“Understood. Move your people clear and stand by.”
“Acknowledged.” She turned to see the rest of the landing party had already withdrawn to a safe distance, and she joined them in a hurry. “McGibbon, have your men stand by to help excavate the survivor for Doctor Leone and his team.”
“Aye, sir.”
The mellisonant drone of a transporter beam filled the air, and then a ten-meter-square patch of snow shimmered with golden light. Seconds later, the radiance faded—and took the snow with it.
Stano pointed at the pit. “Someone cut us a slope, pronto.”
McGibbon and his men drew their phasers, adjusted their settings, and took aim. “On three,” McGibbon said. “One. Two. Three.” The security team fired wide-dispersal, low-power beams of blue energy and melted one side of the pit into a thirty-degree slope. McGibbon lifted his hand. “Cease fire!”
Chief engineer Bersh glov Mog stepped forward and scanned the slope with his tricorder. “Ground’s solid,” he said. “Engineers! Let’s go!”
The engineering team deployed into the pit and went to work melting snow and ice and excavating dirt, rocks, and debris. Within minutes they had unearthed the main fuselage of Cervantes Quinn’s ship, the Dulcinea. Its hull had been twisted, crushed, and shredded. Mog emerged from the wreck and beckoned Leone. “Site secure! Ready for evac!”
Leone was already in motion and hollering for his team of equipment-toting nurses and paramedics to keep up. “C’mon! We don’t get paid by the hour!” On their way down to the wreck they passed Mog, who climbed back up to join Stano.
“Data banks are gone,” the Tellarite engineer said, his gray-maned, porcine face a portrait of bitter disappointment. “It’s just a husk. Nothing left to salvage.”
Stano nodded. “All right. Pull your team out and fall back to the shuttles.”
“Yes, sir.” The engineers followed Mog back to the landing party’s pair of shuttlecraft, the Tysonand the Murakami.
Minutes passed while the medics worked out of sight inside the battered fuselage of the Dulcineaand the security officers lingered at the edge of the pit. Then Leone and his team emerged carrying Cervantes Quinn on a stretcher. They were moving on a direct path toward the shuttles when Stano intercepted them. She nodded at Quinn as she told Leone, “I need to talk to him.”
Leone shouldered past her and waved his team onward. “He just spent five hours buried alive, Commander. This is no time for a debriefing.”
“I just need to ask him one question. Please.”
The doctor rolled his eyes and said to his team, “Hold up.” He and Stano caught up to them and stood on opposite sides of Quinn’s stretcher. “Mister Quinn? This is Doctor Leone from the Endeavour. Can you hear me?” One of Quinn’s eyes fluttered weakly half open. He said nothing. Leone arched his brow skeptically at Stano. “One question.”
Stano leaned close to Quinn and modulated her voice to a dulcet tone. “Quinn, where is Lieutenant Commander McLellan? Where’s Bridy Mac?”
Quinn looked to his left, and he pushed one trembling hand out from under his thermal blanket to point into the distance— toward the smoldering crater and slowly dissipating mushroom cloud on the far side of an ash-covered lake. Then he pulled his hand back under the cover and shut his eyes.
The first officer turned back, her demeanor somber. “Thank you, Doctor.”
As usual, Leone sounded mildly annoyed. “You’re welcome.” He waved his hands at his team as if fanning flames at their backs. “Okay, show’s over. Move!” They resumed their hurried trot toward the shuttles.
Stano called out to McGibbon, “Paul! Let’s go!” As the security team double-timed across the snow to catch up with the rest of the landing party, Stano flipped open her communicator. “Stano to Endeavour.”
Khatami answered, “Endeavour. Go ahead.”
“Request permission to use the Murakamito reconnoiter the blast area for signs of Lieutenant Commander McLellan.”
“Permission denied. The wormhole’s destabilizing. We have to leave in the next twenty minutes, so you and your team need to get back here. As innow.”
“Understood and on our way. Stano out.”
Quinn lay on the stretcher, frozen in both body and spirit. Through the shuttle’s open hatchway, he saw the pit from which he’d been exhumed—the open grave that held the broken pieces of his ship, his life, his hopes, his future.
Around him, people spoke in voices of authority, taking refuge in their command of technology, as if it would defend them from the hand of fate. He had nothing to say to them. What difference would any of it make now?
The hatch was closed, and steady vibrations from thrusters and impulse coils pulsed through the shuttlecraft as it took off. Out of the corner of his eye, Quinn saw the planet’s horizon curve subtly as they gained altitude. Then the planet dropped out of view as the tiny spacecraft turned toward the orbiting Endeavour.
He knew that in the hours, days, and weeks to come, more than one person would pepper him with questions in a futile attempt to make sense of what had happened on this desolate orb in an empty universe that would soon fold in upon itself and vanish forever. All their queries would be for naught. There were no answers to be found here, no wisdom to be gleaned from this catastrophe. In the name of duty, Bridy had given everything, and Quinn had been left with nothing to show for her sacrifice.
The shuttle circled around to Endeavour’s aft quarter and began its approach toward the main shuttlebay, whose doors yawned open ahead of them. Beyond the Constitution-class starship, the nameless orb that Quinn would curse forever eclipsed the fading glow of its white dwarf star. The best part of him, he was certain, had been left behind on that godforsaken ball of ice and stone.
As Endeavourswallowed up its shuttle, Quinn wished the rest of him had been left behind, as well.
FOUR WEEKS LATER
19
Ming Xiong had never been comfortable as the bearer of bad news, and he had never had to deliver a more heartbreaking message than the one that had brought him back to the U.S.S. Sagittarius. He had thought he might have the luxury of doing this via subspace, or perhaps even in a letter, but as the Endeavourreturned that evening to the main hangar of Starbase 47, Xiong had seen the small Archer-class scout ship berthed in the adjacent bay and realized he would have to fulfill this obligation in person.
On the gangway that led to the Sagittarius,Xiong stopped walking. I really don’t want to do this. He bowed his head and looked at his olive-green utility jumpsuit. It had his name stenciled over the left chest flap, and its right shoulder was adorned by a U.S.S. Sagittariuspatch. It had been given to him by the ship’s Deltan commander, Captain Adelard Nassir, as a token of their friendship. I shouldn’t have worn this,he scolded himself. I don’t deserve it right now.
Ahead of him, Captain Nassir stepped through the ship’s open port-side hatch. “Xiong! You’re here. Good.”
“Yes, sir,” Xiong said as he resumed walking and put aside his regrets about wearing the jumpsuit. Too late to change now.
Nassir beckoned Xiong. “We’re all waiting in the mess.”
Xiong followed the captain inside the Sagittarius. The ship’s narrow main corridor and low overheads gave it a claustrophobic quality. They followed the ring-shaped passageway aft, past the ladder up to the transporter bay and engineering deck, to the mess hall, which served as the ship’s conference room.