Demora Sulu stood in a place she hated. It made no sense, she knew that, but the emotion persisted—had persisted for decades. It didn’t matter that the sickbay aboard Enterprise had been the scene of countless recoveries, of wounds healed and illnesses treated, of medical wonders large and small performed by Doctor Morell and her staff. It didn’t even matter that, during her twenty-five years aboard the ship, Sulu herself had spent her share of time there.
More than my share, the captain thought. All told, she’d doubtless endured entire days, maybe even weeks, of regular physical and psychological examinations, not to mention innumerable checkups after participating in landing parties to alien worlds. And that’s not even taking into account the major incidents. Early in her Starfleet career, she’d marched into a Brevant ambush on Beta Orvis III and nearly paid for her carelessness with her life. She’d fallen through the surface on an unnamed moon out in Desidera’s Loop, where she’d narrowly escaped drowning before facing down death by hypothermia. Even during her first mission as Enterprise captain, on the voyage to the Röntgen Wall, she had—
Stop it!
Sulu hated Starfleet medical facilities—sickbays, infirmaries, hospitals, whatever the designation given to them—and she had since the age of six. She understood the reasons she felt that way, conceded the irrationality of her aversion, but recalling the numerous times her health had been preserved or her life saved in such a place wouldn’t change her feelings. Even though she knew that the efforts of all the doctors and nurses and technicians in Enterprise’s sickbay kept the crew—kept her crew—safe, that knowledge didn’t loosen the knot that tightened in her gut every time she set foot in there.
As Sulu stood in the doorway of the ship’s surgical suite, circumstances compounded her usual discomfort. Her first officer had been horribly wounded on the second away mission to Rejarris II, and another crew member, who’d also been injured, remained alone on the planet and cut off from the ship. The captain waited anxiously as Doctors Morell and Benzon consulted over the unconscious form of Commander Linojj. The Boslic woman had been laid out on the operating table, her long purple hair pulled back and tied behind her head. A series of transparent containers sat on a tall, wheeled cart beside her, the various colored fluids within them flowing through medical equipment and down tubes that connected to her left arm. A green light shined steadily and a yellow one pulsed beside it on a silver metal cuff that had been fitted over the stump of Linojj’s right arm.
Sulu swore under her breath. She didn’t blame herself for the terrible injury to her first officer or the loss of communication with Ensign Young. Starfleet Command had accorded the Enterprise crew with the privilege of exploring the universe, of discovering the undiscovered, of meeting the unknown—an exciting and rewarding duty that did not come without danger. Sulu’s people knew their jobs and understood the risks. But even though the captain didn’t blame herself for what had taken place, she took responsibility for it. That was part of her job.
In addition to that, though, the events on Rejarris II hurt Sulu on an intensely personal level. She had no closer friend than Xintal Linojj. They had served together aboard Enterprise for a dozen years, but their friendship stretched back to their Academy days. They had met during Sulu’s graduating year, when she’d assisted an instructor in teaching Advanced Astrophysical Navigation. Linojj took the course in only her second year as a cadet, and she outperformed every other student, all of them upperclassmen. When Starfleet transferred her to Enterprise just after its refit in 2307, she and Sulu quickly renewed their acquaintance.
And Xintal was there for me when I most needed her. The news that Sulu’s father and the crew he commanded aboard Excelsior had been declared missing in action and presumed dead had been the hardest time in her life since the death of her mother. While the later incident lacked the fear and confusion and distress of a child trying to cope with such a devastating event, it carried with it the deep pain that came from an adult’s understanding. For a while, she had held out hope for her father, which had softened the transition to acceptance, but she didn’t know how she would have made it through that difficult time without Linojj’s stalwart friendship.
When Sulu had received promotion to Enterprise captain, it had been an easy decision to follow the advice of the man she’d replaced, John Harriman, who had recommended the elevation of Linojj from second officer to exec. Since that time, the two women had grown even closer. What Sulu had gone through with Captain Harriman when she’d become his first officer, she experienced with Linojj, albeit from the other perspective. The confidence that they needed to have in each other, and the closeness in which they worked, helped them forge an unshakable bond.
Across the compartment, Doctor Morell finished her conversation with Rentis Benzon, the Betazoid physician second in seniority among the Enterprise medical staff. While Benzon moved to speak with a pair of nurses, the chief medical officer headed directly for the captain. Sulu didn’t need to ask for a status.
“Commander Linojj’s condition is serious but stable,” Morell said without preamble. “We’re treating her for shock and we have her sedated, but otherwise her vital signs are good. The prognosis is that she’ll survive.”
But will she live? Sulu thought but didn’t say. Not that people with such disabilities couldn’t lead fulfilling lives—of course they could, and no doubt did—but permanently losing a limb would require of Linojj enormous adjustments, not just physically, but mentally and especially emotionally. Sulu wanted an easier road for her first officer to travel—for her friend to travel.
“As injuries go, hers is better than most of this type,” Morell continued. “Her traumatic amputation was remarkably clean, with little damage to her residual limb.”
“ ‘Little damage’?” Sulu echoed, skeptical.
“Yes, Captain,” the doctor insisted. “When an arm or a leg is lost in the field, there’s often a great deal of damage inflicted on the distal end of the residual limb: bones are compressed and sometimes crushed, veins and muscles are mangled and left ragged, the skin is shredded. In the commander’s case, none of that happened. Under the circumstances, I’d say that qualifies as good news.”
