Ghost of a Chance (21 page)

“Captain,” the Vulcan said, standing up, looking down at her.

“Duck!” she yelled, yanking hard at his sleeve as a Televek beam seared the air a hand’s breadth away from his head. He crouched beside her.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“You’re quite welcome. I take it you’ve been busy.”

“I wish I had better news to report,” he conceded. “I am afraid shuttle communications are completely disabled. But as you can see, I was able to get the transporter working.”

“I knew you’d come through, Tuvok,” Kim said, making a face that passed for cheerful.

“However,” Tuvok continued, his sullen look growing more so, “it is not working very well.”

Shots burned into the trees once more. Janeway picked up Kim’s hand phaser, then nodded toward the Televek on the crest of the hill. Tuvok drew his weapon from his waist, and they both rose up and opened fire.

Even before they had dropped back down, a fresh salvo of return fire arrived from their left flank, vaporizing the trunk of a sapling not half a meter behind the three officers. Janeway and Tuvok both took aim and fired a continuous burst at the point of origin. Janeway’s phaser went dead. She put it on her belt and started using Kim’s weapon.

“This one won’t last long,” she told the lieutenant.

“Then I am just in time,” Tuvok said, putting one of the bands around Kim’s upper arm. “I suggest we move Mr. Kim to safety first.”

“Agreed,” Janeway said, helping him fasten the band.

“I was unable to provide the transporter with sustained minimal operating power, so I activated the system using an automated pulse power curve, which repeats itself every four minutes.

There was no other choice. When the curve peaks, the pulse provides enough energy to transport one person. That is how I was able to join you.”

Janeway nodded, impressed with what Tuvok had accomplished in so short a time, and understanding his logic completely. She was already preparing for contingencies. “When is the next power peak?”

Tuvok examined his tricorder. “In exactly fifteen seconds.”

“Good. Kim goes first, then you, then me.”

“I guess I’ll be seeing you guys around, then,” Kim said, attempting another grin.

Janeway winked at him, then silently put on the last armband.

Tuvok concentrated on the tricorder. He tapped in the command, then sent it. Four seconds later Kim dematerialized and was gone.

“Keep firing, Mr. Tuvok, and stay down,” Janeway ordered. “You have the left flank; I’ll take the hill.”

They fired several shots, then moved farther down along the massive, battered tree trunks. Janeway checked her weapon. Only a small charge remained. Another shot hashed, biting into bark just above Tuvok’s head, this time from their right dank.

Janeway fired two parallel bursts at a dark glimmer of movement, and a figure pulled farther back into cover behind the trees.

She thought she might have hit her target, but there was no way to tell.

“One minute, eleven seconds,” Tuvok reported. “Captain, I do not see how you can hope to fend the Televek off by yourself for another ten minutes.”

“You’re going to leave me your phaser, aren’t you?” Janeway asked.

There followed a brief pause. A gentle tremor shook the earth.

Another phaser shot seared into hardwood just inches away.

Tuvok looked at her, his features calm. “Indeed, I insist, Captain.”

Vulcan humor was subtle, but Janeway was a fan.

The attack had quieted for a moment. They used the opportunity to return fire in three directions. Then they ducked down once more and waited.

“Ten seconds,” Tuvok said. She gave him the go-ahead. He nodded grimly. “Five seconds,” he said. “Three.” He keyed the tricorder and sent the command. Nothing happened.

Janeway mouthed a silent curse. “What’s wrong?”

“It would seem that there is not enough power. My initial calculations were correct. However, the condition of the transporter and the number of variables—” The tree trunk shattered, sending Janeway and Tuvok backward in a fresh shower of splinters and pulp. Janeway found herself lying on her back, looking up at the trees as they waved in the building winds beneath clouds of smoke and ash. She felt the ground start to shake again, harder still. An aftershock, or another full quake. She tried to sit up, discovered Tuvok doing the same beside her.

They looked up the hill together, their eyes drawn to the four Televek rushing down on their position. Janeway could hear more footfalls from their left dank.

