Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star

by David R. George III

  “What happened?” Young called out over the blaring alarm. He sounded dazed.

  “Proximity alert,” Sulu yelled back, though she knew that didn’t answer the question. She crawled out of her bedroll and pulled herself up the deck, improvising handholds along the bulkhead. When she reached the main console, she perched on the front edge of one of the two seats there, both of which had been fixed in place.

  Sulu deactivated the alert, bringing welcome silence down around them—except that, as she searched for both the cause of the alarm and whatever had thrown the shuttlecraft about, she heard other, gentler sounds. A patter almost like a light rain trickled down on the hull of Amundsen at various points. Stressed metal occasionally offered a low groan. Another sound, a scraping sort of a noise, but deeper, seemed to translate through the hull as though from far away.

  The captain looked through the front viewport and made out broken walls of earth all around. She pushed herself forward so that she could peer straight up, where she saw a scrap of dawn sky just visible perhaps ten or so meters above the shuttlecraft. “The ground collapsed beneath us,” she told Kostas and Young. When they had halted their explorations of the planet the previous night, they had set down on the edge of a desert. “Amundsen fell into a sinkhole, or maybe a cave system.” As she gazed upward through the port, a drift of dirt sprinkled down against it, explaining the rainlike noise she heard.

  Something moved up above, blotting out the small patch of sky, and an instant later, a great, dark form landed on the ground before the viewport. Sulu recoiled, and she heard one of the ensigns cry out in surprise behind her. Two large oval eyes stared into the shuttlecraft from a triangular head that swayed from side to side at the end of a long, serpentine neck. The many-legged bulk of the creature filled the port.

  For a strangely quiet moment, the fearsome beast did nothing but look into the cabin. Sulu remained still, but in her mind, she visualized the console before her, marking the locations of the controls she needed. The shuttlecraft carried no armaments and possessed no real defenses beyond a navigational deflector and a force field for the hull. She hoped the latter would be enough for her purposes.

  When the creature jerked its head back and raised its spiked front appendage high, Sulu knew what would come next. She looked down at the main console, thrust her hands across the control surfaces to activate and intensify the force field around the hull, then threw her arms up to protect her head. The creature’s appendage slammed into the viewport with staggering power. The creature uttered a short, low howl, but it didn’t move away.

  Instead, it reared its front appendage back and drove it once more into the port. Sulu reached for the helm controls, but then the shuttlecraft moved, the aft end slipping backward and the bow crashing down. The captain fell forward. Her head struck the console. She wiped her hand across her hairline, and her fingers came away streaked with blood.

  Ignoring her injury, Sulu glanced up through the port. The shuttlecraft had leveled off, but she could no longer see the sky. She didn’t know if she could maneuver Amundsen up and out of the pit into which it had been dropped, but she would try. Her head throbbed as she worked the helm controls. The drive rumbled to life, its steady thrum undoubtedly magnified and quavered by the surrounding earth and stone. She directed the shuttlecraft to rise, and it did, but not even a meter at best.

  Beside her, Kostas threw herself down into the cockpit’s second seat. “I’m on sensors,” she said, her voice strong, if not completely steady.

  Sulu pushed the shuttlecraft, trying to force it upward. It didn’t move. The drive moaned in response.

  “We’re eleven-point-two meters beneath the surface,” Kostas said. “We’re in what looks like a chamber that’s been hollowed out. It’s barely larger than the shuttlecraft. There’s almost no room to maneuver, and virtually no space at all above the bow. It also looks like several boulders have fallen into the hole after us.”

  Blocking our escape route, Sulu thought but didn’t say.

  Amundsen rocked again. Sulu peered through the port. The dark hulk of the creature that had already assaulted the shuttlecraft moved in the shadows up ahead, but it had not attacked again. That meant that a second had joined the first.

  As though to confirm her inference, something thumped above the rear of the shuttlecraft, which shook once more. “How many?” she asked Kostas. “How many of those things are out there?”

  “I’m having trouble isolating life signs,” the ensign said. “Actinides in the rocks are interfering with biosensors.”

