Chekov down your throat, you'd have to use a secure computer line. None
of them could even break into one, I don't think, much less trip the
alarm and erase all evidence of their visit on their way out the door."
Kirk turned to look back into the 'hall, at the growing rivers of
humanity gathering outside the briefing room. "That means we're either
being distracted by a well-prepared saboteur," he mused grimly, "or
we're looking at a very shy good samaritan."
Scott gave an unhappy snort of laughter. "I know which I'd rather it
be."
"Bridge to captain." Spock's voice echoed through the crowded corridors,
the open channel carrying his words from one end of the deck to the
other. "Priority transmission, channel one."
Fighting down a wave of dread, Kirk leaned across
the briefing room table to punch the intercom with his thumb. "Kirk
here. Go ahead."
"Captain." Sulu's voice sounded thin and breathless, backed up by the
whine of a turbolift's anti-gravs. "Sir, there's a bomb set for
immediate explosion in sector thirty-nine, Deck Six. Lieutenant Chekoe
is trying to build a containment housing around it--we didn't have time
to disarm it." The helmsman hesitated, and Kirk heard someone else
moving near that distant intercom. "I found auditors Taylor and Chaiken
murdered in their rooms," Sulu went on, "apparently so the bomb could be
hidden there. Both were killed by unarmed assault, with no signs of
violent struggle in the room."
Kirk didn't pause to acknowledge Sulu's transmission. Opening another
channel, he snapped, "Spock! Put the ship on red alert and bring us to a
full stop!"
The siren shrilled out almost before he'd finished speaking, splashing
the inside of the room with scarlet light. "All hands prepare for
explosive decompression on Deck Six." It was Spock, a certain sharpness'
ringing through his voice despite his Vulcan calm. "Repeat, all hands
prepare for explosive decompression."
Kirk felt the subtexranean shiver of the warp drive fade, replaced by
the brief growl of impulse power as the ship braked its momentum. Then
the impulse drive died in turn, leaving the Enterprise afloat in utter
stillness.
"I'll get my lads ready," Scott said, and ducked out the door without
awaiting Kirk's reply. Still, the captain nodded tensely, turning to
follow Scott into the hall.
Without prelude, the deck shuddered and lurched
fiercely, hurling the captain to the floor. Kirk barely had time to
hear the clamor of horrified cries beyond the doorway before the noise
of the explosion 'followed the shock wave first the roar of shattered
metal, then the unmistakable distant scream of air rushing out into
vacuum.
Chapter Ten
THE DOORS TO Sulu's turbolift snapped open to the scream of multiple
alarms and the pulsing intensity that engulfed the Enterprise during a
crisis. Red alert lights seared across the faces of the crew as they
pulled bulky 'environmental suits out of wall lockers and assembled into
damage control teams. Spock's calm voice echoed from the intercom
speakers overhead, asking all decks for damage reports.
Sulu scrambled to his feet inside the lift chamber, swinging around to
pull Uhura up beside him. The communications officer's bundled hair had
come loose, spilling down to hide her face from his concerned gaze. "Are
you all right?"
"Fine." She tucked her hair back and pushed out into the crowded main
corridor of Deck Three. Sulu followed her, trying to spot Kirk
somewhere in the 'swirl of activity. It didn't look as if the shock
wave had
hit as hard here, probably because three layers of insulated decking
separated this part of the ship from the blast. After a moment, Sulu
gave up trying to see through the milling crowd and reached out to snag
a passing engineer by the elbow.
"Where's Captain Kirk?" he demanded.
"Down at the emergency command center." The young woman jerked her chin
portside, her hands full of metal plates and welders. "Sector
twenty-six."
"Thanks." Sulu glanced down at Uhura when she stepped back. "Aren't you
coming?"
She shook her head. "You won't need me. I'm going to commandeer a
uniform from somebody and head for the br idge. That's where I can help
most now."
"Okay." Sulu cut a swift path between repair teams, thankful that he was
small enough to slide around the portable vacuum bulkheads being
assembled in the hall. Halfway around the curve of corridor, he found
the temporary command center a conference room now bristling with
repair equipment and engineering consoles. The door was open, but the
way inside was blocked by a man in a bulky white environmental suit
wrestling one last monitoring station through the door. Sulu thumped at
his shoulder, hard enough to be felt through the stiff metal fabric.
"What?" Scott turned, the hard lines of his face softening behind his
face plate when he saw Sulu. "Ah, it's you, lad," he said, his voice
deepened by his suit communicator. "The captain wants you inside."
