Identity Theft, page 20
Unless…?
A Klingon bird-of-prey—a smaller B’rel-class scout ship, to be precise—uncloaked on his sensors, flying parallel to Xoline. Chekov’s pulse raced at the sight of the other ship’s ominous silhouette, instantly recalling what Dise had told him about the Klingons possibly lending covert support to the Exiles. Was this the same cloaked ship that might have delivered Picco and his cohorts to Oasis in pursuit of him? That seemed more than likely.
But how had they found him here in deep space? The flashing message on the comm panel hinted at the answer.
My comm signals! he realized. By trying to hail the Enterprise, he had been broadcasting his location to anyone tracking him.
And painting a target on Xoline.
Reacting quickly, he raised the yacht’s rudimentary shields; they were far below Starfleet-level defenses, but they were all he had. Proximity alerts wailed as sensors warned of a torpedo-shaped object zooming straight for Xoline. Chekov attempted an evasive maneuver, banking hard to port, but the torpedo was too close and too fast. He flinched in anticipation, unsure if, even shielded, the yacht could survive a photon torpedo strike.
Good thing I left Dise behind…
The torpedo slammed into Xoline, exploding on contact with her shields. The impact knocked the yacht out of warp and sent it spinning off course but, to Chekov’s relief and surprise, did not bring total annihilation. Finding himself unexpectedly alive, he saw that the blast had reduced Xoline’s shield intensity by only fifty percent, far less than he’d expect from a military-grade Klingon torpedo. A rapid scan of the diagnostic displays showed damage across the boards, but not enough to leave the yacht dead in the water. He could only assume that the Klingons had deliberately reduced the torpedo’s explosive yield—to avoid destroying Xoline completely?
“Attention, fugitive vessel!” a guttural voice barked over the comms; clearly, the Klingons were not jamming their own transmissions. Static indicated that Xoline’s own comm system had not come through the torpedo attack unscathed. “You cannot escape or defeat us in battle. Surrender at once.”
Surrender? After only one pulled punch? It was unlike Klingons to avoid a battle, even one as obviously lopsided as this. More proof that the Exiles, along with their Klingons allies, needed him kept alive—for Ryjo’s sake?
This did little to reassure Chekov. Even if the Klingons were not immediately intent on reducing him to space dust, he was in no hurry to enjoy their infamous “hospitality” anytime soon, especially when he had more important places to be.
“Excuse me,” he attempted to hail the Klingon ship, uncertain if they could even hear him despite the jamming field and the torpedo-inflicted injury to Xoline. Preliminary readings suggested crippling damage to the yacht’s long-range transceiver antenna. “It appears there’s been some sort of misunderstanding—”
“Silence!” Electronic hisses and crackles punctuated the Klingons’ bellicose response. “Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded!”
A viridian tractor beam latched onto Xoline, squeezing her tattered shields. Chekov resisted an urge to fire back at the bird-of-prey with the yacht’s meager phasers; he was hopelessly outgunned and he knew it. He wasn’t going to be able shoot his way out of this, but perhaps there was another option, one the Klingons wouldn’t see coming?
“Acknowledged. Just give me a moment to shut down the deflectors. I’m afraid the controls are somewhat less than responsive, after the torpedo and all. I need to do this carefully, just to be safe…”
“No tricks, Starfleet! Yes, we know who you are!”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Starfleet, me?”
Keep him talking, Chekov thought, stalling for time as he systematically began stripping down the shields protecting Xoline, dissolving the complex lattice of energized gravitons comprising the field so that, from the Klingons’ vantage point, it would certainly seem as though he was dismantling the shields layer by layer, albeit in a rather laborious fashion. One by one, the constituent elements of the deflector field were peeled away, so all that remained was a localized zone of ionized gamma rays leavened with a very specific concentration of free neutrons, not unlike the byproducts of archaic nuclear-fission reactors…
“What is taking so long? Lower your shields or suffer the consequences!”
“Just a moment. I’m almost finished… There!”