Sulu felt the smallest bit of relief. “I take it that means that you’ll be able to fit her with a biosynthetic replacement.”
Morell paused before responding, and Sulu read uncertainty in the doctor’s hesitation. At last, she said, “Commander Linojj will make an excellent candidate.”
“Only a candidate?” the captain said, more sharply than she’d intended. She took a moment herself to rein in her emotions. “I don’t understand,” she told Morell. “You just talked about how ‘clean’ the injury was. What’s the problem?”
“The only specific issue Doctor Benzon and I can see is that there’s some thermal damage to the median and ulnar nerves,” Morell said. “As a result, there’s a possibility that she won’t be able to exercise motor control over artificial muscle tissue.”
“When will you know?”
“Not for a while,” Morell said. “Not until after the operations.”
“Operations,” Sulu said. “More than one.”
“We need to examine her damaged arm and deal with the thermal damage, debride the burned tissue,” Morell explained. “Assuming a successful procedure, we’ll then have to surgically attach a new biosynthetic limb, which will take some time to craft. At that point, the commander will have to undergo physical and occupational therapy, as well as counseling.”
“Can all of that be done aboard ship?” Sulu asked. Enterprise currently traveled outside of Federation space, in unexplored territory, with no specific return scheduled. If Linojj’s medical needs could not be met aboard ship, Sulu would need to alter Enterprise’s course and, once the crew had recovered Ensign Young, head to the closest Federation facility: Helaspont Station, near the Tzenkethi border.
“Yes,” Morell said. “We have the facilities, technologies, and materials to fabricate a biosynthetic limb for Commander Linojj, and Doctor Benzon did his residency at the Loring Institute on Betazed, which specializes in biosynthetics. We have several qualified counselors aboard, including Nurse Veracruz, who has experience with traumatic amputees.”
Sulu nodded, satisfied that Linojj’s recuperation would not require an added layer of complexity by having to return her to a starbase. She believed that the commander would stand a better chance at a full recovery if she didn’t have to be removed from her chosen environment. Sulu also wanted to be there for her friend during her convalescence. “What are Commander Linojj’s chances for success?”
“You know I don’t like to put a number on such things, Captain,” Morell said. “The truth is that even if everything goes medically right, there are no guarantees.”
“There are no guarantees in life, Doctor,” Sulu said. “How often do these procedures result in a patient receiving a functioning replacement limb?”
“In a case like Commander Linojj’s, the success rate is high,” Morell said. “Upward of sixty-five percent.”
Although the number seemed acceptable—even good—to the doctor, it disappointed Sulu. It meant that out of every three patients in Linojj’s condition, one of them would permanently lose their limb. The captain would have preferred better odds.
Returning her attention to the injured crewman still on the surface of Rejarris II, Sulu asked, “Can you tell how this happened?” Crewman Permenter’s description of events on the planet shed little light on what had befallen Linojj, as she had been out of everybody’s sight at the time.
“We believe that it was caused by some sort of energy discharge,” Morell said, “though it’s not quite like anything we’ve seen before.”
“Could a weapon have been used against her?”
“It’s difficult to say, but she didn’t suffer a blast from a phaser or similar weapon.”
Before Sulu could ask any more questions, the three tones of the boatswain’s whistle sounded in the compartment just outside the surgical suite. “Bridge to Captain Sulu,” said Commander Buonarroti, the ship’s chief engineer. Fourth in the ship’s chain of command, he’d taken over the bridge with Enterprise’s top three officers elsewhere.
“Is there anything else, Doctor?” Sulu asked, and when Morell shook her head, the captain headed back out into main sickbay. She moved to the nearest intercom and activated it. “Sulu here.”
“Captain, you asked to be informed when Amundsen was close to returning,” Buonarroti said. “The shuttlecraft has just cleared the atmosphere.” He spoke with the elongated tempo of humans brought up in the Alpha Centauri system.
“Acknowledged,” Sulu said. “Has there been any contact with Ensign Young?”
“No, sir,” Buonarroti said. “We’re continuing our efforts, but so far, we’ve had no luck.”
“All right,” the captain said. “I’m headed to the hangar deck. Have one of your staff meet me there. I need an engineer with medical training.”
“Aye, Captain,” Buonarroti said.
“Sulu out.” She deactivated the intercom and glanced back toward the surgical suite. She thought to tell Doctor Morell to keep her informed about Linojj’s progress, but she knew that she didn’t need to do so. While Sulu had enjoyed Captain Harriman’s more relaxed command style, she’d gravitated to a more formal atmosphere once she’d taken over Enterprise from him. Among other shipboard procedures, she had established protocols for the crew to keep the senior staff apprised of ongoing developments.
Instead, she exited sickbay and headed for the closest turbolift. She didn’t know what had happened down on the planet—either to the vanished native population, or to her two injured officers—but it no longer mattered to her. She had made the decision that, once they’d recovered Ensign Young, she would order the ship onward, so that the crew could continue their mission of exploration elsewhere. They had already spilled too much blood on Rejarris II.
