Текст книги "What Judgments Come"

Alarm klaxons echoed in the cargo bay, and most of the status indicators on the various consoles overseeing the operation glowed and blinked red. Xiong felt sweat running down his back as he watched al-Khaled’s and Davis’s frantic efforts to keep the situation under control.

They were failing.

“Jettison the container!” shouted Captain Okagawa, his voice blasting through the intercom. Commander zh’Rhun started to reply, but then a new sound rang in the cargo bay: metal being stressed.

“The crystal’s gone!” al-Khaled snapped, his attention split between his workstation and the isolation chamber, which was now shaking on the deck plates. Xiong looked at the monitor with its audiovisual feed from inside the chamber and saw that the Mirdonyae Artifact had disappeared, and in its place was a roiling, amorphous black mass. It appeared to be bouncing around the container’s interior, and Xiong could see dents and other rends in the bulkhead panels. Outside the chamber, tell-tale blue flashes of energy sparked each time the container shifted its position and came into contact with the surrounding force field.

“Engineering!” Davis called out. “Full power to the containment system!”

Over the intercom, the voice of the Lovell’s chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Moves-With-Burning-Grace, replied, “You’ve got everything we can push through, Lieutenant. Anything more and the circuits will overheat.”

Davis growled in mounting frustration as he continued to work his console. “Son of a bitch! I don’t think it’s going to be enough.”

“It’s not,” al-Khaled confirmed, before glancing over his shoulder to zh’Rhun. “Evacuate. Everybody out of the secondary hull. Now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Xiong asked, incredulous.

“Just do it!” al-Khaled snapped.

Beside him, Davis added, “The field might hold for a couple of minutes, but only if I can keep the power levels steady. That thing in there is siphoning the power at an exponential rate. If we jettison the chamber, the field drops and it’ll be free.”

“At which point,” Xiong said, “it will likely attack the Lovell.”

“Exactly,” Davis replied. “But if we hurry, we can get everybody out of the secondary hull, separate, and let Vanguard blow this section to hell.” As though in response to the engineer’s statement, the isolation chamber shuddered, eliciting another flash of energy as it bounced against the inside of the containment force field.

Xiong realized what was being proposed. “But someone has to stay back to maintain the field levels.”

“Right,” al-Khaled said. “Davis is rotating the field frequencies, trying to keep the Shedai from locking into it and drawing power that much faster. The longer we wait, the less that trick’s going to matter.”

Moving to the wall-mounted intercom, zh’Rhun slapped the activation control with the palm of her hand. “This is Commander zh’Rhun. Commence immediate emergency evacuation of the secondary hull. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.” She punctuated her order by smacking the panel’s Red Alert control, at which time a louder, more intense alarm siren began wailing in the cargo bay. She then turned back to Xiong and the others. “The three of you: out.”

“I can’t,” Davis said, not taking his attention from his console. “I’m making manual adjustments to the field settings. There’s no time to teach you what needs to be done, Commander.”

Zh’Rhun hesitated not one instant. “Fine. I’m staying with you in case you need help. Al-Khaled, Xiong, see to the evacuation of this section.”

“Commander,” said Okagawa over the intercom, “I’m not liking what I’m hearing.”

Appearing to ignore the captain’s comment, zh’Rhun pointed to Xiong and al-Khaled before gesturing to the cargo bay’s exit. “Move!” Then, in a somewhat softer tone, she added, “Hold the door, and contact me when everyone’s out. We’ll come running.”

Al-Khaled paused, sharing with the first officer a meaningful look that Xiong understood to be an unspoken exchange of mutual respect from two shipmates who together had seen and experienced their share of trials and challenges. “I’ll be there.”

“We’ll be there,” Xiong corrected.

Eyeing the two officers, zh’Rhun nodded in understanding and gratitude. “Go.”

Xiong followed the engineer out of the cargo bay, stopping at the hatch long enough to turn back and see zh’Rhun and Davis now standing alone at the row of consoles, whatever they might be saying now completely drowned out by the alarm klaxons. The isolation chamber before them was in a constant state of movement, with dents clearly visible all across its surface. How much longer would it hold?

Long enough, I hope.

