What Judgments Come

Though he reached for the intercom to reply, al-Khaled was stopped when he and Xiong heard the simple response from Commander zh’Rhun.

“No.”

The bulkheads and deck plates shuddered around them as the compartment was rocked by a series of muffled explosions, and instinct made Xiong reach toward the nearby wall for support. “What was that?” he asked, before realizing what it must be, and he looked to the control panel to see a large indicator glowing bright yellow and illuminating the words SEPARATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

“Damn it!” al-Khaled said, looking from the console to the hatch and back again as he processed what was happening. “Bridge!” he called to the intercom, “zh’Rhun and Davis are still over there! Can you lock onto them with transporters?”

There was a pause—slight but there nonetheless—before Okagawa replied.

“It’s too late.”

Everyone on the Lovell’s compact bridge sat in stu

“Dear God” was all the captain could muster as he stood, transfixed. On the screen was the image of the Lovell’s secondary hull, pushed away by the force of the explosive bolts responsible for separating it from the rest of the vessel. It had begun to tumble in response to other forces being inflicted upon it, and though the image offered no sound, it was not hard for Okagawa to imagine the shriek of twisted metal as strips and chunks of hull plating were ripped with stu

“Shields up,” he snapped, allowing his anger at what had been inflicted upon his ship and crew to seep into his voice. “Target all weapons on that thing and prepare to fire.” Before his order was acknowledged, he saw the black mass on the screen lunge out of the debris field it had created. At the same time, another alarm wailed across the bridge.

“Proximity alert,” reported his weapons officer, Lieutenant Jessica Diamond. “It’s coming straight at us!”

The next instant, the Lovell trembled and the image on the main viewscreen scrambled and flashed blue as something impacted against the ship’s deflector shields. This prompted yet another alarm, which Okagawa ordered silenced. “Fire!” he shouted.

“I can’t get a lock,” Diamond called out. “It’s too close!” Then her voice seemed to raise an octave as she added, “Shields are failing!”

Feeling powerless as he watched the black form spread and expand to fill the viewscreen, Okagawa felt the ship quake around him as the Shedai broke through the deflector shields and slammed itself into the Lovell’s hull. The deck lurched beneath his feet, and he stumbled backward and fell against the side of his chair. Multiple alarms erupted around the bridge and Okagawa saw status indicators at different stations begin to flash bright red. Somewhere beyond the ship’s multiple layers of hull plating, he heard the unmistakable groans and shrieks of metal being torn asunder.

“Multiple breaches across the front of the hull!” Diamond shouted from where she was holding on to the edge of her console in order to remain on her feet.

“Evacuate those sections!” Okagawa ordered. As he tried to figure out how many seconds remained before the Shedai punctured the hull, the captain realized he had one last card to play: the self-destruct protocol. Would it be enough to take the Shedai with them? There was only one way to find out, but only if the alien granted him the time needed to carry out the last-ditch act.

One way to find that out, too.

Another indicator tone sounded from Diamond’s station, and the weapons officer said, “Captain! It’s the Sagittarius!”

Before Okagawa could respond to that, the image on the viewscreen shifted yet again, and this time the Shedai seemed to be reacting to something. It jerked violently, pulling itself away so that stars along with the wreckage of the Lovell’s engineering hull once again were visible. Then bright blue beams cut across the screen, striking the Shedai and sending it tumbling away from view.

“Track it!” Okagawa snapped, and the image shifted to maintain the Shedai at its center as it continued to writhe from the assault on it. The phaser beams were hitting it in rapid succession now, strike after strike, with each blow inflicting noticeable distress on the entity. “Fire all weapons!” he ordered. At the helm, Sasha Rodriguez stabbed at her weapons controls and the Lovell’s phasers joined the fray. Like those of the Sagittarius, the Lovell’s phasers had been retuned in accordance with specifications provided by the small scout vessel’s chief engineer. According to Captain Nassir, the refinements had been developed after the Sagittarius’s encounter with a Shedai on Jinoteur IV. Whatever the engineer had devised, it seemed to be working.

“It’s weakening!” Diamond shouted, but then added, “Some, that is, but the phasers are having an effect.”

“Maintain firing,” Okagawa ordered, taking a small bit of un-wonted satisfaction each time a phaser strike impacted against the Shedai’s body.

Then, the Shedai disappeared. There was no flash or explosion; it simply was gone.

“What the hell just happened?” Okagawa asked, not turning from the screen as he searched for some signs of the entity.

“I don’t know, sir,” Diamond replied, and the captain heard the confusion in her voice. “It’s just gone.” She tapped several controls on her console before looking up from her station. “I think it fled, sir.”

Frowning, he turned to regard his science officer. “Fled?”

Diamond nodded. “Yes, sir. Sensors did detect its departure from the system, but it was moving so fast there was no way to track it.” She glanced toward the viewscreen before returning her gaze to Okagawa. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Waving away her apology, Okagawa returned his attention to the viewscreen. “Nothing you could have done, Lieutenant.” After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder toward the communications station. “Ensign Pzial, hail the Sagittarius and offer Captain Nassir my thanks, and tell him to let his chief engineer know that he is one talented bastard. I’d love to have him if he wants to jump ship.”

For whatever’s left of this one.

The thought was enough to redirect his gaze to the screen, where the expanding cloud of debris that had been the Lovell’s secondary hull drifted. His mind turned to questions of the being that had caused such destruction. Where had the Shedai gone? More important, when would it be back? Okagawa did not know, and answers likely would not be forthcoming today. For now, there were more important things to do, such as pausing to reflect and appreciate Araev zh’Rhun and Kurt Davis, who had given their lives in order to save their shipmates.

“Thank you,” Okagawa whispered.

37

Free!

The Shedai Wanderer drove herself deeper into the void, away from the Telinaruul and her cursed prison. She felt nothing but the boundless energies of the cosmos itself. The weakness and pain inflicted by the Telinaruul weapons was already begi