Star Trek - TOS - Death Count Page 6

that something was amiss. "What do you need, Captain?"

  "I want to change direction, Scotty, and I can't.use the helm to do it.

  Is there any way we can maneuver the ship with just the impulse engine

  controls?"

  Scott sounded doubtful. "Well, I could flip the polarization of the

  impulse engines so that they'll thrust the ship in reverse. But that

  won't give you any maneuverability, sir--that'll only put you one

  hundred eighty degrees off the heading you're already locked onto."

  Sulu scanned his helm screen, then swung around to glance at Kirk. "That

  would get us clear of Sigma One, Captain."

  Kirk pursed his lips and nodded. "Get to work on it, Scotty."

  "Aye-aye, sir." There was a pause, and the murmur of distant orders

  given. "We've started on it now, Captain. It'll take a few minutes to

  get to all the switches."

  "You have two minutes, Mr. Scott." A thread of laughter flared

  unexpectedly in Kirk's voice. "Be efficient."

  Sulu glanced at the warp drive controls he had almost touched, and

  shivered. Even a fraction of a

  second at warp speed would have sent the Enterprise crashing into Sigma

  One, given the course setting they were locked on. When he looked up

  again, it was to find Lieutenant Bhutto staring at him. "How did you

  know the helm computer had malfunctioned, sir?" she asked below the

  shrill blare of the last remaining

  'Tm not sure." Sulu frowned at the viewscreen. Sigma One blinked its

  spidery lights at them, then suddenly went dark. The station commander

  must have started emergency procedures, closing bulkheads and shutting

  down power lines to minimize damage from the impact. "A course of mark

  three should have brought us around toward the Orion nebula, but I

  didn't see it cross the screen."

  Kirk gave him a noncommittal look. "Mr. ulu, at this distance, the

  Orion nebula should look like any other star out there."

  "I know, sir," admitted Sulu. "I'm not sure how I recognize it, but I

  usually can."

  "One and a half minutes to impact, Captain," Uhura reported quietly.

  Kirk grunted and turned his back on the blackness of the station with a

  calm that amazed Sulu. Behind him, John Taylor had retreated to the

  turbolift doors, his face ashen and his hands clamped on the bridge

  railing as if he didn't quite trust the ship on which he rode. Beside

  him, Purviance just looked worried.

  "Any luck with reprogramming Spock?"

  "I have made some progress in restoring computer functions, Captain, but

  I have not yet managed to restore helm control to the bridge." The

  Vulcan never took his eyes from the computer codes scrolling across his

  screen. "We remain locked on a collision course with Sigma One."

  "That won't matter if we can throw the impulse engines in reverse." Kirk

  hit the ship communicator again. "Scotty, have you repolarized the

  engines?"

  "We're almost there, sir." A faint quiver ran through the Enterprise,

  whatever noise it made lost ben eath the drone of the last alarm. "Engine

  polarization complete, Captain. She'll run in reverse of whatever your

  helm setting is now."

  "Good." Kirk spun on his heel, striding back down toward the helm.

  "Three-quarters impulse power, Mr. Sulu."

  "Aye, sir." Gritting his teeth in silent prayer, Sulu brought the

  impulse drive on line. With the slightest of jerks, the Enterprise

  reversed course, pulling away from the station with her usual swift

  power. Sulu let out the tense breath he'd been holding as Sigma One

  dwindled from a massive presence in the sky to a retreating patch of

  darkness against the stars.

  "Sigma One is back on line, Captain." Even as Uhura spoke, Sulu could

  see approach lights blossom across the space station's outflung

  gantries. "They want to know if we require assistance with our helm

  malfunction."

  Kirk glanced inquiringly at his first officer. "Do we require

  assistance, Mr. Spock?"

  "I do not believe so, Captain." Spock tapped a final command into his

  console, then turned toward Sulu. "Mr. Sulu, if you check your helm

  computer, I think you will find it is now operational'Y

  Sulu toggled one course adjustment switch and watched the piloting panel

  respond with a swift flicker as it changed headings. "Affirmative, sir.

  We can engage warp drive now."

  "Not yet." Kirk swung around in a slow circle, scanning every panel on

  the bridge. "Before we go

  anywhere, I want to know why that last damn alarm is still active." He

  paused, facing the security panel and its stubbornly flashing screens.

  "Well, Mr. Howard?"

  The tall security guard looked desperately over his shoulder. "I can't

  seem to make it turn off, sir. I've tried everything I can think of."

  Kirk's eyebrows rose. "Then maybe it's not a false alarm. What seems

  to be triggering it?"

  "According to this, it's--" Howard checked the screen and his voice

  faltered briefly. "--it's an intruder alert, sir."

