When the dying component of the Regulus A binary cast off its atmosphere, leaving a white dwarf corpse behind, its companion swallowed much of the expelled hydrogen and swelled into a much hotter blue giant, vaporizing the system’s innermost planets yet warming several of the outer worlds to habitable temperatures. The resultant rapid ecological shifts created pressures that accelerated the pace of evolution on those worlds, allowing complex, diverse forms of life to emerge unusually early in the system’s history. Regulans take this as a reminder that life thrives on unexpected challenges.
—Vaacith sh’Lesinas, The Federation and Back
Laputa, Hearthside (Regulus I)
Upon the Sacagawea’s arrival in the Regulus system, Kirk made contact with the Central Council on Regulus III, but the councillors requested that he head directly to Hearthside in order to coordinate with the Regulan Defense Force detachment that was already on the scene, along with Councillor T’Zeri, the administrator responsible for the system’s two innermost worlds. According to the Council, the Agni had fired several more warning shots near the aerial cities in the preceding few days, but had not taken any more aggressive actions. Still, the councillors pleaded with Kirk to resolve the matter swiftly, reminding him that lives on multiple planets and moons were potentially endangered by this quiet invasion.
The Regulans Kirk had met, including Ensign Diaz, somewhat reminded him of the inhabitants of Vega Colony—at once proud and insecure about their homeworlds, as if aware of how tenuous their existence was around such inhospitable stars. Thirty millennia ago, an advanced civilization known as the Veliki had used Regulus as a living laboratory for the genetic engineering of ultraviolet-resistant life-forms—from the pale, sluglike bloodworms that eked out a subterranean existence on the dry, scalding second planet to the iridescent, mirror-feathered birds of the lushly forested fifth planet. When a rogue Veliki faction had begun to pursue eugenics for power and conquest, much as the Augments of Earth and the Suliban Cabal would later do, their resultant assaults on neighboring star systems had discredited the Regulus experiment, and the rest of the Veliki had abandoned the system and vanished into galactic history. Other races had resettled the system since then, even before the Vulcans came and made it a protectorate of their High Command. Today, Regulus was a significant Federation member with over a billion inhabitants—primarily of UV-tolerant species like Vulcans, Chelons, and Arodi, but including a sizable human population as well, for humans had never let an environment’s inhospitable conditions deter them from settling it anyway.
The aerial cities of Regulus I—Hearthside—were a case in point: delicate pockets of habitable atmosphere drifting through clouds of sulfuric acid, dozens of kilometers above a surface whose heat, pressure, and corrosive conditions would kill any humanoid in an instant and ruin a shuttlecraft within minutes. Not so delicate, Kirk reminded himself as he materialized in the transporter station of Laputa, the administrative capital of the planet. He knew that the cities were built with multiple safety features and redundancies, including deflector shields to supplement their acid-resistant outer shells.
The transporter station was within one of the upper spherical modules of Laputa—as Kirk could see clearly, for the station was designed so that the first thing new arrivals saw was the large window granting a panoramic view of the city outside. Dozens of spheres, each about fifty meters across, were linked together in a hex pattern, mostly in a single layer but with several scattered clusters nested above it—and probably below it as well. All in all, the city somewhat reminded Kirk of a gigantic bunch of grapes.
Beyond and below the city, the clouds of Hearthside stretched to the horizon in all directions, their sulfurous yellow-brown hue bleached by the actinic blue-white glare of the double sun looming overhead, a glare damped to tolerable levels by the window’s filtering. If he looked closely, Kirk imagined he could see diffuse dark streaks in the clouds, perhaps created by the massive blooms of aerial bacteria that these cities existed to harvest. But he might just be seeing what he expected to see.
Finding that out would have to wait, though, for several Regulans were approaching the transporter pad. The Sacagawea captain led his party down to greet the officials. At the head of the group was a tall, bald, tan-skinned human who extended his hand. “Captain Kirk? Welcome. I’m Khalil Farouz, city administrator of Laputa. Allow me to introduce Councillor T’Zeri, who represents our part of the system on the Central Council.” He gestured to a mature, slender Vulcan woman whose gray-frosted black hair was twisted into an elaborate bun. She offered a gracious nod of her head in response to Kirk’s greeting.
