Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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20

Kira saw the concern on Kasidy’s face: the creases at the top of her nose, the slight downward tilt of her eyebrows, her forceful gaze.

“Is there anything you can do?” Kasidy wanted to know.

“Like what?” Kira asked, more sharply than she had intended. She looked away from the companel to compose herself. Through the glass doors of her office, she saw the crew working in ops. She shifted in her chair and addressed Kasidy again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just…” She hesitated, seeing the difficult truth of the situation. “I’ve tried pretty hard these past few months to live with the Attainder, and most of the time, I do pretty well. But sometimes—” And here lived the truth she hated. “—sometimes it’s still difficult.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Nerys.” Kira saw that Kasidy’s face had become a little rounder since the last time they had spoken. “It sickens me what Yevir and the rest of them did to you. That’s why I wanted to tell you about this. If there’s a problem in the Vedek Assembly, like Prylar Eivos said, they may try to blame you for that too.”

“And they might be right,” Kira said. Kasidy looked shocked at the notion. “I’m not saying that I’m responsible for their actions, but I didpost the Ohalu text on the Bajoran comnet, and I defied a vedek to do it. I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do, and despite being Attainted because of it, I’d do it again.” For the first time, though, Kira wondered if she would; after what Kasidy had told her, the repercussions of her actions might end up being far larger—and far worse—than she had ever anticipated.

“But if they hold you responsible for the division in the Vedek Assembly…” Kasidy’s voice trailed off, and she looked down, obviously troubled. Behind her, Kira could see a window, and beyond it, snow blowing past.

“It’s snowing there,” she said.

Kasidy looked up again. “Yeah, for a couple days now. We’ve gotten a dozen centimeters.”

“A dozen?” Kira said, cheerfully surprised. “Have you been outside?”

“Yes, a few times,” Kasidy said, her mood seeming to lighten a bit. “When the wind dies down, I like to go out for walks. It’s very peaceful and quiet when there’s so much snow on the ground.”

“And very cold,” Kira added with a smile.

“I wear layers,” Kasidy said, and then, pointing to her growing belly, she added, “whether I want to or not.” They both chuckled at that. “You ought to come for a visit.”

“I know, I know,” Kira said. Kasidy had asked her several times in the past few months to go see the new house. Kira had always said that she would, but so far that had not happened, and she really did not know why. The station and all the duties required of her certainly filled much of her time, particularly with Commander Vaughn now off in the Gamma Quadrant, but she realized that it also must be something other than that. To Kasidy, she said, “It’s been a long time since I played in the snow.”

“You really should visit, Nerys,” Kasidy said again. She seemed tired to Kira. “I’d love to see you.”

“I know, I will,” Kira said. “When I can. In the meantime, though, don’t worry about me; I’m fine.”

“I know you’re not fine,” Kasidy said.

“I am,” Kira insisted. “I won’t tell you I’m happy or even indifferent about the Attainder,” she explained, “but I’m dealing with it. And there’s really nothing more they can do to me, no matter what happens in the Vedek Assembly. I still have faith, Kas. Don’t underestimate the power of that.” She found it awkward to have this conversation with Kasidy; after all, Kira’s gods had apparently taken Kas’s husband from her, at least for now. And maybe, it occurred to her, that was one of the other reasons Kira had not visited Bajor.

“All right,” Kasidy said. “But this still worries me.”

It worries me too,Kira thought, though not for the same reasons it worried Kas. Kira could handle the personal consequences of having uploaded the Ohalu text, but the possibility that there might be a division within the Vedek Assembly troubled her. Kira remembered the infighting that had occurred in the provisional government after the Occupation, and how it had weakened her people and stymied their progress. A spiritual rift, though, would be worse than that. The Bajoran faith had seen the people through the worst period in their history, had made them strong and seen them come through the fire united. A religious schism could fracture that unity.

“Kas, please, don’t worry about me,” Kira implored. “I really am fine. The only thing I want you concentrating on is that little baby you’re going to have in a couple of months.”

“Well, there’s not much chance of me forgetting that,” Kasidy said in a funny, exaggerated way. “I’ll talk to you again soon, Nerys.”

