—four—”
“Don’t do it, Tucker!” Westerberg called out, his voice carrying over the com.
Trip looked over at Travis. “Is he serious?”
The answer was plain to see in the helmsman’s eyes.
Trip ran a hand through his hair. “Colonel, I want to warn you that if—”
“Time is up, Tucker. And I see life support is still off.” The sound of a phase pistol firing came over the com. “So Westerberg is dead.”
Peranda’s words echoed through the chamber.
“Son of a bitch,” Cooney said.
Trip looked around and saw the same shock and disbelief he felt on every face in the room.
“Now,” Peranda said, a hint of self-satisfaction in his voice that made Trip’s blood boil, “my next action will be to destroy the helm console. I have enough firepower here to do that, I guarantee you. In five seconds. Five—four—”
Trip’s mind raced. He couldn’t think of a thing to do. Nothing. Except what Peranda wanted, and that wasn’t acceptable.
“Damn it.”
He stepped back from the console and slammed his fist into the hull. This was not in their plan.
He looked around the room. “Any ideas? Anybody?”
No one spoke.
“—and zero,” Peranda said. Again, the sound of a phaser firing. Then a second, and the hiss of electric sparking.
And silence.
“From what I can tell from here,” Ryan said quietly. “Helm is gone.”
Trip swore again. All right, they could reroute helm function to another console. They’d lose some control, but Travis could handle it. But what—
“Next,” Peranda said, and he was breathing heavily now. No surprise—they were all going to start getting a little light-headed soon. “I shall destroy every station on the bridge. Commander, I am not joking. I will take this ship down with me if you don’t give—us—back—life support.”
All at once, Travis was standing next to Trip.
“He has people on this ship—passengers he’s ferrying back to Denari. They’re important to him. Tell him he can take them when he goes.”
Trip shook his head. “No, damn it. This guy just killed a man, and we give what he wants? No.” The thought of it made him sick.
“Five,” Peranda said.
“We lose the bridge, we lose control of the ship,” Travis said.
Trip looked at Travis, and over at Malcolm.
“Do it,” Reed said. “Give him what he wants. We’ll deal with the consequences later.”
“Three,” Peranda said, slowly. “Two—”
What he wants. He’ll kill all of us, his own people included, to get what he wants.
Bet those soldiers wouldn’t necessarily like that.
Trip punched the channel open.
“Denari soldiers, you destroy the bridge, you destroy the ship. Peranda hasn’t told you that, has he? You doom yourselves. Don’t do it. Whoever’s up there, holding those phasers. Don’t do it. We promise—”
“Zero,” Peranda said.
A phase pistol fired.
Trip heard voices in the background. Shouting. The channel went dead.
He spun around to Ryan. “Tell me something.”
The ensign was frantically tracing a signal path on his console. “Looks like the weapons station is not operational.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Son of a gun. Maybe…
“Tucker to the bridge. Colonel?”
No response.
“Sir?” That was Hess.
“What?”
“They still have emergency lighting up there. If I can cut that as well, they won’t be able to see. They won’t be able to hit anything.”
Trip slapped himself on the forehead.
“I’m an idiot,” he said. “Do it.”
He punched open a channel again. “Tucker to the bridge. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. We will turn life support back on shortly and evacuate you. Do not panic.”
Still no response. He looked back over at Ryan.
“All other stations still test out.”
Trip exhaled in relief, and shook his head.
He looked up at Reed.
“I thought you said that would be the easy part.”
“Best-laid plans, and all that.” Malcolm shrugged, and started down the stairs to the main level.
“Come on, Travis. Let’s get those EVA suits, and get to work.”
They went through the ship one deck at a time, starting with the bridge. Reed and Travis, in EVA suits, disarmed all the soldiers, then brought them to the turbolift, where Cooney and Yee took over, ferrying the barely conscious Denari down three at a time first to the brig—they put the stunned Peranda in a cell by himself—and then when that filled up, to junior crew quarters as they could find them.
The last thing they did was take Westerberg’s body and bring it down to sickbay.
They then cleared B-deck without incident and took access ladders down to C. There, near the upper-level entrance to engineering, Reed and Travis found a knot of soldiers clumped behind the bulkhead. They had been working at the emergency panel, obviously trying to raise it so they could get at the door beyond.
