The Returned, Part II, Page 2

  He was not getting any answers to his questions. The bridge was suddenly filled with the hum of a transporter beam and seconds later the D’myurj was gone, leaving the landing party behind.

  “That sounds ominous,” said Soleta.

  “It does indeed.” He tapped his combadge. “Calhoun to Excalibur.”

  “Excalibur. Burgoyne here.”

  “Burgy, are we continuing to scan the area?”

  “Aye, sir,” Burgoyne’s voice came back. “No sign of any other vessels in the vicinity. We’re alone.”

  “If that status should change, I want to be the first to know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Calhoun turned to the away team. “Spread out,” he said. “Cover every inch of this ship. If anyone else is alive, inform me.”

  Kebron, Meyer, and Boyajian headed out to see what they could discover.

  However, Soleta remained with Calhoun. He found this slightly odd. “You’re not going to look around, Soleta? See what you can find?”

  “I do not see that as a necessity, Captain. I think it wiser if I remain here with you.”

  “Why?”

  Calhoun thought he might be imagining it, but she actually seemed slightly uncomfortable discussing this. Finally Soleta said, “You are unprotected. We are on a vessel that is filled with enemies. They are seemingly all dead, but we cannot be certain. If one of them should attack, you would need protection. I can provide that for you.”

  Calhoun cocked an eyebrow. “You think I’m incapable of protecting myself?”

  “You are the captain of the vessel and your safety is of paramount concern. It is my duty to provide protection for you should the situation require it.”

  “Soleta, with all respect, I have trouble envisioning a scenario where I would need protection that I would be unable to pro—”

  Her hand clamped onto his shoulder before he could say anything further, and the next thing he knew he was slowly coming to. He was lying on the deck of the bridge, and the back of his head was sore from where he had struck it when he’d fallen. Soleta was on the far side of the bridge, seated in front of what appeared to be the computer bank. She was clearly trying to bring it back on line, but didn’t seem to be having any success. She glanced over and saw that he was sitting up. “Good. You’re awake,” she said briskly.

  “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

  “It was an attack. You were unprepared for it and succumbed rather easily. Should that happen in a combat situation and you were caught unprepared, you would be unconscious and unable to protect yourself. I would prefer not to see that happen.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.” He got to his feet, feeling a bit woozy as he did so.

  “In order to prove my point, I believe I did,” the Vulcan said.

  He could have argued it, but decided that it wasn’t worth it. “How long was I out?”

  “Four minutes, twenty-seven seconds. I could have put you out for much longer, but I felt that under five minutes was sufficient to make my concerns clear.”

  “You certainly managed to accomplish that.” He rubbed his shoulder to restore circulation. “No luck with their onboard computer?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve tried my best, but have been unable to access it. The ship suffered massive damage, including to the central core. Frankly it’s amazing that gravity and life support are still functioning. There may be a rudimentary computer program keeping things running, but it is certainly not capable of telling us what happened here.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “Captain,” said Soleta with great patience, “we are in a pocket universe. We have no idea who or what races populate it. Were we back in our own universe, I would most certainly be able to make conjectures as to who was responsible. Here? I have no clue.”

  He realized she was right. It was unfair of him to put pressure on her to come up with an explanation that she could not reasonably produce. He tapped his combadge once more. “Calhoun to Kebron.”

  “Kebron here.”

  “What have we got, Zak?”

  “An exceptional amount of nothing, Captain. All over the ship, it’s exactly the same as we found on the bridge. Bodies everywhere. Whoever came through here annihilated the ship’s crew. Total destruction. My conjecture is that the crew didn’t even land a punch.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “No enemy bodies. There had to be hand-to-hand combat here. It couldn’t have been from another ship firing on them; the vessel would have been blown to bits. So they had to come aboard and engage the crew in combat.”

  “They could have taken the bodies with them.”

