Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity (27 page)

“Enterprise
here, Mister Scott,”
replied Uhura.
“Just checking in for your hourly progress report.”

“Everything’s continuing apace,” Scotty told her, quickly referring to the screen
to his right. “We’re right on schedule, maybe a wee bit ahead.”

“How much is ‘a wee bit’?”
she asked, and quickly added,
“Mister Spock is going to ask.”

“Aye.” Scotty looked at the numbers and decided they were on track to finishing about
six hours ahead of his original estimate. “Tell him an hour to an hour and a half
maybe,” he told Uhura, secretly smiling to himself.

“Sounds good,”
Uhura replied.
“Also, Sulu wanted me to mention to you, there seems to be some sort of intermittent
glitch in the proximity detectors.”

“What kind of glitch? Is he there?”

“Right here, Scotty,”
Sulu answered.
“It was just a couple of times, from the sensor cluster at Deck Nine. An alarm was
triggered, but shut off automatically in less than a second. Ensign Strassman ran
a level-four diagnostic, but didn’t find anything wrong.”

“Odd. Tell her to go ahead and run a level three,” Scotty said. “I’ll see what I can
see from out here.” He pocketed the communicator and then pulled the control lever
to the right, directing it onto an intersecting mag-track that would bring him toward
the fore of the ship. There could be still undetected damage that had escaped the
overwhelmed sensors. They would need a full inspection when they returned to a starbase,
and no doubt a plethora of additional repairs. But there was no point in putting this
one off now that it had been identified.

The car moved forward past the engineering hull and below the saucer section. Looking
up through the transparency, Scott spotted one of the disk drones hovering near the
sensor cluster in question. “Well, what are you doing out here?” he asked, and turned
to the drone control panel. None of the drones he was working with had been deployed
here.

He pulled out his communicator again. “Sulu, that proximity sensor you said had a
glitch. What are you reading from it now?”

“Right now, nothing, sir,”
Sulu said, as Scotty watched the small automaton hovering almost directly in front
of the sensor cluster in question.
“Why?”

Scotty heard a quiet alarm starting to sound at the back of his mind. “Are those sensors
still modified to detect nystromite?”

“No,”
Sulu said,
“we reset them after leaving the Nystrom system.”

“Reset them for nystromite,” Scott ordered. Then, realizing what else was in the vicinity
of that sensor cluster, he said, “And send security to check on the lower torpedo
launch tubes.”

“Sir?”

“Now, Sulu.” Scott set the communicator aside and hit the control button to deploy
another drone from the cache carried by the observation car, and manually targeted
it to intercept the rogue. It didn’t detect the other drone until Scotty finished
keying the nystromite detection protocol into its sensor programming. Then it was
able to detect not only the drone, but the photon warhead it had smuggled out through
the
Enterprise
’s opened torpedo launch tube.

“You rutting bastards,” Scotty spat, forgetting for a moment that he still had an
open comm channel to the bridge. “You seeing this now, Sulu?”

“I see it!”
Sulu shouted excitedly.
“I’ve alerted security.”

“The board is still showing the torpedo tubes closed and sealed,”
Chekov chimed in.

“They must’ve installed a backdoor program when they took control of the launcher
the first time.”
I should have looked for that after the incident at the Nalaing system,
Scott berated himself, but he pushed such recriminations aside. Right now, he had
to stop the other drone, and hope that doing so wouldn’t detonate the photon warhead.
If that happened this close to the hull . . .

Whoever was controlling the rogue drone detected Scott’s on an intercept course. The
torpedo-laden robot attempted to run away from the
Enterprise
—toward the
814
. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Scotty growled as he pushed his drone to maximum acceleration.
The gap between the two closed quickly, as the mass of the warhead kept the thief
from gaining velocity. Then, unexpectedly, the other drone changed course and headed
for the underside of the saucer. It then adjusted its course again to avoid collision,
but at the same time, released its hold on the photon warhead, which continued on
a straight line toward the hull.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Scotty cursed. “
Enterprise
! Incoming!”