“And this,” Farouz went on, gesturing to a strongly built, ruddy-skinned woman with close-shorn silver-blond hair, “is Colonel Yelena Orloff of the Regulan Defense Force.”
Orloff gave a curt greeting. “Captain.”
“Pleased to meet you all,” Kirk said. He gestured to the officers accompanying him. “This is my first officer, Commander Eshu Adebayo; my security chief, Lieutenant Joshua Hauraki; and Ensign Kamisha Diaz, my science officer, who hails from Regulus V. ”
“Well, then, welcome home, Ensign,” Farouz said. “Or nearly so. Have you had occasion to visit Hearthside before?”
“Yes, I have, Administrator,” Diaz replied, “though this is my first time in Laputa.”
The niceties dispensed with, Farouz turned back to Kirk. “If you’ll accompany us to the conference room, please?”
As the party moved through the high, curving corridors of the city spheres and the wide, cylindrical airlocks that connected them to one another, Kirk was struck by the abundance of windows and the relative thinness of the walls that encased them. “I would have expected these cities to have sturdier construction,” he remarked, “to keep out the toxic atmosphere.”
“It is not necessary,” Councillor T’Zeri explained in polite tones. “The exterior atmospheric pressure at this altitude is equal to the interior pressure. It is the lower density of an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide that gives us buoyancy. Thus, the walls need be no stronger than standard construction, and the use of lightweight materials reduces the need for additional flotation sacs or antigravs. All that is required is to maintain an airtight seal.”
The brief tour was intriguing, but once the group reached the conference room, Colonel Orloff got straight to business. “We’ve had no luck establishing any communication with these so-called Agni, and little luck improving our sensor scans of their surface outposts. We’re facing an invading force that we have very little intelligence about. Captain, we need to know everything you can tell us about them from Starfleet’s previous encounters.”
“I’m afraid I can add comparatively little to what you already know,” Kirk said. “They’ve shown no interest in communication, so their motives in occupying N-Class planets in Federation space are not yet known. But they have no concern for humanoid life or even our presence. They treat us as a nuisance, to be ignored if possible, destroyed if necessary.” He turned to Diaz. “Ensign?”
“Yes, Captain.” The young science officer picked up with her prepared presentation, projecting image captures and sensor schematics onto the conference room’s holographic display. “Their technology is advanced, though alien in its materials and methods, since most of the metals and synthetics we use would dissolve quickly in their environment. That means their vessels, and no doubt their ground facilities, are extremely robust and hard to damage.
“Rather than using matter-antimatter, they have somehow managed to create artificial microsingularities, which generate energy when matter is injected into them and becomes superheated in the accretion disk, creating an energetic plasma not unlike what we use in warp engines. These singularities power an advanced magnetic tractor-field system that, while not functioning as a deflector shield in its own right, is used in concert with a flux-pinned halo of ablative armor plates to create a point defense system that works almost as well as deflectors, and can also become a weapon by propelling the heavy armor plates at ballistic speeds, causing damage comparable to a meteoroid impact. The plates can also surround a starship and use their mutual attraction to compress around it, crushing it.
“Additionally, the singularities’ plasma can be concentrated into a pinpoint beam of enormous destructive power. A single shot can overwhelm a heavy cruiser’s shields and . . . punch a hole clear through the vessel.” Diaz took a shaky breath, trying to maintain her detachment as sensor footage recorded by the U.S.S. Enterprise showed the near-destruction of the Kongo. Kirk forced himself to look, as he had so many times before. He would not forget Mehran Egdor’s sacrifice. “The good news,” Diaz went on, “is that it depletes their plasma supply and requires four to six minutes to recharge.”
“That’s terrifying,” Farouz said. “But if they have that kind of weaponry . . .” He hesitated and glanced downward, as if afraid of being overheard. “Why haven’t they used it on us? They’ve flung a few small projectiles past our cities as warnings, but they haven’t tried blasting or crushing us.”
