You're getting a two-fer. I couldn't just upload one chapter and be a tease. Besides, I'm excited about this chapter. I have a thing for haunted houses and spooky, derelict ships are a close second. (The countdown to self-destruct in the Aliens movies actually gives me the shivers.) ~ Cooper
CHAPTER 2
Leonard H. McCoy chuckled as he switched off the intercom. He'd bet a bottle of bourbon that Jim was trying to find out who his informant on the bridge was right that moment.
"He'll never figure it out," McCoy said, signing off on the last medical report to reveal the InstaText app hidden behind it. On the screen were three separate messages:
Sulu: Intercepted stolen transport. disabled stabilizers & propulsion.
Uhura: Damaged ship, Doctor. Minimal life support. No response to hails. :o(
Chekov: Very spooky wessel ahead —Ve might have a ghost ship!?
McCoy smiled at the last entry. The words had been spelled correctly, of course, but he couldn't help but read it with a Russian accent. It had been Ensign Chekov's message—no doubt sent with the high hopes of youth—that had finally convinced McCoy that it was time for a little stroll. And if his walk happened to take him to the bridge, well, all the better.
That got shot to hell, McCoy thought as he gathered his tricorder and a medkit before opening the locker where the emergency grav-boots were stored. He stared at the clunky network of magnetic metal strips that clamped over his fleet-issued boots in disgust. God, how he hated those things. They made him feel as graceful as a newborn colt.
McCoy glanced at the wall chronometer and swore softly. Only nine more minutes and his shift would have ended, too. He could have dumped the whole affair into Dr. M'Benga's lap then. He swore again and grabbed the grav-boots before heading for the exit.
The Sick Bay doors slid open just in time for McCoy to pass the dark-skinned doctor. M'Benga was holding a large cup of coffee and shot McCoy a bright smile over its rim. "Mornin,' McCoy. Or evening, in your case," he said cheerfully before giving the boots in McCoy's hand a curious glance. "Going somewhere?"
McCoy didn't slow as he passed. "To hell where, apparently, there is also no gravity."
"Glad you could join us, Bones," Kirk said when McCoy finally stomped up—somewhat louder than necessary—onto the transporter platform to stand on the empty disc next to the captain. The doctor bent over, careful not to throw his balance off, and hit the switch that engaged the magnetic field on the network of clamps. His feet were now secured to the deck.
"Yeah, now the party can start," McCoy said grumpily before turning his wrath on the man operating the transporter controls. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Let's not hesitate to spread our atoms across the galaxy."
Mr. Kyle remained silent but his eyes flicked to the captain.
"Better do as the doctor says, Mr. Kyle. But please," Kirk added cheekily. "Try putting us firmly on Deck Two."
The gold transporter light and corresponding hum faded, and McCoy was left standing in a dimly lit hallway. Before his eyes could fully adjust to the reddish glow of emergency lighting, something cold and clammy brushed against his cheek.
"What the—!" McCoy jerked his head back and pushed at the object floating next to him. It twirled in the zero gravity environment, bumped off a wall, and finally came to settle against the ceiling.
Squatting low with phasers drawn, one of the security officers—Tomo—pulled a light from his belt and raised it. His oval face was tense beneath thinning blonde hair.
"A Ferangi," Kirk breathed, shining his own light up at the figure curled into a fetal position above them. The bald, lumpy skull was sandwiched between two oversized ears, the upper portion of the ears curved across the forehead to form a thick ridge above the eyes. The Ferangi's face was frozen in a contortion of pain—eyes squeezed shut while the mouth stretched wide in a silent scream. A grayish fluid clung to the small, pointed teeth.
"Died of radiation poisoning," McCoy muttered, staring at his tricorder. He stared at the readout longer than necessary, trying to focus on something other than the rapid thudding of his heart and the weightlessness in his stomach. The grav-boots kept his feet pinned to the deck but the rest of him felt like a balloon tied to a string. "From the amount of radiation saturating the organs," he continued. "She must have been pretty close to engineering when the explosion happened."
