Summon the Thunder

She could tell by the look on his face that Okagawa was not pleased with that notion, and could sympathize. Like her, he had people on the surface and had no desire to leave them unprotected. That worry had to be waging with his obligation to follow her instructions, as she was the on-site commander of the current operation.

“ Very well,”he said after a moment, his expression belying his apparent willingness to concede to her judgment. “ My people are continuing to study those power readings. Now that we’ve got some fresh information to work with, they might be able to tell us more about this supposed link between the different locations.”

“Keep on that, Daniel,” Khatami answered before offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “We’ll take care of the nasty stuff if necessary.”

A warning alarm from the science station made her turn her head in time to see Klisiewicz rising from his chair and moving to peer into the console’s hooded sensor viewer. “Captain,” he said without looking away from the viewer, “power readings are approaching pre-firing temperatures.”

“Reroute power from nonessential systems to the shields,” Khatami ordered. “Plot firing solutions on those locations and stand by photon torpedoes.”

The previous attack had come with such speed and fury that there had been time to do nothing save tuck tail and scamper for safety. That would not happen this time, Khatami vowed, not while she still had people in harm’s way down on the planet’s surface. She would leave no one behind, not now, not ever again.

“I think we’re in trouble.”

The temperature inside the control chamber was now almost on par with the standard environment aboard ship. Xiong had long since abandoned his parka and sweat ran down the sides of his face as he and al-Khaled worked. Holding a tricorder, the lieutenant adjusted the device’s settings while using it to scan their surroundings. “Power levels are increasing,” he reported after a moment. It had been a simple matter to detect the activation of the mysterious power source buried somewhere deep beneath their present location. Even though the tricorder had picked up power signatures activating at scattered points throughout the ancient structure, none of the consoles in this chamber had been affected by this new development, much to Xiong’s disappointment.

He turned at the sound of al-Khaled’s communicator beeping for attention, and he looked over as the engineer retrieved the device from his belt and with a flick of his wrist flipped the unit’s cover open. “Al-Khaled here.”

“ This is Commander zh’Rhun,”said the voice of the Lovell’s first officer, who at the moment was overseeing the reconstruction of the outpost’s main camp. “ Power readings from the other sites of those weapons emplacements are coming online, Lieutenant. I want your location evacuated and everyone transported up on the double.”

Al-Khaled already had informed the commander upon Xiong’s detection of the sudden activation of power sources deep beneath their own location. Zh’Rhun had allowed them to stay on site despite her misgivings over the new development, but Xiong knew that their grace period now had expired.

“We have to stay,” Xiong protested anyway, waving his arms to indicate the banks of dormant control consoles. “Our defensive measures are in place, and this could be our only chance to see this equipment in operation.”

Members of al-Khaled’s Corps of Engineers team were at this moment working less than thirty meters from where he stood, farther down the corridor that—like this chamber—had been carved with mathematical precision from the solid rock. In addition to the forcefield generators they already were in the process of deploying, the engineers also were setting up emitters for what they hoped would be a power generator capable of producing a dampening field to disrupt any communications signals detected between this location and other points across the planet. Sooner or later, Xiong surmised, they would have to test that equipment, and despite the fear gnawing at his gut as he remembered what happened here the last time he faced attack, he knew that now was as good a time as any.

“ I’m not ready to try those forcefields with live test subjects, Lieutenant,”zh’Rhun replied, her tone terse, “ and we have no way of knowing if the dampening field will have any effect at all.” Though he had met the Andorian officer for the first time only during the Lovell’s transit to Erilon from Vanguard, that initial encounter was enough to tell him that the commander was unaccustomed to having her orders questioned. “ Get to the surface and call for beam-out. I want everyone out of there right now.”

Xiong was tempted to argue the point but never got the chance as al-Khaled replied, “Understood, Commander. We’re leaving now. Al-Khaled out.” Closing the communicator and returning it to his belt, he regarded Xiong with a resigned expression. “You heard the boss, Ming. Let’s get our people.”

Whatever dissatisfaction Xiong harbored vanished, however, at the sound of his still-active tricorder emitting an alert tone. Holding up the device to inspect its miniaturized display, his eyes widened even as he felt his pulse quicken.

“I’ve got something new here,” he said. “Proximity sensors have detected three unidentified life-forms. They weren’t there a minute ago.”

“Transporter?” al-Khaled asked.

Xiong shook his head. “No transporter signature. One second nothing, the next there they are. Two are on the surface, heading for the base camp.”

The engineer frowned. “Where’s the third?” he asked, his right hand drifting to rest atop the Type-II phaser he wore on his hip.

“Fifty-seven meters below us,” Xiong replied, his jaw clamping in confusion at what the tricorder was telling him. “This doesn’t make any sense. According to these readings, that should be solid rock.”

“Or something designed to present the appearance of solid rock,” al-Khaled said, turning to run from the chamber into the corridor beyond. “Come on!”

Xiong followed after his companion as al-Khaled sprinted into the underground passageway to where two members of his engineering team, a Denobulan female and a human male, crouched near a piece of bulky equipment. Xiong recognized it as the main component for a portable forcefield emitter, one side panel of which lay open to expose its internal mechanisms. The Denobulan—an ensign named Ghrex, according to the nametag embossed over the right breast of her red utility jumpsuit—looked up at al-Khaled’s approach.

“Are the forcefields ready to go?” he called out.

Ghrex nodded. “We know,” she said as she returned her attention to her task. “We picked up the life-form.”

“We need thirty seconds,” added the other engineer, whose nametag identified him as Ensign O’Halloran.

As if in reply, the corridor around them rumbled as though gripped in a single intense, monotonous drone. The vibrations ran through everything—the walls, the equipment, even the tricorder Xiong still carried in his left hand.

“That can’t be good,” al-Khaled said.

Ru

“Time to go, people,” Diamond called out as she approached them. Unlike her two subordinates’, her breathing seemed unaffected by her exertion, even though Xiong knew the trio had to have run the hundred or so meters from the entrance to the underground compound.