“The other good news is that they probably can’t use the singularity beam from the surface,” Diaz said. “The superheating of the dense atmosphere down there would cause a titanic explosion, like a high-yield photon torpedo. They’d immolate themselves if they tried it.”
“Thank Allah for small mercies.”
T’Zeri quirked an eyebrow at the administrator. “Rather, thank the physical laws of the universe.”
Farouz winked back. “Same thing.”
“As for the armor plates,” Diaz went on, “it’s harder to say. It could be that Hearthside’s atmosphere and magnetic field are too disruptive to their tractor field.”
“There’s another possibility,” Eshu Adebayo remarked. “Maybe they don’t want to destroy us if they don’t have to. We’ve seen before that they’re perfectly content to ignore us; they only retaliate when we try to stop them from getting where they’re going. Now that they’ve gotten there, maybe they simply want to ensure that we keep our distance and leave them alone.”
Yelena Orloff leaned forward, without seeming any less erect. “The cities have made no provocative moves toward them beyond simply drifting overhead. Yet they have fired their projectiles dangerously close, and getting closer day by day. The message is clear: they want us to abandon the planet altogether.”
“Which is out of the question,” Farouz said. “Regulus’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries are too reliant on the bacteria we harvest. Not to mention that these are our homes. My family has been born and raised here for two generations. Our cities may not be moored down, but we have roots on this planet, Captain.”
“Of course,” Kirk said. “We may not have a good understanding of the Agni yet, but we’ll do everything we can to find a way to remove them from Hearthside.”
T’Zeri folded her hands before her. “Given the opportunity, my preference would be to devise a means of communication with the Agni. If there is a way to achieve peaceful coexistence with this species, it is in our interest to pursue it. The scientific and practical benefits of contact with a novel form of life with unique technology are vast. And Regulus has always benefitted from the influx of new immigrants, from humans and Chelons in the early years of the Federation to our most recent addition, the Caitians.”
“The Caitians came openly, Councillor,” said Orloff, her tone sharpening. “Had they attempted to sneak in and occupy the moon by stealth, had they threatened the existing outposts there with expulsion, we would have called them invaders and repelled them accordingly.”
“Yet at least we could have communicated with them, so that we and they would both have been clear on one another’s intentions. The ability to communicate clearly with an antagonist can be as essential in conflict as in diplomacy. Either way, devising a translation matrix should be our priority.”
Kirk looked at her. “Has there been anything to translate? Have you been able to intercept any of their communications?”
“Some faint subspace signals,” Orloff replied, “on a deep band, hard to detect or track. But the majority of them appear to have been aimed at 88 Leonis.”
Diaz stared. “You think they’re communicating with their other settlement?”
“Stands to reason. And the other signals might suggest the presence of more footholds we haven’t detected yet. We’ve reported our findings to Commodore Wesley.”
The ensign turned to Kirk. “Captain, this is our first linguistic data on the Agni. With your permission, I’d like to work with Chalan on a translation matrix. I have a xenobiologist friend here in the city, H’Raal, who I know would be glad to work with us on this.”
“A team at the Science Academy is working on interpreting the signals as well,” T’Zeri said. “I am certain they would be willing to coordinate with your people, Captain Kirk.”
“That seems a reasonable place to start,” Kirk said. As much as the replayed image of the Kongo had reawakened his anger toward the Agni, he reminded himself of Wesley’s orders to find a diplomatic option if at all possible. “Ensign, why don’t you contact your—”
The room shuddered. An alarm sounded, and a hail came in for Farouz. “Administrator! We’re under attack from below!”
“I’ll be right there,” the administrator replied. He rose, inviting the others to follow.
Laputa’s control center was only a short distance from the conference room, so they arrived in mere moments. The central holographic display of the city showed several spherical modules flashing red. A lean Vulcan male turned to address Farouz and Orloff. “We have been struck by a projectile from the surface. It was swift and massive enough to overwhelm our protective shields.”
