“Just a peculiar gravitational orientation. I’ve already compensated for it.”
“Then energize,” Sulu said. A moment later, the transporter’s golden, shimmering light swept over him and the rest of the boarding party.
Chapel hated materializing in the darkness, but she knew that there were times when it was unavoidable. As the transporter’s confinement beam released her inside the Neyel ship, she knew that this was just such an occasion. She inhaled deeply, reassured by the cold-yet-breathable air that the party hadn’t materialized too close to a hull breach.
“Tricorders and lights,” Captain Sulu said almost at the same time as Tuvok began scanning the immediate area. Chapel saw that Akaar was in hyperalert mode, his phaser already out and at the ready, held parallel with the bright beam of his palmlight. The Capellan’s breath steamed like that of a dragon in the small light’s cold glare.
Jerdahn was looking around with eyes as big as deflector dishes. He had obviously been unnerved by the transporter, but didn’t seem anywhere close to panic. Chapel wondered if he was an atypical Neyel, or if they were all so adaptable.
“It takes some getting used to, Jerdahn,” Chapel said in an effort to comfort the Neyel. He nodded mutely in response, and seemed to calm, evidently noticing the businesslike demeanor of the other members of the boarding party.
Chapel activated her tricorder. According to her initial scans, no one besides the boarding party was in the immediate vicinity, though the decks just above them—other [219] cylindrically configured levels, which lay closer to the vessel’s core region—teemed with Neyel life-signs.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Chapel saw that the party had beamed into a long, tube-shaped corridor. It was strewn with debris clearly left over from a series of recent, extensive, and apparently hasty hull repairs. Now we know what the Neyel crew has been doing ever since Excelsior crippled their ship.
The corridor’s form was obviously dictated at least in part by the exterior curvature of the Neyel ship’s hull. Her weight felt about Earth normal, almost indistinguishable from Excelsior’s gravity-plating. But the decking beneath his feet curved gently away to the right and left, as though the “downward” direction was actually “outward”—the direction that led through the hull and into space.
Chapel saw that Tuvok was also examining the unusual shape of the deck. “Curious,” the science officer said. “This vessel’s internal arrangement is highly unusual. It is composed of a series of nested cylinders, with the decks curved so that the downward direction radiates outward from the ship’s central axis.”
“That’s what Ensign Fenlenn’s initial scans indicated,” Sulu said. “What’s your point?”
“Merely that it seems an odd arrangement of interior space,” Tuvok said.
Chapel nodded. “It would make sense if they had to spin the ship to create artificial gravity. They’ve laid the decks out like they’re on a colossal centrifuge.”
“Indeed,” Tuvok said. “However, this vessel is not spinning, nor was it at any time during our initial encounter with it. And my tricorder scans show that the decks beneath our feet are outfitted with artificial-gravity plating. The redundancy of this design makes little sense.”
“It might make perfect sense,” Sulu said, leading the team forward into the darkness, which he cut through with [220] his own palmlight. “That is, it might if your ancestors had hollowed out an asteroid and rebuilt its interior along lines similar to this, settled inside it, and then spun it to simulate a planet’s gravitational field. Later on, they must have discovered gravity plating, but clung to the familiarity of this arrangement.”
“And later still they found themselves lost in the galactic wilderness,” Burgess said, walking alongside Sulu. “The Neyel engineers evidently have quite a sense of tradition.”
“It would appear so,” Sulu said.
“That gives me some real hope that we can find a way to reconnect with them,” said Burgess.
As if on cue, a moving blip suddenly appeared on Chapel’s tricorder. Then two more bogeys resolved themselves, and those were joined a moment later by several more. They were quickly converging on the boarding party’s position from opposite directions.
Nearby, Tuvok started, apparently having noticed the same thing. “A large number of Neyel life-signs are now heading toward our position,” he reported calmly. The science officer gestured upward, shining his palmlight on the three-meter-high metal gridwork of the ceiling. “They seem to be moving along the next deck inward from this one.”
