Chapter Twenty: Shenanigans
It was far easier to disconnect the transporter than it had been to hook it up. O'Brien worked on the station side while Shandison took care of the transporter and its pad; neither had to be concerned about what the other end of his wire was attached to.
When they finished, Miles glanced down at the tangle of colored wire that lay strewn across the floor. "A tech can take care of that," he decided. He tapped his combadge. "O'Brien to Dax."
"Dax here, Miles; how are you doing?"
"We have the transporter ready to take back to the Cygnus. I need some people to help get it to the shuttle."
"Acknowledged. I'll send them over, and alert the vedek to stand by to beam over with me as soon as you have it reinstalled."
"With our transporters," O'Brien emphasized. "I don't expect there to be an issue, but I'd rather not find out while beaming people."
"Agreed."
"Any word on the commander?" O'Brien cut in just as Dax was about to sign off.
"Not yet. Dax out."
O'Brien sighed as he turned back to Shandison, trusting Bashir but wishing the doctor had told them a little more about Sisko's condition.
oOo
Reinstalling the transporters took longer than uninstalling them had, but far less time than hooking them up to the holosuite computer.
"I wish our station transporters were this easy to work with," O'Brien commented dryly, patting the console near him.
Shandison grinned. "It makes my life easier," he agreed. "Let me call Captain Janderschmidt; he'll prefer to be the one to have your people contacted to beam over."
oOo
Soon the six of them were assembled in the Cygnus's transporter room, Janderschmidt scowling with his arms crossed over his chest. "All right, let's see how bad the damage is."
"I assure you, no damage has been caused," O'Brien insisted.
"We'll see," Janderschmidt said skeptically.
"So we shall," Dax agreed. "Do you have any preference what we use for the first test?"
"One of my engineer's tools should be sufficient."
O'Brien nodded to Sandison, who stepped forward and placed the instrument on the pad. "Where to, sir?"
"Beam it across to their station, wait five minutes, then beam it back again."
Shandison raised an eyebrow at the slightly odd request, but programmed the destination into the controls without question.
O'Brien stepped back and tapped his combadge. "O'Brien to transporter room," he murmured just loudly enough for the combadge to catch.
"Transporters; Kyle Reed speaking. What's up, Chief?"
"A spanner is going to appear on the transporter pad; in five minutes it will be beamed back again. I don't want anyone touching it in the meantime."
"Acknowledged, sir. Reed out."
O'Brien looked up just as Shandison pressed the button to energize.
oOo
"Acknowledged. Reed out." Kyle Reed tapped his combadge to sign off, then turned back to his guest, a young engineering student who had come to learn about Cardassian transporter technology. "Chief O'Brien could really tell you more than I can," he said apologetically. "He's the one who patched in most of the Starfleet technology we're using now."
The young man nodded, not seeming terribly disappointed — but then, Reed had always had a hard time judging emotions with non-Terrans. "Would he talk to me, do you think?"
Reed shrugged. "I really couldn't say. He's been pretty busy lately, so only if he has a moment to spare."
At the faint buzzing of a transporter effect behind him, he turned to watch in some bemusement as the spanner appeared on the pad. It was some kind of test, he assumed, guessing that O'Brien had merely wished to ensure he didn't pick up and move it out of curiosity.
He could never have told what made him spin back toward his guest; certainly there was no sound. But he was just in time to duck as the "student" swung his heavy carry-all, clearly aiming at Reed's head. "What th' —?" he cried in bewilderment.
Then he saw the "student" heading toward the materialized spanner, and suddenly the chief's warning took on a whole new meaning.
Reed tapped his combadge even as he dove toward the man he now realized must not be a student but some kind of saboteur. "Security needed in transporter room, now!" he gasped, taking the intruder down by the ankles and rolling with him across the floor.
From there, it was a fairly easy matter to subdue him; Reed was trained Starfleet, and his opponent seemed to know only the instinctual self-defense of anyone who was cornered. When the security guards rushed in, Reed was sitting on the other man's back, holding his arms wrenched behind him. "He tried to hit me with that," he panted, nodding toward the carryall that had fallen to the floor in the struggle. "Then he was heading toward the spanner the chief just told me not to touch when it appeared, so I tackled him." Even as he spoke, the spanner disappeared in sparkling transporter effect.
One guard picked up the carry-all, opening it as the other snapped restraints on the intruder. He frowned in puzzlement when he saw the twisted, useless lump of metal it contained. "Now, why under all suns would anyone carry that around?" he ejaculated.
Kyle only shook his head. "Beats me. I don't think his original intent was to use it as a weapon, though I'm glad he missed when he tried." He rubbed the spot on his head that would certainly have been a tender lump had the object met its mark.
