Finished up Chapter Four tonight. I figured out if the only thing on TV to watch is the Oscars, I write faster.
---------------
Chapter FourThe Klingons burst out of the airlock, disruptors ready. There was the usual exchange of hand signals, the long seconds of waiting. No threat presented itself.
“Looks like a a maintenance tunnel, Lieutenant.” Meran had already traded his disruptor for his tricorder. “Power relays all through the walls.”
Leral nodded and holstered her weapon.
“Getting good readings on internal layout.” Huk stated.
“Fascinating, I’m certain.” K’tal growled. He and Rinbar covered the tunnel approaches.
Leral glared at the Ensign. He smiled wide enough that she could see it through his helmet, then turned away.
“It seems like the whole thing is built around a giant cargo chamber.” Huk continued. She was doing a better job at ignoring K’tal than Leral herself was. Leral was beginning to envy her. “Getting high power readings from that area, and it seems like the propulsion system is linked to it somehow.”
“Probably converts some of its food into fuel.” Leral said. "Can you locate the command center?"
"No." She confessed. "There doesn't seem to be any control circuitry that I can locate."
Leral nodded, turned to Meran. "Life signs?"
"None really." He answered. "Some ambiguous readings, but nothing background radiation couldn't account for."
Leral frowned. She doubted the presence of life. The hatch they'd came through and the tunnels they stood in disproved an old theory about the stone eaters being some kind of spacefaring creature and the interior held no atmosphere. There might be something new aboard, she supposed. It might even be hostile, but that was why she'd brought Marines.
In any case, there was only a single way to find out. She keyed her transmitter.
“Leral to Ra’dok.”
“
Here, Lieutenant.” Static marred the Warrant Officer’s voice, but Leral could understand him.
“We’re inside, no hostile contact. Proceeding with mission.”
“
Under...”
Leral’s earphones fizzed, cutting the shuttle pilot off. The same alloys that made the sop’nagh impervious to scans were interfering with communications, but they were fortunate that they could talk to Ra’dok at all.
“This tunnel lead to the propulsion areas?” She asked.
Huk answered. “Yes. That way.”
The party advanced down the corridor, Marines in the lead.
* * *
K'tal halted progress with a quick hand signal. Leral could only see hints of the chamber ahead of him. She wanted to see more.
She crept towards the Marine as quietly as her spacesuit and magnetic boots would allow.
"What is it?" She realized, suddenly, that the new chamber was not built along the same axis of 'up' and down' as the access tunnel.
"This area is very open." K'tal grumbled. There was a sudden professionalism in his voice.
"Sweep it, then. Use caution."
Behind his glassy faceplate, the Ensign grinned. "Yes, Lieutenant."
K'tal motioned for Rinbar and the two Marines charged forward, rifles to their shoulders, their movements swift and predatory. Their boots slowed them down the little but they covered each other well. Leral let their competence comfort her as they left her sight. Being able to take care of himself probably wasn't one of K'tal's failings.
They returned quickly.
"The area is clear. There is no threat to your technicians." The Ensign reported. Rinbar stood off behind him, looking about nervously.
"Good." Leral answered coldly.
"There's some kind of access panel nearby." The Marine continued.
"Which way?"
"Either way. This chamber loops around on itself." K'tal chuckled.
Again the group advanced. Leral's stomach lurched as she walked toward's the large chamber's 'floor'. The distortion of perspective inherent to zero-g operations was unsettling to many Klingons; she was no exception.
"This room is between the storage area and the propulsion system. It's built around the tube that connects them" Huk clarified, staring at her tricorder. "Layout is similar to a primitive space station..."
"She's trying to say we're on the cieling." K'tal barked.
"Yes." Huk agreed.
Leral nodded and opened her eyes. When the group had found the 'floor', she closed them again, trying to imagine she was somewhere flat.
The access panel was easy to find. Wide, and festooned with controls, it sat before a rather massive window. The tube Huk has spoke was visible through the 'glass', connecting with the wall of what was obviously the storage are--or the stomach. As Leral watched, bits of the tube turned a blazing red, and a spiderweb of patterns on the hold bulkhead were defined in crimsoned. Then the effect faded.
"It just fired it's plasma." Huk offered.
Leral smiled, nodded. The spectacle was repeated in blue, though the color was less intense, the effect more sustained, and the patterns on the bulkhead of a different arrangement.
Then, Leral realized, it wasn't really a spectacle. If the energy pathways were visible, disruptions would be easy to spot. She smiled.
"You can reroute the power flow from this panel." She theorized, letting her fingers drift across the controls. "Just look up, see where things are going wrong, and divert around it."
"Our Chief Engineer might call that lazy." Huk grinned. Leral chuckled.
"Can you get us into the system?"
"If it's no more secure than the hatch, yes. It might be hard to translate what it tells us, though, and...I'm not detecting the same kind of control circuitry that was in the hatch."
"See what you can do."
"Yes, My Lord."
"Lieutenant..." Meran called. The male scientist had been staring at his tricorder, a puzzled frown visible beyond his faceplate. Leral went to him, curious.
"I've figured out why I couldn't pinpoint the control circuitry." He explained.
"And?" Out of the corner of her eye, Leral noted the marines taking up standard defensive positions. She hadn't ordered it; it pleased her that she hadn't had too.
"The control pathways are organic." Meran continued. "I was scanning for electronics so I didn't notice them. There's an extensive nerve system running throughout the stone eater, and there's a huge chunk of organic matter under this floor. It's electrically active."
"So we're..." Leral began.
"...standing on it's brain. The access panel is directly linked to it."
Leral's eyes widened and she spun towards Huk. The younger woman had backed away from the panel, which was now ablaze with all manner of light.
"I.." Huk explained. "...have access."
A flash of light blinded Leral, and there was a sudden sense of flying before she crashed to the deck.
Topic: The Miners of the Stars (Read 31967 times)