Firestorm

by L. A. Graf

  When the first thrum of movement shivered through the ground at his feet, Chekov thought the station must utilize some much larger power source than he'd originally assumed. Then he heard the gentle rattle of metal on metal from the crates behind him, and looked up to meet Sulu's startled gaze across the station housing as a fine patter of dust began to hiss down the slope around them.

  Then, like a giant that's rolled over in his sleep and gone on dreaming, the rumbling died away into silence.

  Heart pounding, hands clenched on the towbar of the gravsled, Chekov scowled accusingly down at Mutchler's feet. "Did you do that?"

  The echo of the geologist's laughter inside the housing didn't improve his temperament. "Are you kidding?"

  "Calm down," Sulu said, reaching across to slap at his arm. "It was just an earthquake."

  Chekov's stomach lurched in alarm. "Just an earthquake?"

  "Volcanoes throw them off all the time," Mutchler added.

  "This is supposed to make me feel better?"

  "Pavel …" Sulu rounded the housing to pry his friend's hands loose one at a time. "It's nothing—really. I've slept through worse tremors than that. This was only—" He glanced back at Mutchler as the geologist wormed himself free of the housing door. "—three point nine?"

  "Four point one," Mutchler reported. Then he broke into a grin of obvious pride and pleasure. "That's very good, though. Are you from Japan?"

  Sulu returned his smile. "San Francisco."

  "Ah." Mutchler looked up at Chekov in that sad, pitying way the lieutenant always associated with sincere bureaucrats who thought they knew more about your welfare than you did yourself. "And you're from someplace tectonically very boring, aren't you?"

  Not interested in satisfying the annoying geologist's scientific curiosity, Chekov reached into the attaché and pulled free a shiny piece of scrap metal from among the strange collection of repair tools. "We never did manage to get the focusing device on your laser to aim correctly. Try using this to redirect the beam where you need it." He pressed the piece into Mutchler's palm with a tightly held smile. "Now, why don't you go put that laser in place before somebody out here gets hurt with it?"

  Chapter Nine

  "—AND IT SAYS HERE that this system, containing the planet that you humans call Rakatan, was discovered by Elasian scouts in the third year of the reign of the Dohlman Kiyaan." Israi cast Uhura a triumphant glance. "Long before any of your Starfleet vessels ever came here."

  "Mmm." Uhura paged back through her computer-recorded notes, scanning the royal genealogy Israi had recited for her. They were sitting side by side at the table now, formality abated a little by the long afternoon of reading and transcribing the charts. Her computer held many pages of notes, since Israi had saved the reading of Rakatan's label for last. Uhura was no longer so sure what the young Dohlman's motives were. At first, she had almost certainly wanted just to demonstrate her knowledge of her ancestors and her ability to read. That did not explain why she'd deliberately drawn the afternoon out so long, though.

  Perhaps Uhura had been given a hint when Israi had sent Ensign Murphy outside to join her own cohort guardsmen shortly after work on the charts had begun. "This is business between Dohlmen," Israi had snapped when the security guard had quietly corrected her pronunciation of a Federation planet's name. "We don't need underlings here with us." Her lip curled. "We see you often enough already."

  Uhura had seconded the order, hearing a note in Israi's voice that warned her any insistence on Murphy's presence would have cut the Dohlman's cooperation short. She wondered now if it had been the sheer novelty of spending time with someone not an "underling" that had made Israi so willing to translate for her. Aside from the Dohlman and herself, Uhura had seen no other females of any species at this mining camp since she'd arrived. It couldn't have been an easy life for a youngster, even one trained as Israi must have been.

  "Why do you just say, 'um'? What are you looking at?" Israi leaned over the computer pad, her eyes narrowing in quick suspicion. "What are these marks in here? They all look alike, like scratches made by lizards in the dirt."

  Uhura's lips twitched as she recalled Captain Kirk's description of Elasian pictographs. "These are the marks that record my language." She pointed to the entry she'd been looking at. "This says that the Dohlman Kiyaan reigned fourteenth of the line of Sevuth, and that she reigned for only three years before the Snake Clans revolted. That made their Dohlman Skuah the Dohlman, first of the line of Kesmeth."

