Worlds in Collision (61 page)

Hammersmith waved to his staff to let them know that he didn't require them at the moment, then opened a small case on the top of the stack to bring out a portable terminal. “Why wasn't this subspace ‘attack' mentioned at the board of inquiry hearings?” the vice admiral asked.

“Because no one knew back then,” Scott explained. “With the master nodes fused, the general scans of the ship gave the same results as if every circuit had gone. It was only when the shipwright drones came aboard and started trying to remove damaged equipment that we realized that the damage wasn't as extensive as we thought—just precisely selective.”

“We?” Hammersmith asked. “Does Styles know about this?”

“No, sir. He doesn't seem to care too much about what has happened in the past. He's only interested in taking command of this ship sometime in the future.”

“Nothing wrong with ambition, Mr. Scott. Now who's this ‘we'?”

“Lieutenant Kyle, sir. Chief transporter technician. One of the original crew.”

Hammersmith punched in something on his terminal keypad. “And he confirms your suspicions about an attack by selective subspace pulse?”

Scott wondered what the best way to describe the situation was. “To tell the truth, sir. He has seen the damage the ship has suffered, and knows it's peculiar, but he thinks it might possibly be the result of coincidence or a previously unknown destructive interference effect.”

Hammersmith read whatever was displayed on his screen. He turned to Scott. “And what do
you
think it might possibly be, Engineer?”

“Deliberate, sir. The result of an unknown weapon.”

Hammersmith fixed Scott with an intense gaze. “If you're right in your theory about the ship's damage, you know what that might mean, don't you?”

Scott felt the thrill of sudden hope run through him. Could it be possible? Was Hammersmith going to be someone who would finally pay attention to all that had happened at Talin? “Aye, sir, I know exactly what that might mean.”

“Good,” Hammersmith said. “Good. Then given your past actions and your outspoken desire to defend Kirk at any cost, you'll understand why I must remain skeptical of any new facts you present which might serve to exonerate him.”

No,
Scott cried to himself.
Why did it always have t' be this way? Why couldn't there be just one person in Starfleet who was willing to give the captain the benefit of the doubt for just one second?

Hammersmith tapped at the display screen on his terminal. “And because this Lieutenant Kyle has been with the
Enterprise
since the beginning of her five-year mission, I'm afraid that I'll also have to be skeptical of any claims he might make. However, if you could get someone like Styles to back you on this…well, it might even be possible to reconvene the board of inquiry.”

Scott felt overcome with despair.
Someone like Styles,
he thought.
Typical
. The lieutenant was probably getting ready to phaser him in his sleep at this point.

“Is there nothing else that might do it, sir?” Scott asked, wondering why the fates were punishing him so.

“I'd say that's up to you, Engineer.”

“How so, sir?”

Hammersmith switched off his terminal. “If you can get this ship through the nacelle separation tomorrow, you'll have one week before the
Exeter
arrives. The deal I'll make with you is that if you give me your word that you will stick it out through the rest of the
Enterprise'
s repairs, with your full cooperation, I'll give you that week to take this ship apart and prove your theory.”

Scott shook his head. “I'm afraid Lieutenant Styles would never allow it, sir. He's got too much for me to do as it is.”

“Then for that week, Styles will be out of the picture. You'll report directly to me. And I will give you full run over the ship.” Hammersmith held out his hand. “Is it a deal?”

Scott held back. “It's a big ship, sir.”

“I'll request Kyle as well.” He kept his hand extended.

“A week won't be enough time. Not for only two of us.”

Hammersmith stared up at the hangar bay roof in thought, then said, “You drive a hard bargain, Engineer, but I'm going to make my final offer. I can't do anything about the one-week time limit, but whoever else you want here to help—provided we can get them here on time—I'll get them for you.”

“Whoever else I want?” Scott asked.

“Starfleet personnel only,” Hammersmith clarified.

Scott reached out and shook the vice admiral's hand. “Vice Admiral, sir, ye've got yourself a deal.”

“Then if the
Enterprise
is still in one piece tomorrow, you've got yourself a week.”

Sulu stepped from the airlock and the sudden plunge into microgee was like drifting off into a warm bath, every muscle instantly relaxing. Without thinking, he moaned with relief.

“Are you all right?” Chekov asked over the helmet commlink.

Sulu touched a control on the thruster extension and made a half turn. Chekov was still in the
Queen Mary'
s open airlock, one gloved hand on either side, ready to push himself out to his friend's rescue.

“Come on in,” Sulu said, “the water's fine.” He waved his thickly padded arm slowly. Krulmadden might have a state-of-the-art impulse drive, but his ship's environmental suits were overstuffed antiques.

Chekow leaned out from the airlock, then floated free of it, arms extended. Sulu heard him have the same reaction to leaving the
Queen Mary'
s oppressive two-gee gravity.

“That is much better,” Chekov sighed as he swung down the control arm by his side and used the controls on it to maneuver closer to Sulu, about ten meters out from the ship.

Then Krulmadden's voice boomed over the helmet speakers. “You mammals sound like you enjoy vacuum more than enjoy slavegirls. What has
f'deraxtl
training done to you?”

