Chapter 4: Beat The Heat

When the turbo-lift door hissed open, the four senior officers ran onto the bridge and relieved their counterparts of the graveyard ship.

“Sorry to wreck your evening,” Archer apologized. “We’ve picked up an automated distress call from a Vulcan ship.”

“Did they identify themselves?” T’Pol asked.

“The name is T’Planit,” Hoshi answered, listening to the recording. Archer shot T’Pol a questioning look.

“It’s an ambassadorial courier – the personal transport of Ambassador Soval,” she answered and her face hid her shock only badly.

“How long to the rendezvous?”

“two point one hours at warp five poit two, Sir,” Travis reported back.

“Another ship is approaching them,” T’Pol interrupted. “They are ahead of us bearing two-four-six mark two-five.”

“They’re traveling at warp four point eight and at our current speed will beat us to it by ten minutes,” Travis added.

“Who is it?” the Captain asked.

“Unidentified. The power signature is close to that of a Kumari-class, but not identical,” T’Pol reported, typing and pushing away at her console visibly more frantic than usual.

“Too risky,” Archer decided. “Trip can we get more out of the engines? As long as we don’t know who they are, we’ve gotta be there before them.”

“Five point three, maybe point four for a while, but we’ll be redecorating engineering in the worst way in the process. We haven’t completed all redesigns yet. And we’ll probably be out of spares afterward.”

“Damn!”

“I take care of it,” Trip answered and started towards the turbolift.

“Commander,” T’Pol called after him. He stopped and shot her a questioning glance. “Be careful.”

“Always, Commander,” Trip answered with a short smile and sped of into the turbo-lift.

Archer watched the scene, bemused by T’Pol’s mother-hen gesture, but also noted how consequently they had switched from date mode to duty professionalism. Trip had even addressed her by her rank. Wonders never ceased.

“Anna, take the automatic routines offline and control the intermix-ratio manually, keep it point three below recommendation. That’ll relieve the pressure a bit,” Trip barked as he ran into engineering. “Rostov purge the manifolds!”

“What’s wrong?” Anna Hess asked as she raced over to the console.

“We’re gonna red-line the engines and it’ll soon be a hellhole in here,” Trip answered, frantically checking all his readouts. “Tucker to bridge, Cap’n we’re ready down ‘ere! Start ‘er at five point three. I’ll call ya when we’re ready for point four”

“Ok, give it a shot Cap’n,” Trip’s voice blared over the coms twenty minutes later.

“Travis, warp five point four,” the captain ordered.

“We should pass them in 5 minutes,” the helmsman reported.

“Hold her steady, Ensign. Trip, how’s the status in engineering?”

“Engineering’s ... oh for pete’s sake!...” Trip’s swearing was interrupted by the muffled sound of a small explosion and an audible thud, which sounded very much like a Commander hitting the deck. Another furious Russian blue-streak sounded over the com, which made Hoshi gasp and blush.

T’Pol watched Hoshi’s reaction. Considering Ensign Sato’s radical change in facial coloring, it could only mean that her mate’s latest venture into foreign language outbursts contained an even stronger message than mating with someone’s mother. It did not sound like he had paid much attention to her latest advise of being careful.

“‘Everything OK’ would sound different,” Archer sighed. “Keep the channel open, Hoshi, just in case Commander Tucker’s...”

“Cap’n, I’m evacuat’n all non-critical personnel from engineering! We’ve got sixty degrees centigrade down ‘re. It’s a damn hell-hole. I can hold it for another two minutes or so, any longer and we’re gonna have to get out and push ‘er home.”

“Ok, Trip, hold it for two minutes, then we go back to five point one”

“Like the sound ‘o that...”

“T’Pol, where’s the other ship?”

“We passed them forty seconds ago. At Warp five point one, we would reach the T’Planit four point five two minutes before them.”

“Ok, Travis, five point one, give Trip a break.”

“Aye...”

“EVERYBODY GET DOWN! IT’S GONNA BE NASTY!”