♦ ♦ ♦
The navigational beacon appeared on the shuttlecraft’s main display, and Tenger quickly piloted the auxiliary craft onto an intercept course. When he’d maneuvered Amundsen into position, he slammed the fleshy side of his fist down on the autopilot control, the sound of his hand hitting the panel loud in the small cabin. For a moment, the security chief’s frustration threatened to boil over into anger, but with an effort, he reduced it to a simmer.
Tenger confirmed the autopilot’s operation, which included interfacing with Enterprise’s automated guidance systems. That would allow the Excelsior-class starship to snare the shuttlecraft and bring it in for a landing in the hangar bay. Amundsen rocked slightly as an Enterprise tractor beam latched onto it.
The security chief turned in his chair and regarded the three members of his staff that he’d assigned to the shuttlecraft with him. The two women and one man avoided his gaze, not out of disrespect or discomfort, he didn’t think, but from the surfeit of decorum and discretion their duties often required of them, whether attending Starfleet admirals or Federation dignitaries. Tenger’s crew had surely seen his momentary outburst, but in ignoring it, they allowed him the illusion of believing they hadn’t, which he appreciated. “We’re on approach to the Enterprise,” he told them before swinging back around to the shuttlecraft’s main console.
Through the forward viewport, the gray orb of Rejarris II hung off to port, a dirty speck against the black backdrop of space. Ahead of the shuttlecraft, Enterprise awaited, the navigational beacon and the low-power tractor beam streaming from it invisible to the unaided eye, but registering on the helm display. Amundsen approached the ship aft, headed toward where the secondary hull curved concavely upward from its bulging forward half. The thick but almost-flat circle of the primary section stretched away at the front of the ship, while the sleek warp nacelles, connected by right-angled pylons to the secondary hull, projected backward in an impressive display of drive power.
With just minutes remaining before Amundsen set down in Enterprise’s hangar bay, Tenger considered the argument he would make to the captain. Although Sulu bore the ultimate responsibility for the entire crew, his position as the ship’s chief of security made their welfare his number-one priority. He hadn’t participated in the second landing party to Rejarris II because the captain had needed him to study the incoming data and assess the threat potential of the large, unexplained structure they’d found on the surface. His absence from the planet didn’t mitigate his accountability for what had taken place, though. To his way of thinking, the fact that he’d remained on the ship only pointed out his failure: even though staying on Enterprise allowed him to see readings of the entire alien structure, he should have anticipated the danger and insisted on accompanying Commander Linojj to investigate it in person.
Captain Sulu would of course disagree. She would note that Tenger’s presence on the planet would not have guaranteed the safety of either the exec or the communications officer. He would contend it didn’t matter, that the injuries to Linojj and Young, and the separation of the latter from the ship and crew, provided de facto validation that Enterprise’s security chief should’ve beamed down with the second landing party. He would also petition the captain to assign him to the next one.
In actuality, Sulu had ordered Tenger to travel back down to the planet. After Commander Linojj requested emergency medical transport for Ensign Young, and once the attempts to beam him back to the ship failed, the captain ordered the security chief to form a detachment and take a shuttlecraft to the surface of Rejarris II. Amundsen had already entered the atmosphere and traveled halfway to its destination before Sulu recalled Tenger and his team back to Enterprise.
Apparently, even as the shuttlecraft had headed for the planet, Commander Linojj had been badly injured. According to what the captain told Tenger, one of the ship’s transporter operators, Crewman Corvallis, beamed down with a spare signal enhancer for the first officer, who had lost hers. Corvallis and the entire landing party then transported back up to Enterprise, with the exception of Ensign Young, who, after sustaining his injury, remained somehow cut off from the crew.
At the time the captain had ordered Tenger to reverse the shuttlecraft’s course and return to the ship, he had suggested that he and his team should instead continue on down to the planet. He wanted to directly assess Ensign Young’s situation so that he and his security detail could effect an immediate rescue. If that proved impossible, then he would gauge the requirements for a future attempt at recovery.
Captain Sulu had simply said no. She offered no reasons for her decision, but she didn’t need to: Tenger had served under her command long enough to know what she intended to do. He respected her for it, even as it motivated him to report her actions to Starfleet Command. He would never do such a thing, though, both because the decisions Sulu made never fell outside the scope of “captain’s discretion,” and because, in her position, he probably would have elected to do the same thing.
Up ahead of the shuttlecraft, Tenger saw, the segmented hatches of Enterprise’s hangar bay had divided in the center and begun telescoping open. The security chief checked the navigational readouts to validate Amundsen’s approach, and to assure himself that he didn’t need to resume manual control of the shuttlecraft. As he did so, a message flashed across a display, supplemented by a tonal signal, indicating an incoming transmission. He tapped his panel to permit reception.
“Enterprise shuttlebay control to Amundsen,” said a male voice.
“Shuttlebay control, this is Commander Tenger aboard Amundsen,” said the security chief.
“Commander, our guidance systems are prepared to fully take over landing.”
“Understood,” Tenger said. “I’m shutting down Amundsen’s drive.” He worked his controls, cutting the shuttlecraft’s engine power. The cabin quieted, the hum saturating the compartment—almost unnoticeable because of its constancy—fading completely. On the helm display, Tenger saw the intensity of the tractor beam increase, slowing the vessel for its final approach.
