Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Captain's log, Stardate 3200.2. For the second time in our conscious memory, war has broken out between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. As a Starfleet armada heads for Organia to meet the enemy in battle, the Constellation has diverted to the Scorpius cluster, in the disputed zone, to locate a neutral freighter that has gone missing in transit. The freighter is rumored to be carrying praxium, a partially collapsed metal element that can be refined into a high-tensile alloy for starship hulls. Such an alloy could provide a ship with a significant tactical advantage in combat. It goes without saying, we can't afford to let the Klingons get their mitts on it first.

"Yellow alert," Decker ordered. "Distance to nearest Klingon outpost?"

"About six AUs, sir," Marlowe answered. "But the interstellar medium here is dense enough that it should obscure our warp field."

"Unfortunately it's also playing havoc with our sensors," Masada called over his shoulder. "We're limited to a scan radius of only about two and a half AUs."

"That means we'll have to make close-range scans and hope to all our gods there aren't any Klingon attack cruisers lying in wait," Decker said grimly. "Mr. Zhour, I want defense fields activated around the bridge and main engineering. Load and arm photon torpedoes."

"Aye, aye, sir," Zhour acknowledged. "It is worth noting that Klingon sensors are more attuned to weapons targeting than to search and scan."

"Meaning by the time they've got us in their sights, we'll be easy pickings for them?"

"Well, call me an insufferable optimist, but it also means we should see them before they can see us."

"Okay, you're an insufferable optimist," Decker said, deadpan. "Toshiro, don't take your eyes off that viewer, you hear?"

"Yes, sir," Masada said.

The Constellation was well into its third year of exploring space that had only just been charted after it departed Earth. Some encounters had been more eventful than others - encounters such as a rebellious colony on Doradus whose governor was bent on secession, an interstellar entity whose gravimetric transients played havoc with celestial objects of all masses, and a race on Alrescha II that apparently had paid a clandestine visit to Earth not long before World War III. The Code 1 communiqué from Starfleet Command declaring a state of war with the Klingons was several days old, yet uncomfortably familiar to everyone who had been in Starfleet for the last one. All hands were showing the strain of a constant state of alert following three years of exploring the galaxy more or less in peace.

Edgerton came onto the bridge, stepped into the well, and stood beside Decker. "Twelve hundred hours, sir," he advised. "What news?"

Decker gave him the latest on the conditions of outer space and the complications caused to the sensor sweep. Then he briefed Edgerton on the Constellation's operational status, then concluded: "No sign of the Klingons yet."

"They must all be massing at Organia to take on our forces," Edgerton mused. "I wonder how things are shaping up over there."

"I wish we could concern ourselves, but we've got a job to do," Decker said resolutely. "I don't think this war will be over any time soon, but I'm in no hurry to lose it. The bridge is yours, Mr. Edgerton. See you at eighteen hundred."

"Very good, sir," Edgerton said as Decker put down his fingerprint-covered computer disks and stood up.

"And Mr. Masada," Decker added as he headed toward the turbolift. "You pick up anything resembling that freighter, I want to hear about it before you think about it."

"Understood, sir," Masada said. He and Dorian exchanged a look as Decker left the bridge, confident that the commodore suspected nothing of them, but a bit concerned about his intentions if the missing freighter should appear.

The hours wore on. As the Constellation meandered from search course to search course, one end of the cluster to the other, Edgerton had to relieve Marlowe from her post as fatigue began to overtake her - she was determined to hold the ship steady on the search pattern she'd laid out. It said something to Edgerton that the crew's dedication hadn't flagged a bit in the three years since Decker took command. The Constellation's mission was by now more than half over. As long as they made it through this confounded war, finished their mission in peace, maybe some leave on a resort planet before they resumed exploring the unknown....

Edgerton lingered on the bridge for a short while after Decker relieved him six hours later. Samuels was back at the helm, Masada getting ready for a relief soon, Dorian off watch below and a Vulcan junior lieutenant named T'Prea at communications. The Constellation was on a return leg of its search pattern and was about to change course to starboard when Masada chanced to rub his eyes before taking another look into his viewer.