He turned a dial, but instead of eliminating the gamma field as well, he expanded it so that it blossomed outward toward the bird-of-prey and was almost instantly sucked up by the Klingon vessel’s tractor beam, which pulled it straight into the bird-of-prey—before the beam blinked out entirely.
Yes! Chekov thought. Always wondered if that trick would work.
Just a few years ago, while temporarily stranded in the late twentieth century, he’d had occasion to infiltrate the reactor room of a primitive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, where he had unfortunately been taken into custody by some notably unfriendly American military personnel. Attempting to escape, he discovered that the radiation from the carrier’s archaic nuclear-fission reactor had rendered his communicator and hand phaser inoperative for reasons he had been in no position to examine at the time. Later, however, after that tumultuous excursion to the past reached a successful conclusion, saving all life on Earth, and he had returned to his own, substantially more advanced era, he had delved deeper into precisely how those specific emissions had disabled his gear, while also taking advantage of the opportunity to study the specs of the Klingon ship they had captured around the same time. A B’rel-class bird-of-prey, as it happened.
Searching for potential vulnerabilities that might be exploited later, it had occurred to him that perhaps one could re-create, on a somewhat larger scale, the same effect that had knocked out his equipment on that aircraft carrier three hundred years ago, disabling its weapons and sensors, if only temporarily. Certainly, what he had learned from the late HMS Bounty suggested this trick might work at least once, before the Klingons developed an effective countermeasure.
Once was enough for Chekov. Holding his breath, he reactivated Xoline’s warp engine and took off at top speed. No torpedoes, phasers, or tractor beams pursued him as he resumed course for Voyzr and the Enterprise.
He glanced warily at the comm panel, remembering how the Klingons had located him before.
No more open hails until I’m right in Voyzr’s backyard, he realized. It’s silent running until then.
Twenty-Five
“You sure you want to do this?” Tovar asked. “What with that creature out there?”
She held on to his helmet as Ryjo ran a safety check on his environmental suit to ensure that it was still operational after the crash, quakes, and spills, while exchanging his magnetic gravity boots for levitation boots. Groaning bulkheads added urgency to the procedure, as if anyone trapped aboard the sunken shuttlecraft could possibly forget the fix they were in. His gaze drifted toward the forward window, watching out for whatever had swum past it before. That they now knew that the sea outside was not entirely lifeless did give him pause.
“Doesn’t seem like I have much choice, not if we want to get through to the Enterprise.” He turned toward the rear of Copernicus, where Sulu, Bwoj, and Dipelly were hard at work assembling a makeshift communications buoy out of a standard-issue signal enhancer, a remote-controlled surveillance drone, and an emergency flotation device. Acrid fumes contaminated the pressurized atmosphere as Dipelly employed a beam welder to solder two components together. Ryjo’s nose wrinkled. “How are we doing there?”
“Just a few more minutes.” Sulu hunched over the buoy, using a trident scanner to cross-connect the control circuitry. “Don’t want to cut corners where this gadget is concerned, especially without Scotty on hand to pull off a miracle in record time.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Ryjo said. “Take the time to do it right. Just not too much time.”
Sulu nodded. “Acknowledged… and then some.”
Everything—their lives, Ryjo’s undercover mission—depended on Bwoj’s plan: to deliver a floatable signal enhancer to the surface of the sea in hopes of finally making contact with the Enterprise despite the depth and contamination of all the water above Copernicus, assuming Captain Kirk was indeed still searching for them, of which Sulu and the others remained utterly confident. Ryjo had his doubts, but he kept them to himself to preserve his cover. Given their lack of viable alternatives, he could only hope, for all their sakes, that Kirk’s people knew their captain better than he did. Otherwise, they were almost surely doomed to drown beneath alien waves.
The catch? Since there was no guarantee that the improvised buoy would work perfectly the first time out, without needing any last-minute adjustments or fine-tuning, somebody had to accompany the buoy to the surface to make certain the remote connection to Copernicus worked, that the hailing frequencies to the Enterprise didn’t need to be tweaked, that the buoy stayed afloat, and, not incidentally, to defend it from any lurking aquatic life-forms.