  Israi tipped her head slightly sideways in what looked like a gesture of surprise. "That is not a bad reading, to come from lizard scratches."

  "Thank you," said Uhura, smiling. The young Dohlman gave her a puzzled look, as if the polite words held no meaning for her, and Uhura's smile faded. She looked back at the computer pad. "According to my lizard scratches, the third year of Kiyaan's reign was one hundred and ninety-four Elasian years ago."

  Israi nodded slowly. "That is so."

  "Which is the same as one hundred and five Standard years." Which was indeed a long time before the first Starfleet vessels had entered this quadrant of the galaxy, Uhura thought, but did not say aloud. She reached out for the tricorder she'd set down on one edge of the plastic sheet and aimed it at the chart. A quick whistle told her it had begun its spectral analysis. "Now, we'll see if this chart was really made during Skuah's reign. If so, it should be at least one hundred Standard years old."

  "This machine will tell you that it is," Israi said with arrogant assurance. And a moment later the numbers scrolling across the tricorder's readout did verify the age: the plastic had been made one hundred and two Standard years ago. The Dohlman read the confirmation in Uhura's face and pointed a triumphant finger at her.

  "I told you—" she began.

  The low rumble of what sounded like machinery stopped her, growing ominously louder as it neared the Dohlman's quarters. Israi scowled and swung toward the open door. "What fool is driving—"

  Plastic whispered beneath them. Glancing down, Uhura saw the Elasian charts shiver across the table, moving without being touched. Her breath caught in her throat. Once before, when she'd been studying for an exam at Starfleet Academy, she'd seen tapes crawl across a library table in that same inexplicable way, responding to vibrations too tenuous for human fingers to feel. A moment later, a magnitude-six earthquake had knocked her to the floor in a rain of falling books.

  "Up!" She shoved back the bench they sat on and yanked the Dohlman to her feet. "We have to get out of here! It's an earthquake!"

  Israi shrugged free of her grasp, contempt leaping into her almond eyes. "We have earthquakes here always. They have never caused us damage."

  "Well, this one's going to." Ignoring Israi's gasp of affronted fury, Uhura pushed the small Elasian female toward the door. The corrugated metal floor swayed under them, gently at first, then with increasing force.

  "The charts—we can't leave them!" Muscles rippled in Israi's bare shoulders, and she tore out of Uhura's grasp with unexpected strength, rounding back to the table. Uhura gritted her teeth and went after her, her run becoming a stagger as the floor pitched beneath her feet in jagged, unbalancing spasms.

  Israi grabbed up the rolls of yellowed plastic and turned back toward the door, but it was too late. The growl of tearing earth exploded into a roar so deep Uhura could feel the vibrations in her bones. She barely had time to knock the Dohlman beneath the table before a cascade of broken roof tiles began drumming on the metal surface above their heads. Something larger fell with a crash out in the hallway.

  "What is falling?" Israi's voice was barely audible over the din, but the Universal Translator on Uhura's belt picked it up and amplified it. Uhura turned her head, blinking through the dust-choked light at the young Elasian. "Was it the roof?"

  "A wall, I think. Out in the outer hallway." The screech of ripping metal preceded a second crash, this one so loud it made Uhura's ears ring. The reverberating echoes told Uhura what had happ
ened, even before the dust cleared and let her see the slab of crushed metal blocking the exit. "We're trapped."

  The Dohlman's dark face had gone stiff and taut, but it was the tension of blind anger, not fear. Even in the chaos of the quake, Uhura felt a twist of pity for the youngster lying beside her. Raised to expect utter obedience from her subjects and surroundings, Israi could respond only with rage to events she hadn't ordered to happen.

  "How could this happen?" The Dohlman's voice shook with frustrated fury. "Where was my cohort that they let this happen to me?"

  "They're outside, where you sent them," Uhura said dryly. She felt the last ripples of floor motion damp out, and wriggled cautiously out from under the table. Silenced, Israi followed her out, scowling into the ruins of what had been her private quarters. The roof overhead had split in several places, and the roof beams looked as if they had all shifted sideways.

