Captain Hikaru Sulu exited the starboard turbolift and walked onto the bridge of Excelsior. That late at night, at the beginning of gamma shift, the lighting had dimmed as part of the simulated circadian cycle aboard ship. The dusky setting matched Sulu’s mood: his fatigue left him bleary-eyed. He found great satisfaction in the crew’s current exploratory mission out on the frontier, but it had been months—Nearly a year, he thought—since the ship had visited a starbase. No matter the activities and amenities aboard Excelsior, no matter the participation in an occasional landing party, it sometimes became emotionally imperative for the crew to get off the ship specifically for rest and recreation.
As Sulu crossed the bridge to the command chair, he glanced over at the main viewscreen. He expected to see some particularly beautiful M-class world composed of blue skies, green continents, and white clouds, or a spectacularly ringed planet, or maybe even something completely new to him; although still in his first year aboard ship, Gallin Ressix had served on Excelsior long enough to know what qualified as unusual when viewed through the prism of the captain’s long experience in Starfleet. Instead of some marvelous or strange astronomical sight, though, the curve of a beclouded, nondescript planet filled the bottom half of the viewer. “Lieutenant,” Sulu said as he reached the command chair, “this better be interesting enough to keep your captain from a good night’s sleep.” Sulu had been in his quarters, about to climb into bed, when Ressix had contacted him; he’d had to put his uniform back on before going up to the bridge.
The young Bolian officer stood up from the command chair. “Begging the captain’s pardon,” Ressix said, “but what would a virile man like you need with sleep?”
Sulu maintained a steady expression, but he felt like both smiling and wincing at the jest. He felt good, both physically and mentally, but, more than a year removed from his seventieth birthday, he had to admit that he had slowed down some. “Bucking for promotion again already, Mister Ressix?” he said. “You just made lieutenant last month.”
“Somebody has to be ready to step in when the captain’s asleep.”
Sulu offered Ressix a curt nod and a smile that touched only half his mouth. “Do you know what else happens when the captain sleeps?” he asked. “All over the ship, refreshers are cleaned.” Ressix responded with a knowing smile that suggested he enjoyed the byplay, even when it turned at his own expense. Sulu appreciated the young man’s sense of humor, with which he walked the line between acerbic insouciance and outright insubordination—a delicate balance, even for seasoned veterans.
The captain also saw a great deal of potential in the junior-grade lieutenant, who, like Sulu, had chosen in his nascent starship career the position of helm officer; also like Sulu, he’d elected to do so as a member of the command division. Ressix typically piloted Excelsior during gamma shift, but when Crajjik had devised that month’s duty roster, he’d approached the captain about giving the young officer a taste of the center seat. Sulu had agreed with his first officer. He supposed he would soon learn the wisdom of that decision.
“So what’s interesting enough for you to call the captain to the bridge after twenty-four hundred hours?”
Ressix gestured toward the main viewer. “This is Rejarris Two,” he said. At the end of alpha shift, when Sulu had left the bridge, the crew had been studying the third planet in the system, a task they had been near to completing when he’d asked for a status report during beta shift. “We finished surveying the last of the five gas giants orbiting this star, and we arrived here at twenty-one fifty.” Rejarris numbered just one among many of the charted but unexplored suns Excelsior had visited since the ship had departed Helaspont Station ten months earlier. With no set agenda, no predefined course, and a mandate from Starfleet Command to explore simply in the pursuit of knowledge, the crew had added several scientific discoveries to its list of achievements.
Rejarris II, though, did not impress. “It looks rather dull to me,” Sulu noted.
“It might look that way, sir, but I don’t think it is,” Ressix said. “Or at least I don’t think it was.”
“ ‘Was’?”
“The clouds appear to be the byproduct of a massive event,” Ressix explained. “Possibly an asteroid strike, an offworld attack, or a nuclear conflict. Scans of the surface show intact cities all across the globe, though, so Ensign Millán favors the strike theory.” An assistant science officer, Felicia Millán crewed a station on the port side of the bridge.
“I take it this is a pre-warp civilization,” Sulu said. If there had been any indication of a spacefaring society on Rejarris II, the Excelsior crew would have bypassed the outer planets upon entering the system. If such indications had come later, during beta or gamma shift, the captain would have been notified immediately. Since Ressix had not led with the discovery of a warp-capable culture, Sulu assumed the reverse.
