If not for the pain in her jaw, Khatami might have smiled. She let herself ease back in her seat, comforted somewhat by the knowledge that if she was going to face this situation—whatever it turned out to be—without Captain Zhao, she had Mog at her right hand.
I’d even tell him that, if it didn’t hurt so damned much.
The sharp stings of agony in her jaw had started to subside into a dull, constant throb, and Khatami sensed a wave of nausea coming over her. Allowing herself to settle back into the command chair, she reached out to touch Klisiewicz’s arm. “What happened?”
“A massive energy pulse,” the ensign replied. “It started as individual bursts, originating from the location of the seven power sources we’ve detected. They coalesced into a single beam before striking us.” Shaking his head, he added, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She found it doubtful that he would have, given his lack of experience, but Khatami had never heard of a weapon with such capabilities before, either.
The doors to the turbolift hissed open and she turned to see Nurse Sikal step from the turbolift. The prim young Vulcan took only a moment to survey the scene on the bridge before turning and moving to where Lieutenant Estrada still lay unmoving on the deck.
At Khatami’s prompting, Klisiewicz asked, “Nurse, the commander is asking about casualty figures.”
Without looking away from the medical tricorder in her left hand as she waved a scanner over Estrada’s head, Sikal replied, “Dr. Leone is assessing the situation as we speak, Ensign. He will have a full report in short order.”
Satisfied with the report, such as it was, Khatami returned her attention to the rest of the bridge. Directly in front of her, her helmsman and her navigator, Lieutenants Neelakanta and McCormack, were already back at their stations. At the front of the bridge, the same steady—and deceptively calming—view of Erilon continued to fill the main viewscreen. That serenity was an illusion, she now knew. If whatever had attacked them could do so once, what was to stop it from doing so again?
Over her right shoulder, she heard Halse say, “No response from the captain or any of the landing party, Commander. Erilon Base isn’t answering us, either.”
“Tell him to keep trying,” Khatami said, drawing a breath that whistled through her teeth. As Klisiewicz relayed the order, she asked, “What about those power readings?”
Klisiewicz stepped back to his station, bending over his viewer as he adjusted several controls on his console. After a moment, he reported, “They’re still active, and their temperatures are increasing again.”
“It has to be some kind of planetary defense system,” Mog called out from the engineering station. “They’re probably recharging for another shot. Stephen, calculate how long it’ll take for them to get to pre-firing temperatures. Quickly!”
“Helm,” Khatami called out, straining to talk in a voice loud enough to be heard by the two officers less than a meter in front of her. “Break orbit. Move us out to maximum communications range with the surface.” Even as she gave the order, she heard the question in her mind, wondering if that was enough distance between the Endeavourand whatever was targeting it from the planet’s surface.
“What’s the status on transporters?” she asked.
From behind her, Mog replied, “A few minutes, Commander. They’re having to reroute power from undamaged systems.”
At the science station, Klisiewicz looked up from his viewer. “If my calculations are correct, those power sources will reach target temperature in forty-five seconds…mark.”
“That doesn’t seem very efficient for a defense system,” Mog said. “Too long between volleys, especially if you’re fending off multiple ships.”
Maybe the idea is that one shot should be enough,Khatami thought. She knew from Lieutenant Xiong’s reports that the planet had been uninhabited for millennia, and that the structures he was investigating were even older. Perhaps age had compromised the ancient technology to the point that it had lost much of its power, or at least enough to have spared the Endeavourfrom being destroyed after just a single attack.
“Halse,” she said, agony enveloping every word, “keep trying to contact the captain. Mog, get those transporters up, now. Helm, stand by for evasive maneuvers.”
With orders issued and everyone on the bridge turning to their tasks, Khatami found that—once again—she could only sit, let her people do their jobs, and wait.
If Captain Zhao can wait, then so can I.
“Xiong! Xiong!”
A stinging slap to his face snapped Xiong’s eyes open suddenly. He rubbed his hand against wetness on his brow, and pulled it back to see his blood smeared across his fingers.
“Get up,” called the form in front of him, whom he now recognized as La Sala, the surviving Endeavoursecurity guard. “We’ve got to get out of this thing.”
Xiong stood on wobbly legs, his feet perched on the beveled side panel of the upset all-terrain vehicle, and squinted straight up through its open side hatch into the bright white of the Erilon sky. He then looked around the cabin of the vehicle and saw that he was the only one left to climb out—of those who could climb out, apparently. He saw one of the Erilon researchers slumped between the side and roof of the vehicle, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, and behind him was another jumpsuited researcher, also unmoving. He felt a moment of guilt for never even knowing their names.
La Sala reached up to grab the lip of the hatch before pulling herself through the opening. Lying down atop the vehicle’s exterior, she reached down to give Xiong a hand, and working with her the lieutenant was able to climb out of the transport. Almost immediately he felt the harsh, biting air on his exposed skin. He and La Sala dropped to the ground, hunkering down behind the wrecked vehicle in an effort to hide from the brunt of the wind that now was kicking up.
Next to them, Bohanon, who had been dressed only in his jumpsuit while working inside the structure, was shrugging into a parka that was too small for his portly physique. Xiong saw that blood ran down the right side of the Denobulan’s face, trickling from a cut in his head that looked even worse than his own. Behind him, Zhao and Nauls were checking the power settings on their phasers, the captain returning his to a pocket of his parka. Picking up another weapon from the ground at his feet, Zhao offered it along with a communicator to Xiong.
“Take these,” the captain said. “The Endeavour’s suffered an attack, as well. Transporters are out, but they should be back up in a few minutes. We’ll have to stick it out as best we can until then.”
Under attack?The question screamed in Xiong’s mind, and his thoughts flashed to the ill-fated Bombay. “Who’s attacking them?” he asked.
Zhao shook his head. “Unknown. Weapons placements on the surface appear to be targeting the ship.” Looking to Xiong, he asked, “Something related to your mysterious archaeological expedition, I wonder?”
“Wh-What about the thing that attacked us?” Bohanon chattered in the frigid air. “Where did it go?”
“I hope back where it came from, once we left,” Xiong said. “Or else—”
“Captain!” Nauls said, pointing toward the ridgeline where, through the snow billowing around them, Xiong now saw a column of thick black smoke rising from the distant structures at the end of the road.
Oh, no.
Zhao’s sigh made a visible cloud of vapor that quickly dissipated. “We have to assume it struck the camp and that it’s coming back,” he said. “We need to be ready.” Waving across the roadway, he pointed to La Sala. “Take Xiong and Bohanon and go for cover behind those rocks. I’ll stay with Lieutenant Nauls.” Zhao paused a moment to look La Sala in the eyes. “You know what to do, right?”