there are a number of specialized tools--"
Kirk didn't wait for him to finish. "What you're saying is that the
saboteur could have obtained his' weapon from almost any engineering
section of the
Enterprise."
"Yes, Captain, the Vulcan agreed. "Or brought it on board himselL Our
entry scanners are not designed to recognize power packs as possible
weapons."
Kirk grunted. "Maybe they should be." He turned as four black-suited
guards approached from the far side of the shattered cabin wall, helmet
lights weaving a luminous tapestry across the destruction. "Well,
gentlemen? Any luck?"
"No, sir." Lemieux sounded as if she took the failure personally. Sulu
glanced up at her tight face, then at those of her fellow guards, seeing
the same grim expression on each of them. He realized that he wasn't
the only one mourning Chekov's loss. "We did locate the break in the
main power circuit, sir. Mr. Scott says we should have power back
shortly."
"Good." Kirk stepped back, drawing Sulu with him into the corridor. "I
want all of you to examine this area closely before the engineers rip it
apart. We're looking for evidence of two murders as. well as sabotage,
so report anything suspicious."
"Aye, sir." The guards scattered across the auditors' quarters, although
Sulu noted that all of them skirted the open area in the hull as
carefully as he had. His gaze lifted to the star-spattered dark beyond
the frayed edges of the ship. Given a choice of fates, eternal drift
through that limitless black gulf did not
seem like such an awful one to him. Unfortunately, Sulu was fairly sure
Chekov wouldn't have agreed.
"Sulu." Uhura's quiet voice touched his ear, as close as if she were a
guardian spirit sitting on his shoulder. "I'm getting a strange
interference pattern in one of the communicator panels in sector
thirty--six. Could you go down and check on it for me?"
"Captain?" Sulu glanced at Kirk inquiringly. The captain nodded
permission without taking his own intent gaze away from the breach in
his ship. The bleakness on Kirk's face did not surprise Sulu--the
helmsman knew it stemmed from the ship's injury, as well as from the
loss of crew.
Settling the tricorder at his waist, Sulu turned his back on the
blasted-area, tracing his steps back down the central ship's corridor to
sector thirty-six. Halfway down the hall, he caught sight of his own
door and suppressed a mental image of the huddled plants inside,
blackened and torn by the cruel frost of vacuum. At least, the water
chameleons hadn't been there. Unbidden, the memory of Chekov's voice
floated up inside his head, protesting, "I just thought someone should
keep an eye on them, that's all."
Sulu's throat tightened. Here in the stark emptiness of the hull
breach, it was getting harder and harder to resist the knowledge that he
might never see his friend again. There was enough time for him to get
out, his mind insisted, but the ache in his chest didn't believe it. The
security officer would have reported to the bridge by now if he'd been
able to. Sulu thought about the water chameleons, filling Chekov's
silent cabin with their feathery chirping, and felt the back of his
throat burn with grief.
"Uhura, which--" His voice caught unexpectedly
on the ache in his chest, and Sulu had to take a deep breath to clear
it. "Which communicator panel are you having trouble with?" he asked
Uhura through the suit channel.
"It's not trouble, precisely." The communications officer's soft voice
was almost hesitant, as if she weren't sure how much to say. "I'd just
like to know where the interference is coming from. I'm reading it in
several locations, but it seems strongest just down the hall from
turbolift nine."
signs of damage from the blast. "Nothing looks out of order to me. What
seems to be the problem?"
"It's not exactly a problem." Uhura hesitated again. "Sulu, put your
hand up on the panel, and tell me if you can feel some kind of
vibration."
He obeyed her without asking questions, knowing she must have a good
reason for the request. "I can't feel much through these suit gloves,"
he warned as he touched the panel. A faint shiver touched his skin,
then vanished. "There was--something. I'm not sure what it was."
"Does it feel stronger if you move farther down the hall?" Uhura asked
urgently.
"Um--yes, I think so." The vibration came and went irregularly as Sulu
trailed a hand down the corridor wall, its intensity increasing with
each faint thrum. There seemed to be a pattern to it, but he couldn't
quite catch what it was. He concentrated on it so hard that the end of
the wall caught him unaware.
Sulu stopped abruptly, peering into the dark central junction. "I've
run out of wall," he told Uhura. "Where do you want me to go now?"
"To the right," she said at once. "That's where the turbolift is."