“It appears that way,” Ressix said. “Sensors show very basic, automated spacecraft on the planet’s two moons.”
“What’s the planetary population?”
“That’s where things get interesting, sir,” Ressix said. “Something on the planet is interfering with our bio-scans. There’s a string of artificial satellites in orbit, though, and so I thought to monitor their activity in the hopes of extrapolating the size of the populace based on communications traffic.”
“Resourceful,” Sulu said, eliciting a smile from the lieutenant. “What did you find?”
“None of the satellites show any activity,” Ressix said, “and several have deteriorating orbits and are on the verge of falling back to the planet.”
“So what do you think that tells us?” the captain asked. “That this civilization wiped itself out? Or that an asteroid did? Or that after whatever calamity befell this world, the survivors either lost the capability or the interest in using the satellites they’d put in orbit?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” Ressix said. “but in the course of examining the satellites, we discovered something else.” The lieutenant turned toward the long console situated above and behind the command chair, on the outer ring of the bridge. On one end, Ensign Tobias Benton crewed the tactical station, and on the other, Crewwoman Page Aaron worked communications. “Ensign,” Ressix said, addressing the security officer, “please show the captain what we found.”
“Aye, sir,” said Benton. “Magnifying.” He worked his controls, and the image on the main viewer shifted. Rejarris II and its opaque atmosphere disappeared, replaced by a flurry of stars strewn across the darkness of space. A great curved object hung in the void.
Sulu took a step toward the viewscreen. “What . . . what is that? A space station?”
“Negative,” Ressix said. “There are no life signs.”
From the sciences station, Millán added, “If the object had a crew, there’d be no place to put them. It’s filled with circuitry, with no room for personnel.”
“Even for personnel who are only centimeters tall, Ensign?” Sulu asked, his question a response to what he considered a teaching moment for the young officer—for all the young gamma-shift bridge crew. “Or for energy beings?”
“Well . . . maybe in those cases there would be room,” Millán said, her manner sheepish. “But sensors aren’t detecting life signs of any kind.”
Sulu nodded, curious. He moved around the small hexagonal table he’d had installed in front of the command chair and sat down. “So what can you tell me about the object?” he asked Ressix.
“It occupies a high orbit, and it’s the only one of its kind about the planet,” said the lieutenant. “It’s big and circular.” On the viewscreen, the object appeared elliptical, but only, Sulu realized, because it floated with its edge oriented at an angle with respect to Excelsior. “It measures more than five hundred meters across, and its frame is fourteen-point-three meters through. Solar panels are mounted on the ring, undoubtedly for energy collection.”
“What about shields? Weapons? Drive systems?”
Benton spoke up from tactical. “My scans show no phaser or disruptor banks, no directed-energy reserves, no weapons of any kind,” he said. “I do read low-power force fields protecting the solar panels.”
“There’s no drive,” Millán said. “Thrusters are keeping it in position, and it also has antigravs.”
“What about communications?” Sulu asked. “Are any signals being transmitted to or from the object?”
“No, sir,” said Aaron. “Not since we’ve been monitoring it.”
Sulu folded his arms across his chest. “So what is it?” he asked. Crewman Khaled Rehan and Ensign T’Jen glanced back at the captain from the helm and navigation stations, but they offered no answers. “Do we have any idea whether it even originated here? Could it have been brought to this planet from somewhere else, for some unknown purpose, by a more advanced species?”
“It’s possible, though we’ve found no trace of warp travel within the system,” Millán said. “We’ve also scanned the orbiting satellites and the spacecraft on the two moons, as well as some of the cities. It’s difficult to know with complete confidence, but all of the technology seems consistent with what we see in the object.”
“Could it just be a solar collector?” Ressix asked. “Maybe gathering energy and beaming it down to the surface?”
“Maybe,” Sulu said, but the idea didn’t sound plausible to him. “But why would there be just one of them?”
“It might be a failed experiment,” Ressix suggested. “Or an incomplete one.”
“But it’s such an inefficient design,” Sulu said. “It encompasses so much area, and yet the solar panels are only on the periphery.” The object puzzled the captain. He felt as though he was missing something, some observation or perspective or piece of information that would answer all his questions. “Have you viewed the object from the other side?”
“No, sir,” Ressix said. “We came upon it while in orbit, and when it showed up on sensors, I stopped the ship.”