"I know." Sulu ducked past him, then spotted Kirk's slimmer
environmental suit, the distinctive dark red of a line officer. The
captain hadn't pulled on his helmet yet, and his face wore the look of
focused strength that a crisis always brought out in him. He
bent over the communications display on the conference room table,
activating it with one metal-gloved fist.
"Spock, are those damage reports in yet?"
"Only preliminary estimates so far, Captain." Spock's lean face gave the
screen an odd greenish east. "Deck Seven reports extensive power outages
and minor structural damage, but no decompression. Decks Five and Eight
report only scattered power losses."
"And Deck Six?" Kirk's quick glance at Sulu told him the captain hadn't
forgotten about Chekov.
"Impulse engine crews report complete power outage in their section but
no decompression. The rest of the deck appears to have lost intercom
capability."
"Well, see what you can do about restoring it. Kirk out." The captain
looked up from the monitor as it went black. "Scotty, is the advance
team ready to enter the breach?"
"Almost, sir." Scott glanced up from connecting his engineering console
to the rest of the array. "We've got two more portable bulkheads to
assemble and load on the turbolift."
Kirk grunted and turned toward Sulu, his eyes agate-sharp with
intensity. "All right, Mr. Sulu. What kind of bomb was it, and where
was it placed?"
"Type of bomb unknown, sir." Sulu felt his shoulders draw back into
cadet-rigid attention while he strove to keep his answers short and
informative. Getting debriefed by Kirk always had this effect on him.
"It was hidden in a carton of Auditor Gendron's possessions, in the
storage unit of the room she shared with Chaiken. We didn't have time
to examine it."
Kirk frowned. "How did you know to look for it there?"
"Chekov found an anonymous warni
ng note on his security computer. That's
why he had a bomb kit with him."
"I'm getting a little tired of all this anonymous help." He fixed his
helmsman with a keen stare. "You're sure you saw the bodies of both
auditors?"
Sulu swallowed, remembering the metallic smell of the auditors'
quarters. "Yes, sir. I found Taylor in his cabin, with a broken neck.
Chaiken was in the bathroom. I think she died from a skull
fracture--there was a lot of blood."
"So it's doubtful either of them set the bomb." Kirk drummed metal-clad
fingers on the conference table. "That doesn't leave us very many other
suspects." He swung around and purposefully picked up his helmet. "Get a
suit on, Mr. Sulu. I'm taking a security team down to Deck Six to
record blast effects for evidence before the engineers repair them. I
want you with us when we examine the auditors' quarters." The captain
settled his helmet on his shoulders, then added grimly through the
communicator, "That is, if there's anything left of it."
It was amazing, Kirk thought, how much you could stuff into a turbolift
car if you really tried. This one held four portable vacuum bulkheads
including one with an airlock built into it, a dozen tall canisters of
supercompressed air, an engineering console with a remote link to the
emergency command center on Deck Three, and an assortment of tricorders
and electronic notebooks. It also held nine crew members, all in bulky
environmental suits.
The four security guards made a wall of solid black across the back of
the lift chamber, packed tight as phasers in a weapons locker. Sulu and
Scott had found
space on either side of the portable bulkheads, but Kirk and the other
two engineers had been forced to jam themselves between air canisters in
order to fit inside. It was a good thing none of them was fatmas it
was, every time Kirk took a deep breath, a canister valve tried to
implant itself between his shoulder blades.
He shifted slightly to relieve the pressure on the laminated metal
fabric of his suit, feeling the crinkle of thermal heating units under
its absorbent inner lining. The suit ventilator poured a comforting
hiss of air into his helmet, keeping his face plate clear of fog despite
the prickle of sweat across his upper lip. Mindful of what lay ahead,
Kirk ran another internal check for suit closure. "Scotty," he said
across the suit's communicator channel, "is this the only turbolift
access we have to Deck Six?"
"Aye, sir." The chief engineer carefully steadied the swaying bulkheads
as the turbolift shifted to horizontal motion. "The main power circuit
running through Deck Six got cut by the blast. So far, we've only
managed to restore continuous lift power to the port shaft." He glanced
up at the flashing display over the door, his helmet light sweeping the
chamber. "We should be coming up on it in just a few--"
"Captain." Spock's voice broke into their communicator channel without
ceremony. "Commander Uhura and I have managed to partially restore
intercom circuits on Deck Six."
A little kernel of relief bloomed in Kirk, a sense of gaining control
again after all this chaos. "That was fast. Patch me into whatever's
working."
