Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

14

“Kepler to base,” Ensign O’Halloran said, keeping one eye on the shuttlecraft’s flight controls and the other on the smoke rising from Gamma Tauri IV’s parched landscape.

“Go ahead, Kepler,” replied Commander al-Khaled.

Circling the landing site specified in his orders, O’Halloran reported, “We’re nearing the coordinates now. Lotta smoke down there, sir. Lotsa debris, too.”

“Can you tell what it’s from?”

Squinting against the glare of early morning light low on the horizon, O’Halloran said, “Negative. Not reading any metal, no bodies, no fuel. Doesn’t look like a crash or a battle site.”

“Find a clear spot to put down,” al-Khaled said. “Stand by for dust-off if the survey team gets in trouble.”

Guiding the shuttlecraft into a slow descent, O’Halloran said, “Roger that, base. Putting down in sixty. Kepler out.”

Slouched in the copilot’s seat, Ensign Anderson had one foot propped on the edge of his console and both hands folded behind his head. With a nonchalance that vexed O’Halloran to no end, he said, “What do you think we’re gonna find down there?”

“We aren’t gonna find anything,” O’Halloran said, “because we’re staying in the shuttle, as ordered.”

“Wow, that’s a really boring life choice you’ve made, my friend.” Gesturing at the sunbaked vista outside the cockpit, he added, “For all you know, the mysteries of the universe are down there, waiting to be found, and you’re gonna stay in the ship.”

O’Halloran watched the ground slip under the shuttlecraft as he made a banking turn. “I’d love to debate this with you,” he said, “but I’m kind of busy with the landing.”

“That’s your problem—you don’t multitask,” Anderson said.

Engaging the vertical thrusters, O’Halloran replied, “Your problem is you never shut up long enough to think.”

“Of course not,” Anderson said, unfazed. “Thinking too much is what gets you into trouble.”

“No one’s asking you to think too much, Jeff.” O’Halloran leveled the shuttlecraft with the ground. “I just want you try thinking.” He set the craft down with a soft bump and released the rear hatchway. It lowered with a smooth mechanical whine and served as a ramp for the rest of the team to file out of the shuttlecraft. Anderson got up from the copilot’s chair. O’Halloran looked up at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Pointing aft, Anderson said, “To check out the big hole in the ground.” He started walking toward the ramp.

“Sit down,” O’Halloran said.

Flashing a grin over his shoulder, Anderson replied, “You have to outrank someone to give them orders, Bri.”

“Dammit,” O’Halloran muttered. He hurried through the postflight checks and secured the controls. For a moment he hesitated, torn between obeying orders and indulging his curiosity. Knowing he would probably regret it, he got up and followed his annoying friend out of the shuttlecraft, jogging to catch up with the survey team.

Lieutenant Donovan Adams led the survey team away from the Kepler, across a dusty plain littered with huge, irregular chunks of blackened glass and fine coal-colored dust. The enormous, jagged obsidian boulders looked as if they had fallen from the sky and embedded themselves in the ground. They radiated intense heat, and smoke wafted from their coating of smoldering resin. All around him, the ground had a scorched quality and stank of cordite.

“No life readings,” he reported, watching his tricorder for any kind of fluctuation. Several meters ahead, the dusty soil sloped down to the edge of a circular pit. Its walls were burned black and coated in what looked like a thick layer of dusky, polished glass. Broad columns of smoke ascended from its depths and mushroomed into the sky. Searing heat stopped him more than five meters from the edge of the abyss, and he backed off. To the rest of the team he said, “It’s too hot to go forward. Fan out around it.”

Ensign Blaise Selby, the team’s geologist, marveled at the data on her own tricorder. “The pit extends all the way down to the power source, Lieutenant. But the crystalline structures inside the pit are inconsistent with this area’s geological profile. That’s volcanic glass, sir, but there’s no volcanic activity here.”

Circumnavigating the pit, Adams noticed that the shuttlecraft pilots had followed the survey team. “What are you two doing out of the shuttle?”

“Uh, we just figured, um, you know, maybe you guys could use help with the, uh, stuff,” stammered the fair-haired one.

