Moving through rain and shadows, the landing party did its best to quickly put as much distance as possible between itself and the Chwii’s cave temple. Back in the relatively open spaces of the jungle, Spock became acutely aware of the presence of wild predators stalking the group, always just out of sight, a constant presence of primitive hunger and aggression.
Still proceeding in single-file formation, the group followed Razka, whose confident trailblazing was making their swift retreat possible. As they passed through a dense cluster of waist-high fronds, the landing party was swarmed by tiny flying insects with painful bites. Running offered no escape. The swarm followed them, feasting on their blood as it did, until Spock switched on his tricorder and set it to emit a steady series of powerful ultrasonic pulses. Within seconds the cloud of parasitic insects scattered into the night, leaving Doctor Babitz to treat the landing party’s reddened, swelling bites with hypos of antihistamine.
Off in the distance, shrill screeches of energy weapons being fired at full power rippled through the night. The sounds were muffled by the rain and the jungle but still recognizable. Spock whistled once to signal Razka to stop, and then he raised a fist to halt the rest of the group. Lifting his tricorder he scanned for life signs, in the direction of the sounds of battle. To see the readout clearly, he used his hand to shield it from the rain. “It would appear the Chwii are still pursuing the Klingon strike team on the far bank of the river.”
“Better them than us,” Chekov muttered.
Razka maintained a more professional demeanor. “Still in the same direction, sir?”
“Affirmative. The Klingons are effecting a tactical retreat downriver.”
That seemed to surprise Ensign Singh. “Toward the waterfall?”
Ilucci let slip a derisive snort. “Bold move. Let’s see how that goes for them.”
Continuing his tricorder scans, Spock noticed something curious on the readout. “Chief Razka, I’m reading a broad clearing roughly one kilometer ahead on our present bearing. It might be a trail we can use to expedite our movement.”
Chekov was perplexed. “Movement to where? Where are we going, Mister Spock?”
“At the moment, we are seeking safe ground.” He shut off his tricorder and slung it at his side. “Once we find it, we can formulate a new plan of action.”
Now it was Sulu who sounded confused. “Plan of action? Shouldn’t we get to the shuttle and head back to the Enterprise?”
Spock turned a quizzical look at Sulu. “Why would we do that?”
“Because Doctor Verdo’s dead, and his ship’s a wreck, along with his research. We were sent to bring them back, and they’re both gone. So can we go back to the ship?”
“We cannot.” Spock faced Babitz. “Doctor, would you care to tell him why?”
Babitz was evidently reluctant to speak, but she did anyway. “The creature we met inside the temple might be part of a species known as the Shedai, or it might be a hybrid of some form of humanoid with a Shedai. Either way, it’s Starfleet policy that any active Shedai life-form represents a clear and present danger to Federation security.”
Ensign Singh struck a suspicious tone. “First I’ve ever heard of it.”
The doctor looked at Singh with mild irritation. “That’s because you’re an ensign and Operation Vanguard is an ultraclassified covert operation. One with standing orders to contain the Shedai threat anywhere it’s found, and by any means necessary.”
Sulu, Chekov, and Singh all looked at Spock with varying degrees of disbelief. Sulu asked, “Is this true, Mister Spock?”
“It is. The captain and I, along with Mister Scott, were read into the program roughly twenty months ago, and it is every bit as serious as Doctor Babitz says. When Starfleet demands we suppress the Shedai threat by any means required, that has been shown to include anything up to and including planetary sterilization by photon torpedo bombardment.”
Chekov repeated slowly, in a tone of shock and horror, “Planetary sterilization?”
Singh raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t like the sound of that. At all.”
“No one does,” Babitz said. “Which is why we need to find a more surgical and less apocalyptic way to rid this planet of that thing in the temple.”
Spock nodded. “Agreed. Both because it will be to the long-term benefit of this world’s native people, and because it would be a major strategic blunder to allow the Klingons to obtain this kind of actionable intelligence about the Shedai meta-genome.”
“He’s right,” Babitz added. “Keeping this away from the Klingons is one of Starfleet’s highest priorities right now. No matter what else we do, we can’t let them leave this planet with a sample of the meta-genome or a scan of the creature in the temple.”
Spock raised his voice just enough to make it clear he was addressing the entire landing party. “As of now, that is our new mission objective. And time remains a factor. Chief Razka?”
“I know, I know—onward.” He pointed into the jungle with his machete. “This way.”
Hacking and slashing, Razka butchered a path through green walls of foliage and vines. The ground underfoot varied from slick mud salted with rocks to carpets of decaying vegetation. The former offered worse footing, but the latter gave off rancid bursts of gas that smelled like a rotting corpse with every step the landing party took.
As the fumes built up, Chekov gagged. He pushed on until they were past the stink-moss, and then he shot a glare over his shoulder at it. “Just when we were finally getting rid of the dungeon smell.” Trudging forward, he grumbled under his breath, “I hate this place.”
Razka’s blade sliced through a curtain of mossy vines to reveal open space on the other side. The landing party sidestepped one at a time through the gap, into the scouring embrace of a windy downpour. As soon as Spock saw the path through the jungle, he recognized what it must be, and he could tell from the group’s reactions that they all did, as well.
Just under seven meters wide. All the trees flattened in the same direction, heading down an incline, with most of those in the center of the trail sheared off near the base of the trunk. Bits of scorched metallic debris littering the length of the scar.
