The Cholmondely-Smythe Year

A grim silence reigned in the cramped turbolift. The explosion had shaken the entire ship, ripped a great hole in the saucer section of the vessel. The contents of the deck had been blown out into space, although thankfully the deck had been evacuated in time. Klumpf had been the last to depart, although there had been no word from Damerell since the explosion. His crewmates were beginning to fear the worst, and Wall was practically inconsolable.

For the first time in his life, Hill wondered exactly how much it was possible to fit into a turbolift. For instance, take the current situation. Due to the number of people and amount of equipment it was necessary to get to the centre of the damage as quickly as possible, the turbolift had been crammed full of everything possible. The current list was Hill, Cholmondely-Smythe, Counsellor Hill, Barfoot, two security guards and three engineers, all in tight fitting EVA suits, along with four portable bulkheads to shore up the damage and seal the section, a collection of air canisters and innumerable other pieces of equipment. To make matters worse, the turbolift shafts in this area were damaged and could only move at a snail’s pace down the shaft. The intercom beeped.

“Commander,” Cholmondely-Smythe requested from the other side of the bulkheads, where he was pinned against the wall, “would you be so good as to get that?”

Hill stretched out his arm and tried to reach the toggle, but could not reach. In fact, none of the others in the lift could reach. The intercom continued to beep.

Cholmondely-Smythe sighed and, bracing himself against the wall of the turbolift, worked his way up onto the top of the first portable bulkhead. He eased his way across to the other side of the lift and, using one hand to hold himself steady, leant down to reach the intercom. Eventually, braced upside down against the wall and with one leg hooked around a bulkhead, he flicked the switch.

“Cholmondely-Smythe here,” he said in a remarkably normal voice.

“We’ve restored partial intercom circuits to deck seven,” Stark reported.

“Very well, put me on.” There was a pause, then a click. “Mr Damerell, if you are there, come in please,” Cholmondely-Smythe said then. “Again I say, come in Mr Damerell.”

The only response was the gentle hiss and pop of metal exposed to vacuum and absolute zero.
“No reply,” Stark said, unnecessarily.

“Be so good as to keep monitoring the channels, there’s a good chap,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, rather distantly. To lose an officer so soon in his command was not going to look good.
The channel closed and Cholmondely-Smythe attempted to pull himself back up onto the bulkheads. His grip slipped, and he fell down the gap between the bulkhead and the doors, becoming wedged upside down about a foot off the floor.

“Spiffing,” he said sarcastically. A moment later the lift slowed to a stop and the doors opened, spilling the captain out into the corridor beyond. Although the artificial gravity generators were still operational, it was obvious the entire atmosphere had been sucked out of the deck by the oddly distorted view.

“Very well,” Cholmondely-Smythe getting to his feet and brushing imaginary dust from his suit. “Let us proceed.”

The turbolift was soon emptied and the group separated to begin an examination of the deck, after agreeing to meet at the source of the explosion, sector thirty-eight. After a short time, they were once again assembled. Hill swallowed as he looked out over the gaping hole. The corridor was thrown into stark relief by the peculiar lighting effect produced by the hull breach. Barfoot quickly confirmed that the emergency forcefields in the area were offline. A brief look of consternation crossed his face, which Cholmondely-Smythe picked up on.

“Something wrong, old chap?”

“There’s no good reason for the forcefields to be down, sir,” Barfoot reported. “There’s no indication of damage from the explosion, apart from some minor faults, but the system is designed to withstand exactly that. If the field in one area fails, the ones in the surrounding area should kick into high gear to compensate. But they’re all just simply inactive.” The engineer ripped a panel off a wall nearby. He straightened abruptly.

“They’ve been sabotaged, captain. All of them.”

Cholmondely-Smythe stared off into the distant blackness as the engineers began to work on fixing the portable bulkheads. “Tell me, Number One,” he mused, “does this sort of thing happen a great deal?”

“You mean in general, sir? Or on board the Psycho?”

“On board.”

Hill thought about it. “We don’t often get sabotage,” he admitted, “but given what else the ship has been through, I suppose it’s about time it happened.”

“Ah. Jolly good.” The captain sighed again. “It just seems a little hard to believe. I mean, my first mission in command, what is simply meant to be some posturing and bravado, and this happens.”

“I shouldn’t worry sir,” Hill said cheerfully. “You get used to it.” He glanced out at the stars. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go and have a look around.”

“What?” Cholmondely-Smythe’s head snapped round. “Oh, splendid idea. Take the security guards with you, will you?”

Hill wandered off down the corridor with the security guards following, keeping in practice by muttering ‘hut, hut’ under their breath and flattening themselves against the occasional wall. Hill put up with this until one of them managed to trip over his own feet and sprawled headlong into a storage cabinet, knocking open the hatch and spilling its contents to the floor.

“Okay, guys, can you please go away now?” he asked, and they sheepishly backed away. In a few moments he was alone. He walked over to the bulkhead and laid a hand on the wall. He was about to move away when, faintly, he felt a small vibration in the plating. Frowning, he leant in closer, resting his helmet against the metal. There it was again, faint but distinct.

