Swearing a particularly vile oath under his breath, Kutal rose from his chair and stalked toward the front of the bridge until he stood before the main viewscreen. He crossed his arms and watched as the Zin’za’s orbit shifted to align with the next targets called for by Tonar’s bombardment plan. The area of the planet now visible to him was still shrouded in darkness and dominated by dense cloud cover, preventing him from seeing the outlines of the continents or even those areas that now burned in the aftermath of orbital attack. His inability to see his targets only deepened the mystery surrounding the odd battle he now waged.
“New targets selected,” Kutal heard Tonar say from behind him. “All weapons are ready. I await your…”
When the rest of the customary report did not come, Kutal turned away from the viewer and saw the tactical officer hunched over his console, his face bathed in warm yellow as he peered with intense scrutiny at one of the sensor display monitors.
“Massive spikes in power readings are being detected across the planet,” Tonar finally said. “Geothermal activity is rising rapidly.”
“Helm, break orbit,” Kutal said, feeling the hair on the back of his muscled neck stand up as he considered the report. “Prepare for evasive maneuvering.” If their faceless enemy was preparing to unleash yet another weapon against his ship, he wanted to be ready.
Then Tonar whirled away from the tactical station, his eyes wide with terror. “Captain, the planet! We need to move away from it! Now!”
Frowning, Kutal turned back toward the viewer, muscles tensing in anticipation of a renewed attack from the surface. “What?”
Despite himself, the captain felt his mouth fall open in mute shock.
The rim of the planet seemed to glow as the blanket of clouds shrouding his view of the world below began to burn away before his eyes. Was it his imagination, or was he able to discern cracks in the very continents themselves, easily visible even from his vantage point thousands of qelI’qamsoverhead? Highlighted in bright orange as magma from deep within the planet’s crust was forced to the surface, the fractures appeared to widen and multiply with every passing heartbeat.
“What in the name of Kahless is this?” Kutal asked, though of course he expected no one on the bridge to answer. Whatever was causing the horrific scene before him, common sense told him that it could not possibly be a natural phenomenon. No indications of problems beneath the surface had been detected on any previous sensor scan. The only explanation for what he was seeing—as startling as it was to contemplate—was that it was the result of a deliberate act. Who or what could possess such power?
Ask your questions later!The mental rebuke stung with the force of a physical blow. Assuming you survive!
“Get us out of here!” Kutal shouted, pointing to his helm officer even as he pivoted on his heel and lunged for his chair at the center of the bridge. “Full impulse power!” Slamming his fist down on the arm of his chair with such force that he thought he might break the control pad embedded there, he shouted into the intercom, “Engineering! Stand by warp drive!”
“What about our warriors on the planet?” Tonar asked, his expression a mixture of shock and confusion. “We cannot leave them.”
“They’re already dead!” Kutal said, his attention riveted to the main viewer. The deck plates vibrated and even shifted slightly beneath his boots, the Zin’za’s harried maneuvering away from the planet coming so quickly that the ship’s inertial-dampening systems struggled to maintain balance for the robust yet still fragile living beings inside it. Below and far behind the bridge, the steady drone of the battle cruiser’s impulse engines increased to a whine that was transmitted across every surface of the ship as their power amplified in response to his orders. On the viewscreen, Kutal saw plumes of lava and magma hurled skyward from the surface as the tortured planet slid out of view.
Anyone on the surface, he knew—be they Klingon, jeghpu’wI’,or whatever had put this entire nightmarish scenario into motion—was doomed. If they were fortunate, they already were dead, and would be spared the apocalypse that was to come.
“Reverse angle!” he ordered, feeling the ship complete its rotation as his helm officer aimed its bow for the comparable safety of deep space. The image on the viewer shifted as the impulse drive kicked in and the planet began to recede on the screen.
Then there was nothing for Kutal to do except watch with an odd mixture of horror and fascination as the entirety of Palgrenax collapsed in upon itself.
“Shock wave approaching!” shouted Centurion Darjil from his workstation at the center of the Bloodied Talon’s bridge. “Impact in fifteen ewa!”
Pointing to the centurion manning the helm console, Commander Sarith ordered, “Evasive! Deactivate the cloak and engage warp drive! Emergency power to the shields!”
With everyone on the bridge scrambling to carry out their tasks, Sarith watched as the planet came apart, splintering into billions of fragments that along with magma from the ill-fated world’s molten core were hurled outward in all directions. The core itself, freed from the tremendous tectonic and geothermal pressure at the heart of the planet, vaporized as it surrendered to sudden vacuum, generating a maelstrom of frenzied color and violent energy that served only to punctuate the awesome destructive power which had been unleashed.
None of that mattered to her now, however. The largest threat at this moment was what she could not see.
“Tactical plot!” she ordered, and Centurion N’tovek responded by activating a computer-created digital map outlining the ship’s current position in relation to the world referred to by its native inhabitants as Palgrenax. More accurately, it depicted where Palgrenax once had been, along with the trajectory of the Klingon vessel that the Talon’s sensors had been observing from behind the curtain of stealth offered by the ship’s cloaking device. The battle cruiser was already long gone, having made the jump to warp speed well ahead of the spherical shock wave also displayed on the map. The wave emanated outward from what had been the center of the planet, expanding in all directions with speed far greater than that of the Talon.
“Where are my warp engines?” she called out even as she felt the first effects of the wave beginning to wash over the ship. Her bridge crew gripped support struts, consoles, anything that might provide a handhold while bulkheads shook and deck plating rattled. In the depths of the ship, powerful engines attempted to wrestle it from the orbit of the planet at it succumbed to its death throes. Above all of that, she heard the cycling of the cloaking device as it was deactivated and all of the power it required in order to operate was redirected to the warp drive.
Sarith knew her ship. She was intimately familiar with all of its inner workings. She understood its defects as well as its strengths, its idiosyncrasies and the telltale sounds it made. Because of that awareness, she could decipher from the sound of the Talon’s engines—groaning as they received power once hoarded by the cloaking device and clamoring for more—that they would not achieve the levels needed to accelerate to warp speed before it was too late.
“Channel all available power to the shields!” she shouted. “Everything including life-support!”
Sarith heard the objecting groans of the Talon’s power-distribution system as the emergency changeover went into effect. Lights flickered across the bridge, and on the master systems station she saw computer-simulated representations of energy being redirected from systems that—should this tactic fail—would become irrelevant in short order.