Adams stared at them until they took the hint and turned back. Once they began plodding back to the Kepler, he turned his attention to the gaping maw of the inferno that lay before him. He looked to his science officer, Lieutenant sh’Neroth. “What could have made this? Energy beam?”

The Andorian shen shook her head, bobbling her antennae slightly. “A blast powerful enough to penetrate ten kilometers of bedrock would likely have continued into the atmosphere. We would have detected that. It also would not account for the crystalline residue.”

Kattan and Ndufe, the team’s security guards, stayed on opposite sides of the pit, circling it slowly, phasers drawn.

“Let’s run a few more scans,” Adams said. “I want to know if we’ve found a central hub or maybe a node in its defense—”

The jagged black-glass boulders split apart, stood up, and glowed with violet motes of energy inside their shells. The survey team was completely surrounded. At least two dozen of the giants rose from the field of smoke and ashes. Slinging his tricorder and drawing his phaser, Adams yelled to the others, “Get back to the shuttle!”

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.

“Lovell, this is al-Khaled. Do you read me?”

Captain Okagawa answered, “We read you, Mahmud. Go ahead.”

“Captain, have you beamed up the forensic samples from the attack on our survey team?”

“Affirmative,” Okagawa said. “We just started compiling the data for Dr. Fisher on Vanguard. Why? What’s happened?”

Al-Khaled focused on breathing and staying calm. “We need to get a priority message out to Vanguard, right now. Tell the commodore that the ‘storm’ he warned us about is starting—and it looks like we’re gonna get hit head-on.”

Mogan had been a Klingon warrior his entire adult life, and he had been an agent of Imperial Intelligence for the past decade. He had fought countless battles, walked innumerable battlefields…but this one was the first to give him pause.

The battle’s result appeared to be entirely one-sided. More than a dozen Klingon reconnaissance agents had been slaughtered, dismembered like lingta in an abattoir. Severed limbs and heads lay scattered across the smoldering site at the base of a cliff. Twisted, mangled torsos rested in the blackened dirt beside bodies hollowed out by some terrible force. Every wounded appendage, every liberated skull, was sheathed in a crystalline shroud. Disruptor rifles had been reduced to splinters.

Halfway up the cliff, sixty qams above ground, an obsidian-walled tunnel looked as if it had been cored from the bedrock.

His platoon of QuchHa’ fanned out behind him as he led them across the killing field, watchful for any sign of ambush or a trap. Bootsteps crunched on the gravel as a hot, westerly wind kicked up dust from the rocks and ambered the afternoon light. “Watch the flanks,” he said to his men, who nodded and continued to swivel their heads slowly as they advanced, searching for any sign of Klingon survivors or enemies.

At the cliff Mogan stopped and looked back the way he had come, toward the armored ground transport he and the rest of his men had used to get here from their base camp. “It’s secure,” he declared. Then his eyes sought out the team’s scientist. “Dr. Kamron,” he said. “Start your analysis.”

Kamron, one of the few men under Mogan’s command who was not one of the QuchHa’, kneeled amid a jumble of body parts and began scanning them with a handheld device. Next he chipped off pieces of the crystalline substance and inserted the fragments inside his scanning device for a more intensive analysis.

Mogan’s eyes studied the distribution of debris, the patterns of scorch marks and bloodstains. He visualized the genesis of each bit of evidence and constructed in his imagination a reenactment of the battle. To one of the nearby QuchHa’ he said, pointing out details, “The attack began here. Multiple opponents. They came from above, from that hole in the cliff. The center of the formation was attacked first.” He turned, backpedaled as he followed the clues, narrating as he went. “The front ranks turned, and the rear guard charged. A cross-fire. Their targets split up, broke toward the flanks.” His eyes roamed the ground, sensing the direction and momentum of the combat. “Whatever attacked them did not prioritize among their targets. They killed whoever was closest.” He reached the edge of the battle zone, where the ground ceased to smolder. Dropping to one knee, he scooped up a handful of the radiantly warm earth and sifted it between his fingers. “They were hit with overwhelming force. It was over in seconds.”

His words provoked anxious looks among the QuchHa’, and not for the first time Mogan was angry and ashamed to think of these weaklings as Klingons. Such as these are not fit for war, he brooded, gazing with contempt on his weak-browed troops.