“Okay,” Kira said. “Bye, Kas.” The companel screen went blank for an instant, and then the symbol of Bajor appeared on it. Kira reached forward and deactivated the panel with a touch; it chirped and winked off. She sat and thought for a moment, then stood up and walked to the doors of her office, but stopped before they opened. She had been headed to speak with Admiral Akaar, but just what would she say to him? That she had concerns that some of her people might take actions that threatened Bajor’s admittance to the Federation? Kira did not even know for sure that the presence of Akaar and Councillor zh’Thane on the station had anything to do with that—except that Kira had been around Starfleet long enough to know that they did not leave their admirals sitting around somewhere for no reason, and she was sure the same was true of the Federation Council and their members. What she needed to do—what she would do—would be to meet with the admiral and finally determine what he was doing here.

And what if heis here to address Bajoran membership in the Federation?she thought as she returned to her desk. Not for the first time, she wondered what the near future would bring for her people. Three years ago, when Bajor had been on the brink of entering the Federation, Kira had not only come to accept the inevitability of the event, but to embrace it as the positive step forward it would be for Bajorans. Now, she found herself worried that it would not happen.

As Kira understood it, no restrictions existed with regard to the spiritual beliefs of Federation worlds. Certainly, member planets were not required to practice only a single religion. But if a schism had developed in the Vedek Assembly, and if it widened enough to threaten the peace and unity of the Bajoran people, what then? Would a population splintered by religious strife be permitted to join the Federation? And even apart from that, what would it mean for her people?

Kira did not know, and she hoped she never would.

21

Ezri Dax sat in the command chair on Defiant’s bridge and stared in amazement at the main viewscreen. She had never witnessed anything like this. The lone moon circling the planet of the Vahni Vahltupali had suddenly and inexplicably shattered.

Silence gripped the crew. Just moments before, the bridge had been full of sound and motion, the ship struck by something and propelled from its orbit. The crew had been thrown about, systems had fallen offline, and Defianthad careened toward the planet below. Only Nog’s ability to bring flight control back up quickly, and Prynn’s superior piloting skills, had saved the ship. Now, though, they all sat numb, transfixed by the sight of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of fragments hurtling through space, the remnants of what had just been a dense, inert lunar body.

Ezri gaped at the scene, her mind working to make sense of what she saw, trying to find a context that would make it seem real. Instead, it felt as though she were trapped in some horrible holosuite program. And then a memory—an echoof a memory—reverberated in her thoughts. Praxis,it came to her, and she knew the recollection spilled from another lifetime. Curzon,she thought, though which host it had been mattered less than the content of the old thought: the Klingon moon, half of it blown out into space by an industrial accident. The massive Klingon energy-production facility on the moon had failed disastrously, the result of a tragic miscalculation. But the Vahni moon had been desolate, an empty, lifeless body.

On the viewscreen, masses of debris tore through space, and a voice, another echo– Audrid, maybe, or Jadzia—resonated in her mind: Do something.She stood up and went over to the sciences station, pulling her eyes from the viewer. Shar looked up at her as she approached, an expression of appalled disbelief on his face. His antennae appeared to recede a bit, as though retreating from the image before him. “Shar,” she said, “I need you to chart the courses of the biggest pieces.” Pieces,she thought. Of amoon. The words did not fit together. “Anything that could cause damage on the planet.” On the main viewer, it appeared as though most of the moon had been pulverized, leaving only dust and small fragments that would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere, but there also looked to be a number of sizable pieces left.

“Yes, sir,” Shar said, and he turned to his console.

Ezri moved across the bridge to the tactical station. Ensign Merimark worked her controls, a silver earpiece protruding from her left ear. Ezri put her hand on the young ensign’s shoulder. After a moment, she removed the earpiece and said, “We’ve heard from eighteen of our people on the surface, counting Commander Vaughn.”

“Is anybody hurt?” Ezri asked.

“Some of them are reporting injuries, but nothing serious,” Merimark said. “They all want to stay on the planet to assist the Vahni.” The ensign consulted her panel again, then said, “Three of the crew are still unaccounted for—Bowers, T’rb, and Roness—but two of them may have been the ones with Commander Vaughn.”

“Try to keep reaching them, Kaitlin,” Ezri told her. “Inform the others that they can stay on the planet for now.”

“Aye, sir,” Merimark said, and worked her console.

Ezri moved over to where Nog sat at the engineering station. “What’s the ship’s status?” she asked.