“All right, then, let’s take a look,” Sulu said. “Mister Rehan, take us around slowly. Ensign T’Jen, pass it on the spaceward side.” Although his crew had identified no interaction between the object and the surface of the planet, the captain did not want to risk traveling between the two. “Mister Benton, keep the viewscreen focused on the object.”
“Aye, Captain.”
As Excelsior climbed away from Rejarris II, Sulu watched the ship’s progress on the main viewer, its alignment with the object changing by degrees. He leaned forward in his chair, unfolding his arms and leaning on the small table, trying to discern whatever details he could. As the ship passed in front of the object, it looked less and less elliptical, until the captain could at last make out its circular shape.
Suddenly, the viewscreen erupted in a flood of golden light. From points all around the object, beams burst forth, widening as they laced toward Excelsior. The ship lurched hard, throwing Sulu from the command chair onto the deck. Both of his legs struck the table as he fell, and jolts of pain flared in his knees. Lieutenant Ressix flew backward through the air, struck the railing dividing the outer ring of the bridge from the inner section, and went down hard.
The inertial dampers took a moment to compensate as Excelsior reeled again, the ship heaving to port. Even as Sulu grabbed for the command chair to prevent himself from rolling across the deck, he anticipated the voices of the bridge crew, who would deliver a situation report, a damage assessment, and recommendations for action. He waited as the ship shook, but no announcements came.
Sulu steadied himself with his grip on the command chair and looked around. He saw Ressix sprawled on the deck, facedown, not moving. At the navigator’s station, T’Jen righted her seat as she fought her way back to her panel. The helm sat uncrewed, and the captain saw Rehan scuffling to stand, shaking his head as though to clear it. Around the perimeter of the bridge, supplemental personnel had also been knocked from their feet. From Sulu’s vantage, he could not see past the long aft console to the communications and tactical positions. “Red alert!” the captain called out, hoping that Benton still stood at his post. “Shields!” Though only seconds had passed, Sulu lamented the slower reaction time of his gamma-shift crew. They’re only children, he thought as he pulled himself up by the arm of his chair. They were more than that, of course: they were trained Starfleet personnel—but they were also inexperienced.
“Shields up!” the captain heard Benton cry out, but Excelsior continued to tremble beneath the attack. The alert klaxon shrieked its call to battle stations as the emergency lighting bathed the bridge in a red glow.
“Ready main phasers,” Sulu yelled. As much as he didn’t want to fire on a less-advanced civilization, and even though doing so could be considered a violation of the Prime Directive, he would do what he needed to do to protect his crew. He looked to the main viewer and saw it imbued with a golden aura. At least a dozen beams—More, he thought—radiated out from around the circular construct, all of them aimed at Excelsior. Sulu noticed with dismay that the object had grown in size to fill the entire screen, and as he watched, the top and bottom arcs disappeared from view. Whatever that thing is, it’s drawing the ship toward it. Benton confirmed that a second later.
“Those aren’t weapons,” the crewman called out above the shrill insistence of the red-alert klaxon. “They’re tractor beams.”
“Silence the bridge,” Sulu ordered, and the klaxon quieted. Just two arcs of the object showed on either side of the main viewer, like a pair of enormous space-bound parentheses. Sulu could still see half a dozen beams ensnaring the ship. “Helm, can you break us free?”
Back at his console, Rehan stabbed at his controls. “Trying, Captain,” he said. “Thrusters are making no appreciable difference.”
Thrusters! Sulu thought, judging the conservative and ineffective choice as further evidence of his gamma-shift crew’s lack of experience. “Impulse power now,” he ordered. “Navigator, plot a course directly away from the object.”
“Impulse power, aye,” Rehan replied.
“Course laid in,” T’Jen said.
The low-pitched hum of the ship’s sublight drive rose in the bridge, a familiar cushion of sound and vibration that provided Sulu with hope. He had no idea who sought to capture his ship and crew or why, but he would do everything he could to prevent it. Almost at once, though, the drone of the impulse drive increased in pitch, beginning to wail as it struggled to counteract the pull of the tractor beams. Sulu didn’t need a status report to know that the ship was failing to break free.
“Helm, go to one hundred twenty-five percent of impulse,” he said. He wouldn’t risk engaging the warp engines this deep in a planetary gravity well, or that close to another object, but he would burn out the impulse drive if necessary—and then, if pushed to it, open fire.
“One hundred twenty-five percent of impulse, aye,” Rehan said, working his console.
