Star Trek: ALL - Seven Deadly Sins (59 page)

“We are trying!”
Snollicoob insisted. A ladder crashed loudly in the background. Banging noises almost drowned out the engineer’s words. A bright flash briefly bleached out the Pakled’s features.
“They will not open! They are stuck!”

A sudden jolt tossed him to one side. The screen blanked out abruptly.

“Snollicoob!” La Forge’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to restore communications with
Rorpot,
only to discover that the transmission had been cut off at the other end. Grisly scenarios flashed through his brain. What had happened to
Rorpot?
Had the warp core exploded prematurely?

C’mon, Snollicoob. Don’t do this to me.

A burst of static heralded the resumption of the signal. La Forge let out a sigh of relief as he answered the hail. Snollicoob’s mournful face reappeared on the screen. The Pakled’s hair was badly mussed. Fresh black soot smudged his features. His eyebrows were singed. Shouts and alarms sounded all around him.

“Hello, Mister La Forge. I am sorry for the interruption.”

“Forget it.” Geordi was surprised at just how relieved he was to see that his Pakled counterpart was still among the living. He thought he had lost him for good. “What happened to you?”

“We bumped into another filament,”
he explained.
“It shook us up.”

“I can tell,” La Forge said. At least
Rorpot
was not traveling at warp speed anymore. The only good thing about the freighter’s being stalled in deep space was that it could no longer collide into the quantum filaments at high velocity. “How are you doing?”

“It is bad,”
Snollicoob reported.
“The hull is buckling. There are fires everywhere. The galley is gone.”
He shook his head dourly.
“I do not like quantum filaments.”

“You and me both.” La Forge sympathized with what the Pakleds were going through. He and Beverly Crusher had been trapped in a burning cargo hold after the
Enterprise
’s own runin with the deadly
interstellar hazard. They were both lucky to have survived the conflagration. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”

“You have?”
Snollicoob was surprised to hear it.
“But you are still alive?”

“You bet,” La Forge encouraged him. “And you’re going to get through this, too.”

The Pakled looked unconvinced.
“I don’t know. It is bad here.”

A quick glance at the reactor readings lent some validity to Snollicoob’s gloomy prognosis. Containment field integrity was down to thirty-four percent. Geordi wasn’t sure how far they were from a total collapse, but he figured they were running out of time. There was only one sensible course of action.

“You need to eject the warp core.”

Expelling the overheating reaction assembly might spare
Rorpot
from the catastrophic explosion. Granted, there was still a danger that the core might detonate too near the freighter, but that was a chance they would have to take. Better that the core explode right outside the ship than inside its hull.

Snollicoob hesitated.
“But we will lose our engine. The captain will not like that.”

“You don’t have any choice,” La Forge informed him. “It’s extreme, I know, but you have to do it. Now.”

“Uh-huh.”
Snollicoob gulped.
“You are smart. I trust you.”

The nervous Pakled took a deep breath, then keyed the emergency codes into his console. La Forge hoped Snollicoob wouldn’t get into too much trouble for doing this without his captain’s say-so, but they didn’t have time to conduct a lengthy debate on the pros and cons of the procedure. At least, if this worked, the captain and the crew would still be alive.

Snollicoob flipped a switch.

Nothing happened.

“Uh-oh,”
the engineer said.

“What is it?” La Forge asked, afraid he already knew the answer.
Let me guess. It’s not working.

“I cannot eject the core,”
Snollicoob confirmed.
“The hull doors will not open.”

La Forge wanted to hit something. “Doesn’t anything work right on that ship of yours?”

“I do not know,”
Snollicoob confessed. He wrung his hands. Greasy tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“We are broken.”

“All right. Let’s keep our cool.” La Forge didn’t have to be an empath to see that Snollicoob was on the verge of panic. He emulated Counselor Troi’s comforting tone. “We just have to get those doors apart. Can you force them open from inside?”

Snollicoob pulled himself together. He wiped the tears from his eyes.
“I do not think so.”
He consulted his gauges.
“The ejection chute is too hot. It is not safe. We would burn up.”