“Whatever hit us carried a massive amount of energy,” Nog said, glancing up. “It overloaded the shields and created a feedback surge that knocked just about everything else offline. The backups and secondary backups tried to engage, but they also overloaded.”

“Then how do we have any systems at all?” Ezri asked.

“Most of them shut down automatically before they suffered any damage,” Nog said. “The majority of the damage was done to the EPS power couplings and some of the ODN manifolds.”

“So you were able to bypass the downed junctions,” Ezri concluded.

“Yes,” Nog said. “We’re actually not in bad shape.” Nog looked back up. “It shouldn’t take more than a day or so to replace the failed junctions.”

“Good,” Ezri told him. “Start putting together a repair plan.”

“Yes, sir,” Nog said.

The starboard door opened with a whisper, and Commander Vaughn entered the bridge. He looked hurt. Blood had caked in an irregular patch above his left eye, two dried, red trails snaking from it down the side of his face. His uniform, covered in a brown-gray layer of dirt, had been torn open in a dozen places, his bruised and bloodied flesh showing through them. “Report, Lieutenant,” he said, stepping up to Ezri. She told him what they knew and gave him the ship’s status. Vaughn confirmed that Bowers and Roness had been with him and were now in the medical bay, neither one of them hurt badly, though Bowers might be out of commission for a couple of hours.

“Lieutenant,” Shar said from his station, addressing Ezri, then adding, “Captain,” when he saw Vaughn. “I’ve charted the debris field. I’ve identified any fragments of the moon that will strike the planet, and that are large enough and traveling at such an angle that they’ll produce an impact yield greater than ten megatons.”

Ten megatons,Ezri thought, and wondered exactly what that meant, and then knew almost immediately—probably from Jadzia’s experiences, she guessed—that such a strike would be capable of wiping out a small city. Any fragments significantly larger than that would threaten the entire planet.

“How many, Ensign?” Vaughn asked.

Shar hesitated for just an instant, as though not wanting to deliver bad news, Ezri thought, and then he did just that: “Two hundred thirty-one. And they’ll begin hitting the planet in less than six hours.”

Ezri raced into the two-tiered shuttlebay where Chaffeeand Saganwere berthed. Both of the shuttles had already been powered up, and a low whine buzzed through the bay, like the sound of bees in a hive. The small compartment, barely larger than the craft it housed, felt cold to Ezri, though she suspected that the sight of open space below the shuttles, just beyond the force field, spurred her imagination. Lieutenant Candlewood stood beside Chaffeeon the lower tier, she saw.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “Tenmei and Roness are already on board the shuttles and ready to go.”

“All right,” Ezri said, pleased that Gerda had been in and out of the medical bay as quickly as she had. “Let’s go then. I’ll take the Sagan.”

“Aye, sir,” Candlewood responded, and he immediately boarded Chaffee.

Ezri sprinted to the bulkhead and began climbing the yellow rungs built into it. With so many lives at risk, she was eager to board Sagan.The Vahni interplanetary ships carried no weapons, leaving Defiantand its two shuttles as the only line of defense.

Ezri reached the second tier and hurried aboard Sagan.She quickly closed the hatch and took a seat in the cockpit beside Gerda. The plan was simple: Defiant, Chaffee,and Saganwould attempt to destroy the lunar fragments threatening the planet. Defiant,with its superior weaponry, would focus on the half-dozen largest bodies, which measured hundreds—and, in two cases, thousands—of meters across. If any of those bodies struck the planet, Ezri knew, it would have not just consequences local to the point of impact, but global implications, maybe even to the point of generating a nuclear winter. The exacting process of destroying the massive fragments would take some time, so that they would not end up just broken apart; fracturing the biggest lunar pieces would only increase the amount of work that had to be done, without significantly decreasing the danger to the Vahni. In the meantime, Chaffeeand Saganwould demolish the smaller, but still potentially lethal, fragments.

“Let’s go,” Ezri said, working her controls, configuring them for the weapons and sensors they would need. Within moments, Chaffeeand then Saganhad dropped from Defiantand into space. The debris field spread before them. The number of objects seemed vast, the task ahead impossible. Lunar fragments stretched from one side of their visibility to the other, from the top to the bottom, and reached away from them for kilometers.