As the thrum of the sublight engines grew louder and deeper—an encouraging sound to the captain—the starboard turbolift doors whisked open. Beskle Crajjik, Sulu’s first officer, dashed onto the bridge. He headed toward the captain, who pointed at the inert form of Lieutenant Ressix lying on the deck. Without a word, Crajjik dropped to his knees beside the young man and began examining him.
Once more, the impulse drive started to whine, but not as much as it had previously. “The tractor beams are showing signs of strain,” Benton said. “Our movement toward the object has stopped.”
“Impulse engines are threatening to overload, Captain,” Rehan said.
“Let them,” Sulu said. “We need to break free.”
He heard one of the aft doors open, and then, from the tactical station, came a familiar voice, calm and steady. “I’m here, Captain,” said the ship’s laconic, stone-faced chief of security, Ryan Leslie.
“Target—” Sulu began, but he never finished the order. Excelsior pitched violently, the strong, abrupt motion hurling him to the deck.
“Several tractor beams have failed,” Benton yelled, not from the tactical console, but clearly from some secondary station.
Sulu got up and looked at the main viewer. He saw a single section of the object, much larger than before. Something else suddenly appeared, circling in from the edge of the screen. Although the captain recognized it at once, the context at first confused him. He then realized that when the struggles of the impulse engines to overcome Excelsior’s seizure caused some of the tractor beams to fail, the ship’s drive had carried the newly unencumbered section of the ship in one direction and the rest of it in the other. As Sulu watched, Excelsior yawed to port, sending the warp nacelle on that side of the ship hurtling toward the object.
The captain opened his mouth to give an order, but the words never made it to his lips. Excelsior’s port nacelle slammed into the inner side of the object. Sulu toppled back to the deck, the thunderous sound of the collision painfully loud. He lifted his head as the ship quaked. On the viewscreen, a gash exposed the inside of the object to space, and pieces of wreckage glinted in the sunlight as they floated away from the point of impact. The remaining tractor beams continued to pull Excelsior into the object.
“Targeting tractor beams,” Leslie said, but before he could fire, the pylon supporting the port nacelle snapped. The warp engine struck the engineering section of the ship and shattered, raining down destruction upon the hull. An explosion sent fiery wreckage hurtling into space, and the emergency lighting went out without even flickering first, leaving the bridge bathed in the glow of control consoles.
“Leslie, separate the saucer section!” Sulu yelled, not trusting the complicated maneuver to the green Crewman Rehan in such dangerous conditions. The captain floundered back to his feet as the rock-solid form of his security chief bounded from the outer ring of the bridge and over to the helm, where Rehan barely had time to get out of his way. “Aaron,” Sulu said, “contact all transporter rooms and have them beam the crew over from the secondary hull.” During a call to battle stations, operators staffed all of the ship’s transporters.
“The saucer’s locking mechanisms aren’t responding,” called Leslie. “We can’t separate.”
Sulu threw himself toward the command chair. He groped for the panel on its arm and found the controls he needed, but before activating them, he took one more look at the viewscreen, just in time to see a chunk of compromised hull tear into the second nacelle. The captain brought his fingers down on two separate control surfaces. A booming alarm even louder and more insistent than the red-alert klaxon went up through the ship.
“Abandon ship,” ordered a male voice distinctly different from the usual female identity of Excelsior’s library-computer interface. “All personnel report to escape pods. This is not a drill.”
Sulu peered in Crajjik’s direction, though he could barely see him in the darkened bridge. He spied two silhouettes, though, as the first officer helped Lieutenant Ressix to his feet. At the navigator’s station, T’Jen had risen, and she and Rehan looked to the captain, as though for additional guidance. “Go!” he yelled at them, pointing toward the hull panel beside one of the turbolifts, which had already swung open to allow access to the passage leading to the escape pods. A dim but much-needed emergency light shined from within. Fortunately, Starfleet equipped those systems in every section of every starship with their own independent power supply. The announcement to abandon ship, the automatic opening of hull panels, the lighting in the passages beyond them, and the escape pod launchers would be the last functioning equipment aboard Excelsior.
As the bridge crew hurried toward the open hull panel, a hand grabbed the captain strongly by his biceps and pulled him from the command chair. Standing five or so centimeters taller than Sulu, the security chief gazed down at him, the reflected illumination of a control panel revealing urgency in his eyes, but a demeanor otherwise remarkably composed. “You have to go,” Leslie told him. “Now.”
