Worlds in Collision (42 page)

Chekov angled Lasslanlin perfectly, braced his feet on the “down” bulkhead, then pushed the stretcher toward Artinton. “I was just surprised that you left it turned on when no one was aboard.”

Krulmadden shook his head at Chekov. “You jump to too many conclusions for navigator. Who told you there were no others on board?”

“Why, no one. I…just thought…”

“I am shipmaster. I do thinking for all my crew.”

Silent now, Chekov guided the end of the stretcher through the lock. When the opening was clear, he launched himself toward it to grip its metal lip, still cold from space despite its insulation. Then he felt the soft rippling pressure of the
Queen Mary'
s gravity field.

As he crawled through the meter-long tunnel, he decided he was not happy about Krulmadden's intimation that there might be other beings on board. Overpowering three Orions would not be beyond him and Sulu working together, especially if they struck while Lasslanlin was confined to the medic booth. But if there were other crew on board, especially other Orions, then it was beginning to look as if he and Sulu had just made the worst mistake of their brief civilian careers.

When Chekov was fully within the gravity field, he was puzzled at the amount of muscle tone he must have lost during his months of civilian life. The sudden transition from microgee was a surprising shock, much more strenuous than he had anticipated. And then he realized that yet another obstacle had been placed in their way. The artificial gravity field on the
Queen Mary
was set to normal for Rigel VIII—almost two Earth gees.

Chekov paused for a moment in the airlock—now an opening in a corridor floor—to reposition his hands for better purchase. But before he could move again, Artinton grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him up the rest of the way without apparent effort. The Orion mate moved as easily in the heavy gravity as he had in the low-power “tourist field” that operated through most of the spaceport's alien quarter.

When Sulu appeared in the airlock, Artinton hoisted him through as well, and he enjoyed the look of surprise on Sulu's face as his feet hit the corridor floor faster and harder than he had expected. Chekov saw the look of apprehension on the helmsman's face and knew why it was there. A few days in this gravity and neither one of them would be able to crawl, let alone take on Krulmadden and his crew.

Artinton squatted down to slap an antigrav to Lasslanlin's stretcher, then stood, lifting the mass-neutral stretcher with one powerful hand. “You wait here for shipmaster. On big ship like this, you could get lost…forever.” He grinned at Chekov, flicking his tongue to show the holes where several teeth used to be, then started the stretcher gliding down the corridor.

Sulu stood by the airlock and rocked experimentally from foot to foot. “That's got to be at least a one point eight.”

“It feels like five,” Chekov said and stepped back to lean against the corridor bulkhead. As he rested, he glanced up the corridor in the direction that Artinton had gone. It was obviously a main branch that ran along the disk's diameter. Its narrow and utilitarian appearance, thick with exposed conduits and service access panels, was similar to the old class-J ships that Academy cadets trained on.

“From the way she looks on the outside, I wasn't expecting her to be even this up-to-date,” Sulu said.

“That is only the light.” Chekov fought the high gee to lift his hand and shield his eyes from the dazzling bluewhite glare that came from the corridor's ceiling panels. Like the gravity, they were set to produce Rigel VIII normal. “We will have to wear eye filters.”

Before Chekov could find something else to complain about, Krulmadden smoothly popped through the airlock under his own power. He tried a few kneebends, then pounded his fist against his chest so his rings clanked against his tunic's hard scales. “Ah, the invigoration of real resistance!” He clapped his hand enthusiastically against Sulu's side and the helmsman slammed into the corridor bulkhead.

Krulmadden scowled as Sulu fought to keep his balance. He turned to Chekov. “A few months in real gravity and you behave like true shipmates. But in meantime, what you need is…exercise!
Ur'eon
exercise!” He laughed at the uncomfortable expressions on his new shipmates' faces. “You may think of that as an order.”

Following Krulmadden's doubletime march through the
Queen Mary'
s corridors reminded Chekov of being a cadet again, and he had hated being a cadet. The only good thing about that status was that it had led to the day he had become an ensign. But he knew that was exactly what he and Sulu had become again—cadets in Krulmadden's private navy. The shipmaster was making a pointed show of the control he wielded over them.

But still, there had to be limits. “Excuse me, Shipmaster,” Chekov said, puffing as he eyed the third set of steep, interlevel ladders Krulmadden intended to lead them up, “but are there no turbolifts?”

“No room for drive tubes! No power!” Krulmadden grasped the rung of the ladder inset in the corridor wall. “Has the
f'deraxt
bred the spine out of its mammals as well as the brain and heart?” He leapt up the ladder, hand over hand, singing boisterously in a language Chekov had never heard before.

Chekov stared at Sulu. “I think perhaps it is a form of torture we are unfamiliar with.”

Sulu looked up the ladder. “I think we're going to need a new plan.”

Krulmadden's voice thundered down from above.
“Waaaaiting,
little mammals!”

Sulu began to climb. Chekov waited for the way to clear so he wouldn't suddenly be crushed by Sulu falling at 19.5 meters per second, and then he followed, already feeling blisters form on his hands.

From the sloping angle of the ceiling on the next level, Chekov concluded they had reached the main hull's top deck. Surely Krulmadden wasn't intent on taking them up to the warp pod, but Chekov wasn't even sure what the shipmaster's motives were for bringing them this far.

Krulmadden slowed his pace as he directed them along a curving corridor leading to port. Chekov, inhaling deeply to catch his breath, could hear Sulu breathing hard behind him. But when Krulmadden stopped by a set of doors and turned back to see how his new shipmates were doing, the huge being had not even broken a sweat.

Krulmadden placed one hand on the doors and leaned against them, waiting for Sulu and Chekov to catch up with him. “So my little mammals, do you have any idea where we are on this jewel of mine?”