“Hill to bridge.”

“Go ahead Commander,” Stark replied.

“Can you locate the source of some strange vibrations I’m picking up in sector… thirty four,” he said after a quick glance around.

“Hold on, I’ll get Bleep on it.”

A new voice came onto the channel.

“I am reading an odd disturbance in the communication panel to your left,” Bleep told him. He moved to the panel and laid a hand on it. The vibration was slightly stronger. He looked down the corridor, moved a few feet and laid another hand on the wall. Again, it was stronger. He looked down and saw the turbolift doors. Running towards them, he laid his hands on the door. Now the vibrations were recognisable as Morse code.

“Q… X… M…” he muttered. Only one person, apart from Wall, could possibly be that incompetent at Morse code. “It’s Damerell!” he cried, and raised a hand to bang a response. He hesitated as the corridor was flooded with light. By the time he realised that it was just power being restored to the section, the turbolift behind the doors had moved away.

 

Damerell slumped as he felt the lift begin to move. The doors of the lift had just begun to open as the explosion had lifted him off his feet and propelled him into the lift. As a result the back of his head was singed and his left shoulder hurt where he had collided with the half-open doors. The sensors in the lift had detected the drop in atmospheric pressure and automatically triggered the doors to close, preventing the air in the rest of the ship from being sucked out into space and also, incidentally, saving his life.

Now he sat and waited to see where the lift would deposit him. As it turned out, it was on deck five, not far from the security office. Since it was the closest inhabited place on the ship, he made his way there. When the door opened, he was confronted with utter darkness.

“H… hello?” he quavered, hesitantly. “Anyone there?”

Abruptly he realised that he was standing silhouetted in the doorway and his finely tuned self-preservation instincts kicked in, throwing himself sideways just as a beam of light lanced out to scorch the wall behind his head. Whimpering in panic, he scrambled across the floor until he collided with a wall, which happened to be the one housing the weapons locker. A weapon! he thought. That was a good idea. He slowly raised himself, trusting his attacker to be as blind as he was in the complete darkness. He pressed the button.

“Voice print identification required,” the computer boomed into the silence.

“Damerell, Philip,” he whispered desperately.

“Please speak in a normal tone,” the computer requested. A terrified sound escaped his throat.
“Damerell, Phil-” he managed before the telltale whine of a phaser rifle sent him flinging himself for the relative safety of the ground. Fortunately that was enough for the computer to identify him, and the panel opened, dropping a stack of weapons and equipment on top of him. Searing heat in his shoulder revealed that his dive had not been timed quite right, but the adrenaline was pumping through his system. His questing hands stumbled on a pair of infrared goggles, which he quickly slapped on.

The room was revealed to him in a variety of colours that, in different circumstances, might have been considered pretty. The intruder was revealed as a bright blob, and the goggles briefly flashed up the information that the body temperature was much higher than was normal for a human. Damerell also noted that the intruder was built like a brick shithouse.

He spotted a phaser rifle lying under the desk just a couple of feet in front of him, and as the intruder made his way towards the equipment locker, Damerell dove for the rifle, grabbed it as he landed, slapped blindly at the power gauge and fired. His first shot succeeded in stunning the desk, but he frantically spun the dial back in the other direction and fired again.

The desk practically disintegrated around him and he heard the intruder grunt with pain as the shot connected. Damerell lay in silence for a minute, not even breathing, listening as the intruder dragged himself back to his feet and ran from the office. Damerell got to his feet and staggered to the open door, finding the lighting panel and activating them. He blinked as the lights came on and brought his rifle up reflexively as someone entered the room from the door leading to the cells. It was Eric Kennel, who had been in the brig since the Counsellor had floored him. His nose was still bandaged.

“Hyou safed hmy lifve,” he mumbled, obviously still in pain.

“Mm?” Damerell asked, his brain having shut down some time ago.

“Don’ hyou thin hyou ort to gho hafter ‘im?” the auditor suggested and Damerell, whose brain was happy to receive instructions from any source at this point, turned around and staggered out of the door, following the blood tracks on the floor. They led to the entrance to a Jeffries tube. Crouching, Damerell prepared to open the panel, staying to one side.

 

Hill cursed in frustration as the turbolift vanished upwards and got to his feet. He was about to leave the area when movement caught his eye. It was the doors to some nearby quarters closing. Frowning, as he was the only member of the crew at this section of the deck, he quickly tapped the control to open the door and stepped in.

“Who’s in there?” he called into the gloom. A movement caught his eye, not the silvery-grey of Starfleet issue EVA suits but a bulkier, black version. He sprang at the intruder, intending to knock the slender figure off his feet, but instead found himself being practically caught out of mid-air and catapulted him across the room, and he realised as he flew through the air that the intruder could not be human.

He smashed into the bedside cabinet and got to his feet as quickly as he could, wincing at the pain in his side. The intruder started across the quarters in the semi-dark, tripping over an upturned chair and cursing. Hill finally thought to touch the communicator panel on his wrist.

“Hill to security, there’s an intruder in Damerell’s quarters, sector 33.”

