Текст книги "Summon the Thunder"

Автор книги: Dayton Ward

Соавторы: Kevin Dilmore
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

And it was getting closer.

“Everybody hang on!” Zhao called out, and Xiong felt himself tensing up even as he tried to coax more speed from the lumbering vehicle.

Then the blur struck.

Like a jellyfish, Xiong pitched backward and hard against the back of his seat; then his world upended with the sounds of yelling and groaning metal as he felt the entire vehicle rise off its back wheels and tumble onto its side. Everything spun to the right as he was thrown against the driver compartment’s door, pain stabbing his shoulder. Then his head struck the doorframe and Erilon’s bleak white landscape was swallowed by unyielding darkness.

11

Waves of pure, focused thought-power rippled through the Lattice, disrupting the unity and tranquillity of Tholia’s Great Castemoot Assembly and all but crushing it in the suffocating sensations of oppression and raw, stark terror.

Harsh crimson tinged the boundaries of the immense telepathic network as Eskrene [The Ruby] maintained her tenuous union with the Ruling Conclave, defying every instinct that told her to flee the SubLink and seek out a safe haven.

Such pain! It suffocates me!The crimson now washed over the SubLink as her mind shouted to be heard over the cacophony enveloping them. All around her, Eskrene felt the other members of the council struggling under the onslaught, each of them torn between the almost irrepressible need to escape whatever it was that violated the thoughtspace and the imperative to maintain control over the supreme nerve center of the Great Castemoot Assembly to which they had been entrusted.

This was far worse, much more intense than the thought-pulse that had gripped them all several cycles ago. The brutal, hostile surge of psionic energy, emanating from that area of space long ago forsaken and shunned by the Assembly, had disrupted the Lattice for many cycles after its immediate effects and distressed the totality of the Tholian race.

Clamoring sirens of havoc and dread all but drowned out Falstrene [The Gray]. Anger! Vengeance!

Eskrene resisted the urge to sever her connection, fighting instead to maintain her telepathic balance and restore focal harmony with the Castemoot. It harbors a greater purpose.

Indeed, she realized even as she fought through the pain, this latest violation of Tholian serenity scorned description and resisted comparison, shrouding itself in veils of opaque black even as it mercilessly trampled through their collective essence.

Reaching out with her mind, Eskrene sensed the disorder stressing much of the SubLink, though already she could feel the minds of Tholians across the Lattice toiling to reassert its harmony and balance as the force of the thought-pulse began to dissipate, taking with it the rage and turmoil it had wrought. She also perceived that despite their combined efforts, the peace of the expansive Castemoot was severely fractured.

The conclave and—Eskrene also realized with growing dread—all of the Assembly now cowered in fear.

It will return. We must stop it.

12

On the bridge of the Endeavour,Khatami watched as Klisiewicz worked feverishly at the science station, all the while fighting the urge to push the ensign aside and take over manning the console herself. Annoyed even for considering that course of action, the first officer issued a silent order to herself to remain seated in the captain’s chair and to carry out her own duties, part of which entailed trusting the people around her to see to their own assigned tasks.

“Ensign,” she called out, “what’s happening?”

Pulling away from the hooded viewer dominating his station and turning to face her, Klisiewicz replied, “Holding at seven active power sources, Commander. Each seems to have a central power core, with temperatures ranging between eleven hundred and fourteen hundred degrees Kelvin and rising.”

“Are we continuing to update Erilon Base?” she asked, but waved the question away before Klisiewicz could answer. “Of course you are. I’m sorry, Ensign. Keep monitoring those power readings and update me as needed.”

Stop acting like a mother hen, and let your people do their jobs.

“Commander,” Lieutenant Estrada called from the communications station. “We’re receiving an emergency call from the camp. They say they’re under attack!”

Khatami’s mind quickly flooded with questions, but she pushed them aside, following her thoughts to lead by the book. Slapping the control panel on the arm of the command chair with her open palm, she activated the shipboard communications circuit. “Bridge to transporter room two. Commence emergency beam-out procedures!”

