“Captain, the trash exhaust you are presently occupying is aimed at the personnel portal of hangar seven on the other ship. You are good to go. Provided the other vessel does not alter its current position, I should be able to hold this alignment as long as necessary.”
“Copy that,” Kirk replied. “Scotty, you ready for us yet?”
On the warship, the chief slowed before the very door he was supposed to open. Even though he knew he was in one of the smaller hangar entrances, the barrier’s size still gave him pause.
“Whoa, hold on a sec now. This airlock door I’m lookin’ at is very wee. I mean, it’s small. Only four meters or so in diameter. And you’re comin’ straight across this way? It’s goin’ to be like jumpin’ out of a movin’ car, off a bridge, an’ into a shot glass.”
Back on the Enterprise, Kirk tensed as he prepared himself for the forthcoming release from the airlock. “That’s okay,” Kirk assured the chief via his suit’s comm. “I’ve done this before.”
Turning to him, Khan raised an eyebrow in a disarmingly Spock-like manner. “You’ve done this before?”
“Yeah,” an increasingly tense Kirk told him, “it was vertical. We jumped onto a . . .” His words trailed off, along with the memory, and he returned his attention to the barrier directly in front of them. “It doesn’t matter.”
Khan eyed him a moment longer, then gave a mental shrug and addressed his own suit’s comm pickup. “Mr. Scott. Did you find the manual override?”
On the massive warship, Scott was racing frantically down the empty, disarmingly vast corridor that was hangar seven. “Not yet, not yet! I’m in the hangar. Give me a minute. A lot o’ this is familiar, but there’s a lot that’s new to me, too. Too much that’s new!”
Looking to right and left, he searched desperately for a manual control panel. It should have been . . . there. It wasn’t. Turning in a frantic circle, he thought he saw the console. A quick check revealed plenty of differences from a panel with similar functions on the Enterprise—but enough that were familiar. Several in particular were virtually identical. They were all he needed—he hadn’t come here to stand in a suit and manually bring a shuttle aboard.
So intent was he on studying the controls that he didn’t notice a portal open at the back of the hangar and behind him.
On the Enterprise bridge, Spock felt he could no longer ignore reporting what he was seeing on the monitors. “Captain, before you launch, I feel I must restate that there is considerable debris still drifting between our ships. At your calculated departure velocity, contact with even a seemingly insignificant fragment would be cat—”
“Don’t say ‘catastrophic’!” Despite the best efforts of his suit’s automated internal climate control, Kirk was sweating. “Are we good to go or not?”
“Yes, Captain. If you choose to define ‘good’ as taking into account—”
Kirk interrupted the science officer’s unnecessary and decidedly unwanted explication by checking in with the chief. “Scotty, you ready for us?”
“Give me two seconds!” came the decidedly frenetic response. Under his breath and away from the communicator, the chief added to no one but himself, “Ya mad bastard!”
On the bridge, McCoy leaned toward the command chair and its occupant. “Tell me this is gonna work.”
“I have neither the information nor the confidence to do so, Doctor.”
McCoy’s expression twisted as he straightened. “As always, you’re a real comfort.”
Lying prone in the disposal chute, Kirk heard what he desperately wanted to hear from the chief. “Okay, okay—I’m set to open the door.”
Kirk glanced over at his companion. “You ready?”
“Are you?”
Damn the man! Kirk thought to himself. How can he be so calm under such circumstances? How human is he? Recalling McCoy’s comment about the prisoner’s blood summoned forth a host of questions—none of which Kirk presently had the time or inclination to ask. But later, when this was all over . . .
He addressed his suit’s pickup. “Okay, Spock—pull the trigger.”
“Yes, Captain . . . launching activation sequence on three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The airtight door in front of Kirk and Khan opened. There was a silent blast of compressed air from behind them that was intended to ensure that no refuse drifted back into the circular opening, and both men shot out into space as if blown from a cannon.
Into space, where pure tangled menace awaited.
XIV
Funny thing about acceleration, Kirk thought as he and his companion were shot out of the refuse tube: Though wholly an external stimulus, it has powerful effects on the mind. While being unceremoniously blasted out of a garbage chute lacked the aesthetic of tromping on the accelerator of an antique sports car, both generated similar feelings. He would much preferred to have been in that car now, powering across the flat Iowa landscape instead of . . .
But that was a long time ago, and that bitch reality kept poking him in the side with the ugly stick of immediacy.
Looking to his right, he could see Khan speeding along beside him as together they rocketed toward the looming warship. Rapidly changing light and reflection made it impossible to clearly make out the other man’s face. What was this warrior from the past thinking? Was he excited, energized, afraid, indifferent? On more than one occasion, Kirk had tried to read him, and failed. Having murdered Christopher Pike and too many others, Khan was now assisting Kirk in trying to save the Enterprise and its crew. Did a damaged psyche reside in that remarkable body? If McCoy couldn’t tell, how could he, Kirk?
One thing at a time, he told himself.
