“—retreated—”
“—safely.”
“Shields are up and weapons charged, huh?” Gomez said. “Well, shut them down. I don’t care how you do it, but I want that core and all those bugs’ access to the ship’s systems shut off.”
Both nodded and turned back to the computer, their high-speed computer talk almost painful to listen to.
She turned to Dr. Lense. “Anything getting out of the core yet?”
“Not that I can tell,” she said. “But they are growing at a fantastic rate. I’d say we have no more than twenty minutes before they can leave those food sources.”
“And after that?” Gomez asked.
“We don’t want to be inside this ship after that,” Dr. Lense said.
Gomez nodded and glanced at her chronometer, so she knew exactly how long was left.
Three minutes of eternity later, Geordi and Lieutenant Vale came running back into view from around one part of a huge engine. As they approached, Geordi said, “Fifteen minutes.”
Gomez nodded and again glanced at her chronometer. They were over one hundred decks inside this ship, with fifteen minutes to escape. Their chances were not looking good.
“We have cut—”
“—power to core—”
“—area. But we must—”
“—remain to monitor. You—”
“—go.”
Geordi did a quick scan. “The Beast ’s shields are down, and weapons have shut down as well. Ship is dormant again, for the moment.”
“I’m not leaving anyone down here,” Gomez said. Losing someone was just not an option as far as she was concerned.
“We have no—”
“—intention of staying.”
“Just need—”
“—five minutes.”
Gomez nodded as they turned back to the panel and continued to work, talking to the ship’s computer at high speed again. “Geordi, you and Vale stay with them and make sure they get out. Dr. Lense and I will get to the second team and get them out.”
“The lift is safe for the moment,” Geordi said. “Use it.”
“Planning to,” Gomez said. “Make sure you give yourself enough time to get to a beam-out level.”
“We will,” Geordi said.
At a run, she and the doctor headed for the lift. She hated splitting the team, but in this situation, with the second team to think about as well, she had no choice.
She just hoped this choice of no choice didn’t come back to haunt her.
CHAPTER
13
Duffy glanced around the plush, massive secondary control room at his team as panel after panel went dead in front of them. “All right, people,” he shouted. “Now what’s happening?” Stevens glanced up at him. “Whoever was controlling the ship from the core area has been cut off. The Beast ’s systems are now dormant again.”
“But for how long?” Bart asked.
“That is a critical question,” Pattie said.
“More than likely,” Stevens said, “not long.” He studied the information that was coming over his still-active panel for the moment, then smiled. “Someone in engineering is making sure nothing gets out of the core and retakes control.”
“The Bynars?” Bart asked.
“From the speed, I would say so,” Stevens said.
“So, what the heck is in that core?” Duffy asked.
“Trust me,” Gomez said from the door, “it’s not something any of us ever want to meet.”
Duffy felt his heart soar. He hadn’t let himself think about the chance of Gomez getting stuck down there. Hearing her voice and seeing her was wonderful.
He smiled at her, and she half-smiled back, but her eyes were almost dead with worry. Something was terribly wrong. Even worse than they had thought. Dr. Lense was with her, but Duffy couldn’t see any of the rest of Gomez’s team. They must be the ones still below, holding whatever was in the core at bay.
“We have just about ten minutes before we need to be off this monster,” Gomez said. “Just in case what we have set up below fails, what can you people do from here to make sure this thing never flies again?”
For a moment there was silence, then, finally, an idea came to Duffy. “The ship’s systems are mostly dormant now. We could set up a feedback loop that would only kick in if a system like the shields was brought back on-line.”
“Perfect,” Bart said. “That would—”
Gomez held up her hand for silence. “No more talk about what you are doing until you are back on the da Vinci . I’ll explain then.”
Duffy nodded, and Gomez smiled a faint thanks.
“Duffy, Faulwell, Stevens,” Gomez said, “do what you are thinking about in the next three minutes, and then get to a beam-out level and get off this ship. Not one second longer. Understood?”
Duffy nodded at the fierce look in Gomez’s eyes, then glanced at his chronometer. In all the years he had known her, he had never seen her look like that before. Something down there in that core had clearly spooked her good.
“Understood,” Duffy said.
“Dr. Lense, you stay with them and get off as well. Corsi, you and Pattie come with me. We’re going back to help.”
“You only have about nine minutes,” Dr. Lense said.
Duffy looked at the doctor, then at Gomez. Nine minutes, and Gomez was going back down with a team. What was happening?
“Set it up and make sure it’s going to work. Two minutes and thirty seconds, and then out of here.” Gomez nodded to him and then headed off at a run.
He didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. But with just barely two minutes to figure out a way to sabotage an alien ship, he didn’t have time to think about it.
“Fabe, you take shields,” Duffy said. “Bart, weapons systems. I’m going to try to make sure nothing gets out of the core area into space.”
He went quickly to work, setting up a feedback loop in the commands to open the cargo doors that led down into the core from the surface of the ship. If something, or someone, were to try to open those doors, the computer would shut them and freeze the door permanently shut.
“Done,” Stevens said, with eighteen seconds to spare.
