Worlds in Collision (64 page)

Spock dutifully went to the autokitchen to remove the sandwich tube trays.

Richter called out to him. “And get me a bubble of ale while you're there, Mr. Spock.”

Spock worked quickly and efficiently, all the time preparing for what he would say in his address to the Council, and knowing that no matter how his and Richter's plan worked out, he had to get back into space.

The buzzer sounded again. Alexander yowled. Two more requests for ale were shouted out and someone plugged a music cube into the player.

Spock had no doubt whatsoever. He had to get back into space, and quickly.

Sulu jerked awake and tried to jump from his bunk as the shipmaster's voice roared from the overhead speakers. But he had forgotten the
Queen Mary'
s double-gee field. He heard something crack in his neck and fell back onto the bunk with a drawn-out groan.

“Don't complain,” Chekov said from the other bunk. “At least you can still move.”

“Attention, all
tislins,”
Krulmadden bellowed. “This jewel of the luminous veils drops from warp in less than the time it will take you to crawl to the bridge.” Krulmadden sang a few notes as if delivering a morning concert. “That is all.”

Sulu rolled to his side and raised his eyebrows at Chekov, even though they felt as if they weighed a hundred kilos apiece. “And cadets think that
Starfleet
commanders are crazy.”

Chekov slid his legs to the edge of his bunk and slowly rose to a sitting position. “What is this
‘tislins'
he keeps calling us? Why always
‘tislins'?”

Sulu tensed his neck to keep anything from grating, and forced himself up. At least if they ever got off this ship alive, they were both going to have muscles like iron.

“Do you know this word?” Chekov asked.

Sulu nodded carefully. He did.

“Well?” Chekov said.

“I think you can figure it out, Chekov. You see, we didn't want to have anything at all to do with the slavegirls.”

“So? We are gentlemen. What of it?”

“Tislins
means that even if we
wanted
to have something to do with the slavegirls, we couldn't.”

Chekov waited expectantly for more.

“Keepers of the harem, Chekov. Snip snip.”

“Oh,” Chekov said as the realization hit home. “Cossack,” he muttered.

The vibration in the deck abruptly changed and Sulu heard the whine of the impulse engines coming to life. The
Queen Mary
was much smaller than the
Enterprise
and the sound of her machinery traveled through her more easily.

“We are out of warp,” Chekov said.

Sulu sighed. “Time to meet this ‘Black Ire,' I guess—whoa!”

Sulu and Chekov both flew from their bunks, then slammed onto the metal deck as if they had been snapped from a whip.

“Where did he buy his grawity generator?” Chekov complained. “Or more likely, where did he steal it? I have not felt one malfunction so badly in—”

“Hold on,” Sulu said, pushing experimentally against the deck. The movement was far more effortless than it ever had been before on the ship. “That's not a malfunction. The field's been reset. It's so weak…it's like Mars.”

Chekov jumped smoothly to his feet. He picked up one of his boots from the side of the bunk, held it over his head, then dropped it. “But look how fast that fell. This is not Mars normal. This is Earth normal. We are just…not used to it.”

Sulu pushed off from the floor and was impressed with how painless the action was. It was better than being in Mars gravity. It was like being on the Moon.

“I wonder why he's reset it?” Sulu said.

Krulmadden's voice squawked over the ship's intercom. “Because our guests to be are from a weaker planet, little mammals. Your shipmaster is being courteous, oh yes, indeed.”

“We're from a weaker planet, too,” Chekov grumbled.

“But you are not guests aboard
Queen Mary,”
Krulmadden crooned. “You are crew and courtesy is not required. Now to the bridge before I see what gravity setting for Jupiter does to your little hollow squishy bones.”

Chekov sat on the edge of his bunk and pulled on his boots. “Let's hope ‘our guests' remain onboard for a long meeting,” he said.

Sulu wanted to say what he was hoping for, too, but he didn't think it was something Krulmadden would enjoy overhearing.

