Episode 38
Chapter Twelve
They kept coming.
It was a dreadful sight to behold, as dozens
of Elorg warships emerged from the swirling flexure that led to their subspace
domain. As he watched the events unfold
on the view screen, Commander Matthew Harrison could feel his stomach knotting
up into something that probably looked like a pretzel.
Many times in the past, Harrison had led the
Starlight into battle, and he had
emerged successful on each occasion.
But in each of those instances, the Starlight
had been the superior fighter. But now,
practically staring death in the face, the Starlight did not stand a
chance against the Elorg fleet, and to his chagrin, Harrison was suddenly
devoid of brilliant strategies to defeat their nemesis…
Suddenly the view screen exploded with an
amazing burst of white light.
Harrison’s eyes wandered back to the screen to see the dreadful flexure
coursing with tendrils of white energy as it belched out a generous stream of
hazy violet plasma—and unless Harrison was mistaken, a considerable amount of
debris. “What has happened?” he asked,
slowly turning to Lieutenant Johnson at ops.
Even so, it was Bator that responded. “It would appear our experiment with the
keryon beam was more successful than we realized,” he said. “The rift is partially collapsed near its
center.”
“I’m detecting the remains of five Elorg
vessels in the debris,” Johnson added.
The news was certainly better than Harrison
had anticipated. “Can vessels still
penetrate the rift?”
“Yeah,” said Johnson, his fingers dancing
over the computer controls. “But they
can’t risk sending more than one at a time, otherwise it will collapse
completely.”
Harrison let out a sigh of relief as he saw
fortune smile upon him. “How many
vessels were able to emerge into the expanse, Mr. Johnson?”
“Twenty-six,” he replied.
“Not even half.”
Harrison nodded. Fortune
may have been smiling, but it was certainly not a wide grin. “With those vessels combined with the fleet
the Elorg had previously massed, it is a certainty that they have more than
enough firepower to obliterate our own meager stronghold,” he said softly. “What actions are they taking now?”
“At the moment—nothing,” said Bator. “All thirty-six ships are holding position.”
Harrison gently pounded his fists on the arms of the command
chair. “It is also a certainty that
they shall not stay inactive for long—especially not for two weeks.”
Johnson briefly looked down at the chronometer on his
station. “Two weeks, two days, one
hour, forty-seven minutes until our fleet arrives,” he called out nervously.
Harrison sighed wearily.
“Two weeks, two days too late,” he moaned, knowing that the Elorg would
have to be awfully stupid to stay put while their enemy was at a severe
disadvantage. While he didn’t know when
it would happen, he knew sometime within the next few weeks, things were going
to turn very, very ugly.
But not yet. “Stand down
from red alert,” Harrison ordered.
“Maintain yellow alert status,” he added a moment later. While it wasn’t as ominous or threatening as
the dreaded red alert, yellow alert meant extra duty shifts, more battle
drills, and that a threat was on the horizon.
And there certainly was…
As the red alert lights flickered to yellow hues, Harrison delved
back into his memory to recall what was happening before the crisis arose. At first it eluded him, but after a few
moments, Harrison recalled the other matter at hand. “Talyere,” he whispered.
“What about that message, Lieutenant Bator?”
“The message was heavily degraded,” said the Phobian as he pulled
the file from the computer’s database.
“I suspect the dekyon surge produced by the Elorg to be the cause—that
or the fact that they were jamming numerous comm channels. Either way, it is unlikely we will be
receiving another message.”
Harrison expelled a brief sigh and folded his arms; it seemed to
the Commander that whenever they were graced with a stroke of good luck,
something always happened to taint it.
Even so, he was not about to give up hope. “From where did the message originate?”
Again, Bator checked the computer. “The Inkhezi,” he said
firmly. “I can’t localize it any
further than that.”
The news did not surprise Harrison. The Inkhezi was Xi'Yor’s flagship, and if anyone wanted to
keep Talyere under closer guard, it was Xi'Yor. “That shall make things most interesting,” he decided, just
moments before hearing the tactical station erupt into a series of bleeps.
Bator quickly muted them.
“We are being hailed,” he announced.
“It is Doctor Hartman.”
Hartman? The Commander’s
curiosity immediately went up several notches, for he had anticipated that if
anyone contacted the ship, it would have been Captain Christopher. “On screen,” he briskly ordered.