The heads-up inside Kirk’s helmet showed their destination. At first absurdly tiny, the faint outline of the hatch was growing steadily larger as they drew nearer. He addressed his suit pickup, hoping that communications on board the warship were still sufficiently jumbled by Scott’s efforts to prevent anyone from intercepting his short-range tight-beam sending.
“Scotty, we’re there real soon! You good?”
Alone within hangar seven, Scott was lamenting the number of readouts on a console that was only half familiar. The control he sought ought to be there, high up on the right side, but it was not. Why move it to another location, his engineer’s mind wondered, when high-up-right-side was perfectly adequate? Searching, searching, he ran the fingers of his right hand along the board. He could of course try a verbal command, but if the console was programmed to respond only to specific voices, then it would refuse his request—or worse, lock itself down until local security could unfreeze it.
“No, I’m hardly good,” he muttered into his communicator. “Good is not what I am. . . .”
On the Enterprise bridge, Spock and everyone else who could spare a glance observed the progress of the captain and Khan as they approached the warship. An anxious ensign spoke up the instant Kirk’s projected trajectory turned from green to red.
“Sir, their path isn’t clear! It was when they launched, but much of the remaining debris is still in motion and they’re now on course to intersect! The captain is headed for collision at point four-three-two.”
Spock hit the command chair comm. “Captain, you have debris directly ahead and immediately in your path.”
“Copy that.” Bad luck the chunk of metal was right in front of him, Kirk thought wildly. Good luck that it was large enough to see.
Firing his backpack, he just managed to veer away from certain death from a ragged fragment of the damaged Enterprise. Surrounded by hundreds of drifting shards of metal, plastic, and torn construction fiber, Kirk fought to stay on course while avoiding certain doom. As he pondered the details of his close call, McCoy’s voice echoed in his helmet.
“Whoa, Jim, you’re way off course.”
“I know, I know—I can see that!”
At the Academy, he had spent far more time learning how to maneuver a multi-ton starship than a body in an EV suit. While the hea
ds-up in his forward view continued its inexorable countdown ’til arrival, he gently adjusted the firing controls on his pack until he was back on course.
Inside the hangar, Scott continued his desperate attempt to unscramble the controls on the console. Was he even standing before the correct console, he asked himself? A rapid check of the hangar’s interior had shown him no other likely candidates, but that didn’t mean he might not have missed something. The warship was brand new, after all. Maybe the manual override was located somewhere else. Or worse, that particular control had been entirely eliminated from the massive starship’s design. In which case . . .
No, the override had to exist. Right here in front of him, if only he could identify it. Hadn’t Kirk’s companion said as much?
“Very close now, Mr. Scott,” came Spock’s voice over the communicator.
Damn, but Vulcans could be annoying! he thought. Even the most well-meaning ones.
“Uh, just having a slight issue opening the door.”
There! At an experimental brush of his hand, a number of previously invisible readouts sprang to life. Not perceptible until they’re needed, he realized. Now that it had made itself visible, the control he had been frantically seeking plainly stood out. To ensure that it was functional, he adjusted it ever so slightly, intending to crack the hangar door as little as possible.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, he pushed against the control a little harder, then more forcefully. Still nothing. It struck him that it, and possibly this entire console, had been affected by his own hand—by the sabotage he had inflicted shipwide. Now that power was coming back online throughout the vessel, it was likely that certain elements would have to be manually reactivated and reset—perhaps this console among them?
Well, if he had caused the console controls to shut down, he could damn well get them back online again. Ducking down, he probed beneath the console board, moving cables around until he could get at the solid-state components he sought. The designer portion of the engineer in him automatically took over.
Let’s see . . . power in here, overflow there, emergency interrupt should be here . . . Bending down while holding his open communicator between his teeth, Scott began wrapping one end of a loose length of thick binding strap around one of the console’s supports and the other end around his left wrist. In seconds, he was once more standing up and facing the console. A few last preparations and all would be ready. He didn’t have time to be pessimistic.
A voice sounded behind him: cool, confident, controlled.
“Don’t move.”
“Use your display, Captain,” Sulu told him anxiously. “You must correct precisely thirty-seven-point-two degrees.”
“Got it,” Kirk told him as he dodged still another chunk of floating debris. “I’m working my way back. Scotty, you’re gonna be ready with that door, right?”
There was no response.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
Dammit. Trying to keep his left hand out of sight, the chief complied, keeping his back against the control board while letting his communicator fall to the deck. The uniformed security officer glanced at it, his gaze narrowing as he returned his attention to its owner.
“What the hell are you doing?” The pistol the new arrival wielded was pointed directly at Scott’s chest.
The chief smiled engagingly. “Wee bit o’ maintenance on the airlock console. You’re big.” His expression brightened. “Poch Mahon, right?”
The officer blinked. “What?”
“Sorry,” the chief replied. “Thought you were someone I knew. Fellow named Poch Mahon.”
Time, Scott knew. Unless he could do something, it was a quantity the captain and his companion would very soon be out of.
“Mr. Scott, where are you?”
Uhura’s voice sounded in his helmet. “Captain, he can’t seem to hear you. I’m working on getting his signal back. Stand by.”