“Phasers,” growled Akaar, raising his weapon. Chapel saw the captain and Tuvok do likewise, then followed suit herself. The weapon felt alien in hands far more accustomed to medical instruments. She desperately hoped she wouldn’t have to fire.
Jerdahn turned toward the ambassador. “I think my people are about to grant your wish for ‘reconnection.’ ”
“Captain, your people are only going to provoke the Neyel,” Burgess snapped.
“Our simply being here might be provocation enough for them,” Sulu replied. To the rest of the team, he said, “Circle formation. Keep your weapons low, but ready. Nobody fires [221] until my order, or until the Neyel do. Remember, we didn’t come here to fight.”
Chapel heard an echoing, painfully loud clatter along the ceiling grid. The sound surrounded her. Looking up, she saw metal panels falling from overhead, landing deafeningly a few meters ahead and behind. Lithe, dark-complexioned Neyel bodies leapt to the deck from the newly exposed ceiling portals.
In the dim light, Chapel couldn’t easily determine how many black-clad Neyel figures now swarmed about the boarding party. But she could tell immediately that the team was surrounded.
The illumination levels suddenly rose at least tenfold in intensity, prompting Chapel to shield her eyes with her free hand.
“Please let’s don’t do anything stupid, people.” The hissing voice belonged to Ambassador Burgess.
“Orders, Captain?” Akaar’s voice was unmistakable.
“Stand by, Lieutenant,” the captain said. “That goes for everyone.”
Spots swam before Chapel’s eyes. She clung to her sweat-slicked phaser, pointing it toward one of the indistinct dark forms that stood before her. It approached, carrying something small but unfriendly-looking in one of its long-fingered hands.
“Lower your weapons,” the shape said, in a rough and commanding voice. “All of you.”
“Captain?” Akaar repeated. As Chapel’s vision slowly returned, she felt the level of tension all around her increasing exponentially, almost as though someone was tampering with the ship’s climate controls.
She could see now that the nearest Neyel figure wore the same simple black coverall as the rest of the dozen or so troops who had surrounded them. The foremost creature’s imperious manner and gray uniform sash implied that he was in charge. Each Neyel was armed, bearing either small [222] pistols, or long, evil-looking blades with serrated edges. A few carried both. Their collective breath threw a shroud around them in the chill air, reminding Chapel of gathering storm clouds.
“Lower your weapons,” the sandpaper-voiced Neyel squad leader repeated as a half-meter-long blade found its way into his free hand. Chapel wondered if he could throw the weapon as accurately as Akaar could hurl one of those lethal, triple-bladed Capellan kligats.
Her vision now more or less clear, Chapel looked toward Sulu. The captain was nodding to Akaar as he complied with the Neyel’s orders. Then the huge Capellan slowly brought his weapon down, as did Tuvok.
Chapel felt relieved to be able to lower her own weapon. Except for the fact that we’ve been captured again, Chapel thought, recalling the crackling energy filaments that already hemmed in both Excelsior and the Neyel ship.
A trap within a trap.
PART 6
RAGE
Chapter 18
2169. Auld Greg Aerth Calendar
Watching from the concealment of a space-black sh
adow on Vangar’s rough-hewn exterior, Hanif Wafiyy took the point position at the head of the grapnel team. Securely tethered to the Rock by an impossibly slender cable—one of the more useful artifacts the People had taken from the pointy-eared raiders who had landed a generation or so back—he watched as the blocky, oblong ship approached, gradually matching its velocity to that of Vangar.
Hanif’s nose itched, but the faceplate of his p-suit precluded his doing anything about it. He tried to focus instead on whatever new horrors the alien vessel promised to bring among the People of ’Neal. Would the newcomers turn out to be more of those green-Wooded elves who’d once tried to chop the Rock into fragments for their ore ships?
Or maybe it’s another gang of Tuskers. He shuddered, though the suit’s e-controls maintained a constant comfortable temperature of eleven degrees see-grade.
