The muzzle of the disruptor loomed in Xiong’s vision, looking like a massive, toothless maw as its owner jammed it in his face.
“Move!” shouted the Klingon guard, using the weapon to indicate where Xiong should go. Raising his hands, the lieutenant followed the guard’s instructions and moved toward a far corner of the chamber, stepping away from the polished black computer console and around the crystalline pedestal, which at the moment was not cradling the strange Shedai artifact. Another guard, this one only slightly smaller than his hulking companion, aimed his own disruptor at Tasthene, ordering the Tholian to join Xiong.
“What is happening?” Tasthene asked.
Xiong shook his head. “I don’t know.” One moment, he and his Tholian companion had been working, just as they had done for however many days or weeks the pair had been prisoners of the Klingons. The next, one of their guards, the larger one, had received some kind of alarmed message via his communicator. Whatever the Klingon was told, it had set him on edge, and the next moments were spent with Xiong wondering when and if the excited guard would shoot him in the head.
“Quiet!” the guard snarled, baring his teeth at Xiong.
From somewhere beyond the chamber, he heard the muted reports not of a Klingon’s disruptor weapon but of what he was certain was a Starfleet phaser, its deep warbling echoing in the crystalline corridors. It was accompanied by another and yet another, then answered by a chorus of disruptor fire.
They’re here!
Feeling his pulse quickening in hope and anticipation, Xiong could not help smiling as he realized the true nature of the cacophony unfolding outside the chamber. Somehow, someone had received the message he had embedded in the test carrier signals generated by the mysterious Shedai artifact and its unprecedented access to the primeval technology. Given the limited time he had been allowed to work with the strange crystal, he was certain his plan was a long shot, as likely to be discovered by Lorka or Captain Komoraq as by anyone who might be in a position to attempt a rescue operation.
The other guard moved toward the chamber’s entrance, searching for the source of the commotion. His companion, with his weapon still trained on Xiong and Tasthene, nevertheless directed his attention toward the doorway. Xiong considered making a move for the weapon, but there was no way he could physically overpower a Klingon soldier.
Tasthene had other ideas.
Emitting a disturbing string of high-pitched shrieks that succeeded in startling the guard, the Tholian abruptly surged forward, raising his upper appendages. Before the Klingon could react, Tasthene closed the distance and promptly drove his right spearlike arm into the guard’s chest. The Klingon howled in terror and pain as the arm pushed through his back, spraying pinkish-red blood across the ground and the wall behind him. Using his left arm, Tasthene jammed it upward until the point penetrated the Klingon’s head just beneath his jaw, and the Tholian pressed forward, driving the pointed end through the top of the guard’s skull. The Klingon went limp, still impaled on Tasthene’s crystalline arms as his disruptor fell from his hand.
Startled and even horrified at the scene, Xiong still was able to pull himself together long enough to scoop up the weapon, the disruptor feeling large and ungainly in his hand. He heard heavy footfalls running toward him and looked up to see the other guard an instant before a burst of energy sailed past his head, chewing into the stone wall behind him. He flinched at the attack, ducking to his left even as he held his captured disruptor in both hands and fired. The single burst caught the Klingon in his chest, pushing him back and off his feet. He struck the edge of the computer console before falling lifeless to the ground, a massive smoking hole in his torso.
“Someone’s found us,” Xiong said, shaking off Tasthene’s horrific execution of the guard as he ran across the chamber to retrieve his tricorder. “We need to get out of here.” At the set of crates he had fashioned into a work area, Xiong moved aside one of the smaller containers and grabbed the set of tricorder data discs he had secreted there. The discs contained everything he had been able to record about his work here, including the progress he and Tasthene had made while working with the mysterious object from the sarcophagus. The information he had gathered would prove invaluable to Starfleet’s ongoing research of the Shedai.
Assuming that we can get it out of here without getting killed.
“Come on,” he said as he slung his tricorder over his shoulder. He turned to look for Tasthene, and his eyes widened. He was sure he felt his heart skip a beat as he beheld Lorka standing at the entrance to the chamber. She held a disruptor in her right hand, her arm extended to aim the weapon at Tasthene, who was backpedaling away from the Klingon woman. Still holding the disruptor he had taken from the dead Klingon guard, Xiong tried to bring it to bear, but he was far too slow.
Without saying a word, Lorka fired.
“No!” Xiong yelled, but it was too late. The single disruptor bolt struck Tasthene in his torso, and the Tholian’s spindly, crystalline body trembled as the energy blast enveloped him. His agonized wail echoed off the chamber’s smooth obsidian walls, only to be drowned out by the horrific sound of his entire body shattering. Xiong ducked behind one of the packing crates, throwing up his arms to protect his head as most of Tasthene’s environment suit disintegrated in an expanding mushroom of crystal fragments blown backward toward the room’s far wall.
His hands shaking at the image of Tasthene’s ghastly murder, Xiong peered around one side of the crate and saw Lorka stepping into the room, her disruptor moving in a lateral line across her body as she searched for him. She smiled in wolfish satisfaction as her eyes fell on him, and she aimed her weapon.
“Your usefulness is at an end, Earther.”
Lunging to his left, Xiong stood and brought up his own disruptor, turning it on Lorka. His shot was badly aimed, passing over her right shoulder. The Klingon did not flinch in the face of the attack, instead adjusting her aim. Xiong ducked, trying to avoid her shot, but then his ears rang with the high-pitched whine of a Starfleet phaser, and Lorka’s body was consumed for the briefest of moments by a cobalt-blue sphere of energy. She grunted in surprise before dropping limp to the floor, leaving Xiong to stare wide-eyed at his fallen adversary. Looking across the room, he felt a rush of relief as his eyes beheld Lieutenant Jeanne La Sala entering the chamber, her phaser rifle up and ready for another target. When she caught sight of Xiong, she smiled.
“You the one calling for a ride?”
For the first time in weeks, Xiong felt like laughing, though such thoughts faded as his eyes fell on the countless shards of crystal littering the floor, all that remained of his friend Tasthene.
“That’s me,” he said, his voice soft as he took in the sight of La Sala. Behind her, members of her security detachment entered the room, a couple of them taking up positions near the entrance to guard against unwelcome visitors. How long had it been since he had last seen her? The mission to Jinoteur, he now remembered. Her short black hair was matted to her head with perspiration, but that did not prevent the security officer from looking as radiant to Xiong as he recalled from their previous meetings. Gesturing toward Lorka, he asked, “She’s not dead, is she?” Even as he asked the question, he was disturbed by how much he wanted La Sala to tell him that the Klingon was indeed deceased.
La Sala shook her head. “Heavy stun. No killing unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Drawing a deep breath, Xiong ground his teeth. “If only the Klingons felt that way.”
“We’re not the Klingons,” La Sala said.
For all the good that does us.
He waved toward her phaser rifle. “What is it with you and that thing, anyway? Isn’t a Type-two enough?”