La Forge saw what he meant. A leak in the EPS conduits had flooded the interior of the ejection chute with superenergized gases. The blazing plasma would fry any Pakled technicians before they had a chance to pry open the exterior hull plates.

“Okay then,” he concluded. “You’re going to have to do it from outside.”

“Outside the ship?”
Snollicoob’s eyes widened in fear.
“That will be dangerous.”

“Dangerous is better than dead,” La Forge said bluntly.

Snollicoob looked like he wasn’t quite sure that was so.

“Uh-huh.”

Space was cold. And dark. And scary.

Snollicoob squeezed through an airlock as he exited the ship. The sliding doors had not opened all the way, forcing him to turn sideways to slip through the gap. He held his breath, hoping that his modified Tellarite spacesuit would not catch or tear on anything. The ill-fitting suit, which was one size too small for him, hampered his movements. He had looked for a better fit, but this suit had been in the best condition. In the end, he had chosen safety over comfort. In space, leaks were bad.

He stepped nervously out onto the hull. A tinted visor hid his face. A searchlight built into the top of his helmet cut through the darkness before him. A fully charged phaser was affixed to his tool belt. His heart pounded loudly. He was afraid.

The vast openness of empty space was profoundly intimidating, especially after weeks aboard the cozy confines of the freighter. Despite the protective spacesuit, he felt uncomfortably naked and exposed, like
a newborn cub shoved out of the den into the threatening world outside. Vertigo sent his head spinning, and he realized that he had forgotten to exhale. He gulped down air until the light-headedness passed. The sound of his own breathing echoed inside the helmet.

“Mister La Forge, are you there?”

“Call me Geordi,”
the human engineer answered via the headset in Snollicoob’s helmet. His voice was scratchy and faint, but reassuring nonetheless. Snollicoob did not want to do this alone. An optical connection linked Geordi’s VISOR to a camera in the helmet, so he could see what Snollicoob saw.
“I’m not going anywhere. We engineers have to stick together, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Snollicoob answered uncertainly. He looked longingly back at the airlock entrance, tempted to turn back. “I do not like this, Geordi.”

“You ever spacewalked before?”

“No,” he admitted. He could not remember the last time the hull had been inspected from the outside. If only he could change places with Geordi . . . !

“You can do it,”
the human said.
“Just put one foot in front of the other.”
Geordi sounded tense.
“But you had better get going. I don’t want to rush you, but that containment field is not looking good.”

Snollicoob understood. Bolstering his courage, he set out across the hull. The magnetized soles of his boots clung to the weathered metal surface; he had to strain against the attraction to lift his feet. The helmet light illuminated his patch. He flinched at the scarred appearance of the outer plating. The rust-colored tritanium was scorched and dented, as though it had been lashed by a Ferengi plasma whip. Countless score marks and fissures cried out to be patched. Vapor jetted through a pin-sized puncture below the ventral impeller. He paused briefly to plug the hole with a wad of thermoconcrete, all too aware that there were probably many more punctures elsewhere.
Rorpot
was going to need serious repairs—if it didn’t blow up.

Maybe it would be easier to let it explode?

“Are we almost there yet?”
Geordi asked anxiously.
“You need to hurry.”

“Uh-huh.” Snollicoob quickened his pace. Unfortunately, the nearest working airlock had been on
Rorpot
’s starboard flank, a long hike from the ejection chute doors, which were located on the
underbelly of the freighter. He had to make his way along the ravaged hull, detouring around mangled fins and twisted metal clamps, to get to where he needed to go. An enormous barrel of slush deuterium, hitched to the freighter’s side, blocked his path, forcing him to take the long way around. A jagged wound in the side of the metal drum had already released its contents to the void.
Rorpot
’s losses were mounting, but Snollicoob was too worn out to care. Walking in the magnetized boots was exhausting. His legs were already tired by the time he reached the bottom of the ship. He wasn’t used to moving this fast, let alone in sticky boots and a clumsy suit. Breathing hard, he forced himself to keep on going.

He was going to need a vacation after this, if he survived.