Glancing over his shoulder, Hanif saw the great bejeweled dervish of the Milky Way Galaxy. The powerful centrifugal spin of the Vangar Rock spoke eloquently to his inner ear. He knew well that a snapped tether would send [226] him falling forever toward that brilliant assemblage of distant stars. He fought down a momentary surge of vertigo, reminding himself that he—and the rest of the ’Neal People he was sworn to defend—were over 64,000 pars’x from the blazing Milky Way’s closest spiral arm.
As were, more than likely, the nearest elves or Tuskers.
A quick, sharp jolt, transmitted along Vangar’s rock-andiron surface through his thick-soled boots, interrupted his musings. The alien ship had made contact with the Rock. The waiting had ended.
Good. Maybe we won’t have to stay out here in the hard-rod rain until all of our internal organs shut down. One of the serious drawbacks of life in the Lesser M’jallanish Cloud was the intense and constant wind of X rays, gamma rays, and high-energy neutrons that streamed outward from the densely packed stars at the cloud’s relatively nearby galactic core. Retrovirally delivered DNA recombinants had greatly ameliorated the problem since the ’Neal People’s arrival out in this cosmic hinterland, but enough high-rad exposure could still cook an unshielded Person from the inside out, and with dismaying swiftness. With luck, after the mission nobody on the team would need more than a liver transplant, or perhaps a few minor endocrine replacements. No sweat, Hanif thought. Now all we have to do is neutralize the invaders.
Using his p-suit-enshrouded tail, he tugged on his secondary tether, giving the “move” signal to the rest of the boarding team. He wasn’t going to risk breaking radio silence while the alien crew was in a position to intercept the team’s communications.
Leading the group out of the shadows, Hanif looked behind him. Gavin, Moira, and Safa had all emerged from the darkness, crawling like spiders along the permanent exterior safety rails. Without those rugged hand-, foot-, and tail-holds, they would all be catapulted away from the spinning [227] asteroid’s surface, a human meteor shower running in reverse.
The team got into position, not more than half a klomter away from where the vessel had moored itself. Thanks to the ship’s running lights, the p-suit’s night-vision enhancements, and his own genengineered visual acuity, Hanif could see the marauder ship in considerable detail. So far, he’d seen no sign that the invaders had observed the team’s approach. Using a theo’lite built into his helmet display, Hanif carefully gauged how much safety tether they would have to pay out as he computed the distance that the boarders would have to leap, using the asteroid’s spin to accelerate them toward the marauder vessel.
Recalling his training exercises, Hanif made the first jump, which was over almost before he realized it. His pneumatic crampons deployed flawlessly, retethering him to the rock before Vangar’s spin had an opportunity to fling him into space. Now he was only scant meters from the marauder ship.
Before continuing toward the alien vessel, Hanif took a few seconds to evaluate his condition, and that of his p-suit. He thought he might have sprained his right ankle during his landing, or perhaps even fractured it. The Genescience Heads need to build us better limbs, he thought wryly. Fortunately, his tail had taken the brunt of the impact, without compromising the integrity of his p-suit.
When he took stock of the rest of the team, however, he immediately saw that Gavin had not been so fortunate. His explosively decompressed corpse drifted from its tether like an obscene parody of one of the balloons the ’Neal technicians lofted through the high-grav exterior levels when tracking down slow atmospheric leaks.
Poor bastard, Hanif thought. Maybe someday the genengineers will make us Rock rats tough enough to survive even an accident like that. At least long enough to slap on a p-suit patch, or crawl into a Safety Hutch.
[228] With no small amount of difficulty, Hanif put all such thoughts out of his mind. There would be time to grieve later, once the threat posed by the aliens had been neutralized. Without ceremony, Hanif, Moira, and Safa each cut their tethers to their dead comrade, and Moira kicked the body loose. It quickly pinwheeled out of sight, slung away by Vangar’s relentless spin. Perhaps someday, Gavin would fall all the way back to the Milky Way and Auld Aerth.
The remainder of the team swarmed quickly across the marauder’s hull, holding themselves in place with magnetic grapnels. Hanif was sweating freely by the time they’d finished planting the shaped explosive charges into what appeared to be the vessel’s most prominent hatches and key structural points.