“Like we keep telling you, Shipmaster,” Sulu said, “your normal gravity is too strong for us.”

The shipmaster snorted. “You mean you are too weak. Need more
Ur'eon
exercise you do.”

In the dull light of the red giant star they orbited, Sulu saw Chekov's pained expression through the unfiltered faceplate of his helmet.

“What we need is Earth-normal grawity in our quarters,” Chekov said.

“Too much power. Too expensive,” Krulmadden snapped at them. “Always wanting to spend my credits. You make credits, you can spend them. Leave mine alone. Now go do your work or I leave you here.”

Sulu heard the click of the comlink being broken. “Let's go,” he said to Chekov.

Chekov made a thumbs-up sign, and Sulu placed his own hand on his thruster control. With three quick taps, he had rotated again, then propelled himself toward the
Queen Mary'
s relative upper surface where the impulse engine was housed.

The hullmetal of the Orion pirate's ship glowed deep pink in the light of the red giant, two AUs distance. Though Krulmadden had refused to identify the star, Sulu had recognized its coordinates. It was TNC-5527 in the Minotaur Cluster, the last remnant of an ancient system which had long since lost all of its planets. The very fact that it had nothing of value to offer was why, Sulu presumed, Krulmadden felt safe in hiding out around it. Because that was exactly what he was doing now, hiding out, and with good reason.

Sulu triggered the visual sensor mounted to his helmet to begin recording images of the damage to the
Queen Mary'
s impulse engine housing. Black streaks of rippled metal showed where the border patrol's phasers had hit. Whoever the frigate's weaponry officer had been, he or she had been good. That was one smuggling route that Krulmadden would not be able to use again, and the sale of his living cargo had been indefinitely postponed.

Sulu heard Chekov's whistle, rough and full of static over the old comlink system. “Wery precise control,” he said. “Another half-second of contact and we would have been blown apart.”

Sulu felt a sudden chill in his suit. He had known their run-in with the border patrol had been close. He just hadn't known it had been
that
close.

“Shipmaster Krulmadden,” he said, then waited for the suit's computer to re-open the comlink with the
Queen Mary'
s bridge.

“Yes, little mammal?”

“There's a five-meter secondary gash on the upper impulse housing, port forward quadrant. I know you don't want to tell us too many details about your engine configuration, but we could do a better repair job if you told us what systems are beneath the damaged area.”

Sulu floated peacefully by the ship, unconcerned that Krulmadden was taking so much time to decide how much he could tell his human crewmen. For all of the shipmaster's boisterous good humor when it came to maintaining the spirits of his crew, Sulu had realized early on in his three weeks on the ship that Krulmadden didn't even trust Artinton and Lasslanlin—and they were his cousins who had worked for him for more than twenty years.

“Use sensor probe, setting three twenty,” Krulmadden said finally, sounding as if he were giving the combination to the safe in his stateroom.

Sulu rotated to Chekov and watched as he slowly pulled a sensor wand from the equipment bag strapped to his leg. It took Chekov a full five minutes to align the wand and change the setting on its control handle. The suits Krulmadden had given them had to be at least a hundred years old and more unwieldy than even the ones the Academy made cadets train in.

When Chekov at last seemed to have the sensor probe properly aligned, he aimed it toward the battle damage on the engine housing. Then Sulu heard him cry out in shock.

“What is it, Chekov?” Sulu thrust himself closer.

“Ionizing radiation! All around us!” Chekov turned his head awkwardly in his helmet to catch a glimpse of Sulu. “Back away!”

Chekov suddenly spun off from the ship, cartwheeling slowly as he tried to stabilize his emergency withdrawal. Sulu took a moment longer to plan his own trajectory, then moved off after his friend. He caught up with him two hundred meters off the
Queen Mary,
where Chekov finally halted his wobbling rotations.

“We could have gone over to the other side of the ship, Chekov.”

“I am not used to these thruster controls.”

Suddenly, Krulmadden's voice blared at them again. “What do you do? Where do you go? What damage have you done to my jewel?”

Sulu rotated to face the ship, now small enough that he could blot it out with his hand. He swallowed as he realized how easy it would be for Krulmadden to pop into warp right now and leave him and Chekov as permanent satellites of TNC-5527. He decided he wouldn't let himself sound as angry as he felt.

“Sorry about that, Shipmaster. We were surprised by the amount of ionizing radiation venting from the hull breach.” He tried to sound light-hearted. “We thought that maybe a matter-antimatter reaction might be starting.”

Sulu was surprised when he heard Krulmadden laugh. “Where you think Krulmadden keeps antimatter on his jewel, stupid mammals?”

Sulu glanced at Chekov but couldn't see his friend's face through the red reflection flaring from his faceplate. However, he could hear him say, “In a magnetic bottle?”

“Ha!” Krulmadden shouted. Sulu could picture the way the green-skinned Orion's stomach would be quivering with laughter about now. “You know how much the cost of magnetic bottles? Big coils! Superconductors! Maintenance required every hundred light-years!”

Sulu was confused, and excited. Given Krulmadden's tendency to acquire illegal technology, was there a chance that he had somehow obtained a method for storing antimatter that didn't require the complexities of magnetic storage?

