Star Trek: ALL - Seven Deadly Sins (46 page)

She kept staring at the hatch where Locarno had gone, feeling suddenly alone, as if she were the only remaining voice of reason on the bridge. Walsh, however, quashed that voice before she could allow herself to raise it.

“Organize a boarding party,” he said. “Take Harlow along and see if he can get
Reston
maneuvering under her own power. If not, we’ll have to rig her for towing.”

“That’ll slow us down quite a bit, Skipper,” Reed cautioned. “We’ll be lucky to make three-quarters impulse power hooked up to something that big.”

“It’s good enough to get us out of the Castis system before Starfleet arrives.”

“What then?”

“We stow her someplace while I figure that out,” he snapped, losing patience with her. “Any more questions?”

Reed lowered her eyes. “No, sir.”

“Good. Then carry out your orders.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Her team had already assembled in the transporter room. Three of them—Thayer, Massey, and Harlow—had left the bridge with Reed, taking just enough time to suit up and load weapons before heading down to join the others she had selected for the boarding party. James Casari, a mate from engineering, was there to assist Harlow with
Reston
’s critical systems, while Nicole Carson came over from sickbay to handle the medical emergencies that Reed prayed would never happen.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Reed said to everyone as she entered, trying to lighten the mood. A few of them attempted a smile before immersing themselves back in their preparations, checking their gear packs and zipping up their envirosuits. “Sorry there isn’t time for a full briefing, but I think you all have a pretty good idea what we’re dealing with. Everything else we know is on your padds, along with your assignments. From what we can tell, there
is
some atmosphere on board, probably left over from when the ship went dark—but until we can get life support fully functional, everybody breathes through their packs. I don’t want someone opening a door and walking into a vacuum.”

While Reed was talking, Carson started making the rounds with a hypospray. She used some unlabeled vials from her medkit, attaching a single dose for each person and injecting it through their necks before they put their helmets on. “It’s a combo stimulant and immunization booster,” the medic explained as she injected Reed. “I wasn’t sure what might be floating around in there, so I added protection against every bug I could think of.”

“Thayer could have used some of that on shore leave,” Massey joked, jabbing the young ops officer in the shoulder as the others laughed. “I told him not to mess around with those Orion girls.”

“Yeah,” Casari agreed. “I just hope the Borg didn’t catch any of that action.”

“That’s more action than any of
you
seen lately,” Harlow tossed in as he got his dose, winking at Thayer before locking his helmet in place. Breath fogged his faceplate for a moment while his airflow started, his voice muffled when he turned and spoke to Reed. “So what’s our entry point?”

“Topside, main bridge,” she said. “We’ll work our way down from there, staying together until we’ve verified the ship is secure. After that, we’ll split up and complete our respective tasks: life support, integrity fields, propulsion—in that order.”

“What about the computer core?”

It was Nick Locarno who asked the question. Reed looked over and saw him standing at the entry hatch, wearing an envirosuit, with his helmet tucked under his right arm. He walked in as the others started hauling themselves up to the transporter pads, ignoring the hostility they directed toward him.

“There’s no telling how the Borg might have it rigged,” he finished. “And you’ll have a tougher time with the other systems without it.”

Reed folded her arms. “I don’t recall sending you an invitation to the party.”

“I figured you might be short on volunteers.”

“No argument there,” she said quietly, making sure the others didn’t hear. “So what’s the deal, Locarno? I thought you said this was a bad idea.”

“It is. You know it as well as I do.”

“What I think has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re leading this mission,” he reminded her. “It has everything to do with it.”

She sighed, mostly because Locarno was right. Seeing the others, who looked to her for confidence, didn’t make it any easier.

“Walsh won’t back down,” Reed told him. “He’s leveraged himself too much with this operation. If it doesn’t pay off in a major way, it’ll ruin him. I won’t let that happen.”

“Even if it gets you killed?”

“We’d be dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for him,” Reed said. She knew how it sounded, but all she could do was try to make herself believe it. “Besides, if this is a suicide mission, why do you want to come along?”