When Safa started to sabotage what appeared to be an external engine strut, Hanif pulled on the tether that connected them.
He shook his head when she looked toward him. He was well aware that Director al-Adnan had ordered the alien vessel “completely crippled and neutralized.” However, as leader of the boarding team, he also knew that it was up to him to interpret the director’s orders. Out on the Rock, where death could and often did strike without warning, Hanif was the one in charge. And demolishing what might turn out to be a completely functional Efti’el spacedrive—especially after the ’Neal People had failed to develop one of their own after more than a century of albeit intermittent attempts—struck Hanif as an utterly unconscionable waste.
Al-Adnan wouldn’t have put me in charge of this op if he didn’t trust my judgment. He can always order me and the marauder’s engines spaced if he’s really unhappy about this acquisition. But if he tries that, the Science Heads just might slice his throat from ear to ear and hand the little mullah’s job over to me.
Two tether-tugs from Moira told Hanif that all was in [229] readiness. Using his tail, he pulled on the line three times in response. Go!
The trio leapt clear of the hull again. After landing, Hanif was sure that his sprained ankle must now surely be broken. But there wasn’t any time to think of that. The pain was intense, but manageable. He relied on the suit’s servomotors to keep him walking as the final explosives were put into place and the remote-control keypad booted and ran through its initialization procedures.
The explosions were silent, though the ship’s hull transmitted their vibrations through the asteroid’s skin. Hanif felt the percussive rumbles in his hands and feet, as though Van-gar had suddenly begun shivering in the icy, neverending M’jallanish night.
Hanif looked at the ship, whose hull now showed deep rents and gashes. Clouds of atmosphere were venting, swiftly transforming into tumbling ice crystals that moved away, projectilelike, following the same course that Gavin’s corpse had taken.
He touched the sealed holster strapped to his thigh. The elfish energy weapon was still where he’d left it. With his other hand, he found his chest controls and keyed open the boarding team’s preselected radio channel.
“Let’s move, people,” he said, finally breaking radio silence. “I’m taking point. We kill whatever still moves in there.”
After entering the ship, Hanif was almost disappointed. They had found a total of thirteen of the squat, three-limbed creatures aboard the alien vessel, eleven of whom had already been finished off by the explosives-generated hull breaches before the team had even c
ome aboard.
Stepping over the messily decompressed corpses, Hanif led Safa and Moira into a large aft chamber. Hanif surmised that this was the alien vessel’s engine room, judging by the glowing central structure, a four-mitr-tall semitransparent [230] cylinder which pulsated with mysterious, blue-tinted energies.
Here they also found the vessel’s two survivors. They were small, cowering things dressed in yellow pressure suits, creatures whose faces sported a pair of fist-sized, golden eyes, bordered by tufts of luxuriant white fur.
Hanif saw their complicated mouthparts moving repeatedly, but evidently wasn’t tuned to whatever comm frequency they were using. In the airless room, the creatures made no sound. They might have been trying to sue for peace, or beg for their lives, or even threaten the team.
Or they might have been trying to buy time, waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables on their victims-turned-captors. Hanif unholstered his weapon and shot one of the beings through the chest. Its thick orange blood flowed, sublimating immediately into vapor in the vacuum.
Safer to assume they’re all Tuskers, Hanif thought. Given half a chance, they’d do the same to us, and take everything we have. Including our lives.
The second creature looked terrified, and tried to flee. Safa knocked it down with her tail before it had moved a handful of mitrs away. But she hesitated after that, as though wavering in her purpose.
Then Moira stepped forward and shot the thing dead with three bursts from a lead-projectile pistol.
Hanif found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the blue-glowing cylinder at the room’s center. He wondered if it was the power plant or engine core that enabled these aliens to reach Vangar. They would have needed a truly potent energy source to cross the great gulf of interstellar space that separated the Rock from even the nearest star.
Then he noticed Safa, staring down at the motionless bodies of thé two aliens. Her tail lay limply across the floor, like a coil of discarded EV tether.
STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2298 - The Sundered Page 21