There was a short pause, then Uhura's quiet voice replaced Spock's.
"Captain, right now I can only link
to Deck Six via shipboard circuits. Can you reach tlie panel in your
turbolift?"
Kirk struggled to half-turn, bracing himself against Sulu's shoulder as
he reached for the intercom. "Barely," he said. The helmsman reached
up to help him hit
the button. "Am I on line now?"
"Yes, sir."
The captain raised his voice to cut through the background hum of the
turbolift. "Kirk to Chekov. Repeat, this is Captain Kirk calling
Lieutenant Chekov. Can you hear me?"
What answered him through the communicator wasn't silence--it was the
slow, bitter cracking. of metal as it cooled to absolute zero. Kirk
lifted his hand from the panel abruptly, feeling as though the sound of
his crippled ship had burned it.
"No reply, sir." Beneath her professional tone, Kirk heard the deep
sadness in Uhura's voice.
He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. Grief was a
luxury they couldn't afford right now. "Continue to monitor Deck Six
intercoms from the bridge," he said instead. "Let me know if you pick
up anything. Spook, I want you on our suit channel once we're in the
breach. You may notice something we miss."
"A logical precaution, Captain," the Vulcan agreed. "With your
permission, I shall monitor your trioorder output as well."
chirping in alarm, its doors locking down against the vacuum it sensed
on the other side. Kirk found himself suddenly chilled by the prospect
of searching that darkness for unlucky crew. "Open us up, Scotty," he
said, very quietly.
followed less confidently, trailing his hand along the corridor wall to
keep his balance.
Cabin doors crept eerily into their slanting helmet lights, only to
whisper away into darkness again. They passed the larger darkness of
the central corridor junction, seeing the distant firefly gleams of
security guards down each intersecting arm. Kirk resisted an urge to
signal open each cabin they passed, search each interior for some sign
of his security chief. He didn't know what he wanted more--to delay
finding out what had happened to Chekov, or to find his body immediately
and get on with the pain.
Switching his suit communicator to a private channel, he said quietly,
"Spock--anything from Chekov?"
"No, Captain."
"We haven't found anything here, either."
The Vulcan paused--judging Kirk's mood by his tone, perhaps, or maybe
just dealing with some other fragment of emergency business. "It is
unlikely that Lieutenant Chekov is still on Deck Six," Spock finally
pointed out carefully.
And if he were, Kirk knew his first officer was thinking, it was even
more unlikely he'd be able to answer. But everywhere else on the ship
had working intercoms. "I don't think we're going to find him," Kirk
admitted. It wasn't as hard to say as he had thought it would be.
Spock's answer was surprisingly gentle. "That is
unfortunate. He was an exemplary officer."
"Yes--yes, he was."
A subliminal warning tingled across Kirk's skin, distracting him from
his mourning. Still, it took him several more steps before he
registered that the sparks of light ahead of him were actually stars and
not just
the scattered reflections of his and Sulu's helmet lights. He slowed to
a stop at the lip of the breach, overwhelmed by a blast-torn expanse
taller and deeper and wider than he had ever feared to see. "Oh, my
God--"
The vertigo alone made him feel as though he stood at the very edge of
the world.
Sulu braced a hand against the last edge of corridor wall, feeling
disappointed when no adequate sensation made it through his heavily
gloved palm. The blast had taken out not only the ship's hull, but also
the partition separating the auditors' cabins from the curving outer
passageway. A fractured latticewor k Of metal was all that remained of
either wall.
"Steady, Commander," Kirk warned him through the suit communicator.
"Start taking tricorder readings. Spock, we're at the breach."
"Acknowledged, Captain." The Vulcan's calm voice seemed oddly out of
place amid the twisted and charred ruins of the deck. He paused while
Sulu scanned the breached area with his tricorder. "Initial analysis
indicates that the damage was produced by a large thermochemical
explosion. The pattern of destruction is consistent with that produced
by an overloaded power pack, possibly one belonging to a phaser or other
phase-shifted optic device."
"You mean a device like a metal cutter?" Kirk paced across the auditors'
quarters, not seeming to notice the yawning gulf of space just beyond
his left shoulder. He stopped near a blackened expanse on the floor,
then looked up and beckoned Sulu to join him. The helmsman took a deep
breath, stepping gingerly over the shock-crumpled decking to take a
close-up tricorder reading of the blast zone.
"The power pack from a metal cutter could produce such an explosion,"
Spook conceded. "As could that of a welder or resin-caster. In fact,