  “They could have. But my tricorder says that the blood only belongs to the D’myurj and the Brethren. I doubt whoever took the bodies would have hung around to clean up their blood.”

  Calhoun hated to admit it, but that made sense. “All right. Keep looking.”

  “Honestly, Captain, we’re running out of places to look. Meyer and Boyajian haven’t turned up anything else either.”

  “Report back to the bridge. We’ll return to the—”

  His combadge suddenly beeped at him; someone else was trying to get in touch with him. “Return to the bridge. Hurry.” The captain knew why he wanted Kebron to make it fast. Calhoun had a fairly reliable inner sense that warned him when danger was near, and it had suddenly just gone off. The hair on the back of his neck was rising, and he really didn’t like the feel of it. He tapped his combadge a second time. “Calhoun here.”

  “Captain, we have company,” came Burgoyne’s voice. “They just showed up on long-range sensors, but they’re coming here incredibly fast. They should be here in ten seconds.”

  “Ten seconds?” Calhoun couldn’t believe it. What the hell had happened to the long-range sensors?

  Burgoyne answered the unspoken question. “It’s not the sensors, sir. The ship is simply moving faster than anything we’ve experienced before . . . and it’s here. Damn.”

  “Report.”

  “It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything this big. It’s as large as ten starships. Captain, I would seriously suggest we avoid getting into a firefight with it.”

  “You’re cloaked?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Calhoun ran his options through his head. Granted, the ship could fire while cloaked; it had that advantage. But it couldn’t operate the transporter while invisible. The only way they could beam the away team back was to drop the cloak. If the Excalibur did that, they might well find themselves in the firefight that Burgy had wanted to avoid.

  “Stay cloaked. We’ll find places to hide here just in case they come aboard. Do nothing until you’ve heard from me. Calhoun out.” He then hit his combadge again. “Calhoun to away team. We have visitors. Secrete yourselves out of sight until we have some idea of what we’re dealing with.”

  “Out of sight?” Kebron’s incredulous voice came back. “Captain, have you seen me?”

  “Do your best. Calhoun out.”

  “Captain,” said Soleta urgently.

  He turned toward her and saw, to his surprise, that she was standing next to an open door. It led into a relatively small storage area, and there were weapons within. Soleta was already yanking the weapons out and tossing them onto the corpses nearby to make it seem as if they had been used in combat. “Come on,” she said, and nodded toward the storage cabinet.

  He stepped into it, grabbing what appeared to be a large rifle of some sort and tossing it aside. Soleta jumped in after him and slammed the door shut. There was barely enough room in there for the two of them, but Calhoun figured that they would have to make do.

  There were several narrow slits in the top of the door, presumably to let air flow in and out. It gave him just enough room to be able to look out onto the bridge and see if anyone entered. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The ideal situation was that the new vessel was simply passing through the area and wasn’t going to give the
m a difficult time. However, he had the feeling that that wasn’t going to be the case, because that would require that a degree of luck befall them. Unfortunately that didn’t tend to happen a great deal of the time.

  Long minutes passed, and each one gave Calhoun increased hope that they would be able to avoid a confrontation with aliens which they knew absolutely nothing about. He glanced toward Soleta and realized that she was staring at him. Not only that, their close proximity was seeming to become an issue. “You okay?” he whispered.

  The Vulcan didn’t respond immediately, as if she were unaware that he had addressed her. Then she blinked in realization, as if she had thought that he was talking to someone else. “What? Oh. Yes. I am fine.”

  Soleta did not seem fine to him. But he was unable to pursue any line of questioning, because they suddenly heard the whining of energy that sounded like transporter beams. They were different, though. Higher pitched.

  The light from the transporter was so bright that he had to look away. Soleta, however, did not. She stared straight through the slits, the light flooding her face, and she didn’t even blink. The Vulcan sun was far brighter and thus her eyes were far tougher than Calhoun’s. “We have company,” she said very softly.

