Tales from the Captain’s Table (33 page)

I toggled the speaker selector, sending the command-center audio feed from the individual speaker I’d just used to a panel speaker. I listened as I heard a commotion, and then the sound of flesh against flesh. I recognized the voice of a man on our third team as he cried out in pain.

Behind me, the door slid open again. “Demora.”

Over the comm system, I heard one of the renegades order both prisoners interrogated without regard to their health or survival. “Mike,” I said, turning to look at him, “they’re going to torture—”

“That can’t matter right now,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Nothing’s more important than that intelligence.” He pointed to where my tricorder sat atop the console.

Knowing he was right, I turned back and checked the status monitor. “Ten seconds,” I read, and then, “Five…three, two, one.” I ripped the shielded patch cord from my tricorder. “Let’s go,” I said.

As Mike and I headed out the door of the power substation, I heard behind us the transmitted moans of the two people who’d made up our third team. Again, I felt the urge to do whatever it took to find them and free them, but I also knew that Mike was right about the critical importance of returning to Starfleet Command the renegade intelligence we’d collected.

And so we ran.

We didn’t stop for an hour as we retraced the path we’d hacked through the rain forest. Once we’d cleared the renegade base, we’d sent a signal both back to the shuttle and to the captain’s team, but so far, we’d heard nothing from either. For the moment, we could only hope that the engineer had been able to repair the shuttle and could get us off the planet and back to the Federation.

Breathing heavily and drenched in sweat, Mike and I finally slowed, and then stopped. For several minutes, we listened to the jungle around us, trying to detect any sound that might indicate that we’d been followed. We heard nothing of the kind.

“I think we’re clear,” I said.

“I hope so,” Mike replied. “Now we just—”

A high-pitched whine suddenly filled the air, increasing rapidly in volume. I recognized it as the sound of an overload, and quickly drew my phaser and checked it. The power indicator reflected the imminent detonation of the weapon.

“Overload,” I said, and I reached back and hurled my phaser into the jungle, as far from us as I could. It was quickly lost from sight, though I heard it strike several leaves in its flight. I ducked behind a tree, and Mike followed suit, taking cover a short distance from me. Several seconds passed, and then an explosion rocked the rain forest.

Mike and I looked over at each other, but before we could say anything, another whine pierced the day. Mike drew his own phaser, but even as he did so, a second and then a third whine commenced. The renegades had triggered self-destruct commands not only in our phasers, but in our tricorders as well, obviously blanketing the jungle with the deadly signals.

Mike quickly tossed away his phaser, and then his tricorder. I pulled my tricorder’s strap from around my neck, then opened its storage compartment, from which I pulled a blank data tape.

“Demora,” Mike called to me as the whine from my tricorder grew louder. I didn’t answer, instead focusing on pushing the tape into the recording slot. Out where Mike had thrown his phaser, a second detonation occurred.

As I activated the data transfer, I knew it was too late. I hauled the tricorder back and flung it away. It exploded before it hit the ground, and then Mike’s also blew up.

Mike ran over to me. “Did you get the data off-loaded?” he asked.

“Not onto tape,” I said. “But I’ve got it up here.” I tapped a finger against my forehead. “I viewed the most critical intelligence as I downloaded it at the base.”

“Well done,” Mike said. “But now they know where we are, so we have to keep moving.”

We continued on through the rain forest.

Two hours later, as I’d begun to grow concerned that the shuttle had not yet been repaired, it broke through the jungle canopy. A great sense of relief rose within me as Mike and I stopped and watched it descend. Knowing that we would escape this place, and that we would succeed in our mission to help secure the Federation, I lamented only the apparent loss of at least two of our crew.

The shuttle lowered slowly toward the ground, its antigravs evidently returned to working order. It came down amid the enormous trunks of the rain-forest trees, and settled atop a mass of undergrowth about twenty meters from our position. Bushes and twigs cracked and snapped beneath its weight as it alit.