  “Check for movement,” Sulu said, raising her voice as another blow rained down on the roof at the aft end of the shuttlecraft. The force field around the hull appeared to prove no impediment whatsoever to the creatures.

  Kostas jabbed at her controls. “One in front, one behind . . . there may be two on top of the shuttlecraft . . . and I’m reading more movement coming down the hole.”

  Five of the creatures! Sulu thought, recalling well how it had required two phasers set to kill to bring even one of them down.

  The creature in front of the shuttle charged. It rammed into the viewport at speed, turning to the side at the last instant and sending the mass of its cylindrical body against the transparent pane. To Sulu’s horror, a jagged crack formed.

  “The force fields aren’t stopping them,” Kostas said, even as another thunderous noise resounded atop Amundsen.

  Up ahead, the creature scuttled backward, and Sulu knew that it would storm the shuttlecraft again. Amundsen shuddered before it did, attacked that time from the rear. “They’re pounding the shuttle on three sides: fore, aft, and overhead,” Kostas said.

  “Brace yourselves,” Sulu called out. She operated the helm again, and the shuttlecraft surged forward. The bow struck the creature in front of them and smashed it against boulders at the side of the hole. Amundsen crashed to a halt, throwing Sulu and Kostas up against the console. The creature issued a piercing wail, and when Sulu pushed herself back into her chair, she saw trails of a syrupy violet ichor running down the cracked viewport. Several of the creature’s mangled limbs twitched, but its head lolled on its long neck at a sickening angle.

  Sulu worked the helm, trying again to fly Amundsen up and out of where it had fallen. The drive yowled as it attempted to translate power into velocity, but the shuttlecraft didn’t move. Sulu changed tactics, reversing course. Amundsen surged backward, until it could move no more, slamming to a stop. She heard the rasping cry of another creature as a string of indicator lights on her panel flashed red. The drive sounded in one moment as though it might explode, but in the next, it cycled down with a whine.

  That’s two of them down, Sulu thought. “Movement?” she asked.

  “Checking,” Kostas said. Sulu saw the ensign’s hands trembling as she tried to cull information from the sensors. “The creature in front of the shuttlecraft isn’t moving, and neither is the one behind. There’s motion partway down the hole—”

  Two massive blows struck Amundsen from above. Sulu looked back and saw dents in the overhead. She also saw that Ensign Young had gathered phaser pistols. “Two per person,” Sulu told him, and he turned and picked up three more weapons. He darted to the front of the cabin and handed two each to the captain and Kostas.

  Another set of blows beat down on the shuttlecraft. Small cracks appeared in the overhead. The creatures continued pounding the hull. “Set phasers to kill,” Sulu said, adjusting both of her weapons.

  Amundsen quaked again and again. In one aft corner of the cabin, just above Sulu’s bedroll, a flap of the overhead peeled away from the bulkheads and bent downward. A rank odor spilled into the shuttlecraft.

  More blows struck the roof, and the flap of the overhead bent down farther, opening up a larger whole. Sulu saw the black tip of a creature’s leg for an instant as it worked to give itself access to its prospective next meal. Sulu raised both her weapons. “Ready,” she quietly told her crew.

  Suddenly, the
pounding on the roof of the shuttlecraft stopped. Kostas cocked her head to one side, listening intently. “What—”

  The creature moved with amazing swiftness. It folded its legs through the hole it had opened in the shuttlecraft, pulling its body through until it stood there, facing them, a malevolent force bent on killing. It moved like a swarm, its many limbs and joints a sea of motion. Its triangular head swayed on its long, twisting neck, its outsize eyes cold and menacing. It was larger than the one that had attacked Ensign Young.

  “Fire!” the captain yelled as she depressed the activation pads on the grips of her phasers.

  Six reddish yellow beams streaked into the creature, the high-pitched keens of the weapons loud in the enclosed space, the heat produced by them immediately noticeable. The creature charged through the phaser fire. One of its legs jammed into Sulu’s chest, pushing her backward into the main console. The beams of her phasers veered wildly, and she saw one strike the aft bulkhead. She stopped firing.