Faulwell went right to the last second.
It took Duffy an extra five seconds over what he had promised Gomez, but he took the extra time anyway. Whatever was in that core had spooked the woman he loved. And she didn’t spook easy, so he didn’t want it coming out any time soon.
Then, at a run, they headed for the lift.
They asked the lift computer for deck fifty-five, but before the lift stopped, the transporter took them to safety.
There was only five minutes and ten seconds left.
CHAPTER
14
Geordi couldn’t believe that Gomez and Pattie and Corsi had come back down. He would have done the same thing in Gomez’s place, but it was still insanity, plain and simple. He glanced at his chronometer. There was less than six minutes to go before those black-hole drives started cascading in on themselves. It was going to cause one major explosion. Not big enough to harm the colony, but enough to make sure nothing survived on this ship. And that meant all of them as well, if they were still here.
“We have to get out of here,” Gomez said.
“We must build up—”
“—thirty seconds—”
“—of reserve time,” the Bynars said.
Geordi knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to make sure that everyone had thirty seconds to get up that lift and to safety before the hive-mind regained control of the computer.
“Thirty more seconds and they should have it,” Geordi said to Gomez. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement—fast, like a bug.
“They’re out!” he shouted, pulling his phaser and taking cover.
Gomez and Corsi moved to take cover near a computer bank, pulling Pattie with them.
Vale stayed with him, moving to c
over his back.
The two Bynars stayed in position at the computer terminal, never hesitating, standing and working as if nothing was happening around them.
“What is that?” Corsi demanded as Gomez fired, spraying the guts of one of the bugs against the wall.
Geordi was stunned at how big it was. Just a short time before, they had all been less than an inch long, crawling in the skin of humanoids in the core. This one now had to be three feet tall, still almost snow-white, but with deadly looking claws and wings tucked against a hard shell.
Clearly, Dr. Lense had been right about the point when they could stop eating.
Another movement caught Geordi’s attention, and he fired on instinct, cutting down a bug as it tried to circle behind them.
“We’re running out of time here!” Gomez shouted.
Geordi agreed, but if the Bynars didn’t buy them the thirty seconds they needed to get to and up that lift, it wouldn’t matter how soon they made a run for it.
Corsi fired, then Vale.
Two more bugs exploded on contact with the phaser beam. The smell of burning chitin filled the area, choking them and making him cough.
Both Bynars turned from the panel at the same instant. They were done.
“Now,” Geordi shouted.
“Everyone to the lift!” Gomez ordered.
But getting to the lift wasn’t going to be easy.
Around them, hell suddenly crawled out of the shadows.
The smell was awful, a cross between a rotted corpse and a sewage treatment area. Geordi cut four, then five bugs down to the right, while Vale covered the left, firing almost constantly.
The two Bynars were firing together, first right, then left, bringing down two bugs at a time.
Gomez and Corsi and Pattie were trying to keep the path clear to the lift.
As a unit they moved, firing and making their way closer and closer to that lift door.
But to Geordi, each second seemed like an eternity.
The bugs just kept coming and coming. Geordi had never seen anything like it. Every step they got closer to the lift brought more bugs at them.
When Corsi and Pattie were within twenty paces of the lift, at least a dozen bugs bunched up right in front of them, seeming to not care if they were cut down.
At that point, Geordi and Vale and the two Bynars were almost on top of Gomez and Corsi and Pattie, forming a circle of defense and firing in all directions at the sea of wasp-crab insects. But Geordi knew that if they got stopped for even a few seconds in one spot, they’d never make that lift. These bugs would think nothing of simply overwhelming them with numbers.
“We have to get through this last group!” Gomez shouted between shots, clearly thinking along the same lines he was.
But the creatures seemed to be pouring in faster than the team could kill them. And there was a pile of dead insectoids forming in front of them, blocking their way to the lift. Going around or over was going to be hard, if not impossible.
The smell of burning insectoids was choking Geordi. If he lived through this, he would never get the smell out of his mind and off his skin.
“Corsi—maneuver 14!” Pattie shouted to Corsi.
“That’s a zero-g move!” Corsi shouted.
“It will work!” Pattie said.
“Cover them!” Gomez shouted.
Pattie flipped into the air, holding two phasers in her top hands, and came down curled into a hard-shelled ball, all six of her legs out of sight.
Almost in the same movement, Corsi had her with both hands and, with a mighty heave, rolled her at the pile of bugs and bug-parts between them and the lift.
Pattie’s hard shell smashed through the bugs like they were tissue paper, sending wasp-like crabs flying everywhere and drilling a path straight to the lift.
As Pattie hit the wall, she uncurled and came up firing, clearing away any bug that was near her.
Geordi and Vale and Gomez covered their flank as the two Bynars and Corsi laid down a constant fire, keeping the bugs back in the cross fire between them and Pattie.
The lift door opened and Pattie blocked it that way with her body, staying low and firing constantly with two phasers.
Geordi figured they just might make it when, suddenly, one of the bugs opened white wings that were under its shell, flapped them for an instant, and then flew at them.
