Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [59]
Archer said nothing as the two men worked in grim silence.
Minutes passed—at which point, the captain could no longer ignore that the room was growing cold and stuffy. Without life-support, the temperature would soon drop to subzero levels, and the oxygen would be used up by all the warm bodies.
“We’re going to have to leave,” Archer reluctantly told his crew. “Trip, Reed, you stay here as long as you can manage; try to get that device finished. The rest of you, follow me. We need to stay together.”
He stepped through the doors of engineering—only to greet more crew members waiting in darkness. The corridor outside was equally chilly, and the air here was thinning as well. “We’re sticking together,” Archer told them. “Wait here.”
He went back into engineering. “No life-support outside, either,” he told Trip. “I can’t risk you two being stuck up here and not having the oxygen to get to us. You’re going to have to come, too.”
Tucker scowled—not at the captain or his orders, Archer knew, but at Wanderer, for interrupting his work.
The captain handed Porthos—who had behaved remarkably well throughout the turmoil, as if sensing he should not add to his master’s difficulties—to Hoshi. Taking Trip’s flashlight, Archer led his people to the only source of light, heat, and air visible: the distant corridor beyond, leading aft to the main launch bays.
Wanderer was leading them down a path—one intended to culminate in their destruction, Archer realized, but at the moment he had no other choice.
In the first of the main-level launch bays, the lights were bright, the air fresh and comfortably warm. Archer stopped as his crew entered behind him, and spread out, filling the area around the shuttlepod. Hoshi moved next to him, in order to keep Porthos calm, and Reed and Trip Tucker came and sat on the deck beside them. Trip still held the electricity-generating device in his hands, and he and Reed bent over it, talking. They had opened up a phase pistol and replaced the internal mechanism with circuitry, to which some wiring was attached; Archer, weary but intrigued, sat down next to them.
Hoshi followed suit, and Porthos immediately went to his master…but couldn’t help sniffing at the object Reed and Trip were showing such interest in.
“Easy, boy,” Trip said. “You don’t want to be getting a snootful of this.”
Porthos sneezed in reply, then, obviously unimpressed by the mechanical object, went back and settled in Archer’s lap.
“How much of a current does that thing have?”
“Not that much, in human terms,” Reed said.
Trip clicked his tongue in contradiction. “Enough to curl your hair,” he told the lieutenant, who instinctively ran a hand through his short, straight locks. “It won’t kill a human,” he said to Archer, “but it’ll give ’em a jolt. We figure that if Wanderer can only handle a small amount of electromagnetism at a time, this ought to make it sizzle.” He used a small needle-nosed pair of pliers to thread one of the wires to the weapon’s trigger.
“Careful,” Reed said, staring intently at the process. “Don’t want to shock yourself.”
Trip’s upper lip curled slightly. “Now, that would take some talent, considering these pliers are insulated. I know a little bit about electricity, you know. We had some hellacious lightning storms down in the Keys. I knew when to come out of the water.”
“Really?” Reed tried to imagine such a thing. “Do people ever actually get struck?”
“In Florida? You bet. People—tourists, mostly—get killed every year down there; at least, until the doctors revive ’em.” Trip finally completed the circuit, set down his tool, and popped the cover back over the weapon, hiding all but the trigger. “Now all we’ve got to do is test her out.”
“Forgive me if I don’t volunteer,” Archer said dryly. “I’ve had enough shocks for one day.”
“Oh, she’ll generate electricity,” Trip said. “I’m just