“We’ve got you, Amundsen,” said the voice of shuttlebay control. Tenger made it a point to familiarize himself with everybody aboard ship as part of his security protocols, but he didn’t always recognize voices. “Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“Acknowledged,” Tenger said. “Amundsen out.”
The hatches leading to the hangar bay had opened fully, revealing the landing pad beyond them. Two columns of green chaser lights raced in parallel lines from the aft end of the deck inward, leading to a circular turntable conspicuously inscribed with a large red X. Past that sat an array of auxiliary craft, including several planetary shuttles like Amundsen, as well as a pair each of cargo management units and warp shuttles. Above those vessels, a row of ports stretched across the top of the far bulkhead, and through them, Tenger saw several Enterprise crew members moving about the shuttlebay control room.
Amundsen glided through the open hatches, trembling briefly as it passed through the force field that secured the hangar and maintained its atmosphere. Tenger glanced through the forward port at the observation galleries that overlooked the landing party on either side of the bay. Both appeared empty.
The shuttlecraft touched down in the center of the hangar, directly atop the turntable and its red X. Tenger monitored the external hatches until they had fully closed, and then he verified the atmosphere outside Amundsen. When the control room opened a channel and announced that the crew could safely disembark, Tenger powered down the shuttlecraft’s systems. He then stood up and moved to the port side of the cabin, where he worked a control, still operational via secondary battery power. The hatch whirred open.
“Secure your gear and clear the shuttlecraft,” Tenger told his security team. He waited as the three of them gathered up their weapons, tricorders, and cold-weather tackle. He collected his own equipment, then led them through the hatch and into Enterprise’s hangar bay.
The quartet marched along a gangway marked on the deck until they reached a wide access portal. Its rounded, rectangular port exposed the door’s thickness. It led into an airlock, but with the bay fully pressurized, Tenger and his crew would not require its use. As he reached for the door’s control, it opened before him.
On the other side of the airlock, the inner door stood open as well, revealing Captain Sulu and a young officer whose division sleeve identified her as an engineer. Both of them carried cold-weather clothing, and the young woman had both a tricorder and a field kit slung across her shoulder. Tenger didn’t know the ensign—Galatea Kostas—but he recognized her from her personnel and security files. She had dark eyes and wavy black hair that had been shaped into a bun behind her head.
As Sulu and the engineer walked through the airlock and into the hangar bay, Tenger and his security team stepped to the side to give them room to pass. He’d anticipated the captain would want to travel to Rejarris II herself, though he hadn’t expected to meet her on her way to a shuttlecraft. He wondered if she’d wanted to make sure of his security team’s safe return before embarking herself, or if, had Amundsen not arrived at that moment, she would have taken a different vessel down to the planet’s surface.
Sulu stopped to face Tenger. “Anything to report, Commander?” she asked.
“No, sir,” the security chief said. He paused for a moment, then dismissed his crew back to their duty stations. Once they had exited the hangar bay and the airlock doors had closed behind them, he said, “I’m glad you’re here, Captain. I wanted to speak with you about our plan to recover Ensign Young.”
“My plan,” Sulu said, substituting the word my for our, “is to take a shuttlecraft to the structure and study the situation. I will contact you and the rest of the senior staff to detail what we find. If possible, I will retrieve Ensign Young, and if not, we will work together to determine a course of action that will allow us to do so.”
It did not surprise Tenger at all that Sulu intended to attempt to rescue the ensign herself. It also did not please him. “Begging the captain’s pardon, but with Commander Linojj confined to sickbay for some time to come, I am now functionally second in command,” he said, striving to keep his voice even so that his words would not sound like a challenge to Sulu’s authority. “I would therefore be remiss in my duty if I did not point out that the Enterprise crew should not be without its top two officers.”
“As you just mentioned, Commander, you are presently my exec,” Sulu said. “That means that, even after I depart, one of the ship’s top two officers will remain aboard.”
“Not the top two officers it left port with,” Tenger said, his frustration mounting. “Captain, I can lead a rescue mission down to the planet. As the Enterprise’s chief of security, I would argue that it’s my duty to do so.”
To Tenger’s surprise, Sulu did not reply immediately, and instead seemed to consider his argument. After a few seconds, she looked to the young engineer she had brought with her to the hangar bay. “Ensign, board the shuttlecraft and stow our gear,” she said, handing over her jacket. “I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, sir,” Kostas said, and she made her way across the deck to Amundsen.
Tenger felt deflated. He realized that he’d already lost the battle. Sulu had dismissed Ensign Kostas simply to spare the security chief any embarrassment.
“Commander,” the captain said, but then she stopped. She took a step closer to him, moving with evident deliberation into his personal space. Standing several centimeters taller than the security chief, Sulu looked down at him with her dark brown eyes. “Tenger,” she said, calling him by name rather than by rank, something she rarely did while on duty. “I understand your concerns, particularly in light of what happened to Xintal. Your job is to preserve the security of this ship, and that necessarily means protecting the life and well-being of its captain. But the crew are my first priority, and after the events on the planet, I’m not prepared to send anybody else down there, into an obviously dangerous situation.”