Trip’s shouting sounded through the still open connection to engineering. A series of explosions were followed by an almighty thud, very suspiciously sounding like someone violently slamming into a bulkhead. The connection went silent and only hissing sounds – probably coolant leaks – remained.

“Archer to Engineering!”

Archers request was met by silence, only the hissing of several leaks could be heard.

“Archer to Engineering!” he repeated with more urgency.

“Engineering, Hess here. We have casualties, we can sustain five point one, nothing more. Engineering is a mess,” a very heavily breathing Lieutenant reported.

“We’ll send help,” Archer offered and turned around. “T’Pol, Malcolm, go down, see if you can help, I’ll alert Phlox.”

“Aye, Sir.”

“Oh, bloody Hell!” Malcolm uttered, when he followed T’Pol into engineering. The air was scorching hot. “T’Pol, over there!”

They found the unconscious body of Commander Tucker and T’Pol reached for his neck to check for a pulse. She found one, but it was weak and unsteady. “T’Pol to Phlox, medical emergency in engineering.”

“I’m already on my way,” Phlox replied with the calm of a man who had seen such a situation thousands of times.

“Commander, I’ll check for other casualties, maybe you can keep an eye on Trip,” Malcolm offered and T’Pol answered with a grateful glance and a nod. Several minutes later he returned.

“Two more injured, but they can walk. Looks like Trip took the brunt of it,” Reed reported, when the medics and Dr. Phlox arrived.

“No spinal injuries,” Phlox diagnosed, having hovered his scanner over the limp body of the chief engineer. “Load him on the stretcher and off to sickbay. Where are the other casualties?”

Captain Archer, Lt. Reed and Commander T’Pol filed into the ready room.

“What’s the status?” the Captain asked.

“Commander Tucker, Lt. Rostov and Ensign McInally are in sickbay. Severe damage to the EPS grid, but Lt. Hess is convinced it is repairable. A life support team is working on returning the temperature in engineering to normal levels as quick as possible,” T’Pol summarized.

“We will reach the T’Planit in about thirty minutes. Lt. Reed, assemble a team of MACO’s to accompany T’Pol to the ship when we get there,” Archer ordered.

“Aye, Sir,” Reed nodded and left.

“How’s Trip?” the Captain asked, once Malcolm has left.

“Phlox says he is stable,” T’Pol answered tersely. “We should concentrate on planning the rescue mission.”

“Of course,” Archer nodded. “We can’t dock, just in case this mysterious ship is hostile, so you’ve got to go in a shuttlepod. We’ve got about four minutes before those guys arrive. I don’t think that’ll be enough.”

“There is one option,” T’Pol answered. “We could sling-start the shuttlepod.”

“How does that work?”

“We will deactivate the grav plating inertial dampeners in the cargo bay. Then we will spool up the shuttlepod’s engines to full power and open the launch bay doors. After we drop out of warp, Enterprise comes to an emergency full-stop from maximum impulse speed. The inertial energy will catapult the shuttle out of the bay. That will give us more speed than would be possible on own propulsion for at least thirty seconds.”

“Sounds dangerous. We only had a single test with Trip’s idea of partially disabling the inertial dampeners.”

“It is dangerous, but it is the only chance to dock with the T’Planit in under four minutes.”

“Have you done something like that before.”

“No, but my theoretical calculations have shown the risks to be manageable.”

“I would start to argue with you, but you’ve proven me wrong often enough, so I’ll trust your instincts.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Commander,” he called out, before she reached the door. “Be careful,”

“Always, Captain,” she answered and Archer couldn’t help smiling.

Sergeant Amanda Cole and her MACO’s stood lined up, waiting for Commander T’Pol to arrive.

“Ten-hut!” Amanda ordered as T’Pol entered.

“At ease,” the Vulcan returned and addressed the soldiers.

“The transfer to the target will be fairly unpleasant, the human term would be ‘a wild ride’ as we will have to reroute power from the inertial dampeners to the engines. The dampeners will work at reduced power. It is imperative that you all strap in firmly as soon as we board the shuttle. Once we are aboard, I expect my directions to be followed to the letter. Board the shuttle.”

