Chapter 17

Chapter 17

When the turbolift doors opened, Brett thought he’d gone back in time. On the viewscreen, he saw a freighter identical to the Sunigwil. The freighter straggled behind a flotilla of other ships, a trail of orange gas streaming from one of the warp nacelles. It continued limping along towards the Orion.

“Their warp core is overloading,” Merle said.

“How long until it goes?” Robyn asked.

Merle shook his head. “Five minutes at most.”

The major difference between this situation and that of the Icarus was that now Robyn sat in the command chair. She would have to make the hard decision this time and live with the consequences. Brett knew all too well how difficult those consequences might be to live with.

“Hail them, Mr. Ramirez.”

“No response.”

“Life signs?”

“I’m picking up at least a half-dozen in the forward section,” Merle said. “Can’t tell about the rest of the ship.”

“Put a tractor beam on them.”

Ramirez stabbed at the controls, finally slapping the control panel in frustration. “The radiation is disrupting the beam,” he said.

Hurd pushed past Brett and then bumped Ramirez aside. The Intelligence man’s hands flew across the control panel like a virtuoso pianist’s. The Serparnian freighter stopped limping forward as if by an invisible hand. “I got it but it might not last long,” he said.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Robyn turned to face Brett. “Commander, have an engineering team meet you in the transporter room. See if you can shut down the core and look for survivors. Mr. Ramirez, arm a spread of photon torpedoes. If the core can’t be shut down, we’ll destroy the ship.”

“I’ll go with you,” Hurd said, joining Brett in the turbolift again.

“We aren’t going to need a spy.”

“There might be something I can do.”

“That was a nice trick with the tractor beam. They teach about that in charm school?”

“You pick up a few things when you go undercover with smugglers and other riffraff. You should know that better than anyone.”

Again Brett wanted to cave Hurd’s face in, but he resisted the urge. There wasn’t time and he didn’t want to have to explain it to Robyn. She would throw him back in the brig without batting an eyelash.

Jolok and three of his engineers met them in the transporter room. “We aren’t going to have much time,” Jolok said, pointing out the obvious.

“You guys are miracle workers. I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Brett said.

They beamed onto the bridge of the freighter where Merle had picked up the half-dozen life signs. The hair on the back of Brett’s neck stood up right away. The Serparnians were all slumped over their stations. He touched the freighter’s captain on the neck; he felt cold even for a Serparnian. Brett tugged at the captain’s arm, but it wouldn’t move more than an inch.

“This is a trap,” Brett said.

“How can you be so sure of that?” Hurd asked.

“These guys have been dead too long. Someone planted them here so we’d beam aboard.”

“In that case, let’s go back and blow this thing up before the warp core overloads,” Hurd said.

This was a good idea, but Jolok and his engineers were already in the engine room examining the equipment. If they made it that far. Brett tapped his communicator. No response. The radiation from the overloading core could be interfering with the communicators.

He took off running down the corridor, wishing he’d thought to bring along a weapon. Thinking back to the Cassandra, he wondered if the Serparnian freighter captain kept weapons anywhere on board. Even if he did, Brett didn’t have time to look right now.

No one took a shot at him between the bridge and the engine room. Inside, he found Jolok and the technicians grappling with the controls. “What’s the situation here?” Brett asked.

“Someone’s sabotaged the manual overrides. We can’t eject the core and there isn’t time to repair the controls,” Jolok reported. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“Let’s get back to the bridge and get the hell out of here.” As Brett finished, a disruptor bolt tore into the back of one of the engineers. The young woman crumpled to the floor.

Brett and Jolok scrambled for cover behind a control panel. Again Brett wished for some kind of weapon, even a rock to throw at the attacker. With this in mind, he grabbed one of Jolok’s wrenches and hurled it at the doorway.

The disruptor fired again, the shot ripping into another of the engineers. In the glow of the blast, Brett made out the silhouette of a Serparnian hood. One of the Serparnian Liberation Army no doubt.

“We have to get out of here,” Jolok said, again stating the obvious. “The core will overload in two minutes.”

Brett looked around again for some kind of weapon, but he didn’t see anything that could disable the assassin. There wasn’t any way out except through the door either. They were trapped like rats until the time bomb that was the warp core went off, destroying the Orion and who knew how many other of the nearby ships.

Leaning back to wait for the end, Brett jumped when he heard the sound of a Starfleet phaser. “I got him!” Hurd called out. He stood in the doorway, the palm-sized phaser he’d nearly shot Brett with in the prayer pit in his hand.

“Great, I’ll thank you later. Let’s get out of here.” Brett and Jolok slung the fallen engineers over their shoulders and then took off for the bridge, stepping over the body of a fallen Serparnian. From Jolok’s calculations, they didn’t have more than a minute left.

Brett left the dead engineer with Hurd, going over to the freighter’s helm. The saboteurs hadn’t bothered to cripple the navigation controls. Brett programmed a course that would put the freighter a safe distance away when it blew. He tapped the button to engage the engines as the transporter beam shimmered around him.

The moment Brett’s molecules reassembled on the transporter pad, he was thrown from his feet, crashing into Hurd on the floor. His communicator sounded. “Boutwell here. Everyone’s aboard, but we have two casualties.”

“Casualties?” Robyn said.

“It was all a booby trap.”

“My God,” Robyn breathed. Her voice sounded calmer when she said, “I’ll be right there.”

Brett helped Hurd off the floor and then noticed the palm-sized phaser lying on the pad. He picked it up, examining the tiny weapon. He hadn’t seen one of those in almost ten years. At least someone had been smart enough to bring a phaser or they might have all been killed.

The hairs on the back of Brett’s neck were still standing up as he returned the weapon to Hurd. Something didn’t quite fit with everything that had happened. He didn’t know what it was yet, but he would find out.