"Sir, I've got something!" he called out. "Bearing three two eight mark fifteen. Metallic mass, drifting southward away from Bakula Two-four-seven. Reads as a light vessel, mass of about three hundred kilotons. Could be our missing freighter."

"Alter course to approach, Danny," Decker said to Samuels. "Toshiro, give me a close-in scan. Any sign of unusual or unknown elements, don't miss 'em."

Edgerton leaned on the railing of the bridge well and rubbed his jaw as the Constellation dipped and yawed. Very soon the unidentified ship became evident on the viewscreen. It resembled nothing so much as a short caterpillar, with a bisectional forward hull, a lengthwise column resembling a backbone beneath which its eight cargo containers were slung, and a tail section supporting its engines and single warp nacelle. From the perspective of the people on the Constellation, it was pointed directly downward from Bakula 247 toward the southern region of the galaxy.

As they drew closer, Decker looked up at Masada, still gazing into the blue glow from his sensor viewer. "I'm not detecting any traces of unusual elements, Commodore," the science officer said. "In fact, I'm not detecting anything at all. If that ship's carrying anything, it's well shielded."

"Can we beam aboard?" Decker asked.

"We can probably access the bridge and engineering spaces, but whoever goes over there better don an environmental suit first. Life support systems are inoperative, and atmospheric pressure reads zero."

"Sounds awfully bloody welcoming, doesn't it?" Edgerton commented.

"Awfully is right," Decker said. "I have a sinking feeling the Klingons got here before we did. You and Toshiro get your shit together and take a chemist over with you, along with Seppala and a couple of her people. We'll stand by here and make sure those stinkers don't return to the scene of the crime."

"Yes, sir," Edgerton said. Without another tarry he and Masada made tracks toward the turbolift.

"Slow to impulse," Decker ordered. "Bring us up alongside. Maintain a constant scan of the area. I'm not getting jumped by Klingons on an empty stomach."

"Not for nothing, sir, but...." Samuels's face contorted dubiously. "That ship doesn't look like it was attacked by Klingons."

"Never judge a Vulcan by his ears, Danny," Decker advised. Too late, he caught himself as he remembered who was currently manning communications. He half-turned, holding up a contrite hand. "No offense, T'Prea."

"Offense is a strictly human emotion, Commodore," T'Prea said calmly. "Although it is quite illogical to render judgment of an individual based on their auditory organs."

"I thought you might say something like that," Decker muttered under his breath. "Just keep your eyes open, Danny."

For a very few seconds, the only light on the freighter's bridge was the yellow sparkling energy as the transporter beam reached over from the Constellation and deposited Edgerton, Masada, Seppala, a chemical specialist and two security guards. All of them wore the environmental suits made from a blend of zirconium and polyvinyl chloride - which Seppala determined to be an uncompromising necessity once she'd taken some tricorder readings.

"You weren't fooling about the atmosphere, Mr. Masada," she said. "If we didn't have protection, we might as well have beamed into outer space."

"'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the ship, not a rodent alive to chew microchips," the chemist commented dryly.

"You missed your calling, Sanghevi," Masada said to the round-faced young woman. "You really should've been a high fantasy writer."

"What can I say, Mr. Masada?" Sanghevi shrugged. "I've got all the wrong brain chemicals for it."

"Well, let's get your brain chemicals trickling toward the cargo containers, shall we?" Edgerton said pointedly. "Ms. Seppala, if you please."

Holding her phaser carbine in front of her, Seppala led the cautious procession aft from the bridge. The first compartment they entered was a monitoring station, its instruments still active and its screens still lit. The screens showed the status of the cargo in each of the ship's containers, including their respective environments, but several items were glaringly missing from the displays.

"This is strange," Masada said, sidling over to one of the displays.

"What isn't strange anymore?" Seppala queried.

"There's no manifest. No data on the cargo. Each container shows as loaded, but....the environment reads exactly the same as the rest of this ship. I couldn't get any sensor readings from the Constellation, either."

"Could this have anything to do with life support being inoperative?" Edgerton asked.