  The brightness finally receded and Calhoun looked back out through the narrow slits to see who had arrived. His concern was that it might be more D’myurj, and, upon seeing the slaughter that had been visited upon their kind, that they would prioritize finding out who had committed such a horrific act. If they found Calhoun and Soleta, they would probably blame them and execute them immediately. It was not a scenario that he was especially looking forward to.

  He was both surprised and relieved when he saw that it was not the D’myurj or the Brethren. But when he studied the newcomers, he realized that their situation might actually be worse.

  They were, without question, the most devastating-looking warriors that Calhoun had ever seen.

  The smallest of them was over two meters tall. They were wearing heavy armor made of overlapping black plates. Their blue-skinned arms and heads were exposed, however, and each of their arms were covered with twisted patterns of black tattoos. The tattoos weren’t any sort of pictures, but instead curved lines that intertwined with each other. Calhoun assumed that the tattoos had some sort of meaning, but he couldn’t imagine what that meaning was. Family crests, perhaps. Whatever it was, they obviously took great pride in their arms’ decorations.

  And there were a lot of arms.

  Each of them had six arms, three on each side of their body.

  Their faces each had two eyes, which at least seemed reasonable to Calhoun. But their eyes were solid black, soulless like a shark’s. They had no noses, but instead nictitating slits in their faces where a nose would be. They were identical in the hair upon their heads, which consisted of long, blond strands that were tied in knots at the base of their skulls.

  There were six of them, and they each had massive rifles that were attached to their backs through what appeared to be some sort of magnetic adhesive. Two of them had removed the rifles while they stood there, and they swung them around the bridge as if looking for possible enemies. Calhoun had no idea what the rifles fired, but he had to believe that it wouldn’t do him any good if he sustained fire from one of them.

  It was customary for Calhoun to try and figure out how to beat anyone he met in single combat. It wasn’t as if he was automatically assuming that he would wind up in the midst of a fight with any newcomer. He just prepared himself for the possibility.

  That was what Calhoun was doing as he stared at these heavily armed (in every sense) behemoths. He ran a variety of hand-to-hand combat moves through his head, envisioning every means by which he could come at them and try to take one of them down.

  None of them were working.

  No matter how he envisioned trying to defeat one of them in a combat situation, he was unable to conceive of one that would work. Every instance that he could come up with ended in exactly the same way: with him on his back while one of them brought one of their huge booted feet down on his face.

  This is not good. This is extremely not good.

  Calhoun had no idea what was going through Soleta’s mind, but he was reasonably sure it wasn’t anything pleasant. He suspected she was assessing the situation in exactly the same manner that he was and doubtless coming to the same conclusion. If it came down to a battle with these creatures, they wouldn’t last long at all. The only one who would have any sort of chance against these beings was Kebron, and he was busy hiding—or at least doing his best—somewhere else in the ship. Calhoun considered trying to reach Kebron and telling him to forget the entire concept of hiding and instead storm the bridge in a surprise attack. But he quickly dismissed the idea. It was preferable to try and remain hidden and perhaps elude detection altogether.

  You’ve changed. Once upon a time, you would have thrown yourself into battle without hesitation. You wouldn’t have decided that you couldn’t take these creatures on. Instead you would have simply jumped into the fray and trust that you’d come up with something in the heat of the moment. What’s the matter with you? You’ve just lost your entire race, and you’re aware of the fact that if you die, the Xenexian species will be down to exactly one person. Right. That’s the spirit.

  The tallest of the beings was in the middle of the bridge, and he appeared to be turning in a slow circle. The membranes that substituted for a nose were flaring. It seemed as if he were sniffing the air. Did he smell something that presented a problem? Was something on fire somewhere?

  Then he faced the door that they were hiding behind, and he spoke.