“But I’m volunteering for that duty, Captain,” Tenger said, almost pleading with her. It occurred to him that perhaps he should have simply violated Sulu’s orders and continued down to the surface of Rejarris II. He thought about calling her by her given name, but he understood that, no matter her sincerity in doing so, she had already mined that rhetorical tactic for whatever value it possessed. “Captain, there is risk in everything we do,” he went on. “We travel through the frigid vacuum of space at many times the speed of light. We visit unexplored places and seek out unknown alien life. When necessary, we take up arms to defend the Federation and its allies. Nothing we do out here is for the timid.”
“No,” Sulu said. “You’re certainly right about that. But my decision isn’t about courage or timidity. It’s about my unwillingness to knowingly place my crew in danger, and after the terrible injury to Commander Linojj, we know that there definitely is a danger.”
Accepting that he could not change Sulu’s mind about undertaking the rescue mission herself, Tenger decided to do what he could to ensure her security. “You’re taking Ensign Kostas with you,” he said. “Why not choose me instead?”
“I selected Ensign Kostas because she is an engineer cross-trained as a field medic,” Sulu said. “She can investigate the structure to learn how it’s isolated Ensign Young from us, but if we can figure out a way to recover him, she can treat his injuries at once.”
“I understand,” Tenger said. “But at least allow me to accompany you.”
“I’m taking as few of the crew as I can,” Sulu said. “You are also right to argue that the Enterprise should not be without both its commanding officer and exec. With Commander Linojj incapacitated, that means that you’re the ship’s first officer. In my absence, you therefore need to be here.”
Tenger surrendered the argument. Knowing the captain as well as he did, he’d never expected any other outcome. Sulu always listened to the judgments and recommendations of her senior staff, and compelling reasons and new perspectives could persuade her to different decisions—but not when it would mean sending members of her crew into known dangers. If she could avoid doing so, she would.
“What are your orders then, Captain?” Tenger asked.
“I’ve spoken with Crewman Permenter, who told me all he could about what happened on the planet,” Sulu said. “I want you to speak with him as well. I’ll contact the ship regularly to keep you informed of what we learn, and whether or not we can recover Ensign Young. Under no circumstances is any member of the Enterprise crew to go down to Rejarris Two without my explicit order.”
“Aye, sir,” Tenger said.
The captain offered him a curt nod, then headed for the shuttlecraft. Tenger watched her board Amundsen before he withdrew into the airlock. He sealed the entrance to the hangar bay, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he stared through the port in the door as the turntable slowly rotated to point the shuttlecraft’s bow toward the main hatches, which he saw had already begun to reopen. Moments later, Amundsen rose from the deck and started forward. It passed through the force field—blue pinpoints of light flaring around it as it did so—and out into space.
As the shuttlecraft dropped out of sight, carrying the captain down to the structure on the surface of Rejarris II, Tenger wondered if he would ever see Demora Sulu alive again.
♦ ♦ ♦
The shuttlecraft leveled off fifty meters above the snow-covered plain and approached the coordinates to which the second landing party had transported. Through the forward viewport, Sulu spotted the mysterious structure where Ensign Young had been hurt and contact with him lost, and where Commander Linojj had suffered her grisly injury. The portion of the structure closest to Amundsen did not impress the captain—nothing really distinguished it—but as she followed it with her gaze, first in one direction and then the other, she apprehended its great size. Enterprise’s sensors had measured it as a ring more than half a kilometer in diameter and two kilometers in circumference, but the gray weather, along with the snow and ash, concealed its farthest reaches as it curled into the distance.
“Initiating sensor scans,” said Ensign Kostas, seated beside Sulu at the shuttlecraft’s main console. The captain had tasked the engineer with examining the structure and determining its capabilities, particularly with regard to whatever weapons and defenses it might possess. While Kostas analyzed the readings she gathered, Sulu would transmit the collected data to Enterprise for further study. She intended to employ what they ascertained to formulate a plan to recover Ensign Young.
Operating the helm, the captain slowed Amundsen as they drew nearer the structure. A beam of some kind had fired at Linojj when she’d stood atop it, and the first officer had hypothesized that the same beam might have toppled Young from there to the ground. Sulu would therefore refrain from flying above the structure, unwilling to risk either an attack on the shuttlecraft, or its capture.
“This close to the surface, biosensors appear to be functioning,” Kostas said, “but I’m not finding any life signs in the area.”
The captain didn’t expect any life-form readings. She reasoned that whatever had prevented the signal enhancers from enabling a transport lock on Young likely interfered with sensors as well. They would have to search for the ensign visually. Sulu hadn’t yet resolved whether she would attempt that from the shuttlecraft or on the planet surface, on top of the structure. She would base her decision on what she and Kostas learned.
“No life signs, but I am reading power,” the ensign said. “It’s flowing throughout the structure.” Kostas ran her hands across her console, obviously trying to coax additional detail from her instruments. “The power levels are inconsistent, though . . . they’re fluctuating.”
“According to Crewman Permenter, the structure’s been damaged,” Sulu said. “Maybe that’s why its power is unstable.” She brought Amundsen to a stop a hundred meters away, where it hovered above the beam-down location of the second landing party. She studied the structure through the forward port, picking out a section that appeared free of snow and ash. “There,” she said, pointing. Even at that distance, she could make out a wide cavity in the inner side of the metal.
“I see it,” Kostas said. “Targeting sensors.”