Kirk did a double-take at the gray corpse before shooting McCoy a questioning look.
"She?" he repeated. "Are you sure? I thought they didn't clothe their females."
McCoy raised an eyebrow. "Why am I not surprised you know that?" he said sourly before adding. "I may not know much about Ferangi cultural dress—or undress, for that matter—but I do know the physiological makeup of the species and this one is definitely female."
"She's part of the Qrayock Clan, Sir," Officer Tomo said quickly, tightening his light beam on a green, circular object pinned to her purple tunic. It had a platinum bar etched into it surrounded by three circles. "A radical Ferangi smuggling group consisting of liberated females."
"Violent group?" Kirk asked, intrigued.
"Only to male Ferangi," Tomo replied, shaking his head. "A security report released last quarter described them as 'self-liberated females members who liked to"—Tomo hesitated briefly as an uncomfortable look crossed his face—"cut the ears off their male counterparts before stealing their assets and joining the Qrayock.'"
Ensign Smith, a sharp-faced brunette, made an amused sound deep in her throat as she continued to flash her light around, guarding their position.
"Good work, Lieutenant," Kirk said to Tomo then motioned for the security team to pull out their datapads. McCoy could see three diagrams of the Ginny glowing in the near-darkness but didn't bother pulling out his own. He listened half-heartedly as the captain once again went over the search pattern.
"I want you both to clear the forward section of Deck Two and then precede to Deck Three at one of these access areas." He pointed at several spots along the diagram. "The explosion happened in the aft, so your path should be fairly clear. Dr. McCoy and I will have to get a little creative in bypassing engineering to reach the large storage bay on Deck Five."
"Sir," Smith said, her thin brows pinched. "The engineering deck is flooded with critical amounts of radiation. Wouldn't it be better to drill an access point from outside the hull and send in a probe?"
Kirk gave her a patient smile. "That same radiation is wreaking havoc on our sensors, Ensign. That's why we're here—"
"—in the first place," Smith finished, shaking her head in disgust. "Sorry, Sir. I should have remembered that."
"Quite all right, Ensign," Kirk reassured her, then said to both of them, "Remember: we're dealing with criminals. Use caution and check in every fifteen minute cycle, understood?" With quick motions of affirmation, Tomo and Smith set off for the forward section of the deck and quickly disappeared around a bend in the corridor.
McCoy stepped around the floating legs of the Ferangi to stand next to his friend. He took a deep breath and suppressed a shiver. The air was above freezing but it was cold, bitterly so. It also tasted stale and slightly metallic on his tongue which meant the air filtration units were breaking down.
"I don't like this, Jim. This tin can gives me the creeps," he said quietly, then held out his tricorder for the captain to look at. Through the red glare reflecting off the plasteel display, the sensors showed a twenty percent efficiency. "Emergency lighting is nearly gone and the scanner's barely working—we're walking around blind in here."
Kirk was not one to spook easily but even he looked uneasy. "It's too quiet, too, do you feel it?"
McCoy waited a half-second for Spock to call the captain on his conflicting use of senses, but then he remembered that the Vulcan was still on the bridge of the Enterprise. He suddenly wished that the commander had joined them. McCoy would have appreciated the clipped, unemotional comments for once, not that he would ever admit to it.
"Yeah," McCoy finally agreed. "I know what you mean." The life of the ship didn't hum through the decks as it did on the Enterprise; instead, he felt an occasional glug-glug through the grav-boots that meant the back-up generators were failing. McCoy decided that there was something unnerving about a dying ship. Perhaps because it made an excellent coffin.
McCoy mentally berated himself for his morbid thoughts.
"Guess we better get moving before Tomo and Smith report their section cleared and we're still standing here," he said with more enthusiasm than he felt. "Wouldn't be good for morale if they thought their higher-ups were chicken shits."
"They've been out of the Academy less than two years," Kirk murmured as he maneuvered past the first door, flashing his light inside. "They haven't gotten their gut instincts yet."