They were very close to their destination now, Kirk saw. Almost close enough to . . .
Crack.
Generating a sound all out of proportion to its minuscule size, the impact startled Kirk. Traveling at full velocity, he had struck the seemingly insignificant particle head-on. Neither the Enterprise’s sensors nor those built into his suit had managed to detect its presence in time. The spiderwebbing cracks that had suddenly appeared on the front of his helmet were spreading in multiple directions in uneven jerks and bounds.
Dammit.
The warship lay just ahead, beckoning. Unable to see anything except the diffusing cracks in his faceplate, he hardly heard Spock’s words as they reached him from the Enterprise.
“Captain, what is it?”
“My helmet faceplate was struck. Uhura, tell me you have Mr. Scott back!”
“Not yet—I’m still working on a signal.”
From the communicator Scott had dropped onto the hangar deck, Uhura’s voice sounded plainly.
“His communicator’s working—I don’t know why he isn’t responding.”
His attention drawn toward the voice, the security officer glanced sharply down at the communicator. “What the hell is that? Who the hell is that? What’s going on here? What are you up to, mister?” His gaze shifted back to Scott. “I don’t know everyone on this mission, but I sure don’t recall seeing you in the line when we boarded.”
Scott smiled. “I’m in general maintenance. We’re not very memorable, we’re not. Not like you brave caileags up front. Are you private security? Because you sure look like private security.”
“Imminent collision detected,” Sulu declared sharply.
“Khan,” Spock informed Kirk’s companion, “use evasive action. There is debris directly ahead.”
“I see it,” came the prompt reply.
On the forward screen the words “Transmission Lost” appeared.
“Mr. Sulu,” Spock inquired, “did we lose Khan?”
“I don’t know, Commander.” Used to tracking the movements of other ships, the helmsman was more than a little frazzled trying to maintain contact with two fast-moving but extremely tiny objects as they darted in and among thousands of individual scraps of ship debris.
Kirk glanced to his right, but he might as well have been trying to spot a bullet flying through a barnyard. “Was Khan hit?”
“We’re trying to find him now,” Spock reported.
“Captain,” Sulu interrupted, giving Kirk no time for further contemplation, “you need to adjust your course to target destination to one-eight-three by four-seven-three degrees.”
Kirk complied. The complex instructions didn’t trouble him. Concentrating on Sulu’s instructions helped to keep him from noting that his faceplate continued to crack and splinter.
“Mr. Spock, my faceplate display is down. I’m flying blind.”
“Captain, without your display, hitting your target destination is mathematically impossible.”
“Mr. Spock, when I get back, we really need to talk about your bedside manner.”
Sulu whirled in his chair. “Commander—he’s not gonna make it.”
Another voice; one not heard for a while.
“I see you, Kirk.”
Khan.
“My display is still functioning. You’re two hundred meters ahead of me at my one o’clock. Come to your left at two degrees and follow me.”
In a couple of seconds, the other man was in view, and soon Kirk was flying along almost parallel to him.
There remained the small matter, however, of whether or not they were about to smash themselves into the unyielding flank of the massive ship directly in front of them.
“Scotty,” Kirk declaimed into his still-functioning helmet pickup, “we’re getting close. We’re gonna need a warm welcome. Scotty, do you copy—Scotty! ”
“If you can hear us, Mr. Scott,” Spock commanded, “open the door in ten . . .”
“Scotty!” a desperate Kirk yelled.
“. . . nine . . . ,” Spock continu
ed to count down.
On board the warship, Spock’s voice continued to spill from the open communicator on the floor. A nervously innocent Scott gazed pleasantly at the man holding the phaser on him while the chief’s free hand slid back and down to steady himself against the console.
“That person counting down,” the man demanded, “what is that?”
“What?” Scott feigned ignorance. “I don’t hear anything.”
“. . . seven . . . ,” Spock’s voice declaimed clearly from the device.
“Mr. Scott, where are you?” Kirk queried as the distance between himself, his companion, and the warship continued to shrink rapidly.
“. . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Now, Mr. Scott,” Spock said tightly.
Eyeing the security officer, Scott shook his head slightly. “Sorry about this.”
Frowning, the guard gestured slightly with his phaser. “Sorry about what?”
Even Spock could not keep his voice from rising slightly. “I said, Scott, open the door!”
“Open the door!” Kirk shouted.
Spinning sharply to his left, Scott slammed his right hand down on a very large yellow-tinged button near the center of the console behind him, putting all his force into the gesture.
At the far terminus of the hangar, a small door snapped open. Instantly, a substantial quantity of air was sucked outward into open space—taking the unfortunate security officer along with it. With his left arm strapped to the console, a grimacing Scott found himself stretched out full-length, like a flag in a hurricane, in the direction of the open port.
Kirk barely saw the wide-eyed figure go sailing past him as he entered backward, both he and Khan having reversed position at the last moment so that their full-firing backpacks could slow their momentum. As they crossed the outer boundary of the now-gaping hangar, they also entered the warship’s artificial gravity field.