La Sala could not shake the sensation that it was looking directly at—if not through— her.
“Good god!” Roderick exclaimed, his attention split between the sight before him and his tricorder. “The power drain on the field generators was enormous!”
As if to punctuate his report, another bout of unleashed chaos lit up the dull gray sky to their left, and La Sala turned to see that—in the distance—the other creature was attempting a similar assault at another point along the perimeter. The result was the same, with the thing moving away from the charged boundary only to stand, unmoving, mere paces from where its approach had been rebuffed.
“ Lieutenant La Sala,”said a composed voice filtering through her communicator, “ this is Ensign Sulok. We are detecting immense strain on the forcefield perimeter in response to the creature’s attacks.”
Recognizing the voice of the Vulcan engineer sent down from the Lovell,La Sala picked up her communicator even as she kept her attention focused on the motionless humanoid before her. “We’re seeing that, too, Ensign. You S.C.E. types have any ideas?”
“ Not at this time, Lieutenant. We are examining our options, but thought you should be aware of the potential for the barrier to be breached.”
La Sala opened her mouth to reply but the action was stifled as the creature lunged forward, impacting against the forcefield once more and eliciting the same vicious, cacophonous response.
They’re going to get in.
It was only a matter of time now.
“Get to the control room!”
Xiong heard Diamond’s order over the dissonant howl of unleashed energy as the thing—identical to the creature he had seen kill Captain Zhao—for the second time threw itself against the forcefield now blocking this section of the underground corridor. He could not be sure but he imagined he heard the nightmarish, featureless humanoid crying out in pain as it was subjected to the hellish discharge of energy feeding the protective barrier.
He saw Diamond motioning for her security detail and the other members of al-Khaled’s team to get moving even as she held her ground, her phaser rifle aimed at the creature which stood before the still-humming forcefield—as frozen as the earth from which it had come. Xiong’s eyes were drawn to the menacing lances at the ends of its arms, imagining them piercing the fragile bodies of Captain Zhao and Bohanon just as he had witnessed during the earlier attack. Dread gripped him, holding him frozen in its grasp while it waited for its servant to penetrate the barricade separating it from its prey.
“It won’t stop until it gets to us,” he said, feeling his fingers tighten around the handgrip of his phaser.
“We’re not finished yet,” al-Khaled replied from where he and Ensign Ghrex crouched next to a piece of ungainly equipment, both engineers wielding tools and scanners and working at a rapid pace.
“Can you get that thing running or not?” Diamond called out, backpedaling until she stood abreast of her shipmates.
“Almost there,” al-Khaled replied without looking up as he fused one end of a length of optical cable to what Xiong recognized as a power-distribution node—a very oldmodel of power-distribution node.
Xiong could not even be sure he understood how the engineers were proceeding with their admittedly outlandish scheme. After studying the power signatures recorded by the Endeavour’s sensors during the ship’s previous visit to Erilon, al-Khaled and his engineers had set about building a device to counteract the host of communications signals detected between various points around the planet.
Whereas he had expected to see some form of state-of-the-art technology resulting from that effort, a sterling example of twenty-third-century engineering prowess, what Xiong instead found himself looking upon appeared to be cobbled together from a host of surplus detritus scrounged from a salvage yard. Optical cabling and tools littered the ground at their feet as the engineers worked, seemingly oblivious of the scene unfolding around them.
We’re all going to die.
Xiong flinched at the flare of energy created by the creature choosing that moment to once more slam into the forcefield. Shadows fled from the corridor as multihued tendrils arced between the pair of emitters positioned on opposite sides of the passageway, playing across the humanoid’s opaque, austere form.
Then the light died and the omnipresent hum of the emitters faded, and the creature stepped forward.
The whine of weapons fire echoed across the open ground and La Sala felt the tingle of discharged phaser energy washing across her skin, but she ignored it. Her focus now was the haunting vision of hell that had just broken through the forcefield and that was at this instant moving toward her.
“Back! Everybody back!” she shouted before firing again. The beam struck the creature high near the right shoulder, its skin seeming to absorb the energy while leaving no trace of her attack. As it continued to advance, La Sala pushed the phaser rifle’s intensity setting forward as far as it would go, adjusting the weapon’s power level to maximum. She fired once more, the rifle’s high-pitched howl playing across her ears and causing her to wince from the discomfort.
Though the creature staggered in the face of the barrage, it did not stop.
“Dammit!” she shouted in frustration as the creature moved in lurching steps to its left, angling toward where Roderick huddled behind the cargo container and trained his own weapon on the approaching intruder. “Roderick! Get out of there!”
The ensign rose from his crouch and began to retreat, continuing to fire at the oncoming attacker. He tripped on a coil of cable lying near one of the other cargo containers, stumbling backward but maintaining his balance. Still, it was enough to make him lower his weapon in an attempt to keep from falling to the ground.
“Look out!” La Sala cried, continuing to fire her ineffective weapon after the horrific attacker in their midst.
It was all the opportunity the creature needed. Falling forward more than lunging, the thing lashed out with one of its immense arms, skewering Roderick through the chest. The ensign’s eyes went wide with terror and surprise, his body going limp within seconds as life drained out of his body from the massive wound inflicted upon him. Withdrawing its blood-slickened arm from Roderick’s chest, the creature did not wait for the now dead man even to fall to the frozen ground before turning in search of its next target.
Trembling from the raw horror of what she had witnessed, La Sala was already moving, scrambling around the side of the cargo container in search of even momentary concealment. “This is La Sala! I need help here!” she shouted into her communicator, knowing even as she made the plea that others around the camp would never reach her in time. The creature seemed to be regaining its earlier flagging strength, picking up its pace as it trudged through the snow toward her.
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed, laying her phaser rifle atop the cargo crate and centering the intruder in her sights. At the rate she had been firing the weapon, experience told her that its power cell was almost exhausted. This stand, however pitiful it might be, would be her last.
Less than twenty meters from her, the creature lurched to an abrupt stop, its joints appearing to lock up in midstride even as momentum carried it forward until it tumbled face first into the snow. No sooner did it strike the ground than its body collapsed, slumping to the earth and remaining still.
Rising from her meager place of protection, La Sala regarded the now immobile creature lying on the ground. “What the hell just happened?” she asked, though no one was around to offer an answer.