“Yes, go,” Sulu said.
“Captain—”
“No arguments, Ryan,” Sulu said. “I’ll be the last one off the ship.” He had first met Leslie decades ago, when they’d both served under Captain Kirk aboard Enterprise. When Excelsior’s former chief of security, L. J. Akaar, had left the ship a few years earlier to become second officer aboard the Larson-class Kuala Lumpur, Leslie had applied for the vacated position, and Sulu had accepted his transfer from space station KR-1.
“There’s nothing more you can do here,” said the security chief. “The ship is dead. There’s no reason for you to join it.”
“I have no intention of doing so,” Sulu told him. “But I will be the last one off the ship.”
Leslie stared at the captain for almost too long a time, and Sulu wondered if Excelsior’s security chief was considering throwing a punch in an attempt to incapacitate his commanding officer and abduct him from his own ship. But then the commander relented. He ducked through the hatch and into the escape pod. Sulu reached in after him to pull the hatch closed, but Leslie turned to face him before he could do so. “Don’t wait too long, Hikaru,” he said. “Now more than ever, this crew needs its captain.”
Sulu nodded, then shut both hatches. After he dispatched the second pod, he gazed out through the port. Past the bulkheads in which the escape pod had nestled, he saw the long shape of an Excelsior warp nacelle—or part of a nacelle, anyway—tumbling end over end through space, blue gas jetting from a breach in its side. He looked for the rest of the ship, but couldn’t find it. Neither could he see the alien object that had been the cause of the disaster. He did see sunlight gleaming off fragments of debris floating through space, as well as a dozen escape pods. The ship carried fifty of the emergency vehicles, all but five of which could carry twenty-four individuals.
How did this happen so fast? Sulu knew that only a combination of training, experience, and adrenaline prevented him from falling into shock.
The ship shook again, and the captain guessed that something else had exploded somewhere. He raced back along the passage until he found the dedicated control panel that recorded the present status of Excelsior’s escape pods. A chill ran through him as he saw a line of red indicators in one section. ENGINEERING, AFT DORSAL, he read. Five pods had been damaged or couldn’t be launched, but that still left more than enough to evacuate the entire crew. Sulu counted seventeen green indicators, then watched as others changed from yellow to green.
Excelsior shuddered, throwing Sulu against the outer bulkhead. He pushed himself off and went back to the status board. Twenty-five escape pods had launched, he saw. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. He wanted to wait for thirty of the large pods, which, in addition to the two smaller ones that had already left, could, if filled to capacity, evacuate the entire crew.
The ship jolted again, and Sulu crashed once more into a bulkhead. He looked through the port and saw not the blackness of space, but the blues and browns and whites of a planet. But not Rejarris Two, he thought, recalling that world’s complete cloud cover.
At the moment, though, none of that mattered. The ship—or what was left of it—would go down soon. Sulu looked again at the status board and saw that only one more indicator had turned green. He wanted to wait longer, but knew that any more time might be too much time.
The captain rushed down the passage, Excelsior rumbling and shaking about him. He staggered along, thrown left and right. He tripped at one point and went down to one knee—it twisted and exploded in pain—but he shoved himself back up and hobbled on.
When Sulu reached the third escape pod, he stumbled into it, pulling the shipside hatch closed behind him. Once inside, he closed up the pod, then opened the control panel in the bulkhead. He reached in and worked the handle to launch the escape vehicle away from Excelsior.
Nothing happened.
Sulu retracted the handle and then pushed it a second time, and still the pod remained in place. He peered at the control panel and saw a red indicator, signaling that the launch mechanism had failed. With the tremendous damage done to the ship and the amount of wreckage floating around, it didn’t surprise him. The door on the outside of the compartment enclosing the escape pod could have become wedged shut, or if something had penetrated the hull there, the walls around the pod or the tracks on which it accelerated out into space could have become impaired.
