Chapter 6: Die Trying

AN: it occurs to me that if you are following this thing, you might consider ticking the follow story or follow author field at the bottom of this page and you'll then be alerted when I update. Just a suggestion.

xxx

I intend to live forever, or die trying. ~ Groucho Marx

xxx

The chief engineer's fallback plan was a lot more workable for Kirk's limited engineering skills. Weighed down with the results of Ronson's pilfering, he and Michaels lost no time in making their way to the cargo transporter. Maybe he could have done this after all, because embedding a phaser rifle power cell was surprisingly straight forward.

The transporter gulped down the first two cells and Michaels paused, staring uncertainly at him. "Sir," he said, backing away, "I have never transported anyone in my life."

This he could do. "Engineering, this is Kirk. Standby to energise." Unlike their main transporter room, the cargo transporter could accommodate eight and they could do this in four transports. The transporter sensors made short work of locating the engineers, most of whose life signs were hearteningly robust. Most were squashed into one end of the compartment, leaving his eight targets easy to isolate, his job a lot easier. Mr Scott's prompting, he'd lay odds.

The engineers materialised and, almost as one, heaved a huge sigh of relief. They all looked stressed, but were putting on brave faces.

"Who's senior?" he asked.

A female engineer, one of the most petite women he'd ever met — was she even five foot? — pushed forward. "Engineer Specialist Alex Gregory reporting for duty, sir." She stepped down off the cargo transporter platform.

He smiled. "I think we've gone beyond formality, Gregory."

She didn't smile back. "Yes, sir."

His communicator chirped. A summons from Scott. He briefed Gregory and left her and the other engineers to rescue their colleagues, noticing that rather than follow him to the deck above and a presumption of greater safety, they were all intent on sticking together.

There was no sign of Scott on the pod launch bay, but he approached the knot of people around pod one, all bleak faces and dead eyes. They made way for him, and sure enough the engineer was within.

"Sir," he said, eeling into the confined space, "what's happened?" Scott had found himself a set of coveralls, in the most literal of senses, a particularly appropriate descriptor.

In answer the engineer called up a recording of the pod's sensor output. A vessel, smaller than Apollo, a patrol scout, had come to investigate the distress call and the Pasherini attacked with brutal efficiency. His heart sank. That ship had a complement of thirty-six. The Pasherini, showing a tendency to tease and torment, did not press their attack to the full, even allowing the scout's crew to launch escape pods. As if motivated by a generous impulse, they allowed the scout to get all her pods away. His breath hitched and his ears pounded. It was a disaster, exactly as he had feared. To make it even easier for the Pasherini, the pods helpfully broadcasted a distress call that allowed them to be pinpointed. Each pod winked out of existence in a fleeting blaze of incandescence as the Pasherini systematically despatched them one by one.

"Poor blighters. Ye see?"

He nodded and, at Scott's prompting, withdrew from the pod. In his absence the engineers, including an injured Mr Leslie on a stretcher, had made it to the launch bay. Scott immediately went to confer with Gregory and Bhatterjee. Scott evidently didn't edit his account because the engineers, who had permitted themselves a cautious optimism, now looked forlorn and wretched.

"Ensign Kirk," said Scott, summoning him. "It's going to be a bit of a tight squeeze on this launch bay, but round up any stragglers on the deck below."

"Aye, sir."

Ten minutes later a grim faced Scott was the focus of a small semi circle of Apollo's crew. It seemed everyone knew about the fate of the scout and her escape pods. "Listen up," he said. "As you have all probably figured out already, Apollo is lost. The ship is almost dead. We have enough power for another two hours at the most. Other than the engineering crew who were cut off, we found no other survivors. We have accounted for forty-seven survivors out of a crew complement of one hundred and eighty. Ordinarily, I'd say that we have no alternative other than to abandon ship." Scott looked at the despondent faces before him. "I ken from the way ye're looking at me ye all know what happened to the scout's escape pods."

Bleak nods.