  Now that the noise of the earthquake was fading, Uhura finally heard voices past the crumpled section of hall, deep Elasian shouts of alarm and despair as the cohort discovered the collapsed hall. The words were too muffled for even the Universal Translator to catch, until her communicator beeped and a voice spoke breathless but recognizable English out of it.

  "Commander Uhura?" Murphy said between gasps. "Commander Uhura, are you there?"

  Uhura grabbed up the communicator and thumbed it on. "I'm here, Murphy. Tell the cohort that the Dohlman is alive and unhurt."

  "Aye, sir." Murphy relayed the information without bothering to turn off the communicator, and Uhura heard the cohort's howls of despair become a joyous shout of relief. She picked a careful path through fallen roof tiles to the jumble of shattered metal that had been the doorframe, Israi following at her heels. The sound of muffled thuds told Uhura that someone was already attacking the other side.

  "Murphy," she said into the communicator. "Look up at the roof beams out in the hall. How close are they to falling?"

  There was a grim pause. "Pretty close, sir. How about your side?"

  Uhura glanced up at the nearest beam and saw Israi do the same. Both of them immediately scrambled back from the doorway to the table they'd sheltered under. Only one corner of the first beam still kept a toehold on the supporting wall below, its silica resin quivering with the strain of its dislodged position. The others near it were almost as badly damaged.

  "At least one's ready to come down, maybe more," Uhura reported to Murphy. The thudding increased in intensity, and she frowned, pulling Israi farther back with her into the Dohlman's private quarters. "Murphy, can't you cut through the door with your phaser? The cohort are shaking it much too hard."

  Another pause, this one with the communicator off. When it clicked back on again, Murphy sounded both breathless and angry. "Oben won't listen to me, sir, and the rest of them won't move away from the door long enough to let me fire at it. Should I stun them?"

  "No, I've got a better idea." It was the click of the communicator that had given it to her, reminding her of the conversation with Spock and Kirk. "If you can get the camp's defense screen turned off, Ensign, I'll call the Enterprise and tell them to beam us out of here."

  "But the screen generator is beside the landing pad, sir," Murphy objected. "The way these guys are shoving the door—"

  "I know." Even in the inner room of the building, Uhura could see how the walls swayed under the determined attack. "Just get going, Ensign. Call me the instant that screen's down."

  "Aye, sir."

  Uhura lowered the communicator, then saw Israi's suspicious frown. "What's wrong, Your Glory?" she asked, hoping the Elasian wouldn't refuse to be transported to a Federation ship. "I assure you, we'll only stay on board my ship for a moment or two, just long enough for them to beam us down outside this building."

  The Dohlman ignored that entirely. "Your underling argued with you," she accused Uhura. "What kind of cohort do you lead?"

  "One that can think for itself," Uhura retorted promptly. "And offer suggestions for me to consider, before I issue them orders." She was thankful she had heard Kirk giving the same lecture about his crew to a Starfleet admiral only a few weeks ago. If it had impressed Cartwright, it ought to impress the Dohlman of Elas.

  Then again, maybe not. "A true Dohlman does not need the suggestions of underlings to know which decision to make," Israi declared scornfully. "I spit on the suggestions of underlings."

  Uhura's mouth twitched with repressed amusement. "Yes, I've noticed. Maybe if you—"

  She broke off, alerted by a change in the noise from the outer annex. The rhythmic thudding had broken off, replaced by the furious shouting of Elasian voices. It wasn't that sound that bothered Uhura, though. It was the slow tick-by-tick cracking of silica resin as it splintered under stress.

  She looked up at the ceiling over the Dohlman's quarters and saw it bulge as stress transferred from the buckling beams in the next room. "Hurry, Murphy." Uhura shook the stubbornly silent communicator. "Hurry!"

  Israi made an enraged sound. "The roof is going to fall on us," she said indignantly.

  "I know."

  Cracks were beginning to show in the centers of the beams, opening wider as they watched. The ticking sound grew louder, accompanied by a groan of bending metal. Uhura watched the roof sag deeper, watched the cracks become open fractures—then thumbed her communicator with sudden decision.

  "Uhura to Enterprise. Come in please. This is an emergency."

  The response was as immediate as she'd expected. "Spock here. What do you need, Commander?"

