He made it all of three running steps before his legs were cut out from under him. His torso fell forward, and he landed face-first in the dust. Kattan and Ndufe each fired two shots before they were dismembered in flurries of blood and shadow. Selby’s torso was hollowed out in one fearsome strike, and a blunt impact threw sh’Neroth backward toward the pit. Her body ignited as it plunged into the darkness.
Adams fumbled for his communicator and flipped it open. “Adams to shuttlecraft! Run! Lift—”
He barely felt the storm of blows that tore him to pieces.
O’Halloran flipped switches and prayed that the main thrusters wouldn’t choose that moment to be temperamental.
Anderson stood at the open aft hatch, firing his phaser at the company of black goliaths advancing on the shuttlecraft. The screech of his weapon was constant, but every time O’Halloran looked back, the obsidian giants were moving faster and getting closer, and the phaser energy seemed to have no effect on them.
The engines thrummed to life, and O’Halloran skipped his preflight check and punched the liftoff thrusters. “Hang on!”
A roar of exhaust shrouded the shuttlecraft in a dust cloud. Anderson kept on firing blindly into the golden haze. The Kepler wobbled and then lurched forward, racing skyward away from the smoldering pit and its dark guardians.
O’Halloran pressed the button to close the aft hatch. He looked back as it shut with a gentle thump.
Anderson sat on the deck, his back against the bulkhead, his left hand clamped over the stump of his right arm, which was missing from a few centimeters below the shoulder. He grinned weakly. “Lost my phaser,” he croaked. “Boy, am I gonna be in trouble.”
“Security just finished their sweep of the site,” Gabbert said to al-Khaled. “They found the bodies of the survey team…well, most of them. But no sign of the attackers.”
Commander al-Khaled felt the cold grip of fear inside his stomach. He had seen what one Shedai entity was capable of on Erilon. He didn’t want to imagine the threat posed by dozens of such beings—but if O’Halloran and Anderson’s report was correct, then that’s exactly what was loose on Gamma Tauri IV.
“Have them recover everything,” al-Khaled said to his room boss. “Then get the samples beamed up to the Lovell. I want forensic scans relayed to Vanguard inside the hour.”
“You got it,” Gabbert said. He set to work whipping the rest of the top-secret operations managers into action. Al-Khaled checked the medical report on Ensign Anderson that had just come in from Dr. Rockey, the Lovell’s chief medical officer. Anderson’s wound had been infected by some kind of peculiar crystalline substance, and it was spreading. Unless some way was found to halt its progress, it would kill the ensign in a matter of hours.
Shaking his head, al-Khaled wondered grimly, What have we stirred up out here?
Gabbert rejoined al-Khaled at the master console. “Ready for some more bad news?”
“Always,” al-Khaled said. “I’m an engineer.”
Nodding upward, Gabbert said, “Colony President Vinueza is upstairs. She wants to talk to you. Says it’s urgent.”
Al-Khaled groaned. Vinueza had arrived less than thirty-six hours ago, but in that short time the new colony president had made a lasting impression on him and the rest of his Starfleet contingent. The woman was boldly aggressive when she wanted something from them and impossibly stubborn when they needed anything from her. An advance file sent several days ago by Commodore Reyes had warned al-Khaled and his senior personnel about Vinueza’s considerable esper talents. When dealing with politicians, al-Khaled was used to being careful about his every word. It was a far greater challenge to exercise the same caution about his every thought. So far he had managed not to compromise the security of Operation Vanguard, but he was fairly certain that Vinueza was now keenly aware of how much he admired her figure and how embarrassed he was that she knew.
“I’ll be upstairs talking to the boss lady,” al-Khaled said. “If I’m not back in an hour, it’s because I’ve either shot the president or committed suicide, or both.”
“I’d stop at the first one,” Gabbert said as al-Khaled left, “but that’s just me.”
Because the ops center was a restricted area, the S.C.E. team maintained an administrative office adjacent to the main operations building. It was little more than a naked gray box consisting of four prefabricated polymer walls, a scrap-duranium ceiling, and a thermoconcrete floor. The desk was made from the same dull gray composite as the walls, and the chair behind it was just as uncomfortable as the guest chairs in front of it.
Al-Khaled entered through the office’s back door and found Jeanne Vinueza, president of the New Boulder colony, standing in his path. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, and she regarded him with a glare whose equal he hadn’t seen since basic training nearly two decades earlier. “Commander,” she said icily. “How nice of you to finally join me.”
“I came as quickly as I could, Madam President,” al-Khaled said. “It’s been a busy—”
“Commander,” she said, “my people have been asking for Starfleet’s help for more than an hour. I know that a non-Federation colony probably doesn’t rate high on your priority list, but when someone says they have an emergency—”
He held up his hand to interrupt. “Emergency?”
“Yes, Commander, an emergency. Our civil engineers were testing the aquifers out on the Ilium Range this morning. They’ve missed two check-ins, and they aren’t answering hails.” She kept talking as al-Khaled stepped past her to stand in front of the wall-sized planetary map on the opposite wall. “Around noon the sheriff sent two of his deputies to check on them. Now we’ve lost contact with them, too.”
Fighting to conceal his fears from Vinueza, al-Khaled reached toward the map and pressed his finger down on the Ilium Range. The first thing he noticed was its alarming proximity to the site where his survey team had been slaughtered less than ninety minutes earlier. “I’ll send out a shuttle immediately,” he said, afraid that he already knew what the rescue team would find.
Vinueza stepped up close behind his shoulder. A concerned look darkened her expression. She lowered her voice. “You’re worried about something.”
“Of course I am, Madam President,” he said, quickly blanking his thoughts. “You’ve just reported two sets of disappearances in one day at the same site, less than fifty kilometers from the Klingons’ colony. If I wasn’t concerned, I’d be a fool.”
She didn’t look or sound convinced. “A lot of your people are on edge right now,” she said. “I can feel it. Something’s going on, Commander, and I demand you tell me what it is.”
“Ma’am, if you were the president of a Federation colony, I might have clearance to tell you, but you’re not, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Softening his tone, he added, “As soon as I know what happened to your people, I’ll be in touch.” He gestured with an outstretched arm toward the door.
“I don’t like secrets, Commander,” Vinueza warned.
“No one does, ma’am.” He stepped ahead and opened the door for her, ending the discussion. “Please, Madam President. Don’t make me call security.”
Vinueza took her time walking to the door. As she slipped past him, she said in a seductively teasing voice, “You wouldn’t call security on me, Commander. You think I’m much too hot for that.” Her knowing smirk imprinted itself on his memory as the door closed. He held that image in his mind as he pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open.