Sulu locked in Amundsen’s position and secured the helm, then stood and paced through the rows of chairs to the rear of the cabin. At the aft bulkhead, she slid open an equipment drawer and pulled out a set of field glasses. She carried it back to her seat and trained it on the damaged section of the structure. “The metal there has been bent and twisted inward,” she said. “It’s also been scorched black, suggesting a fire or an explosion or possibly an attack with an energy weapon. If it’s—”
Sulu abruptly stopped speaking when she saw something beyond the structure, something visible through the rent in the metal. She rose and stepped to the side, seeking a better vantage. When she narrowed the scale of her view from the structure to the patch of ground past it, the field glasses adjusted automatically, bringing that spot into sharp focus. “I see something carved into the ground,” she said. “A letter written in Federation Standard.”
Beside the captain, Kostas operated her controls. “Sensors don’t detect anything like that in the area.”
“Sensors don’t, but my eyes do,” Sulu said. Though she felt certain of what she saw, she set down the field glasses and worked the helm to move the shuttlecraft closer to the structure. When Amundsen had covered half the distance, she brought it to a stop again and peered through the field glasses. Having drawn nearer, she looked down at the letter etched into the ground from a steeper angle, seeing it not through the gap where the structure had been torn apart, but out in the open. She saw not just one letter, but many. “It’s a message,” she said, shifting the field glasses to find the first letter. She read aloud what she saw.
CAUGHT IN GOLD BEAM, PULLED INTO RING, CAN’T—
Past the last word, a man on his hands and knees used the point of a wedge-shaped stone to inscribe another letter into the ground. “It’s Ensign Young,” Sulu said. She handed the field glasses to Kostas, who raised them to her eyes.
“I see him,” she said.
The captain worked the helm controls to push Amundsen closer, halving the distance to the structure once again. She remained vigilant for any beams. “Is there any indication that he sees us?”
“No, sir, not that I can tell.”
Sulu reached to the communications panel and opened a channel. “Amundsen to Ensign Young,” she said. “Captain Sulu to Ensign Young.”
She waited, but received no response. She considered simply setting the shuttlecraft down beside him, but she did not want to fly over the structure or into the ring it formed without more information. Given the level of technological sophistication the landing parties had observed on the planet, Sulu suspected that Amundsen could withstand any attack waged on it from the surface of Rejarris II, but the loss of contact with Young troubled her.
“Is there a way we can visually signal him?” she asked Kostas.
“I take it you mean other than by flying the shuttlecraft right past him.”
“Yes.”
“We could dump some of our fuel and ignite it,” Kostas said, her tentative tone reflecting the brainstorming nature of her idea.
“I’d prefer not to do that,” Sulu said. “We might be alone on this planet, but I’d still prefer not to do anything that could seem antagonistic. What about doing something with the shields?”
Kostas appeared to consider that. Finally, she said, “We could overload the power inputs. That would cause the shields to disburse the extra energy as thermal radiation, which would be accompanied by a bright glow.”
“Would that damage the shields or the shuttlecraft?” Sulu wanted to know.
“No, sir, I don’t think so,” Kostas said. She operated the controls on her console, and the captain saw numbers and equations tripping down the ensign’s display. “If we increase the power to the shields in a microburst, they’ll dissipate it as a rapid flash of heat and light.”
“Do it,” the captain ordered.
Kostas made the necessary preparations at her console, then moved to the starboard bulkhead. “In order for the microburst to reach the shields, I’ll need to temporarily remove the primary and secondary surge protectors from the generators,” she said. She detached an access panel, revealing a maze of duotronic circuitry. Kostas reached in and pulled out a pair of translucent, prism-shaped components and set them on the deck.
When the ensign returned to her seat, she said, “I’m not sure how bright the flash will be, but we should avert our eyes.” Sulu turned and faced the aft end of the compartment. “I’m ready on your command, Captain.”
“Go.”
“It will take a few seconds for the power to build up,” Kostas said. “Initiating now.” Sulu heard her tap a control surface, and then the ensign turned away from the forward port.
Seconds passed, and Sulu began to think that nothing would happen, but then the cabin began to brighten. She saw her shadow projected onto the deck beside that of Kostas, and then the light flared brilliantly. A loud bang shook the cabin before the lighting returned to normal.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Kostas said. “I should’ve anticipated that. The heating of the air around the shields caused a rapid expansion of the neighboring atmosphere, which led to a sonic boom.”
“It’s all right, Ensign,” Sulu said, turning back to her console and picking up the field glasses. “As long as the shuttlecraft stayed in one piece.” The captain looked out again at Ensign Young. He remained on his hands and knees, chipping away at the ground. Neither the flash of light nor the thunderclap caused by the shields had attracted his attention. “He can’t see or hear us,” Sulu concluded. “The question we have to answer is: why?”
Kostas moved back over to the open bulkhead, replaced the shield surge protectors, and set the access panel back in place. “What if we tried to land near him?” she asked.
Sulu wondered the same thing, the appeal of such an action strong. But the power coursing through the structure, the beam it had fired toward Linojj, and the resistance of its interior to transporter locks and sensors concerned her. “For now, continue your scans and try to determine the purpose of that thing out there,” she said. “If we wait for Ensign Young to complete his message, maybe he’ll provide us with some useful information.”
As Kostas worked the sensors, the captain observed Young through the field glasses. He had completed another word—SEE—and begun engraving another. She hoped that once he told them what he couldn’t see, it would shed some light on his predicament.
