Home Again
by J. Seaton and T.S. Taylor
"Nyet!" Chekov exploded in exasperation.
Lieutenant Sulu, the officer of the watch, scowled. He walked down to the helm where Ensign Dora Hartley was working through a series of search and intercept exercises under Chekov's watchful eye. As far as he could tell, Hartley was a competent, if inexperienced, trainee navigator. However nothing she could do pleased the normally tolerant Chekov. Dora, in turn, did not bother to conceal her low opinion of her instructor. The instant personal dislike that had sprung up between the two from the first moment of their acquaintance a week previously had since developed into an intense professional antagonism. After a whole day of holding the Enterprise in perfect stillness for the benefit of her cartographers, Sulu was no longer amused by their perpetual bickering.
"If you use that angle of approach, your acceleration..."
"...Will have the same magnitude," Hartley interrupted. "However you arrive at that contour in the gravity well..."
"Da, in normal space, but you have to allow for the gyro-shift in hyperspace. If you accumulate too much spin, you will emerge with sufficient virtual velocity to produce significant sensor error. Look, if you can't visualize it, you have only to watch the simulation!"
With perfect timing, the all too realistic image of the Enterprise on the main screen grazed the surface of the warp boundary on the star. The stellar inferno seethed into a trembling finger that engulfed the little starship.
"I accept that you are correct, Mr. Chekov," Hartly said with icy dignity, "since the computer agrees with you. I merely wish to understand why."
"I have explained why," Chekov complained, "until I no longer understand it myself."
He slapped his palm down on his console, accurately clearing the viewscreen to show the scattered starfield to the galactic north of Sigma Rhebus.
"Mr. Sulu." Kirk's voice sounded from the intercom.
The lieutenant hit the com button on the captain's chair. "Aye, sir?"
"Move to the next benchmark. Half impulse."
"Aye, Sir." Sulu regarded his warring navigators with mock severity. "Well, Mr. Chekov, is Ensign Hartley able to compute our course?"
Chekov scowled. "I'll do it myself."
"That isn't what I asked."
"Pardon me, Lieutenant," the Russian replied with exaggerated civility. "But I assumed that you want to get there in one piece - and some time before the end of this century."
"So what you're saying," Hartley began coldly. "is that you've taught me this system so badly I am unable to comply?"
"Knock it off, both of you," Sulu ordered. "Hartley, compute and lay in the course. Chekov, may I have a word with you?"
Hartley flashed a triumphant smile, then bent over her console, all concentration. Chekov left the helmsman's seat, looking suddenly very serious, plainly suspecting that he was in trouble. He stood almost to attention at Sulu's left hand and waited for the worst.
Sulu beckoned him closer and said, very softly, "Twenty credits says she can do it."
James Kirk came onto the bridge fifteen minutes early the following morning and found his colleagues on the alpha watch already taking their places. Only Chekov was missing, but the ensign's voice could be heard over the intercom from the hanger deck where he and Ensign Hartley were preparing a shuttlecraft for the day's scheduled recalibration on the sensors. Scott was as bored with sitting still as everyone else, Kirk reflected. There was a brisk exchange of information with engineering - as well as the usual bad-tempered sniping between the two ensigns.
Kirk was beginning to be so used to the implacable mutual antipathy of the two junior officers that he hardly registered the fact any more. He took his seat and began to review the logs of the previous uneventful watch.
"Still picking up those energy surges?" he asked Spock, referring to some barely measurable fluctuations recorded the day before.
"Yes, sir. Lieutenant Uhura has suggested some further avenues of investigation."
Uhura turned from her station. "I was thinking about it overnight, sir. There is no directional pattern in the signal, but we have only been moving in one plane. If the signal originates from above or below the plane of the galaxy, we might pick up a measurable Doppler effect if we were to move perpendicular to the plane."
"Move how far?" Kirk interjected.
"Several light years." Spock suggested. "The experimental configuration of the sensors should help to highlight any variations in the signal strength. It would take approximately two days to determine whether or not the method is likely to yield usable readings."
Kirk shrugged. "The cartographers won't like it. Would a shuttle be any use to you?"
"We could try, sir." Uhura admitted doubtfully. "But..."
"If we have any time left when they've finished their charts," Kirk offered by way of a consolation prize.
The communications officer nodded and turned back to her work, hiding her frustration. The unusual energy readings might or might not be some form of communication, and they might cease at any moment. The cartographers' stars would surely still be there tomorrow, or next year, or next millennium.
