Desconocer: Star Trek no es mio. Star Trek es de Paramount. ¡Que triste! Pero, Ensign Jones es mio, y Lt. Simmons es de "Que-es-su-nombre."
Solidchristian_88: Hmm…if you're wondering where my mind was on these chapters, perhaps you ought not to read my other stories/chapters. Although on the other hand, if you loved it…anyway, glad you enjoyed.
Blynneda: I'd never noticed before, but no, I can't say tribble without smiling… : ) And it's not so unnatural to be unable to picture Ensign Jones. He is, first and foremost, a red-shirt after all. And as to that error, um…he had a lot on his mind? He was under a lot of stress…things were happening fast…
Emp: Glad you enjoyed, I figured I'd do something nice for Jones…let him forget briefly that he's a red-shirt. Briefly. Heeheehee…
Ms_Vegeta_Black: Really? And here I thought it was suspenseful…no, I guess I was aiming for humor, really. Glad you liked!
Silverfang: Sigh…if only it was that easy to win the Nobel…or the Pulitzer, I'd settle for either.
It occurs to me that I have nothing in particular to say in the author's note. Except to recommend any and all books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, as I just finished reading four in a row…but that has nothing to do with anything. Therefore, onto the chapter!
Chapter Thirty-Four:
The Troubles Aren't Over Yet!
Two days after the close of our last chapter, several Starfleet ships arrived, with the intent of taking custody of the Klingons, pending their delivery to a Federation penal colony. Kirk is very pleased to see the end of them. So pleased that he has personally escorted Kagon to a cell on the other ship:
"I think my work here is done," Kirk said to a security guard from the other ship.
The guard, who was virtually indistinguishable from any of the Enterprise's numerous guards, nodded. "We'll keep a close eye on 'em, Captain."
"Good." Kirk reached for his communicator, to call the ship for a beam-up. Kagon's voice came him pause.
"Kirk! A word with you," Kagon called from his cell.
Kirk considered, and shrugged. He walked over. "What do you want, Kagon?"
"I wanted to check before they hauled me off to some Federation prison…you think this is over, don't you?"
Kirk shrugged again. "My first officer owes my doctor dinner. Aside from that, yes."
Kagon laughed mockingly. "Has it not occurred to you that I might have an alternate plan?"
Kirk threw him a questioning look.
Kagon's lips curved into a sardonic grin. "Has it not occurred to you that I might want to inflict on your precious ship the same damage that you inflicted on my cousin's?"
* * *
And so, when Kirk beamed back, he wasn't in nearly as good a mood as he'd been in when he beamed over.
Not nearly.
"Kagon dealt with, Captain?" Scotty asked as Kirk stepped off the transporter pad.
"Yes," Kirk said shortly and didn't elaborate. "And there's a department heads' meeting in ten minutes." He paused, considering. "No, five minutes." He walked out of the room, leaving a somewhat mystified Scotty behind him.
* * *
Five minutes later:
Somehow or other, all the department heads managed to get to the briefing room within five minutes. They weren't all happy about it though.
"What's the big idea, Jim?" McCoy demanded. "Five minute notice to a meeting? I was in the middle of an experiment, mixing several combinations of acids, and I had to drop everything—"
"You were dealing with acids and you dropped—"
"Not literally, Spock!" McCoy snapped, exasperated.
"Perhaps you should be more clear then, Doctor," Spock said mildly.
"Oh really? Well I'll tell you—"
"Would you mind terribly if I interrupted, gentlemen?!" Kirk broke in loudly. "I did call this meeting for a reason, and it wasn't to listen to Bones rant!"
"That is to be expected," Spock commented. "We certainly hear enough of the Doctor without calling meetings for the specific purpose of—"
"Well we hear plenty of you too, you know."
"But I am not as loud."
"But you are just as bad…"
Kirk was drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. He should have expected it would be hard to get them to take this seriously. There's an unwritten rule in space, that emergencies have a certain reasonable length of time between them. New emergencies are not supposed to follow five minutes after you deal with the last one. But here they were, with another emergency approaching fast. Not as fast as Kirk's patience was fraying though. "If you don't both sit down and be quiet, I'm going to have to remove you from the room!"
McCoy and Spock paused in their discussion, and looked at each other.
"You think he means it?" McCoy asked.
"Possibly," Spock concluded, and sat down.
McCoy was less certain. "I don't know, he's never thrown us out before…"
"Doctor!"
"All right, all right." McCoy slid into a seat. "Sheesh, what's your problem, Jim?"
Kirk used that as an opening to regain some semblance of control. "It's not my problem. It's a problem we're all going to have to deal with." He paused for effect, let the silence lengthen just a bit, then went on. "We have a problem. This ship's security has been compromised."
