Zip, whine! Part of the tower vaporised and she flung

herself away from the superheated steam that came

billowing out, throwing herself at the platform railing

and somersaulting over it, dropping to the level below.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Whittaker sighting

at her and Pateman maybe twenty feet away from him and

then lost sight of both of them as she vaulted a pit

loader and dropped flat behind it.

The loader was locked down, supposedly unoperational

without the command keys. Larssen blessed Scotty's

insistence that nobody in his department, even those

just being rotated through, touched a machine they

didn't understand down to the sub-molecular level. She

felt at her collar. The rank pip was still there, thank

Ifni, even if the collar itself was ripped open and half

off. And further thank Ifni that she was a junior-grade

Lieutenant, because the hollow pip that differentiated

her from a full lieutenant was just the right size to

fit over the fiddly little screws that held the

maintenance access plate on... and once that plate was

off the pin was sharp enough to piece the safety coating

on the ignition wire.

As the loader began to chatter its way across the

platform Whittaker fired at it, disabling it before it

had gone more than ten feet, but by then Larssen was

thirty feet away in the opposite direction and pounding

up the stairs.

Her knee folded under her again on the second last step

and she dragged herself to the top with a mighty heave

on the handrail. The pain lanced up her leg and into

her groin with a stab that made her nose run. Belly

down on the platform, she started dragging herself

towards a water unit that offered the promise of cover.

Fweep! and the water unit blew up in a shower of

shrapnel and steam. Phaser fire hit to her left, her

right, vaporised the stairs behind her and blew a hole

in the decking before her face.

"It's over, Larssen." Whittaker called, and laughed. He

was at the edge of the pit now, he had her in clear

sight. Larssen lifted herself up on one elbow and

pushed her hair out of her face with her other hand.

She smoothed it down, and straightened her collar. One

finger brushed the hole where her rank pip should be,

and she felt a pang of regret that it was gone.

"Whittaker." she said. "Commodore Whittaker. It's not

too late. Please try to -"

"It's too late for you." he said. "It's too late for

you, Larssen." He squinted through the clouds of steam

and levelled the phaser. "We've had *about* *enough* of

your-"

"Whittaker!" The roar rattled the platforms. "Man, thy

hour is here!" Pateman charged.

Whittaker whirled and fired. Larssen *saw* it hit Fat

Harry, *saw* the wound open in his chest, but Pateman's

inertia was not to be denied. He ploughed into

Whittaker and forced the smaller man backwards with his

tremendous bulk alone. For an instant they were poised

at the edge of the pit, panting and stamping -

And then they were gone.

"Harry!" Larssen screamed, clawing her way to the edge

of the platform.

There was nothing to be seen in the pit but steam.

She couldn't move, she couldn't curse, she could barely

breathe. How long she lay there, staring down into the

depths, she couldn't have said. Fat Harry had to have

fetched up on a ledge down there somewhere. It wasn't

possible for him to be dead. Harry Pateman was

invincible. He was a force of nature. He was one of the

eternal certainties of Starfleet.

Eventually Larssen unclenched her hands from the grill of

the platform, rolled over and sat up.

Her knee was a throbbing agony. The very thought of

standing on it made her gut churn. ~Come on,~ she told it,

~come on, knee. I'll give you a nice long rest later, I

promise. Rest, regeneration, elevation, a hot bath,

whatever you want, just don't pack in on me now, knee.

We're in this together. We've come a long way, taken a lot

of steps, and now, just get me through this next little bit

and I swear on my commission I'll never take you for

granted again.~

~Come on, knee. At the very least, get me back to the

shuttle-bay.~

~Fat Harry just died for you, knee, among the other bits of

my body. Be a little bit grateful.~

Madison should not have been able to walk straight into

Engineering but the Enterprise was not running exactly

according to usual Starfleet practices. A substantial

number of the crew were on the sicklist. The rest of the

ship was practically mothballed.

"Oh, bloody hell." Madison said reverently as he stepped

into the great space that was the heart of all the mechanical

aspects of the Enterprise. It was a little scorched, a little

scraped in places, but compared to every other Central

Engineering Madison had been in it was white and

sparkling and clean. The design was an elegant

combination of form and function and Madison knew that

given the barest minimum of orientation he could have laid

his hands on anything he needed. The warp core glowed

before him, pulsing with more power than Madison had

ever had at his disposal. He could just imagine the

nacelles that core could power...

"Can I *help* you, laddie?" A sharp voice cut across his

reverie. "Or are ye just rubber-necking?" Montgomery

Scott stood before him, his sleeves rolled back, in

characteristic engineer's disarray.

"She's beautiful..." Madison whispered.

"Aye, she is all that." Scott's voice was a little softer. "But

ye'll hae to leave here, we are a little busy."

"That's why I'm here." Madison said. "I'm - I *was* -

Chief Engineer Madison of the Lady Grace, all though

these days I'm just another unemployed space bum. What

do you need me to do?"

Scott looked him up and down, and Madison could see his

scepticism.

"Merchant Navy isn't spit and polish," he said, "but I'm

damn good at my job."

"Aye." Scott said. "I can see how ye'd hae to be on that

scow. Come on, then. We're not so overwhelmed with

crew we can afford to turn down a strong lad like you."

"The captain's over on the Starbase, isn't he?"

"Aye, lad, but knowing Himself he'll be back here in

plenty of time."

"You'll fire even if he isn't?"

"Those were his orders. But we do hope not tae hae

to." Scott said.

"So do I hope you don't have to." Madison muttered

to himself, going to join the crew Scott pointed out. If

it was the only way to keep the ship alive , he would

load the torpedoes that would blow Captain Kirk to

smithereens, but he prayed the Triple God would provide

some other way.