Sulu looked all around the bridge and saw nobody left at any of the stations. He nodded to the security chief, and together they headed for the passage leading to the escape pods. Once there, Leslie stepped aside to allow the captain to enter first, but Sulu stopped and pushed his hand into the small of the commander’s back. The security chief hesitated, but then went first. Sulu followed.
The ship’s hatch allowing access to the first escape pod hung open. Leslie moved past it. Sulu stepped up, peered inside the pod, and counted out the crew in his head: Millán from sciences, Benton from tactical, First Officer Crajjik with the injured Ressix, and Boyle, De Luco, Luckman, and Ybarra, the four supplementary personnel who’d been working at secondary consoles.
Eight of the crew for eight seats, Sulu thought. Crajjik moved toward the hatch, plainly intending to exit after having loaded Ressix aboard, but the captain held up his hand. When the first officer stopped, Sulu reached in and pulled the pod’s inner hatch shut, then backed up and swung Excelsior’s hatch closed atop it. The crew could have launched themselves, but Sulu didn’t wait. He opened a panel in the bulkhead, verified the pod’s readiness, and then shot the handle that would allow eight of his seven hundred thirty-two crew to make their escape from their doomed vessel. He heard a hydraulic sound, and then the round port in the hatch showed nothing but empty space.
Leslie had moved on to the next escape pod, the second of the three that served the bridge. Sulu joined him, and when he looked through the hatch there, he saw Rehan from the helm, T’Jen from navigation, and Aaron from communications, leaving only the security chief and the captain behind. “It’s time to go, sir,” Leslie said.
“Captain—”
“No arguments, Ryan,” Sulu said. “I’ll be the last one off the ship.” He had first met Leslie decades ago, when they’d both served under Captain Kirk aboard Enterprise. When Excelsior’s former chief of security, L. J. Akaar, had left the ship a few years earlier to become second officer aboard the Larson-class Kuala Lumpur, Leslie had applied for the vacated position, and Sulu had accepted his transfer from space station KR-1.
“There’s nothing more you can do here,” said the security chief. “The ship is dead. There’s no reason for you to join it.”
“I have no intention of doing so,” Sulu told him. “But I will be the last one off the ship.”
Leslie stared at the captain for almost too long a time, and Sulu wondered if Excelsior’s security chief was considering throwing a punch in an attempt to incapacitate his commanding officer and abduct him from his own ship. But then the commander relented. He ducked through the hatch and into the escape pod. Sulu reached in after him to pull the hatch closed, but Leslie turned to face him before he could do so. “Don’t wait too long, Hikaru,” he said. “Now more than ever, this crew needs its captain.”
Sulu nodded, then shut both hatches. After he dispatched the second pod, he gazed out through the port. Past the bulkheads in which the escape pod had nestled, he saw the long shape of an Excelsior warp nacelle—or part of a nacelle, anyway—tumbling end over end through space, blue gas jetting from a breach in its side. He looked for the rest of the ship, but couldn’t find it. Neither could he see the alien object that had been the cause of the disaster. He did see sunlight gleaming off fragments of debris floating through space, as well as a dozen escape pods. The ship carried fifty of the emergency vehicles, all but five of which could carry twenty-four individuals.
How did this happen so fast? Sulu knew that only a combination of training, experience, and adrenaline prevented him from falling into shock.
The ship shook again, and the captain guessed that something else had exploded somewhere. He raced back along the passage until he found the dedicated control panel that recorded the present status of Excelsior’s escape pods. A chill ran through him as he saw a line of red indicators in one section. ENGINEERING, AFT DORSAL, he read. Five pods had been damaged or couldn’t be launched, but that still left more than enough to evacuate the entire crew. Sulu counted seventeen green indicators, then watched as others changed from yellow to green.
Excelsior shuddered, throwing Sulu against the outer bulkhead. He pushed himself off and went back to the status board. Twenty-five escape pods had launched, he saw. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. He wanted to wait for thirty of the large pods, which, in addition to the two smaller ones that had already left, could, if filled to capacity, evacuate the entire crew.
The ship jolted again, and Sulu crashed once more into a bulkhead. He looked through the port and saw not the blackness of space, but the blues and browns and whites of a planet. But not Rejarris Two, he thought, recalling that world’s complete cloud cover.
