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It was Chekov’s day off, and he was bored out of his mind. He had spent an hour in the rec room aggressively playing ping pong, but he was at a loss for what to do with the rest of his day. Currently, he was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to think of something to do. His ears pricked up at the sound of his communicator beeping. Sitting up, he snatched it off his nightstand and opened it to find a cryptic message from Sulu:
Hikaru: > meet me in lab 3 at 1710
Chekov, curious, replied:
Pavel: < why?
Hikaru: > that’s for me to know, and for you to find out
Chekov shook his head and checked the time, relieved that he only had twenty minutes until his mysterious meeting with Sulu. The wait went by faster than he anticipated, the possibilities of what was in store for him in lab three helping pass the time.
At precisely 17:10, Chekov stepped into lab three to find Sulu already there, waiting for him. On a table in the middle of the room was a backpack sized, irregularly shaped object hidden under a white drop sheet.
Sulu grinned at him when he entered. “Guess what I found?” He asked, excitedly.
“Uh…” Chekov tried to come up with a plausible guess, but couldn’t. “What?” He asked, giving up. In response, Sulu grabbed the drop sheet and whipped it away with a dramatic flourish, revealing a big metal object covered in buttons and blinking lights. “What is it?” Chekov asked, not recognizing the object.
“No idea,” Sulu answered. “I found it on the ground during this morning’s away mission.”
“And… they just let you take it back to the ship without knowing what it was or what it did, and without handing it off to a science officer or engineer to check it out first?” Chekov asked suspiciously. Sulu shrugged guiltily. “How did you smuggle something this big onto the ship, anyways?”
“Well, I didn’t smuggle it, per say. I just carried it onto the ship and nobody stopped me,” Sulu explained.
“We need better security on this ship,” Chekov muttered under his breath, but approached the object for examination nonetheless. Curiosity always got the better of him.
It looked like a fat silver cylinder with a flat bottom and ends that tapered into smooth round edges. From a side profile, it formed an arch shape. Attached to points all over the cylinder were tons of unlabelled buttons and arrays of little lights. Some of the lights were on, some were off, and some were blinking, and they came in many different colours. The buttons were coloured too, but didn’t seem to correspond with the colours of the lights. There was also a red glass stripe that ran the entire way around the object, parallel with the table.
“What do you think it does?” Chekov asked after examining the strange object.
Sulu shrugged. “Only one way to find out, right?” He pressed a button at random. When nothing happened, he started to press a few more, one after the other. Some of the lights started to change. Sulu kept poking at it, and eventually a low whirring sound started coming from it.
“Hey, touch it,” Sulu said, placing the back of his hand against the metal body of the object.
Chekov reached a cautious hand out to it. “It’s warm. It wasn’t warm before.”
“Yeah, and it’s getting warmer,” Sulu said. “Fast.” It was quickly too hot to touch without getting burnt, the whirring sound was getting louder, and lights were blinking rapidly.
Chekov realized that he and Sulu were standing over a rapidly heating unknown object, with no personal protection equipment and no idea what the thing did. “Uh, Hikaru?” He asked nervously. “Is this safe?”
“I don’t know,” Sulu replied, eyes fixed on the object. Suddenly, a beam of red, focused light shot out from a point on the red glass stripe and struck Chekov directly in the chest. It hit him with such a force that he flew through the air, clear over a table, and slammed into the laboratory wall. “Oh,” Sulu winced. “I guess that answers that question.”
Chekov, seeming mostly uninjured, dragged himself off the floor, and saw Sulu backing away from the machine. The whirring sound had grown loud enough that they had to shout to be heard over it, and it was emitting heat that could be felt from several feet away.
“I think this thing is very unsafe,” Sulu reported in a raised voice.
“You think?” Chekov shouted back. “What do we do?”
“Probably get out of the lab before this thing fires again!” Sulu shouted, quickly heading for the door. Chekov followed hot on his heels. They shut the door behind them, and the whirring sound was instantly cut down to a quiet, muffled buzz.
“Maybe we should get Mr Spock,” Chekov suggested. “Maybe he can fix it.”
“Fix what?” Chekov and Sulu jumped as Spock suddenly appeared before them. He looked past them and gave a suspicious glance at the door to the buzzing lab. “Sensors picked up an abnormality on this deck. I had assumed from the nature of the readings that the sensors were malfunctioning. It unfortunately appears that I assumed incorrectly.” He looked at them each in turn, waiting for them to explain themselves.
“Hikaru brought a weird machine on board and started pressing buttons and it shot me and now it sounds like it’s going to blow up,” Chekov blurted out. “I don’t know what it does or how to stop it from whatever it’s doing.”
Spock’s glare landed on Sulu, who shrugged apologetically. Sighing, Spock passed the two to reach the lab door, keying in the access code to open it. The deafening sound of the machine burst through the open doors, prompting Chekov and Sulu to stagger, their hands flying to their ears. A wave of scorching heat washed out after the sound. Spock immediately shut the door again, and reached for the communications panel on the corridor wall.
“Lab three to transporter room,” Spock said.
“Transporter room, Scotty here,” came the reply.
“Mr Scott, I need you to beam a volatile object out of lab three and send it outside the ship, quickly.”
“And how am I supposed to know which object that is?”
“You’ll know,” Spock said grimly. “It’s emitting heat of approximately 200 degrees centigrade and climbing."
“Christ,” Scotty said, and abandoned the comms, presumably to get to work on the transporter.
Spock keyed in a comm to the bridge. “Spock to bridge.”
“Spock, what’s up?” Kirk responded.
“Captain, it would be wise to activate shields at this time.”
“On it,” Kirk replied without any hesitation. The lights in the corridor flickered as power was diverted to the shield generators. Spock turned and headed for the turbo-lift in long, gliding strides. Chekov and Sulu jogged to keep up with him. They rode the turbo-lift to the bridge in time to see the strange object appear on the view-screen, having been successfully sent out into the void of space. It was white hot now, and beams of light were escaping from cracks in the hull of the machine. It exploded in a brilliant flash of light, pelting the ship with rogue energy that was luckily absorbed by the shields.
After the ordeal, Kirk turned in his chair and broke the silence on the bridge. “Spock, what the fuck was that?”
Chekov and Sulu were slowly backing towards the turbo-lift to make their escape, but Spock’s head snapped to the side and he caught them in a side-eyed glare, freezing them in their place.
“Mr Chekov, Mr Sulu, wait in my office,” Spock said in a voice so steely cold that Chekov and Sulu physically shivered.
“Yes sir,” they said, and quickly made their exit. Once out of earshot, Chekov gulped audibly. “We are so dead.”