  The creature’s spiked front appendage swung through the air, missing her face by mere centimeters, but then she heard Kostas cry out next to her. The creature’s body loomed over her. Sulu brought her hands up and pushed the emitter ends of her phasers against it. She fired.

  The creature bellowed, its cry a mixture of shock and pain. It fell back. Sulu glanced to her side and saw Kostas down on the deck, blood spilling from a deep cut in the right side of her face, from ear to mouth.

  “Keep firing!” she told Young, who had dropped his phasers to his sides. He raised them again and sent directed energy into the creature.

  Sulu kneeled down beside Kostas, who moaned in agony. She had lifted her hand up to her face. Blood flowed between her fingers. Sulu desperately looked about for anything she could use to stem the bleeding. One of the bedrolls lay just a meter away, and she scurried forward on her hands and knees to grab it, aware of the phaser beams shooting not that far above her.

  The captain grabbed the bedroll and pulled it over to Kostas. Sulu set down her phasers and bunched the fabric in one hand. With the other, she lifted the ensign’s hand away from her face, pushed the bedroll against her wound, then let Kostas hold the makeshift bandage in place.

  Sulu quickly retrieved her weapons, crawled away, and stood back up. Even as the beams of Young’s phasers blasted the creature, it lurched forward. Two of its legs suddenly stabbed toward the ensign, knocking the phasers from his hands as he was thrown against the bulkhead. He fell to the floor, unmoving. With no phasers firing, a momentary, deathly silence enveloped the shuttlecraft.

  The creature swung its neck down, bringing it face-to-face with Sulu. The captain couldn’t tell what she saw in its eyes. Anger and pain, certainly, but did she see some level of understanding as well? Or was that simple hunger? She didn’t know, and at that moment, she didn’t care.

  Sulu brought both arms up and fired point blank into the creature’s head. It shrieked and tottered backward, seeming to try to stay on its feet. Sulu continued firing. The smell of singed flesh filled Amundsen like a noxious fog.

  At last, the creature collapsed. Another stood behind it.

  Sulu redirected her aim, but too late. The second creature—The fourth, Sulu told herself, with another coming down the hole—raced across the crumpled body of the first and thrust its front appendage at her. Sulu felt the impact, but she was surprised when she wasn’t thrown backward by the blow. She looked down and saw the creature’s appendage sticking into her abdomen. She knew that in the next moment, it would pull the barbed tip back out of her body, eviscerating her. With almost no thoughts and no hope, Sulu placed her phaser against the appendage and squeezed the activator pad. The limb exploded in a hail of burned flesh and blood.

  Sulu tried to fire again, even as she heard the welcome whine of more phasers. Kostas! she thought, realizing that the ensign must have found the determination and strength to find her weapon and shoot, though all of that seemed very far away, at the end of some hazy tunnel. Sulu could no longer stand, and she dropped to her knees, then fell down onto her side.

  Her breathing grew shallow, and she felt cold sweat streaming down her face. Pain like nothing she had ever felt radiated up from her midsection, but like her conscious mind, it seemed to fade with each passing second. With her head against the deck and her eyes focused on the space just before her, she could not see the battle, but she still heard it. Phasers firing, roars from the creature. It seemed to go on for a long time, but she knew that she could no longer trust her perceptions. Still, even in extremis, it pleased her to hear the sounds of her crew’s weapons. It meant that they yet survived, and even if Sulu herself wouldn’t, it gave her hope. She held on to her certainty that the Enterprise crew would find a way to reenergize the portal and reestablish contact with Kostas and Young. And even if Linojj and the crew couldn’t figure out a means of bringing the two ensigns back, Sulu thought she knew how it could be done.

  And it needs to be done, Sulu thought. I don’t want Kostas and Young just to survive; I want them to live. For that, she knew, they would have to return home.

  Time seemed to take on a malleable quality. Sulu didn’t know if seconds or minutes or even hours passed. Her consciousness brightened and darkened, something that felt no longer anchored to reality. She tried to refocus, and she saw Ensign Young across the cabin from her, propped up against the bulkhead. A phaser lay on the deck beside his open hand, which was covered in blood. Beside him, a tangle of legs and viscera and violet ichor brought bile into Sulu’s throat. She closed her eyes against the image.