“Commander!” Klisiewicz shouted over her order. “Power readings just spiked off the scale! We…”

The ensign’s next words were lost as a hammer blow rocked the Endeavour. Khatami felt the deck disappear beneath her feet as the bridge pitched almost on its port side, tossing her out of her chair and sending her slamming face-first against the bridge railing surrounding the command well. Stars danced in her vision and she felt a distinctive pop as her jaw struck the rail. A bitter metallic taste flooded her mouth and she reached to feel where she was certain teeth were either loose or missing. She winced as her fingers made contact with her jaw, and when she pulled them away their tips were tinged dark red.

Lighting flickered and red-alert klaxons wailed across the bridge as Khatami forced herself to her feet, shaking her head in an attempt to regain her senses and keeping her jaw clenched tightly shut against the dull pain enveloping the lower half of her face. The smell and taste of acrid electrical smoke gagged Khatami as she staggered to her feet. Over the din of sirens and unfettered chatter exploding from the communications station, she heard one voice shouting to he heard.

“Damage report!” Mog called out, pulling himself up from where he had fallen near the turbolift at the rear of the bridge. With speed that belied his bulk, the Tellarite engineer moved across the upper deck to where Khatami now saw Estrada’s unmoving form at the floor of the communications station, a pool of red widening from his head. “Klisiewicz!” he bellowed as he knelt before the fallen lieutenant. “Get a medic up here, and get me that damage report!”

Grabbing a Feinberger receiver from his own console, Klisiewicz retuned it to accept information from Estrada’s station before jamming the cylindrical silver device into his right ear. Khatami saw him wince, as if overwhelmed by the initial onslaught of status reports and requests for assistance that had to be sweeping across the ship’s internal communications network. Squinting his eyes as if trying to ward off the wave of information he was receiving, the ensign reached to adjust a volume control.

“Casualties all over, sir,” he said a moment later. “Hull breaches on decks seven, eight, and nine. Damage-control parties are responding. Artificial gravity is out in the primary hull below deck five. Weapons control reports that phasers are offline. Transporters are also offline.”

“Shields?” Khatami asked as she fumbled toward the command chair. What just happened to us?

Klisiewicz nodded. “They activated automatically the moment the sensors detected…whatever it was that hit us. They’re holding at sixty-seven percent, but shield generators are online and recharging.”

Cradling her jaw in the palm of her right hand, Khatami all but fell into the center seat as she noted a shadow fall across her. She looked up to see Mog standing next to her chair, his expression one of concern.

“You all right, Commander?”

Khatami nodded silently, every attempt to talk bringing with it a stabbing pain along her jawline and inside her mouth. Gripping the sides of her face with both hands, she took a deep breath before jerking to her right, realigning her jaw with an audible pop and an agonizing jolt of fire that would have dropped her to her knees if she had not already been sitting. As it was, she felt herself begin to pitch forward only to be stopped by Mog’s meaty hand.

“By Kera and Phinda, woman,” the Tellarite said. “What can I do?”

“Tell…them,” she said in a strained whisper through gritted teeth, each of which felt like spikes driving into her gums. “Give…the orders.”

“I have to coordinate damage control,” Mog replied. Looking up, he pointed to Klisiewicz. “Ensign, you are the commander’s mouth. Relay her orders wherever they need to go. Understand?”

Her vision blurred owing to the tears welling up in her eyes as she fought back pain, Khatami saw Klisiewicz offer an uncertain nod as he stepped down into the command well, moving close enough that she could keep her voice low.

“Hail the captain,” she whispered, every word a knife plunging through her tortured jaw, “the camp, anyone. And I want…transporters up… now!”

Klisiewicz looked around until he spotted Ensign Halse at the environmental-control station. “Halse, take over the comm station. Hail the captain.” As the nervous young man rose from his chair to cross the bridge, the ensign added, “And get engineering on those transporters!”

“My people are on it, Commander,” Mog said from where he sat at the engineering station. Completing his preliminary survey of the ship’s onboard systems, he turned to lean over the bridge railing so that only Klisiewicz and Khatami could hear him. “And there’s no need to get carried away, Ensign.” He delivered the words with a grunt and a weak smile as he clapped Klisiewicz on the shoulder before returning to his station.

If not for the pain in her jaw, Khatami might have smiled. She let herself ease back in her seat, comforted somewhat by the knowledge that if she was going to face this situation—whatever it turned out to be—without Captain Zhao, she had Mog at her right hand.

I’d even tell him that, if it didn’t hurt so damned much.