  “I smell you,” he said. In stark contrast to his massive and powerful build, his tone of voice was remarkably conversational. He reminded Calhoun of an instructor he had had when he first started Starfleet Academy. He sounded positively avuncular, as if his first order of business was to convince you to like him. Perhaps invite you out for a drink so that you can talk about everything that has come before and all that will come later. “I know that you are hiding there. Furthermore, I know from your scent that you are neither D’myurj nor Brethren. I am giving you a choice. If you force us to come over there and open the door, we will open fire on you and kill you where you stand. If, on the other hand, you step out of there and address us in a straightforward way, then we will take that to indicate that you are worthwhile individuals with whom we can parlay in a reasonable manner.”

  Calhoun didn’t see that he had a lot of options. It was entirely possible that he was being lied to and that they were going to open fire the moment they revealed themselves.

  He saw Soleta’s eyes glance at his phaser, which was on his hip. She didn’t have to speak to reveal her thinking; come out shooting. Try to take them down before they could do anything. That was certainly a possibility. Calhoun didn’t care how heavily armed they were. There wouldn’t be a thing they could do to resist a phaser set to full power. Simply blast them out of existence and then . . . what? Wait on the ship while the Excalibur remained cloaked? When the deceased aliens failed to report, their ship would doubtless conclude that something had happened to them and would simply blow the ship to bits. While killing them would certainly attend to the immediate problem, it would nevertheless sink them in the long term.

  He shook his head slightly at Soleta and, before she could say or do anything, he slowly opened the door.

  The blue-skinned beings stared at him, and there was clear surprise on their faces. It was obvious that they had never seen a Xenexian or Vulcan before. They exchanged confused glances with one another, as if silently inquiring if they had ever beheld anything like what they were seeing.

  Calhoun had no idea what to expect. He was still worried that they would immediately open fire.

  The tallest of them, the one who had spoken the warning pronouncement, slowly walked toward Calhoun. The captain tensed, ready for the alien to launch some sort of hand-to-hand attac
k. Perhaps he was of similar bent, always measuring people by the degree to which he was able to defend himself.

  And then, to Calhoun’s utter astonishment, the being hugged him.

  It was not a gentle embrace. The alien reached out with all six arms and enwrapped Calhoun so quickly that Mac wasn’t able to do anything to avoid it. He lifted Calhoun off his feet, and for a moment Mac was certain that the alien was going to try and break him in half. But instead the alien was content to simply embrace Calhoun as if he were reconnecting with a long-time friend or former lover.

  “This is . . . very uncomfortable,” Calhoun managed to say.

  The alien set Calhoun back down on his feet and then turned to Soleta. She started to explain, “No, wait—” but the Vulcan was unable to get the words out as he folded his six arms around her and gave her the same bizarre welcome that he had visited on Calhoun. Soleta managed to keep her face impassive, but she was clearly no more enamored of the overly familiar greeting than Calhoun was.

  Finally the creature set Soleta on her feet and then took both of them in with his gaze. “Which of you is in charge? I assume one of you is.”

  “That would be me,” said Calhoun. “I am . . .” He paused, about to identify himself as Captain Mackenzie Calhoun of the Starship Excalibur. But then he caught himself, realizing that it wouldn’t be the brightest maneuver to volunteer that much information right up front. So he simply said, “Mackenzie Calhoun. This is Soleta.” He nodded toward her. “And you would be—?”

  “I am Nyos,” said the alien. “My race is called the Dayan. I assume you’ve heard of us.”

  Calhoun shook his head.

  Nyos made no effort to hide his surprise. “Seriously? You have never heard of us? We are quite well known.”

  “I’m sorry, no,” said Calhoun. He looked to Soleta, but she simply shook her head. “We come from another sector, so it is entirely possible that word of your people has simply never reached us.”

  Nyos and the others exchanged expressions of pure bewilderment. They simply could not process the notion that Calhoun and Soleta—indeed, anybody, in all likelihood—had never heard of the Dayan. There were shrugs and quizzical expressions among all of them, and then Nyos cleared his throat and returned his attention to them. “What is the name of your race, if I may ask?”