"I don't see how. I think we'll need to take a closer look."

"There's nothing on those readouts about a destination, I take it," Seppala said as she resumed the sternward search.

"No such luck," Edgerton said. "This is a neutral freighter, Nevorian registry. If it's carrying a load of praxium, it could have been destined for either Federation or Klingon territory."

"You don't need special shielding to transport praxium, though," Sanghevi pointed out. "At the worst, it needs to be handled in zero G."

"Well, let's see what we can see." Masada moved to the hatch leading to the forwardmost container on the port side, examining the small display screen affixed to the front of it. "Oh, now that's interesting."

"Well, I'll be sure to note such in my log," Edgerton said. "What is?"

"The contents aren't in zero G, but they are in a stasis field. Whatever these containers are holding, without a stasis field, they'd be no containers at all."

"Is there any kind of chemical reaction going on in there?" Sanghevi asked. "Something the stasis field is preventing from getting out of control?"

"Let's have a look...." Masada tapped a scroll button to cycle through several displays untll he found data that strongly resembled chemical makeup. He leaned close to it, frowning.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.

Hefting her tricorder, Sanghevi needed only a few seconds to take readings before she pulled back and stared at the hatch, her eyes wide with horror.

"Oh, my God!" she breathed, letting the tricorder fall to her side.

"I'll note him in my log, too," Edgerton said, somewhat impatiently. "What is it?"

"Sir...." Sanghevi gulped and looked at him. "We've got to find a way to either dispose of these containers or get them on board the Constellation before the Klingons arrive."

On the Constellation, the bridge was unnervingly quiet except for its instruments. Decker slouched sideways in his chair and fingered his computer disks, Samuels held the ship alongside the freighter, T'Prea worked with fluid, calculated movements across the communications console. It was Zhour, again manning tactical, who galvanized all of them.

"Unidentified vessels approaching off our starboard quarter," he announced. "Bearing one four five mark four eight. Can't identify them at this distance, but there's three of them that I can distinguish."

"McCreedie, sensors," Decker said to the junior science officer filling in for Masada at his station. "Stand by battle stations."

"Masada to Constellation!" Masada's voice over the speaker was uncharacteristically urgent.

"Constellation responding," T'Prea answered, her own voice striking a calm balance with Masada's perturbance.

"T'Prea, put Commodore Decker on, please," Masada said. "Sir, this is absolutely not what we thought we had here. The rumor was praxium, a rumor is just what it was. This ship is carrying two hundred and fifty kilotons of what reads as magnotritium nitrate - at least that's the closest approximation we can find!"

"Jesus H. Christ!" Decker muttered. "All right, Toshiro, let me have it with both emitters, willya?"

"Sir, if this stuff falls into Klingon hands, they could create weapons that would make the old hydrogen bombs look like water balloons," Masada said. "Somehow we've got to find a way to get rid of it before they get here."

It was here that Edgerton hit the communicator button on his own helmet. "Commodore, this is Edgerton. Based on our readings, I'm not sure we can safely dispose of this substance at all, not even with antimatter. Even hitting this ship with a photon torpedo from extreme range would likely as not shift several planetary orbits in this cluster!"

"Sir!" McCreedie stood bolt upright from the sensor viewer and turned around. "Those three ships are altering course to intercept, range eight hundred thousand kilometers and closing. Definitely Klingons!"

"Red alert!" Decker barked. "Richard, stand by to get back over here!"

"With all due respect, sir, we mustn't!" Edgerton protested. "If the Klingons get past the Constellation and take possession of this cargo, the damage they could do would tear the Federation to shreds! We can't let it fall into their filthy hands!"

"Well, in that case, we'll just have to - " Decker stopped short, distracted for a moment by the memory of what he'd told Will: Never let them get past the Deckers. He wasn't sure if he should tell Edgerton either that the Constellation would have to beat three-to-one odds, or that shifting half a dozen planetary orbits would prove to be the lesser of two evils. But in a flash he realized that he didn't have to be sure what to say.

He half-spun in his chair. "T'Prea, get Lieutenant Galbraith up here on the double," he said. "McCreedie, how long do we have before the Klingons are in range?"