"Don't tell me there's another Klingon loose," McCoy interjected. "Please don't."
"Worse," Kirk snapped.
"Such a thing exists? Incredible. I never would have guessed that—"
"Bones!"
"Fine, fine. I'll be quiet."
"As I was saying, something is loose on this ship. And we need to find it and deal with it as quickly as possible."
"What are we dealing with, Captain?" Spock asked.
Kirk looked at him for a moment, and finally concluded the question was meant seriously. "We are dealing with what might very possibly be the most dangerous creature we have ever encountered." His voice dropped to a near whisper. "Somewhere on this ship, there is…a tribble."
Things proceeded fairly rationally after that. Having convinced them that there really was a problem, Kirk was able to keep a pretty firm rein on things for the rest of the meeting.
"Kagon told me that he had the tribble as a back-up plan," Kirk explained. "They had it in a stasis field so it wouldn't reproduce on the Klingon ship. And once they got over here, they left it…somewhere. If they took over the ship they could go back and get it. If they didn't…well, the tribble's in here somewhere and we've got to find it."
"If we organize oursel'es, we're sure to come across it eventu'lly," Scotty said, trying to sound reassuring.
"Before or after it starts multiplying?" Kirk countered. "Because once it starts having little tribbles…"
"Ah, well…" Scotty brightened. "I know, I can pull the same trick as las' time. Set the transporters for the tribble's genetic make-up, and…"
Kirk was shaking his head. "You can try it, but Kagon claims he thought of that. Would you believe it's a genetically-engineered tribble?"
"Well, that would confuse the transporters a bit," Scotty admitted.
"Which means we've got to crawl through this ship personally, and find that tribble."
* * *
Which is essentially what they set out to do. Problem is, it's a big ship. And the tribble could be virtually anywhere. No telling where the Klingons might have thought of leaving it. So they organized into groups and got into the business of scouring the different rooms of the ship for a small ball of fur.
Kirk had a bad feeling about things though. It just didn't seem quite reasonable that Kagon would have gone to the trouble of getting a genetically altered tribble, and then just leave it in a corner. No, he want a truly out of the way place to stick it, somewhere people rarely were, somewhere hidden from sight, somewhere…like the Jeffries Tubes.
Kirk almost went down to engineering to bring the matter up with Scotty, but then remembered that the engineer was probably in the middle of poking around the warp engines. Not a good time to disturb him. Well, no matter, he'd be sure to bump into some engineer some time soon. And in the meantime, Kirk grabbed the two nearest security guards and set out to start poking around in the Jeffries Tubes.
* * *
One of the engineers, whose name no one seems to recall, walked down a corridor. He paused, noticing an open Jeffries Tube. That was terrible. Someone had been very careless, and if Mr. Scott heard about it they'd all be in for it. Best to avoid the problem right now. He closed up the Jeffries Tube, locked it securely, and continued on his way.
* * *
In a cramped Jeffries Tube, there was a dull clanging noise.
Kirk blinked, wondering what that was about. Sounded like it had come from back at the entrance to the tube. He could hardly check on it himself though, as there were two security guards between him and the corridor. Consequently, he called down to the security guard nearest the bottom, "Lieutenant, see what that noise was about."
"Aye, Captain."
There were various shifting noises below as Lt. Simmons tried to climb back towards the entrance without damaging himself or the tube in the process. Amazing how many sharp things poke out of the sides of Jeffries Tubes. Kirk, meanwhile, continued climbing in what was more or less an upward direction. If nothing turned up in another ten meters or so he was going to clear out of this one, and try somewhere else. He wasn't even sure a Klingon would fit in here, and if he did he wouldn't bother climbing very far.
There was a thud, which indicated Simmons had made contact with the back end of the Tube. Once he finished muttering 'ouch' to himself, he realized something. Something bad. He should have fallen out into the corridor, not bumped into something… "Um…Captain?" Simmons said unhappily.
"Yeah?" Kirk said, not bothering to look down. He couldn't see much past the other guard, Ensign Jones, anyway.
"Ah, well, I think we've got a problem…"
"What is it, Lieutenant?" Kirk asked.
"Somebody shut the hatch, sir."
"So open it again."
"I can't, I think it's locked."
"We're trapped? We're stuck in here?" That was from Jones, not Kirk.
"Now, wait a minute, we don't know it's locked. If you both pushed together…"
Jones didn't wait for specific directions, and simply went plummeting back down the Tube, with a haste born of worry. Near panic was making him incautious.
"Ow!"
"What happened?"