Ezri sensed movement beside her, and she turned to find Gerda looking at her, the realization of the enormousness and difficulty of their job clearly showing on her face. “We can do this,” Ezri told her with a certainty she did not feel. But she had learned from Commander Vaughn that confidence served as an important tool of command—of leadership. “We’re lucky there aren’t even more large fragments than there are.” Whatever destructive force had torn apart the moon, at least it had reduced it mostly to rubble that would not threaten the planet.

“Aye, sir,” Gerda said, and Ezri could see the young woman collect herself, a sense of resolve settling on her features. It was a noteworthy moment for such a junior officer. Gerda operated her console, and Sagansprang toward the debris field. The shuttles would begin in the middle of the pack, destroying the most dangerous fragments first, those with the steepest angle of entry, then work their way outward along spiral courses.

Ahead of Sagan,a cluster of nine fragments rolled end over end toward the planet below. Ezri checked her instruments and saw that only two of them were large enough to threaten the Vahni; the others would either burn up as they encountered the planet’s atmosphere, or be deflected back out into space. And there, Ezri knew, lay the primary danger of this mission. They did not have enough time or power to destroy every fragment headed toward the planet, only those that posed a threat; that meant that they would need to maneuver through the debris field to specific targets, and while the smaller fragments might not have been a danger to the planet, they absolutely would be to the shuttles.

Ezri watched the readouts for optimal weapons proximity, even as she keyed in a phaser lock on one of the tumbling rocks. When Saganflew into range, she hit a touchpad, unleashing the shuttle’s fire. Saganjarred slightly as the phasers sprang into action, the drone of their activation seeping into the cabin. Streams of phased energy raced into the eternal night of space. The phaser lock was true: the largest fragment in the cluster vanished in a burst of light and energy. In her mind, Dax supplied the explosive sound that would never be borne in space.

“Only two hundred twenty-four to go,” she said to Roness, subtracting one from the number of fragments the shuttles had been charged with handling. Then she worked to retarget the phaser lock.

Ezri slumped back in her chair, exhausted. Her arms, extended over her console as she had worked the targeting locks and the phasers, felt leaden. For nearly six hours, the crews aboard Defiant, Chaffee,and Saganhad battled the debris field, winnowing the number of potentially deadly lunar fragments down one by one. Now, finally, only one remained, and it had already been reduced by Defiant’s phasers from seven hundred meters across to two hundred meters.

“You did a terrific job,” Ezri told Gerda. The ensign had also fallen back in her chair, looking as tired as Ezri felt. They had parked the shuttle above the planet, a comfortable distance off Defiant’s port bow as the ship completed the destruction of the last fragment. Chaffeehad similarly settled into station-keeping on the starboard side of the ship.

“Thank you,” Gerda said, smiling. “You too.”

Ezri smiled back, and then exhaled a long, loud breath. Though successful, the mission had not gone flawlessly. Twice, Chaffeeand Saganhad been called in to assist Defiantwhen larger fragments had broken up under the ship’s assault. Chaffeehad also been clipped by one of the smaller rock masses, which had caused a plasma leak in one of its subscale warp engines. Since they had not been using the warp drive, it had not been a problem; Candlewood and Prynn had isolated the leak and thereby stopped it, but it would have to be patched later.

Ezri felt not only pleasure and relief that the threat to the planet had been neutralized, but also a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for the role she had played in making that happen. She had directed the coordinated operations of the shuttles with a surety and skill she had not been fully aware that she possessed. Some of her thoughts and actions had been driven by the ingrained experiences of Dax’s former hosts, she knew, but she also felt that she had brought some of her own qualities to bear. Commander Vaughn had so far been an excellent mentor to her, schooling her not so much in the details of command as in the attitude and mindset required to lead effectively. She felt fortunate to have so adept and willing an instructor.

Ezri glanced over at Gerda and noticed the bruise on her forehead. “By the way,” she said, “I’m so glad that you weren’t hurt down on the planet.”

Gerda peered over at her with a devilish grin. “Oh, you’re just saying that since I successfully navigated us through all those space rocks.”

“Well,” Ezri said playfully, “that didn’t hurt.” The two chuckled, a welcome moment of relief after the last, tense hours. “Really, though, how are you feeling?”

“Actually, I’ve got a bit of a headache,” Gerda said. “Dr. Bashir told me I had a mild concussion, and that I shouldn’t go to sleep for a few hours.” She laughed again. “I guess that wasn’t much of a problem, was it?”

