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?”
“Yes, sir,” La Sala replied, offering a confident nod. Rising to her feet, she looked to Xiong and Bohanon. “Let’s go.”
As they jogged across the snow-packed trail toward the small outcropping of rocks that he was sure would offer nothing resembling adequate protection, Xiong had to ask. “So, what is it you’re supposed to do?”
“Keep you quiet,” she said, “while they attract that thing’s attention.”
“Commander, transporters are back up,” Mog said, his voice a mixture of fatigue and pride.
“Allah be praised,” Khatami said, sighing audibly through her still throbbing jaw. The past moments had passed with agonizing slowness, with little word from the planet’s surface as to the current situation. Communications with the base camp had terminated at the same time the Endeavourwas attacked, and all attempts to reach any member of the Corps of Engineers team assigned to the temporary research facility had failed. Captain Zhao’s report of the mysterious entity that had attacked him and his landing party only deepened her anxiety, which Khatami knew would not ease until everyone on the surface was safely aboard ship and they were well away from this planet.
With transporters still under repair, Khatami had been forced to order the Endeavourout of orbit as the planetary weapons unleashed a fresh barrage at the starship. The cycle had been repeated once more, with the vessel dodging the worst of the attacks and avoiding further damage to already stressed systems. Only now, with transporters once again operational, could an attempt be made to retrieve the landing party and anyone else who might still be alive on the planet’s surface.
She looked at Klisiewicz, who remained steadfast by her side. “Ensign,” she whispered through pain-numbed teeth, “get us back into transporter range, and hail the captain again. Tell Neelakanta I want to try and draw fire from the surface using evasive maneuvers, and then move back into transporter position while it recharges.”
As the ensign stepped forward to relay her orders to the Endeavour’s Arcturian helm officer, Khatami turned to the communications station where Halse still manned the console. “Ensign,” she said, immediately reaching up to massage her still aching jaw, “anything from the encampment?”
His expression forlorn, the young officer turned from the console and shook his head. “Nothing yet, Commander. I’m still trying to hail them on all frequencies.”
Having issued her last set of instructions, Klisiewicz returned to stand beside the command chair, and Khatami looked up to see the tension in the ensign’s blanched features. He was gripping the railing to his left and staring straight ahead, doing his best to maintain his composure. She placed her hand on his arm again and forced a smile in an effort to calm him. “Resume your post. I’ll take it from here.” Klisiewicz paused until she nodded her affirmation, and then stepped out of the command well.
Turning her attention to the main viewscreen, Khatami flinched from the pain in her jaw as she asked, “Time to the next attack?”
Now back at the science station, Klisiewicz replied, “About twenty-five seconds, Commander.”
“Go to red alert,” she said evenly. “Helm, initiate evasive maneuvers. This is going to be close.”
“Aye, Commander,” Neelakanta replied as his long, thin fingers played over the helm console’s rows of multicolored controls, and Khatami felt the starship heave to starboard. Then they tipped downward, faster than the inertial dampeners could compensate, in a maneuver that seemed to bring them close enough to touch the stark white features of the frozen planet centered on the viewer.
To her right and just on the edges of her peripheral vision, she saw Klisiewicz turn from the science station. “Incoming! All hands, brace for impact!”
The volley blow seemed to slam into the ship from astern, nearly throwing Khatami from her chair a second time. She clutched at her armrests and dug in her heels as she felt the entire bridge vault upward. The force drove her back into her seat, the spastic motions only serving to batter her already aching body. In front of her, Neelakanta held on to the helm console, but McCormack was thrown from her navigator’s chair, falling flat on her back at the bottom of the command well. Red-alert klaxons bellowed across the bridge once more as the ship’s systems attempted to recover from the new attack.
“Shields are down,” Mog shouted above the alarms. “We can’t withstand another attack!”
“Transporters, now!” Khatami ordered as loudly as she could muster.
“Commander!” Klisiewicz shouted, panic clear in his voice. “Sensors only detected weapons signatures from three locations. Four are still reading preattack temperatures. They’re primed and ready!”
“It’s coming!” Bohanon said, wide-eyed.
Crouched next to the frightened Denobulan, Xiong heard it, too. The soft whirring, all around him as if something were moving—no, cutting—through the snow and ice. He looked up from his place of concealment behind the rocks, squinting into the whiteness in search of the threat. Panic swelled within him as he beheld the same twisting wake of flying snow surging across the frozen, desolate plain leading to the encampment, fanning out behind a blurred, dark, vaguely humanoid form.
Then he heard both his and La Sala’s communicators emit an identical pair of soft beeping tones. Fumbling into his parka pocket, he retrieved the device and flipped open its antenna grid. “Xiong here.”
“ This is Transporter Chief Schuster,”a deep baritone voice echoed from the communicator’s speaker grille. “ Stand by for beam-out. We’ll be in position in forty-five seconds.”
Any reply Xiong might have offered was lost as the very air around him seemed to hum and vibrate. He felt an almost electrical sensation playing across his exposed skin at the same instant snow and small bits of ice were stirred up around him. The ground was shaking now, with thunderclaps charging the air as the pale white sky melted into a bright, harsh orange maelstrom.
What the hell…?
Then the ominous, approaching figure was upon them, veering across the frozen plain and descending upon the wrecked all-terrain vehicle—just as Zhao had anticipated.
The whine of phaser fire reached his ears, and Xiong saw a bright ray of energy erupt from Nauls’s concealed position near the vehicle. The beam bored into the onrushing figure, which seemed to simply absorb the energy from the phaser volley even as it continued to move with unreal speed across the snow-packed ground. Nauls fired again and achieved the same effect, with the creature maintaining its course before slamming headlong into the ruined transport.
A sharp metallic crack filled the air, and Xiong saw metal cave inward as the vehicle lurched out of the small depression its crash had created, spinning away from where Nauls crouched and skidding across the snow to settle into a ditch on the other side of the narrow path. Nauls, his position now exposed, scrambled away from the creature, moving backward uphill and fighting to keep his balance as he tried to keep his phaser trained on the assailant.