"The turbolift--" Sulu cursed and spun around the corner to slap both
hands flat on the turbolift doors. Vibrations shook the double layer of
plate metal, the soundless echo of some impact from inside. "Uhura,
it's coming from inside the lift chamber! There's someone in there!"
"I thought so." The communications officer's muted voice could not hide
her excitement. "Put your helmet against the door, Sulu, so I can hear
the pattern. I think it's Starfleet code."
He leaned up against the metal obediently, letting the vibration rattle
his face plate. Once inside his suit's small shell of air, it
translated to a faint but distinct tapping sound. Sulu listened to the
pattern of intervals between thumps--short, short, long, very long--and
built up a message letter by letter. "K, O," he muttered, hearing Uhura
echo him softly from the bridge. "V, C, H, E,--Uhura, it's Chekov.t"
Her wordless cry of delight confirmed his guess. Sulu raised a fist to
signal back at his friend, but before he could even begin, a glaring
cascade of light staggered him back from the lift. By the time his
dark-adjusted eyes realized it was only the wall lights, coming back on
as the ship's power was restored, it was too late. His outstretched
hands met only the familiar long humming of a turbolift moving away.
Chapter Eleven
THE TURBOLIFT LIGHTS bloomed warmly into being, and Chekov jerked a look
up at the ceiling panels before it occurred to him that he'd be blinded.
Squinting, hand over his eyes, he swayed against the closed lift doors
when the anti-gravs hummed into life and dropped the car straight
downward.
"Now no one's going to know I'm in here." His voice rebounded hollowly
from the curved lift walls. He shivered from more than the
vacuum-induced cold, thinking about how close he'd come to never getting
out of this turbolift alive. Maybe he should be grateful to be leaving
the breached area by any means at all. "Security," he told the
computer, chafing
his arms to rub away the cold. "Deck Seven."
After spraying the last layer of plasfoam over the bomb in the auditors'
quarters, Chekov honestly hadn't thought he'd make it out of the blast
area in time. He'd run for the turbolift opposite the one Sulu
would have taken, not trusting a lift car from Sulu's turboshaft to be
in range when he needed it. The doors of his lift had swished shut just
ahead of the explosion--a short, flat, percussive bang that tore away
the strength of its own sound as it tore away the ship's atmosphere.
Chekov had felt the lift buck alarmingly, then the lights had pitched
into blackness, and he'd begun pacing his vacuum-sealed coffin, doomed
to passively wait. At the time, pounding his name out, over and over,
on the closed lift doors had been the only action he could think to take
toward his own rescue. He suspected even now that it wouldn't have been
enough.
The lift he rode slewed gently sideways, then bumped to a stop. He
stepped closer to the doors, ready for them to open and release him. He
needed to trace who had left him that message--he wanted to see lab
results on anything the search parties found at the bomb scene. He
wanted to call Sulu and the captain, and tell them that he was alive.
When the doors slid open to the security corridor on Deck Seven, though,
they revealed only a blackness as deep and broad as the vacuum above.
Chekov caught the door with one hand, holding it open while he poised
nervously in the doorway. He hoped Davidson and Tate had called
engineering about the blackout; he didn't much look forward to
navigating his own
department in the dark.
"Ensign Davidson?"
He listened into the darkness with all his might, but heard only ship
sounds and distant thrummings. He had power to the turbo shaft,
damreit, and the hull breach was on the starboard side of the hull. What
had happened to security?
"Tate?"
Nothing.
As the duty officers, Davidson and Tare wouldn't have left their posts,
he knew that. Not against his orders, and not while Kelly was still in
the brig as a prisoner. Chekov's skin tingled with premonitions of
disaster, and he slipped into the open corridor The air smelled clear
and warm. No breach then. Circuitry damage, maybe. But all over this
area? He started around the corner toward security, sliding his feet
along the deck in small, uncertain steps as he fought for equilibrium in
the darkness.
A spark of yellow-white light blinked at the fringe of his vision, and
instinct recognized the flash before thinking did. Chekov threw himself
to the deck just as a crackling bolt of phaser fire ricocheted off the
corner to spatter against the opposite wall.
In the silence that followed, Chekov held his breath to keep from being
heard above the tick of cooling metal behind him. That had been a
phaser set to high heat burn, not stun. Raising gingerly up on his
elbows, he strained his eyes for some bit of light, but total darkness
reduced the security corridor to a hard, impenetrable black expanse. He
tried to remember exactly how long it had been since he'd been told
about the bomb and its explosion. God, this saboteur got around. But
what could he want in security? And what had he done to the ensigns on
duty?