The sharp stings of agony in her jaw had started to subside into a dull, constant throb, and Khatami sensed a wave of nausea coming over her. Allowing herself to settle back into the command chair, she reached out to touch Klisiewicz’s arm. “What happened?”

“A massive energy pulse,” the ensign replied. “It started as individual bursts, originating from the location of the seven power sources we’ve detected. They coalesced into a single beam before striking us.” Shaking his head, he added, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She found it doubtful that he would have, given his lack of experience, but Khatami had never heard of a weapon with such capabilities before, either.

The doors to the turbolift hissed open and she turned to see Nurse Sikal step from the turbolift. The prim young Vulcan took only a moment to survey the scene on the bridge before turning and moving to where Lieutenant Estrada still lay unmoving on the deck.

At Khatami’s prompting, Klisiewicz asked, “Nurse, the commander is asking about casualty figures.”

Without looking away from the medical tricorder in her left hand as she waved a scanner over Estrada’s head, Sikal replied, “Dr. Leone is assessing the situation as we speak, Ensign. He will have a full report in short order.”

Satisfied with the report, such as it was, Khatami returned her attention to the rest of the bridge. Directly in front of her, her helmsman and her navigator, Lieutenants Neelakanta and McCormack, were already back at their stations. At the front of the bridge, the same steady—and deceptively calming—view of Erilon continued to fill the main viewscreen. That serenity was an illusion, she now knew. If whatever had attacked them could do so once, what was to stop it from doing so again?

Over her right shoulder, she heard Halse say, “No response from the captain or any of the landing party, Commander. Erilon Base isn’t answering us, either.”

“Tell him to keep trying,” Khatami said, drawing a breath that whistled through her teeth. As Klisiewicz relayed the order, she asked, “What about those power readings?”

Klisiewicz stepped back to his station, bending over his viewer as he adjusted several controls on his console. After a moment, he reported, “They’re still active, and their temperatures are increasing again.”

“It has to be some kind of planetary defense system,” Mog called out from the engineering station. “They’re probably recharging for another shot. Stephen, calculate how long it’ll take for them to get to pre-firing temperatures. Quickly!”

“Helm,” Khatami called out, straining to talk in a voice loud enough to be heard by the two officers less than a meter in front of her. “Break orbit. Move us out to maximum communications range with the surface.” Even as she gave the order, she heard the question in her mind, wondering if that was enough distance between the Endeavourand whatever was targeting it from the planet’s surface.

“What’s the status on transporters?” she asked.

From behind her, Mog replied, “A few minutes, Commander. They’re having to reroute power from undamaged systems.”

At the science station, Klisiewicz looked up from his viewer. “If my calculations are correct, those power sources will reach target temperature in forty-five seconds…mark.”

“That doesn’t seem very efficient for a defense system,” Mog said. “Too long between volleys, especially if you’re fending off multiple ships.”

Maybe the idea is that one shot should be enough,Khatami thought. She knew from Lieutenant Xiong’s reports that the planet had been uninhabited for millennia, and that the structures he was investigating were even older. Perhaps age had compromised the ancient technology to the point that it had lost much of its power, or at least enough to have spared the Endeavourfrom being destroyed after just a single attack.

“Halse,” she said, agony enveloping every word, “keep trying to contact the captain. Mog, get those transporters up, now. Helm, stand by for evasive maneuvers.”

With orders issued and everyone on the bridge turning to their tasks, Khatami found that—once again—she could only sit, let her people do their jobs, and wait.

If Captain Zhao can wait, then so can I.

“Xiong! Xiong!”

A stinging slap to his face snapped Xiong’s eyes open suddenly. He rubbed his hand against wetness on his brow, and pulled it back to see his blood smeared across his fingers.

“Get up,” called the form in front of him, whom he now recognized as La Sala, the surviving Endeavoursecurity guard. “We’ve got to get out of this thing.”

Xiong stood on wobbly legs, his feet perched on the beveled side panel of the upset all-terrain vehicle, and squinted straight up through its open side hatch into the bright white of the Erilon sky. He then looked around the cabin of the vehicle and saw that he was the only one left to climb out—of those who could climb out, apparently. He saw one of the Erilon researchers slumped between the side and roof of the vehicle, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, and behind him was another jumpsuited researcher, also unmoving. He felt a moment of guilt for never even knowing their names.