“Makes sense,” Diaz muttered to Kirk. “The shields are only meant to keep out clouds.”
“The projectile struck at a forty-three-degree angle from horizontal,” the Vulcan reported, gesturing to a red line that passed clear through the city graphic. “It penetrated entirely through an auxiliary flotation sphere and Hydroponics Sphere Three above it. Upon exit, it struck and ruptured the hull of the adjoining water processing plant.”
“Thrusters,” Farouz ordered. “Move us away from whatever’s firing on us.”
“They are not in the immediate vicinity, sir. Apparently their range of control for their projectiles is greater than we believed.”
“No casualties reported,” a human technician announced, “but there are several dozen people in the upper two spheres.”
“We need to get them out fast,” Kirk said, reaching for his communicator. “The atmosphere—”
“The equal pressure means there is relatively little external atmosphere penetration, Captain Kirk,” the Vulcan technician said. “We are already increasing internal pressure to slow it further. There should be ample time to evacuate.”
“If they don’t strike us again,” Orloff said, drawing her own communicator. “Orloff to Venant. Laputa is taking Agni fire from the surface. Identify the source and neutralize it.”
After her crew acknowledged the order, Kirk caught her eye. “Can your phasers penetrate an atmosphere this dense?”
“We’ll find out. However, if you wanted to add Starfleet phasers to the attempt . . .”
“Say no more.” Kirk contacted the Sacagawea and ordered Mitchell to back up the Defense Force ships.
“Another projectile incoming!” a bulky Chelon technician called. Kirk barely had time to brace himself before the deck heaved. He reached for Diaz as she stumbled, but Lieutenant Hauraki caught her first, and she smiled up at the security chief in appreciation.
“That was close,” Hauraki said. As if to reinforce his words, the power in the control room fluctuated, the displays flickering in and out.
Orloff scanned the intermittent hologram. “They’ve damaged our power plant, and nicked the edge of a manufacturing sphere. Took out another flotation sphere too. They’re targeting our infrastructure, the things that keep the city afloat and functional.”
Adebayo furrowed his brow as he studied the readouts. “It’s a mercy their targets are relatively unpopulated. Two spheres holding only helium, several industrial facilities, and a farm.”
“Probably luck rather than mercy, Commander,” the colonel countered.
“Looks like these projectiles are narrower than the ones they use in space,” Kirk said. “Probably more missile-shaped, to get through this dense air. That reduces the size of the holes they make, at least.”
“But it lets them hit faster,” Diaz said, “and penetrate clear through the city.”
Kirk’s communicator beeped. “Mitchell here, sir. No luck with phasers. The atmosphere absorbs most of the energy. Desai’s trying to retune them to pass through cee-oh-two, but we can’t even be sure we’re aiming right in that muck. Even if we are, I’d bet they have some version of that shield plate barrier.”
The captain turned to Diaz. “Are photon torpedoes an option?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir. In this atmosphere, the blast and EMP effects would be hugely amplified. It could endanger the cities.”
“Captain,” came Mitchell’s voice. “They tried lobbing a third projectile at you, but the Venant managed to shoot it down. We’ll do what we can to run interference, but you might want to get out of there.”
Kirk turned to Farouz, who had been consulting with his technicians. “I recommend we evacuate the civilians.”
“That will be difficult, Captain Kirk,” the administrator said. “The damage to our power and control systems has knocked out our transporters.”
Adebayo sighed. “The transporters are always the first to go.”
“Besides, we don’t know what other cities might come under attack from the surface,” Orloff put in. “We’d have to beam them up to the ships.”
Farouz frowned. “You have, what, six ships in orbit, plus the Sacagawea? How many evacuees could they hold? A few dozen each, a hundred?”
“It’ll have to do, Administrator. I recommend prioritizing children, caregivers, the sick and elderly. We’ll need able-bodied hands to assist in vacating and patching breached modules.”
“Very well.” Farouz turned back to Kirk. “Once that’s underway, our priority will be repairing the breaches to the power plant and hydroponics module. Even with raised pressure, the acid clouds leaking in will begin doing serious damage before long.”