  The Kongo's primary engine room glowed in the sickly plasma-light of

  core overload. Ripples of superheated gas blurred the central warp

  chamber, and the trans-steel alloy of the engine room walls was pitted

  and strained by radiation flares. Alarms howled like tortured souls;

  only the dim black shadows of engineers remained to hear them, trapped

  forever against the blasted walls in a tableau of startled inaction.

  "The core's pretty hot, but I think we can reach it." The face on the

  comm screen--seared shiny red, with eyes burned a deep, unforgiving

  black--was fractured by washes of static. If he'd been calling anywhere

  farther away than the Kongo's bridge, no one would ever have seen his

  transmission at all. "I'm going out the lock in the Number Two

  Jefferids tube, Mr. Stein's going out the lock in Number One." A bloom

  of brilliant light swelled up in the chamber behind him, and the man

  ducked reflexively, not even turning around. "We'll call back as soon

  as we're finished. Cecil out."

  Almost on cue, the lights in the narrow communications booth went black,

  and the eomm picture in front

  of Chekov snapped down to a pingrick, like a star left behind at warp

  speed. Chekov shook himself out of the morass of horrid images--a

  corridor-long pile of charred bodies, the twisted engine breaches

  revealed by the Kongo's diagnostics, his friend's face still open to

  hope even as he turned away from the comm screen to die.

  We'll call back as soon as we're finished.

  Chekov knew now it had been a mistake to call the Kongo for details.

  Power flooded back into the comm booth's system, and, with it, the

  raucous squall of the ship's intruder alert. Still too close to

  secondhand memories of the Kongo's disaster, Chekov had to fight down a

  wave of dread as he punched the intercom next to his terminal. "Chekov

  to Lemieux."

  "Deck Six," she reported without having to be asked. "Sector

  thirty-nine."

  Barely around the corner from the booth in which

  he sat. "Send a team. I'm on my way."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  The empty corri
dors enlarged the alarm's voice, battering sound all over

  the section. Chekov cut down the corridor to section ten while the

  noise would still cover the sound of his approach. The automatic

  systems would shut down deck exits, but it would shorten pursuit if he

  could get the intruder in sight as soon after detection as possible.

  Chekov rounded the last corner just as a lean, dark figure spun to meet

  him, the small device in its hand swinging to center on his chest.

  Adrenaline seared through him at the sight of a potential weapon.

  Twisting aside, he threw his shoulder against the intruder's

  outstretched arm and

  pinned it tight against the wall. He blocked a wild swing to his head,

  and struck back in the same moment Aaron Kelly's voice yelped in panic.

  Chekov felt every muscle in his left arm twinge as he stopped his blow

  just short of a full extension. He knew even before Kelly hit the deck

  that he'd broken the auditor's nose, but hoped for both their sakes that

  he hadn't done anything worse.

  "Get up, Kelly." Chekov caught Kelly by the front of his dark suit and

  hauled him to his feet, wishing he had time to be more gracious. "You've

  got to get out of here."

  Kelly slumped groggily against a doorway with his hand clamped over his

  nose. "What are you doing here?" he slurred in confusion. Blood

  dripped from under his hand to splatter all over the deck and his shoes.

  He seemed almost as interested in those Rorschach patterns as in

  Chekov's attempts to push him back into the doorway's relative safety.

  "Did you come from Deck Seven?"

  Leaning an arm against Kelly to hold him still, Chekov hissed the

  auditor into silence. "There's an intruder alert," he whispered,

  peering up and down the hall for signs of movement. No one, and

  probably no chance of surprising anyone now, intruder or otherwise. "I

  was down the hall when it went off."

  "Ohm" Kelly surged unsteadily against Chekov's hold, trying to swing his

  right hand up in front of his eyes. "Oh, Lieutenant Chekov, this is

  terrible!"

  Chekov glanced irritably at Kelly, and at the bright metal device in

  Kelly's hand. A stopwatch, he realized. He'd just brokeh a man's nose

  on account of a digital stopwatch.

  The sound of running feet reached them ahead of the small security squad

  that appeared at either end of

  the corridor only an instant later. "This'11 probably ruin everything,"

  Kelly lisped as the guards came to cluster around him. He sniffed a

  little, then winced and depressed one of the watch's buttons with his

  thumb. "Mr. Taylor isn't going to like this at all when he hears."

  Chekov had a feeling he didn't like this already. "Mr. Kelly, what are

  you talking about?"

  Kelly blinked at him with pain-watered brown eyes. "The test." He swayed

  a little when Chekov released him to stand on his own. "I'm fairly sure

  your being here invalidates the test, Lieutenant."

  The guards exchanged uncertain looks, but Chekov only braced his hands

  against either side of the doorway and asked grimly, "Did you set off

  that intruder alert, Mr. Kelly?"

  The auditor nodded limply.

