as worried as he felt.
The empty corridor felt huge and echoing, splashed with pulsing red,
where alert beacons lined the walls. Sul u ran to the auditors' quarters
without stopping to check at any of the other cabin doors. Starfleet
people knew the dangers of a decompression alert, knew how to evacuate
an area before the atmosphere evacuated it for them. Civilians were the
ones who had the luxury of growing complacent about their safety. "Don't
worry about it," a station administrator had told him once, when a
station decompression alert had sent him and seven other Starfleet
officers hurrying for emergency bulkheads. "It goes off all the time
around here--it doesn't mean anything." And, sure enough, it hadn't.
Alarms didn't work like that on the Enterprise, though. If the ship
hadn't located the hull breach yet, it would do so soon, and then
nothing would be able to save the auditors from being trapped by the
emergency bulkheads that would protect the rest of the ship. The door
panel on the first of the auditors' cabins refused to yield to the quick
slap of his palm, its golden flare of light indicating that it was still
locked from within. Sulu stepped back and toggled the internal speaker.
"His. Chaiken! We have a decompression warning! You've got to
evacuate your cabin!" There was no reply. Sulu cursed and ran to the
next door down the corridor. The auditors' quarters were connected
through a shared bathroom--maybe they were having a late-night
conference. Right, Sulu, he thought. I can just see them shouting out
efficiency estimates over the noise of the alarm-- The second door
startled him with its hiss, sliding obediently open as soon as he hit
the access panel.
Sulu scowled and took a cautious step into the dimly lit interior. The
air inside smelled faintly metallic and stale. "Mr. Taylor? Mr.
Taylor, are you here?" Seeing no sign of motion in the darkness, Sulu
reached to turn on the lights. The male body on the floor seemed to
leap into sight with the sudden brightness, ruffled hair and rumpled
suit dark against the beige carpet. The stilted angle of head and neck,
flung back like an envelope flap against his shoulders, told Sulu there
was no use in calling sickbay. John Taylor was dead. "Oh, my God--"
Sulu approached the auditor's body, not sure what he should be looking
for but feeling vaguely that someone ought to examine it. There were no
obvious signs of struggle in the room--the scattered notebooks and
recorders around Taylor's sprawled form looked as if he'd simply dropped
them when he fell. No bruises or abrasions discolored his skin, and
even his face wore only an expression of mild surprise. Sulu edged past
the dead man, just far enough to dart a glance through the open bathroom
door. He saw a second still form draped across the polished tiles, long
hair cascading across her caved-in forehead to join the sticky red halo
on the floor. The sour warmth of sickness pushed at the back of Sulu's
throat, and he spun around, desperate for clean corridor air to wash
away the metallic smell of blood.
A short, insistent signal pierced Chekov's sleep, jerking him into
wakefulness and bringing him bolt upright in his bed before his
conscious mind had identified the sound. A throb of amber light drew
his attention quickly through the dark, and he focused on
the security panel by his workstation. His private alarm, telling him
someone was trying to access the security office without coming to him
first. He struggled out of bed, kicking sheets to the foot of his bunk,
and grabbing trousers and tunic from the.top of his dresser. In the
bathroom, Sulu's lizards chirruped happily, echoing the alarm's strident
whistle with their own peeps.
Chekov glanced at his desk chronometer while he stepped into his pants,
then shouldered into his tunic on his way out the door without bothering
to locate his boots. 0300 meant Davidson and Tate were the two guards
manning the duty desk, and they knew better than to go into his office
without first telling him--all the guards knew better. Which meant the
trespasser wasn't from security, probably wasn't from the Enterprise at
dismissed this sort of stunt as too stupid for even the auditors. Then
he thought about Scott's insistence that Sweeney, Gendron, and Purviance
had to have been killed by someone else's deliberate action, and he
couldn't dismiss that line of thinking quite so easily.
Chekov's office was the first door inside the entrance to security. The
outer office was empty and darkened, but Chekov could just glimpse faint
light from beyond the open inner doorway. He padded, stocking-footer,
up to the inside door and leaned around the jamb. His activated work
terminal cast an icy glow against the equipment locker behind his desk,
but no one waited for him inside the tiny room, and nothing else seemed
to be missing or disturbed. Grumbling about whoever had pulled him out
of sleep for nothing, he stretched across the desk to power down the
monitor.
He stopped when the graphic on the screen
his eye.
The circular spiderweb of blue lines was a l schematic for Deck Six of
the Enterprise's hull. A thick, white-light X obscured a portion sector
thirty-nine, and, next to the mark, had printed sloppily "BOMB." Under
that TER HURRY."
