Ship of the Line

by Diane Carey

  “In consideration of your unparalleled service and bravery,” he spoke resonantly, “I shall make this a voluntary mission. However, I won’t delude you. No less than the noble heart of the Federation and millions of innocent Cardassian lives rest upon your shoulders. Yes . . . I’m asking you to risk your lives and your newfound freedom for the safety and security of those who have imprisoned you, who’ve tortured you. My friends, this is your chance,” he finished, “to show them what you’re really made of. Will you come with me now?”

  His voice thrummed through the bombed-out square.

  Cold hands shuddering, Steve McClellan stood there on his aching hip, digesting the fact that he was still alive and that there was food inside that ship for him and his brother and their shipmates, and he couldn’t make so much as a squeak of response.

  Should he answer for all the others? Should he—were they waiting for him to speak for them?

  What was Atherton thinking?

  Should they—

  Steve almost jumped out of his skin when Atherton let out a suddenly whooping cheer beside him and raised both hands into the air. Instantly a bigger cheer erupted from all the former captives, a soul-raising shout of participation and hope.

  Steve looked around to see who was making the noise, and it was himself. Himself, his brother, and everybody with whom they’d been stranded here, shouting and cheering, hugging and some actually dancing.

  Invigorated, Steve swung back to Picard. “Sir! May I offer the services of the crews of the U.S.S. Durant and the satellite tender Tuscany!”

  Another high cheer backed him up.

  Picard reached for Steve’s hand and pumped it. “Lieutenant, I’m proud of you. Starfleet is proud of all of you. The entire Federation owes all of you its pride and gratitude. Everyone, follow me on board! Our mission . . . stop the Enterprise!”

  And the timbers creaked and the rudder groaned and the wind whistled and the sea hissed, everything blending into an inferno of noise as he clung shuddering to the rail.

  Ship of the Line

  Chapter 23

  “Keep your voices down. There are nine Klingons right behind this bulkhead, manning the warp propulsion. We’re at warp now. Lord knows where he’s heading.”

  “He’s heading into Cardassian space, sir.”

  “How do you know that, Scotty?”

  “Directional readout charts. Right on that wee screen over there.”

  Bateson and Scott were in front of Riker as they all hurried through a doorway, hoping the Klingons in the next chamber wouldn’t come out before they were safely behind closed doors.

  They had no hand phasers. They’d raided an auxiliary arms cabinet two decks up, only to find that Kozara knew enough about computer systems to drain those phasers even as they hung on their charging mounts. Useless. Except maybe for throwing, and any hammer would serve for that.

  Why was Kozara going into Cardassian space? Nothing good. Klingons thought Cardassians were slightly more than reptiles. Cardassians thought Klingons were overspined children. At the moment Riker thought they were both right.

  Kozara could’ve gone into Cardassian space and stirred up trouble just fine with that Klingon fighter he’d set adrift. Why would he bother taking this—

  Instantly the question answered itself.

  “Scotty, we’ve got to hurry,” he urged. Suddenly he was cold all over, as the larger picture showed itself across the panorama of his mind. “Do you have another idea?”

  “I have one,” Bateson said. “It’s pretty base.”

  “Basic is good.”

  “Not basic. Base. There’s a subtle difference. Scotty, can we get a view of that area without having them see us?”

  “Think so,” Scott answered, and plucked at a computer console in the corner of the room. “Security cameras ought to be working—there you go, sir.”

  An angled picture of the warp propulsion monitor cubicle cleared on the small screen. Seven . . . eight Klingons in view, having some kind of argument.

  “Where’s the audio?” Riker asked.

  “Doesn’t seem to want to come in.” Scott plucked a little more. “If I tamper, the unit might light up.”

  “Don’t do it then,” Bateson ordered. “We’ll just watch.” He carefully, quietly crossed the deck to a janitorial closet and disappeared inside. Agonizing seconds slogged by before he came out again, with an armload of cleaning and disinfecting chemicals, and oddly, a first-aid kit. “Scotty, Will, feed these ingredients into the computer and come up with a formula.”

