HEKOV MOVED ALONG the corridor as smoothly and silently as if he glided on ice. Leno followed two paces behind him, a watchful attendant, and he felt extremely secure with her presence at his back. Though a little slower in hand-to-hand combat than he would have liked, the ensign made up for it by being a crack shot with a phaser. If someone (or something?) came at them from behind, she would drop them in their tracks, Chekov had no doubt of that.
He was coming to hate this mission, and was more unhappy than he could presently let on by the recent turn of events. No commander enjoyed losing any of the men or women serving under them and Chekov, like Kirk, was particularly prone to the feelings of helpless rage and frustration that the death of one of his crew invariably produced. While Chekov was confident that every member of his security staff knew the dangers inherent in the job when they chose to sign on as security guards, that didn't make their loss any easier to bear. Notifying families of the death of a loved one was one of the worst aspects of his job.
And, dammit, he had liked Dan Markson! True, the kid was pretty green around the edges, but he was a new graduate, after all. Markson, and Hallie too, had come aboard the Enterprise only a short time earlier, bright and shiny from their Starfleet Academy graduation ceremony and eager to do their best, proud to have been assigned to the foremost ship in the Federation fleet. Gregarious Suzanna had settled in a little more readily than Dan, making friends right away and carving out a niche for herself in the squadron of security guards. Dan had been more reticent but just as eager to please. In him, Chekov had seen something reminiscent of himself back in those long-ago but clearly remembered days when he first stepped aboard the Enterprise as an impassioned new crew member, ready to conquer the universe singlehandedly.
He remembered how excited and enthusiastic he'd been … and how scared. Nervous and overly zealous to make a good impression, particularly with Captain Kirk, he'd done a better job of annoying people and making a nuisance of himself. Then one day during his off time, while he sat in the botanical gardens brooding and miserable and questioning everything he had ever thought he knew as the truth, Captain Kirk had just "happened" to stroll by and ask him along on a walk.
Chekov had long since forgotten how many repetitive circuits of the gardens they made that day, but he'd never forgotten a word of what Kirk had told him. The captain made the effort to take the time to encourage the young ensign to talk about himself, his home, his aspirations and dreams … and, finally, his fears. James Kirk had imparted to Chekov a vastly important kernel of wisdom: No one is completely unafraid. No one is untouched by personal fears. And that means none of us is truly alone. Rather than drive us apart from one another, that knowledge should only serve to bring us closer in our understanding, and in our common bond of Humanity.
Dammit! He had wanted the chance to tell that to Markson, to pass along the favor and the knowledge, as Kirk himself had. But now it was too late. The only thing left to do was to gather up Markson's body at the end of this damned mission and ship it home with a sincere and polite note of condolence.
Sometimes Chekov hated his job.
The room coming up on his left was open, the door gaping like a toothless mouth onto the dark corridor. He held his phaser hand in the air as a signal to Leno. Her footfalls stopped immediately, and she slid in quietly behind him, weapon at the ready. Chekov's eyes flicked briefly sideways, caught her ready nod, and returned one of his own. Drawing a deep, silent breath, he paused for an instant, then swung around the doorjamb in a smooth movement, phaser aimed before him. Leno followed in a well-orchestrated motion, staying close to the floor and sliding in under his arm. Between the two of them, they had every inch of the room covered.
Not that there was much to cover themselves against. The room was completely vacant of life, or former life, for that matter. Just to make certain, Chekov hand-signaled to his partner and she obediently went in one direction while he went in the other. They met on the far side of the room, having thoroughly circumnavigated it.
"Anything?" Chekov whispered.
"Not a thing, Chief." Handlamp strapped securely to her wrist, Leno flashed it around the room again. "'Not a creature was stirring,' as the legends say." She shook her head in amazement. "Boy, would you look at this place! Guess besides not trusting any other race in the galaxy, the Romulans don't much trust each other either."
Chekov didn't know if that observation was true or not, and didn't much care. The room was quite a sight to behold, though.
Easily as big as the station bridge, he could only assume it might be the central office for whatever sort of security force the station might have been designed to require. A large desk console occupied the central portion of the room. It was bare but for two computer screens and an immense keyboard imbedded flush with the desk surface. The wall facing the desk was made up of twelve-inch viewscreens, many of them shattered, ostensibly used for observation of the station's various areas and their inhabitants.
Chekov walked over and gingerly ran a hand along the edge of one screen, then bent over the desk to consider several keys before tapping out a sequence. As expected, nothing happened. "This would be really convenient right now, if only it worked. We could check out the entire station and find out if anyone else is on board, all at the same time."
"Yeah, and if wishes were horses, as my mother used to say," Leno responded from behind his back. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled. "Chief, come take a look at this."
