Free Star Trek: The Original Series: The More Things Change by Scott Pearson Page A

function erratically due to interference from the magnetic field. Chapel moved to another alarm and felt her stomach turn.
    “I’ve got a proximity alert.” RF III had numerous small satellites, little more than captured asteroids, in erratic orbits. Chapel looked through the port, expecting to see a large chunk of rock spinning toward them. Spock spared a quick glance toward her display, but the shuttlecraft lurched violently to one side. Chapel, who hadn’t belted in, gripped her seat to keep from falling to the deck, aided by the strength brought on by fear. In shuttles the inherent dangers of the harsh environment of space were immediate and visceral, not like on a starship, where you could almost forget you weren’t working in a planetside hospital. Her survival instincts urged her to hold her breath in case they started venting atmosphere, but the calm, diagnostic part of Chapel’s mind noted she hadn’t heard the grinding shriek of stone on metal.
    “That was not an impact,” Spock said as he fought to regain control of the malfunctioning propulsion system.
    She was grateful for his even tone, his determined expression. Chapel refocused on her displays, trying to think like a science officer. “Confirming the nature of the alert.” That even sounded like something Spock would say.
    Automated alerts were set off under many conditions and needed to be reviewed by a crew member to determine what triggered them and to weed out false alarms. Chapel tried to get more information, a task complicated by her limited knowledge of sensor operations and the rocking of the shuttle. She quickly realized she’d made a mistake, but she liked the real answer even less. “It’s a warp signature,” she said, working at the panel. She looked over at Spock. “Did they spot us?”
    The rocking subsided, and some of the secondary displays popped back on-line. Spock nodded with satisfaction at the results. “I was able to move us into a less energetic region, and I altered the shield frequency to more fully protect us. Impulse engines should be back on-line soon.” He leaned over to look at Chapel’s display and tapped a few controls. “There are no indications that they noticed us. Remember, sensors are barely operational within the magnetosphere. Automated subspace scans detected the warp trail as a ship passed by the system. The strength of the frequency is consistent with the size of the ship that attacked us. They appear to have fallen for my misdirection, but for how long is uncertain. I must make repairs.”
    The thought of Spock going back into the crawlspace unnerved her, but they had no alternatives.
    “I could attempt the repairs in space with little additional risk, but in this orbital environment—” He was interrupted by an alarm from the diagnostic bed, easily heard even though muffled by the wall separating the cockpit and the aft cabin.
    Chapel rushed to her patient’s side. Dax’s brainwaves were deteriorating again, and she had gone into a deep sleep, at the edge of losing consciousness. As Chapel watched the patterns move across the monitor, she could see that the changes were subtly different than before. Skimming through the scans prior to when the alarm was triggered, Chapel could pinpoint the relapse to when the Copernicus crossed the bow shock into the magnetosphere of RF III; from that point onward the bond between Trill and symbiont declined in strength until it reached the threshold that set off the alarm. Something in this highly charged environment was exacerbating Dax’s condition.
    Chapel reached under the covers to put her palm on Dax’s abdomen, hoping to feel the staticky sensation caused by the symbiont’s neural energy. Even after a few minutes there was nothing. Chapel couldn’t try to stabilize the bond as she had before. She just had to hope that Spock could make the necessary repairs to get them out of this environment as soon as possible. That meant she had to help him as