Death Count Read online

  Chekov skidded around the last intersection in the corridor, banking off the opposite wall, and had only enough time to realize that someone had burst out of the doorway in front of him before they’d crashed into one another and gone tumbling to the floor.

  Kirk shot upright in his bunk, right hand flashing out to answer the intercom’s whistle before he was even awake enough to think of it. “Kirk here.”

  “Bridge—Spock here.” The Vulcan’s deep voice filled Kirk’s cabin, pulling him the last quick stages into wakefulness. “Internal systems report a hull breach on Deck Six. Engineering has mobilized a repair crew, and search teams have begun assembling on Deck Three.”

  Kirk swept his sheets aside, crossing to his bureau for trousers while the lights slowly brightened around him. The last of sleep’s fuzziness washed out on an adrenaline surge. “But?” he prompted, sensing additional information underlying his first officer’s report.

  “As of yet,” Spock said, “there is no physical evidence of a breach. Not on Deck Six, or anywhere else. There is only the alarm.”

  “That’s odd.” Kirk jammed on his boots and snaked his arms into the sleeves of his tunic. “If we’re lucky, Mr. Spock, we can keep it that way.” He snatched his jacket on his way to the door. “Call Scotty on Deck Three—tell him I’m on my way.”

  “He has already been notified.” The cabin door hissed shut on the last half of the Vulcan’s reply, but Kirk heard enough to guess the rest: “He is awaiting your arrival. Spock out.”

  Wrenching free of the weight that held him pinned, Sulu rolled to his feet and spun to face his attacker. At first, all he saw was dark gold clothing—not Starfleet, his instincts warned him, not a crewman! He lifted his hands to lash out, then recognized the face above the tunic and felt relief slam through him. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Chekov glared up at him, face tight with tension. His uniform jacket wasn’t the only thing he hadn’t bothered to put on, Sulu saw. Stockinged feet slid gracelessly on the deck as the security officer scrambled to retrieve the package he’d been carrying. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  The decompression alarm broke off in midhowl before Sulu could reply. No reassuring message from engineering followed on the intercom—just a sudden, stifling silence. Sulu felt a shiver run down his back. Something had to be wrong—that wasn’t the way a false alarm shut down.

  “Sulu, what are you doing here?” Chekov repeated urgently.

  “I came to find the auditors.” Sulu fought an urge to look back into the room behind them. The doors whirred, kept mindlessly open by their nearness. “Someone killed them.”

  “Damn.” The security officer spared one brief glance for Taylor’s sprawled body, then ran for the next cabin door. Sulu sprinted after him, baffled by his behavior.

  “It’s locked,” he warned as Chekov slid to a stop at Chaiken’s door. “And anyway, she’s not in there.” The Russian grunted and palmed open the door’s security panel, hitting the switch that bypassed the lock. “Chekov, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for a bomb.”

  Sulu felt his stomach clench as if someone had punched him. “Someone planted a bomb on Deck Six? Who?”

  “I don’t know.” The door hissed open onto total darkness, and Sulu and Chekov sprang apart by reflex, sheltering behind opposite sides of the opening. Nothing stirred inside. Sulu got a wordless nod from his companion, and snaked a hand inside to brighten the lights just as Chekov recklessly launched himself through the door. The helmsman cursed and darted in after him.

  “Are you nuts?” Sulu hissed. The room was empty except for the lingering smell of blood. Chekov searched it swiftly, ducking his head to peer under the built-in bunks and desk units. “The murderer could have still been in here!”

  “I don’t know how long we’ve got until the bomb goes off.” The security officer yanked open the trash disposal unit and looked inside. “The warning note on my computer screen said to hurry.”

  “Someone left a warning for you?” Sulu found the access plate for the wall storage unit and palmed it open. Only a few plain civilian suits and blouses hung inside, above a small storage carton labeled “Gendron.” He forced himself to rifle through Chaiken’s clothes, feeling uneasily like a graverobber. “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” Chekov levered up the cover on the food processing unit and checked the space inside, then slammed it and swung around to glare at the room again. “Damn it! It has to be here somewhere!” His gaze fell on the carton containing Gendron’s possessions. “Did you look inside that?” He crossed the room in three long strides.

  “No.” Sulu dropped to his knees and reached for the lid, but a hard grip on his shoulder stopped him. He sat back on his heels as Chekov squatted beside him and rummaged through his bomb kit. “You think it could be rigged to blow when we open it?”

  “That would explain why someone left me a warning.” Chekov pulled a small sensor out of the kit and scanned it across the carton’s surface. After a moment, it whistled a security code so familiar that even Sulu recognized it: explosion imminent.

  “Out!” Chekov dragged Sulu to his feet and shoved him toward the door. “Get out of here!”

  “But—”

  “Sulu, don’t argue with me! Even if I manage to get this blast contained, it’s going to breach the corridor.” Chekov grabbed at the plasfoam sprayer in his bomb kit. The searing smell of oxygen-hardened plastics tore through the air as he began to build a blast cage around the carton. “You’re the only one on board who knows what happened to the auditors. With all the physical evidence gone, the captain’s going to need your testimony to catch the murderer. Now get out!”

  Logic warred with loyalty inside Sulu and won. He cursed and tore himself away from the auditors’ cabin, his chest tight with frustration. The last memory he took with him was of Chekov’s intent face as he sprayed a second layer of confining plasfoam over the small white carton.

  When the turbolift doors opened sluggishly on Deck Three, Kirk jammed his hands between them to squeeze out while they were still half-closed. Work crews and technicians already criss-crossed the deck, assembling into tight knots of activity around their respective projects and equipment. Befuddled, half-dressed clusters of Deck Six evacuees cluttered several doorways, and Kirk had to force himself not to stop and count faces. There would be time for that later. He pushed between two engineering teams on his way to the briefing room where Scott should be setting up central control. The teams knew not to stop their work just to acknowledge his arrival; they simply moved aside to let him pass, their attention fixed on other things. Kirk was painfully glad to have such a strong, efficient crew.

  Scott and his assistants proved easy enough to find. The chief engineer’s brogue carried down the full length of the corridor, and his crew’s environmental suits stood out like clumsy white beacons amid the rest of the storm. Kirk trotted to stand at Scott’s elbow, waiting for the engineer to finish issuing orders before asking, “What do we know?”

  Scott glanced back at him, then swung a suited arm for Kirk to follow him into the briefing room. “We know there hasn’t been a breach,” he said, his voice as loud and lyric as always. “At least, not anyplace our sensors can reach. Look here.” He tapped a thick finger against a running terminal, tracing the ship schematic with its outline of glowing amber. “Even if there were enough damage at the breach itself to prevent sensors from reading the hole in the hull, we’d detect a voltage drop across the screens anywhere there wasn’t perfect integrity.”

  Kirk nodded, bending to read the terminal. “And there’s nothing.”

  “Not even so much as a dip,” Scott agreed. “I’ve even got lads working on a communications search of the ship, listening for silent spots where we might be holding vacuum instead of air.” He shrugged and straightened. “I don’t expect much, though.”

  Kirk stood up as well. “Then if there’s no breach and no atmosphere loss, what set off the alarm?”


  Scott rubbed his chin, eyebrows high with thinking. “Maybe a who.”

  “The auditors?” That didn’t seem likely, not with Kelly still languishing in jail from their last little test and the others confined to their quarters.

  “No,” Scott said, shaking his head. “They seem a pesky but straightforward lot. To trigger a decompression alarm without getting 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 Chekov 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 subterranean 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 bridge. 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 cast. “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 warning 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 fat—as 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—”