"And therefore that the same thing is almost certainly gonnae happen to us if we deploy our own pods." The grim expression didn't let up. "I don't know about ye lot, but I want to take a few Pasherini with me when I go." Scott paused, but he had each and everyone's full and undivided. "Unless anyone has a better plan, I'm pretty sure we can get the warp drive back online—"

"Sir, Engineering is depressurised," Gregory said.

"Aye, lass, that had not escaped my attention. It's not easy working in a depressurised environment, but we can power up Apollo's warp drive enough to attract the attention of the Pasherini, then orchestrate a warp core breach and hope tae take that Pasherin ship with us, when they poke their noses in. It'll mean a few less Pasherini tae attack Federation ships and colonies in the future."

The crew were staring at the engineer with varying emotions, some shell shocked, others nodding in acceptance, but he estimated that, in the main, the crew were prepared to go along with Scott's plan, which was a pity because he thought it a horrible notion.

He breached a wall of Bhatterjee and Scott's impenetrable engineering double talk. "Excuse me, sir, we really can get the warp drive working again?" An idea of his own formed, mental gears whirling.

The question didn't go down too well with Apollo's chief engineer. "Yes, Mr Kirk" said Scott, a testy edge in his tone. Then to clarify, because he was scrupulously honest where engineering matters were concerned, added, "Tae a limited capacity, probably no more than warp one point five."

"Sir, I think your plan is a bit drastic."

Scott folded his arms. "You want to live forever, Mr Kirk?"

"It's not that, Mr Scott. I don't think it will work, sir."

"Oh, aye, laddie?"

Some of the crew were staring at him, their mouths forming o's of astonishment.

"Aye, sir. If these are your orders, then I will carry them out to the letter, but you did ask if anyone had a better plan."

"So I did, Mister."

"Forgive me, Mr Scott, but I don't see how it is going to be possible to disguise Apollo's sickly warp signature. Any Pasherin tactical officer worth his horns will see what we are about and give us a wide berth. I'm with you on taking a bunch of them with us when we go, but I'm sorry to say, sir, I don't see it happening with your plan."

"Says the boy with confidence. Tell me, Mr Kirk, do you know what an imminent warp core breach looks like?"

"Aye, sir, I may not know which end is which on a spanner, but a warp core breach is something I would recognise. It's a naive tactical ploy." Mr Scott bristled. Why had he said that'?

"Tactics, eh, and pray what do you know of tactics?" The engineer was really ticked off.

"A lot more than I know of engineering, sir. I graduated the Academy in the top five of my class." That had come out a lot more self-assured than he had intended, in other words too cockily full of himself, which was no way to placate a tetchy chief engineer.

"Then if ye have a better idea, pray enlighten me, Ensign."

"As you said, sir, we have to abandon ship." He was thinking out loud now. "Apollo cannot sustain us for much longer."

"And ye saw what happened to the scout's escape pods?"

He nodded, a vision of the pods in the forefront of his mind. Lost lambs crying for their mother. An idea was taking shape. "It must be possible for us to launch the escape pods in unpowered mode."

"Unpowered mode?"

"Unpowered mode, sir."

Bhatterjee scoffed. "What's the point of that? If we don't die of asphyxiation, we'll freeze to death!"

"I'm not saying its not going to be profoundly uncomfortable." Blank, uncomprehending faces. "It seems I need to sharpen up my communication skills. Look, we just need to buy time, we just need to delay the pods from powering up and when they do power up, we need to stop them broadcasting a distress signal. With all the damage to the ship, there's got to be a halo of debris around her. If the pods launch without power, it's possible they might blend in, be taken as no more than part of that debris field. The beauty of this local gas giant is that it was giving Apollo's sensors a hard time. I can't see Pasherini sensors doing much better."

Bhatterjee was about to voice another objection. He over-rode him. "But we need to stop Pasherini inquisitiveness in its tracks, give the hounds a rabbit to chase instead—"

"The rabbit being the engineering hull, I presume?" said Scott.