“Sorry sir, we’re on the other side of the deck.”

“Spiffing,” he muttered, then began to wonder whether he had been spending too much time around Cholmondely-Smythe.

The intruder got to his feet and Hill chased him out of the room, to catch sight of him heading for a nearby Jeffries tube entrance. If he managed to get it open, it could expose the entire rest of the ship to vacuum, drawing all the air out. Hill took off like a spitball from a peashooter in a vain attempt to prevent this. The intruder desperately tapped at the override panel.

 

Damerell opened the Jeffries tube and peered down the yawning hole. There was no sign of the intruder and he sighed with relief. He was about to turn away when he was abruptly buffeted by a gale that seemed to be howling into the tube. A head appeared at the hole just as the wind stopped, and Damerell, more than a little delirious by this point, pointed the phaser rifle directly at the forehead of the intruder, whose faceplate matched the rest of his body suit in that it was totally black, and screamed, “Move one millimetre you complete bastard and I’ll bloody disintegrate you!!!!!!”

The figure froze as a voice echoed up the shaft behind him.

“Damerell, is that you?” Hill shouted up, scrambling around the figure and got to his feet. He eyed the swaying navigator and gently removed the rifle from his loose grasp, aiming it at the black-clad intruder.

“Damerell, are you okay?”

“Mm?”

Hill glanced at him, noting for the first time the blood seeping from his shoulder.

“You’ve been injured!”

Damerell frowned uncertainly, looking down at his sodden uniform.

“Oh yeah!” he said in an amazed tone, then he gave a little whimper, his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed.

“Bloody brilliant,” Hill muttered, prodding the comatose navigator with his foot. He thumbed his communicator. “Hill to anyone who wants to listen, medical and security teams to deck five, section four.” Suddenly remembering the intruder, he spun to point the rifle back at the figure, who had been about to start trying to tiptoe away.

“Freeze dirtbag!” Hill snarled, and then paused to cough as the snarling caught the back of his throat. He continued in a more normal voice. “Take off the mask!”

Reluctantly the figure removed the oddly shaped helmet, to reveal the bright blue features and shocking white hair of an Andorian. Hill stared at him, feeling a small shock of recognition.

“There’s no need to be nasty,” the Andorian tried to say soothingly, but it came out in a rather quavering tone.

“I know you,” Hill muttered, and suddenly it hit him. “You’re M’cus Hasbean, the Andorian scientist! The Andorian government’s put a price out on your head for your capture ever since you disappeared from one of their research facilities with quite a lot of expensive equipment!”

Hasbean preened slightly. “Yes, well, it’s nice to be recognised.”

The pounding of footsteps heralded the arrival of a security team, followed by Cholmondely-Smythe, Jackson and Kennel.

“Jolly good show, Number One,” Cholmondely-Smythe congratulated him, “Caught the saboteur, what?”

“Actually, Damerell did most of the catching,” Hill admitted, just as Hasbean squeaked out, “Saboteur? Me?! I can assure you I am most certainly not that!”

“You were caught on deck seven!” Hill pointed out, and Hasbean gave him a withering look.

“Oh yes, having just planted a bomb on that very deck I decided to hang around to see what would happen,” he said sarcastically.

“Last place we’d look?” Hill suggested, but Cholmondely-Smythe shook his head.

“No Number One, our jolly old saboteur would know we’d be all over that deck, doing repairs and searching and whatnot. Not to mention that I really think the saboteur is more likely to have been engaging in a firefight with Mr Damerell at around the time you were chasing Dr Hasbean here, given that he was trying to kill Mr Kennel.”

Kennel gasped. “How could you know that?” Cholmondely-Smythe gave him a look that far surpassed the merely withering one Hasbean had used on Hill before.

“Because, my dear Auditor, the saboteur has already murdered every one of you associates.”

The auditor gasped again, in shock and horror. “They’re all dead?” he asked, then began to blubber messily, tears and snot dripping down his face.

“Nice one Captain,” Hill said over the sound of the auditor’s sobs.

Jackson broke the awkward moment by finally noticing Damerell lying bleeding on the floor.
“What happened to him?” he asked curiously, kneeling beside him.

“Dunno,” Hill replied. “He was already bleeding when he stopped Hasbean.”

“Thanks awfully for reminding me, Number One,” Cholmondely-Smythe gestured to the guards, who surrounded the Andorian.

A medical team rolled up a stretched and Damerell was lifted onto it. They were about to take him away when Cholmondely-Smythe stopped them. He delicately rubbed one finger into a patch of blood on the navigator’s uniform.

“Does this look like Andorian blood to you, Number One?”

Hill shrugged. “I’ve never seen Andorian blood, so I really couldn’t say sir.”

“Well it jolly well doesn’t look like it to me! In fact, I think this is Orion blood!”

Hill frowned. “The Mahkarowni?”

“I’m not sure,” Cholmondely-Smythe waved the medical team away. “Commander, what can you tell me about our renegade scientist?”

