“We’ll go in, then,” Keru said. He turned toward T’Lirin. “You, me, and Kent. We’ll each take a pattern enhancer. If we can persuade the survivors to stay in one place, we ought to be able to beam them out safely.”
The shuttle veered to port, throwing them all toward that side of the craft. As they righted themselves and recovered their seats, Waen shouted an apology. “Sorry. A huge gout of magma was erupting right below us.”
Keru felt as though his insides had been sliced open, pain from his recent chest wound. “How do we get to the survivors?”
Norellis pointed through the forward window toward a cave opening on one of the buttes. The entrance was narrow, and the pathway leading to it had already crumbled away, no doubt because of all the recent seismic activity. “Line-of-sight transport. We beam ourselves just inside the opening, one at a time. Risky, but it’s our best option.”
Keru nodded, then looked quickly at T’Lirin. She nodded as well.
“I will go in first,” she said. “I’ve traversed the volcanic plains of the Womb of Fire on Vulcan. I believe this will be easier.”
Moments later, T’Lirin had successfully beamed over to the cave opening, followed quickly by Norellis. Keru was the last to go, feeling the beam engulf him in its disorienting shimmer.
The air outside the shuttle was oppressively hot and acrid-smelling, and Keru immediately began to cough as he made his way deeper into the caves. The situation reminded him briefly of the stand he and the other Guardians had made on Trill, when political terrorists had attacked the caves of Mak’ala.
He heard the echoes of footfalls coming from T’Lirin and Norellis up ahead, as well as a variety of screams and shouts beyond. He rounded a corner to find a broad chamber filled with a chaotic and frightened crowd of refugees. Most of them were members of the bovine native species that the Neyel had apparently enslaved long ago, along with representatives of a number of other sentient races, including Neyel, mixed among them.
As T’Lirin tried to explain to the refugees what would happen during the beam-out, Keru and Norellis arranged the tall, stanchion-style transporter pattern enhancers in a triangular formation that encompassed much of the wide chamber. They couldn’t transport everyone out at once; they would have to do so in three groups.
Norellis took the first group, and while they seemed to flicker and linger a bit too long during their dematerialization, Keru was heartened to hear Kent’s voice over his combadge a few moments later. They had reached the shuttle successfully.
The ground shook and groaned, as if the very bones of the planet ached.
“You’d better get out of there quickly though, Ranul,”Norellis said over Keru’s combadge. “These buttes are starting to collapse around us out here.”
Keru looked to T’Lirin. “You go next.”
The Vulcan woman shook her head. “Respectfully, sir, even though you are the leader of this mission, you must go next.” She pointed at him.
Keru was about to disagree, when he saw that she wasn’t pointing at him, but at his chest. He looked down to see blood seeping through his tunic. Hisblood. His wound had reopened.
“See you on the other side,” he said, then joined a group of lowing, frightened Oghen natives within the triangle formed by the pattern enhancers. A moment later, a shimmering curtain of energy enfolded him, and he felt a momentary sensation of freefall.
Then he materialized in the shuttle, along with the refugees. Nurse Kershu turned toward him and her eyes widened when she saw the blood on his tunic.
“Get T’Lirin out immediately,”he shouted. He’d be damned if he was going to leave any of his team behind.
Norellis yelled into the companel in front of him. “T’Lirin! Are you ready? T’Lirin?”
All that came back was static.
Waen turned back from the pilot seat. “Sir, sensors show there’s been a cave-in. We’ve lost our transporter lock.”
Keru’s heart sank. No. I can’t lose her. I can’t loseanyone .He’d made that promise to himself when he’d agreed to take the job as Titan’s chief of security. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, his coma visions of despair and bloodwine assailed him.
Waen shouted again from the cockpit, and Keru heard the sound of hope in her voice. “I’m showing life signs, Commander. And they’re on the move.”
“Is there any way to get them out?” Keru asked, pushing the administering hands of Nurse Kershu aside and moving forward through the frightened crowd toward the cockpit’s copilot seat.
“No, sir,” Waen said. “But I think they’re headed for an opening over there.” She pointed to the forward window, toward another opening in the butte wall.
A moment later, movement was visible just inside the dark egress. Keru turned back toward Norellis.
“Kent, beam over anyone who exits the caves. Energize the moment you have a lock.”
As he turned back toward the screens, Keru heard a cacophonous sound, louder than anything he’d yet heard. A moment later, something massive collided with the face of the butte, near the entrance the team had used previously. Rocks and dust scattered from the impact’s epicenter, stone shrapnel banging against the shuttle’s hull.
Waen turned toward him. “Commander, we’re being hit by lunar debris, and it’s only getting worse. We have to go now!”
“Not without T’Lirin,” Keru said. He turned back toward the rear of the shuttle, just in time to watch another quartet of disoriented refugees materialize.
“There she is,” Waen said, pointing. Through the dust-clotted air, Keru saw T’Lirin, her uniform torn and dirty. She was carrying a small Neyel child, and was standing near the lip of the cave.
“Lock onto them now!” Keru yelled back to Norellis.
“Transporter’s down,” Norellis shouted. “I can’t get a lock!”
No!Eyes wide with horror, Keru looked at the screen, saw T’Lirin holding the Neyel child close to her chest, her image swimming in the heated air.
Keru was about to order Waen to take them in as close as possible to T’Lirin when something struck the shuttle, nearly hard enough to turn it over. Keru felt himself fly up out of the seat, and came crashing down against one of the consoles.
He heard screams, and saw flashes of light and showers of sparks and moving bodies, even as he rolled off the control panels and onto the shuttlecraft’s unyielding deck.
A blue hand helped him up. “Sir,” Waen yelled. “If we don’t leave now, everyone we came to save will die.”
Keru looked up at the screens, staring transfixed at the image of T’Lirin. Her face was a mask of utter calm, of acceptance. She raised one hand toward the Ellington,her fingers paired and parted into the shape of a V.
The shuttle shook again. “Sir!” Waen shouted.
“Raise shields,” Keru snarled, his eyes brimming with tears. “Get us out of here, fast.” But he forced himself to watch the consequences of his choice as T’Lirin and her charge dwindled from sight on the surface of the dying planet.
VANGUARD
Davin ran, and she knew she was running for her life.
Stay out of the lights,she told herself, avoiding the huge, mirrored structures that brought external sunlight into this place. She could hear crowds in the distance, could see some of them in the far distance on the opposite side of the place if she looked straight up.
But when she cried for help, no one came to her aid.
She had to assume they were still chasing her. There were four of them when she had last looked over her shoulder, but she was no longer sure there weren’t more. All she knew was that she couldn’t afford to turn to look again, lest they gain on her. Keeping her tail pointed straight behind her, she kept running, hoping she could find a way to elude her pursuers in this strange, curved place— could this really be Holy Vangar, the moon placed in Oghen’s sky by the original Oh-Neyel people?—or at least ascend to the spincenter of the place, where the pull of gravity was said to be weakest.