"Aye, sir. If we can get the Pasherini to move away, then we're in luck, because we're next door to a gas giant and one of its satellites is class M. If we make it to the surface in one piece, then we live to fight another day." If Scott had garnered everyone's attention earlier, it was as nothing compared to the intense convergence of emotions — defeat, derision, hope — and this time it was he at the centre of all that attention.

Scott looked thoughtful; in fact, all of the engineers, with the exception of Bhatterjee, were looking thoughtful. Bhatterjee was just plainly exasperated at what he considered idiocy. Best not to make an appeal in that direction, then.

"We can set up the Engineering hull so that the computer takes it to warp on a preset course, can't we?"

Scott snorted. "I like the way he says 'we', Bhatterjee."

"Er, I mean my esteemed and accomplished engineering colleagues can do that, can't they?"

Bhatterjee looked at him, wrestling for a polite response to a ranking, commissioned officer. "Excuse me, sir," the way he uttered 'sir', the search for a polite response was very much a work in progress. "But what then? Apollo's engineering hull will be caught and caught quickly. There's no way we can get shields operational, so the Pasherini will readily see no one is aboard and then they'll come back here to look for who sent it in the first place. It's not a long stretch to go looking on that M class world you mentioned for survivors. And, even if the Pasherini give pursuit, there's the same issue you pointed out with Mr Scott's plan: an imminent warp core breach will be easy to detect."

"It depends how you initiate that breach."

Bhatterjee eyed him stonily. "What—?"

Here he was on solid ground. He grinned. "Spoken like a true engineer, Chief. It's amazing what something untoward shoved into an engine orifice at an inopportune time can accomplish." Boo! Really, it was uncanny. Every engineer sucked in a breath and shied away from him, horrified looks on each and every face.

Gregory stared. "When you say 'something untoward', what exactly did you have in mind?" She breached protocol in omitting the usual 'sir'.

"A telemetry probe could do all the damage required, providing I can locate and recover one. Otherwise we might have to tap off a small quantity of anti-matter—" more appalled faces "—instead and set a timer for the mag-container to fail. A breached containment field should convince your warp drive to give up the ghost."

Gregory spluttered. "Sir, that will likely create a wormhole."

"No kidding. I'm thinking subspace implosion at the very least. All good. The idea is to make it impossible for the Pasherin to run for cover before the engines go critical."

Scott scrubbed a hand over his jaw and caught Bhatterjee's eye. The chief shrugged. "The fail safes in Engineering will have to be circumvented by one of us to provoke a warp core breach."

Of his audience, the non engineers looked hopeful, the engineers pensive. A few of the latter put heads together and a murmured discourse began. Working the problem. Someone said 'escape pods' and 'triple redundancies', after which more engineers joined in the discussion and it turned more heated, otherwise known as a full and frank discussion.

"No, no, no! Don't mess with trying to install a delay switch. Too tricky. Best bet is to fool the onboard computer that the pod is still in Apollo's launch bay." To his surprise that was Bhatterjee.

A bemused Scott met his eye and he shrugged in response. The chief engineer had lost the crew, now entirely drawn into the orbit of an upstart ensign, and both of them were well aware of it. He didn't want to see Mr Scott humiliated, yet his plan, however vague at this stage, was the better strategy. Something faintly stifling weighed him down and a similar constriction in his chest gave him pause, until he recognised it as the weight of expectation from those around him.

"There's another thing I was wondering about?" Heads looked up and he continued, "is there any chance of getting communications up?"

Mr Scott shook his head. "Well now ye're just being greedy. That's the trouble with command types, never satisfied, always have to have that wee bit more."

"Aye, Mr Scott. Is there, sir?"

"Pushy blighter, ye are."

"Aye, sir. Is there, sir? I ask, because it would help sell our gambit. The Pasherini would expect us to transmit a subspace signal and anyway Excelsior and Intrepid are somewhere close. If they answer our cry for help, together, the two of them should be a match for any Pasherini within thirty lightyears and make them think twice about giving battle."

"I'll take it under consideration." Scott burrowed into the knot of engineers and started up another discussion come argument.

