Chapter 41 - 02:30
Nyota had left for her own quarters and Spock sat at his desk, examining Lt. Chekhov's sensor data. "In coming message from Commander Sorenson" His terminal's computerized voice announced. He keyed 'receive' and Sorenson's face appeared on his screen.
"Hi Spock, I have two things you should know before we get to the station. The first is that you seriously need to work on your knot-tying skills. It seems you issued orders that only prohibited transporting Selina to the station, so she tracked me down here." The face on the screen made a small grimace.
Spock's eyebrows lifted. "My apologies, in the future, I shall attempt to secure such loose ends. Can you order her restricted to the Aldrin?"
Sorenson shook his head with a resigned look. "She spoke to my captain first. I don't like my chances asking Morris to help keep another woman out of a possible fight, especially after they've already compared notes on the relative merits of Suus mahna and Hapkido. In the future, when I ask you to have someone tie her down, I'd appreciate it if you would take it a bit more literally." His head jerked forward slightly. "Hey!" he said, looking over his shoulder.
Selina's voice came from somewhere off-screen. "I was merely attempting to save your mother the trouble of having to transport out here to do that herself."
"I was only joking." He turned to face the screen again and rolled his eyes. "Mostly."
Spock's lips compressed momentarily. "I take it Ms. Chandri is present with you?"
"I told her I'd meet her in the shuttle bay, but she seems to think I require surveillance."
"You do." Selina's voice interjected.
"In any case," Sorenson continued. "It looks like we're going to be struck with her unless you have any other ideas for keeping her here."
Spock considered for a moment. "Perhaps Capt. Morris might be swayed if my Captain were to make the request?"
A derisive noise could be heard in the background. "I must have pissed off Freyja in another life." Sorenson mumbled. "Unfortunately, she's right. I can't think of any officer more likely to rub Morris the wrong way. If you sent him over in person, I'm pretty sure she'd wind up gutting him."
Spock paused, steepling his fingers as though pondering the potential merits of that scenario, before taking a different tack. "It might be preferable if both of you were to remain on the Aldrin. We believe that we have identified the presence of a cloaked vessel bearing the same sensor trace as the one detected earlier."
Sorenson nodded. "The second thing I had to tell you is that someone is trying to send a message through one of the sleeper programs I dismantled in the station computer. No need bothering to tell me the odds that those bits of information are related. But it's all the more reason I should go."
"You could continue to oversee the station systems from the Aldrin." Spock suggested.
"Unless they jam or break my link." he replied gravely. "Their cloaking technology is an unknown, so we have no idea what else they may have up their sleeves. If they pull something, best to be on site to counter it. I'll see you there."
"As will I." Selina's voice cut in.
Spock exchanged a look with Sorenson. "Acknowledged, Spock out."
Jim stuck his head into sickbay in time to see Bones shoo-ing an engineering tech off of a biobed.
"Next time; watch where you're going." McCoy growled.
The young man snapped a salute when he saw Kirk and then headed quickly down the hallway, looking vastly relieved to escape the CMO's temper. Jim wasn't quite as lucky. The doctor saw him in the doorway and glared.
"Dammit Jim, do you know what happens when you tell engineering to hurry?" the Doctor snarled at him. "They do - and then they make mistakes and wind up in here. I ought to be in bed, but thanks to your 'make it 10' I'm patching up kids moving too fast to notice they're about to bean themselves on a conduit."
"Sorry, Bones. I just want to be ready. We've got some sort of cloaked ship out there, Chekhov can just barely pick it out on sensors, and I've got a bad feeling about this."
"We end up with some serious accident in engineering, I guarantee you'll feel a whole lot worse." Bones warned. "What are you doing here anyway?"
"Too keyed up to go back to sleep or sit still on the bridge."
"I've got just the thing for that." McCoy smirked and reached for a hypo.
"No!" Jim held up his hands defensively. "No, I was just looking for someone to talk to."
Couldn't find our pretty insomniac, eh?"
"According to Spock, she's already sidestepped his order; jumped to the Aldrin to force her tall friend into bringing her along." Jim frowned.
"God help him." Bones intoned. "You'd think someone that's known her that long would make a policy of staying on her good side. I can hardly turn around without catching one of my nurses snickering." He scowled.
Jim laughed. "Just imagine if she'd stuck with the original plan!"
"Shut up, Jim. They're laughing at you too."
The comm beeped. "Chekhov to Keptin Kirk. Pleaze acknowledge, Keptin."