"Jones landed on my head!" Simmons complained, rubbing the injured part.
"Sorry."
Two people pushing proved no more successful than one though. And there wasn't much point in Kirk trying to climb down and help, as there was no way the three of them could get into a position to push effectively in the narrow tube.
So in essence, they were trapped.
"We're gonna die. We're gonna die, an' we're gonna be stuck in here forever, an' we're gonna die," Jones chanted.
"We're not going to die, Ensign!" Kirk snapped.
"Oh." Jones took this under deep consideration. "Okay, Captain."
Silence reigned in the Jeffries Tube. For a few minutes anyway.
"Uh, Captain?"
"What?"
"Why aren't we going to die?" Jones asked.
"Because we're not!"
"Oh."
"Someone's bound to realize we're missing soon and go looking for us, and eventually open that hatch. So we're not going to be stuck in here forever, and we're not going to die!"
* * *
Later:
"You know," Simmons said quietly, "I heard a story about an engineer who got locked in a Jeffries Tube once."
"What happened to him?" Jones asked nervously.
"They found the body…two months later," Simmons said in a hushed voice.
Kirk slapped the palm of his hand against the side of the tube. "That's it. That is it." He had had enough. The two security guards were taking a very fatalistic view of the whole thing, and he had had enough. "We're getting out of here. Somehow."
"Um, how, sir?" Jones asked uncertainly.
"I don't know exactly, but we're going to climb through here until we find a vent, or an open hatch, or something!"
* * *
And Later:
Funny how few vents you run across when you start crawling around the interior of the ship. Not that it was all crawling through Jeffries Tubes. Seemed there were several different ways to get around inside the ship. There were the tubes of course, as well as the ventilation ducts. And then there were the turbolift shafts, which ran both vertically and horizontally, as well as a few areas that seemed to be essentially crawl space between the living areas of the ship. It wasn't too hard to move from one to the other, as they all seemed to twist and turn throughout the ship, and connect and interconnect more or less at random. Kind of interesting if you could look at it objectively.
No one was looking at it objectively just now.
"I think we're lost," Kirk was forced to admit, standing at the junction of two turbolift shafts. Scotty probably could have found his way out in no time, but he wasn't here. Kirk knew every inch of the corridors and rooms of the ship. This interior stuff had him baffled though.
Simmons nodded vigorously. "We're lost, oh yeah, we're lost."
"I don't think we're lost," Jones ventured to say.
Kirk turned to look at him, surprised. "Really. Where are we then?"
Jones shrugged. "The Enterprise."
Kirk didn't know whether to laugh or groan. He did neither, but just nodded, and gestured to the left passage. "Let's go this way."
The two security guards followed without further comment.
* * *
And Still Later:
It was amazing how dusty some of these crawlspaces could get. And how big. This one was almost tall enough to stand straight in. And the dust was an inch deep on the floor, Kirk noted as it clung to his boots. He also noted how bored he was, that he was noting things like dust.
Behind him, Simmons and Jones were talking.
"I heard a story about an engineer who died in an accident in the passageway of some ship," Simmons said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And they say…that his ghost still haunts the depths of that ship."
"That's ridiculous," Kirk said.
"That's scary," Jones said. He shivered. "I don't like ghosts."
"Me neither," Simmons agreed fervently.
It was only a few seconds before the question arose.
"Say…do you think we might see a gho—"
"No," Kirk said quickly. "No ghosts here. Not even one."
They weren't quite certain.
"I don't know sir…a lot of people have died on this ship," Simmons said.
Kirk started in to argue that, and realized he couldn't. A lot of people had died. He went a different tack. "Well…even if we did run into some wandering spirit or something, I out-rank any ghost we might meet!"
Jones and Simmons looked at each other, nodding.
"That makes sense," Simmons said.
"Yeah, it does." But then a new thought occurred to Jones. "But what if the ghost doesn't remember it's in Starfleet?"
Kirk didn't bother to come up with a new idea, and didn't wait for any new problems. He pointed down a couple passageways. "Simmons, look down that way. Jones, try that one. Look for…anything." Maybe if he separated them briefly they'd give up the ghost stories. It would give him a minute's respite anyway.
"Aye, Captain." They obediently trooped off.
It wasn't a long minute, as Jones was back almost immediately.
"Nothing much down there. It dead-ends right away, Cap—eep!" Jones had been walking. Then he had encountered a loose bit of flooring, and, being Jones, proceeded to fall face-first into the dust.
Kirk tried very hard not to laugh.
Coughing, Jones scrambled back to his feet. The dust was even clingier than Kirk had thought. The unfortunate ensign was as white as a sheet.
Or as a ghost.
