Constellations (33 page)

“Here.” McCoy set the case to Kirk's side and opened it for him, figuring he'd be assisting with this operation, not performing it.

“We're going to have to jettison the engines,” Kirk said as he grabbed a magnetic probe from the kit and took readings from near the protected core.

The doctor frowned. “Isn't that done with some push of a button or flip of a switch?”

“It will be, but then containment could last longer than I want.” Kirk rose, stepped over to the ordnance cabinet and pulled out one of four phaser pistols.

Removing the hand phaser from the larger pistol and power pack housing, the captain took a magnetic coupler and attached the small phaser to what looked to McCoy like the outer intermix assembly housing.

“We do this,” Kirk said, “and we're stranded here.”

He set the phaser building up an overload, then quickly withdrew his hand and put the access panel cover back in place.

“What exactly
are
we doing?” McCoy asked as Kirk stood and pulled the doctor up with him.

Kirk brushed off his pant legs and motioned for McCoy to have a seat. “Get a strong grip, Bones.” Which is just what Kirk did once he'd lowered himself into the seat next to him. “Sulu?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Best speed toward the interior of the star system,” Kirk ordered. “Head for the M-Class planetoid.”

“Plotted.”

“Full aft shields, Mr. Kerby.” Kirk waited just a moment, pausing to be sure there was no last-moment change in status. “Jettison the intermix chamber on my mark, Mr. Sulu.”

“Ready, sir.”

Kirk nodded once, firmly, determined, as if he could will the outcome he wanted into being. “Now!”

 

Not even a full moment after the proximity alert shrieked, space bubbled forward with white-hot, blistering energy. D'kar pitched the ship starboard as fast as possible. Engines strained and dampeners struggled to tighten his vessel's seams. Overloads crackled circuits across his control board and power dimmed as if it were now dusk where before it was midday noon.

“Tera'ngan Ha'DI bah!”

Backup systems came online slowly, but sensors did not. Wherever Kirk was now, be it sitting on top of his ship or twenty parsecs away, there was nothing D'kar could do until he could see again.

 

Had it been an overcast day, as it often was this time of season, he would never have seen anything behind the low-hanging clouds that usually plastered the sky with a mugging gray. Today the sun shone brightly on the morning frost, and Simon Anders first mistook the movement in the sky for one of the large native predator birds. But binder hawks didn't vent smoky trails across the horizon.

“A ship.” He wasn't sure if he'd whispered the words or if they were an internal thought. For all he knew, he might have screamed them. If anyone heard, they didn't indicate it. They were too mesmerized by the sight as well. It was midmorning and most people were about the camp, tending to the animals or to the greenhouse crops, or just gathering the plants from which they would harvest oil for the lamps.

“Captain?” They weren't calling his attention to the vessel, which everyone knew it must be by now. Even without assistance from binoculars they knew it not to be a meteor. Meteors don't make thirty-degree turns.

There was no expected crunch of vessel against rock. It may not have looked much like a powered descent, but perhaps it was enough of one to avoid a crash. From the looks of it, about six kilometers east of the second turn in the river, where the best pastures usually were in the spring.

“Gather a party,” Anders said to no one in particular, but he knew that Michael would be close and listening. “Bring the doctor, just in case. Tell her to bring remedies.”

Michael may have nodded, but Anders heard nothing. He turned, finally, and Michael was slowly backing up, still looking at the now-expanding plume of smoke as it dissipated, evening itself across the sky. “Michael, go. Find Alexandra. I will gather the others we need.”

“Y-yes, sir.” Michael had never seen another ship, certainly not flying through the air. Or crashing. Anders had. He remembered their own ship's crash in vivid detail. As he and those he'd gathered made their way toward the plume of smoke that rose from the grasslands where the ship looked to have landed, Anders wondered if there would be dead. He didn't want there to be dead. He'd had to live through seeing such horrors of twisted and mangled bodies. Michael and some of the others with them who'd been born since the crash shouldn't have to. Had the older men not needed the strength of those younger, Anders would have had them stay behind.

“Who could they be?” Alexandra asked. She, too, had been born long after the crash, and her cures for cuts and scrapes and whatever she knew about the mending of bones would assist little if there were radiation burns and cases of plasma-lung awaiting them.

“I don't know,” Anders said to her. “We are farther out than our maps extended. Who knows how far man has come, hm? We'll think good thoughts.”

There was silence between them and the others until finally the smoke was large in the sky and they all knew they were close. First to make it to the top of the last hill, Anders stopped the others from continuing on. He called for Alexandra, gesturing her forward.

“Do you have the instruments?”

The doctor nodded and handed him a sack.

“And they work?” Anders asked.

She shrugged just a bit. “Last I checked, Captain.”

Anders frowned. Why would she not check before bringing them? So few bits of equipment still worked, the ones that did were cherished to the point that people were afraid to use them when they were needed. They had one hand scanner, three computer terminals, and two medical scanners—one portable, one stationary. In the sack were the hand scanner, the smaller medical scanner, and a bag of curatives that once held traditional medicines but now had “local” remedies and bits and bobs they'd managed to synthesize from base chemicals.

“I don't want us to go in blind,” Anders told those around him. “Who doesn't know how to use the scanner yet?”

Michael was the only one who'd really used it before, though a few others had seen its operation. Those that never had, gathered closest.

“We're going to scan for radiation first, to see if it's safe for us to approach. Then we're going to scan for life-signs.” Captain Anders pulled in a deep breath and already smelled the acrid sting of the ship's plume. “And let's pray to God there are some.”