Once the shuttle had landed, I started toward it, reaching up with my knife to slice through the vegetation along the way, but then I felt Mike’s hand close around my upper arm. I looked over at him, and he mouthed the word “Wait.” I gazed back over toward the shuttle and saw the silvery white of its starboard hull visible in patches through the leaves. As I watched, the hatch slipped open with a mechanical hum audible even at that remove.

I waited, as Mike had prompted me to, and he stood motionless beside me. Nothing happened.

“Where is she?” Mike asked quietly, obviously referring to the Starfleet engineer we’d left behind to repair the shuttle. He clearly didn’t trust the situation. Seconds passed, and with each one, I became more suspicious as well.

But then the engineer appeared in the hatchway. She peered out into the jungle, doubtless aware of our presence from the signal we’d sent to her, as well as from her ability to scan for the frequency of our sensor veils, which she knew. As her gaze passed over our position, she and I made eye contact briefly, although she gave no indication that she had seen me. “Captain Green,” she finally called out.

I looked again at Mike, and saw on his face the same mixture of confusion and wariness that I felt. The captain who led our mission was not named Green.

“Commander Brown, Commander White, Specialist Gray,” the engineer continued. “I’ve repaired the shuttle, and we can now depart.”

Green
,
Brown
,
White
,
Gray
, I thought. Not one of the names belonged to any member of the mission crew.
She’s being coerced
, I concluded. Forced to call out to us, she was trying to warn us of the dangers, while at the same time attempting to save her own life. Had she simply refused to call to us, she likely would have been killed by the renegades.

“What should we do?” Mike whispered beside me. As I turned to respond, the shriek of an energy weapon cut through the moist jungle air. A single short burst was followed by a longer one, and a beam of intense light sliced through the vegetation directly to my left. As I instinctively ducked down, I saw the engineer collapse in the hatchway, revealing a renegade behind her in the shuttle. The man, tall and muscular, had obviously aimed in our direction based upon a scan of our sensor veils, but hadn’t yet spotted us visually. Remaining in place seemed an untenable option, though, since he would doubtless sweep the area with his weapon.

As though my thoughts had driven him, the renegade leveled his weapon again and fired into the jungle. Once more, a lethal ray cleaved the air, closer to us this time, less than an arm’s length away. I turned and darted for cover, and felt Mike’s presence beside me as he followed.

I headed for a gargantuan tree just a few steps away, its enormous trunk at least three or four meters in diameter. Throwing myself down behind it, I thought I’d made it in time, but then intense pain erupted in my foot. An involuntary cry escaped through my gritted teeth as Mike landed on the ground beside me.

The weapons fire stopped momentarily, but then the wail of the renegade’s weapon once more pierced the rain forest. Behind me, I heard the blast strike the tree, which trembled beneath the onslaught. I imagined the scorched crater that must have been opened in its trunk.

“Are you hit?” Mike asked me.

I nodded, and said, “My foot.” I drew my knee up toward my chest so that I could examine the damage. As I did so, the scent of seared flesh—
my
flesh—reached my nose. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, but pushed the sensation away. I looked at my boot, where the renegade’s weapon had scored a glancing strike. The upper portion of the boot’s surface had been charred, and a tear penetrated through to my foot. I saw an open wound within, my skin burned black, but the energy bolt had also cauterized the injury.

“Can you move?” Mike asked me.

“I’m going to have to, aren’t I?” I said, already trying to stand by bracing myself against the tree. Then the weapons fire began again, the streaks of lethal light screaming past the tree, first on one side, then on the other. When they stopped, the singed vegetation surrounding us hissed as though communicating to us whispers of death. “We need to find deeper cover,” I said, well aware that the only weapons we now possessed were the broad-bladed knives we’d been using to slash our way through the jungle.

“Right,” Mike agreed. He stood up and moved to my side, where he tucked a shoulder beneath my arm, helping to support me as I stood on my uninjured foot.

Suddenly, a familiar whine rose from the direction of the shuttle: a phaser or tricorder set to overload. The sound increased in pitch, and then abruptly grew louder. Beside us, I saw a glint of alloy as a phaser went arcing down and into the brush a few meters away.