It was the gouge inflicted by the crash-landing of a spacecraft.
Spock ran a fast scan with his tricorder, and pointed down the incline. “I am reading a large metallic object, four kilometers in that direction.”
Ilucci cracked a knowing smile. “The Klingons’ shuttle.”
“I think so, Master Chief.” Spock put away his tricorder. “I think that will serve our present needs most adequately. Chief Razka, lead the way.”
Harried by spears and stones, the strike team was running. All pretense of an orderly fallback had been abandoned. The team’s only goal now was to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the Chwii. Even shooting back had been judged a waste of time. Anything that slowed the strike team’s pace was just bringing them another step closer to being overrun.
Mara hurdled over a fallen tree and sprinted past CheboQ, turning the medic into her unwilling living shield. Forgive me, heroes of Sto-Vo-Kor.
If any of the strike team lived through this, she knew that the one tasked with writing the after-mission report was very likely to omit this part, or transform it into something less utterly humiliating. That was, after all, the Klingon way.
Thorny vines slashed at Mara’s face and arms as she slammed through them, her headlong flight guided only by fleeting glimpses of the river, or of the backs of her comrades ahead of her in the rainy darkness. Slung stones caromed off tree trunks on either side of her, and a spear nicked her shoulder before embedding itself in the ground ahead of her.
She threw herself through a wall of tall leafy things and slammed into D’Gol, who caught her and then pushed her away. “Stop running. We’re out of road.”
Her eyes adjusted quickly, and she realized they were at the edge of a cliff overlooking a long drop into the lowlands. To their right was the river, surging with froth and fury as it coursed around a boulder and then turned into a waterfall, plunging nearly two hundred qams to a mist-shrouded cluster of sharp rocks.
Along with D’Gol, Keekur and Naq’chI had beaten her here, but now they were all equally trapped. CheboQ and Hartür were the next to emerge from the jungle. In the seconds that passed while Mara, Hartür, and CheboQ gasped to catch their breath, she had to wonder if perhaps they had lost the eccentric Doctor Dolaq—but then he stumbled out of the greenery, looking as if he had been put through a shredder with a load of old knives.
From the jungle, the furious cries of the Chwii grew closer and louder.
D’Gol shook his head. “So much for finding cover.”
Large stones and spears struck the last of the trees standing between the strike team and the approaching horde. It would be only moments until the enemy overran this naked position, and the looks on the faces of the strike team confirmed for Mara that they all knew it.
Dolaq tried wading into the river, only to have the current knock him down. Sputtering, he pulled himself ashore. “We aren’t fording the river.”
CheboQ leaned out over the riverbank and looked back the way the team had come—and when he turned around, he wore an expression of horror. “It’s coming. The smoke-serpent.”
D’Gol let out a cynical laugh. “Of course it is. The perfect end to a perfect disaster.”
Mara stole her own look at the serpent of black vapors that was ripping through the trees alongside the river in its haste to reach the strike team. Then she faced the others. “We’ve got about a minute before that thing gets here, less before the Chwii are on top of us. Hartür, Naq’chI! The climbing gear!”
The warrior and the pilot froze. Naq’chI shrugged. “What of it?”
“Use the bolt rifles!” She pointed at the massive boulder in the middle of the swollen, muddy river. “Put three anchors with abseil lines into that rock, just under the waterline, right now!” She faced the rest of the team. “We need to buy them every second we can.”
D’Gol nodded. “Skirmish line! Here!” He dropped to one knee next to Mara, who snagged Naq’chI’s disruptor rifle and fell in beside him. On the other side of D’Gol, Keekur, CheboQ, and Dolaq each took a knee and braced their weapon against their shoulder.
“Aim!” The commander put his eye behind his rifle’s targeting sight, and the others on the line did the same. Then came the order: “Fire! And keep firing ’til Fek’lhr takes us all!”
Crimson disruptor pulses lit up the night and tore the jungle to pieces.
Smoke and steam, screeching beam weapons and anguished cries of pain, the stench of burning bodies, the acrid odor of overheating metal. Five warriors with rifles held their ground against five hundred zealots bent on wild violence, even as their weapons overheated in their hands and their emitter crystals fractured under the stress of sustained fire. But to cease fire was to surrender, and to surrender was to die, so into the jaws of death the five went on firing.
Behind Mara, Hartür called out, “Lines secured!”
She and D’Gol both glanced toward the river to confirm that the climbing anchors had been sunk into place, and that the abseil lines were still connected to the three bolt rifles that had fired them. Before Mara could say what she was thinking, D’Gol clearly already knew. Over the din of battle he roared, “Take CheboQ and Dolaq! Hartür, Naq’chI! Get on the line!”
Mara backed off the skirmish line, pivoted around D’Gol, and grabbed CheboQ and Doctor Dolaq. As the three of them scampered toward the river, Naq’chI and Hartür grabbed the rifles from the lab rat and the medic on their way past and took their places on the skirmish line.
The trio stopped at the river’s edge. Dolaq started to panic. “Now what?”
Mara used eyelets built into their field uniforms to link herself, Dolaq, and CheboQ to the abseil line of one bolt gun, which she slung around her torso, tightening its strap until it felt like a tourniquet. “Now you hang on. With me!”
She charged into the river, dragging CheboQ and Dolaq with her. Within two steps they plunged into deep, fast-moving water whose brutal current swept them up like leaves—and hurled them over the top of the waterfall.