He had to run to catch up with al-Khaled, who had already traversed the short corridor leading from the cargo bay and made it to the wider passageway running the length of the Lovell’s secondary hull. At the far end of the passage was another reinforced hatch, leading to the “access boom” that connected this part of the ship to the spherical primary hull. Essentially an oversized, reinforced cylinder, the boom contained a single passageway that allowed for transit between the vessel’s two main sections. It also supported the warp nacelles, though if the secondary hull was jettisoned, the ship would only be capable of achieving sublight speeds—more than enough to return to Vanguard, assuming the Lovell survived the next few minutes.

Always the optimist.

Feeling something less than useless, Araev zh’Rhun watched as Kurt Davis continued his frantic work, his head bobbing between his console’s rows of buttons and controls and their accompanying status monitors. Every few seconds, she spared a glance toward the isolation chamber, one side of which was now bulging outward and looking to zh’Rhun like a pregnant mother’s swollen belly.

Considering what was about to happen, she decided the analogy was apt.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Get out of here,” Davis replied, not turning from the monitors.

Zh’Rhun shook her head. “You first.” Each had already stated for the record—and in Davis’s case that included a possible charge of insubordination and disobedience of lawful orders—that neither would leave without the other, and Davis was determined to remain on task as long as necessary. Staring at his face, illuminated as it was by the glow of viewscreens and status displays, zh’Rhun comprehended the man’s resolve, seeing that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for his shipmates. There was no way she was going to leave him here to do that alone.

“How much time?” she asked.

Davis grimaced, squinting from droplets of sweat running from his bald head and into his eyes. “A minute. Maybe.” As if on cue, another muffled impact of something against metal sounded in the cargo bay, and zh’Rhun looked up to see a new tear along the top of the isolation chamber’s bulging side panel.

“I’m thinking less,” she said.

She flinched at the sound of Mahmud al-Khaled’s voice bursting from the wall-mounted intercom. “Al-Khaled to zh’Rhun. Everybody’s out, Commander!”

“That’s it!” zh’Rhun said, grabbing Davis by the shoulder and pulling him away from the console. “Time to go!”

“Wait!” Davis said, extending his arms as though stretching for the workstation. “We can’t!”

Zh’Rhun heaved the lieutenant ahead of her and pushed him toward the exit. “It’s over. Move!” She tried to ignore the sounds of metal coming apart behind her, concentrating instead on the sounds of her boots against the deck plates as she closed the distance to the hatch. Davis, running ahead of her, plunged through the opening and waited for her to follow him into the corridor before smacking a control panel set into the bulkhead next to the hatch. The reinforced door began cycling shut, allowing zh’Rhun one last look at the twisted, distended isolation chamber as a black, shapeless mass erupted from inside the wrecked container.

As the door sealed, Davis hit another control and a status indicator on the panel with the label bay decompressing illuminated. A deep rumble made its way through the bulkheads, and zh’Rhun felt a mild reverberation in the deck beneath her feet as the cargo bay’s outer hatch was opened while the compartment still possessed an atmosphere. In her mind’s eye she pictured the bay’s contents being blasted toward the now open hatch as everything in the room was vented into space.

Then, something—the Shedai, of course—slammed into the hatch right in front of them.

No. She did not know why she should be surprised. After all, what was a decompressed cargo bay to an entity that had already demonstrated its ability to traverse interstellar distances without any known form of space vessel?

“I think our plan has a few holes in it,” Davis said, seemingly an echo to zh’Rhun’s own thoughts.

“Bridge to zh’Rhun,” echoed Captain Okagawa’s voice over the intercom. “Where the hell are you?”

“Come on,” zh’Rhun said, grabbing Davis by the arm and pulling him along with her as she began to sprint the length of corridor toward the access boom. Standing in the doorway, waving for them to hurry, were al-Khaled and Xiong.

“Move!” al-Khaled shouted.