Dr. Kamron walked quickly toward Mogan, his mien stern. When he had closed to within a half-dozen paces, Mogan commanded him, “Report, Doctor.”

“All members of the reconnaissance unit accounted for,” Kamron said. “Time of death approximately one hour ago. All casualties inflicted by physical trauma. No sign of energy residue on any of our men.”

Mogan pointed at the dark, glasslike substance that coated a nearby head. “What about that residue, Doctor?”

“Some kind of living crystal. Origin unknown.” The scientist pointed up at the roughly circular opening in the cliff. “The same substance is up there, coating the walls of that tunnel. It does not match any natural elements or composites indigenous to this planet.” Stepping close to Mogan, Kamron confided, “But it does resemble substances documented before…on Palgrenax.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Mogan said. “I want your full report in six hours. For my eyes only, understood?”

With a nod, Kamron said, “Yes, sir,” and drifted away.

Mogan paced around the perimeter of the battlefield. Allowing such a valuable asset as Palgrenax to fall under the control of an imbecile like Morqla had been a grave misstep by the Empire. It had led to the planet’s destruction at the hands of an enemy and resulted in the loss of a valuable strategic resource—one that the Federation had already taken the lead in studying and possibly exploiting. Imperial Intelligence did not intend to let the mistakes of Palgrenax be repeated here, but the threat that had presented itself could not be ignored, either. Mogan had to act quickly.

He pulled his communicator from his belt and set it to a secure frequency. “Mogan to Hanigar.”

Moments later, his Imperial Intelligence supervisor answered. “This is Hanigar. Report.”

“Threat assessment complete,” Mogan said. “Status positive. Recommend response protocol Say’qul.”

“Understood,” Hanigar replied. “I will relay your recommendation. Hanigar out.” The channel went dead, so Mogan closed his communicator and tucked it back on his belt. He was surprised at how little resistance Hanigar had offered to his suggestion that they summon reinforcements and eliminate the independent colony as a precursor to asserting absolute dominion over the planet. Typically, Imperial Intelligence supervisors were loath to request aid from the Defense Force, preferring to handle sensitive operations independently. The exercise of brute force, however, was the Defense Force’s singular specialty.

He called out to his troops, “Back to the transport! We’re returning to base! Move!” He jogged behind them, barking orders to round up the laggards of the bunch. As he stepped aboard the transport and sealed the hatch behind him, he grinned at the knowledge that a military strike on the independent colony, no matter what flag its people lived under, would certainly draw the ire of the Federation and place the Empire’s diplomats in politically untenable positions.

If there was one thing that Mogan loved above all else, it was finding anonymous ways to make politicians miserable.

Captain Daniel Okagawa prepared his report for transmission to Commodore Reyes on Vanguard. The past six days had been filled with low-key tension, the product of maneuvering survey teams around the Klingons’ recon units, who clearly were seeking the same elusive artifacts that Starfleet had come to Gamma Tauri IV to find. In the past hour, however, the bad news had started to come in like a high tide dimmed with blood, and Okagawa suddenly found himself nostalgic for the days of merely simmering aggression.

He tabbed quickly through the layers of information on the data slate he’d been given for review. Casualty reports, complete with service records on each of the lost Starfleet personnel; brief dossiers on the nine civilian engineers, twenty-eight laborers, and two New Boulder peace officers slain at the aquifer dig; an after-action report by two ensigns who had barely escaped the slaughter of the survey team; several kiloquads of classified forensic data collected at the scene, for Dr. Fisher’s personal review; and his own command report, for Vanguard’s senior officers.

Nothing like a little bit of light bedtime reading for the commodore, Okagawa mused with dark humor.

An insistent beeping on a console behind him was silenced by the Lovell’s junior communications officer, Ensign Folanir Pzial. The young Rigelian placed a Feinberger receiver in one ear, then started flipping switches and inserting data cards in slots around his console. Whatever he was doing, he was working intensely and quickly, and it captured Okagawa’s attention.

“Report, Ensign,” Okagawa said.