  Sounds of movement drifted to her in the self-imposed darkness. She remembered that Kostas had counted five creatures: one in front of the shuttlecraft, one in back, and two atop it, with one descending down into the hole. Sulu opened her eyes and looked for her phaser. Though she could not move her head, she hoped she could find the strength to take her weapon in hand one final time. If she could do anything to prevent it, she would not die as some nightmarish creature’s meal, even if that meant finishing her life by her own hand. She had faced similar choices before, and had made similar decisions.

  “Captain,” she heard a voice call, though it sounded like neither Kostas nor Young. Across the cabin, the creature she’d believed dead began to move, which sent a chill through her failing body, but then she saw legs—humanoid legs in a Starfleet uniform—pushing past the remains. “Here, Captain.”

  Yes, I’m here, she thought, but not for long. But she rejoiced. The Enterprise crew must have restored power to the portal and then found a way to make it function in both directions. They had come to bring Sulu and her crewmates back home—too late for Sulu, but that no longer mattered to her. What mattered was that Kostas and Young would be saved.

  A face suddenly filled Sulu’s vision. She didn’t recognize it. Am I wrong? she asked herself. Is this not my crew? Is this some other lost crew—maybe that of Excelsior?

  “Captain, it’s all right,” the man said. “Help is on the way.” He looked away, then pointed somewhere. “There,” he said, though not to Sulu. When he peered back at her, he said, “Hang on, Captain.”

  She didn’t think she could. She closed her eyes again, waiting for death. Then somebody else said something to her in a voice she hadn’t heard in a long time, but she knew it at once. She opened her eyes again.

  Her father looked back at her, his eyes filled with tears. “I’m here, honey,” he said. “Stay with me.”

  “Lost,” Demora said—or tried to say. The word came out in a spray of blood. “You’re still lost.” Barely a whisper, but she saw that her father had heard her.

  “Yes, I’m still lost,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about that, but first we need to get you better.” He turned away from her and raised his voice. “Get the doctor down here now!”

  Now won’t be soon enough, Sulu thought as she felt herself fading. But she had one final duty. With the last bit of strength she could muster, she lifted her hand and reached out to h
er father. Even if she could not save herself, maybe she could still save him . . . save Kostas and Young . . . save whoever else there was. “Tell Linojj,” she started, but then her voice sputtered into a cough. The movement sent fresh spasms of pain coursing through the middle of her body.

  “It’s all right, honey,” her father said. “Don’t try to speak.”

  “No . . . no . . . listen to . . .” she said, then stopped to refocus. “Tell Linojj on . . . Ent’prise . . . contact Ad . . . Ja Harr’man . . .” Her vision began to blur at the edges, and she knew she didn’t have much time. “Tell him . . . I confirm . . . Odyssey solution.”

  That was all she had. She hoped it would be enough. Demora Sulu closed her eyes, and that time, she kept them closed.

  2319

  * * *

  Helaspont Station

  * * *

  * * *

  8

  * * *

  Captain Amina Sasine tilted her champagne flute and sipped the 2306 vintage Dom Pérignon. The effervescent, pale golden liquid gave off a crisp, fresh bouquet, and its complex taste blended more flavors than she could possibly identify, though she felt certain that Demora Sulu could provide a lengthy discourse on the sparkling wine’s notes and accents, on its hints and undertones, on its structure and finish. Sasine could only declare for sure that she heartily enjoyed the prestige champagne. “I know we say it every year,” she told her husband, Admiral John Harriman, “but that woman really knows her wines.”

  Across the small, square table, John took a sip from his own glass. His eyes twinkled, reflecting the two candles that the restaurant’s waitstaff had placed on the white tablecloth. John had recently shaven the goatee he’d worn for the previous couple of years, and the result softened his face. Not just softened, Sasine thought. He looks younger. Seven years older than John—six and a half, really—Sasine had occasionally felt self-conscious about their age difference, not because she’d ever perceived any disparity between them, but because, when they’d first begun seeing each other, he’d looked not seven years her junior, but seventeen—or more. Fortunately, his graying hair had gone some way into narrowing that superficial gap.