Hurried movement from his right caught his attention, and Morqla turned to see an atypically large Palgrenai lunging for him, brandishing what looked to be a shovel. Feeble moonlight reflected off the tool’s dulled, rusted blade, and it was obvious to the governor that the villager was attacking out of desperation. Saliva dripped from both sides of its narrow, elongated mouth, and Morqla saw rows of teeth bared in anger and fear as it charged forward, releasing a garbled hiss.

Morqla ducked as the flat side of the shovel swung past his head, taking advantage of the Palgrenai’s sudden loss of balance to step forward and deliver a powerful punch to his attacker’s head. He felt bone cave beneath his fist as he drove it down into the villager’s skull, and the jeghpu’wI’dropped to the ground, already dead but its body offering up a final series of spasms as life drained from its dark, leathery carcass.

Now feeling the heat of battle coursing through his veins, Morqla turned away from his first kill of the night and began looking for another.

And then he saw it.

A dark, indistinct blur, it might have been humanoid but it moved with such speed that there was no way to be certain. There was no time to study it, for no sooner had it appeared than it lunged for the Klingon soldier closest to it.

“Defend yourselves!” Morqla shouted, but it was already too late. The creature, whatever it was, towered over the warrior, who saw it only at the last moment and tried to bring his weapon around. His movements were far too slow as the new arrival loomed closer, lashing out with at least two extremities that Morqla was able to distinguish from its fluid, undulating form. They slashed across the soldier, and the governor felt his mouth go slack as he watched his subordinate instantly separated into four lifeless hunks of dismembered flesh, bone, and clothing, each falling to the floor of the plaza and releasing a torrent of blood that stained the dark, dry cobblestones.

Uttering a tortured, enraged battle cry, Morqla raised his disruptor and fired at the creature even as it moved again, the pulsing red energy bolts chewing into the stone of the nearby buildings as the thing moved. Other soldiers were firing at it now, as well, a few of their shots even hitting it, of that Morqla was certain, but their efforts seemed to have no effect.

“What isit?” he heard someone yell above the hail of disruptor fire as the creature, all but formless and defying description, moved with deliberate haste, altering its path not the least in reaction to the attack now being directed at it. Instead, it charged other members of his garrison, and blood arced into the air yet again as whatever unholy blades the thing wielded found new targets, and two more of his men fell decapitated to the ground. The appalling scene was repeated twice within the space of seconds, with half a dozen of his soldiers unable to flee the creature’s unchecked wrath as it slashed again and again, with Morqla watching helpless as the thing cut through his men with the ease of a fish swimming through water.

Then it changed direction yet again, this time its trajectory bringing it directly at Morqla.

“Come to me, you filthy ha’DIbah!” he roared, standing his ground and firing at his nearing opponent, watching as the bolts from his disruptor were swallowed by the creature’s body, which reflected none of the light cast off by the cloud-dulled moon or the surrounding fires. Undeterred by the weapon, the thing drew closer, threatening to block out everything with its looming, all-encompassing darkness.

Then the concentrated whine of the disruptor cannon erupted in the plaza once more, and Morqla saw the creature enveloped by a cocoon of frenzied scarlet energy. A chilling wail of pain echoed off the walls around him, and he watched as the thing crumpled beneath the force of the cannon’s blast.

Thankfully, the soldier operating the formidable weapon had the sense to fire again, unleashing another hellish barrage upon the creature. This time the effects were more pronounced, parts of the thing’s formless, featureless hide exploding as its molecular structure was decimated by the disruptor cannon. Morqla saw the creature’s body start to come apart, finally surrendering to the weapon’s vicious fury before collapsing in upon itself in a burst of destabilized molecules that within seconds faded altogether.

The silence enveloping the plaza in the aftermath of the horrendous firefight was all but deafening now, Morqla realized. His soldiers could only stand in silent awe, staring at the patch of scorched stone where only moments before the creature had stood. Even those Palgrenai who had survived the initial wave of attacks by his garrison could only look on, the terror and uncertainty in their wide, dark eyes matching Morqla’s own as each of them tried to comprehend the staggering scene they had just witnessed.

“What servant of Gre’thorhas Fek’lhrunleashed upon us now?” he asked aloud, but the night swallowed his question whole.

27

“Report!”

On the bridge of the imperial cruiser Zin’za,Captain Kutal snarled the order, shouting to be heard over the dull drone of the alert klaxon. Gripping the armrests of his chair with his massive hands, he felt the deck still heaving beneath his heavy boots as his helmsman fought to bring the ship back under some semblance of control.

Over his right shoulder, sparks erupted from the communications console, sending the officer manning that station stumbling backward with his arms thrown up to protect his face. Acrid smoke tinged the already warm air, and the taste of burned insulation and wiring coated his tongue. All around him, consoles blinked and flickered in concert with the compromised overhead lighting, telling Kutal that the ship’s main power systems were suffering in the wake of the massive, unexpected attack on his vessel.

“It is a planet-based weapons system!” was the shouted report from his tactical officer, Lieutenant Tonar. “The attack was launched from four of the locations where we detected the unexplained power readings.”

Of course. Kutal cursed his lack of foresight as he studied the green-brown ball that was the lush world of Palgrenax, rotating before him on the bridge’s main viewscreen. Tonar had first detected power sources coming online from sixteen separate locations on the planet’s largest continent—each of them situated far beneath the surface—less than a kilaanbefore. Each of the locations appeared to be receiving its power via geothermal vents carved from the bowels of the planet and channeled to what Tonar had identified as massive generation and distribution venues. The technology was unlike anything on record, and estimates of the equipment’s age placed it as being older than most explored civilizations in this quadrant of the explored galaxy.

And yet, it works,Kutal mused. It was not lost on him that at least seven of the locations corresponded to sites that Dr. Terath determined featured examples of the ancient structures and technology which had so drawn her interest.

“The energy discharged from those locations combined into one beam for a single strike,” Tonar continued. “If our shields had been down, we might be crippled now.”

And those other twelve power readings might be weapons stations, as well.

“Move the ship to a higher orbit,” Kutal ordered his helmsman. “Route power from nonessential systems to the shields.” He knew he did not have to elaborate as he spoke the words. The Zin’za’s chief engineer would take the directive at face value, channeling energy from every shipboard system save weapons—including life-support—to strengthen the vessel’s defenses. Of Tonar, he asked, “What about those other sites? Are they a danger?”