Sulu moved to the other side of the hatch and found the panel securing the emergency release. He flipped it open and took hold of the lever inside, but he hesitated. The emergency release would fire explosive bolts on the outside of the pod to propel it out of the ship. If the outer door wouldn’t open, though, or if the compartment wall or the tracks would not allow the escape pod to pass, Sulu could set off explosions that, instead of sending him away from Excelsior to safety, could destroy his only avenue of escape—and him along with it.
Ryan said, “Don’t wait too long,” the captain thought. And I won’t.
Sulu detonated the explosive bolts.
♦ ♦ ♦
Commander Ryan Leslie stood outside the escape pod that had delivered him and three other crew members safely to the surface of Rejarris II.
Except that this planet isn’t Rejarris Two, is it? Leslie thought. According to the gamma-shift bridge crew, the ship had arrived at the planet not long before they’d come on duty. A terrestrial world, Rejarris II revealed itself to be in the aftermath of some cataclysmic event that had left it completely blanketed in thick clouds of particulates. As he peered upward, though, he saw only a few wisps of cirrus clouds interrupting an otherwise-clear expanse of blue sky.
Leslie trusted the Excelsior crew, even the relatively inexperienced officers on gamma shift. Still, he’d taken the time to verify their reports with the beta-shift bridge officers who’d been on duty when the ship had arrived at the second planet in the Rejarris system. It seemed as though the place they’d landed bore only a passing resemblance to the world Excelsior had been orbiting.
Or maybe that’s only what we’ve been led to believe. Leslie had served long enough in Starfleet—more than half a century—to know that the complexities of the universe, not to mention those of the myriad beings who populated it, often made it difficult to draw accurate conclusions about a situation. Aboard Enterprise, Lexington, Ingersol, and Excelsior, he’d visited enough alien worlds to fill a galactic atlas. He’d witnessed shape-shifting creatures perfectly mimicking historical figures, his crewmates, and in one memorable instance, Captain Kirk’s command chair. He’d seen energy beings who could take on any form, a civilization that transformed the thoughts of its visitors into a simulacrum of reality, and even a planet that chased a starship through space. The Talosians could impose an illusion of their choosing on others, the Aegis could hide an entire solar system, and the Tracon could send large populations into long periods of hallucinatory sleep. In any puzzling situation he encountered while out exploring the universe, Leslie rarely considered the deductions that he or anybody else made as conclusive.
Maybe we’re on Rejarris Two or maybe we’re not, the security chief thought, but right now, it has no bearing on what I need to do.
Leslie leaned in to the hatch of the eight-passenger escape pod. Inside, alone, Crewwoman Aaron worked at the small communications panel. “Anything?” the security chief asked.
Aaron looked up, and Leslie saw weariness written in her features. He knew that her exhaustion came not from physical or mental exertions, but from the emotional toll exacted by their abandonment of Excelsior and the ship’s subsequent destruction. Still a young member of the crew, less than a year out of Starfleet Academy, Aaron had likely never endured such a harrowing experience. Despite that, she had maintained her composure during the long journey down to the planet’s surface, and her professionalism shined through as she continued to monitor communications on Leslie’s order.
“Yes, sir,” Aaron said. “Commander Azleya just reported in from escape pod number forty-seven.�
� That emergency vehicle, Leslie knew, launched from the starboard aft section of engineering. “She reports a full complement of twenty-four personnel in her pod.”
“Injuries?” Leslie asked.
“A crewman suffered burns on one leg, and another broke his arm,” Aaron said, “but otherwise, the commander described the rest as superficial wounds. She also states that hers was the last pod to depart the secondary hull.” Leslie would have expected nothing less of Terim Azleya, Excelsior’s chief engineer.
“Where are they now?”
“I’m having problems picking them up on biosensors,” Aaron said, “but the communications range finder puts them one hundred seventy-one kilometers northeast of us. According to Commander Azleya, their homing equipment failed immediately after they launched. She attempted to follow the other escape vehicles visually and correct course manually, but there was only so much she could do after atmospheric insertion. Once she sees to her people’s basic needs, she plans to reset the guidance system and make her way to us.”