  Riker squinted. “A formula for what?”

  “Now, this ought to turn their crank.”

  “Oh, my God . . . this is disgusting! Look at those numbers!”

  “Especially with those first-aid chemicals included, Will. Scotty, are you ready?”

  “When you are, Captain.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Operation Skunk, firing away, sir.”

  Riker and Scott worked together from two separate consoles, combining—very quietly—the ingredients of the medical substation into a computer-constructed formula, for a specific result. The chemicals themselves had been rather crudely introduced by Captain Bateson into the ventilation system from a duct access down the corridor, in heavy concentrations. Disinfectants, sterilizers, cleaning agents, solvents, medical salves . . . now the captain was back, the door was closed, the screen was showing the Klingons next door, and the computer was taking over.

  Finishing his sequence, Riker hurried to Scott’s console, where Bateson hovered over Scott’s shoulder. Together they all looked at the small screen, which showed a ceiling view of the eight—oh, there were ten now—Klingons.

  Ten. That was all of them in there, according to the thermal registry in the computer.

  Ten more . . . would it work?

  “Their sense of smell is stronger than ours,” Bateson murmured as he peered over Scott’s shoulder at the working Klingons. “When’s it going to start?”

  Scott hunched over the controls, delicately adjusting a dial. “Any second now . . .”

  On the screen, four Klingons’ faces were toward them, with the other six standing with their backs to the recorder. They continued their argument and kept working at the controls. Riker wished there were sound, but that would be too risky. Systems were scrambled all over this ship, thanks to the sabotage they’d suffered. Better not risk tampering too much. The ship would require a full sensor sweep when this was all—

  “Look!” Bateson pointed at the screen.

  Two of the Klingons had stopped working. They were glancing at each other, frowning, wondering. One more started glancing around. One waved at the air in front of his face. They kept eyeing each other.

  Now, one by one, two by two, the rest of them noticed something less than flowery in the room.

  One Klingon pointed a finger and shouted at another. The second waved his hands furiously, then pointed at another Klingon. The first Klingon clawed at his eyes and tried to plug his nose.

  “They think it’s each other!” Riker crowed.

  Bateson actually giggled. “I wish I’d thought of this back at the fraternity house. How it must stink in there!”

  “It’s got to reek in there,” Scott corrected. “And it’s about to get mighty worse.”

  He cranked more on the dial.

  On the screen, the Klingons began gagging. Two of them retched. Another scratched at his eyes and tried to block his nose and mouth with his arm.

  “Masks,” Bateson ordered, and handed Riker a small personal emergency gas mask. “Get ready.”

  “Do we have to?” Riker put his mask on, still watching the ten Klingons gag and double over at the sickening stinkpot gasses flooding the room. Six Klingons were on their knees. Two more were folded over chairs, another over a console. The assault was turning debilitating, as Scott fed a combination of methane and various other fetid odors into the chamber.

  “I’m putting in enough methane to
make them dizzy,” Scott said. “Any more’ll kill ’em. Now’s the time, sir.”

  Bateson shoved off toward the door. “Come on, Will!”

  Grabbing a box of two dozen packaging ties, Riker followed the captain out into the corridor and down to the warp control doorway. Bateson keyed the door manually, and they went in to meet the gawking eyes of dazed, nauseated, wobbling Klingons.

  Even through the mask—what a stench! Riker almost threw up, but managed to hold his stomach down as he and Bateson scrambled to tie the Klingons’ wrists behind their backs and then secure their ankles together.

  “Aww . . .” he wheezed through the mask. “Repulsive!”

  “Isn’t it?” Bateson secured the last Klingon. “This is what happens when you let engineers do the cooking. Damn it, they’re not armed! No sidearms! Kozara’s smarter than I gave him credit for.”

  Riker hoisted one gagging Klingon to his knees. “We can hide them in the janitorial closet.”

  “Good. Let’s get the hell out of this—”

  “Let’s inhibit the propulsion system first, sir.”