Movement suddenly caught Sulu’s eye, a dark shape that had darted behind Young. Only then did she note that the ensign threw a long shadow on the ground, as did the rocks and boulders around him. Outside the structure, the unbroken cloud cover scattered the sunlight, washing everything in a dull cast devoid of shade, but somehow, around Young, Rejarris shined. She noticed then that he had removed his jacket, though she didn’t see it anywhere about him.
Sulu slid a fingertip across a control on her field glasses, widening their view. She saw, behind the ensign, an area of rock projecting from the soil, surrounded by boulders and smaller stones. As Sulu inspected the area, one of the boulders moved, shifting upward as though pushed from below, but then falling back into place. Its shadow jumped up and down along with it, which must have been what she’d seen.
The boulder did not remain still, but jerked upward more violently. It teetered and seemed to balance precariously for an instant, then toppled onto its side. Beneath where it had stood yawned a dark pit. As Sulu watched, a long, tubular black shape rose from within, its tip barbed. What followed looked like something out of a nightmare. Ten multiply articulated legs emerged spiderlike from the hole and lifted the rest of the beast out into the daylight. At the end of a long, twisted neck, a triangular head tapered to a blunt snout. Two large elliptical eyes glistened as though with sinister intent. A pocked, cylindrical body rose up next, spines protruding from it and curving backward, and a flat, spade-shaped tail trailed behind it. Its wrinkled black flesh looked like old leather. It stood almost as tall as Young, but its many limbs made it appear twice his size.
The ensign whirled around when the boulder crashed to the dirt, and when he saw the creature, he reached around to the back of his waist. Sulu could not see the object he took in his hand, but the pose he assumed told her that he had drawn his phaser. The threat made no discernible impact on the creature, which moved toward him with lightning speed. Young fired once, but too late. A red-tinged yellow beam blazed into the creature, but did not appear to even slow it down. With its spiked front appendage, it swatted the weapon from the ensign’s hand. The creature struck Young, its head impacting with his chest, sending him flying backward from his feet.
Sulu flung the field glasses to the deck and punched new commands into the helm. “Something’s attacking Ensign Young,” she told Kostas as the shuttlecraft shot forward. The captain sent Amundsen into a dive. Through the port, she could see the creature climbing atop Ensign Young. “Get our phasers,” she said, and Kostas immediately raced from her seat.
Sulu brought the shuttlecraft in low over the structure, hoping to startle the creature and scare it away. From somewhere up ahead and somewhere to starboard, two expanding gold beams streaked into Amundsen. The shuttlecraft juddered, and Sulu read on her panel the drag placed on its forward momentum. Two more beams appeared and slammed into Amundsen, but one quickly sputtered and died.
Kostas returned and leaned in over her console, gripping it in order to keep her balance in the shaking cabin. “They’re tractor beams,” she said, obviously consulting the sensor display. Sulu ignored the beams, keeping the shuttlecraft at speed. “They seem to be trying to direct us downward,” Kostas said.
“That’s where we’re going anyway,” Sulu said, even as the cabin suddenly stilled.
“The tractor beams have stopped,” Kostas said.
As Amundsen swooped in low over the creature, Sulu saw it turn its oddly shaped head skyward. It stood over Young. The ensign struggled beneath it, fighting against some of its many limbs holding him down.
“Brace yourself,” Sulu said. She put the shuttlecraft down hard, and she heard Kostas grunt beside her. The captain reached toward the ensign, steadied her, then held out an open hand. “Phaser,” she said, and Kostas slapped a weapon into her palm—not the smaller, concealable type-1, but the type-2 pistol model. Then Sulu raced for the hatch, where she jabbed at the controls set into the bulkhead. The hatch glided open.
Ten meters away, Young scrabbled backward along the ground, away from the creature. It pursued him, the motion of its many limbs like some sort of awkward, frenetic dance. It clapped two of its ten legs down on the ensign’s feet, then clambered forward and secured his hands. The creature’s front appendage rose and hovered high in the air, its spiked tip aimed downward, as though about to strike and impale the supine form of Ensign Young.
Sulu fired. She didn’t even wait to jump to the ground, but raised her phaser and pressed its trigger from inside Amundsen. The beam streaked from her weapon and caught the creature square in its cylindrical body. It lurched to one side, several of its legs coming off the ground, but it did not let go of Young.
The captain leaped from the shuttlecraft, past the port engine nacelle, and onto the ground. As she aimed her phaser again, Kostas alighted beside her. The creature struck at Young, bringing the point of its front appendage straight down at him.
“Fire,” Sulu told Kostas, and together they loosed the might of their energy weapons. The creature reeled under the combined firepower and issued a feral cry—whether of pain or confusion, of fear or anger, Sulu couldn’t tell.
But then the creature pivoted swiftly and fixed Sulu and Kostas with the gaze of its massive oval eyes. It reared up, its front four legs lifting high into the air, and it roared, the sound from its snout guttural and primitive. On the ground beside the creature, Ensign Young didn’t move.
Sulu held up her phaser for Kostas to see, then adjusted it to its highest stun setting. The ensign followed her lead and reset her own weapon. When the creature brought its front legs back down and charged at them, they fired in tandem.