Bhatterjee stared off into space, pondering the plan. "What about splitting up the hulls? I'm thinking of the power relays at the hull junction interface assembly, Mr Scott? If they're shot, someone will have to perform a manual separation from outside the ship. Explosive latches make that a dicey procedure even in space dock with proper facilities."

"I can do it," said Gregory. "I've done it before."

"In space dock and as part of a team," Scott said.

"Yes, I spent four years assigned to the space dock at Starbase 21 before this posting. I know I can do it, Mr Scott."

"And I'm EVA certified, I can help, too."

"You, Kirk?" said Scott. The response wasn't what he expected. The engineer stared at him askance and Gregory's expression was decidedly unenthusiastic.

"I'm not that cack-handed." If he expected agreement, he was sorely disappointed. The chief engineer concealed a snort, but stared at him with the mien of someone who'd sniffed a rotten plomeek. Mr Scott probably had a point. He would rather not think of his offences against basic practical engineering, skills, which Goodborne for some unaccountable reason, had demanded he acquire, but for which he had no aptitude, nor an interest in. The task of training him had fallen to Mr Scott and the exercise left them both annoyed and frustrated at one of Goodborne's more futile notions.

Bhatterjee sized up his fellow engineers, who were avoiding Scott's eye. He let out a sigh. "It may not come to that, but I'd better go. It's a two person job."

Scott shook his head. "You're not certified for EVA and working in space is not something you can learn on the fly."

"I'm standing right here." But the engineers ignored him and went back to talking shop.

Michaels sidled up to him. "Looks like your plan is a go, Ensign." He shrugged, all too aware there were a lot of moving parts in that plan.

At last Scott turned away from the scrum of engineers. "Alright, everyone listen up! We are going to do this Mr Kirk's way, but we have a tight time frame in which to get things done because as I said the auxiliary power reserves for this pod bay will die on us within the next two hours. Bhatterjee, yer notion of tricking the escape pods' onboard computer sounds promising and we'd better hope it works because we have no time to try something different. If it works, then waking up the escape pods at the required time may be as simple as a reboot."

Bhatterjee nodded. "We'll have to be careful with the pods that we don't accidentally engage the launch sequence. If that happens, it will start broadcasting a distress call, which will bring that Pasherin vessel along to investigate and—"

"After that, we'll be contemplating esoteric engineering procedures in the Great Beyond." Scott grimaced. "Gregory, where are you?"

"Here, sir."

"Ye're so wee, lass, I can't see ye among these big lumps. Since ye're EVA certified, ye get to come with me and work in Engineering. Getting the warp engines ready to light up shouldn't be a problem. The problem is getting back to Engineering and working in a depressurised environment in EVA suits. That last bit's going to be tricky." He looked his way. "Ensign, you really weren't joking about a telemetry probe?"

"No, Sir."

Michaels spluttered. "Wait just a moment there, Mr Scott, I thought Chief Bhatterjee was going?"

What?" said Scott, whose patience was fraying. "I'm EVA certified. He isn't."

"You cannot put yourself in a space suit. You've taken a head injury and breathed in toxic coolant. Also, don't think I didn't notice you were throwing up into a sick bag earlier." Michaels and Scott traded glares, until Scott bowed to logic and the fight went out of him.

Bhatterjee would go in his stead.

xxx

The airlock opened and he paused on the threshold.

"Thruster harness at optimal. Sensors in recording mode," said his EVA suit's onboard computer.

"Kirk to Mr Scott. Are you receiving my feed, sir?"

"I am, laddie." The engineer was sulking because he'd been relegated to this monitoring role; his hand and eye coordination, post head injury, did not make him a sensible choice to permit anywhere near delicate escape pod systems.

He allowed for one final check, and then launched himself away from Apollo. Mindful of limited fuel, he took it easy, blipping small corrections with the thruster and took himself out about a hundred metres away from the ship. For the first time he got a good look at her and he heard more Klingon oaths over his suit comm.