 

“Sulu?” Kirk stifled a cough and pulled on the stunned helmsman's arm, straightening him in the copilot seat. “Steady?”

Nodding that he was, but also choking on the smoke, Sulu held a fist over his mouth and kept his eyes tightly shut.

Kirk didn't hear the automatic venting fans that were supposed to have come on, and only emergency lights and the sparks from exposed circuits were flashing into the acrid smoke. With power out, he wasn't going to waste time seeing if the backup battery would open the doors. Half through sight, half by memory, Kirk's hand found the protected plunger that blew a hatch in the bulkhead. Half the cabin's soot-caked air was blown out with the hatchway, and a shaft of light now sliced in to reveal Kerby down under the conn. “Sulu, help him,” Kirk ordered as he moved toward McCoy.

Hacking harshly as Kirk pulled him out into the fresh air, McCoy clutched at his medkit, grasping for a hypospray. He was fumbling with one of the medicinal cartridges as Kirk turned away to help Sulu drag Kerby from the shuttle and over toward where Kirk had brought McCoy.

Hypospray ready, McCoy awkwardly reached for Kirk's arm. “Triox,” he rasped.

Kirk shook his head and snatched the hypo away. “You first.” He kneeled down, held the hypo against McCoy's shoulder, and pressed, probably harder than a nurse would have. It hissed softly, and Kirk twisted around, repeating the treatment on Kerby, then Sulu—who immediately sounded better and looked more relaxed. Finally, Kirk hypoed himself.

Though Kirk's throat still felt rough and razor scraped, the nagging need to cough was gone and the cool air felt good in his lungs. He heaved large gulps as he shifted his knees from underneath himself and sat tiredly on the dry grass.

“Earth…normal…atmos—” McCoy was still gasping a bit. He'd taken in a lot of smoke.

“Close enough to it,” Kirk said, nodding tiredly, and noticed that McCoy had a medical scanner in his palm and was already inching toward Kerby. Not giving himself a moment to recuperate, McCoy had done the triage through eyes squinted closed by the bright sun and was moving to treat the injured, himself excluded. “Bones—”

The doctor was familiar with Kirk's admonishing tone but, as usual, was going to ignore it. “I'm fine. I'm fine.” And with every passing moment he was sounding better. Kirk let it go. He
did
want to know how Kerby was. Sulu was close to the ensign, propping up his head. The young man's breathing sounded shallow, his chest not moving quickly as were Kirk's own and those of the others.

After McCoy had been kneeling by him a moment, Kirk asked how Kerby was doing.

“Carbonatious sputum, which is expected. But his O
₂
levels are rising.” McCoy turned the scanner on himself a moment, then on Sulu. “Better than ours, actually. He banged his head on the console. Slight concussion put him out and metered his breathing so he actually has less”—McCoy had to huff in a breath and as he did he choked on it—“lung damage.” He looked at Sulu. “Feel up to getting the larger medkit?”

Sulu nodded and rose slowly, steadying himself a moment before heading for the shuttle. When Kirk pushed himself up, he understood why Sulu hesitated—a wave of light-headedness crashed down on him and he had to grope for balance as if on a tightrope.

Kirk too headed for the shuttle. He wanted the three remaining phasers aboard, and assuming the vessel was a total loss—it seemed likely since black smoke was still gushing from the impulse drive—he'd help Sulu pull out any supplies as well.

And he also wanted another look at the damage. Several systems had broken down after they were well out of range of the Klingon vessel. Internal sensors were knocked out first, and that was not a system open to failure before several others. There was sabotage at work here, and when the immediate crisis was over, and the whys figured out, the “how” and the “who” could be a much bigger problem for Starfleet.

One question nagged at Kirk the most: Why, if you can sabotage an
Enterprise
shuttle, do you disable only certain systems and not simply destroy the whole vessel—or use it to damage the
Enterprise
herself?

Someone wanted them alive.
Klingons.
They had at least a
little
time to consider their options: Chances were that their pursuers were going to have to take some time for ship repairs as well.

 

Tracking the trail of Earthers was little different than tracking wild
Qaj.
Both were sloppy animals whose idea of stealth was to hide their head behind a large tree in ignorance of whether the body could be seen. For that D'kar was grateful because the sabotage for which he'd so handsomely paid had not been well timed. Kirk's shuttle was supposed to lose propulsion at the flip of a switch. Instead, the enemy had time to turn his warp engine into a weapon. Had Kirk not shifted course, had he allowed D'kar to follow him to an area not within range of a star system, he could have worn down the Starfleet shuttle's defenses and demanded the others turn Kirk over. No, it had not gone as planned. Kirk's ability to force D'kar to change his plans to fit the Earther's tactics was more than frustrating, and he wished he could simply kill Kirk outright. While that might be easier, it would not satisfy the debt he wished paid.

D'kar rubbed his shoulder and studied circuit schematics. He needed to rewire a ship that was not his own and with which he wasn't very familiar, all with a shoulder dislocated when he was tossed into the bulkhead by the shockwave from Kirk's warp core. He cursed Kirk and he cursed his tools and for good measure he cursed scanners and deck plating and the blood that spilled from the finger he had accidentally sliced open two minutes ago.

Kirk's attack had done serious damage, but he
could
repair it, and he would. And he would find Kirk, and he would find him alive, or he would not go home again.

“yIntaH qIrq ‘e' vIneH,”
D'kar whispered to himself.
“DaSwIj bIngDaq latlhpu' vItap.”