Chekov felt his hands go cold. Pushing away the desk, he sprinted down
the security corridor the squad room and its lockers full, lights came
to half-power when he slapped the trols on his way through the door, but
.he across the last meter of deck for lack of shoes traction. When he
collided with the kit locker slammed open the door, one of the ensigns
at the desk clambered out into the hall. "Who's there?"
"Davidson!" he shouted, tearing the bomb kit rack. "Put the department
on standby alert!"
"Lieutenant Chekov?" She came halfway into room, only to duck into the
corridor again when dove past her at a run. "what's happened?"
He didn't slow to explain. "Just stay here at the desk with Tate in
case the captain needs you! I'll Deck Six."
"Aye-aye!"
He thundered up the access ladder to the above, afraid of being trapped
inside a lift shaft there really was a bomb and it detonated before
could reach it. The decompression alarms around him as soon as he threw
back the upper An urge to search every cabin on the deck him, and he
fought it back. The closest thing he had useful knowledge was that
warning on his and he couldn't afford to ignore it if there were
the slightest chance it might be true. Sector thirty-nine, he reminded
himself. Sulu's quarters. Uhura's quarters. The quarters for more
than fifty crew mere
The deck was well evacuated by now. Chekov wondered with an ache in his
stomach how old the decompression alert was, and how little time there
might be left to find an explosive device and disarm it. Tightening his
grip on the bomb kit, he wished insanely that he'd stopped to put on hi
s
boots, so that he could run full out, like he wanted to.
Chekov skidded around the last intersection in the corridor, banking off
the opposite wall, and had only enough time to realize that someone had
burst out of the doorway in front of him before they'd crashed into one
another and gone tumbling to the floor.
Kirk shot upright in his bunk, right hand flashing. out to answer the
intereom's whistle before he was even awake enough to think of it. "Kirk
here."
"Bridge--Spock here." The Vulcan's deep voice filled Kirk's cabin,
pulling him the last quick stages into wakefulness. "Internal systems
report a hull breach on Deck Six. Engineering has mobilized a repair
crew, and search teams have begun assembling on Deck Three."
Kirk swept his .sheets aside, crossing to his bureau for trousers while
the lights slowly brightened around him. The last of sleep's fuzziness
washed out on an adrenaline surge. "But?" he prompted, sensing
additional information underlying his first officer's report.
"As of yet," Spock said, "there is no physical evidence of a breach. Not
on Deck Six, or anywhere else. There is only the alarm."
"That's odd." Kirk jammed on his boots and snaked his arms into the
sleeves of his tunic. "If we're lucky, Mr. Spock, we can keep it that
way." He snatched his jacket on his way to the door. "Call Scotty on
Deck Three--tell him I'm on my way."
"He has already been notified." The cabin door hissed shut on the last
half of the Vulcan's reply, but Kirk heard enough to guess the rest "He
is awaiting your arrival. Spook out."
Wrenching free of the weight that held him pinned, Sulu rolled to his
feet and spun to face his attacker. At first, all he saw was dark gold
clothing--not Starfleet, his instincts warned him, not a crewman! He
lifted his hands to lash out, then recognized the face above the tunic
and felt relief slam through him. "Oh, it's you."
Chekov glared up at him, face tight with tension. His uniform jacket
wasn't the only thing he hadn't bothered to put on, Sulu saw. Stockinged
feet slid gracelessly on the deck as the security officer scrambled to
retrieve the package he'd. been carryin "What are you doing here?" he
demanded.
The decompression alarm broke off in midhowl before Sulu could reply. No
reassuring message from engineering followed on the intercom--just a
sudden, stifling silence. Sulu felt a shiver run down his back.
Something had to be wrong--that wasn't the way a false alarm shut down.
"Sulu, what are you doing here?" Chekov repeated urgenfiy.
"I came to find the auditors." Sulu fought an urge to look back into the
room behind them. The doom whirred, kept mindlessly open by their
nearness. "Someone killed them."
"Damn." The security officer spared one brief glance for Taylor's
sprawled body, then ran for the next cabin door. Sulu sprinted after
him, baffled by his behavior.
"It's lOCked," he warned as Chekov slid to a stop at Cha iken's door.
"And anyway, she's not in there." The Russian grunted and palmed open
the door's security panel, hitting the switch that bypassed the
lock. "Chekov, what are you doing?"
"Looking for a bomb."
Sulu felt his stomach clench as if someone had punched him. "Someone
planted a bomb on Deck Six? Who?"