“I guess not,” Ezri agreed, laughing herself. Gerda’s sense of humor was one of the things she really enjoyed about the young woman.

“You know what I’m going to do when we get back to the ship?” Gerda asked.

“Sleep for two days?” Ezri suggested. The constant, low-level hum of the shuttle seemed restful now, uninterrupted by the sounds of the engines and the phasers. Ezri thought that if she closed her eyes, she would not wake up again until somebody pulled her bodily out of the shuttle back aboard Defiant.

“That too,” Gerda said. “But right now, I’ve got a taste for a big, fat jumjastick.”

“Really?” Ezri said. “How can you eat those things? They’re so sweet.”

“They’re good,” Gerda protested. “It’s a natural sweetness.”

Ezri wrinkled her nose and shook her head, lightheartedly exaggerating her dislike of the Bajoran confection. Before Gerda could respond, a flash of light caught Ezri’s attention. She sat back up and gazed out the forward windows.

“What is it?” Gerda asked, also sitting back up in her chair.

“I think that the—” Another spark flickered above the planet. “The light show’s just beginning for the Vahni.” The leading edge of the debris field had reached the planet, the remaining, smaller fragments burning up as they plunged through the middle atmosphere. Ezri felt tremendously gratified that the Vahni would be able to look up to the sky right now in wonder rather than in fear. Even in the daylight, they would be able to see the meteors as they blazed out of existence, the rock masses done in by friction with the atmosphere as they fell from space.

They watched for long, silent minutes as the lunar fragments disintegrated in magnificent, fiery bursts scores of kilometers above the planet’s surface. Then something flared off to starboard. Ezri looked in that direction and saw only Defiantoff in the distance. She reached up to her console and started to work the sensors. “Did you see that?” she asked Gerda.

“I thought I saw something,” she answered. “I’m not sure—”

“Defiant to Sagan,”came Commander Vaughn’s voice over a com channel.

Ezri touched a control on her panel. “Dax here. Go ahead, Captain,” she said. She continued operating the sensors.

“Lieutenant, the fragment we were trying to destroy just broke into three pieces,” Vaughn said. “The phasers may have ignited some volatile material inside it.” Ezri found two of the pieces with the sensors, then finally located the third, farther away from Defiantthan she had expected. She scanned the masses of rock, and saw that the readings did indicate the residue of an explosion. “Defiantcan still handle the two pieces nearest us,” Vaughn continued, “but we’re not going to have time to destroy the third.” Ezri saw the problem detailed on her readouts: the third fragment had been accelerated by the explosion ahead of the other two—and, she noted, into a dense area of the debris field. Even though the remaining fragments were small, it would be a tricky journey for the shuttle to maneuver through them.

“We’ve got it, Captain,” Ezri said. Considering the damage Chaffeehad sustained from its collision with one of the fragments, Saganwas obviously the better choice for this task. “Dax out.”

Gerda worked at her controls, and Saganbegan to pulse with energy as the engines came back up to full readiness from standby mode. “What about a tractor beam?” she asked.

“It’s traveling too fast,” Ezri said. She quickly plotted a course through the debris field and laid it into the navigational computer. “Do you have the course?” she asked.

“Laid in,” Gerda said. “Bringing us about.”

The shuttle surged forward and then to port, toward the planet. Ezri looked up, through the forward viewport, and saw sparks of light below, the lunar fragments dying in flames as they rushed down. Suddenly, a rock mass soared past the shuttle off to starboard. Ezri consulted the sensors and saw that they had entered the debris field, hundreds of fragments ahead of them, and thousands approaching rapidly from behind. She picked out the one they were after.

“Targeting,” Ezri said, waiting for the computer to acquire a lock. The indicator on her panel flashed green. “Phasers locked.” She reached to fire, but Saganlurched to starboard as Gerda screamed a warning, but too late. Ezri flew from her chair and slammed into the bulkhead. Pain seared through her right shoulder as she felt it give way. She cried out, the sounds of her pain swallowed by the increased thrum of the engines.

“Are you all right?” Gerda yelled, not taking her eyes from her console.

“Yes,” Ezri yelled back, not caring about the truth of her response. She tasted blood, and thought that she must have bitten her tongue or the inside of her cheek. She struggled back up and into her chair as Gerda righted the shuttle, the pulse of the engines quieting.