  Suddenly deprived of any real emergency, Chekov's tension flared inside

  him as cold anger. "You falsified a shipwide alert? For what?" He

  snatched Kelly's wrist and jerked the stopwatch up between them. "To

  time security's response?"

  He could feel the auditor trembling through his grip on Kelly's wrist.

  "It's an essential component to determining efficiency," Kelly offered

  in a tiny, blurry voice.

  "Damn your efficiency!" Chekov sharply released Kelly's hand, resisting

  an urge to reach out and shake the man. "Is efficiency worth

  endangering personnel with false security alerts? Is it worth getting

  yourself killed? My God!" He pounded both hands against the jambs, then

  pushed away from the doorway to pace in frustration. "Why is it that we

  have people lining up to waste themselves just to prove they can?"

  "But Mr. Taylorre"

  Chekov spun to glare at Kelly, and the auditor choked down into silence.

  "Did Taylor put you up to this idiocy?"

  Kelly, eyes wide behind his hand, nodded. "He needs some sort of data

  for his recommendation, and you won't let me into anywhere else in your

  division."

  "Recommendation?" Chekov came to stand in frout of him again, hands kept

  carefully at his sides. "What kind of recommendation?"

  "His recommendation to the Auditor General." Kelly's eyes darted back

  and forth among the collected guards, finally coming to rest on Chekov

  as though terrified of what was coming. "About when and how to

  restructure your department when we get back to Sigma One."

  "You're telling me this entire investigation is because you don't like

  the way I run my division?"

  "That," Taylor admitted from one of the sickbay's diagnostic tables,

  "and other things. But mostly that." He waved irritably at Purviance to

  silence whatever the liaison officer had opened his mouth to say.

  "Frankly, Lieutenant," Taylor said, sitting up and glaring across the

  foot of the table at Chekov, "your division is a mess."

  As near as Chekov could tell, the only advantage Taylor had at the

  moment was that they were all in sickbay, so there'd be a medic team

  nearby when Chekov decided to tear the auditor limb from limb. "Captain

  Kirk has had no complaints."

  "Of course he hasn't," Taylor said through a sneer. "For a ship as

  highly regarded as the Enterprise, an awful lot around here could stand

  redefining. Your captain is no doubt the main reason." He hopped to his

  feet, chin high. "That's why I'm here."

  "You're here to audit ship efficiency," Purviance intervened.

  Chekov tried to appreciate the awkward good intentions that made

  Purviance step in front of Taylor, but instead found himself resenting

  the other's intrusion. "Maybe if you kept your people to their official

  duties, unfortunate run-ins li ke this wouldn't happen."

  "Maybe if you minded your own business," Taylor snapped, "we could spend

  more time working and less time kissing up to Captain Kirk."

  At the edge of his vision, Chekov saw McCoy glance up from setting

  Kelly's broken nose; he made himself repress his temper before the

  doctor interfered. Being scolded by the ship's chief medical officer

  wouldn't do much for his credibility in Taylor's eyes. "Have you ever

  served in Starfleet, Mr. Taylor?"

  The auditor crossed his arms with a frown. "Of course not. But--"

  "No," Chekov cut him off, "no buts. Until you've served on a starship

  and faced the things that come up here every day, you haven't any idea

  what constitutes a well-run department."

  "Ah, but that's where you're wrong." Arms still crossed, Taylor paced

  slowly to his right, moving from behind Purviance and forcing Chekov to

  either turn to face him or wait for the auditor to circle back around in

  front of him. Chekov decided to wait for him. "Regulations tell me

  everything I need to know, Lieutenant. When I see personnel exhibiting

  continual, flagrant disregard for regulat
ions concerning duty

  assignments, scheduling, division of responsibility--well, it's my job

  to ferret out whatever causes those problems." He planted himself in

  front of Chekov and poked the lieutenant once in the chest. "Take a

  guess what that cause usually is."

  "Mr'. Taylor," Purviance objected weakly.

  Chekov curled his hands into fists so tight his wrists ached. "If you

  really care about efficiency," he said slowly, "you should be judging us

  on our performance, not on our adherence to every minor regulation."

  Taylor gave a short bark of laughter. "Performance such as nearly

  killing one of my junior auditors?"

  "Yes!" Turning away from Taylor's infuriating scowl, Chekov gestured

  to-Kelly on the bed across the room. "What was our response time?"

  "Fantastic!" Kelly popped into a sitting position despite McCoy's

  colorful protests, and leaned around the doctor to make eye contact with

  Taylor. "Lieutenant Chekov reached my position in just under

  seventy-eight seconds, and the official squad got there only about a

  minute later." He grinned at Chekov, the growing bruises under his eyes

  making him look sleepy but pleased. "That's the best time for any

  starship I've ever tested."

  "In Other words," McCoy said over his shoulder to Taylor, "if it ain't

  broke, don't fix it." He pushed Kelly flat to the bed again. "Lie

  down!"