Behind zh’Rhun, another impact against the bulkhead echoed in the hallway, and this time it was accompanied by the rush of escaping oxygen. Another alarm sounded in the corridor, and she recognized it as the alert for a hull rupture. They were less than ten meters from the hatch when it slid shut, blocking their escape and hiding al-Khaled and Xiong from view. Halting their advance, they turned in time to see a black mass ripping through the corridor’s interior bulkheads before the pressure door ahead of it closed, sealing the two officers in a ten-meter section of passageway. Decompression protocols were in effect, with containment doors closing throughout the ship, sealing their respective compartments and preventing the entire vessel from being compromised.

“Shit!” Davis said, his eyes wide and his voice rising.

In response to his obscenity, something punctured the hatch leading back to the cargo bay, and a long, black spike thrust itself through the metal. Once again, zh’Rhun heard the hiss of air escaping into space.

From the control panel positioned next to the door that would have been their portal to escape, the intercom flared to life with Captain Okagawa’s voice. “We’re picking up a hull breach. All containment hatches are in place. Is everyone out of there?”

“No” was all zh’Rhun had time to say before the hiss became a roar.

The decompression alarm howled in the corridor just as the pressure hatch began to shift, and Xiong pulled al-Khaled back before the door could slice him in half.

“Watch it!” he said, yanking the engineer almost off balance before the hatch sealed with a resounding click. With the hull breach, Xiong knew the emergency doors spaced throughout the ship would be closed, which he recalled was normal operating procedure on older vessels like the Lovell. The ancient Daedalus-class ship was from another era, before emergency containment force fields and other protective measures had become standard equipment on modern starships.

Slamming his fist against the hatch, al-Khaled released a grunt of rage. “No!” Then, training and experience seemed to reassert themselves as he turned to the control panel set into the bulkhead beside the door. Xiong saw that the panel was more than a simple door or intercom panel, as it also contained controls for overseeing emergency protocols such as separating the hulls. There was an intercom, as well, and Captain Okagawa’s voice erupted from it.

“We’re picking up a hull breach. All containment hatches are in place. Is everyone out of there?”

Though he reached for the intercom to reply, al-Khaled was stopped when he and Xiong heard the simple response from Commander zh’Rhun.

“No.”

The bulkheads and deck plates shuddered around them as the compartment was rocked by a series of muffled explosions, and instinct made Xiong reach toward the nearby wall for support. “What was that?” he asked, before realizing what it must be, and he looked to the control panel to see a large indicator glowing bright yellow and illuminating the words SEPARATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

“Damn it!” al-Khaled said, looking from the console to the hatch and back again as he processed what was happening. “Bridge!” he called to the intercom, “zh’Rhun and Davis are still over there! Can you lock onto them with transporters?”

There was a pause—slight but there nonetheless—before Okagawa replied.

“It’s too late.”

Everyone on the Lovell’s compact bridge sat in stunned silence, watching the horrific scene on the main viewscreen play out before them. Okagawa, as startled by the vision as the rest of his crew, rose from his chair and felt his jaw slacken as he took in the horrific sight of the ship’s engineering hull being torn apart.

“Dear God” was all the captain could muster as he stood, transfixed. On the screen was the image of the Lovell’s secondary hull, pushed away by the force of the explosive bolts responsible for separating it from the rest of the vessel. It had begun to tumble in response to other forces being inflicted upon it, and though the image offered no sound, it was not hard for Okagawa to imagine the shriek of twisted metal as strips and chunks of hull plating were ripped with stunning speed and violence from the hull’s spaceframe. Whatever form the Shedai entity had adopted, it seemed well suited to the task of slicing the duranium sections with the same effort one might expect a knife to cut bread. A cloud of debris now surrounded the wreck, expanding in all directions as the Shedai continued its task of reducing the secondary hull to little more than shrapnel. Within seconds the hull had ceased to resemble anything that might ever have been a component of a space vessel, and at the heart of the flotsam was what Okagawa could only think of as a dark, undulating cloud.

“Shields up,” he snapped, allowing his anger at what had been inflicted upon his ship and crew to seep into his voice. “Target all weapons on that thing and prepare to fire.” Before his order was acknowledged, he saw the black mass on the screen lunge out of the debris field it had created. At the same time, another alarm wailed across the bridge.

“Proximity alert,” reported his weapons officer, Lieutenant Jessica Diamond. “It’s coming straight at us!”

