“No,” said the blond engineer. “But I can rig you one if you let me raid the dorsal sensors for parts.”
It wasn’t the answer he was hoping for; cannibalizing the array would create large gaps in the ship’s scanning capabilities. Weighing the value of restoring the transporter against the loss of tactically useful data, Ilucci decided that it was a necessary trade-off. “How long?”
“At least eight hours,” she said.
He sighed. “Okay, get on it.” She nodded, grabbed a box of tools, and disappeared into the starboard forward crawlspace.
Ilucci walked over and joined Threx, who removed the housing from a metallic shaft the size of his forearm. Studying the cables and circuitry inside, the Denobulan said, “This one looks like it might be okay.” He pointed at an oddly shaped device near Ilucci’s right foot. “Can you hand me that, Master Chief?” Ilucci picked up the object and passed it to Threx, who test-fitted it against the cylinder in his other hand. “Yeah, that’ll do. I can make a new regulator with these. Have the shields back by morning.”
“A hundred percent?” Ilucci asked.
Threx cocked his head sideways. “More like sixty-five.”
“All right,” Ilucci said. “Keep me posted.” He watched Threx shamble away with half-disassembled machine parts in each hand and prepared himself for what promised to be a long night of jury-rigged repairs.
One crisis at a time, he told himself. That’s how we do it.
The escape pod was sheathed in fire. Plunging like a stone through the atmosphere, it shook and spun around Xiong. He ricocheted off the bulkheads, despite his best efforts to brace himself with his outstretched arms and legs.
Images of the view outside the pod rippled over its every interior surface, creating the impression that the pod was little more than a capsule of clear gelatin inside a flame. Then the fire dissipated and faded away, yielding to a seascape that was half day and half night.
Xiong saw the image distort where his hands and feet touched the bulkhead. Must be some kind of holographic projection, he realized, amazed at the total panoramic visibility. Though some aspects of Tholian technology had seemed inferior when compared to that of the Federation, this was one achievement at which he marveled.
Below his feet the horizon flattened into the distance, and the ocean became all that he could see in any direction. Splashdown was only moments away.
No sound but the roar of wind, no light but the glow of two moons over the sea. The pod spiraled down, turning like the bit of a drill as it struck the water. Sudden deceleration hurled Xiong against the bottom of the pod. His impact was cushioned by the extreme density of the atmosphere inside the pod and the protective servomotors and shielding of his EVA gear.
Boiling plumes erupted around the pod as it sank. The distorted surface became distant and faded into blackness. I survived splashdown, Xiong thought as his helmet beacon activated. Then he noted with dismay that the pod remained sealed as it sank into the ocean.
His next dilemma became clear. After all the effort he had gone through to make the pod seal itself and eject from the Tholian ship, he now had to find some way to make it let him out. For a moment he wished that he had kept the monoblade, but then he remembered that in all the turbulence of reentry he would likely have filleted himself, or damaged the pod.
Think like a Tholian, he told himself. You live in a high-pressure environment. You like it really hot. You need your escape pod to keep you alive for days or weeks until you’re rescued. The inevitable conclusion was exactly what he didn’t want to contemplate. They wouldn’t want this thing to open, he realized. Not unless it landed in a Tholian-friendly environment—which is the one thing I’m trying to escape.
Absolute darkness surrounded the pod. He couldn’t tell whether he was looking at its natural obsidian surface or at a faithful representation of the lightless depths outside. Several challenges now demanded his attention: open the pod, return to the ocean’s surface, and survive both events; then find some means of staying alive in a vast expanse of untraveled open water on an uninhabited planet.
All right, time to get creative. He activated his helmet beacon and eyed his surroundings. Seeing no other resources, he began looking at his environment suit. What have I got?
Taking stock of his heavily modified EVA gear, he replayed in his memory the process by which Ilucci and the engineers of the Sagittarius had built the suit around him. They had added several nonstandard components to the suit, in order to make it strong enough to survive inside the Tholian ship. Miniaturized structural integrity fields protected him from the pressure. Myo-electric servos enabled him to move through the dense, semi-fluid atmosphere. Additional power packs had been installed to drive the new components. And a tricorder had been built into the suit’s bulky control block.
His inventory completed, he asked the next question. What do I need to do? Unfortunately, it seemed that the only way to open the pod and get back to the surface would be to blast open its bottom, releasing its superheated atmosphere and causing an explosive decompression whose exhaust would propel the pod upward. Just one problem with detonating something inside the pod, he realized. Any blast strong enough to penetrate the bulkhead will cause an overpressure that’ll turn me into salsa.
He pondered whether a shaped charge might mitigate some of the blast effects before he realized that he still had no idea how to create an explosion in the first place. Come on, Ming, he thought, trying to boost his own morale. First, figure out how to blow this thing open. Then worry about how to survive the blast. Solve one problem at a time.
Of the various components in his suit, the ones that seemed to hold the most promise for generating explosive force were the power cells. They were composed primarily of sarium krellide and had been fully charged when he’d beamed over to the Tholian ship. Even after several hours of use, they were likely still at least half-charged. The key would be releasing all the energy of a power cell at once and directing its force against the bottom bulkhead. Thinking back to the engineering training he’d had at Starfleet Academy, he remembered all the things the instructors had warned him never to do when working with power cells.
Never, they had cautioned, allow an ungrounded conductive wire to contact an exposed sarium krellide power cell.
He searched the pockets of the EVA suit and found that all the standard-issue equipment was still there, including an insulated tether cable of three-ply kelvinium. It was insulated, of course, because kelvinium was superconductive and could be a hazard during EVA operations if left unprotected. Using a small wire cutter from the suit’s repair kit, he stripped the insulation from the kelvinium tether cable and unwound its three-ply wire into separate, delicate filaments. Watching the gossamer-thin wires float in the dense, shimmering atmosphere of the pod, he began thinking about how to dislodge one of the suit’s power cells without compromising the suit itself. The last thing he needed was to fill the inside of his suit with superheated, sulfur-rich gas.
There were only two power cells that he could reach: the ones located just behind each hip of the suit. They powered the servos in its legs. Disabling either one would make it very difficult for him to move until he reached an area of lower pressure. Because that was the cause for which the power cell was being sacrificed, he decided it was a fair trade.
After a few minutes of work, he had almost succeeded in freeing the power cell behind his right hip when the pod jolted to a stop. The impact pinned him against the bulkhead for a moment. Guess I’ve really hit bottom, he mused, then berated himself for the joke. He wondered briefly whether the presence of land under the pod would help or hinder his attempt to return to the surface.