Hill thought. “Not much else, really, sir. He’s one of Andor’s most brilliant scientists but he’s erratic, and when their government refused to fund his latest work, he went renegade. Rumour has it he’s sold the technology to the Orions…” he trailed off.

“Quite,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered. “So now the Orions want him back, and they’re not afraid to kill to get him.” He straightened, coming to a decision. “It’s not safe for him on board, and it’s not safe for anyone else while he is on board. Can you think of a solution?”

“Um, well…” Hill stammered.

“It’s quite simple,” Cholmondely-Smythe told him. “We send the Golden Goose away before the foxes arrive to fight over him!”

Hill gave him an odd look. “Sir?” he asked cautiously.

“I mean we send him off the ship in a shuttle!” Cholmondely-Smythe said, exasperated.

“Oh!”

 

A shot while later, Damerell sat huddled miserably in the back of the shuttlecraft, alongside the silent figure of M’cus Hasbean. In the front of the shuttle, Counsellor Hill and Colonel Klumpf were at the controls. Cholmondely-Smythe had ordered the two of them to take the shuttle Bateman and Hasbean and get as far away from the crippled Psycho towards the regular shipping lanes as fast as they could. When he had heard about the mission, Damerell had demanded that he be allowed to accompany them. As he had said, “Anything to get me away from this ship!!!” The Counsellor, who had begun to worry about the navigator’s mental health, had advised the Captain to allow him to go, despite having one arm in a sling.

Klumpf had again misinterpreted his intentions and was singing his praises as a valiant hero once more, and had been for the past half an hour. Damerell really wanted him to stop, and was contemplating shooting the Klingon in the back with the phaser in the storage locker under his seat. He remembered that Klumpf was a Liaison Officer, so perhaps shooting him wasn’t the best thing to do.

Counsellor Hill glanced back at them.

“Everything okay back there?” she asked.

“Fabulous,” Hasbean said dryly. “But the service is a little shabby.”

“Silence traitorous scum!” Klumpf thundered.

“Ooh, get him,” Hasbean muttered, but quietly.

They flew on in silence for a few more minutes, when Klumpf suddenly looked round at the back of the craft.

“Can you hear that?” he asked, a second before an explosion rocked the vessel and deafened them all. Damerell found himself being thrown to the floor, Hasbean beside him.

“Warning, containment field breached,” the computer said dispassionately. “Loss of containment integrity in thirty minutes.”

Counsellor Hill got to her feet as Klumpf stirred. Damerell was already sat on the floor, rocking gently. She ran through the hatchway to the very rear and examined the consoles there, most of which were smoking. There was a large hole in the deck next to the containment housing of the shuttle’s small warp core.

“Hmm,” she commented.

Lifting the floor grill-plating she rolled her sleeves back to begin digging around in the circuits there, finally managing to get one of the darkened consoles to partially light up.

“Warning, loss of containment integrity in twenty-five minutes,” the computer sing-songed.

Klumpf joined her. “What is the problem?”

“It’s been sabotaged!” Hill frowned at the flickering console, giving it a good, hard bang on the side. The flickering stabilised, though whether due to the bang fixing a loose connection or simply through fear of the Counsellor, Klumpf couldn’t say. She began to tap the controls, but quickly gave up in disgust.

“Someone set this thing to go off a certain time after the shuttle was launched. They’ve taken out the air recyclers as well, so we’re running out of air!”

“We’ve got to escape before it goes up!” Hasbean shouted, diving for the spacesuit closet. He yanked the door open and was promptly floored as the suits fell out on top of him. Damerell crawled over on his hands and knees, grabbing one of the suits.

“Um,” he said, holding it up. Through one sleeve was a hole he could stick his finger through. Hill grabbed the closet door and examined it, finding several small holes where shrapnel from the explosion had entered.

“Oh.”

They spent the next few minutes feverishly assembling all the undamaged sections of suits they could, thankful that the suits were modular one-size-fits-all and could be broken apart into components. They examined their spoils. Four torsos, three helmets, seven arms and nine legs. Finally Hasbean spoke.

“Since there’s not enough pieces to go around and make four whole suits I vote we leave one of you behind.” Hill rounded on him.

“Well I vote we leave you behind!” she growled. The Andorian looked smug.

“You can’t. I’m a hostage and you have to protect me.”

Hill frowned, then turned to kick seven bells out of an inoffensive but dead control panel.

“Warning, loss of containment in fifteen minutes,” the computer interjected.

“Look…” Damerell began, but got no further as Klumpf slapped him on the back.

“Once again the warrior demonstrates his valour and bravery!” the Klingon roared. “He volunteers to stay behind to allow the rest of us to escape!”

“N…” Damerell began, before collapsing.

“Great!” Hasbean said. “Now let’s get dressed!”

He and Klumpf began to assemble suits for themselves, and the Counsellor bent over Damerell.

“Are you sure?” she asked. She didn’t know this crew very well yet, but she was fairly certain that this wasn’t quite what Damerell had been about to say.

“Nnnn…” he moaned.