On some level he had thought Apollo salvageable, but even with his limited engineering competence, the evidence greeting his eyes revealed the extent to which he had been kidding himself. The lost nacelle, the most obvious damage, grabbed at his attention. In contrast, from his current viewpoint the Engineering hull, although depressurised, showed little evidence of the abuse it had taken. The saucer section was a different matter. Bare ribs lay open to his gaze as if some giant hand had taken a paring knife to the structure, and it bore the blemishes of a series of pockmarks, where weapons fire had stitched lines of destruction. One of those lines intersected the Bridge, or rather, where the Bridge had once been, for what remained was a pit with blackened edges.

No one could have survived that.

Goodborne, his unlamented captain; Jerome, and his passion for the French horn, his ill starred attempts to learn the instrument that sent his shipmates running for cover; Douglas, and her uncanny ability to sniff out chocolate at a hundred paces, better than any bloodhound; Kim and Chinbat, navigator and helmsman.

All gone.

His vision blurred and he looked away. Scott, too, was silent; no Klingon oaths this time.

As if to underline why he was out here, his suit comm picked up the blatt of white noise that heralded another broadcast of the Pasherin decoy signal that had already netted them a secondary conquest. It spurred him to action. He sucked up snot and hived off his emotions; he had a telemetry probe to find and recover.

Even with Mr Scott's help and a probe bay laid open to space, it took longer than desired and he would have abandoned the quest were it not that the engineers had put their foot down and wanted no truck with manipulating anti-matter in their current straits.

Gregory met him in the airlock nearest Main Engineering with an anti-grav haul. The probe jutted through the inner airlock; if the deck had been pressurised it would never have fitted, not without first depressurising the whole corridor beyond. Gregory was the very embodiment of relief at seeing him, as well she might, for he was the means of conveying the engineers back to the saucer section. The pair had beamed over, but the last of the precious phaser rifle power cells had been employed to initiate the saucer separation and no juice remained for the one working transporter to bring them back.

"We have disengaged from the saucer section," said Gregory.

"I noticed."

"Chief Bhatterjee has also brought communications back online. The warp capability is proving to be more difficult than anticipated, sir."

"They'll light up?"

"We think so."

Think? He silenced all protests and looked around instead. Despite being depressurised, Engineering, lit under auxiliary power, looked spookily unchanged. Gregory and Bhatterjee, particularly Bhatterjee, who lumbered in his suit with all the grace of a moose trying to shift a wardrobe, were having an awkward time of it. Working in an EVA suit for close quarters work was difficult; it took practice.

He and Gregory laid the probe on the deck, next to the warp engine containment relays, close enough to do the job. Even though part of the plan, and even though suited up, which shrouded their body language, the engineers' horror at this state of affairs came through loud and clear. A mischievous impulse made him jump up and down on the probe and give them a thumbs up. Not armed, perfectly safe. He would not let on, but his teasing of the engineers was the perfect means to reclaim his equilibrium. The remains of the Photon Torpedo Bay's crew would haunt him to the grave.

Bhatterjee pointed to the probe. "I really can't believe we're doing this."

He ignored the comment and got to work. Gregory and Bhatterjee both kept a close eye on what he was doing, his legendary engineering ineptitude evidently still preceded him, but this he knew how to do. Jerome had drilled him and drilled him on tasks like this. He thrust everything out of his mind, except the work before him. At last, probe primed for a delayed detonation, he straightened an aching back made even worse by the thruster harness he had yet to take off. All that remained to be determined was the duration of that interval; for that he required the input of the engineers.

The comm chirped and announced, "All ducks now in a row. Ready on your mark." Just in case the Pasherini were listening in. If Mr Scott's message was brief, his was even briefer acknowledgement.

The engineers, gears all seized up, had ground to an abrupt halt. He drew closer to them. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what's up?"

"We cannot complete the job the way we planned." Through helmet plexi-glass, Bhatterjee was looking glum.

"Tell me you can get the warp drive to engage."

"Oh, we can do that, Mr Kirk. We've even programed the computer on the course the ship is to take."