“Top deck, main hull,” Chekov wheezed, putting his hands on his knees to ease the strain on his back.

“Port side,” Sulu gasped. “And we went through one-and-a-half circuits of the deck below us.”

“Good, you pay attention.” Krulmadden looked at the door panels beneath his hand and when he returned his gaze to Sulu and Chekov, he wasn't smiling. “Have you noticed anything else…unusual about this ship?”

“Besides no turbolifts?” Chekov asked.

“Very few doors,” Sulu said. “Is the hull hollow?”

Chekov carefully watched Krulmadden for a reaction. If the
Queen Mary
were less massive than its apparent volume indicated, then it would be capable of greater acceleration than a potential enemy might expect. But the subterfuge would only work once and a large enough sensor array could detect a significant mass/volume discrepancy.

“On contrary,” the shipmaster answered. “Is quite full. But of what, you need not know for now. Is enough simply to know not everything here is as it seems. And so is much danger…and destructions.” He paused, but neither human interrupted. “Thus, all that remains…is to know if
you
are as you seem.”

It was a threat, Chekov knew, and whatever happened next, Krulmadden had ensured that both humans would be too exhausted to try and make their way back through the ship to the shuttle. There was no choice but to continue with whatever the shipmaster had in mind.

“I don't understand,” Sulu said. “You said you recognized us in the tavern.”

Krulmadden ran his tongue over the diamond set in his incisor, and said very carefully in his best Standard, “Don't you find it convenient that I, a shipmaster in need of crew, and you, crew in need of a ship, found each other on such a large planet in such a big galaxy?” He scratched at the corner of his eye. “Why were you in the tavern? So far from home?”

Chekov and Sulu exchanged a look: The strategy was in Chekov's hands.

“We were…looking for a ship.”

“Why?”

“We have none.”

“Why?”

Chekov was in no mood for this. “Because we are no longer in Starfleet.”

Krulmadden stared at Chekov without blinking. “Why?”

“Because they called us worldkillers,” Chekov said angrily. “I thought the great Krulmadden was supposed to know everything.”

“How else to know than by asking questions? And now, a final one: Are you the worldkillers they say you are?”

Chekov hesitated before answering. Which would an Orion shipmaster prefer to have serving on his ship? Two brutal, reckless criminals that Starfleet had condemned by innuendo if not by courts-martial, or two wrongly accused officers who felt their honor had been smeared? He didn't know the answer, so he told the truth.

“No. The charges are false.”

Krulmadden raised his thick black eyebrows. “Famed Starfleet is wrong?” He bit his knuckle and growled softly.

“Not wrong,” Chekov said. “They just do not understand what truly occurred.”

The shipmaster drummed his fingertips against the doors he leaned against. “What do you intend to do about it?”

Now that Chekov had established the plan, Sulu joined the conversation. “There is nothing more we can do about it. We resigned when that became obvious.”

“Surely, you have…feelings about the way Starfleet has treated you?”

“That is why we were looking for a ship.” Sulu spoke tightly through clenched teeth.

“Any ship? Or one ship in particular?”

“The type of ship we could find in a tavern. On Rigel VIII.”

Krulmadden took his hand from the doors. He had made his decision. “The thirst for revenge can be as invigorating as the resistance of true gravity. I welcome you as crew on the jewel of all the stars.”

“I thought that's what you did after the fight in the tavern,” Sulu said, still wary.

“All that fight told me was the seriousness of you. I didn't need to know your anger with Lasslanlin and Artinton. I needed to know your anger with Starfleet. Too many spies have tried to board this ship in past.”

“And what would have happened if you had decided we were spies as well?” Chekov hated unanswered questions.

“Then, my little mammals, you would have gone through these doors.” Krulmadden smoothed his beard. “But, instead we shall go through those.” He pointed to a second set of closed doors farther along the corridor. “Come.” Krulmadden put his hand to his chest and began to croon again as he led the way.

As Chekov passed the doors Krulmadden had leaned against, he looked at the marker on them. But he couldn't read the Trader's Script. Sulu could. “Recycling room,” the helmsman said.

Krulmadden stopped by the second set of doors and punched in a security code, using his massive body to block his fingers from Chekov's sight.

“What does this one say?” Chekov asked, pointing to the marker on the new doors.

Sulu shrugged. “Cargo storage, I think.”

The doors slid open and a warm breeze filled with a heady scent of rich cinnamon and other less familiar spices spilled past them. The room beyond the doors seemed huge.

“You read the Trader's Script well,” Krulmadden said as he stepped aside and motioned for Sulu and Chekov to enter. “Indeed, this is part of my jewel's greatest cargo. Which you are welcome to enjoy.”

Sulu entered first and Chekov saw him suddenly freeze only a few steps inside. Beside Chekov, Krulmadden laughed. “Ah, yes, quite a sight, are they not?”

Chekov stepped forward, feeling the weight of Krulmadden's hand patting him on his back.

“We do things differently from Starfleet onboard
Queen Mary,”
the shipmaster said gleefully. “You will be paid first and work tomorrow!”

Chekov peered into the vast room over Sulu's shoulder. “What is this?”

“The exercise I promised you!” Krulmadden laughed. “True
Ur'eon
exercise! Come, come, you are
f'deraxt'la
no more.”

Then Chekov saw what had stopped Sulu dead and he realized the true nature of the monster they were forced to deal with if they were ever to clear their names.

In a long row of small cubicles stretched against one wall of the immense cargo hold were more than twenty Orion females. Their green skin glistened and their long black hair shone in the blue glow from the repulsor fields that ringed each open doorway, keeping them in place as inhumanly as any chains or irons.