“If we remain perfectly still and offer no resistance, they may decide not to shoot us,” Tuvok said almost too calmly, a perfectly logical assumption.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Janeway said.

Janeway watched the closest Televek raise his weapon and take aim as he stumbled toward her. Then the forest blurred and disappeared.

Daket stood beside his cruiser, leaning on a flanged section of the hull, catching his breath. He’d been in the woods with one of his teams, going over scores of unremarkable ground echo readings, killing time while he waited for Tolif’s team at the downed shuttle to report in. Then the latest round of quakes had shaken the forest hard enough to bring trees crashing down and send the bedrock heaving up.

Daket was still young and agile, thank the stars, and probably just plain lucky, he guessed. After all that he’d been through, he was still here, still alive and well. He was destined to collide with greatness one day, he had no doubt of that, but at times like these he wondered whether the universe clearly understood that fact.

Somehow he’d managed to sprint into the clearing before the second, even more violent quakes had hit. For a time he worried that the end might well be at hand for all of them, that this absurd planet might have come to claim them, but this second round of tremors had finally subsided like the others.

Temporarily…

The clearing around the cruiser had remained fairly stable, and the cruiser itself had come through the experience unharmed, but Daket knew that was part luck as well, and he didn’t trust to luck. The quakes were getting worse, and the next one might spell disaster. All of which only made his current set of dilemmas that much more convoluted.

Not one single member of this team wanted to die here, and Daket would not hold on to his status as a director for long if the others decided they could not trust him in that regard. And neither could he blame them. Indeed, in their position, he would have been plotting exactly what he knew they were plotting.

Not that he was willing to die, either. He had been certain from the outset that the risks on this mission would be unacceptable.

Daket didn’t like to take chances. He never did, in fact, unless he was forced to do so. Which was the case at present, of course. His was a difficult position.

Despite the intensive foot searches and scanning operations his teams had been carrying out for days now, he had been unable to discover an access route to the exotic, and doubtless extremely valuable power source that lay several kilometers below his feet.

Nor had he learned much more about his elusive target. In short, his mission was a complete failure.

He had managed in his reports, however, to describe his team’s efforts and circumstances in a truly superlative light, as would any proper associate, or director, so as to make himself and his crew seem utterly commendable. The trick, certainly, was to report all of the positives and omit all of the negatives—nothing every bottom-fed manager and assistant in the sector didn’t do. But Daket liked to think he was especially good at it, and he thought he had proven that fact on Drenar Four.

Even that small success seemed threatened now, however. The problems were being compounded. It wasn’t just the dead ends, the earthquakes, the volcanoes, the injuries, or the endless complaining that Gantel and his people incessantly poured down on him from their stable orbit—it was the new aliens now. They weren’t content with troubling Gantel, apparently.

“Find their shuttle’” the third director had said. “Be certain there were no survivors,” he’d said. “Then repair their shuttle and we will take it with us,” he’d said.

It had all sounded simple enough.

Nothing had worked out that way.

The small craft from the Federation starship had landed, not crashed.

Not only had this left the ship intact, but several armed and able survivors had emerged as well. And before Tolif’s team could reach the site, the Drenarians had taken the visitors to their village. Their town was no fortress, certainly, but a great amount of time and manpower would have been required in order to extract the Drenarians’ new guests.

The alternative, unfortunately, was to live with the threat these Voyager people posed. That was unacceptable as well, but it had so far been less risky than the other option.

“We have them under close surveillance,” Daket had several times reported to Gantel. “Each breath they take is being counted.”

The aliens had been somewhere in the village, after all, and that was close enough. But even before the following dawn Daket had been presented with yet another troubling report from one of his scouts: a small party that included the shuttle crew had left the village, heading back in the direction of the downed ship.

The team Daket had in place at the shuttle had been ready for the imminent return of the visitors. Daket could only hope his people would be able to dispose of the intruders quickly when they arrived, and that the whole process would not cause too great a delay. After all, playing tag with the landing party was not his primary task—or even his secondary goal, for that matter.