Pzial held up his index finger to signal that he needed a moment. His bright red eyes were wide with surprise as he listened to whatever signal he had received. After a few more seconds, he looked up at Okagawa and said, “I’ve intercepted a coded Klingon signal, Captain. It’s one of their newer ciphers, took me a few seconds to unscramble it.” He flipped a few more switches on his console. “I’m still translating it. Sounds like they’re using idiomatic code phrases.”

Commander Araev zh’Rhun stepped behind Pzial and observed over his shoulder. The Andorian zhen squinted as she examined the data on Pzial’s screens. “That encryption method is not generally used by the Klingon military,” zh’Rhun said. “This signal is very likely being sent and received by agents of Imperial Intelligence.”

“Their team on the ground is recommending something called ‘Protocol Say’Qul,” Pzial said. “Whatever that is. I can’t find it in the Klingon language database.”

Science Officer Xav joined zh’Rhun and hovered over Pzial’s other shoulder. “In tlhIngan, words are sometimes compounded to create more complex terms,” the Tellarite said. “Try breaking the word down into its components.”

“Well, Say’ has a few possible meanings,” Pzial said, reading from a screen above his console. “It can be a verb, meaning to make something clean, or an adjective, meaning that something is clean.” He switched to a different set of data. “Qul means ‘research.’…I’m not sure putting those two words together makes much sense.”

Xav scratched the back of his head. “Maybe it’s a directive to purge their computers of sensitive information,” he said. “Clean up their research?”

“It might be an order to remove their scientific personnel from the planet,” zh’Rhun said.

Okagawa got up from his chair, tucked his data slate under his arm, and joined the press of bodies gathered around the communications station. Xav and zh’Rhun both moved half a step aside to make room for him. The communications officer ducked his head slightly as the captain leaned over him. “Pzial,” Okagawa said, “scroll this list back a bit—one screen should be sufficient. I want to see something.”

“Aye, sir,” Pzial replied. The data on the overhead display paged back one screen’s worth of data, showing more selections from a very limited Klingon-English translation menu.

Pointing at the screen, Okagawa asked Xav, “Why are these words not in alphabetical order?”

“But they are, sir,” Xav said. “Our phonetic renderings of tlhIngan use the uppercase and lowercase Q characters to distinguish different pronunciations. In a translation dictionary, words that begin with the lowercase Q are listed before those that begin with the capital Q.”

“So,” Okagawa said, “for all we know, the word that Pzial transcribed from the Klingons’ coded message might not be Qul but qul. The Klingon common noun for ‘fire.’ ” He looked at zh’Rhun. “Care to parse that into a familiar idiom, Commander?”

“Cleansing fire,” the Andorian first officer said with a grim realization.

Walking back to his chair, Okagawa remarked, “Yeah. That sounds like the Klingons I know and love.” He sat down. “Commander, what’s the ETA for the Endeavour?”

“Twenty-five hours and forty-nine minutes,” zh’Rhun said.

Okagawa shook his head. “This could be over by then.” He signed the command authorization on his data slate and handed it to a yeoman, who carried it to the communications officer. “Pzial,” the captain said, “add that intercepted signal to the report we’re sending to Vanguard, and let them know what we think it means. After that, get al-Khaled back on the horn; tell him to pack up and bug out. I’m not letting trouble catch us with our pants down this time.”

“Sir,” zh’Rhun asked, “what about the colonists?”

He nodded. “We’ll warn them,” he said. “They’ve got their own ships, enough to carry a few thousand people. Anyone who wants a ride with us can come along,” he said, “but no luggage, no gear, nothing. We can evac a few hundred guests if we dump our cargo. Endeavour can carry a couple thousand.”

As if fearing reproach for stating the obvious, Xav said, “Captain, there are more than eleven thousand colonists on Gamma Tauri IV. Your evacuation scenario would leave nearly fifty percent of them stranded in the event of a disaster.”

“I know, Xav,” Okagawa said, staring at the reddish-brown world turning slowly on the main viewscreen. Something terrible was stirring on the surface of that world, and Okagawa had no idea how to stop it. All he could do was prepare to meet it head-on. “Commander,” he said, “take the ship to yellow alert.”