Broken Bow - Diane Carey [43]
The wind began to clear. Blowing snow flattened into a sea, and the docking platform opened before them—empty! The obscured shape had been nothing but an approach shield!
“Great!” Hoshi blurted.
“Like I said,” Tucker shouted, “it’s over there!”
Another blast of weapons fire sliced the air. Archer ducked and ordered, “Weapons!”
They had to cross the deck again. And now the Suliban had found them! Even in the now-rising snowstorm, Archer caught a glimpse of his determined counterpart, the one Suliban who wouldn’t be put off, and whose resolve gave substance to the others behind him.
But there was distance between them. Archer was resolved, too, and worked to use the blowing snow as a shield. If it could obscure a whole platform, then he could make it obscure his team.
“Down! Get low, everybody! Form a single file!”
He tried to imagine what the Suliban would be seeing. Lower—lower—and keep moving steadily. Sporadic movement would gain more attention.
They kept searching for the shuttle, this time following Tucker through the storm of snow and weapons fire, firing all the way. Deep red plasma bullets streaked across the platform toward the place where the Suliban shots were coming from. Though the Suliban were moving toward them, Archer sensed they were being held back by his and Tucker’s shots. T’Pol was more reserved, taking shots more carefully, but she, too, was succeeding in driving them back. Hoshi was just skittering like a bird across the ice, intent on their target. She had a weapon, but she also knew she was of little use with it. Probably smart to let the trained officers handle that detail, Archer noted as the moments rushed past.
His single-file trick was working. Suliban shots were going wild behind them. Then they corrected their error forward, and the team was forced to scatter. Hot blue beams cut between them, driving them away from each other.
A darkened form, sheeted and blistered with ice, suddenly flashed with blue energy before them. The shuttlepod! The Suliban weapons fire lit up the skin of the pod and gave the Starfleet team a clear beacon to safety.
T’Pol circled around Archer and pounded on the shuttle window. Why was she doing that?
The emergency hatch began to crack open, popped out a few inches, and swung wider. Air gushed with equalization and temperature change.
Archer tried to reach the shuttle, but a crackle of blue energy raked the hull and drove him back into the swirling snow. His face and hands were numb with cold now. Where was Hoshi? He’d lost sight of her!
The Suliban were closing in. He knew that without even looking. He’d be doing the same thing.
“Hoshi!”
“Captain?” her voice was weak, but not far.
Shivering now, he forced his legs to keep moving away from the shuttle and toward her voice. Behind a wall over there, Tucker was firing steadily at something he could obviously see. The cover gave Archer time to find Hoshi in the roiling white storm. Without saying anything, he took her arm and pulled her along back the way he had just come.
Where were his footprints? He had just come this way, but the trail was already erased.
A mechanical roar directly overhead shook him to his boots. He pushed Hoshi down and tried to see what new method of attack the Suliban had invented. An aircraft—an alien craft launching from the port! Only its running lights showed through the blowing snow. Its great gush of thruster exhaust caused a frozen hell down here.
Archer pulled his eyes away from the transport overhead and squinted through the miasma toward the place where the Suliban shots had come from.
They’d stopped. The Suliban were driven down by the thruster exhaust. But the exhaust did one favor here and executed a problem over there—T’Pol was directly under the exhaust. The force knocked her off her feet and blew her across the deck. She had been near the shuttlepod and now she was way over there, shifting and dazed, alone, unarmed.
The Suliban soldiers and their leader rose