"Think they should be on their own then?" McCoy asked, wondering not for the first time why he had been ordered along. He was a doctor, after all, not a damn security guard.
Kirk moved further down the corridor, his voice drifting back.
"Sink or swim, Bones."
McCoy puckered his lips and looked up at the Ferangi still resting against the ceiling.
"Or float," he said to it before hurrying after the captain.
The aft section of Deck Two held forty-two closet-sized storage compartments for confidential shipping—all empty with doors locked open—and two more dead Ferangi, both female and both wearing the pins of the Qrayock Clan. Tomo and Smith reported similarly empty compartments with no sign of either survivors or casualties. With growing radiation readings on the tricorder, few would have made it to the forward section and, unless they had been sealed off in one of the atmospheric, climate controlled compartments, wouldn't have survived much longer.
And even if they had, McCoy had pointed out, it would be touch-and-go with life support failing.
Kirk's communicator chirped at the fifteen minute cycle and he flipped it open.
"Kirk here."
"Captain, we've finished with Deck Two." Smith's voice sounded tinny and small as it echoed around the tubular crawl space that Kirk was leaning into. The lift in the aft section of the ship had been completely blocked by wreckage from the explosion, forcing them to look for an alternate descent. Unlocking an access panel, they had discovered the service shaft. Kirk increased power to his light but it did no good. The ladder rungs disappeared into oppressive darkness just beyond the beam.
Grunting, he pulled his head clear of the access hatch. "All right, Ensign. Continue to report in as you clear Deck Three. Once cleared, return to the Enterprise."
"Aye, Sir," Smith said. "We could backtrack to your—"
"Negative." Kirk snapped. "Return to the ship after clearing Deck Three."
There was a pregnant pause, as though Smith was searching for some regulation that would allow her to return to the captain's side, but finally gave a defeated "Aye, aye, Captain."
Kirk swung his communicator closed and hooked it to his belt.
"I think she likes you," McCoy drawled behind him, his Southern accent thick with amusement.
Kirk gave him an exasperated look. "She's a bit young, Bones."
"You're right. New recruits often see the captain as a fatherly figure. Maybe she just doesn't want dear old dad getting lost."
Snorting, Kirk said. "If I'm the father figure, what does that make you, old man?"
McCoy opened his mouth to reply but failed to find a comment scathing enough.
Jim shook his head in mock sadness. "They say cognition's the first to go." Then he swung one leg through the opening and shifted his weight so that he was clinging to the ladder. "Come on, Bones," his voice echoed from inside. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go home."
Their descent through the remaining decks wasn't easy. Before gravitation had failed, a support pylon had dislodged from somewhere above and had wedged itself between the ladder and several pipes. It took Kirk and McCoy nearly ten minutes, working in darkness except for the two light cylinders they gripped in their mouths, to free the pylon and squeeze it past their bodies. It floated upward into the darkness, clanging too loudly within the dying ship as it struck the sides of the service shaft.
By the time they reached the cargo bay, they were both sweating despite the cold temperature. It could be surprisingly difficult to move without the leverage of gravity. Still, McCoy felt a little better when his feet were firmly clamped to the cargo bay's deck. Not that he could see much—the emergency lighting had failed completely on the lower levels—and McCoy could feel the darkness pressing in on him from all sides. He knew they were standing in a bay that could house several shuttles, but he still felt the urge to wave a hand over his head just to make sure.
"You know, Jim. We could finish this up a lot easier if we had gravity," McCoy said in a hushed voice. He raised his light so that he could see his friend without shining it in his face. Tomo and Smith had just given their final report and beamed back to the Enterprise. "If Scotty could reroute the remaining power from life support into the gravity grid, we'd be able to check out this remaining bit of ship pretty quickly."
"You read my mind, Bones." Kirk flipped open his communicator and asked for the chief engineer.
There was a faint click and a burst of static from radiation interference before the communicator compensated.
"Scott here."
"Scotty, it's Kirk. Is it possible to cut power to the Ginny's life-support system and feed it directly into the gravitational grid?"