The guard shook his prisoner. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
His only answer was an animalian growl.
oOo
Janderschmidt stared in barely veiled surprise at the spanner that had come back through the transporters in apparently the same condition it had left. Picking it up, he turned it over in his hands. "It…appears to have worked," he admitted as if the very words were painful to say.
The vedek nodded solemnly. "Then I believe this is yours, ma'am," he said, holding the chest out to Dax with a bow.
"Thank you," Dax said quietly, as Janderschmidt looked as if he might be physically ill to see so much money slip through his fingers.
O'Brien found himself wondering if he truly had been that sure the transporter would fail, or if something else had happened that he hadn't expected.
A moment later, Janderschmidt seemed to recover himself and gave a false, bright smile. "You'll have no reservations about using my transporter to return, I trust?"
"Not at all," Dax agreed. Miles wasn't quite so sure, though it wasn't the transporters in which he had a lack of faith. Seeing Janderschmidt lean toward Shandison and the startled expression that crossed the young man's face, he suddenly knew he was right.
"There isn't room on the transporter pad for more than two; ladies first?" he suggested, gesturing toward Dax.
She threw him a startled look, but the symbiont Dax was far from as young and naïve as its current host might appear, and she stepped forward without arguing, gesturing for the vedek to accompany her.
The scowl that crossed Janderschmidt's face was truly dangerous, but there was no reason for him to argue and he was forced to let his guests depart in the order they chose. As Miles caught his murderous gaze, he was glad it was the security guard who had been left with him.
oOo
"What was that about?" Dax questioned when they all stood together on Deep Space Nine. "I expect Julian to be chivalrous to a fault, but not you."
"I'm not sure I should take that as a compliment," Miles said ruefully. "But I'm nearly certain that if you — or whoever happened to be carrying the latinum — had gone last, Janderschmidt had ordered Shandison to transport the person but leave the latinum behind."
"Is that even possible?"
Miles shrugged. "I suppose we would have found out — hopefully without you losing a finger or two into the bargain."
Dax shuddered. "Thank you, then," she said sincerely.
"But surely he doesn't think we're stupid enough not to notice it was missing?" the vedek protested.
"I can answer that," Dax said grimly. "He would have claimed it was unintentional, meaning that the transporters were not in full working order, and the money was his anyway." She shook her head. "Honestly, if the money was mine to begin with, I would say to just let him have it if he wants it that badly!"
Miles chuckled and nodded to Reed as they walked past him out of the transporter room.
"Sir…was there something special about that spanner?" Reed questioned.
Miles paused, turning toward him. "I beg your pardon?"
"The spanner, sir," Reed repeated. "I had a young man in here claiming to be a student studying Cardassian transporter technology, but after you warned me not to touch the spanner, he tried to attack me trying to get to it."
Dax and O'Brien looked at each other. "Opportunistic, maybe?" O'Brien suggested. "He heard my warning, and assumed it was something worth taking."
Reed shook his head. "Can't be, sir. You were talking pretty low; I could just make out the words, and I doubt anyone even a few feet away would have heard more than radio crackle. I'm fairly certain my responses wouldn't have suggested anything, either. And another odd thing, sir, was what he attacked me with."
"Well, what was it, then?"
"Just a standard carry-all like any student might have — but inside was a half melted lump of metal that could hardly have been worth carrying around."
"Did it look like it could have been a spanner?" Dax asked with a sudden flash of insight.
"It looked like it could have been anything, sir. But, yes, the mass would have been about right for a spanner."
"Janderschmidt!" Dax spat, turning the name into a curse. "My guess is he was supposed to replace our spanner with that lump of metal — you saw how surprised he was when the spanner came through undamaged."
"And he didn't think we'd be suspicious when we learned someone had been attacked in the transporter room?" Miles asked skeptically.
Dax shrugged. "Maybe there wasn't supposed to be an attack; maybe Mr Reed wasn't supposed to notice at all."
"Come to think of it, I was the one who greeted him first," Reed remembered. "He was stammering a little when he told me what he was there for; I thought he was just bashful, but maybe he was making up his story on the fly."
"There; you see?"
"All right, but if he thought a Starfleet engineer would mistake any other kind of damage for transporter malfunction…"
"For all we know, maybe it really was damaged in a transporter," Dax pointed out. "Either way, it would have been our word against theirs…" She sighed, shaking her head. "I guess I have to go talk to Odo. Unless you want to press changes, Reed" — the young man shook his head — "I'll tell him to hold the attacker until the Cygnus leaves and then transport him on board — and I'm sure we all agree the sooner the better."
Next chapter coming next week! (…hopefully)
I proofread all my stories at least once before posting, but if you see any mistakes I might have missed, please let me know!
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