“Because you need me,” Locarno said, masking the sentiment with a show of feigned arrogance. “And because I like the odds better with you around. If anybody can get me through a crazy stunt like this, it’s you.”

Reed studied him for a moment, still not quite sure what to make of him. In the end she decided to take him at his word, and motioned for Carson to come over with her medkit.

“This is
my
mission,” Reed warned him. “You do what I tell you, when I tell you. If you have a problem with that, it ends right here.”

Locarno saluted. “I’m all yours, Skipper.”

Reed nodded at Carson, who jammed him with her hypospray.

“Then get your ass in gear, Locarno.”

They gave each other half a smile. Locarno then slipped his helmet over his head, snapping it onto his collar as Reed did the same with hers. The two of them walked up to the transporter pads together, Reed making sure that all of her people and equipment were in place and ready to go. They gave her a thumbs-up all around, the compartment charged by their adrenaline—so potent that it seeped through the fabric of Reed’s envirosuit, making her skin tingle with a static charge. She turned toward the crewman manning the transport console, only to find him staring back at her with a blank, haunted expression.

It was the look of someone who didn’t expect to see them again.

“Energize,” Reed said.

Fear asserted itself like some ravenous force, an all-consuming thing that started to devour her from the inside out. At first Reed thought it was a manifestation of the transport process, spiking her consciousness during those few milliseconds when matter and energy converged; but then it became
real
—as tangible as the deck that materialized beneath her feet and the ceiling plates that sublimated above her head. It sparked a panic that gripped her central nervous system and spread outward to her extremities: evil as a physical presence, rising up from the depths. Reed felt it turn to liquid as it poured out of her, filling her helmet and forcing itself back in, her blood laden with heavy elements as it re-formed within her veins. She thrashed and convulsed, trying not to drown, but there was no self for her to
save—only a residual image within the matter stream, utterly isolated, utterly alone.

Until reality emerged from the other side of a shimmering curtain, which tore the fear from her and cast it to the corners of
Reston
’s bridge. Reed culled its presence at the edge of her vision, a disembodied legion that churned and howled in mad protest. Even more hellish was the
emptiness
it left behind, as if it had taken a piece of her—the very essence of her soul, which stared back at her like a reflection through smoke. Reed lurched toward it, frantic to take that piece back, but the thing recoiled from her as if scalded. Vaulting itself to the turbolift, it slid down the shaft and into the deepest recesses of the ship—into the hiding places where it could lie in wait for her, eager to dine on what was left.

“Jenna?”

Her surroundings quickly snapped into focus, off a wave of dizziness that receded at the mention of her name. Reed found herself leaning against the bridge rail, hanging on with one hand and holding a phaser in the other. She didn’t even remember drawing the weapon, just the terror that now seemed more like a faint echo—aftershocks from the trauma of being jammed back into her own body.

“Jenna, are you okay?”

Reed looked up and discovered Nick Locarno hovering over her, his features pallid under the glow of his helmet lamp. He stood by, wary of the phaser—and with good reason. Before she slipped the weapon back into its holster, she saw that it was set to maximum. A single shot might have blown a hole clear through the overhead.

“Yeah,” she replied, steadying herself. Locarno also seemed to be shaking it off, like the rest of the boarding party—at least in the brief flashes Reed could see, which sliced across the confined space in a kinetic interplay of incandescent beams. She planted her boots firmly on the deck, magnetic soles holding her down in the disorienting environment of zero g. “That was a rough beam-out. Did everyone make it through okay?”

“I think so,” Rayna Massey answered, her voice sounding hollow between labored breaths. “What the hell
was
that? It was like going through a goddamned shredder.”

Reed gave Locarno an inquiring glance as he helped her up.

“Why do you keep thinking
I
would know?”

“You’re the gridstalker,” she offered. “Use your imagination.”

“Right now I can imagine quite a bit,” Locarno said, taking a look around. “Between you and me, this place gives me the creeps.”

