Reap the Whirlwind

14

“Kepler to base,” Ensign O’Halloran said, keeping one eye on the shuttlecraft’s flight controls and the other on the smoke rising from Gamma Tauri IV’s parched landscape.

“Go ahead, Kepler,” replied Commander al-Khaled.

Circling the landing site specified in his orders, O’Halloran reported, “We’re nearing the coordinates now. Lotta smoke down there, sir. Lotsa debris, too.”

“Can you tell what it’s from?”

Squinting against the glare of early morning light low on the horizon, O’Halloran said, “Negative. Not reading any metal, no bodies, no fuel. Doesn’t look like a crash or a battle site.”

“Find a clear spot to put down,” al-Khaled said. “Stand by for dust-off if the survey team gets in trouble.”

Guiding the shuttlecraft into a slow descent, O’Halloran said, “Roger that, base. Putting down in sixty. Kepler out.”

Slouched in the copilot’s seat, Ensign Anderson had one foot propped on the edge of his console and both hands folded behind his head. With a nonchalance that vexed O’Halloran to no end, he said, “What do you think we’re go

“We aren’t go

“Wow, that’s a really boring life choice you’ve made, my friend.” Gesturing at the sunbaked vista outside the cockpit, he added, “For all you know, the mysteries of the universe are down there, waiting to be found, and you’re go

O’Halloran watched the ground slip under the shuttlecraft as he made a banking turn. “I’d love to debate this with you,” he said, “but I’m kind of busy with the landing.”

“That’s your problem—you don’t multitask,” Anderson said.

Engaging the vertical thrusters, O’Halloran replied, “Your problem is you never shut up long enough to think.”

“Of course not,” Anderson said, unfazed. “Thinking too much is what gets you into trouble.”

“No one’s asking you to think too much, Jeff.” O’Halloran leveled the shuttlecraft with the ground. “I just want you try thinking.” He set the craft down with a soft bump and released the rear hatchway. It lowered with a smooth mechanical whine and served as a ramp for the rest of the team to file out of the shuttlecraft. Anderson got up from the copilot’s chair. O’Halloran looked up at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Pointing aft, Anderson said, “To check out the big hole in the ground.” He started walking toward the ramp.

“Sit down,” O’Halloran said.

Flashing a grin over his shoulder, Anderson replied, “You have to outrank someone to give them orders, Bri.”

“Dammit,” O’Halloran muttered. He hurried through the postflight checks and secured the controls. For a moment he hesitated, torn between obeying orders and indulging his curiosity. Knowing he would probably regret it, he got up and followed his a

Lieutenant Donovan Adams led the survey team away from the Kepler, across a dusty plain littered with huge, irregular chunks of blackened glass and fine coal-colored dust. The enormous, jagged obsidian boulders looked as if they had fallen from the sky and embedded themselves in the ground. They radiated intense heat, and smoke wafted from their coating of smoldering resin. All around him, the ground had a scorched quality and stank of cordite.

“No life readings,” he reported, watching his tricorder for any kind of fluctuation. Several meters ahead, the dusty soil sloped down to the edge of a circular pit. Its walls were burned black and coated in what looked like a thick layer of dusky, polished glass. Broad columns of smoke ascended from its depths and mushroomed into the sky. Searing heat stopped him more than five meters from the edge of the abyss, and he backed off. To the rest of the team he said, “It’s too hot to go forward. Fan out around it.”

Ensign Blaise Selby, the team’s geologist, marveled at the data on her own tricorder. “The pit extends all the way down to the power source, Lieutenant. But the crystalline structures inside the pit are inconsistent with this area’s geological profile. That’s volcanic glass, sir, but there’s no volcanic activity here.”

Circumnavigating the pit, Adams noticed that the shuttlecraft pilots had followed the survey team. “What are you two doing out of the shuttle?”

“Uh, we just figured, um, you know, maybe you guys could use help with the, uh, stuff,” stammered the fair-haired one.

Adams stared at them until they took the hint and turned back. Once they began plodding back to the Kepler, he turned his attention to the gaping maw of the inferno that lay before him. He looked to his science officer, Lieutenant sh’Neroth. “What could have made this? Energy beam?”

The Andorian shen shook her head, bobbling her ante

Kattan and Ndufe, the team’s security guards, stayed on opposite sides of the pit, circling it slowly, phasers drawn.

“Let’s run a few more scans,” Adams said. “I want to know if we’ve found a central hub or maybe a node in its defense—”

The jagged black-glass boulders split apart, stood up, and glowed with violet motes of energy inside their shells. The survey team was completely surrounded. At least two dozen of the giants rose from the field of smoke and ashes. Slinging his tricorder and drawing his phaser, Adams yelled to the others, “Get back to the shuttle!”

He made it all of three ru

Adams fumbled for his communicator and flipped it open. “Adams to shuttlecraft! Run! Lift—”

He barely felt the storm of blows that tore him to pieces.

O’Halloran flipped switches and prayed that the main thrusters wouldn’t choose that moment to be temperamental.

Anderson stood at the open aft hatch, firing his phaser at the company of black goliaths advancing on the shuttlecraft. The screech of his weapon was constant, but every time O’Halloran looked back, the obsidian giants were moving faster and getting closer, and the phaser energy seemed to have no effect on them.

The engines thrummed to life, and O’Halloran skipped his preflight check and punched the liftoff thrusters. “Hang on!”

A roar of exhaust shrouded the shuttlecraft in a dust cloud. Anderson kept on firing blindly into the golden haze. The Kepler wobbled and then lurched forward, racing skyward away from the smoldering pit and its dark guardians.

O’Halloran pressed the button to close the aft hatch. He looked back as it shut with a gentle thump.

Anderson sat on the deck, his back against the bulkhead, his left hand clamped over the stump of his right arm, which was missing from a few centimeters below the shoulder. He gri

“Security just finished their sweep of the site,” Gabbert said to al-Khaled. “They found the bodies of the survey team…well, most of them. But no sign of the attackers.”

Commander al-Khaled felt the cold grip of fear inside his stomach. He had seen what one Shedai entity was capable of on Erilon. He didn’t want to imagine the threat posed by dozens of such beings—but if O’Halloran and Anderson’s report was correct, then that’s exactly what was loose on Gamma Tauri IV.