At the moment, though, none of that mattered. The ship—or what was left of it—would go down soon. Sulu looked again at the status board and saw that only one more indicator had turned green. He wanted to wait longer, but knew that any more time might be too much time.
The captain rushed down the passage, Excelsior rumbling and shaking about him. He staggered along, thrown left and right. He tripped at one point and went down to one knee—it twisted and exploded in pain—but he shoved himself back up and hobbled on.
When Sulu reached the third escape pod, he stumbled into it, pulling the shipside hatch closed behind him. Once inside, he closed up the pod, then opened the control panel in the bulkhead. He reached in and worked the handle to launch the escape vehicle away from Excelsior.
Nothing happened.
Sulu retracted the handle and then pushed it a second time, and still the pod remained in place. He peered at the control panel and saw a red indicator, signaling that the launch mechanism had failed. With the tremendous damage done to the ship and the amount of wreckage floating around, it didn’t surprise him. The door on the outside of the compartment enclosing the escape pod could have become wedged shut, or if something had penetrated the hull there, the walls around the pod or the tracks on which it accelerated out into space could have become impaired.
Sulu moved to the other side of the hatch and found the panel securing the emergency release. He flipped it open and took hold of the lever inside, but he hesitated. The emergency release would fire explosive bolts on the outside of the pod to propel it out of the ship. If the outer door wouldn’t open, though, or if the compartment wall or the tracks would not allow the escape pod to pass, Sulu could set off explosions that, instead of sending him away from Excelsior to safety, could destroy his only avenue of escape—and him along with it.
Ryan said, “Don’t wait too long,” the captain thought. And I won’t.
Sulu detonated the explosive bolts.
♦ ♦ ♦
Commander Ryan Leslie stood outside the escape pod that had delivered him and three other crew members safely to the surface of Rejarris II.
Except that this planet isn’t Rejarris Two, is it? Leslie thought. According to the gamma-shift bridge crew, the ship had arrived at the planet not long before they’d come on duty. A terrestrial world, Rejarris II revealed itself to be in the aftermath of some cataclysmic event that had left it completely blanketed in thick clouds of particulates. As he peered upward, though, he saw only a few wisps of cirrus clouds interrupting an otherwise-clear expanse of blue sky.
Leslie trusted the Excelsior crew, even the relatively inexperienced officers on gamma shift. Still, he’d taken the time to verify their reports with the beta-shift bridge officers who’d been on duty when the ship had arrived at the second planet in the Rejarris system. It seemed as though the place they’d landed bore only a passing resemblance to the world Excelsior had been orbiting.
Or maybe that’s only what we’ve been led to believe. Leslie had served long enough in Starfleet—more than half a century—to know that the complexities of the universe, not to mention those of the myriad beings who populated it, often made it difficult to draw accurate conclusions about a situation. Aboard Enterprise, Lexington, Ingersol, and Excelsior, he’d visited enough alien worlds to fill a galactic atlas. He’d witnessed shape-shifting creatures perfectly mimicking historical figures, his crewmates, and in one memorable instance, Captain Kirk’s command chair. He’d seen energy beings who could take on any form, a civilization that transformed the thoughts of its visitors into a simulacrum of reality, and even a planet that chased a starship through space. The Talosians could impose an illusion of their choosing on others, the Aegis could hide an entire solar system, and the Tracon could send large populations into long periods of hallucinatory sleep. In any puzzling situation he encountered while out exploring the universe, Leslie rarely considered the deductions that he or anybody else made as conclusive.
Maybe we’re on Rejarris Two or maybe we’re not, the security chief thought, but right now, it has no bearing on what I need to do.
Leslie leaned in to the hatch of the eight-passenger escape pod. Inside, alone, Crewwoman Aaron worked at the small communications panel. “Anything?” the security chief asked.
Aaron looked up, and Leslie saw weariness written in her features. He knew that her exhaustion came not from physical or mental exertions, but from the emotional toll exacted by their abandonment of Excelsior and the ship’s subsequent destruction. Still a young member of the crew, less than a year out of Starfleet Academy, Aaron had likely never endured such a harrowing experience. Despite that, she had maintained her composure during the long journey down to the planet’s surface, and her professionalism shined through as she continued to monitor communications on Leslie’s order.
“Yes, sir,” Aaron said. “Commander Azleya just reported in from escape pod number forty-seven.” That emergency vehicle, Leslie knew, launched from the starboard aft section of engineering. “She reports a full complement of twenty-four personnel in her pod.”