"At best, eight minutes, sir," McCreedie answered.

"All right." Decker leaned over his comm speaker. "Richard, listen to me. Get a move on detaching those containers from the hull of the ship. Leave your comm link open and stand by for further orders. I'll know in a minute what we're gonna do with them."

"Yes, sir," Edgerton answered. He rushed across the freighter's central corridor and pawed at the bulkhead for the manual release of the container on the starboard side. "Masada, Sanghevi, you lop off number one. Dietz, you come over here with me. Seppala and Rechenko, take number four!"

As the red alert wailed, Dorian marched onto the bridge to relieve T'Prea; Decker half-turned to see Galbraith hurrying out of the turbolift behind him. "Yes, Commodore?" she asked anxiously.

"McCreedie, what's the exact total volume of those containers?" Decker asked.

"Ah....they top out at fifteen thousand cubic meters, sir," McCreedie said.

"Okay, Laurie, we're gonna be staring down some Klingon torpedo launchers here any minute," Decker said. "Where have we got space for those containers on board?"

"Maybe one of the ventral bays beneath main engineering - " Galbraith began, but Edgerton's hail cut her off.

"Two containers away, sir!" he reported. "We're on to the next pair!"

Galbraith hastened around behind Decker and bent over the speaker. "Mr. Edgerton, can we beam their contents into one of the storage bays?"

"Negative," Edgerton said. "They're extremely volatile. Probably not even safe to beam into space without blowing out the transporter."

"The shuttlecraft hangar, sir," Galbraith said without even inhaling. "That's the only adequate space we have for them."

By this point in the mission, Decker knew that when Laurie Galbraith made direct eye contact with him, he couldn't doubt her confidence, her absolute conviction of what she was saying: and there was no time for doubts now anyway. "Stan, get me hangar control," he ordered.

"On speaker," Dorian said.

"Hangar control, this is Decker. Move all shuttlecraft into storage alcoves and prepare to recover some damned fragile cargo. Make sure we clear up at least three thousand square meters of open space on the hangar deck." He shut the speaker off and fixed Galbraith with an imperative stare. "All right, Laurie, you get yourself into a suit, get down there, get some deck hands together and get those containers on board. I want 'em secured in six minutes. Remember, you'll have to do this in minimal gravity, so for God's sake don't knock 'em around too hard!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Decker's pat on her arm seemed to catapult Galbraith toward the turbolift.

"Helmsman, move us out ahead of the freighter," Decker said. "Lay a tractor beam on the containers and reel them into the hangar when it's ready."

"Yes, sir," Samuels said. "I just hope we've got six minutes before the Klingons get here."

Working swiftly and systematically, Edgerton and the rest of the boarding party tracked aft and manually released each container one at a time. Masada and Sanghevi chopped off the last one, as Edgerton stood, almost ceremoniously, at the hatch and watched through the viewport. The containers began to jostle into an elephant-like row, drifting away from the freighter as the Constellation's tractor beam enveloped them and pulled them into order.

"How are you doing over there, Richard?" Decker's voice blared in his helmet.

"Last container is away, sir," he answered. "We'll be ready to beam back - "

"Commander!" Seppala called out from further aft. "Back here, we found something!"

"A moment, sir, stand by!" Edgerton beckoned to Masada and rushed back to the engineering section. They found Seppala and her two men standing at a great gap in the deck, a gap identical in shape to the ones filled by nearby antimatter pods.

"I think this tells us what happened to the crew," Seppala said.

"You mean whoever hit this ship jettisoned an antimatter pod out from under it, depressurized the entire ship and got rid of its crew without firing a shot?" Masada's voice was half disbelieving.

"Now who in bloody 'ell would go to that kind of trouble?" Edgerton wondered.

"The Ucans, that's who," Seppala said. "Takes all the trouble out of it, in fact. They sneak up underneath a ship, pinch out one of its pods and bwoof, it's all theirs."

"They could never pull that off with the Constellation," Sanghevi said dismissively. Suddenly she cast a doubtful look at her superiors. "Could they?"