“Understood,” Leslie said. Without the ability of Azleya’s pod to automatically track the rest of the escape vehicles, it frankly amazed the security chief that she’d been able to set down within two hundred klicks of them. He tried to let the feat bolster his confidence in the situation, but it did little to allay his immediate concerns. Including Azleya’s, thirty-one escape pods had so far been accounted for on the surface of the planet, carrying a total of six hundred eighty-seven personnel. Reports of the survivors identified a dozen of the crew who had perished aboard Excelsior, leaving thirty-three missing—most notably, First Officer Crajjik and Captain Sulu.
I should never have left without Hikaru, Leslie thought, just as he had numerous times over the last several hours. In his mind, he relived that moment outside the second bridge escape pod, when for a few seconds he had actually considered physically hauling the captain through the hatch and forcibly removing him from Excelsior. But he also knew that he couldn’t fixate on who might not have safely evacuated the ship. Without Sulu and Crajjik around, command fell on Leslie’s shoulders.
“Sir?” With no small amount of discomfort, the security chief realized that Aaron had been speaking to him while he’d been mired in his own thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “What is it?
“I’m detecting what could be a communications signal from another pod, but it’s very weak,” Aaron said. “So far, I haven’t been able to establish a link.”
“Keep trying,” Leslie said. “I’ll check with Lieutenant Carville about it.” Lieutenant J. S. Carville served Excelsior as its lead comm officer. While Aaron worked in one of the eight-passenger pods, Carville manned communications in one of the larger escape vehicles.
“Yes, sir,” said Aaron, and she reached over and handed him a padd. “Here are the details.”
Leslie took the padd. Before he left, he told the young crewwoman, “You’re doing good work.” The statement provoked a tired but seemingly genuine smile.
“Thank you, sir.”
Leslie turned away from the hatch. All around, at unequal distances and in nearly every direction, twenty-nine of the larger pods sat arrayed on an arid plain. With roughly square footprints and about the size of shuttlecraft, the escape vehicles together looked like a collection of rudimentary dwellings scattered haphazardly across the landscape, as though an ad hoc village had sprung up overnight.
Except that our humble lodgings also appear as though they’ve been sitting on the leading edge of a war, Leslie thought. The lower portions of all the hulls had been charred black during their plunge through the atmosphere, and a number of the pods showed scars from where they had collided with debris from Excelsior. And while most of the escape vehicles had landed on level ground, two of them rested unevenly atop some of the boulders littering the area.
Most of the ship’s complement had disembarked, but they largely stayed close to whatever pod had carried them to the planet’s surface. For the most part, they tended to the injured among them, arranged for the dispersal of rations, and aggregated reports from their various shipboard duty sections about what had taken place on the lost Excelsior. Under direct orders from Leslie, some personnel had begun setting up emergency shelters, while others monitored sensors and communications. Automatic distress beacons already broadcast calls for help toward the Federation.
The security chief headed toward the pod emblazoned with a large number 13, which had alit off to the left, at a distance of about seventy-five meters. The dry ground crunched beneath Leslie’s boots as he walked. He hadn’t yet checked, but he thought that the pull of gravity on the planet seemed slightly higher than the artificial field maintained aboard Excelsior.
As Leslie made his way to the pod where Lieutenant Carville monitored communications, some of the crew gazed toward him. He consciously kept his stride sure and unhurried, wanting to sow confidence in his shipmates. After all that they’d endured to that point, and with Captain Sulu and Commander Crajjik still among the missing, doubts and fears could understandably rise in even the most seasoned of Starfleet veterans.
As Leslie reached Carville’s escape pod, Lieutenant Sevol emerged through the open hatch. The ship’s alpha-shift helmsman flipped open a communicator, but then stopped when he saw the security chief. “Commander, I was just stepping outside to contact you,” Sevol said. He closed his communicator and affixed it to the back of his belt. Despite his Vulcan reserve, even he showed visible signs of the strain that the previous few hours had wrought. “Commander Ajax wishes to speak with you.” Josefina Ajax headed Excelsior’s sciences division.