She considered the options, then performed mental triage and decided that Damerell was probably beyond saving anyway. She quickly joined the others and a minute later they were ready to leave the shuttle. They left Damerell, Klumpf giving him one last Klingon salute, and stepped into the airlock. It cycled and Hill aimed them in the direction she knew the Psycho was. They fired their small thrusters, leaving the shuttle and its heroic occupant behind.

 

“Mister Hill, I want that dastardly saboteur, indeed, that despicable murderer found this instant!” Cholmondely-Smythe ordered, pacing the bridge furiously, as he had been doing for the last fifteen minutes. Hill sighed.

“Yes Captain,” he replied, just like the last hundred times Cholmondely-Smythe had demanded the same thing. “But it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are four hundred crew aboard this vessel, many of them inhum… I mean not of Terran origin… well, the first stands about quite a few of the Terran ones, actually…” he was stopped by the look on the Captain’s face, then continued seamlessly, “so I’m somewhat at a loss as to how to track him.”

Cholmondely-Smythe gave up pacing and stood breathing down Hill’s neck at the science console. Hill barely successfully fought the urge to elbow him in the groin.

“Bring up the details of Orion Physiology, there’s a good chap.” Hill obliged, and Cholmondely-Smythe studied them, a thoughtful, constipated look on his face. “Their body temperature is higher than a human’s.”

“Yes, but so are Vulcans and quite a few other species,” Hill pointed out.

“But not exactly ten degrees higher!” Cholmondely-Smythe exclaimed. Hill shrugged.

“Sure, I guess, but he could be hiding by the coolant chambers, or even just by the refrigerators in the galley. He could lower his temperature any number of ways.”

“But his core temperature would barely drop, old bean, whatever he does to disguise the temperature on his frightful extremities,” Cholmondely-Smythe was insistent.

“Performing a directed, controlled scan of every individual on the ship, in depth enough to measure that temperature and assess it for external temperature variations will take hours!”

“It’s our best hope!”

Hill nodded, resigned. He turned back to his console and began working.

Cholmondely-Smythe strode to the centre of the bridge, just in front of his command chair. At last, he thought, things were beginning to swing their way.

“Captain,” Bleep spoke into the quiet of the bridge, “I have lost tight-beam communication with the shuttle.

 

Inside the shuttle Damerell was hammering furiously at the airlock, screaming at them to come back but soon gave up as he realised he was using up all the air. Then he realised he was going to die anyway and started screaming again. Giving up on that when his throat started to hurt he feverishly began assembling parts of suit and produced a complete one except for one arm and a helmet. He attached the least damaged of the parts and searched the lockers for some sort of sealant, eventually finding a pack of chewing gum.

He started chewing determinedly.

 

Drifting slowly further away from the shuttle, the three refugees watched the small white vessel tumble gently through the darkness.

“He was a great man,” Klumpf stated, respect in his voice.

“Er… yeah,” Hill agreed. She fiddled with her suit’s arm communicator panel. A faint beeping caught her attention. She boosted the gain as far as it could go, then dialled out the subspace interference as best as the suit’s feeble system could manage.

“… cho to Shuttle we… ren…vous… position… minutes.”

“I can’t make it out,” she said in frustration. “They can’t move with that hull damage, the ship’ll tear itself apart!”

“I think,” Klumpf muttered, his tone drawing the Counsellor’s instant attention, “we have other problems.”

On the far side of the shuttle, above their relative position, the Sfhagheti broke out of warp and executed a sweeping arc towards the shuttle.

“They’re going in for a closer look,” Counsellor Hill said. The Orion ship paused as its scanners worked over the crippled vessel. Klumpf was about to say something when, with a blinding flash and slightly unsteadily, the Psycho entered the arena, a gaping hole in the saucer section, trailing small pieces of debris as the weakened hull gave way around it.

Speechless they watched as it rounded on the Orion. Only then did an unfamiliar green transporter beam claim them.

 

“Bloody good show Engineer!” Cholmondely-Smythe barked over the intercom to Stark and Barfoot, who had rigged up a ragged collection of forcefields and bulkheads in record time to prevent the stresses of minimum warp from ripping the ship apart. As it was, it had been a close thing.

“Try not to put it under any more stress!” Barfoot replied. He muted the intercom. “You insane ponce,” he added under his breath.

“Sorry old bean,” Cholmondely-Smythe said regretfully, “but that isn’t really possible. Helm, intercept the cad try and keep the breach away from them.”

Wall threw the ship into a banking turn, sheer luck meaning it was perfectly timed to bring the Psycho‘s strongest shields to bear just as the Sfhagheti lashed out with its disruptors.

“Return fire,” Cholmondely-Smythe calmly ordered as the ship rocked around them.

“The breach is weakening!” the duty engineer shouted as the ship vibrated from a glancing strike. The ship began to shudder from rapid, short bursts from the Orion.

“Be so good as to shunt eighty percent power to starboard phasers, return fire with port phasers only.”

Wall turned to look at him. “Sir?”

“Use the starboard phasers on maximum dispersal, but run them at one hundred and ten precent, overheat the blasted coils! Mr Bleep, match their polarity to the Orion’s disruptors, then flip them to the inverse, there’s a good android.”