“We were about to get hit by one of the fragments,” Gerda explained. Knowing what had been coming, she had obviously been able to brace herself as she had maneuvered the shuttle out of danger.

Ezri found that she could not raise her right arm up to her console, so she grabbed her arm with her left hand and lifted it there. Still able to move all her fingers, she worked the sensors, searching again for their target. She found it as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere, but their evasive maneuvering had taken them away from it. “We need to get back on course,” she said.

“I know,” Gerda said. “We also have to avoid being knocked out of the sky.” She paused, then said, “Brace yourself.”

Saganrolled to port, dipped, then rolled to starboard before righting itself again. Ezri held on to her console with her left hand and kept herself seated. She studied the sensor display, her eyes on the readings of the fragment as they neared it once more. “Targeting,” she said as she worked the phaser controls. She waited. Finally, the indicator blinked green, but almost immediately it reverted to red. The shuttle began to shake as it shot through the upper atmosphere. The targeting indicator changed from red to green and back, two more times.

“I can’t get a lock,” she said, which meant that she would have to target the fragment manually. She could do that, but she could not risk missing and sending a volley of deadly phaser fire into the planet below. “We’re going to have to come up from underneath.”

“We can’t do that,” Gerda said. “We’d be flying head-on into the debris field.”

Ezri understood Gerda’s warning—it was one thing to fly amid the lunar fragments traveling in their direction, and another to fly into them going in the opposite direction—but she had no time to explain why they had to do this. “Do it,” Ezri said. To her credit, Gerda hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but in that instant, Ezri knew that the ensign wanted her to take the shot now and get the shuttle out of there. But she could not—would not—take that chance. They had not worked this long, this hard, to save the Vahni, just to end up killing some of them themselves with errant phaser fire.

Around them, the shuttle grew louder as it raced downward. The huge mass of the planet filled the forward windows, green and brown land visible through white clouds. The flashes of the burning lunar fragments continued to wink on and off in front of them like guttering candles. The vibrations in the cabin increased as Saganbroached the middle atmosphere.

And then they were turning, pulling up and around in an arc. The planet slipped out of sight– too slow,Ezri thought, but she knew that such a maneuver at greater speeds would have torn the shuttle apart. At last, the stars filled the windows, Saganheading back away from the planet. Ezri reacquired the fragment on the scanners and tried another phaser lock, which again failed. She enabled manual firing and concentrated as the shuttle and the fragment rushed headlong at each other. She fired, the phaser blast barely audible in the noisy cabin.

The fragment did not disappear from the sensors. The distance between Saganand the rock mass diminished rapidly. One more shot,she thought, maybe two,but her hands were already working her panel. Another phaser strike surged from the shuttle.

Ahead of them, the fragment exploded in an intense blaze of yellow-red light.

“Yes,” Ezri hissed through clenched teeth, knowing that, while they might have saved the people below, she and Gerda were still in danger. On her sensor readout, she saw two more fragments approaching the shuttle fast. “Come about,” she ordered, looking up in time to see a mass of burning rock charge past Sagan.“There’s another one,” she shouted, following it with the sensors. With no time to establish a phaser lock, she fired a spread directly in front of the shuttle. Ahead, another fragment flashed as it disintegrated.

She checked the sensors again, and saw a huge swarm ahead, too dense to travel through, too wide to escape, too many to destroy. “Land,” she yelled. “We’ve got to land.” If they could even get low enough, below an altitude of about fifty kilometers, the fragments would never reach them, burning up in the atmosphere above them. She thought about transporting to safety, but she could not allow the shuttle to crash and possibly kill any of the Vahni.

Gerda brought Saganaround in a tight arc, the starfield slewing away. Ezri waited to see the horizon of the planet, wanting to know that they were no longer headed upward. Sensors showed that another fragment had just missed them, and she knew this was going to be close. Maybe if she could rig the warp drive to overload and vaporize the shuttle, then they could transport—

A mass of rock slammed into the rear of the shuttle. Power destabilized for a second as the shields went down. The interior went dark, and then emergency lighting flashed on, bathing the cabin in a dull red glow. The noise inside the shuttle increased dramatically, deafeningly, and Ezri realized that the noise-suppression plating must have been breached.