Kirk's attention was dragged back to the battling ensigns by a burst of particularly profane sounding Russian from the intercom. Hartley and Chekov were scheduled to spend a couple of hours testing the navigational sensor arrays by feeding artificial signals to the equipment from the shuttle. The task was, in itself, straightforward. The only imponderable was whether the two of them would come to blows before the task was finished. It was rumored that certain members of the bridge crew had already opened a book on the outcome. "Uhura, have Mr. Chekov meet me in the shuttle bay control room."
"Yes, sir." Uhura's reply sounded a little reluctant.
"Spock, you're in command," Kirk said, heading for the turbolift.
Ensign Chekov was waiting for him when he arrived in the control room, looking anxious. "Mr. Scott wants us to get started by 0900, sir, so that he can..."
"I am aware of that, Mr. Chekov," Kirk interrupted briskly. "I don't intend to delay you. I just wanted to say something before you go."
"Yes, sir?"
"You don't get along very well with Ensign Hartley."
The ensign's expression soured perceptibly despite his best efforts to keep it blank. "No, sir."
"One of the things you are supposed to be learning on this posting is how to work efficiently and effectively with different people - regardless of whether you like them or not. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," Chekov answered stiffly.
"If the two of you can't demonstrate to me that you can put aside your personal differences and get the job done, both of you are going to be downgraded. I know that Ensign Hartley is already almost as far down as an ensign can be..." Kirk paused significantly. "... But you aren't. Do I make myself clear?"
Chekov stood there dumbly giving his captain a shocked you-wouldn't-do-that-to-me look. Kirk replied with his best oh-yes-I-would frown. "I said, do I make myself clear, Ensign?"
Chekov took in a deep breath. "Yes, sir."
"Fine. Then get back to work and don't disappoint me."
Half an hour later, the shuttle was in place and the tests were proceeding like clockwork - at least according to Sulu. Spock pointed out that clockwork was a notoriously inefficient and inaccurate mechanism, requiring frequent human intervention to maintain it in working order, but the helmsman merely exchanged a grin with his Captain and turned back to work.
"Lieutenant, instruct the transporter room to beam Chekov and Hartley aboard NOW!"
Kirk virtually leapt out of his seat in response to Spock's sudden order. Uhura was already obeying as Spock switched the output of his monitors onto the main screen.
"Sir, transporter room reports transporters are not functioning..."
A twisted, multi-hued maelstrom was reaching out fingers into the empty space that surrounded the Enterprise and its little satellite.
Kirk hit the intercom button beside him. "Ensign Chekov, something is moving toward you. Secure yourselves... Spock what is it?"
"Unknown, Captain. A subspace disturbance of some sort."
"Sulu, are they within tractor range?"
Sulu broke the mesmerizing spell of the twisting chaos to look down at his panel. "Yes, sir."
"Then get a lock on them!"
The tiny shuttle started to move. Kirk couldn't tell whether it was under its own power or caught up in the violence of the storm.
"Captain." The crackle of static almost obscured Chekov's voice. "I have lost all navigational sensors. I am flying blind. Can you..."
The channel went dead.
"Uhura..." Kirk began, but the order never left his lips.
On the screen in front of him, the shuttlecraft exploded in a firestorm that was pale and insignificant against the livid background of the subspace phenomenon.
"Kyle to bridge," the transporter chief's voice seemed to echo in the sudden silence. "Estimate repairs to the transporter will take another twenty minutes."
"Spock." Kirk forced his brain back into motion. "Sensor readings?"
The whirlwind seemed to turn on itself and disappear down an invisible drain hole.
"Readings inconclusive," the Vulcan reported, his voice calm and even. "The electromagnetic output of the disturbance corresponds to the signals we were receiving earlier. But there is no indication now that there was ever anything there."
"What about the shuttle?" Kirk compelled himself to ask.
"No debris, Captain. It seems to have been sucked into the vortex."
"And the shuttle's crew?" The words seem to come out of his mouth of their own accord.
"Readings are confused but there was an enormous power surge -almost as if the shuttle's anti-matter core imploded. If that is the case, then there is no real possibility that either of the crew survived."
Kirk had to pause and clear his throat. "Are there other possibilities?"
"Yes, sir, but it is a virtual certainty that the shuttlecraft has been destroyed." The Vulcan turned to his captain. "I fear we must assume that Ensigns Chekov and Hartley are no longer alive."
*Continued *