La Sala reached up to grab the lip of the hatch before pulling herself through the opening. Lying down atop the vehicle’s exterior, she reached down to give Xiong a hand, and working with her the lieutenant was able to climb out of the transport. Almost immediately he felt the harsh, biting air on his exposed skin. He and La Sala dropped to the ground, hunkering down behind the wrecked vehicle in an effort to hide from the brunt of the wind that now was kicking up.

Next to them, Bohanon, who had been dressed only in his jumpsuit while working inside the structure, was shrugging into a parka that was too small for his portly physique. Xiong saw that blood ran down the right side of the Denobulan’s face, trickling from a cut in his head that looked even worse than his own. Behind him, Zhao and Nauls were checking the power settings on their phasers, the captain returning his to a pocket of his parka. Picking up another weapon from the ground at his feet, Zhao offered it along with a communicator to Xiong.

“Take these,” the captain said. “The Endeavour’s suffered an attack, as well. Transporters are out, but they should be back up in a few minutes. We’ll have to stick it out as best we can until then.”

Under attack?The question screamed in Xiong’s mind, and his thoughts flashed to the ill-fated Bombay. “Who’s attacking them?” he asked.

Zhao shook his head. “Unknown. Weapons placements on the surface appear to be targeting the ship.” Looking to Xiong, he asked, “Something related to your mysterious archaeological expedition, I wonder?”

“Wh-What about the thing that attacked us?” Bohanon chattered in the frigid air. “Where did it go?”

“I hope back where it came from, once we left,” Xiong said. “Or else—”

“Captain!” Nauls said, pointing toward the ridgeline where, through the snow billowing around them, Xiong now saw a column of thick black smoke rising from the distant structures at the end of the road.

Oh, no.

Zhao’s sigh made a visible cloud of vapor that quickly dissipated. “We have to assume it struck the camp and that it’s coming back,” he said. “We need to be ready.” Waving across the roadway, he pointed to La Sala. “Take Xiong and Bohanon and go for cover behind those rocks. I’ll stay with Lieutenant Nauls.” Zhao paused a moment to look La Sala in the eyes. “You know what to do, right?”

“Yes, sir,” La Sala replied, offering a confident nod. Rising to her feet, she looked to Xiong and Bohanon. “Let’s go.”

As they jogged across the snow-packed trail toward the small outcropping of rocks that he was sure would offer nothing resembling adequate protection, Xiong had to ask. “So, what is it you’re supposed to do?”

“Keep you quiet,” she said, “while they attract that thing’s attention.”

“Commander, transporters are back up,” Mog said, his voice a mixture of fatigue and pride.

“Allah be praised,” Khatami said, sighing audibly through her still throbbing jaw. The past moments had passed with agonizing slowness, with little word from the planet’s surface as to the current situation. Communications with the base camp had terminated at the same time the Endeavourwas attacked, and all attempts to reach any member of the Corps of Engineers team assigned to the temporary research facility had failed. Captain Zhao’s report of the mysterious entity that had attacked him and his landing party only deepened her anxiety, which Khatami knew would not ease until everyone on the surface was safely aboard ship and they were well away from this planet.

With transporters still under repair, Khatami had been forced to order the Endeavourout of orbit as the planetary weapons unleashed a fresh barrage at the starship. The cycle had been repeated once more, with the vessel dodging the worst of the attacks and avoiding further damage to already stressed systems. Only now, with transporters once again operational, could an attempt be made to retrieve the landing party and anyone else who might still be alive on the planet’s surface.

She looked at Klisiewicz, who remained steadfast by her side. “Ensign,” she whispered through pain-numbed teeth, “get us back into transporter range, and hail the captain again. Tell Neelakanta I want to try and draw fire from the surface using evasive maneuvers, and then move back into transporter position while it recharges.”

As the ensign stepped forward to relay her orders to the Endeavour’s Arcturian helm officer, Khatami turned to the communications station where Halse still manned the console. “Ensign,” she said, immediately reaching up to massage her still aching jaw, “anything from the encampment?”

His expression forlorn, the young officer turned from the console and shook his head. “Nothing yet, Commander. I’m still trying to hail them on all frequencies.”