"And Gregory said communications is back?"

"Yes, subspace distress signal will transmit after the warp drive engages."

"I'm clearly missing something. What?"

"I should have expected something like this, it's been going too easy." Over the comm, Bhatterjee's voice huffed with suppressed emotion. "The problem is that we were going to build in a delay of five or ten minutes before the warp engines engaged, enough time for us to evacuate. Apollo's taken a pounding. Some crucial relays are fried. Now the only time we have to evacuate is covered by the start up sequence of the warp drive and bear in mind, sir, we've had to extemporise. Patch and mend." Bhatterjee went to scratch his head and seemed momentarily surprised his hands encountered plexi-glass. "So it's not the normal start up sequence. A bumpy ride; no inertial dampers, but since no one was supposed to be aboard when the engines engaged, I didn't worry about it. Now…"

This was bad.

As if to pile on the good news, Gregory added. "If we're aboard when the ship goes to warp, we've had it anyway. We can hardly evacuate at warp speed, not without a pod; even if we find an undamaged one, we'll be an awful long way from this local class M planet. And then there's the Pasherini. Any pod from the secondary hull will be unmodified and a sitting duck."

"How long is the start up?" he asked.

"Two minutes thirty seconds, sir. Maybe less. That's not enough time for us to get to the airlock and off the ship."

"Then what about blowing out a bulkhead with a phaser?" Bhatterjee said.

"Good plan," he said. "Do you have a phaser?"

Bhatterjee shuffled his feet and coughed. "Never mind." Another attempt at a head scratch. "Gregory, are the auxiliary inter-mixers working?"

"I think so, Chief."

"Then maybe we can modify the start up sequence." He broke away and lumbered over to a console, stopping dead in his tracks at an empty upended coffee mug covering a switch. "Gregory, what—?"

"Sorry, Chief, I was getting a little punchy. Didn't want to light 'em up, before we were ready."

"Good thinking," the engineer deadpanned. Bhatterjee and Gregory turned their attention back to the console, but he had the bone deep certainty that whatever Bhatterjee was about to try, it was going to take too long.

"What about Engineering's cargo transporter?"

Bhatterjee waved his question away. "Our transporter is a power hungry system, Ensign, so it's routed through the warp drive."

"Yes, I know, but correct me if I'm wrong, the engines don't actually have to be up and running before we have the power. We just have to open up the matter/anti-matter regulators. That'll give you enough power for the transporter." That he would know this seemed to surprise both engineers. He grinned. "What? I may be ham fisted, but when Mr Scott speaks I do try to pay attention."

Bhatterjee cleared his throat. He gained the sense that the engineer was counting to ten. "Sir," and here came that tone again, the one that plainly said the senior officer standing before him was an idiot. "The cargo transporter has no facility for a remote energise function; one of us would be stranded."

"Not stranded, I can get to the airlock."

Through Bhatterjee's face plate, he saw the man's eyes widen. "Sir, you can't be serious!"

"I am very serious."

"Then if you're staying, I'm staying, too."

"Me, too, Mr Kirk!"

"Well, that's just nuts. I appreciate the thought, but I am younger—"

"The hell!" Gregory was indignant, but added a prudent, "sir!"

"Okay, I'm stronger and fitter than the pair of you. I can make it to the airlock in time. You can't." An indubitable truth. Bhatterjee clomped around in his suit, slow, clumsy. He remembered the way the engineers had stuck around at the transporter earlier, waiting for all of their colleagues to be rescued. He had a suspicion Gregory similarly would not abandon the chief. "Trust me, I'll get out."

Bhatterjee betrayed a stubborn cant in the line of his frame.

"Chief, we're running out of time. The rest of the crew are relying on us. Now show me. Is it just that switch I have to throw?"

Gregory rebelled. "But, sir!"

He reached for his inner Goodbore. "This is not a discussion!" he snapped. "I've given you an order, one I expect you to follow. Do I make myself clear?" A pregnant silence followed, while they remembered they were Starfleet.

