A Fair Trade - Chapter 5

A Fair Trade

by kittytrypsin

Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer # 1: Paramount owns the characters from ‘Enterprise’, I’m just borrowing them. But if they don’t look after them…

Disclaimer # 2: No financial gain is being made from these stories, unfortunately.

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CHAPTER FIVE

T’Pol sat in the command chair, unaware of events unfolding in space. Her thoughts were peppered with slight frustration at the idea of having to share her quarters with another. Admittedly, Ensign Sato was perfectly presentable; a quiet, fragrant human as far as any human could be described as fragrant. But when she was nervous, Sato was prone to chatter incessantly. T’Pol put a cool hand to her forehead, feeling a headache developing.

Her thoughts went back to the conversation she’d had with the captain, regarding their guests and the sleeping arrangements. She didn’t believe he’d been serious when he’d threatened to move Commander Tucker into her quarters. In fact, she’d almost called his bluff, but if she’d been wrong…

Sighing inwardly, she looked around the bridge at the junior crew who were currently on duty. If she hadn’t been distracted, she’d have been more alert to the possibility of things going wrong, but she wasn’t to know. On the edge of her peripheral vision, she saw a red light flashing. Rising gracefully to her feet, she crossed the gap between chair and console with deceptive speed.

“Ensign, why have you not reported an unauthorised shuttle launch?”

Ensign York looked up guiltily into the forbidding face of his First Officer.

“I-I’m sorry, Sub-Commander, I didn’t notice it,” he stammered.

T’Pol swung away to regard Ensign Dale, manning the hot seat at communications. Dale felt the Vulcan’s eyes boring into her and she instinctively opened a hail to the shuttlecraft.

“Enterprise to Shuttlepod One, please respond.”

Silence hung heavily as the entire bridge crew strained to hear a reply. T’Pol repeated the hail from the command chair, and again it was ignored.

“Bridge to Captain Archer, respond please.”

Jon was in the turbolift, heading for the bridge, and answered directly as he stepped out.

“What’s up, T’Pol?”

She swung to address him. “There has been an unauthorised shuttle launch and we are not getting a response to our hails. We have picked up their impulse signature and I’ve adjusted to an intercept course. I will operate the grappler.”

Jon nodded, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Computer, locate Commander Tucker,” he asked, for the second time in half an hour.

“Commander Tucker is not on board.” The startled looks on the faces of the bridge crew met his own as Jon saw them watching his reaction.

That confirmed his fears. T’Pol’s eyebrow rose, the question in her mind not really needing to be expressed. Jon took a deep breath before bringing his second-in-command up to speed.

“It would seem we were duped by our guests. Captain Quin’s body was destroyed in an attempt to hide the fact that he was murdered; Phlox was viciously attacked, and now it would appear that our erstwhile passengers have forced Commander Tucker to fly them out in a shuttlepod. Oh…and Lt Reed’s locked inside a storage room!”

T’Pol’s eyebrow rose even higher as she listened to the captain’s impassioned catalogue of disasters. All of a sudden her earlier annoyance at having her personal space invaded seemed trivial. Indeed, the thought of having to share quarters with Commander Tucker was preferable to knowing that he was in the clutches of ruthless murderers.

Her fingers flew over the controls of the grappler, a slight frown creasing her forehead.

“Captain, the grappler is not responding.”

Jon swore under his breath. This day was just going from bad to worse.

“Engineering, respond,” he barked.

“Hess, Captain.”

“Lieutenant, why is the grappler offline?”

“One moment, Captain, while I check.”

Jon tried to wait patiently, all the while wondering what was happening on board the shuttle. Hess’s voice brought him back.

“The programme’s been contaminated, Captain. I don’t know how or why it’s happened, or even when, for that matter, but I’ll get right on it. It’ll take some time, though.”

“Ok, Lieutenant, just let me know when it’s fixed.”

Jon wouldn’t accept that this was a co-incidence. He could picture the scene in Engineering: Trip lovingly extolling the virtues of their Warp 5 engines, his attention all too easily pre-occupied. It would have taken someone with technical know-how to insert a glitch in the computer programme for the grappler, but it wasn’t impossible that one or more of the prisoners had had that knowledge. A chill ran through him as he wondered what else might have been sabotaged.

“Ok, what about the transporter? Can we use it?” he asked.

T’Pol rose and headed for the turbolift, a look of determination on her face.

“I will attempt to retrieve Commander Tucker, Captain. However, we may have little option but to follow them to their destination and attempt a ground rescue.”

“Yeah, let’s just hope they’re heading for a planet, and not another ship.”

He didn’t voice his other fear, that if Trip had been taken simply to pilot the ‘pod, once they landed, he would be only so much excess baggage.

He sat in his chair, chewing on his nails as the minutes ticked by. Phlox reported in to say that Lt Reed and his crewmen were in sickbay, stunned and mildly concussed, but otherwise all right. That was the first thing in their favour in the entire sorry day.

Eventually, T’Pol reported from the transporter. “Our saboteur has been at work here, too, Captain. It will be some time before it is safe to use the transporter. I will remain here to effect the repairs, myself.”

^*^*^*^*^*^

At the helm of Shuttlepod One, Trip could clearly hear the two hails from Enterprise. Instinctively, he reached forward to answer, but gasped in pain as his knuckles were rapped sharply by Goff’s pistol. Drawing his stinging hand to his mouth, he sucked his sore fingers in an attempt to soothe them. Goff brought the pistol up and rammed it viciously into Trip’s temple.

“Now that wasn’t very smart, Commander, was it? If I’d wanted to talk to your crewmates, I’d have answered, myself. If you want to get out of this alive, you’ll have to learn to play the game by my rules.”

Goff removed the pistol from the engineer’s head and addressed the other occupants of the shuttle.

“Our original plan still stands. We’ll be at Kendal Prime in half an hour, and even though Enterprise can keep level with us, there’s no way they’ll get their systems working again in time to do anything.”

Trip listened, perplexed. “What d’ya mean about their systems? What’ve ya done to the ship?”

“Just one or two malfunctions, Commander. Did you think that rescue was just around the corner? Did you think we wouldn’t know about grapplers and transporters? A few glitches in the programmes were so easy to create, and so effective. You’re stuck with us for the time being, so relax and enjoy the ride, fly-boy.”

Trip felt a chill wrap around his heart at Goff’s words. He knew Enterprise wouldn’t have had any difficulty in following them, but he’d hoped for rescue by now, and hadn’t understood why it hadn’t happened. Now it made sense. Behind him, he could hear Ensign Barr beginning to come round, mumbling incoherently, and he felt concern for the man’s head injury as well as for himself. But there wasn’t anything he could do for him until they landed.

TBC

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