“A depolarising defense field?” Hill raised his eyebrows, honestly surprised. That was a trick many people were unaware the phasers were capable of. It had its problems, one being that continual usage of the phasers in that way had a tendency to melt the coils. As Bleep implemented the field, the shuddering noticeably diminished.

“Indeed. Number One?”

“I’m reading one lifesign on the shuttle… my readings are distorted for some reason… oh my God!” Hill paled. “It’s on a countdown to detonation.”

“Time?”

“Ten minutes.”

 

The feeling of sudden return of gravity was more than a little nauseating, Counsellor Hill decided as the insides of an alien ship appeared around them. Hasbean obviously agreed as he clutched his stomach and moaned.

“Be ill on me,” Klumpf warned, “and I will kill you.”

“But I’m sick!”

A cough drew their attention to three Andorians holding phasers pointing at them, looking none too happy at being ignored.

“Put them down,” the Counsellor said scornfully. “My name is Lieutenant-Commander Hill of the Federation Starship Psycho and I demand to be taken to your bridge this instant!”

Lowering the phasers with some reluctance. “You are on board the Andorian Defense Fleet Ship Shirtz. M’cus Hasbean, you are under arrest for…”

“Sorry boys,” the Counsellor smiled. “He’s under Starfleet protective custody so you can shove your arrest where, let’s be honest, it’s best kept. Now take me to the bridge!” Despite the situation, she suddenly realised that she was having a whale of a time being nasty.

“Follow us.”

They took them through the corridors to the bridge, which was close enough to suggest that the Shirtz was a small ship. The cramped bridge was quiet, and the viewscreen was displaying the current firefight between the Psycho and the Sfhagheti. The counsellor strode forwards saying, “You have to get involved, help the Psycho out!”

The captain had the decency to look shifty. “Sorry, I can’t. Officially I’m not meant to be here, and if the Orions knew we were, that could mean some serious problems for my Government, which I’m not willing…”

The ship was abruptly thrown violently to the side, with only Hill keeping her feet, already having had enough experience of Wall’s piloting to let it phase her. She glared at the captain as the ops officer reported.

“It’s an Orion scout, Captain. I don’t know how they found us…” The Ops officer looked at the three refugees, her gaze focussing on Hasbean. “He’s still got his helmet on! He’s transmitting a bloody homing beacon!”

Hill smiled. “Looks like they already know you’re here,” she said. “Now get involved!”

“I don’t… I can’t…” the Andorian captain stuttered, so Hill decided to make it easy for him.

“I’m commandeering this vessel in the name of Starfleet, get the hell out of my chair!” She shoved him out of the way and sat in the command seat. “Klumpf, get at the helm, I want someone I can trust there!” The Klingon sat, having stared the Andorian at that position into trouser-dampening terror.

“Evasive,” Hill ordered grimly.

 

The Psycho was starting to become a bit worse for wear, the phasers whining pathetically.

“Sir, I have communication from an unknown vessel that is apparently engaging the Mahkarowni.”

“Put it on then.”

Every eyebrow on the bridge raised at the sight of Counsellor Hill sat in the command chair of an unfamiliar bridge, Klumpf at the helm.

“Captain,” she said without preamble, “the shuttle’s going to explode, and Damerell’s still on board.”

“We’re aware of that, Counsellor,” Cholmondely-Smythe answered, unruffled. “Any suggestions.”

“Actually,” a different voice replied, and Hasbean entered the view, “I think I can help there.”

 

Damerell, having chewed his jaw into aching paralysis, had resorted to kneeling and praying, quietly.

“Seven minutes,” the computer informed him.

“Bugger off,” he replied absently.

“Unable to comply,” the computer said. “Please rephrase your request.”

Damerell began to sob, and was therefore greatly surprised when a swirling blue, sparkling light dissolved him into his component atoms.

 

Hasbean smirked smugly as Damerell’s lifesign signal disappeared from their sensors. “It’s worked!” he said.

“So this… what did you call it?” the Consellor asked.

“A trans-shield anode.”

“Yeah… it lets you beam through shields?”

“Indeed it does. You see normally this is impossible and the subject is invariably killed by the interaction of the beam and shield producing an enormous backwash of energy. The anode, whilst giving the transporter a clearer signal to focus on, also dissipates the energy harmlessly away.”

Hill uncrossed her eyes and glanced at the viewscreen. “What’s wrong with the Psycho?” she asked.

“It seems to be losing pitch control,” Klumpf reported. “I have a faint message on emergency channel… they have been struck by another subspace pulse as when they left Simper One, are attempting to regain control.”

Hill swung to glare at Hasbean. “That first pulse was you beaming on board the Psycho as we left the station, wasn’t it?” The scientist nodded. “And you knew this would happen!?”

The Andorian frowned. “You wanted to save your friend, didn’t you?” Hill opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, then slapped him wordlessly. Ignoring his whines, she turned back to Klumpf.

“The Orions are closing in on the Psycho,” he said.

“Then intercept them!” she ordered, giving the Andorian captain such a fierce glare when he made to protest that he hid behind the science officer.

