Reap the Whirlwind

Tonar called out, “Two hundred thousand qelIqams.”

“Fire torpedoes,” Kutal ordered. The ship echoed with the percussive ring of missiles leaving the forward torpedo tube. Six self-propelled munitions split up and tracked the Starfleet ship in wide, spiraling trails that skimmed the fourth planet’s upper atmosphere, leaving wispy contrails in their wakes. When all six torpedoes flanked the enemy ship, they detonated, enveloping the outrider in an antimatter-charged blaze.

“Now disruptors,” Kutal said, smiling broadly. “Let’s see what it takes to make them surrender.”

“Port shields buckling,” Sorak reported, sounding to McLellan as if he thought it was just any other item of business.

Smoke and warning lights blanketed the bridge of the Sagittarius in crimson fog. McLellan could barely see her hands on the console in front of her, but the warning lights on her display burned bright through the haze. “Port nacelle’s venting plasma!” she shouted above the wail of engine noise. Disruptor fire from the massive Klingon battle cruiser strafed the Sagittarius, which heaved and lurched as its inertial dampeners stuttered from the overload. “Update,” she added. “Port nacelle is on fire.”

“Sayna,” Nassir said over the din, “get us out of the atmosphere. Head for the closest moon, and hug the surface.”

“Aye, sir,” zh’Firro replied, banking the overtaxed scout ship hard away from the planet.

A warning beeped on Sorak’s console. “They’re locking disruptors—”

“I don’t think so,” zh’Firro said, her competitive streak in full effect. The starfield spun into a blur as she executed a maneuver so swift and complex that McLellan lost track of their position—until she saw the Klingon cruiser dead ahead of them, on a collision course. Its twin disruptor beams slashed past them, barely missing the Sagittarius. Then the scout ship zipped beneath the Zin’za and raced away from it as the larger vessel fought to make a clumsy rolling turn and continue its pursuit.

Xiong stood over the science station—or, at least, what was left of it now that he had extinguished the fire in its duotronic relays. He kicked the access panel shut and set down the emergency fire extinguisher. “Primary sensors are gone,” he said, crossing the bridge. “I’ll fire up the secondary.”

Sorak spoke over his shoulder, “The Klingon cruiser has come about and is back in pursuit. Range two hundred thousand kilometers and closing.”

McLellan got up from the engineering console and favored her left leg as she moved to stand beside Captain Nassir. “Ming,” she said, “look for structures on the moons we can use for cover, and relay the data to Sayna.”

“You got it,” Xiong said, patching in all of the ship’s still-functioning sensor systems.

Nassir swiveled his chair toward Sorak. “Any sign they’ve detected the Rocinante?”

“Negative, Captain,” Sorak replied. “We appear to be their sole object of interest.”

The captain smirked ruefully at McLellan and confided, “I guess that’s the bad news and the good news.”

McLellan replied, “Vulcans are very efficient, sir.”

“And we have excellent hearing,” Sorak added with a reproving lift of one age-whitened eyebrow. “Range one hundred thousand kilometers and closing. They are locking disruptors.”

Another pinwheeling turn turned stars to streaks. Then McLellan was looking at the pockmarked gray landscape of an airless moon. Reddish-orange beams of disruptor energy coursed past the Sagittarius and cut long, charred streaks across the moon’s surface. As they leveled out of their vertical dive, the hard angles and tailored curves of artificial structures came into view ahead of them. Though there were gaps in the dense array of towers and artillery emplacements, McLellan couldn’t imagine that any of them were large enough to grant passage to a starship, even one as compact as the Sagittarius.

“Please tell me we’re not—”

“Yes, we are,” zh’Firro said, cutting her off. “You might want to close your eyes, though.” At that, the young zhen guided the ship into a slow roll and started navigating through a narrow maze of rock-hard surfaces in which one error would spell instantaneous destruction.

McLellan wanted to shut her eyes, but morbid fascination made that completely impossible.

Even at one-eighth impulse, the obstacles and surfaces were nothing more to the second officer’s eyes than a pale gray blur, then a sun-bleached white blur. Every few seconds a close disruptor shot peppered the Sagittarius with rocky debris. Undaunted, zh’Firro rolled and banked the ship, slipping it through walls of fire and evading barriers of broken stone.

Then she noted with trepidation, “Captain, we’re about to run out of cover.”

Nassir asked, “Can we double back?”

“We had disruptors on our tail the whole time,” Xiong said.

“That was a one-way trip.”

The ship streaked back into open space above the surface of the moon and was immediately rocked by a powerful disruptor shot. McLellan was launched forward and down, and her right leg, already stiff, buckled under her.

“Dorsal shields collapsing, Captain,” Sorak said.

“Continuing evasive maneuvers,” zh’Firro said.

The captain jabbed at the intraship comm. “Bridge to top deck. We need warp speed, Master Chief!”

“And I need to fix the valve on that crappy fuel pod!” Ilucci snapped back in reply.

Nassir thumbed off the comm switch and looked at McLellan, who had just pulled herself back to her feet by his side. Three more disruptor strikes pounded the ship in quick succession. This time McLellan held on to the captain’s chair for support as the ship pitched and rolled.

“Clark usually has a bright idea right about now,” Nassir confided to McLellan.

A nearby torpedo detonation hammered the Sagittarius, and Sorak barely leaped clear of the weapons console as it exploded, showering the bridge with brilliant sparks.

Xiong looked up from the auxiliary science station. “The Klingons are in transporter range.”

“They won’t begin transport until they have us in a tractor beam,” Sorak interjected.

McLellan wasn’t encouraged by that news. She looked at Xiong. “How long until they’re in tractor-beam range?”

“Sixty seconds,” he said. “Maybe less.”

Nassir nodded. “Just enough time.”

Not sure she wanted to know, McLellan asked, “For what?”

“To brush up on our tlhIngan,” Nassir said with a smirk. “I don’t suppose you know the Klingon word for ‘mother,’ by any chance? I want to make a strong first impression.”

Pe

Theriault pointed. “This way!”

He followed her down an adjacent passage that led back outside. Groundquakes were disintegrating the city’s foundation and pulverizing its lofty arches. In every direction they turned, tu

The passageway rolled to the left, hurling them both against the wall. Ahead of them, the end of the passage broke away from the promenade that ringed the building’s exterior. A jagged edge of broken rock began to rise, blocking the end of the tu

He reached the edge first and kneeled, offering his cupped hands as a step for Theriault. She leaped onto his hands and pushed off of his shoulders as he launched her through the narrow opening above him. The nimble ensign tumbled and rolled to her feet. He leaped up, counting on her to return the favor as he scrambled to pull himself through the gap before it scissored him in twain. She didn’t disappoint him: her hands locked onto his arms with fierce determination, and she tugged him clear.