It doesn't matter what he wants, Chekov caught himself thinking. If
he's going to get out of there, he has to come through me. He couldn't
count on help from Davidson and Tate--he could only concentrate' on what
it would take to drive this intruder back behind the force barrier in
the brig, where Chekov had some hope of containing him until help could
arrive. He was already counting in his head the number of
steps from here to the security isolation door, from there to the
equipment locker in the back of his office, as he eased his legs beneath
him and slowly regained his feet.
He froze that way for a moment, listening. Nothing came to him through
the darkness except the rubbing of his uniform against his body as he
breathed and the high, white-noise hissing of his blood in his ears.
Deprived of every useful sense but hearing and touch, his focus zeroed
down to a point so fine it made him dizzy. He put a hand against the
wall to steady himself, and the ridged metal felt cold and intricately
contoured.
He resisted trailing a hand along the wall when he started to walk. The
faint sound of his skin against the metal seemed obscenely loud in the
darkness. Vertigo bled into the void once he was moving, and the layout
of his department blossomed in his mind's eye like graphics from the
simulator games on Sigma Onem oversimplified but accurate, with
important doors and goals highlighted to supernatural clarity in his
thinking. Stepping away from the wall, he kept to the center of the
corridor and crept down the darkness toward his office door. There were
phasers in the equipment locker behind his desk, and they'd be easier to
reach than the ones kept locked in the squad room. If he could just get
a weapon and stun whoever was down here, he'd be fine.
His eyes kept fooling him, warning him of movements and flashes of light
that he knew he couldn't truly see. Ignoring them was hardmhe caught
his hands twitching with a want to do something every time a phantom
shadow twinged his nerves. He finally balled his hands into fists just
to keep them steady. No sounds of breathing, though. No click of
hard-soled
shoes on decking, no whisk of fabric brushing fabric from somebody
else's movements. He stopped twice to feel the wall for the edges of a
door and to listen. Once, he thought he felt the heat of someone's body
very close beside him. Then the feeling passed, and he shivered from
the image. He hoped that hadn't meant the intruder had somehow crept
by.
The office door came up on him sooner than he had envisioned. He
stretched out one arm to feel the wall beside him, and didn't realize
he'd reached too far until his balance betrayed him and toppled him
through the opening, into the room beyond. A crash sounded as he
tumbled to the floor. He rolled, trying to scramble away from the
sound, suddenly blind and lost all over again. The clash and clangor of
falling equipment and slamming locker doors filled the dark sector with
shards of broken sound. Something in him registered that the noise came
from deeper in the department, near the squad room.
A man's voice cried out in alarm, answered by the waspish song of a
phaser. Davidson? Tate? Not calling out to them was agony. Chekov
found the door to his inner office on all fours, sensing its nearness
only an instant before actually colliding with the surface. It slid
aside when he stood, and seven fairly confident steps took him around to
where he knew his desk must be and placed him close enough to the
equipment locker to find it with both hands. This is going to get me
killed, he thought as he poised his thumb above the trigger for the
lock. But he couldn't think of any other way to stand ag
ainst this
intruder, and he couldn't let a saboteur leave the area.
His thumb depressed the trigger, and the lock panel exploded to life
with a blast of green light and an
ear-shattering chime. The computer's voice, tuned to a conversational
volume; rebounded off the green-lit office walls like the sound of
mortars "Prepare for retina scan."
It was all Chekov could do to keep his eyes open when everything in him
wanted to wince away from the damning intrusion of noise. He dug out
the key while the scan temporarily blinded him again, fitted it against
the lock while the computer requested, "Voice identification required."
He set himself to jerk the doors open as soon as it cleared him.
"Chekov," he whispered, "Lieutenant Pavel A."
"Please speak in a normal tone."
God, God, when he got out of here he was going to memo every security
division in Starfleet about redesigning this damned system. "Chekov,
Lieutenant Pavel--"
A shriek of phaser fire arced white light all over the room, and a force
like a light-speed missile slammed into his shoulder, throwing him
against the locker. Seared flesh and burnt blood filled the room with a
choking stench, and Chekov felt the horrible, deep heat in his shoulder
blade that meant damage worse than being shot by a phaser set on stun.
The locker doors popped open as he fell, a random collection of phasers
and gear clattering out onto the floor around him. Footsteps clicked
near the outside door, and he jammed his right hand in his mouth to
muffle his anguished breathing as he pawed about him for a phaser, for a
rifle.