Vaughn carried the gear back out into the main cabin. He dumped the jackets and his old field coat onto a chair, and then set the locker down on the floor. He squatted before the box, unlatched it, and then flipped open its lid, revealing four phasers packed in the upper tray. He pulled one free and attached it to his hip.
A sudden movement in Vaughn’s peripheral vision caught his attention. He turned and looked toward the bow of the shuttle in time to see a dark form move out of sight off to starboard. He stood up and started forward. “What—” he started to ask, concerned that he already knew the answer, and then the shuttle shuddered violently. Vaughn flew across the compartment into the port bulkhead.
“We’ve been struck by an energy surge from the clouds,” ch’Thane called, confirming Vaughn’s suspicions. “Engine power is down thirteen percent.”
“I’m taking us down,” Prynn said, not waiting for authorization. Vaughn felt Chaffeetilt down toward the ground. He looked through the forward windows and saw an empty plain below. Once they landed, they could assess the damage, make needed repairs as quickly as possible, and continue on their way.
Another blast thundered into Chaffee.Vaughn felt the shuttle drop precipitously, a wavering sensation filling his stomach. He thought they would fall from the sky, but then Prynn somehow reined Chaffeeback under her control.
“There’s another—” ch’Thane yelled, but too late. Another bolt of energy struck the shuttle. Vaughn hurtled toward the rear of the cabin. He slammed into the bulkhead and collapsed onto the deck. When he looked up, he was amazed to see Prynn still at her station. Ch’Thane, obviously knocked from his seat, now wrestled his way back to it.
Suddenly, a tremendous report shot through the cabin, followed by the horrible moan of tearing metal. Vaughn looked up at the ceiling and saw the dark, writhing sea of clouds above. For a moment, his mind could not process the image, and then he realized that a meter-square section of Chaffee’s roof had been torn open. He saw the blue tinge of an emergency force field and hoped it would hold. Ch’Thane called out, but Vaughn could not make out his words.
Vaughn felt the shuttle veer to port, then dip, and he wondered if Prynn was running evasive maneuvers. Just get us to the ground in one piece,he thought.
Holding on to a chair, Vaughn pulled himself back to his feet. He steadied himself with a hand to the bulkhead, then shuffled back into the aft compartment. He reached the transporter controls and punched at the touchpads, intending to establish a lock on Chaffee’s crew of three. If Prynn could not keep control of the shuttle, then he could beam them—
The transporter panel was dead.
Vaughn peered back through the doorway and out through the forward windows. The ground approached quickly, and he saw Prynn still working hard at the conn. Then another surge hammered into Chaffee,and air screamed through the breach as the shuttle decompressed, the force field obviously gone. The hull screeched as the compromised structure struggled against the forces of its flight. An acrid scent, like that of molten rock, filled the cabin.
Vaughn watched as a shadowy form pushed into the cabin through the hole in the ceiling. An amorphous, shifting mass of gray whirled through the compartment. Ch’Thane turned and saw it just as it reached him. A dark wisp seemed to graze the blue flesh of the ensign’s face, and he screamed. The terrible, ugly wail rose loud enough to be heard over the wind, and over the sounds of Chaffeebreaking up around them. Vaughn had rarely heard such a cry of agony, but something else about it struck him: it seemed less like a cry of pain than of anguish.
Chaffeeswerved to port then. The gray tendril withdrew from the cabin as though the shuttle had jerked itself away from its clutches. Their forward momentum slowed, and the wind dropped significantly. For an instant, Vaughn thought that Prynn—amazingly still at her post—might actually be able to land them safely.
And then Chaffeecrashed.
34
Bashir crawled through the Jefferies tube, a medical tricorder clutched in one hand. The metal grating that formed the base of the conduit rattled as his knees came down on the rigid surface. Voices echoed back to him from around a corner up ahead, the identities of those speaking impossible to distinguish above the din he made as he moved forward.
Bashir reached the intersection of three tubes and turned down the one to his right. Not too far in front of him, Ezri, Lieutenant Nog, and Ensign Gordimer sat one after the other in the enclosed space. Beside them, Bashir saw, several access panels had been removed from one of the bulkheads, revealing some of the ship’s circuitry within. As he neared the trio of officers, he slowed, quieting his approach so that he would not interrupt their conversation.
“— completed the scans,”said a woman’s voice that did not belong to Ezri, obviously being transmitted through a combadge. “The readings only occur at your location. There’s nothing on the exterior of the hull or anywhere inside the ship.”Bashir recognized the voice as that of Ensign Merimark.
“What about transporter signatures?” Ezri asked, glancing up at Bashir, but clearly still speaking with the ensign. Her words rang in the tube, echoing down the long metal conduit.
“We found none,”Merimark said.
“All right. Thank you,” Ezri said. “Dax out.” She raised a hand to her combadge and closed the channel, then addressed Bashir. “Doctor,” she said. He understood the need for such formality, but he also found it somewhat amusing, considering that she had come here directly from their cabin. For that matter, he had also just come from there, not long after she had left.
“Lieutenant,” he responded, acknowledging Ezri. He nodded at Nog and Gordimer, who both responded in kind. Nog, he noticed, also held a tricorder, one doubtless configured for engineering use. Bashir lowered himself to a half-sitting, half-lying position in the cramped space. He peered across the conduit at the exposed circuitry—the middle of the three open sections was dark—and saw what appeared to be a bypass of some sort. A bundle of optical fibers emerged from one section, snaked along the floor of the Jefferies tube past the middle section, and connected back into the third. “What’s going on?” he asked, the reason Ezri had called him here not immediately evident to him.
“Last night,” she explained, “we experienced a minor power disruption in engineering.” He recalled her mentioning that when she had returned to their quarters last night. “Ensign Leishman has circumvented the problem—” She swept her hand through the air above the obviously improvised bypass. “—but this appears to have been the source of the disruption.” Ezri indicated the middle section.
Bashir looked, but beyond the circuitry being dark—and therefore without power, he assumed—he observed nothing out of the ordinary. He searched for something he could recognize as foreign, but saw only the expected assemblage of isolinear optical chips, fiber-optic cables, and routing and junction nodes…except—“Is this what you’re referring to?” he asked, pointing to a gray substance pooled along the length of the middle section.
“Careful, Doctor; don’t get too close,” Ensign Gordimer said. “We’re not sure what we’re dealing with here.”