"Gregory," said an abashed Bhatterjee, "open the secondary matter/anti-matter regulators. Slowly, do it slowly."

"Aye, Chief."

Bhatterjee drew closer, peering into his helmet to make eye contact. "Sir, put the normal start up routine out of your mind," he said, blissfully unaware his pupil had not the foggiest idea of what that might be. "You must follow this sequence to the letter." He went over to the console, and stared at the coffee mug with distaste. "Time to say goodbye to this, I think. Alright, sir, please note you must first deactivate the lambda sensor here, or the safeties will trigger and stop you in your tracks. Open the matter/anti-matter regulators to sixty per cent; any higher than that and the warp drive containment field will fail. Be gentle with the regulators and open them slowly. Alright so far, Ensign?"

Oh, for… "Deactivate lambda sensor; matter/anti-matter regulators to sixty per cent; gentle and slow. Got it."

"Open the inter mixer feed here."

"Check."

"Increase admix flow to twenty percent. In that order, Mr Kirk. Then, and only then, you throw that switch." Bhatterjee paused. "That should kick our warp drive into life."

He was close enough to register the engineer's sombre expression. "Check. Even I can do that, Chief." Bhatterjee responded with a nod the suit almost concealed, but made no other response. An awkward silence drew out, interrupted by a suppressed hiccup from Gregory.

"Transporter up, yet?" he asked.

"Yes, Ensign." Gregory had fixed her attention on her console and refused to look his way.

"Then after you, engineers."

The cargo transporter was right next door. The engineers grew more and more subdued as they mounted the platform. They wished him luck and he caught a fleeting glimpse from Gregory of a suspiciously trembling lip.

Oh, the luxury of having power and a properly working system. It took mere seconds for the transporter sensors to locate the pod launch bay, where the rest of the crew were gathered and primed for their dance. He beamed them out of there before they offered further protest.

He trooped back to Engineering, calculating how long a delay to incorporate into the telemetry probe's detonation. The Pasherini were close by. Once the warp drive engaged, the Pasherini would fall on Apollo — let's hope — in minutes, before a sick warp signature sounded the alarm and the Pasherini decided they had better get out of Dodge. So minutes? Not many of them. Two and a half for the engines to complete its start up sequence, and go to warp. Another minute on top should do it. Setting the probe took moments; it was a little strange addressing something that might be the means of his very own death. Your suicide, an inner voice insisted. His heart rate began to gallop.

"Computer," he said, calling up his suit system, "begin countdown from two minutes and thirty seconds on my mark. Announce time remaining at thirty second intervals."

"Acknowledged."

He took a deep breath and executed Bhatterjee's sequence; the engineer would have been proud of him.

"Computer, mark."

"Acknowledged. Countdown sequence from two minutes thirty seconds in progress."

In the deadening vacuum of Engineering he heard nothing other than his pile driving heart beat, but he felt life shudder beneath his feet as the warp drive began to stir. The vibration felt uneven, but he could only hope that it would start as it was supposed to. If it didn't, Apollo would stall here and the telemetry probe would detonate and take all his shipmates with him.

He dived for the exit and, awkward as it was in his suit, sprinted for the airlock. He gambled on a short cut, but he was still less than halfway there, when he confirmed what he and the engineers had known all along: he really wasn't going to make it. Without inertial dampers, as soon as the warp drive engaged, he would end as a jammy goo against the nearest bulkhead. His breath laboured. Panicking wasn't going to help him, yet the certainty he would be a deck away from the airlock when the ship went to warp solidified as he drew abreast of the hangar deck.

The doors were twisted scrap and allowed a view within. The port side floods were dimmed to something like twenty percent of their normal illumination, but yet miraculously somehow still shone. Inspiration bloomed. In fevered haste, he kicked at the damaged doors, which bent to admit him.

