The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [162]
Beverly pulled them out of her medical bag. “They won’t work, Will.”
“Not in here, sure…”
“Actually, not anywhere. I had to pull out the power cells to energize this console.”
Will stood in front of Beverly and placed his hands on the podium. “What?”
“The facility uses geothermal power to fuel itself. That’s why most of the systems are still working. But the power conduit from this console to the main source was decayed. I couldn’t reconnect it, so I replaced it.” Beverly paused for a moment. “Why did you want the phasers?”
“Because I’m going out there.”
“Will, you can’t. It’s too risky. The Enterprise will find us…”
“Beverly, I know they will, but we don’t know when. There’s so much interference that we don’t know when they’ll be able to locate us. And they don’t know that they’ll be walking into an environment with a hostile Tellarite who’s already shown no compunctions about killing Starfleet officers.”
A wave of realization hit Beverly. “You have a plan.”
Will smiled a confident smile. “You bet I do.”
“Is it a good plan?”
“I can’t say that. Let me show you something.” Will led Beverly out of the chamber and into the waiting room. He pointed at the pool. “Anything look familiar?”
“The architecture?”
“The pool.” Riker sat on the edge of the pool and scooped up a handful of water. “I thought it was a simple reflecting pool, until I recognized this. It’s the same ratty, algae-encrusted muck that we saw in the ponds outside. But there’s no vegetation in here. So I scanned the pool. It’s not a reflecting pool, Beverly, it’s a moon pool. It connects to that pond outside of here. There’s a pipe goes on for about a kilometer. Too long for me to hold my breath…”
“…if you still had to breathe,” Crusher finished.
“Exactly,” Riker said while pressing the keypad on his tricorder.
Beverly looked at the indicator light on Riker’s Lifesaver. Riker didn’t need to look to know it was blinking noticeably faster; he could feel the pulses the Lifesaver sent through his body. He also knew Beverly feared that the alien device’s power supply would never be able to withstand whatever he had planned. He figured she’d look for a way to talk him out of his plan, and he was preparing his counter.
“But the blast doors,” Beverly said in protest. “Surely, there’s a door in the pipe, and I doubt I can isolate just that one…”
Riker cut her off. “You won’t have to. It’s been underwater for six thousand years with nobody to repair or replace it. Look.” Riker held up the tricorder so that Beverly could see the screen. “The mechanism rusted through. When the shutdown occurred, the blast doors in that pipe couldn’t even close.”
“Even if you can get out, Will, then what?”
“I figure I’m dead enough that our Tellarite friend won’t be able to scan me, no matter what kind of instruments he’s got. So maybe I can get the drop on him. Even if I can’t, I can make enough of a distraction for you to open the doors of the facility and make a break for the shuttle.”
Beverly couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She pointed to the flickering light on the Lifesaver. “Will, stop. We don’t know how much power that thing still has. As your doctor, I can’t…”
Riker waved her off. “I may be your patient, Doctor, but I’m also a superior officer.” Riker straightened to his full six-foot-four-inch height and put all the authoritarian air he could muster into his next statement. “Consider it an order, Commander.” Then he gently put his hands on her shoulders and added, “Beverly, if I’m going out, I’m going out the same way I came in.”
“I can’t talk you out of this?”
“Good-bye, Beverly.” And with that, he plunged into the pool.
Riker slowly poked his head out of the water, letting just his eyes surface over the waterline. His tricorder indicated that the Tellarite was near the front entrance of the medical facility, but given all the interference, Riker wasn’t taking anything for granted.