Reed felt it as well, the afterimage of her terror playing itself out again. The abject
darkness
that enveloped her only magnified its presence, which she sensed in every groan of the deck and every shudder of the bulkheads. A permanent midnight had descended on
Reston
’s bridge—a bleak, unnatural thing captured like a still life in pitch black, pressing against her with claustrophobic intensity.

The helmet lamps did little to disperse that unsettling notion. Harsh, sterile lights fell upon relics that served up snapshots of what had been, but was no longer: a discarded padd lying on the floor, an empty command chair awaiting a captain who would never return. Ghosts of a life all but forgotten—until the boarding party’s arrival stirred them from slumber.

“Nothing has changed,” Chris Thayer observed. “It’s like they just got up and left.”

“Damn strange,” Massey added. “No sign of the Borg.”

“They probably didn’t have much use for a bridge,” Tristan Harlow said. “Once they took the ship, control would be decentralized. They wouldn’t need to come up here.”

“Can you get us some lights from up here?” Reed asked him.

“If they didn’t sever the auxiliary.” Harlow motioned for James Casari to accompany him, then pushed off and floated over to the engineering station. While the two of them broke into the console, the others started fanning out across the bridge, securing their equipment and getting ready to settle in for the long haul.

Reed, meanwhile, activated her minicom and opened a channel.

“Celtic,
advance team,” she signaled, listening intently to the crackle that came through the tinny speakers in her helmet. “Are you getting this?”

There was enough of a delay to make both her and Locarno nervous, but after a few moments Evan Walsh answered.
“Reading . . . 
Jenna,
” he said, his words barely audible above all the interference.
“What . . . situation . . . over there?
”

“We’re safe,” she reported. Even though Walsh sounded light-years
away, it was a tremendous relief to have contact with the outside world. “Had some bumps, but we all arrived in one piece.”

“Totally lost you . . . sensors . . . can’t pinpoint . . . exact location.”

“We’re setting up operations on the bridge right now,” Reed told him. “Harlow is trying to get us some power. After that, we’ll head belowdecks and get to work.”

“Any sign . . . crew?”

Locarno’s grave expression reflected her own thinking.

“Not yet,” she said, “but they’re here—somewhere.”

Walsh trailed off into a disconcerting silence, punctuated by ebbs of static.

“Very well,”
he replied.
“Check in . . . thirty minutes . . . keep advised . . . status.”

“Thirty minutes,” Reed affirmed. “Acknowledged.”

“Careful . . . Jenna.”

“Aye, Skipper.” She paused a moment. “You too.”

The channel fell dormant.

Reed closed her eyes and gathered herself together. She made sure the others didn’t see—except for Locarno, who gave her the space she needed. When she opened her eyes again, he was looking the other way, allowing her to project an appearance of command, even though they both knew it was an illusion. Reed only hoped it would last long enough to get this thing done.

She managed a few steps, boots clanking hard against the deck, and spoke up with all the authority she could muster: “Any luck, Harlow?”

“Don’t need any,” Harlow replied as he arose from the engineering console. “Not when you’ve got talent.”

He then touched the interface panel, and the emergency lights started to click on. They flickered in procession, forming a perimeter near the floor of the bridge that encircled the boarding party in a dim but welcome glow. Everyone took the opportunity to look up and around, to see whatever it was they hadn’t seen before—but then found themselves completely unprepared for what had been hiding under the cover of night.

Locarno saw it first, following its paths across the deck and along the walls: darkened smears, black but not
quite
black—bold, garish strokes that could have been left by some large brush, rendering a
macabre pastiche of abstract art. Leading up to the turbolift doors, however, the strokes metastasized into splatters, hinting at their sinister origins.

Casari grimaced. “What
is
that?”

Massey, no stranger to combat, knew in a heartbeat.

“It’s blood,” she said.

Nobody spoke of it. There was only the urgency of getting
out,
traded in anxious, knowing glances as everyone waited for Tristan Harlow to pry open the turbolift doors. When that was finished, they proceeded cautiously, each of them sidestepping blood trails as they filed toward the exit, not daring to tread where someone had fallen.