 

Damerell rematerialised about a foot off the deck, falling to the deck with a heavy thump beside his empty gerbil cage. The ship rolled under Damerell, making him feel seasick. Glancing painfully around, he saw that he was inside a shuttlecraft. What was going on? How had he got here? Encumbered by his semi-complete EVA suit he struggled to rise, but was abruptly aided by a hand grabbing the back of his clothes and hurling him across the cabin.

“Ow!” he exclaimed as his attacked closed the gap between them. His jaw dropped in amazement. It was Lieutenant Purveyance.

“You’re dead!” he shouted, and Purveyance growled.

“No, the real Linda Purveyance is dead, folded in half in a storage locker on Simper One. Using his hand in the transporter accident made it look like I was dead, so I could look for the trans-shield anode or Hasbean in relative safety. But you have foiled me at every turn, and now I’m going to sort that out!!!”

The huge man wrenched a console out of the bulkhead, leaving decking and titanium strewn everywhere, and prepared to drop it on Damerell who scrambled back in terror, having no idea what the madman was talking about. As he did so he planted on foot on a steel rod that had fortuitously fallen over the gerbil cage. The rod pivoted up and connected with a satisfying crunch between Purveyance’s legs. The big man’s eyes crossed and he collapsed, the console falling on top of him. The rod fell back, smashing the gerbil cage. Damerell stood up trembling, then, having been to the Wall school of fighting, planted a boot in Purveyance’s side before making for the hatch.

 

“Bugger!!!” Wall screamed as he fought to stabilise the bucking ship.

“Language helmsman!” Cholmondely-Smythe reprimanded him, sternly. “What is going on, Mr Hill?”

“It’s another pulse sir, from out of nowhere just like last time. I don’t understand.” This time, however, having noted all the major problems the pulse had caused before, it was a relatively short time before Hill had the Psycho at least stable again.

“Shields functioning on less than minimal,” Bleep said, and Hill tapped a few controls.

“Sensors back up, barely,” he said, and the viewscreen flickered on just in time to see the Mahkarowni bearing down on them, gunports glowing. Cholmondely-Smythe hesitated. There didn’t seem to be any options.

A hail of blue charges impacted on the upper surface of the Orion as an Andorian patrol vessel screamed through the viewer, making the Orion furiously turn to give chase.

“That’s my great niece,” Hill gave a small smile, and then cursed as a shot from the Sfhagheti made the Psycho tilt alarmingly, and his console suddenly became a nightmare of flashing lights.

“Weapons back up,” Hill shouted, and without waiting for orders both he and Wall launched separate volleys of phasers and torpedoes, forcing the Sfhagheti to withdraw. Crippled the starship may be, but she was still a match for the smaller Orion vessel.

“Spiffing,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered, swallowing hard. “Wall, um…” he frowned at the ensign who had taken Damerell’s place at navigation, who hadn’t actually registered on him until now, “Dreadfully sorry, got no clue whatsoever who you are, old chap.”

“Ensign Stocks, sir,” the young officer replied.

“Marvellous. You two, take evasive as necessary, keep that breach protected! Number One, do we have Damerell?”

Hill had forgotten that detail in the midst of all the excitement. “Um… yeah, I’m picking his biosign up… he’s in the shuttlebay and…” he drew in a breath, “he’s being chased by our intruder!”

“Are you sure?!”

“Definitely, the body temperature matches exactly.”

The Captain hung on as Wall threw the ship into a dangerously tight turn with a cry of, “Whee!!!”

 

“Uh,” Counsellor Hill muttered to Klumpf as she stood by his chair, “we’re awfully close to the Bateman.” They had spend the last few minutes desperately outrunning the more heavily armed Mahkarowni.

“Yes. I am testing the mettle of our adversary.”

“Right. Only, according to my calculations, it’s gonna go up at any moment.”

Klumpf executed one last flypast then, as the Mahkarowni swept around behind them, kicked the engines into high gear. Behind them, the shuttle exploded, severely damaging the Orion. The Shirtz was buffeted by the shockwave, and the ship was plunged into darkness.

 

Damerell was ploughed into the deck by the force of the impact with Purveyance.

“You fool!” the Orion screamed. “That anode was priceless! My mission here is ruined!”

Damerell huddled into a tight ball. When it became apparent that he wasn’t about to die a horrible and painful death, he uncurled slightly to see Purveyance walking towards the shuttle with a phaser out. Uncertainly, Damerell got to his feet and scuttled over, peering around the hatchway. Purveyance was aiming the phaser directly at the containment housing. The huge Orion glanced over his shoulder and grinned evilly.

“I never really expected to live through this assignment anyway,” he said, and fired the phaser. The beam began to cut through the plating. Damerell, without a second’s hesitation, turned and ran. A few seconds later there was an explosion similar to that on board the Bateman. He threw himself to the floor, looking up as the body of Purveyance was thrown out of the hatchway to land in a jumbled heap. The access door to the shuttlebay opened, to reveal Barfoot.

“You haven’t buggered up another shuttle, have you?” he asked, running in.