Chekov turned, curious at her change in tone. The wall directly behind the desk was made up of narrow doors, which Leno had discovered were lockers. She had one open and was shoulder-deep inside it, rummaging like a terrier. She emerged as he approached, her expression gleeful. "Wait'll you see it! This stuff is great! I could have a field day in here!"
Chekov peered in over her shoulder, then reached past her to push things aside and see for himself. The locker was full of equipment, everything from what looked like a sleek environmental suit to various pieces of body armor, several kinds of weaponry, and who knew what-all else. Curiosity dug at the lieutenant, and he answered the ensign's wide, anticipatory grin with a smile of his own. "Couldn't we both, Leno. Unfortunately …"
He closed the door on her petulant, "Aw, but Chief!" and shrugged apologetically. "We don't have the time right now, Leno. Maybe the Captain will let us dig around in here later, if Starfleet decides to let us really take this baby apart. How's that sound?"
"It sounds great, providing it actually happens. I wonder how much convincing Starfleet and Captain Kirk will take?"
The Russian laughed lightly and gestured for her to follow him. "Ensign, there's something I came to understand about Captain Kirk a very long time ago, and you'll eventually realize it for yourself if you're fortunate enough to really get to know him. His curiosity is immense and it includes everything. We'll probably have to beat him aside to get to it first."
Eyes wide, she took a step backward and feigned horror. "You beat him aside, Chief. I'm hoping for a long and distinguished career in Starfleet Security."
Leno stopped so abruptly in the corridor that Chekov ran into her broad back with a grunt. She was rigid and as unmoving as stone, one arm half-raised in caution for silence. The security chief's eyes searched the corridor, but he spied nothing of concern. "What?" he whispered.
She shook her head. Chekov was standing so close that stray wisps of her hair tickled his nose. "I don't know, Chief," she whispered. "For a second I thought I saw something. It was just at the edge of my vision …" She shook her head again, hard. It was a snapping, angry motion. "My nerves must be getting to me," she said with disgust. "I thought I was cooler than this."
"I've worked with you for years, and you're always cooler than ice, Leno," he assured her. "We've had a tough day. No one could go through it without getting spooked."
She looked over her shoulder. "Even you, sir?"
For just an instant, she was a new recruit again, needing his assurance. He nodded. "Even me, Ensign. The eeriness of this place aside, and I don't like it when my men die."
Her eyes flicked forward again. "Yeah." Her voice was hard, containing her emotions. "It stinks."
Chekov made a mental note. Once back aboard the Enterprise, he would have to work Markson's death out of her, probably by taking her on in the gymnasium. He wondered idly if they would both end up visiting Dr. McCoy afterward, as they had the last time they paired for sparring. Not that it made any difference. He didn't want any of his team carrying around that kind of emotional baggage. It could tie you in knots if push came to shove.
He nudged her. "Let's move out."
"Aye, sir."
They continued down the corridor. Locked doors they passed after one inspection. If any stood open, they paused to flash their lights around the interior and moved on. There was little of interest and nothing that they thought important to bring to the notice of Mister Spock or Doctor McCoy. Certainly there was nothing to lend further clues to why this station was here or why it was under minimum power. Let Starfleet Command be concerned with vacant living quarters and half-finished drinks on tabletops.
The hallway ended in a T. The right-hand arm led back toward Dr. McCoy and Ensign Hallie. The left arm dead-ended, beyond several closed doors, at the gaping maw of a second turboshaft. Chekov nodded with satisfaction and tried to ignore the pit. "That's it, then. Let's head back and see how Mr. Spock's doing. Maybe we can help him while we wait for the others."
"Maybe they've already beaten us back, if they found as little of interest as we have," Leno observed.
Chekov suppressed a smile. "Hungry for some action, Ensign?"
She shrugged. "Not that I want anything bad to happen, Chief, but a little activity sure would beat this aimless walking around."
The security chief held up a finger. "Be careful what you ask for, Ensign Leno. You may …" His voice trailed off, and he stared beyond her shoulder at the open turboshaft. "Oh, my God …"
"Chief?" She frowned at his reaction and slowly turned around to follow his gaze.
Something was coming up toward them out of the shaft's lower darkness, but it wasn't using the ladder to make its ascent. Pale and diaphanous, almost transparent in places, it glided in midair, emerging several feet off the floor from between the open doors and rising rapidly without the support of legs or arms … or anything else, for that matter.
Leno pressed back, stepping away from its advance, but Chekov was immoveable behind her, his eyes trained on the vision. Pale and stroked with faint colors like the inside of a seashell, it glided a long length into the corridor and stopped to seemingly regard them from nothing that looked like eyes. It started forward again, moving in a wavelike motion, and a long, gossamer wisp disengaged from the main body and reached toward them.