 

The bridge of the
Queen Mary
was arranged in a standard configuration—it was a circular deck ringed by elevated monitoring stations, with a main viewscreen mounted in front of a helm and navigation console, and a central commander's chair. But what wasn't standard was the way every surface in it had been finished with gleaming horizontal strips of gold and silver plating. Beneath the blazing blue Rigel-normal lighting, Chekov had to squint to keep from being blinded by the painfully harsh reflections from the bulkheads, consoles, and deck. He saw Sulu doing the same.

As Chekov and Sulu carefully entered the bridge from the ladderway entrance, Krulmadden whirled around in his chair to face them.
More like a throne,
Chekov thought. The shipmaster's bulk flowed seamlessly into a rippling gold chair that resembled a sculpture of an alien flower bud.

“Ah,” Krulmadden said, “so
f'deraxt'l
mammals
can
walk upright like real bipeds after all.”

Chekov peered around the bridge, trying to see if the infamous Black Ire had already beamed aboard. But all he saw was Lasslanlin at the helm. Chekov presumed that the other mate, Artinton, was somewhere else in the ship.

“If you are going to reset the grawity for Black Ire,” Chekov said, “why not reset the lighting as well?”

“What weaklings you are,” Krulmadden jeered. “But it is the least I can do for fearsome pirate guest to be.” He rubbed a thick finger against a part of his chair where there were no apparent control surfaces and the bridge lighting dimmed to a more tolerable level.
Tolerable like high noon on Mercury,
Chekov thought. But at least his eyes had stopped hurting. He decided Krulmadden's unmarked chair control surfaces were the strongest proof of his paranoia yet. Even if someone managed to steal this ship from him, it would take days to learn how to run it. Though he guessed the two mates could be convinced to give up her secrets if the price were right.

“What's that supposed to be?” Sulu suddenly asked. “A gunnery target?” He sounded as if he were ready to laugh.

Chekov looked at the screen and saw a vessel that was even more improbable than the
Queen Mary.
The main hull appeared to be a leftover from the days of the old DY-500s when surplus submarine shells were reconfigured to transport cryogenic cargo through vacuum. And the warp pod slung on the back of the hull looked as if it were nothing more than a half-hearted attempt to disguise a twenty-year-old Mark II shuttle.

“That is supposed to be the ship of a fearsome pirate?” Chekov asked. He and Sulu looked at each other and smirked.

“It is good disguise,” Krulmadden protested. “Who suspects that Black Ire hunts the spaceways in rundown cargo ship not worth fifty credits to spit for? But little
tislins
…see why Black Ire so clever.” He palmed another unmarked surface on his chair and a tactical display sprang up in a corner of the viewscreen. “Lasslanlin! Full scan on
Heart of the Storm!”

Chekov watched as the Orion mate engaged the
Queen Mary'
s sensors from his station. Then he waited for the results to appear on tactical. But there were no results.

“Good stuff, yes, no?” Krulmadden said approvingly. “Full sensor block. Starfleet deflectors. Very expensive. Could hide anything.” He turned back to Chekov and Sulu. “The stories Krulmadden hears say
Heart of the Storm
is delusion like
Queen Mary'
s impulse pod.”

“Illusion,” Sulu corrected.

“Whatever. Antique outside over Starfleet prototypes inside.” He widened his eyes as if they were about to burst from his head. “Warp nine Krulmadden hears, with tractor beams that reach two light-seconds, and cargo transporters that—”

A tactical alert sounded and Krulmadden popped his mouth closed and spun back to the screen. The
Queen Mary'
s shuttle came into view, sliding up close to the
Heart of the Storm.

So that's where Artinton is,
Chekov thought.
But why send a shuttle over when the pirates could be beamed aboard?

“Warp nine?” Sulu said to Chekov. “In that crate? He's got to be kidding.”

“Message arriving,” Lasslanlin announced. The image on the viewscreen rolled over once and a new transmission appeared—Black Ire.