The next instant, the Lovell trembled and the image on the main viewscreen scrambled and flashed blue as something impacted against the ship’s deflector shields. This prompted yet another alarm, which Okagawa ordered silenced. “Fire!” he shouted.

“I can’t get a lock,” Diamond called out. “It’s too close!” Then her voice seemed to raise an octave as she added, “Shields are failing!”

Feeling powerless as he watched the black form spread and expand to fill the viewscreen, Okagawa felt the ship quake around him as the Shedai broke through the deflector shields and slammed itself into the Lovell’s hull. The deck lurched beneath his feet, and he stumbled backward and fell against the side of his chair. Multiple alarms erupted around the bridge and Okagawa saw status indicators at different stations begin to flash bright red. Somewhere beyond the ship’s multiple layers of hull plating, he heard the unmistakable groans and shrieks of metal being torn asunder.

“Multiple breaches across the front of the hull!” Diamond shouted from where she was holding on to the edge of her console in order to remain on her feet.

“Evacuate those sections!” Okagawa ordered. As he tried to figure out how many seconds remained before the Shedai punctured the hull, the captain realized he had one last card to play: the self-destruct protocol. Would it be enough to take the Shedai with them? There was only one way to find out, but only if the alien granted him the time needed to carry out the last-ditch act.

One way to find that out, too.

Another indicator tone sounded from Diamond’s station, and the weapons officer said, “Captain! It’s the Sagittarius!”

Before Okagawa could respond to that, the image on the viewscreen shifted yet again, and this time the Shedai seemed to be reacting to something. It jerked violently, pulling itself away so that stars along with the wreckage of the Lovell’s engineering hull once again were visible. Then bright blue beams cut across the screen, striking the Shedai and sending it tumbling away from view.

“Track it!” Okagawa snapped, and the image shifted to maintain the Shedai at its center as it continued to writhe from the assault on it. The phaser beams were hitting it in rapid succession now, strike after strike, with each blow inflicting noticeable distress on the entity. “Fire all weapons!” he ordered. At the helm, Sasha Rodriguez stabbed at her weapons controls and the Lovell’s phasers joined the fray. Like those of the Sagittarius, the Lovell’s phasers had been retuned in accordance with specifications provided by the small scout vessel’s chief engineer. According to Captain Nassir, the refinements had been developed after the Sagittarius’s encounter with a Shedai on Jinoteur IV. Whatever the engineer had devised, it seemed to be working.

“It’s weakening!” Diamond shouted, but then added, “Some, that is, but the phasers are having an effect.”

“Maintain firing,” Okagawa ordered, taking a small bit of un-wonted satisfaction each time a phaser strike impacted against the Shedai’s body.

Then, the Shedai disappeared. There was no flash or explosion; it simply was gone.

“What the hell just happened?” Okagawa asked, not turning from the screen as he searched for some signs of the entity.

“I don’t know, sir,” Diamond replied, and the captain heard the confusion in her voice. “It’s just gone.” She tapped several controls on her console before looking up from her station. “I think it fled, sir.”

Frowning, he turned to regard his science officer. “Fled?”

Diamond nodded. “Yes, sir. Sensors did detect its departure from the system, but it was moving so fast there was no way to track it.” She glanced toward the viewscreen before returning her gaze to Okagawa. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Waving away her apology, Okagawa returned his attention to the viewscreen. “Nothing you could have done, Lieutenant.” After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder toward the communications station. “Ensign Pzial, hail the Sagittarius and offer Captain Nassir my thanks, and tell him to let his chief engineer know that he is one talented bastard. I’d love to have him if he wants to jump ship.”

For whatever’s left of this one.

The thought was enough to redirect his gaze to the screen, where the expanding cloud of debris that had been the Lovell’s secondary hull drifted. His mind turned to questions of the being that had caused such destruction. Where had the Shedai gone? More important, when would it be back? Okagawa did not know, and answers likely would not be forthcoming today. For now, there were more important things to do, such as pausing to reflect and appreciate Araev zh’Rhun and Kurt Davis, who had given their lives in order to save their shipmates.

“Thank you,” Okagawa whispered.

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