Leno raised her phaser and sighted down it. "Keep back!" she warned.
Whatever this was facing them took no heed of her, if it even understood what she said. As it continued to undulate toward them, Leno squeezed the trigger. The phaser wheezed and spat a weak stream of energy, hitting the thing head-on.
It reared back sharply, an amazing array of colors pulsating under the skin. Abruptly, it was gone, trailing rapidly down the turboshaft like water draining out of a sink. With a sharp cry, Leno bounded after it.
"Christina! Wait!" Chekov started after her, and the lights died. "It's too early to start shooting." He stopped short, and his heart rammed into his throat as he heard her stumble, crying out as she fell … and catch herself, swearing profusely. She appended the profanity with a completely uncontrite, "Sorry, Chief."
Somewhere behind them, a scream ripped free, killing Chekov's reply in his throat.
Eyes wide with fright, McCoy stared into the unyielding darkness. "Hallie!" he called again, not caring if there was something else out there to hear him. His thumb frenetically clicked the button of his flash again and again, with no success. It was dead, just like everything else. Just like Hallie?
Hands outstretched before him, McCoy disobeyed Chekov's strict orders and slowly shuffled blindly down the corridor, the fingers of one hand trailing along the wall for guidance. Adrenaline surged the blood through his veins, and his pulse pounded so loudly in his ears he wasn't certain he'd hear anything until it came up and tapped him on the shoulder, and he was utterly confident that if anything touched him in the darkness, he would explode into a billion pieces, like shards of glass or a nova, and probably take whatever it was with him.
He paused uncertainly as the emergency lights overhead came back on. A faint, hardly perceptible light of a different quality illuminated the corridor's turn, sketching a charcoal line against the red-hued darkness. It came closer, brightening as it advanced. "Hallie?" McCoy whispered hoarsely, knowing full well that this approaching illumination was not the brilliance of the returning security guard's handlamp.
Beyond the turn came a whimper of reply. No words, just sound, but it was enough to get McCoy moving forward again. Despite what he might be moving toward, Hallie was there, and she needed him.
Something incomprehensible drifted around the corner and killed in his throat any other words McCoy might have had. He felt as though someone had pushed the 'stasis' button in his brain. Mental function ceased as his mind came up empty-handed of a name to call this thing, and he froze in fascinated shock.
Whatever this was glowed with a pale bluish-white phosphorescence touched with swirls of pale pink, green, and lavender. There was a slight, definite shape to the thing, but certainly nothing McCoy could readily identify. A central core roughly seven inches in width appeared horizontally around the turn in the corridor, drifting about five feet off the floor. It undulated slightly, as though the station corridor were filled with deep ocean swells and not stale, unmoving air. Cilialike filaments of varying lengths sprouted from the mass at irregular intervals, and they twined and danced with a life seemingly separate from the central trunk. As it drew closer, McCoy could almost see through it. Colors danced under the "skin," though whether these passages were comparable to his own blood vessels was impossible to say. It drew ever nearer to the motionless physician, and the tip of one tendril rose back on itself like a creature testing the wind for scent or a cobra pulled back to strike. It crested and slithered toward McCoy, dancing in the air a scant few inches in front of his insignia pin. McCoy's breath came in rapid, shallow gasps, the race of blood echoing in his eustachian tubes, as it reached out and stroked his cheek.
The searing cold from the creature's touch was like a blow across the face. McCoy gasped with pain, slapping a hand to his cheek, and broke and ran.
He shot away, not back the way he had come, but forward, toward Hallie. Behind and beside him, the thing reared back, then retreated before him, slithering away out of sight like a snake down a hole.
McCoy slammed around the corner and stopped short, almost tripping from his own momentum. Hallie lay on her side, back against the corridor wall, knees pulled up against her chest. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very pale, even under the ruddy cast of the overhead lights.
The doctor fell to his knees at her side, experienced hands reaching to touch her. "Ensign Hallie? Suzanna?"
Her thin lips parted, though her eyes didn't open. "Cold …" she whispered. "So cold …"
She was cold. He cupped her face in his hands, gauging temperature even as his fingertips counted the thread of a pulse in her neck. McCoy dug the mediscanner out of his pouch and ran it over her. No injuries, but her internal temperature had dropped several more degrees. As an afterthought, he turned the scanner on himself. His temperature was down, too, though not as severely. For now, he would forgo an injection. He didn't have much stimulant and he had a feeling they were going to need all he had before this was over.