Having issued her last set of instructions, Klisiewicz returned to stand beside the command chair, and Khatami looked up to see the tension in the ensign’s blanched features. He was gripping the railing to his left and staring straight ahead, doing his best to maintain his composure. She placed her hand on his arm again and forced a smile in an effort to calm him. “Resume your post. I’ll take it from here.” Klisiewicz paused until she nodded her affirmation, and then stepped out of the command well.

Turning her attention to the main viewscreen, Khatami flinched from the pain in her jaw as she asked, “Time to the next attack?”

Now back at the science station, Klisiewicz replied, “About twenty-five seconds, Commander.”

“Go to red alert,” she said evenly. “Helm, initiate evasive maneuvers. This is going to be close.”

“Aye, Commander,” Neelakanta replied as his long, thin fingers played over the helm console’s rows of multicolored controls, and Khatami felt the starship heave to starboard. Then they tipped downward, faster than the inertial dampeners could compensate, in a maneuver that seemed to bring them close enough to touch the stark white features of the frozen planet centered on the viewer.

To her right and just on the edges of her peripheral vision, she saw Klisiewicz turn from the science station. “Incoming! All hands, brace for impact!”

The volley blow seemed to slam into the ship from astern, nearly throwing Khatami from her chair a second time. She clutched at her armrests and dug in her heels as she felt the entire bridge vault upward. The force drove her back into her seat, the spastic motions only serving to batter her already aching body. In front of her, Neelakanta held on to the helm console, but McCormack was thrown from her navigator’s chair, falling flat on her back at the bottom of the command well. Red-alert klaxons bellowed across the bridge once more as the ship’s systems attempted to recover from the new attack.

“Shields are down,” Mog shouted above the alarms. “We can’t withstand another attack!”

“Transporters, now!” Khatami ordered as loudly as she could muster.

“Commander!” Klisiewicz shouted, panic clear in his voice. “Sensors only detected weapons signatures from three locations. Four are still reading preattack temperatures. They’re primed and ready!”

“It’s coming!” Bohanon said, wide-eyed.

Crouched next to the frightened Denobulan, Xiong heard it, too. The soft whirring, all around him as if something were moving—no, cutting—through the snow and ice. He looked up from his place of concealment behind the rocks, squinting into the whiteness in search of the threat. Panic swelled within him as he beheld the same twisting wake of flying snow surging across the frozen, desolate plain leading to the encampment, fanning out behind a blurred, dark, vaguely humanoid form.

Then he heard both his and La Sala’s communicators emit an identical pair of soft beeping tones. Fumbling into his parka pocket, he retrieved the device and flipped open its antenna grid. “Xiong here.”

“ This is Transporter Chief Schuster,”a deep baritone voice echoed from the communicator’s speaker grille. “ Stand by for beam-out. We’ll be in position in forty-five seconds.”

Any reply Xiong might have offered was lost as the very air around him seemed to hum and vibrate. He felt an almost electrical sensation playing across his exposed skin at the same instant snow and small bits of ice were stirred up around him. The ground was shaking now, with thunderclaps charging the air as the pale white sky melted into a bright, harsh orange maelstrom.

What the hell…?

Then the ominous, approaching figure was upon them, veering across the frozen plain and descending upon the wrecked all-terrain vehicle—just as Zhao had anticipated.

The whine of phaser fire reached his ears, and Xiong saw a bright ray of energy erupt from Nauls’s concealed position near the vehicle. The beam bored into the onrushing figure, which seemed to simply absorb the energy from the phaser volley even as it continued to move with unreal speed across the snow-packed ground. Nauls fired again and achieved the same effect, with the creature maintaining its course before slamming headlong into the ruined transport.

A sharp metallic crack filled the air, and Xiong saw metal cave inward as the vehicle lurched out of the small depression its crash had created, spinning away from where Nauls crouched and skidding across the snow to settle into a ditch on the other side of the narrow path. Nauls, his position now exposed, scrambled away from the creature, moving backward uphill and fighting to keep his balance as he tried to keep his phaser trained on the assailant.

“What the hell is that thing?” La Sala whispered. Though her own weapon was aimed at the creature, she did not fire, apparently continuing to follow Zhao’s last instructions.

Xiong felt his pulse racing in his ears and his heart beating as though it might push through his chest as he got his first good look at the…whatever it was. It appeared to be humanoid in only the most rudimentary sense; dark, towering more than two meters in height, glistening and steaming next to the vehicle in stark contrast to the snowpack surrounding it. Its physique was devoid of clothing or in fact any discernible qualities. He saw no indications of hair or skin tone or even facial features. No muscle tone was apparent in any of its extremities; the arms instead appeared to be faceted like glass or polished steel and honed to razor-sharp points that gleamed in what feeble sunlight managed to penetrate the dense cloud cover.