"I don't know." The door hissed open onto total darkness, and Sulu and
Chekov sprang apart by reflex, sheltering behind opposite sides of the
opening. Nothing stirred inside. Sulu got a wordless nod from his
companion, and snaked a hand inside to brighten the lights just as
Chekov recklessly launched himself through the door. The helmsman
cursed and darted in after him.
"Are you nuts?" Sulu hissed. The room was empty except for the
lingering smell of blood. Chekov searched it swiftly, ducking his head
to peer under the built-in bunks and desk units. "The murderer could
have still been in here!"
"I don't know how long we've got until the bomb goes off." The security
officer yanked open the trash disposal unit and looked inside. "The
warning note on my computer screen said to hurry."
"Someone left a warning for you?" Sulu found the access plate for the
wall storage unit and palmed it open. Only a few plain civilian suits
and blouses hung inside, above a small storage carton labeled "Gendron."
He forced himself to rifle through
Chaiken's clothes, feeling uneasily like a graverobber. "Who?"
"I don't know." Chekov levered up the cover on the food processing unit
and checked the space inside, then slammed it and swung around to glare
at the room again. "Damn it! It has to be here somewhere!" His gaze
fell on the carton containing Gendron's possessions. "Did you look
inside that?" He crossed the room in three long strides.
"No." Sulu .dropped to his knees and reached for the lid, but a hard
grip on his shoulder stopped him. He sat back on his heels as Chekov
squatted beside him and rummaged through his bomb kit. "You think it
could be rigged to blow when we open it?"
"That would explain why someone left me a warning." Chekov pulled a
small sensor out of the kit and scanned it across the carton's surface.
After a moment, it whistled a security code so familiar that even Sulu
recognized it explosion imminent.
"Out!" Chekov dragged Sulu to his feet and shoved
him toward the door. "Get out of here!"
"But--"
"Sulu, don't argue with me! Even if I manage to get this blast
contained, it's going to breach the corridor." Chekov grabbed at the
plasfoam sprayer in his bomb kit. The searing smell of oxygen-hardened
plastics tore through the air as he began to build a blast cage around
the carton. "You're the only one on board who knows what happened to
the auditors. With all the physical evidence gone, the captain's going
to need your testimony to catch the murderer. Now get out!"
Logic warred with loyalty inside Sulu and won. He cursed and tore
himself away from the auditors' cabin, his chest tight with frustration.
The last memory he took with him was of Chekov's intent face as he
sprayed a second layer of confining plasfoam over the small white
carton.
When the turbolift doors opened sluggishly on Deck Three, Kirk jammed
his hands between them to squeeze out while they were still half-closed.
Work crews and technicians already crisscrossed the deck, assembling
into tight knots of activity around their respective projects and
equipment. Befuddled, half-dressed clusters of Deck Six evacuees
cluttered several doorways, and Kirk had to force himself not to stop
and count faces. There would be time for that later. He pushed between
two engineering teams on his way to the briefing room where Scott should
be setting up central control. The teams knew not to stop their work
just to acknowledge his arrival; they simply moved aside to let him
pass, their attention fixed on other things. Kirk was painfully glad to
have such a strong, efficient crew.
Scott and his assistants proved easy enough to find. The chief
engineer's brogue carried down the full length of the corridor, and his
crew's environmental suits stood out like clumsy white beacons amid the
rest of the storm. Kirk trotted to stand at Scott's elbow, waiting for
the engineer to finish issuing orders before asking, "What do we know?"
Scott glanced back at him, then swung a suited arm for Kirk to follow
him into the briefing room. "We know there hasn't been a breach," he
said, his voice as loud and lyric as always. "At least, not anyplace
our sensors can reach. Look here." He tapped a thick finger against a
running terminal, tracing the ship hematic with its outline of glowing
amber. "Even if there were enough damage at the breach itself to
prevent sensors from reading the hole in the hull,
we'd detect a voltage drop across the screens anywhere there wasn't
perfect integrity."
Kirk nodded, bending to read the terminal. "And there's nothing."
"Not even so much as a dip," Scott agreed. "I've even got lads working
on a communications search of the ship, listening for silent spots where
we might be holding vacuum instead of air." He shrugged and
straightened. "I don't expect much, though."
Kirk stood up as well. "Then if there's no breach and no atmosphere
loss, what set off the alarm?"
Scott rubbed his chin, eyebrows high with thinking. "Maybe a who."
"The auditors?" That didn't seem likely, not with Kelly still
languishing in jail from their last little test and the others confined
to their quarters.
"No," Scott said, shaking his head. "They seem a pesky but
straightforward lot. To trigger a decompression alarm without getting