“Ready when you are,” Ryjo said. “More or less.”
“Not in that big a hurry to brave the depths?” Tovar said. “Can’t say I blame you. Don’t think we don’t appreciate you taking this plunge for us. You’re a brave man, Pavel Chekov.”
If only. Once again, though, he hadn’t had much of a choice. As mission leader, he’d briefly flirted with delegating Sulu, but that seemed out of character for Chekov. For better or for worse, he still felt obliged to avoid attracting suspicion—just in case he somehow survived to make it back to the Enterprise.
“Just doing my duty,” he said, as Chekov might. “Unless you’re volunteering?”
He was kidding, naturally. This was no job for a nurse or a doctor, nor something that could be trusted to one or more of the rescued civilians.
“You wish,” she joked back. “Guess I can’t really complain about being in this situation. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and check out the far frontier… and here we are.” She chuckled wryly. “Be careful what you wish for.”
He glanced at the buoy-assembly team, who looked like they still had a ways to go. Meanwhile, McCoy was tending to Fressa’s broken arm by administering a fresh dose of painkillers and healing agents. Time enough then, Ryjo concluded, for he and Tovar to engage in a bit more conversation, if only to keep his mind off his impending ascent through the perilous waters outside.
“You said something about a midlife crisis before?”
“Pretty much.” She inspected his helmet for any hairline cracks or loose fittings. “Don’t get me wrong. Medicine and nursing will always be my true vocation, but a few years back, with my fortieth birthday looming on the horizon, I felt like I needed a change of scenery at least, after working in planetside hospitals and clinics for most of my career. As it happens, I once worked with Doctor McCoy, back when he was taking a sabbatical from Starfleet after your original five-year mission, so I reached out to him, told him I was interested in broadening my horizons, and, long story short, he pulled strings to get me assigned to your brand-new Enterprise.” She took in their daunting surroundings, with the dim emergency lighting, creaking bulkheads, and flagging life-support. “Mind you, getting stranded underwater on a dangerously volcanic moon was not exactly what I had in mind…”
“Not really on my to-do list either,” he replied, “but as we say in Russia, life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
Including assassination plots, it seemed.
“Truer words, et cetera.” She handed him the helmet, then stepped closer to brush his hair away from his brow, as though inspecting him for any previously undetected bumps or bruises. “Suit looks fine, but how are you holding up? No concussions after all?”
“Not that I know of.” He found her touch and proximity and outgoing personality more stimulating than he should. Guilt pricked him as he recalled not just his mission but Dise also. “What’s your diagnosis, Nurse?”
She unhooked a medical tricorder from her suit. “Let me see about that.” She scanned him from head to toe, then consulted the display panel. “Hmm. Slightly elevated blood pressure, heartbeat, adrenal levels.” She smirked at him. “Should I be flattered, or are you just stressed about your big swim to the surface?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. Forgive me, Dise.
“I decline to answer on the grounds that it might—”
“Look sharp!” McCoy shouted. “It’s back!”
All heads turned toward the cockpit window to see a pulsing, blue-white glow come surging out of the murk toward Copernicus. At first, all that could be discerned was a large, amorphous shape vaguely defined by bright, strobing flashes, but then the shuttlecraft’s landing lights exposed an immense, jellyfish-like creature reminiscent of the monstrous slime nettles of the Hylera Basin. Its translucent, bell-shaped head was at least a meter high and across. Undulating tentacles streamed behind it like luminous party streamers.
“I’ll be damned!” McCoy gaped at the beast.
Hopefully not, Ryjo thought. Was the sea creature dangerous? He didn’t spy any obvious fangs or claws or spikes. Perhaps it’s harmless and merely curious about us…
A sparkling tentacle lashed out at Copernicus. Lightning blazed beneath the sea in the form of a blinding, white-hot flash that forced Ryjo to avert his eyes. Energy crackled loudly as an electrifying jolt clashed with the shuttlecraft’s already flimsy shields, which barely overlaid the contours of the hull. The landing lights flared, then went black, so that all that could be seen was the glowing jelly retreating back into the swirling mustard slurry before vanishing from sight completely.