I pushed away from Mike at once, intending to hobble forward, find the weapon, and toss it farther away from us. But Mike held me back and forced me down onto the ground, then raced toward the screeching phaser. “Stay there,” he ordered me. “You’ve got the intel.” He raised his long knife over his head and swung it rapidly in short arcs and thrusts, driving through the undergrowth and searching for the weapon that threatened us.

The frequency of the whine increased higher still, clearly only seconds away from detonating.

“Mike,” I called, wanting him to try to find cover, as unlikely a prospect as that seemed.

At the last instant, Mike glanced over his shoulder at me, and then he spread his body wide, obviously attempting to shield me and protect the vital information I carried in my head.

And then the phaser exploded.

I saw a burst of flame bloom on either side of Mike, the yellow-red fire enveloping him for just a moment before it receded. Around me, shrapnel from the blast shot through the jungle, tearing through the plant life. I heard numerous metal fragments strike the tree behind me, and I felt one shoot into my forearm, but I seemed otherwise unscathed by the explosion.

Ahead of me, Mike fell to the ground in a heap.

I resisted the urge to call out to him, instead scrambling up onto my hands and knees and rushing toward him. Pain shot through my foot as I moved, and I felt the new ache in my arm, but I ignored the hard sensations. I concentrated solely on reaching Mike.

When I got to him, I found him on his back, his calves bent awkwardly beneath him. I quickly examined his body, and through rips in his uniform, saw his flesh in bloody tatters. A deep gash had been opened in one arm near his wrist, his hand now just barely attached. A narrow slit climbed from the tip of his chin up his cheek to his hairline, a crimson trail marking the path that a sliver of the destroyed phaser had taken across his face.

He looked badly broken.

I reached up to Mike’s chest to try to gently pull off his uniform, wanting to pinpoint his severest wounds and treat them as best I could. The fabric, already burned and torn from the blast, came away easily. Beneath it, Mike’s torso was shredded, his body pierced in a dozen places, his skin ragged, his blood flowing freely from his body.

As I used scraps of uniform to wipe away the red pools from his wounds, somebody yelled behind me, from somewhere near the shuttle. The meaning was unclear to me, but I absently noted that I heard neither weapons fire nor the sound of another overload. Looking back now, my training should have had me utilize the lull as an opportunity to attempt escape, but I couldn’t leave Mike like that.

As I worked over him, my hands becoming soaked in his blood, the ground around him covered by it, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to save him. Distraught, I peered at his face. To my surprise, he was looking back at me.

I opened my mouth to say something, to somehow try to soothe him. Before I could, though, he took a quick intake of breath, as if gasping for air. Then he was still, and the light faded from his eyes.

Behind me, near the tree, the brush rustled as somebody approached. I spun around from Mike’s body, my foot and forearm flaring in pain, and I realized that I no longer held my knife. I quickly scanned the path I’d crawled along to get to Mike, and looked around the base of the tree, but I didn’t see the blade anyhere. With no recourse, I tensed my muscles, preparing to attack the renegade with the only weapon left to me: my own hands. A moment later, somebody rounded the tree.

It was the captain.

He saw me first, and then Mike. “Dead, sir,” I said, my voice flat. The captain nodded, his features tensing almost imperceptibly.

“And you?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“Wounded, but yes,” I said. “I have the intel.”

He nodded again, and told me that we had to go. He helped me to the shuttle, explaining that the engineer had completed her repairs, but then had been attacked and captured by two renegades. The enemy had apparently tracked the frequency signature of our sensor veils from the shuttle, intending to capture or kill us, but the engineer must not have divulged the different frequencies of the captain’s veil. He and the other member of his jungle team had reached the shuttle just as the attack on us had been launched. Using their knives, the two had overcome the renegades, though too late to save either the engineer or Mike. The captain also confirmed that the other two members of our mission crew had been captured and taken to the renegade base.