Which was precisely the conclusion Simmons drew when he came back a moment later. He took one look at Jones, and screamed. "Aaaaahhh! It's the ghost! It's the ghost!" There weren't very many places to run and virtually nowhere to hide. Simmons dove for what seemed like the safest place: cowering behind Kirk, arms firmly wrapped over his head, for whatever vague protection that would offer.
Kirk tried even harder not to laugh. "Pull yourself together, Lieutenant. It's just Jones."
Simmons looked up long enough to say, "Jones died? I knew this place was dangerous!" Then he went back to cowering.
"No! He's not dead, he's just dusty!"
"Yeah. Just dusty," Jones said, and sneezed.
Simmons took a furtive look at Jones, and concluded that maybe it was just dust. "Oh." He straightened, clinging to the remnants of his dignity. "That's all right then."
* * *
And Later Still:
They continued on down another crawlspace. This one too was very large and very dusty. Kirk was in the lead, Jones was at the rear. All was proceeding. Until…
"Captain!" Jones shrieked.
Kirk whirled. "What? What is it?"
Jones was pointing at something by his feet. "Giant gray tribble!"
Kirk relaxed. "Oh. Well, at least we accomplished—"
"No, wait…" Jones nudged the gray mass with the toe of his boot. "It's a big dust bunny."
Kirk shook his head. "I've got to get Scotty to clean this place up. When we get out of here."
* * *
And Even Later:
One can get lost very quickly. Getting un-lost takes a lot longer. They still hadn't managed it. The Enterprise wasn't all that big, and yet…Kirk was practically ready to swear they'd gone all the way back to Starfleet Command. On Earth. And they still didn't know where they were. Kirk had a new plan though. All this traveling in horizontal passages and trying to keep track of lefts and rights clearly wasn't helping anything. But it's pretty hard to mix up your ups and downs. And if they kept moving up, sooner or later they'd hit the top of the ship, which was the most populated area. Then, into the ventilation ducts and sooner or later they'd find a vent with some people on the other side. This was all assuming they didn't wind up in the warp nacelles. Kirk was willing to take the risk. And he didn't mention the possibility to Jones and Simmons, so they couldn't exactly object.
So all of this is a very lengthy way to explain why they were all climbing up the side of a vertical turbolift shaft, on a conveniently placed ladder bolted into the side, for reasons unknown. But whatever the reason, there it was so there they were, Jones, then Simmons, then Kirk at the bottom. The security guards were a bit nervous about this endeavor, and Kirk figured that if he was below them they couldn't very well back out. This didn't help their nerves though.
"You know," Simmons said quietly, "I was in a turbolift shaft once before."
"Yeah?" Jones said.
"Yeah. And you know what happened?"
"What?"
"A turbolift came!"
Jones shuddered. "That's horrible!"
"But you obviously survived," Kirk pointed out.
"Well, yes, but not without a lot of mental anguish," Simmons said with dignity.
Mental…? "Uh, sure." Kirk was musing over that mental anguish line for the next minute or so, which may explain why he didn't immediately notice that the two security guards had stopped climbing. He became acquainted with the fact when his head bumped Simmons' boots. "What happened, why are we stopped?" That was also when he first noticed that Jones was making some strange sounds.
"Er…ah, um…erg. Ah…huh, ah, tur…uh…"
"What's he saying?" Kirk asked.
Simmons said something that resembled, "Eep!"
"What…?"
"Turbolift!" Jones finally managed to squeak out. "Turbolift! Coming! Turbolift!"
Kirk leaned back as far as he dared from the ladder, and looked up. Sure enough, far above but quickly approaching, was a turbolift.
"We're gonna die we're gonna die we're gonna die," Jones was jabbering.
"Stop talking and climb!" Kirk ordered.
"Yes, sir!" Immediately a pair of boots descended on his head.
"No, not down! Up!" Kirk said, trying to fend off Simmons' frantically kicking feet.
"Towards the turbolift?!" the twin chorus came.
"No, towards the side shaft ten feet above us!"
"Oh."
They climbed.
They went up slowly.
The turbolift came down fast.
But they weren't going nearly as far.
Jones frantically scrambled over the edge and rolled into the side passage, where he huddled, not quite believing the turbolift wouldn't come after him. Simmons followed, with similar thoughts.
By now, the turbolift was very close. Very close.
Kirk had to skip over the last two feet and jump. He just barely rolled into the side passage and out of the way as the turbolift thundered past.
Thundered past, not hitting anyone. Although the way Jones and Simmons shrieked, you would have thought they'd both been killed.
It was some time before Kirk could convince them to go back out into the turbolift shaft and continue climbing upwards.