When she popped onto the screen, the look on Sarah Hartman’s face
only deepened, for she, too looked utterly concerned. Never in the years they had spent together had Harrison seen the
Doctor with such a look on her face.
“What is it?” he beckoned.
Hartman closed her eyes and expelled a deep sigh. “The Dark
Star has been destroyed,” she said somberly. “The Captain and Commander Keller were on board. We don’t know if they’re alive or dead, but
they crashed in the mountains from a rather extreme altitude.”
Just when he was starting to think this day would end without a
major incident, Harrison felt as if someone had just thrown a brick at his
head. The Captain’s brief trip may have
turned into his last one…
Erin Keller froze as she watched the stream of virulent teal
polaron torpedoes throw Alan Christopher to the ground. She stood in utter terror for several
moments and simply stared at her beloved Alan sprawled out motionlessly on the
ground, propped up by a few jagged rocks.
Was he dead?
Erin didn’t even want to consider it. Instinctively, she snapped out of her trance and rushed to Alan’s
side, grabbing the tricorder from her belt and hastily prying the device open
to scan him for injuries. The tricorder
did not provide much in the way of information—perhaps because it was not a
medical tricorder—perhaps because there was not much information to
report. Alan was alive, and that was
about it…
With a morbid feeling slowly rushing over her, Erin slowly turned
her attention to Drayan. “It doesn’t
look good,” she said softly.
Drayan pulled in a nervous lungful of air, and then approached
them, the look on her face an odd mixture of concern and determination. “He will live,” she said evenly.
If her tricorder couldn’t determine that, Erin was relatively
certain that Drayan’s visual analysis was not any more accurate. Even so, it was that optimistic thinking
that Erin often embraced, and this was no time to abandon it. “He’s a strong little boy,” she said softly. “Of course he will live.”
And then, without any warning, Drayan extended her arm and placed
it on Alan’s chest. At first, Erin
wasn’t certain what was going on—a Ka’Tulan ritual perhaps? The notion was quickly dismissed, however.
Within moments, Drayan’s hand started to dissolve into Alan’s
chest amidst a faint blue aura. Tiny
ripples of energy pulsed across his chest like magic, gradually encompassing
Alan’s entire body. And then, just as
abruptly as she had started the procedure, Drayan removed her hand from Alan’s
chest.
The tricorder in Erin’s
hand suddenly shrieked with the arrival of a massive influx of new data. “He’s in a state of flux,” Erin read from
the display. She assumed that Drayan
had used the strange psionic powers she had attained a few months ago from a
modified Omega molecule they stole from the Gorn, and if that was the case,
Drayan’s powers had progressed far beyond what Erin had been originally led to
believe… Of course, now was not the
time for speculation.
Alan was their primary concern, and to Erin’s relief, as Drayan
stepped away from her brother, he slowly opened his bright turquoise eyes and
expelled a long, painful moan. “Am I
ever glad those torpedoes were phased out of alignment,” he rasped.
“Otherwise, you’d be a spot on the wall,” said Erin, making a
valiant attempt to keep her calm. “How
do you feel?”
Alan took a moment to assess his situation before replying, “Aside
from a headache and the stalagmite embedded in my spine, quite well.”
“I’ve got what you could laughingly call a med kit in my bag,”
said Drayan. She quickly scurried over
to her supplies on the floor near the weapon and pulled out a sleek, black
kit.
“Do you have any pain medication?” asked Erin.
“Like hydrocortaline,” Alan suggested.
“Like, no,” said Drayan as she tossed the kit to Erin.
Erin grabbed the kit in mid air and quickly opened it up, scanning
over the few medicines in Drayan’s kit.
“Alazine, peridaxon, hyronalin, asinolayathine—”
“Asinolayathine will do just fine,” Alan snapped.
Quickly, Erin jammed the medication into the butt of the hypospray
and administered it at the base of Alan’s neck. After emitting a short hissing sound, she pulled the hypospray
away and set it back into the med kit.
“Better?”
“Much,” said Christopher.
“Care to help me up?”
Erin extended her arm and helped pull Alan to his feet. His first few steps were a bit wobbly, but
he quickly regained his equilibrium. As
Alan walked past her, Erin couldn’t help but notice the strange blue glow on
his back. Though it disappeared after
only a moment, Erin was certain something was not right.
Quickly, she peered over at the rock where Alan had landed. It briefly glowed with the faintest teal
light before vanishing completely…