Geordi hit it in flight, but one of its crab-like claws cut Vale across the back, smashing her into the ground.
She was up again almost instantly, but clearly hurt. Even though blood was pouring off her back, she kept firing. She was one tough person, that was for sure.
Corsi and Gomez made the lift and took up covering positions across from Pattie.
Then the Bynars reached the lift and moved to the right of the door, both firing constantly.
Now, more and more of the bugs had unfolded wings and were flying at them.
Geordi shoved Vale into the lift and dove after her.
“Come in low!” Geordi shouted as he and Vale fired high, trying to give the rest cover.
Corsi dove through, then Gomez backed in.
Pattie stepped back to let the Bynars in just as five bugs flew at them at once.
Geordi got one of them.
Vale took another.
Pattie blew another out of the air, and Gomez got the fourth.
But they all missed the other one.
As Geordi watched in horror, one of the bug’s claws cleanly sliced off 111’s head.
110 screamed in terror and moved to help his mate.
Geordi knew instantly there was nothing anyone could do for 111. She was dead.
Corsi grabbed 110, who was immobilized with shock, then tossed him over her shoulder and into the lift.
He scrambled to get up, to get back out to his mate, but Vale smashed him against the wall and held him down.
“Computer, deck fifty!” Gomez yelled.
The doors started to close as even more bugs smashed at them.
The firing was intense until finally the lift doors closed.
It was like slamming the door on hell.
One moment a desperate gun battle, the next silence, utter and complete, broken only by 110’s sudden high-pitched keening, a sound like the death throes of a human computer.
Geordi just stared at the closed door, his phaser ready, expecting the doors to open again on his sure death. But for the longest seconds the doors stayed closed, and just as before, there was no sense of movement in the lifts.
Vale was trying to help the sobbing 110 to his feet when the transporter beam took them.
CHAPTER
15
Gomez stumbled off the transporter pad and tapped her combadge. “Captain, jump to warp and get away from here. Fast!” She reached over the panel and clicked on the screen. The image of the Beast still filled the picture, but it was clear that the da Vinci was moving away quickly.
Suddenly, it seemed as if the skin of the Beast puffed out for a moment.
Then it shrunk back in on itself and imploded in a blinding flash of white light.
A moment later the screen cleared, showing only empty space. Wonderfully empty space.
She let herself lean against the console. Her knees were weak and her eyes felt as if they had had sand thrown in them. She couldn’t believe she was out of that nightmare.
She looked around at her team. Duffy was clearly worried about her, but saying nothing. She would talk to him later, but right now wasn’t the time.
Stevens and Bart both looked shaken, but fine.
Pattie sat on the edge of the platform, her eight arms and legs drooping.
Geordi leaned against the wall, his hands at his sides.
Corsi stood, looking almost lost and in shock.
Vale sat on the floor, holding the Bynar in her lap.
They were all out of the Beast, except one.
She moved over to where Vale was trying to console the sobbing Bynar. Blood was pooled
under her and in her lap from her wounds, and her skin looked white. She needed help and she needed it fast, yet she was trying to help another. Captain Picard had a real jewel in her.
Dr. Lense grabbed Vale and shouted to the transporter technician, “Get Lieutenant Vale and me to sickbay stat.” A moment later the doctor and the wounded officer dematerialized.
Just then, Captain Gold appeared in the door, looking worried and relieved at the same time. Then he saw the lone Bynar and he stopped cold.
“Don’t tell me,” he said.
“We lost one, Captain,” Gomez said softly.
“Damn,” he said, shaking his head, the news clearly hitting him hard.
She didn’t want to let the fact that she had lost someone sink in. Not yet. She knew she couldn’t deny it, but she didn’t want to face it right now.
Geordi put his hand on her shoulder, then said, “Let’s get him to sickbay as well.”
She nodded and took a deep, shuddering breath, then leaned down, pulling the still-sobbing Bynar to his feet.
He looked at her, his eyes hollow and empty. “You should—have let—me go—back. I belong— back there.”
Gomez glanced at the captain, then shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t have. But I am sorry for your loss.”
Geordi moved around to the other side of the Bynar and they managed to get him to the bed beside Vale in sickbay.
An hour later, after trying to scrub the smell off her skin in the shower, she sat across from Captain Gold, a drink in her hand, and tried to tell him what had happened, from her point of view.
He let her ramble, let her get it all out of her system the way she wanted to. The way she needed to.
He knew how to listen as well as give orders. And right now, he was the only one on the ship who understood what she was going through.
On the way back to her cabin, she stopped in sickbay. Both patients were sedated and sleeping. She had lost one team member. She would learn somehow to accept that, but she had gotten the rest out safely, and had stopped who knew how many more from dying if those bugs would have gotten out of that core.
The mission wasn’t a success, but it wasn’t a failure either. They had stopped a menace to the Federation cold—although as Geordi had said, turning an enemy into a friend would have been better. A member of her team had died. More than likely she would lose a second as well, because sometimes Bynar bonded pairs did not survive the death of a mate. Only time would tell, and she was willing to give him that time. She owed him that much.
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