Kirk hit the comm. "Kirk here. What is it Chekhov?"
"Zee zhip has wanished, ser. Wery qvickly. I beliewe zat zey haf masked zer zignal."
Damn. Kirk rubbed his temple. "Find them Chekhov. I don't care how, but find them. Kirk out."
"How could they have known we were watching them?" A nurse narrowly avoided a collision as Jim started pacing the exam room. "We've been running more extensive sensor sweeps than a ship in dock normally would, but after a terrorist action and the conference moved on board that's SOP. There are only a handful of people that even know we're looking for a cloaked ship."
"Jim -" McCoy dodged out of the agitated Captain's way.
"Unless..." Jim continued, ignoring Bones' effort to make him slow down. "Spock said Sorenson had picked up someone trying to send a signal from the station. Maybe they were expecting a signal and knew something was wrong when they didn't get it?"
"Jim -" McCoy blocked another near collision with an orderly as Jim zipped past a doorway.
"But then you'd expect them to clear out. Chekhov sounds like he thinks they're still out there and Spock said the probability of that ship coming for something on the station was 89.6231%. And -"
Bones grabbed him by the shoulders to make him stop. "Jim, it's late and I know you're worried, so I'm gonna give you choice here." the doctor said gruffly. "Either get out of my sickbay or stop the damn pacing. Otherwise I am gonna sedate you."
Jim stopped and took in the worn look on his friend's face. "Sorry, Bones. Maybe I'll go talk to Spock."
"You do that." Bones said. "And ask him how the hell he computes odds for stuff like that to four decimal places anyway."
A tall woman with close-cropped hair showing a touch of steel-grey at the temples stood at the shuttle bay doors. "Don't try anything fancy with that shuttle, Sorenson." she warned. "I want it back in exactly the same condition as when it left."
"Aye, aye, Captain." Sorenson replied with a half-smile. "I'll treat her just like I would a high-end rental."
"I will make certain that he treats her better than that." Selina added dryly, nodding to Capt. Morris.
"Just make sure he comes back in roughly the same condition too. I promised Commodore Stone I'd return him in one piece." Her tone acknowledged the degree to which Selina might be tempted to violate that promise.
Selina lifted an eyebrow. "Does that include his vocal chords?"
"Afraid so" Morris replied sympathetically and left to return to her bridge.
Allen and Selina walked to the shuttle and settled into their seats while the bay doors opened. He grinned at her. "So, any requests for traveling music?"
"Silence?" she suggested.
"Don't know that one." he said, engaging the engine and guiding the shuttle out the bay doors. "Maybe if you hum a few bars?"
She rolled her eyes and pulled out her earplugs. "Are you going to make me use these?"
"Only if I fall asleep at the controls." he chuckled.
A corner of her mouth turned upward. "Kindly stay awake, I doubt these are rated for that decibel level."
He smiled and turned the shuttle wide to swing over the outer docks and out of the cargo lanes on the way to the station's main hangar. "Then you should want me to stay awake. Maybe you could sing something?" He whistled a few notes.
"No." She shot him a look. "You only ever got me to sing that because David thought that it was funny."
The shuttle shook and lurched suddenly. Sorenson checked the read outs. "Helvitis!" He tried to push the engines. "Call the ship." he said, rapidly running sequences on the controls, with little effect.
"What is happening?" Selina demanded.
"Some sort of tractor beam, coming out of nowhere." He headed toward the back and yanked open an access panel, muttering. "I told her she should have let me boost the power on this thing."
Selina opened the comm. "Shuttle Apollo to Aldrin, emergency, Aldrin please respond." Nothing but static returned on the comm. She switched channels. "Shuttle Apollo to Enterprise, ..." The shuttle lurched violently and slammed against deck plating.
AN: Cliff hanger!
First, apologies once again for my poor attempt at capturing Chekhov's accent.
For anyone who doesn't know the reference, Freyja is the Norse goddess of both love and war (one of my favorites btw. Motto as seen on a modern wiccan t-shirt: if you can't lay 'em, slay 'em.). She is also the leader of the Valkyrie. Sorenson, who knows a few things about Norse mythology, and currently finds himself at odds with two women who would have made fine Valkyrie, has some cause to think Freyja is out to get him.
Capt. Morris has had a few bad experiences with Starfleet using her ship to test 'improvements' and Sorenson has a reputation. Sadly, he probably won't be returning her shuttle in pristine condition.
