Long Shot

by David Mack

  “Working on it.” After a few hurried computations he added, “Sending now.”

  “Received,” Nizsk said. “Course plotted, Commander.”

  “Engage, best possible speed.” Within seconds, the ship was in position. “Sorak, activate tractor beam!” On the main viewscreen, a pale glow lashed out from the Sagittarius into the comet’s core. The ship lurched as if it were an old seagoing vessel suddenly run aground. Theriault thumbed open the channel to the top deck. “Engineering! We need more power!”

  Threx shouted over the rising whine of the impulse core, “We’re patching in power from the warp reactor. Don’t make any fast maneuvers or you’ll shear us in half.”

  “Understood. Just give us all the juice you can, right now!”

  “Hang on—here it comes!”

  A sharp jolt of resistance boomed like thunder inside the Sagittarius, and the bridge crew clung to their chairs and consoles to keep from being knocked to the deck—unlike Beiana, who was launched from one side of the bridge to the other. Steady shivers trembled the tiny ship, and the high-pitched cry of its overtaxed engines drowned out all other sounds on the bridge.

  Dastin shouted something at Theriault, but she couldn’t hear him. She pointed at her ear, shook her head, and shrugged. He pointed at the image of the comet on the viewscreen, then at his console, before giving her a thumbs-up.

  She swiveled the command chair so Sorak could see her. As soon as they made eye contact, she made a slashing gesture across her throat with her hand. Despite his stereotypically Vulcan penchant for being literal minded, he had served with her long enough to understand the idiomatic meaning of her signal. He deactivated the tractor beam.

  The engines returned to their normal background hum, and except for the gentle feedback tones of the computers, all was quiet on the bridge. Theriault looked at Dastin. “Report.”

  “Comet’s core mass trajectory adjusted by zero point nine three degrees. It’ll miss Anura by about two hundred twenty-one thousand kilometers.”

  “And the other segments?”

  “Should impact harmlessly on the planet’s two moons.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Well done, everybody.”

  Beiana dusted himself off as he stepped toward her. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, Commander. On behalf of my crew, and my people, I thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. But your planet’s still in danger, which means our job’s not done yet.” She settled back into her command posture. “I hope you’re feeling lucky—because we’re going back to Anura.”

  14

  It was all going so well until they crested the hill. After escaping the brush with the mob on the highway, the landing party hadn’t seen another vehicle—or even another living thing—on the rest of their drive into the northern wastes. Despite the increasingly overcast sky and fierce winds, it had seemed to Terrell like they might actually enjoy relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way to the dark energy complex. Then they reached the top of the last rise between them and the remote scientific research facility, and he realized how foolish his assumption had been.

  A grim spectacle filled the vale ahead of them: a towering storm of dust clouds laced with pulses of green energy and shimmering patches of distorted light that made Terrell think of mirages. It was shaped like a squat funnel several kilometers wide and capped by a black stormhead lit by titanic ribbons of lightning and extending beyond the horizon in every direction.

  Taryl stopped the transport in the middle of the road. Her jaw went slack as she marveled at the decidedly unnatural storm that swallowed the highway less than a kilometer away, then she turned her wide-eyed stare at Terrell. “Sir, tell me we’re not driving into that.”

  “Would you believe me if I did?”

  She winced and sighed at their predicament. “No.”

  The trio in the backseat crowded forward for a better look. Hesh activated his tricorder, while Ilucci and Doctor Kavalas were content to gape in wonder at the tempest.

  The Austaran scientist seemed the most amazed by what was transpiring outside. “What is that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “If I had to guess,” Ilucci said, “I’d say that’s the wild edge of a null space created by the intersection of wave fronts from the improbability field your generator’s putting out.”

  Hesh switched off his tricorder. “Precisely correct, Master Chief. There is a quarter-kilometer radius of null space around the generator facility. However, the intersection of all its rebounding wave fronts and their harmonic echoes has created this rather perilous barrier zone. Readings from within its area of effect are . . . erratic, to say the least.”

  Terrell noticed the uncharacteristic imprecision of Hesh’s report. “Erratic, Lieutenant? In what sense? And would you characterize the barrier zone as dangerous?”

  “Dangerous? Absolutely, sir. Some of the peculiarities I’ve detected inside the zone are severe fluctuations of gravity, random shifts of atmospheric molecules, temperature swings, and highly unpredictable electrical discharges ranging in severity from mildly uncomfortable to fatal and even catastrophic. Any attempt to pass through the barrier will be extremely perilous.”

  Taryl aimed a sour look at Hesh. “Remind me to never ask you for a pep talk.”

  Terrell appraised the threat posed by the maelstrom. “Doctor, how well insulated are these transports? Can they stand up to a lightning strike?”

  “It would depend on the lightning.”

  Far from an endorsement, but better than nothing. Terrell knew there was naught to gain by turning back, which left him no other path but to continue forward. “Time to run the gauntlet. Ensign, take us in, as fast you can. If we’re lucky, we’ll punch through the storm before it has a chance to do too much damage, and then we’ll be safe on the other side.”

  His proposal earned a skeptical sidelong look from Taryl. “And if we’re not lucky?”