  “And shields. If Starfleet got our message, they’ll need a way to take the ship back without destroying her.

  “Let’s at least do it fast.”

  “Oh, yes, please.”

  “You know, my throat is still burning from that stink.”

  “My eyes are watering too.”

  “How much do you think Kozara knows about the ship?”

  Riker’s question was barely above a whisper as he and Bateson worked on the environmental controls. Scott, to whom fighting Klingons was old hat, was stationed in the auxiliary control room, dinking with the environmental mains. Together they were plotting mischief, but Riker was worried. Soon Kozara would discover the members of his crew missing on the holodeck and those the guerrilla squad had hidden away back in that janitorial closet. Kozara probably wouldn’t find his men, but he’d know some of the prisoners were free and creating trouble. He could then track humans on the move with the bioscanners.

  With his arm up to the pit in the wall access conduit, Bateson managed a shrug. “I don’t know when he found out about the ship or that I was on it. Obviously some portion of this is a personal vendetta. If he found out about me three years ago, then he’s had three years to track my activities, and he’s known about the starship for about two of those years, right about when I joined the project. And he’s had a spy informing him, but we don’t know for how long. Could be hours, could be years.”

  “I hate unknown quanities,” Riker griped. “But you know as well as I do, he could spend ten years learning about starship systems and still never know them all. I know I don’t. That’s why it takes a large crew to run a ship like this. Nobody can know everything.”

  “Give or take Scotty. I’m beginning to think he knows everything.”

  Nodding in unqualified agreement, Riker added, “When I figure out how he got the pod’s airlock open with just a survival suit, then I’ll know everything too. We know more than Kozara does, and that gives us an edge.”

  “Until he captures us. I’m almost finished here. Adjusting localized gravitational trim . . . now. I wish we could contact Scotty.”

  “We don’t dare,” Riker said. “They could pick up on our comm signals and trace us.”

  “What did he say? Forty-five degrees?”

  “Fifty-five degree pitch.”

  “Fifty-five . . . You better get out into the corridor. Let them see you, but whatever you do, stay on the outside of the centrifugal.”

  “Here I go. Wait for my signal.”

  The ship’s artificial gravitational system wasn’t the sort of thing Riker had ever figured for a weapon. Like walking on a planet, the gravity was just there. It felt normal. It was adjusted to feel that way, always perpendicular to the deck, so a person would be upright and feel as if he were walking on an even surface.

  All that was about to change. Each deck, each stretch of corridor, had its own superconducting stator constantly spinning gravitons, so inertial potential could vary from one area to another and compensate for hard maneuvering. Waveguide conduits connected the network.

  In auxiliary control, Scott had broken into the environmental systems and freed up this link of the network. Bateson now had readjusted the gravity pitch on a fifty-foot stretch of one corridor. All he had to do was push a button, and the deck would feel—well, pretty damned tilted.

  Riker hurried through the ship to a door with a plate announcing BATTLE BRIDGE. Inside, he knew, were seven more of Kozara’s crew, trying to figure out the master systems displays. Riker didn’t know what Kozara had in mind for the battle bridge, but he meant to stop it. Possibly separate the sections, and have effectively two ships, one jam-packed with antimatter power and heavy weapons.

  Heading toward Cardassia Prime . . . if not to gain back his honor, then to start a war and at least have some kind of legacy.

  “Or deny this ship a legacy,” Riker suddenly murmured. “That’s it . . .”

  Pausing briefly under the weight of that realization, he shook himself back to purposes and stepped close to the battle bridge entrance. The door sensor picked up his proximity and the door slid open.

  He found himself staring at all six of the Klingons, all at once.

  Then he looked down the corridor at nothing and shouted, “All hands, run for it!”

  Instantly he took off in that same direction, as if chasing a whole team of Rikers on the loose. Wouldn’t do any good if only two Klingons chased him.

  A shout in Klingon rocketed down the corridor after him, punctuated by the pounding of hard-soled boots. He glanced over his shoulder as he rounded a corner—six . . . all seven were following!