“Excuse me, Shipmaster, but what
do
you keep your antimatter in?”

“What antimatter?” Krulmadden thundered. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”

Sulu saw Chekov spin around beside him and motion with open palms. He didn't know what the shipmaster was talking about, either.

“Then, how do you power your warp drive?” Chekov asked.

“Time-honored methods of my parents, and my parents' parents, and my so-ons and so-forths,” Krulmadden said sagely. “First-stage matter! Fissionables!”

Of course,
Sulu thought,
no wonder Krulmadden was always concerned about power expenditures and the cost of fuel.
Old-fashioned nuclear generators were only a hundredth as efficient as matter-antimatter reactors.
And that probably accounts for all the extra mass and hidden areas of his ship—denselead shielding to protect his “cargo” and fuel supplies. He'd have to keep hundreds of tons of fissionables on board to give the
Queen Mary
even a minimal hundred-light-year range.

And then it hit home—shielding.

“Shipmaster?” Sulu said, trying to remain calm. “Did you send us out to inspect the damage knowing that your fissionable fuel supply might be venting?”

“Of course,” Krulmadden replied in the most reasonable voice in the galaxy. He did not sound as if he had anything to hide.

“But,” Chekov added, and he wasn't trying to remain calm, “why did you not send out remotes? Why did you send us to be exposed to first-stage radiation?”

Krulmadden responded as if he had no idea why Chekov was upset. “Little mammal, if I had sent my remotes to examine the damage caused by the
stator
border patrol, my precious little drones might have been damaged by the leaking radiation. So, Krulmadden sent his newest crew! Smart thinking, yes, you must think so, too?”

As best he could, Sulu gestured to his throat with a desperate cutting motion, telling Chekov to say nothing more. Two hundred meters out from their only way back to Federation space, he did not want to make Krulmadden angry with them.

“But Shipmaster,” Sulu said placatingly, “did you not know that Chekov and I could also be damaged by first-stage radiation?” Who knew? Maybe Orions were naturally stabilized.

“Of course, Krulmadden know. Krulmadden fine shipmaster!” Sulu pictured the Orion leaning closer to the comlink because his voice suddenly became louder and raspier. “But if little mammals are damaged by radiation, Krulmadden will lock them into medic booth that will make them better, no charge, no cost. If remotes get damaged by radiation, Krulmadden must go back to Rigel VIII and pay evil, very bad Andorian criminals exorbitant payments for repairs.” Krulmadden wheezed with laughter. “Mammals are cheaper.”

Expendable, you mean,
Sulu thought, but said nothing.

“Uh, Shipmaster?” Chekov began politely, “are you certain that your medic booth works on humans?”

“If I were you, I would hope so!” Sulu could hear Artinton and Lasslanlin join in Krulmadden's merry laughter. “Please communicate again when breech is sealed. Perhaps airlock will work then, too.”

The comlink clicked off again.

Sulu maneuvered so he floated directly in front of Chekov. The shadow he cast cut the glare on Chekov's faceplate and they could see each other. “What kind of exposure did we get?” Sulu asked.

Chekov shook his head in his helmet. “The sensor wand is not calibrated for humans. But whatever it was, it was off the dial. What do you suppose we should do now?”

“Fix the breech,” Sulu said in resignation. “You heard what he said. If we don't, he's not going to let us back in.”

Sulu saw Chekov blink as Krulmadden's voice whispered over the comlink again. “Righty right you are. And the more time you take, the longer it might take me to decide not to change my mind.”

Great,
Sulu thought,
even out here he can hear everything we say.
Given the pirates' paranoia—something which neither he nor Chekov had anticipated—they had not felt safe enough to risk talking about a plan to take over the ship for the past three weeks. Not that the two-gee field had left them the strength to act on any plan.

“We're returning to the breech,” Sulu said. There was no other choice.

But as he glanced down to check the positioning of his fat, gloved fingers on the thruster controls, he felt Chekov tapping the side of his helmet. “What?” he mouthed through his faceplate.

Chekov smiled and nodded his head enthusiastically. Sulu saw his lips move silently to form something that looked like, “exactly.” Then Chekov flipped open the protective cover on his own chest plate and switched off his suit's main power. Sulu did a quick calculation and decided that they'd have about ten minutes before they'd need the oxygen recirculators turned back on, then he shut down his own suit, feeling nervous as the status lights above his faceplate on the inside of his helmet flickered out.
It's an old, old suit,
he thought.
Sure hope it doesn't lock up when I try to restart it.

Then Chekov grabbed Sulu by the shoulders and brought their helmets together with a bang. Sulu froze, listening intently for the sound of leaking air. But all he heard was Chekov's voice, muffled and tinny. It was one of the lowest-tech tricks they taught at the Academy, but it worked. Sound vibrations passed easily from one helmet to the other as long as they touched.

“Yes…I…can…hear…you,” Sulu shouted in response to Chekov's question, making each word separate and distinct.

“Everything…is…going…to…be…perfect!” Chekov said excitedly.

“That's…what…you…said…last…time…Chekov! This…was…your…idea…in…the…first…place…remember?”