“My people will assist with that,” Kirk said. He turned to Orloff. “Colonel, your gunners on the Venant seem quite skilled, so I’d like to bring the Sacagawea back to assist with the evacuation.”
Orloff appeared pleased by his praise for her crew. “That would be appreciated, Captain.”
Kirk turned to Hauraki and Diaz. “You two, head to the power plant, assist however you can.” Once they had acknowledged and left, he turned to Farouz. “I’d be happy to assist in hydroponics.” He knew it would be quite different from the farm he’d grown up on, but maybe his experience could help somehow.
“Thank you, Captain. Every extra hand will help.”
“Commander Adebayo will remain here to coordinate.” The first officer acknowledged his implicit order with a nod. Kirk checked the map display one last time to get his bearings and headed out.
Kirk was given a filter mask, goggles, and gloves before entering the hydroponics sphere, for a fair amount of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid mist had begun to mix with the interior atmosphere despite the positive pressure to limit its entry. Once inside, he saw that the interior of the stadium-sized sphere was partitioned into multiple large greenhouses with wide aisles between them. It appeared that most of the greenhouses had already sealed themselves off to protect the crops within, a built-in precaution against just this sort of crisis. But there was a gaping hole torn through the deck and canopy of one of the greenhouses, and a matching hole in the mostly clear, domed roof on the other side of the sphere, for the projectile had gone through at an angle. Debris from the damaged greenhouse and roof had breached several other greenhouses, and the hydroponics crew was already rushing to patch the holes. All the sprinklers were on and farmers were waving hoses to spray water into the air, no doubt to capture and dilute the acidic mist.
“Oh, good, you’re here.” The repair team with Kirk was greeted by a compact reptilian humanoid, whom Kirk recognized as one of the Arodi, a species that had settled the Regulus system millennia before the Vulcans had come. “We’ve almost got the lower breach in hand. We’re using a fallen greenhouse wall as a temporary patch, just need to seal it. Getting to the upper breach is more of a challenge. The missile took out some of the catwalks.”
“We have the means to deal with it,” said Verrek, the burly, copper-haired Vulcan man who led the repair team. He took in Kirk and the others with his green-eyed gaze. “Come.”
Verrek instructed the team to split into two groups, with Kirk accompanying his group as they used the overhead catwalks to approach the breach from both directions, as near as they could safely reach, for a portion of the catwalk just under the breach had been knocked out as well. Once they reached the damaged portion, one of the repair team members took a few moments to secure the loosened bolts on the damaged catwalk section, ensuring that the team could safely move out onto it. Kirk saw the other team doing the same on the far side of the breach. While he waited, he turned to examine the six-meter-wide breach in the transparent roof section, astonished to think that there was nothing between him and the atmosphere of a Venus-like world except a filter mask and goggles. Granted, it was the comparatively thin reaches of the upper atmosphere, but it was still impressive to contemplate.
Once the teams advanced onto the catwalks, they worked together to extend a temporary bridge across the gap, allowing the tethered workers to move out beneath the breach and position flexible, acid-resistant polyvinyl sheets over the gap. Kirk assisted in rigging and securing the workers’ lines, amused that his climbing experience had proven more useful than his farming experience. He quickly realized, though, that he would have to unlearn his Starfleet experience. He was used to dealing with hull breaches in the vacuum of space, where a flexible, partial patch like this would be sucked out in an instant, but anything more rigid would be held firmly in place by the internal pressure. He decided that he should think of it like patching a breach in a section already evacuated of its air, with no pressure differential to speak of. It made the patching sheets easier to move into place but required more work to seal them off at the edges. Although in this case, there was the added complication of the water mist being sprayed on everything, making it harder to adhere the patches to the roof. Once a reasonable seal was in place, though, the positive pressure was able to take hold and keep the patch secure, as Kirk could tell when his ears began to pop.
Just as the team was beginning to descend from the catwalk, an alert came in. “Another projectile incoming!” came the call from the control room. “Everyone brace yourselves!”