  “Then if we live through this, you get the rare privilege of saying ‘I told you so.’ ”

  A shrug. “Can’t ask for a better deal than that.” She stomped on the accelerator.

  The transport leapt forward and hurtled downhill, speeding straight into chaos.

  The trio in the backseat hunched low and tightened their safety belts.

  Terrell gripped the armrest of his door as the edge of the barrier loomed, its wall of wind and smoke screaming like a banshee. Then the transport slammed through the outer layer and was swallowed by the madness within.

  Forked bolts of sickly green lightning stabbed at the exterior of the transport, which wobbled and swerved, a prisoner of the wild forces at work inside the barrier zone. The tail end of the vehicle slipped one way while the nose was pulled in another, and then everything went upside-down. Nausea and vertigo assailed Terrell as gravity reversed itself. The transport rolled and twisted in midair, and the impenetrable curtain of swirling dirt and dust that surrounded it made it impossible for Terrell to tell which way was down. Then he felt gravity’s irresistible pull and he knew, but it was too late to do anything about it.

  The transport plummeted back to the ground and landed with a jarring crunch that caved in the roof and shattered all its windows. Terrell shut his eyes as a fierce blast of wind-driven sand scoured his face. He feared to open his mouth to issue orders, but it had to be done.

  “Who’s with me? Sound off!”

  One by one the others replied, shouting over the roar of the storm. Assured that everyone was still conscious, Terrell set their next objective. “Abandon the transport! Continue on foot!”

  Terrell opened his door. Despite the tumult, he heard the other doors open as well. Struggling against the resistance of the wind and his inability to see, he crawled out of the transport. Only then did he realize that, between being blinded by the storm and disoriented by the flipping and rolling of
the transport, he no longer had any idea in what direction lay the generator facility. He shouted over the wind, “Hesh! Is your tricorder working?”

  He couldn’t see Hesh, but he heard him holler back, “Negative!”

  Someone’s hand closed on Terrell’s. Then he heard Taryl say, “Join hands!”

  He reached out and found another hand. Hoarse from fighting to be heard above the gale, Terrell yelled, “Is anyone not holding someone’s hand?” No one replied. “Taryl, lead on.”

  The tug of her hand guided him away from the transport. After half a dozen steps, a bolt of violet lightning danced over his legs and torso. Terrell blacked out for half a second, then he regained awareness to find he was being carried. He squinted against the bite of the dust storm, and then he and the rest of the landing party tumbled en masse into open air.

  All of them hacked and spat dust from their mouths.

  Taryl coughed and glowered at him with bloodshot eyes. “Told you so.”

  In between ragged coughs, Terrell took a head count and confirmed everyone else was still with them. No fatalities. So far, so good.

  Behind them raged the madness of the distortion front. Before them stood the serene, institutional architecture of the dark energy plant. The orbital pictures Terrell had seen had depicted a circular generator facility, surrounded by an asymmetrical octagon of paved ground protected by a tall perimeter fence. From what he saw now, the inner edge of the storm’s eye was within that perimeter, which meant the fence had likely long since been torn away.

  Just as well. I was in no mood for climbing.

  He got up and dusted himself off. “Come on, folks. Let’s head for the main building.”

  The others picked themselves up and followed him toward the largest of the handful of aboveground structures that topped the mostly subterranean facility. Tattered and beaten up, they all limped forward, but no one complained. After a couple of minutes’ walk they reached the lone door of the main building. Terrell tried its lever handle. It was locked.

  Hesh fumbled for his tricorder. “Maybe I can generate a sonic pulse that will—”

  Terrell drew his phaser and shot out the lock with a single blast.

  The door sagged, so Terrell kicked it in. It rebounded off the wall of the corridor inside, then yawned open ahead of him.

  He led Kavalas and the landing party inside. “Let’s go see what makes this mess tick.”

  • • •

  “Holding at maximum comm range from the planet, Commander.”

  Theriault sat forward in the command chair. The Sagittarius was millions of kilometers from Anura, so far away that the planet appeared on the viewscreen as little more than an unusually large, bright point of light nestled among thousands of other visible stars. If not for a series of signal boosting comm-relay buoys they had deployed earlier, on their way out to confront the comet, they would be entirely beyond communications range with the planet, which lacked the technology for faster-than-light subspace radio.

  “Chief, any signals from the landing party?”

  Razka worked the controls at his station. “None, sir. The comm relays report no recorded messages or even attempted signals from the surface.”

  Even before Sorak swiveled his chair in her direction, Theriault knew what he was going to say. “Commander, we are five minutes past the landing party’s check-in time.”

  “Thank you, Mister Sorak. I know how to read the chronometer.” His narrow-eyed look of disapproval suggested he was stifling a strong urge to remind her of the captain’s orders to take the ship to safety if the landing party failed to check in. “Chief, hail the captain.”

  Anxiety twisted like a cold fire deep in her stomach while she waited for Razka to raise Terrell or any other member of the landing party. After more than a minute of failed attempts, the chief turned toward her. Despite his reptilian features, she read his expression as one of regret. “I was unable to reach the landing party, sir.”