Walking upside-down beneath
Rorpot
was disorienting. Empty space stretched endlessly above him—or was it below? Worried eyes searched the vast expanse. He couldn’t see the quantum filaments, but he knew they were still there, all around him.

What if the ship bumps into one while I am out here?

He shuddered at the thought.

“How are you doing?”
Geordi nagged him.
“Can you go any faster?”

The human’s obvious impatience worried Snollicoob. He wondered how close the warp core was to exploding. His helmet could not provide him updates on the ship’s status; he was cut off from his gauges. “How weak is the bubble?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
Geordi’s reticence was not reassuring.
“Just get a move on.”

“I am almost there.” By his reckoning the chute doors were only seven meters away. He shone his searchlight in the right direction. His jaw dropped. “Uh-oh.”

An immense hull breach gaped between him and his destination. From the looks of things, the magnesite in the cargo hold had ignited, blowing open the hull. Only what remained of
Rorpot
’s structural integrity field was holding the ship together. Over four meters across, the breach was like a mountain ravine, directly in his path.

“Geordi, there is a problem.”

“I see,”
Geordi sighed.
“Is there any way around it?”

Snollicoob swept the searchlight along the length of the fissure. It appeared to stretch quite a ways across the width of the ship, for many
meters in both directions. There was no way to bridge the gap; the flickering SIF would not support his weight.

“I do not think so, Geordi.” He peered down into the chasm. The blackened interior of the vault was large enough to hold many kilotons of solid ore. “Maybe I can climb down into the hold and back up again?”

“There’s no time for that,”
the human declared.
“You’re going to have to jump.”

Snollicoob’s mouth went as dry as . . . a very dry thing. He hoped he hadn’t heard Geordi right.

“Jump?”

“If you get a running start,”
Geordi said, as though the idea were not the craziest thing Snollicoob had ever heard,
“then demagnetize your boots at the last minute, your momentum should carry you across the gap. Then you just need to grab onto something on the other side before you go too far.”

Snollicoob spotted a docking strut jutting out from the hull just beyond the crevasse. The metal rail protruded ten centimeters from the underside of the ship; it was bent at an angle, but looked like it was still riveted in place. Geordi’s plan
could
work, but . . .

“I am afraid. What if I miss?”

“You can’t think about that now.”
Geordi was obviously not going to take no for an answer.
“You can do it, Snollicoob. I believe in you.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.”
Geordi sounded oddly bemused by his own declaration.
“You can fly if you have to. You just need to move!”

Snollicoob decided to take his word for it. Geordi was smart.
If he thinks I can do this, maybe I can.

He backed up as far as he could. As with their technology, the Pakleds had appropriated most of their religious beliefs from other species, so he offered up a silent prayer to the Prophets, Kahless, the Overseer, the Blessed Exchequer, and the Q Continuum before sprinting toward the gap faster than any Pakled had probably ever run before. His soles pounded against the warped tritanium plating. Adrenaline rushed through his veins.

It was an unusual feeling.

The yawning abyss looked bigger and bigger the nearer he got to it. He was tempted to close his eyes and let Geordi look instead, but instead he kept his gaze fixed on the life-saving strut on the other side
of the gap. Before he knew it, he was only paces away from the brink of the crevasse.

“Demagnetize your boots!”
Geordi reminded him.
“Now!”

Oh right,
he thought.
I almost forgot.

A trigger in the palm of his spacesuit shut off the magnets. He threw himself over the edge, his arms outstretched before him. Just as Geordi had predicted, he soared weightlessly over the chasm. A broad grin broke out across his face.

“I am doing it! It is working!”

He crossed the gap in a heartbeat. The docking strut seemed to come racing toward him. He reached out to snag it . . . and missed!

“Uh-oh!”

Snollicoob went flying past the hull doors into the void. Gloved fingers groped for something—anything!—to hold on to, but grasped only vacuum. Floating free and untethered, he tumbled helplessly away from the ship. He frantically switched his boot magnets back on, but it was already too late. The attraction was too weak; he had to be in contact with the hull for the magnets to work.