"That piece of space junk hasn't got much more t'give. But aye, tis possible. I'll need a few minutes to access the ship's memory banks t'be sure."
"Do it," Kirk replied. "And see about getting us some lighting, too. Kirk out."
Perhaps ten seconds passed before Kirk gave a frustrated sigh.
"None of this makes sense."
"How so, Jim?"
Kirk flashed his light along the wall where McCoy could see signs of corrosion. "This ship is shit, Bones. It wouldn't even be worth the effort of stripping it for parts," Kirk's voice was filled with disgust, no doubt mentally comparing the Ginny to the Enterprise. "And why would the Ferangi travel to such a desolate location? There's literally nothing between here and the neutral zone. The closest merchant lanes are days away at warp five and this ship would be straining itself at point five."
McCoy thought back to the first dead Ferangi they had encountered, the look of pain on her face. He hadn't mentioned it to Jim, always sensitive to a lifeform's privacy even if they were no longer living, but in the medical scan he had noted several bones that had been broken and improperly set in the female's body. In truth, he had begun to suspect that she had had no medical care whatsoever during her life, and it left him feeling remorseful.
"Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with credits, Jim, maybe it's something else." When his friend gave him an inquiring glance, McCoy continued. "These females escaped from a dominating male culture where they were seen as near valueless. I can't imagine anything worse than a culture that worships platinum bars, universal credits, and other forms of so-called wealth. Maybe they were just trying to find a place free of that chauvinistic garbage."
Before Kirk could respond, his communicator chirped.
"Kirk here."
"Scott again, Captain. If I isolate the light t'the lower decks, I can give ye nineteen minutes at 80% gravity. After that, ye'll lose everythin.'"
"You're a miracle worker, Scotty." Kirk grinned into the communicator. "How long before the power can be rerouted?"
"Lights should be coming on"—a bit of static drowned out Scotty's voice as the bay's lighting flared to life—"now, Captain. Prepare for G in five seconds. Scott out."
Promptly at the five second mark, McCoy felt a weight descend over his body. It wasn't the heaviness that sometimes haunted him on sleepless nights but an entirely welcome, entirely physical weight that allowed him to move freely while keeping the contents of his stomach in place.
He didn't hesitate to release the clamps on his grav-boots and kick the metal casing aside.
There was a small grunt of satisfaction as the captain kicked his own grav-boots off then smoothed down his gold shirt as he straightened. Kirk's hand hovered for the briefest moment over his stomach, giving McCoy the impression that he too had been feeling some nausea.
McCoy bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, experimenting with the new gravity, before stepping out into the large bay. It was empty except for a rusting hoverlift used for moving heavy cargo. Three out of the four power cells had died, leaving only one corner barely floating above the floor. The sight made McCoy feel strangely melancholy and he tore his eyes away.
Well, that's it, McCoy thought, thinking that the whole thing had been somewhat anti-climatic. He turned to look at Kirk and saw that the captain had moved to stand in front of a wide door on the other side of the bay. They weren't the external doors—too small—and McCoy frowned, reaching for the datapad tucked inside his belt. The diagram of the Ginny showed a single large bay with no additional rooms.
Special modification for smuggling? McCoy wondered as he walked across the deck. He didn't understand why the captain seemed so interested in the doors until, with a prickling apprehension, McCoy realized what had caught his friend's attention.
The doors were closed.
All the other doors they had seen had been locked in the open position. McCoy returned the datapad to his belt and lifted the tricorder.
"I can't get any readings through the metal, Jim," McCoy said as he approached the doors.
Kirk didn't answer him as he stood in front of a worn keypad to the left of the doors. "Six-oh-seven-one . . . no, it's two."
McCoy tensed, suddenly realizing what the captain was about to do. "Maybe Tomo and Smith should beam—"
Kirk hit the last digit on the keypad and the doors slid open with surprising speed.
And with almost equal speed, Kirk and McCoy were hit with a wall of stench.