  “Interference?”

  “Uncertain. There was some background noise on the channel, but other times it just went quiet. It’s possible one or more of our intermediate relays may have failed.”

  The prospect of abandoning the landing party anguished Theriault. As their friend and shipmate, she wanted to charge back to the planet and do whatever she could to help them resolve the Austarans’ global crisis. But as an officer and the acting commander of the ship, it was her duty to protect the Sagittarius and all aboard her. And she had her orders.

  “Helm, come about and set course for the nearest starbase, warp six.”

  “Warp six, aye.” Nizsk keyed commands into her console. After several seconds, she sat back and was quiet and still for a moment. Her mandibles clicked a few times, but her universal translator module offered no interpretation, leading Theriault to suspect that Nizsk was engaging in the Kaferian equivalent of clicking her tongue in confusion. Then the ensign turned to look back at her. “Sir, the ship is not responding.”

  The error report drew concerned looks from Razka and Dastin. Theriault did her best to mimic Sorak’s seemingly unflappable veneer of calm. “Is it possible there’s a malfunction in the helm console? Maybe something we can bypass?”

  “Negative, sir. Based on these readings . . . the warp and impulse engines are offline.”

  It was the worst news Theriault could imagine. “Let me guess: the improbability field.”

  Dastin shook his head in frustration. “It can’t be! We’re way out of—” His angry disbelief melted into pained realization. “This is another one of those ‘effect precedes cause’ moments, isn’t it?” Theriault nodded, and Dastin’s shoulders slumped. “I hate this place.”

  Theriault thumbed open the channel to the top deck. “Bridge to Engineering.”

  “Threx here.”

  “Please tell me our engines didn’t just go offline for no reason.”

  “They didn’t. I’m sure there’s a reason, we just haven’t found it yet.”

  She noted an alert signal from Dastin’s console but stayed focused on her discussion with Threx. “So, you’re confirming we’ve lost main power?”

  “For now. Both the warp core and the impulse core stopped dead and went cold.”

  His emphasis on cold alarmed Theriault; she knew that word had a specific and dreaded meaning in the jargon of Starfleet engineers. “How long to restore main power?”

  “At least two hours. The good news is, the batteries kicked in just like they were supposed to. So at least we still have computers, comms, and life support.”

  Dastin cut in, “But not shields—which is a damned shame, because we’re about to need ’em.” He relayed his latest sensor readings to the main viewscreen. The image snapped to a filtered view of Anura’s parent star. “Cavino is on the verge of a major coronal mass ejection. And before you ask, this is no sunspot, no solar flare. In about ninety minutes, that star’s going to spit out a chunk of its surface on a direct heading for us—and for Anura.”

  In spite of dreading the answer, Theriault asked, “How big a chunk?”

  “Big enough that we can’t escape it without impulse power, and hot enough to melt us into slag from half a million kilometers. And the icing on the cake? It’ll cook Anura to a cinder.”

  Theriault shook her head in disbelief. How many death sentences could a planet get in one day? And how many could it dodge before its luck ran out?

  She looked down and realized the intraship comm channel was still open. “Threx, find some way to bring main power back online. I don’t care what it takes. Feel free to use sticks and stones, harsh language, or just get out and push. But get those engines started. You copy?”

  “Five by five, Commander. We’re on it.”

  “Keep us posted. Bridge out.” She thumbed off the channel, then opened another to sickbay. “Bridge to Doctor Babitz.”
<
br />   “Babitz here.”

  “Doc, do me a favor. Have Nurse Tan Bao brief the astronauts in the mess hall on how to use our escape pod.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Let’s just say things are going about as well as usual for us. And just in case they stay that way, I want our guests to have a fighting chance to survive.”

  “Understood. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you. Bridge out.” She closed the channel and looked up to find Dastin standing beside the command chair. “Please tell me nothing else went wrong.”

  “Not yet.” He shot a despairing look at the main view­screen. “We’re having a lot of luck today. All of it bad.”

  Theriault looked up at the man she had come to think of as a thorn in the paw of her command and, realizing she might soon die at his side, succumbed to gallows humor.

  “Why should today be different from any other day in Starfleet?”

  • • •

  Nothing about the interior of the generator facility was what Terrell had expected. Most of the architecture he had seen in the capital city displayed a cultural preference for gentle curves and circular accents. In contrast, everything inside the research facility appeared to have been crafted with an eye toward hard angles, hexagons, and octagons.

  His footsteps and those of the others in the group echoed down the long passage from the entrance to the control center. Few doors broke the monotony of bare walls in the wide corridor. Those that Terrell did notice were unmarked and gave the impression of having been locked since the day they were installed.

  Doctor Kavalas walked at the head of the group. He seemed ill at ease. His eyestalks were in near-constant motion, swiveling to and fro, as if he expected the landing party to come under ambush at any moment. Even when they arrived at the door to the control center, he remained unsettled. “I hope my access code still works.” With one trembling hand, he entered his code on a touchscreen on the wall beside the entrance. Low thunks from inside the door’s jamb signaled the retraction of thick metal bolts. Kavalas opened the door. “This way.”