“I am seeing to the work on the shuttle personally,” he had since told Gantel, even though he didn’t quite know where the little vessel was.

He’d told Gantel he was seeing to the ground echo work personally, too, and the grid search teams, and the energy source evaluations, and whatever else Gantel asked about. That was, of course, what Gantel wanted to hear. And that was the important thing.

“The third director is hailing you,” a voice from the bridge said over Daket’s belt communicator.

“You will explain that at the moment I am in the field inspecting the extensive damage to our operations caused by the last round of quakes, that lives and equipment are being lost, but we are coping. Tell him I will contact him shortly.”

“Yes, Daket.”

The comm went silent. No one on the bridge knew he was standing just outside the ship.

Daket looked up to skies clouded with volcanic smoke and ash.

Time was running out. He had a growing urge to tell Gantel that this mission was entirely senseless, that he and his crew had waited long enough, done all they could, risked too much already.

That it was time to go. The presence of those who had landed in the shuttle and that of their friends in orbit didn’t matter one way or the other, as far as Daket was concerned, especially with the first director on her way here. He was almost certain Gantel would agree if he were down here instead of up there. But Daket was as certain that saying so would only get him into more trouble than he knew how to get out of.

And he didn’t want to risk that.

Gantel kept insisting that Daket hold on and keep working until Shaale and the fleet arrived. “We must appear to be fighting against failure, exploring every option right up until the last.”

And he was right, of course. Gantel hadn’t gotten to be a third director by misreading his opportunities. Or by going easy on those directly beneath him, as Daket had discovered times enough.

It wasn’t that Daket’s excuses weren’t good ones—they were classic—it was just that Gantel did not want to hear any of them. Which left Daket at a considerable loss. Rules were not rules anymore, it seemed.

Daket looked about the grassy clearing. His teams were beginning to come and go in regular patterns again, setting up new probes and going out to take readings on the ones already deployed. It was possible the quakes would reveal underground passageways, or even create them, though Daket didn’t think anyone on this planet was quite that lucky.

At least not anyone working with him. And probably not even Gantel.

He checked the time. He hadn’t gotten a report from the team at the shuttlecraft in several hours, which was unacceptable to begin with.

Moreover, that was quite probably what Gantel wanted to know about.

Tolif, who was in charge of that bunch, was a competent fellow, and usually quite punctual. Daket shook his head. He had endured enough difficulties for one day, and nearly been crushed by falling timbers on top of all that.

“I don’t need this,” he said out loud, to the planet itself, and to the filthy skies above, as he pushed off and headed back into the cruiser.

“And I certainly don’t deserve it.” He headed straight for the bridge.

“Still no word from Tolif?” he asked, though he was quite sure he would have been told.

“None,” said Tatel, the young female associate on duty. She had only joined the crew on this trip. Daket hardly knew a thing about her, and that suited him just fine.

“Try to raise them again. What was their status at last contact?”

“Progress was being made. I have a report.”

Daket looked at the screen at his command station. Tolif’s notes were thorough, but they offered nothing promising. Nothing at all. The shuttle systems were badly damaged, and getting them back on line was proving to be a difficult task. An update had been promised, but it hadn’t come. Worst case, they had all died in the recent round of quakes. Daket shook his head; it would be difficult to put a positive spin on that.

“Very well,” Daket said gravely, shrugging his shoulders. “Did Gantel say what he wanted?”

“There have been some developments in orbit, I believe.”

Which meant nothing good, certainly, Daket decided. Any developments in orbit would have little effect on his end of operations, unless time or circumstances had necessitated a change in plans.

Unless—could he dare hope?—they were finally going to leave this broken-up, boiling pit of a planet. Daket couldn’t imagine what grim task Gantel might have in mind, but anything would be better than sitting here. Almost anything, surely. He ordered Tatel to make contact.