Stano stepped down into the command well of the bridge and placed herself at Khatami’s right side. “All torpedo bays loaded and ready, Captain.”
“Mr. Klisiewicz,” Khatami said, “where are the Klingons?”
The science officer checked the sensor display and reported quickly. “Holding at station, opposite our position relative to the planet.”
Khatami looked to Estrada. “Hail them.”
Though the commodore’s orders hadn’t included warning the Klingons about the impending barrage, Khatami decided it might be prudent to make sure they understood in advance that they would not be the target of the forthcoming salvos of torpedoes. Bad enough I have to blast a planet down to its mantle, she decided, I’m not starting an interstellar incident as well.
“I have the Klingon commander,” Estrada said.
“Onscreen.” Khatami faced the main viewer.
The image of a grizzled, gray-maned, ridged-headed Klingon warrior gazed back at her. “This is Captain Gerzhog, commanding the Imperial Klingon battle cruiser HovQaw’wI’,” he rasped. “Identify yourself.”
“Captain Atish Khatami, commanding the Federation starship Endeavour,” she replied. “We’ve been ordered to begin immediate photon-torpedo bombardment of Gamma Tauri IV. This barrage will continue until all life on the planet has been exterminated. We will not target your vessel. Do you understand?”
Gerzhog conferred briefly with someone out of frame and answered, “Understood, Endeavour. We will assist you by bombarding the hemisphere opposite your position. HovQaw’wI’ out.” The screen blinked back to a motionless starfield.
“The Klingons have armed their weapons array, Captain,” Klisiewicz said. “Their targeting scanners are focused on the planet’s surface.”
“Then it’s time,” Khatami said. She stood from her chair. In unison the crew got up from their seats and stood at attention beside their duty stations. “Mr. Thorsen,” she said, looking to the chief of security and senior weapons officer. “Ten full salvos, on my order.” Khatami turned back toward the main viewer and steeled herself. Gamma Tauri IV was just a speck on the viewscreen, and that was how she wanted it to stay until this was over. She had no desire to observe this atrocity in detail. Denying herself the luxury of tears, she gave the order.
“Fire.”
Whooping screeches accompanied every multiple-warhead salvo that shot away from the Endeavour. The blazing blue streaks joined with identical payloads fired from the Lovell. Sparks of sapphire, they glowed in the darkness of space for several seconds until they cruised out of visual range, on course for their rendezvous with Gamma Tauri IV.
From millions of kilometers away, only the barest flickers attested to the antimatter-fueled cataclysm that was transforming the planet into a sphere of molten rock and radioactive glass.
All around Khatami, her crew hung their heads in shame and sorrow. She kept her head up and her eyes on the screen. You’re the captain. You gave the order. You don’t get to look away. You have to watch…and you’ll have to remember.
23
Wounded and clutching the signal dampener to his mauled torso, Terrell had passed his hours of painful solitude crawling under the foliage back to the campsite where he and Niwara had been attacked nearly twelve hours earlier. It hadn’t taken as long to get back as he had expected it would; following the river’s edge, he dragged himself across the hundred-fifty-odd meters of muddy ground in just a couple of hours.
Little was left of Niwara, and most of their equipment had been destroyed. To his relief, his tricorder remained intact, and from the shredded remains of his pack he retrieved an intact canteen of clean water. In the swiftly rising temperatures of the jungle, he was grateful for every drop of potable liquid. The sun had begun its slow descent from the midheaven; by his best estimate, dusk was only a few hours away.
His communicator beeped. In the eerie silence of the jungle it sounded conspicuously shrill. He plucked it quickly from his belt and flipped it open. “Terrell here,” he said, and was struck by how tired and hoarse he sounded.
“Get ready for evac, Clark,” Captain Nassir said. “Your ride should be arriving any second.”
“It’s about time,” Terrell joked, smiling through the pain.
A powerful rumbling of maneuvering thrusters and turbo-fans went from barely audible to deafening in a matter of seconds. Terrell closed his communicator and tucked it back on his belt as a peculiar-looking, mottled-gray spacecraft appeared above his wrecked campsite. The ship’s nose was a narrow wedge, its belly a fat and blocky mass, its warp nacelles short and squat. Distorted above a curtain of heat radiation, it hovered for a few seconds and lowered vertically to the ground, kicking up a massive cloud of dirt and debris. The moment its landing struts touched down, its aft ramp lowered, and a trim young man with short sandy hair jogged out and peered into the dusty haze.
“Over here!” called Terrell, who weakly waved his arm.
The young man ran to him and kneeled at his side. He had to shout over the piercing whine of the engines. “Can you walk?”
“No,” Terrell said, hugging the signal dampener.
The young man spoke into a small communications device clutched in his left hand. “Get down here and give me a hand!” Moments later another man scrambled out of the ship. He was older and out of shape, with long, unkempt bone-white hair.
He greeted Terrell as he took hold of his arm. “Cervantes Quinn, captain of the Rocinante,” he said. “Nice to meet ya.”
As the duo lifted Terrell to his feet and carried him back to the ship, the younger man nodded and said simply, “Tim Pennington, at your service.”
They portered Terrell adroitly up the ramp into their ship. Quinn thumped a control panel with the side of his fist as they passed by it, and behind them the aft ramp lifted shut with a deep grinding noise.
The scruffy pilot asked Terrell, “Hammock or chair?”
“I’ve been lying down all day,” Terrell said. “Chair.”
Leading with his head, Quinn said to Pennington, “Into the cockpit, then. We’ll put him in the navigator’s seat.”
With surprising dexterity and gentleness, they lowered Terrell into a wide, deep, and well-padded seat on the starboard side of the vessel’s roomy cockpit. He pulled his tricorder away from his hip and let it rest on his lap next to the signal dampener as he settled into the seat. “Thank you, gents,” he said. “Much longer out there, and I’d have been in real trouble. What brings you boys out this far, anyway?”
Quinn replied, “A friend from Vanguard sent us.” He grinned and did a turning flop into his own seat, the most deeply creased and cratered of the four in the cockpit. “No offense, but we’d better motor if we’re gonna get you back to your ship in time to bug out.”
“They’re leaving?” he asked, surprised at the news.
Pennington and Quinn traded questioning glances before Quinn answered, “Yeah, that ship took a hell of a beating. And believe me—I’m a man who knows what an ass-kicking looks like.”
Perhaps noticing Terrell’s disappointment, Pennington asked, “Why, mate? Some reason they ought to stick around?” His slight Scottish accent was more noticeable now that he had stopped shouting to be heard.
“One of our people got swept downriver,” he said. “We—” His mind afflicted him with the memory of Niwara’s gruesome slaying. “We were looking for her when we got attacked.” His hands closed around the tricorder, and he lowered his head. “Still, I suppose it doesn’t make much sense to go on. I don’t even know if she’s alive or how far the river might’ve taken her by now.” This time he noticed a silent debate being volleyed between his two rescuers, with Pennington clearly arguing the yes side of the matter while Quinn championed the cause of no.