“Wha…?” Damerell managed.

“I detected the explosion and came to see what was going on.”

The computer voice of the shuttle echoed around the bay.

“Warning, core breach in one minute.”

Barfoot gave Damerell a disgusted look. “Honestly, it never rains but it pours with you, does it?” He tapped his communicator. “Barfoot to bridge.”

“Cholmondely-Smythe here.”

“I’m with Mister Damerell in the shuttlebay, we really need to get the doors open and the shields down before one of the shuttles in here goes nova on us.”

“Understood.”

Barfoot dragged Damerell to the control room and quickly released the doors, without bothering to activate the containment field. Everything not bolted down, including Purveyance’s body, was dragged from the bay. The shuttle just sat there, ominously. “Hmm,” Barfoot frowned at the console. “We’ll never get enough of a push with the landing tractors the way they are,” he mused. “I know.”

He quickly made a few modifications, then called the bridge.

“Ready when you are, bridge.”

“Spiffing,” Cholmondely-Smythe responded. “Shields down on my mark… mark!”
Quickly, Barfoot implemented the automated tractor sequence he had programmed. Two beams picked the shuttle up, lifting it into the air while simultaneously two others swung in a wide arc, slamming into the side of the shuttle and sending it careering out of the bay doors like a baseball. There was a brief flicker as the shuttle passed the shield perimeter and they were reactivated. Shortly afterward, it detonated.

 

“Captain’s Log, Supplemental. After the near destruction of the Mahkarowni and the right ‘what for’ the Psycho gave the Sfhagheti, the Orion commander has agreed to a ceasefire, which I can tell you is a great relief. We have tractored aboard the badly damaged Andorian patrol craft and collected our crew members. Damerell has been rushed to Sickbay, where he is receiving the best care Jackson’s staff can prevent the doctor from supplying. As it turns out, Hasbean bribed the shopkeeper into giving the anode-cum-gerbil cage to anyone from the first Federation starship to dock at the station. It was also the only one of its kind. All in all, it’s turned out jolly well, I think.”

“Gentlemen,” Cholmondely-Smythe overrode the argument between the Orion commander and the Andorian captain. “I’m frightfully bored by all this. You’ve both behaved jolly badly. The simple fact is, Commander,” he said to the Orion, “I’m not going to turn him over to you right at this moment because you put an agent on my ship who nearly killed us all.”

The Orion looked innocent. “What agent?”

“The one currently floating around outside my ship. Slap on the wrist for you, you naughty great hulking alien. As for you,” he turned to the Andorian, “I feel that, since the Andorians lost him once, I can’t worry that they might lose him again. Therefore I am taking him into Federation custody for trial at a later date. Now both of you get off my ship!”

That dealt with, he returned to the bridge and ordered the Psycho back to Simper One for repairs.

 

Damerell was going to make the most of this leave time. Okay, it had only been a few days since the last one, but it had been a rather hectic few days. He had spent the last couple of them in sickbay, huddled under the sheets of the biobed. Now, however, he was going to relax and enjoy himself.

The last thing he wanted, then, was for three security guards to jump him and pin him to the floor as he and Wall strolled along the corridors of Simper One.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Wall demanded as Damerell was dragged to his feet and handcuffed.

“We were told he was dangerous,” one of the guards replied, “that he beat up an Orion security officer when he was here before.”

“Yeah, he did,” Wall said, making the guards glance at each other nervously and tighten the handcuffs. “But why are you arresting him now?”

“He jumped bail.”

“No I didn’t!” Damerell wailed. “Lieutenant Purveyance posted…” he trailed off.

“We don’t know who that was, but it wasn’t Purveyance. We found him in a two-by-four locker a couple of days ago. So I’m afraid, technically, you jumped bail.”

“But I didn’t know!!” Damerell began to struggle, and one of the guards slapped a hypospray into him, making his eyes cross and a happy smile spread over his face before he crumpled to the floor.

“Don’t worry mate!” Wall shouted as they dragged the navigator away, “We’ll sort it out!”

 

Far away, deep within hostile territory, Commander Shitake of the Orion Destroyer Sfhagheti stood before his employer.

“Stupid men,” the shadowy figure said in disgust. She stepped further into the light to reveal a considerable expanse of emerald green skin covered sparingly with skimpy clothing, luxurious black hair and bright blue eyes.

“Please, Mistress, forgive me,” Shitake pleaded. “I will prove myself!”

“Not in a month o’bluidy Sundays, lad,” the figure replied in a strange accent. “I mean… no.”

In a lightning-quick movement, she pulled a miniature disruptor out from the gauzy folds of her clothing and disintegrated the Orion captain, who didn’t even have time to scream. As she holstered the disruptor another figure stepped out of the shadows. It was another Orion male, smaller than Shitake but with a black ponytail interrupting the smoothness of his otherwise bald head.

“Now what?” he asked, moving behind her and touching his lips to her shoulder.

“Now, Cremini, the plan continues,” she said with a small smile. “The trans-shield anode would have been useful but not essential. The Federation will never know what hit them.”