Travis and Reed each bent and each lifted a man to his feet. They began to drag them down to the turbolift.
“Hold it,” Reed said, stopping in the middle of the corridor. He set his man down and drew Travis’s attention to the left-hand wall, down near the floor, where a silver disk half the size of a man’s hand was stuck to the wall.
A barely visible beam of pale blue light, the thickness of a human hair, extended from the disk across the corridor.
“What is it?”
“Not a doorbell, I can safely say.” Reed knelt down next to it and held out a sensor. “A little present from the colonel, I believe. A nasty little explosive device.”
“Sir, all I can say is, I’m glad you have good eyes,” Travis said.
“It’s my job.” Reed shook his head and stood. “No way to disarm it. For now, let’s just tread carefully.”
Travis nodded, looked down at the man he held propped up against the wall. The soldier was dazed, and just this side of conscious. Deprive him of oxygen too long, and they would end up killing him. They’d have to deal with this little booby trap later.
Reed bent down and, with a grunt, slung his man over his shoulder, then stepped over the beam.
Travis followed suit.
But ten meters down, they found another disk just like the first.
Reed set down his man, hopped over the beam, and walked farther down the corridor.
“And again,” he said, kneeling down. “There seem to be quite a lot of these, actually.”
“Not going to be able to work like this,” Travis said. Lifting a half-conscious man a foot in the air one time was doable. Having to lift that weight over and over again…
“No,” Reed agreed. “We’re not.”
He opened a channel.
A few minutes later, Commander Tucker had joined them, wearing an EVA suit of his own and carrying a full complement of diagnostic tools.
“This idiot Peranda,” Trip said as he worked. “Half his crew’s gonna suffocate, and we’re gonna get the blame.”
He was using a portable sensor to scan the interior of the device, look at the circuitry inside, and see what he could use to disarm it. The more he looked, the less he liked. Nasty was the word for this thing, all right. It was a set-once, never-use-again explosive. There was no way to deactivate it electronically—any stray current would more than likely set it off. That was unacceptable—it looked like the charge was powerful enough to tear through the corridor wall, maybe even through the hull beyond.
He frowned.
“We’re going to have to get in there and physically disconnect the wires.”
“How do we do that?”
Trip reached back i
nto his box of tools and pulled out a set of micropliers.
“Very carefully,” he said.
It took him half a minute to disarm the first one. He got faster as he moved on. Still, by the time he’d covered the entire length of corridor between the bulkhead and the turbolift, a good five minutes had passed. Five minutes they didn’t have.
He stood up, and saw both Denari were now unconscious.
There was another stretch of corridor past the turbolift. Trip pointed in that direction.
“I’ll check down there,” he said, pointing. “You get the rest of the soldiers onto the lift.”
Reed and Travis handed off their unconscious charges to a waiting Cooney and Hess. Trip moved past them into the next corridor.
This wasn’t exactly going the way he’d planned either. If they didn’t work very quickly, a lot of people were going to die.
He turned a corner and frowned.
No booby traps that he could see, but four more soldiers lay stretched out on the floor before him. Unconscious, passed out directly in front of a single door. Unused crew quarters, if he was remembering right. Why were they here?
He approached the door. Locked. Why—
All at once he remembered. Peranda’s passengers.
He opened a channel.
“Ryan?”
“Right here, sir.”
“Do me a favor. C-deck, Cabin 428. Open it, will you?”
“Aye, sir. One minute.”
Trip waited. How many people were in here? he wondered. Should they put them with the other Denari? Probably the safest move—keep them separate, but definitely under lock and key, until they knew who they were dealing with.
The door slid open, and Trip stepped through.
The room was dark. His eyes took a moment to adjust. Details of the room came to him—a table and two chairs, a couch behind it. The configuration of the walls was completely unfamiliar. Had Peranda actually gone into the superstructure and—
All at once, he remembered. Cabin 428, and 430 next to it—those had both been unused crew quarters. The captain had asked for more substantial guest rooms after the incident with the Jantaleyse ambassador. Trip had suggested joining two spare compartments together, gotten Archer’s okay, and promptly passed the assignment along. At which point, he’d forgotten all about it. Well, not forgotten, it was on his follow-up list, but pretty far down that rather lengthy series of items. This was the first time he was seeing the end result in person.