The beams both landed, but the creature dodged to one side. The phaser blasts slowed it, but still it moved with surprising speed for a beast its size and that looked so ungainly. Its long multi-jointed legs ate up the distance to the shuttlecraft in large tracts. The captain judged that she and Kostas had one chance to save themselves.
“Next level,” she yelled as she increased the force of her phaser, setting it to kill. She didn’t wait to see if Kostas had heard her over the creature’s roar, but once more raised her weapon and fired. An instant later, the ensign’s beam joined hers.
The creature screamed. It stumbled, one of its legs missing a step and dragging along the ground. Its legs tangled and it went down hard, its head smashing into the ground face-first, its body skidding along the earth.
The captain reached out and shoved Kostas in the arm. The ensign staggered to the side and her phaser beam ceased, but Sulu continued to fire, wanting to ensure the creature’s incapacitation. She tried to time her escape, but waited a second too long. As she stopped firing and threw herself to the side, the creature crashed into the shuttlecraft. The end of one of its legs lashed across Sulu’s hip and rammed her against Amundsen’s hull. Her elbow struck and her entire lower arm went numb, while pain flashed hot in her right side.
Sulu collapsed to her knees, her body doubled over the creature’s thick, muscular leg that had pinned her against the shuttlecraft. She didn’t know the creature’s status—dazed, unconscious, or dead—but she felt no movement where its leg touched her. She could feel the heat of its leathery hide, though, could smell its sweat. She gagged, but managed not to vomit.
“Captain,” a voice called as though from far away, and Sulu realized that she felt light-headed. She didn’t know if she had struck her skull against Amundsen, but she guessed that she must have. She didn’t want to lose consciousness, not outside with a predatory creature that might still be alive.
Even if it’s dead, Sulu thought, where there was one, there will be others.
“Captain,” a voice said again, and that time, Sulu recognized it as belonging to Ensign Kostas. Sulu looked up to see the engineer coming around the unmoving body of the creature. “Captain, are you hurt?”
“I’m banged up, but I think I’ll be all right,” Sulu said. “Help get me out of here.” She pushed at the creature’s heavy leg, and Kostas reached her arms around it, dug her heels into the ground, and pulled. It moved a few centimeters at a time at first, before finally dropping from Sulu’s waist and onto the ground. “Thanks,” she said around deep breaths of air. She gazed about and realized that she could not see the officer they had come to rescue. “How’s Ensign Young?”
“I don’t know,” Kostas said. “He wasn’t moving, but I came to check on you first.”
“I’ll be all right,” Sulu said again. “Get a medkit and tend to Mister Young.”
“Yes, sir.” The ensign hesitated, though, and then said, “Captain, I don’t think you should stay here beside this thing.”
“Believe me, I won’t,” Sulu said. “None of us will. Now, go.”
Kostas looked past the captain toward the open hatch of Amundsen. The creature blocked the way, and the ensign had to climb over one of its legs to board the shuttlecraft. Sulu stepped away, leaning heavily against the hull. She eyed the creature warily, then called to the ensign to bring her a tricorder.
Kostas reappeared quickly. She handed the captain the tricorder she’d requested, then jumped down past the creature and made her way around it, toward Ensign Young. Sulu took a couple of slow, deep breaths in an attempt to regain her bearings. Finally, she activated her tricorder and scanned the creature. She recognized only some of what she saw inside it, but it appeared to have both circulatory and respiratory systems, neither of which showed any movement: the creature was dead.
Sulu expanded the range of the sensors and scanned the area, both above- and belowground. She read life-forms—from microorganisms, to worms, to bugs, to several small animals—but nothing remotely resembling the one that had attacked them. Satisfied about the immediate safety of the landing party, she padded slowly around the carcass of the creature.
As the captain stepped past its flat, stationary tail, the two ensigns came into view. Young lay on his back, while Kostas kneeled beside him, ministering to whatever injuries he’d suffered. Sulu saw his chest rising and falling steadily, which pleased her, though she saw no other movement. When she drew closer, she saw Young’s eyes closed. She also saw a great deal of blood.
“What’s his condition?” she asked.
“He’s been hurt badly,” Kostas said without looking up. She had set her own tricorder down on the ground, as well as the medkit, from which she extracted a small pair of scissors. She used them to cut off Young’s uniform shirt around the front of his right shoulder, revealing a fifteen-centimeter gash. “I think that thing did this,” Kostas said. “It’s deep, but fortunately it didn’t reach his lung. His hand has also been slashed, and he’s got some damage in his other shoulder; it appears that he dislocated it at some point, but pushed it back into place himself.”
“That might have happened when he fell,” Sulu said, and she gazed up at the structure.
Except that there was no structure.
Sulu thought that she must have become disoriented after striking her head, and so she turned and looked all around her. She saw only a vast, rocky landscape beneath a setting orange-red sun. No structure. No snow or ash.
“Can Ensign Young be moved?” Sulu asked.
“Once I stabilize his shoulder,” Kostas said. “I have to clean and dress both his wounds, but the key will be to keep his shoulder from tearing open further. That’s about all I can do. He’s going to need surgery.”
“Do the best you can, Ensign, and do it as quickly as you can,” Sulu said. She peered out over the empty plain, at the clouds scudding across a cerulean sky, and she wondered precisely where and when they were. “I think we might be in trouble.”