“Greetings, oh noble scourge of death and construction!” Krulmadden gushed.

“Destruction,” Sulu said under his breath.

“Withdraw your shuttle at once or it will be destroyed.” On the viewscreen, Black Ire looked vaguely humanoid, but through the odd twists and folds of his costume, Chekov couldn't be certain. The warbling computer distortion from the translator mask he wore—a small silver cup which covered his nose and mouth—also made it hard to tell what race he was. But the pirate was a he, Chekov decided. Thick tufts of black and white hair sprayed out from around the translator. The rest of the pirate's face and head was hidden beneath a spaceblack battle helmet and featureless radiation goggles. Klingon, Chekov decided. With a ship named
Heart of the Storm,
Black Ire had to be a Klingon.

“I send transportation to you my guest,” Krulmadden said, spreading his hands in an ingratiating gesture of friendship.

“Black Ire does not travel in filthy shuttles like cargo,” the pirate growled. “My mate and I must be beamed aboard your ship.”

Definitely a Klingon,
Chekov thought.

“But noxious one,” Krulmadden said as Sulu groaned at the shipmaster's misuse of the language, “my transporter is onboard my shuttle and has, I feel such shame to say, a limited range because of the great cost of the equipment. Unless you drop all your shields completely, I cannot beam you from there to here.”

Chekov finally realized what the extra equipment at the back of the
Queen Mary'
s shuttle had been. Krulmadden had obviously wanted a getaway vehicle with transporter capability but hadn't wanted to spend the credits for two transporters so he could have one in his ship as well.

“Black Ire is not fool enough to drop all shields for
Ur'eon
scum!” The pirate looked off to the sides. “Crew! Arm phasers! Lock on to that scow's bridge!”

Krulmadden cringed and held up his hands. “No, no, do not. Use your own transporters. Your own shuttle. Swim aboard if you wish.”

Black Ire settled back on whatever he sat in and for a moment Chekov saw another figure in the background—a veiled female draped in a floor-length vest and tunic of shimmering red. She moved quickly out of range of the visual sensor.

“So,” Black Ire said, “you invite us to beam aboard ourselves. Does that mean that Krulmadden would drop his own shields to us?”

Lasslanlin turned around in his chair and gestured to his board. Krulmadden ignored him.

“Alas,” the shipmaster said, “but our screens have a slight malfunction and I regret to say we are unable to turn them off.”

Chekov wondered how criminals could ever trust each other long enough to stay in business. If it was this difficult just to arrange a meeting between the two pirates, how long was it going to take to work out a way to transfer the Orion females to the
Heart of the Storm
once a deal had been struck? He wished he and Sulu had had another chance to talk privately so they could have worked out some way to free Krulmadden's captives. But at least they had the satisfaction of knowing they had enough information about the shipmaster's operations to set the Federation authorities onto him as soon as they got the chance.

“Shipmaster Krulmadden,” Black Ire spat out, “you know who I am, do you not? You have heard the word about me spread through space, have you not?”

“Who has not heard of the dread Black Ire, oh dread Black Ire?” Krulmadden shook his fist at Lasslanlin who kept trying to attract his attention.

Black Ire leaned closer, filling the screen. “Therefore, you know what will happen if you betray my trust in you?”

“I cannot know, for my life would not be worth living if such a thing I ever did, oh no.”

Black Ire stood and placed his black-gloved hands on his wide black belt. A black cape fell from his shoulders.
Odd,
Chekov thought,
that looks just like the one I bought in the souvenir store on Rigel VIII before I met Sulu in the bar.

“Very well,
Ur'eon
dog. You may beam my mate and me to your shuttle and from there to your ship. But if anything should go wrong, my officers will lock tractor beams onto you and drag you into the nearest star! Now lock onto these coordinates exactly so you can beam us through the opening we shall make in our shields.” He punched something in on a console out of view. A blue light lit up on Lasslanlin's board.