Broken Bow - Diane Carey [27]
Once discovered, the creature leaped from its hiding place back into the shadows.
On the biobed, Klaang fell to bizarre quiet. “Suliban!” he growled.
Archer spun, flashing his own beacon across the wall, trying to rediscover the—what was the word? Suliban ... well, he didn’t need any help translating that. Boogeyman.
Another one! Perched high on the wall like a spider! But this one wasn’t camouflaged like the other. This one had blotchy skin, almost tie-dyed, with eyes that were clearly evolved for some kind of night vision.
“Crewman!” Archer shouted.
The guard’s rifle snapped up just as the Suliban leaped to the ground and met a third one darting from the shadows!
The guard fired. Plasma bullets flashed through the room in quick stroboscopic flashes. Now the action turned to rapid cuts illuminated by the strobes. Klaang yanking around in frustration and shouting in Klingon ... Hoshi cowering low to avoid the gunfire, scanning erratically with her beacon ... the guard swinging around to take aim again at something he sensed behind him—
And one of the Suliban leaping onto the big boy. The guard hit the deck, and so did his plasma rifle. The weapon rattled and skidded away.
Archer lunged toward the weapon, hoping he was going in the right direction, but lost his handheld beacon as he struck the deck. Hoshi’s beacon was gone now, too. Was she hurt?
The rifle fell into his hands, like a warhorse seeking a rider, and he whirled it toward the nearest Suliban. Taking an instant to be sure he wasn’t shooting at his own people, he opened fire.
The Suliban was hit, and flew backward into the wall.
At Archer’s right elbow, Klaang stared upward and spat an accusation. Suliban directly overhead! The creature dropped from the ceiling! Archer felt the hard strike of a heavy body on the back of his head and neck. He was driven to the deck under a crushing weight, the plasma rifle trapped under his ribs.
The room went dark again—and very abruptly silent. The silence was scarier than the chaos and rifle shots had been.
Hoshi’s little tremor squeaked from under the biobed.
“Captain ... ?”
Archer tried to roll over. This time he felt no resistance. Whatever had been on top of him was now gone. As he got to his knees, a surge of power thrummed up through the skeleton of the ship under his knees and hands. One by one, the consoles began to flicker and light themselves.
Warp power! It was coming back!
Good boy, Trip ...
The guard was just sitting up, dazed. Phlox rushed to help him. Under the biobed, Hoshi found herself crouched beside the dead Suliban and squirmed suddenly away.
Archer staggered to his feet and looked around as the lights came back on all the way.
The biobed was empty. The Klingon was gone.
And so were the two Suliban interlopers who had survived the past few moments.
Violation. And kidnapping.
Not such a good day after all.
CHAPTER 8
A SHIPWIDE SEARCH had turned up nothing. They weren’t onboard. Still, Klaang and the things he called Suliban had gone somewhere, because they weren’t here anymore.
Jonathan Archer paced the bridge, agitated. His ship had been breached, the engines temporarily shut down, then just as mysteriously repowered again; intruders had found their way both onto the ship and back off without being tracked. None of that made him feel very good at all.
“We’ve got state-of-the-art sensors,” he complained angrily. “Why in hell didn’t we detect them?”
Around him, the bridge crew was virtually sheepish with lack of answers. “Mr. Reed thought he detected something right before we lost power,” T’Pol said, as if she really did want to help this time.
Archer whirled on Reed, who was working his tactical and security console. After a moment, the lieutenant offered, “The starboard sensor logs recorded a spatial disturbance.”
Trip Tucker leaned over Reed’s shoulder. “Looks more like a glitch.”
“Those weren’t glitches in sickbay,” Hoshi