There was barely time for Kirk to grab the railing before Laputa heaved again. Verrek was not so lucky. The catwalk section beneath him buckled and tipped him off—and he had already detached his tether. Kirk lunged at him and grabbed his arm, catching him in the nick of time. The Vulcan’s weight slammed him painfully against the catwalk and dragged him forward. The impact knocked Kirk’s mask and goggles loose. Desperately, he grabbed at a stanchion with his other hand and thrust his foot out to hook around the far edge of the catwalk. Between the two, he was able to halt his descent, but Verrek’s weight felt like it would wrench his shoulder from its socket.
Verrek took a deep breath and looked down and around, assessing his situation. “I recommend you release me, Captain Kirk. I can control my fall and reduce the degree of injury I will sustain.”
“Is that . . . logical?” Kirk asked. “You can . . . do more good for Laputa . . . if you’re in one piece.”
“And you will do more good for all of Regulus if you remain intact. Logically, the needs of the many . . .”
“Save your breath and hang on!” Kirk looked around, seeking an alternative. He spotted another level of the catwalk a few meters down and inward of them. Some team members already stood there, watching in concern. “There, behind you,” Kirk said, directing Verrek’s attention to it. “If I swing you, build up enough momentum, you can land safely there. Your team will catch you.”
“That will materially increase the risk that you will fall, Captain.”
“Risk can be managed by skill!” Kirk told him. “I know what I’m capable of as much as you do.”
Verrek held his gaze for a moment. Kirk’s eyes stung from some residual acid mist, but he fought to keep them open regardless. “Very well.”
Making sure his feet were securely hooked, Kirk released the stanchion and took Verrek’s arm in both hands. He began to swing the Vulcan, who then started to amplify his swing with his legs once he got the rhythm. “All right,” Kirk said. “Counting down . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . now!”
He and Verrek both let go, and the Vulcan fell at an angle. He nearly missed the lower catwalk after all, but he came close enough for his team to catch him and pull him over the rail. A moment later, another team member reached Kirk and helped him to his feet.
As soon as he was back on level ground, Kirk drew his communicator. “Kirk to control room. What’s the latest damage?”
“Adebayo here, Captain. The missile struck a pair of bacterial processing spheres on the edge of the city, right where they connect. The outer one is now only attached to one other sphere, and the impact has twisted that connection. There are still over twenty people trapped in there, but the ships in orbit have already beamed up all they can hold for now. They’re trying to drop off evacuees at other cities, but it’ll take time.”
“Understood.” He closed the lid and turned to Verrek, who had gotten an equivalent report on his own comlink. “Let’s go.”
On her way to the power plant with Lieutenant Hauraki, Kamisha Diaz came across a very familiar, furry face. “Meesh!” H’Raal cried, pouncing on Diaz and pulling her into a tight, twirling hug. “I knew I’d find you where there was trouble!”
“Harl, you shouldn’t be here,” Diaz said. “You should evacuate with the rest of the nonessential personnel.”
“And miss my reunion with my dear old friend? Don’t be silly. And I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you call me nonessential.” The black-and-white Caitian bounded off toward the power plant, her white-tufted tail swishing behind her. Diaz and Hauraki exchanged a shrug and headed off in her wake.
Once at the power plant, Diaz was roped into helping to reroute power away from one of the damaged distribution manifolds adjacent to the gaping hole that had been torn through the plant, while Hauraki and H’Raal helped evacuate the last few people who hadn’t been beamed out. The influx of carbon dioxide from outside was actually beneficial here, for it helped prevent the loose, sparking power cables from setting anything on fire until they could be shut down.
No sooner had the group completed the evacuation than the city rocked from another impact. Hauraki soon found out about the damage to the bacterial processing sphere and led Diaz to assist, with H’Raal still insisting on accompanying them. “Come on, I know a shortcut!”