* * *
And Latest of All:
Smith, security guard aboard the Enterprise, was having a problem. Which was why he was in Sickbay, explaining to Dr. McCoy about how he had recently gone insane. Smith, not McCoy.
"I'm telling you, Doctor, I've lost it! Gone totally bonkers! Absolutely off my rocker!" Smith insisted wildly.
McCoy nodded, the picture of professional calm. "I see. And what exactly leads you to make this diagnosis?"
"I've been hearing things all afternoon. And not just things, I've been hearing screams!"
"Screams?"
"Screams! Shrieks! First I was walking down a corridor, and I hear this scream overhead. I look. No one's there. And while I'm looking at this empty corridor, I hear these shrieks about a ghost! And then later, I'm in my quarters. And I hear this yelling about a tribble! Coming from the walls! So I'm getting kind of freaked by now. Then later, I'm in a turbolift, and you know what I hear?"
"Screams?"
"Yes! Screams! I'm going crazy, Doctor!"
"Well, we'll see." Privately, McCoy rather felt Smith might be right. Too much stress perhaps. He wasn't going to tell him that though. "So, have you ever heard voices…before…" He trailed off. Frowned. He could have sworn he'd just heard…yes, there it was again. Voices, from overhead.
"See?! See?! I'm hearing 'em again!" Smith jabbered.
"You're not hearing things. There really are voices. I can hear them too." McCoy tried to pinpoint where the sounds were coming from…he couldn't quite tell, just as he couldn't quite make out the words. He walked towards the back wall, and as he did the voices grew louder, until he could hear them pretty clearly.
"I think it's Sickbay."
"I don't know, this is a terrible angle, can hardly see anything."
McCoy frowned, puzzled. Both voices sounded familiar.
"I think it's Sickbay. I spend lots of time in Sickbay."
"Yes, so I've heard. If it is Sickbay there should be people…"
McCoy had finally figured it out. The voices were coming out of the large vent near the ceiling. He walked closer, peered at it.
"It is Sickbay. See, there's Dr. McCoy."
"Where…oh. Hi, Bones."
McCoy blinked. He tried to make sense of it all, and found that that wasn't an easy task. "Um, Jim, why exactly are you in the ventilation system? And who else is in there…" A second face moved into view. "Of course. Jones. That figures."
"Yeah, well, it's kind of a long story…could you get the vent…"
Having gotten past the initial shock, McCoy found that he was almost enjoying this. "So any more people up there?"
"Just Simmons. Now about the vent…"
"I should have expected that, he's in here almost as much as Jones."
"Right. So the vent…"
It took a little while longer, but eventually McCoy had mercy and got Smith to help pull the vent off. Kirk climbed out, Jones and Simmons fell out, the vent went back on, and things at least resembled normalcy again. Jones and Simmons trooped off to their respective quarters to rest after their difficult ordeal, Smith, assured that he wasn't crazy, went back to his normal duties, and Kirk stuck around Sickbay for the sake of ranting.
"Never again. Never again!" Kirk swore. "If I ever try to climb into another Jeffries Tube, shoot me, tie me up, do something, just don't let me in there!"
"I'll make a note of it. But seriously, it can't have been that bad."
"Hah! While Simmons and Jones are perfectly good people, they were both completely convinced that we were all going to die. And all they wanted to talk about was stories they'd heard about how people had died. It was enough to drive a saint crazy!"
"I'll take your word on that one."
"Anyway, never again, that's for sure." A bit calmer for having ranted, Kirk turned to other matters. "So have you at least found the tribble?"
McCoy coughed. "The, ah, tribble?"
"Yes. The tribble. Did you ever find it?"
"You know, that's really kind of a funny story, Jim, really kind of, uh…" McCoy trailed off.
Kirk wasn't letting him evade the subject though. "Bones. I want to know about the tribble."
"There, um, well, there wasn't any tribble."
"There wasn't any tribble?" Kirk said quietly.
"No. There wasn't," McCoy admitted. "See, Scotty had this idea that he could set the transporters to transport any living creatures under…I think it was fifteen pounds, to have a safe margin."
"And…?"
"Well, he got Surak, a couple other pets, a few lab animals, and…"
"No tribble?"
"No tribble. Kagon must have made it up."
"I went crawling through the interior of this ship, and there wasn't even any tribble?!"
"Well look on the bright side, Jim. You saw parts of the Enterprise you've never seen before."
"And you know something, Bones? I wasn't missing anything!"
Heehee, poor Jim. Oh well, he'll survive.
Next chapter…no idea what my next chapter is. Something funny I hope. Be up as soon as possible! : )