"I'd rather not stick around and find out," Edgerton said. "Not when we're already going toe to toe with the Klingons out there." He punched the communicator button on his helmet. "Edgerton to Constellation. Ready for transport."

"You'll have to hold on for a little bit, Richard!" Decker grated in reply. "We've had to divert all power to boost our shields around both ships, we can't spare any for the transporter. Sit tight, we'll get you as soon as we can." He pounded the comm button on his chair and turned. "McCreedie!"

"Less than four minutes to intercept now, sir!" McCreedie reported.

"Damn it!" Decker growled, facing the screen. "There's never a temporal anomaly around when you need one."

Down below, Galbraith had gathered six deck hands in the airlock outside the shuttle hangar, where they stood watching the barometer drop toward zero. All of them wore environmental suits, and the six crewmen carried portable anti-grav manipulators. Galbraith herself bore a motion sensor which would alert her if any of the containers picked up too much inertia on its way into the hangar.

"Remember, men, we're working in minimal gravity," she told them. "Move each container as far forward as possible and maintain three meters of separation wherever you can."

"Suppose they're too big and heavy for these little beamers to handle?" one crewman asked, hefting his manipulator. "The Old Man said not to knock 'em together, didn't he?"

"For that matter, why can't we just use the transporter to bring them aboard?" another crewman shrugged.

"There's no time to explain," Galbraith said sharply. "Just carry out your orders!" She glanced at the barometer to see that the last of the pink condensate had vanished from the sight. "All right, men, the airlock is depressurized. Let's go!" She strode through the double-door hatch into the hangar and almost immediately flew off her feet as she encountered the one-tenth gravity to which the hangar was adjusted. Half the men followed: the others hesitated, unsure of this complete stranger who had replaced Laurie Galbraith the moment she was promoted to lieutenant junior grade, this new and decisive Galbraith who two years ago had been happier with her plants than she was around people, this take-charge Galbraith who now had a task of vital importance to complete.

"Well, come on, you guys!" one of their crewmates shouted, beckoning. "Don't just stand around with your thumb up your ass, we got a job to do here!"

"What's next, snakes on a starship?" one of the doubters grumbled as he and his pals filed into the hangar.

The hangar doors slowly ground open to reveal the first pair of containers undulating along the tractor beam, only a few hundred meters distant. Galbraith stationed two crewmen a safe distance from the bulkhead in preparation to guide each one to rest. Then she led the others back toward the hangar doors and quickly examined both sides of the deck to ascertain that the shuttlecraft were all safely tucked away.

"Galbraith to bridge," she called, puffing with the effort of keeping her footing in the minimal gravity. "We're recovering the containers now. How long do we have before the Klingons pose a threat?"

"We'll worry about the Klingons, you worry about the cargo," Decker told her. "But the sooner you get it on board, the better. I don't want to have to maneuver in mid-recovery." He leaned forward in his chair. "How close are they now, Danny?"

"Eighty thousand kilometers, drawing up on our starboard side," Samuels said.

"Put 'em on screen." Decker clenched his jaw as the three Klingon attack cruisers became clearly visible, charging toward the Constellation almost bow on. Three against one - not odds he was keen on in the middle of a recovery operation.

"Is it Kobayashi Maru in here, or is it just me?" Samuels said to no one in particular. Evidently he wasn't fond of the odds either.

"Zhour, stand by on phasers!" Decker said. "Prepare to - " He paused, chafing with frustration, scarcely believing the order he was about to give. "Prepare to drop shields from the freighter."

Half the eyes on the bridge turned on him, horrified. "But sir, what about the boarding party?" Marlowe protested.

"They may be better off than we're going to be in a few minutes," Decker said. "Hold your course. Laurie! How are you coming down there?"

"We've got half of them aboard, sir," Galbraith answered. "We just need - oh, my God, watch out, watch out, watch out!"

A collective gasp sucked almost all the oxygen out of the Constellation's bridge. The only one not frozen solid was Decker, as he burst out of his chair and spun toward it. "What's going on down there?!" he demanded. "Laurie! God damn it, answer me!"