Seconds before striking, small shimmering circles of light rippled out and away from
the tumbling weapon, as if it had just hit the surface of a lake. The deflectors arrested
its momentum and brought it gently to a standstill, mere centimeters before contact.

“Well done, Sulu,” Scotty said as he returned his focus to the fleeing drone. With
new determination, he rammed his own drone into the little thief, causing a brilliant
explosion of sparks. Scotty engaged the manipulating servos and made sure the propulsion
systems of the captured drone were well and truly disabled. He executed a maneuver
to bring it around back toward the ship. “
Enterprise
, prepare the shuttlebay,” he said as he programmed his drone to bring the damaged
one in. The engineer took hold of the car’s control lever to bring it back
around to the hard docking connection to the ship. The rest of the repairs would wait.

*   *   *

“Because you had them.”

Captain Kirk stared agog at Fallag, who in turn looked down haughtily at him from
the viewscreen. “I beg your pardon?” He had just accused the Domain envoy of illegally
violating his ship and stealing three of their photon torpedo warheads, and Fallag
had reacted as if the concept of “sovereign territory” was completely irrelevant to
him.

“You have these photon torpedoes,”
Fallag said,
“these advanced, dangerous weapons, more powerful by an order of magnitude than our
own most formidable defenses. Did you think the Goeg Domain could simply sit back
and let a rival power have a monopoly on such dangerous, destructive devices?”

“So you view the Federation as a potential enemy now?” Kirk asked.

“Is that even in question, given your support of the Taarpi?”
Fallag countered.
“Not to mention your theft and falsification of Domain data records.”

Kirk was tempted to ask how Fallag could simultaneously accuse him of taking data
from the
814
and questioning the veracity of that data, but resolved not to be sidetracked. “And
that gives you the right to engage in this sort of espionage?”

“We’re entitled to defend ourselves, our people,
in any way necessary. Now your Starfleet will think twice before launching any sort
of incursion—”

Kirk turned away from the screen and signaled to Uhura to cut the other man off in
mid-screed. At the same moment, Scotty stepped off the turbolift, carrying a data
slate and looking deeply troubled. “Sir, I tapped into the memory of our little Artful
Dodger,” he said. “Just as you thought: the other two photon warheads it pilfered
from us were brought straight to the
814
.”

“Where’s the
814
now?” Kirk barked, no longer willing or able to contain his outrage. Just hours before,
he was beginning to think that perhaps he could understand and excuse Laspas’s actions,
and then this.

After consulting his computer, Spock answered, “We recorded them leaving their repair
slip and exiting the system six-point-three minutes ago.”

Immediately after we realized what they were up to
, Kirk thought, disgusted. “Heading?”

“The Nalaing system,” Spock said.

“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, spinning back to the engineer, “your last report said our
repairs were ahead of schedule. Are they far enough along that we could have warp
drive?”

“Sir,” Scott said, deep lines furrowing his brow, “the damaged pylon is still far
from one hundred percent—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Kirk shot back.

Scotty looked dismayed, but answered, “We can do warp four for a few hours, sir. But
all it would take is one undetected subspace pocket, anything out of the ordinary
that could knock our warp field—”

“Understood, Mister Scott,” Kirk said, looking the chief engineer straight in the
eye, silently reassuring him that he wasn’t being needlessly reckless, and was as
concerned about the ship as he was.

Scotty nodded, and sat at the engineering station. “Standing by to initiate an emergency
separation from the repair dock,” he said.

Kirk couldn’t help but smile. “Always prepared, Scotty?”

Scott shrugged. “Aye. Compared to breaking away from a moving ship, this is a walk
in the park.”

“Let’s hope so. Scotty, cast off.”

The entire ship vibrated around them, and Kirk could hear the straining of the mooring
clamps resonating through the hull.
“Warning,”
sounded the base’s automated system through the comm,
“shut down all drive systems immediately.”