  Bateson had been right about them—instead of two or three following Riker, all seven were going after the glory, competing with each other, not thinking about how to efficiently cooperate.

  Without body armor or the natural bulk of a Klingon, Riker was quicker. He managed to outpace them by about ten meters. Ahead of him was another curve. Instead of rounding that curve, he ducked into the crew’s quarters straight ahead, just before the curve, and stood there in the doorway, with both feet inside. The Klingons could see him.

  And he could see the fury in their eyes. A shiver raced down his spine.

  “Hope this works,” he gasped, and hit his combadge. “Now!”

  A sickening tuck made his stomach roll. His feet were all right, inside the crew’s quarters, but the upper half of his body still stuck out into the corridor and was washed with the adjusted gravity. Instantly all seven of the Klingons lost their balance and slammed hard into the starboard wall. Completely disoriented, they couldn’t find the deck anymore. Some were trying to climb the wall. Their feet scratched on the short-napped carpet.

  Riker hit his badge again. “Stage two, now!”

  A few seconds passed, and for a moment he thought Scotty might’ve failed.

  Then a glossy crust began forming over the carpet—frost!

  The deck crackled, turned hoary white, and iced up like a skating rink. An instant later, Riker felt another wash of gravity changing, this time to pitch the whole corridor downward on one end.

  As if riding a water slide, the seven Klingons howled and scratched, but couldn’t stop their “fall.” Scraping down the icy surface of the corridor, they swiped toward Riker, their faces plastered with astonishment and disorientation.

  “Welcome aboard!” Riker called as the first one flashed past him, then the second.

  Whoosh—whoosh—Squalling in rage, the third and fourth Klingons came by even faster, their legs ridiculously tangled. The fifth Klingon managed to catch the doorframe of Riker’s cubbyhole and hung on, clawing at Riker’s legs as if hanging from a cliff’s face, and for a hideous second almost climbed inside. The Klingon’s teeth were gnashing, hoping to get a bite out of Riker’s ankle.

  “Can’t have that,” Riker said simply, and assisted his friend with a
kick in the nose.

  Raging, the Klingon flew off down the “hill” with his crewmates, followed by the sixth and seventh Klingons, who were trying to climb each other, as if that would work.

  Riker leaned as far out as he dared, his head spinning with the pull of gravity in the wrong direction, and looked down toward the end of the corridor. There stood Captain Bateson in the doorway of another quarters, throwing loading netting over each Klingon that arrived in the room. Dizzy and as turned around as undersea divers, the Klingons were disoriented enough that Bateson could quickly secure each net while the Klingons were still thrashing about and looking for the floor.

  Riker hit his combadge and dared a quick message. “Cancel!”

  Instantly the gravity changed again, and he had to hang onto the doorframe to keep from falling over. Seven here, ten in the janitor’s closet, six chasing chickens. Twenty-three Klingons out of commission.

  Happy in their victory as schoolboys, Riker and Bateson met each other in the corridor.

  “Twenty-three down,” Bateson said. “That leaves seventeen. Not bad for nonlethals.”

  “Not bad at all,” Riker agreed as they ran to auxiliary control and plunged inside.

  “Scotty!” Bateson called instantly. “It worked! Icing the deck was brilliant!”

  But Scott was not sharing in their joy. In fact, he looked sagged and overwhelmed. “Sir . . .”

  Both Riker and Bateson fell ominously silent at Scott’s horrified expression.

  “He’s unloading the quantum torpedoes,” Scott rasped. “Somehow he got ’em armed!”

  “How?” Riker bolted. “The firing sequence wasn’t laid in yet!”

  “His spy probably told him how,” Bateson huffed.

  Riker rushed to Scott’s side and looked at the readouts. “And he’s firing them?”

  Scott pointed at the firing display. “He’s sure as hell shooting at something, sir.”

  As the blood in his body drained to his feet, Riker raised his sore eyes to Bateson’s and Scott’s paled faces. They gazed helplessly at each other for a few ugly seconds.