McCoy tabbed open the front of his field jacket. Unmindful of his roughness, he hauled Hallie up by the shoulders and pulled her within the warm circle of his arms, tucking the loose sides of his jacket around her. He held her there with one arm while, with his free hand, he inserted into the hypospray something to bring her temperature back up, at least for a while.
He pressed the spray home through the sleeve of her jacket and waited. After a few tense moments, her eyes opened and she looked up at him. Her lips weren't quite so blue now. "Dr. McCoy?"
"Alive and in person," he said gently. When she tried to disengage herself, he caught her arms and held her. "You just stay right where you are, Ensign, and get warm. Are you all right?"
Her nod was rigid, mocking normal human movement like a marionette parodying its Human counterpart. She blinked at the question as though trying to focus her thoughts. "Fine, I think," she finally replied. "I was so disoriented …" She drew in a sudden breath that clattered between her teeth, and grabbed his arms in hands that were strong and punishing when she shook him. "Did you see it?! Did you see that thing?!"
He nodded, letting her pull away and sit up on her own. "I saw it."
Breath gusted out in an explosive sigh that shook her entire willow-thin frame. "Thank God! At least it wasn't my imagination." Her eyes searched his face. "Though I don't know which is worse, having it be my imagination or having it be real. What was that thing, Dr. McCoy?"
He shook his head. "I don't know, Hallie. I thought I'd seen or read about nearly every strange thing in the galaxy, and I can't even make an educated guess."
"But it was real? You weren't just saying that to make me feel better?"
He managed to find a chuckle somewhere deep inside and draw it to the surface. "I almost wish I were, Ensign, but no. It was real."
Her eyes challenged him. "You said there were no ghosts, Dr. McCoy, but I think you're wrong. I think we both just saw our first. And I think it was Dan Markson."
That bizarre thought caught the doctor completely off guard. "That's a little bit far-reaching, don't you think, Ensign?"
"Is it?" she challenged, her tone hard. "You said yourself that you've never seen anything else like it, so what else could it have been?" she demanded, then appended, "sir."
"Just because I don't know what it was doesn't automatically make it a ghost, Ensign. It could have been a lot of things, and I'm sure there's a better explanation than to call it Markson's ghost or a Romulan ghost or any other kind of ghost. Ghosts do not exist, Ensign Hallie." Irritation built, burning away the remnants of his fear. "I can't prove that to you, but I accept it as an empirical fact. If my word isn't good enough for you, you're welcome to take this up with your commanding officer when we're back aboard the Enterprise." Not only was she welcome to, McCoy would insist that Chekov order her to if this attitude persisted. Just such a compulsion may have contributed to the death of one crewman. They didn't need another believing in things that go bump in the night. "We don't have time for it right now."
Her eyes dropped their challenge. "Yes, sir," she said quietly. "I apologize if I was rude, sir."
"Apology accepted. Now, let's—"
"Dr. McCoy! Ensign Hallie!" Chekov's voice and the sound of running feet reached them from beyond the corridor's turn.
McCoy climbed to his feet, pulling Hallie up with him. "Chekov! We're here!" He started forward to meet them.
The security chief and his companion raced toward them from the far end of the corridor. McCoy nearly laughed aloud. He recognized those pale expressions. Evidently someone else had had a visitation, too.
Chekov skidded to a stop. "Are you both all right? We heard someone scream …"
Hallie hung her head. "That was me, Chief. I'm sorry."
"She had every reason to scream," McCoy defended the crewman. "I nearly screamed, too."
"You saw it, didn't you?" Leno broke in. "I thought just the chief and I were going nuts! I hit it with a phaser shot but it got away."
"Did you injure it?" McCoy asked.
"I don't know." Leno said. "What was it, Dr. McCoy?"
"Well, it wasn't a ghost," McCoy stressed before anyone else voiced the dreaded G word. "Beyond that, I can't even begin to guess. It wasn't like anything I've ever seen before. How are you two feeling? Any problems with the cold?"
They stared curiously at him. Chekov shrugged. "It's cold in here, but I—" He stopped, startled, when McCoy ran the mediscanner over him, then turned it toward Leno. "What's the matter, Doctor?"
McCoy pressed his lips into a thin line of annoyance as he read the results. "We've got trouble." He glanced up and down the corridor just to make certain the thing wasn't lurking nearby. "We need to get back to Spock right now," he urged without telling them anything more, and started down the corridor back the way they'd come. Worry chewed at him.
"But, Dr. McCoy—"
"Maybe Mr. Spock will have some good news for us," Hallie expressed hopefully, falling into step beside him.
McCoy smiled at her but didn't reply. Maybe, he thought to himself. But considering everything that's happened so far, I wouldn't bet on it.