Leslie nodded his acknowledgment, and when Sevol stepped aside, the security chief ducked through the hatch. Inside the pod, several of the ship’s senior staff worked over padds, while Carville crewed the escape vehicle’s communications panel, and Ajax operated the sensors. Everybody glanced up when Leslie entered, and he didn’t need to be a counselor to read the concern on their faces. He knew at once that something else—something bad—had happened.
“Lieutenant,” the security chief said, gazing past the escape vehicle’s built-in seats—arranged in five rows of four—toward the bulkhead opposite. There, to the left of the two pod-control positions, Carville sat before the comm console. Leslie sidled through the twenty clustered seats to the other four. “Aaron has heard from Commander Azleya. She’s landed about two hundred kilometers from here with a full escape pod.”
“That’s excellent news, sir,” Carville said.
“Aaron has also detected what she thinks is a weak comm signal.” Leslie handed the padd to the lieutenant. “She’s recorded the details for you.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll see what I can find.”
Leslie watched Carville study the padd for a moment. Bracing himself, the security chief then turned toward Lieutenant Commander Ajax, who sat on the other side of the pod-control consoles. He paced over to her. “Lieutenant Sevol said you wanted to see me.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, peering up at him from the sensor panel. “As you know, I’ve been scanning for any more of our escape pods. I just found something four hundred ninety-three kilometers south-southeast of our position. I’m reading duranium, rodinium, and titanium.”
“Hull materials,” Leslie noted.
“Aye,” Ajax said quietly. “But if what the sensors are detecting was one of our escape vehicles, it’s no longer intact.”
Ever since leaving Excelsior without Captain Sulu, Leslie had tried to convince himself that he hadn’t made a mistake, that his commanding officer had abandoned ship before the vessel had been completely destroyed. And maybe he did succeed in getting away from Excelsior in time, he thought, but what difference does that make if his pod crashed?
“Life signs?” Leslie asked, his voice falling almost to a whisper. He dreaded the answer he would receive.
“None, sir.”
Equal measures of grief and guilt inundated the security chief. H
e had known Hikaru Sulu for such a long time, he considered him more than a commanding officer; they had become friends. And I failed him on both counts.
Leslie struggled not to show any outward response to those members of the crew present. Instead, he announced that he would reconfigure one of the pods and send a team to investigate the apparent crash site. He waited while Ajax transferred the details to a data card, which she then handed to him. “Keep searching,” Leslie said, and then he headed back toward the hatch.
Outside, the security chief saw that Lieutenant Sevol had moved away from the escape pod. He stood thirty or so paces away, where he spoke with Ensign Frisch, one of the ship’s transporter operators. Neither of the two men seemed to notice Leslie, for which he felt grateful. The security chief stepped to the side of the hatch and took a moment to collect himself. He might’ve failed Captain Sulu, but he would not fail the Excelsior crew. More responsibility had fallen to him at that instant than he’d ever had before, and he recommitted himself to living up to it.
Leslie took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He started toward Sevol, whom he would task with modifying one of the pods and checking the readings that Ajax had found. He had only taken a few steps when a small boulder not far from the helmsman thrust upward and toppled onto its side. With stunning speed, a black, many-legged creature climbed from the hole that had been revealed. Even as Leslie reached for his phaser, the grotesque beast charged toward Sevol and Frisch. The security chief raised his weapon and fired, his instincts and training working flawlessly, but still too late. The creature slammed into the two officers, sending Frisch sprawling onto the dirt. It then took hold of Sevol with several of its many limbs, lifting the helmsman from the ground.
As Leslie raced toward the two officers, red-tinged golden fire streaking from his phaser, more movement captured his attention. He looked away once, quickly, even as he continued forward. “Phasers!” he called out to any Excelsior personnel within earshot, and then, “Close the hatches!” It horrified him as he realized how many of the crew remained outside the escape pods.
Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star Page 17