When the trio arrived outside the damaged sphere, they found that the entrance hatch was jammed partway open. The hatch frame was warped, as the entire sphere had twisted as a result of the impact. The interfaces between spheres were designed to be flexible to absorb the stresses of the strong high-altitude winds, but the sudden wrenching imparted by the projectile impact had been more than this one was designed to absorb. The bulkheads groaned under the torsional stresses as the loosened sphere swayed in the wind.
“Are you there?” a voice called from inside the hatch. “We need help!” Diaz ducked down to peer through the lopsided hatch opening. A bulky Chelon was on the other side, struggling to pull the door wider with no evident success. “This section’s still airtight, but there are others stuck in a room back there—debris blocking the door. It’s too heavy for me to move alone. Can any of you get through?”
Hauraki stepped forward and attempted to squeeze through the gap, but his large frame made it impossible. H’Raal hissed and tied her mane back into a compact bun. “All right, stand aside, Muscles. We’ll handle this.” She slipped through the gap and under the Chelon’s arm with ease, seeming to flow through like a liquid. Diaz couldn’t quite manage the same, but her slim build let her squeeze through once the Chelon gave her room.
“Go on,” Hauraki said. “There are others coming—we’ll get the door open from out here.”
Another groan sounded, and Diaz felt the deck shift beneath her feet. “Hurry,” she told her crewmate.
“You too.”
Diaz ran to catch up with H’Raal, while the Chelon—who introduced herself as Chivithan—jogged after them at her best speed. H’Raal threw a glance back at Hauraki while they ran. “He’s cute, for an ape. You had him yet?”
“Harlie!”
“What? I can literally smell the lust between you two. And life is short.”
The deck swayed again. “I sincerely hope not.”
A moment later, they arrived at the blocked doorway and got to work. Fortunately, it proved to be a matter of leverage—once Diaz and H’Raal put their full weight on one end of a heavy beam, Chivithan was just able to push its other end up and over an obstruction in the debris pile and swing it out, letting it fall to the deck. With that linchpin piece removed, the trio outside and the others trapped inside were able to move enough other chunks of debris for the room’s occupants to get out.
At first, the trapped workers crowded the exit, creating a jam. But H’Raal spoke to them with her usual breezy confidence that every situation she faced was simplicity itself to overcome. “No problem, all, just make a line, one by one. There you are. See how easy that is? Now go to your left. Never mind the swaying and groaning, it’s just a little wind. I sway and groan too after a long night.”
Chivithan helped escort her coworkers to the exit, where Diaz could see that Hauraki and a repair team had managed to force the hatch open enough for even a Chelon to squeeze through—although the floor of their sphere was now visibly at a different angle than this one, and slightly upslope on what had been a level deck minutes before. She realized that enough outer atmosphere must have leaked in for the sphere to be losing its buoyancy. “Harlie, we’d better move.”
“We’re fine,” H’Raal said as she helped the last worker over the debris. “See? Plenty of time. So let’s go fast,” she finished over the increasing groaning sounds around them.
When they were mere meters from the door, right behind the last evacuee, the module sagged sharply and the bulkhead material around the hatchway began to split open on top. Diaz stumbled, then coughed, her eyes stinging and tearing. The man in front of her was also coughing, sinking to his hands and knees. Diaz and H’Raal helped him up and into the hands of the rescuers on the other side. Diaz saw Captain Kirk standing beside Joshua Hauraki, catching her gaze, urging her forward. He and Hauraki reached out to her, and she reached back.
But just before she could take their hands, the deck tilted more sharply and she stumbled back. H’Raal caught her but was unbalanced by her weight. Both women fell to the deck, H’Raal on her back, Diaz facing her on hands and knees. H’raal’s huge golden eyes locked on hers.
What happened next was almost too fast for Diaz to process. H’Raal nuzzled her quickly and gasped, “Love you, Meesh.” Then she drew back her powerful legs and thrust them into Diaz’s midriff, pushing her back into Kirk’s and Hauraki’s clutches.
The men pulled her back . . .
The bulkheads groaned and shrieked as the sphere tore free . . .
Harlie grinned up at Diaz as if she were about to go on the ride of her life . . .
And she was gone.