Reap the Whirlwind

Xiong pocketed the wire ball and checked the settings on the transceiver. He needed it to create a field strong enough to contain the blast but small enough that he would be outside its area of effect when he climbed up into the pod’s corner. He made a few adjustments to its subspace field geometry, increased its power output to maximum, and calculated how long it would take the transceiver to power up and generate a subspace field.

The tricky part was that after reactivating the transceiver Xiong needed to be outside its subspace field; he also had to drop the wire ball from the correct height at the proper moment so that it would be inside the subspace field. If he dropped the ball too early, he would have no protection when the sarium krellide detonated; dropped too late, it would bounce off the subspace field—and because he would be unable to pierce the force field himself, he would be unable to shut it off to make a second attempt. If he dropped the ball off-target, he was dead.

He would get only one shot at this. If his math was off, or if his reflexes proved to be either too slow or too jumpy, his day would very soon take a turn for the worst.

Bending forward, he stretched his right arm down and forward toward the transceiver; he held his left arm above the power cell. Clutched in his left hand was the wire ball. Shaking with tension, he aligned his head above the power cell to fix his aim. Anxiety filled his gut with sick sensations.

Here goes.

His finger tapped the transceiver’s power switch.

He pushed off with his left leg, lined up his left hand, and let go of the wire ball. It began to fall in slow motion.

Turning away, he scrambled with his one powered leg and both arms to pull himself up into the corner. Handholds and footholds seemed elusive, his fumbling grasps desperate and clumsy. The top of the pod, which had seemed suffocatingly close this past hour, now seemed far away, unreachable.

A flash of white and a boom like the eruption of a volcano. An impact pi

Water flooded in, boiled into a mad froth, and slammed against Xiong’s pressure suit, setting him afloat. Then he felt the pod pressing on him again, pulling him back down as it sank once more. If it hits bottom and traps me inside, I’ll be stuck for good. He fought his way across the inside of the pod, finding the water as hard to move through as the Tholian atmosphere had been. His gloved hands found the jagged edge of the blasted-open bottom. He pulled himself through the opening and pushed free of the pod. As soon as he was clear it fell away beneath him, swallowed into the night of the ocean bottom.

He was deep enough that he saw no light from the surface, but stray bubbles of gas rising past him showed him, aglow in the light of his helmet, which way to go. Pointing himself upward, he used the forearm controls of his suit to create a slow, steady expulsion of carbon dioxide from his rebreather. Chasing his own escaping waste gas, he ascended swiftly, reassured that the same systems that had protected him aboard the Tholian ship would keep him safe from pressure effects on his journey back to the surface.

Several minutes later he saw the first glimmers of light above, and soon afterward he crested the surface. He checked the passive sensor gauges on the underside of his suit’s forearm. The air tested as breathable and free of toxins; local gravity was just a few tenths of a percent greater than Earth standard. Bobbing along, he powered down the suit’s servos and activated its exchanger to replenish its air tanks from the atmosphere.

The sea was calm beneath a pale sky and sparkling with the peach-colored light of a breaking dawn.

Flotation sequence functioning, he noted with a glance at his gauges. Air supply increasing. So far so good. He lowered the shade on his visor and, confident that he was momentarily out of danger, decided that he’d earned a few hours of rest.

As he drifted off, he murmured to himself with weary sarcasm, “Well…that was fun.”

Theriault shivered awake. Her row of heated rocks had dimmed to a faint reddish hue, and only a faint aura of heat radiated from them. The shafts of amber daylight that had filled the cavern beyond her nook in the wall were gone now. Darkness had fallen.

She was unsure how long she had been asleep, but the fact that the rocks still had some of the heat she had phasered into them told her it could not have been long, perhaps a few hours. Early evening, she figured.

Her teeth chattered, and the flesh on her arms and legs was pimpled from a pervasive chill. She drew her phaser and extended her arm. Steadying her aim was difficult. Holding her breath helped slightly. A few short bursts per stone made them bright orange again, and when she’d finished, their soothing heat enveloped her once more. She tucked the phaser back onto her belt and retreated into the nook, ready to return to sleep.

As she lay basking in the ruddy glow, her thoughts turned to her ship and crewmates, and to her family at home on Mars…then she shuddered awake, fear animating her like an electric current. She was certain that she was not alone.

In the darkness beyond her glowing rocks, she saw only pale ripples of moonlight on the pond, heard only the susurrus of the waterfalls…but there was something else there, something intangible, moving like a breath in the night.

Hyperalert, she sca

Rest, it told her. Your wounds are deeper than you know.

Fear and pain put tremors in her voice. “Who are you?”

Sleep, the great voice said, and this time her body obeyed.

18

Despite being transmitted over a subspace cha

For all of Lugok’s raw volume, Ambassador Jetanien seemed entirely unimpressed. “Ambassador,” the Chelon said with an air of disdainful hauteur, “has it escaped your notice that within hours of your team being attacked, a Starfleet survey team was slaughtered less than a hundred kilometers away? Or that more than three dozen civilian colonists fell victim to an almost identical mass homicide less than fifty kilometers from your people’s own encampment on Gamma Tauri IV?”

“So you claim,” Lugok said. “They could be the victims of an accident. Our people were cut down like beasts!”

Ignoring the instructions she had received from Jetanien before entering his office for the unofficial, “back-cha

“We want your people off that planet!”

Jetanien made some low clucking noises inside his beak. “I’m sure that you do.”

Unfazed, Lugok continued, “We want justice for our dead!”

“What, in your estimation,” Jetanien asked, “would constitute justice under these circumstances, Mr. Ambassador? No, wait. Don’t tell me. Public beheadings? Perhaps something more old-fashioned, like a communal stoning?”