“Injuries?” Leslie asked.
“A crewman suffered burns on one leg, and another broke his arm,” Aaron said, “but otherwise, the commander described the rest as superficial wounds. She also states that hers was the last pod to depart the secondary hull.” Leslie would have expected nothing less of Terim Azleya, Excelsior’s chief engineer.
“Where are they now?”
“I’m having problems picking them up on biosensors,” Aaron said, “but the communications range finder puts them one hundred seventy-one kilometers northeast of us. According to Commander Azleya, their homing equipment failed immediately after they launched. She attempted to follow the other escape vehicles visually and correct course manually, but there was only so much she could do after atmospheric insertion. Once she sees to her people’s basic needs, she plans to reset the guidance system and make her way to us.”
“Understood,” Leslie said. Without the ability of Azleya’s pod to automatically track the rest of the escape vehicles, it frankly amazed the security chief that she’d been able to set down within two hundred klicks of them. He tried to let the feat bolster his confidence in the situation, but it did little to allay his immediate concerns. Including Azleya’s, thirty-one escape pods had so far been accounted for on the surface of the planet, carrying a total of six hundred eighty-seven personnel. Reports of the survivors identified a dozen of the crew who had perished aboard Excelsior, leaving thirty-three missing—most notably, First Officer Crajjik and Captain Sulu.
I should never have left without Hikaru, Leslie thought, just as he had numerous times over the last several hours. In his mind, he relived that moment outside the second bridge escape pod, when for a few seconds he had actually considered physically hauling the captain through the hatch and forcibly removing him from Excelsior. But he also knew that he couldn’t fixate on who might not have safely evacuated the ship. Without Sulu and Crajjik around, command fell on Leslie’s shoulders.
“Sir?” With no small amount of discomfort, the security chief realized that Aaron had been speaking to him while he’d been mired in his own thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “What is it?
“I’m detecting what could be a communications signal from another pod, but it’s very weak,” Aaron said. “So far, I haven’t been able to establish a link.”
“Keep trying,” Leslie said. “I’ll check with Lieutenant Carville about it.” Lieutenant J. S. Carville served Excelsior as its lead comm officer. While Aaron worked in one of the eight-passenger pods, Carville manned communications in one of the larger escape vehicles.
“Yes, sir,” said Aaron, and she reached over and handed him a padd. “Here are the details.”
Leslie took the padd. Before he left, he told the young crewwoman, “You’re doing good work.” The statement provoked a tired but seemingly genuine smile.
“Thank you, sir.”
Leslie turned away from the hatch. All around, at unequal distances and in nearly every direction, twenty-nine of the larger pods sat arrayed on an arid plain. With roughly square footprints and about the size of shuttlecraft, the escape vehicles together looked like a collection of rudimentary dwellings scattered haphazardly across the landscape, as though an ad hoc village had sprung up overnight.
Except that our humble lodgings also appear as though they’ve been sitting on the leading edge of a war, Leslie thought. The lower portions of all the hulls had been charred black during their plunge through the atmosphere, and a number of the pods showed scars from where they had collided with debris from Excelsior. And while most of the escape vehicles had landed on level ground, two of them rested unevenly atop some of the boulders littering the area.
Most of the ship’s complement had disembarked, but they largely stayed close to whatever pod had carried them to the planet’s surface. For the most part, they tended to the injured among them, arranged for the dispersal of rations, and aggregated reports from their various shipboard duty sections about what had taken place on the lost Excelsior. Under direct orders from Leslie, some personnel had begun setting up emergency shelters, while others monitored sensors and communications. Automatic distress beacons already broadcast calls for help toward the Federation.
The security chief headed toward the pod emblazoned with a large number 13, which had alit off to the left, at a distance of about seventy-five meters. The dry ground crunched beneath Leslie’s boots as he walked. He hadn’t yet checked, but he thought that the pull of gravity on the planet seemed slightly higher than the artificial field maintained aboard Excelsior.
As Leslie made his way to the pod where Lieutenant Carville monitored communications, some of the crew gazed toward him. He consciously kept his stride sure and unhurried, wanting to sow confidence in his shipmates. After all that they’d endured to that point, and with Captain Sulu and Commander Crajjik still among the missing, doubts and fears could understandably rise in even the most seasoned of Starfleet veterans.