“Ten-hut, right-face.”

T’Pol watched the MACO’s move in an orderly, almost choreographed manner. Her fondness for structure and order admired this, but she also wondered if this was an instance of what Commander Tucker liked to call ‘showing off’ on behalf of the MACO’s.

As soon as the shuttle’s hatch was closed, the launch bay was depressurized and the doors where opened, despite Enterprise still being at full impulse-speed. The T’Planit was visible directly ahead.

“Shuttlepod 2 to Enterprise, we are ready to start.”

“Acknowledged. Start in thirty seconds.”

The countdown was nearing completion. Amanda Cole was startled slightly when she heard the Vulcan in the pilot seat mutter, “Here we go.”

She couldn’t follow up that thought as suddenly her breath was taken away by a massive acceleration. A hideous screeching sound attacked her ears as the shuttle slid across the launch bay floor and was hurled out of the door, leaving two smoking trails behind.

Sergeant Cole became increasingly worried, since it looked like the Vulcan would smash them head-on into the Vulcan ship. At what looked like the last possible moment, the pointy-eared pilot forced the shuttle into a steep dive and, after a while, into a steep ascent as they dove below the Vulcan transport. Once the obstacle was cleared, the passenger’s stomachs where field-tested as the shuttle was yanked into a looping roll, ending with them facing the opposite direction of where they had come from, with T’Planit’s docking port almost straight ahead. Spooling down the engines, T’Pol coasted the last part of the distance and they docked with a hefty clunk.

“Enterprise, we have docked,” she reported, just over two minutes after being catapulted out of the mother ship’s launch bay.

“Jesus Christ!” Travis exclaimed wide-eyed as he watched T’Pol’s shuttle-acrobatics.

“The other ship is approaching,” Malcolm reported. “They’re charging weapons.”

“Full power to hull plating,” Archer barked before being thrown to the floor as a phase cannon hit rocked the ship.

“Full hit to phaser cannons, one offline.”

“Torpedoes, full yield!”

“Their shields are down,” Malcolm analyzed as the screen showed two of the Mark II photonic torpedoes smash into the attacker, which looked like a Kumari-class cruiser of the Andorian Imperial Guard.

Another hit rocked Enterprise. And Malcolm reported that both cannons were now useless.

“We could ram them,” Travis offered.

“What?” Archer looked at him in disbelief.

“With shuttlepod 1, the way we launched Commander T’Pol,” Travis clarified.

“Aw, what the hell?” Archer grumbled. “Depressurize launch bay one, prepare to open doors.”

Travis performed the same L4-maneuver that they had once used to get rid of Duras and positioned the ship directly behind the attacker.

“Open doors, full emergency stop in ten seconds!”

When Enterprise came to a sudden halt, the crew looked on as the uncontrolled shuttle hurtled towards the Andorians and exploded as it smashed into their propulsion section, setting off a bigger, secondary explosion.

“They’re dead in the water, Sir,” Malcolm reported with the tiniest of smug smiles.

Wordlessly T’Pol directed the MACO’s along the corridors. Even for her disciplined emotional control, the picture looked grim. Vulcan corpses littered each room they had entered so far. The walls were scarred from the fire-fight that had ensued with whomever responsible for the massacre. Two critically injured survivors had been found so far and transported to Enterprise’s sickbay.

As they entered the meditation chamber, T’Pol’s control lapsed for a second as she gasped audibly.

Tela’at Soval!

“Hoshi, get me the Vulcan High Council. I’ll take in my ready room.”

“Aye, Sir.”

The connection was already online when he sat down.

“It is agreeable to see you again, Captain Archer,” T’Pau opened with a nod.

“Nice to see you, too, Minister.”

“I was informed that you have found Ambassador Soval’s ship.”

“Yes, it was boarded and most of the crew was murdered. We have rescued 3 survivors, all in critical condition.”

“Is Ambassador Soval among the survivors?”

“He is. T’Pol says he is in a healing trance and thinks that we need a Vulcan healer as soon as possible.”