He, La Sala, and Bohanon watched as the thing stalked Nauls, covering ground in massive strides and closing the gap between itself and the security officer in seconds. Nauls fired again at near point-blank range, the cobalt blue beam simply disappearing into the creature’s torso as it continued forward. Then the thing swung a massive, shimmering arm that caught Nauls at the midsection, slicing him in half and sending his body falling in two different directions. Blood stained and melted the surrounding snow, rapidly expanding away from the luckless man’s tortured corpse as it ran in rivers down the embankment.

Xiong heard Bohanon scream in abject terror at the same moment the air was filled with the whine of another phaser.

Captain Zhao’s.

This time the report sounded louder and more powerful while the energy beam that struck the creature looked brighter, its drone more intense. Xiong guessed that the captain had increased the setting on his phaser in a renewed attempt to stop the horrific monster in its tracks.

As before, the weapon seemed to have no effect. The creature appeared almost oblivious of any attack on itself as it turned and lunged toward the source of the weapons fire. Zhao, unfazed by the imminent danger he faced, held his ground and fired again even as he reached into his parka with his free hand to extract his communicator.

“Xiong!” La Sala said as she thumbed the power setting on her phaser all the way forward. “Set to maximum and fire! Now!”

Fumbling with his own weapon, Xiong raised it and aimed at the thing advancing on Zhao. The whine of tightly focused energy rang in his ears as his phaser’s piercing blue beam joined La Sala’s in a frantic attempt to force it into breaking off its attack.

Ahead of the creature, Zhao finally moved as it lashed out at him, dodging to his left and scrambling toward the transport vehicle. Xiong gasped in horror as the captain slipped and fell face-first to the snow-packed earth, jarring his phaser and communicator from his grip. The devices skittered across the ice-slickened ground, only to stop well beyond his reach.

“No!”La Sala screamed, rising up from behind the rock outcropping and firing at the creature once again. The thing turned, its featureless face seemingly looking right at them, and Xiong felt the icy fingers of terror close around his heart at the same instant he felt Bohanon jerk on his arm.

“Shoot it!” the Denobulan screamed.

The thing was moving again, this time directly toward them. Snow, ice, and dirt whipped into a frenzy around him as Xiong held his free hand up to protect his exposed face. At the same time, he brought his phaser up to strike in one last stand against the rushing creature. Once again, the weapon tingled in his hand as it discharged its powerful beam of energy, which again proved useless as the menacing black form loomed closer, blocking the very sun from his view.

The tingle in his hand then seemed to cascade over his entire body. Only after he saw the first hints of gold sparkles start to coalesce around him did he realize he had been caught by a transporter beam. Everything faded into blinding white light…

…only to be replaced by the stark interior of a transporter room and the terrified face of a crewman standing behind the chamber’s bright red console. On the pad ahead of him and to his left, Lieutenant La Sala found herself aiming her phaser at the crewman and hurriedly lowered the weapon.

“Sorry, Chief,” she said as she stepped down from the pad. Turning, she looked to Xiong. “Lieutenant…” she began, but the rest of her words died in her throat. Her eyes grew wide with new fear and her mouth dropped open in unbridled shock as she stared at something to his right.

Xiong turned to see Bohanon standing next to him, his features frozen in terror and surprise. His arms were held up in front of him as if trying to fend off an invisible enemy. Between his collar and his abdomen was a nearly perfect circle of nothingness, penetrating his torso from front to back.

The lifeless Denobulan collapsed to the transporter pad just as Xiong felt his own legs go out from under him. Color washed from his vision before everything was consumed by black.

“Incoming!”

Yet again, Khatami employed a death grip on the arms of the command chair as the Endeavourdid its best to buck her out of her seat, pummeled once more from the planet’s surface. This time the blow hit her from the side, driving her rib cage against the sharp contours of the command chair’s armrest. Smoke and sparks issued from the bridge’s now unmanned environmental-control station.

“Transporter room, report!” she shouted into her chair’s intercom, continuing to endure her jaw’s relentless ache.