As Leslie reached Carville’s escape pod, Lieutenant Sevol emerged through the open hatch. The ship’s alpha-shift helmsman flipped open a communicator, but then stopped when he saw the security chief. “Commander, I was just stepping outside to contact you,” Sevol said. He closed his communicator and affixed it to the back of his belt. Despite his Vulcan reserve, even he showed visible signs of the strain that the previous few hours had wrought. “Commander Ajax wishes to speak with you.” Josefina Ajax headed Excelsior’s sciences division.
Leslie nodded his acknowledgment, and when Sevol stepped aside, the security chief ducked through the hatch. Inside the pod, several of the ship’s senior staff worked over padds, while Carville crewed the escape vehicle’s communications panel, and Ajax operated the sensors. Everybody glanced up when Leslie entered, and he didn’t need to be a counselor to read the concern on their faces. He knew at once that something else—something bad—had happened.
“Lieutenant,” the security chief said, gazing past the escape vehicle’s built-in seats—arranged in five rows of four—toward the bulkhead opposite. There, to the left of the two pod-control positions, Carville sat before the comm console. Leslie sidled through the twenty clustered seats to the other four. “Aaron has heard from Commander Azleya. She’s landed about two hundred kilometers from here with a full escape pod.”
“That’s excellent news, sir,” Carville said.
“Aaron has also detected what she thinks is a weak comm signal.” Leslie handed the padd to the lieutenant. “She’s recorded the details for you.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll see what I can find.”
Leslie watched Carville study the padd for a moment. Bracing himself, the security chief then turned toward Lieutenant Commander Ajax, who sat on the other side of the pod-control consoles. He paced over to her. “Lieutenant Sevol said you wanted to see me.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, peering up at him from the sensor panel. “As you know, I’ve been scanning for any more of our escape pods. I just found something four hundred ninety-three kilometers south-southeast of our position. I’m reading duranium, rodinium, and titanium.”
“Hull materials,” Leslie noted.
“Aye,” Ajax said quietly. “But if what the sensors are detecting was one of our escape vehicles, it’s no longer intact.”
Ever since leaving Excelsior without Captain Sulu, Leslie had tried to convince himself that he hadn’t made a mistake, that his commanding officer had abandoned ship before the vessel had been completely destroyed. And maybe he did succeed in getting away from Excelsior in time, he thought, but what difference does that make if his pod crashed?
“Life signs?” Leslie asked, his voice falling almost to a whisper. He dreaded the answer he would receive.
“None, sir.”
Equal measures of grief and guilt inundated the security chief. He had known Hikaru Sulu for such a long time, he considered him more than a commanding officer; they had become friends. And I failed him on both counts.
Leslie struggled not to show any outward response to those members of the crew present. Instead, he announced that he would reconfigure one of the pods and send a team to investigate the apparent crash site. He waited while Ajax transferred the details to a data card, which she then handed to him. “Keep searching,” Leslie said, and then he headed back toward the hatch.
Outside, the security chief saw that Lieutenant Sevol had moved away from the escape pod. He stood thirty or so paces away, where he spoke with Ensign Frisch, one of the ship’s transporter operators. Neither of the two men seemed to notice Leslie, for which he felt grateful. The security chief stepped to the side of the hatch and took a moment to collect himself. He might’ve failed Captain Sulu, but he would not fail the Excelsior crew. More responsibility had fallen to him at that instant than he’d ever had before, and he recommitted himself to living up to it.
Leslie took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He started toward Sevol, whom he would task with modifying one of the pods and checking the readings that Ajax had found. He had only taken a few steps when a small boulder not far from the helmsman thrust upward and toppled onto its side. With stunning speed, a black, many-legged creature climbed from the hole that had been revealed. Even as Leslie reached for his phaser, the grotesque beast charged toward Sevol and Frisch. The security chief raised his weapon and fired, his instincts and training working flawlessly, but still too late. The creature slammed into the two officers, sending Frisch sprawling onto the dirt. It then took hold of Sevol with several of its many limbs, lifting the helmsman from the ground.
As Leslie raced toward the two officers, red-tinged golden fire streaking from his phaser, more movement captured his attention. He looked away once, quickly, even as he continued forward. “Phasers!” he called out to any Excelsior personnel within earshot, and then, “Close the hatches!” It horrified him as he realized how many of the crew remained outside the escape pods.
All about the area, boulders began to topple.