There was a reason the hangar deck was depressurised — it had taken a direct hit. Hangar doors gone. Catastrophic decompression. What remained of the ship's two shuttlecraft had been reduced to slag. Deck tilted at an odd angle; melted under Pasherini weapons fire, it looked like the patterning of a lava field and an enormous bubble of deck plating, as though some leviathan were about to arise from the depths, gave him pause. Detritus floated before him, some of it wicked looking pieces of jagged metal; the grav plating subjected to so much punishment was done for. His gaze followed the wavering line of the deck, which culminated in an open vista of stars.

"Thirty seconds."

He needed no further prompting, drew a bead on the local star, engaged the thruster harness and juiced it to the max. The thruster came to life with a bone jarring scream that communicated through his suit and a vibration he felt along his spine. Shards of debris pinged off his suit helmet, but his suit stayed in one piece and in seconds he was free of the ship, astonishingly not having been cleft in two. The thruster harness coughed and died, its final dying throes imparting a slow head over heels tumble to his motion. On one of the rotations, he was facing the ship and saw that most beautiful, most thrilling of sights, a vessel engaging her warp drive and disappearing before his eyes.

xxx

"Scott to Ensign Kirk."

"Scott to Ensign Kirk."

"Scott to Ensign Kirk. Please respond." A stream of Klingon invective followed. Wasn't that a little vulgar for the afterlife? The afterlife was astonishingly just like Starfleet, no sooner had you settled in for a decent nap, than you were woken up by some thoughtless bas—

"Scott to Ensign Kirk."

"Mr Scott to Kirk. Report Ensign!"

"Wha?

"Attention. Attention. Collision alert."

"Nuh."

"Kirk, can you hear me?"

Someone was bellowing at him. Why was someone bellowing at him?

He was obliquely aware of being manhandled and a click, clunk sound. As if emerging from a dark pit, he surfaced into awareness. A stream of cool, blessed air played on his face and he gasped in hungry lungfuls. He blinked.

"Alright, Ensign, I have ye."

His spin had been arrested. A push on the thruster harness's quick release and it cartwheeled away. Trained to respond, he tried to stir himself, but words would not form and there was something very strange going on with his vision. He shook his head and his vision cleared enough for him to register the crazing of his helmet's face plate. Something leaned in close to him and he started.

"Sir?"

"Back with us, lad? Ye did it, Ensign. Now ye just concentrate on breathing."

He craned his head to one side, so he could see out of the undamaged sides of his helmet. Understood why he could breathe. The engineer had linked their suits together.

"No!" He found the auxiliary hose, tried to disengage it.

"Stop it, laddie!"

"No!"

"Calm down."

"My suit goes, I'll take you with me. Shove your orders! I won't have it!"

More swearing. "Kirk, stop wriggling. Get this agitated and ye'll use too much air!"

"No!"

"Alright, Mister, ye win. Stop struggling and I'll uncouple the hose. Ye need to calm down for me to work." He went still and Scott busied himself with his suit. A small puff of crystals, moist air from his suit, solidified around them. "I've vented your suit a little to reduce pressure on your face plate, but boosted yer O2. I need to get ye back to the ship."

Scott's suit hose gave him only scant moments of recovery. His vision was going black around the edges again. He was vaguely conscious of a cinched tether and being dragged along like a sack of spanners. The chaotic spin added to his disorientation and he whimpered at the rising sense of nausea.

"Hang in there, Ensign. Just a wee bit longer."

One arc of the spin showed something huge that even the view through his crazed face plate could not mistake. Ship.

"Ship," he said.

"Aye, lad, I'm taking us back to Apollo."

"No, ship."

"Aye, just breathe, lad."

He heard an ominous snick and the crazing on his face plate increased. Maybe he should have left a message for Sam while he had the chance. "It's been an honour serving with you, sir." He watched with a paralysed sort of fascination as the crazing propagated to the edges of his face plate. The utter futility, the foolishness of holding his breath. A moment stretched, pregnant with inevitability, and then shards of plexi-glass and what remained of the air in his suit exploded in a cascade about him.

xxx

Oh, dear, what has Tidy done now?

{neediness} Please review. Show me if there's anybody still interested out there. {/neediness}