Inside Out

[Cmdr Ba'alyo 0]

He kicked the strangely curved blade away from the fallen Klingon - a bat'leth, if he remembered right. Although his adversary had been stupid to bring a blade to a phaser fight, it had still taken a heavy stun from Zen and two from Doug to bring him down. Klingons were durable fighters, he had to admit. The warrior-priests of his clan would admire this one.

 

He looked toward the satchel the Klingon had been reaching into. "Doug, see what he was doing over there," he ordered.

 

The tactical officer moved down the corridor toward an open panel, prodding open the leathery sack beside it. Ba'alyo could see blinking lights on what looked like a detonator. He slapped his hand against the wall panel. "Bridge, one Klingon down on Deck Eight. we've got explosives!"

 

His thoughts raced, knowing that if the explosives went off here, it could rip into sickbay below them. With the Klingon spy in surgery, they could lose any information he carried about the ongoing coup. Trying to think where the nearest transporter room was, he realized it had been awhile since he'd been on this class of ship. There was little time for him to remember. "Lieutenant," he called out, "pick up those explosives and head to the transporter!"

 

Momentarily, he wished the systems and fields inside a starship weren't so complex. If transporters could operate freely inside, they could just beam it from one site to another site, maybe right into space.

 

He heard the bridge calling after him as he rushed away. He wasn't going to send Doug to his death alone. Navigators didn't usually give such orders, but even as a shiny new XO, he wasn't ready to let someone else take a risk he wouldn't do himself. Besides, there was supposed to be one more intruder on this deck. He watched Doug turn down one of the radial corridors, maybe toward the gangway. Vaguely, Zen remembered that the transporter room on the Excelsior had been one deck below sickbay - Deck 10?

 

He followed, hoping the anesthezine gas, security, and the Marines were handling the other dangers. He breathed a silent blessing on their task. If he and Doug failed, the ship might go up from the inside out.