  "Two to beam up, Mr. Spock, from these coordinates." Uhura prayed that Murphy had managed to get the screen down in time. If not, she and Israi would encounter a far worse fate than being crushed by a falling roof beam. "Immediately."

  There was a brief pause in transmission. "Commander, I'm afraid that it is impossible to comply with your request. Our sensors detect a class-two defense screen over your present coordinates. Beaming you though that would be fatal."

  Oh, Murphy, where are you? "Mr. Spock, the Dohlman of Elas is in imminent danger." Uhura heard a beam splinter again, this time from the end of the room they were in. She pushed Israi back against the far wall, hoping it would offer some sort of protection from the collapsing roof. "Ensign Murphy is trying to disable the screen. As soon as it's gone, you must beam us up immediately." A second roof beam splintered, closer to them. "Mr. Spock, do you understand?"

  "The transporter is locked on to your coordinates and ready to beam you up." Through the communicator, Uhura could hear the sound of the Vulcan's fingers flying over his station controls. "I am linking sensor controls to transporter controls, to eliminate reaction time—" Another roof beam splintered and a sheet of roof metal crashed down, its sharp edge cleaving through plasfoam furniture as though it were made of butter. If Spock said anything after that, it was drowned out by Israi's shriek of impotent rage.

  "This cannot happen!" The Dohlman whirled on Uhura as if she were responsible for the destruction looming over them. "I am the Dohlman of Elas! This cannot happen!"

  Uhura caught the flailing fists as yet another roof beam splintered overhead. "Hold still. We still have a chance of rescue, if you just stay close to me—"

  The scream of falling metal filled the air, much too loud and much too close. Uhura gasped and threw herself at Israi, trying to flatten both of them against the wall. There was a crash as the roof metal hit beside them, splattering them with torn plasfoam and broken roof tiles. The huge slab teetered on its edge for an endless unbalanced moment, then made its decision and came slamming down toward them.

  The last thing Uhura saw before it hit was the sparkle of the transporter beam.

  "There! It's doing it again!" Mutchler leaned over the shuttle's twinned console to rap a finger against the viewscreen.

  Chekov wasn't sure what ground feature had excited the geologist this time, but he'd learned through fifteen earlier attempts that telling Mutchler to get back to his seat and strap in didn't have
very much effect. "Dr. Mutchler, please don't touch the viewscreen while we're flying."

  "Oh. Sorry." It was an automatic apology, though, and didn't carry much of the geologist's attention. He did bring his hands around to the small of his back, locking his fingers together as if to remind himself not to reach out again. Chekov had to squelch an urge to handcuff him in that position. "Wow! That was great—at least a six point six!"

  Sulu tossed a startled look across the geologist's back at Chekov, and the security chief felt a sick twist in his stomach. "You mean another earthquake?"

  Mutchler nodded, grinning beatifically. "Isn't it neat?"

  Oh, yeah, just terrific. "How can you tell what it's doing from all the way up here?" He didn't even have any of his equipment set up, as if he'd been anywhere near it since lift off.

  "By the ground waves." Apparently having forgotten earlier admonitions yet again, Mutchler stretched across the console to trace a wavy line with his finger on the distant floor of the long ravine below them. "All our laser-equipped seismometers measure, really, is the amplitude of the waves caused by earth movement during a quake."

  "Waves?" The more he heard about this earthquake nonsense, the less Chekov liked the individual details. "You mean waves like on water?"

  Mutchler bobbed his head enthusiastically. "Yes, exactly like that. They're hard to see when you're standing in the middle of them—"

  "I can imagine."

  "—but really pretty spectacular from up here." He turned to grin at Sulu, who was busy looking worried as he guided Gamow through a patch of icy clouds. "Did you ever have a chance to watch a quake from up in the San Francisco hills?"

  Sulu made a little sound that Chekov thought might be a laugh, although not a terribly amused one. "Only once," he admitted. "And I didn't like it at all—it was kind of scary, really."

  "Oh, that's all a matter of attitude." Mutchler squiggled his finger against the viewscreen again, and Chekov realized abruptly that he was demonstrating the rise and fall of the seismic surf. "The waves I saw just a moment ago were spectacular! At least half a meter in amplitude. You can bet there's going to be some wonderful realignment of the local features before the day is out."