“Turn that thing off, Uhura,” Kirk ordered, and moments after the voice subsided,
so did the resistance applied to the outside of the ship.

“We’re clear of the station,” Sulu reported.

“Then set course for Nalaing,” Kirk ordered. “Best speed.”

The captain hoped their best would be good enough.

There had been a field of unusual subspace activity about four light-years out from
Wezonvu, which Chekov had noted during the journey in. They hadn’t been able to get
detailed readings of its size or extent, but he made sure the
Enterprise
’s course back to Nalaing veered clear of the potential hazard, without adding an
undue amount of transit time. Once they had passed its coordinates, and he felt the
rest of their plotted course safe, he stood up from his station and moved to the side
of Kirk’s chair. “Captain,” he said, straightening to full attention, “I hereby present
myself for disciplinary action, sir.”

Kirk raised one eyebrow as he looked at him. “Ensign?”

“Yes, sir,” Chekov said. “I was on duty when the torpedoes were smuggled off the ship.”

The captain considered him seriously for a long several seconds. “And you feel you
were lax in your duties?”

“I regret that I was, sir.”

“What, specifically, did you fail to do, Mister Chekov?”

“I did not anticipate the security breach while we were in hostile territory,” he
answered. “I did not ensure that our weapons were secure.”

“I see,” Kirk said, his left elbow on the arm of his chair, regarding the earnest
young ensign. “You feel that you should have had guards stationed at the photon torpedo
tubes, in case stealth drones were able to open them from the outside without tripping
any alarms, sneak inside, and steal the warheads.”

Slowly, it occurred to Chekov that the captain was gently mocking him. “Sir . . .”

“Resume your post, Mister Chekov,” Kirk ordered him.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Chekov said, and slid quickly back into his seat.

“Good,” Kirk said. “Now that that’s settled, how long until we intercept the
814
?”

Chekov referred to his console and answered, “One hour, sixteen minutes at current
velocity.”

“Sir,” Spock said from his station, “by my calculations, the
814
will reach the Nalaing system in forty-six point eight minutes.”

The captain opened the comm on the side of the command chair. “Bridge to engineering.
How is that pylon holding up, Scotty?”

“Still holding steady, sir,”
Scotty answered, his voice tinged with relief, and a hint of disbelief.

“We’re going to warp five,” Kirk declared.

Both Chekov and Sulu pivoted in their seats as Kirk waited for a response from the
engine room. Finally, Scotty said,
“That wasn’t a question, was it, sir?”

“It was not, Mister Scott,” Kirk affirmed.

After another significant pause from the chief engineer, he said,
“I’ll redirect as much extra power as I can to the structural integrity field. That
should give us a little extra to work with.”

“Excellent, Scotty.” The captain closed the channel, leaned forward on the edge of
his chair, ordering, “Sulu, increase speed to warp five. Bring her up by increments
of point-one.”

*   *   *

They were able to push the
Enterprise
to warp four point seven, cutting significantly into the
814
’s lead. Though not quite enough. “The
814
has just dropped out of warp,” Spock reported from his station, “and is now entering
the Nalaing system.”

“Time to intercept?” Kirk asked, sitting forward in his command chair, both hands
balled into fists.

Sulu answered, “Four minutes, twelve seconds.”

Kirk clenched his jaw, biting back the impulse to demand more. He had already pushed
his overstressed starship to its limits, and then beyond. He had to discover what
precisely Laspas was planning to do with his two stolen warheads. At this point,
all he could do was hope four minutes would be enough time to stop him . . . and that
the
Enterprise
would still be up to that task.

As the seconds on the astrogation console’s chronometer rolled forward at a painfully
slow pace, Kirk noticed McCoy had arrived on the bridge and was now standing unobtrusively
in the alcove in front of the turbolift. He said nothing in reply to Kirk’s questioning
look, but just gave him a simple nod that said he was just there for whatever moral
support his presence might offer.

“Captain.” Uhura turned in her seat, pressing her receiver to her ear. “The
814
is broadcasting to the planet.”