Okay, not so harmless then.
He scrambled into the cockpit, despite his heavy boots and padded EV suit, and tried to reactivate the landing lights. Blue spots danced before his eyes as they recovered from the flash.
“No use,” he announced after a few frustrating moments. “I can’t get the searchlights back on. The circuits are fried.”
“That may have been the intent,” McCoy said.
“How do you mean, Doctor?” Tovar asked.
“You saw that thing, all lit up like a pulsar chandelier. If it’s territorial, it might have seen Copernicus as competition, so it targeted our brightest lights first.”
“But what did it hit us with?” Fressa asked between puffs on her vaporizer, which she stubbornly persisted in employing.
Ryjo studied the relevant readings on the dashboard. “Nearly as I can tell, that tentacle delivered a powerful bioelectric surge, on the order of several gigajoules.”
“Lovely,” McCoy said. “A huge electric jellyfish, armed with lightning bolts. Just what we didn’t need.”
Cowering behind the other Yarfites, Bwoj peered apprehensively at the forward window. “Why hasn’t it attacked again, to finish us off?”
“Maybe it needs time to recharge?” Sulu speculated. “Or only wanted to take out our lights like Doctor McCoy suggested?”
“Could be.” Ryjo was suddenly grateful for the subdued red emergency lighting inside Copernicus. He lowered the heat shield anyway, to hide their interior lights. “We should probably reduce our visibility to be safe.”
“Hang on!” Fressa protested. “How are we going to see that thing coming with the window covered?”
“Is that likely to make a difference in the outcome?” Ryjo exited the cockpit. “With our forward lights out, we’ll barely have any advance notice anyway. If we can possibly avoid provoking that… lightning jelly… by going dark, we ought to give it a try.”
“And if it’s simply recharging before taking another run at us?” Fressa asked. “Or if there are more of those creatures swimming around out there?”
“No way of knowing that,” Ryjo admitted, “although if we’re right about it being territorial and not liking competition, perhaps it’s the only specimen in its territory.”
“Perhaps, maybe, if…” Fressa expelled a jowlful of azure vapor. “None of that is very reassuring, Commander Chekov.”
Tell me about it, Ryjo thought. “All the more reason to get hold of the Enterprise sooner rather than later.” He stomped down the passenger cabin toward the buoy on which their futures depended. “Where do we stand with our composite lifesaver?”
“Ready to go.” Sulu put down the trident scanner. “It’s as good as it’s going to get under the circumstances, although I confess I was briefly distracted by our gooey, galvanic friend out there.”
“You don’t say.”
Ryjo took a moment to refamiliarize himself with the signal enhancer’s controls, another bit of Starfleet tech he’d never actually handled before, not even in simulations. Fortunately, they looked straightforward enough, and manipulable even when wearing gloves.
He hoped.
“Wait a second,” McCoy said. “Let’s rethink this. Does Chekov really need to babysit that buoy, now that we know how dangerous that creature is?”
“And if the remote link to Copernicus doesn’t connect at first?” Ryjo appreciated the doctor’s concern for “Chekov,” but he had already thought this through. “Or if the beast tries to zap the buoy with its tentacles?”
McCoy faltered. “That would cook our goose but good, I guess, but I still don’t like the idea of you taking a swim with a sea monster.”
“Don’t worry.” He slapped the phaser affixed to his hip. “I’m set to kill.”
“Kill?” Sulu raised an eyebrow. “You mean stun, don’t you? We’re the invaders here. For all we know, that life-form is sentient, or even just an endangered species. We can’t just go in phasers blazing. Starfleet protocol—”
“Phasers on stun, of course.” Ryjo switched the setting on the weapon before attaching it back to his suit. “Sorry. Got a little carried away there. I just didn’t want to take chances with your lives all depending on me.”
